The Year of the Frog: What Orchardists Do While Apple Trees are Chilling

I’m working in the studio on a sculpture of a frog. I talk to it while I sculpt it. I ask questions. I stroke it and I pat it. You might say I have fallen in love with this frog—though I’m not intending to kiss it, and definitely not desiring to meet a prince. This is not a frog of fairytales, but the frog who is the subject of a haiku by Matsuo Basho, Japan’s most influential 17th century haiku master.

Haiku was originally a seventeen-syllable introductory verse to a longer series of linked poems. Then in the middle of the 15th century, people began to write these short poems as a separate form. They sent them to each other, shared them. They were often playful. Basho, a maverick, was keen to use this form of poetry to express something more serious. For almost all of his life he explored the writing of haiku. Haiku became an evocation of an experience, of a moment. As an art form, it aligned with the development of Zen Buddhism in Japan, and became an instantaneous presentation of the whole without intellectual commentary.

How much could be expressed in few words? How to express an emotion like loneliness without using the word?

In 2001, when I first visited this rundown farm with its old apple orchard, I was awed by its large pond. Years earlier I had lived in Japan and been influenced by the Zen poets and traditional Japanese arts. This pond reminded me of one of Basho’s haiku and I named the farm Old Frog Pond. There are at least a hundred translations of the poem—some quite strange—but literarily it is:

Furu ike ya/ old pond (‘ya’ is a word of emphasis but without specific meaning)
Kawazu tobikomu/ frog jumps
Mizu no oto/water’s sound

In a traditional haiku, the first line often sets the scene. In this poem, we are introduced to the view of the old pond. This ageless pond might make us think about the beauty of the moon’s reflection in water, or how an old willow’s branches coax ripples on its surface. The pond may hold in its depth old carp, ancient beings.

In the second line, our gaze narrows as we see a frog. In traditional haiku writing, “Frog” was considered a season word to indicate spring. In Basho’s poem this little frog appears, a small creature, perhaps just coming out of the mud on an early spring day. Our mind holds the fragility of the frog within the expansive pond. We hold the singular among the universal.

Then, all of sudden, we are woken from our musings with a ‘splash’—the sound caused by the frog’s jump breaking the surface of the water.

Suddenly, everything disappears—our thoughts about this old pond, about the frog, the season, the setting. Only the sound exists. We are no longer thinking or making up a story. No frog and princess here. For a moment we even forget ourselves—just splash!

What does it take to be absorbed in the moment? Why is this significant?

How do we absorb ourselves in an experience? How do we have an experience?

Who is this ‘we’ that experiences?

Basho trained for several years as a Zen monk. He continued to wear the robes of a monk as his daily garb. His writing of haiku was the practice of a Zen art. His language was always simple yet conveyed the complexity of our heart/mind. In Japanese the character for kokoro, carries the meaning of ‘heart’ and ‘mind’, unlike in English where these two words are distinct.

Working on sculpture is different from writing. I form the muscles of the leg with melted wax. I press and shape the thick and sinuous body parts. I carve into hard wax the lines of the nail ridges on its webbed feet. Wax sticks to my finger tips and palms, and hardened wax packs behind my nails. When I work on the frog, I touch only frog. When I gaze at the frog, I see only frog. This frog does not jump. It is sitting. Contemplative you might say. Prayerful even. There is no splash.

A concrete pillar stands in the water between the lower pond and the small stone bridge before the pond water flows into the vast Delaney wetlands. It’s been calling for a sculpture since I moved here. Once this frog is cast into bronze, it will live on the post and gaze east towards the rising sun. Its feet will dangle and tease the water.

While working on the sculpture, I wondered if the frog should be carrying anything on its back or holding anything in its hands. But the frog was adamant. I’m just a frog. I’m a frog that is completely myself. Not going anywhere, not doing anything. Maybe that’s why I love it. Maybe that’s what love is—not needing something or someone or ourselves to be any more than just what and who we are. Not needing to do anything, only experiencing this moment fully.

            Next spring I hope you will come to see this Frog in its new home.
May we all find the stillness and wakefulness of Basho’s Frog in the New Year!

The Artist and the Orchard: A Memoir

I now hold the book in my hands. I’m surprised by its slight weight, it’s smooth surface. The cover painting is a detail from a watercolor of the orchard and inside are the rows of trees: training in the Noh Theater in Kyoto, raising my children in the old Baptist church in Groton, Massachusetts, moving to Old Frog Pond Farm in nearby Harvard, restoring an abandoned orchard, Zen Buddhist training, and the important personal relationships that have shaped my life.

The book leaning against the wall sculpture, Repetition of Days, from “The Agricultural Tool Series.”

Like a sapling, this writing has taken years to bear fruit. I have written mostly in winter. However, soon after settling into a writing schedule, the first warmth fills the air and the farming season begins. The doing takes over—the weeding, the planting, the tending. I’ve had to learn patience. While the apple trees have had to withstand a freak October ice storm, vole attacks, and the confusion of spring coming far too early, I’ve also lived through challenging events. The hope, of course, is that I am a little stronger. After all, like the trees, we can learn to be resilient and generous despite the inevitable setbacks the wild beasts leave at our door.

Now the published book is here and I hope many of you will celebrate with me on Saturday, October  30th at 2 pm. We’ll meet at Sanctuary, a recently restored large church in the center of Maynard, Massachusetts. In keeping with the community of individuals of who have contributed to the becoming of the book, a few musicians and poets will share the stage with me. Seating will be around small tables and make it possible to maintain social distances. We’ll wear masks and vaccination certificates will be checked at the door (or a PCR test within three days.)

Copies of The Artist the Orchard: A Memoir will be for sale. If you have already bought one, come anyway and I’ll sign your book. If you live far away, the memoir is now available from the publisher, Loom Press, local bookstores as well as at bookstore.org and other online sites.

Enjoy the new season, and I look forward to sharing this event with you.

An Artist in the Orchard

Usually I carry a spade, loppers, clippers, a weeding tool, a basket with rubber ties, and wire into the orchard. But like a plein air painter who leaves the studio and brings paints and brushes to the subject, I bring a notebook and pen, and sit in a patch of purple violets under a Golden Delicious apple tree.

Along with the violets, two varieties of clover are growing—mammoth red and white Dutch. I love clover under my apple trees—and daffodils and dandelions, mountain mint and comfrey, iron weed, valerian, St. John’s wort, bee balm, even stinging nettles. The more companion plants, the richer the soil.

Notebook page 5/16/20

Most people don’t realize that one apple bud opens to become a cluster of five or six flower buds. The king blossom is in the center; it’s the first to grow and the first to open. It’s surrounded by the harem waiting to take over if anything should happen to the king.

In a stellar pollination year, most of the secondary blossoms will be pollinated and the tree becomes a cloud of delicate wings. The downside is too many children. The apples will be small, with more disease and pest pressure, and less air circulation and sunlight, not beneficial for the crop. 

On this particular Golden Delicious tree, I see only a few blossoms. Golden Delicious have a propensity to be biennial—a riot of blossoms one year, and the next only a scattering. Orchardists can control this tendency by “thinning” the trees, removing a portion of the young fruit. As an organic grower, I don’t have an array of chemical thinners to choose from, but I can hand thin. On our youngest trees, we pluck off all the blossoms, discouraging such precocious behavior; these trees need to focus on growth, not reproduction! On the younger trees, we remove some of the fruitlets, leaving a few inches between apples. But on the mature trees, when the fruit set is crazy-good, our feeble efforts to thin hardly make a difference. One tree alone could occupy an afternoon, and we don't have a month to devote to thinning. I leave the Golden Delicious to do as they are inclined. Other trees, like the newer varieties of Liberty and Honey Crisp, are bred to discourage this trait.

The upside of this off-year is all energy goes into growing large and shiny leaves—optimal photosynthesis. A time of repose, a sabbatical to recharge. As I sit in its shade, I think about what the tree offers other than fruit. Maybe nutritive support to other trees and to the soil around its roots? Maybe sequestering more carbon? Maybe that strange notion, self-care?

This Golden Delicious tree is over 45 years old, and some orchard experts say it should be replaced because it’s old and leaning too far south. But I’m enthralled by its wayward slant, its zig-zag desire to find equipoise. In the photo below you can see the young branch I’m training to become a new central leader if necessary. 

Being both orchardist and artist is at times contradictory. Should I spray a particularly nasty, but approved organic material like lime sulfur to thin the Golden Delicious so they don’t fall into biennial production? After all, we have 28 mature Golden Delicious trees with no fruit, and that’s a lot of real estate in a small orchard. The truth is I appreciate the gnarly old trees and the young slender spindles, the trees with no apples and the trees loaded with fruit.

I finish taking notes and gather violets to put in a jar of olive oil for next fall when we will make salves and balms. A pair of cedar waxwings are courting in one of the Gala trees, and two orioles sing from high in a Summer Sweet. The woodchuck peeks out of a nearby hole, and upon seeing me, ducks back down. The geese hiss. On my walk back to the house, I snap off two fat purple asparagus no doubt planted by some robin scratching for worms near the trunk of a Cortland in the first row. Today I’m an artist in the orchard. Tomorrow I’ll return with other tools.

Apple Tree, Watercolor and Pencil, 2020, Linda Hoffman

The Gift

On Christmas last year my stepfather gave me a gift, but before I started to open it, he said, “Wait. There’s baggage that comes with this gift, Linda.” I know about gifts—after all I am the daughter and step-daughter of anthropologists.

            “All right,” I said, and started opening the wrapping paper.

It was a coffee table book on Tibet, one that in all likelihood he had picked up from his living room side table. Bill has been fascinated with Tibet since a brief visit there five years ago.

             “I want you and Blase to take me to Tibet,” he said.

I love this man. He married my mother when I was myself a young bride, and they had a glorious and passionate life until she died in 1997. Bill is now ninety-two—I would do anything for him. He is the one person I often speak to about my mother, a courageous woman who remains a constant inspiration to me. Bill always sends me a note on her birthday.

Bill wanted me to organize our trip, not travel with an organized tour like his previous visit. But Tibet is not easy to enter. You have to travel either from Kathmandu or China. Outsiders cannot visit Tibet as one would a western European country, France for example—climbing the Eiffel Tower, visiting Notre Dame, or taking the train to Versailles. Any person visiting Tibet needs not only a Chinese visa, but a Tibetan visa, and a guide to go anywhere outside of the capital, Lhasa. I made contact with a Tibetan guide service, determined that our trip would benefit the Tibetan people.

I asked my daughter, Ariel, if she wanted to join the three of us, and she jumped at the opportunity. We talked about what painting supplies we would take with us and began looking forward to painting together. Meanwhile, well-meaning friends warned me it would be dangerous to take Bill from sea-level to over 12,000 feet.” They had a point, but when I mentioned this to Bill, he waved it off. “I’ll take Diamox and be fine.”

Obtaining our Chinese visas was the first hurdle. For various bureaucratic reasons Bill’s application was rejected twice, while ours went through after some artful arranging. Several weeks passed and the timing was getting down to the wire. Without Bill’s Chinese visa, we couldn’t apply for the Tibetan visas, and if we didn’t do that shortly, it would be too late. I called Bill.

            “Bill, what do you think?”

            “Maybe I’m just not meant to go,” he said.

            “Well, if you’re not going, we’re not going.”

            “Oh, no!” he said. You must go! The three of you must go without me.”

Getting our visas was arduous, but the re-applications, hotel reservations, letters, documents, and day by day plans had worn me out. I’d spent so much time organizing this trip, arranging, choosing accommodations, and so forth, that I was ready to let it go. Bill was the impetus; without him I was no longer sure about going.

I called Ariel and told her it didn’t seem Bill would get his visa in time and we needed to decide if we would go without him. Blase was on the fence because his mother’s health was failing. I didn’t know what Blase would decide. I hoped he’d come with us, but wanted her to know it might be just the two of us.

“It’s fine just the two of us.” she said.

          “We’ll have to be courageous,” I replied.

           “We can do it.”

She wanted to go no matter what. It was decided. Ariel and I would go with or without the men.

Detail from Journey, Outdoor Installation by Tristan Govignon at Old frog Pond Farm & Studio. Photo: Robert Hesse

Blase visited his mother and after speaking with her and his brothers, he felt more at ease about being away and said he wanted to join us. On Monday, I wrote to Samdup, the person arranging our Tibetan itinerary, wired payment for the trip, and gave the ok to apply for our three Tibetan visas. These were being processed when on Thursday afternoon Bill received his Chinese visa from the embassy.  

I wrote again to Samdup:

                        Bill has his visa. I have attached the copy below. Please add him to our trip.

I didn’t know if there was time to re-apply as a quartet, but I was determined to do everything possible to have Bill go with us. Samdup replied that they needed to resubmit everything, but he would see what he could do to expedite the process. We still have not heard definitively, and our flight to Beijing leaves on Thursday, but we are planning to board our China Air airplane, fly to Beijing, and hopefully to Lhasa.

I still wonder a little, especially in the middle of the night, if we are we supposed to go. But I trust that without knowing the reason, there is something important for us to experience. Ariel and I are excited to share this opportunity with Blase and Bill, to visit a country surviving despite the trauma of its recent history, a country rich in spiritual teachings, one that has already brought so much wisdom to the West.

Cover Drawing by Robert Spellman for The Wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism, edited by Reginald Ray, Shambhala Pocket Library.