JUST DO IT

            Sorry for the long hiatus. Put it down to changes in attitudes, if not latitudes.

Kathy's messy work space, circa 2011

            For example: yesterday I spent time with my weaving teacher, Kathleen, who I suspect is actually myself in some parallel universe. As usual, aware of how I learn best from words (as opposed to pictures, which is how both she and Tim think), she gave me reams of handouts with terminology; technique diagrams; sample cartoons, or drawings of what you want the weaving to look like that you can pin to the warp threads as a guide; loom, materials, and resource information; and several weaving-related articles, including a short piece on John Mercer of Mercerizing fame. She also loaned me five—count ‘em!—five books to peruse.

Arriving home in an inspired but somewhat brain-overloaded state, I piled the stack of printed materials on top of the other stacks of printed materials on the conveniently located flat surface I call my desk.

Kathy's neat desk, circa today

That teetering heap of paper assaulted my eyes this morning, so I decided something must be done about it. I sat down to make a list of how to organize the mess when it occurred to me: don’t plan to do it, just do it. So I did. My weaving stuff is now divided among five folders—Articles, Cartoons & Designs; Techniques & Terms; Tools & Resources; and Warps & Wefts—collected in an uber-folder. The rest of the stacks got doled out either to existing folders (Election, Letters, Down-the-Hall Filing, etc.), or found their way into new ones, or were actually cleared away with  a few phone calls. Now the desktop is clear except for the poetry collection I’m preparing for submission to a contest, neatly contained in a manila envelope.

I just did it.

A half-bushel of apples, transformed

It’s the same with my unabated canning illness. In early October, Tim and I took off five days to visit The Cousins in Maryland, who took us to the Berkeley Springs, West-By-God-Virginia, Apple Butter Festival. Naturally, I came home with a half-bushel (25 pounds) of apples. Adding to the bounty the following Wednesday, I scored a respectable bundle of cucumbers and a couple of pounds of okra for pickling at Wilmington’s Poplar Grove Farmers Market. The enormity of what I’d done hit me as I recovered over a cheese-and-tomato sandwich from my Saturday morning stint of weeding-for-hire. Produce covered every inch of counterspace.

            Instead of looking the other way and burying myself in the Saturday Sudoku, I put water and jars in the canner and got to work. By six o’clock, nine pints of bread-and-butter pickles, four pints of pickled okra, and a single pint of pickled peppers straight out of the front yard (to use up the rest of the vinegar solution) cooled on top of the chest freezer. Tackled the apples the next day. Peeled, cored, quartered, boiled, and strained 64 apples, ending up with about three gallons of applesauce, apple pie filling and apple butter.

I just did it.

After finishing my raglan-sleeve sweater, I started knitting Tim a vest, hoping the third try would prove the Goldilocks moment: the first one I made him was too short, the second one waaay too big all over. (We both could fit in it. At the same time.) With a decent fit in mind, I knitted and measured against his back; ripped out, reknitted, remeasured; ripped a little bit more, remeasured. At bedtime last night, only five rows remained for the the back, so I sat up and finished it.

Raglan-sleeve sweater, completed

Tim's vest back, 

completed AND right size

I just did it.

Then I remembered I hadn’t posted a blog entry in over two weeks. Today,  after clearing up the desk disaster and making those phone calls, I sat down at the computer and started to type. This is what resulted.

It may not be much, but at least I did it.

More garden-themed posts will begin flowing soon—the paper mountain hid lots of post-it-noted ideas that made their ways into the appropriate notebook this morning. All I have to do is write them out. And get pictures, of course. But I’m guessing the present little bagatelle will buy me another week or so.

There’s a lot to be said for just doing stuff, no matter what the stuff is.

Thanks for just dropping by.   

                                                                        Kathy

PICKLES AND APPLESAUCE

Pickles & applesauce

            With the blessing of his cardiologist, ten days ago Tim stopped taking an extremely toxic medication meant to control his afibrillation: now, for the first time in over a year, he feels, well, well. As a result assuming responsibility of his own health (nobody knows a body like its owner), Fitzgeralds Gardening put in its first full work-week since July.

            We labored for 15 hours over 5 days pruning, weeding, bagging debris, dumping debris, edging beds and mulching one of our regulars’ property. Doesn’t sound particularly taxing, but I suggest most of you probably could not achieve the same manicured results in as little time. For two geezers straddling 60 it was a triumphant (if exhausting) re-entry to the world of gardening-for-hire.

            In addition to the regular job, I’ve contracted to weed a friend's overgrown spread for two hours every Saturday morning with the aim of independently financing my various money-pit hobbies—weaving (lessons, yarns, looms, books), knitting (needles, lots and lots and lots of yarns, books), canning (canning pots, jars, lids, specialized utensils, all the local produce I can find, books), and reading (more books). Most of the writing I do—blog, newsletter columns, the poetry collection I’m whipping into shape—only eats up time, which, as the 1% knows full well, is money. Except in my case, apparently.

            With the advent of our return to gainful activity, however, my above-mentioned hobbies threaten to overwhelm me. I cancelled my weaving lesson last week because I hadn’t done my homework. (“Did the dog eat it?” teased Kathleen, my teacher.) I have three little projects in the works on two looms at the moment, one incomplete, two not even started.

Work not in progress

Work in progress

Almost there!

Meanwhile, on the knitting front, my first-ever raglan-sleeve sweater project lacks only two-thirds of a sleeve, neckline detailing, and blocking. The nearness of the finish line is a goad to my flesh. Plus, on our most recent visit to the yarn shop, I got wool for a new sweater for Tim because I love to start new projects and I’m an idiot.  

Out in the garden, I pulled out most of the remaining looper-and-pickleworm-devastated melons (will try again next spring) and sowed lettuces, onions, rutabagas and turnips in the Grow-Bags. What’s hilarious about that is almost every bag has at least one potato sprout that I carefully hilled and planted around. The rest of the yard I continue to ignore.

Hope springs...

The former melon patch

         

            On our way to work Monday, Tim and I stopped by Oak Island’s farmers market, where we cleaned out two stalls’ remaining pickling cucumbers and apples, and picked up some persimmons and three cool-looking yellow zucchini for good measure. Tuesday morning, Tim had his actinic keratoses drug-trial check-up in Wilmington, so we took advantage of proximity to Whole Foods and Carolina Farmin’ stores to buy even more cukes and apples. Arriving home at 2 o’clock, we set about making pickles and applesauce.

Eleven pints of

bread-&-butter pickles

            Working together on projects reveals new and fascinating things about your partner. Tim, for example, is a champion apple-peeler, a fact that had heretofore escaped my notice. He skinned 14 pounds of apples faster than I could core and quarter them. Absolutely amazing. And he’s also a whiz at packing jars with cucumber slices and strips. (“I watched a Mister Rogers once where he visited a pickle factory, and the ladies there really crammed them in,” he explained as I gazed at him with wonder and watery eyes over a saucepan of gently boiling vinegar and spices.)

 Eight pints of applesauce, 

minus the quart jar 

we already opened

            In a little over three hours, we reduced 23 pounds of produce to 24 pints of preserves. It was at this point, obviously in some sort of fugue state, I volunteered—hold on to your hats—to cook dinner. No, really, I did. I whipped up one of my two specialties (the other one is baked ziti), a shepherds pie made with North Carolina-raised grass-fed beef from the Greenlands Farm Store on Midway Road and sweet onions grown in Brunswick County, topped with mashed potatoes from our very own Toadflax Farm. With all those local ingredients, even such a pathetic excuse for a chef as myself couldn’t mess up too badly. It came out okay, I guess: we very nearly polished off the whole thing at one sitting, although we immediately wished we hadn’t.

Two pints pickled yellow zucchini

            Later, the dishes air-drying in the drainer, Alex Trebek running the Jeopardy! board with his usual aplomb, knitting in hand, I remembered I hadn’t turned out a blog post for this week. So here it is now. As with all things, I get around to it. Eventually.

Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                        Kathy

DOG DAY DOLDRUMS

            Oak Island’s August has been an exceptionally wet one, overflowing the rain gauge with 15.5 inches to date, compounded by a 70% chance of heavy rain tonight, and a 40% chance of showers tomorrow, depending on what Hurricane Isaac chooses to do. Out of 29 days, only 13 came and went without measurable precipitation. Even those “dry” days were damp and steamy, not conducive to gainful labor for Fitzgeralds Gardening. If it wouldn’t add insult to injury, I’d weep.

Tomatoes finito

            Toadflax Farm looks as disconsolate as I feel. Already stressed by the merciless heat of July, the garden hasn’t handled August’s incessant rain so well. Harvests have been small and less than gorgeous. Split, leaffooted bug-speckled tomatoes and brown-spotted peppers dribbled in. While the tomatoes planted in the ground have pretty much tanked, I’m hopeful for a second spurt from the ones in containers. The peppers may revive, too. The cucumbers gave up all together and died outright weeks ago. The eggplants, probably because neither Tim nor I eat them, remain unblemished of foliage and fruitful in the extreme.

'Fireworks' globe flowers & zinnias

flank peanuts' new growth

The big surprise has been the peanuts. When I pulled the zinnias off them this afternoon, I discovered they’d put on a ton on new top growth and even bloomed again. Does that mean a redoubled harvest? Don’t have a clue, because I know bupkis about peanuts. I’ll keep you posted.

During various breaks from downpours early in the month, I planted seeds for late-summer/fall crops: three varieties of pole beans, one row of which lost its competition with the aforementioned zinnias; seven heirloom varieties of melon; a hybrid mini-pumpkin; more cukes, in the ground instead of container this time; carrots; and beets. The beans are well up, and the melons and pumpkins put up sturdy sprouts. The cukes seem to lack enthusiasm. Only ‘Cosmic Purple’ came up out of the four cultivars of carrots sown, but, in their defense (like they care), those seeds were several seasons old. The beets—also from old seed—never showed at all. Perhaps they drowned.

The beans patch

Melons and pumpkins

 

           

           Ah, well, out with the old, in with the new. For Fitzes’ autumnal vegetable experimentation, hope will arrive in our mailbox in the form of a manila envelope from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. A week ago, I ordered 14 packets of seeds packaged for 2012 with names to inspire the soppiest gardener: ‘Chioggia,’ ‘Crosby Egyptian,’ ‘Detroit Dark Red’ and ‘Lutz Winter Keeper’ beets; ‘Danvers 125,’ ‘Chantenay Red Core’ and ‘Scarlet Nantes’ carrots; ‘Australian Brown,’ ‘Granax’ (allegedly one of the best for the South) and ‘Yellow of Parma’ onions; ‘American Purple Top’ rutabaga; ‘Amber Globe’ and ‘Purple Top White Globe’ turnips; and ‘Seven Top’ turnip greens. I’ll compost the dead and non-producers and start over with root vegetables and lettuce.

            Take that, August.

*****

First attempt at weaving

   

             To stave off the psychic doldrums, I took my first weaving lesson yesterday. I’m convinced my teacher is actually myself from a parallel universe. We met serendipitously at Joann’s Fabrics in May and clicked instantly over color choices in yarns. Turns out she’s a weaver. Turns out learning to weave is on my bucket list. It’s all so familiar and comfortable. Isn’t it lovely how kindred spirits find each other? 

*****

            Friday's full moon is a blue one, in case you've been waiting for something for a long time. The phrases "Once in a blue moon" and "Only when the moon is blue" have basis in astronomical fact. The Naval Observatory's Sky Guy--back from his annual August sojourn on Fishers Island--says we only get seven of them every 19 years. Nit-picking astronomers cavil over whether the term refers to the fourth full moon in a normally three-moon cycle or to the occurrence of two full moons in a single calendar month. Either way, step outside Friday evening and enjoy it. If it's not raining.

            Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                    Kathy