Asparagus: vegetable, miracle

In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle -- the story of her family's one-year experiment with "deliberately eating food produced in the same place where we worked, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air" -- she, her spouse and their two daughters spend a year eating what grows.  Not just buying what's available at the supermarket, but looking around, waking up to what's actually growing at any given time, and eating it.  She writes about the notion of a genuine food culture, by which she means an affinity between people and the land that feeds them.  This affinity, this genuine food culture, is a sequence of steps people can take, like this: 

Step one, probably is to live on the land that feeds them, or at least on the same continent, ideally the same region.  Step two is to be able to countenance the ideas of "food" and "dirt" in the same sentence, and three is to start poking into one's supply chain to learn where things are coming from.

I'll be honest about a couple of things right off the bat. As a small-time suburban farmer -- I refer to my place as a "farmlet" -- I have loved growing food and composting and digging in the dirt for a long time now, regaining what I think my French grandmother knew all along about growing potatoes and pansies and looking out over rows of pretty plants while the birds sing their song, something about peace and simple satisfaction and good taste.  Next, even though I had every intention of doing so, I haven't finished reading Kingsolver's book -- held up by two things: first my sense that the book itself should take a year to read, to track along with her and her family, month by month, all that they learned through their experience; next, that the tendentious preachy parts (which I skip) do tend to turn me off.  YES, Amen sister-girl on the need to buy organic, on the need to stop spraying.  YES, gotcha: now stop that sermon and rhapsodize some more about vegetables.

Because vegetables, vegetables are a miracle to behold.  And that's enough for me.  I LOVE reading about someone else's experience, their falling into love with the smell of soil, with the pea pods on the vine, the funny parent-like emotion at seeing a plant bud out (My baby is growing up!!).  But I'm a little impatient with the preachy, as much as I appreciate that it needs doing and that somebody needs to hear it.  Somebody will read this and their life will change utterly.

I am certain of this because it's absolutely 100% true that Joe and I were spurred along in our suburban farming by a book we found remaindered in 1990, which we both read and re-read, and which has since gone missing, loaned to someone at some point along the years and never returned.  A Small Farm in Maine, with its story of two publishing professionals who leave their careers and move to Hedgehog Hill Farm, learn to farm and make a living from their labors, filled our imaginations with possibilities.  And we've grown food every year ever since.  As I'm writing this, I just ordered a used copy of the book from Amazon for $1.89 + shipping, and learned the sad news that Terry Silber, the wife of the pair, died of cancer in 2003.  Her ashes were spread at the farm, which closed in 2006.  Sad but also, in its way, perfectly fitting.

I am convinced that the lot of every person walking this earth can be improved by the simple action of planting seeds and harvesting food, that there is little more worth knowing than the flavor of a spear of asparagus fresh from the ground. 

Asparagus is a true miracle, one which is just beginning to emerge from its patch in our farmlet, tender purple and green buds breaking the soil.  It's the beacon, the first glimpse of delicious spring. Asparagus is also the place where I know Kingsolver and I are kin.

I sweated to dig [asparagus] into countless yards I was destined to leave behind, for no better reason than that I believe in vegetables in general, and this one in particular.  Gardeners are widely known and mocked for this sort of fanaticism.  But other people fast or walk long pilgrimages to honor the spirit of what they believe makes our world whole and lovely.  If we gardeners can, in the same spirit, put our heels to the shovel, kneel before a trench holding tender roots, and then wait three years for an edible incarnation of the spring equinox, who's to make the call between ridiculous and reverent?

I'm eating this book slowly, allowing it to accompany what's unfolding in the garden around me.  I can't imagine reading April right now, in the throes of February as we are.  There's time.  In gardening, there's always time.  We're encouraged to rock back on the heels of our gardening clogs and slow down -- waiting, eyes wide, for the wonder that's inevitably coming, that can't and won't be rushed.

If you're seeking inspiration, something to spur you down the garden path or simply another way to think about food, pick up Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and check it out.  Or just come over sometime, in some clothes you're not too fussy about, get down on hands and knees, and rejoice in what the ground can do for us.

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Could you live an entire year eating locally or the food from your garden? Barbara Kingsolver transplanted her family from the deserts of Arizona to the mountains of Virginia for their endeavor. Join From Left to Write on February 21 as we discuss Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own. 

weekend plans: ho hum & so yum

The big question at the office on Fridays, especially on the Friday before a three-day weekend, is "Any big plans this weekend?"  The receptionist in our office is generally the one who asks, of pretty much everyone who crosses his path that day.  I always wish I didn't have the TGIF going so strong, but I do, so I'm always a little giddy on Fridays, eager for the break -- when I actually get one -- and delighted to hear the question asked and answered, vicariously enjoying other people's weekend activities, especially when they're very different from my own.

The truth is that this weekend, the one I'm sitting in right now, feels like it's the first "normal" one in some time.  First Joe was gone for a weekend, then we were both gone the following weekend, then the weekend after that I worked on Sunday, and here it is NOW, this weekend, and we're both here and I don't have to work.  And it's three days long.  From the standpoint of this Saturday morning, the time is unrolled out in front of me, mostly empty, fat with potential.

Joe will be racing tomorrow, his first race of this season, his first race since that catastrophic crash last March which broke 4 ribs, the right clavicle and scapula and punctured his lung. And put a hole in his confidence on the bike.  The driver's insurance company can compensate him for the destroyed frame, the medical bills, the time off work, the pain and suffering, but that hole in his confidence -- that's a tricky thing.  So I'm so, so glad he's out there, so strong right now, ready to engage in the race with his teammates, do well, have fun, feel good.  

Me?  When I was asked yesterday if I had any Big Plans for the weekend, I think I said something like No plans.  Nothing.  Just staying home and I'm so glad.  But I realize now, now that I'm sitting here with my coffee, puppy at my feet, that I was being coy, perhaps, not speaking up about what's really on my list.  Since really, when people are answering things like "going to the movies," "going surfing," "having a romantic dinner with my fiancee at X fancy-pants restau," I realize that my REAL answer is very different and I am a little shy about saying it.  Lame!

Bookworms: stand proud!  Writers: shout it out!

The real answer to what I'm doing this weekend? The Usual: Reading and Writing.  Left to my own devices, besides hiking with the dog, tending the bees and all the other activities associated with my suburban farmlet, all I ever want to do is Read and Write.  And so this weekend's To Do list features finishing The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, reading the last 60 pages of Martha Beck's new Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, making headway in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver so that I can produce my blog post (due Monday) for my beloved From Left to Write online blogger bookclub.  And starting on a book that my so-thoughtful sister had dedicated to me and sneakily mailed, without saying a word: Invoking Lakshmi by Constantina Rhodes.  

Oh, and last but by no means least, working on my own book.  Yes, it's time.

Around all of that, naturally, will be wound some other stuff -- taking clothes to consignment, making dinner for friends, paying bills, hanging out with Joe outside, pulling weeds or staring at the sky (likely both). Taking dozens of pictures of Mr Burns and delighting in his puppyhood, his snuggliness, his ability to get along with everybody, no matter their species.

But what I am most eager for -- the secret drive that underlies everything else -- is always the words on the page, someone else's or my own, always words and stories and books.  Always this funny thing we're able to do, making these meaningful squiggles that transmit so much, working this crazy so-human magic.  Writers are wizards, truly, dunking the readers' heads in the pensieve, immersing us in the experiences of others.  I can't really think of much else that's more satisfying or delightful.

So now, getting down to it.  Wrapping this up so that I can find a cozy spot with Burnsy, him napping, me reading, coffee and pencil within easy reach.

These are my plans for the weekend.  These are my plans for my whole life, really.  Ho hum for some, probably, but for me, so yum.

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oh, fiction: thank goodness

Someone whom you may know, someone who shall remain nameless, used to criticize my reading -- I was much more interested, too interested it has been said, in what was happening in books, lacking in attention for what was really happening in front of my nose.  I countered -- in my head, because in those days I didn't dare say things out loud -- that indeed I was much more interested, blessedly too interested, in what was happening in books precisely BECAUSE OF what was happening in front of my nose.  I could start and stop the book-story, enter and re-enter that book-reality, at will. Where over other things, admittedly, I did not exercise much, if any, control.

And so it is today.

I'm exhausted from the weekend, lacking in stamina for the pursuits that amuse my friends, a bit green around the gills from fatigue, a migraine closing in.  I was in a lot of pain last night from my left hip, a casualty of an overly optimistic yoga session this weekend, a two-hour hike through slushy, gorgeous Blackwood Canyon at Lake Tahoe, and because I stubbornly refused to swallow more pills. I lasted three hours at my job this morning, felt grouchy with everyone in every interaction and suddenly knew it was time to pack it in.  So I came back here and slept for 1 1/2 hours.

But first I read.

Since January 1 of this year, I've been reading one non-fiction after another.  First I finished Quiet by Susan Cain, and then got to within 60 pages of the end of Martha Beck's new book, then started on the next bookclub book, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.  Guess what?  They're all great, but guess what?  They're all non-fiction.

I need some escape.  I need some fiction.

So before the very uncharacteristic nap this afternoon, I started The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht.  From this very first line, hooked, deep:

In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and takes me to see the tigers.

For nearly two hours of daylight, I slept, puppy cozy at my side, though not straight through. I kept waking up and wishing to reach for the book, to find out what comes after page 35, after 60, into the 200s, but I forced myself to remain curled on my side, glasses off, no book.  Now I am finally out of bed, cup of tea, nursing this headache and getting ready to dive back in.

In all that's happening out there in the world, I will never know 100% of anyone else's truth but my own, and even that sometimes eludes and surprises me.  What happens in other places, under the surfaces of things, remains largely inscrutable to me.  I may never know if life exists on other planets or be able to see what others see when they close their eyes and dream, let alone understand what motivates people I know to potentially troubling acts.  But with a book, with this book right now, I can keep my eyes wide open and venture and drift into a truth I can hold between my hands, letting the rest beyond just slip away.  

This is a fiction, a fabrication, that I crave.  The rest, it is really true (you were right), not so much.

Feeling so grateful right now to all of the writers in my long life of reading, strangers to me mostly, who've given me this sweet gift, let me slip gracefully into the story and find happiness in the pages of a book.  Oh, fiction: thank goodness.  Yes. Delight.

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