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 .

ivan.  

an old friend.  funny and wild and bright.  shuffled off the coil a world away. 
strange to think ive run out of chances to see you again, this time around. 

all the best on your next great adventure. 

Letters from the Outside, #58

 A lovely night. Beneath a rainbow haloed waxing Moon in Libra I watch the most marvelous heat lightning in the south through the trees. And the crickets and the peepers and the watersong of the creek and 

All is Well.

 Were in for a stretch of fine weather so I planted out the pumpkins and moved the Tomato seedlings to bigger cribs, setting them down deep to grow a strong root system, after which I rewarded myself with a walk up the creek, and found a fallen Robins egg somehow unbroken between two branches lodged between rocks. Made it all the way to the house before it fell, revealing its perfect little yolk, a lifetime set aside.

 An afternoon in true sunlight benefits all the others also, the leggy Parsley begins to stand, miraculous, and Marigold emits her heady scent and the Calendula straighten, and rise. One brave pea seedling sprouts from the ground. The strawberries thrive from warmth and weeding.

  I hear the thunder now, as the rain moves toward us, the night rain that brings thick morning mist to Cloud Valley and driving to work along the highroad detour (the old road wont be open until about the time you come home) we see it from above, and it is a pure expanse of white that could be land, or lowered sky or water. It is also lovely and marvelous to see. The sun on all that concentrated vapor, slowly thinning into ragged banners through the branches of the trees that crest the ridgelines, now sprouting their little leaves.

The lightning is magick and electricity, and it infuses me with a happiness only the honest heart of nature can bring. I am grateful to witness these phenomena. So I trundle the flats in to shelter on the back porch for the evening, as they would certainly drown were they left to the elements. Even the dogs seem to stop and wonder at the sudden flash of light that plays beyond a bank of clouds. I remember sitting with the priest with our feet up on the railing, watching heat lightning move along the mountains, smoking cigarettes, and not saying anything, a lifetime ago.

  The Moon is this close to full, and I am wide awake in this miraculous, magickal world. All the cats want to be out mousing now, but im sure theyll caterwaul and call at some small, inconvenient hour to be let in, escaping the mad toms and the rain. I had forgotten how lightning travels around the rim of the bowl of the valley, from the south to the east toward the lakes in the north, the hot front chasing all the cold away. T. and I were baptized by raindrops the size of silver thimbles, but it was brief. And now to bed, to dream of Horses in high water, and labor pains, and Manatees.

 Cold grey changeable days follow, one ear cocked for rain to hurry haul the flats down from the picnic table back under the porch roof, and today, not even clearing fifty with brief, teasing flashes of sunlight between long, bereft stretches of damp grey, I set them out just outside the door, to harden them a little against all the variables this northern weather holds. The weekend may prove more pleasant and amenable to my gardening objectives. A few solid days of sunlight would dry out the ground enough for me to till once more before the corn goes in, and in a few weeks, the tomatoes.

 

 

  The peas come up in fits and starts, few and far apart (definitely should have found that rhizome powder) but everything else seems to have found its footing, the broad, prickly radish, the wee filaments of carrot, the slender, ruby-veined beet seedlings. Ill transplant some garden-wandering Rudbeckia into the open spaces in front of the house, and the persistent Comfrey from the center of the vegetable patch to along the outside, a dense hedge of broad leaves and pendant purple flowers.

  Over the weekend I sowed four rows of corn and set out the lettuce, planted another Dicentra, some strange pink Siberian Iris (the flowers of which I may not see for some years, who knows?) and some snapdragons for T. Unceremoniously pushed some more pea seeds into the ground between the apparent seedlings. Next year inoculant, without fail. Planted onion whips around the new rosebushes Cowboy got from his kids for his birthday. Leaving the perennial garden bed alone for the season, but thinking about the north facing patch, what small changes I can make to fill the awkward spaces.

  The Lemon Balm is invasive, and at the height of summer looks like a weed by the roadside to anyone who doesnt know better, so I may pull some out where I can and set down something, dare I say, prettier in its place. Hell, more Dicentra. Columbines would be nice, but they never seem to self-sow, like the Hollyhocks, around here, and it all gets smothered by the Balm anyway. But its been wonderful to see the world slowly fill in with flowers and leaves and grass, this nothing-short-of-miraculous awakening. Dead coyote by the side of the four-lane. Mountain lions spotted south of here. That april snow killed all the Lilac flowers. Blackberries begin.

 We love you.

Letters from the Outside, #57

 The enormous housecat darted off into the night, upending several flats of my already reluctant adolescent lettuce I left on the ground in the more benign late-afternoon light. They had weathered my negligence at having been forgotten outside under penalty of frost, but moped in their beds; the wet, withered limbs of tender leaves dragging in the dirt, a shame of transparencies. The Apples are leafing out, and the Strawberry blooming.

 I dig more dandelions from the perennial bed, pull tall grass and Maple tree nymphs from the edge of the garden, discovering hearty, self-seeded Sunflowers and a forked filament of Dill. The Lupine is grand, Ive stopped believing the wild garlic is a hollyhock, and the Dicentra begin the evocation of their arching, suspended hearts, each with its pale, pendulous, seed-bearing tear.

  I wash the bone armor of my soul in the thought of water, bathe it in some Akashic memory of golden, beveled sunlight, and wait, watching from the corner of my eye for a rustling of life. Very much like watching an egg, its perfect calcium galaxy broken open from the divine force inside.

 I did get around to getting seeds in the ground, carrots and radish and beets and peas; set the crucifers free, however prematurely. The afternoons are beatific, and the Sun and the Air are healthy and lift the weight. I am excited to see how this years garden evolves, and how much farther I can sustain it, and myself, before the waning light that heralds the anniversary of my arrival oppresses more than I can oppose. The other seedlings, moved up to small, biodegradable pots, have transitioned splendidly despite my clumsy, artless maneuvering, and the Tomatoes are still in their original flats, but alive and green and growing.

  I think I may have started the pumpkins too soon, as their ebullient life-force fills the repurposed plastic spinach crate like a kiddie-pool full of puppies. They may have to go into ground soon, and ill shelter them with an old sheet if theres breath of a frost. I think ill have to start the hardening-off of my tender seedlings, as ive done now with the hardy ones. I am surprised that last frost didnt completely decimate my lettuce. Render what is frost's, to the frost, what is the cat's to the cat. And the rest is still hopeful, and lovely.

  Glad to have had my Parsley started, they used to explain its protracted germination rate by saying that the seed went three times down to the devil (the Parsley germination rate is around twenty-one days). The Tomatoes could certainly use some air. Glad also to have started my Cosmos early, as most non-vegetal, direct-sown seeds invariably get kicked and dug and dumped on in my lumbering. Saw flowers today on my walk so charming they made me forget I was picking up litter, but gifted with a Turtle Stone along the way, the sense of a Scarab to it, its perimeter elliptical and its bisecting lines. Im thinking the last frost date will be two weeks ahead of schedule, the way things have gone, but that might be wishful thinking, as theyre now forecasting the possibility of snow. I dont mind letting my tomato plants grow through another re-potting, though. Those wont go in until the very last moment of May and I have every intention to give them all a generous berth (I tend to underestimate how indeterminately magnificent they can become).

  I sit there under the Maple and think about the rows of corn, the keen scent of Tomato, of picking beans in the noon sun and sealing them into mason jars for winter suppers. Last year I bought the wrong kind and I didnt know how to wrangle them; im a bush bean woman. Keep it simple, try and learn how to maintain the space, keep it mulched with straw and harvest what grows. A golden row of Calendula, the cheerful green of sweet peas eaten like a bear in the late morning. My grand saffron Tithonia, and of course the Sunflowers. I want it to be simple and successful. I want to feel as if im learning something, evolving.

  Another night flies over Cloud Valley, I bring the tender seedlings into the house, the hardier ones onto the enclosed porch, let the dogs out one last time before we all take our places in the quiet house and rest our bodies for another morning of navigating obligations and trying our best to be human, and alive. Splendid friday, seventy and a breeze coursing through the new green leaves. Everything rises, rejoicing. Your Apple trees have blossomed out, and the Plum. Impromptu Willow windfall fire, quick to burn but full of sparks, little blazing evanescent ships of sugarwater lovely against the black moonless sky, answering with stars. T. tells a story, the goddess-woman shut herself in the hall, mad with power and grief, and when they came for her she had gone, a sudden self-exile from the mountain cathedral, and all that sought after her were made to navigate some vast, shifting maze of the mortal world.

 Forget about the windows. Entirely insignificant. 

We love you.