I’ve been busy trying to get everything together for my trip tomorrow and getting in a little more work in the Back Forty.

It was the wrong time of the moon, but I transplanted the leeks and the cutting celery Friday evening. And today I bought a tarragon plant from Pat and replanted it - of course I then saw that my other tarragon was coming up. Then I knuckled down and took care of some of the weeds that were about to go to seed in the area that I’ve let go a little wild. The reason I have so many all over the yard is because I let these go to seed last year.

I dug some up, because I’ve learned that a few of these with long tap roots tend to get through my newspaper barriers. Also, I was trying to dig up all the mint runners I could find. This is a big task for me because of my tendinitis problems in my wrists and elbow, so I can only do a small area at a time. Especially now, since I didn’t want to go to a craft class for a week with tendon problems.

This is one of the oldest parts of my garden, so it’s been worked several times, but not last year. It used to have medicinal herbs and flowers, along with the elephant garlic that was growing here when we moved in. This year, I’m growing tomatoes here. Later, the pear trees will shade this area and I’ll have to think of something else.

Normally I put the newspaper on top and mulch it with straw. I’ve already added greensand and some other slow-action organic fertilizers to this area, and my main concern is the weeds and invasive plants, so I’m papering it twice. Today I mulched with compost, and later after I plant my tomatoes, I’ll put a layer of wet newspaper around them and pine straw on top of the paper, probably. (I’ve been using wheat straw, but this past year I’ve had a terrible problem with lots of seed in the straw.) For about a month this will be smothering the weeds and attracting and feeding the earthworms. Then I’ll plant the tomatoes here.

It’s important to wet the area down first, then wet down the newspapers, then wet down the mulch.

All that’s well and good, but THIS is what will be waiting for me when I get back, only twice as bad…

I’ll be away from the computer for a week, so y’all be good. Hope I’m not covered up with spam when I get home.

More peas are coming up.

Mint is taking over.

Violetto artichoke seedlings are emerging inside.

Arugula is bolting.

First crop of lettuce is eaten or given away.

Tomatoes are in the greenhouse or back in the house (low in 30s tonight).

Fig tree is not dead.

Raccoons have not damaged anything yet.

~Mel Brooks as Governor William J. Le Petomane, Blazing Saddles

Yesterday I was feeling abused at work. Not by anyone in my department, but I was carrying some resentment left over from an unjust smackdown last week from somebody high up who didn’t know me from Adam. So I was feeling a little snitty. Especially since I knew that being cool, polite, and professional was the only way that I could handle it without making things worse, when I really wanted to jump on the phone and scream, “Apologize, bitch!” I felt kind of like Alice in Dilbert. I really need one of those fists of death.

This is how I got over it.

It just so happened that I attended a luncheon right after the meeting that made me revert to my Alice-self. It was a discussion luncheon about food, and most of the people attending were on the Slow Food email list and knowledgeable about food from different directions. We went around the table, introducing ourselves and elaborating a bit on why we thought that we were there. I would be last, and I was a little tense from the meeting and I was wondering what to say when they came to me. Then I started losing my self-consciousness in listening to the introductions and stories about food that were being told around the table.

When it was my turn to speak, I introduced myself as a student. I said that I was an organic gardener and a farmers’ market shopper. I talked about how I was a farmer’s daughter, and that I grew up in a culture where we grew our own vegetables, bought milk and eggs from neighbors, and fished or bought our seafood from the coast. I said that I became involved in Slow Food through my interest in voluntary simplicity and my wish was to see at least some of that culture retrieved or preserved.

I never mentioned my job. Everybody else did. I think that I originally planned to, but it didn’t seem necessary.

It’s not that I don’t like my job. It’s very stressful and busy right now, but in about six weeks, I’ll have hardly anything to do. I love the people I work with. I enjoy most of the work.

But I don’t define myself by my job anymore. I used to. I stopped thinking about how to get a promotion or a higher paying job many years ago, and concentrated on finding a job that wouldn’t make me crazy. I don’t check out the job postings or the newspaper ads (a habit of years!). I’m not interested in joining committees or taking on leadership positions that might further my “career.” 99% of the time, I leave my job at work. I don’t think about it at home. I take pride in doing my work well, but I don’t really worry about it. And the result has been that I am much, much happier.

Aren’t I lucky?

When I step out of my front door in the morning, this is what I see. My first sleepy reaction is that it is snowing. I regretted planting these Yoshina cherry trees almost immediately, because I suddenly became aware that it would have been a perfect place for fruit-bearing trees. BUT.

I spend so much time in the Back Forty that I miss what is going on in my itty-bitty front yard sometimes. Then I look a little closer, and a little closer.

I’m really getting behind on my Back Forty updates because I’ve spent my time actually working in the Back Forty. Well, not all of it. But enough that I was pretty sore today.

I don’t think that I mentioned that I received my order from Pinetree on Thursday. That meant that I gave up on the old pepper seeds that didn’t germinate and planted in their places Pimento peppers, Alma Paprika peppers, and Violetta Artichokes. It also meant that I had my awesome new oriental garden tool to dig and plant with. It turned out that it was not magic, though. I think that my straight forked weeder will still be the best tool for wild onions and dandelions. But the oriental tool makes a great trowel!

Weeding, for the most part, makes me happy. That’s a good thing, since I let so many weeds go to seed in the late summer and fall last year. I concentrated on keeping my community garden row neat, not the garden at my house! I’ll bet that by the time the mosquitoes make their appearance I won’t be so appreciative of the task of weeding. It serves a therapeutic need for me, though. I can lose myself in weeding. It’s another reason why I guess I’m not the permaculture poster girl. I know the value of a lot of these weeds, but the OC side of me has a problem with them. I still have a gracious plenty of them - I’m not that obsessive.

I transplanted a lot of my seedlings this weekend. Most of them went in the ground, and I planted more peas as well. The cardoons went into the space between the red cherry bush and the hydrangea. I’ve got to remember to take a before photo because I think that this particular area will look stunning in a few months. Cardoon seedlings have been a problem for me - none of my cardoon or artichoke seedlings made it last summer. This year I’m putting soda bottles over the seedlings at night to protect them from whatever ate them or dug them up last year. In the morning I have to remember to take the bottles off so that they don’t cook.

The heat has given me a bumper crop of lettuce and salad greens and I’ll be giving them away all week. I’ve been keeping the greenhouse door open during the day so that they don’t die of the heat. They are beautiful.

I added a sage plant to the herb garden, which I really need more than ever for the recipes in my Tuscan cookbooks. I think that my tarragon needs replacing too. Dragoncello, Carmen called it. I just love that word.

The tomato seedlings have been out on the deck in the warm weather, and they were getting way too big for their containers, so I repotted all of them on Sunday. I decided to go ahead and put most of the canning tomatoes into the big pots that will be their permanent homes on the south side of the house. For now, the pots are in the greenhouse and on the deck. If the weather takes a sudden dive, it won’t be hard to set the ones now on the deck on the cement blocks in the greenhouse. I think that they’ll do fine there when I’m gone next week if I can get my dear husband to water them once or twice.

As I sat on the deck yesterday afternoon next to the remaining tomato seedings, I counted inventory. Gack.

Brandywine - 11
Mortgage Lifter - 3
Pineapple - 14

These are the known big ones. Yikes! I’m giving some away. But that’s not all:

Heirloom mix - 17

I have no idea what these will be, which makes it fun. I’ll give some of these away too, if I can find takers.

Yellow Pear - 3

I only need one, so I found a home for one, and I’ll give away the other if there’s a taker. Canners:

Amish Paste - 18

12 of these are in big plastic pots that I trashpicked off the street.

Roma - 3

All in big pots. If I don’t have a marker in a big pot saying that it’s Roma, then it’s Amish Paste.

That totals up to 69 tomato plants. Good God, y’all. I thought I went overboard last year, when I had more planting space and less plants. I had tomatoes totally covering my counter space.

I was outside after dark zipping up the greenhouse against marauding raccoons, and it was so beautiful. Really, it may not be the greenest time, but this time of year in my garden is the most precious to me. I can just sit and gaze out over it for hours and be content.

I’ll try to add photos to this post tomorrow. I’m sure that I’ve forgotten something important so I’ll add that too if it comes back to me.

Yah.

I don’t know what that means, but that’s what came to mind. So I figure that it’s time for a stream-of-consciousness blogging kind of post.

It’s been same old same old sort of throughout the week - by that I mean a lot of work anxiety and other anxiety that I get very tempted to write about and then say “nah.”

So maybe that’s where “yah” comes from - a compulsion to ack-sensuate the positive on this blog.

You know, I really ought to write up some kind of profile so that my new readers can get a bit more of an accurate reading of me, I suppose. I updated my 100 Things meme on a separate page for a while and deleted it on an impulse. Quite a few of these items have changed. I think that the page “Nyuk nyuk nyuk” sums me and this blog up pretty well in a general way.

Sometimes I think that people can’t figure out my politics because I don’t write much about politics, other than occasional ranting against politicians in general. In case you’re wondering, I lean way-y-y-y to the left. Democrats piss me off almost as often as Republicans but they don’t scare me nearly as much. They mainly bug me because of a lack of backbone, but things seem to be getting a little better. I guess I identify with Libertarians somewhat, but I have a big problem with the free trade thing. I wouldn’t say that I’m an anarchist. Ralph Nader turned me away from the Greens when he didn’t pull out of that oh-so-important election. Every now and then, I meet a Republican who is totally shocked to find out that I am not one of them. I don’t know why I give out that vibe. Is it the heavy drawl?

I don’t understand Republicans, and feel a little sorry for them. I don’t mean that to sound condescending, but the ones that do seem to have a firm grasp of the facts are embarrassed and a little freaked out, and the others are in total denial. The Republicans who are fiscally conservative, I sympathize with. Their party left them ages ago. I do like a few of them. I’m related to a few Republicans. The ones for other reasons, I just don’t know where their heads are. And so many of them are just plain mean. I don’t like mean people, especially the ones who don’t know they’re mean. (By the way, just in case you’re tempted, mean comments will be deleted. This is my journal and I’m not a masochist. Go insult someone else if you are so inclined. :-b…)

I’ve never gotten over the fact that I held my nose and voted for Clinton twice just to get my man Al in position to see it stolen from him. Watching Hilary now makes me nauseated. I don’t know who I’ll root for in the primary, but it sure won’t be her. I didn’t know last time either, but I knew it wasn’t Kerry. He got the nomination way too soon, in my opinion. Right now I’m leaning toward Edwards, but sheesh. Al, please. Come back, we need you.

I don’t write so much about food politics any more because it makes me tired to think about it. And I wondered who the hell did I think I was, to posit myself as being some kind of teacher about this. There are much better sources of news about food politics. But I do think about it. In the middle of the night, when I should be sleeping.

Lately I’ve been a little anxious, sleep-deprived, and clinically depressed. I feel pretty good tonight, although that might be the organic Prosecco talking. The bottle that I bought to celebrate my birthday about three months ago and forgot about. After a week like this, I was happy to remember it tonight. I’m not a wine snob. In fact, I know next to nothing about wine. But I enjoyed Prosecco when I was in Italy and it was on sale at Earth Fare for $9.95 after New Year’s Eve. I’ll bet you $10 that I’ll sleep tonight. Then I’ll be able to buy me another bottle of Prosecco.

One of the things that I decided to do when I realized that people were actually reading this blog was to be honest about my problems. I am twisted, but adorably so if you get to know me. Good luck with that, though. I’m cautious. I’m insecure about people.

I have a genetic disposition toward panic disorder. I’m a recovering agoraphobic. It colors everything I do. But I’m healing. And I want to show other people who are going through this that it’s possible to heal, and I understand the struggle. I struggle every day, but it gets better every day.

I have a very dry sense of humor that a lot of people are uncomfortable with. I noticed that today when I made a joke to three graduate students after their comprehensive exams. I told them to go get drunk or get ice cream. They responded, wearily and kindly after six hours of essay writing, that they hoped I would get some rest (I was exhausted and they knew it) and I said that I would get ice cream, since I got drunk last night. I could tell that this joke confused them. One laughed, one didn’t, and one made a noise that sounded very strange. Maybe I shouldn’t make jokes like that. Every now and then I can’t resist reminding them that I am human.

Although those two pints of Smithwick’s were good last night. I do know good beer.

I’ll get over myself. There is a lot of great stuff going on, actually. Slow Food is kicking into gear. I’ll go to a GREAT potluck at an awesome farm tomorrow night. I’m going to go on vacation and weave hats for a week only a little over a week from now. One of the students said that I probably won’t have a classmate under 20. I’m totally sure I won’t and I might be the youngest person there. THAT’S A GOOD THING.

Perceptions. Yah.

I hope that I have a lead on Freecycle to pick up a bunch of broken paving stones for my paths tomorrow. I’ve never used Freecycle before.

What’s really funny is that I started out to write about what I did in the garden tonight. But I like this better. I just got a lot off my chest that I won’t be staring at the ceiling thinking about at 3:30 a.m.

There’s not an experienced gardener or farmer who doesn’t have tales of failure and woe, whether it is due to crappy weather, marauding critters, ignorance, or just plain dumb-assery (hats off to Potato Stew for teaching me a fine new word). I’ve come to think that “black thumbs” are just people who caught their bad luck early in the learning process and mistook it for no talent. There is no crying in gardening, folks. “Green thumbs” are simply stubborn or lucky.

For example, this morning I was moving trays of cool-season seedlings out to my deck from my greenhouse, because it gets really hot in there during 70 degree weather. These would be the seedlings that I replanted after moving them to the unheated greenhouse just before a night in the teens. (That was dumb-assery.) I was balancing them on one hand while moving something to make a space for them, and whoops, just as if I was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the tray hit the ground face down. (Yes, I was a waitress, and no, that career didn’t last very long, in case you’re wondering.)

My saving grace was that I had watered them a bit too vigorously with a hose a few days ago and most of the survivors from that mistake were laying on their sides, so only a few were broken. I was amazed at this bit of luck. The fennel and dill went flying and had to be transplanted into the beds right away but the others had developed enough roots to remain in the tray. Fennel and dill seedlings look an awful lot alike, and I hope that I identified them correctly because I don’t want them growing side by side.

I decided that after these incidents Mother Nature wanted me to hand them over, so after work this afternoon I transplanted the seedlings in this tray to the second raised bed out from the deck. That would be, in order, fennel, broccoli “De Cicco” and a broccoli mix, “Oliver” brussels sprouts, red and golden chard, Siberian kale, parsley, and Buttercrunch Bibb lettuce (seeds).

I planted the small bed in front of the greenhouse with alternating colors of chard. It should be delightfully tacky. Maybe I’ll put a garden gnome there.

The dill went into the herb garden in “zone one”; it liked it there last year and I had volunteer plants in late fall/early winter. Since it is a fertile day (gardening by the moon) for planting above-ground annuals, I planted another round of Red Oakleaf and Black-seed Simpson lettuces along the path there.

I planted another round of peas. I picked up the wrong packet of seeds and planted Lincoln peas next to my Sugar Ann sugar snap peas. I think it will be okay but I won’t be able to save the seeds. On one side of the Sugar Anns I dug up all the Lincoln peas I could find and replanted that area with the correct Sugar Ann peas. I’m sure that I missed a lot so I didn’t try to dig up the others. I replanted those seeds next to the other Lincolns and I also planted a new patch of Little Marvels.

Cabbages got a primo sunny spot next to the leeks this year. I felt bad because I planted them in a bad spot last year and they didn’t form heads. I was a cabbage abuser. I only planted five of them though; I didn’t feel that sorry about it.

Believe it or not, there is room for other vegetables. It will still be a challenge because I want to plant a lot of beans later!

A cool drizzly rain is predicted tomorrow, then the next several days is predicted to be in the high 70s.

I am so glad that I went to the Church of the Covenant 9:20 service this morning. The Nutbush Ramblers (I think that was the name) played old-time bluegrass and several women got up and danced. Our church is not a traditional experience, to say the least! It is a church for the non-church crowd, I’d say.

Best of all, my friend Gratia, who I have not talked to in a long time, was the speaker. She spoke about living in the moment, and about how in her moment of grief the best gift that anyone gave to her was to simply be in that moment with her in silence. Later in discussion someone talked about how we often feel like we need to rescue or fix people at these times, when we just need to be there and share our presence. Gratia said that she thought that moments of suffering have their purposes, and instead of trying to visualize or pray or wish them away, we should live in them and learn from them.

After all, there will always be suffering, and we can’t stop it. But we can be a comforting presence for others to draw strength from. That was why I felt bad about not going to the funeral - I felt that I could have lent my presence to Cristy, my old friend, who was there for me when my father died. We decided on the phone that we will try to get together, maybe at the lake this summer. It may well be the right choice, but if it was wrong, it’s over and I’m moving on to the next one.

I’ll lend my presence to Charlie this afternoon, who now has two close family members in Hospice. It will mostly be for Slow Food planning, but I’ll try to take some of his burdens away so that he can focus on what he has to do. Later when it is warmer we plan to sit on the deck in the Back Forty with a bottle of Spannocchia wine and a chessboard.

I have listened to others in the past week - as I’ve said, I feel like I’ve been in the eye of a storm. Part of my despair came from anger at others for their misunderstandings and perceptions about mental illness, some of which was taught from a pulpit, some of which came from a family member who meant well but just doesn’t get it. Part was anger at injustice and lack of compassion, as in the case of my friend’s mother with a disabled husband who was fired for one mistake on the day that her best friend died. I realized in meditation that much of my despair rose from anger in different forms. Not the least of which was at myself.

Today I’m going to work on forgiveness, and being with my friends, myself included.

Sandy fights with a musket (fourth Redcoat from left).

Sandy fights with a mouse (Redcoat with butt in chair).

In the British camp

Today’s reenactment of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse was chilly and muddy but at least the rain stopped. This reenactment is notorious for its bad weather (for around here, anyway). I had forgotten that the event was moved to Price Park last year, which is a little dodgy for taking photos without cars and electrical lines in the background.

To the right is Sandy and Bill, the only two soldiers that showed up for the Forty-twa (42nd Highlanders Light Infantry, now known as the Black Watch). A few years ago, the regiment’s photo boasted around 14-15 soldiers. Hopefully it will regain its former glory.

Last night we took Bill out to Natty Greene’s and McCoul’s Pub for grub and Smithwick’s Irish Ale. I heard a rumour that some of the British re-enactors might go to Natty Greene’s tonight in full regalia. That will be interesting since there will be a St. Patrick’s festival going on.

I dressed out as a backcountry trader and took photos until my fingers froze. I was quite disappointed because some of the very best shots of the battle were out of focus when I downloaded them. There are no photos of me here, but a friend took one of me that I might get to post later. I looked like Calamity Jane from Deadwood. Guess that will be my next Halloween costume.

If you were there, Sandy was the British soldier who fell down first (clue: he always does) and lay on the ground for ten minutes before rejoining the line. This amused the Mystery Science Theater commentators beside me quite a bit, but I informed them that he was merely stunned and bravely re-entered the battle upon recovery.

What happened was that he had a problem with his musket and he was trying to fix it. He said that he got off two shots the whole time.

Before the battle

Traitors against King George Patriots line up

His Majesty’s troops fire upon them

Hessians march with the British

British advance and win the battle, but are weakened and will lose the war at Yorktown within the year