Oats, Corn, and Barley Grow

I read in a magical book about gardening that I could use oats and clover in the walking paths and over the areas waiting to be planted.  That sounded so eco-brilliant to me at the time, that I did just that - I sowed my oats throughout the lower half of my garden, and dispersed clover seed in between the spring beds, and everywhere else that looked to be needing groundcovering.

Course, I always get so excited to find little sprouts poking through the ground but I was doubly excited when I imagined a thick short clover carpet for my toes and knees, and tall stalks of oat grass protecting the soil for pumpkins.   Not to mention the added bonuses of less weeds to pull, clay soil being broken up by long reaching clover roots, and the nitrogen they would put back into my soil when all was said and done.

My father, a sage in gardening, thought I was crazy but was careful to inform me that clover comes back as a weed as does oats.  (He knows that if it ain't my idea, I ain't buyin'.)  My kids cautioned me against clover and bees.  Dru entertained my fancies and I danced a happy dance when them oats and clovers started in to grow.

Brilliant would have been to make the pathways large enough for the lawn mower to get through.  Brilliant also would have been to have owned a weed whacker.   As it was, the clover grew and grew and grew and then they flowered and bees came in droves - many, many happy bees.  (Too bad they weren't any of them my bees.)  We had to carefully pick our way to the sweet peas and no one dared walk barefoot through, or even on, my carpet of clover.

The oats grew too.  I'd mow them when I'd mow the grass but they still managed to go to seed and eventually had to be pulled, not rototilled in at the end of the season as I had ideally imagined.   But I loved them even as I pulled them and sent the seeds scattering as each was uprooted.  I loved my clover even as I eventually went to work pulling them out as well creating a new kind of carpet in my wake.

So my thoughts while pulling was that some day I'd like to grow my own wheat, to take it from seed to flour to bread.  Just to see, to try my hand at it.  To really take something from beginning to end.  To appreciate it because I sweated over it.

I also dream of some day owning chickens, so I can gather their eggs and send my strapping boys out to pluck one for dinner.  A cow for beef.  Goats for milk and specialty herbed cheese.  And for climbing the cow.  Maybe some sheep for wool and lambs for my girls to bottle feed.  My own honey bees for to pollinate my clover - and for the honey, of course.  There's got to be some magical books out there that can teach me everything I need to know 'cuz I honestly don't have a clue.

Meanwhile, I was thinking today of the folks who were buying our home - all the money we sank into it, the sweat we put into it.  I was thinking about the garden they'd get and I'd miss.  And then I thought about what would be sprouting right now, volunteering itself, and I'm thinkin' with all the clover and oats they'll be pullin' maybe I ain't missin' much.