Red Clay Mud

Surinam Cherries--what I grow now & what would fascinate my Grandfather

What we left behind,

What we thought we left behind,

What we never leave behind. 

Pineapple tops & slips...because WV is about making more from what you are

given, about nothing wasted. My Grandpa rooted pineapple tops in water & planted them in the planter boxes around the farmhouse. 

'Waspers', rippled glass window panes, the scent of Palmolive dish soap when boiling water is poured on it from a beat-up kettle, the scent of rust flakes in pump water, unfastened red galoshes flopping full of creek water as I stomped along, the burst of juice from a fat, warm Concord grape pressed against the roof of my mouth, the faux pile scrubbed off heavy traffic areas on the linoleum (inexplicably printed to look like carpet), and red clay mud...EVERYWHERE in the spring.

All are things I thought I left behind when my Grandpa died & Mom sold the Roane County, West Virginia farm, many years ago.  I've never tasted a grape like the ones grown on the farm fence, & with luck I'll never have to smell or taste rust left to settle to the bottom of an old Taster's Choice jar so the hand-pumped water would be drinkable.  All the rest never leaves you. I think of the anxiety of trying to avoid wasps in the outhouse after the long drive there.  I think of it with a little rush of satisfaction when I knock down a Jack Spaniard (our tropical version of 'Waspers') nest.  One of our local restaurants must buy in bulk because they always have that distinctly emerald Palmolive dish soap in the hand soap dispenser.  Washing hands in warm water always transports me to the farm kitchen.  

Fresh pineapple from my yard, because the 'pineapple doesn't fall far from the...?'

Yesterday FEMA pulled into West Virginia & started taking assistance applications from the vast number of people affected by the floods. My friend Natalie works for FEMA, is exceedingly kind & upbeat, & I couldn't wish anyone better on the people she may meet.  I also wish them the strength to rebuild, but even more that they retain their strongest parts--the things no water can sweep away & no silt can destroy--the DNA-deep, permanently inscribed memories of a place. 

The 'Farm-lette' Report

  Ethel the pineapple--before

Let's say it up front: backyard farmers are a bit wack.  If you accept that premise, here's the next:  organic backyard farmers should go ahead & sign themselves into a managed care...of hell with it--sanitarium--& save themselves & their loved ones angst, sweat, & a bleedin' fortune.

Ok,  now that's out there, here's what's sprouting,  what I'm harvesting, & what I'm doing with the loot.  

      Happily Ethel--after

(& FYI, I do garden organically, & if they want me at the sanitarium, they'd better bring several strong orderlies...& a big bottle of white vinegar. I use vinegar where others use Roundup. I also use vinegar in lieu of cleaning products like ammonia & bleach. I love vinegar & if that means I smell a bit like a Kosher dill, so be it.) 

First principle of organic back yard gardening (hereafter OBYG, which come to think of it looks like another topic entirely, & yet shares certain characteristics--patience, endurance, opting for healthy choices, more patience, a lot of nurturing, plotting & planning, conversion of spaces, still more patience, protection, pain, & finally fruition.  Hmmm)-- Adaptation. And I mean you, not the plants. 

Made in the shade-house (for sprouting)

First the adaptation in your planning.  I make a lot of useful out of useless, composting so much that I frequently skip putting out garbage for pickup once or twice out of every three times. I just don't amass as much MSW (municipal solid waste--such a romantic phrase), which wasn't really a conscious goal, rather a great side benefit. I'm not a Moonie-esque devotee of composting, just have a smallish covered barrel.  I won't go into composting detail since there are tons of available articles online. I use the simplest of methods, saving everything in a halfway house Rubbermaid tub by my sink & carting it to the bin when full--a couple times each week. I fill the emptied tub as I pass the hose, swish to rinse & dump that juice in the crown of pineapples growing by the kitchen door.  They thrive on it, & though I have friends who swear by the benefits of fish emulsion, my pineapples are amazingly heavy & sweet & live on an occasional misting with the hose & compost juice. No fertilizer, no smelly emulsion, nothing but water & yuck juice. 

Planning also involves placement & plant selection, & here a shout out to the great botanical beyond.  When we lost my dear friend David Hamada last year, I was comforted by the fact his vast horticultural knowledge lives on in lessons & guidance we were lucky enough to learn from him.  Xeriscaping was important to him & he wrote newspaper articles on the topic. Again there is a lot of online material if you want to delve deeper, but my shorthand version is 'plant what wants to live here, & plant it where it wants to be, whether or not that is exactly where you wanted it to be.'  It has to do with the considered allotment of available resources & the use of native species in your plan. It is also about what you don't do.  You don't go against nature by planting what you're nostalgic for from your stateside childhood, with no concern for the vast amount of effort, energy, & resources (water) you'll have to commit to the process. You will most likely fail in your efforts, making all that led there a true waste. Another good friend recently shifted her concentration from growing hibiscus to cultivating bromeliads. She had moved to a new home where the basis for her yard was caliche, rendering digging & drainage difficult to impossible.  Bromeliads are beautiful, come in myriad varieties & thrive here, requiring minimal drain to resources like water. She is having much more satisfying results.  

Bromeliads & the lizards who love them

I'm working on raised beds in the spirit of this consideration.  Maybe 'raised' is a bit of a stretch, & that is a planning adaptation as well.  I'm constructing them of half-faced concrete block (rough texture on the outside) instead of lumber or wood & metal because (like the first  two houses in 'Little Pig' fame) wood rots & invites termites & metal corrodes & crumbles here in the tropics, so to avoid redoubled efforts in the near future--block.  Raised is relative since I'm digging down a few inches, adding weed barrier & then only going up one or two blocks high. So...raised only if you're a munchkin?  8" high block edging still removes plantings from the path of the evil bush cutter, allows me to minimize weeds & maximize soil quality without investing a time/energy/$$ fortune building higher. The plan includes planting herbs & low annuals in the cells within each block too. Because I'm making smallish beds, I can minimize potential weed growth by leaving less space between plants. Before I swung the pick axe    even once, I spent time watching sun & shade patterns to determine what would have the best chance of success in a specific area. As much as possible, I read & studied seed varieties before purchase.

      The second planting for 2016

I paid attention to successful (& unsuccessful since you frequently learn more from failures) choices in friends'gardens. I cleaned used pots with vinegar & water to remove whatever cooties they still held.  

Then I planted my seeds in pots, misted them morning & evening, & covered all with a suspended bamboo shade until they sprouted & required more direct sun.  They are happily growing away. There are cukes, green & black beans, heirloom tomatoes, all varieties of sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, portulacca, cilantro, basils, dill & thyme.

               Mu inspecting sprouts

The other adaptation is to your expectations.  Aside from not expecting to grow a typical English cottage garden here in the tropics, home gardening here (& especially OBYG) produces unexpected results. The lessons learned won't all be fun, but they're not all bad, either. Tomatoes are my best examples of this.  One year I tried Beefsteak tomatoes. I did it because a local farmer was selling seedlings in his farm stand & they were familiar from my stateside gardening.  Lessons learned:  1.  Just because someone here is trying it doesn't mean it is a good idea & 2.  Abandon your precepts about growing what worked in WV & MD. We're not there, anymore than Dorothy was still in Kansas. The results were abysmal--pest- & blight-ridden, tortured plants producing very few small, sad, gnarled fruit after sucking up a veritable reservoir of water. 

Memory being what it is, a few years later I tried cherry tomatoes, with mixed success.  Again the plants looked stricken, again they drank too deeply from valued water reserves, but the harvest was more plentiful & tastier. 

And then a few years ago I found heirloom tomato seeds at a local hardware store.  Grandpa was a seed saver, with envelopes of saved seeds tucked everywhere in his house. An unwitting follower of Darwin, in saving seed he was selecting for desirable characteristics he wanted to appear in future generations.  This was promising. That year was my tomato personal best.  The plants still looked less than hardy & the resulting tomatoes were smaller & had more ridges & convolutions, but the flavor? The taste of those funny little green/purple striped babies was concentrated heaven, full of peppery undernotes, as if a bold tomato had mated with arugula.  A definite party in your mouth. For months I mostly lived on sandwiches of tomato slices on wheat toast with a bit of horseradish sauce.  This year my seedlings of 'black karim' & 'Cherokee purple' heirloom tomatoes are sprouting nicely. By the time they produce I should be past the most brutally strict part of this dietary revolution & be able to slip in a slice of wheat bread for a tomato sandwich now & then.  

A 'weed mango,' i.e. one that sprouted from a random seed & not from careful grafting like the others in my yard is the first to produce this year, having adapted successfully to the spot it chose.  Still too young to produce the ridiculous bevy of fruit characteristic of its planned brethren, I'm still carrying bags of mangos to give to my coworkers every day. 

The other major harvest is pineapples, & despite the time required to produce a fruit & the fact the plant produces one & dies, they are the best example of xeriscaping in my yard.

Fourteen pineapples in various stages are in the works, and after them their younger sibs will do the same.  All but 2 of the 60+ pineapple plants growing in this yard are the product of the four that were growing here when I bought the house in 2008.  In all, hundreds of offspring have been producing for the last eight years.  They flourish in a grass-covered rock curbing at the foot of my sloping yard. It was designed to keep my yard from visiting the neighbors below, but provides perfect pineapple conditions--support, sun with a bit of shade, & above all, great drainage (to combat rot).  The pineapples are good sized fruit one friend described as tasting like pineapple candy.  Though the parent plant dies after fruiting, it leaves several babies behind on the way out--suckers growing around the fruit, slips growing from the bottom of the plant, & of course the pineapple top to root.

The suckers, slips & tops, ready to plant

All the initial planning & strategy are simply meant to stack the deck toward future success. Lots of stuff can & no doubt will happen between the initial idea & the eventual eating.  It helps to enjoy the process. Every time a seed knocks soil off its head & surfaces, I'm still a kid with radish seeds sprouting in blotter paper, my third grade teacher Mrs. Cubby talking & gesturing excitedly & using metaphors for the potential within the process.

You Will Not

Yesterday was one of those unfathomably horrid days when you can't get right.  Your skin seems to be on crooked. One or both eyes leaks at inopportune times.  Your thoughts, like darting fish, refuse to be corralled.  We've had to learn a lousy corollary to our fundamental belief--that love is love. We were once again reminded that hate is also hate.  We're left to ponder how we'll handle that unavoidable fact. Here's what I can believe, written directly to those haters:

1.  LOVE IS LOVE.  I'm referring to the love I see in my friends, every day. The love when one spouse, one boyfriend, one girlfriend, one partner tells endearingly kind funny anecdotes about their loved one--and that look on their face as they do that.  Hate, you can't have this.  It is not yours.  You wouldn't understand.

2.  LOVE IS LOVE.  I'm talking about the kids I know who are lucky enough to have two Moms or two Dads.  I'm talking about those kids who feel the direct evidence every day of their lives & those young minds, so far superior to your hate-stunted ones who know the love of being chosen to live in a caring home.  Hate, this concept is so far above your paygrade you couldn't reach it with a fire truck ladder. 

3.  LOVE IS LOVE.  And now I'm talking about the love, support, encouragement & pure, rock-solid friendship I'm lucky enough to experience from my friends of all orientations, races, sexes & beliefs every day of my life.  There is no reference, no search engine, no sphere of knowledge to explain to you, Hate, what you've missed by shutting this out of your meager, stingy existence.  

In short, LOVE IS LOVE, & I will choose to live in it as a daily protest to you, Hate.  You will not take that from me.

Recovery?

Those who know me well are expecting the title to be a play on words about upholstery. 

Fooled ya!

Drying out from a coffee addiction?

Strike TWO!

Instead, I'm pondering retrieving lost skill sets, admirable personality traits, & even lost IQ points. 

And I'm starting to believe those are attainable goals. 

A few years ago, after a lifetime spent happily concocting away in the kitchen, I forgot how to cook.

 I don't mean I forgot my fave recipes. I had only used recipes as research on time & temp, always riffing away merrily. Granted there were a few epic fails in there, but on a whole I think you'd find me a good cook, and I enjoyed it.  

And then one day, Darwin came to dinner.  

As a confirmed nocturnalist, I never minded & was in fact happy about cooking great, balanced meals from fresh ingredients & delivering them to the refinery gate or the molasses pier at midnight.  My old love would come past the guard, past the barbed wire & to me in the parking lot.  We'd sit in my ancient Cherokee, he'd eat, be very complimentary about what I had served, we'd neck a little, then nap through the rest of his dinner hour, holding hands over the gearshift. If we knew he couldn't stay & would only be able to take the food to go, I'd add a sprig of blooming basil to the bag, imagining his slow-spreading smile when he found it.  

Shut up.  Romance is where you find it, & we liked blooming basil; alright?  Don't judge.  It gives you wrinkles & antacid addiction issues.

And then life changed (as it does--no Jeep-bound dream lasts forever) & he went stateside to spend vaca with his kids who lived with his ex wife.  For ten days.  He found the kids unsupervised, undisciplined & living on McDonalds (which he blamed for the downfall of the human race).

He took a job in a steel mill, an apartment close to the kids' school, worked graveyard so he'd be with them after school, re-taught his born-in-STX, raised in VA kids to love fresh fruit.

He also forgot to tell me he had moved. Instead, two months of long, late-night phone calls (pre-cell, when they cost big bucks), hemming, hawing, declaring, swearing, promising & delaying...really started to royally piss me off.  A man of few words & those few frequently smothered under my tirades of verbiage, he could never stand disappointing me & could never quite express why he wasn't yet back home with me.  I had some trust issues based on past experience & a great imagination, & that combo led me to fill in gaps with the worst possible versions.  

At the three month mark, I forgot how to answer the phone.  Caller ID wasn't a thing yet, so if I was expecting another call I'd have to answer, & hang up when I heard his voice. As much self-preservation as vindictiveness, I simply couldn't hear his voice without becoming a quivering mass of melancholy. I swear David carried a roll of Bounty with him that entire 16 months, for the inevitable gushy mess I had become.  You want to know who your true friends are?  Try being inconsolable for over a year.  

Slowly, patiently, D cajoled, tolerated, kidded & snarked me out of it, until I was almost human again.  He didn't cook, so we ate in restaurants almost every night. I figure we both ate substantial house downpayments that year. 

I did not lift a pan, a wooden spoon, a spatula that year.  My kitchen was yet another reminder of how the best time of your life can morph into the worst in one plane ride.  I cleaned a small area in the dust for my coffeemaker, & that was the only area I paid any attention to at all.

And then, 16 months into his ten day vaca, he came back.  

And I still refused to take his calls or see him.  I wouldn't know his reasons--the backstory of his extended stay--until months later.  I wouldn't forgive him until long after that, & we wouldn't reboot, forgive & start our life together again for even longer after.  

Eventually we lived together for several years.  The kids would spend summers with us & his parents.  For all appearances normalcy had returned.  

But I forgot how to cook.  I had so thoroughly & carefully repressed all things culinary that it appeared I couldn't go back.  At one point I made a weak attempt, having to look up proper egg boiling time in 'Joy.'  There was, in fact, no joy to it, & I abandoned efforts.  D & I still ate out two or three times a week.  Without ever saying a word about it, it was understood that if you wanted a meal in our house, you'd better cook it.  I did the shopping & B did the cooking, for both of us on the nights I was home.  There was no animus, no blame or resentment. Just his cooking & our eating.  

I didn't really recover my cooking skills or love for it until over a year after we called it quits for good.  It was slow going & I tend to similarly spice a lot of different dishes, but I'm secure in saying I'm once more a decent cook.  

I think I stopped reading when my eyesight became challenging.  I had been a voracious (literally--I scarfed books like they'd spoil if left too long) reader my whole life & had 20/20.  At 41 the jewelry work took its toll & I started requiring readers in escalating strengths...& I stopped reading.  

More accurately I forgot how to read for pleasure.  

When home, I'd be in front of TV & making jewelry or ornaments. For hours.   

Last year I realized how sedentary I had become (my bathroom scales were only too happy to inform me, the bastards), & eventually self-disgust evolved into action.  One day I was exasperated with the cable company, seized the moment & gave them their spawn-of-satan cable box, admonishing them to never darken my door again...except with wifi. I needed their wifi. While I was in a chopping mood, I told them to put my erratically functioning landline where the sun don't shine.  For months the only calls I received on it were from one patient & non-enthusiastic stalker guy & the CDC, polling to see if I had vaccinated my nonexistent kids.  Sure I'd miss them, but I'd live. And live a long time on the compound interest-enhanced cable & phone deposits. I didn't have to pay for the remaining wifi service for 7 months, living off those credits.

I got Netflix but wasn't thrilled with the selection, most offerings dating to after WWII & being in color thus leaving me out.  I watched my DVDs, & eventually, after rehabbing the back yard to contain several great reading spots, picked up a book.  

In March I started trying in earnest to lose a substantial amount of weight.  I realized tv & mindless eating were wired together in my head.  I knew at 54, I'd have to change everything, to do every aspect right if I was going to have any appreciable success.  Restaurants would be a much less frequent occurrence.  Physical exertion would be crucial. I have a fabulous gift for self sabotage I'd have to strategize ways to overcome.  I'd have to really commit. 

I remembered how to cook, to read for pleasure, to garden on a big scale.  In my mind, one mantra: 'Then we will do that which is hard.'  I'm lifting, toting, shoveling this space into submission.  I pretty much live off spicy black beans I cook from dry, fresh veggies, salads, sushi tuna & key lime water, & I don't feel deprived...much.  

When I get home from work I grab my carefully portioned dinner, my book, & head to the umbrella table out back. I read 2-3 chapters & then plot the evening's project. At some point each day I make Mu happy by getting in the floor to do yoga & crunches.  She loves all the outdoor time, too.  Always a bonus when you make your pup happy.

Twenty seven pounds, several books & a lot of hardscape later, I feel better than I have in several years.    My buddy Darwin is showing me once again the joy of adaptation, of recovering.  

By the truckload

It's summer & beauty like ripening fruit is coming by the truckload. The current bit of moon is visible overhead at 3pm. I've been in the backyard since I woke up at 9. No mistaking, it is hot.  Still there is a great breeze giving the little bell chime a real work out, & the new plantings are responding well to the drink I gave them. I've been filling & placing hanging baskets everywhere. There are three in the little lime tree alone--one angel-wing begonia, one full of New Guinea impatiens & one with those chartreuse bromeliads I divided & put everywhere. They are under a branch & they fit with the idea of a secret garden--one with hidden color & sound revealed only when the breeze ruffles though. 

The reading chaise area is my current fave hiding spot, a pleasant eddy that catches you with a good book & pulls you willingly in.  I didn't intend to finish this Harper Lee today, but the chaise got me & that book is history. 

The book & lunch are over & there is still full sun on the rock pile, so it isn't yet shoveling time. And I'm having this curious sensation--an unfamiliar drive to actually complete a project. 

Hmm. What are the odds of that really happening?

Moving Heavens & Good Earth

The ridiculous & the sublime were well represented today. I did my usual after work mambo--changed into my play clothes, one of the tennis outfits D used to call my 'cheerleading ensems,' grabbed my scoop of black beans & glass of lime water, sat out back & read 2 chapters before choosing tonight's yard project & plunging in.  

Note:  If you start umpteen million projects simultaneously, you always have something different to turn to when you are suffering from lack of momentum in any quadrant. At least that's what I tell myself.

So tonight I wanted to move the compost bin to a less visible area, because though I love it with every waking fiber (& peel, shell & skin), I don't expect everyone to get it. The bin, like a lot of nifty things came with the house. So for 8 years with me & who knows how many before that, all the uber rich nutrients from every peel, eggshell & let's be honest--a LOT of coffee grounds has leeched into the ground under it. My version of sacred ground, which, once I pulled up & rolled the bin downslope to the new locale was so fine & rich it resembled instant espresso powder. There is a 2' diameter circle of it where I will plant something really special. 

After that I shoveled gravel & quarry dust awhile, & came in to watch Scandal on Netflix & do laundry. 

But the best part of every evening comes after yard work, after TV, yoga, clean up, etc.  just before sleep I go back out, lie down & look up. By this point it is anytime between midnight & 2 am & most neighbors have doused their lights & turned in, leaving the stars very little competition.  

I don't catalog what I'm looking at, just enjoy the calm reliability of their presence. Bat trails zip between the fruit trees, slicing the milky way above.  And the stars just are. A cosmic nightlight before bed. Good night!