Bird Brain

I just washed the poo off my fingers so I can write. (Bird poo, not mine.) I sit here, typing as quietly as I can as to not disturb the six sleeping babies inches from this keyboard. Despite my efforts, the quiet rat-tat-tapping of the keys draws 12 alert eyes, six at a time, from fuzzy, erect heads.

Um, scratch that. They all just fell asleep. Simultaneously.

That's just it: they're such - babies. 'Narcoleptic babies' may be redundant, because I think most babies sleep and wake at will, at times without direct obvious cause. I've declared it my favorite thing about these birds - that they run around with such an extreme sense of urgency and purpose - until they literally fall asleep. And I mean, fall over. Like they're dead.

It's like the rapture hit the brooder cage. One second, they're running about like mad, frantically searching for the thing they're - about - to - find - - - and the next instant their wings drop to floor and they melt sideways into the soft hay, or on top of the feed hopper, or beak-first into the water trough, or onto each other in one great soft mass. It's so terrifically funny, so inexplicable, but really - why not fall asleep whenever the urge strikes them? They're babies after all.

I really love them. All six of them, even the few I can't tell apart. One is smaller than the rest and has a subtle dark mark on her head tip. We call her 'Runt.' One is just huge, and seems to be developing about a day ahead of the rest, so we suspect she is exactly that - one day older. The other four are very similar, made all the more similar by the impression that the six of them share one tiny bird brain. We call it the 'hive mind,' because it's uncanny how they all want to do exactly the same thing at the same time. Sleep, drink, run around, peck something. It's like some announcement alerted them that water is on Sale Sale Sale! in aisle seven. And the sound that emanates from the cage is one big cloud of 'peep.' Somehow their chirps float around and defy acoustic law, and the effect is calming and dazzling.

Speaking of the pecking - it's constant and they're indiscriminate. They obey the following criteria:

1. Is there a value contrast (light to dark)?

2. Is it nearby?

That's all they care about. If it's a speck, or anything like a speck, or not even a speck but something that looks different than the stuff around it, it's peckable. That includes fingers, sleeves, pieces of hay, dried pieces of poo stuck on a fellow bird, parts of the brooder wire, their own feet - and on and on.

As for their temperament, I now understand two idioms in a way I never have before: 'bird brain,' and acting 'chicken.' I'll take the latter one first:

Being chicken. Chicken shit. Chicken-livered. You know; scared. It's funny, though; they're not timid. The opposite is true - they're intensely curious creatures. But they have hair-trigger orienting responses to absolutely everything. Rustling paper, a slight breeze, the squeak of a chair, a voice, even the clicking of keys on a keyboard. Everything is cause for instant alarm, but unless it's an immediate threat, they calm down as quickly as they get fired up. These birds can go from full panic to asleep in 5 seconds. I've seen it repeatedly.

That brings me to 'bird-brained.' Any creature that can freak out and fall asleep in the space of a few breaths must not think over-much about any one thing. They're not burdened with the concept of cause and effect or even sequential events. It's always now for them - like really now - all the time. Which is why it's so captivating to watch them for hours on end, which is exactly what Erik and I have been doing for the past week.

The brooder sits atop what used to be the dining room table, and has now turned into the bird and veggie nursery. Two chairs are drawn to the edge of the table, inches from the brooder, so that we can easily do all sorts of things while watching the girls. Tooth brushing, shoelace tying, coffee drinking - all happen in immediate proximity to the brooder cage. But mostly we just sit there together, Erik and I, like awestruck sports radio announcers, calling the play-by-play as we see it.

"Look- Runt's charging that other one! Did you see how high she just jumped?"

"Oh, that's definitely a poop squat. Good thing we change the litter to hay; it's a much better color now."

"Now that's one's falling asleep - can you believe it? She just fell over!"

The television in the other room talks to no one. Dirty dishes wait in the kitchen sink. Our cat wonders what happened to his once loving family.

Meanwhile, we just sit and watch, in wonder at it all.

It's cold, and I'm being a baby.

Cold outside. How unusual for New England in December.

So why does this somehow shock me each year? We built cold frames to anticipate, what? July? Well, this blog post was supposed to be a blog boast about how friggin' cool the cold frames are because my lettuce and radishes and turnips are all still growing! And it's 16 degrees out there!

Last night, we had dinner with friends, and brought a spinach salad. Before getting in the car, I pulled up three gorgeous radishes and brought them with us for dinner. They were a hit.

Next year, now that I know that these cold frames work pretty well, I'll try to plan better and plant more winter crops in early October. That way, they have 2 full months of good growing weather before it gets beastly outside, at which point they can just hang in until their dinner time cometh.

When I'm feeling like less of a baby, I'll go out there and take some pictures.

But for now, I'll just change the subject.

Argentina, anyone?

I just wanted to share two pictures I liked from my reunion with black and white film and my Leica. (You can click on them to enlarge them.) The first is of the caregiver of a vineyard and her son right before nightfall. The sky was dynamic and forbidding, and this child was so full of light and love.


And this picture is from the 106,000 acre estancia where Erik and I stayed for two glorious days with Walter and his incredible family. This is his daughter, Delfina, asleep on a sunny and perfect summer afternoon, in her father's pickup truck. I took this picture to try to capture something - that the world, this existence, is caring for us in each moment. It holds us, and holds up life's richness, and we are all, throughout our lives, just children.

Travels, part 1

I'm back.

Or somewhat back. I'm in that half-way state of mind that descends during a transition. To my right, the washing machine is humming along, trying to process an epic amount of dirty clothes, this here teabag is doing triple duty with yet another refill of hot water, and I'm sitting in a silent house, listening to the wind tickle the wind chimes and feeling the chill of November 23 in the Northern Hemisphere.

Many thousands of miles south, November 23 is very different. Having just returned from Mendoza, Argentina, I'm happy to testify that early summer exists somewhere right now. Baby pears are budding in endless orchards, tiny nibs that will someday turn into wine are sprinkled through a sea of vineyards at the foothills of the Andes. And though my lettuce out in the coldframes isn't so sure about this Yankee 20-degree spell, it is currently wiltingly hot and dry on the desert roads, way down there, at three in the afternoon.

Circadian rhythms notwithstanding, I'm experiencing a sort of biological whiplash. Not two weeks ago, I wrapped up the somewhat mournful process of tucking my autumn garden into its cold, dark bed, and was beginning to accept ever fewer hours of daylight each day. And suddenly, by technological and petroleum-fueled magic, it became June all around me.

This must be, I thought, how a recent divorcee feels at a wedding. Wistful, and a bit ironical, and jealous. Babies everywhere - baby grapes, baby basil plants, fistsfull of chicks, a mewing orange kitten - all in their earliest season. And I walked among them full of awareness of the difference time makes to the living thing, to my own garden, to myself and my loved ones. I am prone to this melancholic way of thinking anyway, but there at the feet of the Andes, where snow melt meets desert and earth gives way to crazy sculptures of rock and dirt, I felt at the bleeding edge of this thought, for days on end. And each night, as if to reinforce this mantra, came the stars, zillions of them, blinking unblinkinlgy, to frankly scare the hell out of me.



Some context is necessary, I realize. We were near Tupungato which is about 2 hours (not quite) southish of Mendoza - on the far west part of Argentina. Erik and I were fortunate to stay for a spell at Estancia San Pablo, an enormous (106,000 acre) ranch run by Walter and his wife, Karina (and their two knee-high babes). Walter deserves a blog entry to himself. If the Bible were rewritten in today's time, he would appear as a character in its pages.



My fuzzy brain is beginning to fail me and is crying out for a nap, but I'd like to get to my main point first. Out there on the ranch, life swirling around backed by huge mountains and an even bigger sky, I felt that I had stepped into an alternate universe. Everything felt so raw, imposing, indigestible and dangerous, and it felt foreign, unsafe, different, gorgeous. But this raw world, at the edge of comprehension for my urbanized sensibilities, is so much closer to the truth, ecologically speaking, than my own reality day-to-day. Which completely turns me on my head. I say I want that reality, that intimate closeness with the cycles of life.

What does it say about me if, when faced with what I revere, I am a bit afraid?

The In Betweensies

It's an interesting time in the garden right now. Mid-August, that is, and I should qualify this by saying that I'm only speaking for my garden. Perhaps it's because I'm new at this, and that I didn't read the directions, so to speak, or consult the experts, but it's a sort of tired time, a struggling time out there, in the plants.

Members of the cucurbit family are really unhappy about the non-stop rain we New Englanders have endured since mid-July. I am not a squash, however, and am thrilled at the rain. For me, water falling freely from the sky is a wonder of nature I just can't get over. Then again, I don't have powdery mildew eating away at my limbs.

Last I wrote on the subject, I painted a triumphant picture of sturdy, organically managed plants overcoming a fungal invasion. That was true -- two weeks ago. However, since then, the picture has turned grim. I go out each morning and cull the worst affected leaves and vines. I try to keep the leprous foliage from the yet-undiseased parts.  But I know that my hands and scissors could very well be doing more harm than good by spreading mildew spores. I've even stopped spraying for the past few days. I just can't stand the idea of contributing still more moisture to the already burdened plants.

Lessons learned:

1. Seek out powdery mildew resistant strains of plants next season.

2. Only plant vining plants on trellises, raised far enough above the ground to allow for good ventilation.

The awkward in-betweensies I mentioned earlier has to do with the "now what?" stage.

I've harvested all of the early and most of the mid-season crops. And now my square-foot garden looks more like a jack-o-lantern than a lush grid of greenery. It's only now mid-August, so I figure there's at least 50-60 days before any serious risk of frost (thank you, global warming), and since I refuse to read the directions, I just don't know what to do with all that dirt real estate. 

I do know that beets are yummy, so this evening, I planted another 3 squares of Chioggia beets (4x4x3=48). And when my seeds arrive from Seed Savers Exchange, I'l plant Purple Top white globe turnips, Five Color Silverbeet Swiss chard,  Bull's Blood beets, St. Valery's carrots, and Plum Purple radishes. And in late-October, I'm giving it a go with 2 seed bulbs of German extra-hardy garlic.

The best laid plans, right?

I think I'm writing this because I feel a little like a failure right now - a little fraudulent. This is ridiculous, I know rationally, but I feel like I've let my plants down, in a way. Disease and bad weather shouldn't have happened to my first, perfect garden, and if it did, I should have protected it.

In June, we experienced an awe-inspiring thunderstorm late one evening -- the kind only summertime can produce, that are more than a little scary, and manage to remind you who's boss. I returned home from a day at the office, and was about to run inside to get out of the downpour when the wind started to whip around crazily. Immediately, my mind went to the spindly adolescent plants making their way in the garden. They lacked the girth of mature plants, and were still very vulnerable. So I ran to them and watched as the winds battered them about, and was impressed at their flexibility and strength.

But then it started to hail, and I began to panic. I stretched out my arms and fingers over the pepper plant's leaves to try to deflect the ice pellets, but they tore dozens of holes in the broad leaves. Still, I ran in circles making sounds of alarm, like a Killdeer diverting a predator from her nest. Eventually, though, I had to laugh. The temperature had dropped a good 20 degrees, and I was soaked through, my blouse plastered to my sides, and my hair tangled up in my eyelashes.

There's only so much I can do, I concluded, and went inside to dry off.

This time, though, it's different. Instead of a sudden storm, the threat is an ugly disease that is at once bigger and smaller than my weapons. Maybe all the knowledge in the world couldn't save my squashes, but the fact that I am so ignorant, such a newbie, makes me feel plain foolish right now. 

Is this how parenting will be?

First post!

Ok, so I'm nervous. I've never had a blog before, much less ever regularly read one, and now here I am, in HTML land, like an ant in an auto shop. This all started because I've exhausted my friends with endless stories about 9 pm slug attacks and my cunning beer traps, about our resident skunk and the songs I swear keep him at bay, the daily updates of how *huge* the green tomatoes have become, etc. So I turn to cyberspace, which is quite possibly as vacuous as the real thing, but somehow...well, it's like praying but with a computer. You just hope and trust that someone out there is listening and that they give a damn. 

My name is Dina. I'm a photojournalist by trade, but I'm oh, so distractible. Every month I have a new plan for what I want to be when I grow up (I'm 28), but then get so flustered that the future is now and the clock is ticking and why wait, so I just give into the obsession for a stretch. Through all these vacillations, there is a clear theme: back to the land or into the lab. 

Now and again, I am seized by this old flame of mine and drawn close:  Do I want to be a doctor? Do I want to work inside all the time? To hold hands again with science and those questions? Do I want to sacrifice all my other loves for that One Great Thing?

Nope, I've decided time and again.

My other siren is the farm. To learn deeply about the land, promote fruits and defend it from its enemies. But do I want to get a Ph.D. and go into policy?

Nah. Too much inside-ness.

I decided that I just want to garden. 

And how. Since I've started my first garden (early spring, 2008), I've ripped my life apart at the seams to find ever-more spare time to spend out there. Six am can't come early enough and as soon as the coffee hits my cup, I'm outside to investigate what happened during the intervening hours of sleep. I feel like I've slipped into a missing skin and am suddenly, profoundly, at home. And that by tending the earth, I'm setting in order so many other things. Coaxing order out of chaos, life out of dirt, making small and visible what has happened to bring me here. 

So I really want to talk about it. I want to learn more about how to grow the food my husband and I (and someday, our children) eat. I want chickens (and look out, City of Medford - I shall!). I want to figure out just how many things I can turn into jam (rose hips and green tomatoes -- two yummy checks). And I want to show, and tell, and listen. Thus, this blog. Thank you for being here with me.