Fork & Knife

Hot Foot Day

Generally in the late summer/early fall there comes a day where I feel like my feet are on fire; when that happens, I know the heat is finally over and fall is come. I think I missed it this year because of my mostly indoor work life. I could smell the change a week or so ago but couldn't be sure. Last night settled it for sure. Low 50's and highs in the upper 70's today.

Ebb & flow. Glad of the chance to start over in the garden. Lots of fall crops getting planted, earth under my nails, feet dirty. The evidence of firefly nuptials glowing pale emeralds in the grass as I walk the dogs in the evening. Horseflies! Goldenrod living up to its name and all the wild sunflower clan bursting gloriously yellow. Diogenes, our Great Pyrenees, rambunctious and ecstatic at the moderation of temperatures. Soon, colorful leaves and snow.

Parasitism of hornworms

Interesting bit about the Tachinid Fly's parasitism of Tomato Hornworms. I knew they did this to Squash Bugs but not Hornworms.

Wasps

Lately I have been noticing wasps in the garden.

A few weeks ago, Jordan and I watched as a wasp pulled a cabbage worm through a hole the worm had eaten in a savoy cabbage leaf. It then preceded to eat the things' head off. Very gruesomely cool.

Monday, while picking Pink-Eye Purple Hull Peas, I watched as wasps patrolled the plants looking for aphids. What was most interesting to me was how different their styles were. Some would walk around and around the peas like they were chasing the aphids, or might just find one if they kept walking. Others would sit still and jump at the aphids as they came close. And still others would flit from plant to plant in a drive-by motif. They would hardly even light on a plant before they were off to the next. The ants were annoyed by all of these methods as the wasps were making off with their precious food source. Ants actually farm aphids for the honeydew they excrete. So essentially the wasps were rustling the ants cattle.

Just now, I went out to move the water and thought I might make a quick pass through the tomatoes with my headlamp on a reconnoiter for the pesky tomato hornworms. They come out at night because it's cooler and there aren't a bunch of bluebirds waiting around to eat them. Not to mention most farmers/gardeners aren't wandering around at 1 a.m. with a headlamp on. I succeeded in removing several python-like worms and dispatched them underfoot. After this little meditation I decided to walk around a bit because it was cool and I have had precious little time to just enjoy the garden this year with more subscribers, a new baby, a seven week drought, 100 degree heat etc. I also have been seeing a lot of shooting stars and I just love that. Anyway, I noticed what looked like a wet spot on the edge of one of the pumpkin beds and walked over to have a look. What I found was moistish soil from our 1/2" rain last week that was being carried/pushed out of the ground by an enormous looking wasp. I stood fascinated for several minutes and then noticed several others as I walked through the pumpkin patch. A little googling leads me to believe that they were Cicada Killer Wasps . No real danger, but something to watch, literally and figuratively.

Buzzing in the locust trees and other fertile observations

I was out in the yard with Lucinda & Diogenes headed to the field when the dogs were distracted by something and I was left with a moment of relative quiet as they investigated. Over the white noise of the highway I could hear a low buzzing from above. Observation led to discovery. The locust trees were full of bees gorging themselves on pollen creating a meliferous drone. Days later petals drift to the ground white as snow. Soon the bean pod babies will begin to swell as evidence of all this fertility.

At the farm on Friday I stood transfixed for about 10 minutes as a mockingbird sang his head off above me in the top of a huge cedar. The recording on the website doesn't do justice to the song. At one point he leaped up in the air in this weird way and landed back in the tree and instantly sang another chorus. Eating bugs I believe. The intelligence of scientists and the obviousness is present in the name Mimus polyglottos able to mimic a number of tongues.

Lightning bugs & whippoorwills

April 18 also included the first occurence of two things I tend to associate with high summer, the sound of whippoorwills and the sighting of the first lightning bugs of the year. In general, it seems like everything moves further up in the calendar every year. Another example would be the flowering of Ironweed (Vernonia spp.) that I always associated with autumn, but now occurs in mid-summer. Either our seasons are shifting, or my memory is shifting.

Ejecting seeds

I had the strangest experience on Sunday, April 18. I am a little compulsive about changing the type of pants I wear during the year; don't want to switch to shorts too soon, or take off the long johns, etc. I had, like a walnut tree holding its leaves inside until sure of the weather, decided it was time to switch to shorts. I was walking to one of the garden areas at Dad's (gardens D-1 & D-2) when I began feeling this weird sensation on my shins. I stopped and it stopped. I started walking again and it started; so I began walking slowly and looking down at my legs. Lo and behold, there was a plant that you would not even notice that had flowered and was holding its seed pods up in expectation. When I walked through the seed pods ejected their cargo expectantly. I was filled with a strange glee at this like a kid seeing a long line of mud puddles. I ran in circles and then began looking for this little plant all over the place. I meant to take Lisa down and have her walk through barefooted, but it was dark by the time she got there.

Oh yeah, I planted Mystique, bi-color SE sweet corn, that day too. It should be ready in 74 days.

Infiltration & percolation

I spend quite a bit of time in the field here with the dogs, dogs and man outstanding in their field. It gives me time to look up at the sky a lot, listen to the sounds beneath adjacent highway white noise, investigate the field to learn this place, and time to think.

When there was snow on the field I used it to mark my trips to and fro across the landscape, a sort of map of my small journeys. There was a lot less to hear as everything was more or less frozen literally and figuratively. The sky was still very interesting, but I was obsessed about not making the same trip around the property; in a sense, I didn't want to walk in my own footsteps, or anyone else's for that matter. Difficult thing to do when you introduce the chaos of two dogs who are obsessed with walking and sniffing in everyone's footsteps. Of course with the thawing of winter into spring it has gotten harder to continue walking on fresh ground, but the mud helps. I have certainly learned things about the field. There is a section on the north side that may not be dry enough to plow until summer; either there is a spring there or it is drainage from the field behind us, or both. The area on the south side where I want to put a building and parking area is downstream from the rest of the property. The east side also seems very wet to me. So that leaves the middle of the property for most of the gardening, probably more than enough for one person to grow on. I may use these wetter areas later in the season and hope the water is still there under the surface for summer crops.

Water was the original motivation for this post. Standing in the field one night, I heard a sound I had trouble placing. After listening for awhile I realized it was the sound of water moving like a sheet across the field, trickling and gurgling as it moved. This was the sound of water looking to infiltrate drenched soil and also the sound of the water in the soil percolating through the horizons of the soil. I was mesmerized in that way one can be in a summer corn field after a downpour listening to the joints in the cornstalks popping because it is growing so fast. I know, I know, as interesting as watching grass grow or paint dry, but there really was something intensely sensual and magical about it. The microcosmic motion of water in a field seeking purchase, infiltration, interpenetration, and union just as we do on so many levels in our microcosmic motion through our lives and on and on. As above, so below.

Weather and interview

Temperatures this week have been warm, up to 74 degrees yesterday. We have gotten some rain and there is the constant intimation that we may get more. Everything is full to bursting with vernal glee. Anticipation is rife; we have all been in the starting blocks for what seems like an interminable time, our legs have gotten wobbly. The gun must go off. Tulips are usually the bright hued blast that ushers the rush toward the eventual autumnal respite. So many weeks of labor and flavor and visual joy. It is always with reluctant anticpation, or is it anticpated reluctance, that these early weeks of spring carry me toward the marathon ahead. The season used to be a sprint as I would start in April, or even May, and be done in September. I have moved beyond middle distance to marathon. Over the years the boundaries have been receding rapidly. I start by planting things like fava beans in the field in February and finish planting garlic in December. I can only imagine what my life would be like if I had a greenhouse or lived in warmer climes. I would work myself to death.

I was on the Eagle 93 yesterday evening talking about the beginning of the market season. I heard it sounded good, but I never can tell. As many of you know, talking comes very easy to me; as does listening. I would love it if some of you started talking back by commenting.

Toad and weather

I took Diogenes and Luci out last night around midnight and found a toad crawling through a drainage ditch. It was about 65 degrees and clear.

Today it was raining lightly in the morning and then we had a huge gust of wind that nearly blew everything in the market away as the front passed over us. The temperature dropped by at least 10 degrees and it looked like it was going to really rain. An hour later, the clouds broke and it must be near 70 degrees out there now.

Spring springing to sprung

You can just feel the life oozing back up out of the dark, rich earth. Tonight feels, smells, and tastes like spring; and the peeper frogs and birds have really been screeching their heads off. It seems like the daylight hours have doubled and the solar powered lights at the house stay lit far into the night now instead of dimming at 8 p.m. We had the bloom of skunks a couple of weeks ago and the sad reminders of their nocturnal travels and travails now litter the highways. We move too fast.