Category Archives: Nature and Gardens

Just reading

Sunday evening, my weeding stirred up so much dust and chaff that I needed to wear a bandanna around my nose and mouth. A continuous late-summer drought. There are still tomatoes and basil, sunflowers and zinnias, but the avian migration has been going on for some weeks and the days are getting shorter. Just after equinox, three weeks without rain; at last the sky clouds over and drops a little moisture on the parched soil. Yellow leaves sift onto the lawn. Small flocks of robins rejoice in the softer top layer of dirt, pull at grubs and worms, then fly off.

~

The rain’s necessary, and I’m grateful. Rainy days, however, take issue with my body–or, probably, the other way around. The need to take NSAIDs and rest offers the opportunity for just reading. This isn’t a bad thing, especially as I had Richard Powers’ novel The Gold Bug Variations to hand. It’s a tour de force of pattern, structure, code-breaking, DNA-building, relationships, love, chemistry, music, art, literature, and much more. I love the references (the narrator is a reference librarian), the minutia, history, alliteration, lists, compilations*, the whole thread of the novel’s dramatic arc, its relationship (mathematically, metaphorically, structurally) to music and the work of the gene-sequencing science. The book tells the parallel stories of couples who fall in love 25 years apart, the coincidences and randomness, the patterns that may not be patterns. I’m thoroughly wowed by an author who puts so much research into his writing and makes everything fit somehow.

Powers must have been about 33 when he completed this novel. I can’t imagine being so wise about human behavior and so informed about the sciences and music theory at that young age. Well, for one, I’m not as brilliant as he is; and two, I was raising toddlers when I was 33, which is a science unto itself and as revelatory as any book I could have been reading or writing in early mid-life.

But I digress. This book interests me on so many levels that I’ll be thinking about it for weeks. I may have to re-read it, take notes next time. I kept wanting to underline passages–it’s a library book, and marginalia is a no-no. I can imagine reading it again to the strains of the Goldberg Variations–indeed, I read a few chapters to said accompaniment this time. This is not a swift and easy read: it took me awhile to feel warmed up about the narrator, though she’s funny and smart. By the end, I loved her like a friend.

Honestly, novels seldom get me this excited or inspired. I’m glad I had a crappy day so I could justify lying around and “just reading.” As if “just reading” is not a worthwhile endeavor. The weeds can wait.

~

* re compilations: a word Powers employs often in this novel is the neologism/computer programming term “kludge.” I wasn’t familiar with it. But it’s a terrific word! https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=kludge

Crabgrass

I have been at work in the vegetable garden during the past few dry, sunny, late-summer days–it has been rather droughty here–and pulling up weeds in an effort to get an early start on putting the patch to bed for autumn. I have decided not to do any late-season sowing this year, and therefore I can pretty much tear up everything if I feel like it. Today I was thinking about my mother-in-law, who died in 2017, but who was sometimes my partner in the garden, or I in hers, when we were younger. I learned a great deal about ornamentals from her.

At her property, crabgrass was a particular scourge. I remember us weeding flower beds together while she muttered, “Crabgrass! Always crabgrass, how I hate it!” It struck me odd at the time that she pronounced it “crebgrass,” with the first “a” like a short “e”, because she said the word “crab” and similar words with an open short “a.” It was almost as though she reserved that pronunciation to express her ire at this particular weed. She liked weeding at my house partly because I had so little crabgrass. Plenty of other weeds, but not much crabgrass.

Our weeding together took place over 15 years ago, when my gardens were on the new side, maybe a decade old. Today, however, I find my vegetable patch very much colonized by digitaria sanguinalis…one of the finger grasses, a very successful weed that can produce 150,000 seeds per plant. My garden now hosts both smooth and large crabgrass; the former is much easier to pull, though it can set seed even when it is mowed to under an inch in height! Large crabgrass, when it gets going, can grow over a foot tall and have a base rosette of 10″ with a star-like (or crab-like) set of leaves and quite tenacious roots, for an annual.

While I worked (too late, I really should have gotten to the weeds long before they began to set seed), I heard my mother-in-law in my mind: “Crebgrass! How I hate it.” Well, dearest Gene, I have finally encountered the Eurasian colonizer in my own gardens. And I miss having you around to sympathize with my plight.

 Maudib | Credit: Getty Images

There’s a metaphor here, I know there is. Maybe there’s a poem in this experience, too? For the time being, pulling weeds reminds me of someone I loved–and takes my mind off of another person I love, whose dwindling and decline (her “diminishing”) stay uneasily in the background of everything I do these days.

In the between-season time, with autumn almost upon us, I want to remind myself of the joys that come along with the crabgrass. Such as the brown crickets and the morning glories and the goldenrod…and memories of people for whom I have cared a great deal.

~

báilù

白露 báilù is the section of the lunisolar calendar that refers to the two weeks before the autumnal equinox; the translation is “white dew.” Misty mornings here and there, damp grass, dew spangling the tent spider webs in the meadow, draping the grasses and goldenrod with white gauze. Brown crickets sing, but the cicadas have left off. Nuthatches return. Squirrels knock walnuts off the branches daily, so there’s a regular thump-thump sound along the treeline. My summer-loving acquaintances bemoan the cooler days and insist summer’s not over until the 21st. My fall-loving acquaintances are picking apples and celebrating the return of pumpkin-spice flavoring to their favorite beverages.

I like the in-between times, the verging of seasons, aspects of change. Change means life, even though the onset of autumn traditionally signals the dying of the year. On my walk this morning, I took photos and made a mental list of changes that are flags of the coming season: acorns on the bough; morning glory still open at noon (in Japanese literature, the morning glory is a signal of autumn’s approach); burning bush shrub going pink; pennants of yellow walnut leaves; ripe wild grapes–deep navy blue, quite sour, and full of seeds; sweet autumn clematis (terniflora) in its whirly seed state, swarming over the hedges; oak leaves, five-leaf vines, and sassafras starting to color; winterberries already red; acorn detritus on the tractor path; pin oak galls (probably thanks to the wasp Callirhytis furva) on a leaf. All of these are mid-September features in eastern PA.

If I were feeling more poetically creative, I might try writing haiku using each of these as the image word. But my current state is fretful. Pulling weeds and taking walks ease my mind a bit. Sitting down to write, not so much. However, reader, I encourage you to try the exercise.

~

Helpless

The weeding continues apace. I no longer do a clean rake-up of the gardens in autumn, because I now know that bees and other creatures overwinter in foliage debris; but it is imperative that I get the worst of the vines and perennial invasives out of the beds. We had a bit of rain recently, so I went out to claw and pull. Underneath the spreading Japanese maple, I found this:

~

At first, I thought I’d found a fungus. Upon poking, I realized it appeared to be sections of a paper wasp nest. Hmmm. It took some craning of my neck and crawling much further beneath the tree, but there it was–the remains of a paper wasp hive dangling above me. Certainly it looked unoccupied, but I crept out from under the boughs just in case.

Under the tree, and twined throughout the flowerbed, I found quite a few sumac seedlings and plenty of poison ivy vines. Sumac and poison ivy are native plants, not invasive species like loosestrife and wintercreeper, but I don’t fancy having them in my perennial gardens. More yanking will be required soon.

~

At least I am doing something that, while rather disheartening–the weeds will always come back, weeding’s as endless as housework–keeps me moving and outdoors and occupied so that my mind whirs around less. It appears I’m weeding as a coping strategy while my mother continues to spiral toward whatever is next for her. Hospice care. Death. The inevitable, with the unknown “when”.

What bothers me most about her situation is how helpless she has become. My mom endured some childhood traumas, times when she truly was helpless. She learned to find and deal with her anger, with trouble and conflict, with physical pain, but she hates feeling helpless. And over the years, her inherent pragmatism and stubbornness, as well as her patience and a little emotional counseling, have served her well. I can only recall once when I saw her feeling helpless (and only briefly). It rattled me, but I was also impressed by how quickly she regained emotional equilibrium and took a small action toward…well, toward not being helpless.

And now, she is. Helpless, I mean. She cannot speak, feed herself, walk, or even sit up unassisted in bed. The prognosis for her recovery is so-so. She may manage to regain a little self-sufficiency. Or not. After all, she’s 91 years old.

The paper wasp hive seems like an analogy to me. When it has served its purpose, for all that it sheltered its denizens so well, it rattles apart, breaks down bit by bit, no longer resembles itself. Helpless in the wake of another winter coming on.

~

My father never cared for Neil Young, didn’t like his vocal delivery. But my mom heard the Déjà Vu album over and over in our house when we were teens, and she liked it.

~

Poem-ish thing

I don’t really feel ready to write what’s on my mind today. I do appreciate the cooler weather that means I can mindlessly pull weeds from the perennial beds and the vegetable garden without sweating or sunburn. Here’s a spur-of-moment poem-ish thing to mark, for myself, the place I’m at.

~

All morning, redtails shriek overhead
pleas or threats
or just announcing their presence
they don't much care 
how I interpret them.
I don't interpret them.
Listen only for brown crickets,
whirring cicadas that have begun
to wind down late in August.
My father died in an election year
77 days before he could have
cast his vote. I'm reminded of that now,
how distracted I was and how,
though the election mattered,
my father mattered more.
For most of us, what's near the heart 
obscures other concerns. Look:
there is dew on the grass,
barn swallows have 
already left the garden.
~

Useful avoidance

Trapped inside with the air conditioner on for over a week, I sat by my bookshelves going through the poetry books in my library. I’m re-reading, assessing which books I truly want to keep because I turn to them often or learn something each time I read them, which books I keep for sentimental reasons (maybe I know the author personally), which ones to keep because they are signed copies, which ones are long out of print and I would never be able to replace them. Some of them remind me strongly of places or eras in my life: I bought this one in a small bookshop in Grand Rapids MI, or this one at Barnes & Noble when it was just one store on a NYC street corner, or these at the storied and much-mourned Gotham Book Mart or St. Mark’s Bookshop. What are good reasons to keep books when I really have to downsize? It’s not an easy task, and the first of many in the process of getting rid of stuff so my kids won’t be stuck doing it. Besides, I enjoy re-reading these books. My children are not as enthusiastic about poetry as I am, so it makes sense that someone who loves the works on the shelves be the one who makes such decisions. It feels good to be surrounded by the words of wonderful writers when the outdoors is brutally hot and humid, and every joint in my body aches.

Surrounding myself with other people’s books also acted as one more way of avoiding my own creative work. Sometimes, though, waiting around and doing nothing on a project ends up bringing clarification or new ideas. It can prove useful. I have been stalled on my in-progress manuscript, so a month or so back I asked someone to take a look at it–and then I got caught up in doing other things. Like getting cataract surgery and having covid, and then it was gardening in full swing under sweltering weather, and then the bookshelves… I wasn’t exactly procrastinating, but neither was I actively working on, or even thinking about, the collection.

Acquired when I was much younger, and cool bookshops abounded.

And one night recently–during a much-needed rainstorm–I got a brainstorm! I realized I was trying to pack too many topics into what really should be a manuscript more closely focused on how people who love one another vary in their relationships to old age and death, and on how the contemporary social and medical aspects of the aging process pull us in uncomfortable directions, often distancing us from those relationships. So yes, there should be family poems, hospice poems, biblically-influenced poems, and dealing-with-everyday observation poems. Also some poems of hope and love, poems reminding me (and readers) of the need for compassion in all dealings. But the draft had 92 poems in it, far too many; and some were there just because I like them or they’d been published in a good journal. Which are actually not good enough reasons to include a poem in a collection, according to most of the editors I know.

I am back to thinking about the manuscript and digging up potatoes–a nice crop this year–instead of culling the poetry books because, thank goodness, the heat wave’s subsided a bit. But in the process of this non-routine summer I have allowed numerous weeds to flourish and set seed; all the more work for NEXT year’s gardening, but it’s been too hot to deal with said interlopers. I like to believe the weeds and I are reaching a sort of understanding, but it is not really a compromise. All the concessions have been on my part. [Note: weeding a personal library is less physically taxing but not really any easier.]

Sweltering

I do not much care for air conditioning, and I believe it is bad for the environment; yet I admit I’m grateful for it lately, as I reside in one of the many regions of the USA that’s been enduring dangerously high temperatures for more than a week straight. I feel lucky that we’re not struggling with the heat wave–that we can shut up the windows and turn on the AC. We’re also in an earlier-than-usual drought situation though the air feels muggy and humidity has been as high as 98%.

My garden needs water every day; I generally water in the evenings because that is when the garden is in shade. The barn swallows swoop around me as I make sure the tomato and cucumber plants’ roots are getting a deep soaking. While I water, I watch for insects–fireflies, moths, dragonflies. And for bats, which have returned but aren’t as numerous as they once were. It’s pleasant for me that there are fewer mosquitoes and gnats, but I’m concerned about a drop in the number of junebugs and moths, and even (yes) mosquitoes. The heat and drought have taken a toll on all kinds of wildlife.

This morning, a pair of finches dive-bombed a squirrel that was up in the pear tree, chasing it far into the hedgerow. It may have been after the unripe pears, but squirrels also sometimes eat songbird eggs or chicks, especially when the squirrels are nursing kits or when there’s a lack of other food. The deer are so thirsty and desperate for greens that they’ve eaten every last hosta in my landscape, including the ones right up at the house foundation. They are consuming plants they have overlooked before, but I can’t blame them. Since it has been so miserable outside, I haven’t picked black raspberries this year; I’m sure the deer are happy about that. But I do wish they’d eat the poison ivy, wintercreeper, oriental bittersweet, and honeysuckle vines…that would make my landscaping tasks easier!

I’ve kept a garden journal for 30 years. If you have a garden, you don’t need to be an environmental scientist to recognize that the climate is undergoing changes. This is not a political statement but a fact. Everything right now is stressed–including the gardener! The stress enters into my consciousness and, I suppose, into my creative life. My poem drafts of the past week have been a bit on the bleak side.

Here’s a draft of one of the 7-line poems I was working on last week. Suits the weather, I guess.

~


Sweltering

A description accurate for the days past solstice
when even the wind lies sweating in a hammock
unable to rise for a brief turn around the block.
Blackbirds slow their trills, robins shelter in shade,
all the tasks we should tend to we leave undone.
Hours of lethargy seep into skin and set up house,
keeping us damp, achy, sunburned with the blues.

~


Back to the garden

Late spring weather, mild and pleasant; lettuce and spinach ready and quite tasty, strawberries, asparagus–all the early harvest, with mulberries ripening on the trees and tomatoes starting to blossom. I have weeding to do, and it’s a task I don’t mind when the weather cooperates. Later on in summer, when the days get humid, hot, and blazing–then I am no fan of weeding. But on perfect days in early June, weeding is one of those mindless puttering tasks I can attend to while half-daydreaming.

I’m thinking about task-oriented work and creative work as opposed to wage-based work thanks to Jenny Odell’s second book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life beyond the Clock. Weeding’s one of those forms of work one does when it is necessary–the time it takes, and the best time to do it, don’t conform to clock schedules but to environmental ‘schedules,’ which vary. Too rainy? I don’t weed. After the soil has dried a bit and the weeds are sprouting like crazy? Time to weed. Too dry and hot? Not time to weed. Yet if I were a wage-paid groundskeeper and my boss said, “Get weeding today, $14 an hour, don’t waste your time,” I would have to weed, to look busy, to keep busy. Even though it might be a poor time to accomplish that particular task.

I’m no longer on the clock, at least in terms of wage-earning, but that socially-ingrained urge to keep busy and accomplish things and meet deadlines? That’s hard to move away from. Ill with covid, I kept complaining to myself that I wasn’t accomplishing anything. By which I guess I meant housekeeping, gardening, laundry, cooking, submitting work to journals, making plans for summer events, visiting my mother, taking walks, going to the gym…but really, it’s rather strange to think of such things as accomplishments. They’re not even work, per se, just tasks. They don’t have time constraints; doing them only becomes necessary when I run out of clean clothes, or need to eat or harvest spinach before it bolts.

Odell later addresses the sort of care-giving work that can’t really be broken into wage-based tasks, though industries do try that. Nurturing children, caring for livestock, being a teacher, social worker, farmer, artist: sure, some people do wage-work for these jobs, but hourly accountability doesn’t suit such work well, tends to distort the varying needs of the moment and the fallow or less-busy times that are just as crucial to accomplishing “good work” as the more rushed times are.

An artist needs down time. So does a Certified Nursing Assistant. So do farmers and teachers. And parents!

…and gardeners. We have all winter to do less and plan more, and then we have to respond to the weather and the circumstances around us as the circumstances require. Warming trends from climate change, floods or droughts, invasive beetles, viruses, weeds. What cannot be changed must be adapted to; didn’t we learn that from Darwin? If I have a job, as far as the garden goes, it is learning to balance things so that my effects on the earth are sustainable, harming the earth’s balance as little as possible–providing for pollinators and birds and amphibians, and also for my family.

It’s a difficult task and not clock-measurable, but more rewarding than most jobs are.

~

Because I like this song, and Mitchell’s lines about being billion-year-old carbon and getting ourselves back to the garden, here she is:

~

Jewel

Joya’s curator/founder Simon Beckman requests an artist’s statement from the residents, and mine is below. Compared to many of the resident artist statements, mine seems quite brief–artists often have complex conceptual ideas to describe and rely more on images, so their statements (words!) are often lengthier. I’m a writer, but I’m a poet; concise use of words ought to be my metier.

La jolla, and la joya, mean “the jewel” but also–especially the latter spelling–refer (geologically) to a bowl-like valley. The description is both physically and metaphorically apt, and provides context for the poem below my statement.

~~

In wild places, some part of me that’s not domestic surfaces. I experience a rise in my level of awareness regarding my surroundings, an apprehension in the etymological sense of “a seizing upon, laying hold of; understanding” (Etymology Online). In canyons, caverns, riverbeds, forests—yes, in the desert, too—I respond wholly differently from the way I encounter unfamiliar human-made spaces. While at Joya-AiR, I encountered both: new environments that I’m integrating into my inner ecology. New forms of art. That process of integration, an exciting one, will continue long after my residency here has ended.

It has been such a pleasure to interact with artists whose mediums vary from my own. I was the only poet in this group, and the opportunities I’ve had to learn more about the visual arts have been amazing and useful. My first loves were sketching and painting, and although my longtime practice has been writing, imagery has ever been vital to my creative work. I thank them for their generosity of spirit. What artists can offer to one another is an aspect of themselves through their perspectives as well as their mediums and works. This kind of giving and exchange strikes me as quite personal and enriching. It is something we can do for the world, too.

The extensive work that Simon and Donna have been doing here to make the place both welcoming and ecologically sustainable impresses me and confirms my conviction that with creativity, open minds, and persistence, humans can manage to live more cooperatively with the planet and damage it less—even, perhaps, help it to heal itself.

I will keep the images of Cortijada Los Gázquez with me for a long time.

~~

Jewel

…implies what is small, exquisite, bright.
At even higher altitudes, glassy glacial pools
shine at the caldera’s ridges.
Here, the hills’ aridity offers nothing
but shallow canyons where once
a river coursed, twisting around a cavity
anchored by holm oak and Aleppo pines.
The pinsapos sway in late afternoon,
their cones studded with hardy seeds.

Almond and olive trees dot pale clay soil.
No desert is ever gentle—what survives
must be temperamentally suited to the climate—
but what’s cradled in these ancient mountains
seems gentler than most. Night’s stars,
exquisite. Evenings of ruby, amber, amethyst.
Days that define bright. And when rain descends,
however briefly: everything gleams.


[Cortijada Los Gázquez, Vélez Blanco, Spain]



Many amazements

Subscribe to continue reading

Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.