The squash plants are putting out vines and leaves at such a frantic pace these days, competing for ever-more-limited space, it’s hard to recall how three months ago my main concerns were about whether they’d sprout at all. Now I’m afraid they’ll start strangling each other. Things just looked so empty back when I was planting. Noted for next year: sow squash seeds farther apart.
Rainbows /
And with the rains come the rainbows.
When the monsoon season comes each here, Albuquerque evenings have the magic recipe for rainbows. The clouds that have blown across the city come up against the Sandia Mountains to the east and shed silvery walls of rain in the distance, while the sun descends in clear skies to the west, casting everything in gold. Out of that alchemy comes a shimmering arc of color over us all—sometimes two.
Winds /
Winds were over twenty-five miles per hour this evening, causing the trees to toss above us as my dog and I walked through the park. A few downed branches attracted his attention and are now officially marked (how the mighty have fallen). At one point I made eye contact with a cat tensed some ten feet from us, ready to spring into fight or flight, but I guess all those gusts kept the feline scent from us, because Tycho didn’t even glance in its direction.
I love these winds, not just because they flood the city with coolness, but because they unsettle us. Everything is up in the air, as if anything could happen. The top branches are now the lowest. The cats can get close to the dogs. The smothering heat of summer can lift and we can all feel fresh again for a moment.
Monsoons /
There are storms in the forecast. Storms, plural. Monsoon season is upon us, and I can’t wait for what it’s bringing.
Singing /
I’ve heard many times over the months that there’s a long and storied history in this region of singing to one’s plants. Maybe it’s a tradition in communities around the world. I assumed from the start that this is one custom I wouldn’t bother adopting in my garden... until I did. By which I mean I’ve unconsciously developed the habit of humming while I water, and saying hello to the fresh blossoms each morning, and now of having conversations with my baby pumpkins and ever-taller corn and sprawling squash vines as I weed around them and peek under their leaves. Good morning, little ones! How are things going for you today? Are you getting everything you need? Any new buds or fruit to reveal?
Flowering /
Another development in the last week is a sudden burst of flowering from a few plants that haven’t otherwise shown much development throughout June’s heatwave. The buds are tiny—tinier than the nail on my pinky, so tiny I didn’t manage to get them in focus—but they’re there! Above is amaranth; below are bean and melon plants. Maybe now that we’ve had some cloudy days and highs have dropped from the hundreds back into the nineties, these plants are finally able to channel some energy that had been reserved for sheer survival toward creating the next generation.
Pollination Revisited /
Checking in on that first female flower over the course of the last week: you’ve come a long way, baby. Looks like we’ve got a little sugar pumpkin on the way!
Interdependence /
Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and how to perform them.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Dependence /
The question of the survival of the family farm and the farm family is one version of the question of who will own the country, which is, ultimately, the question of who will own the people. Shall the usable property of our country be democratically be divided, or not? Shall the power of property be a democratic power, or not? If many people do not own the usable property, then they must submit to the few who do own it. They cannot eat or be sheltered or clothed except by submission. They will find themselves entirely dependent on money; they will find costs always higher, and money always harder to get. To renounce the principle of democratic property, which is the only basis of democratic liberty, in exchange for specious notions of efficiency or the economics of the so-called free market is a tragic folly.
(Wendell Berry, Bringing It to the Table p 34)
The wider the gap between us and our food, the more opportunity there is for the industrial food system to exploit our fears and drive us further into its camp.
To build alternatives and assert our independence requires that we rebuild our confidence as both individuals and communities. In effect, the dominance of the industrial food system is related as much to a crisis of confidence in ourselves as it is to that system’s ability to use its amassed power to control policy makers, markets, and consumers. Since a frontal assault on that power would be as futile as it would be foolish, the path to victory is by way of a renaissance of food knowledge and a reemergence of citizen democracy.
(Mark Winne, Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture pp 60-61)
Independence /
...erelong the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms. Such community will be alike independent of crowned kings, money kings, and land kings.
(Abraham Lincoln, Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, 1859)