Is that all there is?
POCATELLO — This year the end of the garden season holds a different meaning. This 2006 garden may literally be my last great effort.
These days (I should have done this sooner) I’m hiring help to weed, prune and trim, all things I used to do myself, but a deteriorating hip joint now prevents me. Those I’ve hired are doing a wonderful job. Their deft and skillful bodies relieve me of considerable stress, as well as guilt.
My physical predicament isn’t jibing with my preconceived vision of what these middle-later years would be like. I imagined wrinkles, gray hair and some weight gain, but not this level of physical discomfort.
After all, I have my mother and her sisters as role models. They are all in their 80s, slowing down, but going strong. My mother is 83, and this is the first year she’s hired help for yard maintenance.
Because I imagined only my looks would change, with maybe a minimum of minor aches that could be fixed with a good night’s sleep, I prepared myself to replace any elements of youthful beauty I may have had by developing my eccentricities.
I covered my little Westside hovel in vines, turned my entire house into a weaving studio draped in red mosquito netting, the windows are hung with handwoven window rugs, and the walls decorated with posters of Bob Dylan and Jack&Neal.
I have lots of books collected over the last half century. I painted a mural of bright red flowers on my dining room wall, and I not-so-secretly ferment fruity concoctions in a dark cupboard and store them in crystal decanters.
I keep a supply of champagne in the fridge for visitors, and my weavings have taken on a Gypsy theme, colorful wanderings from the status quo.
Lately, I’ve taken to playing 1960s music almost exclusively: John Sebastian, Jesse Winchester, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins . . . Their golden voices cast a nostalgic pall throughout my rooms, memories of the olden days when I was a hippie poet living in the East Village in NYC and could march for many blocks in anti-war rallies.
Then there were the 1970s and 1980s at the Central Idaho ranch when I could cross country ski, ride horses, run after my kids, climb stairs two at a time, dance, scale ladders in an apple orchard, grow 100 cabbages in my garden, ferment and preserve huge crocks of sauerkraut. . .
This morning I brought my potted herbs into the house, bay, rosemary and basil. I can still handle this flavorful level of digging in the dirt.
When I finish writing this column, I will chop onions and garlic, saute them in olive oil, add garden produce: tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, summer squash, and chard to make a healthy fall soup. Bay and rosemary add depth to the flavor.
Some of these vegetables were given to me by gardening friends whose bodies are more spry than mine, and I am very appreciative of each healthy mouthful. I am also pleased to peruse our local Farmer’s Market, a joyful place that makes it possible to regret my gardening abdication much less.
Change is about the only thing we peculiar humans can count on; the trick is learning how to accept the universe as it shrinks and expands, accept the earth as it crumbles and groans under our feet, pulling us under to nurture future generations -- you know, like the dead Hiawatha pushing up that famous corn patch . . .an early garden that predates those Puritan ergot-inspired witch burnings . . .