I’ve been seeing reviews all over the place of Barbara Kingsolver’s new book about eating locally — she’s not necessarily one of my favorite writers, but between this interview over at Salon, and this piece she wrote for Mother Jones I might just have to go get a copy. Here’s a quote from the Mother Jones article: Supermarkets only accept properly packaged, coded, and labeled produce that conforms to certain standards of color, size, and shape. Melons can have no stem attached; cucumbers must be no less than six inches long, no more than eight. Crooked eggplants need not apply.…
-
-
I’ve been making the no-knead bread regularly all winter. A loaf a week or so — last week I made rolls from the dough for sandwiches — they were okay, not as good as the regular no-knead since I didn’t do them in the Le Cruset.Yesterday, I had a loaf proofing and I thought I’d experiment with baking it as a loaf. I have an old carbon-steel loaf pan — I don’t know where it came from — maybe the box of stuff my mother sent me when she gave me her KitchenAid Mixer — but I figured that I’d…
-
This is the new bed I dug on Sunday. And this: is the bed I have yet to dig. The second bed defeated me. I’m not a very big person, and so digging means sticking the flat-end spade in, standing on it, and either wiggling it side to side or sort of jumping on it until it goes in. Because this is old sod, I have to do this from a couple of angles before I can pull up a chunk of sod, shake as much soil off as I can, and then chuck it in the can for the…
-
The entire day I searched for spring but spring I could not find, In my straw sandals I tramped among the mountain peak clouds. Home again, smiling, I finger a sprig of fragrant plum blossoms; Spring was right here on these branches in all of its glory! Plum Blossom Nun (via the Nebraska Zen Center)
-
It’s sunny and gorgeous today, and most of my seedlings have gotten their second set of leaves, so out they go for their first day in the cold frame. It’s supposed to be sunny and gorgeous all weekend — the apple trees are leafing out, there are spinach and Italian mustard green seedlings sprouting — the chives and the Chinese garlic chives are up (I thought the garlic chives were a total loss, but the 2nd year they came up beautifully, and now they seem to be self-seeding all over the place). I’ve also got some raddicchio and chicory that…
-
It’s been a grim spring here weather-wise. Cold. Gray. Snowy. Gray. And yet, it’s been warm enough that these pretty daffodils bloomed. I don’t even remember planting them — they must have been in the batch I bought from one of Nina’s kids as a fundraising thing. At any rate, I was silly enough to plant them right under the dripline from the porch, so they got kind of battered, poor things. I’m always torn about picking flowers from the garden — where will I enjoy them more? Outside? or inside? But since these had broken stems from the water…
-
Well, this is a week I don’t think anyone will be sorry to see end. The creative writing connection to this whole Virginia Tech tragedy really threw me for a loop for a couple of days. I have a couple of advanced degrees in Creative Writing and I spent almost 7 years teaching undergraduate writing. There’s been a lot written this week about the ubiquity of oddball students, and the difficulty of determining who is odd, and who is dangerous. I never had anyone who was seriously disturbed — just the garden-variety stories about beautiful twins who are model/assassins and…
-
All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking. The idea, for example, that each particular erases the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch is, by his presence, some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light. Or the other notion that, because there is in this world no one thing to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds, a word is elegy to what it signifies. We talked about it late last night and in the voice of…
-
After the bear came back a second night, and bashed in the Mighty Hunter’s front door, he called the game warden who brought this impressive culvert trap over and parked it in the back yard. About eight last night we heard clanging noises and went out to watch the warden set the trap and bait it with bacon and raw chicken … there we were, the MH, me, and all the neighbors, watching the game warden and thinking about bears. So, off to sleep we went, half an ear cocked for bear noises outside. I had bear dreams all night…
-
The MH called this morning to tell me there was a bear in his neighbor’s yard last night. Looks like it came up the creek from the river, and took out the neighbor’s birdfeeder. He said there wasn’t too much damage, but the sliding glass door is covered in big bear paw prints. We discussed whether I should take my feeder down — I’ve really come to love my little birdfeeder. It’s right outside the kitchen window and watching the birds is such a pleasure when I’m doing dishes. They’re just ordinary little birds: sparrows and finches and chickadees with…