Brutal times

Us? Treading water. Bubbles on the stream.

We've inventoried the supplies and can stay put for some time. How much? Depends, huh?

Beloved stirs some beans

Risa sets up pea and bean trellises

 There's a shortage of dandelions this year for some reason but lots of nipplewort, deadnettle, cleavers, and English daisies. With some holdover beet leaves and such, I'm able to dry quite a bit of veg powder.

Daughter, a front line health worker, quarantined us weeks ago. She keeps us supplied with necessaries, from a distance. We Zoom sometimes. There's a lot of laughter, but it does have an edge to it.

No, that's paper towels. And they were already on hand.

I decided to re-start the lower garden, which I'd given up several years ago, due to "age." First, I rearranged the fences to keep the ducks out.

The fence ram is the best tool on the premises.

Got out the ancient gas mower, which we generally have tried to avoid using, and gave to the lower garden a severe haircut. Did the same to much of the rest of the place, putting all clippings on the lower garden.

Located and tested my dad's vintage electric cultivator, then showed it the job to be done. "Oh, no! not ... not plowing?" Yes. This once. Because I don't have enough materials to do a proper no-dig out there.

 Four days later, between the cultivator and the five-tined fork (for heavier sods), we have fifty by fifty feet ready to line off for potatoes and winter squash. It will have to sit under black plastic for two weeks, otherwise the bindweed and Queen-Anne's lace will come after me.

These methods are brutal, but these are brutal times.




She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading
their roots before the sun. Most of them died,
though a few tenacious grasses rolled over

when she was not looking, and sucked earth
till she found them skulking about, and banished them
to the heap with the egg shells and old tea leaves.

Returning to the scene of the massacre, she placed
a five tined fork before her, pointed toward
the earth's core. On its step she placed her boot's

sole, and drove its teeth home, tearing living soil.
She did this many times, and in her hearing,
the dark loam whispered in protest. But what

was she to do? One must eat, and the white seeds
in their packet were waiting for the sun.
She carried a blue denim bag at her side,

zippered it open, feeling about in its depths
like the housewife at the station platform
seeking her ticket for the last train--

Seizing her prize, she held it in a soiled palm,
reading the runes of inscription:
"Date of last frost"; "zone three," "days

to maturity." How many days now to her own
maturity? Not to be thought of. Her hand
trembled. Tearing the thin paper rind,

she tipped out contents: a shirtfront
of buttons. Five seeds to a hill she counted,
pinching their graves over them: three hills.

And on to other tasks. The rainmaker
whispered over hilled earth all
the zone's days to maturity, and the date

of first frost held true. Almost forgotten in the rush
of gathering in others: beans and corn, tomatoes--
she sought them last in October, the golden

fruits of that planting. Her other crops
talk to her; the Hubbards never do. (What are they
dreaming at, over there? She brings out the knife.)

Now it is March, she remembers having gathered
the silent, sulking Hubbards. How are they faring?
A look into the pantry reveals them,

dour and uncommunicative, all
huddled like bollards on the high shelf.
She chooses one to halve on the kitchen block.

Scooping out seeds to dry and roast later,
she bakes the halves till soft, slipping off skins
per Rombauer and Becker. "Dice them,

and in a mixing bowl add butter, brown sugar,
salt, ginger, and move the lot to the mixer,
remembering to add milk." With a bowl

of silent Hubbard thus richly dressed,
she goes to the living room, asking blessing
of the gods of the steel fork and the weeds,

the rainmaker, the packet of white seeds,
booted foot and blue denim bag
and the longtime summer sun, eating,

listening to a fugue by J. S. Bach.