ceci n'est pas un sampler

It's one of those days. Actually, it's one of a series of those days, strung in succession like beads on a thread: pouring buckets, lowering sky, a bit too damp and drear for even us locals to bother with things like woodland walks and visits to the wetland pools (though they'd be wonderfully swollen with all this rain). As I type, the deep bank of clouds are taking on a rosy cast: sunset, observed from under our thick, wooly blanket of precipitation.

I'm curled up inside, making the most of it - working through this afternoon, then getting a bit of exercise before finishing this embroidery project off tonight.

This is more than a sampler; this is a ward and blessing for our first home, and once I finish it I'll have to find someone to cut glass for the antique, hand-carved frame that I created it for.

craving color

Looking at back posts on social media, I was making a lot of brightly-colored vegetable breads through the tail end of last year's non-event-winter. I think it's a combination of being kind of burnt out on heavy foods by the end of the holidays and craving the lighter vegetal flavors of spring that drives me to it. Whatever the reason, this beet bread (based on Twigg Studio's beet and walnut recipe, here) is amazing. I started dreaming up other combinations this weekend - carrot and dill was the most popular version I made last year, but what about carrot and dill and turmeric? Or parsnip and parsley and sumac! Cauliflower and nigella!

But this week, it's just plain old beet. I think it'll serve as a pinch hitter for lunches on days when I don't have a lot of leftovers to bring in; a slice of beet bread slathered with "Up in Smoke" smoked chevre, and topped with some of the last of my friend Amal's pickled cauliflower? Yeah, that'll hit the spot. Tasty and bright; just the thing to chase winter doldrums away.

mucking about

Such promise in a little plant! It is very early to be picking these fellows; last year I posted elsewhere about harvesting in the first week of March - the earliest I'd ever gathered nettles.

This year it's January. I've been feeling particularly impatient to be out, picking weeds in the woods again. A little late-winter itchiness, if you will.

Crouched in deep, wet leaf-fall, stepping gingerly around ferns, we picked in silence, listening to the constant drip-drip-drip of moisture gently gathering and falling. There are days in Seattle when the weather reminds me of nothing so much as life inside a giant terrarium. Little birds twittered in the misty rain and fog as they drifted overhead, and off in a soggier depression somewhere, frogs sang their amphibious romances to each other.

A nice soak in cool water, and picking-through (with tongs!) to remove the muck and detritus.

Then a quick, 1-minute blanch, a shock in ice water, and gentle draining before pureeing into beautiful, nutritive emerald paste. Buccatini with nettles, pancetta, and black pepper is on the menu for this week, a first taste of something wild and green and woodsy-deep since summer faded last year.

Cozy

Oh, this face! Tonight she was reunited with her favorite blanket in the whole house: the handmade quilt. Naps ensued.

I've been eating Yumm bowls all week. Our favorite version is rice (arborio, because that's all we had on hand) and beans (borlotti, this time), with shredded carrot, sprouts, sliced tomatoes, avocado (leftover guacamole this time), and Cafe Yumm sauce. Soo delicious. And yes, a bit out of season with those tomatoes and avocado, but sometimes you just need a little tomato goodness in January, you know?

Also hopping on the golden milk train. Mine turned out super thick (did I cook it too long?) and tasted kinda like cooked squash. Been using it in everything from smoothies to lattes; it does seem to be helping with my back pain!

And finally, a cozy tableau: the mattress for the sleeping nook in our guest room finally came today. At first I was feeling kind of bummed by the mishmash of patterns and colors involved in setting up the bed (sheets, duvet, quilt, pillows, handmade rug - nothing really matched or felt cohesive), but when the sun sets and the room is lit by the glow of some twinkle lights, suddenly this room glows with a special magic. And do you see the little face peeking around the corner from the foot of the bed? I think anyone who stays here will have to expect to share the nook!

taking in the woods, the woods taking in me

It's a funny thing; the older I get, the more porous life seems to be.

When I was a kid, I used to think of myself as a solid entity, a single individual (the famous American individualism!), hermetically sealed off, really, from the world. I was an individual living and moving in the world, yes - but inside my skin, that was ME, and outside my skin, that was NOT ME. I remember experiencing something of a shock the first time I really conceived of the fact that I was permeable. And not just through my mouth or nose, my ears or eyes ... but my skin. That I excrete through my skin the foods I eat, that my skin breathes in and absorbs the environment around me. 

Yeah, I think it was realizing the porous nature of skin that really started to shake my sense of myself as a solid being, a singular entity: if chemicals, molecules, could pass through my skin - if things could come and go through me - then how could I be certain what constituted me? 

The older I get, the more everything feels ... impermanent. Just chemicals, elements, atoms constantly reconfiguring. Energy transmitted, passed, shared. Touch, go, leave something behind. Maybe it's my yoga practice; maybe this is what it means to start to conceive of one's existence as but a wave in an ocean.

It's a little unsettling. And at the same time, comforting.

In particular, lately, I've been thinking about states of matter. I touch a wall or a crystal or a piece of wood and think about the fact that its solidity is, in some ways, just an illusion of my limited sensory capacity; really, if we could excite the atoms to loosen the molecular bonds connecting them, this solid item could melt and run through my fingers - or evaporate into air, and I could inhale it into my lungs. I think about the act of swimming, about myself as a collection of more densely packed atoms moving in a body through more loosely arranged atoms.

(nettles are just starting to come up; I have half a mind to go pick these young things early, just to satisfy an early craving for the flavors of the woods. It'd take a long time to gather enough for a meal, and I'd have to range over a lot of territory, but my mind fixed on them some weeks ago and I have been contemplating them with something bordering on obsession.)

(miner's lettuce, too)

 

Even our experience of sound and light are determined by varying resonances of vibration; red could so easily be green; treble could so easily be bass. (I have no idea what these fat, juicy little mushrooms are, but aren't they delightfully plump and succulent-looking little fruits?)

I think, too about the conservation of energy in all this, the recycling, the recombining of elements, particles. Nothing is lost, the physicists tell us. 

I don't know to what end these thoughts are tending, but I feel like my sense of my own existence is shifted by them, in subtle ways.

I wonder what changes these changed and changing perspectives work upon me?

waiting to break ground

The bulbs I planted outside two weeks ago haven't broken ground yet. (I know - shocking, right?) But each warm (aka: in the 40s) day, I go out and peek. Today, a little leafy bit of a weed from somewhere had blown over the bulb patch and for a moment my heart was in my throat. It's hard to be patient - even when there's so much to do before the time comes to just enjoy the garden. I miss having snowdrops; we had them in our rental garden, and they always started coming up so early! Maybe I'll add some this autumn.

For now, these bulbs will have to fill the days of watching and waiting (and working). They're amaryllis bulbs, a bit past their prime. I had this great idea for a Yule gift for a friend who lives back east and who is discovering the isolation of the lingering winters in a small New England town: a pretty turquoise dish of a pot, some intensely-colored amaryllis bulbs, a packet of soil and some stones. Life, shipped right to your door.

Of course, when I hatched this plan, I forgot that my friend will be spending the next few months in Oaxaca, leading an undergraduate study abroad session. Ah, the best laid plans...

I transplanted an African violet into the pretty turquoise dish and planted the bulbs before they could languish. It's a bit late in the season, so we'll see how they recover and whether or not they perk back up. I'm optimistic.

A bit of rare midwinter sun for us -though this hasn't been much of a winter at all. This blueberry hasn't even lost its leaves from last year yet, which is kind of crazy to think about. Will we have enough water, come summer? Will we have another devastating fire season, this year?

An old friend of mine is also getting back to blogging with the turn of the calendar; today she posted and asked what our dreams or plans are for the new year.

 Neither of us goes in much for New Year's resolutions, but we do both enjoy a good list (whether it's a to-do list or simply an ideal list of things we'd like to get to within a given period of time); we're both highly productive women with many interests. Planning is essential if you want to do many things at once.

I've already written about getting back to blogging more regularly this year, but on that ideal list, I have another goal, aspiration, or mantra of sorts for the year:

To invest in what is mine, and to relinquish that which is not.

I am working this year on placing my time, my focus, my energy, my care on things which are under my control - that which is "mine." And the rest? I'll be practicing graceful acquiescence to others, to what must be. 

holiday wrap-up

Still finishing up holiday gifts around here, especially the homemade variety. I seem to be having the hardest time just packing up care packages and sending them, for some reason - even when the presents have been made and/or purchased for almost two months now. I try to convince myself that this is okay, arguing that we're just stretching the holidays out longer for everyone ... right?