November Hill farm journal, 102

It’s been a stressful week for me. I haven’t been able to get to sleep, not usually a problem, and find myself up at 3 a.m. reading reports of police brutality and seeing the video footage that illustrates it clearly. I’ve had neck pain radiating into my shoulder blades all week, and while my morning stretching and yoga help keep it from getting too bad, I haven’t been able to get it to completely resolve.

Yesterday we took one of our cats and one of our dogs to the vet to get rabies updates and routine exam. The vet office is open, but instead of going inside with your pets, they come out and get them at their appointed time, take them in for the exam, and consult with you by telephone. All are wearing masks, and overall I felt like this is right way for them to be doing business right now. But the appointment was early enough that I felt rushed getting off the farm, and stressed sitting in the car waiting. All went well, Pippin, our cat, is doing great in general, probably needs to be monitored for a little weight gain, and while he yowled on the way to the vet, when he came out he was calm and seemed relieved. He’s a sweet, sociable cat and they love him at the vet.

Clem got her rabies shot in the car at the beginning of the appointment. She’ll go in for an exam in the fall.

It was a relief to get them home and take some time to relax. But I still had neck and shoulder pain and was tired from the extreme lack of sleep from the night before.

In the late afternoon I went to the barn to give some cooling baths to horses. I think by the time I got halfway through Keil Bay’s bath my neck and shoulders were totally relaxed. The barn, and the horses, are good for settling down my frenzied mind.

The potager is booming. I picked a head of lettuce, 3 cucumbers, and a zucchini for dinner and we had a salad with them. While the bunnies and possibly squirrels definitely eat the lettuces and greens, they have grown back over and over again to the point that we get what we need as well. We still haven’t put chicken wire up and maybe we don’t need to.

We put in tomatoes and basil - the tomatoes are slow I think because we’ve had a lot of very cool weather in April and May, but the basil is doing well and we’ll make pesto soon. I also planted bronze fennel for the pollinators and it’s tripled in size. I haven’t planted this before so I’m eager to see what it looks like when it fully matures.

I was so excited coming in without neck and shoulder pain I leaped at the email from the NC Botanical Garden saying they are back in business with plant sales. You email your order and they notify when you can pick it up, usually a week or so. I said I wasn’t going to plant anything else until fall, but since I’m watering the vegetables in the potager anyway, I decided I can plant some native pollinators there and keep them happy through this season. I’m going to put a grouping in the center of the potager using these native NC plants:

Appalachian bergamot
Foxglove beardtongue
Narrow-leaf mountain mint
Atlantic blue-eyed grass

And along the fenceline at the back of the potager I’m going to build a long trellis between the two hazelnut trees and put in climbing aster. It will make a nice screen there and it tends to flower here almost the entire year, so a great option for the honey bees.

It will be nice to get some perennial flowers in the potager.

Lots of the plants in the pollinator beds are nearing bloom. The sun drops, milkweed, and Stokes’ asters are still going strong, and the narrow-leaf mountain mint, coneflowers, and rattlesnake masters are gearing up to really pop out. I’ll keep an eye out and post photos when they do.

At least for this coming week I’ve deleted Twitter off my ipad and phone. I’m going to limit my news to NPR. I need a break from the videos. I made a donation to the ACLU, have work with our local food council board members to put up a statement, and am supporting black-owned bookstores and authors this week with purchases. I hope you find your own actions to take. It’s time to make big changes. Finding small actions and voting will add up to a lot if we all do it.

After dinner last night I had the last of my 6-week Writing In The Dark workshop meetings. It’s been a pleasure and so inspiring I’ve signed on for another six weeks. I’ve already submitted a piece written during this one, and have several seedlings for more essays. A friend is taking a portrait sketch class online, and she says it’s equally delightful for her as this workshop has been for me. She also reminded me of a poem by Denise Levertov that I used to actually have taped to my refrigerator. I’d forgotten it was titled Writing In The Dark! I shared it with the class last night and will share it here as well:

Writing In the Dark
Denise Levertov

It's not difficult
Anway it's necessary.
Wait till morning, and you'll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.

Fumble for the light, and you'll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.

You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen - ballpoints don't always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There's nothing
shameful in that much prudence: those are your tools.

Never mind about crossing your t's, dotting your i's -
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.

Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
worrds that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices.

or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:

words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again.