Anodyne
Friday, August 15, 2008
 
Working on the balcony at six o'clock in the morning. Grey light, light wind. The tomatoes' coppery scent in my face as I kneel, distributing H20 and kelp emulsion from a green 3L jug that previously held biodegradable laundry soap. I like working around things that silently respond to attention. I once read -- I think it was in Steve Solomon's great Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades -- that garden vegetables and people made a pact long ago, very similar to the one that people and domestic cats made. "We'll give up some of our prickly feral qualities, if you'll take care of us." Or as Solomon says, "You are nature to your vegetables." I don't like working with other people -- collaboration inevitably involves compromise, watering down hard-won core beliefs -- "these fragments shored against my ruin" -- but I like being around living things that demonstrate their appreciation through gesture. The purring cat that turns its head to be scratched; the four foot high balcony tomatoes; the scarlet runner beans that decided to start setting seed while I was away climbing deadfall and are now producing enough pods to keep my whole building in beans for a month.
- posted by cjb @ 10:49 AM


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