More Than Meets the Eye

Hidden gems.

 

Ever since the hailstorm rained destruction on our garden in late June, we have repaired what we could, pulled up what we couldn’t, and valiantly hoped for the best.  For the most part, our hopes have fared better than our expectations.  Squash plants and chard – the broadleafed bullseyes of the storm – resiliently revived, as numerous recent mealtimes can attest.  Our coolers are jammed with beets and turnips unfazed by the battering, and early evidence portends a bumper potato crop in the making.  We’ve harvested enough garlic to keep all of Transylvania “vampire free”, and the broccoli, kohlrabi and peppers are well on their way with downpayments on future harvests already in hand.  

 

Tomatoes, however, incurred a more enduring setback.  Though most of the plants survived in various states of woundedness, the fruit that was already maturing on the vines was knocked to the ground or pocked into disfigurement.  Gratefully, more have come along to whet our anticipation, but the few we have brought in, reddened and ripened, wear their scars.  “The spirit is willing,” the old saying tells the truth of it, “but the flesh is weak.”  We have passed the subsequent weeks trimming off broken branches, clipping to trellises drooping ones, scavenging for beans and zucchinis and the occasional pepper, and weeding.  

 

Weeding, indeed.  The hail occasioned scant interruption for the purslane, miscellaneous grasses and intrusively choking “this and thats” which, if evidence is to be counted, found the onslaught stimulating, even vivifying.  Row by row we have worked our way from one end, across the center aisle into the next section, and then the next before arriving this morning at the final row, bordering the easterly fenceline.  It was, after all, the least urgent – occupied by the newer asparagus plants that have long since completed their springtime flourish.  It turns out, however, that the asparagus was not alone.

 

Lost amidst the overgrowth was a volunteer tomato plant, an echo of last year’s crop.  Deprived of a cage or a trellis, its vines were left to meander among the grasses…

hidden; 

held; 

sheltered; 

protected.  

And there, revealed by Lori’s yanking and clearing, were two perfect and perfectly ripened tomatoes.  

 

Gifts.  

Delivered lovingly into our disbelieving hands by these grassy Good Samaritans who had taken the errant vines as their own and kept them, protectively safe, until they could hand them, trustingly, into our care.  

 

As if to say, “we’ve done what we could.  The rest is up to you.  Enjoy.”

 

Of course, we will.                   

With amazement, delight, and slightly chastened gratitude.  

For the “good” that has been accomplished by that which we were convinced was “evil” - 

alien, 

invading, 

choking,

pernicious, and...

...rescuing.

As with so many things, it turns out that there is more to be seen than what is readily seen.

Crowing, Exploding, and Concern for Each Other

I’ve been thinking a lot, this week, of Sam and Gallo – our two unintentional roosters who both perished last summer during the “Great Raccoon Invasion;” the rooster, and the notion of community. As indicated, we hadn’t planned on having the cockerals.  They were, so to speak, an accidental acquisition.  By the time we recognized their true identity, however, they had wheedled their way into our hearts – the crowing, notwithstanding.  In truth, we adjusted to their daily vocalizations, and once the chicken yard suddenly fell tragically silent, we missed them.  There was something grounding about their antiphonal song.  

 

We don’t, however, live in a vacuum, and we had talked with our neighbors.  We place a high value on neighborliness, and the last thing we wanted to do was alienate those who share our adjacent space.  It is a fiction, after all, that roosters only crow at dawn.  They do that, indeed, but they don’t stop there.  They crow when they are feisty, they crow when they are bored, and if there happen to be two of them they crow when they are feeling especially competitive, mounting a “call-and-response” chorus to rival any gospel choir.  Our neighbors scoffed at any perturbation, and even lamented with us when the crowing ceased.  They said they missed the sound. But still, one never knows.  The birds can be precociously loud.  In truth, we couldn’t help but guess that the roosters made significant withdrawals from our relational bank account, with few enough compensatory deposits.  

 

The roosters have been on my mind this 4^th of July holiday weekend.  It is fireworks season – fireworks having become synonymous with independence for some unknown reason.  Nothing apparently says “freedom” like artificially colored gun powder.  Once upon a time, fireworks were prohibited in Iowa, what with the obvious nuisance of them, the fire hazard and susceptibility to personal injury and property damage.  All that changed a couple of years ago, ostensibly for “libertarian” and recreational reasons, though I wouldn’t be surprised if potential tax revenue had something to do with the loosening of restrictions.  And so we have it now that fireworks are sold by licensed merchants within some calendar parameters that are presumably honored, and exploded by citizens according to other parameters that are largely ignored. 

 

I’ve got no vendetta against fireworks, by the way.  I have a sentimental spot in my heart for fireworks for unrelated reasons having to do with the opposite of independence.  But it is an interesting phenomenon in the context of what it means to be “in community”.  Like our roosters crowing, they don’t explode in a vacuum.  They have a social impact – on pets, on combat veterans, on those who simply prefer quietude.  A community fireworks display, at a designated time and place, is one thing.  Random neighborhood explosions are another.  Exclamation points on the notion of personal freedom, they are, with their percussive disruptions – like the willful truck pulling a long flatbed trailer hauling some piece of heavy machinery that pulled into our driveway recently in order to turn around by backing out and into our mailbox with both destructive consequences and apparent impunity – an exercise in not giving a damn whether anybody else gives a damn.  

 

We are in a public time in which it is hard to be bothered by anyone else’s bother.  We are, after all, “free” – from what is pretty clear; for what is harder to discern.  But we are pretty sure our patriotic forebears died so that we could be free to annoy each other.  Perhaps when the fireworks sales tents have closed and the darkened skies have cleared and the night has finally fallen silent, we can concentrate enough to think about it, and come to some clearer understanding about the tension between freedom and responsibility; between the relative significance of me and you and us together.

 

In the meantime, “Bang!”  And “cock-a-doodle-do.”  Sleep well.