Making it in Toledo

Today I turned the calendar over to August.  Tonight I am baking a plum torte.  Since I try to cook and bake seasonally,  I feel like I’m measuring time with that cake.  Cooking and sharing and tasting, I hope, will help me remember to appreciate time and not let it pass by unnoticed.

The plums, part of this week’s CSA box, are local,  and the first of the year.   They follow blueberries, and I’ve already made blueberry jam, blueberry syrup, blueberry sauce and I’m thinking about blueberry ice cream. But it’s time to move on…

I’ve always liked calendars, and I take real pleasure every December in choosing one for each member of the family.  My schedule is on Google, but the calendar still hangs on the kitchen wall. For the last few years my kitchen calendar has featured old advertisements for food and drinks.  It’s fun to see the fanciful and stylish ways that food has been marketed.  Time measured by the season is so much more appealing than weeks and months.

Tomorrow I’ll share the torte with friends.  I hope they also appreciate that berry season is over and done with, melons are coming in, and this is the perfect time for plums. We’ll hang out at the lake, and then the weekend will be over and I’ll need to pay attention to what day it is.

It’s sure to be a good day for cake.

 

I was not in Toledo during last year’s water crisis, but we followed it closely through the media.  The advisory was lifted the day we returned with our car loaded down with water purchased along the way.  So we’re prepared with several cases of water in the basement.

  We didn’t turn to the bottles last night, though, when we cleaned the kitchen sink, lined it with a towel, and added warm water to give Aloisa a bath.

The sink has rarely been cleaner.  Except for the part that involved her ears, Aloisa seemed to enjoy the experience.  And after some consideration I decided that I trust in the safety of Toledo water, even for my six-week old granddaughter.

I remember a story, perhaps apocryphal, from my childhood.  We lived in a rural area, and our water came from an artesian well.  A relative and neighbor, after boasting of the quality of her own well water, discovered that the well had been the final resting place of a recently-disappeared barn cat.  Perhaps not as scary as microsystin, but disgusting.

I won’t be bragging about Toledo water anytime soon, but I’m grateful for its abundance and, for now, trusting in its safety.

 

It’s been twenty two years since my sister Martha died.   Martha was 36. She was healthy.  She exercised.  She didn’t smoke.  But she died.  Since then, no death has seemed surprising to me.

Last week my old friend Sue Wuest died.  Although we were no longer close, for many years Sue was like a sister to me and like an aunt to my children. We cooked together and hosted meals with friends.  We supported each other and complained to each other about our co-workers. Then we became co-workers and it didn’t work anymore.  I will remember those good years with Sue, enjoy the foods we shared together, and wear the lovely jewelry Sue made for me.  I’ll think of her often.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. – The 14th Dalai Lama

 

My mother was one of twelve children, most of whom lived near where I grew up in St. Lawrence County, New York.  One of her siblings, my aunt, was known for not being able to sit still.  Her visits, although frequent, never lasted long.  She was fidgety.  Her name, really, was Euretta, but we all called her Dady.  Sometimes I worry about being fidgety like Aunt Dady. In truth, though, I think I am more like my father, who knew how to relax but only after accomplishing an almost-endless series of tasks. At my house, like the place I grew up, there is always another task:  there are weeds in the garden, there is paper to be recycled, closets to be cleaned.  Nothing urgent, and perhaps nothing important either.  I need to remember that.

Today is a perfect summer day.  The sun is shining and the birds are singing. The mosquitoes are managable.  I’ve done my errands for the day, and it’s too early to begin cooking.  Here is where I plan to spend the next few hours, tasks be damned.

And here is what I plan to be reading:

 

Please don’t judge.

 

 

It’s taken me three days, but the main section of my front flower bed is weeded and, wth a little help from John, mulched.

The roses are blooming and the bird bath is ready for those dirty birds who seem to love it.

The lavender is in full flower.

I’ve crushed cinnamon basil and rubbed it on my skin

in a hopeful attempt to discourage mosqitoes.

At least some of the new milkweed plants are getting ready to bloom.

And I’ve promised myself to take a break from the garden work today and just enjoy the garden.  I hope I can pull it off.

Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation.
It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.
– Karel Capek

Tuesday is CSA pickup day, and this week our fruit share included three bags of cherries,which is quite a lot:

Since the cherries were at their juicy peak, I got out my cherry pitter and spent a few minutes on the front porch, where the mosquitoes seem to be in abeyance. Once they were all stemmed and pitted, some of the cherries went into the freezer. I’m macerating a few in sugar to serve later with yoghurt, but these will need a few days to be finished: pickled with rosemary will be ready in four days, and the bourbon infusion will expand my cocktail repertoire in August.

The cherry season is short, so I look for ways to make it last.

 

 

I’ve been away from home for most of the last three weeks. What I learned at the CAPLAW conference will make me a better board member for Pathway, the community action agency whose board I chair. Three extra days in Portland, exploring the city with my daughter Olivia, were a wonderful bonus. The hurried trip to Chicago, via Detroit but skipping Toledo, was worth it to be close by for the birth of my first grandchild.  After being home long enough to unpack and do a little laundry, I was eager to go back to Chicago where Aloisa is now at home with her parents, Jeff and Johanna, my oldest.  I loved seeing them all and Loi’s Uncle Sam.

And now I’m back. How I spent my day says a little bit about my priorities.

I spent spent a couple of hours on board work for Pathway.  Here are a few reasons that’s important to me.

I made granola:

I  harvested greens and herbs from the garden, even though the mosquito infestation made it impossible to linger.

and I cleaned the porch, which is as close to outside as we want to be right now, and I’ve begun to set up for drinks before dinner.

It’s good to be home.

 

For some time it’s been easy to feel hopeless and powerless about life in this country, or even in this world. I don’t like either feeling.

Thanks to SCOTUS and Aloisa for a good week.

There’s one big thing:  Aloisa Rose Daschbach was born this week.  My first grandchild.

This is such a big thing that I can’t really write about it yet. I held her for a few minutes, but then she was caught up in high-tech health care (a little breathing support, a few tests and monitoring) and I was limited to just touching her. Now the tests are providing reassurance that all is well.  A very strong and determined little girl, Loi successfully removed her air tube and will soon be released, so I’m looking forward to lots more holding and rocking soon.  It looks like I’m not the only one to have that idea:

For the week before Loi was born, I was in Portland (more later) at a conference.   When she surprised us all by coming early, I went directly to Chicago, so I was away from home for 10 days. That’s a long time for me.

Here is one of the little things that is making me happy to be home again:  I’d given up on my fig tree.  I protected it all winter, brought it out in the spring, and tried to believe, but honestly it was just a stick which provided a nice perch for the birds but showed no signs of life.

 

 

But it’s alive!  Some day I will grow figs! 

 

 

 

 

 

Since it’s Father’s Day, I’ve been thinking about my own father and remembering his passion for growing things.  He always had a big garden, and mine is small, but I think we share a similar feeling about digging in the dirt.  That’s been something Jo has enjoyed as well, so I hope we have passed that particular joy on to Aloisa Rose Daschbach.  I look forward to seeing her discover her own passions and joys.

I’ve never really lived on a farm, but I’ve always had a garden.  There have been only two constants in my gardens here on Brookside:  tomatoes and change.  We inherited some wonderful flowering shrubs and annuals, but no matter how much I love my farmers I like to grow something I can eat.  For years we grew tomatoes in the back yard in pots, and then, when our neighbors eliminated some shade-producing bushes between our properties, I finally had enough sun for some raised beds.  Although the old bushes were replaced by even taller trees, those beds were a perfect spot for eggplants, tomatoes, lettuces and herbs.  Then came the deer!  One morning there were tomatoes, one bite out of each one, languishing mysteriously in the path between the beds.  Soon after I looked out the window to see a deer grazing on the plants. The next year we moved our tomato efforts to the front porch, which because of the death-by-lightning of a big old crabapple, now had more sun than the back.  After one year of a healthy harvest on the driveway side, for some reason we tried a different porch section where a heavy crop and a windy summer required us to literally wire the tomato plants to the front of the house.  The next year, following the sun, we put the pots in the center, near the front of the porch and behind the roses.  That’s the year we learned that deer will not only eat roses, they will lean WAAAY over the roses to eat tomatoes.  Each spring, taking into account the height of the dogwood and the reach of the deer, we select the sunniest spot we can find.   This year our four big pots feature tomatoes and basil, and the space in front is filled with pots of eggplant and mint, which (so far) the deer don’t eat.   My hopes are high, but thank goodness for our CSA.