Mood Swings

One day, we're having everything-abloom weather, when the air is syrupy with orange blossoms and every little weed and vegetable springs out in galaxies of flowers.


The next, we're lighting the fireplace, telling ourselves its the last fire of the year, so we better enjoy it. It hasn't been the last fire.


A day goes like this lately. I come home, throw on ripped jeans, sports bra, t-shirt, boots, and my well-worn gloves, and do something difficult in the garden, like turning the fava beans into the soil or rearranging the compost or manually mowing, because that's how it gets done around here. I feel good, my endorphins are up, I've made change. And isn't that one of the great pleasures of the garden, creating that physical change, so tangible? Every day, I can say, "I did that. I made that happen." (That is a pleasure that does not exist in my career, though there are many other joys.)

Then the ugly happens. I bend down to see the damage, and the damage is great. Slugs have hit so hard this year; all the rain this winter must have led to some sweet sluggy loving. The sowbugs are no better. There are armies of these rolly-pollies that curl into their armored bodies whenever I approach. The slugs pull in their antennae and wait out the danger. If I hold still enough, sowbugs and slugs resume duty and start munching again. Every seed, every tender or struggling plant, is consumed; therefore, direct seeding, my preferred means of planting, has become an impossibility.



Just when I work myself nearly to frustration frenzy, something reminds me to look away from the carnage. Perhaps it is a hummingbird buzzing the lemon tree or a dove flapping to a floppy landing, the way they do. And when this happens, I can see what is growing well. While a couple struggling varieties of garlic are slug-eaten nubs, the rest are mighty and growing mightier.


The tomatoes are in the ground. I'm so hungry for tomatoes I could begin munching on the leaves like a tomato worm, so just seeing the plants, being able to smell them as I walk by fills me with that frantic anticipation: tomatoes are coming, tomatoes are coming.


Sitting in little pots on my porch, waiting to go into their own bed, the eggplants and peppers are plugging along. Once they go into the ground next week, they'll go gangbusters.

Already, I can taste summer. I can taste the bruschettas, the grilled eggplant, the roasted sweet peppers, the fresh chiles in everything. So much good is on its way.



And as for all those beans and other sweeties that my enemies are consuming, they're not lost, not really. I've started a second batch of everything in six-packs far away from the battlefield. They're safe for now, and growing far enough along until they've got strength to fight their own war when I put them in the ground.




While there's all this shifting and growing and fighting and starting, there's also ending, and good sweet endings. It's harvest time for sugar snaps and purple sprouting broccoli, and every night, in the early spring window while they last, we eat our generous fill of both.


Overall, things are swinging my way.

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To see what others across the planet are harvesting this week, stop by Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.