I got the text Saturday afternoon from Ma, the lady who lives downstairs. She had written an article, if I want to use it. It is now well over a year since I took over this column, and I have learned to appreciate the challenge of coming up with something to write about every week- this is a small place, after all. 

And while Ma, Diane O’Brien to most of you, seems content in the passing of the torch, she clearly still has stories in her. And here is what she wrote:

“Pea Fence Redux (Again) 

I don’t know what it is about the annual pea-planting that urges me to sit down and write, but here I of again, reprising the original with comments from my older self. 

Putting Up the Pea Fence, circa 1994 

The pea fence went up easily this year.  For once the two sections of chicken wire had been left neatly rolled up, and stored at the side of the garden last summer, posts inside the rolls.   

Today I haul out the 8’x4’ panels of heavy wire neatly stapled to wooden frames, not an easy feat, as they’ve been stored away under the barn behind several bikes, the rototiller and assorted lawn mowers. Somehow they’re heavier than they used to be, but I do remember the fay I coerced our niece- the one everyone’s always called “Uncle Susie”- to help me build them.

 We lay the wire out on the newly-tilled rows, my husband and I, and it's just long enough.  "Do you need help?" he says, eyeing the sagging barnyard fence he'd been wanting to tear down. "No, I can handle it," I lie. "You go ahead."   

Only now, as I carry the unwieldy things out to the pea bed, in my mind’s ey it’s spring some eight years ago, and I see my strong husband fall trying to maneuver the tiller out of the barn, the first sign of his impending illness.

But to my surprise it's simple.  Except for a couple of miscalculations with the sledge hammer, the poles go in straight and deep, and I bite back my martyr's whimper at the weight of the sledge.

This would be pre-shoulder surgery, after which the doc told me “No more sledge hammering.” Fine/ So I gave up fence posts and still manage to pound in those oak stakes you can get at Rankin’s. With a sledge.

He either doesn't see my wild swings, or has become as adept as I at ignoring signals; he doggedly works with crowbar and hammer, head down.  I forget his abandonment of me then in the pleasure of the job and the day.

Oh, how I miss him.

 How many springs have I put in pea fence, I wonder, while cutting baling twine into foot-long pieces which I hang from a belt loop.  

Plastic zip-ties not hang from my belt look, so much for my environmentally-correct former self. So easy

Twenty-four springs, I figure, and that includes the year I was recovering from neck surgery, as well as the three years I had a baby in the playpen, netted against blackflies. 

Ah, so I wad coming up on 50 that Spring. Fitting that today, 80 looms weeks away.

I bend down to tie the wire to the post close to the ground, and again near the top, tossing aside a half-buried plastic sword handle, artifact of the boys' Star Wars phase.

Ed, my replacement Lincolnville correspondent, does a great job cataloging the details of their childhood, though even now I dig up the occasional Green Plastic Army Man or, like the other day, fin an overlooked Easter Egg under the bird bath. And while I am on the subject, it’s still a race to see who gets to the peas first-me or Ed. He insists on eating his peas raw, we called him the Pea Monster back when he was little Eddie, meaning he is out picking and eating as fast a they ripen.

My pea fence has gone through many metamorphoses.  In the beginning when there was never any money I used baling twine, tied into long lengths, then strung between posts.  Those were terrible fences; they always collapsed under the weight of the peas. (Here I stretch that nice, sturdy chicken wire to another post and admire its straightness.) Then I thought we ought to use brush for peas, a la Helen and Scott Nearing, both cheap and environmentally correct.  It took a tremendous number of six-foot alder branches, which we'd cut in the field up the road, then drag home.  One branch every four to six inches, driven into the dirt, made a good fence, but it was an awful lot of work.  It took several years, but I finally figured out that what the Nearings had that I didn't was plenty of time and no babies.

Perched precariously on an upside down bucket to pound in the stakes, I then zip tie the ends of each panel between two of them. Coming out of Winter hibernation- a winter wit no snowshoeing or cross country skiing, a winter of too much sitting. It’s disconcerting to realize what 80 will feel like, as I tip over from one decade to the next. Tip over. It’s all about balance, as most any octogenarian will tell you. Balance and those deteriorating muscles in our hands, legs, and shoulders.

 Other gardening missteps came through the written word; I think of the potatoes grown under hay mulch -- "the mice will eat them, they'll rot, you don't see the oldtimers growing them that way" said my husband.  As usual in these arguments of what we ought to do, I prevailed.  I don't know what happened to those potatoes, but when we pulled away the mulch that fall to harvest what ˝Mother Earth News˝ promised would be big, beautiful, clean potatoes there was absolutely ˝nothing˝ there.  And we're still battling errant horseradish throughout the garden planted at my insistence to repel potato bugs, advice taken earnestly from ˝Organic Gardening˝ magazine.  The only thing that's ever repelled potato bugs has been my husband's thumb and forefinger, applied religiously twice a day along the rows of growing plants.  He actually enjoys it.

Not surprisingly, this second chapter Don and I have entered, forging a relationship with another partner is like starting all over again. Here’s a guy who, in his 85 year, has figured out the best ways to do things, and finds it frustrating that so have I. It certainly gives us something to laugh about..

 He's never liked growing peas -- "they're too much trouble for what you get," he says -- but characteristic of our marriage, I plant them every year anyway. 

Of course, he was right. Peas are too much trouble. The Spring ritual of putting up the fence, picking the pods on a warm summer morning, and then the long, lazy hours sitting on the back porch at the end of the day shelling. Such a lot of trouble.. 

In this the twenty-fourth spring of our garden and our life together the pea fence is going up more smoothly; and I don't try any half-baked ideas from magazines and books whose authors know nothing of ˝my˝ life and its idiosyncracys.  Instead we move to our own rhythm, my husband and I, he tackling the hard jobs of chopping wood, earning our paycheck, and bringing our boys along, while I figure out the pea fence and try to remember where we've been.

Like I said, I miss him.”

Wow, and now I am tearing up. My parents were pretty close to my wife and my age when she wrote that original piece, her at the cusp of 50, as I am today. Their children had mostly left the nest in 1994, with just my younger brother still at home that spring, while ours have only a few more years to go.

As I said, we live in a small place, where small things happen, each year, in their season. Like putting up the pea fence. Man, I really want some fresh peas, warm from the vine…

French Cemetery Clean Up

French Cemetery, the old burial ground behind Dot’s at Lincolnville Beach, is hosting a community cleanup next Sunday, May 5, from 1 to 4 p.m. Following the wild coastal storms of this winter, there is a lot to clean up. If you are interested, bring work gloves, and there may be snacks involved. French Cemetery commands wonderful views of the bay, and so many stories etched into the stones, most notably the resting place of little Elenora French, the maiden of Maiden’s Cliff.

It was 11 years ago this Spring when my little girl and I made the hike to see the cross, and afterward she laid dandelions on her grave. Grim, perhaps, but also an impromptu lesson in the history of her town.

Condolences

To the vast network of family and friends and neighbors of Rachel A. Young, wife of the late Bernard Young. I still keep expecting to see Rachel and Bernard at the tables in Drake’s when I stop by in the morning.

And that’s the column for this week, Lincolnville. As always, treat each other with kindness and understanding, be good, and reach out at ceobrien246@gmail,com. Enjoy the spring breezes!

CALENDAR

Tuesday, April 30

Library open 3-6 p.m. 208 Main Street

AA Meeting 12 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

Lakes and Pods Committee, 7 p.m. Town Office

Wednesday, May 1

Library open 2-5 p.m. 

Friday May 3

AA Meeting 12 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

Library open 9-12, 208 Main Street

Saturday, May 4

Library open 9-12, 208 Main Street

Sunday, May 5

United Christian Church, 9:30 a.m. Worship, 18 Searsmont Road

Bayshore Baptist Church, 9:30 a.m. Sunday School, 11:00 worship, 2648 Atlantic Highway