Staycation All I Ever Wanted

Last week's staycation at the farm was just what I needed after a hectic quarter (the week before I had no less than 3 students crying in my office!).  Rather than commute back and forth from my condo to there,  I decided to stay overnight for a few days in order to be able to work on the garden in a more leisurely manner.  I also wanted to take a break from the usual routines and to be able to wake up and sleep surrounded by nature.  And I got just what I asked for.

One of the first things I usually do when I get to the farm is to make the rounds and to see what is blooming, pickable, or in dire need of weeding.  This time around, I saw that all the garlic had grown scapes that were  getting ready to bloom so off they came so that the garlic would expend its energy into growing its bulb rather than flowering.  Garlic scapes have a mild garlicky flavor (surprise!) and are great sauteed or stir fried with some other veg.

I also had a few projects in mind besides the usual non-stop weeding.  Linda, the queen of DIY, had given me a few milk jugs when I had told her my theory that the reason why my tomatoes had been doing so dismally year after year was the lack of consistent watering.  She suggested I use the jugs to create self-watering reservoirs for the tomatoes, which I thought was a great idea.  "How hard can it be?" is my inherited motto but sometimes it doesn't quite prove true.  These containers were a bit trickier than anticipated as I was apparently overzealous with my poking on the first two jugs.  When I went to check on them the day after I filled the jugs, they were already completely empty.  So round two had me poking only two tiny holes on the side facing the tomato. This time around, the jugs seemed about a third full when I checked the next day but it was a little hard to judge the depth of the water, so I'm going to leave them be and see how the tomatoes fare this summer.

My other project of which I'm rather proud is this bean trellis that I constructed out of twine and the bamboo poles from my dad's back yard.  When I initially told him my plan, my dad wanted to give me 5' poles, saying that they'd be hard to fit in the car otherwise, but I was pretty sure that bean trellises were usually around 8 feet tall as I had seen them towering over other people's backyard fences.  We compromised at 6' and he trimmed up the poles he had harvested from his bamboo trees.  Once they were in the ground, they were a little under 6' with the horizontal pole just high enough to not be eye-poking height (at least for me).  I wound the twine around the top and bottom, then immediately put my scarlet runner beans, which I had started at home and were ready to climb, in the ground.  I had put some squash in the space between the poles but on second thought, after seeing some photos of how full the vines get, I moved them to more open space.

Dad came to visit me out at the farm and did a whole lot of weedwacking, which spiffed the place up quite a bit.  We picked the first of the favas and shelling peas, though he kept protesting that the favas were still too small but I was glad we could enjoy the young tender beans which didn't have to be shucked twice because the inner membrane was still tender enough to eat.  For my next harvest, I want to try grilled fava beans, which I'd also heard praises about from Ms. Foodie herself, Vicky, when she went to Kyoto in the spring.

Finally, I was able to make several bouquets of flowers for friends and family from flowers that I had grown from seed (which is its own small thrill) and which have been blooming so wildly these last few weeks.  The Sweet William along with cuttings of sage flowers just smelled fantastic and I also learned the name of the bell-shaped mystery flowers, campanula or bellflower, as well as these delicate blue flowers with the fern-like leaves: love-in-the-mist.  Isn't that just an absolutely fantastic name?

I could've stayed there longer but duty called and it also started raining and raining, so with reluctance, I packed up and returned to reality.  But I'll be out there again.  That's the lovely thing about staycations--you don't have to travel anywhere to go on one.  You're already there; you just need to make that mental switch to begin one.

I'll finish with two quotes from Simone Weil about what it means to pay attention.  It seems that often the victim of busyness is our attention and most of the time, we need to get away from it all to open up the space to pay attention again.  However, once we return to "reality," that attention diminishes or disappears again.  Staycations can be little portals to paying attention again, to each other, to the beauty around us, and to the things that matter, and I can't wait until I can go on another one.

"[Attention is] a suspension of one's own self as a center of the world and making oneself available to the reality of another being."--Simone Weil

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."--Simone Weil

Returning

A few weeks ago, I went out onto my back balcony, which had finally been liberated from the builders who had been redoing the siding, roof, railings, etc., of my condo for the last 4 months.  I have a storage unit out back and I wanted to get a couple of things out of it.  Right when I stepped outdoors, a robin started chattering furiously at me from the tree, and hovered around on the branches of the pine tree in front of my balcony, all the while scolding me.  It took me awhile but I finally remembered that the year before, the same thing had happened and it was because a pair of robins had built a nest on the waterspout by the balcony.  I looked over behind me and lo and behold, there was a robin's nest on the water spout full of little baby birds.  They had returned to nest in the same place as last year.  This really surprised me since the building had been undergoing massive renovation for months and in particular, recently the builders had been repainting and making all sorts of racket outside.  But there they all were and I saw that the painters had only painted halfway up the spout in deference to the birds' nest, which was sweet of them.

This got me thinking about the whole instinct that all animals seem to have to return to the familiar, especially as I had recently applied to renew my Taiwanese passport after over 30 years of not having one.  My father and I are returning to Asia this fall.  I say return because we are heading to Taiwan, my birthplace, and then China, his birthplace, to visit the old, probably not-so-familiar-anymore sights and to see former friends and even family who are still there.  In the process, my father had decided to re-apply for a Taiwanese passport although we'd been US citizens for over 30 years.  Partly this was because Taiwanese citizens can obtain a special visa to enter China and by so doing, we would be able to bypass having to get one as American citizens.  When I had lived and worked in Taiwan about ten years ago, I had considered re-applying for my passport then but got stymied by all the bureaucracy in a language that I didn't speak or read very well, so I had forgone doing so. However, this time around, since my dad was already doing one for himself, I asked him to help me get one, too.

The process of applying for a Taiwan passport is much like any other: there are forms to fill out, passport size photos to be taken, and verifications of identity and residence.  In order to show previous residence, my father pulled out what seemed like an ancient manuscript to me: a yellowing typed document with red ribbons dated from 1975.  It was a notarized copy of our household registry, or hukou, from that time.  

In Taiwan as well as China, Japan, Vietnam, and even several European countries like Germany, the household registry is an important document that tracks important family events like births, marriages, deaths, and immigration status.  This process of recording dates back to the Xia Dynasty (2100-1600 BCE) when a system was needed in order to tax (what else), conscript, and keep track of the citizenry.  In recent history, the method of hukou in China has been somewhat controversial as it has been used as a means to control the movement of rural citizens to urban areas where oftentimes more job opportunities are available.  If a person doesn't have a legal hukou in the city, he or she can be denied employer-provided housing, health care, and access to other services, effectively becoming an undocumented worker in his or her own country.  Before my parents had immigrated from Taiwan, they had the forethought to get their houkou translated and notarized and now, all these years later, it was needed again.

I had never seen or even known of this document's existence.  Looking at it was truly like stepping into a time capsule.  Seeing my grandparents' names in English [aren't all grandparents just called  "kung kung" (grandpa) or "po po" (grandma)??] as well as my mom and dad and all my mom's various siblings' names really brought home the fact that despite not being very close to my relatives, that here was a document that inextricably tied us all together.

Ever the pragmatist, my father was not nearly so impressed by these papers.  He filled out the paperwork for me (he reads Chinese whereas I barely do) and then one Thursday in May, he took the bus downtown to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) to get the forms processed.  I wasn't able to accompany him as I had to work but from what he told me, usually the person who was filing the paperwork needed to be present to get the form processed.  However, as a long-standing member of the Chinese community, he knew several of the people who worked at the TECO office and one of the administrative assistants, upon recognizing him, vouched for my existence and he was able to get the deed done.  These are certainly times when having guanxi, or connections, is beneficial.

 Probably not more than two weeks later, my father handed me my Taiwanese passport.  Despite not really knowing the purpose of having one, it was still a thrill to get this newly minted passport that showed my birthright as someone born in Taiwan.  My original Taiwanese passport had been issued when we immigrated from there when I was six years old.  At that time, I didn't even have my own passport but instead, shared one with my mother.  I still remember the black and white photo of me sitting with her from the passport although the passport itself had been long lost.  On the back page of this new passport, there was a note that indicated just that exact situation: that I had originally had a passport with my mother, its issue date, number, and the fact that it had been lost.  It seemed somewhat surreal that after all these decades, and what had seemed overwhelmingly difficult when I lived in Taiwan, was now accomplished so easily and quickly.

I read somewhere that robins will continue to go back and nest in the same spot year after year even if you try to discourage them by tearing down their nest before it's finished and that they also have an innate ability to know how to build the nest.  I don't think that the desire by my father and I to return to the place of our birth is quite so evolutionarily instilled but who knows?  Perhaps we're not as wise or complex as we think.

I thought I'd end with Li-Young Lee's poem "The Gift," which certainly is about legacy, planted in the narrator as a child, a gift that he only realized years later.

The Gift
by Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he’d removed the iron sliver I thought I’d die from. I can’t remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face, the flames of discipline he raised above my head. Had you entered that afternoon you would have thought you saw a man planting something in a boy’s palm, a silver tear, a tiny flame. Had you followed that boy you would have arrived here, where I bend over my wife’s right hand. Look how I shave her thumbnail down so carefully she feels no pain. Watch as I lift the splinter out. I was seven when my father took my hand like this, and I did not hold that shard between my fingers and think, Metal that will bury me, christen it Little Assassin, Ore Going Deep for My Heart. And I did not lift up my wound and cry, Death visited here! I did what a child does when he’s given something to keep. I kissed my father.

Li-Young Lee, "The Gift" from Rose. Copyright © 1986

Fresh From the Farm This Week

Returning this week is the semi-regular installment of "Fresh From the Farm This Week," starring the various flora and fauna (mostly of the worm variety) growing on my little allotment at a family friend's organic farm in Redmond.

As always, the sheer amount of manual labor needed to clear again the plots that I'd cleared the previous years from weeds and old plantings that had overwintered threatened to overwhelm me.  I absolutely get why farming families of old (and surely still) had huge families: they were free day laborers!  It's not quite compelling enough for me to consider (and far too late, I may add) but certainly the tenacity of things to live and grow and to overtake any open and available space serves as an object lesson that trying to rid our lives of unwanted things (be it weeds or much harder things like a quick temper) takes much vigilance and perseverance.

It's always fun to see perennials returning; they really are like old friends.  The packet of "Grandmother's Cutting Garden" by Renee's Garden that I planted 3 years ago is blooming again (as well as slowly trying to expand its territory.  See above paragraph).  Right now the Sweet Williams and Bachelor's Buttons are gearing up to unfurl into their full pink, white, and purple glory and this year, there's a new surprise.  I didn't know that certain seeds needed multiple years to establish themselves but I was told that Sweet Williams take two years, which was true in my case, and so this other flower might be something that just needed another year.  In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing what blossoms it yields as I don't even know how to describe this new plant other than tall with blossoms clustered upward on the stalk (a bit like Bells of Ireland, which who knows, maybe it is?!).  The fig tree also bravely put out two figs this year, which is one more than last, so we're carefully watching it in hopes that this year, we may actually be able to harvest Adam and Eve (having just spontaneously decided to name them that).

This year I was able to get out a little bit earlier than last to plant my "cool" crops of Tuscan kale, Chinese lettuce, fennel, snow and snap peas, and fava beans.  Though the lettuce all bolted with the warm sunshine from a few weeks ago, everyone else is doing quite well.  The favas are about 3 feet high now with pods starting to form, the peas are aclimbing, and I've already harvested some of the baby kale leaves along with the lettuce for stir fry.

As still a relatively new gardener/gentlewoman farmer, it's surprising how a garden can take over so much of your time and thoughts.  With the quarter drawing to a close and what seems like an endless amount of grading, I don't have a lot of spare time to go and play in the dirt, but I find myself trying to find ways to squeeze it in. It somewhat surprises me that I miss my garden when I don't get to visit it at least weekly, but I suppose that it's a relationship of sorts, a give and take where effort and time has a visible effect, something that doesn't always seem true when working with people.

An added bonus when I visit the farm is that in the field across the street are a bunch of miniature horses grazing almost every time I'm out there.  It began with 2 or 3 of them but now there seems to be a field of them, including some even more tiny miniature horses usually frolicking about.  (And you thought that there would only be fauna of the limbless invertebrate kind!) 

I came across this poem from Sarah C. Harwell called "Talking Back to the Mad World," which is a good reminder when after hours of work and the garden looks exactly the same, that it's ok to relax and just enjoy Nature doing her thing without any help whatsoever from us, and to love the magic, the "tattered camisole of nothing," that occurs when we do just that.
  

Talking Back to the Mad World

 

I will not tend. Or water,

pull, or yank,

I will not till, uproot,

 

fill up or spray.

 

The rain comes.

Or not. Plants: sun-fed,

moon-hopped, dirt-stuck.

 

Watch as flocks

of wild phlox

 

appear, disappear. My lazy,

garbagey magic

makes this nothing

happen.

 

I love

the tattered

camisole of

nothing. The world

runs its underbrush

course fed by

the nothing I give it.

 

Wars are fought.

Blood turns.

Dirt is a wide unruly room.

Sarah C. Harwell, from Sit Down Traveler (2012)