In the Garden

This afternoon, CP and I spent some time inside the little garden fence. She spent quite a bit of it taking dirt from one of my rows and pouring it over the fence and onto the back of whichever chicken happened to be standing closest to her. At one point, I was finally prepared to plant butterbeans. To most of the world, they're known as lima beans or Henderson and Sieva lima beans depending upon whether you want them to climb or stay low to the ground.

Last year was a fairly good crop of Hendersons, but the Fordhook 242s didn't do very well. I called my paternal grandmother in Mississippi to keep her up to date with all things in the garden, and when she found out that I planted Fordhooks, she exclaimed, "my my son, that's them big'ol thangs, I never did like them...". If they're not good enough for granny, then I won't plant them again. It'd just be plain stupid to go against the wisdom of 78 years of farming, flower planting, and growing vegetables. She still gets a kick out of hearing about our two short seasons here in the desert and always seems thrilled with whatever we have growing.

I wet the soil with the drip system and got out the garden rake to use George Brookbank's quick way of figuring seed spacing. He takes the rake and digs it in along the row he wants to plant, then continues down the row repeating this. It makes nice little holes for seeds and if you need 3" between seeds then you just use every 3rd or 4th hole. I asked CP if she wanted to take a break from emptying all of the soil from my garden and help out. She replied with a nod and we were off and running. I put the seeds out in my hand and dropped a few into the evenly spaced holes with a "padumpp" sound. Soon the little fingers were grabbing seeds and dropping them into the holes that I pointed to with a little high-pitched "padumpp" sound that bordered on a joyful squeal with the departure of each seed from her fingers.

I kept looking around for her mother, but knew that these images were fleeting and that I'd only have one shot at them. Disrupting her to bring out my camera or to get her mother to come watch would have changed what was happening. It was a beautiful scene and I hope that old age won't steal that memory from me some day. She repeated this at every little hole until we emptied the packet. In all, we planted about 6' of beans and will probably plant more so that we can put them up for winter. I hope that I've planted the seeds for a little green thumb.