CALL OF HARVEST DUTY

“What are you doing?” 

The question was asked by the tired voice of my husband over the phone at 5:30 on Wednesday.  He needed help.  Well, actually, he needed fuel ... in a grain truck ... so he could empty his combine hopper and carry on combining.  Could I please head up the road till I found the truck driver who had put too much faith in his fuel gauge, pick him up and run him back to the half ton with the fuel tank on it?  Please?  Every minute that they couldn’t get on with the harvest was a crisis; Mother Nature is not being kind this year.

There’s no saying ‘no’ to a request like that.  I had spent all day outside finishing up my own kind of harvest.  After the better part of three weeks spent away I had come home to gardens that needed cleaned up, deck planters to put away, and bulbs to plant.  I ached everywhere and the cold I had been fighting for the past week had evolved into an exhausting cough.  I really hadn’t planned on leaving the house again that day, but oh well, this sounded like an easy enough mission.

I turned off the burner on the stove, threw on a jacket, wrapped the old denim blanket around the passenger seat and off I went.  I found the neighbour’s new hired man right where I was told he would be, dropped him off at the fuel truck and headed home again.

The weather had been glorious all day; sun shining, the breeze strong enough to dry but not so crazy to cause trouble.  The sun was at the perfect angle to show off the brilliant yellows and oranges of the fall leaves.  I only had my phone for a camera so I didn’t stop to take any pictures knowing that I couldn’t do the scenery justice – I would just commit it to memory instead.  I was hungry and supper wasn’t cooking itself.

“What are you doing now?”  The same tired voice over the same phone twenty minutes later.

Well, by this time I had heated the hamburger back up, browned it, and was about to pour the water and milk in to produce the simplest thing I could think of for supper ... Hamburger Helper.  If he had called even 30 seconds later the noodles would have devolved to goo while I was gone on my next big adventure.  I reached over, turned off the stove again, and asked what the new mission would be.

They had finished that field and needed to move up north to the next one.  There were three combines, a tractor and grain tank, a grain truck, and a tractor and auger to move but only 4 men to get the job done ... and time was a wasting.  Could I please follow Paul in the tractor up to the new location and bring him back to pick up his combine? 

This time I actually asked if it was okay if I did this in my pyjamas.  He laughed a little and said he didn’t think anyone was going to care.  I agreed.  Josh hadn’t said anything on mission #1.

That’s the kind of thing you get away with as a farm wife.  I had come in from my very strenuous day, taken a shower, and decided that 5:00 was a perfectly acceptable time to put pyjamas on.  The chances of seeing another soul for the rest of the day are next to nothing when you live seven miles from town ... well except for the days that you do.

Once again I pulled on my jacket, slipped into my Uggs, and hit the road.  If I had listened to that little warning voice in my head I would have made myself a ham sandwich too.  Mission #2 took way longer. 

First there was the very slow trip up behind the tractor.  This time I did stop and take pictures of the fall colours – there was lots of time.  Then back to pick up the combine, where my mission was extended to taking Josh back to the grain truck and leading him up to the new field because he had never been there before.  I really should have seen this coming; of course it was going to involve multiple trips.  While I waited for him I started searching the car for sustenance.  I found an almost empty package of breath mints in the glove box.  It kept me alive.  I offered a few to Josh but he said he just knew that he would eventually work his way back to the vehicle he had left his lunch kit in.

There was another round trip to get him back to pick up the tractor and auger.  My breath mints were long gone, it was way after dark, and I still hadn’t cooked supper.

But at least my day was done.  The men went until 3:30 for the second night in a row.  All I had to do was finish my lazy man’s supper and go to bed ... and I was already dressed for that.

RACKING UP THE POINTS

As anyone I went to school with will tell you, I am not a competitive person.  There is not one bone in my body that cares whether someone can else hit a baseball better than me (they all can), jump over a high jump bar better than I can (everyone can), or run faster than I can (again ... ).   This fact has a two part explanation – firstly that I was born with a most uncoordinated, clumsy body, and secondly that this body is equipped with a mind quite unconcerned that 97.2% of other humans on the planet can do anything athletic better than it can. 

The closest thing to exercise I take on is walking the dog.  He never judges me, all he wants is the company and I can do that at any speed I choose.

Also, I do not possess a killer’s instinct.  There are plenty of hunters in this family but I am not interested in going out and shooting anything ... not gophers, not skunks, not even paper targets.  If this is a defect then just add it to my list.

On the other hand, I do enjoy a challenge.  Not one like a ‘can I get this basketball into the net’ kind of challenge – I mean, who wants to fail miserably with a crowd watching your every move?  I’m more of a solitary game player.  Give me a round or two of Tetris or computer Mah-jong instead.  I can waste all kinds of time matching up shapes for no good reason – it must be the music and sound effects that reward my psyche.  Heaven knows I don’t pay any attention to the points that I’m getting and I certainly never share my score with my friends on Face book.  If they’ve known me for any length of time at all they already pity me my dismal gaming skills.  I do have some pride.

This time of year, though, these traits of mine - the sports ineptitude and the competitive indifference - take a wonky turn and I suddenly have a need to rack up points that I am quite prepared to brag about.

It’s ‘Invasion of the Flies’ season.  Oh yes, I know that there have been flies all summer long; the horse flies that bite me when I’m working in the garden, the nuisance ones that buzz around my face when I’m mowing the grass, and the hordes that like to hang out on the deck when I barbeque, but as annoying as these insects are at least they possess meagre intelligence (well, as much as their two brain cells can muster) and follow patterns of predictable behavior. 

Come mid September flying insects are down to one misfiring brain cell possibly caused by age-related dementia, hypothermia, or spending too much time where the apples are fermenting in the back yard.  What this means is that they have morphed from a commonplace annoyance to a plague of hideous, creepy, brain dead, zombie-like creatures who are too stupid to continue living and too dumb to die.  And there are thousands of them.

Perhaps it’s my passionate hatred for them that brings out the killer in me.

At any rate I play this game each fall. Multiple times per day I fire up my vacuum cleaner and go hunting.  One would think that these bumbling idiots would be easy marks, but they are not.  Just like it’s the chronic drunk driver who never seems to get caught, these guys are crazily adept at wobble-flying out of reach in the nick of time.  Sucking them up to their doom is my favorite sport.

So much so that I have devised a scoring system for “kills”:  it’s 5 points for catching them on a window surface (for some reason they just don’t see you coming while they’re on glass), 15 points for a capture on a wall, 20 on a horizontal surface such a table or counter, and a full 50 if I can catch them in flight (it’s the drunk driver thing – you just can’t guess their next move).

It’s been ten days since the season opened.  My score as of this morning is 5,070.  I guess I like my sports to have an actual purpose.

RUNNING OUT OF SUMMER

I’m pretty sure that the hummingbirds should have all left by now.  I can’t imagine how they do the flight to Mexico on their tiny little wings – do they find a certain airstream and just coast?  I know they fuel up on sugar water for a couple weeks in August at a rate that keeps me busy just trying to stay ahead of the demand, but honestly, how far can that take them?  I know that Mother Nature is full of miracles but her hummingbird life/migration is right up there with the best of them.

My best guess is that we had four or five nesting pairs this year – a person has to guess, there’s no way you count anything that moves that fast and erratically.  Sometime after the first week of May the males show up to claim territory, followed shortly afterward by the womenfolk.  For a few weeks the feeders are busy and then they disappear.  For many years I worried that I had done something to offend them, or that the sugar water had not been up to snuff, but then one day I discovered that they were all in the carraganas – apparently hummingbirds consider carragana nectar quite the treat.

As time goes by these tiny birds come and go at my feeders, it all depends what’s in bloom.  They become scarce when the alfalfa is in bloom and it was pretty quiet on the deck when the pea crop across the road was blooming too.  The experts say to grow trumpet shaped flowers to attract them so I have lots of morning glories, hollyhocks and honeysuckle although I see them visiting flowers of all descriptions.  With the energy levels that they have to maintain to keep humming along they can’t be too fussy about their diet, and they take in protein too – God bless anything that eats bugs!

The peak of hummingbird summer is August when the juveniles join their parents at the feeders.  The term for a group of hummingbirds is a “charm”.  During any other month of the year I would agree that these pretty little birds are charming, but come August when they are fueling up for their trip south they are the opposite of charming.  They are feisty and aggressive.  They are angry and warlike.  They are greedy and obnoxious.  They are noisy and dangerous.

Seriously: you have to watch or you could lose and eye.

We have three feeders on the go and for a while I was filling them daily, which is amazing because they spend all their time and energy chasing each other away from the food.  They chirp at each other, not in the usual friendly way a bird chirps, but in a threatening, angry way.  In their bright colours and battle stance I see miniscule Samurai warriors, ready to battle to the death – pointlessly, I might add – a typical scene would involve five birds fighting over three feeders with four stations per feeder.  It never seems like anyone gets to drink but since I do have to keep making more juice there must be some kind of truce called to allow for nourishment.  Google says that they tend to double their weight from 3 grams to 6 before they head out.  I wish I had that kind of magic – to look the same, even if my weight doubled!

Google also says that the males are the first to leave; I noticed that things slowed down a bit the third week in August: there were 20 or so, then maybe 10, and then for a while 5, then 3.  It’s not like they come to have their passports stamped before they leave – they just come and go at their own pace.

And then one morning the deck was quiet and I thought summer was officially over.  There were still two feeders with a little left in each one.  If I had taken them down right away I might have never realized that there was still one female left.  Slowly she is finishing off the rest of the sugar water while I dither about whether I should take the feeders away, or does she need the last of it to fuel up?  Again I consulted Google and learned that they tend to be solitary migrators, leaving on their own individual instincts and flying solo, making Mother Nature’s hummingbird miracle even more impressive in my books.  As of today the feeder is empty and will not be refilled.  If she stays longer she will have to exist on flower power; I have no control over that.  I have to admit though, I’m worried about her.

I hope her “time to go” alarm goes off and she is soon a thousand miles south of here.  I hope no hurricanes or other catastrophes keep her from getting to Mexico.  I hope she makes it back here next spring and I can help her raise her 2020 family.

Heck, best case scenario, I hope I can visit her in Mexico this winter.  Isn’t this the time of year when humans start feeling their migration instincts kick in?

 

 

 

COMMITMENT ISSUES

I hardly know what to do with myself these days.  The last two weeks are a blur of grandchildren and company and cooking for a crowd.  And now here I am, wandering around in the quiet, eating leftovers, and asking myself just how serious I was when I mentioned I might try my hand at canning tomatoes this year.  I know one thing for sure, I never should have said it out loud in front of witnesses.

At any rate, I needn’t worry about that today.  The tomatoes are only just starting to ripen – a legal reason to procrastinate.

And so ... what else can I find to do?  Yesterday I finished a gardening project that took me all summer.  I now have a whole new space to fill with flowers next spring.  I suppose I could go through nursery catalogues and dream of spending money but that is a pastime better spent in the dead of winter when I really need an antidote for winter depression.

There is always weeding and the cleanup of other gardens.  I’ve started pulling out things I don’t want to deal with any more but the resolve I show for that job peters out by this time of the season.  Instead of a methodical row by row marathon I end up meandering from one place to another wondering what a cantaloupe looks like when it’s ripe and how many friends one has to have to make having two zucchini plants a good idea.  Luckily I have three people who want spaghetti squash – that might be enough.  The bees went crazy out there this year.

With no clear destination in mind I find myself back at the house looking for shade – it’s obviously too hot out there for physical labour so I go in, make myself lunch and ponder life some more.

About this time the dog gives me one of his disgruntled, I-can’t-believe-you’re-just-going-to-sit-there looks, backed up with a groan of exasperation. 

I may, or may not have, been talking about a walk.  I mean out loud.  I have been on my case to get back to doing that two mile walk every day for months now, but knowing that if I say it out loud people hold you to such craziness, I really try to avoid having witnesses to my folly.  Turbo is a pretty smart dog: can he read my mind?  Surely I didn’t say the word w-a-l-k out loud!  Heck I don’t even tie my shoes in front of him!  There’s nothing worse than having a dissatisfied dog following you around threatening to sue you for Breach of Contract for not coming through with a walk after letting him witness the tying of shoes.

I consulted my list of laziness excuses and found nothing that was going to save me – I hate it when that happens.

So we hit the road; one mile north and one mile back.  For the human pretty boring scenery, for the dog a great adventure of scents and sounds and chases that I knew nothing about from my position in the middle of a gravel road.  Instead, as I walked I did some math.  In dog years Turbo is almost as old as I am and I would say we are both the same amount of pudgy for our body build.  Most definitely we need to do this exersize thing on a regular basis.  I did NOT say that out loud.  But I probably should ...

HAPPY/SAD

It’s that time of year again.

The evenings are getting chilly, the combines are out foraging for food, trees are the dark green of late summer except where they have begun to slip into their autumn wardrobe, and kitchens smell like pickles.  The ditches have moved on from pastel pink Prairie Roses to the bold yellow of Goldenrod.  Out here in the country coyotes patrol yards with apple trees to cash in on the fruit that falls to the ground, and the hummingbirds are going crazy at the feeders on the deck to fuel up for their trip south.  I doubt that there will be any left by the end of next week.

Summer is a time of outside projects and I made the best of my time completing a garden improvement.  I now have two gardens with a rock walkway/edging in my front yard.  They look lovely but I’m pretty sure I don’t need to do that again.  Surely I can stay fit doing something a little less labour intensive.  I now have the extreme pleasure of having all that new garden space to fill with whatever plants that strike my fancy next spring.  Yes, I do realize this is an addiction, but it only hurts the bank account.

Two weeks ago I traded my rock mover hat for that of a navigator/entertainer/tactical advisor/resident conflict resolution expert.  That is to say Grandma was invited along on an adventure to see the dinosaurs at Drumheller: a day long drive with three children ages 8, 5 and 2, museums, hikes in the badlands, climbing hoodoos, cooling off in a splash park, looking for fossils, watching out for rattle snakes, and taking a coal train ride, all the while existing on fast food and snacks and sharing a hotel room. 

It was every bit as exhausting as it sounds, and yet it was great fun too.  The only thing I would do differently is go back without the kids and get the full adult experience of the museum.  Kids tend to ping pong themselves around the exhibits never giving enough time for an adult who actually wants to read the information that goes with them.  I’ve never been good at speed reading and having someone calling “Grandma!  Come and see this!” every two minutes does not help.

‘Road music’ usually refers to an upbeat play list from your phone but our trip home will always be etched into my memory  to the tune of ‘Found A Peanut’.

There was almost 24 hours to switch gears to a house full of company – all five Canadian grandchildren and a couple extras for a bit, a family supper (because why not?), four large dogs, and 57% of the fly population of Canada waiting on the deck to be let in by the afore mentioned kids and dogs.  It was five more days of fun.  The last of them left an hour ago; I’ve turned on the radio for some ambient noise and our dog is laid out on the trampoline.  He may not move again until next Tuesday.

But, even as we readjust back to the slower pace we usually keep around here it is a happy/sad time.  Yes, there is no way we could keep that up permanently, and the quiet is pleasant, it’s still a little sad when they go home.  I’m never in a big hurry to wipe the fingerprints off the windows and mirrors or return the Lego masterpieces to the toy closet.  Surprise balloons behind doors and random Hot Wheels cars under chairs are the leftovers of happy times.

With the dust of the last vehicle leaving the yard I turned to tidy up the house, shrink the table back to normal size, roll up the cord to the camper, and make a judgement call on what needed doing first – the lawn or the laundry I knew that the summer of 2019 was a thing of the past.  In only a few short days it will be the school bus heading down the road.

ACHIEVING SUPERWOMAN STATUS

There’s nothing like taking on an extremely physically demanding job to test your endurance level.   On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a newborn kitten and 10 being the world title holder of the Ironman competition, my work this week puts me squarely at a 4.2.

I am only moderately strong for a woman of my age but I make up for it in sheer stubborn.  It’s my super power.

Although, there are those who would define it not so much as ‘stubborn’ but more like ‘crazy’.  If that’s the scale they want to work with, with 1 being absolutely, dead pan normal and 10 being totally bat s**t crazy, I may well be a solid 11.  Their judging means nothing to me – I have work to do.

What I decided to do was to install a sunken rock rim around my new flower bed.  The dimensions are approximately 120 feet around, two feet wide, and anywhere from 3 to 10 inches deep; depending on the rock I am trying to ‘plant’ at the time.  This is done on my hands and knees; digging the trench, sorting through the rocks for one that will fit the space I have prepared, and then hauling it over and installing it so it is more or less level with the one next to it, and then repeating the procedure over and over again until I run out of rocks.

Which, of course, means I have to go find more rocks from the pile dumped on the lawn?  I can do this part standing up which is just like taking a holiday after a couple hours of digging and placing.

I knew what I was getting into.  I’ve already done a similarly sized garden a few years ago – when I was much younger and ready to take on the world.  Newly retired and enthralled with all these hours to call my own, I took on this project I had been plotting for years.  I wanted a barrior to keep the grass out of the flower bed, but something low enough to be able to mow over it.  I had no idea that the grandkids would enjoy running along it so much, but that’s the part I love most about it now.

So, why not do it again?  Sure it’s been five years, but this one is on level ground.  It’ll be a piece of cake!

I began in May.  Off I went to the local rock market, right across the road in our pasture, and chose a bucket full of suitable stones.  Full of confidence, spring gardening fever, and sunshine-on-my-shoulders happiness I completed about 30 feet before I ran out of rocks.  I also had run out of steam, but no drugs or hospitalization was necessary so it was all good.

I took time out to recuperate (switched from planting rocks to planting vegetables) and by the time I wanted to get back at the job there was a herd of cattle in the pasture – I’m pretty okay with cows and calves, not so with bulls.  His presence upgraded the job to needing a two man team to get more rocks; I wasn’t going out there by myself.  It took a while to motivate a team but eventually I got a senior citizen and an 8 year old boy to go fetch me more building material.  Don’t judge me harshly – the boy told me this morning that getting the rocks was the easy part.  He knows.

I’m closing in on the end.  I figure I have six more feet to go, but although there are plenty of rocks to work with they are the poorer choices.  I’ve had to go raid the shop for a big hammer so I could bash them down to size; it’s even worked a time or two.  And, I don’t think I’ll have a bruise where that rock chip hit me.  I’m not so sure about the finger that stayed a millisecond longer than it needed to when one rock fell against another.  From his reaction I think the dog understands profanity, but he’s a good guy and has already forgiven me.  So far my toes have stayed out of the way.

And, as mighty as accomplishing this job has been, I had to take my Superwoman status to an even higher level today.  Farm wives have to know a lot of things but if they are smart they steer clear of ever having any knowledge of sewer pumps except to tell their husbands when they are not working right.  That only helps when the husband is there to tell.  Sometimes their husbands are at their daughter’s place when the sewer pump decides to not work properly.

But if that is the case when you have been hauling and placing rocks in the August heat you need to shower.  And that can only happen if the sewer pump is working.  I pulled up my big girl panties, tied on my Superwoman cape, and got the job done.

A completed rock ring around my garden AND fixing my own sewer pump: I guess I have more than one super power.  Nothing can stop me now.

 

TIPPING POINT

I belong to a Face book group called Gardening in Saskatchewan, a place where we addicts get together to discuss how many more plants we could have if money/space/time/energy didn’t hold us back.  We also help each other out identifying mystery plants (friend or foe) and spend time that should probably be spent weeding complaining about the number/variety/persistence of the weeds we have.  All around it’s a great place to hang out comparing gardens in the coolness of our living rooms when it’s 32 degrees outside.

For the most part it’s a safe and friendly Internet environment.  We try to help each other out with the experience we have gained over the years; things like how to pollinate pumpkins when the bees are busy elsewhere and how often a person should fertilize their planters to keep them blooming all summer long.  You never know what you’re going to get Online – there are some nasty people out there who will judge you for not knowing the difference between ragweed and rhubarb, but either we gardeners are just too nice to offer anything but clarification, or the managers of the site patrol the comments and those with malicious intent are scrubbed from the forum.  Even the most novice of gardeners can feel safe to show their naïveté.

The other thing that we do is post photos of our work; there are some gorgeous gardens out there. 

Throughout the winter just like the plants we all love go into dormancy, so do we.  The only posts that come up during that time are the odd houseplant in bloom, or some poor soul going through withdrawal digs out pictures of summer just to be able to hang on until she can start her petunias. 

Around the beginning of March we start to see posts of trays of seedlings in people’s picture windows – all leaning toward the sunlight.  This is never a healthy thing for the plants but is a strikingly good analogy of how we all feel about spring.

About the time I finally get my baby seedlings moved into their next bigger trays the over achievers are displaying they already have tomatoes in bloom – but they have pictures to prove it.

The photo content picks up as soon as the gardeners get outside.  They show the first signs of life in their gardens, the first things to bloom, and the heartbreak a late frost can cause.  The farther into summer we go the more the pictures and posts proliferate.  Scrolling through the site can get to be a full time job (or hobby, depending).  I have posted a few photos of my favorite things and have been amazed how many people respond.  I had over 500 people ‘like’ my peony this spring.  I mean it’s pretty, and I’m proud of it, but who knew there would be so much interest in a single plant?

Just recently I noticed that Gardening in Saskatchewan had listed several categories in their membership by the type of posts they offer – I can’t remember what they all were because I got stuck on the one they put me in ... visual storyteller!  I’ve never been more thrilled with a label. 

But it’s not all fun and games.  I discovered yesterday that there’s a line that can’t be crossed.  Apparently there is zero tolerance for any mention that summer might be on the wane. 

All I had done was post a picture of my morning glories.  This year I must have done something right and they are FABULOUS.  In my storytelling mode I had mentioned that they are September’s flower.  Although I had many folks ooh and awe over how pretty they are, I was sternly asked by three of them to refrain from using any language that referred to summer not lasting forever.  I will be more careful from now on ... on that website.

But just between you and me somewhere between Tuesday’s crazy heat and Wednesday morning’s blessed coolness there was a tipping point.  The sun feels different.  The air smells different.  The crops are ripening.  The crickets are calling.  Cucumbers are coming faster than we can eat them.  The hummingbirds are fueling up for their trip south. 

We are about to step into fall.  I’m going to have to post some pictures of how wonderful a season it is, I just think maybe I will not mention September again until it is September.