Category: Home and Garden

OCCASION OF CELEBRATION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

As I posted in a poem back in April, spotting a hummingbird is an occasion of celebration. They’re so tiny and so fast you’re likely to dismiss one as a dragonfly or as some other large, speedy insect if you’re not paying attention. Sometimes you notice more the irregular angles of their zig-zag flight, the motions no other flyer can manage, rather than the bird itself, and then you start observing closely. And sometimes you just happen to look out when one’s hovering nearby, say at the blooming azalea in front of the bay window.

I hadn’t seen any this year until a few weeks ago, when I glimpsed out from our kitchen and noticed one working its way through our stand of burgundy-color bee balm. I called for my wife to come look, but by the time she came over, it had vanished behind the asparagus, and that was it. You have to be quick. And now those blossoms are gone by.

I’d also remarked that we hadn’t seen all that many goldfinches this summer. Sometimes we seem to have thousands, but these things can go in cycles, so I just figured it was an off year.

And then, late yesterday afternoon, I sat down in the far corner of our yard simply to enjoy a cold beer and regard our garden and house from that perspective. Since this is also the glorious time of year I consider high summer, what I viewed was a culmination of so much that had been building up. Everything was quite green and lush, of course, and the garden was punctuated by the red of tomatoes, the yellows of squashes and peppers, and the incredible purples of eggplants, even before I got to the flowers. As I settled in, after admitting to myself the grass needs to be mowed again, I realized this was dinner rush hour for the birds. Who knows why, but they do seem to eat in spurts, at least when it comes to populating our feeders. And here they were, far more than I could count (after all, they’re constantly flitting from one place to another). Not only that, but many of them were goldfinches, perhaps attracted by our sunflowers that have finally started blooming. Mourning doves landed in the grapevine and wild-rose covered branches of the black walnut tree before looping down to the ground under the main feeder, littered with birdseed as it is. Along the tree I could see just the gray flickers of squirrel tails as they raided the ripe nuts from the branches. In short, it was lovely. And the grass seemed to be just the right depth for many of the smaller birds to go grubbing.

That’s when I caught the distinctive flight of the hummingbird, which then did something I’d never before seen: it actually landed on one of those branches, where it quickly became a camouflaged bump on the distant limb. Soon there were two, and I don’t ever remember seeing two at once. (Well, maybe once in Maine, at a friends’ feeder outside their kitchen slider door?) Still, a first, as far as our yard and garden go.

Minutes later, I spotted one working its way through the zinnias about a dozen feet from me. How meticulously it hovering above a single flower and vacuumed each petal. Next thing I knew, it was gone and then one followed by a second came shooting inches past my head, even as I ducked instinctively. Well, that was the second … and third … time in my life I’ve had to dodge that bullet! They certainly seemed to having fun, as birds and bees are said to do.

It’s been said that meditation may have originated in the art of hunting. That is, in learning to sit very still for extended periods of time and just let the wildlife come to you, if you’re worthy. So I sat very still, the way I would in Quaker meeting for worship or in a half-lotus position on my meditation cushion. Over time, I saw at least four hummingbirds working their way around the yard, swooping from the trees to the Joe Pye weeds, the sunflowers, the zinnias and cosmos, and somewhere behind me, before landing repeatedly in the trees.

All of what was happening could be considered as an epiphany, those special moments when the Holy One appears or becomes manifest in an individual’s life. No, I’m not suggesting that the hummingbirds are divine or even angelic, but this was clearly a reminder of the times and ways we are blessed. You can’t just go looking for it and expect it to happen. You can only be receptive and grateful when it does. You also have to know what you’re seeing and be able to name it, knowing how rare and wonderful it is. Along with the simple pleasures of having everything momentarily perfect. Isn’t that a definition of miracle?

Soon, of course, the hummingbird sightings became fewer and fewer. The ones in the yard were probably already migrating from further north and bulking up for their long flight in a few weeks across the Gulf of Mexico. Their season here is nearly over. The finches, meanwhile, will be around longer before donning their gray traveling cloaks, as one friend says, and then heading south.

On our part, all this was soon followed by our own time for dinner with its fresh sweetcorn, tomatoes, and basil eaten al fresco in the golden rays of the setting sun.

What was I saying about an occasion of celebration? Indeed.

SMOKING GARDEN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment
At night these strands twinkle.

I’ve mentioned the space we whimsically call the Smoking Garden – the funky patio, as it were, beside the barn.

It’s great for late afternoon and evening dining all summer, or parties ringed by Tiki torches, though it’s been a while.

Even so, here it is.

BIRDS AS BYSTANDERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A ring of blue jays is sounding an alarm somewhere close by. Who knows what it is this time.

So I stop typing, get up to look out the window, just in case they’re in view. What I see instead is a grandstand of smaller birds – sparrows, juncos, chickadees – all sitting contentedly on branches and facing the action.

Here we have it: the idle curiosity of us all.

STACKING FIREWOOD AS A METAPHOR

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Because we rely on a wood stove to heat part of our house, one of my annual rituals involves ordering and stacking timber. Living where we do in northern New England, there’s plenty of forest to draw on and we can anticipate suffering through an extended winter. With the advance of “renewable energy” sources, however, we’re also competing with the local electrical utility, which has begun using wood to fire some generators. Since we reside in a small city and have full-time occupations (though not always of the paying variety), we depend on the services of independent entrepreneurs who proclaim, as the saying goes, CUT – SPLIT – DELIVERED. Cordwood, for the stove, being a couple of inches shorter than fuel for the fireplace. It’s a crucial distinction.

This is not something I grew up with. Nobody we knew had a working fireplace, or if they did, it wasn’t used in our presence. My appreciation of wood fires originated in Boy Scout outings with a troop dedicated to backpacking and primitive camping – quite a feat, when you think of it, for a troop based in southwestern Ohio. My first-hand experience with working fireplaces came later, with my residency in an ashram in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania, in a single winter of living in town in Washington State, and in the house I owned for a couple of years in the Rust Belt – a half-dozen years, altogether. Thus, my sustained encounters have been largely in the past dozen years in New Hampshire, though I suspect the applications are fairly universal.

Ordering in itself is an act of faith. You find a phone number – perhaps in one of the weekly neighborhood newspapers or perhaps on a kiosk in a local store or perhaps by word of mouth, and eventually dial (one of my delays is making sure I could pay for the wood on delivery; the timing of our income-tax refund is often a factor); usually you wind up leaving a message on an answering machine and hoping for a reply. Even then, there’s no guarantee the woodcutter will reply or follow through on a promise to deliver. For the dealer, arranging for trees can be iffy – a warm, wet winter, for instance, may keep cutters out of the woods. One year, this meant our pile never arrived, and we were stonewalled on our inquiries. These days, our firewood comes from a man in his early seventies. How much longer he’ll continue, of course, is in question. In typical Yankee farmer tradition, he shows up when he’s ready – anywhere from a month to three or four months after he’s expected. We don’t need to dicker over price – he’s well in line with the going rate, and I’ve always been impressed with the quality he delivers.

After some irregularity in our annual pace, we’ve settled on ordering four cords a year, green wood we hope will arrive in time to lose much of its sap before late autumn. Since we’ve been burning about three-fourths of that amount, I’m hoping to get ahead enough to have enough well-seasoned wood, having had more than a year to turn from yellow to gray, to sustain us – a goal that still eludes me. Maybe we won’t have the creosote buildup this year that has afflicted our chimney by March the past two years, but I can’t convince my wife that the savings in purchasing green wood outweighs the cost of the chimney sweep, something she says we have to do anyway. Seasoned wood also burns hotter and catches more easily. Maybe this year will be different. I keep hoping.

The delivery comes in two parts, each one dumped in our driveway to produce a lovely, chaotic heap of timber that also releases a heavenly aroma, especially after a light rainfall. And then I typically set to work, between my required rounds at the office (who knows what will happen, now that I’m retired) and usual household activities. Let me admit, I don’t rest easily while the driveway is covered; I’m like a beaver when it hears running water. So stack I do, probably more than is healthy for a largely sedentary creature of my age and condition.

By now, I have something of a routine down – maybe that’s in the nature of a ritual, too. The location of the two firewood stacks has been determined, in part as a consequence of landscaping decisions by previous owners of the property and in part as a result of my own tinkering. Half of the wood will go on one side of the house, by the lilacs; the other half, on the other side of the house, well be behind the barn and our shed.

The ritual sets in as I fill my wheelbarrow and begin moving the wood, piece by piece. Immediately, I search out pieces that are squared off, having four sides rather than three; these are essential for constructing the corners. Some are flatter than others, and will be used for the lower levels of what has some resemblance to a filled box or brickwork – three pieces set at a right angle atop three more, alternating as high as needed. Eventually, the warped pieces begin fitting snuggly, and if there’s any lean to the line, I want it to slant toward the pile itself to let gravity add to the stability of the stack. At first, the task of reducing the pile appears overwhelming; there’s no visible progress at the source, and little on the other end. Here I must rely on previous experience, remembering that it’s something that is accomplished, one step at a time. The hard work has already been done – the cutting, moving, and splitting of the wood.

A rhythm sets in. I recognize that each piece has already been handled multiple times. Now I handle it at least twice – once to put it into the wheelbarrow, and again when I add it to the stack. There, it may be turned or jiggled for a secure fit in the emerging puzzle. It will be handled at least twice more, once to be carried to the kitchen and then to be placed in the stove. The ashes, of course, will be carried out and spread on the garden. For now, I regard the wood itself, trying to identify the species (maple, birch, oak, ash, beech, mostly) as well as the color and shape. No two pieces are exactly the same, and some that are gnarled or curved are placed aside, reserved for the top of the stack, where stability won’t be quite as essential.

A pattern emerges, or rather a fascinating movement of visual design. Not that visible harmony is on my mind as the pieces amass; instead, my concern is for engineering security and solidity against settling and the elements. I long learned that no matter how stable the stack feels now, it will slip in the months ahead; while one stack will begin dwindling by Christmas or my birthday, and its interlocking tensions need hold only so long, I am planning on the other stack staying in place a year beyond that, so its lines need to remain shipshape. If anything, I try to anticipate the many small shifts, so that the weight of one row will brace another. Still, there’s a degree of chance on how any of this will fare, no matter my care. A Zen Buddhist saying flits through my mind, “In nothingness, form; in form, nothingness,” though “chaos” or “chance” substitute well for “nothingness” here. In other words, look and see: things come together.

The labor also has me reflecting on how I write a poem – or many other works, for that matter. I usually start with a pile of debris – observations and scattered thoughts I’ve jotted down and collected. I’m not one for formal structures or invention; to my senses, that’s more like carpentry or cabinetry, and the related ritual would be stacking 2x4s from the lumberyard. No, I’m sticking closer to the grain, or the quest of exploring wilderness. The irregular spaces in the stack, resulting from half-moon ends and triangular thrusts and other geometric possibilities coming together fascinate me more. The negative gives dimension to positive, shadow plays into light, and small critters will likely find shelter somewhere in the heart of all this.

I can also see the woodpile as a metaphor for my faith community, though there the number of craggy pieces may be multiplied, and I keep hoping for more new greenwood – we seem to be seasoning a bit too much for a good mix, and I’m not alone in that observation.

Either way, you work with what you are given.

So here I am, pleased to have two woodpiles in place by early July. One measures roughly six by six by six, the other 3½ by ten by six – each about 210 cubic feet, in other words, short of the purchased measure (a cord being 128 cubic feet), but fitting the normal practice. I’m not complaining. Besides, I pack tight in my stacking, unlike the typical woodcutter. With the promise of winter comfort, of caring for my family, of coming home from the office (as I often did) around midnight and loading the stove for the remainder of the night, I stand back for a moment, admiring my sculpture. Yes, Jesus did warn against the man who built a huge barn, expecting to hoard forever, so my regard of my woodpiles is tempered. Still, I know the arrangement will go too quickly, and the process will happen all over again next year, if I’m blessed.

THE PERSONAL STAMP

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Until landing here, I’d never given much thought to selecting a garden plot. Flat, well-drained sunny soil was a given. Crops could be put out in easily marked rows. The Midwestern loam or Pacific Northwest’s volcanic ash-enriched ground demanded little, other than perhaps a bit of fertilizer boost. What came with our house and its small barn, however, were another matter – one abetted by a decade of deferred maintenance. On the driveway side, hedges had grown to overhang what’s now a kitchen garden and the ground was overrun by invasive ivy. Behind the house, one lilac bush stood nearly three-stories tall. Large limbs rubbed against the barn and blocked the pathway. Three garage-size brush piles soon emerged in the swamp, awaiting a fire department burn permit. It becomes a long history. What I was quickly introduced to is what my wife calls “dead dirt,” almost as hard as asphalt (plucking the stealth maples often required pliers), and then squirrels, especially as they dug up daffodil bulbs they had no intention of eating.

The process of restoring soil is another labor, one that becomes evident years later when the stealth maples slip from the earth, offering no resistance, a result of mulching, pruning, appropriate groundcover taking hold, and composting. In short, the improvement reflects a larger repetition of annual cycles of practice.

Moreover, I’d not appreciated the extent to which actions by earlier residents now shaped what we would build on. For starters, the siting of the house, barn, and driveway likely took advantage of drainage. Later, the construction of a gravel patio in shade on the western side of the barn – screened by a row of lilacs – has become so integral I cannot envision another use for the space, which we call the Smoking Garden, with the panels beside it that we filled with ferns, which have proved more difficult to establish than one might imagine. With two “springs” at the top of the swamp (we argue whether the pipes that feed them come from neighbors’ sump pumps or some other source), the seasonal flow of water becomes even more problematic. Combined with variations in sunlight levels and the soil itself – part of the yard remain quite hard, including asphalt fill – to see what grows well, and where, is eye-opening. For instance, our first season, we planted six pussy willow sprigs. One quickly croaked, followed by another. A third has barely grown over the next decade. Two others have shown moderate growth. The sixth, by the more active “spring,” however, has flourished and been the source of a handful of others planted close by.  The asparagus bed, meanwhile, was built atop an earlier raised bed at the top of the yard. And so on.

What has evolved is something that reflects our own style – more natural than formal, low-maintenance or at least relatively low-cost, and often eclectic. Our little city farm hardly provides enough to sustain us, but it does offer a taste of the changing seasons in all of the amazement that truly fresh produce delivers, as well as celebrating the unfolding of the year itself. This is far from the mossy Zen gardens I thought I would have desired, places I now perceive as expensive to build and maintain, or even from orderly, rectangular beds of rational efficiency. I love sitting beside the berm, in the far corner along the street, sipping coffee or wine – or, especially, in the Smoking Garden as late afternoon slips into night, with our torches blazing and clear lights strung overhead twinkling.

I love, too, gazing at the gardens when they’re buried in three feet of snow, appearing so pure and mysterious. They are both all potential and memory of the previous year – the hummingbirds and finches, butterflies and lady bugs.

LION’S TOOTH SALAD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Maybe it was simply a day of firsts.

As I was lunching al fresco for the first time this year, having savored our first asparagus of the season (which I’d sautéed with minced garlic leaf in olive oil and then fried two eggs atop the mixture), I realized I was still hungry. So glancing up, I noticed a sprout of dandelion, got up, plucked a leaf, brought it to the table, wiped it in some of the remaining egg yolk, and … it was good. It was very good. Somehow, the yolk overcame whatever bitterness I expected at the end of the bite.

So I harvested the remainder of that cluster (which also doubled as weeding, let’s be candid), went indoors to rinse it and fry another egg to serve with it, covered the resulting salad with salt and coarse-ground fresh pepper … and it was still good. Very good.

So for dinner, another round, this time with a fresh mustard vinaigrette my wife had just made … and it was still good. Very good.

Maybe I’m hooked. Yes, we’ve read some fine food writers who’ve extolled their pleasure in fresh dandelion every spring, before the leaves turn too bitter and too tough. Until now, though, our dandelions were treasured only by our pet rabbits.

Not anymore. Another first.

Now, to see how it works blanched. Or maybe as a spinach substitute, say in a Florentine-style dish.

Not that I have any intention of turning the Red Barn into a food blog. Oh, no. I know my limitations.

ALL HAIL THE DETERMINED GARDENER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Although I do my share of the weeding and much of the spading, I’m not the gardener. My wife is the one who studies the varieties of plants, selects and orders, fusses and sows, evaluates soil and sunlight, while I’m more likely to mow, do the composting, construct the raised beds, and transport ferns, Quaker ladies, and ox-eye daisies from the wild. In recent years, our elder daughter has taken delight in getting seedlings started and transplanted, especially, as well as making jams from the fruit we harvest. (The younger one could care less.)

While my dad, mainly, raised vegetables and tomatoes behind the garage when I was growing up, and my mother fussed over flowers that generally failed, and despite my later experiences living on a hippie farm and then the ashram as well as my first wife’s efforts in Ohio, Indiana, and the fertile desert country of Washington state, my perspectives on gardening center on Rachel and her world. Everything before was simply preparation. Little did I suspect, when we set out to buy a house as part of our marriage, how much she was calculating garden opportunities; many of the urban New England properties, surprisingly, have little usable space for raising plants. Only after bidding successfully on the house we now inhabit did we learn that it included not just a small but manageable strip beside the driveway but a half-lot on the other side of the house, as well – the side we’ve come to call the swamp.

But that’s the beginning of another story.

EPHEMERALS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Much of the delight in life comes as surprises, especially when you’re paying attention. Moreover, they’re often of a very short time, a fleeting breath. Even when you’re anticipating an event, a certain unpredictability remains. You might be watching the sinking sun along with a bank of clouds, for instance, but a slight shift in conditions can spell the difference between a spectacular sunset and a dull glow in a woolly pile. And that glorious sunset, when it arises, changes second by second before dimming within five minutes.

The same can be said of family life or even a party or artistic endeavor. Much of the time, though, we’re too engaged in other matters to revel in the brief thrills. We need a bit of openness — what some call margins — in our daily activities to allow for such curiosity and wonder.

After the long, slow months of winter where I live, signs of quickening are appearing. In the early morning, the male cardinals, who have been singing defiantly from mid-January, now erupt with an insistent joyfulness, inciting other birds to join in, with hints of what’s just ahead. I haven’t been out in the woods after dusk, but any day now, the peepers will begin their sparkling chorus in their vernal ponds — the pools that will shrink to nothing by midsummer.

In our own yard, the first of the spring ephemerals (how I love that word, as well as the phrase “vernal pond” — they’re such fun on the tongue!) are now blooming, however timidly, even though most of the yard’s still covered in six inches of snow or more. (And rapidly melting.) I could present a checklist of what I expect will follow, but there are no promises — winter takes its toll, after all.

For me, this has been the first winter in a long, long time in which I can admit to suffering cabin fever. I’d have to go back to my “sabbatical” of writing more than a quarter century ago, or the ashram a decade-and-a-half before that, to find a stretch in which I didn’t have the demands of an office away from home weighing upon me. That is, requiring me to leave the house daily for hours on end. Admittedly, this winter hasn’t been completely job-free: November and December were still quite busy on that front. But the New Year turned toward retirement and new focus. What I’m experiencing is not boredom — far from it. I’ve had a full plate of writing and reading, for one thing, and I’ve enjoyed more evening and weekend social activities than I’d been able to attend in, well, it seems like forever. Rather, this strain of cabin fever feels like a time of recharging, getting ready to burst forth with the warming weather, in any number of surprising ways, if I’m lucky. So you see, this affliction is actually a kind of luxury. For now.