Backsliding Once Again
The temperature hit 60 degrees today, a couple weeks before the vernal equinox. 60 degrees, for any of you who live in less temperate climes, is basically a summer day here, what we call unseasonably warm. On days like this we drop what we’re doing and we get our butts outdoors. Which I did. Which is where I am right now, sitting at our picnic table, pen in hand, beer at the ready. I know, it’s a tough life … but save your pity for those poor souls who have jobs, indoor jobs anyway.
Seemed like a good day to wander into the Pea Patch so I did. Cut up potatoes and planted them in mounds. Sowed seed for salad. Hauled the scarecrow over to a new spot. Roto-tilled. Put up the pea fence. Gentleman farmer, that’s me.
Every year I say I’m going to cut back, grow only the stuff that grows well with our cold maritime nights. And every year I plant the whole she-bang all over again. Corn that barely ripens, artichokes that have heads the size of a pingpong ball, tomatoes that stay green. If I didn’t, I’d think I was Backsliding. And when you reach my ripe old age, you want to keep any forward momentum going even if it’s de-accelerating faster than reverse glacial accretion. It’s the same with woodcutting. I think, gee, maybe I’ll switch to propane heat. Save hauling 10 or 12 cord of wood out of the back 40, just hit a thermostat when I’m chilly. But I know it’s a slippery slope. And that slope leads to a Laz-y-Boy and a channel changer.
What I think is you have to see the future as Potential. As Progress. You have to have something to work Toward. And don’t mean tonight’s PBS programming. Me, I’m growing dinner. I’m splitting my heat for a warmer winter. I came to the country so I’d be tuned into the seasons, I’d till the land, I’d plant orchards and I’d make firewood. Sure it gets harder every year. Damn right it does. But not near as hard as the day when I sit here looking at an overgrown garden gone to grass and weed again because I can’t bend down far enough to poke seeds into the ground.
But today feels like spring and as we say on the South End, hope springs eternal. My salad days aren’t over yet and my woodsheds are nearly full. I’m even betting this will be a good tomato year. Like I bet every year….
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