Garden of Eva

Nothing pale about this September!

2010-09-02T03:45:00.005-04:00

My mom and I share a pretty cool trait in that we're both synesthetes--which probably ties in a lot with her mastery of quilting and sewing, my natural draw toward music and dance, and our shared love of beautiful and delicious food and gardening. And now fall is almost here, and the singing-dancing-dirt-worshipper inside me is clawing to get out!

When the nights start to get a breath of chill like this (mid-50s in Asheville), and the late-summer sunwarmed-soil aromas waft around on the breezes, I get the Fiona Apple song Pale September stuck in my head a lot (never minding that I drowned a couple months of high school heartbreak in that album!) The lyrics are, in part:

Pale September, I wore the time like a dress that year
The autumn days swung soft around me, like cotton on my skin
But as the embers of the summer lost their breath and disappeared
My heart went cold and only hollow rhythms resounded from within
But then he rose, brilliant as the moon in full
And sank in the burrows of my keep

And all my armour falling down, in a pile at my feet
And my winter giving way to warm, as I'm singing him to sleep

Autumn's time is like a dress every year, wrapping me up in the gold-orange-brown and the different textures...the crisp, drying air rich with woodsmoke, warm steamy houses with soup on the stove, hot toddies and snuggling with windows open to the refreshing nights. One of the synesthetic phenomena that happens with everyone is the association of those colors, smells and sensations with the turning of the season, but I like to think my relationship with Fall is special. With every stimulus, a thousand more are ignited inside me--I can truly see the scents, smell the textures and hear the changing sundowns. I step out the door and take a lungful, and she's just there for me; if I could bottle the scents of burning leaves, green walnuts, forest soil and cinnamon, that would be my heaven.

Well, romanticism aside, it is project season on Black Dog Hill. My work schedule will soon allow me to take better advantage of the optimal conditions for building some stuff, and boy, are we hitting the ground running! Right now the chicken house, kiwi trellis, porch resurfacing and garden expansion are happening simultaneously. Mom and I are planning a big ol' yard sale sometime in October, too, so that should be a hoot and a half.

Oh, and I'm learning to play the washboard. Got to sit in on my first jam last week with Wayne Erbsen, Chris Wells and Laura Pinell. Way fun!

love
eva

Back in ACTION!

2010-08-23T04:15:00.011-04:00

Sssshhhhh....can you hear that?

The whish-whish-whish of dust being brushed off my blog!

Over the course of nearly two years, more has happened than I care to detail here, but consider this my pushing the reset button. Some highlights:

New garden!

(After a marathon session of enrichment this spring, our warm-season soil is hosting an orgy of life--and the tomatoes were above my head before they even ripened!)

New pup and kitty! (so beautiful I can't put up only one photo):

Welcome to Frankie Manning and The Oracle!!

New heat source:

(Major, major thanks to (also new) Neighbor Thomas and his bottomless skillset for sourcing and installing this beautiful workhorse of a stove!)

New enemies:

(Mother Nature arms her most soft and beautiful creatures with the most vicious weapons. Oh, the pain! The neverending pain!!!!)

Aaaand (drumroll) new home:

(of course, during the colder months. You'll be seeing a lot of this place.)

In short, this place is 3 acres of neverending beauty, and we look at each other every day and ask how the hell we got so lucky. The conveniently split driveway (upper and lower) is wide and nicely graveled, and we have at our disposal a detached ~600 sf. workshop. The house itself has a full unfinished basement and original (1950s) heart pine floors throughout. The living room has seen much dancing, and will see much more as the floor mellows with continued wear.

Old secondary growth hardwoods ring the sides of a very private knoll, which gets differing sunlight and moisture on three sides, resulting in several distinct-yet-abutting ecosystems. We're still discovering the native plants and fungi, and getting to know the avian dwellers--screech owls, red-tailed hawks, pileated and downy woodpeckers, towhees, finches, jays, nuthatches and other songbirds. It's fun to watch the squirrels navigate the treetops all around the hill, and to see the rather private chipmunks play around the edges of the woods (but they're smart, and avoid Frankie pretty well, I think. Either that, or he doesn't leave evidence.)

And 2010's garden!! Seven tomato varieties, Thai and black eggplants, green and purple bell peppers, peperoncinis, jalapenos, orange habaneros, yellow sweet and strawberry popping corn, yellow wax and green string beans, burgundy okra, English and pickling cucumbers, white and sweet potatoes, horseradish, volunteer butternut squash, spaghetti squash and jack-o-lanterns, acorn squash, loofah gourds, basil, cabbage, green onions, oregano, brussels sprouts and a handful of green muscadine grapes. Mmm. I love my garden.

Fall greens (curly kale, purple-top turnips, radishes, spinach and lettuces) are sown and starting to carpet their rows. Can't wait for those delicious vitaminy fall soups!

So, in short, welcome to the new Garden of Eva!

Koyaanisqatsi

2008-12-04T23:01:00.003-05:00

In Hopi, means "crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living."

Look back--the last 20, 40, 60, 100, 10,000 years--and try to visualize how we've changed. How we've lost the sense of our feet on the ground, our connection to place and culture and ways of life and what keeps us alive, and been lulled into acceptance of this overbearing thing that is being modern. My new friend Turtle today mentioned a reconnection ceremony a group of his friends had a few months ago, in part to get in touch with "the spiritual crisis that we're ALL in."

It's true.

Our lives are out of balance. Disentegrating? Maybe. Even for those of us who try to stay in vibration with the humming fundamentals of being, it's easy to get swept along in the turmoil and topsy-turviness of the mechanics of what being "American in 2008" means. Like commercials that tells us "we deserve the best," which might mean anything from a designer handbag or stylish pair of shoes to dual DVD players in the backs of our SUVs to pampering in a head-to-toe spa . . . is that it? No idea where our food comes from, OK with kids thinking that lunch grows on pizza plants? Really? We believe that? Looks like it.

Homogeneity doesn't do justice to what's going on in this tiny world, this tiny blip of our corner of the solar system, in this monstrous unknowable place of a universe. All of this, all around us, and we opt for spending our time on making sure the lawn is a uniform color.

I'm in a period of emerging understanding that started several years ago when some little voice asked if this was it, and I'll never cease to be amazed at what goes into the answer of NO!! Most of us are in the crisis every day, even if it's unacknowledged--it's the basis of the eternal "what's the meaning of life" question, and why people on this planet argue and kill and steal from each other and make it a tough go. Life, that is. Why it's out of balance--and I'm prepared to stop, recollect, reconnect, and get it in sync.

So I'm taking some time over the next few days to watch the Koyaanisqatsi trilogy of films by Godfrey Reggio, with some of the most masterful cinematography ever, by Ron Fricke, and mull it over--anybody game for the discussion? Or the watching? Popcorn's on me!

Asheville

2008-09-28T13:37:00.002-04:00

So, two months late, I finally announce that the Garden has moved.

As of July 28, we are happy denizens of Western North Carolina. We left the NJ crop behind, but immediately inherited a (limited) new one of tomatoes, herbs and green beans. The neighborhood is flush with crabapples and heirloom fruit trees of all sorts; I even heard a rumor about a quince tree, but never found it. All the respectable houses have lavender and rosemary hedges, and so far I've canned applesauce, vegetable soup, pesto. Some of the last summer peppers from Greenback (thx, parental units!) are finishing drying in the oven as I type. Those'll look nice strung over the kitchen window, diminishing in number with each midwinter crock of chili.

Of all the places I've lived, farmer's markets here are unmatched. It's full fall-food time, and the winter squashes are in full effect. I may can some pumpkin and dry some apples (when the dehydrator is set right again), and the pears are aaaaalmost sweet enough to pick. I've found a pretty delicious-looking recipe for pumpkin risotto, and with friends actually nearby, that will probably join many pear crumbles and local brews for great nights around the table.

Living a couple of blocks from downtown has its advantages! Walking to work is a normal part of the day, finally, and we're getting to know all the dogs that drag their people over to say hi to Emmitt. Dancing again is so refreshing, and my body's slowly forgetting that I spent a year sitting in an office behind a computer when I wasn't crammed into the seat of a car. Joy! Not to mention that working with a partner affords leaps forward in knowing myself and chipping away at an "Eva" style. Thanks, Ben!!

Just a quick overview. Much more to come.

love
eva

The garden itself

2008-06-25T19:55:00.008-04:00

A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us. . . . What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the earth's ability to produce.

Wendell Berry

Gardens are not work. They are friends.

In the era of deadly spinach and tomatoes and green onions from thousands of miles away, I'm pleased that it's becoming more clear to people that gardening is not difficult, overly time-consuming or out of reach. What's the tradeoff for a few glorious hours in the sun over the course of a season? Delicious, healthy food, a marvelous tilth for the future, new habitat for some exciting residents, lessons in life, reproduction and responsibility . . . etc., etc., etc. Work?? More like a big ol' playground!

Yesterday, I encountered the first praying mantis of the season--a little brown thing in my laundry basket, actually. So it immediately got a new home in the tomatoes, hopefully to do something about the Mexican bean beetle larvae we pick of day in and day out. I've spotted a toad a couple of times, too; I hope there are more among the mints by the "pond." A pair of harlequin cabbage bugs undertook a bit of risqué activity on some tender young kale, but the fritillaries haven't taken up on the passionflower vines yet. There's a healthy understory of purslane among all the planted plants, because I don't have it in me to remove them--they were Ghandi's favorite vegetable, and make a fantastic gardening snack. And such an intrepid, hardy plant deserves a place in my garden, I think. It takes a lot of work to be that prolific! They're familiar and reassuring in their abundance.

So far, the harvest has been collards, French sorrel, romaine, rosemary, basil, tarragon, chives, thyme and nibbles of purslane. Soon will come yellow squash, green tomatoes, serrano and habanero peppers, cucumbers and maybe a pinch of celery. The okra is about to burst its buds, a volunteer roma is jammin' by the fence, and there are marble-sized watermelons nestled under the vines. This year marked the first planting of heirloom-type strawberry popping corn, which is up to my waist, and it almost goes without saying that there's spearmint in overabundance. Three seasons of horse manure (now chicken manure! W00t!) kitchen scraps, shredded paper and love have turned our loamy sand into sandy loam, and the plant family is shouting its gratitude.

Thank you in return, my lil' green buddies!

Phallacaea Lysurus mokusin, anyone?

2008-06-22T21:58:00.002-04:00

After a rain last week, both the mycologist and the 15-year-old boy in me were tickled to see that our lawn sprouted with lantern stinkhorns, which look exactly like . . . ok, a dog who's really happy to see you. A male dog. Who's really happy to see you.

So after I got done making penis jokes to myself, I thought a little about biodiversity in the state known for Jimmy Hoffa, the turnpike and being an extension of NYC, and how it's a shame that more people don't just take a sec to look down at their feet more often. Apparently, stinkhorns are notorious for popping up in urban spaces, flowerpots, windowboxes and the like. And if I were an apartment dweller noticing one of these (or any of the other dozens of species of North American stinkhorn) rearing its head--and odor! They're called stinkhorns for a reason!!--at me, I'd sure want to learn about them.

Take a peek at the Stinkhorn Hall of Fame for some awesome examples of these fellas. You've totally got to look at the Phallus hadriani, the sixth one down--priceless! Life imitates life, y'know.

Pesto is the Best-o!

2008-06-20T16:44:00.006-04:00

I've said it before--if I were stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat but pesto, that'd be OK by me. Bathtubs and barrels and pools full of it wouldn't be enough--it's ambrosia and joy and just plain perfect.

In an ideal world, the stuff would be everywhere. And there would be fields of basil all over the place, and everyone would know about companion planting, because everyone and their mom plants tomatoes. And tomatoes <3 basil.

Our jungly garden includes a tangle of tomatoes, each with their little basil buddy, and a few extra basils just hangin' out, doing their "I'm so money" thing. So It's looking like a harvest of several pounds of basil won't be out of the question, as long as I don't get guilty about deflowering (heh) them. Because though the dainty little flowers are beautiful and bees love 'em, they develop at the expense of more fragrant foliage. Must . . . be . . . ruthless . . . .

Today was the first-pesto-batch-of-the-season day, and that will all be eaten fresh soon. Later in the summer, when production really ramps up, will be time for dollops frozen on cookie sheets, ready to be plopped into hot pasta, stirred in with veggies and black rice, who knows. Or . . . maybe on a dark night, a furtive shape will crouch in front of the freezer, slowly letting them thaw in her mouth . . . So you can taste the love too:

Pesto
2 c packed basil leaves (any type works, purple is especially vivid and wonderful)
3 cloves fresh garlic
1/2 c. walnuts or pine nuts
1/4 c. good cold-pressed olive or grapeseed oil
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Put it all in a food processor and make a paste out of it. If you'd rather use a mortar and pestle, start with the garlic and walnuts, add a little oil, then alternate the oil and the basil in parts until you're done. Add more or less of anything to taste (except the basil--just add more). Be sure to run your finger around the inside of your mixing vessel when you're done, and don't let a molecule go unenjoyed.

Sights and sounds of a Greenback summer

2008-06-17T23:01:00.002-04:00

Few days bring with them the fullness of this one.

After a (wonderful, rich, overwhelming) long, hectic time at Bonnaroo (posts to come), I spent most of today in the hamlet of Greenback on Cherry Corner Farm. After a full night's sleep, I woke up to a sunshiny yard and eager chickens ready to forage--one of life's most meaningful pleasures is watching a flock of chickens fan out over a stretch of green, fluffing their feathers like their lives depend on it, and getting their breakfast of clover, plantain and grasshoppers. Hardly a cursory glance at their liberator, though, but they show gratitude with scandalously orange-yolked eggs. Heaven.

In the weeks I've been gone, the tomatoes, peppers and okra have skyrocketed, and the black-eyed peas have asserted themselves--I've never seen such deep green foliage on such small sprouts! Over the last couple of years, we've gradually fed our red-clay plot with a feast of chicken manure, mushroom compost and kitchen scraps, and the bricklike soil is beginning to give way to something nurturing. The terraced strawberry bed next to it is all played out, but its horse manure-and-mushroom compost substrate coaxed an overabundance of the most delicious berries this year--the ones we didn't freeze or eat fresh ended up in some wonderful pies, though it took herculean self-restraint to not just scarf the sun-warmed morsels right there among the plants.

So today, after a necessary trip to Knoxville, Dad and I went on a mission to gather creek cane/bamboo poles for the garden beans. During Mother's Day weekend, when my sister and I snuck our brothers back into TN to surprise Mom, we had all gone on a hike and found a canebreak about a half-mile from the house. Of course, then there was much less underbrush and an exponentially less significant carpet of poison ivy, so today's little jaunt turned into rather a war of nature and human fortitude. Dad had his machete, and I my watchful eye (snakes, beaver stumps, muskrat holes--treacherous stuff!) and together we wove our way through the woods. We came upon a couple of patches of wild monarda, and some jewelweed growing, inexplicably, in a cedar bald. We sidestepped a patch of mayapple, found a small stand of horse-chestnut trees, and admired a fallen sycamore before we finally found the patch across the creek and got to work. Dad cut canes while I stripped them (mostly) of their leaves, and we each took a big underarmful and negotiated our way back over the water. We cut a hilarious picture coming back--completely inelegantly tromping our way through the woods, dragging these piles of bamboo, trying not to drop anything or kill ourselves falling. But we made it to his truck with everything, much to the beans' pleasure, I'm sure.

After a quick shower--damn that poison ivy--I went down the road to visit my friend Janet and her boys, Devon and Rowan, both of whom I babysat for years after their births. Janet and I sat and talked on the side of Lake Leech (really a beautiful place!) as they played in their inflatable raft, and I'm not sure if I felt more awe or pride. So intelligent and kind and considerate and fun--wonderful boys, and so old and autonomous. I feel guilty for having spent so little time with them, and they were falling over each other to tell me everything I've missed during all the time I've been gone. Back at their house, Janet and I sipped some fantastic ginger ale on the porch while the boys and their pack of dogs played in the yard. Their home is a 13-acre forested hill called Woodthrush Ridge, and while we sat and rocked, a male thrush made an unusually bold move to perch in the wide-open crown of a dead tree about 50 yards away; Janet grabbed her scope and zeroed in, and the way that bird sang was i.n.c.r.e.d.i.b.l.e! Their song is a disjointed series of different rhythms, pitches, tones and percussives, and they actually DANCE when they sing--he hunched his little shoulders, threw his head back, did a little shimmy and a shake. Amazing! By then, the sun was almost down, and the moon was up and full and pink, and we turned the scope on that too, to see all the crevices and craters shimmering with the heat of our atmosphere.

Earlier, on the way to meet Dad in the woods, I had run down a grassy path on the eastern side of the the pond; the sun was closing in on the west, and the path was warm and all the sweet piney grassy scent around me rose up and swept me on my way. In the moment, I laughed. It was perfect.

Inaugural chick-kons

2007-11-06T14:09:00.003-05:00

I'd like to introduce the chickens and their saga.

But to back up--when we lived in Washington when I was a wee tot, we had a henhouse, some ducks, and some evil, evil geese. My favorite chicken, Jewel, was a white rock (I think) and put up with anything I wanted to do--chase her, pet her, hold her and squeeze her, which I did often.

When we moved to Tennessee and left her behind--I was 5--of course I took her memory with me, and my parents and I finally realized our dream of more chickens when we started Round II of Eva Living in their House. About three months ago, after a heat-induced false start, our little box of chicks got to Knoxville from Iowa, and I left work in a giddy frenzy to pick them up at the branch Post Office on Weisgarber.

They were cuter than I ever remembered chicks being--white rocks, barred rocks, black minorcas, auraucanas, New Hampshire reds and black stars, 25 little multicolored cotton-ball fluffs. My heart just wanted to EXPLODE!! But 8 weeks of living in a bathtub, slowly getting bigger, hungrier and more raucous, wore thin, and their home-on-skids, an 8x12 Mennonite pre-fab (sssh) house finally got plopped down in their yard, and Mom and Dad and me wasted no time with the run, a fancy-pants porch, perches, nestboxes and a feed-bin.
Aaaah, room to breathe.

They love turnip greens, moths and flies, catching floating feathers, and dustbaths. My dad has a favorite--the Quail Chicken, he calls her--and my mom's taken all of the barred rocks under her wing (so to speak, as she's the only one in the equation without wings.) At this point, we're almost certain they're all hens, but it may be early yet.

This is but the introduction of these ladies and their long, prosperous lives. We're glad that they're here with us, give us eggs and company and entertainment, and eventually a pot of delicious hot chicken soup at the ends of their journeys.

Welcome, chickens!