Carving the Watermelons

As a farm kid living in the city, I still have the need to play around in the dirt.  I like to spend time putting seeds in the ground and watching the plants grow into maturity.

This year I was going to be very organized about the gardening.  I had a spreadsheet...

...a file box...

...and gardening in Minnesota book

Yet, despite all the preparation, time came up short and the garden quickly fell into chaos.  I had hoped that by putting straw down around all my plants I could avoid some weeding.  And I will say, the straw did help keep the weeds down.  Of course, that just helped the oats sprout and grow that much better.

There were also the mystery plants coming out of the compost pile. That wasn't part of the plan. With its big broad leaves and spreading vines, it was easy to see it was some sort of squash or melon.

Personally, I don't spend a lot of time remembering all the vegetables and fruits that we throw into the compost pile.  Still, I was convinced I had a watermelon on my hands.  I was even rather excited about this.  I'd never grown a watermelon before. It's one of my favorite fruits.

The color and striping didn't seem quite right, but I figured it would just grow into it.  I also figured it was one of those little personal-sized watermelons and their coloring seemed somewhat different than a true watermelon.  I was pretty sure I had bought one of those for myself because somebody doesn't really care for watermelon; he doesn't not like it, but doesn't get all excited about it either. Yet even he was excited about the idea of a watermelon in our garden.

And so the garden grew.

We had jalapenos, 

soybeans for edamame,

cucumbers,

eggplant flowers*, 

tomato potential**,

and all sorts of tasty vegetables

And, now that Halloween is here, I spent the day carving some of my watermelons.  You'll have to let me know what you think.

________
*which turned into eggplant parmesan


**Which turned into over 30 lbs of frozen tomatoes

My Garden Buddy

While out foraging in our garden, I noticed that something had been eating my parsley leaves.  Not the whole stem, just the leaf snipped off right where it joins the stem.

Admittedly my first reaction was one of continued exasperation and frustration.  I wouldn't say I'm the best gardener to begin with and this year seems to be especially challenging. Our Minnesota spring was cold and wet and that combined with a broken thumb made it difficult to get anything going in the garden.  Despite my spreadsheet and planning, our garden just didn't get planted in a timely manner.  Though now the entire garden has been fully planted and is now going crazy, there are still plants that aren't flourishing.  Sadly the crab grass, cottonwoods, and whole cast of unnamed weeds are growing much better than the beets, beans, and broccoli.

Full of ire, I looked into the parsley and saw this.

A big ol' caterpillar munching away.  Now, I'm not squeamish.  I think caterpillars are cool. So, I plucked that stem of parsley in order to look more closely at my new buddy.

I got really excited about it; my seconds earlier irritation forgetten.  I'd never seen such a brightly colored caterpillar.

It even does tricks.

Anyway, I posted some pictures of my new buddy to Facebook and a friend commented, "To see caterpillars is so rare anymore. Is it because we're not kids anymore or because they aren't as many of them?"

My first reaction is that we're not kids anymore. And we don't spend time outside exploring like we did as kids.  Mostly, as a kid, outside time was fun time.  Yes, maybe there was some yard work to help with, but in my world, outside time was free time.  Time to find adventures.  

As an adult though, I don't seem to find as many adventures outside.  The lawn needs mowing,  the garden needs weeding and watering, trees need trimming, and hedges need haircuts.  On an adventure it's important to keep your eyes open, your wits about you.  When doing mundane chores I think the tendency is to close off our senses in order to get through the day.

I have no idea whether there are fewer caterpillars than when we were kids.  I will say that my research led me to finding out my caterpillar should turn into a Black Swallowtail butterfly and they particularly like parsley.  So, I think part of finding caterpillars is having the right plants for the caterpillar.

Hopefully I'll see this

fluttering about my yard sometime soon.

And I challenge you to find an adventure in your next mundane task.  Who knows what you'll find.

The end of an era

When I was in first grade, we made model Space Shuttles from paper airplanes and toilet paper tubes in anticipation of a shuttle launch. Then, on the day of the first* lift off of the Space Shuttle Columbia, we had fresh popped popcorn** and watched the liftoff on TV. We sat in awe of the flame and smoke and space. We had another popcorn event when Columbia landed. And thus the amazement and grandeur of space travel filled the minds of the six and seven-year olds in small town Wisconsin. At that age, we didn't realize what it took to take a machine into the sky, we didn't realize it was an endeavor fraught with danger, we didn't realize that those brave men (for it was only men at that time) may never come down to earth.

Columbia's First Launch

Later on in elementary school we had actual astronauts visit us from NASA. The rumor (or perhaps truth) is that they thought they were going to Evansville, Indiana (pop. 125,000 or so in the early 1980s) which is much larger than Evansville, Wisconsin (pop. 3000 give or take). We learned what the letters in NASA stood for; we ate freeze dried ice cream; and we attempted to comprehend the size of the shuttle and the distance it would travel. Space was cool, the space shuttle was cool, and the astronauts were cool. They made the space program real.


In fifth grade our space reverie was shattered. While sitting in my desk (last row on the left, third seat from the front), waiting for the teacher to start a video an announcement was broadcast over the loudspeakers. I have no idea what was said, or even who made the announcement. I do remember our teacher foregoing the video and attempting to get a television signal so we could watch what was happening. It was the first time our generation was part of a national event. In that moment, we realized that even the good things in our lives, the things that made us hope for something more, could come to an end. I think it was the first time we experienced and understood that grief was something that an entire country could share.

The Challenger

In 2003, I turned on my computer to check my email (I'm not one to watch television). There, in one of the windows was an image of something exploding in the sky. My stomach sank, but my first thought was, "Oh, it's just something from the Challenger explosion." And then it wasn't. My stomach sank further than it had in a long time. The Columbia disaster seems to be dwarfed by the Challenger disaster before it, but in my mind, it is this later explosion that ended the romance of space travel. The Columbia was the first shuttle that went up. It is fixed in my mind as a time of amazement.

The final launch

Now the final shuttle mission is nearing the end.  The Atlantis will land and become a museum piece. Space travel will be turned over to commercial entities. No longer is the government the sponsor of (literally) out of this world ventures. That is what government should do, support the grandiose aspirations of the best and the brightest. Yes, there are plans for the next stage of space travel, but for those of who grew up with the shuttles, there's a bit of magic is gone. And that seems a little sad.


-----




*The first launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia was April 12, 1981 around 7:00am eastern. Which would have been long before school started for the day and when I was still in kindergarten. My memory is very distinctly of first grade and with Mrs. T. So, despite the fact my memory feels it was the first launch, it clearly must not have been. Looking at the launch time line I'm guessing it was more likely the third.


**My scent-track of elementary school is filled with the smell of air-popped popcorn served on industrial-grade brown paper towels.


Parts of this post have been culled from "My Columbia Eulogy," an email sent to my friends after the Columbia disaster, saved, recovered, and resent by JLH. Thanks.

Not too far from that tree, either

As much as I am my mother's daughter, I am also my father's daughter.

My dad and I share a love of word games: spoonerisms, puns, rhymes, and bad jokes. We share a temper that manifests itself in streams of incoherent cursing. We believe that placing cold things on the back of someone's neck is an amusing thing to do. We believe popcorn is best with butter and salt and in a big ol' orange bowl.

Whether it's because he's learned to live with my mom or that I'm so much like him, sometimes he knows how to read me and either put me in my place or what it takes to adjust my mood.

As a kid, I had a tendency to pout*. My dad is the one who taught me that birds have a tendency to poop on that out thrust lip. And what kid can not laugh in the present of a poop reference.

As a college student, home during Christmas, and struggling with what would become the start of a chronic run of clinical depression, my dad reminded me what the holiday season was really about. Not necessarily religion, but the transcendent feeling of watching kids playing in the snow, thrilled with the joy of living. Since that time, I've taught myself to look for the little joys around me. I'm not going to say it's easy and I'm not going to say it's the cure for depression, but I am going to say that finding the little joys makes surviving that much better.

As a bride, my father showed that he truly understands me and our relationship. When meeting with our officiant in preparation for the ceremony, we requested that the officiant not to ask for the bride to be given away. Yet, habits being habits, my dad walked me down the aisle and when we reached the officiant he asked "Who gives this bride away?" My dad, without missing a beat (and not knowing that I had asked not to be given away) said "No one. She comes here as her own person." Yep. He got it right. And then proceeded to call me "Baby girl" several times that day. For the first time in my memory.

How wonderful for a father to acknowledge his daughter's independence and dependence.

___________

*It's possible I haven't lost this tendency

Read, read, read

I've already told you I love books. I've recently had three experiences that have only served to reinforce books as a wonderful thing to love.

First, I'm participating in 1Book140 this month.  It's a monthly Twitter-based book club sponsored by The Atlantic magazine.  As of this week there are over 10,000 participants. The book chosen for this month is Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, a book I've read several times before, but I realize now that it has neither been been recently, nor carefully.  This community of readers is teaching me to read more conscientiously.  And yet there are times I begrudge them for the same.   I find when I read with intent, I read word by word by word and appreciate the science of the text, but often lose the art.  When I read for pleasure, I turn off the analytical* side of my brain, read by phrases and become flooded with images. Though only black lines on a white background, novel text transports me to an ethereal and yet somehow completely tangible environment.

Then, earlier this week I met Beth in Mankato to attend the Traverse des Sioux Library System Storytellers series featuring Jennifer Weiner.   While waiting for the event to begin, Beth and I got caught up in a conversation with another attendee.  Among the three of us we were able to share stories of reading our favorite books and how the text we read became a part of our realities.  How reading a great book made us think about our own lives differently.  Also, we got to listen to Ms. Weiner speak and answer questions  - the author bringing us more in touch with her characters.

Which brings me to this article based on this study.  Though dated in December, I've only just seen it. Based on data analysis of 30 years worth of responses to the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Sarah H. Konrath and her colleages have found that "almost 75 percent of students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago." The article goes on to state that Americans have become more socially isolated and less likely to read fiction over than same period of time. "The number of adults who read literature for pleasure sank below 50 percent for the first time ever in the past 10 years, with the decrease occurring most sharply among college-age adults."

But humanity's saving grace may in fiction.  From Raymond A. Mar's article:

While frequent readers are often stereotyped as socially awkward, this may only be true of non-fiction readers and not readers of fiction.  Comprehending characters in a narrative fiction appears to parallel the comprehension of peers in the actual world, while the comprehension of expository non-fiction shares no such parallels...The tendency to become absorbed in a story also predicted empathy scores.

Who knew there was symbol for empathy? 

Many of us are reading information (non-fiction) from the time our cell phone alarms wake us in the morning till we take that one last look at the Google news before going to bed.  We have Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, work email, personal email, text messages, online magazines, news aggregation sites.  But stop and think with me for a moment, which made you better understand the experience of those living in Afghanistan over the last 30 years: the innumerable news articles we've seen or Khaled Hosseini's heartbreakingly beautiful novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns?


Admittedly, there is a bit of self-selection here.  As someone who would rather read fiction than non-fiction, the idea that fiction could be emotionally and socially beneficial gives purpose to my favorite reading pastime.  But doesn't it also give purpose to us all, a medium to reach out and connect with those around us? A fuel to power the empathetic human experience.

_____
*Apparently the spell checker I use does not like analytical, wanting me to use analytic in it's place.  An internet search reveals they are synonyms with the "al" suffix being slightly more American.

Life lessons via improv

First of all, Tina Fey's Bossypants is a great book. I enjoyed it cover to cover. Not least because of reminders of people, places, and things (Greg-the-bicycle-helmet-guy, Davis St. El-Stop, and Heartland Cafe's sweet potato fries) that were part of what made my life in Evanston/Chicago memorable.

But really, what I want to share with you is Ms. Fey's

The Rules of Improvisation
That Will Change Your Life and Reduce Belly Fat*

These four rules echo some of my own personal philosophy with regard to success, dealing with challenges, making it through the day.

The first rule of improvisation is AGREE.  Always agree and SAY YES.  When you’re improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created.  So if we’re improvising and I say, “Freeze, I have a gun,” and you say, “That’s not a gun. It’s your finger.  You’re pointing your finger at me,” our improvised scene has ground to a halt.  But if I say, “Freeze, I have a gun!” and you say, “The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!” Then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas Gun.

As Fey states, this isn't going to work in all cases.  BUT, leading a life where the first answer is "Yes", and then dealing with any complications that arise from this seems that it would lead to a far more adventurous life than one where any suggestion is met with a definite, obstinate, recalcitrant "No."

I'm not advocating saying yes to everything. Many people, myself included (and I'm really going to try to change this) have set their default answer to "No."

No, I don't want to try the brussels sprouts.

No, I have no desire to go to the store with you.

There's NO way I could bike 40 miles in a single day.

No, I will not help you rob the bank.

What I am advocating is setting the default to "Yes." It seems that if our initial response is to accept the things and events presented to us we open ourselves to ever larger experience.

Yes, I will try the brussels sprouts. By saying yes to one of the first things my now-husband cooked for me, I showed I was open to adventure with him. Also, I found a new vegetable that I really like.

Yes, I will go to the store with you.  You never know what you might see on the way to, at, or from the store.  Maybe today's the day with the unannounced sale on those wish list things you've been longing for.

Yes, I can bike 40 miles in a day. If we go slowly, have some rest stops, and carry plenty of water.  Our bodies are usually capable of much more than we give them credit for.  And how good does it feel to walk into work the next day and say, "I rode from home to that place 20 miles away and back again yesterday."  Oh Yea.

No, I will not help you rob the bank. But before I said "No." But I thought about it.  At the very least I thought about why you might need to rob a bank.  Also, it's a wee bit flattering to have something thing I could help them rob a bank.  Or, at least, I'm going to assume it's flattering.  The true answer might be that I'm just a good patsy.

The second rule of improvisation is not only to say yes, but YES, AND....To me YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute.  It’s your responsibility to contribute.  Always make sure you’re adding something to the discussion.   Your initiations are worthwhile.

If you're going to come to the party, the least you can do is bring a bottle of wine or bag of chips.  I also think this is part of what makes these rule a challenge.  It's easy to say simply "yes" or "no".  We are often content to let someone else find the adventure so that we can just tag along for the ride.  It can be scary to try to contribute.  But try anyway AND learn from the experience.

Yes, I will try the brussels sprouts.  And I think they would look nice on this antique plate.

Yes, I will go to the store with you.  And let's create a realistic plan to acquire those wish list items.

Yes, I'll bike 40 miles with you.  And if we take this path I heard there's a great burger place along the way.  Let's have lunch there.

Nope, I'm still not going to help you rob the bank.  However (a sort of and) I'll help you find a legal way to acquire those luxury goods you so desperately want.

The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS.  This is a positive way of saying “Don’t ask questions all the time.” If we’re in a scene and I say, “Who are you? Where are we? What are we doing here? What’s in that box?” I’m putting pressure on you to come up with all the answers. 

In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solution.  Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out the obstacles.

This seems to fill right into line with my Wallow With a Purpose philosophy. It's important to spend time evaluating the risks and obstacles, but don't stop there.  My high school math teacher* was always willing to help students through problems on our homework. However, she would only help you if you tried the problem first and could tell her where you got stuck. She forced you to find figure the sticking point and then helped create a path past it.  

THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only opportunities. ... In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents.  And many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been by accident.  I mean, look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, or Botox.

No one is going to be always successful. Falling flat on our face is what teaches us we stronger than we thought.  Be brave enough to try anything.  To say "yes" first.  To add to the pot. To bring your own ideas into the mix. Some concoctions are horrible, but some are greater than the sum of their parts.  

*improv will not reduce belly fat**

Thank you Tina Fey.

________

*Yes, I had same math teacher for all four years of high school.

**Actually, it might.  Research shows (here, here, and here for starters)  that stress raises cortisol levels in the body.  Cortisol seems to be related to the storage fat in the belly.  So, if these Rules help reduce the stress in your life, they could help narrow your waist line at the same time. I'm just saying.

The nut doesn't fall far from the tree

I am my mother's daughter.

Mom, me, Great-Grandma B, Grandma F.
1975ish

Mom

My father and my husband are more than willing to remind me of that on a regular basis.  And admittedly there seems to be a genetic predilection for alphabetized spices, properly folded towels, and overall control-freakishness.

And, quite truthfully, I am proud of this.  In fact, there are times I wish I had some more of my mother's traits.  She seems to be able to maintain a calmness and pleasantness in the face of adversity that I just don't have.

Me

Well, some adversity.  She's good in retail and office situations.  It might just be because every one is scared of her.  When she's at home, with a limited audience, she's not always so collected. Apparently as a youngster I came into the barn repeating my mother's admonitions to the calves she was attempting to teach to drink from a bucket.* Apparently she was convinced they were made of excrement and lacked intelligence. Yes, toddlers talking about the shitty dumb calves is rather cute.

Yet, here is my question. Likely 99.999999% of the troubles I had with my mother were based on me talking back.  Where did I learn this?  Clearly I must have had a good role model.  See, I'm thinking I learned it all from her.  So really, shouldn't she have been glad to have created a child willing to speak up for herself instead of constantly chastising her for that?  I suppose we'll never really know the answer.

Still, and all, I'm glad my mom is my mom.  I'm glad she's at least partly responsible for making me who I am today.  If only I could remember why.**

Fall 2010

________
*It's a bit of a trick to teach a calf to drink from a bucket.  The general trick is to lead her mouth to the fluid by allowing her to suck your fingers.  The problem is that the calf believes that butting her head is a good way to get said fluid.  So, the calf butts her head and the teacher's fingers end up painfully trapped between the bottom of the bucket and the edges of the calf's teeth.

**One trait I do seem to have escaped is my mother's tendency to not remember things.