Boo

I live (alive) across the road from the living dead. They're most visible in the fall, during official haunting season. The rest of the year the old house is relatively abandoned, as it has been since we moved in over a decade ago. The living dead seem to make okay neighbors. No plastic toys cluttering the lawn. No penchant for shooting firearms while drunk. No constant tinkering with muscle car engines. No addiction to fertilizer.

But now, in October, they once again take up their chainsaws and screaming. It’s only on Fridays and Saturday nights, though. The living dead apparently have other jobs during the week.

 The house, before it was officially haunted, always seemed a little haunted anyway. Many years ago, it was a kosher winery. The neighbor who owns it told me once a story about the tragedies of the family who had it before him, who had hoped to make it into their country home, a place to visit when they wanted to leave the city. If I were better at remembering details, I’d tell you what happened. The gist of it was that things went wrong. I want to say that a step-child was seriously injured in an accident and then a wife died of some brain hemorrhage. Whatever it was, the husband stopped coming, crushed, I assume, by memory. A few years after we moved here, my neighbor bought it, but his family didn’t want to live there; they already had a house down the road. So it sat empty for more years, collecting vandals, raccoons,  and other trespassers.

In spring of 2012, a sign went up: Haunted Winery and Corn Maze. And so, the living dead. They practiced for months being dead and scary. They’re pretty much young men and women with a penchant for gothic thespianism. They lurk around in the house’s driveway wearing shredded clothes and bleeding. They laugh ghoulishly, forced and loud. They play with chainsaws.

On the weekend, their soundtrack of fright seeps through my walls. Outside the house, posted rules. No smoking or open flames. No alcohol, firearms, or weapons of any kind. No food or beverages. Please do not touch any props or actors as they will not touch you. I like that there are rules to being scared. I wish it worked that way with all fear. I wish that when confronted with horror we could step easily away from the screaming and choose, instead, to get lost in the sweet shushing stalks of corn. 

The farmette provides its own decorations. 

Bee Tree

As I enjoy the garden’s produce made possible by pollinators, I thank my bees. A gnarled catalpa tree in the yard holds the hive, hole open to the south, where the honey bees buzz back and forth, heading to and from who knows where. It’s had bees since we moved here eleven years ago. Some winters, the hive doesn’t survive, but a new swarm has always found the tree in spring—it’s a powerful bee tree. I’ve witnessed the new swarms’ arrival several times. Once, working in a flowerbed, we heard bees filling up the pink blossom-covered crabapple. They clung to branches, pulling them down with the weight of bees climbing on bees, bees dripping. We took a break for lunch, and when we returned, the bees had moved into the bee tree on the other side of the yard. Another year, I was mowing around the part of the yard with the bee-less tree. On my first pass by the catalpa, I glanced at the hole, which I obsess over a bit when there are no bees. Nothing. On my second approach, as though my looking had conjured them, bodies of bees whizzed by me, bee after bee drawn over the hedge to the tree, a cloud condescending on the hole. Then this last spring, while reading in the garden, I heard a persistent hum, and sure enough, there they were, sucking themselves into the tree. If I stand close when the hive is swarming, they plunk gently against my head. Even now, they’re quite docile most days. I can stand on one of the lumpy roots and stick my nose in the hole—all sweet honey. I’ve only been stung twice near the tree, both within seconds, on my elbows, first one, then the other. A honey bee sting burns, but then leaves a kind of pleasant tingly numbness. Last summer, the hive healthy from a mild winter, a new colony split off from the original and swarmed. I discovered them clustered by a large hole in my house’s stone foundation. Despite my efforts to plug the hole with sealant, hundreds of bees found their way inside the basement, where they spent days flicking around a bare light bulb, dying. I’ve tried to do some quick research on wild bees, but all I find pertains to getting honey out of the hives or collecting the swarm. No interest in cutting down my tree or luring the bees away. No interest in its heart of wax and honey, only in the way it brings me bees.

The Thinker

Spent some of the afternoon at the Cleveland Museum of Art, most of it sitting by the pond, called Wade Lagoon, which lies at the bottom of a long cascade of stone steps spilling from the museum’s southern door. Cleveland naysayers have never been to this museum, I’m certain. It holds some of my favorite paintings, including Cupid and Psyche by Jacques Louis David and Yosemite Valley by Albert Bierstadt and Gray and Gold by John Roberts Cox.

At the pond, people take pictures of Canada geese and a few straggly mallard ducks. I sit on a bench beneath a weeping willow, watching fish bob against the water’s surface then disappear into the green. In spring, the cherry trees lining the pond color the reflection pink, but in the early fall they just look like anonymous trees. I’m sure the geese must like the cherries' fruit, if any drops to the ground. Today, a family with a baby in a stroller feed the geese Doritos, which I suppose the geese like just as well as cherries. A little boy throws pebbles at one of the ducks, hoping to trick her into thinking it’s food. It’s not, and she paddles my way, trying her luck. I‘ve got nothing for her.

I climb the stairs up to the museum’s south entrance, which isn't the main entrance, but instead simply a set of doors along the vast white marble exterior of the original neoclassical 1916 building. The museum is free, so it can have more than one door, which is part of its appeal. No hand stamp, no button for your jacket, no wristband. Come inside and look at Yosemite Valley. Go back outside, where Rodin’s The Thinker gazes down the stairs. His lower legs are blown away, the metal peeled back, scars from a bombing in 1970. I haven’t any idea why anyone would bomb The Thinker—no one was ever charged with the crime—and he, too, seems to be trying to figure it out, fist to chin, head staring the rest of us down.

There’s something reassuring about visiting and revisiting paintings. Cupid will always be rising from bed with Psyche, smirking, young and bold. Yosemite will always be primeval, enveloped in cloud-filtered sun streaks, trees unburned, with whomever that is in foreground gazing away. We will never be at the crossroads in the heart of the storm.

I’m not sure, though, what The Thinker would have to say about permanence, though he is still there, years later, considering.  

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Wide Mouth: I Can Can

End of August brings heat; heat brings tomatoes. This year we’ve got around sixty plants, down from 120 a few years ago, when we canned 300 quarts of tomatoes. Only thirty or so of these plants are really canning tomatoes—smooth, round varieties with nice acidity and a tendency not to crack. I swear by Celebrity, but am also a fan of Fantastic. The rest of our plants are heirlooms and such: red and yellow and pink Brandywines, Mr. Stripey, Costoluto Genevese, Juliet, Hillbilly, Oxheart, Persimmon, Red Lightning, Fourth of July. We try a few new kinds every year. Ohio is a great state for tomatoes. When I tell people that tomatoes are one reason we left Oregon for the Midwest, I’m not really joking.

The tomatoes pile up on plates on the kitchen counter until it becomes clear that they need addressing or we’ll be dealing with rotten tomatoes and swarms of fruit flies. And so, canning day. I put on one of my canning dresses, old faded cotton calico shifts I sewed years ago—cool, thin fabric for a hot job. It’s in the eighties outside; we have no air conditioning, and a fan blows the flames on the stove, slowing things down, so no fan, either. Out in the garden, we load stainless steel bowls with fruit and haul them back to the kitchen for washing and sorting. Anything less than perfect gets cut up and made into juice, Cris’ speciality. He’ll spend all day chopping and heating and squeezing and reheating, even though he doesn’t really drink the juice; he makes it for me. I start every day with a glass of tomato juice, often liberally spiked with hot sauce, also made by Cris. Good husband, good juice.

My job is peeling the whole tomatoes and packing them into jars. I love this, and every time remember watching my mom do the same work, dropping the fruit into a pot of boiling water on the stove until the skin splits or the flesh gives slightly, then pulling them out with a slotted spoon and quenching them in a bowl of cold water. The skin slips off easily, now, revealing the slightly grainy flesh of the tomato. When I’ve got a huge bowlful, I pack them in the jars with lemon juice and salt, squishing them down with my fist, which just fits inside the rim. Cris’ hands are too big for this task.

For a while we used a boiling water canner, but we’ve moved on to pressure canning—much faster. Once the pressure is up, the little weight clatters back and forth releasing steam for twenty minutes. Then the jars cool, the indentations on the lids popping as they seal. We drink icy beer and listen.

Yesterday we canned fourteen quarts of whole tomatoes and seven of juice. People always ask if we can sauce or salsa, but I don’t see the point. Whole tomatoes go in anything. Besides, sauce is a good thing to make in the winter, standing over the stove sautéing onions in the cold kitchen.

On the fridge: my suggested slogan for Ball's canning lids. 

Check out my poem about tomatoes in MAYDAY Magazine. 

High Tide, Low Tide

Spent the last few days on the Oregon coast, visiting my old friends--the rocks.

My favorite beach is always nearly deserted, which is only part of the reason it's my favorite, though a significant part. It's near a more popular beach with many attractions--volleyball, four-person surrey bikes, salt water taffy, ice cream, horseback rides, kite shops, Christian bookstores, pancake houses, jewelry stores, seafood restaurants.

There is nothing to buy or rent or ride on my beach, so perhaps nothing worthwhile to do, in the sense of commerce and human exchange. High tide at my beach seems to push away most visitors, leaving a half-mile or so of quiet sand.

The birds here are busy--the pelicans and oystercatchers and golden eagles--but much of the other action here is difficult to distinguish from inaction, so small and slow.   

I'm never busy at the beach. I poke around the rocks, sip good beer, eat potato chips, poke around the rocks some more, stare at waves, waves, waves. My eyes turn bloodshot from the salty air. I explore the individual worlds of bowl-sized tide pools. Sea anemones smaller than quarters. Nubs of barnacles licking the surf with feathery limbs. Occasional snail.

In the evening, Cris and I switch to another beach to watch the sun disappear behind incoming clouds and drink some wine and search the tide pools at low tide. A beach with families and campfires and surfers, though we find a place away from the crowd occupied mostly by couples and  photographers and kids looking for crabs.  There, I catch sight of the far off parking lot and, descending onto the beach, a cluster of shapes in turquoise, a hue that can only mean bridesmaids. Sure enough, a white puff follows, hoisting her dress up to her knees, along with grey-clad groomsmen and a black-suited groom. They arrange themselves on a stretch of wet sand for the photographer, a shot that will make them appear as though they are perched on the surface of the sea. The ruffled layers of chiffon on the bride's dress soak up the sand. Shot taken, the photographer hustles them along towards our spot on the beach. The incoming clouds look as though they might rain, so we pack up and head to our car, passing by the patch of wet sand where the group posed, now littered with rose petals, orchids, ribbons, cellophane, the discarded bouquets in plastic holders. Behind us, by the tide pools, bridesmaids drape themselves over the rocks.

Traveling Seeds

I’ve planted many things in our garden over the years—romaine and oakleaf lettuce, red, green, spotted; purple and yellow and sometimes orange carrots; tomatoes gnarled and smooth; zucchini with tasty blossoms; cucumbers Chinese and Persian and Indian, including one, poona kheera, that looked like a potato; foot-long red beans; arugula; tatsoi; bok choy; komatsuna and mizuna; New Zealand spinach and Malabar spinach and red spinach and regular old spinach; kale; cilantro; dill (which really just plants itself); Asian basil and sweet basil and holy basil; mustard greens; broccoli raab; ground cherries; tomatillos; shiso; culantro; papaloquelite; green and lime green and red chard; Chioggia beets with target-like rings; radishes Japanese and French; wide Italian green beans and tri-color beans; habanero peppers and jalapeno peppers and serrano peppers and tabasco peppers and hot Thai peppers and banana peppers and cubanelle peppers and ancho peppers and sweet bell peppers large enough for a bird to build a nest in; butternut and acorn and delicata and blue hubbard squash; dark drops of eggplant; pumpkins; fingerling potatoes that one summer fed a fury of voles; asparagus; onions; flat Chinese chives; blue stars of borage; sour sorrel; peas sweet and snow; Persian cress; parsley (which travels to hell and back before it finally pops up through the soil). Seeds carry in them dishes from faraway places. Plants emerge from the ground, evocative as recipes, mysterious as maps.

After planting, I hover. Seeds such as radishes or arugula satisfy my impatience, their green cotyledons arriving in two days sometimes. But most take a bit more waiting. I’m always relieved to see that things have sprouted, and worried when they don’t. These seeds are my responsibility, and I hate it when I screw them up. This year an expensive package of ten seeds—my favorite tiny cucumber (the “Rocky” variety)—failed to sprout; seven dollars rotting somewhere in the dirt. I could’ve planted a few quarters in each hole. At least then I could’ve dug them up and used them for something else.

There’s one seed I plant each year that I don’t hover over, don’t even bother noticing which come up, or, for that matter, where. And yet, these seeds are the most fun to sow of all of them: common milkweed. Near our vegetable garden lies a little field of tall grass surrounded by trees we’ve planted to screen the yard. In the summer the pink rubbery flower heads bloom and droop, and in the fall I crack open the dried seed pods with their layers of seeds inside, each attached to a bit of silken fluff. Rubbing the seeds between my fingers, I separate them from one another and free them to the breeze, each floating across the field. I give the dog a stem of pods to grab in her mouth, and she runs through the grass, seeds releasing.

The milkweed is doing well this year, blossoms thickly sweet, but it took me some time to realize that something was wrong. I love the milkweed flowers, but the main reason I plant them is for the butterflies, the orange and black monarchs that drift around the yard and lay their eggs on the plants; milkweed is the only food the caterpillars eat. The milkweed transfers to the butterfly a poison, making it untasty to predators. Standing in the yard this week, watching a different species of orange butterfly drop in and out of flowers, I realized it was mid-July, and I had yet to see a monarch, probably the most recognizable butterfly in the country, an icon of summer.

The monarchs in our part of the country live and reproduce during their migration to northern United States and Canada, laying eggs on milkweed that hatch into caterpillars which develop into butterflies that continue the journey north. The fourth generation returns south in one long trip, where they winter in Mexico before starting back north, following a trail of milkweed blossoms. No one completely understands how they manage this feat, though we take their summertime presence for granted.

Drought certainly has hurt the species. But my beloved milkweed is unloved by farmers, or at least unappreciated, and over the years, increased use of herbicide has eradicated it from soy and corn fields, leaving much of what was once vast areas of monarch habitat—the American middle—less habitable for the butterflies. There’s simply less for them to eat. When I hear “endangered butterfly habitat,” I’m inclined to imagine someone in South America cutting down a rainforest rather than farmers growing corn in Ohio. Blame is one thing that migrates effortlessly.

Yesterday, I finally spotted a monarch, or at least I’m pretty sure I did—large and orange and swaying over the milkweed before disappearing behind the trees.

"Hatch" Reducks

I've had a hefty hen hanging around the farmette for over a month. She just showed up one day in the company of five drakes. The mallard drakes likely hatched here, because they seem to know where we keep the feed. She clearly has some domestic Rouen in her, mixed with the mallard, because she's too big to fly. Despite the fact that we've just met, she's quite tame. She eats out of my hand. The other day, she appeared with nineteen newly hatched ducklings. I'm not sure what we'll do if they turn out to be grounded as well. That's more than too many ducks underfoot. For now, though, I'm enjoying feeling their soft bellies on my fingertips as they nibble food from my palm.

For more about my adventures and misadventures with ducks over the years, take a look at this excerpt from my essay "Hatch," which first appeared in Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment.