Chocolate for Plants

October 2, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

The forsythia bush I planted four years ago as a forlorn stick with a few ratty leaves is taller than me now. I’m not a giant — I’m not even five feet tall — but this forsythia has leapt from bush to sapling.

We’re at the annual point in the year where I appraise our tiny homestead. The garden needs to be prepped for planting garlic, and there’s plenty, yet, to rip out there. The sunflowers are bending their stalks earthward. I’ll leave their fat heads for the birds to pluck seeds all winter. As for the forsythia, I wonder, Will you bloom next year? Each spring, this plant has given few gold blossoms, but I keep thinking its true radiance has yet to shine.

I offer this bush a fat layer of compost — chocolate for plants. Time will tell….

If you’re in my neck of the woods, I’ve been invited to a book discussion group at the Craftsbury Public Library, Sunday, October 3, at 4 p.m. The Craftsbury Library hosts outdoor events, so wear a good sweater.

listen,
you a wonder.
you a city of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.”
— Lucille Clifton

What’s Real

September 28, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Like a quilt, the fall’s early darkness abruptly pulls over us.

Late afternoon, I swing by the library, then pull off my wool sweater and go for a run. The rain falls so hard I appear to be running through clouds. I’m on a loop, so I keep on — there’s no easy turning back to get home. At home, I feed the hungry cats and light the first wood stove fire of the year, just a small one, with a few handfuls of kindling. There’s no turning back for fall, either.

After dinner, the daughters sprawl on the couch. The cats, who didn’t care much for summer, anyway, curl in a laundry basket, utterly satisfied.

Again, I realize I’m looking at this the wrong way: there’s never any turning back, just going on.

The wonderful poet Kerrin McCadden will be reading and talking with me virtually tonight, hosted by The Norwich Bookstore. Check in, if you have time and inclination.

“To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.”

– Thich Nhat Hạnh

Dinner Conversation

September 26, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

These Vermont days unfold one after one, exceptionally warm for this time of year. Mornings, I write on our back deck. By dinner time, the air has cooled, so we eat in our little dining room, while the dark descends around our house.

Over dumplings, my teen shares stories of high school, and we chew over the school’s new open campus policy. She talks and talks. Listening, I realize so much of the past year and a half was this strange virtual world. Her stories are mesmerizing with intrigue and merriment, but also laced through with all kinds of complicated things.

No parenting advice here. While I’m on the phone Friday morning in our glassed-in second story porch, pitching a story, I see a Subaru dash into my driveway. My daughter and her friend leap out, laughing. Before I finish my call, they’ve disappeared, deep in their own narratives. They’re serious students, with long thought-out lists of goals. How glad I am to see them together, cackling. Before I head back to work, I brew another pot of coffee and stand on the back porch, listening to the crickets.

Be well, I think. Be happy. Be very careful driving and keep your eyes open. And return and tell me, some at least, of your world.

…. I bought my friend the newest Mary Lawson novel, A Town Called Solace. She’s loaned it back to me.

He’d assumed that you went to school because you had to learn things, starting off with the easy stuff and moving on to the bigger issues, and once you’d learned them that was it, the way ahead opened up and thereafter life was simple and straightforward. What a joke. The older he got, the more complicated and obscure everything became. ”
— Mary Lawson

Overheard

September 21, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Running along the old railroad bed, I pause when I see a couple ahead of me. I know her as an acquaintance, and she’s walking and talking animatedly with a man I don’t know.

I linger behind, breathing deeply, just about near the end of my run anyway. They keep walking. Sunlight filters through the trees over the narrow path.

Then, abruptly, what I realize fascinates me so much is merely the carefree tone of their conversation. They keep at it, talking, their hands gesturing together. Sure, I overhear people; I’m not a shut-in. But I’m mesmerized for these moments by their unmasked and unguarded tone, or maybe I’m just happy to hear their laughter. I live in Vermont, where many people, including myself, are vaccinated and use masks; this makes sense to me. Maybe I’m just enchanted by the warm September sunlight, spilling down through the leaves that are golden and red and beginning to drift earthward.

I linger, following, until they go their way, and I go mine.

In the Wee Hours

September 19, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Pulling up dead cucumber vines in my September garden, I realize my main crop this year is a forest of sunflowers. In years past, I’ve verged at times into the maniacal side of gardening. This year, however…. this year, as we all know, has simply been this year.

My oldest wanders out to the garden, her head bent to one side, braiding her hair. She’s begun training on the local volunteer ambulance crew, and tonight is her first overnight shift. She tells me she’s going to stay up all night. Why would I sleep?

My garden soil is dry, hot from the sun beneath my bare feet. The fall greens — kale and Brussels sprouts — are interspersed with brown stalks of dill, seeds drying.

Hidden in my forest of flowers, I remember when I was eighteen and left home. One of the first things I did was stay up all night, wandering around outside in the dark with a friend until the sun came up. It was the first time I realized how long a single night can stretch.

She straightens, and I admire her braids. She’s all grown up, heading out into the world to do her own thing and make her own way. Still, I remember her at four in her pink overalls, determined not to sleep then, either. She hurries away, and I stand there, with my dirty hands, watching.

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren’t on our lists, people we’ve never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer

Two, Not-So-Random Visitors

September 17, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

A young AmeriCorps worker stops by looking for information about how small town Vermont government works and brings a crabapple pie he baked.

The pie is deep-dish, about the size of a dinner plate. He’s tall and cheerful and tells me about his dog named Mindy. Eventually, I give him a paper map and tell him to drive around town. I highlight one section of the map in yellow. Here, I tell him, is one especially beautiful stretch of dirt road, high above a lake. He’s driving his grandmother’s hand-me-down Toyota Corolla.

Good luck, I say as he leaves.

When he’s gone, a friend stops in, looking for town info, too. The sunlight comes through the windows. I offer her a piece of pie. We talk and talk. She finally says, I feel like I haven’t seen anyone in so long.

The strange thing is, I feel that way, too. We keep eating pie. The young baker has peeled the crabapples, one by one, to sweeten the pie. We eat the whole thing, and then I wash up the plates and forks.