Back to the Pantry

My brain is getting overcrowded these days: a consequence, I think, of aging. As memories pile up, something has to go, but before we have a chance to sort through it all the jumble catches up and tends to overwhelm us.

The pantry-cleaning effort became an exercise in metaphor as much as tidiness, because it involved making sense of the past: discarding what is no longer necessary to make room for what is still important.

So out went the ten-year old packets of Bird's Custard mix and a tin of sardines of the same vintage (what was I thinking?) among other archaeological finds, and in went a new dog food bin that allows me to close the door for the first time in six years or so. Not that I'd want to, because the whole thing looks so good now that I amuse Beloved Spouse by standing in the little room admiring my work.

I did end up putting cork on the shelves, which required putting a bar tray under stuff like honey and molasses so they can't leak onto the porous surface. I still have to re-cover the upper shelves, but they've been cleaned off and spiffed up, awaiting my next trip to Home Depot. The cork is a bit pricey, but it seems to take the edge off all the angles, and actually quiets the visits to retrieve tinned tomatoes for a sauce.

The plan is to inventory supplies every six months, and to be much more conscious of how long things remain. If I ever get serious about food preservation, I'll now have room for more stores of pickled garden veg, jam, and tomato sauce.

The photos are a bit blurry because I don't have the patience to set up the tripod and didn't want to use a flash. But I'm happy with the way it all turned out. I actually feel less overcome by my things-t0-do list as a result of having accomplished this one small thing, so perhaps it's a harbinger of better days. After all, the Museum of Unfinished Projects has also recently been catalogued (more or less), and I can actually get in there as well, so excavating the study can't be far behind.

The Idea of Order in East McKinney

She was the single artificer of the world
in which she sang.
--Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order in Key West"

Every now and then I'm bothered by my apparent inability to create any kind of truly ordered environment. My house, my yard, my desk, my "office" (it's actually called a "workroom" because it's a room where about a dozen instructors attempt to get work done)--none of the spaces within I live are particularly ordered. That is, there's no real regularity about them, other than their physical boundaries (walls, a fence--of sorts, sidewalks, alleys). Patterns, especially in the back half of the house property, are difficult to distinguish, and there doesn't seem to be much of anything that's actually planned.

I did think I was going to dig up a nice neat rectangle in which to grow veg, and that I would also create a more or less formal herb garden in a square outlined by a concrete sidewalk. Last year we used brick from an existing path (which had once led to a now-dismantled, corrugated fiberglass-enclosed compost bin, but over which a Rose of Sharon bush had grown, so that only short dogs could actually walk on it to the bin) to create a patio space for a fire pit and/or table and chairs. But at the moment, the only real structure is that patio and the concrete walk. The herbs have gone in rather haphazardly, and a couple of tomato cages (made from recycled grid-wire) stand at the ready (in case I actually acquire tomato plants to place in them). Two supports from the old summer house stand in the eastern corners, one for a squash plant, another for who knows what. Later in the season, assuming that I eventually get most of the space planted with something, it'll probably look really nice; at the moment, it's pretty much just bare and scraggly. The "before" picture is featured in my last post. I'll update it when I've got this week's herbs installed.

When I first moved into this house, eight years ago, the southwest corner of the property was bordered by luscious blackberry bushes and some grapes, but the entire area was otherwise bare, except for poles and grid wire that had been used for growing beans. The earth had been nuked with every pesticide imaginable, it seems, because there were no bugs that summer, save for a few mosquitoes. No butterflies visited, no fireflies, and there were no earthworms for several years. I planted herbs, and a few flowers, but nature pretty much had her way--planting wild primroses, sunflowers, pokeweed, Texas dandelions, and even a basketflower or two. Every year more wildness happened, and I kept planning to till an open space for planting. Tomatoes went in back there, and peppers, and more herbs, but few of those survive today: oregano, one patch of chives, germander, and Mexican mint marigold. The rest is wild grass and baby trees, with honeysuckle growing up them. No order. Perhaps pattern--but indiscernible to me.

Just this week it occurred to me that what I have growing in that little .25 acre plot is my own personal carbon sink! By letting nature take its course, I'm actually helping to offset my own carbon expenses by growing a carbon-dioxide-sucking area that will consume more C02 than it emits--and perhaps absorb some of the hot air that gets spewed on this blog . . .

So the Accidental Garden is turning out to have a purpose, if not a pattern--and has inspired me to let it develop into its own little wildlife habitat, by interfering as little as possible (I do have to trim the wild grapes out of the burr oak if I want it to survive--and it's a great tree), by letting things take their course, and relegating path-building to the dogs. Over the summer, I'll try to produce a species map on which to log what's happening, but gradually, I think, I'll move out all of the purpose-planted flora and just see what happens. I will probably leave a chair or two in there, for sitting and contemplating what I (and Mom Nature) have wrought, because it has the makings of a sanctuary. At least until some bureaucrat from the city comes by and makes me chop everything down because I'm violating some bloody code of civilized behavior.

My lack of order, it seems, is also being visually rewarded. The wild gladiolus "forest" is in bloom, and just yesterday afternoon I discovered a patch of blue-eyed grass in the front yard, tucked in under a pecan tree. New mullein florets are springing up in gangs near the irises (which have bloomed profusely despite my efforts to let them die off). Iris species, except for the wild flags one finds in mountain meadows and other wilderness areas, are the bulldogs of the flower world. They're presently so completely engineered that no matter how charming (and both bulldogs and irises are charming), one feels guilty about having them. I'm not particularly fond of mine (irises, that is; I've loved my bulldogs) because they're a constant reminder of the previous property owner, who had no particular love for anything wild--except for the maniac squirrels that populate the neighborhood. And they're about as wild as the iris garden: completely fostered by human existence. But now even the front border, which has been neglected almost completely since last spring, is putting forth blossoms of the hot colors (reds, yellows, oranges) planted there. If it weren't for all the peeling paint and the unmown lawn (to be remedied tomorrow), the place would look practically civilized.

But my real goal seems to be to mitigate the effects of civilization, not to propagate them, so what goes in front this year will be as many native plants and odd-ball, water-thrifty additions as I can locate. This should help throw a bit of disorder into the mix, and help balance the porch-rail painting operation that began this morning, when I started scraping off the three layers of previous colors (including turquoise, of all things) in preparation for sanding and priming. I hope that's not too orderly of me, but it's really designed to keep entropy at bay, and keep the house from falling down around our ears.

My apologies to Wallace Stevens for my cavalier modification of his title. I am, alas, far from the sea, and don't sing all that well any more. But I'm frequently reminded of this poem when I'm out there, in my world--the one over which I have little control, and little ability to bend to my will, but which seems, nonetheless, to be the product of my own making.

Top photo: My grandmother's metate, with yesterday's rain reflecting a leafing-out pecan tree.