19 Mar- Every flower needs a gardener

 الرحمن الرحیم بسم الله

In the name of Allah most Gracious, most Merciful. 

  19 March 2014.

 I don’t know where I remember this from. It may be a movie or a book. But the gist of it is that in every relationship there is a flower and there is a gardener.

My husband and I joke about who the flower is and who the gardener is, depending on what we are busy with. So for instance if I serve breakfast for the two of us I will remark that the gardener is busy in the kitchen making pancakes with honey and cinnamon. If my husband is busy preparing a tray of tea and snacks he would say his job is to tend to the flower.  I think in life we all do our fair share of gardening and flowering and this accounts for other relationships as well.

We are essentially gardeners when our children are smaller but as they grow they too need to get the soil under their nails. Sometimes it takes a lot of gardening to make a friendship bloom. Subhanallah, nature really has the best examples for living. The seasons of crops demarcate the seasons in life. One’s autumn years or winter years are when one reach maturity. Thus the cyclic nature of seasons could mean that we get one more opportunity sometimes even when older to experience a summer. And nature has some of the best idioms and analogies for us, here’s some that immediately came to mind, now you think of some:

·         What you reap you will sow.
·         Bend the bush when it is still young.
·         Separate the wheat from the chaff
·         You may till the soil and enrich it and even plant the seed, but the fruits may not be for you.

 Today was filled with meetings and I could not wait to come back home and check on the seedlings and find spaces in beds that were good for them. I personally do not like rows and rows of the same crop in one bed. So I check whether plants would be good companions and benefit from one another or detrimental to other plants. Besides unless one intercrops or interplants according to the gurus, the same plants will compete for the same nutrients. Throw in a couple of beans or peas and the competition is less because different kinds of plants need different nutrients to thrive on. Therefore, good companions are basil in the tomato bed, onions or garlic as borders to strawberries, rosebushes and chives below it and of course lavender under olive trees.

The ultimate in companion planting was practiced by the first peoples of the Americas. They would plant corn with bean stalks trailing up and a carpet of squash on the ground. This they called the Three Sisters method.

Sacrificial plants are included in the veggie beds to lure pests away from prized lettuce and cabbages. I have found Chinese cabbage to be one such plant. The worms can chomp it away to the loss of nearly all the leaves and in a no time it will replenish itself and grow new leaves. We rotate the vegetable beds when all the vegetables are used up or the season is over. The general rule of thumb is if one planted a root vegetable in a particular patch, then next a leafy vegetable there. Next one could plant runners. Also if one intersperses the vegetables with certain flowers such as marigolds and lavender and herbs like creeping oregano or borage under the tomato bushes - it will deter pests and also encourage insects necessary for pollination. Lady bugs are a gardener’s best friends; they clean aphids off the leaves of plants, and often one finds them in droves on rose bushes (snacking on aphids no doubt).

All of this impacts on cooking so well. Handfuls of curry leaves enhance the curry and wafts through the air tantalizingly. Fresh red and spring onion are by far more enjoyable to pull out of the soil and into the pan. Brinjals are definitely firmer and have a longer shelve life. In the next few days we intend Insha'Allah to plant a huge crop of garlic. I always use fresh garlic because the moment garlic is crushed, cut or grated it starts to lose its active allisin and thus its wonderful properties. 

So Alhamdulillah; no pesticides or chemical enrichment. The plan for the rest of the week is to drill holes in the barrels and place medium size stones at the bottom before filling it with good composted soil. I am off to find two lemon trees to plant in them or even two orange trees that may still crop in the winter, to trim off their tops a bit in order to stunt them so they can be more sturdy and wind resistant. I am not sure what to plant in the baths yet. And having started a patch in the flower garden we are extending the garden area so that we reach the gate by the end of the month Insha'Allah. We try to create spaces where students can sit and revise their lessons or grab a snack. Imagine the most beautifully recited Qur’an in spaces filled with blooms and fruit hanging and veggies cropping. Butterflies and dragonflies abound. Allah hu akbar.

Till next time, Plant food and flowers.
Yasmine

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 From lemon pips

1st cucumber