Reflections on the Third Week of Winter – The Western Wind

The flow of a rich narrative voice in The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey drew me in from the first page. But the table of contents, starting with day four and ending with day one, made me reconsider. Did I want to read a backward story? Because Spence had given me the novel for Christmas, I read.

Harvey sets her character-driven mystery in Oakham—a poor, tiny, English village—during February 1491. Time plays a huge role.

First, the plot couldn’t hold together without Middle Age beliefs and religious hierarchy.

Second, the main character, the priest John Reve, reflects on time being circular and reversible. His sister Annie told him he didn’t need a miracle to bring his mother back to life.

. . . here’s how you make her alive. There was a woman, Agnes Reve, who died in a fire; eight years before that she had a daughter, seven years before that she had a son, who became a priest. A year before that she married a laborer with narrow shoulders and no humor; for seventeen years before that she lived peacefully with her own mama and father and sisters . . . and she was born. There . . . she’s once more alive. ( p. 190)

Third, Harvey structures the novel backwards, forwards, and circular. The first sections read morning to night day four. The second section reads morning to night day three. The third day two, and the fourth day one. The ending circles to the beginning.

The very last scene shows John Reve promising to save his parishioner. But the reader knows from the days to follow, which already occurred in the novel, that this is not true. The flawed priest conceals evidence to protect himself. The evidence condemns Oliver Townsend.

Though confusing at first, the structure is essential for the novel. If written chronologically, the story would hold no mystery. The first scene would explain the death. Even more, each scene adds depth to the future the reader already knows thus intensifying character development.

Learning about characters this way makes revelations about the narrator John Reve more powerful. He portrays himself as the link to God for the common man. But John is flawed. He hides the truth. He lets Sarah expose her breasts to him repeatedly. He protects himself at the expense of his parishioners. He pretends to sleep instead of fulfilling Newman’s request for last rites.

John also feels God is testing him so he requests God send miracles to prove God wants John as a priest. The public test—a miracle to convince the dean and town that Newman is on his way through purgatory quickly—John stages himself. The private miracle—a western wind—is answered before the reader knows to wonder.

The first thing I noticed was the wind, which was strong, bitter and easterly. (p.4)

At the beginning, the reader accepts this as scene setting until reading further. Because of the wind, midway through the second section, day three, I suspected John was at the heart of the mystery.

Reading Harvey’s novel drenched me in the soggy ham, the waterlogged fields, the rushing river, the constant rain. Harvey is a master at weaving in the setting and sensual references.

Smells: Cecily Townsend “smelt confusingly of lavender and dung.” (p.107)

Tastes: The cooked goose tasted “. . . oily and sapid [strong pleasant] and rich.”(p.89)

Sounds: “A robin chirruped in the churchyard. Rain tink=tinked at the windows. (pp. 191-192)

Touch: “Only the wind itself was dry, dry and so cold, and blowing away long days of rain.” (p.5)

Sight: “The horsetails tied to the branches were soddenly clumped and the yellow velvet so joyous when it went up in summer, hung heavy and burnet.” (p.281)

But naming characters isn’t Harvey’s strength. Townsend, a dairy farmer and poor business man, is about to be accused wrongly of murdering Newman, the widower, free thinker, and owner of most of the villagers land. These characters are distinctive, but I mixed their names constantly forcing me to reread for clarification. Perhaps the half rhyme and the two syllable rhythm caused the confusion. More likely the first names contributed. 

Oliver Townsend and Thomas Newman.

If I’d connected that Townsend was the long term resident of the village and Newman was the man who moved into the village after his daughter and wife died, my confusion would have cleared.

I’m passing the novel onto Spence with the hopes we will have many discussions while he reads.

Reflections on the Second Week of Winter – Ups and Downs with Mr. Hooper 

Spence and His Portable Greenhouse

Spence, with a springy step, toted the carton containing pieces for his portable greenhouse to the south garden. I watched my husband through the sliding glass door of our warm great room. He set the carton beside the black plastic he’d spread on the ground and pulled out pieces of hollow steel tubing―curved, straight, and connectors. Like a child with a box of Tinkertoys, he fitted a connector between two curves and held the half hoop at arm’s length for a moment. Setting his construction on the black plastic, he rummaged in the box for more pieces.

I fetched my camera and bundled for a sun-peak-a-booing end of December Sunday. Then I ambled outside to take pictures of Spence. The shutter release clicked breaking the silence of his concentration on steel pieces. After connecting the half hoops with jointed legs, he attached two pairs of hoops and legs with five side pieces.

My chilled nose and toes convinced me I’d been outside long enough. I put the cap on the lens and walked toward the house.

Spence looked up. “It’s good you’re here. You can help me put the cover on.” He attached the fourth hoop to complete the 11.5 by 6.5 by 6.5 foot frame and fetched the heavy plastic cover―clear with crisscrossing, green reinforcement strands.

Together we unfolded the cover. Stepping inside the greenhouse, we reached outside the frame to hold the opposite ends of the cover then lifted. The cover snuggled against the side of the curved hoop. We tugged. The cover slid up an inch. We adjusted our grips and tugged again. The cover moved a half inch.

Spence frowned. “Maybe the two of us can’t do this.”

With experience pulling new pantyhose over damp-after-swim legs, I gritted my teeth. “Of course we can.” I pulled harder and the cover slid half a foot. “But having our grown nieces and children here would help.”

Adjusting and readjusting our grip on the plastic, we tugged the cover, inch by inch, over the frame. Then we aligned the seams in the cover with the steel supports and fastened the cover to the frame with Velcro ties. Grinning wider than a jack-’o-lantern, Spence paced inside his greenhouse.

I left him placing cement blocks on the bottom edges of the cover. While I warmed up inside and downloaded photos, he carried plant shelves from the deck to his greenhouse, set a small table beside the shelves, and placed a thermometer on the table.

His grin hadn’t diminished by the time he opened the front door and toed off his boots. “My winter greens are ready to go out. NOW.” Spence pointed to the chilly basement where trays of kale, bok choy, tatsoi, and mizuna nestled under plant lights. “But I need to monitor the temperature first. I don’t want to kill the seedlings by setting them out too soon.”

Bok Choy and Mizuna Seedlings Waiting for the Greenhouse

The next day, New Year’s Eve, dawned cloudy. Despite an all day rain, Spence slipped into his boots, grabbed a stocking knit cap, and picked up a temperature/humidity gauge. “I’m going to visit Mr. Hooper.”

The Sesame Street character? I scrunched my forehead. “Mr. Hooper died in the 1980s, Spence.”

He turned the door knob and shook his head. “Not the character. My hoop house. Mr. Hooper.”

An hour later he returned and announced, “I had fun in there with the shelves―even though it doesn’t have any plants.”

After dark, while others prepared for New Year’s Eve celebrations, Spence took off his work clothes and settled on the sofa with his clipboard. He sketched designs of stakes and ties to better secure his hoop house to the ground.

About ten o’clock, wind chimes clanged, rain pounded the roof, and a south west wind howled around our log house.

Spence put his designs on the coffee table, fetched his pocket flashlight, and stepped out the door.

I swallowed a mouthful of celebratory popcorn and called after him. “Where are you going in your long underwear and stocking feet?”

He stuck his head back inside, and, with an expression that meant isn’t it obvious, said, “I’m gonna check on Mr. Hooper.”

“In the rain? In the dark?”

He held up the flashlight. “I can see from the deck.”

Wind gusted, rain slanted onto the porch, and Spence came back with soggy socks. To the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner,” he sang “Mr. Hooper’s still there.”

Stifling a laugh, I went to bed.

Spence’s sneeze woke me, and the clock chimed midnight. “Happy New Year,” I told him.

He didn’t return the greeting. In a deflated voice he said, “The hoop house blew down.”

“How do you know?” I peaked around the curtain. “It’s dark.”

“I heard it crash at eleven. I checked with the flashlight.” He sighed. “It’s flat.”

New Year’s morning, I checked Weather Underground for the wind speeds on New Year’s Eve. At 11:00, the wind blew at 22 mph (35 kph) and gusted at 39 mph ( 63 kph). In the next hour, wind speed increased. Not a normal rain storm.

Downed Hoop House

I took my camera outside, moved half a dozen cement blocks, and photographed the downed hoop house. It looked like the deflated plastic holiday figures littering neighbors yards. Could Spence put the pieces back together? Would his stake and tie plan provide enough grounding?

While I downloaded my photos and watched through the sliding glass door, he trudged to the wreckage. Spence studied the hollow steel tubes, examined connections, and checked the cover. A half hour later, he carried the cover to the basement, walked upstairs, and, in a matter-of-fact voice, gave a report. “The plastic is intact. All the connecting pieces are broken. Seventy-five percent of the steel pieces are bent and unusable.”

“Do you want to reorder the support pieces from the company?” I opened my email receipt file to find the company’s information.

“If we replaced them, we’d have the same problem.” He stared out the window at the shelves toppled onto their sides. “The design is fine. The hollow steel pipes are not.” His gaze changed to the end of the south garden. “The kiwi trellis is higher than the hoop house and didn’t get any wind damage. It’s made of PVC pipes and joints. He left the great room saying, “The hoop house has become a project. I’ll replace the hollow steel pipes with PVC.”

“Yeah!” I cheered.

He came back into the room. “No. Boo.”

For three days, Spence tinkered and made trips to Home Depot. He emailed our son Charlie warning him not to hit the sawhorses at the end of the gravel driveway.

Sawhorses?

Spence Heating PVC

A sawhorse and plywood contraption greeted my return from a Pennwriters meeting Saturday. Spence, wearing safety glasses, bent over the contraption. With gloved hands, he moved a ten inch section of a PVC pipe back and forth above a heat gun spewing hot air and a whooshing noise.

“Just in time,” he said. “I’m curving the last of eight hoops.”

“You’re working out here in the cold?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to burn anything down―like the porch or the house.”

After exchanging the bag of writing folders for my camera, I gaped at his persistence. Heat and bend. Heat and bend. Heat and bend the rigid PVC pipe. He heated until the pipe turned taffy consistency. Section by section, he curved the five foot pipe then tucked it into his homemade frame. He pushed the last pipe close to the frame with a line of shims. “The pipes aren’t pretty, but they might work.”

Inflexible PVC pipes replacing pencil-point-thin steel tubes that I could bend with my bare hands? Of course his new frame would work.

“The next test . . .” Spence turned off the heat gun. “. . . is whether the plastic cover will fit over the PVC frame.”

Meanwhile, in the chilly basement, six flats of winter greens wait. Their roots poke through bottom drainage holes while their leaves stretch toward grow lights. And Spence started four more flats of greens.

Last Hoop in Frame

Reflections on the First Week of Winter – Not My Mother-in-Law’s Fruit Salad

Wells Wood Fruit Salad

Perched on the middle rung of my husband’s five-foot stepladder, I reached over my head into Douglas fir branches. Above me sunshine peaked through the clouds on the mild August 30^th afternoon. Below me, Spence steadied the ladder with both hands so it wouldn’t tip on the uneven ground of the evergreen nursery. I grabbed a wild grape, and a fir branch grabbed my floppy garden hat.

“When you write the garden summary for this year,” Spence said squinting at the wild grape vines growing twenty feet high into the fir, “it’s fruit year.”

I rescued my hat and dropped the grape into a picking bucket on the top step. “Ooh! I can make Christmas fruit salad with just Wells Wood fruit.”

Spence chortled. “That’s planning far ahead.”

Not far enough. If I’d thought of using Wells Wood fruit last June, I could have frozen the five cherries that ripened after I baked the cherry pie. [See “What’s a country girl do on the seventh day of summer?” June 27, 2018]

Five cherries wouldn’t make much difference. You’re fretting about Priscilla.

My mother-in-law made fruit salad for Christmas Day every year.

And it took twenty years to convince her to let you make the fruit salad.

I almost failed.

You passed her test. Forget it.

Forget it? Hardly.

Twenty-five years ago on Christmas Eve afternoon, I reached into our cramped Cleveland Heights refrigerator to pull out apples, oranges, and tangerines. Then I lifted bananas and a pineapple off the top of the refrigerator. Setting everything on the counter, I shrieked. “I forgot the frozen strawberries!”

My husband rushed upstairs from the basement, put a hand on my shoulder, and surveyed the counter. “You’ve got plenty of fruit. You don’t need strawberries.”

“Yes. I do.” I slammed the cutting board on the counter next to the fruit. “When your mother agreed to let me make the fruit salad this year, she stipulated, ‘Don’t forget the frozen strawberries. It’s not fruit salad without frozen strawberries.’”

Spence rubbed my shoulder. “She can do without strawberries for one year.”

“But she’ll never trust me again.” I pressed my face against Spence’s chest.

Our son Charlie and daughter Ellen, both in their late teens, hurried into the standing-room-only kitchen. “What’s wrong with Mom?” they said in unison.

Spence hugged me with one arm and rubbed my back with his other hand. “She forgot the strawberries.”

Everbearing Strawberry

“So? Drive to the store and get some,” Charlie said in his practical voice.

“It’s Christmas Eve.” I let go of Spence, grabbed a tissue, and blew my nose. “Stores won’t be open.”

“Of course they will. It’s nineteen ninety-three.” Charlie held out his hand. “Give me the keys. Ellen and I will go.”

“Make sure they’re frozen strawberries,” I called when they stepped outside.

The next morning in Priscilla’s Pittsburgh kitchen, I handed her a large mixing bowl covered with aluminum foil.

She harrumphed, lifted the foil, and peeked inside. “At least you remembered the strawberries.” Handing the bowl back to me, she pointed to the kitchen doorway. “Put the bowl on the dining room table and get a serving spoon from the china cabinet drawer.”

Every subsequent Christmas Eve, the Priscilla fruit-salad-strawberry episode has reverberated through my mind while I cut fruit.

But this Christmas Eve I didn’t cut a single fruit. I opened freezer bags, dumped the spring and summer Wells Wood fruit harvest into bowls, and defrosted the pre-cut pieces in the micro wave.

Strawberries from the patch I’d weeded when a high-stepping black Morgan pulled an empty sulky down West Creek Road. [See “Strawberry Surprise” April 1, 2018]

 

Wild red raspberries and blackberries that I rescued before ladders crushed the bushes while handymen power washed and stained the front of the log house. [See “Ladder Work” July 15, 2018]

Blueberries I’d picked in abundance under their ghost tents. [See “Garden Ghosts” June 26, 2016]

Rhubarb which my friend Jennifer taste-tested and pronounced ready-to-pick. [See “Rhubarb Rhapsody” September 2, 2018]

Apples from the Wolf River tree that the Pittsburgh Wells family helped harvest. [See “Addy’s Big Adventure (Part 1)” September 7, 2018]

Wild grapes because our domestic grape plants still hadn’t produced in the six-year-old arbor.

By Christmas morning, strawberries and raspberries had tinted apple slices red. Blueberries, blackberries, and wild grapes added contrasting color. Chunks of green rhubarb made the whole salad look festive. I filled a glass compote with the mixture and took my first bite of Wells Wood fruit salad.

With traditional fruit salad, I get the flavor of apple followed by the flavor of orange followed by the flavor of blueberry. Wouldn’t eating each fruit separately taste better?

Not a problem with my nontraditional fruit salad. The smooshed fruit blended so that every bite tasted the same. Only the texture differed―tough wild grape skins and stringy fresh-frozen rhubarb. Instead of chew, swallow, insert-another-spoonful when eating the traditional version, I chewed and spit.

Next Christmas morning I’ll eat fruit salad again―my nontraditional fruit salad. I’ll savor the mixed fruit flavor of an all Wells Wood fruit harvest. And even with frozen strawberries, I’ll contemplate Priscilla harrumphing at the smooshed fruit and the spit-inducing. chewy texture.

Bushel of Wolf River Apples