Thirteen Months

If you’re all about the quiet, the best time to walk the land is 10:17a.m. on pretty much any weekday, or Sunday morning around 7:35. In late May. After Patrick has smoothed off the path with the mower the previous afternoon.

As the pandemic subsides and we gradually emerge from our cocooned manner of living, my current paid gig with health insurance and other benefits likes to see me at the main office M - F by 8:30 latest. To get there on time, my daily walking Ritual needs to begin right at the same time the good residents of Mt Vernon come flying down the two-lane road that connects them with their respective employment destinations. We’re tucked back about a mile from this flurry behind a thick wall of tree line and farm fields but for all the tires whining on the asphalt in rapid succession, occasional horn-honking and jake-braking, you’d think I was running alongside. I don’t mind. I’ll be joining them right after I shower and pack my lunch, earning an honest living that lets me begin and end my days in a landlocked lap of beauty that just keeps on giving.

But on the weekends (Sundays only during farmers’ market season) I let the first light of day pull me from beneath the covers and away from Patrick’s steady breathing to move my feet gently through the grass and join the silence of the woods on the one day of the week I’d be allowed to sleep in. It’s worth it.

I’m coming up on a full year of walking the land nearly daily (see “Survival” from February 7 for a more detailed account of the knee-deep snowfall that kept my orbit smaller for about five weeks) and have committed to memory the subtleties of how she unpacks and arranges her day. Before the sun’s shoulders lift the sky’s cover of darkness (on the clock that would be around 5:20a.m.), the birds are already at it, trying to out-sing each in relentlessly cheerful fashion and I can barely hear my own thoughts so I suppose it’s best not to think at all and just be drenched in their sound (I haven’t used an alarm clock for going on ten years). Any straggling raccoons wrapping up their night’s activities are making their way through the creek as I pass by and barely register the swish of my footsteps through the sawgrass that’s too close to the banks for Patrick to mow safely without tumbling into the drink. A tawny doe raises her head and looks right at me, daring me to move. Had I slept five minutes longer or lingered over the morning dishes we’d have missed each other. Timing is everything if you want to see stuff around here.

Then, around 7:12a.m., as if muted by some hidden universal remote, the full-chorus cacophony is replaced by the random calls of towhees and mockingbirds in a polite back-and-forth discussion about the current events unfolding on the forest floor. Observed from their perch in the growing-ever-more-lush canopy, their commentary is succinct and accurate. I walk carefully beneath their conversation with my head down and my ears on high alert, grateful for the surgery I had back in 2004 to replace both stapes bones (a stapedectomy, if you’re wondering) with delicate platinum prosthetics that would fit perfectly on the tip on my pinky. Thanks to those 4mm lengths of metal, I can hear what matters to the birds.

This morning I stood at the place by the creek where it bends and slopes through the meadow on it’s way toward the bridge and remembered the snow that just two months ago thickly covered the leafless arms of the towering black walnuts and sycamores along the banks. The clear cold water had sung itself across the rocks as I rested my hands on my hickory walking stick, eyes closed and following the sound with my heartbeat. Can this really be the same place? Tall stalks of wild grasses and hogweed have now turned the scene Jurassic and the water has slowed to a trickle; I have to strain those well-placed platinum filaments to hear it. But I do because that’s the arrangement we have each morning. She whispers and I listen.

For thirteen months, I slowly knitted my day’s activities and routines to hers, working from home as advised and allowed. Such a gift, to witness the unspooling of the days from both sides of the windows of our humble home. Her rhythms intimately became my own and we learned much about each other. Winter felt longer because I had a 24/7 front row seat for its performance, interrupted by sleep and daily work-focused screen time. But even as I replied to emails, I knew what she was about. It seeped through the walls, poured in through the curtains and filled each room right into the corners where the spiders napped between meals. I came to know what the stand of volunteer mulberry saplings looked like at 10:17a.m. and 2:30p.m., saw the sun slowly shift its rising position as the earth rotated and turned its face toward another spring equinox. For the first time since we lived here, I really lived here, inhaling the days’ work and exhaling the nights’ peacefulness. I can’t recall feeling more attentive and awake. The only other living being who gets this much of me is Patrick.

It’s going on six weeks now, commuting again to my windowless office only eighteen miles away, but it feels like the other side of the world. I know the land gets along quite well without me, but I hope she misses me a little. I imagine the towhees and mockingbirds swapping stories while I interview volunteer applicants and print copies of their TB test results for their files. Salamanders I can’t see are darting across the wet stones of the creek bed where it bends through the meadow and the ebony wings of a laughing crow catch the sun’s rays, turning them iridescently purple and midnight blue for a flash of a second. Between virtual meetings and Medicare reports, ants move miniscule bits of soil and oak leaves transform sunlight into food, hoping the locusts arriving this year will pass them by. We’ve all got work to do, don’t we?

Until I no longer need to leave this place to pay for this place, I will hold in my full heart thirteen months’ worth of sacred images and sounds that have forever changed the way I understand the pulse of creation. I can’t tell where she ends and I begin, and so I’m going to stop trying.

It’s far better to just wake up, put on my boots, and keep walking.

Spring Cleaning

I’ve been brooding about the chicken run.

It’s a mess—stones scattered everywhere, bits of branches from last fall’s tree trimming project strewn from one fenced wall to the next. Random divots pockmark the dirt and an uneven stubble of nettles, burdock and young blackberry vines fill in what’s left. Every morning on my way to toss a scoopful of grain on the ground and release the girls into the day, my foot will connect with one of those stones or branch cuttings and I’ll wobble a bit off course, stopping short of twisting my ankle. The hens burst out the door, unaware of the squalor that has become the three-season porch to their painted plywood home. Well, perhaps “squalor” is a bit harsh. They’re chickens. They’ll burrow and sit for hours in the dry dusty soil for their summer dirt baths and eat leftover spaghetti right off the ground where we tossed it, without complaint. I should be so low maintenance.

There’s something in me that wants to tidy up around here though, and the chicken run is only the beginning. On my daily walks through the field, I make note of brambles gone wild, reaching their thorny arms well past the established boundary of the cut path. Fallen limbs lurk beneath the forest floor’s thickening new growth of mayapples, trout lilies, miners’ lettuce and the just-born saplings thrown from nearby shagbark hickories and blue beeches. I don’t want to disturb this delicate nursery, but shouldn’t those limbs be gathered up and stacked for heaven’s sake? It would look neater. I hesitate to say anything but think it nonetheless as I stand in the midst of such untamed space: clean this place up! My mother’s voice echoes and swirls to become my own. The Liz apple didn’t fall far from the tree and of course I’m going to reach down to pick it up. Dropped things can’t just stay there now, can they?

Mom and Dad raised five of us for several years before adding our maternal grandmother to our household census. That’s eight people and their things under one roof. Keeping a ranch-style suburban dwelling tidy demanded group participation on a regular basis, and with four of us navigating our way through adolescence at the same time, collaboration toward the “tidy” goal was episodically successful at best. Dad was quietly meticulous about his own stuff—he had a den with a door that shut so he could pay the bills and make notes on his client’s files in peace, and none of us kids dared to cross the threshold without permission (he also had a workshop in the basement. Sawdust was allowed to sit, but his tools were always put away after each job). The den was the room of Serious Importance, and much of what took place within those sacred walls was a mystery until we moved out and understood the weight of paying our own way through life. We came to appreciate the necessary gift of solitude when it came to contemplating and managing one’s future. It’s a lesson I still cherish to this day.

Our home life back then had many moving parts and as children, we just presumed it was up to the taller humans in the room to take care of keeping those parts aligned, easy to find and working properly. Mom wasn’t having it, though, and said as much: “two people can’t clean up after five!” (the maternal grandmother was exempt from clean up duty, though she’d wash your plate mere seconds after you’d scraped off the last bite). Saturday mornings were all about folding laundry (Mom allowed some cartoon-watching in the family room while we did this chore, calling out motivational reminders from the kitchen when our hands would stall and hover over the basket of warm-from-the dryer towels as we fixated on Bugs Bunny’s antics), dusting and polishing the antique furniture (my favorite was the baby grand piano—it was so shiny) and scrubbing the tub in the big bathroom. We may have grumbled our way through some or most of those assigned tasks, especially on particularly bright and beckoning summer mornings, but even we learned quickly how good it felt to see the sink sparkling clean and a full drawer of clean underwear to get us through the week ahead. I’m sure Mom smiled smugly offstage as she watched each of us develop our own self-directed cleaning practices, all the while reaping the benefits of having five semi-professional maids-in-training helping ease her daily housework burden.

Let me say clearly that Mom was no rigid drill sergeant. We had plenty of time to play and ramble about with our own budding youthful agendas, and she indulged any request for a musical sit-down next to her on the bench of that baby grand piano, no matter what she had been doing when we asked (dishes, resting, crossword puzzles, talking with Mrs. Schwartz over the backyard fence). Were any of you to come visit my home today, you’d draw a few sharp conclusions about how faithfully I’ve kept to my own Mom-inspired cleaning practice (I bless the pandemic at times for forcing restrictions on visitors for the past year, but…it shows). To be fair, I think we manage our life’s rhythm and accumulated stuff pretty well for two folks who have full-time jobs and a shared side-hustle of making and selling granola at a nearby farmers’ market. There’s always room for improvement. We make valiant efforts to declutter regularly, almost daily in fact, and yet while we’re asleep our things reproduce or go into hiding and we spend a Sunday afternoon gathering the detritus into bags and boxes for the local thrift store. Some days, we’re content with just having a place to sit; the dust and unfolded laundry can wait.

It’s at times like these that I take my scrutinous eye outside and add to my workload by insisting the forest floor be swept clean, tidied up and made presentable for company. I’m sure the raccoons and tree frogs watching from behind their leafy perches are scratching their heads at my doggedness. Humans…what odd roommates. Of course I don’t succeed and the woods keep growing thick and wild without my help and the residents don’t mind a bit.

That’s when I learn again for the fiftieth time that while the pursuit of order from chaos has its virtue, there’s also a need to embrace the simplicity of letting things go about their business, even for a bit. Leisure climbs easily to the top of our list too, and we need it like the air we inhale. I think if you did come to visit, you’d be far more forgiving than we are about the state of the place. In fact, I’ll bet you’d find it charming and sweet how the tips of the wild raspberry vines along the driveway curl tenderly around the nearby branch of a black walnut, holding fast. We’ll pluck fruits from that vine in a few weeks and I’ll forget that I cared how out of control it looks today. If you’ve ever eaten those raspberries warm from the vine, it can rearrange your priorities pretty quickly.

For now, I give you this verse from Robert Herrick, an 16th-century poet who knew what mattered when it came to keeping things tidy or letting them be a bit out of place. Plucked from my early high school memories, it shall be a work to study as the season of unbridled growth continues to unfold at our bare feet despite my foolish attempts to tame it.

Delight in Disorder

A sweet disorder in the dress.
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown.
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoestring, in whose tie
I see a wild civility;
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

The Tall Grass Can Wait

The lawnmower is broken, so we headed into Columbus today to visit with our nephew and his lovely bride-to-be.

Actually, it’s not that cause-and-effect. We would visit our nephew and his lovely bride-to-be whether the mower was working or not. But we’re at that point in the season when we keep a closer watch on the skies and hope against all odds that it rains during the week while we’re at work. When a dry Saturday rolls around in mid-spring, it sometimes means making hard but understandable choices between time spent with family or being up to our knees is mature compost, a fistful of seed packets tucked into the back pocket of our jeans. A sunny weekend on the land is worth it’s weight in the future carrots we’d like to plant without having to dodge the downpours. In our early days here, we’d invite those beloved family members to come spend the day (we simply imagined them being near, honest. It wasn’t some covert attempt to con them into giving us free labor) and soon they’d be gloved and walking behind us with armfuls of straw to cover the tender ankles of our fifty-some tomato seedlings. We consider it the pinnacle of good fortune and grace that they still agree to come visit us at all.

That’s how it is when you take on a section of acreage miles away from concrete and convenience. The minute we step outside, there’s a project in every direction, and each one is jockeying for that position at the top of the list. We could almost hear the grass begging for a haircut, but the combination of rain and weariness at the end of our respective work days kept the mower dormant in the barn all week. Patrick grew restless seeing the grass getting taller until he finally had the time and energy to start the mower Friday night and nothing happened. After an hour’s worth of mechanical attempts, restlessness turned into outright audible frustration (still catches me off guard how sound travels across the acreage here. A well-placed bit of profanity moves easily up the slope and around the back of the house when I’m taking the laundry off the line) until it was clear the repair was beyond his reach. Might as well pack the car for the market, then, and be grateful for an evening spent together on the couch.

The invitation to spend Sunday afternoon with Robbie and Collin was offered earlier last week and with such enthusiasm, it was impossible to resist. This would be yet another fully vaccinated and unmasked encounter with two people we love and missed sorely these past fourteen months, and if that wasn’t enough, we’d be treated to a delicious meal from the restaurant they’d chosen to cater the wedding reception. We drove into town and opted for carryout orders to take back to their apartment. Since the place was close, we walked through the neighborhood to pick them up.

Both Patrick and I knew the area well, having each lived there in our pre married-to-each-other lives. The slate sidewalks had shifted over time (real toe-stubbers if you’re not paying attention and near impossible to navigate on a bicycle), and the narrow brick streets rumbled beneath the tires of passing cars as we walked past closely-packed houses with barely two feet of space between them. A gorgeous and varied array of irises stood proudly in front yards, their long ruffled-edge petals fluttering in a sun-warmed breeze. One young man was taking advantage of both the sun and the slope of grass in front of his house, using it in place of a bench to press two twenty-pound weights over his head and shoulders while his roommate swept grass clippings from the path leading up to their door. I looked over my shoulder at Patrick, walking behind Collin and me, and caught his eye. Don’t worry, honey. We’ll be raking up grass clippings of our own soon. I promise.

A flood of pleasant memories washed over me as we made our way back to the apartment with our food, taking a different route through alleys and back streets that butted up against the boundaries of the park where I used to ride my bike most mornings. I’d log fifty miles round trip on a path that touched the banks of a river and dripped buckeyes from the trees in the fall. It all came rushing back, that time in my young adulthood when being on my own was precisely what I preferred and I happily paid the bills that sealed my independent way of life. Looking back, I remember feeling content in my circumstance and unable to imagine making any sort of serious commitment to someone else (of course, meeting Patrick was a variable I’d not factored into my future as a happy single person. Let me state freely and with great joy: I have no regrets). Now here I was walking beside my beloved of nearly twenty-eight years, behind two young ones about to step into a similar understanding with each other, in a setting that held different memories and images for each of us. I let the significance of the moment sink in and grow roots as deep as the ones beneath the oak trees that towered over our heads, their freshly unfurled leaves rustling and whispering promises of a cheerful summer filled with more reunions, more hugs and more walks in familiar places.

A broken lawnmower’s unexpected gift to us…

(A word about the sign in the photo that accompanies this reflection—Collin made sure we stopped to read it, filling in details about when it was first posted and how the good residents of the neighborhood wanted simply to record this Big Squirrel’s activity. No hunting expedition resulting in a trophy stuffed and mounted on someone’s mantle. Just a gentle and friendly acknowledgement of this relative’s presence among them. I call that good form and feel confident that if we ever did need to return to a more urban setting, I’d feel safe coming back here and living out my remaining days in the company of such kind and curious hearts. Sometimes, you can go home again).

On the Side

Two 6’ folding tables, a 10’x10’ canopy, a green antique wooden stool and a folding deck chair, two 18-gallon totes plus two Wegman’s reusable shopping bags filled with ten bags each of eight flavors of granola, eight one-pint mason jars of flavor samples (only to look at, not to taste), one canister of Clorox wipes, a 16oz bottle of hand sanitizer and two weary adults.

It’s impressive what can fit in a Hyundai Kona and rattle on down the driveway at 6:25a.m. on a chilly Saturday in May.

Welcome to farmers’ market season!

For nineteen weekends between now and the end of October, Patrick and I will haul ourselves to the charming old town section of a Columbus suburb and set up in a parking lot across from an ice cream parlor to sell the granola we make in our kitchen. We’re trading the luxury of sleeping in after a week of 9 - 5 at our full time jobs for the kind of encounters and conversations that only a farmers’ market vibe can offer. Babies in strollers and cheerful dogs walking their humans from stall to stall, it’s more than worth the effort.

It was Patrick’s idea (which is hilarious in a way, since he owns the night in our relationship and I’m the annoyingly perky morning person) four years ago to take the granola recipe I’d been making for decades and tweak it into a menu of flavors that the good folks of Mt Vernon might be willing to hand over money to eat. Start small we thought, in a familiar place like the town square and see where it goes. Of course we’d have to do the whole research and development thing, so on a trip to Tybee Island several winters ago, we tested recipes in the kitchen of the condo we rented, making note of the ratio between dry and wet ingredients, baking temperatures and duration, and resolved once and for all the “stir/don’t stir after baking” debate. On the drive back home, we finalized the menu, mapped out the business plan and tried on a few names: Bowl o’ Granola (nope, sounded too much like “ebola granola”); GranolaLab (kinda scary and too synthetic-sounding for a product enshrined in the natural food genre); CrunchMasters (what is this—an exercise machine or yogurt topping??). We finally landed on Scoop o’ Granola (again, Patrick’s idea) and worked with a talented graphics designer, Allie, and the team at PrintPro in Columbus to create our current logo, run the labels and make the signs.

We debuted three flavors—Tropical, Chocolate Strawberry, and Chocolate Raspberry—displayed in a repurposed wooden drawer we spotted at the Habitat ReStore, all resting atop an old saw table covered with a cotton drop cloth flecked with natural brown fibers. We had tiny paper souffle cups filled with samples and a painted vintage wooden chair nearby in case one of us needed to sit down between sales (it also added to that made-at-home look). The smiles we wore genuinely on our faces kept any doubts under wraps (will they really like it? Really?) as the sun shifted its way across the morning sky, warming market patrons’ heads as they browsed about, looking for rubber-banded bundles of rhubarb and the season’s first strawberries. The Chocolate Raspberry drew folks in and a young father with two children in tow bought the first bag. Inspired, I blurted out “we’ll have a new flavor next week—Blueberry Almond!”. Patrick shot me a sideways questioning look as our inaugural customer replied “I look forward to trying that!”.

We sold seventeen bags that first day, and Patrick had tears in his eyes most of the way home. Since then, we’ve created over forty flavors, many based on customer recommendations, including a wood-fired bourbon maple that only rolls out in late summer.

Standing beneath our tired but sturdy canopy yesterday waiting for the opening market bell (triangle, actually, clanged to life by one of the market’s most enthusiastic volunteers), a parade of side gig memories (I’m not fond of the word “hustle” here) marched to the surface in somewhat chronological order, offering a broader view of the many ways we’ve tried to marry additional needed income with the pursuit of a new hobby or skill. To date, we have raised and sold goats, chickens and Bourbon Red heritage breed turkeys for meat, and sold eggs from our modest flock of laying hens. I’ve done take-home piecework for a large textile company, made and sold soft sculpture dolls, and steered my own consulting business. Patrick has served as a self-employed patient advocate and made commissioned wood-turned artwork while I sold antiques from two brick-and mortar stores and on eBay. None of these private enterprises (alongside our salaried weekday employment with office doors and health insurance) made us rich or eligible for retirement at an early age, but they did keep a few wolves from snarling at the door on more than one occasion and gave the gentleman who does our taxes a good deal of filing entertainment. In a world where context is a moving target, we’re both rich and struggling depending on one’s global or local vantage point.

Are we restless? Fidgety? Perhaps, or more simply, we’re just a couple of lifelong learners paying close attention to a well-cultivated creativity as we keep an eye on the home budget’s bottom line. One doesn’t always overshadow the other consistently, and we’re hopefully humble and decent enough to feel a rush of surprise when someone wants to put their hard-earned money into our hands. It’s gratitude more than laughter that accompanies us all the way to the bank most weeks. Toss in an element of enjoying being our own bosses and I think that’s pretty much the whole foundation of our extracurricular income pursuits. The stories we’ve collected as a result are more valuable than the good night’s sleep we traded to acquire them.

A few recent circumstances have put us in the hard place of taking on some new debt that has set our spines a bit straighter lately. It’s not dire but neither is it ideal. We can see the financial edge a few inches from our toes and have revised our definition of comfort. We still have enough to eat, nothing is in danger of being repossessed and the cats are excellent mousers, taking some pressure off the household grocery bill. I think we’ll be ok.

In the meantime, the house is filled with the aromas of baked vanilla oats and cinnamon. On a chilly day that won’t see a high even close to 50, that’ll do for now.