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Nadine Feldman, Author

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You are here: Home / Archives for gardening

gardening

June 4, 2010 by admin

“If everybody doesn’t do it, it doesn’t matter,” said the cashier at Target. She was referring to our refusal to put our purchases in plastic bags. Granted, we had forgotten our cloth bags and looked a bit silly as we juggled several items among the two of us, but we knew we were up to the task.

Her comment, however, gave me pause. What are we supposed to do, wait until somebody says, “Okay, GO!” and then we all stop using plastic bags at the same time?

We live in tough times, and it’s easy to feel hopeless about our prospects. As the reality horror show known as the BP oil spill plays itself out 24/7, our individual efforts at caring for our planet seem insignificant. “What’s the point?” we ask. Indeed, the latest spin on the spill is that those wicked “extreme environmentalists” are the cause of all this. Shame on them for restricting oil exploration on land! Shame on them for driving these poor, poor Big Oil companies deep offshore to drill in unsafe conditions.

I worked for a natural gas pipeline company for several years. We would connect to the oil companies’ platforms in the Gulf and transport the natural gas onshore. My job entailed working with contracts, which meant sitting in many meetings with our customers. As I recall, they were proud and excited about the new drilling technologies. No one at the time said, “We hate being out there, but those environmentalist wackos drove us to it.”

Of course, I digress. I was talking about the sense of hopelessness that many have felt and expressed as a result of this tragedy, which first began with the loss of eleven lives. Maybe the cure for hopelessness is action, however small. Action gives us power and reminds us that when enough individuals, one by one, rise up and make changes, we can make a difference. The power of Big Oil to get regulators to turn their heads comes from our dependence on them. We have to look deeper in the Gulf for oil because of our insatiable need for it. The only solution is to take our power back.

Twenty years ago I went camping on a mountaintop in New Mexico. Our hosts lived in a property run by solar power. I will never forget what they said about solar: “It has worked out so much better than anyone told us it would.” Here we are, twenty years later, and solar is still cost prohibitive for most. Still, we have discovered less expensive ways to reduce energy consumption. These methods not only reduce consumption but actually make life easier.

For example, take those nasty plastic bags. We started taking cloth bags to the store. Not only did we eliminate the piling up of bags that made a mess of a closet, but we discovered that it’s easier to bring the groceries in! We require fewer trips, the bags don’t break, and we’re not digging around in the trunk for the cantaloupes that rolled out.

The city doesn’t pick up recycles where we live, but we have a recycling center nearby that is on our way to the grocery store–so we don’t have to make a special trip. Want to feel better? Go to one of these recycling centers and notice all the other people who are doing the same thing. Sometimes we have trouble finding a parking spot on the weekend.

Between recycling and composting, we have reduced the amount of garbage we actually throw in the trash to one-two kitchen-sized bags per week. Composting is easy, too, and you’d be amazed at how quickly the fruit and vegetable peels disappear–even cantaloupe rinds (you may notice that we like our cantaloupe).

When we moved into this house, I decided to learn how to garden, and my little plot of land, despite my many mistakes, despite unpredictable weather, despite pests, is producing well. We’re about to be inundated, in fact, with peppers and–yes–cantaloupes. I picked my first one today, and at least ten more are in various stages of growth and ripening. Whenever possible, we purchase what we can’t grow ourselves at the local Farmer’s Market, one of which we can walk to. The food is much tastier this way. Last week, when my stepdaughter tasted a home-grown green pepper, she said, “I’ve never tasted a pepper this good before.” There’s a lot more incentive to eat well, with emphasis on fruits and vegetables, when they are fresh and delicious.

Lately I’ve taken steps that have caused family and friends to wonder if I’ve gone off the deep end. First, I bought a clothesline, and now I hang clothes to dry outside instead of putting them in the dryer. I knew I would be saving energy. I did not realize that my clothes would smell like sunshine–better than any artificially scented fabric softener that I could by. My latest purchase is a solar oven. So far I’ve boiled eggs and cooked turkey barbeque in it. There’s a definite learning curve involved, but I already know that it works…that it’s almost impossible to burn foods in it…and that my kitchen no longer heats up in the midst of a Houston heat wave.

Yes, there are moments when I think, “So what? That big spill out in the Gulf dwarfs all my little efforts?” Still, I feel like I’m doing SOMETHING. We have to keep our spirits up. So much is happening lately, from unemployment to politicians exaggerating their resumes to oil companies trying to pretend that things aren’t so bad when, indeed, they are. However, I know this: we are better at solving problems when we feel empowered, so we must empower ourselves in any way that we can. When we lose hope, we risk being swallowed up in despair, which helps no one. We must take a stand for ourselves, our families, our country, and our world, even if we make one small change.

Today I will walk in my garden. There, I will find my hope.

https://www.nadinefeldman.com/2010/06/04/507/

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: BP, cloth bags, composting, empowerment, environment, farmer's markets, gardening, local foods, nadine feldman, nadine galinsky, oil spill, plastic bags, power of the individual, recycling, solar oven, solar power

Now I Understand Cat TV

May 18, 2010 by admin

Reports are surfacing that Americans are watching more television than ever, with some estimates of up to 40 hours per week. This doesn’t include time spent with video games, e-mail, or other electronic media. We love the colors, the picture quality, and the passive entertainment, especially when we’re tired. While I don’t spend nearly that much time watching television, I do have my favorite shows–I’ve been in mourning since Ugly Betty’s cancellation, because she always made me laugh regardless of how difficult my day was.

Of course, humans are not the only species that enjoys kicking back and watching the world unfold. If you’ve ever had a cat, you know that they love a good warm spot to look out the window and study all the goings-on. For hours on end, they can watch grass growing, squirrels running up and down trees, and the occasional person walking the sidewalk with that most horrible of creatures, the dog (not my opinion, the cat’s).

It’s a slow pace, the life of a cat. We’re all so busy and important these days that sitting and watching the world seems pointless. There’s always so much to DO.

When we moved into our home and I had the brilliant idea of putting in a garden, I had no idea how much my life would change. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of “doing” involved in creating a garden. We’ve hauled in concrete half blocks, shoveled dirt, added compost and mulch, weeded, potted, repotted, etc. Building a garden from scratch takes a lot of work, and I’m glad I didn’t know how much before I got started!

Each day, early in the morning, I take a walk among the plants. I pick fruit from precocious trees so they can grow a better foundation. I lift weeds from among the sweet peppers. I make sure my thirsty irises have enough to drink.

One day I discovered my milkweed stripped bare of its leaves and covered with Monarch caterpillars. Concerned that they didn’t have anything more to eat, I ran out and bought more milkweed to plant, which made my guests quite happy. I left the pitiful, empty stalks of the milkweed in the ground, and lo and behold, within a few weeks new leaves sprouted. Later, I discovered cabbage worms on my broccoli, which sent me running in a panic to my organic gardening books. Attract wasps, they said, by planting some mint. Okay, I can do that. Actually, it’s a huge broccoli plant, so right now while the mint grows we share an uneasy coexistence. I don’t mind if they chew on leaves, but could you please leave the heads alone?

The peppers grow, and we’ll have cantaloupes in a few weeks from a wild tangle of curving leaves and yellow flowers. Of the package of seeds I planted, four sprouted, and it appears that those four seeds may feed an entire neighborhood. And as for me, while I do take an active role in the garden, feeding the plants, adding diverse species, etc., my main job is to observe. Nature works in her own way. I never thought I would be so enthralled by a caterpillar or by the appearance of a tiny pomegranate. But in these moments, connected to nature, I become part of it, maybe even part of the original Garden. When I am there, I feel closer to a state of pure being than in any other place. It’s better than any television show I could watch, because it’s real–no acting, no pretending, no charging admission. Now, even when I’m in the house, I find myself sitting in the sunroom, looking outside at the garden, just watching, just observing. Cat TV.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: cats, garden, Garden of Eden, gardening, nadine feldman, nadine galinsky

Tale of Two Broccoli

April 13, 2010 by admin

A fledgling gardener, I am a wide-eyed kid on a daily basis as I watch my garden grow. Yes, the cantaloupe seeds sprouted, even when I was sure they wouldn’t. I picked more than two dozen baby lemons, their tart scent clinging to my fingers, because the precocious tree they came from is too young–it needs to put its energy into roots, leaves, and branches. My grape plants, purchased during a freeze, unplanted for weeks due to a move, finally sprouted. In fact, I’m amazed at the plants and trees, so sad after a series of rare Houston freezes, that now produce new growth, new hope, and a tenacity I wish I had.

I’ve learned that gardening, like life, requires that I accept a certain amount of mystery. Take, for example, my broccoli. Please. Since I’m new at this, I purchased four plants, all from the same nursery, all about the same size, and I cared for them exactly the same way. One of them went crazy and has become the Scary Mutant Broccoli Plant in the garden. We didn’t know if we were ever going to get the actual vegetable, or if the plant instead was destined to become another tree in the back yard. The first head is finally growing, and I’m thinking I may not need to get out a ladder to harvest it. SMBP threatens to overshadow my golden sweet peppers, though they seem to hold their own, tolerating their bully neighbor.

While SMBP threatened to take over the entire garden, two other plants, perhaps intimidated, rolled over and died. I had watered, I had fed them rich, organic fertilizer, I had mulched, and yet they couldn’t hold on.

Which leaves, of course, one last broccoli plant, and this one intrigues me. It’s little, having followed in the path of its deceased siblings, but it didn’t die. In fact, it bravely boasts a few new leaves. It will never match the ferocity of SMBP, but maybe, just maybe, it can grow. I have lowered my expectations. You don’t have to produce any fruit, just don’t die, please. Hang in there, and let’s see where this can go.

My writing, my characters, tend to resemble the mystery of my two broccoli. A new story is emerging, and with it a character, Claire, who has seized the story and made it her own. Yes, she says, I know you’re making an ensemble cast, but one of us has to be in charge, and it’s going to be me. My other characters, who are softer and less dominant, struggle to survive. Still, I think we’re going to get a nice harvest from this story. It feels as though I can hear what it needs from me, and I am stronger in my commitment than I used to be. I feed, I water, I sing to it, and maybe it will grow.

Less successful are Blood and Loam and Patchwork. A completed, harvested book, Patchwork struggles to find an audience, and I have had to admit that even the most beautiful fruit rots when no one eats it. Granted, there is much more I can do, and I am stubborn enough to keep finding ways to let people know it exists, and that it’s worth purchasing.

B&L has a different problem: it doesn’t fit in with the rest of my writing garden. I have made halfhearted attempts to find an agent for it, but truth is, I don’t want to be known for this work. It’s too disturbing, too violent, too much at odds with what I want to contribute to the world. It is a pesky invader, a plant I can’t remove. I haven’t given up on this one, though, either. Once I finish a draft of the new novel, I’m going to dig up B&L by the roots and replant it. I think I know a different way of telling the story, one that retains the drama without requiring that I compromise who I am in order to sell a few books.

One never knows what the garden will actually do. All we can do is plant, feed, water, and observe. Listen in the stillness to what the plants need to thrive. Keep the weeds pulled. Invite the butterflies, the hummingbirds, bats, and bees, but let them come in their own time, when the milkweed expands and blooms. Know that sometimes, the plants will die, while other times, they will awe us with their capacity to survive. And the fruits? Those are the extras, a byproduct of the act of sowing.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Blood and Loam, books, creativity, gardening, jeanette feldman, jenny feldman, memoir, nadine feldman, nadine galinsky, novelist, novels, patchwork and ornament book, writing

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