What one Montana shipping company did with an abandoned load of tropical plants. Hanser’s donates cargo from crashed truck to Rescue Mission.
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Category Archives: small town life
Overheard at a Party Sunday Night
“The only person I ever heard call Mr. Wright Frank, was Carl Sandburg …”
Gearing up for spring
It’s raining today — a nice soft spring rain, so I took the poor scraggly herbs from the Winter Herb Garden and put them outside the back door. The rosemary seemed particularly crunchy, but it did it’s job — it didn’t die. The thyme has been remarkably successful — the last few weeks it’s been sending out delicious little soft green shoots.
I also got my act together last weekend and organized my seeds. As you can see — my “system” is nothing fancy. A couple of cheap bins from Pamida and a paper bag — but by the end of any garden season they’re a mess — some are in the basket with the cheapo tongue depressor/craft sticks that I use for garden markers (easy to write on with a sharpie, and they compost nicely), some wind up on the seed starting shelves, some sleeves were empty, in general, it was all a mess. So I went through and got everything organized by type — tomatoes, greens, herbs, cucumbers, beans, peppers, etc. Some people organize by planting order, but that’s too daunting and frankly, feels a little constricting. I know the spinach and broccoli rabe will go in first, but I’m never entirely sure beforehand what I’m going to put in next. So there we are — ready to start seeds this weekend or next, and ready to put some early cold crops in the garden beds.
I don’t have a picture of those, but they’re starting to shape up. I loved the straw mulch I used last year, but it had a lot of seeds in it so there’s all sorts of wheat growing in my garden — and it overwintered just fine, so it must be winter wheat. At any rate, I had a lovely half hour or so after work last night turning over the soil in a couple of my raised beds, pulling all those wheaty bits out for the compost. I have two beds now that are all fluffy and ready for seeds. This weekend I’ll clean up the rest, and start with the cool-weather greens. I’m so excited! Another year!
“Family” Dinner
A few weeks ago my girlfriend Deb called me on a Sunday evening. Sunday evenings can be bleak when you’re single and don’t have kids — it’s the time of the week when one can feel most adrift. And winter is upon us — it’s dark by five these days and we’re all living with a tiny bit of dread knowing that the wind will start up again. “Why don’t we do dinner a couple of times a month?” Debbie suggested. “We could get single people together, and rotate it to different houses.”
So last night, we did. There were six of us — two people who have just moved to town and four of us who’ve been here for a while. I had a lovely piece of lamb shoulder from the half a lamb I bought last spring so I did Mario Batali’s recipe (it’s for shanks, but same difference) — braised lamb with orange and rosemary and green olives. Debbie made polenta, Robert brought a salad, and Margie did bright green brussels sprouts with bacon. We set the table, and toasted the new president and ate a lovely dinner together. There was lively conversation, nice wine (it helps that Debbie runs the wine store) and Mark, who has just moved to town and who had to duck out to do a radio interview with a station back in Michigan read us a couple of poems out of the book for which he was being interviewed.
It was so much fun. Next month is of course, kind of busy with holiday parties but we’re going to try to sneak in another Sunday night. Everyone agreed it was lovely to be together and somehow, the Sunday night vibe, as well as the general admission from all of us at that table that Sunday nights can get lonely when you’re single, well, it felt like something a little more than just a dinner party. We all agreed to get one another through the winter. We’re going to share food, and wine, and our art on Sunday nights and maybe this way the winter won’t seem so long.
On Walking
Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the big snow, I realized I was down to only one egg, so I set off, with Raymond, for the little health food store a couple of blocks from my house. Ray hadn’t had a proper walk because of the snow, and I was feeling like I needed some exercise, and the roads were so crummy I didn’t want to drive. Well, Foodworks was out of my Milk Lady’s eggs, and what can I say? After eating her unbelievably great farm eggs for the past couple of years I just couldn’t bring myself to buy the “organic” “free-range” whatever commercial eggs. I wanted Isabelle’s eggs. And there were none. After a short round of exclaiming bad words under my breath I left the store and untied Ray from the bench and thought well, why not? We headed off on foot across town to the other grocery store.
Now, in the mornings Ray and I walk about 10 blocks to the dog park, do a lap or two, and walk back. The grocery store was only a few blocks further away on the other side of town, and I had a bag I’d brought with me, so off we went.
What I love about walking is the things you see. Houses you didn’t know were for sale. The acquaintance I ran into who I’d seen at the Obama fundraiser the day before — we chatted for 10 minutes about politics, about how we love living in a state so small our Senators show up for those things, about how great the music was before heading back down the block. On the way home, I discovered that the little Mexican restaurant that closed is coming back soon in a new incarnation serving Cuban and Latin American food. Then, when we got to Bill and Maryanne’s house, Ray went up their steps, stood at the gate until we all had to have a small visit because he knows their house, knows their dogs. “Do you want to come in?” Maryanne asked and I said no, because by then we’d been gone over an hour, and I wanted to get home, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun to say hi, to remind ourselves that we all live here together.
Then a few blocks from home Ray ran to the end of the block, and because he knows he’s not allowed to cross the street he headed up the side block. I got to the corner and saw my friend Robin, in her car with her dogs. She pulled up. “I was about to get out,” she said. “I saw Ray and didn’t know why he was on this side of town by himself.” So we chatted for a few minutes about her husband’s campaign, about the fundraiser, about dogs, and then Ray and I walked the last three blocks home.
It was a good walk to the store. We got eggs. We saw people we like. We got a little exercise. We participated in the life of our community. It’s a good thing to get out of the car. It’s a good thing to walk, to slow down, to look at things and talk to the people we like. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to live in town (as much as my fantasy life involves a bigger garden and livestock) — because when you live alone it’s good to live in a place where when you go outside you see people, you talk to people, you’re involved in the communal endeavor.
And the snow was pretty too.