I'm on the porch this morning. For this moment the world seems silent. No cars are zooming by on their way to Southern or Central Avenue, no Fed Ex planes overhead.

The cricket's sounds are soothing as is the echoing bark of the distant dog. The heat is in a hurry today, in a hurry to burn off what little dew is left on the grass and get this place hot. I can feel it as it comes toward us in the form of light, dappling through the shutters.

The days are getting shorter. The nights little by little are longer.

It changes me the way it changes my plants. The surge, the growth surge is over. We're winding down. This season is changing into another season and we're being told about it by the leggy caladiums who prefer their nights to be above 70 degrees. They begin to lean, topple over. They know their days are numbered.

Lately I've felt a need for stillness. I have the need to quiet my mind. It dawned on me in my stillness that my days are numbered, too, here in this form. This is nothing new. My days have always been numbered, but in my youth those days seemed to be infinite.

As I approach 60 I can no longer delude myself. So I'll stop. Be still. I'll enjoy. As my summer comes to an end I can reflect on a few gifts the summer gave me.

My experiment with a vegetable garden this summer was successful inasmuch as I planted everything on top of an old -- and I mean old -- driveway. I had to dig through gravel to get the little tomato plants into the ground. But they thrived with the help of fish emulsion and worm castings and lots of organic matter. Next year should be even better.

A couple of weeks ago Gus and Sollie stopped by to visit. They're both in school now. I don't see them as much as I used to. But when I do see them I

enjoy every second of it.

On this visit my sister Susan happened to be here. She was just leaving to go home when I saw my friends walking by and called them over to the porch.

Sollie, who is still a baby, a toddler, happened to get his hands on a pair of my old glasses. Nothing would do but for him to try them on. My sister Susan, who loves fun as much as anybody ever could, took her glasses off and gave them to Gus. We snapped this picture. We laughed and laughed. It was a simple but wonderful gift.

Now I'm going in to get Blue's leash. I have to walk him before it gets too hot.

The sun has come into the porch so I know it's time to get going.

This week my friend Charlie is coming to build a garden shed so I'll have a place to store my gardening things.

I promise to use it and to quit being messy. Maybe in my stillness a miracle will take place and I'll no longer be a slob! I don't know. That would take a lot of stillness. I'm not sure I have that much time left. But on the other hand I can just imagine how much time I'd save just knowing where my pruners were at any given moment!

We shall see.

We shall see.

But on this Saturday morning I was feeling nothing other than peace and contentment to be where I was and to be doing what I was doing.

Well, here I am reinventing myself– again–. For anyone who hasn't heard, I've started my bread business. I'm getting a banner made for my little card table that I take to the Farmer's Market. I'm calling my business SHOAF'S LOAF ORGANIC.

I get a kick out of the people who come to my table at the Farmer's Market. Every now and then a quick witted soul will ask me about my name. "Now, are you Shoaf?"

I'll tell them that I am.

"Well, I guess you didn't have much choice in naming your bread business did you?"

How many people have a last name that rhymes with loaf?

I feel better about this business than any money making venture I've ever been involved in. In fact, I've been totally lousy at so many jobs I've had that I really don't want to think about it. I'm definitely not good at waiting tables. I really am not that good at landscaping and garden design. I'm ok, but I'm a one style kind of designer. If somebody wants something non-traditional I'm lost. Plus, most of my landscaping experience involves my own yard and I believe it was difficult for me to think big. I could have if I'd had the right mentor, but that didn't happen. I like to think I'm where I am and where I am is where I'm supposed to be.

I've put landscaping behind me.

Unlike certain aspects of landscaping, I'm very confident in my ability to bake bread. I've been doing it for over 30 years. I even underestimate the ability I have, I think. I have yet to teach anyone how to make a pan of rolls that suit me. They have to be uniform in size and folded just right. They need to be baked exactly the right length of time so that the tips are beginning to brown but not the whole roll.

It's very hard work. I saw a friend of mine down at the Market on Sat. He's a caterer. I was carrying on about how well he was doing in his business and he gave me this strange look. "What?" I asked him. "Aren't you doing well?"

"Yes, I guess, but man, it's such hard work. I mean, I work so hard."

And I could see it in his face. I could hear it in his voice. I knew exactly what he was saying. I could see him standing over a vast array of trays, intricate hand made appetizers, hundreds of them all needing to go out onto the floor at the same time and getting everybody organized not even to mention all the running around to grocery stores and markets before hand to get the ingredients all in the right proportions. Made me tired just to think about it.

I suppose everybody who owns their own business lives in parallel universes; one that cherishes independence, being her own boss, experiencing and nurturing the entrepenurial spirit, and the other, working long exhausting hours, aching bones, fear of failure and wanting to just draw a regular paycheck like everybody else.




Martha's such a hard worker. She'd finished an exhausting schedule at her job with television production. She got tot he kitchen a little after 4 am and had a job interview later on in the day.

I felt terrible about seeing my baby so tired, but she got through it with the help of Tamara who arrived at around 6:30am and helped clean the kitchen and slice the bread and bring the rest of the bread down to me at the Market.

I arrived at 7:30am. That's the earliest I've ever made it. When I pulled into the parking lot I looked up and saw the City of New Orleans was still in the station.

I opened the door to my car and stood staring at the silver train perched 20 or so feet above me. I could see heads at the windows but no faces. A strong, healthy breeze pushed against my skin, played with my skirt, reminded me through smells and speed that the Mississippi River was right over the bluff.

It isn't the same, the thought of getting onto a train and going down to New Orleans, but sameness is an illusion if you really stop to think about it. Everything is in flux, constantly changing, being born, dying, being built, decaying, and I tell my heart this when I think about New Orleans.

I'll be going down soon to see Sarah who's moved back and maybe I'll take the train.

I give a nod, a blessing of godspeed to the City of New Orleans and consider myself most fortunate to have glimpsed this quiet little reality the beats in our nation's heart and flows like blood from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico every single day.

Squash borers:
Yesterday I checked on my tiny garden. I have 2 squash plants, three, if you count the one that doesn’t count. It's been stunted from its beginnings. I left it as a decoy, hoping the bugs would pick on it because it wasn't big enough to defend itself. Sounds cruel, doesn't it?

Long ago,waay back in the 70's, my mother gave me a book called Peacock Manure and Marigolds. It was a book about organic gardening. It was the beginning of the end for me. That book took me down the path where I now live. I'm a compulsive gardener. The book told of order, the system, the protective mechanisms of plants and animals, the cycle of the garden and its intelligence.
Somewhere I read about squash borers. I’ll never forget the thrill I experienced when I saved my first squash plant from the pernicious attacker. I inspired myself by becoming a plant rescuer and a squash borer murderer.

I haven’t grown my own squash in years. In fact, my little house in the city has a yard that’s mostly shade. But for a couple of years I’ve been longing for a few vegetable plants, especially tomatoes. I tried tomatoes in pots and I tried them in a small sunny spot next to my neighbor's clematis vines, but nothing happened. I guess I wasn’t serious enough about it. But last fall I had a revelation. I began watching the tilt and pattern of the sunlight in the narrow stretch of hedge that ran beside my house. It was almost full sun. The only problem was that there were 12-foot, 40-year-old overgrown hedges claiming that space, and I had to make my decision as to whether or not to go to war with them.
Go to war I did. I have a handsaw. One of these days I’m going to have my own chain saw, but for now my handsaw will have to do. Before it got too hot, sawing was my morning garden project. Let me tell you, a lumberjack has to be the strongest person in the world. Sawing is exhausting. But bit by bit I took down these overgrown hedges with trunks like trees that took hours to saw through. I hauled it all to the street and within a couple of weeks I could see the future garden site. In the early spring there was only full sun in one small strip, but as the sun’s elliptical path changed to its summer course, the patch became an ideal plot for tomatoes, eggplant, squash and peppers.
I check my vegetables every day for enemies. I found one tomato horned worm about a month ago. I took the big green worm off my plant and put it on a fence post hoping some bird might find him delectable. It worked. I checked back in a few minutes and the worm was nowhere to be seen and I thought I heard a bird saying "Yummy."
I hadn’t really checked on the squash plants until yesterday. I guess I was in denial.. I guess I was hoping there weren’t squash borers within Memphis city limits, but I'd noticed the leaves wilting even when I'd just watered. So I went out and got down on my knees and looked closely at the base of the plants. There it was. The trail of sawdust the books tell you to look for. The little varmints had bored into almost every single stem of both my plants. It was time to go to the kitchen and get my paring knife.
I don't know where I read about this type of plant surgery, but it's right up my alley. I don't want to use pesticides in my garden so I'm always looking for ways to keep plants healthy without them.
Step 1. I looked at the base of the squash plants and saw the gooey sawdust-like substance that is a dead giveaway. It's just like the sawdust a drill makes. It's the evidence that the worm has bored through the stem and is getting fat on the juices the squash plant is bringing up from its roots. These juices are supposed to be feeding the leaves and the blooms and ultimately the baby squash plants. I took my knife and cut open the stem right above the borer hole. Gotcha! There he was: fat, round, pale, slimy with a sinister black head. Boy, was that bug surprised. I had to kill it. I'll spare you the details.

After I checked each stem and killed about 4 more borers, I got a couple of buckets of dirt and reburied the stems and watered the plants.
I checked them again this morning and found two more borers. I think they're ok now.

As I'm getting older I find myself becoming more content with my eccentricity. I don't even call it that, but I'm pretty sure my neighbors do. I don't even think about it being odd that I wake up every morning and the first thing I do is get my coffee and go to the garden. I stay outside until the heat of the day. Late in the afternoons I'm back outside puttering, digging, planting, dreaming. In all the world it is where I'm most at home, most content, most carefree; here near my dirt, listening to my marigolds and wishing I had a peacock to go with it.

On Sunday afternoon I rested. I'd done two Farmer's Markets in a week. The Downtown Market is exhausting simply because I'm not used to getting up at 4am. I did well. And on Sunday I felt entitled to a long restful day.

I took a nap, but for some reason I woke up before I was through napping. I felt disoriented and enervated (Billy's big word; it means without the energy to move).

I grabbed a book and went out to the front porch to lie on the very uncomfortable wicker couch. The fan whirred and moved the hot afternoon air around, making me comfortable enough to want to close my eyes, in spite of the cushion springs' occasional jab.

I put my glasses on the little bench beside me and soon I was in a world of my own -- until the front door opened. It was Billy. He came out to check on me. He'd been in a world of his own in front of the television set watching the French Open. He sat for a minute and we talked. He went back inside and I tried to drift back into dreamland. To no avail.

And then I thought orange sherbet! I hoisted myself off the couch and began looking for my glasses. There they are! On the rug! OH NO!! Someone had stepped on them!! Again!!!! Just the way they did last Sunday afternoon! What a coincidence!

Only this time instead of one arm of the glasses being broken the big foot got both of them.

Glasses are a recent development for me. I've been wearing readers for some time, but have had 20/20 vision otherwise. Then, the last time I had them checked the eye doctor asked what kind of glasses I was wearing.

"Reading glasses," I told him, "they're 175."

He said, "According to your exam you need 300's."

No wonder my eyes were hurting.

FYI: gardening and glasses do not a happy marriage make. Don't get me wrong. I'm very grateful to be able to see. I love the soothing comfort of putting my glasses on and feeling my body relax from the strain of not being able to see. But composting, digging, mulching, building, weed-eating, grass cutting, none of those things lend themselves to wearing glasses. For two Monday mornings in a row I've been in my car on the way to LensCrafters to get my glasses replaced. Billy was thrilled, of course (not).

Echart Tolle says that in the West relationships are a "spiritual exercise." And Martin Luther said that marriage is a "school for character."

I tried valiantly to convince Billy that he'd been the one who stepped on my glasses. "You must have done it when you came out to check on me."

I was very convincing, but not convincing enough. He hadn't been anywhere near them. I honestly don't remember stepping on them and I didn't hear the awful crunch sound. Oh well, all done now.

I was just thinking about my Aunt Velma who's 90 years old. Her eyes are better than mine. Speaking of whom:

Here's the feverfew in bloom. She gave me a very small plant from her garden back in the early spring. I have a new sunny spot in my front yard. It was all very odd. I wrote a blog piece about "The Canopy." That's what I call the shade we have here on my street. I love the beautiful ancient trees, but I'm human. I must find things to complain about, so I wrote about the lack of sun in my front yard and my neighbor's growing young oak tree.
That very day I came home and saw tree trimmers. They'd removed a huge oak from her back yard and cut lots of branches from the young oak in her front yard, the young oak that was blocking all my sunlight.
Here's a delicate little daisy I got the same day I got the feverfew. The plant had a bud on it when I put it in the ground back in early April. It bloomed a few days later and has been blooming ever since.

This is the seed pod of a poppy. Aunt Velma has poppies in her garden and I think they are so beautiful. They're like upside down ballerinas dancing high above the other flowers, catching every breeze, showing off their lovely soft red skirts. After they bloom she harvests the seed pods and puts them in a ziplock bag. In the fall she sows them again in her garden and is always pleasantly surprised to see who germinates and flourishes.
Poppies hate to be transplanted, but I got this one very early and on a nice cool day. We'll just have to see how things work out. Maybe next year I'll have poppies in my garden.

It's Memorial Day morning. I've gotten up early. Billy is enjoying sleeping late. He told me last night that he was going to treat this day like a holiday by just doing nothing except catching up on reading the paper, maybe working at his desk a little. 

What a week I had! I've finally gotten my permit from the State and now I can officially sell bread at the Farmer's Markets at the Botanic Garden and Downtown. 

This week was a learning experience. Here I am with my lifelong friend Molly Turner. Her grandmother and my grandmother played canasta together a million years ago. Her mother, Mary Anne, and my mother went to high school together. Molly's father, Pop Turner, was in the military and when he brought his family back home to Covington they stayed in the big old two story house where Mary Anne grew up. I always loved that house with the huge front porch on College Street. 

When Molly visited during the summers she and I would play together. 

We reconnected after years of not seeing each other. When she found out that I was starting this business she invited me to lunch and let me know that she would help me any way she could. 

When my permit came through I sent her an email and collected on her promise. She was as good as her word and better. She showed up at my house on Wednesday afternoon at 1:30 to help load things into the car. The Market at the Botanic Gardens starts at 2 pm. Molly and I loaded tables, bread, money box, price list and ten tons of other stuff into the trunk of her mother's car and off she went to set up while I got myself dressed. 

The first day of the season is always a test. We got off to a slow start, but quickly recovered. I went on to sell everything I had except the one box of sticky buns that the little black ants got in to. We gave them to a friend of hers who works at the Gardens after carefully shooing off the ants. 

But the Saturday morning Farmer's Market Downtown is a very different experience from the Botanic Gardens. It's a much bigger operation. I had no idea what to expect. I had friends who'd told me I'd do very well, but that wasn't enough information about how much bread to bake. Not only that but it starts at 7 am which meant I needed to be Downtown, dressed and ready to sell by opening. Makes me tired just to think about it.
I failed.
I was 7:30 getting there. Tamara Jeanes is in the picture. Here she is learning the process of mixing the dough for the whole wheat loaf. I used this black and white picture because that's the way the world looked at 4:30 am.  Tamara is a real trouper. She helped me on Saturday morning. She came by my house at 4 o'clock in the morning and we went over to St. Anne's on Highland to their little commercial kitchen. I'm renting that kitchen because I can't bake at my house because of the health code. They don't seem to want dog hair in the dinner rolls. Go figure.

Tamara and I went straight to the kitchen, but it's so easy to forget things when you move one kitchen to another. I had to haul my mixer, my wheat grinder, honey, oil, sugar, filling for the sticky buns, loaf pans, bread flour, rolling pin, bread pans, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I forgot a couple of essentials and Tamara had to drive back to my house to get them. Time is money when you're baking bread.

All of it should have been taken on Friday night, but, you know what Billy says. "You live. You learn." Except he says it with a heavy New York accent and learn is pronounced "lue' ween." As in: You live. You lue' ween. You have to shrug your shoulders when you say it. But it's a simple but true statement.

 I really just tried to do the best I could and to stay present with what I was doing, and to 

"lue' ween."

The guy next to us at the Farmer's Market Downtown sold essential oils. I'm so glad he's right next to us. I'm looking forward to learning more about oils and how to use them. In the picture above I'm taking a whiff of an essential oil blend that is designed for sleep. I haven't been sleeping well lately so I traded Craig a box of sticky buns for the little jar of sleep oil. I used it last night and it worked. I slept better than I have in a while.
I thought a picture sniffing the bottle was in order. Molly laughs at my jokes. Therefore I shall have to insist that she volunteer every week.

Saturday morning I slept until 11am. That told me my body was needing rest. I'm a morning person. By Saturday night I knew I was heading into a sinus infection. Last year I was in bed for 8 days! 8 DAYS IN THE SPRING!!! I couldn't work in the yard, I couldn't enjoy my flowers or the beautiful warm days of early May. All because of that sinus infection.

I've gone holistic. I was ready for this. I've studied essential oils and what to use when. I put my eucalyptus and my lemon scented tea tree oil in my humidifier and went to the guest room to sleep. 

I stayed in bed all day Sunday. I used grapefruit seed spray for my nose and the Neti pot with salt and soda. I drank apple cider vinegar in water and felt terrible all day long. Until about 5 o'clock. 

Something broke up inside of me. I took a sudden turn for the better. YEAH! I don't have to be sick!!!

I'm still congested a little, but I  know what I'm doing is working. 

Whenever I get sick the minute I start feeling better I immediately think of something strenuous to do so that I can over-do-it and maybe get sick all over again. All these things come into my mind that I didn't do while I was in bed and I think, well, here's an hour of daylight, why don't I go out in the yard and dig, plant, clean up, take the recycle to the curb, walk the dogs and deadhead the pansies and pull a few weeds.

So, that's what I did.

I go out almost every evening at about 6 o'clock to play in my flower bed. I listen to the robins and doves calling to each other from the giant oak tree that looms over my street.

 Last night was different. It had rained Saturday night and most of Sunday. Martha and I had baked bread on Friday until late afternoon and when I got home I was too exhausted to do anything except cook a little supper and watch a movie with Billy.

I'm figuring I lost about 48 hours of observing of light, leaves, shadows, the wind. I guess that explains why I was a little stunned last night when I went out in my front yard. The canopy had returned.

I've been working in the late afternoons in sunlight. All winter I've done a few things here and there in the yard. I put tulips out after Thanksgiving. I raked leaves, mulched. I planted pansies. And since March, since the first inklings of spring, I've gone out to the yard in the evenings and enjoyed the sunlight. What a gentle time, what a gentle light it is and how precious it was to me. The canopy of thick dense leaves that covers my yard had been pulled back, the trees have been naked, and I've allowed myself to enjoy it, to treasure it to bask in it even though I knew darn well what lay ahead.

And last night was the night. It was all over. No more sunlight for my little garden. 

The trees are flapping at me now. There's a cool spring wind blowing this morning and from where I sit the show is spectacular and alive and full of movement and newness. The leaves are back. And they are dancing. The leaves are back and they are dictating to me what will grow in my front yard. The canopy has returned. 

It was only yesterday when the shadows on my street were thin spindly pitiful specimens of shadows. But look! Now they are large and smooth, cool and dark and they will remain with us until November.

I have all these problems. My neighbor has planted an oak tree in her front yard. I can't believe how much the former sapling has grown since we moved in 3 years ago. By next year the tree will loom over the little strip of dirt where I grow basil, chives and marigolds. 

Yesterday morning when the rain was coming down in buckets this same neighbor was out in my front yard, umbrella in hand, bending over to get my New York Times out of a mud puddle. She sloshed to my front porch and tossed it in out of the rain. What a kind gesture! And yet her graceful little oak tree plots evil against my stubby, desperate marigolds.

Things are out of control. The world is doing its thing. Grackles and sparrows are eating my bird seed. My neighbor's oak tree is stealing my sunlight. My face has wrinkles. And I myself am a mere form, and all this work that I do is just like me. It is being born so that it can die. The transmutation of forms, from one form to another; that is all I see.

I went to Covington a couple of weeks ago to do some work in my Aunt Velma's garden. If obsessions can be inherited then I guess that's where I got mine. Her perennial bed was born about 60 years ago.
When I first got interested in gardening, I was in my twenties and I was crazy about growing vegetables. She said, "Melinda, that's exactly how I got started. But watch out for flowers. Once you grow a flower you won't want to grow anything else."
I'll never forget those words. They were so true!
And her flower garden is her passion and has been low these 60 years. Now she's 90 years old and there so much she simply can't do any more.
As I was leaving she spoke. Her brow strained, she peered into the rich composted soil, into her garden, seeing but not  seeing. She said– not to me, not  to anybody–she just said, "When I die and Davie get's this place he'll probably just mow all of this down." She extended her arm out over the beautiful garden, her blood, her sweat, her vision, the journal of her life.
It was as if she spoke to test the waters, to brace herself for the inevitable.

I don't know why, but I guess I got scared. I laughed and said, "The good thing about that is that you won't be here to see it."

And we paused together in silence. A ninety year old gardener has learned the lessons of the garden. The grass withers. The flower fades.

I recently read Eckhart Tolle's book, THE POWER OF NOW. It was a tremendous spiritual experience for me. The now is liberation from the ghosts of the past and freedom from anxiety about the future. Now is all we have.
So now, really now, I am watching the dappling light and shadows dancing outside my window and listening to the deep hollow music of the windchime that hangs at the corner eave. And I accept. I accept. I accept.

 It is what it is.

Grackles, sparrows, and all.