so long summer 2011

Kindred Spirits?

but I wasn't there on Sunday . . . damn.

I was recently in West Seattle for business and found myself in a quaint little area with fantastic shops, food abounding, and a plethora of “really cool” people. My stay lasted three days. In those three days this is what I learned:

1) I very likely will never live in a big city again
2) Although Seattle is the birthplace of Starbucks and the coffee craze, all the really good places served and promoted Stumptown Coffee
3) No matter how nice PACNW people are, if you cram them all into a city with lots of traffic and limited sidewalk space they are all kind of crappy to everyone else around them
4) I have finally come to accept that I like living in a 100 year old house, in a 100 year old town where everyone knows everyone elses name, has an awesome local coffee roaster, great bread baker, really beautiful with tons of places to walk and bike, very little traffic (knock on wood), and good local wine tasting every first Friday.

Basically, as much as I love Seattle and enjoy visiting, it ain’t all that.

the laundry line

I love line-dried laundry. The smell, the texture, the feel of fresh hung clothes. To walk between the lines on a hot afternoon and feel the coolness of sheets against my skin, the memories of running between the lines of sheets at my grandmother’s as a child. I love not using the dryer for months and months each year. I love opening the linen closet in February and happening upon a set of sheets or towels that smell like summer. I encourage anyone to use a clothesline; collapsable models ready to go, take up a 5×5 area and are under $50.

The Berkeley Trip

Berkeley Farmer's Market

I love baseball. A lot. And each year I get to go to a new stadium in celebration of my birthday. This year it was the Oakland A’s but we stayed in Berkeley, and boy oh boy was that a good decision.

UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens

Chez Panisse, gourmet ghetto, Berkeley

Kite flying at the Berkeley Marina, Cesar Chavez Park

Northern California Coast

The Redwoods

New Beginnings

quince

4 new laying hens, a new garden plan (again), hellebores and crocus in bloom, clematis ready to burst, peach tree budded and healthy, forced quince in the house, seeds and transplants ready to go into the ground . . .

All whispered with a please, please, please let this be a better season than last. PLEASE.

Embracing it

Formal French Kitchen Garden

I am a lot of things -
mother, wife, organized, short, lover of fresh tomatoes and goat milk mozzarella, fan of black plants, and contemporary art.

One thing I am not is a cottage gardener. I’ve tried embracing a new path in the garden world with meandering paths, overly-voluptious planting areas, and a big, ununiform planting style. The end has come. I am embracing my inner-stodginess and am restructuring the garden this year. I love formal lines, linear paths, and the crisp clean edge of a formal garden. As I tell friends and clients alike, a garden is a journey, part of who you are at the time you are planting it and it reflects where you are in life at that particular time. So, I am embracing it. Wholely. Here is to an entirely new year full of new opportunities, paths, and weather.

Ready for it

dreaming of summer flowers

july that is. i’m ready for mid-summer and all the wonderful things it brings but i will settle for mid-january and all the wonderful things it brings – seed catalogs, new garden plans, bareroot fruit trees, frost, snow, quietude, art projects, and the like. i do embrace january and february, especially the bitterly cold ones, but my heart is with summer adventures and fresh food from the garden. the freezer and the pantry will do for now, if you have a chance, get a case of asparagus this year. it makes THE BEST frozen asparagus soup that makes the mouth happy during these winter days. i must admit january is the harbinger of what i really look forward to – the beginning of classes. i get excited just thinking about evenings spent sharing with my community the amazing world of backyard vegetable gardening. so here is to it my friends, a great gardening year, a great year of learning, and a better year all around than 2010.

2010

seeing the light through the trees

We’re on the cusp of a new year. A new beginning with nothing but the world of possiblities ahead of us. Take this time, this time right now, this moment, to be thankful for all you have, all you love, and for all that will come in the next year. We’re all living through a time of questions, fear, and uncertainty.

Find your one thing that is true and hold onto it.

Let your mind wander towards all the possiblities, not only for the garden next year, the cold frame that is soaking up the sun’s rays this instant, and the plants struggling in your kitchen window but for all the things that make your life worth living each moment of each day even on those that are the darkest.

rejoice. take the time, now. and rejoice.

summer 2010 in review

it wasn’t a great summer for food production. it was a farmer’s loss, a “hope it will be better next year” kind of year. but it was summer and wonderous things happen during the summer during long days, warm evenings, shooting star sightings, camping trips, and some great food here and there.

golden hops just before harvest for beer brewing

blue skies and giant rudbeckia

27 fist-sized amazingly delicious frost peaches

giraffe moth while geocaching along spirit highway

camping shadow portrait

from the garden - lettuce, spinach, cilantro, tomatoes, peaches, bacon, and chevre

Blast from the Past

early 1900s slaughter floor

So I’ve been reading my way down memory lane the last few months. It’s always an adventure to re-read a book that you read as a teenager or in a time in your life that doesn’t resemble in any aspect the life you lead now. Last summer it was John Steinbeck, everything by Steinbeck, and I still love the same books (East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men) but found that stories that I really loved in highschool (Cannery Row) just weren’t as great this time around.

So I’ve been wandering that funny line between things I loved to read, things I read because I had to, and books I read because I was in SPGR (Students for Peace through Global Responsibility), card carrying member of PETA and Greenpeace, and took environmental-leaning law classes in highschool. I loved Silent Spring, anything by Wendell Barry, Aldo Leopold, and Edward Abbey. And then there was Upton Sinclair. I tried. Really, really tried but it just didn’t work for me, until now. He isn’t the best writer, isn’t the most fluid, the most polished, or the most interesting to read. But after being neck deep in food, foodies, food politics, and anything else involving food for the last 10 years or so it all became startlingly clear especially during this Labor Day Weekend.

The Jungle, written in 1904, granted was the open door on exploitation, capitalism gone wrong, workers rights, and labor unions, but it was also about FOOD. After decades of food, health, and inspection laws we are right back where we started with even higher instances of Salmonella and E coli outbreaks due to unsanitary conditions, unhealthy living and eating conditions for slaughter animals, and just plain ‘ol poor animal husbandry practices, not to mention the outrageous environmental impacts that feedlots inflict. Want a decent read that is an open door to the current political, worker rights (still migrant), and food and health issues look no further than a book that was written over 100 years ago.

What does that say about American society, that for the last century we have perpetuated a failing, unhealthy food system, and continue to expand on a model that works for no one except large corporations. Baffling.

Okay, I’m off the soapbox now.