Some Things That Have Been Taken Care Of, Others That Haven't

Late summer's best peaches, peridot pedicure, family portraits with film, long, winding drive up into the mountains, lawn time with girlfriends, tacos for dinner last night, 70s music during Apples to Apples, coffee at the Wake N Bakery, Stalking the Wild Asparagus from the Friends of the Library book sale in Maple Falls, chocolate croissant for breakfast, macarons after fried chicken dinner tonight.

Soon: sorting things for a yard sale, grocery shopping at the co-op I call home, last of the sun tea, dusting, filing, a late afternoon nap, a good book before bed and a weeks worth of clean laundry.

The Rest

There's time for one last coat of summer nailpolish, one summer pedicure. The artichokes are flowering,  but it's going to take the loppers to get them off the plants and into the house for a vase. I don't know if there will be a fall crop of kale or not, though I did plant one. There are late raspberries and tiny strawberries and big blackberries and the little salad patch I planted in the old bathtub seems practically indestructible, no matter how many times I go out and haphazardly chop off a chunk of them at the roots. We will probably get another half dozen small tomatoes, and maybe some summer squash, though the little pattypans don't look like the UFO shape I've come to expect from them. Always, always there is sorrel.

I bought a new bathing suit that I haven't even tried on yet, and I haven't had nearly enough french pastry lately. My summer vacation was at home, a notebook filled with summer things to be done, house projects and iced coffee experiments. I loved both the checking off of items, and the having things left. July went on with more of the to-dos taken care of, more rolled into August, late afternoon naps, Moonrise Kingdom in the theater just a few weekends ago, and tomorrow, finally, summer nailpolish.

1,000

Jessica, from her visit last week

This afternoon, my CEO stood in the hallway outside his office and shouted "It's 2:09! What are you all still doing here!?" We're on Summer Hours these days, closing the office at 2:00 on Fridays, for sunshine and shenanigans. If I had known beforehand that employees would use the time to hang out together, biking to a tap room in Kenmore or the brewery in Woodinville, I would have used that as part of my argument for Summer Hours, camaraderie and team building and all that. I lingered until 3, myself, then got in the car to go pick up the film I dropped off earlier in the week and hadn't had time to pick up. The last summer book of the year is in my car's CD player, which kept the traffic from seeming like anything at all. On the way to the camera shop, I drove by a Baskin Robbins, and a nail place and thought Yes. Instead, I took my computer and the CD with the negative scans and drove down to Third Place Books and read every single title in the psychology section. Then I read every single title in the used audiobook section, where I was rewarding with a $12 copy of Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. One of my all time favorite books, which I have never listened to on audio. There's something specifically delicious about having an entire book read to you. 

Afterwards, I sat in the Honey Bear Bakery with an iced mocha and uploaded all the photos, trying to think about how describe how happy I was that a few turned out well, about the little frenzy of trying to decide which to post. There was a kid about 11 with glasses at a big table near mine, backpack and notebooks everywhere. I only noticed him after his little sister, probably 7 or 8, poured her soda out on his head. No parents in sight. It was painful to watch, you could see that there was part of him that wanted to laugh, but a bigger part that was embarrassed to the point of humiliation, and hurt. He wandered away from her, looking for someone, and she hopped from one skinny leg to the other, cackling nervously, half pleased with herself, half ready for the trouble she knew was coming. An old man pushed a cart by, suddenly shouting the lyrics to a nursery song from right behind me, making me jump, making the girls behind the counter jump and eye him warily, clearly wondering if someone was going to have to ask him to leave. He was fine, passed by and said something to the woman at the information booth laugh, not at him, but with him. I was happy. A bakery in a book store, the whole afternoon my own. 

We're at a thousand now. Took us some time to get here, more than 6 years. Six pretty good ones. xo

It can't be over!

Thomas and Max enjoying the murals in Times Square on a Subway Adventure

I am not ready for summer to end. I am not ready for the boy's first day of school, the leaves changing or my 39th birthday.

The summer has flown by so quickly. We've had construction underway on the screened in porch in Vermont, so I have spent more weekends than usual in the city with the boys. We've had subway adventures, trips to foreign playgrounds, playdates, movie dates, and hijinx galor.

And, it goes without saying, I got to thoroughly experience the Olympics.

But I have missed the woods around the house, roasting marshmallows in the firepit, the sounds of the peepers echoing over the pond.

And great jeebus, I had forgotten how HOT the city is in the summer!

This weekend we head to the Hamptons for a weekend at the beach with some friends, then Labor Day in Vermont and then... school begins!

Not ready, not ready, not ready.

Dry Skies

It's supposed to be dry here this time of year, the 29th and 30th the least likely days of the year for rain. This weekend it was just what we hoped for, today a summer day too hot for weeding, perfect for naps with the windows open and coffee and crumpet breakfast eaten sitting on the front porch and occasionally the Olympics. I harvested shelling peas and salad greens and a sweet onion and best of all, artichokes, which were steamed for lunch. I planted basil and kale, and ripped out all the weeds that were threatening to swallow the six little feathery asparagus plants. Thistles, so many thistles. I realized how badly we need to sort out the compost area, and cut pieces of blue yarn so that I could measure out where we might put raised beds for next year, and sat in the shade writing a letter, and everything felt lazy and easy, in spite of all that got done.

Things to Plant Next Year

Chamomile. Pattypan squash. More artichokes, I'm crazy about the idea of having artichokes. More asparagus, since I will feel fortunate and unworthy if the sad job I did of it this year results in even two measly spears worth eating. I'm still not ready for cauliflower, or cabbage, though one of my favorite memories from my first year up here was that night I drove through the fields near LaConner, those big heads of cabbage glowing like grounded moons. Last year flowers didn't seem worth bothering with, but this year they seem like the best - no worries about whether a slug's mouth has been there first, no big deal about bugs, really, and no question about when to harvest. The big red poppies Tom planted this year - we could not possibly have too many. More of them. More of things to cut, and keep in jars around the house, with the mint and lavender that grow so well here and smell so good.

How do you know when an artichoke is ready? I searched the internet for that today, then stood out in the back of the field looking at them, spiny leaves slightly parted from the core of the vegetable - is it too late? Some looked so small, there was no question, but there was one guy who I was tempted to bring in. One tomato came with me to the kitchen, still orangey, but if I remember right it was an heirloom variety that wasn't really supposed to get all the way red. The last one had a little spot of rot before I had grown brave enough to pluck it from the vine, but I was undeterred, sliced off that little spot and ate it last thing before bed on Saturday night, a fresh square of local mozzarella between my fingers, a leaf of basil picked off one of the plants that sits in the kitchen window. I held that little treat in my hand over the sink, drizzled balsamic vinegar over it, over my fingers, popped it in my mouth and said goodnight.

Vacation Postcard

I listened to the Mariner's game all the way home from the airport, sipping a chocolate milkshake from Dick's. When I came up over the little rise before the Starbird Road exit, the whole valley appeared before me flooded with color. It had rained all and off nearly all day, and the payoff was the way the clouds created a canvas for the sunset, the whole sky saturated. 

It was appropriate that the first day of summer vacation involved three hours of driving, and a good cheeseburger in a sack for dinner, but I don't intend to go south out of the valley again until it's all over next Tuesday and I'm back to work. The Mariners won in the eleventh inning, by one run, and I stayed up too late but it was okay because Emmy needed to go out anyway, and for the next ten days, that's really all that matters.

No cherries for the humans at the mini-farm this year. Doesn't look like the birds really got any either, though. I don't know what happened exactly, there were so many blossoms in the spring, then fewer little cherries, then what few there were just fell to the ground half-heartedly, meager little pale fruits. There's an answer to it, but this isn't the year for me to figure it out. 

The best garden things I've done this year are the bathtub greens garden and the pea trellis. Both are flourishing in a way that the sad little radishes and dormant squash seeds have not. One lesson I did learn from last year was to actually harvest things, as opposed to gazing at them, paralyzed by wonder that anything actually grew. This is how you end up with a lot of bolted plants! Just another reminder to  always use the good stuff. 

Friday evening, we spent the evening outside, weeding and setting up a new bed for pea starts. It was good that we did, since that was the last of the nice weather for the weekend. All weekend it drizzled and the house felt cluttered and crowded. It was Sunday evening before I felt inspired to do anything to remedy that. The day had been spent at the Lucky Dumpster, eating scones and lemon curd with Jess, wandering up to Tweets with our mugs, where James slipped behind the espresso machine and made my latte and Jessica's tea. There was music at Tweets and Jess and David both clowned around in time to it, outdancing each other, David stirring it up with a broom, Jessica doing high frog kicks. I wished I had a video camera. 

Most of gardening is this. The dandelions have all gone to seed already, but there is still creeping buttercup and catchweed bedstraw, vetch, broadleaf dock, horsetail and thistles. Everything tells you a little about what is wrong with the soil, and we chip away at the problem with soil from the compost pile that Tom manages, or the big bags of Harvest Supreme I keep coming home with. The pea vines are doing okay though, and helping the soil as they do. The raspberries are completely out of our control and the onions seem to be flourishing. The artichokes have finally starting to grow and now there are two tiny asparagus stems instead of just one.   

Tom says we can go to the Bellingham farmer's market tomorrow, but I can see that he is thinking about the starts that still need to be transplanted, and the piles of mail around the house that build up over the course of the week, not to mention the fact that there is still no riding lawnmower for the little less than an acre of grass that surrounds the house. I just want to wear sandals and get some breakfast from one of the food stands and maybe one of those mushroom growing kits, but maybe it's a coveralls kind of day instead. 

Everything but the roses

Nearly everything has bloomed in the yard now, the crocus, the daffodils, the tulips, the jasmine, vibernum, snapdragons, all the fruit trees, wisteria, daisies. The peony hasn't bloomed, but I don't expect it to this year, since it was just transplanted last year. First year roots, second year shoots, IIthird year flowers. My radishes are growing and there are microgreens in the old bathtub and peas climbing up the lopsided trellis I put together one night before Sunday music at the Longhorn. The onions and garlic look happy, though the asparagus is, so far, just one lone feathery stalk, smaller than a pencil. 

I feel wilted myself, three days sick with some strange thing that shows up mostly in a kind of light-headedness and exhaustion. Bonus sore throat and headache, but no other symptoms, really. It leaves me feeling confused, like something that I already can't remember just happened and has slipped away from me already. My whole life is throat coat tea, juice of carrots and greens, beans and rice just for something solid to eat, plain except for some shreds of kale, a little salt and pepper. 

There is reading, though, Wrecker by Summer Wood now, and before that Growing a Farmer by Kurt Timmermeister, a book I had to put down for a while out of annoyance over some thing or another, which I can't remember any more. In the end, I was happy to have read it, kept telling everyone what I learned about raw milk as a result. Wrecker is just a pleasure, no complaints, the kind of book you get through before you're even better. Halfway through already and still sore-throated and spacey, it looks like I'll do just that. 

At the Les Schwab in Ballard, there's probably always someone on an iPad. Up here in the valley, I'm the only one with technology more sophisticated than a pair of suspenders or a hearing aid. A couple of guys sit at a table chewing the fat, nothing but a coffee cup between them. I eavesdrop, of course, because they're talking about farming, who has standing water in their fields all winter and what that means. Who's trying to plant corn, but doesn't really grow corn that good. Another guy in the lobby is in the market for a new mower, needs the 500 series, something about the differential, so the guy at the counter introduces him to an old timer who turns out to be the owner of a shop. The owner cracks a joke about Oh well they got em down there to the Lowe's and all the guys in the lobby chuckle. There's something ok about going to the place where the farmers and farm equipment guys take their cars. 

Four Months In

Things are a lot more green now than they were in January. The garden is different here than it was this time last year, too. This weekend something shifted and I started to feel like things are progressing more than they are decaying, or going wild or reverting back to some unmanageable state. 

I still have no idea what I'm doing. YouTube videos will tell you how important soil preparation is in putting together an asparagus bed, but I bought my crowns late in the season, planted them even later, and just scratched a little compost into the bottom of the bed by way of prep. We'll see. That's how everything is now, we'll just see. Horseradish is supposed to grow with the ferocity of dandelions, so I just dug a hole and dropped it in, pretty much. Putting in three rhubarb plants might be overkill. I don't care. What's the worst thing that happens? Dig one up, send it to someone else's yard. 

I'm counting on things being forgiving, to a certain extent, and trying not to get too attached to anything. In the garden, I don't have a problem falling in love with what's easy, or seems so - kale, raspberries, potatoes, nettles, sorrel. It's just too bad that I don't like the taste of dandelions, because we're awfully good at growing those here.

Things I'm Afraid To Tell You

Weeks and weeks ago, over a month now, Tami sent me a piece of writing. It's a good piece of writing, with lots to talk about, especially since it's in early stages and written sort of in chunks, all of which relate to each other in really interesting ways, while still leaving me with the feeling that the piece as a whole is not totally sure what exactly it wants to be yet, which is, in my opinion, exactly where a work at that stage should be. The alternative is for it to be smug and knowing, dictatorial rather than provocative. Even in this early stage it is a piece that lures me in, one that I've thought about a lot since I received it. 

I haven't written back to her yet. I haven't even written to apologize for not writing back, and I hate that, but it just seems too meager to write and say sorry, I've been really busy, and at heart, that excuse doesn't even feel true.

In the grab-bag of neglected things in my life right now, this is the one that bothers me most. Part of the reason my tire resigned from my wheel a few weeks ago was that it was tired of bearing up under the pressure of my misaligned car, a strip of it overburdened and neglected until it just gave up and let itself shred under the weight of all those trips back and forth, between Skagit and Seattle, Seattle and Skagit, Bothell, etc. All of the tires have been replaced now, a forced march down my neglected to-do list, but the car hasn't been realigned yet. This weekend, for real. Speaking of tires, there's at least one flat on the riding lawnmower, plus something else wrong with it that I can't fix, which means that the acre we live on is being maintained by a push mower bought at a yard sale for $15. I'm not afraid to tell you that, exactly, but there is some low level dread to my days as a result of it, which is similar to the way I feel about things I'm afraid to tell you. I'm not afraid to tell you how messy my car is, but that doesn't mean I would want you to ride in it. I think about who I park next to in the lot at work more than a grown woman with her act together should, if you ask me. 

I'm not really afraid to tell you that I'm a grown woman who doesn't exactly have her act together. I think I have an overdue water bill in a bag somewhere at home, and last month I had to pay two months of another bill at the same time. I'm not really afraid to tell you that while I think, in many ways, that I work for a great company, I couldn't say that this is the most successful I've ever been at a job. I have other failures that I am afraid enough to tell you about that I just won't. I think that's okay. Some of them are about other people, and not everyone needs their business shared here.

When I think about why I haven't written back about the piece of writing from Tami, the one thing I know is that it's not about her piece, or her. It is, of course, one hundred percent me and my own relation to writing. Not only to writing, but to the act of reflection, and creation. 

In therapy, we've talked a bit about how I feel these days when someone asks me what I've been up to. My life has changed a lot in the last two years, and sometimes it's hard for me to know how to talk about this. I feel like the answer to what I've been up to is "Nothing." Driving. Making dinner. Vacuuming. Going to acupuncture. The things that used to count as something were places I had traveled to, classes I had taken, stories I was working on, photos made. 

There is something much more introverted about my life now, but without the mental space for introspection. I haven't been writing because I can't imagine having that much space in a day - it would require pushing aside certain things that it just makes me too anxious to push aside at the moment.

That used to be one of my secrets- that in order to do what little writing I did, I pushed things aside. I would let the dishes rot in the sink, or shove everything into a box and close it up, or overspend or go without sleep or eat every meal out. When people ask what I've been up to these days, there must be some way to say that what I'm doing now is letting those things catch up to me, and working my way through them. I'm trying to develop the habit of housecleaning, of cooking my own meals, of opening boxes and going through them and saving or letting go, and catching up on sleep and trying to save money by spending time, and by the way there is this new animal to care for and maintain, this big, one-acre animal called the mini-farm. In Pam's new book, there's a point where Mackenzie (on the Boeing tour) says "It's like building a whale." That's what it feels like these days, building a whale. Something you can't quite get your arms around.

My life is a small whale, relatively. No kids. Enough of most things, except time. But all of these things are relative, and there's no getting around that. Even now, I'm stealing time that's not mine. I'm writing my own selfish things, but maybe sometimes that's the most helpful thing you can do for someone else. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway. 

This isn't South Dakota. In South Dakota, there were only four photos. One of Allison with the Thomas Jefferson statue in Rapid City, one of her with the Calvin Coolidge statue, and two of me with Jimmy Carter. Maybe a few more, but really, those four were it. I carried the big digital SLR, carried my running gear, a bathing suit, but none of that got used. we bought snacks at the health food store in Rapid City that we never got to, mugs at the thrift store so we could make tea in our hotel room, but we never made tea. We did get to the Corn Exchange, and ate butter burgers from Culvers and had sandwiches and lattes from the Green Bean in Belle Fourche, but those were the only luxuries. We had a day to prepare for the estate sale, organizing and sorting and squirreling things away that needed to be sent on later to one of the corners of the country where the four of us live now. Then there were two days of sale, and it was time for Allison and I to set out for the Rapid City airport again. 

At dinner the last night at Lyle and Shorty's, I noticed how tidy and organized everything seemed after the chaos of the last three days. I confess I also thought about everything as though it were in a yard sale - the cross stitch Velkommen sign that matched the one in the garage on that side table with the fake tiles, still unpriced. Putting the Velkommen sign out for sale, of course it hadn't occurred to me that Shorty had probably made it as a gift for Ellen. I wondered what else she saw at the sale, thought about how she had paid $20 for a walker thinking she might be able to convince Lyle to use it, how later I had run out to catch her before she drove away, stood there in the rain on the curb pressing a $20 bill into her hand. She tried to refuse but there was no way I was going to let her pay, and when I told her Ellen would have killed me if I let her pay for it, she couldn't do anything but take the money. 

The plates at the dinner table were the same cheap unbreakable ones Ellen had, Corelle I think, still for sale on the third day. I imagine Shorty had nicer china too, and found myself hoping that she let herself find excuses to use them, but then again, after dinner the cheap dishes just got tossed into the dishwasher. There was fruit salad with dinner and Shorty told us about how she keeps it in the fridge for Lyle, a little pineapple juice in there to keep the apples from going brown. She had a system.

Back home now, I'm thinking about systems too. We didn't eat dinner tonight until 9:30, just more evidence that I do not have the systems down around here. Workin on it. 

Note for April, 2013

Today was the first harvest of the year - nettles and sorrel for soup. By the time we got around to it, our visitors had already packed up and headed home, leaving me with this fantasy about a nettle soup party next year, timed to coincide with the fresh halibut available at the co-op, and the tulips blooming in the fields. 

We chip away at the yard - Tom moving strawberries, me picking weeds here and there, or buying sweet onion starts at the co-op or bare-root trees from Territorial Seed. I still want artichoke starts, and we are out of parsley seed, the blueberry bushes need sawdust and to be moved to a permanent home. They could use a few friends too. The rule of thumb seems to be two per person, and we have two total. Last year the pattypan squash were one of our biggest crops, and they were so delicious, the start of my newfound love of roasting, really, and yet they somehow slipped my mind completely when I was making my mental inventory of things to plant this year. We'll have to fix that.

The swans in their whiteness are gone now, and so is most of the seasonal pond that took over the potato fields to the north of us during the flooding season. There's a robin that seems to have fallen in love with it's own reflection on my driver's side wing mirror and an owl that I sometimes hear as I'm brushing my teeth at night, and on Sunday a congress of ravens chased each other from the tall trees on the east side of our property to the neighbors farther west, one of them with something small and rodent-shaped in its beak. There are still eagles, though not the convocation that was there in early March.

Tacos for dinner, the kind of Sunday evening meal that lends itself to Monday afternoon leftovers. Deconstructed, spooned into tupperware with rice and kale, it's just some weird bowl of nutrients to heat up in the microwave and eat at your desk with tea. It's actually a habit that I really like, those totally functional lunches. Easy.

Sunday evening

On Sundays, there's some time in the early evening I have the house to myself for a change. Tom is off setting up for the singer/songwriter night he books at the Longhorn every Sunday, and Emmy usually curls up for a nap in her little nest of blankets. I used to just make tea and watch TV (Downton Abbey night!) but lately I've been using the time to get things done, prep for the week, be productive in whatever way pleases me instead of whatever way it seems the house needs most. Conveniently, these things sometimes coincide, maybe because giving yourself permission to do whichever piece of work you'd like first, makes the whole thing easier. I turn my New Yorker short story podcast, or an episode of Fresh Air or This American Life, up loud enough to be heard over the dishes, and slowly and sloppily make my way through them, wiping the counters at the end, gathering up all the dishtowels for a load of laundry to be finished later. Sometimes I'll roast a cauliflower, or some baby broccoli, or cook a little pot of rice to pack up for lunch for the week. It's just nice, that's all.

Four is the new...

I can't believe that the twins are four.

I mean, I can, and every day they have some funny new behavior or expression that confirms that they are evolving. Last night, for instance, when they were opening their gifts, Thomas kept saying 'Oh my!!!' or 'Oh my goodness!!!' with such frequency and enthusiasm that Eugene and I were looking at each other wondering - where did that come from? Max, meanwhile, displays a lot of the tendencies that I had at that age. Singing, dancing around, making up elaborate stories. I wouldn't be surprised if he announced his desire to be a singing dentist soon.

We've had them in nursery school/ski school this winter, while I am teaching snowboarding at Mount Snow, and they have been such little troopers about it. I feel some mom guilt that not only am I working during the week, but on weekends as well, but for the most part the time at the mountain is great for us as a family.

I see the boys learning how to socialize and behave in a school setting. I get to do something that I love, whether it is teaching, taking a clinic or just free riding. Eugene gets to get out and see friends, have some fun and even hang out with me, sans twins. And then there are the sunny days, when we pick the boys up early from Cub Camp and take them over to the learning area.

I will sit at the bottom with one of the boys, a container of popcorn and some juice, and we cheer Euge and the other twin on as they take the chair lift and ski down together. It is such a perfect moment of happiness for me, I find myself thinking - here we are, this is the point of everything else that I do.

Thankfully, it is not the only moment that I feel that way. In fact, the twins inspire a lot of that thinking.

Pulling onto Mactaggart after Quiet is the New Loud at the Longhorn, I caught a couple in my headlights, leaned up against a car, someone persuading someone else, and I'm not saying who. At the bar, Harley and Susan and I had talked about winter electricity bills, insulation, farm interns, what kind of savory sauce you can make with blueberries. Tom and James were talking about the berry farm down the street from us, how they were dealing with this late cold snap we've got, and on the way to work the next day I drove past blueberry bushes with their roots stuck in frozen puddles, both cold and flood was the misfortune this week. 

I've switched to tea in the morning, try to get most of the dishes done at night, make notes on what to do next, and put off the ironing.