Sportin' Life

'Tis the season for t-shirts and jerseys, hoodies and jackets, pennants and stickers on rear windows. The appropriate costume for the season is not a scary mask or a witch's hat: it's the logo of your favorite team. And what a wealth of choices!

The Cardinals and Royals will be the Boys of October once again this year. The long summer of daily baseball is over and the nerve wracking process of sweating through the playoffs begins. I am a pathetic fan in October, sometimes glued to every pitch, sometimes isolating myself from every device that might deliver bad news. This is the 'thrill of victory and agony of defeat' part of being a fan that I wish I could lose.

I spent the last two weekends in airports, the ultimate melting pot of fan allegiance. The sports bars at Midway Airport were packed three deep around the flat screens; two different volleyball teams waited at baggage claim in two different airports. Fans of all stripes stared intently at muted electronic devices. The emotion was palpable....

Somewhat akin to that of the East Atchison Wolves Elementary volleyballers, third and fourth graders. This is Lizzie and Abbie's inaugural season in knee pads...it takes me back to watch the endless warmup drills and bouncing ponytails adorned with black and orange frippery. I love volleyball...I love the blocks at the net, the dives for slams, a ballet of pass, set, spike, the drama of a long volley. None of this is part and parcel of the game third and fourth graders play. Lizzie yearns to "hit the ball a different way" but her coach (her mom) makes it clear that passing and serving are the baby steps for girls too short to reach the top of the net. The bobbing ponytails are applauded every time a serve makes its target or the ball is hit three times in a row. A close contest makes Lizzie's feet go "all tingly". When they begin their match with the chant,"What do we love?.....volleyball!", I want to cheer too. Welcome, girls, to the sportin' life....

Fall is for football, from front yard scrambles through the fallen leaves to the tailgating cities that spring up like mushrooms just after daybreak every Saturday and Sunday .

Aaron is in his second year of full blown football, cleats and UnderArmour, coaches (dads) stalking the sidelines, fans in snarling Wolves regalia. The kids work hard, playing both sides of the ball in true small town fashion.

Gabe dons his flag football gear for the first time this year. He's just learning the game and saves his biggest grins for the rare opportunities to grab a flag.

The mood among the fans at these games is positive and upbeat. The bitterness of boobirds is reserved for guys that get paid to play. These kids build teamwork and sweat equity and loyalty: the sportin' life at its best.

Homecoming in East Atchison land was heartwarming, an amalgamation of the traditions of two communities with enthusiastic participation all around. While the sportin' life can showcase small town culture at its very worst....this team effort was its very best.

The "big boys" in their shorts and jerseys took on the elementary Wolves in a couple of quarters of flag football to the delight of a sideline full of cheering fans and a full complement of cheerleaders ages 5 and up.

There were thrilling runs and long passes, last minute tackles and general hilarity as the big boys and little boys entertained the crowd and each other. This commingling of young and younger, of older girls encouraging younger ones, of leading by example, builds the ties that will bind us as neighbors in years to come.

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Lovable Ruffians

This is my very first contribution ever to the advice column genre.

Not to worry....I'm not planning to critique wedding etiquette, offer comfort to the lovelorn, or solve your issues with troublesome faraway relatives.  No, this is my version of the infomercial that promises to clean your glasses, answer your phone, and make you disappear standing sideways to a mirror.

And it has to do with two troublesome but overlapping topics: 1) that awkward but unavoidable season between real summer and real fall...and 2) the ugliness of one's garden in said awkward time period just when the weather is finally becoming agreeable enough to brush the ubiquitous cobwebs off the lawn chairs and drink your morning coffee.

It's just not right.

But wait!  There's a solution!  I call these ''lovable ruffians", but someone else might call them "weeds".  And some of these plants are indeed vigorous, uncontrollably so.  Obsessively neat gardeners tend to classify plants out of bounds as pests, but more laissez faire backyard artists soften that pejorative and hail them as "volunteers".

Whatever your outlook, these flowers come up all by themselves, bloom late in the summery season and, in my garden, cover a multitude of sins.

Let's take a look around.....

Chief among these wildlings is the autumn glory clematis, a hardy perennial also known as Japanese clematis.  Small white star shaped blooms blanket the silvery leafed vine by the thousands and give off a pleasant scent.  Butterflies like it OK, but other pollinators are so attracted that the entire plant seems to be vibrating with activity. It is reliably hardy and carefree and fast growing and will cover a trellis or pergola in a season, no problem.  That's the upside.  Now for the downside.  Autumn Glory will also cover your porch railings and your rosebushes.  It comes up anywhere thanks to the poofy parachutes of seed heads produced after bloom.  In other words, it can be a pest.

Unless....unless you fall in love with a frosting of white woven amid your other vines come Labor Day...unless you allow it to duke it out with rogues like trumpet vines or black spotted defoliated climbing roses or the faded foliage of shrubs like spirea or lilacs.  I leave a certain number of these sweet invaders to clamber over my dusty fall garden like a wedding veil.  When it gets out of bounds, I will whack it off ruthlessly with my mower or my pruners. I know I won't kill it!

So fighting the good fight year after year doesn't appeal to you?  Can't say that I blame you.  How about something less permanent that still comes back...more or less...every year...with an element of surprise to boot.  Some untold number of years ago, I planted four or five kinds of annual morning glories alongside the cattle panels that pass for my garden fence.  They grew...(of course they did...unimproved morning glories are bona fide weeds in crop fields), but remained disappointingly green and leafy for most of the summer.  No rose picotee, no heavenly blue, no icy white.....

I was hasty with my judgment.  As the rest of the garden succumbed to various unpleasant leaf diseases and old age, the morning glories threw out long candelabras of twisted buds until, one morning, every single bud unfurled into a banner of brilliant hue, so thin as to be translucent, so numerous one forgave the months of green before. Morning glories do shut up shop and droop drastically on a hot afternoon, but they are refreshed overnight and give a little caffeine free kick to one's morning when they open anew.

I haven't planted a morning glory since that first year.  They sprout all by themselves from last year's fallen seed pods: the deep blue ones with the shiny heart-shaped leaves dominate one fence line while the rose blossomed vines with twining fuzzy leaves appear willynilly amid cannas or coneflowers or hibiscus without smothering any of their supporting cast.

Yes, it is fall and cooler weather beckons. Enjoy the great plumes of ornamental grasses.

 Anticipate the season of colored leaves.  Don't let me discourage you from acquiring such fall stalwarts as mums or kale or lovely fragrant pansies.

 Just be assured that a little benign neglect has its upside too!  Go a little crazy and let a wild free and reckless vine give your fall garden a fresh facelift.....

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Henri Matisse

Apple Lion

What a crummy year for tomatoes! This summer of 2015 has granted cool nights and drenching days: fabulous for flowers of begonias, not so conducive for blooms on tomatoes.  I bring in the harvest one handful at a time...enough to decorate either three BLTs or two iceberg wedge salads. I am disheartened when my photos from Septembers past feature buckets of juicy fruits, gold and striped, pink and scarlet.  There they are: in the garden, arrayed on the picnic table to ripen, on the countertop cored and cleaned ready to be cooked, and steaming out of the canner...meals for the cold season, just add beans or pasta. 

Well, that was then and this is now.  Thankfully, the Lord doth provide: 

9Out of the ground the LORD God

 caused to grow 

every tree that is pleasing to the sight

 and good for food; (Genesis 2:9).  

Ben with apple, circa 1987

Josh helps himself, circa 2011

If there be not tomatoes, or peppers, or other garden bounty as the calendar turns to September, we look to the trees.... where there will be apples. They may not be beautiful; they may not be bountiful.  But apples will be there for the picking....

We are apple people. I was raised on the Stark Brothers fruit tree catalog.  My grandfather tended his adopted orchard with diligence and brought fruit for tart sauce and fruit for sweet pies to my Granny; we kids pounded the tether ball he planted in the center of the orchard for our entertainment and assumed the long low hanging limbs were welcome mats to literal tree houses. 

My folks planted fruit trees on the terraced field south of their farm house.  The trees benefited from drip lines during dry spells and the careful cultivation and pruning of these meticulous growers.

 Visitors to the farm were treated to boxes of apples that exemplified the breed; regular customers called to see when their favorites would be ripe.  The litany of  Missouri apples and their place in the great march from summer to frost are markers in our family calendar: the great green Lodis, sour and saucy;  the lovely spreading Earliblaze, not much for keeping, but tart and almost crisp out of hand, first summer apple to pick and eat before they carpeted the ground. Rosy honey sweet Galas, moody and susceptible to all nature of disease, but as pretty as a blushing peach. Little Jonathans for pie. Beautiful big red and green Mackintosh for the tastiest, fruitiest, chunky applesauce.  

( A mere zephyr would drop a Mackintosh; after one fell came an avalanche.)  Ozark Golds, so versatile, perfect for lunches those first days of school and not half bad keepers for a hot weather summer apple.  Then, as the days shortened, it would be time for the All Stars of Missouri apples: the Golden Delicious, green and gold and juicy and crisp.

Lastly, the Blushing Goldens would be nestled carefully in boxes lined with newspaper and carried down into the fruit cellar to keep and use all winter.  At Christmas time, my father would fetch a box of Blushing Goldens for us to take home, their barely wrinkled skins giving notice to the concentrated sweetness underneath.  Blushing Goldens: without them, no Apple Breads for treats in January and February!

Lee and Ann and Ben learned proper apple picking etiquette: to use two hands to pick so the fruiting spur would not be damaged and to set, never drop, the apples in the basket or box. The kids were always eager to help if it meant a ride back to the shed in the wagon behind the four wheeler.  Grandpa always told them to stay in the mowed path or the Apple Lion might get them.....

I don't remember the origin of the Apple Lion; perhaps he was related to the BarkaBoos that we humans couldn't sense  but that would get the dogs all riled up.  Ann thought the Apple Lion looked like Aslan from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I assumed he was a merry prankster....kind of like his creator...with the enthusiasm and bright button eyes of Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh.  Either way, the Apple Lion proved to be elusive and invisible, as such mythical creatures can be; he was a scapegoat for all kinds of unexplained phenomena, but served to keep the kids on the mowed paths and out of the reach of ticks and other unfriendlies.....

Like an up to date version of Johnny Appleseed, my folks brought me twenty little apple trees to civilize our homestead not long after we moved to the farm.

 Over the next few years, they came up to visit us early in the spring...and to give the apple trees a professional pruning and good start in life.  These same trees are well past middle age, apple tree wise, and have fallen prey to ice and drought, disease and wind, but we still fill boxes and bushels,  flower pots and ice cream buckets with our favorite fall fruit and have enough to share with friends and family and the resident bee hives. 

 Apple bread for breakfast?  Of course!  Apple pie a' la mode?  Why not?  A Dutch apple pancake some chilly evening?  Can't wait.....

Janus

When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every year, August lashes out in volcanic fury, rising with the din of morning traffic, its great metallic wings smashing against the ground, heating the air with ever-increasing intensity.

Henry Rollins

"All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world."
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

Where do you come down on August?  Thumbs up or thumbs down? Does turning the page fill you with foreboding? Or regret?  Do the days of August flutter away into the haze as the Monarch butterflies migrate?  Or do you feel trapped, cramped, imprisoned by heat, humidity, insects, or regret for the promises of summertime unfulfilled? Is Nature's bounty a cornucopia of tasty treats to be savored fresh today and preserved for the cold days tomorrow?  Or do you avert your eyes from the jungle of foxtail, bindweed,  grasshoppers and assorted crawly beasties that used to be characterized as a garden? Do you anticipate the broadcast of your favorite baseball team...or have pre-season football rankings captured your allegiance?

Like Janus, August is two faced, a time of beginnings and transitions, of doors and gateways,of change. August has one foot in the door of summer and one on the steps of fall. 

A quick trip through Augusts past confirms these dual personalities:

August is a month of fairs....4H and FFA, hogs and sweat, mud and sand and ribbons.

Following the fairs..and the conclusion of projects four-legged and not, August is a time for vacations, for seeing America, for keeping cool, for catching up with friends and family far away, for one last hurrah before school bells ring.

It is the month of farewells...as sons and daughters go back to college...or leave home for the first time.

August is a month of storms.  When we first came back to farm, we'd watch the weather map anxiously, waiting  for a Gulf Coast hurricane to come up from the south, break the July drought, and give our soybeans a good soaking.  More recently, August has blown in violently with destructive winds  flattening the ripening corn and turning the mum patch into a tedious game of 5000 pot pickup. August giveth and August taketh away. August can be synonymous with catastrophe.

But August can be a time to gather as well.  To dig and dry the onions when the ground softens.  To take advantage of all the ways that tomatoes can be canned. To choose the magic moment for picking grapes for jam that glows in a jar like the visual essence of summer. For eating apples off the tree while we water, grabbing a half dozen to bake the first new crop apple loaves, setting aside a half bushel in the 60 year old frosty refrigerator to use til the winter apples come in.

 August is a month of cakes and celebrations.  If  we all lived closer together, we would barely finish one round of desserts before we would blow out the candles on another one with three birthdays in ten days. Levi's birthday starts the birthday fortnight, a continuing feast of thanks for  him, for Ben on the 15th and for Matt on the 20th.  August: a month of new lives and new beginnings in our family.

If you are country people like we are, August brings  a new school year.  The kids have gotten their letters in the mail assigning them to their new classes in their new grade. The school supplies await in plastic bags and almost everyone needs new tennis shoes and jeans.  Aaron and Matt start EA football practice and Lee will drive Gabe over to Burlington Junction to learn the ropes of flag football.  Abbie and Lizzie sign up for the fall's dance classes with Miss Annie.  Josh will start back to Honeytree.  No more kids' laughter at the pool, no more wet towels and swimsuits for the puppies to chew through at the farm. Summer may not end with the advent of school, but the swimming season does.

And, finally, way at the end of August,  we raise our glass for one more celebration.  Some years we mark it; some years it gets no more than a passing mention.  But years ago, when we believed we were grownups, Blake and I wed, and somehow, through all the years, we have held tightly to that partnership, that bond, as we raised our children, struggled with our business, enjoyed the ups and endured the downs of both, and gloried in the happiness and blessings we did not earn.  August may show us its happy face or its scowl from one year to the next, but on the 27th, we breathe a sigh of relief and say, Thanks! Made it another year!

Bring on September!