Category: Home and Garden

AUTUMN RAINS AND LAKE ERNIE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

After a particularly heavy rain, a small pond forms in the bottom corner of the side of our lot we call the Swamp, over by the far neighbor’s driveway. When we first moved in, that meant Ernie, a retired pipe-fitter who’d built the tidy house and large garage a half-century earlier.

Somehow, we dubbed the puddle Lake Ernie and learned to watch it as a warning. Whenever Lake Ernie appeared, I needed to check on the cellar – make sure the sump pump was working.

Soon now, the ground will freeze and likely become snow covered. It comes as a relief, at least until the melting, when I have to start checking the cellar. Especially if heavy rains melt the snowpack.

LOVELY LEEKS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 20 Comments

Unlike the rest of my family, I have an aversion to onions. Or maybe it’s the other way around. It’s not pretty. I’ll spare you my rant. Likewise, I could cite a long history, with heavy childhood quagmire, but we’ll just leave it there.

Leeks, on the other hand, create no problems. They’re marvelous and so beautiful in and out of the garden. So it’s a glorious compromise, all the way around. (Shall we say that potato-leek soup is one of my favorites?)

And I’ve developed quite the love for garlic. In and out of the garden.

SPACE FOR DECOMPRESSION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

It’s hard to believe five years have passed since we made the loft of the barn much more usable.

When we moved here, the loft was accessible only via a second-floor catwalk from the master bedroom, and getting there and back could be tricky, especially when snow was piled on the deck.

I’ll save the home renovation project description and photos for another time, and just mention that it involved removing the catwalk, deck, bedroom doorway, and barn loft doorway, installing stairs inside the barn and lighting in the loft.

What it essentially did was give us another 450 square feet of usable work and storage space – especially once we replaced the leaky roof two years ago. (Gee, I think that’s the size of some of those Ikea model apartments.)

Admittedly, it’s not someplace you linger for much of the year. It’s not insulated and there’s no heat, so you do little more than dash in and out in January-February or July-August, but for me it’s been a huge blessing.

As I wrote in August 2009, an “especially humid Tuesday: No Rick yesterday or today.” Our carpenter/master electrician was “off on another project.” We were in no rush, anyway. Still, enough of the project had progressed for me to note, “Having the top of the barn – the Squirrel Piss Studio or Jnana’s Red Barn or the Summer House – finally available as usable space is mind-boggling. At last! Ten years. A time for decompression, unpacking. The difference in scale as a result of the larger space (framed posters, for instance, now appear so much smaller).” I detailed more effusively in my journal. What I noted was “t

he array of items: places I’ve gone off to, to live. Sometimes unwillingly. The skulls – steer, horse, dog. Elk bones. Shells.

“So much to discard, too. My burgundy valet bag, an artifact of the past (after 9/11, nobody travels with one). Burgundy, LAL’s color. Same as the Chevy. The specially designed coat hangers, with their folding hooks – open for the hotel, closed to slide into the bag. Those two years, a ‘backpack for business travelers.’

“A Quaker altar: a candle on a piece of squared birch firewood, the side with bark facing the sitter; incense; in time, flowers or dried arrangement; Bible, Gita, notebook?

“I sit in the space and recall how Roger Pfingston could sit for hours in front of a blank piece of paper without writing a word. Maybe smoke a cigar. Now see it as his way of meditation and self-collection.”

The space also gave me a place to resume hatha yoga exercises after way too long a hiatus.

I love having large surfaces where I can spread out the pages for a poetry collection and rearrange the sequence. I’m not one who works easily with a crowded desk, unlike many of my colleagues. No, it’s Zen order or Quaker/Shaker simplicity I desire.

The loft is far from the year-round office studio I’d envisioned when we moved here. To get there, though, apart from the money, we’d have to cover the wooden underside of the roof I’ve come to enjoy viewing. The feel would become much different than the funky, well, summer cottage I so much enjoy now – even when it’s fall and spring rather than summer when I most use it.

Besides, to be candid, as I’m able to clean out and dispose of more and more, and as I move increasingly to online, paperless writing and submissions, I don’t really need the big office of those earlier dreams. At least that’s what I’m thinking now.

Who knows what’s really ahead.

MOCKINGBIRD, ESPECIALLY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The amount of wildlife in our yard continually impresses me, especially compared to my childhood home. The abundance of squirrels, of course, and (yuck!) the winter rats we occasionally see but also skunks, opossums, the groundhog (woodchuck) can be added in, plus garden snakes and a rainbow of insects. We must be doing something right, or just be in the right location. (Once, a fox trotted atop my ladder stored over snow, right here in the city.)

A first: amid a throng of blue jays chasing a crow, a mockingbird: was its nest raided or threatened?

But remember, never mock a mockingbird. Like the one singing lustily from our neighbors’ when I’d drive in from work at midnight. They’re quite remarkable musicians.

In a Heartbeat~*~

The influence of the animal kingdom shapes my newest collection of poems, In a Heartbeat, on tap at Barometric Pressures.

GREAT TASTES FROM NEARBY SOURCES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

There are some things we’ve decided not to grow. Sweet corn, for example, requires more space than we’re willing to allocate.

Part of our decision reflects the reality that we have some fine farm markets nearby, and we welcome the exchange of a local economy. The same-day butter-and-sugar or all white ears are unbeatable, especially when accompanied by our own tomatoes. Who says a feast has to be expensive?

A pick-your-own orchard presents another example. We have fond memories of family journeys to Butternut Farm in Meaderboro for peaches and apples. For me, of course, the visit reminds me of living in the orchard in Washington state’s Yakima Valley, so many years ago, now, though I welcome its many varieties other than Delicious. A Gala, anyone?

The annual trek to a Christmas tree farm here in the city feels related – first, to pick out our choice, and then, a few days before Christmas Eve, to harvest it and somehow fit it into the car. We still treasure the bird nests we’ve found in ours some years.

PYRAMID OF VINING BEANS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Back on June 14, I posted a photo of our newly erected tepee for the pole beans. Now that they’ve sprouted and taken off, here’s how it looks.

The vines have climbed to nearly seven feet tall. I'll need a stepladder for picking.
The vines have climbed to nearly seven feet tall. I’ll need a stepladder for picking.

If the plants produce as well as our first round of sugar snap peas did, I’ll be feeling like a pharaoh of beans. (I hear the groans in our household already. So, she might ask, did that make me a sugar-snap daddy?)