Gardening and Thoreau (by way of Gaspereau)

With Tim in London for the triplets birthday this weekend I had little to distract me - so I put on my gloves and rolled up my sleeves and got down to weeding and doing some other gardening tasks.  I am happy to say that all of the things that I planted from seed directly into the garden are doing exceedingly well.

My scarlet runner beans (in the front) are growing like gangbusters! I'm hoping the corn in behind can keep up since the beans are supposed to use the corn as a support.

In fact the snow peas are doing so well that I had to scrounge about for the materials to make an impromptu trellis, as they are already putting out their little feelers.

The snow pea trellis, a.k.a. the Spider's Web. I didn't want to have to buy a trellis system so I scrounged around the yard for dead branches, stuck them in the ground and kitchen twined it up good! It's not pretty but its free and soon enough it will be covered in the snow peas so it will grow into a beautiful thing.

 I also thinned everything out in order to give seedlings more room to grow into big hearty plants - this was exciting for me, as it meant I got to have wilted baby rapini and swiss chard with garlic for lunch....mmmm mmmmm good.  It was delicious but its probably because I grew them myself.

There is just something so satisfying about the results of ones own labour - can you tell I've been rereading Thoreau's Walden. I was reminded how much I love the book by a recent lecturer at Willowbank Andrew Steeves- one of the partners in the small publishing company Gaspereau Press (in the news semi-recently because of The Sentimentalists).

He came to speak about the traditional methods that Gaspereau Press uses in the very modern world of publishing - yet the lecture had very little to do with the use of older technology and much more to do with taking great care in what you do. In Andrew Steeves case that means understanding the needs of the book that you are publishing - from the cover art or lack of it, to the font style, to the sewn binding, so that you create something that conveys the message of the book and will survive to do so for the next century or so. It is really about being respectful and responsible about what you create - which if you've read any novels recently, has not usually been the purview of the huge publishing corporations out there.

Steeves just mentioned Walden in passing within the lecture but it got me to thinking about the book again and how much I liked it when I first read it. I also figured that if I read it again now, it would help to put the summer in perspective i.e. the growing of our own food and saving as much money as we can.  When it comes down to it, I don't think I could give up as much as Thoreau did when he was living on Walden pond (although I don't think that's his point - since he repeatedly pleads for people to live authentically - the lives that they want to live and not the lives their families or society dictates.)  BUT I do think that I can do with much less than many people do and I think I've got my priorities straight when it comes to stuff. That's not to say that we don't have a lot of stuff (much more of it is Tim's than mine!!) but it doesn't drive our lives in anyway and there isn't much that I couldn't part with if and when we move into a smaller place.

On that note, here's a picture of one of the gorgeous peonies that are just beginning to wain from too much rain and wind in the front yard. They were gorgeous while they lasted.