Sew or Mow?

(plus an impromptu discussion of about the virtues of Oregon)

I promised a little peek at the coat project and here it is. A swing coat and the orange fabric I have chosen to make it out of. I was hoping for a sumptuous dove grey or charcoal color wool but since I was limited to what was on clearance this was my only choice. I'm lucky that I happen to LOVE this color. I'm just not sure it's going to be complimentary on me. I'm hoping that the glow I feel just looking at such a happy color will make it look good on me.

Sew or Mow? Indeed. I want to sew but vying for my attention are a whole lot of other things such as the garden beds which need building. It's been easy to ignore outdoor projects what with the freak snow flurries, the nasty bone chilling wind, and the rain we've been having...but suddenly it's nice out again and those beds are calling to me. I started mowing the lawn which has become quite overgrown. As usual, nothing is really simple. Before making the raised beds and situating them in their permanent spots I need to mow the lawn, but to mow the lawn I need to pick up the two weeks worth of dog poop.

I picked up the poop like a pet hero and then I started to mow. I really dislike gas mowers and electric ones seem like a nightmare of immanent electrocution so I requested that Philip locate an old fashioned push mower. He did. It's old, it's squeaky, but it works really well! I love mowing with the push mower. It's an upper body work out, especially when you've not mowed the lawn before and it's become a meadow of flowing grasses. So after getting about 20 feet of lawn sheered down to a respectable golfing* length I finished making the first of my raised beds and measured it into place in the corner of the yard.

Then I had to take a really long break.

It's the next morning and I'm still on the break.

This morning is the Master Gardener's plant sale. It's an annual fund raising event and one hundred percent of the proceeds from it go towards supporting the program. I've never been to it before. I've heard tales about it: how cheap the plants are; how you can fill up a pick up truck with plants for $25; how people line up at the doors to get in; how they will jostle each other with elbows and shoulders to get at the plants they want; how they will steal plants out of your cart.

Dudes. This is not a side of my fellow gardeners I want to see. In fact, this is not a side of my fellow human beings that I want to see. Ever. So I have been sorely tempted not to go. However, I'm on a budget and I have a blank slate of a yard. I feel that it would be stupid of me not to at least check the sale out. What if I can get some things I really want for super cheap? A person in my financial position cannot laugh down my nose at a plant sale. So my mom will be picking me up in a while and we will go see what the truth of this sale is.

Maybe I'll see the dreaded DD** there.

Meanwhile, ex-president Bill Clinton is speaking today at our High School. If this was 1988 I would be so excited I'd be teasing my hair into impossible height right now. Unfortunately this is 2008 and we've seen Monica, Whitewater, affairs with corporate America, and the Clintons are poison to me, particularly because of their little partnership with Monsanto. No one will ever get my vote who supports Monsanto (or similar companies) and is helping them eradicate biodiversity and choice in agriculture. I'm very impressed with Hillary's improved hair, naturally, she's come a long way sartorially since she was the first lady of the US, but she's spreading evil and I would love to go ask some very pointed questions of Bill today but I hear he's only speaking for an hour and then he's splitting.

In my opinion, if you're so desperate for votes that you are speaking in McMinnville's High School, you ought to be allowing questions and be prepared to answer them.

I have often thought of Oregon as the United States best kept secret. It happens to be the best state we have. It's funky, it's gorgeous, it's wild, it's full of progress and at the very same time it is also stodgy and old fashioned. It's a strange mixture of independent thought and traditional people. I fell in love with it in 1978 and I never did stop loving it. It has rarely made appearances in film, in ad campaigns, or the news. It isn't generally the place everyone talks about visiting for vacation like they do California. It's an alarmingly religious state (in my opinion) and yet it is the only state (to my knowledge) that legally allows assisted suicide in terminal medical cases.

Oregon kicks ass!

I've been noticing lately that it has been turning up on the rest of the country's radar more and more. A big Hollywood film is coming out that takes place in Oregon. People are discussing our green cities like Portland and Eugene...and taking notes. Our wines have been getting some notice as well, and more and more people are moving here. People like me.

And now, suddenly, Oregon (who no one has previously valued in the primaries, since we are almost the last state to vote in them) matters to the politicians. Well, watch out, because Oregon is hardly a predictable political field. Oregon is a state of surprises and I think it's hard to impress.

I see only five things wrong with this beloved state of mine:

• People don't take care of their teeth here.

• Avocados don't grow here.

• Citrus doesn't grow here.

• There are too many churches.

• And coincidentally? An alarming rate of teen pregnancies.***

*I think golfing is silly. Just in case you wanted to know. Go ahead, get your nine irons out and have a ball...don't be shy. I think it's a game for stodgy republicans. Maybe it needs an image clean-up. "Golf- the new hockey!" Ha ha. My brother plays golf once in a while and it's something I can never quite wrap my brain around.

**Doubleknit Disaster

***A correlation which I see as being very tightly bound together.

The Road Home

This is the road home from Portland where I stayed the night with my mom. But this is also a very familiar landscape of the past as well. It's been my road home since I was a kid. There is something wonderful about rain hitting the windshield, tail lights reflected in the road, and lush conifers lining the roadsides. It reminds me of listening to Simon and Garfunkel, of always heading somewhere good, especially when it's leading you back to your fireside.

My MECCA: Powell's Books. I come here to worship at the foot of knowledge. I come here to inflate my thirst for new words, new worlds, new guides, and new skills. There are several floors of all of this to explore here, though I confess that I almost always spend every minute of my time on the first floor amongst the crafts, garden, and cookbooks.

Get to know your local herbal! My mom took me to her new favorite herbal shop. She took my sister here too so now it's like our family spot. It smells so good in there. The bars of bees wax look like tiny ingots of gold. There are tins for filling, jars of everything mysterious and wonderful, and oils to scent.

23 rd Street at night. My mom's neighborhood.

I realized that I have a motto to go with this new year of ours: Every Little Bit Counts. I've been applying it to every corner of my life and mind. It's been crawling all over my posts too. I just didn't realize it until last night. It's kind of nice to have a motto.

Some of you probably already know that what I think of Royal people (of any country) is extremely uncomplimentary and generally points mean fingers at a heritage that has become so narrow that it has been known to suffer some classic inbreeding problems and generally accuses members of Royal families of being pretty useless. In general I will probably always cherish this view point. However, I think it shows some ability on my part to overcome my prejudices that I can honestly say that there is one unlikely member of the British Royal family that I have come to admire.

Prince Charles. Seriously, there could not be a weirder person for me to admire, yet I do. The man has actually made himself useful and is doing work that any person could be proud of and is (in my non-British opinion) doing a good service for his country that I could only wish the leader of my own country would do.

He is championing organic practices of gardeners and farmers and has been working to get historical kitchen gardens in Britain rebuilt and put on display. Not only that, he was instrumental in getting the sale and use of GMOs banned in his country until there is more proof that they are not harmful to people and the environment.

I realize that Prince Charles isn't spending most of his time mucking about in the dirt and I realize that he will never truly be one of us regular people, but it is known that he is passionate about gardening and I just can't help myself, I like him. I have my opinions about how he and his ex (dead) wife conducted their marriage, and it is easy to believe that all the Royals of the world are just titular heads of their respective countries at this point in history, but I think it's too facile to let that be the only thing we judge them by.

I like him. So it was extremely hard not to buy his book about organic gardening. I was terribly bummed that I didn't get to see him when he visited Pt. Reyes California to talk about organic gardening...some people are so lucky! The next best thing would be to get his book. I don't need to know how to garden organically, I've already got references for that, but I want to read all his quotes. I really want to read everything he has to say. Yes I do.

Totally bizarre.

I didn't buy it though because I already had a stack of preserving books I've been wanting for a long time. Prince Charles' book cost forty dollars, so I'll just have to wait. It will be on my wish list though.

Which just keeps cracking me up.

I wonder if I could get an autographed copy?

The Homestead Inventory
The winter's coming, is farm girl Mathilda* ready?

One not-naked urban homesteader wrapped in a newly "finished" quilt top.

A more practical view of the quilt top.

One newly stocked pantry. It is very unfortunate that a cat who was a guest in our house decided that the concrete floor in this pantry was much more luxurious to pee on than her litter box. It's not near the food, don't worry. It takes the glamor of my pantry down a notch or two but hopefully with some Mrs. Meyer's cleaner I will be able to muscle out the unsavory odor.

Here is what you will find on these shelves:

36 quarts vanilla pears
26 quarts diced tomatoes
12.5 quarts stewed tomatoes
16.5 quarts tomato sauce
21 pints 2-bean marinated salad
21 pints salsa
9.5 quarts peaches
6.5 pints apple sauce
9 pints marinated green bean salad
10.5 pints blueberry sauce
6 pints silvanberry sauce
9 pints piccalilli
15 pints dilly beans
8 pints bread and butter pickles
12 quarts dill pickles
11 quarts dill pickles from homegrown cucumbers
10 pints jardiniere
8 pints pickled eggplant
14.5 pints pickled beets
11 half pints peach peach preserves
10 half pints blueberry jam
6 half pints silvanberry jam
7 half pints blackberry jam (this is from last year)
3 half pints sour cherry jam

From the freezer:

9 packages soup
20 packages ratatouille
3 packages tomato sauce
8 packages grilled eggplant
10 packages grilled hot peppers
7 packages oven roasted tomatoes
4 packages green beans
4 packages zucchini
5 packages zucchini fritters
28 packages pesto

Is it enough? Will we be forced to eat the pile of rotting wood we're cultivating in the back yard? Would we fail the frontier house test? (Duh, of course we would, we keep a television in our fire place)

You know what I love about Philip? He has an amazing ability to keep his priorities in order. I also love his enthusiasm for all the activities I get into such as food preserving and this whole eating local challenge thing. I have been doing all the research so far on where we will find our sustenance and our comforts.

Then the night before last he comes rushing into our bedroom where I was watching old episodes of ER and says he's been looking for a local source for whiskey!! (The exclamation points are his, not mine.) He happens to love whiskey, not a treat he gets to enjoy very often due to the somewhat hefty nature of the price tag. Can you believe that? How fabulous is this state we live in that he can buy locally made whiskey?

It's entirely possible that the local junk is really disgusting, but he'll have to report to me on that one because the smell of all whiskey makes my stomach want to crawl up my throat and find out what fresh air is like. I know it can't have a peaty essence seeing as we have no peat here. My mom was wondering if anyone around here produces vodka. Sure enough, Philip found a vodka that is made in Portland. It fills me with pride that when the chips are getting weird, my man will always find festive beverages to imbibe before they actually go down.

Today as I was running my errands I saw a man in an official vehicle with a hair-do I really wanted to talk to him about. I thought as I passed him: Dude! I hate your pony tail so much it's making my brain hurt! I wonder if someone else felt the same way about mine?

Has anyone else been baking bread? I haven't baked any bread since the dog hair fiasco last year. Reading about wheat has made me itchy for some home made loaves. This weather also makes me wish bread was baking in my oven. I just hope I can make a decent loaf in my electric oven.

Time to go make food. Or curl up in a blanket and read. Oh yeah...with something festive in a cup. That reminds me, if anyone has any fantastic tried and true recipes for mustard or liqueurs, please share.





*not my real name.

Top Secret Martha-style Enterprises

I don't know what it is about the Pacific Northwest that has so much epitomized what I need from my own place on earth, but it's always been the PNW for me. I will readily admit that having gotten used to being able to grow lemons and tangerines in California I do occasionally pine for a lemon tree that I can put in the ground and know that it will thrive. I did, once this season, look at pomegranates in the nursery catalog and wish I could ripen them here in the Willamette Valley. But those are Mediterranean plants and this is not the same climate.

But these longings for climatically challenged fruit pass pretty quickly underneath the quick-change skies of Yamhill County where we can see the sun bust out of the clouds in a great flourish, feel the rays for two whole hours before the clouds roll across again in a big precipitous display that ends in five minutes of sleet followed by some gentle sprinkles which are then finished off by the most vibrant unbelievable sun set.

We've been here for a year now. A whole cycle of seasons. This has been a year of incredibly hard, but fun, work. A year of coming home. A year of scaring off potential new friends. A year for forging new connections. A year of healing from the incredibly dark months that led up to our northerly migration. In fact, I think we're still healing. Philip still has surgery to look forward to on his arm. (That pesky bone grafting fun he gets to participate in because his bones have not healed even though they're bolted together with sixteen pins and a sheath of titanium).


We thought that by now we would know if all our work building a business was going to pay off. We're still not sure. We've been in this funny limbo for a year and a half now. The limbo of having no idea where life is headed. What we'll be doing in six months. Whether we'll be living in this boring but good house or renting an apartment here in town. Whether we'll both be working for JoAnnes or Wilco with matching mullets, or if we'll be paying all our bills with Dustpan Alley, our labor of great passion. We have been scared at times, and at others so certain that whatever happens we are on the path we need to be on. We have been on a great roller coaster of depression and excitement, anxiety and confidence. It's hard to know the difference between our elbows and our feet which are always bent, always moving.

The only thing I've been sure of in the past year is that moving back to the Pacific North West was the same as moving back home where my spirit belongs. Right here. It's something about the quality of the air. The nature of the climate. Almost no one can resist pairing the words "Pacific North West" with "rain" and also "wet rain" and sometimes even "endless fucking rain". I don't even notice it. Is it raining all the time? Is it grey all the time? Really? Are you sure?

Personally I think the whole liturgy about the Pacific North West and it's dreary weather is something people spin out to discourage others from moving to this region of sparkling earth. No, you can't ripen pomegranates here, but in the end, who the flippin hellety hell needs them when we are living in the place where blueberries grow like WEEDS. LIKE WEEDS WITH CANDY ON THEIR BRANCHES.

And nothing on earth is better than riding down highway 18 on my Vespa to Farmer John's to pick up twenty pounds of tomatoes to can on a scorching day, with the hot air hitting my skin like a sand blaster rushing all my irritation away, and passing through thick clouds of wild blackberry scent, a scent so peculiar to Oregon* in my mind that every time I smell it my soul settles in a little deeper, committing just a little more to the moment at hand.

Oh yeah, about the title of this post... I almost forgot to tell you all that I made some totally cool decorations yesterday for my friend Dominique's baby shower this week-end that I can't show you yet because she reads my blog and I want her to be surprised. For a person like me, who doesn't do parties, who refuses to play any kind of parlour game, or pretty much ANY GAME**, and who is a lot like a grumpy old man with a half smashed cigar hanging out the side of my mouth and perpetually mumbling curses out the other side of my mouth, I was surprised at how well I channeled the decorating hero of the world. Yep, I really did. But now that I've said all that, you will undoubtedly be disappointed.

Oh, you're wondering how I got involved in this party making fest at all if I am as I say I am? I mean, why plan a baby shower for a person who really loves parties and decorations and is sweet and light and full of baby joy...why step in with my curses? A-ha! Good question. You will all be relieved to know that there are at least two other people planning it. I am merely an instrument. The other two are not like grumpy old men at all and have (mercifully) taken on the task of setting up the baby shower games that I will alienate everyone by refusing to participate in. I am just helping out because I adore Dominique and want her to be super happy with her day. That's why I've crawled out of my cave to make like Martha.

Seriously, I can't wait to share my creation.

Right, so on an even less expected topic than the above, I just want to say that I am so tired of being a person with chin hairs. Not just a "person" with chin hair, a WOMAN with chin hairs. I don't have enough to sign up with the local circus as a bearded lady, but I have quite enough to mess with my view of myself as a dainty feminine creature.***



*Don't be worried, I know that blackberries grow in California too. I've picked 'em and canned 'em there too. But they don't permeate the air down south. The scent of blackberries doesn't rush out at you on languid walks from every nook, from every bank of the road, as it does here.

**Except for scrabble with Philip. This is one of those things that really irritates people, drives them wild with a desire to CHANGE my ways and then makes me into even more of an old curmudgeon because the more a person tries to get me to play games, the more they drive me into a fighting corner. Never a good idea. I always come out looking like a mean loser and an outcast. Playing games makes me so uncomfortable that I would rather peel a whole layer of my skin off than participate. I am unbudgable. (Rare exceptions are made for small children.)

***You've sniffed out a contradiction. No, see, I am really more like an old man the way I've described it, so the reality is that I've probably grown chin hairs because they are totally appropriate, but in my mind I imagine that I am a dainty delicate female with grace and gentle ways. (Until someone tries to coerce me into playing games.) Holy hell, I need to just shut up now, huh?