If you have read my posts for any time at all you have probably noticed that a big expedition for me is a trip to the Meriden Post Office. In fact, when our December holiday began, it had been three years since I had spent more than a night away from the farm, and frankly, I was overdue for a rest as those of you who received one of my goofed up orders will no doubt attest.

Since it is easiest to rip me away from my gardens when they are under two feet of snow, Jim took his extraction window of opportunity and whipped our clan off to the island of St John, USVI for a holiday camping extravaganza at Maho Bay.

Extravaganza was NOT the word that the women gathered at midnight in the campground’s communal bathroom would have used to describe their time at Maho. I imagine most of us women spent at least a few moments during the wee hours of the night wishing we had the anatomy of our menfolk, ie those guys back at the tents peeing off the tent platforms with the panache of pirates on the high seas. Meanwhile, for us women, Depends adult diapers drinking no liquids after 3 in the afternoon seemed like a more agreeable option than our 2 am strolls up the campground stairs and boardwalks to our shared toilets.

Adding insult to injury, some clueless man had left an obnoxious diatribe pointers about toilet paper use at the campground in which he suggested two squares of toilet paper were ample for all situations. Let’s just say that the spunky grandmas I ran into at the bathroom in the middle of the night would have known exactly what they were going to do with their allotment of two squares, and they were unanimously going to use it to silence that ECO-JACKASS it didn’t involve a toilet.

Ah camping!

Anyone who thinks of a trip to the post office as a break from routine is obviously someone who doesn’t get out much….. so calling myself an inexperienced traveller is an obvious understatement. To put it mildly, once I leave the farm and sometimes when I am still here I am a stranger in a strange world.

So while I have just complained about my midnight walks to the bathroom, I really have few complaints about our recent trip. Practically everything struck me as wildly exciting. With a smoothie machine on every street corner, I was still THRILLED with my tropical passion flower guava mango smoothie at the stand across from the Cruz Bay Post Office. It felt special, in part because I didn’t have to clean the blender afterwards but mostly because just standing outside in the bright sun while someone made me a tropical drink seemed so wildly improbably. Here at the farm, there are maybe two hours each summer when making a smoothie outside sounds like a good idea.

Did you catch my mention of a post office again? Apparently, post offices are my reference point in any new world. I guess you can take a woman with a mail order business away from her local post office but you can’t take the post office out of her. Is it any wonder my children worried about my mental health when I got excited about Cruz Bay’s zip code of 00830. Only I could find this low number fascinating, even mysterious.

My postal obsession went so far that I actually introduced myself to the ladies at the Cruz Bay Post Office and took their picture to show MY post mistresses. What can I say? I found it enchanting that the postal mistresses of Cruz Bay processed their holiday packages OUTSIDE under a lignum vitae tree!

Leaving Cruz Bay and up the windy dirt roads to the campground, we settled into our tents overlooking the blue green waters of Big Maho Bay. There was something blissful about Swiss Family Robinson housekeeping. A few pieces of already soggy clothing took up a small shelf, no possessions beyond a few seashells littered the place, and there was only a bit of sand to consider sweeping out of the tent (In an act of compassion, I left the sand be).

During our first trips to Maho, back when I was a confused young mother who didn’t understand that any vacation was supposed to include me, I cooked for us in our tent. This time, we ate in the dining pavilion with other campers and during picnic lunches I didn’t even cut the sandwiches in half for anyone or even notice if the rest of the crew ate anything or stayed hydrated. This made life sooooooooo sweet. No cooking. No back seat cooking. No dishes, 76% 89% 97% of which I had no role in creating. No frantic scrambling at 5:50 each night to figure out what to cook for dinner. My mind could be a complete blank when it came to meal planning and just about everything else. This left so much delightful time to make new friends- Leeanne, Dave and Maya! We are so glad we met you!

And speaking of friends, it was also a joy to visit beloved old tropical Flowers friends again. This year, because of an unusual amount of rain, there were also many new Flowers to meet for the first time. I hung off the back of the various open air taxis, luxuriating in every roadside weed while my children rolled their eyes and Jim looked alarmed. On one expedition to the other side of the island, I asked our friend Hamilton to stop his open air taxi at the Love City Mini Mart in Coral Bay. While he assumed it was so I could join the throng inside to stock up on rum, it was really because I wanted to visit some Flowers I had seen last trip in fields surrounding the place. This time, I was in for a treat as the muddy goat filled parking lot of the Love City Mini Mart was encircled in candelabras of yellow Flowers, Cassia alata also known as Christmas Candles.

Because the seas were rough and the skies overcast from all the storms in the north, the water was too murky for much snorkeling but it was lovely for body surfing, and we stayed in the water riding waves until our fingers and feet were numb or in Jim’s case, until a rib was cracked.

The cooler conditions also meant we spent less time doing skin cancer research lounging at the beach and more time hiking. This was a whole new twist since in past trips the only hike I had taken was the midnight one to the communal bathroom. This time we walked to some wonderful places. One trail took us to a copse of bay rum tree whose crushed leaves filled the air with a wonderful bay rum scent. This is the kind of obvious remark that worries my children. Apparently only I get excited when a tree smells like it should.

And because St John is nothing if not dramatically hilly, most every hike delivered one glorious vista after another. Even after many trips to this island, I am always surprised by the way the British Virgin Islands and the US islands sit dramatically cheek by jowl in a sparkling sea. Let’s face it, sometimes the obvious is just so darn amazing.

One day saw me and Jim hitchhiking across the island on a mission to get to a place we couldn’t walk to. I hadn’t hitchhiked in thirty years but on St John it is practically di rigeur. And so I found myself feeling young and bohemian again as I rode in the back of a truck, talking with a most lovely St Johnian, What fun to sail down a mountain road in a stranger’s pick-up with a beautiful soul stirring the pot of my understanding about life.

But all trips come to an end and after more no see’um bites than I could count and some very silly nights playing whist in our tent, it was time to head home with a dozen, three dozen forty six Flower Essences. I may be the only person who returns from the Caribbean with more potions than Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.

I will look forward to sharing all the Flower Essences collected in our island meanderings. But today, it’s time to help the crew catch up on back orders! Our post mistresses may not be waiting under a lignum vitae tree, but they ARE waiting for our packages and so are you!

This week we had our first serious snowstorm, which meant it was Thembi’s first time coming up our hill in slippery conditions. She and her car were spared a journey into a ditch, but her car did end up stuck in the middle of the road. After I backed Thembi’s car down the hill while the town plow guy watched, I hustled Thembi up the hill to the farm where there were five mother hens from 19 to 69 ready to give her guidance about winter driving in the north country.

It may have felt more like an assault than a friendly conversation, because when it comes to this hill in winter and winter driving in general, everyone has a story (or ten) and way too many theories, tips, techniques and complicated advice.

Some morsels shared:

When driving anywhere, we told her she needed to dress for an assault on Mt Everest in case, as with today, she had to abandon her car and walk in the bitter cold. This was hard for Thembi, a fashionable woman from the city of Harare to hear …….but worse advice was to come. We broke it to her that her cute hot pink boots were not going to cut it. The most she could hope for was a flash of fake fur on the right kind of boots, ones that were going to weigh about thirty pounds each.

We suggested she go slow and then slow down some more. Then go half as slow again. Then put on the brakes.

We mentioned that she would need to ignore the knuckleheads breathing down her neck because she was going “too slow”. They’d pass her in their impatience and be off the road in a jiffy.

Particular tips had to be given about our hill. Our hill is a territory unto itself. It has the steepest grade of any road in town. Think Alpe d’Huez with sass.

We explained to Thembi that any vehicle coming down our hill had the right of way, and that she should avoid being in the way somewhere on the hill anyways. Frankly, the hill is so steep that even when the road is well sanded and plowed, it’s a dicey proposition to get down the hill in any vehicle but a sled…….. and really, you don’t want to be a sitting target for some free sliding object. Not a many ton vehicle. Not even a sled.

We amended our advice on coming up the hill to include going down the hill as well. As we discussed our many adventures on the hill, this amendment became a no brainer: Don’t start down the hill if there is a vehicle coming up either. Just wait ’til you have the hill ALL TO YOURSELF and then hope it stays that way until you have safely navigated the whole thing. Everyone who navigates this hill could offer Thembi a sworn testimonial about the wisdom of waiting. It would include phrases like “out of control,” “wheels spinning,” “car with a life of its own,” “off the road in the deepest ditch of the whole hill,” and “vehicle suddenly facing the wrong direction.”

We also used props. “Yes, that enormous town plow that just passed, it tipped over on the hill two years ago during a snowstorm. Our hill really is THAT steep.”

As far as personal car hygiene went, we were adamant. A CD cover is NOT the same thing as an ice scraper.

Nor does a hot cup of coffee held close to the front window open enough of a dim little space of clear glass for safe driving. This method is no substitute for warming up the car, even though everyone I know has probably used the hot coffee technique. For our neighbor Malcolm, it was his signature winter move, used daily on his way to teach fifth grade.

Even this morning, I thought Jim was lingering over breakfast because the conversation was so scintillating, but then suddenly he said, “My windshield’s finally clear. I gotta go.”

Yep, in winter everyone around here is only half listening to anything that is being said. The rest of their brains are thinking about the hill, the snow, the ice, their windshields and the way these ingredients don’t always mix well.

Unlike ingredients for a cold drink where ice only makes things better.

Ah Thembi, welcome to winter where ice isn’t just for cold drinks!

The dogs and I went up into the hills above our farm today for a walk. From above, the patchwork of fields spilling from one farm to the next look a lot like they must have looked a hundred and fifty years ago when sheep farms filled this region. Besides the obvious addition of electric wires, the scene has an orderly timeless tranquility of early winter, something it must have had back then. Everything shipshape and ready for snow.

The one thing that always puzzles me as I walk the roads and fields around our farm is where are all the people. No one is ever home. It befuddles me. Morning, noon and night. Weekday and weekend. Our neighborhood is empty of people. Where is everyone? What are they doing? I really don’t know.

I wonder if a hundred and fifty years ago there would actually have been more bustle here. More home fires burning. More bumping into neighbors out doing chores. More community on a smaller neighborhood scale. I would have liked this.

As I think back to the moments I loved best this past year, they were mostly gatherings on a small scale: a winter bonfire on our farmland down the road, a night of song when one of the children’s friend visited with a guitar, picnics in the Arbor Garden to celebrate whatever we could think of to celebrate- a big garlic crop, the safe harvest of all the red shiso, the joyful return of a child coming home from travels or school.

Small sweet moments feel more and more worthy of celebration and gratitude and a feast (when the stove works), because life gives us all a lot of difficulties that make these moments feel more and more precious.

I know I haven’t written many posts this year. We have been wonderfully busy in the office and that was one contributing factor, but another reason was that we had a lot of difficult things happen to us, and it’s been hard to figure out how to even begin choosing words to describe the events.

One particularly poignant event was the death of my brother, Sam. He died this July in a motel room in Nashville,TN of a prescription drug overdose. A sorrowful end to a tragic life. Sam was the funniest person I have ever known and also the source of much confusion and pain for our family when his personality got the better of his heart, and he went off the deep end with drugs and violence directed at my family. Before his decline into drug addiction and desperate acts, he had been Jeff to my Mutt on a spiritual search for how to make sense of our difficult childhood. No one supported me more in my search for meaning. And then he was lost to us in a haze of scary choices. Letting him go when the relationship endangered my children was one of the most difficult and saddest moments of my life.

When he died this summer, I hoped and prayed he had remembered enough from all our spiritual adventures to get himself safely across the astral plane to heaven. When I heard of his death, I asked him to send me a sign that he was okay. That next morning as I walked into the office, a poster fell off the wall. Unbeknownst to me, the poster had an address label from Sam on it. His address on the label? Sunwood Place.

He always liked the razor’s edge between life and death, so it really shouldn’t have surprised me that Sam went on to spend a good bit of this summer and fall sending me wild and crazy signs that all was well with him and he was moving on and making amends. Much as I still feel in a muddle about other members of my family of origin, I have felt close to Sam since his death, and much healing has happened. For that I will always be grateful.

And while I have frequently reminded him and his Angels that I don’t want his imaginative efforts to console me to get in the way of his forward progress as a soul, I also hope he is up there in heaven giving talks on how to let the people left behind know you love them. He really is a genius at this!

Sam wanted fame while here on earth. It was one of many tragic obsessions that made it so hard for him to find his way. Now he is probably playing to sellout crowds doing heavenly stand-up, all the while finally knowing it doesn’t mean anything unless it serves the light in all of us. That was the thing about Sam. He knew exactly how to light everyone up with his humor, yet it all got away from him as darker pursuits prevailed during his life on earth. Thank God he will get more chances to get it right and be his very best self.

I cheer him on from here as he goes about his work of figuring out a new way for himself. And in the small circle of our family, we begin to mend the wounds of his crazed behavior, one small celebration at a time, and we begin to find a way forward that remembers the best in Sam and leaves the rest to God.

Our wonderful motley crew of Thanksgiving participants began to roll in last night bearing traditional Thanksgiving foods like kibbeh, fatoush, zaatar bread, hummus, laban cheese, olives and grape leaves- Yes, once again, long time Green Hope Farm friend and former staff goddess Catherine Boorady brought us a marvelous night before Thanksgiving feast of Lebanese foods.

Today, we have a gathering of friends from Ohio, Arizona, New Mexico, Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire bringing foods that reflect their German, Irish, Danish, Scottish, English, Lebanese and Mohawk roots. How I love this holiday and how it expresses our country’s wonderful ability to mix worlds with harmony, enthusiasm, joy AND with delicious results! Yes, I know sometimes we don’t harmonize very well as a people- but often we do, and Thanksgiving is a day when we do it well-

And so I send love and blessings to all of you from one part of the melting pot to yours and I raise a toast to the way we mix worlds and cultures with such wonderfully diverse foods and faces round the table!

PS The dogs here are having to find a melting pot of harmony as well. Here are the visiting and resident dogs’ bowls ready for their Thanksgiving meal!

I know. I know. It IS completely oxymoronic, even moronic, to bemoan the technology of the age while blogging on a computer- But sometimes I do wonder where this is all going.

At a soccer game on Saturday night, I sat next to a college student who clutched two iphones, one in each hand, one of which connected to an ear piece in his ear. I tried to keep my eye on the game but felt a sick fascination at someone who could do so much communicating and apparently make sense, though I must say that the conversation he was having with the 3D person to his right had a sort of autopilot feel, and I don’t think he was noticing the fine points of the game. Nonetheless, he had so many cutting edge communication mediums in play, my head was spinning. And frankly, it was already spinning from an afternoon I’d spent sorting out an enormous collection of Flower catalogs a friend gave me.

As you can imagine, decorating our packages with photos of Flowers requires a lot of photos. When a friend who runs a vegetable and flower stand offered to give me their farm’s outdated wholesale catalogs, I was delighted. During the drop off of this mother load of catalogs, my friend Sarah told me of her consternation about a convention for garden businesses that she had just attended. She reported that the marketing workshops had been beyond frightening. Apparently using designer names for all new hybrid Flowers and vegetables is all the rage.

Just what the world needs, Gucci parsnips.

When I sat down to leaf through all the catalogs, I got the drift. And fast. First, there were virtually no Flowers in the catalogs that I recognized. It wasn’t just the cutesy names like Sweet Carolina Bewitched or Molimba Mini Frizzle Pink that threw me off identifying what was being sold, but the hundreds of pages of glossy shots of Flowers I had never seen in any garden. I even noticed no one calls them Flowers anymore, these species were all referred to as “vegetative growth.”

Personally, I have always enjoyed imagining folks sending their sweethearts bouquets of “vegetative growth.”

I guess those who carry two iphones stay better in touch with what is happening in the agribusiness world than me, because everything I was looking at reminded me of a GM production line. And sounded like it too.

Here are a couple of bullet points from these catalogs and I quote:

“Goal: Provide growers with bulked up, performance-charged, ready-to-go-lines. Fast Tracks TM provide quick turns on 6.5 and larger container and basket production.”

My response? Are tests for steroids needed here?

Or this winner: “Higher profits via upscale, total package solutions including informative, eye catching tags and branded pots,”

And I thought it was the plants that were supposed to be eye-catching.

or my favorite:

“4.25 Grande self symetricize (registered trademark) container and flat filled display tray (patented) uses a unique version of our symetricize system. When used with automatic pot dispensers, containers shift into place perfectly in the tray-without assistance- to align logo and tag locator spots.

Or perhaps because of the automatic pot dispensers, people only THINK the containers have shifted perfectly into place without assistance…

OMG ( I learned about that one Saturday night- it’s the default remark when both of your iphones are blowing up)

Can’t you just hear the plants response? “What are we? Chopped Liver?”

Then there were the many catalogs proudly describing the journey of 10,000 miles that each of their six week old seedlings had taken. Do we all really want to buy plant plugs that start their life in Spain then get shipped to Georgia then trucked to us all before they have their first bud?

I guess the designer labels begin to make sense when you realize that every member of the Rockapulco series on offer has travelled more in six weeks than most of us will travel in a lifetime.

In response, I would like to offer some bullet points from Green Hope Farm:

During the spring, my much too small greenhouse is full of pots that are perched precariously, have popsicle stick labels and do not match.

I do not know what someone means when they say “expands the spring shoulder market.”

I still believe in dirt and seeds and I use them. Together.

My children send me on errands with the family cell phone and I am too embarrassed to tell them I don’t know how to turn it on.

And Jim, if you are reading this blog, I would love a bouquet of Flowers. Spare me the vegetative growth.

And last but not least, Sarah, if you are reading this blog, I feel your pain. And I am not sure a Supertunia named Vista Bubblegum is going to ease it.