Big Shop; Big Bake

 

            

    It’s Budget Week at the city—five nights of meetings, starting at six, and running for at least an hour and a half. Even though it can be grueling, there is no better way to learn about how the city works; each department makes a presentation on what they have done, where they are going, and how it is all funded. It is fascinating—if you are bit of a geek, especially. That being said, Budget Week requires serious food planning. There is nothing as grim as a PB on stale bread for three days in a row for lunch. I've done it, too often.

                We did the monthly big shop at the co-op this morning. Years ago, I made a master list of everything we usually buy from the co-op and I use that to inventory our shelves.  All of our bulk, all of the canned goods, all of the soap and shampoo… After the inventory and the food plan for the week, I  make the list, organized by different areas of the store. My mother taught me this system, although she never used it. Then we round up all of the bulk containers and canvas bags, and head out on our bikes with the cart tugging along behind Mark. It takes a little longer than the old weekly shop, but not that much. And we save ten percent once a month, which adds up. After a Big Shop, we can stroll over in the evening for milk or the few things we need to round out a week. The Big Shop, plus buying some key items in bulk (flour, rice, oats, mac and cheese….), means that I can always rustle something up for dinner.

 

               This afternoon, I spent about two hours in the kitchen. I turned on the big oven—first for a batch of granola and some muffins made with left over ricotta cheese, then for pizza and an old head of cauliflower, roasted, for dinner.  I also cooked a bunch of rice for Tuesday night’s casserole and made soup from the black beans I cooked in the crockpot yesterday, as well as setting up the next batch of sourdough bread to rise overnight.  It was satisfying. We now have several nights of dinner prepped, as well as breakfast and lunch for the week. There is salad in the fridge and lettuce (if the rat does not find it!) in the garden. We will not starve, nor will we eat a stale sandwich.

                I started cooking in batches on Saturday mornings when I was a senior in college. I lived alone, so I made soup one week, baked beans the next, and a casserole the third week. I’d eat a third and freeze the rest so I always had lunch or dinner. I made my own bread every week as well, working rises in between walks to the laundry to wash my clothes, which I hung around the tiny apartment to dry. It saved time and money once I had the rhythm down.  It still does.

Greenhouse Planting Schedule

 

                When the world feels chaotic, it is important to have something in order. And the world feels exceptionally chaotic this spring—I don’t need to list all of the reasons why. You know. So I have been spending considerable time in the greenhouse which is not at all chaotic. In fact, it may be in its best order ever. All of the pots are sorted and tucked on the shelves. All of the trays that are not in use are under the tub (which has been cleaned!). There’s a nice lawn chair in there for reading. And I have finally sorted out the spot to dump the old flower pot dirt so it can be refreshed with compost and reused. Even the peeps are happy to run round inside.

                The planting schedule has also been spot on this year. In a perfect spring, it goes like this:

Late January—sort the pots. Sweep out dirt and cobwebs. Find the extension cords and the timer for the lights.

Candlemas (February 2^nd) – plant the Spring Greens and put them on the window  shelf with the heating mats.

Three weeks later—start the peas and sweet peas in shallow flower pots. Hoop  the spring bed and cover it with plastic so it starts to warm and dry out.

Spring Equinox—Bump up the spring greens if you can’t plant them out, move them off the heating mats, and start the tomatoes on the mats. Watch the weather so that you can move the greens into the beds as soon as possible.

As soon as the spring greens leave the greenhouse, start the summer greens.

 Hoop and cover the potato beds to warm and dry out while you wait for the potatoes to arrive from Maine. If you can, prep the beds for potatoes before covering them. Plant potatoes under cover when they all arrive.

Mid  April—bump up the tomatoes. Put away the heating mats. There is suddenly no space in the greenhouse. Tomatoes everywhere.

Late April-- Bump up the summer greens if they cannot move out. Hopefully they can.

May Day: plant out the tomatoes and give away the rest. Once the tomatoes have cleared out, start the vines in four inch pots.

By Memorial Day—plant out the vines. Mulch everything and turn on the hoses. Cross your fingers that there are no geysers.

Mid-June—bring home all of the peeky looking plants from my classroom to fill the greenhouse for the summer.

Before the Summer Solstice —plant the fall crops in six packs. Anything started after struggles to grow bit before the light fades.

 

Showing Up

 

            In this time of chaos in our country, what stories do we tell ourselves and how do we show up? Are we doing a decent  job of communicating our origin stories, the ones that teach us how to behave in challenging situations? Of modeling how to be engaged in civil, civic society? Or are we floundering? Holding back hoping someone else will step forward? Giving up? I’ve been doing a great deal of puttering in the garden and greenhouse this year (and it looks quite nice, if I do say so myself) while contemplating these questions.

            Mark’s origin story is the Bible, as read by southern Methodists. He grew up with the stories; he wanted, deeply, to save the world. He wrestled with how to be a good Christian while also believing in evolution and evolution won. And, although I was raised as a working class Irish Catholic, those stories did not stick in my mind, although the rituals remained. My origin story comes from my roots in New England, in Boston. It started with Johnny Tremain, which led to the Freedom Trail, a masters degree focused on 18^th century New England, and a deep understanding of the economic drivers of revolutions. Along the way, I learned about Mother Jones, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and the Suffragettes.

            We are in a time where we are clearly struggling to articulate clear solutions. Maybe it is the overwhelming barrage of changes coming from the federal government, changes announced on social media that shift every few hours.  Maybe it is because the problems feel so massive and so interconnected: climate change, inequality, immigration, racism, isolation and addiction. Maybe we believe that if we just wait it out, things will get better. Maybe we are waiting for someone else to step up and do the hard work so we don’t have to. Or, maybe, we just don’t know where to start.

            So I look back.  Maybe you have your own origin story to consider, but mine is the history of our country. And this is what I know:

            People in power will try to divide us, usually along racial lines. While they hoover up the entire cake, they start arguments about who should get the crumbs left behind. Follow the money.  Call it out, clearly and loudly.

            There is power in  unions. Labor unions brought us the weekend, the end of child labor, and the 40 hour work week. There are also two types of unions—the official union, which negotiates contracts and wages and the unofficial union, which supports its people in times of stress. Even though there are two official unions in public schools—classified and certified—we are stronger when we work together and show up for one another with time, love, and cookies.

            We have to share the hard work. It’s fun to show up and wave signs, to plant trees, or to watch and discuss a movie. But, behind those fun actions, there are hours and hours of work that is not so fun. There are chairs to move and bike racks to haul. There are press releases, and planning meetings, and permits to fill out, and task forces to build consensus on the message. There is maintenance of buildings, gardens, organizations, clubs, people…. There are bills to follow, lobby for, and support.  Someone has to do all of this work, usually on top of everything else in their lives and we will go further if we all share to load. Free labor is the only way we will move forward.

            Persist. The world is run by those who show up. Show up for the hard, boring stuff.  Over and over and over and over and over.

            Finally, Question Authority.  Vote. People have died for your right to do so. Do not throw their lives away.

And maybe we should turn back to our founding documents: :”And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

 

 

Mark's Away!

 

                Mark has been visiting family for the last two weeks. As always, with him gone, I am struck by how much I get done. I think it is because I have longer stretches of time to focus on the task at hand—answering emails, planting tomatoes, cooking dinner and washing the dishes….I work in larger chunks of time and, in the long run, spend less time online, at least.  I have been able to:

·         Mow  and trim the yard twice

·         Bump up 116 tomatoes

·         Tidy up the side yard

·         Keep the house clean and do the laundry down the street at the Laundromat

·         Eaten several amazing grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner

·         Answered emails in three accounts, read the news every evening, done some research on several subjects

·         Read several books and watched quite a bit of Call the Midwife

·         Had long, detailed conversations with at least one person every day

·         Added many rows to a knitted shawl

I have always loved living by myself; I can spend hours in my own mind, or reading or knitting, listening to the radio, watching the birds and talking to the cat. Every time, though, I realize that it’s not really healthy; I tend to obsess over controlling the small details of my space. I need someone around to keep me in balance.

 

Faith in Potato Planting

 

                It’s spring. Potato planting time. I like to get them in as early as possible so that they can grow on rain water rather than city water. In the ideal world, I water them twice from the hose and then let them dry down for harvest. Then, one bed sits idle for months and maybe hosts the chicken coop first in September while the other is planted with fall greens.  As I was laying out the spuds, I considered the faith that farmers—and teachers—have. We plant potatoes and start new classes on opposite sides of the yearly calendar.

                Potatoes are just lumps in April. The ones I have kept in the larder since late summer are so wrinkled and sprouting that I lay them in trenches quickly, trying to not knock off the long, wandering tendrils while I work. Blue and white worms poke up from the dirt when I am done. The new chunks are dusty, but just beginning to sprout from a week in the greenhouse sunlight. I dig them in as well. We don’t know what will happen. Will we have weeks of cold rain, stunting the growth? Will it dry out too soon, forcing me to water more often? Will something come in and munch the new potatoes, like the moles in the old community garden? With Climate Change, it is harder to know. It’s a risk. A small risk for me; a much bigger risk for the small organic farmers that surround us in the valley.  We will know if it pays off months from now—just about when we are all getting ready to go back to school.

                Students are just symbolic lumps in September, unknown and not sprouting. We move back into the building, sit through days of “training” and wait for students to pour back into our lives. We plan, and hope, and dream of where we will go this year, how far our students will grow and develop by the late spring.  But so much growth is (or, sometimes, is not) happening under soil of high school. We don’t know. We see small signs of learning, flashes of understanding, moment when we stand still in awe—but almost all of the development is under the surface. We have to have faith.

                And, right about the time that I am putting in the potatoes, they begin to show what they have been doing in the dark. Papers have a thesis and paragraph structure. Discussions flow with students adding a new idea, rather than just repeating what someone else has said. A kid who has refused to read the book decides to give in and read…and suddenly, they know what is going on in class. Imagine that! We laugh.

                It is good that the two actions balance each other out, every year. When I am doubting my potatoes, my students display all of their growth. And, before I go back to the building to start a new year, I pull my harvest from the ground, reminding me to have faith, always, in what is happening underground.

Kayli

 

                Kayli, the sun kitty, died on Saturday morning, just a few weeks short of 19 years old, which is pretty impressive for a cat. On Thursday, she spent the day in the greenhouse, negotiating the entire house, three cat doors, one low fence, and a chair climb up to her preferred spot in the sun on the planting shelf.  On Friday night, she basked by a fire until all of the heat had gone. The end came quickly, although we knew she was fading.

                She was about six months old when I found her, isolated with a nasty, drug resistant respiratory   infection, at the shelter. She was in her own cage, huddled far in the back. When I talked with her, she came forward slowly, and then pressed her head against mine, purring. That was her last purr for several months as we took her home and battled the infection. It finally broke on sunny afternoon in late November when we took both of our new kittens outside to explore the yard. While Lucy ran up the tree, Kayli faced the sun, eyes squinting, basking in the warmth. I will be your cat and you will be my people, she told us, under one condition: I go out.

                And so, she went out. She roamed the neighborhood for power nap spots, spending days on the neighbor’s porch (they put out a pillow as she grew older). She was trapped, not once, not twice, but three times in structures around the block because she loved to explore. She rode in the trunk of someone’s car all the way to McMinninville. Fortunately, they caught her as she jumped out and hosted a cat sleepover before she was brought home the next day. She sat under the Ark and accosted people walking by; she had a fan club in China for several years. It was not uncommon to see someone sitting on the curb, holding a conversation with our fluffy, flirting cat.  

                Kayli was a social beastie. She liked a potluck, a gathering of people, and loved a meeting. She would greet each person as they entered the space then sit in the center for appropriate worship. Online, she would wrestle the door open, then howl loudly, weighing in on whatever the pressing issue of the day was. There are countless council shots of her very fluffy tail waving across the camera as I tried to redirect her interests elsewhere.  She even liked to visit Mark at work on the way home from the vet, always on the back of my bike. Bike rides were better than van rides.

                We will miss this fluffy orange cat who was so engaged with the world that she helped read council packets and the newspaper; who slept on the foot of the bed because it was too warm to be too close, but moved into the pile of covers when we got up; who loved the sun and a fire and warmth on her face, as well as tummy rubs and rolling around on the fence, almost but never quite falling off. We buried her in front of the greenhouse, very close to the spot where she decided that we were her people.

Third Winter

 

Last week, there was some serious lobbying to go outside during class. The sun was out and the temperature was in the fifties, which is pretty darn nice by Oregon standards for early March.  I am often susceptible to pleas to read outside; I want to be out as much as the next person.

“We neeed to go out, Ms. Ellis,” they implored. “It’s so nice and you know Third Winter is coming.”

It’s true. Third Winter is coming. In the Willamette Valley we have First Winter, from November to late December, where the days are growing shorter and the clouds are low. But First Winter is improved because of Christmas lights which go on in mid-November and stay on until ….well, there are still some on now.  And there is Winter Break. And the hope of a snow and ice day. And presents. Then there is Second Winter, which starts when school begins again and is plagued by sniffles, colds, flu, and the end of the semester. It rains and drizzles and no one wants to go out ever. Not even the cat. It’s grim. But, the light is slowly coming back and the snowdrops bloom. We can handle it.  Barely.

 Third Winter is the worst. Early March teases us with dry, clear, warm days. Buds swell. We go out to read in the sun.  Gardeners clean out old beds, plant seeds, and monitor the soil for warmth and moisture. There is hope. Then Third Winter hits, usually the week of Spring Break. The sweatshirt you have worn every day all winter is dingy and unappealing, so you leave it home and shiver in the morning instead.  It’s cold and rainy and the clouds are low. There’s hail. Downpours. Creeks flood.  Anything that you foolishly planted out sits in the ground, dodging slugs, and refuses to grow. Third Winter is the worst.

This year, I have been struggling with this knowledge.  For some reason, I am ahead in the garden. I have turned and prepped four beds—the early peas and leeks and parsnips bed, the spring greens bed, and both potato beds.  The starts in the greenhouse are bursting with life. The peas, especially, are ahead of the growth curve, dying to be planted out. “It’s only four feet,” they call to me. “Four feet away, on the other side of the greenhouse wall, is our bed. You even put the strings up!”  Like a bunch of sophomores on a sunny Friday afternoon, they clamor for release.  It is perfect pea planting weather. But….there are no volunteer potatoes up yet, a real sign that the soil is warming. And, after  thirty years here, I know that Third Winter is coming.  We will wait. At least another week.