September 11, 2026

 

It is a cool, sunny morning. The table and the ground are damp with dew. The cats are sprawled in the sun on our bed. The chickens are quietly poking round in the compost. The world feels peaceful.

Twenty five years ago, I woke up to the announcement that a plane had just crashed into one of the Two Towers. “Weird,” I thought as I turned off the alarm, dressed, ate half of my breakfast, and climbed on my bike to ride to school. Once there, I stuck my head into a colleague’s room. He had the T.V. on. As we watched, the second plane crashed.  “This is not good,” we observed, staying calm because there were students around. I spent the day in my classroom, tucked way in the back of the building, teaching. Others kept the T.V. on all day—I saw no reason. We will learn what we need to know when we get home, I thought. We need to stay calm here. Students talked before class, sharing their ideas, but we did our work. My house does not have a T.V. and this was before we spent days of our lives online. I never did see those overwhelming images over and over again. Maybe it gave me some needed distance in the days to come.

Corvallis responded to the threats of war in its usual fashion. The Veterans for Peace started their vigils in front of the courthouse. Professors on campus organized a series of Sunday night lectures where they talked about our foreign policy leading up to this, what was happening in the Middle East, and how we could respond. Information is power. We paced the rug at home, hoping for cooler heads to keep us out of full scale war.  The night we began bombing Afghanistan, I went out to check on the chickens.  Their small, fluffy bodies were warm and snug in the coop; their world was still. Half way around the planet, other lives—and coops—were being destroyed. Anger had prevailed.

Ten years later, I had brought my junior U.S. history class as far as 9-11 (we started with the labor movement in the early 20^th century). It was an amazing class; there were students from every continent besides Antarctica. What did they remember of that day? They were five or six years old. Some classes and families watched the news non-stop.  It was terrifying. Zion Lutheran sent home a letter telling parents, in no uncertain terms, to NOT turn on the news while their children were in the room. That child had no idea what had happened for months. Exchange students remembered feeling sympathy for the United States. The discussion went on all period. Everyone knew that the world changed that day and now, they knew what had lead up to it and where we chose to take it.

Six years ago, I started teaching remotely from the desk at home. Outside, the world were and unearthly greeny-grey with ashes falling from the sky.  Inside, the classroom world was silent. As students wrote, there was no sound from them—no shuffling, coughing, giggling, tapping of keys—because they were all in their bedrooms miles apart. The silence is what I remember from those classroom days. The isolation. 9-11 and those huge fires are related, both by the impact they had on our collective memory, but also in the roots of anger and greed, in our failed human desire to control each other and the planet we live on.

Last night, I took Barbara Kingsolver’s collection of essays, Small Wonder, off of my shelf. She wrote the essays the year after 9-11 and they are full of that time. The anguish, the fear, the small hope that we might bring something good from this underlies all of her writing. In the face of the news today, the essays feel ….quaint. The violence, the hatred, the anger that we encounter every day is an order of magnitude worse that it was 25 years ago. The adults have left the building, as it were, and angry, fearful children are in charge.

                Part of me would leave this essay there. But it is fig season. Like Kingsolver, I take faith in the natural world, in the small rituals of friends and family, in the turning seasons. Cedar Waxwings have just discovered our ripe fruit and their bodies are etched against the deep blue sky as they rise, and turn, and settle once again. Maybe we can learn to do the same.

 

85 Day Tomato

 

We are having a very good tomato year. The plants are eight feet tall and loaded with fruit. The part of me that loves putting by food for the winter is thrilled. The part that worries about climate change is not.

When I first started growing food in our backyard, thirty years ago, I searched for tomatoes that were varied in color and shape, but also ripened early.  I wanted the 70 day tomato, not the 85. I had too many stay green on the vines my first few years and green tomato pie did not sit well in our stomachs.. OSU had been breeding such fruits for years, and I planted those seeds and harvested the fruit in late August.  I often wrapped the cages or placed milk jugs over the plants for a few weeks for extra warmth. I  did not start the irrigation until July because there was still rain and drizzle until the fourth. The season has changed.  
 

These days, my tomato plants are growing rapidly in May and June, even though I start the seeds a month later. I plant them out in late April most years without covering them up. The irrigation is starting in late May or early June, a full month early. The nights are warm, and then hot, by the Summer Solstice. This year, I planted several 85 day plants—ok, I ordered three different large fruited varieties without thinking it through late February because who doesn’t want a two pound ripe tomato in February?—and they are thriving. The plants have been over Mark’s head for a month. The fruit set early and it is rolling in beautifully ripe and colored this week. Early.

Our world is changing. Today, all of the fields are dry and golden, the hawthorn berries are ripe, and the air smells of the distant forest fires, even though the sky is clear. This may be the year of the perfect 85 day tomato here in the Willamette Valley, but other areas are losing their ability to grow our food. Where are we headed?

 

Fruit Season

 

                It is the season of fruit. Starting in late June, we are awash in fresh fruit and berries: strawberries, raspberries, cherries, gooseberries, blueberries, currants all fill the bowls in our house, week following week. We pick blueberries by the pound, eating them by handfuls after lunch. By mid-July, we have the larger fruit. First, the plums in the front yard ripen over several weeks, east branches to west branches. Then peaches cross our paths, although we do not have a tree. Apples thump on the roof of the van at midnight, echoing into the backyard. The fig trees branches are so loaded down that they reach the ground, and the persimmons and jujubes are slowing ripening to finish the season. Last year, we planted a pear tree; this year we added an Italian plum and cherry, as well as two columnar apples.  We live in an orchard.

                A month ago, I cleaned out the shelves in the basement that hold our canned goods. I threw out the old zucchini relish (really, we don’t eat it) and a batch of pickles that was too salty, and then evaluated what I needed to process this year. NO apple butter. Yes to rhubarb marmalade. Every few days  throughout August, I dry or jam or press our fruit—including tomatoes. Using the steam canner, which lets me process on batch of crock-pot tomato sauce at a time, I slowly fill the shelves downstairs. We will eat this bounty all winter long.

 

 

Lammas

 

Lammas—the season of early harvest—is perhaps a contraction of the words loaf mass because all of the early grains are ripening now in the fields. This is when we see if our efforts to raise food to hold us through the winter have been successful. Of course, some years are apple years and others are cabbage, but the hope is that it will all balance out and we will come through the dark times in good health. It is also the time to soak in the light and warmth of summer sun against the dark and damp winters. We are striving to do both.

In the garden, I am prepping for the canning season. I purged the shelves of ancient attempts to preserve zucchini (really, we do not eat relish) and some dried herbs and I will vacuum the shelves and reorder what is left this week. While purging, I made the season’s list: how much of everything do we need with a bit extra thrown in just in case it is not a pear year in 2027.  I’ve already stocked up on lids; after the pandemic surge in canning, when I had lids shipped from Tennessee and they traveled back and forth on UPS three times before arriving here, I buy lids in April. We picked blueberries last week and dried several jars worth on Friday. Today, the drier is humming with local peaches, which are like gold in the Willamette Valley. Tangled in vines, the winter squashes are putting on weight and I count them in the mornings. Apples are falling from my trees and I spend half an hour most days with the picker and ladder, then sort the fruit into eating and juicing piles. All of the potatoes are in, tucked under the cellar stairs in their paper bags and crates.

At Finley Wildlife Refuge, ten miles south of town, the season is shifting as well. The hay is piled high in bales, waiting to come in. The wild fields are golden; thee snowberry and blackberry bushes are covered in berries; the vernal pools are all dried and full of rushes and pennyroyal. The birds gather where this is water and the woodpeckers have loud conversations about where each one is storing acorns in the big dead oak for the winter. As always, once you leave the gravel road and parking lot, there is no one on the trails, which are being overtaken by summer brambles. We ate lunch on the new pavilion that looks out over the valley and swatted away the yellow jackets that came to see if we had tuna fish for lunch. We did not.

Last night, we had a fire and s’mores for desert, rather than a pie. As always, I pulled a tarot card to guide me on the next six weeks. The Hermit. Turn inward, it read, focus on what is true and real, not the mad getting and spending of the world. Be quiet. It is harvest time before moving forward again.

Contemplating Stuff

 

The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Cynthia Ozeki, considers the nature of the stuff we surround ourselves with--- what if it could speak? What stories would it tell us? Do we really need all of this stuff—and the stories it holds—around us all the time? Or does it drive us crazy? Because I have been working my way through it for a week or so—trading off with Regime Change—I have been hearing the stories of my own stuff.

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Over ten years ago, Mark bought me an android tablet with a seven inch screen. I loved—still love—it. It connects to Wi-Fi, so I could check email and post photographs easily. I could  read the news, search up information, and download podcasts for long car rides. It allowed both of us to go online at home in the evening (we have one computer). It was great for traveling. It did not, however, tether me to a cell tower and constant connections, so there were clear boundaries built in. It was perfect. Over the years, though, its use has faded. It is too old to take some upgrades, so functions have faded. First, no photos with the newspaper, then no newspaper, then no searching at all. It takes much longer to charge the battery. It is going to stop working completely someday soon. But, when I went to replace it—it is no longer being made. That niche product, hovering between a tablet and a phone, is gone.  Like the perfect pair of pants, it is no longer there.

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Confession—I am a dish hoarder. I can resist the call of everything else, but not a vintage dish. We could feed sixty people and not run out of plates…

When I was in my twenties, I was wandering around Bar Harbor Maine one day and stopped to peer into a Fancy Kitchen store window. There was a new line of dishes displayed: Lindt-Stymiest Colorways.  I fell in love. But, in a Fancy Kitchen store, items are not cheap, so I moved on that day.  Later that year, I bought the butter dish which is featured in Still Life with Menu from the same era. My boyfriend bought me the large teapot to replace the one of a different design that he broke dropping by a cast iron pan on it. Years later, I found the mugs in a fancy used kitchen store in San Francisco; the plates about ten years ago here in thrift shop.  Mark bought the yellow oil cruet online. They are beautiful on the outdoor table.  If they could speak, they would talk about food and friendship and everyday life.

 

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Finally, a friend died this week. She lived a full and rich life—one of the generation that went to college, married, raised children, traveled all over and then said—this is not enough, so they joined the League of Women Voters to spend countless hours tracking local and federal elections and ballot measures, writing and applying position statements, and testifying at all levels of government. They gathered around kitchen tables, drank far more coffee than anyone should, and talked. Brilliant women with time to work for change. She will be missed.

I loved meeting at her house. It felt like stepping back in time. They bought their furniture when they married—mid century modern, beautiful wood—and then moved into one of the ranch houses that abound here in the Pacific Northwest, clinging to the side of a hill, surrounded by trees, with a deck, rather than a yard, birdfeeders and a daylight basement, with another possible entire house down below.  The furniture, the house, the dishes, the coffee and conversation, were all of a piece and evoked that mid century time when we felt like there could be profound change and we, as local citizens, could bring it forth.

 

 

Fireworks!

 

I have come to hate the Fourth of July.  Not because of the current administration and some of the changes we have seen, but because of fireworks.

When I was little, fireworks were a communal event. On the Third of July, we gathered around the Kingston Green to watch the bonfire—a tall pile of railroad ties with a car perched on top. People bet on which way the car would fall. As a toddler, I was terrified by the sight of the flames reflected in the houses surrounding the Green; when I grew older, I loved running around exploring the carnival, playing games and riding the Tilt-a-Whirl while my parents watched the blaze and chatted with relatives. Real independence at seven years old!

The fireworks happened the next night (two late nights in a row!) either in Kingston or in Hampstead. Mothers sprayed us down with Off to keep off mosquitoes, we found sweatshirts and blankets, and gathered in the local field to watch the display. Beforehand, we cruised around, seeing classmates and hiding on each other while parents stayed is the designated spots. As it grew darker, we settled down. Fireworks exploded overhead and each was greeted by a gasp or sigh of awe. Ooooo, aahhhh….ooooo…..The show went on for about half an hour, one shot at a time. Sometimes, there was a glitch in the system and we had to wait, patiently, until it was resolved.  Sometimes, the sounds freaked out a younger sibling or cousin and we’d cap our hands over their ears. Dogs stayed home, peaceful in the house or yard.  We cheered at the end, then gathered up sleepy kids, and headed for the car and the traffic jam at the gate. My mother and aunt sang popular songs—Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head or The Green Berets—while we waited, dozing, in a pile in the back of the station wagon.

We still have local fireworks and the traffic jam afterwards, but no one coos over the show; many people are watching through their phones. But that’s all still good. What I hate is the hours and hours of illegal booms that shake my house until three in the morning. It starts at nine, at dusk, and goes, peaking around eleven, until the wee hours. Just when we have all nodded off, another boom shakes the windows.  And again. And again. And again. We have lost the communal ritual and need to replace it with individual actions. And, right now, we need the communal rituals more than we ever have.

 

 

Lettuce in Tins

 

                I hesitate to write about this because, every time I talk about a new innovation and how great it is working, it fails, but….my lettuce system is working really well this summer.

                I have been planting out starts for all of my greens for years because it saves seed and improves germination, and lettuce has been no exception. For five or six years, planting the starts out worked beautifully for the spring and early summer and then fell by the wayside by mid-July. The heat, maybe?…the refusal of any seed to germinate after the Summer Solstice? Pill bug munch at germination?  If it did germinate, it was eaten by something, and that “something” changed regularly. I was without lettuce for a vast swath of the year, so we ate cabbage salads. It’s not the same.

                Last year, I decided to plant the lettuce starts in olive oil tins. First, I thought it would look cool—which is does—and it also gave me greater flexibility during dramatic changes in temperature. Cold snap—move them to the greenhouse. Heat wave—move them into the shade. Nice weather—line them up along the fence to admire. The harvest was also very clean.

                This year, I started doing the same thing with the starts and it has worked really well. Two heads per tin. The greens are thriving. As I harvested a tin, I replanted it with another set of starts waiting in the greenhouse. Sometimes, I mixed a little compost or fertilizer in the soil to give it a boost. Last week, I didn’t have any starts waiting, so I direct seeded a tin every evening that we had salad. Germination looks nice. We will have bit of a lag in lettuce in a week, but that’s ok because we are going camping anyways.  The tins are all living in an old wheelbarrow with a hole in it already for drainage, so I can move them round depending on climate. We shall see. It is my hope to keep it going well into fall this year, even if I have to put the tins under lights in the greenhouse. That is, if the system survives being written about….