Compost Trees

                When the hazelnut tree came down last summer, it left a huge hole in the back corner. For years, the brushy tree had shaded Mark’s compost area and hidden it from the alley. Now, he feels exposed. Today, we moved towards changing that.  First, we planted a small grafted plum tree to replace the huge, end of its life, plum that arches over the back yard and Mark has always loved (I pick up most of the dropped fruit…). The plums are small and yellow and the tree is old—it  usually grows mushrooms in September.  A few years ago, Mark grafted a branch to a sucker in the front yard, and it took. We moved the sapling into a pot and, today, into the ground. We were careful to not plant under the power lines. The corner was still empty, so we planted a native elderberry to arch over the compost hoops. The elderberry was a cutting from a friend that had also been living in a pot. It had an amazing rootball, so I am hopeful. We are still thinking about some tall, waving grasses to mark an entrance and screen the piles from view while we eat dinner, but at least a start has been made.  

Thoreau and the Cellar

                Cellars are important in Thoreau’s Walden. He describes his own, six feet square by seven deep, dug in sandy soil one afternoon, in the first chapter, thus creating a direct contrast to the pit he encountered in the Irishman’s shanty, which was covered, not by a hutch, but by the bed.  This is where he will store his potatoes and beans for the winter, so he was careful to dig below the frost line. In the same paragraph, he observes that the cellar is the most important part of a house, no matter how fancy, and the only thing that will be left when the house falls down.

                The last observation is true. In New England, when I was growing up, stone walls wended their way through miles of second growth, indicating old fields. And, in the corners, near the old roads, were cellar holes, lined with granite, sometimes filled with rusting trash. We climbed around in them; my parents used the one on our property as the shooting range for the BB gun. (My mother was a crack shot; she practiced on rats at the dump when young.)  

                Cellars still perform important functions. I am always aware of ours in November, because I spend so much time settling it in for the winter. We store all of our firewood in the cellar, sorted for fireplace and stove. The potatoes are in bins under the stairs. All of the canned goods line another wall, along with the rice, beans, grains, and teas that we buy in bulk.  The packing boxes for sending holiday presents sit on the desk counter. All of my pots for canning are stored down there, as well as the empty bee hive boxes and the extra apples and tomatoes. We have a box of Christmas wrapping paper and a box for birthdays. We bring the benches and chairs inside and downstairs. The furnace, water heater, and washing machine are in the cellar—it is the mechanical heart of the house. We also keep all of the stuff we are almost ready to clear out down there. I kept my old bike for a year or two, until I found a new home for it. There is still a bag of faux Tupperware and lids on the shelf. Mark holds onto old medicine bottles in a bag. Every four or five years, I do a cellar purge and clear out the excess junk, mostly by putting it out to the curb.

 I am not sure that Thoreau would approve of all of the stuff in our basement—it indicates that my affairs cannot be counted on my two hands, or even with my ten toes, and suggests that I should do some work to simplify my life. I think he would seriously object to Mark’s collection of vintage crockpots, burnt orange and avocado, waiting for harvest gold, on one shelf. However, the self-sufficiency of the winter stores and tools would please him, as it does me. It is the essence of New England, tucked away into the cellar.

Walden and the Beans

November is bean planting time in my classroom. We are about to read sections of Walden, where Thoreau contemplates the battles of weeds and beans in his life, and I realized a few years ago that not every student knew what a bean leaf looks like. So now, juniors plant beans: 2 Indian Woman beans to a four inch pot. If you bring your bean to “harvest” you get extra credit. It is not as easy as it sounds. It takes about two months from planting to the first little bean hanging from the vine. Plants grow long and thin, easy to break, on the north side of a building in November and ninth graders checking on the progress of a sibling’s bean can be a little aggressive. Accidents happen.  There are always jokes about who will not be raising food after the apocalypse.  Some people name their beans—Beanadette, Jim Bean- to help with the process while others bring in charms or fold tiny paper cranes. They water, and measure, and consider the beans every day, even when we don’t have class. They become, for a brief time, farmers.

Last week, one girl decided to sit with her bean during class. It had just put on the first true leaves, that bright young green that we usually see in early June. She held the bean, in its round pot, against her dark shirt, in front of her heart. Head down, hair curving around her face, stroking the leaf, considering its form… there were circles within circles, a poster child for Youth and Hope in dire times.  

Snugging Down

A cold front has settled over the Willamette Valley. The sky is high, and bright, and clear. All of the leaves are falling off of the trees and rustling on the ground, shades of gold, and red, and brown mingled with the bright green of the grass. The days are beautiful, the nights chilly.  And, because of our schedules, we are a little behind  on snugging the house down for the winter. This weekend, we went into full on snug mode.

                First, we had to wash all of the windows, inside and out, in preparation for the storm windows.  There is no point covering up fig splatter and bird poop with storm windows for the winter! Once the windows were washed, Mark went to the basement to wash and wax the wooden storms and I worked up stairs. Wool blankets on the bed. All of the curtains washed—it was a good drying day! The last of the summer shirts shifted into the spare room closet, the heavy shirts moved to the bedroom. I made mac and cheese and a baked butternut squash for dinner, which warmed up the kitchen nicely.

                Outside, the leaves from our neighbor’s linden trees were raked into a tempting fifteen foot long windrow, ready for the gathering.  Before they were disturbed by cars running through them, I wanted to collect them in the re-purposed recycling bin on wheels, haul them around back, and dump them, one bin per bed, onto the cleared out garden beds.  This is a yearly task, made much nicer this year by dry, fluffy leaves. Once the beds were covered, I made sure that the plastic cover over the lettuce bed would withstand the winds. All of the plants in pots were moved into the greenhouse. Mark gave the bunny extra straw to block breezes in the hutch from below. The chickens, all five on one perch, are fine until the temperature drops to the teens. When I came home from a meeting last night, I went back out into the street ad gathered more leaves, piling them up in the driveway. This week, I will add them to the other perennial beds.

                Tonight, we have a fire in the stove. There are beans in the crock-pot, bread in the oven. All of the garden beds are covered. The storms are on the windows. The curtains are drawn. Outside, the wind picks up the dry leaves and blows them against the door, but we are all snug inside.

Autumn

It is autumn. The rains have begun. The dining room roof talks, low voices for drops on the roof, high pings for drops on the vents. The little stove is glowing in the late afternoon, warming one room of the house; we have not yet turned on the heat. The laundry hangs from the rafters. The cat sleeps on her pillow on the stool. There are gold and green decorations in the room, gold and brown tablecloth and napkins. Tonight, we are having lasagna with delicate squash and kale tucked into the layers, along with fresh apple cider. I will bake bread and granola, make yougurt and the last batch of tomato sauce. Outside, we have brought the dining table and benches in, moved the coop to another bed, begun to break down the tomato jungle as green tomatoes bounce onto the ground. Rainbows span the sky as the clouds move in a stiff seabreeze; thunder and dark clouds race along soon after. Autumn.

Oregon Winter

This says it all this week.

Oregon Winter

by Jeanne McGahey

The rain begins. This is no summer rain,
Dropping the blotches of wet on the dusty road:
This rain is slow, without thunder or hurry:
There is plenty of time – there will be months of rain.

Lost in the hills, the old gray farmhouses

Hump their backs against it, and smoke from their chimneys
Struggles through weighted air. The sky is sodden with water,
It sags against the hills, and the wild geese.
Wedge-flying, brush the heaviest cloud with their wings.

The farmers move unhurried. The wood is in,

The hay has long been in, the barn lofts piled
Up to the high windows, dripping yellow straws.
There will be plenty of time now, time that will smell of fires,
And drying leather, and catalogues, and apple cores.

The farmers clean their boots, and whittle, and drowse.

October in Corvallis

Woodsmoke and leaf mold.
Bright blue air. Sunshine. Downpours
Grey mist on the hills.

Garden closing down.
Pumpkins and squashes move in.
Vines on the compost.

Wooly hats and socks.
Four warm blankets on the bed.
Turn on the heat? No!