Herban Sprawl

18 August 2010

Recently a friend of mine ran into a hitch in the ongoing care of her elderly mother. It seems she, herself, was running out of steam in terms of driving back and forth to her mother’s small town and dealing with the team of caregivers. In an effort to look for that elusive thing we call “there just HAS to be a better way,” she discovered they were in violation of a whole raft of rules and regulations, not to mention underinsured.

In typical fashion, my friend began the process of research. Now when I say this, I am not being critical. We all have our quirks and hers is to find expert after expert after expert who often A) tell her what she already knows, B) scare the hell out of her, C) give her cover for her own ideas, or D) validate her feelings. But she can also spend a lot of time spinning her wheels looking for that elusive expert who will tell her what she wants to hear. Item C is often the reason. She doesn’t want to take credit for being the smart person she is because she fears the outcome. That outcome is generally resistance from her siblings.

She finally discovered a dandy assisted living center that offers “respite care.” After a whole lotta emotional convolutions,  lukewarm support from the sibs, who live waaaaay out of town, she got Mama installed in the place with a 70 year old caregiver available to run Mama to the salon, church and a few other social activities.

Mama is 85 and had suffered a few strokes that would have sent a lesser woman off to the cemetery. She is a bit wobbly, but she can manage, with help. Mama is also comfortably well-off, so staying at home with caregivers was an option for her. However, the issue now is that in order to bring her situation in compliance with the laws of the land, and to protect her by means of increased liability insurance, Mama’s nest egg is going to be depleted long before her body runs out of steam. What to do?

This is the problem many of my peers have been facing and for many it is uncharted territory, fraught with traps and misery. Once upon a time, our elders suffered debilitating strokes, massive heart attacks or cancer and they died within a short period of time. Those who didn’t often were taken care of in the homes of their children. But those were the days when there was a stay-at-home parent, household help and other support systems of that nature. In today’s society, we don’t see the spinster aunt taking care of the elderly parent in the family home. Nor do we see the set up we all read about in Tomi DePaola’s book, Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs. We now have rules and regulations regarding paying into Social Security, etc. etc. It’s complicated and it’s not an intuitive kind of thing. You have to know what to do. Hence the numbers of social workers and other “experts” who are out there to help us thread our way through the maze.

The cost of respite care, assisted living, nursing home care, retirement centers and so on is tremendous. And some of us discover, much to our shock and dismay, that our elder has done something really, really risky like taking out a reverse mortgage without the knowledge of the kids. Rossiferous@blogspot.com has a piece about saving a client from that trap. (Lucky for that client!) Elderly people who were able to sell their homes during the housing bubble in order to pay the upfront fees in the nicer retirement centers are the only ones who are in the catbird seat. Most of the elderly are not that fortunate.

And so it has fallen to my friend to try to organize her siblings. Her mother has lived far longer than any of them reasonably expected, and because her general health is excellent, there is no reason to believe she won’t last another five or so years as her body winds down. But my friend has been dealing with this for over ten years and she is plumb tuckered. The siblings live far away and don’t have a clue as to the pain in the neck it is to try to keep a team of decent caregivers in place. The news that they would soon have to have taxes and such deducted from their paychecks sent a few over the edge and they quit. It seems they were more than willing to work for unreported income.

In our own situation, after a revolving door of live-in caregivers, we lucked into one who had come in as a substitute caregiver. She had the bright idea to manage our dad’s care with a team of local ladies, and she volunteered to be the leader. She was worth her weight in gold. It was not without hiccups, to be sure, but there was nothing so difficult that two college educated daughters couldn’t figure out. One involved sending a letter informing the parental unit’s girlfriend that she needed to back off or we’d take legal action against her. It was a bluff, but it worked. I mean to tell you, having a shrieking virago bitching that the caregivers hired to provide assistance in the home - light housekeeping, cooking, personal care, companionship, errands, laundry - needed to be outside running the lawnmower or the weed whacker really got on our nerves as caregiver after caregiver quit. We had to do something.

Eventually it came together and it worked because my sibling knew the tax rules and so on. My friend’s family for some reason never figured on any of this, so the recent revelations were a shock to all concerned. I have to ask how many other families are in this boat and what do they do to bail themselves out?

For my friend, having her mother in the assisted living center has been a huge source of relief. She would like this to be a permanent situation, but Mama has to be convinced it is in her best interests. This means she has to have the complete picture laid out before her so she can make a decision. She has all her faculties, so, yes, she will be the one who decides. The siblings, however don’t have the same sense of urgency as my friend, and their fact-finding assignments haven’t been completed on time. Her emails to them have fallen on deaf eyes. I read them. I see why. She fails to be direct in telling them what she wants. She can’t be direct. She cannot be succinct. She does not have it in her to say what she feels: I am worn out, I have had enough, I never thought this gig would drag on this long and I want out.

And so after a lot of “miscommunication” in which she was positive I wasn’t hearing her, I forced her to participate in a simple exercise of -her favorite word - prioritizing. Then I composed a to-the-point piece for her to send to the siblings. It assigned them their tasks and it gave them deadlines with specific, businesslike reasons for those deadlines. All pointed back to one thing: she wants out. It’s what she did next that sent me over the edge. After freaking out because she needed to send this right away, she slammed her computer shut and headed down the road, saying she didn’t have time to read through what I had written and to process it.

Now I am no fool. I know she was cringing because I had been -gasp- direct. I knew right then she had absolutely no intention of sending it and that I had wasted an afternoon trying to help her make herself understood to her two no-nonsense siblings. I knew she was having trouble taking responsibility for her need to get out from under the whole business, and by golly there is nothing wrong with saying so. It ain’t like she hasn’t pulled her time with this. But she is single, on her own, and due to her inability to stay focused on one thing at a time and a propensity for “multi-tasking” where she gets not one single thing brought to completion, her entire life has been in disarray and she can’t stand the mess anymore. Imagine being saddled with attention deficit disorder and being obsessive compulsive. Get the picture? She cannot see that she has done a good job so far and she cannot see that she is within her rights to say to her mother, “Mom, I love you, but I have to have a break. You are going broke under the current system and I can’t manage it any more. You need to be in assisted living for our peace of mind for your safety and well-being. Being at home isn’t working any more. I can’t get help who will agree to have taxes deducted from their paychecks and we’ve run out of alternatives. I’m sorry about this, but this is the way it will have to be.”

What she did was get on that infernal earpiece thing that makes her look like she’s talking to herself and keeps her from focusing on her driving on a very dangerous piece of Virginia highway. She called one of her experts. Then she called me back and told me what the expert said. It was exactly what I had told her. She had to get permission to send what will likely be a watered down message to the siblings. And it will certainly become a watered down message that will revert to being indirect and never will tell them what she is within her rights to say out loud.

Furthermore, she has arranged for an expert who will deliver this to her mother, but it still involves her siblings doing their part to assemble all the facts and figures of the various alternatives so her mom can see it in black and white and to have the message delivered by her financial adviser. No one wants to be the bad guy.

My point in all this is that it’s business. There is nothing more littered with hidden landmines than family business. And there is nothing more emotionally charged than the care of our elderly within that structure. With our changing landscape of scattered families, we no longer have the same options and we no longer really want those options. Parents want to hang onto their independence, children struggle to accommodate that in order to preserve their parents’ dignity, and in the end, there has to be a safety valve or the whole thing will blow up. Without carefully put together estate plans in which we look to our own futures, we Boomers are setting ourselves up for even bigger fights.

See an elderlaw specialist today. Get your own affairs in order. Don’t be an ass. Your kids may deserve a little grief, but not this kind of nonsense.

5 August 2010

When Bk and I joined the Italian American Heritage Club, I had no idea it would progress beyond the monthly potluck supper, annual Christmas party and annual picnic. But then-president Joe had a vision for smaller groups that would bring folks together in their particular areas of interest. A language study group formed, a Keno group was signed up, and then there was the cooking and cookbook group that started as two groups and morphed into one. Obviously, I’m in the latter. If we ever get anyone to organize the bocce group, you can bet your sweet pallino I’ll be in that one!

Anyway, our group meets once a month for a kind of potluck, or a demonstration and lesson. Always we bring recipes to share. Our goal is to create a cookbook that reflects the different regions represented by the members of the club, as well as pictures and remembrances to document our people. As the months have progressed, we find ourselves staying longer and longer to talk. It’s become a wonderful experience for me since my upbringing was so utterly assimilated.

Last month I taught noodle-making and it was a gas! We were crammed into Millie’s kitchen, with four noodle machines clamped onto the four corners of her kitchen table. I brought dough that was ready to be rolled and cut, but had them mix their own in pairs. While their dough rested, we rolled out the pasta I’d brought. The flour was exceptionally dry and the extra large eggs didn’t do the trick. We had to moisten the balls of dough and some of it was really hard to roll out. But it was a good learning experience because that happens from time to time. It also happens that the dough is too soft and more flour is needed. Regardless, we had a lot of fun.

Afterward, we cooked up some of it and had it with a great tomato cream sauce from Marcella Hazan, as well as some home made pesto from Nancy. Millie had made a big salad and Teresa had made bruschetta to get us started before the pasta event. And then there was Sylvia’s spumoni bombe. To die for, I tell ya! We ate and we critiqued, we ate and we talked, we are and we raved about the food, we ate and we talked. It was then that I began to really appreciate just what I’d gotten myself into.

Each summer when school was out, Anna and I would pile into the car and drive to Illinois. I left her in Orland Park with Mimma, her delightful mother, and I went west on I80 to LaSalle. On the return, I got to spend a day or so with her family and that’s where I learned about the true Italian family. What with Anna’s decampment to Rome, that annual injection of ethnic conscious raising has ceased and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until this group gelled.

Not everyone is Italian. Two are married to Italians, but they enjoy cooking Italian food. I’m a half Italian, raised as a WASP, and the others are very much of the vine. What we share is the common experience of cooking and sharing around the table. As women, we have much to talk about. We’re all at the age where we have aged parents, spouses or others for whom we provide care. When we talk, we share insights, tell stories and generally have become closer over the plates and forks.

Today, two of us decided it’s been too hot and sticky and wearing to meet this month. The dog days are upon us and we’re plumb tuckered. Aside from that, she is trying to muster the courage and energy to deal with clearing out her mother’s home. Mama had a freak fall last year and did not survive a broken neck. It’s been so rough because her daughter has been racked with guilt. And so we talked about the experience of caring for elderly parents - ours and that of our friends who are going through it as well. We talked about the feelings of guilt when we don’t do everything just right and the reluctance to let go when it’s time to do so.

When I hung up a few hours later, I realized what we have is a small group ministry. I have no doubt that this group of cooks will rally around when a couple of our older members begin to need help. I have no doubt that any more family tragedies or deaths will be made less lonely by the loving and generous presence of these women. And I know that when we meet in September, we will have a whole lot of catching up to do. This is a fine way to get my Italian mamma fix.

28 July 2010

It’s been a hot, dry July and between running the sprinkler and sorting books, we managed to attend a Unitarian Universalist summer gathering for a week. Afterward, BGP (Best Gal Pal) and I had some time to ourselves to review some recent incidents in our respective lives. There were so many commonalities that it was a bit on the spooky side, but at the same time, it was so validating to have someone else nod vigorously and say out loud, “I know exactly what you mean.” One of the things that I’ve been thinking about since then has to do with how we are perceived within certain circles.

For example, as an employee in the city school division, I know I was perceived as difficult, and probably unmanageable. This in spite of the fact that I always did what I was told and reports were completed thoroughly, on time, and with no runs, drips nor errors. I know I was good at what I did because I was persnickety about conducting pre and post tests to measure the progress of the children. Okay, I can admit to loving the process of diagnosing and correcting reading difficulties, and analyzing the informal reading inventories, and later the additional spelling stage inventory I administered. Thanks to that, I had empirical evidence that I was good, and every year I had the data to show just how good. The longer I did it, the better I got.

But for me to say, in certain circles, that I was damn stellar at the job could come off as arrogant and offensive. Never mind I had the data to back up my claims. It was just the idea that I could sit there, giggle, and say, “Oh, yeah. I’m really good at this. I love doing it, I always get results and if I don’t, it’s because there is a deeper learning issue that requires a different set of teaching skills and knowledge.” My BGP was also exceedingly good at what she did. The unfortunate problem was that she was overshadowed by an ex-husband who was doing the same job, who shifted the balance of work onto her, and then had the nerve to tell others that she didn’t know what she was doing. The woman who followed her in her job can tell you a whole different story, and so can I.

Recently she has been handling a sticky, tricky set of circumstances and with her usual attention to every little detail, she has managed to paint herself into a corner. The thing is, the paint is dry now and she wants to leave the corner. But those with whom she has been attempting to conduct a cooperative working situation don’t hear what she is saying. When she says, “I need to step away from this because the decision needs to be made apart from me,” they hear “I can’t deal with this any more.” That may be partly true, but it isn’t the message. They eliminated the key piece that I just eliminated in recounting the incident, which is, “I’m afraid that [our loved one] is going to base a decision on what [s/he] thinks I want to hear, rather than on what [s/he] really wants. I need to step away and let you all help with this so that I am no longer the issue and you can focus the attention on genuine needs.”  Nowhere in there did she say, “I can’t deal with this.”

I heard her, but that’s because I was listening. Even the sib who questioned her endlessly to be sure there was complete comprehension has some holes in understanding. I’m left to ask, “What the hell is so hard about what she told you?” And yet, I have been in the same boat.

Many years ago, I worked my way through Julie Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way.  In the process, I had an epiphany when a buried memory came out. The remark that was made to me was this: Well, you can’t make a living as an artist. It really hurt and instead of getting mean and trying to disprove it, I withdrew and quit doing art during the years when I should have kept it up in order to get better. I concluded I must not have been any good.

In the interim, I have honed my hand work, creating some mighty nice pieces of needlework. It satisfied my urge to create and everyone got lovely handmade gifts over the years. Recently, I recounted the above statement to a woman that I had always looked up to and tried to emulate. She responded, “Well, she knew how hard it was for me to find jobs.”

Same statement, two different interpretations. Then it hit me, I don’t ever recall her trying to do art and have shows or sell it. “Hmmmm,” I thought, “hmmmmm.” I heard, “you aren’t good enough,” and she heard, “it’s just too hard.”

What it all boils down to is that what we say and what we intend may not be what is heard or understood. I made a beautiful card that I sent along. It was designed specifically for that person, and it turned out really well. The response was that it was beautiful, but the added, “we kept looking at it and turning it over because we couldn’t believe you made it” was troublesome. There were two ways to interpret that. One was that they couldn’t believe that I had made such a great thing - in spite of all the fabulous handmade things they’d gotten over the years. The other was that it was so skillfully done it was hard to believe it was handmade.

We live in an age when a carelessly tapped out message in an email can come across as rude and inappropriate, depending on the recipient’s point of view. It’s hard enough to keep on the straight and narrow in face to face conversations, but emails and texts have complicated it far beyond anyone’s comfort zone. Young people are particularly cavalier in these things and they often forget to take into account the recipient of the message. They fail to include words that indicate respect for their elders. Many are the conversations of parents who had had to haul their young’uns up by the short hairs for those kinds of infractions. However, kids learn by what they observe.

Too often their elders are not modeling the kind of behavior they want their children to emulate. The cell phone gets answered at the dinner table, for example. They blab on the phone while they are careening down the interstate and yet they tell their teens they’d better not be doing that. It’s sort of like my mom’s constant statement: don’t do what I do, do what I tell you. Somehow I think I was more easily intimidated by my mother than today’s kids are by theirs!  I didn’t drink until I was 21 and I sure as hell didn’t try smoking.

The lesson in all this is that we need to be mindful of the act of really listening. We need to hear ALL of what we are being told, not just the Cliff Notes. And even then, we must remember that when we speak, our listeners, no matter how assiduously they use their ears, may not hear what we say. “You aren’t good enough” is a lot different from “it’s awfully hard.” When we write, we need to pay attention to our audience. “I can get somebody else” typed to an elder is rude and disrespectful. Type it to a contemporary and it’s a whole different story. It’s all in the eyes and ears of the beholder and no matter how easy it gets to stay connected and to communicate in a nano-second, it still pays to attend to the conventions that make for civilized and respectful communication.

Happy Independence Day!

I was engaging in some uniquely American activities today and one of those gave me a little time to sit still and ponder the nature of a holiday such as this. I’d made some baked beans with root beer from this month’s issue of Bon Appetit, the brats were simmering in Schlitz (the beer that made Milwaukee famous) with onion slices, and I was sitting on the front steps shucking corn. How much more American can you get? Oh, yeah, and I had a glass of iced tea on the table with the Sunday crossword that was July 4th themed.

We also made a run to the hardware store, where there was an entire wall given over to flags, flag poles and the like. The hardware store is definitely an all-American institution, and in spite of loving our large home centers, it is to the hardware store that we head when we have a peculiar problem to fix.  Not only are the people who work there knowledgeable, but there are also the other people in there who have had the same problem and are happy to share their solutions. It is community at its finest.

Anyway, there is no flag flying from our house. Neither of us is into flaunting our patriotism. Big Kitty is a vet, after all. I really don’t think he has anything to prove in that department. But our across the street neighbor has suddenly sprouted a flagpole next to her front stoop, which is rather odd. She doesn’t leave her house - ever - and in all these years, she has never given in to the fad of flying banners that proclaim the household’s college ties, the seasons, or even anything remotely interesting like a custom made flag. Now here is where my pickiness comes into play. I have this thing about people who don’t mind the rules about flag flying.

My next door neighbor - the one with the falling down house and weedlot for a yard - had one that became so utterly tattered and disgusting that I really wanted to rip it down and call the Boy Scouts. I said that one day at work and the other people at the table looked at me like I was crazy. Come to find out, none of them ever paid the slightest bit of attention to the condition of Old Glory, nor did they know you aren’t supposed to fly her at night unless she has a spotlight on her. If she gets frayed, you need to take her down, fold her properly and call the Boy Scouts or the local American Legion to take her for a proper send-off.

So here is my neighbor across the street with a new flagpole with her patriotic symbol gently flapping in the breeze. There is no spotlight and it hasn’t come down at night. She was a young hottie during WWII, so you’d think she’d have some idea. They used to teach this stuff in school, y’know.

Myself, I’ve never gotten into the whole flag-waving thing. My excitement over the Fourth of July is pretty low-key. Besides the opportunity to make brats the way Hare’s Uncle Bob made them at his place on Lake Geneva (that’s Wisconsin, folks), I see this as a day to reflect on what is important about being an American. As I shucked corn, the manna of the Midwest, I thought about fireworks and how as much as I like them, we’ve never gone to see them. One year we saw them from step-father’s window at the hospital, which was a great vantage point. But we’ve never gone to the trouble of packing ourselves off to see them. My darling niece adores fireworks, so whenever we were visiting Dad around the 4th, we were absolutely certain to go to Peru and watch them over the river. Very cool.

Then I got to thinking about why my grandfather insisted that his family speak English, “because we are in America,” and yet he never became a citizen. The grandmother who always talked about The Old Country had naturalized and never missed an opportunity to vote. My father worked in the Navy Yards in Charleston, SC during the war, and then in the Seneca Shipyards in Illinois, where they made tanks. His brother and my mother’s brother served in the Army. One was in the European Theater and the other in the Pacific. Uncle Joe was wounded at Guadalcanal. After reading about it in history class, I was amazed my handsome uncle made it home with only shrapnel in his foot. I often wondered what kind of “shrapnel” disturbed his sleep at night. Uncle Earl served in Korea and is wont to get misty-eyed over that experience. Uncle Cookie served on the U.S.S. Washington as, you guessed it, a cook. He finds it easier to bake cakes for 2500 crewmen than for a family of five!

We all have stories that come from our families’ experiences as Americans. As parts of our country duke it out over immigrants, I become saddened. None of my people came here with any of the folderol we now have. In 1905 there weren’t green cards or visas. People came here, they got miserably low-paying jobs doing the work that the “real Americans” would not be caught dead doing, and they somehow managed to make it economically, even through the Depression. They struggled to learn English and some still spoke their first language at home.

So what’s so different about the people who sneak into our country, look for those low-paying jobs that “real Americans” wouldn’t be caught dead doing, and who contribute positively to our economy? Walk into the Walmart on a Sunday….the people who are neat, clean, and with their families…mother, father and adorable children… are the Latinos, not the “real Americans.” The people who work from morning until late at night are the Asians, not the “real Americans.”

This is Independence Day and the people who come here looking for opportunity know a good thing when they see it. The rest of us should take heed. There is nothing wrong with people who honor their heritage by speaking their first language while they struggle to learn English. Heaven knows, most of them do better at it than the “real Americans” who never bothered to pay attention to subject verb agreement in English class. This is the sort of thing we should be celebrating on a day like today. That we have the kind of country that other people would give anything to be a part of.

It’s time to put the brats on the grill. They can go back into the beer after they’re browned. Yep. All-American food for an Italian-Slovenian-American and a Swedish-Scots Irish-French-American. It’s the U.N. here on Snob Crick and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

I got a few pats on the back for awarding Hizzoner da Mare of Roanoke the Herban Sprawl Mensch Award because of his genuine and heartfelt expression of sympathy and attempts at bridge building yesterday. Thanks to those who feel as I do that the Roanoke Times goes out of its way to highlight his gaffes, but totally ignores what he does absolutely right or above and beyond the call.

Our message to Hizzoner: sidewalks, curbs and gutters on Colonial, Brambleton and some other similarly heavily traveled streets would keep pedestrians safer. We believe they trump non-essentials like an amphitheater or a water park or a Mill Mountain restaurant for the affluent. We’d also like to encourage him to continue thinking regionally and to push for county participation in Valley Metro in order to provide public transit to jobs in outlying pockets, and also to extend those hours to the third shift which is so essential for the economic well-being of the entire valley. The entire Valley needs to reduce its dependence on the automobile. Sidewalks are a start and improving public transit is a worthy goal.

25 May 2010

Regular visitors to the Sprawl know that food plays a huge part in the lives of Big Kitty and me. If we’re not toting a dish to the Italian-American Heritage Club, we’re gearing up for a dinner party. Maybe it’s the simple day to day stuff, but whatever, food is a big topic around here.

This winter we got a brochure in the mail from a cooperative in Floyd County, mecca to the locavores. We perused it seriously because this is something we’ve been threatening to do for a while. Our friends, Spike ‘n Jane, have bought shares for a couple of years now, and Jane, being the ultra fab cook that she is, is delightfully challenged to find recipes for her weekly treasures. One week they were unable to retrieve their bag of food, so I went to the drop off spot and got the goodies for them. I was intrigued, to say the very, very least.

We read through the brochure and decided we wanted to participate. We figured a half share would do nicely. It was expensive - a bit over $500, but I’m one of these average-it-out-over-the-life-of-the-product shoppers. By my reckoning, it would be well worth it. So, I filled out the form, wrote the check, picked my preferred delivery day and location and waited to see if we were in. (There are only so many shares, you see.) Pretty soon I got an email. We couldn’t have Tuesday at that location, but we could have Saturday. Good enough.

Two weeks ago we got our first bag of produce. There was a bag of the mixed greens that are always so half dead at the store. There was a bag of spinach. There were hydroponic tomatoes, a hydroponic seedless cuke, and a bunch of thyme that was picture-worthy. We are our way through that bag with gusto. I hadn’t made spinach salad in eons, but for this fresh stuff, I boiled a couple of eggs, nuked some bacon, chopped some red onion and mixed up a vinaigrette. We wolfed it down like oinkers.

The maters were really good. I put them on the windowsill, and unlike grocery store maters, they did what home grown ones do. They ripened beautifully. The cuke was skinny and crunchy. Deelish.

On Saturday, I jumped out of bed and got myself out the door early. I wanted to see what was in there so I could plan meals. More spinach, more mixed greens, more hydroponic maters and a matching cuke, AND a quart of strawberries. Sacre coeur!

Today I made some orange almond scones. They are big, fat and perfect for splitting in half for shortcake. I cleaned up the strawberries, and popped one in my mouth. Sweet! I hated to put any sugar on them, but a tiny amount of powdered sugar helps their juices run, so I was very stingy with the sugar and stirred it in carefully. These are not the huge, tasteless berries from California or Florida. These are the tasty ones you pick yourself in the fields locally. These are the ones I routinely miss because my stubborn Midwestern mental clock says strawberries don’t arrive until June. Yeah, well, here in the Roanoke Valley, they show up in May. Ya’d think I’d get it straight. The farmers fixed me up. I’m purring.

The concept of community supported agriculture is gaining traction all over the country, and foodies everywhere are realizing how much better the food tastes when it comes straight from the farmer. I used to shop at the farmers’ market downtown, but what I learned was that many of them relied on lots of chemicals for weed and pest control, not to mention fertilizers that were derived from petrochemicals. I’m not a huge organic freak, mind you, but not all of that locally grown stuff was that great. What we get from our CSA is organic and from a group of farmers who are committed to working with Mother Nature, instead of against her. By buying shares, we are supporting them ahead of schedule and insuring they’ll have a market for their produce. It’s a leap of faith on our part because Mother Nature can get kind of fickle, but we can trust these folks to do their best to deliver $500 worth of food over 22 weeks. We’re all gambling here.

I didn’t make salad tonight. I was a little tired of greens, but tomorrow is another story. The fresh greens happen now while the weather is a little cool at night. Soon the focus will shift to hotter weather veggies, and we’ll be pining for those crunchy salads of spring. Meanwhile, I’m hoping we’ll see asparagus in next week’s bag, but if it’s strawberries again, you won’t hear me whine!

Our CSA is Good Food, Good People. We highly recommend them!

19 May 2010

It’s been busy hereabouts. We elected a couple of new city council members, the Local Colors Festival went on with nary a rain drop, and I’ve been a shrub thug, whacking and trimming.

The Italian American Heritage Club sold a variety of homemade cookies and went home with empty containers. Our president set up a bocce court and we had a steady stream of customers anxious to try the deceptively simple game. What pleased me to no end were the dads who asked where one got a bocce set and who left discussing who had the flattest yard for setting up a court for the kids.

While lining up to march in the parade of nations, I had the distinct honor of being ignored by Hizzoner da Mare. I was standing with his former secretary and the slight was deliberate. As I told Ruth, he’ll have to do a whole lot worse to lose my vote! I then proceeded to tell her that I had been a pain in the neck complaining about the city Democrats. We had a good laugh.

Okay, I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. Our mayor knows his job and he’s good at it. Who the hell else on city council would be such a good sport? He helped pull Pearl Fu’s rickshaw to the stage! City council member Court Rosen, who is doing a creditable job on council, spoke, but he was as dry as a desert. Hizzoner got up and did his thing with gusto. He makes you glad you live here because he’s so glad he lives here. This is what a mayor is supposed to do and Hizzoner, who wears his emotions on his sleeve, is the best ambassador we could have. So go ahead and ignore me, Old Friend. As long as you keep doing what you do, I’ll have no reason to cheat on you!

We have also had a lot of rain lately, which was heaven sent. Things were reaching a bone dry state and we gardeners were hauling hoses and running up our water bills. This rain was just dandy and thanks to it happening over the course of a few days, I dabbed a little Eau de Off behind my ears and, handy Japanese weeder in hand, was able to cultivate with ease.

That wasn’t all, though. I spaded out a line where railroad ties had rotted out and put up a two block high wall today. It isn’t straight, and it’s not exactly level, but then neither is the Great Wall of China! It is long, though, and goes right to the property line, just under the quince that had one of Fatso’s burrow holes. The clay was just soft enough to facilitate plopping down blocks and getting them more or less even and level. I didn’t even bother with using a string or the level - I just eyeballed it and am happy to have it up and done.

Next up is the spot where I can build another terraced bed above this particular garden. However, since the clay is so pliable, I’m thinking forking up the lower bed and sifting out the wild mint roots, the spiderwort roots and the violets might be a good thing to do first. Definitely, this is stuff to do on overcast, cool days like today.

Digging around and building stuff like this is good for parsing out problems and thinking about the issues of the day. It’s also good for counting blessings. I did a lot of that today while I hauled big heavy blocks downhill and jockeyed them around. My achy and creaky joints got a workout, and I noticed a few muscles that probably needed some working in order to build strength. A guy I went to high school with went head over the handlebars of his bicycle about a year ago. He is a quadriplegic now, and no longer able to practice his trade. I know he’d swap places with me and my little aches and pains in a heartbeat.

And that’s what we always have to keep in mind when we find new muscles we never knew existed until they rebel. It’s truly a privilege to be able to move about freely, even when it means learning to compensate for weak lower back muscles, or stiff quads or hams. Building a wall, even though it isn’t ruler perfect, is a big job, but it was a pleasure to be able to move dirt around easily and to heft big ole blocks. I even found a railroad spike!

My most recent angel card is beauty, and that’s another thing this type of work facilitates. One can ponder the beauty of nature. On Sunday I was giving the maters and basil a thorough drink of Miracle-Gro when I was visited by an annual visitor. She hovered around the red tomato cages, which had caught her eye, and let me know she was baa-aack. I finished watering the one plant, dashed inside and fixed the feeder. Ran back outside and hung it up, then went back to my fertilizing job, keeping an eye out. Where else but in my garden would I be inches away from a hummingbird who wanted me to fix her some dinner?

Looking at my wall from the den window, I am struck by the idea that it’s a metaphor for most of life. We spend a lot of our time, trying to keep things from eroding or tumbling hither and yon. Walls don’t have to be beautiful; they just have to get the job done. If they keep soil in place, or provide a protected spot for a tender plant, they’ve done what they’re supposed to do. When the mayor pulls a lady with Parkinson’s disease in a rickshaw to kick off a festival she founded 20 years ago, he’s holding up his end in more ways than one. I call that good building.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Ellington~

29 April 2010

Every now and then we mere mortals are lucky enough to meet people who not only share our interests, but have the gift of helping us expand them into the all-encompassing, life-changing focuses of our being. Such was the case when I bought three tarragon plants from a lady with dysphonia on the city market in 1988. She in turn introduced me to a friend of hers who became the focus of our lives by means of his nursery, generosity to our herb group, and the sheer force of his knowledge and enthusiasm for that which grows.

Through circumstances too personal to relate here, we had a parting of the ways. It wasn’t anything either of us wanted, but we needed breathing room from one another. You could call it a separation of necessity. But for me, even though we didn’t have contact, my friend was with me every day that I worked in the yard. From the bleeding heart he planted when he sped to my side the day the cat died, to the vitex that looms over the corner of the garage and porch, he has been here with me. From the partial circle of Stella D’Oro daylilies we planted to the Queen of the Prairie that hangs on in spite of being in the wrong place, he has been a presence looking over my shoulder. When I “moved out” of my house, emotionally, I felt guilt about neglecting things. Somewhere in there, the climbing hydrangea he planted finally decided it was time to bloom. I fretted about the nandina that he stuck in next to the porch every winter has heavy snow bent it over like an old woman with a dowager’s hump.

Some personalities just don’t leave your life, even if their physical presence has. We’re supposed to not like it when that happens, right? We’re supposed to try hard to suppress that presence. I never could, and I just never tried. Even if we weren’t speaking, he was still here, along with the hostas we stuck in under the dogwood in front.

This week I realized he was on Facebook. Facebook - that bane of our modern society. I just couldn’t walk away from that opportunity. The planets were aligned and it was time to thank him for all that he had given me. So I took a deep breath and sent him a missive telling him about the triumph of Uncle Doc’s Garden and told him that if he’d be my friend, he could see the pictures. Then I hit send and did what I do best. Worried.

It was a tough rift. I wasn’t sure if he could trust me enough to take the leap. But when you love a friend, you have to give it a try and just hope that the divine spirit finds that place of forgiveness in our hearts and punches the Activate Button.

It’s been a long time and a lot has happened since then. He moved away, I quit my job, my dad died, the kids got married, Uncle Doc got me hooked on hostas and unusual trees, my knees acquired some ‘art-ritis’ and heaven only knows what all. I was afraid he’d grown away, but the fact that he was ‘friends’ with two other pals on Facebook seemed to indicate he was hanging onto some of his old ties. I buried myself in the task of making cards for the upcoming herb festival where a friend and I are going to try to sell our art work.

Then I got a reply. He’d accepted the friend request. And a little later, he responded to my message. Every November, he said, he thought about the old Ann Landers day of reconciliation… Okay. I admit it. I cried. I just really, really wanted to hug that ole bag of bones.

There is so much to say and so much to catch up on. It’s hard not to just spend an entire day writing the history, but these things take time and I’m just grateful we’re both willing to heal the breach and carry on. That wicked sense of humor, encyclopedic knowledge of garden stuff, fabulous sense of what goes with what…I want it back. In return, I’m not sure I have that much to offer, but I can give my heart to a friendship and feel very, very lucky to have that chance. Like I said, he never really left. I’ve got the yard to prove it.

“My often-wise dad says “sins are either forgiven or paid for, they can’t be both.” The churches tell the story that God had to kill rather than just forgive, and they call the day it happened “Good.” Spent 37 years as a good Christian trying to get it. Never did.” The Rev. Meg Barnhouse

I read the above words from Meg on Facebook, and as usually happens when I read her pithy messages, I find myself ministered to in the most concise possible fashion. At this time of year, when the churches are busy trying to get people in the door to save their souls and get their pledges, I find myself offended left and right. Usually I don’t comment on it and just try to do the forgiveness thing. But this year, what with the door hanger thing stuck to my front door, all the yard signs inviting us to Easter services, and a friend’s daughter all caught up in her newly found religious fervor, I kind of snapped. I got angry. Angry is not good for me. It expends energy that I need for more positive and enjoyable things.

Like Meg, I never was able to square the Biblical contradictions. She, being a learned minister who transitioned to Unitarian Universalism, has a lot more to say on the subject and it always makes sense. Like the time she asked, “which family values are we talking about?” She was referring to passages in the Bible that allowed for rape, incest and such-like.

I’ve done my reading and am still doing it from time to time. Unlike Big Kitty, I did not attend Sunday School regularly, and had to be forced to go through our church’s catechism classes. None of it ever made a lick of sense to me, and after all the reading I’ve done, I have to agree with Thomas Jefferson when he mused that sooner or later all thinking men will turn to Unitarianism. The trouble is, and I think deep down Tom knew it, is that “men” don’t necessarily think. At least not rationally. And these days, the biggest Bible thumping “men” are men who seem to have a lot of sexual insecurities!

And so we find the killer of a doctor sentenced to life imprisonment on Maundy Thursday. He still thinks the doctor deserved to be killed. I’d like to know who appointed him judge and jury? God? If he thinks that, he needs some tutoring in reading comprehension because abortion occurred in the Bible and God never struck anyone dead for it. Truthfully, people who read history know there have been folks performing abortions ever since somebody figured out how to do it. I really think he was hoping he’d be sentenced to death, though. Trouble is, the chances are good he wouldn’t be rising from the dead post Shabbos, so he can kiss good-bye his hopes for martyrdom!

At any rate, this morning on Good Friday, the grocery store was a bit busy, but I managed to slide in and nab a lot of asparagus, herbs, green lentils and some chicken. We’re going to have a very warm weekend, and I wanted to make sure I had meals covered so I could spend it outside.

On Sunday, our lovely neighbor and we will convene over a delish spiral cut ham. The point is, on holidays, whether we worship in some fashion or not, we come together as people of various faiths to share a meal and enjoy each other. We are mindful of the fact that Mother Nature reminded us who’s boss this winter, and we are grateful for the warmth and sunshine of an early spring - one that will likely see us having a lot of fun at an outside table!

Shalom Shabbat, friends. May the Goddess heap blessings upon the fruits of your labors.

1 April 2010

It was a beautiful day today, with sunshine and 75 degree weather. It sent the Old Sprawler digging to the bottom of the closet for a tee shirt! I set out for the herb garden, but realized the garden I’d installed last summer, Uncle Doc’s Garden, was coming to after its winter nap and there were so few weeds, I just took the path of least resistance.

Miss Mary the Fairy’s tree house was askew, and I had an idea I could put my mitts on the Stren, so once that was found, I set to work on renovations for her. I wasn’t crazy about her dooryard and neither was she, but I promised her I would hunt about for better patio material for her. She isn’t sure she likes being on the far side of the tree because she said she can’t see what I’m up to from there. “Well, new patio pavers might mean the door moves, and if the door moves, you can pick out a new spot, Miss Mary.”

At long last the lilies of the valley that I rescued from my mother’s flower bed are taking hold, and I know they have the ability to overrun the area, but still, I am so happy to see them finally settling in. After whacking out a Japanese yew, I noticed the Virginia bluebells are also fluffing, so here and there I have some reminders of my mother’s gardening, which is nice. One of these days, if they get thicker and in need of dividing, I hope to pass some along to my niece. She never met her grandma, but there is a lot of Budde in her, so I suspect those plants will instinctively do well for her.

Late last night Big Kitty and I engaged in some anti-Fatso the Groundhog skullduggery. I’d read in the paper that dumping used cat litter in the burrow hole will convince them to move away. The other day, I chased Fatso Jr. six times and saw that there was a ginormous burrow entrance under my neighbor’s flowering quince. If there is anything we have in great quantities every week, it is used cat litter! We stole out by the light of the waning full moon and BK emptied the used litter bucket into the burrow hole. Today there was no sign of Fatso or any of his ever expanding family. Of course, the fact that I managed to bean Fatso Jr. with a hunk of rotted railroad tie the other day might have him avoiding my territory while I’m out there. Honestly, the fact that I scored a direct hit had me grinning from ear to ear. I’m pretty sure I could have wiped him out had it been a bocce ball!

Spring signals the arrival of the rebirth mythology that so captivated the ancient civilizations. It is easy to see why the agrarian cultures felt such a kinship with those stories. It is also easy to see why the Christian church borrowed so much of that mythology for its own liturgical year. Makes me start thinking of deviled eggs in celebration of Ostara!

Tomorrow, I’ll need to brave the wilds of the grocery store as people do their shopping for Easter weekend. Given the weather we’ve had, I suspect there will be some grilling going on. I know I’m thinking along those lines. I’m also trying to decide on a good Easter-y cocktail for this week’s experiment. Y’all send me some ideas, hear?