Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Want what you have

The garden grows and is becoming what it is and not what it was.

Memories of last year’s abundance and worries that this year’s crop will not be a bountiful are moving into the background. Now I watch the broccoli, the cabbage, the Brussels sprouts grow lushly with the moist warm climate. The tomatoes start to fill the cages and even if the varieties are not quite the same as last year, I am gaining confidence that there will a crop that I will dehydrate and use throughout the year.

The garden is an example of a continuous giving. Even as we harvest fresh green onions, cilantro, parley, Swiss chard, and spinach, the freezer and the pantry shelves provide grated yellow squash, tomato sauce, blackened peppers and pickles.

David Wolf speaks of reincarnation at the Fellowship this past Sunday and speaks of scientist Ian Stephenson’s documentation of 2,500 children who could recall all sorts of details that they could not possibly know unless they had a past live. He says that those children, between the ages of two and five, become more firmly rooted in their present life and forget the details that they knew when they were younger.

It is the concept that I remember with my garden now, as it becomes itself and not what it was before.

Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church gives the simple advice in dealing with uncertain times “want what you have.”

To that I add, let things, people and gardens, be what they are. Take care of them and discover their individual uniqueness. And in that process, I believe that we will find blessings and harvests to appreciate.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Wow!

Governmental climate change reports.

Higher than expect rainfall in the Northeast, like we have been experiencing.

Loss of maple syruping, some varieties of apple, blueberries and the fledgling ski industry.

And what are we supposed to do? Find some sort of measure of reasonable expectation?

Okay. Behind Door Number I is misery with the way things are.

Behind Door Number 2 is acceptance.
Which do you choose? (Gosh, when you put it that way, which choice is the right one?)

Do I sound bitter, I don’t mean to be?

Do I sound frustrated? I guess that sounds pretty right on.

I guess the question is where do we go from here?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Felting again



So I thought I was on a roll, with making a couple of felt rounds this afternoon and finishing them up this evening. After processing them a bit, bouncing them around in the dryer, I took them outside and photographed them in natural settings. I was feeling a bit inspired, almost like an artist.

I took the inflatable ball, tightly wrapped with felt all around into my room to use my sharpest scissors. I found the plug, marked a line and carefully snipped through the felt. I heard a hissing sound and knew that I had snipped through the rubber surface.

Annoyed, I pulled the deflated and ruined rubber ball out cavern and was happy to see that the felt was thick enough and would hold its shape without reinforcement. I cut the second one very carefully, making a small hole right over the plug and deflating the ball before cutting.

Artist or not, the only thing I can say it is that it is a good thing that in planning to get started with my felting again, I bought three inflatable 9-inch balls.

Monday, June 15, 2009

The morning's work

I am late getting into the garden this morning and it takes me a while before I settle down to my work. Some mornings, I know exactly what I want to accomplish – but this morning, with seeds and seedling mostly planted, and feeling like I squandered the early morning cool, I am impatient.

I stop to breathe into my frustration and to let it tell me what needs to get done. I decide that it is time to cover the garden with mulch and choose the Brussels sprouts as the place to begin. A quick survey finds the bed in good shape but takes in the fact that the grass from outside of the garden continues to send its runners into my cultivated soil. In my desire to get rid of those roots, I move outside the garden and begin to pull the grass from the other side. I get a serrated knife from the kitchen to saw away a huge clump of horse grass that grows between the two layers of wire fencing.

The grass is succulent and I think how it is unfortunate that it is not edible. And as soon as that thought pops into my brain, I think of the many meat animals that feed on this type of grass and how this grass and those animals, sustain many humans. I shake my head in the realization that my garden work is all about what I eat – not what the rest of the biosphere eats. Especially not the slugs, which routinely suck holes in my tender plants.

I move inside the fence and pull out more grass. The ground is loose and the roots are quickly removed. Even though I have done this work many times, I have the feeling that I am making progress. That somehow, I will become master over this evasive growth and that I will perfect some sort of method or plan that will keep it out of my garden perimeter.

I cover the damp beds with newspaper and hay, put away my tools and vow to start earlier tomorrow.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Considering theology

I don’t know about you but I think a lot about God. I think about how it is that people throughout time have constructed stories and whole belief systems that explain the creative energy that they feel is present in their lives, and somehow beyond themselves. I think about how the ancient people needed to explain why the sun would come up every day or be assured that the fertile growing season would return.

Now, we have our science and our meteorologists who routinely tell us the schedule of the sunrise, sunset and the movement of the tides. They predict the kind of winter we’re going to have, as well as the path of an oncoming storm. Of course, there is a limit to their, and our, knowledge and often we can brace ourselves for some sort of natural onslaught, only to have winds blow it in another direction. We are saved, somehow, by an energy that we cannot control. We feel blessed.

And even with our science, we are inclined to attribute meaning to things that are outside of our habituated life patterns. We create stories that give us comfort and explain the unexplainable. Such storytelling took place at Bob Wasserman’s funeral and burial this week.

Bob Wasserman was a lifelong Sullivan County native. He was an activist and he had a lot of friends. In fact, Rasmussen’s Funeral Home was packed this past Tuesday. As Bob did not have an affiliation with any religious congregation, I volunteered, wearing my ministerial hat from the Upper Delaware Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, to facilitate the memorial stories at the funeral home. And because Bob had been raised in a Jewish household and had requested on his deathbed the assistance of a Rabbi, the burial was under the direction of the Rabbi Michele Medwin of Temple Shalom in Monticello.

The sky was ominous as the long line of cars made their way up Route 97 and across the river to the Milanville Cemetery. The thunder was getting closer and the wind had picked up as the concrete cover was lowered over Bob’s coffin. The Rabbi had said some prayers and had just explained that it considered a mitvah, a good deed, to help bury the dead. People were lined up to shovel dirt into the open grave when the sky let loose.

First, there was rain, and then we were pelted for about seven minutes or so with hail the size of marbles and golf balls. Huddled under umbrellas, the assembled crowd, at first, thought it was funny. But as the intensity increased and we were stung by these bouncing ice crystals, the crowd grew concerned and humbly stood through the onslaught. When it finally ended, the ground was littered with an inch or two of the frozen crystals that had fallen violently out of the sky. The sun came out and the air filled with steam. People made their way around the large mud puddles to shovel dirt, now wet and mudlike, into the grave.

They smiled, joked and came up with their own version of what had just happened. While there were reports of tornadoes in the area, most people expressed the belief that it was Bob’s message from above that had caused the isolated storm.

“It was a reminder from Bob that we needed to look up and see the world around us, and not be concentrated on the ground and the grave.”

“He loved the 1812 Overture and this was his final send off.”

“He loved stories, and he gave us one more to remember him by.”

In determining the message of a common experience, everyone had a different take on the situation, and I wonder, as I ponder our spiritual nature, whether the different stories are a result of our theology, the way that we find meaning in the world, the way we explain feeling connected to something larger than ourselves.

I don’t know.

But for me, standing in that storm, having consciously left my raincoat at home and having no umbrella, I moved closer and put my arm around Valerie Manzi, whose umbrella I shared, so that we could huddle more tightly and keep the warm rain from falling over the umbrellas’ edge and soaking us more completely.

From that refuge, I saw others holding each other: Bob’s beloved wife, Joanne, held in a protective embrace of her son, Justin; Bob’s brothers, Steve, Dan and Tom, with arms around each other, standing close to the Rabbi, who was sheltered by funeral director Patrick Harrison. In groups of two, three and four, under a variety of colorful temporary roofs of man’s invention, I saw a community of people, united by their love and concern for each other, share a common experience on this fragile and unpredictable planet.

In thoroughly soaked, mud-splattered clothes, we shared life.

And it was good.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Fertile ground

I am here and the next place, while in the garden this morning.

I fill in the spaces where some snap peas didn’t come up. They were old seeds and I guess some were not as virulent as others. I replace them with this year's snow pea seeds. I am thankful for my abundance of seeds and for the warm fertile earth. I think of farmers in other parts of the world who are more dependent on their gardens than I and bless their toil and send prayers of fertility.

There are only two plants in the row of cucumbers that I reseeded this morning. While I am confused why so many didn’t grow, I am thankful that my harvest will be staggered. For some reason cucumbers come on strong and then succumb to a quick death. Staggering the seed planting is always suggested, although not surprisingly it took an act of nature for it to happen in my garden.



I plant beets in two rows about six inches apart. The seed package says plant in rows 12 inches apart. I plant them closer because I figure that if I am not walking between, it is not necessary to have so much room. I have to admit, I have never gotten much of a harvest of beets.

I turn a pile of sawdust and twigs that Stephen has piled on the edge of the mowed grass. It is filled with earthworms churning it into black gold that I will use next year to replenish the soil. I move the volunteer squash plants that are popping up all over the garden, a result of using "not quite done compost" from my kitchen pile as a soil booster.

I believe the plants to be butternut squash and I place them on the sawdust mound with a little bit of extra soil. This method of sending some seedlings out beyond the fence has worked in the past. The deer don’t seem to be able to find the hard squash growing in the high weeds. It’s a risk but it has always increased the harvest.

I pick stones out of the soil. There are so many. I used to consider that some could have been Indian artifacts. Last summer, I took some to Cliff S. at Tom’s Bait and Tackle in Narrowsburg. He’s more or less an expert on Indian artifacts and he told me that my shards, while triangular and sometimes grooved, were just broken rock from an ancient plow.

The knowledge changed how I picked up the stones. For a while, no longer innocent, I didn't look at them much. I understood that my sea of rocks were just that – rocks. Then for a time, when I picked up the shards, I thought about how I used to think that native peoples lived and worked in this fertile ground and that it wasn’t true.

Now I understand that it is important to me to feel connected and while Cliff might be right, I continue to look at the rocks, some of them, as if they were left over ancient tools. I continue my search, even though it may not lead to anything conclusive. It’s an act of imagination. It’s an act of needing or wanting to feel that there is a connection to something else beyond the present moment in the garden.

It’s a meditation, this garden work. An abetting of creation.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Warning signs and boundaries

My front flower beds have been overgrown with weeds for some years now. I joke that once the flowers are cut and placed in a vase, you can’t tell how many weeds they grew between. I marvel at people who have neat flower beds and finely kept outdoor spaces. I could even add a neat clean house to the list. My vegetables are about all I can keep up.

But, I do love zinnias, as do deer. So it works out that the zinnias can be planted behind the garden fences.

So today in an attempt to make room for some zinnia plants that are growing spindly in little pots on the kitchen table, I worked in the round kitchen garden a bit more, pulling catnip, tarragon, and oregano. These are the herbs that are dangerous to an orderly garden. They are as insidious as grass, with roots that travel horizontally, everywhere. I actually think that garden centers should mark certain perennial herbs with a warning. “Caution: This plant will take over your garden, if not kept within very deliberate bounds.”

Today, I wondered whether caution signs ever deter anyone from getting involved in something. Today I thought that even when we are warned, about people and even perennials (be careful of the mint) we somehow think that they'll stay within boundaries, even as we don’t keep them.

Boundaries are a curious thing and it seems a lifelong learning about how we can maneuver around and between them. How do we keep healthy boundaries and still allow ourselves and our lives to flow with a certain fluidity?

I don’t know the answer. But yesterday, I pulled the volunteer sunflower plants out from in the eggplant patch. There’s nothing that I will allow to get in the way of a potentially productive eggplant.

People are like that, I guess. No limits in some places and very rigid ones in others.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Potatoes

I planted some purple potatoes tonight in the round garden in the side yard. Undoubtedly in the time that the original owners farmed this land (1905 to 1984), it was the kitchen garden, filled with herbs and things handy for food preparation. When I moved in, it was a rusted fence holding a tangle of grass.

I have wrestled with the grass, planting perennial herbs from time to time since then, and the grass and the herbs have always gotten the better of me. Now, the 12-foot round garden, with a fairly decent fence, holds the chives, rhubarb, and asparagus roots, planted some 25 years ago that throw up one or two sprouts and delicate ferns just to keep me hopeful.

Last year, with my primary garden under relative control, I reclaimed half of the round garden and studiously planted seed potatoes, given to me by John T., in two eight-foot trenches which I filled in as the plants grew tall. I estimated at the time that I would get about 100 or so pounds of potatoes.

When I harvested about 10 pounds all told, I wondered if it was the lack of water that kept their yields low. The two volunteer purple fingerling potato plants in the main garden yielded as much.

So I wasn’t totally surprised to find about 10 plants, potatoes that I missed when harvesting last fall, growing strong this spring. Tonight, I quickly cut up the sprouted purple potatoes from the pantry and threw them into the soil in between the established potato plants.

This year, there are no trenches. This year, there was no research about how to grow tubers. This year, there is no expectation as to yield, or anything really, beyond gratefulness that my hurried harvest left behind seeds for this year’s growth.

Who knows, this year I may get a crop of potatoes--purple and yellow, both.

I wonder if sometimes we spend a little too much energy trying to get things right when actually it's the happenstance of the situation which makes it all work out in the end.

I'll keep you posted.