Cilantro. The way my mom likes it (bolted and on its way to being coriander.)A neighboring plot reaching for the sky with a riot of color.“Aww, gimme a hug” to its finished friend while it feeds a bee.Peppers considering their next move.Tomatoes racing to catch the peas.
The obvious, obviously. But also the end of the broccoli, cabbage, and cauli and the start of the beans, squash, and corn.
I hope the Brussels stick around awhile. It’ll depend on the cabbage fly, I imagine.
I forgot when I sowed the potatoes and need to check so I know when to plan their replacements. Anyone remember?
The tunnel behind them is for the melon that still needs to sprout…
I’m not sure why I feel summers here don’t have the varieties winters do. Summers are fine with peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, okra, southern peas, and Malabar spinach. Perhaps it’s the abundance of variety of greens that grow in the winters that feels different.
This mid-season for growing in Central Texas isn’t quite “spring” but will all die off before the dead center of summer. The melons, potatoes, beans, squash, corn, cucumbers, and others will have to run fast to beat the heat and don’t always make it. This is the season I still haven’t learned as intimately as I’d like. The moving target of climate change doesn’t help!
I’ve been dividing seeds to share. Finding and finding my seeds. I grew these once, (nearly if not) ten years ago.
Testing germination was a first for me. “Sow and see” was more for me. But these are for others. They might be counting on them. So sow and see has a new meaning.
Tiger eye beans are beautiful dried beans that taste akin to pinto. With more depth, as garden-grown food is known to do.
They’re an heirloom, as I try for most of my seeds to be, either officially or simply in age. If you’d like to grow some soup beans, I can’t recommend these enough for flavor, production, and now also I can say longevity of seed vitality. They’re on Seed Savers Exchange.
I was a Mr. Rogers Neighborhood kid. Hopefully a lot of the good lessons sunk in although I don’t consciously remember many of them.
The one I do remember is that during times of fear or cruel realities, to look for the helpers.
Right now, across the world, those helpers are the medical workers, caretakers, and all of the team in support of our hospitals, elder care, and food access.
And they don’t have the help they need. They don’t have the masks, shields, and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that they need to stay healthy themselves. The items that would prevent them from falling ill, infecting others, or having to stop helping.
We all know these people. We usually know many of them personally. It’s my nephew. It’s my Sister-in-law. It’s my friend’s husband and it’s my cousin’s husband. It’s more than that and for you, it might be even closer to home. Or personal.
Politics aside on how it got this bad, we need to put our feelings (fear, anger, blame, worry, all of it) toward love, hope, and helping.
And maybe you do sew. Or maybe you don’t, but you have a weirdly large supply of elastic. Or some random wire to share.
Or a 3D printer.
So today, I’ll be dusting off (literally) my sewing machine. And dusting off my sewing skills (figuratively) to make what masks I have supplies to make.
The more we help one another, the more help there is.
plumdirt 