Summer Project

It's been a busy summer in the garden. We decided to double the size of the orchard that is fenced in to keep the deer out. It's a project that requires many hands and strong backs, so we gathered up a bunch of our kids' friends. This is a group of hard-working young women and men who love to be outdoors, and who are interested in growing and eating real food. Most of them garden, and two of the women are heading to Vermont in a few months to start their own organic farm.

Several of our crew worked on the first fence a few years ago, and they feel a wonderful sense of ownership of their orchard.

With enough luck, manure, and TLC, there should be enough apples and pears and peaches and raspberries and garlic and onions for all of us. (Probably there is some equivalent here to "never count your chickens before they hatch," like "never count your garlic heads before they harden off.")

Tom did a bunch of layout prep work the weekend before, and then when the gang arrived the fence posts had to be set, the wire stretched and nailed down, and the gates built and installed. It sounds fairly simple, but it's hard work.

After the fence was up, we even got a few rows dug. I took a turn on the machine....also hard work. The machine wants to run and it's a job to keep up with it and stop it at the end of the row so it doesn't chew up the new fence. After a couple rows I headed back to the kitchen for my usual job: farm wife. After all, a crew like this has to be well-fed.

Last photo: the tired, victorious crew.

Earth Day and spring and friendship are in the air

Girls out for a hike on Earth Day. I love my friends, just like this, even if it doesn't always show.

And here are the flowers at Full Belly Farm's stand at the farmer's market. Spring, brought to you by the armload.

Winter Gathering

Woke up to frost all around, sparkling and beautiful, on the grass and trees and glimmering on my strawberry plants.

Winter solstice here, once again. Had a holiday party Sunday night, with food and drink and caroling and lighting the menorah, all to drive back the dark, and glory in the cozy center in the depths of winter.

And before the cold could strike everything, we'd brought in the bounty of the back yard. The persimmons gathered, hung and drying, thanks to our son Felix. These ridiculously large squash, cut and stewed and pureed.





And flourishing in the garden, the sturdy, defiant Meyer's lemon tree, perseveres despite the cold.

autumn

I love how the light shifts in the fall. I took this photo a mile from my cabin. I'd just driven down the dirt road to Highway One, where the land meets the water and the sky.Day ends as the sun slips into the water, night comes. Summer ends, autumn pauses, slides into winter. Crisp air, light so rich you can scoop up handfuls and pour it inside you.

Word picture from the Farmer's Market

Went to the farmer's market today, which was lovely and relaxed, with an old-time music festival in the adjoining park. People flowed back and forth between the two, eating plates of delicious smelling food, and biting into apples and peaches. Small dancing children, chatting adults, young ccouples on blankets.

If-I'd-Had-A-Camera Moment: A grey haired lady who had a small table covered with little cobalt blue bottles and a sign saying "homemade healing herbals." Standing in front of her table, a woman held opened her blouse while the grey haired lady earnestly rubbed an oil between her breasts. The woman getting the mini-healing-massage had her eyes closed, her face up to the sun and such a deep look of surrender, while we all walked around her, in the warmth and the music and the smells of cooking food. What was the story here, I wondered. Breast cancer? Heartache?

A few days ago I ran into a friend and asked about something he'd told me about a few weeks earlier. How can you remember I was doing that? he asked.

Easy. The stories are so endlessly interesting. I go around gleaning moments, as lives brush up against mine, and just for a few seconds, or a year, or a lifetime, our stories flow together.

New Mexico desert

I have a new understanding of why artists move to the New Mexico desert to paint, draw, photograph, write, sculpt, whatever. There is such a magnificence here.

In a big bus driving to Ghost Ranch, the desert unfolded in front of us, and the colors of the dirt and craggy cliffs filled me up. I though, inexplicably, of Judy, my older sister Joan's childhood friend. Judy had a sturdy frame, and was tawny skinned with dark shiny hair, in a family of blondes. She had a realness I loved. When she grew up, she moved to the New Mexico desert on a sheep ranch down a long, long dirt road. She got pregnant, and had her baby at home. The baby died during the birthing, and was buried in the dark red desert dirt.

Judy would show up from time to time at my parents house to visit, her face and hands weathered to a dark mahogany, and I would look at her and wonder: does she wish she'd had her baby in a modern hospital? But I never asked. My parents went to visit, and came back with photographs of the small adobe house she'd built with her own hands. Kerosene lamps, kitchen tools hanging from the wall, strands of dried plants from the ceiling. I pored over those photos. Does she wish? Does she ever stand over the baby's grave and wonder?

But now, all these years later, I understand. The desert claims you. You become part of the desert and its vastness, the red dirt and the unending sky, and you and your babies live and die in harmony with the breathing and sighing, giving and taking, of the desert.

Purple mountains majesties

Last week my sister Meg and I drove north to visit our other sister, Joan, and her husband, Bernard. They live at the very top of California in a gorgeous valley where people mainly grow alfalfa and raise cattle. The cowboys drive either really big, fancy trucks, or old beaters. Joan and Bernard run a little cafe there and one night while we were there the Cowboy Christians met. They came in, young and old, the women bearing trays of brownies and other treats, the men stopping to put their hats on one of the round cafe tables, upside-down. Then they all sat in a big semi-circle and shared their stories about Jesus in their lives.

I wanted to take a photo of that table covered with cowboy hats, the beautiful round circles made by the inside of the headbands and then the wide brims, touching, and behind the table all the people in the circle. I didn't want to disturb them though, so you'll just have to imagine it.

And in the mornings and the evenings, the hills were purple and, yes, way majestic. I have a heart full of the tender, earnest people there, and beauty of this amazing country.



Big thanks to my sister Meg for the photos.

Sunlight and redwood trees, Chiura Obata

After days of stormy wet weather, woke up to sun today. Raindrops are shimmering on everything-- bare winter branches, grass, ferns, and huckleberry bushes. My favorite is seeing the morning sun lighting up one side of the redwood trees. Rusty red-brown bark, bare lower branches. All topped off by huge, leafy branches swaying gently in the wind.

Chiura Obata painted it so beautifully.
Life and Death, Porcupine Flat, High Sierra, California, 1930