Mythology (Leeming) and My Garden

I'm sort of excited about a class, actually, just about the book.  Or books I guess.

I'm pursuing a double major and really wanted to take this fast-paced series this summer, but transportation isn't going to work out for it.  I'm keeping the book so I can still use it soon. 

I was looking for other courses then, and there's not a ton for summer really, but I found this one and decided to click on the book and thought, "That's my garden."

It's a book called "Mythology" by Leeming, 1998, Oxford Press, and there is this face/sculpture on it, that has the same form (not completely but sort of) as my garden.  What's even weirder (to me) are 2 other things that go along with it.

I wasn't planning on even looking up this course but decided to do so tonight.  I saw it before and thought it was a myth class on the Bible, which I wouldn't care for.  I tried taking a "Bible" class in college once and it was this big slam on christianity the entire time so I dropped it.  So when I first saw this course title, I thought it was the same thing.  But I looked at it again tonight and it's more about mythology in general, and fairytales, and things I enjoy reading about.

So the weird part is that when I was putting rows into my garden today, and making a path for water course, I made this ditch around my lettuce too.  Then something didn't feel right, and I didn't know what it was.  So I smoothed some dirt across it.  I thought, "Now it looks like a bridge."  Why I did that, not sure but reminded me of making tunnels and bridges in the dirt as a kid.  It was one of my favorite things to do in the garden.  I thought about how, one time, when I was so young, I was digging things up and making dirt patties or bridges and found a boy's toy car and said look!  It wasn't my brother's.  I was only about 6-8 or so.  Just remembering things.  My "bridge", isn't to keep I don't think, it just felt right at the moment, but it's from the dirt of the lettuce to the regular grass next to my place.    Anyway, the bridge thing only stood out to me because I did this today, and then the description for this class was stories that are a "living bridge" (something like that).  I thought, I wonder why I felt something was wrong closing off this one section.  Maybe tomorrow, it's different, but something felt really oddly wrong, when I was putting in this border in one section.

So then, today I ended up, with my last row, making a different "end" to it, because the edges were slightly rounded there.  So it is a cusp or a sliver of moon, in the same shape as the hat on the figures head for this book cover I just looked at.

Anyway, I thought of herbs, flowers, and veggies to companion plant today and will probably change some things around, but the cusp is where I had marked for butternut squash and black beauty zucchini with sweet sensei endame.  Then I have carrots with parsley and thyme nearby, with maybe mint, and onion.  Then pak choi with marigold.  Swiss chard with oregano and bachelor buttons.   broccoli and cauliflower.  Onion.  Then golden acre cabbage with cilantro and maybe a tomato and basil.  I have artichokes and lavendar too.  I have sage as an idea by squash or lettuce and I put a few stones near lettuce and considered the corsican mint for that.  Not sure yet. 

I might change things around a little.  Then my lettuce is in a different section, adjoined, and I have just a french lavendar guarding it from deer.  Hanging above is salmonberry, and ferns, and grasses.

So anyway, I had thought I have no idea why I'm leaving this one row the way I did, but then I found almost a kind of similiarity with something later.  And just last night, I was reading something in the Bible that brought King Arthur to mind, so I think I am probably ready to read some stories.

The garden is not a perfect circle, or square or rectangle or anything.  It's sort of ? modern?  My rows are fairly straight but...I have absolutely no form or idea that comes to mind when I look at it.  One section is sort of a square with slightly angled rows and a very slight rounding of edges on a corner section and then it's next to another smaller kind of square but I expanded it up in a tall v about this, to provide access to a little storage area that used to be for hens.  So it's kind of square-diamond with a diagonal and then a little hint of rounding at one end.

I am not planting the cherry radishes, or black dragon eggplant this year bc it's too late, and I have asparagus but it's too late for that too.  So they will keep until next year.

I'm sort of excited about the artichoke, because I had no idea how it grows or what it looks like growing when I bought it.  I thought maybe it grew like a potato in the ground.  It turns out, it's this enormous thistle-like plant with huge thistle flowers.  I never knew that's what an artichoke was--so you cut the head before it gets to the thistle stage or you leave it and it's ornamental.  I didn't realize they get to be 3-6 ft. tall so that changed my garden planning some.  

I was thinking, if I needed a walled garden, to protect it from deer, I could use artichoke all the way around.  It would look like sort of a mess maybe, but I think it would work.

I got the rows in today and knew I would not have any problem at all with a raspberry patch.  I could definitely manage it, and some kind of small organic gardening thing.

There were some very interesting birds in the garden today too.  I have no clue where they came from. 

You know what I want?

I want an avocado tree.  Really.

I would love to have an avocado tree and be able to pick avocados right there in my yard.  I was looking into greenhouses and sizes and everything even.  I really, really, like avocadoes.  I don't eat a ton now bc of my off-on diet thing, but if I could pick one tree, to start out with, it would be that.