Tractor Language

This morning was a busy one in the greenhouse and the garden. I repotted tomatoes, started melons, nasturtiums, and sunflowers, and planted edamame and the Bintje potatoes. The Norkotahs are ready to go in the ground, too, but we don't have a tower built. Tomorrow, I may just plant them in the space where they're meant to go and fit the tower around them.

In planting the potatoes, I discovered that I'm a dumb ass. I ordered some of the potatoes from a supplier that shipped them in plastic mesh bags, and I stupidly left them to sprout inside said mesh bags. So of course they sprouted right through the mesh. It took some very dainty work with nail clippers to snip the plastic from around the sprouts without damaging them, and I still lost three sprouts, muttering tractor language as I went.

Wait. What's tractor language, you ask? Didn't I mention this last year? My grandfather, who taught me how to farm, was a wonderful man: hardworking, clever, generous, trustworthy. He could also swear like a soldier (which he had been in WWII) in English, Spanish, and a smattering of Italian. I'd be out in the apple orchard throwing rotten apples at my brother, and I'd hear this stream of invective echoing over the alfalfa. So I'd wade out through that green sea to, most likely, my grandfather's cantankerous tractor and find him laying under it, hands smeared with grease and mouth running at full throttle.

My family used to joke that my grandfather's blue streak was a secret language he'd invented in order to talk to his tractor, and so we always called it tractor language. And tractor language popped up in the most unlikely places. One day, I wandered in from the fields and asked my grandmother for the meaning a particular Spanish idiom my grandfather had just used. She turned beet red, marched out to the tractor, and let loose her own stream of invective upon my poor unsuspecting grandfather. Which is how I found out that Abuela knew tractor language, too.

Today, I stood in the back office of the greenhouse, snipping and swearing, when I heard a buzzing next to me. A carpenter bee had slipped down behind the plastic over the window next to me and was having a devilish time getting out. He'd climb a little ways up, get stuck because the space was too tight for him to use his wings, and slide back down again. Every so often, he'd let loose this little buzz of frustration. And it suddenly hit me: he was using the bee equivalent of tractor language.

I felt a moment of solidarity with the poor bee. I took hold of the plastic and tore it down so that he could escape. Instead, he ran from the nice big gap I'd just made and crawled through a hole under the windowsill. So now I have to replace the plastic. #$@*!

How to Turn Strawberries Into Asparagus (well, sort of)

Last Monday, my Jersey Supreme asparagus crowns arrived from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Excellent! I thought, and ran out to my garden to plant them. Then I read the instructions, which specified working compost into the soil. I'm out of compost; one tumbler keeps almost-but-not-quite being ready. So I sighed, deposited the crowns in the greenhouse, and went back to whatever I was doing.

Meanwhile, my friend Megan offered me some finished compost in exchange for some of the bazillion volunteer strawberries I dug out of the beds and paths last Saturday. On Wednesday, we met up in Burlington and exchanged organic matter.

And then it rained. And rained. And rained some more. I kept spraying the crowns with water to keep them from drying out and praying for a break in the weather. We had a nice break yesterday, but with my husband sick and a crazy work week, I was just too tired to do much of anything. This morning, I woke up and peeked out the curtains at a lovely blue sky.

Aha! Asparagus time! After breakfast, I went outside and weeded out the bed. Then I dumped the compost on it. Bonus: it was chock full of very happy, wriggling worms! I weeded an adjoining bed for a few minutes to give them time to settle down, then I pulled out my cultivator and worked that compost in.

I dug a trench and put down some crowns, but I still had some left. So I dug the trench a bit farther and put down some more crowns, and there were still some left. I just kept going and going and going until I'd dug a 25-foot trench in the long bed at the foot of the garden. It was starting to sprinkle. I had seven crowns left, but I didn't really want to extend the trench further and encroach on other growing spaces. So I took the crowns next door, along with my remaining volunteer strawberries, and deposited them all upon my delighted neighbors. As I covered the crowns, it gently began to rain.

It'll be interesting to see the effect of the compost, since I only worked it into the first half of the trench. Otherwise, it was a pretty perfect morning in the garden. I can't wait to see what comes up.