Christine Gelineau

My husband and I live on 120 or so acres in the Susquehanna River Valley in rural New York State, where we raise Morgan horses. In addition to the horses, since the summer of 1973, each year I have grown much of our own food in a large organic garden with an alertness to interactions between plants and companion planting. Early on I had an opportunity to attend a "powwow" where I was exposed to the traditional planting methods of the Haudenosaunee (then commonly called the Iroquois) who are indigenous to this land and who had husbanded "the three sisters" -- corn, beans, and squash -- for many centuries. The Haudenosaunee plant the corn in circles so that the self-pollinating stalks link plant to plant ensuring pollination of every ear. Beans are planted amongst the corn so the stalks can provide a support to the bean vines, and the spiny-vined squash form a barrier around the circle keeping raccoons and other animals from the tempting corn. I have tried to learn from this not only how to plant my three sisters, but also how to be attuned to the plants' own needs and defenses.  After so many decades of eating from the land -- "incorporating" the land in a very literal sense -- by now we are made of this land we live on as surely as are the trees with which we share this space. This springtime poem, "Carpe Diem," attempts to communicate that urgent appetite for life and continuance we humans share with plants and with other-than-human animals.