What I Did on My Summer Vacation...Sort of

I think I did this vacation all wrong.

While Patrick took good care of the People at Sundance, some 1500 miles away, I tended to all things land-connected here at home, releasing the chickens into their feathery pecking day each morning and tucking them in at dusk while gleaming pairs of raccoon eyes peered out from the thicket hoping for a chance at a robust meal. Thankfully, the wire-wrapped coop continued to do its job for the fourteen days I was on my own, letting me focus on a few landscaping projects of the heavy-lifting variety.

Here’s how it went for the first few days: I’d get up before the sun had even nudged the horizon and wheel the garden cart to the half-acre plot behind the house, toting a shovel, rake, lopers and trimmers to tame the thistle and quack grass creeping hungrily toward the raised beds. In my mind, the plan was to frame this area in a wooden pallet border, leaving a couple of gaps for easy entry gates and then reinforce it with rolls of welded metal fencing to slow down the midnight marauders who like nothing better than to dig up our sweet Cherokee Purple and Atomic Grape tomato plants, still too young to even sport a blossom. Before Patrick left, I scrounged successfully for the majority of the pallets I’d need, hitting the mother lode with one supplier who is willing to trade pallets for granola. And she’s kind to boot—don’t you just love people sometimes?

One pallet, one t-post at a time, the garden wall grew and if you squinted a bit, it looked mostly straight. I wasn’t going for a photo shoot finish, just something modestly functional that maybe we’d paint one of these days, or years. Something whimsical, like sunflowers from the ‘60s or a mural depicting a tree going through the four seasons (I’ll keep you posted). As I hoisted the heavy post driver over my head to thread it onto the tall tip of a post, I spoke aloud my promise to Patrick: no injuries, no trips to the ER. Only once, in a weary moment, one of the handles of the post driver bumped into my cheek as I lifted it up and off of the freshly-placed post. Thanks to chaos theory, physics and possibly some garden muses on full alert, my face sported no bruise that would need explaining when I got back to work.

Before you get all impressed, it’s important to note that I paused each day’s progress around 8:00am., roughly three hours into it, and spent way too much time after that scrolling through the day’s news and purposeless videos, wandering the house missing Patrick, and wondering what to make for dinner. On one particularly hot and humid Wednesday, I sat as motionless as I could on the couch, feeling regret and self-care approval in equal measure. Getting up to draw the curtains and finally turn on the window AC unit was a big deal that day.

In past years, when I had this much time stretched out before me and no one to share it with, I rolled out grandiose plans that included the Wild and Never-Tried, like taking myself out to lunch in a more upscale restaurant, throwing a couple of sleeping bags in the back of the truck and driving out to one of the best places in the field to star-gaze all night and keeping the sink free of dishes (I’m ok to set the bar low on that one—there’s nothing quite like waking up on vacation to a clean kitchen). With Patrick safely tucked away on the reservation, miles away and out of sight, I’d schedule much-needed home improvement projects like extending the front deck and adding new steps, remodeling the kitchen and painting the bathroom. I missed him of course, but also knew he’d never approve of the way I’d approach these secret plans. The year of the kitchen remodel, I needed to prep the area for the contractors while he was still here, so he did see the refrigerator and the tea hutch in the living room but had no idea where the rest of that project was heading. One year I changed the locks on the doors and he came home early (around 1:00a.m.) unable to get in until he’d tossed a few pebbles at the upstairs bedroom window, startling me out of a sound slumber. Sigh…those were the days…

But this year, I felt rudderless and set adrift on a sea of no motivation save for those pallets and a loosely shaped image of clearing the ridge above the meadow. A reality had come home to roost—I was no longer thirty-something with energy to spare, able to set my hands and shoulders to multiple heavy lifting tasks for hours and need only a quick tuna salad sandwich before heading out to finish hand-weeding the 20’ x 60’ garden rows down by the creek. Three hours in the pre-dawn cool of the day is my limit now and somewhere in the past twenty-three years I acquired a cell phone, which hasn’t helped matters. What held fast to my heart, though, for the duration of this vacation was a weighty glimpse of what life might be like without my man, an uncomfortable mix of retirement and widow practice. I sat on the curb-gleaned wooden platform glider looking into the mouth of the meadow and an empty future. I couldn’t shake it for days.

To be fair, I could also claim pandemic and world news fatigue as backdrop to this year’s vacation malaise (it’s been an especially rough couple of weeks if you support the moral direction of the left). One particular day’s headline gave me enough rage to obliterate a tough thicket of ruthless brambles beneath a grove of mulberry saplings. Sweaty and spent, I dumped the last load of thorny sticks from the garden cart and strode back to the house, a new sense of purpose in hand. I looked over my shoulder at tidy pallet garden enclosure and knew that difficult things were indeed possible. Not the two-week vacation take-away I’d imagined, but I’ll take it nonetheless.

I did make it to our local farmers’ market one Saturday (the one down the road where our granola made its debut; not the one where we sell now) and savored the moseying pace of it all. I saw a couple of familiar vendors and visited with them a while, buying the most excellent blueberry cookies I really shouldn’t eat (but did anyway—I’m gluten-free now; another story for another time) and a wonderfully whimsical nesting star from the talented fiber artist who spins wool from her own carefully tended flocks. Filled with airy bits of dyed wool, it now hangs from a shepherd’s hook on the ridge and the house wrens pluck wisps from to soften their stick-pokey homes. It was good to connect, to be on the other side of the table, buying instead of selling and catching up on the local news. Back at the farm, I’d have a go at taming the shaggy lawn under a brilliantly blue sky and do some impulsive baking after I’d washed stray bits of grass from my hands. For reasons I don’t need to understand, all that helped me feel better, and bonus—I still had a week of vacation to go.

I don’t know what I was expecting from this long two-week stretch of time all to myself and I wonder if, on some random Thursday back at the office, I’ll have pangs of regrets for squandering too much of it. Best not to dwell on that now—there’s a bird feeder and raccoon party going on outside and a few more areas beneath the trees that need to be cleared. I’ll keep my orbit a bit wider around that nesting star so I don’t disturb the wren’s busy agenda. From my view on the deck, I could watch them for hours.

And when I get back to the office, I’ll do what I always do that first day on the job after a vacation—submit a request for the next one.

Powerless

A steel-hard rain tap danced furiously on the window ledges while strobe lightning backlit the clouds in an electrified dome over our heads. Straightline winds bent the limbs of the young mulberry stand parallel to the ground, stripping the looser berries from their branches and throwing them in the grass for the overnight possums and our feet to find later, once the skies were emptied of all this drama. It’s not really summer until you’ve walked barefoot from the deck to the car, staining your feet a spectacular and nearly indelible bruise-y purple. Thank goodness for dark blue washcloths in the bath.

Patrick had begun packing for Sundance earlier that day, slowly covering most flat surfaces in the living room and kitchen with groups of themed items (bath/personal care, handcrafted giveaway gifts, clothing for two weeks, food/eating utensils, medicine). It looks like a small garage sale that had moved indoors without the price tags. We’re used to this annual ritual, interrupted only twice in twenty years, confident that it will all eventually migrate out the front door, across that mulberry-shaded deck and into the car. Between here and Indianapolis, whatever he remembers he forgot to pack can probably be found on the shelves of a store on the other side of some distant outerbelt. But last week, when the storm hit, the temperature was sitting stock-still at around 92 degrees, challenging the humble floor fan to reach the humid corners of every room and somehow freshen them a bit. Our collective attention turned to the home base and away from the grassy prairies of Sundance grounds. The downpour left the creek swollen just to the edge of breaking the banks, which meant our sump pump would have its work cut out for it in the next twelve hours. We started filling gallon jugs of water for drinking, bathing and toilet-flushing just in case. All around, a good helping of the kind of drama and distraction that usually accompanies the days leading up to Patrick’s departure. I had just asked if the generator was in working order when, as if on cue, the house went dark and silent.

For the next two days…as the temperature continued to climb and the humidity made the air around us thickly sliceable…

In those first couple of hours, while the lightning stalled over the acreage in a seizure-inducing dance club spectacle, we lay motionless in our airless bedroom, confident that soon, (soon?), the power would click back on and we’d go about our pre-Sundance normal after a good night’s sleep. I was still holding on to that illusion the next morning as I grabbed a gallon jug of water and bent over the side of the bathtub to wash my hair before going to work, thankful for a pixie haircut that is most forgiving in the absence of a hair dryer. I told myself I looked sleek and fashion forward.

At the office, a couple of coworkers who lived in their own versions of “middle of nowhere” were also sporting “sleek and fashion forward” hairstyles; I felt a rush of affection for our shared circumstance and kept the comments to a gentle minimum. But I was in air-conditioned comfort while Patrick slugged it out with the generator back home under a searing sun, no cooling fan to ease his brow. I wondered if he’d sidled up to the lifeless freezer just to feel the cold metal against his skin for a moment. I wouldn’t blame him if he’d opened the door for a flash, just to grab one of the still-solid ice packs and hold it to his forehead. Twenty minutes away, I sent emails and drafted well-earned letters of recommendation for some of our pre-med student volunteers, not even breaking a sweat. We were both where we needed to be but not necessarily where we wanted to be. Misery loves supportive company.

We’ve had power outages before and muscled through them just fine, reminding ourselves that we’re made of pretty stern stuff and can transition to a raw food diet rather easily. One summer when Patrick was out west, a derecho roared through the land and in thirty minutes, had plastered the side of the house with leaves of all sorts, remnants of a half dozen cottonwoods, sycamores and blue beech that now lay quietly on the ground, their trunks snapped in winds the likes of which I’d never known. I went without power for a week that year (2012, I think it was), sleeping on the couch downstairs with the front door open, watching the shadowy shapes of baby raccoons on the other side of the screen, checking to make sure I was ok at 2:30 in the morning. After three days, the freezer and fridge had never been so clean. And empty. It helped to be on vacation, not needing to make myself presentable for anyone who mattered. Blessed line crews restored power to our far-flung little neighborhood at the tail end of the substation’s reach one day before Patrick arrived back home. We celebrated with wonderfully hot spaghetti and meatballs and a lovely Malbec. And yes, the fan turned on the highest setting, with enormous gratitude.

Doing without is the rolling lesson here, folks, and I’m glad for its recurrence in our lives. Shakes us out of our complacency for hours or days at a time, pulls skills out of storage, dusts off our survivor capabilities until we almost start planning for an off-grid existence. Almost. The older we get, the harder it gets, plain and simple. But the refrain “as often as we can, for as long as we can” gets us through to tell our stories for another day. I keep nattering on for an outhouse and an outdoor shower. Maybe this will be the year we get those in place. Until then, there’s plenty of other work and distractions about, tapping me on the shoulder. The weather report for the next several days looks hot but not stormy.

I’ll take it.

When We Take a Moment to Pause

I slowly sank into a deep and delicious nap on my side of the recliner couch yesterday after we got home from a nearly nonstop market day (well, when I say “after”, that means after we unloaded the truck, put the remaining inventory away, cleaned the kitchen, had lunch and hung laundry). I can’t recall the last time I gave in to such indulgent midday surrender, heeding my body’s insistence on resting. I must have needed it because I didn’t dream or hear Patrick fire up the sickle bar trimmer and take down the stand of last year’s pampas grass stalks, all tan and tawny, or notice that Xena claimed her spot at my feet, curled into a perfect circle of fur. Two hours later, I woke up as slowly as I’d drifted off, stretched and wandered into the kitchen to make dinner—cumin noodles with ground turkey, one of Patrick’s favorites.

So far in my time on the planet, I’ve noticed that life seems to be mostly about motion and contrast. Other elements flow from these, of course, but there’s a significant measure of either or both in pretty much everything I set my hands to in a given day. The past several weeks have been a relentlessly paced double-header of accomplishment and too much on our plates, taking it in turns and leaving us feeling a bit conflicted about whether we’re making any progress on our to-do lists. Then for no reason, in a pause during dinner (once again from my perch on the couch), my eyes land on the whirring blur of a hummingbird’s wings at the feeder before he darts off toward a nest I’ll probably never see, one that took hours to build and is, fingers crossed, cozily housing his offspring that will grow too fast and fly thousands of miles from here just before the leaves turn. This morning, there’s a bee on the inside of the screen, meticulously walking the tiny squares of mesh in an apian Etch-a-Sketch pattern, hoping to find his way to the other side where there’s more green space and clover. Here I sit in between granola batches and these paragraphs, watching…and learning.

On my morning walks, when I get to the section of woods where I step into this entirely different world altogether—one rich with color and mystery and perfect acoustics for the birds who have so much to say—I ache to sit on one of the massive fallen black walnut trunks and just be absorbed into it all, not go to work, not go back to the house to make breakfast. Just be there. But I don’t and I regret it. Every time. I make up for it a little by working my way through the fields and into the smaller woods north of the meadow where I’ve placed a curb-gleaned antique wicker love seat beneath an apple tree. The curved back pushes up against a thicket of mutliflora rose and blackberry vines, trimmed just enough to not get tangled up in my hair. Five or so feet away, the creek curves along a steep bank and when I’m still and there’s a break in the bird overture above my head, I can hear it tumble and splash over the rocks and exposed tree roots. I pause here a bit longer, head bowed in a sweet mix of wonder and gratitude. I’m still not exactly sure what I did to be gifted with all this. And then I remember that’s now how It All Works. Luck and a few good choices.

On the days when I wonder about my place in the big picture of things, I’ll remember the bee on the screen, the nap that pulled me into its warm embrace and hummingbird babes, hidden from view. All in motion, all in contrast against a backdrop of life going on.

Advice From a Humble Gardener

The trick to hand-weeding a fifteen-foot stretch of overgrowth between the raised beds of your garden is to keep your head down and deal just with what’s in front of you. The catmint, quack grass, edible and plentiful plantain and purslane will all bend to your will if you don’t cast your eyes down the long expanse of All That Is Still Left To Pull. Once that happens, the siren call of a cool kitchen and iced tea is stronger that the weeds’ roots themselves. Ye be warned, my friends.

It also helps not to face the sun or expect the cats to offer any assistance. They’ll pounce and gambol about, chasing the seeded end of that clump of tenacious annual bluegrass that missed the garden cart when you tossed it over your shoulder, but not even try to put it in a tidy pile with all the other near misses when they’re done playing with it. They’re cute and absolutely the opposite of useful to your gardening ambitions (enjoy them anyway).

I remember a summer when my dear friend Rhonda came to visit. I was sick and she offered to hand-weed the old potato patch to help me keep up on my list of outdoor chores. Patrick was well away at Sundance and not expected home for about two weeks. Rhonda confessed to thoroughly enjoying pulling weeds and I stayed out of her way. She did a marvelous job and then moved onto cleaning the chicken coop while I napped. I remember the joy on her face and have carried that image into each gardening project ever since. She’s welcome here anytime.

There was another summer when my niece Rebecca took on the entire 20 x 40’ rectangular tangle of weediness on her hands and knees, looking for the onions and chard patiently hiding beneath a shaggy carpet of nutsedge, bindweed and Canada thistle that you just don’t want to approach with your bare hands. Her sunblock must have given out about an hour into the endeavor; she’s fair-skinned and a trooper but looked like a blond-headed strawberry by lunchtime. I gave her the afternoon off and a full day’s pay while the burdock kept reaching for the sky. That’s what burdock does.

By now, some of you may be wondering if we know what a weed whip is or how to use one. The answer is “yes” to both, but they’re finicky gas-powered things and not as reliable as my own two hands. Plus, you can’t hear the mockingbirds’ encouragement from the shagbark hickories on the ridge to the west of the garden’s edge with all that whirring and buzzing going on just inches from your bare ankles. Most years, we don’t let things get so out of control as to need such equipment to tame the garden wilderness. On those occasions, Patrick will yank the pull-start cord for all it’s worth, felling nettles and pokeweed like a logger. I follow him around with a rake and a grateful smile, a firm resolve to do better in future.

But no matter how you slice them, weeds will return, laughing and pointing at our folly with their ever-uncurling fingers, giving us constant employment as gardeners and path-tenders well past the season’s harvest. I show up each week like a devout church-goer, on my knees, head bowed to purpose and inching my way toward tomato salvation.

Can I get an “Amen”, people?