The Inertia Kid

A body at rest tends to stay at rest, which is why it is so hard for me to get outside and do non-gardening chores like cutting wood with my chain saw.

Consequently, I have to think of the job in such a way that the first step appears easy.  Thus it is that I fill the saw with gas and chain bar oil before putting it away.  I air up the tires on the cart and Rosie, my lawn tractor.

I have to have in mind specific wood to cut.  Usually, it's a promising find that I discovered on a long walk around my ten acres.

Hickory Acres is the name I gave to my place, for all the mature nut trees growing here.  I should have called it Hillside Hills, on account of there is hardly a flat spot on the property.

There are several huge sycamore trees growing in the stream beds between the hilly fields.  They occasionally drop a nice limb, my current goal.  The limb was caught up in some grape vines until I pulled it down a couple of days ago.  All was in readiness.

These limbs are a favorite of mine, with their interesting knobby growth that turns pink in places after they die.  Sycamores are beautiful trees, with their white bark and little balls of seeds that shower down in early spring.

I am not a tree-hugger, on account of poison ivy, but I do talk with them and give them a little pat with my leather gloves.  I believe they know how I appreciate these limbs for my wood stove fire.  I always say thank you.

The plan was to zip up the hill to the next field, get the limb cut up, put it in the cart and bring it back, sort of an assault tactic, the way I shop.  Get it and get out. 

I had mowed this spot between the fields before, but I didn't keep it up last fall.  Now, Rosie's wheels spun on the thick clumps of fescue.  After several unsuccessful runs, I disconnected the cart.  That let me mow the path to above the sycamore, then back down to fetch the cart.

After that, it was merely a matter of fighting my way through the greenbriar, blackcap and rose thorns to cut up the prize limb.  Carrying the wood back uphill to the cart gave me some healthy exercise.  My hefty steel-toed boots added to the workout, as did the sneaky grape vines that clutched at my ankles.

From there, it was easy to find other limbs to cut.

For me, a late start is essential.  The other side of inertia, the body in motion part, is also true.  Once I'm outdoors, I never want to come back inside until the light starts to fade.  In winter, the sun sets around five, so a start at one in the afternoon and finishing up at four o'clock is perfect for the Inertia Kid.

An Odd Christmas Tradition

Years ago, when my children were young, a peculiar Christmas tradition was started.  After the presents were all opened and things quieted down, my older daughter Isabelle and I opened the new seed catalogs.  We lived on a farm then, a farm that was lost in the flood of 1993.  Let's not speak of that heartbreak.

We gathered all our seed packets around us, in front of the wood stove, and made gardening plans.  We checked our notebooks for previous planting successes, if any.  With a 90 by 90 foot garden of fabulous loam enriched by goat manure and straw bedding, it was hard to be restrained.  It was slightly more than a grandiose idea, which resulted in canning and freezing enough to feed many families for a couple of years.

One year, we were especially profligate with the tomato starts, speaking of a dozen of this and that variety, until we wound up putting in eighty plants for our family of five. 

We were to learn that being comfortable in front of the fire turned out to be a lot different than weeding in the blazing summer sun.  This lesson is forgotten annually.

Izzy  is a mom now and we each have our gardens.  She was the only one of my three children to inherit the unfortunate addictive gardening gene.  My other daughter, Lissa,  and my son Chris cannot stand the smell of cooking tomatoes. 

The seed catalog project starts for me on Christmas Day and continues unabated for an indefinite time, during which I fill out orders and stick  Post-Its on pages.  Even though I won't start any seeds until February at the earliest, it is a very important time for me.  I must not be alone, because that's when they send the catalogs.

This is Where I Came In

My earliest memories are of living with my mom at my grandparents' house.  I later learned that it was during the War.

Today, we are bombarded with every known or imagined risk to children, and yet we hear nothing about the dangers of exposing the very young to greenhouses.

So it was that I was allowed to go next door to Mr. G's greenhouse, where I believe I was exposed to greenhouse microbes, some the size of BB's, that were to infect me all of my life.

Mr. and Mrs. Glascock were our elderly neighbors.  He made his living growing things.  I don't remember much about her, because she was indoors a lot, perhaps cooking.  She was nice, too.

Years later, my Grandma Belle told me that she would come to fetch me and find me quite naked, a little blue-eyed, towheaded Child of Nature playing in the greenhouse.  It was warm in there, with the moist air smelling of peat and sawdust.  Clothes served no function at all.

Perhaps Mr. G regarded me like a stray cat that followed him around.  He busied himself with filling little pots with soil, his old brown hands sounding dry against the clay.

This was no hobby greenhouse.  It was magnificent.  There were long cement tables for the pots of flowers.  The sawdust aisles felt so good on my bare feet.

I don't remember the naked episodes, but I do recall, when I must have been a bit older, he let me turn the huge wheel to crank the roof glass vents open.

Sitting on a stool in the small cellar adjoining the house, I watched him make sprays of roses.  He wrapped them with wires and green tape, while he smoked his pipe.  We didn't speak much.  Then he put the exquisite floral arrangements in his old gray panel truck, probably to deliver them to funeral homes.

After such a childhood, all hope fled for me to accept a normal, greenhouseless life.

Oh, sure, I grow plants under lights, but the longing won't leave me for a tropical shelter where I can go in February and start the growing season.  It's an incurable condition.  Those blessed microbes!

Winter Solstice

Tonight's the night!  I'm sure all gardeners feel this inexorable pull toward springtime.  Back to Life and Living!  Yay.

This is where denial is such a handy tool.  To say that it is the first day of winter is to miss the point entirely.  The earth, after some hesitation, will slowly start to tilt back towards the sun for us in the northern hemisphere.  Too bad for people in the southern hemisphere; they've had their turn.

Every day is a day closer to spring, that most marvelous time of year.

How wonderful that some astronomer or scientist somewhere knows the exact time this will happen tonight.  It's a mathematical certainty, along with when the moon will rise and set.  I leave it to those guys.

Having checked the Old Farmer's Almanac, I am counting down the hours.  The wine is chilling.

I am saving the rest of the celebration for Christmas Day, when I break out the new seed catalogs.