🏡 In and Around the Garden - August '23
Making space for the ordinary. Also, vermin are eating our tomatoes.
Summer is coming to a close, and the kids are starting school soon. Anticipation is building. It is the anticipation that blends excitement with fear. Life is already full, and it will only get fuller moving into this next season. But then again, life has always seemed full. Funny to me how that is. When I hear someone who has no children and isn’t married talking about how busy they are and how they have no time, I chuckle to myself and think, “just wait.” But I was the same way before marriage and before kids. No matter the stage of life, we find ways to fill up our time. It takes a conscious effort to slow down, be present, and make space for a slow, intentional life. And I’m not complaining about kids. Or marriage. In fact, for Morgan and me, it’s our marriage and our kids that have made us more aware of our need to press into the ordinary and the common. Because it is the present moment, no matter how ordinary it is, that holds the key to slowing down. Slowing down isn’t an act. It is an awareness and an acceptance of the present moment.
I do think there are certain actions or activities that help us cultivate space for a slower, more intentional lifestyle. For example: cooking a meal instead of eating out. Or better yet, cooking a meal with a loved one instead of eating out. Or - stay with me - cooking a meal, made up of fresh, seasonal ingredients with a loved one instead of eating out. And what if those ingredients were grown by you? or your neighbor? or bought from a farmer whose kids you know and whose story you could tell? That meal is much more than a means to an end. It is an experience and a savoring of beautiful, ordinary things. An act that cultivates space for connection. And it used to be common.
Gardeners have to deal with pests of all kinds. Or should I say - vermin. I’m of the impression (with what I believe is good reason) that as a gardener, it is better to work with the vermin, than actively against them. I am not saying do nothing. But rather, do everything you can possibly do to either share or keep the vermin out before you resort to removing the animal. The good reason that I referred to earlier is rooted in the idea of “carrying capacity”. That means that each environment has a certain capacity for “carrying” life. Or in other words, there are limited resources in each environment and therefore there is a limited amount of animals that can survive in any given environment. Generally, the theory goes on to say, that in most environments, life will expand to the extent at which resources are available. If there are resources to support more life, life will expand into it. And this is good. This is one of the reasons very little is wasted in a natural ecosystem. And so, removing life from an environment that has the resources to support it, is futile, because it won’t be long until another life, similar in nature, is there to replace it.
Let me give you an example. In my back yard is one such environment where there are plenty of resources to support life. Planting tomatoes is an example of me increasing the resources available in this environment. If I don’t eat my tomatoes, something else will. And sometimes, as has happened in my backyard recently, that something else ate my tomatoes before I could. In this particular case, it’s squirrels. I was away for a week and that was all it took. You see, previously, as soon as I saw a tomato blush, I picked it. Typically, in my experience, squirrels prefer to eat ripe or ripening tomatoes as opposed to green tomatoes. And prior to my leaving, this strategy was working. However, upon coming back to our garden after a week away, I found half a dozen eaten tomatoes, another half dozen, half eaten tomatoes, and countless other green tomatoes that had a single bite taken out of them. The squirrels had put the word out. Mind you, we only have 6 tomato plants. We can’t really share. And the squirrels are obviously of the same opinion. Since being back, a more consistent presence in the garden and early picking has helped a lot. Our options for dealing with squirrels are limited. We aren’t fencing in the garden to keep them out and we don’t want a cat at this time… Killing them would be pointless. So we do our best to live with the squirrels and pick the ‘maters before they do.
Here are some shots that capture some of the moments from the past few weeks.
Great read. Thanks Taylor!