The Task by William Cowper

Who loves a garden loves a green-house too.

Unconscious of less propitious clime,

There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug,

While the winds whistle and snows descend.

The spiry myrtle with unwith’ring leaf

Shines there, and flourishes. The golden boast

Of Portugal and western India there,

The ruddier orange, and the paler lime,

Peep through their polish’d foliage at the storm,

And seem to smile at what they need not fear.

Th’ amomum there with intermingling flow’rs

And cherries hangs her twigs. Geranium boasts

Her crimson honours, and the spangled beau,

Ficoides, glitters bright the winter long.

All plants, of ev’ry leaf, that can endure

The winter’s frown, if screen’d from his shrewd bite,

Live there, and prosper . . .

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Love & Liguine

My sister-in-law is the super glue of the family; she holds us all together with large helpings of linguine and love.

She’s 97% Italian. Her grandparents immigrated from Torrecuso, a small hilltop town near Naples. When they arrived in New Jersey, her grandfather set up a vegetable cart, which grew into a small grocery store. Her father married into the family and worked in the grocery store, too, in many roles, including butcher. But customers came for more than his cuts of meat. I met her parents once—her father arrived at her house and went straight to the kitchen to begin “the sauce.” The smells coming from that kitchen were heady. All day he talked and chopped garlic and tomatoes, laughed and broke into song as he touched everything that came into that kitchen. 

Nothing in my Minnesota upbringing prepared me for this.

My grandmother Olson’s kitchen was quiet, even when her sister Lena joined her to help with the Christmas baking. Everything that came out of her kitchen was white: lutefisk, lefse and kringle. And I never saw her touch anyone. Not even her husband. They reminded me of that joke about the Norwegian husband that loved his wife so much he almost told her. Norwegians don’t laugh at this joke. Italians find it hilarious.

My sister-in-law is the Italian version of Babette in the movie Babette’s Feast.

Like the Danes in the movie, my grandparents’ life centered around the Lutheran church. And they never touched liquor. They’re all gone now, but I like to imagine my sister-in-law among them. As she offers them more food and wine, her cooking and love break through. Grudges forgotten. Love revived. Redemption found amid the ratatouille.

Her ever-present smile. Her embrace. They’re unfailing. In her own home or in a foreign country—on busy streets or dirt roads, she’s the same. She doesn’t see an animal without stopping to stroke its head or scratch its ear. Babies smile at her. Friends yearn to talk to her. She gets together every year with a grade school friend she met 62 years ago.

Her love never lets up.

From the moment her feet touch the floor at 6:00 a.m. until she retires at 9:00 p.m., she devotes herself to her guests’ happiness. She scurries about with offers of good food, family news and kindness.

My husband and his brother love a good martini—light on the vermouth, please. When we’re guests in their home, every night at 5:00 p.m. she makes a mean martini. You should see her 100 pounds shake it up like a pro.

And while she didn’t marry an Italian, her husband now grows garlic, and he’s had some bumper crops.

She’s never far from food. On our last visit, she was just getting home from her volunteer work at the local food pantry. She gives countless hours to the local library during book drives and in their community garden. She leaves everyone, wherever she goes, better off than she found them.

Before she retired, she worked as a physical therapist. Whenever we visit, I love to tag along to Wegmans grocery store. Not just because we don’t have a Wegmans in Connecticut and it’s something to behold, but because we always run into her former patients. She knows them by their injury. “Hi, how’s your ACL tear? You’re moving great.” Or in the produce aisle near the broccoli: “Is your plantar fasciitis better?” Then, at the seafood counter, “Well, hello there, did the exercises for your patellofemoral syndrome help?” She knows all their kids and their grandkids. She still remembers them, and she still cares.

She’s worked with many physical therapists over the years. One said to her; “You get more information from patients than anyone I know.” I’m sure that’s true. She was interested in her patients; she asked the right questions. She listened. She was creative. She’s still all of that.

As I write, I’m looking at a lovely plant on my desk. She gave me a cutting from her plant several years ago. Her plant started from a cutting from her mother. Her mother got a cutting from her aunt. That’s the kind of family they are; generations passing along the love.

My sister-in-law has been serving large helpings since I met her 30 years ago. As I sit at her table, something in me opens wide as she smiles and hands me a large steaming dish. And I say “yes” to her offer of fresh pecorino romano.

Twenty Years of Edging: With A Captive Sodbuster

“We should be done some day, right?” my husband asks about the edging. He’s been edging my garden beds for 20 years – not continuously, but maybe it feels that way.

Weekend walkers stop to admire our gardens and ask; “What’s that plant?” His reply: “I don’t know, I just do the low-skilled stuff, like edging and hauling mulch. My wife had the vision and knows the names of all the plants. Just wait, she comes out every three minutes to check on my work.”

Even though he’s a plant illiterate, as a trained artist and painter, he’s my color consultant. He has his own vocabulary. “Put a tall plant in alizarin crimson behind that low cadmium yellow one,” he says. A quick visit to his painting studio and a survey of the paint tubes unravels his meaning.

When we bought this place, I could have held a seminar on invasive plants. The three-quarter-acre parcel was covered with Asiatic bittersweet, Japanese knotweed and stiltgrass. The rest was green, not with grass, but a little grass mixed mostly with weeds. Every weekend my patient husband heard these words, “I’ve another idea for a new perennial bed. Grab your edger and let’s bust some sod.”

We began with 10 yards of composted cow manure from a local farm and I set about amending the soil. There wasn’t an earthworm in sight. My husband hauled hundreds of wheelbarrows of manure up our hilly property. He’s a longtime a runner, and one day he checked his pulse and found it was as high as when he was running.

He soon came to regret sharing this information with me. Whenever he announced he was going for a run, I told him to grab the wheelbarrow instead and move some manure. He finally put me on a daily quota: no more than 10 loads a day. Harsh for a gardener with big visions. Like Penelope, I worked on that proverbial shroud every day, but it was never done. I vowed to commit to my quota once another perennial bed was done.

He’s just finished edging an area that will become a new perennial shade bed. I’ll plant it tomorrow. Then he just needs to load the wheelbarrow with mulch and head up the hill. I think 30 loads should do it. Before he heads out to the mulch pile he says, “Ten loads are all you get. Then I’m going for a run.”

I’ve worn out one wheelbarrow, and I’m on my second. I’m also on my second husband.

Heat

Photo by Richard Bristol

Planting, mulching or rescuing plants in need of salvation from weeds – none of it should be done in the heat. What makes me an authority? I have been planting, mulching and weeding in the heat.

Need a lesson in how to handle the heat? Look no further than one of my parents’ cats, Spoolie. Nothing flat to lounge on? Become a multi-level lounger. Notice his head is lower than his body, and maybe cooler? Heat does rise. The high midday sun has lowered his eyes to slits, a quarter of their full size – a glaze over his gaze. Did he just burn through one of his nine lives?

Last summer, our cat, Van Gogh, was so languid in the heat that a chipmunk ran by and he only opened one eye. This predator had taken the afternoon off.

I could learn how to handle the heat by watching my cat.

You never see a cat hunting in the midday sun. Van Gogh disappears under the large, leathery hosta leaves. My miniature goat weed plant becomes a pillow. He’s flattened a fair number of plants this past summer with his 17 pounds. The garden is pocked with the imprint of his body. He naps anywhere and everywhere there’s shade. It’s as if he is narcoleptic; he just drops to the ground and naps.

If only I could relax and nap like that.

I did pass out in the heat several times. But that’s not narcolepsy, that’s stupidity. When you find yourself disoriented with your nose in the dirt, that’s not relaxing. I managed to crawl into the air-conditioned house and lay motionless while the room spun. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what happens to those who have no place to cool off. Where do people in India go? Despite its icy, pristine start in the Himalayas, the River Ganges is no place to cool off anymore.

I too burned through one of my lives during the hottest summer on record. No more working in the heat. Next summer I’ll follow my cat deep into a shady hollow. Stretch out. And forget everything.

Humans would be better off if we stopped trying to train cats; they could train us.

The P Years

I told my sister-in-law, someone I can tell anything, that I’ve entered the “P” years. “Are you having urinary tract issues?” she asks. No, not pee, but P, as in I now have a close relationship with a periodontist and a podiatrist. I think I’m too young for either, but my puffy gums and bulging bunions have landed me in with the P specialists. What’s next? Psychiatrist?

I used to hear old folks talk about their visits to the podiatrists and wonder what the hell happened to their feet. Now I practically need a chainsaw to trim my nails; as my bunion bones go east, my toes go west and never the twain shall meet. I don’t like looking at my feet in sandals. I used to enjoy unswaddling my feet after a long winter and exposing them to their first rays of sun in months and going barefoot. The podiatrist says going barefoot is bad for bunions. But it’s bad for my mental health not to go barefoot, I tell him.

I never paid much attention to my gums; now I’m paying too much attention to them. It’s easy to take your gums for granted. I just had a deep scaling last week. I wish they would come up with better name for this procedure. Deep is not the word I object to, I’m all for going deep, but scaling is not a word I want associated with anything – except maybe the biblical “scales” that should fall from my eyes.

If I could only get these scales to lift from my eyes, my mental outlook would improve. I see the hours spent in these doctor’s offices robbing me of time in the open air among the irises. Irises don’t care if you have puffy gums or bulges on your feet.

The hygienist doing the deep scaling says stress plays a big role in gum health. She recommends that I reduce all the stress in my life. How the heck do I do that? Except maybe in the garden. But I seem to be gifted at carrying stress with me wherever I go – even to the garden.

Do I get a refund if the P doctors cannot reduce my puffy gums or aching bunions? Just asking.

I can hardly wait to see what’s next. The D years? Dermatologists and Drugs (a.k.a., the pharmacist.)

But maybe that belongs in the P years, too?

Comeuppance

I would like to see a few people get their comeuppance. One day a year is all I’m asking. Let’s call it Comeuppance Day.

Okay, so comeuppance is an old-fashioned word that looks funny with two p’s so close together. But it’s a good word. A word my mother still uses and one my grandmother used. I’m not talking about vengeance, that’s too strong a word – just a chance to see the woman who lets her dog poop in my perennial beds slip and fall in her dog’s poop and twist her ankle. Too harsh? I need practice at this.

Or how about her dog gets diarrhea in her car on her way home? Explosive diarrhea. Went too far again?

And the man who speeds by our house and throws his beer cans on our property … He can get strung up by his … Wait, let me back that up again, this takes some discipline. How about, his tire hits the broken glass left in the road by kids who were in the church basement last night?

Our little town put a teen center there many years ago, and since then we’ve had broken glass in our driveway, on the street, our cars scratched or “keyed,” a fire started in our yard … maybe a double comeuppance? He gets a flat tire from the broken glass left by the teens from the teen center and they get? They get, well, they get fined for littering. The broken glass was right under the sign that said, “No littering.”

Irony is not dead in our little town.

Oh, and our Christian brethren across the street at the church? The one that professes to love thy neighbor as thyself? Can they get their comeuppance for not removing the dead trees from their property until they topple over and take the power lines with them, and the whole neighborhood is plunged into darkness?

I’ll have to ponder the church’s comeuppance, but it will be biblical. Something will be smote for sure.

Two with the Earth

If you are lucky enough to have your mother live a long time, and you share a love of the earth, you might get the chance to garden alongside your mother as I did on the Great Plains.

Visiting while weeding can’t be beat.

While my dad installs a new solenoid on his John Deere mower, we clean the perennial beds. We uncover last year’s plantings under the leaves, eggshells and coffee grounds. There are too many perennial beds for me to get to them all; that would take a much longer visit.

We’re never alone. Her four cats supervise the work: They check out the flower beds, and then they check my dad’s progress.

My mom heads to the potting shed that my dad built a few summers ago. She’s cleaning and organizing it. Something she does in short order. No one cleans and organizes like my mom. Spring arrived with extreme weather: a 90-degree day followed by the threat of an overnight freeze. She lines up her pots, so she’s ready to take them into the potting shed overnight.

She says the orioles are back, and I spot a nest on the highest branch of the weeping willow. Gardening in the great migratory flyway is to garden accompanied by a symphony of birdsong. The shelter belt that’s full of trees, and protects three sides of their acreage, is streaming live with birds. And I’m not just talking about sandhill cranes. There are ducks, owls, hawks and songbirds. Nebraska is on the great bird migration route and thousands of species pass through each spring. On our weekly calls, as my mom carries the phone around her gardens, I can hear the birds.

We take a break and eat a tuna fish sandwich, and then we get back to the watering. Despite the record flooding, the 60-mph winds suck the moisture out of her newly planted forsythia. I have no idea how she and my dad have managed to keep everything watered on their acreage. I carry a bucket to the far corner of their land and realize how my mother got the biceps of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And then there are the tons of large rocks that ring all the beds that she and my dad haul from Kansas during their weekly rock-hunting treks.

Proust said it best: “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

Bubbles and Bliss

I plunge my hands into the warm sudsy water and gaze out the window at my tulips, and that’s when it happens.

I relax into the slow, methodical act of washing dishes by hand. I feel a connection to all the women who ever washed dishes or a baby in the kitchen sink. 

No, my dishwasher isn’t broken. I decided to turn off my cell phone, and then I wondered if other modern conveniences have robbed me of some of the simple everyday past pleasures in life? There’s a gap between what my mind and body need, and I need to get creative to fight the fragmentation of the real world. Maybe that gap grows with all these time-saving devices? So I decided to wash the dishes in the sink. Something I’ve not done in years.

My first bath was in the kitchen sink. You can fit a baby or two in a large sink. You can’t beat fun like that. Add a red hat, like my mother did when she bathed my niece, and you’re really having some fun.

I think of all the women who spent so much time at their kitchen sinks. I see my grandmother there with the window open on a hot Minnesota summer day. She could see her apple tree and hear the birds from her kitchen window. I’ll bet she did her best creative thinking at that sink, and she designed and made all her children’s clothes. They had the most original outfits in town. One man complained to his wife, “Why can’t our kids have cute outfits like those Falk kids?”

As her children slept, her Singer® sewing machine hummed through the night. Maybe she was designing that pleated skirt and matching vest for my mother over the kitchen sink? Alone with her own thoughts for the first time all day, her hands washed the breakfast dishes, but her mind worked on new patterns for outfits. Or maybe she was thinking about all the latest trials her children confided in her.

Now and then I need to have my hands in some warm water and soothing suds, open the window over the sink, and hum. Not the hum of the automatic dishwasher.

I never know what the bubbles might bring forth from the recesses of my childhood. I just know that now and then I need a good hum among the suds.

My Brother's Legs

He was a master at converting tense moments into comedy. Our family had plenty of both. He delivered perfect mimicry in voice, gesture and walk. His inventive mind directed his whole body, and he used everything he had to keep us laughing.

He’d perfect the walk of the person he was imitating with his long legs. My brother’s legs were gorgeous. Longer than anyone’s in the family, with nice calves and narrow ankles.

It’s hard to admit that your brother has better legs than you do. But it happens.

After he died, it was hard when his belongings were detached from the one they belonged to. The pants, the shoes, the beautiful shirts, the eyeglasses. The dead have no use for them. And while the living struggle to let go, we cannot carry such heavy cargo.

Twelve years after his death, I still think about my brother’s personal items. The minister in Omaha that wears all his meticulous shirts. My brother would have loved that his things are being used by others.

Most of all, I think of the man who got his femur. He had a lovely femur, taken from those long lovely legs. You don’t recognize your brother’s femur when it belongs to someone else, but you feel good knowing someone else has it. But you wonder how all of it comes to be. The need for a femur? How do you match a femur?

Several years after his death, I was waiting for a long car repair to come to an end. When the service manager appeared in the waiting room and told me my car was done, I noticed he had a bad limp. He told me he had been in a motorcycle accident and his femur was crushed, “But I got a new one,” he said. “From a cadaver. The guy was just 40, I’m 53, so my femur is younger than the rest of me.”

Hmm, my brother was 40 when he died, I thought. So that’s how it happens. How someone gets a femur from someone else.

“That’s wonderful,” I said, “But that cadaver belonged to someone and that someone may have been someone’s brother.” Then I realized that he meant no offense, and I really was happy for him. But I still cried all the way home.

And you know how people tell you, “grief gets better with time.” It’s not true.

I miss him more. Lovely legs and all.

Eat More Fish

I had already resolved to eat more fish, but hearing my doctor recommend it didn’t hurt. “You need those Omega 3s and 6s you get in fish like salmon,” she said.

I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean Swedish fish – the chewy red candy that I’ve been eating by the bagful. But I’ve never been one to ignore healthy advice.

What is it about winter that makes me want to gnaw on something — anything?

I can easily consume a whole bag of Swedish fish while reading Jane Austen. Suddenly my hand is digging around in an empty bag. Hey, what happened? I don’t mean between Darcy and Elizabeth, I mean how did that school of Swedish fish go extinct?

Since I gave up red meat years ago, I miss gnawing. I think we are designed to gnaw on stuff. You get awfully satisfied from chewing.

Now I eat mostly vegetables. And some, like riced cauliflower, are not satisfying to chew. There’s no molar-to-molar contact, and I’m definitely not using my incisors to rip anything. It’s like eating plankton — it doesn’t involve chewing as much as straining. But other vegetables seem to burn more calories to chew than I actually take in – a net loss. Chewing undercooked kale can be exhausting. I’ve been having plant protein shakes lately just because the chewing gets so monotonous. Plus, I needed to gain some weight.

Last week, soon after vacuuming the floor mats of my car, I discovered a Swedish fish stuck in the metal track as I readjusted the seat. I examined it, and turned it over several times. I can’t be sure, but I think it’s circa November 2018. It was as hard as the ice on Lake Michigan this January, for sure.

I dusted it off and placed it on the heated seat. Five minutes later, reheated to its original chewy state, I ate it.

We were meant to gnaw on things. I’m proof that shame takes a back seat to this ancient urge.

Wandering in the Dark

When my mother can’t sleep, she grabs her flashlight and takes a walk on her acreage out on the great plains of Nebraska. There’s a lot to see and hear: for starters, this is the best place for stargazing. A dark dome overhead, with no light to compete, showcases shooting stars and constellations.

And the night is full of sounds you won’t hear anywhere else.

Their acreage is in the migratory bird flyway. Not far from them, half a million sandhill cranes converge on the Platte River – she hears their bugle calls. There are bald eagles, snow geese honking overhead, American white pelicans, ospreys and grebes. She hears owls and tundra swans – birds and waterfowl that I’ve only seen in the pages of my Roger Tory Peterson field guide. The nearby cottonwoods and grassland are a rest stop for bobwhites, Bell’s vireo, orchard and Baltimore orioles – masses of them. Last fall hundreds of monarch butterflies stopped on their way to Mexico.

Tomorrow her sister from Minnesota will stop on her migratory route to Arizona.

Then there are all the four-legged critters. She hears coyotes, but rarely sees these elusive animals. A few weeks ago, she came face-to-face with a large opossum and discovered that “they hiss and bare their razor-sharp teeth when cornered.”

Last night she saw another “possum.” It headed for a hole in the foundation of their house and disappeared. She sprang into action and closed that hole with some fencing and anchored that with a large rock.

Back in bed she heard the possum rearranging things beneath her and straining to get out. Perhaps he had some stargazing to do too?

The next morning, she removed the fencing, but by then the possum had found another way out. So she set about closing that opening in case he tried to get back in.

A few days later she heard a plaintive cry coming from the same location the possum had vacated, only to find her cat, Agatha, trapped under the foundation. She and my father quickly removed some of the fencing and freed little Agatha.

Who says you have to leave home to find adventure?

I told my mother that it’s fashionable in Connecticut to give your acreage a name. We have a property nearby that sits at the bend of the Farmington River named Riverbend.

“What would you name our property? she asked.

“Possum Hollow.”

Going to Seed

Today I feel 10 years younger than I did last fall.

All that fall planting made my back ache; the raking gave me blisters, my bunions throbbed even as I slept. When my husband saw me struggle to transplant a large hydrangea, he said; “gardening isn’t for sissies.” No kidding. It took me three hours just to dig that shrub up and another hour to dig it in to its new location.

So I decided to make filling the birdfeeders that dangle from a tall pole into a stretching exercise. I pulled a muscle in my shoulder.

I dreamed up a 40-foot privacy hedge that I was going to plant with evergreens, but my body would not cooperate. My imagination just kept inventing projects that my body could not fulfill. Wasn’t that a country and western song, “My mind’s making promises my body just can’t keep?” I would sing more of it, but I’ve forgotten the rest of the words. The memory goes right after the back.

And my attention span  . . .

Dragging leaves to my compost pile used to be rewarding. But I think I need to harness more than my own horsepower. My pride has resisted buying those noisy leaf blowers in favor of a good old-fashioned rake, but maybe I should rethink that decision before I break down. Totally.

And last fall I never seemed to have enough gas – I had to be fed every hour. My husband saw me flagging and he ran out with food and water. He would have helped with the heavy lifting, but he was at physical therapy three times a week.

Now ’tis the season for snow. But shoveling causes spasms in my piriformis – that muscle in the butt that runs from the low spine to the femur. Mine are tight, says my physical therapist. How did that happen? While everything else was getting loose, my piriformis got tight? But so far this winter we’ve mainly had rain. Lots of it. I bought a snow blower anyway, and the gas tank is topped off and it’s ready.

Still, for all the pulling, aching, throbbing and spasms, I know that to grow old in a garden that I have made…this is a privilege.

How I Learned to Speak Texan

From northern Minnesota to Iowa to Burkburnett, Texas. From moose and the call of the loons to armadillos, rattlesnakes and horny toads. Talk about culture shock. Well, when you’re a kid and you make a move like that you have to learn a whole new language. It helps if you’re seven and new to everything.

That move gave me an appreciation for language and contrast.

Figuring out what Texans were saying was tricky.

Our new neighbor must have seen the movers carrying in the couch, because a few days later, I heard her ask my mother: “You putting antimacassars on your davenport?”

Come again?

I got some help from my mother. Were we going to place doilies on the couch, was the question. Thanks, mom. One other question, mom: What strange land have you brought us to?”

Still, there are some things you can figure out on your own. When I heard a man at the soda fountain say to another man, “them’s bodacious tatas, “I just followed his eyes to the lady at the end of the counter whose bosom was spilling out into her lemon-lime – another sweet novelty – called lemonade in Minnesota.

“Wanna open the spigot (pronounced spicket) and play on a hot day,” my new playmate advised. Sounds good, but where do I find a spigot? Oh, the faucet. And is there a day that isn’t hot?

Pop or Coke anyone?

I was recounting this period in my childhood to my husband, who moved as much as I did as a kid, and he remembers a few expressions he first heard in Pittsburgh: “Loaf with your friends or lie in.” He liked to do both.

“Rode hard an put up wet,” was something you never did to a horse. I heard that at a few events to describe some shady practices among some shadier people. At least that’s what I thought they were talking about.

I still can’t be sure. I wish I could have said; “This isn’t my first time at the rodeo.” But it was my first time at the dang rodeo.

As I heard in Scotland: “There’s nowt so queer as folk.”

What I Think During Organ Recitals

My life has been ravaged by niceness.

The most recent episode happened last Sunday morning. As I headed to the garden to plant dozens of daffodil, allium and tulip bulbs, I got a phone call from a friend of a friend. I met her once.

Next thing I know, instead of eyeing places to plant those bulbs, I’m listening to an organ recital – a litany of all the things that are wrong with her different organs.

One of these days I’m going to say exactly what I think. Out loud. That’s frowned on where I grew up – Minnesota. You’ve heard of “Minnesota nice?” You’re polite. God forbid you ever disappoint anyone by saying what you really think, even if that means disappointing yourself.

 And while I’m at it, you also don’t make comments about odd behavior. When you see someone in church making change from the collection plate you just say, “Oh.” And you look away.

Or, when that farmer expresses an affection for his sheep that makes you squirm, you say; “How interesting.” See what I am up against with this ruinous background? And believe me, the needy, the chatty, and the bored can spot me. They seek me out and they find me. Even by phone. My husband says; “You’re like a magnet.”

But back to that phone call.

So, I say the nicest thing I can think of and I do mean it. I do.

But this doesn’t stop me from thinking what I might like to say.

What I said: Of course, I don’t mind that your therapist is out of the country. No, it doesn’t matter that you've called six other friends and none of them are home.

Thinking: Do I mind boils on my posterior? Your friends and your therapist must have Caller ID.

What I said: Your bladder collapsed? No, prolapsed? Are you okay?

Thinking: Here comes her organ recital. Which organ comes after her bladder? Kidneys?

What I said: You cancelled your hike up Mount Everest, you say, because you passed a kidney stone? Can I guess the size of your kidney stone?

Thinking: Not knowing is eating me up. Just tell me and I’ll die a happy woman.

What I said: Thank God you didn’t pass that kidney stone on Mount Everest – although you might have broken a world record. (Minnesotans also like to find something positive to say in a bad situation.)

Sixty-seven minutes later she sees a call coming through from someone else and drops me without so much as a goodbye.

Thinking: Sweetie, you’ve got my vote for President of Time Wasters of America (TWA).

Wait, I am off the phone. I can say that out loud. See, old habits die hard when you’ve been schooled in Minnesota.

I’m finally in my garden among the Autumn Joy sedum, planting those bulbs.

And let me tell you what I think. It’s a joy.

Beclouded

Photos by Richard Bristol

They come in thick bands, narrow strips, wisps, pale pinks and menacing gray, but all summer they come. Some days I feel closed in by clouds, as if I could reach up and rearrange them. But the sun cannot break through them.

Some clouds bring lashing winds. As I collect downed branches, the clouds scuttle by.

Thick, heavy clouds muddle my mind. A little sunshine might add some clarity. Back-to-back days of clouds cause me to hunker down and turn inward. And what I find is “the brain within its groove,” just as Emily Dickinson described in her poem.

And what I need now is a new groove.

Several summers ago, my husband bemoaned too many days of cloudless blue skies – it meant no rain. A drought followed. Clouds that produce no rain unsettle the parched soul. This summer, we have had weeks of clouds and plenty of rain.

So, while we celebrated that the nearby Farmington River was high, and the reservoirs were full, we were hankering for some sunshine. We got our wish. And with the sunshine came record heat in five record-breaking waves.

In the Midwest, where I grew up, farmers knew clouds. They knew a cirrus from a cumulus; they knew which clouds promised rain, and which didn’t. The dark stratus is where they would put their money. They were good students of clouds, forever scanning the skies. Their crops and livelihoods depended on it.

And is there anything more thrilling than a summer thunderstorm? The house of my childhood had a large porch, clad in a metal roof, and to hear the rain amplified on the metal roof was a thrill. My mother would gather her five children and we would sit on the porch and listen to the rain.

The mood of the day changes with clouds.

There’s that heavy, still feeling that hangs in the air right before a thunderstorm. Clouds roiling overhead. Then hot air collides with cold air and the ground trembles with deafening thunder and lightning. After a cloudburst and a hard rain, the air is lighter, scrubbed clean.

For drama, go to my parent’s acreage in rural Nebraska in Cather country, about thirty miles west of Red Cloud. Just drop in, they won’t mind. Talk about the eye of the storm; they have some of the wildest weather I’ve ever seen.

You won’t be bored. Promise. Just look up.

So much to say about clouds. You could study them for a lifetime. See the faces of loved ones in them, revel in the promise of moisture that makes all life possible. There’s just not enough time.

Burma Shave Today

Remember those beloved sequential roadside signs that first appeared in 1925, along country highways and byways. Here’s what they look like today.

Remember these original signs:

She raised Cain
When he raised stubble
Guess what
Smoothed away
Their Trouble?
Burma Shave

My job is
Keeping faces clean
And nobody knows
De Stubble
I’ve Seen
Burma Shave

On curves ahead
Remember, sonny
That rabbit’s foot
Didn’t save
The Bunny
Burma Shave

Short, stiff hair
Is what we’re after
We make no
Claims on
The hereafter
Burma Shave

Today’s billboards:

His combover hides
His stubble and brows
But hold on Martha
He’s scaring
The sows
Burma Shave

Putin’s shaves
Are very close
But our Pres says
His hair grows
The most
Burma Shave

They are no more
Hicks, Gates, and Flynn
But think of
Manafort and Cohen
And the trouble they're in
Burma Shave

Those daily Tweets
Are all the rage
But his
Orange hair
Reveals his age
Burma Shave

Higher Ground

I have so many lovely places in my garden to sit and get a new perspective. My favorite is a patio my husband built on the highest ground, with a view of the valley. I’m level with the treetops so I feel like I’m tucked in a treehouse.

But I’m too busy to enjoy any of these perches.

Why? Because I can’t walk by a weed without pulling it, a drooping plant without watering it, a disappointing perennial bed without re-designing it, or a wilting plant without inspecting it for aphids. There’s always something to do.

So out of the mouth of the non-gardener, my husband, the oracle of higher ground, comes this: “Stop re-designing, plucking and righting, and start enjoying.”

Come again?

You can tell he’s not a gardener because he can walk right by a weed without even pulling it. Shocking, isn’t it?

And yet, I know he’s right. I need to fill up my tank with joy so I have vast reserves for the journey ahead. Because some days you need to draw on those reserves, and you don’t want to find the tank empty.

Given all the things that happen in my garden, why have I not stopped to enjoy them?

My grandmother knew how to do this. My mother does this daily. They know how to sit and listen and learn and just watch ants at work. We were taught to take in all the joy around us. The world right outside our back door. Full of mystery, intrigue and even live bait for a late-in-the-day fishing trip.

I had better scrap the “to do” list and get serious about joy.

Joy is on an installment plan, and I need an installment every day. This may be the hardest thing I have to learn.

May I extend to myself the tenderness I feel towards all the teeming life in the garden. And may you, too.

We’re going to need joy for the journey.

Striptease

I grew up in the land of the reverse striptease. For roughly three-quarters of the year you’re putting things on instead of taking things off – layer after layer after layer.

But now it’s the season to shed things. Bras and bad attitudes seem to go hand in hand – or is it cup in hand?

While we all need some support, maybe it’s good to shed more than clothing. I'm not at my best in the heat. I’m not a patient person, except with small children and the elderly, and I’m even less patient in the heat. I recently fantasized about drowning an elderly man who rammed me with his shopping cart. Forgive me.

There’s not much I know for certain, but I do know this: nothing should be encased in spandex and latex in the high heat and humidity of summer. The older I get the harder it is to bear the heat. I know I’m not alone. I hear the same thing from my mother, who is driven inside by the searing temps that hit the 100°s on the Great Plains. And I hear it from other gardeners of a certain age. I run into to them everywhere: red-faced, hands dabbing their moist foreheads; hair piled atop their heads as they try to cool the nape of their sweaty necks; bras abandoned in this bed or that (I mean perennial bed.)

One can feel as shut-in during the heat of summer as in winter. I follow my cat’s lead and take cover under the canopy of a sweet pepperbush – bees buzzing overhead.

And everyone wants in on the striptease. Even a hosta grower got into the act when he named his hosta “Striptease” after its alluring sliver of white. Ooh la la.

Years ago, I was visiting a neighbor’s garden and I saw her DD bra cradling a large trellis-grown cantaloupe. Now that’s the only use I can think of for a bra in the heat of summer, but I'm open to other suggestions.

Republican Versus Democrat Gardeners

Warning: the following contains labels, over-simplifications, stereotypes, slights and slurs.

We live in a divided country, so I escape to nature in general, and my garden in particular. But even there I cannot escape political differences.

Here’s a crash course on how to spot the political leanings of the gardener.

The tidiest gardens in my neighborhood belong to Republicans: they’ve been trimmed, sprayed, denuded, edged, weed whacked and mulched. Democrats tolerate a fair amount of disarray. Organization is not their strong suit. Will Rogers said it best: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”  

 Havahart™ traps were made for Democrats.

Democrats are tolerant to a flaw. They only trap critters after they’ve eaten their way through the vegetable garden many times. My Republican friends own guns, and they use them. Both parties agree a gun is quicker than hauling a Havahart™ trap with a mad woodchuck to a quiet country road.

Rare plants versus common plants? If you want to know the latest plant trends, look no farther than the garden of the former head of the local Republican Party. In contrast, the head of our local Democratic Party has planted a garden with common plants and pollinators in mind. The garden is buzzing with activity, even though the local political party has no activity.

Democrats meet once a month with the same agenda – which never includes the word WIN. They drink wine and whine about Republicans. If you want to see their heads spin, use the words strategy or message. Meeting after meeting they have the same action steps. None.

I told a Democrat that I liked his garden and he gave me ten reasons why I liked it. I can’t remember any of them because he talked so long and used so many multi-syllable words that my eyes glazed over. He had invited other Democrats over to see his garden and they talked and agreed on nothing. I asked him about a particular planting and he took a half hour to explain it.

Maybe that’s why Democrats use the Latin names of most plants. They’re longer. (See my blessay: Lutheran vs. Catholic Gardeners.) But ask a Republican what he intends to do about the root rot on his corn, and he’ll say: “Kill.” Now that’s economy.

Size matters in gardens. Neither political party has the corner on size, but Republicans tend to think bigger is better as long as they’re not bound by regulations. “You don’t need regulations because each gardener should take ‘personal responsibility’ for how he or she uses chemicals,” says a Republican friend.

You can’t make this stuff up.

If you see a lawn service pull up, it’s probably a Republican’s lawn they’ve come to treat. Sure, there are Democrats who hire lawn services, but if it’s TruGreen® (formerly known as Chemlawn, but with a brand name designed to deceive) it’s not the lawn of a Democrat. The buyers of organic lawn care are mostly Democrats. They’re suckers for anything labeled “organic.” They don’t take a chemical approach to pests; they tolerate dandelions and other weeds because they believe they’re good for beneficial insects. (Scientific fact in previous sentence.)

Gardening based on the latest science is the goal of most Democrats. The information they glean from literature on beehive collapse or pear blight, shows up in their garden practices. Republicans ignore the latest scientific findings because they believe they know what’s right for the planet.

One of my Republican friends even quoted the bible. “God gave man dominion over the earth.” Democrats believe the word dominion means stewardship, not domination.

The corner on righteousness? Democrats own that.

Republicans also believe there’s “a lot of hype in the science reporting on climate change.” Hurricane Harvey and Irma were “flukes,” they say. “The weather is cyclical.” I ask: “How do you explain the three warmest years on record?” Their answer: “Propaganda from the liberal media.” When I show them that Republicans own most of the media, they say: “Why do you make this stuff up?”

Okay, we’re pretty deep in the weeds right now, so grab your Round-Up® or other newly unregulated chemicals.

You may be thinking Geez, she’s biased.

So, in fairness to my Independent friends, next time I’ll give a summary of an Independent’s garden. On second thought, Independents believe the George Carlin line: “Never join a group that has a name.”