I am just starting to see the change of colors on the mountain this week.  It comes off as a spectrum of green, mostly.  However, recently it has been a fairly uniform wall, like a hedge that has grown well out of proportion.  Now it is noticeably more diverse. Up on the ledge the various hardwoods are slowly turning to their cold-weather state. The fluffy darker pines continue as if nothing is happening.

​No doubt species will have something to do with what our impending palette will be.  I suspect there are roughly equal numbers of sugar and red maples, for example.  There are also oak and ash.  Maybe there are a few birches too.  Each will have its own way of going about the change of seasons.  Also, some are on rock shelves that I can see from the porch. For others the soil or water may be more plentiful.  I know from my own explorations that there are a few small drainage streams wending their way to the Millers.  Their mini-biomes seem rich to my untrained eye. 

Anyway, I have noticed the trees noticing the beginning of the transitional season of fall. The weather is colder, too...just a little.  It even rained this week!  Most of the grasses are still very dead.  Yet one can have hope for August and September.  It has been nice not to mow...but only in a way.  I am very busy with church and family and don't mind dropping a task.  That said, it does feel strange.  The earth is changing in ways that seem obvious to some and less to others.

During the heat wave and drought, I put together a new composter.  The house came with one of those black vertical barrels featuring a small door at the bottom.  The critters figured it out well before I got here.  I "upgraded" to a rotating one, which may buy me some time.  Realistically, though, it is also a stopgap.  In the end I will be building a keyhole garden...hopefully in September.  Then I will fill it with leaves, vegetable bits, and finished compost over the winter. Then I will plant it out in the spring. 

This makes sense to me. Both the old and the new composters I have now are built for the suburbs. I don't really live there anymore. You have to accept that there is more wildlife than domestic and they will have their way. I would have just gone straight to some other plan but I don't have the time. The problem is that there are still stumps to pull where the keyhole bed will go.  One can only move so fast...

Thinking about compost has been a good exercise.  The magic of transforming "waste" into "fertility" preaches without my help.  I feel it.  The old and battered and used gets--not discarded but--stored in a sort of dark, warm sabbath container.  Then out of that rolling barrel--or bin or dirt pile--something new comes of it.  That new thing, though is very different.  A handful of finished compost derived from pounds of kitchen scraps, leaves, and newspaper is more altered than a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon a butterfly.  I think compost is a better metaphor for the transformation many of us look for.  We settle for butterfly. Who doesn't celebrate when we manage it! Still, compost is the harbinger of the new thing.  We change not so much to alter ourselves but to alter the world, right?

Anyway, that is all for now.  I am looking forward to the changes, seasonal, agricultural, and otherwise. Who know what will come of us or the world?  We shall see.  Let's do our best to make the location wherever we end up into a fertile place.

Today the air is a little better than it has been.  I can look up to the ledges on Rattlesnake Mountain and the haze is less obvious.  Still, you can tell there are forest fires in Canada. It feels like an annual event.  The local government reminds us that breathing is a risk right now.  We do it anyway. Yesterday every other person I saw looked like they had just wrapped up an hour-long crying jag. Thank you, particulates! Conservatives seem to think that by making Climate Change illegal it will go away.  Thoughts and prayers can't change the weather no matter how hard one tries.

There is plenty of evidence this summer of nature's presence intersecting with ours. A couple days ago an adult black bear walked by the back deck and out to the front driveway before heading north toward the mountain. I think we were just part of its commute.  The bear was massive. We had to delay dinner as Allison waited in the car until it had moved on. 

It has been a long time since I saw one.  I am not sure I have ever seen a bear in this particular context.  We live on a fairly dense street.  However, it is a dead end and there is forest all around us.  Hiking in Maine and New Hampshire we see them but not as close.  We stay away from them and they from us. We definitely do not feed them!  A bear that sees people as sources of food does not fear humanity. Then they are a danger and sometimes have to be relocated or killed. It is another sad story of human encroachment and human ignorance when it comes to the natural world.  The cops said we only have to call them if they get into the garbage. Otherwise, we are all trying our best in the space we have been given.

In other news, I managed to do something to my back on the journey to getting a new fridge.  As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we got the smallest full-sized refrigerator we could find.  This necessitated removing the outside door to get it into our  vintage 1970's pocket-kitchen.  Our house has good bones but the idea that people would socialize where the food is made was foreign to the builders.  The kitchen was definitely an after-thought. One theory is that they had servants when the house was built in the 1890's. Anyway, I blame the door for a certain awkwardness in my moving about this week. We have a composter that needs assembly...but it will have to wait.

Yesterday As a rehab walk, I braved the hideous air and went over to Energy Park to check out the native plant garden.  It is a short stroll from my office.  I am still thinking meadow thoughts for next year and find it helpful to see some actual plants in the ground.  One can only get so far with the description on the tag; "heavy spreader, reaches 3'-6' tall." The park has a little exhibit that helps explain what I am looking at as well. This weekend we managed to get to the "Bridge of Flowers" which is rehabbing as well.  They had labels, too.  It was our first drive west of Greenfield since we moved.

​Other than that, there are small tasks that I think I can handle.  The yard-demolition continues.  When I can manage it, I cut vines here and there. Some of them are like tree trunks themselves.  It has been a long time since an attempt was made.

There is not much more to say.  Life in summer moves fast then it moves slow, even if you aren't on vacation.  Hopefully next week I will be able to report on a hike or two.  However...I do hear the heat is coming back...

I got a shipment of pamphlets this week.  They are about $5 a piece and cover an array of garden and garden-adjacent pursuits.  You can order them here.  They have ebook versions of their entire catalog but I am a sucker for print.  Yes, it kills trees.  However, I am the sort of person who reads a book or article with a pen.  I underline.  I put stars and exclamation points in the margin so I can find the good bits again.  Sometimes I write myself notes arguing or affirming certain assertions.  I have an "ereader", which does its best to replicate that experience...but I am not that good at it.  Therefore, my wife--who reads more and more widely than I do--and I also have a library that is more extensive than it needs to be.

I actually do fine "online" with some newer books and essays, particularly if I am reading strictly for enjoyment.  Yet an old book or a new book for work--which is frequently about old books--is best in its analog form. So, too, are pamphlets.  The form has an ancient history and certain early works--Common Sense comes to mind along with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers--had demonstrable world-wide influence. The Epistles are a kind of pamphlet. They are still around, it seems.

Before making decisions about crops and planting in general, I will be consulting the internet.  Youtube has taught me so much over the years.  That said, I will be using these as well.  They have a no-nonsense quality in conveying specific information.  Yet somehow they are engaging more generally.  I have already started underlining and "conversing" with a few of them.  

The process is quite pleasurable, actually. As with any art form that stacks words on each other to generate meaning, a pamphlet needs a good writer.  Knowledge of the subject is important.  So, too, is knowledge of the reader. None of this knowledge is useful if the writer doesn't know how to arrange words into compelling sentences. There are only 32 pages in a Storey County Wisdom Bulletin. For me to be brought along, every word has to do its job.

My favorite as of right now is All the Onions by Betty Jacobs.  By the end I felt like I knew some things. That is the goal.  I also felt a certain confident engagement in the subject, one that I am already interested in.  Jacobs loves onions. She feels I should love them, too.  For the record, I have chives and "walking onions" (Jacobs calls them "Egyptian Onions" but they are the same thing).  Now I am ready to branch out to a breed less perennial.  The question is which one.

Also high on the list is Great Grapes by Annie Proulx.  Yes...that would be Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain, Fen, Bog, and Swamp Annie Proulx.  One can add Great Grapes to her masterful works along with a couple pamphlets on apple cider.  Great Grapes gave me pause, though.  One thing she managed to efficiently convey is that--great as they are--grapes are also a lot of work.

I think I partly like pamphlets because they are just nice to have.  They have texture.  They have a smell.  They have a reason to exist that serves a clear purpose in society.  Also, they hearken back to the long tradition of informational writing.  I like that, too.  It is a form far greater than what comes in our IKEA boxes. My grandfather--who was a farmer and gardener among other things--had publications like these. Sometimes, after a hard day at the office, he found pleasure in figuring out what was wrong with the knot-tying mechanism on the hay baler, or how to properly bring back his own grandfather's apple trees.  

​As the world gets faster, we start looking for things that slow us down.  These pamphlets are part of that connection. Younger generations, tired of their phones and the meaninglessness of life's tasks are now looking to these early things. Nostalgia hits us all.  At its most toxic it manifests as MAGA, white supremacy, and the romantic (and untruthful) retelling of history.  There is a way, though, to look to the past not to replicate it, but to draw from it lessons and life-patterns that might make our own time more fulfilling.  These pamphlets are a way to reach back with an old form, but the content can reflect our needs and motivations today.

I am a preacher on Sundays.  With this in mind I have always taken an interest in another old form.  The sermon isn't exactly like the informational garden pamphlets.  It has more in common with the works of Tom Paine.  Still, there is a form and structure to a piece.  One only has so many pages. A sermon can go very much awry without boundaries and guides to get from beginning to end.  I use a few different forms and modes depending on the subject and how the congregation "listens" to it.  Sometimes those forms are explicit.  More frequently I use them without thinking.  Then when I look back I see the pattern that makes it cogent. 

I am learning a new congregation these days so I am thinking about this a lot.  Maybe that is why I find myself working through a collection of sermons by Jonathan Edwards. There are a number of famous figures by that fairly common name.  Of course this John Edwards is not the famously narcissistic politician derailed by a scandal that seems quaint today. Nor is it the underappreciated folk singer of the 1960's and 1970's who I saw opening for Arlo Guthrie a couple of times when I was a child.  This is the Jonathan Edwards,  a Congregationalist lion of the pulpit back before the revolution. He is also the sort of Pioneer Valley resident who might be the answer on an AP US History exam.  That gives him something in common with Daniel Shays, among others.

Much of Edwards' theology is very old fashioned today.  After all, his biggest hit--also possibly on an AP test--is Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The reason I am reading his sermons has more to do with structure rather than theology. He was considered one of the great public speakers of any era.  Some of the passages still sing.  The way he preached continues to influence how we do the same thing today.  His church is still just down the river. I don't have to dig too deep to see his influence.

One of the styles in a modern preacher's arsenal is the "three point" sermon. Not everyone likes to admit it...but it is still in use.  There are many variations, of course, but the idea is simple or "Puritan Plain";  There is a topic.  You say three related or escalating things about that topic.  Then you wrap it up. Edwards, who gave himself way more time for a sermon, has at least three little points for each of his three main points!  When taken as a whole, it can sound plodding today. 

Still, the framework is interesting.  It is old.  He also inspired his listeners who didn't mind sitting for hours in those pews. Studying his sermons today helps to see how both the form and theology has changed and how it hasn't. It connects us to our past--both beautiful and ugly--and it gives us a way forward that is hopefully both contemporary and traditional.

The sermon is an old thing worth keeping.  The content changes.  It has to be adjusted for new ideas and new ways of being.  However, it should be on that list of artisanal old-school media that can give something to the modern (or post-modern) person. Like the pamphlet, they also have a reason to exist that serves a clear purpose in society...or they can if we preachers are able to shift the lens to point to what is now than what we wish for in a mythological past.

I used to tell my interns that preachers are like blacksmiths.  There are fewer of us now. Both our art and our reason for existing has changed somewhat.  Still, we are here.  We are cooler than you think. We are--or can be--a part of someone's reaching back and reinterpretation of hand-made days.

It rained yesterday. What a relief!  There could have been more, though.  The clouds lasted most of the day and there was a steady drizzle, particularly as we got ready for church in the morning.  The soft and fertile soil of the raised beds seemed to have absorbed it reasonably well.  Still, when I planted some gift herbs (thanks to a friend who read of my distress a couple posts ago), I made sure to water them thoroughly.  Also, when I took the last of those plants--probably an enthusiastic but pot-locked version of marjoram--directly in the ground today, the hot, sandy soil was dry as a bone.  I soaked that plant as well.

Today is my "sabbath day"...in a sense.  It is the one day of the week when I am definitively "off" from work.  Errands get done. So does the garden.  There are always household tasks, too. This morning's first task, for example, was to make sure we could get the door off its hinges to accept delivery of a refrigerator in a couple days.  The fridge is the smallest and cheapest "full-sized" one we can find.  Our house, however, is built for a time before appliance escalation.  With the door off...maybe...we will be able to preserve our new food. 

That is all in the future, though.  The old fridge died spectacularly yesterday. It is conventional wisdom that when you move, the appliances in your new place will start to die.  Sometimes there is truth in these common beliefs.

After the door project, the dog and I took a long walk.  We back on to the M&M trail.  Our section--not surprisingly--is road but you can go on for miles.  Theoretically I could have ended up on Mount Monadnock or at the Connecticut border.  The dog is named Carrigain, after my final peak on the NH 48 4,000 footers.  We will go the distance on the M&M, but not today. It would require camping or car spots...and I didn't bring any water.  So after dipping into the woods for a moment to cool off, we turned back around.  Still, it was around 4.5 miles on a beautiful day. 

Now I am back.  This afternoon--after a meal of whatever the fridge hasn't destroyed--will be about making appointments.  There is a tree removal to set up.  The dog needs me to order more pills.  I should fold some laundry and catch up with friends if I can.  It is just the simple tasks of life, right?  We need a day for that sort of thing. 

For me that day is frequently Monday.  The most "sabbath" I get--at least in the way most people think of the term--is a Sunday afternoon when I don't have anything going on.  Then I will sit in front of the TV and cheer on whichever of my many teams happens to be playing.  That​ is relaxing....even when they are losing...which can be pretty frequently.

Whatever the body is doing on this sabbath, I appreciate the freedom of letting my mind wander a bit.  Today I have actually been thinking about that rain and heat.  Climate Change is real.  As I look at my small garden and consider larger dreams for the future, I wonder about expectations.  Maybe whatever berry bushes I order for the spring should be drought-tolerant or do well in the warmer "zones" that gardeners think about.  Certainly the lawn needs a different plan.  It crunches in places where I walk.  We will see what that marjoram plant does...

I found this article in the Boston Globe helpful. It says that within my lifetime we could have the sort of climate that Virginia has now.  That means different plants.  It makes me wonder what I can put outside to replace what is already there.  The lawn is a mix of things.  Someone many years ago must have put down grass seed.  However, wind and time have diversified the ground cover, which is fine with me. These days it is mostly clover and other low plants that survive being mowed occasionally.  In my planning I have a great deal of freedom.  I just left a place where the condition of one's lawn could be the topic of neighborhood gossip, judgement, and retribution.  That isn't the way in Farley.  

Anyway, if you can get through the paywall, I recommend it.  We will continue to move from grass to gardens, bushes, and flowers.  They have some suggestions as to how...

Yesterday in church we had to move back to the sanctuary from the air-conditioned Parish Hall where we had been meeting this summer.  There reason was wildlife.  A bat or bats had escaped from the belfry, which must be painfully hot, and began doing loops around the room.  The low ceiling would have made their motions rather...distracting.  So we decided to give them some space.  I remember early in my career preaching a sermon while a small bird flew about the sanctuary.  No one remembers what I said.  Least of all me.  There is only one sermon on a Sunday morning.  Sometimes nature is preaching.

It's been a minute since I wrote about gardens.  Maybe gardening--a slow and stumbling project in the best of times--hasn't been fully on my radar for a year or two.  My garden was always small.  There are couple or three raised beds containing herbs, mostly.  Also, over time I accumulated a massive number of pots...mostly for flowers and weeds.

Now we have a house that we plan on being at for a while.  Of course I do see the irony of the "temporary" parsonage lasting over two decades and--with all the factors of life--the real possibility that we will never live in another place as long.  Here though, I have "permission" of a sort to move things around and plant, not just for right now...but for an undisclosed future.

With that in mind, I have been at work.  Mostly it has been "garden demo."  Many ornamental plants on the property have grown to stupendous size.  The owner before the woman we bought it from loved both lawns and gardens. He put in a number of flowering bushes--rhododendrons mostly--and some of them went feral in the intervening decade. 

​I totally get it, actually.  They are big and beautiful.  However, they were also filled with vines and absorbed a number of other bushes along the way.  I have been trimming some and removing others.  

One massive collection of bush and vine has been completely removed.  Next year I will use it for planting fruit.  I haven't completely decided between blueberries (high bush), blackberries, and raspberries.  That is OK.  The best time to plant them appears to be in late May.  I have a literal year. There are some wild black raspberries peeking out from some of the brambles, though.  When I find one I stake it...and try not to kill it as I thrash about. In any case--given the growth patterns of these berries--I am a good 24-36 months from a meaningful harvest.

There is a heat wave and a drought here.  This has presented its own challenges.  On the good side, my lawn can be maintained with a grass-whip and some spot mowing with my reel mower.  Reel mowers are what we call the motor-less contraptions of yesteryear.  Mine is made by Fiskar, an actual scissor company. 

This same drought has been hard on the two raised beds I managed to salvage in the move.  Really they are  more the spiritual descendants of the parsonage beds rather than the actual ones.  Each is a third new wood.  However the perennial herbs all survived the trip. Some--like the walking onions--are establishing a new generation while letting the old one pass.  Others need to be trimmed and either dried, or chopped and frozen...maybe next week.

There are a lot of beasts about.  My kale basically feeds the local rabbit population, who have decided the bok choy is my portion. We have had a front-row seat to two different hatchings of two different families of small birds.  I am fighting a loosing battle with some yard-dweller about who gets to enter the compost bin that the previous owner left.  Now I just leave the little door open so they don't damage my plants.  Carving a human space in all this is a chore.  I knew it would be and--so far--I enjoy it more than not.

Anyway, that is where we are right now.  It took a lot of work but it doesn't seem to take much time to write about.  I have empty pots and big dreams.  I am reminding myself that I also have all the time in the world for this.  Nature moves slowly and so should I.  I should see whatever annuals are still about in the garden centers and bang them in the few pots that have soil.  Basil and parsley seem hard to find now, which is too bad.  I have space left over from harvesting choy. There is always, always spot-watering thanks to the heat.

I have ordered a better composter. This time it is one the critters may not figure out right away. Also, I have a lot of studying and watching to do. I have books and videos and sketches of what could be.  There is plenty going on at the church these days.  It is nice to have this other work that leads to its own kind of prayer.

In my previous post I wrote a bit about the "whys" of the process of making youtube videos.  You should probably check that out for more information.  That said, the reasons  are pretty basic.  One is that they provide a creative outlet for me. They are a way to generate a dialogue with nature and with others who might be interested in the experience.  Also, this experience is a bit of an experiment into the possibilities for spiritual communities, who will increasingly find themselves in need of creative ways to reach out beyond their doors.

In addition to the previous post, you might be interested in the reasoning behind the initial project or my attempt at a method for sabbath walking, which underlies a lot of this work.  

However, what I would like to do in this post is share some videos, talk about my motivation to make them, and discuss a little about what I have learned from them.  I will be going in reverse chronology--most recent to least recent--as it may help to set where I am now before talking about where I have been.

Mount Watatic in Winter:
​This video is fairly typical of what I have been trying to do.  The format is fairly well established at this point.  It opens with a description of why I am hiking the trail and what I--or we--hope to see.  I also talk about my relationship with the walk.  In this case I am climbing my favorite mountain. Earlier hikes up Mount Watatic helped me to refine my thoughts on mindful walking.

Technically there are still problems.  While the music has improved a bit, I am still not a great musician.  There are compression issues and sound issues, too.  These are all problems that could be fixed with money...which I do not have.  I am using my phone for all the elements of recording.  I am using a fairly basic editing platform (Filmora) which is probably best suited for end-of-year high school slideshows.  The musician is free.  Also, I was not terribly satisfied with much of the footage I recorded initially.  It took quite a bit of work to tell this story.

Mount Kearsarge (South) in Winter:

This video was fun to make because I had the company of my wife Allison!  She did some recording of me and I could also record her.  The addition of people--including an anonymous fellow traveler--gives the video more motion to carry the story.  Also, while Watatic is important to me, one could argue that Kearsarge has more general importance. There were a lot of human (historical and artistic) resources for this video, which helped.  The view from Kearsarge is also one of the best in New England.  

By the time I got to this video I felt I had hit a wall technically.  The music needed to be updated. You will hear some of these same cuts in every video as we go back in time.  Why bother with music?  It helps to move the story along.  There are walks-and-talks that need a little something sometimes. There are moments when the view is the story and some framing is necessary. That said, it went together fairly quickly, which was nice. 

Tecumseh in Winter

This was a fun one.  I recorded it just a couple days before the Kearsarge hike so many of the points in that video are relevant here.  I had a friend with me--Andy Linscott--and we knocked out one of our favorite 4,000 footers.  Here we had the challenge of too many people, which made recording awkward at times.  For some reason editing was a BEAST.  You will note a couple spots where the sound gets clipped a bit.  I will say that after this video I tried to develop a method for layering the various elements together; completing one layer before starting the next.  The system is imperfect but having one was probably the adjustment that made the Kearsarge and Watatic edits go more smoothly. 

Finally, this marks--I think--the ideal length for one of these videos.  Keeping it Between 8 and 9 minutes tells the story before tedium sets in.  I feel this way about sermons, too.  However, it seems easier to stay tight when you have another hiker with you.  My solo climbs are all a bit longer.

Poet's Seat, Deerfield, MA

I had the most fun making this video.  It is different from the others in that the hike, itself is relatively unremarkable.  Instead I spent time talking about the poet Frederick Tuckerman. He is relevant to the walk.  Things don't always work out that way so I took advantage of the opportunity  You will note there is no music in this.  My one assignment from my son was to record voice overs instead of leaving long stretches of relatively silent (or scored) walking. Thankfully Tuckerman had enough poems to fill things in.  

Also, this was the first time I used a tripod mount for my phone.  This enabled me to film myself sitting and walking. It feels ridiculous while you are doing it.  However, it does help to give motion to the narrative.  This is a worthwhile practice...if you can avoid other people.

Starting Seeds and Hiking High Ledges

Before these videos--and you are welcome to look--my channel was mostly either panoramic views of mountains I climbed, sermons I wanted to share, or music from our various music ministries.  I think one can also find some of the earliest pandemic worship services hosted here before we got the church youtube page updated.  That was fun too.  The services were even necessary. I do feel, though, that the two videos below mark the beginning of something new. 

Like the pandemic worship videos, they are self-contained and internally consistent.  The goal is not to record something and say "look what is going on out there." Instead they say "look what is happening right here."  That is an important distinction between, say, an edited youtube worship video and a recording of a live-streamed worship video. The first has an immediacy.  The second is a document of something that happened in the past.  With these nature vids I am looking for immediacy. They differ from the pandemic material in that while they may be spiritual or even worshipful in some ways, they are not beholden to the traditional ideas behind those concepts.  They are meant to have their own patterns and pacing because both the media and the context are different.

I am putting these two together because they show some of the same challenges.  They are both too long,  The planting video in particular drags in the middle and is saved by my cat.  There are too many musical interludes in the hiking video and there is a sort of "reflection" bit that goes on too long at the end of both of them.  I think that somewhere in my subconscious was the form of a traditional worship service.  I wanted a "sermon" of some kind. 

​Still, I like them.  They are watchable and they represent an effort to do something creative and new.

After my climb up Black Mountain, I went apple picking.  I had noticed the place on my way to the trailhead and was tempted. Then the woman I talked to at the peak told me her family works there. When I was younger and the children more pliable, Al and I used to take them picking quite frequently.  It got us out on a Sunday afternoon and was a low-stress social option for adults and families alike.  Also, in the end there would be apples.  Who can complain about that?

I grew up working for my grandfather on school vacations and during the summer.  He had apple trees.  That said, the apples--like the extensive garden next to it--were for family use. The big sale items on the farm were Christmas trees, actually.  Also, he contracted out to raise heifers for Heifer International. He cut hay for himself and other local farmers. He grew corn and other crops primarily for the heifers.  Once he boarded someone else's sheep for a while. 

The apple trees were the personal passion of a guy with plenty of passions. They would be pruned and the pests abated in the off-season.  Then we would harvest them throughout the fall and put them in barrels on the porch, pulling them out when we felt like it.  I remember sitting on that porch the day before Thanksgiving munching apples while waiting for my cousins to arrive. I did this more than once.

At home we had apples, too.  There was a big, old apple tree whose variety is best described as "green and wormy" along with a couple crabapple trees. My mom--not to be outdone by her father--built a cider press in our yard.  We would spend days grinding apples and squeezing them, producing gallons and gallons of unfiltered,  unpasteurized apple-and-bug juice that we would start drinking immediately. Jugs of the stuff would go down in the basement for safekeeping.  Then it would slowly ferment through the winter.  We usually ran out in early March.

As an adult, of course, the whole process has been a bit more commercialized.  It is safe to say that the cost per bushel and peck is substantially over the free-with-labor rate of my youth.  It took me a while to get used to that. There is something strange about paying to work instead of the other way around. 

I have learned, of course, that this is how the local orchards survive; preserving an endangered economy along with varieties that would be hard to find otherwise.  That there are more than Macintosh, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, and Cortland apples in the grocery store is a direct result of these orchards maintaining their many trees in all their variety. 

This is part of the fun, of course.  One place we used to go to when we were younger parents had a tree that was older than the memory of the family that ran it.  Every other year those apples are the best  ever.  On the off year they taste like rotting grass.

Nothing compares to an apple so I don't know how to describe the flavor.  They taste like fall, family, and farm work to me.  I am going to pretentiously say they taste like America, or, rather,  its best parts. That said, there are sweeter ones and less sweet.  Some outliers have their own thing going on that can be pleasant or really not pleasant depending on the environment they are raised in.  The taste also depends on the mood of the eater.   Even the varieties themselves vary by tree. 

​Let's talk variety for a minute. When I was growing up it was either the green wormy variety or Macs at home. Mom still insists on Macs to this day.  My grandfather's fruit were varieties of Golden Delicious although some of the trees were more delicious than others.  Maybe because of how may of these particular apples I ate when I was a kid, I tend not to get them now.  Also, I am not fond of off-season varieties.  They are mealy and taste a bit manufactured.

It turns out only two members of my immediate family can be counted on to consume apples in any quantity.  One is me.  The other one is still living in a tent somewhere in the Appalachian Range.  This means the demand these days  is low.  Usually, therefore, I forego the whole event of picking and just buy a half-peck of local apples that are in season. In fact, that was my plan when I arrived at this particular apple place.  There was a school bus full of small children.  There were family groups with their seniors.  It appeared I was the only one flying solo and the smallest bag for picking is the $14 peck.  What a frivolous pursuit for a serious middle aged man! At least that was my initial impression and fear.  Then someone in front of me--probably a decade or so younger with a couple bags if donuts--bought an empty peck bag for himself, too.  That was all the peer pressure I needed.

In the end I had a good time.  It wasn't the full-on picking experience of some of those places closer to home.  There thankfully wasn't a petting zoo or a pony ride.  They sold cider donuts in theory...but that guy in front of me bought the last.  There were also a few corny hand painted signs but they kept themselves to defining the boundaries of various varieties and warning people not to bring their dogs. The environment was pretty no-nonsense for an operation like this, which was just what I was looking for.

I took my bag and spent about 20 minutes filling it with Macouns and Paula Reds while munching on a Cortland held in my other hand.  One of the painted signs said I could eat on the job; "Sample, Don't Feast!" After the Cortland I had a Paula Red. It is early in the season in New Hampshire--and the bigger apples go in bags for the orchard store anyway--so the apples in the field are small and tart.  You can't find them at the supermarket like this, where the ideal of the big, puffy, red or green, unblemished apple reigns supreme. Maybe I will make a pie, but really these should be eaten straight up, on the porch.

It wasn't like when I was a kid.  I didn't prune these trees, or mow between them, or fight the battle of the bugs.  I did not feel like a farmer.  However, I got my hands a bit dirty to get the freshest new apples I could and that is enough for now.

Sometimes it is good to concentrate on one thing.  If we focus hard enough we can block out the noise and worry that burdens our movements most of the time.  Of course we return the noise. We can't help ourselves because it is in the air wherever we go. However, the rest we find while homing in on a pleasurable task can be just what we need to sustain us in our return.  That may actually be the crux of the project I am on.  Hiking, music, writing and preaching all require concentration at a level that draws the detritus away.  Each word, each note, and each step is a puzzle that requires attention.  Gardening can be like that, too.  Which is good, because I am not as successful at reaping the more obvious rewards.

It has been a while since I updated you on the small parsonage garden.  I have been working on it regularly.  Sometimes the work takes a couple hours.  More often it is just a few minutes.  Up until the heat wave, I have been drinking my morning coffee and answering emails by the raised beds while it is still cool.  These days I have to get my miles in while I can, so garden visiting has to wait until the hot midday.  The fact is, though, I am learning something new each day.  Some of those lessons, though, are harder than others...

Potatoes: Lets start with a mixed bag, shall we?  I planted two types of potatoes.  This was more than I needed but I was curious about them. Some of my ancestors were Irish and potatoes loom large in their history.  I myself grew up in the potato growing state of Maine and lived there as an adult. Potatoes have a special status in a Mainer's heart.  After all, we eat way more spuds than lobster.

One variety--Irish Cobbler--was a disaster.  They had scab and a little rot.  The yield was also low.  Strangely their neighbors--all Northland Red--were excellent!  I don't know why one type succeeded and the other failed but for the first time in my illustrious gardening career...I took a note of it and will get reds in the future. If I feel the need for whites next year I will try Kennebecs...because Maine.

Cucumbers: I did not take a picture of the cucumber plant.  It is a bushing variety that I got in order to save space and labor. A couple of weeks ago they started to look really bad...or at least some of them did.  My first move was to water them religiously.  However, they didn't get any better.  A consult with my sister-in-law Hanne (who is a professional vegetable farmer, among other things) revealed that they had something called "bacterial wilt."   I ended up pulling four plants, leaving me two relatively healthy ones.

Peppers: I now have a ton of pepper plants and very few peppers to show for them.  I started with a variety including Jedi, shishito, and those round hot ones we used to get at Italian restaurants.  Now that the potatoes are gone, I have added cubanelles and one bell pepper.  In the heat of summer, maybe peppers will require less work.

Tomatoes: ​At least these are going OK.  I got a hardy bushing variety.  I have no idea how they taste but they live!  I spent a little time with these early on, removing early flowers so that strength could go to the plant.  Now there are many, many unripe tomatoes that hopefully will survive long enough for me to eat.  I am told that the critters don't molest nightshades as often.  I hope that is true. I love tomatoes.

Herbs: You see that dead basil at the top?  There is more where that came from.  However, other plants in the herb garden are doing well.  Rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme, oregano, mint, chives, and fennel are all thriving.  I also have a small volunteer dill plant that would have been used for pickling if the cuke yield was substantially higher.  The two "characters" in the herb bed are a stevia plant that I don't know what to do with and some strawberries that I apparently use to distract the local rabbits.

Finally, there are flowers.  I keep mine in pots so that the veg has enough space to expand.  This year I planted a number of different types but--thanks to the British program "Gardeners' World"--I went in big for Dahlias.  They are outrageous and I may have found a new thing to take a deep-dive on this winter when everything is bleak.  I bought three common varieties and inter-planted with Gazanias, which are similarly hardy.  The effect is perfect for morning coffee contemplation and I usually end that time of day by deadheading those three pots.  Yes I play favorites.

Next year I will order some more of both and of different types.  The Gazania tray I picked up promised a variety but really were just the attractive yellow ones in the picture.  I never thought of myself as a flower person.  They seem so impractical.  This year, though, their impractical beauty has been just what I needed at the beginning of many days.

So that is where I am now.  I may add something more if the cucumbers finally fail and if there is an herb I would like to establish where the poor basil used to be.  Carrots maybe?  It feels late for them.  I may just expand the greens section, which is rather cramped but produces plenty of arugula and micro-kale to make salads interesting.

​I did also add one yellow squash.  A couple of nights ago I had--I think for the first time in my adult life--a zucchini dish that I liked and considered planting one. Sadly I couldn't find anything at the garden store, hence the compromise-squash.  Many of the shops are transitioning to other things now and we are stuck with the seedlings that are left.  Still, I needn't have worried about the zucchini.  The neighbors have way too many and gave us a couple.  We probably don't need more than one plant in the neighborhood.

Again, this isn't really just a hiking blog.  That is no more true than right now.  A family-wide Covid epidemic has left us isolated at home and sick as dogs.  Thankfully, we are vaccinated. I actually had my second booster the day my wife started showing symptoms. Though that last shot turned out to be a couple weeks too late, I am glad for the other ones.  Who knows how horrid it would have been otherwise.

Anyway, this hiatus from our usual weekend hiking expeditions has made me realize how important they are.  The hiking part is important, sure.  More important, however, is just being outdoors.  Being cooped up indoors most of the time is exhausting more than any hike.  It is why I don't like winter.  You are either moving around skiing, snowshoeing or whatever or you are trapped at the office or the living room.  It is hard to just sit. Drives me crazy.

So the past few days on into the weekend I am getting familiar with my garden.  The garden is pretty much my project.  My eldest son--who normally grows vegetables for a living--has customarily helped, but now he is on the Appalachian Trail.  Middle son--who also grows veg--has no interest in more gardening when he gets home from work.  Youngest son hates gardens and vegetables.  My wife is content to let it be my project.   This means it usually takes a back seat to hiking and any other free-time activities.

But here I am...sick.  So the past few days have consisted of me planting, weeding, dividing, and harvesting...runny nose, startling hacking cough and all.  Then, exhausted, I stumble into the shade with my coffee to stare at the garden while I plan my next project...once I catch my breath.  My garden--two raised beds, an herb bed, and some old plastic planters--is not pretty.  Even when everything is in peak season it has the look of an amateur.  That said, it is important to me.  It is another way to interact with nature.  It is a way to touch the ground even in my imperfection.

Mid-plague when we were all falling apart and I couldn't walk more than a few feet my eldest bought me a little kneeler so I could weed the herb bed, which was all we had at the time.  Then he lobbied me to buy myself the first raised bed.  After the surgery on my back, he helped me put it together. It is a good memory in a dark time.  I still couldn't walk much or well.  Now, though, I could be outside with a reason other than feeling sad.  Yeah, I had "outdoor office hours" during the plague and I am outdoors typing right now.  Still, it was [and is] different when you are doing inside activities outside.  My neighbors probably think I am total nerd for doing this...which I am.

The garden also gave us something to talk about.  It wasn't that we lacked topics!  Still, this one is different.  It is about resurrection and growth. It is about getting better in spite of everything that holds us down. Now--while he is marching across Virginia--I text him garden questions and send him pictures a couple times a week.  It is something to share other than mountain pics, which are a bit coals-to-Newcastle right now.

This week I divided the near-dead lavender.  I hardened-off and planted some iffy pepper plants, basil, sage, fennel (for the flowers and the parasitic wasps that will make it home) rosemary and bush cukes.  I made a tiny salad out of the greens that are coming up.  I searched for and found a few reluctant perennials as they made their appearance, marking them off with parts of a pair of glasses I broke in my delirium.  Then I wrestled with the mint.  I have some spaces open for kale and eggplant and some empty flower pots still but--given my positive status--it is all over except the watering and weeding for a a couple more days. 

Now it is getting hot. So here are some pictures of my ugly garden.  The middle ones are from past years.  The first and last are from this week, taken from the relative shade of the parsonage during coffee breaks. You can see the kneeler in its "banjo seat" position. May your encounters with Creation be good ones this weekend, whatever they may be.