Of Squash and Farmers Markets

Yesterday, I went to a farmer's market, the kind that happens only on a Saturday, the Mills River Farmer's Market.  It was in the parking lot of an elementary school, and the vendors sat under the pop-up shelters they brought.  We used to have similar green markets in South Florida, but in South Florida, I didn't find many vegetables.  There was jewelry and essential oils and various craft projects and flowers, but not much that was edible.

When I first moved to Columbia, SC for grad school, I went over to the State Farmer's Market, the very same one where my grandfather used to bring the truckload of vegetables from the family farm in Lexington, SC.  It was an institution of permanent structures by the time I discovered it in the summer of 1987 with lots of 18 wheeler kind of trucks, not the kind my grandfather had driven.  I remember late on day, I got a great deal on a bushel of yellow squash ($3!), and only later did I wonder what I would do with that many squash.  After I gave away as much as I could, we ate squash for days and had frozen squash through the winter.

Yesterday, I drove through beautiful mountain vistas, more than I needed to, because of the way the roads were named.  Only on the return trip did I find the correct road--from the other side of the street, the road name changed.  In some ways, I didn't mind--the surroundings were so beautiful.  And finally, I found the farmer's market.

Baby butternut photographed on my back deck in Arden, NC

I was delighted to realize that the farmer's market offered a variety of vegetables, some organically grown, some not.  The farmers were there to answer questions.  I noticed a basket of winter squash like these with a large pumpkin that had a sign:  "These squash will be ready in 25 days."  When I expressed my delight over the baby butternut squashes and asked how much, the farmer said, "Well, they're really not for sale."  Then she gave me one with my corn on the cob purchase.

I bought a variety of tomatoes, 4 ears of corn, and a cucumber.  I also got baked goods and some smoked fish dip.  We ate well yesterday, and we will eat well again today.

My uncle stopped by on his way back from rafting with my cousin's family.  It was a joy to sit on our back deck, eat baked goods that I had just bought, and catch up.  It seems to be the kind of neighborhood that encourages this dropping by.  And unlike other neighborhoods I've lived in, I'm happy to see our neighbors.  One even brought us some tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden.

I wonder if there will be baskets of summer squash that will appear when the zucchini yield is bigger than expected?

Camp Christmas in July

Today is the last day of the summer 2022 summer season at Lutheridge, the church camp and conference center. The last week has been Christmas in July.  What a strange treat!

At the beginning of the week, as I took my morning walk, I didn't notice much that was different.  But as the week went on, Christmas began to take hold:

I thought I saw lights through a distant window, and then, when I walked on the porch of the dining hall, sure enough, there were lights!

I don't have a picture to demonstrate my favorite morning memory from the week.  On the lawn of the Faith Center I saw a huge inflatable of a Disney snowman--Olaf from Frozen maybe?  As I walked down the hill, a group of elementary school girl campers hiked up.  They exclaimed in such wonder that I turned to see what they were seeing.  One of them had said, "Oh, it's so big."  And indeed, it did seem to loom up in the distance.

As I continued my walk down the hill to the lake, another set of campers hiked by.  Their counselor was trying to get them to sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" to distract them from the steepness of the hill.  I sang along.

Last night, the Lutheridge Residential Community was invited to closing vespers.  Through the years as I've thought about what it would be like to live at Lutheridge, I had thought about going to vespers each night during the summer, which may no longer be an option.  So I wanted to make sure to go last night.  Plus, during my walk, I had seen several tables full of paper bags.  I had a vision of luminarias lighting the way to the chapel.

It was not that kind of service.  But after all, it was designed for a much younger crowd.  We had glow sticks instead of candles and song sheets that I didn't need because I had been singing these Christmas songs for 57 years.

It will be interesting to see how my experience of living on the edge of a church camp changes in the next few weeks when the campers have gone home.  I've enjoyed seeing them as I've been out and about this week.  I am sure the camp will offer other delights when campers have gone.

Wrist Update: Fifteen Weeks After Break

Fifteen weeks ago, I went out for a morning walk thinking I would return home to make hot cross buns, a traditional bread for Good Friday.  I set the dried fruit in a bowl to soak and went out for my walk.

It was not a vigorous walk.  It was not across broken surfaces.  Nonetheless, I tripped and fell.  I broke my wrist, although it would take me some time to realize that I had.  I heard no breaking, and my injury didn't hurt much, so I thought it was a bad sprain.  I've told this story several times, but this morning I want to take note of how my wrist has healed, even though I haven't yet regained full mobility.

I have done a lot of self-improvement work through the years, and progress has never--NEVER--felt as microscopic as my wrist healing has been.  But let me remind myself that 13 weeks ago, when I had to hold my arm at a certain angle away to have the splint put on, I thought I might throw up or pass out from the pain.  Now I can turn my arm that way with discomfort, not pain.  When I first had the cast off in late June, I couldn't hold a metal set of tongs in my hand and pick up objects.  When I tried, I felt a searing pain down my arm.  A month later, when I did an exit exam for my hand therapist, I could do the exercise with some minimal pain.

Last night, we played Yahtzee, and I was able to roll the dice with my right hand.  I can still roll the dice better with my left hand, but it's progress.  Likewise with using utensils:  I can get the food to my mouth, but it's still a bit easier with my left hand.

This morning, I wrote a poem the way I once wrote poems:  by hand, on a purple legal pad.  I had started composing it as I walked yesterday morning.  I was thinking of all the ways our fathers had taught us to leave:  how to pack a suitcase, how to pack a box, how to load the moving van.  I thought about the way that grandmothers teach us to stay:  which plants we can eat and how to transform scraps into the comfort of quilts.  Then I wondered if this gendering was fair.  I wrote the poem that begins "They taught us how to pack" and the second stanza "They taught us how to grow."  I like it better.

I have experimented with writing poems by using voice dictation into the computer, but I like writing on the legal pad better.  Still, it's good to remember that I have options.  I don't think that the content of my poems changed radically with the writing process.  For poems, I don't think I even wrote any faster, as I do when I'm writing prose.  When I'm using the computer, I still prefer to type.  I make fewer errors.

I still have work to do, especially in flexing my hand backward, the way you do when you press down o a table top.  I can hold my fingers straighter than I once could, but my hand still feels strange.  In terms of touch, however, my fingers are almost back to normal.  Once, every surface felt pebbled, like an orange peel.  Now the surface of my desk feels like wood, the way it should.

Like I said, I'm still not where I hope to be.  But each day brings a bit more progress--and with it, hope that the healing will continue.

The End Part of the Moving Process

This morning, I'm sitting in my office chair, with my laptop on the desk that had once been owned by my grandparents.  I haven't done this in a week--my possessions have been in a warehouse or a truck.  A week ago, I was fretful about the movers and all that can go wrong in the three hour narrow window of moving time that our condo gave us.

Happily, that experience went as well as I could have hoped.  The movers showed up on time, took good care of our stuff, and got it all out of the condo in the time frame we had to get it done.  We, too, headed out.  And then, we got to our new-to-us house in Arden, North Carolina, and we strategized, since by last Friday, it was clear that it could take some time for our possessions to catch up with us.

On Tuesday, we got the phone call that the moving van would be to us by Wednesday from noon to 3.  We needed to have cash to pay the balance.  Happily, we could make that happen.  Yesterday morning, we got up and moved stuff around so that the movers would have an easier time.  I went to the bank where extremely helpful tellers assisted me in getting money moved from savings to checking to cash--such a contrast with the South Florida branch that wasn't as helpful when we needed money to close on the house.

And then we waited.  And we waited and waited and waited.  Unlike the furniture delivery that happened at the earliest part of the delivery window on Tuesday, the movers didn't arrive until 3:30.  In some ways, they were efficient--the stuff was moved in by 5.  In other ways, they were not.  For example, one of them wore flip flops.  Another one of them grumbled the whole time--the whole time--about the work habits of his fellow workers and about the people who had packed the items, as he disapproved of the amount of packing tape used.

In another half hour, when it's a bit lighter, I'll be putting all that used tape into garbage bags; the team didn't take the trash with them, which I found odd.  But at that point, I was just ready to be done with this strangely non-communicative/sullen team of movers.

It could have been worse.  The only damage that I see right now is that we have a coffee table with a broken leg; happily it's not a piece of furniture with sentimental value or economic value.  Truthfully, most of our furniture has no economic value.  

Did all of our boxes arrive?  I think so.  A box that's not ours came into our house, and I caught it and sent it back, which made it hard for me to trust that all of our boxes came to us.  Our 6 foot ladder is not here--when I mentioned it, one moving guy brought another ladder off the truck.  It was 4 feet tall and had someone else's sticker on it.  Each of our possessions had a green sticker, which coordinated to a packing list--I was so impressed with that part of the packing process.  The box that came into our house that wasn't ours had a red sticker on it--when I pointed it out to the mover, he said, "They could have put a different sticker on it."  I could see some clothes peeking out of the handholds--those weren't our clothes.

I went off to a neighborhood meeting, which my spouse joined by way of Zoom.  He got possessions sorted while the meeting happened--which is why I'm at my desk.  Part of what we paid for with the movers was re-assembly of furniture, which didn't happen.  My spouse picked up that slack.

So, was paying for movers worth it?  If you asked my spouse and me, you'll get different answers.  He thinks we would take better care of our possessions, but I remember all the times we didn't, when we just shoved stuff in the U-Haul willy-nilly and hoped for the best.  There was no wrapping of furniture and taping the wrapping so that it stayed in place.

I think it was worth it.  We probably paid $1,000-$2,000 more than we would have had we done our own move.  For me it was worth it to have the extra muscle and to have someone else drive the truck across the mountains and navigate the driveway.  I felt stress about that, but I'd have felt more stress if my spouse drove the truck.  I am still working on getting full use of my right hand back, and picking up some items is tough.  I would not have been as functional a partner in a move-it-yourself experience as I would want to be.

Again and again, I've been struck by how expensive it is to move, and how lucky we are to have resources:  financial, emotional, and physical.  I am able to work from a distance--if we were trying to move and trying to be functional in new jobs, this experience would be SO different.  I always think of these factors when we hear people on a national/international stage wonder why people don't just move to where the jobs are better or the cost of living cheaper.  It takes a substantial amount of money, time, and energy to move.

Now let me go to put all the trash left behind out to the curb--our first garbage pick up should be today!  I am also aware of what it costs the planet when we move:  gas to power the truck, plastic to create the tape and the water bottles, on and on I could go.  I used to joke about all the trees I would need to plant in retirement to repay the planet for all the paper my job required, but at least that was a renewable resource.

I hope that we can put down roots here, roots for the long term.  I hope the trees on the property outlive our roots.

Moving Van Anticipation

If all goes well, tonight I will be sleeping in my own bed.  The moving van is supposed to come today between noon and 3:00.  Fingers crossed that all goes well.

Yesterday, the furniture that we bought on Friday was delivered.  We have been wanting a small sofa for many years, but a combination of forces kept us from buying:  not knowing what we wanted, not wanting to spend the money, knowing we would be moving.

That furniture was delivered effortlessly.  May today be the same.

You might ask why I am worried.  It's because this house presents some challenges:  a gravel driveway that has some slope, and a steep set of 6 stairs to get to the only doors to the house that are in the back.  I am sure they have dealt with worse.

Strange to think that it has been almost a week since our furniture got loaded on that van and driven away.  It's been a week of feeling effective:  getting trash service set up and choosing some furniture.  We've gotten 2 carloads of stuff moved into the house, but we couldn't put all of it away because some of what we need is on the van (like a dresser).

It's been a week of feeling ineffective.  We planned to buy a refrigerator.  Back in the olden times, the last time we needed to buy a refrigerator, we had lots of options:  Sears and other department stores, home builder supply big box stores, local mom and pop stores, and scratch and dent places--not to mention classified ads.  We went to a local appliance store here, one that a neighbor recommended, but it's more of a showroom, where you can order an appliance and have it delivered.

But it won't be delivered right away.  Supply chain issues are snarling up availability.  We went to the nearby Lowe's, which said we could have the same fridge that we saw at the local appliance store and that it could be delivered the next day.

But that sign in the store and on the website is wrong.  There are none in stock, 600 on order, and who knows when those refrigerators will arrive.

We ended up buying a very small dorm style fridge that was on sale.  In a few weeks, I won't be living here, and my spouse doesn't use the fridge for much more than keeping beer cold. We didn't spend the extra $150 to get one with a freezer.  

Similarly, yesterday we spent a lot of time looking for some sort of screened tent like thing to put at the end of our deck, something that could give shelter from the rain and also protection from bees and other flying creatures.  Our deck is only 8 feet in one direction, and many tents and gazebos are 10 feet or bigger.

By evening, I was feeling dispirited, and I don't know why.  In part, it was feeling like we weren't making progress.  In part, it was because my spouse talked about a variety of home improvements that seem like more trouble than they are worth to me.  In part, it's because that summer is almost over, and there's that feeling I always have of feeling like I haven't gotten quite enough done.  I feel that way regardless of the season.

I predict that today will offer a different feeling at the end of the day--fingers crossed that it's a good feeling!

Healthy Habits

Today I hope to get back to my healthiest habit of taking a daily walk--my other healthiest habit of eating plenty of fruits and veggies will have to wait until we have a fridge.  I should probably take a multivitamin to make sure I'm getting enough nourishment.

There are other habits I need to get back to--sketching will need to wait until our furniture catches up with us and perhaps until I get more mobility in my wrist.  I need to get back to poetry writing--that took a back seat as I packed up the house.

It is also strange to think about establishing habits, since in a month, I will be in a new place, needing to establish new habits there.  But in a way, these habits should transfer.  All of my classes will be afternoon and evening classes, so if I establish morning habits, those should be able to transfer to seminary housing with me.

It is interesting to feel this possibility of a much more leisurely pace to the morning.  In South Florida, I had to get my walk in before the sun came up.  

I am also realizing that I didn't bring much in the way of reading material with me.  How could I have forgotten to keep a few books out of the boxes for this transitional time?

Let me also record some delights of the past few days.  We went to the closest Lutheran church yesterday--they had an outdoor bluegrass/country service for their 8:45 service.  We brought our lawn chairs, as the website suggested.  Once I got settled, I realized that one of my Create in Me retreat friends was there.  After the service, my spouse greeted friends he had made during his time on the Novus Way board.  It's cool to realize that we already have some roots in this area, deeper roots than I may have realized.

Sunday afternoon, a Lutheran Student Movement friend from long ago college days stopped by.  She and her husband were on their way back from a family event nearby.  She offered to pick up lunch, which I thought was generous.  I thought she meant they'd grab some fast food, but instead, she brought a beautiful picnic with a cooler that we can keep until we see them again.  I'm glad, since we had leftovers.  

We had great conversation on our beautiful deck.  It was a warm day, but the deck was comfortable.  Our house doesn't have AC, so we could have stood it with the fans going, but it was better outside--and that's not something I said often during the summer months in South Florida.  How wonderful to get back to the healthy habit of resumed friendships.

It's light enough to walk now--let me get ready.  But let me also choose a line from my collection of abandoned lines that led me to some good poems in the late spring and early summer.  Let me set the stage to have a poem percolating.

Here's the line:

Make your new porridge in a dented pot

A Look Back at Moving and First Mornings

Tomorrow, I will puzzle out the best approach to daily walking; today I will write a blog post about the last several days, and then I'll get ready to go to the 8:45 bluegrass service at the local Lutheran church.  Yesterday, before the internet installation happened, I sat on the back deck watching the light change as the sun rose, and the light made its way across the mountains.

Of course, I can't actually see the mountains from my deck, but I know that they are there.  I can't see them because of the trees, but I get a sense of the view we will have when the trees drop their leaves.  By then, my primary residence will be student housing at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Before we get too far away from moving day, let me write a blog post about that.  It went very smoothly, which was more of a relief than I have words to express.  The moving team showed up right at 9 and went right to work wrapping all of our furniture in blankets and packing tape.  They were done by 11:30, and then there was paperwork to sign.  We did a quick cleaning of all the places we couldn't clean when the moving team was there, and then we went to the car, which was already packed.

It was almost anticlimactic.  It felt like there should be some sort of closing ceremony.  Instead, we drove 10 hours north.  Back when we thought there was a chance that the moving van would be at our new house the next day, we wanted to be close.

I usually make a long drive by getting up very early in the morning to get ahead of traffic.  It was very strange to get on the road by 12:30 p.m.  We had a surprisingly easy trip to our grad school friend's house in Columbia.  I felt a subdued euphoria as I felt my worries about the logistics of moving out of a condo evaporate.

The next day, we had a leisurely breakfast after I called the moving company just to make sure there wasn't a chance that the moving van was already in Arden, North Carolina wondering where we were.  My spouse did the kind of toilet repair that's simple if you know how to do it, but mystifying/terrifying if you don't--much more useful to our grad school friend than taking her out for a meal to say thank you for her hospitality.  Since I didn't know for sure when we'd have internet connectivity in our new house, I got some grading done while they did the toilet repair.

We headed to Arden after an early lunch.  We got the car unloaded and did some organizing.  Our grad school friend loaned us an air mattress, but we needed a place to sit.  After an early dinner at a local brewery, 12 Bones, we got two durable lawn chairs and some groceries.  We sat out on the back deck watching the sun set.  

We continued to sit on the back deck, sipping wine and listening to all the insects sing in the dark.  We saw the occasional firefly.

Saturday morning, my spouse slept, and I returned to the deck to watch the light change as the sun rose.  I drank coffee, ate granola bars, and read Melissa Studdard's Dear Search Committee--what an engaging and delightful book of poems.  It was a great way to start the day.

The internet tech showed up right on schedule at 10 a.m., and the installation went smoothly.  I had worried about it a bit--this house was built in the mid 70's, and it hasn't been wired for anything, not even a landline phone.  But by noon, we had internet, and even better, both laptops can access it.  Yesterday we allowed ourselves a slower day, with grocery shopping and watching The Big Year, the birding movie with the great cast. We saw it when it first was available on Netflix, but that was several houses ago (meaning at least 2012 or earlier), so it felt new.

I am fascinated watching my brain work, going from anxiety to anxiety.  I don't think I need medication, although I have wondered.  I have a variety of self-soothing techniques that I've picked up from years of worry.  These past few days will be part of those techniques, as I remind myself how often I worry about things that end up going smoothly.