Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Monday, August 14, 2006
A Beautiful Garden Poem
...courtesy of the Writer's Almanac.
Touch Me
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.
Touch Me
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz
from Staying Alone, Real Poems for Unreal Times
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Catching Up
Where to begin? With apologies for being so long.
August is fully here, and so few words about the garden so far! It seems I haven’t spent much more time gardening than blogging, although the results far outweigh the efforts. The one semi-perennial border I put in along the west fence has done amazingly well, with all my old favorites — Russian sage, achillea, rudbekia, santolina, salvia, sage, rosemary, thyme, and the annuals Mexican heather, eucalyptus, basil, parsley, red-leafed lettuce, a couple tomatoes (insurance), a pepper and an eggplant. Petunias in the shed window box. A few scattered pots of coleus, double-petunia, two leftover poinsettias from Christmas, and the scented geranium moved out to the front porch.
The vegetable patch — not big enough to be a garden — yielded some cabbages and broccoli early, and now is a dense, tall thicket of tomatoes. Neighbor Fred made fun of my “oil derrick” tomato towers when I first set them out over the young plants. (It didn’t help that they blew over in a storm before I had them anchored.) But now! Several plants have topped out at 7’. They are dense and lush, putting the neighbors' plants to shame. The only ones bigger all season were my Mom’s, but now mine have eclipsed even hers. Fried tomatoes for dinner tonight, the second time this season. The fruits are beautiful and heavy — the new favorite, pineapple red, and large lemon yellows, smaller lemon boy, tasty green zebra, and a massively sprawling volunteer red currant (the tiny South American variety; it must have sprouted from the compost). Plenty of fruit. I just hope it lasts into the Fall. I never have paid close enough attention to maturity dates to extend the crop, although I remember one year getting lucky and having tomatoes right up to Thanksgiving.
If I get time and motivation, I’d like to pull out that red currant and plant some beets, turnips, kale, and another crop of lettuce. My salad has been delicious but pathetically thin. What can I say? My attentions have been divided…
…as is evidenced by the project from hell, the patio retaining wall. I had to laugh when I walked by it this evening. There it was, half done, with the rest of the stones scattered all over the patio area. I could fill in the gaps with sand and I’d have a finished patio. It’s tough to get anything done when I am away every weekend.
August already, and I have spent hardly any time just sitting out back. When I think back to Taneytown, just a short year ago, with morning coffee outside on the porch or in the garden every day, and the sunset behind the mountains every evening from the porch swing. (sigh)
A couple weeks ago I was complaining that the night sounds had not yet started. This evening, sitting out back at dusk with my book, it was so loud it was almost painful. What a lovely cacophony of insects, although still not loud enough to drown out the yapping of Farmer Sebastian’s mutts coming up from the hollow. The full moon was making its way up through the trees. I was hoping a deer would come in, as I’ve seen once or twice this summer, but no luck. I’m sure I’ll see them again coming after my apples and my neighbor’s.
Other news of the summer: a bout of Lyme disease, which seems to have been knocked out with a nasty course of antibiotics. Daughter unit worked a six-week gig at summer camp. No steady employment for the son. The dogs are beginning to show their age, especially Trixie. I need to be more religious in walking her.
Oh, I started re-reading The Contrary Farmer tonight. I thought of it after I heard something about Wendell Berry the other day, thinking he wrote it. It was funny how I went right to it among the hundreds of books on the bookcases. I was mistaken, it is written by Gene Logsden, but it starts with a long Wendell Berry poem. Has it been years already since I first read it? Four? Five? Six? His simple wisdom still resounds with me, perhaps more than ever. Encouraging and depressing all at once. It would be such a better world if we held such simple, straightforward values. But we will never go back, or forward, to that. The only way to do it is to be…contrary. I shouldn’t mind being that.
August is fully here, and so few words about the garden so far! It seems I haven’t spent much more time gardening than blogging, although the results far outweigh the efforts. The one semi-perennial border I put in along the west fence has done amazingly well, with all my old favorites — Russian sage, achillea, rudbekia, santolina, salvia, sage, rosemary, thyme, and the annuals Mexican heather, eucalyptus, basil, parsley, red-leafed lettuce, a couple tomatoes (insurance), a pepper and an eggplant. Petunias in the shed window box. A few scattered pots of coleus, double-petunia, two leftover poinsettias from Christmas, and the scented geranium moved out to the front porch.
The vegetable patch — not big enough to be a garden — yielded some cabbages and broccoli early, and now is a dense, tall thicket of tomatoes. Neighbor Fred made fun of my “oil derrick” tomato towers when I first set them out over the young plants. (It didn’t help that they blew over in a storm before I had them anchored.) But now! Several plants have topped out at 7’. They are dense and lush, putting the neighbors' plants to shame. The only ones bigger all season were my Mom’s, but now mine have eclipsed even hers. Fried tomatoes for dinner tonight, the second time this season. The fruits are beautiful and heavy — the new favorite, pineapple red, and large lemon yellows, smaller lemon boy, tasty green zebra, and a massively sprawling volunteer red currant (the tiny South American variety; it must have sprouted from the compost). Plenty of fruit. I just hope it lasts into the Fall. I never have paid close enough attention to maturity dates to extend the crop, although I remember one year getting lucky and having tomatoes right up to Thanksgiving.
If I get time and motivation, I’d like to pull out that red currant and plant some beets, turnips, kale, and another crop of lettuce. My salad has been delicious but pathetically thin. What can I say? My attentions have been divided…
…as is evidenced by the project from hell, the patio retaining wall. I had to laugh when I walked by it this evening. There it was, half done, with the rest of the stones scattered all over the patio area. I could fill in the gaps with sand and I’d have a finished patio. It’s tough to get anything done when I am away every weekend.
August already, and I have spent hardly any time just sitting out back. When I think back to Taneytown, just a short year ago, with morning coffee outside on the porch or in the garden every day, and the sunset behind the mountains every evening from the porch swing. (sigh)
A couple weeks ago I was complaining that the night sounds had not yet started. This evening, sitting out back at dusk with my book, it was so loud it was almost painful. What a lovely cacophony of insects, although still not loud enough to drown out the yapping of Farmer Sebastian’s mutts coming up from the hollow. The full moon was making its way up through the trees. I was hoping a deer would come in, as I’ve seen once or twice this summer, but no luck. I’m sure I’ll see them again coming after my apples and my neighbor’s.
Other news of the summer: a bout of Lyme disease, which seems to have been knocked out with a nasty course of antibiotics. Daughter unit worked a six-week gig at summer camp. No steady employment for the son. The dogs are beginning to show their age, especially Trixie. I need to be more religious in walking her.
Oh, I started re-reading The Contrary Farmer tonight. I thought of it after I heard something about Wendell Berry the other day, thinking he wrote it. It was funny how I went right to it among the hundreds of books on the bookcases. I was mistaken, it is written by Gene Logsden, but it starts with a long Wendell Berry poem. Has it been years already since I first read it? Four? Five? Six? His simple wisdom still resounds with me, perhaps more than ever. Encouraging and depressing all at once. It would be such a better world if we held such simple, straightforward values. But we will never go back, or forward, to that. The only way to do it is to be…contrary. I shouldn’t mind being that.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
It is this...
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
— Albert Camus
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