I Wonder if I Will Miss the Moss: A Poem by Jane Mead

(I tore this poem from an issue of The New Yorker last September, because it speaks to my heart. Sharing it here on the blog is easier than keeping up with a sheet of a magazine.)

I wonder if I will miss the moss
after I fly off as much as I miss it now
just thinking about leaving.

There were stones of many colors.
There were sticks holding both
lichen and moss.
There were red gates with old
hand-forged hardware.
There were fields of dry grass
smelling of first rain
then of new mud. There was mud,
and there was the walking,
all the beautiful walking,
and it alone filled me—
the smells, the scratchy grass heads.
All the sleeping under bushes,
once waking to vultures above, peering down
with their bent heads the way they do,
caricatures of interest and curiosity.
Once too a lizard.
Once too a kangaroo rat.
Once too a rat.
They did not say I belonged to them,
but I did.

Whenever the experiment on and of
my life begins to draw to a close
I’ll go back to the place that held me
and be held. It’s O.K. I think
I did what I could. I think
I sang some, I think I held my hand out.

—Jane Mead (1958-2019)

Fall into Gumbo

 All I can say about the first frosts and freezes of the season and their resultant devastation of our remaining hot-weather garden, is "Thank y'all!" 

I've never liked tomatoes before, and suddenly I love them. My experience growing them was nearly zilch, and the garden produced like wild, wild weeds. 

Okra and peppers and several fantastic pots of beans were THERE. Not everything Jack and I started back in the spring amounted to anything, but overall, what a wonderful summer of work we did.

Nothing but grateful from this gardener.

We finished the season with flouish in some of the most beautifully velvety gumbos to ever be created. Our okra - especially the late "Motherland" variety, which didn't start producing until 5 or so weeks ago - was creamier than any okra either of us have had before. In gumbo, it transformed into silky perfection with hearty chicken and rings of andouille sausage. 

I'm not blowing it up, either. This stuff (with a light dusting of file on top) was every bit'a that good. 

Cool Cabbages

October's here, and I'm ready for it. I haven't always welcomed the arrival of cooler weather with open arms, but this year, fall has arrived like an old friend. I'm mostly ready to stop worrying about the cabbage and broccoli plants I've been helicopter parenting since the seeds went into the dirt back in July. 

The cabbage and broccoli in the spring garden were devoured first by deer then caterpillars, and we got nothing. The bok choys were beautiful, but the rest of the brassicas were literal worm food. I tried picking them off by hand on a daily basis, but they were too much, and yes, that task is absolutely as unpleasant as it sounds. 

After giving up on the spring crop, I learned about natural, non-poisonous ways to control cabbage cooties, and without jumping into a whole big thing, I'll just say, "they work." 

You have to stay on top of things, observe the plants everyday, and be ready to spray at the sight of the first worm, but they work. 

Here's where we currently sit: