Samain                                                                            Closing Moon

At some point the weather of Conifer and Andover will diverge. This week is a foretaste. Andover heads into the teens while Conifer remains in the 30’s and 40’s. This divergence will increase as December and January come with Andover getting colder and colder, but Conifer remaining 10 to 20 degrees warmer. Fortunately, this process reverses as Andover heats up, Conifer remains cooler and will eventually be cooler consistently than Andover during the summer months. From my perspective this is an ideal divergence from our norms here, mildly warmer in the winter, markedly cooler in the summer. And, yes, this factored in our choice of locations.

Going to lay down the broadcast in the vegetable garden and the orchard this morning, then mulch. Kate and Anne planted next year’s garlic crop while I was in Colorado. With no additional effort then, the new owners will have apples, pears, plums, cherries, currants, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus and garlic from their orchard and vegetable garden. In addition they will have daffodils, liguria, monkshood, many varieties of Asiatic lilies, iris and hemerocallis. Clematis, daffodils, tulips and fall crocus will bloom, too. Wisteria, lilac, bushy clematis and snakeroot put fragrance, delicate and sweet, in the air. They will have three different sheds in which to organize their outdoor life and a firepit for family evenings. There are, too, the separated plantings of prairie grass and wildflowers that bracket the front lawn, providing habitat for butterflies and other wildlife.

In addition the property has about 1.5 acres of woods, including a morel patch that shows up in the late spring. With the inground irrigation system this is a place for a person with an interest in living closer to the earth and harvesting the literal fruits of such a lifestyle.

Included with the property is enough woodenware to get a beekeeping hobby started.

Fall                                                                       Falling Leaves Moon

Another box. Carpet. 160 yards of a champagne colored floor covering that we may never walk on. Weird. At Hamernick’s Decorating in St. Paul we walked across the street from their main showrooms to another Hamernick’s building. This one, instead of aisles filled with flooring samples and fabric books, had stacked rolls of carpet. It would have made Harun al-Rashid comfortable.

Though there were more rows in the back, the front had two rows of carpet still attached to the cardboard rolls from the mills. Both rows were over my head in height which meant there were carpet rolls buried beneath as many four and five other rolls. Each row was probably 30 feet long. How did they get the bottom ones out, I wondered?

There was the answer. Near the open back door a man got onto an ordinary forklift with an unordinary front attachment, a long round metal probe, the exact length of the carpet rolls, drove it over and deftly picked up a fat roll. A worker there said he could get at any roll in “under 10 minutes.” Then, looking at the precarious portions of the two nearby rows stacked up against the far concrete wall, he amended that, “Well, maybe not those.”

Afterward Kate and I had lunch at Mai Village on University Avenue. While we waited for our food, I told Kate the story of the owners who flew Vietnamese carpenters in to build the interior. It’s a marvelous feat of woodcraft with delicate light sconces and elegant open screens, thick pillars, an interior roof over tables each with bamboo lengths carved from dark wood along the table edge. Each chair at the tables has an open back, again carved.

Later, on the way home, discussing what we would miss about the Twin Cities I used that story as an example. “I’ll miss,” I said, “the thick network of memories and concrete places, a network woven over 40 years. Like the story of Mai Village this network is idiosyncratic to these cities. But, part of the fun will be building a new network in Denver.”

Fall                                                                                          Falling Leaves Moon

11 hours of sleep last night, a nap this afternoon, by tomorrow I’ll be back in the land of the fully awake, a state I try to encourage on as many levels as possible. Still feeling a bit numb from the sudden whirlwind of energy about the Tchaikovsky Road house. I didn’t mention that it had a great address, 329 romantic Russian composer street.

I remember, come to think of it, another stupid state, finals stupid. Just before, during and in the immediate aftermath of final exams my world would narrow to streams of data, large chunks of ideas and my focus would be tight. Cooking was ramen noodles, mac and cheese. Lots of coffee, pencils, outlines and summaries. Finals stupid and move stupid are very similar though move stupid has occupied a longer period of time. They both simplify and constrict the flow of information, ratcheting down to those matters relevant to the task.

It’s simplification and constriction that produce the effect, the shoving out of irrelevances, pushing them to the periphery and maintaining attention, a most precious cognitive resource, where it needs to be. But these are not states I would want to last very long. They produce an intense concentration on particular results, necessary, yes, but there are other pursuits that call to me.