Transition...

It's that time of year again...

A summer garden becomes a winter garden.  

Transition.  

Transition has never been an easy thing for me.  I'm not good with change or leavings or new paradigms.  As adventurous as I've been in my travels and learnings, I'm not too great about it on the micro-level.

And my garden this year followed suit.  A few months ago I cut down all the summer crops and dutifully left them to lay fallow in their beds to return all that goodness to the earth.  I turned them into the dirt occasionally and when it stopped being 100 degrees in October (!!), I planted my winter garden.  I planted lots of lettuces and peas and carrots and beets and radishes and onions and garlic.

Three days later, the lettuces had been chewed down to the roots, along with the peas.  The seeds and bulbs for the rest had been pulled up out of their little three inch deep holes, like a reverse game of 'whac-a-mole".  Some critters had wreaked havoc.

Just like my garden this year, I've got lots of things being upturned.  I've got lots of decisions to make about what next year will look like for me.  I feel pulled in a few directions some of which seem practical and some of which seem, well, insane and scary to dream or try.  I'm not sure if they can all work together or if they even should.  I feel alone in it all and I'm not sure I have the spare energy to make them happen, but I'm reading, taking classes, thinking, seeking counsel from smarter people than me about it.  What I know for sure is it is going to require transition: of my work, my creative vision, my faith, and my belief in myself. 

Some people in my life are in their own transitions and in some cases I've had to admit that they don't want me along for the ride.  With others, we are working hard to replant and move from our summer garden to our winter garden.  I think if we can do that we'll have very deep roots that will take us to the end.

Part of my transition is most likely leaving this blog behind.  It's been an amazing place to share some triumphs of life and love and garden.  It's also been a place to quietly share heartache and robbed gardens and disappointments.  It's been a safe place to push and pull at my writing and see if there is anything to say...  And to all 6 of my readers (no seriously...), I thank you for encouraging me.  But, if the classes and readings and counsel are right, I must stop being sooo secretive and safe about it all. 

So, I'll keep gardening, but those updates will be over on my photo blog.  And eventually when it's right, I'll transition that one into the light.  But, it will be all of me - the photos, the garden, the writing.  All of it.  All of me.

I hope you'll go over to it and put it in your RSS feeds or however you get your news feeds so you won't miss anything when the time comes:  www.squidpictures.blogspot.com   

In the meantime:  I replanted my winter garden and then locked it down like Fort Knox!!!!   Here's a few shots of it... Some seeds are already sprouting.  How inspiring is that?!

Lettuce Entertain You

There was no shortage of lettuce in today's harvest.

With 1/2 this much still in the fridge from a few days ago!

The garden gave over a few other little treats, too:

A couple of radishes.

Some spinach (exciting because I usually get an F in spinach).

And some snap peas (which I usually get an F in, too!).

I can't wait to make myself a salad for dinner!

'harvest'

One for me.

One for some critter who got there first.

She's A '10'

There's been a bit of a scuttlebutt (is that the correct spelling of a non-word?) about the USDA's newly released 'hardiness zone map'.  This is the gardener's equivalent of a food pyramid.  It correlates to what you can plant and when.  Or rather, what is more likely to survive once you plant it.

So, you can imagine the horror when the new map arrived and people who were once unable to plant a dogwood tree could suddenly, well, plant a dogwood tree.  In other words, some zones changed quite significantly.

Thus the argument began:  global warming or more accurate terrain readings?  Since the degree change is fairly significant since 1990, I'm going with 80% global warming and 20% "they finally took lakes and oceans into consideration".   But, I'm kind of a conspiracy theorist like that.

For me in Long Beach, I seem to have changed a letter.  I always thought I was a 10 (um, you know, in garden speak), but apparently, I'm a 10b.  I'm not sure it's as big a difference as, say, going from a 34C to a 34D and suddenly your social life has a brighter outlook.   It's probably more like how a year or so ago they changed the zodiac signs and I went from a Capricorn to a Sagittarius.  Or was it to an Aquarius?

Anyway, just like I know in my heart I'm a Capricorn, my zone adjustment doesn't change the fact that I still can't plant rhubarb, but really WANT to.... It does, however, put me in the same exact zone as Malaga Spain and Nicosia Cyprus.  Which in some weird way is kind of cool.

The map is fun.  It's interactive so you can almost zoom in on your garden.  It was interesting to see that our East/West beach put me in a much hotter zone than a few neighboring towns which are just a couple of miles down the coast:

The Map

The map is a good rule of thumb.  But, truthfully, I'll probably continue to generally ignore it as well as my newly minted 10b status.  I mean, I'm STILL going to plant corn this summer - who cares if I'm three blocks from the ocean?

Yep, I think I'll just pretend I'm still a perfect "10".

She Let Go..

I spent a few hours weeding in the garden today.  It was a beautiful day for that kind of meditative work.  The East Village was quiet and I was alone.  The garden thinks it's spring, so as I worked peach blossoms floated on the wind into my hair.   The flower bulbs have come up and the hyacinth I planted in memory of my grandfather is in full bloom. 

The goal was to weed an area just outside my plot which had become overgrown with 'nut grass'.  For those non-gardeners out there, this is a hardy weed connected by a nut-type root.  It sends out underground branches which can continue on for forever, sending up grass and squeezing out anything else in its path.  Inevitably, if it’s NEAR your garden it will be IN your garden momentarily. 

There's been a lot of rain the past week and the ground was still soft, so these normally determined weeds were coming up easily.  The grass, roots and nuts were just giving over to me.  That got me thinking about something that keeps coming up in my new meditation practice: the reoccurring theme of ‘letting go’.  Sometimes in the Dharma talks it's followed by the words, “of attachments”, but not always. 

In all honesty, I’m not a good “let’er go’er”. 

I’m the keeper of family history, belongings, traditions – even recipes!  I’m sentimental and have long friendships.  I'm loyal. I tend to stick by people, running alongside them, cheering them on at times - even when they can’t believe in themselves or us.  I’ve done this in professional relationships, friendships, and love affairs.  I’ve even, sometimes, been thanked for the belief and persistence - for being the one not willing to let go.  

But, it gets confusing to me, this idea of 'letting go'.  As I pulled up that nut grass this morning, the sweet smell of the hyacinth found its way to me bringing back memories of my grandfather.   Does not letting go of sentimental feelings hold me back?  I absolutely know people who are not "sentimental".  Or at least claim they aren't.  Are they better in mind, heart, and soul for that?

What does it really mean to LET GO?  Or likewise, what does it mean to be let go?  How do you let go of being let go?  In particular, how do you let go of attachments to people without becoming heartless or sterile or robotic?   That last part confounds me the most. 

Where does the heart have a say or a place?

However, when it comes to releasing fear or pain or hurt, I get it.  I'm not good at it yet, but I get it:  the goal is to yield like that nut grass did today.  As those weeds were giving over to me, I thought of something I'd read recently which feels like a sort of freedom:

  

"She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go. She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the 'right' reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go……Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go. There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad. It was what it was, and it is just that. In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore." - Ernest Holmes

oops...

...I hatched another Monarch in the loft.  

I accidentally brought a chrysalis home on some rosemary the other day.  Luckily I caught it before it found its way into a roasted chicken!  I meant to return it to the garden, but days passed as those things do and this morning a beautiful Monarch greeted me in my closet, where I had ferreted the rosemary and her chrysalis away out of my kitten's grasp.

She has no spots on her wings, so this one is female.  She clearly had time to stretch her wings, but had only moved a half a foot from her chrysalis - funnily enough clinging to a wooden plaque I have with the British wartime advice of "Keep Calm and Carry On".  Still the poor thing must have been confused in the dark.  I guided her into a jar and took her back to the garden where after a few minutes pondering the milkweed plant, she tried her wings out. 

What a blessing to witness her very first flight... wobbles and all.  She flew 25 yards and landed on some fern. 

I think she'll be just fine. 

Italian Girls Are Saucy

What I learned in my garden so far this summer:  I'm a Saucy Italian Girl.  Let me explain...

I didn't start the garden for economic reasons.  I don't continue to garden for economic reasons.  I'm fortunate enough to not have to count on what I grow to feed myself.  In fact, if there has been one theme of this blog, it's that for me the joy of garden is sharing it.

I also don't tend to keep track of the store value of what I grow like many other gardeners.  However, today's early morning tomato haul seemed particularly HEAVY, so out of curiosity I put those puppies on a scale and lookie here:  almost 4 pounds of tomatoes (some wouldn't fit on the plate!).  And yes, that's not counting the plate. The scale was set back to zero, so that's all unadulterated red, juicy TO-MA-TERS.

I planted only heirloom varieties this year:  three in total.  Don't ask me what kind, I can't see the tags anymore - it's a JUNGLE out there!   But, let's just say I went shopping at Whole Foods (which I rarely do, but let's just say...).   Their heirlooms are somewhere in the range of 3.99 a pound, so I'm guessing I've got about $15 or so dollars worth of produce on that scale.   At $2.99 a seedling and (who knows really, but let's guess) about 30 more pounds of tomatoes yet to ripen, I'm thinking I made good on my initial investment.  If only my retirement portfolio had that kind of return!

Funny thing is... after three very elegant caprese salads in the past two weeks, all wonderful excuses to dine and wine with friends and colleagues, I've come to the conclusion that what I really want are some good old fashioned San Marzanos to make pasta sauce with.  I'm already buckling under the pressure to showcase the heirlooms in meals!   I just want to can or freeze some tomato sauce!

Turns out, in the end, I'm really just a simple, saucy Italian gal at heart.

A Garden's Story

They say that transformative art is "the personal made universal". 

I have just finished reading Joyce Carol Oate’s A WIDOW’S STORY, the tale of her first year of (sudden) widowhood after many decades of marriage.  Despite never having had (thankfully) a dead husband, I was struck by how much her grief resonated with me.  In truth, grief and despair, no matter the source or trigger, is grief and despair.  Battling illness can mimic the same. 

The descriptions of her journey through widowhood including having only energy enough to change television channels, juggling a public work persona which carries on but depletes one of all energy, the deep pain of loneliness that keeps one asking ‘why bother’ when whether one has had a good or bad day it's all the same once arriving back at an empty house, the sleeplessness and then the challenge (as she describes it) to slowly blow oneself up like a large balloon each morning, and mostly intensely, the sense of such delicate threads of family and friends that are holding one down, tethered to earth, rather than simply cutting them and flying free in all the forms that might mean, all hit close to home for me.   Her personal had become universal. 

Ray Smith, her husband, had been a gardener.  The back yard was his domain.  As that first Spring arrives and the garden awakens, she understands that her choice is to let it grow over with weeds or plant her own garden in its place. 

She notes, “A gardener is one for whom the prospect of the future is not threatening, but happy”.

She dons his gloves and his clothes and begins to do the Spring errands she watched her husband do each year, but instead of vegetables which she has no appetite for, she plants things that will bring her some joy – perennials versus annuals.  In doing so, “his” garden is now “their” garden. 

She writes about working in the garden to create something in his memory and says, “… and I am working with my hands, and with my back, and my legs --- for working in the soil is working.  And so, as I am working, I am thinking – but the kind of thinking I am doing isn’t anything like the kind of thinking I would do elsewhere, still less in bed, in the nest.  This is a kind of thinking in tandem with working --- some part or parts of my brain is roused, alive".

Her husband’s garden is what finally begins to connect her back to her life.  It places body and mind together.  I suspect any gardener will say this is true no matter the reason they themselves happen to be digging in that dirt. 

And so, like her tale of grief, she reveals the garden to be its own form of simple, transformative art.  My personal becoming universal...

I Ate Tomatoes Over The Sink...

 

Tonight I ate tomatoes over the sink.  Well, just about over the sink.  I did it because I could.  There was no one here to stop me.

I ate them over the sink because they were ripe and juicy and so unexpectedly good after a Fall, Winter, Spring, and almost half a Summer worth of useless, tasteless, crappy, mealy, hot house-flown in, store bought tomatoes.   I ate them over the sink because once I started I could not stop. 

It began in this way….  You see, I’ve been hoarding the ripe tomatoes this week – the very first of the season for me.   I’ve left them to go really ripe on the vine, not taken a moment sooner.  I have a business lunch at the loft on Friday and wanted to impress and confound with some caprese.   What could be more charming?   But, tonight as I was searching for leftovers to brighten up some brown rice pasta with pesto I had brewing, I saw the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana would not be “technically” good by then.  It couldn’t go to waste. 

So, I sliced ONE small tomato, an heirloom variety that has grown so bushy and my gardening notes are so woefully scant that I can no longer see the tag and have no other reference at this point to put a name to it.  On the same plant, the tomatoes themselves range from San Marzano-like to more delicate bell shaped drops of deep orange-red that gently fold and curve into themselves as if to be wearing their best Victorian skirt to the “ball of the year”.

I sliced it, sprinkled a tiny bit of salt and piled on a small slab of the mozz.  Oh My.  It wasn’t quite a Jersey Tomato from my youth, (with a capital J and a capital T), but the flesh was just the right amount of acidic and then a surprise, as the sweet, sweet juices came rushing in to make it right.  It tasted – I kid you not - RED.  You could feel each ray of sunshine that had brought it from green to red to plump and juicy dancing on your tongue.  It tasted like SUMMER.  It tasted like PLEASURE.

And so I had another.  And another.  And, yes, another.  And shamefully, another.

“Slice, salt, mozz, groan with pleasure”. 

I ate them over the sink to catch the juices and because I ate them so fast, one right after another, I couldn’t move from that place;  the pesto pasta abandoned.  Honestly, it would have been gluttonous, but for the size of the tomatoes! 

I ate them over the sink because I could.  There was no one to stop me.  And, still, with each bite of such taste-flavor-juiciness, I wished someone, you, were here to moan and groan and hmmm and yummmm with delight in what I’ve grown and how good the earth and wind and sun and water were to me and these lovely little tomatoes.

I wished someone, you, were here to share in the sweet goodness that were once my bowl of tomatoes.  And I wouldn't even be bothered if you ate them over the sink, too.

Sun Setting On The First Tomatoes

Tomorrow in the garden I'll be taking out the mystery squash, watering, and maybe planting something in the box with the strawberries. 

Tonight, I'll dive further into my book AN EXTRAVAGANT HUNGER: the passionate years of M.F.K. Fisher by Anne Zimmerman.   M.F.K. was a woman who wrote about food and life and passion like no one else and I thought I should read about her with the hopes that it might be of some influence on me.  Today, July 3rd, was her birthday, just over 100 years ago.  She was a woman who only came into her own writing and voice later on in her life, so I have some hope!  

Now, though, with the holiday just an hour away,  I'll wish you a HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY with my VERY poorly styled shot of clams and fresh baked bread from a little road trip I took to Malibu this afternoon.  I tried to place the flag artfully and then just decided on the Mount Everest approach and simply stabbed the bread.   I just couldn't be bothered to make it nicer,  you know, what with the fish and chips sitting just off to the side to devour and my belly crying out for some food! 

Patience

I'm obviously not the first person, writer, poet or farmer with a pipe to give this tidbit of wisdom... But, gardening takes PATIENCE.  It takes patience because crops fail at any given point in the process, even after you've put months of time in.  It takes patience because sometimes the seeds don't even sprout.  It takes patience because sometimes you just have to take a deep breath when half your plant has been eaten by a critter or as I experienced today, it is very clear that a snail (or 5) has taken a slimy joy ride on your beautiful sage. 

But, patient I was in my quest for dried fava beans. 

My fava obsession started last year when I planted the variety of "Windsor Broad Beans" and ate them green in any number of varied ways and loved them.  I loved them, in particular, with farmer's market raw fresh peas swirled up in the food processor with lemon and garlic and a really good parmigiana-reggiano and then set atop a garlic toast and topped with fresh pea sprouts and bufalo mozzarella. 

But, after the incident of the mystery beans, I began to wonder if I could find myself this year with some dried fava beans in order to make Fuul.  Fuul is what began each and every day of my Egyptian trip.  It's favas, garlic, lemon, salt.  All blended up like a hummous.  And it's fresh and delicious and it brings me back to mornings at the eco lodge on the cool porch being served a boiled egg and fuul and mint tea before I would set out riding the fastest horse in the most glorious of Sea Sands.  

But, I digress....

So, this year I went ahead and planted another crop of fava beans.  The variety has long escaped me now.  And they grew less and produced less, but they grew nonetheless.  They grew and flowered and made pods and grew pods.  And then I waited.  I refrained from harvesting the plump green pods with their "fed ex" bubble wrap around each bean.  I just waited.  And waited.  Eventually I stopped watering and then cursed the rain.  But, slowly the pods turned black and wrinkled and the stalks died.  And yesterday I did it.  I took those wrinkled up old pods.

Then I didn't know WHAT to do.  So, I googled.  And I found Patrick.  Patrick has a great blog called the Bifurcated Carrot.  And despite an age old posting on favas as ground covering, he responded to my question in the comment section within a few hours.  And then answered a second set of questions.  So, a big thank you to him.  I would have left them in the pods to dry further.  And that would have been a sad ending to my game of patience. 

And so here I am with a bowl full of dried fava beans (that still have more drying and then freezing to do apparently) and some fuul is within my reach!  I suppose I should have waited to do this post until after I'd made some and posted a lovely photo for you dear reader to see, as well.

But, I didn't have the patience.....