Color me Carrot

too lovely not to share

Waiting for them to fall

 Another step in the year of food preservation... what excites me almost more than these blueberries? We got a deep freezer! translation = hand picked food for the winter & no more booby traps set as we open our months stuffed small indoor freezer. I recently brought back fish from my month up north and had just about pushed the three shelved wonder out of commission. but no more.

Often I'm asked "how do you like Corvallis?" my response 7 months ago was very different than it is today. It is like a bit of a treasure box. you have to keep your eyes open and that is when you start to find all the secrets. The day I got home T send me out back to our patio and told me to look around..... Nothing other than confusion. "take two steps forward and look down" still confusion. "look harder." what sat there but a small red round ball. "pick it up and eat it" T told me. It was a wee plum. Our tree out back had started to fruit these amazingly tasty little bits of yumminess. About twice a day we go out and are greeted by 10 new plums that are perfectly ripe and sweet which have made their way from the high branches. We look like monkeys outside collecting them. Even the dogs are getting down on the action. We joked last night that we have 5 competitors for the goods. I'm a pretty savvy one, I even monkeyed my way up the tree in my dress and shook the branches until I got so entangled I was forced back to the ground or would have donated my dress to the tree as a peace offering. I guess I'm impatient.

Saturday found C and I at a organic pick your own blueberry patch just a few miles from my house. I'd never seen it before. In 45 minutes we had managed something like 20 lbs of blueberries. The giant berries were literally falling off the bushes. We continued our weekend excursion to a few local wineries. Many out here are family owned and located on a farm of sorts. They are just lovely. We debated trying to visit all the Oregon ones in the next year to come but were quickly shut down by the realization that there are over 450. We'd really be lushes. C picked up a winery tour map and we've compromised our original plan to hitting up a few in each location. A more manageable endeavor. The day continued to a friends house to try their newest home brew experiment. "We gave this one a protein rest" they happily explained. Oh how I love living amongst fellow scientists!

C later helped me sort and clean the berries which Sunday operations turned them into freezer packs, dehydrated berries and jars of goodness. T even put up some heady jars of pickles. We've realized once the canner is up and going we best make the most of it. It turns into quite the kitchen process. The experimental batch; a blueberry, plum and honey compote. I have a gut feeling I will be happy with it come December on waffles. 

For my birthday last year my cousin gave me a book called "the complete book of home preserving." I LOVE this book. It has served as a great reference guide to modern canning. Not only does it cover the basics but it also offers new and fun ideas to putting up everyday fruits and vegis. Highly recommended to my fellow crunchy friends out there. I was blessed with growing up in a family that never put down this art. I can remember from a very young age "beet time." you could tell it was summer when the baskets were full of beets and zucchini from the garden and the kitchen smelled of fresh cut vegis and vinegar. This past time has now followed me into adulthood, my mother donating her canning pot to my Oregon efforts. to those who have a desire to learn- there is nothing better than opening up your own jar of jam on freezing cold day of winter and remembering how warm and lovely it was outside the day you put it up.

reflection

Sometimes order is Chaos but oh how I love it so.....

summer is almost dark

Where did the time go? One month. I saw the stars two nights ago for the first time in 4 weeks. And after all of that; I realize how much you can truly fit into 30 days. kayaks and lonely beaches, Microscopes and children, rain and sunshine, yoga and bicycles, alpine and sand, new land. I spent my last night in Alaska with two dear Colorado friends who also will begin their journey south after spending a year in the land of wild. this time was different. I feel like a tourist. Am i happy? indeed. I had never spent a summer on the road systems; following campers and watching people's eyes light up as they pull over on the turnigan arm to take pictures 4 feet from the highway. I feel privileged to have the experience of new places. to share these places. and so off again to Oregon. Another year.

off the radar

Oregon Sunshine 

&

Multnomah Falls

     Madison, Wisconsin   

                                                                                              Indiana BBQ                                                    

Homer Alaska 

Off the radar.... summer has began in full swing. A month of travels, of reunions with beautiful friends, of places dear to my heart. For the last 9 months I have lived in Oregon, a second round in the universe that exists around a college campus. I watched Oregon go to sleep over the winter. watched snow fall and explored places covered in moss and lava rock. I've learned what it means to live close to my food, my small community is saturated with farms and local goods. And then the spring came and I watched Oregon wake back up, the foxglove pop up all over the hills, the rivers flow full force. I watched the sun return to the sky and scare away the rains and dark clouds that seemed to exist each morning. Did I mention I am now a bit of a champ at riding my bike in the rain (except when it is dark, stormy and I forget my lights... but we'll talk no further of that one!) Indeed, I experienced a new home. And yet today, again, I write from a place I love so dearly. Someone recently told me that if you are unfinished than you will be summoned back but if your work is done than let it exist as a fond memory. I must not have completed my list because I am finding new adventures and seeing places that I never knew. To have loved and lost? No- to have loved and learned. this time I return  with knowledge of place. I know where to find what I love most- it exists at the lowest of tides.

Demoralized

In David Arora’s  terms: “demoralized.”

we literally spend hours searching various burn areas; 1^st year burns, 2^nd year, 3^rd year. Disturbed sites, Manzanita and Ceanothis thickets, loams & sands, slash piles…. Nothing.

 We discovered early season mushrooms of all shapes, colors and sizes; even a good number of false morels and an amazingly large conk. But, when it came right down to what we hunted- we found not one.

Not a single that is, until we gave up.  At that very moment what showed up right in-between my feet? A big fat black morel. And then another, and another…. And the story goes.

We ended up in an open forested area and found ourselves spotting them left and right. Morchellas everywhere. So I suppose the term demoralized explains exactly our affliction: it wasn’t until we stopped looking that we actually found what we desired most.

Morel of the story: the best things in life tend to pop up in the most unusual of places & at the times we expect them least. Keep an open mind.

**Looking for a fantastic fungi reference book that will blow your mind away? “Mushrooms Demystified” by David Arora. Throwing this beast in your backpack feels a bit like a brick so for our west coast outings I love “All the rain promises and more”; I leave the big un at home.

pied de mouton

    the early arrivals.... the gardens are getting planted and the forest is beginning to bloom once again. Last weekend a small harvest of early mushrooms graced our egg scramble after a quick hillside foray. The season is upon us. The lettuce is starting to appear in small quantities on dinner plates and the spinach and kale has taken it's holding in the garden beds. The fava beans growing larger by the day. The tulips and daffodils have competition.  I sat one morning at the kitchen table, a cup of black coffee in hand and watched T carefully layout and count the new wallawalla onions that were bound for our modest beds. Up until recently the garden attire consisted of rubber boots and dainty steps. The back yard over the course of the winter months took on the consistency of  chocolate pudding; so much in fact that the dogs adapted to skirting the perimeter to avoid the sink. Curious to the project, Huckleberry (the furry foot) repeatedly stepped on the organized shoots. T pushed him back and scolded, but to no avail. I could do nothing more than sit back and smile at the site from my seat behind the glass.

the power of magic

Magic places; we've all been to the place that you know holds magic because of the way it makes you feel. Sometimes it's under a tree, by a stream, maybe even an old barn or someones home. L and I recently got back from a venture in Kauai. The first portion of our trip, we stacked on packs and hiked our way into this valley. Unbelievable. So unbelievable in fact that on the day we were to depart, we instead spent the morning doing yoga on the beach, bathing in the stream and reading books. A Hawaiian monk seal visited the sands for a lofty nap. For 10 days we slept on beaches, explored trails, watched the sun disappear each evening into the sea. We drank wine, ate unmentionable amounts of chocolate and wild tomatoes. We realigned ourselves with a slower pace of life once again.

 Dreams, Desires, Love, and Exploration.... magic places.

Fava Beans and Compost Schemes

Sandy was my first yoga teacher. Her home sat in the forests of Bayfield outside of Durango. We would make little ventures out to her house on the weekends, winding our way back through the winter roads which remained shrouded in ice from the thick shadows cast by the evergreen trees. I remember most the baskets of beautiful nature artifacts, the crystals that sat on the window sills,  the petunia plants that she brought indoors to escape the killing frosts of winter. I remember the smell, it was earthy; like the woven mats that covered the wood floors. I remember sitting around her kitchen table, each one of us so young at the time, talking about life lists. "The beauty of a list is that you write on it what you want at that very moment. It can be anything" she told us. "When you accomplish that, you cross it off and move to another. If the time comes that you don't want it anymore, than you just take it off. It's that easy." Sandy was my introduction to lists. Now ten years later, I love them, they drive me. I think the best fulfillment of my lists happen when I can cross the items off and smile because I had forgotten that I had written that item there so long ago. I had forgotten that it was just an idea or adventure at one point and now it is reality. My lists today just keep growing but you know what? I find solitude in my list because it tells me that I have time. I have time to slow down and eventually I'll get to each of those items (if even I still want them there). Sometimes life gives you the opportunity to cross off pieces of the list at the best times, and had the opportunity come any earlier it just would not have been right. so what am I working on now? This is the precursor to the "I want a farm" item. I've been working on learning composting. I find myself suddenly introduced to individuals that I am amazed with, those that have tactful, beautiful ways to share that knowledge; I could not have asked for anything more. These particular pictures came from an afternoon of a compost workshop I arranged through the sustainability center. I was fortunate enough to have one of the best soils professors I have ever seen in action teach the down and dirty of outdoor composting. How did he do it? We dug through a horridly rancid smelling compost pile all the while he taught everyone about why it stunk (it had become waterlogged and anaerobic due to lack of oxygen.) He then showed everyone how to re-layer it into a healthy, well balanced C:N ratio lasagna style pile. Hands on work at it's finest. We ended the night by planting fava beans into the student cooperative housing garden beds. "If nothing else gets planted this year, at least they'll have fava beans."

Tradition

(Tradition) the only explanation this blurry picture needs. I am a fool for these sentiments, however I think many of us really are. This particular tradition part of a Wednesday night, it only lasted a few months but came about just before our many roads shifted directions.
Being part of a community marks tradition, even if it seems like only a small one. Consider a new tradition and pull some people together. Maybe it is with friends, music, gardens, food, outdoors......