How I Watch the News

This is how I watch the news these days. First, the cat, the dog, and I jockey for position on the loveseat. Guess who always wins...

Then the daily blend of despair-inducing catastrophes, outrages, and cataclysms assaults my ears and threatens my sanity:

But when it's over, I put my arms around my comfort critters and things don't look so dark.

Rescuing The Garlic

Please believe me when I say that I am trying hard not to write constantly about the weather.  In my last post, which was about the Pope and women's issues, I don't believe I mentioned the weather once.

But now I have to bring up the weather again, because it is wreaking havoc with farmers and gardeners in this newly-annexed province of Brazil, formerly known as Vermont.

So far it hasn't rained today, and it didn't rain yesterday, but before that we had the wettest, hottest succession of days--nineteen of them--ever recorded in the state.

Plants are dying because the ground is so water-logged that no oxygen can get to their roots.  Farmers cannot cut hay because it has no chance to dry--the grass in our fields is up to my shoulders--and people with livestock are worried about finding enough hay to last the winter.

I thought that my high garden beds would provide good drainage for the vegetables, but I decided to take advantage of a single day of respite from the heat and humidity to check on the garlic crop.  I had never planted garlic before last fall, and the instruction sheet from the ladies who sold me the seed bulbs said not to harvest until mid-July.  But I thought I'd better take a look.

I pulled on one of the stems and, to my dismay, it came off in my hand.  The end where it was supposed to be attached to the head looked like it had sort of dissolved.  I got my shovel and plunged it into the mud and the entire bulb came up...as did a cloud of the most pestilential stench I have ever smelled in a garden.  Next to it, chicken, goat, and probably even pig manure are as nothing.  Rotten garlic is deadly to the nose.

If I wanted to save the crop, I needed to act quickly.  But the ground was so sodden, so clingy and heavy that it took a huge effort to pry out the heads with the shovel.  Fortunately not all the bulbs had rotted, though enough of them had to keep me breathing through my mouth.

An hour later, I had extracted over eighty bulbs.  Some were tiny--they should have stayed in the ground another couple of weeks--but most were a reasonable size.  All were encased in mud.  I left them out overnight and the next day spent a couple of hours brushing off the dirt.

I dearly love a garlic braid.  I'd always found it endearing that people would want to make something decorative out of this most prosaic of vegetables.  And I fantasized that, if I ever managed to grow some garlic, I would make it into a nice fat braid and give it pride of place in my kitchen.

Unfortunately, the only garlic that grows in cold climates is the "hard neck" kind, which means that the stem is too stiff and inflexible to be braided.  So I merely bunched my garlics in groups of ten or so, bound them with twine, and hung them in the shed to dry.  They don't look the least bit decorative, but I hope the flavor will be good.

The way the climate is changing, in another couple of years the winters will be warm enough to grow the soft-neck varieties right here in Vermont.  The snow will be gone, and kudzu will cover the landscape, but at least I'll be able to make garlic braids.

Saint John's Wort

Went to the front field this morning, to pick Saint John's Wort.

Herbalists believe that if a plant grows abundantly in your proximity, it's because you are in need of its properties.  If this is true the Wort, which is supposed to have anti-depressant and calming powers, is accurately reading my mind.

This is my least favorite season, and the fact that each year the heat and humidity grow worse ratchets my awareness of climate change up to obsessive levels.  Holed up in the house with the windows closed and the shades down to keep out the heat, I creep wanly in the gloom like some cave creature, pondering disaster scenarios.

Hence the Wort.

Sent to me by the midsummer deities, and perhaps by the Baptist as well, its Van Gogh yellow starts to work on me right away.  I snip off the tops of branches, trying to calculate how much I'll need to make enough tincture to last me through the year.  The plants are so abundant this summer that I could cheer up entire nations of depressives.

Later today I will buy a bottle of cheap vodka.  Then I will strip the Wort stems, chop up the flowers and leaves, put them in a jar and pour in enough vodka to cover them.  I will give the jar a good shake and watch the vodka turn blood red.  This ability to "bleed," plus its habit of blooming around the feast of Saint John, in midsummer, is what gave the Wort its name.

If you're wondering what blood has to do with John the Baptist, here's a Biblical episode worthy of cable TV:  John had condemned Herod Antipas, who was divorced, for marrying Herodias, who was also divorced and had a daughter, Salome, by her former husband.

Herodias felt threatened by the Baptist, and plotted to get rid of him.  For Herod's birthday she had Salome dance for him, dressed in the famous seven veils.  Herod was so overcome that he offered to give Salome anything she wanted.  Her mother told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

Here she is, painted by Lukas Cranach, having changed out of the seven veils into street clothes. The dark red of her headdress and of the Baptist's severed neck is exactly the shade of red that the Wort exudes when you crush it.

Mind-Numbing Weather

Like the inhabitants of a castle preparing against an attack, my spouse and I have shut every window, drawn down the shades, opened the basement door, and hefted the room air-conditioner onto one of the upstairs windowsills.  Hot weather is on the way.

It's the weather that I moved to Vermont to escape, the kind of heat and humidity that reduce me to molluscan status.  Every summer the heat gets stronger and stays longer. If and when the kudzu vines and the cave crickets arrive from the lower latitudes, I'm moving north.

Meanwhile, all I want to do is hibernate or rather, estivate ("a state of dormancy or torpor during summer").  This is unfortunate because, now that the ridiculously long spell of cool weather is over, the garden is exploding.

Instead of writing, I should be out there picking kale to make into pesto.  I should be picking and freezing chard, pulling up the bolted lettuces and planting something else in their space.  Straightening the tomato cages that the daily storms have felled. Weeding the front flower beds, the back flower beds, the vegetable beds.   And pruning the four big lilacs before the job gets too big for me to handle.

But these days the only job I like is picking lavender.  In the morning, after the dew has dried but before the sun unleashes its full fury, I go out with my basket and cut the spears where a single cobalt bud has opened.  It hasn't been a good year for lavender, for although the winter was cold there wasn't enough snow cover.  I lost a couple of bushes, and the survivors aren't flowering well.  But I'll take whatever they give me.

I leave the lavender in its basket on the dining room table, where it releases clouds of scent into the humid air.  I should be tying it into bunches and hanging it up to dry, but that seems like a big effort right now.

Instead, I go and sit blankly by the indoor pond and watch the goldfish play in the fountain stream. Don't ask me to lift a finger, express an opinion, or make any sense.  I'm estivating.

Rain, Maybe

I just walked in the house from taking the dogs out in the field, and all three of us are actually wet.  Well, maybe only moist.  But after two and a half weeks without rain, every drop counts.

Mind you, things are still green around here--it takes a while to use up the spring melt.  But yesterday the woods gave off that sweet, dry Mediterranean smell that would have made a nightingale not sound out of place.  In Vermont, however, a dry spell this early in the season does not bode well for fields and farms, flowers and wells.

I have a little fixation on wells, having spent my young adult years trying to coexist with a slow one.  I learned to do no more than one load of wash on any given day, and to turn off the shower while I soaped myself, and to never, ever water the garden or the grass.  But the Christmas when, having just placed turkey and trimmings in front of twelve house guests, I went to wash my hands and heard that fatal "shhhhhh" come drily out of the faucet ranks as one of the low points of my life.

Hence my over-vigilance about rainfall and water tables and wells.  As soon as we have a couple of dry days I go into water conservation mode.  I water the vegetables with a watering can instead of a hose.  I turn the water off while brushing my teeth.  And while I cook, I fill a bowl with water and rinse my fingers in it rather than under the faucet.  When I'm done I throw the contents of the bowl into the pond, to replenish it.  Need I say that our toilet tanks are equipped with water-saving quart jars year round?

So far, our Vermont well has never failed us, but who knows what lies ahead in this era of morphing climate?  Like, for instance, right now the rain has stopped.  The patio is dry again and the hens have come out to hunt for whatever micro-fauna emerge after a shower.  My hopes are dashed. The drought is not averted.  It will be sad to watch the gardens slowly die, the Holsteins in the fields grow gaunt and skeletal...

But wait!  The hens just ran inside!  It's sprinkling again, and the frog in the pond just croaked with joy.  And so did I.

Haying Time

This cool, dry, sunny weather is perfect for haying, and our neighbor farmer cut our fields yesterday.  He did this with the help of several large machines and the village librarian (could I ask for more than to live in a place where the librarian hays my field?). It was done quickly and efficiently--no fat peasants snoozing under trees at midday--and today the red-tailed hawk spent the morning circling above the field, whistling at his luck. 

I shooed Bisou away from a mouse, neatly sliced in half by the mower, that she found on the driveway.  Haying is not a vegetarian operation, and those big, fast machines wreak much havoc among the small, furry and defenceless.  Gone are the days when Robert Burns had the leisure to apologize to a field mouse "for turning her up in her nest with his plough."  But every year, when the big machines rumble up our driveway, I call to mind Burns's expression of regrets:

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!

In this post-solstice season, after the warmest twelve months on record, we would do well to remember that we are earth born companions and fellow mortals of even the lowest, most timorous beastie, that our fates hang together, and that we should do all in our power to preserve "Nature's social union."
On a more cheerful note, driving down Route 30 yesterday I saw a man mowing the verge...with a pair of Belgians.  Is there anything more gorgeous, majestic and at the same time strangely cuddly than those honey-colored giants with their blond manes and tails?

I'm sure the horse-drawn mower had sharp blades, but I hope it was slow enough to give the wee sleekit beasties time, if not to save their nests, at least to save their skins. 

Of Frog And Pond

I had to spring-clean the little patio pond today.  Normally I aim for a sunny day after the ice has melted but before the frogs come loudly back to life.  But because of this apocalyptic weather, frog-song erupted on the patio two nights ago, about the same time the peepers started yelling in the big pond way down in the woods.  Our pair of pond frogs have clearly been doing more than singing, since this morning there was a substantial mass of frog eggs floating on the water.

At last year's spring cleaning, there were a number of frog cadavers to dispose of (my frog funerals consist of flipping the rubbery bodies over the fence into the chicken yard, for the hens to feast on).  I didn't want this year's tadpoles to hatch in water polluted by their relatives' remains.  Before things went any farther, I figured I should partially drain the pond, get the worst of the muck and the winter's frog casualties out of the bottom, fertilize the water lilies, and refill the pond with clean, cold well water for the tadpoles to grow in. 

When we built the pond, we made sure that one end of it was 3 1/2 feet deep.  This is supposed to be below the frost line, and to ensure that hibernating critters don't get killed by the encroaching ice.  After  last year's tragic spring, I learned that even if there is water below the ice, unless gases have a way to escape, frogs and salamanders and fish will suffocate.  The only way to prevent this is to keep an opening in the ice by electrical means, and since we don't (yet) have an outlet on the back wall of the house, despite the mild winter, the pond was solidly frozen for months.

I was expecting quite a frog holocaust today.  There had been dozens of frogs in the pond last summer.  In the fall, before the pond iced over, three or four of them had died, floated to the surface, and been skimmed off and fed to the hens.  Today, however, when my spouse-installed siphon started to lower the water level, a lot of dead leaves surfaced, and quite a few dead caterpillars, but not a single dead frog.

The two live frogs, alarmed by the receding waters, clung to the lily pots, their eyes popping with alarm.  I had previously scooped the mass of spawn into a bucket and put it out of harm's way in the shade.  As I skimmed the year's detritus, I brought up one very lively tadpole and three salamanders (two of whom were in flagrante).  When the water level got quite low I also saw, swimming in the murky depths...a fish!

I have documented in these pages my sad attempts to introduce fish into the pond.  For two summers I have decanted, first, shubunkin (the Japanese gold fish that look like koi), and then, when these perished, plain gold "feeder" fish into the pond.  Every single one--or so I thought--floated up or disappeared, victims of my pond's unsatisfactory ecology.  And yet today here was a fish, not gold but mud-colored, and definitely alive.  Had it dropped from the sky?  Had it emerged by spontaneous generation from the bottom muck?  Was it one of the originals that had somehow survived?  Was it a mirage spawned by my fevered brain?

When the pond was about a third empty, I started pouring in clean water from the hose, and decanted the frog spawn into it.  Both the mass of eggs and their parents disappeared into the depths.  As the pond filled and I installed the solar-powered fountain and bubbler, then poured in the barley straw pellets and the rotten-egg-scented solution intended to keep the water from turning into a fetid jelly, there was no sign of life on the surface.  I wondered if I by insisting on this belated cleaning I had murdered my pond pets.

But as soon as the sun went down somebody on the patio started playing the amphibian castanets with gusto again, and I feel reassured.  If we don't get a blizzard in the next few days, the frogs, the salamanders,  that ghostly fish and I will probably be o.k.

Some Catholic Reflections On An Early Spring

As many of you know, I am a former Catholic--or rather a lapsed Catholic,  since few people ever succeed in ridding themselves completely of Holy Mother Church's hold on their psyches.  I ceased practicing in my twenties, since I couldn't go along with the Church's position on birth control and had been taught that a cafeteria-style Catholicism was worse than no Catholicism at all.  But I can still chant the Credo in latin, and will do so at the drop of a hat.

The imprint goes much deeper than Gregorian chant and the smell of beeswax candles, however.  It is my suppressed Catholicism, for instance, that is responsible for my tendency to imbue everyday happenings with a religious significance.  Take, for instance, this early spring, which has caused maple sugaring to begin a full three weeks ahead of schedule. 

I know many people who glory in this sort of weather, who are grateful to be able to get outdoors and start raking the hay mulch off the flower beds--a task that in normal years they couldn't even begin to think about until April.  I, on the other hand, view this warmth with deep suspicion.  For one thing, we don't deserve it.  We don't deserve it because we haven't earned it by three good months of snow-shoveling, fire-stoking, and long-underwear-wearing.  There have been no blizzards, no cabin fever, and thus none of that bursting out of doors on the first day the thermometer hits 32F to fling spinach seeds on the still snow-covered garden.  The prizes that aren't sacrificed and waited for are hardly worth the winning.  It is by our sufferings in this vale of tears that we earn eternal life, no?

Furthermore, I think this early spring is the first stage of something we have earned:  a severe punishment, in the form of global warming, for our sins against the earth.  Hildegard of Bingen knew what she was talking about, back in the 12th century, when she said:  

Now in the people that were meant to be green there is no more life of any kind. There is only shriveled barrenness. The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples. The earth should not be injured! The earth must not be destroyed!

To distract myself from these dire thoughts, yesterday I pruned my two little apple trees.  I was shocked, when I took off the first "sucker," to see how much green there was under the bark.  The sap had certainly been running, and I hoped I was not too late with my shears.  But I finished the job anyway, sculpting the trees by cutting away the upright-growing branches and preserving the ones that came off the trunk at a wide angle, and snipping off the skinny little twigs that would get in the way of a thrown cat (if an apple tree has been properly pruned, you should be able to throw a cat through its branches).

And here again I found myself having Catholic thoughts--all this cutting and purifying and inflicting pain (I hope not much) in the hopes of a glorious future harvest reminded me of going to confession, where in exchange for the pain of telling your sins to a stranger you are left feeling cleansed and full of hope.

Speaking of which, as soon as it stops raining, I will plant my spinach, which mundane act will not fail to remind me that by doing my little bit to minimize the "shriveled barrenness" of the earth I will perhaps save my life, and possibly even my soul.