Filling Raised Beds
Meal Planning
Today we finished filling the raised beds, which puts us ahead of where we were last year, which was nowhere. This year, we’re actually putting soil in them and deciding what goes where. My wife is the one driving this. I’m along for the ride and trying to be useful without getting in the way, which is its own skill.
We have deer that bed down in our lawn. Rabbits, too, the kind you can almost walk up to. We’ll need fencing. That’s the next step after the soil and the seeds and the decisions about what to actually grow. We plan to visit the hardware store over the Memorial Day weekend that is coming up. In a way, we are getting ready for the economic downturn that is well on the way.
The idea of planning, of putting things in place now so that later takes care of itself, makes it a little easier. I paid off the last credit card I had, so now we have extra funds that were going to interest at our disposal to use for gas and food as prices spike. It all takes planning and trying to do the right things at the right times. When you see a storm rolling in, it’s time to get under some roof. A garden works the same way. You don’t put a tomato plant in the ground in August and expect tomatoes by September. You plan in the cold months, you plant in the right window, you tend it through the heat, and then you get tomatoes. Or you don’t, because deer got in. But you gave it a chance.
There’s a pottery connection here, as there always is. I’m thinking about fermentation pots. Sauerkraut crocks specifically. Traditional, heavy, functional pieces that do one thing and do it well for decades. If we’re growing cabbage, I want to be the one making the pot that ferments it. That feels right in a way I can’t fully explain. The garden feeds the table, and the studio feeds the garden. A closed loop. Self-reliant in the way that actually means something.
Planning the garden didn’t grow the vegetables. I learned that last year by thinking about it and doing nothing. This year, we’re putting things in the ground and seeing what comes up. Some of it will fail. The deer will get something. The rabbits will find a way in before the fence goes up. That’s fine. Failure in a garden, like failure in a kiln, teaches you what to do differently next time.
For now, the raised beds are going in. The books are off the shelf and actually open on the table. The fermentation pots are on the list. That’s enough for today.
If I were living yesterday a second time: Gardening, like pottery, is better when you’re not rushing because you ran out of daylight.
Things I am grateful for: The knowledge that putting something in the ground is an act of hope.
If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,684 days left. Today a few of them hours went toward putting something in the ground that might feed us. That counts.
Originally published at Creek Road Pottery
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