One Wild and Precious Life

Lent

I love Lent.  It's the Church's time of "New Year's Resolutions," a time to examine oneself, and make a plan to address a shortcoming or two.  Shortcomings are those things that stand in the way of our fullest possible relationship with God, of course.  God absolutely longs to be in relationship with all of creation.  We humans erect barrier after barrier to that intimacy that is our true home.  Lent is a chance to live more fully into that relationship between creature and Creator.  It's less about sackcloth and ashes than it is about the mutual longing between Lover and beloved.

We had our usual Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner at church, and it was lovely -- 40 or so people gathered together to eat pancakes, celebrate Mardi Gras in our dignified, Episcopalian way (still with much laughter and fellowship), and just be "family" with this group of people who have chosen to worship and celebrate together on this mountain.  The men's group cooked; the women's group served.  I blessed the food, ate heartily, wandered around socializing (not the easiest thing for someone who's a classic introvert), and went home, satisfied in body and soul.

On Ash Wednesday we had two services, 10 am and 6 pm.  We had 45 people between the 2 services, which is extremely good for a weekday service, even a fairly momentous one, liturgically and ecclesiastically.  It's a big day in the Church, kind of like Good Friday in significance -- but for most of the world, it's really "just another day."  In between our services, I visited two parishioners who were hospitalized with heart problems -- I call these folks, with some humor, but certainly not to trivialize -- "broken hearts."  I've had a fair number of parishioners with broken hearts in the last few months, and it breaks my heart, as well.  Some weather their problems relatively easily, be they bypasses, stents, heart catheterizations, pacemaker implants, defibrillator implants, or whatever.  I see others grow more and more frail, recovering less and less quickly.  My parish is predominantly a retirement parish -- they don't get any younger.  People who were vital and active when I came here six years ago are, in some cases, quite frail, and several have died.  My people face the possibility of death on a regular basis.

But both of these Ash Wednesday hospital visits, one in town and the other in Cookeville (off the Plateau and 30 miles west of here) were delightful and precious, true gifts.  I can't tell details, of course, because of confidentiality -- but I will say that anointing people with oil and laying my hands on their heads for a prayer of healing is one of the greatest privileges I have as a priest.  And as my heart has broken right open in these last few weeks, I'm also privileged to be with people in a way that is holier than I ever could have asked or imagined.

As for me, I considered my own Lenten practice with due sobriety and reverence.  What I realized was that, rather than the typical season of quiet self-reflection, what I needed to do to honor God best, was to make this season a season of action, rather than inaction.  You can't imagine the amount of time I spend in relative inactivity:  sitting at my desk, meeting with people, reading, studying for church related things, or parked in front of the computer (like now!), the television, the Spider Solitaire game, or other mindless diversions.  I have discerned several very special calls from God (in my own view, at least), and also particular practices that make me the best person and priest that I can be.  I have tons of creative ideas that hardly ever come to fruition.  So I examined (there's the self-examination!) exactly which of all these things and ideas that I felt most passionate about, which things I felt most strongly called to do, which things would restore holy balance to my life.  I came up with six projects that I've dreamed of, written of, spoken of, and neglected to act upon.  Perhaps I'll tell you exactly what those six items are at another time -- just now they seem a little embarrassing in their simplicity.  I made a silly little chart, like we make for our children so they will do their chores.  I painted it Lenten purple and bought silly and pretty litle stickers.  I want to work on each of my six projects for at least 1/2 hour, at least 3 times a week.  That means 18 stickers a week for each of the weeks of Lent.  What fun!  I bought glittery shamrocks and chickies and bunnies and flowers.  I'm actually excited, in a silly sort of way.  I don't want to completely trivialize this -- project boards and progress stickers really seem to work for me.  They helped me do all the tasks I had to do for my spiritual direction program.  Today I did 2 things, and so I  now have 2 stickers on my chart (which is on a piece of poster board, 22x28 inches).  Who knows?  There might even be another sticker before I go to bed!

Today I also met with my spiritual director.  I drive an hour each way to see her -- it's a good thing that  I like to drive!  These monthly meetings are a chance to itemize all the times during the  month that I feel God has touched my life.  By the end of our meeting today, we were laughing, because I found myself saying, "Oh, and just one more thing -- just this one more thing, I promise....!"  There is great abundance in my life right now.  God is touching me often.  Sometimes it's the gift I receive from someone else.  Sometimes it's a creative idea (or two, or two dozen).  Sometimes it's a confluence of things that seem to all come at once, falling together, opening doors, making one or another path seem like it must be the true path for me.  Like another trip to Italy this year.  I haven't yet purchased my ticket, but I think it will happen.  O Happy Day.  O Happy Lent.  I'm so grateful.

Snow!

Who'd 'a thunk it?  Six hours ago I was outside, working in gardening clothes and only a fleece vest for outerwear, and sweating.  When I filled up my car with gasoline, the wind was blowing, cold and fierce.  But I had no idea of what was in store.  I just went outside, 10:30 pm, and we have about an inch of wet snow, and it's still falling fiercely!  I love it.  The dogs loved it on their bedtime walk.  I'm about to go to bed.  I wonder who'll show up for church in the morning?  I wonder when I can get back to my garden?  My weather page (weather underground -- much more accurate here than the weather channel page) says it will be 54 and 56 on Wed. and Thurs., though it might rain.  If no rain, those seem to be my next garden days!

The Mystified Gardener

I'm starting a new section or feature of this blog.  I'm thinking of asking the local, small-town newspaper if they'd be interested in a weekly article from me.  I don't want to start a separate blog for it, because I'd never keep up two -- it's all I can do to update one!  But I do have a title for this section -- "The Mystified Gardener."

Now, I always think of myself as rather a "mystical gardener."  Working the soil, growing food, eating what I grow and feeding others from my garden are all experiences that make me feel closer to God.  I have profound thoughts about sin, evil, and of course resurrection, when I'm tending my plants.  But it occurred to me that I am also frequently "mystified" by the challenges that my yard and gardens present.  There is so much to do, and so much that I don't know, that I'm often immobilized by it all.  I have so many questions, and so little knowledge.  Now I'm a fair gardener.  I've got a pretty good intuitive or "mystical" sense for plants and what they need; in other words, I've got a bit of a green thumb.  But that's often not enough to make things thrive.  And rather than carefully research and address problems that I encounter, I tend to just shuffle them to the back of my "problem pile" or "question deck," and nothing gets done.

So I'm going to begin to address this long list of questions and challenges, one project a week (roughly speaking), until I work my way through them all.  I've taken pictures of various "problem spots" in my yard.  What I hope for, is that any of you with ideas and/or gardening experience, will chime in and offer comments.  I also intend to research each problem, both on the web, by visiting gardening shops or the extension agent, when appropriate, and in my own substantial library of gardening books.  Then I intend to post a "before" photo (that will be at the beginning of the week), and progress reports periodically about how I'm doing.

Here's the first one -- it's a "two photo" question that mystifies me:

This is the western-most end of my garden, which measures approximately 20' x 35'.  That's twenty feet (no, not metrical) by thirty-five feet.  You see my cunning little gate with the "A" in the middle, built for me by a parishioner and stained by moi.  You see the fenceposts, even though you can't see the fencing itself.  I have sunk that fence about 6 inches into the ground, and lined the bottom of the material with chicken wire, to keep out marauding bunnies.  I worked hard on this garden.  You also see the raised beds, which I worked so hard two years ago to put in with boards given to me by friends who dismantled a house, board-by-board, and saved the salvaged wood.  I measured, I staked, I placed all the wood, filling the beds with dirt from the paths and manure that I hauled myself from a local stockyard.  The vertical structure in the second bed from the left (can you see the green fenceposts, with white on top of them?) is a structure on which my peas climb each year.  I grow sweet sugar snap peas, yum.  There are no perennials in the beds you see, they are each planted anew in the spring.

In this second picture you can see where we are now by the placement of the gate.  This is the east end of my veggie/herb garden.  The concentrated bit of green  at the far right is my rosemary bush (I'll get to it in a later post).  I'm thrilled that it survives the winters.  My asparagus is also in this bed.  The raised bed next to that is filled with strawberries.  In the heaviest part of the season (it's "Ozark Beauty" and I get a pretty long season, though not completely throughout the summer) I get about a quart a day from the "white part," which is the oldest stand, mulched with yellow straw.  In this part of the world (I don't know about other places) there's "yellow straw," which I imagine is wheat, and "pine straw," which is raked-up pine needles.  After a windy winter, I'll be raking up the fallen pine needles from our small stand of pines, and using it as mulch this summer.  In the first photo, at the very end of the left-most bed, you see a brown spot -- that's a pile of shredded leaves that I will also use as mulch.  Anyway, here's my first "mystified gardener" question:  What can I do to make this garden charming and beautiful?

Of course it's prettier in the summer, when everything is growing, blooming, producing.  But you can see it's a very utilitarian garden, appearing neater and better-kept than it actually is during growing season.  The restrictions on this question are that I really can't afford to invest more than minimally.  The fence works well (wish it were a little higher, to discourage deer, but I have other ideas for this year), and I don't have time, money, or energy to change it.  The gate is obviously beloved, and I'll stain the posts this year, as I did the gate itself.  I have LOTS of questions about this little garden alone, but the first one is, what can I do to jazz it up a little, to beautify it?

The first answer is obvious.  Close up, it needs work.  The raspberries need cutting completely back.  The laboriously and carefully placed wooden borders for the raised beds need reinforcement in some places -- they lean into the bed, or outward into the path, and need more staking in place.  I need to complete the mulching of the paths.  You can see how much better the mulched sections look:

The mulch, of course, is in the foreground.  So today I began to address that project further -- I mulched perhaps 8 feet of path, down to that corner and around to probably where the photo itself ends.  It took me nearly an hour, and maybe 4 wheelbarrows full of mulch.  It doesn't seem like much (though it looks like quite a lot in this photo, because of angle and perspective), but I did remind myself that on 3-foot paths, 8 feet is 24 square feet.  It sounds like a lot that way.  But of course there are enormous numbers of feet (and most especially square feet)  remaining.  When I see growing weeds, I pull them, even root them up with a hand cultivator if I can.  But of course in late winter, there are no visible weeds.  So I lay a thick layer of newspaper (at least 6 sheets, often more -- you see it at the edge of the fresh mulch), and top that with 3-4 inches of the wood chips that are from the maple tree downed nearly 2 years ago.  There's still quite a mulch pile, though considerably reduced by my mulching efforts and natural settling through the seasons.  Newspaper and wood chips won't last forever, but it's really effective, and completely organic.  Use only the black-and-white sections of the paper (I know, there's still a LITTLE bit of color, but stay away from all those heavily colored advertising sections).  Last summer it worked pretty well.  I intend to have all the paths finished this year, and I'll let you know how it goes.  That back path and several others were mulched with landscaping cloth and grass clippings -- major mistake!  Stuff grew up through the landscaping fabric, and made it impossible to completely uproot.  I'm not removing the fabric just now, but will top it with my newspaper/wood chip experiment.

  This bed on the right, as I said, is the herb and asparagus bed.  Asparagus doesn't like its roots disturbed, so I can't put in any pretty little border of herbs or flowers.  And the strawberries, remember, are at the left of this photo.  Midwinter, on a really warm day, I dug strawberry plants from the path and transplanted them into the bed, back at the rear part that isn't mulched.  Many of them look like they've survived, though you can't see it here.  In that east-west running bed at the very rear of the photo are the raspberries that need cutting back ("Autumn Gold" -- they produce well in late summer and fall, and are a pretty yellow color, not red, but taste just the same).  It all needs a very early-season cover of compost and manure.  I think this year I'm going to buy bags of it at Kmart or the garden supply store.  I may work on making a pile from the stockyard and my own cold-compost pile (which means LOADS of miscellaneous seeds survive, and lots of gravel from the stockyard manure), but this year I'll do myself a favor.

So I'm working on some cheap, simple solutions for "jazzing up" or beautifying my veggie garden.  I'm also thinking about a PVC or even metal-pipe "arbor" for over my pretty little gate.  But that's only thinking.  I'll be stringing either disposable aluminum pie plates or trash CDs (I get them in the mail from AOL, etc.) to scare off the deer from my grapes and raspberries.  And I'll be looking in my garden books, though they usually have things like elaborate arbors and charming little picket fences, neither of which I can afford (or have the energy for).  What I'm most interested in is:  What do YOU think?  Do you have clever, even quirky ideas for adding some charm to the utilitarian look?  Can anyone out there help me?  I'll be posting pictures as I continue to address this eyesore, both in the next week, and in the lovely seasons following.

O February! O Spring!

What a fabulous couple of days we've had, here on our mountain!  Yesterday, my day off, was about 60 degrees F and sunny.  I had a run with the dogs, went to yoga, and shopped at some of my favorite thrift shops.  I got some pretty candle holders (I've been burning candles and enjoying them a lot in the last few weeks), and then found Martha Stewart candles 50% off at Kmart, so I stocked up on red (which I'm using through Valentine's day or so) and green (which I'll use through St. Patrick's Day and on into springtime).  I also had breakfast and a latte at The Artist's Corner, my favorite little cafe and coffee shop.  I ran into a couple of parishioner-buddies and had the greatest talk about life after death with the woman, who lost both her parents in the last year or so.  I love talking about that stuff -- it's really all speculation, but what fun!

Today, another day off (a mentor of mine says, "Humans need two consecutive days off, Ann -- that's why God made weekends!" -- even though priests only generally get one day off), was about 65 degrees F and also sunny.  Another run with the dogs, long hours for morning pages and journaling, some errands, and an hour's worth of yard work: picking up sticks, uprooting a couple of huge clumps of grass that I've allowed to invade the bed that encircles my front porch, and laying some mulch to delineate that bed (which I'm making narrower, rather than the 4-5 feet that it originally was -- so much work to weed and maintain!).  I also picked up an entire wheelbarrow full of twigs that have fallen from the trees in my yard. 

I feel so good when I work outside!  I keep resolving to work a bit every day, even in the winter (I've got plenty of pruning and mulching that could still be done, even when it's frosty) -- but I never quite make it.  Still, I'll keep trying.  Even 15 minutes or a half-hour in the yard leaves me feeling productive and energized.  I've sure got hours and days and weeks of work that I want to do.  There are perennial beds to weed and mulch and re-shape; there is mulching to do on the paths of the veggie garden; there is planning to do for both perennials and veggies.  I've got a lot of pruning to do on trees that have never been pruned, and shrubs that are completely and horribly overgrown.

Here are a few things I found when I was working today:

Aren't these just the most cunning little baby iris?  Just when I'm amazed at the length and coldness of the winter, I clear away a few leaves, and this is what I find!  Of course, you can see the poor little tops have been frostbitten since they started growing -- but aren't they brave little soldiers?  I wish I were better about growing iris.  I can't seem to get them to bloom.  The ones I sorely neglect bloom under the edge of other shrubs, etc.  But when I try to dig, divide, re-plant so they'll be the healthiest, I end up with nothing -- or lovely foliage and absolutely not a sign of a bloom.  I seem to have some kind of "reverse green thumb:"  the things that people say, "It'll grow anywhere, you can't kill it!" -- those are the things that I kill with great regularity.  I've been trying to get an old fashioned hydrangea -- the "snowball bush" that grows huge and hearty around here -- to grow -- I've been given two healthy, vigorous starts by my neighbor -- and they die off.  Sigh.  On the other hand, many of the weird, exotic specimens I have in my yard (thanks to my predecessor) seem to flourish.  Go figure.  Here's a little something else:

These are little bitty baby flowers -- I think maybe last spring (after 5+ years here) I figured out what they really are -- but I've completely forgotten that.  So I just call them buttercups.  I think they're so sweet, and they grow over in my west yard, back behind the house near the fence line, where I seldom see them.  I only noticed them today because I brought my wheelbarrow this way to haul mulch.  I also found a piece of trim that fell off the house up near the roofline.  I'm going to have to find someone to replace it for me.  The guy who usually does this kind of repair -- the one who made my lovely little blue garden gate -- just had double heart bypass surgery, and he's not really up to hauling and climbing ladders and pounding nails yet.  Here's something else that's pretty sweet:

I have little snowdrops blooming and budding in several places in my yard, including beneath the ornamental cherry tree (which is badly in need of pruning) and in the bed where I have hostas and much-overgrown and invasive bamboo.  But these little sweeties were hidden away beneath some privet that has run wild and rampant (couldn't cut it without a chain saw), and as you can see, amid some sort of vine that I think is oriental bittersweet run amok.  All these little emerging flowers are like gifts, or like God's grace for me -- a sign of hope and the inevitable rolling round of seasons of growth and light.

Here's the final one for today, I promise:   These little baby daffodils brought a smile to my face, for sure.  I truly have been enjoying the winter weather.  We've had more snow and cold weather than we have in all the six years I've been here.  And even our snow on Wednesday was sweet, because I did know that by Friday it would be at least in the 50s, and the snow would be gone again.  But I must admit that these little signs that spring is truly around the corner are most welcome!  One thing I love about living on this Tennessee plateau is that I am truly delighted to see every single season come and go.  They are each long enough that I can enjoy them to the fullest, and then enjoy the advent of the one that follows.

Yesterday I had a truly "springtime experience":  when I brought the dogs out for their evening walk about 5 pm, I slipped in the mud and went straight down on hands and knees beneath the bird feeder!  Mud all over feet and knees, of course.  I was so mad at first, then I realized how much worse it could have been, had I fallen backward and hit my head or spine on cement.  Talk about "mud season!"  But the lack of damage (the mud was quickly undone in the washing machine) was truly foremost among my gratitudes last night.

I suppose there's one more sign of spring in my life: I've begun reading "Simple Abundance" again, and am enjoying the short daily readings.  I've also undertaken several new books.  One reading group is doing "Start Where You Are" by Pema Chodron; another is beginning "Our Endangered Values" by Jimmy Carter.  I'm reading a large tome on "Celtic Spirituality" (the Classics of Western Spirituality series), as well as "Vision Boards" and Julia Cameron's "The Writing Diet."  In March, I'll be doing a Lenten quiet day on "Women in the Bible," and in April I will be a presenter in the spring for a religious conference whose theme is interfaith approaches to prayer and meditation.  The book they've selected to study is "Five Voices Five Faiths: An Interfaith Primer."  So I'm reading that one, too.  New projects and study and books feels like a new start, and that feels like spring!  Tomorrow is also forecast to be sunny and in the 60s.  If I have the energy after church, I may try to burn my brush pile.  Happy earliest spring to all!