You’ve got to dig from week to week . . . .

Mea culpa: I haven’t written a word in two months. What’s that about? Two things, mostly: The end of our COVID-19 lockdown, and the beginning of gardening season.

Now that we’ve reconnected f2f with family and friends, I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning and cooking, tasks I’d mostly ignored when there was no one at the Perry Farm to impress but Keith (who would eat green beans and new potatoes three times a day, every day) and two cats (who can’t tell a dust bunny from a hairball and would gladly eat both, if I let them). But now we’re entertaining again, and that means I have to relocate the spiders and their nests (who knew so many of them lived between my kitchen cabinets and the baseboard?), scrub up the tiny blobs of honey that drip from the extractor with every spin, and put up the nice hand towels (which have been neatly folded under our everyday flour sacks for at least a last year). It means Keith has to move the birdfeeder away from the dining room window, in case the Cooper’s Hawk wants a snack (nothing spoils a guest’s appetite more than seeing a raptor rip a cute little goldfinch to shreds while she’s holding her fork midair). And it means I have to remember how I made that pie the last time my guests raved about it. (Crisco or butter? Fresh blueberries or were frozen good enough?)

Gardening season operates on the calendar system, so there shouldn’t be any surprises there, right? We know we’ll have too much asparagus in May, too many strawberries and blueberries in June, and too many squash, green beans, and tomatoes in July and August. But then the seventeen-year cicadas show up in droning masses, determined to nip off the tender tips of all the fruit trees unless we shake them off several times a day. Or the neighbors relocate “their” raccoons to the Perry Farm, and we have to build a fortress around the berries. Or patches of Purple Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susans become infected with aster yellows, a viral disease that sucks their sap, and we have to remove each plant by hand. Or I decide my garden fence needs a coat of paint, which means Keith’s first task is to dig up the chicken wire we buried around it to keep the burrowers out. 

Before we know it, it’s July 7^th and I haven’t written a word for weeks. But the house, garden, orchard, and wildflower fields look great

So what’s a farmer/naturalist/wife/friend/grandmother/writer supposed to do? I am reminded of the “25-5 rule,” a strategy meant to help us zero in on what’s really important. The idea is that you write down 25 goals you’d like to achieve in your lifetime, and then focus only on the 5 that are most important to you. Warren Buffet recently denied coining the term, noting that he’d never made a list in his life.

Well, Warren, I do make lists. And this week I’m actually abiding by one.

Results and Roses (Edgar Guest)
The man who wants a garden fair, 
Or small or very big, 
With flowers growing here and there, 
Must bend his back and dig. 
The things are mighty few on earth 
That wishes can attain. 
Whate'er we want of any worth 
We've got to work to gain. 
It matters not what goal you seek 
Its secret here reposes: 
You've got to dig from week to week 
To get Results or Roses.