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Herbs and meadows
I can’t believe I just looked out the back window and started to plan how I would relocate the big raised planter to a sunnier spot in the spring. Then my mind branched out to the herbs I’d add to the mix already planted. Come on now! It’s only the end of January (and what a January it has been) and I’m looking forward to spring gardening! Who am I? If my mom had been here, she would have said something like, “Theresa, don’t wish away the days.” But I remember how our mom loved to be outside in her garden. When we were kids, it was all about Mom’s garden. Oh we had lots of space to play in because we had such a big yard, but approximately one half of the backyard was a vegetable garden. She was a seed saver and a composter before composting and seed saving was the cool thing to do. In the ’50s, having a vegetable garden had become something poor people did, at least according to a lot of our friends and neighbours. But Mom loved her garden and she had a homegrown weeding and bug-picker-offer workforce at her beck-and-call. If any one of us kids ever complained about being bored around our mom we were give an old kitchen knife and an empty tin can and tasked with getting rid of all intruders. It seemed to me there were always weeds to pull or bugs and slugs to be removed from the plants. My younger brother and I spent a bit of time weeding one afternoon, in particular, only to find out we’d destroyed her newest vegetable adventure—asparagus. I don’t think she was pleased, but I do know making that mistake didn’t take us off the garden-duty-roster. If anything, making a weeding mistake was a simply lesson learned. Recently, my younger brother has become quite the backyard farmer. His knowledge of bone meal, composting, weeding and slug-picking is expansive. Who knew we’d have an urban farmer in our midst?
And, here I am. I’m thinking about moving the great, big planter to a sunnier spot and upping my herb output. Not too long ago I realized I was better off (financially and quality-wise) to buy our fresh, summer vegetables from a local farm stand or wait to see if a mystery bag of Romas (from Brother Farmer) would show up on my side porch. The thing is, I do like to grow herbs and look forward to trying new varieties. In addition to the herbs in the planter, last year I decided to let one section of the “deep deeps” (as our youngest used to call the part of the yard furthest from the house) to grow wild. Believe it or not, turning a lawn into a meadow isn’t an overnight thing, nor is it a one-season thing. The section to be “wilded” was mapped out and our young, lawn mowing guy was told to just let it go/grow. And so he did. Last year I planted a few wildflowers, aka weeds, back there and transplanted several hostas. I also cleared a wee path to the bird feeders so I wouldn’t tromp down any new weed growth. Let’s just say “last year the meadow was an ugly sight and a beautiful sight” all at the same time. I’m a bit excited to see what 2024 brings to the meadow. If anything, the birds were happy with it. If Mom were around, she’d have something to say about all of that.
Yep, I’m growing a meadow for my birdie friends and at twenty-four hours to February I’m doing research on the best wildflowers for a shady spot in the “deep deeps”, the back-of-beyond. Our yard has been through a lot of iterations over the nearly 38 years we’ve lived here. It was very tame and wide open when we moved in. At the time we were not opposed to paying the Green Truck People to spray those nasty weeds. However, within five years we had planted eight trees, six of which survived the rigours of three growing kids playing touch football, baseball, basketball, badminton and enjoying campouts with their friends. And over those years we’ve had vegetable gardens and flower beds, the herb planter and now the meadow-in-the-making. Occasionally I tell myself I’ll just turn it all into a lawn and skip the by-guess and by-golly of all of the other ideas I have for the space. And, then? Well, and then I remember how nice it is to have so many birds, so many butterflies and so much joy from planting, re-planting, transplanting, seeding and feeding, which fuels my imagination and my peace.
It’s February this week. It might be okay to dream about spring.
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