A dirty rainy morning. To console ourselves for the clouds, we try to tell ourselves that nature needs water. There are a couple of mallards around a pond not far from the house. We rarely see them together; while the female is on the nest, the male stays away, alone.
May. It’s that time of year when I become a farmer again. For several weeks already, in the countryside, we have been busy starting a cycle again. The tools are taken out, “re-branched”, sharpened. The machines are serviced and ready. At the edge of the rows, for large-scale agriculture, the machinery is parked, waiting to be able to “embark” into the fields to sow seeds. The market gardeners began putting the lettuce in the ground at the beginning of April.
Gray morning, then. A little news and current affairs when you wake up. In writing and on the radio. Nothing to be happy about. Camps, opposing ideologies (the same logic since the dawn of the world: oppressed against oppressors). As usual, we remake the world and tear up our Lululemon t-shirt. In the stands, the avatars of indignation intoxicate us day after day, endlessly and ad infinitum. It’s going bad, astie, we know it. But we can sometimes also look through the other end of the lens. It seems to me. One day a week, let’s say.
We can guess that the ambient air is angry and fragile, close to its limits. That was enough for the day. Quota reached. To hell with the rain, I’ll go pick some wild garlic for my mother. Don’t feed boredom, don’t foster boredom or resentment, ever. We know it ends in arguments.
A bag, a pitchfork and a pair of boots later, passing the shed tractors, there was a baby bird, obviously fallen from the sky, under the bucket of the pip, and unable to fly. Another bird, an adult, panicked, flew around me and uttered cries. Damn coincidence that the little one escaped the stray cats, including a cat as big as two this spring. I stretched the extension ladder up to the ridge, over the beams, then picked up the little blackbird and placed him in his nest built in an attic rafter. The mother waited until I had gone away and she found him.
Further into the forest, like a child, I traced channels with my feet in the mud so that the water would make a path and drip down to the small river. Nature point: fern, lily of the valley and young tender green leaves. Ticks too. Two on me, in an hour. Dirty. I could have cursed climate change, governments, society, or the slow pace of science in producing a vaccine. It’s Sunday, we’re holding back.
I tore off about thirty garlic bulbs. The limit is 50. We push the fork with a strong kick to its limit, we then raise it with a lever to “loose” the earth and with the other hand, we plunge into it to pull on the garlic. Great happiness. Especially since these are new tillers discovered in a small hill two weeks ago.
On the way back to the return path, a huge racket two meters away: a frightened wild turkey flew off the ground in a huge crash of air and noise. Bad jump. She remained there, motionless until the last second, because she was incubating her nest. Protective instinct. That others, more socialized, would also dare to call love or feelings. An idea of survival like any other, we say to ourselves, in view of the state of the world, as if having children sent destiny to shit, through the bombs, the horrors and the fundamental failures of benevolence.
When the turkey flew away, three eggs rolled out of the nest, down the slope. The female bird, perched high on the branch of a large hemlock, looked down, worried.
With my hands covered in wet earth, wiped on my pants, I picked up the three eggs one by one and put them back in the nest, with the six others. I left with the fork on my shoulder and a small bunch of wild garlic to offer. Without the mothers of the world, there would be less follow-up.
Happy Mother’s Day.
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