A Lot to Go Through for a Song

The baton has been tapped and the symphony has officially begun.   The players are the 17-year cicadas that have emerged in full force, and though the instrumentation is a bit narrow -- something like an oboe on steroids -- it's really quite an impressive sound.  Truth be told, it's almost deafening; a wave-like undulation of varying intensities.

We had fair warning.  The media had earlier put us on alert, but I'll confess to inattention.  Then, Saturday morning, while walking outside with the dogs, Lori was troubled by the witness of an apparent beetle infestation of almost biblical proportions.  Rushing back inside, she tore into Google Images trying to identify the beetle at hand.  "They are everywhere," she noted with alarm and obvious concern for the garden.  Unsuccessful with the internet, she nudged me outside to have a look. 

Closer inspection betrayed the truth.  It was true:  they were everywhere.  Dozens on virtually every grassy stem.  According to news reports, a single tree can bear up to 40,000 -- 1.5 million per acre.  No wonder Lori's first concern was the garden.  Plague-like, all that was missing was Cecil B. Demille, Moses and the Egyptian Pharaoah.  Or maybe Alfred Hitchcock.  Anyone the least bit arachnophobic would have readily labeled it a horror movie.  But there was also fascination.  Harmless, now that we recognized what they were, we could accede to closer observation -- and fascination.

The "beetles" were in reality the exoskeletons from which the cicadas were emerging.  Pale green and almost translucent, the newly liberated insects dried themselves on the tall grass stems, defenseless, and offered themselves up to the gods of transformation.  By mid-day they had grown to a two-inch body size and found their adult colors -- orange veins and big red eyes. By mid-afternoon the music had begun -- the males trying their aural best to attract feminine attention.  They have my sympathy.  I've been to junior high dances.  It's tough enough to get yourself noticed when you are simply one among a few dozen competitors.  I can't imagine what it's like for the poor cicada.  At least we could try out an interesting dance move.  All these guys have is a single instrument identical to the ones that everybody else in the tree is playing.  Volume seems to be the only variable virtuosity.  By evening they were venturing their first flight.

They will be gone in a handful of weeks.  By then we will be deaf or inured to the sound.  Then the troops will once again march under ground until their next concert in 2031.   I doubt I will miss them -- the sound, but also the concentration.  Even knowing what they are and their harmlessness, the sheer numbers are a little creepy.

Still, it's impressive what all they go through -- 17 years underground, a climb up into the open, bursting out of a shell, drying off and stretching their wings -- just to make a little music.  So to speak.

Good luck, little guys.  I'm pulling for you.

Where the Heart Is

Home.  Some describe it in relational terms -- "where, when you go there, they have to take you in," according to Robert Frost.  For Dorothy, there was "no place like home," and there would be no relief until she could physically return there.  Emily Dickinson took the opposite view -- that "where thou art, that is home."  But for at least two of the chickens, Pliny the Elder got it right:  "home is where the heart is."  And their heart is very specifically located.

It started a month ago when the two Red Stars arrived.  Following conventional wisdom I settled them into the coup annex -- that modest secondary structure located in the general vicinity of the primary coop, but separated by mesh fencing to protect the new arrivals from pecking order battles that can mount into deadly escalations.  The idea is for the settled hens to become familiar with the new neighbors long enough to forget that they haven't always been together.

The requisite two-weeks passed and I introduced the Stars to the larger flock.  Afternoon passed without incident, but that evening as everyone was drifting inside the run, Lori noticed that one of the Barred Rocks was roughing up the smaller of the two Stars.  She heroically intervened and reestablished the previous segregation.  In subsequent days I united the flock during daylight hours, but returned the Red Stars to their annex for roosting.

Now weeks later, that's where it stands.  Days are spent in united free-ranging, but as darkness approaches the division emerges -- the older nine ascend the ramp into their coop, while the newer two drift over to the edge of the fence line near the annex and wait for me to help them home.  Safety is no longer the issue -- they are all perfectly happy in each others company.  Rainstorms have sent them all running amiably for common shelter.  They share the same food and water and nesting boxes.  They scurry around happily side by side most of the day.

Then it is as though dusk blows some kind of a whistle.  Regardless of the day's events, nightfall sends the older hens up and the newer hens over -- quite literally over the fence -- with help.  The two follow me over to the edge and squat, waiting for me to pick them up, one by one, and drop them into their own little corner of their own little world.

I'll admit that it's sweet.  I will also acknowledge that it's tiresome.  We'll be sitting on the deck, enjoying the free entertainment of the 11 pecking their way around the enclosure when, as if on a signal, the two groups move in their separate directions.  The Stars kindly but assertively look our way, as if to say, "We'd like to go to bed now."  And I comply.

It could, I suppose, be the residue of traumatic memories -- a kind of Freudian imposition of unspoken boundaries.  But I don't think so.  By all appearances they are content in each other's company.  And then there are those who locate responsibility squarely at my feet.  I have been complicit, they argue, in patterning a habit the hens are now unwilling to break.  To some extent, I'll concede their point.  I am an indulgent flockster.  Those who have observed this have noted that in their second life they would like to come back as one of our chickens.  Fair enough.  I'm an enabler.

But I am convinced there is more to it than mere routine.  More than memory; more than habit, I rather believe, as Pliny surmised, it has something to do with the location of their heart.  It's as though they are saying, "we'll spend our days in whatever way makes sense -- in wild adventure or pursuit of basic sustenance, in deep contemplation or lively social engagement -- but at the end of the day we'd prefer to simply go home.  Where our comb-headed, feathery little heart is."

Which, come to think of it, sounds a lot like me.

So, I suppose I am good with it.  But it sure would be nice if I could teach them to close their eyes, click their heels together and cluck something like, "There's no place like the annex..." and miraculously be there without my assistance.

But I doubt the ruby slippers would fit their little claws.

Life is a Verb

Life is a verb.  Grammarians would dispute this on technical grounds, but their correctness rings hollow in the experience of life itself.  All is movement -- seed to stem to leaf to fruit to seed again and compost; sand to stone; falling rain to rising evaporation.  Life is in motion -- a concerto moving among allegros and andantes; whole notes and sixteenths and triplets and rests, but the music never really ends.   Because life is a verb.

I should know that.  At how many gravesides have I stood and spoken words of both gratitude and hope?  How many seeds have I gently covered and patiently watered and prayerfully beckoned?  How many buckets of manure have I spread -- waste and promise miraculously united?  I should know it, but I lose myself putting one foot in front of the other; the movement itself distracting from the movement.

And then there are the dawnings.  On this particular one the dogs had been walked, the chickens had been released and in the gray haze of an emergent day I was stumbling my way back inside for a first cup of coffee when something about the bud pods of the poppies in the front bed flashed color.  The green/gray pod was still there, but along with it a bright orange unmistakably flamed.  It was, as I focused my attention, a garden birthing in-process.  There, outside our front door, a horticultural obstetrics unit was in full operation.  I stood and watched, but though I detected no movement the stasis was more apparent than real.  Life was moving forward. By lunchtime the blossom was complete and on full and expansive display.

And, though I shudder to admit it, it was similarly on its way beyond the crest to decay.

Because life is a verb, always moving.  Opening and closing.  More often than I care to admit I am too caught up in its flow to notice.  But every now and then a flash of color where it had not been and my eyes are wet with birth.  And I remember.

And am grateful.

It's hard to know what other births might interrupt my steady plod through these hours, but I will be watching for color, listening for newborn cries, reverencing the slightest moves.

Because though it's easy to miss it moving, life is a verb.

A Coop of Inspiration

"I never took you for a chicken guy."  That's the first response I routinely get from friends and acquaintances who hear about our recent acquisitions.  If it helps, I never took me for a chicken guy, either.  And I'm pretty sure it only recently crossed Lori's mind.  That we two urban settlers would first resettle to the countryside and then start making room for laying hens strikes us as comical as it does others.  Nothing in our educational repertoire nor professional resumes foreshadows it, but here we are, digging in the dirt, planting all kinds of things, and gathering eggs.  

Brown ones and blue ones.

Which usually precipitates further questions, and amazement.  The questions -- like "Who knew there was such a thing as a blue egg?" -- don't surprise me.  Eggs, after all, in our overly industrialized food system are almost universally white.  Diversity comes in size -- small, medium, large and extra-large -- but rarely in color.  Only recently could brown eggs be routinely found in a grocery store refrigerator case, but even then relegated to the edges as something of a quaint novelty.  Blue eggs aren't likely to gain any shelf space any time soon.  Little wonder that few people know such things exist.  

The amazement, however, is more difficult to explain -- amazement that multiple breeds exist, and amazement that we would choose more than one of them.  Of the eleven birds that now call Taproot Garden home, two are Ameraucana, two are Black Australorp, two are Buff Orpington, two are Red Star, two are Barred Rock, and one is a Wyandotte.  Beautiful, I would say -- every one of them -- and beautifully diverse.   These six hardly exhaust the options.  Hatchery catalogs are as thick and colorfully evocative as seed catalogs -- glossy photographs of all manner of sizes and colors and purposes and temperaments.  Heritage breeds, hybrids and cross-breeds; Asian breeds, European breeds, African breeds, American breeds.  

Sort of like people.  And vegetables.  And, I'm guessing, everything else around us. I remember my own surprise at discovering multiple varieties of broccoli.  And tomatoes.  And lettuce.  Etc.  Creation is an orchestra, not just in its aggregate, but within each instrumental part.  There aren't just "flutes," but bass flutes and alto flutes, tenor and soprano flutes.  Neither are there simply "drums".  And we aren't just people; we are all kinds of people -- "red and yellow, black and white" as the old children's song observes, but also short and tall and quiet and loud and any number of other diversities we are still getting our minds around.

And there aren't just chickens, but a veritable symphony of them -- each breed with physical characteristics and personality traits, but also each bird with its own unique one.  I know because I've been watching them. 

And laughing.

And marveling at them all.  

Diverse individuals living as a community within the same backyard coop -- pushing and shoving and pecking each other from time to time and haggling over a remnant scrap of food, not unlike the people who tend them; but also nestling close together on the roost at night for companionship and warmth.  

A cacophony of diversity, for the most part getting along.

An inspiration, don't you think, for this larger coop that houses us all?

Parenting That Which Is Older Than Me

We had walked the nascent prairie that just days before had been burned in preparation for seeding; we had signed the agreements committing us to ongoing prairie management in exchange for cost assistance, and now the agents from the Department of Natural Resources and the Fish and Wildlife Agency were standing with me looking out over the acres.  We looked past the 1/4 acre garden I have developed; beyond the 2-dozen fruit trees we have planted since moving to this plot of ground almost three years ago, and surveyed the 3-acres we are beginning to restore to native prairie grasses and pollinator wildflowers.

"When we first moved here I couldn't bring myself to dig a hole or cut a tree limb," I reflected.  "It seemed arrogant to assert my vision onto the land.  Now look at us."

The Fish and Wildlife agent turned his eyes from the window and addressed me with parental wisdom:  "Doing nothing is also a management decision."  Which I took to mean "doing nothing is, in reality, doing something."

I know this of course.  I am not unfamiliar with children whose parents have adopted a similar "hands-off" approach.  They are the dandelions of the nursery -- or the classroom or the youth group or, later, the office -- who contribute one annual burst of brilliant color, but otherwise displace most of the more desirable growth and quickly go to seed.  Doing nothing is, indeed, doing something, producing results with generally limited appeal.

The truth is I am proud of the "interventions" we have made on the land.  I prefer to think of them less as "impositions" than stewarding partnerships.  Indeed, if the DNR's aerial photos of our property from the 1930's are any indication, the kind of work we are undertaking represents some undoing of the human interventions that have dramatically reshaped this area throughout the ensuing decades; restoration, rather than alteration.  The butterflies and bees and other pollinators so diminished in those years will once again have a habitat.  That the vitality of those pollinators will also benefit my horticultural ambitions doesn't seem too self-serving or nullifying.  I rather think of it as partnership -- working "with" rather than "upon."

All that said, it still feels brazenly forward to to cut in, cut down, dig out, burn off and plant something new in its place -- even if its presence has a prior claim.  And for the record, it's a lump I hope never gets easier to swallow.  As I recognized in the very beginning of this little educational sojourn, the documents with the bank and the taxing authorities say we own this land, but we are under no such delusion.  We are simply privileged to live here for a time, and to do the best by it that we can.

The Nourishing Goodness of Spring

The temperature, of course, can still surprise me with its deceptive chill, but spring is convincing me that after all the months of wintry imprisonment its door has finally opened more than a crack.  Even the rains of April's closing days -- gloomy in their own way -- foreshadow the colors of May, just as the old rhyme observes. The pear trees are blossoming. The tulips, having stood sentry for days, are just beginning to open.  The rhubarb leaves are unfurling, garlic stems are emerging through the mulch, and for the first time asparagus spears are offering themselves up for supper.

It won't be long before the sprouts giving the greenhouse its name will need transplanting into garden rows, though there have been disappointments in that corner.  Tomato seeds have sprouted in adequate numbers, along with cabbage and cauliflower, broccoli and onions and herbs and kale.  But the peppers have largely been no-shows, along with the interesting flowers we had imagined.  I'm not skilled enough to know what all has interfered.  Since I have more confidence in the seed purveyors than the seed planter, I trust that the seeds were good in the package.  Despite the warming lights and the auxiliary heater it might not have been warm enough when the seeds were trying to germinate, or perhaps it got too hot.  I could have watered them too heavily -- or, for that matter, inadequately.  There was some early mouse activity and its possible that all those seeds got eaten.  Whatever was the trouble, remediation is always available at the nearby garden store in the form of transplants made available via someone else's better success.

In the meantime there are new rows to dig, old rows to revive, a layout plan to revise, a fence to enlarge, seeds to sow, the irrigation system to reassemble, and...

...new dreams to dream about canning and freezing and enjoying the harvest.  That, assuming I don't screw it all up.

In the meantime, the chickens, too, are getting into the spirit -- offering up a five-egg day on Saturday after raising the new normal to three.

 Life is cool, colorful, nourishing...

...and good.

The Anticipatory of Challenge of Making Room

One could rightly say that the trouble began with the garlic.  Rather, the trouble began with me getting carried away with the garlic.  It's an understandable problem.  We like garlic.  We use garlic.  Lots of garlic.  And the catalog descriptions all sounded so appealing.  And so last fall I ordered lots of garlic to plant.  Eleven rows worth of garlic as it turned out.  Two-hundred-and-seventy-five feet worth of garlic.  And it was only the descent of winter that prevented me from going further.

Fast forward to the approach of spring and trays full of seeds germinating in the greenhouse.  I finally carved out time to work on this year's layout using the garden planner software from Mother Earth News.  It's an incredible tool, assisting with garden design, yearly plant rotation, growing guides, scheduling, plant spacing and more -- all localized according to the average frost patterns of our specific address.  I sat down at the computer in the company of my plant list and began to drag and drop the varieties into the virtual rows.  I was well into the process when I remembered the garlic already in the ground since November.  I excavated from my files the names of the varietals planted, along with my scribbled notes of which had been planted where, and added them to the layout; then continued with the other vegetables intended for the season.

The problem was quick to emerge.  Every row has been labeled (click here to see the plan) -- including the new expansion rows I have imagined outside the fence to the north and the east -- and everything fit...

...except the peppers (of which there are nine varieties)...

...and the tomatoes (of which there are 17 varieties).  In previous years I have planted close to 100 tomato plants.  Fifty to seventy-five pepper plants.  All this not counting the herbs I'll plant on the deck and the fall varieties I have kept in reserve.  Where is it all to go?

I panicked.
Lori shrugged.
"Good thing we have plenty of land," she mused.
"That garlic better be really good," I muttered.

But of course it will be.  It's garlic, after all.  All eight varieties. And once I find a place for the peppers and tomatoes and the harvest is eventually in, the marriage of all three -- a culinary Holy Trinity if ever there was one -- will almost certainly affirm the value of surmounting the challenge of their planting.

For now, however, my muscles are already groaning in anticipation.  It will be work turning all that soil -- tilling, shoveling, forking, composting, nourishing.  But, then, "making room" is always strenuous, I suppose, whether the crowding party is a new idea, a new belief, a new perspective, a new neighbor...
...or simply a few tomatoes and peppers.  If previous salsas are any indication, however, the effort is more than worth it.