Aloha, Bro!

The Surfer Dude is moving back to his home place, and that old saying about not being able to go home again simply isn’t true in his case. I knew, when I suggested he spend a few months back home last fall to see if he would really enjoy living there again so many years later, that he was almost certainly going to discover he would; and I was right, damn it. It took him a couple of months to say it out loud to us cold-climate types, but there you have it; and soon he’ll be off. I doubt, once he’s there, that he’ll often look back. If he does, for a good part of the year the blizzards we’re enduring will obscure his vision, and he’ll shiver with the memory and thank his lucky stars that he no longer has to shovel snow as he tosses out his flannel-lined trousers and puts on a new pair of shorts. 

Change sucks, but it also means adventure. In this instance, the Surfer Dude is going to have the great adventure of returning to the land and landscape he loves, to extended family and old, long-time friends, of rebuilding and revisiting friendships and places and activities that were once so close to him they were in his pocket, but over the long years he’s lived away have became a part-time reality in a mature mind whose center of life was elsewhere, and very different. The sucky part for the Surfer Dude is that he’s leaving behind Glorious Us – and we are quite glorious. That means a lot – his home place is so distant that, unless he comes back here for a visit, he’ll probably never see most of Us again in the flesh – which, with modern technology, is still sad, but not mind-blowingly so. Even so, Glorious Us will move out of his pocket and into a treasure chest he looks into from time to time; but we’ll no longer be a daily part of his reality, we’ll no longer know what he’s thinking and doing day to day, and quite soon the strands of connection will be mostly memory threads and heart strings of affection, rejuvenated from time to time by emails and photos from a place I, at least, have never seen in person.

What he’ll gain is his return to the place that speaks, in a deep and secret and sacred way, to his bones and his soul. I get that - once, long ago, I gave up the potential of a really nifty job with hardly a second glance because I couldn’t bear the thought of being long removed from the shadow of the mountain I grew up near, the murmur of the trees, the bones of the terroir that nurtured my bones, and the small towns where I felt always a level of comfort I don’t feel in larger places. When you have land love, you have it deep in the pit of your belly, and sooner or later you have to give in to it or spend your life slightly off, always.

 

Even though I get it, and have been secretly rooting for him to give in to the mystical tug on his heart, I find myself tearing up every so often. Parts of my life, too, will change when he departs, and change sucks, as well as bringing adventure that I can’t see into yet.

The Surfer Dude and I are colleagues; we spend our working days in adjacent spaces in a shared office suite. There used to be three of us - two sisters and a brother; but our sister took off on her own adventure a couple of years ago. I still miss her, but with my bro in the office, it didn’t seem too bad. Now it seems like a chasm has opened at my feet that’s not likely to disappear.

It’s not that I mind being left behind – I’m in my home place, after all, so where else would I go? I don’t crave a change of venue – the mountain still looms over me, and the rocks and trees and waters of this place feel like family. But that’s the thing – family can be a whole lot of things, and a whole lot of people. These two people I worked near became family – we looked out for each other, we tried to make each others’ working lives easier, we treated each other when we were ill or in pain, and we listened to each other when a friendly ear was needed. We were more than work friends – the connection was deeper and more intimate – we were truly a kind of family. The connection was more than associational, it was in some way chemical, or maybe mystical.

We rarely saw each other outside the office; we weren’t that kind of friends – but we know things about each other, and share memories, that no one else does. Our affection for each other was familial – we lent rooms and linens and opinions and help freely, extended work days to treat each other, brought food in times of stress, ran errands and did favors and gave hugs and advice when we could. We were like happy siblings, often bumping into each other – literally – and happy to do so.

 

I’ve had a lot of different jobs over the years, and worked with a lot of different people, and always, always – well, almost always (there was that one lady who was certain I wanted her job, which I had no interest in doing and didn’t have the skill to do, anyway, rather than the job I had and enjoyed – working with her was, let us say, more interesting than I cared for) - all the folks I’ve worked with or near have been friendly and comfortable; and with some, friendships developed that continued for many years after one or the other of us left one place of work for another. Two work friends became special, life-long friends: the British Car Gal and I remain good friends decades after our last job together, and the Musician and I met at that same weird workplace where the British Car Gal and I met.

When we’re young I think we all accept the drifting away of some friends we made in school or college or work as part of life. Stuff happens: we move to a far coast, or another country, or marry and get sucked into a different set of friends, or change jobs and no longer keep the same hours or have the same days off. Affection remains, but over time, actual physical ties wear thin and often dissolve. We look backwards and ponder, “I wonder what happened to so-and-so? I wonder where that person’s living now?” and then we sigh, and smile, and go on with our own busy lives.

Now, for me – looking at life through my older eyes – to have spent many years working alongside two people who really settled into my heart as closer than friendly colleagues, who feel to me like a special kind of family – I recognize this has been a precious gift, and this last parting, of my bro to his home place, has brought tears to my eyes more than once. 

The office is still filled with charming, lovely, friendly people, but the energy – while still very good - is different, and there are ghosts haunting my days. A certain laugh that I listened for throughout the days has drifted away, the spontaneous sisterly hug that we intuited was needed is gone, and the footsteps I hear in the hallway outside my door are different footsteps. When I whistle on my way down the hall, I’m not sure anyone now is glad to hear it. 

Aloha, Bro. Safe journey. I’ll look forward to seeing pictures of you in the sun, especially when the north wind’s blowing here and the wolves are howling at the door in the dead of winter. Just don’t rub it in! 

And if you ever find yourself in need of a mid-winter snowball, I'm your gal. Fed Ex and I will be on it in a flash.

Artwork and photo by Deb Marshall.   For the blog, July 30, 2017.

  

How the Garden Grows

Squash plant overtaking the peas; Deb Marshall photo

This has been a slightly odd gardening year – unlike last summer, it’s been pretty wet, but lately not quite wet enough; unlike last summer, not so horribly hot, but kind of too cold many nights. I’ve been picking baby summer squashes and zucchinis for several weeks now, and even a few cherry tomatoes from the plant in the pot on the wart, but only this weekend have the peas finally started to fill out, and that is just wrong. The first bed of parsnips I planted is a loss – only one seed germinated, and then one more appeared a couple of days ago. The first germinated parsnip is about 2 inches high and has been for weeks. There’s a pepper plant in that bed that’s big and happy and producing fruit, and on the far side of the bed, where the parsnips happily grew last year, beans are doing well, so I don’t know what’s going on. Not even weeds have appeared where I want to see parsnips, just a few stray catnip seedlings that show up everywhere, thanks to the careful ministrations of Catmandoo. I may try seeding that side of the bed with turnips; maybe stirring things up a bit will cause late germination.

Fava bean flowers; Deb Marshall photo

The beans are finally blooming and looking lush, though the scarlet runners are only limping along. All my squash plants are looking big and healthy, though I’ve sighted the nasty squash bugs which may or may not wreak havoc before we’re done. Those odd, alien creatures the fava beans, which like cold weather as a rule, are looking quite poorly this summer; they’re unusually short and look like they’ve been used hard. But they’ve started blooming, so all may not be lost, though I don’t see any pods yet. Some critter has dug a lovely little hole in the side of one of the fava bean/pea beds; I haven’t caught a sight of the homesteader so I’m not sure what exactly it is, and I don’t care so long as it doesn’t eat peas and beans and peppers. I suspect a chipmunk.

Critter hole under the French peas; Deb Marshall photo

 The sunflowers are starting to bloom, but they’re slow this year, too – only chest high instead of last year’s giants, and several not even thigh high yet. The passionflower vine, which I put outdoors for the first time this summer, is very happily producing a number of flower buds, so it likes its summer digs. I can’t wait ‘til the flowers open – they smell like heaven, but last only a day or two, and they take a long time developing so I can’t guess when they’ll open. All the flowers on the wart seem to be pretty happy this year, but I lost one of two hibiscus I planted in the ground last year, and the mock orange, another new addition, started well then fizzled. I’m going to take a chance planting a lovely hydrangea, hoping it will take to the earth and live to see another year; we don’t do well with bushes, for some reason. I don’t seem to speak bush and can’t tell when they’re in distress.

Potted plants on the wart; Deb Marshall photo

 

Parsnips weren’t the only thing that didn’t germinate – this summer there’s not a single cosmos in my whole garden, first time ever; but volunteer California poppies, calendula, and dill are everywhere, and one lone coriander plant popped up in the middle of the hay mulch. I even have a very large volunteer cherry tomato plant behind the raised bed near the house, and another in the compost bin. Marjoram from a single plant that I planted a decade ago, and Jerusalem artichokes and bee balm -  all refugees from at least 10 years ago – have migrated back to the garden, or perhaps emerged from down below it after moving about some and staying out of sight for years, and have taken over huge sections against the back fence , which is not where they were when I planted them all those years ago. Along with a giant clump of some daisy-like flower (where did that come from?) and some lovely yellow ground-cover-like thing that arrived several years ago in the discarded remains of a windowbox, that turns out to be hardy in my garden, they are starting to crowd out the grass and sweet-sour grass I’ve been weeding out for what feels like ages. Some morning glory seed I put into the ground there came up and is starting to climb the fence, and the old heads of Love Lies Bleeding that I buried along  the fence line has sprouted a million little seedlings; I hope a few will grow to adult-size and bloom.

Bee balm, daisy-like thing, and unknown hardy creeping vine; Deb Marshall photo

Anything that grows along that fence which isn’t a noxious weed or grass makes me happy. The fence wasn’t originally part of the garden, but the Barkie Boys’ continual intrusion into the garden, especially chasing Abu’s big red ball through the beds, inspired the Husband to string up some leftover cement wire as a fence on the field side, using some leftover PVC pipe as fence posts.  He snaked it behind the pear tree, and we’ve since planted a sour cherry tree - which the birds harvest long before we get to it - just inside one end of the fence. We added a garden arbor at that end and the blueberry bushes form a natural barrier along the house side; the fence wraps around the woods side a little way, and so encloses the raspberry patch we put in a few years ago, too. 

Bee balm with butterfly and bee; Deb Marshall photo

I’ve been slowly trying to build a slightly-raised planting border inside the fence for the last few years, using my Reclaim the Garden method: put down a lot of flattened cardboard boxes and folded up newspapers, and every fall dump the contents of the spent wart-rail boxes and planters on top of the cardboard.  With some manure and any extra compost we manage to make worked in a year or so later, and a whole lot of weeding (the field keeps trying to sneak under the fence into the beds) and a lot of cooperation from earthworms which slowly turn the cardboard into soil, eventually I have a partly-domesticated border, and eventually it’ll extend all the way to the nether end. In the meantime, I have many semi-successful plantings – a volunteer lettuce, a new catnip patch, a hosta under the cherry tree, a clump of garlic chives – but the most successful have been the plants that moved themselves there and are taking over. So successful are these old friends that this fall I need to rescue an iris I put there that’s been completely engulfed by the marjoram.

Morning Glories, catnip, baby Love Lies Bleeding, and that yellow viney thing; Deb Marshall photo

This year the raspberries are very prolific, and the bees and I do battle over the luscious fruits. The birds are causing some destruction in the blueberry patch, but worse, this year has been a great year for the annoying fungus that results in mummy berries. The ground around the blueberry bushes is littered with them, too many to remove, so we’ll need to bury them under inches of mulch sometime soon to foil the fungus’s ability to reproduce. 

Passionflower vine and the critter that lives on the wart; Deb Marshall photo

We’re half-way through summer, and it seems to be speeding by.  It seems that every morning I wake up and think, This will be the day that feels like summer: I’ll sit in the screen tent, reading and listening to the birdsong, waiting to see Buzzy Boy as he visits his feeders, watch the bees collecting their gold, breathing in the scents of full-on summer. This will be the day when I don’t get sidetracked by all the other stuff that needs to be done. This will be the day that feels and sounds and tastes of summer.

Hibiscus; Deb Marshall photo

Yeah, right. That stack of anything-but-serious-reading books I bought is still piled high by my bed, I haven’t had even a single screened-in nap or supper, and soon every spare moment will be taken up with bean picking and processing, followed (one hopes) by tomatoes and basil and many more squashes. And yet – the gladiolas are up and starting to form buds; and when I let the Barkie Boys out the kitchen door for last outs before bed, the air is filled with summer. I step out and my heart is tickled by the solar lights lining the wart rail, many of them changing colors; and two steps down the wart stairs puts me in a place where I can admire the great round color-changing solar light I perched on the pedestal base of the birdbath, all that remains after I dropped the silly thing last fall putting it away. I set it up near the critter hole in the fava/pea bed; I wonder what the critter thinks of its new streetlight?

First Sunflowers; Deb Marshall photo

I’m charmed. But then again, I’m a quarter French-Canadian!

Moon Time

July Pumpkin Moon, Deb Marshall art

Moon Time

I came over the top of the hill in Enfield Tuesday night around 10 pm, on my way home from the Upper Valley, and reached the spot where the tree canopy opens up to the sky – and almost drove off the road. “What the hell is that?!” I actually shouted out loud to no one but myself. It was huge, more oval than round, burnt-orange color, and hanging in the sky what looked to be not so far from my car. I actually ducked. It took me a few moments to collect myself and gather together my alarm-scattered wits and breath to realize it was the moon – a July moon that would have made a better-than-great harvest moon, bigger – and less round – than any moon I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen some wicked big ones from time to time from the top of that particular hill.

It raced ahead of me all the way home, and I lost sight of it below the tree line only when I was pretty much at my driveway. By the time I’d parked and walked around the garage to take a look above the trees across our field, the moon had shrunk down to about normal size and shape, but was still that over-ripe pumpkin color. Seems like Lady Moon was playing some games with us, and I’ve got to say, starting around the solstice last month and continuing on through this week following the full moon, the natural energies that we often don’t notice unless the cats and dogs or Crazy Uncle Arthur are acting up near the full moon night seem to be particularly strong and affecting most of us, noticeably. I haven’t had a patient in all that time who hasn’t reported unusual fatigue, or written me checks dated 2014, or forgotten appointments altogether, or some other looney (from the Latin luna: moon) thing.  Not to mention catching some strange, serious summer illnesses, which we might call moon fevers.

Even my garden’s acting up: I’ve picked a handful of ripe cherry tomatoes and a zucchini squash, but my peas have just barely started to set pods and, in one entire bed of parsnips, only one (yes, 1) seed germinated - which is bad even for the notoriously poor-to-germinate parsnip family.

I did notice the fireflies are out in spite of the often cool nights, when the Husband and I were crossing the field for the 40^th time trying to lure the very bad mister Catman from his well-hidden hidey hole on the night he decided to go on a full-moon toot. He and his furry sister aren’t allowed out after dark, and they usually sashay around to the screen tent on the wart near dusk so we can capture them; that night Catman had moon-doin’s on his mind and couldn’t be found in any of the spots he usually patrols before coming in for the night, including his giant patch of catnip. He ignored my regular forays out into the field, plaintively calling and shaking the treat bag; and we couldn’t pick up a glint of cat-eyes when the Husband swept the puckerbrush at the edge of the woods with the flashlight, which sometimes gives Catman’s lair away (one of these days we’re going to accidentally corner a skunk that way, almost certainly). The Bad Boy returned home at 10:30, after the Husband’s bedtime, on his own: time for pills and treats! – and wanted out again as soon as those were consumed. He’s now grounded – he’s not allowed to stay out later than 5. That’ll teach him.

I haven’t seen Moosie who I danced with for miles back in June (see “Planting Season? Ha!”) since that night; I assume he’s found a more appropriate dance partner. I have, however, encountered several deer and one quite full-grown moose during my night travels, all of whom were willing to move politely off the road as I approached. I also saw a couple of turkeys with a small herd of baby turkeys (turklets?) with them – must have been two separate clutches of eggs, because some of the youngstahs were duck-sized and some were still little fluffy things. 

One of the big winds we had recently blew the front and floor off the birdhouse we attach to the arbor in the garden, and I discovered them on the ground when I was weeding. I looked into the remains of the house and found a bird’s nest with nothing in it, which I cleaned out, then took the structure down for repairs. A little later I found a perfect, dark-blue-sky-colored undamaged egg about 10 feet away under the cherry tree, which I assume came from the damaged bird house since I couldn’t find a nest anywhere in the tree. I hunted about and didn’t find any other eggs, and I wonder about it because the wind would have had to blow the egg sideways from the remaining walls of the nest for it to land where I found it, which isn’t very likely. So – was someone taking advantage and stealing eggs? And if so – who? And how did they come to lose one and not damage it?

I tried looking up the nest and egg on the internet to see what bird might have made them, because I didn’t get a look at the birds using the nest this summer. There weren’t speckles on the deep blue egg, and it seems that it could have been either a robin’s (usually speckled eggs, but not always) or bluebird’s. It made me a little sad; last summer it was a cheery sight to watch the parent birds flying back and forth feeding their young. The Husband will repair the house and we’ll hang it again, and with any luck some birds will try it out again.

Nights have been filled with the hoo-hooing of owls for several months now, which seem to be moving from one side of the house, earlier in the late evening, to the other side of the house, after midnight. I haven’t caught sight of them, either – I imagine it’s a pair – and wish I could. Where are they living, what are they saying, how many are there? I do so wish, sometimes, that we could pop into a critter’s brain to check out what they’re seeing and feeling and thinking – I’m guessing a few seconds might be more than enough time, but, oh, wouldn’t that be an adventure!

Full Moon Dreams, Deb Marshall art

Some nights I drift off to sleep with the hoo-ing of owls in my ears, the snuffling of barkie boys nearby, Catman purring by my neck. The blankets are soft and comfortable, and kind of curl around and nestle me into them; a little woof from a barkie boy tells me there’s a dream underway, and foot scrabbles soon follow. Lady Moon peers in the window, and I crack one eye open and greet her. Catman’s ears prick, and tail flicks, then he relaxes, and soon there are dog snores, cat snores and muffled sighing. The owls are still calling, calling…my eyelids shut, but I still hear the calling; and the blankets turn to down, and there’s an almost silent whooshing as wings pass through my still barely consciousness, and Lady Moon shines silver down over my nest…leaves rustle…toads sing…a soft breeze gently brushes my face…

…and I’m asleep.

Written for the blog, July 13, 2017

Backseat Passengers

Car Full of Sheep; Deb Marshall artwork

One day I was making the seemingly endless trip between the home place and the coast, and ‘round about Northwood I got stuck behind a slow station wagon that was packed to the roof with some sort of grayish-white matter. It kept shifting, but never cleared, and while I was wondering how the driver could possibly see out her rear-view window, the load shifted and a long black face with bright eyes appeared, pressed up against the hatchback window. It was a sheep!  And when I got a chance to pass the car, I discovered the car was packed absolutely full with sheep, from the fuzzy depths of which emerged a human head and hands, which I assume were in charge of driving the car.

On the way north, another day, I pulled into a gas-station/convenience store and parked a few cars away from the door. When I got out of the car, I discovered there was a rather large green parrot perched atop the roof of the car two spaces from me. “Why, hello,” I said to it; and it cocked its head and looked at me, then took a little stroll across the roof of the car, down the windshield, onto the hood, then back onto the roof, where it started to preen. I got a good look – no tethers on its legs, and I knew there was a pet store down the road about half a mile. “Must have escaped,” I thought, “I’d better keep an eye on it until someone comes out, and they can go call the pet store.” At the time, my Dad had a parrot, so I knew better than to try to pick it up, because they can bite hard, and this was a very large parrot; but all the stories I’d ever heard of exotic birds accidentally getting free and lost while anxious bird parents searched frantically for it ran through my head. So I leaned back against the car and kept talking to it hoping it wouldn’t fly off, and the parrot kept preening and watching me, though it had nothing to say.

Parrot on a Car Roof; Deb Marshall artwork

Soon the store door opened and out came a fellow headed my way. Finally, I thought, help in a very weird situation. But no; without a glance at the parrot or me, he quickly hopped into the parrot’s car and started it up. As he started to back out and the words I was going to say were drowned by the engine, the parrot ducked down and entered the open back-seat window. I marveled, and still wonder, sometimes, if the driver eventually looked in his rearview window and got a great surprise.

Out-back neighbor Eddie B used to have a couple of horses and a very, very busy pony, who figured out how to open everyone’s stall doors and also the barn door. No system they tried discouraged this intrepid wanderer, and - usually after midnight - Pony would decide to take a stroll. The two horses would happily follow Pony up the hill headed for Elkins, stopping here and there to munch good stuff on the way. Eddie finally fixed the problem by putting an alarm on the barn door, so he’d know to hop out of bed and go after the escapees. 

If he followed them, Pony and the horses picked up speed and Eddie B had a hard time catching them. So instead he’d drive his van the other way around to Elkins, and then back towards Wilmot, pick a spot to turn it around, open the back doors, and set down a ramp, with a few carrots or a pail of grain inside as pony lure. Then he’d settle down and snooze until Pony and his followers arrived. Pony would get in the van to get the treats; the horses, too big for the van, would stand about outside, while Eddie shut Pony in. Then he’d turn around and drive home slowly, Pony hanging his head out the open window like a dog, and horses happily following their leader back to the barn.

Too Small for Horses, but not for Ponies!  Deb Marshall artwork

 

Back in the dark ages, I made the acquaintance of some folks who were traveling cross-country over the  summer months. We talked about how long the trip was, how interesting it had been, and how I thought it sounded like fun, but I had too many animals to do such a thing, including a couple of cats. “Look in the way back,” one of the Travelers said. There, in the station wagon back, was their mother cat and her newly-born litter of kittens. “She likes to travel,” I was told. “We were going to leave her with friends until we got back in the fall, but as soon as the car was packed, she hopped in and made that nest. We didn’t know she was pregnant until - voila!”

Dogs enjoying a ride are no surprise to anyone; but the very best was the dream I had, one night. I was in the hallway of a downtown business, looking out the door and wondering how I was going to get home, when in strolled the First Hound, walking upright and carrying a set of car keys in one paw. “Ready to go home?” he asked me.  Slightly surprised, I asked him if he’d driven the car. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I like to drive.” “Huh,” I said, as we headed across the town green towards the car, a little worried that, if we saw another dog, the First Hound would be off in a flash and I'd lose my ride home, "Do you mind if I put your collar and leash on you?" "Oh, no," the First Hound replied, "I don't mind. I like my collar and leash."

I was feeling slightly more secure, but still a little leery of being a passenger in a Hound-driven car (barking? going really fast? chasing other cars?).“Do you mind if I drive home?” I asked as the First Hound unlocked the car for me. “Oh, no,” he said, “I don’t mind. If you drive, I can hang my head out the window. I like to hang my head out the window.”

Be sure to check your back seats this summer – there’s no telling what you might find there, and it might not be a giant zucchini.

Written for the blog, July 3, 2017.