Back Again: On Artichokes and Writing Goals

So a few weeks ago, a friend of mine did a lovely thing, sending me a Facebook message booting me in the arse for not having gotten going on this blog. And since that moment (and before, when I was watering my garden and imagining how I would introduce my little garden to you), I've been wanting to get back here. I've thought it many times, but it's taken me until now to actually physically get back here and do it. (I had to finish out the teaching term and rest this past week blah blah blah.) But here on this blog, I want to focus on two things: my garden (and associated projects, like recipes, maybe, or herb experiments) and writing.

My Artichokes

I am from California, and I feel it, here in Michigan. We won't talk about my challenges with winter just now or the impossibility and anxiety that is snow driving -- that's just the obvious stuff. But though I've lived just about half my life now away from Los Angeles, I still have Angeleno eyes. When I look in the sky and see a real clear blue, just gorgeous, it's still a surprise, like my eyes expect to see the haze and smog, the gray skies of the San Fernando Valley. When will this place bore into me and change my eyes, my expectations? The trees here are a real yellow green, spring true green grass green here. The trees in southern California are all brown green, unhappy denizens of chaparel, not the gorgeous woods. Here I easily grow the peas and cucumbers I found difficult elsewhere. (Luckily my husband is also from southern California, so he shares my wonder. More than that -- he inspires me to see a lot more because he loves animals, and we have a pond and lots of animals. More on that later, I'm sure.)

But one thing I've never seen in the grocery stores here (not that I go all that much -- my husband does most of the shopping) is artichokes. Where I grew up, we had them in the grocery stores; my mother would buy them sometimes, and we'd steam them and eat them petal by petal dunked in melted butter. At the Renaissance Faire, you could buy them with homemade mayonnaise. But I've never seen them here at a grocery store (we don't have Trader Joe's here), never seen them at a farmer's market here. It's really important to grow what you love to eat (or suffer the fate of the tomatoes that are being ignored in our garden), so I started them super-early in the basement, then transplanted into one of our bigger raised beds. Here's what they look like now.

The artichokes are small, but there are quite a few. I'll have to harvest all of those tomorrow, I think. 

In What a Plant Knows, Daniel Chamovitz says that plants can sense when we're standing over them. I'm pretty sure that my plants, especially the tomatoes and green beans, have lost all patience with me because they know all that I don't do. I'm the kind of gardener who lovingly tends each new tendril when I have time, but the harvest always comes rolling in when I'm super-busy or tired. In a play, you could suggest so much by a garden like mine, with the tomato cages blown over and bright red tomatoes popping out all over the place, signaling to the audience the gardener has been ill. (Wait, am I stealing that from Trifles?)

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On Writing Goals

I've been writing poems with serious intention (if not seriously) for over twenty years, and having written in a variety of situations, I know that I do better writing-wise, when I have community and accountability. Now, honestly, I've been doing incredibly awesome this year so far in terms of writing productivity: I have gotten more poems out this year than in any other year except when I was in my MFA program and focused, mostly, on writing poems and had as much community as I could handle (okay, it wasn't always perfect -- I can barely remember now, honestly). But this year has also been incredibly difficult for me in other ways, and I could really benefit from some more community. Not only do I not want to remain as isolated as I have been, but the project I'm working on -- about Israel/Palestine based on a citizen delegation I was on, but also my own study -- is difficult. And I also have a new tribe of poet and teacher friends and remember especially right now from friends old and new how wonderful it is to feel more connected. But right now I want to focus on accountability.

Goals until the end of the year:

-writing at least 30 minutes per day, but ideally morning and night, leading to
-2 pages of somewhat-revised poetry per week
-1 section of a past notebook gone through and poems or scraps pulled out per week
-continue with transcription project, which is currently The Song of Songs, translated by my recently-deceased teacher, Chana Bloch, of blessed memory (I have a lot to say about her, her influence in general, and her influence on this project -- another time)

If I can manage these goals, then I'll have a first draft of my collection of Israel-Palestine poems by the end of the year.

For the week that ended yesterday, I totally nailed it, writing 2 pages of poetry, going through one and some sections of a past notebook. (I write a lot -- but my problem is when I get busy, like the last nine years, I don't pull my writing out of my notebook and revise it often enough -- so I know that I have many workings of some central poems still not yet written drafted in these notebooks. I must rescue these proto-poems!) I also just radically revised a poem tonight. I'm on a roll, which, I'm learning is a good time NOT to push it, but to end.

Blessings and good vibes all!