One Wild and Precious Life

Abundance

Today's Harvest

In her poem "What the Bird with the Human Head Knew," Anne Sexton wrote, "Abundance is scooped from abundance, yet abundance remains."  That's what my garden feels like this time of year.  The grape tomatoes are falling off the vines because I can't pick them fast enough.  The romas seem to have all ripened almost at once (they're in the basket, under the cucumbers and acorn squash).  The watermelons are the only thing ripening in orderly sequence, and are they good!  I haven't watered this garden once, and it just keeps producing.  My herbs are thriving, as well.

And you know, it's hard for me to believe that this isn't exactly the kind of abundance that God intends and wishes for all of us.  If God creates such abundance in a vegetable garden, then surely that's the divine intention for us humans, God's family, as well.  It really is the "half-full, half-empty" cliche: you need to know where to look to see the abundance that's everywhere.  I'm not sure God intends us to have Cadillacs and home theaters, but I do believe that the riches are all around us, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to give thanks.  End of sermon.

Today I was visited by a new friend, passing through town on her way home from delivering her daughter to college.  It's the artist that gave me my black Julian.  We had a lovely long visit, and she was very kind to my dogs, who showed their worst manners when they discovered she is a dog lover!  I took great delight in spending my day getting ready to feed her:  rounds of baguette with mascarpone and sliced tomatoes, gazpacho from garden produce, a salad from the garden and the farmer's market, and grilled wild salmon with yogurt-lemon-dill sauce.  There would have been fresh, sweet watermelon from my garden for dessert, but we were both too full to eat it.  It's waiting in the fridge for my breakfast.  All was served on my mama's good china, and accompanied by some of the best conversation I've had in a long time, ranging from black-tongued dogs to the nature of the Holy Spirit.  Wonderful!  Heaven!  Thank you, Rara, for the fabulous visit.

Tonight I went to the Playhouse with a parishioner buddy to see a Mark Twain monologue performance.  I really did enjoy it.  Our Playhouse has a large theater, equipped for more high-tech productions, and a smaller, more intimate theater, with seating on three sides.  This particular production was done in the smaller venue, where I saw "The Belle of Amherst" several years ago.  Those two performances are the favorites I've ever seen there, and I think maybe one factor is the size of the theater itself.  I may just also prefer good monologue plays -- I'm also crazy about "The Vagina Monologues," which will never play in this town.  I'm really glad I went.

Tomorrow I'm going into Knoxville for a diocesan stewardship conference, and will be doing a presentation in the afternoon workshop (I'm on the diocesan stewardship commission).  I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to flex that time and take it off, but I'll figure it out, I assure you!

So despite the brutal heat (it continues in the 90s) and drought, I'm managing to have a lot of fun.  I hope you are, too!

Oh, My, It Has Been a While!

Well, I couldn't even click all the appropriate headers (what's up, Typepad?), so "Personal Growth" will have to cover it.  My sermon's completed and I have a few moments to fill you in on the week and a half since I've made an appearance here!

Some of my absence I'll blame on simple post-vacation, re-entry adjustment.  I did feel a bit disoriented for that first week after vacation, and had a pile of mail to sort, both at home and at work.  And there's the garden, of course -- a garden burgeoning with the abundance of harvest season.  I've frozen nearly a gallon of tomatoes (all in quart-size bags), and over two gallons of sweet corn.  I haven't even made any of my exquisitely intense, cooked-for-hours spaghetti sauce yet, but I'm due for a batch!  The tomatoes are dropping from the vines before I can get to them, and the watermelon are all ripening at once.  This is a poor, drought-stricken garden that has had no watering from me most of the summer, and it keeps cranking out the produce.  Last night I had the best batch of green beans I've ever eaten.  Overcooked with onion and a bit of meat, in the southern style, of course.  Now the late-summer raspberries are setting up, and I finally have bell peppers set on the plant (they always grow slowly and poorly for me).  I've been pretty busy cooking, eating, giving away, and otherwise using up all this beautiful garden produce (as well as what I was given and bought at the farmer's market).

At the aforementioned farmer's market, I met a horticulturist who is consulting with me on scaling down my yard.  I already have a plan for eliminating most of one bed in the front.  She has given me some great ideas, and will come and work alongside me, too.  I've also had a parishioner (the one who built the patio for me) who has been clearing one of the double border beds at the side of the house -- it looks amazingly empty, but it is clear for new things, and for the regeneration of some of the things I want there (like the perennial geraniums).  I'm thinking of a lattice at the back where the dead arborvitae are coming out, where I can train the raspberries in espalier fashion.  Or at least in some controlled-chaos fashion, since I'm far from compulsive, and espalier requires fairly intense attention.  So that's another project.

I'm also refurbishing my home study.  I've moved out all my work-related books (maybe 20 boxes' worth?) to my office at work.  I bought some shelving and brackets (had the strips already mounted on the wall), and now my big bookcase from the Yale Div dumpster is full of my personal books -- the ones that make my heart smile.  There is even a handful that I've decided to part with.  I've painted one wall of the study with a soft yellow that I thought would be sort of "light lemon-custard yellow," but which actually looks more like "eggshell" to me.  But it was free, left here by my predecessor, so I can't complain.  I enjoyed seeing the dusty rose of this room (which looks more like "dirty rose" every year -- it doesn't seem to wear very well) disappear under a fresh, light coat of paint (actually three fresh coats -- 1 of primer and 2 of paint -- I'll reverse that next time, to cover it!).  I have a plan to stick my computer and bill-paying materials off in a corner that is set apart by my very long 4-drawer file cabinet (also a Yale dumpster find), which I will cover with a coat (or many coats) of glossy yellow paint.  I've figured out a way to do it so the only thing I need is one of those tall, skinny computer desks -- everything else can be moved from other parts of the house.  It's a slow process.  I'm not really one to go at things full-speed ahead (otherwise I come to a standstill in the middle), and I still have 3 boxes of books by the front door, waiting transport to my church office (I already took 3 today).  It's a big project, but it feels like a labor of self-love.  I want a study where the unpleasant stuff and the computer are off in a corner, and the rest of the room is devoted to art and writing and things that make me feel alive.  And I think I'm doing it in such a way that I can leave it half-done and still be happy with what I've got.

I've also made myself a concrete, week-by-week plan to finish my studies for spiritual direction by January, as scheduled.  I have 11 books and 4 papers to complete, but it breaks down to 25-30 pages of reading a day (with four weeks completely off!), as well as the papers (Hello?  Can you guess that I like to write?).  So it's reasonable and do-able, and I'll be so happy to be all done in January, so I can get on with the work of planning my sabbatical for next fall!  Thanks to my coach, Will, for the help with this structure.

So, no pictures today.  I haven't taken any since my last entry.  But imagine the sound of my dog's tail thumping on the carpet as I look at her, and she hopes for her last walk of the night.  Imagine that thumping tail sound.  Good night, now.

Amazing Day

Well, to begin with, I told you all that I would tell the tales of my return.  First of all, I greeted my doggies (retrieved from the kennel by a friend before my arrival at home) with great enthusiasm.  Gosh, I missed them!  I'm not sure what I'll do when I go on sabbatical for 2-3 months next year!  Then, of course, I checked the garden.  It was hugely overgrown, of course, with some tomato cages toppled by the weight of the plants (oops, forgot to stake them up), more acorn squash than I'll ever be able to eat (get ready for casseroles and pies!), and a couple of cucumbers the size of small baseball bats.  Sigh.  At least we got some rain while I was gone, and things weren't dead!

Here's what my grape tomatoes and beans looked like (the beans were just sprouting when I left!) when I returned:

Needless to say, the squash and watermelon were entirely out of control.  But, having read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver, I trekked out to the farmer's market 2 days after I arrived home.  I picked up lots of veggies to grill and preserve, but my detective work did not yet (I still have lots of hope) unearth a source of pasture-finished, free-range meat, eggs, and milk.  I'll keep at it.  Meanwhile, I froze donated corn and some tomatoes already -- and the harvest has just begun!  I also grilled eggplant, squash, and red peppers to go with my chicken breast.

A visit to my neighbor, who just harvested 1/3 of his potato plantings, netted me potatoes, cabbage, corn, beans, okra (how shall I ever eat it?), a plethora of free items that I probably won't use, like brownie mix and canned icing), and lots of other stuff I didn't plan on taking.  They are so willing to give, and I to receive, even if I only went over to explore his potato harvest.  Anybody have any good, easy okra recipes?  I'm thinking a casserole with lots of bread crumbs and maybe tomatoes and red pepper flakes.

It's hard to be back in some ways.  Keeping up the free flow of creativity that I experienced while I was gone, while I'm struggling to catch up at work is a big challenge.  I think this is why God made sabbaticals.

So I also came home to a couple of really nice things.  A parishioner said he would build me a very small patio/foundation to set my grill on.  So I looked out my back window and saw this:

It's a perfect little space to hold my grill and a little table for implements, etc.  God love Lee!

And then there was this, to make me even more glad to be home:  it's actually the western, setting sun shining on on the eastern sky:

Then today, I managed to finish off two books and a paper for my spiritual direction training!  The books were "Living Buddha, Living Christ," by Thich Nhat Hanh (something my reading group has been chewing on since March!), and "Memories, Dreams, Reflections," Carl Jung's autobiography.  I wrote off the reports and the paper (on contemplative prayer), and now I've completed the entire first semester's requirements for my program (keep in mind, I'm a fourth semester student  -- only 3 semesters' requirements to go!).  Tomorrow I will buy a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

Home Again

Actually, I've been home for 3 days.  It has taken me that long to even begin to get re-oriented to my normal life.  Fortunately, my work-week was only two days this week.  But I'm getting there, and want to share highlights of my vacation with you.

For those of you who didn't read my gushing entries prior to leaving, I spent two weeks in and around Buffalo, NY, where I lived for 22 years (not counting the 3 years I spent in Connecticut, in seminary).  My best friend in all the world, Cheryl -- we've been friends for 26 years now -- has a cute little camping trailer on the sandy shore of Lake Erie, just south of Buffalo.  She's a little self-conscious about it being a "trailer" (pretty lowbrow in her estimation), but for me, having been a tent camper my whole life, having a trailer is definitely upscale!  Heck, we even had a TV, DVD player, and microwave! And I love the size and location, much preferring it to the "aren't we special?" cottages on the Canadian side of the lake.  This was truly my kind of vacation (well, second only to Italy, that is)!

Below you see my friend Tom (Cheryl's partner) in front of the little camper:

It's actually perfect for one, not bad for two, and just about impossible for more.  But as you see, it's now nestled into a pretty little grove of trees -- before this year it sat out in blazing sun, with no shade at all.  And Tom has used the jacks to stabilize it, and built a little deck that is just the right size and height to keep our tootsies out of the mud when it rains.  He has also used stones to define a fire pit, and has dug that out to the perfect depth.  Oh, it was a little bit of heaven for this happy camper.

Tom was there a few times, and one day we had a party for 13 people -- good, old Buffalo friends -- the usual suspects, I call them.  We also went into Buffalo for a couple of days, for an elegant birthday dinner for Tom (oh, I should have taken more pictures of the restaurant and food, so you could see!), but most of the time it was Cheryl and me out at the trailer, talking, reading, cooking and eating together, going to the beach.  Here's a shot that epitomizes my two weeks:

Yep, flip-flops, dirty feet, and capris, shorts, or swim suits -- that about sums it up.

Someone told me that Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was a Very Important Book for them.  Turns out that it is for me, too.  I am currently seeking out locally produced protein sources -- they were readily available at the farmer's market in Buffalo, but here in Tennessee I'm going to have to do just a little detective work.  I'd love local milk, but more important for me are chemical-free meat and poultry, and I'd love some organic eggs, as well.  Yum.  Yesterday I went to our own local farmer's market and had a wonderful time -- but that's a tale for another day.  I was a bit shocked by Kingsolver's facts on the petroleum costs of mass-produced food crops, as well as by the health costs to humans.  All those pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones aren't perfectly benign.  I can't really ignore those things anymore, and am making modifications, though I can't quite "go all the way" as she and her family did.

I also finished novels by Alice Hoffman (Here on Earth) and Elizabeth George (With No One as Witness), and also did some reading from a couple of art books that I brought (The Decorated Page by Gwen Diehn and Sketching School by Judy Martin).  I also began a loaner from Cheryl:  Italy, a Love Story, edited by Camille Cusumano -- a collection of essays by women traveling in Italy.  I'm loving it, though I confess I haven't opened it since I've been home.

I cooked on the grill, wrote and read and sketched and painted and slept late and let my running practice go almost entirely to hell.  I went to the beach any darned time I pleased, and came home whenever I pleased, as well.  It was cool and cloudy a couple of days, and even rained 2 or 3 times (mostly overnight) while we were there.  Cheryl was very apologetic, and also mad that the weather interfered with her own vacation; but the cool and damp were a great treat for me, having left the hot weather of midsummer in Tennessee.  I didn't even need a fan, much less air conditioning, and most nights even had a light comforter for sleeping.  Yum.  It was a delicious, incredibly restful, amazingly creative and restorative time, and I owe it all to Cheryl for promoting and financing the whole production!  Once again she did what she has always done -- given me the best gift of my year.

Next entry, I'll write more about homecoming, as there are stories to tell.  The flight home was certainly a debacle of cancelled, rescheduled, and delayed flights (so that's why my flight on Northwest was so cheap -- they were going bankrupt!).  But I'm in one piece and eager to tell more.  I'll close with one photo of a favorite activity -- sunset watching.  I'll be back soon!