One Wild and Precious Life

The Mystified Gardener: Memorial Day Confession

Okay.  I've hidden my secret from you long enough.  My gardens are driving me wild (and they have gone almost perfectly wild, themselves).  My predecessor at this church was a passionate gardener, and something of a garden snob.  He was also an anglophile, and so planted lovely little English cottage garden beds all over about a half-acre of yard here.  He also planted some beautiful and unusual specimen plants, as well as a cartload of roses.  When I arrived, the gardens had only been neglected for about a year and a half, and my first summer, I actually managed, by dint of very hard labor, to whip them all into nearly-perfect shape.  They were a delight.  I performed a wedding that summer, and proudly invited the bridal party into my gardens for photographs.

Then I became enamored with my veggie garden, and the flower beds became seriously neglected.  I labored long and hard on that little plot, enlarging, tilling, fertilizing, planting, harvesting.  I installed a sunken fence, to guard against tunneling pests.  I lined it with chicken wire to keep out bunnies.  I installed raised beds for quicker warming and earlier planting.  I mulched paths with everything from landscape fabric to newspaper to wood chips.  It was a labor of love and great satisfaction.

Last spring and summer were very busy for me, finally culminating in that long bout with allergies, bronchitis that was very near to pneumonia, and nearly 2 months on the sofa prior to my trip to Italy in September.  It was all I could do to get to church and my office hours; there was nothing, nothing left for the gardens.

As you may know, this spring I fought the beginnings of the same battle with my allergies, but I was determined to learn to manage them, not be sick for months like last year.  I weathered the worst of pollen season fairly well, certainly better than last summer, but the gardens have gone begging.  And today I feel the urge to get to them.  I've decided that my gardening really requires two characters:  "Farmer Ann" and "The Genteel Lady Gardener" -- unfortunately, rather more of the former, and less of the latter, at least right now.

I will get to the flower gardens shortly, but if I want any crop at all (I'm already nearly a month late getting any garden veggies in, and have to forego cool-weather stuff like peas, onions, potatoes, lettuce, & spinach completely), I have to act quickly.  I have one surviving tomato plant (from a batch I bought several weeks ago), and can still buy more, I suppose.  It's really tomatoes that I love, anyway.

But here is what I have to contend with:

Yes, this is one part of my shameful secret (the other part is my flower beds, and you'll see those, in time).

The weather is mostly cloudy, with rain always threatening.  Even if it does rain, I want to get some work done out there.  I'm about to "suit up:"  getting ready to garden in Tennessee is never an easy process.  There's old, "mudproof" clothing and shoes to don, then insect repellent and a cap to soak up sweat.  Without bug repellent I'll be annoyed by many flying insects and eaten alive by chiggers.  Then gloves and my tool basket to dig out tough stuff.  My list of chores includes:

1. Pulling as many weeds as I can, loading them into my wheelbarrow, and hauling them off to the end of the yard where I dump green stuff as "landfill."
2. Dismantling the raised beds I spent weeks installing a couple of years ago.
3. Tilling up all the soil, if I can get my tiller to start (haven't used it in years).
4. Replacing the fence, including digging a small trench to bury the bottom 6-8" down.  I pulled it up to reduce the size of the garden (should probably have just left it in place and dismantled whatever beds I didn't want to cultivate any longer, but it's too late for that -- no sense crying over spilt milk).
5. Mounding up beds to plant, re-mulching paths with wood chips.

So I've got my work cut out for me as "Farmer Ann."  It's probably more than I can do in a week, much less a day, or a few hours (my energy won't hold up for more than a couple of hours at a time).  Look for pictures later today or tomorrow of whatever I manage to accomplish.  You're my means of accountability.  The "mystified" part today is:  How did I ever let it all get this bad (answer:  benign neglect)?  And how will I ever get it cleaned up (answer: one weed, one board, one trench at a time, over hours and days).  I can know those two answers in my head, but I still feel mystified by it all!  Wish me luck!

Holiday Weekend

Wow!  I checked a lot of categories; I guess I have a lot to say tonight.  It's the eve of a holiday for me -- not exactly a "holiday weekend," as my title implies, but a day off my normal routine, at least.  Ordinarily, it would have been Friday, Saturday, and Monday off, with only the morning service at church.  But this week I had a wedding rehearsal on Friday (with rehearsal dinner afterward), the wedding itself Saturday morning (with reception luncheon afterward), and two sermons to write, one for the wedding, one for Trinity Sunday at church.  So all I get is a day, but ah, what a lovely day I've got planned!  But sigh -- I don't think the weather is going to cooperate -- 60% chance of rain tomorrow. 

When I was a little girl, my mother and I would go camping on Memorial Day Weekend; it was the opening of the summer camping and recreation season.  Our habitual haunt was Raccoon Lake State Recreation Area, about 1/2 hour from our home.  We would set up our tent in a campsite just inside the edge of the woods, so there was plenty of shade, and plenty of trees from which my mother would string rope to hang large sheets of plastic.  The plastic sheltered our campsite from rain, but also from any debris that might fall from the trees.  It made a cozy, covered "living space" under which we'd place our picnic tables, our food and supplies, and our Coleman camp stove.  The campfire would be outside the plastic "roof," of course.  My camping memories are lovely ones, but it nearly always rained on Memorial Day weekend.  There was usually enough sunshine and warmth to make the adventure worthwhile, but yes, we got rain, too.  Memorial Day Weekend was always punctuated with the plip, plip, plip of raindrops on the plastic overhead, with a wet sleeping bag where our canvas tent got wet, and the need to wear warm jeans, socks, and a sweatshirt, rather than the brand new swimsuit and flip flops I had for the summer. So tomorrow will remind me of my childhood camping days, I fear.

Some of the things I've planned I can still do inside, rather than outside on my porch:

A little creative work can certainly be done inside, though I confess that it really feels more like carefree play when I'm on the sunny back porch.

But there are also lots of things that can't happen inside, and almost certainly won't happen.  I can't really burn my brush pile at all, because we got a couple of downpours today.  It really takes 2-3 days of dry weather to dry out my brush well enough to burn, especially since some of it is still fairly green and recent trimming, and some fair-size logs that I pulled out of the wood chips that were given to me.

I'm not going to want to wrestle wood-chip mulch for my labyrinth in the rain.

I'm not sure even one whole day could make much progress in my veggie garden.  I was actually going to pay someone to come and help me clear out the jungle that it has become, but he called a couple of days ago and said he's been in an auto accident, and now he really can't help me.  If I still want help, I'm going to have to find someone else.  Of course, the pouring rain is a pretty good time to pull weeds -- lots of nice, soft earth, if I don't mind getting filthy and soaked (but that's the gardener's lot, anyway!).

So this probably isn't going to happen for me tomorrow, but I may get something done:

Oh, my, but it looks so lovely and orderly!

But perhaps I'll get a run with the dogs in between rain showers.  My weight loss is continuing; I'm still keeping my rules about increasing activity and eating salads and not drinking alcohol (though I had 2 glasses of wine at the wedding rehearsal dinner).  I'm a little frustrated because I seem to have hit a plateau last week, despite good behavior (I do expect it after 14 pounds, and am surprised it didn't come sooner!), and now over the weekend, I ate and drank more than I should have, even though I came home and was a perfect little paragon of dietary virtue.  So that scale isn't really budging just now -- but it will again, O it will!  A new indulgence I've discovered is Crystal Light Sunrise Tangerine Strawberry.  Oh, yum, yum.  I've known about Crystal Light since the first time I went to Weight Watchers in 1989, but I never tried it until just a couple of weeks ago.  Oh, my.  Oh, yum.  It kind of reminds me of having a pitcher of Kool-Aid around when I was a young married girl.  My only caution is that I can just about overdose on Aspartame, if I'm not careful.  And despite what I heard at Weight Watchers oh, these many years ago, it really doesn't substitute for good, clear, filtered water.

Today, of course, I preached on the doctrine of the Trinity, since it's Trinity Sunday.  If you're even slightly interested, I highly recommend Karen Armstrong's latest, The Case for God.  She does a really, really great job of describing the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, which was originally intended as a spiritual exercise that, rather than being fully understood, was meant to show us how utterly incomprehensible God actually is.  We were never meant to understand the Trinity.  And furthermore, faith originally had little to do with intellectual comprehension and agreement, but rather with loyalty and commitment.  Whether I understand the Trinity, whether I agree with the Church's doctrine of the Trinity, I stand behind and within it, and I commit my whole being to the Triune God and the teachings of Christ.  That's all that really matters!

While we're talking about books, I'm also listening to a really great one.  Most of my fiction "reading" is done in the car as I drive on my daily errands, visits, and meetings.  I'm currently listening to The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  It's one I can barely "put down" -- I want to just keep driving and driving so I can hear more and more of this story.

So tomorrow I plan to sleep in (which seems to mean about 7:30 these days, since I go to bed so early), get some exercise, and do some creative work.  I plan to play a lot and work just a little.  I might get some yard work done.  I feel very grateful for this good little life of mine.  I hope you all have something delicious planned for your day off!

Well, Okay, It's Pentecost...

...and I'm finally back!  Don't even ask me where I've been, what's taken so long.  I've been mostly around, but distracted by ever so very many things.  I did attend a short conference in Newark last month, quite inspiring and informative.  My role there was as Board Chair for our church's Jubilee Ministry, the Cumberland Adult Reading Council.

Otherwise, I've been struck down with allergies for about 6 weeks.  Now, I'm not someone who has had allergies, but as I get older (and yes, fatter), these things bother me more and more.  I got to feeling absolutely sick with them -- in fact, I thought I was sick, at first.  Of course, I was ignoring the yellow film of pollen that coated every inch of my house, inside and out.  It was my favorite season to have the windows open, the air and heat both turned off, and fresh air blowing through.  When I finally realized that allergies were the problem, not illness, I decided that my focus needed to be on learning to manage them, since it seemed that I would have to live with them.  Everyone I spoke to said that the level of allergens in the air has been extraordinary this year, probably due to a long winter, a cool, delayed spring -- and everything deciding to bloom all at once!

So I read up on allergy management on the web, and I asked everyone I know.  I closed up my house and turned the fan permanently on (to filter and re-filter the air), I dusted my house thoroughly (well, I got my cleaning lady to dust and vacuum carefully while I was at the conference), I bought a neti pot, and I went in search of an antihistamine that didn't immobilize me.  Claritin-D is my magic pill.  I do know that different brands work for different people, but this one works for me.  Once I could put aside my resentment at even having allergies at all, and having to close up my house during the beautiful springtime, then I could accept the fact that lots and lots of people have to live with allergies and learn to manage them.  I was determined not to be incapacitated as I was for 2 months last summer.  And I did it!  I got through the very worst of the worst of allergy season.

Presently, though, I've been off my antihistamines for 4 days, and I can even lie down to sleep again (previously I had to be propped up to a nearly sitting position to sleep, to avoid that postnasal cough that laid me so low last year).  I've been sleeping like a rock, 8 hours straight and waking up groggy like I could sleep 8 more.  It feels so good to get good rest!

And I've been working outside.  The electric company gave me 2 truckloads of wood chips from their trimming up and down our highway, so I've got lots of mulch for paths and my labyrinth.  I've also started work to reduce the size of one of my front beds -- to much garden for me to maintain.  I have thriving black walnut trees that I have to uproot with a pitchfork and mattock -- the squirrels harvest the black walnuts that grow profusely around my house and the church, and they like to bury them in my flower beds!  Everything has been so unkempt, but this has been a glorious year for flowers!  Here are a few that I just shot today:

I think you can click on any of these to get bigger pictures.  This is just one tiny bit of what's blooming in my gardens -- you can see that the flowers are flourishing.  My veggie garden is another story, however.  Yes, I have rhubarb, raspberries, herbs, grapes, and one tiny, neglected asparagus that has gone to fern.  But I'm completely overgrown with ragweed, thistle, and other nasties.  I've got no annual garden veggies in, not even my beloved tomatoes.  Between allergies, busy-ness at church, the half-moved fence that I haven't finished, I just have not had the energy to tackle it.  In fact, I'm going to pay someone to renovate it for me!  I may get a few late crops in this year.  I'm so ashamed of it that I won't even take pictures of it.  But, as Anne Sexton really did say, "There is hope.  There is hope everywhere.  Today God gives milk, and I have the pail."  Things may yet happen.

And here are a few signs of hope:

Lots of promise here.  It looks like it'll be a good year for the sweet-tart English apples in the back, for grapes, for the golden delicious apples in the driveway, and yes, for wild blackberries in the part of the yard that never gets cleaned out, the part that faces the highway.  So yep, lots of promise, indeed.  Hope, indeed.

Oh, yeah, at church we also doubled the size of our gravel parking lot in two long, hot days:

 

The men's group also threw in some weeding and mowing with the job they did on the parking lot, amazing guys that they are.  I spent the first day fetching lunch orders, making fresh-brewed sweet and unsweet tea, serving donuts as a mid-morning snack, and making sure the water was iced and ready for thirsty, sweaty workers.  You'll have to enlarge these pictures to really see what's going on, but in the third picture, down by the dump truck, there's a tulip-poplar tree they left standing -- just for me!  They removed 3 other trees from that little cluster -- all growing too close together.  I hate removing healthy trees, but decided to bite my tongue, as the men were doing such a great ministry to the church.  What I discovered was that by being very meek, I won one healthy tree!  It was worth it.  Big-mouth little sister that I am, it has taken me nearly 58 years to learn the art of keeping my mouth shut once in a while!

We also had one heck of a great strawberry festival, the 3rd Saturday in May!

A really good time was had by all, we fed a record number of people, and also raised a record number of dollars for the church from this event.  It was a ton of work, but we all work together, and it really does bring us closer together as a parish.  I remind them each year of how it's such a clear sign of the Spirit working within and among us.

And finally, I want to tell you about my big project for the year, which actually subsumes a number of projects within its scope:  I intend to lose weight.  A lot of weight.  I reached a spectacular, horrifying, all-time high weight on March 5, 2010.  I got on the scale for what must have been the first time in months, and I almost passed out from horror at the number I saw.  No, I'm not going to even tell you what it was, but it was way too high.  Mind-numbingly, health-threateningly high.  And it took me a few weeks to figure out what I was going to do, but it was like waking up from a long, bad dream.  I realized, really realized for the first time that my mother's sister had Type I diabetes, and I see relatives all around me developing Type II.  I'm just pushing my luck and asking for trouble here.  I also realized that in 2 years I'll be 60.  Why would I head into a new decade, and into at least the threshold of old age, without giving myself every health advantage that I possibly can?  Why am I doing this to myself?

So I'll share my simple strategy.  It's not brain surgery -- we all know what to do.

• I've given up alcohol altogether for now.  I had a bad habit of drinking daily, or nearly so -- and I think it was playing hell with my metabolism and the way my body was processing carbohydrates.
• I've taken up activity again: walking and running with my dogs, yard work, yoga classes.  Since the time I was so sick last summer, my vigorous activity was sporadic to nonexistent.  No more.  The older I get, the more crucial activity is for my weight loss.
• I eat at least one salad every single day (with a very few exceptions).  I need the veggies.
• I'm drinking lots and lots of water and other non-carbonated liquids.
• I'm really working at getting plenty of rest.
• I'm thinking about trying Overeaters Anonymous in one or more of its several incarnations.
  

How's that for a start?  I have to say, I'm down 14 pounds from where I was on March 5.  I'm down a full size in clothes.  Now that I've really started the journey, about the first of this month, I'm losing at the rate of 3 pounds a week.  The more I lose, the more I'm motivated to lose.  The more I move, the more I'm motivated to move.  I hope I can lose at this rate for a while longer, though I know it will slow down as I lose more.  I hope to reach my goal weight by the end of the year.  What a gift I'm giving myself!

And my owls?  Three of the four are flying now.  Max, Pattison, and Austin are all flying as soon as the sun sets.  I enjoy the chat room community there, as well.  And little Wesley should fly within the next day or two.  Certainly by the end of June, they'll all be fully fledged and gone from the owl box.  I feel a little sad to think about the end of my journey with these owls.  I've been watching them since the day after the oldest one hatched.  I've seen them go from blind, pink, naked little hatchlings to darling, fuzzy little chicks, to nearly fully feathered adolescent owlets.  I've seen them take their first steps outside the box, seen them fly for the first time.  Now they'll learn to hunt, and then they'll be off on their own.

So yes, it's Pentecost.  It's the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter.  Things quiet down around the church this time of year, and I begin to think about vacations and fresh tomatoes and cold glasses of unsweet iced tea.  I told my congregation this morning that Pentecost is the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit: the time when the Church received the last tool it needed to get on with living a Resurrection life.  And I feel that I'm living an abundant, fulfilling, Resurrection life myself.  I hope I'll post here more often this summer.

Most of all, I hope that all who are reading this are having happy, abundant lives, too.