THREE SISTERS GARDEN

Yesterday I pushed the remaining snow off of our hot tub and filled it with water. We don’t use it in the winter because up north here it has a nasty habit of getting cold in the winter. The idea of being parboiled in hot water while the hair on the back of my neck freezes, definitely takes a back seat to sitting in front of a blazing fire, reading a good book as soft snow flakes fall from the sky.

Now that spring has officially arrived, on the calendar at least, Marian is looking through the snow patches at our garden plot, envisioning bushes heavy with raspberries and strawberries surrounded by rows of carrots, onions, beans, and all that other stuff tat leads to a heathy lifestyle. I see a vast expanse of soil that needs to be turned with a shovel and some back-bending labour.

The little amount of room available on our average city lot leads me to thinking about the gardens Ojibway Natives grew before the coming of the white man. In chapter three of Altar and Throne, I describe Jenny Redsky picking corn and beans from what was called the “Three Sisters Garden.”
I”m going to plant one this year. All I need is a circle of ground about 30" in diameter, so maybe I’ll plant two our three, I have to turn the soil anyway. Around the outside of this circle the Ojibway first planted six stalks of corn. Now come the part I like; wait a couple of weeks for the stalks to sprout and start growing. I find this is best done sitting on the sundeck with a cold beer, I can also watch my grass grow at the same time. Next, climbing beans are planted at the base of the stalks. As the beans grow, they will have the corn stalks to twine about. Once the beans sprout, squash, or pumpkin seeds go in at the base of the circle, providing ground cover.
In today’s modern, fast paced society, we have all sorts of modern conveniences to make life easy, but not necessarily simple. I have electric waterers for our hanging baskets and flower beds. The complexity of it all, is that Murphy’s law states the batteries will die when were are away at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference.
Years ago, Ojibway women had to haul water from the lake. Where as I need to water an entire garden with its long rows, they needed only water at the base of their Three Sisters Garden to keep three crops growing. I think I could do that with a garden hose and still have time to relax in the hot tub.

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