Growing Potential

A Bumper Crop of Possibility

Look at that. Can't you just taste the potential? Mmm, delicious, delicious potential. Well, whether it's delicious or not, this year I suspect I'll have to develop a taste for it. It'd be nice to plant lettuce and carrots and potatoes and other things you can, you know, actually eat, but with 8-month-old Rowan grazing the lawn every time I turn my back and 3-year-old Daisy ritualistically interring my hand tools whenever I break off to shepherd Rowan, it's unlikely I will succeed in sowing much more than this vision of freshly cultivated potential. At least it's nice to look at. Maybe I can set aside a few minutes every couple weeks to go out with a hoe and tend the potential. Pull weeds, rake the bed, think about what lovely broccoli could have grown here or snappy beans over there. Pull bits of dead leaves and bugs out of Rowans mouth while I daydream of tomatoes past. 

It is tempting, as a (self-pitying) parent, to see one's untended ambitions as lying fallow or unproductive while the primary objective of Not-Screwing-Up-Your-Kids-Too-Badly quickly drains one's strategic reserves of time, patience, and give-a-hoot. Why not, then, try to cultivate this potent dormancy as a worthwhile crop in its own right? Keep it free of weeds, fertile, and ready for the scantest input of inspiration and effort to return it to glorious and delicious productivity. Until such a time, should such a time occur, you will have a bare (but not barren!) testament to your erstwhile good intentions and aspirations. That's easily as satisfying as fresh tomatoes! Isn't it? Please tell me it is ... 

Finis!

Yeah ... we'll call that good.

As this Winter's previous posts should have adequately prepared the reader, I just can't fight it anymore. The weather, that is. So if our much-anticipated new greenhouse (greenshanty? greenshack? more of a green-to, really) project stands nearly complete one day and lies toppled by 50 mph winds the next morning, I am at this point inclined to just roll with it. Yep, I don't care that it resembles nothing so much as an ill-fated foray into horticulture by one of the two less provident Little Pigs after an encounter with that huffy-puffy wolf, it gets the Fencebroke Promontory seal of Good Enough. (I've a sneaking suspicion this will not be the last time we break out that seal this season).

Therefore, it is in this spirit of lowered expectations and with no particular pride that I present ...  <cue a single rusty trumpet's broken fanfare> ... The (Sponsor-to-be-Named) Conservatory at Fencebroke Promontory Gardens, henceforth and in perpetuity known as ... The Green-To, I guess. 

This structure will doubtless provide little practical use and will serve instead as a grating reminder of the powerlessness of man and woman and the primacy, capriciousness, and wanton misanthropy of nature. Because, like a birdbath, shouldn't every garden have one of those?

Weather Permitting

… Buuut, it's not. Cycles of petulant snow and sleet each weekend are not permitting. Inches of cold rain above the average are not permitting. Blankets of hail whumping down to cover the ground just as I zip up my rain gear for a brave, all-out assault on the impending garden are not permitting (he stands in the doorway clutching his spade—the soldier crosshaired by a fatally underestimated enemy). Tree limbs felled by cackling gales are not permitting. Groundwater and frost heave and erosion and that smug weatherman are not permitting. WHY IS HE LAUGHING? HOW CAN HE LAUGH!?

This whole @!#@% Winter is permitting little else but board games, snacks, and ominous tool-sharpening in what I'm told is uncomfortable proximity to loved ones. I'm not too close! You're too close! Where's the trail mix?

Well, that's done anyway.

I've got seeds in troves. I've got a greenhouse to finish building. I've got new fertilizer to alchemize. I've got strawberries to plant; stone fruits to prune; sod to lift; all these dang cinderblocks I've got to do something with. I have impressionable children in whom I must imbue the farmer's timeless connection to land and nature.

I've got imbuing to do! How am I supposed to imbue in all this mud!?

At this rate, with forecasts calling for bickering between polar and marine air masses until one or the other admits it was wrong and says 'I'm sorry', I'll be returned to the regularly-scheduled Spring garden (already in progress) sometime round about late April.

Weather permitting, of course.

These pruners are going to be sooo sharp by then.

Fencebroke Promontory Wonderland

Going forward, I plan on only posting pictures of the garden proper while its shortcomings are comfortably redacted with a blanket of snow. Beautiful, right? 

Wait a minute, are those cinderblocks I see scattered around the yard for no discernible reason? 

Nope, all I see are soft, playful snowblocks.

Okay, but what about that ugly tarp-covered wheelbarrow by the shed there?

Oh, you mean the majestic snowbarrow? Lovely, isn't it.

What about that spot there where the whole yard buckles upwards as though recently excavated?

Yes sir, nothing but the gently undulating terrain of Fencebroke Promontory Wonderland, certainly not the site of a recent, emergency sewer replacement project. 

Fine, fine, but come on now ... what's the deal with that purple shed door?

No questions about the purple door! That's it--this blog post is over! 

As Promised: Arnold Promise's Promise

Arnold Unfurls

To all those who doubted when I claimed my witch hazel blooms every Winter, come sun, rain, or snow; to the legions of haters and disbelievers who assaulted my timid assertion that, yes, indeed, this Hamamelis will burst forth into the frigidest of Februaries; to the angry hoards of persecutors who pelted me with stale dinner rolls following my meek espousal of 'Arnold Promise' as the noblest of this most noble clan; to that unruly mob that picketed Fencebroke Promontory for weeks on the heels of my controversial digression into fragrant winter-blooming shrubs; to the thugs who slashed my tires when I said I liked the color yellow ... eat your heart out. Here, as promised, is 'Arnold Promise' in all his promised glory, (as seen during Monday's Snowaclysm '17).

Now, if you'll excuse me, as I do not expect this announcement to go over well with the aforementioned haters, disbelievers, angry hoards, unruly mobs, and thugs (hey, what did I expect from a life in horticulture?) ... I have an appointment with Witness Protection.

Perfection

Tictictictictictic...

Remember this game? You know, the one by which we instill in our children a lifelong fear of sudden heart failure? It's called Perfection, and since the goal is to correctly match all the shapes into their holes within the allotted time lest the whole game board explode like a jack-in-the-box on meth, its name seems to imply that anything less than the nominal perfection is catastrophic, cardiac-arresting disaster. Good times. That tictictictictic of the timer still makes my hands sweaty just thinking about it. WHY CAN'T WE JUST BE VERY GOOD AT SOMETHING!!??

The reason I bring up Perfection is to evoke the lit-fuse urgency and dread one feels (one belonging to the Perfection generation, anyway) whenever there is a limited amount of time in which to accomplish a large number of tasks. My previous post laid out a few of the many such tasks to be tackled around Fencebroke. What I failed to mention is that—tictictictic—there is a—tictictic—timer going on in the—tictictic—background while I hem and haw and dither and procrastinate and wait for the weather to clear.

For Spring lies in wait, ticking silently underground, like an impending subterranean nuclear test blast beneath our feet. At least that's how I feel. But I mean, what difference will it make if I manage to relocate a couple perennials and add a row of bricks to the patio and prune two out of five apple trees when tictictictic—KPPSHWHOOOMPH!!!—Spring explodes in my face come April and I can't even find the rest of the apple trees. Unless I accomplish every. Single. Thing. To perfection. Then it will all be for nought, it will all be buried 'neath the incoming, supersonic, pyroclastic shrapnel cloud of daffodils and yellow plastic game pieces. That's just the way life works. According to Milton Bradley anyway. Those folks must have been gardeners.

To-Do

Whew! Okay, uh … sorry, just had a mini freak out when I started thinking about all the off-season gardening tasks on the docket for Fencebroke this Winter. But, if there's one thing I've learned from my brilliant wife over the years, it's that there's not a problem in the world too overwhelming to be solved—or at least put off for a few more minutes—by making a list. So here goes …

*Prune fruit trees

*Design and build small greenhouse out of existing materials

*Install new cinderblock border for veggie bed; plant strawberries in cinderblock holes

*Throw away old, expired seeds

*Buy new seeds

*Stifle guilt of once again buying too many seeds

*Build support for raspberries planted last year

*Find and re-bury treasure

*Dig new bed for planting quinoa; use sod thus lifted to start a new squash mound

*Figure out why the @##$^& I can't seem to grow potatoes

*Finish planting and edging existing ornamental beds

*Conduct mass funeral for all the plants that didn't make it this year

*Clean out rain barrels

*Find a way to market my book in China; learn Mandarin

*Dig-up and relocate at least 75% of so-called “permanent” plantings; after careful consideration, replant at least 50% of those back in the same spot they came from.

*Pot-up container plantings

*Clean out fire pit; burn all incriminating documents

*Plan edible plantings for the year in order to maximize nutrition, yield, variety, flavor, preservation, kid-friendliness, and length of growing season; give up and just wing it.

*Instill in offspring a lasting sense of harmony and connection to the Earth through the thoughtful cultivation of its soil; give up and put on Daniel Tiger instead.

*Find a way to share this year's harvest with those in need

*Prune dead limbs on trees in front yard

*Make garden more bird-friendly

*Make garden less cat-friendly

*Make garden more gardener-friendly

*Re-do and expand back patio for better—

—You know what? This isn't helping at all. I can't even … I don't know where to … and the ground is still frozen … and the kids won't ever nap at the same time and—

All right, I've got a new, simplified list:

*Stay inside

*Drink coffee

*Play video games

Check, check, and … check. Turns out my wife was on to something.