The Inadvertent Gardener

It’s probably no surprise to any close reader of this blog that this past year has been, well, challenging. I’m a girl who keeps her chin up, who tries really hard to make things — even the unpleasant ones — work out for the best, and who is determined to seize every possible opportunity to celebrate. But this past year had its moments. There was loss, and that ever-lasting winter. I spent more hours than I care to count trudging back and forth through O’Hare.

Spring has arrived, though, and I am most definitely celebrating. First, I’m celebrating two years of blogging – Post #1 went up on the site on May 6, 2006. I have loved every minute of it. I’ve met amazing people, made wonderful friends, and been lifted up by a community of readers and fellow bloggers just when I needed it most.

I’m also celebrating a fairly momentous announcement: In just more than a week, I’m going to pack up my car and take the gardening show on the road. I’m heading West for a job (and, no doubt, a very expensive apartment) in Oakland, California.

I had the unique opportunity to choose where I would land next, with no strings tying me anywhere, and California’s been tugging at the hem of my jeans for a long, long time. I have never felt so certain about a decision in my entire life.

So what does this mean for my little toddler blog? Well, it’s not going anywhere. When I interviewed for my job, someone asked me why I wanted to move to the Bay Area, and I mentioned the blog, and my love for slow food and sustainable agriculture and how the first time I walked into the Berkeley Bowl, I wanted to pull up a cot and move in so I could have 24-7 access to the satsumas. I’m heading to Mecca for the way I love to eat, and I’m going to want to tell you about all my discoveries. The Inadvertent Gardener is rolling on, whether I land somewhere – at first – with a garden or not.

My posts might be a bit sporadic while I make the move, but I’ll be back to a more regular course of business just as soon as I’m on the ground out there. Stick with me, folks. Even though I’m about to drive out of here, I still have some Iowa writing to attend to. There are stories I have not yet told.

I’m writing this entry out on my little back porch while the sun sets, with a glass of wine by my side, listening to the sounds of the yard and looking over the garden I’ve come to love since living here. A cardinal’s up in the black walnut tree, fluffing his feathers. Every now and then, the dangling metal moons of my wind chime ping together as the breeze kicks up. I’m barefoot, and there’s chicken roasting inside, stuffed with thyme I harvested last year and froze for the winter. I’m going to miss this – and all the wonderful friends I’ve made during my time in Iowa – terribly.

But it’s time to move on. California, here I come. I hope you’re ready for a little inadvertent gardening, third-year-style.

When I was in college, I had a lot of things at the top of my mind: what cheese-laden item would be most tasty at the dining hall at dinner, when I was going to leave campus to drive to visit my boyfriend (two hours away and he didn’t own a car—I definitely know how to pick ‘em), whether I was going to be able to get up in time for swim practice… Gardening? Not one of the things I spent a lot of time thinking about.

In fact, I didn’t even think that much about cooking. My college roommate can tell you a horrible story about my one experiment with Hamburger Helper, and I was often more interested in making a Waffle House run than actually cooking anything. I did whip up a mess of pancakes for a sudden and quite welcome influx of 9 midshipmen who drove down from the Naval Academy one weekend to visit me and my friends (I went to a women’s college, people. That weekend goes down in my mind as one of the miraculous ones that made college great…), but I think I used a big box of Bisquick to make that happen.

My own college experience meant I kind of chuckled when I got a call from The Daily Iowan, the independent newspaper at the University of Iowa, from Brian Stewart, a reporter interested in doing a story about me and the blog. College students? Interested in gardening? Alrighty, then.

The next step in the process was a photo shoot that, because of my schedule this week, had to take place Wednesday morning before I went to work. Ever-patient photographer Beth Skogen got out of bed at an ungodly hour to come to my house and shoot me (I’m sure, when her alarm went off, that took on a very different meaning…) making a frittata. Brittney Hibbs of DITV, the television arm of the news-gathering organization, decided to cover it, too, so there I was, in the kitchen, wielding a chopping knife under pressure of two cameras: one still, one motion.

That was worse than trying to pull off my first Thanksgiving, people. Much, much worse. Much more pressure.

Regardless, the story ran today, and it makes me sound fairly articulate, possibly because I sent a piece of frittata along with Beth to take back to Brian in the newsroom. (Note to the Journalism Ethics Police: I’m kidding about that last part. I’m sure Brian would have written a fabulous article with or without sustenance.) Anyway, if you’d like, check it out, although know that it might require (free) registration to read the article. If I get a link to the DITV story, I’ll post that, too.

(And hey…Alanna…that last quote in the article? I dedicate that one to you…)

UPDATE: If you go to the the box to the right of the story and click on “Play Today’s Newscast,” you can see the television version of the story. The segment’s right in the middle of the newscast, just after the weather and a story about some singers at West High in Iowa City. If you let the file load, you can navigate through the newscast with the slider bar. I’m not sure how long it will be available, so act now if you want to see me talking with my hands and wielding a big knife!

Not long ago, Kathy of Cold Climate Gardening started following my Twitter feed, which led her to another of my web ventures.

“I am charmed!” she wrote to me. “These are little jewels, prose poems…I want to collect them all! Did you ever write a post explaining what got you started writing these?”

I responded to her that I had not written such a post, but that I had been meaning to. In keeping with the thematic emphasis, I had been waiting for a garden-related story to blossom in my notebook, but one hasn’t arisen yet, so I might as well stop dragging my feet.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, let me formally introduce you to 100 Proof Stories.

That particular blog came out of a conversation Betsy and I had one day last September. We have occasional writing-lunch dates, where we escape from the office and head to a nearby Panera to eat soup and salad, chatter on for awhile, and then, usually, give ourselves a hearty 20 minutes in which to write before we have to return to work.

I told Betsy that I had been considering a fiction blog of some sort – something that would allow me to get work out there and circumvent the more traditional publication process. I have longer stories in circulation, and they trudge from lit mag slush pile to lit mag slush pile, plaintively looking for a home. Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure each story has its own set of flaws, but fundamentally, they’re good work. They just haven’t found their place, and even when they do, I’ll probably get a couple of contributor’s copies for my time and trouble.

“But part of me doesn’t want to put work out there on a site myself,” I said. “It’s not as legitimate, somehow.”

Betsy scrunched up her face, because she did not agree with me.

It took me a couple of weeks, but I mulled over the concept. What if I thought of the blog less as publication and more as structure? By committing to post every other day, I’d drive myself to write more regularly, and to do so in a format that is ever-so-compatible with my crazy life. So one day, I wrote the first story and launched the blog.

I have cranked out numerous 100-word stories with my notebook resting on the tray table of one United Express plane or another. I have written them while sitting in restaurants, at bars late at night, in the morning before work and, indeed, at Panera with Betsy.

The stories fall into three categories: Kind of true, which is my version of creative non-fiction; Not so true, because all fiction, after all, comes from a seed of truth; and Overheard, because I love to listen to what’s going on around me.

As a result, I am once again writing almost every day. Because even when I can’t find time to write something longer, I can find time to string together 100 words into a small, intoxicating story.

Why is it that every year, I speak too soon about the whole end-of-winter business? I mean, seriously. Every year.

Only this year, I thought there might be something to it. You know, it being Spring today. And yesterday. And the day before.

I stumbled across this quote from a helpful National Weather Service meteorologist in an AP article this morning:

“Everyone is pretty tired of the snow but I think most people will agree these types of storms aren’t unusual in the spring,” National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Davis said. “These kinds of early-spring, late-winter storms are fairly common.”

Thanks, Steve Davis. Thanks for your insight into the fairly common problem of never. ending. snow.

For those of you who may be wondering why I’m including this long-winded, weather-whiny intro to the real meat of this post, it’s because I have plenty of time. I’m stuck in O’Hare right now, looking out at precipitation falling, waiting to board a plane that has already been delayed three times.

I’m doubly unhappy about the weather for more than just the normal reasons–on this trip, I managed to leave my winter coat at my parents’ house in Pennsylvania. I haven’t needed the stupid coat for most of my trip, and, well, just plum forgot it. So I’m facing my return to a never-ending winter (and a walk through the snow to board my plane outside) with an Old Navy hoodie.

Ah — another phone call from United. Another delay. This is real-time blogging, people! REAL-TIME WEATHER-BLOGGING.

The upshot of this is that for those of you who might be planning to meet me at the CSA Fair to pick up your swag (and, hopefully, support your local farmers), please accept my apologies — if I get there at all, I’m going to be woefully late. If you stop by and miss me, just leave a note in the comments — if there’s enough interest, I’ll arrange a meet-up sometime in the next two weeks in Iowa City. I will arrange it for a time when there are, in fact, no airplanes involved.

I have not been very good at storing garden food. I did a better job with freezing things this year, sure. But storing food in such a way that it hangs out and survives for a whole winter? Not so much.

That’s not the case, though, for California native David Cavagnaro, a Decorah-area photographer who, with his wife, spend much of the winter eating out of the root cellar they built 17 years ago on their property. “We have almost as much fresh food here year-round as we did in California,” he told me.

Cavagnaro’s root cellar is one of the ones I profiled in my latest article for Edible Iowa River Valley. The winter 2008 issue, which features my piece, as well as features on locally-made maple syrup (including an amazing-looking recipe for Squash Bisque with Maple and Templeton Rye), a tour across the Iowa Wine Trail, and a profile of Jude Becker, who raises organic pigs outside Dyersville.

The magazine just hit the streets here in Iowa City—even the never-ending snow hasn’t kept it away. You can find a free copy in the usual locations, or pony up and order a subscription to have it delivered to your home. And if you aren’t local and don’t want to subscribe, just be patient—the article will be up on the Edible site once all the current issues are distributed.