Part II: Day 55: Beauty and the Beasts

The gardener has summoned me: it's peony time.  We have talked about my taking a tour of her sumptuous gardens for weeks, but this visit cannot be postponed.  Nature waits for no one.  And these peonies . . . You will see yourselves, gentle readers, but my camera (well, the human being behind this camera) cannot do them justice.

I bring Zoe to save time--the woods near campus where I'm taking her on today's walk are halfway to the gardener's house--but I realize it's a mistake as soon as I pull up to the wrong house and call my friend to get her house number.  Zoe is whining.  She's whining as she does when I've altered her routines and she's afraid she'll be left in a ditch on the road, or in a lab where people in white coats will perform experiments on her--she's whining in the way she does when any of us leaves the house without her permission.

I can see this patch of enchantment before I see my friend standing outside waiting for us.  We pull up and I'm so blown away that I can barely speak.  How many words are there in the English language to say, "wow, beautiful, wow, that's gorgeous, wow, these plants are happy here, wow, look at that color!"  I'm always humbled by the limitations within the medium I've chosen for making my own kind of beauty.  Words can paint pictures but the things themselves--these radiant flowers--point to nothing beyond themselves and need no signifiers: they are just busy being themselves, because that's their job.

My friend thinks the gardening bug came to her through a great-grandmother, but she and her sister only developed it in their middle years.  What is perhaps just as beautiful as the hot pink peonies, red peonies, pale pink peonies, and while we're at it, the irises and bleeding hearts still in fine form (my friend thinks that the house she shares with her musician man-friend is just higher enough in altitude to delay the demise of our favorite May flowers)--is the smile on my friend's face.  These lovely gardens surround the house, one after the other, and lazy me can't help but think with horror of all the hard physical work and time that goes into them, hours and hours of it every day, but the contentment and satisfaction this labor gives my friend that she carries in her arms and shoulders is very moving to behold.  Being beauty's architect is soulful work.  It takes a lot from the body, and from the earth (although speaking of earth, her mulch from the top-secret location is one of the secrets of her success) but it gives back with gusto.

a neighbor's cows trim their fields beyond the gardens

Zoe runs around the house as I meet each patch of flowers and learn the story behind each one.  This one was moved here because the sun was better.  That one didn't like that spot but thrived here.  This one is new.  This one volunteered and arrived unexpectedly like a stray cat.

There are many cats that have "volunteered" in these parts as well.  I count four in the stories my friend tells me, but I may have missed one.  Zoe whines to go inside and meet one, and we oblige her.  I have to say that in all my travels, I have never seen a more pronounced display of Cat with Hackles Rising than in the moment Zoe runs into the living room.  There is a beauty to this tableau as well: Curious black dog barking at Gray Cat.  Gray Cat Saying Back Off, Beast.

Zoe cries to be inside near the cat but when we go outside, she cries to come back out.  She cries to go in again when she spies the gray cat through the window and thinks that meaningful contact will now occur.  We can tune it out, sort of, until we arrive at a moment that my friend knows will appeal to me in a Secret Garden kind of way.  She tells me how her prize peonies have come to her courtesy of the hidden peony patch her 90-year-old neighbor told her she could transplant on one of the days when he remembered her name.  When we cross the road so she can show me the mother load--it's just a few yards across the way--Zoe's cries through the window are so piercing that if an animal-lover heard her they would think Zoe was being abused.

"Next time, this dog is not coming with me," I tell my friend.

But my friend is very patient.  She says that she understands that Zoe is a member of our family, just as the cats are for hers.  And one of the most deep and satisfying relationships she has in her life is with her horse.  "There's so much to see when you look into a horse's eyes," she says.

She's still upset by something terrible she witnessed earlier today.  She was at Agway and a boy ran in, distressed because his beagle had jumped from the car when his stepdad parked in the lot, and now the dog was running around out there.  When the stepfather found the beagle, he beat her.  He beat her again when she was inside the car.  We are sitting on the front porch of the house as she tells me this, admiring the beauty of the gardens, the bouquet of peonies she has picked for me, and this story has us both on the verge of tears.

"Some people shouldn't be allowed to have pets.  Or kids.  Or any living being under their command," we both say in our own way.

We talk about the intelligence of animals and how people still have a long way to go to understand the range of talents and ways of knowing and sensitivity the creatures we both love possess.  My friend volunteers at the local stables as part of a group that leads children with cerebral palsy around on the horses.  The more gentle, patient horses are picked to do the honors.  They are the ones who understand what this encounter is all about.  Her horse is one of them.  Her horse understands that this is not going to be a vigorous ride, and that the rider is not going to be alpha and predictably dominant, but is not necessarily afraid either.  Her horse understands that what happens in these "mixers" is just a sweet inter-species exchange that helps the riders find joy in their physicality, in the moment, in encounters with other sentient beings.  "My horse just kind of gets it," she says.  "And really likes it."

this stuff is like gold

But not all of our animal lovefest is about their high emotional IQs and spirituality.  Zoe needs grooming.  I need to wash her butt and now and then I get a whiff.  I mention this to my friend, but she has seen it all.  Our tales about animals move on to the grotesque.  A white cat runs off after word gets out that a dog is on the premises.  When my friend rescued her, this kitten had severe frostbite.  My friend took the kitty to the vet when she thought its ears and tail smelled bad.  The vet just tugged on the ears and they  . . . fell right off!  He told her that the dead part of her tail would fall off too, in its own time.  One morning my friend saw her cat in the kitchen playing with something: her own amputated tail.  The cat was fine with this new development.  She hears and navigates perfectly--enough so to fly out of town when a dog comes knocking.

Meanwhile, my dog eats all the cats' food before I can stop her, then stares provocatively inside the screen door to Gray Hat with Hackles.  In an earlier post I gave the various animal characters lines from action films.  Now I imagine that white cat saying to Zoe, before it headed to a distant pasture, "Want a piece of me?"

It's time to go home for dinner.  I carry those gorgeous hot pink peonies in my lap all the way back in the car, careful not to squash an iota of petal.  And then I find a place of honor for the vase in our kitchen.

How can I begin to describe the magic of this peony?

peek-a-boo!

Feline hackles, as art form.  Feline hackles as performance piece.  Feline hackles as architecture.

The cat is looking at her from the other side, saying "Ha!"

I carried them home on my lap and now they are in the kitchen

To see more photos of these peonies, taken by the gardener herself, go here.

Namaste, gentle readers.  Even if you don't have a green thumb like my friend does, I hope that you have at least one person close to you who is an architect of beauty, and you can schedule a visit soon.

Part II, Day 41: The God of Dirt

I told my atheist husband that I've started praying for Zoe.  He questioned whether someone with my solidly secular rationalist humanist credentials is allowed, opportunistically, to get in on the prayer circle scene, but then I reminded him that the god I already pray to is the god of animals and the natural world, so I don't have to be clandestine about the whole thing, I don't have to feel like a gate-crasher or poser, because in that realm I'm already a regular.

Today I pray also to the god of dirt.  I haven't planted anything in three years because I was traveling, so it felt good this weekend to revive my flower boxes on the balcony where Zoe sits to watch the river.  Here's a picture of her from the day before I got to work.  She doesn't know that some of us think there are serious problems afoot up here; she just says, "whatever" as I click away in what I hope isn't too obviously an elegiac way.  I don't think she notices the seedlings I've stashed under my chair for the time being, but then when she stands she is careful with her tail.

Later, in full afternoon sunlight, which is not always the best time for planting, I  get swarmed by the sweat bees who have occupied one of the pots and won't budge even when I dump out that dirt on the lawn below and start again with fresh topsoil.  They can't stop me.  They're a blip on my horizon.  I hum while I plant the snapdragons and pansies.  It will be lovely to sit out here with Zoe in the early morning drinking coffee or tea gazing at these flowers while watching the river, hoping the great blue heron will drop by again.  I picked purple to match Zoe's purple heart and pink and scarlet and white for contrast.

Here's an excerpt from a poem by Mary Oliver called "One or Two Things" that I have read every morning this week before beginning my morning session of meditation and, yes, prayer.

The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now;

and never once mentioned forever,

which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.

I think that's how we live, isn't it?  With the now and forever inside us, the ephemeral and the eternal, pink petunias greeting pink rhododendron.  I look outside as I write this post and Zoe is posing in our freshly planted garden--which I'm not supposed to let her do--and even though she's quiet at the moment she brings her own dog voice, wise and delectable as ever, into the heart of this conversation. 

Part II, Day 10: Errand

I used to squeeze errands into the beginning or end of a work day, and I rarely got to savor them.  The long line at the post office would make me worry I would be late for class, and the even longer line at the grocery store would make me grumpy about how late dinner was going to be.

Sometimes I'd pack all of my errands into a Saturday, and then I'd rush through them so that I'd have more time to grade papers and exercise and, if I was lucky, write a page or two.

Writing was the transgressive thing I would wake up at 5 AM to do before the day's demands took me hostage.

Now that writing is my job all day, running an errand is a sweet escape.  It's so lovely to take a break from the search for words. 

Today I set out in the rain to deliver our tax materials to our accountant.  The sky is blurry and gray like a big rheumy eye, and it's hard to believe that the shiny, brown not-planted-yet fields will bloom in a matter of weeks.   

My accountant lives on a country road around the way from a diner named Mom's.  It's an old-fashioned country diner with an ice cream cone drawing on its sign, and I promise myself that next time I drive out here, I'll stop in the diner and have a snack.  That old adage, you should never eat at a place called Mom's, is one of those axioms I love to prove wrong. 

At the house, my accountant's three huge German shepherds bark and jump and try to break through the door.  If I were scared of dogs, I would surely be scared of them, but I just say, "Hi sweeties, I love you," and they do eventually back off.  It helps when their male person, my accountant's husband, pops his head through the door to thank me for the package.  "I think they think there are bones in there for them," I say, and he laughs.

When Zoe was younger and I brought her everywhere I went--I explained to civilians that this was her much-needed socialization, but it was really separation anxiety: mine--I once asked my accountant if I could bring her to our appointment.  The first time, when she was a puppy, I left her in the car.  But one time she came in the house with me, and I thought my accountant was going to cry.  "That's Maggie," she said, her voice trembling with emotion.

Then I looked at the photo above the desk, in her office.  A Zoe-clone.  We got talking and realized that her dog, Maggie, had to have been one of Zoe's litter mates.  It was the same story.  Puppies brought to the Postdam Humane Society in May of 2003.  Eight puppies from the same litter.  Some looked like golden retrievers.  The others were tri-color, wolfy dogs, mostly black with white bellies and brown highlights.

"Maggie was the best dog we ever had," she said.  "She was so nice.  So peaceful.  So easy to train.  Just a good, calm presence."  But then the dog got out one day and ran into the road and was hit by a car.  She was only about two.

"I knew I couldn't live without dogs in my life," she said.  "But I wouldn't allow myself to try to replace her.  There could be no replacement.  So I go out of my way to find difficult dogs now.  My dogs--let's face it--are jerks."

When she told me this story, I assumed Zoe would live to 16.  I vowed never to let her near a busy road.  That was always my worst fear--that she would get hit.  More than once, she had sprinted out of our house to chase dogs she spotted across the street--I think it was the herding instinct gone wayward--and once a car screeched to a halt an inch from her body, but we were always so lucky.

Zoe isn't with me today.  I still bring her on many of my errands, but never to my accountant's.

Next stop is the pet supply section of Agway.  My friend Rebecca read my post about bunnies from Sunday, and found out that I can buy rabbit in a can.  I'm excited at the prospect.

Inside, there are too many cans and bags to choose from.  It's all so overwhelming.  So I meet with the pet food expert at the store.  He tells me that it's hard to source rabbit in the states, that you can't trust where it comes from.  He's vehement that he doesn't want to sell pet food that comes from outside the U.S. and Canada.  But he knows one supplier that he trusts, and he's on the phone to order it for me.  I'm going to be bringing Zoe her bunny next week.  Not in a can, but in a carcass, as raw meat.  I'm so happy.  On this errand list, I'm two for two.

Just before I leave, the heavens open.  The steady rain becomes a violent downpour and the sound, over the plant annex's greenhouse ceiling, is like marbles spilling on tile.  It's such a rich, wonderful sound, of life and freshness and change, and the air is electric from it.  I take a stroll around the annuals that have just come in: my favorite flower pot varieties, peonies, are in force.  The room is perfumed with so many flowers that I feel a little giddy.  I could stay here listening to the rain and taking in all these colors--violet, scarlet, pink, orange, and yellow--for hours. 

And then I see something I've never come across in my life.  I've been to flower shows and greenhouses and rain forests and I've never seen these fuzzy pink flowers that look like caterpillars on steroids looming before me.

"What is this?" I ask the woman.  "I've never seen a plant like this."

She looks at me like I'm half-witted.  I can't tell if it's my excitement--Hey, I want to say, I'm running errands, isn't that the greatest thing, ever?--or that I don't know the name of this flower.

"Chenille," she says, and when I ask her to she spells it for me.

I must confess I snagged this photo from the web page from one of my favorite plant stores in the North Country, White's.  I hope they will forgive my theft if it brings them customers.  Don't you want one of these?

Next stop is the Potsdam co-op.  The co-op is one of my favorite places to run errands.  I love their homemade soup and their sandwich wraps and their bakery's baguettes and their customers.  I often run into my friend Anne, the historian/gardener, near the vegetable section of the co-op.  This is where we were when we talked about blogs for the first time, and now she's got her own, about gardening, and it's a wondrous thing.  (Go to this link to read it, and today you will learn more about composting.)

It's 2 PM and I forgot to eat lunch.  The soup today is tomato blue cheese, and I dig in as soon as I arrive, which gives me time to wander around and see what's new.  More new brands of coffee, more kinds of cheese, more local meats, and the thing I need for tonight's dinner with my husband, who is slow-roasting his signature ribs: collard greens.

Next stop is Purple Rice, a few doors down, the Asian grocery.  When I walk in the woman who works there looks at me and says, "You're going to be disappointed."  Because every time I go in there, I buy baby bok choy, but sometimes she runs out.

Today, though, I'm on such a good streak that I won't let this set me back.  "What do you think I should try instead?" I say.  "Something that's good with duck.  For tomorrow."

"I know just the thing," she says, and she sells me a bag of yu choy.  "It's a cross between spinach and bok choy," she says.  "I hope you like it."

"I know I will, because I like everything," I say.

I think about this as I drive home.  Do I really like everything?  Well, of course not.  I won't trouble you with the predictable list of things I loathe: war, cruelty, bigotry, reality TV, organ meats, chocolate malted milk balls (only because I overdosed on them when I was ten and got sick), bad music from the 1970s.

The rain lightens up when I get home and Zoe is very happy to see me.  She doesn't care that it's raining.  It's time for our walk.  I tell her she's going to eat bunny soon.  Not bunny in a can, but bunny that looks like bunny, and was frozen in a slab.  I tell her that if I don't owe the government a lot of money, I'll buy her another plush toy.  And I tell her that we'll have a box garden soon for her to lounge beneath on the deck, full of scarlet and violet peonies, but probably not the chenille flowers that for now I will admire from a distance.