"A Lovesome Thing"

. . . because it seems nearly anything can be brought back to dorothy sayers' Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, which latter says on her honeymoon that "A garden is a lovesome thing. God wot", a phrase i find charming in an earthy, fundamental way.
we dug a little garden this year. the miniscule raised bed that hubs made for me last autumn is an herb garden now. my parsley is out of control, absolutely. and i pulled out about 2/3s of it, too, or maybe more.

i mean it.

seriously out of control.

but it's incredible to me, this gardening!



beets (from seed) and marigolds (boughten)

we have, by and large (except most of you all . . . but you know what i mean. as a culture) gotten so far away from the most basic cause-effect events: i put seeds in the ground!

my pumpkin seeds

they grew! food comes from the earth, not a factory or grocery store or truck! we make love, it makes a baby! babies come from people, not from petri dishes, or test tubes, or laboratories! we pollute the earth and grow the same stupid three crops, and people develop allergies and digestive what-nots and our whole country is full of sick people, and our earth is dead and grey, ashes and dust, producing through chemicals. i do not think it is co-incidence, this killing of the Earth and the killing of our children. once self, money, and convenience take over, they are like ailanthus altissima whose root systems spread underneath acres of ground and permeate everywhere.
okay, sorry for that diatribe . . .
because growing things is amazing.

pepper plant: it's so pretty!

i feel like a little kid.

broccoli, lettuces, brussels sprouts, cabbage moth holes

i still am in awe that i put things in the ground--seeds, even, not just pre-sprouted seedlings  (although some of those), and they GREW!

broccoli, brussels sprouts, marigolds, turtle

Finn thinks it's pretty cool, too. he wanted to dig and plant his own garden.

pumpkin seeds and zucchini seeds

  right by the raggle-taggle swing our landlord left (and, incidentally, in the roots of the enormous ailanthus tree in our yard). here you can sort of see his carrots.

will they survive two boys, a dog, a weedwhacker,
and ailanthus roots????

it's an amazing thing. i am totally in love.
God wot.

soggy bottom boys

a couple weekends ago we went camping in George Washington National Forest, which is beautiful and free entry and also where i used to go rock climbing ages and ages ago. it contains a beautiful and peaceful tributary of the shenandoah (you rolling river). it was glorious, if a bit more primitive than we were expecting, in that they hadn't turned on the water. it was a good thing we had brought a lot with us. regardless, the boys had a lot of fun and slept like logs in our 2-person tent. yah, we've outgrown that one . . . their favorite part was playing in Passage Creek:

here's my buddy, who's turning into a little man, in the middle of the river. he could lead a trek.

my little bright eyes:

he had a lot of fun getting really, really wet.

and playing peek-a-boo with the tent.

we brought the dog, too, which ended up being a major mistake. he is not an outdoor dog. he got really terrified when a squirrel dropped by our tent in the middle of the night. BUT we somehow managed to make a big enough fire to cook our dinner, despite the sort of ridiculous scarcity of wood. if you look closely, you can see that one stick, the one pointing right at you, is bubbling. that was pretty nifty.

we are super stoked to go camping again . . . when we get a bigger tent. and maybe some air mattresses, 'cause let's face it, folks: we're not so young as once we were.