I didn’t realize blight had made it this far west. I thought I was safe because I started my tomatoes from organic seed and organic soil in my basement instead of buying plants from a big box store. I was wrong.

I know this is just one of those things that happens and it’s been a ridiculously wet summer, which makes blight thrive, but every day I read another gardener’s account of bagging up their tomato and potato plants and forfeiting their gleaming jars of sauce and salsa and it feels like the plague has hit. I suppose early blight is a sort of plant black plague. I’m going to skip photos, it’s too depressing.

I’m wondering if my new lasagna bed made the plants more susceptible to the blight, and it’s time to find out if there’s anything I can do to safely treat my soil so it doesn’t recur next year. I noticed a bunch of yellowed and browned leaves in the Matt’s Wild Cherry and Cosmonaut Volkovs last night, so it’s just a matter of time before my entire tomato crop is wasted. I should probably pull my potatoes immediately, too.

Oh, this gardening year has been the worst ever and I’m pitching a little fit in my heart. Can you feel me stomping my feet? I started off with such high hopes! Most of my beds were prepared for spring planting in the fall and I got so much in the ground early. Then I went away and the ground hogs and rabbits moved in. Now blight, which means I lost eighty percent of my summer crops. Sigh.

I guess it’s a good lesson in attachment. I’ve come to identify myself so strongly with my gardens and things are percolating under the surface of the community that is leading me towards work in gardening. I’m a little bit worried that this season just proves I haven’t got what it takes. But only a little bit worried. I can shoot out the other side of that black tunnel of fear into the stupid blinding light of my list of things to do to prevent the same scene next year. Buried fences. Soil amendments. Crop rotation. You just move forward or you stop, right?

I’m not going to give detailed voice to how much I want to stop at this moment. Amen for the winter. In past years I’ve said that — meaning how nice it is to give my body a rest. Gardening at this scale is a lot of physical work. But now? Now I’m simply hopeful that winter will heal my blighted heart and bring me back to the place of loving my garden again. At the moment, I’m thinking a bulldozer might be the answer. Double sigh.

I feel so bad for the farmers that are losing their cash crops. I’m just missing out on a freezer full of marinara and a pantry self of salsa. I can still go buy tomatoes from a u-pick (as long as they don’t also have blight). Yes, I was counting on my crops for winter. Losing 280 foot row of shelling beans when the beans were *just* about ready for the first picking, to the furry little f*ckers has put me in a space of no mercy. But I can buy beans. They won’t taste as good and I’ll spend money I don’t want to spend, but I have the option.

I don’t know, you guys. Something about this season feels like an alarm sounding. Guess I’d better make my list and get to work.

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I planted raspberry canes in one of the six beds over in my mother in-law’s yard our first summer here (has it really been three years?) but as with everything over there, they didn’t get enough sun. This spring I dug them up and moved them to a very sunny spot on the side of the front porch along with a dozen other new canes and they’re looking great. They remind me that it’s sometimes difficult for some of us to adapt to transplanting. That sometimes it’s hard to find the exact right combination of elements needed to help someone grow and thrive. Sometimes we have to try a lot of things to figure out what doesn‘t work first.

Like me. Since moving from New York to Ohio I have needed to try a lot of things to find what makes me grow and thrive. Some of those things made my roots so dry they couldn’t take in any nutrients at all, and they shaded me so much that I produced no fruit.

But all of this trying has made me dizzy and I feel starved for some sense of success. Looking back at all of this transplanting from idea to idea, I see that I’m a great starter, but lose interest quickly. I fall down on the follow-through. I love to take the spark of an idea and flesh out all of the details in my mind and sometimes on paper, but rarely manage to take the bigger ones through to implementation. I don’t even want to tell you how many domain names I’ve purchased in the last five years, all with nebulous business ideas attached to them.

I want to know why.

I’m tired of waving my hand and dismissing myself with the same old phrases:

I get distracted too easily.

I’m still discovering what I want to do when I grow up.

I don’t think the story I’ve always told myself is the whole story. It goes a lot deeper than that and I think I’m ready to start digging. Our situation demands that I pick up the psychic shovel and push. I don’t want to keep spinning my wheels like this forever and I have this idea that I think is viable and sustainable and that gets me excited every time I open up my spread sheet to add more information to my plan.

But I’m afraid:

That what I want to do is already done by somebody else and so much better (even if it is far away in another city or state).

That financial success will mean spiritual failure.

So I keep opening that spread sheet to add details. I have a list of people I need to call and I put off calling because of that dewy-eyed dreamer thing. But I keep adding names and numbers and my list of questions grows.

Soon.

I tell myself:

Listen…it’s only pizza. It’s not as if you want to open a hotel. It’s a truck with an oven and good, local, seasonal ingredients. It’s a few tables and a cooler and umbrellas. It’s permits and fees and taxes. It’s marketing and making. You can do this. Just do it one bit at a time. Really, now. It’s only pizza.

If I can do it? It means a part-time gig that generates an alternate and much-needed revenue stream for my family and is a nice counterbalance to the computer-intensive writing and graphic design work I also do part-time. It will allow me to participate in the incredible downtown revitalization that’s happening right now in my community.

Oh, and making it truly successful, I’ll get paid to do something I love: feed people.

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Two years ago I began to envision work that allows me to be at home, pay the bills and have plenty of time left over to manage my gardens effectively, work on my own writing and get my home and family life in order. A year ago the opportunities began to present themselves and I started taking the steps. Shortly after, it all fell apart and it’s been an upstream slog to get this new home business lifestyle working for us. I’m nowhere near close to where I want to be, but I’m facing the right direction.

Looking back over this last year, I see what looks like a million moments of me staring down yet another obstacle and feeling the fight rise up with balled fists, stamping feet and petulant whining. But I’ve managed each time, after a bit, to bow my head and look away from the sparks and stop feeding the fire, then to will and witness my feet taking another step forward.

I’ve told the story less. Sure, I’ve told it, trying to at least put a funny spin on it, acknowledge the ridiculous nature of getting caught up in this financial snowball as it hurtles downhill. Then I dealt with the emotional hangover. I don’t know if it’s just a function of age, or maybe maturity, but it gets harder and harder to process that particular brand of toxic. So I’ve become quieter, which is not an easy thing for me. I’m a bridge-maker. I fill the silence with sound and story so I don’t have to hear the wind whistling its lonely song in all the crevasses of my life.

I don’t know how to not worry that you take my quiet as a sign that I’m upset with you. Even if you never say so. So we’re there together and I don’t know what to do with the quiet or how to make small talk without pulling faces, and I tell myself to shhhh, keep my own counsel, it’s OK to just be quiet. Until it’s not and maybe you ask a question, so I mention the lack of pay, or the renters moving out. And we’re off and running and my stomach begins to churn and here we go back to the start again.

We’re skating along here. Nothing has stabilized and the phone rings 50 times a day because the bank would like some money. But they’re not going to get it unless they let us sell the house for less than what we owe, and so we dance.

I work every day on envisioning and opportunities pop up –some days two or three. Many are volunteer. Some with potential for pay down the road. All are related to building a local food economy and educating people about sustainable practices. They’re all projects I feel passionate about, but there are only so many hours in the day, and as one new friend said “you can’t feed your family altruism.”

So I ask for more clarity. I write in an effort to find it. I listen to the thumpity thump of my heart and continue to meet with new people. I speak less and listen more. I work on trying not to finish these people’s thoughts for them when they pause and I fail because oh, how my ego wants to bridge every gap.

But here’s what I bring myself back to every day when the panic sets in: I’m finding my tribe. I’m opening myself to Ohio and Ohio is unfurling her Buckeye leaves and presenting me with all her hope and beauty. There are people here who want to do good work. They’re inviting me to step out on the road with them.

How can I see that happening and not believe that what I want is possible?

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So after I read her post and followed a few of the links, I was thinking how cool it is that Lila enjoys working in the garden with me, and how at her school (the lab school on campus) all of the kids love the school garden. I wondered how difficult it would be for schools to take that partnership model and apply those principals and reap the same rewards by partnering with a local farm stand, green market or farmers’ market. Our region’s challenge is the short growing season and lining that up with when school is in session, but there’s enough overlap for some arrangement to come to fruition. I intend to bring this idea to the table at our first Haymaker Farmers’ Market board meeting. There’s got to be a way the market can build a healthy relationship with our area children and their schools. And maybe as our market grows into its new incarnation, we can hire Lisa
to visit and do a training on her fantastic Sprouts at the Market Program.

Another idea is to have that fun family night out at a restaurant or cafe that makes local and sustainable business choices. That one’s much harder to come by in our community, as I’m sure it is in many others–none of our restaurants work with local producers or growers. But I believe that the tide is shifting and that the sea change is heading our way. I have heard several people talking about food service businesses they would like to open in Kent–from cafés to coffee shops to coffee roasters, and all of them have used phrases like locally produced, organic, local farms, and sustainable.

We also have a group of young families in our town who are interested in working together on various environmental projects. One of them is to bring healthier foods into the public school system. They’re looking at the elementary level because their children are just entering the system this year and they’re already shocked by what passes for lunch. Many of them are vegetarian or vegan, and they grow some of their own foods already. They frequent the area farmers’ markets and health food co-op, and buy memberships in a growing number of CSAs. They’re finding that their children’s first exposure to unhealthy food is happening in the school system and they’re not happy about it…not happy at all. It sounds like they might just have the energy needed to agitate for change.

One of the moms is organizing a meeting for interested families with the help of the Kent Environmental Council. The purpose of this meeting is to figure out areas of interest for environmental projects and then set up task groups and action plans. The school lunch thing is one, another is cooperative gardening in neighborhoods to share food and possibly sell at market, as well as donate a portion of each harvest to the area shelters.

I know it can take a long time to make big changes in systems that are so firmly and deeply entrenched in old ways. But I’m encouraged to hear that so many people are putting their attention on the problem and are looking for ways they can begin to chip away at it in their own neighborhoods. I’m thrilled to see it happening in my neighborhood. I believe the more voices that join together, the more likely we’ll be heard; the more hands that pick up tools, the more likely we’ll build the world we want.

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I’m currently enjoying the benefits of having so little work last fall that I was able to clean up and amend the garden beds to ready them for spring planting. Sure, back then I didn’t think of it as a benefit, and I thought so even less when we ran out of money a couple of months ago because of that dearth of work. But it’s all a matter of framing, isn’t it? We’re getting back on track with our finances and creating new work paradigms for ourselves, and have the double bonus of being able to eat out of the gardens before we know it.

I mean, seriously, I started my spring planting at the end of February. I’ve never done that before and am amazed at how much is popping out of the soil. After two days of heavy rains, the sun is shining–though briefly, because more storms are rolling in–and the whole world has turned green.

The above photo shows my handy work with trellising for the peas (sugar snap, snow, English shelling) to climb in one of the many garden beds. After the peas are done, I’ll use those rigs for the cucumber varieties I’m planting this year (pickling, lemon, Mexican sour Gherkin, Japanese climbing). They’ll enjoy the benefit of the nitrogen injected soil from the peas and I’ll hopefully make it out the other end of this growing season with many jars of pickles. Oh, how I miss my pickles.

See in the top left corner of that photo? That’s Chris putting the finishing touches on the cold frame he started for me back when we lived at the other house. We really do tend to drag our projects out interminably. Sigh. I’d like to give the wood a cheerful paint job. Maybe a deep red and bright, Mediterranean blue. Check in with me in five years to see if it’s done.

Since I snapped that picture last Friday, the taller trees are still working on their bud formation, but the understory is leafing out and weaving a vibrant green scrim around the edges of the property. In another month or so we’ll be back to feeling more private here. I love this time of year when the landscape begins to ruffle its feathers and fill out after the long winter of gray and brown and all sharp edges.

I planted some green and purple spring bunching onions this year, and seeing their thin stalks pushing through the soil gives me hope. If they can make it through the trial of cold and wet and more cold this Ohio spring has wrought, then so can I. And I am. I definitely am. Even if on this Earth Day, it’s raining and snowing. Snowing! Not sticking, but Maude, there is snow falling out of the sky again.

But, see how those little shoots reach for the light and then take it in and hold it so they’re glowing with the sun’s heartbeat? I’m doing that too. I’m finding the yes when life gives me what I normally identify as a no. Kate Braveheart reminds me that no points me in the direction of a new, better yes.

In recent months, the grip of no has tightened its angry fist around my entire life. Chris and I have had to stop together, and individually, to face the situations we created with work and money, until we could find new action. That’s felt like facing a blank wall that stretches for miles in every direction. Even though I’m terrified of the dark, it helped to turn out the lights, to sit in the black unknowing, facing the wall with our eyes and hearts open until we saw bits of light shining through cracks.

Putting insight into action is easier than I imagined. Sure, I had to speak around the lump of pumping flesh that is my heart lodged in my throat, but I spoke. Work and money are flowing to me now, and from several sources. Chris’ issues with the shop are a little slower moving, but there are more players. Still, they’re taking steps daily and the story is changing.

I’ve grown to think of hope as a noxious weed in the garden of my life, yet one of those plants that if managed properly, has great medicinal value. It thrives when contained, trimmed and used regularly. But its shadow is hopeless/helpless, and that chokes out everything when allowed to grow with abandon.

My big lesson in recent months (years, really, but I wasn’t paying attention) is to stop undervaluing myself. I feel like these peas, growing and reaching for the strings so I can really climb. I know that I’m good at what I do and I deserve to be paid for it. Cat encouraged me along–thank you mddddf. Value can be subjective, and industry standards exist to help keep that in balance. But I’m much more likely to get what I need if I actually say it out loud.

Oh, peas! Hurry up and grow! I need you!

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This post is about the ten delicious, albeit butt-numbing hours I spent in the car by myself swimming in the sounds of these two albums by Talk, Talk: Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock. I kept them on constant loop as I coasted my way past farms and fields and trucks and tractors.

I haven’t had the opportunity to immerse myself in music like this in such a long time. I used to do it once a month or so, for five years when I lived in NY and drove out to OH for visits. Sometimes Ty rode with me, but often he stayed with his dad and I spent the 7.5 hours each way in a beautiful cocoon of sound and sight and vision, listening to a single album over and over again.

A couple of years ago, Lisa B-K sent me a video of a Talk, Talk live performance of Give It Up. I think it was this one, but there are several on the tubez…

… I loved this band in high school, but you know, synth pop–it only went so far and I lost track. I had no idea they performed like this, but I can always trust Lisa to hook me up with the real deal. Watching Mark Hollis singing as if he’s pulling the words up out of the stage beneath his feet and sending them out into the crowd with every ounce of energy in his being, well…my goodness. There are other videos from this show on youtube and I’ve turned to them repeatedly, particularly on days when I’m feeling frozen and can’t get my priorities straight. It works every time. Really, I’m going to cling to my fear and insecurity? Really? Gotta Give It UP.

The day before my trip, an old friend from high school and I were chatting on facebook about music and I sent him the link to the above, then watched the video a dozen times in a row. I wanted to hear more, so searched around in iTunes and the reviews for these two albums sold me, so I loaded up the iPod. (it’s so weird that our world is so i-branded–more and more it’s all about Me).

Listening to these two albums on this trip got my blood flowing with an energy I’ve desperately needed to feel–and my mind tumbled the usual thoughts that feel like pointy rocks, round and round, smoothing the edges with the grains of sound.

My family is in a strange and unexpected place right now (like millions of other families) and the fear is a sucking sink hole of mud that’s pulling me towards its center at every moment. It was there as I drove, looping thoughts of worry about the immediate future, the far-off future and judging decisions made in the past. So it went, my tumbling thoughts, the swirling music with a thousand layers compressing my mind into a blankness until I was nothing but the ride, rolling over miles of pavement and aware of myself moving through the landscape.

This song is the one I replayed about 432 times because it takes me from my usual place of Maybe to this whole new land that’s made of Yes. I tried to upload the mp3, but the file was too big, and this is clearly a lip sync job…but ah well..the song is the point.

But here’s the thing: nothing’s changed. I initially thought I’d be able to wrap this post up with a neat little commentary on the power of music to transform a life, but it’s more complicated than that. You see, now I want to listen to this with my headphones around the clock in order to drown out the gawping howl of fear that’s always playing in the background. But that’s just a soundtrack change, and I’ve been trying to learn to think more positively for years.

I make my action plan and set priorities and do the bloody best I can. I try to change my own song, to act as if everything is perfectly fine and abundant and I am plugged into that abundance and everything I need flows to me–and what I need isn’t always what I want, and doesn’t always feel good, and that’s OK. So I tell myself in the few quiet spaces in between.

I try not to give voice to what seems like the facts because well, maybe they’re not facts and maybe it’s an illusion that we’re no longer just inching towards foreclosure and bankruptcy, but perhaps even taking great, long-legged strides. But I fail miserably in this effort. I find myself blurting out the story at the worst possible moments and then I’m in–my legs caught in the sucking, swirling vortex. I’m nauseous, head-achy, twitchy and vibrating so hard I’m levitating.

And that’s what’s so powerful about music. I plug into that and it pulls me back out of the sink hole. It’s an IV hookup to a positive flow, giving me a much-needed transfusion.

You know what? I’m going to go get my iPod and hop in the car and drive around the back roads of Oho until I feel right again. Thanks for riding along while I ramble.

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Where was the outrage over the past hundred years as our government allowed, and encouraged through policy, the corporatization of America and much of the world? Where was the citizen outrage as much of our society (myself included) went along blindly acquiring and consuming and digging ourselves into debt? Blind sheep? Well, I feel sheepish now.

Yes, I had a few moments of fist-shaking and swearing at the bobble-heads, but now I’m firmly stuck up to my knees in the mud of my own making. I put on boots first, thank goodness, and am working at changing my own little world, right here, right now, shovel in hand.

Seriously. Screw “the news”. I want to read and hear stories of people putting on their work boots and gloves and digging in to make their own little corner of this topsy-turvy world a more stable, sustainable and equitable place to live. Those stories are out there, but they won’t headline on CNN.

You’ll hear more about it at Her Albe Hands, because here in Kent, things are starting to percolate in regards to local food, urban farming, feeding the hungry and food entrepreneurship. You can bet the farm I’m digging in to that.

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What if the positive thinking folks are right, and the universe or god or whatever, takes my negative statements about money as a directive to not send me any? Counter-intuitive right? What if all of our thoughts really do move like a river around the planet, and what we put out we get more of in return? Now as our family edges closer to our own financial crisis, just like millions of other families around the world, I’m seeing that I should have been working on that mentality during the flush times.

Did you know that I have spent my whole life believing that it’s not good to make money doing what I love? That what I love is actually considered a hobby and not work, and certainly not a career, and so no, I shouldn’t be well-compensated for it. I’ve also thought that in order to earn good money, I have to spend my time doing something I hate, as a sacrifice to the money gods. Here, please, let me make myself miserable…just pay me already! And when I say *thought*, I’m talking about the thick, sludgy river of subconscious that runs beneath everything, not clear, conscious, intelligent thought.

I have been deeply embarrassed by the fact that we had enough money to pay our bills and still buy books and music and plants and dinners out without worrying our way through a balance sheet. That we could take a road trip to visit family without having to scrimp and save first. Embarrassed! Even though I earned my part of that money doing something I didn’t enjoy! Oh, my twisted little head.

All of these thoughts swirled around me in the air over the past two days as I bent over garden beds and poked, sprinkled and broadcast seeds for spring vegetables. Planting the garden feels more of an imperative now and much less of a hobby. In two months we’ll be eating spinach, lettuce, snap peas, shell peas, snow peas, broccoli raab, green garlic, and spring onions. I planted enough spinach to get some into the freezer for winter, as long as we don’t mow it down with our teeth standing over the garden beds. Right now I can picture myself sitting in the sun, my giant stainless mixing bowl perched on my lap, overflowing with a spinach salad topped with soft boiled egg, bacon and sugar snaps; drizzled with vinaigrette. Drool.

Planting and raking and turning over soil helped me get back into my body and out of the panic frequency that is the current river of humanity. I can feel it tugging at my ankles, but I made it to the shore and I’m staying there. I can’t afford to go floating off in the eddies, to let the current take me out into the deep and dark. I have work to do.

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