After I burbled so happily about the garden last week, within hours pea-sized hail pelted from the sky and all I could do was watch. The hailstorm lasted for a good 15 to 20 minutes and covered the garden in a thick layer that took a few hours to completely melt away.

When it was safe to go outside, I dashed out to check on everyone. Peppers and tomatoes were battered and covered in mud, but survived. The peas were perky as ever, perhaps having an affinity for hail the size of their eventual produce. A few beans throughout the garden that had just been coming up were guillotined, but for the most part, they were all fine. The little basils suffered the most. I’m not sure if they were battered to pieces, frozen and then melted, buried in the mud, or what, but suddenly my glut of little basil plants has become one or two. Yet, I am hoping the disappeared will somehow reappear as if they were playing a game of hide-and-seek and we can all laugh about it in July when James is making yet more pesto.

The hail was followed a day later by more rain and some high wind gusts. I was out picking some arugula to go with dinner and heard a crash. I looked up to see the plant shelf on the deck that had the remaining too small to plant yet seedlings on it blown over and the tray with the goji berries, feverfew, catmint, and dyers chamomile upside down beneath the shelf. No! No! No! No! No! I whimpered, running up to the deck.

I righted the shelf and crouched down over the tray of plants, trying to figure out how best to turn them over without causing more damage. And then another wind gust and the plant shelf blew over again and landed on me. Gave me a good whack on the head. That served to piss me off and I stood up and picked up the shelf—it’s got four removable wire racks and is made of very light plastic—like I was a WWF wrestler picking up my opponent to smash them down on the mat. Thankfully I realized in time that such a move would probably break the shelf, and I semi-gently laid it down on its side this time, on the other side of the deck.

Turning back to the plants, I put my hand beneath each overturned pot and carefully righted them. I packed in soil that had fallen out and pressed them down into the pots again. One of the pots had shattered and I smooshed that little plant in with another of their kind. After careful inspection and a few days of babying them, they are all just fine. Another week and I should be able to plant them all out but for the goji berries. Those I will probably pot up. I have four of them that are looking super strong but only planned on planting two since they will turn into big bushes eventually, but now I’m wondering if I should keep them all just in case. And in a couple of years when I am complaining about the gigantic goji bushes taking over their corner of the garden, please remind me of this moment and we can all have a good laugh.

The fuzzy little peaches survived the hail, but Wednesday James noticed the birds had discovered them. Because they are not ripe, the birds pecked holes into a couple, ruining them, and then left them on the tree or dropped them onto the ground beneath. I had been worrying about squirrels and hadn’t though about birds bothering them before they were even close to ripe. So now Marlon is swathed in bird netting from head to toe to protect the few remaining peaches.

We welcomed three additional shrubs and trees into the garden this week. Back in February I ordered them from Honeyberry USA, and finally they arrived. We planted Rovada Red Currant and Highbush Cranberry right away since they were both bareroot. We have surrounded all the new arrivals with chicken wire to keep the squirrels from digging them up. Red Currant has immediately settled in and all the pale anemic leaves when they arrived have unfurled, turned a lovely new green, and are looking strong and happy.

Highbush Cranberry, not actually a cranberry but they get red cranberry-like fruit and can be used in the same way, was just coming out of dormancy and looking uncertain. They have not unfurled like Currant, but they are looking a bit more relaxed as they settle in and realize they are going to be ok.

Saturday we planted the Trader Mulberry (Morus Nigra). They came with dirt around their roots and swathed in wet newspaper wrapped around with plastic wrap to keep them wet. Mulberry has gone in the middle of the sunchoke bed and required we did out a good many sunchokes to make space. I had hoped to find a native mulberry, Morus Ruba, but they are not easy to come by because apparently native mulberries have crossed with Asian mulberries for so many years that they are uncommon, especially in the midwest. I did read that there are some folks working on breeding the native mulberry so it doesn’t disappear. The Trader Mulberry is one of the hardiest varieties and is native to China and Asia. It has also been cultivated in Europe for hundreds of years.

James tends to call all fruit he doesn’t know the name of huckleberries and has decided he would like to call Mulberry Finn. I immediately said no and scoffed because for some reason is bothered me. But I have since relented and Mulberry Finn it is.

We decided to welcome a mulberry after thinking about paw paws (large trees and need two so nope) and quince (has to be cooked in order to eat it and is marginal here). For the past few summers we have been foraging fruit from a mulberry growing along a creek a short bike ride from our house. We only ever get enough fruit for one or two oatmeal breakfasts and we both like the fruit quite a lot. We’ve bought dried mulberries before too and enjoyed those in homemade granola. So a mulberry made sense. We’ll see how this one does in their new home.

Today we planted a row of rutabaga. I’ve never grown these before but I’ve eaten them. They are such a versatile vegetable and they store well so a person doesn’t have to eat and/ or preserve them immediately upon harvest. It is surprisingly hard to find rutabaga seeds, at least in the catalogues I usually buy from, which surprised me. I bought a variety called “Laurentian” from Fedco seeds, the only variety they sell. I suppose people prefer to plant turnips, which are related.

James and I had a good laugh at the expense of a squirrel Memorial Day evening. The critter came running through the garden with a half-eaten ear of corn almost as big as they were. They probably stole it from someone’s holiday cookout. We watched Squirrel drag the corn around the garden, looking for a place to hide it. Then they decided burying it in the bed we had just planted with black-eyed peas would be a great place. Given the size of the cob, the hole was going to need to be very large, so James went out and yelled at Squirrel to go hide their corn somewhere else. Squirrel ran off.

But then an hour so so later, Squirrel was back, still carrying the corn. They decided since we had chased them away from the one bed, they would try a different place in the garden. Again, James went out and told Squirrel they needed to go elsewhere. Squirrel scampered off and we didn’t see them or their corn again. We laughed, imagining the huge hole the squirrel must have dug in someone else’s garden.

June first began International Nature Journaling Week. I just found out about this the middle of last week and signed up for their emails. It came at a good time because it reminded me that last winter I had decided I was going to try out nature journaling, or at least sitting in the garden now and then with paper and pencil, making close observations. The drawing bit gives you a reason to watch and something to do with your hands. Plus, I enjoy drawing but haven’t done any in a very long time, maybe twenty years.

Since I am out of practice, and even when I wasn’t I was constantly anxious about whether what I drew was “good,” even when drawing was just for fun with no intent to make a finished art piece out of it, I needed to make this a low-stress and no pressure undertaking. I left my nice colored pencils on the closet shelf along with the art paper. I pulled out seven white index cards and a number 2 pencil; a dull pencil at that whose eraser is so old it has become hard and will not erase anything.

Each day has a theme. June first was “emerging.” I drew a black-eyed pea that had just come up. Today is “growth and development” and I drew a common milkweed that’s about eight inches tall. It was great fun sitting out in the garden and looking at the plants. I noticed all the folds in the the leaves, the different colors, and in the milkweed, the veins in the leaves that at first looked like they just went straight from the center of the leaf to the edge, but on an older leaf when the sun hit it just right, I saw the veins curved before reaching the edge, making a series of mmm with veins within those. I tried to draw that on one of the leaves but the rest just got straight lines. It turns out it is hard to get much detail and nuance with a dull number two pencil. But I reminded myself that I knew that would be the case and is what I wanted in order to make sure I didn’t freak out about whether my drawing was any good.

Today James joined me. He has no drawing anxieties but used an index card like I did anyway. However, he used a ballpoint pen to draw, a bold decision I can’t help but admire. He chose to draw the Lincoln shelling peas climbing their string trellis.

We’ll see what the rest of the week brings. But so far, I am enjoying myself immensely. And, in the way I always let my brain run ahead when I am enjoying things, I’m thinking that when the week is done I will have to find myself a proper journal and maybe even get a watercolor palette. I have always wanted to try watercolors.

Reading

• Book: Poetry: Aster of Ceremonies by JJJJJerome Ellis. This is a poetry collection like none other I have ever read. Ellis has a stutter and uses their stutter as part of their poetry. The poetry is about stuttering, language, plants, slavery and so much more. They write in musical movements and behind it is a chorus chanting names of plants. They use musical scores, different colors, italics, capitals, even footnotes. It took awhile to figure out how to read it, and it has taken awhile since finishing it for everything to begin to sink in. Completely worth the effort and the disorientation.
• Article: Where the Wild Things Are: the untapped potential for our gardens, parks and balconies. A good article from The Guardian about how gardens and even balconies can become a link in a chain of wildlife corridors and refuges.
• Article: What QAnon supporters, butthole sunners, and New Age spiritualists have in common. An article about who and how people come to believe conspiracy theories. It’s not just far-right Republicans who believe the government is controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles. A recent survey reveals 8% of self-identified Democrats believe it too as well as 14% of Independents. The article examines the elements that go into people believing in conspiracies. I learned that butthole sunning–it’s exactly what it sounds like–is actually a thing, and now I am never going to be able to unknow this and I will regret even having written it here.

Quote

Prayer to My Stutter #2

You restore
a living
shoreline
between word
and silence

~JJJJJerome Ellis, Aster of Ceremonies, where along with everything that breaks all the “rules” there are simple poems too.

Listening

• Podcast: Between the Covers: Amitav Ghosh: Smoke and Ashes. How lucky I am to have listened to this in anticipation of Smoke and Ashes coming to me sometime in the next week from the library. I enjoy Ghosh’s fiction but I love his nonfiction. I was sad to hear him say during the interview that he is done with nonfiction now. Maybe he will change his mind? Regardless, this is a most excellent conversation.

Watching

Nothing new.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

No photo, but yesterday James found everything bagel spice in the back of the cupboard and put it on one of the bread loaves he was baking. Then he used that bread to make vegan sausage sandwiches that had sweet zucchini relish he had made last summer and froze and had just found in the back of the freezer. Slathered in Dijon mustard with fresh from the garden arugula, I could have eaten ten of these sandwiches. No, not really, but I could imagine doing it, that’s how delicious it was.