After Gifts, Mystery

Gifts sometimes are accompanied by mystery--who really left the excellent sausage on our kitchen counter top? That mystery eventually solved itself--our neighbor Joe Wilkes had dropped it by.

But some mysteries remain--well, mysterious.

Last Sunday, Martha called from our driveway, blocked by a large construction truck. Trotting down there in the sloppy snow, we found, indeed, a truck from a Pegram company, not so carefully backed into our driveway and leaning against the fence. There were three post-hole diggers, a wet box of wrenches and bolts, a coil of wavy silver wire, an almost-new generator, an armload of crowbars, a drill, the drill charger, and a rumpled fluorescent vest.

What there was not was a driver, either in or around the truck or up or down the road, or a note. Interestingly, there were also no coffee cups, beer cans, or the usual detritus found inside a work truck--gloves, notebooks, lunch bags.

The police informed us that since the vehicle had been abandoned on our property, this was entirely our problem. Several of our neighbors generously offered to adopt the stray, and Kabir, arms crossed as he rocked back on his work boots, said this was a fifty-thousand dollar truck.

Over the next few days Tom played phone tag with the company whose logo was painted on the truck, and eventually someone came and drove it, presumably, home. It had not been missed, no one knows who drove it out here or where he went, and whoever retrieved it didn't stop to talk to Tom or to pick up the box of wrenches.

The Bermuda Triangle has its mysteries. So does Scottsboro. Though ours are ranged more in a skinny rectangle up and down both sides of Old Hickory Boulevard.

Gifts.

Tom is justly famed for his potluck blessings. This last Tuesday he, by way of gratitude, informed the Lord that he was very very pleased with our new-to-us 20-foot neckover deckover 5-foot dovetail braked trailer.

A week ago I came home to find an excellent roll of homemade sausage on the countertop--Joe Wilkes had dropped it by.

JodyTheComputerGeekSpelunkerJuggler helped me figure out how to record a poem for The Cortland Review.

The greenhouse has a lovely midline green haze of thready little onion starts. The garden keeps giving us carrots, and EricTheFarmer dropped by some little cabbage sprouts.

Elaine brought over lunch today.

But the farm's biggest gifts lately are the Sandhus--father and son, they have poured concrete, dug holes, designed water systems, trucked hay. To say nothing of loaning us their grandmother and her excellent cooking and philosopher/farmer grandfather.

We give thanks every day, and the Sandhus are welcome to use our new-to-us 20-foot neckover deckover 5-foot dovetail braked trailer whenever they need to move something really really big. And Kabir can raid our refrigerator any time.

Thank you, whoever you are. We will all do our best to keep on giving.

Yet another murmuration. Party. And so on.

Below is, in it's (somewhat erratically typed) entirety, the message I found in my in-box last Thursday, Tom having stayed up very very late sipping wine with JodyTheComputerGuyJugglerSpelunker.

By the time I got home yesterday, I was forced to park in one of the more-uh-cattle-intense parts of the pasture. Devender, Kabir, and the Oaxacans had worked all morning pouring a suddenly-available four yards of concrete for our shed extension, Tom had made chicken soup for a sick Oaxacan on the crew, and the party was well underway.

We had a fine time--friends old and new, the last of whom left sometime after 10 p.m. Tom allowed as to how he had decided that, at this event, he might let himself drink a bit too much, and, in retrospect, he did an excellent job. This tiny wedge of the universe has exceptional people on it--you've gotta love our low threshhold for entertainment...


This Friday @ about 4:15 Pm we are having a nonexclusive viewing of one of the Grand Phenonomona of the Greater Scottsboro Environs, The Great Sulpher Creek Murmuration.


For those of you unacquainted with such granduer a murmur is the pleural for a flock of blackbirds & a murmuration is a large flock of blackbirds,. starlings included,that participate in magnificantly wonderful aerial flockarity proir to roosting, in this case , in a large grove of bamboo.


The scene is greatly influenced by 2 or 3 Sharpshinned Hawks acting as "hosts" with the effect of enhancing the aerial dynamics of the flocks, and adding to the overall avian extravavagansa.


This will be a fine experience in the visual, spiritual, auditory,and for the less fortunate tactile, senses.Hats and not so fine shirts may be in order for the latter.Some olfactory sensual treats are an occasional, feature and should be appreciated for their organic & soil enriching qualities.


To avoid adding the gustatory to complete the sensory pentad light H'orderves will be served indoors.


Cocktails of appropriate variety & quality will be offered.Any contribution to this will by no means be considered offensive to your hosts.


Hosts of admirable social elegance & high energy would offer a well thought out culinary finale to the evening.Lacking these attributes, we suggest that such guests as are interested may consider a communial feed at the very good riverside catfish restaurant in Ashland City or some other ethnic restaurant in Nashville.


For those interested in the Sulpher Creek Farm that would like a tour, such will be very informally availiable at 3 pmish.


We are most recepive to any guests you may wish to bring.


We look foward to seeing you.


Tom & Brenda & Rachel

Early Morning Bus. Music. Books. Murmuration.

There is something clarifying about delivering daughter to Greyhound bus station at 4:30 in the morning--one is whisked nonstop downtown like a VIP on empty roads with blinking yellow lights to a glass box packed with humanity. A polite man in a white cowboy hat and bear-claw earrings offered me his seat, next to a woman hunched protectively over her boombox. We installed India beside an Amish boy and his black-bonneted mother at Gate Number Three, a door in a short row of four which all open onto the same small patch of sidewalk where the buses are nosed in.

Last night Tom and I were at Ann Patchett's new bookstore, Parnassus, to hear Barry Sulkin's guitar duo, Heavy Mellow. Definitely a Bells Bend invasion of Green Hills! We caught up on all the news--orchards, who (JimTheArtist and Heather) has moved into the neighborhood (Sandra's apartment and Ayla's little studio), who is buying property, easements for road and water access, and how many birders have visited the cranes in Hiawassee (two thousand). Tom ordered up several copies of the new Iliad translation to share with Mike and Jimmy. Though our shared peregrinations around the globe hardly constitute an odyssey. (And everyone's Penelope was along on the trip--none of us much into staying home to spin.)

India and Rachel threw a LastNightHome cocktail party--hot spiced rum cider (I think) and a viewing of the murmuration, our swirling flocks of blackbirds who circle, settle, flare back into the sky and eventually fall like tiny grenades into the bamboo to roost at dusk.

Like the birds, I plan (or maybe they don't actually plan--maybe they just do) to circle back, to the holidays in my case, and record a bit of the Farm doings over the last few weeks. But now--literally, alas--off for the root canal. Tooth Number Five.

Christmas Letter. Yes, it's old-fashioned.

Dear Family and Friends:

Although to the world at large this is the Christmas season, for us and the gang at Bells Bend Farms this is the end of our third CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) season. We had 85 happy families as members this year, and also sold produce at a local farmer’s market. Our absolutely splendid crew of workers, friends, neighbors, and volunteers have made boredom an impossibility, especially on Tuesdays, our potluck dinner night.

We harvested our first hops, and Yazoo Brewery made a limited edition of Bells Bend Preservation Ale, celebrated at our First Annual Hops and Square Dance Festival. Yazoo’s winter charity run is also scheduled for our neighborhood next week.

Tom’s retirement continues to be punctuated by the acquisition of machinery, most recently a much-needed pickup truck. I’m still fulltime at Vanderbilt, and have had a couple of art shows and poetry readings on the side, with work at Sunset River Marketplace in Calabash, North Carolina.

We had a spectacular trip to Turkey with a little side trip to Paris this fall. Tom had a memorable massage in a bathhouse that opened for business in 1539 , and came home with a bag of lovely Black Sea rocks (if you have to ask, you’ll never understand), in addition to the memories of hundreds of eagles and falcons circling overhead during fall migration. And so much more.

Liz has started grad school at the University of Chicago, studying literature, which will, of course, improve her barista credentials.

Rachel is in the middle of the med school applications process, and continues to work at Beaman Park, supervising volunteers (Vandy frat boys!) and assisting with environmental education.

India, after a term in Ecuador and a summer doing geology in Wyoming, is a senior at Beloit College—geology and the school paper seem to be her main interests these days. Or so we hope.

We’re going to have fresh carrots, beets, radishes, and greens throughout the winter—come on down and have dinner with us!


From Brenda, speaking for Tom, Liz, Rachel, India, and all the beings, sentient or otherwise, who have roamed through, eaten, dropped by, slept, danced, harvested, hoed, picked guitar/banjo/mandolin, barked, tunneled, washed dishes, laughed hysterically, swum, purred, and cackled over/on/through Sulphur Creek Farm this year…and Merry Christmas to you all!

the week that was. another one. "gotta get my baby heads"

So let's see: Sunday the beach/Thanksgiving crowd (well, really Tom and Rachel) return. Monday a spontaneous shrimp-fest. Weird pics of Tom's Black Sea Rocks brought home from Turkey, along with the Black Sea plastic doll arm, which triggered the appearance of the Sulphur Creek Very Strange Doll Head and Related Stories. (Tom's immortal line: "gotta get my baby heads"...)

Tuesday: Potluck at EricTheFarmer's. Wednesday: Gathering of the HopHeads--Tom, Keith, Eric, Joe, and Peter--to plan where to put new cables to expand the hop crop. Thursday: Farm dinner.

Friday: My most challenging monthly day-long clinic, lunch talk, inpatient rounds, signout. Raced over to Scarritt-Bennett for the opening of "23 Years", a very interesting show about war which features a large group of my drawings. Eventually home for the end of Rachel's birthday dinner.

Saturday: big batch of greens and slaw cooked up with Sidney for the Nashville Occupiers.

Quite a week. Maybe you had to be here.

Actually not all that different from most weeks.

(And thanks to Shea Sulkin for the photo and a good bit of the hysterical laughter around Monday night's dinner table.)

The Day After: Loony

A beautiful day in Hickman County, where Martha and I painted Sharon's horses (literally, as it happened: one nipped at my cadmium orange and proceeded to spread it over one leg, lips, and side--our scrubbing turned it a sickly pink), and had the perfect Thanksgiving dinner and Lick Creek walk.

We just knew that the ThanksgivingAtTheBeach crowd was truly bored: nothing to do but walk and read. Called to confirm and crow a little in our superiority, and heard this:

Here's DiAnne's pic of the little loon that Rachel and a couple of other heroic beach-walkers rescued from illegal gillnets on Sunset Beach yesterday. Nipped Tom, but practically purred for Rachel, I hear, and wanted to follow her around.

Loony found a nurturing home with a Brunswick County bird rescuer, who thinks the prognosis for eventual return to the wild is good.

If THAT hadn't happened, they would have been bored. Without me. Really.