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.

 

The Heroic Journey: Painting the House

We have embarked upon the Heroic Journey of Painting The House.

 

1.       The Call: Bubbling paint. Cracked windows.  Weird brown seeping through some paint—is that water damage? It is time.

2.       Gathering of Allies:  The pandemic. After all, what else do I have to do? I am not going anywhere, so I may as well do something useful. I bought the paint in March.

3.       Guardian of the Threshold:  Should I hire help? In the past, I have hired a high school student to help out. They needed to be reliable, reasonably tidy, trustworthy over my head with a can of paint, and entertaining. No one wants to be caught on a hot wall with a kid talking about a video game.  But, with the pandemic, it seemed dicey to try and hire someone, so we are on our own.

4.       Road of Trials:  Where to start?

a.       The Very Wet Wood by the bathroom window required the replacement of four boards.

b.      The cracked windows have been both difficult to remove—why is the glazing so tight around broken panes and so loose around solid ones, every time?—and replace, as we clearly cannot measure correctly.

c.       Dead caulking everywhere. I have pulled out long pieces of dead caulk above the windows and under some clapboards.

5.       The Gift: Going wall by wall to completion. I started on the front wall behind the grape vines in early April, so that was completed before the vines grew out. Having an area done and back in order was so gratifying that I decided to use that plan all along. I pull part a wall, trim back the plants, wash, scrape, glaze and caulk, paint, and reassemble. It glows. Then I admire for a day and move on. The mess is contained, too.

6.       Transformation: Will come, with a house that, once again, glows like a nasturtium in November.

7.        Return with Glory: House done. Time to move onto the shed. Or maybe the rental windows? And the process begin again….

 

The Fourth of July

When I was young, I loved the Fourth of July. My uncle, aunt, and four cousins lived on Sunset Lake in what was a essentially a summer cabin, and, every summer, my parents parked the camper in their driveway and my mother and I settled in. My dad came up on weekends. Between my father, uncle, and grandfather, they scraped together enough money to buy an old wooden motorboat, which they docked beside the metal rowboat I would take into the swamp early in the morning. It was heaven.

The Fourth began the night before, with the bonfire in Kingston Commons.  Every year, they built a pyre out of old railroad ties, mounted a car on top, and set it on fire. As a small child, the sight of the flames reflected in the revolutionary era houses that line the common terrified me, but I came to love the event. There was a carnival, with rides and games, nearby, and, as we grew older, our parents would let us roam free, as long as we showed up at the bonfire spot on time. Nine, eight, and seven, we reveled in the independence.  We stayed up late to watch the car fall in a shower of sparks and cheers, then piled into my aunt’s station wagon for the ride home. The youngest fell asleep. My aunt and mother belted out popular tunes: “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “The Green Berets” were popular.

On the Fourth itself, we swam (nothing new there), begged my father to take the boat out and steer it in tight, fast circles so that we leapt the waves of the wake and screamed “Do it again!” over and over, and ate macaroni salad and grilled hotdogs for dinner.  The radio played tinny songs all afternoon—“In the summertime, when the weather is fine, we go swimming or go fishin all the time.” After dinner, we pulled rough sweatshirts over sunburned shoulders, and went back to the carnival for the fireworks.  Everyone sighed after each burst of color in the sky…a unified delight.

When I grew older, I read the Declaration of Independence to my mother as she made the potato salad, considered what I knew of history, and how many of the references I understood. Growing up in New England, I caught most of them and explained them to my mother, as a trapped audience.  My mother and aunt still sang together, although they preferred “I am Woman” and “United we stand, divided we fall, and if our backs should ever be against the wall, we will be together, you and I” with dramatic arm motions.

So I am dismayed, now, that I really dread the Fourth of July. It’s not that I understand more about our complex history and the slow, painful struggle that many have endured in their own search for freedom and independence in our country. It is not that I no longer believe in the words of the Declaration—I do.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” ring as true now – if you replace men with people-- as they did over 200 years ago. It is not that we are so fractured as a country that we no longer even sigh in unified wonder as each firework bursts overhead in a public display.

The Fourth of July has become one more reason to drink, bellow, light off more fireworks every year, turning our neighborhoods into “war zones” for hours, terrorizing dogs and vets with PTSD, along with the rest of the populace, in the name of patriotism. We have lost our reverence for our history, for the founding of the country we all claim to love, for our neighbors. Somehow, we have to bring that back.

Garden Volunteers

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Volunteers. Given time and space, they move in and take over. Weeded out too vigorously, and the garden is barren, orderly, and empty of surprises.  In an established patch, they are in balance. In June, the choices we have made all spring become clear.

There are a wide variety of volunteers… first, the free seeders. I bought one packet of borage 18 years ago and we have never lacked for the herb since, which is fine because we love the flowers and the chickens love the leaves and seeds. Love in a Mist has taken over the dry shade under the apple tree and creates a bank of blooms and funky seedheads in May and June. One lemon balm plant has become hundreds. Lovage, while less prolific, is huge when it does appear. Feverfew creates a nice filler in a bouquet, as does the Lady’s Mantle that has moved into the paths between garden beds. Wild seeded cosmos and nasturtiums bloom before the May planted every year.

Once you have  potato crop, you always have a potato crop, a friend observed one spring. It’s true. Every one of my beds has at least one potato, every year, despite constant rotations and careful harvest. They appear in early March, telling me that the soil is warm enough to plant the crop. I can pull a few plants for the Fourth of July and have new potato salad for dinner. There is usually at least one very vigorous plant  sprawling out of the compost bins until the chickens eat the leaves. When I weigh the harvest, I calculate in the volunteers.

Three years ago, I tossed the insides of our carving pumpkins into the garden. The next spring, before I realized it, a vine was sprawling across the beans, so I rigged up a trellis and rope and lifted it above my head. Four huge, round pumpkins grew off of the vines, slowing turning orange in late August. They became the Halloween pumpkins. Last October, when I tossed those seeds, I was thoughtful about their placement and settled them at the base of my new cattle panel hoop. In April, they seeds sprouted and the vines are well on their way up and out. There is another vine crawling out of the potato bed…

The structure of the vegetable garden is orderly and linear—all of the beds are ten feet long, four feet across, raised boxes, with three foot paths between. They are sized to hold the chicken coop—four feet by five—during the winter months.  The main paths end in blue gates that lead to the chicken run and the compost bins. Each bed has its own soaker hose, which can be turned on and off at will. This imposed order is essential. However, the cheerful chaos of a volunteer pumpkin vine making a run for freedom and flowers blooming where they were not planted break the patterns every day.

 

Compost Piles

One of the benefits of the Stay Home, Save Lives spring has been the ability to wander out into the back yard and see how things are growing.  When my eyes are tired of looking at the screen, they are happy to rest on the hunt for the cabbage worm eating in the center of the broccoli plant. And, because it has been warm, wet season, everything is growing madly.

We  are also working on the compost mounds. The pruning and trimming of shrubs and trees is finally done—the Camilla has to wait until after the bloom—and everything has been hauled back and piled up next to the fence. Over the next few weeks, we will cut it all up, using everything from the Big Loppers to hand trimmers—and the occasional stomp—and fill the wire bins. We should work from one bin to the next, so that there is an order to the decomposition, but, occasionally we give into convenience and toss branches into the nearest bin. Mark has used a chipper in the past and it produced some really nice compost in a much shorter period of time, but it was loud and not conducive to Deep Thought, so he has returned to the hand cutting method. These days, as he is also working from home, he will wander out to the pile and trim while considering a sticky problem. Cutting compost is an ongoing meditative process.

Occasionally, we grow an extra potato.

There are three wire bins. We prefer bins because of their flexibility; when one is full and ready to be sifted, Mark pulls the wire away, sets it up into its new spot, and begins (with the help of the chickens) to sift out the finished compost and to toss the pieces that need some more time into the new circle. We add the kitchen and garden scraps to that bin while the others work in peace. There is room for five full bins in the work area, but we only have three, so we can move things around. By late July, there will be one hoop of fresh chopped material, one sprawled on the ground being sifted, and one working on decomposition.  There will also be an old garbage bin full of sifted compost for me to distribute to the raspberry and gooseberry beds out front.

Working on the compost mounds is a steady process and cycle in our lives. Tucked into the back corner, it s never tidy, never done, and a constant work in progress.

Rhubarb

When I was little, I found rhubarb terrifying. There was something about those big, crinkly leaves, the way it grew so quickly in the spring, the deep red stalks that gave me the creeps. I would hide behind the barn and peer around the corner, just to shiver at the sight. I did not like large vegetables, overgrown or otherwise. Even today, a huge zucchini emerging from the undergrowth will make me scream. There’s something wrong about it.

That being said, I have two rhubarb plants in my back garden and there are six more thriving in the school garden, where I have been working to restore order. So, it is the season. I made a rhubarb cake, which we love and ate quickly. Then I made some rhubarb pickles because I have been pickling everything lately. They were…ok. Maybe they are getting better over time, as the flavors meld. I’ll check again in couple of days. That left quite a bit of the plant, so I tried the rhubarb marmalade in the newspaper. Yum. I simplified the recipe a little bit and it feels more like a jam to me, but the flavors are amazing.  Who knew a scary plant could become so tasty.

Rhubarb Marmalade

Makes about 7 half pints

•About 2¼ pounds rhubarb, cut into ½-inch pieces to measure 8 cups

•4½ cups granulated sugar

•2 oranges, zested and chopped

•1 lemon, zested and chopped

•¼ cup finely chopped candied ginger

In non aluminum bowl, combine the rhubarb with the sugar. Cover and let stand overnight at room temperature.

Place the prepared oranges and lemon in a heavy pot, along with the rhubarb and sugar mixture, and the butter. Bring the mixture to a full rolling boil over medium high heat, stirring frequently. Reduce the heat to a slow boil and continue simmering, stirring frequently, until the mixture has reached the jelly stage (220 degrees from sea level up to 1,000 feet; 216 degrees at 2,000 feet; 214 degrees at 3,000 feet; 212 degrees at 4,000 feet; 211 degrees at 5,000 feet; 209 degrees at 6,000 feet; 207 degrees at 7,000 feet; 205 degrees at 8,000 feet), stirring constantly, about 8 minutes to 10 minutes.

Remove from heat, add ginger and rind. Let sit for about 2 minutes, then skim off any foam that has accumulated. Ladle the marmalade into individual containers for storage in the refrigerator or freezer.

For long-term storage at room temperature: Have 7 half-pint canning jars washed and ready for filling when the marmalade is through cooking. Prepare canning lids as manufacturer directs. While it is still hot, ladle into 1 clean and hot canning jar at a time, leaving ¼-inch head space. Wipe jar rim with a clean damp cloth. Attach lid. Fill and close remaining jars. Process in a boiling-water canner for 10 minutes