Page 74 - Flathead Living Fall 2014

homE ExtEriors stoRy and Photos by JaiX ChaiX
Garden as a second home
Fall is one of the most anticipated times of the year
F all in the Flathead. It’s a time when the vegetable garden is no longer just an extension of the house and yard, but a
second home, or a home-away-from-home in its own right.
And for many, it’s a time when food comes from where it should: the ground.
Gardening is a year-round obsession. The cold days of January and February are spent with one hand around a generously warm beverage and the other flipping through the pages of a seed catalog or book on raised-bed layouts from the library.
Spring provides a slight reprieve in the monot- ony of anticipation (and spares more than a few pages of any given seed catalog from having the corners folded thrice).
Late spring finds the avid gardener finally mak- ing a break from indoors – and the beginning of a relocation of sorts. For some, this is when the
visits to their home-away-from-home (aka garden) begins. Some are tidy square plots in the corner of a fence that sees the most sun. For others, the vegetable garden resembles more of a mad-scien- tist-constructed contraption meant to ward off critters as much to provide accommodating space for vegetables to thrive. And for the lucky ones, the garden is a wide-open space (near the house – that annoying place that needs cleaning, but pro- vides a place to rest in between getting out in the garden).
But fall is the most anticipated time in the gar- den spaces. A time teeming with energy as most vegetables finally reach their ripened state – or bumper crops of early veggies deliver delightful surprises.
Yet fall is bittersweet: There is a swell of pride from having grown fresh, delicious food, but also somewhat of a gardener’s despair. As each
clockWise From leFt
Crystal Clark and her sons ezra, Jubal, and Gideon tend to the family garden.
A pumpkin ready for fall harvest in the pumpkin patch grown by Jan keinas.
A peek at some of the nutritious root vegetables grown in the Clark family garden – a three- generation effort.
72 FLATHEAD LIVING | FALL 2014