I’m back!

Some of my aficionados have been complaining that I haven’t posted any new recipes in more than a week.
Where have I been? Simply outdoors, since it’s the time of the year when gardening is the most demanding of my activities and it cannot wait, forcing me to neglect my blog.

While the garden work is ceaseless and it peaks right now, up here at three thousand feet the growing season is short. We plant our summer veggies and annuals after Mother’s Day because a late frost can still surprise us, even in May. But, before we get to plant, we need to pull tons of weeds, amend and till the soil, check the irrigation, and do all those little things that every passionate garden does at springtime. Did I mention mowing the grass? That is a daily chore because, by the time you are finished with the last area of your yard, the grass has already grown back where you started.
As you can easily imagine, after many hours a day of such hard work, I’m so exhausted that I can’t even
think of writing recipes – least of all my articles – although I’ve missed my writing more than you’ve missed your reading, believe me.On top of preventing my yard and veggie garden from reverting to wilderness  – while trying to make them look pleasant for ourselves and our neighbors – this year I undertook another, irresistible project: creating a flower and herb garden for children.

As I might have already said, I’m very fortunate to live in an extraordinary community. What makes it really special are the people who live here. Two of them are a couple of dear friends who have created a summer camp for children with special needs. It’s called Tuolumne Trails (after the river that flows nearby) and it owes its existence not only to the good will and enormous generosity of its founders but also to our community. The good people of Pine Mountain Lake and Groveland have actually contributed building it with donations and voluntary hard work, and keep supporting it because – as somebody said lately – “The Camp is part of the community, and the community is part of the Camp!”
So a few times a year we
gather at The Camp – as we affectionately call it. Sometimes it’s for a fundraiser, other times to take care of its maintenance.
Last Saturday we did for the spring sprucing up. At 8 am a small army of enthusiastic volunteers was ready to take to different tasks, from staining cabins and railings to repairing fences, from adding a higher rail to the horse corral to splitting and stacking wood for the campfire, from weed whacking to cleaning the cabins.
All this volunteer labor – besides being fun and very rewarding – saves a lot of money to the Camp, money that can be used to improve the facilities or to pay for the children’s stays at the camp itself, since the economic downturn has affected the funding of many associations that used make this kind of initiatives possible for the families of children with disabilities.

As for me, last Friday I packed my SUV with plants, bulbs, seeds, and tools to create what will hopefully become a garden for the little guests of the Camp to enjoy in the years to come.
I said “hopefully” because the area where we worked was meant to be a veggie garden, but it didn’t succeed because of the interest it stirred among the too many critters that share the camp with the humans.
Last year John – the amazing camp director – planted all kinds of summer veggies, none of which was given a chance to succeed by the ground squirrels, gophers, jackrabbits, moles, raccoons, birds and the occasional bear that populate the area. Can you blame them? The animals might have felt like we feel when a Whole Foods store opens in our neighborhood. As I said, up here the growing season is short: why pass good free food?

So John and I decided to try Plan B: plant something less interesting for the animals but equally stimulating and eye-pleasing for the kids. Years of experience have taught me that animals don’t bother plants with a smell or with a rough texture, like lavenders, cone flowers, herbs in general and most flowers (with the exception of deer, who nibble anything – but fortunately our garden is fenced).

With the help of many excited volunteers – and, boy, did they work hard despite the heat! – in just four hours the whole area had been cleared of waist-high weeds, the soil amended with compost from John’s kitchen scraps pile, tilled with my loyal Mantis rototiller, and planted with all kinds of herbs, roses, lavenders, cone flowers, lamb’s ears, dahlias, snapdragons, sunflowers, gladioli, petunias, and more.

Only time will tell which plants will succeed and which won’t, and we will keep planting more of those that do well and are not bothered by animals.
I think that he plants had been in the ground for just minutes when hummingbirds, bees and butterflies started flying around them and that already felt like a great success.
Let’s hope that his time they are the only creatures interested in our work …

Of course, John and I have more plans and dreams for that garden: a pergola for shade and for a grape to climb on it, a tool shed, a pretty arbor over the gate, umbrella trellises to support climbing roses. But, first of all, we need a nice stone path for the wheelchairs, so that the children can get to the raised beds to plant a seed and watch it sprout at the end of their stay. It will be tiny and satisfying miracle by Mother Nature but a very important message of hope for the children.

So next year at this time, if I stop posting my recipes, you will know where I am: working in the Dream Garden.

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