Just had to stop for ice cream…

Sometimes all you want to do is just simply get home…leave work, get in the car and drive, windows rolled up, A/C on, tunes playin’ on the radio…your own little living room on wheels transporting you to your big living room with a roof and a mortgage. This was a Monday all day long and my brain died while I was still trying to use it …so, I really didn’t need to stop at the grocery store on my way home….and if it wasn’t for that Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia I wouldn’t have…ah, yes, the ice cream…I’ll get to eatin’ that later, but first this thought is buzzin’ around in my head!

I get through the market almost unbruised…well, except for the kid in the grocery cart who thought it would be funny to stick his foot out in front of my cart as I went by, kicking me in the elbow, then me holding my funny bone (?) stopped to say something sweet to the kid and he began to cough God-knows-what all over me…maybe that’s why he stuck his foot out, he needed a target. So, now I’m on the home stretch and proceeding with caution to the self-checkout aisle where I’m convinced there must be a film crew up in the ceiling taking video to play later on The World’s Funniest Grocery Store Checkout Videos. How can those things possibly save anyone any time?…. I only go there to keep from interacting with a cashier that ignores me and a bagger who puts my watermelon on top of my $3.99/lb. tomatoes on the vine, but NO, the stupid checkout machine won’t leave me alone, it doesn’t let me put my groceries where I want to, sensing that I may be stealing something and tells me to wait for an attendant…but I NEED my ice cream so I hang in there, knowing that I’m only moments away from my car and I’ll soon be back home, if all goes well.

OK! Great!…I’m heading for the car and there’s a woman parked next to me loading her groceries into the back of her pumpkin orange Saturn SUV. She finishes, hops in her car and proceeds with caution to back out of her parking space…just then and from out of nowhere walks a woman directly behind the SUV while it’s in reverse…all I could say was NOOOOOOO, like in slow motion, I could just imagine her hitting the pavement and I was already thinking 911 in that split second…the SUV missed her by 1 millimeter, no more no less…it only took me a second to spurt out “YOU WERE ALMOST HIT BY THAT CAR!!!!” and she just looked at me and kept walking past and into the sunset not seeming to care that those steps behind that car might have been her last…she had no reaction and almost seemed mad that I interrupted her train of thought, well her train was almost de-railed!

Now, I’m in my car, trying to calm down from that near miss, I pull out of the parking lot onto the street and notice that a big green bug, a cicada, I believe, had attached himself to my side view mirror on the mirror side. At first I thought he would fly off if I slowed down…I knew that if I opened my window to shoo him off he would most likely fly into my car. So, my only choice was to drive…30, 35,….40…45 mph and he’s still hanging on! The longer he hung on, the more compassion I felt for him…we were bonding perhaps…well, not exactly…I just admired his chutzpuh, he was hanging on for dear life! Could it be that the bug had more of a survival instinct, appreciation for my efforts to save its life, than the woman behind the car in the parking lot? I’m rounding the corner now on the home stretch and 100 yards from my driveway…yes, he’s still there..Well, I’ll go inside and check on him later…he’ll be gone. A couple of hours pass and, hmmm, he’s STILL there, and it struck me…he was seeing his image in the mirror, probably thinking to himself, “hey, you look maw-val-ous daw-ling, simply maw-val-ous!” ..afterall, it is the height of the summer when all the bugs are lookin’ for love, not only the love-bugs. I guess he realized that he found a beauty and he wasn’t about to let her go now when he could see his unborn children in her eyes!

My mama always told me that there’s a lesson in everything we experience, but I do declare, I learn more from the animal kingdom than all that book learnin’ they teach in school. This bug was testimony to that which has been buzzin’ round in my head for the past 3 years (30 days at a time…), if you find that special someone whose mere reflection sets your heart on fire and makes you want to hang on for dear life, go with it, you never know where love will take you!

Dreams Realized….

Years ago I dreamed that I would one day have grandchildren and have the pleasure of introducing them to and teaching them something about gardening. Along with the garden I would have a few farm animals and instill into those ‘grandbabies’ the concept of where our food comes from and how to care for God’s creatures, perhaps while gathering a few veggies and eggs along the way. I would spend time digging in the dirt with them, picking up worms and looking at bugs. Well, tonight around 7:30 p.m. it dawned on me that my dream had come true….not on a farm as I had envisioned, but in the back yard of my residential lot…my urban homestead, The Little House In Suburbia!

This evening after work I picked up my granddaughter, we went to dinner and then, at her request, came home to work in the garden. As I do almost every evening, I carried each of the chickens to their ‘playground,’ a fenced in area of the garden where the chickens tractor a section of the new garden bed… (as part of their room and board) …As I carried each one I would stop so that Ava could ever so sweetly pet and talk to them before I placed them in their run where they would hunt and peck and scratch until dusk. As she began to pet Frannie Frances, the Araucana chicken with the tufts of feathers around her ears, Ava exclaimed, “Mimi, I can see her ears right there behind her feathers!” I had never told her anything about the anatomy of the chicken, she noticed that all on her own! How many 6 year olds know what a chicken’s ear looks like or even where to look for it? Well, now Ava does!

Ava then began to fill up her little watering can and to water the peas and then the okra…she declared, “I like fried okra!” On her way down the garden aisle …”Whoops, sorry Mimi, I just tripped over your plant…oh look, is that a baby watermelon?” (Don’t worry, no watermelon was harmed in the making of this wonder-filled evening!) Next, she put on her Dora the Explorer garden gloves to do a little raking in the coop when spying a well-pecked corn cob….”Mimi, how do the chick chicks eat this little tiny corn on the cob?” I explained to her that it was a regular sized cob before the chickens got a hold of it! After that, it was time to harvest some veggies; two zucchini squash (one with a blossom attached and upon opening the blossom we found some little ants…she thought that was curiously awesome), one ‘Flying Saucer’ patty pan squash (that name made her laugh!), a Japanese eggplant with a tiny little hole in it that she had to examine closely (note to self, get a magnifying glass before Ava’s next visit), a gypsy pepper and a radish! She was disappointed that the carrots weren’t ready to be pulled when she shared, “I’ve never in my whole life (of 6 years) ever pulled out a carrot from the ground, ever!” She carried the bounty around in a market basket for a few minutes and then remembered that she hadn’t checked the coop for eggs. The Easter Egg Hunt was on..she hurried into the coop and gathered the 4 eggs from the nesting boxes…not even concerned a bit that she might get some poo on her shoes, …”Mimi, it’s OK if I get my shoes dirty…” well alrighty then…right into the coop she went… just like a real farm girl! Then into the house we went for a good soak in the tub!

What a great evening, seeing the garden through a child’s eyes….my granddaughter and I sharing a very special time together, a dreamy time for me, a learning experience for us both, a time that I hope will remain in her memory in the years to come when she conjures up “Mimi”… I know it will always remain in mine.

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out if I’m nurturing the plants and animals or are they nurturing me….? Maybe Ava can help me figure that out…

Gardening grows more than food…it grows love!

For this moment….

everything is calm and as it should be …in my little world, my microcosm…

Last Wednesday I came home after shopping at the open air farmer’s market and took my time about getting out into the back yard to check on the hens…much to my shock and dismay, I found one of ‘the girls’ dead on the coop floor. Let’s just say that I wasn’t prepared for the emotions that would ensue. I mean, after all, the girls just had their 1st birthday on Ava’s birthday, May 28th. It was one of the Barred Plymouth Rocks, “Big Bird” as we affectionately called her. It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with the death of a pet, the last was Ebony, my 15 year-old black lab. That was so very difficult as I had to make the decision to end her suffering, tough stuff. I had no idea that I could get so attached to a chicken…just a chicken. Those silly hens each have their own very special personalities and Big Bird had a lot to say. She was the first one to speak to me when I walked out into the back yard, she used to fly up to the roosting post outside in the run as I approached just so she could look me in the eye when I came to the coop door. She also had a fetish for sweet clover leaves and flowers as no matter where she was pastured she just knew that the grass was going to be sweeter on the other side of the fence. She would fly the coop just as soon as I would put her in the enclosed pasture that the girls were supposed to be ‘tractoring,’ just to prove her theory.

The shock and sadness of Big Bird’s passing was so very powerful, a zillion thoughts filled my mind..she was just fine Wednesday morning when I came out to give them their morning cracked corn. Bob went out to see them later in the day but hadn’t checked the inside of the coop. One or the other of the girls is always in and out of the coop and nesting boxes either laying eggs or checking on somebody else doing the same. It just seemed like a normal day on ‘the farm’…no need to take a head count. By the time I went out there around 6:30 she was stiff and cold, not a sign of what might have happened, no struggle, no blood, her eyes closed, neck stretched out..just lying in a fresh clean pile of pine shavings as I’d just cleaned the coop the evening before. I lost it, like I have before….when human loved ones passed…denial “NO, NO!!!!”….”WHY WHY?”…then guilt…”What did I do, what didn’t I do…what should I have done?”…then….fear, “Oh my God!…what if it’s something contagious and they all die!” ..then the tears, sobs…moans and such deep painful empty loss…over a chicken…A CHICKEN! I can’t begin to tell you how much of a sense of peace and appreciation for life that those chickens have given me.

Everyday we go about our daily business…get up, go to work to a place we don’t want to be going, doing things we don’t want to be doing just as fast as we can while we multitask in order to do as many of those things as we can, looking at the clock and waiting for the moment that we are released, to go back home to the filling station and get recharged to do it all over again…ok, it may not be quite that mundane but for me the moments are superficial. Those moments are all about earning money to pay for things like food shelter and clothing…but MUCH more that that…many material things that cause me to serve THEM instead of the other way around.

I have had this opportunity for the past year to observe life from a different angle, a slightly familiar and nostalgic one. Through taking charge of growing some of my own food, my life had suddenly been slowed down a bit to the point of being able to be both a participant and an observer of the precious miracle of how things grow…first a patio container filled with a tomato plant, pepper plant and some herbs…then a 4’ x 8’ raised garden bed overflowing with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra and cucumbers. I couldn’t stop with that, next were 8 fuzzy 2 day old chicks in a homemade brooder in my laundry room with them looking up at me wondering if I was their mother…well, I was the next best thing, Mother Nurture but not Mother Nature. The chicks grew up so fast, as did the garden, first the tomatoes and then…they were laying eggs. It didn’t take long for me to become enthralled with it all and the possibilities that may be ahead….bigger garden, more animals…goats, goat cheese, more chickens and maybe someday ….a little farm! It all started with 1 tomato plant on the patio.

Big Bird’s untimely passing has been another reminder of how precious are life’s moments. Her death is so very fresh on my mind, but it’s her life that I must remember as it’s given me more reasons to want to be a good steward, to plant, to nurture to watch it grow and to be hopeful, knowing that with every harvest there will be some loss and that love can be found in the most unusual places…even in a chicken coop in your own backyard.

Big Bird died on June 3, 2009 was cremated on June 4th at Paws Whiskers & Wags Pet Crematory. Her ashes will rest in the garden and in the fields of sweet clover of Coop d’ville Farm ….wherever that may be now or in the future.