Starting on Easter

One of my favorite things about having a garden is the constant discovery of the new, and the prolific concentration of such discoveries following the black box of winter are what make spring so inspiring. Sometimes it's an unexpected surprise of delight, like this volunteer calendula:

There are two of these. My best guess is the seedpods 
escaped from previous year's container.

Some discoveries are not so much unexpected as they are reminders that yes, it really is that time of year again:

I realized this week that our lilac had gone into full bloom 
with a thorough disregard for whether I was enjoying its
 beauty or not.

Sometimes a discovery is tinged with the sadness of loss and regret, like the perennial artichoke that clearly did not make it through the winter snows this year for want of better mulching:

No garden 'chokes for us this year

But mostly, the discoveries are ones of cyclic beginnings and promises of transformation: impressive numbers of flowers setting fruit on the Asian pear and almond trees for the first time, blueberry shrubs that have tripled in size from last spring, a single perfect asparagus spear begging me to figure out how to give it siblings sometime between now and the next spring. 

This is our third spring at the hovel, but it's the first one that the resources of time, money, and energy have been concurrently available for garden and yard planning, at least in a more stable configuration. While we continue to have many competing irons in a big unwieldy fire of workschoolrelationshipshomeleisure, we are no longer trying to find jobs, make the hovel minimally livable, get oriented to Corvallis and campus life, or, heaven forbid, plan a wedding. 

Just as importantly, we have done as much preparatory and crisis management work as we have been able, and I am looking forward to a year of pulling all the pieces together into a more comprehensive, thriving, prolific whole. There are still basics to work on, but this is the first year living here I feel poised to engage the hovel dirt more deeply. 

There is that old saying about perennials: first year it sleeps, second year it creeps, third year it leaps. I'd like this blog to serve as a sort of travelogue of our third year leap seen through the lens of the hovel garden. I'd also like to see it become a space for my many gardening friends and family members to share ideas, feedback, and support.

For me the garden intersects with so many other areas of our lives here: cooking, homebrewing, outdoor living space, cats, community. It has the power to be the center ground from which I can connect to the rest of the world. Even when I neglect it, it is still there for me whenever I am ready again.

Of course, I tend to write much like I garden; in sporadic, furious bursts of energy punctuating long periods of...energy conservation. (Hence the blog title of psychology-reversing lowered expectation.) I often describe my gardening style as survival of the fittest; it remains to be seen whether this blog will survive the Darwinian nature of my creative impulses and perhaps even evolve. If so, then I will be delighted to have discovered another new joy.