New Brooms and Dogwood Winter

The brooms -- last year’s and this year’s, on the brick floor they keep as clean as it gets. Such a treat to have a new broom.

This is dogwood winter. Yep, the dogwoods are in bloom and it came a good cold snap, cold enough for a fire again for tonight and tomorrow at least. When the dogwood’s have leaves the size of a squirrels ear it is time to plant the corn.

We’ll have another cold snap in a few weeks, when the blackberries bloom. That “winter” is (big surprise) blackberry winter.

It is funny how things respond to the different changes in temperature. I expect that this damp cold will vitalize the cold weather stuff that is in the garden, things like the peas and all the coles and the fava beans. Last year we had a weird cold snap in August and there was some sort of fungus got on everything in those three days. Just destroyed a lot of things. As soon as it warmed up, it was gone, and also too late. Husband is in the hothouse now moving the hot weather stuff to the floor and covering it because too much got nipped in the last cold night.

I talked with my sister/midwife/friend in California today and she’s battling the earwigs. They are eating things they are not supposed to like, like her marigolds which you plant to protect things from bugs.

What would life be like if moderns realized how precarious their food supply is? I mean, on micro and macro levels? I wonder. I know that I am aware that we (my family and I) are not facing starvation, no matter what, it really doesn‘t just depend on our efforts, there is a large net of worldwide agriculture that barring major collapse will feed us. But what if it did all depend on our efforts? Or what if there was some major failure, some potato famine type event? Of course, that was caused by so many things, like mono-cropping, and so many people don’t realize Ireland exported food during the so-called famine -- only the poor people were going hungry. Imagine the anger if you’d harvested potatoes and then didn’t have something to eat! But people get used to subservience. As Scott Nearing said, quoting someone else, (and I’m pulling this out of my head so accuracy is questionable), “Men throw off chains of iron to put on chains of gold.” Or what if terrorists had blown up bridges over the Mississippi instead of the Trade Center? That would be enough to really mess with the food supply of the eastern seaboard and they might have sent the whole country into a tizzy without killing a single person.

I don’t know what it would mean really. I don’t think hungry people from the cities will be pouring out here to try to steal our food though -- what would they know to do with a live goat or a barrel full of wheat? I do think it will be ugly. And I guess I really do think something has to give at some point. Drill the hell out of Anwar and it isn’t enough to make a difference. I don’t much believe in trying to stave off the inevitable, but I do want to live through it. I guess I’m like the Klingons on the doomed ship: “We’re breaking up Captain!” “Yes, isn’t it invigorating!” What would it be like?

It would be ugly, individuals would hurt, but wouldn’t it be better in the end? At least, wouldn’t it be possible for it to be better, which as it goes now, is there any positive outcome at all?

Well, that’s a strange line of thought for dogwood winter and new brooms to have swept in.