The Tao of planting asparagus to deal w/ disappointment (4 years later)

Four years ago, I first applied for a Presidential pardon for my federal medical cannabis conviction. After months of collecting support letters and completing the application, I mailed it in with high hopes ... only to have it returned right away because ("they" said) I had applied too soon.

To deal with the frustration, I planted some asparagas, knowing it would be several years before I would taste the first. I also wrote the following essay which I posted here at the time. Four years later, I hope y'all'll enjoy again.

It's been four years, the President supports medical cannabis nationwide and I'm having asparagus for dinner.

Good things come to those who breathe ... and do the next right thing.

Now back to the Garden.
In the here and now.

FBN
.........

The Tao of planting asparagus to deal with disappointment (May, 2011)

Tao ("dou", noun):

1. In Chinese philosophy, the absolute principle underlying the universe, combining within itself the principles of yin and yang and signifying the way, in harmony with the natural order.

2. In Confucianism, the right manner of human activity and virtuous conduct seen as stemming from universal criteria and ideals governing right, wrong, and other categories of existence.
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Good early cool blackberry winter morning, all y'all. I was up at 4:00 am this morning in my Tennessee deep hollow home, hoping and praying that my Higher Power (Mother Nature) would spare me an unusually late killing frost that threatened when I went to bed last night. A week ago last Thursday, we had one of those, three weeks later than usual. I spent the late afternoon and early evening the day before collecting loose straw from an obliging neighbor (whose barn had been blown down weeks earlier in another of the powerful storm systems that continue to rake the South these years) to cover my red and white potatoes and to anchor the paper and plastic bags that I used to cover my young tomatoes, peppers and basil.

When I awoke the next morning, there was a sheet of glare ice on my pick-um-up truck's windows, thick enough to obstruct my view. The straw and leaf mulch that filled the walkways between my planted rows crackled and crunched with the heavy frost underneath my bare feet as I walked through the Garden that morning. But by 10:00 am, when the sun finally showed his face in my deep hollow and it was safe to look, underneath those thrown-together natural and man-made blankets were snug, happy and still-alive young plants, every single one of them smiling up at me.

Last night, however, it was a different story. In the intervening two weeks, everything in the Garden (particularly the tomatoes and potatoes) had grown much bigger, fed by my farmer's footprints and the gift of aged mule manure given by another neighbor. There were also now small sweet corn shoots sticking their slender green snouts above-ground from the first of four succession plantings; joining the tender cotyledons of purple hull peas, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, Straight 8 cucumbers and yellow crookneck squash. In short, everything was too tall and too abundant to blanket the Garden again. So I went to bed last night, hoping that the cloud cover would continue, that this last, very late frost of blackberry winter would be held at bay.

Before I brewed my quart of coffee this morning, I first took my flashlight to the front porch deck and checked my thermometer there. Even though it was cool enough to see my breath and to watch those breath-clouds swirl as my trio of brown bats played their morning game of tag flying round and round my house (missing me sometimes by a millimeter, close enough almost to feel their wings), I knew from the feel of the air on my bare skin that Mother Nature had played her part last night, had spared me the grief of an untimely mass die-off in my Garden. The thermometer read 42 degrees, which likely meant high 30s in the Garden. Close, but not close enough to break the life-hold therein. Close, but not close enough to stop its progress, its march toward fulfillment that will full-fill my belly and those of neighbors and friends who will share its bounty soon enough.

Of course, even a killing frost would not have left me empty-bellied. There are other plants growing in the Garden who can survive anything short of a hard freeze, plants that have been growing well there for almost two months now – red and green cabbage, red, white and yellow onions, cauliflower, broccoli, beets, turnips, spinach, radishes. And my newest and most permanent addition to the Garden – my first-ever raised-bed row of asparagus.

I'm not sure why I've never planted asparagus before in my four decade old organic Garden, because I love the taste of those long tender purple-and-green shoots, steamed with a little butter or, better yet, eaten raw within a few seconds of their harvest. For whatever reason, though, I had never planted asparagus before. Until, in the aftermath of a major new disappointment, they had waved at me from the shelf at my local farmer's co-op, packets that contained a dozen desiccated masses of dry roots, smiling and whispering "Take us home."

And so I did, buying three packets of the plants, soaking them overnight to let those roots swell up, their root-hairs turning bright red where, before, they had been dull brown. Digging a trench in the short raised bed, close to the house near one of my compost piles, across from the other perennial bed of spearmint and lemon balm. Then spending each early morning on my knees, trying to discern a new, unfamiliar life-form unfolding from the soil amidst the weed seedlings that I know too well.

It took a few weeks for the first tentative asparagus shoot to show and, when it did, I tenderly encircled it with compost to mark its place in the bed. Day after day, other shoots appeared and, with each new arrival, another ring of compost marked its place. Now those single shoots are small, slender circles of foot-tall fern-like plants, strong enough to withstand real frosts and foregone ones, tender enough to keep me busy feeding and protecting them, too soon to harvest (that will take a year or two) but not too soon to admire and marvel. To give thanks.

I bought those asparagus plants on April Fool's Day, after picking up an unexpected package from my small town post office, turning in my notice slip for a large manila envelope labeled "US Department of Justice". In that envelope, crammed together in an unkempt pile, was my application for a Presidential pardon for my medical cannabis conviction. The 26 page application itself, along with my resume, several of my publications about reducing alcoholism in Indian country and methamphetamine abuse in Cowboy country, a copy of "UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections" (in which I appear) and, most precious of all, the 175 support letter submitted on my behalf (when only three were required).

It all was all there. It appeared that the only thing the Pardon Office had done was take that material out of the boxes in which it had been submitted and shove everything into a plain brown, government-issue envelope, returned to sender perhaps with timing intended to make me feel the fool.

There was only one thing new in that pile of paper – a one-page cover letter rejecting my pardon application as premature. It seems that my four year probation sentence (later reduced to two) had actually been a prison sentence, unbeknownst to me and to my federal judge. The Pardon Office had decided that my time in a halfway house as part of my probation punishment had actually been prison time because it was "confinement", even though the sentencing guidelines used by my judge said that time was "in lieu of imprisonment".

This distinction is important because the pardon guidelines state that persons who receive a prison sentence must wait five years from their release from prison to apply for a pardon while persons receiving probation sentences can count their five year waiting period from the date of their sentence. It has been 6 ½ years since my sentencing date but only four years since my release from the "house". So my application was premature, according to some faceless fed in Washington, and it will have to gather dust until next May, when I will be allowed to resubmit it.

Nowhere in the pardon instructions, nowhere in the bowels of the USDOJ web-site, is this distinction made apparent, or even mentioned. In the aftermath, in the several emails that passed between the Pardon Office and me, I was told by a Pardon Office attorney that this distinction (this unwritten rule) is made clear when petitioners contact their office. On the contrary, a half dozen emails had gone between me and them before I had submitted the pardon application and in none of them was this "probation is really prison, at least in your case" message imparted. Of course, I knew enough (as a former federal official myself) to know that questioning their judgment (and their integrity) would get me nowhere.

So I did the next best thing. I bought some asparagus plants.

As I've spent my time since on my knees, watching the new life awaken in its new world, I've had lots of time to think about all of this and what it all means. I knew going in that no one – no one – has ever received a Presidential pardon for a medical cannabis conviction. I knew that there are likely many reasons for this, at least some of them as irrational as our continued war on "illegal smiles" itself. But I also knew that if someone didn't plant the seeds, we would never be blessed by the bounty that science, common sense and compassion will bring us when we finally reach the end of this, our nation's longest and most costly war.

Being the constant gardener that I am, I was happy to plant the seeds. But being an experienced gardener as well, I knew enough to plant those seeds not in one but in several places: in the halls of governments in four states, nineteen of whose leaders wrote support letters for me; in the country stores and cafes surrounding my farm so that my neighbors could learn what I was attempting and lend their own voices, prayers and support letters to the effort; in the hearts of my friends, some who've been with me every step of this journey and others who have only recently climbed on board. I even planted seeds in the minds of several California attorneys I met recently at the NORML convention in Denver, encouraging them to file pardon petitions also for their own medical cannabis convict clients, all of whom are as deserving (if not more so) than me.

Those seeds are sprouting now, I am confident of that, as I type these words to you. I know that in my heart and in my soil-stained fingers, just as surely as I know that my Garden will keep feeding me and others if I will only do my part, that work that I do best on my knees, watching for new life to arrive.

These days, as we enter another beautiful spring, new life is arriving in abundance and I am doing my part. Sometimes my part is simply to replace a bale of spoiled straw atop a beautiful young female skunk's nest that I had uncovered by mistake, returning her home to peaceful and protective darkness before she felt the need to protect her young black-and-white kittens by covering me with her scent. Sometimes my part is simply to move quietly and slowly so as not to spook a wild young hen turkey who is helping herself (and me) by eating stray weed seeds and bugs in my Garden. Sometimes my part is to be persistent in working for a long-overdue correction of our ship of state when it comes to our punitive policies against a healing plant.

And sometimes my part is simply to be patient and, in so doing, to be present in this moment. Because, as I am learning now, if I can wait two more years for my first full plate of asparagus from the Garden, I can wait another "minute" for my government to pardon me. Or not.

Lord knows, all y'all (and many more besides) did that a long time ago.

And for that, I am eternally thankful.

Now back to the Garden. Peace out. Y'all come.