Rhubarb Apricot Jam

Ila planted rhubarb many, many years ago, and it appears each year at the west edge of the garden.  The first year I lived here, I didn't use any of it.  In fact, I actually kept about 3 feet between myself and the row of three plants.  I'd heard they were poisonous and as a new mom, I wasn't taking any chances.   Luckily, I didn't dig them up.  (Oh, can you imagine?!)  The second year, I faced my rhubarb phobia and made my first rhubarb crisp.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  Love.  Pure love.

See, I really love foods that score high on the acerbic acid scale.  Give me bitter over sweet any day.  Give me bittersweet, and you will see a woman with a tablespoon leaning over an entire casserole dish of rhubarb crisp refusing to share because "it's poisonous."

And then something miraculous happened.  I stumbled upon a rhubarb apricot jam recipe last year and knew I had to try it.  Those two together were bound to have enough sour in them to turn my entire mouth inside out.  I was all about it.

I think I told you a couple months back that I thought the apricot tree had made it through the cold weather with its dream of fruit still intact.  It didn't.  In fact, there are fewer fruits and blossoms on just about everything this year.  (I'll find out why one of these days.  Once you start growing stuff and watching nature grow stuff, you're always asking yourself, "Now why would God make it work that way?"  It's like unpacking a little of the Creator's heart when I discover a garden secret.)

Anyway, the jam.  

Let me explain the recipe:  Marry 6 cups of rhubarb and 6 cups of apricots.  Don't worry.  They'll get along just fine because you are going to sweeten their relationship with...uhhum...8 cups of sugar.  Okay, I can see all you moms out there who only use 1/2 a cup of sugar in your koolaid throwing up your arms or possibly unfriending me on facebook.  Let me ask you this, if you knew that all it took for you to get along with each other was 8 cups of sugar, wouldn't you eat the sugar?  That's what I thought.  You only live once.  Sugar is not even close to being the enemy here.  Shoot even lower, folks.  You can fill a cavity, but you can't fill the time you lost worrying about tooth decay.

The other challenge attached to this recipe is that you have to stir it for an entire hour, nonstop.  I'll tell you a secret.  I love stirring.  I love the slow movement of the wooden spoon, the open space of a kitchen window and the world beyond it, and an excuse to stand in one place for longer than 3 minutes.

And after you've stirred and stirred, and you've felt your own heart stirred in the process, the consistency thickened, strengthened and sweetened in the slowness of jam-making, you'll be looking at 5 pints of the best jam you've ever had in this "one wild and precious life."*

*from a poem by Mary Oliver

Love Quiets All Voices But Its Own

Keep us well and happy and guide us in the right way.  Amen.

Boots: A brief exploration of why the older ones are more comfortable (with themselves)

Swept up and loving the feeling of finally, almost, possibly standing inside this life.

 I had refused to walk a mile in my own boots

(I needed some time to think.)

 But after some kneeling

and kicking and standing on both of them squarely

I do believe they are finally breaking in.

Summertime Farm Update

Hello, everyone, and welcome to your summertime farm update starring Nora, lots of green stuff, an abused minivan, and a front porch.

As I write this, I'm listening to Roy Acuff, so feel free to rock a little of that while you visit us here on the farm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UipkTPGIOm4&feature=fvst

Right now, Nora and I are spending quite a bit of time at the pool, but we're also doing some interpretive dancing in the kitchen with homemade stuffed animals.  This is Nora's new owl "Chew Chew."

Ila's roses are a magenta exclamation point that says something like:  "Live Here!  You'll love it!  Come on in!  We've got sun tea!"  My aunt Dottie once told me when I was little that angels smell like roses.  This is what I'm thinking whenever I am near a rose, and I close my eyes so my nose can see better.

The garlic has started to form scapes.  They will lift their heads slowly, uncurling with the grace of a hesitant swan.  Also, did you know you can eat these?  Cut them early before they get tough.  They have a milder garlic flavor.  I've even seen recipes for garlic scape chutney.  Yummy.  (Sidenote:  Once your garlic bursts open in purple flowers, cut them off so the plant's "energy" can focus on the bulb growing in the ground.)

Yellow.  I put in a few of these perennials dug up and shared by Grandma B down the road.  This year, they filled in so beautifully.  I'm definitely going to be stealing some of these plants to fill in a few bald spots around the flower bed.  Neighbors, let me know if you'd like some, too.

And here it is, folks--the reason I need one of those pick-up trucks I was dreaming about last night.  (Contents:  2 hay bales, paper recycling, survival kit including shiny thermal blanket and a whistle just in case I need to look at something shiny and call a foul, car seat, Bob Dylan and Neil Young cassette tapes for a cassette player that no longer works)

The garden is revealing the secret message I wrote in seeds a few weeks ago.  Today I put in a soaker hose wound around the tomatoes, peppers, squash plants and cukes.  (Thank you, Mom and Mike!)

And here it is after I put down the straw mulch tonight.  (Thank you, Jessica and Matt, for sharing!  This is what they mean by "hitting the hay."  I'm pretty sure anyway.)

There's still a lot of room in this garden, and this is a good thing because things are going to get a lot bigger (we talked about this--room to grow, spreading your wings).  Contents of this photo:  potatoes (lower left corner), asparagus bed (this is after two years--it takes at least one year before you can harvest), blackberry bush, and everything else.

I send lots of love, good people!  Grow wild and useful.  Don't hold back.

Ma'am, did you know there are two bails of hay in the back of your minivan?

Why, yes.  Yes, I did.   This girl needs a pick-up.  A zero-air conditioned, roll the windows down, sunburned left arm, 800 dollar, cigarette lighter still works, so you'd better not plug your laptop into it unless you're looking to start a fire, cracked rust-colored seat like the skin on some hands working hard to keep things moving in a growing, going direction pick-up.

I'd need a dog.  Definitely.  A dog with his tongue hanging out so far, it nearly cleans the road underneath us.  I'd put rolls of barbed wire worry back there, firewood of the self-consuming variety, compost for the good dirt.  I'd help friends move, even in the summer.  I'd take a load of the past that's been sitting in my basement to some newer, more useful place.

In my pick-up, I'd buy more than three bags of salt for the water softener.  I'd get paper bags of groceries and just toss them in the back like Sally Fields does in Murphy's Romance, and the door would creak when it opened but I wouldn't oil it because this pick-up likes to make a little noise, like the old man who yells from his porch, "Slow down!  Life is passing you by driving that fast!"

Today's Little Things

1.  Day One:  VBS at St. Paul's.  The theme?  Jungle Adventure.  Nora:   One happy lion.

2.  The driver's side window has been giving me trouble for awhile now and finally fell off the tracks, disappearing into some unknown region inside the door.  Armed with a power drill and a refusal to pay someone else to do something I just might be able to do, I took off the door panel and managed to get the window back on track.  I'm covered in tar and scrapes and a couple of bruises, but it was worth it just to throw my hat up in the air and holler once I heard it catch and lift back into place.

3.  I'll get you a picture soon.  The garden is...  Is.  I put down a drip line around the tomatoes and cucumbers and went searching for straw to mulch.  No luck, but I might have a source around here.

4.  A car ride with three kids on the way to McDonald's.  We're making up different "emotion/object meals" we could have once we get there.  One wants a Grumpy Kid Meal.  Another wants a Shirt Meal.  And the third has requested a Bug Meal.  I mistakenly ordered the fish sandwich with cheese only to find they'd only put half a slice on it.  I don't usually complain, but if I would have wanted half a slice of cheese, I'm sure I would have specified.  I guess I got the Grumpy Kid Meal, too.

5.  Nora has been obsessed with Phineas and Ferb this summer.  It could be the summer vacation theme.  It could be the kids inventing impossible things theme.  It could be that there's a secret agent platypus in it.  Whatever the case, she loves it, so tonight, I made her a Phineas doll.  When she wakes up, this is what she'll find.  Yes, he's naked.  No comment.

6.  Okay, the truth is I just ran out of energy to sew clothes for him tonight.  I'd better not hear this used as an excuse for this type of situation in the future.

7.  Ukulele band practice coming up soon.  Yes.

8.  Nora actually ate carrots and spinach tonight.  Yes, I had to pretend to be a bunny the entire meal, but it was worth it.

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Digging My Fingers In

The exhaustion of the dirt and sun and the work of two women bent over the rows, building a family's health, but even more than that--rooting themselves in faith.  Because these gardens are established in faith.  Who would believe that something so small, so light, so insignificant could feed the entire world?  You, seed, are how I see God working in me, root and blossom.  The Word in me may only be a couple lines glanced over while on the way to the kitchen sink, but how those words sink into me.  Yes.  More of this please, Lord.   And if I think on those words, tend them, water them with suffering, warm them with joy and believe.  If I trust, then this root is established.

Today, Pastor Blanco spoke of becoming established.  I've heard that word used so many times, and it hit me--the epiphany, the showing forth--don't weed the carrots because they aren't established yet.  And there I was, bent over my life trying to pick through the parts I wanted to keep and the parts I wanted to pull and toss.  But I'm not established yet--and this premature sorting could prove fatal to that which allows me to root, to establish, to grow in this fertile plot grace upon grace.

And I am so tired right now after this good day of work.  Words are hard to find.  So, this is less poetry than it is the thinking behind something that will grow.  Of this I am absolutely certain.  Thank you for these lessons today.