Lifescapes

While I was gone....

While I was keeping cool in NM, this baby was growing to ripeness in TX. Came home (in the rain--yay!) on Monday night, got up at first light on Tuesday morning and headed for the garden to find this nice squash, many zukes, and the pinto beans happily clambering up their bamboo tripods. Thanks to a neighbor for watering, and to the rain goddess for raining on the garden.

The blue tubs were empty when I took this photo yesterday, but this morning, I transplated a dozen tomatoes from their soft drink bottle self-waterers (where they spent my vacation under the grow lights, growing to transplant size and then some) into the tubs and other containers. These are early-maturing tomatoes (Silver Fir and Heatwave), 55-60 days, so I hope to have ripe tomatoes by the end of October. We'll see--it's an experiment, remember? Learning from mistakes? In the foreground: carrots. In the bed in the back: southern peas (cowpeas) and green beans. More planting today.






























The vacation was lovely, but I'm ready to be home. Applebeck Orchard has gone to NY. I'm expecting the copyedited manuscript of Landscapes of the Heart next week, copyedited on the computer, which I HATE passionately but can't escape. Best just to grit my teeth and hope that there aren't too many problems. I'm back at work on Extraordinary Year, or will be when I finish planting the fall garden (maybe Friday). Bill will be back in a couple of weeks. And Hurricane Gustav will be in the Gulf on Sunday, headed who-knows-where.

Reading note. It's said that you can do everything right and still fail to harvest a worthwhile crop of watermelons. Somehow, I did everything wrong and succeeded anyway. Who is to say that making all the wrong choices doesn't lead as surely to ripeness as making all the right ones? Given time enough to ripen, we can make peace with even our worst failures and shortcomings. Given time enough to ripen, we can find that even death loses its terror.--Janice Emily Bowers: A Full Life in a Small Place

The Theory of Anyway

In a comment to my previous post, Grace mentioned "the theory of anyway." I wanted to tell you something about that and give you a couple of links, in case you haven't stumbled on it yet.

Some time back, on a couple of Internet forums on the concept of Peak Oil (the idea that the globe's hydrocarbon resources will sooner or later be depleted), Pat Meadows wrote about this idea: that whatever we need to be doing to meet the coming crises of energy depletions, we need to be doing anyway, if we are moral beings who care about others, who care about living lightly on the earth. Not long after, Sharon Astyk picked up Pat's idea and elaborated on it, in a post on her blog, Casaubon's Book. After that, Pat wrote about Sharon's post, on her own blog, in a post called "The Theory of Anyway." (If you're thinking that what goes around on the Internet certainly comes around, I couldn't agree more!)

I have long been a believer in the Theory of Anyway, and I'm grateful to Pat and Sharon for articulating it so well. I am especially grateful to Pat for this paragraph:

I think there's a terrific psychological difference determined by the frame of mind in which one takes certain actions. Supposing, for example, you are going to cover your windows with clear plastic in winter, to save on energy.

Well, you can think of yourself as being forced into this act by Peak Oil, by Global Warming, or for economic reasons. There's not much joy in taking defensive actions.

But if you can think of it as contributing to "the repair of the world," then you have a totally different view of the action. Now you can really be happy about it: you have made a difference (however small) by this action. You have conserved resources for those who desperately need them (especially if you contribute the money that you save to a charity), you have lessened your contribution to Global Warming and to air pollution and you have used less fuel. Wow! This is a good thing to have done: I can be happy about this.

Yes. There are many things we should be doing anyway. Things that we can be happy about. Things that our governments (national, state, and local) can never do for us.

Thank you, Pat, for naming The Theory of Anyway. Thank you, Sharon, for elaborating on it. And thank you, Grace, for reminding us here on this blog.

I'm leaving New Mexico and heading back to Texas on Monday, August 25. I'd love to stay where it's cool, but my fall kitchen garden project needs tending to. I've left some tomato, broccali, and cabbage seedlings under grow lights, with a home-made self-watering arrangement. I'm curious to see how this has worked out. I'm not counting on this garden to feed us this fall, although I'm sure we'll enjoy whatever it produces. It's an experimental plot, where I'm growing some heirloom varieties that I hope will do well in our Texas climate. I'll have more details about it later.

Reading note. When we comprehend our actions over time, we see what we do in terms of a story. We see obstacles confronted, and intentions realized and frustrated over time. As we move forward from yesterday to today to tomorrow, we move through tensions building to climaxes, climaxes giving way to denouements, and tensions building again as we continue to move and change. Human time is a storied affair.--Donald P. McAdams

Busy New Mexico Bee

Don't know if you can see in the photo (click on it for a better view), but this bee's pollen baskets are loaded. She's been visiting the sunflowers along the road in front of our house. And not just sunflowers. Yellow clover, red clover, goldenrod, mullein, primroses, thistles, purple asters. Enough to keep a bee busy for the rest of the season. That's short here: nights have been in the 40s this week. And rain almost every day, which is definitely okay by me, since I'm having an indoor vacation, writing, reading, thinking, knitting, watching the mountains. Oh, and admiring the bees.

We drove to Las Vegas yesterday, to the farmers' market, maybe 25 vendors and lots of buyers. Plenty of local garden veggies, greens, melons, herbs, even flowers and plants. I bought corn, radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, and we feasted on tostadas last night. Next project: learning to make tortillas. I'm okay with flour tortillas, but corn tortillas are still a mystery. I tried last night but flopped. Good thing I had some store-bought tostada shells tucked in the pantry.

Writing and reading. I'll send an efile of Applebeck Orchard to New York tomorrow (it's finished), and follow up with a print copy when I get home. I need to get Peggy Turchette started on the map--she's done the covers from the second book on, and I hope will be doing the cover for this book, too (not my call: the Art folks at Berkley make that decision). I'm working on An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days. In case you've just tuned in, this is my "journal book," which (I hope) will be published by the University of Texas Press in 2010. I've been making regular entries throughout the year, and I've now reviewing what I've done so far, pruning and shaping the journal into a book. That's my project for the rest of the year--that, and the next China Bayles, which I need to start in November/December. Holly Blues, it's called.

Rereading the entries in Extraordinary Year, I'm struck by the way my ideas and attitudes about the future have changed since February, when I began reading and educating myself about "peak oil" and other resource depletions. Bill is deeply interested in this, too, and we've been having some lengthy discussions about how we--the two of us, that is--might be affected and what changes we ought to make in our lives.

Much of this is reflected in Extraordinary Year, which makes it a coming-to-realize book in a way that I could not have foreseen when I pitched the idea to my editor in September, 2007. It's a different book altogether from the one I envisioned a year ago, and much riskier (personally speaking), since it lets readers into a corner of my life that I wouldn't ordinarily open to them. But that's what happens when you propose a journal book that will cover a particular year: you simply cannot predict what's going to happen. Donald Hall started a journal book one year (Life Work), and was diagnosed with cancer in mid-year. So you work with the material that life hands you. Life has handed me these new ideas, and that's what I'm working with.

And more reading. I've finished High Noon for Natural Gas and can recommend it, although I admit to skipping the highly technical parts (I'm not a petroleum geologist) and focusing on the Big Picture. (Bill is more interested in the technical aspects, and fills in details that I miss.) I don't know if I'm Nietzsche's "perfect reader," but I'm really compelled by this stuff, which seems so urgent to me, and it's been especially good to talk these books over with Bill. Together, we read James Kunstler's A World Made by Hand (which I discovered through a review in Orion Magazine). That book led both of us to The Long Emergency, also by Kunstler.

Yesterday when we went to Las Vegas, I took my Kindle (I'm in love with it) and downloaded Matthew Simmons' Twilight in the Desert: the Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, and J.A. Jance's Devil's Claw, for fun reading. We're out of cell phone range up here, and Kindle delivers via cell-phone techology.

There are some periods in my life that have been marked by the opening of radically new ideas, some of them life-changing. My first couple of years at college, the first year at graduate school in Berkley (1968), and now this. These ideas, every time, have come from books. I feel a little like that bee, hurrying from one source to another, collecting all kinds of materials, bringing them back into myself, and being changed (sometimes uncomfortably) by them.

Reading note. When I picture a perfect reader, I always picture a monster of courage and curiosity, also something supple, cunning, cautious, a born adventure and discoverer.-- Nietzsche

View from my window

This is what I see when I look out the window of my writing loft. Green native grasses, a pine-covered ridge to the south, and five miles beyond (not visible from here), Hermit's Peak, where in the 1870s a real hermit, Giovanni Augustiani, lived for several years in a rock shelter. This is the summer monsoon season, and Bill (who is repairing and refinishing the logs of our house) is endlessly frustrated by the rains. I'm sorry for his frustration, but I love the rain, and the delightfully varied weathers: bright, clear mornings; billowing thunderheads and curtains of rain falling across the mountains in the afternoon; brilliant sunsets; starry, starry nights.

Yesterday, we visited a neighbor's garden. Marge and Dick are growing carrots, beets, beans, lettuces, potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, corn, and peas in a deer-proof enclosure. (We brought home a bag of fresh peas. I shelled them and we had them for supper--delicious.) The growing season here is short: last frost the second week of June, first frost the middle of September. Last year, Marge brought in her green tomatoes and ripened them in the basement. On Saturday, we went to a farmer's market in Las Vegas: watermelons, cantalopes, squash, peas, and bushels of fresh corn. The Mora Valley, just to the north of us, has long been known for its truck gardening. We're planning a few more day trips, after the book is finished. Not sure how long I'll be here--maybe a couple more weeks.

Book report. The book will be finished today, maybe, or tomorrow. It's actually done--that is, it's all written. This is my last pass through it, cleaning up problems, smoothing the style, reweaving a few plot strands. The work has gone pretty fast, and I'm pleased. I gave a book talk on Saturday night at Tome on the Range, to a full house. It's not every town (Las Vegas is only about 15,000) that has an independent bookstore, thanks to the commitment and courage of Nancy (the owner) and Janet (the manager). Life isn't easy for non-chain bookstores these days, and these gals deserve a huge round of applause.

Otherwise, reading (currently High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis--part of my effort to educate myself to the various resource depletions we are facing); knitting a sock; watching DVDs in the evening (last night, the old but still good Conduct Unbecoming). We're slowly getting used to life without Labs, and Toro is settling into his new status as Only Dog. We had a birthday party for neighbor Bob Goodfellow (his 73rd!), but Toro stole the show from Bob. He was the center of attention and loved it.

Reading note, from Little Things in a Big Country, one of the books for the online class I'm teaching for Story Circle this fall: And what do we really know of all this--the substance of light, the inner lives of creatures, the forming and dissolving of clouds and mountains, the countless events playing out simultaneously, ceaselessly? I find it soothing to be rendered insignificant. And am cheered just to be at home on the planet, upright and walking around, in the midst of the vast unknowable.--Hannah Hinchman

Here

There's always a certain dis-location, coming to New Mexico. We've owned this house--Coyote Lodge is the name we've given it--for nearly four years, but we've been spending time here for six or seven. "Here" is the small mountain community of Pendaries, between Taos and Las Vegas, on the eastern slope of the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The valley to the north of our house is a cattle ranch. Beyond (more photos later), the mountains, often tinged red by the rising sun.

It was hot in Texas when I left (104 is HOT) but deliciously cool here. In Texas, the view is trees--pecan, willow, oak, hackberry, elm--and rolling hills; here, pine trees and mountains. The window in the gable is my loft writing studio. The pines are lodgepole and Ponderosa. In bloom along our road: sunflowers, mullein, asters, verbena, purple clover, yellow clover. I left a hurricane behind, Eduordo, which turned out to be only a tropical storm and didn't do much to ease the drought at Meadow Knoll. And Toro and I left Zach behind, another difficult dislocation, but one that will be steadied by time.

Book report. After a couple of days getting settled (remembering where I'd left things, stocking the fridge, doing laundry, saying hello to neighbors), I'm back at work on Applebeck Orchard. It's finished, but not quite--it needs one more run-through before I can call it quits. I'm anxious to get on to my other writing project for this year: a journal book called An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days. I've been working on it since January, and since the year is nearly three-quarters done, so is that project. But it needs trimming and smoothing, and I'm adding reading notes, thanks to my editor's agreement that the book will have "scholar's margins," wide margins with space for quotations, like the ones at the bottom of these blog entries. Today: Applebeck. This evening, watching a DVD with Bill, knitting (socks, naturally) and reading (currently: Kitchen Literacy, by Ann Vileisis, for review at www.StoryCircleBookReviews).

And there's another writing project in the works, for the wonderful new online ezine on sustainability, www.henandharvest.com, where I'll be writing about herbs and other such. Check it out.

Reading note, from Kitchen Literacy: As I pushed my shopping cart through the supermarket aisles, questions rose insistently in my mind: How were my eggs raised? Who grew my tomatoes? Where did my fish come from? What about the milk? The colorful boxes, cans, and jars that had long appeared familiar and comforting now looked cryptic. Each product, I realized, was the culmination of some hidden story that I--and most of my fellow shoppers--had never bothered to consider. Everything we ate had a story, but we didn't know any of them.--Ann Vileisis

Sister Earth

Going on. Many thanks to all of you for your comments and emails. Bill and I appreciate it more than we can tell you. Our animal companions fill such an important place in our lives--it's good to know that so many of us have shared that kind of love, and that we can go on when our friends have left us.

So we are going on here. This morning, Toro (our heeler) and I were heartened by the sight of huge swarms of bees--many natives, but some honeybees--on the sumacs, which have just come into bloom along our morning path. After a long bee-drought, this feels like a blessing, a message from Sister Earth that the daily round of life and death, blossom, bee, and fruit--it all goes on, even though losses leave us lonely.

I'm leaving a little earlier than I had planned to join Bill in New Mexico. With luck, that will be tomorrow. Lots happening here today. For one thing, Peggy and I have just launched Story Circle's online class program--a project that's been taking up my spare time for some months. You can check us out here. For another, I'm packing and collecting stuff for the trip, including a box of to-be-read books I've been saving. And Peggy and I are putting together the herbal eletters that will go out while I'm gone. So today's busy. And hot. Yesterday, our digital thermometer told me it was 104.6, in the shade. It may be a couple of degrees high, but who's counting when the temps go over 100?

Book report. Yes, I'm finished with Applebeck Orchard. Well, more or less. One more pass through (probably about 5-6 days work), and then print and mail.

I'll be doing one book talk while I'm in New Mexico, on August 9. Las Vegas (NM) is an interesting old town, with lots of history. If you're in the area and looking for a Saturday field trip, it's a good place to go--and of course, you're invited to join me that evening, at Tome on the Range.

I'll try to blog while I'm gone, but we're on dialup in the mountains, and the line is verrrry verrrrrrry slow. I'll try to keep you posted.

Reading note. This earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am. How we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget: what she is to me, what I am to her.--Susan Griffin

Journey's end, and beginning

We put Zach to sleep this morning. He's been ill with Cushings since January, but was doing pretty well--fairly good energy, eating okay. Until last week, and since then it's been a very steady decline. The vet said that he was probably suffering from a cancer that caused internal bleeding, which accounts for the very recent severe anemia (we were treating him for that) and coughing up blood. This morning, he was much worse, so Bill and I (via phone--Bill is in NM) decided that it was the right day to help him end his journey here, and begin our journey without him.

Zach has been our companion for nearly 12 years. He was about 18 months when he came--a refugee from the Round Rock pound, rescued by Dick and Louann Lindsey in 1996--and so his human years equivalent was somewhere in the 90s. A ripe old age for a grand old dog, who was unfailingly loving, gentle, and amenable to most suggestions, although not all, since he was a dog who knew his own mind. He loved going on walks, riding in the van, breakfast and dinner, puppy treats, petting and hugs, and his bed. He didn't like snakes (smart dog!), armadillos (he tasted one once and concluded that they were not on his menu), and being left alone. He ignored the cat, tolerated Lady (who passed on just a couple of months ago), and learned to like Toro, our optimistic, self-confident heeler. He was fondest of Bill, and considered him the Alpha Dog (I wasn't even in the picture when Bill was around). We loved him. It will seem like a different life without him.

Deer love sweet potatoes

It's a good thing I wasn't counting on sweet potatoes to keep me alive over the winter. The deer ate the tops off the six biggest (and prettiest) plants last night--leaving the six smallest intact. I'd never grown sweet potatoes before, so this was an experiment. What I learned: if I want sweet potatoes, I'll have to put them where I can fence out the deer. The dogs and I surprised the culprits early this morning: a doe and two fawns.

This is the first year the deer have come close to the house--perhaps because the man who owns the neighboring property (I won't dignify him with the word "neighbor") has installed a deer feeder and a deer blind on his side of the fence. It's not unusual to see a half-dozen deer eating the corn, which is delivered from the feeder by means of a solar-powered gizmo at twelve hour intervals. This intrepid hunter sits in his blind and shoots them, from a distance of about 25 feet. Shows what a brave, macho sharpshooter he is, doesn't it? Not.

Re: Darning eggs, which Leslie Thompson mentioned in a comment on the previous post. Here's my egg, photographed with my current sock project. (Thought I'd given up knitting, did you?) I inherited the egg from my great-grandmother, Jane Jackson Turnell, who came to America from Lincolnshire in the early 1870s. It's a different style from other egg-shaped darners I've seen. I wonder if it might have been used to darn holes in flat items, like napkins and tablecloths, as well as socks. Anybody an expert on darning eggs? Maybe it has another name, to reflect its different shape?

















If you want to know how this might have been used, I found this interesting tutorial. My mother didn't use an egg; she darned on her fist, and that's how I learned. This egg came along years later, when I cleaned out my grandmother's things. I love it because it's a symbol of my great-gram's industry and frugality, her attention to detail, her care for small things. It's a metaphor for a way of life that will disappear, unless we find a way to keep it alive.

Book report. I'm working on the last chapter today, and maybe the author's note. I may have to take out a section unless I can tie it up. Sometimes little pieces of action--interesting in themselves, but by themselves not very significant--become "islands" in the book. Either they have to be bridged to something else or cut. So I have to fix what I've come to think of as the "ferret" plot. Isn't much of a "plot"--therein lies the problem.

Reading note. Through metaphor, the past has the capacity to imagine us, and we it.--Cynthia Ozick, Metaphor and Memory 

So long, Dolly

Thanks for the rain wishes--we got a half-inch last night, delivered via one of the shower bands that trailed Dolly as she moved across South Texas. San Antonio got a good drenching, Austin got well over an inch, and we got wet. But I'm not complaining. A little wet is better than a lot dry. Looks like the tropics have dried out for a while--nothing cooking from the Gulf to Africa, so it will be a dry couple of weeks ahead.

Dumpster diving. Yes, it's true. Both Bill and I are dumpster divers from way back. Favorite dumpster finds over the years: a wonderful washer-dryer combination discovered in an alley the year my first son was born, back in the Cloth Diaper Era; a cane-seated rocker like the one Jinni T tells us about in her comment, which I used when I was nursing my daughter Robin; a solid cherry fireplace mantle that weighs about 120 pounds, found on a curb, which Bill and I carried some six blocks home; and a useful bamboo wall cabinet snatched from certain oblivion on I-35 (Bill was certain that I would be obliviated). We never throw anything out that's useful; in fact, we rarely throw anything out at all, which presents certain other problems, as you can guess. I think we could live quite comfortably out of our stash, at least for a few years.

Garden report. Fall beans are up, and southern peas. More manure collection going on, and compost building. I'll plant some fall squash in the next few days--maybe it'll do better than the April planting, which didn't yield diddly. Big crop this year: our mesquite trees, which are loaded with beans. I don't have the time to make jelly this year, and I've never tried making wine or flour but it's nice to know how it's done.

Book report. Getting down to the end, with 83,000 words. Yet to be done, the wrap-up chapter, historical note, another historical recipe or two (I love that feature of the Cottage Tales), and a map. Today I'll draft the wrap-up chapter. Oh, and for all you Beatrix fans: Willie Heelis (called Will, in this series) proposes in this book (Book 6)! I hadn't intended this to happen until the next book (7), but he just got impetuous and popped the question. She says no, of course. She said no, right up to the last minute (Book 8). Which is the way it happened in real life, as nearly as we can tell. July 28 is Beatrix's birthday. Please plan a big celebration!

Reading note. Con tuna solo se puede vivir, pero con tunas y mesquites los dos se engorda mucho. Loosely translated: You can live on prickly pear fruit alone, but with pears and mesquite beans, you can get fat.--Mexican saying, reported by J. Frank Dobie 

Hello, Dolly!

Not much to see, is there? Three raised beds, two of them 4x8, the other 3x16, and the blue tubs in the middle, where a few tomatoes will live this fall--if I'm lucky. The beds are built of a mix of sand and humusy soil dug out of the spot where we've been dumping grass clippings and such for the last 10 years. Our native soil--what's left of it here--is an alkaline gumbo. It used to be much more fertile, before the cotton farmers denuded the topsoil and the cotton plants sucked up all the good nutrients. Not the most promising soil for a garden, which is why we put the extra work into bed-building. Everything you see here is recycled. The timbers around the beds used to be a corral fence, the chicken wire kept my chickens in, and the tubs came from a dumpster diving adventure. I won't be planting much until I get back from New Mexico in early September, but I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Oh, and that door in the top left that looks like it goes to a fruit cellar? That's Archie Bunker, where we hole up when tornados threaten. We had it installed after the F5 hit Jarrell, about 35 miles from here. It seemed like a very good idea, although we've only had to use it a couple of times. Archie could also serve as a fruit cellar, if the need (or desire) arises.

Are you keeping an eye on Dolly? Probably not--you've got better things to do, unless you live between Corpus and Brownsville. But we are, not because we want a hurricane smashing into the coast and causing lots of people lots of grief, but because we're desperate, desperate, simply desperate for rain. This time of year, systems like Dolly are about the only way we're going to get it. The way things look now, she might come in too far south to do us much good, but we'll be hoping, right up to the very last minute.

Reading note. Gardening . . . tutors us in nature's ways, fostering an ethic of give and take with respect to the land. Gardens instruct us in the particulars of place. They lessen our dependence on distant sources of energy, technology, food . . . --Michael Pollan