Yesterday I made 4,944 soil blocks which were planted in winter share. Leeks, broccoli and the like. It took four hours.
While driving north on Highway One I nodded off for a brief moment. After realizing it I sat upright, glanced in the mirror and concentrated on staying awake.
It’s not like I didn’t get a full night’s sleep Thursday… I did.
The combination of sun and repetitive work may have worn me out.
After arriving home I walked the garden, checked seedlings for moisture level, took a shower, and crashed into a two-hour nap. It’s become a Friday pattern.
Then I remember it was not soil blocking that wore me out but the news of Anthony Bourdain’s suicide in France.
Bourdain was a celebrity I liked. I read Kitchen Confidential a number of years ago and watched him on Food Network. In many ways, he is what I’d like to be as a writer, although with less inebriation. How little we know about celebrities. His suicide makes no sense. It may never make sense.
A memorable episode from Bourdain’s television work was when he returned to Borneo and got a chest tattoo on camera. He appeared to be drunk and uncomfortable. In a later CNN interview he recounted the process was much more painful than expected. We already knew that from the video. A reality came through in much of Bourdain’s work — one of his making. That’s why I liked him. The ability to depict a reality is essential to creative endeavor. Bourdain and his crew were masters at what they did. He’s gone too soon and will be missed.
I brought home a bag of groceries from the farm — lettuce, sugar snap peas, garlic scapes, kohlrabi, spring onions and kale. After napping I washed lettuce for salads and stored it in the ice box until supper time. I’m not sure what else got done. Maybe nothing, or something… whatever.
A couple of weeks ago our association held a community cleanup.
We own a well, a wastewater treatment plant, two vacant lots, 25 acres of woods, roads, and sundry open spaces which require attention from time to time.
Teams policed up trash, landscaped near the well house, trimmed trees, inspected roads, and repaired a retaining wall around the community parking lot near access to the state park.
A group of us — men about my age — worked near an intersection where a tree blocked the view of oncoming traffic. We made quick work of the tree and piled the trimmed branches at the edge of the nearby parking lot. An adjacent retaining wall had fallen over and we couldn’t get the cement blocks to fit back into place. A retired contractor walked the short distance home and returned with a couple of paint scrapers to remove dirt built up along the joints of the blocks.
“It will only take an eighth of an inch,” he said.
We made short work of the wall and returned home for the rest of our day. As the African proverb says, “Many hands make light work.”
Our lives can be like these projects — they are our lives as we work them. We forget our origins and become crusted with habits accumulated in complex living to get by. To make a life work, we scrape off the residue of the past and make things fit in the present.
It rained yesterday and I went to town.
I recycled glass jars near the former grocery store on Dodge Street and drove into the county seat. En route I spotted a Charles Bukowski bumper sticker on a car not far from where John Irving lived and wrote during his early years.
There are always an abundance of construction detours in this UNESCO City of Literature. Parking in one of the ramps off Burlington, I walked past a construction site toward the jewelry store.
Wedding band in a pocket, I planned to resize it so it didn’t pinch and deform my ring finger more than it had. The jewelry store was gone… long gone from the look of it. I guess being a customer once every 36 years is not enough to sustain a local business. At first I didn’t know what to do.
I walked around the corner and found another jeweler. This one was established in 1854, 12 years after Iowa statehood. Staff was friendly and efficient. We determined one size larger would make the ring fit again. I’ll pick up the resized ring after farm work on Friday.
After waiting for an LTL carrier to back into the crowded construction site near the ramp I drove to Coralville.
This was my second shopping trip this month. The combination of adequate income, a worn out French press, and a wet, rainy day precipitated it. The fitting where the long rod of the plunger connected to the screen had become stripped with use. I researched on line and the Target store at the mall had what I wanted — something as close as possible to the French press I’d used for many years. It took me a while to locate it in the large box store.
I picked up a few items at other stores — necessities that fit our lives. I splurged on a bottle of Trader Joe’s organic ranch dressing. We usually make our own salad dressing but this is the season of spring salads and I craved something different. It cost $2.79. I visited the home, farm and auto supply store and bought three 16-quart bags of organic soil mix to transplant seedlings for further growth before planting. I appreciated the employee discount.
While rain kept me from gardening, the time was easy to fill with the habits of a creative life. We require a platform to create things the way my contractor friend kept tools to repair the retaining wall in his home workshop. Often that means fitting the bits and pieces of a seemingly random life into something stable and predictable — measured in fractions of an inch.
Fishing Trip with Maciej Nadolski (seated with beard)
The political, social and economic environment in Iowa deteriorated substantially over the last few years. What I mean is the 87th Iowa General Assembly was a pisser. What’s a person to do?
First thought was to chuck it all and move near our daughter in Florida. Father attended Leon High School in Tallahassee, and I worked for several months in nearby Ochlocknee, Georgia. I became enamored of the Spanish moss hanging from trees lining Highway 319 as I drove back and forth to the Tallahassee airport. “You and mom wouldn’t like it here,” our daughter wisely said.
If the sunshine state is out, what about Minnesota? It’s not far away and we have family roots there. They also have Democratic U.S. Senators — what’s not to like about that?
Our family doesn’t know much about why great, great grandfather left the Pennsylvania coal mines and moved to Lincoln County, Minnesota in the last decades of the 19th Century. Maciej Nadolski bought land from the railroad and settled a couple miles west of Wilno where he would go to town, drink adult beverages, and sleep in the wagon as the horse took him home. He did so even after his spouse joined him from Poland.
Wilno was the creation of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, the Polish National Alliance and the Catholic Church, according to Wikipedia. It seemed a lot like Iowa. I visited Saint John Cantius Church (established 1883) after Grandmother died and met briefly with the parish priest. He mailed our grandmother’s baptismal record. I drove the route the horse took to the home place where the then current owners let me look around. People in Ivanhoe, the county seat, weren’t wealthy and a bit scrappier than in Iowa. I was related to a number of people I met — shirt tail relatives were everywhere.
A few stories about farm life survived through family oral history. We know farming did not work out for the large Nadolski family. After 20 years in Lincoln County, they moved north near Argyle and tried it again. After ten years in Argyle, most of the family moved near LaSalle, Illinois.
Other parts of Minnesota might not be so bad. Grandmother worked as a maid in Minneapolis when she was young. We don’t like city life so much, but there are small rural cities like the one we live near today. Why not Minnesota?
I’ll tell you why. I was born in Iowa and this is my state. If the political, social and economic climate is not to my liking, I’d better damn well get busy and work to fix it. Thing is, my values are not that different from the values of most people I know. This creates an opportunity for change.
If my first reaction to the 87th Iowa General Assembly was “Nuts! I’m moving to Minnesota,” it is natural to revert to who we are in crisis. Now that we’re home, it’s time to get up from the wagon, sleep off the booze, and get busy building the environment in which we want to live. It can be done, it should be, and we’re up to the task.
When the Catholic Church built the new school, seventh and eighth graders were segregated from friends with whom we had been growing up. A group of us were mixed together in an advanced program for college bound students as a nun explained at the time.
I didn’t like it and continue to harbor resentment even though it was 1964 and the segregation proved to be the foundation of my interest in a creative life.
During the course of our succeeding years, neighborhood friends and I would never again maintain the “old school” relationship. Mostly I’m over it, I guess. I do have writing which relies upon the distance from peers I learned then. A bit of alienation is essential for writing or public speaking to be worth much.
These days each morning begins with creative work. Reading, writing and coffee mixed together beginning around 3 a.m. It has been a chance to understand a world that is increasingly complicated. If the morning is productive, I feel positive the rest of the day.
End of Personal Journal
I work on a few projects off-line but the majority of what I write is available to readers. Otherwise, what’s the point. For many years, from my first trip to Europe in 1974, until this year I maintained a journal. As one can see in the image, those days are finished.
There is also newspaper writing which includes many letters to the editor and the freelance work I did a couple years ago. Some pieces were edited more than others. These days what I send to the papers isn’t hardly edited. I value it all.
Writing on-line has it’s points. There is a chance to edit what was written both before publication and afterward. I don’t blurt out incoherent rants on-line as I did when a journal was a place to let off steam. Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, serves as a creative outlet as well.
At its core writing originates in isolation from and connection to society. The two aspects are needed for it to be any good. When I review old pieces I am tempted to edit them, and my punctuation over the years has been inconsistent to be kind, but they capture moments I remember and wouldn’t change. There are also those where I don’t perceive myself in the finished piece. If that’s positive or negative I’m not sure, but the writing seems really good when I rediscover those.
We carry a limited amount of stuff where we go. The transition from old to new school is one that’s always in my kit bag. It taught me how social forces and institutions can tear us apart, and sometimes provide the foundation for something equally good or better.
No food is more local than a kitchen garden. I’ve got to get moving on mine after a late spring.
Everyone was in a good mood at the farms when I soil blocked Friday and Sunday. My farmer friends caught up last week by finishing onion and potato planting. Trays of seedlings are moving to wagons and then into the ground, thus clearing the greenhouse for what will be June and July crops. I started zucchini and cucumbers Sunday in the greenhouse.
The first spring share is today and in honor of it I’m composting my over-wintered lettuce.
A neighbor and I had a conversation about spinach and how it grows. She is changing her garden around as last year the zucchini they love developed powdery mildew. Her tactic is to plant the whole garden in corn to give the soil a break and let the fungus dissipate. Here’s hoping that works.
As for me, Monday is mine to do what I want. This week that will include getting our septic tank pumped, writing off line, gardening and yard care. It’s time to put winter behind us.
Hearing the laughter of children; seeing wildlife in the backyard; digging dirt turned to soil by one’s hands; feeling a breeze, getting frostbite, dancing in the rain, watering a garden with our own sweat.
They make a place if we are lucky enough to understand.
Among the lakes, creeks, forests, farms, cemeteries and subdivisions there is something. Something imperceptible but there.
To know it is a sense of place. It is not natural but has its rewards.
Hearing the laughter of children; seeing wildlife in the backyard; digging dirt turned to soil by one’s hands; feeling a breeze, getting frostbite, dancing in the rain, watering a garden with our own sweat.
It’s been 30 days since retirement and I’m up to my old tricks.
Like a hungry dog, I see things and want to be a part of them. “I’ll do this,” I say to myself and others. I run the risk of over-committing and letting people down. Importantly, I divert attention from priorities. New tricks should replace old but I’m not there yet.
Let the engine of life make a soft landing on this rain-soaked spring day. Focus until leaving for the farm in a few hours. In my second go-around at “retirement,” I’ve learned that lesson.
It’s not like I’ve kicked back in an easy chair. I agreed to stay on at the home, farm and auto supply store two days a week and never planned to give up farm work. I’ve written more and would like to write more still.
I’ve been in transition. Without good health life would be harder. I saw the dentist and tomorrow have an appointment with a physician for a physical. I got my car serviced, hair cut, and am planning a trip to purchase clothes. When I do, I’ll turn tattered attire into rags and recycle the denim and cotton. We’ve been living within our budget and the federal and state taxes are filed. The garden is behind this season, but there are seedlings in the greenhouse and garlic poking through the mulch. There will be a garden when the weather breaks. 2018 is a midterm election year and I plan to be more active this cycle than in recent years.
Days take on a rhythm and I’m no longer sure when a week begins and ends. Mostly, it’s been cold, I’ve felt it through to the bone, and there is so much to do before settling into a sustainable pattern. The weather will break and I feel ready to take off.
Slow down, you move too fast. Good advice for someone with my social style.
I’d rather have spent both of this week’s days at the home, farm and auto supply store in our garden. Temperatures were warm enough to work in shirtsleeves and the garden is way behind.
Outdoors tasks occupied my work day: unloading field tile and plant trucks, rearranging the yard, and moving tall pallets of pine shavings, first outside while unloading the truck, and then back inside as I made room in the warehouse. We had trucks of merchandise from our main warehouse, a load of feed, and a truck from Missouri with odds and ends of a retail operation: ladders, pipe, light bulbs and sundry stuff. It seemed like I was on the lift truck the entire time.
The best part of the days was feeling a breeze through my hair as I drove from one end of the lot to the other on the lift truck. Father died on a lift truck at the meat packing plant. That thought is never far from me as I finish my days in the work force.
Now begins the rest of today: coffee with an elected official in the county seat and a shift of farm work. If I have the bandwidth, and thunderstorms hold off, I’ll work in the garden later this afternoon.
Part of yesterday was spent outside — in the garden, working compost, cleaning buckets, collecting the bits of drainage tile used to support celery plants, tending the garlic, planting turnips and radishes.
Using a bag of shredded office paper and a match, I started the burn pile created in the aftermath of an unusual wind storm last year. An arborist cut down the big branches and I sawed them into smaller logs and branches. The wood was dry and burned quickly even though it was covered with snow a couple days ago.
The first spring burn pile marks the beginning of gardening season.
I didn’t connect the garden hose as we are expecting freezing temperatures again this weekend. There is plenty of moisture in the ground to give the seeds a start.
A week ago I got a haircut. Partly it was too shaggy and in my eyes while working outside at the home, farm and auto supply store. Partly it was about casting aside the experience it represents for a new start.
My retirement March 16 has been something of a crash landing. Long anticipated, I know the major themes — writing, gardening, farm work, home maintenance and community organizing. I’ve had to add a need to deal with my aging frame and life systems. I made an appointment to see a medical doctor for a physical next week.
Even though I have more time, there never seems like enough to get what I want accomplished. With that in mind, I’ve come to believe what I said in February, that low income workers and retirees can’t afford social media. I posted this on Facebook this morning:
I’ve decided to end my relationship with the Facebook application on or about April 30. I joined in 2008 to follow our daughter and she deleted her account a couple of years ago. It’s not you fair reader, it’s me.
I listened to Mark Zuckerberg testify to Congress yesterday and his plans for dealing with public issues here. I have no interest in artificial intelligence reading my every post to determine if it is worthy according to Facebook criteria.
That said, I will miss the exchanges, likes and shares and appreciate your interest in what I’ve been doing. Facebook has been a creative outlet for me and I plan to channel those impulses elsewhere.
You are invited to continue to follow me elsewhere. I plan to keep my twitter account @PaulDeaton_IA and my WordPress account pauldeaton.com. If you are on WordPress click the button on my home page to add me to your reader, or click on the Follow Via Email button if you are not.
So that’s it. Hope to see you around… literally.
The burn pile was hot and I had to keep my distance while using a hoe to move partly burned branches to the top of it. By supper time it was a pile of white ashes with minerals returned to the ground and carbon released into the atmosphere. I plan to add another garden plot where the burn pile was.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. A burn pile reminds us all of the natural world is in transition. In a burn pile there’s no judgment, just the heat of released energy and beautiful, ever changing orange-yellow-blue flames.
In this moment that’s all we require to sustain ourselves.
The high tunnel is fully planted. The ground is too cold for transplants. Cooler temperatures retard growth of fledgling vegetable sprouts. There is no place to go with the trays of lettuce, kale and greens coming along. The greenhouses are full.
It made an easy weekend of farm work for me with 24 trays of soil blocks on Friday and 20 on Sunday, about half the usual volume.
My good news was after about four weeks, the celery seeds germinated! The depth of flavor of home-grown celery has become essential to our kitchen. Because I had given up on the first planting, ordered new seeds, and re-planted I was thrilled. I delayed planting pepper seeds as it is clearly not too late to get them started. Several inches of snow fell last night and dampened any prospect of gardening today.
What’s different this year is weather and work kept me out of the garden completely in late winter and early spring. In past years I’ve planted lettuce, potatoes, radishes, turnips and spinach by now. I’m past ready to get started. The cold temperatures look to break for a brief planting window tomorrow or Wednesday. I’m hitting the reset button on Spring.
Friends conversed about Facebook this weekend. So many want to delete their accounts. At the same time, we manage information and pages that make it seem important. We long for personal information posts and can’t give them up — a form of craving or confirmation bias. Our presence on the popular social media platform persists… for now.
24 days into retirement I’m not fully healed, but have bottomed out. I cleared the last hurdle of winter by filing our federal and state tax returns this morning. A path to creativity cleared of nagging concerns. Now for a slow, methodical climb to the light. A fall could be fatal. Hope springs if the season has not.
Daily writing is important. It provides a chance to work through wicked problems and understand, if not resolve them. It is also a chance to consider experience deeply. If this blog is a way of dashing off notes in the form of an electronic journal, I’m okay with that. I appreciate my regular followers and readers. There is something more. I’ve dedicated part of this new life to determining what it is.
On another day of waiting for Spring to break I’ll work at home and contemplate where I’m bound. Along with any view of the future is the baggage of a life lived. I’m not sure I need all that baggage any more.
Journey Home 
You must be logged in to post a comment.