I’m grateful that I didn’t hurry up and eat all the frozen apricots from last year. Despite a million tiny fruitlets on the tree long after bloom time, I looked today and saw only a dozen or so. The natural thinning process must have been amped up by the several microbursts we had over the past month. A dozen in sight during this time that they so closely resemble the leaves means maybe three or four dozen, my guess, will come to fruition. Most of those are at the very top, in the birds’ portion of the tree. Oh well. Grateful for learning to let go. In so many ways.
The 93 Fruits & Vegetables a Day challenge is going well. The first week I managed a total of 28, counting spices. I haven’t tallied last week, when I didn’t put as much focus into it, and this week I’m off to a good start with a four-fruit smoothie for breakfast today, Kung Pau Tofu last night, and an overall enthusiasm for the project bodes well.
How many grasshoppers? ARRRGG! They’re turning this catnip into lace and they’re still just tiny. This bodes ill for the entire garden, and my strategy this year is to leave plenty of weeds and grasses in the yard but not near the food garden. Still, I know I’ll have to practice letting go in the garden.
You can’t see them, but I know they’re there. I was taking a picture of the new copper birdbath which has been a long time coming, and noticed fledgeling mountain bluebirds following their papa around on the tree behind the hummingbird feeder. I’m grateful for insectivorous birds this summer, that’s for sure.
And I made myself cook a little bit of chicken tonight, because I’ve tried, and I cannot live on fruits and vegetables alone. I adapted this sheetpan chicken with rhubarb and red onion recipe to a quick skillet dinner, sautéing cut up chicken and sliced red onion with coriander, salt and pepper for awhile, tossing in chopped rhubarb, maple syrup, and some old white wine, and simmering til done. So simple, so delicious.
My dear friend has not let go yet, though her final breath nears. It could be hours, days, even a week. Her care team at home and her virtual support team are in frequent contact, all of us learning over and over again how to let go; how we must let go.
Whether it’s the flowers of arugula and broccolini drawing beneficial insects to the raised beds, or subtly fragrant pink honeysuckle flowers on the giant Lonicera korolkowii filled with honeybees, I’m grateful for the complex diverse flowers of the garden, of the world.
I started planting two ‘three sisters’ mounds today, with four corn seeds in each depression. In a couple of weeks when the corn is up, I’ll intersperse a vining bean, and a week or so after that plant two winter squash plants on the outsides of each mound. In the raised bed just above this area, I planted three more squares of four corn kernels interspersed with the salvaged arugula dug up when we turned and amended the bed below. Next to those, bush beans are already sprouting, and zucchini seeds wait for more warmth.
Where’s Wren?
The days have been full with compassion and not much attention to my 42 fruits and vegetables each day, but at least I got some color in my lunch. The cheese sandwich du jour is brie, arugula pesto, avocado and lettuce on herbed focaccia leftover from yesterday. I was grateful for a relatively quiet day in the garden, except for a quick ride to town to pick up my car from the shop where tires were fixed and winter wheels swapped off. Little Wren charmed everywhere from the bank, to Farm and Home, to the shop.
Where’s Wren? I was grateful to find a riot of flowers still at Paonia Farm & Home, and wished GB and I had gone there shopping last week instead of the actual farm where the plants I bought were, frankly, kinda tragic. Oh well, “water off a duck’s back.” Excellent to practice letting go with the small losses, so it’s a habit when the big losses come along, as they inevitably do.
Potatoes seemed to take forever to emerge, but I’m thrilled to be watching as first the soil bulges, then cracks, and then the first few leaves push through. These are the red potatoes, farther along in sprouting when planted and first to emerge, and now the yellow potatoes have started pushing up dirt, with just the tips of leaves from one showing.
Where’s Wren?
I’m grateful for more rain this afternoon, and can only attribute the blurry photos to that. I’m grateful for the sense of accomplishment that came from a morning teaching and an afternoon working in the garden. I’m grateful that Good Tim has recovered remarkably from his heart attack, and was able to come work for a couple of hours; which motivated me to work hard on the bed around the cherry tree. I removed the “temporary” foot-tall wire that tripped me last month from around the circle, and pounded proper edging into the ground, then replaced the decorative rocks. Then I weeded it, and planted some leftover tulip bulbs from last fall, which I hope will bloom next spring. I picked up an ‘electric blue’ penstemon at the nursery yesterday, which I planted in this bed to complement the yellow columbines that volunteered here years ago. A gardener always lives for the future, even while enjoying the present moment. We also learn from the past.
I’m grateful once again today for the Parks State Farm – Phil’s Towing combo that have rescued me three times in the past six months. This time it was a flat tire that must have occurred shortly before I arrived home from the last place I went, whenever and wherever that was. I’m grateful that I have to leave home so infrequently that I sometimes can’t remember the last time I did so. And I’m grateful to neighbor Gary who suggested I call my car insurance instead of try to do it myself.
This surprising little flower popped up in the ground cover that I don’t remember seeing before. And it didn’t last long — the next day they were gone, nipped off by deer, which is probably why I have only seen the foliage.
The sandwich loaf provided good lunches all week, including this Havarti-avocado-lettuce-peach salsa sandwich.
I’ve been grateful all week for ample and delicious food, from occasional homemade granola with peaches from the tree last summer via the freezer, to fresh garden salads supplemented with avocados and nuts that I didn’t grow, to of course cheese sandwiches. I’ve been eating more protein recently, and how lucky am I that I can say that? And have smoked salmon in the fridge to include in my lunches.
I made one sandwich with fromage fort, smoked salmon, lettuce, avocado, and peach salsa. It was delicious but it felt like it needed to be on a bagel, open-face, instead of between two slices.
Lacking a bagel, but with a thick slice toward the end of the loaf, I toasted that and added a fried egg, and enjoyed a gourmet lunch. I truly do savor these simple sandwiches with a few extra touches, with deep humility and gratitude that my life at this time allows me such marvelous food. I share the bounty of my garden and my lunch plates not to boast or show off, but to inspire and encourage anyone who has the means to make the time to make a simple meal special, and to savor it. I’m keenly aware that the day may come when I don’t get to enjoy this kind of lunch, for an infinite array of potential reasons: anything can happen, to anyone, at any time. Each meal is a special meal; each meal, like each breath, like each moment, is unique.
Where’s Wren?
Meanwhile, in the garden, each day offers new delight. New blossoms continue to open on the little cherry tree even as the first cluster to open begins to set fruit.
With the coldest nights behind us, I hope, I am planting this week. These sci-fi ‘self-watering’ baskets came from Gardeners’ Supply complete with a water meter for each. They actually seem like the best hanging option for this dry climate, and I’m optimistic about the strawberries I planted in them.
The little North Sky blueberry has acclimated long enough, sprouted new leaves, and seemed ready to go in its big pot filled with special blueberry soil.
How is it possible that I forget over the winter how much joy and contentment the garden brings me? I stepped outside into a cool, damp morning after Telesangha, and didn’t come inside again until lunchtime. I was just going to plant the blueberry, but one thing led to another. I spread compost over the onions, garlic, strawberry pot, and a few other large pots I’ve yet to plant, watered some beds lightly in case it didn’t rain, brought in the tea towels from the laundry line in case it did rain, strolled around the grounds admiring a few things, pulling a few weeds. I noticed and praised the first potato leaves emerging in that bed, checked on the illicit asparagus patch, and puttered with some small tasks, all the while humming aloud or silently to myself like a grateful, busy bumblebee.
The crabapple blossoms survived last weekend’s windstorm, and ongoing windy days, but a juniper by the driveway lost part of a trunk.
The Fuji apple tree, though irregularly pruned by deer, has a few limbs with blooms, lit with late sun after rain. Our evening rounds brought satisfaction, contentment, and a light rainbow. I’m grateful for a day off with no obligations, time to plant, rest, and restore in the garden, time to meditate during the storm, and time to reflect on the blessings of this life I landed in.
I’m grateful for the easy sourdough pizza crust recipe that Garden Buddy shared, and for cheese. And the right tools for the job.
I’m grateful for several salads with garden lettuce and arugula, as well as extras like toasted cashews, celery, cheddar cubes, pickled onions, and one of the miracle tomatoes from the sunroom.
I’m grateful for occasional store-bought organic chicken thighs with bones and skin. So hard to find any kind of chicken with skin, and it’s the best part! I made a delicious sheetpan roasted chicken and veggies and enjoyed several meals over the next days, including a chicken and cheese sandwich, chicken and veggie salad, and broth for Wren.
Once all the chicken was gone, I still had skin from two of the thighs. Too much fat for Wren, too good to throw away, too tempting to compost, so I fried it and used it for extra flavor in a cheese sandwich, along with more miracle tomatoes.
Plenty also to be grateful for in the garden over the past week, with new flowers blooming daily, lots of bees, bountiful sunshine, and mild spring weather.
I’d been craving fish sticks after seeing this recipe, and so made a few one night and also breaded and baked some wild asparagus with them. The scallions are young perennial onions from the garden, and the tartar sauce is homemade, including the last pickle and onions from a jar of refrigerator pickles I made at the end of last summer and lost in the back of the fridge. I’m grateful for using up odds and ends in the kitchen.
I’m grateful that the tender new cherry tree has opened its buds, one by one and five by ten.
Wren enjoys a snack of Atlas (or mat) daisy. I keep telling her, “Please don’t eat the daisies.” But she won’t listen. Look how she clutches it!
I’m grateful to spend time under the crabapple tree in full bloom and buzzing with pollinators. More from here another day.
I decided to make cheesos with the three leftover fish sticks, but the white cheddar melted just too holey, so I flipped it onto some corn tortillas, then loaded them up.
Yes, even more sunroom tomatoes! Tiny but prolific, considering. And garden greens.
I’m grateful that the onion patch is popping up nicely.
I unintentionally let the sourdough starter sit out for a few days because I couldn’t find time to start my usual bread. It grew tall in the jar, then subsided. So I looked for a way to use some discard before feeding it again and refrigerating until I have more time. Found a quick recipe for a sandwich loaf, which didn’t use as much discard as I wished, but made a lovely loaf! Despite forgetting to halve the yeast for altitude compensation, and then falling asleep and letting it rise too long, it turned out pretty well.
And so today’s cheese sandwich included avocado, Havarti, garden lettuce, and I opened a new jar of last summer’s peach salsa for extra punch. I’m grateful for a lovely lunch under the red umbrella, reading The Left Hand of Darkness, by master story-weaver Ursula K. LeGuin. I’m so grateful that I can read.
After lunch I potted down the French lilac I’ve been gradually training toward bonsai, from the large black pot into a much smaller pot, trimming more than half the roots, and all twigs except those with flower buds. In another year, I anticipate downsizing again into its final bonsai pot and drastically pruning. I’m grateful that today, I felt better physically and mentally than I have since before the face poison in early December. I attribute this to a number of new health protocols including allergy and anti-inflammatory, and some other lifestyle changes I’m in the midst of making. I’ve been awake all day and gotten a lot accomplished that I’ve been wanting to do.
Before coming in for the day I battened down the hatches, stowing chairs and other loose items around the yard, in anticipation of a potential fierce wind storm tomorrow. I moved the car away from trees. As I write tonight, the wind is already picking up outside with an occasional moan. Things may look quite different around here tomorrow night. This is the most dramatic high wind warning I can recall here. Steady southwest winds up to 50 mph with gusts to 65 are expected. Precautionary and Preparedness Actions advised on Weather Underground include “avoid being outside in forested areas and around trees and branches… People, especially those with respiratory illnesses… are recommended to stay indoors and avoid prolonged outdoor exercise or heavy exertion due to wind-blown dust.” I’ll gratefully stay inside and rest. We’ll know more later!
The tiny blueberry bush arrived from Territorial Seeds yesterday. It was bare rootball in a plastic sleeve, and it needs to harden off a few days to acclimate to sun and temperatures before I can plant it in its prepared container, so I put it in a clean clay pot and tamped in its special soil around the edges. I’ll keep it moving in and outside til after the next cold snap later this week, at least. Look at those tiny white bell flowers! I’ve never seen a blueberry plant before, so I was delightfully surprised by the flowers. And tiny germinal blueberries, too! But after its portrait, I snipped off all the flowers and budding berries, as recommended, in order to encourage strong root growth its first year.
I’m grateful for the gorgeous trees blossoming sequentially through this past month, and thrilled to see the crabapple so lush with flowers and buds.
I’m grateful for the right tools for the job, and for these great hinges from Lee Valley. I made a couple of small mistakes, but got the worst-sagging half of the gate hung this afternoon. I’m grateful for a socket set, a wood-bit set, a yardstick, a Makita screwgun, and the little string level I bought almost thirty years ago and used a lot while building my house. It was my ingenious trick to keep the drill bit level as I drilled through the juniper gateposts for the hinge bolts. It set perfectly on top of the bit shank with the rounded legs and I held it steady as I drilled: the bubble shimmied like a belly dancer but stayed between the lines, and when the bit was in deep enough I set the level aside.
I’m grateful for my father teaching me a thing or two about tools when I was a child. I am always grateful for this whenever I open my tool box, but especially so when I undertake a project that uses more than a hammer, wrench, or screwdriver. I’m grateful he taught me his cardinal rule of ‘the right tool for the job,’ and how to measure, and so much more, and I’m grateful that I can remember him with love and gratitude when I think of him in his workshop in the basement, where I would often sit and watch and help and learn.
We ran errands yesterday. I had to run to the post office, and thought while I was out I might as well go buy some dirt and red salvias at the garden center. I was grateful for the company of my little friend, who charmed everyone at Afton’s, and I was grateful for Afton herself, who runs the ‘new’ garden center on the west end of Rogers Mesa. And run she did, running herself ragged making sure I and other customers found everything we wanted. I was also looking for rosemary, and a cherry tree, and came home with all those things and a few more: strawberries and columbines as well.
I’d had my heart set on one kind of sour cherry tree for no reason other than that someone had recommended that variety; but while we were at Afton’s we found a different cultivar called North Star. I’m grateful I was able to support a local business owned and run by a young woman putting her heart into it, rather than order a tree online. I was grateful that we managed to fit everything in my hardy little Honda and still have room for Wren.
Then I fell last night. It got so windy before bedtime that I went out in the dark (with a headlamp) to move the cherry tree up against something, so it wouldn’t blow over in its pot and get damaged. Instead I got a little damaged: but I’m grateful it wasn’t worse. It could have been so much worse. As it was, I bruised a hip and scraped an ankle, tripping on the wire edging as I stepped over it holding the pot; but the cherry tree was unscathed, which is what really mattered. Oh, and that I didn’t break a hip or anything else.
In the morning the mini-tulip had opened, as well as the first yellow tulip in My Own Private Netherlands bed (below). I can hardly wait for these rows of tulips to bloom all together; but I don’t know that they will, and even if they do they won’t last long, so I’m not hanging my happiness on this stimulus-driven pleasure. Instead, my happiness lies in the satisfaction and fun I derive from the idea of color-blocking tulips; from working in the dirt, from spending time outside in the garden appreciating the transient beauty of each blossom as it opens; from simply being out in and belonging to nature.
I’m grateful for enjoying morning coffee outside under the apricot tree bursting with popcorn blossoms, under a bluebird sky, buzzing with bees, while a meadowlark sings…
I’m grateful for meaningful conversation this morning about grief and guilt, life and death, meaning, laughter, and joy. And I’m grateful for help in the garden this afternoon. All the prep work we did enabled me to plant the cherry tree in a hole deep and wide, filled with fresh, nutritious, slightly acidic soil. Years ago I planted a cherry tree in this same location, and it died in its second year. I don’t know why. It had come from the equivalent of the tree orphanage, those straggly struggling trees that stand lonely outside City Market every year until the last of them dies; so I chalked it up to childhood trauma. But it could have been planter error.
Ever since it died, I have wanted to replace it, but for one reason or another it hadn’t happened. As I continue to age, I’m pondering how long I’ll be able to live here. Suddenly, replacing the cherry tree assumed paramount importance this season. I’ve done everything right with this one –so far– testing the surrounding soil for pH and nutrients, and then filling the hole accordingly; roughing up the rootball which was pretty compacted; leaving on the protective sheath to protect against sunburn. Tomorrow I’ll tie supports from the stakes to the trunk to stabilize it from wind. I’ll pay more attention to its water and fertilizer needs. I’m grateful for this cherry tree, and so I’ll tend to it tenderly, with exquisite care.
This week’s bread, one-quarter rouge de Bordeaux flour and the rest all-purpose, made another beautiful loaf. As it was cooling, I was craving cream cheese-olive spread, so I whipped up a batch, and enjoyed it on the warm heel and one slice of fresh bread.
Later that night I finally made the lasagna rolls I’d been planning for several weeks, first chopping and sautéing kale and mushrooms with a few minced garlic cloves.
Then the veggies get mixed in with ricotta, parmesan, and an egg, and spread over cooked (and cooled) lasagna noodles. What a juggling act that is! The noodles have to be cooked enough to be pliable, cooled enough not to melt the cheeses, yet warm enough not to have dried out.
Then each noodle gets rolled up neatly and nestled in a bed of marinara, topped with more marinara, and sprinkled with ample shredded mozzarella.
The result is a pan full of richly delicious single-serve lasagna portions, so delicious, so convenient. I froze some in pairs, but found that one roll made an ample meal. This was a five ⭐️ recipe, and I’m grateful to my vegetarian cousin for sharing it.
The past few days have finally afforded some time to spend outside for all of us. Biko is enjoying free rein in the whole yarden at last, and so grateful to be out of his round pen. He still has to come in overnight until temps stay above 40℉, but as soon as I put him out in the morning he ambles up to the spot that gets first light and sunbathes there until he’s warm enough to start his morning rounds grazing fresh grasses and weed sprouts. Wren reminds me each evening when it’s time to go find him. Even after all winter without this job, she hasn’t forgotten her responsibility, and seeks him with bounding alacrity as soon as I ask her to “Find Biko!”
I’m grateful for the right tools for the job, as always. After cutting back bunch grasses with the hardy little Sunjoe yesterday I warmed up enough to lose the vest, and then powered up the weed torch for the first time since I bought it last fall. This is a great little tool for weeding crevices and other hard to reach spots. I’m grateful for the energy and time to be able to work in the yarden for a little bit of each day between shifts at the desk.
This morning when I stepped outside after meditation, I got a little jolt seeing Topaz resting on top of Stellar’s grave. They were close. I’m sure I’m projecting, but there was a poignance to her lying there, where I’ve never seen her before. She’s still not too fond of Wren, and I think she, like me, still misses her big old dog friend sometimes. But maybe it’s just a cozy spot for a morning nap. And maybe I’ve just been feeling the loss of that great dog a little bit extra this past week, as I mourn the unexpected death of a bright young man whose mother I’ve been close with since before his birth forty years ago. I continue to feel the shockwaves of his parents’ and siblings’ grief a few thousand miles away and a week later. I’ve known a few friends over the years who have lost a child in various ways, and each time the magnitude of their loss has paralyzed me. I cannot imagine anything worse.
Now, with the wisdom of age, the sharp personal grief I experience for my friend is softened by an expanded perspective: As I hold empathy for this one profound loss for one family I love, I can also feel compassion for the thousands of mothers across the world who lost a child on that same day. Depending where you ask, between 16,000 and 30,000 people under age 40 die every day worldwide; one source reports that 14,000 children under age 5 die daily across the world. As the Buddha teaches in the Five Remembrances, I am of the nature to grow old; I am of the nature to grow ill; I am of the nature to die; all that is dear to me and everyone I love is of the nature to change and I will be separated from them. I am grateful for the (still tenuous) equanimity that I’ve found in reckoning with the truth of death and impermanence.
I’m grateful for the ineluctable return of Spring.
I am standing still in the embrace of the apricot tree, waiting for a good shot of a bumblebee. I look down to see Wren silently looking up at me, clearly wondering what I am doing.
