Time’s Fun When You Are Having Flies

Time’s fun when you’re having flies.
~Kermit the Frog

Time flies like the wind; fruit flies like a banana.
~attributed to Groucho Marx

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It’s not easy being green unless you also have a dorsal brown stripe and live in a box of ripe Asian pears on the front porch that has become a metropolis of Drosophila (fruit flies).  Then you are in frog heaven with breakfast, lunch and dinner within reach of your tongue any time.

And the Drosophila happily move in to the kitchen any time some pears are brought in.  The apple cider vinegar killing fields I’ve set up on the kitchen counter are capturing dozens daily, but their robust reproducing (which I carefully studied in undergraduate biology lab) outstrips the effectiveness of my coffee filter funnel death trap lures.

Fruit fly season too shall pass.  Time flies and time’s fun when you’re having frogs.

The Forgiving Worm

We don’t think of worms very kindly. They tend to show up where we don’t want or expect them, as if they have no right to be living in vegetables (pea pods), fruits (cherries and apples) or other foods we like to eat. We think they should just stay put in the compost pile where they belong.

Worms definitely have an “ick” factor, especially when they surprise us, and that is hard for any creature to live down.

Yet worms are shy and lowly: when unexpectedly unearthed they dive for cover quickly if exposed to the light. It is helpful to remember the worm in the soil is critical to the health of the earth we stand on: enriching, aerating and fertilizing everything they touch so plants can grow and provide the food we need.

I think we owe worms an apology. And true to their nature, worms are very forgiving, whether they forgive the plow that turns their home upside down, or the bird that pulls them out of the ground for dinner, or the human who uses them on a hook to catch fish.

After all, worms know they win out in the end.

Blooming Where Planted

I have always hoped to be a serious gardener, and over the years have made not-very-serious efforts at it.   During college and medical school I owned so many house plants that walking into my room felt like a botanical excursion, then we grew the flowers from seed that we used at our wedding, and before we had children we kept a truly ambitious vegetable garden.  Each seed catalog was studied and varieties surveyed, seedlings started in a sun room, each plant nurtured and protected, the harvest preserved with great care, shared and eaten with appreciation.

Then life happened.  I’m not sure exactly what intervened but it had something to do with raising children, a demanding job, a full barn of four legged critters, and aging parents.  Despite a move to a good size farm with an orchard, large garden spot and plenty of room for flower beds, we couldn’t muster the energy to do what needed to be done to create blooms.   Flowers took a back seat in our lives, with only a few predictable bulbs and perennials showing up year after year.

But I’m the granddaughter of a woman who had a large greenhouse full of hanging fuschia baskets that she tended and sold, and the daughter of a woman who left no side of her house or fence line without a border of carefully planned and managed flower gardens.  The colorful blooms have always called to me from the florist shops and gardening centers.

Now we have the time and energy to return to the nurturing of the soil, to make things beautiful and productive, to someday feed our grandchildren’s souls and stomachs as I was fed as a child.  I’m filled with gratitude for the loveliness I see hanging outside my windows.  

I’m simply blooming with happiness at being planted here.

Potato Weather

photo by Tim McCord in Entiat, Washington

“Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.”
Mrs. Gibb― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Tonight is super moon night –the full moon combined with the annual closest approach to the earth and it did not disappoint.  The orb was orange and optically oversized on the horizon, looking ever so much like a search light trained over the landscape, creating moon shadows and moon worshippers everywhere.  The moon was made for hankerings of all kinds and in my case, I’m hankering for a new crop of potatoes.  I’ve cooked up the last dug up 7 months ago.

The garden is ready for the spuds, just newly rotatilled with worm-happy compost.  The dirt feels fluffy in the hand, and the air is still cool on the face.  Between a full moon waning and brisk spring weather, it is time to plant potatoes, eyes up, anxious to sprout through to the surface and reach for the sky and the moon.

I have no idea what the moon has to do with potato planting.  I only know that back when people paid close to attention to such things, it mattered when they planted.  Maybe the search light moonbeams brought those sprouts out of the ground just a little faster, with due haste and God speed.   Maybe the accelerando tidal pull of a close super moon brings
us all a little nearer to the surface: to grow, to flourish, to howl moonward from the safety of the evanescent shadows that vanish, dissolved by the sun, at daybreak.

They danced by the light of the moon,
          The moon,
          The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
Edward Lear–The Owl and the PussyCat

For Finding A Job To Do

Rosie the Riveter by Norman Rockwell

Labor Day is a holiday that has always been a bit muddled in my mind as I don’t come from family with activist labor movement union members.  Instead this day recalls the extra energy and nerves before returning back to school, trying to decide what to wear the next day, finding the perfect lunch box, watching the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, and sewing all the last minute buttons onto my home made clothing.

Now, as an adult considering the significance of Labor Day, I’m grateful that I still have a job that I enjoy.  I have one less job than I had a year ago on Labor Day due to budget cuts at our local hospital.  As a result of this recent change in my life, I have understanding for those whose jobs have disappeared in this economic recession, and who truly long for work.  I know a number of people who would give anything for permanent employment on this Labor Day.

John Gresham, the attorney turned best selling author many times over, wrote an interesting opinion piece for the New York Times here today recounting his own journey through many varied jobs during his life time.  It got me thinking about my own path of employment over the years.

I started at age eight picking wild blackberries for 3 cents a pound for the frozen food processor down the road.  This company prepared fruit salads for airplane meals, and they particularly wanted hand-picked fresh blackberries to add to other more conventional fruit. A good day for me was fifteen pounds.  It was a very good day for the fruit processor as I found out later, as the berries were worth 10 cents a pound on the market.  But as an eight year old trying to earn money to buy my own horse, I was highly motivated even though my arms and legs were scratched and bleeding at the end of the day.

Primarily I picked the larger Evergreen and Himalayan berries so they formed a pound more quickly.  The highly treasured and harder to find tiny mountain blackberries no larger than my littlest fingernail that grew close to the ground remain a gourmet item that are worth far more.   It would have taken all summer to find fifteen pounds of those so those precious berries were reserved for my mother’s special pies.

From my blackberry beginnings, I moved on to the following:

Blueberry picker
Garden weeder
Dog and cat sitter
Babysitter–several full time summer jobs taking care of children for working mothers
Head Start assistant (volunteer)
Dental assistant and receptionist
Nurses’ Aide in a rest home (evening and night shifts, summers and school breaks)
Part time church organist (volunteer)
Student Adviser in my college major (two years)
Teaching Assistant in four different college classes (two years)
Note Taker in six different college classes (two years)
Research Assistant in Africa (volunteer)
Research Assistant in medical school (stipend)
Internship and Residency at Group Health (three years)
Family Practice at Group Health, private practice, locum tenens (6 years)
Occupational Health, aluminum and oil refineries (two years part time)
Geriatric home visits for home bound elderly (one year part time)
Medical Director for a start up community health clinic (2 years part time)
Medical Director for a family planning clinic (3 years part time)
Forensic examiner for over 1000 cases of child abuse (10 years)
County detox doctor and chemical dependency attending physician (25 years)
Medical Director, University Student Health Clinic (21 years and counting)
Self employed farmer and manure picker-upper (25 years and counting)
Self employed writer (4 years and counting)

I’ve worked as many as four different part time jobs at once because that is what I had to do.  I’m grateful each job taught me something new I needed to know.

I’m also grateful that when I go out to pick blackberries today for a cobbler, I’m no longer working for 3 cents a pound.  But at the time it was as good a start as any young worker with a goal in mind could have hoped for.

For Summer Preserved

When we bought Walnut Hill from Morton and Bessie Lawrence, I was determined to do what Bessie had done even well into her seventies–can and preserve fruits and vegetables and store them in the root cellar dug into the slope 30 yards above the house.  It was a small shingled building with an upper story that was immediately dubbed “the bunk house” by our children, a perfect wood floored place to play and pretend.  The thick walled root cellar below was entirely underground, entered only by lifting up a “trap door” like Auntie Em’s cyclone cellar in “The Wizard of Oz” movie.  Then there were several descending steps to a double door –one that opened out and another thicker heavy door that pushed in.  Entering that dark place was mixed with apprehension as well as anticipation.  I was uncertain what critter may unexpectedly surprise me on the inside–bullfrog?  snake?  but the blast of cool air on a hot summer day was always a welcome relief.  There was one hanging light bulb in the middle with a pull chain, and once the insides of the cellar were illuminated, a colorful trove appeared from the shadows, lined up on shelves like the ghostly discoveries in King Tut’s tomb.

These were not gilded treasures, but the kind that were lovingly and carefully harvested, washed, boiled and preserved in the midst of a sweaty summer, to be savored during dinners served on the coldest of winter days.  The potatoes lay in the cool darkness, not tempted to turn green or sprout, and the “keeper” apples and pears remained firm and tasty.   Even in the coldest of winter blasts, the root cellar contents never froze or rotted.  It was the best refrigeration system imaginable and didn’t cost a thing to maintain.

Over the years my commitment to the huge job of canning waned as my work schedule got tighter and the price of fresh apricots, cherries and peaches rose. I found excellent already canned fruit wholesale for less than the price it would cost to purchase and can it myself.  I discovered dehydrating for our orchard apples and pears and garden vegetables so I stopped using the root cellar for food storage a few years ago.    The upper bunk house had filled with boxes and old furniture, the roof began to leak and recently the wood floor rotted and collapsed into the cellar.   It was time to put our efforts into preserving the building itself.

The roof has been replaced and we have two strong young men working on restoring the floor, and instead of the four inches of shaving that was used as insulation between the floor and the ceiling of the cellar a century ago, we’ll use modern insulation to protect that underground coolness.  We’ll build sturdy new shelves and bins, and it will be time to fill the many empty canning jars that have stood unused for too many years.

Root cellars have now been discovered as the new “green” way–no electricity needed to preserve foods for months at a time.  The old timers like the Lawrences knew a thing or two about how to bring summer to the table in the dead of winter and it is our privilege to preserve that way of life for the next generation.

For Being in Full Bloom

"Lynden" hanging basket from VanderGiessen Nursery

I have always hoped to be a serious gardener, and over the years have made not-very-serious efforts at it.   During college and medical school I owned so many house plants that walking into my room felt like a botanical excursion, we grew the flowers from seed that we used at our wedding, and before we had children we kept a truly ambitious vegetable garden.  Each seed catalog was studied and varieties surveyed, seedlings started in a sun room, each plant nurtured and protected, the harvest preserved with great care, shared and eaten with appreciation.

Then life happened.  I’m not sure exactly what intervened but it had something to do with raising children, a demanding job, a full barn of four legged critters, and aging parents.  Despite a move to a good size farm with an orchard, large garden spot and plenty of room for flower beds, I couldn’t muster the energy to do what needed to be done to create blooms.   Flowers took a back seat in my mind and in my life, with only a few predictable bulbs and perennials showing up year after year.

But I’m the granddaughter of a woman who had a large greenhouse full of hanging fuschia baskets that she tended and sold, and the daughter of a woman who left no side of her house or fence line without a border of carefully planned and managed flower gardens.  The colorful blooms have always called to me from the florist shops and gardening centers.

Yesterday, the siren call reached their peak and we came home with three hanging baskets in full bloom, created like a painting from a palette of tiny seedlings a few short months ago.    I’ve known the young man who created these floral masterpieces since he was in kindergarten, having watched him grow up, get married and take over the family business.  Now he is a botanical artist, something I have always aspired to, but have never achieved.

Someday I may be able to return to the nurturing of the soil, to make things beautiful and productive, feed my grandchildren’s souls and stomachs as I was fed as a child.  But for now, I’m filled with gratitude for the loveliness I see hanging outside my windows.   I’m simply blooming with happiness.

For a Self-Weeding Garden

Our garden has been planted for several weeks now, and the vegetables are emerging and declaring themselves in tidy rows.

So too, the weeds are reappearing in their usual chaotic and careless fashion, threatening to overtake the orderliness of the garden in a demonstration of chlorophyllous entropy.  It will soon become the battle of the sprouts, linear vs. scattershot.  Our side will need reinforcements.

So we are compelled to intervene to salvage the dignity of the domesticated seed at risk of being overwhelmed by indefatigable weeds that run wild.  If left unchecked, the weeds would happily choke out the peas and lettuce and carrots, for no other reason than to be able to say it can be done.

Truly, the only harvest left unscathed would be the radishes, which have perfected the art of growing faster than weeds in the race to maturity.    No weed would dare to threaten the ambition of a radish.

Only the gardener can dare to take a bite–always surprisingly, the wily radish bites back.