STRAW!

Letters from the Outside, #60

 A blush on the strawberries. I take advantage of the wet weather to pull some tall grass out from behind the Roses. Eventually theyll get tucked in with pennysaver pages and hay flakes, but its a start. Its easier and more effective to hoe on a hot day through the encroaching waves of bitty little weeds but the big brave redroot is a joy to pluck. I spied, and thankfully failed to trod upon, one Tulsi seedling. Blessed Be.

 The corn rises every day, and everything Ive planted out has settled in, even the tiny Tomatoes hold their ground. Surprise reseeded squash flourishes in that delightful upright parasol way of it own, the pumpkin all accounted for. Beans and cucumbers in, lettuce red-speckled and joyful in their beds. But we could use a string of good hot days, dry things out, encourage these little spirits to reach for the Sun.

 Two men on the wayside, older, t-shirts and toddler bellies, practicing plein-air painting on a grassy pasture of sheep.

  Zuzu and Ratnik and I, some atomic triumvirate radiating light down the boulevard of parallel memory. the crazys kept me young, my greek boss from the diner I worked at almost twenty years ago (and hadnt been to since) recognizes me at once and says, “You look the same. How is it you look the same?” We make friends with the winsome young Buddha hipster behind the counter of the only sanity left on this old main drag and some woman is talking about armadillos and leprosy and he tells me about cuttlefish, and ive seen the same program where the creature changes color and slides its large, marvelous form between two panes of glass, inches apart. The Iraqui bodega owner skyping, carding me for cigarettes, and upon discovering my age, exclaims, “I hope I look as good as you do when Im your age!”

  A little lawn of strawberries at the edge of a waning metropolis, behind a house held down by tides of fabric and camp, magical old toys, and a Herkimer Diamond the size of my head, tucked in between the DPW sand and gravel barns and the freeway. A Zen funeral, the incense and the gongs and the chanting, people we havent seen in twenty-two years, one man from back then has lived his life in Palestine, Afghanistan, Darfur, some kind of cultural liaison, organized the reconstruction of twenty-three Indonesian villages after the tsunami. He drank iced tea out of my mason jar standing there in the little neighborhood we haunted when we were kids and spit the ice cube back into the drink. A first for me. Tall and broad and wild-eyed, looming over me and laughing as loud as I do.

 The whole weekends been beautiful and surreal, the drive back from breakfast in the '57 bel aire and I dont even like those cars but this thing is cream and grey and mint condition and plays “Beyond the Sea” and I give Zuzu the vulture feathers I was finally offered by nothing short of karmic circumstance. My vehicles been parked in the sun for a few days, and the pendant collage of a rearview finally separated from the windshield. Time for a change, time for letting go, dont look back. I take the weight of years off the neck of that reflective sentry like the yoke off a plow mule and with a little lock-tite, were good to go. Forward.

 The garden is starting to ratchet up, but I can tell where the soil needs amending, where its still clay, wet or dry, and I get in in my head to go out in the late, low dusk with the bats and the fireflies and put a dent in the pigweed and purslane that sprawl between the tomatoes where there isnt any straw. I see the difference the little compost I harvested made on the carrots. The peas are gestating. The volunteer squash is a wonder.

  The beans are up, as are the cucumber, beets, broccoli, cabbage and corn. My last ditch effort at germinating Sunflowers seems to have been okayed with the Earth. I plant out the Cleome seeds, late started, find more Tulsi and circle them with little stones, to catch my eye and prevent my lumbering from releasing their sweet, wild scent unintentionally underfoot. But some of that ground is so hard ive a blister in the center of my hand from trying to drive the trowel under the roots, to make them easier to pull.

 I look forward to all this a month or so from now, the corn forming those cool, rustling tunnels, tomatoes on the vine. Roasted beets. Whatever Sunflowers had the strength to break through. Marigold, Cleome and Calendula, the sweet nostalgic scent of the airy umbrels of dill, picking beans in the hottest part of the day. The pumpkins are grand. Just twelve bales of straw and ten more tons of horse manure this summer, and we might get somewhere next year.

 The nights have been lovely and clear, the stars closer every year. Its been such a slow revolution, but like the man said, it all seems so well timed. What great changes happened so quietly, how my life bloomed during the long dark.

 Tending this garden is some kind of reminder that moving toward the harvest of september brings you closer home.

the friday song.

Letters from the Outside, #59

 Hummingbirds in the Comfrey, at the feeder. Joy, pure and unalloyed. I dug weeds out of the corners and planted some Parsley by the rhubarb that has remained a poxy runt of itself since I planted it years ago. Set out some Zinnia, some Marigold, just for something to do. Realized the Trollius isnt coming back, and more needs to be acquired because the hodge-podge northern bed is starting to unnerve even me.

 What I really want is another Aconite, but where did I find the first one? Trollius, common and lovely, will raise the bar in that swath of flora, add a little vertical interest and unusual bright yolk yellow for the shade. If I dont get a handle on it, itll all go to Wild Violet and Lemon Balm. Persevere, Gentle Heart! Steward the Earth!

 The Lupine is blooming, and the haler of the two young Rhododendron sets out a respectable artichoke of a bud, revealing slowly, slowly, the brilliant edges of deep, wine colored blooms. I bought a single-flower “old-fashioned” Hollyhock (again) to set against the outhouse, where it belongs. By now, had things gone in my favor, there would be a great mass of them, taking turns to bear their blooms. But so.

  I sowed some Cleome seeds the other day, rather late in the game, and will see if I can get them to rise to their magnificent height by late summer. There are buds on the roses, and the white-petaled, five-pointed stars of strawberry blossoms are baskets for sunlight to fuel the berry beyond. Sowed corn and a companion row of Sunflower, double and mammoth varieties alternating, planted out the heartier Martian Tomatoes, the Zinnia here and there in the garden and among the perennial bed.

 Realized the place I set out Moonflower and Morning Glory seeds may not get the sun they need. But its all a grand experiment, one notch over from Play, which is the operative word in my life right now it would seem, the feeling I experienced sitting with a small circle of women last week seeking insight and guidance. Of swimming like an Otter in the perfectly cool water of an underground cavern, delighting in my body, and then the voice that said, “You cant swim like that with all the armor on.”

 A gift of hot, bright weather, and then respite of rain monday afternoon, likely to carry over into tuesday, but followed by more hot, bright weather, which is excellent for all the growing things. Balance is beautiful. And so follows a seemingly endless parade of cool, wet days, saturating the garden and keeping from the wee tomatoes that heat and light they need to rise. 

Now it is June.

 The roses flourish, and I think something in my rough handling of them returned them to their wild nature in order to survive; they grow in long, fine-spined boughs of wide open burgundy blooms instead of those thick, stiff stems with their huge thorns and densely doubled flowers. But what strange weather nonetheless, and the predicted (second) week of overcast, sixty-degree weather doesnt bode so well (as long as we can avoid a frost, however, I wont complain too loudly).

  Im learning slowly how to accept myself and turn, as ive been trying to for better than twenty years, to face myself, and see myself as I am, and not as I was taught to perceive me. I must be ready, for the Teachers have appeared, and what a huge and happy surprise. People who seem to actually see me and dont avert their gaze, and for me to leave hours of their company spent in intense emotional exchange feeling lighter and smiling, my shoulders a long way away from my ears, which is certainly not the norm for me. 

“Invite the Peace In.”

 These radical internal paradigm shifts are bound to manifest themselves in equally beautiful life changes, which I am most definitely looking forward to. This month sees me attending several rites of passage: girls celebrating their threshold-crossing into the sacred house of womanhood, a nieces grand celebration of her graduating high school, and a memorial service for a sad, beautiful man I met in first grade. Then comes the Solstice, the longest day, what ive always perceived to be the bloom of our sweet, brief acquaintance with summer here in the middle latitudes. A week ago I spied my first firefly right before a brief and sudden midnight storm, between the forks of lightning that clothed the dark in flashes of day.

  Cant imagine where im going to get another Aconite to mirror the one thats grown so grand over the years, and would help fill this lonely space taken over by Lemon Balm and Wild Violet. Aconite and a few more Rhododendron. Trollius, if she allows me to find her. Coneflowers beginning to craft their elaborate crowns, the Foxgloves draw down their spotted bells, the Peonies explode into remarkable heavy heads of pale scent, and the Comfrey sprawls on the lawn, unashamed.

 The preparations for your return shift up a gear. I can feel the waves begin to increase in frequency even from across the creek, the anticipation building, the joy rising. So soon now. 

We love you .