growth

i started a garden.

i figured it was as little commitment as possible, while still supporting something living (the other options were acquiring a pet and/or child- neither of these options sounded particularly attractive). i have no idea why i decided i needed to support something living, except to keep myself from turning into a totally-self-serving jerk while living alone (my roommate and i have very different schedules, so we actually don’t see each other very often).

when i moved to my current residence, i noticed that there was a garden area in front of the apartment. my roommate (and probably her prior roommate) had tried their hand at gardening; i felt the call and challenge to give it a try myself.

i grew up on a corn-and-bean farm. farming has been the profession of choice on both sides of my family. hypothetically, the skills are in my blood.

in the same strip mall as my old navy is a lowe’s. so one day after work i went to lowe’s, threw down $3, and left with corn and green bean seeds as well as a pepper plant.

that very night, i put some dirt (i dug it out of the garden with a spoon) in some tupperware containers and planted my seeds. a few days later, when i had time, i cultivated (proper farming terminology) a swath of ground and planted my seedlings.

and they grew. i am quite certain i am the only resident of my apartment complex to have corn growing in their patch-‘o-ground.

and for the record, it is not field corn or seed corn, it is sweet corn. i decided that (a) delay planting male rows wasn’t exactly going to fit into my work schedule and (b) i really had no desire to go out trying to find illegal immigrants to do my detasseling. thus, sweet corn was deemed best option. and i can eat it myself, as apposed to feeding it to a cow. i don’t think we are allowed farm animals in this gated community.

the most recent newsflash in kelsey’s garden world is that i have constructed bean poles out of cheap chopsticks and busted hair ties. innovation at it’s best. the beans are starting to flower, as is the pepper plant, which means that soon, i should be harvesting the fruits of my labor.

summer

the sound of my childhood summers is, without question, the irrigation pump. because rains were always few and far between during the heat of the summer, the time when corn grows the most, water was always being pumped to some irrigation, somewhere on our land.

you knew it was summer when to my father’s dinner-time prayer the phrase, “and God please bring the rains” was added. he never prayed for any other weather phenomenon that i remember (although in the middle of february, in a seasonal-depression induced slump my mother and i prayed fervently for a variety of weather phenomenon and i knew my brother prayed for snow so he could snowmobile. i wondered how God handled it when He was getting conflicting prayers from under the same roof).

the irrigation pump was at the end of our long driveway. once someone told me that i lived “in the house with the leaky irrigation pump at the end of the dirt driveway.” yes, that was it. forget all the trees or the windmill or any other landmarks, the leaky irrigation was forever the marker of our residence. although the pump never broke, it always leaked, so we always had a puddle in the grassy (or it would have been grassy had it not been so perpetually wet) space between the driveway and the next field. in the heat and humidity of july and august, this pool of water became a stagnant breeding ground for all types of algae, slime and scum.

it didn’t matter where you were in the house, as long as a window somewhere was open, you could hear the pump’s constant whirr. it never wavered, never clicked, never squeaked, never changed. twenty years i listened to the pump and nothing about it ever faltered. the same parts were always rusted (nothing new or different decided it needed to rust, too) it never faded or a new leak never came to be. whatever leaked had simply leaked since the beginning of time.

i wonder how many hours of his life my dad spent at that pump: turning it on and off, using the water from it to fill his sprayer, turning a knob to change the water’s flow. it was his home office, the place where he took a lot of cell phone calls and helped his assets- his corn- to grow.

summer was over when the pump turned off for the last time. when its whirr wasn’t in the air, it was deathly quiet- the quiet of fall and winter. it always astonished me how silent winter was outside if you just stood there. then i realized that if you just stood there in summer you would hear birds, frogs, insects and a steady irrigation pump that never slept.

one year ago today

we met aurora for the first time.

32 steps

32 simple steps to a fabulous day off:

1. awaken without the aid of alarm clock.
2. eat a large breakfast of cornflakes, banana and ½ a chocolate chip cookie.
3. prepare self for entry into public (fashion hair, put on clothes, etc)
4. realize the medicated shampoo you ordered arrived!!
5. walk to bus stop, stopping to gaze in wonder at the hibiscus along the sidewalk.
6. board the e bus.
7. ride e bus for a while.
8. disembark e bus.
9. find public restroom (macy’s).
10. find self in chinatown.
11. locate chinese bookstore. get discount because you are buying for your sister, adopted from china.
12. find chinese veggie sellers.
13. realize that produce is so much cheaper in chinatown: must come more often! find green beans, broccoli and papaya all very affordably priced. also locate fresh sweet cherries for the can’t-beat-it- price of $1.79/lb.
14. catch bus to ala moana shopping center.
15. enter ala moana shopping center and manage not to get lost immediately.
16. find that aeropostale has opened. score affordably priced shorts that fit (not expensive and they fit? must be dreaming!)
17. walk across the street from ala moana shopping center to ala moana beach park.
18. find slighty (but not overwhelmingly) fragrant beach restroom. change into new shorts.
19. find shade under palm tree with nice view of the ocean.
20. eat cherries, read highly amusing j. maarten troost travelogue.
21. realize the sun is moving so the shade has moved: now the shady spot offers no view of the ocean.
22. realize if you stay here all afternoon you will fry to a crisp.
23. dip toes, feet and ankles in ocean.
24. grab belongings (produce, clothes and purse, together weighing no less than 20 lbs), walk to foot-rinsing-shower-thingie, rinse feet.
25. walk to bus stop.
26. catch e bus home.
27. arrive home, eat another cookie and a papaya, have roommate tell you that she has killed lots of spiders residing in our garden (what?!) with this amazing spray. this spray will forever be on hand in residence. it kills bugs, of which we are both terrified. the garden is looking lovely.
28. take leisurely bike ride around neighborhood. bike pedal looses a screw and falls off.
29. refrain from using improper language- the bike is inanimate anyways- and survey bike pedal situation.
30. put bike pedal in purse. one good thing about working next door to lowe’s… the availability of such necessary nuts and bolts. hopefully this can be fixed with limited fix-it abilities.
31. consume evening meal.
32. retire for the evening.