The Sidebar: Secret Gardens, Small Veg Plots, Quesadillas — And Farmer Sue Freaks Out
When pressure mounts, take a beauty break.
Hello everyone!
I hope you’ve had a good week. I must confess to a bit of anxiety, to feeling a tad overwhelmed on our return to the Island and to work. There is a half-eaten bag of chocolate chips by my side as evidence. Why is it that the universe conspires to punish us for time spent away from the daily grind?
We returned to a dishwasher that had been heating itself for 10 days. So that’s a miracle right there that the house didn’t burn down. But the machine is shot, so $$ for a new one. I took Farmer to the vet on Wednesday and came away with a $990 bill and three new supplements. But again, I’m grateful to our Dr. Janet who is keeping the old boy going.
Then we had a $$$ car problem and a double charge from the DC hotel on our credit card. I realize these are ridiculously small problems in the scheme of things. And actually, it wasn’t this confluence of expenses, bummer as it was, that I was most worried about. I knew we could work through them as we always do.
But then something else freaked me out. On Tuesday, work began unexpectedly on leveling the area of our field where we are going to erect the hoop house. We have a connection to a lovely man with a hardscaping business (and a Bobcat) through a contractor friend. He (the hardscaper) has done two small projects for us, and we manage to communicate pretty well though we know virtually no Portuguese and he is still improving his English. We like this man a lot and trust him, but when I came home from work and saw what at first looked more like excavation than leveling – and a lot of sandy fill going into the plot, I thought we – no, I – had screwed things up.
I got that old familiar feeling of being stupid, of not really knowing what I was doing, of not having thought something through completely or communicated well enough. I felt especially anxious because building the hoop house (and starting this farmette) is a big deal. My husband has put so much trust in me, and suddenly I was imagining that this expensive structure (which isn’t even built yet!) would someday fall over because I had made the wrong decision about the foundation.
When I looked down at the plot, what I saw was at least a foot of sand (less on the high side, more on the low side, as this was, after all a leveling project) that I thought would never be stable enough to hold the ground stakes for the hoops. I couldn’t remember how deep the ground stakes go in, and I couldn’t find the information online quickly. So I chose to freak out instead. (My poor husband.)
I texted the woman who is going to erect the hoop house for us (she is both an awesome carpenter and an awesome person) and we also got in touch with our contractor friend, who promised to stop by and look.
Then I went down to (politely, calmly) talk through my concerns with the man doing the work. I attempted to explain more articulately what we are planning to do on this plot. He attempted to reassure me that by the time they were done with compacting the sand, it would all be fine. This particular sand, I learned, is sand hardener – or what the internet calls utility sand – and I recognized it as the stuff used to fill the pot holes and smooth out the curves on the dirt roads (including ours) out here. Once compacted, it is quite strong.
To bring this story to a swift conclusion, let me just say that he was right: by the end of the next day when the work was completed, I could see that it was all going to be fine. Or at least I think it is! My husband thinks it is. Our contractor friend who stopped by thinks it is. And our carpenter thinks it is. The work is beautiful – not only is the plot compacted and leveled but dirt was added all around to ease the slope created from leveling. I thanked our hardscaper friend profusely.
When I texted our carpenter again after it was finished, I lamented about the scary-feelings thing, and she concurred, saying that this is always how it goes when you push beyond your imagined limitations. “It’s how you build up the bravery to keep trying,” she said. ‘It’s going to be great.”
(If you are wondering: I am not planning to plant directly into the ground in the hoop house right away, so the fact that I will have sand under my feet – or more accurately under landscape fabric under my feet— isn’t a problem. I’ll be using the hoop house for seed starting, transplanting, hardening off, etc. at first, and I will create two long raised beds on the sides that I’ll slowly build up with soil and compost to use in the future.)
Second: Garden Fantasies
I also had some pressing work deadlines this week, so for relief I went garden-fantasy googling. First I arrived at British gardening maven Sarah Raven’s website, and learned that her property in East Sussex – Perch Hill Farm – will be open to the public three times this year.
The first of the Open Days will be over three weekends in April when the bulbs are all in bloom. The photos looked so stunning that I immediately began fantasizing about getting on a plane to England. (I once got on a plane to Kentucky to see Wendell Berry at the last minute, but my spontaneity, not to mention my time and funds, is in much shorter supply these days.) But let’s just pretend for a minute. Who wants to go with me? I corresponded with her website folks to make sure they wouldn’t mind me using an image (the one at the top of this post). Perhaps I could write back and get us a special tour?
By the way, Sarah’s A Year Full of Flowers is one of my most dog-eared flower books. I first learned about her from an interview Erin at Floret did with her. I’m looking forward to her new book, A Year Full of Veg. Follow her on Instagram @sarahravenperchhill. And you absolutely want to follow talented garden photographer Jonathan Buckley @jonathanbuckleyphotography, who has shot most of Sarah’s books.