I’ve discovered my new favorite shortbread. I saved this zebra-striped shortbread recipe from Bon Appétit years ago but had never made it, and was looking for a special cookie for my personal shopper and his boss, who loves shortbread most of all. It wasn’t exactly simple, but it was pretty easy, and so delicious.
You mix the dry ingredients in two bowls, just flour and salt in one, and swap out a third cup flour for cocoa powder in the other. Once you’ve beaten the butter, sugars, egg yolk, and vanilla you split that into two equal parts and then mix the vanilla batch first, then the chocolate batch. Then you layer them, roll them, and chill them.
Once chilled, you brush each log all over with egg (I just used the white from the yolk in the dough), roll them in sanding sugar, and slice (as evenly as possible). Then pop them in the oven. Even if I opt not to go through the zebra striping process again, leaving out the cocoa, I’m going to make the dough otherwise the same. It came out so tender but not crumbly, and so tasty.
Just one more word about corruption, from Ta-Nehisi Coates; and then, an antidote if you’ve got 17 more minutes. Check out this inspiring short film about the Ground Game, featuring key candidates in battleground states and their massive grassroots support from volunteers. I am enthusiastically but also cautiously hopeful about democrats taking back the House and Senate this midterm after watching it. Mainstream/legacy media simply have not covered the millions of Americans who’ve been fighting for democracy since the last election, since the scale of the Republican president’s moral turpitude and staggering corruption have smeared themselves through our lives, leaving us all with some degree of moral injury. There really is a ground game, and we are certainly winning that. We’ve got the numbers to flip some seats, if only enough people bother to vote!
There used to be a nice bird feeder hanging in this tree. I glanced at it from the patio this morning as I always do, and saw that it needed filling, but when I came down with a scoop of seeds the feeder was nowhere to be found! Obviously it hadn’t been there two minutes before: whatever I’d seen was an optical illusion or my imagination filling in a habitual expectation. Ironically, I had just gotten frustrated with it a few days ago because the handle had bent, making the lid hard to open. I thought maybe a squirrel had been worrying it. But to find the stout twig it hung from broken off and the feeder disappeared, my best guess is a bear ran off with it. Several thoughts clambered through my head. I hope he didn’t get a paw stuck in the handle, or worse a head… but no, it was too small an opening for a head… I’m sorry it was probably empty at the time so it wasn’t even worth her effort… do I buy a new one? …bears are having a rough season…
Climate chaos is affecting bears severely this year, report several sources including The Colorado Sun, and this one in The Guardian. “In Colorado, there have been more than 8,600 reports of bear sightings and incidents this year, more than twice as many as last year, according to the state parks and wildlife department. The agency has euthanized 294 bears, three times the 2025 amount.” This isn’t news to most of us living in the rural west, even in towns. A killing freeze in the spring plus extreme drought depleted their natural food supplies throughout the west, and they’ve been coming out of the woods desperate. My neighbor lost her gas grill to a bear last month. But I have not seen a bear yet this year, and I’ve never seen one in my yard. The article goes on to say that “there have been 10 confirmed bear attacks in Colorado, the highest number on record…. In August in New Mexico, which also has had more bear encounters this year, one killed a 67-year-old wildland firefighter inside his home.”
This much larger broken limb likely came down in a recent storm. The woods are so green right now. Another neighbor reported nearly an inch of rain since yesterday, starting shortly after the little ones and I took a nice long ramble. I knew we were in for a few wet days.
Verdure everywhere, mosses, grasses, weeds…
I’m grateful for the respite of the woods, and I’m keeping my eyes open for bears. I’m trying to keep up with the horrors happening and also keep things in perspective. It takes all my mindfulness skills to get through every day, and using them I’m cultivating resilience. Horrors have happened as long as there have been humans, near as anyone can tell. While I pray that they will one day cease when enough people wake up, I have no expectations. This week I read of this new film about the genocide in Gaza asking the question: How do human beings explain taking part in genocide? It was chilling and enlightening.
Then since my loins were already girded for horrors, I read this interview with Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross – not your local disaster relief Red Cross. It’s a long read, but well worth spending the time with her compassion, wisdom, and insights. “Today you get the feeling that war becomes the means to an end itself, and wars continue because people want to stay in power. They have created an environment where war becomes the condition under which they can continue ruling, and that’s very dangerous. You ask me whether we are approaching a third world war. Honestly, history will judge that. History books will tell us whether today we were already in the beginning, or maybe already in the middle of such a situation. The I.C.R.C. didn’t know that we were in the Second World War when it was happening.”
On a potentially more comfortable note, I enjoyed this article exploring the four foundations of mindfulness in the garden, especially resonating with the first foundation, mindfulness of body in being aware of one’s movements and postures while gardening, as well as the sensory experience of working in soil, and the various facets of beauty in the garden, like these Sunfired Flare tomatoes which came on very late in summer, and came off the vine with a lot of skin damage I suspect was inflicted by insects. They sat on the counter a long time ripening after I picked them while I pondered the best way to use them. Finally I just cut and roasted them the other day, and squeezed them out of the skins easily. I used some in a batch of beans for burritos, which I like to make in bulk and freeze for a quick meal. I was glad to have some homegrown onions, too, and used up the last white and yellow onions along with a red one in the beans. The rest of the reds I’ll probably pickle.
An interview I listened to while cooking was with Dr. Jeremy Faust explaining what ER doctors are actually looking for when you show up there, and why he thinks the 1-10 pain scale is pretty much useless. I know I’ll now have a better sense of how to answer questions if I ever end up in an Emergency Room again, and also the next time I see my nice new primary care provider.
Walking in the woods, puttering or working in the garden, cooking and cleaning the kitchen, these activities ground me in what is real and true, help me see reality clearly. And even with the rich reality of my grounded life, I can feel my attention being subtly sucked by the insidious tendrils of algorithms. I’m sorry to admit that I spend more time playing NYT word games and scrolling Instagram now than I did a year ago. It’s a way to escape the horrors of the distillation of power and money to the oligarchs, but the escape itself is a delusion. Christopher Armitage explains the whys and hows in his article ‘Fracking Attention and Strip-Mining Mental Health’. It’s uncomfortable but it offers some small sense of agency going forward in how I spend my attention budget. And it’s been a mindfulness tenet for millennia that where we place our attention forms our world view.
In my house growing up, the only time sour cream ever showed up was when mom made beef stroganoff. I picked up a childish aversion to sour cream because my parents seemed to avoid it, and besides it just sounded all wrong. It’s one of many foods I developed a taste for years later. It’s been many years since I’ve had any kind of stroganoff, and when I saw this recipe for mushroom stroganoff I replenished my sour cream supply and whipped up a quick batch. So simple, so delicious!
And on a differently uncomfortable note speaking of food, this article ranging through the Dark Nutrition movement offers plenty of food for a flite of thoughts. Alexandra Petri once again skewers our times with her satire on ‘humanitarian’ and other words that have lost their meaning in the Trumpscape. And in other doublespeak news, Texas senate candidate Ken Paxton appears to be guilty of voter fraud.
Prickly pear pads plump and round with recent rains…
My practice is all about balancing external influences and internal knowing in an everchanging landscape of uncertainty day by day, minute by minute, breath by breath.
I’ve been delighted and horrified and everything in between as I read through my journals from the first one I started writing when I was fifteen. So far I’m up to age twenty-two, and reacquainting myself with me during those seven years a key finding is how unreliable my memory is. It’s comforting to know from memory science that it’s not just mine. Studies indicate that each time we recall a memory we overlay it with something of our current conditions, gradually shaping and shifting it into something that can be very different from the actual situation we think we remember. The journals are a gift as I unpack this phenomenon. I have written proof that I did not, in fact, do something that I years later memory-guilted myself over doing.
I was raised by republicans in the suburbs of DC and didn’t know any better. That’s my excuse for what my friend Wayne and I planned when candidate Jimmy Carter came to town. I was editor of the school newspaper, he was photo editor. We pinned Gerald Ford buttons inside our blazer lapels, and intended to flash them at Carter from our place in the front row as he came along greeting people.
I think of his smile now, which must have dazzled us back then but I don’t remember that. Some years after his legacy of compassionate integrity was cemented, I recalled with shame that youthful prank. It haunted me from time to time, popping up out of the blue when I heard his name as he built Habitat houses, unobtrusively and tirelessly worked for world peace, modeled a healthy marriage, and so much more. Imagine my delight to read that though we had intended to do it, we had restrained ourselves! I misremembered, colored my recollection of the event over time with the dark brush of the inner critic, the habit of creeping negativity bias.
It was a good week in the sandwich department. This one included farmstand tomato, smoked Gouda, refrigerator pickles, and pickled red onions. Dinners were also nourishing, which doesn’t happen every day. I got another three meals from the Aphid Kale, cutting the heat by serving with fried leftover parmesan-polenta, with or without cheese.
I notice ‘negativity bias’ more clearly in reviewing my life than I do in the present moment. It’s become habitual. Negativity bias is an evolutionary adaptation for survival which seems to make danger and aversion create stronger memories than pleasure. But we rarely need the protection from predators now as when we emerged from the forests onto the open plains, and most foods at our disposal we already know aren’t going to poison us. (Most, depending on where you get them.) I look forward to trying this malabar spinach when it grows a bit bigger, and thanks to Garden Buddy for the seeds of this edible leafy vine.
If this shift toward memory loss with aging is built in by evolution (and I’m not saying it is but these new studies may suggest it), then maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe it’s only our Type A-Grasping-Doing culture that sees forgetting with age as a flaw. Personally I’m thankful for some memory loss. Life gets easier with just a little bit of a blur. I’ve forgotten a lot of good things and people from my life, but as I age I am forgetting more and faster the unhappy, prickly, afflictive things that happen, and have happened. I used to be the queen of grudges, and I’m softer now. It could be that forgetting some things with age allows us to open in other ways, to become more compassionate and wise.
The week’s good sandwiches have also included tuna fish. ‘Tuna fish’, thinking about that redundant name, short for tuna fish salad, but why not just ‘tuna sandwich’? Because it could be confused with tuna prepared some other way than the standard mayo mush? I love it with celery, red onion, mayo, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, Penzeys Wauwatosa Village seasoning, and some pickle relish. It’s an infinitely versatile staple, and now that I’ve found Thrive Market sustainably caught skipjack tuna, I indulge in a couple of cans a month and get three servings per can. Next week I plan to branch out from the humble tuna fish sandwich to try a Gourmet tuna-noodle casserole. I used to love tuna fish casserole growing up (no, haven’t found it referred to yet in the journals) but it always seemed to suffer from an unjust stigma as ‘cheap’ food. I don’t remember the last time I had a good tuna fish casserole.
It’s been a joy to be able to eat outside again now that the smoke has dissipated, the nearby fires are largely under control, and it’s cooler than 98 degrees in the shade. We’re getting to enjoy sitting by the pond at either end of the day again, and sometimes even catch the lilies as they open. The summer chugs on by with its highs and lows, its holdings and releasings, and I’m grateful for awareness of Impermanence: When we’re in the midst of scalding, desiccating heat and my lungs burn with every breath, it can be hard to remember that this too shall pass. Whatever comes next, it won’t be like this someday. At least for awhile.
These two are not kissing. It’s a rare moment of domestic bliss when I can get them both in the same frame so I take it when I can get it. Wren is in her thunder shirt, which she half thinks brings the thunder but she actually does freak out a bit less if I can get it on her before a storm. This article on ‘The Death of the Kiss‘ makes me grateful I got so much kissing in as a youth. So much kissing! I don’t remember half the boys I kissed in high school but I’m glad I mentioned them in those journals. And oh, the giddiness of kissing. No wonder my mother called me “boy crazy” more than once. I’m surprised, too, by how little supervision I must have actually had, even though it felt oppressive at the time and created a crippling adult aversion to being scrutinized. I kissed a lot of men after high school, too, but it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced that particularly blissful physical surrender, since well before Covid. I wonder if the Covid Shift away from proximity and contact led to this tragic reported youthful self-consciousness, aversion to, and denial of the pleasures of kissing.
Everyone I know is grateful this week for cooler temperatures and more humidity. From Wednesday morning humidity in the single digits it was up to 42 by midday and 80 by evening. It never quite rained until after dark, but brought soothing clouds and a strong breeze. The house cooled down enough to finally bake granola, one of my favorite all-purpose anytime foods to keep on hand. So simple, so delicious!
I used a cup of raw pecans which I toasted with the oats and dressing to bake, then added a half cup each of roasted-salted pepitas and mini-chocolate chips, and even more craisins on top after the grain cooled. It was so satisfying to break up the sheet of toasted oats and crumble everything together before scooping it all into a half-gallon mason jar. In the morning, with a big dollop of Greek yogurt and a splash of organic milk I started the day right.
But before breakfast, the morning too cool and dewy to resist, Wren and I walked to the rim for the first time in more than a month. Piñon needles and juniper leaves sparkled with raindrops and the sagebrush smelled crisp and medicinal.
I practiced a lot of deep breathing at stops along the trail, and also while walking. I’ve been practicing several techniques to open my lungs, along with using the new COPD inhaler twice a day. But yesterday I may have ended up with too much of a good thing.
Lots of exercise, lots of deep breathing, lots of energy. I was also halfway through a ten day course of prednisone to finally knock out once and for all this ear condition that’s plagued me since March. I was warned that the prednisone might give me jitters like too much caffeine, and I was feeling some of that, but was more than compensated by feeling so much better than I have in over a year in so many other ways. No more mouth-face-ear-jaw pain, plenty of motivation and stamina, and a sense of awakening. That movie came to mind, a miracle drug drawing me out of a deep haze. I enjoyed a mindful supper on the patio, not a book in sight, just dinner with the hummingbirds, and a half-glass of wine mixed with cold sparkling water.
Another cool evening, another oven bake, this time a recipe off a King Arthur flour bag for Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars. I blame Philip for everything that happened afterward. Not saying any of it was his fault, just that I blame him. I wanted a special trade for him when he brought me groceries today and he loves this brownie-blondie kind of treat. Timing was perfect, baked to perfection early enough to let the house cool again before bedtime, and the bars cool overnight before cutting. “You might initially think these bars are underbaked, but once you let them cool completely (overnight is best), they’re wonderfully chewy and moist.” So concludes the recipe. About ten o’clock I took the last activated charcoal capsule in my dental-mercury-cleanse protocol. They’re big and hard to swallow, so I cut off a little corner of the cookie bars to help wash it down.
Within minutes, as I watched TV and knitted, my heart started racing. I wasn’t worried, considering all the aforementioned conditions. But it went on. So I made a cup of chamomile-mint tea, and sipping that over the next hour failed to settle it. I checked in with my pulse oximeter to see just how fast my heart was racing, and was not surprised to see it peaking around 142 bpm. What shocked me was that it skittered rapidly up and down, bottoming out occasionally at 48. Then I got a little worried. I checked it a couple more times over the next half hour, before deciding I should just go to bed. But I thought of Philip saying how he always checks out medical stuff with AI, and thought, Why not? Maybe it’s something serious since it’s not stopping. AI advised me to immediately go to the hospital. I was grateful for the equanimity that comes of practice. I didn’t panic, I calmly called 911 and told the calm, kind dispatcher “the nature of” my emergency. He sent an ambulance to check me out.
It took about half an hour. Waiting, I calmly put on more clothes than I’d been wearing, and settled Wren in her little nest in the laundry nook since dispatch had asked me to shut any pets in another room. But they didn’t even come in. I met them outside and they kindly took me into their tiny space, hooked me up, spoke calmly, did the things. A few minutes in another EMT arrived, a few questions later, they let me go. My heart was fine, BP a little high, pulse a little high but regular. I had already felt much better by the time they arrived than I had for the two hours before they came. Wren was a mess when I got in. She’d shredded the lower rubber door jamb and was bouncing off the door when I opened it. I cuddled and consoled her, swept up the mess, and calmly we wandered up to bed. I lay still, spent but not sleepy, meditated for half an hour, and eventually drifted off, floating on awareness of gratitude for Christopher, Caden, and the third EMT whose name I didn’t catch, compassionate volunteers who showed up to reassure me at midnight. Christopher explained the form I signed this way: “You’re saying you’ve refused transport to the hospital, but you’re also promising that if anything happens after we leave you’ll call again, any time. We’re here for you, and there’s no charge for us to come out, it doesn’t cost you a thing.”
Causes and conditions. Everything is causes and conditions that arise, come together, and change. Nothing ever remains the same, whether we want it to or not. I woke well rested and sublimely grateful for a new day in which to start living all over again. I confess that I took it easier today, practicing moderation in all things. I’ll finish off the prednisone but hold off on the inhaler which also contains a steroid until I’m not double dosing. I trained my energy on some light housecleaning instead of a brisk hike. Lunch was a simple plate with pickles, tomatoes, and a piece of toast lightly spread with a quick fromage fort I whipped up with four different cheese ends, garlic, salt&pepper, and a splash of dry vermouth. I had to get back on the horse, so for dessert I ate a small cookie bar just so I wouldn’t be afraid of them. Hours later and I’m feeling fine, kind of like a fever broke: calm, steady, good O2 saturation, a steady pulse, and a distinct pleasure in simply being alive.
I don’t know if that’s how you say “with aphids” in French, but it feels like it should be (except for the accent over the a, but it was all my keyboard offered). My kale was looking bushy but small, growing again after a summer lapse, and I thought it was insufficient water stunting it. I cut it all this morning down to an inch, and as I gathered it into the basket I realized it was completely infested with aphids. So I put it through four soaks and rinses, and cooked it down tonight. I got most of the aphids off, but I’m sure I ate a little extra protein for dinner.
The onions are coming in, smaller than I’d anticipated but every set I planted grew at least a little. The yellow onions are smallest, red next in size, and some of the white onions look almost as good as store-bought–and I know they’re clean. I sautéed the last grocery store onion half, and one small yellow from the garden, a homegrown shallot and garlic, with some dried herbs I’d harvested, and then threw in a little curry powder.
I almost forgot the ends of the sandwich tomatoes from the farm store, splashed in some red wine I chose to indulge in while cooking, and then added and tasted til I had it just right: salt, lemon, a dollop of maple syrup to counter the excess salt, a little more lemon juice, more curry powder, but it was still bland. So, a pinch of garam masala, a swipe of cumin, and because I have it and hadn’t tried it, a generous pinch of galangal, which I think perfected the dish, though it was hotter than I expected. As I played with my food, I kept muttering salt, fat, acid, heat, salt, fat, acid, heat. Samin would have appreciated my open-handed light-hearted approach.
My beautiful garlic harvest, probably the most successful crop of the season.
I’m so grateful for the cool, smoke-free evening that enabled me to eat outside as it cooled down with a clear breeze. I opened the house up before taking supper out, and when I came in after sunset it’s a very comfortable 80℉ and cooling. I could not have cooked this evening if it hadn’t been clear outside. The Elk fire got a little rain which tamed some of the blazes, and the wind is coming from the opposite direction, and our forecast for the next couple of weeks is cooler with a chance of precipitation, so I’m hopeful for a breather.
It’s the first morning in awhile that I’ve been able to enjoy coffee at the pond, and appreciate Wren’s concentration meditation. I don’t know how long she stared at the frog hidden in the rushes. I could breathe freely for the first time in over a month, between the clean air and an inhaler I’ve been using for a week. I could smell the moisture in the air as I sat by the pond, enjoying breathing deeply. I’m grateful for this especially easy day, wrapped up before dinner with our Grateful Gathering, seven of us from around the country, talking vulnerably and honestly about aging, discussing the wonderful resources provided by grateful.org, including this provocative video on staying young at heart.
All the grey flames on the map are a gratifying indication that many of the fires of the past weeks are essentially out. Colorado remains the epicenter, and some are horrifically huge. A couple of friends have asked me, “Why don’t you move?” I told that to Garden Buddy, and she replied, “No—-! Where would we go????”My thoughts exactly. Fortunately, after dense smoke for days, the winds shifted late this afternoon and I was able spend a little time in the yarden, and to harvest my blueberry crop.
The yield was a satisfying 200% larger than last year’s. The half that I enjoyed was very sweet and perfectly ripe. Though reluctant at first because it was so tiny she didn’t recognize it as a blueberry, Wren ultimately enjoyed her half.
Kathleen shared this amazing photo she took while cleaning her outside windowsills in Florida. It’s a mama scorpion carrying its live-birthed babies with the adorable name of scorplings. I’ve bookmarked the word to use in Scrabble.
Speaking of adorable, this grebe family is a photo Audubon Society shared on Instagram, and I still can’t get over the faces of those little piggy-backed chicks. Their Pa is feeding one of them a feather, which helps with their digestion.
My digestion was helped over the holiday with a red, white, and blue French toast bowl, using up the heel of the latest sourdough boule.
Some flowers I’ve tried and failed to cultivate several times are enjoying some semblance of success, including these sweetpeas that the Bad Dog boss started from seed and shared with me. May they survive the summer, overwinter well, and climb the fence next year.
Zoom Cooking With Amy on the 4th resulted in one of the most delicious meals ever, a simple caramelized onion pasta. We both used thin spaghetti, and Vidalia onions, which were more teary than I expected, but also sweeter after half an hour simmering on medium heat in olive oil and butter. Once the onions were done, we tossed in chopped garlic for a minute, then the cooked pasta, and alternately stirred in pasta water and grated Parmesan until a glossy sauce came together. The flavor was amazing with an unexpected quality of juiciness. The last of the leftovers held this quality through lunch today.
Even after intense mindfulness practice for more than five years (or maybe because of it) I feel like I’m just now learning to really listen.
I’m grateful for meditations at the pond, with the frog chorus building to a crescendo and then resting, the blackbirds calling, mountain bluebirds and nuthatches coming to the edge to drink, spring winds rising and falling, sun or shade as needed on one side or the other depending on the time of day.
I’m grateful for getting onion sets planted before a couple of good rains; red, yellow, and white onions from Afton’s, and a round container of shallots.
I’m grateful for golden mashed potatoes with buttermilk and chrysanthemum salt; and more potatoes the next day sautéed with oyster mushrooms and onions, half hot the first night with a soft-boiled egg, and half cold in a salad the next day.
I’m grateful for signs of life on the poor apricot tree. Though the leaves are dessicated and brown, there are tiny tender green shoots beginning below them. Fingers crossed they survive tomorrow night’s hard freeze.
I’m grateful for the simplest sandwich I’d never thought of before: peanut butter and jelly with mayo and potato chips. So delicious! I grew up on PB&J and learned young to stuff my chips inside for a fun crunch; and later the Colonel persuaded me to try peanut butter and mayo on a cracker. After my initial aversion to the idea of it, I found it delicious. But somehow I’d never tried them all together.
I’m grateful today for an opportunity to explore the Buddhist concept of no-self, which in its simplest interpretation means recognizing the influence of ego and releasing it. A miscommunication in the morning left me with hurt feelings, but once I’d expressed that in a reasonably mature way I was able to let the emotions move through pretty quickly. Instead of ruminating over it all day, I used the incident to practice letting go.
I quickly let go of attachment to outcome, and I eventually let go of the story. Emotions don’t last more than a couple of minutes, but like many I tend to repeat the story over and over thus regenerating the emotions again and again. I’m finally learning to say “Oh well!” and really mean it. It’s no big deal. I still felt the upheaval of disappointment like an echo in the background of the rest of my day, but I didn’t participate in it. Instead, I dug deeper into the dharma and nurtured my better qualities.
This is the actual Big Deal. I was able to find gratitude for the opportunity to learn and grow from an unpleasant event. I was able to use an emotional challenge to deepen my understanding of liberation through no-self; to see clearly how suffering is generated by an unruly mind; and to recognize and release some of my habitual thought patterns more quickly than ever before. I’m grateful for the teachings, the teachers, and my own dedication to the practice.
Despite the crazy spring weather, the yuccas promise to bloom this summer. These stalks grow at an amazing rate, it will be fun to watch them climb and open.
I found myself with some extra buttermilk, which I bought for maybe the second time ever, for a recipe, and used only a little. So I searched “buttermilk waffles,” and saw there was such a thing, but ended up using a different recipe with sourdough discard, but subbed buttermilk for the milk in the recipe. As usual I made the whole recipe and now have some in the freezer for later. So simple, so delicious! Dipping in cinnamon sugar seemed over the top, but I tried it anyway–and it was over the top, but what a great idea if you don’t have all the other trimmings: organic maple syrup, blueberries, and Greek yogurt.
The May Day rallies appear to have gone pretty well today, though as usual there’s not much coverage from mainstream US media. I did work, but I work from home helping people cultivate equanimity and prosocial emotions, so that was my protest action. No spending money for me! A dear friend did though (I’m not naming names!) but she had not known about the economic blackout. She promised to pay cash when I scolded her, rather than support big banks with a credit card, and she was supporting a local small business.
As I was baking these marvelous cookies I listened to Joyce Vance, Norm Eisen, and April Ryan, recorded on Substack yesterday. A lingering moment of delight, swapping out half the chocolate chips for dark chocolate M&Ms, basking in sweet color and also in the camaraderie, dedication to justice, and joie de vivre of three of our most influential resistance leaders. If you watch this you cannot help but feel uplifted by their energy, and breathe in a little of their hope.
Between morning leading meditation and afternoon editing my podcast, we took a lovely windy walk to the canyon. The milk vetch (Astragalus) is blooming, the wind was blowing, and a storm thundered over the mountains. I’m grateful for this life, for this wild place, and for meaningful conversations the past few days with old and new friends.
The lilacs out the window on Friday morning. Note the decals on the kitchen window, iridescent through birds’ eyes, to curb or hopefully prevent window strikes. Overnight it went down to 15℉. As anticipated, this morning the cherry blossoms and nascent fruits look finished for the year. Oh well. The magnificent yellow columbine at the cherry tree base took a hard hit but will likely come back from the center. Everything else in the garden looks stressed or wounded but I’m optimistic that all will survive. I covered them again tonight.
Yesterday was a perfect day for a grilled cheese sandwich: cloudy with blowing snow all morning and bitter wind even after the snow stopped. The high was barely above freezing. Melted dill havarti on rosemary-garlic focaccia with thinly sliced red onion, lettuce, mayo, and a splash of raspberry jam offered tasty comfort at lunchtime. And it was a perfect day to finally bake the orange marmalade brownies I’d been considering for a long time.
I’ve never really liked orange marmalade, and I thought maybe this recipe would make it palatable for me. It was simple to make, and I must say, delicious. But I doubt I’ll be spreading marmalade on toast any time soon.
This day dawned sunny and crisp and then warmed up into the 50s. The brownie went beautifully with my ritual maple-vanilla latté and morning fiction. It felt good to share the bake with my neighbors, so Wren and I made a quick run up the driveway and then around the corner to make deliveries. Not only did I feel good about sharing, but I got to return home with surprise bonus bacon! Which went right into today’s cheese sandwich: lettuce, cheddar, and bacon with mayo, mustard and raspberry jam.
Of all the articles I read online this week, by far the best was this hilarious article on The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America. It provided a wonderful balance to the majority of the other headlines. I’ve been working with Discernment this month, and considering deeply what media I ingest. Why, I wonder, is 90% of the news and entertainment about horrors, when in actual fact, most humans spend most of their time–maybe as much as 90%–doing good, kind, generous things, and simply aspiring to be good, kind, happy people? Media coverage of the species is terribly skewed toward bad behavior, and by over-representing violence, betrayal, destruction, hatred, rage, etc., is invariably influencing the zeitgeist. Too bad. One more good reason to focus on gratitude and living mindfully.
I’ve been working on a hard post to write, about the costs of war, human, financial, and to the wild world. But I wasn’t able to focus on that today, so instead, by popular demand, I’m sharing some happy eye candy. The first goldfinch of the season and a couple of piñon jays were among Bird Buddy’s captures this past week. It’s time to focus on gardening for birds, with helpful tips from Cornell Lab of Ornithology and also the Audubon Society.
We enjoyed a nice rain shower on Wednesday, which rinsed the dust off the feral heirloom arugula thriving among the flagstones, so I harvested a bowlful.
I’ve been adding it to salads along with the perennial lettuce that’s been creeping toward cutting size since December. How marvelous to be able to gather fresh greens again!
With a big bag of fresh feral arugula in the fridge I’ve been adding it to everything. I made an arugula and green pea frittata with cheddar and mozzarella and topped it with fresh chopped chives from the windowsill pot; and added arugula to a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich the next day.
I woke Thursday morning to a lush green yarden, with the last of the storm clouds crawling east over the mountains, leaving a nice top up of the disastrous snowpack. I knew it would freeze hard that night and didn’t know what would survive, so in the afternoon I cut some tulips, jonquils, forsythia, and the one lilac cluster that was just starting to open, and brought them inside.
The snowfall Thursday night caught me off guard. Wren ran quaking from the bed when we heard heavy rain and a little thunder, but I gathered her in under the covers and held her tight, and very quickly the rain stopped. Or, the sound of the rain stopped, as I realized when I woke disoriented by the view. It took a beat to understand that the rain had quickly turned to snow, and left a welcome couple of inches on the ground. The temperature had also dropped to 20℉ (-6.67℃ for my fortunate international friends). I was glad I’d salvaged some flowers.
By afternoon it had all melted, but the damage was done. There will be no peaches from Mirador this year, few lilacs, and likely no crabapple blossoms at all. I was grateful that I’d cut a few budding twigs, which I arranged in a little Ikebana tray inherited from my mother, so at least I can enjoy a few spectacular pink blooms.
Today, a dear friend reminded me of the joy of Hipstamatic, so I spent a little time diving back into those imaginary films and lenses, and captured this image of the crabapple twigs with my new Impressionist pack. I used a little more of my precious time on this day that will never come again playing with Hipsta outside in the afternoon, but I’ll save those images for another day.
I’ve been reading the amazing new book from Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, and I’m grateful for his historical and philosophical synthesis of the times we find ourselves in. It’s grueling, but he articulates so thoroughly what I have believed in my bones to be true since I was a child. But enough about humanity’s ineluctable drive toward mechanization at the cost of Nature, we see it in every facet of our lives, including this blog that I’m writing and you are reading on machines that embody so much more than the simple convenience of a keyboard, a digital camera, and the internet. We needn’t dwell on it in this moment.
I’m grateful for the gift of calamondin jam that surprised me in the mail the other day, out of the blue, from an old school friend and reader of Morning Rounds. It represents the good in this world: homegrown fruit cooked and canned, and one person thinking of another with generosity. She read about my quest to bake birthday cakes, and thought I might like to include something a little different in one. Of course I had to taste it, and it was Florida sunshine on toast. Next cake, here it comes! And the next cake is coming soon.
In contrast to The Machine that grinds up nature and humanity in its conquest of the world through concentration of power and worship of wealth, treetops have captured my attention this week. Pinyon jays have been spinning the Bird Buddy feeder around on its pole with their enthusiastic feeding, and I caught a group of them in a treetop the other day on our walk. One seems to have fluff in its bill, hopefully an indication of nest building.
Between working, walking, and baking cakes, I tried out this recipe for big fat chewy chocolate chip cookies, and they are fantastic.
Joanna Macy said “Hope is a verb,” and so I continue to hope to do all that I can to contribute to the remaking of the world as Western Civilization collapses. Some of those things include vigilant introspection to see myself clearly and live in alignment with my values, which by the way are not the values of The Machine; sharing in various ways the mindfulness skills that I rely on to ground me in a meaningful life and bolster resilience; and supporting the wild world through the ways I protect and tend the land in my care. I’m so grateful to have brought the birds back to my yarden after a decade, now that I’ve minimized the domestic cat threat. Evening grosbeaks are back at the feeder, and filling the aspen tree.
In cheese sandwich news, there continue to be many delicious options. Last week I pickled red onions and am putting them on everything including this simple cheddar, lettuce, and mayo sandwich.
Despite a few freezing cold days and nights, the weather was warm enough last week to enjoy time at the pond, including polishing off the last of the ice cream.
But the weather is too nice. This morning I discovered that the apricot blossoms are already opening. I spent a few hours in the yarden, installing a couple of bluebird nest boxes to give them options, and watering. I gave the apricot her first water of the season, and took some time to sit beneath her boughs and appreciate her. Those buds are really swelling, I thought and then I looked more closely. First I saw a few white tips on some buds, and then saw a few just breaking open. Earliest ever, I think.
Today’s cheese sandwich included tuna salad with parsley and celery, pickled red onions, and havarti. So simple, so delicious.
After lunch and a few hours desk work, I took the little animals on a leisurely ramble through the woods, remembering to look up. We rambled northwest from the house, a spontaneous and unusual direction, and then back toward the forest center. We saw treetops reaching for the clouds, and a surprising number of treetops toppled over.
Coming up a slope from an unfamiliar direction I spied an oddly glowing trunk, and when we got close I was mystified to see this young pinyon pine stripped bare, all its bark in chips at the base, its top recently deceased. Curious. And then we found ourselves near the Triangle Tree, where I paused to lean back into its curved embrace and look out toward the mountains for awhile, resting, calmly abiding, breathing.
From there we rambled back to a familiar bench, where we rested again, and noticed these tiny wildflowers in bloom, I’m thinking weeks or even months early… But then, I found flowers even in midwinter in some parts of the woods.
Back home it was happy hour time, so I took a mocktail and a bowl of poison fish down to sit in the golden light and read some more about the cyclical history of the Machine. What a juxtaposition. This week in telesangha we’re exploring paradoxes; in particular, a paradox that has come up synchronistically a couple of times in recent days: navigating the wisdom of accepting conditions exactly as they are, allowing oneself to be just as one is, and at the same time aspiring to refine or grow oneself and improve conditions in the world. Chewing on this book at the same time will add an interesting influence in this exploration.
As the sun goldly lowered I glanced up to see a pair of bluebirds atop the aspen tree. More synchronicity. I hope they find a nest site they like for this summer, in one of the boxes I put up this morning, or back in the hole in the side of my house.
I’m grateful that Topaz has learned in recent years not to hunt birds.
Wren jumped right into her job of finding Biko as soon as I started putting him out in his round pen. Tonight just before sunset she raced right to his gate and loudly announced his location. Life’s simple pleasures.
