Carrots

Today I was delighted today to find a comment from another blogger who loves both gardens and Palestine. Alajnabiya ! http://alajnabiya.blogspot.com/

I went to the blog and was thrilled to see a real garden- it really is a real garden in Palestine and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go look at the blog- Alajnabiya's blog's banner is "Climbing Walls"... you'll get at least a glimpse of one of many beautiful gardens in the region. Notice the attention to detail and the careful balance of what is grown where. Visually appealing and yet at the same time very practical. A lived in garden, not only for looking or quickly walking past, but to be part of everyday life.




http://alajnabiya.blogspot.com/2008/03/where-flowers-bloom-so-does-hope.html

I have iotas of pictures I have taken through out the years of my husband's parents' gardens and their farm, as well as many relatives. So many it is too hard to even think about which ones to blog.

Anyway, technically those are Jordanian gardens, as many of my husband's relatives live in Jordan. Jordan is not Palestine. Although Jordan does have many connections to Palestine, as well as many people who very much care about what happens to Palestine. Jordan by the way really is a wonderful place. Well worth going to visit whether you have family there or not.

Today my husband finished his lunch and wandered out into the back yard. I grabbed my digital camera and oh so casually followed him as I often do. But last year I was not stalking him in quite the same way I am this year...


He often wanders out to do a bit of gardening or yard work after lunch. He wears a pager and if work needs him the pager lets him know and he'll cut his lunch hour short and make the call or whatever needs to be done. His pager is also a cell phone. He has different people programed to play different ring tones. One son is James Bond, and the other the Pink Panther.

It never occurred to me to ask him what ring tone was for me... The other day I was delighted to accidentally hear for the first time the ring tone he choose to let him know it is me. It's very pretty in a gentle quiet way. And it feels graceful- feminine. Its called Klavier and I tried to find it on the Internet but could not. It is either carefully played wind chimes or some sort of xylophone or perhaps even a modern harpsichord. I don't know. But I do know that I like that he chose such a pleasant unique and yet soothing song to tell him I am calling.

Today after lunch my husband headed right up to the vegetable garden. It has been a magnificent day- blue blue skies and it almost feels warm.... Spring really is on its way. My husband pulled up old dry stalks and cleared away all the brush and dried leaves left from last year, revealing not only the rich brown moist earth, but also some bits of feathery dark green leaf that he tugged up and out popped a small carrot! I helped him pull all the little carrots left from last year. He also found one tiny radish.


I scrubbed them in the kitchen sink and will be snacking on them all afternoon. A small nibble from last years garden, thinking about this year and what might be.

My husband rotates the 'crops' so as not to deplete the soil. Today he was poking around to see what might go where. He also checked the strawberries that we planted last year up in the wild flower garden.

The wild flower garden was my idea years and years ago when our kids were toddlers. I wanted the feeling of a field in that hard to mow very sloped spot- or perhaps an English Cottage garden type thing, up on the top tier of our terraced back yard. Something wild and full of color and at least several things blooming through out the entire growing season. Would love to say that the idea flourished and bloomed beyond our expectations. We do, after all, live in a place that gets plenty of rain.

But reality is that it has been been a constant struggle and more of a joke than anything. One seriously needs a sense of humor to deal with that very stubborn bit of garden. Between the dog romping up there, the rabbits nibbling (luring the dog up there again) and the birds pecking up every seed they can, plus the kids playing- and the ground hog- oh heavens the ground hog. An awful ugly big sloshy fat rat like creature with very big front teeth who can easily eat an entire garden in an afternoon. And yet year after year, we keep trying anyway, and year after year it gets a bit better really!

Last year we put in some strawberries. We used to have strawberries running alongside the back of the house when the boys were young. They would snack on them. So would the Chipmunks which really are fun to watch- adorable delicate creatures. And too small to do too much harm as they forage.

One year not long ago the strawberries always by the house simply did not come back. So last year we planted some more up on the upper garden. And this year the June bearing ones look solid and hopeful- as if they might grow.

And so today in growing a private personal Garden for Palestine, I think it is a good idea to look at what we might have and try to make the most of it. Real gardens in Palestine are enchanting, but here in America, especially in the North, we simply can not grow all the same things. But we can remember Palestine in little ways in an American Garden.

And in my imagined public Garden for Palestine- well frankly I am not even sure yet where it might be and thus what types of plants should be there, much less the best way to lay out the garden itself. The whole thing is still forming itself and I am a long way from finished...



And my mind cannot help but wander, back to yesterday and Ismail Shammout. If you went to his website http://www.shammout.com/ you also noticed not only the amazing Exodus, a series of paintings: " "Palestine: The Exodus and the Odyssey" is a collection of 19 large murals painted by Ismail and Tamam Shammout from 1997 to 2000." Ismail Shammout (1930-2006): Artist, Activist, Legend

And you might have also noticed his wife, another wonderful artist by the name of Tamam Al-Akhal. She married her artist colleague Ismail Shammout, moving various places and sharing with him the art exhibitions held in various countries of the world. They moved to Amman Jordan in 1994. http://www.shammout.com/bio-tam.htm

Jaffa: Bride of the Sea by Tamam Al-Akhal, 1997
http://www.palestinecalendar.org/march.html

Her inspiring paintings illustrate the Palestine online calender- and one of my favorite ones is

Do Not Forsake The Steed by Tamam Al-Akhal, 2000

http://www.palestinecalendar.org/september.html

And so in growing my public garden for Palestine today I want to step into a total Utopian fantasy of the very best I can think of- a large rambling garden where we have enough land to have horses. Right now dreaming as big a dream as I can dream, my imagined garden is on the West Coast, close enough to overlook the ocean, echoing historic Palestine as its far western edge borders the Mediterranean sea. And our garden is big- huge- and intricate, with many sub gardens and greenhouses- our budget is limitless... and off to the side, off the right side are meandering meadows where the horses are. And we'd have Arabian horses and riding trails where people could hire the horses to ride... or simply lean on the fence and watch the horses play. And we'd have gentle ponies and maybe donkeys even for children to ride on a special garden path created for the little ones...

And children could pull up a carrot or two in the children's garden- and be taught how to hold it out in an open hand, and how to tuck their thumb out of the way so that the horse doesn't accidentally nibble it off as he nuzzles up his crunchy garden fresh morsel of food.



notes

• ADC Convention "Securing the Principles of Liberty" June 12-15 in Washington DC