Small Things, Small Moments

This was two weeks ago in Minnesota, but trust me, Ohio has these same colors! 

Back in April, I wrote a small post in which I announced that I was no longer writing on Medium. In my Medium article, I let readers know that I do have this blog, but then warned them not to expect to find any stunning revelations. After all, this blog is "Small Moments of Great Reward."

"Small Moments," not "Great Big Honking Moments." Small moments. I try to write about what I see, what I do, how I manage my days. And as I make more deliberate efforts to write again, I remind myself that writing small is perfectly okay.

I take great comfort from E. B. White's observation about his own writing: "I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day...the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace."

White was 30 years when he wrote those words to his older brother. If White were looking back and commenting on his own work today, he would likely still say that about himself, perhaps adding that even his children's books reflected those "small things of the day." 

If small things worked for Andy White, they sure as heck work for me.

As I noted in a long ago post that disappeared due to operator error (and which I paid homage to in that small April post), a small focus does not mean I have parked my intellect at the door. That being said, for the most part, this continues not to be a forum in which I make pithy, political observations or solve world issues. When I do write about the issues of the day such as hunger or access to justice or homelessness, it is almost always about how those issues play out on a local and personal level.

The last several weeks have been hard at times on several fronts. I learned this morning on Facebook that a colleague from the very early years of the mental health docket, someone whose contributions as a therapist were insightful and gracious and, at times, hilarious, and who had just celebrated his 69th birthday, died suddenly this morning. Thinking of him triggered memories of helping create that docket over a decade ago and then seeing the rewards. Warren's schedule has been beyond packed, straining personal time (his, mine, and ours) and any of our calendars. There are elderly parent issues, there are other matters in our circles of family and friends. The recession is hitting this community hard, which means the number of people needing legal help is hitting all-time highs. 

It has been tough.

But here's the thing: life goes on. Life rolls on despite the hardships and losses and I try to take joy in brighter moments. While the weather continues to shift into deeper autumn, we are still having brilliant days. Today is one such day; I took a long walk earlier just to soak in the colors in the trees, the blue sky, the sunshine.

In my last post, I wrote about the tomatoes and peppers sunning on the deck. Some of them are out there right now as I type this. We had a meal of roasted stuffed peppers a few nights ago; I chopped and froze the rest of them. I have eaten some of the tomatoes; I still have hopes of nurturing the others to eating stage. This morning I texted my friend Pat to see if she wanted any; she and her husband were about to go out of town for the weekend and she was thrilled to have them. (Talk about perfect timing!) I bagged six medium ones for them to pick up as they left When I handed her the bag, she cradled it to her heart.  I have a small bag of cherry tomatoes to take with me tomorrow to a meeting with Amy; she loves cherry tomatoes.  

They are the last tomatoes of 2022. May Pat and Amy enjoy theirs. As for the ones I have, I hope to savor every bite.

This Year's Gardens: End of the Season

The last of the garden

The garden year is over. 

As I wrote in my last post, I picked all of the remaining not-yet-ripe peppers and tomatoes a week ago and have been sunning them since Saturday on our deck in the hopes that some of them will ripen. While we are having a warm weekend ("warm" being in the 70s), the change in light and the cooler days in general spelled the end of them ripening on the vines. I am writing this Monday and there have been good results. We are still having a few more days of warm, sunny weather, so I am looking forward to a few more days for the tomatoes. The peppers, judging by their textures, are ready to call it a year. 

This was not a good gardening year on many fronts. We did manage to get three more cabbages, small red ones, from the Hej garden, much to my  surprise. Small? One was about the size of my fist. Maybe. They made the white cabbages from earlier in the summer look large. I chopped the three up and we had enough coleslaw to accompany our meals for several days. 

Tiny cabbages.

The cabbage crop!

Next year, I told myself as I chopped. Next year.

Next year's gardens have been on my mind a lot. A. Lot. How to approach them, what to plant, how to make sure the gardens thrive. We now have rabbit-fencing for the Hej garden and will roll it out at the beginning of the season. (Ha! Take that, rabbits! I hope the falcons come back and thin you out again.) So that is one small step.

What to plant is more nagsome. I planted a lot (again, A. LOT.) of tomatoes on the promises of friends to take the extras. Well, one friend took extras only if I picked them for her. Another had such a crowded summer that tomatoes were not high on her list of priorities as tomato season waxed and waned. A longtime neighbor across the street, who not only took tomatoes but picked them herself, moved away in September (but not before coming over and picking more tomatoes). So next year? WAY less tomato plants (and unlike this year, that is a vow I will keep). 

By growing fewer tomatoes, I should have more room for the peppers, which were definitely crowded. Those also suffered attacks from the rabbits in the early weeks until we put fencing around the individual plants. I don't know that I will plant more peppers, but I will definitely give the ones I plant more room and respect.

Other probable changes? The four planters are lackluster when it comes to growing lettuce and carrots (finger carrots, which are smaller). Some of that is due to my lack of attention. Some of it I blame on how the soil compacts quickly in the planters. I doubt I will try carrots again in any format and I am not even enthusiastic about a lettuce patch, although I love the fresh lettuce. The planters will likely go to the curb with a "FREE" sign next spring. 

I am planning on growing zucchini again, despite a mediocre season. Again, some of that was rabbit depredation. Some of it may have been (again) lack of care. I pretty much neglected the Hej garden, even after the fencing, so the weeds grew strong and plentiful. They did not overshadow the few zucchini plants that grew large, because it takes a lot to best a full-sized zucchini plant. But the weeds did shove aside the smaller plants. And all the plants seemed to develop a white coating, no doubt a disease of some sort, which hampered the growth. Still, there are quarts bags of sliced zucchini in the basement freezer to eat for the next several months, and I would like to see how next year's crop plays out. 

And of course there will be basil, although to my disappointment the bees did not flock to it this year after the final cutting. They apparently found the cosmos, which grew abundantly from a pack of scattered seeds, of far more interest. Bees loved the potted marigolds on the deck as well. They also loved a flowering plant (coleus, perhaps?) in a large planter that Warren's daughter brought over as a gift and that we kept on the deck for the summer. The planter has come inside for the winter and will make a reappearance next summer.

In the comos

And the marigolds

And on the coleus (I think)

I am planting more cosmos in the kitchen garden next year. They were too bright and too engaging to ignore. I will plant sunflowers again, although they take up a lot of space, just for the joy of watching the goldfinches and other small birds feast on the heads as they go to seed.

In the waning days of the fall, I am bringing down the gardens. For the kitchen garden, that means pulling up the plants, taking in the tomato cages for the year, and first weeding, then tilling the bed. For the Hej garden, I think the only way I can get it under control is to go out there daily, for 30 to 40 minutes at a time (setting an alarm), and take the weeds out bit by bit. It is too overgrown to be an easy afternoon, trust me. (I started this project over the weekend, and soon realized the enormity and the tenacity of the deeply rooted weeds.) Only then we can till. We may spread compost on both gardens for the winter, then till and put down compost in the spring.

As I settle into the late fall, I hope to return to writing on a more regular basis. My health continues to be very stable, but with 18 years of myeloma under my belt, I have no illusions as to how fast the sand in the hourglass is running. Even without the myeloma, we recently had a harsh reminder of how brief life can be when one of Warren's high school classmates, who we'd just seen in September at the 50th reunion, died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Time is precious. I want to spend more time writing; Kaki Okumura, a writer I first found on Medium, recently wrote about being away and then coming back to writing and her thoughts resonated with me deeply. I admire bloggers like Sam (Sam, Coffee, Money, and Thyme) and Kim (Out My Window), who write daily or almost daily. 

And I want to spend more time with my camera. I look at Laurie's beautiful work on The Clean Green Homestead and her photos make me want to also look at the seemingly everyday but infinitely precious world around me.

Like this little one who decided to visit yesterday:

I'll be watching myself to see how I do.

Third Quarter Pennies Review

Three weeks into October, I am finally tallying up the food and household expenses for the third quarter of 2022. When I posted our expenses for the second quarter back in July, I noted that I was caught off guard with how much food prices had been rising. Third quarter was less of a shock for two reasons. First, I was now acutely aware of how much food prices had been rising. Second, because of that awareness, I tried to be more deliberate in our purchases.

So how did we do?

Our grocery (food) expenditures in the third quarter came to $709.36. Household expenditures, such as tissues, detergent, and toilet paper, were another $22.40, for a total of $731.76. Year to date, we are averaging $242.57 a month. Looking back at where we were after two quarters, that is only 68¢ more than where we were halfway through the year. That is a minuscule increase.

As before, I have been keeping an eye on price increases. The one that caught my attention the most was that a 42 ounce container of old fashioned oats jumped from $2.49 to $3.49 at Aldi, which has the lowest price on oatmeal of our local stores. It has not increased since then. Eggs have gone up quite a bit in the stores; fortunately, I get great coupons from Kroger and Meijer for eggs, so I have not winced too much. Milk, after hovering near $3.50/gallon for much of the summer, is starting to drop. 

Three weeks into the final quarter of 2023, I am strategizing on how to keep our food purchases flat line or, I hope, lower for the rest of the year. Both Warren and I try (and often succeed) at keeping food waste to a minimum, and frequently have none whatsoever in any given week. Whenever I have an opportunity to buy butter for $2.50 or less a pound, I buy what I can (often the stores limit you to five pounds) and freeze it, looking ahead to winter baking. With the onset of fall, bringing with it the change in sunlight and the cooler temperatures, the remaining tomatoes and peppers in the garden were not maturing, so last Sunday I picked them all and am seeing how many I can ripen indoors to cutting/freezing stage (the peppers) or to eating stage (the tomatoes). I am hopeful that this will give me a few more weeks of garden tomatoes as those will be the last tomatoes I will eat at home until next summer. (I refuse to buy tomatoes at the store.) 

A few days ago, I shared some thoughts on money and rising costs with my close friend Cindy. I said I was watching the food dollars and the heating costs (we turned our furnace on for the winter on October 4, which is earlier than usual, because of the temperatures) and that I was okay financially, but very penny conscious. (I say "I" and not "we" because while Warren is equally frugal, he and I have always had separate accounts, including for groceries. The figures above are our dollars, not "his" or "my" dollars, but I am reflecting on how the dollars impact my bank account.) Perhaps I feel that more so than usual, in part, because I am no longer employed and right now drawing only a small public employees pension (I am deferring drawing social security for several reasons, at least for now). But I am also feeling that way, and think I would even if I were still working for pay, because of what I see in the stores, at the gas pump, and in the utility bills. I am not panicking, mind you, but I am wary.

Food insecurity is on the rise in our community, as it is everywhere else in this country. The lone remaining ham I noted last time? I ended up taking it to someone whose family was in deep need because of a temporary crisis; they needed it more than we did. When hunger is that close and personal, the reality of food costs and too few pennies hits hard. 

I remain grateful that our table continues to feed this household well. 

This Year's Gardens: Part 12

The continuing saga of the gardens can be summed up in three words: What a summer.

As we roll into the fall, here is what happened (still is, in fact) in this year's gardens:

The cauliflower? A total loss. 

The cabbages? Two small white cabbages. When I say "small," I mean probably under a pound. In the two prior years, I was harvesting cabbages in the four to five pound range. The red cabbages developed some outer leaves but nothing beyond that. 

The zucchini? Poor production. Not a lack of pollinators. Not a lack of blossoms. A seller at our local farmer's market (yes, I had to buy zucchini this year) said she'd had good luck, but many of her friends had seen similar results to mine: blossoms and pollinators, but no zukes. She said her friends had male blossoms but no female blossoms this year. I'm sorry: this season has been rigorous enough that I am not going out to sex my plants.

Peppers? Decent. Not stellar, but decent.

Tomatoes? A strong season, far surpassing last year. I only planted hybrids this year, and the issues  (Bugs? Disease? Aliens from another galaxy?) that I had last year did not pop up one time. 

Basil? Best. Year. Ever. And I have had good basil seasons most years. 

Friday I had a close friend coming over to learn how to make pesto. To save time, I went out to the kitchen garden in the morning, while cool, to cut basil. 

The basil season is coming to an end. If it rains as predicted, there might be one more growth spurt and one more harvest. So I cut with that in mind, meaning I did not cut down to the ground. Even this late in the season, there was plenty of basil.

Some of the basil is starting to flower. There had been flowers earlier this summer, and we cut them off to prolong the growing. This time, I let many of the flowers stand. I want the basil to flower; I want there to be bees in the basil.

My friend learned how I make pesto (without a recipe) and exclaimed at how simple it was. Afterwards, we sat at the kitchen table and talked of life and Life. She carried home two containers; I assured her we already have plenty of pesto in the freezer.

Perhaps there will be more basil. Maybe I will make one more batch of pesto. I don't know.

But I do know there will be bees in the basil.

Looking Back

The 2013 book with the box of prompts

I have often chronicled my attempts to get back to and stay in the habit of writing on a daily basis. Writing writing, that is: essays, posts, poetry, that unfinished novel (well, more than one). And, in all honesty, my attempts run in fits and starts, depending on what else I am working on or involved with, what else is going on in the family, the Symphony, the community, the world, and how I feel physically. 

So many excuses, so little time, perhaps, but also so many other passions and commitments that I cannot just set aside.

Back in May of 2013, I blogged about one such attempt to write regularly using prompts. And I actually did it for a short amount of time. A very short amount of time. I don't know what happened to the box of prompts (well, I know they probably got tossed at some point). I do still have that notebook, however, and have dipped into it from time to time, including recently, trying to make sense of writing. Or life. Or both. In doing so, I have been flipping back through it and looking at the prompts I did write those many years ago.

I surely was rereading Dante's Divine Comedy at the time, or at least the first book, Inferno, because references to it and him pop up in a few of my 2013 prompt responses. I was dealing with the resurgence of the myeloma and the impact of new treatment on it. (Well, there's a familiar theme that I managed to tie into several prompts.) I wrote about walking and seeds and time. 

Time. Always time. Time is always threaded through my thoughts and my words. I certainly did not write in 2013 thinking that I would reread those words in 2022. But here I am and here are my words.

Below is a writing from that 2013 era. I allowed myself five minutes only to respond to a prompt; I have not edited it or polished it for today. The prompt was a quote by Alix Kate Shulman, "Amor fati goes the Latin proverb now tacked up over my desk: accept what is—literally, love fate."

***
Love fate? But fate is a wild card dealer. If this were Las Vegas, fate would be sitting in the dealer's seat, dealing the cards, no smile on her face, her hands flicking them silently and precisely to my seat.

No indication in her cold stone green stare what she has sent skimming my way.

So fate deals. Only this is the truth Tim told me years ago: You got one lousy card in your hand—myeloma. The rest look to be pretty good.

So what do I have? My kids, Alise, Ramona. David. Warren above all. A job, family, friends. Food & shelter. Laughter. Writing prompts. Being able to walk to work, to downtown, to the library.

Maybe it is not so hard to accept what fate has dealt. Or rather, what is. Love fate.

Maybe if I stepped away from the card table & opened both hands—stand outside, stand by the ocean, stand under the stars—then I love fate. I love what is.

Back to those stars, Dante's stars. I come out from my rant about loving fate and see the stars above.

****

My, oh my. 

Some things have changed: Alix, fna Alise, is my child-in-law. The grandchild count has gone up, the family has both expanded and contracted. I no longer work, but I still walk everywhere. 

And the sight of the stars still renders me silent and grateful.

And how it looks in 2022

This Year's Gardens: Part 11

The season's first zucchini, the first pepper (this one a sweet banana pepper), and tomatoes picked yesterday and this morning.

Nothing says "summer" like a basket of tomatoes. Especially for those of us who wait from October to July for that first bite.

Second Quarter Pennies Review

 

Back in April, I wrote about our household expenses, especially groceries, and made some projections for where prices were going. In retrospect, even though I was aware of rising food prices, I did not take into account just how much food prices were rising. Tallying our grocery purchases for the second quarter of 2022 drove that point home.

At the end of the first quarter, our monthly grocery expenditures averaged $206.03. That is both food and common household items such as toilet paper, dish soap, and so on. 

I recently totaled our expenditures for the second quarter of 2022. Our household purchases have remained low, less than $20 a month. But our food? Oh yeah, it has gone up. In two of those three months, food purchases came in just under $300.00. I can make some excuses, such as "Well, we did have a guest artist stay with us in May and then one in June, and so I bought extra," but that doesn't entirely explain the figure. It's not like I was buying lobster and champagne. (Frozen lobster tails right now are running about $43.50 a pound locally.) And there was the half gallon of skim milk that I had to buy in downtown Rochester because I forgot to buy it at Kwik Trip before going to our hotel. That lapse, sending me to an in-walking-distance small store near the Mayo Clinic, cost me $3.89. But again, those little lapses do not explain the overall rise in our groceries.

But other things do. I have been tracking a few items, one we buy frequently. A gallon of milk? $2.99 all spring, then jumped to $3.49 or thereabouts in the first week of May. Flour (5 pound bag, unbleached, all purpose white) took a 50¢ raise from April to June. (White wheat flour took an even greater leap.) Bread has gone up across all the stores by 25¢ or more. Sometimes the leaps are huge, sometimes they are small, but so far of the items I am tracking, very few have held steady. So start adding pennies, dimes, quarters, and more to your shopping list items, and the rise is there. 

So what did we spend in the second quarter of 2022? In food alone, we spent an average of $266.00 a month. ($265.99, to be exact.) With the household items added in, our monthly average groceries came to $277.75 for the second quarter, which raised our year-to-date average to $241.89.  

Yeah. $241.89.

It is not just us, of course. In a long conversation with a good friend past weekend, he commented that he budgeted $50 a month for household items such as laundry detergent, toilet paper, and the like. "And that is no longer enough!" he exclaimed. That friend is a household of one; I didn't comment on our average expenditures for such items ($11.65/month through the first half of 2022) in our household of two.

Looking ahead into the third quarter, there are some bright spots. We are halfway through July and have spent less than $60.00 on groceries. Our food waste is almost zero in this house, so we're making the most of what we have. And all those hams we bought back in April? We have been carving them up and enjoying ham sandwiches and other ham meals steadily. Our June guest enjoyed the sliced ham, as did my dad (who I sent home with ham slices both to eat and to freeze for later). Only one ham remains intact out of the six; it may make an appearance as a whole ham much later this year. And the garden is coming on; I have yet to see zucchini, but my hopes remain high. 

I am grateful that our household continues to run smoothly on the money front. From my volunteer work with our Legal Clinic, and in talking with friends and colleagues active in the food world (food banks, summer lunches, and such), I know that there are many who do not have that luxury in these times.