Thank you, Elizabeth Warren

June 30, 2013June 30, 2013 / jelizabeth / 1 Comment

I’m really glad she won the November 2012 Senate race against Scott Brown. And I’m really glad that Jimmy had the presence of mind to make a contribution to her campaign and ask volunteers to install one of her giant signs in our front yard. The sign came on a giant wooden stake that, since mid-November, has been resting against the wall of our garage, too tall to put in a trash barrel. Today I cut and drilled that scrap to make a hanger for bike helmets on the garage wall.

It’s kind of sad that we’ve lived in this house, with garage bike storage, for 14 years and only now have I solved the helmet problem. Until this morning, we either kept them dangling off bike handlebars or tossed into a bin in the corner. So, thanks for improved helmet storage, Elizabeth Warren. (I used my own tools and fasteners.)

Tell me though: Why does it take so long — years! — to get around to doing a chore that takes only an hour to complete?

Gardening is revising

June 24, 2013June 26, 2013 / jelizabeth / Leave a comment

I hadn’t really planned to garden on Saturday — I have been fantasizing about a day of decadent rest with books and a lightly spiked drink — but after Jimmy and I dropped Lydia off at 6:30am in the South End for the first leg of her trip to Vietnam and Cambodia with Boston Children’s Chorus, I had a hankering for both dirt and improvement.

“How would you feel about a quick trip to Home Depot? I believe it opens at seven.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy, the driver.

By 7:30am, we had pots of sunflowers, flats of ground ivy, and one red dahlia, which I had to buy because, as I told Jimmy, “It’s alone, and it needs me.” It was the last dahlia in sight.

The sunflowers that Lydia and I planted a few weeks ago never really took off. I blame the black landscaper’s cloth; I should have used the white cloth I used for my first folly. A few seedlings came up here and there but not enough to insure a burst of yellow in August. Instead of giving up and throwing down grass seed, I thought I’d help nature along and augment our few babies with some adolescent plants from the nursery.

By 8:30am, they were planted in the two narrow rectangles in front of the house between the road and the town sidewalk. The dahlia doesn’t really fit, but she needs sun too, so I nestled her in with the sunflowers.

After we had a coffee-and-dog break, Jimmy went back to Home Depot for some rolled sod, which was scheduled to arrive in the store at 11am. Meanwhile, I started digging up the area around my path to nowhere. The heavy rains mid-June had pounded away a lot of the grass seed, and the water also revealed some stones that had been too deeply set. They were enough below ground level that a huge puddle formed, about two inches deep and three feet in diameter. The birds were happy, but I didn’t make the path for it to become an occasional birdbath.

As I dug, I thought about writing and especially about revising. It can be very exciting when you jump into a new project full of energy and vision. The satisfaction of finishing a first draft — whether it’s a poem or a new flower bed — reflects a glow onto the work itself. For a while, the draft can shimmer in beauty simply by virtue of being done and having an existence outside the maker’s head. But then some time passes, whether days or weeks, and shimmer fades and the reality of the draft reveals itself. There are awkward phrases; there are gaps; and there are puddles that make only birds happy.

Jimmy returned with the sod, and he dug too. We got dirty, and the closer we got to getting done, the messier this revision became. I tossed rocks to the side as I came across them. We pulled up stray roots. I wondered of course why I was re-making a path to nowhere. The world doesn’t need it.

At one point Jimmy, noting my tight-lipped fatigue, suggested that we put the tools aside and get back to it next Sunday. I looked him in the eye and said, “We have to finish it today.”

In the middle of revision, even though I enjoy having something to work with and puzzling over problems, it often starts to look worse before I can make it better. In such moments, it is tempting to put the hard work aside and fall in love with a new project. People say the blank page is scary, and it can be, but it’s also full of possibility: a screen I can project my hopes onto. In the middle of a revision, it’s easy to lose heart, because I can start to see what my poem or essay or sunflower folly or wandering path will not become.

And yet only by finishing it will it become something. So we dig, shovel, smooth. We finish, as well as we can.

Teacher as learner, learner as teacher

June 18, 2013June 18, 2013 / jelizabeth / 2 Comments

Friday I went to the studio of my MIT friend/colleague Juhan, for a critique meeting for Health Axioms, a project for which I’m doing (freelance) editorial work. On my way in, one of his colleagues, whom I’ve met a few times, said to me, “Jane, I read your article on teaching MIT students. Very nice.”

If you haven’t read my reflection published in Technology Review on teacher as learner — and, by extension, students as teachers of their own work — here it is: link.

It was a beautiful morning for nematodes

June 12, 2013June 13, 2013 / jelizabeth / 4 Comments

Sometimes I do these things just to do them. For example, I saw on MAKE this watering can made from an empty milk jug, and I had to make one simply because I could.

Last year my cheap plastic watering reached the point of battered beyond use, and I threw it away. I haven’t replaced it because it seems an unnecessary purchase. The hose will do.

But I had a sudden urgent need for a watering can: 10,000,000 beneficial nematodes (Steinerema feltiae) in our refrigerator that had to be applied to the lawn on a rainy day. Today was that day.

What are nematodes? They are microscopic parasites that kill other parasites, namely the grubs in the dirt under our lawn. Those grubs grow up to be some kind of scarab beetle, and beetles eat the fibrous roots of turf grass.

A mournful violin tune could be played every July in my front yard after the bright green grass starts to die off and wither in patches. I’ve done the soil analysis, and we have applied compost and extra nitrogen. No matter how much we tend to it, the lawn gets sickly after its early summer burst. I don’t want to spread a toxic chemical like GrubX on it. That seems like a greater harm than good. Nematodes, purchased from Gardens Alive!, are benign to all organisms but for beetle grubs, into which they burrow and eat their guts out.

Plus, I have seen grubs while planting — their fat, white fetal bodies curled into a C shape, so visible against a scoop of dark soil.

This morning, the ground was wet, but there was a lull in the rain. Under Winston’s supervision, I made a watering can from an empty water jug: I heated the tip of a brad nail with a BIC® lighter and pierced the jug lid many times.

Then I mixed 5,000,000 nematodes with tap water I had already put into the jug. (After I used up the first solution, I came back and repeated the process with the other 5,000,000 nematodes for the other half of the front lawn.)

With my homemade watering can, I applied the water-and-nematode solution to the grass by shaking the jug and squeezing it a bit too.

Continue reading →

Animal rescue league

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013 / jelizabeth / 2 Comments

Jimmy asked, “How was your day?” We are sitting in the living room. I get the couch, the best seat, and he the green chair.

Our usual weekday subjects are work and kids. The conversation is always better if there’s an anecdote.

“Grace called me twice this afternoon. She found a cat in the yard without a collar, and she wanted to talk it through with me.”

wild thing, you make me stalk you (june 2013)

I described the stream of texts she sent, her eagerness to locate the owner, and desire for me to come home and help. It was late afternoon, and I was wrapping up anyway. By the time I pulled into the driveway, Grace had already called an adult friend for cat-catching advice, posted a photo on Instagram, searched craigslist for “lost cat,” and speculated as to who in our neighborhood might own the cat.

She and I stalked the collarless cat for a little while, trying to herd it back to our yard where we believed we could think and plan better. After we tip-toed into the fourth neighbor’s yard, I said to Grace, “I’m going home to get a laundry basket so we can try catching it.”

The cat eluded catching with the laundry basket. Grace finally said, “I sense this cat is smart enough to survive and find her way home. And I think I know whose cat it is.” We abandoned pursuit.

Later, she took our dog Winston for a walk and rang the bell of some new neighbors. Indeed, the cat belongs to them. The woman told Grace, “She lost her collar and we haven’t replaced it yet. But we know she’ll come home when she’s hungry.”

I told Jimmy that I hoped we weren’t going to become those kind of people, always on the lookout for strays. Continue reading →

Well-made path to nowhere

June 3, 2013June 3, 2013 / jelizabeth / 1 Comment

We’ve lived in our house since June 1999. In the backyard, under a huge Japanese maple, is a dry, packed-dirt patch that has defied the planting of grass and flowers. Because it’s a long and narrow strip that follows the length of my neighbor’s fence, it has always seemed to be a natural location for a stone path.

But paths should lead you to a spectacle or stopping place, and one planted there would only lead you to my neighbor’s gate, which is never used. These neighbors are homebodies — the indoor kind — and we never stand in our backyards talking or offering pies to each other or doing whatever friendly people divided by fences do.

The path idea, though, had planted itself in my mind. Several weeks ago I picked a Saturday and wrote on my calendar: rent roto tiller! With that, a project was set in motion.

It takes longer than a morning to make a path. The labor happened over a few weekends; as of yesterday afternoon (Sunday June 2nd), it’s done. Here is how it unfolded in 10 illustrations: nine photos and one movie.

1. Tilling begins.