Gardening is For Risk Takers

Gardening has made me more of a risk-taker. Don’t laugh; I’m serious. When I moved into my first home after college, I immediately set off for the local hardware store and bought a flat of impatiens. I planted them in a neat row outside my little house trailer (again, serious). Having grown up in the woods, I knew these particular flowers would grow in the shade provided by the maple tree that sheltered my home. I spaced them exactly as the tag instructed and smiled all summer every time I came home and saw the happy pattern of pink- purple – orange – pink – purple – orange. For the next few years I planted more impatiens and when I moved to a sunnier locale, I planted petunias. I walked past the complicated perennials in their big pots with their big price tags. I didn’t have the budget for that – and what if I killed them as I had every house plant I’d ever offered shelter to? As a gardener, I played it safe.

When my husband and I bought our first house it came with a long gardening history. A huge established perennial bed loaded with coreopsis, iris, dame’s rocket, lily of the valley, coneflowers, and peonies filled the foundation of the old carriage house just outside my kitchen door.  A 60 foot long asparagus bed and tidily contained raspberry patch grew along the edges of the property, along with gooseberries (?) and justaberries (???), strawberries, black raspberries, rhubarb, blackberries, and seven fruit trees! My gardening education took a steep curve upward. Sadly, I must report in the first year alone we killed the peach tree, tilled under the weed-infested strawberries, and could only stare in confusion at the gooseberries and justaberries – what do you do with those?

Our Carriage House Foundation Garden (circa 1996)

My greatest gardening goal was simply not to kill anything else. And we did get better. I learned to freeze and can almost everything we grew.  I even planted more perennials and started an overly ambitious vegetable garden which mostly fed the deer and rabbits. And then I got pregnant and handed my garden over to the weeds and my husband.

(Almost) Screen Free Vacation

We’re taking a vacation next week! It will be a whole week with no animals to feed, no gardens to worry over, no grass to mow, no screens to dull our minds! Or mostly no screens.

When I was a kid we spent two weeks at the beach every summer. I loved those weeks. We rose with the sun, surf-fished endlessly, played in the water, and lay on the sand reading. We always arrived at the shore with a stack of books we’d selected the week before when Mom took us to the Bookateria, a local used book store that let you trade in old paperbacks for credit. We each got to fill a grocery bag full of books for our vacation. I loved the possibilities of those books and the long days and quiet evenings spent turning the pages. Some nights we played Hearts, Parcheesi, Risk, or Rack-O. We basked in our parents’ undivided attention. On afternoons when the sun burned too hot for the beach, we’d tramp across the dunes to Newman’s Shell Shop and spend hours studying the shells sold by the pound and savoring the air conditioning before picking out that year’s hermit crabs.  Some nights we’d hunt ghost crabs and study the stars. Other nights Dad would build a bonfire on the beach and we’d fish through the tide change. We’d come home from vacation just in time to start back to school with our coolers full of fish, our skin bronzed, and our books crackling from the sand still left between the pages.

The one thing that was never a part of our beach vacations was a television. Amazingly, every cottage we rented was without one! After I grew up, my mom confessed that each summer when we pulled in to our rented cottage, Dad would demand that we all help him untie the car top carrier and stow the beach chairs and buckets under the house while Mom would hurry in, locate the TV, unplug it and hide it in the Master bedroom closet where it would stay for the duration of the vacation. Pretty clever, my parents.

The Teepee is Ready to Go!

The teepee is up! I know you were not aware of my Native American roots, but that’s only because I have none. The teepee is for my beans. It’s always the most impressive feature in my garden, causing people to ooo and awe over my gardening prowess. But really, it’s no big deal. You can build one, too.

The teepee costs nothing and can be assembled in a half hour or less, depending on your available resources. All you need is a few sticks – three long, three medium – and a bunch of twine. Baling twine, which is littered in most every nook and crevice of my barn, works best. After this winter, sticks are everywhere. If you haven’t got a pile in the back of your yard, stop by a park, woods, etc., and grab a few off the ground. I promise no one will mind. If you’re local and need sticks – c’mon over. We picked up fifteen pick-up truck loads of fallen branches after this winter’s ice storm. (You can grab some free baling twine while you’re here.)

Once you have your sticks and twine assembled, choose a relatively level spot that gets plenty of sun.

Bring on the Fat! (Really!)

When my youngest son was first diagnosed with alopecia areata, we desperately sought answers. All the traditional doctors at the esteemed hospitals told us there was nothing we could do. I refused to believe that and sought alternative treatments. This led us to a doc in Lancaster who practiced what I’ll call ‘wellness medicine.’ He doesn’t have a sign and he isn’t in the book, but through combing the internet, autoimmune message boards, and facebook, we found him.

We waited nearly six months for our appointment. It was pouring rain on the day that Ian and I set out for his office. We found it deep in the heart of the city of Lancaster in a basement of an unmarked old house. I was anxious, but committed to seeing it through so we waited in a damp, dimly lit room for over thirty minutes. The only literature available to read consisted of hippie newsletters full of information on making your own kefir, recipes for bulgur (what?), CSA’s, organic farms, and endless rants against the corrupt food system controlled by our even more corrupt government.

When the doctor appeared, he was a friendly bear of a man and Ian took to him immediately. He talked to us extensively about what Ian currently ate, looked in his mouth, felt his glands, scraped his skin, and took a saliva test. Then he overwhelmed my mind with his talk about how upside down our government’s nutritional standards are. He said Ian needed more animal fats and salt in his diet. He prescribed homeopathic remedies like butter capsules and vitamins he had specifically developed for kids in today’s American food culture. While Ian munched on a piece of beef jerky from the jar on his desk, I frantically wrote down everything he said about raw milk, grass-fed meat, full-fat cheeses, and bacon grease.

Sugar Addict

Is sugar addictive? Scientists and dieticians have debated this question, but most of us know the truth. Indeed it is. Powerfully so. The National Institutes of Health quietly agrees also, although they didn’t take out an ad on the front page of the New York Times to announce it.

Here’s what I know – If I eat one handful of M&M’s, I’m going to want another handful so badly that I’ll steal it out of my kid’s Halloween stash if I have to.  But when I stop eating white sugar for longer than a few days, I no longer crave it. There have been three Cadbury crème eggs (my biggest weakness in terms of hideously-bad-for-you-but-OMG-deliciousness) sitting on the top of my dresser since Easter morning. Usually my hubby is much trickier in hiding my eggs, but he had just returned that morning at 1am from a week of digging foundations by hand in rural Honduras in 100 degree heat. Instead of finding my Cadbury eggs in my sock drawer or inside my pillowcase, they were unceremoniously dumped on top of my dresser, Happy Easter. I think he gets points for even managing to produce them in light of his previous week. At any rate, those eggs are still sitting there over two weeks later. I haven’t even touched them because I know that the moment I do, I’ll eat all three. I stare at them every day, but don’t remove them. It’s like the cigarette in Augustus’ mouth in The Fault in Our Stars – I look at the killing thing every day to gain power over it.

Breaking the sugar habit is tough for all of us. Nearly everything edible you buy has added sugar. Check out any bread, yogurt, condiment, cracker, spaghetti sauce, prepared food, even hot dogs – high fructuous corn syrup or sugar is an added ingredient. It’s very difficult to avoid sugar.

Put It All on the Line (Literally)

Monday morning on my run, I noticed a new clothesline at a neighbor’s house. It’s one of those single pole types with multiple rows of lines filling a metal frame. Shirts on hangers hung neatly from each row and waved in the breeze. I didn’t stop to be certain, but my casual in-flight count was 24 shirts! That’s a lot for such a small set up.

At our house we have a single line with pulleys on both ends. One pulley is attached to a pole on our deck and the other is atop a long metal pole secured in the ground with cement. Because our line runs down hill, the pole is extra tall.

It’s surprising to me that more of my neighbor’s don’t utilize a clothesline. A dryer is one of the biggest energy hogs in the house. Our electric bill goes down by half in the summer thanks to solar powered hot water and the clothesline. I resisted the line for too many years thinking it would be too time consuming, too labor-intensive, too ugly.

Now when I drive up my driveway and see the clothes blowing in the breeze, it makes me smile. And I look forward to the five minutes I spend each morning hanging clothes out. It’s my time to listen to the birds, take in the sunshine, and be left alone. No one ever offers to help hang out the laundry (except my father-in-law’s wife who understands the sacred space created by clotheslines).