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:

Sunflowers

Inspired by the strong spirit of the Ukrainian people and friends planting sunflowers, I ordered seeds for four different varieties from Baker Creek Seed Company. Jack and I planted seeds on May 21st, and by late July, magnificent sunflowers were giving us a show.

Friend Matt visited the garden, and Mom helped us send him home with a bouquet.

Suddenly September

Yes, I know it's been awhile, y'all, but here we are in the second week of September, so I'm just going to jump right into it like I haven't been absent from this blog for nearly six months. 

To get the sad stuff out of the way first, Jack and I had to say goodbye to our favorite beagle and full-time sweetheart, JosieJo, earlier this month. She was diagnosed with liver failure a year ago after falling deathly and suddenly ill, so we knew our time with her was limited and treated every day like a gift. By our vet's estimation, she was maybe as old as fourteen, and we're confident that we gave her the best home and life possible in the ten years she was part of our family. 

She loved trips to the farm to roll in the grass, hunt for moles, get loved-on by Mom and Dad, watch cows, and patrol the garden, and she got to do those things in her last days. She was a great co-pilot for errands, insanely jealous of cute puppies, indifferent toward cats, and a wonderful friend and companion.

She became suddenly sick again two Fridays ago, and an x-ray at our vet's office late that afternoon revealed a large tumor on her liver and a smaller tumor in one of her lungs. Nothing could be done but love, respect, and say goodbye to her.

This is the first time since 1993 that I've been dog'less and nearly that long for Jack, so the house feels a little empty. We're going to wait until we make some little home and grounds improvements to make our situation as safe and secure as possible before bringing another dog or puppy into the family. 

Other aspects of life are chugging along quite nicely.

Like our garden, which has given us enough tomatoes to feed an army and almost that much okra. 

Big tomatoes? Yes. Big tomatoes like this monster!

Yes, that's a pound and a half!! And it was delicious. I've got photos of it all sliced-up and need to pull those off the camera to share, because it was a thing of beauty. I probably use the word "perfect" too much for the real world, but this tomato was absolutely perfect. 

I know that, because I'm now something I've always wanted to be: someone who loves to eat tomatoes.

No kidding.

Back in the winter when I planted tomato seeds, I told Jack and everybody else who'd listen that 2022 would be the year I overcame a lifetime being a tomato pariah. I've been shamed and picked-at since I was a little kid for not liking raw tomatoes, but those days are over, at least as far as the home-grown kind of tomatoes are concerned. 

Here's a picture of the first BLT I ever ate that had "T" on it -

It was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted in my life. The tomato makes it, and I now understand why people have always given me side-eye when I talk about eating BLTs without the T. I won't make that mistake again.

The cherry and grape tomatoes we grew were magic, and there's no other way to describe them. Bea even won a blue ribbon at the Williamson County Fair with tomatoes she raised from a plant I gave her. I'm still beaming with pride so hard it's ridiculous 

Our tomatoes are still producing like gangbusters, but we know the end is coming. Our first row of tomatoes, planted the day before Mother's Day, is almost finished. A few of the grape/cherry tomatoes are still hanging in there and will likely give us a few handfuls a day until our first frost, which is expected to happen around October 15th. The second row of tomatoes is productive, but they're showing signs of being tired. The peppers and most of the okra are doing the same. Daylight is shorter - Autumn Equinox is the day after tomorrow, and after that, we start the roll into winter. 

Lots and lots of okra.

An Unfinished Garden Post (that I found while cleaning up the blog.)

"Alexa, wake us at 5 a.m. to uplifting classical

That's what I said last night at our summer early bedtime, which is east of 11:00 when possible. 

Jack and I were at the farm and ready to garden by 8:00, and I am here to tell you that 85 degrees ( and rising) is what it is no matter what time of day you're pushing the wheelbarrow. We intended to get a much earlier start, and since we aren't officially into summer yet, we have plenty of time to improve our gardening schedule to get things done without killing ourselves out in blistering heat.

We got behind weed-wise two weeks ago when nearly six inches of rain fell over the course of five days and left our garden spaces full of sticky, muddy dirt and an amazing crop of morning glories, jimson weeds, thorny little whatever-those-are, and assorted grass between the row of tomatoes on the upper length of the garden and the row of beans on the closest lower length. It was a big patch of solid weeds, and by the time the ground dried out enough for us to work it, the whole mess was more than ankle high and in need of special attention. This morning a combination of line trimming, wheel hoeing, sweating, and swearing, Jack and I reclaimed most of our space. There's still a thick patch of weeds for the reckoning and plenty of other work to be done, but two hot hours this morning and two shadier, less-miserable hours this afternoon made a world of difference, and our "to do" list this evening is far less daunting than when we started this day.

The spring garden has hit-and-miss with bok choy and radishes once again being our A+ performers, but staying ahead of the cabbage worms on the bok was an almost impossible task, and I don't even want to talk about the broccoli, but I will.

I REALLY thought I was on top of the broccoli game back in February when I had four whole trays of little plants bopping along in the guest room windowsill. I still thought I was on top of the broccoli game a couple of weeks after we planted the sets, then the deer came. 

Bea's Birthday and a Quick Garden Update

How did we get to the end of April already? It seems like "palindrome day" was just yesterday, but it was two whole months ago. More than two whole months ago!

While we're playing "where did the time go?" yesterday was Bea's tenth birthday. We had a sweet, fun family celebration at the baby house in Franklin. Bea requested spaghetti, and her NanNan came through with it. Sis brought what has become a regular thing when Bea's b'day rolls around, a strawberry cake from the Nothing Bundt Cakes store. I love that cake, too, and am always happy to co-celebrate April birthdays with Beatrice and a big slice of deliciousness.

Here are some photos I took:

In other happenings, Jack and I are back on the garden bandwagon and have several things underway already, including a new helper, Scarecrow Charlie, who will hopefully do a good job shooing away any deer that might have designs on our tender vegetable plants. 

Happy Palindrome Week

Deuces for everybody!! ✌

A Touch of Snow

 

Monday the 17th, we woke up to THIS INCREDIBLE SNOW!! And I even got out to take pictures in it.

COVID Update and Commentary

COVID is surging in Tennessee again, and Governor Lee has leaned into the narrative that everyone needs to simply not worry about the virus and let it burn itself out, adamantly refusing to re-declare a state of emergency which would allow school systems and municipalities across the state to implement mask mandates. Our legislature, duty-bound to Tennessee's evangelical population to exploit crises in the advancement of extreme political position, has declared COVID officially over and continues its attack on public education, public health, public assistance, and anything which might be deemed helpful or beneficial to anyone or any thing that isn't white, conservative, and fundamentally Christian.

As of today, Tennessee has the highest COVID death rate per capita in the United States, and Jack watches the obituaries for Smithville and McMinnville daily, speculating about who died of COVID and who didn't die of COVID. 

Our new normal is weird.

Bounty from the Garden

These pictures are from a few weeks ago when the fall garden was living its best life. 

We grew a GREAT crop of broccoli and expected to just "eat some along" throughout colder weather until the temperatures really dipped, but our weather was amazingly warm - in the mid-70s for the stretch of days through Christmas - and crowns started rotting on the vine. Boom! In a matter of days, our nearly perfect broccoli overshot ideal ripeness and started getting soft and mushy in the middle. DOH! We picked every bit of it, sharing with Mom, Dad, the Vernons, and the neighbors and eating lots of it ourselves. 

Steamed. Soup. Sheet pan dinner. 

We'd hoped we'd get another picking or two of sideshoots, but as quickly as the temperatures rose to the 70s, it plunged to less than 15, and the broccoli was finito. 

The bok choy was a slightly different scenario and tolerated both warm and cold better than other things in our garden, and was cold hearty even through a dusting of snow. We did finally pick the remaining dozen or so heads last week before the super-cold weather and still have a handful in the fridge. 

Our "regular cabbage" never grew that well but is hanging in through whatever weather we have in heads ranging in size from tennis ball to softball. They're mild and tender and taste great quartered and roasted on a sheetpan. 

Baby Turnips

 Despite the disappointment of the peas, the fall garden DOES have some really nice things happening, and turnips are among them. 

These are some baby ones we pulled to thin our row of purple-topped globe turnips. Jack cooked these whole in the InstantPot with a double-handful of ham-hock flibberts, and they were delicious.

With cornbread.

The Great 2021 Pea Patch Disaster

Maybe I bragged too much about my beautiful, wonderful, perfect peas and jinxed them.

Because GodLord, they're now miserably miserable. Two three teepees'worth have completely given up.

When they fell off the supports, slumping toward the fence instead of growing upward, I lied to myself and said they were just confused, redirecting them, lovingly tying their sad arms to the teepee.  

They aren't confused; they are dying. 

The soil in that bed is heavy and not ideal for peas, which I knew from the get-go, but I sincerely believed my enthusiasm and good seeds would overcome dank and fungus and too many gravels and too much shade. We grew nice tomatoes in this same bed during the summer, but my pea crop is proof that "good dirt" for one thing isn't "good dirt" for all things. 

The snow peas along the fence aren't as near-death as the snap peas on the teepees, but they're close. They look OK at the roots, but have developed what appears to be powdery mildew, and other thing I worried about from the get-go. 

We had okra in that bed all summer, and by the time I planted peas in late August, the leaves on the okra plants were completely consumed with mildew. The plants were still producing, but they were sick and looked horrible with shriveled, powder-covered leaves. I probably should have held off on planting peas until those were torn out and dragged off, but again, I believed in my enthusiasm. 

Now, the pea plants are consumed with leaf mold or dying of dank dirt cooties, and my incredible effort in the pea patch goes down as just that: incredible effort. 

Oh well, lessons learned...

In the next few days, I'm pulling those peas out, dis-assembling the teepees, and regrouping for another attempt at "pea-topia" for Spring 2022.

Pea Porn

 

Y'all are probably going to get tired of hearing about these peas before I get tired of talking about them. 

Or eating them.

Or taking pictures of them. 

Peas of Mine

 

(Peas may or may not be shown actual size)

Get it? Peas of mine... peace of mind... 

No? 

Maybe I'm not as clever as I tell myself I am, but it's a better effort than I expected when I sat down to type this brisk fall evening. 

Y'all might remember when I planted about a thousand peas on the hottest day of late August - the 27th to be exact - and predicted the first harvest on or about October 20th. Well, this is it. 

This is actually a third of it, because somebody called ME kept eating precious tasty pods as soon as I picked them, because they are 100% as delicious as I want them to be. These are little, but I had to have something to show for myself for the on-time harvest, right?

I'm trying not to brag too much or be too proud of the way the fall garden project is coming along, because deer, rabbits, raccoons, groundhogs, squirrels, and stuff I don't even know to worry about could eat it all to the ground in a single evening. 

Aside from that, the garden is on the edge of a walnut grove and might be susceptible to jugalone poisoning, which I'd never heard of until we had a bunch of stuff planted already. Here's an article about it from The Morton Arboretum if you're interested:

https://mortonarb.org/plant-and-protect/tree-plant-care/plant-care-resources/black-walnut-toxicity/#!

Back to the peas, though. 

After I picked those, I harvested the last bit of okra - six tiny, blotchy, mildew'ish pods - and said goodbye to the gigantic stalks Dad and I grew over the summer. Some were more than 2 inches in diameter at the ground and grew tall - 7 to 8 feet tall and were GENEROUS with the pods they gave us. They were beautiful in their prime but had gotten spindly and piddling in recent weeks with a frosting of powdery mildew on the larger plants. I worried about that stuff spreading to the pea plants before I could get them whacked-out and dragged-off.

This sheet pan dinner included both, so I guess you could call it a transition in seasons with the last of summer and the first of fall on the same plate. The peppers were from the garden and the other things, carrots (always carrots), mushrooms (ALWAYS mushrooms), and broccoli, from the store, it was perfectly delicious over some brown rice.

(Peas were added at the end to keep them lively. Throw them on, cut the heat, wait 5 minutes, PERFECT.)

Fall Break with Lu and Bea

Beatrice and Lucia visited Mom and Dad on the farm for part of their fall break last week, and spending time with them was wondrous. I don't use that word very often, but when I do I mean it *THIS BIG*. Shew! Some of y'all know how much I miss them on the regular, especially when I haven't seen them since July. 

OR SIS!! 

Beatrice arrived a day earlier than Lucia and enjoyed having "run of the place," as the old-timers say.

She did "miss her Sis," because that's how it works with sisters in this family and was glad to see Lucia on Tuesday. 

The next day, Jack and I loaded them up and carried them for some dorking around - that's what we call it - at Rock Island State Park. LOVE that place. I'm sad that our family didn't know about it when we were growing up, because it's a beautiful state park almost literally in our back yard. 

Anyhoo - 

Here are some photos I took during their visit: 

Beatrice

Beatrice and NanNan

Lu and Bea with an American beauty berry bush at Rock Island State Park.

Lu and Bea at the spring house at Rock Island State Park

Girls at Great Falls 

Girls at Great Falls

Beatrice doing a perfect cartwheel. Look at those sweet pink toes!!!

Garden Update, Up a Ladder, Other Stuff

Is everybody surviving pumpkin spice and decorative gourd season? 

Have you worn a sweater because it's October and we're supposed to? Are y'all OK? 😅

God help me, I've used an emoji in a blog post, but so what? Traffic through this joint is so sluggish that stooping to smilie use probably isn't going to kill my monthly visitor count of "about 5." 

I would put another one here, but no - too much.

Fall rolls on, but my sweaters are still in the closet. 

The garden is coming along nicely, if I do say so myself. This is what it looked after Jack and I finished prepping for the rain we got early last week.

From left to right, we've got purple-top turnips, broccoli, early wonder beets, French breakfast radishes/Nantes carrots/white icicle radishes (interplanted into layered row), bok choy, three kinds of branching broccoli, Georgia collards, cabbage, and cherry belle radishes/Detroit beets interplanted.

Dad said to plant enough to share with the critters - there's a den with at least three generations of groundhogs less than 50 yards from where I stood to take this picture - so I did. Especially if they like radishes.

So far, knock on wood, we haven't had problems with pests other than weeds. 

Two days after the Hurricane Ida rains passed, morning glories, wild violets, and all manner of grass came for us, but I threw down like a rug on fire with our little electric tiller, Jack muscled a hoe until damn-near-dark, and we got everything in order before the last batch of rain moved through.

The pea patch I talked about last time is still plugging along and will hopefully give us some goodies in just a couple more weeks. Blooms are here.

We've also got a bed for a gazillion turnip greens, a bed of spinach and (crossed-fingers) artichokes come spring, and a bed for bulb fennel, because fennel has no friends and needs its own private space. 

Now we wait. And weed and wait some more. And weed some more. And wait.

What else has been going on?

Carpentry and power tools is what!

Dad's been wanting to complete the finish-work on the back porch he and Mom had built this time last year and hit me up to help him out with it. He helped me craft a bread peel from red oak in the spring, and I demonstrated appropriate safety and basic competence in using the power tools, so I got invited back for another round. 

I don't have any pictures of that, but I should add some, because we did AWESOME, and the finished product is A+. I got checked off on the mitre saw and demonstrated my competence with the nail gun. We worked hard for two days, and I had to <gasp> climb the ladder, and some of y'all know how I feel about climbing more than a step stool. It's all good, though, but wow! 

"MY FEET FEEL BROKEN!" I chatted to my friend Matt. 

"You were up a ladder, silly," he immediately countered, like I completely failed to put two and two together.

Well, duh.

Anyway, I dealt with my fear of falling from a ladder and breaking my bones into pieces, got more experience using a nail gun (which is fun and you need to try it), and hung with two of my favorite people. PLUS, the porch looks GREAT!!

Sunset at the farm

10/07/2021

Fall Garden, Dr. Jason Martin, and Everything is Fine

Happy fall, y'all! 

It's here, too. I stepped outside with Josie a little bit ago, and it's downright chipper. The harvest moon from earlier in the week still looks mostly full, and I had a hard time getting back to sleep at 3:00 this morning because so much moonlight was streaming into our bedroom. There were moonshadows on the wall! Aside from the insomnia and the cats all-hours playfulness, it's a cool experience. 

Since the last time I wrote anything here, Jack and I have jumped head and ears into planting a fall garden. For years now, October comes around, and I'm sad that we have no snap peas planted. This year I got on the stick and planted a BUNCH of peas the last week in August. Four varieties. Some are doing better than others, but all-in-all, I'm pleased with the outcome of the ones that are making it and determined to have make the best of the situation. I ordered seeds from two different sources and am pleasantly surprised to have almost 100% germination of the seeds we purchased from Botanical Interests, a newish company in Colorado. If you need seeds, check them out.

In addition to peas, we have turnips and beets, radishes, broccoli, cabbage (we think - it may have been mislabeled), carrots, collards, bok choy, more broccoli, turnips for greens, fennel, and all kinds of salad greens.

Ambitious, yes. Hopeful, yes. Vulnerable, yes. To weeds, which are growing like freaking gangbusters and maybe rabbits, because half of the beets are MIA already, and the first round of radishes look spindly. Dad says we may not have used enough fertilizer, so inexperience is another weak spot, but before the next rain, I plan on getting some close consultation from him about fertilizing specifics for  whatever is still kicking when the garden dries out enough for us to at least walk across it.

I tried to do some assessment and planning today, but yikes, the earth stuck to my hoe and I nearly got the truck stuck in the earth. 

It's fine, though, I tell myself. Everything is fine. 

I also tell myself that same stuff about the COVID pandemic, which continues to rage, especially in red states like Tennessee with governors like Bill Lee who are fine with letting their people die, because they know they can use it against Democrats in the mid-term elections of 2022, but again, 

it's fine. 

On Wednesday of last week, I joined some DeKalb County friends and neighbors in welcoming Dr. Jason Martin to town. He's an ICU physician from Hendersonville who's announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Tennessee governor next year. His main priority is moving us past the pandemic into solid economic territory for the benefit of middle, working class folks and families with children. He supports Medicaid expansion and is outraged that since Bill Lee was elected in 2018, fourteen rural Tennessee hospitals have closed leaving thousands of people without a place to go for emergencies in their home communities. He and his wife have three school-age children, daughters, so both strong public education and abortion rights are important to him. He talked about the importance of rural broadband and providing infrastructure services to people in counties like DeKalb and talked knowledgeably and respectfully about the effectiveness of rural phone and electric cooperatives. 

The only thing I didn't like about him were his pants.