Oh, how I love to look out my front door and see green.
I have a little writing desk next to this door. Actually, it is an old Singer sewing machine–the kind that is folded away inside a wooden table with drawers on each side and ornate iron scrollwork for legs. It used to belong to my grandmother, who would probably have approved of the fact that I put a typewriter on top of it. She, like me, was more of a writer than a seamstress—though not unable to sew when the urge struck her.
I set the typewriter on top of the sewing machine so that I could use it on those days when computers are getting me down, and I set the sewing machine next to the door so I could look out at the lawn, and the trees, and my little potted plants, which, by the way, are the perfect antidote to a technology-overdose.
This is the first year I have ever “grown” anything. It’s the first year I have fallen in love with little starts at the farmer’s market or nurseries, the first year I have so-carefully nudged them out of their plastic cartons and nestled them with gloved hands in their prepared bit of soil, the first year I have hovered over them day after day checking for water levels and signs of health—and probably, the Negative Nellie in my head says, the first year I will KILL ALL OF THEM. I just have to shush that voice when it crops up, though… no matter what happens, it will have been a learning experience, and so far they are all just FINE.
The pot most visible from my post at the sewing machine holds my strawberries. Oh, my beautiful strawberry plants–what were blooms in mid-April are growing enticingly more and more strawberry-like by the day. Of course, my landlady has informed me that the deer who frequent the property will most likely eat them any day now. Well, there’s that voice again. Oh, and now it’s also reminding me that just buying a pint of strawberries at the farmer’s market yields more strawberries than I may see all summer, at about half the price of the strawberry plants. Hush, voice. Don’t you know that part of what I was buying was experience? Can you really put a price tag on that?
I sometimes wonder, as I’m sitting at my desk, what my strawberry plants think of this very, very wet spring/summer we are having in Oregon. Because there they are, reaching heavenward, protecting their developing fruit, and every other day the sky just opens up and dumps on them. For all I know, they love these storms. But I can’t help thinking, that if I were they, I would not like to sit around outside with my arms outstretched while God poured buckets of cold water on me. I mean, at least if I did that I would have the option of coming inside and drying off—they just have to sit there and take it.
Then again, maybe that’s in their favor. They don’t have the illusion of shelter to make themselves think they are safe from the elements–or to think that their existence is in their own hands. We humans, on the other hand, build ourselves bigger and bigger shelters against wind, rain, and God—until our shelters become so elaborate that it takes earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes to remind us that wind, rain, and God are not yet quite irrelevant.
But, I remind myself, strawberries don’t think (probably), and when I reach the point that I am genuinely concerned about their feelings I know that I have been sitting at the sewing machine too long. Which is just as well, because by then it’s time to move on to some other task around the cottage–like making dinner, perhaps. Or perhaps, if I have the luxury of a few hours with nothing to do, lying on the couch where I can see out this door, and then taking a nap. (This doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it’s heavenly.)
June 5th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
I’m with you about the strawberries saying, “Enough already with the rain!”
Thanks for sharing your musings!