AT THE FEEDER

April 8, 2014April 7, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I’ve already mentioned my astonishment at the range of wildlife we’ve had at our property inside the city limits. We’ve enhanced that, of course, by keeping our bird feeders up through the year. In fact, they devour much more in warm weather than in the depths of winter.

Watching them along with the garden can provide a marvelous awareness of the changing seasons. Here are some notes I made in the passing:

EVEN IN WINTER GARB NOW EMERGING

LATE SUMMER

already the goldfinches are losing their bright yellow,
shifting over to their “traveling clothes”
cardinal flower still scarlet
the sunflowers nearly past
will we have any pumpkins in this crazy year?

a stream of crows, maybe a hundred, all headed south
(the ten thousand roosting together in a cemetery, how spooky)

admiring the white gull against blue sky
and the black band on its wing
four white droplets fall away and vanish
never seen that before!

today, two large hawks, soaring

* * *

and the goldfinches lost their yellow …
how sudden and uniform this molting!
now-dun at the feeder

MIDWINTER

cardinals singing boisterously, 5 a.m.

a raven or two in our yard
regular visitors
under our bird feeder

corn / cracked corn in the mix

AN UPDATE, OF SORTS

April 3, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The world of fellow bloggers keeps reminding me how far behind the curve our northern New England calendar can be when it comes to springtime. We still have snow in parts of the yard, for one thing. Yet since we’re near the ocean, our weather is a week ahead of places only a few miles inland, meaning to our west or our north.

Still, there’s been a definite change in the air. A very welcome change. And even a few signs of green, in addition to the final gray puffing of the pussy willow stalks.

Let’s not neglect those gardening bloggers in the Southern Hemisphere, either, reminding us of their approaching autumn.

For many of us, then, it never lets up. Plug on as we will!

~*~

Although I’ve posted in previous seasons on our use of seaweed as a mulch for our garden, I don’t think I reported on the results. Yes, many things get lost in the cracks of daily living.

The short answer is that I’ve been returning to the beach lately to load up on more. A lot more. Since the master gardener in our household can’t seem to get enough of this magical mixture, I fill black plastic bags and tote them home in the trunk as I can. So far, that’s been five trips.

While last year’s weather wasn’t exactly typical, meaning we can’t factor out its impact cleanly, we can say that we had our best garden yet – and the seaweed appeared to play a big role.

Since our soil is largely clay-based, we’re usually plagued with garden slugs, but last year they were at a minimum. Apparently, the slugs don’t like the salty mineral nature of the mulch when it’s fresh, and they don’t like its prickly nature when it’s dry. On top of it all, the plants love the mineral nutrients. And so I’m trying to load up between the end of the frozen weather and mid-May, when the town down the road in Maine closes its beach parking to non-residents like me.

~*~

While I’m still thinking about the snowfall, I can say our seasonal total unofficially came to a hair under 80 inches. (Yes, we can still get more, but it will melt quickly.) We’ve had more, but this just felt onerous. At least we didn’t get any storms that dropped two or three feet in one swoop to push the season’s total into three figures.

Where we live, harsh winters come in one of two varieties: either unusually cold and dry or else with a heavier than normal snow total. This year we had both rolled into one. Four months of snow cover and all those near-zero lows (or below) have taken a toll on even the heartiest among us.

And, yes, the black flies and weeds are already appearing. Mud season is upon us, after all.

A SINKING FEELING

February 10, 2014January 28, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

This is not where I envisioned sinking roots after so many years adrift.

Sinking, as a feeling of being lost or losing, after so many of feeling being lost or losing (or at least losing out). It’s not that I don’t like where I’ve finally landed – far from it. Rather, the sinking feeling comes from the battle with rot and squirrels and flaking paint and plumbing and, well, all the stuff about home ownership you never hear from a Realtor. All the stuff, too, that comes on top of what you’re supposed to be saving by owning rather than renting. (Ha!)

Still, there are other sides. For instance, at last, after so many years, I await asparagus and ferns rising from beds I’ve built from detritus. It may still be the depth of winter here, but I can practically hear what’s already happening in the soil, especially as our years in this spot gain layers.

I think, too, of the generations of families we follow, as if walking on a mosaic of bones.

ASPARAGUS POLLOCK

November 15, 2013November 15, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

AFTER THE FROST

November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As everyone’s been saying, New England had a strange summer. It felt shorter than normal, and despite some uncommonly hot spikes, was overall on the cool side. June was drier than usual, while July was wetter. And we swimmers were finding the ocean already growing uncomfortable toward the end of August, rather than leading into the glorious days of September we often anticipate. (The Gulf of Maine takes time to warm, after all.) I barely got my value’s worth out of my season pass to Fort Foster beach, unlike last year, even though I’m officially fully retired now.

As the buzz went, the fall foliage was better than we’d had in years, although it seemed to run about a week ahead of schedule and then essentially drifted off. And, after a few near misses in September, we were finally hit with killing frosts before the last week of October.

Not that many years ago, I would have said that was the end of the garden season, but that’s no longer the case. The cold gives the Brussels sprouts and kale a sweet edge, the parsley hangs in well for a few more weeks, and root crops like carrots, parsnips, turnips, and leeks can stay in the ground until it’s too frozen to spade.

Maybe part of my sense of a shortened summer can be laid to my revived activity as a novelist, thanks to the Smashwords publishing. With Hippie Drum released at the end of May, I found myself busy getting the word out through June and then spent much of August and September revising and formatting more works. Unexpectedly, but with a renewed sense of direction, I even drafted large sections of new material. What all this meant, of course, was time at the keyboard instead of outdoors.

Now that Ashram is in circulation again, I’m once more reflecting on attempting to establish a right balance in my life – time for exercise and home projects, for instance, renewed cooking and expanded social activity. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally reach that sweet spot.

For now, that includes cleaning up the garden, removing the dead zinnia stalks, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes. Pruning the raspberries. Turning compost. And then there’s moving the fig tree to the cellar, putting the hoses and Smoking Garden lights away, dismantling the hammock, stacking the tomato cages.

Already I’m looking at the dandelion leaves and calculating how soon they’ll be emerging from winter and heading to our plates.

Just don’t tell me it’s going to be a hard winter or there will be tons of snow to shovel.

Balance means savoring just one day at a time, right? Or can it mean all of them?

ALL THE NEIGHBORS’ CATS

November 1, 2013November 15, 2012 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Our yard is claimed by the neighborhood cats. We have no idea where most of them live. The gray one prowls everything. “You’d think after five years here, they’d finally come up to me,” Rachel once said, and nothing’s changed.

The white-bibbed black cat often snoozes in our berm (the bank of shrubs and ivy between the sidewalk and Swamp), while the solid black one beside the catnip watches the bird feeder, and then there are Heifer Cat, Smoky, and Nimrod, who once caught a squirrel in our viewing. Who knows what their owners call them.

My favorite incident was watching a peregrine falcon raid the thistle feeder as I was showering. All the other birds fled in the commotion, but the fearless cat I named Spooky came marching forward, as a hawk. Everything happened so fast, what are you, kitty, really nuts? But the scene cleared without further incident. Hip-hip, for Spooky.

GARDEN POSTSCRIPT

September 29, 2013September 29, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As our gardening season winds down toward the inevitable killing frost, let me follow up on our experiment using seaweed this year. Quite simply, we had our best results ever, and while determining how much of that to attribute to Neptune’s mulch can be difficult, we are resolved to continue.

It was an unusual summer on many counts, often cooler than usual interspersed with uncommon hot spikes, and the rain was unreliable. What we did appreciate was having far fewer garden slugs than usual – something the seaweed supposedly accomplishes.

As for the weeds, well, morning glory has overrun just about everything. Next year we won’t be so tolerant.

Yes, here we are already, looking forward to next year, even as the Brussels sprouts and kale and carrots and turnips and potatoes and … Well, the harvest is far from finished.

THAT FRESH PERSPECTIVE

September 2, 2013September 2, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

When it comes to food, this time of summer is always a revelation, at least here in northern New England. The sheer abundance and variety of fresh produce is such a contrast to the rest of the year. One bite from any of the kinds of tomatoes we harvest is enough to make you ask just what those imitations in the grocery really are. You can go down the list.

Yes, this has been building up, beginning with the asparagus and lettuce in the spring and continuing through the strawberries and blueberries and a number of other crops along the way. Should we even mention peaches and apples, now coming on strong?

Let me argue that there’s nothing more marvelous than a sandwich loaded with real mayonnaise and sliced fresh tomato and nothing else. Forget the bacon. Lettuce is nice, if it hasn’t all bolted. Or a sprig of fresh basil. But that’s it. Pure and simple.

You can put all those cookbooks aside.

Another of those nothing-can-be-better experiences is one that sometimes follows a day at the beach. On my way home, I pull off the highway at a nondescript seafood wholesaler and boatyard where I purchase three one-pound soft-shell “chix” culls – the lobsters that may be missing a claw or simply not be visually perfect enough for the restaurant crowd. If it seems extravagant, I remind myself I’m saving 50 cents a pound, which makes each lobster cheaper than a McDonald’s fish sandwich this time of year, even before you get to New Hampshire’s added eight percent Meals and Rooms Tax aimed at tourists. And the lobsters are from local waters, rather than shipped in from Chile or wherever.

A bit up the road I stop at a farm market, if it’s not Wednesday, when I’d have already hit one of two farmers markets. This time, it’s fresh corn-on-the-cob – ears picked that morning.

As soon as I arrive home, I put a big pot on the stove, go outdoors and shuck the corn, which then goes into the pot once it reaches a full boil. Five minutes later, the corn comes out and the lobsters go in. The water’s already flavored.

Butter goes immediately on the corn, to melt thoroughly before I add fresh-ground pepper.

Ten minutes later, two of the lobsters join the corn on the plate – and that’s it, plus a squirt of lemon in the melted butter. Forget the little dish of butter you get in a restaurant; just use what’s come off the corn. Yummers, as we sometimes say.

So I retreat to the Smoking Garden, where making a mess is no problem, and delight in my classic twin lobster repast as the dialogue in my head asserts the king of France never ate better. Gold flatware and rare porcelain would add nothing to this meal. Julia Child, for all of her insistence on fine culinary technique, would have to admit that all of those skills existed only to try to emulate the wonder of this simple afternoon glory. Tamar Adler, with her advocacy of one-pot meals, would no doubt be on my side here.

The third lobster, you ask? It goes into the refrigerator for lunch or even breakfast the next day. I’ll add a dollop of mayo on the side, for dipping, and find myself re-creating lobster salad, minus the bread.

If we’re really being ambitious, we save all of the shells for chowder stock or lobster ravioli, the latter dish sometimes getting an extra lobster all its own for the meat. Either way, that step really lowers the per-serving cost.

This hardly makes me a foodie or even give me any creds in the kitchen. So? The fact is that we’ll never be able to subsist on the food we raise on our little city-garden. But it, and the local farmers and fishermen we visit, give us many reminders of the inescapable wonder of freshness on the plate. You can’t beat quality ingredients after all, and this is where it all starts.

As Julia would say, Bon Appetit! With or without the king of France in the background.

OCCASION OF CELEBRATION

August 25, 2013 ~ 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.