Wake Up!

"Waken! my people, to the boughs green

With ripening fruit within you!

Waken to the myriad cinquefoil

In the waving grass of your minds!

Waken to the silent phoebe nest

Under the eaves of your spirit!"
William Carlos Williams, The Wanderer (1914)

While winter snow blankets New England and tornados rage through Florida, Spring has arrived in my backyard. I’m ready to hit the garden to plant my seeds and prune the frost-killed branches. The bees are waking up, the irises are blooming, and even the calls of the mourning doves seem happy. I see birds – hawks, doves, thrushes and humming birds – cavorting in the sky two by two. The overwintering migratory tourist birds have gone and the local birds have begun ignoring feeders and noticing bugs and the flowers. Wild mustard covers the hills in swaths of pale yellow, and my seedlings are stretching their roots through the paper pots and leaning into the sun. Birds have to hunt, but plants make their own food.

My quilt of winter root vegetables is done. I had more success indoors than out this year with root crops. My onions and shallots outdoors have yet to flower and ripen.

The stone path winding through my quilt has been hand-embroidered “Garden with attitude” an intentionally ambiguous statement that may be advice or may be the name of the quilted garden of winter root vegetables. The fact that they're "mental" pleases me because I so frequently exhibit such attitudes as "beet it" beet and redlight radish.

Leeky, has been embellished with ribbon stalks and root tassels to emphasize that I clearly know Nature less the more I try to grow vegetables with attitude. The vegetables are fabric available from AnthroPoMorphCo.etsy.com. The back of my quilt includes the url as well as the peintws name of this pattern: "Make your own Friend! ...stuffed vegetable edition". I stuffed one set and made the quilt from another set.

For a while I’ve been too tired to blog. Now, suddenly, I have energy, and I’m too busy to blog. My winter activities of making cozy quilts, fermenting sauerkraut, and canning lemon lavender marmalade no longer entice me. The sunshine and the millions of shades of green are reaching beneath the eaves of my spirit and reminding me that I need Vitamin D and dirty fingernails.

I need the slow stretching exercise of garden work to relieve my winter-cramped muscles. The air is soft and it smells green. It’s time to sow my seeds and refresh my mind and body by working in the garden.

Rainy Day Thoughts

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind
As if my Brain had split--
I tried to match it--Seam by Seam--
But could not make them fit.

“The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before--
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls--upon a Floor.”

Emily Dickinson, The Lost Thought

I’ve heard of balls to the wall, but I’ve never heard of anybody feeling like balls upon a floor. Well, maybe close – I sometimes feel more like those loose balls of dust that gather themselves into corners neglected by the mop – almost, but not quite, coherently ball-like. Would balloid describe that in-between state? Is that what Emily meant?

It’s rained heavily the past few days. The other night, when warning about the coming storm, the weather dude explained we’d have over 8 inches of rain so far (for the year that begins 7/1/08, but wherein the rain doesn’t fall until January), and that the average by this date is only six inches. He reminds us, as we sit before a toasty fire, we’re still in a drought.

If there was a webcam in my yard, it would be obscured by the green shade-cloth that has come unhooked and is flapping in the strong gusty wind. It’s also cold outside – in the 50F range. I know, that’s not something most people would consider cold, but to those of us who have acclimated to So Cal, it’s winter if it’s necessary to actually wear a coat when you go outside.

Days like these are good days to get lost in thought - as opposed to lost from thought.

To Die For

“I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted to the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

“He questioned softly why I failed?
‘For beauty,’ I replied.
‘And I for truth, - the two are one:
We brethren are,’ he said.

“And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.”

- Emily Dickinson, #448

Although it’s the beginning of this poem that echoes Keats (“I died for beauty”) the more famous last stanza of Dickinson’s poem evokes a tombstone slowly being engulfed in moss. The eons rush by, passing in a dizzying fast forward, as we watch the moss swallow the stone, creeping up to the surprised lips of the talking friends. At this faster rate, the growth of the moss is freakish, but sublime – a peaceful scene so beautiful it is “to die for”. But at last, the moss will place a gentle finger on the lips, softly murmuring “shhhh”. In the end all is silent – peace reigns.

You win again, nature. Placidly residing in even the most humble garden, I sometimes stumble over Peace, nodding her head on the shoulder of a kindly tree root. Rushing through like I did today, just to take the compost out, turn and water it, I was taken by some new blooms, unrecognized flowers of seed sown months ago and name forgotten. The compost is cooking and liking it, which is more than I can say for the flowers who are also cooking, but not so enthusiastically.

I don’t flatter myself that the garden I build will stand the test of the ages. I know that in the end, my garden will be redesigned by nature and no trace will be left of me. Nature always has the last word, even if it’s “shhhh.” The interesting thing is that my garden is here today. Someday soon, we may look back at this summer as the time we reached the tipping point. We may have already surrendered our once-undisputed claim to running this place. Whether we recognize it yet, we may be past the point of no return. Man is beginning to lose the battle. Nature has started to fight back.

And I’m ok with that because nature has much more experience in running things than man, and it’s almost time for mankind to stop sowing, and start reaping. It might take nature longer to clean up than it took man to make dirty, but the tide will turn. Man might not be at the top of the food chain after the next spin of Natural Selection wheel. It’s ok with me that the next time there’s a garden where I now live, it will be a more sustainable one, in a more generous climate, and with a more generous caretaker. By then, even the moss and stone will be gone, although I’m betting truth and beauty survive. I think it’s not a bad cause to die for.