restingmotion

Late June, Garden, A Sweater

I don't know how June has passed so quickly by.  It feels almost as if I missed it, or perhaps I just slept through large swaths of it.  I am over 1/3 done with chemo, next week I will be half done.  What a relief.  This particular course seemed easier than the first two, perhaps because I slept more and tried to do less, perhaps just dumb luck.  I suspect that my summer and my quest, such as it is, is to realize and find my way through the tunnel of darkness that is the dominant cultural myth of my time and come out on the other side. Or in other words to undo the shackles of the idea that doing more, constant stress, and lack of sleep are the hallmarks of a life well lived. 

In fact, I seem to let go of something each week.  But I gain things as well.  Time spent with friends.  The joy of simple meaningful work,  work simply to participate and share the benefits of this life, with myself, with the world around me, with friends.  Granted my particular bubble is mostly internally focused at the moment, but there are always cycles where we need to look inward, to brush off the accumulated dust of worldly cares and other's expectations.

The garden is progressing along at its own pace.  I have scattered a few pictures here and there, much the way they pop up in my life.  "Oh, look at this!" I might think.  The daylillies are blooming now, the later, larger, hybrids.  Still scattered about in temporary holding stations all, except for the one immediately above, which I had planned to move, but which I now think is in its perfect location already.  I love the contrast of the flower with the Japanese maple behind.   Perhaps the scale of the daylily is off, compared to the maple and the other plants.  Perhaps it is exactly that juxtaposition that I find appealing.  A reminder that what I imagine the world to be and what it actually wants to become rarely align.

I also managed to finish one sweater, and photograph it.  I can probably finish another today, but it will not be photographed today so wait for that in another post.  

This is the mixed yarn, multi-striped sweater I am calling Blueberry Season.   It is basically an unstructured cardigan as it was knit in the round and split at the armholes.  I actually tend to prefer cardigans with seams as the seams add structure, but in this case, given the widely varying weight of the yarns and the mix of colors, it was easier to knit in one piece.  The sweater itself is rather slouchy but the sleeves are more closely fitted, which is my own preference.  For one thing, I do not like floppy sleeves that get in my way, secondly, having a garment fit across the shoulders to the bust, as well as in the sleeves,  adds more than a tiny bit of silhouette to the shape, providing contrast to the loose body.  To my eye, it looks less 1980s and more 21st Century. It may be all in my head and not born out in photographs, but if the sleeves and shoulders fit, I feel sleek and modern.  Most of style and beauty is in the mind anyway, or it is so superficial as to be ephemeral and ultimately meaningless.  

Or so I tell myself.

 

So this is it right now.  I am keeping up.  I love to drink my morning coffee with the sunrise.  This morning I was watering a few areas that needed extra help following recent heat.  I am not allowed to dig at this particular stage of my treatment so any garden progress is pretty much on hold and I am learning to leave the door locked on those inner demons that might try to chime in and make me feel guilty over things not done.    

And I will leave you this photo, taken early this morning, in the horizontal light which brightens and blurs everything. Li'l bang coreopsis and Li'l Lyme Hydrangeas.  A combination that will bring me joy throughout much of the summer.  The hydrangeas are just opening, the coreopsis will move through flushes of rest and bloom, as do we all, reminding us that summer is a time not just of frantic pursuit, of outdoor adventure and accomplishment but also of languor, repose, and retreat.

 

Happy summer.

 

 

 

 

Reading in May

Did you think I had forgotten?  I still keep a list,  although I am not convinced that the May reading list reflects anything more than random unsettledness.   But first, the List:

39. Ruth. J. Gendler, The Book of Qualities.

40. Việt Thanh Nguyễn, The Committed.

41. Karin Slaughter, Unseen.

42. C.S. Wilkins, Breezy in Bandera.

43. Karin Slaughter, The Kept Woman.

44. Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

45. George Gissing, The Odd Woman.

46. Lee Miller, Landscape Design Combinations.

47. Bryan Chick, The Secret Zoo.

48. Tom Robb Smith,  Child 44.

49. Karin Slaughter, The Last Widow.

50. Olga Ravn, The Employees.

51. Ann Cleeves, The Long Call.

52. Carole Grace, That's Amore.

 

Let's see, five suspense novels, three of them by Karin Slaughter.  I have been slowly, intermittently, working my way through the Sara Linton novels, and although I was beginning to waver during the end of the first series, with Will Trent I have become more engaged.  I connected with Sara Linton from the first novel, small town girl, too smart, awkward, self-doubting -- she is a character I can understand and it is for this reason that I continue to read.  The brutality of the novels doesn't really bother me.  Sara and Will are sufficiently complicated to carry me through and I always learn something, feel my time was rewarded even if that reward is simply escape into a world so completely outside my own experience.

 

As to the other two, Ann Cleeves is a new to me author who has been oft recommended.  I saw The Long Call  at the library and picked it up.  Alas it is a new series and now I have to wait months for the second book.  I have sought out some of Cleeves' previous novels.  More about that later.  Matthew Venn is a fine character with a sharp mind, the story is complex and richly woven with both intricate relationships, a great slow-burn of a story that peaks near the end of the book and was quite a bit more complicated than I expected it to be.  

 

Tom Robb Smith's Child 44 is another slow burn, but this one is dark, raw, and emotionally draining.  Unlike Slaughter, whose brutality and darkness is somehow separate from the reader, at least this reader, this novel  seeps under one's skin and explores humanity's deepest emotions in a way that is quite unsettling.  Smith accomplishes this while telling a gripping story, one I had read before.  I didn't realize this until I was in to it, but I read this years ago, when it first came out in paperback, either when George was sick, or I was packing to move, a raw and emotionally draining period in my own life.  The book was worth reading again and it managed to surprise me even on this second reading.  Leo Demidov is a fascinating character, both filled with strength and conviction as well as doubt, but perhaps those are necessary balances, each bolstering the other.  I might well read the next.

 

Intermingled with the mystery/suspense were two literary novels.  Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Committed was every bit as brilliant, poetic, sarcastic, dark, cutting and outrageously humorous as The Sympathizer, except without the fine line of hope in the face of despair that ran through the previous novel.   I loved it but it also left me feeling cold and unsettled in my bones.  Both novels are disturbing in that they cut right to the heart of who people are, the way we act, and the stories we tell ourselves to hide the truth of our lives from ourselves and each other.  In that sense these are not happy escape novels.  But they are brilliant, insightful, intelligent, witty, poetic, and incredibly humorous.  Nguyen has a way of capturing a scene, an emotion, a way of wrapping truth and a story in humor so that you don't notice you are bleeding until after you have rolled on the floor in laughter.

 

Olga Ravn's The Employeees is a completely different kind of novel and it is not an easy read, although I do think it is brilliant and proved worth the effort.  Such a short novel: science fiction; some unknown place; some unknown time.  The story does not emerge linearly.  In fact, we get a series of short interviews, sometimes reports, sometimes vignettes, sometimes almost poetry, and through the spacing of these interviews, the use of words and white space, Ravn explores what it means to be human, memory, self, life itself as some of her characters are human-born and some are made, artificial life.  But as the story progresses the lines begin to blur and the question of who we are and how we define ourselves emerges.  I found this fascinating, unsettling, but also calming in an odd sort of way.  Highly recommended for those who can work their way slowly through metaphor and vague images, who can read a poem a day in search of a unifying thread.

 

Then there were the toss-offs,  quick easy reads that I enjoyed, some more than others, at the time of reading but which are effectively completely forgettable.   Landscape Design Combinations  was the only non-fiction in this group and although it had lots of pretty pictures, I found nothing new or particularly inspiring in it --  an afternoon of garden pictures that will have no impact on my future gardens.   Of the remaining books, Eleanor Oliphant was probably the best of the lot.  It is a rather quirky novel, and the author does a good job of hinting at Eleanor's past without either revealing too much or too little.  Eleanor herself is endearing and charming, and I loved her unintentional sense of humor.  An excellent feel-good read with little long-term impact.   I don't know how The Secret Zoo ended up on my stack; the cover perhaps?  It is a children's novel, but not a good one although I initially thought the premise was interesting.  It reads much like a bad children's movie, pandering to stereotypes with shallow character development.  That said, probably my 8 year old self would have loved it.  That's Amore is a romance, given to me by a friend in a period when I was having trouble reading or settling down, and it surprised me with how good it was.  The writing is crisp, and there is wit in the dialogue despite the other tropes of the formula.  It is a bit out of date for modern tastes in this genre, sweet and romantic, with no steamy scenes, not that I am objecting.  A perfect novel for when you crave inane feel-good fun.

 

Now let's deal with George Gissing.  I did not like The Odd Woman. It reminded me of all the worst things about Victorian Literature, and there are Victorian authors I adore and whose writing withstands the passage  of time.  Not Gissing.  Of course don't tell my former college student self that I ever admitting to liking anything Victorian.  That girl thought literature stopped in 1800.  Yes, we all have our faults.   That said, there were many good things about this book.  It was filled with shocking and valuable information about the plight of women in Victorian England.  Alas for Gissing he is no Upton Sinclair and I would be surprised if this story provoked outrage, which is a shame.  I did find it interesting, upon reading this, as I noticed how many of these same biases still shape our understanding of women's worth and women's work today.   Gissing was excellent at sussing out the foibles of people of society (then and now) and their blind spots and self-delusions.  In fact, I wished I was reading an in-depth sociological study rather than a novel; that, perhaps, I could have appreciated. 

 

And what are those two remaining books? The green ones?  Those are little frivolous bits of fluff that surprised me and which I adored.   J. Ruth Gendler's The Book of Qualities is a brief book, an alphabet book of sorts, although dealing with emotions and qualities.  I found it charming, and although yes, sometimes the analogies are simple, they are also at times quite profound.  I breezed through this book once, and keep it near my mediation chair as I find it often offers a perfect diving board for reflection on those mornings when I am too scattered, too tired, to nauseated, to settle my mind.    And since I have already. said I "breezed" through The Book of Qualities, that brings up our last book, Breezy in Bandera.   Bandera is a town in the Texas Hill Country, and this novel was written by a blogger whom I have followed for a few years now, although never really commenting.  I think I found her through knitting, but she is a fabulous weaver and inspires me, even though I have not yet warped my loom.  I found the story well written (it is a romance), and I felt at home with the descriptions of place, as if I was back in familiar territory. with a character I could relate to (an introvert who loves to cook and feed people and weave).  Yeah.  My kind of story.  Make no excuses for what you love.  I am looking forward to the second book.

 

 

What Was I Thinking?

Whenever I get too deeply in my head, too deeply in my own obsessions and excesses, my too-muchness, life has a way of reminding me  to slow down.

 

 

Way back in January I said I was going to resurrect the old knitting and sewing blogs.  I had plans.  Big plans.  I should know better. I was always the kind of child whose eyes were too big for her stomach.  I still am that child.  I want to do everything, to know everything, to miss nothing, and even as I recognize that I cannot physically do that, neither can I manage it psychologically.  Another part of me wants to sit on the grass and stare at a dandelion for hours, to be lost in dreams, to play, and to let my imagination run wild while the world slips by unnoticed.  

 

For a while I managed three blogs.  For a while I didn't even manage one.  You know what?  It doesn't matter.  But what does matter is that I rediscovered something and that is sometimes my own tendency not only to overthink, but my tendency to allow my own ideas and inspirations and general mental peripatetic overdrive leap far ahead of what is actually important.  I am not a knitting person as distinct from a sewing or needlepoint or embroidery person.  I am not a gardener or a cook.  I am all those selves and more.  There is no one thing I am driven to come home and focus all my energies on, at least not consistently.  The more I try to compartmentalize myself and my interests the more confused I grow.  I need to hop from pile to pile, and sometimes I need to knock all my piles down and let them reconfigure themselves in news ways.   

 

All of this is a long way of saying that all I have energy for is one blog.  Actually, all I have interest in is one blog, one life, one me.  So sometimes, if you are not interested in x or y, I may bore you to tears.    There are days when I bore myself to tears. So be it.

 

 

So what has happened in the ten or eleven days since last I wrote?  Precious little.  Precious little is a good thing.

 

I spent two days mostly knitting, not this past weekend, but the one before that.  I finished the sleeves on the purple cashmere sweater and blocked them.  You can see them just above.  While they were blocking I finished the front edge of the sweater.  All that is waiting now is for me to seam those sleeves and attach them to the body of the sweater.  Haven't done that yet, the story of my life.  

 

That same weekend, I rounded up the remaining yarn from the multi-yarn striped cardigan I have also been working on and divvied it up into two equal parts.  I wanted to make sure that the sleeves would be identical in their stripe sequence, and that sequence already varies slightly from the body of the sweater because I ran out of two yarns.   Very little knitting has been done since, but I do hope to finish this second set of sleeves over the course of this week.  No rush.  I cannot wear either sweater until the weather cools, and yet I am itching to start something new. 

 

 

I also opened my birthday presents from 2020.  You might remember that I promised to buy myself some fermentation crocks. Smaller crocks than the giant 3 or 4 gallon crock I already own, which is too large for me to lift when empty, much less haul around when it is full of cabbage, or anything else for that matter.  Since I am not feeding an army of teenage boys, there is no reason for me to make gallons of sauerkraut at a time.  But Covid-19 also happened last year and I was not able to order the crocks I wanted from Sarah Kersten studio until May.  As you can see I went a little overboard.  Remember what I said about excess?

 

At least they arrived before this year's birthday.  Due to my reduced energy levels, it took me a day to open all the boxes and unwrap the crocks.  They are still sitting on my dining room table.  Now I have to figure out where to keep them.  I had already prepared a nice fermentation shelf downstairs in the cool basement, but if I want to actually use these crocks this summer, they need to be in the kitchen, because I don't have energy to chop and prep and haul pottery up and down the stairs.  As it is, it took me three days to clean up all the packing materials and haul it out to the recycle bin.  But I did.  And before recycle pickup.  Sometimes my joy in small accomplishments is almost too big to contain.

This past Saturday was one of those days my cardiologist warned me about, one of those days where the best option was staying in bed or perhaps lounging on the sofa.  I suppose it could have been a perfect knitting day.  Instead it was a cookbook reading day, a reminisce and dream about food day.  I have owned Marcella Hazan's first cookbook, The Classic Italian Cookbook, since 1980.  Marcella Hazan taught me about Italian food, and the book is now, 40 years later, stained and falling apart.  I knew I would need to replace it but had been dithering, loath to part with an old friend. Then I happened upon this book, a compilation of Hazan's first two cookbooks, in my local second-hand bookstore for 75 cents.  Of course I bought it.  I spent Saturday in my pajamas, wrapped in a cuddly blanket, reading both cookbooks and cross referencing the recipes to be sure that everything I cared about in the first book was included in the second. Only two recipes failed to make the cut, and I understand the rationale, even as I myself am loathe to give them up.  I am not planning on letting go of the original book anyway, at least not at this point as I have space and it holds too much sentimental value.  Needless to say, I also discovered a lot of new-to-me things I want to cook, next time my cooking hat is on anyway.  And those two recipes?  They are pretty much a part of my culinary DNA, my mental repertoire, but a back-up copy has been made.  I have forgotten things before, doubtless I will do so again.

 

Hope you are having a great week.  Today is chemo day, and another cycle begins.

 

 

Five Things Friday

Just a quick update.  A little shaky this time around, chemo #2, but not as bad as the first round. A dose reduction has helped and some acceptance that I am, and always have been, sensitive to medications, especially those that affect heart rhythms.  A bit of a boost now though hopefully means that the end of the summer will also be a bit more manageable.

 

Garden time always brings joy, and this glowing pink hydrangea peeking out from behind the Japanese maple brings me joy each and every day.  I could just sit on the lawn lost in its loveliness.  The daylilly in front of the maple is also going to bloom.  I have forgotten everything about it, its name, its color.  Too much digging, too much trauma.  It hasn't bloomed in two years, but apparently has survived and is now coming back with strength.  There is hope in that don't you think?

 

Agretti.  A new to me green vegetable, which I adore.  Simply served here with a drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of lemon zest and Aleppo pepper.  This came from GirlnDug Farm, my winter vegetable indulgence.   I am going to try to grow some next spring although apparently it is tricky and a bit difficult.   But that is what makes gardening fun.  I don't want to stop supporting local farmers, and yet there is joy and satisfaction in harvesting a. bit of one's own food, of fresh peas from the garden, a fully ripe tomato, perhaps a vegetable one loves but does not find easily.  Earlier this spring I attempted to grow spigiarello, another new to me Italian green related to sprouting broccoli.  A late start and neglect resulted in a tiny yield, but perhaps next year will be better.  I had visions of sharing spigariello with all my greens-loving friends. Plagued by hopes and dreams and visions of excess, I can't help but seem to be carried away. And yet the trick seems to be not in disappointment over dreams not fulfilled, but in the joys of discovering precious new things, new growth, tiny bowls of Italian greens.

 

Ah yes! Hidden in the middle, but perhaps most important of all!  Hair.  The requisite car selfie after leaving the wig shop.  I love my new hair.  I love the silver highlights.  Admittedly I had silver highlights but not this many, and long covid hair appeared more dark, too dark for my aging paleface.  It was time for short.  And my hair, or at least my old hair, was too fine to hold this kind of off the face look no matter what I put in it.    I like the shape of my head.  I like a hat or a turban. I fully believe that there is no shame in cancer and no reason not to embrace the fact of it.  But, I also love my wig, and yes, it has brought a spark of joy.

 

The Shade Garden.  It does seem that so much of my joys revolve around moments in the garden this year and I remain grateful for that, that enough is planted that I have these peaceful vignettes, these places of escape and repose, where all is good with the world and my soul is washed clear of its troubles.  I sat in one of these chairs one morning, facing away from the hydrangeas, facing toward the vegetable garden, watching the cardinals eat my peas, battle over who got the best peas.  I have had my own good fair share, so I don't mind.  It seems there is always something new to learn, some new drama, some newly discovered peaceful release.

 

 

And then there are all the little things. Having the energy to fill the two small planters in the front yard with flowers.  A kind neighbor who brings my garbage can down to the garage from the street after trash collection.  Surprise gifts of cuddly blankets.  Family who stop by with shishito peppers just because they know I love them, love both family and the peppers in fact.  A snuggle from my grand-puppy.  All these things are a world in and of themselves.  Sometimes I think we, or at times I at least, get wrapped up in thinking about all the grand things to see, to do, but in reality, perfection is in these little things. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In The Market and In The Kitchen

This past Saturday I went to the Farmer's Market. It was a lovely morning, perfect for a stroll and shopping. I tend to circumnavigate the market first, eyeing the offerings and letting my brain buzz with excitement and inspirational visions of various dishes and menus.  Then of course, to sit, and collect those thoughts.  In this case also to remind myself that I would have chemo again in a few days, and my energy levels are unpredictable at best.  I overdid it the previous week, but more about that later.

 

Despite all the wandering, I seem to purchase from the same farms again and again.  This week, suitably chastened about excess, I tried to rein in my purchases, not completely successfully. Here is my haul from this past weekend.

Not shown is a bunch of local asparagus, purchased at the local co-op, which was promptly roasted for lunch.  

 

Note the carrots.  Lots of carrots.  This is where my exuberance got the better of me. Blame it on the previous week. As my energy level was fairly high and the carrot top season short, it seemed I could justify a little, controlled, abundance.

But why the reference to the previous weekend?  Above is the Memorial Day weekend haul, and, as you can see, it is somewhat smaller in total volume, but actually higher in cooking effort required. The broccolini and raspberries were promptly consumed, as well as the Japanese turnips, which are good for both cooking and thinly slicing and eating raw. Then there was a lovely bunch of carrots, only one, and a lovely bunch (head?) of celery with gorgeous leaves.  The flavor of celery is more concentrated in the leaves and inspired me to make soup.  Celery and carrots with plentiful leaves are a seasonal treat here in Tennessee, whereas they were a much more plentiful staple when I lived in the mid-Hudson region of New York.

 

Cook I did. I had already planned to make a big pot of venison chili, and thought I could make a couple of batches of soup at the same time, packaging everything up in quart-sized vacuum-bags for future meals.  I managed to do that despite the fact that my energy was at its lowest since my first chemo, about 25%, 30% on a good day, of my normal.  Having recently inventoried the freezer, I knew there were two boxes of washed and chopped carrot greens remaining from last fall, when I was inspired to purchase them but too low on energy to actually cook.  The fresh greens plus the frozen greens yielded four quarts of soup and the fact that the frozen greens were already washed and chopped saved me a great deal of effort. It says much when chopping 4 to 8 cups of carrots greens uses up one's energy and requires a multi-hour nap for recovery.

Over the course of the three-day weekend I managed to put away 10 quarts, or roughly 20 meals. (shown above): 3 quarts of chili, 4 quarts of carrot greens soup, and 3 quarts of chicken and celery soup.  It sounds like a lot, but in my past life, at full energy, I could easily have cooked and packaged three to four times that over the course of a long weekend.  Also admittedly this was a more esoteric selection than I usually put away, as I like to keep food on hand to deliver to people in need.  This was meant for personal use.  I couldn't quite manage running two pots at once, as I needed too much rest time between work sessions. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying accomplishment. 

 

By. Monday I realized that my heart rate was consistently lower than usual, my body temperature was low, and although I could raise my pulse, I needed excessive rest time. Tuesday I ended up in the hospital where I got a few days rest and some strategies for dealing with future chemo sessions.  I was mildly nauseous after the first chemo session, but tiredness seemed to be a bigger issue than initially anticipated.  I do have a congenital heart defect, and my pulse tends to run on the low side, which I tend to ignore for the most part, always refusing to see myself as someone who is, or can do, less than anyone else.   After a little worry on the part of the internal medicine department, a lot of rest on my part, and consultation with my cardiologists and several others, we decided that my heart is strong, even if atypical, and that no intervention was needed other than rest and some strategies for dealing with future chemo sessions.  

And before I knew it, I found myself at another farmer's market.  Of course the freezer was already rather full.  But the season for carrot greens is rather short, so yes, I did indulge.  When I got home I trimmed and chopped the carrot greens and washed them in several sinkfull's of water.  A nap was undertaken during one of those washing cycles.  My guess was that the four bunches of carrots would yield approximately 4 quarts of soup, which was close.  I ended up with 4 1/2, all now happily packaged and frozen,  The local onions went into the soup, the tops have been chopped and frozen with bags of vegetables for the making of stock.  

 

The chicken stock supply has now been exhausted. Although I have bags of chicken carcasses, necks, and vegetable trimmings in the freezer, stock making will not commence for at least another week or more, either due to exhaustion or the pending nausea period that immediately follows chemo.  I am not certain that nausea and a house that smells of chicken stock are compatible forces.  Not that I need stock.  Between the cooking festival over the past two weeks, the five 2-serving moussaka's that remain in my freezer, and other soups that have been frozen periodically, as well as a selection of fish and chicken frozen in single serving portions, I should not need to do any serious cooking for some time.

As an aside, and not really related to this post, here I am all masked and turbaned, port connected and ready for chemo yesterday afternoon.  The turban helps keep the requisite mask, hearing aides, glasses, and yes earrings, in place and hopefully adds a bit of mystery.  Acceptable wigs have not yet arrived, and I remain comfortable without them but am open to experimentation.

 

All that remains to be dealt with from Saturday's haul are the actual carrots.  I am one of the odd people who prefer my carrots cooked, unless of course they are perfectly fresh young carrots such as these.  However I don't believe I can eat them all raw so I plan to make carrot puree with the rest and freeze it in 1/2 cup portions.  Carrot puree requires minimal effort, especially when the carrots are this young, fresh, and flavorful, and the puree makes a wonderful delicate sauce for use with fish, or probably chicken as well.