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  “Look Mildred,” I said as I walked towards the yearling  deer who was munching on grass just outside the fence near our garden. Not a deer-proof fence. Just a fence. I don’t know for sure that her name was Mildred, but it seemed to fit. “You aren’t supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be in the wilderness someplace, not casing my vegetables.” Mildred tore up another mouthful of grass, began to chomp on it and seemed to ponder what I was saying. “It’s nothing personal. Or deer-onal.   I just don’t want you to eat my garden. Okay?” By this time, I was about a free throw away from her. I looked down for a moment and when I looked up, she was gone. I saw her bounding across the corn field to a well-known hangout across the street where she and a dozen or so of her kind congregate in the evenings. Probably waiting for us to go to bed so they can sneak over to our place again. To be honest, we have been pretty lucky, considering the number of deer in our area. ...

Comedian Demetri Martin says that swimming is a confusing sport, because sometimes we do it for fun, and sometimes we do it not to die. In a way, gardening is the same. All over the world people grow food in order to survive, while most gardeners I know do it as a hobby, albeit one with health advantages that come from the work involved and the food harvested. With food prices at historically high levels and with more concerns about food safety, the hobby part of gardening is taking a back seat to the pragmatic part. More gardens are popping up, and even people without yards are finding ways to plant some food in pots or with hydroponic set-ups in spare rooms. It is interesting to see, especially in community gardens where many people have plots, that some people start with enthusiasm but succumb to the reality of heat, bugs, and weeds, while others endure to harvest time. I think we fall half-way between those two extremes. We keep at it all summer and generally have a good harves...

The unusually warm weather we’ve had recently has been a real treat.  Farmers who couldn’t do the field work they wanted to do last fall because of the rain that turned too quickly into snow were able to play catch-up, and a lot of fields are ready to plant ahead of schedule, and some planting has already been done. Because we live in Wisconsin, most of us feel like there is a shoe left to drop, and that shoe will take the form of a blizzard, complete with a few feet of snow and below zero temperatures.  There is no meteorological basis for this expectation, just a feeling that something good is usually followed by something bad when it comes to weather. I think people in the Midwest see the world that way more than other folks.  On a perfect day in June, you’ll hear people say, “we’re gonna pay for this later!”  I’ve never heard people in San Diego make the same prediction. Well, I may pay for it later, but last weekend I got a start planting our garden.  Most ...

  I Sat With the Cat Not to get all Seussy or anything, but this morning I sat on the cement next to the garage with our cat, Barney. We’ve had a number of cats over the years but now Barney is the sole survivor, and he is showing his age. He is named Barney because he lives in our barn. Before he belonged to us, he belonged to someone else, which we know because he had been “fixed” (a poor choice of words) when we found him. Or when he found us. I was up in the barn loft on a winter night when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I asked, “Is there a cat up here?” It turns out there was, and he meowed very conversationally for several minutes. It was a month or more before he’d hang around with us. We started to feed him on some very cold winter nights, even though he’d been fending for himself for who knows how long. Our horse vet at the time gave the cat his shots and verified that he was neutered. Then we named him (the cat, not the vet) Barney. He has unhappily c...

So many seeds – so little space! We have a pretty big garden, considering that there are just two of us at home these days. We do give food away to our daughters and some other relations and neighbors, but the garden is pretty big. And yet, every year some seeds and plants get crowded, or I’ll look up and realize that we’re out of space with a couple of seed packets left over. It seems like an impossible space to fill when we start, and not big enough once the planting is nearly done. By the same token, we can, freeze, and dry food frantically during the harvest season. We don’t pretend to be self-sufficient, but the way things are going these days, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for such a circumstance. Now, with days getting longer, we look at our mostly full shelves and freezer and wonder how in the world we’ll be able to eat it all. Of course, that is a wonderful problem to have. So, how do we go about turning stored food into tasty meals? One idea is soup. Lots of soup. ...

  There are so many quotes about gardens and gardening. Most of them have lots of flowery (pardon the pun) language about being one with nature and such. Here are a few quotes that resonated with me, and I thought you might like them too. “A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.” -- Doug Larson   “A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.” -- D. Elton Trueblood   “Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”   -- May Sarton   “Weeds are flowers too -- once you get to know them.”   -- A. A. Milne “Gardening is not a rational act.” -- Margaret Atwood “What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.” -- Charles Dudley Warner ...