The Big Garden of 2014 - 2015

What a disaster.  Last year our spring was so muddy we couldn't get even get into our ranch let alone our garden.  By the time things dried up, it was too late ...but I worked it as best I could and hoped for the best.  The best didn't happen.

Then, the ants ...I learned a lot about ants last year while I was, alternately, doing nothing and watching them eat every single thing I planted.  They even ate my rhubarb!!!  All of it!!!  They "killed corn ass-high" as my father liked to describe the destruction of things that were seemingly too big to fail.

I swore off gardening.

Now, however, in the deep of the Argentine winter ...I am beginning to peruse seed catalogs once again.

I begin to dream of gardens-past.  That leads me to dream of gardens-future!

I'm a rancher.  That's different from a farmer.  Ranchers laugh at farmers ...then they REALLY laugh when farmers fail.  Our animals plod along with no fixed schedule of harvest and they load themselves onto the trucks when the time comes to harvest the "calf crop."  There's an old Argentine (rancher) saying that goes something like, "Crops will bankrupt you ...but cattle will keep your homestead for generations."

But I've planted a few crops and a few gardens and, well, sitting by the fire perusing a seed catalog, and thinking of the green of spring and deliciousness of summer and fall ...that gets into your blood.  And since my wife and I are probably more vegetarian than most of you, the thought of colorful, sweet, crunchy, herbal veggies stretching up from the soil is just too much for me to abandon easily.

Rage, RAGE against the dying of the veggies!

After much research, I think I have just the thing to organically keep the ants at bay ...so I have set myself to endeavor again to garden.

I'll keep you posted.