Farmer's Market Opening Day!

The Ringwood Farmer’s Market has finally opened! We’ve been waiting for weeks, knowing full well local vegetables are hardly at their peak in May. We went as a kind of hor'derve to the feast of summer ahead, a glimpse into the slowly mounting bounty provided by farmer’s whose lands are within an hour’s drive of where we live.

My favorites were there: Nina’s Red Barn Farm with shiny silver pails stuffed with peonies, iris, cottoneaster, zinnias, mounds of lovage, honey from their own hives, eggs from free-range chickens, cheese and Nina herself greeting everyone in town, because face it, everyone knows Nina.

Bialas Farms was there too, with a different variety to choose from: turnips still with their deep greens tops, so good in a salad, freshly plucked spinach that squeaked when I picked it up and put it in a bag, arugula, onions and an assortment of herbs for planting: sweet basil, chocolate mint (it really smells like chocolate!), thyme, oregano, tarragon, parsley, rosemary. Pick three and they will pot it in a planter for you to bring home to enjoy all summer.

I bought meat pies for supper from Down Under Café, where you could also have a taste of strawberry/ginger soup that will send you over the moon and then back for more. From the Farmer's Daughter, I picked up stuffed portabello mushroom caps and a container of blue cheese dressing that I could probably devour in one sitting all by myself.

The Market allows people to bring their dogs, so there is an endless display of wagging tails and curious noses sniffing the good smells. Burmese Mountain dogs, Greyhounds, and a pair of Mastiffs that weighed more than their owner were dancing around the parking lot while the smaller terriers and a Shi Tzu were tucked under protective arms.

I love this Farmer’s Market and I am grateful to the people in the town who started it last year. They are to be commended for their tenacity, organization and ability to pull the town together for the benefit of everyone. Hats off to all of you!

And now, it’s almost time for supper….

Black Bears and Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver’s poems make me swoon every time. I know this bear.

Spring

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her~
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

No Ticky, No Birdy

Ahhhhhhh!!!!

My friend spun around to see what was wrong.

There’s a tick in my hair! Aaaaarrrggghhhhhh!

My friend smiled. She is very cool about these things. When she finds them on her legs or arms, she calmly pinches them between her fingers, then walks over to show me before pitching them underfoot. It grosses me out every single time.

I can’t abide ticks.

I can tolerate mosquitoes, gnats, midges, black flies in spring. I am fine with spiders and snakes and the occasional centipede undulating across the driveway. Black bears cross our back yard and have even climbed onto the second floor of our deck. Deer graze in the corner near the woods. I am 100% nature girl. Ask anybody.

But ticks totally skeeve me. I am grossed out by the VERY IDEA of some sneaky insect plunging its entire head into my body, wherever the heck it wants and sucking my life blood out of me. And to think its entire body gets so engorged that it blows up like a cartoon character eating too much makes me want to retch. High grass? Think ticks. There is a thousand in every crowd.

Years ago, when Ken and I were dating, he helped me out one afternoon by walking my dog. (I had been out hiking with her the day before. He called me from my apartment.

“Your dog has, like, raisins all around her neck.”

“Raisins?”

“Yes. They’re like raisins.”

Oh no. Raisins on your dog means only one thing.

Engorged ticks. In my apartment.

Well, to make a long story short, I took care of her. I pulled out each one of those M….. F…ers. She got the bath of her life. I almost vacuumed the carpet clear off the floor. But there were no more ticks.

The problem is: I love to go out birding. Time spent in the woods is holy; it is my private access trail to myself. I am constantly at war with myself between my aversion to ticks and my love of birds and the natural world. Because, face it, if you are going to look at birds, you have to go where the birds are. And where the birds are, are also where the ticks are, in abundance. It’s a fragile balance, but the the birds get me every time.

But please, please, watch out for ticks. And if you see one on me, have mercy.

A Salute to Memorial Day

I am amazed that we have cycled around to Memorial Day (what... already?). This holiday weekend is heralded as the official port to summer, regardless of the actual date of the summer solstice. Seasonal merchants wait for the big start to what will hopefully be a profitable eight weeks, kids see the light at the end of the tunnel to the school year, the neighborhood pools have had their covers rolled back to reveal their sparkling waters.

This morning, without saying a word, my husband put out the flags. We have two: The first, the American flag and the second, the official standard of the Marine Corps, of which Ken is a member. I say “is,” not “was,” as I was quickly disavowed of the notion that someone who was ever honorably discharged from this branch of the military service is ever considered an “ex.” A Marine always IS a Marine. If you are ever strolling with one through the tents of a country fair and come upon the Marine Corp display table, you will see the brotherhood in action: High fives and semper fi’s all around; you would think they had been neighbors for years. I tell you; they are all like this.

I am proud to say my parents served in the military too. The five of us kids grew up listening to stories of Dad’s exploits on a fighting destroyer in Admiral “Bull” Halsey’s Seventh Fleet in the Pacific during World War II. He lent his 119 pounds of Navy strength to keep his ship moving forward during the Battles of Saipan, Philippines, Leyte Gulf, the Marianas “Turkey Shoot” and scores of others. We would finish dinner and let the dishes sit while we sat in rapt silence listening to his exploits; picking up downed pilots, the challenges of keeping the giant boilers running, the towering waves from ocean storms, the terrifying attacks from planes whose pilots had no intention of returning alive. There were funny stories too; how fresh baked bread was whisked to their hold in the boiler room, the cans of "missing" peaches, the search and share by compassionate officers. The most astonishing tale was from the end of World War II, when Dad’s ship, The Connor, captured the Tachibana Maru, a warship in disguise. Instead of patients, it was loaded with troops. Fortunately, for the crew who boarded it, of which Dad was one, the soldiers did not know they were sleeping on beds that were actually boxes filled with weapons and ammunition. The story only made a small splash stateside; however, because by the time they reached shore, the Big Bombs had been dropped and the war was officially over.

When Dad joined the Navy, Mom did too. At that time, women did not serve overseas, unless they were medical professionals, but Mom did the office support work so essential in the massive effort for this country to pull off fighting two wars at the same time.

Memorial Day is about memories, for the living and the dead. It is to honor those ordinary people all around us who have done, and are still doing, jobs that we cannot imagine knowing about, and then come home and live among us. They are a different breed, they share an amazing past, some bitter, some painful, some best forgotten. They are all to be honored. Regardless of what we believe about politics, or war, or hatred or winning or losing, we need to honor those who have stepped up to the plate and put their lives on the line, even when they did not want to.

So today, Memorial Day; I salute you: Ken, my Marine, Gavin, my Marine nephew who served twice in Iraq, Dad, my sailor, and Mom, my WAVE.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

I Did It Again

I’m beat. The only part of my body that doesn’t ache is my hair. My back, my knees, my hips, my shoulders, my elbows. Even my fingers ache. My nails aren’t too pretty either. Despite brushes and lavish amounts of lather, they are dried and stained with the good earth outside my door. I just can’t keep out of it. Never could.

Every year, I vow not to do it again. After the winter months have turned my muscles into mashed potatoes, I swear I am not going to commit to digging out my vegetable garden patch to get it up and running again. It’s all just too much with everything else that needs doing this time of year. I promise not to spend Memorial Day weekend in the yard weeding, mulching, splitting, transplanting, fertilizing, digging, watering, pruning, planting, trimming, mowing and generally half-killing myself. I am not 20 years old, for pete’s sake. I don’t have boundless reservoirs of energy. There are other, less violent ways to wake my body up after its long winter’s nap.

But here I am, sitting with a big glass of water, completely, totally, thoroughly spent. I invited my friend over for dinner last night and just about fell asleep by 8:30. Fortunately, she is the gracious type (and sore from her own gardening efforts), so she left shortly after she realized I was a goner for the evening.

It all started a few weeks ago, after confessing to my mother that I was not going to work the vegetable garden this year. She said, too bad; that stuff is so good, but you really have to listen to what you really want to do. Besides, there is that great Farmer’s Market on Saturdays during the summer; it’s so easy to get fresh vegetables there. So I went out to the patch in the back yard to see what was involved in pulling up the wire fence to keep the deer out and letting it go to grass. I picked up a large branch and cleared some leaves from a damp corner.

What’s this? A patch of bright green struggling its way to the light. Having made it through a long season of ice and snow, not to mention a certain benign neglect from the gardener of last year, it was flat leaf parsley, with its unmistakable palm waving at me like a shipwrecked survivor. After all it had gone through, I couldn’t betray it now! Maybe I’ll just let the parsley grow then and leave it at that.

What’s this over here? Mint, already creeping behind my back to take over the spot where the basil grew last year. Ah…fresh basil with its clove-licorice scent. How I adore those melt-in-your mouth, buttery leaves with roasted peppers and a good mozzarella. Maybe I’ll just get one or two of those and THEN, leave it at that.

Remember the green beans? They were easy and fun to pick. Nothing better than snappy fresh green beans with a little fresh lemon and butter melted over them. And oh, how I love the warm tangy wine of a REAL vine-ripened tomato dripping from my chin. Last year’s crop included some very successful volunteer plants. Yea, they were really good.

Maybe…if I move the trumpet vine out of the way, it will free up that corner for that pretty bi-colored sage I saw last week; if I pull out this invasion of mint from this side, it will open up that side for cilantro (love it in guacamole). A squash plant or two or three would fit over here and climb the fence. If I dig out the compost bin, I could mix it with the soil already here; that would liven it up a little; wow—look at all these great worms. Let’s get these leaves out of here; let me just first go get the wheel barrel and the rake and the hoe and the shovel and the….

Sigh. I did it again.

Writing in Nantucket

A friend of mine (a "real writer," who is currently working on a novel) invited another woman, Kim (another real book writer) and me (so not a novelist or book writer) to join her in Nantucket at the ancestral summer home of a family friend. Since I have fancied the idea of having whole days of uninterrupted writing time, I readily accepted and dreamed of island exploration, photographing cool stuff, blogging about it, writing for hours in my notebook. Heck, I thought, maybe I'll write a book too. I’ll have all the time in the world without having to worry about feeding the cats, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, running errands, going to work, returning phone calls. It will be a veritable writing feast where I will come into my own and claim the coveted title of “writer” (for real). I had fantasies of clinking glasses with an imaginary Hemingway at the end of a writing work day, or strolling along the beach with St. Exupery while contemplating profound matters of literary consequence.

The house was amazing. It is the home of quiet wealth, the kind that has no need to reveal itself as anything other than what it is. There are 7 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, an enormous sunny kitchen with full views of the bay. The wood floors of the old section were painted and scrubbed clean, immaculate, every corner proud of its nobility and its age. The collected wisdoms of the people who lived and laughed there have left a patina of silence in each room, leaving me feeling very much at peace. There is no "decor" other than the plain reflection of the lives of the owners: a black and white photograph of a woman racing to hit a tennis ball, a man smiling at the ocean, a cat sprawled on a desk. Here I was, sitting at a desk in a mansion in Nantucket, with the bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, writing in my $7 notebook. I would love to tell you how inspired I was, how ideas came tumbling out faster than I could write them down. You would think that for as much as I like to write, I would be possessed of a higher discipline.

As it turned out, I kept sneaking out the door to look for birds: Eastern Towhees by the dozens, Yellow Warblers (how did they find their way here?) Redstarts, Common Eiders, Grey Catbirds, Song Sparrows, ROBINS GALORE, Wood Thrushes spinning rays of sunlight through the morning fog with their eeee-oh-lay song, a female Northern Harrier coursing over the brushy meadows, and even her mysterious mate, the Grey Ghost, was spotted twice. Once I heard the cry of a loon, which sends me over the moon every time.

Like faith, I believe the benefits of these days on a writing retreat with someone who was really writing (not me) will reveal themselves over time. As it turns out, I grew impatient with spending so much time in my own head and needed some stimulation, some distraction to ignore to force myself to focus my thoughts and experience. All that wonderful writing time sucked the desire right out of me, so I was left somewhat bewildered by the realization that I write better when I should be doing something else; getting ready for work, raking leaves, doing the grocery shopping, weeding the garden. What is it about those stolen moments that are so juicy and provocative, not to mention, PRODUCTIVE? (Like now, when I should be washing the breakfast dishes…).

Thank you, N. West Moss, and you too, Kim! You both are forever an inspiration!

Nantucket Island!

Writing from Nantucket this week, can you imagine? I never could until a friend invited another writer and me to join her in a personal writers' retreat on this 14-mile long, 3.5 mile wide island off the coast of Cape Cod. We are staying in the beautiful home owned by my friend's friend (it gets complicated) and savoring views of both the bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.
Issues with the wi-fi prevented earlier postings, so if you have been checking in and not seeing any new posts, please overlook this unscheduled blogging hiatus. I missed you too! On the other hand, I have been out birding Nantucket (Yellow Warblers "sweet-sweeting" in the low brush, a boatload of Eastern Towhees drinking their tea from dawn to dusk, a Northern Harrier rocking over the scrub in the back while baby bunnies hunker down trying not to be spotted. There are also Least Terns and the ubiquitous Black-backed, Herring and Laughing Gulls).
The wind is a constant companion. Some days are worse than others. Every day is a bad hair day but nobody cares. Since it is pre-tourist season, most of the tour operators are not yet open, so the island is relatively quiet; however, we are fortunate that the amazing restaurants ARE. We have yet to have a bad meal--salads, fresh fish, antipasto platters, pomegranate vinegrettes...and...well, it is now time for lunch! Off for some chowder! Until later....

Iguana Eyes

I think my face is caving in on top of my eyeballs. They are squinty and red and hot and itchy and swollen. I can hardly keep them open, and it is not from sleepiness. It feels like my eyes are rolling around in glass shards. They are a mask of pink. The doctor says, "Allergies. They are really bad this year."

People come to see me in my office at work and jump back. They think I have just experienced a personal tragedy. They whisper to each other that I must have gotten bad news. They think I have been weeping. They are respectful. They try to be discreet. They prepare themselves, bolster themselves up to be supportive. They look at me with great sympathy, ready to offer comfort.

“What the hell is the matter with your eyes? You look awful.”

My colleagues are nothing but honest.

Allergies, I sniff.

They are really nasty here in northeastern New Jersey. Just when you think it’s the taxes that are tough, along comes the tree pollen.

Every year gets a little worse. Itchy eyes, red eyes, post-nasal drip; sneezing, sniffling, and some weird mental confusion, nothing a little Claritin can’t take care of. But this year, the Pollen Queen has arrived and annointed us with the emerald fairy dust of oaks and maples and beeches. I love to see the birth of their tiny fingers spread into mature leaves, but lordy, lord, many of us are getting our eyes slammed shut with allergies, so we really can’t see a darned thing. We ain’t so pretty to look at either.

The eye doctor exhausted the one drug she recommended, then gave me the name and phone number of a dermatologist. I called and promised to give the secretary my first-born son if she would give me an appointment Friday, a mere 24 hours before I drive 5 hours to a rendezvous in Nantucket on Saturday (more on that in a few days).

In the meantime, if you want to know where the weight of the world is, it’s on my eyeballs.

Clean Greens

This morning I spotted “our” bunny nibbling in a corner of the backyard, now emerald green from spring showers. Every time I think of spraying the weeds to keep them from destroying the turf grass, I think of that bunny and how the poor thing would be slurping up a mouthful of poison instead of juicy plantain stalks. Someone from a chemical lawn company must have noticed our property needs help, what with bare patches and moss intermingling with glowing stands of dandelion and mystery greens. The rep actually rang the doorbell and introduced himself to my husband, who assured him we were fine. The wildlife that crosses our patch of earth are fine too, thank you very much.
Frankly, I enjoy the variety of grasses and wildflowers that slip in and visit. It’s normal for things to grow there. It’s not normal to nurture a monoculture of rye grass to the exclusion of everything else.
The ground ivy; however, has become arrogant and controlling. At least, it has a pretty purple flower in spring but that is all I can say for it. Every year, I crawl around the yard for hours pulling it out by hand, an activity that is not altogether unpleasant but largely unsuccessful. It sneaks back in during the night like a bad guest. At least it’s green, so it gets mowed along with everything else.
I mow around a sprig of spring beauty, a tiny wildflower that comes back every year in the same spot in the middle of the back yard, springing open its streaked pink petals in time for me to notice its delicate nature and give her a wide berth with the mower. I do the same for violets, even though they are all over the place. My mother said violets were her mother’s favorite flower, and since Nana died when I was only six months old, violets are all I have of her. So, while these tiny denizens of my secret backyard life spin their lives out during the month of May, my mowing pattern looks like someone was drunk while shaving. Little random tufts of tall grass with purple and white peaking through their grassy verticals. It makes me smile.

Mrs. Cool's (Almost) Funky Glasses

I have spent an entire week agonizing over a new pair of eyeglasses. I was not planning on buying them right now but some creep recently stole my prescription sunglasses. Yes, stole them. I had left them on the counter while fishing around in my purse for change to pay for my Starbucks coffee, then went to the ladies, realized my glasses were not on my head and returned to find they were gone. “Turned up missing,” as they say. I have since learned there is quite a market in left-behind sunglasses since you can pop the prescription out and replace them with your own, thereby avoiding the hundreds of dollars you would have had to ante up to obtain them legally. I was very upset, still am, damn the thief’s eyes.

Since I have been routinely ripping my everyday glasses off my head to see better, I was overdue for an exam and prescription change anyway, so off I went to the ophthalmologist, who handed me the ticket for my eyeball upgrade. Next: The optician. While I was horrified at the potential unexpected expense, deep down I was thrilled to pick new frames, which for me is almost a lifetime commitment.

The optician’s assistant was happy to be my personal shopping assistant and brought me 5,000 pairs to try on. I glommed on to a funky pair made by “Face a Face” that sported dark ocean turquoise “arms” and turquoisy-tortoise shell eyepieces. They were VERY DIFFERENT from anything I have ever worn. They were fun, contemporary and comfortable. I felt like Mrs. Cool. And while I am not funky in general, I have my moments, and I wanted to wear the possibility of it on my face.

With the special Varilux lenses (yes, I am stepping away from trifocals-with-lines) and the antiglare jazz thrown in, they would have cost close to a thousand dollars. And even though my own mother would remind me to allocate the expense over the anticipated lifetime of wearing them every day (8-10 years), I still could not do it. Mrs. Cool had to step back. I opted instead to reuse my rimless frames, still nice, but now with the option of having a “fake” blue rim etched in around the lenses to give them some definition. The expense was cut in half, which made the purchase of both the sunglasses and my everyday glasses somewhat reasonable. Sigh.

But mark my words: One of these days, expect to see me sporting a rainbow-funky-who-is-she-where-did-she-get-those-cool-glasses pair. My inner funky will eventually show her true self.

The Enemy-Garlic Mustard

Calling all you gardeners! You know what garlic mustard is, don’t you? It is a highly invasive, quiet but nasty little plant that will take over every inch of your garden, your yard, your house, your life and the lives of your children if allowed to grow unchecked.

Garlic mustard started popping up in the northeastern United States a number of years ago, when few people gave much thought to its benign appearance and smelly leaves. It is now the bane of field and forest everywhere since not only does it commandeer every piece of turf formerly held by native plants, such as wild ginger, trillium and bloodwort, it leaches a chemical into the soil to keep anything else from growing nearby, like wildflower B.O.

I was horrified to spy two flower heads a-blooming in my back yard last weekend. I read that pulling them and leaving them to wilt on the ground does not keep them from reseeding anyway, so you have to shove the little bastards in a plastic bag and toss them in the trash. My backyard search for more that might be hiding revealed an entire cache in my neighbor’s woodsy back lot, so I sneaked back there and yanked them out with determined abandon. Garlic mustard will probably end up taking over the world, sort of like Republicans, but I will never give up trying to hold back their negative influence on the rest of my plants.

The Tragedy of Eight Belles

This will not be a popular post. But it needs to be said.

January 1st is the "technical" birthday for all thoroughbreds born in the northern hemisphere. Hypothetically speaking, a thoroughbred could be born on December 31, and be legally one year old the next day. Its age would qualify it to run in a race for three years olds when they are actually only two. And while most of these horses are born in spring, many are months shy of their physical age of three by the time they run the Kentucky Derby. (And for the record, the bone plates of a horse do not close until they are four. It is like forcing a five year old child to run the Boston Marathon). By the time a racehorse is an adult, most of its racing “career” is over. If it is not dead on the track, like Eight Belles, like Ruffian, like horses die almost every day, they are doomed to endure pain for the rest of their lives because they were run too young, too fast, too hard, too far.

Then there is the Derby winner, Big Brown. This three year old (?) had only raced three times in his young life before this first leg of the Triple Crown. Why? He has abscesses in his front feet from the concussion of running on hard surfaces. He had cushions glued into his feet so he could race. How’s that for sportsmanship?

You know who I feel sorry for? The man or woman who mucked out Eight Belle’s stall. The man or woman who cleaned her white bridle, who walked her out after a workout, who brushed the knots out of her tail, who heard her whinny, the person who knew she was not a highway horse but just another animal born to green pastures who died in the dust of a racetrack, another victim of greed.

These were the invisible folks who cared for Eight Belles in the quiet moments of the morning, when there were no TV cameras or mint juleps, just the dull bang and clang of a horse barn waking up. The people who cared for her and were familiar with her “ways.” They probably coddled her, perhaps overlooked some of her behavioral quirks because, let’s face it; these horses are bred for their bodies, not their brains. She was born to make money, period.

Somewhere, one of the “barn people” who cared for Eight Belles mourns the terrible death of this fine horse, and weeps before an empty stall. Somewhere, someone caught in the filthy industry of horse racing knows it for what it is. This filly, not even grown up yet, literally ran her legs off. Not for the love of running, as some race people would have you believe, but for the love of money.

Gone Birding!

(http://photobucket.com/)

It’s May, New Jersey Birding Month! This is the time of year birders keep their alarms set for weekends, then stumble out the door when the robins are tweedling their dawn song. May is warbler time, the month when the amazing birds of spring are getting closer to their final breeding grounds. New Jersey is a corridor state not only for truck drivers, but for many species of birds that skirt north. May is the month to get out and see them moving through. May is the month to let the grass grow crazy, who cares, May is the month to stand witness to the astonishing event called migration.

I usually spend the first weekend of this month at Garret Mountain but this year a friend invited me to join her and three other birders to Central Park in NY. The place did not disappoint! Despite the hordes of bikers, joggers and dog walkers, the birds were skidding in at every level: Ovenbirds, Hermit, Wood and Northern Waterthrushes scuttling over the ground next to leaf tossing Eastern Towhees drinking their tea, Blue-Winged Warblers wheezy bee buzzes were heard over our heads, Rose Breasted Grosbeaks sang soprano serenades, the Redstarts flashed their scarlet and onyx wings, and a quiet Hooded Warbler was spotted by a sharp birder from our group in time for a dozen others of us to see it too.

A big debt of gratitude to my companions for the day, and to the other birders we met in Central Park. Everywhere we went, we got directions where to find the Hooded, or the Cape May Warbler was seen over there, or the Orchard Oriole is here, behind the trunk of that tree, at 2 o’clock, oh no there it goes. You missed it.

Sorry for the short post. Got to get some rest. Tomorrow is another birding day. Maybe a Wilson’s or a Western Tanager, you just never know. When you are a birder, you learn a peculiar kind of faith. Never say never. Be open to it all. Hey, you might even hear the drumming a a Ruffed Grouse while you are climbing into the car at a remote parking lot in New Jersey. Weirder things have happened.

You should try it….