As it turns out, sometimes NOT weeding ends up being a good thing.
(Which is surely a metaphor for something … )
Our almost-entirely-untended vegetable garden yielded ten squash this fall.
(TEN! Nine butternut and one spaghetti.)
Question: When would squash plants be considered weeds?
Answer: When you don’t plant them.
When I planted our veggie garden threw down some seeds this spring, not a single squash seed was sown — which means all these squash are a gift from our compost bin.
So, what to do with ten all-at-once squash?
We ate two in the usual way (for supper: one was roasted, one was diced and steamed and added to a dish).
Last week, I roasted another three:
Two trays went into the oven at once. I baked them at 350F for about 40 minutes.
And after puréeing the squash, I baked three double batches of “pumpkin” muffins:
Did you know butternut squash can be substituted for pumpkin?
(I didn’t … thank you, internet!)
In other compost bin news, ours also produced this wonder:
We don’t know with absolute certainty, but we suspect it was an avocado plant.
I took a walk along the lake yesterday after getting my 11-year-old part way to school.
It was a drizzly fall morning and the sky was purple-hued and the water silent and still and while I “should have” just turned around and gone home and dusted or swept or baked, I didn’t; I walked on …
Here’s something I realised a couple of weeks ago: there are now days in which I don’t step foot out of my house.
I used to take twice daily walks in order to deliver and fetch my youngest from school, but our routine changed this September when I began providing some before- and after-school childcare for my son’s friend whose mother is a nurse. While it’s entirely debatable whether one 11-year-old boy would have needed a mother to walk him to school, it’s an absolute given that two 11-year-old boys don’t need a mother to walk them to school.
Nope. Now, most days I send the two of them on their way with a wave and a Have a good day!, and the door is shut, and it isn’t opened again until 3:30 when I greet them with Hi! How was your day?
And it didn’t occur to me until yesterday’s walk, when I felt myself breathing deeply for what felt like the first time in days, the air damp and sweet, the raindrops a gentle shiver on my umbrella, that I may have inadvertently made things harder for myself these past couple of months. Not only am I dealing with messy and depressing emotions, not the least of which is having children grow up and become old enough to go off to university (or to walk to school independently), but in the midst of all of it, I’ve allowed myself to forget something vital, something I’ve known for a long time: namely, that nature is healing.
I felt this healing power once before: a long-ago trip to the Rocky Mountains, post-miscarriage, somehow helped me to move past my grief. There’s something ineffable about perceiving your own insignificance while being surrounded by abundant life: walking along a trail and taking in the impossibility of tall spruce perching on craggy slopes; observing saplings taking root in infinitesimal nooks and crannies; feeling the surety that life will simply be — that the trees will continue on just fine without us, thankyouverymuch, that they will remain standing long after I — and any children I happen to be fortunate enough to bear — have passed from this existence. And equally important, or maybe even paramount: knowing just as surely that not all life can be, that seeds are spun that cannot take hold, that saplings wither before their time … and that this is not design or malice but simply chance, and that nature brooks no room for overwrought emotion when contemplating this. It simply is.
I’ve long felt I prefer my nature wild and untamed and — most importantly — out of the realm of personal responsibility. Nature is something that happens naturally, in wild spaces, and thus a backyard, a space which we in suburbia feel pressured to cultivate to Pinterest-worthy perfection, surely does not equal nature. Or if it does, then at the very least it must be well-behaved nature, nature that keeps to its boundaries, nature that’s always wearing its Sunday Best.
This is a notion I’ve long cultivated, and I’ve spun myself a narrative to illustrate my place in all this: I’ve told myself that I am not much of a gardener, that gardening is too much work, and that it’s work I don’t enjoy and don’t have time for. Indeed, I spent much of this past summer inside, shirking the outdoors, trying to escape the sweltering heat and humidity. What could have been medicinal doses of greenery were relegated to mere telescopic snatches through windows, and when I did step outside? It was overwhelming. Unchecked natural nature creeping over and displacing what was supposed to be well-behaved and cultivated nature: uninvited weeds; bullying perennials; a cacophony of overgrown shrubs; a blemished “lawn”; a neglected and accusatory vegetable patch.
But I’m now wondering: what if I tried to rid myself of the notion that yard work and vegetable gardening and perennial beds are only yet-more-work that isn’t-getting-done? What would happen if I led myself outside and let the wondrous living details of this abundant life embrace me? Perhaps I should be spinning the whole thing into a prescription of gardening-as-nature-cum-DIY-psychotherapy.
Thyme growing around and between paving stones; honey locust leaves: diminutive, and to my eyes, charming.Autumn blaze serviceberry; so very aptly named.
And maybe if I did that, if I took the time to care for — and heal — my own small plot of nature, maybe that small plot of nature might in turn heal me.
Green, Grey and Gezellig 