Across the Bourne

Just three months ago I was buying the wood I would use to build the 3 by 6 foot borders for my raised beds in the garden.  One bed was to be for herbs and one for vegetables.  Now, although I don’t want to sound complaining, I am faced  with many vegetable gardeners’ nightmare – a glut of one particular kind of produce.  In my case, I am currently deluged with lettuce.

In our first full summer at our house, we have considered all of our plantings as an experiment.  My partner keeps quoting his late father who said that every plant has two options:  “either it will live or it will die”.  We thus have tried to look  at all of our gardening work as a lesson – to learn which plants do well and live and which plants do poorly and die.

In the raised bed for the vegetables, there is a mixed report.  The radishes were so so, some being very good and tasty, others being either super hot or very woody and tough.  The broccoli raab was a mini disaster – it grew quite well – almost too well and too fast, with the tiny buds of broccoli flowering way too early and turning the vegetable into a wild, weedy row that became a favorite food of aphids.  No more broccoli raab.

The star of the vegetable garden has been the mixed “cut and come again”  lettuce. The two 3 foot rows have produced and produced and produced.  True to its name, we can hardly tell where we have harvested any of the leaves.  Also, thankfully, it has not been just a prodigious producer, but the lettuce is exceptionally tasty, and we have really enjoyed it on salads.  Many, many salads.

Now that the broccoli raab and radishes are all gone, I have a little more space in the bed, and am contemplating what to plant next.  I do have one very large courgette that is also showing signs of being ready to go into the hyper-production of courgettes, but there is still some space between the lettuce and the courgette.

I thought of getting some brussels sprouts seedlings at the market today, but the only stall that was selling them had sold out by the time I went shopping.  I still have some seeds from the spring – the same broccoli raab, radish, and lettuce.

So, I guess it’s going to be some more lettuce.  The only question I have is, does anyone have a good recipe for lettuce soup?

South Wiltshire, which is the home of Sting’s beloved Manor House in the Woodford Valley, will very shortly be filled with scenes of real “fields of gold”.  Hills and meadows planted to barley are ripening quickly, and they will soon present a gorgeous spectacle immortalised in Sting’s beautiful and moving song “Fields of Gold”.  That song, which many believe represents one man’s journey through life, may be especially evocative today as we in England first hear of the untimely death of pop star Michael Jackson.    

The above photo shows the fields of barley which are growing near our home, at the base of Laverstock Down, looking towards Salisbury Cathedral.  I hope you will enjoy the summer and enjoy walking among the fields of gold.

Today was a glorious early summer day across southern England – temps in the mid-70′s, with big white clouds in a beautiful blue sky, a nice breeze to keep things fresh, and all the grasses, flowers, shrubs and trees looking really great.  I was lucky to be able to walk into Salisbury from Laverstock with no big agenda.  I did have a few earrands to run, but no timetable, so I really did have time to “smell the roses”   (and we really do have some lovely beds of roses around town).  I took my camera with me, and took some photos along the street and across the fields and the river as I walked into town.  I could tell that some other pedestrians seemed a little startled to see me taking photos of what to them must have seemed like ordinary scenes.  The truth is, however, that this is a very special place, with a beauty that may be easy to take for granted, but it is something that I think we all should cherish.

Then when I got home and logged on the Internet for news, I saw the stories about the governor of the American state of South Crolinahaving a press conference to admit that he had lied about his whereabouts for the past week.  That he had not been alone in America hiking, but had spent the past week in Argentina, with a woman that he has been having an affair with.  The press is America is now busy dissectingthis latest sexual scandal to hit a prominent American politician.  One columnist even said that there is a difference between a “real person” and a “politician”.  

The two parts of the afternoon – the beautiful walk into town and the reading of the last scandal in America  – may seem totally unrelated, but I see a thread between them, and I think the thread is about choices, and what it means to be a “real person”.  

I seem to remember that anthropologists say that human life is a study of the choices that people make – both individually and as a society.  I also think of the hymn “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide” and reflect that the tune to hymn was the tune to the German national anthem during the rise of Hitler, and we know the horrendous choices made by that society.  

We all make choices in our life, every day.   I think being a real person means that we are aware of the choices that we make, and that we then own the consequences of those choices.  My choices in life have not been perfect; nobody’s are.  But I am thankful that the choices I have made in my life have brought me to this current place and time.  I am grateful that I could spend my afternoon enjoying the lovely day here, rather than standing before the national media trying to explain a web of lies.   And I hope that my choices tomorrow and into the future  will be positive – for love, for beauty, for the earth, for family and friends, for peace.

When I was preparing to move from San Francisco to the UK at the end of 2007, many of my friends and family asked me with concern about how I would react to the different weather in the UK.  My standard response was that I had lived for a year in the UK before so I knew what I was getting into, and also that, in many respects, the weather differences between SF and the UK are not that great.

The truth, however, is that of course there are some big differences in the weather between the two.

After relocating from London to Salisbury and living here for a full year now, I really can appreciate the biggest single difference, and that is the variety of the seasons.  There are seasons in San Francisco, although like so many things in that remarkable city, they are different than in most parts of the U.S.  Summer there can be very cool and cloudy.  autumnis often the warmest time, and winter is more like spring, with revitalizing storms and showers, usually the only time of the year in which it rains.  Perhaps the most unusual overriding feature of the weather in San Francisco is the relatively narrow band of temperature differences throughout the year.  Summer can be as cool as winter, frosts are almost unheard of, and it is rare for more than a day or two of temps above 80 degrees F.

Here in Salisbury, of course, we have four very distinct seasons, and after just one year, I must admit I am a little in awe of the seasons, in a way that a native of the area might not be.  Three aspects of the seasons havemade a special impact.

The first, naturally, is the wide range of temperatures.  Although we do not suffer with the extreme highs and lows that parts of continental Europe or America experience throughout the year, we have enough of a contrast to keep things interesting.  This morning I was reflecting on the fact that just 4 months ago we were walking up Laverstock Down and Cockey Down, just beyond our home, through 4-6 inches of snow to watch the children slide down the hills on sledges, trash can lids, and anything else they could find.  Today those hills are covered by soft grass interspersed with pretty wild flowers and the hills slope down to hedges full of flowering trees and native shrubs.  On the far side of the hedges there are cultivated fields of dark green barley and the rows of crop sway and rustle in the warm summer breezes.  I also think back to the early morning in January when we had “freezing fog” that left all the trees and ivy in the woods on Burroughs Hill behind us coated with a thin layer of ice, turning it into a spectacle of dazzling light and grace.  Now those same trees are full of lush green leaves.  Just as the plants need the full cycle of cold and warm, wet and dry, so, too. I think we humans need the contrasts of the seasons to fully appreciate each part of the year.

Just as amazing to me as the temperature differences are the huge changes in the amount of daylight between the seasons.  I had friends from America visit in the week before Christmas, and they were surprised on the first morning when we were planning our day that I warned them that it would be nearly dark by 3.30 PM.  Now, of course, it is still light well past 9.30 PM, and I feel as if each day is literally twice as long as one in the winter.  Because England’s weather is moderate, it is easy to forget how far north we are until we think about the huge swings in daylight between winter and summer, swings which are much greater than almost anywhere in the U.S.   The early nightfalls in the winter were harder for me to adjust to than the temperature changes, but the change in sunrise and sunset times is another marvel.

The final aspect, closely related to the temperature and daylight changes, and naturally dependent on our abundant rain, is the vegetation.  I don’t think I had fully realized before this year just how abundant and luxurious English vegetation is in the summer.  It almost seems like we are living in a jungle, just without all the heat and humidity.  The grasses, trees and shrubs in the Bourne River Valley, which separates Laverstock, where I live, with the city of Salisbury, are at the height of their growth now, and although the valley is relatively narrow, I think it would be very difficult to cross on foot outside of the road or cultivated areas.   The grasses on the verges of the road between Laverstockand the city centre tower above the car, long grasses are flowering in the river Bourne, and the trees are covered with rich leaves in a multitude of shades of green.

I’ve lived here long enough to know that weather is the probably the safest subject of conversation between strangers, and the usual refrain is almost always one of complaint.  So sometimes I do moan about the rain, and tire of the long nights of winter.  Deep down, though, I marvel at the beauty and variety of our seasons.