Doing Right The Old-Fashioned Way

So, here we are in the third week of January. A strange January at many levels but I’ll stick to the weather. Every day of seasonal weather, has been counter-pointed with a not so seasonal day. What is one to make of this irregularity with regard to the garden? Beats me!

While we, as a world community come to grips with climate change and pressure our leaders to implement policies to deal with it, I am doing my level best to do my part in my own little piece of earth. I have no control of the weather itself but I do have the power to make informed, intelligent choices.

From the start, when we bought our house a good 24 years ago, I made a conscious decision to go organic. At that time, it was not so simple or even popular to be organic. It made me seem like a throwback to the ‘60s. A hippie-flower child wanna be. Nurseries did not carry many organic pest-control products, compost was barely understood. This being the years before the Internet or Google, I had to do my research the ‘old-fashioned’ way. That took a fair amount of time but I actually ended up learning more than a search permits today. When specific information can be conjured up instantly, there is no opportunity for detours into related and not so related topics.

I mail ordered my composter and when I excitedly announced its arrival, I was met with responses that ranged from puzzled to amused smiles and told I was so ‘quaint’, a ‘modern hippie’ or ‘trés new age-y’. Re-purposing an oak wine barrel to a water butt elicited similar reactions. Ditto for the manual, push-reel mower that I had such a hard time finding. When I began introducing native plants in the garden, I was told more than once that I was growing ‘very common’ plants. Some pronounced them ‘weeds’.

I sourced neem oil, seaweed and fish emulsion, lady bugs, Bacillus thuringiensis, nitrogen fixing microbes and made other products like comfrey ‘tea’ (best fertilizer!) at home. Those were the good old days!

Today, almost everything is available at my local nursery and what isn’t can be ordered super-easily on-line. Instead of the calender reminding me when to do what and physically making the effort to monitor temperatures and precipitation, I have apps and digital gadgets that have simplified everything. While these have freed me up for other matters and provide a certain peace of mind, they also push me away from my garden to a certain extent. I do not have to actually be in the garden quite as much. I realized this a couple of years ago and missed my 100% hands on approach. So now, although I enjoy the benefits of modern technology, I consciously putter around the garden no matter what. My physical, mental and spiritual well-being depends on it.

I still have the same composter and rain barrel. The mower was upgraded to a lighter, better manual model – there is now a choice! All the organic products are readily available. Towns offer free compost and mulch to their residents. Nurseries now proudly carry numerous native plants and some even have a whole section devoted to them. In fact, in current parlance, organic, native and ecologically sound practices are trending. Our forefathers would no doubt be highly amused by our ‘modern and progressive’ ways.

Meanwhile, I’m determined to plug away ethically, with integrity and, put up with whatever the weather blows my way. There is absolutely no excuse for anybody to do otherwise.

Note: Enjoy my watercolor renderings of a few of the natives that grow in my garden. Do they look common or weedy to you?!

Watercolor-037

Watercolor-024

Watercolor-017

Watercolor-033

Watercolor-002

Watercolor-032

Watercolor-036

(c) 2016 Shobha Vanchiswar

[do_widget “Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack)”]

Print Friendly, PDF & Email