I woke up a worm today.
It’s Sunday, and I try not to work much on Sunday. It’s not a religious statement – the newspaper is bigger on Sunday and so I take a longer morning with it. Then we usually take off for somewhere – anywhere – to escape those far-off but incessant whispers all around the farm calling, “Hey there! I need a new feed bin. What about that faucet you were going to fix? How about some hay over here! Can’t you put a better latch on that gate? What’s with all this poop in the coop!”
Today I escaped to the hoophouse. It’s not Paris, or the beach, or even downtown Petaluma – all much better choices. But it was where I could get to today. (And it’s also where the snap peas are overgrowing the much too short trellis I made for them, but peas can’t whisper as loud as animals, so it was okay.)
A hoophouse is an unheated greenhouse. Ours is pretty big. There are metal “hoops” that are, oh, maybe 20 feet high with plastic stretched over them and the entire structure is 30 feet wide and 48 feet long. It is a place I go in the middle of winter when I want a dose of summer. A very humid summer. With water dripping off a plastic sky. (Okay, I really do have to pretend.)
Anyway, I moved a flat of beet seedlings and there she was. She was reddish and new looking – very moist and fresh. She slowly unwound her body, then stretched and gave a little twitch of her backend (that’s how I knew she was a she).
She didn’t seem to mind being awakened. But I did. I know we’re supposed to love spring and the rebirth and awakening of our new selves, fresh and dewy with anticipation of adventures to come. But it’s too soon for me. I’m not ready. I want to curl back up and go into someplace dark and warm and stay for a while longer. I haven’t made enough cups of tea or learned to spin yet or finished clearing out my office files. I want to take a fabulous candlelit bubble bath, like the women in those magazine ads, and this was the winter I was going to do it.
So I covered the little worm with the warm, moist soil and put the flat of seedlings back down. And I slowly and quietly backed out of the hoophouse and closed the doors and walked back down to the house and started the bathwater. A little while longer please.
SONOMAVORE™ 