Our 2012 Garden

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”
― Wendell Berry

   Two years ago, Melissa and I built two raised beds and tried our hand at growing a very small garden. Mel had read and then passed on to me this great article about the victory gardens that Americans had been encouraged to grow during World War II. We were both inspired and wanted to try our hand at gardening. I had grown up watching and helping my granddad grow some great gardens and then had even grown several of my own as part of a family garden when I was growing up and Mel had grown up in a family that grew great gardens. And so we grew a garden. It was very fun, but not such a great success. We made many mistakes, but we still caught the "gardening" bug. The next year, we increased our gardening space and built two more raised beds and had some great success, but also made many more mistakes. Now we come to this year! We moved the raised beds in effort to let the plants get more sun and built two more raised beds. We also added quite a bit of our own homegrown fertilizer courtesy of Eudora and Flannery (our chickens) and have been more than happy with our 2012 garden. I have tossed in the idea of just plowing our bottom yard next year, but Mel says enough is enough and that we have enough gardening space. I agree, but I just get ahead of myself all the time. So, here are some pics of our garden as it has taken shape over the last several months.I have been wanting to share these for at least two months, but Mel grew us a baby and we harvested the little boy on the 26th and have been sort of busy since then!

The coming together of old and new for the 2012 growing season.

We placed the two oldest beds against the wall and added a layer to them.

We got rid of our original herb pots and built two beds solely for herbs. There are few things that beat cooking with fresh herbs.

The infant cucumbers and Mel's ingenious way of growing more in a smaller space.

The infant Better Boy tomato plants along with the ground seeded with carrots and broccoli.

Adding zucchini and squash.

A new bed. Squared, level, covered, and ready for dirt.

My most handy of all assistants!

What a difference a couple of months can make in a garden!

We have already harvested around 30 cucumbers and 10 zucchini and one sad squash. And we have used the herbs and the Egyptian Crawling Onion a lot.

A cucumber waiting its time.

Our tomato plants are really going strong this year. Both varieties are loaded down with baby tomatoes. I can't wait to eat them. Fresh tomatoes have such a great and full-bodied flavor. They make the ones you buy at the grocery store taste like cardboard.

Cucumber plants produce beautiful, little yellow flowers. 

A carrot that I'm going to cook very soon!

A Roma tomato plant loaded down with Caprese salad ingredients.

  Mel and I love our garden and each year we make a lot of mistakes, but we also have had some great success. It is so nice to eat a full meal out of items you have grown yourself. It seems to make the food taste even better than it already does. Each year we grow enough to have herbs, potatoes, peppers and several other items for the rest of the year and we live on less than a quarter acre. It makes me want to sell off everything and move to somewhere I could farm, but then again, I could just be getting far ahead of myself and reading too much Wendell Berry. 

Happy Gardening and even better eating,

   David

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.” 

                     ― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Duel in the Sun--Book Review

   Duel in the Sun is John Brant's account of the 1982 Boston Marathon where two of America's brightest burning stars of American distance running pushed each other to the limits; limits that neither one would ever recover from. Over the last several years, I have read many books about running, but I can easily say this is either the finest book about running or at minimum it is one of the finest. Brant does a fine job of telling a riveting story all while including all the details that runners and non-runners can enjoy.

  The facet that I liked the most about this book was how Brant makes a point of focusing in on the idea that moments make us who we are inside. I truly believe this and Brant highlights this throughout the book. He also does a great job of splicing a chapter about the actual race in between chapters either about the lives of Beardsley or Salazar before or after the 82' Boston Marathon. Brant also does a good job of highlighting the ups and downs of both men's live all while only writing about and refraining from passing judgement. As a reader, it is nice to get to read an account of an event or happening and then getting to decide for yourself. It allows the reader to become involved in a book much more deeply than just reading about how one person thinks about this or that.

  For those of you who don't know much about the 1982 Boston Marathon, here are the details in a several sentences. The 82' Boston was very hot, much the same as this past year. Alberto Salazar was the heaved favorite. He had either broken or set the record for every distance from the 5000 up to the marathon. He seemed to have no end to what he could push himself to accomplish. However, it was no surprise since he had grown up to be like this since he had followed the privileged road within the running community. He had trained with Olympic greats in high school and college. He had been coached by the who's who of 1960-1970's running coaches. He had trained with Billy Rodgers who had won the Boston and New York Marathons four times a piece. He had gone to college and run at Oregon in the footsteps of Steve Prefontaine. And then there was Dick Beardsley. He was the "blue collar" runner. He had run in college, but at a small one and to no big records or showing. He had won races, but they weren't the big ones. He had had coaches, but no one anyone had heard of. He had even won Grandma's Marathon in his home state. And he was currently coached by the infamous Bill Squires. Everyone thought Salazar was going to blow the competition, if you could even call it that, away and basically walk away with the win. Then the starting gun went off and everything that everyone said or thought changed. Dick Beardsley led the race for 25 miles with Salazar having to pull deep inside himself to even keep up. They dropped the other lead runners 16 miles into the race and for 10 miles they pushed each other to limits that neither would ever recover from. Salazar would end up winning the 82' marathon but only by several seconds and as the cover shows would end up pulling Beardsley up onto the podium. The best quote about the race from either of them comes from Beardsley and it goes something like, "I can't believe I ran a 2:09 and came in second."

   The sad part about this book was how they both spent the next section of their lives trying to find meaning for their lives. Both had injuries from pushing their bodies so hard for so long that they would really never recover from. The 82' Boston was the last great race either one of them would end of running. They both would run more and even win more, but they would never again burn as brightly as they did on Patriot's Day of 1982.

  If you are looking for a great read this summer. This is it, even if you don't run.

Happy Reading,

   David