Wayward Thoughts

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My mind is muddled by the amount of suffering worldwide. To relieve my rage, I’ve been ripping invasive plants up by their roots—barehanded. The Asiatic bittersweet roots can be 12-14 feet long, and I pull until I get to the source. Right behind me, robins gather. Watchful. Waiting. As soon as I move out, the robins move in. Where I’ve unearthed invasive roots, I’ve also disturbed slumbering worms. In my wake is a trail of happy meals—and the robins never pass up a fresh worm. We work in unison, in a way; they wait for me to do the hard work. Then they dart through the remaining undergrowth and snag a newly uncovered worm.

As I wrestle with these roots, my mind wanders...

As a kid, I played tag in cemeteries with my brothers and sister. Midwest cemeteries often claimed the highest and best ground. There were views of the plains, the winding Minnesota River below, and bent cedars battered by the winds. Why did the dead get the best views, we wondered?

I remember seeing side-by-side graves of children from the same family—with the same year of death, 1918. My mother told me the reason. It stopped me in my tracks. “Parents had outlived their children?” I asked. And with every move we made, and at every cemetery, it was the same. One cemetery had five children aged 3-15 who had died in the 1918 flu pandemic. The parents’ gravestone showed that they had lived into old age. What had their remaining 50 years been like, crowded with the memories of their children’s faces coming into the world and then leaving this world so soon?

It hurt to think of it.

My grandmother, who was a nurse, had not shielded me from life’s realities. I knew from the moment we arrived on earth we were all eligible for death.

Tomorrow I’ll pull more roots out by hand and hope my anger and this pestilence leaves the land. I don’t know much; I do know the robins will be well fed.

Men in the Garden?

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Answer: Yes, please.

A reader wondered why I don't write about men in the garden. “I’m not qualified,” I wrote back. There’s only one man in my garden at a time, since I embraced serial monogamy.

The man in my garden for the last 26 years is not a gardener. He doesn’t want to be a gardener. He calls himself the “gardener’s helper.” He specializes in heavy lifting. I bring him in for big jobs: loads of mulch, relocating shrubs, felling large trees. You get the idea. He also does the edging, and it’s both neat and original. He does all this without complaint. Though he does require close supervision since he tends to manhandle things.

In all his years of helping me, he hasn’t learned the names of any trees or plants. “What?” you say. “Come on, how can that be?” It’s just his nature. He is not someone who likes to go deep into the weeds or the details. He was the same way when he ran a company with over 100 employees. He shared his vision—and the employees were free to make it come alive in their daily work.

But he sees bigger things: the contours of the land—he sees how a large swath of blue blossoms looks above that gray-green foliage on that plant that attracts all the cats (Nepeta); he sees how short-lived and explosive that yellow bush (forsythia) is in the spring. He sees color keenly and is an inspired color consultant. “Plant that little lime green plant in front of that taller, dark burgundy one,” he says. “You mean Heuchera ‘limelight’ in front of Heuchera ‘plum pudding’?” I ask. “Of course,” he says.

This is where his mind dwells.

A few female gardeners have shared their husbands’ “garden atrocities.” One husband weed-whacked a beautiful, mature perennial bed to the ground. I told my friend it would likely regrow, though she wondered about the future of their relationship. Dear readers, I’m not Ann Landers and this is not a Dear Abby column. But since forgiveness started in the garden, why not forgive? And plenty of gardeners are men. They just don’t happen to live with me.

My Uncle Peter gardens in Minnesota, where he’s just finished his Master Gardener coursework. He told me that for his volunteer hours he wants to educate young school children about the interconnectedness of the earth. He fears that not all children are as lucky as he was to have a mother who taught her children that all living things are connected to the earth.

Amen to that.

I know that when my uncle enters that school and those children see his kind blue eyes and hear his tender voice, they will move in closer to listen to what he has to say. There’s all his knowledge, but most of all there’s still a lot of kid in him—full of wonder for all living things. He has all the right credentials, don’t you think? 

Love & Liguine

My sister-in-law is the super glue of the family; she holds us all together with large helpings of linguine and love.

She’s 97% Italian. Her grandparents immigrated from Torrecuso, a small hilltop town near Naples. When they arrived in New Jersey, her grandfather set up a vegetable cart, which grew into a small grocery store. Her father married into the family and worked in the grocery store, too, in many roles, including butcher. But customers came for more than his cuts of meat. I met her parents once—her father arrived at her house and went straight to the kitchen to begin “the sauce.” The smells coming from that kitchen were heady. All day he talked and chopped garlic and tomatoes, laughed and broke into song as he touched everything that came into that kitchen. 

Nothing in my Minnesota upbringing prepared me for this.

My grandmother Olson’s kitchen was quiet, even when her sister Lena joined her to help with the Christmas baking. Everything that came out of her kitchen was white: lutefisk, lefse and kringle. And I never saw her touch anyone. Not even her husband. They reminded me of that joke about the Norwegian husband that loved his wife so much he almost told her. Norwegians don’t laugh at this joke. Italians find it hilarious.

My sister-in-law is the Italian version of Babette in the movie Babette’s Feast.

Like the Danes in the movie, my grandparents’ life centered around the Lutheran church. And they never touched liquor. They’re all gone now, but I like to imagine my sister-in-law among them. As she offers them more food and wine, her cooking and love break through. Grudges forgotten. Love revived. Redemption found amid the ratatouille.

Her ever-present smile. Her embrace. They’re unfailing. In her own home or in a foreign country—on busy streets or dirt roads, she’s the same. She doesn’t see an animal without stopping to stroke its head or scratch its ear. Babies smile at her. Friends yearn to talk to her. She gets together every year with a grade school friend she met 62 years ago.

Her love never lets up.

From the moment her feet touch the floor at 6:00 a.m. until she retires at 9:00 p.m., she devotes herself to her guests’ happiness. She scurries about with offers of good food, family news and kindness.

My husband and his brother love a good martini—light on the vermouth, please. When we’re guests in their home, every night at 5:00 p.m. she makes a mean martini. You should see her 100 pounds shake it up like a pro.

And while she didn’t marry an Italian, her husband now grows garlic, and he’s had some bumper crops.

She’s never far from food. On our last visit, she was just getting home from her volunteer work at the local food pantry. She gives countless hours to the local library during book drives and in their community garden. She leaves everyone, wherever she goes, better off than she found them.

Before she retired, she worked as a physical therapist. Whenever we visit, I love to tag along to Wegmans grocery store. Not just because we don’t have a Wegmans in Connecticut and it’s something to behold, but because we always run into her former patients. She knows them by their injury. “Hi, how’s your ACL tear? You’re moving great.” Or in the produce aisle near the broccoli: “Is your plantar fasciitis better?” Then, at the seafood counter, “Well, hello there, did the exercises for your patellofemoral syndrome help?” She knows all their kids and their grandkids. She still remembers them, and she still cares.

She’s worked with many physical therapists over the years. One said to her; “You get more information from patients than anyone I know.” I’m sure that’s true. She was interested in her patients; she asked the right questions. She listened. She was creative. She’s still all of that.

As I write, I’m looking at a lovely plant on my desk. She gave me a cutting from her plant several years ago. Her plant started from a cutting from her mother. Her mother got a cutting from her aunt. That’s the kind of family they are; generations passing along the love.

My sister-in-law has been serving large helpings since I met her 30 years ago. As I sit at her table, something in me opens wide as she smiles and hands me a large steaming dish. And I say “yes” to her offer of fresh pecorino romano.

Heat

Photo by Richard Bristol

Photo by Richard Bristol

Planting, mulching or rescuing plants in need of salvation from weeds – none of it should be done in the heat. What makes me an authority? I have been planting, mulching and weeding in the heat.

Need a lesson in how to handle the heat? Look no further than one of my parents’ cats, Spoolie. Nothing flat to lounge on? Become a multi-level lounger. Notice his head is lower than his body, and maybe cooler? Heat does rise. The high midday sun has lowered his eyes to slits, a quarter of their full size – a glaze over his gaze. Did he just burn through one of his nine lives?

Last summer, our cat, Van Gogh, was so languid in the heat that a chipmunk ran by and he only opened one eye. This predator had taken the afternoon off.

I could learn how to handle the heat by watching my cat.

You never see a cat hunting in the midday sun. Van Gogh disappears under the large, leathery hosta leaves. My miniature goat weed plant becomes a pillow. He’s flattened a fair number of plants this past summer with his 17 pounds. The garden is pocked with the imprint of his body. He naps anywhere and everywhere there’s shade. It’s as if he is narcoleptic; he just drops to the ground and naps.

If only I could relax and nap like that.

I did pass out in the heat several times. But that’s not narcolepsy, that’s stupidity. When you find yourself disoriented with your nose in the dirt, that’s not relaxing. I managed to crawl into the air-conditioned house and lay motionless while the room spun. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what happens to those who have no place to cool off. Where do people in India go? Despite its icy, pristine start in the Himalayas, the River Ganges is no place to cool off anymore.

I too burned through one of my lives during the hottest summer on record. No more working in the heat. Next summer I’ll follow my cat deep into a shady hollow. Stretch out. And forget everything.

Humans would be better off if we stopped trying to train cats; they could train us.

Burma Shave Today

Remember those beloved sequential roadside signs that first appeared in 1925, along country highways and byways. Here’s what they look like today.

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Remember these original signs:

She raised Cain
When he raised stubble
Guess what
Smoothed away
Their Trouble?
Burma Shave

My job is
Keeping faces clean
And nobody knows
De Stubble
I’ve Seen
Burma Shave

On curves ahead
Remember, sonny
That rabbit’s foot
Didn’t save
The Bunny
Burma Shave

Short, stiff hair
Is what we’re after
We make no
Claims on
The hereafter
Burma Shave

Today’s billboards:

His combover hides
His stubble and brows
But hold on Martha
He’s scaring
The sows
Burma Shave

Putin’s shaves
Are very close
But our Pres says
His hair grows
The most
Burma Shave

They are no more
Hicks, Gates, and Flynn
But think of
Manafort and Cohen
And the trouble they're in
Burma Shave

Those daily Tweets
Are all the rage
But his
Orange hair
Reveals his age
Burma Shave