Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [83]
At quitting time we have finished the deck. It doesn’t look like much—just a wooden floor on two large skids. But it’s a start. Mr. Miller took our picture just before we finished. There’s me, a lumpy bald guy in cheap sunglasses with sweat darkening his T-shirt collar, resting my hand on the shoulder of a gangly little gap-toothed girl in shorts and pink Crocs, her head higher against my sternum than even a month ago, squinting in the sun and quite literally standing on a good day’s work, and—I hope—on a little piece of her education.
Back home, I am walking down to check the pigs when a press of cold wind rushes the yard behind me, and when I turn to look back my heart startles, because a towering billow of pollen has spun from the pine crowns and is twisting up and over the house, so thick and yellow I actually think for second that the attic is afire. Majestic and surreal, right out of the blue. And then it is gone. Down in the pen, the pigs squeal and zigzag madly, kicking up their heels as the first drops hit. Now the wind is on a straight line, and the space between the house and granary goes white as it scours a blizzard of dandelion fluff from our overgrown yard. Then the real rain hits with its hiss and splatter, driving the pigs to their shelter and the dandelion fluff to ground. The land is dry, dry. Our yard is like a brick. We need this.
It rains hard, but not long. In the wake, the sun is already poking through, and steam rises from the asphalt by the garage. A rainbow forms across the ridge. Amy is spinning across the yard with an umbrella. Just like she did, she tells me, “when I was a kid, and I was three.”
You can really go off the rails with this scavenging business. While working on the pigpen as the earth has warmed, I noticed a number of seedlings cracking the dirt. Their cotyledons were fat and spoon-shaped on the order of a squash or melon. I assumed the previous owner must have tossed some garbage down here and figured what the heck, they’re off to an early start, I’ll transplant them. Take them as a gift of the good earth. So over a period of a week I spoon out the sprouts as I find them and place them in a careful row along the far side of the garden. Soon the first real leaves emerge. They are pointy, kinda like you might see on zucchini. I begin to get a little nervous, however, when I start seeing the things popping up all over the barnyard and around the outbuildings. Then while clearing out the pigpen tangle, I notice a pattern in the distribution of the sprouts and put two and two together: I have been transplanting wild cucumber. This is the equivalent of transplanting thistles. Honestly, I should get a plant book or something.
Anneliese is taking the lead on the garden. I helped plant onion sets and some kale, but she is doing most of the rest of it. So far she has put in turnips, chard, more radishes, two rows of tomatoes, and several hills of potatoes. And in a touch missing from my bachelor gardening days, she plants marigolds at the end of each row.
Lately Jane fights her bedtime with a ferocity that easily out-sizes her frame, and we have fallen into a pattern after supper in which Anneliese gardens in the remaining light while I try to settle the baby. I am often surprised to find myself here, holding this teensy howling beast to my chest, catching the scent of baby powder, and contemplating how I have come to understand what a “onesie” is at this late stage in my life. Here I am buying diapers when most of my contemporaries are buying graduation cakes.
The kid can really holler. People say that, but seriously: when I cradle her to my chest, invariably she’ll hit a