A Farewell

So here it is June 30, and one half of 2020 is over in another nine hours as I start to type this.

And where are we? Heck, forget "we." Where am I?

I have now been home since March 12, or 110 days. 110 days. I have been working throughout that entire time, so there has been no financial disruption, but 110 days since I last set foot in my office is mind-boggling. In some ways, this reminds me of 15 years ago, when I was preparing for and then undergoing tandem stem cell transplants; I spent a lot of time at home and not in my office (which I would give up later that summer). A difference is that in 2005, what I went through was  personal, and in 2020 we are all going through a deadly pandemic.

Another difference is that in 2005,  I was the one who chose to step away and close my law practice. I chose. I was in control. I have no illusions as to control in this pandemic. There is none. I don't know when I will be allowed to return to my office, even if I were to go in after hours, wearing a mask, not touching anything except the door handles. (Looking at the failure in this country to control COVID-19, I sometimes wonder if instead of "when," I should be writing "if.")

And down the hallway at Symphony Annex North? Warren and his colleagues around the world are watching orchestra after orchestra postpone or scrap their seasons. Each daily briefing from the League of American Orchestras brings another wave of announcements. Major orchestras are furloughing their salaried musicians, furloughing their staff, reexamining how to proceed safely and sensibly in this new world. Warren, his Music Director, and other partners are discussing daily the possible trajectories for our upcoming season. 

In the midst of all this upheaval, I learned that about 20 months ago, Jerry Luedders died. 

Now, if I am just learning that Jerry died, clearly this is not someone I was in close touch with over the years. He and I last communicated by email maybe five, maybe ten years ago after I had stumbled across some reference that made me suddenly think "so where is Jerry these days?" and track him down. We had a friendly "glad to touch base" exchange and that was it. 

I learned he died in a similar fashion. While editing grant material for Warren, the material referenced a saxophone instructor and I suddenly thought of Jerry and went looking for him online. 

And that's when and how I found Jerry had died.

Jerry was the incoming Director of the School of Music at Lewis and Clark College in the fall of 1977, when I was there for the last three quarters of my undergraduate degree. We met because he was directing the Wind Ensemble (band) that fall while the director was on leave, and I joined the ensemble for one quarter because I realized that this would be my last chance ever to play tuba. As it turns out, I was the only tubaist on campus, so he was glad to have me We hit it off immediately as two newcomers, as two outsiders, as two strangers who connected over those other two commonalities. He had just come from Minnesota, I had just arrived from Chicago, and we were at a small, pristine, preppy college before the word "preppy" had even come into vogue. 

Jerry was witty, and deeply knowledgeable about music, and a gifted conductor. He was also a world-class classical saxophonist (which is not an oxymoron). He was openly gay at a time when many people were still in the the closet and his off campus wear ran the gamut from "business casual" to "Let-me-remind-you-who-I-am-and-proud-of-it" leathers. He threw parties at his house high in the Portland Hills, he tooled up and down the hills of Terwilliger Boulevard in a Volvo PV 544, and it was not unheard of for me to be walking on campus and hear him shouting my name. My favorite time was when he ran up behind me yelling "April, you are such a slob!" and grabbed me in a hug. (It was one of the many days I wore a mechanic's shirt, battered jeans, and worn out shoes. Compared to Jerry and most of my fellow students, I was a slob. I would have passed easily and fit in better at Reed College across the river, but Reed had a 6-quarter graduation requirement for transferees, and I didn't want to spend another year in college.)  In the spring of that year, my last quarter, he begged me to come join the orchestra's low brass section for a performance of the overture of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. 

How could I say no? That turned out to be the last time I played tuba, and I am forever grateful it was with Jerry on the podium.

I have taken to walking a local labyrinth many mornings (you can read my reflections on that here) and there are days where I think of those dear to me who have died and gone before me. I often murmur a name, followed by "blessed be their memory," a variation of a common Jewish statement of mourning. 

Jerry Luedders, blessed be your memory. 

Jerry Luedders, 1943-2018

A Look at the Gardens

Back in late April, I shared that our vegetable garden, the one I call the "kitchen garden," had been cleared and tilled by Warren, and was just waiting for planting. It looked like this then:

What I have not shared, because my posting has been, ahem, irregular at best, is that we added a second garden, the Hej (pronounced "hedge") garden. The Hej garden actually sits on our backyard neighbors' parcel. The owner before the current ones was an avid gardener, a certified Master Gardener, and she had established a thriving vegetable garden in the far back corner of the yard, just where it butts up to the little dogleg on Warren's parcel. It has been tilled but not planted for several seasons, as our current neighbors have many, many demands on their time and a garden just wasn't one of them. So I proposed that we take over the garden, they can have some of the vegetables grown on it (making me a sharecropper no matter how I look at it), and there we go. 

The Hej garden is our zucchini garden, because our kitchen garden does not have enough space for zucchini. It has been planted twice, because the first planting of 20 zucchini seeds resulted in five coming up.

Five.

You could toss a coin, call "heads," and get better results than that.

About three weeks ago, I tore out everything but those five zucchini and planted it over again, this time marking the seeds (which I doubled and tripled) with spoons:

And today, I was in the garden at 6:30 a.m., transplanting the zucchinis that came up in twos and threes to the spaces where there were still not results, marking the transplants and their former companions with the spoons upside down:

It's been a lot of work. This garden also contains  five extra tomato plants we had from my over-ordering tomatoes this year; they are along the fence on the left side of this photo. 

The kitchen garden and I likewise got off to a rocky start, but we have smoothed out our most of our differences. How rocky? Lettuce that didn't come up, parsley that didn't come up, marigolds (border) that didn't come up. You get the picture. So there was some extensive replanting in that garden as well. 

But just a day into summer, and it is looking good:

Bit by bit, it is coming along. Tomatoes are starting to form:

Indigo Rose

Early Girls

My very favorite feature is the ceramic partial border in the kitchen garden. As I continue to sort through stuff in my house, some of the stuff is headed west to my sons out there. Sam declined any of his childhood pottery attempts; Ben and Alise took a few. I couldn't just toss my children's offerings over the years, so I put them in the garden instead. 

The border

A ripply plant impression plant by Ben

A skull by Sam

I smile every time I walk by, seeing my children's art springing to life in the garden.

Observations About May Money

This pandemic and our grocery spending (because that is about the ONLY spending I am doing these days) continue to be...what? Fascinating? Mind boggling? Head scratching? All of these?

Yeah, all of these. 

After sailing through April with food expenditures well below the monthly $180.00 target I had set months ago, May costs went back up over that. May food costs were $218.52; household (non-food) expenditures were $23.43. The grand total? $242.36. 

That brings our monthly average year-to-date to $221.69.

And, once again, we did not eat out. Ohio has started reopening, and restaurants that can accommodate the mandatory distances are opening, but I have not yet been cleared by my oncologist to go beyond the boundaries of my home for all practical purposes. 

In preparing to write this post, especially in light of last month's revelations about my "twitch," I looked back at the three (yes, three) receipts for groceries in May. Some (a significant portion) of the expenditures consisted of stocking up on food items we routinely use such as coconut oil (my current jar is down to about a week's left), olive oil, and decaf instant coffee (I make chocolate mochas with it at home; I cannot drink caffeinated coffee). Those three items alone came to $14.77. Butter was on sale at Kroger and we spent $6.00 to get three pounds of unsalted as I was running low on it from the stocking up I did last December. (I use the unsalted in baking and there has been a lot of baking lately. A. Lot.) 

And let's talk about the steep rise in the cost of meat. Fortunately, we are not huge meat eaters. I cringe for family and friends who are. Around here, meat is more expensive and, of course, scarcer. So when I looked to order chicken thighs, the store's first response was it had none. By the time we picked up the order the next day, thighs were available, at a higher cost because these were boneless and skinless (the only type available).

So I get why the May expenses were higher. I also suspect that June will drop off precipitously as we eat our way through the items on hand. And maybe this will be the 2020 pattern: high, low, high, low. The good news going forward is that now that I am aware of my twitch, I am much more conscientious about what we order. Placing the second online order in May was stressful as I wrestled with making sure the items were needs and not twitches. (Once I placed the order, the stress dissolved.) When I am allowed back in a grocery, I hope to carry that awareness with me. 

On the gardening front, we are still weeks away from tomatoes. Many of the tomato plants are setting blooms and I am hoping that I will have one by month's end. Time will tell. The zucchini is not cooperating in germinating; I will be replanting that entire garden. (I now have a second garden, courtesy of our backyard neighbors, who have a great plot they never use. Basically, I am sharecropping zucchini this year.) Lettuce is coming along slowly; maybe in a few more weeks we will have lettuce. 

These were hard times before the Minneapolis killing tore even deeper fissures into our country. Our Legal Clinic, which is serving clients remotely, is already seeing its numbers rising and we know the tsunami of evictions and debt-related matters is on its way. I am dealing with personal issues as well, ranging from my health to accepting that I will not be able to travel to the Pacific Northwest this year. As the likelihood of the NW family contingent coming here is also nil, this will be first year since 2013 I have not seen Ramona and company in person. I get it, but it is still a disappointment. So the fact that I managed Tuesday to knock the entire stack of our everyday bowls off the shelf onto the counter and kitchen floor, shattering every last one, seemed somehow a fitting note.

Here's to a better June. 

Those Sourdough Brownies

As I mentioned in summing up our April food expenses, I now house sourdough starter. Starter needs fed on a regular basis to keep it alive and healthy. My routine is to pull it out of the refrigerator on the weekend, feed it, let it rest (usually overnight), then put a small portion of it back in the fridge. What does not go back in is called discard.

Discard is just extra starter. When you feed the starter, it grows. Only a small amount goes back in the fridge for next time, so now there is all this extra sourdough goop, the discard.

Some people actually toss the discard. They don't want to use it at the time, they have already given starter portions to their friends so the friends can get into sourdough baking (that's what happened to me: a neighbor gave me some)(yes, she asked first), and, guess what, there'll be more discard next week!

I don't like throwing the discard away, even though there truly is more where that came from. So with the advent of sourdough baking in this household, I started looking up discard recipes. (Another phrase for "discard recipes" is "sourdough recipes," because they really are one and the same thing.

As you can imagine, many sourdough recipes feature breads and crackers, and yes, I have made some of those. I have seen recipes for pancakes, coffee cakes, and such. On a whim, I searched "sourdough brownie recipe."

Holy moly!

Apparently, sourdough enthusiasts have been baking sourdough brownies for years! Who knew? Many recipes commented on the "tang" that sourdough brought to the brownie. I was intrigued and went searching for a recipe I could get into easily. Some of them were labor intensive. Others required huge amounts of this or that (one called for four eggs, which I have never seen in any homemade brownie recipe). And then I stumbled across this one from Bob's Red Mill and never looked back: https://www.bobsredmill.com/recipes/how-to-make/sourdough-brownies/

What's not to like about a recipe that starts with 9 ounces of bittersweet chocolate (I used dark chocolate) and 1 cup of butter?

The brownies were delicious. We shared them with neighbors on either sides, as well as the friend who got me started down this sourdough road. Everyone gave them rave reviews.

Here are some of my photos of that first batch. When I make them again, I may add a little (very little) more flour to provide a bit more body. The recipe requires the baker to "sprinkle" the flour, so perhaps I will add one more sprinkle.

The starter after being fed and resting overnight

The bubbles show the starter is healthy 

9 ounces of dark chocolate and 1 cup of butter, melted over slow heat

Adding the discard to the chocolate and other ingredients

Stirring the starter in

About to fold in the sprinkles of flour

The recipe calls for a 9x9 baking pan, a size I do not own. This oval pan holds the same volume.

Out of the pan. 

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." 

Observations About April Money

When I wrote about our March food and household expenditures, I noted that we spent larger than normal amounts of money that month and the month before, most of it being related to stocking up on basics and staples. I also breathed the hope that our April spending would be much less.

Well, here it is May Day, although given our weather in Ohio, you'd swear we were in March still, and I have the numbers at hand because guess what? Our spending on food has decreased greatly so I only have a few numbers to add instead of a sheet full of them. And, looking at the decrease in spending, clearly we are looking at what we have around the house rather than jumping in the car to go to the grocery store to get something else (more about that later).

Our April food purchases? $144.56. Household items added up to $6.10, the bulk of that being trash liners for our household, a box which will last into 2021. Total? $150.66. That starts to yank the average YTD down from $238+ to $216+. I might get it down to $180.00/month average yet. We did not eat out (takeout) at all.

The food costs include two large shoppings at Aldi, one in person early in the month by Warren and one online for home delivery later in the month, one key food item when Warren had to get something for his shop at Walmart (What key food item? Kosher salt, a must have and something Aldi does not carry), and, finally, $5.00 to the Symphony for the Hershey's chocolate bars (from February's downtown Chocolate Walk) that I knew were there. The early Aldi shopping included two hams from Aldi at the pre-Easter price of 89¢ a pound. Those are now residing in the freezer and will come into play later on this year.

The most interesting revelation about April spending has been the changes I see in me. Even without the spending spurts in February and March, I now realize exactly what I mentioned above: I have a huge tendency to jump to the grocery store rather than ask myself "so what do we have here?"  Now that I am unable to go to the store and we are both very reluctant to have Warren in a store (because I am in such a high risk group), I find myself being far more thoughtful about food preparation. To borrow from blogger friend Laurie at The Clean Green Homestead, I am using what's on hand.

One item on hand now is sourdough starter, which I use weekly. (Well, I feed it weekly and then use the discard, but that's what sourdough starters are all about: feeding and discarding.) There are a variety of things you can bake with the discard, but my favorite to date has been sourdough brownies.

Sourdough starter (the bubbles show it is active)

But going back to realizing how much I just went to the grocery without thinking: this revelation about my twitchy impulse (to borrow from Anthony Ongaro, the one minimalist I enjoy, really like) caught me off guard. I famously do not shop. Ever. Malls? Nope. Online? Nope. Amazon Prime? Ha. I don't even buy books (very much) anymore. But apparently I was totally open to the call of the grocery store. And while it is likely another month or more before my oncologist lets me even stand near a grocery store, let alone set foot in one, this is a truth about me (that twitch to shop) that I need to be aware of when I finally do enter a grocery.

Despite my optimism in early April about gardening soon, the weather here has stayed colder than I expected for this time of year. We are still having occasional frosts. So there are no beds planted, other than the sprouted onions I planted for the first time ever, most of which seem to have settled in and are growing. I hope the gardening front is entirely different by May's end.

And until then, we'll enjoy the brownies.

Winding Down Another Week in Another World

It has over six weeks since I was in my office at Juvenile Court, six weeks since I was last in a grocery store (well, any store), and almost six weeks since my oncologist put me on lockdown.

It is almost six weeks since Warren closed the Symphony office and moved the base of operations to our home.

And the verdict is?

I'm fine.

We're fine.

The second floor of our house is now home to the Symphony North Annex and one of three satellite offices of the Delaware County Juvenile Court Mediation Department. Warren puts in far longer hours than I do, both because I am only a part-time employee and because even though the Symphony, like every other Symphony in this country (and most in the world at this point), is locked down, there is still work, not the least of which is writing grants and trying to imagine what live music will look like going forward. Never one to waste a good crisis, Warren is making plans and alternative plans for the Symphony's future.

So what does life in a time of shelter-at-home pandemic look like for us?

Well, it's quieter, certainly. I mean that literally. The streets are quieter because car traffic in our town of approximately 40,000 is a sliver of what it was in the beginning of March. Our downtown, our main routes, and even US 23, which slices through just east of downtown and only three blocks from our house, have far fewer vehicles on them. As a result, the birds are now providing a soundtrack to daily life which, for a change, is the main sound, not just background sound.

But life is also figuratively quieter. I don't have to balance work, chores, social obligations, community commitments, whatever. My only for-certain calendar events are our weekly Court Zoom meeting and my oncology appointment with infusion every four weeks. A very occasional webinar might get noted on my calendar, but that is the exception, not the rule. A number of my friends have commented (in letters, in emails, in social media) how much slower life is and how much more satisfying the days often are because the layer of busyness we all live with is removed. (This enforced time of quiet, of less doing, is also providing me observations about my health that are both insightful and troublesome, but that is a topic for another day.)

So, besides working, what else does one do in these strange times? If you are Warren and me, you move by hand and hard work the perennials that you plopped down in the vegetable garden in the fall to winter over before putting them in a flowerbed. These were end-of-season markdowns at a local nursery.

Which season?

Fall 2014, but who's counting?

Warren dug the holes by hand because it is not possible to rent a rototiller from our hardware store right now. I helped lug the dug-up plants around, helped replant them, but all those holes, not to mention digging the flowers up? That was Warren.

Our vegetable garden space (above) has easily doubled. Those perennials—lilies, coneflowers, butterfly weed—had thrived, but were out of hand and took up about 2/3rds of the space. I am looking forward to seeing what we make of the expanded vegetable garden, but that time is still a few weeks away.

This is the new bed, now in the back of our yard.

We will put down a heavy layer of mulch to kill off the grass. This bed makes me smile every single time I look at it. It is my favorite garden for its raggedy spirit and for all the love that went into every one of those holes.

I walked out this morning to check on it and found everything in order. The coneflowers especially have settled in and are thriving.

And so are we.

Observations About March Money

Well, can I call them or what?

When I wrote about this household's February spending, back in mid-March, I predicted that March would be worse. In February, we spent $231 and change on food and household staples, and that was as the COVID-19 issues were just starting to swirl around us in Ohio.

Since my post on March 14, all things related to COVID-19 have only intensified here as our Governor and Director of Health, the who-would-have-thought-it? amazing duo of Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton have taken steps to make sure Ohioans flatten the curve. Warren and I had already bought a lot of staples by mid-March; our last grocery trip that month was March 20, which Warren conducted alone because I was not allowed in stores (or anywhere else) per my oncologist. [Note: I am still not. And I do not expect that to change when I see Tim next Tuesday for infusion.]

March totals? $281.97 in groceries (food items), $23.83 in common household goods. Grand total? $305.80.  Year-to-date average? $238.47, or about $59 a month over my 2020 goal, set back in pre-COVID-19 times, of $180 a month.

Now that is a curve it will be hard to flatten. Oh, our spending will go down, but I'm not sure I can drag that monthly average back down to $180.00. If my math is right, we'd have to hold monthly spending at $160.00 for the rest of the year. Doable? Sure. Will we do it? Remains to be seen.

But it is what it is. We are eating out of the pantry and freezer, we have had only one grocery trip in April (and will likely have one more later in the month), and life goes on.

In a note that makes me smile, our eating out expenses in March were a little higher than you would expect for two people who don't eat out much in a state that is all but shut down. Our total was $31.25. That amount covered meeting a friend for tea in very early March, a quick, late evening meal, also in early March, following a music presentation by Warren in Marion (20 miles north), Warren buying a sandwich for takeout in downtown Delaware when the Symphony office was still open to show support for local restaurants, and a takeout lunch with another local restaurant at month's end to celebrate an important anniversary for us. (Why did we get takeout? It had to be Mexican to tie in with the anniversary.) Eating out this month will probably be...zero.

In the meantime, the weather is finally showing signs that spring is no more than a wild story.  We will be starting our garden soon and, assuming all goes well, we should be eating out of it by early June (at least the lettuces, maybe, I hope, please).

So keep on washing your hands and staying safe. I know we are.