Reflections on the Sixth Week of Spring – Garden Companionsssssssssss

    Friday, Spence walked in the front door with dust on his red tractor cap and mud on his L. L. Bean boots. “I have a garden job that’s perfect for you,” he said.

    I carried a basket of laundry down the hall to join him in the great room and imagined breathing fresh air. “What?”

    “Pick asparagus. We have enough to freeze.”

    “Already?” Usually we don’t pick asparagus until May nor freeze any until June.

    “Yeah.”

    I hesitated. On my last two garden jobs I’d had companions.

    Fresh air. Garden companions. Break from laundry. Garden companions.

    Nearly two weeks earlier, on a warm, blue sky Sunday, I’d agreed to plant the rest of the peas seeds Spence had sprouted. He led me to the old tomato patch in the north garden. Black plastic covered the ground, white PVC pipes formed scaffolds for climbing plants, and holes in the plastic waited for a new seeds.

    “Put two seeds in each hole,” Spence said.

    A two-foot garter snake sunned itself where I needed to kneel. I gazed at the snake.

    “Do you want me to move it before you start?” Spence said.

    “Definitely.”

    He picked up a stick and touched the tip of the garter snake’s tail.

    It circled the warm spot on the plastic.

    Spence nudged the snake again.

    It slithered two feet.

    Nudge. Slither. Nudge. Slither.

    The garter snake moved in a rectangular path back to its starting place.

    “This could take some time,” Spence said.

    “I can wait.” While I inhaled the fragrance of wet spring soil, Spence nudged until the snake crawled under the log walls of the raised onion bed six feet away. I knelt, shoved the trowel into the first hole, and pulled out a scoop of earth with three squiggling worms.

    I could deal with worms.

    Two days later, on a sunny warm Tuesday, I carried knee pads, garden gloves, and two weed diggers to the raised strawberry bed. At the northeast corner lay a small snake exposing half of its brownish back and half of its bright orange underside. The snake didn’t move. Was it dead? “Hey, Spence,” I shouted. “Come look at this.”

    He shut off the hand mower and walked to the strawberry patch. “It’s a dead snake,” he said.

    I could deal with dead.

    I knelt, pulled off the bird netting, and weeded.

    On a break, I checked our Audubon reptile guide. The dead snake was a red-bellied snake which ate slugs and snails that consume strawberries. Too bad the red-bellied snake didn’t survive to slither among the strawberries after I’d finished weeding.

    I closed the guide and went back to the strawberry patch.

    A chickadee sang in a nearby apple tree, bees buzzed, and the hand mower droned. I weeded and crawled to mid patch where a disgusting odor rose from a cup with last summer’s beer and drowned slugs. Fermented death. I pried the cup out of the ground, poured the noxious brew onto weeds in the footpath, and replaced the cup. A foot long red-bellied snake wiggled past the empty cup.

    “May you fill your tummy with lots of slugs and snails,” I’d whispered.

    So, when Spence said he had a garden job for me this Friday, I calculated the likelihood of meeting snakes. High sixty degrees but cloudy. Snakes wouldn’t be sunning themselves, would they?

    “Okay,” I said. 

    “You’ll need a basket for the asparagus.”

    I reached under the sink for my largest picking bucket and followed Spence outside.

    A robin hopped from the wood shed to the blueberry bushes. White cabbage butterflies flitted from dandelion to dandelion.

    I snapped off asparagus spears, placed them carefully in the bucket, and admired new milkweed leaves forming in the asparagus patch. No sunning snakes.

    When I reached the end of the row near the garage where Spence flame weeded white dandelion seed heads, he said, “You just missed stepping on him.”

    Stepping on him? I glanced up from spear-searching in time to see the garter snake slither out of the asparagus patch.

    “He was right where you’re standing,” Spence said.

    Sheesh.

    Okay. The garter snake lived in the north garden, and I was treading on its territory.

    I could deal with sharing the garden as long as it didn’t follow me into the house. Giving the snake a name would help me adjust. But what name?

    I sent a message to my third grade email pal.

    JW: I picked asparagus today, and the garter snake slithered out of the asparagus patch. I think it's the same snake that was sunning itself when I planted peas. I want to give it a name. Do you have any suggestions?

    Email Pal: Snakalious. (Snake - a - lisious)

    His email triggered an image of the garter snake on a white plate with me holding a knife in one hand and a fork in the other. Yuck. I’d expected something like “Stripy” or “Slither.” But I’d asked for help, and I didn’t want to brush off my young friend’s suggestion.

    JW: Snakalicious makes me think of eating because of delicious and nutritious. But eating the snake makes me think yuck. Can you think of another name? Perhaps we could use your idea with a different ending like Snakamongus (snake-among-us). That only reminds me of fungus.

    Email Pal: Snakamazing (Snake – amazing)

    JW: Snakamazing it is!

    Email Pal: HOORAY!!

    Later, while I cut asparagus into pieces for par boiling, I told Spence the name my email pal and I chose for the garter snake.

    “You know there are two of them,” Spence said. “The one today came from under the garage step. When I tilled yesterday, it scooted towards the asparagus patch. It was bigger than the one that sunned in the pea patch.”

   “It didn’t just grow bigger?”

    He shook his head.

    I cut more asparagus, decided I could call both garter snakes Snakamazing, and considered wearing boots the next time I help Spence in the garden.

 

Reflections on the Fifth Week of Spring – Celebrating Earth Day 

    Thursday, I settled in my Adirondack chair, watched the breeze toss new leaves on the River Willows below the blueberry patch, then googled “March for Science Pennsylvania locations.” One of the fourteen listed was Diamond Park in Meadville. I whooped. Perhaps the idea that had been incubating in the back of my mind since I’d listened to a Science Friday podcast last February, would be a new way of celebrating Earth Day. I started an email chain with Spence and Ellen, our daughter, world traveler, and epidemiologist.

    JW: I found a March for Science in Meadville. The website says 30 are going and 55 are interested but they don't have a permit yet. I'm contemplating celebrating Earth Day at the march. Are you going to a March for Science, Ellen?

    Ellen: You know the march is tomorrow. They have one locally; I am thinking about going.

    Spence: My sign will read "Our daughter is a scientist, but we like her anyway."

    JW: Nope. "My daughter is a scientist. She rocks!"

    Ellen: Not the most effective campaign slogan.

    Earth Day morning dawned cloudy and cold. On the way to the park, we passed volunteers planting shade trees on South Main Street. A lone woman, holding a sign with a picture of Rachel Carson, stood at the southeast corner of the park.

    “Not much of a turn out,” I murmured.

    “We’ll drive around and see,” Spence said. He cruised toward the court house, and a line of about thirty marchers appeared–Allegheny college students, families with elementary school aged children, an infant in a baby carrier, old people like us, and two dogs. My size crowd.

    Spence parked. Without homemade signs, we joined the end of the line. An older man and women stooped to pick up litter while the group wound around the three block long and half a block wide perimeter. A woman in a red windbreaker and sunglasses said, “What will they say with Earth Day people tramping on the grass instead of the sidewalks?” She and her friends left the line and took the sidewalk leading to the gazebo in the middle of the park.

    Since we’d joined the demonstration forty-five minutes into the three hour event, we only circled the park twice before people broke into clusters for conversation among the leafing out trees.

    A cute kindergärtner with his hands in his gray hoodie pockets stood idly by his mom and older sister. Recognizing the children from the Learning Center where I volunteer on Thursday mornings, I approached them. “Are you Marching for Science?”

    The boy frowned. “Not any more. I’m ready to play.” He dashed across the grass and climbed a boulder two-thirds his height.

    A young woman wearing a bright pink T-shirt sporting a feminist fist held the leash of a brown and black dog she called her unruly toddler. While the dog tugged her arm, she talked to an aging hippie with a boom box before selecting a donut from the organizer’s table. The dog jumped up on her in an attempt to grab the donut.

    The other dog, a seeing-eye dog on duty, ignored the donuts and sat quietly by his master.

    I bought a March for Science Meadville, PA button then walked about taking photos of signs.

    I’m a Voting Citizen 4 Science

    Science Rocks

    I’m Marching for Her (with an arrow pointing from “Her” to a picture of the Earth)

    Science is Knowledge is Power

    Meadville Stands with Science and Scientists

    March for Science

    The kindergärtner's sister held a cardboard sign against her leg and flipped her long, thick braid over her shoulder. The braid flipping was familiar to me after many sessions of reading together at the Learning Center. I asked if she’d let me take a picture of her with the sign.

    She put her finger to her chin, shook her head, and ran to join her brother on the rock he’d climbed.

    Then a tall young man with a goatee walked up to Spence and me and began talking about his C-corp endeavors to provide solar cells for people who couldn’t afford the systems.

    Spence nudged my elbow. “Are you going to tell him?”

    The man looked back and forth between Spence to me.

    I said, “We’re in the midst of negotiating with a company to install solar cells on our house.”

    “That’s great. We encourage people to install their own cells if they can.” He handed me a business card. “Pass this along to friends who can donate to the cause or who need our help.”

    His partner, barefoot despite the forty degree temperatures, jiggled the baby in the carrier strapped to her front and said, “It’s for his future.”

    After forty-five minutes chilling and milling, I turned to Spence. “We can go home now.”

    Later, with hands in hot, soapy dish water after dinner, I looked out the window at Spence driving his red tractor. He scooped a bucketful of compost from one pile, dumped it on another, and exposed rich black earth that had formed inside. Though he wouldn’t consider it a celebration, just another Wells Wood task, he’d created fresh earth for Earth Day.

    The tractor engine rumbled, and I ruminated on the discussion from the afternoon All Things Considered broadcast  about the significance of the March for Science.

    A nine year old participant in DC sounded hopeful. “. . . some people who do not believe in it [science] . . . will . . .see how important it really is.”

    But commentators questioned the efficacy of the march because, despite organizers’ intentions for a nonpartisan event, signs such as the “I’m Marching for Her,” a variation of Hillary Clinton campaign slogan, “winked” at politics.

    I chose to ignore the politics and concentrate on my success. After years of planting trees, picking up litter, and teaching elementary students the three Rs, reduce, reuse, recycle, I’d found a different way to celebrate Earth Day. I also supported Ellen, whose research focuses on keeping people safe from heavy metals in the environment.

    This morning I sent her a text.
    JW: Did you go to a March for Science?

    Ellen: No . . . But I support it! I am not a big fan of crowds.

    She wouldn’t have had to contend with a crowd if she’d lived closer to us.

Reflections on the Fourth Week of Spring - Three Mothers and My Easter Eggs Part 2

    “They’re pretty,” said Mary Ann, our eighty-three year old neighbor who’d come by to drop off a piece of misdirected junk mail. Chuckling, she’d admitted the mail was just an excuse for a chat.

    I’d listened to the latest on her mean ex-boyfriend then switched the conversation to children and grandchildren before walking her out front and cutting a bouquet of daffodils to give her.

    Daffodils grew at the foot of the burning bush holding my Easter eggs. Dew and gentle rain had turned solid, vivid colored shells to curiosities with white tops and pastel bottoms reminiscent of the two-toned cars in the fifties.

    “So interesting,” Mary Ann added.

    Did her “interesting” carry the coded writers’ group meaning of too weird, wacky, or inept for a polite comment? Probably not. Her failing eyesight must have blended the whites and pastels in amusing ways.

    Hanging brightly colored eggs to commemorate three mothers–Mom who’d taught me to dye eggs, my sister-in-law’s mother Martha who’d blown the heirloom shells, and Spence’s mother Priscilla who’d hung colored eggs in her front yard tree–had failed a second time.

    The day after Mary Ann’s visit, I drove to town and checked for craft paints at Jo-Ann Fabrics. A child’s set of acrylics professed to wash with soap and water while wet but dry to a permanent finish. Permanent would be long enough.

    On Good Friday, I spread newspaper on the kitchen table and gathered three bread pans, a package of wooden shish kabob skewers, rags, and the child’s paint set. Then I walked out front to the burning bush. Bumblebees buzzed around my legs while I pulled off a two-toned shell, blew into it to clear bush fragments, and inhaled whiffs of vinegar.

    Back inside, I easily slipped a skewer through a shell’s enlarged-from-sliding-along-branches end holes. Letting the bottom of the shell rest against my left thumb, I painted with the child’s eighth of an inch wide plastic bristles. Creamy paint streaked with lumpy edges and thin middles. In vain, I stroked to smooth the paint.

    When Spence walked around the table to pick up the compost canister, I said, “Do you think brush strokes will matter?”

    Compost container in hand he said, “Whose your audience?” 

    “People passing in vehicles.”

    “They won’t see the strokes. It will be fine.” He stared at my brush and half painted purple egg. “Why are you using such a tiny brush?”

    “I don’t have a larger one.”

    Spence set the container by the door and headed for the basement.

    Rumble, crash, and rattle floated up before he reappeared. Picking up the compost, he said, “I don’t have one either.”

    I painted shells on skewers, set skewers across the tops of bread pans so the eggs could dry, washed the brush, and wiped my messy fingers on the rags. While I worked, I thought of Mom, Martha, and Priscilla. All three mothers had painted. Mom painted walls, Martha painted butterflies on wood slabs, and Priscilla painted rural landscapes with houses and barns. I didn’t remember any painting eggs shells, but I heard their advice. “Why go to all that bother . . . buy plastic eggs . . . and use a coupon.”

    When the painted shells dried, I slipped them onto the burning bush for the third time.

    Brightly colored eggs commemorate three mothers this Easter Sunday.

    If I pack the shells carefully and if the end holes don’t enlarge too much, I will have commemorative eggs for neighbors passing in vehicles to view on many Easter Sundays to come.

    Mary Ann will be a passenger in one of those vehicles. Even with her bad eyesight, she’ll see vibrant colors on the burning bush and comment, “They’re pretty . . . so interesting.”

Reflections on the Third Week of Spring – Three Mothers Inspired My Easter Eggs

 

    At the end of March, I invited Cindy and Bruce, the Washington County Wellses, to view the mini daffodils I’d planted in memory of Cindy’s mom Martha. After the daffodil walk, we sat around the coffee table in the great room and crushed the dried egg shells I’d saved over the past year. In late May, a handful of crushed shells will go into each tomato seedling hole to prevent blossom end rot.

    Cindy and I crushed shells with our hands. Bruce mashed the crushed shells with a large wooden spoon. Halfway through the process, I opened a carton of whole shells. Cindy had brought them to me last summer with a pair of empty cartons I’d requested for storing shells.

    Many years before, Martha, a folk artist, had poked holes in the eggs and blown out the contents. I couldn’t crush these heirlooms from Cindy’s mom.

    Instead, I handed the carton to Cindy. “These are your mom’s. You crush them.”

    Cindy held the carton several moments before setting it on the couch. She chose another carton from the stack on the table and pulled out an egg.

    Martha’s in tact shells reminded me of Easters I’d visited Priscilla, Cindy and my mutual mother-in-law. Priscilla had blown many an egg to dye and hang on the small tree in her front yard. Her colorful decorations highlighted her cheerful “He is risen” traditional Easter welcome.

    I crushed another shell and dropped the pieces into a bowl. “You could dye your mom’s eggs, Cindy, and hang them in a tree like Priscilla used to do.”

    Cindy studied her mom’s shells. “I won’t have time. Why don’t you?”

    Under my mom’s guidance, I’d dyed many a hard boiled egg in my youth. I could color Martha’s shells like my mom had taught me, hang them in a tree like Priscilla had, and celebrate all three mothers.

    How hard could it be?

    Last Monday, I gathered six mugs, dye tablets, measuring spoons, and vinegar. The directions said to use three tablespoons of vinegar for bright color. I wanted bright. I tipped the vinegar container and poured a tablespoonful like my mom had done. But she’d bought quart bottles, and I had a gallon jug that Spence used for making pickles. Vinegar splashed out of the spoon, into the cup, and onto the table. Oops.

    Figuring a little extra vinegar would make the colors even brighter, I persevered. The directions didn’t say to add water, but Mom had so the hard boiled eggs could sink into the liquid. I added water.

    The egg shells floated. I held them down with the wire egg holder, but they popped up. Okay, this wasn’t going to be as easy as dying hard boiled eggs.

    Attending to one shell at a time, I angled a hole toward the surface of the dye and jiggled the shell so that air would bubble out, dye would seep in, and the shell would sink. Sort of.

    Some shells sank faster than others. Some never sank. I forced them under with the metal egg holder.

    When the colors looked bright, I lifted the shells out of the water. Liquid trickled out, gushed out, or stayed inside. I stuffed paper towels into the egg carton and set the eggs on top to drain. Then, glad none of the mothers were watching over my shoulder, I used a handful of rags to mop the liquid mess off the table.

    Tuesday morning wind howled around the log house. Not the weather Priscilla would have chosen to hang her eggs. To survive spring gales, the eggs had to slide down branches rather than rest on the ends. I waited.

    Wednesday wind calmed to a breeze and sun shone in bright blue skies. I walked outside in search of a small deciduous tree like Priscilla had used. Our trees were too large or had buds opening on branch ends. I settled on a burning bush in the front yard because it had numerous branches with out buds.

    While Spence snapped photos from various angles, I slid the colored eggs onto random branches. Not perfect, but certainly good enough for passing vehicles. I imagined the three mother’s chuckling over my dying tribulations and headed back inside the log house satisfied with my three mother Easter project.

    Pounding rain fell Thursday. When I returned from volunteering at the Learning Center and swimming laps at the YMCA, rain had washed the color off the shells. They had white tops and smears of pastels on the bottom. Sheesh.

    Had the extra vinegar and water caused this washout effect?

    I interrupted Spence at his computer. “Is it okay to have white eggs decorating the bush for Easter?”

    Without looking up from the screen he said, “Don’t worry. It will be fine, or you could dye them again.”

    An inch of snow fell Friday morning. While I did laundry, I frequently paused to peak out the window at the white eggs covered in white snow–not as attractive as the bright rainbow colors I’d hung. After dinner, I pulled the eggs off the branches and carried them back inside. After wiping snow off the shells with a tissue, I prepared to dye them again.

    This time, I poured vinegar into a measuring cup and dipped out each tablespoonful to get exactly three per mug. I plopped in dye tablets and stirred while they fizzed. Unlike Mom, I didn’t add water. With less than half an inch of liquid for dying, I tilted the mugs, one by one, and rolled each egg shell with a spoon until all sides were bright red, orange, chartreuse, green, blue, or pink. Perhaps that’s how Priscilla had dyed her shells.

    Pieces of twigs from the burning bush floated in the dye. Guessing none of the three mothers ever dealt with that, I wiped bark bits off the shells with a tissue.

    Saturday morning brought sunshine, blue skies, and chilly temperatures. I bundled and carried the re-dyed shells to the burning bush. Spence snapped photos from different angles, and I slid the re-dyed shells onto branches. Stepping back, I checked the color array. Good enough.

    Now, if Tuesday’s predicted thunderstorm doesn’t wash the color off, I’ll have brightly colored eggs to commemorate all three mothers on Easter Sunday.

Reflections on the Second Week of Spring - Daffodil Walk

    While the sun played peek-a-boo among gray clouds Monday afternoon, I pulled on mud boots for another daffodil walk.

    These walks are a March–April tradition because, unlike Christmas or Valentine’s Day with fixed dates, the first daffodil bloom varies from March 16 to April 16 at Wells Wood.

    I checked daffodils from bulbs Spence’s mom had planted and Aunt Marge had sent. The plants sported swollen buds with tinges of yellow but no open flowers.

    Then I squished through the woods and up a rise.

    Eleven tete a tete daffodil flowers greeted me. The flowers bloomed among yellow buds in nine clusters of six inch high daffodils growing in a twenty-five foot arc at the edge of a slope overlooking Deer Creek.

    As if someone had fired a starting pistol, I whooped and, carefully, raced over slippery spring mud to the log house and my computer. “WE HAVE DAFFODILS!” I typed in an email to the Wells family with a invitation for a daffodil walk–especially for my sister-in-law Cindy.

    Would she make it in time this year?

    I’d planted the tete a tete bulbs November 21, 2004 in memory of her mom. Every spring since, I’d emailed Cindy with the news of the first bloom in the hopes she could drive up from Pittsburgh to see the flowers. Most years our schedules didn’t mesh. Twice, she arrived to withering flowers. Only once, in 2009, did she see the yellow array at peak. “They are smaller and more numerous than I imagined,” she’d said.

    This past Tuesday, Cindy emailed back. “Bruce [Spence’s brother] says Wednesday should work for him, but I will come even if he can't.”

    Unfortunately, Spence’s Tuesday meeting about lead safe housing in Cleveland changed to Wednesday so he was away when Bruce and Cindy arrived.

    Under blue skies with puffy white clouds, wearing mud boots, and carrying three stakes, a mallet, camera, cell phone, quart sized bucket, and scissors, Bruce, Cindy, and I ambled along muddy paths. When we reached the arc of yellow, Cindy whispered, “Oh.”

    Bruce and I stood in silence while she surveyed her mom’s flowers.

    After Cindy took a deep breath, I handed her the scissors and said, “Cut as many as you want.”

    Bending at the waist, Cindy gently separated tangled flower heads.

    I inched down the slope to the creek, waded across the rocky shallows, and crossed the grassy island. Kneeling where the water was close and deep enough for dipping the bucket, I scooped water and carefully, so I didn’t spill any, climbed back to Cindy. “You can put the flowers in here to keep them fresh.”

    Cindy tucked six flower heads around the edge of the bucket. “I don’t want them to drown.”

    With cell phone and camera, Bruce and I took photos. He contented himself with wide angle photos of people and flowers. I wanted daffodils. The inch and a half wide flowers on slender stalks bent towards the ground. To try for their faces, I lay on my stomach.

    Later the three of us would wander off to check woods ponds for frog eggs, crush nineteen dozen chicken egg shells for tomato plant fertilizer, eat homemade chicken pot pie, and chat with Spence when he finally got back from Cleveland. But before we left the daffodils, I asked, “Which cluster would you like for transplanting in Pittsburgh?”

    “The one growing in the path makes sense,” Bruce said. “People will walk on it.”

    “Not on the edge.” I fastened the cap on the camera lens. “Besides, those flowers are easier to see than the cluster in the brush below path.”

    Cindy gazed along the yellow arc and said, “The ones in the brush.”

    With the mallet, I maneuvered through twigs and hammered stakes in the points of a triangle around the flowers she chose.

    Next fall, I’ll dig up the bulbs so that Cindy can plant them at her house. Then every spring, no matter if she makes it to peak tete a tete blooming at Wells Wood or not, she can enjoy fresh, full bloom daffodils planted in memory of her mom.