Keeping the Faith

I had a singularly disappointing gardening season. Forget the perennial beds, badly in need of re-shaping and re-positioning of virtually every plant - the physical labor has become too much for me. But I did have hopes for the vegetable garden, which requires less muscle. I was late starting seeds, but thanks to good gardening friends, had a decent selection of tomatoes and peppers to put out.

The bunnies found their way into the enclosure and ate first the green beans, then the carrot tops, then the Swiss chard - down to the very ground. Next, the squirrels laid claim to the early tomatoes, devouring the fruit the moment a hint of red appeared. I threw up my hands, satisfied that we at least had had a decent strawberry crop, and turned my attention to finishing the kitchen renovation and trying to schedule a kidney transplant.

To my surprise, in these waning days of summer, the garden has rebounded. The cherry tomatoes are coming in sweet and thick and fast, the mini-peppers and poblanos are thriving, and there are three gorgeous eggplants almost ready to pick. The leeks have survived my benign neglect and lack of weeding, and while the beets succumbed to some mysterious ailment that caused the roots to disappear overnight, I have hope for the potatoes. The strawberry patch is happy and healthy, a good omen for next year.

I am trying to keep the faith.

Worship

AND LO, the temperatures rose above 50 *F.

YEA VERILY, I arose with the dawn and donned immediately my Good Gardening Shoes.

AND I SAID UNTO the Husband, Forsooth, I shall garden all of this day.

And so it came to pass, and it was exceeding good.

Scenes from a Summer

So, in between bitching about being tired and watching my new deck being built, it turns out that we did actually have a wonderful summer.

I found a little time to garden:







And Garrick and I spent a wonderful day in Manhattan feeding pigeons and visiting the Bodyworlds exhibit:



We drove up to the Finger Lake region to visit family, and Quin & Garrick met some second cousins they didn't even know they had:





Garrick got a short lesson in boat driving from Uncle Ernie:




While up north, we took a side trip to Niagara Falls. That's a whole lotta water.



While there, we visited the aviary down at the end of the strip and Quinlan made a friend:



We saw a wonderful production of "Cherry Orchard" at the Shaw Festival while we were up there, and afterward, on the sidewalk, Garrick got the thrill of his life upon encountering the actress playing the young ingenue.

We also made our annual pilgrimage to the Jersey shore:





Due to crazy, rainy weather, we grabbed our beach time when we could. Those are my kids in the moonlight.



And I celebrated my mid-life crisis by cutting off all my hair.



All in all, an eventful summer!

Harvest

I'll write a real post soon. But meanwhile, I'm falling back on the blogger's best cop-out -- garden photos. All of the below bounty came out of my garden on Sunday. Harvesting food that we've grown gives me a rare visceral delight.




From left to right: lettuce of many colors, Swiss chard in red and green, broccoli, sungold tomatoes, broccoli raab, and basil standing up behind.





Looks good enough to eat.

Things About Which I Have Not Blogged

My New Haircut

On good days, I feel like Louise Brooks, minus the bangs.




















On bad days, I feel like Willy Wonka.








Our April Beach Trip

An empty beach is a thing of beauty. I slept 16 hours per day.
















The Wonders of a Cold Frame

We've been harvesting Swiss chard from last year's plants since April 15. For realz.
















Garrick's Birthday

He now goes all the way to eleven.



























My Last-Ever Elementary Chaperoning Experience

The mud in the Stone Harbor wetlands is super-strength.





























































My Neglected Garden

Is giving me peonies and strawberries. We're picking almost a quart per day. NOM.

Tongue-Tied

Oh, my pretties.  The real world is crashing in in horrible ways that I can't (yet) blog about.  So I will share good news and a recipe, and hope for better days to come.

THE GOOD NEWS: Gwen and her kids are safe and well, and the support of the internets enabled her to keep her lights on.  Well done, us!  She is keeping her blog private for now on the advice of her lawyer, and she could really use some good thoughts this week -- after which, hopefully, she will be able to come out of hiding and start to rebuild.  Bless you all for your help.

THE RECIPE: This is one of the best snacks EVAH, and is best consumed in bed with the TV on after the kids are asleep.  If you will feel compelled to share with anyone else who happens to be in your bed at that point, double it.

• Preheat your toaster oven to 375*.  (You can use a big oven if you have to, but allow enough time for it to really heat up.)
• Melt 1 tablespoon of salted butter and brush it all over a flour tortilla.  (White flour, please.  None of this whole wheat nonsense.)
• Lick melted butter from your fingers.
• Cut the flour tortilla into 8 wedges and place on a baking tray (the little one that came with the toaster oven is perfect) or a piece of foil.
• Toast until firm and just starting to color -- think straw-golden rather than golden-brown.  In my oven, this takes 3-4 minutes.
• Forage the final container of last summer's pesto out of the freezer and dollop about 1 teaspoon of it on each wedge.  If you're feeling fancy, spread the pesto a bit.
• Top the pesto with a thumbnail-sized blob of goat cheese.  Herbed is fine, but by no means necessary.
• Lick goat cheese from your fingers.
• Put the tray back in the toaster oven and heat until the goat cheese gets a bit melty and the tortilla gets golden-brown around the edges -- another 3-4 minutes in my toaster.
• Eat while warm, and plant more basil in the garden for this summer's pesto.

Every Day a Little Death

In our house it is birthday season, which begins with Quin in April, follows with Garrick in May, and concludes with me and Michael in June and July. As Garrick requested a pool party this year, we are carpetbagging at the YMCA (to which we do not belong) and I am inwardly grateful to be avoiding a house party.

So I ducked out of the office today to drive over to the Y and sign the contract, and didn't realize until I halfway there (because I am carpetbagging) that this YMCA is next door to the retirement community where my grandmother lived out the last, difficult months of her life, and I was suddenly grief-stricken. I haven't been to her real home (outside Poughkeepsie, New York) since we buried her ashes in November 2007, and the impulse to go visit and sit by her graveside and strew zinnia seeds was so overwhelming, I nearly headed straight for the Jersey Turnpike.

And I started thinking, while I drove, of all the things she hasn't witnessed (Quin's straight-A report cards, Garrick's incredible creative writing, Michael's songwriting awards) and I thought how proud she would be to know about my baking business (which is not only bringing in revenue but developing a following, lord help me). And I imagined how she would temper her pride with warnings of how hard a life in food service is, hearkening back to the days when she and my grandfather owned a restaurant for all those years, and people came from over 100 miles to have a slice of her amazing cheesecake.

(I learned to make change in that restaurant, my six-year-old self standing on a chair behind the cash register and leaning with all my might to depress the big push-key that rang the total. "Vincent's" was named for my grandfather, who died when I was 15, and whose spirit visited me the day that Garrick was born, almost eleven years ago. The nurse had taken the baby to get washed, the midwife had just finished stitching me up, and Michael was down the hall making calls. In the 2-3 minutes that the room was empty of medical personnel and family members, I suddenly felt my grandfather's presence with laser-like intensity. I was out of the country on a school trip when he died after a horrible battle with lung cancer, and will always regret not knowing him in my adulthood.)

And perhaps it's because our little town lost a beloved community stalwart yesterday, but I can't help but feel today that it's all going by much too quickly. My schedule of late has not allowed much in the way of time for introspection, but I did have a moment of clarity earlier this week regarding the increasingly challenging (if not ridiculous) goals that I've been setting for myself over the last few years. From the first year of PKD fundraising, to the amped-up second year, to opening a baking business: these are all things that, when my kidneys finish failing, I will no longer have the time or energy to contemplate, let alone do.

So.

These days I am feeling a kinship with marathon runners who get a rush from meeting and achieving the challenge: this morning, in my sixth week of business, I delivered my 100th cake to the Co-Op. I've been baking until midnight several nights a week, not even noticing the fatigue until the last pan is washed (usually by Michael) and I'm upstairs in the bedroom. I am somewhat disgustingly proud of myself, and in spite of being so fatigued that I'm in a partial out-of-body haze most days, my brain is saying to me "What's next?". Because it is a splendidly gorgeous spring day out there, and even running on 60% of the sleep I need to function properly, I have an overwhelming urge to go and do and be and create and achieve more and more and more while I still can.

***

It is birthday season in our house and we are celebrating the years-ago arrivals of our incredible, fascinating sons, neither of whom ever had a chance to know my father's mother, who died when Quin was six months old. It is birthday season and the weather is voluptuous and I've baked and been paid for 100 cakes and am feeling omnipotent, and when I drove into town today and saw the impromptu tribute of notes and flowers that has sprung up in honor of our town's lost friend, I realize that time is the key element, time is what we can never have enough of. T.S. Eliot said it right.

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I'll be in my garden this weekend, up to my elbows in dirt, trying to enliven the dull roots while I can.

Oh Hai!

I've been a little busy.

Okay, I've been a lot busy.

In the last four days I've:

• made lots of vats of cookie dough
• planted the early crops in the veg patch after turning and amending the soil (ouch)
• repotted the indoor seedlings for a heavy drinking seedling exchange party on Saturday
• admired my mother's garden and wept with envy
  
• mailed the party invites for Garrick's upcoming birthday
• fretted and plotted about Sunday's fundraising bake sale
• met with the husband of a friend of a friend who was recently diagnosed with PKD
• took the puking, rear-end-bleeding dog to the vet (he's better now)
  
• worked really late Tuesday and missed the reruns of "The Office" on TBS
  
• started physical therapy (woot!)

Do you think I've been overdoing it? Maybe?

Re: the working late, I have a little piece of advice. If your boss asks you to help open a branch of your company in Mexico? Run. You want no part of it. It will age you faster than drugs, parenting and air pollution combined.

Re: the garden and seedlings, I am cautiously optimistic. I moved four wheelbarrows full of leaf mulch by myself on Sunday and while it hurt, it didn't put me out of commission. If I manage to get everything planted on time (HA!), we should have a terrific harvest. "Lavender Touch" eggplant, anyone?....

Re: the physical therapy, I am such a wimp. During the strength test portion of the intake evaluation, I was as weak as a little newborn kitten. Pathetic. My initial exercises are insultingly gentle -- teeny tiny pelvic tilts, very mild bridges. I know this is where I have to start, but boy, do I feel old.

Re: the fundraising bake sale, I'm alternately stoked and petrified. If I manage to bake up all the cookie dough that's in the freezer before Sunday, I'll have about 450 cookies to sell. Plus the cake raffle. Plus the zucchini muffins I'll be making because Michael threatened me suggested that the 20 pounds of shredded garden (local! organic!) zucchini is taking up too much room in the freezer. Plus the banana muffins I'll HAVE to make because I've got bananas going brown on the counter. Is that too much stuff to sell, or way too little? I haven't the foggiest notion, but am perfectly willing to drive myself crazy worrying about it.

The HARDEST part is that Michael will have to do the set-up without me -- I'll be driving back from visiting my wonderful gardening friends in Virginia on the morning of the event. I know Michael will be fine and I'll be there hungover before the event starts, but it's still wigging me out. (NO, I'm not a control freak!!! How could you say such a thing?)

It might be time to break out the chocolate and tequila...

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Well, at my house, hope is actually the thing with yellow feathery petals that smells, to me, like cat pee.

Spring's coming.

Self-Pity-Free Zone

Thanks to all for the comments and encouragement. Today I spoke with an Alexander Technique teacher, and while we decided that I'm probably a bit acute right now for Alexander to provide much immediate relief, she was helpful and encouraging and gave me the name of a good physical therapist. I just may take her home and ply her with baked goods in my gratitude.




So, progress will come, and I have determined to stop with the whining and find something else to post about. Look! A cute puppy:





Theo loves empty tonic bottles, yes he does. And I harvested the last of the garden bounty this weekend:



Celeriac, which I planted on a whim. Now, what do I do with it?......