8/11/2012

summer veggies - a dream

In the summer we expect an abundance of fruit and vegetables in our well-tended gardens, after months of hard work, lots of care, adequate mulching & watering and mostly a lot of waiting.

When the harvest is not quite as copious as expected we tend to find the faults in outside factors:

- the soil where the newly created vegetable patch is located is too poor
- the compost used as natural fertilizer has not broken down enough
- the growing season started later than normal
- there was frost even after the Saints de Glaces, the indicator of the last frost in May
- etc. etc.

This year I have decided to blame the drought, the lack of rain, for the last almost 3 months. Then I took a nap this afternoon, and in my dream I entered a very lush (hence not organic Provencal) garden with ripe lemons & grapefruit (in the summer? I think not!), loads of zucchini growing on a stalk (in a dream anything is possible), plenty of tomatoes, etc. This was a very nice dream. So I am taking this as a sign to not give up on my vegetable garden yet, with its small growth of vines for potential pumpkin, 2 tiny aubergines the size of a deflated tennis ball, the tiniest cherry tomatoes and the sunflowers with their drooping heads.

I shall go out tonight and water again, from a very shallow basin with very green water. I must admit that I have broken down in a way and allowed a pump run with electricity to fetch the water and abandon the Robinson Crusoe method of hauling a small bucket on a rope, with maybe 1 liter per dip....


Happy summer gardening
and don't forget to get your patch ready
for fall planting!


Claudia

2/15/2012

Wise Words

One minute of consciousness

Found this quote today and thought of the story we had posted a while ago, about the fishermen enjoying the sun.

The Dalai Lama was asked what surprised him the most; he said:
“Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.”

Our personal thought of the day....

Happy, relaxed and sunny greetings from La Vudèle, Provence

Claudia & Jim