Most of the reason I've been so busy has to do with the Dark Side of Volunteering (you'll just have to imagine the spooky music and hockey mask and stuff). There is an old saying that goes something like “In any organization twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work.” There's another that says “Never do a bad thing well.” My experience has been that both of these old saws apply doubly in volunteer organizations (and maybe in Tennessee; it is the volunteer state, after all). In any case, there was sort of a shake up in the local Master Gardener organization and the old galoot ended up being the chair of not one, but two committees. So now I find myself spending a great deal of time on something that used to be a spare time hobby but is rapidly becoming a lot more like work. The main difference is that I used to get paid a fair amount of money when it was work. Now that it is a volunteer activity I just get to feel good about helping people. Yeah, that'll be the day.
So Ellie and I have had to cut back on our adventures a bit. We've been learning, though, to combine the hobby turned work with adventure book stuff. So last weekend we made a 250-mile round trip to check out something called a keyhole garden.
What you do with a keyhole garden, and the reason it has that name, is that you stack stones or bricks or whatever, up to form a six-foot diameter circle about three or four feet high, but you put a notch in one side. So from the top it looks kind of like a keyhole. In the very center you build a sort of chimney about a foot in diameter out of whatever you have. In the Aftrican keyhole gardens they use sticks, but most of them in the US use chicken wire. The key point here is that the chimney is a little higher than the top of the garden and it has to be made out of something that will let water leak through the sides.
After the enclosure and chimney are built you start filling the area inside the enclosure (but not inside the chimney) with anything that will compost. That could be straw, leaves, old newspapers, the pages out of old phone books or what have you. You put it down in layers and wet it real well as it is laid down. When you get to within a foot of the top, you put in dirt mixed with compost or dry leaves or any organic matter that is already decayed. Then you fill the chimney with compost material up to at least the level of the top of the dirt.
You plant your plants or seeds in the ring of dirt and once a day you put two gallons of water in the chimney. You also throw any vegetable table scraps or garden refuse into the chimney. The plants' roots will grow toward the chimney because that's where the water is and they will get fed by the decaying compost in the chimney. I don't know if this works, but since I'm chairman of the master gardener demonstration garden committee, I'm going to build one and find out.
So while Ellie and I were in this little town checking out the keyhole garden we found a little Czech bakery/market/deli and ate lunch there. We also loaded up on kolaches and other goodies. Then we tooled around through the countryside looking for other potential day trip destinations. All in all it was a fun day, even though it was kind of a small day and not really a big deal.
As we age and as my time gets occupied by things like the master gardener stuff, my old girl and I are beginning to appreciate those small moments and to be on the lookout for opportunities to share them. For instance, yesterday we were in the little town where we usually walk the park. We couldn't walk, because my wife has had some recent surgery and wasn't up to walking just yet, and anyway we were really there because of some MG business. However, we realized that it is near Valentine Day and that means that Dairy Queen is making Choco-cherry-love blizzards. So, even though we usually try to eat healthy, we stopped by the local DQ to pick up a couple. Then we went down to the park and watched the ducks and geese while we ate our blizzards in the car. It was sort of an early Valentine Day outing. A small moment, to be sure, but we enjoyed it.
This is the time of year in central Texas when the weather is pretty unpredictable. We have had some unseasonably warm days when the high was up around 90 degrees but last night it was so cold that it froze the water in the birdbath. So I have been using row cover over a lot of the winter veggies, both to protect the tender ones from the cold and also to keep the insects off of the plants. That is one of the downsides of gardening in a place with a mild winter climate: The bugs and varmints never die. They just sort of hibernate on the cold days and come out to kick back and eat your veggies when the weather warms up. I guess this is sort of like a winter resort for them. I'm surprised there aren't Shiner Bock bottles littering the garden. So the row cover helps to fend them off and save a few veggies for us.
Watch this space and I'll let you know how the keyhole garden comes out; and enjoy those small moments. Sometimes they are the best times of all.
