We woke up this morning and bounced. Memorial Day weekend in Vermont means one thing to us: planting.
For weeks we have lugged vegetable flats back and forth from outside sun to the garage for protection from the nightime cold. A sudden frost alert means that when I am done tucking animals for the night, I then have to tuck plants in as well. I climb up on the rain barrel to reach a big hanging plant. I teeter, precariously while trying to unhook it. It is what happens in Vermont in the spring and is one of the few spring rituals that tends to get old.
The bells announce Memorial Day weekend. I lift the cardboard boxes stuffed full of starts and place them onto the back of the ATV. This is the final haul: I tell them that at this point they are on their own. It reminds me of our kids making the “final move” out of their rooms. The backseat of the car jammed with milk crates full of sneakers, books and video games. Always welcome home but the tears in all of our eyes remind us that it really is the final move and that they are now officially planted.
We added four new beds to the garden and this morning while eating eggs, we draw a detailed map of where everything will go. Our goal being to eat at least one thing from our garden every day throughout the year. Sometimes this is just frozen raspberries for morning smoothies but often it is potatoes, round like spring baseballs, kale, stiff and still from the freezer, tomato sauce to cover pasta. As we plant, we feel a sense of luxury in the broad space of our new digs.
Paul cuts potatoes for planting while I, on hands and knees, make concentric circles of carrot seeds. We plant seeds for giant pumpkins dreaming of winning the blue at the fall fair. We carefully tuck tender kale, broccoli and cucumber plants into their bed and Paul sprays water over them as I move to the next planting. Asparagus and rhubarb sprout from the spring ground, their stalks like arms lifting to the sun in celebration of their arrival. I snap the asparagus and cut some into a frittata for dinner. The rhubarb stalks are tender and slim, perfect for strawberry rhubarb pie.
We fork shavings laced with chicken manure into rows between the beds where they will leech into the soil and further fertilize the plants. The raspberry canes will also get a layer of leaves and other compost around their feet. The hope is that come July picking will be less treacherous from insidious weeds and invasive vines.
We stop periodically and sit in the shade drinking water and later beer. Muir lays quietly near the ATV, one eye on us, waiting for one of us to make a mad dash up the hill.
The black flies are feasting on the dwellers in the garden. I dig a hole then swat a fly. When we pat soil over the final plant: I stand, a bit stiffly, and brush off my pants reminding myself that we need to do a tick check before showers tonight.
We stand, cold beer in hand, and look over our work. One might think that year after year things would look the same, and yet they don’t. There is something of awe in the newness, the beginning. We walk up Magic road in the filtered afternoon sun: leaves their brightest green. I see the traffic pattern of flying insects lazily passing each other in the path of light. Everything looks new, scrubbed clean, even the blue of the sky. As if I have forgotten these smells, these colors.
When we first moved here twenty years ago, I put a small wood bird house on the front window of the house. The idea being that we could see inside their house from inside our house. Through the years it has sat empty. Once in a while a chickadee would arrive, bring in a few sticks, see our faces pressed against the window and go, leaving her luggage.
Two weeks ago I heard the most beautiful bird song; it seemed to come from everywhere, from our window in the morning, as I walked down the road in the evening. I lifted my head to the trees to try to find the singer but I could not.
One afternoon while teaching on my computer at the counter in the kitchen, I turned my head, heard the song and noticed a very small, gray bird standing on top of the bird house. In a few minutes she was inside and, resisting mashing my nose against the glass, I watched quietly from where I sat. An ornithologist friend identified her as a House Wren.
Day after day she returned with her things, and one day her partner arrived for an inspection as well. Seems the place worked as they subsequently moved in. I feel she has since laid eggs because he often comes home in the evening with take-out.
We had looked at this empty bird house every day, year after year, and had come to feel that we would not ever see anything different. And yet last week we did.