Good Dirt

This spring we started getting a CSA share (community-supported agriculture). Actually it is a half-share, which is just about right for us.

Here's the routine. Every week we drive to the farm on the way home and fill one or two grocery bags with whatever they have for us that day. We then drive home and I spend the next hour (ish) washing and prepping the veggies so that they are ready-to-use throughout the week. Being a bit obsessive, I also write what we have on little sticky notes so that I can see at a glance what we have in the fridge without opening it and trying to remember what I have wrapped up in which container.

We're nearly at the end of the season; next week is our last regular pick-up. I'm gonna miss the routine.

The pick-up (most weeks) included at least one u-pick item. The farmers tell me that they usually save this for things that are just too time-intensive for them to pick for us. So over the course of the seasons we walked a quarter-mile or so into the fields to pick peas, snap peas, green beans, tomatoes, tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, dragon's tongue beans, cranberry shell beans, and purple beans (like green beans but deep purple on the outside). And every week there were flowers to cut for happy bouquets.

So I've had my feet (and sometimes hands) in the dirt every week, and happily. I never got the hang of the garden cycle here, even though I've been here since college. Somehow the lower-midwest rhythms are still in my blood and brain and I think about planting peas before the soil here has thawed. Oh, well. The CSA is a great alternative. At the end of a u-pick, I would stand up and look out over all the fields with a satisfied (and undeservedly proud) feeling. I like the way my boots feel when they are planted (so to speak) in the dirt.

I've been thinking about dirt all week because of Carmi's Thematic Photographic challenge, Let's Get Dirty. Forgot to take my camera to the farm, but thanks to modern smartphones, I had a backup in my pocket. 

Lined Up

Check out Carmi's post for more parallel-themed pictures.

I snapped this picture with my cell phone on my way out of the garage at work this week. 

I intended to go back with my camera to get a wider view or a different angle. Alas, work trapped me inside most of the week and by the time I got back to the garage today with my camera in hand, the workers had quit for the day. 

On my way to meet my wife I walked past these outside the restaurant next door. 

Then as I waited outside my her office I took pictures of the building, of the brick plaza, the blinds in the window, even the stripes on my espadrilles. Then I noticed the hostas in the planter I was sitting on.  

I love the parallel veins in the leaves, don't you?

Gray Is a Story

Check out Carmi's post for more gray.

When Carmi prompted us to post a gray-themed picture I started thinking about what I might use as my gray subject. What is gray for me? What comes to mind when I think of gray? 

The simplest answer is that gray is a paint chip; one of those little pieces of paper you get at the hardware store with a series of "warm grays" or "cool grays" that you can hold against your wall, scrunch up your eyes and try to figure out what it would look like magnified a thousand times to fill the room. 

Beyond that, however, I realized that gray (to me) is a story. gray is my drive to work 

with the interior of the car in a color that Toyota (that year) called "stone."

Gray can be a boring length of galvanized steel. 

But if I back up a step, I see it has a story to tell, with a hole and rust, and a chain. 

Gray is the color of rocks around here. 

I grew up with rocks that were predominantly beige. New England granite, however, seems to be mostly served up in gray.

The gravel beneath my feet can tell a story; this time the story is about nature's resilience. 

The Civil War Monument downtown is gray, and definitely tells a story, with the names carved in the bottom section. The fact that it is in good shape and not neglected is also a story. 

I just know that this house has stories to tell.

Even the parking meter I used on Wednesday has a story to tell. I see that it wasn't always gray. It seems to me that in a former life it was blue. 

But the favorite gray for me are these chairs. 

Simple folding chairs might seem to be a boring story. But every time these chairs come out of the basement it is because we're expecting company, and that is always a smile-worthy occasion.

Pics Taken with SmartPhone

Carmi over at Written Inc challenged us to share pictures taken with smartphones (or tablets, etc).  I do that occasionally for pleasure when my camera isn't with me.  But most of the pictures I take with my phone are for short-term work purposes like these: 

The one above is when I was helping someone with connections.  We had to disconnect all these wires, disconnect the box, thread everything out of the lectern they were in, then reverse all the steps with the brand-new lectern.  I captured this so we would remember which order the colors connect to the box. 

A couple of weeks later I was on a walk-through of an office area under construction.  Rather than jot down lots of network jack numbers, I snapped a few of these so that I could send the info to someone later.  This one had the advantage of reminding me where in the room it was (next to the light switch).

I don't typically keep these around after the task is finished, although a few end up tweaked into documentation (such as our how-to on using the buil-in audio-visual features in the conference rooms).

Go check out Carmi's post and see what others contributed this week.

Refuse

Refuse

Meditation was a taxing chore,
so-called sage counsel for self-healing.
I never knew there were so many rocks
in my couch cushion, so many scratchy tags
in my shirts. I carried a pout on the inside
of my face
and NO in my heart.

And one day,
and one day I forgot
to pack my heavy anger,
and I floated over time,
breathed deeply and heard the sun
sing in my veins, carrying joy
to my fingertips,
and YES into my soul.