Gardening: Happy Hobby or Prairie Penance?

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The Great Garden Makeover of 2013

Gardening is NOT for sissies. In my usual winter-is-finally-over delirium, I forgot that, so I’m enjoying a painful reminder today.

We’re always late getting our veggie garden in. The semester doesn’t really end until the middle of May, and before that, I can forget any semblance of a life beyond grading rubrics, panicky students, deadlines and shrapnel cleanup. Then I need about a week to sit drooling in a chair, watching reruns of Alaska: The Last Frontier, and recovering. And that was BEFORE the stroke, so multiply by infinity…

This year, my usual post-semester [s]lackadaisicalness was also compounded by freaky weather. We had a mild but very late winter, with snows into late April. This was followed by near-constant rain. It’s tough to put a garden in when the ground is mush and water is pouring on your head. And today it's a balmy 88 degrees. I drove past a woman gardening in her bikini, and believe me, it was not a pretty sight. The Row is starting to look like a wild tropical rainforest. I swear I hear monkeys in the shelterbelt at night.

But we’re prairie folk, by gum. We never give up on our Better Girl tomatoes or our Bush Pickling cucumbers. Ray has gradually been dismantling old horse/cow fences around the Row and hauling huge iron fencing panels to the garden. He made an amazing perimeter fence sturdy enough for vining cukes & squash. We “skirted” the fence with chicken wire to keep bunnies out (the peacocks will eat whatever they can reach through the garden fence—they LOVE gooseberries—but they haven’t figured out that they could just fly over the fence). Finally, Ray laid ground cloth, and the garden was ready to plant.

The Row's Original Homestead House

Zorro's ImPEArsonation of a Lawn Ornament

So yesterday, Ray took a “vacation” day and, because I was feeling all Mother Earthish and clearly forgot I’d had a stroke, and because SoDakians have to “make hay while the sun shines,” we did the marathon. It was 10 hours of finishing fences, rigging a gate out of old parts we found in the homestead house, moving the herb garden, reigning in The Mint that Took Over the World, and finally, putting in tomatoes, cucumbers, hot and sweet peppers, squash, greens, basil, parsley, and dill. I had a short midday nap, one minor frustration meltdown, and I had to leave Ray to wrap things up for the last hour or so. But we got it done.

Whoodoggies! Crawling around on the ground and contorting to reach trowel, flats of tomatoes, gloves, water bottle, etc., is a whole new experience with this clunky post-stroke body. I was an idiot to let garden guilt and fear of more rain drive me like a madwoman yesterday—today, I could barely move enough to shower and go to PT. But thanks to Tiger Balm and Advil I can move my fingers, so here’s a little poem I wrote that explores the typical SoDakian philosophy of gardening:

GARDEN HYMN

This is no English tea garden, pal.

No fragile limp fuscia

edged in periwinkle ruffles,

no meandering crocus border,

wisteria draped over a pale trellis,

no painted wrought-iron bench

resting in the thick, damp shade.

No thin ivy dipping its compact buds

in a moss-blue wading pool,

dotted with alabaster cherubs and

creamy-white water lilies.

No sir, this is serious prairie stock.

Drought-resistant bush beans,

sixty quarts worth,

squared off in rotten railroad ties.

Screaming red Big Girl tomatoes

strung to chicken wire

with old support hose.

Hot jalapeño peppers splitting

in a sudden mud-splattering downpour—

a brief storm that somewhere washes out

a delicate, orderly flower bed.

Curse of the Poetry Festival

Wonderland in white.

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Uncle! [slapping the mat] Aunt! I give!

Poetry curse: 1. Me: 0.

My friends B, L and I just got back last weekend from a 2 ½-day retreat in Minnesota. Most of the 35 women at the retreat had been coming to the annual event for 25+ years. L and I were invited to give poetry workshops as part of the event, a yearly gathering to celebrate women and art. In addition to our poetry workshops, the weekend also included meditative drawing, acrylic painting, and interpretive movement. B spent her afternoons birding in the MN woods. We all had a lovely time and made many new friends, but it was NOT a poetry festival. You’ll see in a minute why that matters.

Under this sugar coating is a layer of ice.

My plan yesterday was to drive with another guest poet to a poetry festival in Aberdeen, about 3-4 hours northwest of here. Two other poets would drive in from Sioux Falls and MN. When I checked safetravelusa.com early yesterday morning, the northbound leg of our route was designated “No travel advised.” The westerly leg of our route was “ice and snow covered; slippery,” with continuing snow showers. So we scrapped the drive for the day and hoped that by this morning, the plow fairies would have swept it all away.

I think I’ve mentioned that each time my friend P invites me to Aberdeen to do workshops & readings, I run into freakish weather (see http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2008/08/hackers-really-raise-my-hackles.html for gory details of one of these trips). But what I haven’t mentioned is that each year in February, when I organize the annual one-day-only student poetry festival at our own Little Town U, something BIG gums up the works. One year, we had a blizzard the day before the festival. Another year, we had an ice storm the morning of the festival. And one year, on the morning of the festival (and because winter wouldn’t cooperate that year, I guess), Ray was sideswiped on the interstate by a distracted driver, flipped, and rolled his pickup into a ditch. He was okay, but of course I was a short-circuiting bundle of jangled nerves the entire day.

Time to refill the bird feeders!

So you can see why my first reaction when P called yesterday to cancel the festival was hysterical laughter. I’d been smacked down again by the dreaded poetry curse!

It’s true…I’m relieved not to have to fishtail across the frozen north. And the farmyard is a breathtaking wonderland in white (if you don’t have to go anywhere). And I cancelled classes today expecting to be gone, so I’ll have a nice long, snowy weekend to grade papers and knit (there’s no un-cancelling classes—30 seconds after cancelling a class, students have already made 30 other plans).

Still, I’ll miss hanging out with P, sampling Aberdeen martinis, and reading & writing poetry. And I LOVE road trips.

Brigid, in your shawl of snow, protect us.

I’m starting to think that me + poetry festivals = psychic disturbance in the Universe. But I won’t give up, dammit. Somehow, I will lift this curse. I will burn sage over my Yeats books. I will speak in trochaic tetrameter. I will knit bookmarks. I will memorize Christopher Dewdney’s “Grid Erectile” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN3AaYp_kyY). I will stockpile magnetic poetry kits. And next year, when plans are afoot for Little Town U’s poetry festival or another trip to Aberdeen, I will not reveal my intentions aloud, lest the Universe hear. As the goddess Brigid is my witness, one day poetry festivals everywhere will be able to raise their faces to the sun and shout out their slant rhymes, curse-free and unafraid.

Jack Blizzard's Last Hurrah

glazed chairs in spring colors

I am planning & packing to go do a poetry workshop and reading in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I’ve gone to Aberdeen several times before for workshops and readings, and each time I go, Jack Blizzard has a nasty little tantrum. It doesn’t matter if it’s February, March, or April—I’ve gone in each of these months before—there’s a freakish winter storm.

farmyard dressed in white

I’m supposed to head out tomorrow, so yesterday, of course, we had an ice storm. It glazed everything with a ¼” of treacherous crystal. I crawled home from an early evening meeting by driving 20 miles on gravel at 25 mph. By the time I got home, my hands were permanently molded into white-knuckle-grip claws. All of this, in spite of the fact that the day before, the temp in Little Town was 73 degrees and female students were sashaying to & from classes in their Daisy Duke cutoffs.

pergola's ice fringe

But remember, we’re hearty prairie stock. Jack can’t ruffle our feathers. Under this crusty layer of white, the farmyard grass is green and growing again. The allium, tulips, and crocus are up, and the robins are busy building nests. I’m already itching to get out the garden sculptures. Ray is finding progressively more “outside work” to do—rake up honey locust pods, tune up the lawn tractor, take down an old barbed-wire fence, tie up new prayer flags.

So maybe it's brain damage from the stroke, but by golly, I will pack my car, load up the emergency winter car kit, stock my backpack with water and beef jerky, and charge my phone. If I have to, I will crawl gravel roads across the frozen tundra, all the way to Aberdeen. My children taught me not to give in. They taught me that the best way to stop Jack Blizzard’s tantrum is to completely ignore it. Stay calm, hum “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” head down, plow forward.

hundreds of snow geese take a roadside rest

Winter Work

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Well-Stocked Prairie Pantry

This wacky winter in South Dakota has resourceful prairie people doing supermodel quick-changes—stripping off the down and woolies, then piling on 17 layers, then trying to coordinate Bermuda shorts with thermal turtlenecks. Last week, in the middle of January, it was 53 degrees. Over the weekend, Ray was shoveling snow and the wind chill got down to -25. My friend Bee calls it South Dakota’s “bipolar meteorological disorder.” Seriously, South Dakota…get some help.

Knit Brain Hat in Progress

Here on the Row, we’re busy with winter chores. Sinclair Lewis wrote, “Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.” Absotively true, and no one knows it better than SoDakians, except maybe Arctic tundra-dwellers. Take our wood stove, for example. It’s so romantic, right? that lovely warm glow? iron kettle of water on top—cinnamon, cloves & orange peel filling the house with steamy, spicy perfume? sleeping cat curled up on a sheepskin in front of the stove? Sigh…makes me wanna churn some butter. But I’m not sure Ray’s feeling the romance right now. Right now, mid-winter, that stove is Ray’s part-time job. Chop the wood. Split the wood. Carry the wood. Make a fire. Stoke the stove. Clean the stove. Dump the ash. Repeat. All. Winter. Long. I remember getting my first wood stove back in the 70’s. I was so thrilled. But my buzz-kill grandma said, “Why would you want something we couldn’t WAIT to get rid of?” I figured she was just too old to get it. O youthful arrogance…

Pom-Pom Hat

Stocking the pantry is another winter occupation. Hearty prairie folk know how to “put food by.” Deeply ingrained in our psyche is the primordial walrus-like instinct to pack on blubber. And in the back of our minds we know that at any moment, the grocery store might be on the other side of a blizzard, just out of reach.

So we’re doing our usual winter panicky pathological food-hoarding. My sky-high triglycerides, revealed in a recent health screening, have us eating boat-loads of fresh tuna and salmon. (New research suggests that triglycerides, more than HDL or LDL cholesterol, are a risk factor for stroke and heart disease. It now seems I had EVERY stroke risk factor known to modern medicine. Sheesh.) Our freezer is full of organic grass-fed beef, lamb, and Bambi’s cousin. I keep a giant container of cooked blackeyed peas in the fridge now, which I add to everything, since it’s the single best food for lowering tri’s. Kale is also good for lowering tri’s, so I’m making kale chips, kale smoothies, and wilted kale with blackeyed peas. I make huge batches of rainbow quinoa and bulgur tabhouli, which we snack on for days. The pantry is full of canned peaches, tomatoes, applesauce, and pickled jalapenos. We could live on nothing but homemade jam from now till spring. We have homemade wine a’plenty, and I have several pounds of decaf Sumatra beans in the freezer, so we can keep our fluids topped-off and balanced as we wait out this nasty cold. We’re not quite as obsessive about stocking our larder as the spinster sisters in Kit Reed’s short story, “Winter,” but we’re close…wandering strangers, beware.

Blackeyed Pea Salad, Tabhouli, Kale & Parsnip Chips

Another of our winter jobs is keeping our peacocks alive. We’re holding steady at two males and two females. In spite of reported sightings, the rest of the flock never returned after last summer’s drought and predator infestation. So we’re giving our micro-flock every advantage we can (short of bringing them inside and knitting them sweaters). They’re feasting on dry cat food, dried corn, black oil sunflower seed, and occasional boiled eggs (mashed, shell and all). Giving them eggs might seem cannibalistic, but they need the extra fat in this brutal cold. Ray hasn’t put brooding lights up in the loafing shed rafters yet, but I’m sure that’s coming.

Peacock Power-Nap

When I’m not grading student essays (ALWAYS a winter occupation) or having fun with food, I’m practicing another cottage industry: knitting. Two family members are cooking up new babies, so I dug out scrumptious angora yarn, and kitty hats will be underway soon. I recently sorted my yarn stash, so I’m also making colorful striped silly hats with bits of leftover texture-y yarns for next year’s Christmas stash.

Keep the Home Fires Burning!

When Sinclair Lewis said winter was an occupation, I think he was talking about the work it takes to survive the weather. But out here on the northern plains—land of vitamin D deprivation, cabin fever, and Seasonal Affective Disorder—I think we keep busy so we won’t turn on each other. Keep stoking that stove, folks, and bring in some more kindling...

The Winter of Our Discontent

This winter will certainly go down in the Annals of the Bizarre here on the Row…a confounding conflagration of calamity…a sheit-storm of Really, Universe? Really?!?

Take the weather. Last week, on the day of The Great 2012 Tuneup (see previous post), it was a sun-soaked, record-breaking, 62-degree day in Sioux Falls. I could have sunbathed in my bikini on the veranda of the Heart Hospital, though that might have been too much (literally & figuratively) for a few too-fragile hearts, scaring them into permanent OFF. 


We’ve had very little snow so far, and the landscape remains mostly brown and gold. No icy roads, no white-out blizzards, no waiting for Tractor Man to dig us out. Corn-fused pea-boys are out fanning their half-grown tail feathers (they won’t have fully grown new “trains” until spring) in the faces of bewildered peahens. And I should be celebrating Mother Nature’s beneficence, but I recently read that the incidence of depression actually increases in northern climes during unusually mild winters, since there’s no snow to reflect what little SAD-preventing light we count on up here. Time to break out the full-spectrum bulbs and vitamin D.

Or take our peaflock. By mid-summer we had 29 peacocks—18 adults and 11 chicks. Then came The Marauder(s). Over the next few months, peas began to disappear. Or we’d come home to a half-eaten carcass. The first couple grisly scenes made us think it was a furry predator. Then we woke to a pile of cleanly-plucked feathers below a tree branch, which  made us think it was a raptor or very big owl. Then finding three or four headless but otherwise intact peabodies (I found the most recent headless peahen today) made us think raccoons. I finally decided that a local thug-critter got word out that the Row is a free, all-you-can-eat pea smorgasbord—a peaffet—and that we’re completely surrounded by predatory wildlife. So I did what any rebel farmwife would do: I wrapped the Roosting Tree with blinking Christmas lights. This strategy worked for a few days, until a squirrel chewed through the wire (paid off by the coyote down the road, I’m sure). Anyway, we’re down to 13 adult peacocks--not a single surviving summer chick. Some well-meaning friends suggest that Mother Nature simply knew I was in way over my head and “helped” me restore balance. But that’s a net loss of 16 peas in ONE season! So while I’m not a violent person, I’m now shopping for a patio duck blind/paintball gun combo.

Back to The Great 2012 Tuneup. In addition to Ray’s heart nudge (“attack” sounds so deliberate), my friend’s surgery to remove what she calls a “non-benign visitor” from her colon, and my other friend’s mom ending up as Ray’s roomie down the hall at the Heart Hospital, my oldest brother has had at least three surgeries on his eyeball this winter to repair (and repair and repair) a detached retina. This is unsettling because (1) he’s in Ecuador, where I can’t just pop over to help out, (2) he has to spend most of his time face-down and isn’t supposed to use his eye for a while, and (3) he makes his living working mostly as an online travel writer, which is hard to do if you’re not supposed to LOOK at anything. Then, Mom had to have a couple of teeth pulled. Dangerous, because I know a person can only stand so much blended split-pea soup before he or she loses it completely and starts trying to train his or her little dog to sing “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Amid all this, I had to keep plugging away to get ready for a new semester. Also, since about New Year’s, I’ve had the South Dakota Respiratory Plague, which means my best friends are Emergen-C, Advil, Puffs, Nyquil, chicken soup and my heating pad.

It's not one stressful event that does us in; it's the pile-up, when we don't have enough time between stressful events to recover or rally. So I’ve been in a sort of stunned pre-hibernation mode lately. I've been “closing ranks,” as my Mom would say. Holing up. Hiding out. Yes, I know there are bigger things going on out there in the Great Wide World and I may be thinking a little too locally. Yes, I know it’s only January. And yes, I know Jack Blizzard’s probably in Wessington Springs right now, having a beer and plotting on his bar napkin a trajectory that will lead him directly to our door. But for now, if I don't answer my door or my phone, it's because I'm curled up in a blanket-wrapped ball, knitting peacock chain maille and contemplating what surely will continue to be one mighty strange winter.

Blizzard Survival Kit

Jack Blizzard had his first major tantrum of the season yesterday. It hit South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. It’s a gen-you-whine snow-in on the Row, with an impossible 7’ drift running the length of our long driveway. While we’re waiting for a kind-hearted tractor neighbor and/or county road crew, I thought I’d offer my essential Blizzard Survival Kit…

1. Coffee. You’ll need a couple pounds stored in an opaque, airtight container in the fridge. Then you’ll need another couple pounds stored in airtight bags in the freezer. You might consider ½-decaf if you’ll be snowed in with another human; you wouldn’t want to be too jumpy. But even worse—for all concerned—would be running out.

2. A larder. Out here on the prairie, you want a fully-stocked pantry at all times. Some people, I won’t mention names, have a pantry full of rice noodles, canned oysters, maple syrup, palm fruit pulp, pad thai sauce, canned tomatoes, refried beans, six kinds of crackers, microwave popcorn, and enough pickled jalapenos to stock every Taco Bell in the U.S. So maybe they don’t think in practical, menu-driven terms, but don’t judge; have you ever tried rice noodles with maple syrup and jalapenos? Yeah, I didn’t think so. They might also have a roasting hen, 5 lbs of tilapia, two boxes of henna, a bazillion wonton skins, a dozen candles, half a carrot cake, 3 lbs of coffee (see #1), an old bag of tater tots, 25 lbs of parrot food, a pound of dried parsley and 25 lbs of venison in the freezer.

3. Woolies. You may think you’re too cool for long underwear, but when the snow blows horizontally in a 50 mph wind, you’ll think again. Without the woolies, pale pink prairie skin looks like red cellophane after a 3-minute walk to the loafing shed.

4. A loafing shed. This is for your peacocks. They’ll want somewhere to roost out of the wind, preferably with a snow-free dirt floor below, where you can leave them cat food and black oil sunflower seeds, daily, at 10 a.m. sharp. A flock of 18 hungry peacocks marching toward your back door at 10:05 is a scary sight. Imagine the Skeksies in Dark Crystal, only leaner & meaner.

5. Chocolate. Four kinds of dark chocolate – with ginger, panko breadcrumbs, sea salt, and cayenne. Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, which causes the brain to release dopamine and oxytocin – chemicals involved in falling in love, relaxation, nurturing and orgasm. Avoid chocolate if you’re snowed in with relatives and/or ex’es.

6. Empty carbs. You’ll need Doritos, mashed potatoes, white bread with butter & sugar, and plenty of pasta with butter and parmie. These become especially important from Day 3 on in the event of a snow-in. The semi-comatose carb sedation will help prevent domestic unrest once the chocolate runs out.

7. Layered outerwear. You’ll want flannel-lined jeans and a sweatshirt, insulated coveralls, parka with a fur-lined hood, knee-high snow boots, a wool hat, insulated waterproof gloves, and a wool scarf to wrap around your face. You won’t be able to breathe, see or move, so you may as well stay inside…skip #7.

8. Dish TV. In the midst of a blizzard, all of your self-righteous pontificating about the evils of Bridezillas, Hell’s Kitchen, the golf channel and Nick Jr. goes out the window along with your heat. Trust me – you’ll be happy to stumble across that Petticoat Junction marathon.

9. Paper books and flashlights with fresh batteries. Your power WILL eventually go out. Books will help you survive the TV/Internet DT’s, which set in about 20 minutes after your power goes out.

10. Knitting. A good yarn stash and a 4-day snow-in could net you at least half a dozen adorable Christmas presents. Search the Web for fast, easy knitting patterns on Day 1, before you lose power. Remember, knitting needles are NOT weapons.

11. A wood stove. Have an ample supply of cut wood, dry and in the house. Have a folding Army cot or two near the stove. When the power goes out, pretend you’re camping in the Himalayas, on your way to meet the Dalai Lama. Chanting ohm nama shivaya ohm helps with the shivering.

12. Wine & Bailey’s. Ditto the importance of the semi-coma mentioned in #6.

13. Board/Bored games. On Days 1-2, these will help pass the time and create the illusion of an old-fashioned farm holiday season. On Days 3-4, they come in handy as non-lethal projectiles.

14. Binoculars. From Day 3 on, you’ll need these in order to stare longingly at the Interstate traffic ½-mile away. This will remind you to keep bathing, shaving your legs, and getting dressed in the morning—life is going on somewhere, and someday, you’ll be part of it again.

15. A comfy bed (if the heat is still on). If you’re not dug out by Day 4, take to your bed. Load up with carbs first for heavy, uninterrupted sleep. Pile on the down quilts. Know that when they dig you out, a kindly social worker will arrive to do a “well person” check called in by your mother. She will wake you to make sure you’re still breathing. Tell her you’ll get up as soon as the coffee’s ready.

Our Little Darwinian Hothouse

It’s late fall at Uncannery Row. The ground is covered with leaves in that perfect late stage of crunchiness. Farmers are combining late into the night, and the corn and soybean fields are shaved almost bare. Squirrels, when they aren’t running from Yogi, the Great Hunting Schnoodle, are carting off black walnuts as fast as their fat legs can carry them. No sign of barn cats for a while now; they may have gotten tired of Yogi’s pestering and skulked off to find a more cat-friendly acreage. But something’s eating the cat food I keep putting out in the pyramid shed…

Speaking of food, the repercussions of my meddling in Nature have come home to roost this fall, so to speak. I may have mentioned before that there were 6 peacocks here when we moved in a little over three years ago—they came with the house. When we bought the place, I asked the previous owners how to care for the peas. She said, “Oh, they take care of themselves. I toss a little cat food out once in a great while when I’m feeding the cats.” So, that’s what I did. Toss a little cat food out, maybe a little too often. Then I noticed the peas would saunter into the yard just after I filled the feeders, to catch the spillage. I thought to myself, “Self? Why not toss a little bird food on the ground every now and then, so the peas can have their own?” Then one day I noticed the peas gorging on spilled field corn in the road. I thought, “Self? Why not add a little cracked corn to the bird food, since the peas like it so much?”

Yesterday, I counted 22 peacocks in the yard. They’d heard me take the metal lid off the bird food can, and they came RUNNING. Watching 22 peacocks run at you is like starring in your own Roadrunner cartoon, in fly-lens perspective. And if I so much as turn in the direction of the pyramid, where the cat food is stored, the peas FLY in, a honking aerial assault.

Peacocks aren’t supposed to get their train feathers, those “eye” tail feathers for which they’re famous, until they’re around 3 years old. And although they can breed in their second year, the boys can’t usually attract the mostly stuck-up hens until they have that swanky train (the pea-quivalent of a red 1975 Camaro). And breeding season is usually Feb-Sept or so. But we now have three 1-year-old black-shouldered males, each with a sprinkling of teeny tiny eye feathers they shouldn’t have yet, high-stepping back and forth on the back patio daily. In mid-November! It’s evolutionary hyperdrive, I tell you, probably resulting from excessive protein (cat food and corn), or Gore-bal warming (no seasonal cues to signal breeding seasons), or both. Directly or indirectly, it’s my pesky meddling in Nature. I might as well be out in the yard stocking an all-you-can-eat Atkins/South Beach pea-buffet while firing off a dozen aerosol cans.

Calculating the possible future pea-population is dizzying. The cost of corn. The hopscotch over pea-droppings. The no-room-at-the-inn Roosting Tree. The “Crazy Pea-lady” sniggers at the Co-op elevator. So today, while Yogi conserves hunting energy in Ray’s lap, I’ll be in the greenhouse grading papers, watching our bulked-up peas clumsily leapfrog in the yard, bickering over leftover bird seed. I will try to tone down my interference. I will try to appreciate and let alone the beautiful balance of Nature. I will sit on my hands if I have to. From now on, I will only feed the peas, cats, dogs, little birds (and occasional wild turkeys) on days ending in “-day.” Honest.

Truffle-Gathering

The county plow guy finally went down the road yesterday morning around 10. Ray had been shoveling and snow-blowing drifts in the driveway for a couple hours when, in an amazing gesture of holiday generosity, the plow guy came back and scooped all the way down the driveway. I felt like crying. But instead, I got out of here as fast as I could and went shopping. Civilization. Whew. Ray doesn’t know how close he came to being forced to make flour & salt dough ornamental knitting needle toppers...I was seriously stir-crazy.

So today, with my winter demons released, I’d like to get some writing done. I write mostly poetry because there’s still something mysterious and inexpressible and (because I share the masochism of the sporadically insecure) painful about the process of writing poems. And I can flog myself even more knowing that 9.9 people out of 10 (that poor .9 guy) won’t ever read a poem that isn’t funny, filthy, or rhymey. But I haven’t finished a poem since I published a book in November, and I’m feeling sluggish, bloated, lazy. I’d rather bake something.

I write other stuff, too. I thought in this season of overeating I’d use my favorite metaphor—food—to explain how I think about different kinds of writing.

Blogging is like a Butterfinger (chilled, not frozen). It’s pure pleasure, a secret indulgence you really shouldn’t overdo. It’s sweet, chocolaty & peanut-buttery, and has virtually no nutritional value except the gazillion calories that migrate instantly to your thighs.

Letter-writing is like penuche. Penuche-making is a dying art that was once practiced regularly, especially at holidays. It takes a little time, patience, and a Martha Stewart candy thermometer. Not much nutrition here either, but it doesn’t matter, since penuche is a labor of love meant to be given away.

Short story writing is like biscuits & gravy. Roll up your sleeves. You need some muscle to knead the dough, and the process can really mess up your kitchen. It isn’t complicated, but without the right ingredients in the proper proportions, you’ll have flat, rock-hard biscuits and lumpy gravy that no one will touch. There’s some nutritional value, maybe a few carbs for energy and some protein in the gravy to keep you digesting for a while.

Poetry is a delicacy, petit foie gras in saffron truffle sauce, made from the rarest, finest, freshest ingredients, rooted out by pigs named Sarah or Maude, and gathered by hand in the most unexpected and unadulterated places on earth (or elsewhere). These ingredients have little-known and poorly-understood nutritional, medicinal, maybe even metaphysical properties that somehow feed the body and support the spirit. But this stuff is labor-intensive. Boy howdy, you’d better have an apron on, and you can plan on spending many long hours tethered to the stove, sweating like a racehorse. And when, after starting, stirring, feeding the concoction to the dogs, then starting over again you finally get it right, you’re still not done. You have to make it LOOK good, perfectly elegant and effortless, a Monet en plat. This stuff can make you laugh & cry if it all comes together in the kitchen, and its serving presentation can make grown men run for the coat room to weep in secret.

Today we’re supposed to have a bonafide warmup, with temps in the 10-15 above range. The peacocks will come down from the rafters and forage in the snow, the dogs will want to stay out longer and play, and the barn cats will head to the grain shed for a hand or two of poker with the mice. Still, any delicacy worth gathering is buried deep under Jack Blizzard’s frozen feet, so I’ll whip up some cinnamon scones topped, of course, with crushed Butterfingers. I owe my Aunt Daisy a letter…

Look Who's Looking...

I’m all for overturning the Patriot Act. Weighing the potential useful information Big Brother might get from eavesdropping on Joe Schmoe’s phone calls to Aunt Rhoda or LuLu Librarian’s Internet dating progress, against Americans’ rights to speak, write, worship, talk, correspond, and assemble, & gripe freely & unmonitored, I’ll take freedom. I heard that’s what America is supposed to be all about—freedom—although I’m not naïve enough to believe this is as true in practice as it might be in principle.

But this IS true: People DIE on the prairie in weather like we’re having today, and Big Brother can sometimes be the only savior.

Yesterday, it was in the upper 30’s and Ray, Mom and I fought city traffic in search of last-minute holiday bargains. Today, the wind chill is -20, and a steady haze of snows blows in from the corn field to the west, on a north wind that could peel away your skin in no time. The peacocks are huddled in the loafing shed rafters, as close as they can get to the brooder lamp without setting feathers aflame. There is no figuring the sudden shift, short of the plains waking up in a seriously foul mood.

Our nature here is to slip into that same bad temper and complain about the weather, and I do. But I also appreciate the raw power of the north wind to strip the linden pods in a shower of thready black, and the willingness of barn cats to tolerate my presence if it means Wal-Mart cat food on a makeshift ledge, out of the icy blast.

I’m not sure folks from more temperate climates really get the gravity of inside/outside. Days like this can make going outside, even a simple trip to town for groceries, unbearable. And if you get to town, the truck with all that glorious California (or Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, etc.) produce may have stalled out near Kadoka, or Bessie may have frozen to a fencepost overnight. So most of us stay inside, happy enough with a hearty “freezer stew” and powdered milk.

I remember a couple winters ago, a woman traveling alone on South Dakota highways got caught in a blizzard. She was missing for 2 or 3 days, her car buried somewhere in a drift. They finally found her, alive, by homing in on her cell phone. So when Jack Blizzard unleashes his shenanigans in the Heartland, I try to curb my railing against Big Brother’s constant nosing into my business, because given a choice between BB’s buttinsky meddling, and having someone find a Marlene-sicle on a gravel road near Irene, I’m glad to be trackable.

So if you have to venture out and Jack’s afoot, remember to wear clean underwear in case you high-center on a snowbank in the hinderland. But pay a little attention, too, to your hair & makeup—you’ll wanna look your best in the satellite video, which will most likely be on YouTube by midweek, doctored to look like you’re lip-syncing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”

Road Trip Reverie

It’s a grey, lazy Sunday at Uncannery Row. We got a couple inches of snow Friday night, but it’s in the 30’s today and melting, a good day to load some Little Feat and Tom Waits into my iPod, catch up on laundry, cut through a layer or two of dust, and think about Thanksgiving dinner.

I can’t begin to name the things for which I’m grateful this year—the list is too long—but just today, I’m especially thankful for one thing in particular: road trips.

Ray and I went to Alejandro MN Friday night so he could play a gig with Small Howard, a band of brothers from Ray’s 20’s. The boys all lived together in an old farmhouse, and they gather every few months or years to do what we all know they really love (in spite of pledges to wives, spouse-equivalents, children, or home fires). I’ve SEEN that look of adoration for a 1970’s Gibson electric—puts stars in a man’s eyes. The boys love each other, too, but talk about it only in private to wives and spouse-equivalents. Women, even prairie women, will tell each other how much they need & enjoy each others’ company. But for men, maybe especially for prairie men, the most they can muster to each other is “good to see you” or “nice licks.”

In spite of a little Norlander stoicism, we had a great time. The boys smiled in and out of moments where the music clicked so perfectly, they were simultaneously in the Alejandro wine bar AND sitting around the living room of the Small Howard House 30 years ago, pushing their long hair out of their eyes and jamming in their holey bell bottoms.

Penelope, Artemis, and I had just as much fun. We sipped wine or Belgian beers, sampled chocolate genache-filled pastry, sang along, and laughed. We celebrated the happy news that Artemis and Byron will dive into the mysterious marital abyss next spring or summer. And we all kept room in our hearts for Betsy, Arnold’s wife, who is home battling cancer. No one said anything, but we were all feeling her absence and aware of the delicacy of our days, somewhere in these middle years where we begin to see the horizon at both ends of life. We did our best to surround Arnold with joy, warm friendship, and music, filling him to overflowing so he could take the extra home to Betsy.

Maybe it’s just a stray drop or two of gypsy blood on my father’s Czech side, a little mongrel wanderlust stirring somewhere, but there’s something about a road trip that restores my spiritual center, re-aligns my emotional compass. Seeing newly harvested fields roll by in black & white striped blurs, or beyond those fields, snow hanging like mist over river bluffs, or beyond the bluffs, the curve of the earth at the edge of my vision, makes me realize not just how small I am, but also that the bigness of the world is a good thing. It puts my puny fears, complaints, and troubles in their proper place, at least temporarily. So today, while I’m worrying that a new green bean recipe (sans the crunchy fake onions) might be a kind of sacrilege, or while I’m coming unhinged because I can’t find the little pilgrim salt & pepper shakers, the prairie will be resting peacefully, healing the necessary brutality of farming, highway traffic, and human need under her brief, beautiful blanket of winter.

Going All Prairie Girl

I grew up in the Omaha, spent 20-some years in a city I never had to leave and couldn’t possibly get to know. There was noise, 24-hour light, fast-moving everything, busy people everywhere. When we were tired of our own neighborhood, north Omaha, we wandered into South O, snuck downtown, or cruised out to West O. When that wasn’t exotic enough, we crossed a bridge into Council Bluffs and there we were, in the foreign land of Iowa, without once leaving the city lights.

It was perpetual motion, constant stimulation. If we wanted a cool light show, we parked just outside Eppley airfield fence, spread blankets on the hoods of our cars, laid back and braced ourselves, then waited for our bones to rattle around in our skinny little bodies as jets took off overhead. Sometimes we played chicken on the train trestle over 30th Street. Sometimes we jumped the fence at the Water Works and played balance beam on the rims of cement holding tanks. We ate Chinese at King Fong’s, where the tables were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and we had to point at pictures on the menu to order. We shared pancakes and bottomless pots of coffee at Village Inn at 2 in the morning, to watch the post-bar folks drift (or stagger) in. We hung out in the Greyhound depot in the middle of the night and smoked cigarettes, imagining peoples’ stories as they got on and off the buses.

So when I moved from the city to a little farmhouse in South Dakota, ten miles from the nearest dinky town, I felt Dorothy’s pain—lions and tigers and bears…oh my. I couldn’t imagine a more complete desolation, except maybe on the surface of Mars. I wasn’t sure how people survived the dark, the quiet, the oceans of corn. And it was summer. I hadn’t been through a South Dakota winter yet.

I have almost three decades under my prairie belt now. I’ve spent some of it in the country, some in small towns, some in smaller towns, and now back in the country. Once I knew I wouldn’t be eaten by roving wolves, I started to like the slower pace. When my friend Paul from New York came to visit and asked, on the drive from the airport to my house, “Are those real cows?” I rolled my eyes. You don’t get it, my rolled eyeballs said.

I knew I’d gone Prairie Girl all the way, knew I’d never go back to the city, when I came up over a country hill one morning at sunrise. A perfectly illuminated Maxfield Parrish landscape stretched out as far as I could see, and I actually wept, it was so beautiful.

I don’t have the lights at Eppley any more, but I can walk 30 feet out my front door on a moonless night, spread a blanket on the ground, and watch the Milky Way. And I may have to pawn a guitar amp or two for the gas it takes to get to decent Chinese food, but just out my east windows tonight is the moon, breaking over the trees in a cloudy sky. She’s half in light, half in shadow, a grinning wài pó or a bright yin yang, reminding me again why I’m out here in the dark, in the quiet, on the prairie--BALANCE.

A Winter State of Mind

It smells like winter this week. The wind is cold, we have a crunchy, golden-red footpath of leaves from the house to the pyramid, the mums are blooming in fire colors, and we’re surrounded by chugging combines well into the night. We finally turned the furnace on against nights in the 30’s, although the days still warm into the 60’s. Houseplants summering on the patio have come inside and are crowded in with the year-round residents of the greenhouse. There are 64 of them now which, incidentally, is the number of hexagrams in the IChing.

I once had a life reading done by a psychic, in which I was told that at the heart of my unique “life seal,” was the IChing’s hexagram 13: Community.

Our peafowl community is holding steady at 15. Yesterday the flock was riled up and peeking out from inside the garage, all except for the one in the linden tree above my head. Suddenly, the one in the tree took flight toward the pasture to the north. Turns out it was a big redtail hawk—the prairie stealth bomber. I ran after it, clapping and yelling that there were fat, leggy chickens down the road. The hawk flew in a big arc south, then west, then north again, and probably ended up right back where she started in the linden tree. The peaflock was still jittery and huddled close to the house when I got home from work, but no casualties.

There WILL be casualties when this election business is done. We forget that whatever nasty venom we muster for the candidates we don’t like, or the friends & family with whom we disagree, or the colleagues we alienate with our rancorous blow-harding, will still be circulating in our systems after the election. We’ll all need a good cowboy or cowgirl when it’s over, someone to take the Bowie knife to our leg and then suck out the poison before it reaches heart & brain.

Speaking of brains, I think this is how the mind works in the South Dakota winter—you’re stuck inside too much, too long in the dark cave, until you begin to chase after obscure connections—drawing invisible lines from one thought to another (unrelated) thought—just to create the sense that something’s moving.

The truth is, my mind actually takes these odd, twisty back roads from one idea to another all the time, sun or snow. I’m okay with that. Because if Jack Blizzard’s inevitable siege buries me under a thick layer of snow & ice soon, I know some spark, some disjointed notion, revelation or epiphany, some thawed, crystal-clear stream of my consciousness, will be moving, moving, moving…

State of the [Hiber]Nation

I’m thrilled to report that all of the peachicks somehow made their way back to the fold after last week’s scary unknown-assailant scattering. So we are, once again, 15.

The chicks—Gloria, Laverne & Shirley, and the Abba quads—are getting big, and the flock is getting pushy about food. Maybe they’re like me, and in spite of this beautiful fall weather, they’re laying on fat for Jack Blizzard, as my Aussie poet friend calls the South Dakota winter. I understand their desperation. In fact, I have an overpowering urge to curl up with a blankie, a truckload of Doritos, a gallon of red wine, and a bad Diane Mott Davidson novel until I’m in a deep, carb-induced hibernation. Sadly, however, I must stay awake...

Yesterday and this morning were grey and drizzly. The flock is hanging around the house, as if they know something’s coming and it’s best to stick close to the food. Hurricane fallout, maybe, or just a preliminary slap from Jack—cold winds or a hint of frost.

Other wildlife seem to feel it, too. Two fawns cut in front of my car just before the shelterbelt the other day, then ducked into the plum thicket where there’s plenty of grass and good tree cover. Mice are coming inside, so the traps are set. The dogs are poofing into their winter coats already. The birdroom windows are closed, and the parrots are spending more time fluffed up and sleeping. Hummingbirds usually come through around Mother’s Day on their trek north and spend a couple of weeks here eating at the feeders. Then we don’t see them again until right about now, when they stop for another couple of weeks until they blow south in late September with the autumn thunderstorms. But this year, they’ve already come & gone, at least two weeks early, and we’re just getting stragglers now; this morning, a fat male buzzed between feeders and the fire begonia. Snowball and Snowflake are fat & furry, and we’ve been seeing them more often, spooking around the pyramid or the loafing shed, staying near the cat food & shelter.

Maybe we’re not so different from the animals, whose behavior is regulated to a degree by the length and angle of shadows on the land. Since living in South Dakota, for example, I’ve developed this weird autumnal yen to line a cave with a knee-deep layer of twigs & leaves, or piece together hide robes thick enough to repel ice bullets. A general malaise creeps in, too, with the knowledge that soon we’ll be boxed in for as long as Jack decides to toy with us. But the sun is out right now, Mom and the kids are coming for dinner, and we’ll all pretend it’s just another glorious, lazy autumn day…as we sip our wine and dip our Doritos.

Men-No-Pause

When four menopausal women go camping in a remote, rustic cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota, certain fundamental precepts of polite society are bound to be trampled. There’s just no way around it.

Too many cooks spoil the broth. This no longer applies when four women, all used to complete control of the kitchen, come together. However cramped the quarters, all four women will attempt to occupy even the tiniest kitchen space simultaneously. There is an occasional brandishing of knives and other sharp instruments one must watch out for. Collisions are inevitable and are best turned into impromptu dances.

Always keep the comfort of others in mind. Poo, I say. A woman plagued by daily hot flashes and/or night sweats will open windows, leave doors ajar (ignoring the threat of renegade bats or coyotes), crowd in front of an open refrigerator, stick her feet in a nearby stream or (if no stream is available) cold toilet water, hog fans, throw blankets across the room or steal them from compadres, or strip down to indecency with total disregard for anyone else, as her haywire internal thermostat demands.

Be patient, compassionate, considerate. This sounds great in theory, but when HELL hits (hormone-enhanced lethargy or lunacy), manners go bye-bye. Expect a woman under this hellish influence to rant one minute and weep the next, drone on with a litany of complaints, eat something high-fat and salty, then fall into a deep, stuporous nap. Wake and repeat. Wake and repeat.

Be mindful of proper modesty and decorum. Nope, won’t happen. In fact, menopausal women will sometimes test the effectiveness of kegels and the weakness of bladders by intentionally making each other laugh until semi-hysterical, with seemingly innocuous pantomimes in their underwear and/or incredibly lame puns. NM’s (non-menopausers) would not understand what’s so funny. This raucous and often baseless laughter can be counted as one’s daily aerobic exercise.

Leave the driver alone. Impossible. The laws of physics suggest that four women in an enclosed moving space will each attempt to direct the timing and direction of movement until navigational volume reaches the limits of human comfort, when the four must stop in Rochford and split a beer. Drive and repeat. Drive and repeat.

All life in balance. This is the prime directive in menopausal camping and, in spite of HELL, is eventually observed. The lunacy and lethargy are counterbalanced by blissful moments of solitary reflection, peaceful conversational examination of spiritual ideals, generous sharing of relationship and/or parenting observations, quiet perusing of self-help books or trashy novels, collective identification of native flora & fauna, and an open expression of gratitude for one another’s continuing friendship & company.

Down from the Mountains

We’re back from the Black Hills, and one almost needs a vacation after a vacation. Ray, his son Jasper, Yogi and I drove out last Thursday, pausing to meander through the Badlands. With the unusually heavy snow last winter and rain this spring, the Badlands are the greenest they’ll be for another 100 years, according to park rangers. We saw prairie dogs bob up and down in their holes like an arcade game, turkey vultures and maybe an eagle circling the cliffs, and a couple of antelope rams squaring off for a round of head butting.

There were 15 of us in Ray’s extended family group, staying in two cabins near Silver City. It was an ideal vacation, where we either hung out together or split into groups to wander the Hills. Ray and I got to visit friends in Deadwood and Spearfish, and various groups fished, golfed, did horseback trail rides, hiked, or went sight-seeing. We checked out the progress at Crazy Horse monument, and we wandered through Hill City. Yogi obsessively stalked Ray’s one-year-old great niece, and we had to maneuver to keep Yogi away from Ray’s niece’s Shiba Inu, Presley, who’s not so fond of pesky pups.

Ray dropped me off in Spearfish Sunday evening, where I met up with Deirdre, Gloria, and Millie. Then on Monday morning as Ray and his family all headed home, the four of us women drove up to a cabin near O’Neill Pass. The cabin sits at the end of a long drive, in the middle of a meadow at around 6500 feet. No TV, no phone service, no computers—just elk, deer, and at night, bats & coyotes. We walked, read books, talked, played guitars & sang, and toured old haunts in the Hills. One night we aimed a flashlight at a treeline at the edge of the meadow and discovered glowing coyote eyes blinking back at us. It makes one wonder, who are the watchers and who are the watched?

It’s good to be home. It took me a couple days of driving in the Hills to shed my flatlander equilibrium and get over my up-turn-down-turn queasiness. And although I could get used to the spectacular topography of the Hills, I know I would miss the magical peace & the perspective--the sheer vastness of earth & sky--I marvel at here on the prairie.

More rain while we were gone, so things are looking a little tropical, including the foot-high lawn. In peacock news, now we are thirteen—Debbie’s only child is still around, but Wanda’s down from 6 babies to 4. The big boys have dropped most of their train feathers, which are now woven into our wire fence like fringe. No sign of the cats lately. My brother and his family from KS are coming through tonight on their way to MN for the reunion of my dad's side of the family, so we’ll go for dinner at Mom’s. Mom’s having minor surgery on Tuesday, so we’ll miss my family’s reunion this year. I’ll have to start working in earnest soon, getting ready for a new, busy semester, but it is still summer, and Ray calls me the Queen of Procrastination, so for today at least, I’m planning to uphold my office…