What We Need Is Here

It's getting hot in here

The next generation

It is your soul you need to change, not the climate. - Seneca

Every year around this time, I begin to contemplate how I am going to survive another summer of North Central Florida’s outstanding heat and humidity. I dread it with a passion. It confines me like I imagine winter cold does in other places; my days are ruled by avoidance - of being outdoors after 10am, of manual labor upstairs after 9, of vigorous exercise after 8. I feel imprisoned by the heat, and I hate it.  And every year I try to tell myself that it’s a matter of attitude (and a few trips to the springs and a lot of cold showers). Thus far I’ve survived quite a few summers.

But the quote above, read with a different emphasis, speaks to a much more serious topic: We need to change our souls so we don’t change the climate.  While I’m aware of the controversy, the sources that seem least self-interested predict serious climate change during this century if we keep going as we are. It’s going to get hotter and, while this thought fills me with dread at a most basic level, it calls me to greater action than heading north for the summer, or to the springs. Why is there still argument about this? Even if we’re not absolutely sure, if there is a possibility of preventing rising ocean levels, widespread famine, and mass die-offs of species by changing our lifestyles now, why wouldn’t we? Why don’t we?

The First Gulf War of the early nineties was my first war as an adult.  George Bush the Elder, in a moment of astonishing candor, called it a war in defense of our American lifestyle. This was the war where my friends were facing deployment (as opposed to this one where it’s the friends of my children), and I thought I would gladly give up my car and ride my bike every single day to save one of their lives.  It’s our grandchildren who will face the catastrophe of climate change.  Can’t we muster the gumption to change for them? My friend, Julie, says she has a recurring nightmare where her descendants ask her why she didn’t do something. 

Jan Phillips, co-founder of Syracuse Cultural Workers says this: “No matter what our attempts to inform, it is our ability to inspire that will turn the tides.”  I feel inspired by bike commuters who head out rain or shine and brave all kinds of inconvenience to avoid being “one more car,” and by folks counting food miles and travel miles, carbon footprints and the real cost of the “American Dream.” I’m inspired by those wonderful extremists who challenge themselves and others to “live simply so others can simply live.”

It’s getting hot, and I’m getting more and more uncomfortable. I need a change of soul.  

Wisdom from Abe

Let us live to prove that we can cultivate the natural world that is about us, and the intellectual and moral world that is within us, so that we may secure an individual, social, and political prosperity whose course shall be forward, and which, while the Earth endures, shall not pass away.

-Abraham Lincoln

Wild onions

We were thrilled to find patches of wild onions growing in the "weedy" area in the empty lot surrounding our garden. Googling "wild onion" let to a number of sites and ads with explanations about how to get rid of them. One went to particular lengths to differentiate between wild garlic (tubular leaves) and wild onion (flatter leaves) and presented a history of both plants. Wild onion is native and has been used since time immemorial by native people in the Americas. Wild garlic was brought over by the Europeans and naturalized in our friendly soil. It seemed strange to follow this information with a list of toxic remedies to their persistence - like killing off a long-lost friend.

I'd rather enjoy their delicate flowers, and eat the bulb. The flowers spring out of little bulblets that eventually burst and fall to the ground, starting the next generation. I'm not sure when the smallish underground bulbs are at their peak for eating, but the blooming ones we picked today were good enough.

Some native peoples apparently boiled them down to a syrup for use as a medicine for colds, croup, and "tickly throat" (Bradford Angier in Field Guide to Medicinal Plants). I wonder how they would work with spring allergies...

Happy Earth Day!

I have been noticing lately the number of little vegetable gardens springing up just a short walk from our house. I've never seen so many before - and these are only the ones boldly visible from the sidewalk and roadside. Today John and I celebrated Earth Day by riding our bikes along my regular walking route and taking photos.

With baby crib vine supports

Cabbages among the roses

Drive-by corn

Lettuce border

Onion hedge

Vegetable boxes

More roadside corn

Tomatoes in bird heaven

Veggies in a traffic-calmer

Impromptu community garden near public housing

For some reason I kept hearing in my head the song "Little Boxes" (now a theme song for "Weeds") - the lyrics of which are the opposite of what I think is going on here. With apologies to Malvina Reynolds, I had to come up with some new words:

Little gardens in the front yard, little gardens growing corn and beans
Little gardens in the backyard, with tomatoes and kale
There’s a big one and a small one, grown in straight rows or growing everywhere,
And they’re all made out of seeds and hope, and no two look the same.

I am so thrilled to see these little gardens, so expressive of hope and vitality. It's incredibly simple to plant a seed or a transplant, water it, and let the sun work its magic. But there's also something potentially revolutionary about taking back a little of the food system. Let them grow!

Very simple, wildly delicious vegetable quiche

We brought home such a wonderful and diverse bunch of veggies at the market over the weekend - a variety of colors, textures, and tastes.  By dinner time we were hungry, but without a lot of energy left for preparing food. A good response to the situation: quiche. It's filling, tasty and can go with the flow as far as which vegetables to use. One of the particularly good things about this recipe is that it doesn't require a crust, and you can bake it in a regular pie pan - no fuss. Add a salad (ours was a mix of red and green lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, and pesto goat cheese), and you have a meal. The blueprint is below with our particular ingredients in parentheses.

1 1/2 cups grated cheese (1 cup swiss, 1/2 cup cheddar)
1 cup chopped vegetables (raw tomatoes and chives, lightly sauteed onions, spinach and yellow squash)
12 eggs
2 cups milk (one cup whol milk, one cup skim)
A bit of pepper and nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a 9-10" pie pan. Spread cheese on the bottom of the pan. Add the vegetables. Hand whisk eggs and milk with a little pepper and nutmeg. Pour over cheese and veggies. Bake until just set in the middle - about 45 minutes. Serves 6.

Sabbaths

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

-Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

The sweet ruliness of gardens

Last year

This time last year, I was watching our last garden at the old house sprout while marveling at the unruliness of nature .  No matter how carefully planned and diagrammed, things were always popping up in unplanned places, or being eaten before their time by insects and other unwanted garden foragers.  Still it was lovely, and I was reveling in my role as co-creator in such a beautiful, bountiful mess.

This year, I am watching our first garden in our new place begin to grow, and feel inspired by the “ruliness” of it.  I take comfort in the fact that if you plant a seed and water it, it will sprout and grow – there or here.  I visit the garden each morning to see how things are getting along - who needs water, who’s been chewed by caterpillars. I am soothed even by the familiar, nasty habit of the caterpillars (aka cutworms) who denude a plant of its leaves during the night and then hide in the soil next to it (right where I can find it) by morning.  When I hand-water, mockingbirds come to watch just like before. There was a frost the week after planting out tomatoes, like there always is. 

I read some beautiful reflections on gardening this week by Victor Guroian, a theologian/professor and avid gardener.  He’s an Orthodox Christian and believes that God reveals himself through created things – the earth and all that lives here.  The idea of learning about the creator through what he/she has created rings true to me.

I’m not always sure what "religion" I fall under these days. I think of myself still as Catholic and cling to the example of good people who have lived that faith – Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, St. Francis, and certain less famous Catholic I’ve known up close - while at the same time recoiling from the hierarchical power structure and the abuses thereof.  But I still can’t not believe in a Creator no matter how angry and disgusted I may feel, especially when I’m in the garden.  I keep finding evidence of a wild and unpredictable God that enlivens us and surprises us. And some days I am comforted and intrigued by the constancy and sense of eternity around me - the worm, the fruit, sprouting seeds, decaying compost - all still here, no matter where I'm at. 

This year - row of baby sunflowers

Spiderwort

You can find these almost everywhere in late spring and early summer. We have them growing in the field around our garden, volunteering in our herb garden in the front yard, and along the roadside. They're monocots (grass-type plants) that resemble irises or lilies. They're so pretty it's hard to think of them as a weed, and since they don't seem to mind being dug up and replanted, I wonder why more of us don't (intentionally) have them in our gardens. Maybe they're just too common and easy to grow. I understand the British, after transporting across the ocean in the seventeenth century, now coddle them in their cottage gardens. 

They're edible. The tender leaves can be thrown into salad or cooked in soup. Their flowers make pretty salad garnishes. And the steamed stems have the taste and texture of asparagus - which we cannot grow here.

Why are they called spiderwort? No one knows for sure but some think it's because the viscous sap from the stem can be strung into spiderweb-like strands. Others think it's the general apperarance of the leggy leaves from above. A friend once told me that the sap can be used to soothe ant bites. The "wort" part of the name is from Old English and implies a medicinal quality for use against spiders. We've lost so much of that old knowledge about the use of things that grow near us. Makes me want to join the grandmothers of the world and try out this cure next time I'm stung in the garden - especially since they're so conveniently located. Could it be they're right where we need them?

Everything is growing!

It seems like every time I round the corner into the family room I come face to face with two totally different chickens. It's hard to believe they were two little peeps who could fit together into a custard cup just two weeks ago. Today they seem to have twice the amount of real feathers they had yesterday and they look as gawky as middle schoolers. We're going to have to come up with a larger pen for them while they grow old enough to go outdoors (just two more weeks).

Same thing with the garden. The seeds we planted two weeks ago are little plants in the garden now and the transplants are twice as big in spite of the recent cold snap.

It's happening everyplace. Our bucket at the farmers' market runneth over. Each week after we buy what we can afford, we leave a bucket out for farmers to put any leftover produce in that they want to donate to our soup. This week we had about four buckets full - so much that we ended up giving some away to families in our neighborhood. It was nice to think of all those steaming pots of collards, mustards, and turnips on Easter day.  And we still  have plenty for a week's worth of healthy soup.

I love this time of year - beautiful weather, new life, new leaves, new growth everywhere. It is good.

Sabbath!!

The word is not usually followed by exclamation points, but I feel like hollering right now for a TIME OUT.  And that’s what a Sabbath is supposed to be - a time out of time to recollect oneself.  The ancient Jews came up with the idea thousands of years ago to set aside one day out of seven to "rest." Which leads me to think they must have needed some legislation on the matter, that it wasn’t in their nature to declare enough is enough without a law to enforce it.

We here in the U.S. in the 21^st century share this weakness (although not everyone would call it that). I had a telling conversation a few years ago with a father of two little girls who had just lost a job in the finance industry.  The reason?  With two small children, he wanted to work 40 – 50 hours each week. But he said if you aren’t willing to work 60, another younger guy with the same credentials and without a family is – and was in this case.

Contrast that to the average French worker, now being encouraged by the government to work 40 hours (instead of the more accepted 35). The French attitude is that too much work is bad for person – and bad for everyone else too.  In the French mind, working 60 hours a week would put a fellow citizen out of work.  Thirty five hours is enough.

Enough?  The little sergeant inside my head wants me to think nothing I do is enough. It makes no difference to him whether it’s vegetables growing in the garden or money market certificates in the bank; there ought to be more and I should be doing it better. There’s not enough time in the day, and there is no time to lose. 

This is why I find the idea of Sabbath so compelling; it’s a counter-voice to my inner-fascist. “Thou shalt rest” one day in seven. Thou shalt let all the busy-ness go and just be.  Thou shalt tell the little sergeant to pipeth down.   What would I do on a real Sabbath? I would read the newspaper before I get out of bed. I would go to the garden but play bocce instead of weed.  And at night I would sit on the front stoop and watch people go by and maybe the moon rise. I would write a list of at least ten things I am grateful for this week.  Who knows what else I would do if I were free in this way?

We are free. What would you do? Let’s just do it! Fire the little sergeant. Recognize that the world goes on even if you take a day off.

A new manifesto for living well: Hold close to your heart and keep in mind the things that matter to you - your family, your neighbor, the environment, the common good - whatever those things are for you. Take steps each day to make life better someday for your grandchildren.  And one day each week, sit back and say to yourself “it is good.” It is enough.

No need to holler.