Who knows where the time goes?

 Time passes slowly up here in the mountains
We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains
And we catch the wild fishes that swim in the stream
Time passes slow when you're lost in a dream...

Ain't no reason to go in the wagon to town
Ain't no reason to go to the fair
Ain't no reason to go up
Ain't no reason to go down
Ain't no reason to go anywhere.-- Judy Collins / Bob Dylan

When I began this note, it had been nearly a week since we changed the date on our blog. That may be the longest time we have gone without updating. It isn't that we have been inundated with work or crises--at least any more than is our usual, but we have been busy. The days have passed without time for this particular pleasure.

H has been here on the weekends, and he has been able to play pool on THE table in THE pool room. He has begun to set it up with his art and furniture from Medford. (That includes the cat's favorite webbed chairs. H found large quantities of matted fur under the seat.) But so far, H hasn't spent much time playing. I think he has actually spent as much time cleaning and arranging as moving the balls around, but it seems satisfying just to be there.

I have been learning about the garden. Someone once said that the way to approach a garden is to think of it as rooms, taking each one in turn to clean and prepare. If that is the case, we have a 14 room garden-house. Certainly some of the rooms are more complex than others. There is the spot on the lawn that has nothing more than three or four blueberry bushes; all it will need is some bird netting. There is the spot that has a sole Spirea, and the bed of ferns and lilies needs little, but the east side shade garden has a dozen or more varieties of plants and the garden beds will support another dozen types of veggies. Our friend Derrick has just finished rebuilding them with 3 inch wide hemlock sides and reorienting the center stone pavers to match the height of the new sides. The beds need composted manure which I ordered by the truckload, and some fish emulsion. I need stakes and markers for the plants which I am making out of old cutlery which I am engraving with a Dremel tool. And of course, the new beds will need new plants. Snap peas, Walla Walla onions and some of the spinach are already in the one to the southeast, but there are 4 other  beds to measure out, hammering in brads a foot apart on the sides and tying string to make a big planting grid. I have, of course, also pulled out the sour grass and creeping charlie and chickweed - well, most of it.  It could take most of the day, if I let it.

There is also the section along the lattice by the sheds, and "the rooms" to the north, south, east and west, and each one of those has sub-areas that need different care. The good news is that it rained at last, for what is probably the first time in two weeks. The aforementioned veggies and the herbs and lettuce will be dancing. Or they would be if they weren't going to be frozen by tonight's temperatures in the thirties. And tomorrow's. I am hoping the lilacs and crab apples make it through the night.

Otherwise, everywhere I look there is new growth. It isn't there one day, and the next the hostas are up or the crabapple or the forsythia has blossomed, or the daffodils have gone by. I look at this place once again, through the eyes of the people who lived here and planted all this - and I am gratful for their enormous care and skill.

We have a plethora of birds here at the feeder- purple finches and gold finches and tufted titmice, and black-capped chickadees, and Red breasted grosbeaks and, at last count, 8 or 9 blue jays in a flock, and woodpeckers and 1 lone starling. I am noticing that the very fat squirrels that like to feed at the "squirrel proof" feeders are gone by afternoon when the jays take over. There was a hummingbird at the feeder last weekend, and Herb heard an owl.

All in all, it has been busy. And as I said, I am seeing the landscape through others' eyes - a dog we nearly adopted (long story), the prior owners, the cats (who have gone out twice unsupervised and come home), and yes, my husband, who has taken the lawnmower out of winter storage, and has begun patrolling for windfall that can be used for kindling next Fall. And perhaps that is the most interesting piece of all - that we are seeing the landscape as a progression in time, as part of its seasonal cycle, as it changes day by day.

In the city, we see the world of the "T" or the subway or the bus to work as rituals of the commute; "third places" like the coffee bar we stop at each morning or the deli where we get our afternoon snacks; these are also  rituals, as are the newspaper headlines and the meetings at work. But here? Each day is another lesson in change and in seeing, really seeing, what is before me and how it is all connected. The bucket of wood ash from the stove has been standing too long outside by the garage door. Something I read recently said it was a good addition to the soil for peas, and so it was distributed yesterday on that newly planted garden bed. That wood began as trees on this land. Late last summer, the guys who tap our trees for maple syrup took down some of the dead trees and cut the wood into 16 inch lengths for the wood stove. In early Fall, we worked with our friends to split it into usable chunks for the fire. We stacked it in the wood shed, and then through the winter, we moved it, one wheelbarrow load at a time, into the garage. We then carried it into the house in canvas bags and stacked it, first beside the stove, and then in it. And now that ash is fertilizing our peas. There is an old saying about warming yourself three times by a wood fire...we warmed ourselves far more frequently.  It takes a lot of time, but little is wasted. We have  a compost bin that has taken our food scraps and sod clumps and Fall leaves and spent flowers and is still taking more. We recycle more than we throw away, and the old food containers are making plant cloches to protect them from tonight's chill and tomorrow's near freezing temps at night.. Am I sounding a bit too...well..."Hints from Heloise"?

What I am realizing here is that I can watch time passing as the plants sprout from the soil, mature, and go by nearly as I watch. I am realizing that each day and night and day cycle contain the seeds of the next one, and that if I watch carefully, I will understand that each action I take has an impact on something else - what I plant, and whether I cover it or water it, and where I set my foot. We walked with friends in the woods behind our house yesterday. He is a hunter and I asked him whether he could see the places the deer traveled. I asked him whether it was the fact that we stood in a clearing with many broken branches that was his key. "No," he said." It's their prints," and as he motioned to the leaf litter at our feet, I realized that I couldn't see what was right before my eyes.

My cousin wrote recently, that the guy who occasionally prunes her trees has been telling her that her dogwood should be removed since it is half dead. She says "his idea of the proper role of trees is much more parklike (human designed)" than hers and that he worries that the dogwood will attract damaging insects. She says, "good, more woodpeckers and nuthatches. The older I get the more I identify with that tree, so I can't begin to contemplate cutting it down."

Every time someone asks me if I am working now, meaning am I back in the classroom, I feel guilty. But I am working as hard as I ever have, at learning to see what is before me, whether deer prints in the leaf litter or the progression from a green spike to a Hosta, or the link between the squirrels and the jays. A friend once said that I was like a five year old with a rock or a salamander in my pocket, pulling it out and asking "what's this?" or exclaiming "Look what I found!" over the things that he takes for granted.

One of the late great Social Psychologists, Stanley Milgram, wrote that the city dweller is more acutely attuned to the environment. The walker needs to make a host of assessments before he or she crosses the street--the color of the traffic light, the nature of the traffic, the distance and speed of approaching cars, the desire to cross and time needed to complete their route to the destination. In contrast, he said, the rural dweller has few decisions to make. The implication was that the urbanite was somehow "fitter" and more prepared for survival. I knew when I heard it, that this was bunk, but as I live here, I learn over and over again how to see, how to hear, and how my actions are tied to the land - both driven by it and a contributor to its health or its demise. Truth be told, I am working as hard as I ever have, at understanding how our sense of time influences the way we think about what matters in our world, and how that impacts the decisions we make. Who knows where the time goes?

Across the morning sky
All the birds are leaving?
How can they know
It's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire
We'll still be dreaming.
I do not count the time.

Who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad deserted shore 
Your fickle friends are leaving
But then you know, 
It's time for them to go
But I will still be here
I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

Who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone
While my love is near me
And I know it will be slow
'Til it's time to go
Still come the storms of winter
And then the birds of Spring again
I do not count the time

Who knows how my love grows?
Who knows where the time goes?

  - Sandy Denny and Judy Collins