Digging Up Bones

I was born at potato digging time.  I'm not a spring baby who celebrates with pretty flowers, or a child of hot summer days at the beach.  Neither did my childhood birthday parties involve snow activities.  My parties were held shortly after school began another year, when the grass was still green, but the trees were changing to their fall colours; the days still warm, but the evenings cool.  I vaguely remember being dissatisfied with these circumstances in the early years, but I got over it.

Autumn is my absolute favourite time of the year.  The sky is a softer, September kind of blue, the garden overflows with good things to eat, the sun kinder to my skin.  While Mother Nature dresses summer in a whole spectrum of greens, her pallet for fall is rich with so many more colours.  Russets and rusts, ochers and oranges, as dark as burgundy in one place, as dazzling as gold somewhere else: all waiting for the wind to send them to their final resting place.  One of my favourite autumn scenes is where yellow poplar leaves lay scattered across a green lawn; it always makes me think of pieces of gold strewn on an expensive carpet.

The days are more welcoming to those of us who don't like to bake in the sun.  I take advantage of breezy days to hang laundry on the line, trying to capture enough of that heavenly outdoors scent to get me through the winter.  We can still sleep with the window open a crack - I do it for the fresh air but as an extra benefit we wake to the sound of Canada Geese discussing their flight plan for the day, great wedges of them flying overhead endlessly as the days get shorter.

There is only a little garden work left to do.  The crunch of everything ripening at once is behind me now.  The cucumbers are still going crazy but I've got past my guilt of what to do with them.  There is still pasta sauce to make as the tomatoes ripen and the root vegetables have to be dug, brought in, and stored, but the timing is my choice now - my only deadline is snow, and that's a way off yet.

So I work at it slowly.  This week - the day before my birthday, actually - I decided I would tackle a row of potatoes.  It was a pleasant afternoon - warm sun and my dog withholding judgement on my language when I would spoil  my harvest by spearing them with my digging fork.  As I dug, another day many many years ago came into my memory.  It was probably my 14th birthday and being past school girl parties I had moved on to inviting a friend for a sleepover.  Although we would become very close friends I think this was the first time she had come to my house and I really wanted her to like me ... and then mom had told me to go dig potatoes for supper!  On my birthday!  How could she!

In my 14 year old mind this was beyond awful.  What would my friend think of this?  Why couldn't I be treated with some kind of respect?  It was my birthday, after all!  For me to remember this after so much time, I must have been traumatised.  All I can say now is "Good grief!  Get over yourself Jocelyn!"  But that was then, and I'm much wiser now.

The complete picture of that day was that mom had given me the day off my usual chores - to do the milking.  We had a small dairy farm and instead of more than an hour of milking I had been given fifteen minutes of digging potatoes.  A 14 year old girl full of friend angst can be a miserable thing to deal with, obviously.

But, because I was digging potatoes, the whole experience came back to me and I spent some time thinking about my mother, and motherhood, in general.  I am still learning lessons all these years later.  Like a touchstone the act of digging potatoes brought mom and me together for a moment; it was like a birthday gift from her.  To the Fates who arranged that: thank you.

And to whoever was responsible for playing a certain piece of music on the oldies channel the night of my birthday - the kind of music that a daddy would use to teach his silly, awkward daughter how to dance - thanks again.  It's funny how a little age and wisdom can help you recognize a real gift when it comes along.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in my quest to become a better writer I came across a tip on how best to put your reader in touch with the scene you were describing.  The advice given was to pretend you had forgotten your camera but you still wanted to save the whole image right down to the finest details. 

It's not enough to say that you walked down a dusty road.  Even though everyone has walked down a dusty road and has an experience they can identify with, if that's all you give them in your description it leaves them with a very limited window to look through, not the panorama you want them to be a part of.  You must awaken their senses and invite them to walk down that road with you.  You need to add sound - like the crickets' scratchy/sizzle sound emanating from the dry grass in the ditches.  There needs to be a physical sensation involved like the heat of the afternoon sun on the back of your neck, and that one fly that just won't leave you alone, repeatedly buzzing in close to your face, trying to land on your nose.

You need to introduce the wider scene - like how only the later season flowers are still blooming - the goldenrod and the tiny purple asters at the road's edge.  And wider still ... the school bus in the distance returning the neighbour's kids home or the cattle, also being tormented by flies, taking to a mini stampede across their pasture, thundering to a halt at the gate, stopping to stare at the human walking past.  Then, to draw the reader's attention back to their place in the story, to describe how puffs of dust lift from the road's surface each time a shoe hits the ground. 

The bottom line is that you're still only talking about walking down a dusty road, but now the reader feels that he or she is there with you.

The example given in this writer's help book was an amazing description of - believe it or not - a ham sandwich.  An item as mundane as a ham sandwich and yet so masterfully described that I could taste it as I read, and I absolutely remember it still - the crusty home made loaf, the butter spread lavishly right to edges of the bread, the thick slices of home cured ham, the swipe of Dijon mustard across the meat before the top slice was put in place, the large glass of cold milk it was served with.  My mouth literally watered for just even one bite of this treat - and I don't even like Dijon mustard! 

I've never forgotten the lesson.  Not that I have the talent to do such an amazing job, but it gives me something to aim for.  Even when I don't have any way of writing it down I will give myself an assignment to do justice to some scene I come across.  These days everyone has a camera with them all the time, but a quick click just isn't capable of the texture and depth of what the human eye can see.

I am reminded of a scene one morning on my drive to work that is still frozen in my memory because I took the time soak it in - it was too exquisite to lose and I really didn't have a camera with me at the time.

It was an early summer morning.  The night had been cool enough to condense the moist evening air into mist.  As happens sometimes this mist had sunk into the hollows of the landscape and formed shallow, filmy layers that hung just above the grass.  This phenomenon only lasts until the sun rises high enough to burn it off; the magic is fleeting.

My route had taken me past several low spots where these magical clouds hung suspended by invisible wires, not connected to the sky, not quite touching the ground.  There was one place where I had actually driven through it - the defining line between visibility and invisibility as flat and straight as if someone had uses a ruler to draw it: my windshield was above it, the hood of my car was obscured.  I felt like I was floating.

As other-worldly as that sensation was, the scene that awaited me at the corner was breath-taking.  With the rising sun as a backdrop, at least twenty colours of pink/orange/yellow flowed like liquid through green branches and spread their light across an expanse of white mist.  This, by itself, would have been a jewel of a scene, but dotted throughout the pool of mist rose the heads and shoulders of several cattle - suspended, ungrounded, magical - beasts with no bodies.  I felt blessed that Mother Nature had given me this special gift for being at the right place at the right time.  Because I committed it to memory, I still do.

This has been a very convoluted lead in to what inspired me to write today, but I do have a direction I'm heading with this.  I've been trying all week to find the words that would describe what our world looks like with the smoke from distant ( like a thousand miles distant) wildfires filling our air. 

It isn't the smell of smoke - although we can smell it.  It isn't so much the irritated throats and sore eyes that the weather advisories warn us of - although we can certainly feel these things too.  It isn't the spectacular sunsets we get as the last of the sun's rays burn through a dense layer of smoke and turn the western sky vibrant shades of ochre and burnt sienna - but man!  are they ever something to behold.

The part that is so different, so strange, so eerie is the colour of the light, and believe it or not, the colour of our shadows.  Did you know that a blood-red sun throws a sepia shadow?  I have been followed all week by a tarnished, yellow/brown shadow.  Trees at the horizon have faded back into a  gunmetal blue haze, the sun has been an angry red disc in the sky, and all our shadows have had jaundice.  The word 'surreal' comes to mind, but not in a pleasant way.

Tonight there is finally rain.  This is nice for us but a godsend for those who have been battling the fires, because of course, while the smoke made our world weird, it made theirs deadly.  I will leave it up to them to describe what that feels like.

Prepared For Anything

I spent this morning making many many trips up and down my basement stairs doing a job that rates right up there with scrubbing down bathrooms on my 'things I hate to do' list.  The time had absolutely come to defrost and wash down the deep freeze - the butcher had just called and asked how I wanted the pork we had ordered cut up.  It is only going to be a matter of days and I will need to put it away ... in a deep freeze ... which until mid morning was more of a self-contained iceberg that a food storage facility.  I may as well confess just how diligent I am at this job - I found packages of freezer burnt rhubarb marked 2013 at the very back.  And some other stuff that I couldn't quite figure out - possibly a solid clump of perogies?  Even the dog took one sniff and decided it was inedible.

It wasn't all garbage though, there was lots of food that I stacked carefully back in once the glacier had been removed.  Besides the meat we buy in bulk, the extra loaves of bread, the packages of homemade pasta sauce and apple pie filler, there were 25 pints of corn and other veggies from this year's garden.  The bottom two shelves have been freed up for the pork, although there will have to be some rearranging of the bigger chest freezer to get it all in.

That's right, we have two freezers.  Sadly for me this other one also harbours an iceberg of its own, but that's another day's project.

And no, we're not over-the-top "preppers" who stockpile for Armagedon or other end-of-days scenarios.  We are pretty much normal, rural, common sense people who like to be self sufficient.  There's a lot of us out here in the country.  In the world we live in it's nothing unusual to have a lot of food at the ready.  In my world I can't just call up for take out at 5:30; I live 100 miles from the closest Pizza Hut.  Being self reliant is just a way of life for us.

I've been watching the news coverage for Hurricane Irma and it's made me wonder about how it would be to live in the path of such potential devastation.  Year after year, hurricane season after hurricane season - but then I wonder about the folks in California waiting for their next big earthquake too.  Somehow blizzards never seem so bad.

What does make me stop and think though, is watching the stores being over run with panicked people looking for supplies at the last minute to be able to survive the coming trauma.  Why do they need last minute lumber to board up their windows?  Why wouldn't they have permanent covers ready to go?  Why are they trying to hunt down the last bottle of water at the eleventh hour - Irma has been making news for a week.  All of a sudden they need bread and peanut butter - whose house doesn't have bread and peanut butter?  And there seems to be a real run on flashlights - again - really?  Who doesn't have these things as a matter of regular household items? 

The mile long line ups for gas just blow my mind.  In the winter here we just go by the standard rule to keep the tank full all the time; it only makes sense to treat their bad weather season with the same precaution.

I guess it just boils down to we live in different worlds.  Theirs is the fast-paced, modern, every-convenience-at-your-fingertips world and we occupy a place in space and time where we know we have to take care of ourselves.  I'm not saying we don't shop at supermarkets because we do.  I buy bread, but I can make it.  I make cakes and pies and cookies from scratch because they just taste better, not because there's no alternative.  We have a generator in case we ever have to deal without power for a while.  It wouldn't be at our usual comfort level, but I am certain we could survive on our own for quite some time without a run to town for peanut butter.

It isn't my intention for these observations to sound like a sermon.  I honestly don't know how I would manage if I were in Florida at the moment because I have no experience of Cat 5 storm or a 12 foot storm surge; watching it on TV is plenty close enough for me. 

I wish all the people dealing with Hurricane Irma ... and Jose ... and who knows what comes next ... all the best.  Let them be safe.  Let them not lose everything.  Let them help each other back on their feet. 

Happy Harvesting

I got a bit of a lecture this morning. 

There we were, breakfast done and we lingered over our morning coffee contemplating what we were going to be doing today.  Being the high-tech wonder that I am I had just checked the weather app on my phone (instead of getting up and walking over to the deck door and stick my nose outside to check the temperature).  It was already too hot for me.  I commenced grumbling.

Instantly I was chastised for complaining about hot, sunny weather during harvest.  I suppose I should have known better, but it's been a few years since we actually had a harvest of our own to worry about so my frame of mind was not in harvest mode.  He, on the other hand, has spent the past week working for a neighbour; he is in full-blown Farmer-itis. 

"This is the best combining weather we could ask for!"

"Everything is ripening to perfection!"

And, scrolling through the 14 day forecast on his phone "There's not a drop of rain in sight for two weeks.  We couldn't ask for better than that!"

It hadn't been the rain, or lack of it, that had been on my mind.  It was all those days of temperatures over 30.  I really don't do heat well.

I get it though; hot and dry is good.  Let the farmers get their crops off.  A single rain can degrade a crop  tens of thousands of dollars, and a wind can shatter seed pods and throw the seeds on the ground - a waste for this year and a curse for next year.  By this time of the year the days are getting shorter all the time; a farmer doesn't want cool, dewy nights either because it takes half the day to get the crop back to dry again. 

The bottom line is people like me just need to keep our heat disapproval to a minimum until the crop is in the bin.  It can't happen fast enough to suit me.

I have a whole list of things I need to get done.  There is a little bit of grass to mow.  There is garden to clean up, and there is always weeding to do.  There are strawberries to pick, potatoes to dig, corn to bring in for supper, and although I have no idea what to do with them anymore, there are tons of cucumbers out there.  They love the hot weather.

The trouble is none of these jobs can be done in the shade.  I was so desperate for something to do inside yesterday I even cleaned out my bowls/plastics cupboards, and the notion that I should tackle my deepfreeze next keeps crossing my mind.  My subconscious is at war over this - my emotional side screams "But you hate that job!" while my practical side points out that "At least it would a cool place to hang out for an afternoon."  So far my sheer laziness has saved me, but their constant bickering is really starting to get on my nerves.

The dog really really really wants to go for a walk but he's crazy.  He's a Husky/German Shepherd cross and has a hair coat that safely gets him through Canadian winters - 30 degree summer days are worse for him that they are for me.  I can just see me having to carry the lunk back home when he keels over from heat exhaustion.  Well actually, he would probably do fine: I'm just worried that if I keeled over from heat exhaustion he wouldn't bother carrying me home.  So just to be on the safe side, we're not going for a walk until it's much cooler outside.  Like maybe mid September.

This may call for a trip to the library for something to read, or maybe I will checkout what Netflix has to offer.  Or maybe I will Google BBQ recipes - I have no desire to heat up the inside of my house to feed this re-awakened farmer of mine.  I do hope that they have a clear run and the crop comes off in peak condition ... the faster the better.

HOME BASE

Some of the advertisements for Ancestry.com really blow my mind.  The ones about using DNA to discover where on the planet your genetics originated are one thing, and maybe everyone should have a dose of reality in their ethnicity; it might do the world some good.

It's the other ads, the ones of folks saying that they discovered relatives they never knew they had - people only one or two generations away from their own.  I ask you; how is that even possible?  How can families be so loosely associated that they have lost knowledge of each other in such a short period of time? I can't imagine not knowing all my family connections going back for multiple generations - that's what families do.  That's what families are.

But then, maybe I've just had the good fortune to be included in some pretty stellar families and have set my 'family-hood' bar higher than most.

Some families have never organized a family reunion; each branch of the family tree spreading in separate directions through laziness or lack of interest.  They are the ones who need Ancestry.com to track down relatives.

Other families throw everything they have into getting everyone together; a massive undertaking and to be admired for the work and commitment done by the organizing committee.  It's common at these affairs for the different family branches wear colour coded t-shirts so folks can try to keep semi-strangers sorted.

And then there's the people who do it every year with the motto of whoever can make it, come on down!  It's low key, laidback, and lovely.  These people know everyone by first names, are excited to meet new babies, have all the little cousins play together, and sit around a campfire talking of everything from jobs, trips, plans, ailments, recipes, and hobbies, picking up the threads of conversations started around last year's fire as if they happened yesterday. 

There are also two kinds of family building.  To some people 'family' is an exclusive term.  They see the world in terms of 'them' and 'us', drawing a dividing line between who they are, and everyone else who isn't quite so lucky.  I'm not saying that this approach is wrong, but my observation is that it is probably pretty lonely.

The other extreme is a family founded on inclusiveness.  This is my experience, and there is no way any of the DNA search companies would be able to figure us out.

The standard joke about a family reunion not being a good place to look for future spouses hardly holds water when there are kids from second marriages and cousins of step grand children mixed in with the regulars, all of them welcomed as full family with no reservation.  In-laws, out-laws, second marriages, children from previous relationships ... it's all the same to us.  Come in, sit down, and have something to eat!

This year's gathering was special, being held at the family's home base - the original family farm now held by a fourth generation.   Although the landscape of the yard has changed over the years it still holds enough landmarks to anchor memories of our younger selves.  And right around the corner we gathered Sunday morning in the church (because that's the kind of thing this family does) and took part in a lay service (because, again, that is what this family does).  In reflection on the reading about faith and love the brother who spoke gave credit for his family's faith and capacity for love to his parents' example. I've been thinking a lot about that while I worked on what I wanted to write today.

I absolutely agree that these people were good people and that they showed love and faith in their everyday lives, but it seems to me that the focus is too narrow if we single out their generation alone.  The big picture is that obviously these two good people didn't appear out of a vacuum.  They came from good people just as surely as they brought forth more good people.  We are all welcoming and inclusive and kind, partly because of the example set for us, but also because it is just in us to be welcoming and inclusive and kind.  We are all, singly, an example of the whole.  It connects us much more profoundly than DNA.

We also have a tendency to have fun, eat too much, laugh a lot, cuddle babies, problem solve, tell stories, play games, and give each other  a hard time.  Pretty normal family stuff in my world.

What I Did On My Summer Holidays ....

Some things just stay with a person for life. 

I was the nerdy kid who liked school.  I liked learning.  I liked books.  I don't recall having any problem with lunchbox meals.  And, since we only lived two miles from town, the bus ride was never much of a sacrifice of precious time either.

By this time of the year, while other students were dreading the end of August, I was merrily writing my name on all my new school supplies, sniffing the freshness of the unblemished notebooks, and wondering which desk I would be given for the coming year.  On the Nerd-O-Nomiter I think this puts me at about a 9.6 out of 10.

Not that I wasn't also plagued with back-to-school angst; I had plenty of that too.  We were a big family with a smaller income - other kids would have whole new wardrobes to show off whereas I would just have one or two new things.  And fear of the unknown played a role in my anxiety - a new locker code to remember, new teachers to meet, and wishing that I could just stay with arithmetic because the word 'algebra' sounded terrifying.  Above all this, though, was my concern over what I would have to report in one of the first assignments we would be given ... an essay on what we had done during our summer holidays.

I realize now that this was merely the simplest way to gauge the student's writing/expression skills while learning a little bit about them, but from my perspective I felt more like a reporter - more often than not a reporter without a story to tell.  Other kids went places and did things I could only dream of (the year of Canada's Centennial was especially painful for me - how could I compete with a trip to Montreal?)  My poor, pathetic, puny essay would be about hiking out to the birch tree slough, riding my bike to my uncle's house, finding kittens in the loft, putting pennies on the railroad tracks to get squished, picking wild strawberries, sleepovers at both Grandmas' houses and climbing sweet-smelling bale stacks.  It was hardly worth putting down on paper.  All the teacher was going to know about me was that my life was so boring!

This self assessment of how I spend my summers has followed me through life, though.  This time of the year there is a subtle shift in the atmosphere that tells us summer is done.  The grass is till green, the garden is producing like mad, the pool and the ice cream place are still open, but with the crickets chirping in the ditches and the hummingbirds feeding madly before they leave for Mexico summer's wain quietly seeps into our very bones.  In the midst of harvesting crops and making pickles my mind turns to what my essay would say about this summer should someone ask me to write one.

2017's essay would be a doozy.

For starters I'm on the committee that planned and presented our community's Canada 150 celebration this July 1st.  From the pancake breakfast to the pig roast to the fireworks; it takes months of planning to make one day a success.  It still makes me tired (and proud) to think about what we accomplished.

From there I had a couple weeks to catch up on my yard and garden work before my next summer project landed on my doorstep - literally.  Two little grandsons came to stay with us while their parents got settled in their new house.  In the past month we have squeezed in numerous dinosaur hunts, pea picking and shelling lessons, wild flower bouquet quests, getting the quad stuck in the mud with grandpa, water fights with their cousins, and the art of snitching new potatoes without disturbing the plant.  Add to that a family picnic/train ride/museum day, a camping sleepover at their cousins' place, and topping it all off with a family reunion before their parents took them home and it's safe to say at 61 years old I have just had the busiest summer of my life.

2017 isn't over yet - we still have another summer to aim for.  Plans are now in the works for us to be in Australia to visit another set of grandchildren on their summer holidays.  Two essays in six months!  The nerd in me rejoices!

GARDENING 101

You could probably say I've been a gardener all my life.  That's not to say I've been a good gardener all my life, or even a willing gardener all my life, but I that I have gardening memories back as far back as I can remember anything - that much is true.

I remember helping mom plant the garden - I wonder whose idea that was?  Having been a mom myself I know that there are some jobs that are easier done without the help of a small child and planting tiny seeds would be one of them.  All the same, I recall feeling that I was helping to do an important job - and believe me, with a family of seven kids, growing a big garden is very important. 

I remember her explaining how to make the rows, how to take into consideration the size of the seed when covering them with dirt, how to deal with weightless seeds on a windy day, and how all seeds had to be pressed into the soil so they could be securely in where they could access moisture for germination.  It always seemed mean to me that I should pack them so hard and still expect them to make it back out of the earth, but of course she was right and I was wrong.  She was a fountain of gardening knowledge and thankfully I had enough brains to listen and learn.

I got the basics from mom, and judging from the rest of the family's interest in growing things, I would say that I came by my desire to garden through my very DNA.  That's not to say that I haven't had some painfully embarrassing failures over the years, but every season has taught me something and my gardening knowledge continues to expand.  It's not only that though; gardening ties me to the earth ,and the time I spend working with the plants and in the soil is a time of meditation and memories of the people who have shared both their knowledge and their plants with me.  The veggies might be good for my body, but the experience is good for my soul.

I don't know where the time has gone but I find myself in my sixth decade and have lived in the same place now for 35 years.  That kind of time lapse and permanence has given me what it takes to build a park-like yard with substantial gardens - both vegetable and flower.  I will never be 'done' because as time goes by I am inspired by others' ideas or my own imagination.  Just this past year we have begun to establish an orchard as well, and maybe a bit of a market garden.  Heaven knows we will never be able to eat all the asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, and saskatoons we have growing out there ourselves.  We will decide what to do at a later date - meanwhile it's just fun to watch it all grow.

It's funny how a person is unaware of just how much they know on any given subject until they are asked to pass their knowledge on.  I got a call from my baby sister (she's ten years younger than me - you do the math, but she'll always be the 'baby' sister); she had some gardening questions.

While we do have the same parents, our growing up experience was different: my entire childhood was on the farm with the big garden but hers only started there, she grew up a town kid.  And then she married a guy whose job took them to a city where yard space was more important than garden space.  Until their son bought an acreage the idea of a garden wasn't even a thing ... but with this opportunity those gardening genetics had awakened - ground has been tilled, rows have been planted.

She had a list of things she needed to know ... were gardening gloves a good idea?  (YES!)  And what was 'hilling' potatoes?  Why did one do it, and how was it done?  On the one hand how could anyone not know this?  On the other hand, I guess potato hilling doesn't come up in casual conversation all that much. 

A subsequent phone call thanked me for the tip on garden gloves and while we were talking she marvelled about how the carrot seeds must have blown or washed all over the garden because she had carrots everywhere.  I told her to rub the leaves of one of her wayward carrots together to see if they didn't smell a lot like dill - another mystery solved.  It came in handy as they had wanted to make pickles and had forgotten to plant any themselves.

It was a few nights later that we talked again and I smiled at what she said.  I have written from time to time about my musings while I garden - how my time weeding flower beds or picking peas and beans is often spent in the happy, comfortable company of people important in my life even though I am all alone.  It was obvious from her comments that she had planted vegetable seeds true enough, and wanted to harvest good things to eat, but she had also been hoping for her own private crop of memories too ... and her first garden was already bearing this kind of fruit.