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Blanket Weather Is Almost Here

Sometimes it just feels good to finish something.

Last week felt like a busy week for me, and it was in terms of whatever passes for busy in this world, which still feels very different to me from the world of a year ago. All those things one must do were done, but I also expanded my horizons a bit, and finished a long-term project, one that might have taken longer than it should, but then who can say how long a project should take. Circumstances often intervene.

I wanted to postpone this blog post until the blanket I have been knitting was completely finished: knitted, blocked, dried. It took a tad longer than I had hoped, but that seems to be the story of 2020. The first photo is of the wet blanket, folded on the kitchen counter after being rolled up in towels to remove excess moisture, and before I laid it out to dry. I did post that photo on Instagram on Saturday morning. It has been cool however, and I have not yet turned on the heat, despite the fact that it was 64 degrees in the house Sunday morning. Cool air meant slower drying time, and the blanket was not ready until today.

It is really more of a throw or lap-sized blanket. Measuring 4’ x 4’, the blanket is knit from Noro Taiyo, a cotton, silk, wool, and nylon blend, which makes it very versatile for our Tennessee climate. This was so much fun to knit that, when I found more of the same yarn in a different color on sale, I purchased enough to knit a second. I don’t really need more sweaters at the moment and I do need throws and blankets, although I wouldn’t count on seeing another blanket soon.

But beginnings are also good: to that end I went out and double dug a small bed in the yard, only about 8 square feet, hauling away 4 not-quite-full 14-gallon trugs of clay and mixing in soil amendments. Yes, I was tired. But I did more in one short 40 minute session than I had been able to accomplish in hours over the summer, and it was a good kind of tired. My muscles ached, but I could not help but note the difference in my muscle aches as compared to a few short months ago. This was the tiredness brought on by exertion in muscles that had adequate blood supply. It was a remarkable feeling, a positive feeling, and one I do not believe I had fully comprehended before. Two months ago, to dig up 8 square feet would send me to bed for 2 days. That is why I eventually had to stop gardening, and let the jungle take over. Just being able to do this work was amazing to me.

I stopped and rested before I was exhausted, and two days later I transplanted the plants that had been languishing behind my garage since July. The actual planting was harder than the digging, not surprisingly, and I have in fact taken it pretty easy since. My back was a little sore, with a few periods of spasm, and my walks necessarily became shorter, but this wasn’t so much a setback as a small hiccup. I am almost back to where I was, walking-wise, at the beginning of last week, and I am grateful that I have months to build strength before the next gardening season is upon us.

October 20, 2020
Just Another Day In Just Another Week.

It has been a busy week, well not quite a week, but who is counting? And we have all been busy, busy with the stuff of life, whatever that stuff may be. It is not my place to either hold up my life, nor to judge the choices and/or circumstances of others. I continue to struggle with blogging, with subject matter, and privilege, with the idea that we way we present ourselves to the world is a gloss, an edited version of ourselves, even more so on the web than in our day to day lives.

But I spend too much time thinking. And perhaps I spend too much time writing about merely one side of life. Maybe I need to write about the more quotidian things, about the basic boring aspects of life that we all have to deal with, boring as they may be to write about. I suspect however that no one wants me to post a picture of a vacuum, of a bucket of water and a mop. Perhaps we read to escape the mundane. I too. But why do we think the necessary and the quotidian is less worthy than the exceptional?

So here is a day, yesterday, in fact. But even that, of course is edited. What is shown? What is not? What is worthy of mention? What is not?

I usually wake up somewhere between 6 and 7. There have been periods of my life where it was earlier, and times when I have slept later. I make the bed. I make coffee. If Moises has been out overnight, I let him in. I sit and write out whatever random thoughts arise. Yesterday I also read a letter that arrived a month ago, when I was in hospital, and which I had misplaced. It was, then, a special kind of treat. I found the letter on Thursday, and colored in the card stock, an act of active doodling, before reading the actual letter.

Next I usually meditate, dress, and eat breakfast. Yesterday that meant scrambled eggs with broccoli raab and fresh tomatoes from the garden.

As I walked back from the vegetable garden to the house, I admired the Coreopsis.

Then it was time for daily household maintenance. Yesterday that meant dusting and vacuuming. It also meant that I finally started on a thorough cleaning of the stove and stove vent. Started, but did not finish, alas. Completion of that task should be accomplished today, and since it is raining, there are fewer distractions. I also managed to ignore the crystal on the dining table. A cabinet had to be emptied so that a faulty lighting circuit could be repaired. I fully intend to wash all of the glassware before returning it to the cabinet. But not yet.

I had to run to Walgreens to pick up medications and a few other items. By the time I returned home my stomach was rumbling and my blood sugar was low. While I warmed some soup, I quickly made mayonnaise.

My reward was a lunch of tuna salad rolled up in sesame leaves and spicy eggplant soup, a soup made from my own tomatoes and eggplant.

After lunch, and zooming with friends, I went back outside because I thought I had noticed an azalea blooming. I moved this azalea, Marshy Creek Humdinger, in early June as it seemed to be growing smaller and more frail in its previous location. This is the first time I recall seeing it bloom.

A nap, my stretching routine, and a late afternoon walk helped me finish out the day. I read until it was time for dinner, when I reheated some chile verde and sliced a couple more small tomatoes. After cleaning up I watched and listened to The Bad Plus streaming from the Bijou Theater and knitted.

All in all, it was a good day. It was a pretty typical day. Increasingly I think a good day is just this, what we do, what we need to do, to nourish and sustain ourselves, body and spirit.

October 10, 2020
Finding My Own Path To A Change of Season

Three months ago today it was my birthday. Little did I know my world was about to be rocked. Frankly, the summer of 2020 has been my least favorite quarter in what has turned out to be my least favorite year. I never meant to disappear from this blog, although I can also admit that at the moment I am wondering about so much, including this. I do not think I am alone in this state of mental stress, alone in wondering, alone in fighting against change, alone in struggling for acceptance, alone even in occasional fits of denial. I am not alone in yearning for a former world, in wondering what this new normal will be, in protesting that I never wanted a new normal even as I acknowledge that it was probably overdue.

Autumn has long been my favorite season. Partially this is because I seem to be designed to prefer cooler weather. I don’t know where this comes from; I grew up in Texas after all, and New York has its share of summer heat and humidity. The Hudson Valley is not perhaps as hot as Tennessee, but if the global warming models are correct that could be changing. My preference for cool to cold air could be genetic although my siblings appear perfectly contented in the heat. Perhaps I just got the lucky side of the genetic draw. That is assuming, after all, that my genetic makeup, all of which derives from the north Atlantic island nations, Scandinavia, the northwestern portion of the European mainland, and the Germanic nations, plays a role in my climatic adaptation. Science seems to indicate it does. I will admit I don’t like 0°F any more than anyone else although I would far rather bundle up for the cold than deal with the heat. My ideal world would range from about 20° to about 72°. I say this even as I have enjoyed a long summer crop of tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. Being human is nothing if not a lesson in embracing inconsistency.

I digress. Autumn. In much of Western culture there is a tendency to associate winter, and its attendant darkness, with death. But this is not how I feel. I associate winter and the fall months as well, even with the dying back of winter growth, with repose, with turning inward, with rest and restoration. Autumn is a period of letting go of the excess of summer for me. And winter is a time of quiet nourishment where I can prepare to face another period of rampant worldly extroversion. Winter is Mother Nature’s introverted period. I think it is important that in ancient Hebrew culture, the day began at Sundown, in the period of darkness and rest that nourishes our brains and cells, allows them to build strength to face another day.

But this particular summer proved to be one of struggle, of battles which, for the longest time, I thought I was losing. I despaired. Although I wrote blog posts showing canning and gardening and knitting, I was, in fact struggling with all of that, doing a fraction of what I would normally accomplish. Admittedly, I shared some of my struggle with you, telling you that I fell, that I broke a nose and later a toe, sharing partial frustration over the slowness of healing. But that was only part of the story. Writing about the things I did, even the act of doing itself, was a bulwark against despair, against the things I could not yet say.

You see, there was more going on. Back in July, I truly had no idea why I fell, loathe as I was to admit that fact. In retrospect it is pretty clear that I fell because I had developed a heart arrhythmia, and I probably experienced momentary dizziness, the shock of face on pavement supplanting any awareness of the dizziness itself. It was only when I went in for pre-surgical testing that I learned that I was in persistent atrial flutter.

So began a summer of struggle: A struggle with assumptions and bias on the part of some doctors; A struggle with my own denial; A struggle to both find my voice and a doctor with a willingness to listen; A struggle of arranging treatment during a time of pandemic. It was a time of fear, and depression, and determination, my fear not so much of dying, which is not my fear, but of leaving a mess, and the far more frightening, at least to me, fear of the loss of independence.

I suppose I have to go backwards even further, back 25 years. In August 1995 I had heart surgery to repair a congenital heart defect, an Atrial Septal Defect or ASD. That information is relevant. I always tell people I am healthy as a horse but structurally unsound, by that referring to my scoliosis and heart defect. Both have been corrected. Correction does not mean returned to normal however, and there is then some level of denial in my self-accounting. It is true in terms of what people commonly refer to as “healthy” or “not healthy” but it is also only a partial truth.

When the flutter was first picked up I was still in shock. I was in pain and uncomfortable; I was not at all happy that what had been billed as a brief, pre-surgical blood test, was turning into an ordeal lasting multiple hours with multiple gross insensitivities and insults to my person. I was referred to a cardiologist who read my history of ASD repair and then made assumptions of what my care should be without listening to a word I said, patently ignoring my questions and objections, even when I pointed out that her assumptions were not in alignment with my actual history.

It was not that I feared the procedure in and of itself, but that I feared the added potential for harm. Fortunately, I did find a doctor who listened, and who made astute observations about the nature of my own flutter that were far more in alignment with my own experience and history than those of the first doctor. I was placed on medications, was given a referral to a specialist in congenital heart defects, and further tests were scheduled. Everyone assumed I had lots of time, that I was stable, that this was a problem that had developed slowly over time, and that there was no rush. I was more than willing to believe this was true, willing to believe, even as a niggling voice in the back of my head kept saying “no”. It was possible I had experienced brief, intermittent bursts of flutter over the previous year, or years as I had been released from cardiology long ago and nothing suspicious ever showed up on annual physicals or routine EKGs. Declines often occur so gradually that we unwittingly accommodate ourselves to them. But I also knew that I had been walking several miles a day, digging hard in the garden, working hard, until sometime in mid June when I was suddenly unable to do so. Some part of me knew I was unstable, and so I would hold on tightly to those times when I would suddenly feel better, and do as much as I could when I could, with an air of desperate determination, the remnant of some lurking fear, which I know to be untrue, that worth is determined by accomplishment, some fear that I would leave a mess….

I knew I was not getting better. I knew my pulse was too high, was unstable, that I was tired all the time. I knew that I was not myself, that I could not write, not even letters to friends. I was not sleeping. I was not managing even the bare minimum of what needed to be managed. And yet I put on a brave face because that is the way I was brought up, and it is an inescapable part of my nature. I worried that I was not going to be able to hold on until I saw the specialist. But I was determined to try. I was holding out for the echocardiogram, scheduled for September 10th , 2 months after my nose surgery, two months after we discovered I was in flutter.

On the 10th I went in for the echo, and my cardiologist realized that beta-blockers were not keeping my pulse or blood pressure in a manageable range. Just lying on the table, my pulse was 157, dangerously high for my age, especially for doing nothing, and I was showing all the signs of heart failure . As the technicians fluttered and fretted, and ran more tests, I was both agitated and calm. Agitated because I had two busy days scheduled, but also secretly relieved, because I already knew, through the wonders of modern technology, that my sleeping pulse had become higher than my full-on gym-workout pulse had been merely 4 months previously. My doctor was located; I was sent to the hospital where I met the specialist and was scheduled for the procedure the next day.

I worried that I had not made the bed that morning. I worried that the bathroom at home was not clean. This was reasonable because these were substitutions for allowing myself to worry about myself. There is something to being told you are in heart failure to bring on a sudden and permanent change in perspective. All those choices I had made about minimum things to be done each day, seemed simultaneously trivial and desperately important. I canned tomatoes because I had tomatoes galore, but I didn't vacuum. A friend told me that if I hadn't been canning tomatoes I wouldn't be in heart failure, which I recognized as nonsense, her own fear talking. I could stand in the kitchen, although not for long, but I couldn't walk, even to the end of the driveway without risking falling over. And I spent a lot of time on the sofa numbly staring at the TV. I realized that canning and gardening did not cause the problem, and were not even, technically, denial. The act of producing something was an act of promising myself that there was a future, and that I would indeed get there, a promise I desperately needed.

The ablation went well. It was not standard. But I understood that when I spoke to the interventional cardiologist. We spoke extensively about my history, about the atypical patterns seen on my ekg and echocardiogram, about the various options and the risks. As I mentioned, I still have a congenital heart defect, which required surgery when I was 37, but a repaired heart is not the same as a normal heart. That hole was in a rare and unusual place (lucky me), and that atypical repair was as instrumental in my atypical flutter as I suspected when I saw the first cardiologist, the one who had not listened. There were no promises that this would be the only procedure needed. That second day in the hospital, alone and waiting for my procedure, I let go of all those crutches and felt simultaneously desperately alone and frightened, but also relieved because I already knew that the fact that I was there was in and of itself hopeful. To wait would have been disastrous. When I awoke, it was the first time in two months I did not feel like I was being pulled slowly downward into quicksand.

Alas recovery was slower than I had hoped. Two months of being pulled downward left me weak. The first two weeks after surgery were a struggle. I was still on beta blockers. My heart rate seemed, initially, to recover, but my pulse grew slower, going from abnormally and inefficiently high pre-surgery, to abnormally and inefficiently low, until by the end of the second week I struggled to get my pulse to rise above 50 even when climbing stairs, which was about the biggest effort I could expend. When I went in for post-surgical follow-up, my cardiologist was rightly concerned. He considered readmitting me for further testing and a possible pacemaker, but admitted that I looked fairly healthy. Instead I had blood work and an echo, was taken off the beta blockers, and told to come back for repeat testing in three days. I was also told to go to the ER if I had a single dizzy spell (I did not). Three days later, with reassuring test results, and another long conversation with my caridiologist, I was released to begin walking again and to slowly resume normal activity, released with cautious optimism, although I am being followed closely to make sure that I do indeed continue to heal.

My days are still slow. I sleep 8 or 9 hours a night, and I often take a nap, anywhere from half an hour to two hours in duration. As long as I still sleep I do not worry about this. Yesterday I increased the distance of my walk from a round trip of 1/2 mile to 3/4 mile, and reduced from three walks to two. The second walk is being replaced by a moderate floor exercise and stretching routine, which still wears me out, but which is doing wonders for my back. I am still knitting the lap blanket that I was working on earlier in the summer, although I am enjoying the process. It too is taking longer, like everything in my life right now.

But neither what one accomplishes, nor how long those accomplishments take, has any bearing on who one is, on one’s worth as a person. I know this but I don’t always accept it. I have learned that if I congratulate myself on doing something, I also have to remind myself that the actual doing is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Otherwise, I am surreptitiously feeding that old inner demon, the one who says “never good enough”. I am also learning that thinking of myself as “architecturally unsound” is a kind of double-edge sword. Denying that a congenital heart defect is also a type of congenital heart disease, much like denying that my scoliosis does not come with disabilities, is, another back-door way of feeding that inner demon, a way of telling myself, without meaning to, that broken things are less worthy. It does not mean the life as lived cannot be a good and full life, even a normal life. In fact, I increasingly think it is the breaking and the mending that make life full and good, that make life normal.

On my birthday I was thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, about what was really important. I know it is impolitic in America to think of 62 as old. But it is, at least if I am thinking strictly mathematically. In all likelihood I am in the last third of my life. And therefore I am old, old enough to know better, old enough to seek wisdom, old enough to decide that I can live according to what is important to me, other people’s opinions be damned. If I live to be 94, I can look back and tell myself I was premature in judging myself “old” too soon. But old does not have to be decrepit. I think I am choosing to look at aging much like I look at Autumn, as a time to let go of the extroverted forces of rampant expectation. I didn’t know the first quarter of my 63rd year would be such a trial, but now that Autumn is here, I embrace the metaphor. I embrace my own autumnal years. I weathered my own personal fire; there may be some smoldering embers lying in wait, some future blazes, but I am also ready to revel in this autumnal stage of life, a stage not of dying but of perhaps choosing what is important, letting go of the rest, and letting my colors show.

October 6, 2020
Labor Day Musings

Culturally, Labor Day marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall. Technically, fall is nearly two weeks away, at the solstice, but there is more to it than that. Although the nights are cooler at the moment, and the quality of the light is beginning to change; the scent of autumn in the air is not yet as prevalent as it was at this time last year. This could simply be because last year was very dry and this year has been quite wet. It could also be that my sense of smell, which had seemed to grow more acute as I aged, may not be what it was before my fall. I do hope this is not the case.

I would not object to the arrival of Autumn. I am tired of rampant growth. The blueberry bushes are turning red. I have been entranced with the browning of the oak leaf hydrangeas near the patio. Last year the blossoms on this shrub were white and green well into autumn; this year they turned brown before the end of July. The plants appear healthy but it has been an odd year for hydrangeas. It has been an odd year in many ways. Aside from blueberries and hydrangeas however, growth rather than decay seems to be the order of business.

Or perhaps I just feel that way because I have been out in the garden tackling the weeds. At least I have been weeding and mulching the small areas of the garden that I had already planted. What looks like lush greenery from the upstairs window, is actually an infestation of weeds. I admit I am happy for green, but I also admit defeat, admit that my back is not up to this. After two hours of weeding and spreading the mulch I had on hand, I spent most of the rest of Labor day sitting and reading, my back mostly in spasm.

I cannot do everything myself, and have hired help on the yard reclamation front. I am happy to have weeded that area next to the driveway, now cleared and mulched, and area I planted just before my fall in July. It is possible, and regrettable, that I lost some of those plants, but I found a few small delicate remnants hanging on. There is hope, but it will be spring once again, before I know whether this last-ditch effort was enough. I can beat myself up over it, my natural inclination is to be harder on myself than anyone else after all, or let it go. Letting go of self-recrimination seems to be an exercise in lifetime learning.

Admittedly I have also probably overdone it in the kitchen, as well as in my focused attempt to organize, shift everything around, and reorganize the house. Perhaps I am ready for a personal autumn of sorts, a slowing down and preparation for reflection, a letting go of heavy lifting and the mad overdrive of summer labors.

My first pressure canner arrived. Ordered in May, I did not expect it before mid-September. I find I am fascinated by a device that terrified my younger self. Truthfully, I always had a glass-topped stove, a stove that would not accommodate a pressure canner. But I also worried, worried that I was too easily distracted, too unfocused, worried that the combination of an absent-minded cook and pressure cooker was a recipe for disaster.

My fears were unfounded. Yes, during George’s final years my life was fairly chaotic, my ability to concentrate often limited, and I was often pulled in too many directions, but that does not mean I still have to be that addle-pated and distracted person. I feel like I have rediscovered my focus. I feel like I am settling into being this person who exists today, a person who does not need to limit herself by past fears. So I got to work, learned to use the canner, and canned a batch green chiles.

Why green chiles? They are widely available, or were widely available. At the moment it seems like nothing is always widely available. In this world, maintaining a larder feels like a good idea. Mild green chiles are something I use often; it may be the Texan in me. But truthfully I struggle to find them. I use them in strips, but usually only find diced chiles in local markets. I can easily spend an entire day looking for whole green chiles in small cans, whereas once they were available everywhere. I still find them when I am visiting family in Texas, but going to Texas for a case of green chiles is perhaps less practical than canning my own. The goal was to can several varieties, see what I like best, and perhaps grow my own next year.

In fact I have been thinking a lot about pantries and larders and storage. Not everything I put up is difficult to find. Tomatoes, for example, are commonly available, but fresh tomatoes, picked freshly off the vine taste nothing like grocery store tomatoes. And home canned tomatoes taste fresher than anything I can buy in a can in the store, although I did not really know that before I started. The tomatoes I used to buy now taste of chemicals and salt by comparison. I also feel virtuous because a small space in my yard produces food for the present and tomatoes for the year. I feel virtuous because canning jars are reusable. Although cans can be recycled, many tomato products come in cans that are lined with a plastic coating to prevent leaching from the metal into the acid of the tomato, and lined cans are not recyclable. I feel virtuous because I use the whole tomato: the flesh becomes crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce; the skin, pulp and seeds get dehydrated into tomato powder; the water that drains from the pulp becomes tomato water that gets used weekly in soups and stews. Very little is left as waste, and that goes into a compost pile to be returned to the earth. But mostly for me it is all about taste, and about some connection to the earth that provides sustenance for all of us.

I canned 13 quarts of stock over the weekend. I actually made 15 quarts, four quarts of beef stock and eleven quarts of chicken stock. Two of those went into a batch of soup, half of which was frozen for later. This happened mostly because the freezer was full, and when I was rustling through it I found 5 gallons of chicken bones and vegetable trimmings and another couple of gallons of beef bones. Apparently weeds were not the only thing that got out of control this weekend.

No wonder my back is sore.

September 8, 2020
Putting to Rights

So much for the stories we tell ourselves.

Over the course of the six weeks of recovery following my fall and subsequent surgery, any claims to orderliness, perhaps even to organization, at least in terms of my immediate physical surroundings, fell apart. So much for the idea that if one has systems in place, they will keep everything running during the bad times — for a week or two, perhaps; for a month and a half, not really.

Of course as you know from previous posts, the vegetable garden ramped into production about half-way through the healing process, and much cooking and canning was taking place. This took all my energy, perhaps more than I should have allowed, because there were also days where I would collapse, spent, on the sofa, unable to knit even, much less vacuum. Pig-headed determination has its good side, but even determination needs to be curbed at times.

Just as my energy levels were becoming more consistent, Tikka, my cuddly pup and travel companion, took a turn for the worse. Truthfully she had been failing for some time and I had been in denial. We spent much of the weekend following my last blog post cuddling, although it soon became evident that her time was up. The end actually came very quickly, for which I am grateful. She was at least 11 years old, but truthfully, she could have been older. I will never know. Just as I will also never really know if it was I who rescued her or she who rescued me.

The last two weeks have proven to be not so much a time for thinking or creative exploration, but instead, a time for mindless expenditures of energy.

What do you call spring cleaning when it takes place in August? When it takes place in an already upside-down year? A resettling perhaps? In some sense perhaps even a retrenchment, although I am taking liberties with that word. It has been over a year since I moved into this house, but barely a year since the work of contractors was finished. One year: six months of the busy normalcy of my former life, a life that now seems distant enough to feel almost foreign; six months of a world in the process of being transformed, although I am not sure we are quite ready to admit that yet.

Truthfully there seems to be a lot of denial and magical thinking going on. I am no better than anyone else on that front.

I cleaned the house from top to bottom. Well I haven’t tackled the basement level yet, but that is next on the agenda. There were books to shelve, so I dusted and reorganized the bookshelves. That should be an annual task anyway. The same for the kitchen. As I’ve discovered a revitalized love of cooking, I’ve noticed a need to reorganize and regroup, to accommodate my own evolving priorities and waves of energy. Cooking for one is not like cooking for two. Cooking in my 60s is not the same as cooking in my 30s or even my 50s. Luckily for me there has been a lull in garden production during the past two weeks, just enough produce for daily meals and nothing more, but that is about to turn. When it happens I will be prepared.

No promises here. It seems I am perfectly happy to assign myself two or three tasks to accomplish in a day but also perfectly content to spend long hours sitting and reading, to allow a cat to sleep in my lap, perhaps to knit again.

All in all, I think that is a good place to be, doing what needs to be done but content to leave it at that, willing to accept the simple satisfaction that life as it is lived is enough. At the moment it is raining. My book and my knitting call.

August 29, 2020
Eating From the Garden

One morning earlier this week I harvested 5 pounds of tomatoes. Not an unusual harvest; I have a larger assortment of tomatoes sitting on my counter this morning, waiting to be turned into crushed tomatoes and tomato puree. But on that particular morning I was in the mood for something more immediate. As it happened, I also had somewhat over 2 pounds of cucumbers in the fridge. The combination triggered thoughts of gazpacho. The ratio of tomatoes to cucumbers felt perfect for gazpacho making, and so, with the addition of some pimientos de padron and basil, also from the garden, the taste of summer materialized in my blender.

The garden has shaped my eating habits and changed me; the garden and the farmer’s market because I never intended to be fully self-sufficient, and I believe in supporting local farmers. But this year, what was once a belief held more in the abstract than always in practical reality, has burrowed deeper, helped me to redefine who I am and what I think is important, important to me alone perhaps, but nonetheless important to my life.

Much summer eating is simple, has always been simple. Produce at its peak does not ask for much. I have been eating fresh tomatoes and shishito peppers daily for at least six weeks now. I am not yet tired of either, and I am certain I will miss them when the season ends. Cool weather crops are figments of memory, although there are still herbs, scattered greens, a few miscellaneous vegetables here and there. I fell behind after my fall. But I am fortunate. I do not depend on my small patch of earth to live. Compared to grocery store produce, freshly picked vegetables are a carnival of flavor. I already knew that. I have supported local farmers and markets for years, but it has also been years since I walked outside and picked my dinner.

I have always loved to cook. When I was young I worked my way through Julia Child and Marcella Hazan. I made complicated things but I increasingly learned to love simple things as well, but it was a different kind of simplicity than the simplicity of my childhood, a simplicity based on taste, on respect for the ingredients, and increasingly, for me at any rate, on connection to the earth that nourishes us.

As a result of my love of cooking, of food, and my burgeoning appreciate of taste, my first gardens were vegetable gardens. I was not interested in flowers. I was interested in unusual, at the time, European produce and heirloom vegetables. I saved seeds. Because the nights often cooled down in early August when I was living further north, I had been known, during particularly cool seasons to dig up and pot pepper plants, growing them on a hot, glassed in sun porch, using a child’s paintbrush as a pollinating aid.

But this season is different. Gardening in Tennessee is the same, and yet different, than gardening in New York. This year was always an experiment. I decided early on that I would not fret over my failures, but celebrate abundance and the opportunity to learn.

What I suspect I did not count upon was the way I would change. Perhaps it is not so much change but a refining, a rediscovery of more youthful passions combined with years of experience. I love going out and wandering in the garden, picking a salad. I have always thought that simple things, a salad, a roast chicken, fish, were often the most telling. But the salads of my 60s are not the salads of my 20s. I love picking herbs, flowers, garden plants. I love tasting, combining colors and flavors. I love the way even something as simple, as innocent even, as a salad reveals the ever evolving sense of terroir.

For a long time in this once-again single life I did not cook much. Cooking for one did not seem to be as much fun as feeding other people. I still loved to entertain. But cooking, like everything else worthwhile in life, is a skill that blossoms with practice. It feels so good to be in the kitchen again, whether I am simply layering herbs and greens, blistering peppers, making pickles and relish, grilling a steak, making soups, ratatouille, or moussaka. I perfected gluten-free biscuits, going so far even as to develop a gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan version, that I find quite good — an accomplishment for a woman who finds that all dairy-free plant-milks have an off-putting mouth-feel and aftertaste.

Mostly the garden has rekindled my sense of play. I have rediscovered my kitchen confidence, my sense of taste, but also of community, and a kind of creative exploration that rolls over into everything else in my life. When I can throw parties again it will be easier because my footing is more sure. This connection to earth and its own cycles, to the air, the water, is necessary to nourish body and soul, to nourish creativity. It is not about just being in nature, but participating with it. I have found that convenience is a form of disconnection. I need less on my plate, not more.

I am different than I was six months ago. We are all different, each one of us, and truthfully this is always the case, even in non-pandemic years. The tomato I pick today is not the same as the tomato I picked yesterday, its own terroir is different than that of its sibling on the same plant. But this year, this year of uprooting, of tragedy, this year offers an opportunity as well as an unsettling.

I am finding that I have about half the energy I think I used to have. That too may be a myth, I may not have had as much energy as I believe. At the moment, expect one post a week. I barely made this week, but at least I am still here.

August 15, 2020
Raindrops

Scattered bits of rain. Monday it rained in the morning and again in the evening. Yesterday evening again. Not the heaviest rain of the week, but somehow it was a calming rain, a reassuring rain. Rain can be like that: sometimes warm and friendly, necessary and life-giving; at other times needling like a cold and annoying ache; and still other times brutal, pounding, destructive. But the water itself is life.

A song is stuck in my head, a song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, “Raindrops Keep Fallin On My Head”. A familiar song. July was not my favorite month, but it was a month of raindrops, not a month of devastating floods.

As I mentioned in my last post, I fell and broke my nose. It required surgery. A little after that I broke my left fourth metatarsal. I’ve spent a lot of time on the sofa. I’ve been unusually tired, perhaps not unusual given the events, but unusual in terms of what I normally expect of myself. I’ve been miserable. I have not always been gracious. But rain is kind of sneaky. It leaves some residual moisture, some nourishment behind. Acceptance and contentment begin to filter in.

So far, August feels more hopeful. The last few morning have been cooler. There has been rain, yes and the garden is thriving. There are buds on the roses I planted this spring. A single blossom greeted me just the other morning.

My yard is a jungle of weeds, and although there is some part of me, the part that thinks I can control life, the part that thinks that if I just do all the right things and follow the rules everything will be “right” — that part of me struggles with the weeds. The other part, the part that yearns to be content in the moment, that knows that control is just a myth we tell ourselves — that part is happy to sit on the porch in the morning and evening and watch the birds and bunnies cavorting in those very same weeds and marvel at the wonders of the world, which carries on.

Raindrops.

The last 10 days or so have been better. Still tired but I have been able to do more. Good, because the garden, suffering its own setback from heat and drought, recovered and is producing a little more. It is still a staggered harvest, which suits my staggered energy levels.

I managed my first small foray into canning, first in a couple of decades anyway, Saturday before last. Three jars of tomato puree, some sweet pepper pickles. That was enough of an initial adventure. A jar of tomato water was retrieved from the tomato seeds and pulp. It was a worthy addition to a pot of soup.

Less than a week later, faced with more tomatoes. I put up some more. I have another quart of tomato water to use. More soup, but I am a person who thinks that soup is always a good thing.

I also dehydrated the tomato skins to make tomato powder. I was inspired by the skins of the costuloto Genovase tomatoes, which are incredibly fragrant, although there are actually three or four tomato varieties in both the jars and the container of powder.

I am also knitting again. That seems to be all I can expect of myself at the moment. There was a period when pain meds or exhaustion meant that I spent more time unknitting than in making actual progress.

I finally finished a pair of socks.

I started making squares for a throw. There are 24 of these small squares. Then some bigger ones. I hope to complete a square a day. Not much, but enough for now. The yarn needed to complete the summer sunset sweater arrived. That process is slightly more complex than these squares, but I hope to pick that project up soon. I am learning to accept a slower pace. But sometimes I feel I am barely keeping my head above water.

There is hope. It is August now. It is the second month of sixty-third year. My new rose bush is blooming. The air is filled with birdsong. It is enough.

August 5, 2020
Monday Miscellaney

Today has not gone as planned. But it is still Monday so let’s get on with it.

Finally, I finished the first of three dresses that I cut and started during my March sewing retreat. This dress was almost finished; it simply needed a little adjustment in the lining seams and hemming. The initial plan had been to finish it immediately, but the world shut down and there seemed no need for a new dress. I started sewing masks. When I finally put the dress up on the sewing table the hem looked so wonky I couldn’t believe it was right, even though I knew in my head it was. Yes, the point is that the dress look straight and balanced and even when it is on me. And so it does.

I wore the dress to my birthday brunch with my step-daughter’s family on Sunday. In fact, it was comfortable throughout the day, which was hot and humid, and I was very happy. This was meant to be an “everyday” kind of summer dress, one I could wear running around town in hot humid weather and it serves that purpose well. I did line it, although the Japanese quilting cotton is opaque enough, primarily because this allows the dress to hang more nicely and not cling, bag, or rumple excessively, problems with the original J Jill dress I copied. The silk habotai lining is light and cool even in humid weather.

After brunch we walked around Market Square and stopped for a chocolate fix at Coffee and Chocolate. I had one piece, this beautiful almond praline truffle. It is almost too beautiful to eat, but that did not stop me.

Over the weekend I also finished knitting the pieces to the summer sunset sweater. Actually, I finished reknitting. Initially the whole thing got tossed in my bag in a fit of pique when I realized I did not have enough yarn to finish. I refused to think about it at all for several weeks. When I pulled it back out I realized two things: First that I had lost my mind and knit the two front pieces about 2 inches too long; and second, that I failed to take into account the changes I had made to the pattern due to gauge issues. My altered pattern used about 15% more yarn. Not surprising then that I would not have enough.

The pieces are finished but the sweater is on hold until the yarn arrives. Since the yarn is hand-dyed Prism linen lace-weight, I do not expect to receive it right away.

I cannot begin to express how happy wearing my purple dress made me yesterday. To wear a cool, comfortable dress that in a color I love, that fit perfectly, and which I made myself brings its own kind of happiness. There is so much joy in that statement that I just want to dance. Alas the kind of stitching that I had in mind for today is not what came to pass.

Near the end of my walk this morning, I somehow managed to trip and fall. I actually thought I had an instant of foot drag and I stumbled over some unevenness in the pavement. Before I knew it i went down, knees, wrist, face. My nose took the brunt of it. Here I am after attempting to clean myself up but before going to the doctor. I wondered if I was over-reacting and did not need to go at all. Not so. I broke my nose and dislocated the septum. I will see an ENT on Wednesday. I got a series of stitches for the cuts on the top of my lip.

I look worse now. There will be other days for stitching. There is nothing quite like starting a new year of life with a bang, even if it is not the kind of bang I might have preferred. Hopefully things can only get better from here.

July 6, 2020
Art Starved

The Knoxville Museum of Art opened to the public, by appointment only, this week. It opened to members last week, and I was there, desperate as I was to for an art fix. My intention had been to look at the Delaney/Baldwin exhibit, but I thought I would take a “quick whirl” through part of the permanent collection and found myself lost there, completely absorbed by the experience of what I was seeing.

It started when i walked into the Currents gallery, where I was stunned by the vibrancy of this painting by Jered Sprecher, A Plane Is A Pocket In The Corner of The Mind. The painting had been in the gallery for some time, but its previous location, on an end wall, made a different kind of statement. Here, with the light striking it in a way I cannot really capture in a photograph it seemed to leap out and envelop this observer, filling the mind with an overwhelming sense of both chaos and light-within-chaos or hope.

I spent most of my time in that gallery, and I am certain that my focus was shaped by many things: My joy at being able to return to the museum, one of my favorite calming spots in Knoxville; the general tumult and uncertainty roiling about in the greater world right now combined and contrasted with the sense of solitude shaped by sheltering-at-home; the flash that seeing the Sprecher provoked in my heart upon turning the corner into the gallery. So many things influence what we see and how we react to what is seen. I constantly wonder about this conversation with the soul that art, in its many forms (painting, sculpture, music, dance), provokes. I wonder about the process, but also about the artist, what the process of creating something that can provoke reactions that one may not anticipate, or perhaps even desire, evokes.

I cannot say. I can only write about the experience of one person, one day, fully recognizing that even this viewer might find herself experiencing the same work of art in a completely different way on a different day, the new experience shaped by the previous, but also by all of the experiences that come together in that moment of time. This painting, Green Picture In My Meadow, by Jim Dine snuck up on me. It was not new to me, I can’t say that I saw anything on that visit that I had not seen before. And I am not certain that any idea that struck me about that painting was new either, was anything that I had not thought before, but on that day somehow, the impact was more profound.

I have long been fond of Dine, finding his works simultaneously elementally simple and present but also complexly layered and enlightening. I like the way they seem to reference the pop art movement, but without the sarcasm, almost as if they are both inside and on the fringe, looking in. I find myself constantly challenged by the use of the quotidien, by symbols, referenced in ways that make them simultaneously fading-toward-invisible, while at the same time brought forward in sometimes shocking ways. I like the sneaky emotional resonance which is not necessarily overt, but which seems to slip in sideways, almost unnoticed.

I suppose that is how I first approached this painting, beginning not with the whole but with the small, approaching from the side, noticing the detail as seen in the photo above, the layers of paint and straw and the way they reference a field and nature, layers of grass and soil, new and old, the dying back of old grass overtopped with new leaves, and the layers of soil and matter that make up everything. The way the surface, what we see, is only that, a gloss on something deeper. It was only then that I stepped back and looked again at the entire painting. Noticing the heart in the field, the many layers of meaning, from the very simple and unremarkable to that which could be deeply unearthed.

Then I noticed other smaller bits. This bright eye, in the center of the picture above, shining out, filled with light, like the eye of the divine if one is so inclined, or light and hope, shining out.

When I stepped back, I saw that, to me at least on that day, there were two eyes, a face even, in the heart of the heart, in the center of the painting. The light eye balanced and contrasted by the dark eye, less overtly obvious perhaps but no less presence once my mind decided it was there. This eye is slanted, shaded, almost hidden, the way we hide the darkness within ourselves, but no less present. Ego, fear, darkness are always present, even in the midst of light. These things I see: A field; the earth in all its bounty; cycles of death and life hidden in the behind the initial impression of green; the heart; the soul of earth and of humanity; the contrast of shadow-self and true-self, of ego and id, of hope and despair.

Poor Jim Dine might be despairing of what I think of his painting. Hopefully not. As I said earlier these reflections might simply be a bubbling up of all the things going on in my own inner world in this time of what feels like two pandemics, one of the body and another of the soul. Perhaps the painting is only a trigger, but I think art is always more than that, that the artist is more than that as well. A conduit perhaps to some greater truth, and who knows how each of us may confront, or avoid, that truth.

Then, as I turned to leave the gallery I was struck by something else, another contrasting of images. Next to the exuberant, world-filled outburst that is the Sprecher painting seen at the top of this post is a quiet painting of two people embracing in a room. I thought I took a photo of the plaque identifying the painting, but if so it is lost. I do not know the name of the artist; I believe the painting was named for the pattern on the carpet. My failure. But what struck me then, still, was the contrast of inner and personal versus the outer and public, but also of the mental turmoil vs inner peace, of the contrasting yet simultaneous needs for creation and safety that make up the human condition. I applaud the curatorial impulse that can layer meaning in this way.

I tried to take pictures that captured my own feelings about this pairing, but I failed. I tried to make a collage in photoshop and instead I somehow I accidentally created this overlapped transparency. I apologize to the artists for bastardizing their work and yet somehow this captures my own overlapping and confused feelings about the juxtaposition of the two works: Public and private existing both separately and simultaneously. Perhaps all these random bits are just the flotsam created by the various wreckages of this unusual year. But also perhaps, through art, we can also find our way to new pathways.

July 3, 2020
Monday Miscellany

A little bit of this and that to start the week:

I picked up three books from the local library on Sunday. Those plus the two new books I purchased, and which both arrived last week, are shown above. I had planned to read both Open Season and Death In Her Hands over the weekend, but did not get that far. Open Season is turning out to be a rather wrenching read and I am, therefore, proceeding slowly. I am also simultaneously reading Mick Herron’s London Rules, which I have on digital download from the library and which is due back this week. Will I get through all six books this week? Who knows. Sometimes I finish a book a day, sometimes I struggle with a book a week.

The sauerkraut is happily bubbling away, on a shelf in the basement, where the temperature is currently averaging abut 65 degrees. I had originally packed the cabbage in the one-gallon jar shown, and it was doing nicely, but was really over-full, with cabbage almost to the top. As fermentation progressed, and gases escaped, the jar was constantly overflowing. So I had to drag up the large 3-gallon fermentation crock, wash and sanitize it, repack the cabbage and get it back downstairs. That thing is heavy, and crocks don’t really seem to come with useful handles. I figured out I could carry it up and down the stairs using the red trug tub shown. Even so it was a bit of a struggle.

The experience reminded me that I really like the using the water-sealed crock, although this one is too large for most of my ferments. It was the only crock I could find locally, and generally my sauerkraut batches have been the only thing made in a large enough quantity to use it. But, since I have now made about 6 batches of sauerkraut and even more batches of kimchi and other pickles, it is past time to start acquiring crocks in sizes more appropriate to my most common ferments. These will be my birthday gift to myself, although they will probably be acquired over a period of months. Should I need the 3 gallon crock in the future, I will pack it downstairs in the basement pantry. Of course, if I make a gallon or more of anything, I will also need larger mixing bowls…

The art museum is reopening to the public this week. It opened for members last week and I went once, in a timed slot. It felt like coming home in a way, and I was both calmed and overwhelmed just by being able to see the actual art, as opposed to just an image. I will be back in the coming week, and there will probably be a blog post, or posts.

I have driven 196 miles in June. Since I don’t plan on driving anywhere before Wednesday, that would be the final accounting. I actually didn’t drive much the first three months of this slow-down either, but I didn’t note monthly totals. Given that driving is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases, and Americans as a whole drive far more than anyone else, it has been one goal to cut my miles driven by at least one-third and I am well on my way, for this year at least. But I am hoping that this little interruption in the flow of normal life will actually lead to a reset, to reconsidering of priorities that will be more lasting. I know I will eventually drive more than I am now, but the process of questioning my underlying assumptions seems to be high on my mind at the moment. Who knows where the process will lead.

It looks like another partly overcast day, with more rain. The garden is not complaining, and it is good weather for letting the new plants establish themselves. As for me, the cloud cover means I can spend more time in the garden, so it promises to be a good day and a good beginning to the week. What good things are you hoping for this week?

June 29, 2020