Starts in Winter

 

               It is late February and seeds are poking up all over the neighborhood.

 In our greenhouse, all of the spring greens are sprouting, sitting on heating mats and under lights to extend the daylight for a few hours on either side. The space glows in the evening, warm and cozy across the lawn. Other plants huddle underneath the shelf, waiting to move outside after the next cold snap. Last Thursday, I was carrying a plant light down the street at 8 AM when I caught a glimpse of our neighbors, immigrants from Guatemala,  backyard. They have a small plastic greenhouse/cloche from Bi-Mart tucked into a sheltered corner. No lights—yet. Across the street, Tim has at least fifty tomato plants under lights, but you can’t see the glow because they are on the floor, tucked behind plastic curtains to stay warm. You just know that they are there, growing madly.

                Last week, in class, we started the early greens for the school garden. Each student planted a six-pack. One half was mustard, kale, or chard. Then we sowed all of the 2019 weird lettuce seeds that were left behind by other garden planners. If they sprout, we will have lots of greens in the spring. This week, I will start the peas.  Classroom starts hang out on my counter and thrive in the hot air of discussions and gossip. And a light, balanced on old textbooks from the 1960s, hovers over them all day long.  

                Hopeful gardeners everywhere.

January on the homestead

 

Bay and Rosemary

When I was 16, my mother took me to the Massachusetts Bay Horticultural Society’s Garden Show, set up in a echoing convention center in Boston. It was an exceptionally good year for displays—mounds of hyacinths on every corner. Daffodils in barrels. Azaleas everywhere. Rustic garden structures and sheds. I sniffed every bloom, stroked every leaf, breathed in the warm moist air that smelled of soil, reluctant to move back out into the slushy grey world of New England in late February.  The plant that I most remember, though, was an old and gnarled rosemary in a terra cotta pot. How did the owner keeps such a tender perennial alive?

For years, I nurtured rosemary plants in terra cotta pots. I set the pots into the soil in the summer, so that the plant could feel at home outside and not dry out. I brought them in for the winter, giving them the prize sun spot in my chilly old apartments. They would live for a few years, growing about half as big as the one I saw at the garden show. I would be cautiously optimistic.  Then they would grow faint, and develop mildew, and slowly fade away. I dreamed of armfuls of herbs—rosemary, bay, oregano, mint—but the climate and my rental status made it impossible.

Then I moved west, settled in the Willamette Valley and bought a house. Our first summer, after I finished painting the exterior of the house, I bought rosemary and daphne plants for under the bedroom window. The rosemary grew. And Grew. And Grew. It sprawled. Another one sprouted from the crack between the sidewalk and the steps. A third masqueraded as lavender at a plant sale and has taken over the planting strip in from of the house. Now, in order to walk down the sidewalk, or into the front door, I prune armloads of rosemary every spring.

At the same time, we bought a Bay sprig—about a foot tall—and planted it in the old rosemary terra cotta pot. It grew on the front porch for several years, then we moved it to an oak barrel in the side yard. Close enough to harvest the leaves easily, but also creating a little barrier to the neighbor’s parking space. It was a sturdy little tree for a long time. One spring day, Mark brushed his bike against it on the way to the back yard. “I think it has broken through the barrel,” he observed. “It’s Growing.” It was heading for the sky, rapidly. Bay trees, I realized, are trees. And, with our shifting climate and urban location, this bay was no longer held in check by colder winters—or by the barrel that still surrounds it. It grows, two, three, four feet a year. If I let it go, it would take over the columnar apple on one side, the gooseberry and tea plant on the other. So I prune armloads of bay, every spring.

Over time, our yard has grown up around us. We have armloads of herbs every year, bushels of potatoes, buckets of apples and plums, enough figs to feed the entire neighborhood. This growth comes, mostly, not from my skills as a garden planner, but from lucky accidents, mature plantings, time and climate—allowing my plants to take deep root in the earth, like us.

 

After Yule, The Long Winter

 

                After 12^th Night, the Long Winter begins, the stretch, here in the Pacific Northwest, which mixes with pre-spring for months on end. Rain. Mud. Dead leaves. Snowdrops. Foggy, icy mornings. Bean soup and fresh bread. Seed catalogs. Finches and juncos on the feeding ladder outside the living room window.  Hazelnut catkins growing longer every week. Solar gain. Rare glimpses off the moon through clouds. Full rivers.

                In preparation for this time, we have taken down the tree, filling the front room with light. The floors and sheets are all washed. The mantle is clear, except for the candles. The pruning saw and loppers are on the front steps; the crockpot is on the counter, full of local black beans. On this foggy morning, a towhee looks in at me while he tosses seed around for breakfast and the house smells like toast.

Yule and Snow

 

  

              We are coming to the end of Yule and the end of a cold spell that had snow on the ground for four or five days—there is still a mound by the greenhouse, where it slowly slid off of the solar panels and the roof. Preparation for both events is pretty similar, as we focus inward and limit interactions with the outside world.

                First, we settle and cover the outside world. All of the plants in pots around the yard move into the greenhouse. If it is really cold, we toss a remay sheet over them, but we did not do that this time. Branches break. Plants that normally live in the greenhouse may move into the dining room or the duration of the cold spell. The scented geraniums that cluster around the front steps move inside to the unheated dining room; the parsley and chives in pots move into their semi-protected spaces under the porch porch roof.  The chickens and rabbit get extra straw and I find the back-up water bottles so trading them out is easy. This year, Mark contacted a friend and brought in an extra load of firewood, which we unloaded one afternoon.

                Inside, the world shrinks down to the kitchen and living room. We go to the library and bring home a stack of books and, perhaps, a DVD or two. We stop at the co-op and stock up on milk, eggs, cheese, and chocolate. We put an extra blanket on the bed. Then, we shut the doors to the bedroom, cozy room, and bathroom, keeping the heat in the core of the house.  

                When everything is protected, Yule can begin, even in a snowstorm.  Wet boots dry by the heater after a long walk.  The crockpot bubbles with local beans, onions, garlic, and bay leaves. Add cornbread—cornmeal from our own plants!—and a salad made from the last head of lettuce in the garden, and we are well fed. I draw the curtains and start a fire while Mark washes the dishes. The cat basks in the dry heat and dodges the occasional spark. We read A Christmas Carol, stare at the flames, watch the snow pile up outside and swirl around the colored lights on the front fence. Our world pauses for a little while, before beginning again with the new year.

               

Be n Love With Yr Life-- Dec. 1st until Solstice

I love walking home in twilight, under a wide, high cloud sky, watching all of the lights come on in and around houses.

Be in love with your life:

Teaching Green Club how to write an email to an elected official, using Sara Acres Gelser Blouin as my source.

Be in love with yr life: latkes cooked in saflower oil for extra crispy Ness.

Be in love with yr life: local veg for dinner. Beans, carrots, onion, celery, tomatoes, cornmeal, and, yes, garden zucchini.

Be in love with yr life: Some cold, damp days, Mr Beezhold decides that, really, the hutch is the best place to be. Especially if there is an apple quartered just for him in there.

Be in love with yr life: Therapy hand putty. After two broken arms in four years, I have not one, not two, but three containers of it. They sit on my desk at school. Every day, in every class, a couple of kids snag them, roll long logs, create spirals, shape ramps for hot wheels, make art, and just fondle the stuff during class. And then, it comes back to my desk for the next round.

Be in love with yr life: Watching the Forestry class take out the bushy, falling over into the garden trees that will be replaced by a Fall Fruit Orchard in the CHS garden.

Be in love with yr life:

It is raining outside, cold, dark rain. Inside, the twinkle lights dispel the gloom, bean plants line the windows, ninth graders are bent over papers and chromebooks, encountering Alan Ginsberg and the Witicha Vortex Sutra. The task begins with looking up five people Ginsberg calls upon to help him. This is a bit of a teacher dilemma....one person he calls upon for help appears on Wikipedia naked and covered in ashes. Do I call attention to him by telling the students to not go there? Do I remind them to Be Mature? Or do I figure, with at least twenty people to choose from the odds are low that someone will stumble across him?

We are about 15 minutes into the task when four girls gasp, laugh in delight and horror, and slide to the floor. They found him.

Be in love with yr life: HOT WATER! Mark is taking a shower.

Be in Love with yr Life: Lucia Day in the rain...cocoa, buns, a dog, and brave friends who gather despite the weather.

Be in Love with yr Life: I live with a Stud Muffin in a sweater vest, who wanders around creating vocal bass riffs on funky songs from the 1970s.

Be in Love with yr Life: if you make one pie shell, you might as well make two, and use up the cherries in the freezer.

Be in Love with yr Life: browsing the public library.

Be in Love with yr life: walking to the end of the street to buy our tree from the boy scouts and walking it home.

Be in Love with yr Life: Yule begins on the afternoon that student interactions end.

Be in Love with yr Life: Chard on a sunny Friday afternoon. And then, we went for a walk. Snow covered Cascade mountains against the high clouds and almost full moon rise while the sun went down. We live in a beautiful world.

Be in Love with yr Life: Saturday...Kayli has brought in 78 twigs since November 18th.

Sunday: newspapers, tea, toast, and birds on the feeder outside the window.

Be in Love with yr Life: The moment when the City recorder pauses, then says, "All councilors present" and the meeting begins. I love democracy.

Be in Love with yr Life: The Light begins to return on Tuesday.

8Laurie Kaptur Chaplen, Stewart Wershow and 6 others

Laundry

                 Laundry was my first real household chore, beyond feeding the dog, washing the dishes, and keeping my own room in order.  It became mine when my mother opened her hair dressing salon, which brought in several loads of small white towels every week. For about six months, I rolled an old fashioned grocery cart down the road to the Laundromat and sat for several hours with a book while the machines churned away at the five loads. I loved it. I could read or people watch. But, as the towel piles grew, we needed a new system. My mother bought a dryer, which she set up in her bedroom, and an ancient wringer washing machine. The thing was dangerous! If you were not careful with the wringer, buttons went flying and there were rumors of smashed fingers. But there was a rhythm to the process—hot water for washing whites, followed by colored clothes because the water had cooled, then a rinse cycle where I reloaded the whites, then the colored, followed by washing the really dirty work clothes in the rinse water.  I hauled the sheets and our clothes out to the lines and devised ways to fold sheets neatly while still hanging up. It was an adult accomplishment.

                When we moved into our house, there were two sets of washers and dryers—one installed in the basement and one stored in the garage. We hauled the garage set away. The basement washer was avocado green, solid as a rock, and huge. I caught the greywater in a 55 gallon drum and pumped it up to water my newly established perennials and I had to watch it closely if I did more than two loads. When it finally died, we replaced it with a very efficient front loader which used half the water and worked about half as well on really dirty clothes. The dryer was from the 1950s. When a part burned out, Mark replaced it. When it happened again a couple of months later, we bought another wooden drying rack and unplugged it forever. It was hauled away with the avocado green washer.

                Having just a washer, no dryer, has worked well for us. For long stretches of the year, we can hang everything out. In winter, we use the drying racks and the rafters over the wood stove in the dining room.  We held onto sheets and towels, doing huge loads on the mid-winter days when it is bright and sunny. If they did not appear, Mark hauled the sheets down to the laundromat at the end of the street and did a massive wash and dry. He brought a book, read, and enjoyed the time. We ran loads of laundry at the same time as house cleaning, once a week.

                A few months ago, the washer died for the third time. Last time, the repairman had to dig the part out from a dark corner of his van, because the model is now obsolete. “I don’t know if we can fix it again,” he muttered to Mark. Neither of them were happy with the thought. “It’s not that old,” we complained. Because it died on a Saturday morning and we needed clean underwear, Mark loaded up the laundry duffel and rode the load down the street. He came back less than an hour later, quite chirked up. The new remodel they completed during the pandemic was great, he reported. New, big machines, that were highly efficient. The spin cycle pulled almost all of the water out of our clothes, even better than our machine downstairs. It was like….Denmark. We hung up the clothes. He was right. They dried faster. Why buy a new washer?

                And so, here we are, full circle, back at the laundromat. We still hang our stuff up at home, but the washers are great and our clothes are cleaner. Is it, overall, more energy efficient? We are using a communal machine, rather than replacing our own. That counts for a lot. The water heater there has to be better than ours. We are using less water. When we dry the sheets, it is faster and the heat from the machine heats the building, not the outside air. And it is faster—all of the wash is done at once, in 47 minutes, rather than over the course of the morning. We could do the calculations, but, so far, it is working.