Songbirds

Overnight, the winter birds found my feeder.  Before the snow, though the ground was bare and brown, they had flitted through the shrubs and pecked at the seed heads in the garden. But the storms that drove us humans into the warm hearts of our homes kept the birds grounded too...and hungry.  

So, rather than purchase the big bags of “mostly millet”, the stuff that leaves the ground under the feeder rank and weedy come summer, in pity, I sprung for the good stuff…..sunflower hearts and cracked corn.  The rosy purple finches and the wintry green goldfinches clung to the perches in defiance of freeloading squirrels while the sooty little juncoes took their chances with what the other birds dropped. Watching them from the kitchen window, I felt slightly less downtrodden by the speed bumps of the season.

“Skylark, have you seen a valley green with spring
Where my heart can go a-journeying
Over the shadows and the rain to a blossom-covered lane?”

….Hoagy Carmichael

Alas, the meadowlarks that stick out the season in northern Missouri, contrary to all common sense, have no such help when the ground is white. Like forlorn hitch hikers, they huddle on the shoulders of our country roads, taking their chances with the passing semis in hopes some grain will blow off a flapping tarp or leaking trap.

I’ve been reading John Eldredge’s new devotional Restoration Year, a year long selection of short devotions that builds on the foundation of his All Things New, a book of wild hope and encouragement.  Like opening a door to warmth and companionship, his book and these short essays are like looking down into the valley green with spring and rain beaded blooms of tulips and quince and redbud.  

I took a screenshot of that page….the January 30 page...which sparkles defiantly with cheerful birdsong when spring is not just one calendar page, but three or four months in the future.  Be hopeful, be confident, and throw those songsters in your yard some seed for their long winter days…..

Post Super Bowl Post

Roll out those glazed, dazed, crazed days of springtime

Those days of phone calls and emails and sun

Roll out those glazed,dazed, crazed days of springtime

It’s still winter, but those days will come!

Head's up!  It's February!  The Super Bowl is over, thus paving the way for the most welcome words of the winter, "Pitchers and Catchers report!" Baseball, beckoning us all with visions of green grass and sunshine.

February!  This week we will look for the very first tender tomato to unfurl, pushing up through the chilly potting mix into the artificially long days under the high intensity lamps.

 By next week, it will be time to sweep the winter's debris from the seeder, time to plant the early vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.  These hardy seedlings don't mind a week of cloudy days; they need no coddling, just an assurance that wee mousies and opportunistic sparrows leave them be. This is a week we relish getting those boxes from FedEx, anxious to plug the little cuttings into their new homes, water them in, and watch the hanging basket lines fill row by row and bay by bay.  We breathe deep the welcome scent of spring, a sneak preview of April: the combination of water falling on soil.  Even in February, the winter sun can raise a sweat; farewell to itchy dry skin and hello to the cuts and scrapes of cheap plastic pots and hanging basket wires.  Aveeno lotion and over the knuckle Bandaids are our sponsors.

The frame of "number 16" February 1, 2016

February and there's an unfinished greenhouse.  It's not the first time we've looked at our prospective spring business and said 'Whoops!'  The heavy snow forecast for last weekend lent extra urgency to the business of finishing the frame and getting all the tools under cover.  The doors are in; the endwalls wait for exhaust fans and vents; the heaters will arrive this week.  There is still lots of work to do, but getting this far in the middle of winter leaves us optimistic.  More than once in the past, the last heater is still being wired as the first plants are being wheeled into one of these 'overflow' greenhouses!

Smoothing the ground for an overflow greenhouse January 2006

Rarely do we escape into March without a few snow days.  While the disruption can be anything from inconsequential to a considerable hardship, the first snow day is always kinda fun. The kids react as if it were the first day of summer vacation; helping the adults is still a novelty and not the drag it will be when the days are warm and they want to play outdoors.  Some of my favorite winter memories are snowdays with the grandchildren at work and at play in the largely vacant greenhouse.

With the work comes the worry.  Up til now, bad weather meant no more than bad roads.  Now, there are plants to keep warm and wind brings the constant risk of electrical outage and damage to the layers of plastic that constitute the roofs of the greenhouses.  The alarm system, aka the "little man", the computer generated voice on the other end of the unwelcome nighttime phone call, is that guy you don't want to talk to.   We just picked up a small but mighty piece of electronics to repair that vital part of our safety net: the generator.

The greenhouse, like the farm, is built on a bedrock of immutable seasonal truths: rain and snow, day length, frostfree dates. To believe greenhouse production is immune from the vagaries of weather is to be disappointed.  A sunny February or March can cut a week at least from scheduled production time blessing us all with the upturned faces and sweet fragrance of adorable pansies.  Dull cloudy cold days mean the propane truck comes to call more than once a week and we water sparingly to protect new and fragile roots from nasty rots and fungi.  Who says people are the only victims of Seasonal Affective Disorder? 

But the vagaries of the business extend beyond the weather.  February is the first time some customers call us with their plans for the coming spring.  Some, especially those landscaping for their own clients, won't call us with their orders until late in the month. It does no good to tell these folks that flowers must be grown and some kinds take two full months to grow to salable size; they are at the mercy of their clients and doing the best they can.  From year to year, we don't really know what we are going to grow in our greenhouses, a situation that makes us flexible...and gives us indigestion too.  Small businesses all: Thy middle name must be Nimble.

I think I planted our first tomato seedlings in spring of 1979 in a homemade greenhouse we later moved to Tarkio.  We didn't use a stick of treated lumber, and the structure it pretty well melted after just a few years.  My first tomato seedlings didn't fare any better; we went to church one cool and cloudy Sunday and left the door closed to keep the little plants warm.  Yeah, that's right: the sun came out while we were at church; the greenhouse did its greenhouse gas thing; and the tiny tomatoes wilted and cooked.  I was a sad earth mother, but learned a vital lesson about greenhouse growing: don't rely on fallible humanity for climate control.  

 The cyclical nature of growing makes it easy to wax nostalgic.  We commemorated in photos nearly every greenhouse we ever built; there are plenty of pictures of our kids from toddler to teen, at work with their parents...like a sundial, we record only the smiling hours. 

There are even more pictures of the next generation! There's little Aaron helping pick up fall pansies;

Little Lizzie and Abbie splashing about in their rubber boots;

 Gabe lugging four hanging baskets like a big kid; 

and Josh, who doesn't need any help picking out pots.

Speaking of seasonal.  Let's not forget the holiday at the end of this week.  I went searching my scrapbooks and found the delivery note for a single rose to Julie Renken, 401 Conley, Columbia from Blake way back in 1977.  One flower nearly four decades ago....acres of flowers now!  Happy Valentine's Day, dear!

Harvest Home

COME, ye thankful people, come,

raise the song of harvest home;

all is safely gathered in,

ere the winter storms begin.

All the world is God's own field, 

fruit as praise to God we yield;

wheat and tares together sown 

are to joy or sorrow grown; 

first the blade and then the ear, 

then the full corn shall appear; 

Lord of harvest, grant that we 

wholesome grain and pure may be.

We thank thee then, O Father, for all things bright and good,

The seedtime and the harvest, our life our health our food,

No gifts have we to offer for all thy love imparts,

But that which thou desirest, our humble thankful hearts.

Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing;

Fill our hearts with joy and peace;

Let us each Thy love possessing,

Triumph in redeeming grace.

O refresh us, O refresh us,

Traveling through this wilderness.

All good gifts around us

Are sent from Heaven above.

So thank the Lord,

 O, thank the Lord for all his love..

Comfort and Joy

“In November, the smell of food is different. It is an orange smell. A squash and pumpkin smell. It tastes like cinnamon and can fill up a house in the morning, can pull everyone from bed in a fog. Food is better in November than any other time of the year.”
― Cynthia Rylant, In November

I've lived in a lot of cold houses. The house in Orland Park with no basement, the chilled brown tiles atop the concrete foundation laid across the frozen black earth of northern Illinois. The unheated second floor of the sandstone farmhouse in Calloway where we breathed frost into the air if our noses escaped the mountain of wool blankets. Our first house on the farm with neither furnace nor basement, where the electric baseboard heaters fought a losing battle with drafts from above and below and we preheated our bed with the electric blanket every night.

We fought back. With lath and plastic, hammer and nails, Blake covered every window, shrouding us in a blurry world until spring returned. It was not a pretty sight. When we moved out to the windy hill by Deadman's Hollow, our situation improved with the comforting on and off of the furnace blower and warm air coming out of the register. But I still covered the windows...on the inside this time...and felt virtuous and smart when the plastic breathed in and out like it was alive every time the wind attempted to get in.

This old house on Spruce plays by its own set of winter rules: slippers for everyone, an electric throw for Blake's uber cold feet, the friendly hiss of the gas log in the front room. The new windows thwart the sound and fury of winter with one exception: the sun porch upstairs where the houseplants go to spend the winter. And that's where I spent part of this glorious November afternoon, swatting away sun resurrected houseflies and late season lady bugs, spreading out cellophane and double sticky tape like generations have before me. When I am finished, the sun porch is winterized and the plants as cozy as I can accomplish. One more November task put to rest.

November is full of satisfactions like this. Harvest continues, but the acres are piling up behind the combines and there is cautious talk of an end in sight. The sun greets us in the mornings for a few days after the time change and helps compensate for the long evenings of work after the sun sets when other folks are headed home. By November, the mum mess has been picked up...groundcloth piled under bricks, irrigation lines rolled up, fertilizer machines and pumps put up where they won't freeze and break.The greenhouse work revolves around emails and phone calls and web sites.

This leaves time to cook. After six weeks of harvest meals, it takes some invention to present something for dinner ála Rubbermaid that hasn't been eaten recently and "travels well". Sandwiches are so summer cold cuts. Salad days are gone to frost; time for slow cookers of chili and stew, pot pies wrapped in dish towels, baked pastas of Italian extraction. Food that can be scooped with a spoon or cut with a plastic fork. Food that can be wrapped in foil, eaten in a cab, and doesn't spill enroute. Comfort foods....garlic bread, corn bread, soaking up sauce, mopping up honey.

As the calendar days pile up in November, the days fade and the temperatures wane. There's no better way to warm chilled hands than to put them to work stirring or peeling or soaking in hot dishwater. Cold mornings are an incentive to cook. All the meals in November are just a countdown to the most splendid meal of the year: Thanksgiving.

Sunday morning finds us women folk gathering after Sunday school to pool resources in the kitchen. There's a new recipe to try, a chicken enchilada casserole that promises to feed 12 people. In our line of work, a dozen is always an option, so I screw up my eyes trying to read the capacities of the largest casserole dishes in my cupboard...there it is! Found one....4.5 liters is the winner. The bean dip appetizer is partly for the meal...and partly to accompany the preparation of the meal. The cooks dip Fritos; the oven pings as it heats; the conversation warms as the kids check on dinner's progress and the dog sneaks in from the back porch to sit on someone's feet and be sociable. It's an anti-Martha kind of kitchen, crowded,noisy, busy, steamy, made more so by the growing stacks of dirty pans and the overflowing trash can.

Good news! The harvest crew is switching from corn to beans, leaving an hour free to shut down the machinery to eat while the beans dry on this November day. No paper plates today and no Tupperware! Spread out the tablecloth and count the forks...I'll make the tea. Crumbs and stains and seconds are emblems of plenty. Family AND dinner at the table...not out of a hatchback.

The new recipe is a success, even if Abbie and Josh would rather eat corn than casserole. After cake and ice cream, the guys pile into the pickup and head back to the field. There is a city skyline of dirty dishes in the kitchen. This is November's legacy, November's gift: the comforts of a busy kitchen and the abundance of a big home cooked meal for hard working people. The joy of preparing good food and the satisfying work of cleaning up afterwards.

O tidings, of comfort and joy...welcome, November....

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