May 2021

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2021.

It is now the blessed season that, when the sun rises on weekends, we are out in the garden, sipping coffee on our favorite chairs. There are too many and too few words at once: leaves glowing, birds chirping, Juniper darting. The quiet joy of being in the right place, embraced by light and nature. Home.

I have taken to buying clothes on etsy, mostly bespoke linen dresses from Lithuania. This one, freshly off and tossed onto the bed, just so, no fussing over it, and begging for a photo. I obliged.

columbine
scarlet runner bean
snowball
choke cherry

I am on The Lost Kitchen mail list, and this dazzler of a dessert, Spoon Cake, came with their last missive. Theirs was made with a straight rhubarb compote, but since mine is booger-green, which is not a failing, just the color of this particular variety, I mixed in some berries to pretty it up. It did not disappoint, in look or flavor. Huzzah!

Last year’s onions, which did barely anything during their proper season, came to life over winter and spring. How about that?

One of the wonders of living in an Air Force town is to be summoned by the roar of high flying technology and dash into the garden to gaze upon it. This is a Stealth Bomber.

Not since I was a teenager have I owned white footwear. The last, an unfortunate pair of K-Swiss, which I saved for ages to buy, only to have hurt my feet. Wah. I am happy to report these are quite the opposite. And how about the flowers? 100% why I bought them. They sparkle!

royston turquoise

The first iris bloom and Juniper on her very best behavior. Everything good at once….

Pondering

I read, once, a story about a poet who could feel a poem coming, usually while outdoors, and would rush headlong at the house, or anywhere that might hold a pen and a scrap to write upon. I know this feeling, though not as intensely. It is more like a sudden and steady tumble from within. I need only sit still and gaze upon the words with my mind’s eye, transcribing onto neat legal pads. Never the computer.

The writings arriving at the keyboard exist on another plane. Cultivated. The tumble down-on-paper variety are more like a surprise visit from a beloved friend. Peggy or Andie. Effervescent and alive.

I am surrounded by disease and death. The daughter of a friend, a walking buddy, and a relative all with cancer. Greg’s cousin, died in a forest, unexpectedly and too damn young. A once musical finch found, stiff and floating, in the stock tank; the woman whose book I just finished. A time and phase of the here and now. I try to be okay with it, not to get completely sad and overwhelmed. It befalls every last one of us, after all.

But. Still. It is the end. Flesh to ashes, consciousness on the wind.

I have no thesis here. My words are a wretched scribble. Maybe that’s precisely it, the knowing, the pondering, that matters. A flicker in the background to make a body consider the precious nature of life, how it could vanish at any second.

Join

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Alan Watts

Tags:

Hello friends! How excited I am to say Spring has well and truly arrived. I am wearing dresses and sandals and my new favorite hat in great celebration. What a long, cold winter. Coupled with wretched COVID, it felt like years rather than months.

We’ve been doing more normal activities, like going to cherished restaurants, and eating in-person at our favorite food cart, which feels like such a treat after so much home cooking.

The garden is really coming to life, too. I’m doing a ton of planting and mulching (we had 10 yards deliverd!), an hour or two a day. This is both to replace plants killed by the horrible deep freeze and slowly fill in brown gaps in need of green and flower. I’ll show you pictures once it is all done. Maybe this weekend, as I’ll have Greg’s hands, as well as my own to finish. Juniper just lolls about and occasionally digs holes where she ought not. She is a dog, after all.

One of my favorite person’s tasks at his new job was to write a bio to accompany a photo, so we did a proper photo shoot. Isn’t he just so handsome? Greg Cooper, you are a looker!

Green mertensia and Juniper giving her best sniff.

The lamb’s ears are really starting to spread their wings.

The daphne bloomed! Hot diggity dog! This will always be the scent of Portland for me. Kinda like Froot Loops, only better.

blueberry scone goodness

Pike’s Peak peek…

Muskrat sighting!

Indian chicken – I combined a Patak’s Vindaloo curry paste with some mango chutney and water, and let the drumsticks braise in the liquid until done. I love it when something SO easy tastes SO wonderful!

I am rather sad to report that this is not my lilac in bloom here. Ours seems to be the only one in the neighborhood that got ravaged by the deep freeze. Luckily, it still has a bit of green on it, so I will prune the heck out of it and hope for it to flower next year.

She sure loves her Pops!

Coffee

Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.

Terry Pratchett

Tags:

« Older entries