Sunshine After the Rain (and hail) (and wind) (and thunder) (and more rain)

I rather enjoy my life on my [hobby] farm. We have enough growing here that I can call it a [hobby] farm. We have several patches of vegetable gardens.We have chickens. We have several berry plants and fruit trees. I like to call my backyard "my oasis." This past weekend, I spend several hours working in my oasis, enjoying the glorious sun and breeze. My back muscles and swatches of tender red skin will attest to it. 

Last week, we had two severe storms roar through West Tennessee. The first one came suddenly with little warning. It was sunny, calm, and 84 degrees one moment. Then it was blowing sideways rain, pelting hail, and the weather radio began to blare the evil tornado warning message. The electricity went out for about two hours and it rained all night. Sure enough, within a day of that storm another one came through. The second one lacked the tornado warning, but it knocked out our electricity for a solid 23 hours and brought damaging winds. Randall worked for some six hours helping the fire department clear roads of felled trees that night.

I could see the storms looming on the second day and the events from the day before made me especially "weather aware." I lit candles as we sat down for dinner. Sure enough, the electricity went out as we were eating. Randall barely finished his second slice of pizza when he got that call from the fire department and was gone until almost 1am.

I had the foresight to light candles before dinner because of the previous day's storms.
I did not know the need would last so long.
It is amazing how difficult it is to have both no electricity and nowhere to go.

The next morning was clear and sunny but I knew it would be difficult. I had just transplanted several of my "babies" from their safe harbor under their grow light in the basement to their new homes in the garden. Hail and plants are not friends. I donned my red, rubber boots and proceeded to march around my yard for a damage assessment. I couldn't even bare to take pictures because the damage made me sad. Stalks and stems held up torn and holey leaves as mini, green surrender flags. The strawberry patch was a mess of shredded, green foliage and a few beaten-up berries. Several of my babies were gone.

My beautiful broccoli (from maybe three weeks ago)?

We have such a small [hobby] farm that these damages are practically insignificant. But I could feel the weight of a farmer who has to face whatever nature throws her way. Weather? Pests? Fungus? Blight? I don't farm for a living, but in the moment of sadness for losing all of the living things that I helped cultivate, I also realized that there is so much more. Generations have felt this way. People across many landscapes on different continents have felt this way. I have been raised in a modern enough time that the weather is more of an annoyance and not the force to be reckoned with if you want to feed your family. It took me about three days to digest my sadness and work onward.

I spent many hours this past weekend in my yard (my guess is something like 13 or 14 hours total). Yes, there were things to clean up. There are always things to clean or repair on a farm. But there were also chores to keep things moving forward. More plants need to be planted, more weeds need to be pulled, more seeds put in the ground. I had my chance to be sad for what happened after those storms, but dwelling in the damage was not going to make anything better.

What impressed me during those beautiful days is how the damaged plants bounced back. They have leaves with holes but those leaves still turned to face the sun. Birds still sang. The earth still rotates and the sun still sears my skin unless I apply regular and complete doses of SPF 800. Maybe that is why I love to garden? I receive many lessons outside, like the days don't stop even if I want them to. That the worst maybe isn't actually the worst. That the sun will return even after the most severe storms blow through.

As I was working on one part of the yard, Randall was mowing. He stopped and started motioning to me like a crazy person (let's just say that maybe we should not be charades partners). I finally understood that he was motioning to a tree. I checked it out and saw a mockingbird's nest about chest-height with one spotted egg in it. New babies! This morning, I saw that there are now three eggs in it. That mockingbird probably did not like the storms, neither, but here it is, continuing with its life.

And yes. I should be studying for my final final law school exam of the semester. But my brain can only do so much, so I am reflecting and writing instead. It is a way of continuing to digest the events of the week (and maybe also the events of the past two and a half months).

Planting Wildflowers

I've been meaning to write more. My buddy, Paul, helped motivate me to get back into it. Last night, I found a moment that felt inspired enough that I could write about it. Forgive my forthcoming stream of consciousness:

Randall and I purchased land from his dad this spring. One swath of land runs to the side of our property and we decided it would be a good place to create some form of "buffer" from potential future neighbors. We decided said buffer would be an orchard. Now, this land has been agricultural in nature; the farmers who leased it rotated growing crops on it, like soybeans and corn. When the land has nothing growing, we see a weed-splosion occur. In order to combat the weed-splosion, we bought this: 

Clover and wildflower seeds! The clover is native and will be good for the ground as it grows our various fruit and nut trees. It is also good for pollinators (and we have to save the bees!). However, because of the world predicament we are in (this here Time of the Coronavirus), I have turned into Scrooge. If we don't need it, we are not spending any money on it. So, while we talked about wildflowers back in January, a few weeks ago Randall said he was going to buy the seed for the patch along the road. "Maybe next year?" I offered. "It seems like an unnecessary expense right now." He said that's one way to look at it, then followed up: "but think of the joy we will provide to anyone driving by who sees the cheery patch of flowers." Ok. "Think of the joy you get every time you see flowers." He's not wrong.* So we bought the wildflower seed. And I already experience great amounts of joy just thinking about the flowers.

Knowing it was going to rain over the next several days, Randall and I tilled the land in order to spread the layer of seeds. Randall and I had already used the tractor a few weeks back to turn over the soil. So as the daylight hours slipped away, Randall and I feverishly completed the task of planting seeds. Ok, I just did some tossing of seeds and a few light raking motions to cover them up. But we got the field planted.

Look! Look at this! Ok, ok. Right now it looks like patchy dirt. But while Randall and I were sowing seeds, a thought dawned on me. We are sowing hope. We plant for the future. We don't know what the future will hold (in this case, we hope it is a field of wildflowers), but our efforts are for the future.

So I offer this thought: we are living in a world of uncertainty right now (completely off topic, but if I hear the word "unprecedented" one more time, I might stab someone). Maybe it feels like we are living in an abstract place of patchy dirt. Maybe it is difficult to see through the weeds. But we keep working toward a future that holds things like wildflowers. We keep educating children for their brighter future. We keep being kind to others because that's the type of world where we want to live. We keep living, taking each day as it comes knowing that we can't change that these days continue to come, we can only do our best with them. Ultimately, there is still a future and even if it feels like a vast space of tilled-up dirt right now, we can still hold on to hope. Hang in there and stay well, my friends.

*Actually, often my handsome husband knows more about me than I do. In this case, he preemptively offered me a season of feeling grounded in my garden.