Around the Farmhouse: Mostly Food
My CSA produced some astonishing rutabagas- the one I picked out is the size of a baby's head. I still haven't decided how to prepare it yet because the thought of cutting into it is intimidating! It sits on my kitchen counter mocking me. I think roasting it is the answer but with so much of it to use I could easily do something else with it and I just don't know. I have provided you with a picture of the rutabaga enjoying a ride in my bicycle basket. You will surely agree with me that that is an obscenely sized root?
This is my favorite food right now: grapefruit and avocado salad. I posted the "recipe" up on Stitch and Boots if you'd like to make it. Please observe the strange absence of cheese. I ate this one vegan-style. I have to admit that it was very good without cheese though it causes me slight pain to admit that a meal without some cheese was really that good.
These grapefruits which Lonnie sent me are so good I have inhaled most of them already. After cutting out the segments for salads I squeezed out every last drop of juice so that nothing was wasted. Luscious fruit! You want some don't you?
The garden is absolutely crackling with impatient growth- the inevitable stirring of warmer days to come and the intense blossom-fest of spring. The fruit trees and roses are all covered in buds and the Japanese Snowball tree is also ready to burst with them. I absolutely love late winter in the garden. It still looks decimated with all the dead plants I never clean up in fall and the branches are still bare of leaves yet everywhere I look there is the enthusiasm of the plants gearing up for the equivalent of the opening night of a play. 
There is buzzing all around me, the plants practically talk to me, I hear them moving without seeing, and each one is reaching and vibrating with spazzy anticipation. People often think the winter is a dead time in the garden and early winter is- early winter is about leveling the field- killing the weak off to make more room for the strong. Early winter is nature's time to clean house and, like new parents putting up a nursery for their first offspring, to build new rooms for emerging life. Mid-winter is quiet, a time for roots to get stronger in hibernation deep beneath the soil. Everything sleeps, but not a dead sleep, it's alive with cell building and the architecture of growth. Then late winter is when all the sap rises in the wood and the twigs and the stalks and the still branches.
I love winter.
Philip is back from New York and I'm happy he's home. Max is happy he's home too. We function better as a group. This week Max said "Mom, I'm really glad you and dad have OCD too." I asked him why and he said "Because you never make me feel bad for needing things to be a certain way. You understand me." I don't relish the moment when he figures out that he's got OCD BECAUSE OF US. But perhaps the way we're raising him, to value being different, will cushion the blow. He told me he likes that our family is weird because he thinks we're cooler than other families. But he already feels the pain of being the way we are too and after Kung Fu on Wednesday he was looking upset and I asked him what was wrong and he said he couldn't really explain and said "Do you ever just feel sad, like sad in the spirit? For no reason at all?"
Just go ahead and stab me a little harder in the heart, universe.
Yes, kid, I have experienced it my whole life and it's called Major Depressive Disorder.
I wonder if it will help him to have a mom to guide him through those dark waters, a mom who has been through them over and over herself? Or is it always strictly a solitary hell that each of us must muck through without a hand to hold, without someone else's hope to grab onto? I like to think that Max won't have to struggle as hard as I did because I know things that can help. Because I know there are lifelines out there amongst friends and amongst professionals and if necessary with medication.
Right now I feel good because I am no different than the rest of nature. I am an animal just like the rest who have been hiding mostly in shelter, listening to the wind howl, and then smelling the soil warm up ever so slightly during my dream filled sleep, and my sap rises involuntarily with the rest of nature. My blood vibrates and anticipates. Today is full of sunshine and I plan to go spray my fruit trees with dormant oil, plant some lettuce seeds, and get my chitted potatoes in the ground where beans grew last year.
Max doesn't have these excitements, these revels of spirit connected to the seasons, he doesn't feel it like I do. Maybe someday, like many warrior-men before him, he will balance out the sharp blades and urges for battle with the business of tending dirt, caring for roses perhaps (the rose business is riddled with men), sowing plant seeds*, growing food for himself and food for the insects he does already appreciate and marvel at.
For some of you out there it is still solid ice and snow and it may be hard for you to believe that anything could be stirring beneath the frigid temperatures. The stirring may come late for you. Different regions have their own clock. So if you're buried in thick winter with no buds breaking yet- be patient! Curl up a little longer in dreams and read your seed catalogs and plan and enjoy the warmth of your fire or your favorite comforter. Relish the quiet, the nesting, and the waiting because it will inevitably lead you straight into the spring you're dreaming of. There will be little rest later so build it up now.
Winter is kinder than most people think.
*I specify plant seed, of course, because it is hardly a nurturing act for men to spread their own seed. That is simply impulse and pleasure without the need to hover, to care, to water, to weed, or to feed. Women do that.
I love winter.
Philip is back from New York and I'm happy he's home. Max is happy he's home too. We function better as a group. This week Max said "Mom, I'm really glad you and dad have OCD too." I asked him why and he said "Because you never make me feel bad for needing things to be a certain way. You understand me." I don't relish the moment when he figures out that he's got OCD BECAUSE OF US. But perhaps the way we're raising him, to value being different, will cushion the blow. He told me he likes that our family is weird because he thinks we're cooler than other families. But he already feels the pain of being the way we are too and after Kung Fu on Wednesday he was looking upset and I asked him what was wrong and he said he couldn't really explain and said "Do you ever just feel sad, like sad in the spirit? For no reason at all?"
Just go ahead and stab me a little harder in the heart, universe.
Yes, kid, I have experienced it my whole life and it's called Major Depressive Disorder.
I wonder if it will help him to have a mom to guide him through those dark waters, a mom who has been through them over and over herself? Or is it always strictly a solitary hell that each of us must muck through without a hand to hold, without someone else's hope to grab onto? I like to think that Max won't have to struggle as hard as I did because I know things that can help. Because I know there are lifelines out there amongst friends and amongst professionals and if necessary with medication.
Right now I feel good because I am no different than the rest of nature. I am an animal just like the rest who have been hiding mostly in shelter, listening to the wind howl, and then smelling the soil warm up ever so slightly during my dream filled sleep, and my sap rises involuntarily with the rest of nature. My blood vibrates and anticipates. Today is full of sunshine and I plan to go spray my fruit trees with dormant oil, plant some lettuce seeds, and get my chitted potatoes in the ground where beans grew last year.
Max doesn't have these excitements, these revels of spirit connected to the seasons, he doesn't feel it like I do. Maybe someday, like many warrior-men before him, he will balance out the sharp blades and urges for battle with the business of tending dirt, caring for roses perhaps (the rose business is riddled with men), sowing plant seeds*, growing food for himself and food for the insects he does already appreciate and marvel at.
For some of you out there it is still solid ice and snow and it may be hard for you to believe that anything could be stirring beneath the frigid temperatures. The stirring may come late for you. Different regions have their own clock. So if you're buried in thick winter with no buds breaking yet- be patient! Curl up a little longer in dreams and read your seed catalogs and plan and enjoy the warmth of your fire or your favorite comforter. Relish the quiet, the nesting, and the waiting because it will inevitably lead you straight into the spring you're dreaming of. There will be little rest later so build it up now.
Winter is kinder than most people think.
*I specify plant seed, of course, because it is hardly a nurturing act for men to spread their own seed. That is simply impulse and pleasure without the need to hover, to care, to water, to weed, or to feed. Women do that.
Comments (2)
Angelina,
that grapefruit practically jumped off the screen at me, it looks so tasty! Now I need to go to the grocery and get some citrus...
Posted by alison | February 20, 2010 2:30 PM
Posted on February 20, 2010 14:30
Max is such an awesome kid. Its really fabulous that he can put into (not surprisingly) poetic words the way he is feeling. That too you gave him and Im sure it will help him to help himself just as it has helped you and your expression of yourself.
Posted by Sharon | February 20, 2010 7:20 PM
Posted on February 20, 2010 19:20