Wintergreen
As I write this, a wild snow storm is swirling about my little house, wet stuff. The streets were bare when it began. Who knows what the world will look like come morning.
I am sipping a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, a large-mouth, crystal glass, only a quarter full so I can swirl the wine and enjoy the “nose” before sipping, let it slip about on my tongue before swallowing.
` It’s an inexpensive wine, but it holds its own, and I’m enjoying it with my winter, store-bought salad made from “Italian” greens, spinach, sliced mandarin oranges, avocado and a side of sliced pear.
Overall, I’ve poured balsamic vinaigrette. My favorite dressing of the moment.
I’m listening to a CD called “Gypsy Passion” -- lots of moving guitars, and I wonder about my sedentary life knowing that deep inside the road calls me, and the times I’ve answered have been sweet. I love the lift, the high, the expectation the first day a road trip brings.
I’ve traversed this continent many times in my half century-plus of life, by train twice, by air, by car and bus. I think the train and bus trips were most memorable, the characters one meets, the peculiar diners a bus hits in the middle of red dirt Oklahoma nowhere, guarding one’s purse from unpleasant strangers while dozing in the station at 2 a.m. in Laramie, Wyoming, waiting for the trip to resume.
Bus travel is the lowest of the low in terms of travel these days, maybe one step above hitchhiking and almost as dangerous, but I love the circumstances it puts people in, kind of like being trapped in a stalled elevator with people you see every day but never talk to.
Yesterday I brought in plastic seed starting trays from the garage and washed them, dipping them in a light bleach solution to kill whatever vermin may conspire to kill seedlings.
A gypsy traveler cannot maintain a garden. Staying on a piece of ground is necessary, so once I plant tiny seeds in these trays I’m committed.
In this high Rocky Mountain climate, it’s still too early to start most seedlings, but I want to experiment with leeks. I’ll start a few in peat pellets and trim the hair-like stalks back when they bend over and see if I can produce stronger seedlings and larger roots in the long run.
This experiment has probably already been done, but not by me, so I will reap the results on my own time.
My small garden is overshadowed by a neighbor’s huge tree and shaded from late afternoon sun by a small building. The plants literally grow sideways trying to reach the sun from under the tree’s shade.
I’ve talked with the property owner about the tree, but nothing has been done.
It would be a wonderful tree in an open field, a home to birds of all kinds, squirrels and other wild life, but here it’s a nuisance, and is even dangerous because during wind storms huge chunks of it break free and fall on electrical wires and threaten buildings.
In a few weeks, I will plant greens in my cold frame. Last year it worked well, I ate several salads from a mesclun mix I grew under glass, that is, before the little slugs hatched and ate my second planting as fast as the seeds germinated.
Lettuce and Mesclun mixes are great for the gardener working within a small space. In one of the catalogs I noticed a sweet pepper mixture that would also be a boon to a gardener with a small space who likes to start his/her own plants from seed.
Because my garden space is small compared to the 1/4 acre I tended at the ranch years ago when I was married, I nearly always over crowd plants in an attempt to try to grow EVERYTHING. Every year I say I will restrain myself, but when the garden is all freshly tilled earth, everything seems possible.
I annually (and inconveniently) forget, or underestimate, the width of a zucchini plant, how leaf lettuces planted too close may shade a row of carrot or beet seedlings, for instance.
One thing I’ve enjoyed is a bit of container gardening. I always grow basil in a large pot started in situ indoors, and then bring it in in the fall and snip fresh leaves until the plants give out. (I can still snip a few). I also grow rosemary in a pot and bring it indoors, along with a small bay tree I repotted last year that’s doing quite well.
Bay and rosemary are essential to a good vegetable soup.
Two years ago, and last year, I planted Tom Thumb peas in a large pot and harvested several handfuls of the sweet treats and ate them raw, my favorite way to eat peas, and grew snowpeas and snap peas in the regular garden on trellises.
I’ve yet to have a really good crop of green beans in this garden space, but the plants that survive the slugs and who knows what else eats them, and blocked sun from the neighboring shade tree, produce tasty treats I sometimes steam for breakfast.