June Diary: by Luanne Armstrong

June Journal:

At the beginning of June, even though I had promised people I was coming, I resisted going to Kaslo and Nelson to teach, even going so far as to email the organizers to see if they would cancel. But no go.

And then I left the farm, got to Nelson, had a good time, and realized that leaving the farm, periodically, is a good thing. Five days of talking and visiting and home again. And of course, things are fine.

The garden is in; the ground is weeded, three weeks of rain soaked everything and the fir and cedar have responded with lush electric green tips on their branches. The hot weather plants, tomatoes and eggplants, are sulking and yellow but their turn will come now the sun is back. Right now, they are pushing their root tips into the soggy fertile ground and getting ready to produce mountains of fruit. I planted only the large, purple-black eggplants this year. The smaller eggplants are more productive but I love the colour of the big fat ones. Every year I pick them and stare at them; how can a purple be so black, a black be so iridescent? I have never seen a colour like it anywhere else.

Plus Nelson is a mini-city. So I bought five books, several magazines, looked at hemp shirts and some other lovely and very expensive clothes I would never buy. But I did buy puzzles and toys for Tiger Lily and Tallulah. And I took home a bag of expensive organic food I can’t get in Creston; ate brilliant lunches and even did some writing. What’s not to like? But it’s hard to leave the farm, especially at this time of year. There’s always something that needs doing, something to plant, something to weed, something to water, even something to pick. Even though it is the middle of June, the garden is bursting with spinach, radishes, lettuce, onions, Chinese cabbage, Swiss chard, and even broccoli. Every morning, I wander with my coffee. There is always a new flower opening. When I am there, the farm becomes the world.

And too often, late at night, unable to sleep, I read. I read about the oil plumes in the Gulf of Mexico, albatross chicks starving to death after their parents feed them plastic, mistaking it for fish. I read about peak oil and possible food shortages in the future, about global warming, ice sheets melting in Greenland. This fall, I will fill the shelves again with canning, jars full of dried fruit, and a freezer full of vegetables, fruit and meat. Life continues here as it has for ten thousand years.

And yet I am planning on running away from it all again. Not for long and not soon, but the need to finish the two books I have been slowly working on. So I will try to spend some time in the city in the fall. The essays on land are almost done but the ethics book needs some concentration and time. The farm is a difficult place for a writer. A farm needs to be a community; it needs people, it needs parties and dinners and planning and work. And I need solitude and time to walk and think and write. So I will run away again to the smelly city where life is too easy and the grocery story full of expensive fruit that I would never pay for at home and the library is just down the hill and all the tools I need and want as a writer are there; my friends, books, my writer’s life and all the time my heart will be crying, go home, go home, go home.

The weekend after I got home was full of people: sons, friends, and a lovely long leisurely Sunday morning with all sorts of people dropping by, eating raspberry pancakes and apple cake, then coffee or lemonade and sitting in the (finally) hot sun. Then I drove to Creston and did an exhibition ride at the Therapeutic Riding Centre. People cheered and applauded and my riding instructor asked if I would think about going to the National Therapeutic Riding Centre Dressage test sometime in the future. I immediately said yes, even though I have no idea what this means. But it is a goal to ride towards and a new vision of myself, at 61, as a ‘disabled athlete.’ Hilarious. But fun.

The farm has now acquired an old wood cookstove that will eventually become part of the summer kitchen-shower-bathroom building we will one day build at the beach and a relatively new tractor that will be used for many, many things.

Today the clouds are rolling in a bit but the tomatoes are in flower as are the intensely blue Chinese delphiniums, the purple delphiniums, the white miniature roses, and the pink poppies are ready to ‘pop’. I feel like getting a chair and sitting beside them, quietly cheering.