Nourishing Bites: Living On the Cusp
Part I (Read Part 2)
On the cusp of high summer, with the farm at my doorstep, I’m never at a loss for inspiration or good life lessons. Nature is full of surprises- a constant reminder to drop the expectations of what things are supposed to be and live with what is at hand.
And what is at hand?
The very first ripening tomatoes, a gorgeous crescendo of pink, blue, and white potato blooms, fledgling barn owls (possibly a trio!) cavorting at dusk on the fence posts and gates.
What is at hand is a field bursting with bright orange squash blossoms and the uplifting aroma of freshly harvested carrots.
What is at hand is a thrumming of hundreds of pollen-laden bees gathering for an early morning breakfast at the spiky profusion of mullein blooms.
What is at hand is the tiny cheep of a chick hatching and the rustling breath of the oats ripening and the red house finches flitting in the towering cardoon buds just on the cusp of opening.
So much living on the cusp.
Right now, there is a profusion of blooms on the farm. Everywhere I turn there is another bud gravid with life.
In fact, the strips of flowers we carefully planted to attract pollinating insects have grown into freewheeling youngsters. We worked hard that first year to maintain things in a neat and tidy fashion. We planted like-with-like and weeded and watered and kept everything in straight lines as if it were a 1950s classroom.
Three years later, Nature is teaching me that I am the one in school and it’s quite a good thing to paint outside the lines. If I squint my eyes, there is still a hint of human order in the planted beds of comfrey, but otherwise, everything is a playground full of dancing diversity. Volunteer dock jumps skyward along a few edges and sow thistles hopscotch across once pristine rows. Zigzagging vetch climbs and crawls as if everything else is a jungle gym, and brome, rye and bunch grasses pop straight up then sway and fall, arching heavy seed heads to the ground like fireworks. The volunteer plants are freely mixing with my cultivated transplants, who have found a way to share the light.
All in all, it’s a total party scene.
Honestly, for a few weeks, each time I walked by, I felt a tinge of loss and the urge to “do something.”
When standing from afar, nothing has much curb appeal, at least to humans. For some reason, big uniform blocks of flowers are very compelling to us- I think it must be some unconscious comfort in a sense of abundance? That was the thought which gave me pause. I had to reconcile my beliefs about beauty with my knowledge of the pitfalls of monocultures.
It was when I stopped with my hand wringing generalizations and moved closer that I could see intricate details— a symphony of habitat and color and niches vibrantly filled with living creatures— that everything changed for me.
There, hidden so plainly in sight, I found that my pollinator beds represent a very powerful form of abundance- a whole system of growth and change, with something always on the verge of coming into being. When I envisioned adding flowers to my farm, this is not at all what I expected, and yet, it’s everything Nature needs it to be. I had to train my eyes to see and my heart to appreciate the wealth before me.
My pollinator strips are easy to miss, because they look a-jumble. But I love knowing there is a safe harbor for creatures great and small and that these pockets are an inviting, healthy place that is nurturing so much life I will never know the half of it. Each year, there is more depth, more complexity, and most importantly, increasingly sustained and reliable sources of nectar, pollen and shelter for all the beneficial insects so critical to the production of our food, and so critical to the integrity of our planet.
Today, I find an oasis of relief in these areas where wildness is the perfect order of things. I have happily set down any expectation that I am supposed to be managing, fixing, controlling, weeding, or otherwise “in charge” of the outcome. I’ve stopped worrying about what things look like, and started to care deeply about what things are on the cusp of becoming. ~AJ
Sometimes you just need to be close to a friend. Our old, mostly blind, peaceful and patient Grandma Hen keeps me company while sowing flats of fall crops.
“Shé:kon skennenkó:wa ken
Do you still have the Great Peace?”