May: an aromatic, colorful segway toward summer. May’s blooms help our busy brains forget the wall of rain we so recently swam through. The warm, clear skies are perfect for honeybees to cut through efficiently, visiting a thousand of flowers per day. May is a month for pollination! The Arbor campus is a wonderful jungle of beneficial insects, including honeybees! May I suggest a meditative May activity for you? Sit beside a flower of your choosing. I suggest a yellow, white, purple or blue flower, since native and honeybees tend to prefer them. Observe the flower, and track how many insects pay a visit. What kinds of winged things, and how many?

I’m greeted by the hum of catmint visitors as I pass by the gathering center. Catmint, a flower from the Nepeta family, attracts bees, hummingbirds and butterflies, and deters pests like aphids and squash bugs. Speaking of squash bugs, as the end of May nears, it’s time to hill up some mounds and direct-seed our favorite squash varieties! Will you plant pumpkins? Zucchini? Tom says if you plant zucchini, your neighbors will thank you: “they might not eat it… but they’ll thank you.”

These funky flowers are currently blooming on Arbor’s potato plants. Fun fact- potatoes do not require pollination to produce their root fruit. They are hermaphroditic flowers, meaning they have both sex organs required to produce their fruit. When the flowers have completed their bloom, the potatoes are ready for a look-see. Pull up one nutrient-rock and rub its surface with your thumb. If the skin rubs away, it needs more time. If the skin is thick enough, go ahead and sift through the soil for all the potato siblings! What you’re not ready to cook, you can keep underground.

I’ve grown potatoes a couple different ways this year: trench planting at Arbor, and in a bag at my home. Both styles allow for “hilling” the potatoes to force more root production and a higher yield. Leigh asked me about potatoes earlier this year--wondering when to plant, and then how long til hash browns? Her family has enjoyed at least one yummy harvest that I know of. Who else planted potatoes this year? How’s breakfast?

((Email me for easy details on how to grow potatoes in a sack! clara@arborschool.org))

Personally, I can’t cook potatoes without garlic. The Arbor garlic bed dances like tens of green flags on the spring breeze. Yesterday I pulled a couple young ones for inspection. Plump little baby bulbs will season a weekend meal. Tell me your favorite way to enjoy garlic!

Tom and I spent some time in the Arbor árboles thinning apple clusters! The evidence is strewn about the grass below: small, dense fruits that resist our picking and choosing. We used clippers to carefully cut the stems of all but one or two of the strongest fruits in each cluster. Tom told me that the “king fruit,” and that which we select for, is not necessarily the largest apple of the bunch, but rather the central apple with the most stable and stalky stem. We admitted to each other that while the tree climbing is fun, and the sound of heavy apples plunking to the ground satisfying, it doesn’t feel great to be the tough decision-maker. Which reminded me of a journal entry I made earlier this week as I weeded the library garden:

“To be a good gardener, one must also be a destroyer. I don’t only refer to the accidental deaths from which a gardener learns and grows. I mean, one must become trained to squish, pull, chuck. Pests. Weeds. Slugs. The sprouts must be thinned and an efficient garden-tender cannot be distracted by what-if optimisms. From these necessary deaths, our purposeful plantings grow.”

To the contrary, Noemi and other dedicated intermediates display a strong argument for preservation of so-called “pest” life, by ferrying found snails and slugs in the gardens out to the woods where they cannot do harm to our vegetables. Sometimes it just takes time, little running feet, and childlike, loving acceptance to help all the creatures thrive at once.

Here’s to becoming better gardeners, I’ve got a lot of weeding to do yet. Sending love from Arbor’s gardens!

Clara