Ey yi yi

The biggest news of the week was the mass slaughter of tomato transplants, which turns out is a lot more harrowing and stomach turning to me than slaughtering ten measly rabbits (which is what I did exactly a week before). For one, my damn fine memory makes it impossible for me to fool myself into thinking I was not to blame-- I know that some of the plants we dug up were put in the ground by yours truly and no matter how much I'd like to, I can't throw the entire blame on Brian. I mean, this was certainly not all me-- a small comfort, I guess. Henry has remained his stoic self throughout this whole ordeal, breaking it only to muse how on earth so many could have died “I've never seen the likes of this before” and comforting me (in his way) when I fell into stressed-induced super guilt. I had a bit of stress anyway this week but it was nothing, NOTHING, to how I felt about the tomatoes. These are Henry's cash crop, after all, and we fucked it up, WE, people. Not rain, or frost, or bugs, or disease, but people who spent hours and hours over the last three months transforming these from seeds to plants and then what? Just smashing them into the ground with such careless abandon that 207 of them, a freaking third of his entire crop, die within the next few days? Shameful is what that is, and I couldn't get it out of my head. Thursday he informed us we'd be replanting transplants and we were thinking that we'd be putting roughly thirty plants into the ground. As we walked slowly down the rows with shovels, digging a foot down at each withered or missing plant, the mood darkened considerably. Each shovel full was like a little grave digging into my conscience-- I was sad, and stressed, and so, so guilty. Excuses were like wildfire, but I knew that some of the plants I planted just keeled over, that I put them on their sides and bent the stems past capacity. Others did this, too, which I'll probably say it to myself a dozen more times; these excuses, along with Henry's “so it goes” attitude, have been my saving grace on the subject. There was definitely a hurry to put them into the ground and Henry's beds were full of two-foot tall, mowed down wheat grass that had only been plowed under earlier in the day, making it nearly impossible to dig deeper than 5 inches. The plants were already on the tall side for planting anyway, so the method for getting them in the ground before the rain came (which, of course, was supposed to be anytime) was to put them on their sides, support the stems with some dirt, and bend them up before burying them and tamping them in. They were too big, it was too shallow, and we probably pressed to hard. We, not just I, but unfortunately a whole lot of I, I think. I called Charlie on the long walk back to the trailer Thursday night after transplanting til 8 and he gave me some comfort, though my stress was even more compounded by Henry telling Mustard to have us interns meet him ten minutes early the next day so he could talk to us. “Oh god!” I thought. I didn't know what I was scared of (now I think a fat lot of that was pms-induced) but it certainly wasn't that I would get yelled at, or Henry would get mad, or I would be fired or anything like this. I was just scared that I would show up to this meeting and Henry would put to voice all the nagging guilts I had accumulated and excused away (or at least to the nether regions of my brain). Over and over that evening I thought about all the things I've done wrong-- not working hard enough, not working fast enough, talking too much, showing up a couple minutes late... not to mention those tomatoes. Charlie calmed me and said, “Henry is fair, but has high expectations.” Perfectly true. And after a fitful night's sleep I woke up bright and early and the three of us walked to the greenhouses to face the music, only to get a pep-talk about harvest day protocols. Geeze. We blasted through this Friday, too, finishing just after 4pm. I came home, showered and heated up some leftovers before Brian came in. We watched Super Troopers, my ultimate favorite funny movie, and I went to bed at about 8, successfully fooling myself into thinking it was 2 hours later. My first market day, which was about 16 hours from start to finish, began at 1:40am, waiting in the pitch dark at the end of the trailer lane for Henry to pick me up in the big market truck. We talked a bit in the ride up, but had “silent time” after his designated pee stop and during which time I gratefully slept until our arrival at the kosher Dunkin Donuts in Skokie (the designated changing clothes and contacts-in stop). I downed a big cup of coffee and a donut (I'd also already put away a bowl of oatmeal I ate out of tupperware around 2am) and was in tip-top form by the time we pulled into the market. Unpack, schmooze, a trip to my sacred Unicorn (which included a latte and pastry and Mandi time) and before I knew it 5 hours had passed and the market was underway. I had a great time and will probably go up to Evanston pretty often. I also didn't get too bowled over by the long day and early start. 

This morning we raced against rain and Zoe's high school graduation to move around some transplanted kale (transplanting transplants. The theme of May, I think) and then put the sweet potatoes in the ground. Brian and I finished up while the Fam went to watch their valedictorian get her diploma and we put the very last pepper in as the fat rain drops we'd been praying for began to fall on us. We rushed back and pulled my laundry off the clothesline and had a blissful five minutes before the massive thunderstorm killed the power in the trailer. Made beans in the dark (not many vegetables coming back from market... another week of sorrel is ahead) and once the hail died down Brian and I escaped our dark hot-box of a home and hit the road to blo-no, where I am writing to you, watching a lame soccer game, and waiting for B's girlfriend to get in from the train. Also I went to the bathroom and realized I was covered in dirt. Such a charmer.