Animism

"The squirrel misses the turkey," the Patient Spouse joked. He's not a sentimental man, largely, and I knew he only said it to break the usual mealtime silence. But I saw right away that he was right. The squirrel continued to lean to the right, where the turkey had been, but with no turkey there to support its little furry shoulder or meet its sidelong glance, the lean had turned to more of a list and the sidelong glance looked—yes, it most certainly was—no longer wistful, but sad.
     The turkey and the squirrel arrived on our dining table independently: the turkey, from his place in the dark safety of the glass china closet where he awaits his annual Thanksgiving appearance; the squirrel, from a box of fall decorations kept under the window seat. The turkey dates back to my childhood. He is a wax candle, probably from the Ben Franklin store circa 1970. His wick is long gone and his possibly-even-applied-in-America paint plumage is somewhat eroded after years of state appearances on the family table, in the dollhouse and now, every November of my adulthood, on my own dining table. The squirrel arrived from IKEA a few years back, a charming little fellow with embroidered eyes and a winsome tilt of the head, clutching a tiny mushroom in his paws. When I set them together on the table this past November, the turkey proudly stood his ground as ever, but he looked less darkly arrogant and more as if he were pleased with his new role: propping up the simpleminded but adorable squirrel, whose little mushroom was held like a bouquet about to be offered. It was clear this December-May relationship was made to last. Then, one day while changing the tablecloth, I saw the turkey had lost a big chip out of his breast feathers. Not wanting to further endanger this, one of my favorite family inheritances, I returned him prematurely to the china closet. The squirrel stood alone. That is, it did until I became so sad at seeing it, lonesome and leaning, supper after supper, that I returned it to the box under the window seat.
     Do I need therapy? Am I externalizing my own failings and lonlinesses? I'm sure the DSM would say so. The PS might concur. At best, its a childish thing to worry over two pieces of wax, polyester and paint as if they had feelings, as if I've never outgrown the ability to invest those things that represent life with sentience. But my elder daughter is more on the mark, I think, when she recognizes my reaction for what it is: the sensitive and slippery slope of animism.
     Take these carrots. Clearly, they love each other. It was for that reason that they became the last of my most recent digging to be separated. I kept grabbing them out of the bag in the fridge, seeing their shapes entwined,, and thinking nah-they just can't be separated. Some may see theirs as a sex act, but I see it as the ultimate embrace. Once, I even tried untwining them, but it became clear I would have to dismember them to extricate one from its soulmate. The best I could do was wait until the PS and I were sharing a lunch, make these devoted Daucus into sticks, and share them with my own soulmate. In our mutual affection, theirs lives on.
    See? She called it a slippery slope, the Eldest did. A life lived in the animist religion is a complicated thing. It can be consuming, even. Yet, it rarely seems unhealthy. Rather, it is another way of preserving wonder at the world, where the lines between magic and reality are blurred. 
    Say two vegetables are entwined, and you are harvesting them to sell. This happens all the time. The ag agent will likely explain it away as bad thinning practice, or stony soil, or maybe a nematode that has made your beets entwine, your parsnips embrace, your carrots consort. These experts would never consider animist explanations. They disregard the soul that animates all things. They don't believe in Gaia, the older name for Mother Earth.
     For a long time, good gardeners shared this secret: if you dug a lady slipper orchid in the wild and transplanted it to your yard, it would die no matter how you nurtured it. There was a relationship between the plant and its native soil—microorganisms that kept it alive and helped it thrive in a co-dependent system labelled "mutuality." A few such setups existed: the nitrogen-fixing bacteria living on pea-family plants, the algae and fungus living together as the visible "Plant" we call lichen; we learned about such things in biology class, and if the ladyslipper trick was a trade secret, it was backed by this scientific pigeonhole.
    It is becoming increasingly evident that such mutual arrangements exist everywhere throughout the plant kingdom, on such an intricate and complex scale that it boggles the mind. Seemingly unrelated species enable each others' survival. Stranger still, trees foster their nearby offspring. Weak plants cry out to be helped and their chemical signals allow pests to close in on them in their  undefended state. Outside your door, the air is filled with shouts and murmurs you can't hear, with messages sent across great stretches of time and between species. The old are teaching the young. The weak are sacrificing themselves for the strong. Plants, as it turns out, are not only more animate than the modern mind has allowed, they appear to be far better at getting along with one another than our single species can even manage to do with others of its own kind. How can you not respect that?
    So it's impossible for me to thin the garden and leave the little transplants gasping in the row beside their living comrades. It's hard to separate the two seedlings and plant them a row apart (or worse, choose one to live and one to execute). "Pick me!" the one bean seems to cry out, while its neighbor scolds, "I was too young: you should have waited until tomorrow." "Don't drop me here!" says the seed lost along the side of the row where it will grow up and be trampled in the path. "I tried so hard" says the volunteer poppy growing in the crack right in the middle of the walkway.
     Is it all in my head? I try to tell myself so. I don't want to turn into a white-haired old coot wrinkled as a raisin who talks to ants. The white hair and the wrinkles are starting to look inevitable.  I know the ants don't speak my language, I really do. But as the quiet of gardening alone sets in, things do speak: seedlings and bugs and stones and fruit. The old coot in the garden is a stereotype because this does happen to people. Are we coots crazy? Or are we just listening? Every time science discovers fresh evidence of the animate "inanimate" life buzzing below our human radar, I feel equal parts wonder and vindication. Meanwhile, you'll have to pardon me if I break off here. The begonia is calling me from the window, and it's so, so thirsty. Bloom where you are planted.

For the Brown Thumb on Your List...

The simplest things are the hardest for me. Consider Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera). Now when I worked at a garden center back in the days when such places still grew and tended things (rather than getting it all in by the truckload from someplace in the South) we had a greenhouse full of past-season Christmas cacti every spring and summer. They grew leathery and reddish, shrivelling in the heat and drought in their weedy resting place under the wire benches where marketable stock awaited purchase; any water these almost-dead specimens got was what trickled down from above. Every fall, we pulled them out, gave them a soak, and watched them green up and burst forth in magnificent magenta and red blooms. They were bought and taken away, or else they survived to spend another year in exile and neglect while they put on more growth...and an even better show the following year. "Neglect," I say. Yet my attempts to imitate this on a household level always end in sudden botanical death. After a summer spent outside in the droughty shade between some arborvitae and the house, I bring in my schlumbergia to watch it wake from schlumber, bud, and die. I've killed two, and am raising a third that I'm pretty certain is doomed. Sure, Christmas cacti are a dime a dozen at the nearest grocery store floral department this time of year. But for someone who makes their reputation growing figs and peaches, jewelled corn and iris from seed, this inability to keep alive the most undemanding, bomb-proof of plants has always been a bit of an embarrassment. The un-fussy Christmas cactus is not the only thing: gift amaryllis never rebloom in my care; sometimes they don't even unfurl those fat buds they arrive with. Paperwhites and hyacinths grown in those lovely glass forcing vases are doomed in my hands.
     But wait: maybe I'm not alone. A fellow gardener confesses she is lethal to aloes. Another routinely executes rabbit's foot ferns unless they are rescued by covetous friends (ahem). Everything—EVERYTHING—has its limits, after all: too much love, not enough; more fertilizer than necessary, or not enough; sudden death by cats or slow death by gas leak. Unfortunately, a lot of these maladies are hard to diagnose until it's too late. I'm not sure, for exampe, whether my shallow-rooted cacti died from too much water or too little; obvously, the protocols for doctoring it through one diagnosis or the other conflict.
    Anyways, my cactus never did bloom on time. The first year when I brought it home from the store it was a Christmas cactus. Then it was a Haunukkah cactus. Then, a Thanksgiving cactus. This year, it set bud on Halloween, opened two flowers on All Souls Day, then went to meet its maker. But I love Cristmas Cactus! The contrast between those thick, dull green leaves that are almost, I daresay, ugly out of season and the jewelled blossoms that appear from nowhere at just the right moment (okay—or not quite the right moment, but nonetheless a happy surprise)... The Christmas cactus is a botanical enigma: easy to grow yet difficult to grow well; common as dirt, yet somehow declasse in a way that allows me to appreciate them for their pure, classic, pedestrian splendor. They're a grandma kind of plant, like gladioli, african violets, zinnias and hoyas: plant breeders and style-makers have largely let them be in such a way that these old-fashioned plants have kept the naive charm they posessed back when plants weren't shipped cross-country in semis but were grown by the white-haired nurseryman at the local glasshouse or passed along via "slips" from a generous neighbor.
     My associates will point out that I turn everything into a pean to simpler times. Nevver mind. Really, all I wanted here was to explain that I've come up with a triumphant solution to my embarrassing case of schlumbergia rot. In fact, the first limp limb to droop, redden and drop to the floor beneath the hanging planter provided a template for this, the truly heirloom Christmas cactus:

 Materials: Paper, wire, wool, cotton, china
Available in two colors and varying pots, signed by the artist. $35.
  It isn't often I make something totally original, and even less frequenly do I make something so utterly like I wanted it to be that I am loathe to part with it.
Okay—so a real, live CC is available right now at Price Chopper for $6.
Is it organic?
Can you keep it alive?
Is it environmentally sound?
Is it signed by the artist?
Can it be passed along as an heirloom?

 Tomorrow, I embark on a two-day holiday marketplace at the nearby botanical garden, where I have been assigned space in the food tent and am supposed to hawk only my edible items.
But these, and the two others I made, simply have to make an appearance.

 Just for fun, here are a few more pictures, including one of my first Hellebores (the Christmas rose, a hardy perennial that doesn't bloom until February here in New England, and resents life in a vase.) Already, I have vague notions of tissuey crocus and tiny nodding snowdrops to herald February. Looks like I need a studio as much as I did a greenhouse... 

(Meantime, I'm happy to schedule a trunk show by appointment: georgiadouillet@gmail.com.
Bloom where you are pasted.

  

 

A Summer in Pictures

I've been meaning to share the joy of weekly flower harvests. The season just got way too busy to fit in a blog post, though. So, here, without the labor of more reading, is a sample of what First-Flower's first market year included. Bloom where you are posted!

 

Setting Up, Moving In

 Here is the completed greenhouse on Halloween day. Not visible is the guyline going from the back end to a driven 2X4, all conceived of and installed by the Patient Spouse to minimize racking and provide one more anchor against prevailing winds. Shelter Logic's plastic tarp "glazing" seems much sturdier than standard 6mil greenhouse film, but it is hard to imagine enough light coming through to foster plant growth and also allow the interior to warm significantly.
     Originally, I was going to install the end panels only, to check if that mystery roof angle (remember the gray macaroni pipes?) was properly done, then box up the glazing and wait until seed starting season to finish the project. It seemed a waste to start the clock on wear and tear from  sun and wind, since the completed house was intended for seed starting. It also seemed like installing the cover would take no time at all (meaning I could remove the glazing in summer and grow crops in-ground on this site). However, as construction progressed, I began to plan differently. It seems like a waste to have indoor space and not start experimenting with it. I'd rather know how it heats (and freezes) relative to the outdoor climate now, and not when there are $200 worth of seedlings inside. Why not try out a winter crop, recognizing that this should have been planted in September but that a few free sample seedlings could provide a sense of what I'm working with—and maybe a dinner as well.
      As to the future summer use and permanence/impermanence of this house, having put up the cover and sides it is clear this is no quick job. 2-3 hours seems a modest estimate of what it takes to dress or undress the frame, and that's with nice unrusted hardware. It may remain an indoor space year-round, though that will mean coming up with a reasonable and inexpensive means of irrigation if it is going to be useful growth space all season next year. IN THE MEANTIME:

     Last year's two cold frames are installed, giving a 1' path between them for watering and servicing. Eliot Coleman promises this greenhouse-within-a-greenhouse will add nearly 20 degrees of protection to any winter crops with the cold frame covers installed. As an experiment, I've planted some seedlings salvaged from the vegetable garden (self-sown): "Tennis Ball" lettuce, dill, cilantro, misticanza and arugula. Outside of the frame is a row of onion "Ailsa Craig" I think might sprout at some point and provide me seedlings for the summer onion crop with far less trouble than I'd get planting them indoors in February. I've seen nothing written about fall-seeded onions, and only know this is how the Evergreen Bunching Onions manage if left to their own devices. If you think about it, in the wild any plant ripens and drops its seed to winter some dormant season on the ground. So why don't we seed in the fall and let the seeds time themselves, rather than coming up with these elaborate indoor methods? With plants native to warmer places, it makes sense that the gardener has to make an artificial early spring in a heated greenhouse. But for cold-climate crops like onions, potatoes, spinach, leafy greens, etc., why not fall plant?
     Guess I'll find out. Meantime, it's tempting to go crazy with the theory, and put in more than a plot of arugula and a row of onions and lavender. I start to imagine a nastirtium crop put in now, while I'm thinking of it, to vine and trail around the outside foundation wall as soon as it's of a mind to sprout in spring. Why not carrots? Broccoli? Kale? Easy to fool myself and my years of experience, as the in-house temp soars 20 degrees above the outdoor 60F on this first, sunny, warm fall day...
     I think Coleman sez "no," though—something about the lessening hours of sunlight and its lowering angle causing plants to shut down growth until early February. So I put the seeds away for more well-reasoned times. Still, a November salad looks a promising prospect. I spend the remainder of the day moving the burn pile a safe distance from this meltable plastic home, and my spirit soars towards the coming season. Bloom!

Greenish House, Part Two

     The greenhouse arrived a week sooner than expected. It weighed about 145 pounds and arrived UPS in a box much, much smaller than I expected. (The UPS man was nevertheless relieved to be rid of it. He declined my offer of unloading assistance—probably company policy—but admitted he had been dreading this stop since he put it on the truck that morning. He looked like he was getting ready to smoke a celebratory cigarette as he heaved himself back into the driver's seat after dragging the box into the garage.)
     This greenhouse is Shelter Logic's "Greenhouse in a Box". The distributor, Home Depot, had great over-the-phone customer service, and also offered free shipping without adding $75-$100 to the base price like other distributors. At just under $400 for 200 square feet of greenhouse space, I know I am getting a chintzier-than-pro product. After looking at some other Shelter Logic structures in the neighborhood, though, I've gone against my better judgement and am willing to give chintzy a try. Those other structures look tight, square, tidy, and have stood up to area conditions for at least a year or two. The online customer ratings of this greenhouse run the gamut from "Great product for this price point" to "Fell down twice in as many days." The problem seems to come in one of two ways: this is an IKEA-like major assembly project and some folks really hate that kind of thing; and/or it needs way more anchoring than the manual suggests.
    The possibility of my investment taking flight is the harder of the two issues to address.  I've stood in a sturdy USDA-grade high tunnel in a serious windstorm and I understand how wind and 6mil plastic relate to one another (think: kite). The 4 "free" auger anchors supplied with the kit seem like a nice start, but have less holding power than the neighbor's dog picket pin, and I'm guessing in a windstorm this sucker is going to have more than 4-dogpower pulling strength. The bottom boards I built for the homemade greenhouse are now the bottom board retrofit for this kit: 60 board feet of 2X6, with the greenhouse's legs screwed to it and it screwed to three 2X4 posts driven into the ground. Presumably, the structure itself can stay upright with this kind of anchor, as long as it is assembled exactly the way the manufacturer intended. Which leads to the other problem: building from a kit.
     There are those that love a kit, and those that chafe at having to follow directions slowly, exactly and in order. I love IKEA. If IKEA made a greenhouse kit, I would buy it. (Dig those free Allen wrenches!) This Greenhouse-in-a-Box isn't IKEA-level design genius, but the quality is at or near IKEA-grade. Although the instructions claim two people can assemble the kit in 2 hours, I assume this is a weekend-long project.
     Sorting the pieces takes an hour. (Consumer tip, Shelter Logic: if you put a dot of colored paint on each part instead of a smeary six-digit number stamp, or even bundled like pieces together in the box-especially those three kinds of bolts —90 of them—which only differ 1/8" in length—it would be ever so much easier for the builder.) Here is the greenhouse, sorted into its components, on a very cold day, in the basement garage. I usually arrange flowers here. This is far more exciting.

(Note the IKEA toolkit. Indispensible! Likewise the set of socket wrenches my dad bought years and years ago when I got my first car. Thanks, Papa!) This kit necessitates a 7/16" socket, a mallet for gentle persuasion, a stepladder, and later, a couple long pieces of rope. That's it!
     Once the parts are sorted, it's relatively quick work to make the two end frames and three center sections - except that those parts that look like big gray elbow macaroni in this photo, and which determine the angle of the roof. These can fit either way onto the leg and eave pipes, but give the roof a different angle depending... I wonder which way is right, and go for an educated and uniform guess. (Again, Shelter Logic could have made an identifying orientation mark or a detail drawing in the instructions to aid with this critical step.)
     Now, here are those pieces, stacked in the yard and waiting to go up to the cleared spot. They are lightweight, but cumbersome. Especially in what remains of the blackberry patch...
   By lunchtime, a structure rises in the footprint of the first try. It is far more graceful. I'm glad to have put effort into site prep. All the joints are loose. That's just the nature of the design(chintzy). (Heck, it's a greenhouse-in-a-BOX, fer christsakes!) It means the whole structure wracks on uneven ground, in this case listing southward as if it wanted to go into the warm kitchen for a cup of coffee...  Wait: that's me that does. Fearing wind, I wait to get the whole frame anchored before putting up the end walls, which looks like a two-person job.Ta-Dah! (for now.)

A Greenish House

     My father started it. Last spring, about the time I was planting those first seeds and trying to resign myself to the fact that I'd have to revert to the bad old pre-greenhouse days of seed starting (check out spring posts and you'll see why sans-greenhouse is a challenge), he sent me some lovely greenhouse porn online. The options were tempting, and put the costs of house ownership bellow the $2000 price tag for the smallest of tunnels from Farm Tek. Still, I didn't have the capital to justify even a modest hobby house, and resolved to make do with cold frames (also documented in those March posts). Still, for some reason I didn't delete those tempting pictures and their alluring blue links to sites offering walk-in spring protection.
     By the end of summer, the Patient Spouse began delicately re-opening the question. "Where are you going to put your greenhouse," he inquired now and again throughout the hot days of August and early September—when, like the cricket in the fable, I was still fiddling away the summer as if all issues of seed starting and icy winds would never again be an issue.  As the leaves began to change, so did his tactics. Besides increasing the frequency of his gentle inquiry, he began to offer his spare time. Did I want help clearing out the garden? Would the greenhouse go here, or over there? How big was I thinking to make it? I stopped insisting that I was not, in fact, "Thinking to make it" any size at all, and began tentative, then aggressive, measuring, staking, and land clearing. "Is this where the greenhouse is going?" he asked, coming out one buggy October morning with gloves and a shovel to help dig grapevine. I realized I was talking siting, dimensions, visibilty to neighbors and proximity to water and electricity rather than denying the presence of a mental greenhouse. Like two separate people, I was the Scot with the $2000 profit and a copy of the Help Wanted section, and a farmer with startup capital of my own and a Muck Boot poised to step into my future.
     Land clearing is far more comforting than sitting down with the want ads. When the going gets (emotionally) tough and I can't really validate my abilities, it's by far easier to get outdoors and pull bittersweet roots than it is to think how I could have made it to the age of 46 without a stable career (fodder for another post someday). Through hot autumn, I cleared the swath from the squash bed to the Northwest corner of the property. The Patient Spouse helped level dirt, move rocks, and cut vines. While I hemmed and hawed over dimensions, measured materials and drew up rudimentary designs, he merely smiled and nodded. His smile puts the Mona Lisa's all to shame.

This is the spot, all cleared and more or less level, limited by the old boulder wall marking the West property boundary (greenery growing on it—parallel to neighbor's hedge), North boundary (thin white stick in background is the corner post), North edge of squash bed (post and wire in foreground) and a huge boulder after which land drops away. We had to dig out and move about 2' of soil down-slope to rocks in foreground to make a more or less level 10' X 20' pad. It's a long way from either the spigot or the rain barrel, which I'll surely regret, but this was the only place with flat ground, all-day sun and not needed for ag or access.
     The Patient Spouse looked at my rough, not-to-scale renderings of the greenhouse I could make for pretty much nothing out of existing lumber and an 8' X 100' roll of 6 mil poly bought for an earlier, failed attempt at a retrofit lean-to greenhouse. The width of the plastic ruled out making a hoop-style frame from either conduit or pvc pipe because there is no way to attach separate sheets over such a framework and keep the plastic "skin" airtight. Besides that, buying materials that would bend to hoop shape immediately meant a $200 investment in building materials, not including another $100-plus for greenhouse plastic of an appropriate width. It seemed easier to think in terms of an old-fashioned, frame-style house, using the existing salvaged 6 X 6 and 4 X 4 posts I had on hand, with a sturdy kicker board base and  top frame and some sort of roof... maybe 4 operable lights like I built for the cold frames. "Free"...or, mostly free... the term appeals to this farmer.
     Little did I know, the P.S. was biding his time. He had heard the words "of some sort" in that design of mine. I built. He went to work and earned an actual living wage for us. A rather exciting frame rose up from the dirt. Here it is.

     Meanwhile, the weather grew colder. A couple weeks back, we hiked in the mountains and saw the first of the snow under the trees. Oh, yeah: winter. Snow weight. We didn't have any snow at all last winter until March. But I saw that I had been deceiving myself. Those cold frame lights for the roof would have to be smaller, reinforced, and maybe all removable wasn't such an affordable idea. Either way, I'd be buying about $75 of welded-wire fence for inadequate reinforcement under the plastic, lots and lots of firring strips to build the frames and hold down the plastic, and 4 10' 2X4s to hold up my increasingly elaborate, no-longer-so-cheap roof. Use Palram plastic? Not for under $300. Use cattle panels in place of welded wire? Only available in useless dimensions for my increments-of-5 design. The Mona Lisa smile never left my man's face. I endeavored to persevere with my giant cold frame design for a few more days. Then I went back to those porn pics from Pop's.
In two weeks, for $100 shipping, I could have the kit for a complete $400 Shelter Logic tunnel frame (think "sheds snow") delivered to my door in 2 weeks. Dimensions? 10 X 20. How about that!
The P.S. let me use his laptop to place the order. He waited until I hit the "print purchase confirmation" button on Home Depot's friendly website (!Free Shipping!) before he said, seetly as ever,  "That was the right choice." I had to rough him up a little before he would even confess that he "Didn't want to say anything." Under no amount of wifely pressure would he utter the words "I told you so." He is a far better man than I, you know. End of part 1.

At the End of the Season

     October 14, the eve of my final farm market of the season, a white frost settled over the grass. It dimmed the zinnias, turned the marigolds to a faded amber drift, wrestled the tomatoes and peppers to limp black rags. Summer is over. For that final market, I offered vivid bouquets of variegated "Fish" peppers in all stages of ripeness, set amid the last of the dark red dahlias, fiery sprays of burning bush, plumed bronze miscanthus grasses and graceful Ruby Silk Looooove Grass. (It must be said that way, just as grits can never be ordered without a drawl.) Most of those bouquets came home with me. It was a better week to sell dried bunches of Japanese lanterns. Perhaps with the blaze of color everywhere around, nobody needs bouquets; we're living in one.
     The need for bouquets has been a bugaboo all summer. I was doing pretty well back in lilac season selling seven bunches at a market, I now realize. Back in May, even here in the country, shoppers must have been hungry for a little captive springtime to put on the dinner table. The start of the summer bloom season, however, coincided with a floral glut: buckets upon buckets of bouquets brought by the local BIG farm, which has a farmstand open seven days a week, a full greenhouse and bakery, and a presence at all the larger farm markets as well. My bouquets sold between the moment theirs sold out and the end of the market. Four bouquets per market is a good take. I had to learn to accept that and look away. My price was the same as Big Farm's, I really think my quality and overall loveliness was the same. I even invested in plastic sleeves like theirs, thinking the presentation might make impulse buying more inviting but the addition made no noticeable change in sales. The fact is, a tiny stand can't compete with a huge stand that offers one-stop shopping. If I'm going to sell flowers again next year, then it will have to be during the shoulder seasons, it won't include the sunflowers or glads other vendors have done so well with that I can't compete, and it will have to be with some niche flowers no one else has thought of. Maybe no flowers at all? What, then?
    Will there be a "next year" for First-Flower? During this month of Last Flowers, it's time to tally up the successes and failings of the spring and summer now past. Discounting major one-time gifts from family members, my first year's labors cost a grand total of $3,333.64. Most of that wasn't the kind of one-time expense I'd hoped; it was the cost of market fees, health department licenses, sugar and canning jars. That means these costs will be annual ones. There is no way to spend less. My total profit after expenses? $2,606.36. Not a living wage. Pretty humiliating, actually.
     And yet, the voice inside my head keeps scheming. Even as the Math Major tells me "Mom, you should look for a job" and her gainfully employed elder sister pounds the pavements looking for even more ways to make herself useful and rich, I'm mooning about, expanding garden space and looking up seed possibilities. There's a new greenhouse of sorts rising from the newly cleared tangle at the back of the property, and 100 mixed late tulips tucked among garlic cloves in the cutting beds. 100 mixed tall Dutch iris are setting down roots beside them. Three elderberries are rallying to make syrup-perfect flowers and fruit come spring. I'm happy when I'm out there in the dirt and the fresh fall air. That's where the math fades into the background, and all this labor makes perfect sense with no calculus needed. I may not have a job, but I have a livelihood. Bloom where you are planted!

Tasting the Past

     When summer comes, I want to eat plums.
     Most people wax lovingly of sun-warmed tomatoes, devoured right there in the August garden. I've eaten my share of tomatoes this way, it's true. I have my favorites, most especially little 'sungold' which there are never enough of for long enough into autumn. But poetry? That's not for pedestrian love apples, which have grown almost tiresome from their enduring presence in the limelight, the darling of heirloom vegetable proponents to such a degree that even the supermarket uses the term "heirloom" as a sort of flavor guarantee. Tomatoes are useful, pretty, estimable for their sheer variety and ability to earn the adulation of the masses. But plums... oh, plums, warmed by the ripening sun, warm on one side and still leaf-cool on the other, eaten in the long, baking grass to the hum of cicadas, with no way to clean the juice from wrist and forearm than the swipe of your own tongue, and the taste of sweat and sweet-tart mingled together... To my mind, this is the reason the word "delicious" was coined.
     Sadly, mine is a taste unfulfilled, summer upon summer. It's easy enough to grow or buy that sun-warmed tomato, even if all you get is a pot on a rented balcony or a day in the country at tomato time. Sure, there are plums in the grocery store, and even at fruit stands in my rural county near the orchard-lined Hudson River. But my longing is more specific than any of these blue, or red or yellow plums can satisfy; something more like the first heirloom tomato advocates three decades ago were espousing. I want a specific plum, a Greengage plum: army-green under that smoky bloom on the skin, and meltingly soft golden ripe within. A ripe greengage sometimes collapses in the hand once your teeth have snapped the skin. It is a fruit to be sought, nearly camouflaged among the leaves, and devoured in place. Sometimes, even the ones I carried home from the orchard in my childhood never made it intact to the kitchen. It is not a plum for shipping, and it is rarely seen at farm stands. The only way to taste a greengage seems to be to grow your own. I tried that once; it was a fifteen year tale of heartbreak, pruning, white flowers and black rot, a tale of trying to recreate my past that ended when my ex-husband pruned the tree one final time on a winter day, six inches above the snow line.

     At Fist-Flower, part of my first year experiment involves growing vegetables from Slow Food USA's "Ark of Taste," a kind of endangered species list for plants of particular merit that have fallen out of commercial availability. They include Amish Paste and Cherokee Black tomatoes, Aunt Molly ground cherries and Amish Deer Tongue lettuce, Jimmy Nardello peppers and Sibley squash.  In most cases, you can't buy these crops at  the store, either because they don't submit to modern agricultural practices or, like my Greengages, they don't bear up to packing and shipping. In many cases, even the seed is hard to come by; a lesson in the stew of politics and power monopolies that is Big Seed. Somewhere among them, I hope to find other flavors that make eating something more than eating; that recall old memories, fire the imagination, that taste of the past and bring back something lost, or nearly lost.
To be continued... 

Blooming This Week

The hot weather has made everything grow; all at once, the flowers that have taken so long to come to full promise are budding, in many cases giving a first glimpse at what was only an idea from a seed catalog description. New this week: orange Zinnia "Inca", red zinnia "Will Rogers", Cerinthe in full purple bloom, many blue flowers on the borage, white ammi and snapdragons smelling of Grape Crush soda pop in shades of white, pink, deep red and a great Swedish red...

Blooming This Week

Today's walk-through (in preparation for the next two days' farm markets) suggests this is the last week I'll need to rely on established perennials. Most of the seed-grown plants are about one week of helpful weather away from first flowering! Meanwhile, bouquets this week will draw heavily on:

 and a little bit of courage, flair and originality,  like this:

Blooming where we are planted!

Rose Water and Chagrin

I am at my first market. I am nervous, excited, worried about what kind of reputation I will begin to develop among both the marketing and the market community. Will I sell anything? Will I ever break even on my investment? Is my hope of launching a farm even realistic? Since my marketing plan this year consists entirely of selling through these Thursday and Friday, and alternate Saturday markets, it feels like a major moment when a young girl walks up to my stand that first chilly afternoon and successfully petitions her mother to buy a pansy pop. I have made my first dollar. After child and parent have wandered out of earshot (lollipop already unwrapped and—a relieved sigh here—not stuck to the wrapper) the Mathematician says, "Hey—you should frame that dollar, Mom. Don't they do that in stores with the first money they make?" Heck no, not me, I tell her. Maybe I'll draw a smiley face on George, but this one is going in the bank. Now I'm only $2,397.22 in the red for the year.
     We make almost $80 the first market. Towards the end, I spot an old friend from my nursery days at Windy Hill Farm; delighted to see a familiar face, I wave and he comes over to check out the booth with his wife, who is a private gardener in the area. She size up my selection of hand-sewn aprons and bags, my flower syrups and my bouquets. "Living the dream, huh?" she says rhetorically, and I can't miss the rind of sarcasm in her comment. They don't buy anything, but the husband wishes me good luck before they move on. There is a little shadow on my lilacs after that.
      How can this not be living the dream? Here was my morning's work a few weeks ago, when the apothecary rose I lovingly transplanted and nurtured two years ago burst into glorious bloom. When I brought it that errant runner from the Shaker medicinal garden where I worked, I did so because I loved the way it filled the surroundings with fragrance for three very special weeks in late spring, and how its vase-shaped hips graced the final days of my fall labors. I had no idea I would someday be harvesting from this plant as part of my effort to turn a farm dream into a financially viable reality. Now, here I am plucking one silken handful of petals at a time, passing by only the ones with a honeybee working the pollen-rich stamens. The Shakers were not allowed to pluck the flowers with enough stem for a bouquet: decorating the household was considered frivolous. That wasn't the stoic misfortune it might seem. Each bloom on this simple species rose only lasts 24 hours, whether on the bush or in a vase. Moreover, a day among the blossoms is better than the brief splendor of such a bouquet. The chore of picking roses is undeniably sensual: taking the most beautiful part, in its prime, in a gesture that has to be a caress if the petals are not to be torn or sift down from the fingers to fall among the thorns.

   The resulting harvest is no less sensuous: a bowl of heart-shaped silk, that whispers as you sift through it, and fills the air with that evanescent fragrance of fragrances. There are so many petals! I confess, by the third harvest, I began to be drawn away from the idea of product and profit, and began to think of the emotionally healing potential of a bath carpeted with pink petals; a hedonistic soak in the middle of the afternoon, when the heat of the sun would send the smell of the highest flowers up and in through the bathroom window which is directly above the bush. No: I think the fear of bouquet-making must have been the least of the Shaker Elders' concerns as they planned for the annual rose harvest. Perhaps they sent the more prosaic males of their celibate sect out to accomplish the task, and left the women and girls home to boil the petals and drain off the rosewater.
    After some experimentation, I have dismissed the notion of making rosewater myself. The only part with intense fragrance is the steam that collects on the lid after I have cooked the petals at a bare simmer 20 minutes and then let them cool. The brew itself is a disappointing brownish color, and while it smells faintly of roses, it tastes like vaguely rose-ish tea. Cooked with sugar and re-steeped in fresh petals, I get a delicious thin pink syrup... which proceeds to show mold on the surface after a week in storage. With more sugar, it is a beautiful rose pink, thick and sweet and, in blind taste tests among The Sisters (mine, not the Shakers)  is deemed far more rosey and delicious than the fancy commercial stuff I received for Christmas. Now, to convince the masses that rose syrup is the stuff of their summer. I have about 25 bottles, and at an affordable $6 each I could not only make a reputation for myself, I could make some headway into that problem of How the Farm Pays.
    Except, oddly, that trying to sell rose syrup is an uphill battle. It begins to feel less like Living the Life and more like another of my thankless,  hopeless endeavors that rank up there with selling the novel, improving the Shaker Museum gardens, and writing the handbook for CSA customers. Offered up mixed in seltzer, the marketgoers are curious  for two weeks. I get smiles, and I get my first customers. It is an encouraging start. Then, as summer approaches, the skeptics and grouches come to rain on my parade. I might as well be smiling, issuing my friendly hello and inquiring, "Would you like to try some of my dog shit on a cracker?"   I receive, in this order, "Uh, I don't think so." "Does it have a lot of sugar? I can't eat any sugar." "I don't like roses." And, the chilly week when I am passing out half-Dixie-cups of black tea with rose syrup, "Does that have caffeine in it?" Really? I mean, really? One week, two women make it a point to walk into my booth so they can inform me that flowers make a mess, get in the way of conversation at dinner parties, and that the taste of flowers in any form is unappetizing. O-kayyy... thanks for that. Worse, they're not even working together. They come separately, like two different slaps on the same afternoon!  It's like a trend: each week, fewer buyers and more grief. To top it off, I'm bringing almost as much back home as I brought to market, except now it's wilted.
    The Patient Spouse makes, in three hours, what I can sell in 5, on a good day, net. I get a total of ten hours a week to replicate my wages a year ago: $15,000. He knows and I know it won't happen at three lousy farm markets. I can forget about getting paid for my time. But if you look at that figure, $15,000, it doesn't look like a lot to ask for in terms of earnings for a business. And yet...
     And yet, after that eyebrow-raising first week when I came home overjoyed at the $80 in my pocket and he zipped his lips before he could let them express the "that's it?" expression writ across his handsome face, I have gone through days where I have sold, coaxed, cajoled, clipped, packaged and pleaded my heart out for $25 or $30. What am I doing wrong? I can grow beautiful lettuces, incredible parsley, and outstanding dill. I can make heartbreakingly beautiful, fragrant, unique and lasting bouquets. It all travels to market...and most of it travels back home. I can cook, sew, or arrange the most beautiful and affordable hostess gifts possible, and no one stops long enough to consider them.
      This week, I am taking serious stock of my options. I don't want First-Flower to fail before even the first flowers from seed have come into bloom. I still think learning to deal with my envy at others' success and to pour forth happiness and gratitude has got to be the answer in a large-picture way. Besides—remunerative or not, yes, I am "living the life": not the life of leisure and luxury as this cliche implies, but the life I have studied, toiled, considered and waited for all the years of my life until now: a life of tending to the soil, finding what is good in it, and offering that to others. Maybe I just need a rose bath and then everything will be coming up roses again. Bloom where you are planted.

Pictures from the Market

No reading required: Here are some pictures taken by the Mathematician at our first market, West Stockbridge, on May 19. Lilacs were the feature flower:

Bat Power

     There are no pictures with this post, because it is abut poop. There may be a lot of new farms, large and small, starting up in this age of startups and back-to-the-landers. But how many of them can say they are powered by bats and llamas? That's right: First-Flower Farm is not only low-petrol, we are high on the poop chain, too! This is the haute stuff, and for me, its free!
     Let me explain. All this Domaine de Doo boasting comes about because I am fortunate in my friendships. You might say I know how to work my connections. For some, that means ascending the Ladder of Success. For me, it means getting out my Shovel of Attainment. Nothing makes me happier than getting a big pile of shit. Lucky for me, this spring yielded the mother lode from two most unusual sources.
    My friend Melissa has been an urban homesteader since long before it was cool. We two were already calling it "Suburban Homesteading" (a term WE invented) back in the mid '90s, when we did it without the benefit of the then-six-page Baker Creek seed list, the chic-chic linen smocks and Hunter boots or the cute chicken shanties. We labored with a baby on our hip and a shovel in our hands. Spring play dates for our then-toddlers became a mere by-product of trips to help her clean up her llama pasture and return with a pile of poopy mulch for my vegetable garden. The kids went off to rappel down the swing set with dog leashes while we shovelled. Her farm was called "Honey Hill" for the bees her husband and she raised. After her divorce, when most of her income came from the byproducts of her llama herd, she pondered a switch to "Hot Shit Farm."
     The best thing is, llama shit isn't actually hot. Like the goat manure I was familiar with from my childhood days on a Michigan dairy goat farm, it issues forth in compact little pellets, and can be used on plants without burning them. After the stink of anaerobic decomposition from winter-matted dirty bedding hay has dissipated, there's no smell to it either, making llama a neighborly manure to use on a pocket farm or Suburban(TM) Homestead.
     When Melissa heard I had thrown in the 9-5 paid farm job for a farm endeavor of my own this spring, she was supportive if not downright jubilant. At last she must have thought, We'll have something in common again: now she can see what it's really like to starve, doing what you believe in!  As a gift to my infant endeavor, she gave me a division of lovage and a seedling agastache (both of whose parent plants I had given her years ago) and, best of all, three giant buckets of gorgeous llama compost. And though her llamas have won her many ribbons at the state and national level, it's the byproduct I'm admiring. It, too, deserves ribbons. It is now feeding the phenomenal rise of my first-ever crop of snapdragons-from-seed, as well as a stand of "Copperhead" amaranth and  white "Psyche" cosmos and half-a-dozen artichoke seedlings.
     The rest of the garden is growing before my eyes on a twenty-year accumulation of bat guano.
     When the family trust decided to put The Patient Spouse's ancestral family farm on the market, the realtor advised them, among other things, to clean up the attic. The Farmhouse dates back centuries, and the attic has a marvelous accumulation of concomitantly ancient things: a big-wheeled spinning wheel you can picture Betsy Ross or her compatriots spinning wool upon; a barber's cabinet that might also have held bloodletting and surgical tools when those things were a hairstylist's purview; gas fixtures abandoned at the outset of the Edison bulb. It is a dark and marvelous place. Through the center of all this historical oddmentry, running from gable to gable, was the thing I wished most to inherit: a pile in places 6" deep of petrified bat guano. While The Patient Spouse checked the furnace and tilled the family vegetable garden for our potatoes and corn, I put on a dust mask and shoveled seven 5-gallon pails of pure poop. I could hardly believe my great good fortune: first, that it was there to be shoveled and, second, that no one else in the family wanted to inherit it!
     Actually, I may have made off like a bandit in the inheritance department. A little Googling revealed that my guano has a chemical analysis of 10-3-1 (Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium). By contrast, the balanced organic fertilizer I paid $30 for a single 5-gal pail of is about 3-3-3. Not only that, the guano available by the box online runs $10.50 (on sale for spring, marked down from $13.95 plus shipping for those without Amazon Prime) for a 11/2 lb box. So my free attic treasure would be worth about $300-$600. Antiques Roadshow might want to film this for it's next Surprises From the Attic segment!
     Online, one can select from a multi-ethnicity of global bat dungs, among them Desert, Jamaican. Indonesian, Mexican, Peruvian and Sumatran. But not all these bat communities poop equally, and some sport a much lower chemical analysis than my rich, local source. The proof of my poop's value is evident in the way my weak little transplants have done on two foliar feeds with a dung-comfey tea and a little dusting to top dress them at planting. Everything is thriving, and the vegetable starts have set roots and grown so fast I hardly recognize them from one day to the next!
    There is also a happy endnote to this tale. I was in the attic a few days ago to release a couple of trapped starlings, and the floor was already sprinkled with more bat doo. Melissa's llamas are always under good care and thrive even when she hasn't. But the bats hereabouts have been a beleaguered species of late. So it is good to see evidence that those clouds which once darkened the skies as they flew out the chimney on summer evenings are still alive and active, tucked up there among the hot, dark eaves. Bloom Where You are Planted.

Love, Devotion and Surrender

   
    When I go to the market, I can't help but feel a little competitive. That guy over there has a bunch of rhubarb he didn't buy off my stand, and it's much smaller than the bunches I'm selling. Why are folks going for that chick's salad mix when mine has yellow and purple pansies mixed with the greens? Really? That lady is buying fudge instead of my lilac-blackberry syrup? What gives???
    Inter-farm snark isn't part of the wholesome, community-centered farm market image. However, it is a competition when it comes to markets. Behind the scenes, each of us growers and makers needs a marketing trick or two up our sleeves. Especially when there's no farm stand back home on the acreage and no steady weekly CSA income and traffic, these brief hours in the market are the only place to gamble the farm. You have to essentially kill your crop by picking it, then bring it to an unrefrigerated space, and get it to turn from perishable commodity to cash dollar in a few short hours. There is a fierce undercurrent of hope vibrating beneath those blue and white canopies on a summer afternoon. We all want you, the buyer, to love and want what we do as much as we do. To do so, the buyer sometimes has to make a few sacrifices as well: fresh, occasionally messy flowers over the near-plastic ones from the supermarket; radishes with a little dirt on them instead of the kind "triple washed" and then showered on the hour in the produce section; a fly or two hovering around the baskets of fragrant strawberries. We love, devote and surrender out in the fields; the customers, we each hope, will do the same as they wander from awning to awning. Otherwise, our precious product goes home to sit in the fridge, appear on our penny-pinched dinner table (the Patient Spouse has consumed two meals of pansy and lilac salad to his undying credit—not exactly the Blue-Plate For Stonemasons) or cycle itself back into the soil via the compost heap.
     We all have a trick or two up our sleeves. Finding a way to make the produce, the fudge, or the flowers speak for themselves is crucial to getting them off the table and into the motley arrangement of re-usable bags that circulate the grounds on the arms of weekly shoppers. The first market, fresh lilacs with "free" first smells and compulsory second whiffs did the selling for First-Flower, and half of my stock went merrily homewards to other houses. I went home with $60+ dollars - not a living wage, exactly, but the first time earned income has flowed into, not out of, this endeavor. Last week, daughter Margot the Mathematician offered correct change (after standing in one place for four hours, nine plus three only equals twelve for some of us. Ahem...) She also poured out samples of lilac-blackberry seltzer and rose geranium seltzer. Wherein the Patient Spouse was found to have an equal in the Good Sport department: the burly man whose wife called out, "Honey, do you want to try some lilac seltzer or some rose?" We all acknowledged the bizarre quality of this inquiry—after which he gamely tried the seltzer and bought the syrup, and even managed to retain his pride at the same time!
     Now we are home again, with gorgeous salad in the hydrator where I am product testing it for shelf life and appeal, and a spectacular bouquet in every room. The Patient Spouse gets the lilacs on his dresser and the lilies-of-the-valley on his desk. That way, he can enjoy them in private, and remain a Man Among Men.

Getting Ready...

 In the remaining weeks before the first farm market on May 19, First-Flower is a veritable madhouse of activity. It is a good thing the Patient Spouse is out earning a viable income and not being called upon to provide continual moral support. It is a good thing the Mathematician is at school (finals week) and not criticizing my choice of paint colors and fitness at tent set-up. It is just me and the Farm Dog, who is most fascinated by the shade under various stationary objects and the intriguing goings-on two yards over. (What can it be living inside that old converted doghouse in their backyard? I'm waiting for my neighbor to chastise me in person for the constant disturbances my dog has caused the gimpy raccoon she is nursing back to health inside that little animal shelter ever since it came loping into the yard a week ago...)
     Here are some baskets I found in attic and root cellar, now an attractive shade of First-Flower 1940s green. This photo is notable primarily because I have intentionally used the most recent "Help-Wanted" section of the Shopper's Guide, so I won't be tempted by all the ads for "skilled gardener, pay commensurate with experience." Am currently, still, chronically, experiencing non-commensurate pay.

    While the weather was shabby (cold, rainy, near-freezing, snow flurries on May 12), I finished sewing my 1930s line of potholders and aprons, and figured out how to display them so they wouldn't clash with the 1900s line on the other side of the rack. I hope some day I will be doing all this sewing in the winter and spending yuckky spring days inside my greenhouse doing the better work of farming, but until that time, this sideline gives me some flowers to sell before the photosynthesizing kind are ready.

 Baby food jars from the farmhouse cellar make cute little 4oz vases which I hope to sell with a tiny bouquet or herbs included. The perfect hostess gift!

Kitchen chaos! Why does it always seem that to get something really clean requires making an utter mess first? In anticipation of selling jams, jellies and other flower-flavored products, my kitchen has to be certified by the Town of Great Barrington. The process is really simple, if a little costly: the town in Massachusetts where your kitchen is located tests your knowledge of keeping reasonably clean in the kitchen, asks for proof you've passed  ServeSafe and Allergen Awareness exams, and checks the temperatures of your hot water and refrigeration. Knowing this, I have cleaned every nook and cranny, washed everything right down to the spice jars, put labels on all my bulk-stored items, and cleaned nooks and crannies that haven't sen the light of day since we moved here. It all needed doing anyways.
     While each additional town you plan to sell your "cottage industry" food in requires their own documentation and fee payment, they abide by the decision of your hometown Board of Health when it comes to kitchen certification. Happily, not only does my kitchen pass, I also discover what may well be the most helpful, neighborly, prompt arm of Great Barrington town government. The BOH (and Building Inspector's secretary across the hall)  are a terrific group of individuals, and that restores a little of my pride in the town, where my tax dollars often seem "at work" in squanderous ways such as the replanting of new Bradford pear trees to replace the old ones deemed "too large" and an "inappropriate street tree." Yup.
    Now, on to that first market, and the big question: will anything I have for sale week one actually BE a flower?...

The Long View

If you climb a mountain, the landscape below takes on both an order and a timelessness that suggests peace. The weeds and the potholes and the wrinkles of life aren't visible from such a distance. "Taking the long view" is a necessity when those wrinkles begin to seem like mountains in the Sysiphean endeavor that is life. That said, here is the long view of First-Flower Farm as I see it every morning from our upstairs bedroom.
     This is the part in the book about the divorced mother of two trying to reinvent her life in rural New England by farming/beekeeping/animal husbandry (I've read them all) where the mom encounters one too many obstacles, has a big fit  and then, despite being months in arrears on her phone and electric bills, somehow finds the money for too much beer and a $300 pair of reading glasses (you know who you are).
    I'm not that mom. She's probably a whole lot more fun for most people to read about, because she is spectacular in naivete, guts, failure and redemption. Me, not so much. I haven't sprung for fancy specs or anything like that, but the tears of rage have been real enough in this past couple of weeks of dropped seedlings, spectacular bruises, freak frosts, damp-off, raccoons and the EZ-Up tent that isn't. "What is your first flower going to be?" I have been queried by several well-meaning supporters. Well, it's dandelions or garlic mustard, I haven't decided. Whichever is blooming next week when I have my first market.
     Frost arrived in the early part of the week. I had covered (with help of the Patient Spouse) the few tender things like the pet coleus and the enormous rose geranium now trellised up the pergola. We covered the cold frames, and with only a possibility of frost, this seemed sufficient given the cold those frames have weathered so far. I didn't even check next morning until 10:00, when the P.S. came out to ask how everything had made it through the night. The second frame, covered in corrugated sheets of Palram (therefore not tight around the edges) and set directly on the ground was fine. The hotbed looked like someone had capriciously poured boiling water here and there, blackening about 90 percent of the zinnias (my backbone cut flower) just starting to recover from an earlier trauma, and most of the second planting of peppers.
     That night, anticipating a relaxing evening watching a movie, I thought to myself, "I wonder how those chicks are?" We had put them in the big chicken house a few days before, and hadn't let them out in their fenced yard yet. The house has a little portcullis door on a pulley, which we always shut at night after the flock has come in and roosted. Even though the house was shut tight, I decided to go out and make sure all was well.
     The first thing I saw was a raccoon hanging from the inside wire wall. Beneath him, two of our six chicks lay, disemboweled and mostly eaten. The chicken door was tightly closed. The remaining chicks huddled in the far corner in terrified silence.  I screamed for the Patient Spouse, scooped chicks into my arms and deposited them in our mudroom, then ran outside to join him in battle. Raccoons are fierce when cornered. They also have very, very thick hides. After at least a ten-minute stabbing fight on the part of the Patient Spouse  (during which I was stationed at the now-open portcullis with a shovel to bash and bury however much raccoon made it past him), the coon made a break through a tiny hole in a windowpane, breaking out the glass and escaping under the chicken house, through the garden and over the fence. We pursued as far as the edge of the woods. Now we only have four chicks.
    The tent is called an EZ-Up, but the instructions call for two people to help each other with the set-up process. The Patient Spouse bought it to use himself a summer ago, and didn't, so I was glad not only to have this required shelter for market, but to make the purchase of it then, worthwhile after all. He wanted very much to help me figure out the setup, but I will be alone for the three markets I've signed on for, so I'll have to be able to do it myself. I asked him to stand by and provide moral support. Having set it up himself, he decided on a fast overview of the instructions, followed by me struggling in much the manner of Snoopy in the original Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Except that my words came out as the actual thing, not like @**!#. "EZ-Hernia" seemed like a better title for the thing, but we/I managed to bring it listing and moaning to its feet with about the same grace and speed as a tired camel.  I leaned against one frail metal leg and tried not to weep. I thought of tents on Amazon, tents in the outdoor living department at Target, tents everywhere that were a little shorter, a little smaller, surely a little more EZ. Then I thought about Ma from Little House who would never have let an EZ-Up stand between herself and westward progress, and I announced that I would now be taking the tent down—alone—and then putting it back up—alone—until I could do it EZly.
     So here I am. The Farm has survived another week. I can set that tent from flat to shelter in about two minutes, alone, @**!#. The Patient Spouse has wired a brick to the portcullis in really quite an elegant way, and the chicks fell asleep in my arms the night of their trauma such that I now feel bonded to them and vice-versa, which is delightful. I'm off to Andrews for green zinnias, having replanted all the others. (The peppers were mostly Wenk's Hots and I wasn't really depending on them.) Every challenge can be met, one way or another, and it still feels like the Farm is abundant, when I think of what it has given me so far in joy, insight, and development of inner and outer resolve—and life lessons that reach beyond me, as well. Zinnias or no zinnias, these (actually very minor) trials have shown me that I have so much! As my older daughter put it, "That's what I need in my life, Mom: A man willing to stab a raccoon for me."

Three Cheers and a Sweater for May Day

 Sunday will be May Day, the ne plus ultre of spring celebrations (at least for those of us placidly blooming where we are planted in a free-market economy). The Patient Spouse will be there with bells on, literally, helping to summon in the summer as a member of a Morris dance troupe he has participated in for the past year. This very old dance form has, apparently, something to do with, variously: fertility, battle, and drinking craft-brewed beer. On May Day, the official launch of the Berkshire Morris Men's brief season, it also may involve an early dip in a nearby lake at dawn. It is supposed to be 41 degrees this May Day, and I am very glad to hand this rite of the agricultural calendar over to those with more chill tolerance than I.

     Instead of jumping around hitting sticks together or rushing headlong into an icy tarn, here is my tribute to the soul of the season. Above, the height of tulip bloom in the perennial border: these are mutable yelllow-to red "Gudoshnik" tulips and smaller species "Candy Cane" tulips.
    Next, coffee in the garden yesterday afternoon, (a version of Tasha Tudor's "Delectable Elevenish Parties") just after I installed two "T-Post Platforms" created from scrap lumber according to Herrick Kimball's great design from his "Whizzbang" book. (You can get one at his blogsite or from the Fedco catalog; if you grow vegetables, it's worth every penny.) Once again, his designs are greater than the sum of their parts. This ingenious creation, made at the cost of four 2" screws per platform, means not only the end to spilled or dirt-filled coffee, but also a way to keep from tearing open shins or thighs or elbows on these snaggly salvage posts, which form the ends of my caterpillar cloche system. Kimball is a genius!

Our new chicks may not be geniuses, but this was the day they graduated. Here they are, our suppliers-of-manure, in their new digs in the chicken house (that white building at the far end of the garden in the previous shot). They have reached the teenage stage, with much sizing-up of each other, tiny mock battles, scurryings-about and short flights when they get the urge. That's my crop of wheat from last year they are standing on. It never reached a state of edibility, but they should know that's homegrown, hand-harvested straw they're standing on, and it is the last of my precious four bags of the useful stuff. Next year, it may be I'll accept my neighbor's offer of tractor help after all and grow another crop of it on the narrow "dogleg" of property that runs behind our neighbors' properties. Meantime, things are settling down to business here at First-Flower Farm, come cold rains, lords-a-leaping or what-have-you. Blooming!

Reasons to Hope

It's nice to have a boost. Whether it comes in the form of a cold frame that does as it should, a call from my supportive parents, an interested inquiry from my older daughter/inspiration, or an unexpected and generous monetary contribution from my Master Gardener aunt in Florida, every time I have a moment of doubt, someone or something puts in encouragement. Encouragement is an amazing force!
     The material support of my aunt has primarily gone to the huge, invisible expense of going commercial: farmers' market fees, insurance, possibly the licensure to extend my offerings to jams and other processed food items. It is certainly true that the moment you declare independence, everyone with their rubber stamp in one hand and their collection tray in the other turns to you with avid and severe attention.
     But it didn't seem right to squander all her generosity on prosaic necessities. That's how I rationalized getting some foliage plants and a few seedlings (12, to be exact) that actually look like something. Here, in my older and scrufty home cold fame, is one those selections: Matthiola, or "stocks" (not sure why - Stocks of what? Should I tell my aunt I have bought stocks with her money?). This variety, which I have raised in the past, is "Old Fashioned Mix." They don't get tall like the kind sold in the florist trade, but make a perfectly great and quite respectable table-height bouquet in shades of purple, pink, vanilla-yellow and white, all with a cinnamon-clove sweetness not at all like their muskier relative Sweet Alyssum or their farty-smelling cousins kale and cabbage. I walk by this area, just outside the sink/potting up area my Patient Spouse built for me, and am reminded that the season will warm, things will sprout past their two-leaf infancy, and I will, one day this summer, be picking flowers and herbs here at First-Flower Farm. Even if it takes a lot of encouragement and help from my friends. Bloom!