Happy New Year!

A mezze platter to take to our friends' house tonight. Hummus, olives and crudités with homemade baked pita chips. And raw dolmades, with grape leaves I canned from our vines this summer, and a diced parsnip (instead of rice), pine nut, red pepper, avocado, lemon juice and tomato filling.

I have been reading so many "good riddance 2011" articles, about what a terrible year it has been. I work at our parish food bank, and that is where you see it. The people working two and three jobs who still can't feed their families, the hard workers who are skilled and experienced in struggling industries, who used to make a great living, but just can't find work any more. My family has so many more pressures and barely-squeaking-by times than we ever used to have. We are skating very close to the margins every month. But it still bothers me to ring out the old year with contempt. It was a good year! We had so much fun. Right in the middle of it, R turned from a shy sweet funny seven year old to a shy even sweeter and funnier eight year old.

So from a very selfish perspective, I have loved this year. The garden and D and Charlie and R, a child who is busting out all over with so much new information and excitement about life that she talks out loud in her sleep. Last night she was reading Roald Dahl's Matilda under the covers with a flashlight, and she got to the part that lists the books that four year old Matilda reads. It is such a great list that I will have to put it here:

• Great Expectations
• Nicholas Nickleby
• Oliver Twist
• Jane Eyre
• Pride and Prejudice
• Tess of D'Urbervilles
• Gone to Earth
• Kim
• The Invisible Man
• The Old Man and the Sea
• The Sound and the Fury
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Good Companions
• Brighton Rock
• Animal Farm

And with each new title R would shout out to me, muffled from under her blankets, "What is that one about? Who wrote it?" and when I explained the authors and plots of the ones I knew (all of them but Gone to Earth? The Good Companions? Brighton Rock?), she would yell out, "Could you get that for me to read?" And she knows I will, I'll add it to her giant and growing bookshelf downstairs.

You could say that it has been a pretty universally awful year for--for, I don't know what to call it. For what I think is important in culture, social justice, general quality of life for humans. For some modicum of moral responsibility that would check or temper greed, or lacking that, legal restraints imposed by a wise and ethical and considered body. A friend made me laugh last month when she blurted out "There's one for our side!" about something in the news. That's why I love this Tennyson poem so much. Let the bad of the old year die. There was tiredness and falseness in it, but "ring out wild bells, and let him die."  There was so much goodness too. Call out the bad things and work to fix them. But ring out the wild bells, against the snow!

In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]
by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true . . . 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good . . .

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Robert Frost "Pea Brush"

I came across this Robert Frost poem when I was Googling pictures of pea supports.

Pea Brush

I walked down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—
All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
And got them off the wild flower’s backs.

They might be good for garden things
To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,
And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,
They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
And since it was coming up had to come.

***

Trillium is a wildflower in the lily family. Here is a photo from Wikipedia:

You can imagine them climbing the fallen birch boughs that were piled on their backs and crooking them.

I love the line,
"They might be good for garden things
To curl a little finger round,"

That's exactly what the peas are doing to my trellis of twigs.

Peas and spinach-mustard went into the ground earlier this week.

And we spent all day Saturday building two more raised beds for vegetables. I double-dug the ground, D built the beds.

We filled them with good soil and compost.

Next to the peas, I seeded some arugula, French breakfast radishes and mesclun. My neighbor came out to tell me it was too cold for anything but peas and spinach--definitely no seeds. She was kind not to laugh at my version of pea brush. We didn't have any birch boughs "fresh and sound from the woodman's axe."