The S’TO family finished their Easter dinner and sat around the table waiting for the story telling to begin, as it always did when the whole family met at the ancestral home.  Little Gregor couldn’t wait, but he worded his request well.  “Grandpapa, tell Cousin Marianne the story about the cape.”

“I will tell the story just as my great grandmama Marina told it to me.  She was very old, some said she was over a hundred when she passed away. I met her when I was very young, and she told me this story.

Marina scrabbled to the top of a rock outcropping above their home and sat on the sun warmed rock as great waves of sadness swept over her.”

“That’s the rock where the gr’tun live.  Isn’t Grandpapa?”  Gregor interrupted in his eagerness to hear the family history. 

Grandpapa nodded and patted his lap for Gregor to come sit on his lap.  Once Gregor settled himself, Grandpapa began again.  “Marina’s sister, Sabrina, was two months pregnant, while she had once again encountered the cramping and red stains that heralded her emptiness.  She couldn’t blame Hau.  He’d tried to give her a baby.  She smiled through her tears as she remembered how hard they had worked at making a baby. 

She jumped, startled as a small furry animal, a gr’tun, stopped by her hand.  She hated gr’tun.  They got into the grain fields and broke down the heads ruining what they didn’t eat.  This late in the year, the grain was harvested, but they came into the house and fouled the grain stored there.  Without thinking, Marina took a rock and smashed the head of the gr’tun.  She didn’t want to look at the dead animal, so she stroked its soft fur once and tossed it behind her. 

Marina knew that nobody blamed her for not being with child.  After all she was exactly like her sister.  Still Marina wondered if they had only one womb between them and her twin had gotten it.  A tear slid down her cheek.  Thwap, she crushed the head of another gr’tun with her rock.

She had learned in the convent that feeling sorry for oneself was a sin.  She snorted again and thought that in the convent everything was a sin except for beating the young girls who worked there.  This time when she hit another gr’tun with her rock, she felt a certain satisfaction in the action.  She wondered if the beatings from the nuns had broken something inside her, so she couldn’t have babies.  She broke down and sobbed and clobbered a couple more gr’tuns. 

Long shadows from the setting sun crept across the valley when Hau found Marina on the rock.  “Marina, what are you going to do with so many gr’tun?”

Marina jumped and immediately felt guilty for having spent the day loitering when everybody needed to work if they were to survive the winter.  She turned and smiled up at her husband behind her, then looked at the pile of dead animals behind her.  She felt a little sad over taking her frustration out on so many of the soft furry thieves.  “Oh, the gr’tun, I don’t like when they come inside.”  She looked at the pile of dead animals and a memory came back to her.  “In the city, women came to Mass wearing shawls made from such fur.  If I made such a shawl, we could trade it for things we don’t grow.  We will need blankets for Marina’s baby and other things.”

Hau helped his wife to stand.  “And, we will need to be more prosperous when it is time for you and me to have a baby.  I will help you make this shawl thing, and we will go to the city and sell it.”  Hau had long been eager to see the city, so he grew excited over the excuse his wife gave him to have an adventure.  He picked up an armload of dead animals and handed them to his wife while he picked up the rest.  “I will clean these tonight and Rau can help me cure them.”

That night Papa and his wife joined the rest of the family as they cleaned and scraped the small skins of soft fur.  The next day, Sabrina gathered the herbs needed to cure the skins and Papa S’TO climbed the rock to find more gr’tuns. 

At the end of two weeks, Marina, Sabrina and Mama S’TO sat in a circle carefully stitching the skins together using thorn needles and fiber from a thistle plant.  They chatted about when Marina and Hau would go to the city, and how they would get there.  Marina and Sabrina speculated about their parents and wondered if their sisters were married.  When they finished the first garment, it fit around the Marina’s shoulders like a cape.  The tails of the gr’tuns hung down forming a fringe around her elbows. 

They made a second cape of black and white gr’tuns and laughed over the animals that would not eat their grain this winter.  They agreed the second cape turned out more elegant than the first, brown cape.  Marina and Sabrina wore the furs around their shoulders and walked back and forth pretending to be the great ladies they’d seen at Mass.

Finally, the day came for Hau and Marina to go to the city.  They left early in the morning with instructions on how to reach their cousin’s house before breakfast.  Hau carried a pack on his back with the precious fur capes.  Marina carried a one handed basket with five pottery plates she and Sabrina made from the white clay in the creek bank.  The plates were gifts for the cousins.

After breakfast, they set out from our cousins’ house. They’d left the plates behind but now carried a large cheese, 10 bean cakes and two large wooden spoons. 

Marina’s welcome in her parents home seemed a bit chilly until Marina explained that, no, her husband had not sent her back.  They had gifts for the family. Finally, Hau convinced his in-laws that he felt very pleased with his wife and had only stopped to visit on his way to take her shopping in the city.  After the bean cakes and cheese were displayed, Marina’s parents found themselves quite happy to see their daughter and could inquire after Sabrina and her father-in-law.  They spent the night with Marina’s family, sleeping on a bed of straw in the hut where her father’s pottery was packed. 

In the morning, Hau and Marina set out before sunrise to walk to the city.  Marina remembered where to find a store that might trade for the capes.  The shopkeeper didn’t look at them when they entered wearing country rags.  Hau waited patiently for the shopkeeper to finish with a customer before he demanded.  “Do you have the authority to buy a fine piece of goods, or must I speak to the owner?”

“I am the owner.”  The shopkeeper replied as he started to turn away.

Marina hissed at the shopkeeper.  “Do not judge us by our appearance.  We were afraid of bandits because of what we carry.”

When the shopkeeper turned back to look at her, Marina knew he felt curious.  She pulled the brown cape from Hau’s pack. 

Before she could hand the cape to the shopkeeper, Hau took it from her hands and wrapped it around her shoulders, “See how fine it fits.  See the fine work in shaping it to fit over the shoulders.” 

Marina hadn’t thought her husband noticed her long discussions with her sister and step-mother-in-law over how to shape the skins to fit.   She pranced and spun about to show off the beautiful garment. 

The shopkeeper stared. 

Hau didn’t quite know how to go about the negotiations or how to get a fair price for the cape.  He tried,  “Now, we have no use for money.  What say we set the cape here and put the things we want in trade over there.  When you think it is a fair trade, we will bargain from there.”

The shopkeeper nodded.  His eyes gleamed and his fingers twitched to hold the soft cape.  He had no doubt he could sell something so beautiful for a great sum.

Neither Hau nor Marina had any idea of how to shop in a store, so they began to stroll about and look at things.  Marina saw bolts of cloth and pointed them out, “Look at the different colors.  We can get blue for Sabrina, and I like that green.  What color should we get for Mama S’TO?” 

They agreed on the brown for their step-mother.  Sabrina fingered some white fabric and remembered the white underskirts she’d seen girls showing off in Mass.  Hau carried the green and blue fabric to the place where he agreed to place his purchases and went back for the brown. He saw Marina’s eyes looking lovingly at the white.  He took that too. 

The shopkeeper didn’t know what to make of the young couple.  His wife watched the young woman so she couldn’t steal anything.  After all, where did poor people get that cape?  Marina picked up scissors, needles and thread.  She smiled at the shopkeeper’s wife assuming the older woman hovered over her to be helpful.  “Oh, I used to love to embroider in the convent school.”  She ran her fingers over a package of multicolored silks.  She handed the silks to the shopkeeper’s wife, to take to the counter.  The older woman whispered to her husband, “Do you really think she went to the convent school?  Her parents would have to be very rich.”

At this moment, Marina approached the front counter carrying several books and calling for Hau to come see.  Mother Abbess came through the door and scowled at Marina. “You! Miss Sabrina, how dare you show your face in this town after you ran off? I have half a notion to drag you back to the convent by your hair, you shameless, ungrateful girl.”

“I wouldn’t like that.” Hau drawled.  He seemed unaware that the axe he held in his hand might be intimidating.  “By the way, that is Marina, my wife.  You are lucky it isn’t Sabrina because my brother is married to her. He has no respect for your vocation or the scars on his wife’s back.”

Mother Abbess fled.

Hau took the books and added them to the stack of fabric, notions and his new axe.

The shopkeeper and his wife looked at each other in confusion.  They realized the woman, at least, was well known to the Abbess.  They had no idea Marina had been a lowly scullery maid.  They eyed the books she set on the counter with no way to tell that they were only alphabet books such as a child might use to learn their letters.  They whispered to each other, “Perhaps the girl had run from the convent to marry her lover.”  Good.  The shopkeeper knew the Abbess tried to cheat his wife, and treated trades people as unclean.  The shopkeeper eyed Marina. He could not cheat someone the Abbess disliked so thoroughly.  Truth be told, he felt half afraid to cheat Marina because he didn’t know which powerful family she might be associated with.

Hau added two shovels to the pile of goods, but before Marina could add a big black cooking pot, the shopkeeper said, “That is enough.  I think I’ve been generous, but I cannot afford more for the cape.”

Hau stood and surveyed the goods with a pick in one hand, then he looked at his wife.  “Where is the black and white cape?  Didn’t you show it to him?”  He felt quite proud of himself for how he tricked the shopkeeper into showing him what one cape was worth.

Marina pulled the soft garment out of Hau’s backpack, and Hau draped it over her shoulders.  She stroked the soft fur and rubbed her cheek against the softness.  “But this one is so fine, it is a shame to sell it, and we have too much to carry as it is.”  In truth, Marina had already spotted the solution to this problem.

The shopkeeper knew quality when he saw it.  He’d fingered the brown cape, and now, he must have the black and white one too.  Thus, he ran to the back of the store to produce a barrow to wheel their goods home.  The shopkeeper’s wife took Marina off to show her shoes and hats. 

Marina had no idea what one would do with shoes or a hat, but she confided that her sister was with child, and they would want things for the baby. 

The older woman watched Marina as they found fabric for the baby’s necessaries and a pretty blanket.  “I think you might like a baby too?”  The wise older woman ventured.

Marina nodded and looked away.



“Come, I have just the thing.  The midwife traded for this.  It is a special honey.  You are to take a teaspoon of this every day.  Next month or the next, you will have a baby, providing that handsome husband of yours does his duty.”

Marina blushed and giggled and added the honey to the wheelbarrow.  Next, she added a set of spoons. 

By the time Marina and Hau left the city pushing their cart full of tools, kitchen wares, shirts for the men, hair ribbons and fabric they were very proud of themselves. 

They left behind a shopkeeper who hugged his wife and danced over his good fortune.  The next day, the shopkeeper and his wife closed the store and took the capes all the way to Sherife’s Women’s Store in the capital.  The shopkeeper thought he drove a hard bargain and left the capital with more goods and money than he’d dared to dream possible.

Mr. Sherife himself placed the two capes for sale in the window of his store.  After a couple days, the emperor’s daughters insisted that their papa buy them the beautiful furs.  The emperor grumbled and growled over the outrageous expense and felt very proud of himself for being rich enough to buy something so fine for his daughters.

It is seldom in the course of human events that some one thing makes so many people happy.  Our family felt wealthy beyond measure with the goods they bought with the capes.  The shopkeeper later confided that he congratulated himself for being such a sharp trader, and Mr. Sherif gloated over the unexpected coins from the sale.  The emperor was happy with showing off his wealth.  The emperor’s daughters paraded their finery and had no way of knowing that grandpapa S’TO sat on a rock smashing the heads of gr’tuns so that his daughters could be dressed equally fine.

Sabrina did eat the royal jelly every day, and just as the shopkeeper’s wife said, she became pregnant within the next month.”

Again Gregor squirmed and asked, “Can we see the capes?  Will Grandmama show us the capes?”

The capes that Grandpapa S’TO made for his daughters were brought out for the family to see and stroke and comment upon how fine they were.  Marianne surprised her new family.  “And I have seen two others almost like these, a black and white one and a brown.  They are in the The Compound museum, a gift from the first emperor.  You must all come to the capital and see them.  I had no idea they were part of Ruben’s history, but then we really are all one big family in this country.”

Somebody posted a comment on this or that country having a poor history with civil rights.  The comment surprised me and made me suspect that the author’s definition of civil rights included anything they didn’t agree with.    When I thought about it, I realized that human society doesn’t have an impartial objective system for judging social justice and its cousin civil rights.  Sometimes we recognize violations when we see them.  More often we don’t.  After asking myself how one would construct such a measurement without one’s own history and prejudices influencing the scale.  I decided that using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs might be a good starting point.

Maslow starts with basic physical needs such as air, water, food and shelter.  Everybody has basic needs.  These are the conditions we need to survive.  Perhaps our first question is how does a community, or nation, meet those needs for its citizens.  Does everybody have access to clean air?  Obviously not.  The debate on air quality tends to error on the dirty side, I like air a little cleaner.  Then we might ask at what point does my neighbor’s need to save money by heating with wood supersede my need to go outside without getting asthma from his wood smoke.  At what point can a factory dispel pollutants into the air before they interfere with the community’s need for air?  Is it okay for one entity to decide a certain number of people will have emphysema and asthma?

We can look at the other physical needs the same as we do air.  Some currently argue that people do not have a right of access to drinkable water.  Others argue against shelter.  How can a nation claim to have high standards for civil rights when it cannot meet the basic physical needs of its citizens?

Next up on Maslow’s hierarchy are the needs for safety.  Maslow elaborates that this includes physical security, security of employment, of health, family, morality, resources and property.  I assume there are some places that meet this need fairly well.  My own immediate community is reasonably safe, but that safety disintegrates within a few miles of my home, where theft is fairly common.  Even here, we have the hidden problem of domestic violence.  I question the physical safety of a community that condones domestic violence, rape, and bullying. 

Before one group can point fingers at another group, perhaps they should take a look at the level of safety in their own country.  Violation of safety issues are a huge factor that often goes overlooked when talking about civil rights yet this is one area that breaks down quickly for minorities and women. 

Currently, in the US we have a trend toward day-labor or temp help.  Rather than hiring a body of employees, large companies may hire only the employees they need for the day or the week.  They may hire the same people next week and next month but do not treat them as their employees.  They do not provide security of employment. We are borderline on security of employment.

We need to look beyond our immediate borders and ask, “What is the social justice/civil rights standing of a nation with policies that endanger the lives, health and well being of those living in foreign countries.”  One of the problems of colonialism is that the property, lives, health and social structure of indigenous peoples has been discounted.  Of course our constant war places many people at risk when they just want to go about the business of living their lives.  Expansion of industry into third world countries introduces workplace injuries into a community seeking an easier way of life.  This is unacceptable when one reason corporations move out of a developed country is to escape the safety regulations imposed on industry by nations more sensitive to civil rights.

Within a few words I have been able to mention a wide range of basic rights that all people need in order to survive to rise above a subsistence level of existence.  I didn’t begin to address those needs that must be met before people can begin to reach their potential as problem solvers in our community.  I suspect that when a community commits to meeting the basic physical and safety needs of their population the whole community will begin to prosper.  

It is the time of year when we in the US prepare for our annual accounting with the government.  Did we pay enough into the system, or do we owe more?  It is the time of year when, for all of my married life, I have lived like a widow, because my tax accountant hubby works long hours helping you prepare for your reckoning with the IRS.  I thought I’d share some insights with you.

Your tax return is never finished until the last amendment has been filed.  You can change the thing next year if you find something you left out this year.  You can file an extension if you don’t have your act together by April fifteenth.  You do have to pay your estimated tax on the fifteenth if you think you might owe more than you withheld.

Insider Tip:  There is a little known reason why you might want to file for an extension.  Your tax accountant turns into a zombie on April first.  He forgets his wife’s name or that he has a wife and children.  He no longer understands simple statements like, “Honey, your mom called and wants you to call her back.”  He won’t call her.  He or she is highly likely to bite your head off.  Never demand that your tax accountant complete your return between April first and about April twenty-fifth.   File for an extension.

Are you getting a nice return this year?  You failed to plan correctly.  There is no reason to let the government use your money when you don’t owe it to them.  Better management has you paying them a few hundred.  Just remember to save for paying those taxes.

Of course, you are paying too much in taxes.  Everybody forever and ever has paid too much in taxes.  Do you have any idea how much you pay?  Forget the stated tax rates.  Everybody has exemptions and deductions, so it is mathematically impossible to pay the full rate, or if you do, fire you tax preparer.  To find out what your real income tax rate is, divide the amount of tax you paid by your gross income.  Your rate should be below twenty percent.  If it is over fifteen percent, maybe you need to find someone else to do your taxes.  Look for a Certified Public Accountant with experience in tax.  You may also need to do some better planning to lower your bill.

Taking your return to a tax accountant does not have to cost a fortune.  You will need to have good records.  A good accountant will send you a tax preparation package based on last year’s return to help you remember to include all your income by category and include all your deductions.  I do my businesses on a sheet of paper that has a column for “in” and another for “out.”  I list both total income and expenses by category.  My accountant hubby tells me what categories to use.  The better prepared you are, the less it will cost.

Save your receipts.  Hubby is savage about this one.  Your credit card bill showing expenses at Office Depot or the PUD is not a receipt.  If you should get audited, an auditor does not have to accept credit card bills as receipts, so you will lose that deduction.

About those audits:  Audits happen.  They don’t mean you did anything wrong.  Even if you did your return yourself, you might want to take a tax accountant to an audit with you.  More than a few times, we’ve gotten a call at home from someone who is distraught because the IRS is auditing them and thinks they owe twenty thousand more in tax.  Curiously, Hubby has always been able to get a better outcome for the client.  Occasionally, the audit shows that they get a refund. 

Yes, you do have to pay your taxes if you cannot demonstrate that you don’t owe them.  One of the more common frustrations Hubby sees is people with business losses that don’t keep records.  The IRS will receive 1099’s stating they had income.  If they cannot show that the income was offset by business losses, the IRS will hound them the rest of their lives to get that money and may bill their estate.  Keep your receipts. 

If you are not detail oriented, hire someone to do your taxes for you.  If you own businesses, your tax preparer should be at least an enrolled agent working with a CPA.  The CPA has more training and is required to take continuing education every year to keep current on law and procedures, so they will be current on what the law requires for your situation.  The private practice CPA in the nice office may not be as expensive as the storefront, franchise tax preparer.  They may bill differently per form or per hour.

Finally, TurboTax or one of the other tax programs for your computer is fine for doing your return if you have not been buying and selling businesses, stocks or real estate.   Most wage earners without some unusual financial activity can use TurboTax.

Save your receipts.

Margaret had The Gift as they said in the old country.  Of course in modern times, people didn’t believe in The Gift.  They believed lots of silly nonsense that they saw on the television.  They believed that the color of one’s skin made one human different from another.  They believed that the poor were dishonest and the wealthy must be honest.  They believed they knew the hearts and minds of their leaders or their coworkers. They believed that they knew how old the earth was and how people came to be on earth.  Yet, they couldn’t believe that some people have the gift to see through time and space.  They even thought they understood time and space.

Margaret first experienced the gift as a small child sensing a companion beside her as she played.  Her parents noticed her play and said she had an imaginary friend. Being a child, she had no idea that others didn’t hear the music she heard or that they never visited Gran who still lived in Scotland. She didn't know they never heard the voice of her companion.

As she became an adult she tried explaining, “It’s a quantum physics thing.  Time and space are human constructs to help us organize our lives.  Sometimes I look through the construct to see another time and space.”

Some days, Margaret tried to explain that having The Gift was somewhat like reading a book.  Most days she only read the page she was living on.  Other days, she would unconsciously peek ahead a few pages or maybe a whole chapter.  Always, she felt the pull of her childhood companion, but she never mentioned that.

As Margaret’s own children began to be old enough to understand adult things, she tried to protect them by not mentioning when she saw a bridge collapse or a terrorist with a bomb in his truck.  This is when she began to grow pale and thin over the images of brutal men beating their wives.  She watched but could not help those women. 

Now, she tried to shut out the images because she couldn’t change the future, she could only observe the tragedies of the world. She grew sick of living through horrors in her mind then living through them again a day or so later when the event happened. Slowly, she shut down the images learning to live only one page at a time.

Shutting down led to prolonged, deep depression.  She missed a vital connection to something she could not name.  She didn’t like refusing to be the person she was created to be.  That nameless something called to her, so she began to open her mind just a little.  This is when she met Adam.

Adam appeared before her as she reclined with her eyes closed in her sunny garden.  He kissed her forehead, “There you are.  I’ve been looking for you.  What is this place?”

Margaret sat up abruptly, “What? Who? How did you get in here?”  She looked around her, wildly.

“I came through.  I’ve been looking for you.  You know me.  We’ve been together, but you shut down.”

Margaret eyed Adam and thought she understood.  Yes, she’d met him when her mind wandered.  Her parents called him her imaginary friend.

He looked around her garden.  “This is pleasant enough.  Why do you see such horrors?”

“The horrors are real enough, outside of here.  I don’t want to see them, but they intrude.”



“That is why you shut down.”  He made the statement as he understood.  He sat beside her on her chaise.  “I’ve missed you.  I came to take you with me to where there are no horrors.”

Margaret nodded.  Within a thought came a new image.  Adam led Margaret down the street of a beautiful city.  The streets were clean.  On each corner, sat a small park filled with slides and swings for children. Trees, and flowers spilled out of the parks and lined the streets.  Tall glass skyscrapers reflected the light and clouds.  Margaret asked, “What is this place?”

Adam laughed at her for asking his question.  “It is through.  This is where I live and where I first saw you.”

Margaret understood that he meant their minds had touched. She recognized the connection that she’d lost when she shut down.  “Perhaps, it is meeting you and learning how to see and how to move through that I was meant to do.  Certainly seeing bombs ripping through buildings that house daycares is no life.  Although, I do not think my world is ready for the reality of slipping through.”

“Yet, here is the way it is meant to be.  We do not have such horrors as you see.” Adam remarked as they stopped to listen to a band in one of the parks.  After a few minutes of reflection he added, “Perhaps you are allowed to see the horrors so that those who see here can understand why we must not stray from the path of agape.”

Margaret nodded, then knew why she must return. “I have responsibilities there.  My children are almost grown, but still need their mother.  Can I come back here?”

“Of course, we were meant to be together.”

“I’m not certain what my husband would think of that idea, but I know what you mean.”  She looked away.  “He tries to pretend that I don’t see things before they happen.  It would help if he would at least hug me.”

Adam pulled Margaret into his arms and held her.  “We will be together in the future as we have been in the past.”

Margaret nodded, understanding what he meant about future and past. They would always be together outside of time and space.

Margaret woke up on her chaise and stretched.  She smiled and went inside glancing at the clock to see how long she’d been away.  It seemed that hours had passed.  She shook her head and snorted when the kitchen clock told her that she’d gone outside two minutes earlier. 

As the years passed, Margaret traveled through as often as she had a free moment to slip away and be back before the passage of time.  Finding an opportunity to slip away wasn’t as easy as it sounded, for with a husband and three children, she never found herself alone.

The day came when her husband passed away.  Adam came to the service and comforted her while her children whispered, “Mom is more spacey than ever.  What will we do with her?”

Time here passed as Margaret and Adam had more opportunities for her to slip away.  Adam stayed with her here often when she stayed to care for her grandchildren and her house.  Her children finally insisted on selling her house, telling her she should live in a condo near the shops. 

Margaret didn’t care where she lived as long as she had privacy to come and go as she pleased.  It pleased her more to go than to come these days.  In slipping away she shed her aged body that was tied to time and space here and lived in her young body there.

When Margaret saw her new condo, she snorted to herself.  “The children are locking me up in the old folks home.  I know assisted living when I see it. I’m not senile.”  She waved her children off and assured them she liked her new apartment, then went inside and whispered, “Adam, it is time.  I have become a burden.”

At dinnertime, Margaret did not appear in the facility dining room, so the evening administrator sent an aide off to, “fetch the patient in two-ten. She just came in today.  Her children warned us that she never knows what time it is.”

The home had a no-fail system for locating patients who wandered, but they never found Margaret.

***

Note:  Margaret still loved her children and grandchildren.  She checked in on them occasionally from the other side.  They would often recognize her thoughts resting on them and comment, “Remember how Mom…?”

“Yeah, I was just thinking about her too.”

She’d sigh and slip back through to run on the beach or sit and sip tea in the sun with Adam.

Today, I have a guest blogger Melissa McCann who is writing about her garden.
****

Spring! When a middle-aged woman's fancy turns to thoughts of...GARDENING! I am boring the snot out of all my friends with my chattering on about my plans to introduce Permaculture[i] to the little farm of Goose Crossing.[ii]

Permaculture is the practice of gardening such that you don’t have to do so freakin’ much work. The idea is to let Mama Nature handle the heavy lifting while I make suggestions and sit back, sipping fizzy fruit drinks under a shady umbrella. 

Step one: introduce a hideously invasive plant species to my yard. Ha ha, no, I’m kidding. Jerusalem Artichoke (sunchoke) is perfectly controllable if you eat it. A lot of it. Even if you find you can’t stand the stuff yourself, you can always feed it to the livestock. Even better, it is a perennial sunflower, so it’s pretty.

Step two: Perennial vegetables. I’m not sure what has to be done to kale to make it edible, but sea kale is an “edible” perennial kale that puts out little broccoli-type florets. Frankly, this sounds disgusting. People keep trying to tell me you can make kale fit for human consumption by cooking it with lemon or vinegar or several quarts of raspberry jam, but I remain dubious.

Another perennial vegetable that grows abundantly in the Pacific Northwest is Stinging Nettle, a highly nutritious plant which, when harvested using moderately heavy garden gloves, can be stir-fried, or blanched and chopped fine and used like spinach in a quiche.

IT’S A TRICK! DON’T FALL FOR IT.

Nettles are not actually fit for human consumption. Even when you cook them down to the point where they can’t sting, they are unpleasantly fuzzy, and they make my feet swell up and itch. Your mileage may vary.

Step three: Plant guilds. Did you know that different species of plants like to form gangs and loiter around together, waving their sepals and making lewd comments to the bees? Yes indeed. Walnut trees, for example, like to hang out with the madrones and the hazelnuts and the thimbleberries. I have no walnut trees, but madrones I’ve got aplenty. Sure enough, the madrones are always surrounded by hazelnuts and thimbleberries.

Thimbleberries are my sworn enemies. It’s not that they aren’t pretty, just that they take up space and light, are mostly leaves, and the berries they do have are small, seedy and fall apart when you try to eat them. But it turns out they are related to raspberries. The essence of plant guilds is to replace wild varieties with their domesticated cousins. I get fruit, while the madrones and the raspberries have congenial companionship. There’s still a pretty wild pack of thimbleberries across the street, but we each stay on our own side, and we’re actually pretty good friends.

Step four: Hugelkultur.[iii] All that time I have been trying to shore up my steep south slope, I should have been building it out, adding material to fill in the slope and make it shallower.  This can be accomplished by Hugelkultur.

Hugelkultur is a system which enables you to build terraces and raised beds without all that tiresome digging and dragging and hauling of dirt. What you do is you call your local tree guy, point him at the two humongous maple trees that have been plotting among themselves to fall on the house in the next windstorm, and tell him where you want the terrace to be. He fires up the chainsaw and before you know it, you have hugelkultur.

Okay, specifically, you now have a big barrier across the slope that will slow erosion and capture moisture, preventing it from seeping away and leaving your slope dry and barren. 

I exaggerate the simplicity of this process. I still have to do a lot of cutting and dragging to fill in around the big log with additional branches, yard waste etc., but I will be a lot less concerned about the house either being flattened or slithering down the slope such that I find myself living in the bottom of the gully rather than at the top of the ridge.

Meanwhile, I add some rotted barn scrapings and a bit of topsoil and plant some nice annuals over the top of the messIn the fall, I sow some clover and oats. It all kinda settles while underneath, the maple tree goes to work breaking down and slowly releasing all the wonderful nutrients it has been storing up for 80 years. Which is exactly what it would have done anyway after the next windstorm—only it would have been doing it on top of my house, so I have just worked *with* nature to save my house, bolster my slope, and give myself a little more light and garden area with just a stroke of the chainsaw.

I don’t mean to under-represent the amount of labor involved in this process. I expect it to be strenuous to say the least, but that’s what spring is for! The sap is rising in my blood! The oil is oozing in my chainsaw! The seeds are on their way from the nursery!

SPRING!



[i] For a GREAT read about home permaculture: Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway


[ii] My little inside joke. I decided to call it “Goose Crossing” because my summer days are largely occupied in running out into the street screaming, “You geese get out of the road and quit playing in traffic.” I have a sign in the shape of two geese.


[iii] Outlined here in Sepp Holzer's Permaculture along with a lot of other great facts and ideas.

Melissa McCann has a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.  She has written a humor column for the local paper and has three science fiction novels in print and on e-book.  Her book Symbiont is on special the first week of March 2015

You can find Melissa's books on Amazon at:

Symbiont: http://www.amazon.com/Symbiont-Melissa-McCann-ebook/dp/B00APORBNU/ref

Yetfurther: http://www.amazon.com/Yetfurther-Strangers-Book-Melissa-McCann-ebook/dp/B00QXJTV98/ref

Farenough:  http://www.amazon.com/Farenough-Strangers-Book-Melissa-McCann-ebook/dp/B00RPPTLK8/ref