Playing in the dirt

Walmart sucks. I had just been shopping in the civilized world on Friday, but I had a false memory that I had recently purchased wheat bran and had not put in on my list. Imagine my surprise when I began measuring ingredients for muffins Saturday morning and could not find the new box anywhere. Harvard has limited options for groceries. We used to have Sullivan’s for groceries and the World’s Smallest Walmart for other things. Then they built the new Super Walmart, and Sullivan’s pulled out. It was replaced ever so briefly by Cost Savers, but it couldn’t compete either. There are several small Mexican groceries which are fine if one is looking for items for that cuisine.

So off to Walmart I went. I first asked Hilda if she had wheat bran, which she did not. But she needed ice cream, bittersweet chocolate, and unsweetened chocolate for a recipe she was making. I made a list and set off.

One problem I have with any store I visit infrequently is that I don’t know where things are. I looked in places where I find bran at Meijer and Woodman’s. Nothing. I found a number of Bob’s Red Mill products, but they were in the Gluten Free section, which is not the place for wheat bran. I saw a young woman in a blue vest checking the meat section. “Excuse me,” I said, “where would I find wheat bran? Sometimes it is in the baking aisle and sometimes it is with the cereal, but I don’t see it either place.”

“What is that?” she countered.

I am the wrong person to ask. I know too much. I resisted the temptation to deliver a lecturette on seed structure, but was at a loss for a simple explanation. “It’s, uh, the bran of wheat.” Now I sounded condescending.

“I figured that much,” she said. “What is it used for?”

“Baking, usually. Do you have an organic section?”

“I got organics all over the place,” she answered. She got her phone and started searching inventory. “I have All-Bran. Let’s see--is it different from wheat germ?”

Twice was too much for me. “No, wheat germ is the embryo. Bran is the seed coat.” I’m sure that cleared everything up for her.

“So it would look like this?” she asked, showing me a picture of Bob’s Red Mill wheat bran.

“Yes,” I said.

“I don’t have it.”

“Okay, thanks for checking.” And by the way, your store sucks. I didn’t say that last part. I don’t think of wheat bran as being an unusual food. How can they not have it?

I was able to find everything that Hilda needed. I stopped at La Rosita’s on my way home. There were more varieties of dried chiles than you could shake a stick at but no bran.

I had to go home because of the ice cream. I was thinking of going to Sentry in Walworth, but Hilda talked me out of it, saying that they didn’t have much inventory either. She had some All-Bran. I read the ingredients and decided it would do in a pinch. It was not, strictly speaking, all bran, but there wasn’t too much else in it.  I wasn’t taking an hour out of my day to drive to Woodstock. The muffins turned out fine.

After lunch I went for a walk. It was 63°! Beautiful day. I had been hearing killdeer for weeks, but this was the first time I saw them in the yard.

Killdeer in the yard

The creek had gone down. The height of the floodwater was apparent by the debris caught in these branches. This is the first time I noticed that a barbed wire fence had fallen into the creek. You can see the wire behind the fallen tree. There’s a fence post parallel to the water and on top of the log at the left.

Evidence of the flood plus a fallen barbed wire fence

Terry finished burning the parts of the field that were too wet two weeks ago. My restoration area burned really well this year. Maybe it got hot enough to get rid of the reed canary grass. I’m not holding my breath.

The restored wetland thoroughly burned

Terry has been saying for weeks that the grass was turning green. There is finally evidence to support this claim.

Green grass

A few weeks ago, I was inspired by an email offer to order a Woodland Garden of native plants. This assortment of shade-tolerant plants is supposed to fill up 75 ft². I thought a good place would be where we took that big buckthorn out last fall. Because of the former shade, there wasn’t a lot of woody undergrowth. I had to prep the site right away to keep anything from sprouting.

The buckthorn stump around which I propose to plant a shade garden of native plants

I sent Terry out for two bales of straw. His usual supplier had only one bale left, so he got two hay bales as well. He put them out by the site along with a roll of tablecloth paper he had in the shop taking up space. We were short on newspaper. I got a shovel, rake, hand pruners, and scissors from the garden shed and took the long walk to the creek.

First I measured 75 square feet. I did it the easy way—10 ft x 7.5 ft. I put pin flags in the corners, and it did not turn out to be exactly rectangular. Jimmy Crack Corn. 

Measuring and flagging

I raked away the branches and leaves, cutting out a few grapevines (which put Marvin Gaye in my head, as always with grapevines).

Flagged and raked

I started spading. It took me awhile to realize that I should be surprised that the ground was thawed. The soil was fairly loose making my task easy at first. Not surprisingly, as I moved closer to the stump, I began running into buckthorn roots, readily identified by their orange color. Roots are such a bitch. Sometimes they loosened as I pulled them. Sometimes they gave way suddenly, showering me with black dirt as I fell over backwards. Sometimes I dug and dug just to find where the root was and struggled to cut it with the hand pruners. As long as I was on my knees, I pulled out garlic mustard crowns without number. So much garlic mustard.

Spaded

At length, I was ready to roll out the paper. It was quite thin. I put down three layers, weighing one corner down with the bucket holding newspapers. I covered the paper with straw to hold it in place while I did a second row.

The first row of paper and straw

The second row of paper just about covered the area. I filled in the rest with newspapers and covered the whole thing with straw. That should shade out any garlic mustard I missed. I only used one bale. Oh well. Terry will find something to do with the hay.

All done. Now we wait for the plants to be delivered

As with every spring, I’m having the day when it is obvious that working out is not the same as working. My whole body hurts, and it will be worse tomorrow. It is not, however, the mysterious and maddening aches and pains of growing older. This is the soreness of getting stronger. It’s a good pain.