Project Homestead

promise

My three-year-old early riser and I awoke early the other morning to an unfamiliar friend — the sun! As it peeked over the eastern edge of neighboring pines and ponds, these gorgeous, plump, popcorn-like blackberry blossoms nearly glowed. They hold such promise... for birds and bees, for lovely blooms, for berries green-then-red-then-purple-then-deepest black, by summer's end. In the past, I'd say "I can't wait." But this year feels different.

I've planted so much more, from strawberries, blueberries and raspberries (to harvest next year), to many veggies in an entirely new and experimental garden site, that I'm excited to watch what happens next to each of them, one by one. I feel like a proud new mama of a happy but scattered brood. (Not all of those babes are in the ground yet, either.)

It's the middle of June, but days of cool and rain make it feel like summer is still just around the corner here. The Summer Solstice arrives this Sunday, so I suppose it is. It's the day the sun reaches its farthest point north of the equator, lazing its way through the year's longest day; this year, it falls on Father's Day (lucky papa!). And, lucky for us and the blackberries that surround us, the sun will be warming us even more as the days march on.

As much as I'd like to take credit for their vitality, the truth is, nothing here grows more effortlessly, and with as little human intervention, as these generous canes. Coaxing bud into blossom and tart into sweet, I am sure, is some benevolent and powerful force; one the dew drops on spring leaves, my early riser and I have been waiting to greet.

Welcome, summer. Go ahead, stay awhile.

eelgrass + blackberries = one perfect day

Here's how it went:

1. Wake up. Make cappuccino. Eat yogurt and homemade granola. (Dream of sending boys out to fetch fresh berries.)
2. Dig errant roses and sumac suckers and rake dried flower stalks from beloved patch of wild blackberries. (I suppose all of this human tending might make them a little less "wild." On the other hand, they were here long before we were, so I'm sticking with it.)
3. Drive five minutes to our town's best tidal beach. Take black garbage bags and children to water's edge. Children frolic. Michael and I use our hands to loosen piles of well-weathered eelgrass from along the top edge of the beach, where soft sand and beach roses meet.
4. Stuff eelgrass into bags. (This is so easy.)
5. Strip children of freezing, wet clothes. Ask youngest to stop burying perfect stranger with sand. Wrap boys in blankets in the car.
6. Load sandy, grassy bags into the back of our friend's truck. (Thank you, Lex.)
7. With warm spring sunshine on our shoulders, spread fluffy eelgrass on thinned, pruned blackberry patch. Envision its minerals slowly strengthening the soil. Watch boys discover nodules, and smile as they tell me that sitting in the soft, dry mulch is like a trip to the beach—salty and fresh and deeply alive—all over again.

Here's what I learned:

Even though eelgrass grows in the sea, it's not seaweed at all. Instead, it's a flowering plant that forms meadows in the sands and muddy beds of shallow, sheltered waters. It grows in patches ever since the 1930s, when a wasting disease wiped out populations everywhere. Waves and weather help ours pile up on beaches to dry into papery ribbons. We and other coastal gardeners are lucky to have it.

A University of British Columbia's Botanical Garden forum reminded me: Live seaweed is critical to a host of marine life. (Ours marked the top end of a storm surge, when the water was higher than it will be for some time, so I sleep at night knowing it wasn't ocean-bound.) Even so, collecting grass from the length of the beach—while leaving some behind—will shelter and protect any animals left behind.

In my nascent study of permaculture, I also understand that using local materials to heal land (that can then grow food to feed healthy families and communities) is the definition of sustainable. Lex spreads his eelgrass thinly around his broccoli seedlings, which grow up into tender blooms his kids can't refuse. And just one fine day of foraging has enriched our best crop, already.

I can only imagine what it will do for our blackberries.

spring creeps in (under cover of snow)

Despite the snow that still surrounds us and looms large in sad plow piles in driveways everywhere, Spring is here. The sap is rising in the maples* (and the kiddos). The first red-winged black birds just broke into song. And everyone from happy hens to little boys can't wait to stretch out their toes and scratch a bit in the FINALLY thawing ground. 

While soaking up the balmy 40-degree sunshine, I spent a few minutes taking pictures of my various hillsides and sleepy garden plots to help me site future cold frames, bulb and fruit tree sites and micro-climates that might best nurture cold-hardy greens. It surprises me to no end how the complex patterns of sunshine, snowfall and tree cover can influence the ground below. Our land has several aspects, all of which are waking up at different rates.

I observed one clear constant: The chance to dig a bit, if only with chicken claws and Tonka trucks, is a fine, welcome start. There's life under there. And we've all got a primal urge to find it.

* Stay tuned for a first-hand report of the tastiest holiday in these parts: Maine Maple Sunday. Y-u-m.