Trips to the Garden

It must be some kind of genetic calendar that on occasion inspires me to pick up my dad’s little book of re-worked journal entries (collected under the title Skylarking on Honeysuckle Road) and thumb through to the entry nearest or matching the day’s date, where I almost always find a truth fit perfectly for the moment.

Cover art by Dan Kirchhefer

Today after spending the morning indoors writing code and transferring, one-by-one, numbers (mostly of people I haven’t talked to in years) to my new phone; I take a breath and decide to go out to the garden to note any progress and perform a kind of general inspection.

Yesterday the first of the orange cosmos bloomed and today a yellow neighbor has started opening up.

I wade out into the middle where the path we put in—one or two stones at a time—gets swallowed up by sprawling tomato plants, umbrella-sized summer squash, and leggy bachelor buttons. All colliding in a wild sea of growth.

I poke around under the tomato plants to find the swelling green fruits hiding under the leaves. Little lanterns, not yet lit, but warming slowly.

Get that bitter, earthy smell all over my hands. Pluck a zucchini that’s not very big, but whose blossom has already fallen off. Take one more satisfied look at the whole scene before heading back in to the Brick House.

And then pick up that book. Today being August 8th, I select the closest entry, dated August 6th (circa 1999). It reads:

Moving right along in the Thanatopsis vein, a personal note from us gardener boomers.Which is mainly, those trips to check on the flowers are just secret denials of like coming down with cancer. Dodgings of imminent coronary failure, escape from diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s. To each his own. —Oh they’re just palpitations, the dahlias say. It’s only your hemorrhoid, your caffeinated heartburn or some other trifle —according to the hosta. It’s gas, says the bee balm, so take some Rolaids.

But seriously this is serious stuff. At fifty you figure you can count on the next summer and that’s if you’re lucky. Any after that the odds start to plummet. Here’s Housman again, his “since to look at things in bloom / Fifty springs are little room, / About the woodlands yada yada / To see the cherry hung with snow.”

—Hung with snow—what does he know, fatalistic at 20. We’re not that bad.

Back to the garden, where it’s little wonder we like to linger, in our slow-down, interminable, vegetable heaven, waiting forever on this to leaf and that to bloom, throwing up hands in absorbed despair of the border plantings ever growing tall, of our specimen tree maybe looking like something. —All excellent stays against tempus fugit and that fatal disease.

Suzannah Lessard, the great-granddaughter of Sanford White, writes about the lovely rhododendron drive that led to Box Hill, White’s mansion home. Beautiful bushes dense and polished lined the road, a near tunnel of green. Imagine the years to live up to his vision, to grow to that size—thirty or more. Then just like that it’s end of the century, generations later, and the ruin that befalls things left untended. Now, Lessard says, the once-gorgeous drive is a “winding footpath that threads between ancient rhododendrons,” gargantuan “creatures” that have “slid down the bank…in a dissolute…way.”

And here I am, anxiously waiting on my own little rhodies, the fullness and then some I’m longing to see, biding my health and wishing God speed. Twenty years, thirty, forty, fifty: they’ll walk out here, the new neighbors will, and see nothing but jungle.

—What was he thinking, old what’s-his-name-was over at the college-planting this mess.

—Oh yeah wasn’t he the geezer the tree fell on?

Here—not twenty, but fifteen— years later. Dad is almost ten-years-gone from kidney cancer that spread like a vine to liver, rib, brain. And our old house is sold off. And we’ve all moved away.

Adam and I are planning a trip to PA next week. I fret about leaving the garden for more than a few days, imagine coming back to shriveled brown stalks and leaves beetle-eaten to lace.

But I’ll go anyway. And I’ll borrow mom’s car to make the trip down 81 and get off at exit 29 (which I still remember as exit 10). And drive up Main Street and turn on Morris, up the hill past the cemetery. Park the car in the school board lot. Cross the street into the park that neighbors our old house. And peer in through the trees at what was once my father’s garden.

I’ll note which plants are gone, and how the ones that are still there have grown. And tell myself that my garden will be different when I come back, maybe some blush on the tomatoes, maybe a lost broccoli plant or two. But that’s just fine. That’s just great.

 

What We’re Doing in Vermont

We’ve been in Vermont for just a little over two months now. When people ask us what we’re up to, Adam and I have the simple answer down: “Doing some work on the house, doing a little gardening. And we both freelance, so it’s easy to work from home.” But of course, there’s a little more to it than that.

If the person asking is from Danville, we make one minor adjustment. We refer to the place we’re living by name, The Brick House.

This is the house that Adam grew up in. Before I came here, the name used to make me laugh a bit. As though the town were so small that there was only one house made of brick. Actually, there’s a funny story about that.

One evening shortly after we moved in, a man walked in the door. This was not in itself a strange occurrence, since we leave our side door open while we’re home, and one or two people tend to pop in every day. However this man came through the front door, which we usually keep closed. He opened it with some effort, since it tends to stick, then probably sensing he had made a mistake, tentatively called in, “Hello?” We said hello back, but it probably sounded more like,”Can we …help you?” He was looking for the Masonic Lodge. Someone had told him it was the brick building on The Green. The funny thing is, he sort of had the right place. He was just a century or two too late. The house was built in 1816, with the upstairs designed as a Masonic Hall. It may have included a secret escape route through a false chimney. This might have come in handy in case of trouble from the Anti-Masonic movement, which did manage to put an end to the Danville chapter of the Freemasons in the 1830s. A new chapter didn’t start up until 40 years later, this time with their hall in another brick building just across The Green. We politely pointed our visitor in the right direction.

The Green deserves some mention as well, since it’s a big part of where we live. The official address of the house doesn’t work in Google maps, so we advise visitors to follow directions to The Danville Green (or to the sadly defunct, yet still recognized by Google, Danville Video Store). This public common park across the street hosts the weekly farmer’s market and, soon, the much anticipated Danville Fair.

The aforementioned work we’re doing on the house includes a lot of sorting and cleaning, but also making the place feel like home.

The garden is part of that too. My parents always had gardens, but aside from the short-lived potted garden that Margaret and I shared, I’d never had my own. After experiencing Wendy Town Farms in Austin, the prospect of having a yard made living in Vermont a big draw.

When we got here, the garden potential abounded. I was excited to turn Adam’s old sandbox into a shade bed and this old bathtub had a lot of promise.

There were also two abandoned raised beds behind the church next door to us. Shortly after Adam’s dad got permission for us to use them, they were taken out as part of the town’s Green Up Day.

This did at least give us a good, ironic story to tell. When we told it at a party at our neighbor’s house, one thing led to another. Suddenly a man we hadn’t met before, who had just put the tiller on his tractor, would “be by in the morning.”

I woke up to the gurgle of a tractor pulling into the yard. It took him about ten or fifteen minutes to till up a swath of land about four times what I had been picturing. “Big enough?” he shouted over the engine. “Oh gosh, yes,” I replied, trying not to betray just how flummoxed I was. But he was already driving away, calling back to me,”The rest is up to you…”

I spent a good deal of time feeling as though I’d dug up more than I could hoe. Several times I confessed to Adam that I was afraid to plant my seeds, because I thought they wouldn’t grow. But Adam and his brother helped weed out the sod. The seeds, of course, gradually sprouted.

A neighbor donated a few more plants. Visiting friends helped weed some more and unearthed a huge stone in the back. This turned a plan for a stone path from a dream into a necessity. Spring warmed to summer, and all of a sudden the garden is looking a lot more gardeny.

What else did I say we’re doing? Oh yeah! Work! Freelancing does make it easy to work from home, but working from home in Vermont isn’t always easy. Cell reception is spotty. Wireless is spotty (and last week, inexplicably gone). Still, it is work we like doing. And while we’re not making a ton of money, we have the freedom and time to do the other work we want to do.

Working from home also means one less reason to need a car. While living without one  perfectly reasonable to do in cities with public transportation, it’s a bit less practical in rural Vermont. People also ask how we get by not being able to drive. To be fair, we have relied a lot on the kindness of friends and family when we want to venture out of town. They have generously given us lifts when they’re on the way somewhere, and even when they’re not. When friends with cars are visiting, we can wander and explore a little farther. But most days, we don’t have a need for a car. The farmer’s market is practically in our front yard and the grocery store is a fifteen minute walk away.

We can catch a bus to St. Johnsbury, Montpelier, or Burlington.

We do occasionally make it down to the big city, whether it’s to pick up some extra work or visit with friends.

We’ve happily entertained visitors as well. (If you haven’t come up yet, you’re welcome! And if you have come up, you’re welcome back!)

And we’re lucky to have Adam’s family around and a great friend just down the street.

Still, in a town with a single traffic light and no stores open after 8pm, it’s not unreasonable that some people ask if we’re bored up here. If you’d have told teenage me—who lived in a rural college town where the only entertainment was driving 20 miles away to wander the aisles of Wal Mart—that a decade later, after living in two hip and happening cities, I’d decide to spend the summer in yet another place where cows outnumber people, I would have asked if we get bored too.

But we’re anything but bored. In fact, we often find ourselves saying, “It’s difficult to describe what we’re actually doing, but we feel really busy.”

Here are some of the other activities that occupy our time:

Writing. A short story I started in Austin is rapidly turning into a…long story.

Reading.

Making art.

Making music.

Making dandelion wine.

Visiting the smallest state capitol in the U.S.

Finding like-minded souls at one of the coolest museums ever.

Climbing a bell tower.

And just…kind of…taking in the sights…

Welcome to Austin

Please don’t move here.

With our departure now less than week away, here are some thoughts on the mixed messages and feelings about our visit and how long it should be.

Our position has been kind of tough to pin down during our time in Austin. I mean this partially literally, since we’ve stayed in four different places. But also more metaphorically. Adam lived here for a year and a half before, and I spent a little time here last year. So we were neither newcomers nor locals. The duration of our stay was somewhat peculiar as well—longer than a visit, shorter than a real move. It hasn’t been all rest and relaxation and sight-seeing either. I’ve been going to an office Monday through Thursday, and Adam’s got freelancing deadlines. We’ve thought of our time here as an experimental, extended work-cation, but that’s difficult to explain to people when they ask, “Do you live in Austin?”

When we arrived back in February, one of the first things our AirBnB host said to us was, “You’ll see a lot of those T-shirts and bumper stickers about ‘please don’t move to Austin…’ just ignore ’em.” Included in the welcome packet she made with maps, bus routes, and restaurant recommendations were statistics about Austin’s rapid growth. It’s been at or near the top of most lists of fastest growing cities in the US for 5+ years.

Even just since our visit last year, the changes around town are glaring. Small charming houses on the East Side turned into hip bars and restaurants; streets, sidewalks, and entire blocks closed for construction; condos and hotels springing up everywhere.

The first time I headed to Wendy Town Farms, I planned my route using Google Maps. The Street View showed what was unmistakably Wendy’s place, sky-blue house with raised beds and pinwheels in the front yard, and across the street a huge empty lot. When I got off the bus, I was surprised to see the steel-beam skeleton of a rising condo.

A few days after that visit, we met up with our friends Deedee and Kelly, at one of the many art openings we’ve attended while down here.  Amid the catching up, the subject of the changes going on around town came up. Deedee told us, it used to take her 15 minutes to get to her house from downtown. Now it never takes less than 45.  Kelly said, “I want one of those shirts. What do they say?” He looked at DeeDee. She said, “Oh. Welcome to Austin. Please don’t move here…” Kelly grinned and completed the slogan, “I hear Dallas is great.”

We’ve been conscious of our role in the expansion. Even though there’s a debate about how AirBnB affects neighborhoods, to us it has meant our money is going to residents rather than corporations, and we’re staying in houses that are already rented, rather than in a cookie-cutter apartment complex. We ride the bus, walk, or get rides from friends. We’ve tried to support institutions like the Alamo Drafhouse, I Luv Video, Jackalopes, and Rosita’s Al Pastor, rather than the newest bars on Rainey Street. But it was tough to shake the carpetbagger feeling.  We were still two extra bodies in town. Taking up space and shopping at HEB.

I entered the “Changing Face of Austin” photo contest, partially to allay my guilt for however I might be contributing to the (over)growth down here. The contest was sponsored by Monkeywrench Books, an all volunteer-run Anarchist bookstore. So the announcement party, naturally, featured a conversation about whether the competition was itself exploitative. When all was said and done though, I won, and one of the volunteers  gave me a gift card she bought with her own money. I did not feel better.

But, not all of the messages have been negative.

When I told Wendy about the whirlwind of landing a job 12 hours after getting into town, she said “That means you’re supposed to be here right now.”

Our good friends Eric and Steph echoed this sentiment. During our visit  last year, they kept asking, as a joke that was not quite a joke, “So when are you going to move here?” And when we met up with them the first time on this extended trip, the not-quite-a-joke question became, “So you’re staying, right? Now that you have a job, you have to stay.”

But that’s not what we planned to do. About a month ago  I called my mom, to schedule a time for her to come visit. She suggested late April, and I said, “We might not be here then. ” “What about your job?” she asked.

And, what about my job? I really lucked out with this gig. My co-workers are nice, and smart, and laid back. It’s work I like doing. Not to mention the free breakfast  and coffee every morning.  Plus, knowing how many people are trying to get one,  I know I should grateful just to have a job. Should I give it up so easily, just because I didn’t plan to stay?

Or did I want to stay? Our latest AirBnB place is a bohemian wonderland. A Santa Sangre poster above the bed, wild artwork on every wall, and, best of all, a back porch.

Around the time we checked in, the weather got so it was reliably 70 degrees and breezy every afternoon. I could sit on the porch and read, write, observe the cacti and the birds in the back yard. The wildflowers started blooming, and I started feeling like maybe I belonged here. Though, when a bus driver told me on an 85 degree day that it was “finally starting to feel like spring,” I knew that this feeling wouldn’t last.

Through a strange coincidence or serendipity, the new AirBnB place is right next door to Wendy. Instead of taking the bus to volunteer on Saturdays, I could now walk just through a gate. One morning while we were sitting in her garden snipping cilantro, she asked if we’re looking for a more permanent place to live. I had to admit that, even though I was starting to feel like I didn’t want to leave, we probably wouldn’t be here for too much longer.

I began to contemplate how I would have this same conversation with my boss. How I would explain that  I never really planned on staying, and maybe took a job I shouldn’t have. But that I’m glad I did. Then something happened.

First it was a rumor. The owner was getting ready to retire and had been looking for a buyer for the company. A few days later the details got more concrete: the London-based company that made an offer would be sending representatives to Austin conduct interviews and audits. Then at the weekly staff meeting, a more brutal truth: the new owners will not maintain an office in Austin. No one was guaranteed a job past May, least of all the lowly production assistants.

This small, cool company was evaporating. Just like so many small, cool places in town. Horrifying news to those, like my boss, who have been at the company since the beginning, but for me, at least, it was a chance for a more graceful exit. When I got home from work, I talked with Adam, and we booked a cheap flight back to Boston.

I broke the news to my co-workers that I would be jumping ship before it went down. Everyone was kind saying they’ll miss me. They started planning a going-away slumber party. In the same conversation though, one of them said that she wished people would stop moving here.

The next weekend, I told Wendy that we were leaving sooner rather than later. She was sorry to hear it. We harvested lettuce and kale in silence for a bit then, she asked, “What are you going to miss most about Austin?” I was surprised by the question, and I fumbled through a list in my head:

I finally managed, “This place…walking by the river…our friends. But mostly…everything.”

This is true, but I also miss everything about Boston.

Adam and I have made a sort of friend who frequents I Luv Video as much as we do. A gregarious guy who, each time we talk, asks us our names but interrupts before we can get them out. Last night we bumped into him and got to talking about where we’re from. When we said Boston, he told us he gone to college in New Hampshire.  He was excited when we recognized the name of the school, but then said, “I became an alcoholic there. There was just nothing to do. And it was too cold to go outside.” We chuckled politely at this. “So you’re East Coasters at heart then,” he said. We looked at each other and nodded, then Adam added, “We like it down here too, though.” “Well enjoy it while you’re here. Because…it’s better.” We laughed at this, but it made us both feel a little twinge of bruised pride.

I talked with my mom the other day, and filled her in on the latest news. Our plans to visit Boston for a bit then head up to Vermont for the summer. She remarked”you’re going to get two springs!”

I love thinking about it this way.  That we’ll bring a little Texas weather up with us, and make the spring last a bit longer. The growing season hasn’t even started yet in Vermont. I told Wendy I’m thinking about starting a small garden.

It’s been great to spend so much time in Austin. But we’ll oblige the request on those T-shirts, and we won’t move here.  It’s about to get real hot, and we’re ready to head home.

A month in photos.

A catalog of the fauna, flora, architecture, shrines, and other specimens I’ve been examining this month.

 

Not enough photos for you? Plenty more on the photos, couches, and life pages.

Austin Week 1

A summary of how I spent my first week in Austin.

I had an interview scheduled for Thursday morning, and when our Wednesday morning flight got snowed out and changed to Wednesday night, I started to worry I might miss it. We almost didn’t make our connection because it took so long to de-ice in Burlington. But we ran through JFK, and caught our breath a little after midnight when we landed.  I made it to my interview, and I got the job. I’m working as a production assistant at a small science journal publisher on the west side of the city in this rather grand old house.

The weather has been exceptionally cold (for Texas). Schools were delayed on Thursday and closed on Friday because the temperature dipped below freezing. (Apologies to friends and family back east buried under a foot of snow…)

But there have been some nice warm days and a few signs of spring. 

And birds! There are so many birds. This indignant mocking bird for example.

These happy bathing grackles.

And Monk Parakeets! I had heard about them before, but I was a bit astonished to actually see them…in a McDonald’s parking lot.

Cormorants are weird and might be my favorites down here so far.

Saturday was the first warm day, and I took full advantage by volunteering at Wendy Town Farms. So relaxing to dig in the dirt and rummage around under large broccoli pants snipping off leaves. Bonus: Wendy sent me home with a generous bag of veggies.

What else have I been up to.

Been seeing a lot of art. Some bad, some interesting. Gallery receptions have proven to be a fun (and inexpensive) way to spend evenings with friends. Here’s our friend Eric enjoying a nude and some free food.

Been making art too. And making Adam pose for pictures.

We’re both using our time in Austin to do the work we want to do. Writing, reading, and meditating every day.

Other than that, a lot of walking around. Taking in the surroundings. The rising condos, the crumbling lots, the cacti. Breathing the air and moving around on the earth.

on stuff

Two weeks ago, I moved—as in packed up and carried my belongings to another town. This was only first of three moves in one month. This move was Dorchester to Quincy via four plus trips with a suitcase on the the 215 bus. In the next few hours, Adam and I will be hauling our belongings up to Vermont in a van. Then in a few days flying down to Austin and hopefully taking very little.

Moving around so much in a short period can give you two feelings at once: one, that you’re cut loose—reeling almost—free; and two, that you’re inextricably tied down—overburdened with bills, job, lease, and mostly with stuff.

Shortly before the move, my roommate’s father stayed with us for a few weeks. He has, at several times in his life, been homeless, and found himself this winter without a place to live. My roommate wished she could do more, but a room for a while—so he could work and make enough money to head to a shelter down south—was all she could offer. The night I moved my third load of stuff out of the apartment was the same night he left. He complained to my roommate that he had come with one bag, and now he was over-burdened with three. She had given him a few things—mostly warm clothing. “Stuff just accumulates!” he said, half laughing, “I could fill all the houses on the street with the things I used to own.”

He told us that the more he moved around the more he learned to leave everything behind. For a long time the only thing he carried from place to place was a big scrap book filled with family pictures, things from when he was younger, stamps , ticket stubs. One move though, he got so tired of lugging it around, he threw it in the river. He said, “Everything was easy to get rid of after that. Because that was the thing I loved the most.”

As a recovering pack-rat, I can’t help but admire this attitude. Even as I watch the pain on my roommate’s face as she let’s her father go to an uncertain place, an uncertain fate. I realize it comes partially from an unending series of desperate situations. Still, the idea at least seems like a noble, Buddhist thing to strive for—a life free of possessions.

While I’ve done a good job this move with getting rid of things—selling/trading/donating/loaning all but twenty or so books, half a dozen trash bags of clothing and bedding, and three quarters of my dvd collection—I still have a number of  items I can’t quite let go of:

• not one but two lizard sculptures given to me by my father
• a box of photos, letters, and other small mementos
• books that belonged to my father
• his box of treasures (marbles, seashells, ID tags of dead pets—he was a bit of a pack-rat too).

Each of these things, as I was packing, was a unique and sacred object. I wrapped them carefully and nestled them between clothes or bedding to protect them on the bumpy journey. But along the way the identity of the individual items got subsumed by their collective weight. I no longer have precious treasures; I just have heavy stuff.

On one of the final bus rides, I sat in a spot reserved for the disabled, balancing my suitcase between my feet. I tried to remember what I’d packed, but I couldn’t recall a single object. As the bus crossed the Neponset River, I imagined myself pitching everything overboard, but I didn’t.

Among my father’s treasures is Letters from Quabbin  a book about the reservoir in Western Mass that supplies most of the water for the Greater Boston Area. The creation of the reservoir in the 1930s required the 2,000 plus residents of the Swift River Valley to be uprooted from their homes. They took what they could with them; graves were dug up and entire buildings were moved. But much of the town was bulldozed or burned or simply abandoned for the flood, and the ruins remain under the reservoir.

I found a sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad—my dad’s go-to notebook—stuck between two pages in the book. There are just a few lines scribbled in his looping scrawl:

all the stuff you accumulate
take me away
river

My Mom and family friend, tossed some of my Dad’s ashes into the Quabbin a few years ago. While living in Boston, I like to remind myself, there’s something in the water. I want to say that he was the hardest thing to lose, and everything since has been easier. But I still cling to things that remind me he existed.  And I’ll carry them around at least a while longer.

second guessing

With grad school completed and the New England winter bearing down earlier than usual, a once pie-in-the-sky scheme to try living in Austin, Texas for a little while is now a lot more…pie on the table? In the oven, maybe.

So, sub-letter found and notice given, I begin the work of looking for work.

This means of course doing an awful lot of writing about myself. Not the introspective kind, but the outward, professional kind. Writing about the work that I’ve done. Résumés. Cover letters. About pages. Online profiles.

This work is hard to do. The drudgery of it. The slightly sleazy feeling of selling yourself. But the real torture of it, for me at least, is all of the second guessing it incurs. Are those really the dates I worked there? Should I call myself an intern if I worked there for two years and got paid? Should I say I’m a designer when no-one’s used my designs since undergrad?  My website’s not mobile-friendly yet, should I really link to it? I am a pathological second guesser.

There’s a related syndrome that I observe in those I’m close to.  At annual between-birthdays meeting in early December, my friend Bon and I talk about the confidence roadblocks between being publishing students becoming published writers. Bon says, “I mean, why should anyone give a shit about what I have to say?”

I tell her that she and I are good writers. That the only reason people are published and we’re not is that we don’t have the guts. The idiotic self-esteem. I almost believe myself.

A few weeks later I’m talking with Adam about us both preparing to jump into the deep end of  freelancing. How intimidating the prospect is. I say, “I know that people do it, but it seems impossible.” Then I stop and correct myself. “But really, if it’s a thing that people can do, then we can do it.” He says, “I believe that about you, but I’m not so sure about me.”

I give Adam a hard time about having 1,000+ unread emails in his inbox. But as he has pointed out, I have a couple hundred drafts in mine.  Emails written but never sent. Evidence of instances where  second-guessing has settled into paralysis.

Second guessing has stopped me, now a supposed Master of publishing, from even trying to share my thoughts or my work in a public space. The end of the url for this post is “second-guessing-2”— two guesses why. I have a secret pop culture blog that is, itself, full of three saved drafts for every published post. I haven’t sent anything out to be published since my undergraduate literary magazine. I’m afraid to bid for any jobs before I completely finish my Elance profile.

There are plenty of second thoughts about Austin too. It’s not the most financially responsible decision to make right now. And on the flip side, many of our Boston friends worry we’ll never return. Bon asks, “Are we still going to be friends?” I tell her not to be silly. But even as I say it, I think about all of the un-sent emails to now long-distance friends.

I want us all to stop second guessing. To have the faith we have in each other in ourselves. To summon the courage of idiots. To press send. Submit. Publish. Go.