April 29, 2020

David and I have made a decision, and I have to tell you, the next couple of months are going to be interesting.

You may recall that a few years ago we were weighing our options, with respect to our back yard. Do we install a pool? We decided against that in the end, because it would really limit the back yard space that was available for our Mr. Tuffy. There is not much flat yard between our back door and the hill as it is. He was a small dog and my, did he ever love running laps! His son and daughter love doing that as much as he did. They also like to dig holes that David keeps filling in, but that’s another story.

So at that time, we installed a “gazebo”, a metal frame and canvas one, and we enjoyed that for several years. We even replaced the original gazebo with a slightly bigger one.

Now, however, we’re at a new decision point for our back yard. Do we replace the second gazebo with a third, or do something different? Yes, it’s something different we’ve decided upon, and something that has been inspired by the times we are in.

When we were a young married couple, and in the aftermath of my mother’s death, we moved into her house, which came with a piece of property that was three-quarters of an acre in size. My mother’s property featured five flower beds in the front yard, and one really large vegetable garden in the back yard.

How large, you may ask? Large enough that every spring, we had a neighbor who was a farmer come on his tractor to plow and then a few days later disc the garden so that it was ready for us to plant. That house sat on land that was atop the Niagara Escarpment. It was a heavy limestone area, and the topsoil layer wasn’t all that deep. We even had a limestone quarry (yes, the quarry where David worked for 39 ½ years) as one of our “neighbors”.

We used joke that each year that garden yielded us a good crop of rocks. It really wasn’t a joke, as it did just that. Working that thing we were forever tossing rocks out to sit at the base of the fence. But we did grow more than rocks. We had green and yellow beans, green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, different types of squash, radishes, Swiss chard, carrots, corn…the only things David and I never grew were lettuce and cauliflower.

 We loved that garden, and it helped to feed our family. We made pickles and relish from the cucumbers each year, chili sauce from the tomatoes—plus we froze a lot of tomatoes, whole, and used them to make sauces. We froze beans and broccoli and anything else we could manage.

And oh, the luxury of walking down to the garden to pick a tomato for a sandwich at lunch time—or some beans for supper! Each August while we had that garden we would enjoy a harvest meal—a supper that was all fresh picked or dug up veggies, and my goodness, how tasty that was!

We’re a lot older now, the two of us, and no longer able to get down to weed and work a garden the way we used to. And that brings us to the decision we’ve made. We’ve found “specs” to build garden boxes—boxes that will be about waist height and will measure, box size, two foot by four foot. The plan at the moment is to build three of them and put them where the gazebo used to be.

We’ve been trying to decide what veggies we’ll grow. Beans and tomatoes, for certain. If we have an entire box with beans, that should yield us enough to freeze at least a few. We won’t have the abundance that our old garden gave us, of course. I think the real benefit will be more psychological than anything else.

The latest headlines are that the food supply chain may be breaking. None of us has any idea how long it will take for it to be fixed. In the interim, none of us wants to go hungry. We’re older now and can’t do much about that. We have been picking up a few extra cans of veggies and meat as we shop. Canned goods will last a good couple of years. So that’s one thing we’re doing to protect ourselves.

By building and then cultivating a few table gardens we’ll not only be providing ourselves with some food. We’ll be doing something that will make us feel that we have some measure of control over the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

A little bit of control can go a long way toward soothing the id, if not the ego. 

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury