Simply Priceless Information

I should have had my peas and the potatoes in the ground yesterfuckingday. As sweet Lis would say. I just don't know about gardening any more. We don't get enough sun to make it worthwhile for the effort or at least that's what I tell myself. And the bottom line truth is- it's not as easy for me to get down in the dirt as it used to be. We really should have raised beds but we've not done that and I wish we had because it would make things so much easier. And the garden would probably be way more productive. Honestly, we're not very serious gardeners. We're dilettantes and haphazard about it all and it shows.

And yet, just as Jack said to Enis in Brokeback Mountain, "I wish I knew how to quit you." There's something in my blood that just compels me to plant stuff when spring rolls around. It's in my DNA. They'll find a gene for it. Trust me.

But hell, although I've been gardening for over thirty-five years I've not figured out one damn thing except that you need a lot of sun and plenty of water and the right dirt. How's that? And don't ask me what the right dirt is, either.

Maybe I should change my motto from "I don't know shit" to "Fuck if I know," although I guess they're about equal in meaning. But hey- it's good to change things up now and then, isn't it?

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about on this beautiful morning in Lloyd. It's supposed to get up to 80 degrees here today and then rain tomorrow which would make it a perfect day to plant. Do I have my seeds? No I do not. I do have some potatoes to plant. I could hustle in to town and buy my peas and maybe some onion sets.
Hustle?
Have I ever even SAID that word before?
What the hell?

In a completely unrelated topic, I think I have finally figured out how to make a good pie crust. After almost fifty years of baking I am now able to make pastry without weeping. I started using the recipe in my ancient "Young America Cooks" cookbook and by golly, it's a good recipe and it rolls out without tearing and is just a lovely thing.

And to further the not-connected-to-anything-else conversational segue, I decided last night that the best way to pick out a face cream is by smell because ain't none of 'em, no matter how much you pay, really going to do shit when it comes to wrinkles, either in prevention or elimination. So just pick the one that smells the best to you and be happy with that.

All right. I'm going to take my wrinkled up old face and crippled up old hips out for a walk in this glorious day. And then...well, fuck if I know.

Love...Ms. Moon

It has been the best day. It has been a growing day. A soothing day, and I haven't left the property and I've hardly spoken to anyone either, for that matter. Mr. Moon took off in the early afternoon to go attend to a project involving an Airstream Trailer and not that I don't like having him around or anything but if anyone in this world loves a bit of solitude now and then, it's me.
Well, me and that Buddhist nun who went off and meditated in a cave for fourteen years or something but that's a bit extreme.

I read Madame Radish King's posts wherein she talked about making some bread and proofing her yeast and it reminded me that I have been severely neglecting my sourdough starter which is not only a living, breathing thing but was given to me by The Sauce Boss himself, Mr. Bill Wharton, and even though yes, yes, YES goddammit, I said I was going to quit making bread, I just couldn't help myself and I took a bunch of oatmeal and ground it up in the food processor and then I added some hot water to that and some honey and made a sort of slurry out of it and then dumped in some of the stirred-up starter and added flour and mixed all of that and some salt and an egg and olive oil up in a big old bowl with my own hands and then I kneaded it by hand just for the pure pleasure and gave the Kitchen Aid dough hook a day off. It's rising like crazy, nice and lovely, sitting on top of my stove, the second rising in fact, and I think it's going to be good bread with mighty shoulders and a nice crispy crust.

I vinegared the coffee maker and then dumped the vinegar water in the washing machine to clean that out and did a few loads of laundry and washed up the dishes and then I went out to the garden and did a little weeding and planted a nice, long row of cucumbers, four different varieties, along the fence in a place where they'll get some damn light because the earlier cucumbers I planted are shaded by the peas and aren't doing shit. Then I weeded an area right by the front of the garden and planted one and a half packs of zinnia seeds, Giant Mixed Colors, my favorite. I remember distinctly the very first seeds I ever planted as a child and they, too, were zinnia seeds that my grandmother had in a glass, stoppered bottle and why, I do not know. I don't recall her ever growing anything except demented but she was a sweet soul and she told me those seeds were old and probably wouldn't grow and she was right. I remember going out every morning to check them and not a one of them came up but somehow it did not deter or discourage my future gardening attempts. I don't even know why I love to plant things so much. My horrible stepfather, The Asshole, as we call him, loved to garden and actually, he was a planting fool and he could grow anything and you'd think I would refuse to do any activity which he loved but I do believe that the love of growing things is a powerful force in our very DNA and so there you go. Growing shit and keeping chickens. Yep. Right there in the DNA. They'll find the genes for those things eventually, just as they'll find the genes for Patriotism and Religion, and they needn't bother searching my DNA for those because, as I have said a million times, I am lacking them.

I knelt in the dirt to weed and plant and it smelled so good and a couple of times I brushed up against the basil and that's all you have to do to release that good scent. I gave my weed scraps to the goats next door because I feel so sorry for them. They never get anything fresh and green and they run for it in a thundering herd when I dump those weeds over the fence. I was sweated through and dirty as hell by the time I set the sprinklers on the garden and came in and took a shower and then I went around and took a few pictures.

Who doesn't love an oak leaf hydrangea? Yes. I have already posted pictures of these blooms this year but I can't help doing it again. They are just magical to me. Tiny tissue-like flowers on a cone-shaped bloom, white as angel-light, airy as a perfect meringue.

These are the beginning blooms of the lace-cap hydrangea. I think that's what they are. They're going to be pretty, trust me. I hope. They don't really get enough sun (this is a theme in my yard) but they look like they might do something nice this year.

And then this. Oh my god. I feel as if I've just given birth.

Can you see it? Probably not. Here. Let me give you a better view.

The teeny-tiny leafling of the giant begonia that I've had rooting since last November. NOVEMBER, PEOPLE! I've kept the soil moist and watched over those things so tenderly for seven months! And I started the original plant from a few cuttings that a woman I know who works at a nursery gave me some years back so it's not hard to understand why I feel so very maternal about that tiny green leaf. I expect more and if all goes well, I shall gift them to people when they are big enough to leave the nursery pot.  

I am a fool for begonias. Yes. This and the love of wild birds is a definite sign of aging. 

Fuck it. Makes me happy. 

All right. One more picture.

The vegetables are what I picked today. The snow peas are still coming on as is the squash, and the banana peppers are just becoming mature and those cherry tomatoes are our first of the year. 

The eggs are some of what we got today and yesterday. Some. I hadn't had one of the Tiffany blue eggs for quite some time so I was happy to see it. 

And that's what I've done today. Planted and picked and punched and cleaned and weeded and watered and restored my very soul. My husband's on his way home and Prairie Home Companion is on and the bread is just about ready to go into the oven.

Don't tell me I'm not the luckiest woman in the world. Don't even try. Because I know that I am.

I Think Peace. I Dig Potatoes

I dug the potatoes today and that was two hours of hot, sweaty work. But rewarding. We now have an old canning kettle over three-quarters full of the things and they will keep well for a long time. Some of them are tiny- marble sized and some of them are large, chunky things. But most are un-nibbled by ants or moles or whatever it is that so often gets to the potatoes before we do and I am grateful.
I, myself, am not un-nibbled though. The damn ants got to me through my overalls and above my gloves, biting and stinging and it was rather miserable work although there is great pleasure in the finding of the potatoes under the dirt, round and smooth and red. I simply waited too late to begin and thus, the sun was blistering down and it was hot.

I came into the house when I was done and took a shower and and heated Mr. Moon up some lunch and then I took him to where he rents a car to drive down to auction. The rental car place is way on the west side of Tallahassee and we are beyond the east side and so it takes forever and on the way home, I stopped at an Ace Hardware to buy okra seeds and cucumber seeds to fill in where the potatoes were. They had no okra seeds but I bought the cuke seeds and also some zinnia seeds because I have not planted any this year except for the ones I put in the old rusted reclaimed wagon from the dump with the lemon balm and the mint and the flowers were quickly eaten by the chickens although they have spared the mint and lemon balm. I also bought a clothespin bag and a higher quality type of clothespins than the ones I have been using. I love the Ace Hardware. It has a bit of everything and I was fantasizing that they might even have some young chickens I could bring home and set in the coop but of course they did not. It's probably too late for that anyway.

When I got home I was starving and ate a very sensible lunch of some cottage cheese and a mango and then, unsatisfied, I dove into the leftovers from yesterday's lunch in Panacea which was a stupid mistake which I have paid for already in part and will no doubt, be paying for all evening. Fried food. Oh Lord. Why? But it was so good. Cold fried shrimp may not sound like a treat, but trust me- it is.

And then of course I was exhausted and full and laid down on the bed and slept for about forty-five minutes and woke up feeling itchy in my soul and I washed dishes and folded laundry and felt as if I had accomplished nothing at all today, nothing whatsoever of any importance but I am trying out a new mantra which is "I don't give a shit," and it works. Sort of. I think I am completely weary of giving a shit about everything on this earth, from the things which I can do nothing about to the things which I can and which I fret over like a cat worries over a dead mouse which it is not even hungry enough to eat.
I went back out to the garden and picked almost a gallon bag of snow peas and I pulled up two bolted and gone-to-seed collards and fed them to the goats next door and turned on the sprinklers and planted the little azalea Lily gave me for Mother's Day and put the sprinkler on that bed and also set a sprinkler in the fern and camellia bed and put some more laundry away and here I am. Here I am.

All day I have been thinking about the things I touched on this morning in my post about Memorial Day and what Elizabeth said in her beautiful post (her posts are all beautiful) and how we are all on holiday today to honor the war dead and how, of course, in this country that means we get off work and we  grill good ol' American food such as hot dogs and the Florida State Troupers had cars lined up in the shade in Lloyd, ready to jump on the interstate less than a quarter of a mile away because surely this must be one of their biggest money-making days because as Americans we always seem to have to drive somewhere on a holiday, never, I suppose, being satisfied with where we are or who we are with and so must go elsewhere to celebrate with others and it all seems so wrong to me. If we were truly to be acknowledging those who have died in wars, shouldn't we all be shutting ourselves into dark places and keening and moaning over the losses, the unimaginable losses? But no, that is not how we do it. We cook out and we drive places and we put up patriotic posts on Facebook (although it never seems to be actual veterans who do that) and some people, I suppose, shop the Big Memorial Day Sales! advertised in the paper and we do nothing, nothing at all to try and contemplate an end to war and we are still laughing at people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono who had the completely idiotic idea to put up billboards saying "Imagine Peace" and "War Is Over If You Want it" which, it would seem to me, would be a far more fitting tribute to those who died than waving flags and posting pictures of service men and women with their heads bowed in grief.

I mean- aren't we Americans? Aren't we supposed to be able to figure shit OUT?

Doesn't it say in the Bible in Isaiah that they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nation shall not lift up sword against nation and they shall not learn war any more?

Yes. It does.

Well, so what? It says a lot of shit in the Bible and you get to pick and choose as you want but that verse, that's one of my favorites. But really, is that any crazier than imagining peace? Than saying that war is over if you want it?

I heard our president on the radio today and he was talking about how we all need to be worthy of the sacrifice that our fallen soldiers made for us and again, that sounds way too much like Jesus dying on the cross to me. Here's what I think- I think that most of the soldiers who die in battle are not thinking one iota about freedom or liberty or even the United States of America. I think they are probably thinking, "Oh shit."

Well, thank god I do not really know. But I will tell you this- I am quite sure that every mother whose son or daughter was killed in battle did not have, as an immediate reaction to the news of her child's death, the thought that there was any glory in it at all.
There is NO fucking glory in war death. And I am not ashamed or afraid to say that I believe that. Not for god, not for country.

There is just waste.

I should go move the sprinklers. The sun is setting and the sky is golden and actually, I do give a shit although frankly, I don't think the planet does. It will go on or it will not. We humans can lie to ourselves about everything from our poisonous effect on our very mother Earth and her salty amniotic birthing oceans due to our greedy gas-guzzling needs (me too!) to the glory of war and death. We make up stories and we choose to believe them while we ignore what is right in front of us, be it flood or draught or the melting of the icecaps or the blood of our children.

I'm gonna cook me some peas and potatoes. I am a human being and an American and I am at the top of the food chain and I can eat whatever I want and I can use the earth's water for the benefit of myself.

And I'm going to keep telling myself that I don't give a shit, meanwhile being so crazy in love with the trees and the light on the magnolias and sound of the water falling on ferns and flowers and tomatoes and the vision I have in my head of the way the sun is looking right now setting over Dog Island and the little bonnet shark that kept visiting us every day in the very shallowest waters of the bay like a friendly little puppy that I sort of want to swoon.

Imagine Peace.

War Is Over If You Want It.

Amen.

Done And Dirty

I am done. I weeded all fucking day. It was a chore. Not fun, but a chore. I got nothing spiritually rewarding from it AT ALL. All I got was dirty. And I didn't even finish it. And I haven't planted one damn thing.
So what?
Who cares?
Not me.

My knees hurt and so does my right-hand index finger from poking it into the dirt, even with gloves on. My hips hurt too. Right now, I feel that the garden does not love me and I am not completely in love with it either. I wish I had a garden with gnomes hiding behind rocks and a small pond in it for the toads. One time I made a tiny pond from a buried half-whiskey barrel in a garden. It was awesome. I had like one water lily in it. My neighbor caught a crawfish and came over and put it in my whiskey-barrel pond. Maybe I need another one of those. And some gnomes. And some Buddha heads and a bath-tub madonna and enough stuff so that no weeds would grow. Okay, no plants would grow either, besides the one water lily but so what? I could drag a lounge chair out there and put up an umbrella beside the pond with the water lily in it and the toads and I could hang with the Buddha and the gnomes and the madonna.

Fuck weeding.

And yes. I fucking mulch.

Okay. I'll feel differently later.

It's been an odd Sunday all the way around. I did not make pancakes this morning. Mr. Moon said something like, "I think I'll get out in the garden before it gets hot," and looked at me rather expectantly.
"Well," I said, "I do not feel like either making a big breakfast or eating one." And so I did not. Mr. Moon had to eat Cheerios. He does not like any cereal that doesn't have an "o" in it. I had yogurt and a peach and some almonds. That was fine. I did make him a nice chicken sandwich later though so I guess I won't go to hell.

Lily called me. She was crying. "Baby, what's wrong?"
Turns out that she and Jason and Owen were about a mile from their house and a Florida Highway Patrol Officer of an age approximately old enough to buy a legal beer pulled them over. They were mystified. Jason had broken no rules of the road at all. The officer proceed to give Jason a citation for not having his seat belt on. The crazy thing was- he did have it on. Not only when the FHP dude got to the car but the entire time he'd been driving. And the officer wouldn't even discuss the possibility that he could have been wrong and he didn't give Jason a warning, no, he gave Jason a ticket for $115 and said that his job was not to argue with them on the side of the road and if they didn't agree with the ticket, he would explain it in court.
Like Lily and Jason have either the money to pay the ticket or the time to go to court to fight something which was a blatant misuse of stupid-cop power. They drive a minivan for god's sake! Dark green!
Oh for christ's sake. Don't upset or piss off my pregnant daughter! Do not do it! She called her daddy too and he was in the woods and it was a bad connection and all he could hear was her crying and he thought...well, you know where the mind can go when you have a pregnant daughter and a grandson and the daughter is wailing.

So when he got home from the woods I was in the kitchen, and I told him that I was DONE gardening for the day and that was that and that I'd just come in and he looked at me and said, "Well, what did you DO?" because I was doing that tiny picky weeding and it takes forever and it doesn't look like I did shit even though it took me hours and hours to do that which does not look like I did shit and he said, "So you didn't mulch as you weeded?"
And I just looked at him with that look and he said, "Do you love me?"
And I said, "Yes."

That's how it goes when you're old. You don't get into fights, you just go straight for the forgiveness because by the time you're our age you know it ain't worth it and the other one knows that when you say you've done all you can do, it's the truth, plus, she might be washing a knife there, standing at the sink and who knows? Women are odd creatures. They cry and they wail and they give you that look and they are good with knives and they keep them sharp.
So he asked me if he could kiss me and I said yes and he did and then he went off to work in the garden.

Sometimes this is how it is on a Sunday. It is neither sunny nor particularly cloudy, it is not hot and yet not really cool either. Sometimes there are neither pancakes nor bacon. Sometimes you're driving along with your sleeping son in the back seat of your mommy-van and a man with a gun on his hip gives you a ticket for something you did not do. Or gives you a ticket for not-doing something which you DID do.

I have leftover fish in the refrigerator and I have to come up with an idea for our supper which incorporates that. I do not have a lot of hope for grand success. I should have made Anne-Helene teach me to make Norwegian Fish Dish but I did not and I have a feeling it contained more cream and cheese than I would feel comfortable using.
But damn, it was good.
I mean really, really good.

Oh well.

None of this is earth-shattering in the least and I have enjoyed watching Elvis today as he ran to the hen house every time one of the sister-wives laid an egg and I could almost imagine him thinking as he ran, "Damn! Can't I get ONE MOMENT'S PEACE AROUND HERE?" I also saw him get some off Ms. Mabel, that poor old favorite. At least he doesn't ignore the old wives in favor of the new, although Mabel probably wishes he would.

But that's what's happened today on a Sunday at the Church of the Batshit Crazy and I expect the death gases to start arising from under the floor again at any moment. I think the Emmy's are on tonight. Do I care? I'm not sure. Probably not. But it's better than football.

If you just started reading this blog, please forgive me because you're probably clueless. If you have been reading for awhile, forgive me because you've surely heard all of this before.

Either way, I'm just glad you're here and lucky you, I am done.

Stiff and Sore But Moving On

Mr. Moon and I weeded for about five hours yesterday which leads me to the understanding that we are not smart gardeners because if we were, we'd be doing raised beds but we're not and both of us walked around last night groaning and stretching and rubbing our backs and groaning some more and I'm doing the same thing today.

You wouldn't think that weeding is such hard work but dammit, it is. I was talking to May about it this morning and she said, "It's like cleaning your bathtub for five hours."
Yes. That's it.
Only a lot dirtier.

As we worked in the garden, the sky would bruise up to the north and the wind would blow stiff and strong and we'd both smile and sigh and say, "Nie," quoting Owen, you know, as it cooled our sweaty skin and it even thundered a few times and but nothing happened beyond the popping and dropping of random rotten branches and still, no rain.

After we were done we planted the eggplant and peppers and a few tomatoes but neither one of us had the strength or energy to go ahead and get the bean and cuke and zinnia seeds in. No way. Mr. Moon took a shower and I decided to take the garden cart around and very, very slowly pick up dead branches and kick a little bamboo to try and limber up my weeding muscles and then I took my shower and we played a little cards on the back porch and then we got silly and fooled around some and then I cooked dinner which was leftover pasta with another loaf of home made bread and damn, it was better than the night before. I didn't even mess with a salad.

After that it was all sort of a dream of wandering around, the bed pulling us with great gravity and finally, we quit resisting and the lights were out before ten-thirty and that's how it goes.

None of this has been about complaint, let me tell you. I am completely and fully aware today of how precious it is that both of us still have the strength to do our gardening, to work in the yard, to live the way we live. That point has been driven home this weekend, watching as both my own mother and Billy's grandparents are at a place where they're going to have to have help and no two ways around it.

One day you're fully independent and can get around fine and take out your trash and remember how to write checks and pay bills and drive to the store or even to Kentucky and the next day you're not sure how to do anything and your body doesn't remember how to walk right.

I don't care who you are, it happens.

The day comes when you have to admit that you cannot do it any more and it'll happen to me and Mr. Moon, too, unless a truck hits us before then or we decide to take up heroin and overdose together watching the sunset which we have discussed doing but probably won't. When we were in our thirties, that seemed like a fairly sensible way to end our days and not be a burden on our children but how in hell does an elderly person score junk?

So. I'm sore.
Big deal.
That's why they make Ibuprofen.
I can still swing Owen up on my hip with one arm and I can weed for five hours in a row and then pick up branches and then fool around and then make supper.

And I'm going to work in the yard today. All day if I can. I told Mr. Moon he can plant the seeds because he likes those rows STRAIGHT and I never get 'em straight enough and that'll drive him crazy all summer long so it will just be for the best if he plants them.

My potatoes are coming up. The rows aren't straight but the plants come up rather randomly anyway so that's okay. If the ants don't eat them all, we'll have some potatoes this year. And maybe peas if they'll hurry up. I remember being a young hippie-mama-gardener and cooking new potatoes and sugar snap peas with a cream sauce and I still think that's about the best thing ever.

How many more years will we be able to plant potatoes and peas? How many more years will I be able to cook them?

I don't know. But I tell you what- I'm going to do both for as long as I can.

And I probably won't buy heroin but I already buy Ibuprofen by the case-load.

Time to go put on the overalls. I did a load of laundry last night and so they're clean and ready to go and that's another thing I'm grateful for- I can still do laundry.
I'll probably never not be able to do laundry. Unless someone cuts my arms off.

So I guess my point here is this- when you're young, all these chores and daily tasks seem so damn endless, pointless and burdensome at times but honestly? They're the very stuff of life and if we're lucky, we'll always be able to do them and the older we get, the more we know that.

And if you're smart, you'll get in shape while you're young and work at staying that way because there's nothing in this world that you'll need to be stronger for than aging.

Happy Sunday, y'all.

Love...Ms. (Aged, Aching) Moon

Who Knows When These Seeds Were Planted?

The story goes that my grandfather met my grandmother when he went to her father and asked if he could make a garden in a vacant city lot which my grandmother's daddy owned.

My grandfather was the son of the son of the son of farmers from Pennsylvania and had grown up on a farm owned by that family since before the war which tore the serrated edge of the tag of England from the new country's ruling power.

Ahem. I am at least half Yankee stock. Can you believe that? Ah-lah.

And Granddaddy, being the eldest of his generation, was due to inherit the farm and spend his life on it but he didn't wish to do that and went to New York state to learn the art of cabinetry and while he was in school there, he cut off the fingers of his left hand in a saw. Done. Cabinetry making and what all else, I can't imagine.

BUT, the company he worked for sent him to another school to learn to buy wood and that is what my grandfather did for his entire working life. He loved wood and my brother who lives in Washington State inherited that love and has spent most of his life with trees, planting and cutting them.
Anyway, Granddaddy went to Grandmama's father and asked to make a garden out of this lot and the old man, Mr. Slocum, said yes, and he was impressed with my grandfather's work ethic (or at least, this is how the story goes) and before long, it appeared that my grandfather was impressed with Mr. Slocum's youngest child (there were twelve children and Granny was the baby) and well, next thing you know a diamond was being given and I wear this diamond on my left hand in a ring nestled between two other diamonds given to me by Mr. Moon. Granny's diamond has a visible flaw in it- a dark piece of coal which never transmogrified into diamond, I suppose, and to me, it has always resembled a seed of some sort.
Appropriate.
I, too, love trees although I have never cut more than a branch or a young seedling tree which I did not want to have growing where it sprouted, unlike my brother who cut and milled wood for many years. He knows more about trees and wood than anyone I personally know and when Mr. Moon and I visited him a few years ago, he took us to a forest to see trees like this one:

Blood will tell, babies. Blood will tell.

And although I have my beautiful oaks, it is the dirt which calls to me most strongly. I imagine that, too, comes from my grandfather because as far as I know, my father's side of the family never planted anything more than a rose bush or a rumor. Really, I have no idea and I might be amazed if I searched through the family tree. As it were.
(White- tell me what you know about this.)

Anyway, I have just planted some winter things in the garden. The arugula and some spinach, some mustard greens and some turnips and some mesclun lettuces which will take us through the winter for salad and greens. I waited until the sun was low in the sky and the heat was not so bad and then, after I did my planting, I went out with my clippers and trimmed up some of the palms and elephant ears and bananas.

Now I feel as if I have done my job for the day. There is no denying the call of the genes of my ancestors to take a bit of land and make it into something fruitful and beautiful. I don't care to raise cows for milk or meat or hogs for their bacon (oh wait- maybe I do) but I do have a need to plant the greens and the lettuces and beans and to see the chickens scratching in the dirt. My mother tells me that Granddaddy always kept chickens on their bit of property on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, and that she hated gathering eggs when he was gone because the hens pecked at her.

My hens peck at me too, but I don't mind. They are, for the most part, quite generous, and hop on and off the nest as handily as can be, to lay their eggs and then just leave them. Occasionally one will grow broody and want to keep her eggs, but it is rare and if they do peck at me, it's more love bite than real threat. I love to pat the hens on the nest and this morning I was able to give Miss Daffodil a very nice little neck and wing massage as she sat and she seemed to enjoy it.

It's interesting to think and wonder about the ways I've been influenced by my grandparents and theirs as well and I should probably start researching them and finding out more about who I am and why I am but I just seem to be too busy taking care of my descendant these days and I know I am instilling some of those genes within him. He loves to find eggs in the nest and he loves the chickens, as we all know, and eventually, I'll take him out to the garden to learn about they mysteries and wonders there, as well.

An almost half-moon is rising above my little bit of land tonight and as I pulled a few invasive potato vines and gave them to the goats next door and dumped the wheelbarrow full of trimmed-off elephant ears and banana leaves, I saw it shining silver above my head and I felt, for the moment, perfectly content. The goats were moaning their approval over the potato vine, my chickens were shut up into their house and the sprinkler was on, watering in my seeds. The oak trees and pecans which I have can take absolutely no credit for their presence or their growing were stretching up into the night sky and I could feel my grandfather in my blood, nodding his own approval over my tending of the small piece of earth I am lucky enough, at this point in my life, to be shepherd over. I thought of the salads we shall eat this winter and of the eggs which will give us their flavor and protein and for a second, at least, I knew I was doing exactly what I should be.

These moments are rare and they rarely involve malls or watching television or reading newspapers. Or sitting in church. For me, anyway.

No, for me they always involve dirt and water, sky and trees, sweat and effort. And I have this diamond on my finger with its tiny seed wrapped in harder-than-anything memory and promise on my finger, my ant-bit, dirt-under-the-nail finger. The diamond which Granddaddy gave Granny so very many years ago and it rests just above the skin which covers the veins his very own blood runs through. And is bracketed on each side by diamonds which my husband gave me, the husband whose blood runs through our grandson who will, someday I hope, want to dig in the dirt to plant seeds and keep chickens and fix engines and maybe even (be still my heart) write.

I hope that because in my experience, those things are real and worth doing. I heard a man once, a long time ago, refer to a certain class of people as the changers of the oil and the tillers of the soil. It struck me then and strikes me now as a perfect description of the sort of person I want to be and would want my descendants to be.
With a bit of the crazy musician/writer/dancer/artist thrown in for damn good measure.

The moon is rising. The crickets are rubbing their legs together and my seeds are in the ground. My fat, sweet hens are sleeping on their roost and my tiny bit of land is trimmed up and waiting for fall to find us.

For tonight at least, there is peace in my soul and Grandfather is not displeased.

Simple Stuff

Well, it's a real nice evening here in Lloyd. Not as hot as it has been. In fact, the last two days we've all remarked on the subtle change in the air. It's a promise of fall that only people who have been slowly roasting to death in ninety-seven degree temperatures with ninety-nine percent humidity can detect. But detect it we do and we're grateful for it and we discuss it among ourselves when we meet up on the road or in the post office.

"Almost 'fraid to say anything, but don't it feel a bit cooler?"
"Yep. You're right. I mean, it's still hot but it's not AS hot."
"And it'll get hotter again, but this is nice."
We nod at each other and go on separate ways having discussed something which, to us, is of grave importance.

And it is nice and I went out and pulled a few weeds from the garden from around the sweet potatoes. The garden has gone to HELL, I tell you.



The tomatoes are dried vines and the green beans are too. The squash is long gone and so are the big eggplants. I have a few of the small Italian ones still and some of the tiny, lethal peppers and the sweet potato vines but you can't pull them until after first frost. Or so I hear. I've never grown sweet potatoes before.

There are some volunteer marigolds and zinnias from last year but the zinnias are all a shade of dusky pink which doesn't do a thing for me and I grieve for all the beautiful blooms I might have had if the yard guy hadn't cut all my new plants down a month or so ago.

I mourn the reds and the yellows, the oranges and the greens. I mourn the whites. Well. Next year.

But the weeds are easier to pull this time of year than the tiny hair-like ones we're so vigilant about in spring and I did sweat, pulling them, but it wasn't as bad as it would have been three nights ago and I sort of enjoyed it. The chickens came in the garden and scratched in the clean dirt I'd just cleared and I threw them a tomato hornworm and they pecked at it with great curiosity.
There is little in this world which brings me as much pleasure as watching my chickens in the dirt and the yard.

I've learned to make the same sound that Elvis makes when he finds a tasty treat and wants to call his hens. I feel as if I'd learned French or maybe even Chinese when I make the sound and the hens come running. I'm a simple woman. Let's face it. It's true.

I stayed with Owen for a few hours today. When I got there, his mama said, "Thank god," and handed him over. "He's driving me crazy," she said. He was tired but fighting sleep which results in some pretty frantic behavior. I got down on the floor and played ball with him and he laughed like a hyena when I started bouncing it off the side of the couch. When his mama left to go to work he said, "Bye!" and waved his whole arm with great vigor.
He can say "Hi!" and "Bye!" now, as well as you or I can, and when Lily and I demonstrated throwing kisses, he looked at us with that calculating look in his eye and I know he is thinking, "I can do that. I just have to think about it for awhile."
And he will. He's a damn genius.

So Mr. Moon has a new toy. It's one of those ATV's.


I hate those motherfucking things but he bought it for a purpose and because he's Mr. Moon, he will probably end up making a few bucks off it when he's done with it. Everything he buys is an investment and dammit! He's right. It is. I don't think the man has ever lost money on anything he's bought, whereas everything I buy is NOT an investment unless you think of flax seed as an investment in our health.
Whatever.

He keeps calling it a "quad" and I finally said, "Quit calling it that! It makes me think of quadriplegic which is what you're going to be when it rolls on top of you."
"Okay," he says. "I'll call it an ATV."

Last night when we were going to bed I said, "You know, Ozzy Osbourne flipped his and was really hurt."
"Ozzy's a moron," said Mr. Moon.

I had to admit he's right although I do love Ozzy. It's strange- when he was the Prince of Darkness I couldn't have given one shit about him but after I watched him on that reality show I fell completely in love with his sweet, bumbling self. I watched the show faithfully and my kids laughed at me. I couldn't help it. I loved him. He may be a moron but he loves his family to distraction and his stupid, little dogs too.

Anyway, Mr. Moon is careful and he is not a moron and I trust his ATV driving abilities. Plus, he's a grown man and who am I to tell him he can't have an ATV? It's making him happy and I'm all about that.

Well, I think the chickens have gone to roost and so I need to go shut them up and cook some supper. It's been a good day. A good walk in a slightly cooler world, a visit with my grandson, a few weeds pulled, a chat with Kathleen on the phone, another chat with May on the phone, five good eggs from the hens, and I think maybe Hannah will get a few gifts from people she didn't even know cared about her.

The cicadas are humming so loudly I can't hear myself think and tomorrow Lily and I might take Owen to Wakulla Springs.
There will be pictures.

I'm really busy these days but I'm loving it. I'm good.

I hope you are too.

Love...Ms. Moon

Evening Song

Today has been the opposite of yesterday. It has been quiet and I have rested and I have renewed. I walked, I hung my laundry including the sheets which are now tucked tightly on my bed, waiting for me. I watered my porch plants, I gathered eggs, I took last night's trash and recycle down to the trash depot, I sent Mr. Moon off to Orlando, I worked in the yard.
It has been lovely, this day of rest and renewal.
In the quiet and peace I found treasures in my yard and I consider this one to be my Birth-Day present:

Doesn't look like much, does it?
Well. It is. For me. To me. It is the first bloom of the giant begonia I started from one leaf two summers ago. I was just wondering the other day if it would ever bloom. All the begonias I've ever had have had a bloom- where was the giant begonia's? And here it is. Tiny and unimpressive to the eye. It may grow larger. I do not know. But I am delighted at its appearance today.
Here's another present:

My Easter lily, or should I say, my "Easter" lily? Finally it has opened. I believe that Lily may have given me this lily. I've been watching it every day, patiently waiting for it to bloom. And today it did.

The thing I believe I have enjoyed most today was finally weeding and clearing out the place where I wanted to plant zinnias. I am so ashamed- I should have planted those tiny winged seeds two months ago. I hope they will forgive me and make something of themselves despite my tardiness in giving them to the dirt. The first seeds I ever planted were zinnia seeds that my grandmother had in a glass bottle and although I checked them every day, they never sprouted. I think they might have been many years old, those seeds.
But today I weeded and broke up the earth, the chickens very curious and coming to see what I was doing, and I spread a little composted chicken shit and then laid down leaves for mulch and brushed them aside to make a place to plant the seeds (a dark gash of earth) and I mixed the contents of three different types of zinnias from their packages into one and I so carefully placed them in the shallow indented row I made with my forefinger. Then I patted the dirt back over them and have set the sprinkler on and am hoping for the best. Summer will be with us for quite awhile and zinnias are summer plants and so I have hope.
I do.

I have been gardening for over thirty years and yet strangely, I feel like a novice; every year a new adventure, a different experiment in how to grow flowers and food. Isn't that odd? You would think I would know how to do it, what to do, and the best way to do it, wouldn't you? And yet, no.

There are so many different factors every year. The lateness of winter or the early arrival of spring. The bugs we have one year are different than the ones we have other years. So are the fungi and other plant diseases. One year the cucumbers may thrive while another they hardly do a thing. My peas this year have been a vast disappointment and the collards bolted so early, despite spring's long, unusual coolness. Why? I do not know. Half my garden right now is filled with bolted things- lettuces and the collards, mustards and even the radishes. I need to clear it out. And I will. It's just hard to let it go, for some reason. Hard to be ruthless with something still green, even if it's gone bitter and to seed.

But every year I hope to learn something new. Every year we hope to improve the dirt with composted shit and leaves for mulch. Every year is a new beginning. A new lesson. A brand, spanking new experience.

Sort of like raising children- just because you know how to raise one, doesn't mean shit when it comes to the next.

Believe me.

When I finished the last bit of the zinnia row and patted it like I'd pat a baby's bottom and turned on the sprinkler, I walked around with my camera for a bit.
Here are some different hydrangea, their blooms just beginning to turn color:

There are blue and pink and purple hydrangea, already showing like pieces of the sky in the different hours of the day in Lloyd, but mine are shaded and so are slow in coming. Shade makes many blossoms shy but what are you going to do? Cut down the oak trees? I don't think so.

Here's another. It's a fancier version. The tiny white blossoms dance around the inner blue ones. I'll show you what it looks like in a week or two. It will be different.

My chickens continue to delight and amaze me. Every day. They line up to be let out in the mornings and spend their day either in busy scratching or in rest under bushes or a shed. Jessie and I went out today and we didn't see them but when we went into the front yard, there they were, rushing us to see what we might bring them. They rarely go into the front yard so we were surprised to see them. We lured them back to their coop where Jessie had taken the rinds of the watermelon and cantaloupe and strawberry tops I'd cut up earlier. And Hank- that watermelon is TASTY! Elvis made his throat call after tasting the bounty to call the hens to treats. I never get tired of watching them, these social, intelligent creatures who give me such pretty eggs every day.

Miss Bob of whom I rarely speak. She is a quiet hen and just goes about her day but she is a pretty thing.

Daffodil and Luna The Cat, both wishing I would fill up the bowl with cat food. I had no idea that chickens and cats could co-exist so peacefully. Who knew? Not me. But now I do.

And now it's getting dark and those chickens have tucked themselves up into bed and I need to go out and shut their door against predators and turn off the sprinklers. I am filthy dirty and need a shower. There's an Amy's pizza in the freezer I am going to make for my supper. Why not? No one here but me. I'll cook some peppers and garlic and onions and chop up some tomatoes to put on it before I put it into the oven. It will be GOURMET frozen pizza.
I might watch some TV as I eat it.
I will not be watching the last episode of "24" which even my beloved NPR has been talking about today. I've never watched one minute of that show and so what would be the point? A show where they torture people? Oh, maybe there is more to it than that but I'm pretty sure it's not for me.

The crickets are singing and a distant dog is barking. Beside that, it is quiet.

Thirty-two years ago right now my baby May was just over twelve hours old. She was fussy that night. I remember. I stayed up with her and sang her songs and nursed her. I remember that well. I looked into her eyes and wondered who this soul was whom I had just given birth to. I wonder if the descendants of the crickets I hear now are the same ones who sang that night. They must be.

I had made a dinner the night she was born of peas and potatoes from our garden and chicken baked in the oven with barbeque sauce. I remember that.
There are potatoes in my garden right now and a few peas. A few.

I am alone with these memories and the knowing that I have had a good and peaceful day, the knowing that after all of these years I don't know squat about gardening and yet, was trusted with the lives of four children.

Amazing.

Grace.

Down On The Farm

Yesterday I worked in the garden all day long. I weeded and I mulched and I dug trenches and put composted chicken shit in them and I planted cucumbers and I tied up tomatoes.



I planted two eggplants and my peppers look so good that I think I'll go buy a few more to put in. I've pulled up the bolted mustard and fed them to the goats next door. Those goats run to the fence when they see me coming. The baa and they bump each other out of the way as I toss the spent plants over and they pull at the greens and tear them from the stems and munch them with great and obvious delight.

The potatoes are doing well and I think we could probably dig up a few already. I love the way just-pulled-from-the-ground potatoes respond to the knife. They're so crisp they practically explode away from it in pieces. If you cut them. Which I don't, if they're the new, baby ones.
I'm excited to see how my blue potatoes turn out. They're the shorter row on the right.

All day as I worked, it threatened rain. Thunder to the northwest and great dark clouds and even a few heavy drops but then nothing. Nothing at all. By the time I finished I turned on the sprinklers, thinking that surely that would get the rain to come, but no, it did not. I kept checking the radar and it looked like surely we would get a squall at least, but radar lies, children, it truly does.

You've never seen anyone as filthy as I was by the time I was done working. I'd had my hands in the dirt all day and composted chicken shit, too. My hair was soaking wet from sweat and I'd probably smushed fifty mosquitoes who'd had the temerity to try and feed upon me. Whenever I'd find a bug in the garden, I'd pick it up and take it to the chicks and put it in their box and as always, Mabel/Maynard would be the one to find it first and the others would chase her/him around and try to take it but that bird is the bug-eatin'est bird you ever saw. Mr. Moon actually chopped a worm into six pieces the other day for them. He's nicer than me. To chickens, at least.

I was taking a shower when he got home and I showed him what I'd done in the garden. We had to check the chicks, of course, and we oohed and aahed because they were on their roost, all lined up like the big chicks they're learning to be. I came back to the house to grab the camera but by the time I got back to the coop, they'd all scattered, of course.


I'd picked broccoli and collards and snow peas and onions and I made a stir fry for our supper with all of those, a red pepper, two carrots, tofu and peanuts. Here are the vegetables being wokked.

It was a perfect day, short of not getting rain. I love getting filthy in the dirt, I love having a body strong enough to dig and bend and pull and plant. I love getting things tidy in the garden, tucking up the mulch like a nice, airy blanket around the plants and I love the sight of things growing. Nothing makes me happier than all of that. And then to come inside and cook what we've grown and sit down to eat with my love- well, here we are. Heaven of a sorts.

Our old house, our two acres, our birds and our crazy dogs. The garden we've made. Unlike the people who lived in this house a hundred and fifty years ago, we don't have to depend solely on what we raise in the garden and the chicken coop and the hog pen. We have Publix, eight miles down the road. But if there's anything more rewarding than eating what we've raised with sweat and muscle and dirt and water, I don't know what it is.

Well, seeing my kids all in one place, having a good time with each other, laughing. That's the very best.

And reaching over in the bed at night to find my husband, to pat him and feel his hand touch mine, to turn over and go back to sleep, knowing he's there beside me.

How did I get so lucky?
I have no idea.
But here I am, lucky and knowing it. Working and growing it. Writing and showing it.

Now. Could we please get some rain? Not to be ungrateful or anything, but could we?

The Good Damp Earth and The Things We Grow In It

I'm just back from the Goodwood plant sale on a drizzly Saturday morning and I just feel so good.

I didn't buy much. A native azalea, a begonia, an old rose.

I hadn't been to the sale in years and probably wouldn't have gone this year, either, but my friend K. invited me to go with her and so I did. I think the rain kept a lot of people away this year because it wasn't very crowded and no one was knocking anyone over to get to the camellias. But the people who were there very cheerful, despite the drizzle; a typical Tallahassee mix of black folks and white, men and women, old and young, dressed in everything from pearls and ponchos to overalls and rubber boots with no common bond except for that of being passionate about plants.

This has gotten me wondering why exactly it is that humans just love to plant things. It's probably firmly encoded into our DNA by now to cultivate the plants and trees that we eat the fruit of. That I can understand. But where does the impulse come from to grow plants that offer us nothing but flowers? Why do we plant trees that offer us nothing but the delight we get from the way the wind sounds in their leaves?

I don't know, but I'm one of the people who definitely have the impulse.

I can be seduced by the spring offering of gaudy annuals from Lowe's and Home Depot and Target and I adore my pots of ornamentals on my porch, but what I really love, what makes me almost giddy with delight are the plants I find at places like Native Nurseries and Goodwood. And nothing in the world makes me happier than finding ferns in the woods and digging them up and bringing them home. I love the plants that are native to the area. Ones that I don't so much cultivate as just bring home and allow to flourish. The ashe magnolia, the oak leaf hydrangea, the palms, the ferns, the wild violets, the Buckeye.

I'm also a fool for camellias, which strangely, this yard was severely lacking in when I moved here. There was one lone bush, grown almost to a tree, but I have planted a dozen more and this year's relatively rainy weather has given them all new growth, and me great hope that one day they, too, will be big, strong, adult camellias, offering their color to winter's drab gray. I get as much pleasure from seeing new growth on something I've planted as a mother does, seeing her child go from baby to toddler to child, learning to walk, to talk, to read.

When I was a young gardener, I ordered a rose from Burbee that I planted next to my garden fence and over the years it took off, climbing the fence and giving me deep red, almost magenta roses that were full and as fragrant as any rose you can imagine. I used to pick the blossoms and put them in a bowl and their scent would fill the house. I have spent the ensuing thirty years since I left that house trying to figure out just what in hell that rose was. I've never been able to find it again but yesterday I drove past a yard where an old house has recently been torn down and there, growing on a fence, was a rose that I do believe may be the same kind. I instructed my husband to go by with his knife on the way home and cut me a few pieces and I am trying to root them right now. The delight I am getting from those four pieces of rose plant stuck in a pot with rooting hormone is beyond what I can quite describe. There is no pleasure greater for me than taking pieces of plants or seeds I've collected and nurturing them into something that will grow in my yard.

It probably has something to do with my maternal instinct and I'm not ashamed of that.
I can think of no scenerio for my future that makes me any happier than to be an old, gnarled woman in a big hat with a trowel, clippers, and a shovel and garden cart, moving stiffly from one area of my yard to another, trimming, weeding, transplanting, planting.

Perhaps it is this impulse to plant green things that really differentiate us from the animals. It's certainly not tool-making, we're discovering. I don't feel any need to separate myself from our great ape brethren but I think it's interesting that we plant stuff and as far as we know, they don't, although some chimps seem to treat illness or injury by hunting out specific plants and eating their leaves, which indicates a knowledge of plants that transcends what's good to eat and what's not.

All things to ponder as I enjoy this quiet morning, a perfect morning to plant my new (old) rose, my azalea, and my begonia which sit in their pots waiting to be introduced to their new homes.

The mother in me, the human ape in me, the old Southern lady gardener in me- all of these parts of my soul are completely content to putter around in the wet, black earth, getting dirt under my fingernails and planting things that hopefully will bring joy to future generations as I receive joy from the things that have been planted in this yard by people unknown to me, many of them long, long gone.

I planted a tiny live oak tree in the yard of the last house I lived in and sometimes I drive past that house, just to see how big it's getting. It'll be two hundred years before it's anywhere near as big as the oaks in this yard and I'll be long dead by then, but instead of depressing me, that thought just brings me joy.

Nothing lasts forever, not a good meal I've cooked or words I've written or a clean kitchen floor but a live oak- plant one of those and it'll last, if not forever, long enough.

And of course a rose won't last that long and certainly not a begonia, but the babies of the rose, the offshoots of the azalea might.

And even if they don't, just the momentary pleasure I'll get from putting them in the ground and tucking the soil firmly around their roots and then watching them flourish is plenty.

More than plenty.

It will be a joy.

It will make me feel good.