Cycles and Seasons

 Graduation was Friday night. The week before, my Honors ninth graders rocked their final presentations and ate an inordinate number of cookies afterwards. We are almost ready to put out projects in American lit. The playing fields are quiet—no one is prepping for districts. Kids are just messing around outside. The school year is winding down.

                In the morning and evening, the light lingers. I wake up early, when the sun leans into my bedroom windows. Because of all of the rain, the sunlight is almost green and the air is rich with the scents of earth and mulch. We are eating later every night because the “start dinner light” is slipping later and later every night. We are reaching for the longest day of the year very soon.

                The garden, too, falls into its familiar cycle. Yes, it is a very rainy June, but still, the peas are reaching for the sky in my backyard and we picked a wooden salad bowl full of peapods from the school garden on Friday, right on schedule. The plum tree branches are loaded with hard green fruit which rattles on the roof of the van when we pull in. The grape vines are knocking on the kitchen window—tying them up is next on the list of chores between the downpours.

                My life, as a teacher and a gardener, follows the seasons of the year, turns around the months. In January, we read Malcolm X; in May, we read Romeo and Juliet. In January, I browse seed catalogs, dream of new varieties; in May, we have the first harvest between mowing and weeding. There is a deep and abiding comfort in these rituals, in these cycles, in the changing light moving through my classroom and my garden. These cycles, these rituals, have been followed by millions of teachers and students, and gardeners and farmers, reaching back centuries in some places on our planet. They ground us, literally, to our place in earth.

                I wonder, looking forward, how many of these grounding cycles and rituals will reach the end of this century. Even now, I can see the impacts of climate change on my gardens and the larger ecosystem around me. Planting and pollination, reliable fruiting and harvest, feel less tied to our skill as farmers and more to the uncontrollable weather patterns. We struggle to adjust, observing closely, choosing crops and seeds carefully, but the seasons are changing.  This change, this constantly shifting ground, impacts my students as well. They know that their future will not look like mine did, and, unlike Henry Adams in the 19^th century, they do not feel like the constant speeding up of the world is a good thing. It is hard to look forward to a world of Climate Chaos.

                And so, here I am. Knowing that a deep connection to the rituals, cycles of the earth will keep us sane in difficult times and also knowing that those cycles and rituals are being destroyed—and that my students are scared, worried, looking for guidance going forward. How do we hope, work for change, not give into fear and despair, going forward?  

 

               

               Graduation was Friday night. The week before, my Honors ninth graders rocked their final presentations and ate an inordinate number of cookies afterwards. We are almost ready to put out projects in American lit. The playing fields are quiet—no one is prepping for districts. Kids are just messing around outside. The school year is winding down.

                In the morning and evening, the light lingers. I wake up early, when the sun leans into my bedroom windows. Because of all of the rain, the sunlight is almost green and the air is rich with the scents of earth and mulch. We are eating later every night because the “start dinner light” is slipping later and later every night. We are reaching for the longest day of the year very soon.

                The garden, too, falls into its familiar cycle. Yes, it is a very rainy June, but still, the peas are reaching for the sky in my backyard and we picked a wooden salad bowl full of peapods from the school garden on Friday, right on schedule. The plum tree branches are loaded with hard green fruit which rattles on the roof of the van when we pull in. The grape vines are knocking on the kitchen window—tying them up is next on the list of chores between the downpours.

                My life, as a teacher and a gardener, follows the seasons of the year, turns around the months. In January, we read Malcolm X; in May, we read Romeo and Juliet. In January, I browse seed catalogs, dream of new varieties; in May, we have the first harvest between mowing and weeding. There is a deep and abiding comfort in these rituals, in these cycles, in the changing light moving through my classroom and my garden. These cycles, these rituals, have been followed by millions of teachers and students, and gardeners and farmers, reaching back centuries in some places on our planet. They ground us, literally, to our place in earth.

                I wonder, looking forward, how many of these grounding cycles and rituals will reach the end of this century. Even now, I can see the impacts of climate change on my gardens and the larger ecosystem around me. Planting and pollination, reliable fruiting and harvest, feel less tied to our skill as farmers and more to the uncontrollable weather patterns. We struggle to adjust, observing closely, choosing crops and seeds carefully, but the seasons are changing.  This change, this constantly shifting ground, impacts my students as well. They know that their future will not look like mine did, and, unlike Henry Adams in the 19^th century, they do not feel like the constant speeding up of the world is a good thing. It is hard to look forward to a world of Climate Chaos.

                And so, here I am. Knowing that a deep connection to the rituals, cycles of the earth will keep us sane in difficult times and also knowing that those cycles and rituals are being destroyed—and that my students are scared, worried, looking for guidance going forward. How do we hope, work for change, not give into fear and despair, going forward?  

 

               

                

Graduation was Friday night. The week before, my Honors ninth graders rocked their final presentations and ate an inordinate number of cookies afterwards. We are almost ready to put out projects in American lit. The playing fields are quiet—no one is prepping for districts. Kids are just messing around outside. The school year is winding down.

                In the morning and evening, the light lingers. I wake up early, when the sun leans into my bedroom windows. Because of all of the rain, the sunlight is almost green and the air is rich with the scents of earth and mulch. We are eating later every night because the “start dinner light” is slipping later and later every night. We are reaching for the longest day of the year very soon.

                The garden, too, falls into its familiar cycle. Yes, it is a very rainy June, but still, the peas are reaching for the sky in my backyard and we picked a wooden salad bowl full of peapods from the school garden on Friday, right on schedule. The plum tree branches are loaded with hard green fruit which rattles on the roof of the van when we pull in. The grape vines are knocking on the kitchen window—tying them up is next on the list of chores between the downpours.

                My life, as a teacher and a gardener, follows the seasons of the year, turns around the months. In January, we read Malcolm X; in May, we read Romeo and Juliet. In January, I browse seed catalogs, dream of new varieties; in May, we have the first harvest between mowing and weeding. There is a deep and abiding comfort in these rituals, in these cycles, in the changing light moving through my classroom and my garden. These cycles, these rituals, have been followed by millions of teachers and students, and gardeners and farmers, reaching back centuries in some places on our planet. They ground us, literally, to our place in earth.

                I wonder, looking forward, how many of these grounding cycles and rituals will reach the end of this century. Even now, I can see the impacts of climate change on my gardens and the larger ecosystem around me. Planting and pollination, reliable fruiting and harvest, feel less tied to our skill as farmers and more to the uncontrollable weather patterns. We struggle to adjust, observing closely, choosing crops and seeds carefully, but the seasons are changing.  This change, this constantly shifting ground, impacts my students as well. They know that their future will not look like mine did, and, unlike Henry Adams in the 19^th century, they do not feel like the constant speeding up of the world is a good thing. It is hard to look forward to a world of Climate Chaos.

                And so, here I am. Knowing that a deep connection to the rituals, cycles of the earth will keep us sane in difficult times and also knowing that those cycles and rituals are being destroyed—and that my students are scared, worried, looking for guidance going forward. How do we hope, work for change, not give into fear and despair, going forward?  

 

               

               

Planting the Corn

 

The garden is planted. The last bed went in this afternoon—and it might have been the worst of the season. It is the edge of chicken run, so it has a six foot high fence attached to the side. And I planted the corn, which requires extra protection. The afternoon went like this:

1.       Turn over the bed, pull out all of the apple mint that has crept in, and break up the clumps. The ground is still remarkably wet. Have a long conversation with the chickens on the other side of the fence about all of the worms in the bed. Toss a few their way.

2.       Consider the soaker hose. Someone cut the hose in half last fall during an energetic session with the loppers and the sunflower stalks that once ran along the back fence. Of course we did not fix it then—or any other time in the last six months.  Find the last ½ inch hose repair kit, the screwdriver in the basement, and commence repairs. Brush off ants which have decided that the hose is an excellent nesting spot. Lots of ants. So many ants. Lay the repaired hose down. Brush off the last of the ants (I hope).

3.       Consider being done for the day. Decide that, really, the corn is not getting any younger in the six packs that it sprouted in and it can’t wait until Thursday. And the birds might find it….

4.       Find the pole bean and sunflower seeds. Hunt for the digging fork and fail. Bring out the fertilizer and spread it for the beans. Use your hands to work it into the soil. Long reaches and balances. Awkward.

5.       Long reach across the four foot bed because the beans go against the fence as a trellis. So awkward. Consider taking the fence down, but remember that you are alone and there is no one else to chase the chickens out of the garden beds when they make a run for it.  Continue the long reach. Beans planted. Sunflowers tucked in.

6.       Bring the corn over to be planted. Lay down three rows of fertilizer and plant. Try and keep the lines straight. Fail. Pat the corn into place.

7.       Because birds love to swoop down and dig up the corn, find five hoops and the really big piece of plastic in the shed. Cover the bed. Wrestle the clamps into place through the chicken fence. Catch a chicken making a run through the gate.

8.  

     Once the hoops are up, consider the rabbit fence. Might as well. Unroll the two foot wire fence that surrounds every bed in the garden, staple it in place. It just fits.

9.       Step back and consider the project completed.

Mighty Wild Yeasties

 

   

             After I graduated from college, I went through a bread baking extravaganza. I had time. I made bagels, pita bread, experimented with various grains….and I read somewhere that there was enough wild  yeast in the air of a house that baked bread regularly to cause bread to rise without yeast. I was in New Hampshire—not the heart of sourdough country, which was on the wild and weird west coast. I did not try it. I suspected our house was too cold.  And then I went to graduate school while working  and just making our daily bread was enough to take on. I went back to buying bagels and pita bread.

                When the pandemic hit, I had already checked out a book on various methods of fermentation to learn how to make sauerkraut. And then there was the Great Yeast shortage. It was clearly time to see how much wild yeast I had in my air and, according to my book, on my hands.  I set out some flour and water on the top of the fridge and observed. Apparently, we had a lot; the mixture began to bubble quickly. A couple of weeks later, we had a sourdough starter. I made bread. It was great! I made pancakes. I made flatbreads. All excellent. It took a little longer to rise, but I had time. When school started up again, I tucked the starter in the back of the fridge and hauled it out every couple of weeks for care, feeding, and exercise, and returned to my old, yeast based recipes for daily bread.

                This weekend, Mark cleaned out the fridge and found the starter. It had been ignored for at least two months and it looked gnarly. But I smelled it and it smelled clean and yeasty, so I gave it some flour and water and set it on the stove. An hour later, Mark came out to the garden. “Have you looked at the starter?” he asked. “It’s bubbling over.” And so it was. I prepped sourdough pancakes for breakfast, fed it once more, and tucked it back into the fridge until we need another loaf of bread. Clearly, we have a lot of wild yeasties partying in our kitchen.

 

Sourdough pancakes:

2 eggs

1.25 c milk

.25 c honey (or just a good gulg…)

1 t vanilla

4T oil

1 c of starter

2 c flour (half whole wheat in our house)

1 t salt

 

Mix everything together, cover, and leave out overnight. They are a little slower to cook than baking powder pancakes.

Chicken yard drama

 

                Backyard mysteries….why is the cat spending 23.5 hours a day in the greenhouse? What does the rabbit eat dandelion greens in the hutch, but not in the ground? Will it ever stop raining? Why are the chickens so loud? They have just spent eight months on the sitting on garden beds, confined by fencing, to a four by ten foot space with bit of straw and leaf mulch. They were fine—peaceful, quiet, inwardly focused, wintering. Yesterday, we moved the coop to the back run. Now they have a quarter of the back yard to move around in, three compost piles to toss, places to hide from each other….and they have been complaining all day. Loudly. They stand by the back gate, looking into the garden, and squawk. I need to be there, not here.  There, not here. They work on Labor Coaching, yelling at whomever is on nest to get off, now, because I need to lay my egg now. Now, I say. Now. They call for one another, where are you? Where are you? Where are you? The cacophony is constant. Why? Why do we all fuss more when our lives are improved, rather than when the situation is more limited?  Why?

Sick Leave and the Shop and Save Deli

 

                I am home for two days of work. I had a slight fever that broke Sunday night, and a positive covid test, so I am following the protocols and staying out of work for 48 hours, post fever. I am feeling better; I am growing restless. Growing restless because of sick leave is a luxury.

                Right after college, I worked at the Shop and Save deli department. It was a decent job. Thirty five or so hours week—although they occasionally cut you back so that you knew you were not an officially Full Time employee, entitled to real benefits—within a five minute walk of home, that paid better than average wages. The deli team was a bunch of people in their 20s, some recent college graduates, like me, and some local Dover folks who had graduated from high school, married, and had a kid or two. We got along. We had each other’s backs, covered for each other, had preferred nasty tasks (mine was putting the walk in freezer in order) that we did, even if it was not officially our job that week. No one was mad when you accidently dropped a gallon of Italian dressing in the cooler; they just directed you in the best clean up techniques. There was some flirting with Produce. It was not unusual to hear the phone ring at six thirty in the morning, asking you to cover an early shift because someone was sick (or hung over), but agreeing to do so gave you leverage later on schedule changes. The system worked because we were all healthy and did not abuse it.

                But then, a really nasty flu season hit Dover. People came into work looking kind of pale and exhausted, but they needed the hours. It was winter, with high heating bills. No one could afford a week off. We all worked the deli counter, shouting over each other, trying to distract the couple who started making out half way through ordering their thinly sliced imported ham for the week. We all handled the food—sliced meat, crab salad, salad bar fixings—all day, every day. We were constantly washing deli juice off of our hands, but it was not an official scrubbing. It was tight quarters back there, too. After a couple of days of powering through, the first people called in sick. Could not get out of bed. Had no choice. Others filled in for them. What could you do? People want their ham. The second wave of employees powered through a few days and fell ill. One or two from the first wave came back to fill in, but they were still sick. Just less sick than their peers. We rotated through that flu for several weeks, short-handed and exhausted, until we were finally back to normal.

                The store had no back up plans for a wave of illness. I am sure the front end cashiers and the other departments were also hit hard; we all shared the same windowless break room in the basement. I don’t know if it occurred to them to bring in people from other stores in the area—if other stores were also hammered by the same virus. But I have always felt like the grocery store, specifically the deli department, was the center of that wave of illness. We were all sick and working. We had no choice.

                And that has been the story of some many people during this pandemic, from the very beginning. People still want their ham, so others have gone to work, even when ill. Bills need to be paid, so people go to work, even when they are infectious. I have the absolute luxury of sick leave—even if I do have to wrestle the online system for a sub and set up lesson plans, knowing only about half of what I say will be done—I can take a day or two off without destroying the family budget or letting down my team. Huge chunks of the country can not. And that is both unhealthy for us all and morally wrong.

               

Easter Candy

 

Why do I find Easter candy so compelling? Lindt sheep, jelly beans, peeps, chocolates wrapped in pastel foil, Reese’s peanut butter eggs… all call to me when I enter the grocery store in early spring. Bring me home, they say, and set me on the mantle to be eaten, illicitly, after school.

I am not a big candy eater. When I was little, my mother joked that my Halloween candy lasted until Easter, tucked in the cabinet, and I preferred Fritos—crunchy, salty, corn flavored snacks that fit over my fingertips like witches hats-- to sweetness. I still do. I can dole out a good dark chocolate bar for a week, but a bag of corn chips is gone in two days (a big bag, not the single serving). Salt triumphs over sugar every time.

But Easter candy…

Maybe it’s the memories of the white chocolate rabbit tucked in my Easter Basket with the small stuffed bunny and a handful of jelly beans. I always speculated on where the Easter Bunny would hide it for days before the hunt and it was never where I thought it would be. I loved the hunt. The best spot—on a dark shelf over the cellar stairs.

Or it is the delight of eating the marshmallow and chocolate egg found tucked under a juniper bush in our back forty, a week after the massive Easter egg hunt my parents organized for the entire extended family. My father hid the candy before we left for church on Easter morning. When I asked why he was out there, he said “I’m just checking to make sure the Easter Bunny did a good job” and I believed him. With about 20 kids hunting, it was rare to miss anything, so the discovery still shines in my mind, even though the egg was past its prime.

Maybe it is the invention of the Reese’s Egg, which happened when I was 11. My father came home with one, knowing I loved the peanut butter cups. We cut it in half—they were much bigger then—to share. The next day, he had another. The day after, we began to measure the cuts, considering the egg shape in our delicate division of the piece. We debated the balance of chocolate to peanut butter and which half was best for a month. It required many trials. The jury is still out.

It’s been a very long while since I had a candy basket. My mother shifted to fruit baskets when I was in college, which I loved, and then we were done with the tradition. This year, I have purchased a bag of peanut butter eggs for Easter hunting. I will probably succumb to the lure of the foil wrapped sheep this week. I don’t need a basket…but, siren call of pastel foil still echoes in my mind.

Garden Plans

     

Every year, in January, I draw a garden plan. I work out crop rotations, so that the potatoes are in new beds. I consider arch placement for the cucumbers and squash vines. I clump my crops so that the bed will all empty out at the same time, not leaving three kale plants to lurk in a corner until April, in the way of the chicken tractor. I even plan for watering, so that I can reduce consumption by thoughtful plantings. It is a tidy, orderly, thought out plan and I love creating it. I even hang it on the fridge so that I can admire it at breakfast.

Then, Spring arrives. Beds dry out at different, unexpected rates. The chicken tractor is a couple of weeks behind schedule in its rotation. The potatoes I ordered are on Maine planting schedules, not Pacific Northwest and still have not arrived. And there The Plan goes….every year. The potato bed becomes the bed for carrots and leeks, as well as the first two rows of potatoes that I held over from last year’s harvest.  Or the peas go into the tomato bed, because there are ready to be planted and that is the sunniest spot in the yard. Or….every year, the planting plan is broken by early April.

A few months later, the second type of disruption to The Plan happens. I have extra cabbage plants, because I was over enthusiastic and unable to convince friends that they, too, needed at least three types of cabbage. Or there is one tomato that does not fit in the tomato bed. Or something did not germinate, so there is a gap, ten feet long and a foot wide, along the edge of the bed. Nature abhors a vacuum, I think, and sow something not on The Plan in the space. Some years, I think I need an extra bed to hold all of the experiments—but then I just tuck them in anywhere.

By late July, the garden is a jungle, overflowing with planned plantings, random starts, and volunteers.  In a good year, I have tracked most of the changes on the garden map, which still hangs on the fridge, notes in various colors of ink all over it. After all, we need a record of where everything was this year, so that I can create—and follow—the amazing, tidy plan next year.