Volunteers and Other Life in the Garden

Little Basil Volunteer

Grace and I counted the different “volunteers” growing in the garden today.  We have sweet potatoes, butternut squash, watermelon, tomatoes, basil, lots of zinnias and tithonia, as well as pine trees, hickory trees, and one loquat tree – all growing where we did not plant them.  With the exception of the trees, we will try to keep a few of each of them, since they are evidently growing in a place well-suited to their needs.  I thinned out the zinnias today, most of which were growing near the road in the front of the garden.  Tomorrow I’ll get to the army of tithonia marching due west of the compost pile.  The few basil plants I left near the “sunzilla” sunflowers we transplanted today. 

Watching the undisturbed soil suddenly sprout forth all of these plants makes me think of a novel I once read called Love in the Ruins (Walker Percy).  I have forgotten a lot of it, but one thing that sticks with me is its description of vines growing over and around houses and lawns and other signs of civilization without human beings around anymore to beat them back. I wonder what our garden would look like a few years down the road if left to its own devices.  Probably a lot of little pine and hickory trees vying for sunlight, after a few final generations of flowers and veggies became shaded out.  And vines, definitely lots of cat's claw vines, without me in there pulling out their little tubers right and left.

I think this is one of the things I like best about growing a garden, or I should say “helping a garden to grow.”  I love having a hand (literally) in the chaos, being a "co-creator" of the beauty that a diverse community of plants can bring to a sunny spot, while recognizing the ultimate uncontrollability of it all. I want branching sunflowers and double zinnias, and juicy watermelons and red and green lettuce, and vines weighted with sun gold tomatoes.  I will probably have a lot of them, but will also have aphids on the lettuce, and squirrels in the seed pots, and a squash popping up next to the tithonia sprouting right in the path to the compost, and of course bettony and oxalis and Spanish needles and slugs and snails and fungi and bacterial wilt… Like life, I will want to control it, and I will try.  I also hope to enjoy when possible - and learn to tolerate with some grace when not - the uncontrollable, the unforeseen, and the disappointing.  It’s not by chance that one of our most beautiful creation stories has us plopped down in a garden wanting apples and finding a snake.  C’est la vie.

Comments

[Waste Wear Daily]

That was really quite beautiful writting. I love your descriptions of the garden. Did you know that Spanish Needle is edible? We ate some of it growing in our yard last year. It has a kind of alfalfa hay taste to it. Not bad really.
Cindy

[Kelli]

Really?! Are we talking about the same plant, aka bidens? Did you eat the leaves? Did you cook them? If you note some excitement here, it's because I could feed my neighborhood on the amount of this stuff cropping up in my gardens and even in the potted plants! I have eaten the tubers of the Florida Bettany that grows in the cooler weather; it's also called "rattlesnake weed" due to the shape of the tuber. I will learn more and experiment with eating more of these extremely local plants (or at least localized). Thanks! Kelli

[Waste Wear Daily]

I haven't tried the Betany tubers yet. What are they like? And yes, I think we are talking about the same stuff. Spanish needles-green leaf, pointy on the end, can grow very tall, has daisy like flowers that become the needles that stick to your clothing by two prongs at the end of the "needle". I don't know what you mean by aka bidens. Is that another name for them? A friend of mine told me they were edible and I ggogled them and found several recipes. Enjoy them.
Cindy

[Waste Wear Daily]

Oh yes, I did eat mostly the leaves and treated them like most greens- stir fry with garlic and olive oil.
Cindy

[Kelli]

Sorry it took me so long to write back; I was out of town for a bit. Yes, the "scientific name" for Spanish Neeles is Bidens Pilosa. And you can eat the rattlesnake rattle-shaped tuber of the miserable betany. They taste like a mix between a radish and a water chesnut. I've never cooked them, just sliced them up in salads. The conveniently proliferate - and I mean proliferate - during cooler lettuce season. Sometimes I wonder if these things that keep popping up with wild abandon - Spanish Needles in the heat, Betany in the cool - have some medicinal quality we need here. They're the answer to something and we just keep cursing them and whacking them back. A romaniticized viewpoint of nature, but you never know. I am sure to have a bumper crop of Bidens this summer (like every summer) and am looking forward to trying them out. Thanks!