Yule, 2020

                 Thursday afternoon was the last day of classes for 2020. As I left the building, I was struck, once again, by the weirdness of this time. Usually, the day before Winter Break is packed—ramped up students who have been up all night finishing projects they put off until the last minute and staying awake by eating more sugar in seven hours than they do all month plus exhausted teachers who have been scrambling to finish up their own work and track the stuff coming in so that they are free over break, also eating far more sugar and caffeine than is healthy or natural. Santa hats. Candy canes sharpened to points. Movies in the afternoon.  This year, it was silent. Kids were tired, but in  drawn out way, not in an I achieved something meaningful way. Teachers, too, I suppose, although I did not see anyone as I left the almost empty building.

 It was cloudy and blowy, with a scent of ocean storm in the air, as I walked home. Yule, too, is going to be different this year. Usually it is a balancing act between long hours in solitude, reading, hiking, watching the birds at the feeder, staring at the fires on the hearth at night and visiting people, traveling to Portland, meeting friends in coffee shops, moving in and out of each other’s homes with platters of food. This year, no one is coming into our house and we are going nowhere to visit. It’s ok; we do this so that we can all gather again when this pandemic is over. The trade is fair.

So, this year,  I will invite you all in via the internet—one image, every day of Yule,-- our time out of time, the bridge between past and future --  which begins on the last day of school and runs until Twelfth Night, January sixth, when we take down the tree. 

                

December 18: The tree is up.

December 19: Cookies-- 1950s gingerbread and whole wheat anise seed.

December 20-- wet walk to the covered bridge and back.

December 21: Solstice. We begin reading a Christmas Carol.

December 22: second cup of tea and a good book, post walk.

December 23: Mantel figures.

December 24: Christmas Stollen

December 25: A seas of contrasts.

December 26: Seed catalogs arrive.

December 27: Sunny Sunday

December 28: Knitting socks (I started in late November...)

December 29: Frosty morning walk.

December 30: Painting the kitchen cabinets.

December 31: Long walk to Mulkey Creek and then Tarn Tip for dinner.

January 1:  Black Eyed Peas in the crockpot.

And, on January 2nd, the camera battery died. 

Feeding the Birds

 

  

              When we first moved into our house, we had a bird feeder. Our cat at the time was elderly; the juncos looked at her perched by the cat door, shrugged, and went on eating, even on the ground. Over Winter Breaks, Mabel and I were transfixed by the feeder. There was something soothing in the flutter of wings, small dances of dominance, and occasional new sight. We at in the window for hours.    When Mabel died and we acquired young cats, we put the feeder away. It didn’t seem fair to lure the birds in with the promise of sunflower and thistle seed and then have them caught and hauled into the house. Besides, the dropped seed attracted rodents.

 

               This winter, the young cat has become older—she’s sixteen, after all. And it has been a lonely time, without human visitors in the house.  Last week, as the sun set at four thirty and the clouds came down, I bought a bag of bird seed at Fred Meyers. Not the fancy expensive stuff, but decent enough to lure in juncos and finches, the big jays occasionally. I spread it on the top of an old ladder that doubles as a sweet pea trellis in the summer, right outside the living room window. Within two days, the birds had found the seeds and were swooping in once more, resting on the bay and plum tree branches, taking turns, tossing  seed hulls into the garden bed below. Once again, I watch, transfixed, as the wings flutter outside the window. Life in dark times.

Hermits?

 

               In the New York Times today, I saw an article “Hermits Support the Newly Isolated” which described the life of two self-described hermits and their outreach to others during the pandemic. They write books, run a web-site and now produce YouTube videos—I know, not very hermit-like, in my mind. I was most interested in the definitions of hermits and, in the end, thought, are we hermits?

1.       “Hermits can live anywhere, but tend to reside in modest dwellings.” Check—we have a modest dwelling. Comfortable, but not large or fancy.  

2.       Hermits do “not exit society because of misanthropy… but chooses solitude for spiritual reasons.” Check—we both like humanity, but need long periods of quiet in order to function.

3.   

    Hermits are “rooted in place.” They are “anchorites.” Check—getting Mark to leave home is a constant battle, made worse by the pandemic. We have not left Corvallis since September.  Once on the road, we are both great, but, even during normal times, the amount of effort needed to chivy us out of the house and backyard is considerable.

4.       Hermits “practice austerity.” Check—the heat is set at 64 degrees. My pants are ten years old. The van-- 1984.We mend, and repair, and reuse as a spiritual practice.

5.       Hermits show “awe in the face of the natural world.” Check—We take long walks, watch the seasons change, consider the sublimity of the natural world.

6.       Hermits like rituals. Check.  We are creatures of habit and ritual, from the tea we drink before bed to our observations and celebrations of the cycle of the year. Wheels within wheels, rituals within rituals. 

Six for six, on a chilly November morning. The Catholic Church is ringing their bells for second service. Outside, juncos dig in the left over leaves; the Halloween pumpkins slowly compost into the garden beds; garlic begins to poke up in the small bed under the kitchen window. Inside, the newspaper is scattered on the couch; laundry hangs to dry in the dining room; fresh greens and four small advent candles settle into the mantle.  

Thanks

 

Portland, Oregon. Late January. I was broke—being a cook, even in a foodie city, is hard in the middle of the winter. I was walking home from Fred Meyers on Hawthorne when a street person asked me for change.  He was clearly sleeping outside, colder than I was, without the knowledge that a paycheck was coming in three days. I pulled out my change purse and dumped it into his hand.

                “That’s all I’ve got,” I said. It wasn’t much.

                He nodded. “Are you ok?” he asked.

                “Yeah, I’ll get paid soon,” I told him.

                He dug through the pile and handed me a penny. “Always keep a penny,” he said, “for seed money.” We smiled, I thanked him, and we went on our separate ways.

 

                I’ve been thinking about this encounter—and the many others I’ve had on the streets a lot lately. We’re coming up to Thanksgiving in a very rough year, but it rougher for some than others. We are thankful for a home, after the ashes of others fell in our yard. We are thankful that our friends and family are still safe and well, when so many others are not. We are thankful that we have food in the larder, grown by people we know, in soil we all love. We have enough.

 

                If you find yourselves in the same position, there are many organizations looking for help.

Pancake Grills

 

        

        Years ago, when I still lived in Portsmouth, I bought an avocado colored waffle and pancake grill from the Immaculate Conception thrift shop. I was tired of trying to flip pancakes in my cast iron frying pan. I wanted a little wrist room! It was about five dollars, and it lasted another fifteen years before it finally died.  I really liked the design—it was multi-purpose and reasonably flat, so that it stored well—so I hunted through thrift stores, searching for another. None. I tried local stores for a new one. None. Finally, I ordered another on line, because Mark really likes oatmeal waffles for breakfast. The new grill lasted about six years and died. Once again, I hunted around and gave into the online order. Five years, alter, it died.

                By now, Mark had decided that he likes electrical repairs and projects, so he dismantled the grill, looking for the problem. It was a short in the thermostat; we could see the crack.  He looked for the replacement part, but it does not exist. Black and Decker makes the exact same grill with the exact same thermostat, but you cannot purchase it separately.  This is the epitome of the throw away society we are living in. First, the product is made to give out in about five years, rather than twenty five years, like my old one. Then, it cannot be repaired when it dies, so we have to purchase a new grill, if we want waffles again.

                Rather than buy a new Black and Decker grill, we bought a stove top cast iron grill which allows me to make pancakes and flip them. It is also nice for breakfast potatoes and eggs, as well as veggies and grilled cheese sandwiches, so I am happy. Even better, it has no moving parts to break and can be used inside, on my stove, or outside, over a camp fire.  We are, however, still waffle-less, so I am hunting, once again, for a vintage waffle iron, one that is built to last and to be repaired, like our stove.

Wood Piles

  

               Mark and I brought in a load of wood this morning. He has a work friend who took down a couple of dead trees, had the wood split, and sells it for a donation to the food bank.  Everyone wins. This morning, we drove over, loaded up  the Ark with nice dry wood—some of it a funky shape—and came home to move it into the basement.

                Moving wood is one of the projects we do well together. We are not like his parents, who are perfectly in tune after fifty years of house projects. Mark wants more snacks, requires more specialized equipment, and needs to think the entire effort through before he begins. I tend to plunge in, forget the gloves, and get splinters.  Sometimes, one of us will be the official Lead on the Project (yes, he is such a software engineer) but usually we work alone, calling for help occasionally. Wood does not work that way, if you want it out of the car or driveway so that the space can be usable again.

                Mark works the lower station; I take the surface. Before we begin, I consider the existing piles and the order I am always striving for, firewood split from stove wood split from kindling wood. I move things around, including a storm window or two.  He finds our gloves, fills a water bottle, and considers the space I have cleared. We discuss the stacking plan. Then it begins. I gather a pile of wood, walk over to the basement window, and call “Ready?” down. “Yes,” he calls back, and I drop the wood, piece by piece, into the window well. Occasionally, one bounces into the cellar—Mark stands back. He did mutter about needing his bike helmet, but it never got that bad. Sometimes he yells “NO!” because his hand is in the window well. I wait above. When I am done dropping wood, I call “done” and held back for the next load.  He stacks the pieces while I gather the next load. Back and forth, back and forth we move, working our way down the pile. There is a rhythm and a peace to the project, which is always done faster than I think it will be.

                There is a comfort to this late fall work, bringing in what we need for the winter. We have gathered the potatoes and onions, squash and dried fruit. We have canned tomatoes and jam. We have ordered dried beans, flour, what, and oatmeal. The wood for winter fires is in. The benches, table, and chairs from outside are in. The storm windows are up; the chicken coop is resting on an empty garden bed. Most of the compost work is done.  In the next few days, as the leaves fall and are swept into the street, we will pile them onto the cleaned out gardens. And then we will read, and rest, and take long walks in the damp winter world, waiting for the season to begin again with seed catalogs.

                       

Pumpkin Spirits, remembered

This si an old post, but I think we all need a little more protection in the coming Winter.    

Pumpkin Spirits guard our house on the thinnest nights of the year.  

            The first two spirit guards are the big pumpkins, carved with faces. We light them in the house and carry them out  the  front door. We walk around the house—North, East, South, West, through two gates, asking the spirits to protect the space for the winter. Mark places his in front of the dining room door; it is a face made from leaves this year. I carry mine to the front steps; a huge smile and a third eye watch the night.  Gaurdian Spirits.

            The second  two  are carved gourds from Sunbow farm, with thick skins. The designs are simpler—triangles and slits let the light through. These leave via the back door and  round the house as well. As I walk, I remember all of the fruits of the gardens—grapes, raspberries, flowers, figs, tomatoes, greens—and we place these in the back veg garden. Mark’s is on the bridge, mine under the collard patch where the rabbit likes to hide. Garden Spirits.

            The third spirit gourds are actually two votive holders of pumpkin faces that have been in the family for years. I gave my mother one for her birthday when I was twenty years old; I just liked the smile. We carry these small figures out of the dining room and around the house, still heading clockwise. One sits on the potting bench; the other watches from the thick wooden plank in front of the fireplace. They look towards the house, leading spirits in. I tuck my mother’s glass pumpkin into the strawberry plants at the feet of Saint Francis. Guiding Spirits.

            At night, before we climb into bed, I look outside. Small golden lights gleam in the darkness.

Dinner in the Time of Covid

 

    

            Wash hands. Turn on the frying pan and line it with olive oil. Chop the onion. Start dinner. Repeat. And again. And again.  The pandemic has stopped us from going out for the casual meal, but I have always cooked dinner regularly. It is the transitional ritual from work to home.

                My mother was a traditional daily cook. Every night, she made dinner—meat, potatoes, veg. Some nights it was pasta. Some weekend nights, it might be a roast. But she cooked from scratch (except for an occasional can of tomato soup for the top of the meatloaf and frozen veggies), every night. When we were traveling across the country in a camper, she cooked. We ate dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf, with the tourists walking by peering in. We ate dinner perched on the Western edge of the country, in rest areas in the Southwest, every night. Even when she worked full time,  it’s not like there were a lot of options in Hampstead New Hampshire—pizza and meatball subs, a fried clam bar in the summer,  a Chinese restaurant in the strip mall that held the grocery store ten miles away.  But everyone cooked. It was what you did.

                 When I was in college, cooking was my job. My roommate woke up at six AM on Saturday morning and cleaned the bathroom while I slept in until eight. I planned the meals, made the Friday afternoon grocery list, and cooked. We washed dishes together, harmonizing along with The Doobie Brothers “Black Water” and the Beatles. Even when I lived alone, for years, I cooked dinner. The menus shifted away from meat and potatoes and more to soups and bread, pastas and rice, mounds of local and seasonal  veggies, cooked and uncooked. On the road, I became the master of a finicky Coleman stove, slow cooking pots of beans while reading in the late afternoon at a campground. I kept the wok under the shelf. Even now, I make flatbread and farls, soups and stir fries when we travel. Mark jokes that he thought he might stick around when I handed him a hot dinner on a real plate in the back country off China Hat Road on an early road trip.

                So the pandemic hasn’t really changed much for us around dinner time. I cook. Mark washes dishes. We miss going out to dinner, not because of the food, but because we can just let someone else do the work and, more importantly, because you always see someone you know when you go out to eat in Corvallis. We are just not that big a town.  And I think that is what I am missing, far more than the break from cooking. The casual interaction with my neighbors—the parents of an old student or the table with a newly minted ninth grader eating with her family and wondering—do I say something?  Nod and smile? Or just announce it in class on Monday?  Eating at home every night breaks those delicate bonds that hold a community together, even as it strengths the ones that keep a small family close.

October

     

October. Maybe it is being raised in New England, surrounded by maple trees that range from deep red, to orange, to yellow, to green on one tree—sitting in the center of the glory, on a strong branch. Or it is the result of living for half of my life here, in the Pacific Northwest, knowing that, for every glorious day, there’s a cloud lurking over the hills, waiting to descend in its own delicate beauty over the hills. But I find myself drawn outside every afternoon to work the ground or walk the hills, storing up the beauty of the golden light for one more winter. October is the time to finish up the summer’s projects.

Yesterday, we washed the windows. We’re not good window washers. There are always streaks and spots left behind, but we get off the worst of the dirt and dust and bug poop from the summer. This year, between the mess we made washing the house for painting plus the ash fall in September, it was a major task. Mark washes outside. I wash inside. We also scraped paint. “You missed some glazing here,” he observed. “Next summer,” I replied. We are at that point. Next summer’s project list begins.

This afternoon, we worked in the school garden, realigning a couple of beds  and tossing down the cover crop. I’ve been prepping a bed a day all week and an hour on Sunday finished up the roughest beds. There’s plenty still to do- -tomatoes to pull, kale and carrots to weed, paths to mulch. But we took a few moments to consider future plans. We could tear out those evergreens and plant fruit trees. Put out benches so classes can come out and read. Keep pulling thistle and nut sedge and clear out the grass in the herb mound. Some of that will happen this fall, as long as the weather stays dry, but some is for next summer or the summer after that. The light slanted across the playing fields, struck the stained glass piece hung above the pollinator habitat, turned the world gold for a few moments.

We turn inward in the evenings, light a fire, eat a squash for dinner, wear wooly socks while we read. Soon, the clouds of winter will lay over us without a break—“there will be months of rain.”  But, right now, we hover on the cusp of the turning year, not quite ready to come inside. And  we start the plans for the next year.

Autumn Rituals

 

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               Sometime between Friday and Sunday, the season shifted. On Friday, walking home, I was thinking about socks—in a future tense sort of way. Someday, I would need socks again.  This morning, I was wearing socks. The rains had come blowing in--downpours in the night—and the temperature dropped.  We have moved into autumn behaviors.

1.       We have a fire in the fireplace.

2.       I turned on the chili pepper lights in the kitchen.

3.       Laundry is hanging on a rack in the living room.

4.       There are squashes and onions in the larder, potatoes under the stairs, cider in the fridge.

5.       The windows are closed.

6.       The cat did not go out last night, by her own choice.

7.       The chickens are living on a garden bed.

8.       There are no zucchini in the house, although there may still be a few in the garden.

9.       Socks. Big woolly sweater.

10.   Damp raincoats hang in the back hall.

11.   Piles of books, the New York Times, magazines scattered on the couch for Sunday reading.

12.   Lentil soup bubbles in the crockpot.

This winter, we fear, will be more challenging than others, but we are Hardy Folk, knowing how to both snug down for the afternoon and embrace the wild winds and rain on a morning walk.

Larder Repair

     

In early October, we finish up the filling of the larder for the winter. This year, it required a little more work. Because of a funky foundation that shifts as the ground grows wetter and then dries out in the summer, we have cracks between the wall and the foundation in the space that was once the garage and is now our cool storage area. There are already vents into the space and insulation surrounding it, so it was not the cold air that was the problem. It was the large slugs that found their way in last winter, slimed all over the walls, and munched on the beets. Gross!  When we emptied the space this fall to examine the problem, we also realized a rodent had visited once or twice, leaving behind some droppings. Gross!!

Mark has spent the last week consulting and working on a solution. We filled a large crack in the floor with sand, first. We considered a caulking material that could fill in the gaps around the foundation, but Mark was afraid it would not hold when the foundation shifted in the winter. I wondered if it would not just squirt out the other side. After several conversations, he decided on a fine hardware cloth, to tight for slugs or rodents to squeeze through, held in place with a wooden rail on top and heavy shelving bricks below. It would move with the foundation, he thought. As he worked, he also cleaned slug slime off of the walls and washed down the board and block shelves. It looks much better. We lifted the two 25 pound bags of onions in, added some garden squash and pumpkins, and some seed potatoes. Or the next few weeks, the stores will grow as we add more squash and garlic, some fermenting veggies, and an occasional haul of greens.

 

 

 

 

               

Tomato Processing

         

On Friday, we received a delivery of fifty pounds of paste tomatoes, enough, when processed, to feed us for the winter. They were glossy and firm—just beautiful in their tomato-ness. I fondled them all evening. The cat climbed into the box lid for the night.

                On Saturday, I processed tomatoes. First, I sliced them thin, taking off either end, and placed them in the food dehydrator. In about seven hours, they were dry, like chips. We will eat these, broken into bits, on salads, out of hand on hikes, and tossed into soups and stews when we need a hit of intense flavor. Meanwhile, they sit on the shelf in a quart canning jar, like all of the other dried fruits.

                Then, I started a double batch of crockpot sauce, in my two old crockpots—one avocado green, the other burnt orange, both with the traditional dancing veggies around the base. I leave the lid on until the tomatoes break down and simmer, then take them off so that it cooks down.  If I stir it every hour or so, it is done in five or six hours. Then, while the sauce is still hot, I can it in pint jars, processing in the steam canner for 25 minutes.  The pings greet me as I lift off the lid. Each crockpot yields four or five pints of sauce. I usually make crockpot sauce from my own tomatoes, because they come in more slowly and it lends itself to small batch work, but this was a good chance to fill in a few gaps.

                Once the crockpots and dryer are full, and the dining room begins to smell of cooking tomatoes, I move onto roasting. Quickly, I slice the tomatoes in half or in thirds, place them cut side down on a sheet pan, and pop them into a 350 oven. In about half an hour, they have wilted down to a paste with skins that I scoop into half pint jars. Sometimes the skins char a bit, but that’s ok. The half pints are also processed in the steam canner—I give them about 15 minutes if half a batch sat out and cooled down a bit while waiting for the second tray. Roasted tomatoes are great for pizza and other spreads and I also use them in soups and pasta sauce when I don’t want the tomato to dominate. They are drier than sauce so can be used in more places. It’s nice to get a bulk box of paste tomatoes to roast, because the process is messy, with lots of sheet pans and tools, so I like to do it all at once.

                As I finish, I haul the boxes of jarred tomatoes down into the basement, where they rest with the other winter stores. Pickles, jams, dried fruits, juices on one side, beans, grains, and dry goods on the other.  Onions and potatoes under the stairs, squashes in the larder. I feel like the mid-western grandmother in Greg Brown’s old song, who puts the summer in jars against hard cold winters.

               

Equinox Rains

 

        

        The rains returned on Thursday evening, heralding in the equinox with thunder and lightning.  Because it has been such a weird year—smoke in the valley, school on line, all of our usual seasonal markers thrown off—I did not recognize the rain for what is was, the return of green grass in the fall that happens every year about this time. Usually these rains are slow and deep, reaching into the ground and waking up our dormant grasses, sending my vines on one last frantic climb for the sky, signaling to the bees that it is a good time to pack in the last pollen for the year.  After months of dry air and dust, we rejoice in the familiar moisture in the air, the damp sidewalks, the smell of earth. This year, the rain came with a huge loud storm that flashed and rumbled until 2 AM and pooled on the earth. Still, it washed away the smoke and ash, cleared our air and minds and returning a small bit of balance to our lives.

Wildfire

 Labor Day was clear and quiet. I spent most of the morning trimming back brush, raking up leaves and twigs, and making huge deposits to Mark’s compost area. He chopped up the compost and talked to the chickens.  We picked plums. The air was clear and bright, the sky blue. In the late afternoon, the phone rang. It was the emergency weather service, alerting us to a major weather event—strong winds from the dry east would be blowing in by evening. Fire danger was increasing rapidly, as the air currents would push the flames ahead of them. Be careful. I climbed our big ladder and looked east, over the houses in the neighborhood. I could see a line of grey in the distance, like a wall. By the time I returned from working at Stone Soup, the air was smoky and golden, but still. We went to bed with the windows open, as we had every night all summer.

When we woke up in the morning, the wind was whipping around the house, blowing dust and ash everywhere. There was a pile of debris in the tub, blown in from the bathroom window. We moved around the house, closing everything up. Mr Beezhold, our rabbit, wanted to run around, so I let him out. A few hours later, I found him cowering in the rosemary and placed him back in the hutch, behind a piece of plywood to reduce the winds. I vacuumed up dirt and ash that still retained a glimpse of the wood it once was, washed floors, went to meetings and wrestled with prep for online teaching. By mid-morning , the sky was a lurid orange and it was deeply unpleasant outside.

By Wednesday, the air was absolutely still. The sky was thick with smoke and haze. We brought the rabbit inside—Mark thought he was depressed and ill. We looked the cat in as well, so that she would not obsesses over washing her fur.  School began—a strange, short day—and the light was a weird greenish brown.  Because there was no sun or solar gain, the air grew cold and clammy as well as smoky. We all hunkered down. Even the chickens went to bed early.

By Thursday, evacuees were coming into town. First, large animals, because the Linn county fairgrounds was full. Then people, camping at the fairgrounds and in motels. They had all fled the flames, got out just in time, with a car full of quickly assembled gear. Torn between tears of loss and gratitude for surviving, they arrived. On Friday, they were shopping at the local grocery store for the basics, learning where to go for different needs. Parking together in the lots, cars huddled near one another for company.

Meanwhile, the world has been so still. No one walks their dog by the house. The bees and birds are somewhere, but not in the yard. Even cars are gone—it is like the first days of the pandemic, without the brisk walkers. Since March, we have consoled ourselves with “at least we can go outside, walk around, breathe in the air.” But, right now, we can’t even do that. We are inside—all of us, with our pets, our drying laundry, our families, yet again. The contrast between the stillness here and the violence of the fires is stark. We feel helpless. What can we do?

Outside, the ideological battles are heating up as the weather cools, the fires slow down—but not stop—and a bit of sun breaks through this afternoon. The fires are caused by bad management of the resource (we should be cutting down more trees and clearing up windfalls), by man being careless, by lightening strikes and the big winds. And this may be true, but…the underlying reason that the fires are so huge is Climate Change. Our winters and springs are wetter, so more growth sprouts up early. Then the summers are drier, pulling all of the moisture from that new growth and turning it into fuel. We have known about the science for thirty years, at least.  Science warns us—more and bigger fires, storms, floods. More chaos in the weather systems. When I was younger, I thought, we’ll do something about this before it gets to bad. We really won’t destroy our planet, our home, our lives. It won’t get that bad. But it has.

And so, there is a lot of mourning happening here in the Willamette Valley this week. Jobs gone. Lives lost—human and animal. Homes and fragile communities destroyed. Beautiful wild places burned until the soil is sterile. Some of this will return. I know the huckleberry fields will be amazing in about ten years. Some will not. Communities, ecological and human, if can so divide them, may be gone forever.  What we have really lost, although we don’t want to admit it yet, is the faith that the world will return to normal, be as it was before. Because it will not.

Spartan Garden

 

When the pandemic struck, we all returned to our root behaviors. Some hid in the house; some frolicked on the beach; some found new places to volunteer their time. I met a friend at the public library on the last day it was open and we decided to take on the school garden. A few days later, we wandered over to look at it. The garden had been well designed about five years ago, but it had not had consistent love and maintenance for several years. Different groups had planted veggies, or set up mason bee houses, or met on the circle of logs for class on a sunny morning, but it was haphazard. It felt, in some ways, that the last group just….left one day, planning to come back, but never did. There were condiments in the fridge in the shed, but the electricity was off. There were stakes scattered around, and hoses in various spots, like you would leave them to finish the job but had to go home for supper. And, because it was late March, the weeds were Growing and spreading everywhere.

We tackled the weeds first. Leslie worked in the beds and finished one before moving onto another project. I pulled two buckets of thistle every visit and then worked on the herb mound. We pruned out old raspberry canes and pulled out the asparagus ferns. We got into the tool shed, painted the door, and cleared that up one rainy day.  We move some strawberries. We identified the dreaded nut sedge, a new weed for both of us. Lush and green, it pulled easily, but left a small nodule behind to grow again. We nagged the school landscapers to mow around the garden and the planter strip in the neighborhood.  We quickly covered a third of the garden in some extra heavy black plastic, because there was no way we could get it all in order—that made a huge difference. Neighbors walked by to weigh in on things and we sent them home with strawberries and artichokes.

For the first month or so, we weeded and imagined how the school could use the space. It could become the center of the Sustainability class; we could supply the Foods classes with fresh produce; students could come out and draw the leaves and write about the scents of the herbs for English and Art class.  What should we plant? Would we be back in school this spring? Doubt it. This fall? In May, it seemed reasonable, so we planned to fall crops. We brought all of our extra tomatoes over to plant a rainbow of color and flavor.  I planted a few extra potatoes. Leslie started squashes, small pumpkins, and popcorn at home and planted them out. We filled another bed with sunflowers. We debated—the same crop throughout the bed? Or bed of random extra plants from our starts?   We did both.

By late June, it looked like a garden again. By late July, it was promising a good harvest in the fall, and we were still hopeful that students would be around, at least part time, to eat the tomatoes. There was football practice happening on the field and a group of sophomore boys helped us move the potting table out of the blackberries. Everywhere we looked, we could see progress. The paths were mulch. The grape vine was growing up the signposts. The apples were filling out. The herb mound was clear of thistle.

There will not be students in school this fall. We gathered in the garden yesterday to plan forward. We’ll take the tomatoes into the staff room and put out a donation jar and we may add some more of our own produce, because we need mulch and fertilizer, cover crop seeds and some potting soil for the spring. We nailed the timing—if school opened on Wednesday, we could have a tomato tasting on Thursday and the Foods class could make applesauce on Friday. That’s good to know for next year. And we are farmers and teachers—we have faith that the world will return to normal. Students and teachers will be back in the building. The lessons we have learned this spring in summer will inform our practices going forward.  We have hope. It is our root.

Stress List....sometimes it is helpful to just lay it all out!

 

It’s been kind of a stressful week, so far….partly, it is the change of seasons, knowing that I have to move inside soon, back to a classroom, out of a garden and trails. But, this year, it feels bigger, like I am carrying so much more.  And it is hard to see what I can impact and what I need to let go.

1.       Climate Change. Even in the middle of pandemic, climate change is still happening. In April, emissions decreased by 17%, but it will not stay there—probably has already climbed back up. This is a huge threat to our lives and our planet.

2.       The elections. If they are close, especially, I am very worried about a national crisis. I’ve never been worried about the sanctity of the vote before, but I am this year.

3.       Systemic racism and violence, exacerbated by #2.

4.       Pandemic:

a.       OSU students returning, bringing more cases of the virus to my neighborhood. Constituents are afraid for their health and lives.

b.      Campgrounds are packed, as are other gathering places. We are not practicing social distancing, as a society.

c.       The economic fallout from this pandemic, which will impact both school and the city budgets. I get to make difficult choices in the next two years.

d.      This winter. We have made some adaptations because it is sunny and warm out. Stone Soup eats on the porch. What happens when winter comes? What happens to the homeless then?

5.       School starting.

a.       Online, which is so not my style.  School works because we bump into each other all the times. Online, we do not.

b.      Health concerns—mine and my students and colleagues. My eyes were giving out in the spring, when many students were not working hard and we were not required to be online 80 minutes at a stretch.

c.       No schedule yet. Although school is starting very soon, I do not know what I am teaching or when. I have five distinct preps that I teach- -which ones this year? Which semester? I would not care, but see point 5.a….

d.      All of the issues around school…. Access, equity, engagement…..they have not gone away. And I don’t think there is enough bandwidth on the planet for us all to be online at the same time.

6.       Fire season is about to begin. I saw lots of people with campfires in the wilderness a few weeks ago.

7.       Loss of community input because of changes at the city level. I am getting the fishy eye from people who are concerned that their voices will not be heard.

8.       Rogue councilor, because the concerns of my ward are unique in the city. We worry way more about some things—OSU, Climate Change—and less about others.

I know that I am healthy, I have a job that is stable and provides health insurance, that I can go outside and be in the woods in 20 minutes if I need to, that there is a community that surrounds me. I am lucky. But I am also deeply concerned about the health and welfare of that community, looking towards the future.

 

August

    

 I believe we all love the time around when we were born the best…it resonates deeply in our bodies. This is what the world should look like. For me, that time is late August, the time when the light shifts down in the sky and the end of summer is near. There’s a beauty in the aching sadness of ripe fruit, dry grass, and golden light tinged by dust and distant fires that brings my life to a standstill every year. The cat and I sit in the back garden, moving with the sun, soaking up the light for the long grey winter ahead.  

Mark and I pressed apples yesterday, using our new press. I wandered the neighborhood with my picker, harvesting apples from several abandoned trees that lean over rental housing fences. It’s a good year; I can feel the trees breathe a sigh of relief when I remove the fruit and the branches can reach upward again. In half an hour, I had two laundry baskets full of fruit, including some of our own. It took a while to figure out the new system, as we did not have a pre-pressing chopper, so the first round of just quarter fruit went nowhere. After I realized that the food processer could chop quartered apples quickly, we made progress. Juice flowed from all of the cracks, gushing into the bowl below. After two and a half hours, there was fruit pulp everywhere and a full professional kitchen pasta pot of juice. 14 quarts! And still lots of fruit in the neighborhood!

The house is painted and the tool bucket is unpacked, brushes and sandpaper returned to the basement shelves. In early mornings, the house glows against the deep blue sky—yellow and green, with dark red gutters and storm windows. We also repaired windows, and posts, and cracks in the bathroom. I painted bookshelves and the bedroom trim…if the pandemic keeps me in all winter, I will take on the kitchen.  If you add in a closet clean-out, reorganization of a the shed, and a purge of the lost space behind the shed, the house is in much better shape than it was last winter. According to the salesperson at Miller paint, I am not the only one tackling home repair this summer.

Late August and early September are the most beautiful months in the high Cascades….I miss the solitude of mountains this summer, because the trails have been packed with people escaping tourists to their towns and looking for a safe place to be. We spent the night at Duffy lake last week—every site was taken in the middle of the week. We need to go further in if we want to find peace and quiet, or wait a few weeks until school begins again.

Meanwhile, the cat and I are sitting in the back yard in the morning, watching the hummingbirds dive around the flowers, the woodpecker check out the greenhouse—no bugs here!—and the light shine on the seedheads of lovage and mustard. Mr. Beezhold nibbles on the dried cherries on the ground. The chickens argue over who owns the nesting box. Late August.

 

Letter to OSU Trustees on school reopening

 

Dear trustees of Oregon State University,

 

I am addressing you today because of my deep concerns around OSU reopening in the fall for in person instruction.  As the City Councilor for Ward Five, which has the highest proportion of Oregon State students in the city, I was gathering signatures for my re-election campaign.  I talked with many of my constituents. The common concern—OSU students returning in the fall. What is the plan to keep us safe? How will we monitor and control for the virus and its spread?  What is the community testing schedule?  Is OSU coming back? Why?

We live in the heart of the student community, north of campus. We observe OSU student behavior every day. Many are very respectful, serious, focused, working hard, wearing a mask when they cannot maintain social distancing—ideal members of the community during a pandemic. However, others are not. We have regularly seen groups of students gathered in backyards, drinking, playing beer pong, lighting off fireworks, mingling and talking loudly, without masks, without social distancing.  We have seen large groups of students hanging out in front of townhouses, as if the entire block of five bedroom apartments was one quarantine pod. We have raised these concerns with Steve Clark and Benton County Health, and the response has been “Students live in congregate housing. That’s what you are seeing.” It is not. We know who are neighbors are—we know there is considerable mixing of households happening throughout the ward.  We also know that, because of the design of the infill “student” housing, many students are living five—or more—to a unit. We cannot monitor behavior in private homes and backyards and we should not.  It is nearly impossible to control the spread of a virus in these conditions.

Nothing has really changed about the pandemic since we closed schools in March. The county now has a plan for where to store the dead, if we have a spike in severe cases. We have some regulations in place that allow businesses to hobble along for the time being. But, we do not have a cure or a vaccine. We do not fully understand how the virus is spread, how long antibodies last—if they do—and how to test the entire community regularly. We do know that the virus load will go up in the winter, as people move inside with the coming of the rains. We also know that the virus load will rise much more dramatically if we add ten thousand new people, from around the state and the country, to the community mix.

Schools across the country are weighing their options and making the very hard choice to go online this fall. I understand the difficulty of that choice. As a high school English teacher, I would give up many things—eating out on Friday nights for ever—to be able to work with my students face to face this fall. I would much rather be speaking to you directly right now.  I have experienced the difficulties of working with struggling students online. I have seen many a meeting fall apart because of a failure of technology. I deeply believe the most meaningful teaching and learning occurs face to face, when you can build relationships through daily proximity. However, I am not willing to put the lives of our elders, the long term economic success of our small businesses, and the real education of our children—all of our children—at risk for the short term financial  and educational gains of a few.

Please make the right choice for the health of us all and cancel in person instruction for the fall term and longer, if needed.

 

Sincerely,

Charlyn Ellis

Corvallis City Councilor, Ward Five

Corvallis High School English teacher

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary's Peak

Last week, we climbed Mary’s Peak, our local mountain—Connor’s Camp to the rock garden, then down via the Tie trail, if you want to know the route. We do it every summer, about this time, usually clutching a botany book or two. This year, we left the books behind, so we are only greeting old friends along the way: the phantom orchid right before the trail really begins, the senicio triagularis on the corner of a turn, the monkey flowers in the seep that tumble down through the woods so that you pass their relatives several times along the route. We paced ourselves up the hill, admiring the huge gallery forest of trees and the glimpses of the valley below. There were no other people on the trail; it was so quiet.

There is an old rotting Douglas Fir beside the path. It fell in a storm and the Forest Service cut it so that it no longer blocked the trail. You can see inside, watch the wood slowly decay, leaving only the roots of the branches behind, because that wood is the strongest of all. Looking in, it is a dragon’s maw of teeth, circling down the trunk, lit from the other end. Riverteeth, David James Duncan called them—what is left of your memory when all of the details are gone, the emotional core of the experience.  What are our Riverteeth? What is left behind, as we grow old?

As I climb the mountain, Mark falls behind to examine a flower. He is, always, a stop and start hiker, his eye and mind pulled to and fro by the natural world. How does that bent branch happen? Is that the same penstemon as the one I just passed?  Why is the rock changing here?  I am a steady state hiker, letting my mind wander, but my feet keep going. My stride matches the rhythm of my mind and heart. I remember the riverteeth forming below, the roots upthrust from a tree blown down, and consider my own roots… and how the pandemic reveals our emotional roots and our core selves.

Steady up, nodding to the familiar flowers, roots, and rocks that mark our trail. Steady. We emerge into sunlight, bright blue sky, fields and open space, skirt the meadow, and join the old road to the top, passing the rock garden’s deep red Indian Paintbrush, Blue Gilia, and Oregon Sunshine, the late blooms, as we circle upwards. At the top, we pause, eat our lunch, and name the mountains. Is that Hood? Ranier?! Yes. A line of cloud marks the ocean. We are rooted. Perhaps this trail has become a Rivertooth, ingrained in our spirits, a yearly ritual of return.  

Pandemic Potato Harvest

Last January, I ordered seed potatoes from Johnny’s, because they have the best price and selection; I have deep suspicions that other companies don’t want to mess with the home grower trade any longer, when it comes to potatoes. All Blue and Yukon Gold were on the purchase rotation this year. Usually, they arrive in early April, which is a little late for me because I like to raise them with as little water as possible, so I plant in mid-March.  I deal.

This year, I planted my saved seed potatoes on time and prepped the other bed, and waited. No potato box. And waited.  No box. The weather was perfect for potato planting.  And waited. “It’s the pandemic,” I thought. “They are behind.” Finally, I emailed. We had a bad potato year, they told me. First a freeze, then the pandemic. We don’t have your potatoes. This is Bad News for an Irish potato eater!  It was mid-April.  It was too late to order from anyone else—and they were not the only company in potato crisis—so I dug into the last sad, small All Blue potatoes in my basement storage. Wrinkled. Sprouted. Small—the rejects of a winter’s rummaging in the bag for the right sizes for that dinner. Oh well, I thought, let’s toss them in. Can’t hurt. They filled about two thirds of a bed. I added a couple of extra tomato plants to fill it, allowed a volunteer pumpkin to grow on one side, and let it grow.

The vines never grew huge, unlike the other bed of potatoes, planted back in March. They died back early, too. I did not have high hopes, but I let them be. Today, I looked at the bed, at the fall starts sitting on the potting bench, waiting for the potatoes to come out so they could have a home, and decided it was time. I pulled back the straw mulch and started digging. Several small hills were cleared out and then I hit a Big potato. Not bad, I thought. More Big potatoes, mixed in with the usual small and medium sized tubers. I tossed them into the waiting paper bag, which filled up quickly.  When I was done, I carried them inside to the scale. Eighteen pounds. Not the best All Blue harvest—we’ve gone up to about 40 pounds on new seed stock—but not too shabby, either.  And knowing that you never get them all, there might be a few surprises underneath the fall crops that I planted out afterwards.