Squash Humor in Paradise

This one’s for Noelle. And Michael. And Ben.

I have been trying to pollinate my yellow squash for days now. The task is harder than it sounds, even for an Idaho farm girl. But I’m determined, because just as our garden was starting to look fabulous, and ready to burst with edible delectables, the squash started to shrivel, and that damn gopher found our corn. Two stalks have fallen, and the zucchini plant went from ill to cadaver in an eerie stretch of hours between dusk and dawn. But the yellow squash and pumpkin plant are far from the gopher’s haunt, so I think I have a chance with them, if I can figure out the pollination. I guess some more explanation is in order.


I got a new job. I feed horses, drive big trucks, and remind people not park on the rocks by the river (even if the parking lot was full and they had a lot of beer to carry and it made them tired). With my new job came a general realization in the office that I might be qualified for other prospective jobs in the future that had seemed a bit, well, out of my skill set to various co-workers (they didn’t know about my past life with A.I. training since they hadn’t read my March 20 blog post). All this to say, I got my rental contract extended, and my family gets to stay in Paradise. Yay! Among other things, we celebrated with various purchases, one of these being satellite hi-speed (relatively) internet.


How does this relate to squash pollination? Hold your mouses now. We’re getting there.


I had been told that over-watering could cause squash shriveling. So I let things dry out while my family took a 4-day vacation to the Phoenix area to be with relatives. I came back to plants that looked as if they’d taken a road trip through Nevada without air conditioning (believe me, I know first hand what this does to one’s looks). They had survived my absence—just barely. And yet, after all that sobering up, more squashes than ever looked like child toes just out of the bathtub. Since I studied a bit of investigative journalism in college, I decided it was time to put myself on a serious investigation of the problem. Thus, I went inside, changed into my pajamas, and sat down at the computer to google “squashes”.


Lo and behold! Within 20 minutes I had found enough reports of similar shrivelings to feel confident in my need to assist nature in one of her most intimate acts of procreation: pollen transfer.


So we have come to the part you have all been waiting for, when I began to discuss the birds and the bees of my recent endeavor. I’ve already talked enough about birds in past posts, (If you have been following my blog at all, you know we have a plethora of them here). But bees... not so much. Wasps yes, biting flies, affirmative, black widows, numerous, but good old-fashioned bee in your bonnet, bee in your pants, diligent busy specimens, I do not have. Or I have not seen. So the pollen that in a perfect world would get passed from “male” pollen flowers to “female” fruit bearing beauties is just accumulating listlessly. Poor male blooms. I suppose their perfect world scenario would enable them to move…


Now to part of the story where you begin to question whether I actually am a farm girl from Idaho, or just someone with a vivid imagination who takes large artistic liberty.


I can’t figure out how to get the pollen from one place to the other. I have dug up a small paintbrush from my art supplies, as was suggested, but when I catch the male blooms showing off, I find the female ones closed up tight. And vice versa. And on the cucumber plants—saw some shrivels there too so I thought I’d be proactive-- I can’t tell the difference between the pollen bearers and the pollen receivers (even when I run inside to compare them to the color images on my monitor). So I am a bit of a reproductive failure, with my poor timing, and my gender confusion.


What can I do? I resort to my tried and true backup for all of life’s failures: prayerful listening. I’m trying to become more attentive to the rhythms of the squash plant. Rather than expecting it to participate in my success plan, I’m trying to learn what it can teach me. There must be a reason for all the opening and closing of flowerheads, and just because google can’t enlighten me, it doesn’t mean I can’t find enlightenment.


Enough deepness. This is supposed to make your gut ache. So I’ll end by saying that I’m not giving up on my attempt to play the role of squash birth coach, but I’m turning it over to the ultimate mid-wife, the great God creator. I’m asking for bees, please, to come and do what I seem so incapable of. Not wasps, but those creatures who can see through even the best cross-dressing routine without batting an eyelid. And, before that damn gopher finds out he has missed the best feast this side of Paradise (Road, of course), I am hoping for fat bottomed men who will buzz in and take charge of my squash problem.


Unless, of course, you have other suggestions…?

Gaga over Finches

My family is gaga over finches. If you recall, we lost one set of chicks to tragedy; this second set is like discovered treasure. The three who sit inside the nest have passed the roly-poly fluff-ball cuteness stage yet they have kept us wrapped around their chirping corn-kernel beaks of sleek attraction. They are not loud by any means, but when we freeze and listen hard the cheeping, tweeting, pleading can be heard in bedrooms down the hall. Two days ago I noticed that the wobbly elbowed arms had been replaced by feathered lengths of brown and tan and black. Their eyes are shiny ebony equipped to see the danger posed by ladder escapades and so we limit heavily our curious looks from inside of the glass. It’s all happening so fast....

We are in love with all that’s taking place. Tonight a baby stood where mother stands to feed his beak and flapped his tiny wings and looked as if he might consider leaving. We are excited for the flight that’s eminent. We don’t forget that mother nature took the life of former chicks or that our family is witnessing a sweet metaphor of life—hope after disaster. And yet, we are losing lovely friends and thus at times we sigh in premature depression. I must admit that though I want the chicks to fly I do not want to lose the mystery and company and constant entertainment of these birds we’ve come to love as pets.

Now that the fear of eggs un-hatched and chicks unfed has passed, we are noticing the nastiness of feathers gooped in bird poop in the window. It is clinging like cement to wood and glass around the nest built right above the place where we eat and serve our guests. My children do not mind but Jason and I are tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task and miss the miracle of waiting now with baited breath for the chance to see a lift-off. How amazing will that be to get to see the chicks take off into the open, sun-drenched sky? I want to be a witness.

But the time! There are so many items scheduled into my agenda! There are so many cheeping, tweeting, chattering demands to cloud my vision of the place I ought to be right now. Or the way I ought to be right now. Or the one I want to please right now. It is a sacrifice divine when I take the time to watch the house finch parents raise their chicks… I am reminded then that I have the time it takes to raise my kids. I become convinced that rather than postponing all my dreams, I am watching my own mystery unfold in all the craziness of daily feeding.

I make it sound so simple and appealing. Don’t be deceived: “watching and waiting” is the hardest thing of all to be achieved. I feel the tension of the wait as I resist the restless space inside my head that pesters me with questions like, “What’s next? What is your plan? When do we move? Where do we get to land?” I am impatient for the answers to such things and sit sometimes as if I had the quills of porcupines under my ass. To pass the time I worry and work and talk to my friends and hike and write and boss around my husband and my kids.

I’m hoping to grow out of the worry and bossing, because it is so horrible for everyone concerned. The antidotes are numerous: reading, sleeping, eating well and evening walks into the woods with Jason. But the time! It is hard to schedule in between the bills and TV shows, 4H record books and end-of-year school talent show rehearsals. The list of all that’s left undone can squeeze me into full anxiety, and then I start to boss and worry....

Thank God for morning finches! They bring me back to humbleness. This life I live is a risky, crazy gift that changes every day I live it. Nothing can be completely planned on or predicted. But certain things can be trusted. Certain things can be obeyed. Like Sabbath time: to breathe in trees and birds and stroll down wooded paths with my dog Louie. He likes to play a game of “tiger in the grass”, stalking water bugs in river holes. He makes me laugh and let go of all delusion. I am not the one who’s sent to save the world. I can then resist the tyrant voice inside my head that says, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry”.

All I have is now. Now contains so many griefs I cannot name for you, but also this: a home on National Forest land with a window full of finch song. I have a heart that’s healing from so many broken dreams, but in their place I have a family raised on prayer and tears and laughter. Mostly I have been the prayer and tears; I want to learn to be the laughter.

So I start small today, with deciding to stall on the responsible task of arranging to get that ladder back to my friend Jamila. I continue by not standing demurely aside in model-mother-sacrifice when the chance comes to argue and shush and fight for my turn to scramble. I decide to feel proud, not foolish about the comment I made yesterday that made the whole family laugh. I was watching that chick that stood on the rim and considered the window ledge beneath him. He was flapping his wings so hard and fast they were a blur of brown against the sun-lit screen. I gasped and said, “Look at him! Look at him! We are watching history!”


We are making history. Maybe you have a dead-end job, a crushing mortgage, a messy divorce, or a 20-year addiction. Maybe you feel as if you can’t stand one more day of cheeping, pleading mouths to feed and hands to clean and hearts to fill with model-mother-sacrifice. Maybe you need some finches.

Maybe you are jealous of me with all my simple, daily pleasures. Maybe I am I succeeding in my plot to start a chain reaction from your heart to make you look above your normal line of sight....

Are you, like me, tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task? Will you, like me, try to bear the tension of the waiting?

Left to our own means, we are the ones who vacillate between extremes of impulse-driven “win” and fear-induced “I quit”. But if we schedule in the time to be amazed by nature’s metaphors of life, we can stay brave enough to stand up to the tyrants in our head that whisper things like, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry!”

I’m telling you that more than half the time, the wait is where it’s at. It is the place where we can fill our time with business of heart and mind or watch until we catch our breath in pure delight at hope that’s hatched where it’s least expected. The wait is where we see or miss miracle coincidences we could never dream of. To bear the tension of the in-between is to learn to see through poop-smeared panes and screens into a space where dreams are bursting at the seams and can’t help but stretch out necks and wings in impatient anticipation.


That’s where I’ll be, whenever I can swing it. For the sake the sake of my mystery miracle life I have to live, I want to be a witness....