When working with nature it is worth the wait
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This quote is under a painting in our son’s bedroom, and we were reminded of the truth of it recently when, after some long-awaited rain, some parts of our garden produced surprise treasures.
Vincent had planted a row of purple sprouting broccoli a year ago and despite their big leaves, thick stalks and vigorous health, they had not produced a single bit of broccoli! We had been discussing whether it was time to give up and remove them to make way for spring plantings but we’re very glad we waited.
Suddenly they are blooming and making a very welcome addition to our meals, as there is nothing better than home grown vegetables with a seasoning of patience 😉
The other ‘much longer than we anticipated’ project that reached fruition this week was our mushroom logs. In December 2019 we drilled holes in oak logs, inoculated them with shiitake mushroom spore and sealed them with wax several years ago.
We knew it would take some time for the mycelium to spread through the logs, and there are also some guidelines about where to keep them and how moist they should be. Which, given how full our hands have been with kids and this corner of Naussannes countryside, we didn’t really follow.
So despite our lack of attention, nature has taken it’s course and the logs finally sprouted some beautiful shiitakes this week. As you can imagine we were delighted to taste them after all this time.
Our food forest is a much bigger long term project, we will share about that in another post soon.
