Tag Archive | rainbow

Winding Down

Today’s cheese sandwich included mayo, of course, romaine, avocado, Sandwich Sprinkle, smoked Gouda (a cheese I am just now truly falling in love with), and apricots. I’m grateful for every lunch I get to eat a cheese sandwich: so simple, so delicious!

I’m grateful that the apricot blessing is winding down! It’s been –is being– an extraordinary year for apricots at Mirador. The east side of the tree looks like it’s about given up all its fruit… but the west side still has plenty to offer! However, at this point even many fruits within reach have been pecked by birds on their tops or far sides, and so while I may still be able to harvest a few more, I’ve pretty much surrendered the season. A couple of baskets remain in the kitchen to be turned into jam or frozen, but within a couple of days I believe that apricot harvest will feel complete. It’s been a fun ride!

Though little Wren buries herself in towels or the bedding during a rainstorm, she quickly runs outside when the storm has passed, to enjoy with me the gorgeous aftermath. Note the slowly ripening peaches on the next tree up for harvest, another banner year if I can get to them before the rodents.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, apricot upside-down cake is brewing. I’ve never made an upside-down cake, honestly never understood the appeal until quite recently when Deb shared some homemade pineapple upside-down cake. Hmmmm, I thought, this is actually quite tasty. And so when NYT threw this recipe my way in its ‘Many Ways to Use Apricots’ feature, I saved the recipe, and baked it tonight.

While I’m immensely pleased with the outcome, I haven’t tasted it yet. The blessed rain postponed my dinner plan so I’m saving the cake to serve with coffee tomorrow. Instead tonight, I zoomed with a friend and student as we sipped cocktails together and discussed impermanence, non-attachment to outcome, and the infinitely unfolding path of mindfulness practice. I’m so grateful for every little bit of my life; even more so when I remember how fleeting and fraught with uncertainty it is. I’m grateful for gradually learning how to hold everything, just as it is, the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows. And the ten thousand apricots.

Community

Oct5

I am so grateful today not only for this rainbow, but for living in a community where it was widely celebrated. I was looking on Facebook for something else, and as we do, got sucked into scrolling through the home page, and there was shot after shot of this gorgeous double rainbow, from every possible perspective. I love my friends who celebrate the beautiful skies where we live, who care about the world we live in, who made the choice to take time during their evening to step outside and photograph a rainbow.

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
~ William James

…*the rest of the story: the sky opposite the rainbow.*

Equanimity

Sep29

*The first Tabasco pepper ripens. I’m optimistic that most of the remaining peppers will ripen before the first frost, but it’s getting dicey.*

It’s a bit challenging to be grateful that my friends and family seem to have escaped the worst of Hurricane Ian, though the fate of my brother’s house in Naples remains to be determined, and Charleston cousins await the second landfall. Of course I’m grateful for the safety of my beloveds, but this catastrophe really hammers home our interconnectedness on this planet: the destruction of so much habitat, humans’ and other species alike, affects us all. As I experience relief, many thousands of others grieve their losses; and many non-human sentient beings have lost their lives or homes as well. This is a spiritual conundrum that requires strength, courage, and equanimity to be able to hold awareness of both the horrors and losses, as well as gratitude for the joys and blessings, of life in the Anthropocene.

*In this peaceable kingdom, in this peaceful moment, all is well in this moment.*

*Both ends of a rainbow that disappeared in dense clouds above…*

*…with aspens on Mendicant Ridge all gloried up.*

Rainbows

Sep13

*The past week’s hot pepper harvest, ready to roll…*

Practicing resilience, gambling, trying another batch of fermented hot sauce. This time, I let the saltwater brine cool down before pouring it over the peppers. The first batch met an ambiguous end. It’s been over a week, and still no bubbles, no cloud; so I poured off the brine, patted the peppers dry, and laid them on a pan in the oven at 275℉ for an hour. I should have left it at that. Instead, I turned it up to 400℉ for 20 minutes to give them a bit of a roast. When the timer went off, I was engrossed in something else, and way too long later I pulled them out of the oven. It’s possible I can salvage them with a pulse in the blender as ‘dark-roasted pepper flakes.’ I tasted one: smoky, salty, hot. We’ll know more later! I will pay more attention to this batch.

*I’m grateful for a gorgeous storm that walked in late this afternoon…*

*…and grateful for this spectacular, fleeting rainbow that greeted me when I went outside to harvest tomatoes. Grateful to be a part of this fragile, precious world.*

Deluge

Aug26

Grateful for garden goulash for lunch. I gathered all the scraps from pickling dilly beans and freezing spiralized zucchini this morning, tossed them in a pan with bacon grease and a chopped tomato, and cooked up veggies for Wren’s food for a few days plus a lunch wrap for me. So simple, so delicious! And making the most of food scraps.

*A good dollop of the veggies on top of cheese, avocado, and mayonnaise, on a tomato tortilla rolled up for lunch.*

I am grateful for the deluge that blessed us this afternoon in the valley, on the mesa. It poured for a good forty minutes, nourishing the drought-stricken land. Both patios were underwater and pathways were streams. I’m not the only one who stopped what I was doing (reading) and gawked at the downpour. I’m grateful to live among people who appreciate this gift from the storm gods; to know that my friends and neighbors also paused in their everyday lives to marvel at the glory of this rain.

It wasn’t quite a Hundred Year Flood like they got in Moab last weekend, a desert town a few hours west of here; nor was it like the five Thousand-Year Floods that have occurred in the US this past month. And maybe this particular rainstorm wasn’t a direct effect of climate chaos like the record-breaking floods in Dallas, Kentucky, St. Louis, Illinois, and Death Valley since July 26. Maybe our storm was just an extra heavy monsoon rain, but it was definitely unusual for this area in recent years, and most welcome. I’m grateful it didn’t last much longer, because it actually could have overflowed the patio into the front door. As it was, and rarely happens, wind and rain came from the east for part of the storm, melting adobe down the living room window. I’m grateful that all the other sides of my house got stuccoed years ago. I’m grateful I had the presence of mind this time to go outside and squeegee the window while it was still wet, so tomorrow I’ll only have a few streaks to wash off instead of a curtain of dried grit.

After the storm I wandered around the yard assessing erosion, and hunting for Biko. I was kind of worried he might have gotten caught in a puddle and drowned. As cold as it got so suddenly, he might not have been able to move if he’d been tucked in somewhere water was flowing, which happened to be most of the yarden. There are half a dozen places he tucks in for the night this time of year; he could have been anywhere else, too. I started my search in the dog pen where he hides in the dogloo or the dog house when he senses rough weather coming. But the ferocity of this storm caught us all off guard. I circled the yard checking his other hidey-holes, and found him under the lavender-cotton by the top gate.

*He was a little muddy and very cold, but I rinsed him off in a puddle and brought him inside for the night, quite relieved to have found him.*

*After all that excitement, I prepped cucumbers and onions to chill overnight for B&B pickle making tomorrow.*

*And then Wren and I walked up the driveway just before sunset…*

*…returning to the yard just in time for another gorgeous spectacle.*

Rainbows

Jul31

I’m grateful for rainbows.

Portentous Winds of Autumn

Sep17

Russet tones of autumn emerge first in the Amur maple seedlings, already dried and set with seed. This maple never does as well as the other, on the south side of the house. They’re in different soils, one in native clay and the sad one in more sandy soil. I need to deep water with some extra nutrients.

Russet tones of autumn emerged first last month in the Amur maple samaras, now already dried and set with seed. This maple never does as well as the other, on the south side of the house. They’re in different soils, one in native clay and the sad one in more sandy soil. I need to deep water with some extra nutrients before fall gets away.

I’ve seen first hand how leaving a cluster of peaches on a limb will result in crowded misshapen small fruit, how even two opposite on a stem can smash together and provide haven for earwigs, how too many along a slender limb can bend it to the ground; all the things Fred warned me about as he urged me to thin thin, thin.

Nevertheless, my sweet tree delivered bowl after bowl of delicious peaches, that I gave away, froze, cooked into peach jam, infused into vodka, gin, and brandy, and canned in a special syrup…

Canada Peaches! In a twist on the bourbon peach recipes found online, I packed each half-pint jar with peaches, adding about a tablespoon of maple syrup, then filling with half simple syrup and half Canadian whiskey, before processing in a boiling water bath. I hope these last long enough to eat some mid-winter by a toasty fire.

And of course a couple of peach pies.

I ate the last fresh peach this morning, and harvested the two remaining apples on the heirloom tree, I’m so sad I can’t recall its name. Are the finches feasting on wild sunflower seeds also marauding the Fuji apple? It doesn’t appear so; the leaves are grasshopper eaten but the fruit is sound, and so much of it, more than ever before, dozens of apples, I’m so happy I thinned them! At least 59 Fuji apples. I’ve got my eagle eye on these, watching for predation by those pesky birds.

September is like the last hill on the roller coaster. You’re near the top, the wild rush of August harvest has unwound behind you, there is that last push of fall fruits and vegetables to get in before the varmints git ‘em. Rosie has a big squirrel in her garden. I’ve got a stray deer here and there reminding me it’s time to put up fences around trees and shrubs whose protective rings I’ve repurposed on smaller plants throughout the summer. Someone ate two fat cheeks off the biggest tomato of the season; just yesterday I thought that’s about ripe, maybe I should pick it, but it wasn’t ready to let go, and I didn’t come back. This morning’s rising sun highlighted the glistening dips in its flesh when I chanced to glance over from the patio, where I sipped coffee and listened to the raucous sound of morning.

Cynthia led a meditation on sounds last week that’s reminded me to cherish more the wild sounds and deeper silence where I’m blessed to live, like the cacophony of finches in the wild sunflower patch that sprang up on the south side. It’s been years since I’ve lived with a constant musical soundtrack, and for the past several I’ve lived with only intermittent music through the course of my waking day. More and more I find myself eschewing external music, to simply hear, and listen to, the music of nature: birds, crickets, wind, bees, coyotes at night, more coyotes this summer than I have heard in many years.

A great-horned owl has come a courting me. It must be me he woos, because I’ve listened long and faraway and do not hear another. And so I croon back to him a few times, though Stellar doesn’t like it and tries to make me stop, and soon I do stop, because it isn’t fair; I can’t give the owl what it’s looking for. But I sure do enjoy exchanging hoots with it for a few minutes on a clear full-moon night, or any other.

Rain moved through again last night, this time early enough to leave a double rainbow in its wake. I alerted the Bad Dog Ranch that they were centered beneath it. The next day I received a rainbow alert from them. I love this about where we live, that we care about rainbows.

This morning, rain-washed and crisp, the golds of autumn jingle forth. Last Saturday we noticed the first hint of aspen turning up on Mendicant Ridge. By Tuesday the yellows were distinct, and after that storm moved over Wednesday night, the golds are glowing bright, clearly delineated patches among shades of greens, siennas and ochres, treed and rocky slopes. Air is brisk and the dogs are frisky.

Great cumulus clouds march in close formation lockstep briskly through blue sky, white tops glowing, their grey treads gliding low. It’s too spectacular not to walk the frisky dogs up the driveway, where I meet my sweet neighbor and we stroll our rural, precious neighborhood.

Fall blows in on these winds that feel portentous. March winds last longer than they used to, and winter winds start early, in late summer. The breeze sometimes is just a bit too strong; I feel the atmosphere whipping up, winding up all this energy, that later, maybe elsewhere, will unwind with a fury. Ever since I watched the film Melancholia earlier this summer, I’ve viewed this world differently, trusting and allowing myself to sense and feel the changes, the subtle shifts in seasonal events, in their timing, likelihood, or nature. Something is coming, and all I want to do is make jam.

Apricot jam, peach jam, plum jam, chokecherry jelly, salsa hot and mild, and the new house specialty, Canada Peaches. Also plum brandy, peach vodka, plum syrup, plum sauce, pickled beets and cukes, and all the blanched greens, peeled and unpeeled fruits, tomato sauce and peppers in the freezer, let me feel I’ve made the most of the garden this summer.

At the end of the day, though, it’s not about my garden and what I’ve grown and what I’ve put up and what I’ve enjoyed this summer. It’s about what we’ve all tended and grown and loved and eaten and shared and put up for winter, it’s about what we all do in our lives here on this fragile planet. It’s about not just this apple, but all them apples, too! The change that’s in the wind is about me and you, and the choices we make in the next few weeks. To be continued…

BLT Bust

Aug4

First BLT of the season was not half as satisfying as I’d anticipated.

My first BLT of the season was a mess. I only had two slices of bread, which I over-toasted. The only organic “happy pig” bacon available when I shopped the other day was the thick cut, which is great with eggs and toast, but doesn’t work so well in a sandwich. Especially one with over-toasted bread. A rainstorm came just as I was preparing to go pick a few leaves of lettuce from what’s left of the garden, but I did have some left in the fridge. I wanted that sandwich now.

Saturday there were two perfect yellow tomatoes on the plant Fred gave me. They didn’t release when I tried to pluck them that day, so I decided to wait til today, since I was having dinner out last night. I was out all day at a video job. When I went to pick those two perfect tomatoes, there was only one. At lunchtime, Deborah assured me, when she came to give the cat his pill for me, there were two. She also assured me she didn’t pick one. Where did it go? It was in a narrow fenced bed.

Those two tomatoes were priceless. Or, if not priceless, at least extremely costly. When I think of what I pay for water to grow the garden, and what I pay for help building soil and preparing the beds, and then I think of how I watched all but that and one other tomato plant get eaten down by the old doe just as fast as they could grow, I come to the painful conclusion that I’m financially and energetically better off shopping the farmers’ markets or getting a half share in a CSA.

That old doe. Over the course of three days in mid-June, just after I’d eaten the first few peas, she mowed down both rows. One afternoon I was in the kitchen and looked out the window to see her munching the violas from a pot on the patio. Another time, I was working at my desk, and the worthless dogs were napping on the couch because it was “too hot” for them outside. That’s what they said, anyway. I chanced to look up and see her enjoying the blossoms and first little fruits on the big cherry tomato. A few weeks later, when Chris and Dave were here with three extra catahoulas on the grounds, my friend looked out and saw her chowing down on the parsley.

It’s my fault. Earlier in the summer I walked out and found her at the edge of the yard eating snowberry leaves. That was ok. She’s so old and grey-faced. I felt sorry for her, and I have snowberry to spare. So I didn’t shoo her off, and didn’t call the dogs off their couch, where they were that time because they “thought it might rain.” And so, because I’m a softy and the dogs aren’t doing their job, she thinks she has carte blanche in my garden.

Well, she’s only half the problem. Or less. The grasshoppers this year are voracious. They’ve eaten down all the brussels sprouts, made lace of the acorn squash leaves, and are continually topping the scarlet runner beans. They or the doe are keeping the beet greens and romaine trimmed almost to the ground. For some other reason, the bell peppers are stunted, the melon vines are barely bigger than when I put them in the ground two months ago, and several of the jalapeños haven’t even blossomed yet.

There’s almost nothing coming to fruition in my garden except the zucchinis and those two perfect golden tomatoes. I mean, that one. Oh well. First-World problems. But it hasn’t been a total bust. I got a platter of jalapeño poppers out of it, and five heads of red leaf lettuce. And tonight, at least, I wasn’t out of mayonnaise.

Cream cheese and bacon stuffed jalapeños for last night’s summer feast with neighbors.

Lazy dog can’t keep deer out of the yard but happily buries their bones in the woods.

And the day started and ended with a rainbow. This rare morning rainbow over the mesa where I live was shot by Pamela from across the valley...

And the day started and ended with a rainbow. This rare morning rainbow over the mesa where I live was shot by Pamela from her ranch across the valley…

… right about the time I crawled out of bed and shot this sunrise beyond her house.

As I finished the over-toasted, under-tomatoed BLT, the sky gave up another rainbow.

Warmer Days

Feb16

Suddenly this week the pond has thawed, revealing goldfish still thriving underneath. Amy the Fish still lives! She and her three surviving cohorts are at least four, maybe five years old, and have filled the pond with their progeny.

A few rays of sunlight through the darkling clouds, a wedge of blue sky behind wispies. We’ve all been grateful for the precipitation that’s come this winter, both here and in the high country. It bodes well for our next growing season. But I think I speak for everyone when I say Welcome! to the first glimpse of our mother star in what seems like at least a month.

Elk browse the junipers and winterfat right outside the yard fence.

Ice Canyon freezes and melts with this oddly fluctuating winter.

Today I walked all the way to the canyon by myself, with the dogs of course, and with ski poles, for the first time in two weeks. Yesterday I walked there with a friend, and the day before took the dogs halfway. At the beginning of the week I tried, and could only make it a few steps past the gate, but I let the dogs run loose in the woods for awhile because they desperately needed the exercise.

My next try, on Friday, I walked through slush to the first chair, the dogs so good they wouldn’t go farther without me. To get them more exercise I continued a few steps on, but still they stuck with me better than average. A few steps more, I rounded the first corner downhill and found the kindness and compassion banner, strips of cotton, ribbon and paint made by a friend long ago, that had hung at the house for fifteen years until it was faded, bedraggled; I finally hung it in a tree in the woods last year. Whether nibbled by elk or shredded by weather it now lay in tatters on the ground, just the top few inches still intact. I brought it home and lay it in the compost bin, ashes to ashes.

The next day, when my friend showed up to walk, she brought a rainbow streamer, an accidental replacement, which we hung on the same twig where the banner gave up the ghost. It’s the little things that make my day.

Two weeks ago I woke up dizzy. After several dark days where I could barely open my eyes or leave the bed, I saw a few doctors, took a few supplements, and it began to improve incrementally after a week. Apparently it’s a virus that comes around every few years, and several others in the community are suffering with it as well. If you’re ever inclined to hurl a curse at someone, wishing them dizzy would be a wicked one.

Friday night, two other friends generously hosted a Love-In for Valentine’s Day, which went over well with a bunch of us both with and without sweethearts. It was a great equalizer and the party was full of love, warm red decor, and delicious food. Old friends were reunited, new friends were made. One couple even brought flowers for our hair. A day that began in dark separation concluded in bright togetherness.

So many of them do.

Gordon grazes at the hors d’oeuvres table.

Morning Rounds

let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day

Tag Archive | rainbow

Winding Down

Like this:

Community

Like this:

Equanimity

Like this:

Rainbows

Like this:

Deluge

Like this:

Rainbows

Like this:

Portentous Winds of Autumn

Like this:

BLT Bust

Like this:

Warmer Days

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: