Grandma collard seed

Such a gift this week to have the school garden come together with such exuberance. The four of us from the Dade City Garden Club (aka the garden ladies) received our grant to do it in August.

With tons of help from spouses and friends we installed the raised beds, irrigation system and shoveled in the soil. We planted many seedlings and seeds with help from the kids. It was so hard getting the school staff and teachers to come out and participate.

This school has been under state supervision because its rating was a D. All the more reason it seemed to us garden ladies, to bring some joy and soul, science and good eating to this place. We prepared lessons and art activities, the kids loved the bugs and frogs they found. We had cooking groups for the vegetables we harvested.

But there was something immense missing. Seemed that the school did not care, there was no communication however hard we tried, our cooking groups often couldn't happen because the kitchen was always either locked or being used. Many times no kids showed up on schedule. We felt dismissed and unappreciated. We were dispirited. But always, we regrouped to try something else. We knew that these folks at this school were fearful and anxious and we knew also that this garden project could be great.

We admired the garden so burgeoning with produce, a field of fluffy green and tons of flowers, many butterflies. No problem with growing stuff! We invited and cajoled everyone at school to pick the harvest, take it home to eat. It was hard. We went to the garden and no sign of anyone harvesting anything. Gradually, a few classes began to pick collards and broccoli and carrots. We encouraged the kids to just eat beans and peapods off the vines.

Keeping on, we invited parents and teachers and community members to come and learn about growing their very own earth box of what vegetables they choose. Amazing! People showed up! Kids came. It was a wonderful morning of shared work and fellowship. The school parent coordinator, the school science coach, even the principal all showed up - and it seemed they GOT IT! Many e-mails have been whizzing back and forth since then about garden issues. Kids who came to the garden confidently extracted seedlings from the nine packs and deftly inserted them into the beds.

Our broccoli plants have been trying to flower. We leave a few for the butterflies. Two lovely children who had been hanging out working in the garden all morning couldn't bear to throw the spent plants into the compost and saved a plant, sticking it into a pot. "What are you gong to do with this?" I asked. They said they were gong to give it to their teacher! As they hauled it off I called out, "Come back here and tell me how she reacted!"

Five minutes later they were back with mile wide grins. "She loves it!"

These kids and a few others loved being in the garden with a motley group of folks. They hung around as the adults talked vegetable cooking techniques and they spoke up with their own opinions. This is just the way it's spozed to be! I think that now this school has ownership of this magical place.

Grandma collard seed

Grandma Collard Seed

Being Sick

A whole week of my life disappeared. It began happening on a Tuesday afternoon when everything in my body began to hurt with shards of dull pain. I was cold, then hot, I began to cough, I took ibuprophen and went to bed early, and by morning I had changed my sweat soaked p.j.'s twice. My husband was suffering with the same thing and had actually come down with it a couple of days before me.

I was only faintly sympathetic. (I never get sick! Hey, I got the flue shot and have been vaccinated against whooping cough and pneumonia. No worries.) I made soup, my best effort as Florence Nightingale.

But when I became ill, it really was the worst since I had had Asian flu as a teenager. We moved slowly from room to room seeking flat places to lie supine. The dog loved this choice of super warm bodies to cuddle up to. At one point I was lying quietly upstairs on our grandson's bed, and with so much time and nothing to read, I examined everything in the room: the many post-it notes all over the walls. When did this boy do that? I did not have the energy to go and see what they said and my eyes moved on to an amazingly complicated Lego construction on the table. What ARE these turtles?  Then there are the framed child paintings I have not examined in years, and the large photograph of me as a lovely three year old. This is a strange room. And I can't possibly live feeling like this.

After hauling myself in to see my doctor, who said I had nothing unique, a sinus infection and I should rest, drink chicken soup and take a course of antibiotics I felt no better for several days. We continued to cough and ooze from couch to couch, bed to bed. Sometimes we roused ourselves to make some comfort food, stuff we usually never eat such as mac and cheese, dumplings, more soup. It was too much trouble to go out to the garden and pick a salad. I forced myself to tend to the two hundred tomato and pepper seedlings on the porch. Couldn't let them die! One morning we did four loads of laundry- all those sweaty sheets and pajamas.

Just before we turned the corner I got the idea in my head that I wanted to eat pound cake. No one could possibly make the trip to the store.
And so my husband said he'd make a cake. It took six eggs and a prodigious amount of butter. By the time the cake was nearing doneness, he was clinging to the counter, whipped.  We ate it for dessert after one of our comfort food meals we pretended to enjoy. The cake was actually lovely.

Then, this morning after the freeze, we awoke human again. Maybe not quite well, but the possibility exists. We had things to do, places to go.

I have been hungry all day, eating everything in sight. We both lost so much weight in a week it's scary.

 From one Downton Abbey to the next that I watched from my couch, I seriously began to love Maggie Smith's face and began to think of her as my fashion guru.

I will be more sympathetic from now on with everyone, anyone who just has something non unique that is serious to them. The kids never called, not that we had alerted them. But I did think about the many times I sent them off to school sick and was not entirely sympathetic to the various spots and scabs of their childhood.

Such is life.

                             

Many Guests, Many Veges

The tomatoes lasted until the end of January, and even tonight there are probably a few wizened ones left. It has been an amazing winter, warm beyond what anyone has ever seen.

Our New England family is hunkered down watching the snow fall, thinking about tomorrow when all that snow will have to be removed.

  And, here in paradise, I spent the day setting out seedlings, weeding, mulching, planting the new crops to join the broccoli, collards, carrots, and potatoes we are already enjoying. The porch is full of dozens of heirloom tomato and pepper starts I planted just after Christmas that will go into the garden in a couple of weeks. Many of them will go to the school/community garden and to friends.

 It is a new thing to have had vegetables from the garden non-stop for the entire year. Yeah, sometimes there are a lot of repeats. Collards and broccoli several times a week, salad every night.

Yesterday, when we made a last breakfast for our departing guests, we had those exquisite tiny new red potatoes with the eggs from a neighbor and the last of the tomatoes.

My brother and his wife had been visiting for two and a half weeks. They stayed in our lovely guest house that perches on a ridge overlooking the pond. My husband  and I and my brother and his wife have spent two or three weeks together every year for the past twelve years. We have been in Italy and France several times, to Alaska, to New Zealand and places closer to home. Sometimes our sisters were a part of these trips, but always it has been the four of us.

This time they came to visit us here and it was the best visit ever. I could be working in the garden and listen to my brother playing his violin from the porch on the guest house. We read and talked our heads off about books and politics and family. They loved the outdoor shower and the walks through the woods and the panorama of Florida spring with the wild yellow jasmine vines in the trees. We ate marvelous dinners and took day trips all around the vicinity and we had friends over and we sat on the bench by the pond and watched the birds.

It was a perfect visit from this big brother of mine. How I enjoyed the several hours when he prepared a bed for the strawberries and tenderly inserted the plants into the compost amended bed. When it's a long visit, everything doesn't have to be addressed immediately; important issues come in bits, more to come later.