I know I'm not the only one who does this. You know, this: You know how it is - you go to the garden shop and there's this and there's that and you just... can't...say... no. In this case, there were a few things on my "must have" list - including (but not limited to) cold hardy, dwarf cherries. They had four varieties so I bought... yes, four. But really here, growing fruit is a real trick. I can do well enough with gooseberries and currants (when they're protected from goats, chickens, and ducks), some raspberries and last year - blueberries. So, this is a garden trial I suppose. I think cherry leaves for ecoprinting, pruning for dye, and cherries for eating. I know you can see something that looks suspiciously like an elderberry by my knee. It is an elderberry. I love elderberries for syrup and flowers for cordial and wonder about the leaves for printing as well. I may have also gotten barberries and a hardy fig (which may or may not be hardy here) Ah gardening. Now I have to figure out what each of these needs. Haha. Time to research. Afternote: Yeah, that one had to go back. I don't need a toxic red berry elderberry planted on purpose. Fortunately, there were a few other friends ready to take its place. Yep, a Golf can fit a full sized quince, some hardy kiwis, and definitely knitting. Now, time to plant.
So, we live in a world where busy-ness is a normal way of life and exhaustion, its partner. I've seen a lot of "recover from exhaustion" posts but not many of them apply to parents (especially single parents) or even people with other day to day obligations. So, here are a few tips to help you feel less exhausted and more grounded without telling you to quit your job, take a day of silent, private, contemplation, or other thing many of us really can't do.
1) Take your shoes off. Ideally, you'll read this in warm and not too wet weather and you'll take your shoes off outside and walk barefoot in some grass, or a garden, or somewhere that you can really feel the earth. Are you parenting/caregiving? If so, take the people you care for to walk in the grass with you. If you can't get outside, grab a small towel and a straight backed chair. Put the towel on the floor by your feet and using only your toes, scrunch the towel up, moving it along until you've worked the towel all of the way along to the end. I learned about this from my cousin, the Cranky Daoist (also a professor of Traditional Chinese Medicine) and it works like a charm. He uses it to deal with jet lag. I'm finding it works well with life lag. My instructions make no sense at all? Well thank Dogs for the internet. Here's a video on You Tube that shows a demonstration. Can't do that? Try this next one. 2) Make yourself a cup of tea, hot chocolate, coffee, warm milk, hot water and lemon, anything you find comforting (ordinarily). When the beverage is the right temperature - not cool but not hot enough to scald you - take a sip and don't swallow. Instead, close your eyes. Take a moment to savour the flavour and identify it. Is it rich? Sweet? Bitter? Astringent? Soothing? Alert-inducing? What does it make you think of/remind you of? Swallow it and take another drink. Go deeper into it. What do you taste? What good memories come up? Bad memories? No room for them, just the good and savouring ones. One more sip and just totally savour it. 3) Shower. I know this is a difficult one for a parent, especially a single parent. If you don't have a daycare option, see if you can trade with a friend to watch your kid(s) and then you'll watch theirs. You only need about 15 minutes, though you'll likely want more. I just did this one so I'm intimately acquainted with it. It's shocking and rejuvenating and I think you might know where I'm headed. Yep, cold shower. Sometimes I like to have cold and then warm, sometimes, like today, I need the shocking, liberating, freeing effect of all cold. Sometimes I do cold, warm, then cold, it all depends on the day and my mood and all of those variables. Whatever your mood and where ever you want to place the cold, let it shock the bad, blah, dark, angry, whatever is holding you back, right out of you. Let it shock it out and carry it off. It can be returned to the earth and recycled. If you need soothing, you can follow it up with a hot shower but sometimes it's best to just hop out of the shower right after and leave all of the gik (yeah, you read that right) behind. 4) Another recycling option- find a place in nature. Ideally it will be a quiet, private place where you can be alone (I'm giggling a bit remembering how easy that would have been with a four year old). It's ok with you can't be alone - you can teach this one to your kids. Lean against a tree or, if you have no trees around, be close to plants or growing things. You must be in contact with something natural for this to work and while trees work best, it doesn't have to be a tree. Make contact with the earth - with your feet, sitting, or even laying on the earth. Imagine there is a conduit running from your spinal column into the earth and everything bad, yucky, or negative is going through you and into the earth for recycling. Be there for as long as it takes to feel cleansed, or until someone needs a snack/potty/ other demand and you have to get up. Teach your kids to do this too. Let the earth take all of the stress and troubles and cares. You still have to deal with your day to day life but the earth can take some of the stress from them. 5) Plant something you can eat. You might not have money, time, or space for a garden or even a packet of seeds. Most food banks, permaculture centres/programmes, etc. can help get you started, often at no charge. All you need is a pot and something like calendula seeds or nasturtium seeds. Not only are these edible (so safe for small people) they'll absolutely brighten up your life and are pretty fool proof. Seeds+dirt+ water = sprouts. A bit of sunlight= growth and blooming. They're low maintenance. You'll be amazed at how they brighten things up. 6) Forage something yummy. There are few things more fun (for me, but maybe because I'm weird?) than getting some food for free. This is also an adventure you can take your kids on but make sure, before you eat anything or feed it to anyone else, that you really have what you think you have. Some things, like Hawthorn berries or Rowan berries don't taste like much but make good liqueurs. Other things, like lambs lettuce, can be steamed or sautéed to eat - find a reputable foraging site and get hunting! Here are a few I love (in no particular order): http://www.urbanoutdoorskills.com/ http://www.christophernyerges.com/ http://www.urbanhuntress.com/ http://outdoorselfreliance.com/ http://www.selfsufficientish.com/main/ http://www.eatweeds.co.uk/ http://nordicfoodlab.org/ So, that's a decent smattering from the northern hemisphere. I know there are others and please do send them to me if you'd like them included. That concludes your six tips to help get you back online when things are feeling off. They shouldn't cost you anything, can mostly be done if you're caregiving, and don't require too much effort. Happy doing. Such a great day. I was lucky enough to share Saturday with my family and some wonderful friends. And then we rolled right into Sunday with a quiet, early morning of writing and tea (bliss), followed by reading a new book, lunch out at one of my favourite places, and then, the greenhouse. There may have been impulse purchases but really, is it a bad thing when we're talking about food plants? I think the most splurgy splurge was the massive tomato that's a total cheater and going straight to the greenhouse. It came home with fruit on it! Yes, it's probably been given miracle gro and whatever else but really, at this time of year we're all so desperate for those sorts of things that I think it's an ok cheat! And, when I look at what I'm paying for organic tomatoes when I have a craving for them that I just have to satisfy... I think it's an ok trade off financially. I know it's not coming to my house organic but it won't be pesticided etc. now. So, not organic but probably less interfered with than a conventionally grown tomato at the grocery store. And frankly, I was eating chips this weekend so... Let's not think I have too much of a halo when it comes to being organic! I did want to share with you my berry planting experience. I think people don't realize some key things about berry bush planting (I didn't until fairly recently) so, let's go through it step by step. First of all, select your site carefully. Perhaps you're a bit like me (that is to say Scottish - I'm a MacDonald by birth) and, as my husband likes to remind me, that informs the basis of all accounting. For exmaple - I have a garden with some patches of poor soil (none really, dust and rocks) and some lush, rich places. I see that the wild raspberries, currants, etc all do just fine in these places so what do I do? In the past I did not pick the rich, lush soil for my plants because I'm always saving that for... I'm not sure what. Right now it looks like a healthy crop of cleavers in some of those beds to be honest with you. And then I would be surprised when, imagine this - my plants had the crummiest harvest ever or just gave up and died. I realized last year that outside of my stinginess, I was basing this decision on flawed logic. First of all, the wild plants are meant to be where they are -in a few generations of keeping my poor plants alive they may have adapted to the conditions. But, second of all, even if that were to happen, they rarely give us much fruit. Now, what they do give is delicious and packed with flavour but not abundant or an easy harvest. So, for a wonder, I have selected lovely sites which I am determined not to neglect watering-wise this year. They're right in the usual path of sprinklers etc. So, we have good soil and water - off to a good start. Berries (and fruit in general) usually want a bit to eat to get it started. The phosphorous is essential to forming the fruit and balancing out nitrogen. Lots of people think "manure, manure, manure" which is great but if you have too much nitrogen and not enough phosphorous, you will end up with lopsided soil that makes lovely leaves and no fruit. You don't want to get carried away mind you, they do need some nitrogen (as well as a bit of potassium) but blueberries especially will usually get what they need if you soil is generally healthy. If it's a bit poor or played out, and you would rather not use bone meal, I'm told you can bury a banana peel with it and that will provide both potassium and phosphorous in small enough amounts. If you buy a commercial fertilizer, you would no longer be considered an "organic" grower. That might be just fine by you - like I'm fine with my tomato choice - but it may not. You now know and can make the call. The other very, very, very important thing about most berries is that they want an acid soil. So, we have our site and our soil and our amendments (more important in well used soil). Now let's get some plants. First of all, your family may select a beautiful looking bush like this: This blueberry is a bit leggy but that actually makes it perfect for where I wanted it to go. It's a happy, full of fruit and blooms little plant. It could stand to be a bit leafier and a bit bushier but it's early in the season and it's very healthy - not a speck of an unhappy leaf on it. There is one major problem with this bush though. Can you spot it? That's right, it's the berries and blooms. The very thing a lot of us think we want when we buy plants are really not a good idea. When the plant is fruiting, it's not worrying about establishing good roots. So, the general rule is that if you buy a plant that is fruiting, you pull off every bloom and fruit to let the root system dig in. My Scottishness won't allow that by any stretch so I will be leaving this baby in the pot until the fruiting is done, with a plan to plant it in the autumn. This means (especially with a blueberry) that you must ensure a good supply of water to it. Pots dry out quickly as it is but blueberries are inclined to more moisture than not so I see twice a day watering for me though it will be worth it. So, leaving our lovely blueberry behind, let's plant some raspberries and blackberries. Raspberries and blackberries are a bit less fussy than the blueberries - especially when it comes to moisture. They want to be watered, of course, but they prefer a well drained spot and while they will do ok with some shade, they'd rather full sun (unless you're in an area that's much hotter than mine). My in-laws have always had the best raspberries of anyone I know - for production, flavour, and size. They have a fairly open site for theirs but lots of trees give some shade at various points throughout the day. It's not a huge patch but it keeps them in raspberries through the summer with enough to freeze and jam as well. I'm aiming for that. So, we have four raspberries - so cute. One is a heavy fruiting, hardy June bearing one (with a second, August crop likely), one is a golden (and I think autumn bearing), and two are everbearing. I was going for an assortment. And the spot I picked as my raspberry patch has room for one more to climb up along the fence so... if I notice any gaps in my raspberries, I'll have a space to fill it. This is another long-known, recently-learned lesson. If you don't crowd everything in, they have room to grow and, you can even add in when needed. So, this is a lovely hole for a berry plant - a chicken dug it earlier in the day. Sheesh! It's not really lovely - that was sarcasm. Right now I have a chicken/garden problem. Don't let anyone tell you chickens are all good in the garden -sometimes they do horrific damage. Here is a much better hole. You can't see the amazing worms in that picture so here's a close up of them. There were so many I killed a bunch by accident just getting the hole dug. This is dirt that's been made over the last couple of years. It's the old manure (which includes straw and the hay they have rejected) from the goats on top of the previous sheep pen. It's pretty lush. When I need to add nitrogen to my soil (almost never, just ask my carrots), I just grab some of this stuff. It makes a great, slow release mulch. Goat manure (as well as sheep and rabbit and, I think, cow) are all considered cool. That means, they won't burn the plants they are supposed to be helping. A lot of people still compost their manure because of the concern for pathogens. I figure I'm around them all of the time and handling them so... I'll take my chances. Most of it is old anyway but, your mileage may vary. Anyway, back to the berries! I like to really soak the plant in its pot and the hole before the meal goes in. I find the plants tend to come free much easier and, especially when it's been so dry here, a bit of moisture to start things off never goes amiss. Add your bone meal (or banana peel, if you'd rather). I didn't leave that much in there - check what the instructions say. A side note on bone meal - I'm not a fan of the whole industrial food production industry - and especially not of the industrial meat production. I do feel more comfortable using things like this than buying a commercially reared steak simply because if the animal is being killed, I hope every part of it will be put to good use and not wasted. I also suspect strongly that they're not going to be killing cows just for their bones to make bone meal anytime soon. So there's the raspberry, all tucked in and heavily mulched with old straw. I did the same thing for all of the berry bushes - except the blueberry.
Happy planting! |
AuthorI'm a 40-something writer and smallholder living in the wilds of BC with my family, our small herd of Nigerian Dwarf Goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, and cats. Archives
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