Yardly Tales: Yuletide in the Trenches

The scene: a lovingly set holiday table. Present: the matriarch, mid-seventies. Deeply adored husband recently deceased, and now deeply missed. All four of her children present--a rare event. These include: eldest daughter, mid-fifties, funny, smart, bright, light, a people person; second daughter, also known as middle child, socially organized but also socially sensitive, talkative and cheerful yet unnecessarily nervous; the only son, also known as the black sheep, who has recently completed retelling the saga of his just-destroyed marriage, involving the fist-fight with the 18-year-old step-son, the calling of the cops, and the obligatory restraining order; youngest daughter, also known as the unplanned pregnancy or "the mistake"--this would be me--, who accidentally got a PhD in astrophysics, inadvertantly and inexplicably ostricizing herself from all but the recently deceased, deeply adored and now deeply missed father. Eldest daughter's fiance is present--she's newly engaged!! Horay! All are delighted. Middle-child's husband is present. He is a pillar of strength and stability and all are happy and calm in his presence! Horay! Middle-child's eldest, a daughter, is expected soon, with her fiance--she has just gotten engaged. Horay! Middle-child's son and girlfriend--both veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom, also known as the Iraq war--both made it out alive and are present at our table!! Horay! And she's writing a book which will come out soon, and is showing us some of her pictures for Iraq! Awesome! Youngest daughter's husband is present, who has chatted merrily to everyone and made the best gravy ever, and is well loved by all for being among other things the father of The Only Child at the Holiday Event, namely my beloved son. Who is, as of this Holiday 2004, six years old.

You will remember, that Holiday Season 2004 is only a few short weeks beyond the shocking and painful defeat of John Kerry and John Edwards by the Forces of Evil. So among all this, while dessert is being enjoyed, is my little son. Who begins with the following:

Son: Raise your hand if you vote for George Bush.

(In the interests of fairness, I will not reveal who raises their hands. But neither of his parents raised our hands. Instead, we held our breath. We had no idea where he was going with this.)

A few people put their hands up.

Son: Oh good. Maybe one of you can give me one good reason why anyone would vote for THAT IDIOT!?!?

(His parents are at once amazed and amused. This kid's got some serious comic timing thing going on!)

One diehard Republican reported that he/she just didn't vote cuz he/she was so disgusted with the party. The only other explanation I remember was:

Anonymous: Well, I think Bush is wrong about the war in Iraq. But I do agree with all his other policies.

Really?! Another intelligent right-winger, hoodwinked by the Republican Noise Machine.
Shocking. I invite all of you who feel similarly, as well as all of us who don't, to check out the new book by Victor Gold entitled, Envasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy Roller and Neocons Stole the GOP." This guy is a Barry Goldwater and Bush-the-Elder insider, so his words pack a particularly powerful punch.

Perhaps my next post will be about the destruction of my civil liberties so I can retain my status as a badged employee at NASA's GSFC. If you just can't wait til my next post, then simply Google "HSPD-12". Remember 1984? Now, you don't have to.

Easter in the Snow

It's Easter Sunday morning, and it doesn't look like we'll be going to church in 30 minutes, since I'm the only one awake! Yesterday morning we awoke to snow covering the trees (which all by now have flowers, and leaves and/or buds), and the daffodils and the newly green grass. It was surreal. The angle of the Sun in the sky gave you all the other visual cues of a Spring day. And yet, the ground was white.

Yesterday we spent the day with my nephew, his wife and daughter. We took in a puppet show-a new interpretation of Red Riding Hood that I thought was a yawn but the 9-yr-olds adored. Then off to the Udvar-Hazy extension of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. Following that, a round of Balderdash, and finally a long, luxurious dinner at the Melting Pot.

On the drive home, my son shared his opinion that churches should not use electric lighting at night, but rather torches. This, he explained, is because God is ancient, and he had nothing to do with the invention of electricity. It was a good jumping off point, since my come-back was that God had just as much to do with the discovery of how electricity might work as he did with the discovery of how torches might be fashioned. To which he replied that a lot of bad things have occurred on Earth due to modern technology. To which I could reply that people on the Earth had managed to cause quite considerable mayhem to each other for many years with little more than fire at their disposal.

Perhaps not a very rosy conversation for Easter eve. But at least it let us get to a point where we were talking about people doing good things and people doing bad things and God forgiving people if they realize what they've done and seek forgiveness. Good to see that the Sunday school is paying off. Now if I can just get all the adults into the class for a couple months!

Off to college in 15 minutes

My son is 9. Very funny and persuasive. A pretty good baseball player. And was born with an easygoing nature that goes a long way toward making parenthood pretty easy for his folks. But there remain two areas that frustrate us. Since he turned one, he refuses to try any new food, though he will strike previously acceptable foods off his list of consumables. And in the face of many organized efforts to teach him to go to sleep on his own, he still often needs a parent to lie in bed with him. I should mention that literally since the day he was born, he has refused to settle down for the night before 9:30 and often not til 10:30. From the day he was born.

My husband and I both work full time and we are both in busy music bands. We each have a sufficiently bloated schedule that the boy is often with only one parent from the time he gets home from school to the time he "goes to bed" for the evening. On one particular night between last Thanksgiving and New Years, he was home with me. We don't turn the TV on and limit his time on the computer or video games on school nights. So he was distraction-free. He was glued to my side the entire evening, talking to me mostly about imaginary space battles from his Star Trek imagination. Or reviewing with me plot points from episodes he'd seen before but didn't quite understand. Or just wanted to talk about again. And as the night lumbered along toward bed time, he became increasingly reluctant to let me out of his sight or away from his side. He wouldn't brush his teeth unless I was in the bathroom with him. He wouldn't go upstairs to put his pajamas on unless I went up too. He wouldn't lie down on the bed to read unless I lay down too. He wanted me to read to him. I agreed to every request, and finally, around 10:15, and feeling not a little bit exasperated, I manged to turn the light off.

"Mom?"

"Yes, son?"

"Will you tell me a story?"

In a much more negative and frustrated tone than I like to use, I answered with. "You really should be able to put yourself to sleep now that you are nine years old. You really need to think about why it is that you won't leave my side all night and then you can't just lie in your room and put yourself to sleep. Why is that? Can you give me any idea?" I was not expecting an answer.

He was quiet for a moment, and then responded with this. "Well, in about eight or nine years, I'm going to go to college." "Right." "And that time is going to pass by before we know it. It's going to seem like fifteen minutes. Or maybe two weeks." [A beat.] "And I really just want to get to know you, and spend time with you before then."

My negative attidude disappeared. Poof. I made up a story about a kid who found a spacecraft in his back yard and pushed a button and took a trip through the solar system, and counted my blessings. And I didn't stop the story until he was fast asleep.

A French Fry Garden

I have to admit, I didn't even look into whether cocoa beans would grow in Maryland. Maybe a Real Mom would have, after my son's adorable request for a cookie garden. I didn't even think about growing peanuts for peanut-butter cookies. Or sugar cane, for sugar cookies. What I did was go along another fundamental axis of his acceptable food space and plant potatoes. For french fries. We now have a french fry garden.

We now have the following growing in our yard, in addition to the 'taters: peas, spinach, lettuce, kale, chard, beets, carrots, parsnips, asparagus, mint, rosemary, parsley, sage and a bit of garlic leftover from 2 seasons ago but still finding a way to grow. I'm officially ready for the apocalyse.

The Warm and Bright Son

This weekend, the right of passage my 9-year-old son had been long fearing was upon him. Our tiny tortoise-shell kitty, 18 years old, was finally giving up. The divine Ms. M could no longer walk, and wasn't interested in eating or drinking late Saturday night. She would sit on our laps and very faintly purr a bit before returning to her comfort zone on the lowest shelf of the linen closet. I lined it with her favorite towels. My son told her "I love you. You are the best pet ever. Hopefully you'll pull through this, but probably not." He has always been a fascinating combination of optimist and realist. He is also generally calm and easy-going. (Those last two traits must have skipped at least one generation.)

She was still there the next morning looking up at me, lounging on her little shelf. Only her eyes were still, and she was gone. She looked peaceful and comfortable. We buried her in the backyard with a favorite toy (an aluminum foil ball, for batting), a soft pink baby blanket, and a love note from the boy.

A bit afterward, he offered this suggestion to his Dad and I: "Let's grow a cookie garden this year!" Thinking he was surely joking, we both responded with sarcastic laughs and "yeah, right"s. To which he retorted with a hint of impatience, "if we can't grow a cookie garden, can we at least plant chocolate chips?"

How 'bout the Greenbelt Victory Garden?

Well, today is the first weekend day in weeks when it hasn't been bitter cold here in Greenbelt, Maryland. So what better time to break out the seed collection, rake the last of Fall's leaves
from the raised beds, and get started with the early spring garden? It's also a great time to plan for the entire growing season ahead. What shall we plant? Where shall we plant it?

I did a bit of Web surfing while planning for the Woodland Gardens 2007 season, and
happened upon Liz' Pocket Farm blog. What a lovely and inspiring discovery! Her recent post about Victory Gardens got me thinking. During World Wars I and II the US government encouraged everyone to grow as much of their own food as possible via family and community "Victory Gardens." And the public responded enthusiastically. In 1943, more than half the US
population grew some fraction of their own food right in their own backyards or in neighborhood plots.

Now there is a move to bring back this concept. But for 2007, the goal is to combat global warming. The produce you consume has to be transported from someplace, on average 1500 miles away. So every bit you grow on your own turf helps reduce your personal impact on the planet. A good goal. Plus it's fun, tasty and satisfying to consume your own Earthly delights.
Well another blogger named Szarka left a comment on Liz's blog about hoping to share her produce with a local chef who could then create a "half-mile menu", on which all offerings were prepared using ingredients that were grown within a half a mile.

So I have gotten motivated now. I suggested that our local restaurant, the New Deal Cafe, come up with a "half-mile menu" in which they serve up soups, salads and what-not based as much as possible on the fruits, vegetables and herbs grown by Greenbelt's very own Victory Gardeners. There are many of us here in our little town. All that remains is linking up the avid gardeners with the New Deal Cafe chef! I did manage to get the president of the New Deal Cafe board interested. I'll keep this blog updated on our progress as the garden season progresses.

Coming back down to Earth, today we planted peas, three kinds of lettuce, and Kale.
There is plenty of rosemary to be had, and the last of the 2006 carrots and parsnips came out
of the ground this afteroon. Yippee, and yum!

What about Gardening?

I live in the indescribably good and beautiful town of Greenbelt, Maryland. People who own small cooperative housing units here---part of a group known as Greenbelt Homes Incorporated, or GHI---are community minded, friendly, environmentally conscious, and original. A smaller group of Greenbelters own single family homes, mostly smallish brick houses built in the 1950s through 1970s.

A lot of Greenbelters, myself included, work at nearby NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Another segment of the Greenbelt population is active in the local arts scene. We have an amazingly talented group of potters, a local restaurant, the New Deal Cafe---which hosts arts displays and sales, our very own Greenbelt Arts Center, a dance studio, a brand new Yoga studio, and the list goes on and on.

So what better place, both literally and figuratively, to begin blogging about the interfaces of science and art that good Old Greenbelt?

Many Greenbelters are devoted to gardening. A spectacular array of trees, shrubs and flowers adorn the small front yards of many GHIs. For others like me, the allure of picking, preparing and serving garden-fresh delights through the warmer months is encouragement enough to cultivate a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs. I wonder what a "Greenbelt Gardener's Market" would be like. I'm confident the displays of homegrown goodness would exceed most people's expectations.

For Mother's Day 1999, my husband double dug me a large garden plot in our backyard. The yard itself is in partial sun, but certain spots of it get enough light to go for the gusto and grow tomatoes, cucumbers and the other sun-loving veggies. Here are a few highlights of the last several seasons:

Throughout the summer of 2000 it was so cool and rainy that not a single tomato ripened before September. Then they all turned red, burgandy, yellow and orange nearly at once. My father, who was in hospice care during those Fall months, really enjoyed the offerings of fresh tomato soup back then. The color of the soup depended on the variety of the tomatoes used.
(Choices ranged from traditional red Roma, to the more pink Brandywine, through golden and yellow varieties.)

On Christmas morning 2001 my son and I picked fresh sugar snap peas for our dinner that night. It had been a mild winter so far, and most of the Fall vegetables we'd planted that August made it all the way through to the new year.

We ate many a fresh salad from the garden in September 2003, after hurricane Isabel knocked out our power for the better part of four days.

During summer 2005 we had a few parties out on our patio, which adjoins the garden. Several expedition parties would break off throughout the evening to sample the strawberries and other goodies that could be picked and eaten right in the garden. A bit hit was the copious asparagus.

In the spring of 2006 a nest of baby bunnies snuggled under the impromptu cold frame we'd built using an old greenhouse shelfing frame and a clear plastic cover. They were safe from predators, and very cute.

In January 2007, just a few weeks ago and before the brutal cold spell, we were picking and enjoying last Fall's carrots, parsnips, mint, parsley and even some volunteer broccoli.

In general, we have been pretty successful with cooler-season veggies. It is not uncommon for us to have virtually a 4-season garden, as our last Fall crops overwinter through the generally fairly mild winters. If we plan it right, we're eating spinach salads from the garden in March as we're planning what to grow for the upcoming seasons.

Now if it weren't such backbreaking and continuous work!