Taking a bath in the country

This morning I drove through the countryside to pick up our weekly CSA share. This week we get:

• Arugula
• Brentwood Lettuce
• Chives
• Broccoli Raab
• Cutting Celery
• Kale Mix
• Mustard Greens
• Radish
• Spinach, and
• Sunflower Microgreens

After the events of the past few days, the drive through a nature-dominated rural area helped a lot. Picking up a share of products grown through the sanity of sustainable agriculture reinforced a sense that the entire world isn’t crazy, just too much of it. Fortunately, lilacs are coming on nicely. Trillium are still in bloom. Many of the dandelions have blossoms converted into seed heads. Full leaf out is in evidence in the tree tops. Many farm fields are showing the green of emergent new growth. I uncharacteristically had enough sense to slow down to about 20 mph, enjoy the scene and decompress a bit.

a field planted to rapeseed

Photo by J. Harrington

It’s that time of year dominated by new life. Birds are incubating eggs or feeding hatchlings. So far we’ve not seen any of this year’s fawns. The sheep farm we often pass has fields still full of lambs, including one or two little black sheep. (I felt right at home.) A number of the farm fields look like they’re full of carryover yellow rape plants. Swaths of bright yellow blossoms brightened the fields but the distribution was uneven enough that it didn’t look like intentional planting from this year.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of forest bathing. I’m learning that a very leisurely, low speed, drive through the country is a helpful alternative. Soon, very soon I hope, we’ll be practicing a different variation on forest bathing as we wade a local trout stream. But first, it’s time to empty this season’s first bucket of kitchen scraps into the compost tumblr. Have a wonderful holiday weekend and remember to honor those who gave their all in service to US.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

Ada Limón - 1976-

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

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