Wishin, and Hopin', and Dreamin'

I always bite off more than I can chew. I know this about myself. Sitting in a sunbrightly-lit living room, perusing the seed order catalogs, going online and making lists - this is what I have done every season, every year. Oooooh, look at that! What about THAT? Should I try that one or this one? What if I ordered two?

I look at the huge south-facing bay window, lit up with the glorious intense midmorning sunlight. The orange trees are doing well in the big dining room window; almost all of my windows are ceiling-to-floor here (not good for a nudist who has had to retrain herself). The sun that pours in here, all day, every day, will be perfect for the trays and trays of seedlings and bedding plants. Sixteen flats with 72 cells each will give me 1172 tiny little plots for seedlings. The question is - will it be enough?

Well, the potato cuts and the onion plants will not go there, of course. Neither will the blueberry bushes. Yes, blueberry bushes. The mangel beets I'm going to try - for future chicken and cattle feed - may not go there either. But because I moved from a Zone 9 to a Zone 4, almost everything else will have to. I'm talking and dreaming about a luscious and productive garden, dreaming about harvesting vegies and fruits, and the grasses are still brown on the hills. Seems like a lot of hope that is currently frozen - the temp here, right now, is 20 degrees.

I'm keeping back the canned vegetable seed I bought last year; it is all heirloom, open-pollinated, sealed airtight and oxygen-free for a guaranteed 5 years in a big #10 can. I don't want to use that yet, or at all, except in exigency. Too much chance of cross-pollination. It is emergency seed, ready if and when I need it. Things are not so bad yet! But if I get a late May snow (like they did here, last year) I may have to start over quickly.

I've always wanted to grow some things that I never had space for before. The big pumpkins, the potato towers of old tires, all will be relegated to my east-side "experimental" garden, right in with the already-established asparagus. The mangel beets will be there too. I want to have a fall 'punkin patch' for the neighborhood kids, and now I can. I hope.

The west garden - the one where the horseradish lives - already has the walking onions in it. We'll see how soon they pop up; then I can put in the "keeper onion" plants - the red, white, and yellow plants I'm ordering of onions that will keep for a year after harvesting. No sweet Vidalia-types here - their sun requirements just won't jive.

Peas, green beans, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, radishes, carrots, cabbage... the list goes on and on. Cool weather plants, warm weather plants. I saved some collard seed from last year; we'll see how it does. Herbs like basil and sage. And even some flowers as well; petunias and morning glories. The petunias I'll probably start in the hanging baskets where I'll keep them all summer.

Thinking about what to put where; no restrictions on space here. In my mind, I can see the rows of vegetables in the West garden as clearly as if I had planted them months ago. No clay soil to fight to eke out a few stunted carrots or other root vegies here, at least. In the sandy soil they will grow straight and clean without having to push against the hardpack.

I know this will mean a LOT of work; as soon as the seeds and supplies come in I'll have to rearrange the bay window to set everything up, get all of the little babies going. Then once the frost line drops in the garden, I'll be out there hoeing and digging and sweating in my hoodie. Hills for the pumpkins. Hills for the potatoes. Long cuts with side fencing for the peas. Bush beans instead of pole beans. I can put the cherry tomato vines around the front of the house, in the flower garden. The morning glories along the board fence and up the trellis that spans the walkway. Lots of digging, lots of carefully percolating the compost pile as soon as the weather warms so that every bit is black and crumbly.

I pop in to some forums now and then and read where folks want to have a self-sufficient lifestyle. They dream of growing their own produce, of canning and dehydrating and preserving. Few understand what hard work it is. They think you throw some seeds down, add water, and POOF! - food! I know how hard it is - and every year I try to do more and more instead of less. Now that I've got a big enough place, I can do what I have always wanted to do, without restrictions or worrying that the neighbor's brats will steal or destroy everything.

There. The order's in. $200 worth of seeds and supplies. It should be here in two weeks. And next month I'll order the chickens and I'll really get moving. The winter solstice is far too short a rest period...