Ah the Smell of Sweat, of Soil, of Rotting Scraps

We were perfumed with spring tonight.

Before I tell you about the dense clay I hit with my shovel in what I hope will someday be a crumbly, rich strawberry bed (looted by birds and beast), I think I'd better tell you a few things about Wazoo Farm.

First of all, though it doesn't quite exist yet, something is beginning to shape up, as you'd be able to tell if you drove by slowly and gaze with eyes that discern past the mess littered all over the yard.

Secondly, Wazoo Farm has quite a history. How much is fact, and how much legend? We can't say. . .

Our house is almost 100 years old; next to us is a big sloping lot, in all, 3/4 of an acre. Apparently we have little to complain about, since the lot originally sloped much more dramatically than its current perfect sledding/wagoning grade.

Back in the day when I was still nonexistent, the city council demolished a hotel downtown. Rather than haul the crumbled building to a landfill, they trundled the wreck over to our property, where they buried it and graduated the steep hill. One of these days as I plant tomatoes, I expect to plunge my shovel into the soil only to hit the old porcelain of a sink, or the bricks of an old chimney, or the spittoon of a paying guest.

I have so far turned out miscellany: pottery, glass, plate, brick shards. Nothing truly outlandish yet.

Later Wazoo Farm played a major part during the Depression in feeding the inhabitants of the college where Martin now teaches. I don't believe the food was raised on the land we own now, though the fellow who lived in our house was the provider; he owned sheep he grazed on one of bucolic hills that nestle around us.

We watched the first episode of the BBC James Harriot series, and I was struck again at how very like this place is to England, though we have many more trees and trailers.

This afternoon we tooled down the winding roads to a favorite haunt of ours. We passed, among other things, a man turning chickens on a giant spit over a fire (this weekend we attended the annual ramp festival--more on that later). Finally we pulled into Shield's Nursery, a rambling, lush place with numerous greenhouses, organic seedlings, and wandering peacocks. There I found rosemary and creeping thyme, a myrtle, and would you know it? More roses! In fact, this nursery carried David Austen Roses, (David Austen is a British company that carries mouth-watering old English teas.) A woman was watching a huge Asian wisteria tree being loaded into her pick-up truck. The blue-purple blossoms were embarrassing; it was as if we were staring at someone in lingerie. The two David Austens I loaded into the back of our car were more respectable with their stark, thorny, bare branches. But inside the bareroots pulses the blood of queens, (or at least frumpy English matrons smelling of talcum powder).

Now I am bone-tired, having spent a good part of the day hauling dirt from our hill UP the hill to my beds. We are filthy and happy, and Wazoo Farm is at last taking shape. If you'd like to visit, we have an extra shovel! Come and toil! Merry will make you lunch, and Elspeth will sing you a song.

Sideyard of Wazoo Farm (before); stay tuned for "after!"