A Time for All Seasons
By Bill, posted on 02/29/2008
I spent a very brief period of time owning a typical house in a typical suburb. Some called it Long Island.
My favorite part of the neighborhood were the trees. It was lined, on both sides, with huge oak trees. One year we had a truly spectacular bounty of acorns. People were filling up whole garbage cans full of acorns just to get them off their lawns.
American Indians used acorns as a dietary staple and I had always wanted to try cooking with them. So on a particularly crisp and pleasing fall afternoon I plopped myself down in the driveway with a huge bag and began sorting acorns, looking for the ones without holes.
There’s a bug that likes to lay eggs in acorns and any with a hole means there is a grub inside. For those unfamiliar with grubs think maggot. Kinda the same thing.
My neighbors found this amusing. For weeks afterward if an acorn fell they would yell, “Hey Bill! You missed one!”
It was a working class neighborhood. We all had 60’ x 40’ lots. Take away 10 feet for the driveway and you’ve got a front yard about 30’ x 20’. You could roll and egg across it in about 15 seconds. Not that I ever did such. If you have a really big front yard the idea of rolling an egg across it would be absurd. This one was just about the right size where you could, if you wanted to, go out and roll an egg and get it done quickly.
Being of such a convenient egg rolling size it only took about eight minutes to mow. One filling of the tupperware-sized gas tank on my Home Depot weekend warrior mower would last me for weeks. I would go out weekly and perform this time honored suburban rite... but before I could even begin to feel the bon-homie bubbling up from the roots of this ancestral tradition the job was done and I was left feeling… unfulfilled. I had always imagined a having good long mechanized whack at the perennial rye while contemplating the day I could hand the job over the Wally or The Beav. Not this wham-bam fantasy interruptus.
We were about the only family on the block that mowed our own lawn. The rest used landscapers. With big mowers a few guys they could mow, trim, edge, mulch and manicure in all of about ten minutes. Eleven if they rolled an egg, which they rarely did.
Perhaps that’s how my neighbors handled the loss of the fantasy. Or perhaps they were trying to live a different fantasy.
It was only five years ago but that house, that neighborhood, seem a distant memory. The only time I think about it is during the change of seasons. While living in a suburb seasonal change never held much significance. In the winter you turned off the outside faucets, brought in the lawn furniture and that was that.
Out here, even on our little farm, it means change. Big change. The few hundred feet of warm-weather hoses that supply the automatic waterer in the coop have to be pulled up and stowed. Electric lines run and de-icers installed. It changes for the chickens too. Much of the small wildlife that sustains the predators tuck themselves in for a long winters nap which leaves said predators cold and hungry. Took me a few years but I’ve figured out that hawks don’t like to hunt after noon and it’s just not safe to let the chickens out before then.
As I coil up the summer hose I can’t help but reflect on the days when this seasonal change meant nothing. This change fills me with a sense of connectedness with nature— much more so than the relief of spring. It makes me feel more alive.
I know it means that harder times are coming and I do dread hauling 5 gallon water founts on a nine degree day with water sloshing and instantly freezing on my pants. I dread the inevitable ice that collects on the gentle slope that leads to the coop — a slope I don’t even notice in the summer — and wonder how may times I’ll be taking a header on said ice this year.
I recognize that this huge change of nature will be making a significant change in my life.
I also mourn all those years it didn’t.
Return to Farm Diary
