A Year Outdoors

List It

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
See no evil--list it instead.

See no evil–list it instead.

It’s about this time of year when I look around and see how shabby the garden looks. Through the depths of winter, I didn’t notice. I wasn’t outside enough. The days were short. I didn’t want to work outdoors.

But even if the lengthening days and singing magpies weren’t enough to tell me, the calendar is screaming that it’s just two weeks to spring.

So I’m paying more attention to the yard and garden. I’m taking a second glance at what I thought was my herbs beginning to resprout…and finding that the green I saw was actually a giant, aggressively spreading vetch. I’m walking through the vegetable garden to assess what needs to be done…and finding that though the chickens did a lovely job on some weeds, they didn’t touch the most difficult ones. I’m checking the bird netting over the strawberries, and finding hole after hole that needs repairing. I’m inspecting irrigation pipes, and finding ice-cracked valves. I’m walking the rows of currants and raspberries, and finding enough thistles to make me want to cry.

In short, I’m finding so many things to do, I begin to think I can’t possibly do them all.

And so, to maintain my sanity, I make lists.

A list of things to do this weekend.

A list of things to do in the evenings during the week.

A list of things to purchase in town.

A list of things to do next weekend.

A list of things to do the weekend after that.

A list of things that need to go on a list…

By mid-September, I’ll have every weekend through late-November planned in detail—exactly what needs to be done in order to have everything under control and planted out at the right time.

It sounds crazy, but it keeps me sane. Once a task is on a list, I can ignore it. I can walk past that aggressive vetch plant every day, knowing that if I just keep to my lists, I will eventually get to it. I can be completely blind to the holes in the bird netting, because I know that fixing it is on the list the week before the strawberries should start to ripen.

Without my lists, I’d be overwhelmed by the mountain of tasks to get done between now and December.

But the lists aren’t just good for making me get my work done. They also help me get my play in, too. Fun stuff goes on the lists, too. A weekend tramping trip, a day at the beach—I can schedule these things in alongside my work, and then actually enjoy them, because I know I’ve got time to do them. It says so, right on my lists.

 

Literary Fog

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The view extended no farther than the neighbour's irrigator.

The view extended no farther than the neighbour’s irrigator.

“The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.”
–Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

This is one of my favourite quotes about fog. It’s actually quite a bit longer than this (Dickens certainly couldn’t dispense with such an atmosphere in just two sentences.)—I’ve just transcribed the second half of it here.

Today put me in mind of this quote. We were in the grip of a chilly sea fog most of the day. Heavy, wet and cold. I’m sure that a mere kilometre away, it was a warm and sunny day—that was the forecast, at least. But this close to the sea, our weather sometimes defies the land-based predictions.

I worked in hat and fingerless gloves most of the day, even indoors. When I went outdoors to care for the animals or get the mail, the trees dripped sullenly, and I came back in with my hair frosted with water droplets.

For about an hour—between 11 am and noon—the fog retreated. The sun shone warm on paddocks sparkling with water. I threw open the windows and took off my hat and gloves.

But soon the dull grey blanket came rolling back. I saw it coming, while the sun still shone, and closed the windows. And then we were plunged into the chill darkness again.

I would have liked the sun today—my laundry, hung on the line in the morning, ended up being thrown into the dryer in the afternoon, wetter than it had started. But there is something so delicious and…Dickens…about fog, that I can’t resist spending time out in it. There is mystery in fog. There is introspection and contemplation. Who knows, but the Hound of the Baskervilles could be out in that fog. Fog is literary. Fog is visceral, tangible like a sunny day can never be.

I do hope we see the sun tomorrow, but if it is fog, well, I’ll sharpen my pencil and keep an eye out for strange door knockers and large black dogs.

My life in gumboots

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2016-08-16 12.32.47My daughter and I wear the same size gumboot, but there’s never any problem telling them apart.

That’s because gumboots tell the story of their wearer’s activities.

Mine tell many tales.

A smear of paint—Sicily White—tells of a hot summer day scraping and painting the house. A job that had to be called off, because the paint was drying so fast, I couldn’t spread it.

Another glob—brick red—tells of another summer day fixing and painting the roof, balancing paint bucket and feet on the peak, and looking out over the hedges to the lake and sea beyond.

Lavender speckles recount an afternoon drenching goats, when a syringe of purple medicine burst open and splattered everywhere.

Bits of hay relate frosty mornings feeding the animals in the dark, by moonlight and starlight.

Smears of mud describe weeding and planting in the vegetable garden.

Clumps of goat poo tell of afternoons in the paddock, hand-feeding grain to eager goats who push and shove to get more than the others.

The tales are fleeting—even the most enduring splatters fade in time, replaced by the next instalment of my life in gumboots.

It’s All About Perspective

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IMG_5709 sm
We headed to the mountains this morning in the hopes of snow. We were disappointed in that—there was no sledding to be had, but we did have a lovely walk at Kura Tawhiti/Castle Hill instead.

Kura Tawhiti, with its fabulous limestone formations and huge boulders, is one of our favourite quick day trips and a regular stop-off on our way to other places. For all our visits, though, we have never actually gone to the top of Castle Hill. So today, that was our destination (with many boulder-scaling detours along the way, of course).

The best part of the top of Castle Hill was the massive boulder jutting up from near the summit (I really think they should have put the trig marker on top of that rock—it really is the summit, more so than the ground below). Though I didn’t measure it, I’d guess the rock adds a good seven metres to the height of the hill. It dwarfed us all as we stood in its shadow.

It was a lovely walk to the top, though we were disappointed that we couldn’t actually make it to the top of that big rock. After a few minutes on top, we made our way down the other side of the hill.

Later, looking back toward the summit from a neighbouring ridge, that massive boulder looked tiny.

“The lesson,” my husband said, “Is that until you reach them, all your problems will seem insignificant. It’s only when they’re upon you that you’ll realise how utterly insurmountable they are.”

It wasn’t exactly the lesson I took (I was thinking that big problems, safely in the past, look small), but it’s a valid point. Sometimes we take on challenges or make decisions we know will lead to challenges in the future. At the time, those challenges might look manageable, but when we finally face them down, they could be huge.

Thankfully, we rarely have to face life’s problems alone unless we choose to do so. In fact, many of the big challenges that matter a great deal to us—raising kids, dealing with illness, facing loss—are really only manageable when shared. Sometimes, the hardest part is asking for help.

And then, once you’re past, the problems look smaller again. They look more manageable, because you did manage them.

So, don’t be afraid of those big challenges. They may be bigger than you think, but once you’ve made it past them, you’ll be able to look back from a distant ridge and say, “Well, maybe that wasn’t so bad after all.”

Going bananas

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bananaOver 100 billion bananas are eaten globally every year, making bananas the fourth most important food crop in the world. Most bananas are consumed locally—only 15% are exported. Almost all the bananas grown for export are a variety known as Cavendish. New Zealand is said to have the highest per-capita consumption of Cavendish bananas in the world, at 18 kg per person per year.

The Cavendish was named for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire—whose family name was Cavendish. Their head gardener imported a plant from Mauritius in 1830 and grew it in the family’s hothouse. The banana flourished and provided the duke’s guests with fresh bananas to eat. The Cavendish banana grew so well, the duke was able to supply two cases of plants to a missionary in Samoa. Those bananas were the start of the banana industry in Samoa.

Missionaries spread the Cavendish throughout the Pacific, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that the variety became popular commercially.

Until the 1950s, the most important banana for export was the Gros Michel, but in that decade, it was almost wiped out by a fungus known as Panama disease.

The Cavendish—smaller and not as flavourful as the Gros Michel—was immune, so growers switched largely to the Cavendish.

Almost all commercially grown bananas today are Cavendishes—clones of the plant grown by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

Panama disease didn’t sit idly, though. By 1992, a strain evolved in Southeast Asia that was able to attack the Cavendish. And since the plants are all genetically identical, they are all susceptible to the new strain of the disease. At least 10,000 hectares of Cavendish bananas have been destroyed, and more will certainly fall as the fungus spreads.

For many of the nations that export bananas, it will be an economic disaster. For those of us who enjoy bananas…who knows?

There will likely be a time in which bananas become more expensive, even hard to find in our grocery stores.

But having lived in Panama, I know there are many banana varieties (about 1000, worldwide). And every single one I’ve eaten is better than the Cavendish. The Cavendish’s main selling point is its ability to survive transport, not its flavour.

In our village in Panama, everyone grew bananas. They came in many sizes, shapes, and colours. Some were more starchy, some were sweeter. Some tasted so much like banana, they seemed almost fake. Others tasted like a fruit salad, with tangy citrus overtones to the banana flavour.

I have to believe that as growers develop a replacement for the Cavendish, they will naturally end up with something more flavourful than the bland Cavendish. If we’re really lucky, they’ll develop more than one variety, providing greater insurance against the future evolution of Panama disease and more variety in our supermarkets. That has to be a good thing in the long run.

Want to know more? Visit the Panama Disease website.

Frozen

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

2016-08-10 10.08.08 smFive degrees below zero.
Grass
stiff with frost.
Pipes
frozen.
Pond
iced over.
Broken tap
paralysed mid-drip.
Nothing moves in the pre-dawn darkness
Except the stars,
shimmering in a black-ice sky.

 

 

Risk

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
The stilts nearing completion.

The stilts nearing completion.

When I was about ten, my dad built me a high bar in the back yard so I could practice gymnastics at home.

My mom hated it. She refused to watch as I flipped and swung and tumbled through the air, with no crash mat below me. I used that bar a lot. Never once did I injure myself or even come close (the blisters don’t really count).

What mom didn’t know was that before the bar, I did my aerial work in the woods across the road—flipping and swinging around tree branches that bounced and swayed under me, with branches below to whack into if I should fall. I once found two branches that were the perfect distance apart to serve as uneven parallel bars. I couldn’t resist, though the branches were a little to big around for me to get a great grip on them. And they were at least twice as far off the ground as a real set of bars.

I stuck to moves I was comfortable with, but one involved being completely airborne and catching the upper bar.

But that upper branch was just too big. My hands slipped. I only just managed to dig the nails of one hand into the bark and hold on while I scrabbled around with my feet to find the lower branch (at this point, my mother, who reads my blog, is cringing and thinking she should have just locked me in my room instead). I admit that I clung to that branch for five minutes before I could bring myself to let go enough to climb down.

I write this as one who is now the mother of an equally adventurous daughter, not to scare other parents into locking their children away from trees, but to point out that children will find adventures. They will find ways to challenge themselves. By enabling our children’s adventures, we have an opportunity to manage those adventures.

Maybe mom didn’t like the high bar, but it was a heck of a lot safer than the tree branches.

My daughter is currently building herself a set of strap-on stilts, with the help and advice of both her parents. These stilts will replace the ordinary stilts we helped her make years ago, when she felt her first pair of (rather short) stilts weren’t challenging enough anymore. I was terrified by the tall stilts when she first got up on them. She fell again and again, but soon had them on their tallest setting and was playing soccer in them.

Now she wants to be able to juggle while walking on stilts. Her first idea was to tie her regular stilts to her legs. Not a good idea. Her father suggested she make purpose-built strap-on stilts.

I’m worried about the strap-on stilts—the only way to get off them is to fall—but because we are helping her address her need for more physical challenge, we are managing the risk. Elbow, wrist, and knee pads and a helmet will reduce the damage when she falls. Parental guidance on construction will ensure the stilts are strong enough to take the forces she’ll put on them.

It will be tempting to close my eyes the first time she gets up on them. But I owe it to the girl on the high bar to watch.

Spinning House, Spinning Life

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Photo: OMI International Arts Center; http://artomi.org/page.php?Alex-Schweder-Ward-Shelley-233

Photo: OMI International Arts Center; http://artomi.org/page.php?Alex-Schweder-Ward-Shelley-233

In looking for something in the news that wasn’t depressing on this rainy Friday, I found an article about this delightful piece of art by Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley—a house that spins in the wind and tilts as it occupants move around in it. They built it, then moved into it for five days.

The article about the house in the New York Times includes observations written by the artists during their time living there.

Shelley’s final observation: “We’ve stayed spinning most of this breezy day. Four-and-a-half days in, I can’t say something definitive about this spinning. It is the prime feature, and joy of life inside this machine. I know it could become too much of a good thing. For now, though, it is what I like best.”

Isn’t that a great encapsulation of life?

The spinning is the prime feature and joy of life–the crazy every day whirlwind of school, work, family, friends, sun, snow, and rainbows. The emotional highs and lows as we spin in and out of the metaphorical sunshine are what give life spark and colour. The spinning keeps us on our toes and interested, because the view is ever-changing.

But spin too fast, too out of control, and we’re liable to get dizzy and fall. We won’t know how to step to go in the direction we want to move. We might lose track of where we are altogether.

I would love to see this house in action, and maybe even spend time in it. Alas, I’m unlikely to find myself at the OMI International Arts Center in Ghent, New York in the next two years while the house is on display there. I suppose I’ll have to remain in my own spinning life instead.

Tease

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2016-08-03 14.58.18The starlings mutter. The sparrows scold. Magpies warble on the fenceposts.

Daffodils stretch skyward.

I pace the garden, pulling weeds. I finger the newly arrived seed packets.

The goats stand sentinel on the hill, noses quivering with the smell of soil.

Buds swell on the fruit trees.

We are all impatient. Waiting.

The sky is a little bit lighter for a little bit longer than it was yesterday.

The sun, when it shines, is warm.

But we know it is a tease.

Clouds boil to the south, dark and heavy with rain, maybe even snow, if you believe the forecast.

The northerly breath of spring whisks around to the southwest, knife-edged and cold, reminding us that winter still rules.

We bide our time by the fireplace, planning the new season’s garden while rain and sleet lash the window.

Smell of a Memory

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2016-07-29 13.55.18I was hanging up laundry early yesterday morning, when I caught a whiff of the past.

I don’t know where the smell came from, or whether it was even real, but there it was—the unmistakable smell of our house when we moved into it eleven years ago.

More than one previous owner ignored maintenance on the house. Today, I can’t believe we were so desperate to have bought it. The owners before us allowed the roof to leak, the toilet to leak, the piles and weatherboards to rot. They covered the smell of rotting carpets with air fresheners and sweet-smelling flowers.

The first thing we did, even before moving in, was to remove the carpets and air fresheners. Then I attacked the highly perfumed (and disgusting to my nose) flowering shrubs by the door.

We quickly improved the smell of the house (and fixed all those leaks and rotted bits), but it made a strong impression on me. On chilly winter mornings like the day we moved in, I can still smell those awful flowers.