In the Dark, All Manner of Possibilities

Russian sage has nothing do with this post, because I can't take a picture in the dark.

Dark in the morning in the fall is a dark that just stays put. When you wake up early to get a jump on the day in late October, you can accomplish so much because the daylight just never arrives. My fireplace is roaring and it can't cure the chill, the dog doesn't even show up to keep me warm. I have finished off nearly the whole pot of coffee and still as the clock moves ever relentlessly toward the day, the day just refuses to arrive. So far this morning, I've read most of the New Yorker and I'm thinking I can just sit happily here for another several hours and keep the day at bay.

Outside the threat of an early freeze lurks, but I'm still sure it won't come for another month. This weekend, I have a wide-open dance card. No daughters home. No plans made. Nobody expecting much from me. There is a tiny temptation to go down to the office and get a jump on getting that goSmithsonian Visitors Guide started. But I sure don't want to do that. I could hire some help and clear out the ivy in the back corner by the fence and plan my rose garden for next summer. I want to plant two or three heirloom big bushy beauties to cover the entire slope. I've selected several varieties with sweet scents and rose hips (perhaps, Bayses Blueberry, Belinda's Dream, Chrysler Imperial or Miss Lillian) so that I can make rose hip teas, jams and jellies next fall.

I collected about six pounds of coffee grounds from Starbucks yesterday to take over to the Community Garden. I've got a clover cover crop growing in my plot and I'm wondering if I should turn it under now, while it's still in its early stage and sew in compost and grounds. My friend Anne at the garden has turned each of her beds into billowy piles of rich, dark fluff and I'm envious and want to do the same.

I'm going to go for a run both days because I haven't had any exercise since Tuesday.

I'm going to read travel guides about the Galapagos, because we just booked our trip in December.

I'm going to want to cook cozy comfort foods and a large Sunday morning breakfast.

Maybe Jim will want to go for a bike ride.

And the Sunday Times, I could read every section.

You see what happens when the daylight refuses to show up. I get cocky and think that I might be able to do it all.


The Putterer

Keeping It In Landscape Mode

I prefer a landscape mode.

I prefer a landscape view on my iPad. I like a magazine layout. I don't want to turn it vertically and see it elongated. Maybe it's because I'm short and I like the ceiling, glass or otherwise, close to my head. Or maybe because my peripheral vision is good and I can see things clearly from my far left to my far right. I said left first, didn't I? I'm not a lefty, I prefer my right hand. But lately my right hand aches, so sometimes I use my left hand, but that's awkward. Don't you hate how everything is political?

I like symbolism and schmaltzy stuff. Cheap birdhouses and silly phrases scratched into garden rocks. I like to buy cheap things, but I prefer to live high end with quality. Still, I can't get past the idea that I can only shop at Sears. Sometimes when I'm at Nordstroms, I feel like I'm crashing a party. I like good design. I think of my Mac as a work of art. But I also like my old white sofa because it's got some stains on it, coffee, pet, dust. It feels good to sit here, because I can't really ruin it since it's already ruined. But it feels good, old, antique, high quality.

I feel fortunate. Like I won the lottery. But then I worry. I  might lose it all in a hurry. One bad decision. One misspoken word.

I feel like I'm stupid smart. I miss things. I don't read things closely. I hurry too much. I have so many opportunities. I can't do it all unless I hurry. But if I slow down, I won't finish. But then, when I think about it, I know a lot. I've read a lot. I'm open to lots of ideas. I'm out there. Bat shit crazy, really. I have a tree instead of a God. But then maybe God resides in the tree. Sometimes when I hug my tree, I feel it pulsing beneath my fingers as if God were giving my a warm hello. That's when I'm slowing down. When my tree and I rest and breath deeply and hear the soft, gentle flow of the water in the stream and quiet still air moves rhythmically from my extreme left to my extreme right. I am religious about my tree. And sometimes, I hear the hymns of my church. I loved church because I loved the music, but now, I don't want to church because it's just another demand to hurry off to.

I'm full of joy. I'm breathing deeply. But I wake up early. My heart aches. Anxiety. My dog is worrying about another storm. I comfort her. I wonder if I really do have intuitive pulses when I wake as if I'm intercepting some strange code that connects through some long severed umbilical cord. My mother to me to my daughters. Do I actually feel someone else's anxiety or is it mine alone?

I am old, but I stay young. My belly is round. My hips thick. My ankles swell (when I fly far). But I can run, I can push up and pull up many times. I can dance at a dizzying pace. I love to be kinetic. Because when I hurry, I get it all done and then I can do more. But then on my sofa, by my tree, I am bat shit crazy, quiet and happy and taking it all in from my far left to my far right and if the sky is falling, it won't hurt too much because it doesn't have too far to fall in my horizontal landscape.  The Putterer

Yelping about Food and Gardens

Garden bounty

We were up in Clarksburg on Saturday, dropping the dog off to be groomed and so with two hours to kill, we thought wouldn't it be nice to go out for breakfast. Both of us were thinking about coffee, eggs and bacon, so I downloaded on my new iPhone the Yelp app and asked it where we should go. Nothing nearby looked promising, but a Bob Evans.

Now Yelp is asking for a review and like all social networks, I already have four new "friends" on Yelp, who include a work colleague, a cousin, an old friend from high school and a gardener. If I write my first Yelp review, these four individuals presumably will see it and I'm a little concerned that my reputation will be tainted for the very reason that of all the great places to eat around the DC area, I will be noted for having eaten first at Bobs.

But never mind that. Here is my review. A bright, cheery facade falsely promising the healthy and hearty. Modest attempt to look clean, resulting sadly in a soggy seat with drizzled drops left behind on my chair from the wipe rag, which was surely soaked in dirty dish water. After swapping out chairs, a friendly waitress came by and gave us a book-length menu filled with every combination of breakfast fare. We read it and couldn't find what we wanted. Two eggs scrambled, toast (Jim), grits (me), bacon and coffee. Waitress pointed out classic breakfast, which we happily agreed to. Out in the parking lot, I watched two couples get out of their car. The girls were beautiful, the boys not so much. The boys had cigarettes, the girls waited with them until they finished smoking. One of the girls continuously tugged self-consciously at her shirt, pulling at it to make sure it was covering her tummy. I sipped my coffee and the blue mug felt warm and comforting in my hands and I closed my eyes and enjoyed the calm of just sitting and waiting to being served. I measured breath going in through my nose and out my parted lips, calling up my yoga instructor's mantra and thinking only if only, I could ever learn to relax and just be in the moment. The food arrived. The eggs were that flat yellow cafeteria material, rubber and tasteless. My biscuits, which came as an un-asked-for side, where oddly white. No integrity. Nothing held them together and they crumbled when you buttered them. The grits, also ghostly white, were soupy and of course, tasteless. I peppered them. Didn't help. I salted them. Not good either. Jim tried dunking the bacon in. But the bacon was rough. It was hard to bite into and when it finally chewed up, little bits of it parked into the crevices between my teeth. I looked around the room, remembering now why I never go to these places and felt sorry for all the people who do. We paid our $20 and tipped the nice waitress.

And like all things in my life, connected and interconnected, the New York Times on Sunday was spot on with their article by Mark Bitman, "Is Junk Food Really Cheaper," which argued that the real cost of preparing good wholesome foot at home, was merely the time and energy it took to do it. Lost to our culture is the desire to make and serve food. And so off people go to Bob Evans to eat ghastly food. Eating and growing and preparing food is a huge part of my life, now. I do it because I enjoy it. And the results are so rich and tasty. That poor girl in the parking lot, pretty but very overweight, her gross boyfriend, baggy pants and shaggy face, sucking on his cigarette. I know, I'm a snob. I'm sorry for judging. I'm sorry, really I am. But oh, if she was my adopted daughter, I think I could help her.

Most weekend, Jim makes me my breakfast. It's his favorite food to cook. That man can scramble an egg that tastes like manna from heaven. The toast is served perfectly hot, dripping with butter. The bacon is salty and a perfect combination of crispy and chewy. He always finds a fruit to decorate my plate, some berries, a melon, a pear. I eat it happy.  Dear Bob Evans, the only thing I can say for you is that I liked your coffee. But I won't be back for any more visits. The Putterer

Making a Plot a Home

This is the entrance to my community garden.

And this is what it looked like in early spring.

Two gardens this summer kept The Putterer in fit gardening form. The community garden on Fenton Street is my new favorite pastime. I got a 10 foot by 20 foot plot in full sun but built on top of an abandoned lot with plenty of nasty stuff in the soil. The county did an awesome job of plowing, prepping and soil testing, but the first year was touch and go. Though after a buying into a share of compost, I did harvest a huge bunch of tomatoes, plenty of basil, some squash and eggplant and pile of pole beans.

Last weekend, I pulled all the tomato plants out. And this weekend, I'm planting a cover crop of clover to help nourish the soil this fall and winter. I'll turn that back into the soil (my back is aching already in anticipation) and next summer, I'll dump a pile more compost in and then, oh what magic will grow there, I can't wait.

But I think the best part of the community garden this summer had to have been my plot neighbors. I got so lucky because I'm just across the path from Gordon Clark, our resident master gardener and just up the way from Kathy Jentz, editor of Washington Gardener. I have new friends Anne McDermott and Pamela Trochesset and Colette Rausch and Natasha Hurwitz. The Putterer

Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Empty Nests and Spider Mothers

This spring, a mother built a nest at my door. Today, it's empty

.

I started this blog in 2009 to collect my crazy ramblings. Here, I record the thoughts that bubble up in my brain, while my hands are busy in my garden. Over the last two years, while my garden took shape (and a few gray hairs grew), young mothers would stop by and tell me how they yearned for time to putter in a garden. My kids, by then, were away from home more often than I cared to actually count. So even as I was a little envious of the children clinging at their knees, I would tell them that we go through phases in our life: childhood, our teens, young adulthood, then parenthood, and finally, gardener.

And the garden is rich with metaphor, fuel for this blog.

This spring, a wren built a nest in the hanging basket at my door and two chicks emerged from eggs carefully laid. If I took a peek, mother bird would sometimes angrily swat the back of my head in a perfectly executed dive bomb from her perch in the nearby crepe myrtle. Despite her warning, I routinely checked on them every time I went in or out my front door. And then one day they were gone. [Full stop, wipe tear here.]

The world has given me plenty of metaphor this past week. We had an earthquake, followed by a hurricane. Monumental events. My house and garden survived both, but they look look like a tsunami hit. All summer, I ignored them, as I sped from shopping mall to box store to specialty shop, spending until my credit card glowed warmly from overuse. Farewell parties. Last suppers. Long talks and long walks. Heartfelt conversations over tea and coffee. It was as if both girls, just like their mother, secretly had a need to shore up and stow away enough nurturing and sentiment to last them the many weeks of their individual journeys.

This morning, I went out to get the paper and a large spider had spun her web straight across my doorway.

Spider mother at my door

You can not ask for more metaphor than this.

"The Spider is an ode to my mother," the artist Louise Bourgeois has said. "She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother."

One of Bourgeois's spider sculptures holds court in the National Gallery's Sculpture Garden on the Mall. I pass it every day on my way to work. Called simply "Maman," her bronz head and thorax hover high overhead and her eight legs drop down around her on the Earth, like pinpoints on a map. Where legs touch down, I've always thought, a child resides. Ever vigilant, spider mother watches over them from on high. When my kids were in school in Maryland and I was away all day at work in the District. I morphed into spider mother. Out there in the world, they were growing, learning, living without me. But I was close enough. (Spider mothers, unlike helicopter parents, are far more nuanced in deciding when they might swoop in.)

Maman's legs now pinpoint further locations on her map. One in St. Petersburg, Florida, the other in Quito, Ecuador, my girls are out there now. And me, I've got some gardening to do. The Putterer

The Smithsonian Catbird Study Reveals A Host of Visitors in My Garden

Ea

Earlier this summer, I wrote about a Smithsonian researcher who was in our neighborhood studying domestic cat predation on songbirds. Leah Culp introduced herself to me while I was out walking my dog one day and before long, my garden became a study field. Next to my purple chair, Leah put in a motion-sensitive camera that could photograph both day and night any visitors or intruders to my garden. Last week, the Catbird Study team sent me an email with the above photographs. Two raccoons, a robin and the targeted culprit, a cat, triggered the camera. The good news, my friends?

No Deer! The Putterer

I Got Lucky This Year

This squash plant volunteered to grow in my garden.

This mystery squash is about 2 inches long right now

Growing two gardens is time consuming and so The Putterer only gets to post on occasion this summer. Yesterday at the Fenton Street Community Garden late in the afternoon after the temperature had dipped from something around 100 degrees to something in the 90s, I spent some time watering my plants. Each bucket of water was infused with some fish fertilizer. I am hoping that the fertilizer will give my poor plants enough nutrition to hold strong through this incredible heat wave and drought period.

I was alone in the garden on Saturday night and so I took a stroll around the place to admire everyone's incredible handiworks. It's truly amazing how in just a few short months a parking lot has become a little piece of heaven. I guess I got lucky when I signed up for my plot. And speaking of luck, growing in my plot is a wonderful squash plant that grew out of a seed that must have been tossed into the compost pile and survived the heat of the pile. I don't know what it is, but if it survives the nasty little squash bugs that ate my other squash plant, I might have some late fall squash to harvest. Here are some photos from the Fenton Street Community Garden.