No one talks about potato flowers, but here they are. Star-like, a little strange, and kind of lovely.
These are the little almond potatoes M planted last fall. It was an experiment to see if fall planting potatoes works (I had heard it does and with higher yields). For a while the experiment seemed like a failure, but in time- weeks after the Carola potatoes- they sprouted. Now- weeks after the Carola potatoes (whose blooms were big and white)- they're flowering. And the plants look wonderful. Saturday morning I woke early, took my coffee outside with me, and played in the dirt. Those sorts of weekend mornings- sitting barefoot on the ground with a weed bucket and a coffee mug- are a treasure; they are sweet and constant and good. Pessoa has a poem that I've come back to again. The part I like goes like this: What's my life worth? In the end (I don't know what end) One man said: I earned three hundred thousand dollars." Another man says: "I enjoyed three thousand days of glory." Yet another says: "I have a clear conscience and that's enough." And I, should somebody ask what I did, I will say: "Nothing except look at things, Which is why I have the whole Universe in my pocket." The wonderful thing about summer is there's always so much to look at and to touch and to move. Whitman said that the best of earth is always cheaper, easier, and nearer than we think. That's true. That's the point of the garden- don't let it be anything else.
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There are annual favorites and perennial favorites, and it can be hard to know the difference. One year it was borage- borage, borage, borage. One year it was Munich purslane.
But let me say, I still grow it all. And enthusiasm doesn't always wane. Black currants please me more every year. They grow without trouble, fruit without fail. Sweet Blackdowns, musky Ben Sarek, gumdrop-sized Crandalls. The smell of the leaves is good. The jam and liquor are a joy and are essential. |