St Francis of Our Streets

I like this essay, although it seems the editor who titled it paid no attention to the writer's opening sentence. Nonetheless, it's a good job of calling out for special appreciation to one of the many people who work in purposeful anonymity to help others. For Father Jordan, and for the others inspired like him, it's not about them it's about "the care of the poor and vulnerable." It should be so for all of us. 

A note, too, on my appreciation for the Franciscans. We have had a St Francis statue in our gardens for years, modeling some of our stewardship on his theology. I've written of how that happens in the past. Interestingly, my father, who I've often said looks like the Dalai Lama, has the middle name Francis. 

250 candles-days 151-152

258 candles-day 20

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases. 

Today: Nursery Fields Forever. 

my superhero identity

Barring introduction by aliens or an industrial accident, the superhero whose special powers I could replicate is Mystery Men's The Shoveler. With the exception of one very big plot done with a Bobcat, all the gardens at the two homes we've owned have been created by me with my trusty yellow-handled spade bought in the mid-90s for $20. In our gardening ventures, my wife is the brains, I am the strong back.

Most recently, we've decided to make an above-ground garden, previously devoted to flowers, a vegetable garden. This required my not only weeding it but digging up the black plastic we had laid under the soil years ago (possibly a decade ago). It took a little over a week and a half; after I started and got half-way done, it rained for nearly a solid week, which made weeding easier but tugging the plastic loose harder.

It began as a load of soil mistakenly dumped in the backyard instead of on the garden we'd already dug, and to quote the sainted Arlo Guthrie, "instead of bringing that pile up we threw ours down." We had a number of railroad ties that propped it up and dozens of bricks to hold them in place until they were solid. It's served us well in the ensuing years, and St. Francis has watched over it peacefully. But with only a few exceptions, you can't eat flowers, and we're ready to make it more utilitarian.

weeding

weeding is a blessing and a curse, and another blessing again. it's a blessing because it's repetitive and in the silence of the garden where all I hear are birds, the lowing of nearby cows, and the hum from the distant interstate, my mind drifts and flows and I'm unaware of the hours passing. it's a curse because it has to be done so often; there is as yet no foolproof way to prevent grass and broadleaves and dandelions from filtering up through the mesh we lay down and mar what we take pains to sculpt. and it's a blessing again because for those hours all my problems and issues and insecurities are reduced to getting these plants out of this plot of land.

we must make our garden grow

it's primary day here on the rim. it was scheduled earlier this spring as a recall election for 6 republican senators who voted with governor scott walker and his brouhaha against unions and workers this winter, but the republicans, recognizing the bad taste they've left in people's mouths would likely result in landslide democratic victories, placed trojan candidates--officially they're called "protest candidates"--in each of the races, forcing the races into primaries rather than elections, thereby giving them a 5 month opportunity to help people forget what they've been upset about. it's obvious that it's not something they're really behind--here on the rim I haven't seen a single sign mentioning isaac weix (I even had to look up his name) but many with the name sheila harsdorf, the republican senator up for recall--and if I were 1 of their sacrificial lambs I'd be plenty angry about that.

but it's legal and while it may not be right, politics isn't about "right." short term results show all the protest candidates going down in flames (although as I write this polls have only been closed for an hour so results may vary), but their careers weren't really the point anyway. I drove over to town hall to vote for shelly moore, the "real" democratic candidate as she's been touted, and came home to drink beer and appreciate my backyard.

I've just returned from about a month's vacation and spent the morning and afternoon working on the gardens and lawn. I weeded 2 of the gardens yesterday and the largest 1 this morning, then mowed about a third of the lawns. it was an allday project. the above photo shows the largest garden after weeding (with another garden just visible in the rear). we used to have 6 gardens, including vegetables, but I am naturally lazy and the others dropped away 1 by 1 until only these 3 flower and shrub gardens are left.

I did a pretty diligent job of weeding before leaving and it still took me from 9:30 until 12:30 to make this 3rd garden presentable. it's true of course that weeds are just plants we don't want in our gardens, but it's also true that, as candide puts it, we must cultivate our garden. (this is not, as it was taught to me in the 80s, a panegyric to solipsism, to focusing on the self to the exclusion of others, but a stress on improving things, on bettering life. this is how I taught that lovely little final line in candide for several years until I realized, to my bitterness, that no matter what I did no one was reading candide and I let it go the way of all things.)

now, imagine what it would have looked like if someone during my time away had been actively destroying my garden while I was away under pretense that he was improving it--sowing grass and nettles and boxelder saplings. it would take, naturally, much longer than the 3 hours I toiled at it. yet, to expand this metaphor into politics, this is what barack obama has to deal with: 8 years of willful destruction of the economy and government services by the bush administration. I am not sympathetic to critics lambasting him for not having turned the economy around yet or returning employment and wages to their upright positions of the late clinton years. it will take more than the 2 years he has had, and may frankly take longer than 2 terms, particularly with a republican opposition whose every position is reducible to a single phrase.

it is too grandiose to imagine obama as the contemporary political equivalent of candide but I think I could be forgiven for presenting him as the weeder-in-chief, and it is this activity we have to give support and patience.

asparagus roots

I live in an old house, or a house which is old by standards of the rim, which in my eastern seaboard experience is pretty recent--"oh, a hundred years old? that's the new house"--but out here farms advertise their existence as century-long enterprises by official plaques, so that the lifetime of our home at 110 years is still exceptional even if it might not last another century. all of which is to say I'm not terribly surprised to discover all kinds of things in the ground that I would never have expected to be there: mauls and tanks and pottery shards and worn-smooth wooden toys along with the requisite bones.

our property used to be a larger piece, chunked into parcels decades ago by the farmer to our immediate east, a former high school history teacher who got the bug and never looked back. he married into a working farm and they built a newer, more efficient set of buildings and gave these up. at one time, before the county road came through, this was all of a piece, which goes some way to explaining why there is asparagus growing not 2 feet from the macadam.

the state is widening the road, which will bring it right up to 1 end of our front lawn, and so threatens the existence of the asparagus, so it was in a righteous mood that I went out yesterday with a shovel to dig it up and replant it on our property. but I'll also admit to a proprietary mood as well, that it should remain part of the property.

it took me much longer to dig up than I'd expected. I knew the roots were tangled and thick and deep but not how deep and I spent the better part of an hour and a half digging out a little here and there and here again. it had had 10 stalks when I started and dropped off, 1 by 1, all but 2 by the time I tugged out the rootball, like an upsidedown head with a matted tangle of thick dreads, free of the earth. but not to worry, I left a generous amount of offshoots still there so that when the apocalypse comes and the roads dissolve the stalks will shoot up through them like nebraskan missiles.