How does your garden grow?

We've gotten past Shavu'ot, and the weather is beautiful.

From a historical perspective, this Jewish festival celebrates the Israelites receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. But it's also an agricultural festival, marking the season of the first fruits of the harvest.

The major Jewish holidays, Passover, Shavu'ot, and Sukkot, all have agricultural roots to them, but I feel that we rarely stop to think of those roots, perhaps because we're so removed from the importance of that cycle. We generally focus instead on the historical associations with the holidays. Don't get me wrong-- those associations are critically important, too. But I do feel that getting back to the agricultural meaning of the days might just help us reconnect with the earth in ways it seems we've also forgotten.

We are eagerly trying to be organic gardeners, so, like Farmer Rich, we've been counting the days since Passover, watching as our garlic, tomatoes, carrots, and green pepper have gone from seeds to tiny plants in our kitchen window, and then into the ground in our backyard. They've endured benign neglect from the Mosbacher Family, late frosts from Mother Nature, and an early attack from our resident ground hog. At the risk of jinxing the whole enterprise, things seem to be going well, so far:


Left to right: tomatoes, green pepper (mystery plants in back), carrots




In the bed: Heirloom Garlic



The garlic, planted last October, appears that it might actually make it!

We even have a couple of mystery plants in the bed behind the pepper plant; Elyssa speculates that these are pumpkin plants sprouting up from some pumpkin seeds that must have made it into our bionic compost. Oh, we're so organic, I can't stand it!!