dig

The fence is the final major project on this garden.

Note five inch trench.

No critter would dare go under.

Especially when they could go over.

At least it keeps Calley and her playmates out.

And the wild turkey family which has taken to cutting across our front

lawn on their stately way to somewhere else.

Tools.

A gardener's best friend.

Looking closely one can see my mother's favorite scratcher with

the red handle.

A closer look will reveal the shears with rubber on the handles once used

by my dad to clip the hedge.

I swore I'd never have a garden after the years of weeding I did in theirs.

Yesterday I weeded the rhododendron and vinca like a mad woman.

And stood back to admire the results.

"what do you think, mom? look better?"

Old habits die hard.

We had parsley, basil and chives in potato salad yesterday.

Picked from the garden.

This project might be worth it after all.

Loon, A Marine Story

Hardcover on the left

Newly issued paperback on the right

What is written at the top of the paperback?

National Bestseller!

Congratulations to my brother, Jack McLean, the author.

Random House has issued this book not once but twice.

A great accomplishment, a great book.

We are all really proud of the author and the

book which stands on it's own.

So far I have seen it at The Concord Bookshop and at Barnes and Noble.

Buy it, read it, give it away. Buy another one.

That is what I do.

back at the homestead...

iris in the perennial garden

solar power

now for the fence

ash from the spring bonfire to neutralize the acidic soil

the first plants go in!

interlude

We sent some music out into the universe today. If the ancestors are going to hear it, surely this would be the platform from which to send it off. I loved sitting back and hearing Beethoven and Joplin fill this venerable space. We visited all the sites but for me this was the best.

our garden

During World War II, Americans planted vegetable gardens to feed their families as supplies were scarce. These were called "Victory Gardens" and were considered to be a part of the war effort. Once the soldiers came home, many vegetable gardens were discontinued. The baby boomers came along and needed to be taken care of. Gardens became "borders" filled with peonies, sweet woodruff, candy tuft, bleeding hearts. Children grew up running on perfectly cut lawns. Dads made sure not a dandelion sprouted. Rachel Carson wrote a book about that. Chemicals abounded in the 1950's. But that is another story.

The 1960's saw a resurgence in vegetable gardens. The Whole Earth Catalog was the Baby Boomer's Bible. "Back to the Land" was the rallying cry. I thought it was cool that my own mother had a vegetable garden. It was very "in."

Vegetable gardens are having a come back. The down turn in the economy (okay let's call it what it is, The Great Recession) has inspired many of us to find ways to live more frugally. There's also a desire to be independent. More and more land is being cultivated for growing vegetables here in Lincoln and surrounding towns. Local farms have become "CSA's." Community Supported Agriculture means that the customer pays a fee for a summer membership and accepts whatever produce does well and takes losses along with the farmer. We are members of the Lindentree Farm CSA here in Lincoln. I have taken many photographs over there and we decided this year to reinstate our membership.

But sometimes you just want to walk out the door and pick your own parsley, basil or tomato. Enter the 2010 O'Neil front yard vegetable garden. This is not our first veggie garden but it is the first one in this location and the first since some major trees have been taken down. We have sun!

Raised beds are the method of the day. Now for the soil. Good soil is hard to find, since it's hard to know it's provenance. Soil stripped off farmland can be full of chemicals. We rediscovered a pile of dirt and rocks in our "back forty" left over from our most recent construction project. Using a screened door left over from our chicken coop of a decade ago, David and I screened the dirt and out came soft soil. Added to that was the soil created in the bottom of our ancient leaf pile and we have some pretty good organic material.

Everyone says that Memorial Day is the time to plant tomatoes. That is next weekend. I'm pretty sure we'll make it. Stay tuned.

roots and wings

Mother Nature doesn't mess around. She takes no chances when it comes to propagation. Our two acres are covered with sprouting oak trees. A gentle pull and up comes the tell tale acorn; burst open now and sending roots down and leaves up. It's a tiny miracle that I marvel at every year. So many potential trees spawned and so few take hold. My wheelbarrow is full of them.

Bird parents put us all to shame. They work with intense determination and chastise us if we even consider walking into the barn. We found a nest with three speckled eggs expertly constructed atop a can of nails and carefully lined with a few pieces of plastic for the eggs to lie on. There's a nest in the canoe, one on top of the front porch light and one behind a shovel.

Eliza, David and I helped Carrie dismantle her nest in New York City this week. We watched her graduate from Columbia University's School of International Public Administration at Riverside Church, celebrated in a park with her friends and their parents and the next day, loaded a truck and headed for home. She will work for Seeds of Peace International Camp in Otisfield, Maine this summer then take some well earned time off before starting school in Cambridge in the fall.

Eliza is headed to Europe in June, hired by Overland to lead hiking trips in the Alps and Pyrenees. For more detail, see the Overland web site. Here is the link to Overland. Then she is off to the High Mountain Institute in Leadville, Colorado where she will be an intern at the Rocky Mountain School for the fall term.

David and I have been creating a new garden in the front yard. With the tall pines gone, we now have plenty of sun (if it ever stops raining.) Now we just need the time and impetus to plant it and build a fence to keep out predators. More on that project in future posts!

Happy May Day!