transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Whether you're a history fan or not, if you care about bravery, wisdom, passion, larger than life characters, and some of the most emotionally intense moments in the human experience, History on Fire is the podcast for you. Daniele Boleli is a writer and university professor who combines historical accuracy with powerful storytelling. His episodes range from ancient Rome to medieval Japan, from 5,000-year-old murder mysteries to the most dramatic events of the 20th century. Despite his insanely thick Italian accent, somehow History on Fire has become one of the most popular history podcasts in the world. If you give it a listen, you'll quickly find out why. Please check out History on Fire wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stories from the Village of Nothing Much. Like easy listening, but for fiction. I'm Kathryn Nicolai. I write and read all the stories you'll hear on the Village of Nothing Much. Audio engineering and sound design is by Bob Wittersheim. In our show notes, you'll find links to our ad-free premium version, our other shows, and our merch and partner products. Here we are again, my friend, back in the Village of Nothing Much, our grownup Mr. Rogers neighborhood, and back for another walking tour. If you're new around here, well, welcome. I'm glad you found us. I write healing fiction and am most known for my work on my bedtime story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. Over the last eight years, I've been creating a little universe over there, soft stories to rest your mind upon as you fall to sleep. So many people wrote to tell me that while they really loved the stories themselves, they couldn't actually stay awake to hear them because they got knocked out so fast. Yes, I am that good. So we started this show as a way to use the stories to be grounded and connected to goodness during the day. It's like Nyquil and Dayquil, but for your ears. Over the course of writing over 400 stories about this place, jeez, oh, Pete, 400? Bob, is that right? Wow. Okay. Well, we really established this little village so much though that I decided to give you actual tours of it. You can listen while you're out on a walk if you like. That can be a really nice way to hear these. Or while you're putting together a puzzle or doodling or just whatever. Just imagine yourself out with a friend, a friend who knows a bit more than most about some special spots and likes to share. Before we start, just because I think it will feel good, let's take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. One more time, fill it up and sigh it out. Community Garden Walking Tour. Hey there. Oh, good. You wore your tall boots. I forgot to say you should, but hey, you're a smart cookie. And it is April, and there is definitely some mud in our path today. I'm not mad about it, though. Remember last month, we were counting down the days till spring, and now she is here. It's official. So, I thought it would be a good time to visit the community gardens. They are being tilled and planted and are abuzz with vernal activity. You can smell the fresh, wet earth and hear the birds singing. That is always how I know that spring is here. You know, the winter can be so quiet. Not much sound to begin with, then snow muffling whatever is left. But spring is full, birds and small animals on the move, wind blowing last year's leaves around, people out bringing gardens to life again. Hey, let's stop by the bulletin boards here at the entrance. They just hung them last week, after it seemed likely that the snow was done. But there are already a bunch of notes and flyers posted. Let's see. This whole board is dedicated to seed swaps. Over here, people have written what they have extras of, and over here, what they're hoping for. And they've got a pencil hanging from some twine here. Very gardener vibes. These heirloom seed names, they are so cool. I can tell you from experience, you can't write better ones. Well, I can't anyway. I love this one. Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter Tomatoes. I don't know if we're going to beat that one. And it is named after a guy who actually paid off his mortgage by selling them. No, that's true. Then there are the Rattlesnake Pole Beans, the Moon and Stars Watermelon, Glass Gem Corn, Grandmother Inks Garlic, and Fish Pepper. Wow. Maybe we should sign up for a plot and grow a garden of just plants with great names. You know how they grow those poisoners gardens that are full of deadly plants? Well, this would be an onomatomaniacs garden. That means someone who is obsessed with names. No? Well, think about it. Let me know. Now, on this board, they've got tools for sale or for free to a good home. Folks looking for certain things. I like when people add in a line or two. Like this one says, terracotta pots, free, moving to the big city. I wonder who that is. Or here under trade, it says, you can use my truck to move soil. If I can have two bushels of green beans when they come in. Hey, I appreciate someone who knows what they want. It looks like someone needs a pH testing kit over at plot 7. Someone has extra tomato cages at plot 2. This one just says, surprise me, plot 12. Huh. We're going to have to swing by plot 12 later. There is also a schedule for rain collection. A notice of what can and what can't, in all caps, go in the compost bins. Something tells me that notice has gone up more than once. This looks like it was torn out of the Village Gazette. An article about companion planting, like what to plant beside what for best results. And this is sweet. A drawing of a family at their plot with, uh, I think that's probably a wheelbarrow there. And they do have too many fingers, but I love it. Okay, here we go, and it's going to get a little muddy. Ready to head in? Me too. So this garden has about 30 plots in it, and they come in different sizes. I think the largest is about 30 by 30, and you can get half plots, and there's even a section with just raised beds. So you can have a bed or two. I know some of these gardeners are serious farmers. They grow pumpkins and corn and three kinds of beans and such, and some folks just want to have some lettuce and herbs for their dinner tables. So it's nice that it's not one size fits all. Let's start with one of the largest plots. In fact, if I remember correctly, it's actually two plots that were combined into one super-sized one. I think I'm going to count the number of robins I see today. I already saw one from my kitchen window this morning, and look, there is one right there on the fence post, two. That makes two robins. I feel like the count on Sesame Street. I think robins egg blue might be my favorite color, at least today. I looked up why they were that color or maybe how they are that color, and I learned a great word. Bilaverdin. It's the pigment that robin moms magically layer into the shells, and that Bilaverdin helps protect baby robins from UV rays. I think Bilaverdin would be a great name for a dog or maybe a fish, and you could call them Bill for short. Anyway, this is the biggest plot in the garden, and it looks like they've already tilled all the soil. I love the scent that comes from fresh rain-soaked dirt, and it's that lovely rich brown-black color. Vegetable gardens like this, when they're remade from scratch each year, they start off so tidy and organized. Even rows, a structured design, furrows and mounded lines of freshly planted seeds. And by the end of May, the rows will still be pretty neat, but everything will be green instead of brown. And then things will go wild. Plants crossing over into the territory of other veggies, tomatoes climbing out of their cages, second plantings coming in. The shape of the sections will be completely lost, and there will just be footprints left here and there to step into, so cucumbers and summer squash can be picked. Some of the lettuces won't be cut in time, and they will send up these tall spikes of leaves and go to seed, and weeds will take over some sections. It's like watching a time lapse of a little self-contained civilization rise and grow and collapse and be tilled back into the sands of time to be remade again. Did I warn you that I tend to romanticize just about everything? Poetry is everywhere when you look. Anyway, coming back to Earth, though, I'm supposed to be leading you on a tour. It looks like this garden has been pretty much completely planted, but it's too early to see anything sprout. Still, we can walk the roads if we're careful and just see what has been put where. I like how they have all these mismatched garden markers. Like this one is ceramic and kind of reminds me of my grandma's kitchen aesthetic in 1990. It's shaped like a carrot. So they've got a full row of carrots. And this marker is one for runner beans. It's just galvanized metal and they wrote on it with a sharpie. And the acorn squash one is just a popsicle stick with a sticky note wrapped around one end. Again, this feels very true to gardener life for me. My mom is a great gardener. And at some point, everything around her is covered with smears of mud. And she's stringing stuff up with twine and using a trowel whose handle broke off and is as happy as she can be. If you're hearing this, it means you've already made sleep a priority. And that's something worth applauding. You've carved out this quiet moment to wind down. And I have something that fits beautifully into that routine. It's called Moonbird. It's a small screen-free device that gently expands and contracts in your hand, guiding your breath with a calming rhythm. You don't have to count or focus, just hold it and breathe. I get mine first, and I'm using it right now. I use it whenever I record this podcast. It helps me stay calm and centered as I read to you. And after seeing how much it helped me, my wife wanted one for herself, and now she loves it too. There's no screen to distract you, but if you like data, there's an optional app that tracks your heart rate and HRV. A recent study found that people fell asleep 28% faster and had 37% better sleep quality using Moonbird daily. If you're ready to take your bedtime ritual even further, you can get 15% off at moonbird.life slash nothing much happens. We'll have that in our show notes. Moonbird.life slash nothing much happens. Oh, here is something that's coming up. Look at these green sprouts over here. I think this may be, yes, the sign says, this is their garlic patch. Garlic in this zone needs to go in in the fall, like mid-October to mid-November. And though it's showing us some shoots here, it won't be ready to harvest till July. You gotta plan ahead for garlic. They have rows of arugula and little gem lettuce. Their tomato plants haven't gone in yet, but they've got these cages ready to go. Corn and snap peas and, oh, this is their potato patch. They have been fighting the good fight when it comes to growing potatoes for years now. These gardeners will not give up. And last year, I think they got their first solid harvest. I was kind of proud of them. Now, this section of the plot used to belong to a family. I remember they had two boys, and they had a long section of wild raspberries. Oh, good. The bushes are still here. They grew them along this back fence, which is smart because raspberries like to climb. If you squat down here, you can see that they were cut back in the autumn and covered with a good bit of mulch to help them survive the winter. They will grow all over this fence by the end of the summer. And see right there through the fence in the grass over there? That's Robin number three. The family? Life just got busy as the boys got older, but I know they come back a few times a year to help the other gardeners with harvest and weeding. They show up for picnics. The boys are nearly young men now. I know, I've been writing about our little town for eight years already. There are a few sheds scattered through the allotments. I see one over there. Let's poke around. No, they're not locked. I think a lot of things here are run on the honor system. And I can't speak for the farmers, but I'm guessing that if you wandered all the way through these lots and found yourself in a shed and just couldn't live without a copy of the farmer's almanac or a spare pair of muddy work boots, you'd be welcome to them. This shed is set on a small concrete slab, which is smart. We had a shed in our backyard growing up, and it was just set on the grass, and every year it sank another inch into the earth until we couldn't open the doors anymore. Along the side here is a collection of long-handled tools, hoes and spades and cultivators. These are community owned, so anyone working can use them. And I've heard that there is a small battle going on between the person who gardens at plot 10 and the gardener at plot 4. Plot 10 thinks that these tools should be organized by size, so that the longest implements are on the right, running to the shortest on the left. And I have seen him out here taking everything down, starting from scratch, just shaking his head. Meanwhile, plot 4 just puts things back wherever there is space. And I guess to call it a battle isn't right, because I don't think plot 4 has even noticed this is going on. She's not aware that she's driving 10 up the wall. Have you ever been in a big, contentious conflict with someone in your head, and they don't know about it yet? Yeah, me too. Sometimes made up arguments can get pretty heated. Humans are funny, aren't we? Now come around the back here. This is where part of the rain collection system is set up. The shed isn't that big, I'd say like the size of a one-car garage, but it still is able to collect about 750 gallons of water a month. That's not enough for all of these plots, even with the two other sheds. There's one there, and you can see that one way over there. They're all set up with tanks just like this one. It still doesn't replace rainfall, but it supplements what the gardeners need, and it kind of brings them together. This is a functional little ecosystem, but it doesn't function well without some teamwork. I think that is part of what makes these gardeners more than people who just grow things beside one another. There are real stakes to this endeavor. Yeah, not just garden stakes, good one. But that element of difficulty, it means that they have to trust each other, to empty the rain barrels, to not overuse their portion. One of my meditation teachers used to say, whenever someone takes too much, someone else goes without. And something like gardening makes that concept less abstract. And when the harvest comes, my goodness, is there some generosity here among the community. Extra fruits and vegetables, whatever can't be eaten, is shared almost aggressively. Like, don't leave your car doors unlocked during zucchini season. That's all I'm saying. Let's see what's inside the shed. These doors are a little creaky. And they have these bolts that drop down into holes in the concrete out here so they will stay open. I love that kind of thing. I don't even know how to describe what I mean there, but when there is a little mechanism or design element in something that shows some forethought about how it will be used, that is the best, you know? Like when an old house or apartment has an ironing board and a cupboard that folds up perfectly or a window seat with a hinged lid to store blankets, it's a kind of care embedded into an object. I guess I did know how to describe it. I just needed a moment to talk it through. That's one of the things I love about these walks we take together, by the way. Sometimes I understand something better because I get to describe it to you. So thanks again for coming along. With the doors open and the windows on either side, it's actually pretty bright in here. Yeah, you can see the posters of planting zones over on that wall. They're all faded from years of sunlight. There is usually a rototiller in here, but I bet somebody's using it. In fact, yep, I can kind of hear it out there in the distance. Now, each shed has a small seed library, mostly herbs and flowers, which sounds a bit more formal than what it actually is. It's just one of those storage shelves with tons of small drawers in it. My grandpa had one like this in his workshop. It held washers and screws and tiny fittings. This one holds leftover seeds, whatever someone had extra of. Another example of that gardener aesthetic, they just tear the name off the packet and stick it on the front of the drawer with some masking tape. Now, I bet there are a few more banger names here. Let's see. Yep, this whole row of flower seeds do not disappoint. We've got Bishop of Landoff Dahlia, Black Lace Elderflower, Bells of Ireland, Larkspur, Scabiosa, that sounds like a Bond villain, Chocolate Cosmos, and Parrot Tulips. And these are all herbs, but they sound interesting, too. Hyssop and Lovage and Tulsi and Shiso. And beside the seed library is a regular book sort. As I mentioned, they have an impressive collection of farmer's almanacs and garden guides, seed catalogs, and it looks like every user manual for every piece of machinery that's ever been anywhere near here. I bet most of these aerators and tillers and cultivators don't even work anymore. Do you keep this kind of stuff? I never do. The instructions are thrown out before everything is out of the box. What can I say? I'm living on the edge. Let's take a deep breath together, in through the nose, and out through the mouth. It feels good to breathe deeply, and the air we breathe, especially at night, matters more than we might think. While we sleep, our bodies are hard at work, restoring, repairing, and recharging, but that work can be quietly disrupted by what's floating in the air, things like dust, pollen, and other allergens. I didn't used to think much about indoor air quality, but once I did, I realized, if we care about what we eat and drink, why not care just as much about what we breathe? That's why I sleep with a Jasper air scrubber in my room. It has no annoying lights and doubles as a gentle white noise machine that's become essential to my bedtime rhythm. But more than anything, it's turned my bedroom into a sleep sanctuary. A space where the air helps me sleep, deeply and peacefully. I can't recommend Jasper enough. You can learn more at jasper.co. And if you use the code SLEEP, you'll get $300 off. That's jasper.co. Use code SLEEP for $300 off. I see they also have an electric kettle in here, a few boxes of good strong tea, and some old coffee mugs. I like this one. It says, World's Okayest Brother. Oh my gosh, look at what's on this one. A robin. That's four. We've seen two kinds of libraries already, but these mugs are making me think of another kind I saw recently. You know how you can easily acquire like way too many coffee mugs? And at least for me, I only really like maybe two or three of mine. Well, some genius came up with this idea of building a little library to put out on a post in front of her house, but instead of books, it was a mug library. And it had hooks for about a dozen mugs, and she stocked it nearly full with the ones she never used. And people started to swap them out with others. Like maybe you're bored with your team building 2014 cup, but it's oddly appealing to someone else, or the ones your aunt gives you, because one time, ten years ago, you said you liked narwhals, and now every birthday, another narwhal. But for the kid down the street who just discovered that unicorn whales are real, they're perfect. What are the chances that someone in our little village is putting one of these mug libraries together right now? Pretty good. Pretty good. Well, that concludes the thrilling shed portion of today's tour. Let's spend the rest of our time here, just walking through the plots and enjoying the sunshine. Okay, let me just close up the shed. We don't want to let any chipmunks in. They'd eat through all those user manuals, and then where would we be? What a gorgeous day. The wind is picking up a bit. That's a big part of spring in my mind. Warmer days and wind. And I looked up once why the spring is so windy, and I remember that it has to do with the clash of retreating cold air and the arrival of warmer air from the south, different pressures that battle it out and it turns into gusts. However it happens, it does seem to be drying up some of this mud. Hey, let's check out the raised bed section, shall we? There are maybe a dozen or so of these beds, a couple feet across and maybe eight feet long. And they're nice for a couple reasons. You know, if you want to grow just a few things and you don't really have time or desire to do a full plot, well here you go. Put in your tomatoes and your basil and you're off to the summer salad races. But they're also great for folks who struggle to get down close to the dirt. Not every body can easily or even at all work down low. And this section has paved paths, it's barrier free, so folks with mobility devices can plant. I remember last year this plot over here didn't have a gardener. And there's usually a waiting list for the next open plot, but for whatever reason last year this spot was open and empty. So someone, and I have a feeling I know who, planted roughly a gazillion sunflowers, just sunflowers, close together and covering every available inch of space. It was amazing to look at. And since it was like a bonus garden, people could just cut them themselves, some to take home and put on the kitchen table or harvest the seeds from. Who planted? Well, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag on that one. The gray cat with the yellow eyes, whose person is often mixed up in anonymous acts of whimsy around these parts. Ring any bells? And this one, oh, yep, plot 12. Remember from the bulletin board, surprise me. It does look like they've been surprised with something. Someone split their rhubarb plant and brought half of it to share with this garden. Rhubarb is often one of the first plants ready to pick and eat in the spring. Its stalks remind me a bit of celery, but with this lovely, rosy color. The leaves are poisonous, but the stalks, once they get a few inches longer, they'll be ready. I remember finding a patch of rhubarb in the garden of the first house I ever bought, and the neighbor lady taught me that I needed to twist them off the plant, rather than cut them off, because it prevents rot at the root. And now our plot 12 gardener has been gifted some of their own. Good for them. Oh, I like that sound. A shovel cutting through the dirt. Mind if we just sit at this picnic table for a bit? I just want to listen to the birds, the sounds of the gardeners at work for a bit. I brought my sketchbook and I might draw a little. No, it would be cool to sketch out what everything looks like right now. And then come back every month or so and redraw things from this same spot. You're welcome to join me. You can just relax for a little. I also have a feeling I'll spot at least one more robin before we head home. While I draw up, maybe have a think about where we should go next month. I'm thinking that the Farmer's Market might be nice, or should we save that for July, when all the stalls are full of fresh stuff? Or the Tulip Farm, have you been there? Or out to Weathervane to meet the animals? Wow, there is still so much I want to show you in the Village. I'm looking forward to doing this again next month.