Jimmy, Mildred, and Grey Rabbit

First harvest, some thinnings from the spinach and beet rows. Baby spinach and baby beet greens for dinner tonight.

I over-mulched the tomato plants, they seem a little suffocated, leaves wilty and yellowing. I knew I wouldn't be here to water for a week, and the weather called for full sun, so I was worried about moisture loss. Sigh. At this stage, when first transplanted, they really do need careful attention, more than once weekly. They are infants, after all. Hopefully they'll bounce back, I've given them a little more air.

The back and forth between city and country is wearing on me in a new way. Can't quite identify it, but something is shifting, something is pressing. I think more and more about laying roots somewhere, about committing to a place; no more this life of halvsies. Every so often I read a biography of a rural life (right now, Jimmy Carter's "An Hour Before Daylight") and I ache for a life rooted in place. Even if the place is not native, even if it means fabricating home, consciously locating and dropping the anchor.

This article from the NYT a few days ago also I think got under my skin. Ms. Puett's Mildred's Lane must be a stone's throw from here. The hippie communal quality doesn't so much appeal to me as the simple longevity, the life work of several years, making home and art in a place. Making art of home, making home of art.

Man From Plains

In fact, the name of the tiny rural place in Georgia where Jimmy Carter grew up, where his family farmed, was Archery. The town - it wasn't even quite a town - no longer exists. Jimmy was born in Plains, and he and Rosslyn returned there after his presidential term and still live there.

Just watched the Jonathan Demme bio-documentary on Carter. It's a good one, I recommend. Demme is a fan, of the man and the President, which comes through. Talk about a country boy making his way to the big city; and yet never losing the country in him. Carter is nothing if not a man of place and land, which of course explains his tireless and unapologetic compassion (which has gotten him into trouble) for the Palestinian cause.

It occurs to me that, in this modern world, either you are a person of place, or you aren't. The dividing line between those two ways of existing on the planet is stark. We city people are nomadic, our fidelity is to things abstract. Seems to me Carter's relationship to place and land might be the most defining and driving force of his character, and thus his leadership and legacy.

I'm reading one of his memoirs now and looking forward to Peter Bourne's biography.

Dorothy, Getting Her Bearings

Back in the Bronx, the fire escape lettuces have "bolted," meaning they got too hot too fast and flowered; they're past eating now. Phooey. How did that happen? I go away for a week, and all hell breaks loose... Living things (sigh) do need constant attention.

Where am I? Not in Kansas anymore. The pup and I went for a short run, partway across the Triboro and down to Randall's Island. Our normal park route is blocked off, the whole area dug up. We're told it's being developed into a giant, privately-owned tennis center. We like tennis, but...no more community baseball, no more public access. There goes the neighborhood.

We've been exploring other areas of the Bronx, looking at real estate. In particular, areas near large parks. Pickings are slim. As we venture north, it starts to feel like another planet - 50, 60, 70 minutes by subway to downtown Manhattan. We've been told apartments in the Bronx rarely allow dogs. How odd. I find myself pining for Manhattan, which surprises me. It's a momentary lapse, irrational. Longing for something that feels like "home" or vaguely "comfortable" - but really, there's no such thing (no place called home, my own Dorothy-esque chant), not in the form of real estate anyway.

The Beginning of Summer

Memorial Day weekend in the country, the summer people have all descended. Folks are out walking, bicycling, boating. We went for a motorcycle ride and saw all the young city families with their well-groomed, apartment-bound kids running around, doing cartwheels (literally), splashing in the river. The most beautiful river-side homes seem to belong to city people. I felt something - not sure what exactly - as we sped by. Something akin to what you feel when you read a John Cheever story, or a James Salter novel. The elegance and sadness of privilege. The fleeting nature of joy, like a weekend.

We stopped by the nursery and J. picked out three trees: a weeping cherry, a Japanese maple, and a crab apple. He planted them all, hard work, digging into that red clay; and it makes me happy to look at them... our investment in the future, in the beauty of this piece of earth.

I planted tomato seedlings, cucumber seeds (green and yellow), zucchini and squash seeds (green and yellow), sweet basil seedlings, and the last of the lettuce and bok choy seeds. I also built the pole bean teepee. We've got a lot growing now, a lot to tend to. I should try to be here as much as possible while the plants are just budding and require lots of regular water and weeding; but the city pulls me back each week. I'll be doing a rain dance from the Bronx.

Waste Not, Want Not

Energy and food crises are finally turning attention toward waste (see Sunday NY Times article on food waste). It takes talent, I’ve realized, to be a good steward of resources, to be creative and smart about recycling and repurposing so that nothing goes to waste. And vigilance, too. We Americans, as a whole, seem to be lacking this talent, mostly because we’ve not been forced to develop it. Once we are forced to, though, it will hopefully become habit.

I’m working on it. Food waste makes me crazy, so I’m paying more attention to quantities – what we buy, what we cook, what we consume, what goes straight to the freezer. Your freezer is your best friend when it comes to food conservation. In the country, we have a compost pile—which also takes talent. Been trying to master the fine art/science of composting, including turning the thing regularly (and banning J. from it, with his manly insistence on throwing hunks of meat and all manner of protein on the pile).

We used to collect kitchen scraps in the city and bring them out with us to the country. But that got sort of icky. In San Francisco, an innovative city-run composting program is getting some attention. How to make it happen in NYC? Garbage disposal is very expensive in NYC, so any financial incentives for people to compost would work, I think. Plus, the city can then sell the compost to small-scale farms and gardeners.

It Takes a Village

Making our rounds this weekend, it occurs to me that we've covered our bases in terms of finding suppliers of basic needs out here.

First stop, the saw mill. A reasonable $30/hr rate to plane down some very specialized planks of walnut (eight years old, J. rescued the trunk after the whole tree fell in a hurricane). J. is excited about making furniture.

Second stop, the kennel. Preparing for a week-long trip in June, we found what seems to be a terrific dog-loving place nearby where P. the pup will be well cared for. Everything built for doggie comfort and health (my favorite: a doggie "dry sauna," with very low heat, where they dry off and nap after baths or rainy walks), and also very green (wind power, geothermal wells, etc). D. and K. opened their doors in January, after a long fight with the town council (they've been coming out here for 25 years while working in Manhattan, but there's some animosity about them not being natives). Anyway, a bargain at $20/night.

Third stop, the bakery, currently housed in a little out-building behind someone's house, but moving soon to a larger space in town. Breads, pies, morning pastries, all fresh daily.

Fourth stop, Alice's farm stand, where we get local grass-fed meats (ever had a mutton-burger? YUM) and veges in season. A little pricey for the veges, so it's motivation to work harder at the garden. Also carries eggs and chickens, and cheeses and yogurts from a nearby dairy farm.

Fifth stop, the general store, to pick up mail and browse movie rentals. In the parking lot, J.'s walnut in the back of the pick-up gets a lot of attention, and he gets a rec from T., a local plumber, for someone who might be selling a used table saw. B. and D. are holding back their sweet but high-strung German Shepherd "pup" (he's huge) and mention that they'll be taking him to a week of doggie training. When I ask where, it turns out they're sending him to doggie camp at D. and K.'s kennel.

Last stop, the tennis courts by the river. We hit some balls around then head home, ready to take on chores.

Food

What's happening with food right now is the lynchpin that links city people and country people, all around the world.

As city consumers, we can help set the parameters for what food is grown, and how. Food is something we all consume, our universal connector. Health and a thriving environment are the by-products of how we consume food. The more demand we make for real, healthful food - as opposed to processed, soy-and-corn-syrup based foods - the more of it will be grown. Theoretically.

"Increasingly we can see the wisdom of diversified farming operations, where there are built-in relationships among plants and animals. A dairy farm can provide manure for a neighboring potato farm, for example, which can in turn offer potato scraps as extra feed for the herd...To encourage small, diversified farms is not to make a nostalgic bid to revert to the agrarian ways of our ancestors. It is to look toward the future, leapfrogging past the age of heavy machinery and pollution, to farms that take advantage of the sun's free energy and use the waste of one species as food for another." (Dan Barber, NY Times Op-Ed 5/11/08)

Nature is genius, Nature understands how energy recycles itself symbiotically. Greed, impatience, excessively indulged appetites - these are what threw us off, worldwide. I don't know what's in the mind of farmers, perhaps they felt it was their due to cash in on ethanol as fast as they could; regardless, gigantic subsidized corn-farming is wreaking havoc on both food supply and prices.

City people eat. A lot. Join movements for more small-farm foods, make the consumer demand. Sign petitions to your elected officials when the farm bill comes up, voice against inefficient subsidies which support farming practices that do not benefit health or the environment in the short or long run. Buy real food and cook it. The more diversified farms that can thrive, the more likely you can buy local foods which do not require cross country trucking or international transport (more fuel).

I'm not sure what the right balance is between eating locally and international free trade. If our importing of South American bananas and mangos is helping to keep those countries' economies afloat. The economics of it I find hard to grasp. But at the least, it seems we can buy and eat the foods which grow naturally in our regions from local sources, and learn about the growing practices of the West coast farms from where our oranges come.

It has to get bad enough, I suppose, for the movement towards diversified farms to take a serious turn, and for Americans to change the way we eat and buy food. How bad, I wonder.

What's Growing These Days in the Bronx

On the fire escape, Asian greens are coming up nicely - bok choy, Japanese mustards, gai laan. I'm also sprouting snapdragons for the first time; they're a bit sluggish, but they seem to be reaching for the sun and growing little by little.

Our new super, Z., is well-meaning but apparently not very experienced with plants. He's bought marigolds and something that looks like a mini evergreen for each floor and has set them on the stairwell windowsills with no dishes underneath to catch the water (assuming he will be watering them). Also, the marigolds are mostly sitting in the dark (the stairwells don't catch much light).

I feel sorry for the plants, but not sure how much I can take on to assist; we're still unsure about our future here. An incident involving a chase and a handgun on our block (about 11pm) was recently reported to us by a floor-mate. This neighbor has decided to break his lease as a result--leaving us and one other couple as the only ones remaining from among the original group who moved in when the building was first completed.

Options are slim, though. We're seeking but not finding. And who wants to move. Even with all the hoopla, we kind of like it here. I guess I'll look after the marigold here on floor 3.

We Make Progress

We now have about 80 square feet of vegetable gardens. The new raised beds - three 2'x6'x1' boxes - are ready for planting. We'll wait about two weeks until all danger of frost has passed before we put the tomatoes, zucchini, beans, and cucumbers in the ground.

Last year we built one large plot, 8'x12', using railroad ties to contain the dirt; the railroad ties are incredibly heavy, so we really broke our backs. We also didn't have enough top soil to fill the thing, so we ended up making mounded rows, which are a little unstable and don't quite optimize the space. Finally, the whole plot is situated in partial shade. DUH.

The new beds are in full sun, they are smaller so we can reach all sides; they are full to the top one inch; and they are made out of lightweight 2-by-12's. J. also banged together a sifter, so we've gotten most of the rocks out of the top soil. If things go all right, we'll be able to grow the majority of our vegetables for 5 months out of the year. We're thinking about setting up a germinating system (in the basement?) next year to increase that to maybe 6 or 7 months.

So, we learn and we improve. Also: I had written last year about not being able to change my water filter without J.'s help. I am happy to report that I have done it! With a little creative bracing (my feet up on the wall and my back against the opposite wall), I was able twist the old filter loose and tighten up a new one.

We make progress.