Holly Korbey - Outside/In

Take That, Mother Nature!

It has been so long. Hasn't it? I have been away from the blog for a couple of weeks, for a humbling concoction of reasons and excuses that have to do as much with x-rays and casts as they do with avoidance. Not to mention torrential downpours that went on for so long that I thought that my husband would one day arrive home from work and announce that God had told him to build an ark. But just in time the sun has arrived, along with the Texas that I am familiar with (hot and humid), and look what I found in my garden today!! Just look at those tomatoes.

Before we get into what a wonderful gardener I am, and what a generally lucky and blessed person I am, and how much people like me and ask me to tell them funny stories, and how when I saw these tomatoes growing on the tomato plants that I grew myself with no help from anyone I felt like I no longer had deep, deep lines running around my mouth like Fred Flinstone, or how the skin around my stomach that sagged a little from birthing two enormous children suddenly felt taut, or how I realized after staring at those greent tomatoes for just a few seconds that I do have an extremely green thumb after all. Before we get into all that, let's just go back for a moment, to the 90% of the vegetables I planted in those deliciously humble veggie bed boxes my husband so graciously gave up his entire weekend and built for me, the zucchini and the squash and the carrots and the radishes and the onions. Remember those? Let's just get right to the point: they're all dead. Dead. Everything that I thought might have gone wrong - not enough sunlight, sub-prime soil, lack of fertilizer, too much effing rain, all those things conspired together, I believe, to create the perfect storm of infertility, and, under the strain of all those clouds and all that moisture, my weakened little plants just threw up their stems and said, okay, we give up. We're tired and we don't want to do this anymore. I took them at their word.

The cantaloupes and the tomatoes, however, are doing quite well.

Now, let's take a look at these little green tomatoes! Look how robust, how tight their skins are, wrapped around whatever soon-to-be-juicy insides are swirling up and down inside there. Since they are grape tomatoes, I had my little two-year-old gently put his chubby little hand next to one so you could see their actual size:

 

But still! Even if they are very small, they look full of life, and I grew them, and I'm sure they will taste delicious in a side salad next to my main course in an upcoming meal. I am just sure that they will.

In my last post, the last sorry post before my short break, I mentioned to you how depressing, how desperate it is for me to stick with something for a long stretch of time without receiving any feedback that it's going well (I'm a recovering actress, remember). These tomatoes, however, these little blooms that make me feel both young and fruitful and old and wise simultaneously, have done just that. It's like the universe just gave me a standing ovation.

And, to you, Mother Nature, I take my bow.

Ah, Wednesday

Those were the days, everything so green and new.

After the fifteenth straight day of rain, the newness, the excitement of the garden is beginning to wear on me. It’s hard to do as Milli Vanilli says, however, because I do this with nearly everything I have ever attempted in my life - with or without the rain to blame. The once shiny anticipation of feeling tingly and alive in nature, of watching food grow, has slowly turned itself into a dark, thick rag knotted in the pit of my stomach, dragging at me. I don’t go outside that much. I’m bored with trying all the fixes – how to fix the yellowing leaves, the bugs nibbling the spring onions (what are those bugs, by the way? I have no idea. I’m too ambivalent to care). When I peek out and see the occasional squash-blossom giving it the old college try, I feel like it’s trying to cheer me up in the midst of my personal pity-party. I want to tell her, go away, not today, I’m looking to replace you with something a little more fun. I’m tired of worrying and fretting over every little detail.

I wander around the house, humid and sticky from all the rain, when I should be writing, or pitching, or weeding, or composting, and think of new projects. Something immediate and fresh would satisfy me right now, something that wouldn’t take lots of time but yield a large result. Like spraypainting. I’ve been thinking of things around here we could spraypaint - and there are many - and it would be so fun. Turquoise blue, white, and red. It would be quick and smelly and I could use my arms and really get into it. I could do it in the garage, in the middle of the day with all the lights on, the plum-purple skies threatening thunderstorms yet again, and again tomorrow, and again and again forever until I consider talking to my husband about moving to Seattle, and forgetting sunny Texas. We rarely see the sun anymore.

How many times have I had this feeling, this ache, to just dump what I’ve got and start over: apartments, wardrobes, careers. I look out the streaked windows of our sun room, the rain room I guess it is now, and wish the garden would go away. I wish it would get up and walk out of here and leave me alone, leave me to my overly messy house with bikes and bike helmets and bits of crayons and chewed-up doggie bones scattered helplessly in the shag carpet, the shag carpet that once looked so cool to me but now only looks dirty and sad. How many times have I abandoned a perfectly good project and walked away and never looked back just because things got hard. Or boring. I wouldn’t say vengefully, but maybe more like spitefully. No regrets.

The thick, glommy Texas mud clings to my veggie boxes and pots like a stalker. I consider in short bursts going out and at least cleaning them off with a spray of the hose, making them look more attractive to my wandering eye, but it continues to rain, making it pointless. Other more pressing tasks beckon. Suddenly washing the dishes looks too good to be missed. I organize the boys’ clothes in their closet according to season, then color. I know I’m avoiding.

I try to think of a way in which this despicable aspect of my personality turns out, Oprah-like, to be the one thing I really need right now. The ability to get up and walk away from what’s not working: how can I use it? What amazing problem will be solved with this mountain of impatience I’m too bored to climb?

Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.

The Possibility of Untimely Miracles

Dear birds and squirrels, you will not defeat me.

After three more days of drenching rain, I stepped out into the mud-soaked garden this morning, and looky looky what I found: cantaloupes!

Evidently, the birds that had feasted on my large and healthy cantaloupe seeds had missed a few. And here they were, sprouting up, all healthy and vivacious and dark glossy green, right on the hills where I'd planted them. The way they stand up so straight, with those proud little leaves and short chubby stems, reminds me of my little boys. They seem to be saying, in the same manner as when my boys actually eat their vegetables, hey, look at our muscles! I like the way the cantaloupe seedlings look - healthy. Sturdy. Corn-fed. Survivors. I can't help it, I'm Midwestern, and I am so proud of them.

My two-year-old and I performed a victory dance right there in the mud, this kind of jumpy, kicky dance, with him punching his arms in the air, kung fu-style, and I was jumping straighat up and down with my knees nearly locked, like I used to do, many years ago, every single time I heard the Violent Femmes (I love dancing. It's a sickness. I don't understand why there aren't more opportunities for adults to freestyle dance in the world.). It was, in every sense of the word, a miracle, and if all goes well I will eat cantaloupe this summer from my own backyard. With salt.

Funny, I was about to tear down the hills where I had assumed all the cantaloupe seeds had been robbed from me - I was going to use the soil and compost for another planting project. But, I didn't. I decided - for once - to wait a few days to try to decide what my next move would be, and that's when the sturdy little seedlings popped up with their muscle shirts on.

This makes me wonder about miracles. Because I didn't do anything. I mean, I did do everything - I used the right soil, the premium compost, the right spot, the right water, everything. But I didn't do too much. When I realized the birds had come and had lunch on my seeds, I did not rush out and tear down the hills. I let them sit for a while. I thought about what to do next. And mostly, I didn't think. I just let them sit, and I looked at them, and pictured all the possibilities.

The miracles: they show up in the unlikeliest of places.