Everyone's a Winner

A couple of weekends ago, I had two chickens entered at a local fair. It was not something I was interested in, because I’m lazy and didn’t see the point—they’re my chickens, so how good could they be?—but my wife insisted. She reasoned that it would give our daughter something to do, since she’d been aced out of working with the horsey group she belongs to that was performing there (long story). Anyway, my wife and daughter picked them out of our flock of eight barred rocks, shoved them into a dog carrier, and delivered them to the fair, where they were given blood tests (they were stuck under the wing, the part I like to eat). When I visited them Saturday morning, they looked like the other barred rocks, except for the one that my daughter selected, which had pink feathers because a girlfriend of hers decided to paint her with nail polish.

The day dragged on, as such days do, and I happened to be hanging around the cages when a fair official started going down the row affixing ribbons to some—though not all—of the cages. I held my breath. I was weak in knees. And what do you know, my pink chicken was awarded a yellow third-prize ribbon and the other one a blue first-place ribbon. I was practically dancing with delight. I buttonholed every remotely familiar-looking person to say, “Look, my chicken won!” I was not unaware of how absurd that sounded; it was part of the fun. I cornered the judge shortly afterward to ask what I’d done right, because even though I don’t know anything about chickens, it was I who won the ribbon, not the chicken. It turned out she wasn’t the judge; she was just handing out ribbons. A girl assisting her had worked with the judge and told me that the blue-ribbon winner conformed to barred-rock-chicken standards, both in terms of proportions and the perfection of its bars. I looked at the chicken more closely, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. The other chicken was given a prize just for being pink. That I could understand. I took pictures of both of them, which of course didn’t come out.

The rest of that day I floated around the fair feeling pretty good, checking in with the chickens from time to time to get a fresh dose of first-place bliss. It was on one of these visits that I noticed that the other chickens were being awarded too—in fact, every single one of them got something. The air went out of the balloon. Everybody wins. Although I have to admit that this approach toward competition is directed toward children, who just want a prize, rather than adults, who just want to win, it took what was special about what had happened—this unexpected, inconsequential, and therefore delightful gift—away. I felt compelled to tell all of those familiar faces that the ribbons meant nothing—they were an award for just showing up, which in my view is no award at all. However, a little later on, when we were driving home and my thinking cleared, I realized that first place is first place, so I began to negotiate with my daughter over who would get what. I told her she could have the pretty yellow ribbon and I’d take the ugly blue one. Convinced she had made a deal, she insisted we make a pinky promise, which I was only too glad to do, having cleverly manipulated an eight-year-old.

When we came back the next day, the first-prize winner, whom my wife named Ida, had laid an egg. Even better things were to come. Another ribbon mysteriously appeared on Ida’s cage, a bigger, showier one. At first I thought it was a ribbon my daughter had won for eating watermelon with no hands or walking a banner around the horse ring. But then I realized that this was special indeed, that it was an award of a larger order, a Reserve Special. However, when I realized it wasn’t the highest order, I was vaguely disappointed, which is ridiculous given the fact that I had no expectations coming in, but that’s what happens—it’s never enough. I tempered my unreasonable response by noting that very few of these ribbons were given out. A real distinction had been made. Now all I had to do was figure out how to get it away from my daughter.

September 11

A bell tolled at the Catholic church in town when I walked past it this morning. At first I thought, How charming. It’s like living in Italy! Then I thought, How annoying. It’s like living in Italy! And then I realized, after looking at my watch—it was 9 o’clock—that it was commemorating the 9/11 attacks. And I’m going into the city.

The Lawn

We do not employ a gardener anymore, mostly for financial reasons, though the guy we did use—call him Al—is not around anyway. Al returned to his native Brazil for unspecified reasons. I think it’s fair to say that whatever those reasons were, they were not good ones for him. Anyway, we will miss Al, because he and his guys—he always had a few broken-English speakers with him—did the backbreaking work I refuse to do. I’d rather the yard go back to nature than cut down or pull out dead plants. Plus, he was a character. He played the bongos at Christmas and had a truck with a horn that made mooing sounds, like an especially loud—and large—cow. He was also cheap, but you get what you pay for. His men would clean up our garden in the spring but dump the vegetable matter on our property instead of either burning it (the professional way) or moving it across the street to our neighbors’ property (my way). When he’d mow our lawn, he’d miss spots and more than once skinned the roots of our weeping cherry tree, which may now be rotting as a result. He was always in too much of a hurry, as are a lot of illegal immigrants who are constantly hustling because they're feeding themselves, the Third World, and probably some of the First World too. And his attendance was erratic. He’d go for weeks in the summer without mowing the lawn, so it would grow over our shins, to the point where walking in it was more like wading, and small objects, including children, chickens, and cats, might get lost or at least stepped on. Of course, the fact that we were slow to pay him might have had something to do with his performance issues. Also, to be fair, he was more than just a weed whacker. He built a wall behind our house from stones he found on our property without using mortar. Occasionally one those stones will slide free, and I can't for the life of me put it back, because I don't know how the hell he did it. He was an artist.

Now that Al is no longer here, I have to do the mowing myself. I bought a machine that was fancy twenty years ago, like an old Mercedes, so its state-of-the-art technology is analog (mechanical) rather than digital (electronic). One of the things I like about it is that it was manufactured before government safety people made operating anything with moving parts a pain in the ass. I’m referring specifically to the fact that a contemporary mower won’t stay on unless you’ve got a hand on it, depressing a bar. They don’t want the thing to run unattended, because, I suppose, it might start rolling downhill and cut off your toes, if for some reason you were dumb enough to align it that way and to be standing in its path in bare feet. With this baby, I can stop, wipe my brow, hitch up my pants, drink a beer, all using two hands. (Many of these functions are best performed with two hands.) The downside of this mower is that it warms up like an old man, very slowly, coughing and spluttering, and sometimes, like an old man, it never really gets going. I try not to mind, because I know we’re a lot alike.

Haircut

My wife’s cousin gave me one in the driveway of the family bungalow, about a hundred yards from the beach, which was closing up for the summer. I wasn’t so much concerned about the public sheep shearing or what she would do to my hair as I was the integrity of my head, ears, and, especially, eyes. After all, she had in her hands a pair of sharp scissors that she’d only used on her own bangs. The result was a modified duck’s ass, but at least it was bloodless.

The Horse Whisperer

That would be my daughter, who rode a miniature pony that may or may not have ever been ridden before (it was a rescue). She did so without getting thrown off, shaken, or stirred, much to the relief of her teacher, who was holding the lead while I held the rider. The pony did look a bit wild-eyed at first and shied away when my daughter attempted to mount, but then it got with the program, fell in line, and walked in mindless circles, just like everyone else. Needless to say, my daughter does not in any way resemble Robert Redford, though she has that in common with most Horse Whisperers. And she does share with Redford a disarming quality despite her good looks. Perhaps that’s what horses respond to.

Beans

Yesterday I picked beans at the CSA—two pints of them. Since I didn’t have a pint measurer, one of the farm hands helpfully said after taking one look at me to imagine filling two glasses of beer. Thanks. I filled a pony keg. Then I went on to pillage the sunflowers, the wildflowers, the ground cherry tomatoes, and the tomatillos. Actually, that’s not true. They’re very niggardly with their portions, especially with people like me who only have half shares, and there wasn’t much to pick from. It’s also worth mentioning that I didn’t know what the tomatoes and tomatillos looked like. The best way I can describe them is that they resemble tiny paper lanterns, with a nugget of fruit inside. Afterwards I had a couple of beer glasses filled with beer. And left the beans in the car.

See You in the Fall

It’s as if someone flipped a switch: Suddenly it’s fall. I can see clearly now, what with the low humidity and theatrical lighting, though the rest of me hasn't caught up with the new season. It’s stuck in boggy August, or the tedium that is July. Naturally I’m inside. It’s somehow easier to enjoy a day like this by experiencing it at a remove, by looking at it through a window or an open doorway. This reminds me of Gertrude Stein’s observation that she liked a good view but preferred to sit with her back to it. Same idea as it’s better to journey than to arrive. Once you get there, then where do you go?

Guns and Roses

Took the dog for a late-afternoon walk around the pond and ran into a couple of guys, one of them armed with an automatic rifle, the other trailing the odor of weed. The guy with the gun said hi in a friendly way. I returned fire with a fake smile and a small look of disapproval that he could easily dismiss. I wanted to feel as if I’d stood up to him without getting my head blown off. It’s a familiar gesture around here, what with all the lunatic four-wheelers, dirt bikers, hunters, drinkers, drug dealers, and hot rodders.

Garden

This is an old essay. Part of the landscape featured here has been altered by a backhoe and a barn, but the attitude remains.

I live in upstate New York on three acres with a garden the size of Central Park. At least it feels that way. There’s a long bed along the road, healthy-size beds on each side of the house—unfortunately, like most houses, ours has four sides—and an enormous fenced-in garden beyond the front lawn. The previous owner was so intoxicated by all of this that she changed her last name from something Irish to something Irish-botanical, from, say, “O’Reilly” to “O’Rhododendron.”

Fortunately, when we moved in some of these beds were planted with perennials—irises by the porch, peonies on either side of the steps leading up from the road. No problems there. Then things got rather sketchy. Ms. O’Hollyhocks gardened in the French manner, meaning the enclosed area and some of the other beds were a riot not only of flowers but also of weeds. Somehow the weeds seemed to predominate. We suspected that Ms. O’Boc Choy had let the garden go after she and her husband had sold us the house. We shook our fists at her.

Before taking stock of what we had, our first task was take stock of ourselves, though we didn’t do that on any conscious level. We learned how ill equipped we were, and why, as we went along. The extent of our gardening experience had consisted of a small patch of basil that we’d planted behind a Brooklyn brownstone. (I’m so dumb that as recently as very recently I ordered pesto at a produce stand, thinking that’s what we’d grown way back when.) As long as we’ve lived together, seventeen years, we’ve had only a handful of potted plants, because neither of us could remember to water them. Speaking for myself, I can say that even when I did remember, I was too lazy to. The truth is that I just didn’t care. My wife, though, did, and was embarrassed and slightly bitter about the fact that she couldn’t make even simple plant maintenance a priority. Somehow she regarded this as a personal failing, like the inability to love children or dogs.

Having established how apathetic and ignorant we were, the next step was determining what, if anything, we could do about it. But as it turns out, much of our attitude was predicated on the fact that we’d always been renters (though this doesn’t quite explain our churlishness toward potted plants). Suddenly we were in the grip of house pride, which is not to be confused with keeping up with the Joneses. There are no Joneses here. We are alone in the woods. Only the deer and the occasional wild turkey look at our property, and I don’t care about them.

I think the first impulse of any (would be) gardener is to tidy up. That’s a very good impulse. We did away with the Gallic approach and mulched massively, as if our garden were a suburban industrial park or MacDonald’s, spending hundreds of dollars burying ground that we’d painstakingly weeded. We had a local landscaper Rototill the biggest, gnarliest patch of earth inside the enclosed area, and there we planted vegetables—corn, broccoli, eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce. There is nothing especially photogenic about vegetables, but since we have no idea what a garden is supposed to look like, that’s not a problem. What is a problem is that over the four years we’ve done this we’ve never had a decent crop. We have soil problems, which we’ve tried to address by pouring in lime and fertilizer. The weather has frequently been too wet or too dry. We’ve learned to compensate for the dry years and our summer lassitude with a drip system, which requires only that I bend over and turn it on. However, even if the stars are aligned, our produce is often decimated. If it’s not the soil or the weather, it’s the bugs.

The insects take advantage of my wife’s decision that we garden organically—not that I have cared enough to argue with her about it. However, with a few seasons under my belt, I do feel as if we are like overly permissive parents. We don’t say no to the bugs and, for that matter, to the weeds we can’t suppress with mulch. We try to live with them. No Miracle-gro or Roundout for us. (My brother-in-law, a farmer, swears by Roundout and takes a serial killer’s glee in its effectiveness.) Our one exception to organic enlightenment is the application of Preem to the flagstone path that winds its way through the enclosed garden. We’ve learned that the tidiness theory especially applies to the path, that the beds can look like a jungle but if the path between them is clear, then somehow the rest of garden looks cultivated. Aside from this very convenient truth, my wife rationalizes that Preem does not kill weeds but simply prevents them from growing. It’s a prophylactic rather than a napalm-like herbicide. And, obviously, it’s not going on anything we’re likely to eat. So our tomatoes may be wormy but our path is clear.

Once outside the garden enclosure, it’s a whole different ballgame. The soil around the house is better and the insects are somehow less of a menace (perhaps because we’re not growing vegetables), so our principal adversary is deer. I am impressed by how they can mow down lilies without ever being caught. Ever. And they can easily do it in an evening. I only wish they liked our lawn half as much. But they don’t, so we’ve resorted to the usual stratagems: coyote urine, Irish Spring, and now a pair of twelve pound neutered male cats. The cats have created a sort of free fire zone around the house. They will hunt and kill, or at least torture, anything that moves. Though hunting and killing and torturing are its own reward, we’ve added another, planting catnip beneath the kitchen window. Catnip is one of the few pleasantly interactive plants that I know, in the sense that it gives pleasure rather than lower back pain or a headache, at least to the cats—and to me watching them. Come to think of it, if you step away from the labor, or better yet embrace it, you could argue that having a garden that looks and smells great qualifies too. It’s funny, but I never thought of it that way before.

Left Behind

By my tenants: bicycle gloves, a watch (which I haven’t seen), a broken shade, a broken window (which I haven’t seen), deodorant, strawberry ice cream, a recycling bin full of bottles, the dining room table in the kitchen and the kitchen table in the dining room, a leaky cold water faucet, and a bottle of steak sauce.