Thursday, August 16, 2012

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Arugula


 Thank you thank you rain for this beautiful patch of arugula.  I vow to eat as much as possible while it's here.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Morning, fog

  I've been trying to read to Ruth while she nurses (an on/off endeavor) and I came across a poem titled 'The Clearing' by Wendell Berry that has stuck with me.  He talks of how vision needs severity at its edge.  Severity against neglect, indifference, weariness.  There is much more to the poem than that, but my mind keeps returning to those points.  I also can't seem to stop thinking about Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.  In the novel there is a kind of break in the narrative where she takes you to a house that has been neglected for around a decade and has been overrun by nature.  It is a beautiful step back where the mind just observes the scene, a commentary of time going on with or without us.  Nature will run its course.  Our existence is incidental.  Right now our farm feels as if it is sitting in this break in the narrative, slowly being overrun by nature as we watch it happen.  A morning glory plant entirely engulfs a few tomato plants.  The barn is overrun by privet, virginia creeper,  poison ivy, saplings, and honeysuckle.  The insect world becomes more and more evident, more prominent.  Weed seeds drip from the plants.  
Drip.  

Drip. 

 Drip.  

We ordered around 30-40 trees and shrubs earlier this year for some landscaping, maybe in early March, and then got carried away with the season.  They sit root-bound in their pots, cowering together in a semi-circle of questionable hope, wanting a better place to call home.  I had an art professor in college that once told the class that a perfectionist is someone who actually gets the task at hand done in perfect form, not someone who procrastinates with the vision then rushes through it unable to finish in perfect form---using the excuse of being a perfectionist.  Someone who puts off doing things because the only option is perfection and there is not enough time for perfection.  Let's just say the image of myself as a perfectionist was shattered at that point in time.  I still have my vision though and I can dream big dreams with the best of them.   And I will get done what I can and learn to be okay with that.