joy

i’m a work at home mama in extreme northwest arkansas, near the KS, MO, and OK borders—in the beautiful ozark mountains. i live in an artist’s community where the owner is generous enough to provide us with a big sunny plot for a community garden. since two of the four initial gardeners dropped out, we just keep expanding. we dropped a few trees in order to get more sun, and have used the logs to create raised beds. a fence is slowly being built to keep the varmints out (deer and rabbit are plentiful here in this very rural area), and soon we should have drip tape irrigation coming straight from a pump from the pond on site.

right now, up and coming, we have too many tomato plants to count, some squash, a bunch of cantaloupe, two beds of everbearing strawberries, a few watermelon, three brussels sprouts that we can’t make sense of—verdant but nothing resembling an actual brussels sprout—and a couple okra that seem not long for this world, and a few herbs (nasturtium, cilantro, stevia, and spearmint). we just planted two rows of lima beans last night and will be digging rows for purple hull peas in the next few days.

i already have two kids, ages 5 and 14. i’m also 8.5 months pregnant and enjoying the fact that gardening is a great way to get my uterus contracting. if labor stalls, i’ll just need to go do some weeding or dig a new bed!

i tie-dye mandalas onto silk and cotton for a living (though we don’t make a killing :wink:) and you can see our stuff at www.thecolorfarm.com. we sell at farmer’s markets and online, and i also study something called attachment parenting and i write about the mothers who practice it, whom i’ve been observing and learning from and about for close to 15 years.