Where the wind blows

The wind is blowing. I can hear it as it whistles past the building I sit in and I watch the tips of the pines outside bending and swaying. It is also raining, a chill patter fueling the steady dripping of the roof that adds a rhythmic counterpoint to the wind's howls. Two days ago it was snowing. And not just a little, but two and half feet that buried the horses, the fences, and many people's cars. Before that we had a day that was sunny and almost fifty. A day that made spring sing in people's hearts and the river's ice break apart and flow in one of nature's great spectacles.

I never meant to stay here. I moved to the Adirondacks for love or so I told myself. Following a boyfriend to the wilderness for no other reason than I was bored with what life was offering me at the moment. Tired of the sometimes glitzy, but mostly gritty backside of the racehorse industry and the emptiness of Florida nightlife, and impatient with cooling my heels in Western Massachusetts with my family, I was looking for a different path. A year was what I gave myself. I would try the mountains and the relationship for a year.

Life sometimes fools us and the boyfriend became a husband and the year turned into three than five and finally eight. My daughter was born not in the comfortable and familiar surroundings of Western Massachusetts in a perfectly planned homebirth, but in a small hospital in the middle of nowhere as I watched ice fisherman patiently watching their holes. That winter with a newborn was no longer than any other Adirondack winter, although maybe it felt it. Both Eowyn and I longed for the sun by the time it was done.

And now we have decided to stay here. We will make our home in this land that is so unpredictable, with sun then snow then rain. The growing season 40 minutes off of the mountain where we live is 100 days. As I look to planning my garden and starting my seeds I wonder what the actual growing season is here, at this elevation. 90 days? 80 days? In my experience so far, not long enough to turn my green tomatoes red. I admit to longing for Massachusetts where it feels like you just drop a seed in the soil and reap the bountiful harvest. I know it is not this simple, but sustaining a garden here sometimes feels like a climb up Everest itself. But I am committed. Both to making a good, sustainable life for my family here in the mountaintops, and also to figuring out how to ripen my tomatoes.

Sometimes the wind blows us far from where we thought we would be. Sometimes it blows us where we have the most to learn. I will slowly learn the walk to the beat of the different seasons here. My garden will flourish as I slowly learn when to start things and when to plant and what grows best in such inhospitable conditions. And I assure you I will have red tomatoes, maybe not this year or maybe not in three years, but definately by eight. Because what is life and gardening but a giant experiment? We just keep trying all the different variations until it works.