I love turtles. Always did...always will. When I was a kid, if you went to the Barnum Bailey Circus at Boston Garden, you could buy a chameleon or a turtle for 99 cents. My sister and I had turtles for our first pet. We used to have races on the bedsheets early on a Sunday morning while my parents slept. No one ever worried about Salmonella. The turtles occaisionally got lost. Once we lost one and found it months later under the downstairs carpet and it was still alive. I live with the guilt of putting my turtle outside for a sunbath and then forgetting about him. When I returned, he was dead and all that was left of his eyes were black circles. It was one of the many lessons I recieved from the natural world. Stephen and I always stop to help a turtle cross the street. I guess it's my karmic debt to the species. I actually kind of love snapping turtles too. They remind me of dinosaurs and for all their feisty agressiveness, they are fun to watch in their element. We used to walk the railroad tracks in Marblehead to a little pond where we fished for snappers. We used chunks of meat for bait and the turtles were so big that catching and releasing them was a rush of adrenaline. They have punctuated my life. My new guilt has come with a growing interest in sea turtles. When we went to Antigua we swam in a bay with them and got all excited when we spotted their heads breaking the surface for a breath. I recently read that a sea turtle had washed up dead on a beach and biologists had found 317 pieces of plastic in its belly. Now, as I bring in my garden harvest, I feel guilt about my dependency on plastic bags. My prefered preserving technique is to blanch and freeze because the vegetables taste better than ones stored in jars and there is more texture because you don't have to boil them in a bath for 20 minutes. I can't believe how many plastic bags must be being thrown out in our society and the fact that the plastic doesn't ever go away is especially bothersome. In fact packaging has become ridiculous. I am aware that anything I can do to cut down on my consumption is a help. I've used my 4 pint berry boxes twelve times already and I'll use them more...so I've taken to washing out my plastic bags and hanging them up around the kitchen to dry. I chuckle to myself because my sister and I always laughed at my mother who hangs her plastic bags on the rungs of the kitchen stools and places the stool over the heating register to dry them. I always thought mom took her Scottish thriftyness a wee bit too far. Now I try to be more like her. So here it is August 1-2nd. It's Lammas...the Celtic Celebration Day for blessing the first fruits of the harvest. It's a day of mixed feelings for me because Lammas 1995 was my father's last day of life on Earth. His favorite thing was to mess around in his garden, especially toward the end of his life when most human beings became "assholes" or "horsesasses". Dad became downright ornery toward the end of his life though he always exuded joy while he created in the kitchen. As I write these sentences, I am aware that I celebrated him today, unwittingly. I worked in the garden and then made up a new recipe for spinach squares with my harvest. I picked berries. I puzzled over my compost piles and it dawned on me that what is missing for my compost, is movement. My piles are so big and heavy that I never turn them. Heavy shit. A layer of manure in spring is great for the garden but dressing the plants with compost would certainly help. I bought my garden a gift for Lammas...a big black recycled plastic composter that tumbles and I thought wow...what a cool way to celebrate first fruits and give back to the Earth some of the energy that she gives me in the form of my garden veggies. I felt like I found a missing key...and it is something as simple as a container for my waste so my waste doesn't go to waste. And that makes my mother feel better too. I'm not sure how I went from turtles to compost...but there you have it. Happy Lammas...and Dad, I miss you...your smile, your hearty laughter and your warm hugging arms...but you were with me today, here in my heart where the turtles swim and the plastic gets recycled.
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