We don’t have much of a garden this year.
For the first time in recent memory, we have only a few food plants and herbs; the rest are flowers and existing growth. Simple lack of time, coupled with the once-again-early arrival of the monsoon season. Part of it has been an unusually heavy workload related to the land and the animals. But even that can be laid in large part at the doorstep of a much bigger issue: climate change.
Most years, we have at least three gardens, and usually four. The Three Sisters, of course — Corn, Beans, and Squash — but also much else. Depending on the year, the seeds available (organic heirlooms; no GMO for us, not on this land), and whatever seems especially appealing, our usual selection includes spinach and green-leaf lettuce; onions; carrots; cucumbers; tomatoes; chile (peppers); and a sizeable selection of other good foods. But among the Three Sisters, we usually plant a wide variety: yellow sweet corn; white corn; blue corn; Indian corn in a rainbow of shades, single-hued and multi-colored. Pinto beans; green beans; purple runner beans; a host of heirloom Indian beans from various tribal nations. Pumpkin; yellow quash; zucchini; acorn squash; butternut squash. And many more.
Our soil here is conducive to planting and growing. No surprise, really. When Wings was young, summers would see the family leave their home at the old village, and come out to this parcel of land to plant and till. Sometimes it would be the whole family, and sometimes by horse-drawn cart, with arbors built to provide shelter from the hot desert sun. Sometimes it would be only Wings and his older brother, sent out to work the land and sleep under the stars. At the time, of course, it may not have seemed particularly fun for him, but he appreciates it now: the chance to grow up with this very earth between his fingers, to come to know the land and its soil intimately, to tend it so carefully that it gives up the gifts of good, healthy food to keep the people alive and well.
He knows this land, but more, it knows him.
I’m luckier than many like me. Separated by time, distance, and forced assimilation from the lands my own father planted as a child, and his father before him, I’ve been given a chance to know other earth, other soil. Wings introduced me to this soil years ago, and one of my greatest joys has come from tending it, planting, talking to the seeds and the soil and the sun and the rain, thanking them, watching life flower and grow. In good years, the bees come, and I talk to them, too, in the old language. They never sting, but they will occasionally land briefly on my hand or arm or shoulder before flying to the next blossom. It feels like a moment of grace.
Last year, the monsoons arrived early — and ended early. They flooded the corn plants; we had no yield from them at all. The beans were the only plant that thrived in any significant way. We had planned to try to plant earlier this year, but a sick horse requiring round-the-clock care puts a very large dent in available gardening time. And based on subsequent weather, we were right not to try to plant on our customary schedule. Which means, I suppose, that this particular effect of climate change is now our new norm, and we’re going to need to plan well in advance and adjust our planting patterns accordingly.
Fortunately, there have been enough blooms of various sorts to bring back some of our visitors that have been noticeably scarce (or entirely absent) more years than not, recently. Honeybees; bumblebees; dragonflies; butterflies. Hummingbirds. Pollinators, all busily and happily at work. Whatever else happens, a summer when they return for the season is a summer I deem a success.
Over the winter, we’ll sort and stockpile beans and seeds and corn kernels for use in next year’s planting. Some of them may even be sorted into jars like the one shown above: a traditional micaceous seed pot. This is a contemporary one, but made in the old style, the style Wings’s mother used, and her mother before her, and so on, as far back as anyone remembers. The style hasn’t changed, because it doesn’t need to; it’s perfectly utilitarian as it is. They’re made of the traditional micaceous clay, dry enough to keep moisture from accumulating inside and spoiling the seeds. Seeds are sorted by type into individual pots, and when planting time comes around again, they can simply be shaken out and placed into the earth. Better yet, for seeds being planted loosely in rows or plots (where the object is not to plant each one individually or in a defined number), the seed pot can be held upside down at an angle and the seeds shaken out as you walk along the rows. It’s much easier on the back and the shoulders, and a welcome reprieve from the kind of planting that requires more specificity.
If you’ve never seen a seed pot, here’s what one looks like from the top, with its description from its place in the Other Artists: Pottery Gallery here on the site:
Keep your seeds safe and dry in this perfectly-shaped little seed pot by Benito Romero (Taos Pueblo). Great for storage in the cold months, and useful for dispensing seeds during planting season. Made of the Pueblo’s local micaceous clay; 3″ high by 3.5″ across at widest point (dimensions approximate).
Micaceous clay
$65 + shipping, handling, and insurance
When the description says “perfectly-shaped,” that’s exactly what it means: a perfect little globe-like pot, its sphere broken only by a flat bottom that allows it to stand safely on a counter or shelf. Unlike the “art” pottery, this one is very much meant to be used, and therefore small and coarse-textured. If it were polished to a high sheen, it would risk slipping out of your grasp during planting, shattering and scattering seeds all over the garden. it’s much easier to hang onto something hand-sized, with a rougher surface. The lack of a silken finish does not detract from its beauty, either — indeed, the texture sets off the mica in the clay, making the little jar shimmer in the sunlight.
It’s a little piece of history, of tradition, of a very old lifeway that survives in the same form to this day. It’s small enough to hold in the palm of your hand; large enough to feed the people.
It’s a bit of the soil, the local earth, returned metaphorically to that same earth again and again and again, in a perfect cycle and circle of existence.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
