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Those Bright Hours

Oct20

Every now and then over the past two days I’ve pressed the pause button and sat down outside to savor the still-blooming patio flowers and the slowly changing colors of the yarden. But in between pauses and work I’ve focused on a fun and labor intensive project: Jelly.

Not just any jelly… not just rosehip jelly, either, though it did require a bowlful of those. These wild rosehips are small and seedy, not much flesh or juice, so I knew it would take a lot of them. And they’re not easy to harvest; even the rosehips themselves have pickers on them, so I took kitchen snippers out to clip them off by ones and twos, invariably snipping plenty of leaves. I picked out the leaves as I dumped the fruits into a bowl of cold water with a splash of vinegar.

Then onto the crabapples! My gorgeous tree produces the tiniest crabapples I’ve ever seen. The rosehips are small, but the crabapples are no bigger than the rosehips! I plucked them from the tree by ones and twos and threes, reaching overhead for most of them and dropping plenty on the ground. It took awhile, but I refilled the bowl, picked out the leaves, and dumped the crabapples into another bowl of cold water and vinegar wash.

It took an hour to rinse the rosehips and pick off blossom ends and residual stems, but at least the prickers had softened during the soak. I put them in a pot, covered them with water, and simmered for well over an hour, mashing them some about halfway through to release even more rosy essence, adding water a couple times to keep them submerged.

When they were sufficiently softened I scooped the mash into the ancestral chinois cone strainer that my sister from another mister gave me a few years ago, which had belonged to her mother. I let it drip for about five hours, squeezing out more pulp a few times with the elegant wooden pestle that you swirl around the edge simply using the palm of your hand on the smooth handle.

Once I’d extracted all the goodness I could from the rosehips, I put the crabapples on to boil, again keeping them just covered with water, and mashing halfway through cooking. They were just as hard to prepare because I had to pull off each stem using small pliers. I cooked them for only around 45 minutes, as I’d read that if you overcook them you ruin the pectin.

This mash strained for a couple hours before bedtime, with a couple of pressings, and then I left that in the strainer overnight, covered with a mesh tent to keep out the one or two pesky houseflies remaining inside.

In the morning I pulled the rosehip juice from the fridge, swirled the two bowls full together, and dumped them into a larger saucepan with an equal volume of sugar.

I brought this to a rolling boil, then reduced the heat and simmered until the jelly had reduced to the proper thickness. Or maybe just a bit longer. I used the “wrinkle test” to determine when to stop cooking: put a couple of small plates in the freezer, and when you think it’s close, pull one out and drop a spoonful of jelly onto the cold plate, let it sit for two minutes, then draw your finger through it. If it wrinkles on top it’s ready; if not, cook a bit longer. Pretty sure I could have called it good after the first test despite not getting the wrinkle but I let it cook another five minutes until the next test wrinkled.

I knew I wouldn’t get much jelly out of all this effort, but volume wasn’t the point. Some kind of crazy satisfaction from the process was the point, and a few mouthfuls of powerful flavor. I optimistically sterilized six 4-ounce jars, and was delighted to fill five of them. While they processed in the hot water bath for twenty minutes, I scraped the saucepan clean and slathered a piece of buttered toast.

I slowly savored every single tart, sweet, slightly flowery mouthful.

Twenty-four hours and uncounted steps later, the labor intensive fun resulted in five tiny jelly jars full. How I wish I had enough to give some to everyone I want to share it with! Oh well. That’s why they say “Mashed potatoes are so everyone can have enough.”

There are still tons of even smaller rosehips on the bush… will I decide to spend another day harvesting and processing another batch? Maybe… but most of the crabapples left are out of reach so it would be purely rosehip jelly if I do it again. Who knows how the wind blows? Who knows where the time goes?

Meanwhile, as I labored away, the lazy little animals just sat around enjoying the gorgeous fall days. Ok, well, I did sit with them some of the time, grateful for the time to sit, and grateful for those bright hours making such extravagant jelly.

Interconnected

Oct15
Little Bambino drinking from the bird bath
BLT under construction, with added basil
Using more gifted basil with leftover squash in a layered pickled salad with garden red onion and Prosecco vinegar
Rain-drenched moss glowing under juniper on evening walk
Quick pasta dinner with leftover gnocchi dough and tomatoes leftover from the BLT reduced in sage butter with a dollop of bacon fat
This morning’s joy while filling the small-bird feeder
Midafternoon walk to the sunlit canyon, playing with Hipstamatic app
A tote bag full of geraniums broken up and potted to give away at No Kings Day rally on Saturday. I’ll be keeping just one, of course

Grasshopper Plague

Jul16
On midday grasshopper patrol…

Morning, noon, and evening, neither rain nor hail nor fire nor smoke can keep me from doing grasshopper patrol around the patio and through the garden. Sometimes I use the hose and sometimes I just sweep with my hands. I’m grateful I’ve managed them as well as I have, despite not starting quite early enough; now they’re big I have some strategies in mind but I was waiting for the grasshopper webinar today to decide my next step.

They’ve once again demolished all the rabbitbrush in the yarden, stripping the leaves of what little grew back on this massive bush this year, after they completely denuded it last summer, killing the lower half.

The beautiful little rose bush I nursed along and finally potted up last month was thriving on the patio table, alongside three tiny citrus trees. I checked them several times a day for the slightest sign of grasshopper predation, intending to bring them inside at the first bite.

I failed miserably with the tiny trees: one afternoon I noticed a single leaf damaged, so I set the tray near the door to bring inside—but I forgot, left it out overnight, and the rock squirrel who haunts the patio ate all three down to a toothpick. The rose continued to thrive—until yesterday. Midday it was fine. Evening rounds it was missing three-quarters of its foliage. So I whisked it inside to the sunroom table and administered first aid.

I was relieved to sit down for an hour at lunchtime, amidst heavy smoke outside, to a PPAN (People and Pollinators Action Network) zoom webinar called “Pollinators Meet Grasshopper and Mormon Cricket Management.” Sharon Selvaggio, a pesticide reduction specialist with The Xerces Society, gave a riveting presentation on the complex relationship between grasshoppers, pollinators, and ecosystem health. The Xerces Society, a conservation organization working to protect the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates, educates about the unintended consequences of widespread pesticide use.

Ever wonder why honeybee populations are in steep decline? They’re a canary in the coal mine for native bees and other pollinators like butterflies and moths. APHIS aerial spraying of pesticides to control Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids) in the Midwest and western states is a contributing factor in the decline of many pollinators. Sharon leads Xerces’ work in seeking sustainable solutions for grasshopper and Mormon cricket management, especially on public lands. She offered some alternatives to pesticides for the home gardener.

Great news! Having a low tolerance for snapping their little heads off, lacking chloroform as my zoo friends use, and not (yet) interested in freezing and frying them, she gave the answer to what to do with them if I choose to pluck or vacuum them off plants in the cool hours while they’re sluggish: drop them into bucket of soapy water! (Ack. I still hate the idea of killing them. Which do I hate more? Killing insects or losing the fruits of my labors? Probably losing my garden.)

Speaking of the garden… I made the onion greens pesto finally, with the chopped greens, some parsley, garlic, lemon juice, pecans, and parmesan cheese. So simple, so delicious!

I was grateful it was cloudy and a little cooler today, so I could also make “Vichyssoise light.” I’d been putting it off because I didn’t want to heat up the house, but you can’t make cold Vichyssoise without first cooking it. I sautéed the onions in butter, added a chopped potato, chicken broth, salt and pepper, and simmered for half an hour. Then I took it off the heat and stirred in a couple tablespoons of yogurt and a big splash of milk and blended til it was smooth and creamy. By then I was too hot to eat hot soup so it went into the fridge for tomorrow. But I did lick the spoon and it’s delicious!

The wind shifted to the west this evening and blew in some fresh air. I was able to cool off outside without a mask and leave the doors open to get a cross breeze through the house for a few hours. I took the opportunity to pick the rest of the un- or less-damaged apricots and harvested more than expected. Another garden success in a scant year!

A screenshot from the Watch Duty app yesterday showing the South Rim fire perimeter, evacuation zones, and the two planes and one helicopter working it at the time. The blue dot near the top is where I live, nine miles as the crow flies from the fire. I’ve been relying on it so much in the past week that I felt compelled to pay their reasonable membership fee; getting the little purple aircraft moving in real time was an unexpected bonus.

I’m grateful for the nonprofits that make the world better, like Watch Duty, PPAN and Xerces, and for endangered government agencies, like APHIS and the National Weather Service, that use science to serve diverse human needs; and I’m grateful for the technology that puts warnings, forecasts, and other helpful data at our fingertips.

I’m grateful for the Weather Underground app, with all the bells and whistles selected: radar, cloud cover, fronts, heat, hail, severe storms… and for knowing where I stand in the midst of it all, once again that little blue dot near the top.

Communication

Jun7

I spent a lot of time in the garden today, spraying vinegar on the ground to kill grass and weeds popping up through the chips we put down to mitigate grasshoppers; pulling weeds, spraying a neem/soap mix on the cabbages, onions, potatoes, carrots and more to drive grasshoppers away; and burning some scrap wood since it was finally calm enough and damp enough to not pose a wildfire risk. And I also found time to take Husband Camera for a few strolls around the yarden to capture the love between flowers and their pollinators.

The little orchard bee first caught my eye in the top picture, and as she moved down the Gaillardia blossom I saw the spider. But she did not.

I serendipitously caught the moment when the two insects communicated: as though the spider said “I am here” by gently reaching a leg toward the bee’s antenna.

Then the bee courteously said “Pardon me!” and flew back to the top of the flower. And the spider smiled her thanks with her eyes.

I’m grateful for this gorgeous day, for the communication I witnessed among many beings, for communication with several friends, for the health, energy, and stamina to spend the day working and playing in the yarden.

Cabbages and Kings

Feb21

I’m grateful today to see all the sweet cabbage seedlings which have sprouted since I planted the seeds five days ago. A few had started popping up yesterday, and this morning many!

But my moments of delight are few and far between, corrupted by increasing dread and anger, fueled in large measure by the absolute failure of US media to do their job as the Fourth Estate: “The hallmark of the fourth estate is that it scrutinises the actions of public officials and political institutions in the interest of the public, serving as a watchdog that holds the other three estates (the legislation, the executive and the judiciary) accountable for their actions.” Can you imagine the uproar if Biden or Obama (or possibly even George W) had claimed to be a king and released official images of himself wearing a crown? There would have been a media feeding frenzy like giant piranhas over a donkey carcass.

I spend more and more of my waking hours each day consciously transforming a simmering rage into more helpful and beneficial actions, thoughts, and emotions. It’s exhausting. This is the strategy of the coup plotters, to overwhelm and exhaust. My aversion is so strong that I can’t even write their names, so I’m calling them Mump. And this is the ad accepted by The Washington Post and subsequently rejected:

What will it take to get the media to focus on the hostile takeover of our precious democracy? In an eloquent speech the other day, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker told the hard truth about what’s happening, including a humble confession illustrating the evil of the new regime. The last ten minutes is well worth watching and extrapolating from: “This is real,” he says. Maybe the press will listen if we come together and shut down the economy for a single day. What a great idea! Well, it’s a plan. Get on board:

“The 24 hour Economic Blackout

For one day we show them who really holds the power:

WHEN:

Thursday February 27th from Midnight till Friday the 28th Midnight

(A full 24 hours of the 28th)

12:00 AM to 12:00 AM

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Do not make any purchases

Do not shop online, or in-store

No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy

Nowhere!

Do not spend money on:

Fast Food

Gas

Major Retailers

Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Only buy essentials if absolutely necessary 

(Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies)

If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.

SPREAD THE MESSAGE

Talk about it, post about it, and document your actions that day!

WHY THIS MATTERS!

~ Corporations and banks only care about their bottom line.

~ If we disrupt the economy for just ONE day, it sends a powerful message.

~ If they don’t listen we make the next blackout longer.

From The People’s Union website

Make sure you have enough groceries to feed yourself and your whole family for that 24-hour period. This week’s Sandwich of the Week included sharp white cheddar, kippered herring, and homemade pickles.

Also we need to be talking about the stories, our own or of people we know, who are suffering from the effects of these sudden layoffs. Soon we can share stories of people suffering medical crises from cuts to Medicaid, on the chopping block in the big House budget bill. Eventually we’ll be able to amplify the tragic stories of almost every American we know, except for our Billionaire friends. Well, I don’t personally have any billionaire friends, but most of us must, right? Or why else are we letting them get all the benefits from the proposed tax cuts which will save the government money at our (potentially lethal) expense?

So I’ll share the story of a couple of friends. As we share, let’s be sure to protect the identity and privacy of people we share about. A woman friend did a wonderful job for a contractor supporting CFPB, a job she loved and was great at. With the CFPB slaughter, she lost that job, was told one day to work from home the next week, and the next day told that her job was gone. She’s among the lucky: she has some savings, and a couple of other sources of minor income to help her limp along. Another friend, a young man, has been job-hunting in the DC area for a long time, and had just gone through a three week interview process that was going really well. He was so optimistic that this would be the job he’d get! It was with a government contractor. So guess what, now he’s back to square one. He lives on a very thin margin, and even volunteers at the food bank where he gets his groceries. Every day I hear from someone new about friends or family who have lost their jobs.

This is real. We have a very small window of opportunity to rally ourselves, our elected officials, and the press to see the truth of the dark hole this country is heading down. Speaking of holes, the burrow is active! And these are not gentle rock squirrel footprints; I think it’s a badger hole.

Damage is already done in our lives that will be hard to mitigate: further damage is inevitable, and could be irrevocable. It’s past time to WAKE UP and take action, take more action, and take more action. Resources for getting involved in the resistance abound. Start with Indivisible, Common Cause, ACLU, NRDC, Move On, or the nearest gathering of fierce old ladies or angry youth near you.

Once again, Topaz got too close for my comfort, and even for her own. As she stuck half herself down into the hole, I called “No, don’t do that!” and she ignored me, but a few beats later she squeaked and popped back out. I wish she could tell me what she met down in there. And oh, by the way…

Opportunities

Nov15

Tonight I’m grateful that I got to spend an hour in the garden this morning, pulling a few weeds, turning over a little cold, wet dirt, and planting some bulbs. I don’t feel able yet to get down on the ground so I planted them in raised beds and tubs, all protected from the deer who last spring demolished most of my tulips, even the little naturalizing tulips that they used to leave alone. I’m grateful for the opportunity the fine weather allowed. Some of the beds had chunks of frozen dirt in them, but mostly the soil was malleable, and the temperature went up to 62℉. If it hadn’t been for the stiff wind all day I might have spent more time outside, but I’m grateful I got two loads of laundry done and hung on the line.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to sleep in an adjustable bed for the past two months, and I was sad to see it go this afternoon. It’s been my resting place since surgery, and ever so comfortable compared to my sweet old recliner, which feels sooo low now that that’s the only place downstairs I have to stretch out. Now I get the opportunity to clean off my convalescent windowsill!

I’m grateful for the technology that provides the opportunity to learn from wise teachers around the world. I’ll be zooming into Upaya Zen Center throughout the weekend for a retreat called AWAKENED ACTION: Opening to All of Life, which features five powerful women: Roshi Joan Halifax, Terry Tempest Williams, Valerie Brown, Rebecca Solnit, and Christiana Figueres. I’m taking every opportunity now to strengthen and deepen my meditation practice and spiritual understanding in order to cope with the unfathomable election results, and build resilience for the work ahead. I’m grateful for Indivisible, and for all the other grassroots groups who are already gathering momentum; I’m grateful for the many women and men in government jobs who are already struggling to stand strong for truth and freedom.

I’m grateful for these gloriously colored flowers that I get to plant in my own little yard, anticipating some bright spots of beauty if I live til spring. I’m grateful to understand that anything can happen, any time, and it has always been this way. Today is no different than the November full moon a year ago, or ten years or twenty before that. I’ll be grateful to wake up alive tomorrow morning. Ongoing mindfulness practice creates the opportunity to open to radical acceptance of impermanence. It isn’t easy, but it really makes sense. And it makes each day, each aware breath, each tiny perfect moment of beauty, sweetness, kindness, connection, all that much more precious and meaningful.

Final Harvest (This Year)

Oct21

I’m grateful the grasshoppers chose this year to eat my garden. I couldn’t have done much with a big harvest. The other day I picked the handful of cherry tomatoes that made up my entire tomato crop out of the eight plants I sowed. The same evening I dug the last of the potatoes.

Today, I ate them all. Tomatoes on toast with avocado and mayonnaise, potatoes boiled, buttered and salted, with mustard – herbed chicken. I’m grateful for my tiny, final harvest.

Resting in Uncertainty

Aug23
I’m grateful for the rains and the rainbows, and also that the ferocious lightning storm the other evening didn’t start any out of control wildfires.

I guess grief gives me writers’ block. This is what happened after the Summer of Loss in 2020. Not as many beloveds died this past summer… but enough for me to withdraw inward. I appreciate understanding this about how I grieve, and having learned to allow me to grieve in whatever way it shows up, whenever and however. My grief is a slow burn. I have always handled things pretty well in the moment, generally rising to the occasion to provide whatever is called for: presence, calm, comfort, strength, courage, bandages… and then collapsing into myself for awhile.

I’m grateful for Zoom Cooking with Amy last weekend. We made chicken cordon bleu. It was fun to make, but we were both a little disappointed for different reasons in our results. Next time, plain fried chicken! And then a chicken ranch cheese sandwich with the leftovers.

When I was a child, my father had a wood shop in the basement. Several kinds of electric saws, shelves of tools. He built things, including a lot of frames for my mother’s and my brother’s paintings; and a beautiful little pine coffin for Mittens, my cat who died of an early diagnosed case of feline leukemia when I was eleven. A couple of times he cut himself pretty badly. The first time, he came up the stairs and called into the living room where I was watching TV with mom, “Pooh, can you help me with something for a minute?” I was daddy’s little helper in so many ways. When he needed extra hands in the shop, when he shopped for groceries, when his glasses needed cleaning, when he needed another bourbon and water and didn’t want to get up from his recliner. So no one (i.e. mom) thought twice when he asked me to help him for a minute.

I followed him down the hall into the master bedroom and into the bathroom, where he asked me to get the bandaids and removed the wadded paper towels from his finger, sliced open and bleeding hard. I rose to that occasion, and helped staunch the bleeding with pressure, then doctored with tincture of benzoin and bandaged with gauze and adhesive tape. It was way too much for a bandaid. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said. After he was tidied up and settled down with his bourbon, I curled up in a still ball on the couch beside my mother, and never said a word. The second time either.

I’m grateful for coffee and biscotti by the pond on a sunny, cool morning, with all my little friends.

When people died in 2020 I was strong. When people died this summer I was strong for those closer to the dying. Strong enough afterward even to say that I was struggling. I’m done struggling now. I’ve settled into loss the way that I do, with a lot of curling up still and breathing. But maybe the curling up still and breathing is also the way I handle apprehension. Big change is coming to my little world next month with major surgery and months of recovery. Also, breathing is harder and my oxygen level is consistently considerably lower than optimal. More and more, I ponder the likelihood that I will have to leave my beloved home, the trees I so dearly love, and move to a lower elevation. All this is great practice in letting go of attachment: to people and to place.

I’m grateful the garden wasn’t a total bust by the grasshoppers. They did some damage to the pickling cukes, but I kept them covered long enough that when I opened them to pollinators the grasshoppers had mostly eaten their fill. I’m grateful that now, though there are still plague numbers, they are mostly mating and dying, and not eating so much.
Three cucumbers is no great success, but there’s still time…
Though they demolished the potato tops so that I’ll only be harvesting baby potatoes this year, this was the haul from one prematurely dead plant, and enough for two tasty meals. Seven more meager batches to harvest over the next month or two.
Boiled, with butter and salt: baby potatoes don’t get much better than this.
I’m grateful for the two giant tomatoes that keep on giving. Still got half of one left. This is ‘tomato toast,’ a thing I didn’t know had a name until Amy shared an instagram post suggesting to grate cheddar cheese into the mayonnaise for the “best tomato toast.” I mixed fromage fort with mayo. Yum. But plain mayo would have been just as good. Often, simpler is better.

So while I am curling up and breathing, I am also resting in uncertainty, in mortality, in gratitude for this precious human life that has offered me so much adventure and beauty, joy and love and opportunity to grow. I’m doing my best to allow myself to appreciate the full range of human experience, without wishing for anything beyond my control to be different than it is: practicing accepting life on its own terms, and death too. Right now that involves a lot of curling up still and breathing, simply being, when I’m not doing something else.

Living inside the kaleidoscope…

Squash Blossom Season

Jul13

First, the bad news. After demolishing almost everything else in the garden, the grasshoppers finally attacked the onions, which were doing so well. I pulled those they’d eaten down to the ground, then consulted with Dr. Onion. He offered a “Duh!” solution: cover them, he said, with an old window screen or some row cover, and they’ll keep growing. So I chased out all the grasshoppers (a few times) as I laid over some old row cover I dug out, tucked in the edges, and weighed it down with hoses. We’ll see what happens.

And in Surprising New Garden Pests, I discovered several limbs of the precious cherry tree had damaged leaves, gnawed to lace by these horrible creatures, which Neighbor Fred identified as Pear Slugs. They’re the larvae of a type of Sawfly, which feed on pear, plum, and cherry leaves. After I removed eight or nine leaves, I hosed the tree down hard, then found one remaining. I’m glad I noticed before they did too much damage, and I’ll have to monitor the tree.

But the good news is, grasshoppers don’t prefer zucchini plants. They’ve eaten a few of the flowers, but so far haven’t bothered with the leaves much. For the past few days if I get to them first thing in the morning I’ve been able to harvest four or five for stuffing. A quick batter of one egg beaten with ⅓ cup flour and ¼ cup soda water (the recipe calls for beer) yields a nice light coating.

By the third day stuffing flowers I branched out. The Brie was mostly just melting away, so I mashed some rice with cream cheese and Za’atar and stuffed today’s blossoms with that for a much more fulfilling squash blossom experience.

And while I was stuffing things in the kitchen, I whipped up some stuffed red peppers from a recipe Cousin Mel shared the old fashioned way, in a photo of a magazine page. She spiced hers up, I didn’t add so much chipotle. They were good! One for lunch, one in the fridge for later, and two in the freezer for later later. I’m grateful for knowledgeable friends, plenty of food and the energy to prepare it, and for squash blossom season.

Another Sunset

Jun14

Tonight I’m grateful for living to see another sunset. So many people didn’t.

And I’m grateful for the lush growth in the garden, despite the grasshopper infestation. I’m even ok with that as I watch baby bluebirds and baby phoebes learning to hunt. Whatever will be will be, and there will be something left for me.