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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
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
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 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
Garden Progress

The garden, microcosm of the world that it is, continues to offer lessons in joy, in patience, in fortitude, in failure, in folly, and in grace. The other morning, after I mowed my rather small patch of lawn, I picked a handful of blueberries and sat on the steps admiring my handiwork with self-satisfied contentment.

But of course all is not as it seems. There are far more planting beds, intentionally so, that patches of lawn, and most of those areas remain filled with weeds, some of those extensive weedy patches in the front yard, the more public space of the house. It struck me that my neighbors may not be as contented with my manicured lawn but overgrown weedy beds as am I. Oddly enough I find myself unconcerned, marveling far more at this general state of acceptance of my own limitations, than at any concern over other people’s opinions. It has not always been so.

Despite initial intentions the planned order of work, from public to private, from street to back, exactly the opposite has occurred. In this rocky time in the world my imperative has instead been to create sanctuary. This too is a part of a long process, but I have created a space where I love to sit, where nothing is finished but everything is filled with potential, where I can sit and watch the birds, the bunnies, occasionally if I am very lucky a fox, or perhaps merely a cat or my grand-puppy hiding in the long grass.

Above is the planting bed at the base of the deck, to the left in the photo above it. It took me a good while to dig that up and plant it, but the plants have been in a couple of weeks now, and look like they are establishing themselves. There are a few stakes where designated plants were not available. Now that the ground is ready, these have been ordered for fall planting.

Furnishings remain unsettled and in flux. A dining table has been ordered but has not arrived. In the meantime I am not really holding dinner parties, and chairs remain scattered about for social-distancing. Eventually, I would like these beds to be mostly perennials, mostly for my own ease, but it is good to stick some annuals in here and there, as spaces evolve, grow, change.

Across the walkway is the bed designated #2. I have dug up and planted about half that bed, as seen here in a photo actually taken through the kitchen window. You see the undug, unplanted portion of that bed in the second photo from the top, on the right. Plants have been ordered for the rest of this bed, which means more digging is required to prep the soil for their arrival, but I am mostly done with planting until October. There is time and as my strength has grown so has my confidence that this bed will be ready when the time comes.

Also from the deck, I am looking across the driveway to the vegetable garden, which is thriving. There is a small planting of euphorbia nowthowlee at the end of bed 3, where the walk meets the driveway. I misjudged that planting. I have seven plants, 14 more are on their way which will fill that small quarter circle at the end of that bed, next to the path. I would like a similar patch on the other side of that walk, but due to availability that cannot happen this year. The delay gives me time to plan, even as I can acknowledge that plans are tenuous, at best.

The vegetable garden, though thriving, is a continuing lesson in munificence, in failure, and in hidden joys. The spring crops are almost done, the summer crops just beginning. There are lots of tomatoes. The eggplant have begun to set fruit.

I can probably still put some summer crops in as the first frost really won’t be until October. Even if they don’t fully yield, this was always an experimental year, and my attentions have been scattered between various projects. The point is to take joy in what works, and simply accept the rest. The peppers are heavily laden. I harvested my first shishito peppers yesterday and blistered them to serve alongside my eggs for breakfast. In retrospect I should have planted more peppers. My adventures with sauerkraut have me dreaming of condiment-making and chile-fermentation. Next year.

I suppose now we should walk around toward the front.

This small bed at the base of the circle is doing well: geranium max frei, and Siberian iris. A few of the iris died before the sprinkler system got connected, and there was a long period where I wondered if any would survive. That bed was rocky and the clay more packed than I would have hoped, I had trouble digging it up last fall when I planted it, but I am stronger now. It seems worth the possibility of redigging and replanting it when the bulbs come in during the fall. But that decision does not need to be made now.

The Japanese maple and the small bed around it that were not destroyed are doing well, although there a few plants that need moving, and as you see, an area to be dug and planted.

Much of the front remains a place in waiting. These shrubs are doing well, although the blueberries (center of the photo) were spaced far too widely and need to be dug and repositioned. Given the amount of rock and difficulty I had digging and filling in a gap in the boxwood border, this may be a rather time-consuming task. I had been waiting until the blueberries finished fruiting, the season began in early June and the late blueberries are just ripening now, but am now thinking I should just wait until fall, until shrubs are dormant and the weather is kinder to both plant and gardener. In this case I should just weed and mulch to make the bed look neater and forget about it. Laziness prevented me from doing this earlier; I was loath to put energy into mulching a bed I was about to dig up. Surprisingly enough, mulching is harder on my back than actual digging.

Across the driveway you see little lime hydrangeas starting to come into bloom. They too are in the wrong place, and will have to be moved, another tedious fall task, after which I can finally start designing the front beds and hopefully finish planting them in 2021.

I hope the hardscaping implies the intentionality of it all. But I am not really bothered by the mix of manicured lawn and unruly weeds. The speck of orange flowers in the photo above is a daylily, the one seen at the top of this post. It is in temporary housing in a pot, and will be planted just outside the fence, near the post, once it has finished blooming. No point in moving it now, I will just lose the remaining blooms.

I don’t expect to see further visible progress in the garden this year. I will continue to dig beds so that they are ready to plant when the time comes. Aside from what those euphorbia and a few transplants here and there, fall bulbs and a few perennials, nothing else will be purchased or ordered until its home is ready and waiting, which means planting will, in all likelihood, be put off until 2021. But gardens, like lives, are things that evolve over time.

I hope you have enjoyed this visit to my work in progress. Some of these photos have appeared on my instagram feed, a site that feels somehow more suited to my current state of contentment with the slow, the small, the quotidian, a flower here and there. But the odd photo will appear here as well, depending on how things evolve, although perhaps not another garden tour for some time.

June 27, 2020
The morning after…

I hosted book club last night on the patio with social distancing…

Eight chairs. I managed to scrounge up 8 small tables, although a few had to be dragged outside from the house — those have to go back inside at some point, preferably today, but at the moment I am stiff and my back is still a bit too sore to carry them up the stairs. Never mind. They can always reside in the garage a day or two if necessary.

This morning I am in no rush, instead settled into that contentedly contemplative zone, the morning-after-a-party zone, reflecting back on conversations and community. Every good party deserves a follow-up morning of happy repose. The furniture must be put back in place, the dishwashers emptied, the linens washed, but there is really no reason to rush. The morning after a party is almost as important as the party itself.

Not unusually, my back is a bit sore. Too much standing in the kitchen I suppose, plus carrying tables outside. Would I do anything differently? No. Not really. Cooking, even the simple preparation of salads, is both labor-intensive and meditative. And I seem to have needed this time to be reminded that the important things in life are not the fast things, not the busy things, but the slow and connected things, like sitting and talking for a few hours with friends, discussing a book, but also discussing the world and our lives and then coming back around to the book, the way reading is a conversation, and a conversation about reading also sparks other conversations, about the complicated web of human interaction.

Not a lot of dinner came from my garden. The fava beans that are in the rice salad. I pulled out the fava beans this week as the temperatures had gotten too hot and the plants were dying. Admittedly, I knew I had planted them a bit too late, but was happy to have about 2 cups of shelled and de-skinned beans, enough to share in a group of 8 only as part of a salad. Also an opportunity for contemplative anticipation as the beans were shelled, par-boiled, iced, skins removed, and only then allowed to finish cooking. This labor-intensive part of food preparation is something our ancestors knew as part of the inescapable rhythmic of life, not even that long ago even. I don’t expect the world to change, or anyone to agree with me even. But I wonder what we have lost and what we have sacrificed for convenience.

The herbs and micro greens were also from my garden. Chervil, oregano, parsley, cilantro, beet thinnings, fenugreek thinnings, mint. Well the mint was actually from a neighbor’s garden, but I dug some up to plant here as well. I’ve been using a lot of chervil this summer and wonder now how I lived without it. And the herb garden isn’t what I want it to be yet. The thyme is still too small; so too the sage. I haven’t even planted lovage yet: I intended to go to an herb nursery and buy plants, but I should have just bought seeds. Celery leaf would be good. So much potential. So much gratification to be found in pulling dinner out of the earth.

The fava beans were not the only plants pulled out of the garden this week. The sugar snaps as well. Hidden peas were harvested. I think I picked 2 cups or so of peas every day for 2 – 3 weeks, but I found another 6 or 8 cups of peas hiding in the vines, a few a little larger than ideal but still better than anything in any store. Peas were steamed and frozen. A dinner of stir-fried shrimp and peas materialized when I realized I had forgotten to pick bok choy before dark and was too tired to go back out in the garden.

The last peas became a salad with chervil, bok choy blossoms, and fennel pollen, shared with friends. You can see the yellow bok choy blossoms at the back of the photo of the herb and salad garden above. The scattered leaves of the bok choy are still edible, but those too will have to be pulled soon. In the meantime the sense of discovery remains. Before this year I never even thought about bok choy blossoms.

This morning I have been out in the garden watering. Three zones on the sprinkler system are not working so I must water by hand, which is not such a bad thing. I saw the first of the Costuloto Genovese tomatoes on the vine, a photo I also shared to Instagram. I admired the tuscan kale, which I have been eating two or three times a week for over a month now, and which looks almost like some kind of pre-historic artifact. It is all that remains in the bed that contained peas and faves, and will next hold cucumbers, bitter melon, and my first ever crop of belgian endive. I am wondering if I can plant endive beneath its tall structures, or if I should perhaps plant some other smaller, cutting green between its leaves. As usual there are no answers, only questions and opportunities for conversations and growth. This is as true with each other as it is with the earth. Life is an ongoing experiment its seems, here in the garden, with friends, in our societies and interactions. And there is no doubt that mine is a fortunate life, something not to be taken for granted.

June 13, 2020
A Miscellany

Although I seem to have no difficulty keeping myself busy and entertained, I continue to struggle with blogging. In fact I also struggle with keeping up with social media and that seems odd because of the social aspect and the fact that I am once again struggling with balance, albeit in a very different setting than my previous struggles. It seems that once I struggled with having enough creative time, alone time. I admitted to myself that I said yes to too many things, that it was time to let go of that youthful and erroneous idea, that I could only be liked if I was useful. I admitted to myself that sometimes I went out too often, that I was avoiding being home alone, especially at night.

Would that simply admitting to one’s self-perceived failings in an insecurities, to one’s loneliness even, could be enough to turn the world around. It seems like there is always something new to learn, something new to overcome. I do not believe that this life, this physical world and life that we all share is the be all and end all. Often it seems like a proving ground, a place where we get to be tested, to spread our wings, to find out who we really are.

I struggle with the idea that if I am not going somewhere, doing something, hopefully something interesting I have nothing to say. Perhaps then, I continue to struggle with the question of what is a worthwhile life.

On the one hand, I am content to putter about here at home, content for the most part to not wander far. I have been cooking, knitting, sewing, gardening, reading. I have been watching television. I have walked around my neighborhood. I sit and watch the birds in the yard. I love my field of long grass, in back, where the slope is too steep for me to mow easily, where birds and bunnies cavort and play, and where my grand-puppy loves to collapse when his family brings him over for a walk. I mostly walk in my own neighborhood, and am oddly content to see the changes in the same space, day after day. When Tikka loved to walk for miles every day we travelled around, walked the many parks around Knoxville, and part of me wishes to do that again, wonders if perhaps I should go to the Smokies, but my focus has always been on the small, the everyday. I would go if I had someone to go with, but for myself I am oddly content with wherever I can get on my own power.

I am reading, a lot, news and magazines, which I have been gradually shifting from paper to digital formats. I don’t want to be drowning in paper. But books also. I am currently reading the third volume of The Last Lion, William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, as finished by Paul Reid, as well as Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool, which I am rereading for book club. I am thoroughly enjoying it; perhaps enjoying it more than I did with that first reading. But I tend to think of reading as an active intellectual pursuit, a conversation, and in a way a relationship that builds between the words and the reader, the author and the reader, not so much a relationship of people, but of ideas and awareness.

The birds get most of the blueberries, but I am not surprised at that. The crop is small this first year, and the bushes are too widely spaced, an issue that still has to be addressed. I do manage to grab a small handful of sugar snap peas every time I walk through the garden. None have made it in to the dinner table, but several handfuls of peas are consumed every day. I am reminded of a few essential truths: the sweetness of a pea freshly plucked, the subtle delicate life of freshly harvested lettuce, berries warmed in the sun, hands in the dirt, flowers you have grown yourself.

Some parts of the garden are doing well although there are a few failures. My bloody dock never germinated. I admit that I am moving slowly. I can only manage a couple of hours of garden work a day, and alas, in this stage of building and digging, progress sometimes seems slow. I started out all gung-ho in the vegetable garden, but then lost momentum as the spring remained chill. There are gaps in my planting. But I see little pockets of progress and they make me happy.

I made cilantro pesto yesterday and froze it in 2-tablespoon blocks for use later in the season. This was from the first planting, which is still going strong. I am about to put in the third cilantro planting, and i want some of the fleshy roots, but never having grown cilantro for the roots, I see that I will have to allow a patch to grow old and woody, to flower. Cilantro, when picked frequently for its tender green leaves, never develops a substantial foundation of thick roots. Once again, always learning.

I see I haven’t answered any of my questions, especially not my question of blogging. Does writing come out of some sense of discontent, of a need to express something intangible. What about comfort? Does one need to write when one is content, like Dash above, to stop and simply lie in the long grass? And does it matter? Perhaps there is time for all these things in this world. And then again, perhaps times of contentment, times of not rushing about can yield their own surprises. Only time will tell.

May 26, 2020
A Walk Through the Garden — Very Much in Progress

I thought I would walk through the yard today. Not all the photos are lovely, but as I’ve been occasionally been posting pictures of pretty flowers, I also want to document that this is very much a work in progress, with far more that is undone than in any way ‘finished’. Not that I believe a garden is ever finished. This one is, however, still very rough.

Walking out the front door, looking across the driveway to the front circle. Those tall things behind the wall are very much weeds, in a future flower bed that has not yet been designed, much less prepped.

But in front of the wall, the ‘max frei’ geraniums are starting to bloom, even though they are still quite small. It has been a cool spring. I don’t yet know how the Siberian iris behind the geraniums will fare, but at least they are up, and there is promise for the future.

To my right (east) is the Japanese maple (previously posted to instagram) and more landscaping in waiting.

Walking toward the back we see the tomatoes, which i staked the other day. A deer had made a romp through the garden — I could see the deer prints in the soft soil — and had broken one of the tomatoes, a costoluto genovese tomato I cannot easily replace. I wrapped it and hope it wills survive.

The peas and favas are finally blossoming. I hope not to late. It has been a long cool spring, but this feels more like Hudson Valley timing than Tennessee, and I hope the heat will not set in too soon, giving these cool weather crops a bit of a chance. It could just be that I got them in too late, and the shade came out too early in their development. But then, I have known all along that this, my first vegetable garden in decades, and the first one in Tennessee, is a bit of an experiment.

I am starting to plan, dig, and prep the back beds. There are a few dwarf sedum in the front bed along the driveway. They will spread. I planted bloody dock seeds which have not yet sprouted. I wonder if they will, or if I have to start over. Still much to clear, but the bunnies (and the cat) love to hide in the weeds. And so far the bunnies prefer nibbling on the weeds over my veggie garden, so I am loath to uproot their hiding and dining spots.

First bloom on the fringe tree.

Various things have been transplanted to this bed by my small back patio. So far, they seem to be settling in, but only time will really tell.

The peonies are blooming profusely in my secret garden behind the garage. I decided to keep this cozy space and transplant them after bloom, probably after the blueberries bear fruit as well, as they will go up in that bed, where everything needs to be dug up and rearranged, as the landscape crew could obviously not follow a planting diagram and I was not here when they showed up to do the planting. Never hire a landscaping crew who sneaks in and plants when one is away. (although admittedly that was not my intention)

And there is Moises, walking along the eastern pathway. The oak leaf hydrangea has leafed out, the established hellebores are doing well, and there are plenty of areas that were dug up and need to be replanted. Much space for dreams and imagining along with getting hands dirty.

May 12, 2020
Six Things On A Saturday Morning

I missed Friday and a planned, well obviously only hoped-for, five-things post. I don’t know that six things on Saturday is a thing, but I will do my best.

1 — I finished the prayer shawl that I had been doggedly working on. There was a fair amount of ripping back and re-knitting, primarily due to the knitter’s state of mind and enthusiasm.

2 — This iris, Iris versicolor John Wood, was rescued from its temporary holding spot behind the garage and planted and has now rewarded my efforts by bursting into bloom. There is not much around it but an empty bed and weeds, but all of that will change with time, lots of time…

3 — I went through of nearly three weeks where I did not pick up a book, finding myself oddly unable to focus. And then, in one week, I needed to read Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for book club discussions. I enjoyed both books, although I also struggled with both in some ways and I realized near the end that I just needed to read something that would draw me in to the story, without the mental side show that I experienced with Kingsolver and Skloot. I ended up ripping through Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series over the course of about 10 days. It was what I needed, a gripping story, completely outside of my life. I can’t review each book individually, but as a whole I loved the way the series built on the characters through both the exploration of both the seriously dark and brutal side of human nature and our own need for, and fear of, vulnerability. In the beginning the characters are, in many ways, flat and stereotypical, but through the course of the books Slaughter adds layers of complexity, and the beginnings of insight, which often flat as characters return, time and time again, to their default modes. Much like all of us. This reader found the interweaving of character and story to become steadily more complex throughout the series. At times the characters walk a fine line between engagement and a shallow shadowiness, enough that the reader can read his or her own world-view into the experience. And well, I can relate to Sara Linton: smart, too much in her head, but also insecure when it comes to her emotions. In short, my reading of Slaughter might not be the same as yours.

Anyway Grant County suitably whetted my reading appetite, and I have pulled few books from the stacks and ordered a couple of more — got to use the May book allowance after all y’all. Shown above is the current stack. I am currently about 50 pages into The Splendid and the Vile and enjoying it very much. When I am done I will finally finish off the last volume of Manchester’s The Last Lion. Both books begin when Churchill becomes prime minister, and they should be an interesting pair to read together, although I tend to think of Manchester as a savoring slowly kind of book, whereas Larson writes more of a gripping read.

4 — There has been some sewing, although not yet really for me. Above are the results of one day’s worth of bias tape making. Those masks have all been sent out. Another 28 yard pile of bias tape has been created, and 14 more masks cut out, all waiting for assembly.

5 — Yesterday was a cold rainy day, and I suppose it would have been the perfect day to work in the studio, sewing those masks, but somehow I couldn’t drag myself out the door even for a short sheltered walk to the studio. Chalk it up to COVID unsettlement. Last month I binged on the Australian series “Offspring” and loved it. Really that series is what helped me get that prayer shawl finished and kept me somewhat sane. A couple of days ago I found the Norwegian series “Beforeigners” and I finished it off yesterday. It is a little gritty, and of course in Norwegian with subtitles, but fascinating. I love the way it explores the the idea of immigration with people immigrating through time, so the race question is obviated but in the end all the issues remain. It is a great reflection on otherness, on the seeking of safety and the disruption of chaos, and the way we define ourselves, and redefine our understanding of history through the lens of our current experience, as well as the shock of the reality of that history. I hope there is a second season.

6 — My TV day was also a knitting day. Finishing “Beforeigners” and watching a Metropolitan Opera production of The Magic Flute, yielded ample knitting opportunity. My current obsession is a sweater knitted holding two strands of lace weight linen. I started this last summer and then put it aside after finishing the first piece of four. I am now almost finished with the second piece, and I don’t want to stop knitting. Linen is not my favorite yarn to knit, although it is a favorite for wear, and yet, the changes in the colors holds my interest and drives me on. I will be wearing this sweater this year.

May 9, 2020