Half-planted flat of tomato and basil seedlings–the wicking mat waters the roots from underneath.
I’m struggling a little as I attempt to balance crafting my new memoir with other writing projects, plus finish carpentry, preparing for my first Write & Retreat workshop, and getting organized to break ground on my new little house.
Late one afternoon this week, I took a garden-break. I headed out to the garage and dug out a seed-starting tray and organic potting soil, and selected packets of tomato and basil seeds from a shelf in the utility room.
And then spent the next hour happily kneeling on the floor of my bedroom ”greenhouse” area, the sunny patch by the 8-foot-wide sliding glass door, filling pots with rich soil, and pressing seeds into each. When I finished planting, I watered the wicking mat in the tray under the pots, and plugged in the heat-mat that sits under the tray to warm the soil and jump-start germination.
The tomato and basil flat, ready to germinate.
Before going back to writing, I straightened up (a mite creakily) and stood smiling foolishly at my summer-garden-to-be. Which will include eight varieties of heritage tomatoes: yellow pear and silvery fir (both small and best eaten fresh), stupice (rich-flavored, delicious in soup), persimmon (brilliant orange and sweet), black krim (a beefsteak-type with a dark-green top), Pompeii roma (prolific and great for cooking), Cherokee purple (not prolific in this climate, but oh, the flavor!), and marvel stripe (huge and red with yellow marbling). Plus pesto basil. (Six of the tomato varieties and the basil come from my all-time favorite garden seed supplier, Renee’s Garden; the Cherokee purple and silvery fir come from Colorado’s own Botanical Interests.)
I planted one seedling flat, 40 pots in all. Five are devoted to basil (three seeds per pot potentially equals 15 basil plants–can you have too much basil?), which leaves 35 pots for tomatoes. At 2 seeds per pot, that’s 70 plants. I need one plant of each variety for my garden (actually, eight tomato plants is about six more than one of me needs, but as with basil…). Yup, I got a little carried away. Fortunately, my friends appreciate my tomato plants.
The half-wall conceals the shower-tub area.
On the house-finishing front, today was another work day with my wonderfully generous friends Maggie and Tony. Tony got me started on what is to me the most demanding of my projects: finishing the complicated shower and tub area in the master bathroom. We got two of the wall areas sheathed), and Tony tacked up the black rubber waterproofing membrane from under the shower area floor. So we’re ready for the next step, about which more in another post.
The tub is usable, but the walls around it need finishing; the shower plumbing is in the wall to the left.
Maggie took on the project of varnishing the sliding doors for the master bedroom closets, which Tony had taught me how to hang on a previous work day. I have just two more doors to finish, and only one more piece of trim to nail in. I may someday live without an air compressor and pneumatic nailer in my back hall….
Another friend, farrier and art blacksmith Harry Hansen, came over with his son Ethan, bearing the hand-curved metal arches that will trim out the kitchen and entry doorways, the last two unfinished doorways in the house. Like the master bathroom tub and shower area, those arching doorways were my biggest creative challenge. I wanted to finish them in a way that would honor Richard’s love of industrial materials used as themselves, without making too big a project out of it (read: making it too expensive).
The front hall entryway with its curved steel arch and galvanized sheet in place.
My solution was to use galvanized steel sheeting to line the jambs and to commission Harry to hand-beat curving steel edging into arches that would hold the sheets in place. Two of the four steel arches (there are two per opening, one on either side of the doorway) are now in place, and they look stunning.
After today’s frenzy of project-completing, I think I’ll take it easier tomorrow. Although I do have some drywall to screw in, and that last piece of door trim to nail up…. Both of which, of course, will keep.
What’s most important, I remind myself frequently, is not how quickly I finish any individual project or piece of a project. It’s doing the work with love. That I learned from Richard.
As ever, your gentle musing wraps around my heart with compassion and opens me to beauty once again. Thank you ever so much, Ms. Susan.
Querida Jeanne, How lovely to “hear” your voice on this blog! Many thanks for reading and for opening your heart again. You are a treasure….
Your house is so wonderful, Susan, I don’t know how you can bear to leave it. You’ve put so much of yourself into it, as did Richard, that it must feel like losing a part of yourself when you move. I understand the necessity but that doesn’t make it easy, I’m sure. Then again, when I finally decided to leave the house I’d lived in for nearly 30 years, with all the personal things we’d done to it, it felt right. I was very surprised by that. So if it feels right, you’ll do it well, just like you do everything.
Sam, I think you answered your own question in that very perceptive comment. For me, the time is right. Someone will love this house and be inspired and nurtured by living in these beautiful spaces, and that warms my heart. (It doesn’t help my aching muscles though!) I’m ready, and soon the house and the yard will be ready too. I do have a bit of a qualm when I think of leaving those tomato plants behind though. But I’ll grow new ones next year….
Hmmm. . . . Maybe you need to build a garden at the new house before you build the house, and put some of those extra tomato plants in. . . . Not many. Just enough to make the transition, if it’s not too much trouble.
Those arches look like exactly what Richard would want there.
In a way, what you’re doing is (as you know) completing a work of art. And the thing about art is that it isn’t really finished until the communication occurs: the reader turns pages (I’m old-fashioned), the viewer perceives the sculpture or the painting, the listener hears the music, or, in this case, someone other than you lives in this house. Part of the process of art is giving it away and making more.
Have a wonderful time at your Write and Retreat workshop! My Explore 4 has become my favorite event of the year–which is saying a lot, because I love all my teaching and exploring.
Deb, I wish I could put in my garden at the new house before summer, but it would be in the way of construction, and since the first couple of months involve a lot of backhoe, filling and grading work, a garden would be flattened! So the tomatoes and basil and the rest of the kitchen garden at the little house will just have to wait until the house is done and I move, whenever that is!
I think of this house as Richard’s largest sculpture, and finishing it is a gift in many ways. It’s a huge responsibility too, because I want to make sure what I do honors his work (within my budget, time and skills, along with the skills of friends). Those steel arches are likely to be my single biggest expense–I have no idea what they’ll cost and haven’t asked because I’m afraid to!–but they turned out so beautifully, it’s worth it. Whoever buys this house will fall in love with the whole place, and that’s what matters.
I still have to prepare for W&R, after I get a few more carpentry details done. But I know I’ll have a wonderful time. I’m so glad your Explore 4 workshop has turned out so well for you and your students. Congratulations!
Ohhh…. I remember all the hoops Richard jumped through, trying to get the right wood to bend the right way for those doors. I can see his face light up with pleasure at this elegant solution… hear his delighted chuckle. Well done, Susan!
Sherrie, Oh yes, the board-steaming and bending exercises…. Richard’s initial ideas for those arches would have worked if he could have found ash boards that were green enough (meaning not kiln-dried lumber). He even considered whether it would be reasonable to buy a load of ash logs, freshly harvested. And what would I have done with the other 40 tree trunks that he didn’t mill and steam-bend, I wonder?
I know he’s delighted with the steel arches, and he always loved Harry’s work, so that’s a bonus.
Know the joy of getting up from the computer and going outside to work in the garden. Asparagus is coming up! The tip breaks ground in the morning and I must check it again before dinner and snip. such joy and pride in my single spear, which left overnight, can turn ferny.
Oh, asparagus! Lucky you, Sandra. Mine won’t be up for another month or more…. Enjoy it, tip by tip!
tomatoes and basil in pots, ready for an instant kitchen garden in your new home? Or will there be another winter in between?
I wish the seedlings-to-be were for the kitchen garden in my new house, Diana, but they’re for the garden here. Some lucky house buyer will get a pre-planted kitchen garden, already flourishing, along with the house and studio. At my new house, my garden will be much smaller, in galvanized steel stock tanks on my patio. I won’t be able to get those in place and planted until after the walls are up, which will be too late for these tomatoes and basil. I may get in a fall garden though….
no pocket of native meadow with wildlife? That’s going to be a huge change for you to live with. But it will be fascinating to watch how you make that new garden grow! With wildlife in the borrowed scenery.
Diana, The reason the kitchen garden is going in stock tanks is to save a bit of my much-smaller lot for restoring a tiny patch of native meadow. And I’ll have wildlife in abundance because my front door and my front deck will come right to the edge of the bank of the urban creek that runs along one side of this whole formerly industrial property. The creek has been dry for months in our terrible drought, but it’s still a corridor for wildlife from mule deer to garter snakes. (I’m just going to be at the opposite end of the block, and closer to the creek, than where I am now.) I’m looking forward to the challenge of re-wilding a smaller patch of ground that was more intensively affected by the railroad corridor that followed the creek. It’ll take patience, and a lot of weeding and love!
Susan, your house is gorgeous! And your idea of the wicking mat is a very good one. Keep those babies growing.
Susan A, Thank you! The house is very modest outside, gray stucco, gray metal roof, in order to not be obtrusive. But inside, it really shines. The wicking mat really helps with seed-starting and seedling nurturing because it not only keeps them watered evenly, it encourages downward root growth, which makes for sturdier transplants.
Metal arches? Big grin. Happy SPRING!
Aren’t they great, Blanche? I think Richard would approve. And the other half of each should be finished next week, after I get back from this teaching trip. Happy spring to you too, though it’s going to be more like winter here for the next little while….
good work, i like the industrial with the organic very much. using the fruits of the industrial revolution for the good they do (yes, good) is admirable. just returning to blog reading, this is great to read.
Thanks, Velma. It’s good to have you back. I love the metal arches, and am looking forward to getting them finished after I get home in the middle of next week. Happy Spring!