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Blooms Blue August 15, 2011 |
Blooms Blue
August 15, 2011
Greetings Friends of the Farm,
Another farmer sent me a recent NY Times article.* It kind of brought me down. The farmer remarked, be glad we’re not living in 1450 to 1489, a forty year stretch of the worst human-recorded drought, according to testimony of very old trees, knowledgeable saplings even then. A person could have lived and died of thirst...and never seen rain....
Gads, I was trying to believe that we aren’t beginning a puny ten year drought like the one that gripped Texas in the 1950’s.
When I think of drought, I see caliche. On the outskirts of San Antonio, in the little rural community of Balcones Heights, caliche (calcium carbonate) was our native soil. Rocky, powdery, blanchedly white. Dusty, coating dust. Only mesquite trees could stand it.
The danged stuff is barely beneath a leaf-made layer of soil in front of our farm stand. Who in the world thought to put it there? It swirls around on market days with the southeast wind, and before market, as we rake early fallen leaves -- tidying up. When droughts strike, the best thing to do is tidy up and sprinkle the parking area with precious municipal water to sedate the dust.
To further elevate morale, I planted six little plumbago bushes around the big oak tree. Plumbagos were the shrubs I watered in Little Dove’s flower beds back in my childhood, during the big drought of the ‘50s. We watered only the shrubs; the yard grass (tan) was on its own. I planted the plumbago because it reminds me of my mother, and because it blooms blue. I think the people who come to our market will appreciate a cool, blue flower, just as did Little Dove all those years ago. And the Natural Gardener Nursery reassuringly said, “It will take anything.” The plant lady was too young to know that plumbago took the ‘50‘s drought; only I remembered they did.
But the first day here, the hens ate most of the shrubs’ little leaves, stretching their necks through the tomato baskets to pluck them. I don’t think the nursery, nor I, fully considered the hens factor. But the girls want something green. We must note that if we are ever starving, we should find plumbago and eat the leaves. Chickens teach you these things. For consequent protection, I installed a decidedly untidy chicken wire fence around the plumbago. They are blooming -- these little stems with their half leaves are blooming. Such generosity. Such optimism.
The oak tree mediates the heat around the little blue flowers, the tree that I “examine” every single day, and ask, “Are you reaching for the aquifer water and are you finding it?” For how in the world can I water its roots? I worry about a tree that saw the birth of this farm in 1839. It survived the tornado of 2001, although the ends of its branches twisted off, and a major branch came to touch upon, delicately, almost reverently, the farm house roof. It survived. We could stand to lose every 80-year old giant pecan tree on this farm, but not the old oak. If it died, would this farm also die, of heartbreak?
I’m asking Larry to take the mower off of Lillian, the smaller tractor. She mowed down a finished crop of squash today, and had a problem doing it as her mower is not a bush hog, it’s a grass mower. The squash plants balled up petulantly as they squished beneath the tires. They had some precious water in their stems. It spilled and evaporated.
Squash plants mowed down...
Left to right: old eggplant, new eggplant, arugula and Okra....
We have no grass to mow. The Bermuda grass shows green only where we
fail to control leaks in our irrigation system. The Bermuda won’t die
though. Not with this worst drought year “ever.” It will find a way to
return. And suddenly I am glad it will. Imagine walking through dry dirt
to the fields, kicking up dust with every step?
Yet, we have green, growing crops on the farm. They replace the crops that perished too early -- okra, Asian long beans, cherry tomatoes -- crops that usually take us through late summer and into October. And new squash and cucumbers are bearing now or will soon.
Forging on, I ordered more fall seeds today. Parsnips, fava beans, radicchio, mache, carrots...those darlings of cool, damp weather. Because things got better after 1489, and in a few moments, soon, some day, things will be better again.
And if not immediately, we’ll figure out a way to tidy up and grow some good food for you and for us, and, for the hens.
Carol Ann
*http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/as-texas-dries-out-life-falters-and-fades.html?_r=1
Another farmer sent me a recent NY Times article.* It kind of brought me down. The farmer remarked, be glad we’re not living in 1450 to 1489, a forty year stretch of the worst human-recorded drought, according to testimony of very old trees, knowledgeable saplings even then. A person could have lived and died of thirst...and never seen rain....
Gads, I was trying to believe that we aren’t beginning a puny ten year drought like the one that gripped Texas in the 1950’s.
When I think of drought, I see caliche. On the outskirts of San Antonio, in the little rural community of Balcones Heights, caliche (calcium carbonate) was our native soil. Rocky, powdery, blanchedly white. Dusty, coating dust. Only mesquite trees could stand it.
The danged stuff is barely beneath a leaf-made layer of soil in front of our farm stand. Who in the world thought to put it there? It swirls around on market days with the southeast wind, and before market, as we rake early fallen leaves -- tidying up. When droughts strike, the best thing to do is tidy up and sprinkle the parking area with precious municipal water to sedate the dust.
To further elevate morale, I planted six little plumbago bushes around the big oak tree. Plumbagos were the shrubs I watered in Little Dove’s flower beds back in my childhood, during the big drought of the ‘50s. We watered only the shrubs; the yard grass (tan) was on its own. I planted the plumbago because it reminds me of my mother, and because it blooms blue. I think the people who come to our market will appreciate a cool, blue flower, just as did Little Dove all those years ago. And the Natural Gardener Nursery reassuringly said, “It will take anything.” The plant lady was too young to know that plumbago took the ‘50‘s drought; only I remembered they did.
But the first day here, the hens ate most of the shrubs’ little leaves, stretching their necks through the tomato baskets to pluck them. I don’t think the nursery, nor I, fully considered the hens factor. But the girls want something green. We must note that if we are ever starving, we should find plumbago and eat the leaves. Chickens teach you these things. For consequent protection, I installed a decidedly untidy chicken wire fence around the plumbago. They are blooming -- these little stems with their half leaves are blooming. Such generosity. Such optimism.
The oak tree mediates the heat around the little blue flowers, the tree that I “examine” every single day, and ask, “Are you reaching for the aquifer water and are you finding it?” For how in the world can I water its roots? I worry about a tree that saw the birth of this farm in 1839. It survived the tornado of 2001, although the ends of its branches twisted off, and a major branch came to touch upon, delicately, almost reverently, the farm house roof. It survived. We could stand to lose every 80-year old giant pecan tree on this farm, but not the old oak. If it died, would this farm also die, of heartbreak?
I’m asking Larry to take the mower off of Lillian, the smaller tractor. She mowed down a finished crop of squash today, and had a problem doing it as her mower is not a bush hog, it’s a grass mower. The squash plants balled up petulantly as they squished beneath the tires. They had some precious water in their stems. It spilled and evaporated.
Squash plants mowed down...
Left to right: old eggplant, new eggplant, arugula and Okra....
Yet, we have green, growing crops on the farm. They replace the crops that perished too early -- okra, Asian long beans, cherry tomatoes -- crops that usually take us through late summer and into October. And new squash and cucumbers are bearing now or will soon.
Cucumber leaves wilt in the afternoon heat...but they are producing nonetheless....
Forging on, I ordered more fall seeds today. Parsnips, fava beans, radicchio, mache, carrots...those darlings of cool, damp weather. Because things got better after 1489, and in a few moments, soon, some day, things will be better again.
And if not immediately, we’ll figure out a way to tidy up and grow some good food for you and for us, and, for the hens.
Carol Ann
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