Meditative Ritual

The wedges, the four of them, were beaten and battered front and rear. Before anything else, they needed to be made right.

The four were more or less identical three pound splitting wedges. Three of them have been around since forever; I don't know where they originally came from. The fourth one I found on the side of the road last year; I literally reached down and picked it up while stuck in stop-and-go traffic on Beast.

They all exhibited a certain degree of mushrooming. The mushrooming is the main focus of my efforts. I remember a few decades ago, splitting with a mushroomed wedge and a sledge hammer on a cool Vermont fall day. There was pinging sound, and I felt a sting in my bicep. There I found a hot chip of steel, hooked with a little barb, stuck in my skin. I was lucky; people have been killed by flying bits of wedge shrapnel.

So I grabbed the hand grinder and set to work. Four objects, four facets, four edges, two facets. A section of log served as the workbench; my workpiece was held in place by another wedge and braced by my foot. A spray of orange sparks splashed faintly across the log and my shoe in the brilliant fall sunlight.

The deformed metal slowly burned away, transformed into a hundred thousand tiny grains of oxide hanging on the air. The facets of the wedge slowly reemerged as brilliant gleaming silver planes, intersecting as crisp sharp angles. When the facets were all plane, I ground the corners away, leaving gently rounded intersections less prone to deformation and mushrooming.

Grind, turn, grind, turn, grind. The world around me disappears, focusing down to the intersection of a rapidly rotating abrasive wheel, a three pound chunk of steel, a spray of orange sparks, the desired geometry. The hazard of deformation reduced, utility can be addressed.

A splitting wedge does not have or need a cutting edge, like an ax. It works by separating wood fibers; it is less effective if it cuts those fibers instead. But, a blunt edge will not make that first bite into the end grain; it will take more effort and more time. So some edge is desirable, and unlike the reshaping of the deformed metal at the blunt end, restoring the narrow end takes but a pass or two with the grinder.

Deformation removed, edges restored, the wedges are returned to their original form. I take them inside, scrub them down, and warm them over the stove to thoroughly dry them. I then repaint the sides a bright red to make them stand out in the litter and clutter of a woodyard, where the native dull color of steel seems to blend right into the background.

Four objects, four facets, four edges, two facets. Meditation done, now the work can begin.


 

When Things Come Together

It's nice when things come together. Like when the shortest and quickest route from Point A to Point B also happens to be the preferred route.

I'm somewhere in Research Triangle, which I guess is where research mysteriously disappears, or something. I am here for a couple of days to learn something, and because it is relatively nearby, it made sense to drive rather than fly. The time driving to and from the airport, getting through security, waiting at the airport, renting a car at the other airport, then reversing the process less than three days later would be more productively applied to driving.

I say this because I have always enjoyed driving as a pastime, and consider time on the road an opportunity to experience something different. It is productive, and to have the opportunity to meld a business trip with a mild adventure was too good to pass by. In this instance, I had the opportunity to trace a "Blue Highways" route from nearly one end to the other, and a great deal of the trip was over terra incognito,  a transect of my home state I had never seen any of before—a double bonus.

The first hour-and-a-half was pleasant and familiar, covering well-known roads and terrain. Following that, indulging in a little map-less, GPS-less, directions-less dead reckoning offered me the opportunity to get mildly lost and explore some rutted and sinuous dirt roads, more pothole and washboard than road proper. Eventually, I was reunited with my intended route, a minor, two-lane state highway,

I saw hidden gems like the town of Scottsville, (pop. 566) on the James River; skirted Willis Mountain, which has been gnawed away by years of mining the kyanite it contains to feed the spark plug industry, a field somewhere in between with a flock of forty wild turkeys blissfully browsing in the early morning light, and not much later a field with a scattering of bison quietly grazing like clenched fists. All this transpired beneath a November sky of increasing overcast and mood.

Willis Mountain, in the distance

The thing about taking a "Blue Highway" route is that you're never more than a few feet from people's lives. For better or worse, you are witness to ten thousand silent vignettes, snapshots of the endless variety of the human condition. In a brief moment you witness and absorb joy, bliss, sorrow, despair...and then they are all gone, replaced by some other moment of insight into another world.

The road, mostly two-laned, rolled southward through deep hollows and ravines of the piedmont resplendent with the yellow-orange cloak of hickories, oaks and beech, then onto more gently rolling hills given to fieldcrops and pasture. Round bales in abundance; fields of some undetermined cover crop, bleached gray by the frost but still standing. The farther south the road ran, the more the land alongside it was given to plantations of pine and clearcuts now grown back with a low understory of riotous autumn colors, as if to compliment the pumpkin-orange clay.

Roads like this are not the arteries of our world anymore; they're not even the arterioles. They're more like capillaries, essential in aggregate but no one in particular is indispensable—but to those whose lives revolve around and are connected directly to them.

I would contrast this route of choice with my alternative, the first choice of Google Maps and Garmin alike—the inevitable interstate corridor, in this case I-95 and I-85. While the "Blue Highway" places you squarely in the middle of people's lives, what you can observe from the interstate highway is generally determined by those who want to be seen. It is a calculated, calculating, deliberate effort to shape and present a very narrowly tailored message to a specific audience. There is no spontaneity within it, there is no humanity in it, there is no serendipity in it. It is commerce, reduced to lowest terms. You can assume that you are being lied to, in one form or another, when you see something from the interstate. When people live in close proximity to an interstate, they try and screen themselves and their lives off from it, to maintain a modicum of privacy.

There is no need for this screening from the "Blue Highway," because there is no dichotomy between inside and outside; the highway is a part of their life.

In a couple of days, I will retrace my route, perhaps with a few minor tweaks learned from my southbound passage, hopefully with enough time to make a stop in Scottsville. I'm looking forward to it, as much as i looked forward to today's trip.

I saw so much.

Addendum:

• The bleached gray crop was soybeans. I know this because at one point I pulled over on the shoulder and walked to the edge of a field, where I bent down and snapped off a branch from a plant. The leaves were completely wilted but the pods and the stems remained intact, giving a very odd look to the whole thing.
• I filled the tank in the middle of nowhere, for $2.99 a gallon...full service. Yep, Full Service. Who knew? My receipt was hand-written on a receipt pad made from yellowing newsprint. It might just be the only full service station outside of N.J. 
• What is it with company trips and Bald Eagles? I'm driving down a divided highway, and an oncoming car spooks a juvenile bald eagle from the median with something in its beak/talons. I slammed on the brakes and pulled to the shoulder; it flew up and circled above the road long enough for me go get a good look at it but not long enough for me to get a picture. Amazing.
• On the way down, I came around a bend in the road and had to slow down sharply for a woman crossing the road from the mailbox to a small business. On the way home...I came around the reciprocal bend, and had to slow down for the same woman (hairdo) crossing the same road from the same mailbox to the same business. How odd is that?
• What is it with company trips and bison/buffalo? 

  

  Yep. Those are buffaloes. Or bisons. 

• Scottsville is a gem of a little town. I had no idea that places like that existed in Virginia. Lunch at the Tavern on the James was amazing. Enjoyed chatting with Tom at James River Brewing about where they are now and where they're heading. I will definitely be seeing more of Scottsville in the future.

Cattle Egret

A few days ago, we were driving through the county to visit our friend's little dairy, when something moving off in the distance caught our attention.

It was a bird, brilliant white in the low-slanting sunlight of the morning, flying gracefully and purposefully towards the northwest. Both its brightness and it's flight pattern were distinctive, but at such a distance we had a difficult time identifying it. As we arrived, it flew behind the crest of the hill and disappeared.

As we went about our business at the dairy, my curiosity got the better of me. After asking permission—of course—I unchained the twin metal gates and quietly as I could, entered the adjoining field. Securing the gate behind me, I walked cross-country slowly and deliberately through the field, among the dozens of cows and calf grazing there, towards the crest, scanning the horizon as I went for any sign of the bird.

As I reached the ridge, there was a flash of white downhill to my left. There the bird stood in all its brilliance. It was tall and elegant, and as best I could see, pure white from wingtip to wingtip and head to tail. It moved with great poise and consideration through the russet grasses, plucking seeds and insects as it went. It studied its surroundings with great care and diligence, and seemed utterly serene.

From time to time, it would take flight for a few yards, moving to a new patch of grass to feed. And when it arrived in a new location, it paid no attention to the residents in place—calf, cow, steer or border collie. It simply went about its business with great focus. At one point, a calf, seemingly annoyed by the bird, charged it and ran after it for a few yards; the bird simply flew just a few feet ahead of the calf until it tired of the effort. It did the same for the border collie, who seemed to feel this avian intruder was not showing the proper respect.

But in a few minutes, the most amazing thing occurred. The same tan calf (or an identical looking one) slowly moved closer to the bird. For a brief moment, the two stood motionless, face-to-face, addressing one another. "There is no veil."

Then they simply went about their respective businesses.

It turns out the bird was a Cattle Egret, not common to this area, but not unknown. We are on the edge of their natural range. They are well known for their commensal relationship with livestock, feeding on insects drawn to and stirred up by the livestock. The livestock neither particularly benefit from, nor are harmed by, their presence. They seem to have no natural distrust for the animals surrounding them that dwarf them, but instead get along with them in an admirable display of neighborliness.

Its graceful flight, brilliant plumage and regal, assured presence made the Cattle Egret one of the most impressive birds I have ever seen in person. I'm very glad I decided to take that little walk into the field to see what I could see.

Road To Kilmarnock

On a cold gray November morning, I am driving to Kilmarnock, a small town at the distal end of Virginia's Northern Neck. The neck is bounded by the Potomac on the north and the Rappahanock on the south; at its tip is the Chesapeake. The land is mostly flat sandy farmland punctuated with rich stands of pine and long walls of grey-brown oaks with their leaves around their ankles. The spine of the Northern Neck is a long, low dwindling ridge breaking the flatness and adding some twistiness to the roads. Soybeans are being harvested today by giant John Deere combines; corn is long gone from the fields, leaving only the rough stubble of its stalks behind.

I travel Route 3, a state highway that begins in the Piedmont at Culpeper, crosses the Fall line at Fredericksburg before meandering down the coastal plain and ending in Gloucester. It waxes and wanes on its way to the waterside, first four lanes, then two, then four again so many times over that it's hard to keep track. I note that every time it dwindles to two lanes, the driver ahead prefers to drive at least ten miles below the speed limit. This phenomena, and the astonishing length of the Northern Neck—after a short time driving, I reach what I assume to be the midpoint. It is not; I still have almost an hour and a half ahead of me—contributes to my sense of having been driving for ever and that I will never, ever, reach Kilmarnock.

I was wise to leave my arrival time vague.

A few miles shy of Kilmarnock, I crest a gentle rise and see in the distance a figure walking on the shoulder amid the wind-blown leaves. Though he is walking determinedly, with his back to me, I can tell by his posture he is hitchhiking. As if in confirmation, he hears my approach and turns to stick out his thumb. I have already changed lanes and begun to slow down.

He trots along the shoulder to where I have stopped. (I am always glad when hitchhikers do that; there is nothing more infuriating that a dawdling hitchhiker.) The front seat is full of a jumble of things, so I reach back and open the rear door so there will be no confusion. I am slightly embarrassed for making him ride in the back, but there is only so much...

He ducks in gratefully, trailing a nimbus of stale cigarette smoke behind him. He extends a scarred and calloused hand for me to shake, and thanks me profusely for stopping. I run through the obligatory preliminaries—how long you been out there, how far you heading, and so on, and find myself pleased that though my long and arduous trek to Kilmarnock is nearly done, I am still going just far enough to get him to his destination.

He tells me his story.

He is a plasterer. Not a drywall man, but a real plasterer. He was called out to a job first thing this morning and hitched there, but the lead was called off to another site and there was nothing for him to do. So he is heading home late in the morning, not a dime richer and hoping tomorrow will work out better. I surmise a lifetime of working with alkali is responsible for the condition of his hands.

“We're working on an older hoese, maybe from the 1830's. The original lintels over the windows were made of plaster, but they've rotted oat over the years. Instead of rebuilding them with plaster, we're building them up from cement. The final finish we'll do with plaster, so they look right.” 

“The hoese has walls that are two feet thick, ceilings ten, twelve feet high. The lintels themselves are eight feet up, so everything we do, we gotta do from either up on a stepladder or on scaffolding. It's tough. And there are a lot of windows...” he trailed off and gestured out the window. We had arrived. 

He exits the car and thanks me once again. I had spent four, maybe five minutes with him, and it was like stepping back into the 18th century; his trade, his description of his work, his self-reliant demeanor, his generous attitude. But mostly his ancient Virginia accent, with its distinctive bending of vowels that still maintains here and there, mostly in those low places close to the saltwater. It is the still-living language of the English who came here sometime between the founding of the country and the Civil War, and it is beautiful to hear it being spoken in a land where we have lost almost all marks of regional distinction.

Really glad I stopped. No idea why I did.

Also: This timely piece.

Our Thanksgiving Benediction

In lieu of saying grace or offering a blessing, we shared this quote as we all sat together for our Thanksgiving meal:

"Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend."

— Wendell Berry

Denouement

Last Saturday was a denouement of our grand poultry adventure, as one of the chosen got to spend the day luxuriating in the poultry hot tub in a bath fragrant with pepper, rosemary, thyme, oregano and some other odds-and-ends.

This one fairly small bird yielded up over half a pint of brilliant yellow fat we skimmed and saved for later. We added some finely chopped celery and onion to the pot poultry hot tub, finished it off with a small measure of egg noodles, and finally dined on our very first home-raised chicken.

As would be expected from a hen at the end of a long laying career, she was dense and solid. The meat was rather tough, even after her long sojourn in the crockpot poultry hot tub, and her fully mineralized bones were held together by unyielding ligaments. In my haste to prepare her, I neglected to check her weight, so I have no idea how big she was. But the two of us will have two meals from her, the dogs will have some savory and crunchy treats to brighten their days, and there's still that golden chicken fat to be used...

They say the trick to eating animals you have raised and lived with for an extended time is to fully acknowledge their sacrifice (in both meanings of the term) and to use them completely and with respect. I would say we strived for all of these objectives, and met most of them fully.

No doubt about it—we enjoyed eating this bird.

The Great Beveragepalooza of 2009

My great expectations for a day-long roofing-fest were cruelly dashed by the carcass of Tropical Storm Ida, who waited until mid-November—MID-NOVEMBER—to come die on us. It started raining Tuesday night and rained and rained and rained straight on through into Thursday morning. So, no roofing for us!

But a cold grey rainy day laid the groundwork for The Great Beveragepalooza of 2009. It was a day-long campaign during which we managed to bottle fifteen gallons of hard cider and create a 2009 vintage apple wine. The process by which we made the apple wine was as convoluted as anything we’ve done—so convoluted it makes my head hurt to even think about it—so let me see if I can even remember the whole thing:

1. We gathered the dregs from four carboys worth of hard cider and set them aside.
2. Set aside one gallon of scrumpy from the six-gallon carboy.
3. Warmed up about 4-1/2 quarts of raw sweet cider (from the fridge) to room temperature, stirring vigorously with a whisk to aereate it thoroughly.
4. Warmed another quart of raw sweet cider enough to dissolve about 2 pounds of local honey in it, along with about ½ teaspoon of yeast nutrient.
5. Poured the dregs in the 2-1/2 gallon carboy; added both batches of sweet cider; topped it off with most of the gallon of scrumpy.

The initial gravity was in the neighborhood of 1.095, and with so many warm fat happy yeasties feasting on such a sugar-rich solution, the carbon dioxide output was almost immediate and phenomenal—one long stream of bubbles out the airlock even though the liquid volume is half that of a regular carboy. It’s about the ugliest stuff you’ve ever seen at this point, but in about a week it should calm a bit and get prettier, and once it’s racked, it can settle down for a nice long slow maturation process. I’m looking forward to it, anticipating a final ABV of about 10% with a dry finish. The question remains: Still or sparkling? Both?

The other benefit of The Great Beveragepalooza of 2009 is we now have four carboys freed up! Even anticipating the cider pressing to come when the gang is here for Thanksgiving, that still leaves us room to finally brew beer again! Woo-Hoo! Many, many good brewing ideas have been held in abeyance whilst the cider did its thing, and now it’s finally time to cry havoc! and let slip the yeasts of beer…

Awesome.

Tear The Roof Off The Sucker/Give Up The Funk

Those of you who know our little house in the woods know that it's got a lot of roof. It also has a lot of holes punched in that roof, for chimneys and skylights and vents of one kind or another. This is a large part of the appeal of the house, because it makes it very bright and sunny and cheerful and airy, a pleasant change from the rather dim and close house we lived in for so long.

It also leaks like a sieve, mostly in one particular room. It leaks so much in a steady or heavy rain that we simply leave the buckets in place all the time, like some backwoods hayseeds from a depression-era comedy. Following each rain, we would judge the quantity and quality of the "Roof Tea" we had brewed, evaluating the depth and color in each bucket. But enough is enough—there was only one thing to do:

Tear The Roof Off The Sucker. Give Up The Funk.

Starting the afternoon of Halloween, Mary began to—well, tear the roof off the sucker. With a shovel. At the West End. Assisted by Colonel Mustard with a lead pipe, if I recall correctly. And once the roof was torn off the sucker, then we could give up the funk, which has flourished funkily in the dark, damp confines of the rafters and roof decking. Sodden insulation was dragged out to reveal the progress of the decay...eccch.

It was pretty disgusting. Whole sections of the roof superstructure were completely rotted away (the load bearing portion of the roof, protected below, remained intact and sound, mercifully) along with the boards above them. At the west end, the rotten materials were replaced by sound new plywood and 2-bys, and in short order Mary had the new roof in place, with the guidance and assistance of our neighbor, the erstwhile roofer.

Now the living room roof is getting its due. The three of us spent half of Saturday and most of Sunday doing demolition and reframing the roof, giving up the funk—actually, bleaching the living hell out of the funk—then adding fresh R-30 fiberglass, piecing together the new plywood roof decking, and framing in the new skylights. BTW: After years of pooh-pooing them, I can unequivocally say I am a believer in pneumatic nailers.

Who would have imagined it would be possible to break a sweat and get sunburned in mid-November? By late Sunday morning, the air temperature was in the upper sixties, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the humidity was low, and the sun was dazzlingly intense. By sundown Sunday, all the bad stuff had been excised, the new roof was sound and completely enclosed and the skylights were in place. Sunday after dark, we made a huge bonfire of all the rotten old stuff and sent it off to a better place, where there is no funk and the sun shines perpetually.

Mary spent this afternoon tearing off more old roofing and getting the sound old roof deck ready for the new stuff. With any luck, she can start applying the substrate (ice & water barrier, something like tar paper or rool roofing, but adhesive and better than both) to the exposed surfaces tomorrow and have the new structure protected before a change of weather predicted for sometime Wednesday. Hey, with any luck and three of us working at it, we'll have the new shingles in place before the change of weather.

Hot damn. Can't wait for that first real rain after the new roof is on! No more roof tea for us!

Last of the Season?

I stopped off in the Big Effer last night on the way home to take care of a couple of errands. In the grocery store I noticed a weathered man, within a few years of my age, pushing a large backpack around in his grocery cart, gathering a few compact necessities. In the cart with the pack was a long and worn hiking staff.

When I was done shopping, he was out front of the store reworking the contents of his pack to accommodate his new provisions, carefully removing extraneous packaging and delicately repacking everything in just the right place. I nodded to the man and we exchanged pleasantries, and I walked across the parking lot to the drugstore. I took a wild guess he was heading back to the AT trail crossing on the ZTH.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I saw him hiking up the shoulder of the road a short distance away. He would extend his thumb in a desultory manner as each car passed him by, so he appeared genuinely surprised when I pulled over in a driveway behind him.

He quickly confirmed that he was, indeed, heading to the trailhead with a fresh load of groceries, and shucked the bulky pack with a practiced grace. We loaded it into the back seat—trunk full of crap—and he politely asked if I would prefer he rode in back with it.

For some reason, that struck me as very funny, and I walked over and unlocked the passenger side for him. Aside from his obviously being a heavy smoker (yeah, what a surprise...not that uncommon for hikers, from what I've found) he was acceptable company. We drove the short distance to the trailhead tentatively, with a couple of false stops before finding the right place—I can never remember exactly where it is, and neither, apparently, can the hikers.

His story, in brief, was that he had departed Delaware Water Gap on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border in September, heading southbound. He planned to hike as far south as he could before winter set in, find a place to stay for the winter, and return to Delaware Water Gap to begin hiking northbound in the spring.

We pulled over at the now-familiar looking trailhead. The early November sun had dipped below the Blue Ridge while we were both still back at the store. Twilight was already beginning to fade in the few minutes it took us to reach the road crossing, and the air was cooling rapidly from a mild autumnal chill down towards the mid-twenties it would reach by morning.

Without delay, we got out and unloaded his pack from the back seat. He thanked me profusely for my kindness, shook my hand enthusiastically, and hefted his pack onto his back. He was encouraged by the unexpected head-start I had given him, and though the light was failing, I reminded him the full moon would rise in short order.

He paused to tell me about the beauty and wonder of hiking the last few miles into last night’s shelter by the light of the moon, then smiled, thanked me again, and set off briskly down the trail into the cold dark woods. Part of me envied him his journey. There aren’t that many long-distance hikers left on the AT come November; besides the peace and solitude, the bare trees and crisp cold air would offer scenery unimaginable during the warmer months.

But the bigger part of me couldn’t help but think how cold it was going to get up on the mountain by morning, and how far it is to Springer Mountain.

Orders of Magnitude

A while back, I confessed to dispatching two black snakes who had been harassing our chickens. I threw the limp lifeless body of one snake into the tall grass at the edge of the woods, in order for it to be assimilated by the various and sundry woodland decomposers whose job it is to make such things right.

A few days later, I was walking up the driveway towards the pines when I was startled by a commotion to my left. Out of the deep grasses and scrub a turkey buzzard rose majestically and swooped across the driveway and garden. It grabbed great fistsful of air with its pinions, pulling itself into the sky with unimaginable power and grace, slowly gaining speed and altitude until it disappeared above the pines to the north.

I peered into the grasses from where this pterosaur had launched, and found what looked like a tiny scrap of frayed rope—the few remains of the snake, picked clean of flesh and skin. What the bird with a wingspan greater than my armspan found for sustenance in that tiny morel, and how it discovered it in the first place, astonished me.

The next afternoon, we sat quietly in the front yard, enjoying a leisurely afternoon in the warm sun. All at once, there was a commotion, and a turkey buzzard once again rose from the tall grasses, taking the same trajectory. But something amazing happened: The buzzard flushed a pileated woodpecker from a nearby oak tree, and in its haste, it followed a parallel trajectory with the buzzard. (Normally, a pileated woodpecker is one of the largest birds you will see in the woods, with a two-foot wingspan and a distinctive flight pattern—it is majestic and beautiful with its distinctive brilliant red-white-black plumage). And at the same instance, just before our faces, a few yards away, a ruby-throated hummingbird hovered in mid-flight:

So for one split second, all in the same line of sight, at the same instant—a turkey buzzard, a pileated woodpecker, and a ruby-throated hummingbird.

And they were gone.

The fall garden (200-?)

Fall is the most compelling time in the garden. In place of the long, gentle unwinding and developing that characterizes the warm season, the open ended nature of growth, there is an end. Fall brings completion, finality, conclusion. Whether it comes in the guise of fruition and harvest, fading falling blossoms, or the abrupt discipline of the first killing frost, fall ends the expansion that drives the garden.

Look to the garden then, to see how fall expresses itself. Look at the haggard tomatoes, so recently bold and dominant lording a green canopy over all else. Now they stand exhausted, yellowing foliage dripping, desperately struggling to bring a last faint blush to their resolutely green fruit.

See the lone pumpkin, no gold yet lighting its cheek, looming dark green and glossy. It sits alone, isolated, abandoned by its vine during a hasty retreat. Yet to be decided is whether it has a use or not; it may be left to rot as it sits.

The ranks of peppers stand, drooping, weighted down by scores of fruit camoflaged in the deep green leaves. They mimic the twisted posture of old men loaded with cares and devoid of hope. Like the nearby tomatoes, they hasten to bring a last few fruit to ripeness before they are struck down. Loaded as they are, their future seems unlikely—the hand of the gardener will take all they bear, unformed and immature as they may be, to ripen or rot inside.

The barren and dessicated cornstalks stand, bolder in their death than their living compatriots. They stand tall and proud over the garden, bleached by the sun.

Look past the towering failures; look low, down and see the plants that prosper even as the frost surely approaches. These are the modest plants that have yet to take their place in the season's bounty, yet they will, long after the others have rotted and been turned under.

Row after row, where the towering titans of summer have departed, stand the small, inconspicuous grey plants.

Today

I butchered five of our chickens.

Addendum: Apparently I can't count. I butchered four of our chickens. Spicy remains.