Lately on Facebook, status updates from friends who are playing FarmVille have become as ubiquitous as Mafia Wars updates were back in the summer. I’ve been mildly curious–not enough so to check the game out. Mostly I just click past and keep on rolling.

Not so much lately though. I mean I click past, but I can’t stop chewing on the idea that we need many fewer people playing FarmVille and many more people willing to get their hands dirty … willing to grow something … willing to farm …

See, that’s where I am. I don’t want to play FarmVille. I want to farm.

I know this desire has to do with my family’s land in South Carolina–land they purchased right after Emancipation, land that was farmed through the 1960s, land that’s been handed down generation by generation, without the loss of a single acre, to me and my cousins … none of whom have the first idea of what to do with it because our parents steered us so firmly toward education, good jobs, professions and professional achievement.

See, it’s OK with my folks if I have a nice little garden, grow some nice little roses. A nice even emerald-green lawn–achieved with pesticides and monthly applications of fertilizers? That would be the pinnacle of outdoor achievement to them. The thought that I want to farm… That horrifies them. Red clay stains, chickens pumping out fresh eggs in the back yard–those are emblems not of food security and self sufficiency but just of poverty and dirt. My father loves a home-grown tomato as much as anyone–but sees no rational reason why anyone should spend hours picking bugs off the lettuce when you can get it bagged and prewashed from the grocery store.

I’ve stopped trying to explain and just try to keep my mom from selling off her share of the land to her siblings … so it’ll be there waiting for me when I’m ready to go back home.

But I do not plan to go home without skills. That’s why I’m farming right here this summer–in the city limits of my little town in central Virginia. With my partner in plants.

This is our land.

Looks wild doesn’t it? It’s not. We’re less than half a mile from downtown, one block off the main north-south route through town and bracketed between two major east-west arteries. It’s just the proximity to the cemetery that makes the spot seem so secluded and far away from everything.

Of course, it’s not all ours–not all by ourselves. We’re sharing with a nonprofit and a little community of enthusiastic volunteers. More on all that later. Here’s what counts.

Tomorrow, the property owner comes with a bulldozer and knocks down all the trees. (Our ancestors would not have had it so easy!) We’ll keep you posted on what unfolds over the course of the spring and summer. But remember, you don’t have to have 12,000 square feet on a south-facing slope to make FarmVille blossom under your feet.

All you need is a plastic to-go container from that lunch at Applebee’s you weren’t able to finish plus some nice soil, seeds, water and a sunny window–a heating pad to get things jump-started and an old towel to go on top of it are optional.

It’s two months precisely before the last frost date in our zone. The perfect time to start… getting your hands dirty!

This week, I’ve been thinking about pears.

Mmmm. Pears…

Pears? I can almost see your furrowed brows. Why pears? you may be wondering and well you might.

Apples are, after all, the glory of Albemarle County. We have our own heirloom variety—the tiny, tart Albemarle Pippin—not to mention apple festivals and fall pressings and, my personal favorite, my buddy Kevin Lynch’s homemade hard apple cider.

Just this fall, apples have adorned the cover of Edible Blue Ridge magazine here in Charlottesville; they’ve been the subject of countless newspaper food section spreads all over our region; they were the star of—well, at least the opening act in—The Botany of Desire, the book that started the whole Michael Pollan phenom. And yet … I can’t stop thinking about pears.

You see, they, too, are in season—though you’d never know it to look at the grocery store shelves, which abound with pears fresh off the container ship from China and Chile twelve months of the year…

But the “slow foods”-local foods folks have got me thinking about seasonal eating. And that’s meant thinking back, way back to childhood when “farm fresh” meant the food I ate “down home,” at my grandparents’ farm in Godsey, a tiny community of emancipated slaves who all purchased land together, founded a church together, married, farmed, worked, and lived together near Ninety-Six, a one-stoplight hamlet in South Carolina’s Appalachian foothills.

Yes, there’s a story behind the name Ninety-Six, and one day I’ll tell it, but today I’m thinking about the pear trees on my grandfather’s farm—one hundred fifty acres of the “sweetest land on earth,” my Uncle Lee Moss used to call it.

Just after dawn last November: an old tree swing, the sweetest land on earth

There was a pear tree by the cotton house, where the cotton was stored until it could be taken to the gin, another by the well house and yet another next to the enormous woodpile that fed the woodstoves, the one on which my grandma—we called her Mawmaw—cooked and the ones that heated the house.

I knew nothing of varieties in those days, just that the fruit were green and stony hard and they’d make you sick if you tried to eat them too soon (and we “grands” tried every year). But that was just until late fall, and then they’d turn honey sweet and golden yellow—well worth the wait.

Those trees gave fruit in such abundance that it was impossible to eat fresh. So my aunts and uncles would pick, and Mawmaw would can in quart-sized Mason jars or turn the fruit into meltingly sweet preserves.

Sweetness. That was what I remember of that farm. Now, I was a city kid and no stranger to penny sweets from the corner store. But there was nothing in my city life like the sweetness to be found on that farm, which, along with pears, produced  green and red apples, yellow and white peaches, bright red plums not to mention the sweet melons from Mawmaw’s one-acre vegetable “patch” and the mulberries, maypops, blackberries, scuppernongs, muscadines, persimmons, and so much more that grew wild.

By the time of cold weather, this time of year—the time of frosty nights and grandkids snuggled two and three to a bed under piles of quilts sewn on a foot-powered Singer by Mawmaw and my aunts—all that sweetness had been dried or canned or jellied and was waiting in neat rows in the root cellar to be turned into dessert.

So I’d like to share a recipe for my grandmother’s cobbler—a word she never used, by the way; her desserts were either “cakes” or “pies.” I was lucky enough to get the green thumb gene from my Mawmaw—the baking gene, unfortunately, passed me by. But this cobbler, which is neither a cake nor a pie but a kind of best-of-both-worlds cross between the two, is so easy even I can’t mess it up!

One note about the pears—my grandmother made this all-purpose recipe with fresh peaches or berries in summer or with canned pears or dried (and reconstituted) apples in fall and winter. A really firm pear would likely not cook to the desired consistency, so I’d recommend really ripe fresh pears or lightly stewed pears for this recipe.

Mawmaw’s Fall Pear “Pie”

1 stick of butter

1 cup of self-rising flour

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of milk

1 T of vanilla extract

½ tsp of cinnamon

A pinch of salt

2 cups of peeled pears

Peel and chop the pears. If they’re nice and soft, add 1 T of sugar, a squirt of lemon and set aside in a bowl. If they are firm, stew for about 10 minutes in a small amount of water with 1 T of sugar and either a pinch of salt or a squirt of lemon. (A touch of tart to cut the sweetness).

Preheat oven to 325 degrees, place butter in a casserole-style baking dish in the oven.

Combine wet and dry ingredients separately, then slowly combine wet with dry to create a cake-like batter.

Remove the melted butter from oven and pour the batter on top of the melted butter.

Pour the pears and some of the reserved juices on top of the batter.

Shake the dish to even the distribution of batter and fruit.

Bake about 30 minutes or until a golden brown crust forms on top. (Note: This will not be a “dry” pie, but gooey and delicious).

Serve with a tall, frosty glass of (raw!) milk or with a scoop of your favorite vanilla ice cream.

OK, this is making me hungry. I gotta get in the kitchen and get baking. … But stay tuned. I’ve got a lot more to say about my farming ancestors. I think you’ll find them quite an interesting crew.

The knockout rose–gift from my baby–has been blooming like a champion, setting new buds every few days even into December.

And it looks so pretty in the snow.

So do these hips on the Champney’s pink that drapes over the back deck.

And this lovely Bourbon, wearing its coat of fluffy white.

It’ll be warm tomorrow. The snow will be gone.

Wonder how long the roses will last?

For the last month of Saturdays I’ve been “working” the Charlottesville City Market.

Mmmmm, City Market…

Now, those of us who love Charlottesville have long known about the Charlottesville City Market. And what we know  surer than celery with our Buffalo wings is that the CCM is no longer the city’s best-kept secret. In high summer, it’s more like the ultimate see-and-be-scene. If you’re not there by 8 a.m., you’ll never make the circuit in under an hour. If you’re not there by 10, you can forget finding your favorite wild mushrooms, arugula or farm fresh eggs.

“Working” the market, now … that’s a bit of a fantasy for us avid see-and-be-City-Market-scenesters. But it’s also the perfect cover for those of us who are just … hanging out with our boyfriends.

Yes, gentle readers, I admit it–even though it may cost me my feminist membership card. My new Saturday “job” is motivated largely by my high school-esque desire … to hang out with my guy.

But hey, I have been useful, a value-added aspect of the proceedings. All these years in the city–and those few years on City Council–mean that people are always coming over to talk to me and some of those folks actually buy. They’ve absolutely been lapping up the eggs Marc has been selling as a favor to his good friend, Laura Dollard. In fact, that’s sort of my Saturday alter ego. When I’m at the market, at his side, I kind of morph into … “the egg lady.”

Don’t laugh. OK, you can actually stop rolling on the floor now. It’s great fun, and I’ve actually enjoyed telling Laura’s story.

I have, after all, spent a number of hours with Laura’s chickens. I’ve gotten to know the “pets,” Rocket and Henny Penny, who live in cat cages in the kitchen when they’re not out in the yard scratching in the dirt and eating bugs with their sisters. I mourned with Laura and Marc when a predator got into the barn and killed eight of the girls and wounded several others nearly to death. I was sobered when Laura–who has the kindest of hearts–showed the steel in her backbone by putting a chicken-killing dog down rather than allow it to kill again.

But I don’t think I fully understood the value of what Laura does, who she is, what Broomfield Farm represents, until I sold a dozen extra large eggs to a young man at City Market on Saturday.

I arrived late, around 11ish, and the day was bright but cold. It wasn’t even the City Market any longer–it was the Holiday Market, with mostly different vendors, selling wreaths and jewelry and hand-spun, hand-dyed yarns rather than jams and okra and  dahlias. The shorter days meant Laura’s rooster-less hens were producing fewer eggs, so there were only two dozen left when I assumed the position at Marc’s stand: one dozen extra large at $4 and one dozen double-extra-jumbo eggs at $5.50.

That’s when the young man showed up.

I gave him the prices and, automatically, started to apologize for the size of the eggs and the prices. These are the thing most people complain about, in my brief experience as the egg lady. “Gosh, that’s high,” someone will say, even though they’re looking at eggs graded as “colossal”–twice the size by weight of medium eggs. Or, “Lord, those eggs are big,” they’ll say–thinking, no doubt, of cholesterol or whether the cake will fall or who knows what.

But before I could even draw a breath to respond to what I imagined as his concerns, the kid just cut me off.

“i’ll take the extra large,” he said. I closed my mouth. He handed me four bills, and I handed the eggs over. There was a little bit of byplay while he figured out how to carry them safely in his backpack.Then, spontaneously, he started responding to what I had not quite said.

“Yeah, they’re a little more expensive than grocery store eggs. But it’s not a problem for me, not  when I think about the conditions on those factory farms.”

He kind of gave a little shudder that might have been theatrical, except for the seriousness in his eyes and the set to his youthful, bearded chin. “Yeah, I buy my eggs at the market because it’s just important to me to participate in this food chain.”

He looked around, his eyes taking in the vendors, but not smiling at all. “You know? It makes a big difference to me … that this is a food chain that’s not, that’s not cruel,” he said.

It stopped me cold for a hot second. My meet-and-greet-the-public smile faded, and I gave him my real smile. And then I said, “I know just what you mean.”

Because I did.

I’ve seen what that food chain looks like. It looks like Rocket:

Rocket, the house chicken

I’ve sat at Laura’s kitchen table in sandals and gotten my toe pecked by that food chain, because Rocket wanted to make sure that my painted toe was not something good to eat. I’ve stood in Laura’s backyard gorging on juicy just-overripe peaches watching that food chain scramble for every morsel I dropped or tossed down. Who knew? Who knew that, in addition to bugs and grass and feed, chickens loved peaches? Or that they’d even beg for a bite of your ham sandwich? Who knew chickens had personality? I sure didn’t.

Behold Laura’s girls, chowing on a little squash with their feed …

… and scratching (there’s a reason they call it chicken scratch) in the dust

Free-range eggs are said to be a joke. I’ve found websites defending–seriously, defending–the practice of caging chickens and turkeys, cutting their beaks off so they won’t peck each other, and sending them to slaughter the moment their production falls off. (Check this one out, if you dare. It manages a creepy-crawlie intersection of biblical scripture, anti-organic food rant, and factual reference to nutritional studies.)

But I spent my summer vacation singing the Jets’ theme  from West Side Story to Rocket (”got a rocket in your pocket–keep cooly cool boy!”) while she gazed quizzically up at me with her golden chicken eyes hoping against hope that I’d spare her a bite of bread, so I know sure as celery that free range–at least in Albemarle County–is for real. And those sweet-and-sweaty wings from McGrady’s–well, I don’t feel the same way as I did about them back in the spring, when they were just cheap food to go with my basketball viewing.

(Warning here: I’m about to climb up on my political soapbox.)

Yeah, you do pay more for free-range eggs. But there are real differences between factory-farmed and organic local eggs. There are differences in grade. In the grocery store, you get, for the most part, medium, large, and jumbo. Laura sells pullet eggs (the equivalent of medium), and the sizes move up from there to large, extra large, jumbo, extra jumbo, double extra jumbo and colossal (which are roughly twice the weight of pullet eggs). Why so much larger? Partly because the chickens are large–Rhode Island Reds, a healthy-sized breed–who eat well and get lots of sunlight (which encourages hens to lay).

At left, jumbo from the grocery store; at right, double extra jumbo from Laura’s girls

But to a large degree, the eggs are big because Laura doesn’t slaughter her hens the minute they get older and their production starts to fall off. Older hens produce larger eggs, fewer in number, rather than more, smaller eggs. It’s a raw economic calculation on the factory farm that it’s cheaper to kill a chicken (and turn her into … say, buffalo wings) than to feed her once her laying capacity falls. Fact is, Laura doesn’t even slaughter her hens when they stop laying. They just hang out on the farm and live out their lovely chicken lives–scratching in the dirt and eating bugs and grass and (that increasingly expensive!) chicken feed.

Yeah, that grocery store egg is much cheaper–maybe as little as $1.99 for a dozen. But that grocery store egg is also older, possibly weeks older depending on the point of origin. The egg weighs less, because an air pocket forms between the egg and the shell as it ages. The egg is tougher, chewier because it’s less moist (that whole air pocket thing).

There’s also noticeable difference in the color of the yolk–the grocery store egg’s yolk is a pale yellow rather than the deep rich nearly orange color of the Albemarle County free range egg. That’s partly due to the difference in feed: factory farmed chickens eat a diet that’s mostly genetically modified, pesticide-doused grain and antibiotics rather than the mixed diet of organic corn, bugs, grass and the occasional fruit or bread treat that Laura’s chickens enjoy. And of course, there’s a big difference in nutrition. All eggs are high in choline, B-vitamins, and loads more stuff that’s good for you–but you don’t get that dose of pesticides and antibiotics and hormones with your free-range egg.

At left, grocery store; at right, one of Laura’s girls

I’ve been thinking about this all summer, particularly as I’ve spent more time in Albemarle County with people who live close to the land. Laura has 100 chickens rather than the thousands in cages it is one’s misery to behold (not to mention smell) on the factory farm. The kinds of economies of scale that are possible on those big operations are out of reach for her and the rest of the small farmers in our area. When a bag of feed goes from $8 to $14, it hurts–hurts all of them–and it shows up immediately in the price we pay at the City Market for those eggs or that meat. But one thing you can be assured of is that the chickens and pigs that are the source of all that City Market goodness were well fed and well treated. (And you don’t have to believe me: You can visit the farms and see with your own eyes).

So yeah, my participation in City Market started out being all about hanging out–hanging out with the boy, seeing the world from the vendors’ angle, running my mouth with my friends, that kind of thing. But what I realized on Saturday was that this endeavor has real meaning. We are all part of a food chain in Charlottesville, in Albemarle and the surrounding counties. And for those of us who sell or patronize the sellers at City Market, for those of us who grow our own, even if it’s just a tub of tomatoes on the deck, those few links in the chain we’re able to contribute? They have value, because they’re not cruel. I’ll always be grateful to that serious young man for reminding me of that.

So chew on that with your morning omelet. And I’ll see you in this space soon.

Trifle, the fierce beagle who watches over the chicks

In the nearly six months that I’ve been dating “farm boy”–also known as “Marc”–my friends have come to realize that the whole “farm boy” appellation has been, basically, one of my little jokes. (Actually, a tall joke–the boy’s at least six-four.) Marc is, more properly speaking, a horticulturist (I get corrected when I say “horticulturalist.” Apparently that’s what you call it in the  British Isles–in A-MUR-ca, we lose the “al”).

So anyway, baby boy has been running–and repping–large nurseries for the last decade-and-a-half: a commercial nursery with 17 farms in two counties and relationships from central Virginia to the Washington-Baltimore area, then later an educational foundation where he produced 600 varieties of heirloom plants for display and collection purposes and for retail sales. And then there’s that whole garden renovation and design business of his–and the trees and shrubs and perennials he grows on his own land to supply it…

I say all this not to present my beloved’s bona fides–but because, knowing all this, seeing it all in action, with the trucks and the crew and the whole Charlottesville City Market gig–it should come as no surprise to me that my house is turning into … well, an impromptu propagation lab. But it kind of has surprised me … very pleasantly, I might add.

It all started quite innocently enough, back when it was still warm. Marc and I were sipping wine on the deck, talking roses (I just love it when he talks dirty to me). I was moaning about the fact that I’d planted my favorite rose–Rosa chinensis “Mutabilis,” aka “The Confederate Rose”–at my mama’s, where it was blooming prolifically in a riot of blush to deep pink to coral while in mine there were only a bunch of boring Noisettes and Bourbons. (Yes, I was whining, rose lovers–we know Noisettes and Bourbons are not shabby at all). Whereupon, he bounded off the deck and took a whack at one of my hydrangeas to demonstrate how easily we could make rose babies.

Well, not a whack precisely… He started with a simple garden staple.

And then he dug a groove beneath the hydrangea with what happened to be handy–a stray picket from my fence. He selected a branch from the hydrangea, one with a fork …

Stripped off the leaves, scored the stem with his thumb, stapled it in, and covered it with soil…

All to demonstrate how easy it is to make more of your favorite plants. Come spring, I’ll have baby hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla “Endless Summer,” to be precise) that will be ready for potting or planting in my yard. And I’ll save that that 25 smackeroos I’d otherwise spend for each plant at the local garden center. (Hmmm… was that when I knew it was love?)

That was how it started … and I should have known it was just the start. But now that gardening season is nearly done and pruning season is about to begin, little projects are starting to, well, sprout around the house. For instance, I came home from church on Sunday to discover that Marc had cleaned the kitchen (yes, there is a goddess!) and started puttering around with what was handy: a schefflera that had miraculously survived the plant holocaust that was my dissertation and a couple of geraniums–one with a lovely variegated leaf–that were left over from his summer stock.

This is the pretty little thing I found on my counter.

Here’s a nice closeup.

Basically, what he’d done was filled a small clay pot with river pebbles and nested it inside a larger pot filled with a nice potting mix. I don’t know if you can see in the pix, but the soil in the larger pot comes nearly to the lip of the smaller pot. (The stakes are provided by a piece of bamboo cut to roughly 12-inch lengths and spaced around the rim.)

Next, he took sections of the plants–trimmed of their extra branchings with the leaves cut back, too–and inserted them into the soil. This is another method for turning one plant into six, and I’m sure it has a name–probably a Latin one.

The only tools he used were the most basic ones: his trusty pruning shears and a pair of scissors. I’m sure you’ve got those around the house, too.

Next, he labeled the babies and gave them a good misting, followed by a good drenching: pouring lots of water on the pebbles and draining it off, twice.

The last stage of the operation was supplied by my good friends from Southern States. Namely, a plastic bag that had lately held cat food. This is what our kitchen counter “greenhouse” ended up looking like.

This greenhouse doesn’t require much in the way of sun or anything in the way of attention. We’re, in fact, going to forget about it for a while. And when there’s something new to see, I’ll post it in this space.

… I’m beginning to think I’m dating The Green Man.

Hey, as we used to say in the 60s, I can dig it!

This is the time of year when the Goddess of Gumbo earns her title. Something just happens when the temperature dips below 45 degrees. Makes me want to bust out my cast-iron skillets and start burnin’ … So a few days ago, I decided to make a Charleston, South Carolina, specialty for my Indiana-bred squeeze. He’s a great cook, mind you, if a bit heavy on the potatoes. So I’m trying to introduce him, gently, to the pleasures of the Southern table, the bounty of the ocean, stuff like that.

He is fortunate to have made the acquaintance of a woman raised in the two great Southern culinary traditions–those of Charleston and New Orleans, plus a healthy dose of Tex-Mex from all those years I spent in the Southwest. And I’ve made progress with things like grits, though we’ve discovered a regrettable and apparently unalterable aversion to things like oysters, clams, even scallops. (Sigh).

Anyway, this morning I woke from my post-Thanksgiving turkey hangover with a craving … for shrimp and grits. This, I know, sounds bizarre to non-Southerners–and even to Southerners not raised within the sight and sound of the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. But trust me, it is a delicacy beyond compare. I took myself down to my local seafood market. And word of God, they had never-frozen creek shrimp from South Carolina on ice. I took it as a sign, bought about three quarters of a pound, and this is what ensued…

The Goddess of Gumbo’s Shrimp & Grits

3/4 pound of medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 small onion, chopped

1/2 bell pepper, chopped

1/4 cup roasted or sun-dried tomatoes, sliced small

2 or 3 slices of bacon, chopped

1 T oil or butter

1 T flour

1/4 cup shrimp stock (clam juice or even water will do in a pinch)

1/4 cup cream

Seasonings: salt, pepper & paprika or your favorite mix (mine is Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning)

Sliced polenta, seared on both sides

Now let’s get something clear. This recipe will taste just fine if you like jumbo-sized shrimp from Vietnam–you know, the ones that look great on the plate and taste like nothing in particular. But if you want a full-flavored recipe, the best shrimp to use are creek shrimp from the Carolinas. (This is not in any way to take a swipe at Gulf shrimp, which are superb as well. I simply happen to live in Virginia.)

And when you’re buying those shrimp, resist the urge to buy the great, big ones. Medium is what you want. It’s a fact well known  to connoisseurs (and folks who grow up in shrimp country) that the smaller shrimp are, in fact, the sweetest in flavor. And if you really want to blow your taste buds wide open, take an extra 15 minutes and make a stock with the shrimp shells. This recipe does not take long to make–especially if you use prepared polenta rather than boiling your own grits from scratch. The extra flavor boost is definitely worth the extra effort.

One final note: Do not, upon pain of visitation by the Ghost of Great Southern Cooks Past, use quick grits. It is an abomination. Either take the 20 minutes to make real grits or buy precooked polenta in a plastic sock like I do. I’ve seen at least three brands of this stuff in my little town–at the little Italian market and at the big chain grocery story, too. And don’t be thrown by the fancy Italian name. You can call it grits–you can call it polenta: It’s all corn!

Now, down to business.

Heat the oil or butter in a skillet and lightly saute the shrimp to release their juices. Remove the shrimp before they’re completely done (there should be a little gray still visible). Add the flour and saute, stirring frequently, until you have a roux that is the color of a nicely browned bisquit. When the flour reaches the desired color, toss in the onions and peppers. This halts the browning of the flour.

Cook the flour, onions and peppers together for perhaps a minute, then add the stock and cream. This should make a rich gravy. Stir the mixture until the onions are cooked–you may have to adjust the liquids by adding a little more stock or a little more cream, depending on how thick you want the gravy to be.

Stir in the shrimp, the tomatoes and the bacon. Cook for about a minutes. Adjust the flavors with salt, white or black pepper, and paprika to taste. Spoon over a couple of slices of lightly seared polenta, garnish with green onions or parsley. And you have a feast!

So I never realized what a city mouse I actually was until a tall, handsome, dashing stranger—the kind we’d all order up from Design-a-Man.com if we could bring ourselves to believe they really existed—invited me to sleep (chastely) with him under the stars in a bower of love and peace (just like Tristan and Isolde, only without the sword and, well, the adultery), and my reaction was not an enraptured, “Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!” (which a cute guy actually said to me earlier this year when I asked him out on a date). It was to cringe and even take a half-step backward and say: “W-w-won’t there be … bugs?”

Yep. That’s what I said.

City mouse.

But a sport nonetheless. I squared my shoulders, summoned up my most dazzling Southern belle smile, said, “Ah-ah-are … you sure?”

Being assured that he, indeed, was, I suffered to recline in the bower of love and peace, stuffing down my misgivings as I kicked off my jeans, and … was most pleasantly surprised. I can even testify that—between the tarp and the blankets and sleeping bags, the unheard-of-for-July-in-Virginia sub-70-degree temps, and the fairy carpet of stars stretching out overhead—Isolde never had it so good.

And that ominous crashing in the underbrush that woke me up at 4 a.m.? Well, that just made me snuggle just a wee bit harder against the broad shoulders of the dashing stranger … which, now that I think about it, is probably what he had in mind all along.

The girlfriends, city mice one and all, were thrown into transports when they heard about this escapade.

“Oh, my God! He made you a bower under the stars!” said Marcia. (Alas, as much as I’d like to claim it, the word bower was not original with me.) “That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Easy for you to say,” I thought to myself, recalling the last time I’d idly floated the idea that we take a summer hike through the rolling Virginia hills. Her response then was more like: “Sunblock! At least 70 SPF, don’t you think? And oh my God! Ticks! I know Deet’s illegal, but shall you bring it or should I?”

Of course, I don’t mean to scoff. We all are one and all of us city mice. Some of us may have a fleeting romance with the Green World. We patronize farmer’s markets. Talk knowledgeably about heirloom tomatoes with our chums. Tout the benefits of free-range eggs. Perhaps even dare make herbal teas with what’s growing in the back forty. I certainly for quite some time liked to imagine myself as some kind of budding artist-cum- goddess of the cottage garden a la Gertrude Jekyll or Anne Spencer.

But the fact of the matter—proven by the fact that it only took 18 months of dissertating to utterly wreck my garden—is that that is a flimsy fantasy. The reality is, I’m a city mouse.

It’s a tiny city—just ten square miles—but I love it passionately because, within its environs, I have everything I need. I live smack between the university and the Downtown Mall, where I currently work. I can walk to either, but if it’s hot or raining or I’m feeling lazy, the city bus line is sixty seconds from my door, and the university bus only a two-, possibly a three-minute walk.

No, there’s no chain grocery store within walking distance. But on Wednesdays and Saturdays between April and October, there’s the Farmer’s Market. And other seasons, there’s Integral Yoga, run by lovely bunch of hippie, vegetarian Buddhists who also have an ashram in nearby Buckingham County—or if I’m looking for a bargain, there’s Cville Market, which has cheeses, wine, and locally produced meats in addition to the best prices on produce in town.

For real bakery bread, there’s BreadWorks, in the strip shopping center one block from my front door. The chocolate muffins with butter cream icing, I have it on good authority, are actually made with crack.

There’s also the best coffee in town, Shenandoah Joe’s, two stores beyond that. Reid’s, a few blocks in the other direction is a locally owned grocery with real, live butchers. And there are fish markets, an organic butcher, an Italian products market, the finest local and imported cheeses within all walking distance or a short drive away.

Clothes! I see you think you’ve got me there. You gotta have a mall, or at least a Marshall’s, for clothes, you’re thinking. Well, actually, no.

Sure, I could go to the mall and buy something new from J. Crew. But where’s the challenge in that? I’d much rather find a fabulous men’s tuxedo shirt at the Twice as Nice (next to the bakery), get the saleswoman at Martin’s Hardware (on the other side of the bakery) to help me pick out fancy bolt caps to use as studs, then shimmy into a mini and my Lucchese cowboy boots for an evening of dining, live music and dancing on the Downtown Mall…  A five-mile drive to the county mall for a little light shopping and Starbucks, well, it sounds downright dull by comparison, don’t you think?

For years I’ve said everything I need, everything I could even imagine wanting, is within the ten square miles of the city limits of Charlottesville…

OK, so the Pet Food Discounters is not within the city limits of Charlottesville, but cat food is expensive and I only have to drive out there once a month…

And all right! There’s one other thing that’s not in the city limits of Charlottesville…  The guy. And the bower under the stars.

Yes, that guy. You knew we were getting back to him.

If I’m city mouse, he is indubitably, indisputably, one hundred percent country. Intimate with heavy machinery. Uses words like “tractor” and “bush hog” in casual conversation. Digs stumps and builds stone walls. Fixes things—including his own trucks and, in 15 minutes, my front gate, which had been sagging off its hinges for two years. Knows every tree, every shrub, every flower, every by-gosh weed in the field by its Latin name.

Is a bit obsessed with football.

But also loves history.

And poetry.

No, really. Poetry.

So, I’m spending a lot more time these days watching swallows swoop in and out of the barn as I drink my morning coffee.

…finding patches of blackberries and fences to sit on while I eat them off the vine.

…noting the trees where the goldfinches have built their nests.

…watching my fella fish frogs out of the dog’s water bowl.

…getting to know the ways of chickens—there are 120 of them in the barn, and did you know they’ll eat anything?

…walking around, talking and holding hands with a guy who can tuck me under his armpit and kiss me on top of my head.

…and feeling the fears and stresses of 18 months of dissertating, living off an ever-dwindling store of stipend and savings, getting done just in time to watch every academic job I might have imagined applying for vanish like a puff of Virginia fog in the blaze of a little thing called the worldwide economic meltdown, working shit jobs for no money, losing ground, losing hope—just feeling all that kind of … fall away as we explore this this unexpected but oh-so-very-welcome … whatever it is you call when a woman of fifty starts falling for a guy who’s precisely her age.

There’s no denying the situation presents … challenges. Last Saturday morning, for example, I was at the farm doing what I always do on Saturday mornings, drinking coffee curled up with a book (Flaubert’s Egyptian journals; the library at the farmhouse is simply not to be believed) when an incredible rattling and banging made me look up to the sight of the guys from the farm next door driving past the house in an enormous red truck, pulling an even more enormous red trailer, which contained the largest blackest Black Angus bull I’d ever seen. Word of God it was every bit as big as a Volkswagen bus, if not even bigger. I had to go out on the porch just to gawk.

The guys in the truck spotted me and waved. I waved back … and caught a glimpse of my beautifully manicured nails, painted stop-traffic red. They were so out of context I had to stop and stare at them a moment. And my eyes kept moving down, down to my designer flip-flops and my matching stop-traffic-red toes…

Now farm boy doesn’t just tolerate my little vanities, the hard-learned and hard-earned wiles of the Southern version of the girly-girl—he downright adores them. Marvels at the notion that a woman would take the time and trouble to match her blouse color with her fingers and toes. Pays tribute with kisses and compliments. Which I, in turn, adore. Every performance must have its audience, after all.

…But I think a truer gauge of the distance we’re trying to bridge might be found in the eyes of Laura, the 73-year-old widow who’s his best friend. Laura—a woman with nearly a thousand acres who’s raised crops of children, Thoroughbred horses, heirloom tomatoes, chickens, and heaven knows what all else— looks at me with liking and affection, but also puzzlement, as if I were some kind of exotic bird who’d shown up at the feeder. Decorative, without a doubt, and such a lovely song, I see her thinking—but now that she’s fluttered out of her cage, can she make it in the wild?

Lana, so kind, so wise. I don’t think she’s quite sure.

I’m trying to remember how the story of the city mouse and the country mouse went. The details escape me—something about a great meal in the city, then getting chased by a cat, the country mouse declaring the city sucked and lighting out for the territory … Not a happy-ever-after tale, in other words.

But I have high hopes for me and farm boy. He’s got a great lap for lap-sitting and a chest that, even when I wear my tallest shoes, is just the right height for a cheek to rest on. He’s got a great truck for riding around and looking at the gardens he’s designed. He’s kind and funny and sexy—and just as good at wine and conversation as he is at wrestling stumps out of the ground. He is, in fact, the guy I would have ordered from Design-a-Man.com, if I could have brought myself to believe that such a paragon could actually exist.

So who cares that, on paper, this does not quite compute? I am starting to relax about the bugs.

Allow me to repeat that: I. am. starting. to. relax. about. the. bugs.

That may sound like a small step to you. But, trust me, it’s a giant step for girly-girl-kind.

This week I realized that I have had no vacation this summer–it’s been work, work, work, except for the times I’ve carved out to play on this blog. And while I like work, and lord knows I need to work–hard and fast–to complete this project, I also needed … a change of pace.

That’s how I found myself braking for butterflies on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Rockfish Gap Overlook off the Blue Ridge Parkway

Now you may find this hard to believe, but though I live less than 20 minutes from the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway/Shenandoah National Park, I’ve visited precisely once in the fourteen years I’ve lived here. Earlier this week, I had to go “over the mountain” — as we say when we cross Afton Mountain into the Shenandoah River Valley — on business. I wrapped that up by ten, so instead of coming straight home on the interstate, I took the dogleg onto the parkway and drove … for hours.

Homestead with chicken coop in the backdrop

Now I’m familiar with the work of Chuck and Nan Perdue, folklorists at the University of Virginia, so I knew that thousands of families had been moved off their lands to create the parkway and the park. But it never clicked until I found this cabin, part of a farm “exhibit” near Humpback Rocks that included a tiny garden, a chicken coop that was more like a palace, a root cellar, a springhouse, and a cow byre.

These, mind you, are real buildings assembled from farms from which the owners had been displaced. Beautifully crafted–they were built to last–and meticulously maintained by the National Park Service, the buildings allow visitors to the park to experience selected sights of farm life without any of the sounds or smells. No sweaty humans with funny accents and guns to chase off the unwelcome visitor. No animals except for a single, exceedingly fat hen. The only sounds were the voice of the costumed interpreter, bird song, and the buzzing of insects.

Pipevine swallowtail in ecstatic communion with coneflowers

I stood in deep woods looking at the springhouse, the care with which it had been built from stone, wood, and mud mortar, and my body, which had been vibrating with fear and anxiety for weeks, began to relax. I stood marveling at the temperature–it was at least 10 degrees cooler than the city. I daydreamed amid massive flowering wands of black cohosh, drifts and drifts of them, with Humpback Rocks looming above … and gradually the shattering cacophony of bird voices began to resolve into individual songs: the fluting of wood thrushes, the peter-peter-peter of tufted titmice, the wicka-wicka-wicka of flickers.

My only companions were the insects: The forest was simply alive with insects. The occasional hornet. Bees and beetles aplenty. But especially (marvellously) butterflies. Thousands of them. Spotted. Tiger-striped. Giant and swallowtailed. Tiny as my thumbnail and silvery white… Lazily fanning their wings as they fed on the coneflowers and zinnias that surrounded the farmhouse. Dancing by the dozens in ecstatic spiral flights at the side of the road.

I bought a souvenir at the National Parks gift shop and hit the road after about an hour of that, but found my reverence for the butterflies lingering. I slowed my car when they launched themselves across the tiny ribbon of asphalt ahead of me. When I saw a huge swallowtail just chilling in the middle of my lane, I actually stopped the car , backed up, and drove slowly around it…

By this time hours had passed, and I was starved. So I exited the Parkway at VA 646–which, going east, leads to the ski-and-spa resort at Wintergreen and, heading west, leads to Sherando Lake, a swimming-camping-fishing complex around a beautiful spring-fed lake that, even though it was built by the CCC during the Depression, remains something of a secret.

“Beautiful people” or “regular people”? Four-star restaurant and spectacular views or fried chicken (if I was lucky) at the gas station up the road from the lake?

Royal Oaks Country Store in Love, VA

As it turned out, it was neither. I ended up in a country store in Love, Virginia. I chatted with the young man behind the counter about his garden–and the three dozens squash and cucumbers it was pumping out daily. “I’m so sick of squash–squash casserole, squash with butter and onions, squash any kinda way you could think of–I just told my wife to start giving it away,” he chuckled.

I couldn’t resist ordering a “Love Sub” and, while he made it, I browsed among the Appalachian kitsch in his gift shop: homemade soaps and jams and jellies, alternating with arrows fletched with fake hawk feathers and Indian maiden statuettes with angel wings.

Then, loaded down with the sandwich, chips, soft drinks, and water, I headed to Sherando Lake.

Bathers on the beach at Sherando Lake.

There were fewer than a hundred people there. If I’d had my bathing suit, it would have been the perfect day….

A few days ago, Sam, one of two special men in my life disappeared for a full 24 hours. He didn’t come home, wasn’t seen in any of his usual haunts, missed his breakfast and his dinner.

That was the factor that sent my doting Southern mama genes into panic mode. Because Sam–short for Sambuca–is a feral cat rescue. I don’t know how much you know about feral cats, but missing meals is not something they do.

Sam, right, and Tiger sharing a mug of water.
I’d last seen Sam about 8 o’clock the evening before. He and his brother Tiger–both born under my porch and tamed only gradually over a long, painstaking period of months–had eaten a dinner of their favorite canned food (Harris Teeter brand–go figure), then glided out into the garden: Sam to sprawl on the warm soil; Tiger to hide under the tomato plants and lie in wait for an unwary bird to fly too close. It all looked as normal as normal could be. I smiled to myself and closed the back door.

The next morning, I’d opened the door at the usual time–6:30. Tiger bounded out of the sunflower bed before I even had time to draw breath to call. But there was no Sam–not at 6:30, not at nine or noon or three in the afternoon, and not at dinner time. He didn’t respond to calls, to the sound of an opening can, or to persistent tapping on said can with a spoon.

And I was deeply, heart-stabbingly worried.

Being in the feral cat rescue business means dealing with beings who live dangerous, precarious lives–disease, hunger, indifferent cars, passionately interested dogs, and rock-shying humans are only a few of the dangers they face. But like more than a few humans I could name, feral cats tend to think their risky lives are just fine, thank you very much. They’re not typically interested in your desire to help–though canned food is high treat and a brush is something they can come to look forward to with positive relish.

Gaining their trust is a slooow process. There are some real hurdles to overcome: things like confinement in cat carriers, visits to the vet, the occasional bath when they’ve gotten into something particularly nasty. And there is the constant gnawing worry they can cause you. Because there’s nothing safe about loving a semi-wild animal. It may grow to love you, but it will never belong to you.

Nine feral cats and kittens moved through my life in roughly an 18-month period. I trapped them, got them spayed and neutered at the SPCA, hand-tamed almost all of them. I watched three of them die, and performed the heartbreaking duty of digging a grave for the kitten who had been my favorite–flattened by a speeding neighbor (the bitch–she never even apologized). I found homes for two of the cats, watched two of them find homes for themselves(!).

But of all of them–Midnight, Tweety, Tink, Lucky, Darla, the two mama cats, and Tiger–it was Sam who had given me the most sleepless nights.

While oddly self-sufficient, he was also incredibly needy.

Nearly starved to death when his mother weaned him–just couldn’t make the adjustment to the dry food. I watched him grow weaker and weaker–until I couldn’t stand it, started experimenting with various combinations of kibble, broth, and milk until I finally stumbled on something he could hold down…

Sam before he was weaned.

He went from being adorable at three weeks to the skinniest, ugliest, funniest looking kitten in his litter at three months. When I trapped him and dropped him off at the SPCA for what would be a monthlong stay (I had to go to Europe and he needed to be neutered) I didn’t recognize the cat who awaited me on my return. His glossy adult coat had grown in and he was quite handsome–if still painfully skinny…

At six months, he’d started to fill out, his appearance and skittishness seemed to be improving daily. And then he took a swan dive off the roof and snapped his femur cleanly in half. He got a screw in his thigh that year–and my family got homemade cookies for Christmas…

All these memories were going through my mind as I closed the door to my house at 5:30 p.m. and headed out to a meeting at church. I had a serious purpose–helping to pick an interim pastor–but I was finding it hard to concentrate.

So instead of running up the stairs to the library, I made a u-turn into the sanctuary instead. I knelt down at the altar–not sure at first sure what to say. But the words just started pouring out. Prayers that Sam would be safe whether or not he returned to me. Prayers that he would find a loving home if he did not. Prayers that he would return home–but only if my home were indeed a place where his little cat spirit was intended to dwell. Because somewhere, dimly, I was groping to a realization, no, a certainty, that however much I loved him, Sam was not … in fact, my possession… that he could come to harm or simply choose to live elsewhere, and there was not a single thing I could do about it… but pray that he would be all right.

So you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you?

Sam came home.

As I drove down to the end of my dead end street, made the Y-turn, and pulled slowly in front of my house, he slipped from behind the neighbor’s hedge, sat in front of the gate, and calmly curled his tail around his feet.

“Where have you been!” was my scolding greeting, though I was so happy tears were pricking my eyelids. “You scared me half to death!”

He blinked his great gold-green eyes in reply, as if to say, “Such a fuss! Calm yourself, kiddo.”

But he also dashed pretty quickly through the picket fence to the front porch when I opened the gate, made a beeline for the kitchen when I opened the front door, and tucked into his Harris Teeter canned food with a voracious appetite.

“Humph! Well, I guess they weren’t feeding you wherever it was you were,” I muttered.

A few hours later, though, he gave me his nightly signal: he walked over, rubbed against my legs, made sure I was looking at him, then sat by the door. He was ready to go outside for the evening.

“Sure you haven’t had enough adventures for one day?” I said, hoping against hope. He cocked his head consideringly, then meowed and turned his gaze on the door. Clearly the answer was no.

I hesitated, but only for a moment. Sighing, I got up, opened the door, and watched Sambuca glide silently into the long blue shadows under the daylilies and disappear…

… because when you love something, you have to set it free. Especially if it’s a feral cat.

Sambuca, spiritual teacher.

This morning, I took a walk along the Rivanna River. It’s the first time I’ve walked the area since the Woolen Mills dam was demolished last August, and the changes seemed quite dramatic.

Now mind you, it’s been some years since I walked the Riverview. Time was — when I lived near the river, in the section of town called the “Woolen Mills,” after the mill founded there in 1841 — I walked that trail every day, winter or summer, whether the weather was dry and fine or ice and snow. My daily companion on those expeditions was Jade, a lab-collie mix with a pure white coat, root beer eyes, a pink mottled nose, and the best disposition of any animal it has ever been my pleasure to share my life with. If an animal can, in fact, be a spirit guide, then she was surely mine … But Jade died in 2002 after a short bitter fight with liver cancer–and I’ve barely set foot on that trail or even in the park that’s the entrance to it since…

But today, I promised a friend who runs a community service agency — QCC, the Quality Community Council — that I would join the ladies taking part in one of her weekly health walks. There were about a dozen of us–some elderly, some disabled, a mother with a toddler, one woman in full walkers’ regalia including an iPod armband. We got a brief pep talk from Susan Pleiss, a volunteer wrangler extraordinaire who does amazing work with parks and gardens and transportation and the poor, and Chris Jensic, the city planner who works with the trails system. Then we all set off in a big crush… but in short order I found myself … all by myself.

I got left behind rather quickly because I had to stop to look at the river. It had been many years since I’d taken a good long look at it, and I noticed the changes wrought by the destruction of the dam immediately. From a deep, sluggish, mossy green snail, the river had turned shallow, wide, clear, quick-moving as a coachwhip snake over rocks that I had never even known were there.

The deep shade cover made the walk blessedly cool, so I walked a bit slower (and, as it happened, a lot farther) than everyone else. I took the time to listen to Susan and Chris bemoaning the colonies of invasive Japanese bindweed that were overtaking the riverbanks (one was literally as tall as a house). I watched bees pollinating chest high stands of milkweed. I stopped to pick mulberries from a tree at the side of the path and exchanged a few laughs with a guy on a mountain bike who stopped and pulled down the branches so I could reach them, then fed handfuls to his daughter.

Cardinals and grackles and catbirds were calling, and there was a memory around every bend. There was where Jade got into a fight with that mean-ass Dalmation. There was where she’d launch herself after sticks until my arm was heavy and aching and her tongue lolled almost to the ground. There was where I scattered her ashes…

But there was much that was new, too. The city has widened and resurfaced the path so that it’s more like a ped-bike superhighway than the little goat track we used to scramble up and over. The deepest, darkest, shadiest portion of the trail–the section where Riverview Cemetery looms 100 feet on a sheer bluff overhead–is now dappled with sunlight because the city permitted a luxury development that decimated the enormous trees that used to block the light. And the trail just keeps going now instead of ending at the city limits.

This requires some explanation: The city and the county actually got together (this may sound strange to folks from other states, but in Virginia, they’re separate and often competing entities) and connected their trails. So now, instead of just ending at U.S. 250, at the city-county line in effect, the trail winds under the Free Bridge, and continues along the river through Darden Towe Park to end in Pen Park, on the far north end of town. … Now I don’t know about you, but to me, the thought of walking through woods in a complete circuit around the east side of town from the southern limit of the city to the northern– that’s cool. I can’t wait to try it.

So I’ll return to Riverview. In addition to the scary, ropy vines of poison ivy — thick as my arm — climbing the sycamores beside the trail, I saw Queen Anne’s Lace and wild yarrow. And the milkweed is just starting to mature. The umbels, though as big as my fist, are just starting to turn a rich coral color. Soon they’ll start attracting monarch butterflies. I want to be there to see that. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to get a picture.

(P.S. Apologies for not posting any pictures with this. I didn’t have my camera today, but I’ll be going back soon!)