Yule Gratitude

Jack Kerouac, Beat poet, wrote a list of rules for Modern Prose which I work into my Honors Ninth grade curriculum every year.  The one I really emphasize is Be in Love with Yr Life (being the beginning of the atomic era, the underlying idea was "because we could all die tomorrow."). What do you love about your life? 

December 18th: I love curling up in bed under all of the blankets while cold night air blows over me head and moonlight shines down.

December 19th: Papers are recorded in the gradebook, Bean credit has been noted, chairs are up, dishes washed, and plants watered. And I ate five Christmas cookies during class. I think Yule can begin.

December 20th: Prepped for Solstice: clean out the fireplace, find the bulbs and pots for planting, grind the corn for cornbread and make some soup, fill the lanterns. Shut off the internet, the radio, and the lights. Tomorrow-- no lights, a long walk in the rain, and home to fire, dinner, and a Christmas Carol.

December 21st: Oak trees, like from Middle Earth, sketched against a rainy sky. Elk in the field. Mist covered hills.

December 22nd: Waking up the morning after Solstice, turning on the lights and making waffles for breakfast. 

December 23rd: Latkes for dinner!

December 24th: A long walk in the dark, cool forest, through the clouds, then the Indian Buffet for lunch. 

December 25th: Fish pie in front of the fire.

December 26th: Long walks and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. 

December 27th: Portland has done some very cool things for bicycle infrastructure!

December 28th: Ok, there's a lot of food being eaten over Yule. Today, we went to Roman Russian grocery in NE Portland, bought perogies, pickles, black bread, and pastries with poppy seeds and ate it all for lunch. It's like traveling to a new country without leaving  the state.

December 29th: The public library on a rainy afternoon-- warm, well lit, quiet, and full of books.

December 30th: Small cities are the best. I was to meet someone for lunch, but the place was closed. I looked across the street, saw her bike at the co-op. While hunting for her, I ran into three other people I knew. I love the web of threads that connect us all. 

December 31st: When Mark and I first started taking long walks through town, basically commuting by foot, the China Buffet (about 2 miles) seemed like a long dark trek through Ranchland. Tonight, it barely registered. Shrinking Corvallis, one walk at a time.

January 1st: A double rainbow arched over the valley this morning as we began our New Year's Walk. A little while later, after  a downpour, the sun shown through the trees and rain sodden air like a cathedral. It was a beautiful start to the decade.

January 2nd: I was walking home from a meeting when I saw a woman photographing the ground. As I passed, she smiled. "I have a friend who makes a cake for the first person who spots violets every year, " she told me. And there they were-- deep purple violets are her feet. 

January 3rd: Potlucks. People show up at your house with hot dishes of good food, ready for conversation. Is there anything better on a dark winter night?

January 4th: A clean house! Where did all of that dirt come from?!

January 5th: Hundreds of snowdrops blooming.

Bell's Seasoning

 Usually, on the day after Thanksgiving, I am happy to eat the salad that we traditionally bring to our feast that no one else ate along with whatever leftover soup that is in the fridge and a stray sliver of pie. I love the big mid-day meal, but no longer crave the piles of leftovers. This year, though, I am missing my mother’s hot turkey sandwiches.

 It started with the stuffing, which was the best. Finely chopped onions and celery, cooked with some pungent sausage meat, then mixed with two bags of stuffing bread croutons, already softened with water. Once everything was in the Big Bowl—we made a lot of stuffing—we would mix it by hand, one person mixing while the other sprinkled in the Bell’s Seasoning, a mixture of herbs that smelled strongly of sage. “Enough?” she would ask. We would both pause, sniff the bowl, and shake our heads. “More.”  The stuffing rested, mellowing, on the cold back porch overnight.

                In the morning, we stuffed the bird, letting the fragrant cubes spill out between the legs. More Bell’s Seasoning went over the skin and it was tucked into the oven. The stuffing and turkey baked together, flavoring one another. When the turkey was hauled out of the pan, we piled the stuffing into her best casserole dish, white with flowers, carved the bird, and made gravy with the drippings.  The entire meal smelled of sage and onions.

                The next evening, she would scoop gravy into a frying pan, add slices of turkey, and heat them up, hot. This was poured over toasted bread and barely warm stuffing that had retained all of its crunch from the day before. Some people might add cranberry sauce from the can, but I never did. We would bring our plates into the living room and watch T.V. while we ate. It was heaven.

                I know that I could make my own stuffing and turkey, my own Hot Turkey sandwiches, but a turkey is not a small endeavor and I no longer eat sausage. I’m not even sure where to find her specific brand, or the Bell’s Seasoning,  if I wanted to.  But I missed that pungent New England aroma this afternoon, as we eat our salad and cake leftovers.

Compost Trees

                When the hazelnut tree came down last summer, it left a huge hole in the back corner. For years, the brushy tree had shaded Mark’s compost area and hidden it from the alley. Now, he feels exposed. Today, we moved towards changing that.  First, we planted a small grafted plum tree to replace the huge, end of its life, plum that arches over the back yard and Mark has always loved (I pick up most of the dropped fruit…). The plums are small and yellow and the tree is old—it  usually grows mushrooms in September.  A few years ago, Mark grafted a branch to a sucker in the front yard, and it took. We moved the sapling into a pot and, today, into the ground. We were careful to not plant under the power lines. The corner was still empty, so we planted a native elderberry to arch over the compost hoops. The elderberry was a cutting from a friend that had also been living in a pot. It had an amazing rootball, so I am hopeful. We are still thinking about some tall, waving grasses to mark an entrance and screen the piles from view while we eat dinner, but at least a start has been made.  

Thoreau and the Cellar

                Cellars are important in Thoreau’s Walden. He describes his own, six feet square by seven deep, dug in sandy soil one afternoon, in the first chapter, thus creating a direct contrast to the pit he encountered in the Irishman’s shanty, which was covered, not by a hutch, but by the bed.  This is where he will store his potatoes and beans for the winter, so he was careful to dig below the frost line. In the same paragraph, he observes that the cellar is the most important part of a house, no matter how fancy, and the only thing that will be left when the house falls down.

                The last observation is true. In New England, when I was growing up, stone walls wended their way through miles of second growth, indicating old fields. And, in the corners, near the old roads, were cellar holes, lined with granite, sometimes filled with rusting trash. We climbed around in them; my parents used the one on our property as the shooting range for the BB gun. (My mother was a crack shot; she practiced on rats at the dump when young.)  

                Cellars still perform important functions. I am always aware of ours in November, because I spend so much time settling it in for the winter. We store all of our firewood in the cellar, sorted for fireplace and stove. The potatoes are in bins under the stairs. All of the canned goods line another wall, along with the rice, beans, grains, and teas that we buy in bulk.  The packing boxes for sending holiday presents sit on the desk counter. All of my pots for canning are stored down there, as well as the empty bee hive boxes and the extra apples and tomatoes. We have a box of Christmas wrapping paper and a box for birthdays. We bring the benches and chairs inside and downstairs. The furnace, water heater, and washing machine are in the cellar—it is the mechanical heart of the house. We also keep all of the stuff we are almost ready to clear out down there. I kept my old bike for a year or two, until I found a new home for it. There is still a bag of faux Tupperware and lids on the shelf. Mark holds onto old medicine bottles in a bag. Every four or five years, I do a cellar purge and clear out the excess junk, mostly by putting it out to the curb.

 I am not sure that Thoreau would approve of all of the stuff in our basement—it indicates that my affairs cannot be counted on my two hands, or even with my ten toes, and suggests that I should do some work to simplify my life. I think he would seriously object to Mark’s collection of vintage crockpots, burnt orange and avocado, waiting for harvest gold, on one shelf. However, the self-sufficiency of the winter stores and tools would please him, as it does me. It is the essence of New England, tucked away into the cellar.

Walden and the Beans

November is bean planting time in my classroom. We are about to read sections of Walden, where Thoreau contemplates the battles of weeds and beans in his life, and I realized a few years ago that not every student knew what a bean leaf looks like. So now, juniors plant beans: 2 Indian Woman beans to a four inch pot. If you bring your bean to “harvest” you get extra credit. It is not as easy as it sounds. It takes about two months from planting to the first little bean hanging from the vine. Plants grow long and thin, easy to break, on the north side of a building in November and ninth graders checking on the progress of a sibling’s bean can be a little aggressive. Accidents happen.  There are always jokes about who will not be raising food after the apocalypse.  Some people name their beans—Beanadette, Jim Bean- to help with the process while others bring in charms or fold tiny paper cranes. They water, and measure, and consider the beans every day, even when we don’t have class. They become, for a brief time, farmers.

Last week, one girl decided to sit with her bean during class. It had just put on the first true leaves, that bright young green that we usually see in early June. She held the bean, in its round pot, against her dark shirt, in front of her heart. Head down, hair curving around her face, stroking the leaf, considering its form… there were circles within circles, a poster child for Youth and Hope in dire times.  

Snugging Down

A cold front has settled over the Willamette Valley. The sky is high, and bright, and clear. All of the leaves are falling off of the trees and rustling on the ground, shades of gold, and red, and brown mingled with the bright green of the grass. The days are beautiful, the nights chilly.  And, because of our schedules, we are a little behind  on snugging the house down for the winter. This weekend, we went into full on snug mode.

                First, we had to wash all of the windows, inside and out, in preparation for the storm windows.  There is no point covering up fig splatter and bird poop with storm windows for the winter! Once the windows were washed, Mark went to the basement to wash and wax the wooden storms and I worked up stairs. Wool blankets on the bed. All of the curtains washed—it was a good drying day! The last of the summer shirts shifted into the spare room closet, the heavy shirts moved to the bedroom. I made mac and cheese and a baked butternut squash for dinner, which warmed up the kitchen nicely.

                Outside, the leaves from our neighbor’s linden trees were raked into a tempting fifteen foot long windrow, ready for the gathering.  Before they were disturbed by cars running through them, I wanted to collect them in the re-purposed recycling bin on wheels, haul them around back, and dump them, one bin per bed, onto the cleared out garden beds.  This is a yearly task, made much nicer this year by dry, fluffy leaves. Once the beds were covered, I made sure that the plastic cover over the lettuce bed would withstand the winds. All of the plants in pots were moved into the greenhouse. Mark gave the bunny extra straw to block breezes in the hutch from below. The chickens, all five on one perch, are fine until the temperature drops to the teens. When I came home from a meeting last night, I went back out into the street ad gathered more leaves, piling them up in the driveway. This week, I will add them to the other perennial beds.

                Tonight, we have a fire in the stove. There are beans in the crock-pot, bread in the oven. All of the garden beds are covered. The storms are on the windows. The curtains are drawn. Outside, the wind picks up the dry leaves and blows them against the door, but we are all snug inside.

Autumn

It is autumn. The rains have begun. The dining room roof talks, low voices for drops on the roof, high pings for drops on the vents. The little stove is glowing in the late afternoon, warming one room of the house; we have not yet turned on the heat. The laundry hangs from the rafters. The cat sleeps on her pillow on the stool. There are gold and green decorations in the room, gold and brown tablecloth and napkins. Tonight, we are having lasagna with delicate squash and kale tucked into the layers, along with fresh apple cider. I will bake bread and granola, make yougurt and the last batch of tomato sauce. Outside, we have brought the dining table and benches in, moved the coop to another bed, begun to break down the tomato jungle as green tomatoes bounce onto the ground. Rainbows span the sky as the clouds move in a stiff seabreeze; thunder and dark clouds race along soon after. Autumn.

Oregon Winter

This says it all this week.

Oregon Winter

by Jeanne McGahey

The rain begins. This is no summer rain,
Dropping the blotches of wet on the dusty road:
This rain is slow, without thunder or hurry:
There is plenty of time – there will be months of rain.

Lost in the hills, the old gray farmhouses

Hump their backs against it, and smoke from their chimneys
Struggles through weighted air. The sky is sodden with water,
It sags against the hills, and the wild geese.
Wedge-flying, brush the heaviest cloud with their wings.

The farmers move unhurried. The wood is in,

The hay has long been in, the barn lofts piled
Up to the high windows, dripping yellow straws.
There will be plenty of time now, time that will smell of fires,
And drying leather, and catalogues, and apple cores.

The farmers clean their boots, and whittle, and drowse.

October in Corvallis

Woodsmoke and leaf mold.
Bright blue air. Sunshine. Downpours
Grey mist on the hills.

Garden closing down.
Pumpkins and squashes move in.
Vines on the compost.

Wooly hats and socks.
Four warm blankets on the bed.
Turn on the heat? No!

Oat Bread Days

  

              In our house, we rotate through seasonal foods. First the fruits and veggies, eating whatever is ripe and fresh every day until it is out of season (or every other day, when it is zucchini). But we also have seasonal baked goods, like pies and quick breads. It started years ago, when there were too many yummy things in December and Mark suggested that we just shift some of them to other seasons. Now, we spread various lentil soups out over months of winter and early spring and quick breads each have their season. We just finished the zucchini bread season, and I broke out the oat bread recipe last week, before we went camping. It is perfect because we are often purchasing fresh oatmeal and wheat berries in late September, so it reflects the harvest season.

Oat Bread

1.5 c oatmeal

1.25 c buttermilk

6T oil

.5 c brown sugar

2 eggs

1.25 c fresh ground whole wheat flour

1 t BP

.5 t salt

1t BS

1 cup small dried fruit—currants, blueberries, raisins….

Soak the oats in the buttermilk for a couple of hours. Mix in wet ingredients, then the dry. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake in 400 degree oven until done.

Metolious Preserve

Around the Equinox—and the time college students come back to school, but have nothing productive to do at night—Mark and I head to the Metolious for the weekend. We camp at Camp Sherman, buy a sandwich from the store and eat it while watching salmon come up stream, have morning campfires, and take long walks. It begins to bring our world back into balance after the chaos of school starting, both my job and the university.

This year, we decided to walk over to the Deschutes County Land Trust’s Metolious Preserve. It’s a lovely, diverse patch of Eastern Oregon forest, right on the dividing lines of Doug Fir and Ponderosa bioregions. From the campground, it is about two miles to the north trailhead, and then there are several miles of trails within the preserve, wandering over the three forks of Lake Creek, then off into the dusty pines. Black Butte, absolutely symmetrical, rises on one side, glimpsed through the trees.

This year, we spent some time considering regeneration after what appeared to be a controlled burn on the way over. Tufty grasses and wildflowers were looking beautiful—it had rained recently—and the underbrush was coming back. Dogbane and bitterbrush were sprouting new shoots from the bases. Baby ponderosa trees rose up in the middle of the trail.  We’ve seen this pattern before, the regrowth after fires, but we always find it fascinating. And, if you are really lucky in the high country, you might be hiking through regrowth at the peak huckleberry and blueberry production years. We keep our eyes out. This is a fire ecosystem.  Even devastated areas, like the gorge, return with time.

The Preserve, was, as always, almost empty. One car in the lot, three people on bikes. Mark worked on his evergreen identification skills: Douglas Fir, Ponderosa Pine, Larch, Lodgepole Pine, Noble Fir, Grand Fir, and one small Juniper. Pacific Ninebark and roses were in seed and the snowberry was covered in white, often twinned, berries. Some summer blooms, encouraged by the rain, were blooming again—phlox, lupine, yarrow, and scarlet gilia. The sky was cloudy and the air misty as we walked into the center, where there are benches to look through the trees while you eat lunch. We have seen deer in the distance there on another visit, but never people. While we ate lunch, the rain began. True Oregonians, we munched our peanut and apple butter sandwiches in the drizzle, hunched in raincoats. After lunch, we walked over to a shelter and changed into rain pants. “I think it’s stopping,” Mark observed. Just to be on the safe side, we kept the rain gear on.

Walking back, we moved a little more slowly. The world was still and quiet. The rain stopped; in places it looked like it had never started. When we came into civilization, we passed people and their dogs, families gathered at the store, campers watching the river flow by. Our fire pit was sodden from rains, so we set up our campfire and chairs in the CCC shelter, which has one of the best fireplaces—and views—in the country.  The stars came out right before we went to bed.

Moon Walk

Last night was the full Harvest Moon and the clouds broke in the late afternoon, so that we could hold our annual Moon Watch. Usually we make dinner and drive to Chip Ross Park, where we eat, watch people and their dogs come and go, and wait for the moonrise. Last night, we decided to walk. I packed cheese rolls, salad, corn on the cob, and chocolate into our day packs, grabbed an extra layer or two from the drawers, and we headed uphill.

                It was a lovely warm evening. The light was golden as the sun set; the air was still and quiet; the ground smelled of dampness from a recent rain. We walked from our densely populated neighborhood through Ranchland, and then into the undeveloped area on the hills, finally cresting into the park. The world dropped away and we arrived at the picnic table a little after seven.  Dog Walk time. The world grew dimmer. People came out of the park and pulled away. The church let out around eight and all of the cars left, taillights bright in the darkness. We were alone, standing on the gravel mound, waiting for the moon, which was, as always, later than expected and NOT where we were watching. When it finally appeared, it was bands of deep orange light, blocked by the ridges of clouds backed up against the Cascades. As it rose, it rapidly shifted in color to yellow, then cream emerging about the distant clouds.  We cheered,  picked up our backpacks, and started down the trail.

                Gravel crunched underfoot. Crickets and birds called back and forth as we walked the broad trail into the park. Up and down the hills, watching for the high point where the trail back to town drops off the side of the slope. There—right after the dark space of trees, two posts. Down. We leave the gravel behind, walk down the dirt, worn by both feet and mountain bikes. A bit of a gully.  On the south side, the moon, huge and creamy, peeks between the huge twisted branches of the oaks and then disappears again. Stars wink above. Below, we can see the lights of town, moving from curving roads of the hillsides to the straight runways of the older gridded streets. The slight breeze has died. The air is warm and still. Down, down, down, we drop, feeling our way. I can barely see Mark in front of me; he does not always notice when I stop to watch the moon. The slope opens up, moonwashed, into a meadow and the trail ahead is clear. We swing to the right, towards a wash of willows, blackberry, and fir, knowing that the trailhead is not far away. As we move through the wash, we can barely see. Mark pokes ahead with his walking stick; I follow my memory. In the brush, a deer jumps up and runs away, startled by our presence. Mark jumps. “It’s a deer,” I say, “not the cougar.”  One more small meadow, then civilization.

                Even when we move onto sidewalk, the evening is still and silent. It could be one AM by the traffic. No one else is out on this beautiful evening; we have the sidewalks to ourselves.  Moon and street lights create our shadows, dappled in leaves, moving quietly downhill.  

September Gold

One of the hardest things about early September is having to move back inside for hours on end. We all feel it; even the cat is more inclined to sprawl in the sun, soaking up the dry heat before the long damp season begins.

It is the golden season. The light is a clear, liquid gold, pouring over the landscape. Everything turns golden—the fields, the leaves, the crops, the flowers, all gather in this light and reflect it back. In my garden, small pumpkins emerge from the tangle of green leaves—there are eight?! I had only counted five all summer long. Three were hidden. Sungold tomato vines sprawl over the others, small golden suns everywhere. We eat them constantly. The goldenrod is blooming and every pollinator from miles around is collecting on it, so it hums.   My fall crops are growing madly; they are in the brightest bed. Along the fence, one volunteer pumpkin vines is making a final run for it; it has grown three feet in the last two weeks and has a tiny fruit hanging from it. We will see if anything comes of it.

Harvest is everywhere. Last summer vegetables compete with the early squashes in the Farmer’s Market. All sorts of fruits spill over, all ready to be processed for winter. We bring in the potatoes and onions, dried beans and corn. The time of reckoning…what went well? What did not? It’s serious for us, home gardeners, far more serious for the local farmers. These six weeks between Lammastide and the Fall equinox determine how well we will eat this winter. Soon, we will break out the wool socks, start the wood stove, consider baked beans for dinner. Until then, though, I am stretching my bare feet towards the sun, holding onto these golden days as long as possible.

The South Side

                For the last two years, I have been experimenting with plantings on the south side of the house. It can be a challenging location. It receives full sun in the afternoon, is blocked by house on two sides, and is buffeted by the evening sea breezes.  There are a series of wine barrels, and other containers the size of wine barrels, that live in what was the driveway, as well as two small raised beds built up against the house. For a long time, it was the home for all of the tomatoes, which did well in the heat and also allowed us to nibble on sungold tomatoes as we wheeled our bikes in and out of the back yard. Two years ago, I decided to do some crop rotation.

                Last year, I went for the vining squashes in the pots and the corn in the beds. It did not work. The corn was fried in a heat wave and looked like something from the Dust Bowl. The squashes, although slightly shaded by a tree, were also hit by the heat and did not produce large fruits. I had mini-squashes which were not edible. I thought, if I had moved them into the full shade, they would have been ok, but it’s hard to move a pot full of a long pumpkin vines that are visiting the neighbors.  Scarlet runner beans will grow up the twine along the side of the house, but they will not produce beans (Heat again). The Three Sisters were not happy.

 

Resting bed

               This year, I tried the spring crops—peas, lettuce, mustard, and kale—as well as cabbages and broccoli.  That was more successful. Lettuces really like succession plantings in big barrels. Kale and mustard did pretty well in barrels, too. The longer, heavy feeding crops were not as happy; they were too crowded.  I did get three out of four cabbages, but the same generation did much better in a back yard bed.  I replaced some early crops with dill and zinnas, which are flourishing. And, oddly enough, so is a celery plant which I popped into one empty planter hoping to keep it going through the winter, rather than losing it to the chickens when  I move the coop onto the garden bed that holds its sister plant.  The bed next to the house had problems from too much undigested organic matter rather than from heat; it did not do well even in cool weather. Right now, it is resting and digesting, like a family after Thanksgiving.

                I like the idea of quick growing greens outside the living room windows in the early spring. It brings the garden closer to the house when we really need to watch something grow. I think I will try that again next March.  I am also thinking of bringing the snacks forward —cherry tomatoes and ground cherries—so that we can eat them easily. Flowers and herbs can fill in as the season moves along. They will tolerate heat and being moved if needed for a few days. Maybe the real question should be: what do I want to see when I gaze out of the windows?

Open Streets, Corvallis

Highway 99 runs through Corvallis. It begins as a two lane country highway, winding peacefully  through hazelnut orchards, seed farms, and mint fields, but, when it hits Corvallis from the south, it becomes a behemoth—five lanes with bike lanes and sidewalks—with lots of open land around it, so there is no reason to slow down.  It is a menace as a bicyclist; riders spend hours talking about how to avoid it, which is difficult because it is the spine for the entire South Corvallis community.  No one walks on the sidewalks if they can avoid it. Last week, a traffic calming pedestrian crossing light was taken out by a car.

Ten past one, Sunday afternoon. The side streets are crowded with people on bikes, all ready to surge forward across Highway 99 when given the signal. Three official crossing guards stand at attention, holding signs. “Slow.” “Stop.”  They move into the highway and gesture to five figures in the crowd. The five, dressed in exaggerated costumes from 1958, run into the street. One pushes a tricycle. The audience follows them onto the highway to watch. They strike poses and break into “Greased Lightening” from Grease. They dance and sing around the trike, adding streamers. The audience dances and sways in time to the beat. The pavement is warm, but not burning. Cars pile up behind the barriers. They have altered the lines to the song to fit the moment. Everyone laughs. At the end, they strike a pose, then run off the highway. The crowd breaks up, humming, moves along the Open Streets.

Along the route, children ride their bikes, swaying and swirling and playing with balance as we all love to do when we know the road is clear.  Some stop and draw with sidewalk chalk, leaving reminders that it was, for a few hours, okay to create art in the middle of the street.  One little girl learns to ride her bike without training wheels because she has the ability to think just about pedaling, not direction or cars, for an hour.  Parents stand around and talk in the road. Other families set up face painting stands, play live music from 1967 in the driveway, park vintage cars on the grass for an impromptu car show.  Bicyclists are everywhere. “It’s a fiesta,” one crossing guard explains to a neighbor who needs to drive through the street to get to work. The driver moves slowly through the crowd.

In the parks, neighbors listen to music, dance, eat pizza, give opinions on city issues, and hang out in the shade, gossiping. Kids climb over the play structures, chase each other around with water bottles, and yell. A few dogs hunt for scraps. Three folks decide to have a potato sack race and fall over, laughing. Although there are racks, bikes are everywhere along the perimeters.

Streets, even highways, are for everyone—walkers, bicyclists, trucks haulers, families in autos,  skateboarders… Cars do not own the roads. We all do. And, for brief moments in late August, Open Streets reminds us of this fact. We all share the road.

Yard Art

When I was little, my grandmother’s garden felt like the Stations of the Cross, with pathways leading to various pieces of yard art. It was even arranged like a cross; you stepped up into the side yard on one of the arms, then walked to the center line, and turned  right to stand in front of the Virgin Mary in a clamshell, so popular with New England Catholics. The other two statues were a painted cement squirrel, and (I think) some sort of garden gnome. I loved walking the stations of these figures when I visited. Her sister-in-law favored pink flamingos around a cement birdbath.  My mother owned an Italianate fountain: a boy on a fish that spouted water into a large—and very heavy—basin, perched on a pillar. When the fountain broke, she planted the basin in petunias. When the basin broke, she kept the boy, fish, and pedestal. I grew up with some fine yard art, which I rejected out of hand. My own garden, I vowed, would have none of that tacky cement figure stuff, no plastic, nothing like that. Rustic trellises from tree trimmings, hand made signs, lots of veggies and few flowers (NO petunias, thank you!) were ok. The natural beauty of a cabbage would shine in my garden.

But then, in graduate school, I began to look at yard art. Wooden cut out figures of farmers and farmer’s wives bent over appeared in local yards on the coast. “Tacky!” I thought, but I also noticed as they moved. One week, they were in Kittery, then in Dover, and then, a few months later, they were about 50 miles inland at Great East Lake.  I took pictures. “There’s a thesis here,” I thought. There are, to a graduate student, thesi everywhere. Different areas supported different yard art. The Virgin Mary was popular around Boston, but not in Pennsylvania.  Some areas had more art than others. Glass balls, fake deer, birdbaths, gnomes….cement figures, wooden figures, ceramics….There is a thesis here.

When we bought our house, I caved into peer pressure and bought a pair of pink flamingos, who lived in the back yard near the compost piles and brush. When we built a little pool back there, they were right at home. We added a cement Buddha and Saint Francis, and then some mardi-gras beads. Blue bottles lined paths.   Broken dishes found new homes in garden beds. When my mother died, I brought home the boy riding the fish and the pedestal.  There is a small wall hanging of the Virgin Mary on the fence. A wooden crescent moon and hearts hang from tree branches.  Sixteen gnomes are tucked in the foliage; at least three came from Sarah Lee,  my partner’s mother, as birthday presents. Five painted Mrs. Butterworths are posing near the chives and asparagus. On Saturday, a friend delivered a cement figure that he had purchased years ago because it reminded him of his children. They don’t want it (at least, not now), so it is living in my yard. At night, when we are asleep, do all of these figures move around, have pie parties and long conversations?

My yard has become my grandmother’s, in a way. There are stepping stones and hidden figures among the cabbages. Pink flamingos look down upon the vegetable garden.  My family—all of it—has gathered in this space. And so, I am keeping the new statue, but, if Corey ever wants it, she knows where it is. Because I still kick myself for not claiming the squirrel from my grandmother’s yard.

Lammastide

In the circle of the year, Lammastide is the beginning of the grain harvest. Wheat, oats, barley—all of the northern grains that fed the community—were harvested and brought to the church for a festival and a blessing, also known as the Loaf Mass, in early August. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the big harvests begin at the same time. Fields of wheat are drying down. Straw and hay dust turn the sunlight  golden. Fruit tree branches bend over from the weight. The annual veggies are at their peak of growth and production. In the next six weeks, all of the madness of summer food processing will dominate kitchens and cellars.  Pickling.  Drying. Canning in light syrup.  Making jams and preserves. Tucking potatoes into paper bags and storing them away from the light.  Food driers and crockpots run overnight to keep up with the food tumbling in during this season. 

Transit Reality Check

Public Transit. I believe in public transit. I did not get my driver’s license until I was 26, and I’ve lived in Boston and Portland, so I have ridden a lot of buses in my time. I enjoy a good bus ride—stare out the window, eavesdrop on the gossip behind me, meditate on the nature of the universe of dinner plans—it rarely  feels like  a waste of time  to ride the bus, when it is on schedule. I’ll give an extra 35% of travel time gladly for a bus ride. However,….

Last week, I decided to take public transit to visit my friend Amy, who lives in Milwaukie, Oregon. It is almost exactly two hours to drive my VW van door to door, but the Ark had developed a hiccup that could lead to a stop by the side of the road, and I did not want to deal a visit to the repair shop instead of dinner with a friend. I walked out of the door at 11 AM, heading to the Corvallis transit center a mile away. At 11:25, I climbed onto the Linn-Benton loop, rode for 15 minutes to the community college, transferred to the Albany bus, and rode another 12 minutes into the Albany transit station, arriving at 11:55.  Although my bus to Portland left at 1:05, I had to arrive an hour early because the loop bus takes a lunch break for an hour. I packed my own lunch and a book, and ate on a bench outside.  At 1:05, my bus pulled into the station, loaded up, and headed north. It arrived in Portland about five minutes late—no big deal. I grabbed my backpack, walked to the near-by tri-met stop, waited for the orange line, and climbed aboard. This new line travels all the way to Milwaukie, which is very cool. I admired all of the new public art along the way and studied the complex green paint for bikes around some of the stations. We came into town a little after four and I walked the last mile to Amy’s house, landing in her yard just before 4:30.  It took two local buses, one regional bus, and a light rail ride and two walks five and a half hours to travel a two hour car drive. And that was with every bus on time.

Recently, I broke my arm. I am fine, but I have been going to physical therapy 2.5 miles away.  To walk would be an hour and a half there and back—if my ankle was ok that day. To take the bus would be even longer, and would involve hours of waiting because the local buses run once an hour.  The ideal is riding a bike, which I now do, but that was out when I was in a cast. We drove for the first month.

These are just two examples of the problems we face when we begin to think about how to move people from one place to another without individual cars. When we say “just don’t bring your car to campus” or “you don’t need a car in Corvallis—you can get everywhere on the bus. Its free!” we are not considering the absurd amount of time and effort it takes for healthy people to commit to public transit.  Buses need to run every 15 minutes, day and into the late evening, to be user friendly on a broad scale. They cannot take lunch breaks. Bike lanes need to feel safe on busy streets. Walkers need paths to cut through long blocks. Everyone needs better signage to calculate distance and location. This is more than a cultural mind shift—it will require a complete shift of how we fund transportation and road design. It needs to happen; we need to begin today. Otherwise, in a few years, we will all be trapped at home, unable to visit a friend in Milwaukie.

July, 1969

July 1969.

My father and I are home alone with the dog. My mother and cousins are at a teen dance in the Hampstead town gym, sponsored by the PTA. My mother is chaperone.  Night falls. The fields, with quiet cows, are dark. Insects call. There is a hint of skunk in the humid summer air.  We have been watching the news on the enclosed porch. The moon landing.  There are men on the moon.  We walk outside, followed by the dog, and look up. The full moon is rising over the trees. “Can you see them up there?” my father asks. We all squint at the moon, watching for movements and shadows. Man, daughter, dog stand in the moonlight, casting moon shadows, and join the millions world-wide staring at the moon.  “I think so,” I reply.

Summer Canning

The morning is cool and quiet, cloudy. In the dining room, the red currants are draining; the gooseberries have been tipped and tailed. After breakfast, I wander to the basement, find the steam canner, gather the jars and long loops of rings handing on Christmas cords. Half way up the stairs, the lids are tucked in amongst the cleaning supplies.  Metal changes on metal as I dump everything on the kitchen table. It is time for the summer rituals to begin.

First, I boil the currant juice. Poured into half pint jars and sealed, we can drink the juice with fizzy water in the winter. Vitamin C. It is a deep red and stains the counter. The canner, with the usual quart of honey weight on the lid, rattles and steams. In the living room, NPR explains the news. While the currants seal, I make the gooseberry jam, boiling sugar and berries together, testing the transformation of juice into jam. It finishes just before the timer buzzes for the currants. Move quickly—trade the jars. Replace the lid, the weight, start the timer once more.  Clean up. Summer work on quiet mornings, before the day grows warm.

A Week in Garden Harvests

Radicchio

    

            I am in love with radicchio this season. I bought some seed this winter, when all greens looked good in the catalog (hence my overabundance of cabbages and broccolis) and started it in February, first in six-packs, then bumped up to a barrel in the yard and some four inch pots. It has been lush for months.  That has been one of its charms; whenever I harvest a full sized plant, I have popped another, from the four inch pot stash, into the hole. It keeps on growing without missing a beat. So far, it has been one tough plant, even when it was hot and dry a few weeks ago. It even repels pill bugs and earwigs!

                It is also a beautiful plant. Deep green leaves, veined with red on the outside. A cabbage-y, swirly leaf layout in red and white inside.  Some are more red, some more green.  When it first grows the true leaves, they have an adorable little twist to them, like the piping on a cake that turns inward to create the head. Layer upon layer of leaves build up on that twist, and the biggest lay down to frame the plant. So lovely.

                Radicchio is tasty, too. We started eating the young leaves in salads in late April. Lately, I have been harvesting the heads for sautéed greens. They are bitter but not spicy as mustard greens and they mix beautifully with kales and mustards. Last night, we ate them cooked with an onion and garlic, toasted pecans and raisins. So good.  Such a nice counter point to the ricotta pie that was left over from the night before.  This one is clearly a keeper.

Hand Splints, Heat Waves, and Climate Change

               My right hand is restricted by a plastic splint and it has been hot for several days. I am having flashbacks to 1988, when, using a hand scythe to mow down some big weeds in the side yard of my rental, I sliced open my right index finger. I knew right away it was bad. I grabbed my finger and hitched a ride to the emergency room with the guy living downstairs. A few hours later, I had stitches and a splint that held my finger immobile and extended for the next three weeks.  It was difficult to deal with my hair, but I quickly developed techniques for moving the mixing bowls at the bakery around and for pounding butter with the rolling pin.

                !988 was a really hot summer. Starting about the same time as my injury, the temperature in Portsmouth N.H. was over 90 degrees and humid  every day for six weeks (and Portsmouth is full of ocean breezes…).  Mark remembers it being hot in Tennessee. It was so hot and dry in the wheat growing west that the bakery had to raise prices that autumn when the cost of grain skyrocketed. It was hot. 1988 was also about the time we began to hear about Climate Change and its coming impacts on the world. It was scary stuff. “Is this what it’s going to be like with global warming?” we all asked. It was a general question, discussed on the news and over the counter. It was also non-partisan.  Almost everyone, democrat or republican, was aware of the science and part of the conversation.  And there was some movement to make changes to mitigate the worst of the damage. And then…

                It is thirty years later. Another accident. Another splint of plastic that causes my arm and fingers to sweat and swell in the heat.  And we are still talking about Climate Change. “Is this what every summer is going to be like? Hot, with wildfires all of August?” we ask. Unfortunately, the changes we need to make to mitigate the absolute worst effects of Climate Change are much greater than they were in 1988. If, in 1988, we followed Jimmy Carter’s lead, turned down the heat and put a sweater on, installed solar panels, insulated houses, invested in public transit, etc. we would be in a much better position right now. We could go gracefully into a new era focused on renewal energy rather than fossil fuels. Now, we have much more difficult decisions to make. Nuclear energy? What neighborhoods/cities/regions do we rebuild after big storms? Which do we let go? How do we support the huge rural population that lives throughout the country, the people who cannot walk to any services they need every day? What do we do about forest fires and the people who live in the woods? Not to mention the rest of the living beings on this earth. These are huge, complex, systemic questions. And time is running out. We do not have another thirty years.

               

One Handed Gardener

What you can do with one (and a half) arms in the garden:

1.       Weed

2.       Transplant (85% survival rate)

3.       Mulch

4.       Direct seed

5.       Hand water with hose or watering can

6.       Harvest strawberries

7.       Break up clods to prep beds

8.       Haul hoses around

9.       Trim out the beds, slowly

10.   Clean up drying bulbs

11.   Paint the plant signs

12.   Fertilize the berries

What you cannot do with one (and a half) arms in the garden:

1.       Set up the new irrigation system

2.       String up the bean vines

3.       Move a full wheelbarrow around

4.       Create a new rabbit fence

5.       Tie anything

6.       Turn compost

7.       Move the chicken coop

8.       Catch a chicken or a rabbit

9.       Take photos

What you should not do with one (and a half) arms:

1.       Pitchfork a bed

2.       Clean out the garden pool

3.       Haul hoses around

Despite limitations and with some serious help from Mark, the veg. garden is planted, irrigated, and mulched.