Raspberry Picking (and Neighbors)

The raspberries are almost dripping on the bushes. I stopped during a little walk the other day and ate a handful while Gurler watched. She was not interested in eating any, though usually she’ll eat anything I am eating. She’ll have a little piece or two of orange and she loves watermelon and goes nuts for apples. I guess raspberries just are not her thing. Anyway, while they were good two days ago they still had a bit to go before they would be really sweet but in the meantime, waiting, there was a risk that the birds and other wildlife would get them before I could get my share. I decided to wait anyway. It was worth it. Today they were juicy and sweet, almost too ripe to pick without squishing in my hand. Just right.

After I walked Gurler about 6:00am I picked up a colander and went back out without her to do some picking. She wanted to go but it is too hard to keep an eye on her while in the berry patch and she is up on the road. Best to leave her home for a while until I pick my fill.

Next to my house there is a vacant lot that sits between us and the Sadlon's. We have been neighbors for over 30 years and we’re friendly and all, but not real close. I like to bring them tomatoes from the garden as they ripen and they ask me to collect their mail when they are traveling. They are a bit older than us. He used to work for Consolidated Edison but has been retired for a few years. They go to Florida in the winter. They never had a garden. They don’t pick berries. Steve calls me Farmer Rand and gushes over the tomatoes. Nice people. Little story…

When we were building our house and the excavating contractor (piece of shit, may he rot in hell!) was digging the septic system and the site for the foundation there was a huge tree which had not been removed and he didn’t have responsibility for tree work. He told me to get it outta there so he could keep working. Being the crazy fool I am I decided to remove the tree myself rather than hire someone to do it for me. I’d taken a lot of trees down in my life and this one seemed like it would be pretty straight forward. I got the carpenters who were working on the house with me to give me a hand. We tied off some lines to the tree as high as we could reach and I took the chain saw to the tree. It was pretty big, maybe 50 or 60 feet tall but we had plenty of room towards the back of the property to let her rip. All well and good except that the tree decided it wasn’t going to go to the back side of the property. A gust of wind sent it in the opposite direction and the lines and my men could not hold her. Down it came…right over the power lines, phone lines, and the TV cable snapping them all as it fell. The power lines exploded in a shower of sparks and flame as we stood there gaping at the disaster.

Within minutes the police were on the scene as was the fire truck from the Continental Village fire department. All the neighbors began to show up too, you see this was Super Bowl Sunday and I’d shut the game down in a big, big way. Needless to say no one was happy with me. I was the guy who worked on his house every weekend, every holiday late into the afternoon with the generator running and power tools humming. Not the most popular character in town to begin with and now I’d ruined every Super Bowl party for a half mile in every direction. I felt about two feet tall. There was nothing I could do to fix the situation and no place for me to hide. My carpenters left quickly and I don’t blame them a bit. I was alone to face the wrath of the neighborhood and answer the questions for the fire chief and the state police. While answering those questions along comes my neighbor to the north (another piece of crap named Sprat!) all up in arms about his “meat”! He jumps all over the state cop complaining about what’s he gonna do about the freezer full of meat that he just bought yesterday and who’s gonna replace it? I mean he was more dramatic than the Hunchback of Notre Dame and he was kicking me while I was down. The cop, to his credit, put him right in his place, told him to calm down and leave the freezer closed. The problem, he assured the obnoxious neighbor, would be fixed quickly and there would not be any loss. And, he added, “Your neighbor (meaning me) has a lot more problems than that to worry about without you piling on!” That shut him up and for the first time in my life I found myself liking a cop.

Steve Sadlon watched the whole circus from the sidelines calmly assessing the situation and then he said hello to me. It was the first time we’d spoken since I’d bought the property and started building. He introduced himself and told me he worked for ConEd and, unfortunately this was going to be an expensive mistake. It was obvious that he took no pleasure in serving up the bad news. When I asked him how much it was going to cost to fix he couldn’t say but he knew it would be a lot of dough. The next set of vehicles to show up to the disaster were the ConEd trucks including a hardy crew of guys in hardhats all on overtime. I was royally screwed, of that I was sure.

I paced in the road, back and forth, watching the crew mobilize. They safe’d off the area and in short order they reconnected the power lines. The phone company and the cable company came too and within an hour and a half the community was back up and running. Steve Sadlon stood off to the side and talked to the foreman of the power company crew and they seemed to find the whole mess amusing. The blue light of the state police finally stopped spinning and the crowd disbursed. Steve Sadlon was the last to leave the scene. He must have been reading my mind because he tried to reassure me and make me feel better. I will always thank him for that. A little bit of kindness at a time like that is the best medicine. I still feel a pang of guilt and stupidity every time I think of that day even though it was thirty years ago. I still have a special place in my heart for Steve, my neighbor, because of his kind words and the fact that, while I have no proof that he interceded, I never got a bill for anything that happened that day. I was thinking of him this morning looking up towards his house as I picked the berries growing on the vacant lot between his house and mine.

As soon as I can get the berries up to Lizzy she promised to make some muffins. I can’t wait to taste them. I wish Steve and Carol Sadlon were home so I could bring some over to them. The only thing better than eating my wife’s home baked muffins and my homegrown tomatoes is bringing some over to Steve’s house.

A Small Garden

A Small Garden

Very late start in the garden this year. It has been cold and damp and dreary most of the month...at least since we got back from Florida. It rained the first eleven days. It has been down in the 50’s the rest of the time. I am sitting here in my jeans and my old, green, Plaza Construction fleece zipped up tight for warmth as I type this. That has been my uniform pretty much the whole month of May. But yesterday something turned over in our heads. The day dawned bright and it cleared and the sun warmed everything and brought us to a resolution to put the garden in.

That is not to say that nothing had been done to date out there in the garden plot, because a lot had. I had already raked up most of the leaves left over from the Fall. I brought the weed-burner in and blasted the Winter grass and a lot of the weeds. I had even turned some of the soil and planted 8 tomato plants. Elisabeth and I had decided we’d not plant a large garden this year. I thought the 8 tomatoes and some basil would be plenty. Her idea of “small” was different though, and it included using up all the seeds that were left in the cabinet in the dining room. A complete “clean out” of the bottom of that cabinet produced packets of old, outdated seeds that my lovely, frugal wife just had to use up. Whether they will sprout or not is not the point. They shall not go to waste without an attempt to bring them to life. This little exercise in utility necessitated turning three more areas and seeding them and covering with plastic so they would sprout. That was yesterday. Oh!! And then she decided to plant flowers in a couple of other small sections-more cleaning out. And then she decided to, perhaps, put in just a few squash plants. Just a few. She asked “would you prepare that little area over there for me tomorrow?” and what could I say?

So, the small garden has now almost taken on the proportions of a regular garden but who cares. I knew this would happen the minute she was so adamant about keeping it small. That was just an idle discussion we’d had as we munched the miles in the CRV pulling the Scamp behind us through the long state of Virginia (or was it Georgia?) on our way home. I knew once we were in that old, rickety fencing and the green gate of the garden slapped closed behind us that the plan would change. By the end of the Summer the garden would be burgeoning. The last minute squash plants would be fighting for every inch of ground and we would be battling to keep them from climbing on the eight tomato plants and over the lettuce of our “small” garden. Truth be told, I am very happy with this “small” garden.

Pulling up the Vines

Pulling up the Vines

The nasty corkscrew roots

clinging, not just tangled in,

the rocks

and yellowish soil,

makes me wonder if

the plant knows?

The way it sends

its orange roots out

just under the surface

of my garden

scouting

getting the lay of the land.

The way it winds

around my plants

like a constrictor

in perfect coils,

I suspect a plan.

And when I try

to pull it from its

devious exploration

under my garden

it travels and unravels

like a zipper

and snaps

before I can get it all-

there is always a tiny bit

left behind.

That is all it takes,

a tiny bit,

and next year

it will again

be grown

as prosperous

and cloying

and strong.

"busted clay pot garden-by Matt Gartman

photo by Matt Gartman-used without permission.