Peppers, Wrens and Stories for the Age of Coronavirus

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live" is how Joan Didion begins her essay "The White Album." During these months of staying home during the coronavirus pandemic, these are the stories I've told myself.

Someday I'll get a haircut.

Peppers in their protective cage, June 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Someday I'll be able to go to my favorite restaurant and eat there.

Someday I will walk or buy groceries without a mask.

Someday I'll grow peppers.

The first three are obvious, the last one may be less so to you.

Every year I grow peppers in pots because I don't care to do the backbreaking labor to create a garden in a sunny spot of my backyard (to avoid the disapproval of some neighbors). Most years I buy my plants when MH and I and a couple of friends drive to a place in central NJ. Not this year. The place told us not to come but to order online. My friends did but I did not. Instead, I pulled out some of the many, many seeds I've kept from my peppers over the years. I put a few of my favorite type - a sweet frying pepper called Italia - in a pot on a sunny window sill in March. Several sprouted and grew. Then, they died because the weather took a chilly turn for the worse in April.

Apples in June 2020 (Margo D. Beller)

Undeterred, I threw more seeds into the pot and waited. This time as the seedlings grew the weather warmed because the sun was out more often. The seedlings grew bigger. I separated them into two larger pots. The seedlings grew bigger still.

This week, after waiting impatiently for mid-June's steamy weather to move out, I took the three biggest seedlings and put them in their own pots. Then I took the remaining peppers and put them in a very large pot to see what will happen. If the smaller ones die, so it goes. If they all grow, some will be removed to other pots. So-called experts say you thin out seedlings so only the strong survive. But after all the waiting and watching I hate to let those seedlings go. Besides, you never know if the larger, supposedly stronger, seedlings will die anyway.

Life is like that. Seemingly strong plants, like people, suddenly take sick and die. During this coronavirus pandemic the number of people dying has decreased but the dying continues so we can take nothing for granted, which is why I still wear a mask, eat at home and my hair looks as it did in my high school graduation picture.

My garden is growing, too. These are Stargazer
lilies. (Margo D. Beller)

The shock of transplanting and being moved into a sunnier spot than the indoor window sill had the plants wilting and I feared the worse. But they have since revived and I look forward to tending my vegetables along with the other plants growing and blooming in my garden.

Here is another story I told myself: Someday, a house wren and his mate will find the nest box in the apple tree and use it to raise young.

As with the peppers, that finally happened this month.

A house wren had been singing around the yard but not in the apple tree where I hang a nest box every year. At the end of May I was on the porch and saw a house wren investigating the box. A few days after that, I was mowing the lawn and stopped to rest in the back yard. As I sat I saw two wrens. One went inside the box, the other sang. I know the male brings the female over to potential nest sites and she chooses the one she wants, so I was optimistic. My box was picked and they've been hanging around ever since, the male singing every morning to proclaim my yard is his territory. By now the female should be on eggs.

So once again my yard is hosting a house wren pair and once again the fruit is starting to grow in the apple tree, which means the squirrels are once again climbing around and making a mess that will draw deer. But that is another story for this pandemic time. As with the peppers, I am hoping this one about the wrens turns out well.

Towards the center of this photo is this year's house wren. It was as
close as he would allow me to come. (Margo D. Beller)

“It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking