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What Was I Thinking?

Whenever I get too deeply in my head, too deeply in my own obsessions and excesses, my too-muchness, life has a way of reminding me to slow down.

Way back in January I said I was going to resurrect the old knitting and sewing blogs. I had plans. Big plans. I should know better. I was always the kind of child whose eyes were too big for her stomach. I still am that child. I want to do everything, to know everything, to miss nothing, and even as I recognize that I cannot physically do that, neither can I manage it psychologically. Another part of me wants to sit on the grass and stare at a dandelion for hours, to be lost in dreams, to play, and to let my imagination run wild while the world slips by unnoticed.

For a while I managed three blogs. For a while I didn't even manage one. You know what? It doesn't matter. But what does matter is that I rediscovered something and that is sometimes my own tendency not only to overthink, but my tendency to allow my own ideas and inspirations and general mental peripatetic overdrive leap far ahead of what is actually important. I am not a knitting person as distinct from a sewing or needlepoint or embroidery person. I am not a gardener or a cook. I am all those selves and more. There is no one thing I am driven to come home and focus all my energies on, at least not consistently. The more I try to compartmentalize myself and my interests the more confused I grow. I need to hop from pile to pile, and sometimes I need to knock all my piles down and let them reconfigure themselves in news ways.

All of this is a long way of saying that all I have energy for is one blog. Actually, all I have interest in is one blog, one life, one me. So sometimes, if you are not interested in x or y, I may bore you to tears. There are days when I bore myself to tears. So be it.

So what has happened in the ten or eleven days since last I wrote? Precious little. Precious little is a good thing.

I spent two days mostly knitting, not this past weekend, but the one before that. I finished the sleeves on the purple cashmere sweater and blocked them. You can see them just above. While they were blocking I finished the front edge of the sweater. All that is waiting now is for me to seam those sleeves and attach them to the body of the sweater. Haven't done that yet, the story of my life.

That same weekend, I rounded up the remaining yarn from the multi-yarn striped cardigan I have also been working on and divvied it up into two equal parts. I wanted to make sure that the sleeves would be identical in their stripe sequence, and that sequence already varies slightly from the body of the sweater because I ran out of two yarns. Very little knitting has been done since, but I do hope to finish this second set of sleeves over the course of this week. No rush. I cannot wear either sweater until the weather cools, and yet I am itching to start something new.

I also opened my birthday presents from 2020. You might remember that I promised to buy myself some fermentation crocks. Smaller crocks than the giant 3 or 4 gallon crock I already own, which is too large for me to lift when empty, much less haul around when it is full of cabbage, or anything else for that matter. Since I am not feeding an army of teenage boys, there is no reason for me to make gallons of sauerkraut at a time. But Covid-19 also happened last year and I was not able to order the crocks I wanted from Sarah Kersten studio until May. As you can see I went a little overboard. Remember what I said about excess?

At least they arrived before this year's birthday. Due to my reduced energy levels, it took me a day to open all the boxes and unwrap the crocks. They are still sitting on my dining room table. Now I have to figure out where to keep them. I had already prepared a nice fermentation shelf downstairs in the cool basement, but if I want to actually use these crocks this summer, they need to be in the kitchen, because I don't have energy to chop and prep and haul pottery up and down the stairs. As it is, it took me three days to clean up all the packing materials and haul it out to the recycle bin. But I did. And before recycle pickup. Sometimes my joy in small accomplishments is almost too big to contain.

This past Saturday was one of those days my cardiologist warned me about, one of those days where the best option was staying in bed or perhaps lounging on the sofa. I suppose it could have been a perfect knitting day. Instead it was a cookbook reading day, a reminisce and dream about food day. I have owned Marcella Hazan's first cookbook, The Classic Italian Cookbook, since 1980. Marcella Hazan taught me about Italian food, and the book is now, 40 years later, stained and falling apart. I knew I would need to replace it but had been dithering, loath to part with an old friend. Then I happened upon this book, a compilation of Hazan's first two cookbooks, in my local second-hand bookstore for 75 cents. Of course I bought it. I spent Saturday in my pajamas, wrapped in a cuddly blanket, reading both cookbooks and cross referencing the recipes to be sure that everything I cared about in the first book was included in the second. Only two recipes failed to make the cut, and I understand the rationale, even as I myself am loathe to give them up. I am not planning on letting go of the original book anyway, at least not at this point as I have space and it holds too much sentimental value. Needless to say, I also discovered a lot of new-to-me things I want to cook, next time my cooking hat is on anyway. And those two recipes? They are pretty much a part of my culinary DNA, my mental repertoire, but a back-up copy has been made. I have forgotten things before, doubtless I will do so again.

Hope you are having a great week. Today is chemo day, and another cycle begins.

June 22, 2021
Five Things Friday

Just a quick update. A little shaky this time around, chemo #2, but not as bad as the first round. A dose reduction has helped and some acceptance that I am, and always have been, sensitive to medications, especially those that affect heart rhythms. A bit of a boost now though hopefully means that the end of the summer will also be a bit more manageable.

Garden time always brings joy, and this glowing pink hydrangea peeking out from behind the Japanese maple brings me joy each and every day. I could just sit on the lawn lost in its loveliness. The daylilly in front of the maple is also going to bloom. I have forgotten everything about it, its name, its color. Too much digging, too much trauma. It hasn't bloomed in two years, but apparently has survived and is now coming back with strength. There is hope in that don't you think?

Agretti. A new to me green vegetable, which I adore. Simply served here with a drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of lemon zest and Aleppo pepper. This came from GirlnDug Farm, my winter vegetable indulgence. I am going to try to grow some next spring although apparently it is tricky and a bit difficult. But that is what makes gardening fun. I don't want to stop supporting local farmers, and yet there is joy and satisfaction in harvesting a. bit of one's own food, of fresh peas from the garden, a fully ripe tomato, perhaps a vegetable one loves but does not find easily. Earlier this spring I attempted to grow spigiarello, another new to me Italian green related to sprouting broccoli. A late start and neglect resulted in a tiny yield, but perhaps next year will be better. I had visions of sharing spigariello with all my greens-loving friends. Plagued by hopes and dreams and visions of excess, I can't help but seem to be carried away. And yet the trick seems to be not in disappointment over dreams not fulfilled, but in the joys of discovering precious new things, new growth, tiny bowls of Italian greens.

Ah yes! Hidden in the middle, but perhaps most important of all! Hair. The requisite car selfie after leaving the wig shop. I love my new hair. I love the silver highlights. Admittedly I had silver highlights but not this many, and long covid hair appeared more dark, too dark for my aging paleface. It was time for short. And my hair, or at least my old hair, was too fine to hold this kind of off the face look no matter what I put in it. I like the shape of my head. I like a hat or a turban. I fully believe that there is no shame in cancer and no reason not to embrace the fact of it. But, I also love my wig, and yes, it has brought a spark of joy.

The Shade Garden. It does seem that so much of my joys revolve around moments in the garden this year and I remain grateful for that, that enough is planted that I have these peaceful vignettes, these places of escape and repose, where all is good with the world and my soul is washed clear of its troubles. I sat in one of these chairs one morning, facing away from the hydrangeas, facing toward the vegetable garden, watching the cardinals eat my peas, battle over who got the best peas. I have had my own good fair share, so I don't mind. It seems there is always something new to learn, some new drama, some newly discovered peaceful release.

And then there are all the little things. Having the energy to fill the two small planters in the front yard with flowers. A kind neighbor who brings my garbage can down to the garage from the street after trash collection. Surprise gifts of cuddly blankets. Family who stop by with shishito peppers just because they know I love them, love both family and the peppers in fact. A snuggle from my grand-puppy. All these things are a world in and of themselves. Sometimes I think we, or at times I at least, get wrapped up in thinking about all the grand things to see, to do, but in reality, perfection is in these little things.

June 11, 2021
In The Market and In The Kitchen

This past Saturday I went to the Farmer's Market. It was a lovely morning, perfect for a stroll and shopping. I tend to circumnavigate the market first, eyeing the offerings and letting my brain buzz with excitement and inspirational visions of various dishes and menus. Then of course, to sit, and collect those thoughts. In this case also to remind myself that I would have chemo again in a few days, and my energy levels are unpredictable at best. I overdid it the previous week, but more about that later.

Despite all the wandering, I seem to purchase from the same farms again and again. This week, suitably chastened about excess, I tried to rein in my purchases, not completely successfully. Here is my haul from this past weekend.

Not shown is a bunch of local asparagus, purchased at the local co-op, which was promptly roasted for lunch.

Note the carrots. Lots of carrots. This is where my exuberance got the better of me. Blame it on the previous week. As my energy level was fairly high and the carrot top season short, it seemed I could justify a little, controlled, abundance.

But why the reference to the previous weekend? Above is the Memorial Day weekend haul, and, as you can see, it is somewhat smaller in total volume, but actually higher in cooking effort required. The broccolini and raspberries were promptly consumed, as well as the Japanese turnips, which are good for both cooking and thinly slicing and eating raw. Then there was a lovely bunch of carrots, only one, and a lovely bunch (head?) of celery with gorgeous leaves. The flavor of celery is more concentrated in the leaves and inspired me to make soup. Celery and carrots with plentiful leaves are a seasonal treat here in Tennessee, whereas they were a much more plentiful staple when I lived in the mid-Hudson region of New York.

Cook I did. I had already planned to make a big pot of venison chili, and thought I could make a couple of batches of soup at the same time, packaging everything up in quart-sized vacuum-bags for future meals. I managed to do that despite the fact that my energy was at its lowest since my first chemo, about 25%, 30% on a good day, of my normal. Having recently inventoried the freezer, I knew there were two boxes of washed and chopped carrot greens remaining from last fall, when I was inspired to purchase them but too low on energy to actually cook. The fresh greens plus the frozen greens yielded four quarts of soup and the fact that the frozen greens were already washed and chopped saved me a great deal of effort. It says much when chopping 4 to 8 cups of carrots greens uses up one's energy and requires a multi-hour nap for recovery.

Over the course of the three-day weekend I managed to put away 10 quarts, or roughly 20 meals. (shown above): 3 quarts of chili, 4 quarts of carrot greens soup, and 3 quarts of chicken and celery soup. It sounds like a lot, but in my past life, at full energy, I could easily have cooked and packaged three to four times that over the course of a long weekend. Also admittedly this was a more esoteric selection than I usually put away, as I like to keep food on hand to deliver to people in need. This was meant for personal use. I couldn't quite manage running two pots at once, as I needed too much rest time between work sessions. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying accomplishment.

By. Monday I realized that my heart rate was consistently lower than usual, my body temperature was low, and although I could raise my pulse, I needed excessive rest time. Tuesday I ended up in the hospital where I got a few days rest and some strategies for dealing with future chemo sessions. I was mildly nauseous after the first chemo session, but tiredness seemed to be a bigger issue than initially anticipated. I do have a congenital heart defect, and my pulse tends to run on the low side, which I tend to ignore for the most part, always refusing to see myself as someone who is, or can do, less than anyone else. After a little worry on the part of the internal medicine department, a lot of rest on my part, and consultation with my cardiologists and several others, we decided that my heart is strong, even if atypical, and that no intervention was needed other than rest and some strategies for dealing with future chemo sessions.

And before I knew it, I found myself at another farmer's market. Of course the freezer was already rather full. But the season for carrot greens is rather short, so yes, I did indulge. When I got home I trimmed and chopped the carrot greens and washed them in several sinkfull's of water. A nap was undertaken during one of those washing cycles. My guess was that the four bunches of carrots would yield approximately 4 quarts of soup, which was close. I ended up with 4 1/2, all now happily packaged and frozen, The local onions went into the soup, the tops have been chopped and frozen with bags of vegetables for the making of stock.

The chicken stock supply has now been exhausted. Although I have bags of chicken carcasses, necks, and vegetable trimmings in the freezer, stock making will not commence for at least another week or more, either due to exhaustion or the pending nausea period that immediately follows chemo. I am not certain that nausea and a house that smells of chicken stock are compatible forces. Not that I need stock. Between the cooking festival over the past two weeks, the five 2-serving moussaka's that remain in my freezer, and other soups that have been frozen periodically, as well as a selection of fish and chicken frozen in single serving portions, I should not need to do any serious cooking for some time.

As an aside, and not really related to this post, here I am all masked and turbaned, port connected and ready for chemo yesterday afternoon. The turban helps keep the requisite mask, hearing aides, glasses, and yes earrings, in place and hopefully adds a bit of mystery. Acceptable wigs have not yet arrived, and I remain comfortable without them but am open to experimentation.

All that remains to be dealt with from Saturday's haul are the actual carrots. I am one of the odd people who prefer my carrots cooked, unless of course they are perfectly fresh young carrots such as these. However I don't believe I can eat them all raw so I plan to make carrot puree with the rest and freeze it in 1/2 cup portions. Carrot puree requires minimal effort, especially when the carrots are this young, fresh, and flavorful, and the puree makes a wonderful delicate sauce for use with fish, or probably chicken as well.

June 9, 2021
Three Things That Make Me Smile

Yesterday was an unmitigated disaster.

But rather than dwell on that, I shall share a few happy bits.

New red birkies. These make me inordinately happy. They make me so happy that i wonder why i thought I couldn't pull off white patent birkenstocks a few summers ago. Are they still cool? Or was white a passing fad? Ooh the possibilities.

Last Friday I went to hear Tessa Lark play Michael Torke's Sky with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. I was so hungry for live music that I went even though I did not feel well, and as much as loved hearing live music, my evening was a struggle. I had not heard this piece before and I wished I had. Usually I find new music exciting — both emotionally and intellectually stimulating, but on this evening I could not connect the notes I was hearing to a pattern. It was as if some some essential part of my wiring had temporarily shorted. By Saturday I had figured out that this was a not-unheard-of effect of the particular mix of drugs I am on at the moment. For a person who considers reading and writing an essential part of her nature, as well as listening to music, this was difficult the most difficult aspect of chemo. And yet, this week, restored, I have been listening to Tessa Lark playing Sky on YouTube again and again. It is a happy piece and I am happy to have been introduced to it.

The Shady Patio. It is a bit hot at mid-day for me to spend time here now, but at the waxing and waning of the day this is where you are most likely to find me. Listening to the birds. Perhaps doing nothing at all.

May 27, 2021
The Late May Garden

I started this post 10 days ago, and here it is, still languishing. Shall we see if I can resurrect it? Perhaps a wander through the garden is exactly what we need.

On the Saturday before Mother's Day I finished planting the vegetable garden. Here is a picture taken from an upstairs window that very evening. The next day I flew to Texas to see my mom.

It doesn't look that much different now, two weeks later. The tomatoes and peppers are doing well, as are the eggplant. Not everything else is up yet. I have perhaps been remiss in watering daily during the current heat spell, but I have also given myself permission to fall down on the job as needed. The experimental things are up, yacon for example. The flush of green at the back, chervil, is now bronze and dying back in the heat. It probably needs to be pulled but it has also probably self-seeded and will return, another flush of chervil gracing kitchen and garden. The fava beans (front) pods are plumping nicely. I have been eating peas for a week or so.

I had a large handful, about a cup and half, of peas this morning with my local eggs and local bacon. The peas were steamed very briefly, just as long as it took to quickly scramble two eggs, American-style, but still just barely firm to the touch, while still tender and delicate, the way I like them. This was actually the first relatively full breakfast I had enjoyed since my first chemotherapy on Wednesday. Who can say no to breakfast in the soft morning light, especially in a garden?

I have not actually done much in the garden but enjoy it. Put a plant in here and and there, Add a few herbs to my salad. I am waiting for the blueberries.

While I was away the Louisiana Iris unfurled their blossoms and greeted me with their saturated colors upon my return. They are still blooming, soft and velvety, as are the flag iris, which just don't seem to stop.

The blackberry blossoms are fading but the vines are covered in green fruit. Mixed in with the blackberries are the polka roses:

I struggle to find a photo with both rose and blackberry blossom. The scale of the roses dwarfs the delicate blackberry flowers. Perhaps there will be roses when the fruit ripens. Below is a photo of a rose for scale, one I posted on Instagram last week.

Yes, that is a hospital bracelet still on my wrist. Doesn't it coordinate so nicely? I believe I took that after coming home from my first chemotherapy session.

There were a couple of other photos taken before I actually started treatment, an attempt at registering a moment too quickly lost. This peony, for example, the one nestled at the base of the little lime hydrangeas.

This peony lives is this bed on the east side of the front yard. You see the bed below in the morning light. Alas the peonies are gone, but the bed is filling in nicely, and it brings me great joy. This bed was my least favorite part of the yard when I moved in –ugly red knockout roses, red azaleas — not me. Now it looks like my garden. The peony is behind the dogwood, hiding behind the nepeta now that the blossoms have fallen, the nepeta which looks almost. silvery in the horizontal light.

The Siberian iris which are nestled behind the cranesbill geraniums also bloomed this spring, their first bloom:

This bed has also filled in nicely and makes me smile every day. Smiles are always good. No I haven't filled the planters yet.

I have started planting more cranesbill geraniums in front of the encore azaleas that were put in earlier in the spring, but you don't see much yet. In fact, the leaves of this geranium are deep purple and are not really visible above the clay at the moment. You see their tiny little tags. Named "ghost" they will have white blossoms. Perhaps a moment of craziness, perhaps not, but is not that the joy of gardens, the indulgence of wild ideas, the hope that things will play well together?

As you can see, there is still much to be done. Much promise ahead. Much waiting as well and I am content with that. There is time.

May 24, 2021
A Reading Update: April and Beyond

Somehow my reading plans for the year have shifted. Here is my Summer Reading List. I will read other books of course, but this is a more focused list, one to see me throughout the rest of the year. I am one of those people who likes to learn as much as I can about whatever I find myself involved in, and the thought of learning about cancer is calming. Since I cannot, at the moment, ignore cancer, I can learn as much as I can about it.

As you will see from my April list, I've already read two of these books, and yet they remain on the stack. I actually shelved them and brought them back. I have referred back to both books repeatedly, and both have excellent references and I also have a growing list of articles to work my way through. Best to keep them at hand.

But what about April? My reading in April was scattershot and unfocused. Often my head wasn't in it. Sometimes I was simply depressed, sometimes I was simply too tired. It doesn't matter. It seems likely that I will not reach my 120 book goal for the year, but then so what. No one is keeping track but me, and it is a minor distraction. No groupings this month, simply fiction, and nonfiction.

30. Jane Harper, The Survivors.

31. Danielle Girard, White Out.

32. Siddhartha Mukerjee, The Emperor of All Maladies

33. Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist

34. Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind.

35. Paulette Jiles, News of the World.

36. Avrom Bluming, Estrogen Matters.

37. Việt Thanh Nguyễn, The Sympathizer.

38. Winifred Peck, Bewildering Cares.

I started the month in need of some escapist reading and, as it turns out, The Survivors was not the best book for my state of mind. It is beautifully written, but although it centered around a murder, it is really a slow-burn character study filled with gloom and the narrator's sense of guilt. Given my own state of mind I found it difficult, but I stuck with it and I actually liked the ending, which pulled the story together. I think, in a different frame of mind, I would have liked this very much as it is a very good exploration of how tragedy, as well as mindset and the assumptions and stories people tell about the tragedy, marks and changes people. In this case a murder resurrects long buried but not dead feelings about an earlier tragedy, and the reader gets to see how those memories and fears have shaped both individuals and a town. There are inconsistencies in the accepted version of what happened in the past, but no one really sees them because they have already formed their own narrative. In some ways, when the truth arises, it seems like it came out of left field, except that it had been present all along, in the subtext. I found the novel fascinating, tragic, sad, but also hopeful in some ways.

Still looking for some kind of escape, I next picked up Danielle Girard's White Out. It opened well, and I did finish it, but again I struggled. I perhaps could have forgiven the rough transitions, the holes in the plot, the disparate themes that were never quite connected, had the characters felt more compelling. But to this reader they seemed so immature and inconsistent, behaving in ways that made no sense, and the inconsistencies were never pulled together in any coherent way. Mostly I was just constantly annoyed with the lead detective, Kylie, who struck me as self-centered, illogical and often downright stupid. Heaven help this fictional town, but at least my annoyance, and my desire to learn what had happened to the one interesting, but still too inconsistently drawn character, Lily, drove me forward. Kylie does not interest me, so this will not be a series I will pursue further.

After two iffy attempts with fiction I leapt into Siddhartha Mukerjee's The Emperor of All Maladies, which had been sitting on my shelf for what, a decade, now? This was the distraction I needed. I plowed through it as if it were the most gripping novel. I read hungrily. I jotted notes and held conversations with myself. I could not put the book down. Yes, there was a lot of information, yes the author has some writing tics that I found annoying, but I think the book was compelling and beautifully written with wonderful metaphors and great flow. Perhaps this too was just me, but reading about cancer as I started my own cancer journey proved to be a very calming thing.

The next book on my list, Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Antiracist, just showed up because my turn finally arrived on the county library wait list. It is an excellent book, a well written book, a book I am glad I read. But I wanted to like it more than I did. Maybe if I had read it sooner. I am grateful for Kendi's argument that you are either a racist or an antiracist, and his exploration of how racist ideas sneak into our consciousness without our even realizing they are there. I like the way Kendi explores the development of his own understandings as a kind of guidebook to how we can look at ourselves, the way he tells us that just because we do not know we are racist, we are not absolved from the responsibility of rooting out our own misconceptions and hurtful ideas. There are some issues, more than we would like in fact, and racism is a big one, in which there really is no neutral territory. You are either upholding it or trying to tear it down. Unfortunately, and Kendi reminds us of this, the act of tearing down always starts within. I am either upholding a system that harms others, or I am trying to fight it. There really is no middle ground. I write this as the Tennessee legislature is attempting to legislate what can and cannot be taught about racism and American history. I find this morally heinous. There is no middle ground, I am either upholding racism, or I am acting to fight it. If one does not acknowledge one's history of failings one cannot become a better person. We all have failings, admitting them is not the same as saying we are bad people, only that we are flawed, as are we all. I am either a racist or an antiracist. I hope I can become the latter.

After Kendi I returned to fiction. Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind is a fascinating novel, very low key, but the very sense of detachment that the author employs serves to emphasize the disconnect here, the disconnect between what is happening in the world and what we want to be happening, between what really is and what we see, between how we act and who we think we are. A middle-class and fairly middle-brow white family is renting a house on Long Island for a summer vacation. They want to pretend that this is their house, their life, if only for a moment. But then a black couple knocks on the door in the middle of the night, claiming to be the owners, seeking refuge from a disaster as yet unfelt in this vacation world. Everything is challenged. The internet is out, the news is out. When there is no information people are driven both by fear and by hope, including the irrational hope that if they just can get back to their old life all will be well. This is not so much an apocalyptical or even post-apocalyptical novel, but a pre-appocalyptical novel. What happens when we don't know what is happening? How do we behave? Who do we become? Fascinating.

Next I picked up News of the World, which I had read before. It holds up well on rereading. I watched the movie as well. Much as I enjoyed the movie, I still prefer the book, but then I almost always do. Jiles captures Texas as I know it and remember it in her prose, the space, the landscape, even the history and the people. I am reminded that I intended to read The Captured after my first reading of this novel, the true story of children captured by Indians. I still have not gotten to that, but I will even though life intervenes. I am also reminded that the Indian problem has been a problem throughout American history, not the problem of Indians killing settlers, but the problem of settlers who, once exposed to Indian culture did not want to return to their European roots. This dates back to Plymouth Rock, to early Virginia. What does this tell us about our own civilization, about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves? Reading this book again, especially following Alam's novel, the difference between Captain Kidd, who is very much a realist who deals with the world and what he needs to do, and Alam's characters, self-obsessed with their own bubbles and their neediness, so self-absorbed they don't really see others clearly, is striking. Don't know where I am going with this yet, but that thought hovers.

I picked up Estrogen Matters after listening to an interview with the author on Peter Attia's podcast. I have long been interested in the topic. I went through menopause early, and was diagnosed about the time the a report was published from the Women's Health Initiative (2002) stating that HRT was dangerous and it increased the risks of cancer, stroke, hart disease and death. Despite the fact that I had severe symptoms and was only in my early 40s, my doctor's refused to give me HRT. They continued to refuse, even as it became evident that this was not at all what the study found, that this report came from a misinterpretation of the data and it was not vetted by the scientists undertaking the study, that the risks were exaggerated or downright wrong. I knew this because I had a tendency to read all my husband's medical journals from cover to cover. Yet I still could not convince my doctor. It may or may not be too late for me now, nearly 20 years later, but there is all kinds of interesting information in this book, and all kinds of reference material available for follow-up. I love a book that makes me think, and makes me reexamine my assumptions.

Next, I finally read Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer. I read it now because his next novel The Committed came up on my library queue and I wanted to read The Sympathizer first. I was completely blown away. It is a novel that it is almost disturbing in its intelligence, in its unsparing look at the world and the foibles of humanity. And yet it is not really polemical fiction. It is brilliant and sharp, clever and touching. The author has a way of capturing a feeling, a place, a pivotal moment with such clarity that the reader feels the emotion of the time and is connected to his or her own pivotal moments, a way of capturing the mindset of its participants, of exploring a culture, its strengths and its discontents without really preaching. It is a very clever book, at times bitterly sarcastic, at time outrageously funny, and although it takes place in the past it is still relevant to our lives today and our future. As you can tell, I loved this book and was primed for the next one. I am in the middle of reading The Committed now.

I actually started Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck before I picked up The Sympathizer. I usually like these mid-twentieth century novels of women's lives, and I usually like the novels of Winifred Peck. But I struggled to engage with this one. I suspect that I really needed a book that took me outside of myself, a book like The Sympathizer, and Bewildering Cares was just a little too slow for my agitated and peripatetic mind. It is the fictional journal of a week in the life of a vicar's wife during a week in 1940, the story of a middle aged woman of some wit, who loves her husband and her parish even though she is often exasperated with the petty cares and trials of life. The novel is somewhat more serious and less light-hearted than Peck's other novels, but still funny, and I did love Camilla's constant obsession with the small things, when there were big things brewing all around. But this is so much like most of us I found it endearing. So there you have it, I enjoyed the book even as I struggled to read it. A bit of an oxymoron, no? But then, when did being human actually ever really make sense?

May 7, 2021
The Irises

Several of the irises are in bloom. The Louisiana iris have bloomed but I neglected to snap pictures, and there are several winter-blooming irises, which are, of course, out of season.

There are these small irises, iris Japonica, named Porcelain Maiden. The foliage suffered a bit as it was covered by a downed laurel for too long and so it is difficult to capture the masses of tiny blossoms. I had worried that they were too heavily shaded, as very little light got to them before the laurel was removed. Either they were happy enough, or this was a difficult last gasp. I need to watch them closely over the coming year, as now that the laurel is gone, they may now get too much sun. Below is a detail shot.

The older patch of roof iris, Iris Tectorum, is also in bloom.

These are named "Slippery Slope" and they are blooming well. Below is a detail shot with a bit of an early morning glow.

I planted more roof iris last year, but they are not yet in bloom. Since they were gifted, and I do not remember the specifics from my friend's garden, the specifics shall be a surprise..

Finally, iris versicolor, is in full bloom. This is actually a hybridized version of the native blue flag iris, named John Wood. Above is a single flower that I also posted on instagram, but there are about 8 open now. I transplanted this in a bit of a rush last year, as it was not happy in its temporary holding spot, which was too shaded. It had been rescued from trampling by the men with boots and heavy equipment attacked my yard, and seems quite happy in its new home. Certainly I am happy seeing its blossoms out my kitchen window.

I still plan on putting tall bearded iris and dutch irises as well. As you might surmise I am not convinced that there is such a thing as too many irises, too many hellebores, too many hydrangeas. We will see what else fills out my garden as it continues to evolve.

May 3, 2021
Five Things Friday

I weeded a section of flower bed yesterday and I planted 9 plants. I hoped to do more but rain and tiredness won. After today I will be able to lift 10 pounds again, or more, and that will make gardening easier as well. It sounds like such a little thing, but if I plant 9 things every day, and perhaps some seeds in the vegetable garden, everything will be planted and in before the chemo kicks in and steals my ambition. There will of course be days when it rains, or I have to many appointments, so a little fudge factor is included. It is a manageable goal, and manageable goals are good things right now.

Otherwise, it has been a long time since I have done a "five things" post, and it seems about time.

Gifts from friends:  I posted this photo on Instagram earlier this week. A few things that brightened my life following surgery. Each of these is perfect, kind, distracting, soothing — but more than the things itself it is the thoughts and kindnesses even the smallest kindnesses, that remind me of how fortunate I truly am.

Jar Weights: After my fermenting session with Owen, I was thinking about fermentation weights and the impracticality of the glass weights that came in the fermentation kit I gave Owen for Christmas. Or at least they seemed impractical to me. They fit in the jars, but as a single piece, nearly the width of the wide mouth jar, they seemed like they may be difficult to remove, at least to someone with arthritic hands like myself. I wondered if anyone made weights for mason jars that were like the weights that are made for crocks — in two pieces. Lo and behold there are such brilliant people in the world. I love these. I haven't used them yet, but garden season, and fermenting season will soon be upon us.

Yarn and Knitting: I now have two cardigans in process. Yes, I started something new and relatively mindless, something suitable for tired evenings and post-anesthesia mental fog. And even though I am supposed to be knitting down the stash, which I am, more yarn arrived. In the April box from L'Atelier were the yarns to finally start my blanket squares. Those are the yellow and green yarns at the top of the photo. More amazing to me were the yarns that came for a new sweater project, the variegated yarn and the three yarns right around it. Notice how perfectly they coordinate with the current stripe in the sweater I was knitting as I attended the zoom and opened the box, with the blue and wine yarns. Of course I will not be wearing these garments together, but they are my happy colors, the colors of this moment in my heart. I don't have a picture of the sweater, or I would show you, but for me, the idea for a garment always starts with the yarn, with the color, or with the fabric if I am sewing. I never start out thinking "I need this dress", I start out with "oooh isn't that lovely, what does it want to be?" Of course my wardrobe could use some specific item-oriented planning as well. But that is not today's topic.

Mirror Reflections:  I continue to be fascinated by reflections in this rolled glass mirror, which was admittedly placed in the hall to reflect the light, not for photography sessions. But still, but there is something specific about the lack of clarity, the breaking up of the image into separate panes, the reminder that everything we present to the world is exactly that, a shifting mask. Oh, I should stop philosophizing. Even though I need a mirror where I can take good photos, especially as I start sewing and fitting, I still think I prefer the vague. This mirror reminds me of fog, something else I love, and the way it shifts our perceptions of the world around us.

Friends, Flowers, Impromptu Moments: Flowers, dropped off by a talented friend. Wine and conversation with other friends. The impromptu note. A new favorite cracker. A prayer. A silly text GIF. It is our community that sustains us, soothes us, strengthens us, each according to his or her own gifts and focus. I am constantly surprised. I think that is what I wish for, to be constantly surprised by people, by life, by the good that surrounds us, often untapped.

April 30, 2021
Gardening in Slow Motion

This is my front yard as seen from the master bedroom window.

I took the photo a week ago, Sunday the 18th. Since then the field of green weeds on the right hand side of the center island has been filled with little yellow flowers, flowers which gladden my heart, even though, yes, I know they are weeds. I love violets too, and apparently do not care if there are violets or clover in my lawn. Something to consider for the future, but at the moment the lawn is something green I don't have to think about. The same can be said for those areas of the garden that I am not yet ready to plant. Weeds are Mother Nature's interim plantings.

Weeds and all, the vista makes me smile. The center brown area, between the slates and the road, contains the blueberry bushes, and I hope to have small annuals beneath them, preferable to my eye over mulch, or, eventually, some form of ground cover. I am the kind of gardener that wants the beds filled with a panoply of growing things. To the right of the stones is where the three peonies were transplanted, and I am still in the process of planting Columbine and other perennials to fill the space. Something similar will take place to the left of the blueberries, in the still-weed-filled green patch. More peonies, a rose, some delphiniums — all are planned but not yet planted. I hoped for this spring but plans may have been interrupted. More about that later.

Next photo. Still looking north, slightly to the east of the first photo. This bed, along the east side of the house, was the only part of the yard I disliked when I bought the house, now it is much more my garden. Hydrangeas, coreopsis, daffodils, irises, nepeta, even a stray peony are located here and are beginning to fill in nicely. The laurel that is falling down has finally been removed, and replaced. I suppose I should update the photos, but that is not going to happen today, not for this post.

Ther azaleas between the fence and the driveway are thriving, blooming intermittently, and there are more plants to go around the curved wall near the steps to the circle, all planned and ordered before I knew the course my summer would take. If you look you will see plants lined up, awaiting new homes, in the lower portions of the top two photos. I will get to them in time. Life is like that sometimes, and I grow annoyed with interruptions, but there is nothing to do but live with them.

The top two photos were taken two days after I had a partial mastectomy for a breast cancer that showed up on my mammogram in March. Remember that week I was crying? I was crying because I had to have a biopsy, my first, and I was tired of doctors and hospitals, tired of illness and exhaustion, of broken noses and broken heart rhythms. I felt it was silly to cry over a biopsy as 80% are negative. It was as much frustration as it was fear: I was finally starting to feel good, starting to walk and work in the garden and it didn't seem fair. Well, no one ever said life would be fair.

I've gotten over that now. There is no help for it. Now I am in fight mode. It seems I have an aggressive little breast cancer but it also appears we have caught it early and my summer will revolve around chemotherapy with radiation to follow in the fall. Many women have done this before me. Many more will follow. My primary goal is beating back the invader and reclaiming my body. My body is a war zone and I cannot make predictions as to what I will or will not do, when or what I will, or will not, write.

The last photo is of an iris, a Louisiana iris, that opened the morning I had my surgery. I missed it at its peak. We had cold temperatures and it only lasted a day or two. In this photo, taken that same Sunday, two days after surgery, it is already waning, but still beautiful. I love it even as it begins to curl and fade — the grace is in the living not the perfect moment of full actualization, something ephemeral that we somehow always seem to miss anyway both in the world around us, and in our own lives. Even these photos, celebrating a past already lost in the mists, reminds me of the multi-faceted nature of every moment, reminds me of the fractal geometry of memory.

Life really isn't about what happens or doesn't happen, it is about how you chose to deal with it, or chose not to deal as the case may be. It is about where you chose to find beauty and joy, and what, when, and where you chose to let go.

Good grief I say! Enough is enough. And if I were talking to you in person I would probably say exactly what I can't write — I am going put every effort into kicking this M-F-B (imagine the swear words here) in the balls. I will knit or sew or cook when I can as these things all soothe my soul. My hands will be in the soil. I will write whenever those splintered moments of clarity arise.

April 27, 2021
Fermenting with Owen

Last week I started a batch of sauerkraut. and, somehow thinking that too much was never enough, I also started a large batch of kimchi. Owen came over to help and we made more. I started with three heads of cabbage, with a total weight of between 9 and 10 pounds, and two large heads of Napa.

I had already started chopping cabbage for a batch of sauerkraut when Owen texted and inquired about making some pickles or ferments. This is sliced more thinly than my last batch of sauerkraut, but thicker than is traditional. I am okay with that. I have learned that I am not a sauerkraut purist, and that I not only like a variety of textures, I may prefer them. Nine pounds of cabbage was shredded to become sauerkraut.

By the time Owen arrived it had been salted and massaged and was resting. In this photo the cabbage has already begun to relax and release its brine. I always intend to buy more, larger, bowls, but why do so when pots work just as well?

Owen brought another 2 1/2 pounds of cabbage, some beets, and a couple of cucumbers. I had a generous bunch of carrots, but I only needed about half of them for my kimchi. We decided that Owen would make a beet and cabbage sauerkraut and a carrot, cabbage and cucumber kimchi. In all of the excitement of having company in the kitchen, I forgot to take pictures, so these are all after the process was finished.

I got the kimchi started. Here it is in a large Le Creuset pot. Although many kimchi's start by cutting whole Napa cabbage into lengthwise quarters, I prefer this batch to be chopped into large chunks. This particular batch sat out a couple of days before being moved into the refrigerator, where it resides now. The intention was to make a fairly young, sparkly, kimchi.

While I worked on the kimchi, Owen added the salted cabbage to the fermentation crock and pounded it down to make a good brine. Those three large cabbages filled my large, three gallon, fermentation crock a little over half full. That batch of sauerkraut is still in the basement fermenting away where it needs at least another week or two, possibly more as it has been cool and the basement cool as well.

Then we finished up Owen's ferments. The sauerkraut is pretty simple: beets, cabbage, salt. Owen did some spice testing and added celery seed, caraway seed and a bit of cumin seed as well. The beets turn the sauerkraut a lovely shade of pink. The kimchi is also red, but that is mostly from the Korean Chile powder. That one has carrots, regular cabbage, and cucumbers as well as other standard kimchi components, including fish sauce and salted shrimp. They both had excellent flavor when they left my house, and Owen tells me they are progressing nicely.

Because I had some extra cucumbers I also tried a short cucumber kimchi-style pickle, inspired by David Chang. That has turned into a softer condiment, something I can only think of as a kimchi-pickle-relish type of hybrid. But I don't really know anything about cucumber kimchi. I only know that mine is soft, has the consistency of pickle relish but the funky umami of kimchi, and was excellent on a hamburger for lunch yesterday.

April 22, 2021