sometimes I feel an urge, bordering on obligation, to pin down the details of any particularly rich day. yet upon delving into my account I quickly lose interest and patience. after all, I know what happened--I've already lived it. clearly, I've yet to mastered the art of storytelling. constructing a narrative involves detail and interpretation in appropriate doses; bare facts alone aren't effective in captivating any audience's attention--not even my own. but abstractions, vague color-tints and impressions of murmurs and moments, leave everyone out.
I have some necessary writing to tackle very soon. I contain dim and troubled waters on only the rarest of occasions but this time around the waters are rough. that vague allusion will suffice so far as this little blog entry is concerned. in this moment I am writing as an exercise--to warm up to the art so that my skills may be a little sharper once I turn my attention to more outwardly oriented topics.
enough adieu.
this morning I arrived at work on time. for much of my employment this was the norm, but I've been rolling in about five minutes late these past few months. but not today - this time I was a few minutes early. my boss never notices my arrival as it hovers behind and ahead of when I'm on the clock, and I have a hard time worrying myself with the matter too much as I almost always leave a good chunk after my hour of intended departure, not to mention the research time I put in on my own time.
her text messages roll in on the latter half of my commute there. if it seems safe to do so I check them on the way, the I cut off the radio or music and tune in to the tasks ahead. "Good morning! CC this AM. Please gently wash off H wound with water, trying not to disturb any healthy scabbing. She is wary of the hose so start slowly. Perhaps a bucket of warm water and a gauze would work best. When it dries, apply antibiotic ointment - found w/gauze in the drawers to the left as you enter the tack shack. You may need to warm it up to squeeze it out. Please also give Savana an afternoon feed."
she starts her communication with the general and moves through the increasingly specific. codes emerge: "CC" is critter care: feeding and watering the seven horses, ranging from tiny Sadie who barely hits my hip to giant, 18 Hh Zolton, a black spotted draft whose youthful exuberance makes his size all the more intimidating (he is around six feet tall at his withers). "H" is Honey, because she is the color of Honey, with a glorious white mane and tail. Honey managed to scuff herself up pretty bad recently, probably while throwing her heft around - though I suspect her overwhelming locks may make for a tough time minding the fence snags and briars that can make pasture life difficult. finally, "S" is Savana, who is over thirty years old and insecure of her place in the herd. I'm told by the horse trimmer Crystal (who is a story in her own right) that Savana wasn't likely to last through last winter. she is a Trakehner, meaning she has aggressive angles made all the more rigid by her age. but her face is dished, and looks young, and she carries an ever-worried look in her dark eyes that remind me of my old dead mare Codi and my tiny grandmother Sybil who has been locked in the steadfast grasp of Alzheimer's for longer than I can remember.
so, I set to work. I fed the horses and checked on the chickens, too. I tended to Honey's wounds, and soaked Murphy's abscessed hoof, and brushed Savana, and filled troughs, and gathered buckets, and trotted horses across three pastures. I dashed around the property on their golf cart (which we treat as one of those tough green Gators despite its constant protests in the form of flat tires and lost buckets). sometimes the farm cats climb aboard and taste horse feed and chicken mash just to make sure, for the hundredth time, that it is indeed not the same as cat food. most of the cats are affectionate and long overdue for a cuddle, so I hold them tight and accelerate to fifteen, twenty, twenty-two miles per hour while cat claws curl into my skin and fasten to me like velcro.
I was weeding the long, arced strawberry row when it began to rain so I moved my work to their dining room table and made great strides in planning the garden. what a myriad of considerations there are! what grows in the garden now, what was there last season, last year, two years ago all come into play--as do less ephemeral considerations like sunlight, soil structure, and how much finished compost I have now or will have later. and then there is simple matter of what I need to grow. and how much of each. and, are the seeds still good?
this time around my boss wants me to build a cloche for seed-starting. I think it'll be a bit more involved than she assumes, but I am up to the challenge, and thankful that an early spring has forced her to focus on planting season in a timely fashion rather than waiting 'til we're weeks behind.
I've just about got it figured out, though I have been this confident before only to have some unforeseen factor or critical aspect I failed to take into account completely sabotage my intended scheme. so it goes! that beloved term, resilience, applies to agriculture in the abstract, too: I must be able to grow, and grow well, even when set askew.
garden books make long-term crop plans seem easy. ah, you planted tomato and peppers there last year? solanaceae? well, that's where the alliums will go this spring!
but what if that soil is unsuitable for leeks or onions? and, what of leeks' slow growth? and what if that spot had a bizarre interplanting of eggplant and onion the year prior because the gardener was experimenting with microclimates and differing root depths!? ... hypothetically speaking, of course.
it's taxing to know what ought to be done at a particular point in the season while lacking the time to tackle it. I must finish pruning the orchard, the grapes, the blackberries. I must double-dig a bed I sheet mulched in the fall. I must lime the front pastures and lawn. I must remove some sod and henbit from the base of the blueberries, fertilize them, mulch them. I must reclaim large portions of the upper garden bed from errant strawberries, but doing this involves digging bordering rows, checking the soil's pH, amending, covering it securely with corn-based landscaping fabric, and then finally moving the strawberries to their new home with care.
while I was agonizing over my crop placement, and my rapidly diminishing eraser, I got another text from my boss: "Recycling today too please." ah, she wants me to pick up the recycling from the farm and their office in town and drop it off at a county dump. I adjusted my time frame accordingly: I'd work just a little longer on the garden design, feed Savana again, load up the big farm truck and head onward. it would work out so that Savana would be just finishing her feed by the time I returned to let her bag in with the ponies before her nerves caught up with her. but, alas! the truck bed was full to the brim with mops, garden material, de-icing salts, an antique school desk. I don't know why, but it meant I had to unload each item before heading on. it was during this time that I really began to resent their young German Shepherd and his incessant barking.
the truck gate gets jammed. sometimes I can unlatch it: I heave my body upwards against a particular point on the gate while lifting the handle backwards. when it works I feel like I've manipulated physics in my favor. when it doesn't--when both ends of the gate are jammed--I end up with bruised shoulders, shot nerves, and an even deeper-seated resentment of Buddy the dog. hauling trash cans loaded with glass wine and rum bottles + thick bi-monthly dental supply catalogues up and over the side of the truck instead of out the back like any civilized farmhand gets old, but I try to involve my whole body, and hope that the extra work shows in my muscles instead of my joints.
sometimes the truck doesn't start and I have to jump it. sometimes it starts but is frightfully low on gas. the only gas station between the farm and town is cash-only. you stop the pump yourself, meaning you're either getting a few nickels shy of the gas you paid for, or you're dashing back into the ramshackle station with a handful of change to compensate for running the meter beyond what you paid for upfront.
I'm getting better at loading the truck. a handful of bungee cables, most with the elastic shot, stretch and weave over precariously arranged cargo in the hopes that nothing flies out and endangers some car trailing too close or mars the emerging green highway shoulders with the ultramarine blue of diet coke packaging. it's an art made all the more expressive when I involve my whole body: I hop in, shift, heave stuff about, hop out and land upon that satisfying grit, grab something else that needs to go, and repeat. I dip me knees into black bags to shove them into tight spaces and throw the weight of my upper body against broken-down boxes or tin trash bins. everyone must get along or the whole show goes down.
county dumps are funny places. there are lots of trucks. sometimes I think, "goodness, does everyone drive a pickup truck?" before realizing that I pulled up in one. they are manned and managed by retirees who poke at piles of trash with rakes and fish out plastic bags carelessly tossed in the recycling bin. sometimes I drive up with a rough load, me in my most unfeminine of clothing, with a brown cap and black gloves and muddy boots. something about the aesthetic affects my attitude, and I find myself disinclined to wave or make conversation. the more minimal and to-the-point my movements are the better, I catch myself thinking. before long I'm bound up in affectation!
without compromising my economy of motion, today I loosened up. I waved and let my palm linger, a little limp, with a flicker of fingers out the open window of the truck. my hope is the attendant recognized me as the girl who would not stop asking questions about Johnston County's recycling habits. and when a woman pulled up to unload a trunk's worth of soda bottles and cardboard I sought to maintain an open air. "oh shit!" she said when a glass bottle dropped as she ascended the other short staircase up to the lip of the giant receptacle. "--pardon my french." she actually said that! people say that!
"this stuff isn't mine. it's my daughter-in-law's. I always keep my stuff real neat." she explained, as if one errant bottle were enough to condemn her as a slob. "some people just don't know how to pack trash," I said. "she keeps everything," the woman continued. "I take it all up when I watch the kid. I think she's something like a hoarder. they say it's a disease." I listened while unloading flattened cardboard at the other end of the bend. "but she lost her mother real young--her mother died at forty-seven." she said it was hard for her to have to get rid of her mother's stuff right after she died--"too soon." I thought about what I wanted to say, realized it'd make me sound like a know-it-all psych major, and replied with some acknowledgement that we sometimes try to shore up security for ourselves to compensate. the loudspeaker in the middle of the lot cut on. it was someone from another dump sharing stats about how many tons of trash and recycling and how many batteries and TV's or whatever they'd received that week. she left without saying goodbye, but that's how it goes there.
in an effort to avoid blocking the bin I had parked the truck close to the chain link fence that encircles the facility. it was a steep drop-off; I used the parking brake. after taking it off I tried to ease the truck back but it dig into the gravel and sand. damn! so much for my attempt at seeming cool and at-ease with tough tasks! but it wasn't psychosocial disaster after all--pulling forward a bit before backing up a different direction solved my problem. I dashed back and smoothed over the dry ruts with my boot, realizing all the while that conscientiousness ought to trump coolness any day, and a little dose of uninvited humility could probably only do me good.
I told my boss how much she owed me. it's two weeks wages. she didn't see the text 'til hours after I'd left, but I don't mind - I'm good 'til monday. once I returned to the farm I hustled hard to finish the day (half an hour late already) to get to the post office before it closed it pick up a Punch Brothers vinyl that the USPS keeps trying to deliver but I am never there to sign for. I braved Gorman and Avent Ferry stop-go traffic and found my destination tucked into a shopping center lacking color or character only to realize that I'd missed my chance--they'd already sent my package back to the shipper. silly. frustrating. but ultimately inconsequential--it's a worry I'd choose over many I've experienced.
tonight is first friday. I am dressed a bit nicer than normal--I am showered and feeling almost sleek. the bike gang left from the belltower a full hour ago. galleries close in another hour. I don't have to get up as early in the morning as I first thought. what, then, to do?
I think I will close this account of my day. I'll go to Whole Foods and buy apples, milk, an onion and maybe some cereal. then I'll cook some vegetables and eggs and drink the Shiner that's been in my fridge for two weeks. I will play guitar, study up more on pruning fruit trees, wonder what my favorite person is doing on the other side of the country, and finish the day having invested in evening, and in tomorrow.
