Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone

The Nymphs of Vermont

The landscape of ancient Greece teemed with nymphs, the protective spirits that dwelt in particular places.  Glens, pastures, meadows, valleys, mountains and grottoes each had their own nymph species.  There were salt-water nymphs--oceanids--of which the Mediterranean contained a subspecies, the nereids.  Fresh-water nymphs, naiads, were classified according to whether they inhabited a river, a spring, a fountain, a lake or a swamp.  And there were nymphs of trees and plants, nymphs of the sky and nymphs of the underworld.

If Nature filled Greece with nymphs, who's to say She didn't put some in Vermont as well?  When I walk outside with the dogs they certainly appear alert to what are to me invisible presences.  Surely the hill on which our house sits has its own oread, or mountain nymph, and the front field its auloniad, or pasture nymph.  The woods behind the house must be alive with dryads--tree nymphs-- and I hope there is a watchful meliad in the big ash tree, keeping the deadly ash borer at bay.

 I never thought about the swamp at the bottom of the woods as anything but a nuisance--the dogs love to wade in it and get muddy--until I realized that it is home to a naiad, specifically an eleinomad, or wetlands nymph, put there to take care of the frogs and turtles and salamanders.

How to explain the disproportionately large crops I've been getting from my young trees other than that there must be a pretty good epimeliad, or apple nymph, floating around their branches?  I should put out an offering--wine?  milk?  maple syrup?--to thank her, and also some for the syke, or fig-tree nymph, to make sure my tiny potted tree survives the cold.

I wonder what happens to the anthousai, the flower nymphs, in this weather?  They must all be deep  underground by now, although seeing how exuberantly the geraniums and the rosemary burst into bloom when I brought them indoors, there may well be an anthousa spending the winter in the sun porch.

May the nymphs of yam and cranberry dance on your Thanksgiving table, and may you be filled with gratitude.

The Chickens' Thanksgiving

The equinox is past, and we're careening towards the solstice.  A delicately-nurtured turkey has been ordered from a nearby farm--my quick-and-easy contribution to the Thangsgiving meal that my descendants will prepare.

But my hens celebrate Thanksgiving on a different schedule, sometime between the Canadian and the U.S. holidays.  Like ours, their day of gratitude does not have a fixed date.  It happens just before or just after the first frost, on the day when I, breathing stertorous sighs of relief, finally put the garden to bed.

I normally take frost warnings with a grain of salt, given the near-Floridian microclimate behind our house.  But this year I heeded the Vermont Public Radio weather prophet and, as the wind picked up and the temperature dropped a couple of days ago, I harvested enough green tomatoes to fill two windowsills, and a peck of peppers and eggplants.

It's a good thing I did, because the next morning, with the temperature at 25F, all the nightshades--tomatoes, peppers and eggplants--which had thrived in our hot and dry Mediterranean summer had perished.  That gave me permission to bring the 2012 garden to an end.

The tomato stems were withered, but plenty of tomatoes--some green, some tiny, some cracked--were still clinging to them.  I cut the stems, trying to save every last fruit, untangled them from the tomato cages and threw the lot over the fence into the chicken yard.  Although inside the coop they will let me pick them up and hold them in my arms, the hens, dear inflexible critters that they are, fled as I dumped the tomatoes into their domain. 

This was followed by a forest of eggplants, with finger-long fruits and flowers still attached.  Normally, I rejoice if I get half a dozen eggplants  in a given summer.  But this year I have eaten and roasted and frozen and given away pounds of eggplants, the long skinny Japanese ones that melt in your mouth. 

Then came the broccoli, twelve stalwart plants that had been producing non-stop since June.  As I yanked them out I saw that the dirt under them was covered with mushrooms.  For a moment I thought, surely nothing deadly could possibly grow from my home-made compost, under my holy broccoli?  Putting aside that thought, I dragged the broccoli trees one by one to the chicken yard.

By then the hens had figured out that this was their last hurrah before the long winter of laying pellets and coffee grounds, and were going after those tomatoes and artisanal eggplants.  They will peck at the broccoli for the next couple of weeks, until nothing is left but the barely-green skeletons.  Their Thanksgiving lasts longer than ours.

While they feasted I cleared a couple of beds and planted the garlic I had gotten from a couple of garlic priestesses at the Bennington Garlic Festival.  If all goes well, by next summer I should be able to furnish my own booth at the Garlic Festival.  (Check this blog for Garlic Giveaways!)

But you should not conclude from all this that summer is really over.  Yesterday, while geese were honking overhead, I saw the male bluebird, his colors looking muted, sitting on the roof of his abandoned house.  He banged into our window again and then perched on the apple tree.  I wish he, and the still-flourishing kale and chard in the garden, would get the message and depart, and let me get on with winter already.

November 28, 2008 "Stick Season"

Good friends invited us to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Our contribution, aside from our irrepressible charm, was limited to a few bottles of wine. It was my easiest Thanksgiving ever, and one of the best.

But that was yesterday. Today is another story.

Vermont's stick season (no leaves on the trees, no snow on the ground, just sticks everywhere) is in full swing. The clouds hover above the treetops, and the brightest color outside the window is the dull yellow of the dead grass.

It's stick season in my soul as well. No spark, no oomph, just existential dread clogging up my vitals. So oomphless am I, in fact, that after asking my husband's permission (I'll explain later) I decided to spend the day in my pajamas, in and around the bed.

Now spending the day in pajamas when I don't have a fever symbolizes a major abdication for me, second only to watching TV in the daytime. Spend a day in pajamas and before you know it, you've stopped washing your hair, then your teeth fall out (because you've also stopped brushing your teeth), then you stop going out (after all, you're in your pajamas) and instead you start keeping cats, lots of them, in the house and you stop changing the litter....

You can see why I had to ask my husband's permission before setting foot on that slippery slope. Since the man is utterly lacking in tragic imagination, he willingly gave me his blessing—heck, he even smiled. And later, when I asked, he took the dogs out into the field and threw balls for them to tire them out. I'm married to an enabler!

So here I sit, in bed, in my pajamas (hair and teeth brushed, however—noblesse oblige) trying to salvage the day in the only way I know: writing.

When it gets dark, I'll go downstairs and make a fire in the stove. Then, still in my pajamas, I'll walk through the attached garage to the attached chicken coop, say a few words to the chickens, and close them in for the night.

November 28, 2008 "Stick Season"

Good friends invited us to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Our contribution, aside from our irrepressible charm, was limited to a few bottles of wine. It was my easiest Thanksgiving ever, and one of the best.

But that was yesterday. Today is another story.

Vermont's stick season (no leaves on the trees, no snow on the ground, just sticks everywhere) is in full swing. The clouds hover above the treetops, and the brightest color outside the window is the dull yellow of the dead grass.

It's stick season in my soul as well. No spark, no oomph, just existential dread clogging up my vitals. So oomphless am I, in fact, that after asking my husband's permission (I'll explain later) I decided to spend the day in my pajamas, in and around the bed.

Now spending the day in pajamas when I don't have a fever symbolizes a major abdication for me, second only to watching TV in the daytime. Spend a day in pajamas and before you know it, you've stopped washing your hair, then your teeth fall out (because you've also stopped brushing your teeth), then you stop going out (after all, you're in your pajamas) and instead you start keeping cats, lots of them, in the house and you stop changing the litter....

You can see why I had to ask my husband's permission before setting foot on that slippery slope. Since the man is utterly lacking in tragic imagination, he willingly gave me his blessing—heck, he even smiled. And later, when I asked, he took the dogs out into the field and threw balls for them to tire them out. I'm married to an enabler!

So here I sit, in bed, in my pajamas (hair and teeth brushed, however—noblesse oblige) trying to salvage the day in the only way I know: writing.

When it gets dark, I'll go downstairs and make a fire in the stove. Then, still in my pajamas, I'll walk through the attached garage to the attached chicken coop, say a few words to the chickens, and close them in for the night.

November 26, 2008 "First Thanksgiving"

The time: the late 1950s

The place: Birmingham, Alabama

My mother, my father and I are driving home after Thanksgiving dinner with an American family.

“What a meal!” my mother says. “Do you suppose it was typical?”

“I don't know,” my father answers, “but I have just eaten a dinner composed entirely of desserts. First, there was that red gelatin with grapes, on a leaf of lettuce. Why do Americans put a dessert on lettuce, and serve it at the beginning?”

“I've also seen them put pears from a can on lettuce,” my mother says.

“Tonight they put, all in one plate, sweet potatoes with those things like cotton balls on top—another dessert—and green beans. I cannot eat green beans on the same plate with dessert!”

“But they also gave you turkey, and that wasn't dessert. The turkey was the size of a pig! Mrs. Hillman had cooked it all alone. These American women, I don't know how they do it, without a maid to help them. But they don't get upset about anything, and their hair is always combed. Did you see?” my mother says, growing animated, “At the end of the meal Mr. Hillman and the boy took all the dirty dishes to the kitchen.”

“It is a strange country,” my father nods. “For instance, those round red slices they served with the turkey...”

“Ay! For a moment it reminded me of membrillo, quince paste...”

“But membrillo is never that sweet! No, no, this was too sweet, and it was followed by the final dessert: a pie with nuts. Even the cold tea they gave us to drink had sugar. My tongue is stuck to my teeth. In Spain this would never have happened.” My parents fall silent for a moment.

“But these Americans are so kind,” my mother says. “They don't understand anything we say, I can see their eyes open wide whenever I start to speak. Still, they invite us. They like a lot of butter, though. Maybe they don't have enough olive oil. In the store they only sell it in little bottles, very expensive.”

“Today they put butter on everything—on the turkey, on the green beans, on the bread, in the crust of the pie. How can we digest all that butter without wine? We may be a little sick tonight.”

My mother is laughing now. “You should have seen your face when they offered you a glass of milk with the pie!”

“That is the first time I have been offered a glass of milk since I was in short pants.”

“But they have so much good will, these Americans. They tried so much to explain the tradition to us. I think they said it was about eating with the Indians.”

“Impossible,” says my father. “The Indians were all killed...”

The conversation continues as we drive through the darkened streets. In the back seat, I barely hear it. I have fallen in love with the boy who helped clear the dishes, and a whole new continent is opening up before me.

November 22, 2008 "Requiem For A Red Hen"

I knew it was coming. When I found her two days ago, hunched over and pecking listlessly at the wall, I knew her sickness was upon her again, her lower abdomen flabby and distended. When this happened for the first time in August, I feared that scourge of good layers—egg binding. I soaked her in a warm bath, dried her off, and provided that chicken panacea: warmth and isolation. In just 24 hours she was looking perky and ready to rejoin the flock.

But this time it was different. The temperature has stayed well below freezing for about a week, so there was no way I could bathe her. Still, I put her in a cardboard box with the top open and a heat lamp suspended over it. But it didn't help. Yesterday, when I offered her water, she drank a couple of drops, just to please me. This morning, she didn't drink at all. When I went to close the coop doors for the night, I knew what I would find.

I turned off the heat lamp and carried the box into the feed room, so as not to upset the rest of the chickens.

Rest in peace, red hen. You were a good and faithful layer. We made your big brown eggs into omelettes, gave them to the food bank, fed them to the dogs. Your last, super-sized egg is in our fridge right now. Tomorrow we will take you into the woods, and in the night the red fox will come—but you will not mind this—and carry you to his den. His wife needs to build up her reserves, to last through the winter and make babies in the spring. You will be their Thanksgiving dinner.