the long, hard winter, right?

I don't want to complain.

It's been what the locals call a "proper" winter.  It's been long.  I've gotten the car deeply stuck in snow and ice on two occasions. I've been afraid to leave the house.  I've felt my motivation shrivel up to nothing. 

And it always seems that March will be a turning point, right?  That the worst will be over. 

But our first week of March will start off with snow, and negative temperatures. 

In like a lion, out like a lamb, right?  Let's hope.

Hope is what I'm doing now, putting all my eggs in one basket, pinning all my dreams on spring. Spring, like love, never fails. (Right?)

Those nights when I go out to shut the chickens in their coop, to protect them against the dreadful possum (don't they remind you of Rodents Of Unusual Size?) -- some of those nights, the sky is clear and dazzling.  And my gratitude rises almost visible, like my breath in the cold, like a deep exhale from my heart.

I wrote about this long winter, about the Little House on the Prairie books, about TS Eliot and Kathleen Norris, and about my acedia.  You can read it at Art House America today.

(PS: I've also been writing for Christ and Pop Culture again - most recently, about the TV show The Fosters.)

composter

I'm beginning to figure out why I have such a hard time starting things. My problem is that I get overwhelmed by my own inability to fully grasp the intricacies of a topic or a task, and give up before I start. Voting. Eating in a way that honors God's creation. Switching to natural health and cleaning products. Making medical decisions. Arts and crafts. If I can't dive in with a high sense of informed competency at the beginning, I don't even want to test the waters.

(I know this sounds like perfectionism, but I don't think that's exactly it. I am too lazy to care much about being perfect, but I do have to feel competent and confident that I'll have some level of success.)

I started getting more adventurous when I was pregnant with Rosie and began sewing. I tried things even when I wasn't sure they would work. I made things up, and worked without a pattern. I allowed myself to see failure as an acceptable outcome. I let myself play at things instead of perfect them.

I've tried to adopt that attitude in other areas of my life, too. For example, even though I haven't mastered the facts on fish (which have high mercury levels, which to buy farmed, which to buy wild, which are in danger from overfishing, etc.), I try to absorb a little bit of knowledge at a time, and if I can't always be sure I'm making a responsible decision, I just make one anyway. Give myself some grace on it.

This is the approach I'm taking to composting this spring. I've skimmed the book I got for Christmas, and i have realized there are a thousand different methods and a million things to know. My options are deeply limited right now, since we will likely move mid-summer, so I'm just going to play at composting and see what happens.

So this is the ceramic crock I got at the Goodwill and keep by my sink for kitchen scraps.

And this is the compost tumbler that my clever husband built for me. (Inspiration here.). He bolted two plastic tubs together, drilled holes in the ends, and ran a steel pipe through it. Then he cut a door flap, hinged it, and added a hook and latch closure. He drilled another half dozen holes for air flow, too.

When I have a full pot of kitchen compost, I drop it through the door along with a couple handfuls of dead leaves or twigs. Every now and then, I spin the bin to mix the contents.

I don't know if the proportions of materials I'm adding will be right. I don't know if the moisture level is exactly where it should be. I don't know how long this cold (not hot and not worm) method of compost will take. I don't know if the bin will get too heavy to move to our next home.

But that's ok. I'm just playing. I'm just giving it a try. Why did it take me so long to get here?

Directions In Which To Lean in 2012

(My blog posting dropped off at the end of 2011 for several reasons - the external hard drive on which I had stored everything, photos included, started malfunctioning; I began teaching again very suddenly and unexpectedly; and I hosted my first family holiday, Thanksgiving. I'm still having trouble with my photos, but am going to blog anyway.)

These are my resolutions, of a sort, though none of them are the kind that require me to do something every day, like read the bible or exercise or drink more water. I always fail at those. These are more like directions I have already started traveling in, and want to continue in for 2012.

1. Eat meatless one day a week, probably two, and when eating meat, try to eat more organically, locally, happily raised animals and animal products.

2. Start composting, and somehow or another, do more vegetable gardening this year.

3. Continue gradually to replace personal health and beauty products, and household cleaning products, with more natural alternatives (eliminate SLS, dyes, fragrances, chemicals, etc). (My pinterest inspiration board is here, and I'm always looking for suggestions!)

4. Use Common Prayer daily & read large portions of the Bible (Message translation for freshness).

5. Help Rosie develop better habits regarding toothbrushing, tv watching, bible reading &memorization. Maybe try a visual schedule with her?

6. Re-work budget and be more organized in spending (in January!).

7. Continue to have 2-3 evenings a week tv-free.

8. Continue to go on a date twice a month.

Would also like to (but don't hold your breath)...
-Revive the practice of morning pages (I haven't done them since 2005!)
-Go for a walk outside every day

PS- With both my laptop and external hard drive on the fritz, I'm blogging through an iPad app which seems to cut off my pictures on some (though not all) browsers. Still working on a fix :-(

surprised by carrots

This week we picked some carrots in our backyard.


Back in March or April, I planted carrot and pea seeds next to our storage shed. A couple days later, the rabbit family came nosing around, eating flowers off the snapdragon stems in my pots. With a newborn in my arms, I decided to give up the idea of a garden for this summer. I didn't want to fight the rabbits. And I let the weeds grow over my little cleared patch of dirt.




But last week we picked these carrots in my forgotten plot. Their existence reminds me of God's grace, and how he keeps working even when I don't. That he can bless even my short-lived, half-forgotten impulses is a gift. I'm thankful.

meatless monday: postpartum edition

Well, my computer just ate the pictures that I was going to post tonight.

I had some great shots of Rosie and Mimi using the kid's gardening tools that Rosie got in the mail today from Aunt Birdie. They planted some snapdragons and nasturtiums.

And I had a picture of our dinner. Thoughtful friend Whitney brought us spinach quiche, cheese grits, fruit salad and pumpkin scones. It was delicious. And, though I hadn't even thought of it all day, it was monday and it was meatless!

29 of 52

This is a neat little book advising how to create your own cleaning products, health care solutions, and garden. Sometimes I like to think that when we are in our own place I will do these kinds of things, but reading this book made me doubt whether or not I'm really committed.

Before you can start making your own all-purpose cleaner, and face wash, and laundry soap, and toothpaste, and headache tinctures,(etc.) you do have to invest in a number of items (herbs, essential oils, borax...not to mention glass jars and cooking and mixing equipment solely devoted to these creations) that are not necessarily easy to find. Something makes me think that might be especially true in a small town.

So, I'm probably not going to make my own toothpaste. But here are the kind of things I am more likely to try...

uncle sam wants chickens

I know a lot of people just won't be able to understand this, but

I would like to keep chickens.

When we finally have our own place, I would like to have a biggger garden and some chickens.

I can't find the city ordinances online for Upland, so I guess I'll just have to march on up to city hall and ask. In my googling, though, I found this, and couldn't resist sharing it. It supposedly dates from 1918.

no culture comparable

This week the sun is back, and we may hit sixty degrees (!). I win, as Katie says.

Every winter I think to myself, "I'm not going to garden next year. What's the point, really?" And then the instant that the plum tree outside Rosemary's window starts blooming, I run to the garden. This year I had extra inspiration, thanks to Laura:



(On the offchance that you're not holding your computer up to a mirror right now, the foam kneeling pad reads "No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden." - Thomas Jefferson, 1811)

Yesterday I turned over the soil, added a huge bucket of reeking compost we'd been storing since last summer, and mixed in a couple of bags of organic soil on top. I might go ahead and plant some lettuces next week - and then carrots and peas in March!

I even spent some time clearing out dead plant material from our side beds. Never felt so much like my mother.

There's a little stress in my life these days. Jack applying for jobs takes a large amount of time and energy from the both of us. As we work, we are living in, trying to navigate, ambiguity. Sad things are happening at church and to my friends. Rosemary has been sick for a week.

Sunshine and garden and good therapy. And I'm giving up facebook for forty days or so. Instead of surfing aimlessly, I'm trying to spend a little extra time meditating on sacrifice and self-denial, and that dark season of seeds underground, germinating, but not sprouting into visible new life quite yet.

garden, july

What does Posy do while I water the garden? She lies on an old painting drop cloth on top of the grass, pulling it toward her until she can reach the grass underneath and tear handfuls of it out.
Look, a potato!
Wait a minute - two potatoes!
Three. I just robbed half a plant (can you do that?).
Cherry tomatoes. We are going to have hundreds soon.



Zucchini flowers.



Posygirl doesn't like to wait while I take so many pictures, though.

garden, june

I set these extra tomato seedlings, and stunted pepper seedlings, out in the sun to die. But look at their will to live!


Here's a nurtured from seed tomato plant. Arugula going to seed in the background.


And snap peas.

composters, beware

Don't put your Halloween pumpkins in the compost.

Yesterday I pulled thirty pumpkin seedlings out of my garden, bringing the total up to roughly a hundred. This time a group of them sprouted up right under my arugula, and I can't tell yet if the little lettuce will make it after such calamity at the root level.

We're trying a bunch of new things this year. We've still got our tomatoes growing from seed indoors, along with red and yellow peppers. They'll move out at the beginning of June.

In the garden now, we have Yukon Gold potatoes

snap peas

merlot romaine lettuce

carrots

and arugula

and, you can get a prize if you can identify this guy (I've no clue, but it looks like a shrub or a tree, don't you think?).

garden bounty

Classic zucchini bread.

Herbed Summer Squash and Potato Torte.

my explosive garden

how to eat; and, what the heck is rhubarb?

I've been doing a lot of reading about food. It's a favorite topic for most Americans, but especially for Lepines, I've noticed. I've been reading about local, sustainable farming and organic yumminess. If I were a heartier sort, I'd be a farmer.

Recommended reading:

Absolutely first, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. You will learn that everything Americans eat is made of modified corn products.

Second, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. As if writing one of the best novels of the last twenty years wasn't enough (The Poisonwood Bible), she had to follow up with one of the best nonfiction works. You will want to plant a garden.

Third, The Art of Simple Cooking by Alice Waters. Learn to cook seasonal, local produce deliciously.

Now that you are finished reading, support a local farm by Community Supported Agriculture. We've got a CSA share this summer from Oxbow Farm. Every Sunday we get a box full of veggies, half of which we've never seen or cooked with before. I'm learning to identify kale, chard, garlic scapes, parsley, beets, and radishes. And beginning to learn how to cook with them.

Today, I cooked rhubarb for the first time. I'd heard of rhubarb pie; but frankly, it never seemed like something one would choose when offered several flavors of pie. I'll take chocolate cream pie any day over something called rhu-barb.

It looks like the pink-striped cousin of celery and it tastes sour. It is a vegetable. Vegetables do not dessert pies make.

Or so I thought.

But when you add a lot of sugar and strawberries, it makes a very nice sweet-tart pie. Top with Breyer's vanilla.

The first pic is courtesy of wikipedia, since I neglected to photograph my rhubarb before cutting it.

how my garden grows

Fast, now that we have ten hours of sunlight and summer temps. Tomatoes at the top, squash and zuchs down the sides, and bush beans at the bottom (if I'm lucky).
But what is eating my squash leaves?
That yellow flower will be a tomato soon.

happy summer

We are out of Siberia and into the sunshine. A few of my favorite things:
Jack with our first box from our CSA at Oxbow Farms
Our new compost bins
My poor battered garden
rocket pops! (peach-grape, apple-cran, and blueberry yogurt)

my tomato seedlings