I've been out working in the garden, pruning grapevines and clearing and hoeing a small patch of ground. Then I put in a few legumes: peas, fava beans and chickpeas.
In reality, it's technically too late for fava beans, a little on the late side for peas, and too early for chickpeas. Also, though I meant to intercrop the legumes with onions, I didn't do so in the end, because I couldn't find onions in time. Too late, too early, not in time ... time, oh time! Time to garden is never plentiful, so I did what I could, when I could. I'll have to leave the rest to chance, and just hope that the weather will be kind, that my legumes will all sprout and grow, and that the onions which I'll plant alongside the legumes - when I get around to it - will do as intercropping. Sidecropping, why not? Sidecropping is sometimes the best that I can aspire to.
Though I've gained a fair amount of experience during these last ten years of gardening, and although I always hope to dedicate more time to my garden, the fact is that right now I garden when I can. I aspire to grow the perfect bio-diverse garden, but the reality is that for now my garden is just good enough. And I'm a good enough gardener.
The good enough gardener plants fava, peas and chickpeas together, some too late, and some too early. And doesn't manage to intercrop them.
The good enough gardener prunes her grapevines wearing thin, pale pink yoga pants, not because she's just been to yoga (unfortunately she doesn't have time for yoga classes), but because she didn't have the time to change into more practical jeans. And she, the good enough gardener, knows very well that had she taken more time to pull out those infesting weeds when they were tender young plants, they wouldn't have gone to seed, which she's now helping spread.
The good enough gardener has huge piles of prunings and dead vegetation to burn, because she wasn't able, yet again, to make a hugelkultur compost mound. But she's hopeful that next autumn she will.
The good enough gardener found several and several carrots that she'd missed during harvest last year, which little earth critters had fed on during the winter.
The good enough gardener may end up sowing and planting and harvesting at not quite the right time, and she may even end up watering at not quite the right time of day during growing season (in fact she has an uncanny instinct for timing her watering sessions just before huge rainstorms).
But the good enough gardener absolutely loves every minute she spends thinking about and working in her garden. And despite the fact that her gardening falls far short of perfection, her "good enough" approach still allows her to feed her family with surprising amounts of fresh, healthy produce.
