Mountain Musings… Back to the Garden

Mountain Musings long Dottie Simmons

Mountain Musings – A guest column by Dottie Simmons who lives in eastern Humboldt County describes life at her rural homestead:

‘Tis the season and I am drawn to the soil. By now you all know I am a confirmed plant-a-holic and would rather be out working in yard or garden than practically anything else. This has made the past couple years rather hard as I continue to recover from Lyme and the medical issues that hit me in 2024. But this year, THIS year, I feel like we are back in the swing of things. Slower and more awkwardly, perhaps, but the garden is coming along better than it has since this chapter all started.

We had to get clever when the mice were dining on our seedlings

We always start a few extra – just in case

Even without a note from my doctor, it’s been helpful to keep in focus how to make gardening go more smoothly and with less physical effort over time. None of us is getting any younger nor staying the same, despite our brain not always recognizing that fact. So this year we are not planting *quite* as much and we staggered starting seeds and did it later than we used to. They seem to have caught up anyhow – everything grows with wild abandon this time of year.

One of our greenhouse beds has a new guardian!

Our winter greenhouse crops are all done and replaced/being replaced with late spring and summer offerings. The mild winter we had resulted in the most beautiful early Romaine and other lettuce, spinach, and Asian greens we’ve ever had (at least it seems that way to me). Those were replaced with cabbage and broccoli, which are now also giving way to peppers, peas, cucumbers and melons… and a small sweet potato experiment. Fingers crossed on that one.

I prefer to stake tomatoes. It makes me look closely at each plant often.

What really makes me happy is having most of the main garden planted. Only beans to plant and winter squash and more flowers to transplant for now. We were fortunate to have a hand with tilling in our cover crop, then we amended and did the final tilling and laying down of the drip irrigation (and fixing all the leaks) and now it’s all my living art project.

Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kale – Brassicas galore!

Of course the raised beds are there, too, with the garlic and onions heading for harvest, having been in the ground since fall/winter. I confess 1/2 a bed of onions (the overflow) had to be harvested as ‘green onions’ before the gopher got them all. I think that particular raised bed may end up being all flowers! And second plantings of radishes, greens, brassicas, and more are in the beds and more will cycle through over the year.

We eat well all year from this, doing it bit by bit to the best of our current ability trying hard to be mindful of that ability as it changes with the years. And those years are adding up.

Still, one thing always remains constant – with all it’s (and our) ups and downs, the garden brings us joy.