Day After the Blue Moon

 

It’s the day after the Super Blue Moon in August, and it’s windy as all get-out here at my house; stuff is blowing off the porch, all around the yard, I saw a garden gnome go whizzing by the window a few minutes ago, and the cats gave up the outdoors early and are snoozing inside near a breezy window but protected from the damage. I’ve chased the Husband’s hat, which he insists on leaving out on the porch, around the yard a few times already today, and the emails I’ve received today from patients indicate that the full moon is having its usual – and expected – evil ways with people. And it’s still only early afternoon. And I woke up with a headache.

I’m pretty sure the headache, which I rarely get,  has a lot to do with  gnomes and gremlins dancing on and in my head all night. I saw Lady Moon floating by before I went to bed, and greeted her kindly, but last night’s dreams – which for me are more bizarre than maybe you experience yourselves, because I’m a lucid dreamer, which isn’t that common – were beyond beyond. 

A lucid dreamer, by the way, is someone who is aware she’s dreaming while she’s dreaming. So while I’m having a dream, another part of my brain is making constant commentary about the dream from a waking consciousness. It has advantages – I don’t have nightmares, because I know I’m dreaming, and if I really dislike the way a dream’s going I can stop the action and revise the plot and then start the dream again; if I really like a dream I can start it again the next night; and it gives me a lot of insight into dreams that are just pure entertainment and those that are my subconscious sending me a message I should pay attention to.  The important ones usually have a particular scenario, and my running commentary will be that this is one of the ones I need to pay attention to and my analysis of why I need to pay attention, all happening while the dream is running. Sometimes I irritate myself because my commentary interrupts the action. 

And I wonder, sometimes, if my brain ever, ever shuts up!?

So, your nightmares are just my entertaining horror flicks, complete with reviewer’s commentary. One of my favorites was when I, and some other dream folks, were defending a tower against attacking vampires. The vampires were flying at us and we were shooting arrows at them. And then we discovered we could fly, too. It was GREAT! I repeated some version of that dream several nights in a row. 

Rasta Furian atop the compost bin

Last night my dreams were mostly senseless, and annoying, in a dream kind of way. Sort of like my brain was jumping into muddy puddles and not able to get out without jumping into another muddy puddle. There was no real plot line, just short clips of something annoying happening in many different ways. F’ing full moon gremlins!

And, like I said, I woke up with a headache.

I had a t’ai chi student years ago who, whenever it was windy, became furious: mind-blowing, uncontrollable anger. She would need to isolate herself for the day until the wind died down. Good thing she didn’t live in hurricane places! At the time, I wasn’t a Chinese medicine practitioner, so I didn’t know that her wind-anger made perfect sense in Chinese medical theory. Wind blows stuff around; it isn’t controllable, and it isn’t even, or reasonable, or predictable. The Liver, in Chinese medical theory, is, among other things, the organ in the body that best likes and needs to be in control. Its emotion is anger. When it feels that  things are out of control, it gets irritable, then angry, then furious.

And then there are the people who get wildly excited when it’s windy.  The angry people have a little excess in their Liver, and the wildly excitable people are a little deficient in their Liver – or else they’re gnomes or gremlins.

Yes, I still have gnomes and gremlins on my mind. They haven’t been as active this summer in my garden, because, I assume, they don’t like the constant rain any better than we do. But they’ve caused some trouble; and they’ve clearly been active out in the bigger world. There are a lot of excessive-Liver people out there, and the gnomes and gremlins have been blowing them around a lot in the past few years. You've probably noticed.

Okra plants

My garden, like so many gardens this summer, kind of sucks. The green bean plants got moldy whenever they were touched because they were always wet; I’ve had to pull many, and all of the yellow bean plants, but the remaining green beans are starting to produce their second, fall crop, and the flowers are plentiful; but they’re still molding because there’s no way to pick them without touching them --- and they’re always wet. The tomatoes are very few, the plants never got big enough to support full-size fruit, and many of the fruits are starting to rot on the vine before they’ve ripened. I’m picking at the slightest sign of yellow and letting them ripen indoors, but I won’t have the baskets and baskets of them I usually have. Cherry tomatoes have been a little better – at least they aren’t rotting before ripening – but there aren’t as many as usual. And let’s not even mention the early blight that’s removed most of the leaves.

I finally, last week, had a handful of cucumbers, climbing the sunflowers, which - of all the other things in the garden - were beautiful this year, if short and late. The shell beans have been excellent, and I planted a different variety of scarlet runner bean that apparently has a shorter season, because those beans are already done, while the standard runners are still taking their usual sweet time and I’ll be picking them late in September.  Which makes Buzzy Boy the hummingbird very happy because those vines, which he loves, are still covered with bright red blossoms.

All the winter squash and pumpkins died, except two in a new bed we filled with the magic gnome-house compost; and the one in the gnome-beds behind the garage, which was growing something that looked like cucumbers or zucchini on it. Two days ago that fruit started to turn yellow, and I can see it’s a Delicata squash, which I’ve never before planted – but after last summer’s gnome-provided Delicatas, we discovered that Delicata is actually excellent if roasted, so I planted one this year. It looks like I’ll get maybe 2 squashes from it. 

 

The fava beans in the past couple of weeks have finally started producing beans. And last weekend I pulled a few carrots from the gnome bed next to the Delicata vine – I have never in my life seen such gigantic carrots, most with several full-sized-plus branches, and two about 3 inches in diameter. They were scary; I turned the giant ones into soup, with a lot of mint in it. Carrots oddly taste like soap to me unless they’re fried until they caramelize, but something had to be done with these massive roots, and I managed, with the help of lots of onions, shallots, garlic, mint and half-and-half, to turn the monsters into a soup that doesn’t taste to me like liquid soap.

The swamp maples, I’ve seen in my trips up 89 to the Upper Valley, are starting to change colors; the hummers are emptying their feeders almost daily, prepping for their flight south for the winter, which will start soon (the flight, not winter – I hope!); and the bees are very very busy in the garden. Many of the sunflowers have already formed seeds, and somebodies are having a go at them. Wildflowers, and heather and thyme, have been gorgeous this year.

Look carefully; there is a squash in there!

And now it’s time for me to go out and feed the mosquitoes, which have also been very happy this summer, and go through the garden to see what needs my attention. And, of course – the wind has died down, just in time for feeding time.

Which makes my Liver more than a little excessive.

 

For the blog, 31 August 2023: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

O, Fava Rites

 

 

Fava bean flowers

Two short summers ago, I sat with her at the Polish witch poet’s kitchen table, and we filled our mouths and souls with a giant bowl of cooked fava beans doused in lemon juice and chunks of feta cheese. It was heavenly. I licked my empty bowl, when she wasn’t looking.

The Polish witch poet lives up the hill through the woods from me, and she’s a fava bean whisperer. She usually has ripe fava beans in her garden before my fava plants are even thinking about flowering; she has fava beans that fill the pods to bursting; she has fava beans in quantities I look at with jealous eyes and withering heart. She is a Fava Bean Goddess. I’m in awe.

Not this year, though, and I’m sure it’s not that she’s lost her witchy powers. I’m pretty sure her talent with fava beans has nothing to do with being a witch or a poet; I’m pretty sure she doesn’t cast spells on the plants. Besides, her witchiness has more to do with a herd of turkeys and some mourning doves, but that’s another story. And – after all – poets all have to be at least a little bit witchy. Being a poet does…things…to your brain.

No. This year the Weather Gods, who have to co-operate with the Fava Bean Goddess,  took exception to our desires for a nice, productive summer and have done their best to thwart our gardens and twist our brains, trash our fondest hopes and plant bitter nightmares in our hearts. If only we knew upon whom to wreak revenge…we’d parboil them and store them for the winter in the chest freezer in the cellar, in which there will be plenty of room after this truly unharvestable summer.

Thyme in bloom

Fava beans are odd beasts: they like being planted in cool ground, and germinate and grow best in cool weather, so they usually go out to be planted with the peas. They produce tall thick, twisty square stalks, with black-and-white flowers that grow in clumps on the stalks. The pods, which can get very long and very fat if the weather and garden environment is right, grow straight up towards the sky; and on the inside of its pod, the bean, which looks a little like a lima bean that’s been worked hard and put away wet, and which can get quite large, like three or four times the size of a typical lima bean and possibly much  larger, is nestled in a bed of white, soft, bedding that resembles, to some extent, airy Styrofoam – until you touch it, and then it melts away. When allowed to mature fully and dry on the stalk, the beans turn yellow and are huge – the dried beans we plant are often the size of my last thumb joint.

This year, even the Polish witch poet is having little luck with her fava beans. Here at mid-August, my fava beans are finally producing a few pods – I get maybe 5 or 6 every couple of days - nowhere near enough to do the wonderful thing with. I‘ve been sticking them in the freezer, in the same bag as the peas, which also were very, very late and not very abundant.

Where the whisky is now

The weather has been – that’s about all I can say about it. The garden has barely been. Even the garden gnomes/gremlins haven’t been very active this year; they don’t seem to like being out in the rain any more than I do. One released skunk smell right under the dining room window four nights in a row, when I was working there late into the evening, so they are still being obnoxious. They’ve moved the bottle of whisky I left out for them around a bit, but haven’t made it disappear, and they haven’t figured out how to open it. Temperance leprechauns, maybe?

So far, half-way through August,  here’s the garden list:

The peach and pear and half the apple blossoms got zapped by the late frost;

More than half the beets didn’t germinate, and of those that did, one batch produced some early greens then gave up – they have no root ball and their leaves are 2.5 inches tall; and another bunch produced 9 beets; 

Mountain Ash berries

I’ve had 10 ripe cherry tomatoes; and 3 ripe regular-size tomatoes, each from individual plants. Once two of those plants produced their one fruit, they immediately died. Other tomato plants never got thick but got very long hunting for sun, and none have more than 4 green fruits on it; good thing, since they aren’t sturdy enough to support any more than that.

In the bed out back that we remade in June and filled with the compost that came out of the haunted compost bin that the gremlins/gnomes overwintered in, a tomato plant that I didn’t plant has appeared, and it’s the healthiest of the many other pitiful plants in my garden. Many things I didn’t plant in that bed are growing in it – it’s going to be interesting to see what they are;

Another new bed, also filled with magic compost, has produced some massive borage plants, the size of a usual healthy tomato plant…at least, I think it’s borage, it hasn’t actually bloomed yet;

The cucumber vine is happily climbing the sunflowers and has lots of flowers but no cukes;

The pepper plants have no fruits;

The summer squash and the zucchini plants produced one fruit each, which stopped growing at 4 inches. I ate them;

Heron solar light

One pumpkin plant died, the other winter squashes have flowers but no fruit;

The blueberries, onions, shallots, and garlic are doing beautifully; most the garlic and shallots and half the onions are already harvested and drying. Something has eaten the entire bulb of 4 onions, 2 garlics, and 2 leeks – all below ground leaving perfect leafy parts above ground;;

Most the lettuce, and the spinach, didn’t germinate;

I’ve had 4 kohlrabis;

The green beans and yellow beans finally produced, but started to mold almost immediately;

One of my tarragon plants, vigorous in the spring, recently gave up the ghost; and the summer savory hasn’t blossomed;

The California poppies and the daisies, and the golden rod and milkweed, and the Lady’s Thumb and Joe Pye weed, and yarrow and clover and other wild flowers, have been massively happy;

Mother’s Wort and a strange wild bupleurum have appeared in my garden – unplanted – and done beautifully, the Sweet Woodruff has been traveling, but the Egyptian onions are unhappy;

The heather is glorious;

Heather in bloom

 

And on it goes. My freezers are going to be sadly mostly empty this winter, alas.

Every summer is different, and this one is definitely different! At least we’re out of the drought; and we hope for a long, warm autumn so the pollinators have time to build their winter stores. Buzzy Boy and his kind have been sucking a lot of sugar water, and he is personally guarding the scarlet runner beans, which are finally blooming – quite possibly too late to produce beans, unless we have a long warm autumn. And I’m keeping an eye on a potato plant that something – gnome, gremlin, something with a good arm – tossed out of the potato bags (those did well but finished early and are drying and curing under the dining room table) this spring and planted in one of the raised beds. I’m wondering what, if anything, it’ll produce.

Rabbit foot clover

And now, at this very moment, the sun is out again, between storms. Lynxie and I are going to go take a nap. He will dream of catnip – which is doing very well this year; and I will lean back and let my mind drift to the Polish witch poet’s kitchen, and a phantom bowl of fava beans with lemon and feta cheese, which if I reach out slowly, I can almost touch…

 

For the blog, 9 August 2023: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall

 

A new garden buddy, currently residing on the porch. Freaked the cats out at first, but now they've beaten it up, and no longer have to pay it any attention.

 

 

 

Book Gobblin'

 

I rarely buy clothes. I buy books.

Don’t misunderstand – I also love libraries. Unfortunately, in small towns, the libraries, and even the state library, often don’t have the books I want to read. They have to keep current books that many people want to read, and they have fairly small spaces to store them. Sometimes I do find a book I’d enjoy in the library book sales racks – usually only one or two people have borrowed the ones I’m interested in, and often no one has.  

When I got back from F’ing Florida in April, I’d sent 19 books belonging to my friend, the Hoarder, back to NH because they looked like ones I’d enjoy reading. The weekend after I got back, the Sailor and I went to the 5 Colleges Book Sale and I got another two bags full of books; and in a basket on my bedroom floor was already another pile of books I’d acquired before the trip to F-FL from, mostly, Thriftbooks; and there was a giant pile of books covering the small bench behind my bed, within handy reach, plus a couple I was in the process of reading – including one 750-pager that I’d been reading at for a year but couldn’t concentrate on well enough, because I’d just not had time to read much during the last year while taking care of all the stuff that needed to be done leading up to moving my F-FL friend in March.

In April, finally back from F-FL and finished, I hoped, with the daily distractions F-FL represents, I had time to read again, and I was too tired to do much else; and besides, the weather wasn’t co-operating with any of the faint urges that sometimes rose in my consciousness to do something about the garden. So I read; and I filled a couple of small boxes with books I’d finished. The Scholar took most of those first boxes to his summer camp, and I continue to fill small boxes with finished books. 

At some point it occurred to me: I could make a list of all the books that are setting there waiting for me to read them!

Now, I LOVE books. I have a lot of books; there are certain authors whose works I want all of: Twain, Austin, Hebert, Mosher, Roach, Sacks, Davies, Chappell, Maxwell, Moore, Miss Read, Heinrich, Bryson, Gorey, Penney, Bird, and others; and certain genres I’m especially fond of, of which I have a collection of  each, filling a couple of bookshelves each: fantasy, restaurant kitchen insider stories, Celtic and old English works, books on language, certain children’s books and series, like Wind in the Willows and Alcott’s books, and books with excellent illustrations, like those by Allsburg, and Christmas ghost stories, and really old books from my grandparents’ day… And I read many of these over and over.

But I also LOVE making lists, because there’s nothing so satisfying as crossing something off a list; and for that matter, the actual making of the list is also very nice. So I made a list of the books waiting to be read – I just wish I’d done it when I first got home in April. So many books already read and gone, but not listed and not crossed off…sigh.

However, after I’d already passed about 20 books on to other people who will enjoy them, the list got made. There were 79 books on the list; since I made the list I’ve crossed off 18 titles. Most of the books go into small boxes, and I bring them, once filled, along with magazines I’ve finished, to the Tiptop  Building and leave them on the “free benches” in the main hallway between the pottery shop and the Café, where all we tenants leave things we no longer need, for others to benefit from. I’ve picked up a few good books someone else left there, myself. And a few books get set aside to give to friends and family at Christmas, or on birthdays, when I find a book I know will be enjoyed by those people. And on that list, there are at least 10 that I know I’ll be shelving in my collections when I’ve finished reading them.

So here are a few observations about books and reading:

Large hardcover books make a noise that causes the startled cats to jump off the bed and flee when you fall asleep reading and they fall on the floor. Claws are generally involved.

Hardcover books are much more painful than paperbacks when you fall asleep reading in bed and instead of dropping on the floor, the book falls on your nose.

It’s hard to carry a 20-lb cat plus the two books you’ve been carrying around all day, plus a glass of drinking water, upstairs to bed at night. Use a book bag, and use an insulated water bottle instead of a glass; that way the bottle can also go in the book bag, and you won’t be drinking bugs with your water in the dark in the middle of the night when you wake up parched, the book covering your face, and with your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth; and you won’t drop the books on your feet as you climb the stairs juggling everything. It’s still hard to carry a 20-lb cat upstairs to bed at night – make him walk.

If you’ve gotten very comfortable with your books and a lap blanket in your favorite comfy chair, the cats will inevitably decide to lie on top of you and your book. If you move to the desk and lay the book on it, the cats will lie on the book and then roll onto their backs looking for tummy rubs. They will also shed and your mug of coffee or cup of tea or glass of water will surprise you with a thick layer of floating cat fur.

Hide the bookmarks – the cats will otherwise use them as toys. Teeth and claws will be involved.

 

If there’s the smallest amount of space left open on any bookshelf, when you can’t find the cat, that’s where he’ll be. If there isn’t room, he will toss enough books onto the floor to make room, so just look for the pile.

It is possible to brush your teeth and read at the same time. Not advisable to wash your face and read at the same time.

When the book you’ve been reading disappears, check the dog’s bed. How it got there will remain a mystery.

This year, especially, don’t take your book out to the garden to read: it will get soaked or blow away or both. You can’t successfully dry out a soaked book, but you can compost them.

Happy Reading!

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com   August 8, 2023

All photos Deb Marshall