Author: Philo

human

Patience

patience

I am told quite often to have patience, but I watch my tomato plants and they seem to grow inches everyday, but the fruit remains green. Large, green globs of fruit hang heavy on the vines. I can taste the fruit of my labors; I envision the salsa if only my peppers would hurry.

 

My peppers are bearing fruit as well, but the plants themselves haven’t grown much. They look healthy now, but only after some attention. I watch as peppers sprout from white flowers, healthy green, red and purplish. I watch the peppers and envision baskets of Anaheim, Joe’s Cayenne, Poblano, Jalepeno…, if only my tomatillos would get bigger.

 

The tomatillo plant was given to me by a friend of mine; the plant is beautiful. Small, yellow flowers wielding to pockets of green, sticky fruit. Spreading its spindly branches, I tie the plant religiously to the homemade stands I’ve built. Dozens of green bags hang precariously from the plant, and I check often for the fruit hidden inside. The green chili that I make from the peppers and tomatillos always taste good with a homemade beer, if only my hops would hurry.

 

The cascade hop plant is probably my favorite plant in the garden. It hangs heavy with sticky leaves and gorgeous, small green cones of goodness. The lupulin inside the cones await golden nectar. The plant is a fast grower, and the hops that spring forth (with a little help from the bees this year) are lovely light green and smell of the goodness that beer is. I plan to brew a honey porter, if only the bees would hurry with their making of honey.

 

I added a honey super to the hive two weeks ago. The last check on the super, the little girls had begun to make comb for the honey that I hope will soon be. The bees have been a favorite addition to my garden. They have done so well this year. I really didn’t get the bees for honey production, but out of curiosity. But I remember the addition of the second hive box. They filled it hurriedly and I worry about the bit slower production on the honey super. I have mason jars that I can almost taste the honey dripping from the spoonful’s that I ladle from them. Honey harvest is often in September, and only if the girls have enough for themselves. August is almost here.

 

August is almost here and with the end of summer begins the fall. I remember the times past in the fall as the leaves change and cool evenings bring the leaves to the ground. I’ll gather them and send them through the shredder for mulch over the winter. I always like that job because it is somehow calming, but it does make me wonder where the time has gone.

 

 

Simple Lessons

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Sometimes I get angry and lash out, mostly at inanimate objects. Or, I complain, mostly to my wife. But four and ½ years ago I found a dog at the pound, and that changed a lot of things. I still get angry and lash out, mostly at inanimate objects and I still complain, mostly to my wife, but now when I am angry or frustrated my dog, Maggie, comes up to me, tail tucked and nuzzles me gently. Now I have to calm my anger and curb my complaining. It is difficult at times, but it forces me to reconsider.

I have to calm my anger and curb my complaining because Maggie does not understand why I am angry, frustrated, or generally grouchy. She simply knows that I am. She comes up slowly with her head bowed low and her tail tucked and she creeps up to me, nuzzles my arm and begs for petting. Without knowing it she reminds me that I have a great life and that most likely my anger and frustration while perhaps warranted is simply not worth it.

This is a hard lesson and I am a difficult student, but Maggie is a relentlessly patient teacher. I get mad and the tail tucks. I get frustrated and I feel a wet nose against my arm. This relentless reminder is irritating at times, but I cannot afford to let that show lest the cost of doing so is paid. That is, I must look into the dark brown eyes of my teacher, my pet, my companion and without being able to explain that it is not her that I am mad at, reconcile her worries the best I can.

I am reminded by my wife that I could give her the same respect and consideration, but I remind her that she understands my anger and frustration while Maggie does not. I know, and at times am reminded by Maggie, that this argument is not a good one, but like I said: I am a difficult student. I wonder why I do not react to people, my wife, the same way that I react to Maggie, but then the answer comes: people do not react the same way to others as dogs react to people.

There is a lot of honesty in a dog: it cannot lie. It does not have ulterior motives nor does it revel in its own ignorance proudly. I calm my anger and curb my frustration because I do not want my dog to be unhappy, and she shows me love and affection because she does not want me to be unhappy.

Such a simple lesson to be learned from a dog from the pound.

Nature Knows Best

yellow tomato leaves

I woke up this morning and enjoyed my morning coffee as I do every morning. It was early and the dew was still on the plants. The bees were not very busy yet; it was silent which is why I like early mornings. I took my usual garden walk, coffee in hand, and I noticed a few of my tomato plants had yellowing leaves on the bottom. All at once my morning was no longer peaceful. I wondered about that.

My garden is not doing so well this year (I think), and that worries me as well. I’m not sure why? Is it because I want to be perceived as a good gardener or is it because I want to be a good gardener? Maybe it’s the soil, the plants? My father-in-law chuckled at my worries. He’s been a farmer for some sixty years. His only advice: “it happens sometimes.”

That was not good enough for me. I knew better; better than a man who had spent his life growing things! That’s the thing with nature: it does not care what we want or why we want it. It simply is. I understand this even when I take my morning walk with my coffee: it only seems to me as if nature is pleasing. But nature knows best.

I don’t understand how my father-in-law is so nonchalant about something he has spent a lifetime doing. I tell him this and he brings back a conversation about nature that we had many years ago concerning the nature of, well, nature. He reminds me that nature does what nature does best: exist; this coming from a farmer of sixty years. After that, he adds, it’s pretty much guesswork and we don’t have much say so in the matter.

I don’t know why, but I can’t accept that explanation. It is not because it is not an answer, but because there are reasons for everything, even if we do not know what those reasons are. Also, I must admit, I expect a little more from a lifetime of experience in farming, which is what this man has. He seems to recognize my disappointment and chuckles again. I think he realizes that it is because of his experience and not in spite of it that he can laugh.

Killing Chickens

Description White chicken.JPG

I killed a chicken today. I say “killed” because I did not “take its life”; it did not “pass on”. I took a knife and I slit its throat. To kill and animal ought to be an act of respect, and I hope that I do the bird justice when I eventually put her in a pot and make chicken and dumplings with her. She was a nice looking bird if not a bit old. She’d had a good life, which is important.

 

I also think that it is important for everyone that eats meat to kill their own food at least once. It is never a pleasant experience until after the act of killing when it is easy to differentiate the food aspect from the living creature aspect. Somehow in that split second it is easy to understand how fragile all life really is and the cost that is paid for living. This is perhaps one of the greatest personal motivations that I have for trying to become self-sufficient.

 

I’ve killed a number of animals over the years, all of which I’ve put in my freezer and eaten, except for a few sheep that I helped someone kill in order to put in their own freezer. Death is certainly part of life, and is no doubt a part of becoming self-sufficient: we have to eat. Self-sufficiency is in some ways self-realization and in the bigger scheme of things, the realization that we are part of a greater cycle which will continue with or without us.

 

I thought about that I was a part of; the cycle that would begin with the death of the old bird. The owner of the chicken had bought four new pullets to replace the doomed chicken. I would eat the chicken and eventually the cycle would come full circle with my own death. This is not morbid or odd; it is beautiful actually.

 

More and more, as the realization of what it is to become self-sufficent grows along with my skill-set, I realize the beauty in the idea of self-sufficiency whether it is through my new found love for “Bee TV” (pulling up a chair with a cup of coffee and watching the bees fly to and from their hive), growing a garden, carpentry, mechanics, putting up drywall (I did that last week, one of my lesser favorite skills) or killing a chicken for a friend.

 

I thought about it and concluded that it would not show the respect due the old chicken had I simply referred to her death as a “passing”, or that I “ sent her to a better place”. I killed a chicken, simply put. But her death symbolizes something greater than can be described, pronounced or understood.

Box of Bugs: Chapter 2

Description Beehive.JPG

It’s been two months since I became a beekeeper, and yesterday I ended my stint as a beekeeper. I still have the bees, make no mistake, but yesterday I decided to quit feeding them. You see, in the beginning when you buy a package of bees they have nothing but the box you give them. To give them a head start, you feed them sugar water. Yesterday I took the feeder off the hive since they have grown significantly. Now they forage for their own food as bees should. It was difficult: becoming a bee-watcher rather than a beekeeper. I worry about them. I know that I shouldn’t because they are bugs that forage for food; that’s what bees do.

But nevertheless, my mind won’t let go. They are “my” bees after all. It seems that I have a relationship with each of the 30,000 or so bees that must live in the two-deep hive that they have made home. Although I know that it is impossible, I still can’t get around the hope that they know me. The have no such thoughts, I know. All of this anthropomorphism is tiring, and yet I know that when I am done writing this I will go out back to visit them.

Yesterday they bearded the front of the box as it was hot, and as bees are apt to do; and yesterday I worried and fretted. This morning I sat in my chair outside the hive with coffee and watched as the hive came to life. Perhaps this is the life of that which I have become. It is true that it is simply a box of bugs as I have written previously, but it is a box of bugs that is full of mystery and muster a fascination that I have not had in a while. I want us to understand each other, but realistically they are barely aware of me. They do what bees do and I, well I watch what bees do.

When I open the hive see the amazing amount of work that they do, both as individuals and as a hive I am dumfounded and they continue to work. Work defines the bee. I cannot help but be a little envious of such a life: doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, for no other reason than it needs to be done. What simplicity. What directed significance; and all in six weeks or so during the summer. And now I step back and let them be what they are naturally. It is nothing to them and a major step for me.

In my determined trek to be self-sufficient I am finding that I am the most dependent of all creatures when a simple bug can teach me freedom by doing nothing more than that which it does so flawlessly. Maybe I am worried not about the bees and my feeding them, but about myself as I slowly strip away the false sense of independence replacing it with the very real sense of awareness that it is me that needs to learn to do what needs to be done, when it needs to done, for no other reason than it needs to be done. I continue to learn from a box of bugs, and am humbled to do so.

The Workshop Universe Pt. III (Edited)

Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8)

 

The Big Bench Bang, then the year after the bench was built it is claimed in the tradition of mythology that most of the tools present were in place, had a place and were all accounted for. Of course, this is just a myth because looking at the place now it really does seem impossible. Five years later, the spread of the universe accumulates in the form of an electric welder and the first and only cleaning on record is applied. Organization and then entropy ensues afterwards. Ten years later an assortment of what is now the stuff of the universe is acquired: wrenches, ratchet sets appear and the space between appears as blackness, cleaning is but a faded memory. Fifteen years after the Big Bang, the gas welder appears from the nothingness and afterwards the black hole appears spitting forth hand tools from one end and sucking up all that comes within its reach, cleaning becomes a myth for some and a wish for others. Shelving falls and it and all its contents lay untouched for two years until by sheer force and will organization fights the chaos of the Universe; the act of cleaning is outlawed by the creator himself. There was a few wars fought in defense of organization and a simple wash but all were quashed in the name of chaotic order. There are some that ask about the time before the Big Bench Bang and the answer is simple: it was a workshop for the wagons and horses. Another little side-use was the slaughtering of pigs. It is in fact where I learned to do such things.

Pigs have lost their lives in the Universe long before its inception. Actually, since about 1934 pigs have been slaughtered here. The war-grounds for pork is marked territory with the blood and grease of man and pig. The times that the author was involved in the wholesale fight for meat a large, round metal bowl was used; a left-over from the second world war, a “horn-mine” that was found by the father of the creator of the universe (yes, the creator has a father) on the nearby beach but before that a wooden cask was used to hold the hot water that cleaned the carcass before the hair was burnt off the skin. It is neither a pretty sight or a quaint smell that ensues when pigs are slaughtered and both are permanent parts of the workshop. The pig is killed, hung and bled. Then parted while cats and dogs claw over the innards and the grandfather tool (the axe) is put to use to half the carcass. The head is fought over while entrails are dragged out into the darkness of space by cats and dogs alike. All of this happens within the workshop leaving the place with a different kind of smell. I wonder if because water is used if this is counted as a cleaning.

Today the shop is off-limits to any hired help because of unknown realities and time-warp related worries. It continues to grow both in sight and smell. The black hole grows, sucking in the shelving at times, and at other times parts and tools but it nevertheless continues to exist; a parody to existence itself, a stubborn trophy waved in the face of the belief in design and order. Both and anachronism and a study in the future of mankind itself, the Universe of the shop defies definition and yet defines itself as the matrix of change and the canvas of the future. Entropy ensues and it is good.

Workshop Universe Pt. II (Edited)

Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8)

On the far wall along the total length of the workshop universe is the divine workbench itself. It is the mighty holder of all that there is. Only the bravest of people dare run their hand across its fanciful but invisible top. It is no longer flat although it is not round; it exists without shape. It bears witness to countless oil-spills, tool-cleaning chemicals, gasoline, diesel, spit, blood, dirt, grease, beer, melted rubber, metal, iron, cloth and other unmentionables; emanating from it is a smell unknown to mankind. From the bowels of its load the smell entices and edifies, it sickens and cleanses the body; it is both a religious experience and a nightmarish vision from the asshole of hell itself; Medusa with the voice of the Sirens; Satan with the voice of angels. It is a small mountain range of blackened history where tools die and are reborn in a cyclical act of evolution by the natural selection of the creator himself. Its herculean strength is the only thing that be accounted for its still standing under the weight of so much for so long. It is made of wood but from some magical forest of strength endowed trees.

 

”I built it new, when I turned the place into my workshop.” Says the creator. He continues with a gleam in his eye as he tells me about the table drill in the middle of the bench. ”I bought that drill with a case of beer and then helped drink the beer…” The drill is a single piece anchored in place upon the bench by magical forces or sheer stubbornness, bounding out of the wilderness of sprawling parts, tools, pieces with its pulleys and belts opened for air. A chunk of blackened Swiss cheese like wood ornaments its drill plank. Everything hangs in anticipation of joining the cohorts of junk that lies on the imaginary floor. Gravity never gives up; everything eventually falls. The corners of the bench are long since rounded by use and the shelves seem to float above the bench itself, covered in grease and stacked, rounded with no-named pieces and parts. Above the middle of the workbench is a small window, most of the panes miraculously intact although light is frightened away from the prospect of shining though the smutty glass into the black hole of the workshop. It runs, screaming insanely, while all that is rests peacefully.

 

From the bowels of this place have come amazing feats of mechanical mystery. It is well known that from the chaotic chords of the blackened workbench are home to the answers to inexplicable and innumerous breakdowns, cracks in well-worn machinery, broken parts and a multitude of other problems that the farmer-creator faces. Inventions are not an unknown oddity to such a place as this. ”We bought the Buch 302 (A tractor) in about 1960 and right after I finished building the bench, I needed a backloader for the Buch, so I built one. It had a hydraulic lift and everything. That was the first project that I had after building the bench.” Nothing is off-limits and everything can be fixed if not permanently then at least temporarily; temporary being the permanent state of the workshop universe. Wheel-alignment, parts replacement, parts made, reparation of tools, invention of tools.

The Workshop Universe Part I (edited)

Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8)

Respectfully dedicated to my father-in-law, Jorgen Troldborg.  A man who has taught me much.

In the Universe the 2nd rule of Thermodynamics applies: that entropy will ensue. We live with that knowledge comfortably because it is such a slow-going process. But in some cases, entropy is evident and even happens right before our very eyes. Such is the case with the workshop universe at the Troldborg farm. The universe is not as old as we thought. It is, in fact, forty years old because Jørgen (the owner of the universe) was thirty years old when he created it. The Universe is a part of a totality of Universes known as the Troldborg Gård (Troldborg Farm) and Jørgen acts as the manager and general CEO of the place: his creation by design. The workshop universe holds a special place in the history of time here because within its dark bowels lays the history of Troldborg Farm. This is a short story about that history and the entropy that is inherent in all creations including his.

As was stated, the Workshop Universe is about forty years old but the oldest tool somehow outdates the universe by some one-hundred and twenty years. Such illogical facts are not important to the creator. Now if the word of the creator is not to be questioned that tool is an ax of sorts used to split tree trunks and is still usable and is enjoying life as the metaphysical grandfather of all tools in the universe today. What sort of place does such a special parcel of amazing history take up in the universe? I asked the creator himself.

”Some place or another… I think it may be in the attic over the workshop…”

While he pondered the existential space-time continuum of the question, I pondered the importance and place of lesser tools in the workshop. For example, the Drill press, a no-named drill that was once used in a fishing village called Skagen Denmark. ”Of course,” the creator followed up when I asked him about it, “it was originally powered by a windmill in a workshop on the harbor up there. They had a ´pull-station´ and would throw a belt over one of the pulleys there and the drill would be run that way. When I got it I fixed it so it could be run with a little electric motor.” The drill press sits pretty much in the middle of the black-hole of the workshop; there is a black hole in the center of this universe as well. That is to say, right in the middle, surrounded by the insurmountable stash of tools, toys, scrap iron, wood, empty cans, half-full cans, fuel barrels, plastic buckets, chains, rope, plastic ties, nylon webbing, electric motors, gas motors, reserve parts, axles from cars, tractors, mopeds, bicycles, shovels (with and without handles), the handles of the said shovels without such handles, broken bottles, paint brushes, ratchet sets, open-ended wrenches, collections of assorted rubber parts, pieces of panhandled plows, compressor pistons, hay-press pulls, bolts, nuts, washers, screws and nails that have been pulled, pried, pricked, pummeled, pled, pounded and peened out, in and around most known materials of mankind, chainsaws, pulleys, lifts, hooks, cords, cables, used saws, assortments of hammers, several welders masks, an electric welder, boxes of welding sticks, gloves with and without holes, burnt out plugs, jars of liquids that defy definition and either snuff out life itself or are the cradles of civilizations yet unknown to even the creator himself. To actually come to stand next to the drill press would take a miraculous act or would cost one their sanity and probable their life to boot. It is said it can be done but the author has his doubts. I believe that it is the event horizon.

Another standing question that I had of the Workshop Universe is the large compressor that sits in its corner silently until its long, shaggy tail is followed through the trail of indefinable debris and connected with the hidden contact mounted proudly but covered with the dust, grease and grime of the infinite muck of universe itself. It is then that the monstrosity hums and pops into life spreading an earthquake of bangs that rumble the theoretical floor of the shop itself. Now I say ´theoretical´ only because the floor as really never been seen as far as I know. The fact that one does not float in the shop is no proof because of the thick, dense fog that hangs over and in the workshop at all times; perhaps the ether that Einstein mistakenly referred to? It would be easy enough to enjoy the sights and sounds of the shop simply by walking on the fog itself. Of course, there are theories about this but to go into the physical guesswork of if, when and how is well beyond the scope of this trivial discourse. Suffice it to say that the actual floor is somewhat of a myth. The compressor has no color but is not black nor is it white. It is rather a thick, oily grayish “blue”. Its color changes with the fog and with the sorrowful rays of sun that happen upon it from one of the three openings into the workshop world.

A Time of Peace

 

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There is something calming about noticing a flower that you have never noticed before; there is something that is exciting about waking up in the morning and seeing that the plants have been busy the night before. There is something that is humbling when we realize that life goes on without our taking the time to notice, that we are a mere blip in the endless sea of time that laps over the beachhead.

 

That life goes on without us forces us to realize that we live on borrowed time; no one owns their time, and peace of mind comes from realizing that we are on borrowed time. I notice this when I stop to realize that my new bees only live for six or so weeks. I realize this every time I think of the twenty-five years of marriage that I have enjoyed. These relationships and the things that we deem as so important come as waves on a beach, dissipating into the sand. Time is limitless but our time is limited.

 

Our time is limited, but what we do with our time is not. How we spend our time is up to us, but that we spend our time is not. Perhaps this is why peace of mind is so often found in nature, on a piece of land: time is free there because nature is time incarnate: timeless.

 

This is perhaps the reason that real peace of mind can only be found in noticing a flower that you have never noticed before, or hearing the buzzing of a few bees in the honeysuckle. This time is never wasted because it is time not being spent. I am learning not to waste my time because I am learning that my time is borrowed. I am learning to spend my time wisely because again, my time is only borrowed. That flower that I notice today will be gone tomorrow, another taking its place. That piece of land that is so beautiful costs nothing to notice, but not noticing it costs so much.

 

The wrinkles that show up on my face remind me of the things that are so important, and that they are important only because my lack of time makes them so. I have found that it takes time to enjoy peace of mind, and that such time is well spent. I have found that like everything else, truth is embedded in time itself: it is a process, and such is life as well as death.

 

There is no cheating time, we only get so much. We will only have time to barter with in our dying breath as Mr. Death comes to take the last coins of seconds that we have left. This is why it is so important to spend your time wisely. Notice the flower in the garden, the bees in the hive, the garden and everything else which is timeless. It is only these things that are free, and perhaps because of that bring peace of mind. Peace of mind comes with no buyer’s remorse. Perhaps this is because in the end it is the only thing that gives us a time of peace.