“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
~Leonardo DaVinci
Jul 012010
PDF Feb 272010
“We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on the planet seems aware of this strange, powerful taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever.”
– Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
So many of you still have your gardens under a heavy blanket of snow that I do sometimes feel a bit guilty, whining about not being able to get out and garden as I’d like by the end of February. But we can all experience the sun now, and it’s fun to realize that we all regularly participate in this unacknowledged, universal taboo, in every season, on every continent, and at almost every latitude.
Of course excepting the Arctic Circle where human beings are now experiencing perpetual Polar Night or Polar Twilight. I’m in awe of the psychological fortitude required to live out this season in such places. Comparatively, I’m a total winter weakling.
Today the sun has been with us, but has not managed to overcome the deep chill in the air. It’s so cold I’m back to all my January behaviors, wanting to hunker down inside with a meaty novel and a cozy blanket, even resorting to making a cup of hot chocolate once twilight settled in the hollow. My current read is John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, although I do highly recommend the origin of the above quote, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; both are winners of the Pulitzer Prize.
The cats seem to be responding to other signals somehow, spending as much time as possible outdoors, Booty traipsing back inside coated with shimmering mica dust, Leo bringing back the results of his renewed energy for stalking prey, and both of them beginning the infamous spring shed. (Spring is truly the season where I heart my vacuum cleaner.)
And the garden, too, is responding to some cues I must be missing in this unseasonable chill. The rosemary is perking up and possibly preparing to flower, the garlic shoots are suddenly reaching for the sky, and the recently-thinned radishes are fattening up, as F. verified with an impressive Daikon he sampled today.
One pea is even sprouting. I’m hoping he’s the advanced outlier on a bell curve of peas that not only survived the snows and cold nights, but might feel right at home in such conditions. Peas, you will remember, are my new vegetable to try growing in 2010, and as such I have no idea what to expect. Our last recommended planting date for bringing them to maturity before the heat sets in was February 15th.
This one may be a freak who survived against all odds — or the sign that not all is lost. Even so, if the peas fail utterly, I have other seeds to plant in their place.
In the garden, it is hard to lose it all; isn’t it? The flow of life and possibility never ceases, even if we’re stuck contemplating it only in the mind’s eye while snuggled under a blanket.
Feb 052010
Two ‘Miragreen’ garden peas in the bottom of their planting hole.
Wednesday morning, as I washed my kitchen windows, I felt the warmth of the sun on my left shoulder. It was not that anemic light I’ve grown accustomed to over the winter months, but the rays had persistence and strength — even weight, as if the sun were laying a gentle hand on me. But of course, this particular hand has an incomparable touch, comprised of equal parts youth, generosity, new love, and giddy delight.
Later that afternoon when my sister had joined me, she suddenly stood up from where she’d been bent over sprinkling pea inoculant down a freshly prepared row. Her brow was furrowed as though she were thinking Big Thoughts.
“What?” I said, seeing the look. I continued to hoe up stubborn winter weeds that had taken hold in the nearby pathway.
“The sun,” she said slowly, and paused, squinting up at the sky.
“I know,” I said immediately, excited that someone else had noticed it, felt its subtle weight.
But that wasn’t what she’d noticed. Not exactly.
“It’s yellow,” she said. “The winter white is fading out of it.”
I had to smile. My sister, the visual artist, had noticed the fine seasonal gradations of the sunlight’s color, whereas I was focused on the feeling of it striking my skin. There is nothing new about this pattern at all. We may have been playing the same variations on a theme since childhood, actually.
Still, it was good to get confirmation that the change was real, not just wishful thinking on my part.
But just in case we got any ideas that this newborn, slightly more golden sunlight was here to stay, two reminders of its inconstancy arrived in quick succession. One came in the person of our friendly UPS delivery man walking around the side of the house to find us (voices carry in our little, secluded hollow). When he saw my sister kneeling in the mulch and me up to my wrists in dirt, he laughed and said that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be so easily “tricked” into believing spring was here.
What he didn’t realize, however, is that I am ready and willing to be misled if it will result in another glorious day like that so early in the growing season.
And the other began yesterday evening and is continuing this morning: flash-flood inducing rains.
Remember how a river ran through it? The river is back in full force, its rippling current carrying away the soil, compost, and four inches of heavy mulch that I’d put down to try and hold the land in place, sweeping away even F.’s careful attempt at a retaining wall at the lower end.
Garlic bulbs lie exposed on the surface of the bed, stark white dots on the banks of the ever-widening stream seen clearly from the newly-cleaned kitchen window. And I’d just said on our sunny day out how proud of them I was, how quickly they’d recovered from their trauma and put out new green shoots.
Sigh. I do feel in need of a sunny pat on the shoulder when I see the ongoing destruction, part deux.
