This journal, portions of which appeared as a chapbook entitled Stony Run: A Gardener's Journal, is composed of blog posts written between 1996 and 2004, lightly edited.
January
WE HAVE a handful of garden chairs stacked in the porch area of our country home, and from time to time we lift the topmost two from the stack, dust them off, and carry them through dew-spangled grass to a point below the fruit trees and above the garden. A vista opens across the neighbor's field to a bluff, or ridge, locally called Jasper Mountain, in the distance.
The ridgeline has changed shape a bit over the years, due to human activity. There has been intermittent logging over the last century and a half, beginning with the harvesting of giant Douglas firs, some over eight feet in diameter. These were cut by pairs of men with long handsaws known as misery whips; you can still see notches in stumps where the men stood on springboards while making the cuts. Now the cutting is more mechanized. Second-growth or even third-growth timber is efficiently reduced to second-grade lumber and "fiber" by highly capitalized and industrialized systems requiring generous doses of petroleum for their operation.
A few houses have appeared on the mountain's slopes, no doubt built with lumber hauled from somewhere far removed from the ridge and its sometime groves. These homes are expansive, two or even three stories in height, with cupolas and dormers, with each a large veranda and no doubt a swimming pool in the back. These testify to the power of bundled debt – while that lasted.
To get to these homesites, roads several miles long were added to the existing network of what were originally logging access roads, removing still more forest cover from the steep slopes. The roads added to the burden of silt in the numerous rivulets working their way down from the ridgeline to the river below.
The river is stressed -- not nearly so much so as at the Big City, a hundred miles or more downstream, with its three-eyed fish -- but where running water is concerned, such stresses are cumulative over distance. Wherever we find them, it is possible to regard them with interest.
We can also see changes in the massive promontory that gives the mountain its name.
The rock there is relatively high quality, a greenish basalt that makes good gravel for roads and construction sites. A quarry has been built into the face of the mountain, and a road, discreetly hidden among the remaining firs and big-leaf maples, provides access for huge dump trucks and wide-bladed dozers with gigantic diesel engines. These we cannot see or hear from our place, but from time to time an explosion gently rocks the valley, and for a few minutes the mountain resembles a small volcano as the powdered stone drifts along the ridge and down to the long line of cottonwoods along the river.
The quarry does not much spoil the looks of the promontory, because from this distance -- or even up close -- it looks like nothing so much as a natural scree slope somewhere in the higher mountains east of here. But this, too, with its road and its heavy equipment, adds to the burden of silt, with trace hydrocarbons and heavy metals as well, in the watershed.
All too true. And as we look closer to home, watching the chromed and painted monsters passing in front of the house, breathing out their noxious fumes, and noting our own such beast reposing in our driveway, and thinking how soon we will be mowing the grass under these fruit trees with yet another poisonous machine -- and from here we can also see our electric meter with its merrily spinning kilowatt-counting disk -- We're as aware as ever of our part in the curious web of capitalized destruction that has been devised and substituted for what might have been Western civilization.
And yet we're feeling remarkably cheerful.
That cheer, we recognize, is hardly justifiable. We're the privileged, an American couple in a not-poor neighborhood, which makes us part of the most massively consumptive minority in history. Nevertheless, the beauty in the scene before us, of sky, clouds, trees, stone, and the neighbors' ewes and lambs, costs nothing in itself; the price of viewing Jasper Mountain, which, with all that has happened to it, is well worth looking at, is zero.
Now, on the one hand, we have "bought" the right to look; the ad said, "country house with view." On the other hand, when we was younger, and had no land, no car, no family to support, and were living out of backpacks and our feet were our transportation, we saw just such views, and they were just as beautiful then.
Ownership is perhaps the most overrated concept in Westernism.
Busy-ness is a close second.
By sitting here, there are several things that we're not doing. We're (at the moment) not driving to the mall, not shopping, not eating a hamburger, not watching a car commercial. We're not tooling around in an outboard runabout, or on a jet-ski or snowmobile. We're not attending a football game, auto race, or rock concert. I could build quite a list here of "nots," but -- not to worry -- you can think of more of these, and never mind that yes, sometimes we do choose to do some of these things; attend a conference in the Big City, say.
But we are actively choosing to do fewer things, and less consumptive things, not as avoidance, as in "oh, mustn't do that," but as seeking out activities that have the inestimable value that viewing Jasper Mountain has -- partaking of the quality of being that, because it has no price in consumerism, barely has a name, but which every person in the "third world" who is habitually freer and happier than we -- and there are many -- would immediately recognize.
Disengaging from the error of capitalized gratification by thinking of it as error, by focusing on the negative, is a project fraught with stresses, pitfalls, failures and depression.
We're too deeply enmeshed, many of us, to take the bravest positive approaches, exemplified, in recent history, by so few: Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Peace Pilgrim, Jane Goodall, Mother Teresa. These challenge us, and it's easy to focus on their commitment, conclude it is somehow unachievable for us, and drift back to our potato chips and our cable news, feeling vaguely depressed, wallowing in a gray fog of discontent with ourselves and our little self-defeating ways.
The good news is that none of them would condemn us for starting out with smaller goals.
A positive approach is not less positive for lasting for only a few years, or days, or even seconds. It is never a matter of scale.
Every moment of viewing Jasper Mountain is its own eternity of getting it right, and no one can ever take that away from you.
,,,
There is another small mountain about two miles from here that is covered with a network of trails, and is the centerpiece of an attractive county park. The mountain's south slope is a steep meadowland, interspersed with copses of black oak, and dotted with wild plum trees. The north slope is forested with second growth Douglas fir and carpeted with an understory of sword ferns, viney maples, and filberts gone wild.
We like to hike to the top, though each year we find the going a little harder. We look about. Below, two rivers come together after dodging round the mountain toward each other. With binoculars we can find, in season, fishermen seeking steelhead and salmon.
To the north there is considerable urbanization; we can see at one glance the second largest metropolitan area in our state, but it is not unattractive as cities go, and we forgive its noise and bustle for its not being any worse (yet) than it is.
To the south and east is the valley of one of the rivers, opening out of the foothills of a substantial and still very wild mountain range. In winter the eastern peaks are dusted white with snow, and present a dramatic and lovely scene; but our interest is generally drawn to the near view.
At our feet we find a succession of habitats: the eastern ridge of the mountain, with Douglas fir forest to the left and oaks to the right, with perhaps a herd of deer placidly browsing in plain view; the meadowland within the park boundary, with a few pear trees left over from some farm venture in the previous century; the wetlands with its dark patches of sedge and the occasional blue heron.
Beyond are pastures, woodlots, filbert orchards, and fields used mostly for corn, hay, and grass seed farming. Threading among these, we see, are narrow roads along which are some two hundred houses, on properties of anywhere from one acre to two hundred acres, with their barns, outbuildings, and accumulated belongings left to the winter rains and summer sun: trucks, tractors, harrows, drift boats, and an occasional stove or washing machine. Most of us in this valley are not especially poor, but we are a thrifty people, many only two or three generations descended from pioneers, and we make but few trips to the county dump.
Who here can earn a living from farming now?
We are an amalgam of loggers, retirees, and commuters. The commuters are of two classes: 1) the professionals -- doctors, dentists, and the like -- and 2) everyone else. These are mostly school teachers, store clerks, office workers, retirees, and the chronically underemployed.
Regardless of category, almost every household has a garden. We can see the gardens from the mountaintop: at every house, a brown patch within easy access of the kitchen door. Some of us have enough pasture for a horse or two, or a few steers; at our place we have room for a flock of ducks and geese; but if there is nothing else, there is a garden. Gardens here have a priority over lawns. This is a thing that we greatly admire in my neighbors.
If, like the people in our valley, you want to grow things, it can be a good idea to first try to get such an eagle's eye view.
If no mountain is handy, try a map. Most gardeners know the dates of frost in their "zone," but there is much more to know. Find out the direction of the prevailing winds, the angle of winter sun, the temperature of June nights. Know the depth of the water table in August. All this is changing now, but the changes are still slow; the knowledge still matters.
From the mountaintop we can see that the valley runs east and west, and that the river is nestled against the northern hills; among these is Jasper Mountain, which looks much smaller than from here than from our garden.
Our own little piece of land is in the middle distance, on the long glide of slope from the south hills to the river. There is a seasonal creek through the property, dry in summer and a raging torrent in winter. This means that we're in a low-lying spot, subject to the movement of air. In winter the wind comes from the southwest generally, in the form of Pacific storms laden with incessant rain. These winds chill the soil, and the water that drops from them saturates it and renders it clammy. Pools lie on the surface in winter with no place to drain away to; the water table is very near the surface. Dig a post-hole anywhere and it fills to overflowing. So gardens tend to be planted late, well after the dates recommended on seed packets.
In summer the water table drops to ten, twenty, or even thirty feet, while the winds are continual, shifting daily from north to south. This is because of our mountain ranges. The sun heats the slopes, and air rises, drawing air away from the river bottom. At night, this air cools and sinks back down along draws and creek valleys toward the river.
Gardens in this drainage must be almost continually watered, as the tender plants are subject to drying out. Watering is more frequent than the books recommend; corn begins wilting within a day of its last soaking. At night the wind stops, but heat radiates away quickly beneath glittering stars, and temperatures can drop into the forties (Fahrenheit) by morning, even if it's been close to a hundred degrees during the day.
All this gives tomato lovers fits.
But we persist.
The wiser among us build wooden fences, or hedge their gardens about with shrubbery or even hay bales, to combat the winds and the heat loss. A heavy mulch would help, but the main mulching material is straw. The straw available locally contains a lot of weed seeds, and it invites tremendous armies of slugs and snails of all sizes. No one seems to care for black plastic, which takes a lot of fiddling with in the shifting winds, or newspaper, so most of the gardeners keep their soil bare and cultivated. The majority use herbicide to control grass, which is the primary weed.
"Beloved" and I have reason to believe herbicide is the greater evil in this case, and use the straw mulch, trying to stay just ahead of the weeds by piling on more.
It's January.
Most of us here have not had much chance this New Year's, to think about gardening. We have had record rains, with some manual gauges registering ninety-three inches. That other river, the one you can see to the southwest from the mountaintop, recently jumped its banks and flooded two hundred homes, making the national news.
The creek on our place, which doesn't even exist half the year, rose to the foundation of the house and flooded the potting shed, which we'd thought of as standing on high ground. Three fences were destroyed, and tons of earth moved in the general direction of the Pacific.
But the garden was spared.
The vetch that we planted last fall for green manure is intact, as are the piles of leaves and the compost bin. The wintered-over red chard is still useable, and our Detroit Red beets are superb. Meanwhile, our first harbingers of spring -- elephant garlic, growing from those tiny cloves that stay in the soil when we pull the crop -- have sprung from the cold, heavy soil, dotting the view from our kitchen window like randomly dibbled irises. And on the rainy nights, between the gusts of Pacific wind, we can hear the first chirruping choruses of the green tree frogs. We found one once in high summer, napping as it were, on the shore of a pond of water in the angle of a sunflower leaf. Their sound is a promise of sunflowers yet to come. We fall asleep to their frantic cheeping, and dream of green things growing in the sun.
,,,
This is a good month for clearing the potting shed.
Ours is the remnant of a decrepit lean-to, which the previous owner constructed out of whatever was handy, and used mainly to store trash and to indulge, with the use of a perilously derelict woodstove, in melting lead for a lifetime's supply of sinkers and split shot. As we stood looking at this structure, which had helped by its presence to bring down the asking price on the property, the neighbor, a stout and cheery farm woman who had befriended us in our first week with a gift of raspberry starts, fetched up on the other side of the boundary fence.
"You are going to rip down that eyesore, aren't you?" she asked. "First thing?"
So we felt we had an obligation, but once inside, we found the former owners had used solid beams, each eight inches square and sixteen feet long, for framing the roof. We are no longer young, and the prospect of dismantling those massive rafters dismayed us. Suddenly we thought of the "eyesore" as the "barn and potting shed," and within days began installing walls, windows, and doors. A coat of red fence stain on the barn boards of the walls, and cheery green trim on the window frames, produced a pleasing enough effect that our neighbor has never called us to account on our unspoken contract. At least, that's our interpretation!
One side of the building, about two-thirds, is given over to Beloved's ducks and her retired show rabbits. We put down straw bedding over the bare earth, and change it periodically; this becomes our favorite mulch and top dressing, as it is rich in duck and rabbit manure but not enough so to burn plants noticeably.
It is pleasant, every morning, to go hunting for eggs in the tiny barn. The ducks, Khaki Campbells, produce almost an egg a day each, which they never look at again, but they do like to build their communal nest in a different spot each night.
The other half of the building is the potting shed, which we also call the greenhouse, but that's stretching things a bit.
To construct this space, so necessary to the garden, we began by removing the south wall and framing in rafters for three sliding glass doors, which had been donated by a friend. These lean against the building and form a kind of large greenhouse window. The east wall, against the duck room, is for tools. Before doing anything else, we gathered the tools, old friends that had gardened with us on four previous sites, and hung them along the weathered gray boards: two round-point shovels, one square-point, one d-ring spade, a garden fork, a hay fork, two toothed rakes, one mattock, two stirrup hoes, a pry bar, a splitting maul, a bow saw, machete, lopping shears.
A comforting sight, these, lined up, waiting for orders. Even in the dead of winter we sometimes go out to look at them and touch each one.
The floor was a matter of concern. Former Owner had laid out some of the precious beams directly on the soil and covered them with 1/2 inch plywood. Dry rot and carpenter ants had made of this area a serious ankle trap. We asked our oldest boy and his friend if they wanted exercise. With the pry bar and the maul, they made a joyful noise and large chunks of erstwhile flooring flew out the door for about half an hour.
At first we considered using the bare earth, but as we knew we would be watering plants inside, we looked about for something more suitable. Bricks were what was wanted, but used bricks go for a dollar apiece hereabouts. I mentioned this, in a woebegone manner, to a friend.
"Well, I might have just the thing. There is a dangerous chimney on the house I use for an office building, which would cost me a fortune to have taken down by masons. If you can do the job I'll pay you and you can keep the bricks."
I thought this was a godsend and took our pickup truck and a rented forty foot ladder to the site. This turned out to be, to my horror, a two-story house with a sixty-degree pitch. I'd need the whole length of the ladder to get at the thing -- forty feet doesn't sound like much but just try it sometime -- but the bricks, the bricks!
Greed overcame good sense, and there I was, a million miles above the earth it seemed to me, plucking bricks from midair (the mortar was completely shot) and tossing them at random over my shoulder into space. They made a lovely truckload, though, and with the aid of our nine-year-old daughter, the next day, I laid them in a herringbone pattern, just like the ones pictured in garden books, and they made exactly the length and width of the room.
In the west wall we installed wood-framed windows in a row at table height, then dragged a suitable "bench" from the garage and painted it green ( for good luck? Why do we insist on green potting benches?). Using roofing nails, we covered the top of the bench with linoleum. The bench had been a kitchen cabinet once, but had long since lost its doors and hinges. We installed it along the west wall beneath the windows, and filled its shelves with clay pots, green plastic pots of all sizes, and tomato cans. With the addition of a watering can, two trowels, and a couple of bags of potting soil, the shed was done! Beloved ducked out.
I envisioned opening the door through the years, admiring the herringbone pattern of the bricks, the row of waiting tools, the sun shining in through the greenhouse window on ranks of flats bursting with lettuce, broccoli, chard...ahhh.
"Hello!" said Beloved, returning. "I need to put the duck feed, the rabbit feed, and the geese's cob in here."
Excuse me? Three large-size garbage cans? But there's no arguing with fate. Soon other items, large and small, came marching in, like animals into the ark. Boxes, lengths of hose, "white buckets" (even the green ones are called "white"), old pillows (she uses these to kneel on while working in the earth), you name it....
So now, in midwinter, when it's as dark as an eclipse all day anyway, is the time to clean out. Find out which things can go in the garage instead. Find all the broken plastic pots and move them out. Sort and stack the ones that are left. Take the edged tools, one by one, to the garage to be wire-brushed, filed, oiled, and have their handles linseed-oiled. Slowly the shed will begin to look useful. Even some of the beautiful floor begins to appear. But I don't think I'll ever get rid of those huge trash cans. They have made themselves At Home.
,,,
In January, here, it can be gray and rainy for weeks, as in December, but often it will clear up and be sunny and almost warm for several days, a condition known as a Blue Hole.
On such days I sometimes take my little green kayak over to the nearby reservoir for exercise. Unlike large motorboats and sailboats, kayaks tend to enforce a bit of solitude, which can be a good thing, I think.
At this time of year the lake hosts from hundreds to thousands of Canada geese, mallards, mergansers, and coots. The black coots, with their stubby beaks, are fun to watch, especially while landing on the water. They crash-land, skittering along on the surface tension of the water with their wings folded, until they stall out in their own bow wave and seem about to flip forward just as they come to a stop.
A few days ago, I came across a dying mallard. I realized, as if I had never thought of it before, that every wild duck, as do all of us, must die sometime.
She had been paddling, a bit lamely, in the same general direction as I had, but as I came up to her, several hundred yards from shore, she seemed to give it up. I thought at first she might be settling in for a nap. But napping, for a mallard, involves turning one's head about on that long neck and using one's back for a downy pillow. She had her head extended before her, and her face in the water, blowing bubbles, lifting weakly from time to time to inhale. I waited with her, about ten feet away; she showed no reaction to my presence and eventually her head sagged beneath the surface film a last time and the bubbling stopped.
,,,
Dogen tells the story of Great Master Zhenji, who met with a newly arrived monk.
"Have you been here before?"
The monk said, "Yes, I have been here."
The master said, "Have some tea."
Again, he asked another monk, "Have you been here before?"
The monk said, "No, I haven't been here."
The master said, "Have some tea."
The temple director then asked the master, "Why do you say, 'Have some tea,' to someone who has been here and 'Have some tea,' to someone who has not?"
The master said, "Director." When the director responded, the master said, "Have some tea."
Dogen concludes that "the everyday activity of buddha ancestors is nothing but having rice and tea."
Here in the West, when we, or at any rate some of us, read this sort of thing, we tend to get very excited by it, and to visualize becoming Buddhas ourselves by trying out this kind of everydayness -- sounds easier than sitting with our legs painfully crossed. But, of course, there's a trick to it, as one might suspect from reading of the long years Dogen put in, sitting cross-legged, before he felt himself to be, and was certified by his own master as, qualified to say something on the subject.
On the one hand, it's very hard to come to one-pointedness of mind (everyone says so), and on the other, nothing could be easier (everyone says that too -- as one master commented, "here I've been all these years selling water right by the river."). Dogen's genius, though, is that he doesn't try to mystify us by embracing either the difficulties and complexities of practice nor the easiness and simplicity of practice. He demystifies, by telling us to relax and simply do what's next. If you want to be a Zen nun or monk, you may begin anywhere, such as having a cup of tea -- that's a start, nothing to be ashamed of. Little steps. Come, he says, patting the tatami and the seat cushion. Sit.
,,,
I made soup in the crock pot and baked some bread. The soup is rice, tofu diced small, onion from the winter garden, green vegetables, peas, tomatoes, water chestnuts, thyme, basil, rosemary, spring onion greens -- garlic greens too. Threw half the tofu and onions and garlic into the soup, the other half into the mixing bowl ...
... to which I added a dollop of oil, tablespoon of salt, sixteen ounces of warm water, 1/4 cup of honey, a small handful each of bran and oatmeal and a half teaspoon of yeast, stirred, then added a cup of white flour, and several cups of whole wheat flour, stirring until too thick to stir, then floured up my hands a bit and kneaded, adding flour occasionally, until the dough "felt right." Covered the bowl and set it on top of the crock pot to stay warm and rise. You can flip the glass lid upside down and it's a stable enough warming shelf.
Looked out: it was raining heavily. Jasper Mountain completely obscured. Went over the supply of seed left over from last year's garden. I have thought that this year I might try to get some greens going early, so last month I cleaned up the potting shed/greenhouse. There's an old radio suspended from the ceiling, tuned to the classical station; it's a soothing place to work.
I put on a coat, hat, and rubber boots, slither out to the shed, fire up the music (Mendelssohn's violin concerto, I think), pick six old, cracked flats, load them up with potting soil, and spread seeds. Romaine lettuce, Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce, Red Russian kale, bunching onions, Detroit Red beets (for the greens, really), spinach.
Each packet I broadcast round the flat, then cover the seeds with peat, set the flats in the window and dose them with rain water.
Music off, close door, back to the house, boots, etc. off, check the dough, grease the cookie sheet, shape the loaves, put them on the sheet.
Jasper Mountain is somewhere beyond the window. External fog, internal fog. Wind, rain, and typos. When the bread has risen some, bake (in this oven) 40 minutes at 350 degrees.
Have we been here before?
Have some tea.
(To be continued)