Do you ever wonder what your living partner does when you’re not around?

I mean, I thought I knew. But I just found a harmonica on the table next to the toilet.

Whoa! It is trash-picking season in College Hill. I found a neat little statue in a trash pile on the way to church tonight. They were having a program on gardening. It was three primitive little men holding a bowl in the middle of them. One of the men was headless. I figured I’d put it in the garden and stick something interesting down the poor little guy’s hollow neck. I carried it in the church with me because I was walking. I also was kinda wanting to show off my groovin’ garden find.

The minister asked me where I found it. Get this - it was STOLEN from the church, along with a bunch of other stuff. He said for me to keep it since it was damaged. Can you believe it? Stealing from a church. Man, that is LOW.

I went back to the trash pile and looked for the head but it was gone. Now I feel a little deflated about the whole thing. The minister said that people had looked everywhere for it. Dang.

Sunday night was bad…I had a panic attack. Then Monday morning, a co-worker called me from work and I had to go in to take care of some things. Everything at work is in chaos. One of the people I support took a vacation last week (which was an extremely unwise decision, to be kind about it) and now he has the flu. All this within probably the busiest two weeks in the semester for us. People are getting pregnant and sick and other jobs and getting research leaves and asking for reductions in course loads. And getting them. It is NUTS. At this rate, there will be no one left to teach next year.

Anyway, this wasn’t very good for my stress load, so I called my doctor and asked if she could just call me and talk to me for a minute about changing my anxiety medication. She has yet to call but the office assistants didn’t get my message right. She thinks I’m on another medication.

By the time I went to Charlie’s house I was starting to have a little trouble breathing. I was thinking about my garden project on the way. The only thing I would be missing by the time it was due was perhaps the most important thing - a nice comfy chair to sit in and relax. Charlie and I got some good planning work done for Slow Food and I felt a little better, but I asked him for a ride to class. I didn’t want to risk another panic attack.

So, I go back home, and what do I see? A beautiful bamboo chair sitting on the curb across from my house. I resisted. They must be about to load it. No, no one came around. There must be something wrong with it. The dog probably peed on it. The stray tomcat probably sprayed it. The seat is probably missing beneath the cushion.

Finally I walked across the street and looked it over. It didn’t smell, not really bad, anyway. It was worn but in good shape. The seat was perfect. The cane was woven in a bird’s eye pattern. Best of all, it reclined! It had a pull-out foot rest! It was a beautifully-made, well-used chair! Even the cushion was in good condition. There was a handmade needlepoint pillow with a torn zipper on top. I hauled it back to the deck and washed everything.

Today at work, everything was worse. Amazing but true. But when I came home for lunch, I got to sit in my beautiful bamboo chair. After Mama Kitty got out of it, of course.

Wow, I looked at the weather report again today and it looks exceedingly wet and warm for the rest of the week. I’m so tempted to plant some of my tomatoes. If I can find a place to buy humus and topsoil today, maybe I’ll plant a few and put one of the cold frames over them. But I have to fill out the raised bed first, which will take a lot of soil and a lot of physical work. I have pretty filled out all the available spots with other plants and seeds. I think it is going to look fabulous!

Should retail establishments open on major holidays? I have such mixed feelings about it. I support their right to do so, but then again, shouldn’t some days be reserved for people to be with their families, even if you are not religious? Otherwise there are some companies, one of which I have experienced, that would squeeze every little bit of time they could get out of their workers. I used to have to do inventory every Easter Sunday, and my boss was like, so what? If it’s voluntary, I suppose that it’s okay. I guess I get the most aggravated with the companies that do not walk their talk, like Wal-Mart.

I promised my mother that I would go to church today, since I didn’t go to Marietta for Easter like I normally do. I joined a very progressive church in January, but I have only gone to the alternative service, since that fills my needs, and I like to reflect after the service instead of going straight to the traditional service. Here I am, a new Presbyterian, but I have no idea what a traditional Presbyterian service is like. I’m sure that this church’s service will not be as conventional as some, but I’m guessing that Easter Sunday will be a good time to check it out, so I’m going to the regular service today.

Today I went to the farmers’ market and bought a few plants. I planted strawberries in a pot. Once I get the whole yard set up in a garden beds, I’m going to devote a place to strawberries. I’m not much of a fruit eater, but I do like them and to move toward a permaculture-based design I’m trying to find more perennial food plants. But the last time I had a strawberry bed next door, they crossed with the wild “snake”berries in the yard the second year and had no taste. I’m not sure what I can do about that, but I’ll wait to do the strawberry bed when I have a little more to lose.

I also bought some foxgloves, (again, the fish market syndrome–I have foxglove seedlings and seeds, but the squirrels keep digging them up), fennel, and a pineapple sage.

The little artichokes were really worrying me, but I think that they are going to survive now. The weather is supposed to be rainy and warm for at least this week.

I saw Charlie at the market and we are going to get together at 1 on Monday to talk about what I need to do about the Slow Food web site, etc. So I guess that makes it official, I am playing hooky from work on Monday. Is it playing hooky when your boss knows and agrees? I guess I’m still pretending to be a bad girl when I’m not!

Lunch

Yay! A three day weekend, and I have warned everyone at work that I might make it a four or five day weekend. I have got to get my anxiety under control. I’m getting quite crazy. It’s the “Nibbled to Death by Ducks Syndrome” again.

Part of the reason I am pursuing a simple lifestyle is by economic necessity. My choices in life have led me to being at this income level, so I still think of that as being voluntary simplicity. Also, I am preparing for the hard times ahead when the oil runs out. But the main reason is that I am often overwhelmed by life, and I am trying to find some peace.

The past few weeks have been very, very hard for me. I go through bad times. This blog has helped. Some things I have not been able to write about, or I’ve written them and deleted them. Things finally started getting better today.

The gutters were installed and directed into my rain barrels. The short one over the porch extends out and has a place for me to hang a rain chain one day. The first night we had a major rainstorm and they all filled completely up. We had tested one before we bought the other three. The one we tested was solid as a rock. The other three were spouting mini-geysers and seeping out at the bottom. I’m telling you, it did not help my nerves a bit. But they seemed to tighten up after a couple of days. I set up a soaker hose in my new spring garden beds and emptied the two back barrels through it.

Another thing that has helped…my husband Sandy got into a temp job. It was beginning to look like he wasn’t going to qualify. He had to make an 80 on two of six tests, and he didn’t make it on the first four. So he had to do it on both of the last ones. I was ready to climb the walls. He has the worst luck in jobs that I have ever seen in my life. We both joke that he is cursed, but sometimes we’re not joking. He has not had a permanent, full-time job in two and a half years now. And people wonder why I’m a liberal Democrat.

The washing machine is about to die on us. We’ll have to think about what to do about that. My hope was to replace each major appliance as they wore out with highly energy-efficent ones. Until Sandy gets a real job, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to follow that plan.

But my spinach seeds are coming up, and I picked three radishes and a few spinach and lettuce leaves that I planted in January! I filled it out with dandelion greens and had a nice little salad out of my garden. Then I made a very good pot of soup, which I’ll never be able to recreate, but it contained a little butternut squash that I grew and picked last September - amazing! I’d forgotten I had it. I sliced some collard leaves into thin strips and put into the soup, and added a lot of dried parsley from this summer. It’s great to be able to eat food that you have grown. Best therapy in the world.

Now if I could just grow some Xanax!

This essay was sent to me by the Slow Food DC listserv. It is important reading for everyone who eats. As consumers, we have more power than we think. As a descendant of many generations of farmers, I know how important it is to support the small farmers who are trying against all odds to revive our agricultural economy and heritage. The way to do it is with our pocketbooks.

Biting the land that feeds us

By Jim Scharplaz
Prairie Writers Circle

I am a rancher. I live on the land I grew up on, in the house my father built for us. For more than 25 years, I have tended descendants of the same cows my parents bought when they married 64 years ago.

I am also a licensed professional engineer. I hold an advanced degree in agricultural engineering. I have done university agricultural research, and I have designed and built specialized machinery to farm research plots.

I think I have a pretty wide view of agriculture.

What I see are wonderful people doing their best to care for creation and produce healthful food. And I see practices that pollute the soil, water and air, and destroy our long-term ability to feed ourselves.

It’s easy to blame lazy, greedy farmers for destructive agricultural practices. But I believe that the economy within which farmers must operate is responsible. This economy aims only for cheap food and a quick bottom line. It forces farmers to cut corners with our soil and water, to use practices that harm the land on which agriculture depends.

As our source of food suffers, so eventually do we all.

For about 15 years I have been involved in various efforts to change the things in agriculture that, if not stopped, will lead to hunger in the future. Others have worked far longer and harder than I have.

Have things changed? Certainly. They have gotten worse.

More fertilizer has polluted the rivers, more topsoil has washed away to the ocean, and more pesticides have polluted the groundwater. Noxious odors and dust have fouled the air. Bioengineered “Frankenfoods” have infiltrated the supermarket and corrupted the gene pool. Multinational corporations have commandeered the marketplace. And many more of those wonderful people have had to leave their farms forever.

That’s not to say efforts have been wasted in promoting an agriculture that can furnish abundant food and also protect our soil and water. The situation would be far worse without this work. But I no longer believe that farmers alone can change agriculture for the better.

Agriculture is the basis of civilization, and the two are inseparably linked. No wonder, then, that our agriculture reflects the rest of our economy, in which everything is simply a resource to use, profit from and discard. Our economy’s lust for resources has become so rapacious that its relationship to the agriculture that feeds us has become like that of a drug addict who is willing to rob his own mother for another fix.

Many non-farmers are as concerned as anyone else about this. And now that more than 98 percent of Americans don’t farm, the decisions these non-farmers make about what to buy, what kind of work to do, what kind of public policy choices are made, and what to value have far more influence than the decisions farmers can make about how to farm. When our economy is driven by consumption, the cheapest possible price and immediate profit, it is not realistic to think that farmers’ decisions about how to farm will be based on feeding generations to come.

Our future food security depends on redirecting our society and its economy. I am not about to prescribe the form this should take. But I hope that once we realize our headlong race to the bottom of the resource barrel is madness, our combined good will and intellect will be sufficient for a new path.

Farmers and ranchers are a small minority of our population. They cannot keep feeding us in an economy determined to extract every penny from every resource as fast as possible. Whether our grandchildren will eat is up to non-farmers.

###

Jim Scharplaz raises cattle in Ottawa County, Kan., and serves on the board of the Kansas Rural Center. He wrote this essay for the Land Institute’s Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kan

I have not ever had seedlings get so big this early. But I haven’t had this lamp or these particular kinds of plants growing indoors before. I had to stake my tomatoes in their little pots with kabob sticks! Hope I can get them out early this year. Global warming might be good for a few things.

This weekend, I got the bulk of my spring planting done. I sowed more seeds, transplanted most of the broccoli seedlings, and I decided to plant the two biggest artichoke seedlings. I know that they are supposed to have strong tap roots so I thought that maybe I should get them in the ground. It immediately started turning colder, so I redid the cold frames so that I could divide them in half, and put them back over the new plantings. I also put bricks around the artichokes to help retain heat. I planted more potatoes. I bought humus instead of cow manure this time.

I’m really excited because I should be getting gutters installed this week. It was a lot more expensive that I expected, but I already bought four expensive rain barrels that are pretty much worthless without the gutters. Guess I put the cart before the horse. I think that this is a good investment - not only for the water catchment system and my garden, but for my crawlspace and basement, which is damp.

My stress level is sky high now. Working in the garden is such a relief.

Today was beautiful again, and my husband went back to Guilford Courthouse to fight the rebels against King George (uh, that would be 1781 King George, not our current dictator).

I resolved to clean up the mess of boards and pallets I’ve been hoarding with the idea that I’d build a nicer looking compost bin. Well, I guess it looks just a tiny bit nicer. And it’s 10-year-old child workmanship, the sides are not even hooked together. I nailed some pieces of a picket fence together to face the side that you can see from my deck. I leaned it and two wooden pallets against the three sides of my wire compost bin (the fourth side being the chain link fence behind it). I was going to nail it or hinge it all together, but it’s a lot heavier than I thought it would be and I need to be able to move it. So I think I’ll wire the corners together so I can take one side off when I need to. At least I cleaned up some stuff that just needed to be chucked.

It took me back to when I built a “fort” out of scrap lumber in the woods when I was little.

Now I need to clean up the brushpile and paper and mulch that back middle bed, which I don’t think I’ll plant this year. And the biggest part of my class project will be done. Part of which, by the way, was to incorporate recycled objects into my garden. Admittedly, I do that anyway. I’m a terrible trash picker. The other parts were to concentrate on spring vegetables and rework my path and beds to have curved borders.