Fragments From Floyd

Garden Plotting ** This year's garden was neither the best or the worst garden we've ever had. Among the long list of defeats were some successes. You may remember that I railed against the green beans early in the summer (slow to flower, covered with Japanese Beetles, and not the beans I'd intended but POLE beans unsupported and twining all over the garden). But we harvested 21 quarts off the plants last week, and they are better in taste than Blue Lake and some of the others we've planted. Next year, we'll plant a smaller number of Kentucky Wonder and let them climb up the sunflowers--something that happened accidentally this year. I pulled almost a quart of straight, perfect seven-inch beans off one sunflower stalk that held this running bean up in the light with plenty of room to mature properly. Victory, of sorts, from our mistakes and the forces of entropy. We pulled the spent bean plants the other day; I tilled the bean rows back to a clean slate. There's nothing prettier than a freshly prepared seedbed--such potential, so earthy! I thought as I discovered that deer had left deep cloven pits in my seedbed overnight. Insult to injury, the hoof prints had pierced into the empty blackness of mole tunnels running everywhere, rubbing my nose in our powerlessness against creatures of the night, of the very earth, of the air who must eat too.

School Dazing ** I spent several times longer at Radford than I had planned on Wednesday butting my head against bureaucratic and technological glitches that, as Mr. Murphy so well stated, make things take more time than you have. I visited my assigned classroom (some good little distance across campus from my office) to be sure the laptop would work with the multimedia setup. It didn't. I owe the secretary in the Interior Design office a batch of cookies; I borrowed her phone six times to talk to tech support to problem solve. After installing a new bit of software (air projector client) I was able to wirelessly connect to the system and should be good to go at my first meeting with students on Monday morning. Glad I didn't walk in cold and expect things to work.

Desk Jockeying ** Today I pick up the hardware for the hanging files to go in my bottom drawers of the new desk. I'll have to reinvent a filing system based now on the amazing new assumption that I will actually be able to OPEN the drawer to access the information inside in ALL SEASONS of the year--not just winter when the woodstove sufficiently dried out all the moisture that the swollen particle board had been absorbing, spring and summer and fall. I reach down every so often now and effortlessly open and close the empty drawers on the new desk a few times, just because I can.

PowerPointing ** The program at the library went well last night. No equipment or costume malfunctions. No tips of the slung or gross errors of judgement. Four thousand words read with reasonable enunciation and articulation. It was well attended by Floyd standards. And not a single person lost consciousness during the 25 minute program while the lights were out! It was well-received, I think, and quite a few expressed fellow-feeling in matters of place and belonging. Many had similar stories of finding their homes here in the county quite by accident, discovering that here, there seems to be here a nutrient that we cannot live without. Just what is the essence of belonging and attraction to this place in all the world remains to be understood.