Jinny's Occasional Poems

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Monday, May 1, 2023 (Beltane/May Day); from Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal, 

Happy May Day! I’ve now experienced my first cool weather harvest in San Diego. Starting in mid-February, I had decent crops of chard, lettuce, carrots, kale, parsley, and leeks. We’d had adequate rainfall and a good bit of cool weather; there even were frost warnings one or two nights. By late February, I’d harvested enough carrots for sixteen carrot cupcakes for Parker’s birthday. He’ll be driving soon, which makes me feel old. In a somewhat downbeat journal entry on his birthday, I wrote:

“Find myself sometimes ‘channeling’ Granny and Pop-Pop—an aging couple, mostly housebound, living through uncertain times together.” Covid concerns are waning somewhat, but some restrictions are still in place and life is not yet back to “normal” (and maybe never will be).

Our mid-winter travels took us briefly out to sea for a whale watching expedition. Not being avid sports fans, we’d accidentally booked our afternoon cruise on Super Bowl Sunday, so the boat wasn’t crowded. In our previous attempts we’d not seen any whales. This time we got to see perhaps a dozen—mostly brief glimpses of spouting at a distance of half a mile or so. More endearing to me were the pods of dolphins who seemed to enjoy swimming alongside our boat, nearly close enough to touch. I’d taken some motion sickness medicine and never got sick, just a little drowsy. We went far enough outside San Diego’s harbor to become aware of how sheltered San Diego’s bays are. When we got home, the “big game” was still going on. Kansas City eventually prevailed with a field goal in the final minute.

My mood improved with the weather in early March. I discovered an extensive “Japanese Friendship Garden” in one of the canyons of Balboa Park—nearly twelve acres of cherry trees and other ornamental plantings. When I first went, the cherry blossoms were just starting to come out, but many of the azaleas and camellias were in full bloom. Wish you could see them. We’re gradually making improvements in our own small yard. We purchased a young pomegranate tree and a hybrid “Meyer lemon” at a local nursery. Purchase price included delivery and planting by a landscaping team. We’ve also purchased a raised bed planter (on metal supports and about waist high) for an area near the privacy fence we share with our next door neighbor.

I spent part of the cool weather season polishing up a set of blog posts to create an essay collection which I then self-published via Ingram, an alternative to Amazon that seems to specialize in global sales centering on libraries and research institutions. “Somewhat Centrist, Slightly Sexist Seasonal Rants” will never make any bestseller lists, but I was gratified to have seen the process through to publication. I sent out various promotional copies to family and friends, but have yet to make more than a few “for profit” sales.

The latest episode in our saga of aging was an “eye explosion/retinal tear” that Jim experienced while driving home from a nearby lunch with friends. He says it was as if a spider had suddenly built a web in his left eye. We were doubly blessed that he was able to get home safely and that we were then were able to get an emergency appointment with a retinal specialist. I drove him to see Dr. Lee, who stayed after hours to treat him, about 5:30 that same afternoon. Dr. Lee, a spritely older woman of Chinese background, expertly repaired the tear; follow-up visits show no permanent damage.

We’ve also benefited from the wisdom of an older friend who’d had a similar episode about a month before Jim’s. Our friend Marc is part of the lunch group Jim had just finished attending when his eye misfired—post-retirement men who gather about once a month for “ROMEO” meals: Retired Old Men Eating Out. Aging, it seems, is an adventure better done as a community. Hope your White Rose Farm Circle is thriving, as they seem to be a big part of your community through these fraught times.

Enough for now. Please take good care. Lots of virtual hugs!

Love, Jin

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Monday, October 31, 2022 (Samhain/Hallowe’en); from Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal,

No trick or treaters at all this year, despite a general decline in covid worries. Now have at least a partial explanation, courtesy of one of son Jason’s next-door neighbors who grew up here:

Hallowe’en really is a big deal in the U.S. southwest, especially this close to the border with Mexico. Hallowe’en festivities often get twinned with “Day of the Dead” celebrations that occur during the first few days of November. Families buy Hallowe’en costumes for their young children, alongside the marigolds and chrysanthemums for creating temporary family “altars” for loved ones who have died. In advance of Hallowe’en night, some parents will drive around to “scope out” areas and neighborhoods where the sidewalks are safe and the prospects for bountiful candy are good. Parts of the large housing complex where we live (over 700 single family homes in close proximity) are nearly ideal for trick or treating. There are lots of families with children of their own in the development, hence lots of candy. Also, the streets and alleyways are laid out in such a way that it’s possible to visit lots of houses without crossing any streets.

There are only four entrance streets to our entire complex, with a sort of “ring road” one block in from the entrances and then short, stubby, streets with alleyways between any cross streets, leading to dead ends at a six-acre park at the center of our “Villa.”  People who live “inside” the ring road are referred to as being on the “inner loop,” while those outside the ring road are on the “outer loop.” Jason and Kelly and their neighbors are “inner loopers,” very close to the park, while our house is on the “outer loop.” We live along the block leading in from our area high school. Young trick or treaters can cross our alleys with little risk—there’s very little automobile traffic except at rush hour. However, parents are rightly leery about having their children cross any streets.

Once we figured out the “system,” it made sense. When we asked Jason and Kelly this year how many trick or treaters they typically get, they said “hundreds.” On a recent video call, daughter-in-law Morgan recounted how during their Hallowe’en visit last year, they’d had to send somebody out to buy more candy after the 11 pounds Kelly had initially stocked ran out. Morgan and Scott officially married on October 20, with a small ceremony in the nearby town of Findlay, OH. They sent pictures—a nice set of relatives in autumn-colored outfits, with 5-month old Kenley looking especially fetching. One of Morgan’s grandparents, “Grandma Shirley,” is still alive and attended part of the festivities—she’s the matriarch of family redheads.

In this year’s midterm elections, I’ll again participate as an early voting and election day poll worker. The length of the early voting period where I’ll be stationed is a lot shorter than the two-plus weeks I spent in North Carolina in 2020—basically just an extra-long weekend. California has had mail-in ballots for many election cycles already, so the expectation is that a pretty high proportion of ballots will be cast that way, especially since concerns about covid have not yet entirely disappeared.

I’ve been through a two-day training regimen at an area library, along with workers for several other early voting sites. Our site leader seems to be a retired military officer with a good bit of prior experience running elections. We’ll have face masks and hand sanitizer for those who want them, but masking is not mandatory this cycle. The number of languages used for printed ballots is higher than I’m used to, with several Asian languages as well as English and Spanish. Perhaps because I’m new to the temporary electoral workforce, perhaps because I was just too dumb to request a voting site near where we live, I’ll have a long commute for the several days of early voting—to a county park about 20 miles north of Tierrasanta. Should give me more than my fill of freeway driving.

Soon I’ll need to buckle down and research what candidates and issues I want to support via my own ballot. California allows “ballot initiatives,” some generated by the state legislature, others certified if a certain proportion of registered voters request them. Some of the issues seem important to me; others mainly seem like some disgruntled partisan wanted to stroke his/her ego by getting verbiage onto the ballot.  

A month or so ago, I became an official member of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego, after about a year of intermittent Sunday attendance and a fairly lengthy orientation process. It’s not a perfect fit—I’d prefer something geographically closer to where we live if I could find it, but it’s a good group of people. Like most congregations these days, it trends somewhat older.

Not long after moving to San Diego, Jim and I joined the Tierrasanta Village Movement of San Diego (TVSD). For adults over 50, its membership is centered on the few square miles of this “Island in the Hills” that Tierrasanta calls itself. As I understand it, TVSD aims to strengthen the social and mutual help ties that reduce loneliness and lengthen the interval when we can live mostly-independently rather than becoming part of a “continuing care” facility. Covid has pretty severely limited the activities TVSD can provide for now—outdoor gatherings, some video calls and phone trees.

Tierrasanta is a fairly self-enclosed community, surrounded by freeways and a regional park. Over 3,000 older adults live among a general population nearly 10 times that large. Within TVSD overall, there are neighborhood subgroups—I’ve attended a couple of events for our neighborhood at our complex’s central park. I have a regular TVSD weekly walking partner who lives a couple of blocks away. On good days, I don’t much notice that I’m getting older. On other days, well…

Hope you’re aging gracefully. Please take good care. Lots of virtual hugs! 

Love, Jin

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Monday, August 1, 2022 (Lammas/Midsummer) ; from Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal,

Happy Midsummer! Happy Lammas! Since I last wrote, the Batterson clan has added a new member: Kenley Jean Batterson, born in Lima, OH on May 21. Mom, dad, and baby seem to be doing just fine. Although we knew the covid risks of airplane travel, Jim and I couldn’t resist a chance to see the new baby and her parents in person during a brief visit to Ohio in early June. Just before our return to San Diego, I did come down with a mild case of covid, possibly from our inbound plane ride, which was crowded and long. I don’t appear to have spread the infection to anyone else except maybe Jim, thank goodness. We both recovered fairly quickly.

Wonder if we’ll now have immunity for a while. For such a widespread infection, there seems to be an amazing lack of consensus about how to control the spread, how effective vaccines are, and how to treat those who get infected. At least mortality figures seem to be going down. No further trips planned any time soon, but we do video phone calls with the Ohio crew a couple of times a month. Kenley is growing incredibly fast. She has red hair, which pleases her fading-strawberry-blond grandma.

Son Jason and his family spent part of the summer in Scandinavia, alternately exploring urban areas and hiking among waterfalls. Somewhere in their wanderings, they, too, picked up covid, except for Kelly. No one got very sick. All are recovered now. While they were away, I was tasked with caring for both grand-dog Ginger and a bunch of “grand-fish.” Was able to follow a fairly complicated set of instructions to clean the fish tank while they were away. Last I heard, all the fish were alive.

I was distressed at the U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively overturning the 1972 Roe v. Wade abortion decision. Their ruling was not totally unexpected, given the current make-up of the court. I believe their decision was overly broad, likely to worsen women’s health in general without having much societal benefit. The weekend after Mother’s Day, San Diego was one of the locales with a sizable abortion rights demonstration in anticipation of the court’s ruling. I went. I walked without a sign, but was touched by a fellow marcher who’d crafted a simple handmade placard giving the full name, birth and death dates of a woman who’d died quite young: Mary McCarthy, 1909-1933. When I asked my marching neighbor for a fuller story, she said she was honoring her great-aunt, who’d died from a self-induced abortion attempt back when abortions were illegal, difficult to obtain, and often deadly. Mary had been married, with four living children, limited resources, and an unemployed husband when she discovered she was carrying a fifth child.

Other marchers carried more generic symbols—twisted coat hangers, stylized uteruses with coiled snakes inside and the slogan “don’t tread on me,” unflattering comparisons between the rights of women and the rights of some AR-15 assault rifle purchasers. I know that no decision to end a pregnancy is easy, but wish the choice still rested primarily with the mother-to-be. San Diego hosted a smaller right to life counter-demonstration in the same general area on the same day. Local law enforcement tried to ensure that the two groups were separated in both time and space.

It seems to get harder and harder to find any sort of middle ground, either on the abortion issue or other “hot button” topics. I doubt you and I will ever agree fully about abortion (or any other topic, for that matter).  I wish we could have further discussions in person, but know that’s not practical for now.

In cheerier news, my plot at the giving garden has produced enough tomatoes to can a good bit of sauce. I’ve had good luck with green peppers, less success this year with eggplants, though we had one for supper a week or so ago. I’ve made enough ice cube tray pesto to last through most of the cooler weather, I think. Some weeks I’ve even had enough extra veggies to contribute to the produce going to the drop-in center.

Wonder if you remember the “Lammas” celebration at White Rose Farm in 2015—I’d come up for a short visit, and got to attend a “Women’s Circle” workshop guided by your friend Gwen. I remember that you’d burned your face rather badly a few days earlier, while rushing around and using lighter fluid to start incinerating a big brush pile ahead of a thunderstorm. You’d put on some healing salve, but your skin was red and inflamed. Gwen had us make “seasonal scrapbooks,” using scraps of fabric, old journals she’d brought, and cutouts from magazines. I still have mine, with a frontispiece containing five visual images: Oprah in a red head scarf, a west-facing ocean sunset, a buffalo, a moose, and a mountain meadow with jagged peaks in the background. Three short sets of words form a caption “Better fire—pass on your values.” In the years since that session, I’ve written enough sporadically to fill that journal completely.

My recollection is that once we finished the scrapbooks, I tried singing a lovingkindness meditation song for the group. It seemed to me that the song, the effort of singing it, and the mutual hugs at the end helped heal the somewhat fractured relationship you and I had evolved in the decade after Mom’s death. It hadn’t been easy settling her estate and then dissolving the family real estate corporation and enabling you to purchase White Rose Farm. You, I, and White Rose Farm somehow all continued to exist. I didn’t get to the farm often. By the time of my next visit, your face had healed with no scars, something of a miracle.

Thanks for letting me reminisce on paper. No relationship is perfect, yet I believe ours has been special. Hope you’ll not have to experience any more fires, “better” or not. Please take good care!   

Love, Jin

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Sunday, May 1, 2022 (Beltane/May Day); from Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal,

Happy May Day! Happy gardening! A garden plot at the giving garden did indeed open up, and I’ve been working on it intermittently since late February. For each plot, the renter pays a flat fee of $150 per year. The gardener agrees to keep his/her plot in good shape and to put in at least 6 volunteer hours over the course of the year helping maintain the common areas. It seems a good bargain to me, especially since water is included in the fee. Gardening has always been partly therapy for me. The previous worker of my new-to-me plot did a pretty good job of enriching the soil, but there are still a fair number of rocks. I dig them out, then shift them from this “hillside garden” plot to border areas in our yard at home to help provide erosion control and garden accents.

At first I planted a cover crop mix of mustard and buckwheat that was available from the garden shed for the taking. We had enough rain in March so I didn’t have to water much. Once the cover crops had started to bloom, I spaded them under and then prepared the soil for warmer weather plants.

Each year, it seems, Carolyn starts flats of tomato and pepper seedlings in the garden’s small greenhouse. She sells them for $1 each, with the proceeds benefiting a drop-in center in downtown San Diego for low income folks. I have bought a few tomato seedlings of different varieties, along with a couple of peppers. I’ve also planted string beans from seeds. They’re struggling. Trying to avoid providing “bunny food” is a continuing challenge. Several of the nearby garden plots use upside down metal mesh wastebaskets for plant protection, the kind you can sometimes find at the Dollar Store. I haven’t found any yet, but will keep trying. You would probably laugh at my puny garden efforts, but working the soil does help “ground” me, both literally and figuratively.

The world seems in serious need of grounding at the moment. It seems to me as if the final homeward flights for Beijing Winter Olympic athletes had barely taken to the skies when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine. I’ve attended a couple of rallies at San Diego’s Balboa Park in support of Ukraine. I’ve learned that there is a substantial Ukrainian diaspora in this area, with a local Ukrainian church processing donations of cash, clothing, and emergency supplies. I try to contribute some cash for Ukraine, but to focus most of my efforts locally. The ripple effects of the Ukraine war in the global economy may turn out to be substantial. The war is also likely to further complicate efforts to bring the pandemic under control. Probably a good time to be living in the American countryside and relatively isolated, though I doubt the U.S. will be directly impacted by this flare-up in Europe. Do you still store home canned goods in the bomb shelter Dad included at the Ruggles Road house, I wonder?

I’ve gotten involved in a food distribution project here that a member of the local UU church started shortly after the beginning of the pandemic. Once schools shut down, many of her elementary school students were food insecure without school breakfasts and lunches. Maureen taught in a part of San Diego county near the Mexican border. She arranged for a weekly food giveaway at a satellite UU campus in a small strip shopping center close to her school. Families can come for meat, dry goods, baked goods, and fresh produce each Saturday, no questions asked. Someone has devised a minimal registration and timing schedule to reduce congestion in the small parking lot. I’ve been going early in the morning a couple times a month to help break down the pallets full of apples, potatoes, onions, squash, or whatever other fruits and vegetables show up that week. We work outdoors, and wear masks and gloves, so it’s fairly safe pandemic-wise. The program keeps growing.

The regional food rescue group that supplies the produce and much of the baked goods seems to do a pretty good job of diverting “near expiration” edibles from the landfill to actually feed people in need. Seems a little like the effort you started at the farm to get fresh produce to people who needed it once pandemic shutdowns took hold.

We’ve had our first out-of-town guest in our new place—a solo visit from “Joey,” who helped us keep our computers functioning during the year when we taught in the small Chinese city of Ya’an, Sichuan. It was great to see him, if only for a couple days, and to swap stories. Since coming to the U.S. around 2014, he’s gotten additional computer training, gotten married, and made plans to start a family. He worked for several years in the New York City area, living in Brooklyn with his Chinese-American wife. We’d seen them a couple of times when we lived in Cary. Joey recently got hired on at Google here in California. We hope to be able to visit with them once they get more settled in the Silicon Valley area and this blasted pandemic abates. Their “coast-to-coast” move turned out to be even more complicated and awkward than ours. Joey and Lu Wei had nearly gotten stuck in China in 2020—they’d gone back for a visit and barely got out before lockdowns started there. First they were nearly stuck in Ya’an, then they were really stuck in Brooklyn. Joey has asthma, but seems to be all right. A somewhat challenging time to be alive.

This morning I attended my first “in person” worship service at the local UU church. Rather than an indoor venue, the service was held on an outdoor patio, with distanced chairs. It had an earth-centered theme, with related music and a very graceful dancer who did a sort of single person “May Pole Dance.” Perhaps I’ll start learning more about the traditions surrounding “Beltane.”

Enough of my nattering. Lots of virtual hugs. Please take good care!

Love, Jin

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Wednesday, February 2, 2022 (Imbolc, Groundhog’s Day): from Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal,

Happy Groundhog Day from sunny southern California! We tried having a local “groundhog gala” this afternoon with some of the other older residents of Tierrasanta at the clubhouse of a seniors’ group we joined last fall. Getting across the concepts of snow and “winter” in southern California is challenging.  One of the other “villagers” I talked with said the only time he’d seen snow was flying over the Colorado Rockies as he and his bride returned from their Caribbean honeymoon. There are ski areas in the mountains not too far from San Diego, but no one we’ve talked with can remember its ever snowing here. Despite the lack of winter, of local groundhogs, or of groundhog lore, the “gala” was a fun occasion. I’d found a recipe for groundhog cookies and some groundhog-shaped cookie cutters. At least one of the other Tierrasanta Village members is a superb baker and contributed her cookies, too.

We were lucky that the weather for the party here was at its southern California best—sunny and pleasant, with afternoon temperatures in the 70’s. The latest variant of covid is again causing spikes in infections and making people really nervous. Having the chance to open up the clubhouse doors and windows and to spend most of our time on an outdoor patio was a boon for all concerned.

Later this evening, we got a phone call from son Scott in Ohio, where a foot of snow is predicted overnight and schools are being closed in anticipation of the storm. Scott says that “Groot,” the name they’re using for now for the upcoming baby, is kicking vigorously enough to be noticeable.  (When I asked who/what “groot” was, he explained that it’s a tree-like extraterrestrial character from a Marvel comics series, “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Lots of responsibility for a kid that’s not born yet…)

I’ve been spending a fair amount of outdoor time at the giving garden, even though I don’t yet have a plot. I’d brought enough garden tools with me from North Carolina to be able to do a fair amount of digging and pruning. There’s a local succulent bush that I’ve heard called “elephant grass,” which is not a grass at all, but which puts out small-leaved green branches almost continuously, even in dry weather. In a good pruning session, I can reduce several of the bushes along a garden-side hill outside the main gardening enclosure from leggy sprawlers to a more pleasing “snow globe” shape. I then take the clippings to a nearby dumpster.

I really enjoy talking with Carolyn, though my guess is that our political views are not very closely aligned. She’s on a fixed income and seems to get exposed to a good bit of media about the immigrants who are “stealing our jobs and benefits.” (Her media menu is decidedly mixed, though. In lieu of a cable television subscription, she gets Spanish language broadcasts from Mexico of local weather and sports events.) Since she moved to San Diego a generation or so ago, she’s learned a lot about local growing conditions.

Carolyn and her aging husband came here from Michigan to be near children and grandchildren in the area (sound familiar?). She spent several years after their move being first an on-site, then a visiting caregiver while her husband got increasingly incapacitated with dementia. I admire her. At one point she explained to me that, after her husband died, she “inherited a garden.” She works there nearly full time, with more stamina than many of us much younger than she is. I really hope I’ll get to be an official gardener with my very own plot come March.

Husband Jim and I are taking turns having “eye issues.” He’s scheduled to have cataracts removed in the next month or so. I’ve had two different ophthalmologists since I got here, due to health insurance changes. I’ve also had some trouble getting my prior medical records sent from the eye practice in Cary. It doesn’t look as if my glaucoma has caused any further damage—in one checkup, my vision had actually improved! I have prescriptions for eyedrops, probably somewhat similar to those Mom used. Ah, the joys of aging.

Coverage of the Winter Olympics looks as if it will be spotty with our current television and internet set-up. We might get a few chances to see highlights, though there are concerns that warmer weather will make some of the skiing events rather slushy. We have memories of watching early construction of the “Bird’s Nest” in 2006 when we were in Beijing, and of visiting the site again in 2017 on our most recent China trip. I believe some of the 2022 Olympic ceremonies will be held there. I’d like to see it again, even if just remotely. I imagine Olympic coverage at the farm is non-existent, so guess I should stop complaining. Please take good care. Lots of virtual hugs!

Love, Jin

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Sunday, October 31, 2021 (Samhain/Hallowe’en); from Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal,

Happy Hallowe’en! Our first Hallowe’en in San Diego was really short on trick or treaters. I’d bought a couple of bags of candy, but only had four groups of kids come by. Not sure if it was pandemic-related, or just that there are fewer trick or treaters in San Diego. I’d chosen mixes with some candies that grandkids Parker and Ada like (Hershey’s miniatures), a few that I like (mint patties). The rest will just get put into the garbage rather than tempt either me or Jim in our diabetes-adapted household.

We got an unexpected “treat” during a short late-October visit from son Scott and Morgan—we’re likely to become grandparents again next spring. Morgan is due about Mother’s Day. She and Scott arrived by budget airline on Thursday for the long weekend. Despite the stress of early pregnancy and the lingering uneasiness of being a nurse in a regional hospital emergency room during covid, Morgan seemed to be holding up well. She was somewhat queasy at times. They’re visiting mostly with local son Jason and Kelly, so Kelly and Morgan should have chances to swap motherhood stories. I’m not sure if Morgan’s fourth pregnancy will be a charm—she says her previous three pregnancies were not much fun. Scott seems almost giddy at being a prospective dad.

I find Morgan generally charming—a tall girl with gorgeous hair and a good bit of energy. She’s much younger than Scott, but seems to have matured beyond her years through her previous marriage and divorce. I’m somewhat hopeful that

A) the baby will be born healthy, and

B) that the two parents will choose to formalize their relationship at some point. Scott seems poised to go “from zero to four” in a very short time.

We went as an extended family group to see the seals at the shore at La Jolla one day, the animals at the San Diego Zoo the next. One evening Kelly, Parker, Ada, and Morgan made Hallowe’en themed cookies that we all took part in decorating. Morgan’s older children didn’t come this time—one of the advantages of joint custody is having the option to plan (at least for now) “adult only” activities during the week they’re with their dad.

We took a little time to have part of “the talk” with just Jason and Scott about our wishes if/when one or both of us should become incapacitated or die. Our wills from North Carolina will need to be updated for our new circumstances, and it will take us a while to develop the same kinds of support networks here that we had when we lived in Cary. Hope our preferences will not need to be exercised for a while yet. Glad we broached the subject, even if the conversation was somewhat awkward at times. We promised to start working on getting our wills updated and the house here put into a “family trust.” Once we’ve handled the paperwork, we’ll give Jason the contact information for the local lawyer’s office. Not sure if this part of autumn brings thoughts of death to everyone, but it’s been on our minds some lately.

Sister-in-law Wendy’s younger brother died earlier this year, of an apparent stroke or heart attack after he’d had a festive dinner with friends in Shenzhen in southern China. Apparently burial formalities are complicated by the somewhat fraught relationship between the People’s Republic and Hong Kong. Shenzhen, where Hilbert died, is one of the economic engines in the Pearl River Delta of the PRC, a booming “Special Economic Zone.” Hong Kong, where Hilbert officially resided, is still a “Special Administrative Zone,” with its own government and regulations separate from the PRC. It sounds as though Wendy is somewhat involved in trying to sort it all out. Much of the on-site effort is being handled by Hilbert’s common law widow. Hard work under very trying circumstances!

In weather news, it actually rained here earlier in the week—only an hour or so of fairly steady moisture-from-the-sky, but perhaps a start. I’ve been doing a good bit of walking in our new-to-us neighborhood, and have discovered a community garden, also known as “the giving garden,” about a mile uphill from our house, along a flat expanse behind the Tierrasanta Lutheran Church, overlooking one of the area canyons. I’ve met the garden coordinator, a winsome octogenarian named Carolyn, and chatted with her about the place. It was started in about 2008 by another local Lutheran, Carol, and has gradually expanded to 45 raised bed plots. Carolyn took over coordination duties some years ago, after founder Carol decamped to Kauai, Hawaii, to take up small scale farming on Hawaii’s “garden island.”

The garden area is fully fenced to keep out deer and other critters, but Carolyn wages ongoing battles with ground squirrels, local kangaroo rats, and other assorted interlopers. The gardening year at this certified “earth friendly” garden runs all twelve months, starting March 1 of each calendar year. Right now, all the plots are spoken for, but I added my name to a waiting list for next spring. Crossing my fingers that one of the older gardeners (but not Carolyn!) might choose to retire and free up a spot. Learning to garden in this climate would be a challenge (there is irrigation, with spigots at all the plots), but I’d have access to tools from the community tool shed and advice from the other gardeners. For now, I love walking along the paths between the plots and marveling at the “cool weather crops” people have planted—mostly cabbage family vegetables from the look of it.

Enough for now. Lots of virtual hugs. Please take good care!

Love, Jin

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Sunday, August 1, 2021 (Lammas/Midsummer); from Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal,

Happy Midsummer! We now live in a very different part of the country from when I last wrote. Most of May, 2021 went by in a blur. Though covid restrictions are easing somewhat, few places, either in the Raleigh vicinity or near our new place, are yet open for indoor dining. In San Diego, the libraries are still closed.

Before we left the Raleigh area, my cousin the realtor had found “good homes” for any remaining furnishings from our place that did not meet Goodwill’s requirements. I was glad most would not wind up in the landfill. Cousin George also handled completing the closing formalities on the townhouse in Cary while we started on the initial leg of our cross-country car trip. We left central North Carolina at midday on Friday, May 14. We’d opted to drive the trusty Yaris across the U.S. rather than boarding an airplane flight. We figured using automobile transportation would give us a bit more flexibility, avoid sharing indoor air with lots of potential covid carriers on a plane, and allow us to pick and choose overnight stays with friends or at hotels that seemed relatively low-pandemic-risk.

The first day, we headed generally northward, visiting friends in Charlottesville, VA before stopping for the night at a small inn in Appomattox, VA. The following day, we made a brief stop in Richmond, VA to visit with friends in the city where we’ve spent the most time during our lives so far. All those years ago, when we came to stay on the sofa bed in your first apartment in the Fan while Jim looked for a job, I bet you had little idea how long Richmond would hold us. Who would ever have expected that we would still be in Richmond long after you had moved back to Maryland?

By evening of our second day, we arrived in Elkridge for a quick reunion with brother Bruce and some of the rest of the family. You’d have been somewhat pleased at your elder sister’s self-restraint, I like to think. We mainly skirted controversial topics. Sorry you couldn’t be there in person. Sister-in-law Wendy arranged an outdoor patio supper with some of the cousins at a former “biker bar.” Good burgers and fries all around. It was very good to see parts of the family one more time before our trek westward.

The following morning, we headed out early and made it to Scott and Morgan’s vicinity in Ohio before dark. We watched part of a local softball contest in Ada, OH where Morgan’s eldest daughter was playing, maybe even pitching, I’m not sure. We managed brief introductions with Morgan’s other children and with Morgan’s parents before our eyes glazed completely over, then excused ourselves and found a comfortable motel room in a nearby town. As we headed further into the Midwest, we became viscerally aware of the need for an “infrastructure bill” of some sort—the roads, even the interstates, were potholed and uneven. To add to the unpleasantness, it kept raining, a dreary, heavy drizzle.

Our next stop turned out to be something of a walk down memory lane for Jim—Muscatine, IA. Just across the Mississippi from Illinois, Muscatine had had its heyday a couple of generations ago. Jim’s dad had been born there in 1907. The downtown still had a “Batterson Building” sign on one of the three-story brick structures along the town’s main street. We took a picture. In a park near the river, we noticed a statue of a fisherman and a plaque about the town’s former role as a pearl button manufacturing center. (Batterson family lore includes mention of the “Batterson-Wessels Company—Wholesale Distributor of Buttons and Notions” co-founded by one of Jim’s great-grandfathers in 1899.)

We’d written ahead to friends in Omaha, NE and in Albuquerque, NM for stopovers—the two stays helped put some personal contact into the vastness of the center of the country. When we stayed elsewhere on our own, we noticed huge variability in pandemic responses: In some towns, covid hardly seemed to register at all. People congregated unmasked. They continued with the same patterns of socializing and business activities as before. In other towns, masking and distancing were scrupulously practiced. A fair number of businesses were closed, some permanently. As far as we could tell, the differences had more to do with local culture and customs than with infection rates or the severity of the disease’s impact.

By the time we left Albuquerque, we were ready for our travels to end. A final push from Yuma, AZ to San Diego brought us to our new place mid-afternoon on Tuesday, May 25, a couple of days sooner than originally planned. A hasty trip to a local hardware store got us a queen sized air mattress that would do for sleeping until the PODS arrived. Son Jason and Kelly lent us some sheets and towels. As May ended, the PODS had been delivered, its contents had been disgorged with considerable help from Jason and family, and Jim and Jinny were settling into our new home.

Not long after we arrived, we heard on area news that if infection rates continued low, California would lift its covid restrictions in mid-June. That would indeed be good news. Not sure if it has happened or not—our media access so far is lousy. We’d welcome a visit sometime if you could manage one, but doubt it would be practical.

We’ve spent much of the remainder of the summer having minor repairs and upgrades done to the house, getting to know the area better, and getting officially established. It takes more time and effort than I’d realized to get “identifying information” reset to a different location—driver’s license, bank account, voting card, library access, health insurance, etc. etc. Most of the required changes have now been accomplished.

Today, somewhat fitting for midsummer’s day, I went to one of our area’s largest outdoor farmer’s markets, in La Jolla, the ritziest part of San Diego. I picked up a 3-pack container of berries—blueberries, strawberries, raspberries—seemingly available year-round here. I also got a few vegetables. Produce prices didn’t seem all that high, a relief. I’ll try to find a closer market, though. It took a good bit of gas to get to La Jolla and back.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference from NC here is the lack of rainfall. People tell us it will rain, come November or so, but the only moisture we’ve had so far is a brief thunderstorm around dawn one morning in July. Please take good care. Lots of virtual hugs!

Love, Jin

Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland, part of an inheritance from our parents. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-middle-age career transition from more sedentary work. Especially the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. Gradually, she got an acre or two into biodynamic production. She rented the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. She built up a cadre of part-time volunteers. Her work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. Her internet access was spotty at best, so we kept in touch through phone calls and letters.

For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding harvest and planting schedules: Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).

This November, I’m posting six years’ worth of cross-quarter day letters, through multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances. Please read along…

Tuesday, February 2, 2021 (Imbolc, Groundhog’s Day); from Jinny, in Cary, NC, to Sally, in Taneytown, MD

Dear Sal,

Happy Groundhog Day! This year’s groundhog celebrations are decidedly muted nearly everywhere. I read that “Sir Walter Wally,” Raleigh’s official groundhog, remains in seclusion at his winter quarters in eastern Tennessee this year, rather than on duty for local Groundhog Day celebrations. The natural history museum where he typically holds court in Raleigh is closed because of the pandemic. Does Taneytown have groundhogs, I wonder? I seem to remember from earlier times an especially obnoxious marmot-like creature that your farm dog tried unsuccessfully to capture and kill. Punxsutawney, PA, is probably a ghost town this year.

Some breaking personal news—I am now partway to being covid-vaccinated! I got my first of two shots at a mobile clinic I found out about through a local mostly black A.M.E. congregation that I’ve been attending either virtually or in person as conditions allow. When I phoned to sign up for the shot, I had a slight twinge of white guilt, thinking I might be taking a slot that would be more equitably filled by a black A.M.E. congregant. After a little consideration, my desire for covid immunity overrode any twinges of guilt. In our area there’s a certain amount of “vaccine hesitancy,” regardless of race or ethnic background. I think the A.M.E. minister at the church I’ve been going to has done a great job of alerting people both to covid risks and protection possibilities. Once I got to the vaccination site, I found an appropriately masked multi-racial mix of folks in the waiting area. Most of the people I saw at the clinic were over 50. Nearly half were black. I noticed a few other local A.M.E. parishioners on the day I went, which further eased any guilt. I’m a little sore and headachy, but don’t have a fever.

It makes sense to me that health care workers got first access to the vaccines. It’s a big relief to me that son Scott and daughter-in-law Kelly, both working in hospital settings, are now fully vaccinated. Health workers are the people with the highest risks and exposure, and those most needed to help us deal with serious covid cases. Still, I’m glad there’s finally a publicly available set of vaccines. I’ll need to wait several weeks before getting a second shot. Husband Jim will see about signing up in a few days.

The weather has been pretty dreary lately, though not uniformly so. We’ve had a couple of “light” snowfalls sandwiched between periods of cold rain, chilly nights, and a few mornings of glare ice. I’ve even seen an initial bluebird on a branch out behind our condo; it seems to me that nesting season is starting earlier than usual.

Our library is again partially open—they now offer “take out books,” a little like take out food. You order online, then come, appropriately masked, to a vestibule area at the entrance to the library. A staffer checks your temperature via contactless thermometer. If you aren’t feverish, you get to sanitize your hands, then go to a temporary set of shelves and find your selections in a paper bag with your last name on it. Not the same as full library access, but a lot better than nothing. It seems a shame that our big new regional library was only open a few months before the pandemic hit. I’ve heard that some of the library staff, instead of being furloughed, have been converted into contact tracers. They’re good at research and tracking down leads, so the transition makes sense. We’ve been getting lots of publicity about “flattening the curve”—keeping the rate of new infections low enough so our hospitals don’t get overwhelmed with cases.

Jim and I have learned enough about a new-to-us video conferencing application called “Zoom” to try to organize a set of virtual “Groundhog Day” parties this coming weekend. We bought a year’s subscription to the service. We’ll invite two separate shifts of friends to sign on for a couple of afternoon sessions. The bad news this Groundhog Day is that it’s still too risky to try large in-person gatherings; the good news is that virtually we can include friends, like Bob and Rita in Georgia, whom we wouldn’t otherwise get to see at all. Wish you had enough internet access to join us!

When planning the party, I read back through my journal entries from February 2, 2020 and was surprised at how different life was just a year ago. Jim and I had just gotten back from a mid-winter break to the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, transiting on our way back through a poorly ventilated local airport that would have been a real super spreader of covid infections. Our Sunday afternoon in-person Groundhog party coincided with the 2020 edition of the Super Bowl, so attendance was sparse.

The two of us are beginning to think about moving to San Diego to be near son Jason and family once we’re fully vaccinated. From what we’ve seen or heard of friends and neighbors who’ve gotten covid infections, plane travel is one of the highest risk activities—poor air circulation and lots of people in tight spaces. We’ve been in the habit of flying out to see the San Diego Battersons at least a couple of times a year, which doesn’t seem very smart during a pandemic whose duration is still very much in question. I’m not sure how we would manage the relocation, or even if it is practical—real estate sales are pretty well stymied for now, with “open house” home showings a non-starter.

Still, we won’t have many more years to watch grandkids Parker and Ada grow up, and we’ll eventually likely need help coping with life as we age. It makes sense to move sooner if/when we can, rather than waiting until this awful pandemic has run its course and/or we’re too doddering to take care of ourselves. I’ve started looking at online real estate listings not far from Jason’s house. Housing prices in southern California are ridiculously expensive, but unlikely to get lower any time soon.

Now that the election has been decided and a new administration has been sworn in, I’m paying somewhat less attention to politics. I’m relieved not to face the prospect of four more years of the “orange man.” I’m still disgusted by some of the shenanigans that went on on January 6. Remember how our folks would tell us that watching too much TV would turn our brains to mush? Guess our outgoing chief exec is a good example of that, or maybe it’s more his moral sense that is mushy.

Occasionally, I indulge my spiteful side by listening to musical satirists. One of my favorite numbers at the moment is a parody of “Johnny Be Good” entitled “Donny Be Gone.” Peppy tune, clever words, good rhymes. We still have a lot of work to do to get through the pandemic, both as a nation and as a global community, but at least we’ll be less inundated by lies, slurs and innuendos coming from the White House. Got this quip from a recent phone call with a friend: “I bought a warranty for the year 2021. Is it too late to turn it in for a refund?”  On an earlier phone call, a different friend summarized 2020 this way: “It was like looking both ways before crossing the street and then getting hit by an airplane.”

I’m still making face masks for the project at church, though at a slightly slower pace. I sent a big packet to California for Christmas. As far as I can tell, grandkids Parker and Ada liked their quilt-lets. The good old U.S. Post Office has been a real boon during shut-downs. Hope spring will come early at the farm. Please take good care!

Love, Jin