This week National Public Radio (NPR) http://www.npr.org/broadcast a story about a new law in the state Washington that now requires manufacturers to be responsible for the entire life cycle of electronics. This is a huge step in the right direction. A shocking number of computers, game systems and other electronic devices containing heavy metals and many recyclable elements are ended up dumped in landfills regardless of local laws concerning their disposal. This becomes even more important with the switch to digital televisions which will produce even more dangerous waste.
I'm glad Washington State has taken the initiative. Now what about the other 49 states? And why didn't we start doing this 50 years ago?
Environment
E-Waste Law: Manufacturers Pay For Recycling
by Ann Dornfeld
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100131277
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Golden apples of the sun
February 8, 2009
In Becca’s recent posting, Sign of Spring http://backyardtransliteration.blogspot.com/2009/01/sign-of-spring.html on her blog http://backyardtransliteration.blogspot.com/ she said she dreaded the spring. I understand her dread. My mother has been dead for sixteen years now and Christmas has never been the same for my sister, my son or for me. Christmas has long been associated with a time of mourning for us not a time of joy. My love for farming and for growing things was instilled in me by my mother. I don’t remember her ever complaining about the work being too hard, the days too long or the sun too hot. My father did much of the heavy farm work so it was left to us, the woman and the children to plant the garden, hoe the weeds, and harvest for canning and freezing in the late summer and autumn.
Spring for me is a time to take a deep breath and begin anew. Spring is a time for planning and for planting. Looking through seed catalogues even the act of running seeds through my fingers is a memory of my mother. We’ll grow tiny sweet bell tomatoes because when I was a child, we ate them over candy. My mother always made sure that there were a few of those planted. Funny, I don’t remember them being served at the table. What I remember is my mother walking back from the garden where my sister and I were resting in the shade. Her skirt was lifted up with her white cotton slip showing and in the basket formed by the cloth of her skirt was a mound of golden yellow tomatoes. When I hear a song or story with a reference to silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun, I think of those sun-kissed tomatoes she gathered for us.
Becca says, “If home is where you keep your stuff, then this is definitely home. And if home is where you spent your childhood, I’m in the right place.” My stuff is in El Paso, my childhood was in Kentucky so which is my home now? Either, or neither? I’m still not sure. Becca, grief has no season but we do still have hope and we have our memories to sustain us and comfort us. Nearly every day, I will think of something I want to tell my mother. There are times I have reached for the phone wanting to call her. There are times I dream of her, clear eyed, loving and strong. The grief will fade but your memories never will. When your memory of childhood awakens in the spring, cherish it and look forward to a glorious spring.
In Becca’s recent posting, Sign of Spring http://backyardtransliteration.blogspot.com/2009/01/sign-of-spring.html on her blog http://backyardtransliteration.blogspot.com/ she said she dreaded the spring. I understand her dread. My mother has been dead for sixteen years now and Christmas has never been the same for my sister, my son or for me. Christmas has long been associated with a time of mourning for us not a time of joy. My love for farming and for growing things was instilled in me by my mother. I don’t remember her ever complaining about the work being too hard, the days too long or the sun too hot. My father did much of the heavy farm work so it was left to us, the woman and the children to plant the garden, hoe the weeds, and harvest for canning and freezing in the late summer and autumn.
Spring for me is a time to take a deep breath and begin anew. Spring is a time for planning and for planting. Looking through seed catalogues even the act of running seeds through my fingers is a memory of my mother. We’ll grow tiny sweet bell tomatoes because when I was a child, we ate them over candy. My mother always made sure that there were a few of those planted. Funny, I don’t remember them being served at the table. What I remember is my mother walking back from the garden where my sister and I were resting in the shade. Her skirt was lifted up with her white cotton slip showing and in the basket formed by the cloth of her skirt was a mound of golden yellow tomatoes. When I hear a song or story with a reference to silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun, I think of those sun-kissed tomatoes she gathered for us.
Becca says, “If home is where you keep your stuff, then this is definitely home. And if home is where you spent your childhood, I’m in the right place.” My stuff is in El Paso, my childhood was in Kentucky so which is my home now? Either, or neither? I’m still not sure. Becca, grief has no season but we do still have hope and we have our memories to sustain us and comfort us. Nearly every day, I will think of something I want to tell my mother. There are times I have reached for the phone wanting to call her. There are times I dream of her, clear eyed, loving and strong. The grief will fade but your memories never will. When your memory of childhood awakens in the spring, cherish it and look forward to a glorious spring.
An Elegy
February 8, 2009
Requiem (excerpt)
by Wendell Berry
Though the green fields are my delight,
elegy is my fate. I have come
to be survivor of many and of much
that I love, that I won’t see
come again into this world.
The word requiem is often associated with the Mass for the dead, but according to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, it also means rest. An elegy is a song of mourning. Our reading of Wendell Berry’s work this week and all of our discussion and postings about family members who have died made me get out Wendell Berry’s The Wheel, a collection of poems that celebrate the great circle of life while mourning both people and ways that have passed on.
The two excerpts I am posting have a deeper meaning for me today than they did 25 years ago when Mr. Berry signed my copy of The Wheel. I understand them so much better but now I wonder what losses he must have had in his life to have written these poems so long ago. But of course he wasn’t much older than I am now when he wrote them. By the time you reach my age, there are substantial losses. He speaks of the connection between the living and the dead and the connection of the land between the living and the dead. Another of the poems in this collection called “Rising” says, “There is kinship of the fields that gives to the living the breath of the dead.” His poems are gentle and quiet but they speak of people and things that won’t “come again into this world.”
As we start our garden in the back, I look back to my childhood and my youth when farming was a way of life with us. Since my son was born eighteen and half years ago, I have tried to share with him my knowledge and experiences. I have so desperately wanted him to love the earth and the joy of growing things, of harvesting and eating the fruits of your labors. Loving the land and growing things are so much a part of who I was and who I am, somehow I thought it would be in his blood too. It is not.
It saddens me that I cannot seem to impart this tradition, this fundamental relationship with the land to my son. I do not want to see him become a consumer, one of those strangers so far removed from the earth. But he is not a farmer. He will help. If asked. He doesn’t volunteer though.
I remember when he was a baby of two and three, asking to pick the herbs growing by the house. He would crush the mint, the basil, the sage in his tiny hand to smell the sharp scent. We picked plums and figs from the trees still warm from the sun. So much time has passed since then. I don’t think he will ever love the earth the way I did. The way I do.
My son’s grandparents are all dead now. My parents were farmers and so were their parents before them and beyond for I don’t know how many generations. Most young people today don’t care about the old ways of doing things. Who will be left to remember, to tell, when the last of us are gone?
The backyard soil that Albert turned with such hard work is cold now and hardening in the sun. It is still too cold to plant anything. But we talk about what to plant where and how much. Beans, tomatoes, greens, for sure, and herbs; a real herb garden, not a few pots on the porch. We will plant and we will tend and we will harvest. Albert grew up in a Hong Kong high-rise but his love for cooking ties him to the land in a different way. My son will eat the fruits of our garden and perhaps the love of the earth will seep into him with the warmth of the sun, or maybe not. Perhaps when I am gone, too, he will remember. But still, I will rest easier in the night knowing the plants are growing in the back yard.
In Rain (excerpt)
by Wendell Berry
Let the rain come,
the sun, and then the dark,
for I will rest
in an easy bed tonight.
Requiem (excerpt)
by Wendell Berry
Though the green fields are my delight,
elegy is my fate. I have come
to be survivor of many and of much
that I love, that I won’t see
come again into this world.
The word requiem is often associated with the Mass for the dead, but according to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, it also means rest. An elegy is a song of mourning. Our reading of Wendell Berry’s work this week and all of our discussion and postings about family members who have died made me get out Wendell Berry’s The Wheel, a collection of poems that celebrate the great circle of life while mourning both people and ways that have passed on.
The two excerpts I am posting have a deeper meaning for me today than they did 25 years ago when Mr. Berry signed my copy of The Wheel. I understand them so much better but now I wonder what losses he must have had in his life to have written these poems so long ago. But of course he wasn’t much older than I am now when he wrote them. By the time you reach my age, there are substantial losses. He speaks of the connection between the living and the dead and the connection of the land between the living and the dead. Another of the poems in this collection called “Rising” says, “There is kinship of the fields that gives to the living the breath of the dead.” His poems are gentle and quiet but they speak of people and things that won’t “come again into this world.”
As we start our garden in the back, I look back to my childhood and my youth when farming was a way of life with us. Since my son was born eighteen and half years ago, I have tried to share with him my knowledge and experiences. I have so desperately wanted him to love the earth and the joy of growing things, of harvesting and eating the fruits of your labors. Loving the land and growing things are so much a part of who I was and who I am, somehow I thought it would be in his blood too. It is not.
It saddens me that I cannot seem to impart this tradition, this fundamental relationship with the land to my son. I do not want to see him become a consumer, one of those strangers so far removed from the earth. But he is not a farmer. He will help. If asked. He doesn’t volunteer though.
I remember when he was a baby of two and three, asking to pick the herbs growing by the house. He would crush the mint, the basil, the sage in his tiny hand to smell the sharp scent. We picked plums and figs from the trees still warm from the sun. So much time has passed since then. I don’t think he will ever love the earth the way I did. The way I do.
My son’s grandparents are all dead now. My parents were farmers and so were their parents before them and beyond for I don’t know how many generations. Most young people today don’t care about the old ways of doing things. Who will be left to remember, to tell, when the last of us are gone?
The backyard soil that Albert turned with such hard work is cold now and hardening in the sun. It is still too cold to plant anything. But we talk about what to plant where and how much. Beans, tomatoes, greens, for sure, and herbs; a real herb garden, not a few pots on the porch. We will plant and we will tend and we will harvest. Albert grew up in a Hong Kong high-rise but his love for cooking ties him to the land in a different way. My son will eat the fruits of our garden and perhaps the love of the earth will seep into him with the warmth of the sun, or maybe not. Perhaps when I am gone, too, he will remember. But still, I will rest easier in the night knowing the plants are growing in the back yard.
In Rain (excerpt)
by Wendell Berry
Let the rain come,
the sun, and then the dark,
for I will rest
in an easy bed tonight.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Response to Dory and Elaina
(photo from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chihuahuan_Desert)In Dory’s Nature Writing blog http://doryperry.blogspot.com/, she refers to “Florida in its natural state” being “an inhospitable environment, or at least for humans.” El Paso, which is part of the Chihuahuan Desert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chihuahuan_Desert, is also an inhospitable place for humans to live. It is much better suited to geckos, lizards, and coyotes. A colony of skunks and the occasional fox stroll by when we take a walk. They are so used to humans that they only stop and look at us as we all go unmolested about our business, just as the deer watched and moved on in Dory’s earlier posting. We are blessed with fewer bugs than southern Florida but thankfully there are enough to provide a substantial dinner for the bats.
Our house is near the university campus and in the shadow of the Franklin Mountains. We live less than two miles from downtown, less than five miles from the Mexican border. The Franklins are furrowed near their base with arroyos. An arroyo cuts through our neighborhood. An arroyo is a low area or wash that provides natural drainage when we have our torrential rainstorms once or twice a year. El Paso for many years was true desert with six inches or less of rainfall each year. In recent years, our response to global change has been surprising floods. The sandy soil cannot absorb the now about eight inches of rain that seems to all come within a few days in August. Population and expansion in El Paso have pushed people to build in places where they should have never built, much like the Florida wetlands that man tried to reclaim. In our last flood, houses filled with mud and roads broke apart to accommodate the rains that continued to fall while the mountains poured their excess water down into what should have been our natural collection system, the arroyos. The arroyos always have provided stunning views of the mountains framed by spectacular sunsets. A most desirable place to live, right? But when the arroyos are bulldozed and paved like Joni Mitchell’s parking lot, the water still comes. We are perhaps the geological opposite to watery humid Miami but water is an essential part of the desert eco-system, in a different way.
Similar to Elaina at http://elainasnatureblog.blogspot.com/ I thought the desert landscape was unappealing when I first arrived in El Paso. I grew up in the soft hills of Kentucky; had lived on the windy plains of Iowa, near the San Diego beach, among the pine forests of North Carolina and southern coastal Georgia. My son was born in my beloved Mystic, Connecticut. I was used to seasons, green trees and grass. Flowers had always grown where I planted them. My first years in the desert were a learning curve as I killed so many plants that were not biologically engineered to grow in the southwestern sun or this harsh alkaline soil. I missed fall and spring. I missed rain.
Then I began to study the native plants that belonged here. I shopped at the annual University of Texas at El Paso sponsored FloraFEST and Native Plant Sale http://museum.utep.edu/ which they hold every April in the Chihuahuan Desert Garden on campus. I watched the plants and animals that live and thrive within our urban populated area. In El Paso the plants and animals do not recognize any superiority or transcendental qualities of their human neighbors. We move in and they join us.
Like Kristin http://naturalkristin.blogspot.com and Dory, I have lived many places and loved them. The El Paso desert is my home now and I am learning to live in harmony with this exigent land so different from any place I have ever called home. I believe the desert welcomes those who understand.
The Garden - Part 2
The Garden - February 1, 2009
I came home from a long Saturday filled with a cafeteria packed with hormonally challenged tweens to find that Albert had spent the day digging up a substantial rectangle of the back yard. This January day had warmed to seventy degrees, a hint of spring coming soon. I came in the back gate and he proudly led me over to the plot. There was a soft pillow of turned earth. The grass was gone and the soil had doubled and was fluffy in volume from his work with the spade. The digging up of the plot, Albert’s removal of the grass, was a commitment. His secret surprise knowing I would come home exhausted. The tension and noise of the day lifted from me. As we stood there watching the beginning of the garden, like a gift, a mockingbird flew boldly down and began shopping for bugs or worms in the newly turned earth. He took our presence for granted as he saucily hopped about this way and that, cocking his head and flipping his tail.
The garden had suddenly become a symbol of our choice to join our lives; the mockingbird an auspicious sign for the project. He took me back to summer mornings when as a child I would wake to the male mockingbird’s entire repertoire of songs. His joyous song filled the dawn as he sang every song he knew while his little ones grew in their hickory tree nest outside my bedroom window.
In El Paso, we don’t see many mockingbirds. Starlings and doves, yes, the scourges of city life. Doves are as plentiful as pigeons in New York City and I cannot love them. Perhaps if there was a market for dove guano? They seem so dull and dense with their tiny beads for eyes. But the mockingbird returns my gaze with a lively, intelligent air as if there is a private joke between you. He has no fear of humans and takes it as his right to join you and share the moment. And we do.
The scent of the earth rises warm, strange and yet familiar. I pause a moment and ponder the sum of chemicals that may buried there. But we have let the soil rest for two and a half years and there will be compost, and mulch. And there will be mockingbirds. I watch him fly away and wonder where his nest is. It doesn’t matter. He knows where we are. He has found our garden and he will be back. He will bring his mate and later his young. Next year they will bring their young. The sun that had warmed the soil has dipped behind the house. It will be dark soon and we turn to go back into the house. We could talk about what to plant first, but we don’t. Not yet. We both savor the moment. Our decision to grow food together has become a reality. It is a beginning.
I came home from a long Saturday filled with a cafeteria packed with hormonally challenged tweens to find that Albert had spent the day digging up a substantial rectangle of the back yard. This January day had warmed to seventy degrees, a hint of spring coming soon. I came in the back gate and he proudly led me over to the plot. There was a soft pillow of turned earth. The grass was gone and the soil had doubled and was fluffy in volume from his work with the spade. The digging up of the plot, Albert’s removal of the grass, was a commitment. His secret surprise knowing I would come home exhausted. The tension and noise of the day lifted from me. As we stood there watching the beginning of the garden, like a gift, a mockingbird flew boldly down and began shopping for bugs or worms in the newly turned earth. He took our presence for granted as he saucily hopped about this way and that, cocking his head and flipping his tail.
The garden had suddenly become a symbol of our choice to join our lives; the mockingbird an auspicious sign for the project. He took me back to summer mornings when as a child I would wake to the male mockingbird’s entire repertoire of songs. His joyous song filled the dawn as he sang every song he knew while his little ones grew in their hickory tree nest outside my bedroom window.
In El Paso, we don’t see many mockingbirds. Starlings and doves, yes, the scourges of city life. Doves are as plentiful as pigeons in New York City and I cannot love them. Perhaps if there was a market for dove guano? They seem so dull and dense with their tiny beads for eyes. But the mockingbird returns my gaze with a lively, intelligent air as if there is a private joke between you. He has no fear of humans and takes it as his right to join you and share the moment. And we do.
The scent of the earth rises warm, strange and yet familiar. I pause a moment and ponder the sum of chemicals that may buried there. But we have let the soil rest for two and a half years and there will be compost, and mulch. And there will be mockingbirds. I watch him fly away and wonder where his nest is. It doesn’t matter. He knows where we are. He has found our garden and he will be back. He will bring his mate and later his young. Next year they will bring their young. The sun that had warmed the soil has dipped behind the house. It will be dark soon and we turn to go back into the house. We could talk about what to plant first, but we don’t. Not yet. We both savor the moment. Our decision to grow food together has become a reality. It is a beginning.
A Reflection of Peonies
Peonies
By Mary Oliver
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open –
pools of lace,
white and pink –
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away
to their dark, underground cities –
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again –
beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
(Prompt #2 All italics reference lines from Mary Oliver’s poem.)
Reading Mary Oliver’s “Peonies” took me back to my childhood, back to the front yard of my parents’ house in Kentucky. In early Spring, the iris sent their sharp green swords through the earth where nothing but dead leaves and jumbled brown bulbs were before. Between the iris beds, there was a clump of peonies so big my five-year-old arms did not reach from one end to the other. Oliver’s description, “the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart,” is so apt. I remember wondering how that profusion of petals could possibly be contained within that tight, hard, green ball. After the iris were in full bloom, the peony buds would appear, swell and, suddenly, they were the size of ping pong balls. It is the memory of them now half a century later that breaks my heart.
The peonies exploding into bloom was always a wonder and a surprise. The peonies were mixed, snowy white “pools of lace” with red veins in their heart. But nestled under the huge snowballs were the smaller but cherished raspberry pink peonies. The pink ones were perhaps half the size of the showy white ones. Even Oliver’s ants in the poem were more impressed by the overshadowing white ones. The pinks were slower to open but when the white peonies were blowsy and tattered, showing the wear of the summer rains, the vivid pinks held their color and their heads high.
My mother would send me to the front yard with kitchen shears to cut flowers for the table. My childish hands would amass a bouquet of bluish-purple iris and white peonies just before their peak of bloom so they would continue to open on the kitchen table. Tucked into the bundle, I placed one or two of the glowing pink peonies. Their smaller blossoms were dominated by the mass of white and blue but they were always my secret delight, “and there it is again – the brave, the bright, the exemplary, blazing open.”
Mary Oliver’s poems seem to love nature but they look at it through wistful eyes. So many of her poems look into the past with bittersweet remembrance or they look forward with underlying sadness and an impending sense of loss. This poem of peonies is a sensual view, a Georgia O’Keefe voluptuous gaze with words into the fleeting beauty of a summer flower.
I have not lived in Kentucky for many years and peonies in the desert landscape of El Paso are just not possible. In my mind’s eye, I see that Kentucky front yard not as it is now with new owners and their tidy beds of petunias, but as it was fifty years ago. I see it on a bright summer day as a child with the morning sun on my arms as I shake the morning dew and the ants from the flowers my mother sent me to gather. My mother loved the iris best, their translucent sapphire petals crowning the fuzzy stripe of yellow that disappeared into the heart. She worried the peonies would carry ants and who knows what else to our dinner on the table. I shook each flower examining the furled petals so that she would welcome them and they could join the bouquet. Her iris and my peonies mingled in the Mason jar.
Gazing into the past, that moment in my childhood seems “wild and perfect.” The peonies of my old front yard are gone now but they remain, a captured moment in my mind, forever.
Non-natives v/s natives
In a previous post, I provided some definitions for xeriscaping. Xeriscaping is our local response to planting native plants which in turn encourages and nurtures native insects, birds and animals. My classmate, Becca, in her blog at http://backyardtransliteration.blogspot.com/ spoke about becoming a beekeeper and wanting to provide native plantings for her bees. She also provided information about the National Wildlife Federation and creating a certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat. Becca recommended naturalpatriot.org, a nature blog by Emmett Duffy. Duffy has some wonderful advice on using native plants and he provides food for thought about the ultimate effect on our environment, particularly urban and suburban areas, when the dominant plants are non-native species.
Although I consider myself to be someone who cares about and is knowledgeable about ecology and biodiversity, I had not considered the bigger picture of non-native plants affecting the lives of local fauna. For years I have been much more concerned about the use of pesticides and herbicides and the chemical warfare to create green golf-course lawns where none were meant to be. But Duffy’s remarks make so much sense! He says, “Sure, that Wisteria looks nice. But does it taste nice–that is, to the creatures that have to make a living on it? How has this creeping transformation of outdoor space affected the rest of the ecosystem?” I honestly never thought about the long-reaching effects of non-native plants literally starving out our local fauna!
Reading both Becca’s and Duffy’s blogs motivated me to do something very public in our neighborhood. We waited in trepidation for someone to complain to the city authorities when we dug up our front lawn and began planting native plants. The only people who commented were positive about our flowering sages and penstemons so we breathed a sigh of relief. Today I spent time on the National Wildlife Federation website going through the process of certifying our home as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. Our urban yard meets all the requirements of using organic methods, planting natives, and providing food, water and cover for animals. For a $25 fee, they are sending me a weatherproof aluminum sign that we will proudly place in our front yard under the Mount Lemmon Marigold shrub (tagetes lemmonii) to announce that our home is also home to the plants and animals that have made it their home long before us.
Although I consider myself to be someone who cares about and is knowledgeable about ecology and biodiversity, I had not considered the bigger picture of non-native plants affecting the lives of local fauna. For years I have been much more concerned about the use of pesticides and herbicides and the chemical warfare to create green golf-course lawns where none were meant to be. But Duffy’s remarks make so much sense! He says, “Sure, that Wisteria looks nice. But does it taste nice–that is, to the creatures that have to make a living on it? How has this creeping transformation of outdoor space affected the rest of the ecosystem?” I honestly never thought about the long-reaching effects of non-native plants literally starving out our local fauna!
Reading both Becca’s and Duffy’s blogs motivated me to do something very public in our neighborhood. We waited in trepidation for someone to complain to the city authorities when we dug up our front lawn and began planting native plants. The only people who commented were positive about our flowering sages and penstemons so we breathed a sigh of relief. Today I spent time on the National Wildlife Federation website going through the process of certifying our home as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. Our urban yard meets all the requirements of using organic methods, planting natives, and providing food, water and cover for animals. For a $25 fee, they are sending me a weatherproof aluminum sign that we will proudly place in our front yard under the Mount Lemmon Marigold shrub (tagetes lemmonii) to announce that our home is also home to the plants and animals that have made it their home long before us.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Kentucky - Land of my birth
Prompt #1
As a child, my world was eighty-seven acres of farmland and woods in south-central Kentucky. My family came from a muddle of most of the British Isles, Germany, Cherokee and perhaps some unknown quantities; an uneasy combination of gentleman farmers and sturdy yeoman stock. Wedded to the land, tillers of the soil, Kentuckians are a people where the land sustains you and defines you. Land is important. The land is who you are. We say the land belongs to the farmers but really, the farmer belongs to the land.
We lived by the seasons. Our days ruled by the sun and the rain. The land sustained us, fed us, and defined us within our community. What we ate, we first grew, then harvested, and preserved. The seeds we planted in the spring, blistered our hands by the summer hoe, and were blessed at dinner through the winter.
We were farmers. Our neighbors were farmers. We left each other alone but helped when needed. There were never enough hands for work waiting to be done, so each household timed it so that harvest could be gathered before a storm. Neighbors rode over on their tractors and worked until sunset. We would be at their place tomorrow. Cutting hay requires generations of hard-earned, weather-wise knowledge. If it rains after the hay is cut, it will mildew. How many days must it cure on the ground before and after raking? How do you know it is properly cured before bailing? Too soon, and it’s too green. Too late, and the cattle won’t eat it. Horses and cows are choosy. There’s a reason for the old saying, “That’s only fit for a pig.”
I visited the farm for the first time in years this past autumn. My son and I went home to visit my cousin dying of cancer. We buried my cousin right before Christmas. My parents are both gone, dead from cancer years ago. The land hasn’t belonged to us for a long time. The farm passed out of our hands with the death of my father. Sometimes I wonder about the number of farm people who have died of cancer. Have we poisoned the soil beyond redemption? What is certain is that someday the land to which we belonged, reclaims us.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Kentucky (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky)
The origin of Kentucky's name (variously spelled Cane-tuck-ee, Cantucky, Kain-tuck-ee, and Kentuckee before its modern spelling was accepted)[6] has never been definitively identified, though some theories have been debunked. For example, Kentucky's name is unlikely to mean "dark and bloody ground" as is commonly believed, because it does not occur with that meaning in any known Native American language. It also is not a combination of "cane" and "turkey".[7] The most likely etymology is that it comes from an Iroquoian word for "meadow" or "prairie"[6][8] (c.f. Mohawk kenhtà:ke, Seneca këhta'keh).[9] Other possibilities also exist: the suggestion of early Kentucky pioneer George Rogers Clark that the name means "the river of blood",[6] a Wyandot name meaning "land of tomorrow", a Shawnee term possibly referring to the head of a river,[10] or an Algonquian word for a river bottom.[7]
As a child, my world was eighty-seven acres of farmland and woods in south-central Kentucky. My family came from a muddle of most of the British Isles, Germany, Cherokee and perhaps some unknown quantities; an uneasy combination of gentleman farmers and sturdy yeoman stock. Wedded to the land, tillers of the soil, Kentuckians are a people where the land sustains you and defines you. Land is important. The land is who you are. We say the land belongs to the farmers but really, the farmer belongs to the land.
We lived by the seasons. Our days ruled by the sun and the rain. The land sustained us, fed us, and defined us within our community. What we ate, we first grew, then harvested, and preserved. The seeds we planted in the spring, blistered our hands by the summer hoe, and were blessed at dinner through the winter.
We were farmers. Our neighbors were farmers. We left each other alone but helped when needed. There were never enough hands for work waiting to be done, so each household timed it so that harvest could be gathered before a storm. Neighbors rode over on their tractors and worked until sunset. We would be at their place tomorrow. Cutting hay requires generations of hard-earned, weather-wise knowledge. If it rains after the hay is cut, it will mildew. How many days must it cure on the ground before and after raking? How do you know it is properly cured before bailing? Too soon, and it’s too green. Too late, and the cattle won’t eat it. Horses and cows are choosy. There’s a reason for the old saying, “That’s only fit for a pig.”
I visited the farm for the first time in years this past autumn. My son and I went home to visit my cousin dying of cancer. We buried my cousin right before Christmas. My parents are both gone, dead from cancer years ago. The land hasn’t belonged to us for a long time. The farm passed out of our hands with the death of my father. Sometimes I wonder about the number of farm people who have died of cancer. Have we poisoned the soil beyond redemption? What is certain is that someday the land to which we belonged, reclaims us.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Kentucky (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky)
The origin of Kentucky's name (variously spelled Cane-tuck-ee, Cantucky, Kain-tuck-ee, and Kentuckee before its modern spelling was accepted)[6] has never been definitively identified, though some theories have been debunked. For example, Kentucky's name is unlikely to mean "dark and bloody ground" as is commonly believed, because it does not occur with that meaning in any known Native American language. It also is not a combination of "cane" and "turkey".[7] The most likely etymology is that it comes from an Iroquoian word for "meadow" or "prairie"[6][8] (c.f. Mohawk kenhtà:ke, Seneca këhta'keh).[9] Other possibilities also exist: the suggestion of early Kentucky pioneer George Rogers Clark that the name means "the river of blood",[6] a Wyandot name meaning "land of tomorrow", a Shawnee term possibly referring to the head of a river,[10] or an Algonquian word for a river bottom.[7]
The Garden - Part 1
The Garden – January 27, 2009
Nothing quite compares to picking and eating fruits or vegetables, warm from the sun, that you have nurtured and grown with your own labor. The proponents of raw food diets must be acting from some vestigial need to forage to survive. Somewhere deep in my childhood memories, growing a garden is satisfying, sustaining and connects me to whatever tiny bit of land that is within my reach. In every place I have ever lived over eight states, from the kitchen window herbs of my first apartment to a shared backyard in Mystic while my baby was growing inside of me, I have grown some of my own food. And so in this dry, brown desert winter of this corner of the Chihuahuan desert, the idea of a proper garden in our backyard was born.
While most of the rest of the country is digging out of snow and ice, grateful for a weak winter sun, El Paso is warming fast. Although it could still freeze at night, many days warm into the upper sixties and low seventies. Dressing is an exercise in layers. Warm jacket and gloves early, turtleneck and vest in the morning then peel down to tee-shirt by early afternoon. By evening it all goes back on again. The rock wall and the house hold the afternoon sun, but the air quickly chills.
Except for the evergreens, the trees and shrubs look dead but they are resting, saving themselves for spring. Spring is an odd season in El Paso and lasts only about two weeks. There will be no sign of life in the trees and then suddenly they explode with hard little leaf buds. Days later the leaves appear, and within a couple of weeks it can be so hot that you forget that it was just winter. Students strip to tank tops and shorts and I have not yet packed away the woolen sweaters.
Growing food in the desert is not easy. It requires extensive planning and cooperation with the local climate and soil. The desert can be productive but it is not meant to be a hospitable place for humans. It is much better suited to armadillos, geckos and roadrunners. It may appear that humans have tamed the desert, but it is an illusion. As you drive through my neighborhood, you see lawns starting to green up. I see the green grass and my mind travels up the Rio Grande, up to the Elephant Butte reservoir in New Mexico and high up in the mountains near the Colorado border where drastically reduced snowfall is the source of water those greedy lawns are drinking.
Our yard is still brown and crispy from our imposed diet, about six inches natural annual rainfall supplemented by judicious sips for survival. After we bought this house two and a half years ago, we re-claimed one third of the front yard for native desert plants, called xeriscaping here. This winter we are preparing to switch the front lawn to blue grama, Bouteloua gracilis, a perennial native prairie grass. While the seeds are germinating, the lawn will luxuriate in water daily for two weeks, then begins the spartan diet for all of our front lawn. When drought comes, and it will, with its water restrictions, our desert sages will be covered with a blush of purple blooms. The penstemon will wave in the wind, while our neighbors’ lawns wither and die. Some will stealthily water illegally in the night. Our smug desert plantings will conserve their energy, folding their leaves in the night and opening wide for a hint of morning dew.
The garden will be in the back, sheltered from the intense southwestern sun which bakes the front of the property. When I look at the back yard, I don’t see the brown crunchy grass. I see lush tomato plants standing tall in their cages, towers of green beans, deep red peppers and royal purple eggplants peeping out from bushy green, playful squash curling and writhing under the chaste tree and more.
For now, the dying wintered grass is tan and ashy. I watch the movement of the sun, deciding which plants will need the morning sun, the noonday heat and the shade of the late afternoon. No random, ramshackle planting. Tall plants too close to others will cause deadly shade. Which ones need a generous drip system and which ones are better thirsty? For now we watch and consider, moving the plants from section to section in our minds. Next month we’ll plant. January is too soon but the ground is warming fast.
* * *
xeric – adj. - (zěr'ĭk, zîr'-) adj.
characterized by, or adapted to an extremely dry habitat. xer'i·cal·ly adv., xe·ric'i·ty (zě-rĭs'ĭ-tē) n.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 27 Jan. 2009.
being deficient in moisture; “deserts provide xeric environments” [ant: hydric, mesic].WordNet® 3.0. Princeton University. 27 Jan. 2009. Dictionary.com. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/xeric>
* * *
xeric - \ZEER-ik\ : characterized by, relating to, or requiring only a small amount of moisture
Did you know? -- By the late 1800s, botanists were using the terms “xerophyte” and “xerophytic” for plants that were well adapted for survival in dry environments. But some felt the need of a more generic word that included both animals and plants. In 1926 that group proposed using “xeric” (derived from "xēros," the Greek word for “dry”) as a more generalized term for either flora or fauna. They further suggested that “xerophytic … be entirely abandoned as useless and misleading.” Not everyone liked the idea. In fact, the Ecological Society of America stated that “xeric” was “not desirable,” preferring terms such as “arid.” Others declared that “xeric” should refer only to habitats, not to organisms. Scientists used it anyway, and by the 1940s “xeric” was well documented in scientific literature.
“Xeric.” Merriam-Webster Online. Accessed on January 27, 2009. http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Dec.26.2008
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Nature and the Environment
Welcome to my blog on nature and the environment! This Spring I am taking a course in Nature and Environmental Writing at Chatham University in Pittsburgh as part of an MFA degree in Creative Writing. You are invited to view my previous postings on Sustainable Living which explain my views on nature.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
