Autumn Morning

The Taste of Grace

 We enjoyed a caprese salad last night with dinner.  You know, fresh tomato slices, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar?  There is really nothing especially novel about the dish, other than the fact that we had it, in mid-October, with tomatoes and herbs fresh from the garden.  By this point in the season our tomato plants are typically spent.  Indeed, we have been working in the garden, these recent days, pulling, clearing and readying the beds for winter.  There are cover crop seeds to plant, after all.  That, plus we have sorely neglected the garden this summer - abandoning it mid-season to tend to family matters out of state.  True to expectation, the weeds and grasses went wild, like children once the adults have turned their back.  The garden became an embarrassing jungle.  

But leaning back into the care of it in recent days - yanking and hoeing and shoveling our way into the choking foliage - we discovered...

...generosity.  Abundance, still.  Patiently, forgivingly flourishing food - peppers, leeks, onions, carrots and beets, chard and kale, collards and, yes, tomatoes.  There are even sweet potatoes lurking beneath the ground, and more than a few missed potatoes from the digging last month.

It was an humble feast, then, crowned with the garden’s forgiveness.  Tomatoes, yes, along with those errant potatoes; collards and peppers, leeks and onions and garlic and herbs.  And apple crisp for dessert, because the orchard would not be outdone.  

It was nourishing, of course.  Our bodies smiled with sated appreciation.  Even moreso, it was delicious - the very taste of grace.  Unmerited, unexpected grace.

Of course, that’s what grace is:  unmerited munificence.  Goodness where you had no reason to find it.  No, abundance where you had every reason NOT to find it.  

And so it was that we chewed more mindfully, tasted more exactingly, savored with conscious and lingering intentionality.  Nourished, yet again, by what we did not deserve.     It was, as I say, the taste of grace.  

It is, of course, the taste of everyday - blessed and nourished by what we don’t deserve.  

Maybe “caprese” should become our secret code word for “pay attention, grace is being served.”  You know, for those times we might callously, or distractedly forget. 

In Gratitude for the Day

 

"To open my eyes 

and wake up alive in the world
To open my eyes 

and fully arrive in the world

With its beauty and its cruelty
With its heartbreak and its joy
With it constantly giving birth to life 

and to forces that destroy
And the infinite power of change
Alive in the world"

--Jackson Browne

 A rabbit scurries across the lawn, disturbed by my approach, but already busy with its day.  The morning sun is young, just breaking through the trees as I lug pails of chicken feed toward the coops.  There is something settling, centering, about this morning routine - an homage to purpose, to capacity, to necessity.  

 

The sky is clear and the air crisp after yesterday’s rain.  Though technically still summer, this morning’s 47-degrees already feels like autumn.  The scattering of fallen leaves punctuates the anticipation.  Two deer stir from their reverie in the orchard, shaking off the last quiet grace of dawn – and no doubt the lingering taste of fallen apples – and lope into the woods.  The chickens, of course, are long-awake.  Eager in equal measure for the feed and the freedom, they cluck their impatience and, I like to imagine, their gratitude and greeting.  It’s hard to mistake Dwayne the Rooster’s persistent crowing for anything but impatience.  

 

I fill the feeders, open the hatches, and retreat back through the gate, my boots showering dew ahead of me with each step.  

 

I’m feeling lazy about the day ahead.  Though the heaviest harvest is behind us, there are still leeks in the ground, peppers on the bushes, and purple-hulled peas on the vines.  Apples and pears and plums are ready for our attentions, and of course there is the fall clean-up to commence.  Some of that will get some of my attentions today, but ragweed season in all its histamined glory is not a helpful workmate, and I’ve little energy for much beyond tissue retrieval and disposal.  We’ll see how much or how little I accomplish.

 

But “accomplishment” is not the measure of the day.  The day is its own glory, with or without my initiatives.  It is both humbling and enlivening to reconcile with the reality that the morning is indifferent to my productivity.  For the moment, then, I relish the light on my face, the cool on my skin, the shiver of delight, and the empty buckets in my hands.  

 

It’s a new day, and I get to be alive within it.  I’m grateful. 

In Anticipation of the Dawn

 It’s not that I couldn’t sleep; just that sleep ended early.  Reheating a mug of yesterday’s leftover coffee, I take a seat on the deck, gently rocking in the pre-dawn darkness.  And listen.  It’s not exactly silent; the chirps and clicks and miscellaneous thrums layer an underlying drone that bends my own rhythms to its pitch - like a tuning fork for the heart and mind.  Part rhythm, part sound, my breath - already relaxed - slows even more as it becomes aligned with the lingering night noise.  Even the reheated coffee tastes better.

Gradually, imperceptibly, the edges of the horizon gain light - eastward, to be sure, but even in the recesses to the north the hint of a glow.  It’s still dark, but my body moreso than my eyes perceives the change.  Soon I will be able to make out the form of the landing plane in the distance, not simply its blinking light.  Soon, the stars overhead will dissolve into the blue of the morning sky.  Soon the green of the trees will swell the details of the branches and leaves beyond the current outlined silhouette.  And just now, Dwayne, the rooster, announced that he, too, is aware of dawn’s approach.

Last week the temperatures hovered around 100, and next week the prediction is a return to more of the same sweltering climatic malaise.  But this week days will be mild and the darkness almost chilly.  I draw my robe more closely around my shoulders and savor the rejuvenating cool.  

Reviewing the calendar, I confirm that there is no schedule to keep within the hours of this day, just the rhythms of the farmstead to honor.  There is harvesting and groundskeeping and preserving.  There are bees to tend and chickens to feed, eggs to gather and music to make and perhaps, when day is done, a fire to build in the pit.

But for now there is the music of the night to hear, and the crescendoing morning.  And the dawn to celebrate.  Which might just be the most important work of the day.  

The chair rocks gently. I breathe slowly, and deep.  And color teases the horizon.  

Good morning.  

Good, indeed.

The Long Game

 I watch the young chickens while I water on the deck.  The labor allows for considerable watching.  Our deck is ringed with vertical PVC pipes - 18, plus the 14 French flower cans suspended in a steel frame - filled with potting soil, sown various herb seeds.  Watering doesn’t require much concentration.  The pipes stand just taller than the deck rail, no bending involved, and aim is the only requirement.  It is slow, quotidian work; mindless in that liberating way that untethers my attention, allowing it to drift like a stringless kite and snag on whatever branch or chimney or light pole happens into its path.  

Those, or chickens.  The young ones are segregated into a partitioned section of the chicken yard. With only a wire fence between them, there is plenty of opportunity for mutual observation and curious envy between these 12-week-olds and the mature ones on the other side.  Eventually the adolescents will make the great migration into the big yard, making room for the next round of chicks even now trading down for feathers in the brooder in the barn, but for now their sequestration affords them a little kinder, more protected environment while they continue to grow.  There will be time enough in the weeks ahead for their skirmishes with the big girls, and their introductions into the ways of life administered by Dwayne the rooster.  For now, they flit and flurry their way from water to feed to bug to whatever else they happen to see.  

And I tip the watering can from pole to pole, spotting tiny sprouts slowing emerging.  

These early days of the growing season recalibrate my sense of time.  What a tuning fork is to the ears, a seed - a chick - is to the soul.  Someone once said, “Never travel faster than your guardian angels can fly.”  Carrie Newcomer lyricises that wisdom into the caution not to “travel faster than our souls can go.”  The farmstead constantly counsels me not to live faster than seeds can grow; than buds open into flowers; than bees make honey; than fruit ripens.  To live at the speed of soul.  Pouring on more water, after all, won’t speed up the process.

Every day, then, I fill the can and sprinkle the seeds, and wonder with awe at all that might be happening around me.

And within.

This Sanguine Moment in Time

 

There is a soulful sanguinity to this transitional moment.  Garden planting is complete, save for a few more flowers intended to feed the bees (and our own aesthetic hunger).  The supportive systems – the wire cages, the trellises and the plastic drip lines – are in place and functioning.  After a frenetic and tiresome few weeks of furrowing and transplanting, the initiating work is done.  Exclamation and exhalation are both warranted and earned.  There is always work to do, but in this still and transient moment, we rest in the transition between construction and maintenance.  On this holiday weekend we intend to do a little of both: basking in the satisfaction, and taking a deep breath.

 

But as that opening sentence suggests, it is not simply that the startup work is completed.  More than anything it is that the work is a down payment on hope.  We haven’t sored our muscles and exhausted our energies merely for the good and righteous discipline of it.  It was all in service to the prospect of growth – that the work would eventually lead to something, produce something, that is profoundly good.  And “here” is the only place to start if we want to arrive “there”, at harvest.  I am spiritual enough to know that grace is real, and that blessings quite often fall on the undeserving and the unprepared.  Good things sometimes simply come whether we have seeded them or not.  I have been the beneficiary of too many of those to count to scoff at the wonder and the joy of them.  But cultivation never got in the way of grace.  I don’t think God takes offense at the little bit of spade work we can contribute to the alchemy of abundance.  Hence, the sweat and the fatigue and the ever-sore muscles.

 

But even harvest is not the ultimate denouement.  It, too - as good and celebratory as it will be – is but the precursor to the kitchen, which is the on-ramp to the dining room with its plated wonders and delights, and the satiated, satisfied smiles that result. 

 

For now, of course, the garden is more brown than green; more loosened soil than sturdy plants.  But those nascent seedlings, both transplanted whole and popping up from below, will have their day.  Hope will find its height and breadth and, if the malefactors are held at bay, its fruit. 

 

That is a question for another day, the predations that are always lurking and how to counter them.  This morning I am sitting on the deck in the cool of a quiet holiday, admiring the work and its promise. 

 

Hopeful. 

Sanguine. 

A deep and grateful breath. 

Rested.

Smiling.

Savoring the anticipation of the flavors just beginning to stir.

Holiness in the Dirt

The work days were interestingly bookended.  We started the week spreading worm poop – a ton of it; literally 2000 pounds of it – and ended the week spreading chicken poop.  It’s a sentence that I couldn’t have imagined writing not too many years ago, but there it is:  manure in all its glory, large and small, put to the ancient use of fertility.  Reality is more exciting than the facts might sound.

 

It is planting season of course.  The grass is growing, the chickens are laying, the dandelions are blooming, the flower beds are bursting, the rain barrels are filling.   And we have been working.   The garden beds have been prepared – cleared of remnant detritus and lightly tilled; scored with a hoe and drilled with an auger, the seeds have been meted out and the greenhouse seedlings have been transplanted.  The tomato cages have been placed - though their securing still needs reinforcement - and the irrigation drip tapes have been unrolled into place.  

 

Life has been nudged forward in the direction of color and fruit, and thanks to the earthworms and the chickens, it has been encouraged.  Fed.  Nourished. Beckoned.  With the manure.  Small and large; worm and hen, bucket and shovel wielded by Lori and me.  It gets down to basics - far from any glamour, it’s about the humble building blocks.  The occasional rains will surely help, and when it refuses, the faucet.  Sunlight will do its part, as will we with the hoe.  But it’s the soil that will make the difference – the soil, elevated by the excrement.

 

I once heard a famous chef observe that cuisines were born out of the creative use of the poor leftovers, the discards, the refuse.  The result, he said with a smile, was the inversion of desire.  Having discerned its quieter value, that creative use elevated and popularized the previously maligned, overshadowing the once-preferred. 

 

I have no idea who figured out this miracle of manure – above who’s ancient head the bulb of insight flashed on – but it’s funny to recognize that same inversion in the garden.  What comes out of the ground as food is beneficially returned to it in digested, concentrated form.  As important as are the seeds and the seedlings, it’s the shit that is the salvation.  

 

I suspect that truth is resident and operational in all manner of pursuits – for those with the patience to wait for it, the vision to discern it, and adequate humility to wield the shovel and carry the bucket and entertain the possibility that mouths are not the only valuable orifice.  I have work to do in that regard, but in the chicken yard and the garden I have good teachers. 

 

And plenty of opportunities to learn.

 

We shovel, then, and turn in the promise:  a kind of genuflection amidst the sacrament of the soil.