I’m learning a few things about myself now that I’m settling into these 50-year-old bones and settling into the notion that nothing in my life is as I thought it would be. Learning, for example, that much as I want to be, much as I’ve striven to be one over the years, I am not a Zen warrior.

Not peaceful. Not serene. Not content.

I am, in fact, much more of a Zen worrier–incessantly plagued by bouts of gnawing doubt and creeping darkness barely held at bay by the practices of prayer and meditation without which I’m sure I’d be an utter and complete basket case.

But there’s one place in my world where darkness never finds me, one place where I’m always at peace. And that’s the garden. There are things in that world that disturb me. Bugs, for example. There’s an alarmingly large mama spider lurking in the darkness beneath my comfrey plant. There’s a praying mantis so big I briefly thought about having him fitted for a leash. There are gigantically fat bees bathing ecstatically in the nectar from the butterfly bushes who have a disconcerting way of behaving like mini-attack helicopters if I get too close to their source of supply.

But there are also lady bugs. I happen to like lady bugs. I’ll pick them off my arms or out my hair and show them where the aphids are lurking–on the undersides of the bindweed I’ve just spent an hour ripping out of the tomato bed. I know the lady bugs will appreciate the meal–such healthy aphids. Fat and juicy and  translucently orange. But I don’t stay to watch. There’s more weeding to do.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about weeding. It’s the next best thing to a day in the yoga studio. You’re getting exercise, fresh air, sun … along with 90% humidity and voracious mosquitoes … It is August in the South, after all. But in a well-worked bed you’ll spend only an hour or so at it, and you’ll come away feeling, yes, a little bit itchy and sticky but a whole lot centered, serene, at peace.

This year, I’m doing something different. Instead of retreating from the garden at the height of the hot, humid season. I’m putting in fall vegetables. Not by myself, of course. Baby is helping. We did weeding together. (Which was, as my students say, awesome.) Then he ran the tiller. We had leftover okra and tomato seedlings so we decided to try to take them right up to frost. In the other bed, we put in pigeon peas, some shelling beans, English peas, sugar snap peas, broccoli … It’s still a hair too early for the other things I love, like mustard greens and lettuce.

Something amazing happens with a fall garden… The soil is good and warm. The air is humid. Thundershowers help things along. We planted seeds Tuesday. This is what I found Sunday morning.

Pigeon peas. In January, they’ll be Hoppin’ John–the meal we eat for luck, along with greens, for money, on New Years Day.

Today, thoughm they’re just little nippers. They’ve just grown their secondary leaves and they’re twice as tall as in this picture. And the other rows–containing the White Wonder cukes, the Red Swan beans, the Green Arrow and Sugar Ann peas are sassy and green and poking above the soil, too.

Baby and I are going to set up little fences for them to climb on. But not today. It just started to rain. Softly, gently, peacefully. Think I’ll put on my rubber shoes and go make like a Zen warrior for just a few moments…

Here are some optimal “windows of time” for planting fall vegetables for a zone 7 garden. Just remember our final frost date is around Oct. 31 so adjust the dates you find here accordingly:

Beans - 8/1 - 9/1 (lima beans 7/15 - 8/15)	Muskmelon (Cantaloupe) - 7/15 - 8/1
Beets - 9/1 - 10/15	Mustard - 9/15 - 10/15
Broccoli plants - 8/1 - 9/15	Parsley - 8/15 - 10/1
Brussels sprouts - 8/1 - 10/1	Peas, English - 8/15 - 9/15
Cabbage plants - 8/15 - 9/15	Peas, Southern - 7/1 - 8/1
Carrots - 8/15 - 10/15	Pepper plants - 7/1 - 8/1
Cauliflower plants - 8/15 - 9/15	Potatoes, Irish - 8/15 - 9/15
Chard, Swiss - 8/1 - 10/15	Pumpkin - 7/1 - 8/1
Collard/Kale - 8/15 - 10/1	Radish - 9/15 - 10/15
Corn, Sweet - 8/1 - 8/15	Spinach - 9/1 - 10/15
Cucumber - 8/1 - 9/1	Squash, Summer - 7/15 - 8/15
Eggplant plants - 7/15 - 8/1	Squash, Winter - 7/1 - 7/15
Garlic - 9/1 - 10/15	Tomato plants - 7/15 - 8/1
Kohlrabi - 8/15 - 9/15	Turnips - 10/1 - 11/1
Lettuce (leaf) - 9/15 - 10/15	Watermelon - 7/1 - 8/1

I always take weather forecasts with a grain of salt. Shoot me. I just don’t believe the weather man.

Maybe it’s all those years of living in hurricane country. The storm’s always coming, coming, coming–and then not. In central Virginia it’s the opposite issue. The winter storm is always coming, coming, coming–and then either staying on the Shenandoah Valley side of Afton Mountain or just skipping us all together and moving up the coast.

Weatherman. Biggest teases on the planet.

All this is to say I was caught flat-footed by the snow yesterday. I mean, I believe it would snow, but I didn’t think it could be a big deal. So I dressed warmly but didn’t wear my rubber boots. I drove to work without it once clicking that this would be the first time the car I was driving–a long luxurious Olds from the late nineties, which came into my life when a long period of recovery from ankle surgery meant I had to get rid of my beloved stick shift–had ever been subjected to such weather.

If I had a thought process about that decision, it was probably something like: Hey, it’s less than a mile from my house to the office. The word “hill” did not enter into my calculations–nor did the phrase “rear-wheel drive.”

So imagine my surprise when it started snowing exactly when the weatherman said it would. Looking out the window, conditions were near whiteout as early as 4 p.m. By 9 p.m., when I finally decided I had to bail, it had been snowing for roughly five hours, and the car was buried under at least eight inches. I was wearing comfy clogs but the snow was a palm’s breadth above my ankles as I vainly brushed and dabbed in a mostly attempt to clear the windshields and windows (what I needed was a broom).

Chilled to the bone and soaking wet, I finally pulled onto Market Street–the main drag through downtown–about 9:15 only to discover that IT HAD NOT BEEN PLOWED!!! What ensued was a white-knuckle 20 minutes–and mind you, this is normally a five-minute drive–of dodging stalled cars, sideways cars, cars sliding backwards down hills. To be honest, I don’t think I ever before noticed how many hills there were between my house and downtown, and now I’ll never forget: THERE ARE THREE!!!

I arrived on Booker Street to find Marc shoveling the sidewalks in what was to prove a vain attempt to keep ahead of the storm. As I parked, he started shoveling toward me. “Rescuing!” he called, and I could have cried from relief. The snow was at least a foot.

Anyway as White Christmases go, I think this is probably a bit of overkill. (Hey, I grew up in the South and have fond memories of wearing shorts and T-shirts on Christmas day. My idea of a perfect Christmas? St. Croix, or failing that, Vegas.) But snow at night, once you’re safe and warm at home, is, well, it’s just like they say: magical.

I woke up around 7 a.m. praying the snow had stopped. It had not.

I’m not sure how long I would have stayed upstairs wrapped in blankets had Marc not lured me with tempting odors of sausage and coffee. So I stumbled down the stairs, and this is the sight that greeted my eyes.

Sam and Tiger fascinated by the snow. So I turned on the light…

Aren’t they too much? Tails at identical angles…

Looking out the window in the kitchen, I was struck by this…

… a geranium (OK, Marc, Pelargonium inquinans)–blooming against the backdrop of three-foot drifts piled against the back fence.

***

Around noon, electrifying news! Reid’s, the neighborhood grocery, was open and would remain so until 4! So, we decided to brave the elements.

Marc had cleared the sidewalks in front of the house. But that first step into the street was a doozy. The snow was above my knees!

Nobody’s seen me in a while… Here’s the reason:

So July 4th is Independence Day for REAALLL!

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 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!

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….