The Growing Season

5/27/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

The Growing Season

            “When something takes root it’s as if it had a mind of its own, growing like mad. Be careful what you plant. Be selective. Once it takes root it will own you.”

Beryl Barclay

           

            I don’t know what the pale purple flowers are really called. I call them a nuisance because they take over the flower beds that my mother in law put in all those years ago. She was passionate about purple.

            Most flowers that grow at Bruce’s family homestead are remnants of Linnien’s planning. Her thumbs were a lot greener than mine, and she tended to choose hardy varieties of lilies, poppies, old fashioned yellow roses, and several kinds of purple posies. I’ve always been grateful for hand-me-downs, so it’s nice to have perennials already in place, but when I plant hollyhocks, delphinium, columbine or marigolds, they invariably disappear in a clump of purple.            

Pull out the purple, you say. I do, every week, by the roots. Trouble is, the roots are all connected, and eradicating one clump makes it grow bigger in another place. I’ve spaded up whole flower beds to start over, but there’s no getting all that stuff out of the soil. I’ve come to realize there’d be more time to raise vegetables, go camping, or out to lunch with a friend if I wasn’t always on my knees digging at the purple, so maybe this year I’ll let it alone.

            Or not. It’s hard to give up a crusade you’ve set your mind to, and that purple stuff has taken root in my head. I guess you could say it owns me.

            Of course there are other things that own me, and perhaps this obsession with the purple flowers is just a way to avoid dealing with the jungle that makes life unmanageable. The overcrowded calendar on my desk proves that I seldom plant selectively.          

            Not many of us consciously set priorities, commit to a particular journey, or evaluate the sacrifices necessary to achieve our dreams. Sometimes, what we plant early on takes on a life of its own and the thought of digging it out to make room for new growth is so overwhelming that we give up and lie down in the same old rut.

            The garden will go in this week. Those seeds and plants are only meant to last one growing season. I’m ok with that, so why have I retained certain ideas from my childhood long past the time to let them go?

            Bruce and I, along with help from neighbors, planted several hundred trees this month. Those windbreaks will benefit others for many seasons beyond our lifetimes. We’re ok with that too, as well as sore backs and blisters, because habitat for wildlife, preventing erosion, and shelter for livestock are lifetime priorities for us.

            Our lives are comprised of several growing seasons. Selective planting is fine, but sometimes old growth needs trimmed. Bruce’s retirement from the rails means we have time to travel and explore our “someday” dreams. Lo and behold, the work ethic my parents planted in me long ago has taken on a life of its own, and is as difficult to dig out as those darned purple flowers. I’m not growing into leisure very well, and my husband may need some help to pull me out of this rut where my roots run deep and tangled.

           

Things That Matter

5/20/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Things That Matter

            There’s not room in my house to keep every little thing. (We pretty much covered the subject of closet space last week.)  Besides, I don’t work well amid clutter, so recently while tossing old journals and notebooks full of scribbles, I came across a writing exercise from some long ago workshop. The assignment was to write about what I would miss when I’m dead. It was thought provoking then, and still is. You know the old verse. “In the midst of life, we are in death.” With Memorial Day approaching, this seems as good a time as any to share some long thoughts.

            When I’m dead I’ll miss the stars. I’ll miss the scent of wild roses, new mown hay, and meadow mint, the clatter of a side delivery rake, and the creak of a windmill turning slowly as dusk settles on the valley.

I’ll miss the call of Sandhill Cranes from so high up that it takes five minutes to spot them; their voices preceding the sighting, then receding on waves of silver sound, and I’ll miss the intense blue of an October sky, the way that huge cottonwood just past the Brownlee bridge seems to turn all gold overnight, Jiminy Cricket’s fiddle among the scent of drying sunflowers, and wisps of fog that hover over the river in the stillness of dawn.

            I’ll miss the bawling of cows whose calves just left out on the trucks, the cry of an auctioneer; the laughter of neighbors in the café after the sale, and even the lonely feeling that lingers on the ranch when you ride back to silence after the last of the mourners have been moved to a distant pasture.

When I’m dead, I’ll miss the scent of wood smoke from someone’s fireplace of a winter evening, the taste of snow on my tongue; lacy bare branches against a brilliant sunset, and frost flowers sparkling on a morning window pane.

I’ll miss the smell of grass greening, the way the moon reflects off a bend in the creek when you’re sitting in the calving lot on a quiet midnight, the sound of mothering up from over by the windbreak fence, and peepers, on the first night that it’s warm enough to sleep with the window open.

I’ll miss fireflies, the feel of dew damp grass on bare feet, the purr of a kitten, the smell of sweaty horse blankets, wet dogs, and the taste of chili, home grown tomatoes, and pumpkin pie.

When I’m gone I’ll miss the feel of fresh sheets, the touch of my husband’s hand, the color red, the softness of velvet, candlelight, old songs of my youth, a crying steel guitar, and Willie Nelson singing Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.

I’ll miss the hugs of grandchildren, laughing at family jokes, driving on moonlit nights, dancing, oh yes, always the dancing; the music of rain on the roof, and water babbling on its way to someplace else.

Will I really miss these? Perhaps not; maybe the sense of them remains through eternity. There’s no way to know, but the main thing is not to miss them now.

How Large Is Your Closet?

 

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

5/13/2015

How Large Is Your Closet?

            It’s time to put away winter wraps and get out summer wear. That’s probably what got me thinking about closets and what they reveal about our values and lifestyle choices.

            My mother, dad, and I shared one closet until we moved into the new house, six months before I left home. The closet was roughly three by four feet; standard for those times, and yes, it was crowded, but none of us had many clothes to put in it. A shelf above the clothes rod was stacked with extra bedding and whatever we didn’t need on a daily basis. Boxes on the closet floor held shoes and coats, and everything else was in boxes under the beds.

The house the folks built in 1959 was luxurious by comparison. The master bedroom and basement bedroom have double closets, with a standard one in the guest room, and even a coat closet in the living room. Mom managed to stuff them all in short order, but since that home became mine none of the closets have been filled to capacity.

Bruce and I live in a conglomeration of houses that his family cobbled together under one roof, over several decades. There’s a closet about like the one I grew up with, but not in the master bedroom. Other bedrooms for the large family had a rod in one corner with a curtain around it and a shelf above; pretty common for homes of that era. When we moved in after the death of Bruce’s parents, one of his aunts said to him, “Well, I hope you build your wife a closet. Your mom always wanted one and never got it!”

We didn’t do a lot to the house structurally but I have a closet. It’s exactly the size of the area which used to have a curtain and shelf, but at least there are doors. I’m ambivalent about that choice; the closet took quite a chunk out of a room never designed for a queen bed. Being reasonably sized people, we could revert to a double bed, but there’s the matter of the dog…

We have the leftover rods and shelves in the den and sunroom where coats are hung, but it’s hard to keep track of just which rod holds which coat. Of course, if we didn’t have so many coats, it wouldn’t be an issue.

One of us, who shall remain unnamed, has way more clothes and shoes than the other. One of us, who shall remain unnamed, can hardly bear to discard the shirt with no collar left, the jacket that the other partner has never seen worn, or the half embroidered pillow cases from fifty years ago. Consequently our closets are stuffed, and the out of season items often migrate to the home with double closets that are half full.

Unless someone is building a new home, visitors aren’t generally invited to view closet space, but according to the latest house plans in magazines walk in closets are pretty standard for a master bedroom. I wonder what that says about the expectations of today’s homeowners. Do people really have that many clothes, or have we simply become a nation of hoarders? If they have so many outfits, why do they wear their pajamas to the grocery store?

My grandparents likely only had about three changes of clothes, so one closet was plenty. I probably have about half as much clothing as most of my friends, but if I never bought another stitch until I died, I still wouldn’t need to wear my pajamas to the store.

So what is it that our generation puts in all those closets? Oh, I know; all the stuff that won’t fit in the storage unit.