Last weekend I closed up the garden. I gathered the stray rakes and hand tools and stowed them. I cleaned and "organized" the garage, stacked up empty pots, sorted through the pile of plant markers so I could make a list of plants I had bought but now can't remember the names of, and swept. I hauled the table and chairs in from the deck, and folded up the Adirondack chair for winter storage. I took down the rope hammock and put it away in its box.
The next day it rained.
Like Rich, I too have seen the confused look on people's faces when I have complained about lack of rain, or rain too late in the season, or waxed poetic about rain.
The first lesson a gardener learns is about control. You don't have it. Nature does. And so you begin to learn more about the Big N. About dirt. About wild creatures. About weather. Which requires a certain level of attention to things you might never have paid attention to before.
Like dirt. I knew one thing about dirt when I began gardening and that was the kind of dirt inhabiting my region. We call it "adobe" because that's what the Spanish "Californios" called it when they formed it into bricks to make houses. It's clay. Black, dense, sticky. In the dry season it's hard as cement. Mid-monsoon season it's soupy and greyish and slippery.
You don't want to work in adobe when it's wet. It merely compacts it and you have a gooey mess of gum balls. The first winter I ordered bare-root roses they arrived in January and I had to dig 2-foot holes in the adobe. I stuck my shovel in and pulled up a chunk of grey dirt. It stuck to the shovel like a leech to skin. I tried to heave it off and found myself flying along with the shovel and clod. I tried kicking it off. It stuck to my shoe. Finally, I got a trowel and scraped it off laboriously. Now I plant anything that arrives in January in temporary pots for placement in the garden proper when the adobe is back to its pliable state.
I have over time discovered the importance of my compost bin to the dirt in my garden. As kitchen scraps and dead plant matter miraculously metamorphose into sweet-smelling, fluffy, loamy dirt I pile it around my garden beds and dig it into the adobe. As the years go by there is a marriage of sorts. The adobe chunks grow smaller and disperse among the compost dirt, finally becoming small grey specks in the loam. The adobe still resides not far below the surface of this worked dirt. But it's enough to get the plants started, to give their roots some easy going before they must drill into the solid deeps.
So winter has become the time of replenishment in my garden. I cease prodding and pleading for growth. Instead I give back to it, piling up the compost accumulated during the summer onto the beds, spreading it out, letting the rain percolate through it. Only the worms will work this soil for the next few months. The human gardener is done for the season.
Posted by briggs at December 12, 2002 2:19 PM