This post is not for the squeamish.   I hope I’ve managed to gently offend a couple folks here these last months, otherwise what good is a blog?  If I haven’t, here’s one that goes that extra mile.

Handy hubby, this one I owe to him.  This man’s got serious skills!  He assures me among Southern men, at least 80% can do it.  But he and I both originate from Chicago.  There, and most other places in America, the percentage surely hovers closer to 25%, tops.  In any case, I am standing in awe.   Handy Hubby, t-shirt now splattered with blood (did he wear white on purpose?), gun still strapped to his belt, an axe and an array of various sized knives and a cleaver on the counter next to him, which he had sharpened last night in preparation,  has between the hours of 8 am and 12, again impressed me in is handy-hubbiedness.  I have witnessed a pig trapped, heard him shot, knew him to be gutted and skinned elsewhere, heavens be praised, then watched him slaughtered and then butchered.  My sole responsibility in the process?  Bag and tag.  Brilliant!

I’ve handled fish the size of large mammals after being freshly caught and cleaned in Alaska, but the feeling of a boar left me less, let’s say, elated.   It was not the feeling of the freshly slaughtered flesh, which was surprisingly similar to a really enormous salmon, but which is distinctly different from store-bought.  Reminds me of Jell-O.

And it was not the butcher shop smell that soon overwhelmed the kitchen though the windows were open and fans fully employed; the odor was not at all offensive, not the heavy musk and rot like in the Spanish charcuterie, where the pig trotters dangle from the ceilings.  And, like the finest Iberico ham, the color was beautiful, rich red and uniform in its leanness, with a taste that seemed to me closer to duck than to the pork we get from the supermarket.

And it was not that I felt bad for his life, exactly, because wild pig in these parts are considered vermin, not unlike the rat of New York city streets, an invasive species.  What was it then that made this feel so much less thrilling to me?  Maybe because, the fish, I knew I could tackle it, and did, (though with the skill of a child).

This is in fact the ideal win-win.  Handy hubby gets a manly satisfaction out of at least some of the process as well as the fact that he has now fed his little family for free for some months and should a mass welcome disaster close all the Wal-marts out here, he has just proven to us and himself that he can control his environment, a true alpha male feat.

Despite all this, I cannot put my finger on it, I wish we’d caught a fish.  While I watched handy hubby hack away at femur bones with a cleaver, I could only think, “Thank you all on Earth and in the Heavens who have conspired together in the blessed result that, this is not “my job.”

I don’t want to think of it as a sexist stereotype, but of course it is.  Even in the South I do not have to pretend to know or like guns, or skinning, gutting, butchering and well, pretty much anything terribly disgusting .  I consider that a true gift.  Contradictory I know, me, all espousing on autonomy, the heart of homesteading.  But I beam at the knowledge that I can I can observe this ritual from a curious distance, and enjoy the pretty-smelling side that comes out the other end of the process, when it is roasting in the oven.

This gift comes just in time for my upcoming birthday.  And I have another one to boot:   Where last year I was clubbing in Florida with the fab girls of my family, this time I will be alone in my garden shoveling 4,000 pounds of mushroom compost.

Amazing what can change in a year.

A win-win all the way around

Sunday BBQ YES!

Before: A perfectly manageable size he says

After: Here's where I come in

Want change?  Excitement?  Adventure?  Romance?  Of course you do.  At least you say you do.  But you’re probably happier just to watch it on T.V.  Most of us say we want it, but once we manage to get it, we find it’s not what we really wanted at all.

To say something as simple as:  “I’ll be happy if my husband brings me home flowers,” is actually an impossible statement to make.  Will you really?  You wouldn’t have a single doubt why he brought you flowers out of the blue, for no reason at all?  What if he brought you nauseatingly-scented lilies, which you KNOW you’ve mentioned before that you don’t like?  What if they’re a wee bit wilted, like they were on the clearance rack?  What if he tossed them on the table without a look, instead of offering them to you sweetly with a kiss?

Politicians and lawyers depend on the fact that we are, as a species, brilliantly inconsistent.   This is true primarily because we are, and maybe I am even more than most, comically poor predictors of our own future feelings (thank you Kevin Hogan for making that my new mantra).

Still, when it comes to feelings, it is Proust I thank for making me first realize the power of circumstance.  No, not the power of memory, definitely the power of circumstance.  The very same moment can be, and always is, totally altered by every single other aspect, oftentimes with little matter of how huge or tiny:  Expect a war or economic crises will make it impossible for you to enjoy your anticipated New Year’s Eve celebration?  Doubtful.

But the state of your health, the presence or absence of a friend, the meal or beverages served, your mood, others’ moods, the weather, can totally ruin an otherwise perfect occasion.

So, on to my point.  It’s now nearly six months living in the sticks and despite my mind’s regular buffing, the sheen of country romance is already growing dull.  I know that’s pretty clear from reading the first blog to the latest, so since I have the illusion that I am actually being read, which is the same as being observed, (which of course makes all the difference, look at The Biggest Loser’s success rate!) I feel required to come up with a reason why, after only six months, I can feel the honeymoon period is already passing.

Is it simply that for romance there is a requirement of novelty?

I don’t like that answer, it sounds excessively shallow, and American.  I think I can come up with a better one here in a minute. . .

Take our little country “homestead”:  It’s not as if I like it any less.  Not at all.  Every day I still see something I haven’t seen before; I still marvel at some new plant or insect, or the beauty of some new view I hadn’t noticed.  It’s not that I’m already sick of the work, or as if I am not enthusiastically adding to the honey-do list:  a greenhouse and new flooring top my current demands.  And it’s not that I no longer look forward to my own upcoming projects, like fall tree planting and inventing a dozen new varieties of kim chi to process the excess cabbage sure to soon be overwhelming me all at once.   And it is still everyday a personal satisfaction to look out over our landscape and see we are slowly taming, but not overhauling it; our quaint view everyday suits us a bit better.  That still gives me great satisfaction because the carved out, hyper-planned communities, whether city or suburb will never qualify, to me, as ideal.

Still I have griped about more than a few annoyances and complications out here, in fact I’ve been bitching about them now for weeks, and those are just my issues.  Handy hubby’s got a whole long list of his own:  equipment constantly failing, important deliveries needed to complete a project lost for weeks in transit, flat tires, wrong tools, poor planning, and of course the inevitable Homer Simpson “d’oh!”

Sometimes to gauge whether I am happy in any one set of circumstances I ask myself, “if you won $50,000, or $100,000, or $200,000 or some other decent sum, not enough to change your life totally, but enough that if used wisely could make a huge difference in circumstances, what would you do differently?   Change careers?  Start a business?  Go back to school?  Move?  Consider kids?  Buy a designer wardrobe?”

When I can answer, “What I really want can’t be bought, or produced, or faked, or invented, or even learned, but only FELT,” then I know I’ve got myself on the right path.  I think Master Hogan would choke laughing on that one.

Through my office window I feel the gentle breeze coming up from the little valley, and I smell the rain soaked earth, and see the first traces of yellow and red in the leaves, and I am relieved.  I have no answers at all.  The world and all in it is still a huge, gorgeous mystery.  And feelings are the only way to truly experience that.

Maybe the romance lives not in novelty, but in wonder.  You feel it’s right out there, exactly what you’re looking for, just out your window.  But even when you know it’s there, you still keep looking out for the next want:  today love, tomorrow sex, next week security, this moment happiness, next month purpose.  It makes me think of juggling pins, because once you have managed to catch one, you look up to see there are still many more waiting to drop.

For a long time I have wanted purpose, and out this window is the only place I have ever seen a glimpse of it.  What that means exactly, and how that can be true, and whether it will ever pay the bills, I have absolutely no idea.  Call it inconsistent, unreliable feeling if you will, but I will continue to call it instinct.

It is with sex, as with money, or time, or choices, or influences, or friends, or zucchini: in surplus they become meaningless and while they are best left somewhat untamed and unregulated, still it is our nature to attempt to control every aspect of each of them. There is no real difference between enough and too much, because not enough is too scary to even consider.  That reality is surely what drives us to attempt to control scarcity and achieve surplus.  But don’t we forget the surplus causes distress too, sometimes to a nearly equal degree as the scarcity?

The melons, squash, okra, that were left to the fates while I perused intellectual interests in London are still haunting me.  Surplus is considered a success.  But why?  It comes with just as much baggage to handle.  In your career surplus money always leads to scarcity in time.   In the home my fridges are so stuffed that each mealtime requires an elaborate unloading of frozen packages to the counter to get to the desired item, always in the back. Every table, counter top, chair, or other viable surfaces are covered with melons and squash and okra and a half dozen culinary herbs, so that surrounding me at every moment is the visual image of my success, and then the nagging reminder that this all must be processed.   Melons, once adored, are threatening to give me a gag reflex on sight.

Success is over-rated, just like money, and most work actually.  I take double notice now of all those around me not only driven, but damn near obsessed with success.  I’m not trying to say there is not a certain joy in good work, yes even hard work, but who is to say what is good, and what is hard, and for that matter, how much of it we must do to claim we have achieved something?  Where others often see success, I am apt to call it ego.  Goal-setting, schedule keeping, personal growth, it’s a veritable carnival of over-achievers out there.  I feel I need to remind them all, and myself while I’m at it, that there really is no achievement in surplus.  The achievement should be rated not by the façade of success, but by how many others are able to appreciate and grow in that success with you.  And looking around my kitchen I see I have sorely failed somewhere along the season.

Do I control the surplus? What about the scarcity?  When the work, people, zucchini are in abundance we are stressed, but when they are rationed we are downright scared, bewildered, dismayed even.  Well, o.k., not for the zucchini.

Enough is enough!  I do not want to choose between the city or the country, intellectual pursuits or physical labor, kids or quiet, time or money.  I don’t even want to choose surplus or scarcity, because they both pretty much suck!   I do not have the nature to choose.  I am American after all; I should not have to choose.  I want the best of both worlds, I mean, all worlds.  I want connection with the natural world and connection with the man-made world and I do not understand why the status quo is continually insisting CHOOSE!

Why?  Why choose?  Why must I choose between two worlds that fit so logically together.  The city is inspiring.  It is a tribute to man’s illusion of control.  Function is paramount.  Control appears achievable.   Achievement rules.  But nature is true reality.  There is no ego.  There is NO control.  ALL control is illusion.  And achievement is far more relative, and personal.  Because, simple as it is, if nothing else fails, there is still the weather.

Weather is the environmental equivalent of emotion.  Feelings.   Both we are trained not to trust and have little skill in predicting.   But I am convinced they both have a far deeper logic in them than we realize.  In the modern world we believe logic can rule nature, but that’s like believing man has triumphed over weather, or emotion.  There are still tomatoes growing out of the gutter, but the book about the complexities of growing tomatoes costs $12, and the course will run you $250.  Is it even necessary to have so many books about growing tomatoes when so few people actually do it?  Man plays his achievement-driven game, but nature doesn’t play along.   She really couldn’t care less about all our big plans.

When there is a surplus of choice, I hate choice.  When there is a scarcity of it, well, what on earth is worse?  So it goes on and on, everyone’s afraid of scarcity, but surplus is no picnic either.

After THE SIXTH CASE of poison ivy this season, after failed efforts: hand picking, folk remedies, chemical warfare, we concluded there was no other choice but to burn it out.  6 of our 9 most prominent danger zones are now bare dirt, more like sand actually, and I can chalk this one up to who would have ever expected which things turn out to be most difficult.

Previously I talked about a couple of the efforts that were much easier than expected, now I feel like whining about the unexpectedly hard stuff.  The laundry line.  Who would have ever expected that a highly functional laundry line would be so complicated, and that the line itself would be either useless, or shockingly high-priced.  We didn’t even mess with the cheap stuff, and after six months or so it still has to be regularly re-tied, requiring a tool and considerable effort, to keep the skivvies from brushing against the grass.

I’m a firm believer in the laundry line, especially in a place like Texas.  It makes no sense at all that folks heat up their homes with ovens and dryers only to air condition them back to a tolerable temperature.  An outdoor oven is high on the priority list at the moment.   Drying laundry on the line is as big a no-brainer as it is zen.  Really.  It’s one of those tasks like gardening, or, for me anyway, cooking–those activities that force you to slow down and accept a different speed or else the result is sub-par.

A few other things that are way annoying out here.  Why are there no real farmer’s markets though there are plenty of farmers all around these parts?  Why do I pay more for my very necessary “high speed” internet service while my connection speed is intolerably slow and highly unreliable?   Why did it take over a month to get landline service and over two months to get home delivered mail service started?  It makes you feel like living in the country in America makes you a second-class citizen.

Oh don’t mind my bitching, it’s just this boiling poison ivy rash spreading up and down my arms, for the SIXTH TIME!  It’s not pretty.  Neither the blistered skin nor the fact that there for all things unpleasant there is always the breaking point when you feel you’ve tried everything with no tangible result and you can’t think of anything else to do than just burn it all.

I’m convinced that this is sometimes exactly the right solution.  There is even proof of that in nature:  All the best wild flowers come out of the most disturbed soil.

I assure you medication, subscription or otherwise, is not the cause.  It’s not insanity either.  Fire ants, wind storms, periodic droughts, phantom herbivores, murdering raccoons, and you damn eternally invading poison ivy, I am laughing at all of you now!

Why? Two simple reasons: The first is I’m back from ten loud days in London, so it is very obvious that, I am high on home!  As a bonus, even after my neglect in the garden there is still an endless supply of okra, zucchini, yellow squash, peppers of several varieties, honeydew, and watermelon, sweet potatoes on the way.  I honestly never expected this.  All the work early on and all the lost battles along the way, but wow, finally something way easier than I expected.

Determination is a very strange thing, and not at all what I thought it was.  It is more a mood, driven by irrationality and circumstance.  Some things are so much easier than expected, and then there are of course those other things that are so much harder.  Determination is entirely relative and completely unreliable.

And that constantly raises new challenges, like what to do with prolific success?  The freezers are full, I don’t have enough time or space to deal with the abundance, and now I must divide my time further by choosing between preserving the harvest, preparing the fall planting, and somehow squeezing in hours for my actual paying jobs.

If I didn’t like those paying jobs I’d surely quit them, but I do, so running the numbers to define my success in order to determine how I must spend my hours doesn’t really matter to me.  I suppose it should, but the truth is it just doesn’t.  So, I find I am stretched in a way that an ambitious (but comically underpaid) CEO is stretched, which by the very definition of the simple life and my own personal version of determination, I cannot allow.

All this time I thought it was the expectations of the culture, the society, the peer groups that were pushing me, like all of us, to work more than we should. I now realize I push myself just as hard, only not in the same directions as they do, and not with the same goals or set of priorities.  Interesting.

We are all creatures of comfort to varying degrees, but because of my comparatively vagabond lifestyle I thought I was less-so than most.  But as I drove home from the airport and saw the cement give way to grass and the buildings replaced by trees, and the noise and chaos disappearing, and I then spotted a lone coyote lingering at the wood’s edge and a succession of deer, I recognized my comfort in the way the happy city dweller sinks into her easy chair after a day at the office and grabs the remote.  To each her own.

Our definition of comfort, like our definitions of success, and ambition, and determination surely vary quite a lot, but the drives underlying them are universal.  I learned that in London.  From a couple teachers who didn’t even mean to teach me that, exactly.

That reminds me of the two most satisfying things I’ve ever felt about creating a home, no matter where it is: When you get to leave it, and then you get to come back.

All in life and comfort and happiness is a lot like this damn zucchini actually, you can only consume so much of it at once, and there’s no good way to preserve it in the condition it was meant to be appreciated.  If only there were some good way to freeze, bottle, or can, these moments called bliss.

Which makes me happier at this moment?  I have a garden full of the most delicious melons ever, or I am on my way to spend ten days in London?  It’s so tough!  I mean really, the hugest melons ever.  Watermelons so red and juicy that sweet slime drips down your arms with every mouthful, and honeydew so subtle that each velveteen bite unite the perfect mélange of rich and mellow.  And then, on the other hand, It’s London, Baby!

Not that I would actually cancel my trip, it’s mostly business after all, but to be gone for a whole ten days from my latest addiction isn’t the easiest thing either, even to do it for London.  I love great cities and there are depressingly few in the world, most of them not in the U.S.  I guess that’s why my oldest friends think it’s odd that I’m way out here, not weird-odd I’m sure, because they knew me as the chick-who-moves-every- year-odd, who joins-the-Peace-Corps-odd, who tries-curing-her-own-olives-odd.  Is that really so far from let’s-try-homesteading-odd?  I don’t think it is such a far cry from she’s-living-in-Paris-this-year-odd, no-it’s-Corsica-this-summer-odd, or rather Guadeloupe-again-no-,that’s-Prague-now-odd, which I guess they see as somehow not equating with this year’s rural-East-Texas-odd.  I really don’t know why.  They are all so obviously similar.

Our dearest Professor Coyne made me laugh when his early-riser email informed me he’d  just google-mapped our little Texas village.  After he saw the porta-potty sized “jail” he quipped, “I think you’re in the Peace Corps NOW.”  For some peculiar reason I wanted to squeeze him right then and squeal, “Yes Thank You!”

I don’t know why that is exactly.  Maybe because I was not in the “real” Peace Corps.  I was not in the Peace Corps we all envision, of mud African huts or swampy Asian villages.  I was in the Paris of the Peace Corps, which is how any assignment anywhere in or near Prague or Budapest was called.  I was a stone’s throw away from the western German border and so of course, great shopping.  I was living in the Gymnazium administrator’s old flat complete with guest bedroom, telephone, and satellite television, and teaching in a brand new school with an observatory and computer lab and private office.  It was certainly far better than I’d lived as a graduate student either before or after, and better than nearly everyone else in the training group.  Of course, there were those in the Business Sector who were even more lucky.

I felt over-privileged, yes.  Balanced of course, by a notorious sense of entitlement.  But was it really luck?  After all, my most charismatic ex-hubby called daily to the Peace Corps DC office, flirting his arse off to any staff who would listen, begging for us to be offered those precious slots in the Czech Republic, rather than Armenia.  Afterward he charmed his way into his language teacher’s best graces, with his natural linguistic aptitude of course, and was always selected for the choicest of any event, whether it was eating lunch with some official, or getting the cream of assignments.  I as his wife, on several occasions, was actually left behind, because while I can be cute and charming when required, I was just too critical to be seated at the same table with VIP visitors from Washington.  I actually had the gall to write my true beliefs on the Peace Corps’ indefatigable surveys!  Only for me then was our prime locale thanks to luck.  For him, it was something else.

Which brings me to the reason for the London trip.  Master Kevin Hogan promises to teach me some all-persuasive techniques; how to do everything from Getting a Yes Within 8 Minutes, to Uncovering the Secrets of Personal Magnetism, to, as the London seminar is titled, learning “The Psychological Triggers of Hypnotic Persuasion.“  And I am so on board!  I’m registered in the course, signed up for the seminar, and bought three of his dozen-odd books.  Why the hell not?  This guy is the most prolific contemporary world’s marketing genius conceivable, so I just know he is brilliant enough to illuminate for me the illogical inconsistencies in my ridiculous simultaneous striving for great melons and lingering visits to London.

The impression of hard work is more significant than the actual work accomplished.  What gives the visual impression of work versus  the actual effort spent is so deceptive that the word “work” itself should really be called up for reassignment.

I slaved for the tomatoes that are now standing like Hitchcock horrors of the garden, but there are tomatoes growing out of the gray water runoff from the dishes and laundry; and I will shamefully admit,  I have been using very name brand, very non-organic detergent.    For all the plans, and expectations, and diligent, directed effort, what ends up really making a difference are the all those things you never understood, never planned for, and required exceptionally minimal effort to realize.  Of course, as always, and with everything, it all boils down to perceptions.

Everyone is an expert.  From tomatoes to laundry, from writing verse to anaylzing stocks, everyone has an opinion, and frankly, it is exhausting.  I am especially tired of results that are good only in theory.  There are tomatoes growing out of the proverbial gutter, flowering right at this minute promising to bear better fruit than I’ve had all season!  But those nurtured in the garden are withered brown demoralizing spindles. They were watered and fertilized and nurtured, and still there is nary a flower to inspect or encourage.

But I will try, because that’s what I do.  There is another kind of hope.  A hawk has taken up residence in our meager valley.  Everyday he is there, as consistent as the grass, and he gives me hope for my most challenging tasks of the fall.   The voles, and rabbits, and snakes, and yes, even my own mind.  Because I watch him sometimes, he hunts just outside my office window, and some days his perseverance is not only mind boggling, or, I admit, irritating, in its vocal enthusiasm, I find it still, somehow, inspiring.

If not now, then, when?  If not for us, then, for whom?  If not why, then, why not?  I hear him scream this to me, sometimes a dozen times a day, and every once in a call, I get it.

I don’t like when clichés ring true-it’s like underscoring the fact that everything worth saying has already been said a million times.  Still I can’t help it, so often it is the cliché that first comes to mind.  Like:  When it rains, it pours. In my experience that’s true regardless of whether it’s raining good fortune or bad.  Or, is it only our perception of good or bad fortune that changes?  Rain can be, after all, both good and bad.  Maybe that can even be said for the hurricane.

It was the strangest coincidence, surely, that the very day the three-week-long drought got drenched, little droplets of success began after a drought in both my paying career and my personal life.  When circumstances seem serendipitous, it feels to me, well, eerie.   It makes me wonder if there might be something to all those self-help books and spiritual texts that proclaim the power of envisioning and positive thinking.  Maybe our lives, just like “The Secret” says, are nothing more, or less, than the manifestations of our own thoughts.  What if the old tribal rain dancers really could alter their weather by sheer will and chanting?

And if that’s the case, then we’ve really got things screwed up in the world.  We spend more time, far more time, working, than we do praying or chanting or even just thinking.  We claim that hard work is the way to a successful life and a prosperous future, but, what if we’re wrong?  We’ve made ourselves so busy we’ve hardly any time to consider the question at all.

Surely there exists the perfect synergy of vision, luck, and labor?

Could it mean we need a return to “the simple life” in order to find it?  Is life out here really any simpler?  The simple life is itself something of a cliché, but I’d say it’s also of the variety that rings true.  Still, unlike the romantic image of a simple life in the countryside, it’s not simpler because there’s less work, or because you feel any more in control over things like the weather as you would, say, the traffic.  It’s simpler, I suppose, for the very simple truth that you, me, everyone, everywhere, are immensely affected by our environment.  When your surroundings are chaotic and loud and you are constantly bombarded with new images and rampant information, then that is the state your psyche is bound to mimic.  In this case, country life truly is more simple.  In our complicated modern world we are required to steal away the time, the energy, and the will to rediscover our own inner chant.

Here’s where I’m going to admit something really eerie.  I once made it rain.  Of course, I mean that figuratively.  Three years ago when we bought this place and were still commuting from the city, I decided we needed to move here full-time.  At that point, I had no idea how it could possibly happen before retirement, and obviously I couldn’t be certain that I would like a permanent life out here anyway.  But with that vision, a lot of prayer, a little planning, hard work, and the help of two hurricanes, it actually came to pass.

And that reminds me of another cliché I love to hate:  Be careful what you wish for.

Just like in the city, out here the work never stops.  Still while you are on vacation you try to pretend it does.  For two weeks, deserved or not, you attempt to repress the knowledge that those two weeks of stifling stress have inflated the work load on your return to a such an insurmountable mound that you have no idea where to start digging to get it under control again.

The two week vacation is really an American nightmare to a good portion of the developed world, where they are much more wise to the fact that it takes one month, minimum, to fully decompress and be ready to go back to work again.  After a month, or even two, when you return to the mound waiting for you, somehow, miraculously, it is hardly any bigger than the two week mound!  I don’t understand how this is, but if you’ve ever been lucky enough to take a two month vacation, you know exactly what I mean.

In my garden that fact translates as well.  After two weeks it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between the crops and the weeds, so how much worse could it possibly get if I just took the rest of the season off?  I can pick it back up again for the fall planting.   After all, there are melon and sweet potato vines and plenty of squash taking over what’s left of the tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and corn.  So, it’s not like we’ll starve if I don’t save those last morsels from the oblivion of weed wilderness.  What I really wish is that I could appreciate more what’s out there, but all I keep thinking about is all the changes that should be made for next time.  The space, water,  and soil are at least alterable; I still have no clue what I’m going to do about the voles, deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons and poison ivy.

Learning through trail and error, while significantly more efficient than learning from books, is itself terribly inefficient.  Had this knowledge and these skills been passed down to me since childhood, through demonstration by family or even school, they would feel second-nature now.  But, like many suburban raised kids, I had considered nature as something to be clipped and esthetically arranged and shamelessly manipulated, not painstakingly nurtured and gently tamed and regularly harvested, and certainly not studied or understood.

Anyway, because of heat I am back to my desk work for the remainder of the summer, which feels miserably less productive in comparison.  Just another two weeks, please, I keep praying,  if only so my inbox can resemble the garden.

I used to be one of those Nancy Drew, game of Clue, Sherlock Holmes loving kind of girls.  Now I am so damn sick of mysteries I would beg never to have to waste another second trying to incessantly figure everything out.  I read enough about Buddhism to understand control is an illusion, but it’s still annoying how ofter there are times it seems everyone and everything I come across would appear to want to underscore that reality ad nauseam.

Who killed the chicks?  What’s consuming entire full-grown plants of basil overnight?  Why are the fire ants swarming all over the okra and nothing else?  How can one tomato plant be thriving while those of the same variety on either side of it are long since dead?  Where can I hear some truth that works in practice and not just in theory?  Who is John Galt?

How often I am hearing different versions of the same mysterious stories.  For even the simplest answers I’m seeking I find a good half-dozen contradictory solutions.  So obviously, for the complicated topics, the misinformation overload is overwhelming.

Of these complicated topics one recurring subject is the meaning of organic.  In my quest for an organic garden (a goal which failed within two weeks), I called Monterey Mushrooms to learn about their mushroom compost, aka SMS, spent mushroom substrate.  When I inquire if the product is organic, the girl answers in a heavy drawl, “Whatcha meeeeen?”

Momentarily stumped, I pause, offering a friendly, “Ummm, well . . .”

“I can tell ya what’s in it, if you’ll even know what any of it is,” she offers.

“Sure, give it a shot,” I reply.  I’m feeling pretty confident because I’ve been reading up.

“Gypsum, chicken litter, cottonseed meal, soybean oil, straw, . . .” And I’m thinkin, hey, so far so good.

“Urea.”  Op, stop there.

This word can be used to describe both an organic and a chemical compound, and, my little brain churning, in order to separate the urea from the urine requires it be chemically processed, right?  So, that means it’s not organic.  Right?

And then that question leads to another, and yet another, and then a whole series of questions about organics.  What if the seeds I’m using aren’t organic?  What if the chicken producing the litter was not eating organic feed (which we can be quite certain it was not)?  What about the pesticides that went on the soybeans and cottonseed and Bermuda grass?   What if I’m watering my garden from treated water, because it’s ALL treated?  And even if I could irrigate solely through rainwater, What about Acid Rain?!

Oh my, please stop! It is all really too much.  Thank heavens it’s 4^th of July so I can drown these burgeoning mysteries in that all-American of southern drinks, the Margarita.  The path to a good buzz, at least, is never a mystery.