Duh Sawx

You may be surprised to find me writing about sports but . . .

The news media around here lean toward New York, and yeah, I grew up with the Mets, but I lived in Boston for more than 20 years and was compelled to become a Sox fan. (Resistance is futile.) If there are any life lessons to be drawn from professional sports, well, this Red Sox season offers some. Last year was a disaster, with a self-adoring fool and mindless motormouth as manager, and a bunch of underachieving egomaniacal whiners conspiring to drive the team straight into the cellar.

So, management somehow hypnotized the Dodgers into taking the egomaniacal whiners and even paying their salaries; replaced them with some hardworking, underappreciated journeymen who were grateful for the chance (even as the sportswriters were skeptical of the signings); hired a grownup to be the manager; and kept all the good guys.

At least as far as anyone could tell from the public view, they all put the team first and worried only about winning. Nobody got busted for DUI, or domestic violence, or discharging a firearm in a nightclub, or performance enhancing drugs, or any of the typical sins of professional athletes. Away from the game, they just visited sick kids in the hospital and organized charity golf tournaments.

When the marathon bombing struck at the very heart of the city, they took it as their responsibility to rally the community, starting with David Ortiz's famous speech in which he used the famous expletive that the FCC allowed this time. And they played beautifully. Two gold gloves; a silver slugger for el Papi Enorme, el Papi Tremendo, el Papi de Máximo Tamaño, el Papi Largo y Anchoso, el Papi que Ocupe Mucho Espacio, el Papi Grande, Big Papi David Ortiz; Jacoby Ellsbury stole bases at will, they got key hits when they needed them up and down the lineup; they had the best starting rotation and the best bullpen in baseball. And of course they won the championship.

At the conclusion of the victory parade, they put the World Series trophy on the finish line of the marathon. It really meant a lot to the city and I think they accepted the responsibility with sincerity. So it probably does inspire kids and help produce civic unity and strengthen community and all that good stuff that sports are supposed to do but usually don't really. Oh yeah. They paid for their own stadium. 100 years ago.

Janus

Today I finished taking apart my garden. A series of hard freezes this week finally ended everything, although I was still harvesting broccoli and lima beans last weekend. Actually I left the broccoli, it's semi-hardy and there's still some action there, plus I'm going to try to harvest seed, just for the heck of it.

But otherwise, I spent the morning rolling up the fencing, pulling up the stakes, and putting everything away. Then I ran the mower over the garden to chop up the crop waste. This would be a sad time, and it is somewhat. I'm not looking forward to winter this year. But it's also the time I plant garlic, so I get to look past the winter. I dug much of what had been the tomato patch -- you always want to rotate your crops. This is land I've been cultivating for years, but I still came up with a pile of rocks big enough to crush a mule.

It's unbelievable, they never stop coming. It seems as though the reproduce but what actually happens is that the freeze and thaw cycle keeps pushing them up from deeper down. It's a simple process. When the ice thaws, the water runs down and tends to accumulate under the rocks. When it freezes, it expands, and they work their way up. So every year there are more.

Will it ever stop? Yes, when there are no more rocks above the frost line, I'll be done. The frost line here officially is four feet down, but with the milder climate, it really isn't any more. Maybe next year, I'll be done pulling out rocks. But then of course if I decide to expand my agricultural endeavors . . .

Anybody need any rocks? I've got some.

Bird brains

There's a gang of four turkeys that's been hanging around my place lately. They always stick together, and they are disturbingly unperturbed by my proximity. They just stroll around the place lazily, going nowhere in particular. I seldom see them feeding. They're just out enjoying the weather.

Turkey social life is mysterious. You tend to see them much more in autumn than summer or winter. In the spring, you'll say hens with their young. (I don't think you call them chicks. What then?) Sometimes the hens go around in pairs, so the kids have an auntie. In autumn, you can see groups of any size, from a solitary individual to a field full of dozens or a hundred. I think the latter are special events, basically like mixer parties. The toms will be puffing themselves up and fanning their tails, hoping to get lucky. But the rest of the time, why they form the groups they do, how stable they are, and where they go in the winter and summer, I don't have a clue.

For you city slickers, these are nothing like the domesticated dolts. They're obviously smart enough to stay alive out here in the deep dark woods, and they can fly just fine. They don't go long distances, but they can get up in the air in a hurry when they need to.

It's well known that Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national symbol instead of the eagle. If he'd had his way, we might have a whole different attitude about ourselves.

Uppity critters

I stepped out onto my front porch yesterday evening and there was a big buck just standing in my front yard. He looked at me like "What are you doing in my place?" After a while I yelled at him, "Yo, get lost!" He stood there giving me the hairy eyeball for a couple more seconds before bouncing off into the woods.

Look here. They're supposed to be afraid of me. If I had any sense I would have gone out there with my 30-30 and had his ass (literally) for dinner. The problem is, not enough people are doing this any more. Some city slickers even move out here and think they're cute, and start feeding them. No shit. Completely nuts.

culture clash

Finally got most everything planted today. It rained all week, but today was cool and cloudy, a good climate for working outdoors. I had tilled horse manure into the entire garden a few weeks ago, but by now of course weeds had come in to the area where I planted the sweet corn so I turned it over again by hand -- coming up with seven or eight boulders in the process. Also set out my tomatoes, planted basil, cauliflower and squash, did some weeding. A good day's work.

But . . . most of the afternoon some clown was up in the woods shooting. He must have gotten off at least a couple of hundred rounds. Pow, pow, pow for an entire hour. It's illegal of course -- state land. But the rangers never come here. The locals ride around in ATVs and shoot at shadows all the time. Once a week the state police fly the pot chopper over but they always do it at the same time on Saturday so everybody knows to put their toys down. Ridiculous.

My question, obviously, is why this is supposed to be fun. I'll never figure that out.

Entre dos mundos

Today I weeded my onions, garlic, peas and beans, all of which are already in the ground. That took me a couple of hours. I don't know how people do it for a living, all day, six days a week.

I think I'll actually plant corn tomorrow, and start putting out some of the tender plants -- forecast is for rain starting Monday, and mild temperatures, so now's the time. Also tomorrow, I'm going to grab some firewood left from when I helped my neighbor clear his interior road of trees that came down in the hurricane.

Then on Monday, I have to engage in the bizarre practice of neck binding -- meeting all morning, and then a formal business dinner in the evening with various high and mighty people of importance to my professional milieu. I get a kind of psychological whiplash from this. But that's the how it is these days. The money is in the city, the peace is in the country.

Gardening

Today I did some weeding of the onions and peas. It was a good day to try to get ahead of the weeds a bit since we just had a good soaking rain after a considerable dry spell and the weeds are jumping. I also did the first mow yesterday in between showers. I'm going to put some broccoli and basil seed in the ground today -- we might get a light frost later this week but that won't hurt them, and that will be the last danger of frost, I think. Corn goes in and then the tender plants starting in the greenhouse will go out, maybe next weekend.

I need this because I'm a bit spiritually starved right now. A relationship that seemed so right that didn't work out, needing to find a second wind in my research career -- I only get excited by new ideas but I have to take the time to apply the old ones first, and it can seem like drudgery. The woods now are full of birdsong and shimmering with the pale green of new leaves. There was a tiny toad in the garden that was almost indistinguishable from the dirt, but fortunately I didn't step on it. I've seen a fox and bobcat in just the past week. So I'll be alright.