Yakon

 My fans and followers may have noticed that I have been updated my blog very rarely over the past year or so. Several life events have shifted my priorities to the point where my garden has been in maintenance mode at best, and a bit of a disaster at worst. There is a time in life for everything, and the time to care for my family has put garden activities on hold. My father had been quite ill for the past two years, and the time I would be planning and sprouting my garden was spent in hospital visits juggled with single parenting. This past week, my father died, peacefully and surrounded by our family. It had been a difficult and painful time in my life, and I am grateful to the many wonderful friends and loving family members who surround us and support us through these first weeks of grief and mourning.

I spend a few minutes each day marveling at the continuity of life as first the early spring flowers burst through the remaining snow, and then the trees explode into blossom. I managed to take some low quality photos from my phone of some of the most beautiful spring displays as I rushed between stage visits, classes and the hospital. 

My children, over the past weeks, have suddenly demonstrated a tremendous maturity, taking over cooking and cleaning in the house and generally getting along remarkably well. I will eternally be grateful to them, especially if they continue to do so from now on. It has been amazingly supportive. Like last spring, the dandelions have been abundant and lush, and after letting the bees have a feast, I realized that time was limited before I would have oh so many more dandelions sprouting forever, and asked my kids to blitz through and get as many as possible while I was spending time in the hospital and desperately correcting assignments and exams as efficiently as possible to hand in my final marks. I finished the last of them the morning after my father had died. 

Once we had arranged the funeral, and my cousins from Toronto texted me to tell me they would come visit on Saturday when they got into town, suddenly my focus shifted from work and family to my own environment.  The front yard was overgrown and covered with weeds, the flower bed in the front so choked with grass and weeds that the newly blooming irises were barely visible. Of course nobody cared and nobody would judge me, but I have my pride and after more than a year of feeling that the garden was becoming more of a burden than a pleasure, I felt a strong need to have some beauty and order surrounding me. I suppose it also allowed me to focus on something wonderfully mindless and tire me out. So on Friday, I announced to my children that I needed their help to get the front yard weeded and tidied, and graciously accepted the offer so often repeated "if you need anything, let me know" and asked my friend Moishe for some garden help. So the five of us spent a very intensive three hours transforming my front yard into my dream garden again. Knowing I would have no time for at least a week to do much else, I was relieved that I would not be stressed every time I walked out my door. I also picked a huge bouquet of lilacs for my mother.

In the midst of the chaos that has been my life this week, upon return from synagogue on Saturday morning the day before the funeral, I had an odd offering left on my doorstep. I got a yakon root from my nabor. It came thus labelled, a robust looking mystery plant (a yakon, clearly) sitting on my doorstep planted in an orange juice container with the top half cut off. Actually, there were two containers, one inside the other, so the donor clearly was a careful person. We were somewhat puzzled, two of my kids asking who Nabor is (a mysterious secret admirer, who lovingly signs Your Nabor to his gifts?) 

Having more experience with unorthodox (and beautifully simplified and phonetic) spelling both as someone who worked with immigrants and as a college teacher, I am assuming that this is one of my neighbours who is not a native English speaker and who likes gardening. That does not narrow the options down significantly, as my street (and much of my neighbourhood) fits this description. Before researching what a Yakon root is and what to do with it, I verified that it was not a surprise gift from Iulia (who has never labelled a gift, and is more likely to call me to let me know she borrowed four bags of black earth yesterday and will pick some more up on the weekend, or just shout at me as I walk out the door to come over to share some of the bounty of annuals she just scored at a great price somewhere.)

I walked by the house one block over on the corner which was recently sold and introduced myself to the new owner, Tony who was working on landscaping and setting up a garden. I offered him some perennials from my garden, and he came back with me to take a look at my garden. While we were there, I pointed to the mystery Yakon, and asked if he knew about it, but he was as baffled as I was, and agreed to discuss with his wife my proposal to share some of my bounteous spreading foliage.

Still unclear on how it arrived on my doorstep, I decide in the meantime to do some research. Having had the experience of pretty plants that become a complete menace with their voracious appetite for space crowding out other plants (my very own version of Audrey Two from Little Shop of Horrors, my never-ending battle with creeping bellflowers), I look up Yakon on the computer to get the measure of this new garden surprise. I discover that it is a South American plant with a yellow daisy-like flower, and tuber roots that one digs up over winter, harvesting some to eat. Raw. Like fruits. They are supposed to be mildly sweet and a bit reminiscent of sweet potatoes. So, one would snack on yakon, then replant the remaining tubers for another year of flowers.  Cool!

My next decision was whether I plant it with the flowers or with the vegetables (it fits both). I started to plant it in one of the newer beds in my front lawn, where the perennials have not yet spread far, but the layer of good earth was not deep enough to bury the roots easily, so I gave up and moved to the deeper, richer beds in the back. The middle patch of my yard is still mostly fallow, with the remaining sage and sweet Williams that I transplanted last year from the front yard when the city dug up my yard to replace the water pipes. I discovered there were three separate plants growing from the mass of small tubers. If they spread rapidly, they have lots of space. If there are too many, we can just snack on yakon to keep the population manageable I suppose. I am no closer to identifying the donor, but I will walk along the alleyway that runs behind my neighbours’ across the road, and see if I can spy some yakon in anyone’s garden. If they are on my side of the street I am out of luck unless it is in the front garden. My one clue: they are a generous person who cannot spell in English.

As I mentioned, I had no time to really do any preparation this winter, so planting time arrived with no sprouts to plant. I also have had several visits already from my old garden rival, the groundhog, looking for the sprouts which I stubbornly am not offering up to him this year. I decided that I would try a mass sprouting in the old clawfoot bathtub, one of the few groundhog proof zones of my garden, and will transplant the lettuce, broccoli, rapini, carrots, chard and sunflowers once they are a bit larger and less tempting to munch. In the meantime, I have not weeded the beds much, but waiting for the sprouts to grow buys me some time. The garlic and mint are doing marvelous so far. I have plans to clear out the raspberry patch. After last summer's disastrous fruit fly infestation, my kids have lost their taste for fresh raspberries, and they take up a lot of real estate and have become quite labour intensive. I am not sure if the bugs have moved in for good, but I am ready to downsize anyways. Once I have cleared some space, I will be planting a new tree in the back to honour my late father. In the meantime, the mysterious yakon will serve as a memorial to my father's passing. May it grow as strong and beautiful and fruitful as was my father's life.