Well hell

Jack Deatherage

(5/2025) I'm pondering the laughing gods. The date is April 22, Earth Day. A day of no significance to me other than being the day I wanted to have the Cedar Avenue Community Garden ready for the town. What the rest of humanity does today doesn't even register on my "who gives a rat's..." meter. As I have the previous two Earth Day I wandered over to Harbaugh Valley for some cabbage, broccoli, spinach and pansy transplants. Those years the town and librarians had events planned and I was in the garden ready with trowels, seedlings and seeds for the kidlets to plant.

This year neither the town nor library planned events due to the Easter break and people being elsewhere. I'm alone in the garden when I plant the flowers and veggies. Of course, the gods are laughing as I scramble madly about trying to meet another garden deadline- the week of May 12th's ribbon cutting ceremony. A ceremony I'm even less interested in than I am Earth Day. Though I will be on hand to plant seeds in the minds of those elected and anointed who can make the garden I envision a reality.

We have three weeks to tear apart and rearrange the library section of the garden. During that time we'll also use a rear-tine rototiller, last item on our "wants" list to be purchased with the Sustainable Maryland's garden grant money, to till three large in-ground beds between the original garden and the latest raised beds edition. If the soil proves to be unworkable with the new tiller, we'll use the 50 years old one to spot till that area and cover the untilled spaces with thick layers of straw.

Given I'm not a gardener and I'm stupid enough to think I can adapt and overcome any problems that turn up- that space will be planted this season! First Sister's little pumpkin patch was planted last year in fabric growbags set on a thick layer of straw covering undisturbed sod. I ate my fill of roasted, 'Small Pie' pumpkin and seeds from those few bags the pumpkins grew in!

One of the large beds will be planted with- "The 'Nanticoke' winter squash is just plain incredible. It must be grown, seen, and tasted, to be believed. It is an unimproved landrace from the Nanticoke (or Kuskarawaok) people, one of the southernmost peoples in the Algonquin language family, who historically lived in southern Delaware and on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake in Maryland. Today, Nanticoke people live primarily in Delaware and southern New Jersey (where they have merged with the local Lenni Lenape to form the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Nation). Intriguingly, this squash is a Cucurbita maxima, which means it originated in Argentina. Most scientists and scholars believe all maxima squash reached North America in the 1500s or later, so the genesis of the Nanticoke squash in the mid-Atlantic region is likely relatively recent. Nevertheless, this landrace holds staggering diversity within its genome. Fruits appear in a range of colors, including blue, pink, grey, orange, coral, white, green, gold, and red (though blue, pink, and grey seem to be most common). Some fruits have a distinctive "turban" quality to them. Some have a profuse amount of warts. Some are small and round, others large and flat, and still others pointed. Some have stripes, some have dots, and some have asymmetrical splotches of color. Flavors and textures vary too, but thankfully most of them are quite delicious." -Experimental Farm Network

We've 10 new cattle panels and plenty of T-posts to train a wide variety of vegetables and flowering vines on. The second large in-ground bed will be dedicated to melons- watermelons, cantaloupe and smaller melons that can be trellised.

The third bed I haven't made up my mind about. I'm thinking tomatoes and pole beans. I've also got some seed of a Sudanese (I think) sorghum and some variety of a dry land rice I might plant in there.

If we can manage to layer leaves and straw on the in-ground beds each autumn we'll eventually have deep enough planting material to skip using growbags, which would make that part of the garden "sustainable".

All the metal raised beds and stock tanks have been claimed or assigned to gardeners for the season- ten individuals, two groups and myself (I claimed the beds least likely to perform well this first year). Of the in-ground beds in the original garden section- one gardener is planting sweet corn, another watermelons and the DW and First Sister planted taters in the third. I'm planning to sow bush beans 'tween the tater rows as the weather warms.

The "show piece" of the garden was supposed to be the flowerbed that paralleled the Cedar Avenue sidewalk. While I've gotten a few positive comments about that bed each summer I'm a long way from being pleased with what we've done there! As with the library section of the garden we're going to tear up that flowerbed and remake it. Fortunately the metal beds are easy to lift, leaving the soil and whatever perennials are in it behind.

Idiots 1 and 2 have decided surrounding the left behind soil and plantings with straw bales will hold the soil in place. I've doubts as to how nice this will look. However, the entire garden is a continuous work in progress.

When I straighten my back, moaning with the ache of it- hips, knees and ankles chiming in to remind me gardening will only get harder and more hurtful now that I've fewer years ahead of me than behind- I eye the rest of the town's lot. What can I do with that? A few grape vines? A coupla hardy kiwi vines? Fruiting bushes- blueberries, currants, gooseberries? Perhaps a "pick your own" garden? Several plots used to supply fresh produce to the food bank? Sheesh. I'm indeed Idiot 1. Idiot 2 is like "Well hell! Let's do it!"

A mother of two wee ones approached me in the library and asked if I could plant roses in the community garden. "I loves roses."

As I scan the length of the lot along South Seton Avenue I ponder roses. How many of the tens of thousands of cultivars could I place along that line? Roses, the ones I admire, aren't cheap. Where would the money for them come from? Who would care for them? It's not as if I know a thing about roses. Meh. It's not as if I know anything about gardening! I'm just helping to get one started. Someone else will one day make a garden of it.

People keep telling me when I leave the garden for the final time that will be the end of it. No one else will step up to continue building it or even maintain it. I ignore them of course. I've seen the kidlets the librarians bring into the garden. Sure, most of them see the garden as another bauble to play with- an interesting moment away from the daily routines. However, I've also seen those coupla kids come into the garden with that look, that determination to make some part of the garden theirs.

Those are the future I'm building a garden for.