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Apr. 24th, 2026 05:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI planted the first seeds yesterday: the fava mix I've been shepherding since the beginning, a pink hybrid radish called Orient Ruby, and Olympia spinach. Both big radishes and spinach are sensitive to daylength, which often means they can't grow well in spring here: by the time the soil is thawed, the days are too long for them and they bolt.
I don't do any gardening for certainty. I do it to learn the plants.
In any case, I planted them in the upper field in one of the bays between baby apple trees and covered them with frost cloth. Instantly Little Bear and Hazard came and played in the frost cloth; Bear absolutely adores going under fabric and skulking. I'd forgotten about that. Last year he would run straight through the relatively lightweight cloth.
Next is grain and peas. I haven't grown peas much, but I'm trying for more diversity than just tomatoes this year. Last year the fennel, kohlrabi, and broccoli were such successful additions that I'm following that path a little more. I also have a bunch of old soup peas, of course, I can't remember the provenance of the oldest ones but still. And I want to plant my dwarf soup peas again if the seeds will sprout.
I got this out to write because it occurs to me that I don't do art about things, for the most part. If we're going to consider pottery art and gardening not-art, I still do them both in order to be inside the thing I'm doing. Everything is aligned: mind, body, that whole subconscious apparatus that figures out how to interact with the physical world and performs the calculations necessary to throw a ball, the discernment apparatus and the appreciation one. Everything works together in one direction.
I have done pottery about wildfires. I have and will do it about The Waste Land. And I will eventually do it about Avallu. Those are important things.
So you'd think I'd do pottery about the garden. I don't. My experience of the garden might inform my pottery but it's not a thing I alchemize into some body of work. I'm not sure why that is.
I don't do any gardening for certainty. I do it to learn the plants.
In any case, I planted them in the upper field in one of the bays between baby apple trees and covered them with frost cloth. Instantly Little Bear and Hazard came and played in the frost cloth; Bear absolutely adores going under fabric and skulking. I'd forgotten about that. Last year he would run straight through the relatively lightweight cloth.
Next is grain and peas. I haven't grown peas much, but I'm trying for more diversity than just tomatoes this year. Last year the fennel, kohlrabi, and broccoli were such successful additions that I'm following that path a little more. I also have a bunch of old soup peas, of course, I can't remember the provenance of the oldest ones but still. And I want to plant my dwarf soup peas again if the seeds will sprout.
I got this out to write because it occurs to me that I don't do art about things, for the most part. If we're going to consider pottery art and gardening not-art, I still do them both in order to be inside the thing I'm doing. Everything is aligned: mind, body, that whole subconscious apparatus that figures out how to interact with the physical world and performs the calculations necessary to throw a ball, the discernment apparatus and the appreciation one. Everything works together in one direction.
I have done pottery about wildfires. I have and will do it about The Waste Land. And I will eventually do it about Avallu. Those are important things.
So you'd think I'd do pottery about the garden. I don't. My experience of the garden might inform my pottery but it's not a thing I alchemize into some body of work. I'm not sure why that is.
