On Gardening

Wendellian Cucs

The plants are in the ground.  Onions, Cabbage (Why?), Jalapenos, Green peppers, Tomatoes, Raspberries, Strawberries, Rhubarb, Cucumbers, Squash, Lettuce, Cantaloupe, and Pole Beans.  I rebuilt the garden space to better use the sun by flipping it over and putting my walking path along the fence in the shade as well as cutting the fence down by a few slats.  I like a short fence anyway.  This isn't the first year we've gardened and I like to think I've learned at least a few things in the past, such as sun is good and water too, but it is still mostly a vast mystery.  For example, in the course of a week the cucumbers are already almost dead.  This is a fell blow to my soul. 

The dill is coming up nicely in the barrels and the cucumbers are brown withered little misanthropes.  Though not a true definition of irony, its at least poetic injustice.  I've a few theories about this.  One: I'm a rotten gardener and the very act of touching plants make them wither into pitiful husks of their former glory.  Two: cucumber predestination as an act of God.  Three: Not enough water (Which not even a retard would consider if they were outside in their small bus for even a few hours this week.  Rain, rain, rain.)  I watered them more anyway.  Four: my cucumbers are actually retarded like me.  Five:  my cucumbers have always been diseased and malformed but were painted green by an unscrupulous corporate fat cat till exposed to five days of rain and a retarded waterer.  I like this theory a lot (responsibility displacement.)  Six: fifty degree days and forty degree nights are hard on cucumbers who are like the surfer dudes of the plant world, named Nancy, wear skirts, shave their chest hair, eat microwave burritos and say dude a lot.  And it may be that they don't like being transplanted all that much (aka ripped from the earth and stuffed in a cold dark hole in the wilds of Montana.)  All that said they withered up and made for the fetal position.

My sad excuse for a cuc. 

All may be lost on them but I dug a few milk jugs out of the garbage, cut off the bases, and covered the wee little sissies.  We'll see if they survive.  If not then I'll try again cause I love pickles.  A lot.  And if that means satisfying a bunch of pansy little gourds then so be it.

The Last Sabbath of May

Books

by Billy Collins

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus

I can hear the library humming in the night,

a choir of authors murmuring inside their books

along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,

Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,

each one stitched into his own private coat,

together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I picture a figure in the act of reading,

shoes on a desk, head tilted into the wind of a book,

a man in two worlds, holding the rope of his tie

as the suicide of lovers saturates a page,

or lighting a cigarette in the middle of a theorem.

He moves from paragraph to paragraph

as if touring a house of endless, paneled rooms.

I hear the voice of my mother reading to me

from a chair facing the bed, books about horses and dogs,

and inside her voice lie other distant sounds,

the horrors of a stable ablaze in the night,

a bark that is moving toward the brink of speech.

I watch myself building bookshelves in college,

walls within walls, as rain soaks New England,

or standing in a bookstore in a trench coat.

I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves,

straining in circles of light to find more light

until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs

that we follow across a page of fresh snow;

when evening is shadowing the forest

and small birds flutter down to consume the crumbs,

we have to listen hard to hear the voices

of the boy and his sister receding into the woods.

On Isolation and Individualism

A few of Wendell's thoughts that have intrigued me, although I'm not sure how to illucidate them with life.  Many of his thoughts would seem most apt to those who are already intrinsically tied to them for they are intuitive as much as they are anything.  They are dug into actual dirt and their metaphors are not metaphors.  When Wendell says common ground he means just that.  For the rest then they at times seem like dirges.

"More and more," Mary Catharine Bateson wrote in With a Daughter’s Eye, "it has seemed to me that the idea of an individual, the idea that there is someone to be known, separate from the relationships, is simply an error."

...On the other hand, it may be that our marriages, kinships, friendships, neighborhoods, and all our forms and acts of homemaking are the rites by which we solemnize and enact our union with the universe. These ways are practical, proper, available to everybody, and they can provide for the safekeeping of the small acreages of the universe that have been entrusted to us. Moreover, they give the word "love" its only chance to mean, for only they can give it a history, a community, and a place. Only in such ways can love become flesh and do its worldly work. For example, a marriage without a place, a household, has nothing to show for itself. Without a history of some length, it does not know what it means. Without a community to exert a shaping pressure around it. It may explode because of the pressure inside it.

...Our choice may be between a small, human-sized meaning and a vast meaninglessness, or between the freedom of our virtues and the freedom of our vices. It is only in these bonds that our individuality has a use and a worth; it is only to the people who know us, love us, and depend on us that we are indispensable as the persons we uniquely are. In our industrial society, in which people insist so fervently on their value and their freedom "as individuals," individuals are seen more and more as "units" by their governments, employers, and suppliers. They live, that is, under the rule of the interchangeability of parts: what one person can do, another person can do just as well or a newer person can do better. Separate from the relationships, there is nobody to be known; people become, as they say and feel, nobodies.

It is only in these trying circumstances that human love is given its chance to have meaning, for it is only in these circumstances that it can be born out in deeds through time -"even," to quote Shakespeare again, "to the edge of doom"- and thus prove itself true by fulfilling its true term.

Wendell Berry - Men and Women in Search of Common Ground

The 4th Sabbath of May

Family Garden

by Hank Hudepohl

Tell me again about your garden

Tell me how you planted, in the small

flat of mountain land, corn seed

and bean seed, how your finger poked the soil

then you dropped in three dark bean seeds

for every yellow seed of corn.

Trees and mountains collared your land,

but the fenced garden opened freely

to sun and warm summer rains.

Your potato rows bulged in July. You ached

from digging them up, your hands down in dirt,

the cool lump of a tuber, brown-spotted,

just recovered, a greeting, like shaking hands.

Baskets full of bumpy brown potatoes filled

your basement until fall, until you gave

away what you could, throwing out the rest.

You gave away honey from the white hive too,

that box of bees beside the garden,

honey stored in Mason jars, a clearest honey

nectar from lin tree blossoms and wild flowers.

The bright taste of honey on the tongue

spoke of the place, if a place can be known

by the activity of bees and a flavor in the mouth,

if a person can be known by small acts

such as these, such as the way you rocked

summer evenings from a chair on the porch

tending your inner garden, eyes closed.

On Gardening

Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and re-use its own wastes. If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or a merchant for his pleasure. He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people.

-Wendell Berry from Think Little

It’s finally spring. With the snow earlier this month, (my brother who lives closer to the mountains got fourteen inches) and the below freezing temperatures every night, its been a glorious romp in the flowers, (of which, our tulips were blasted into instant oblivion while covered in a sheet of ice.) But now, its eighty degrees and I stand on the threshold of greatness. That is, I stand in the arbor leading into the garden, a nest of weeds, dried stalks, vines, and garbage. It’s been a long hard winter.

On mother’s day it was beautiful and we planted our peas against the garage and the herbs in big whiskey barrels nearby. This is new territory for gardening. We’ve decided to put a few things here and there about the homestead to change things up a bit. I like a little variety and wildness in my landscaping which brings me full circle to the scourge we call “The Weed”. I’m not talking dandelions which are the quaint native peoples of the yard world. I’m talking Japanese Knotweed, also known as Mexican Bamboo, Fleece Flower, Monkey Weed, Hancock's Curse, Elephant Ears, Pea Shooters, or Donkey Rhubarb, which is the Mongol horde of the plant world. I mean, if in due time you can manage to be nicknamed a Mexican, a monkey, a curse and an ass then your doing something wrong, or right depending on who’s side your on. I’ve been battling it for years by picking it and slapping it around a little and to no avail. Some years past I gave up and let it grow and boy did it grow. A great green swath of towering stalks covered the side of the garage and exploded in bunches of small white blooms that the bees found irresistible and commenced to swarm the back yard for a good part of the summer. Pandora would be proud.

I like to call it the BFW and that isn’t an elderly association.

This year I’ve unleashed shock and awe. Donkey Rhubarb, (I’ve decided this to be one of my favorite names of it.) is a Rhizome which means that for what you see up here there is ten times that down there and it will never go away. Ever. It can go nine feet deep and twenty four feet horizontal. It’s the definition of incorrigible and corrig it I have.

Fighting Donkey Rhubarb is like taking on a terrorist insurgency. Let me explain. I spent six years trying to be nice and Wendell may or may not have been proud at the back breaking labor of pulling six foot tall weeds just to have them grow back up again in a week. I’ve since resorted to chemical warfare but even that has been a stop gap at minimum. Round-uping the BFW causes it to merely drool uncontrollably and bare its teeth at us. I believe this is in part because Mr Kurtz (more on the name later) crosses the border to the neighbor’s side whenever I engage him directly, seeks protection from the indigenous population – the roses, peonies, poppies, and horseradish and is over all a real bad ass. (I’m talking an Apache, Mujahedeen, Vietcong, William Wallace who drinks his own piss and shaves with a Claymore.) This is classic Guerrilla warfare.

This year I’ve gone Apocolypse Now on the Donkey Rhubarb and Mr Kurtz doesn’t stand a chance.

Most soldiers engaged in combat are encouraged to dehumanize their enemy in order to ease the killing process. I’ve chosen the opposite approach mostly so I don’t feel like a complete retard when I’m outmatched, outgunned, and outwitted by a plant. (You know – a photosynthesizing, mitochondrial crapping, green, and leafy plant.)  “That Mr Kurtz is a real badass,” I’ll say when I come into the house covered in dirt and blood – mud streaks running down my tear stained face after an afternoon of combat.

Yippe-Ki-Yay. 

Let me recap. Of course Mr Kurtz starts coming up in March. I spray him with roundup. The assault slows but doesn’t decapitate. I cut him down at the knees. Hydra that he is he sprouts two more heads for each I cut off. I cut those down and pour roundup down his gullets like a Herbicidal cocktail. He wilts. April offensive begins. Mr Kurtz sweeps around my flank and hits the horseradish and roses hard. I retreat but not before taking a few of his donkey friends with me. The monkey weed is good but I’ve found an ally. His names Ortho and he's also a bad ass.  I dig up every root ball I can find and cut them in half with a saws all and paint on the Brush B Gone while chuckling maniacally.  I let it soak a while and then cover them up.  May came with no sign yet but just yesterday the little knob of green I'd been dreading appeared.  Is this the Battle of Dien Bien Phu all over?  Is Ortho actually a sissified french man and I didn't know?  We will see.  On Gardening to be continued.

A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us. He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in meaning and pleasure. But he is doing something else that is more important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as an impediment of traffic, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration. And his sense of man's dependence on the world will have grown precise enough, one would hope, to be politically clarifying and useful.

-Wendell Berry from Think Little

The 3rd Sabbath in May

My Father's Corpse

by Andrew Hudgins

He lay stone still, pretended to be dead.

My brothers and I, tiny, swarmed over him

like puppies. He wouldn't move. We tickled him

tracing our fingers up and down his huge

misshapen feet — then armpits, belly, face.

He wouldn't move. We pushed small fingers up

inside his nostrils, wiggled them, and giggled.

He wouldn't move. We peeled his eyelids back,

stared into those motionless, blurred circles. Still,

he wouldn't, didn't move. Then we, alarmed,

poked, prodded his great body urgently.

Diddy, are you okay? Are you okay?

He didn't move. I reared back, gathered speed,

and slammed my forehead on his face. He rose,

he rose up roaring, scattered us from his body

and, as he raged, we sprawled at his feet – thrilled

to have the resurrected bastard back.

On Work - Again and Again and Again

As the connections have been broken by the fragmentation and isolation of work, they can be restored by restoring the wholeness of work. There is work that is isolating, harsh, destructive, specialized or trivialized into meaninglessness. And there is work that is restorative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing. Good work is not just the maintenance of connections - as one is now said to work "for a living" or "to support a family" - but enactment of connections. It is living, and a way of living; it is not support for a family in the sense of an exterior brace or prop, but is one of the forms and acts of love.

Wendell - The Body and The Earth

I'm nearly finished.  The tile is up on the walls in the tub; just the ceiling to go.  I'm long ready to be done.  The nice thing is that when your reading Wendell you realize in the midst of it all that this is restorative, convivial, dignified and pleasing.  I didn't know this or even consider this at 10 oclock last night when I emerged hunched, numb and half covered in thinset.  But I of course will consider it now.

If by restorative he means the euphoric feeling of being done and having straight lines and flush tile then yeah I'll buy that.  If by restorative he means crouching in a tub for eight hours like some sick buddhist kamasutra prank then...  If by convivial he means short bursts of congratulations and profanities directed at an inanimate wall and yourself then alright.  If by conviviality he means what I think he means then...  If by dignified he means I've done something for myself that proved difficult and done it, though not perfect, well, then sweet.  If by dignified he means crouching in a tub half naked, covered in mud, and talking to yourself then...

And I am pleased.  I can stand in the bathroom and look at my work and I am pleased.  I'll be even more pleased when I can be done and get on with the gardening and the hammocking and the frolicking about on the summer earth like a true Wendellian.

And in defense of myself I'm not sure I've yet grasped Wendell's view of work.  Not yet.

Work is the health of love.  To last, love must enflesh itself in the materiality of the world - produce food, shelter, warmth or shade, surround itself with careful acts, well-made things. 

Wendell - The Body and The Earth

The 2nd Sabbath of May

iPoem

by George Bilgere

Someone's taken a bite

from my laptop's glowing apple,

the damaged fruit of our disobedience,

of which we must constantly be reminded.

There's the fatal crescent,

the dark smile

of Eve, who never dreamed of a laptop,

who, in fact, didn't even have clothes,

or anything else for that matter,

which was probably the nicest thing

about the Garden, I'm thinking,

as I sit here in the café

with my expensive computer,

afraid to get up even for a minute

in order to go to the bathroom

because someone might steal it

in this fallen world she invented

with a single bite

of an apple nobody, and I mean

nobody,

was going to tell her not to eat.

On Political Packages

A few of our political packages, with a fair dose of humorous ribbing, as defined by Wendell in "The Joys Of Sale Resistance."

The Future, as everybody knows, is a subject of extreme importance to politicians, and we have several political packages that are almost irresistible—expensive, of course, but rare:

1. Tolerance and Multiculturalism. Quit talking bad about women, homosexuals, and preferred social minorities, and you can say anything you want about people who haven't been to college, manual workers, country people, peasants, religious people, unmodern people, old people, and so on. Tolerant and multicultural persons hyphenate their land of origin and their nationality. I, for example, am a Kentuckian-American.

2.  Preservation of Human Resources. Despite world-record advances in automation, robotification, and other "labor-saving" technologies, it is assumed that almost every human being may, at least in the Future, turn out to be useful for something, just like the members of other endangered species. Sometimes, after all, the Economy still requires a "human component." At such times, human resources are called "human components," and are highly esteemed in that capacity as long as their usefulness lasts. Therefore, don't quit taking care of human resources yet. See that the schools are run as ideal orphanages or, as ideal jails. Provide preschool and pre-preschool. Also postschool. Keep the children in institutions and away from home as much as possible—remember that their parents wanted children only because other people have them, and are much too busy to raise them. Only the government cares. Move the children around a lot while they're young, for this provides many opportunities for socialization. Show them a lot of TV, for TV is educational. Teach them about computers, for computers still require a "human component." Teach them the three S's: Sex can be Scientific and Safe. When the children grow up, try to keep them busy. Try to see that they become addicted only to legal substances. That's about it.

3. Reduce the Government. the government should only be big enough to annihilate any country and (if necessary) every country, to spy on its citizens and on other governments, to keep big secrets, and to see to the health and happiness of large corporations. A government thus reduced will be almost too small to notice and will require almost no taxes and spend almost no money.

4. The Free Market. The free market sees to it that everything ends up in the right place—that is, it makes sure that only the worthy get rich. All millionaires and billionaires have worked hard for their money, and they deserve the rewards of their work. They need all the help they can get from the government and the universities. Having money stimulates the rich to further economic activity that ultimately benefits the rest of us. Needing money stimulates the rest of us to further economic activity that ultimately benefits the rich. The cardinal principle of the free market is unrestrained competition, which is a kind of tournament that will decide which is the world's champion corporation. Ultimately, thanks to this principle, there will be only one corporation, which will be wonderfully simplifying. After that, we will rest in peace.

5. Unlimited Economic Growth. This is the pet idea of the Party of Hardheaded Realists. That unlimited economic growth can be accomplished within limited space, with limited materials and limited intelligence, only shows the unlimited courage and self-confidence of these Great Minds. That unlimited economic growth implies unlimited consumption, which in turn implies unlimited pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth, only makes the prospect even more unlimited.

Or, finally, we might consider the package known as:

6. The Food System, which is one of my favorites. The Food System is firmly grounded on the following principles:

I. Food is important mainly as an article of international trade.

II. It doesn't matter what happens to farmers.

III. It doesn't matter what happens to the land.

IV. Agriculture has nothing to do with "the environment."

V. There will always be plenty of food, for if farmers don't grow it from the soil, then scientists will invent it.

VI. There is no connection between food and health. People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

VII. It follows that there is no connection between healing and health. Hospitals customarily feed their patients poor-quality, awful-tasting, factory-made expensive food and keep them awake all night with various expensive attentions. There is a connection between money and health.

The 1st Sabbath of May

Wild Geese

by Charles Goodrich

I'm picking beans when the geese fly over, Blue Lake pole beans I figure to blanch and freeze. Maybe pick some dilly beans.  And there will be more beans to give to the neighbors, forcibly if necessary.

The geese come over so low I can hear their wings creak, can see their tail feathers making fine adjustments. They slip-stream along so gracefully, riding on each other's wind, surfing the sky. Maybe after the harvest I'll head south. Somebody told me Puerto Vallarta is nice. I'd be happy with a cheap room. Rice and beans at every meal.  Swim a little, lay on the beach.

Who are you kidding, Charles? You don't like to leave home in the winter. Spring, fall, or summer either. True. But I do love to watch those wild geese fly over, feel these impertinent desires glide through me. Then get back to work.