Farm Therapy

I firmly believe that a farm day, even in darkest winter, is good for the soul. When we feel low or when things seem stressful or when winter has just been too long...we head for a farm get a little pick-me-up. Farms and farmers have a vibrant steadiness about them, a sense that even though the rest of the world may be doldrums and grey there are still energies and happenings inside the privacy of the barn. 

We saw a mama sheep, tucked into a warm indoor stall with plenty of hay....just waiting to lamb. We'll have to check and see if she has one lamb or twins the next time we're up. The boys were pretty happy just to be lifted over the half door of her stall and peek at her expectantly. We poked around a little more the way you do in barns, dodge sparrows flying in and out the doors heading for the rafters, climb the ladder to the haymow and then come back down backwards, open the feed bins and peer in at the big mounds of grain pellets. All good things.

We bought milk, piled on a few cartons of eggs, took an apple each for snacking, we oggled yogurt (and I promised myself I'd make some) and I talked them out of chocolate milk. We noticed a pile of freshly washed spiles in the dairy, read a brochure about the expensive and select maple syrup program they're running and smugly remembered our time up north at my parents house tapping trees with Big Grandpa. 

And after paying for our goods we wandered off through the snow and mud puddles to explore the door of the open greenhouse. So lovely. Greenhouses, farms, Panera Bread. My survival techniques. I think we need to hit up another one sometime very soon. There is something so very healing about the green and alive. I worked in a greenhouse for a little while and even thought I largely did just grunt work, I LOVED it. I still think about that business sometimes and wonder if they are still running. Going to "work" in the middle of January and spending all day trimming blooming geraniums and watering seedlings is a wonderful way to spend your time.

Mommy, Heal Thyself

Sometimes, life is just too much and I'm kind of blowing steam out my ears and afraid someone will talk to me at which point I will either explode or burst into tears...not that anything super horrible is happening.  I just need a little time in a safe place sometimes, a little hope and a little healing and some way to create some extra buffer space and margin for myself.

Image by tkw954 via Flickr

Historically, the woods where I grew up was my "safe place" where I went to recover and breathe again. There was a bottomless sort of solid freshness to the feel of a mound of moss under my fingers or the tinkling run of the crick at the bottom of our little valley.

Image via Wikipedia

Once I no longer lived in a woods I had to extemporize. I would escape the pressure of campus relationship dramas, my roomate's eating disorders and the endless industrial pavement of the city and drive my little clunker around in aimless wandering spirals on little country roads north of town and south of town and east of town, wherever the sidewalks ended and the farmstands began. I'd roll the windows down and play loud music and sometimes stop to sit in a roadside ditch just to listen to the crickets sing around me.

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Then once I was married life got a little busier and I couldn't always dash off to drive off my worries but I discovered a greenhouse in town not far from where I worked and sometimes when a rough shift ended on a cold winter night, I'd stop at the greenhouse and dawdle my way through every single row and table, reading the names of different epiphytes and orchids, playing in the water the the table-top fountains they sold burbled and petting the ubiquitous greenhouse kitties. I don't know if it was the sound of moving water, the smell of growing things, the green haze in the air or the purring nudge of the resident cats but it always worked. I'd go back to my car feeling like I could walk again, like I wouldn't cry after all and like there was a reason to live.

Lemons as big as your head!

Maybe you think I'm crazy and shallow and even selfish, but that's how it works with me. The one last place that has been a haven in tough times (don't laugh!) is Panera Bread. Somehow everything is alright again when I am snuggled own in a warm booth, watching the fireplace flicker with a mug of coca as big as my head between my hands. I think I can thank my sister-in-law, Jane for introducing me to this particular form of healing. We spent many a chatty afternoon back in my college and post-college Michigan days noshing in the comforting glow of Panera after they built one right down the road from her house. Now Panera makes think of all those who love me and slow conversation and laughter and good times and there's also something very boosting as the perennial mommy-person who takes care of everyone else, in having someone else make me lunch and bring it to me on a platter (special perk of appearing at the counter with your arms full of babies) even if "someone else" is a guy named Jose who doesn't know me from Adam is being paid by someone else to make my lunch. Still. I'll take it. And it does come with a fireplace and a mug of cocoa the size of my head.

Giant green leaves. :)

Today I took the boys to Panera. (They pretty much always have to come along whenever mommy needs some healing.) I've discovered that Panera makes pb&j perfectly and that they serve these exciting little yogurt-in-a-tube snacks that Mommy never buys which are thrilling to my sons. We had lunch together, watched all the other people eating lunch and talked about them, snuggled up to the fireplace, and then bought a gingerbread man to split over our cocoa. Life was better.

The beautiful herb wreaths they were making while we were there today, all sage and bay and thyme etc. They smelled amazing.

Nib, wandering the aisles.

And then I remembered that there was a greenhouse I'd heard a rumor about that I'd been meaning to visit for some time...so we gps'd it and drove ourselves right over. There are actually about four greenhouses, a special one just for herbs, one with an amazing, lush lemon tree and one with an indoor farmer's market once a week (today, just by chance!). There are kitties curled up snoozing on the top of plant racks, there is that moist green smell that all greenhouses have and there are little corners where nobody is and you can just let your boys sit down on the ground and run the pea gravel through their fingers while you smell flowers and meander around fingering tags. The doors on each house close so there's no serious losing of the toddler and it turns out my boys light up just as much as I do when they walk into a greenhouse. We all left ready to come back again soon. I think I just found my safe place. If you need a little solace yourself and you happen to be in the area, this particular greenhouse is called Gilbertie's Herb Garden. So, I'm feeling better now, and our house is one jasmine plant and a few herbs richer and we have a place to run when the needle is on E.

My Happy Place

 We all have our "happy places" right? The kind of place you go when life is rough and you're not sure you can make it, the kind of place where you go and you instantly know you're going to make it. The kind of place that can make it all okay again. On of my happy places is Panera Bread.

Another one is this greenhouse. We make a point of going every year and have for five or six years running now. It is best to go in the dead of winter, when you've hit the dregs and are not sure you believe in spring anymore.

 You'd never know we were in a greenhouse in Connecticut. I feel like I'm in deepest jungle in Costa Rica...somewhere always warm, misty humid and vibrant with life.

This citrus tree has ten varieties grafted into it.

 This is one of those places I wish I could live. And a place that it's honestly good we don't live down the road from because I would work there for free for sure...and A might not like that.

Here is the entrance...the happy world you walk into through that door of light.

Oh Spring, am holding on for you! Come soon. Okay?

(The greenhouse we visit is Logee's, of catalog fame...you can go too if you find yourself nearby!)

Winter Sowing My Little Heart Out!

Image by nociveglia via Flickr

Winter Sowing is a genius way to plant things. I mentioned earlier that I had made a silly gaffe and left my giant box of seeds out in the un-heated, un-attached garage for the winter. Heh. For most of my seeds this means a certain doom but, there are some that can handle the cold, usually flower seeds and of those, usually the ones that are native to cold or and/or mountainous regions. These seeds can not only handle being left out in cold winter weather, they actually tend to sprout well and grow in these conditions...with a little help.

I first learned about Winter Sowing on Garden Web...one of my favorite places online. (If you're interested, even sort of, in growing things...any kind of things, Garden Web is a wealth of comradarie and information.) So, that I don't have to belabor you with an explanation, suffice it to say that Winter Sowing is a way to start seeds, fuss-free, in little mini-greenhouses made of recyclables, right in the dead of winter when there's snow and ice and little else outdoors.You can find out what to Winter Sow and when, here. And here's another blogger or two who are walking through the steps and a great article on the method to boot! I love Winter Sowing because I'm the type of gardener who stresses seedlings out by forgetting to water and God does a much, much better job at keeping them consistently moist. Starting seedlings in homemade terrariums is painless.

I just hauled my box out of the garage and spread everything out in a massive swirl of seed packets and scribbled-upon envelopes and started working through it all. Eventually I arrived at a decent amount of things that qualify for Winter Sowing. I raided my recycling bin for what had around to use (anything with a lid will work, even bottles and jugs).

Then, on to the dumping in of potting soil, the splashing and sprinkling with water, the inevitable leaking onto the floor, and small fingers covered with mud and then it was planting time.

And that is how it was that I came to have a small, misty looking pile of various plastic containers, in my back yard. The greenhouse effect makes them condense and bead droplets of steamy water all over the insides of their lids once they are out sitting in a snowbank. I didn't plant all of what could be salvaged, not nearly, but there will be more plastic containers and slowly the flock will grow...and someday soon we will have little sprouts of green to greet us and slowly grow tantalizingly taller by our back door.

Man! I have got to get that apple tree in the yard pruned or else! Heavens how the winter has flown!