Let's Get this Garden Started!

When we lived up north and traveled a lot, we used to have lots of little get-togethers with friends, sometimes planned, other times spontaneous. They usually involved some good food, crazy dancing, and some sort of rallying chant, like "Party! Pizza Party!" or "Bar-B-Q! BBQ!" or "USA! USA!" or the one that prompted the title of this post, "Let's Get this Party Started!"

After a few deeply philosophical and political posts (sorry, it's all that's on the news these days!), I got a hankerin' to lighten up a bit and write about the garden. It's March. The tulip trees have already bloomed and released their intoxicating scent and then spontaneously combusted in a mess of petals all over everyone's lawns. Daffodils have poked up at random intervals along the monkey grass border, beaming sunny smiles to all who look their way. Irises and daylilies won't bloom for a bit yet, but their brand new green foliage is coming in thick and lush and tall. Garden stores have put out their flowers, herbs and vegetables for the general public to peruse and take our chances with.

I've been pruning old dead stuff here and there. First it was the brown, straw-like fronds from last year's daylily foliage. I cut those off and pulled them out of the lily bed, where they were acting as a sort of mulch over the winter, and tilled them into the vegetable bed, along with some fresh garden soil to help boost this year's crop of tomatoes and peppers and such.

Next, I got rid of the spent, dried stalks of kitchen herbs in the concrete planters on the patio to make room for the young green shoots that have started to peek out. I'll probably need a new rosemary plant. I had one in the kitchen over the winter, but I got a little overeager and put it out a little too early one warm sunny day a month or so ago and forgot it out there overnight to freeze.

Then B. sharpened the shears for me (the ones I should have been using instead of a knife the summer I cut myself pruning holly, but couldn't 'cause they were too dull...but that's old news) and I gave the crape myrtles a haircut. Before we moved here, they'd been chopped off low, at a height of a couple of feet, even though the trunks were already about 4 inches across, and lots of little strappy suckers were growing all over them in every direction. I did some research on pruning them and repairing the damage to get them looking more like their natural shape, and we cut them "properly" last spring. Though there are places that may never look normal, I'm happy to report that the places we cut have mostly forked like real crape myrtles and healed themselves by growing bark over the wound so that many of the new forks look like they naturally grew that way. Hooray!

[This is another place in this blog where photos would be really timely and helpful. One of these days, I promise, I'll go back and insert some good ones. When I have some free time. And a good camera. And some motivation. I was motivated tonight, but for other things. Shoe shopping, grocery shopping, filling up the car. It was at 1/4 tank when I started. I stopped at $30, thinking surely that's about full. I started up the car to drive away and the needle jumped up and stopped at 3/4. But I digress.]

Yes, the garden. Tomatoes, a variety of peppers, lettuces, cilantro - basically a salad/salsa garden. I'm also thinking I may need a zucchini plant this year. Just one. I know they come in little pots of about 10 plants at once, and I always have such a hard time throwing a plant away. But I also know how zucchini can take over your life and I'm trying not to overcommit to too many relationships right now. My mom grows so much zucchini that she's always trying to find people to give it to. She picked 10 squash one weekend, so she brought one to church and stuck it in the offering basket. She sneaks it into the most unexpected recipes (my dad is so onto her) and gives it away to everyone. Which would be great if she wasn't the only one doing it. In their small Canadian town, the only time people lock their cars or houses is during zucchini season, to keep it out.

Chant with me, "Let's Get this Garden Started! Let's Get this Garden Started! Let's Get..."

Thoughts on Japan

B.'s family lived in Tokyo for a few years when he was little. We've talked about going back to see it, and looking up his friends from the Japanese yo-chin (kindergarten) he went to. Someday we probably will.

His mom showed us pics this weekend of a family vacation they took one summer, at Sendai beach of all places. It's pretty weird to think that these people I know and love actually stood on the very spot that was the hardest hit. Back then there was a huge stone sea wall in the water a few hundred yards out from shore to break the waves and shelter the swimming area. It's completely gone now. Thank God the friends we currently know over there are safe, and their families are too.

It's weird to think that the earthquake and tsunami happened in the middle of the afternoon, with the sun shining. All that water gives you the impression of a storm, of clouds and dark grey swirling skies, but it wasn't a hurricane. It washed over and then subsided. And the sun kept shining. Must have been pretty surreal.

We once had the unforgettable opportunity to visit Auschwitz in Poland, and had the same sort of strange realization. We'd only ever seen it in black and white photos and video, but in person that bright, sunny afternoon, it was unexpectedly...pretty. The grass was a vibrant emerald green, and flowers bloomed in neat beds around the tidy buildings. Groups of schoolchildren and tourists from all over the world roamed the grounds, chatting quietly amongst themselves. It was almost impossible to imagine the violence that took place there not all that long ago.

I say this not to belittle the loss of life and home, but to step back and take in the grand scheme perspective. This, too, will pass...at least here on this side of the globe. I saw a map of all the nuclear reactors in this country and there are three right here in our city, of the same type that are causing all the concern now. But just like the oil spill didn't change our demand for the stuff, neither will this change our lifestyle, unless we suddenly decide to acknowledge the simple laws of cause and effect again like we used to. Wonder why simple logic doesn't seem to motivate people to change anymore? Is it because we are accustomed to being able to pay to make uncomfortable things go away? Hmm. Time to sign up for a psychology course. It would be either a fascinating or maddening field of study, but you wouldn't know which until you were right in the middle of it. I'm sure, like anything, it would have its days.

I have paused mid-errand, mid-task, several times in the last couple of weeks, and just thought how strange it was that here I am going on like nothing happened - because over here it didn't - while entire cities, a nation of people, are paused, watching the news and waiting for word from loved ones, for a final tally, for some good news, some answers, some hope, anything they can hold on to, the way we did ten years ago this September. I hope and pray they find that, and that somehow they come out stronger on the other side.

A Sunday Morning Devotional

Ever wonder why they put political commentaries on tv on Sunday mornings, right before everyone goes off to church (or, in many cases, to serve as a poor substitute for church)? I don't watch them "religiously" but find that when I do, even for a few minutes, they get my blood pressure up. I start arguing back at the talking heads and scrolling ticker messages. What is it that stirs so much emotion?

This morning I just glanced up for a second from the kitchen sink and saw something about the battle between the two sides over finances, and felt that same surge of anger. I didn't even have to hear a word of the dialogue. I suddenly realized what it is that bothers me so much.

The whole thing makes me feel like a kid whose parents are on the verge of divorce, who is afraid of having to choose which one to go and live with. A kid who has seen the struggle, the incompatibility, the disunity, for years, but only in short glimpses because they always seemed to keep it under wraps better than they do now. A kid who has gotten used to the power struggle and learned which parent to ask for what when the other isn't in the house. A kid who thought she could muddle through the controlled chaos until she was old enough to leave home and get some fresh perspective, but suddenly finds she may be forced to do it sooner. A kid who can't choose one flawed side over the other and just wants to get as far away from the whole thing as her little rattly piggy bank will take her. A kid who realizes that she is, at least for the moment, on her own, because the people who are supposed to be looking out for her well-being seem to only be concerned about themselves and winning the argument right now. A kid who one day will look back with the wisdom, experience and compassion that comes with age and realize that the forces tearing her family apart are not flesh and blood, but spiritual powers she hadn't yet begun to understand.

And then I snap out of it. I remember that the political parties of this nation, no matter how much sway they may hold over the lives of others, are not my parents. This is not my home, not this city, not this nation, not this world, nor the systems devised by its best and brightest. My home is somewhere I've not yet been, yet I feel a nostalgic longing to return there. I cling to this. I ignore the signposts of this world and set my compass in this direction.

Romans 8:18-24 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved....

March Showers

What happens when a Japanese cargo plane blows up mid-flight?
It rains Datsun cogs.

Thank you, thank you very much. Actually, you can thank my dad. Don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from.

It's raining Datsun cogs today. The grass is turning bright green, the tulip trees are blooming profusely, and everything else is starting to bud. February showers have brought us March flowers and the March showers bring that brilliant greenness that lifts the clouds from your soul and puts a sparkle in your eyes.

April showers, however, will bring suffocating humidity, so we're quite happy right where we are.

It's finally time for my favorite sky-blue rubber boots! Or bubber boots, as I'm more prone to call them. Hooray! I remember as kids walking to and from school in the spring, my brother and I used to pass an empty sunken lot with a foot-deep standing puddle in it. We'd walk out on the edge of the melting ice until our weight broke us through it, then slowly, carefully wade out toward the middle, watching as the water crept higher and higher up our rubber boots. Finally one or the other of us would venture just a millimeter too far and get the inevitable "booter" - the sudden, shocking sensation of your whole boot instantly filling with bone-chilling ice water - followed by screams of shock and laughter. Then, of course, the comedy of trying to balance on one foot while emptying said boot, without tipping so far over that the other boot became inundated. This generally worked better on the way home from school, rather than to it. Good times.



P.S.

Made the local paper. Second time in 2 years of living here (vs. once in my whole lifetime before that, if I'm counting right, and that was for a "Keep Christ in Christmas" art project a friend and I made for an elementary school contest. Way back in the day when one could still utter the words "Christ" and "Christmas" in a school). Anyway, back to the present day - if you scroll through the gallery for this event, you might find someone that looks a little like me.