Time Machine Hardware

(Written around midnight Thursday, June 3, 2010.)

I am no physicist, but I think I have figured out a method of time travel.

Deb and I went to Knoblocks Hardware the other day, to shop for knobs for “my mom’s” bookcases, which have been ours for years, waiting patiently for us to refinish them.  Deb took the bull by the paintbrush and made the old things beautiful.  We wanted to find knobs to add a touch of uniqueness and that my mom would have appreciated.   So, on the recommendation of Tompkins Hardware, we were off to knoblocks.

I had barely taken two steps into the place when I stopped in my tracks to inhale deeply.

At that moment, I was back at Big Joe’s hardware store, walking into the front door.  I was getting my very first lesson on how to run a business:  Me, “why do you put things on sale?”  Big Joe, “to make things cost less so people can buy them.”  Me, “so, where do you get all this stuff?”  Big Joe, “I buy it, then I sell it to other people who need it.”  Me, “so, you help people out by selling them stuff for less than you paid for it, that’s so nice of you to help people like that.”  (I was obviously totally convinced that his selfless generosity toward me spilled over to his generosity to the world.)  Big Joe, laughing, “no, I sell it for more.  I have to pay the bills.”  Me, still puzzled, but trusting in Joe’s generosity anyway, “oh.  Can I buy something?”

Then, I was back at Knoblock’s in Flint, grinning and saying to Deb, “THIS is what a hardware store is supposed to smell like!”  We lingered at the store, looking at everything:  knobs, pieces of welding steel, beautifully colored arrow fletching, beeswax,  replacement shovel handles, screws, fertilizer, wooden dowels, potato chips, shelves and shelves of ordering catalogues (behind the counter), and a sign noting that they specially make bows and arrows for hunting.  Hardware stores like Knoblocks, or my other contemporary favorite, Tompkins, bring smiles to my face and the same anticipatory alertness that I feel when I walk into a bookstore or a fabric shop.  I never know what treasures await- a new blender to replace my broken one?  A garden torch?  Canopied chairs in which to park my butt while I watch concerts at the upcoming Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival?  I get as excited as a kid in a hardware store- I mean, in a candy store.

Although Savard’s Hardware, Big Joe’s store, has long been closed, I will always associate small family owned hardware stores with love and laughter and adventure.

As summer camping season begins, it is more than fitting that Big Joe is in my heart and on my mind.  The Savard family and our family had a tradition of camping together.  I believe that I was with that gang when I first discovered tent worms.  They were such beautiful fuzzy caterpillars.  On this particular trip, I collected as many as I could find and put them on the roof and sides of our tent.  My mom couldn’t figure out why our tent was crawling with them.  When she caught me relocating them, she asked me why on Earth I was doing that.  I replied that they were supposed to be there because they ARE, after all, tent worms.  Like the whole belly button thing, mom had to explain once again a fact of life that I had misunderstood.  She explained that they are called tent worms because they make their own tents and kill trees.  For a long time, I didn’t want to believe that my beautiful tent worms would kill my beloved trees.

When our families camped together, there was always fun to be had:  eating mom’s half raw yet burned gooey mess of camp pancakes, walks in the woods, learning to squat in the woods without peeing on my feet, campfires, building a homemade sundial, singing, and stories, lots of stories.   My favorite seat at the camp fire was always on Big Joe’s lap.  (Little Joe is my brother-in-law.  We just call both of them Joe now, they know who they are.)  Big Joe assigned us all camp names.  Mom was “Queen of the Road” because she always drove a big van full of noisy kids and she often found shortcuts to our destinations, usually making the van ride about three times as long.  She would say we weren’t lost, we were having an adventure!  (I get my sense of direction from the Queen of the Road.)  My sister, Annette,  was “Princess Blue Eyes”  because she has the most beautiful blue eyes and long eyelashes that I’ve ever seen.  And, my camp name that was bestowed by Big Joe was “Princess Boney Butt,” because his leg would be sore from my butt bones digging into his thighs as I adamantly asserted that no, I wouldn’t rather sit on a log or in a chair.  Of course now, my name would probably be “Princess Wide but Boney Butt.”  And now, I would much prefer a chair- perhaps one with its own canopy.  I can’t remember anyone else’s camp names.  I’d love to hear in the comment section, what camp names people have had, whether Big Joe bestowed them, or your Girl Scout counselor or your great aunt Hilda.

Today, Knoblocks called to say that our knobs are in.  I pulled the message off of our voicemail when I came in from the rain to make wooden markers for the Anaheim and Sweet Bell peppers I was getting ready to plant.

Deb and I worked and played and laughed in the garden for five and a half hours today.  About four of those hours were in the rain.  We had mud in our hair, between our toes and in our belly buttons.  The weeds were willing to let go of their tenacious holds on the Earth with a little help from the rain and Deb’s hard work with “the garden claw”.  Then I  carted their not so little corpses to the compost.  Then, I got to do my favorite part-  I got to start putting plants in the ground, or, rather, the mud.  By the time I was done planting two and a half twelve foot long beds, I did not have one more place to wipe the caked mud from my hands.  I’d already used my pant legs, my big boney butt’s pants, the front of my shirt, the sleeves of my shirt, and, finally, I wiped my hands on my face, then impishly held out my hands as if with a bowl, and said in fake Cockney accent, “Please sir, may I have some more?”

At the point where the mud and cold and rain had us ready to turn in our tools, the rain stopped and the sun came out and the damp soil took almost no time to get warm to the touch.  Along with the emergence of the sun, came the emergence of our new neighbor kid, Steven.  He popped his head over the fence and said, “can I help?”  Of course, I wasn’t going to stop then, with free labor at stake, despite my hunger.  He happily took over my job of toting weeds to the compost pile as I finished hand sifting through my third bed, picking out tiny tendrils of old roots.  Steven was surprised when I told him I’d seen a couple different kinds of beetles in the soil and melodramatic when I told him that what is now dirt was once horse manure.  He seemed interested to learn that earthworms help plow our garden and that the soil is full of life when chemical fertilizers are avoided.    He very conscientiously dug a nice deep hole for his first roma tomato plant and laughed in delight when I told him that we just planted some spaghetti sauce.  I sent him home with a big bunch of tall, muddy green onions that he helped to pull.  He seemed proud as he headed home and the tools were put back in the shed.

As I reflect on my time with Steven, I realize that in some ways, I have become my mother.  I don’t have eleven kids of my own or a nursing career, or a husband, nor did she have a wife.  But I could almost hear her speaking through me while I reached down and pinched off a leaf of sage for Steven to smell.  I imagined how she felt while teaching me how to plant tomatoes as a kid, even if I did omit the lump of horse poop in the hole that she used to have me put in.

So, this week, I have figured out that I can travel through time using the magic of smell or the joy of getting my hands so filthy, I’m not sure if they’ll ever be clean.  Except that the rain and the soil and the kid, and the smells and the laughter and the good memories all work together to scrub my mind clean of negativity.  I wonder if I can apply for a patent for “mental exfoliating scrub,” made with stuff that once came out of a horse’s butt, available in Jasmine or hardware store scent.

Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice

In this summer season (yes, summer- Memorial Day Weekend is the new American Summer Solstice), I have begun to root out dandelions, creeping Charlie, sour grass and other assorted “weeds” from our flowerbeds and garden. (By the way, Green Tooth, Eva’s cabbage is dong well despite being frosted upon a few times, massively windblown, rained on with torrents of water, and being dug up once by either a squirrel or, more likely, one of my beloved dogs.) I have enjoyed my forays into the beloved spaces that claim me for their own. Despite painful shoulder joints and muscles, sore knees, hips and sore-well, just about everything- I am enjoying the beautiful weather and hard work. A few times over the past couple of weeks, Deb and I both have overworked our bodies and moaned and groaned I pain for a couple of days, feeling like we should buy stock in the companies that make “Biofreeze” and acetegesic.

One day, as I attacked “trees of heaven” with loppers and dug up foot long dandelion roots and clumps of grass embedded in the chain-link fence where our butterfly bush is beginning to come back to life, I felt peace and uninvoked gratitude.

Conscious gratitude has long been one of my coping skills to help fend of the depression and anxiety that constantly lurk below my surface-like zits waiting to erupt and disrupt my balance at any moment. On one of those days of excessive weeds and excruciating pain, I experienced exquisite gratitude. I also had an epiphany in realizing that my practice of gratitude has become not simply a coping skill, but a deeply ingrained spiritual practice as well. (Perhaps that is precisely what a spiritual practice is, coping skills that become embedded in the soul.)

Someone recently pointed out to me that I am lucky, that I have everything. My internal knee-jerk reaction was a mental whine, “no I don’t!”, and I mentally began listing those things or states of mind that I desire but lack. I indulged myself for a moment in that self defeating, self imposed emotional poverty, and then I reminded myself: “I have enough, plus some.” Then the anxiety that my self indulgent whine stirred, seeped back down where Mother Earth wrapped it in a soothing hibernating rest for the moment.

My practice of gratitude is much like the Buddhist notion of wanting what you have instead of having to have what you think you want. My practice of gratitude is much like the Wiccan acknowledgement that balance is the natural state of things (it’s we humans that much everything up with our insatiable need to control). My practice of gratitude is much like the Christian recognition that the divine source will provide for my essential needs as long as I keep my heart and mind open to receive. My practice of gratitude is much like the Native American wisdom recognizing the interconnected relations between all beings, where each has an impact on the others. My practice of gratitude is much like the concept within the science of evolution where the fact that each species of plant, animal, insect, fungus and bacteria have a specific ecological niche and as a human being, I am part of that niche ecology as well, and if I do not pay attention, I can easily out-want my biological piece of the Earthly pie. (As an American, I probably already do.)

On that day of physical toil, while being actutely aware and intimately experiencing these interconnections on a deeper level than simply in my mind, I felt peaceful with my place in the world, peaceful-for the moment-with my physic\al limitations, and peacefully in sync with most of the beings that I was trying to eradicate from my designated planting areas. (Outside of those designated areas, I don’t take issue with most of them and don’t consider them weeds in other places.)

Even as I was yanking dandelions, I still was grateful for their cheerful yellow and fuzzy beauty, their healing properties and nutritional value, and I admired their tenacity. As I oh so carefully, with gloved hands, cut up and bagged the six foot tall dried out thistle plants, I thanked the plants and Mother Gaia for its exquisite purple display of flowers from last year. That ouchy plant provided succor and sustenance for a few local bees last year which had not succumbed to the mysterious disappearing bee syndrome. As I hacked away at the “trees of heaven” and renamed them, “the demon weed that wants to be a tree and is trying to take over the world”, I tried to find some sort of gratitude for them. To do so, I tried to find some sort of redeeming value that I could grasp onto in order to maintain my calm synergy-with-the-universe moment. I could not. But I was grateful for my new awesome loppers and fabulous pruning shears as I chopped the demon weeds up to get hauled away. (By the way-if anyone does know what value they have to the ecological balance of things, or some medicinal or other redeeming value, let me know, if you will.)

There are plenty of things that I want. I think about them each time I balance my checkbook or try to schedule some fun time with Deb and see my limited available vacation days. So, no, I don’t have everything, but I have plenty (including plenty of demon weeds). I have learned (and have to keep re-learning) that rather than dwell on what I think is lacking, I feel privileged and blessed when I take moments in time to experience gratitude for those things that I do have. There is always something to feel grateful for. Sometimes for me it is something as simple as a set of loppers, a beautiful sunset or a six foot tall thistle that most would name weed.

At least once a day, I feel myself start to panic about money. Then I realize that I have a job and health insurance, my house payment is up to date, my refrigerator is stocked, my garden is beginning to grow and my tuition is taken care of by treasured angels. At least once a day, I feel myself getting annoyed or angry (often unjustly) with Deb or the dogs or the cat drooling on my face. Then I realize that I hve a beautiful smart partner and codependent affectionate animals who remind me what unconditional love looks like.

How could I not feel grateful?

Green Tooth Finds a Home

Saturday, my young friend, Eva Rose, brought me joy and her cabbage plant. It’s still her plant-her responsibility for a contest at school to grow the biggest and best cabbage. I let her choose any spot in the garden and she chose the middle long bed, front and center. She dug the hole herself, we put a bit of worm poo and water into the hole, she carefully lifted the plant by its sturdy stem and placed it into the hole, lovingly backfilling with the dirt she’d just removed. We gave it another shot of water and sprinkled crushed eggshells all the way around to protect it from slugs. While she decorated the stake and named her cabbage “Eva’s Green Tooth”, I sprinkled carot seeds nearby. She decorated that stake as well, writing carefully “Carrot 4-18-09” and drawing a pictures of carrots on it.

She wanted to plant something else. So we planted turnips. She wanted to plant something else and something else. Before we knew it, we had sprinkled seeds and labeled carrots, turnips, Brussels sprouts. Kohlrabi, mustard greens, Asian greens and all of the middle long bed was full of seeds and wide wooden stakes and a cabbage plant protected by eggshells and a tomato cage so running dogs and slugs don’t mess with it. And Eva sprinkled wildflower seeds under one of the maple trees.

Sunday morning before church I went out to look. No slug marks and I swear the cabbage is so happy that it has already grown some! (Maybe as the proud foster mom I just think it has.) And then it rained and I think it rained just for those precious seeds and happy cabbage, but that may simply be my self centered illusion.

I told Eva that when she watches the news and the weather person is talking about rain or snow as if they are bad things that she should not believe them because her cabbage and all these other new lives need that rain and snow in order to grow and so do we. (Why DO they dis rain anyway?)

Playing again in the dirt really helps me to stay centered and calm in a world that seems to constantly be trying to throw me (and everyone else) off balance.

Writing and thinking about all of this, my heart is filled with gratitude and love of my afternoon with Eva Rose. It also reminds me of all of the days I worked side by side with my mom and her friend, Mrs. Turner, in our big garden on Baldwin Road. It makes me miss mom and miss being a mom and miss Little Bit, knowing that she’ll miss digging up the carrots I just planted.

So, I guess that mostly right now I have a jumble of feelings mixing up like a beautiful tie dye tapestry in my heart: joypainlovesadnessaweanxietyhopeanticipationexcitementgriefgratitudepeacefulnesscentered.

P.S. I wrote that at work last night. It rained all night, so I went out to visit the cabbage. It seems to be happy in the rain. Also, some of the seeds I planted inside the other day are sprouting!! Also, see picture of kale planted one month and two days ago: (pretty twisted, I’m like a new parent showing pictures of my child’s first trip to Disney or something.)

Spring Comes Again and Again and Yet Again

I planted some seeds indoors yesterday-mild banana peppers, eggplant, basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary. Some of the seeds were off the shelf this year, and some were dug out of my stash from past years. I’m not sure if they’ll grow at all, but I’ll soon know. (I also sprinkled a few lettuce and spinach seeds in a pot.) I still have more to plant-tomatoes (I’m going to try not to go so crazy with them this year), bell peppers, cucumbers, melons, squash (those 3 won’t be for a few weeks yet). I need to get out to the garden beds yet and get seeds for my cole crops (broccoli, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi) in the ground before things heat up too much. There are some root crops begging to be planted as well: carrots, beets, parsnips (I recently discovered that I really like parsnips-yummy roasted!), turnips and radishes for Deb.

If I get off my butt and do the successive plantings that I have planned, we’ll have way more than we need-but it will be fun to watch it grow! I’ll need to do successive batches of canning as well, instead of just waiting until September when there is a bumper crop of tomatoes. I’ll have to do early beets, pickled veggies in a gardeneria-type of concoction, and clean, blanch and freeze kale, broccoli and maybe cauliflower (I think I forgot to get seed for that).

Amidst all of this seed planting and spring bulbs singing a chorus of colors, I am also acutely aware of the cycle of life not simply being the joy of birth and growth, but also the sad harvest of age, sickness and eventually death. In all of this talk of planting, I am acutely aware that I don’t have to plant extra carrots and tomatoes this year because my beloved thieving Little Bit won’t be here to take first pick of the best of everything right out of the dirt or off of the plant. I am anxious as I see people close to me battling health issues and I am unable to stop the cycle of illness.

And yet, with sick loved ones, and others aging rapidly or in need or in pain, I still find joy in the cycles of life. Spring once again reminds me that not all is dark, not all is illness or pain. We go on, and after us-the daffodils will keep renewing their lives each spring-after the cold and despair and seeming death of winter. Still, there is life. Still, there will be life, even after I am gone and even after humans are gone there will still be flowers and tomatoes (or some evolutionarily related tomato like species) and carrots and slugs to eat the pepper plants (ditto with the evolutionarily related statement on all of these living nouns). Still, there will be births, renewal, lives and deaths throughout time-throughout the life of this amazing planet that we call home.

Today, I am grateful for all the beauty that surrounds me in the spring riot of growth. I am grateful for the love that surrounds me in the arms, eyes, hearts and words for those who choose to share my life and who I also choose to share mine. I am grateful for the sacredness that surrounds me in the plants, the four-leggeds, the stones, the stars, the two-leggeds and the tiny seed sprouting in trays in my entryway. I am grateful for the cycle of life, for I am constantly reminded that this too will end and this too will begin again.

Planting Memories

Intellectually, I know it’s still winter despite the fact that it’s warm enough to leave my coat in the car instead of on my back. I don’t smell the worms and I still see an occasional lump of dirty snow that was a huge mount not so long ago. I know it’s still winter, early March-not quite time to jump the clocks forward. It’s not even spring equinox yet and I haven’t yet seen a robin (although I have seen a few geese, who knows if they migrated or not).

But…but…the crocuses or daffodils are reaching up with their little arms by my front door. (Yeah, I know- they got frozen solid in that last freeze a few days ago, but I still hope they are alive and not mushy like lettuce stored in the back of the fridge that gets frozen and thawed.) And, it’s supposed to be 62* this weekend! And, I know (I mean I have a possible hunch that the following may be in progress) that it really is spring because everywhere I look there are Resses Peanut Butter Eggs! And, in my household, the surefire way to tell spring is either here or within the next snowstop or two, is that the dogs wouldn’t eat breakfast the other day because Indigo was laying on the floor in front of my bedroom door, gnawing on her freshly caught bunny breakfast and Pippin was afraid to walk past her to get to her bowl. Forget the robins, I have a doggy door! (Of course, robins have been known to come through there as well due to the due diligence of one Cindy Lou Who cat that normally hunts paper.)

And, I’ve got that seed planting itch. I’m beginning to fanaticize about little tomato sprouts looking for a home, seeds no longer orphaned to winter’s cruel plant murder. I’m dreaming about pepper plants digging their roots deep and backhanding (backleafing?) any murderous munching slugs slithering up their stems to munch their little leaves and stems into nubs. (No straw mulch this year!)

I look forward to cutting a phenomenal puffy purple bouquet from my chives that go to seed.

The news the other night said that the number of people planning to garden this year is up by 17% (I think that was the number) due to economic considerations and fear of contamination by e-coli and salmonella, etc. That’s great that people are planning on planting. It’s sad that fear is their motivation.

I garden for those reasons as well. But mostly, I garden because I love it. Digging my hands into black Earth relaxes my mind and exercises my body. Seeing my hands plant tomato seedlings reminds me of watching my mom’s hands plant tomatoes with a lump of horse manure in each hole and “manure tea” for the first in-ground watering. Pinching off live growing herbs and smelling them fresh brings images to my mind of my mom’s narrow nose inhaling scents from the Earth. Biting into the first ripe tomato of August, warm from the vine reminds me of my mom’s childlike excitement at the garden’s first harvest each year. She is there with me in the garden every time I pull a weed or snip a chive. She smiles as she wipes a freshly dug carrot on her ghostly jeans and bites into it-grit and all. I think I loved her best in the garden. It is there where I feel closest to her since she no longer visits my dreams. The smell of fresh bread dough as my hands knead it is a close second in getting me to feel a close proximity to her.

Mom’s birthday is coming up on March 21, the spring equinox (this year equinox may be the 20th, I’m not sure). I always feel joy and melancholy at this time of rebirth. Joy in the feeling of being alive in this magnificent place called Earth and melancholy because I miss being able to celebrate Mom’s, Deb’s and my birthdays together.

Happy early birthday mom, please help keep the slugs away from my plants this year, and take care of my Little Bit, Ashee and Cocoa. Tell them they have to share the carrots and apples with you this time.

Something I keep forgetting to rant about is the missing honeybees!! Is anyone else as freaked out as I am that the bees seem to be taking residence with the aliens? Well, maybe not, but they may as well be, they are disappearing without a trace. All over the world!! Especially in North America. Does anyone know if anyone has studied the physical proximity of the affected hives to genetically modified crops? (I know, I know, one of my pet paranoias is this whole G.M. food thing.)

If honey bees keep disappearing, food prices will be out of reach for many people, not just the poorest, but the middle class as well. If the honey bees go, we will have no almonds or honey and there will be a lot of other foods that will become scarcer, as the bees disappear.

On a good bee note, the giant thistle that has taken over the flower bed in front of my house has grown so tall that I can see its deadly spikes and purple prickly flowers through the bay window. Almost every day, I see bees feeding on the thistle nectar, as happy as can bee. I can’t bear to get rid of the thing because it brings such bee joy. There is even a goldfinch that zooms in on the purple puffy flowers now and then.

I truly believe the adage that a plant is only a weed if it grows somewhere that we (humans) don’t want it to grow.

That is why I haven’t been able to bring myself to yank the volunteer tomato plants that have grown smack in the middle of the walkways that we worked so hard to weed-proof last year. Many of those tomato-weeds have born delicious, prolific fruit. Some of them are mere saplings in the shadow of their giant siblings.

Remember the peach tomatoes I raved about last year? Volunteers. The romas that I spent the other afternoon making into tomato puree? Volunteers. (Seven quarts full so far, when added to the ones I got from Dolores and Walt.) Yellow Pear tomatoes-Deb’s favorites? Volunteers. Big cherry-like ones I can’t name? Volunteers. Heart-shaped ones? Volunteers. Brandywines-red and yellow? I planted those. They are big and beautiful and still green! Yum. I can’t wait! Not volunteers.

Did I mention that the slugs wiped out an entire 12 foot by 4 foot bed of peppers? Twice?

Why is it that slugs can take over the world but honeybees have decided to go live with the aliens?

By the way, is it legal to keep honeybee hives in the city of Flint? How about chickens? Do chickens eat honeybees? (Yes, these are real questions. Don’t laugh. Let me know if you know the answers.)

(Note: I wrote this last week, I juist didn't post it until today.)


Update since writing this: I went out this morning to pick more tomatoes. I found lots of red ones. The problem is that the slugs, with the cooler weather, have somehow totally taken over that corner of the world!! Only a fraction of the red tomatoes were salvagable, the rest had been ravaged by little invisible slug teeth.

Fantasy Footwork

Friday morning, I saw a blue dragon, a yellow dragon, an east coast baseball player, parachutes sewn by eight handed seamstresses, the Easter Bunny, a cocky guy with six girlfriends who seemed devoted to him despite his infidelity, and I got a lesson in evolution from a bush.

As I was walking through Sorenson Park in Holly, hoping to catch the Lupines in bloom, I saw lots of things that were not the spectacular lupine display that I had hoped for. I saw a Darner Blue dragonfly, and another dragonfly that was bright yellow with black stripes, it looked like a dragonfly had mated with a bumblebee. I had never seen one like that. I saw a Baltimore Oriole with it's bright orange/yellow belly. I saw spider webs shaped like double layered upside-down parachutes. I saw a rabbit as it jumped out of the tall grass, ran across the trail about 15 feet in front of me and disappeared into the shelter of the trees. I saw another, slightly smaller rabbit about 45 minutes later. On my way back toward my car, ahead of me on the trail I saw about 6 brown, plain looking birds. They looked kind of like ducks, but not quite the right shape. They got a little agitated when they sensed my presence, so they started fluttering their wings and hop-skip-flying off the path. Then, out of the brush near them, a magnificent pheasant rooster made a ruinning jump, spread his wings and flew up toward the trees nearby. He showed me all the beautiful splendor of his 6 or so foot wing span. I've never seen a pheasant in full flight like that. I've seen them scurry off, but never in full out flight. It was breathtaking.

Before meeting the pheasant rooster and his harem, while I was walking around the prairie where the lupines were done blooming, I saw an Autumn Olive growing right up next to the trail. I looked at it an said, "what are you doing here?" I went on to explain that several years earlier, volunteers had worked hours, days and more days and more days to cut out all of the Autumn Olive in the area because it is an invasive species and has no business being there. The bush replied, "of course I'm supposed to be here, a bird planted me fair and square in its poop. After all, what's ecosystem evolution but bird poop, squirrel amnesia and answers blowin' in the wind?" How could I argue with that, except to say, but I love the lupines and Autumn Olive creates too much shade for them. So, the question becomes do my personal preferences for a natural prairie to continue as it has for millenia, or an invasive bush seeded in bird poop, imported from another continent and promoted by the DNR as a good way to attract birds to your property. It's beautiful green and silver leaves make a beautiful display even when the tart and tasty fruit aren't present. The birds eat the berries which have a large hard seed inside which they can't digest, so when they poop, the seed comes out whole, already fertalized with a dollop of white gold from a feathered backside. Whenever I see Autumn Olive, I get the urge to pull out the chainsaw, however, I can't help but admire its tenacity.

I also admire the tenacity of tomatos. Even though they are not supposed to be perrenials, or be able to self seed in our climate, I have volunteers every year. This year, I even have one growing through a knot in the wood surrounding one of the beds. I don't have a picture of it yet, but I'll get one added to this entry at some point. I laughed when I saw it. I finally planted something in the garden!! I have one whole bed that I have labled "mystery 'matos" which is a combination of some of those unknown upstarts and an assortment of unlabled tomatoes that a friend traded me for some of my seedlings.

If you want any plants, let me know, I don't want to waste extras like I did last year. The tomatoes are a little leggy and confused, and the peppers are short, but I think once they are in the dirt, they will be happy and jump up.

I have to replant the beets and carrots, I shouldn't have kept the mulch on the bed after planting them, they didn't make it. I've been eating lettuce from my deck and the sage that I planted last year is going crazy and growing huge. They were so little last fall, that I was surprised to see how they are flourishing.

I'm hoping to get some more stuff in the ground this week. I'm torn between finally getting the garden in, or helping Deb to tear out our bathroom so we can finally finish that project. The house is a mess with tiles, towel bars, faucets, showerheads, and boxes of stuff that we pulled out of the bathroom cupboards to sort through. Deb has already started getting tiles off the walls.

I haven't done a darned thing except work and sleep, with the exception of my walk on Friday and my hour in the garden today. There is so much more to do. As much as I have to say this, being off work last summer did wonders for my garden, even I couldn't work in it for very long each time, I had time to work in it more often. Although I don't plan on repeating that experience if I can help it.

Walking Through Two Parks

Deb and I went camping over Memorial Day weekend with some of our friends. We left the animals at home, with another friend at our house to keep them company, give them food and luvins.

I called my sister on Monday to invite her out to the site for dinner on Tuesday, she laughed at me and declared, "That's not camping!", when I told her that because it was so cold, Deb and I were inside the camper with the heat on, watching DVDs and eating celery. I had to agree with her that using a heater and bringing a laptop computer are definitely not what I would normally call camping. (Not to mention sleeping in a camper instead of a tent.) But, as I age, I'm finding myself less resiliant about temperature changes, sitting still for too long, and sleeping on the ground when the frost leaves a silvery glaze on the dandilions and scrubgrass surviving outside my door.

Yes, frost. As I walked to the bathroom early Wednesday morning, the frost was beautiful. But, the fog rising from the small gravel pit lake was stunning in its simplistic division between the golden Earth and the ethereal grey of the sky, lingering just above the water's glassy surface. Once the temperature difference between the frosty air and the chilly water leveled out, the beach was back to its daytime disguise of being just a plain old gravel pit, similar to many others scattered throughout Oakland County.

Because of the cool weather thus far, Deb and I decided not to brave the cold water. And, to be perfectly honest, I am still a little freaked out by the swarms of bluegill in that pit who seem to have an identity crisis. They are deluding themselves into believing that they are paranas. The last time I swam there in Sand Lake, two years ago, I was minding my own business, yacking with a friend when one of those deluded fish nibbled me toothlessly and painlessly on the thigh. I laughed, then yelped as the darn thing got me again on the back of the calf, then again on the shin. I looked down to find that not just one, but a whole school of bluegill had surrounded me on all sides and were eyeing me as I imagine a school of paranas would eye a fat juicy Black Angus who had wandered into their midst. In a momentary flash of rationality, I thought maybe I was standing in their nest. So, I moved several feet to the left. They swam several feet to the left. they still surrounded me with their watchful stares, and gave an occasional nip at my finger, toe, shoulder blade, or backside. I turned and moved again, but further this time. Again, their intimidating parana-like stalking stares, with their toothless kisses aimed for my knees, calves, shins and thighs. That's when I started to get a little freaked out. I was laughing my butt off (or, maybe only the parts that weren't being touched by the lips of fish), and running in circles at this point, while they swam in that same radius, tracking my every move.

So now, two years later, I'm a little nervous about meeting those toothless parana wannabees. The thing is, to my knowlege, these bug-eyed-big-lipped boogers have not been known to stalk anyone else!! (Did I mention that the couple who were fishing 20 feet away hadn't had a single nibble in that hour?)

One day this summer, during one of our upcoming camping trips, I will once again brave the paranas and swim i Sand Lake. Maybe, now that my chemistry and hormones have changed, they won't recognize me as a Golden Heifer upon which to feast.

Setting aside my unreasonable fear of mutant parana-bluegill, and the cold nights, this weekend of camping was just what I needed. When I'm outside like that, even the simple act of putting a coffeepot on the small propane stove is an excercise in mindfulness. I fill one percolator with a basket of coffee grounds to make my morning caffine fix. I fill the other with plain water, so that the two dish pans (one for washing and one for rinsing) will have warm water instead of cold that matches the nighttime air.

A typical camping morning for me begins with the post dawn light in my eyes, the chatter of birds filling my ears and an urgent need to pee driving me up out of bed and toward the loo. Upon my return, I light the stove with a match until two or three coils burn with a nearly invisible flame that flickers with each breath of wind, God's reminder that she is still alive. She is still softly managing things. Whether I believe in her or not, she believes in me enough to make my coffee take what feels like forever because the flame keeps teasing me, first one side flickers out with the breeze, then the other, almost dying completely. Once, I even had to re-light the burner to get htat first "blurp" in the percolator. As I wait for the "blurps" to get dark enough to call the liquid inside coffee, generally I take that time to sit quietly reading or writing. This weekend, however, I forgot my journal and was disappointed with the book that I had chosen to crack opened for the first time. So, rummaging around one of the many nifty storage areas of the pop-up, I found crayons and a coloring book. Also, early in the mornings before most people or dogs are stirring, I have been known to take a walk, cook oatmeal or bacon, eat a piece of fruit, or just sit and try to see the birds who are creating such a rucus while they hide unseen in the canopy of the small, twig-like trees just beyond the firepit.

I think that those quiet morning moments are my favorite camping moments, second only to the evenings around the fire with the kids toasting marshmallows perfectly to order ("burnt, on fire", "lightly brown, just on the end", "medium brown all the way around"), and squishing them between graham crackers with one or two pieces of chocolate embedded in the toasty goo. I have not enjoyed s'mores for many years because of the cloying sweetness of them, but 7 year old Maddie made me the most delicious s'more I have ever tasted. She first toasted the marshmallow to a golden brown, then put two small rectangles of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate on the graham cracker sandwich. Yum. Not too sweet, but sweet enoughh to know it's a treat.

I loved seeing the three girls-Maddie, Ana and Cassidy-, play and laugh, chasing each other round and round on their bikes and scooters. Cassidy loved the super soaker that shot sideways, fooling the victim into a false complacency.

On Saturday, we all wnt to Sorenson Park to surprise Ellen with a bigger crowd of friends, fruit salad, burgers and a huge sun-shaped cake for her 50th bbirthday. (I won't reveal what came out of her mouth once she realized she had been duped with a woeful tale of a broken window and her cell phone being the only one with a person on the other end.)

My friend, Walt, and I took a quiet break form the party's bustle to wald back to the prairie and the overlook near the edge of the Shiawassee River. The wild lupines were in their first week of bloom. Blue spikes of flowers dotted the green/gold of the prairie grasses. In another 2 weeks, the blue will be joined by pink and white in a breathtaking cacophony of color. Out on the outlook, we watched a family canoe by us, through the liquid path that the Shiawassee cut among the cattails and invasive Loosestrife (not yet in bloom). On our way back, we saw a turtle in the middle of the path. She had dug out a small hollow in the ground and was excreting liquid, I think inpreparation for laying a batch of eggs. I wanted to stay there, sit on the ground and stare at this process, but we both (Walt and I, not the turtle and I) figured that we would be missed at the party if I sat there 'til dark if need be, just to see some turtle eggs that would probably be cacoon food by midnight. Makes me kind of sad to think about that, but, as always, I remind myslef that both birth and death are part of this wild ride that we call life, and, as sad as death feels, without it there can be no life. Even looking at my compost pile with its rich life-giving nutrients, at its core is compiled of death, dying, eating and pooping.

Mentioning compost, of course, leads me to thoughts of the garden, which is not yet planted, except for some beets and carrots. In containers on the deck I have spinach, lettuce, leeks and catnip. The spinach is about 3 inches tall. Yippee Yum Yum. With the cool weather, I am kind of glad that I was late in planting my tomato and pepper seeds because otherwise, I would be tempted to put them out before the ground and air warmed up enough. As it is, I think another couple of weeks should be about right for the plants and for the dirt.

Growth just keeps on happening through life's joys, fears and compost heaps of what may be mistaken for wasted strawberry hulls, shredded paper, shredded dreams or wasted energy.