Contributor Movie Review: Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Ingram Entertainment, 2005

Have you ever been alone in your car with the music up, maybe at a busy intersection or heading out of town at nightfall with a duffel in the trunk, and felt like your life—your story, your inner world, and the world around you--was soundtracked? Let’s say you’re already in a state of angst or mild vexation. The basic idea drumming in your mind is, What’s it all mean? What’s it all (me, friends, jobs, family, etc.) add up to? You’re coming home from work. You’ve got Joseph Arthur’s “In the Sun” cranked, or maybe some Sarah McLachlan (“Good to Me”?) or Indigo Girls. Ok, not Indigo Girls, but you get the idea—a song or artist you know will only mimic, if not indulge and enhance, your current condition. You begin to experience irrational feelings of sadness and self-importance, and your thoughts verge toward a kind of ill-gotten empathy for the exquisite complexity of our lives: Everybody hurts (sometimes). How tragic and beautiful we all are!

Maybe it’s just me.

And there are other songs and moods your soundtrack might include. You’ve got music to “chill” by, music that gets you hopping, music that brings you down, music that says, “I’m carefree,” music that floats you, music that floors you. That’s the challenge of a mix tape (well, not tape anymore, but whatever): You need to take the listener on a journey, and you know the journey isn’t so much through the lyric content of the songs, thought that’s part of it, but through tunnels of self, of memory, of dreams.

Follow me so far?

This whole thing—the soundtracking of our lives—has got to be a late 20th Century innovation. Before recorded music, and before that recorded music became portable (i.e. the advent of car radio, walkmen, ipods), and before movie directors began heavily emphasizing the film score, it seems to me this would have been unlikely. It doesn’t help that increasingly directors appear to be abandoning traditional symphonic film scores for pop music—music that, when we hear it in a film, echoes previous experiences with that song or predicts others we will have.

The problem is, of course, that while these experiences may be part of the “real” soundtrack of our lives, and we might enjoy them (I certainly do), they are essentially escapist in nature. I have students that stroll from class to class with earphones on, and no doubt they spend a good deal of the time I don’t see—in their dorms, in the park, lounging in bed, driving, even eating—doing the same. My fear is that they, and that we and that I, will miss most of the real soundtrack: the birdsongs I can’t identify; the dialogue I can’t overhear; the troubled, unfocused thoughts I’d like to numb; the lives people beyond my windshield are living out day after day. You know, if I drive by a construction worker holding a “Slow” sign and I’m “soundtracking,” I think I’m more likely to appropriate what I observe and use it to my own self-absorbed ends. I might not really care about this guy no matter what, but there’s a chance I will if I can give him my attention for the few seconds I see him without the gloss of the song I’m imbibing.

What does this all have to do with Elizabethtown, directed by Cameron Crowe? Only this: Elizabethtown is an homage to the soundtracked life. A confirmed pop-rock junkie, Crowe (who you’ll remember from Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, a loosely autobiographical account of Crowe’s days as a young journalist for Rolling Stone) fills two hours of movie, and about 45 minutes of script, with music. I’d bet—I haven’t looked this up—that nearly fifty songs appear in some form in the film. I had fun ticking them off: “Big Love,” Fleetwood Mac; Wheat’s “Don’t I Hold You”; “Learning to Fly,” Tom Petty, and on and on. You’ve got Elton, you’ve got My Morning Jacket, you’ve got Kathleen Edwards and Ryan Adams. And those are just the ones I could name on the spot.

The problem isn’t just the lack of a substantial script. It’s that all this soundtracking has the effect of making all characters and plot points bow the knee to Orlando Bloom’s protagonist, Drew Baylor. To be fair, Drew’s hung up on himself from the start: He’s about to become a monumental failure at his job—the shoe he’s designed turns out to be the footwear equivalent of an Edsel—and tries to kill himself with a butcher knife-rigged stationary bike before his sister calls to tell him his dad has died. But instead of critiquing Drew’s emotional onanism, the movie only affirms it. For instance, when Drew visits his father’s extended family in Kentucky (Elizabethtown, where the film gets its name), we’d like to see the movie plumb some of the evident tensions: Drew is from Oregon, he’s well-educated, successful—at least to this point—young, good looking, and in a state of shock over the loss of his father; the myriad people he meets are provincial, good-natured, resentful about Drew’s mom “stealing” his dad away to the Pacific Northwest, and pretty much fulfill all the aw-shucks Southern exaggeration you can conjure. Should be plenty of grist for the mill. But Crowe cops out. He gives us a few stylish, quirky interchanges, and a bunch of sequences where we watch people talking and eating and laughing and crying and but don’t hear any of it: We hear Patty Griffin or Lindsay Buckingham, or whoever it was at that moment. Ditto for Drew’s weekend romance with Claire Colburn (ever perky Kirsten Dunst), and his aloof relationship with his sister (Judy Greer) and mother (I won’t begin to discuss Susan Sarandon’s ridiculous memorial service eulogy/dance in honor of her husband, just before a band plays “Freebird” and accidentally lights the hotel ballroom on fire with a paper mache bird that wings out on a cable over the mourners).

At Claire’s urging, Drew takes a road trip, scheduled to the last detail by Claire, who disingenuously suggests Drew work through his grief on his own, then call her. (In fact, she’s in control of him the whole time, pulling his strings, and by the end even waiting for him--*surprise*--to arrive at a county fair where a vendor is actually selling his doomed shoe, the Spasmodica. We’re supposed to believe that Drew experiences a kind of breakthrough on this road trip—the sort of moment Crowe gave us in Almost Famous when everyone on a band’s tour bus sings along to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”—but it doesn’t work here. Drew’s father, now ashes in a safely-seatbelted urn, rides shotgun, and at one point we see Drew talking to the cremated paterfamilias. He’s hitting his hands on the steering wheel, laughing, weeping, motioning (watch where you’re going!), etc. Do we hear any of this? No. We hear yet another song, no doubt appropriate to how we should be feeling at this moment.

And so we’re left in the cold. We’re the construction worker with the “Slow” sign, but instead of waving Drew by, we’re forced to watch him for 123 minutes. He’s in his own soundtrack, we’re excluded.

Reviewed by Martin B. Cockroft
"Martoon" rides a red wagon down a killer Pennsylvania hill, composes songs for his daughters, and cooks to-die-for Thai food.

Gardening After Dark

While Martin furiously graded, I danced with the girls and then put them to bed, Elspeth with her stuffed floppy dog and Merry with her dreams of Laura Ingalls. And then I ran downstairs and out the door.

Gardening after dark has its rewards. I don't worry about sunburn, for instance. And when I hit rock while digging up turf, I couldn't see well enough to discern whether the rock was movable or not, so I didn't bother trying too hard. In the dark I can imagine that the ugly pool is gone instead of slouching like an unwelcome, demanding visitor who smells terrible in the corner of our yard. (The lady who wanted it so badly removed part of it but never came back! O please, come back!)

And after my digging tonight, I sat on our porch and took in the quiet of the evening: stars brilliant, my neighbor (who gave me Tiger Lily tubers today) silhouetted behind his computer screen, the lights glowing from houses. I revelled in the feeling of being completely hidden.

I find that gardening demands more than you expected but then in turn gives more than you hoped. After sweating all day digging rocks, ankle deep in grass clippings, you receive a gift: the mellowing of eveningfall, colors beginning to glow; everything softens; the green of leaves and grass blades is so deep you feel as though you could stroke it like a cat. Leaning on your shovel, talking to a neighbor or better still, enjoying the quiet, the world fills you with a knowledge that does not make you feel like jumping up and down but nodding and saying, That's Right. After all, I knew it all the time.

This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.

CONTRIBUTOR BOOK REVIEW: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: AN AMERICAN LIFE BY WALTER ISAACSON

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
by Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (May 4, 2004)

I am always pretty careful when embarking upon some serious non-fiction— 6oo some-odd pages worth in this case— as I have an inquisitive mind, but not one that can resist the yawner biographies that are mass-produced these days. Luckily, in Isaacson’s treatment of a much-written-about and much-mythologized subject he manages to create a compelling narrative and interesting voice that carries the reader (not literally, as I am unseasonably heavy right now) through the life and times of Benjamin Franklin.

Ben Franklin— or B. Franks as I have come to call him— was an exceedingly interesting guy. He invented things— bifocals, lightning rods, political cartoons; he developed organizations— libraries, fire departments, postal service; he signed stuff— peace accord with England , treaty with France , Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution; he…

Well, let me put it this way, HE IS THE BENJAMINS. When a rapper says “it’s all about the Benjamins, they’re talking about B. Franks. So turn down your Kanye West and listen up.

Although, that Kanye West is really on to something, don’t you think? Or what about that Fall Out Boy— not their new album, or even “Under the…” but that “Take This To Your Grave” is a real toe-tapper, wouldn’t you say? But I digress.

What struck me as most interesting about the book was the character of B. Franks— he was free-spirited and simultaneously diligent to his beliefs. For instance, while we might think of Ben Franklin as a pudgy old dude who was busy signing the Declaration of Independence and flying lighting kites, he was a fairly rebellious young kid. By 17 he had run away from Boston to Philadelphia and not long after that he hopped ship to live in London (which was a 6-week voyage at the time). Franklin was a globetrotter before the Grateful Dead even had a tour bus. It is astounding to me to think that in the early- to mid-1700’s B. Franks was living in Philadelphia, Boston, London, France— with trips to Montreal and all up and down the colonies. He was the most well-traveled and knowledgeable person about all 13 colonies up until the Declaration of Independence was signed— and maybe after.

I can’t help but think of all the times I sat around with my flunky buddies and we talked about a road trip and instead wound up at 7-11 buying Cheetos. B. Franks was criss-crossing the globe and meeting famous people all over the world.

By 17, it is suspected, that he was the best writer in “the colonies.” And he was self-taught for the most part. His style is considered a father to Mark Twain and American writing. Further, he is now considered the most important scientist since Newton — before Einstein and physics, etc.— for his experiments with electricity.

Also of interest was his dedication to true democracy (he was considered radical to many when they drafted the Constitution), as well as his commitment to the greater good in compromise. In an era when we too often can confuse compromise in politics with self-seeking, Franklin ’s personal style of pushing for the greater good— with compromise and diplomacy— reveals the necessity and strength of these tools when combined with a passion for common people’s rights and a disgust for aristocracy.

Probably my favorite scenes in the book come when Franklin hits Europe for the second time. By then he was considered a demigod for his discoveries with electricity and lightning. Consider this: before Franklin , when a town had difficulties with lightning, there was often a sense that God had somehow become upset with them. The solution? Build a taller church, with a big metal bell, which would inevitably get crushed by lightning. Franklin develops the lightning rod and people revere him. He not only saved their churches and homes— but the sense is almost that he got God to be happy with them again. When Franklin was a delegate to France in the 1770’s there were hundreds of coins, miniatures, and representations of him dressed as a frontiersman.

He was like the P. Diddy of his time— times 100. He attended a party in France — one where everyone was wearing powdered wigs. Well, B. Franks wasn’t down with that high-class stuff, so he wore his fur hat. The next year, women’s wigs fashioned in the manner of the fur hat he wore were a fashion craze in Paris . The next year he attended a function simply carrying a white hat in his hand. Of course, white hats were the next fashion trend in Paris . Who else besides B. Franks was a scientist, writer, civil servant, AND a fashion icon. Look out fashion week.

The one negative about the book? It is not juicy enough at times. Isaacson takes great care to provide a fair representation of the man. While much has been said of Franklin as an adulterer and a party animal, the book tempers these stories with a true sketch of the man rather than a sensational E! True Hollywood Story version.

All in all, a fascinating book. Not the best biography I have read (which goes to de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan), but a great one regardless.

As French financier A.J. Turgot said about Franklin :

“He stole lightning from the sky / and the scepter from tyrants.”

--REVIEWED BY KURT COLE EIDSVIG
Eidsvig is a wicked-good painter and poet who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Check out his art at the Wazoo Art Show (posted last month) and at his website.

BY M: Music Review (Sort of): Who's Your Daddy?

Music Review by M

Ok. First a couple of qualifiers:

I am a music geek, I guess, but I am not a music guru. I am not like John Cusack in High Fidelity, though I wish I were. I am not one of the purists who felt betrayed when British director Stephen Frears set the movie in Chicago, rather than London (where Nick Hornsby's novel takes place). With Jack Black I will raise my goblet of rock, but I will not claim to be able to name ten underrated hair metal bands, or ten Beatles B-sides, or ten best prog rock albums. I'm doing good to know what prog rock is. I have a flimsy album collection, mostly because we have no money for such excesses--not because I don't think it's important to own Dylan's Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks.

Kim calls me a music snob, too, and I guess if by that she means I get physically ill when someone begins singing Culture Club's Karma Chameleon, or that I respond with "rage and contempt" (to steal a phrase from poet John Berryman) when someone calls "Sound of Silence" a great song (it's sophomoric) or Dave Matthews Band the best in the world (they're pretentious) or Disturbed really, well, disturbing (shallow emotionalism), then, yeah, I'm guilty as charged.

I'm also an English teacher, which means I'm allowed to write long sentences like that.

I'm a poet, too, so I'll invoke Whitman: I will freely contradict myself. (I like a little cheese now and again. I actually enjoyed Lindsay Lohan's "Confessions of a Broken Heart" the first time I heard it, and I'll go to the mat for Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.)

By way of introduction, here are my ten favorite songs of the moment, in no particular order:

--Time of the Season, Zombies (and not because some chump on American Idol covered it a few weeks ago. I don't watch TV and didn't know anything about it until I searched for the song on YouTube. Now I feel like something's been stolen. And I did watch a bootleg of that version, and while passable, the Idol house band didn't even attempt Rod Argent's insane organ solo)

--Wear Your Love Like Heaven, Donovan

--Your Touch, Black Keys

--Bennie and the Jets, Elton John

--Peace Train, Cat Stevens (as a dad, I happen to know that it's of the more listenable songs on the Little People's album Things That Go--a better cover, for instance, than their rendition of the 5th Dimension's Up, Up and Away, which isn't a good song no matter who sings it)

--Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, Flaming Lips

--Crazy, Gnarls Barkley (though I'll probably get sick of it soon; I don't think it has staying power)

--Wonderous Stories, Yes

--Requiem, Eliza Gilkyson, or maybe Susan Warner's Did Trouble Me

--Spirit in the Sky, Norman Greenbaum (Merry's actually been requesting this as a bedtime song; you have to love lines like "You gotta have a friend in Jesus/So you know that when you die/He's gonna recommend you to spirit in the sky")

I guess that's ten. That's all the review I'll do this week.

Now you out there. You know who you are. Post your top ten of the moment.

NEW MUSIC COLUMN STARTS NOW

Now, GIVE IT UP
for the new music column, weekly this summer (and hopefully longer),
by music geek and jive turkey
M.

Great Winds, Great Rain at Wazoo

With friends we ate chocolate cake; on our deck, by the beat-up pool, we sipped frothy vanilla lattes as the children ran over the green hill down to the creek and the tire swing; we laughed and the children threw themselves down the hill in wild rolling tumbles.

It was lovely.

Earlier that day we lay under the maple, leaves still tightly wound, watching clouds and the girls' faces as they flew back and forth above us like birds. . .

This also was lovely.

We washed the dishes, put away chairs and children in their proper places. And a great wind blew up, and in one ripping thunderous clap, our house blew away. The children did not stir. Martin and I held onto door frames, clutched at useless objects: a lamp, a book, a fork. The children slept soundly. The piano rolled across the living room, playing keys at random in a pattern that sounded faintly like "When the Saints" or some medley my grandmother used to sing.

The children are still sleeping. Martin has looked out the window and reported that he sees a mass of thickly growing palm fronds. The air is warmer and feels tropical. Despite the heat I have put the pot to boil. In cases such as these the only immediate solution is a cup of strong tea.

Gravel. Mercy.

Ah, gardening. There was a time when I believed gardening meant scarved, hatted women with baskets over their arms. Now I believe gardening means sweat, blisters, dirty fingernails. Clouds of dust. And gravel. Or is that particular just to Wazoo?

I'm often bewildered at the attempts at improvement attempted by the former owners of Wazoo Farm. It surely didn't take them long to slap up faux-wood siding all over their living room, and it didn't take me long to detach it again (one piece literally fell off when I touched it with a crowbar). BUT it took a very long time to scrape off the glue, sand the walls, resurface the plaster, and paint. (Through the open window I tossed siding and plaster dust, and it was during my foray with sanding that a woman dropped by to invite me to her Baptist church. Removing my mask, coated with a thick layer of white dust, I extended my hand as she looked at me somewhat apprehensively and then beat a fairly quick retreat. Have I mentioned how often we are proselytized at Wazoo? So far we've been invited by the Baptists, Itinerant Politicians, Mormons, Pizza Evangelists, and Jehovah's Witnesses.)

Today, thinking in despair about the blackberries and "The Fairy" roses that have been sweltering ever since I received them a week ago in the mail, I doggedly dragged my feet back to the scene of procrastination to wrestle with the gravel.

I picture the former owners, laying the dastardly landscape fabric, blithely drowning a perfectly good bed with gallons of sharp, grey gravel. And then you may picture me, gloved, first with shovel and then on my hands and knees, filling wheelbarrow and plastic pots full of gravel which I then redeposit under the stairs. This monotony, this dust, this picture when I close my eyes: silver gravel on black landscape fabric. Ah. If only they'd thought about it before they dumped. (The other day, I considered that instead of toting the gravel down the stairs, I could just wheelbarrow it down. For a few stairs I was in control, but then, as any dolt could have predicted, the wheelbarrow took on a power of its own and careened down the hill. At least it careened without me attached.)

So now, to my list of BAD THINGS HOMEOWNERS SHOULD NEVER, EVER DO:

Fake siding
Linoleum
Wallpaper
Wallpaper borders
Textured Paint
Swimming Pools, any kind
Popcorn Ceilings

I have added: Gravel. Please, do not give into the temptation to cover huge expanses with low-maintenance gravel. Think of those who come after you, and have mercy.


NEVER NEVER NEVER HAVE MERCY!

Wazoo Farm, Early Spring

Street View of Wazoo Farmhouse; see the red tulips? Also a forsythia hedge will hopefully take root from the cuttings I stuck into the ground. . .Someday: picket fence.
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Wazoo Farmhouse's breezy porch. In the summer, happyhour or supper is out back on the deck (more snaps of that later, after our ugly pool is removed and our potager planted in its place!) looking down the hill; but this is a nice spot for tea.

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Down the front steps, please note the brave jonny jumpups


and the rhodondendron, which I planted last fall. It will someday grow huge.

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So now, trip down the path and you'll find my rose garden, mostly still dormant. Creeping thyme, rosemary, and lots of roses; in the beds in back you see, among other things, the peonies and lilacs almost ready to bloom.
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Down the driveway and gaze at the side yard: a path in construction, lined with a bed filled with soil from the hill and planted with red and yellow floribunda roses as well as lavendar; a strawberry bed (finally planted); and other beds under construction. See also the teeny-tiny little trees: quaking aspens, scarlet maples, and red oaks.
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More of the sideyard as well as the grand maple, strung up with Elspea's swing. The genius of this swing: you can sit on the maple tree bench and push with one hand. Perfect after mowing 1 foot grass with a manual mower with Elspeth strapped on my back!
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Side view of Wazoo Farmhouse.
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Looking down the hill: see the firepit (Martin built last fall), the forsythia with beds in progress, the tire swing hanging from the Locust. What you can't see: the puny but fast-growing hybrid elm; to the right is a huge slope used in winter for sledding and now planted with more trees.

Some day we'll have wild grasses and native plants there, as well as a children's garden and hideaway. Good, rich, moist soil; lots of deer venturing from the hill by the creek.

In the foreground you can see my first attempts at step-terracing. Whew!
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Hoorah for spring!

Robin in the Rain

"Robin in the rain; what a saucy fellow!" This is one of Raffi's lovelier songs for children; you can't help singing along when he pipes up with the Robin On a Rainy Day--even when you have heard that same song a gazillion times over. Such repetition marks the passage of daily life with children, and indeed it is one of the joys of having children.

Today found me out in the rain (not as lovely as a robin with soft slick feathers) driven by some force (guilt? procrastinating planting 48 strawberries?) to continue my gardening efforts. This time I was after a tree.

Between our house and the neighbor's runs a skinny sort of alley, filled with miscellaneous trash, overgrown vines, gorgeous fern fronds, and three renegade maples that do not belong and will probably choke all our pipes and lines and end by unearthing our entire foundation. Needless to say these maples must go.

But after paying numerous sums for shipments of puny, stick-like trees, I am loathe to just cut down three healthy trees with robust buds. As today was wet and soggy, I thought I might just have success in digging up a maple.

If you had looked down the shady alleyway from under the dry canopy of your umbrella this morning, you would have found a woman, hair unruly, pants mud-spattered, huge pink sweater wet, wrestling with an impossibly big maple. This woman would have been grunting, bloody-knuckled from a bit of a fall, leaning and rocking on the handle of her shovel, verbally abusing the maple, then hugging it around its trunk and tugging in a clearly futile attempt to take it with her to a new home. Then you would have seen this same woman whacking wildly at the roots with her shovel and finally slipping down the alleyway empty-handed.

Or not entirely empty-handed. I did steal five ferns, fuzzy fiddleheads curled; some small indeterminate trees or bushes; and a few pounds of mud on my shoes.

I am determined to unearth that maple. Tomorrow, gloved this time since I cannot afford more skinned knuckles, I will return for another brawl. Coming? There's strength in numbers.

PS. I want to take more pictures of Wazoo Farm but our battery has run out and I can't be bothered at the moment to buy a new one. But as soon as I locate a store somewhere, I'll begin posting pictures of maples, compost, straw--oh, my--I'll bet you can hardly wait!

The Child is Father of the Man

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So it is now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is the father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
--William Wordsworth

I cannot read this poem without picturing the following: Rossyln Academy's sixth grade class, marching up and down a classroom between desks in military style, shouting: My heart leaps UP when I beHOLD a rainbow in the SKY! So WAS it WHEN my life begGAN! So it is NOW I am a MAN! Though I am at a bit of a loss to remember why we were marching thus, I have a suspicion it had something to do with meter.

Merry's heart leaps up when she beholds a earthworm in the garden, wiggling bravely through a clump of clay. My heart leaps up to think of all the forsythia branches I cut and stuck in the ground growing little roots all on their own in tonight's rain. The garden is full of small miracles.

Five more roses today. More terracing. My strawberry bed is at last ready to receive the little ruffly seedlings, and I purchased several packets of zinnia seeds at the grocery store. Elspeth got clocked with a tire swing; Merry dressed in full "Laura-Pioneer" regalia and strode barefoot through the freshly mowed grass. I glimpsed, curled up and content under our hedge, a coiled snake gazing contemplatively at our overgrown yard. He was not poisonous but all the same I am glad the grass was mowed today. A sweet fellow we know walked his mower all the way through a couple neighborhoods, up our hill, and mowed our upper lawn. Martin can't get the riding mower up the hill without chains on the tires. We had supper under the huge maple, drank a beer and ate peanut-butter and jam sandwiches while Elspeth wandered around giving us hugs and adventuring on her own.

Tonight I sat at the window breastfeeding Elspeth before bed and watching the activity through our window. The sunlight dappled the lawn as Martin pounded stakes around our new trees. Merry slung the frisbee toward the forsythia bushes. All was lovely. These deeply happy times--they are like rainbows. Your heart leaps up to meet the brilliance before you; you find it and partake; and always the joy trembles with the temporal, with the deep sadness of passing. There is no explaining these themes that weave through my life, the astoundingly happy, the shadows of grief. The realization that much we love with all of ourselves is as brief as dew, as the color that fills the sky and begs adoration.

At the same time I feel roots, dark and unknown, roots that always grow, that bind me to something deeply real and everlasting. I cannot see my roots, but they drink from hidden sources of water and give me life even when I forget they are there below me, providing always my very sense of being. This is grace, and God's love, and all the endlessness that exists.

And for now I crave another temporal but giddy pleasure: a bowl of chocolate cereal, a cup of chamomile tea, and another episode of James Harriot. I feel the exhaustion creeping up through my limbs and that is good, too.

Peace to you wherever you are tonight.

Columbine, Photo by Tonya Martin

Terracing on Wazoo

Merry in Texas (two years old) in a previous garden (1 year old)

Our one year stay in the wilds of Texas (gardening-wise) was full of battles with unbelievable spiders, fireants, and those remarkably industrious, plague-like leaf-cutter ants. A group of leaf-cutters stripped my father-in-law's rose bush in one evening. You could watch them laboring in a straight line over the sidewalk, burdened with towering loads of redbud leaves. If they chose a favorite of yours, say your Mexican Heather, all was lost. Boiling water, soap, you name it--the tunnels of the leaf-cutters were deep and secret, and even if you thought you had them beat they reappeared like a ghostly army.

Martin and I gave gardening a good effort in Texas. You could get a tin can to grow in the rich soil, but then some critter would eat it up, no fooling, every time. Martin's vegetable garden was well-researched and planned but utterly pathetic in the end. Our compost pile looked busy enough; it swarmed with life and I squinted my eyes in defense every time I dumped in a new round of scraps. Indeed it was so frightening in there that we never used the well-rotted mess except to spread it hap-hazardly on a bed of cilantro.

After we cleared the mountains of leaves from our patio, I dug beds and lined them with bricks. The nurseries were tempting with every sort of tropical plant I grew up with in Bangladesh, and I bought bunches of plants regardless of the fact that they were suited for full sun and our patio was shadowed in cool shade from the giant spreading pecan trees.

I even planted sunflowers, which were duly destroyed by a tropical-force storm.

And before I left, just a year later, I dug up all my best plants (one scorching summer day--not recommended replanting time!) and bedded them in at my in-laws, where the jasmine, heather, esperanza, and lantana took off gloriously, at last at home in full sunshine. It turns out that even impatiens is a perennial in Texas (who would have thought it?), in the sunny humidity.

Fast-forward some years and you'll find us in the cooler, drier hills of Pennsylvania, at Wazoo Farm. All in all, I think I've found the perfect planting zone. Why? It's cold enough in the winter to rule out mighty armies of bugs, snakes, and creatures, yet we're still warm enough to make rhododendron, azaleas, and dogwoods feel right at home.

And for the first time in my life, I might just stay put long enough to see my garden mature with the passage of time. This is a happy development, especially as it makes our toil feel worthwhile.

Today found me beginning terracing on one part of our plummeting hill. If you've ever seen the stunning terraces in Ecuador, say, the effort seems worthwhile. At least in theory. If terracing sounds like fun to you, you are deluded. I can't remember the last time I've been so sore at the end of a day, though it may have been the time I last gave birth to a baby.

I've been putting off the hills since we moved into our house last summer. One hill is covered with nettles and some promising landscape rose stubs I threw in last fall. The other hill is covered in long grass and various weeds, and is waiting anxiously to receive the box of berries the UPS fellow dropped off this morning. Oh, no, I thought. They're here, nestled in that Stark Brothers box: 48 strawberries, raspberries, blackberries. And I'm not ready. Again, the bad hostess.

--What's in that box, Mommy?
--MORE WORK.

But look, I'm not complaining really. I just wish an army of fit people armed with shovels and hoes would knock on the door: We've come to take care of the hill, ma'am.

Yes, please. Instead I get visited by the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they only leave tracts. I saw the Mormon missionaries walking by again today, and hoping they were not trampling our insignificant Canadian Hemlocks, I pictured myself handing them shovels, perhaps, or inviting them on the precarious wheelbarrow walk up to the garden. They looked a great deal cleaner than I have in a while, and I didn't think they'd be up for the trek with a stinky, filthy indeterminate Christian.

Tomorrow, more terracing. I invite you to show up with your shovels.

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!"

Phew-WEE!

Merry riding in wagon with cast of "Laura-Pioneer"
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"Pie! How did you get pie?" said Pa.

Laura was so amazed.

"What kind of pie is it?" asked Pa, tasting a piece. "Apple pie! Where did you get apples?"

"It's a blueberry pie," said Ma. "From the blueberries I saved from our garden."

"You are a wondrous," said Pa.

[Later:]

. . ."Now a nice chopped button," Ma said.

Laura brought Ma a button.

"Now some gravy," said Ma.

Laura brought Ma some gravy.

"Now please give me a match, Laura. . . .A button lamp," said Ma, and set the lamp by Mary. It only gave a little light.

When the bread had been made, Ma took the bread and put it on a shelf. "Time to go to sleep, Carrie," Ma said.

Laura stayed awake. She wanted to see what would happen in the morning. Everyone slept soundly. [pause for sleeping] Then the wagon jumped! Ma woke up. Laura woke up.

"What in the world is going on?" said Ma.

"A blizzard," said Laura.

It whirled round and round.

"Phew!" said Ma. "You stay in bed, Laura." Everyone had to stay in bed. Ma dressed warmly by the stove. They stayed in bed, listening to the sounds of the blizzard.

Pa was singing: "Slap, slap, the blizzard of the day! Oh, slap, slap, slap, the blizzard of the day!" he sang. The beds weren't made.

"Oh," Ma said, "What is it?"

"A blizzard," said Laura, "Don't you remember?"

"Oh, yes, but I was wondering what Pa was doing."

"It's his slap-slap song," said Laura.

. . ."Now that's enough," said Ma. "Washing day!" she reminded Laura. [seasons have changed?]

. . .Ma washed Laura in the creek. She scrubbed Laura top to bottom. "Feel free to splash about!" Ma said.

Ma put a new dress on Laura. Time to time, Laura said, "When is Pa coming back?"

"Soon," said Ma.

"But when is Pa coming back?"

"Soon!" said Ma. Laura kept saying that. Ma dressed her up and slowly combed her head and braided it. [Merry brushes doll's hair]

"Can you put my hair in a bun?"

"Of course I can," said Ma.

etc. etc. etc.

Oh, I can't keep up! This is a taste, verbatim (though I missed much of the dialogue and narration) of the rapid-fire dialogue Merry is spewing out lately, whenever she has a few moments. I hear her rattling behind me as I work at the computer, and I hadn't been paying close attention to the actual storyline until now. I have noticed that Merry has littered her bed so full of "stations" (kitchen, bathtub, etc.), that there is barely any room left for her to sleep.

And I have noted that more than once Ma has "thrown herself on the bed," and sighed "Phew-WEE!"

We've been reading "The Long Winter" and Merry is completely immersed in "Laura-Pioneer" world.

Merry enjoys being Laura--except when I ask Merry to perform some distasteful task, and then Merry is suddenly most emphatically her literal self again.

In other roles, Merry is once again filling the soil-spattered boots of "WORM QUEEN." We spent most of yesterday digging up impossibly heavy squares of sod and flipping them over to make beds for our strawberries and flowers. Merry hovered over my spade, plucking out long earthworms and rubbing them on her face and neck. "I kissed it!" she yelled at one point; at another she crammed a few in her magnifying box, and at another she queried, "Have you ever put a worm down your shirt?" I ceased telling her when I spotted a worm, and muttered to one as it anxiously squirmed back into the soil, "Don't worry, you're safe with me."

Elspeth spent much of the day banging about in the outdoor kitchen, gurgling tepid water from dirty receptacles, and sitting in her blue sled, looking contemplatively at the sky, until Merry pulled her over the grass.

But now it's time for me to go. I've got beds to make inside, beds to dig outside, (sounds like Pa needs to find a new job, too, since there's "no more food in this town") and the world is sunny and warm. Phew-WEE!

Trees

--photo by K J Robinson

TREES

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

--Joyce Kilmer
spotted in A Child's Anthology of Poetry, Ed. E H Sword, Ecco Press 1995.
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I wish I had written the above poem, though I expect I would not have allowed myself the lovely archaic language.

Here is my own bumbling attempt at spring time poetry:

SPRING

Just before green,
in rain that feels
like the breath of rivers:
Bud like infant fist opens,
Rain pearls on black feathers.
I hear singing, soil whispering.

--Kimberly Cockroft
Once again, a chronic problem with my poems: line endings? last line? (Of course Martin has not yet got his poet's paws on it.) But for heaven's sakes, it's a spring poem and does not have to be completely brittle and finished but can afford to be supple, bending, pale green. Here's to spring time poetry!