Slow Changes

Change is funny, isn't it?

We devote a fair amount of our lives to resisting changes and then, at other points, we long for change so badly that we can hardly see straight as we wait for its arrival. Around these parts, we're feeling a little stymied - by spring, by life - yet no amount of willing change to occur actually prompts it. So instead we wait, trying hard to remind ourselves that if you look closely enough, you can watch things changing before your very eyes.

 

 Current ice out prediction: when pigs fly.

 The sun is out today (heavens be praised) and across the bay, neighbors have their laundry out to dry.

This is one of the longest pussywillow seasons in recent years. Some of the pussywillows are just starting to pop now.

 Exactly six years ago, this section of forest was on fire. Today, happy little conifers soak up sunshine.

Seedlings will be seedlings. In typical fashion, they have completely taken over the dining room table. Is it Memorial Day weekend yet?

We're finally getting around to spring tasks, like tidying up the woodpile, turning the compost, and tending to brush pile.

The chives I planted last year (who did not like being transplanted one bit) are holding their own this spring. In a few years, they  will have completely taken over the flower bed and I'll be cursing them most foul. All I want are enough blossoms for chive blossom vinegar.

 Why hello there, blue sky.

Little rhubarb nubs. As the first crop of the season pokes up, I'm reminded that it's time to start eating up what's left of last year's harvest. The not so bad result of this "pantry cleansing" was a blueberry pie yesterday. We still have green beans, blueberries, and oh so much cabbage hanging out in our freezer. So what exactly does one do with a gallon of frozen cabbage wedges? Suggestions most welcome!!
 

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Smell Like Dirt

“In spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
 - Margaret Atwood 

When we were in town last week, I ran into the hardware store to pick up a couple bags of seed starting mix.

"This is so exciting!" the clerk said as she rung me up. I tend to agree.

By gum, it may not look like spring around here (ahem, sub-zero mornings, 3 feet + of lake ice, and a good 12-18 inches of compacted snow in the woods), but at  least since I started the first batch of seeds on Sunday afternoon it smells a little bit like spring. Now every time  you walk into the cabin, you're greeted  with the earthy aroma of warm, moist soil, a smell I most associate with the interior of greenhouses. Ahhhh! Just a single whiff gives you hope!

To date, nothing's sprouted, but any day now the first herbs, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and more will be poking up their first little green shoots.This marks our third summer of serious gardening and I'm hoping for another successful and fruitful year.  Each year we get a little wiser in our gardening ways, but one of the joys of gardening is it unpredictability.

As I observe our eating habits and how well vegetable types grow, I try to modify our garden each year so we get the best delicious bang for our buck. Considering that I still have a gallon bag stuffed with cabbage in our freezer, I'm cutting back considerably on the amount of cabbage I plant this year and will instead increasing the amount of broccoli and kohlrabi . I'm also experimenting with a few new types of tomatoes since we can never get enough garden grown tomatoes around here. Whenever Andy asked why a batch of soup was so good this winter, the answer was always, "garden tomatoes." We'll also be planting more carrots and potatoes and I have my fingers crossed for a better squash year.

A few brand new veggies/fruits we'll be trying out this year are ginormous kohlrabi (you harvest them when they're 12 inches in diameter rather than 2-3"!), a watermelon with a short growing season, and eggplant.Will any of it grow? Who knows?

One thing we won't be doing this year is expanding our gardening space. Instead we'll be trying to use the space we've established over the last couple years as wisely as we can.

It's amazing to think that what is right now a teeny little seed in the dirt will, in a few months' time, be tall, green, strong and  producing pounds of food. For me, gardening's worth it just for that miraculous affirmation: that with a little love and care, the tiniest speck of an idea can be transformed into something incredible.  

Are you gardening this year? What are you planning? Have you started your seeds yet?    

 

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Saturday Outtakes

It's been one of those week's where I'm tempted to tell you that nothing happened. But if nothing happened this weekend, then why am I sitting on the couch this Saturday morning feeling like I've been run over by a truck? I spent the last two days in town at a radio production workshop and between that and a dinner out last night to celebrate one of Andy's coworker's last day, this hermity introvert is beat.

But, but, not only was the workshop an excellent opportunity for testing out my new Smartpen, it was a great workshop. (What a nice change from my other recent attempts at continuing education!) The instructors were sweet and nurturing, but also not afraid to challenge and push the small group of 10. The workshop focused primarily on creating radio features and all that talking about interviewing, editing, and script-building just reinforces my belief that it's time for me to get out of management. Somehow . . .

After two weeks of June-like weather, we've had a return of typical northern Minnesota spring weather.   But before things got really cold and grey, Andy and I tromped back on a very overgrown, obstructed trail that's being reopened on the grounds of the museum where I work. The trail's flagged all the way to its destination (Blueberry Hill, pictured below, which has a panoramic view of the surrounding area), but between a blowdown storm in 1999, a wildfire in 2007, and absolutely no maintenance work for nearly 15 years, a lot of work needs to be done before the trail can be opened to the public. So if you're knacky with a chainsaw, let me know.

Last weekend I announced plans to finish not one, but two pairs of socks. Here both pairs are in all their glory:

 

 

What's the next  knitting project? Knitting up and felting a pair of clog slippers to replace these bad boys:

 

Not that those slippers need to be replaced. Lots of life in them yet . . . *cough*

I don't think I'll be hopping in the freshly open lake anytime soon, but we've had a couple of "neighbors" testing out the chilly water: 

Otter

Muskrat?

Sprouts keep popping up. Since we did get two inches of snow on Thursday night, Andy did bring our little pot of lettuce sprouts inside. They seem a little happier inside than battling 30 degree weather outside. 

Kohlrabi, broccoli, basil, flowers and more poking up in the seedling greenhouse

And as if that wasn't enough awesomeness for one week, check out this announcement:  

I've been hearing rumors of an Anchorman sequel since early 2008 and as someone who wore out her Anchorman DVD, I am pumped!

Happy weekend!
 

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Wordless Wednesday: Snow and Seedlings

This weekend, we got another dumping of snow: 5-6 inches. What the heck? At least there's some greenery in the cabin to keep spirits high even when the view out the window remains snowy.

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Planting Seeds in the Cruelest Month

First sprout up: basil

T.S. Eliot betrayed his Midwestern roots when he wrote in the Modernist poem The Waste Land: “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

April, if you live in northern Minnesota, is a good time of year to not be at home. Around here, the month brings lingering ice, lurking snow banks and April showers that come in the form of snow. Meanwhile, mud season makes a bold entrance, so that even as Old Man Winter refuses to give up his icy grip over the land, mud splatters pant legs and dirt get dragged indoors on shoe soles and ground into the rugs. Vacuuming becomes a twice daily chore and during the slow melt that is April, even snow grows dirty.

Throw in Tax Day and we’ve got a rip roarin’ good time up here this month.

It probably comes as no surprise after that flattering description that I try to spend as much of April away from the Ol’ North Woods as possible. Last year saw Andy and I jetting off to the Pacific Northwest and I followed that up with a reunion trip to NYC. This year I’m headed to . . . maybe the Twin Cities for a weekend?

As you might imagine, attempting to avoid an entire month is a rather expensive proposition and this year, the old wallet wasn’t up to the task.

But I’ve been planting seeds.

The very end of March and early April mark the prime time for starting the summer vegetables and flowers. Because I’m usually gone during this span of time, my seeds usually get started closer to the first week of May and those seedlings are pretty piddly and sad when it comes time for outside planting. This year, the seeds got started right on schedule.

As I planted my tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflowers and flowers Saturday I was reminded of the uncertainty that surrounds every thing we do. The directions on the little Jiffy greenhouses I purchases told me to put two to three in each little seed pod. There’s no knowing which seeds will germinate and from the seeds that do sprout, which ones will weather the transplanting into the garden and of those, which of those will produce. I tried to get nicotiana planted in the pods, the seeds so teeny they seemed to disappear on my finger tips and thought, “it’s a miracle these can amount to anything noticeable at all.”

In the misty, grey chill that is April, ennui tends to be the prevailing emotion. But if I’m going to spend the whole accursed month up here, then I might as well commit to getting 1000 words written on the current novel in progress each morning before anything else happens. Unless I keep planting seeds, I can’t expect anything to grow and blossom in the warmer months to come.

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The Perpetual Busy-ness

There’s no denying it’s been busy around here. Last night I turned the page in my day planner and realized all those things those obligations that seemed so hazily off in the distant future are actually pretty much today. Never mind that I also have three articles that need to be written in the next 36 hours and plenty of other freelance commitments that “seemed like a good idea” to contend with.

But just when I was about to throw my hands in the air, I found a timely reminder imbedded in this week’s Funds for Writers’ newsletter, a quote from Sir Heneage Ogilvie: “The really idle man gets nowhere. The perpetually busy man does not get much farther.”

Molly over at the Snyder 5 has made taking on clutter in her house (and her inbox) her challenge for the last half year or so. Sir Ogilvie’s quote got me thinking of all the clutter we keep in our heads and on our calendars. The to-do lists, the things we worry about when we should be going to sleep, the overreaching. After all, if we allow ourselves to puppets at the mercy of our own schedule, we’re not really doing anything. We’re just spinning our wheels.

But I’ve never been especially good at saying “no,” even when I know I have plenty on my plate (which is why I always feel so sick after a good potluck) nor very good at shaking this sort of clutter. I let things get to me. I get overwhelmed, cranky, sometimes, rather unbearable.

And installing a gift shop at work has been, frankly, a disaster and the last three days have been little more than a data entry hell. We’re on the home stretch with that particular project (sort of): all the stuff is pretty well on the shelves and at least the clutter of cardboard and packing material is on its way to the recycling center.

Today was the third straight day of staring down invoices and trying to squeeze a ton of merchandise onto too small shelves. By midday, I was feeling pretty over the whole gift shop. And then my father and aunt and uncle showed up. They hung out at work for a while and then we came back to the cabin for tea. We didn’t worry about how much we were going to charge for this knick-knack or that. Instead we talked about canoe trips and baby mergansers.

After they left, I weeded the garden. I could have been working on those three articles, but digging in the dirt felt much, much better than staring at the computer for another hour or two. The garden isn’t doing much in this cool weather and I haven’t been doing much in the garden. So lucky me to find I have some help in the gardening department from some well meaning chipmunks or squirrels. One of them buried some sunflower seeds in the upper garden which have now sprouted. I moved them to a sunnier patch of grown where I hope they’ll grow tall.

The tomatoes are doing quite well too.The peppers are just put out by the cold.

I’m still working to strike that perfect balance between work and play so I can be free of the clutter of perpetual busy-ness. A little tea and gardening can only help.

I thought I’d end with some shameless self-promotion and a very blurry, dark picture of the baby mallards who spent last night on our dock.

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Welcome Back

Minnesota’s state bird, the common loon, doesn’t winter in the state. Instead, in the middle of November, loons head down to the Gulf of Mexico, where they stay into April. Sometimes they head home to find the Minnesota lakes pretty well iced over, but this year with our early spring, they came home to open waters.

When I was thirteen, my family went on a Civils Rights Tour (until I started college, I assume all families had themed vacations) down through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. When we were in Biloxi, MS, we had a chance to head out into the Gulf on a fishing boat. As we were nearing the harbor at the end of the cruise, one of the other tourists pointed at a large grey bird swimming alongside the boat. “What’s that?” the person asked the captain. My brother and I both rolled our eyes. For crissakes. Couldn’t they see it was a loon?!

But when loons are in the South, they loose their distinctive tuxedo of feathers that they don all summer long, nor do they sing while in the Gulf. In essence, loons become recluses in the winter and as a result, people in the South aren't nearly as enamored by these solid boned divers as we are up here. So we’re really glad to have our loons back in northern waters. They just narrowly escaped being victims of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill.

Of course, there are plenty of birds and other marine wildlife who will be affected by this massive environmental disaster. It makes me sick to think that this oil spill is worse than Exxon Valdex. I wish there was something tangible I could do to help with the Gulf disaster, but it seems like the best thing we can do is reduce our dependency on oil, foreign or not.

I’m also glad to be back in the Northwoods. I had a wonderful time in New York City and it sounds as though the NYPD and other city officials did an excellent job defusing the amateur bomb in Times Square and managing the situation last night. But I’m okay with having been removed from that drama by a good 1000 miles. We feel pretty safe up here in the middle of the Continent. But with lots and lots of wind this weekend, and not too much rain, everyone’s worried about potential wildfire.

The seedlings are just starting to plant from their sunny spot on the kitchen table. This morning, three cosmos seedlings were stretching out in the light of day. Andy’s been putting lots of time into revamping the garden beds outside. With a bit of luck, the kitchen table will be overflowing with seedlings to plant in those beds in no time.

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I Will Buy You A Garden

“I made you something,” Andy said when I got back to the Shack on Sunday. Cranky from my five-hour drive back from the Twin Cities and feeling (somewhat melodramatically) as though I’d arrived up at the very end of the world, I raised my eyebrow.

“Yeah? What?” I asked.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe, a necklace made out of bubble gum wrappers?

It turned out to be a lot better than a bubble gum wrapper necklace.

While I gallivanted in New York City, Andy constructed a raised garden bed at the cabin where we’ll be spending the summer. My mother gave me some flower seeds for my birthday in March and at the time, I didn’t know quite what to do with the seeds. While I’ve been dreaming of a garden all winter, the Shack is located in a shady valley that doesn’t appear particularly agriculturally viable. But my new summer job has lead to shift in residencies for the summer where the raised bed Andy built as well as the pre-existing terraced beds with warrant plenty of digging in the dirt this summer.

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

Now that the means exist to have a bit of a garden, we’re faced with the dilemma of deciding what to plant. Although it’ll still be awhile before any seedlings can be put out in the garden, we’re a little behind on starting seedlings. I really don’t want to bite off more than we can chew when it comes to garden maintenance, so I want to be as smart about this project as possible. One of my concerns is that the garden is as sustainable as possible.

Gardening seems the ultimate sustainable act, but gardening can generate a ton of largely unusable plastic waste. Just think of all the dinky little plastic 4/6-pack containers you accumulate on a trip to the greenhouse. Molly over at the Snyder 5 has a great idea on how to use egg cartons to start seedlings: Composting for Newbies. That’s so smart! I need to pick up some potting soil from my parents’ house tomorrow and then I plan to start a batch of flowers in an egg carton tomorrow evening.

We plopped a few tulip bulbs – excess favors from coworkers’ wedding last September – in the perennial garden last fall. Like most things you “plop” in the ground, I promptly forgot about them. So it’s fun to see all three tulips poking up now.

I have a cold, probably just travel fatigue catching up with me. We’re also in the process of moving out of the Shack for the summer. Our bedroom currently looks like a suitcase vomited in it and my desk space is a teetering cityscape of notebook towers and paperclip ponds. I should spend the evening organizing, but I’m more keen to plant my sweet pea seeds in the far corner of the raised bed.

I’ve gotten back to work. I have some calls out for an article that needs to be done by the end of the week and as long as I actually get some calls back, I think it has potential to be a really good article. I’m also in the process of setting up some interviews for my radio project and my current priority needs to be hammering out a draft of a commentary.

Speaking of commentaries, here’s my recent effort.

A college colleague got in touch with me yesterday regarding a freelance opportunity for the website he edits. My interest is piqued, but I need more details before I make a commitment to any more work.

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