Luck

The first time I ever played Lotto 649, I won. True story. I had just started working at a printing place where everybody went in on tickets every week. And, although my naturally frugal aspect was screaming, "Don't do it!" I threw in my $2.00, that first week, in order to feel a part of the group.
The next morning, there was great excitement in the shop. The owners son, a huge deaf-mute guy, was all flushed and sweaty. He motioned at us with his hands: five out of six numbers! We won!

After much checking and re-checking, it was determined that we had indeed won the "2nd" prize; five of six numbers. The jackpot was at least a million, but second place was much less; I think a few thousand dollars. Anyway, after we had divided it seven or eight ways, it came out to perhaps $260. each. At the time, about a weeks pay for me. A nice return on a $2.00 investment.

Imagine winning the lottery the first time you play it. How crazy is that?
It wasn't a lot of money but it was tremendously exciting. For me, it demonstrated two things. One, that lotteries were winnable. By ordinary people, like me and my co-workers. Two, that I was lucky. I couldn't help but think that while my co-workers had been playing the lottery for months and years before I came along, it was only when I joined in, that we won. I have always thought of myself as a lucky person; here now was proof.
For quite a long time after that, lottery tickets were irresistible. I justified buying them by telling myself I had that $260 in credit.

Fast forward twenty-three years or so. (My god, has it been that long?)
Although it embarrasses me to admit it, I still occasionally succumb to the lure of the lottery ticket. I cannot help but imagine winning. So many of my problems could be solved by an influx of cash, that the idea of winning is just too alluring to pass up. Yet I know, somewhere in there, that lotteries are exploitive. That they are institutional money-makers that exist because they make gazillions of dollars on the dashed dreams of poor people. A tax on the gullible and the desperate and the foolish. A tax on me.

I still think of myself as a lucky person but in reality, I almost never win anything. There are people who win door prizes regularly; whose names are pulled from hats; who pick the lucky chair; whose numbers are read out at the end of the evening. I am not one of them.
I only ever really won the lottery that one time. And the more I think about it, the less I think it has to do with me being lucky and the more it has to do with something else; something I'm not sure of and don't know how to name.

But whatever it is, I don't think I'll call it "luck".

Mid-Season Bean Report

Okay. It is now mid-summer and the gardens are in full swing. I rode over to the community garden to take a look. Here is what I found.

My Rattlesnake pole beans are amazing; prolific and delicious. They are probably my favourite bean this year. The Northeasters are confusing; flat, yellow beans except for one plant that bears long flat green beans. They're all very good but... I actually didn't expect them to be yellow. And what's with that green one?

The Tongue of Fire are obviously pole beans. They were sold to me as bush beans and that's how I planted them in both gardens... so they're a bit of a mess, twining and sprawling around. They are not particularly prolific. Additionally, they are apparently extremely attractive to bugs. They have sustained more damage than any of my other beans. We've eaten a bunch of them both as snap and as shelly beans; they're nice enough but not quite as special as I'd hoped.

My tomatoes are all over the ground, due to mismanagement. However, they are starting to ripen up nicely and we've been eating quite a lot of them. The Persimmon variety is fantastically sweet and lovely. The Brandywines are misshapen but delicious. I don't think I'll grow the "Heart" variety again; they are humongous but slow to ripen. I have a couple of mystery plants in there that are producing tomatoes of dubious quality; one appears to be some kind of Roma and I know I didn't plant any of those deliberately. Sigh...

In Karen's garden:

The Thibodeau de Compte Beauce are growing well and are very prolific and quite lovely. They look like a slightly heavy Rattlesnake bean. I'm growing them for dry beans which is good because their pods seem very tough. The Jacob's Cattle are also growing very well. They are reasonably prolific and seem untroubled by bugs. My soybeans look good and seem to be quite prolific. I want to eat some of them as edamame, but I'm not sure I can get out to Karen's to pick them at the right time for that. They were still flowering and had only tiny beans when I went out last week to weed and look at everything. It was kind of thrilling to see all the different beans hanging down from their respective plants.

I'm enjoying the gardens, even though they are more work than I can keep up with. Because of this, I think I'll try to do the community garden again next year. The dry bean garden is an hours drive from here, so not really feasible to maintain. I don't know what kind of yield I'll get from it but I can't really imagine that it will be cost-effective. Still, it will be nice to have some different beans for baking this winter, even if we don't get a lot of them.

If you crawl under a rock and die...

Once in a while, I get the feeling that I'd like to just crawl under a rock and die.

But if you crawl under a rock and die, you will never get to swim in cool, fresh water again. Nor sit in the shade of a hackberry tree and watch the river go by. You will not watch with joy the little yellow warblers flying through the willows on the riverbank. Or feel a cold, wet dog's nose, followed by little wake-up kisses, so gentle, on your eyelids in the morning.

Yesterday, we rode our bicycles to Pinehurst Conservation Area and went swimming. It is one of the parks of Rob's childhood, so we spent the day re-visiting some memorable campsites and trails. We ate a picnic lunch under some big old white pines and oak trees and explored the gorgeous Carolinian forest. It's amazing to me that we can ride our bikes for just a couple of hours and end up in a place with noticeably different flora from our own. Notably, there were a lot of large shagbark hickories, some pawpaw trees, and various flowering plants that I am not accustomed to seeing daily. It was cool! We saw a little wood frog, a brown thrasher and a few butterflies but not much else in terms of fauna. It was a holiday Monday, so the park was busy but the roads were mercifully quiet.

I was pretty beat on the way home and thought that perhaps I'd be miserable today because I had to get up at 5:30 to go to the coffee booth at the market. But I feel okay today, despite the long ride yesterday. Except for this faint, lingering feeling of wanting to crawl under a rock and die. Other than that, and a slightly sore cycling ass, everything is a-okay.

Dogs

Today was a shitty day for so many reasons I can't detail them all. But mostly, I'm just getting really, really tired of being broke and relying so completely on Rob. I've applied for every job that I see that I think I could actually do but so far no luck. I even signed up for a study I don't want to do. It's depressing.

Anyhow, I thought that going to the community garden would make me feel better because it usually does, if only a little. Today I was disturbed to see that my garden seems to be strangling itself to death. The "bush" beans have turned out to have serious climbing ambitions and are flopping all over the place, strangling the flowers and blocking out all of the light from that end of the garden. The tomato plants have all fallen down, taking their laughably tiny "cages" along with them.

As I stood looking sadly at the green chaos, I heard a woman barking orders to her dog: Come here! I said COME HERE!! Leave it! I said LEAVE IT!! Get over here! Sit down! I said SIT DOWN!!! I thought, well, maybe she has one of those hyper dogs who need constant direction to tire them out... but then I noticed that her dog was actually obeying her every irate command and that he didn't seem particularly hyper or badly behaved. This didn't stop her from kicking him when he didn't sit down quickly enough; I heard the impact of her boot; the dog yelped piteously. Then she stood over him, swearing at him as he cowered. I said, "Jesus lady, I hope you don't have kids." but she was already on her way home, dragging the dog behind her. I guess that was his ten minutes of exercise for the day.

I was done looking at the garden. I had about a hundred mosquito bites already. It was too hot for weeding and I'd picked every sizable bean I laid eyes on. I picked some nasturtiums and purple basil to make confetti butter, cut some chard leaves and climbed on my bicycle. On my way out, I couldn't help noticing another depressing thing - the garden is full of produce that isn't being picked. There are overgrown peas and beans covering the plants. I was tempted to pick some peas but I didn't; it would have felt wrong. Somehow even more wrong than leaving them there to rot on the vines.

Another thing eating me is that my dogs are getting so old. I've lived with them for so long, in such a congenial way, that I don't know what I'll do without them. They are there in the morning, (and always happy in the morning; as though they are just glad to be starting another day...) they keep me company throughout the day and they are there at night, when they seem always glad to go to bed. They used to be so springy and resilient; now they are creaky and clunky. They have lumps and bumps. They smell worse. But somehow they are sweeter than they were as young dogs. They seem more affectionate, more trusting, more gentle and loving; happier.

I wonder if that dog I saw today will get to be an old dog. If he will get sweeter as he ages, or if he will be dropped off at the pound with a broken spirit and a bad rap sheet. I wonder sometimes if dogs ever regret having hooked up with us humans in the first place.

Fava Beans

So, I actually grew fava beans once. Last year, I think it was. I had a bit of a garden out at Karen's place and for some reason, even though I had NEVER EATEN THEM, I decided that I should try growing fava beans. The plants grew well, flowered early and formed a few large, fuzzy pods at some point... (I think I was out of town for that, but anyway), when harvest time came around, I picked about twelve bean pods, all different sizes from the fava bean plants. I think I shelled them, getting perhaps 30 beans of various sizes - I ate a couple, found them bitter; it seemed so pointless that I think I gave the rest to the chickens.

Last Thursday, I worked with my friend, Carole, at her coffee booth at the market. Before leaving, I wandered amongst the fantastic bounty of St. Jacob's market and noticed that one of the vendors had many baskets of fava beans for sale. Honouring my bean fixation, I stopped to look. Before I knew what I was doing, I had purchased two 2 quart baskets (2 for $5.00) and was walking away whistling. Fava beans are so enormous that my huge bag, bristling with fuzzy pods seemed like quite a deal for five bucks. At home, the shelling began on the front porch. I sat on the porch step with a colander and my bag of favas, a frosty beer at my side. All seemed well with the universe.

After about half an hour, I looked down at the colander and wondered if I was missing when I dropped beans into it; there was an awfully small pile of pale beans at the bottom. The compost bag beside it was bristling with the fat, empty pods, however. Obviously, I needed some livestock to feed. Probably pigs would do the trick. The shelling continued, unabated, for perhaps another hour until at last I had pried open the last fat pod and dropped the last bean onto the little hill in the colander.
We boiled them for about three minutes, then I tried one. The skin was thick, tough and bitter. The little darlings needed to be skinned! So, another 15 minutes or so went by as we skinned the little buggers. By the time we were done, we had such a small pathetic pile of beans that I said to Rob, "These things are a rip-off! I'm never buying them again!"

I had sauteed a pile of onions and garlic in olive oil, with a couple of nice tomatoes and a bit of salt. We tossed in the fava beans and mixed it all up. We cracked a bottle of white wine (in Italy, fava beans are eaten with white wine...) and a loaf of crusty bread and sat down to eat.
The beans were like nothing I have ever tasted. A little bit sweet, a little bit bitter, a little bit nutty, soft and buttery, totally delicious and very, very satisfying.
By the end of the first bowl, I was eating my words along with the beans. "I'm definitely getting these again!" I said. "We should be growing these things! They're fantastic!"
Rob nodded in agreement, his mouth too full to speak.

In Search of a Better Me

I think that one of the best things about having the "right" person in your life is no matter how cliched it sounds, the right person inspires you to be a better person yourself. Like most things, this turns out to be a double edged sword. Standing beside a really great person kind of highlights what a twit you are, yourself.

My partner, Rob, is one of the best people I know; one of the few real heroes in the story of my life. I say this not only because he is honest and funny and kind and generous, but also because he is flawed and knows he is flawed. We all are, of course, but some of us hate like hell to admit it.

Last night, we had an excellent dinner with good friends. (The dinner included homemade linguine and pesto, epi bread and fancy cheese, a raw broccoli and apple salad and gelato from the Italian place in Waterloo. It was fantastic.) After dinner, Rob told a story about riding his bike up to Paisley (a 7 hour trek) and having one incident on the road; a guy yelled, "Get off the road!" at him. Rob said, I tried to yell back, "Share it with me!" but what came out of my mouth was, "Fuck you, dick!"
Everybody laughed. It was a funny telling but what was really funny about it, is that Rob hardly ever swears like that. He is a very controlled person, and while he does swear occasionally, it is rarely in anger and even more rarely directed at anybody.

I, on the other hand, am quite a potty-mouth by comparison. I have to bite my tongue about a million times a day to keep from chewing out everyone who comes into contact with me and I fail regularly. And, as it turns out, I'm also less honest, less funny and certainly less generous than Rob. (They say you shouldn't compare yourself to others, but really, who can help it?) And if I hadn't met Rob, I might never have figured out that I'm not quite as great as I thought I was; I used to think of myself as really honest and quite funny, and at least somewhat generous. (Umm... fail...)

So I'm writing this because I'm trying to get up my nerve to go to my community garden. I'm afraid to go there because I haven't been in a while and I'm pretty sure that it's out of control by now. Specifically, I'm afraid of my tomato plants, although the prospect of the weeds and my "bush" beans is also alarming. But, look at me, I'm going to take a page from Rob's book and overcome my fears and do the right thing. I'm going to gather up some trellis and some twine and a trowel and I'm going to ride my bicycle over to the garden and I'm going to whip it into shape! Yes, I am! Just watch me!

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Three (3) hours later... did I mention that it's 27 degrees outside? With a humidex of 33? Did I mention that I'm a menopausal female? With a propensity to sweating? And cussing?

Well, anyway, I did it! And I'm back to tell the tale!
Now that I am seated calmly in front of a computer with a cool soda in hand, it seems less terrifying than it was but still... it was pretty bad. You may recall me bragging on how nice my garden looked earlier in the season and even how some of my neighbours' gardens at the community plot looked a little... well... *untended* by comparison. Well, I'm bragging no more. My plot is now second only to the group home's for sheer neglected chaos.
First of all, my best crop turns out to be purslane, which is EVERYWHERE. I actually brought a bag home, planning to eat it in revenge. My tomatoes have curiously decided to both mutate and mutiny. I neglected to be ruthless in my suckering and as a result, today I was forced to tie them up with yarn and hack off some of their limbs with a nail file. (I forgot a knife.) It pained me to do it but I can't have them acting like something out of "Little Shop of Horrors". Still, a few of them have elected to crawl across the path and lie down in my neighbour's garden. Fortunately, she is about 80, blind and very kind, so she might not object. I told them I'm coming back later with some serious bondage equipment but they only snickered.
My Tongue of Fire bush beans are finally blooming prettily but they are also sprawling around smothering things for no good reason. I put in a couple of bamboo stakes and some trellis for them to lean on. My neighbour across the main path planted purple bush beans and hers are very well behaved and are covered in small purple beans already. Another neighbour, Bill, planted scarlet runner beans (which I love) and they are already eating size. I'm envious. My pole beans are taller than I am, finally, and beginning, very shyly, to bloom but they are also looking much less robust than I would like. Bill's scarlet runners are looking very hale and hearty.
The rhubarb chard is finally big enough to harvest and I ripped off some chard stems which we'll eat tonight with the purslane. (I must remember to take a knife next time, if only to threaten the tomatoes.)
The nasturtiums are starting to bloom at last and I was able to pull out most of the remaining french breakfast radishes, thereby freeing up a little space for walking. The marigolds still look stunning, although some of them are now being shaded out by the tomatoes. My tomatillo continues to bloom madly but (unlike Michelle's) is not setting any fruit. (Why the hell not?)

Finally, I intended to take the camera with me to capture some of the joy and horror of the community garden, but in the end, I forgot it. So, for now, a photo of my better half will have to suffice.

Some things I will never do

There are a lot of things that I would like to do, in this life, but will probably never get to do.

Here is a partial list:

1) Write a best-selling novel
2) Learn French
3) Build a bottle house
4) Make my own clothes
5) Get a black belt in any martial art
6) Travel North America in a horse-drawn wagon, like the pioneers, or the old-time circus folk and document my travels with compelling photos
7) Make short animated films
8) Write songs that change the world
9) Speak fluent Spanish
10) Rule the earth as a (mostly) benevolent dictator

Today the humidex reached 42, which I think means about 110, farenheit... (the thermometer measures the actual temperature; the humidex measures the degree to which you wish you were dead...) I do not handle the heat particularly well.

The thing about this kind of heat is that it saps your energy so thoroughly. I do not normally watch sports on the television but I'm actually grateful for the World Cup games because they are such a pleasantly mindless distraction from the things I should do but don't have the energy for. My plan for today involves writing a cover letter for a job that I will probably apply for. I'll be lucky if i accomplish this; I have already screwed up the few small tasks I had hoped to accomplish today... this heat also makes me stupid.

There are some other things that I would NOT like to do but sometimes fear I may. Here is a partial list:

1) Scream loudly in the supermarket
2) Chastise people I see in the grocery store, based on the contents of their carts
3) Get so drunk that I actually feel no pain
4) Forget how to speak
5) Write a book that I love but no one will ever publish
6) Overdose on pizza
7) Alienate Rob
8) Make a "surprise" dish that turns out horribly
9) Kill somebody
10)Forget to thank everyone for tolerating me