her able hands

Yesterday afternoon, my new neighbor questioned my spacing in my tomato bed. “Aren’t you planting those a little close?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Twenty inches.” He said.

“Well, I’ve planted them 15” for the past few years and canned over one hundred jars of sauce each year, given away bags and bags of tomatoes, and composted more than I care to think about. On top of that I sold about $150 worth of them last season.”

Raised eyebrows. Glaring at my garden bed. “I don’t know. That’s a little too close.”

I smiled as I dug another hole 15” south of the last one and pulled a Bloody Butcher plant from the bucket of water by my side. I didn’t say anything else, not out loud anyway, but in my head I told him to plant his own damned tomatoes and stop acting like just because he’s been on the planet almost twice as long as I have that it means he knows the only way to plant a tomato. “I hope you’ll want some of the harvest, I’m sure I won’t have time for all the canning I usually do.”

“Hmm.” He said, and stood at the fence watching for a few more minutes. I could feel him wanting to scold me, to tell me to listen to age and wisdom, to tell me to yank those tomatoes out right now little missy, and plant them the right way, the way he told me to already. Then he ambled off after his dogs and I planted another twenty sets at a 15” spacing, then mulched them deeply with grass clippings. Here is the offending tomato bed.

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Tuesday afternoon, Lila and I made the trek out to the old house to get another load of detritus and loose cannons with the pickup truck, and to attempt (unsuccessfully) to gather the rest of the felines. The day was hot and humid, and when I pulled in the driveway my heart lurched at the thought that I might somehow get trapped there and have to stay forever. That would suck on a thousand levels, though isn’t a remote possibility. We fed and watered the chickens and Charles the female rabbit, and while I was outside I got a visual reminder of the fact that my fat cat Oliver has opposable thumbs when he opened the sliding screen door and ran for the woods. Bastid.

Bummer for him, because I couldn’t go back on Wednesday, so he spent two nights outside. He’ll be clinging to the screen when I get there this afternoon to try again, and he’s going to get the sneak attack from behind while he’s gobbling up his kibbles like a hungry dog. He can sit his sneaky ass in the pet carrier until I’m done collecting another load and cleaning out the fridge.

When I got home (HOME!!) on Tuesday evening, Chris wasn’t back yet from his guitar lesson, and the Corvaire wasn’t in the garage. And the one cat we’d managed to collect on Monday wasn’t anywhere in the house. I cracked a Negra Modelo, sliced some lime and squished it into the bottle neck. Drank half of it, then set about searching for the whiny cat that everybody but me loves. Nothing. And where was my errant husband, due home by 5:45, and here it is 7:00? And Lila running outside and down the driveway every five minutes while I tried to make dinner? The cell rings, it’s Chris, and he’s exactly where I suspected he’d be (and on an easier day? exactly where I’d encourage him to be) at his friend D’s house in town, having a beer. This is the friend who lives right down the street from the shop, where Chris has often wanted to stop after work and have a beer with the guys and the wives, or two or three, but hasn’t because the drive home would be dangerous. Now the drive home takes exactly three minutes, and the fact that he can stop in for a beer or two or three is a beautiful thing. Except not this night.

He tells me they all want me to put Lila in the truck and come on down, and a dozen voices are howling in the background that they want to meet Chris’ Phantom Wife.

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Living here in this house must have been the dam in the river of life for us, because now that we’ve taken the action to move, the dam seems to have split apart, and the currents are swirling almost too fast for us to keep up.

We’ll start moving things over on Friday, but we’re only about 1/3 of the way packed. Trying to figure out how to juggle all of the different balls has turned into a logistical nightmare. I’m living by the grace of a very long list. Every day I end up driving into town to get rid of bags of things we’re purging. Sorry about that bag on the porch at the thrift store and the overstuffed donation box on Sunday, I tried to get that last one in there, but it wouldn’t fit. I promise it was some good stuff!

In between these thrift/dump runs, and Tylers’ classes, and packing, and doing 432 loads of laundry, and meal prep, and taking care of the animals, and playing with the kids, and the 25 phone calls a day, and planning for a few other big things that are coming down the pike, I’ve squeezed in hours to get things planted in the in-laws’ back yard. My head is spinning, and I feel like a crazy person who wants to kick everybody in the balls. Just because. Can somebody please come out here with a dozen bales of straw to mulch up the rows of fast-growing potatoes? The weeds are starting to catch up with the plants, and I just stand at the kitchen sink and look out at the rows turning green and think, “Huh. Wonder whose dumbass, big idea it was to plant potatoes in the middle of a MOVE? Furktard.”

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Yesterday was the kind of one step forward, two steps to the side, three steps backward Barnyard Dance day that makes me want to pluck my eyes out of my head and throw them at my kids, yelling “Do you see how much harder you are making every little thing I try to do?” But that would be gross, and irreversible, and, well, abusive I suppose, so I don’t. But Jeebus on a stick, what a day.

Every third movement was interrupted in order to flick a spider off of the slide, or to wipe the sand from between the chubby toes of the stubbornly bare feet because God Forfend the child should wear shoes outside to play in the sandbox. The teenager needed to stop my flow by ignoring me repeatedly for close to an hour when I asked him to please shut off the computer, put on some day clothes, and get his pasty winter white self outside to give me a hand with some of the heavy work. The ignoring prompted louder requesting on my part, which prompted his mumbles, groans, and snarky explanations of why he needed to stay online playing Rune Scape for the rest of the day so he could be part of the Easter Celebration going on there, and maybe become an egg.

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There’s something deeply satsifying about lifting the recycled window lids on the cold frames in the morning to shower icy, slighty sulfurous water onto the tiny sprouts, soaking their vibrant green ovals and spears. The spinach is coming on like gangbusters after a couple of sunny, but cold days, and the only thing I’m not seeing any of yet is the cilantro, which I forgot to soak first. I’m thinking another four weeks and we’ll be enjoying a rich array of sweet and spicy greens. I’m looking forward to the particular energy that comes from eating something that grew right outside the kitchen door.

The cold frames are the last thing I attend to in my new late-morning routine of hauling a bucket of feed and some scratch, along with whatever kitchen scraps I’ve put aside, out to the chicken tractor. The girls are starting to circle around when they hear me coming, instead of flapping in distress and trampling one another in their slightly retarded race for the corners. It’s a wonder they didn’t all suffocate those first weeks.

They’ve nearly done away with the grass in in the pen, so I picked up a few bales of straw today. In another day or two I’ll need to start layering it so they don’t make the run into a poopy, muddy mess.

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