A Week Alone

It started with the nettles, with which I have developed a love-hate relationship. I love them, because they make delicious pies, soups, quiches, pestos, sautees and even nettle beer, which I will be trying out this spring. But I hate them because they hurt and sting and cover the little meadow that came with the country house, blocking passage and keeping anyone from even thinking about doing anything out there but carefully avoiding them.

Winter took the field of rough stalks and cut them down to size, though. the land became something we could walk across, a carpet of crunchy dry yellow twigs, last years old nettles, pushed flat to the ground by snow. It melted, the song birds came out just about the time the old dead nettles dried up. Tufts of new grass began to appear outside of nettle town. A patch of snow drops sprouted under the cherry tree. Sun warmed the earth. I began to imagine the possibilities, stand and take in the slope of the land, look back at the house.

With the sun's warmth, new nettles had also begun to emerge. Little hopeful green baby nettles peeking their cute little furry noses up through the old dead twigs from last year's enormous plants. They are cute, but they won't be for long, I know this. I have spent many evenings rubbing swollen spots where the nettles have gotten up my pant legs and pricked their needles into bare calves or pricked stray hands, hurting for hours like bee stings afterward. No summer walks along that country path in a skirt and espadrilles, that's for sure. But a thought of the baby clinched it. Do I want the child to be able to play outside at the country house? How will it be possible for a kid not have a rope swing on this ancient cherry tree? We don't know if this baby is going to be a boy or a girl. But one thing is clear: We have got to get the nettles under control.

They have formed a thick root network. A little hand spade, just a toy, really. I have taken to kneeling on the ground and loosening them, then standing up, wrapping my fingers about the roots, and heaving my weight into the labor of getting them out, artery and vein alike. They don't want to come. I begin stabbing, learning their ways, where to find the junctions, the twisted knots. If you get the nettle highways, the small roots follow more easily. A nettle city, a network, a planet. I am eradicating a whole nettle world complete with multiple levels of underground resistance networks. In 4 hours, I have just begun to chip away at a small square. At the end of my hard labor, a pitiful patch of turned rich earth, from which I had pulled only nettles from the ground. Their thick roots were piled in a heap in the sun. The soil is dark and fertile. Aside from one small tuft of wild chives, these nettles have choked everything else out.



At the end of the day, Bernadette's clicks and humming fire form a choir with an evening lark. The kitchen door is open. The feeder is illuminated and crowded with many species of birds. Loic is puttering around in the attic.

I ran my hands in icy cold mountain water from the tap for as long as I could stand it. I quickly pinched cold butter into flour with my numbed clean cold hands. We were to have a neighbor over for dinner, a man from the village who had come to cut the storm's fallen branches into neat logs that we stacked on the porch to use as firewood maybe next year.

My hands and forearms were near exhaustion just trying to make a crust. It's a good kind of fatigue, I thought to myself. From the pulling. Wouldn't it be nice to get these nettles taken care of this week. The weather is going to be nice. There is a clear circle of sunny meadow, between the apple and cherry trees that gets good all day sun. It is where the nettles thrive. I could probably turn it into a field of flowers if I had some time.

We've been waiting on this baby to arrive, and for that purpose, I have found myself easing big engagements off the calendar. Last week was the first week since January that I didn't have people coming in. 'This could be my only chance', I thought. The nettles seem compelling in the Sunday evening quiet before bed. We were lying there under the quilt, each with a book, and instead of readying my thoughts for a return to the rhythms of the city, I found myself veering in the opposite direction.

- And what if I stayed?
- You won't have a car.
- That's ok, I won't need it.
- Will you have enough to eat?
- I will.

A quick mental inventory. I had three eggs, a bit of bacon, 6 potatoes, some cabbage, a basket of good apples, some cheese, things in the larder like dried fruits and mushrooms, flour, rice, plus of course the Alpine butter, garlic in a braid from my trip to Sicily. The tuft of chives out there in the dirt patch. Then there were all those young nettles waiting for their fate. I even had some stock and frozen peas and beans in the freezer should the need really arise, and two big lumps of yeast for bread. We know the goat farm is within walking distance where I can get yogurt, cheeses, milk, everything I need in the end.

- You won't get bored?
- I might.

I smiled. It was settled. I made a few calls and sent a few messages. I shuffled chunks of time off the agenda. I was staying. We cuddled in the night, cherishing our sudden togetherness before a separation as my thoughts ventured in this new direction. Not an abyss, but a free fall kind of dive into a very different kind of week indeed.