Though now Redbud Creek Farm is open through mid December with lots of wonderful décor and more for Christmas and the winter season, until 2009 the Farm’s year ended on October 30th.  The following is a journal entry from October 30, 2008, marking the end of the growing year, the end of a season of business, and most importantly, the end of a friend’s time on earth.  In a crazy weather year on a day when the super-storm of the century buffets the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states, even sending huge winds across Lake Michigan into Northern Illinois, a week before the conclusion of the most polarized elections in generations, perhaps it is a good time to reflect, remember, and celebrate. 

 

Closings

It is October 30th, the last day of the regular season at Redbud Creek Farm.  The Farm has been open every day since mid April except for July 4th, and though the end of the growing season is at hand, there is still a little reluctance in letting it go.  Nancy and I are not present for the final day.  Our friend, Jim Evans, who has been aware of inoperable lung cancer for five years, has finally succumbed at the age of 72.  Today is his funeral.

Jim’s funeral mass is everything a final formal religious service can be and a lot more.  Jim was pretty active in his church and was well liked and appreciated for his generous spirit, humility, and simple faith.  Jim planned the funeral service about nine months before he died, including readings and songs that had an extra dimension that communicated his appreciation for his family and friends while subtly inviting them to follow the God whom he obviously felt had richly blessed his time.  I was touched by Jim Evan’s faith.  I felt various hints throughout the service that this was not just the faith of a person who was raised in a religious home and simply stayed true to those basic precepts.  Rather I felt here the dynamic faith of a person who experienced a lot of life, whose victories and especially scars, deepened and broadened his spiritual understanding.  Jim included Albert Malotte’s Our Father in his service.  Now I am sure he did not grow up with that piece of music, but became cognizant of it at his parish in his late middle age, before it dropped out of favor with the parish’s music gurus.  It occurs to me that this piece of music with its spare, somewhat contemplative treatment of the basic foundations of the prayer; acceptance and appreciation of life’s flow, and hope for daily bread, forgiveness, guidance, and deliverance, leading to a soaring crescendo on kingdom, power, and glory was the melody of Jim Evan’s life.  

From Jim’s church a long string of cars processes to a cemetery that has been in use since the mid 1800s.  In a setting that is dramatically picturesque the priest begins the final prayers and rituals at the gravesite.  The huge mature trees are still largely full of colorful leaves, though the strong breeze is scattering dozens of them by the minute.  The leaves billow from the trees and fall not quite silently in an almost literal and instant answer to the beseeching clergyman’s plea for blessing.  The sky is so blue, the grass so verdant, and the shadows are deep and cool beneath the ancient trees with their vivid leaves.  To alleviate a shiver, one steps from shadow into the sun, and basks in clear celestial light and regales in radiant warmth.  It takes some time to inter the casket and I think about Jim, and I rejoice in these quiet minutes of beauty and know that by tomorrow the wonderful trees of this place will be mostly leafless silhouettes, so apropos for Halloween.

After the service Nancy and I return home.  We will be taking dinner to Jim’s family tomorrow night.  Knowing that the two college age boys are big fans of our barbecued baby back ribs, we decide that we will build our meal around that and I set about getting this accomplished.  It is a simple task that I know well, a perfect activity to consider things.  My mind keeps coming to the moment of Jim’s death.  Apparently he was finally ready to die but continued to resist.  At last his wife went to him and told him that it was alright, she and the boys were ready, and it seemed like he was ready too.  And for the final time he followed her direction.    As the lovely afternoon continues to unfold I watch the pungent smoke wafting from the little opening in the barbecue cooker’s lid.  The smoke is very light and it drifts on the breeze like the illustrator’s conception of a genie coming out of a bottle.  I see it as a kind of counterpoint to the leaves of blessing being showered down upon us at the cemetery.  Indeed, my prayers rise like incense.

Nancy talks to Phyllis at the Farm.  It turns out that the final day of the regular season results in several customer visits and a few fairly significant sales.  Of course we could have used a few more significant sales through the fall, but the season has ended, and on a little bit of a high note.  So we shall move on, hopeful, that businesswise we can improve and that our customers and friends will weather the economic vicissitudes that vex us.  With friends like Jim Evans, and seasonal zeniths like today, we are refreshed and ready for the next season that begins tomorrow.

Pundits predicted a pretty poor showing of fall color this year owing to the drought.  “Lackluster” has been a term I’ve heard or read several times.  In my travels around northern Illinois, especially in the vicinity of the Farm, this has been an early and very colorful fall.  Bright oranges, orange reds, and reds have been plentiful and perhaps have been even more noticeable and beautiful than in many years by being contrasted (at least over the past three weeks) by still deep green leaves on some of the surrounding trees.  At Redbud Creek Farm a number of people have commented how beautiful the early part of fall has been this year and several observed that this is not what they had been lead to expect.

Those darn pundits—it seems that they just can’t get it right.  Of course poor prediction about autumn’s palette pales when paired with a lot of other porous punditry.  Pundit is an interesting word.  It’s actually of Hindi origin (the main language of India) and originally meant learned scholar or priest.  In English it basically means “expert” but in recent use it seems especially to mean an expert or apparent expert who offers his or her perspective on a particular subject most often in some form of the news or entertainment media.

It has acquired a somewhat negative connotation.  Our politicians are always blasting the pundits and I suspect that most of us have a kind of love/hate relationship with people who are supposed to be experts.  It is always satisfying to note their poor predictions even if generally they are correct.  One of the problems with some experts is their apparent lack of humility.  I think it is pretty important to qualify statements and recognize that there are exceptions to rules as well as to keep in mind that life is full of irony.

As a freshman in a college philosophy class I had a teaching assistant who ripped my inelegant essays dealing with various questions.  He advised me to temper my perspective and taught me to use qualifiers like “seems” and “appears” as well as less strong words like “might,” “probably,” and “perhaps.”  He advised a clear separation between fact and my opinion and recommended the use of “in my opinion,” “I think,” or “I believe” when necessary.  I named this lesson in humble expression the “Volmecke Principle,” after that bold teaching assistant who made that otherwise mundane philosophy class into something quite significant.  The better commentators often use some form of the “Volmecke Principle.”  I recommend it to them all.

At Redbud Creek Farm we are often called on to offer opinions on a whole range of gardening and growing subjects.  I think we take that responsibility pretty seriously and diligently prepare to be sources of expertise.  Whether we are answering a question about a subject we’ve known for years or one we’ve just attended a seminar about, I hope that we are always practicing the “Volmecke Principle.” 

Besides pundit, another word for expert is maven which comes from Yiddish.  The connotation for this word seems much more positive than for pundit, possibly because many people’s first introduction to the word might have been in the pleasant circumstance of listening to a Jewish comedian.  Whereas pundits seem to offer opinion, mavens offer fact.  And best of all there often seems to be a personal endorsement or connection with the maven.  “I would like to introduce the company’s gardening maven…” or “this is our gardening maven, she’s been a big help…”  At Redbud Creek Farm we want to be your gardening mavens.  And we’ll be practicing the “Volmecke Principle” which means we’ll be doing our best to give you the facts and humbly share our opinions, but for questions like planting a sun loving plant in a fairly shady spot you won’t be getting any absolute answers.

The Chicago Cubs are on my mind.  Considering that this is October it is rare for anyone to be thinking about the Cubs since these “boys of summer” folded long ago and are focusing on next season—not the post season.  My reason for thinking of the Cubs involves their new mega bucks owners, the Ricketts family and Papa Ricketts spending ten million dollars of the family’s funds to defeat Obama.

These days I don’t find much that is very compelling about professional sports including the Chicago Cubs.  I’ve learned that they can take a lot of your time, inevitably they disappoint and there is nothing you can do about it.  Still I must admit that there was a little glimmer of interest that would come alive whenever the northsiders were doing well.  The Cubs may not be big winners but they are a storied team; robbed of a pennant by Steve Bartman’s interference with a questionably catchable foul ball, the butt of Babe Ruth’s bravado, victims of a billy goat’s curse.  The team’s collapse in 1969 is legendary.

Sometime in the late 1970s the first version of the play Bleacher Bums emerged exploring/celebrating a group of Cub fans who have long endured the emotional roller coaster of win-lose and lose some more but remain loyal and hopeful for eventual success.  Whether the viewer of the original Bleacher Bums or its more recent reincarnations wants to find the loyal Cub’s fans experiences analogous to life is perhaps the overriding question of the play.  For fans, whether really devoted or merely casual, professional sports teams like the Cubs are entertainment—but they are much more, because they are a kind of long-running saga in which the fan and the team are linked. 

Teams like the Cubs provide an avenue where all kinds of people can meet and share and enjoy a moment or maybe much more of camaraderie and connectedness.  I am in a hospital waiting area churning through my collection of unread newspapers while my Dad is getting a new pace maker installed.  An African American man a bit older than me sits down nearby to wait while his wife has some kind of test.  He gets into reading my old newspapers.  And before long we are talking about baseball and those damn collapsing Cubs of 1969.  He recalls growing up “in the projects” on the west side.  He savors the memory of Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ferguson Jenkins.  I too remember that summer of ’69, a high school junior to be, working on a huge landscape project shoveling, smoothing and planting while two “old shoe” radio announcers broadcast the Cubs games from Wrigley Field amid bright sun, warm wind, and the occasional drive by of cheerleader Barb Spreen in a red convertible who might give a little wave and a smile.  

Owning a baseball team might be a great ego trip but in some ways it is a great responsibility and while the Ricketts family might be the big bosses of the Cubs, they are also stewards with an obligation to nurture that long running saga which is part of our region and a part of even the most casual fan’s life.  So when the Rickett’s family patriarch takes a public stand in a presidential election he is taking a big risk.  When he goes so far as to set up his own Political Action Committee that actually produces its own ads, and then spends ten million dollars to attack one of the candidates, he has acted inappropriately.  To take an action with which a significant percentage of fans will firmly disagree and many will find deeply offensive is an egregious expression of outsized ego, selfishness and disregard for fans/customers.

At Redbud Creek Farm we find many of our customers and friends have strong opinions about the election.  And as might be expected, these opinions break down so that there is significant support for both sides.  Be assured, whichever camp you come from—your opinion is respected.  But know that the Farm is a relatively free from politics kind of place.  Hopefully, the Farm is a respite from a sometimes crazy world where all are welcome.  As much as we love red and blue, our real preference is always for the mixed combination of red, white, and blue with maybe a little golden yellow.  And with the majority of plants, while their blooms may be colorful, by far they are nearly all mostly green.