wideeyedfunk

Category: Garden

Stuff grows out of the dirt like magic.

  • Rolling in the clover.

    The neighborhood is full of them, those little yellow signs: “Keep Off Pesticide Applied.” Crooked Hankie and Sweet Miss Tibbit prance by them without a pause, sniffing and nibbling and thinking dog thoughts. I read them, I observe the lush green carpet lawns, and I get it. That stuff is soft and inviting and looks just like a fresh new shag carpet. I mean, I guess it looks like a fresh new shag carpet because I haven’t actually observed one of those, mainly I see used, flattened, stinky shag carpets awaiting tear-out in the less updated homes the WideEyedHousehold has purchased over the decades.

    But then, our evening walkies round the corner into our WideEyedYard and the joyous chaos of bees buzzing and butterflies fluttering and beetles creeping among the taller green stuff is so soothing to me. And to Hankie and Sweet Tibbit, because they stop, drop, and roll as soon as they hit it, standing up reeking of green clover and scattered with little clover blooms.

    Our yard is cut long because the Museum of Natural History in London posted on social media that this is the best way to create habitat for hedge hogs. [Pause.] I know. Hedge hogs do not live in the yards of Buffalo, NY, but in the spirit of supporting the importance of hedge hog foraging space, I complied with the suggestion.

    Something wonderful happened to the yard in mid-June. The long grass went to seed with little fronds flowing in the breeze, and the clover grew taller and bloomed. Our city yard is a mini-prairie, rolling and surrounded by mostly edible shrubs, and herbs, and flowers, and trees. The bee hive susurrates in the back and little honey bees with leg pockets full of honey and their little sacs full of nectar come and go.

    If I stand still and wait, the big bees, little bees, fuzzy bees, and butterflies swirl around me. The dogs flop and pant. The gardens rustle and push push push for the warm summer sun in our short growing season. It is pure joy to lie down in the clover with the whole lot of the garden things and know, everyone can enter here. There isn’t any pesticide. No one need keep off.

  • Leave the puffer behind.

    70 degrees Fahrenheit. Possibly the most perfect temperature. And friends, I’m incredibly relieved to report that I’m experiencing it today. Experiencing it outside. Because of course inside my second story office in my antique house with antique radiators, it is usually well over 70 degrees when it is 65 degrees downstairs at the thermostat and 15 degrees outside.

    I’m not making sense. Blame it on the 70 degrees.

    On this day, I left my ankle length Patagonia puffer on the coat rack for morning dog walkies for the first time since mid-November. I felt mostly unprotected and I did worry a bit. What if the situation changed around the corner? Ok, now I’m bragging about my own bravery because the truth of the matter is that I had on thinsulate lined Carhartt bib overalls, blundstone boots, my red pompom hat, and a slightly lighter jacket. But not the puffer and that’s something.

    My smile actually ached in my cheeks in the final block, and it is certain any watching neighbors, and in the city there’re always watching neighbors, well, they probably thought the isolation finally sent me off the rails.

    But it wasn’t madness. It was wild joy. And I still feel it. The (nearly) useless dogs feel it. Catticus the Cat feels it. The WideEyedBees in the backyard WideEyedHive are living it. They are living it so robustly that I think we are going to have to suit up and crack that thing open this afternoon to check on food stores and brood. It’s a little scary in the off season because the bees, oddly, do not respect that I am acting out of concern when I allow cold air into their home. They dive bomb our bee suits and leave startlingly large poop splotches in their wake. No one has ever asked my opinion, but I’ll give it now: any given creature should not produce poop splotches nearly as large as themselves. I guess holding it in for a few months will cause that.

    Snow is predicted for the weekend but it won’t stay. I think I’ll step into the backyard and hoot and holler a bit. The sunny warmth is begging for it. Might as well confirm my mad state with the neighbors.

  • Aggressive decency.

    Most days I tell myself, today feels good. Birds chirp during morning dog walks. Hankie Smalls the Corgi and Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog – innocent and protected – are untroubled by politics, economics, or impending societal collapse. They are cheerful and hopeful every single morning. Interesting adventures in the confounding universe await. They smile at me and expect love back. So I smile and feel good, breathing deeply in the cold, hydrocarbon scented city air.

    Then comes the newspaper. The morning news on the car radio. The news synopsis emails. The Facebook feeds. From them I learn who died and how. Who was assaulted, harassed, or disempowered. Who has had their legal rights, access to medicine, or control over their own bodies stripped from them in the night as our political leaders sneak sly, lobby-fueled, religion-fired legislation into the system. The senators must be tiring of my letters.

    Ugh. I grit my teeth and work through it, distracting myself with the minutiae of academic program management and research.

    Time is passing and green stuff is sprouting in the garden. I pruned the pear trees and the blackberry canes. When the snow melts, hah, it is blizzarding right now!, when the snow melts I’ll trim the ornamental grasses.

    But it bothers me every day, who am I to take joy in the universe, in the fresh cold morning, and the coming spring? Humans keep on revealing their inherent awfulness, and I feel powerless to mediate the impacts.

    Is being kind enough? Is growing a garden, petting some dogs, and writing to the powerful enough? Here’s what I think: these things aren’t nothing and every positive action, every tiny commitment to decency contributes to the greater good. The plan: grit my teeth, carry on, and smile while I shove decency down the throats of the asshats. Er. I mean that figuratively, of course I do.

    Here, look at the picture of the happy corgi with me and we’ll all feel better…

    IMG_1355_3-14

  • Garden avatar

    With a near supernatural restraint and indomitable force of WideEyed will, I did not buy new plants for the front garden this year. Ok. I did not by many plants for the front garden – only two sedum tiles which I cunningly split into a few pieces each resulting in six new plantings. Hah.

    Instead, I hacked bits from the Shasta daisies to fill in holes. These bits are droopy excuses for plants. I stare at them as the dogs and I stroll past them. I am distracted by them as I pull into the driveway after a long day of being Chained To An Office Chair.  They better perk up or I’m hitting the garden store down on Main Street. (Sounds charming, right? Like Main Street is some kind of throwback with interesting shops, flowers, smiling people. Uh. Nope. Major traffic artery right through the city. Lotta red lights and screaming and enormous potholes. The garden shop is nice though.)

    I tiled inferno weed zones with flagstone scraps and bricks reclaimed from a sadly deceased neighbor’s defunct garden patio. (No. I did not reclaim these bricks in the dead of night after her funeral, if that’s what you were thinking. Her husband and sons removed the patio and graciously offered them to me. I promise. That’s how it happened.) Maybe pretty weeds will grow between the new stonework. Maybe the nasturtium seeds I threw down will produce delights. The WideEyedSpouse added an inukshuk – or more correctly an inunnguaq I guess – to the garden. The little stone person had dignity and gravitas until the birds visited this morning. Now the WideEyedAvatar needs a bath.

    The gardens awaken. The sun beams down on us all. Winter doldrums are fading into a dim memory of something that happened to someone else.

    inunnguaq

  • Eight inches below normal.

    Eight inches below normal.

    I think I mowed the grass once back in June.  Then I maybe mowed the taller, more resilient weeds in July. Now, mid-August, I just don’t care. And I think if I subject the brown crackly stuff that used to be my lawn to a mower, I’ll be reenacting the Worst Hard Times (dustbowl) right here in Buffalo.

    Lost the cucs. Potatoes barely holding on. Tomatoes are producing by sheer force of the WideEyedSpouse’s will and liberal use of the hose. The avocado tree has a few leaves left. The pear trees produced nothing. (But then, they never have except that one pear the first year, which a squirrel ate right in front of me. A**hat squirrel.) The shaded coffee trees are weird, one is flourishing (no beans yet, still young) and the other is withered and weak. I think the healthy one is stealing the soul of the poorly one. Should make for interesting coffee someday. I’ll call it SoulStealer. Buffalo SoulStealer. It’ll make you feel awake and strong but you’ll have questionable moral grounding for a few hours.

    But I’ll tell you what, I’ve got two limes. Count ‘em. Two. First time ever those little white blossoms on this wee shrubby, scraggly thing of a lime plant ever turned into something. I’m including images for proof. See, there below?

    Lime 2 8-10-2016

    We’ve been warned that the drought has the city rats mad with thirst and hunger. Rumor has it that they are pillaging gardens and yards. Evidently they really like tomatoes and dog poop. Sorta makes a person have a short mental wander into what might be similarly good about tomatoes and dog poop.

    I fully expect that a lime stealing rat will come for these precious fruits soon. If that happens, I assure you friends, the WideEyed-Buffalo-SoulStealer-Funk will have her revenge. And it won’t be fair or nice or decent.

    Maybe it’ll rain again someday.

  • Independence Day.

    Thanks to the bold minds and brave signers of the Declaration of Independence, and their willingness to see it through we are here now:  equal, free of abuses, repeated injuries,  and usurpations from Government, free of a Government which refuses to pass laws, free from the obstruction of justice, free of taxation without representation…er.

    Ok.

    Well.

    Thanks to the bold minds and etc. etc. were here now: basking in a glorious summer day of picnics and simply joys. The people of the WideEyedHousehold came of age in one of the New Jersey shore towns, working to serve the holidays of one hundred thousand city-folk. Now, we wallow in the quietude and privacy of a day of independence, without obligation.

    Sweet Tibbit the Useless-Little-Black dog waits patiently for more raspberries to ripen on the thicket in back yard. She already harvested all within reach using her front nibble teeth, stretching her neck, balancing her dainty toes on the edges of the raised beds to reach more. Hamish watches, pretty sure this is Not Allowed but not sure enough to administer chastisement.  I rescued enough for yard-raspberry French-toast for breakfast.

    SmokedThe WideEyedSpouse hovers over the bounty of his 16-hour overnight pork shoulder smoke. Ten pounds of darkly barked smoked pork await conversion into pulled pork sandwiches, tacos, omelets, pizzas, stews, Shepherd’s pies, burritos, lettuce wraps, grilled cheeses, soups, stir-frys – who knows what desperate lengths we’ll go to.

    The baby-toe cactus and the Venus-fly-trap feel it too, exploding with vegetation regeneration in mad blooms, and yes, picnicking in the case of the fly-trap. A desiccated gnat carcass is revealed as one trap slowly reopens in the morning sun.

    Plants

    I stand on the freshly scrubbed front porch, watching the flag undulate lazily over the bees tending their lavender in the garden. Main Street is quiet for once. Instead of driving here and there, bustling and hustling, the Good People of Buffalo seem to be taking the day. The park was full this morning of bikes and kids and dogs and golfers. We weaved and bobbed among them all on the park loop until my bike chain broke – creeee-clank – and then we walked with them.

    Flag

    Independence Day.

  • Save the grapes.

    In past times the marauders took all.

    Dragon

    This year we vowed to defend against their incursion.

    Castle Building 4

    The harbingers arrived yesterday evening, as we ate the evening meal. I gazed out the open windows and into the gardens as is my habit in weather fair and foul. The grape clusters are small this year, but numerous, and their purpling flesh glowed in the lowering sunlight. I admired their bounty and watched the leaves of the vines rustle in our summery breezes.

    Grape1

    But wait. My eyes sharpened and I peered intently. Not breezes rustling the leaves! Not breezes at all! The leaves shook and shimmied as two, no three, no! Many robins and starlings gripped the vines with tiny feet and ravaged the fruits with rapacious beaks. A fight broke out over a particularly lush patch. Wretched pillagers fighting! Over MY grapes!

    “They are here!” I announced to the WideEyedSpouse, “They are in the grapes!” He slewed about in his chair and gaining his feet stormed the arbor with determined strides. The winged looters fled his arrival, perching tauntingly out of reach on roof and tree.

    The Spouse returned to the kitchen. “Our loses are small yet,” he gravely reported. We thought on it. Do we cede all to the feathered freebooters? Do we protect the harvest, as we vowed? “The air rifle we saw in the market earlier today would make short work of the problem,” he decided with a dark eye. I could see him measuring distance, angle, wind – seeing in his mind’s eye the small pirates falling from the arbor. Neutralized.

    “Yes,” I agreed, uncertain of the wisdom of this choice, “but they are many, and you must sleep sometime.” We loaded into the Mighty Pathfinder and set about procuring defensive matériel. We fought even tinier marauders bent on attacking our very persons, buzzing in our ears as we draped the precious harvest with fine netting.  “How can this work?” we asked ourselves of the fine, light nylon.

    Today the vile garden thieves circle the arbor, cheeping tactical data to one another.  The netting wafts in the airy day, effective still. Wish us luck Friends, as we guard our precious grapes.

    Grape2

  • WideEyedFunk Progenitor is Also WideEyed Over Spring

    WideEyedFunk Progenitor is Also WideEyed Over Spring

    *Guest written by WideEyedMom from her home in central Virginia.

    “When we left for Florida last week there were little peeping buds of pale chartreuse on the trees and a smoking yellow mist at the tops.  We arrived back yesterday afternoon to a darker chartreuse and a deep spicy aroma of oak woods.  The mist from the trees is now on all the porches. The oaks are alive with bug-eating woodpeckers, darting bluebirds, finches and cardinals.  A little bird again built its nest upon the patio light fixture and Choppie the Cat monitors it every day from the upstairs decking.  I have peas and onions waving their heads and summer is almost upon us…”

  • Sun shining on suet. Briefly.

    I looked in the fridge and discovered that the WideEyedSpouse and I had successfully filled the backs of the shelves with containers and objects of mystery.

    Crème fraîche container. Actually contained crème fraîche. From New Year’s Eve caviar, blinis, and a bright-sparkling Spanish cava. I sniffed it. “Seems ok,” I told the Spouse. My tongue tingled and burned under the little sample. Perhaps not.

    Tarter sauce jar. Actually contained tartar sauce. Expiration December 5, 2014. No one can remember why or when it was purchased. Now we have a warehouse club bag of 115 frozen fish sticks waiting for saucy additions. I wacked the stuck on lid on the counter a couple of times and cranked it open over the sink so the crumbly bits didn’t go all over the floor. I sniffed it. “Seems ok,” I told the Spouse. I dipped a crunchy warm fish stick into it and tasted. “Tastes ok,” I announced and plopped a few tablespoons on my plate. If something happens to us, tell them to check the fish sticks AND the tartar sauce jar. Which is now back in the fridge. Because now there’re 93 frozen fish sticks waiting for saucy additions.

    Wegman’s 4% cottage cheese container. Contents unidentifiable. Did not sniff. Sniffing was, in fact, unnecessary as the aroma instantaneously saturated my sinuses. Miss Tibbit, who helps with food investigations, sneezed.

    ½ head of Chinese cabbage. Felt solid, did not sag. I peeled it out of the thin produce bag and sniffed it. “Smells ok,” I told the Spouse. He looked at me over his fish sticks. “It’s black,” he said. I peeled open the layers, “not inside the leaves,” I told him. “It’s black,” he said.

    Daisy Sour Cream Light container. See cottage cheese container. With blue fuzz.

    2.5 pint Ball Jars of bacon and beef fat. Clean, pure, lenses of suet collected throughout our years in this place. No, there is no logic to this. We cook bacon or whatever. Fat is bad for drains. Thus, we dump fat into jars and refrigerate. Problem solved. I opened the jars. Sniffed. Smelled like meat. The dogs offered a solution, which I ignored. I thought about our long, cold, snowy winter. I thought out the chickadees, woodpeckers, crows, sparrows, robins, thrushes, and finches. “I bet the birds are hungry,” I said to the Spouse and traded clearing the fridge and eating fish sticks for a run to the hardware store. It was an easy decision.

    I melted the fat, tossed in some old cornmeal and old oats – because mystery containers are not restricted to the fridge – and piled in as much premium Northeastern bird seed as the greasy liquid would take. After cooling the whole thing down for a couple of hours I cut it into six suet cakes and hung the first from the grape arbor in the back garden.

    It’s out there now, dangling in the winter sun. There are a couple of peck marks in it but not much action so far. Tibbit got stuck in the three feet of snow below it. She cried for help. She knows there is something wonderful up there. Come on birdies, there’s something wonderful here for you!

    Then, as I was writing about the suet cake and hungry birds…

  • The benevolent dictator at Christmas.

    My absolute dominion over the thousands of beings in my WidedEyedDemesne is of the gentlest nature. This is my moral and ethical choice – as you know, with great power comes great responsibility. In the holiday season, I strive to make the lives of my WideEyedSubjects shine brightly.

    For Hamish the Corgi, a stuffed Olaf the Snowman waits under the tree – Sven the Reindeer is sitting next to him, having no notion that he is a gift for Miss Tibbit and that his days are short. Fitz (the betta fish are always named Fitz) will have a new moss ball. Wiggins the Ancient Cat received a teeth cleaning and three extractions – the vet tells me this was a gift of life. This almost made my heart swell in direct proportion to the shrinking of the WideEyedTreasury.

    Innocents waiting under the tree.
    Innocents waiting under the tree.

    The hundreds of red wigglers in the worm bin, so content to ooze in the dim moistness – I’ve got three eggs shells and some mushroom stems for them. Wiggle worms, and squirm. Enjoy your holiday feast and think warm thoughts of my largess as you produce compost for the territorial gardens.

    And my dermestid subjects, my thousands of loyal flesh eating beetles, for generations of their heritage I ’ve cared for them. Do they have oral histories of their arrival into my territories? Do they teach each new larval group of the great hand which delivers food and water under a searing bright light? When food grows scarce and all flesh is consumed from the skeletons, do they pour libations and perform sacrifice to me?

    Dermestid territory, let the feast begin!
    Dermestid territory, let the feast begin!

    My dermestids will be pleased with any gift, but I want them to grow and prosper and be content in the coming winter for my freezer is full of specimens to deflesh and I’ll need the hungry bellies of their young. I thought long, resting my chin in hand, what will please them? Ah, it came to me…the bison head, the fine fats and proteins of the bison brain, rare and rich gifts that all can share.  Feast well my small subjects!

    Merry Christmas Friends. May you also have a fine day of love, kindness, and feasting.