There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

I recall one delightful autumn evening last year at Ravenna, sitting by the creek side with a beer and my pipe, weary from a day of clearing brush in the sun with my scythe and playing with my brand new broad axe.  If you could do anything right now, be anywhere, be anyone, what would you choose?  The water, framed on both sides by steeply forested hills, trickled by, bearing yellow and orange leaves south towards the Potomac.  The air was slightly crisp with an occasional gentle breeze.  The only other sound besides the creek was the distant yips of a coyote pack.  This, I felt.  This.

So Google Reader is dead.  In looking for alternative ways to read my subscriptions of personal blogs, I’d forgotten I had one myself.  Then I asked myself what the purpose of a blog is for someone who is not inclined to be the focus of attention.  Then I remembered.

A running chronicle helps the author remember and take stock of how much has been learned through trial, error and experience.

With my food production exploits in the garden, every year my “agricultural laboratory” has yielded more and more crops and required less toil.  Though, for the life of me, I still can’t get peas to thrive.

The Ravenna orchard has expanded.  The two apple trees have miraculously never been mauled by the deer, which are everywhere here until muzzleloader season starts in October.  Then, to the frustration of my friends who hunt, they disappear.  Completely.  Even from the neighboring state forest.  Amazing adaptive quality, like the cicadas which stay in the earth for a specific prime number of years in order to confuse their predators.  So this year, I planted a sour cherry, sweet cherry and a pear tree in the same area.  I have also been bringing up raspberry plants as they expand from the original shrub I bought for $20 something like seven years ago.

But there are new lessons to be learned, construction being the most immediate.  My current shelter, a rusting old trailer, is impossible to heat up in the dead of winter.  I’ve spent too many mornings unwilling to do anything because it required exiting the sleeping bag and all the blankets I could get my hands on in the dark.  I need a place where I can use a wood burning stove, with room for a bed and a table.

The plan is already in my head.  Like gardening, this will be a prolonged class taught by those two exacting professors: Nature and experience.

the witnesses

I've decided you kind of develop a friendship with your perennial plants that come back year after year. My oldest is a spearmint plant that began life in my late grandmother's garden. "Such a nuisance," she said. "It just takes over." Ah, but when there is mint tea and tabouli to be had, you work out a compromise with its expansionist nature. It lives in the black plastic pot, half submerged in the background (back left of photo). It stealthily tries to take over the whole corner, but I refer back to our 2006 negotiated treaty that established the mutually recognized borders of Mintania. As the pot slowly deteriorates, those terms will probably have to be renegotiated.

The second is the red raspberry plant in the foreground. "Ed," as he was named by an ex girlfriend. Ed has expansionist privileges that the mint can only dream of. This pic was taken in June 2006, soon after I drove Ed over from the nursery and installed him. He's at least 3X bigger now. As you can see, the weeds have already recovered from my labor the month before. This was before I started growing corn in that area.

Along with the asparagus, oregano and thyme are also permanent residents. "Be fruitful and multiply," spake I. It's supposed to be good to talk to plants anyway. This study shows that women have an advantage in that field though.