Alright.  Enough of the preparation for Harakiri.  I’m tired of wallowing around in my depression.  The mud has been bad enough.  Enough of this crap.  The garden is actually growing!  Much to my surprise.  Mother nature is a pretty amazing lady.  She pounds us with rain and hail and at the same time makes the potatoes grow.  So which one then, is Mother Nature? – The plants or the storms?  Both, me thinks.  As Walt Whitman once said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”  In any case, it seems that the learning for the farmer/gardener never ceases.

Aaron and I put up a divider of chicken wire in the coop run so the little chicks can finally come out into the big world.  While sitting out there admiring our handiwork and watching to see if the little birds would come out (they didn’t) we saw another huge storm cell build up and head on over to visit.  Fortunately we were on the northern edge of this one and all we got was some rain and thunder.  Sorry Kansas and Oklahoma…. your turn.

Prior to battening everything down and heading into the house again, I did a stroll around the garden.  While the deluges have caused a lot of erosion and the fruiting plants (tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, eggplants look like they’d been rode hard and put away wet), the more root type of crops and those still low to the ground appear to be on their way to actually making it.

All of the potatoes are up.  All of the black beans are up.  Some of the sweet corn is up (I may just re-seed some of that), the carrots are coming up and so are the beets.  The onions look a little pummeled but may turn out ok.  The strawberries are getting leaves, and it is too soon to tell about the Asparagus.

All in all, there is life.  The tomatoes could make it.  It just depends on if the storms continue or not.

One of the homesteading magazines I read had an article on this very subject as well.  They swear by raising the root crops outside, and if you have the ability, raise the tomato, pepper and eggplant type plants in a greenhouse or high hoop tunnel.  As you might expect, my brain is already trying to figure that one out.  I was looking forward to the day when the construction ended, but I also had half a mind to build a greenhouse out of reclaimed windows.  Perhaps that still needs to be the case.

It seems it only takes a glimmer of hope to reignite all of the excitement one may have thought was lost.  So I’m chalking this all up to experience and the need to learn what works here and what doesn’t.  There are several farms around here with high tunnels.  Perhaps now I know the reason why.  The other option, while we still have our urban garden, would be to grow those plants back there and do the roots here with an eye to eventually having the greenhouse here.  There is a part of me that wishes this project would have started 20 years ago.  But then of course, we could never have afforded it.

Evidently…. nature destroys herself and grows herself.  I look forward to getting back to the growing herself phase.  I wonder if I sent Exxon a bill if they’d pay it?  Or Conoco?  Shell?  Big Coal?  Probably not.  In the meantime, Plant til I can’t.  When the plants get crushed… plant til I can’t.  Rinse… repeat.