Horse manure

Today is horse manure day in the vegetable garden. The plot of land I'm working on, which is 4 m by 4 m in size (that's a square 13 ft. on a side), is one I tilled up two weeks ago. Since then, I gathered up a lot of sticks, twigs, and leaves from a couple of piles we had made last fall and covered for the winter. It was all pretty dry, so I made a big pile in the middle of the garden plot and set it on fire one afternoon last week.

A succulent that spent the winter indoors
is happy to be outside again.

Now I have a plot of soil covered with fine ash. To that, I'm going to add about 40 lbs. of composted horse manure (fumier de cheval) that we bought at the supermarket. And then I'll run the rotary cultivator through it all one more time to mix it all together well. That plot will be ready for planting.

One of our requirements when we left the city (San Francisco) and moved to the country (outside Saint-Aignan) nearly six years ago was enough land to have a respectable vegetable garden on it. When we cameto France to look at houses in 2002, we rejected a couple that were bigger (but not necessarily nicer) than the one we now live in because they were on land that were not level.

These I know to be plums. They are on a tree
in the neighbors' yard. They look like the ones I've found
out on the edge of the vineyard and that I'm keeping an eye on.

After living in San Francisco for 8 years, we knew about hills. Our house there was on 4 levels, from the garage down on street level up to the bedrooms and rear deck. It wasn't 4 stories, just 4 different levels offset by half a story. And the back yard — if you can use the word "yard" for a spact that was 25 ft. wide and 35 ft. deep — was actually on a fifth level. It was up higher than the highest floor of the house.

We did have a garden there, but we quickly learned we couldn't grow vegetables because of the cool, gray weather we had in summertime in San Francisco. Besides, since it was in a city neighborhood in the middle of a block, the only access to the yard was through the house. It wasn't easy to haul a lot of dirt or manure or dead leaves through the house up several flights of stairs.

Weeds are plants too.

Here in Saint-Aignan, we live in a house with a big flat yard. What we didn't realize when we chose it, however, was that the soil is very poor. That's why the land is planted in grapes all around us. Grape vines thrive in poor soil — clay with lots of rocks (flintstone) in it. Chalky soil. Sand. Gravel. Vegetable gardens would rather have rich, loamy soil that is well drained. We are trying to create those conditions for our tomatoes and eggplants.

That's why we are constantly working to improve the soil by mixing in composted leaves, ashes, and now, for the first time, horse manure. Composted horse manure, by the way, not the fresh stuff. Somebody warned me to keep the dog away from it anyway, because dogs love to roll in things that smell bad.

These orchids have come up as weeds in our yard.

This gardening thing is a lot of work. But it's important. In San Francisco, I used to say, my feet almost never touched real earth. I would go down the stairs to the garage, get in my car, drive 50 miles to work, park, walk on asphalt and concrete into my building, and spend the day indoors. In the evening, I'd repeat the trip in reverse order.

Here, I'm always scraping mud off my shoes — at least in springtime. We now live not to the rhythms imposed by an employer and the freeways, but to the rhythms of nature and dirt.

Grapes grow well in poor soil.

If the weather will just cooperate this summer, we will have a great 2009 garden. But there are no guarantees, despite the best intentions and a lot of hard work.