Friday night grateful moment

Such a peaceful evening here, with the sun going down earlier and earlier, and the nights cooling off. I know it's only July, but I can already feel summer waning, even as the days are 100 degrees. So quickly, the long days shorten and before you know it, I'll be complaining about the frost on the tomatoes. Except (wait for it, you know what's coming, don't you Jen?), autumn is my favorite season. I almost forgot, I love summer so much too. And spring. Spring's not bad. Winter's really the low point on the season radar for me, but you can winnow that to January and February, really, because anything up to the first of the year is the holidays, and who doesn't love the holidays? So, 10 months to love, 2 months to be "meh" about? That's not bad.

Now that I've got my seasonal musings out of the way, I can move on to gratitude. I can't seem to pull much more together on the blog lately than gratitude. Gratitude and kale. Really, aren't those the same thing?!

The garden does continue to produce, and we continue to enjoy kale, potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and this week our first little lemon cucumber. Still to come will be the avalanche of tomatoes, when all the plants are producing daily. Right now it's still mostly the Early Girls and some yellow cherry toms.

Today husband and I went to the funeral and it made me think about a lot of things to be grateful for--community, family, love, tradition, faith, health, and a host of other things that have complicated emotions tied to them. A friend, without knowing that I was headed to a funeral, sent me an essay to read about two recent funerals she and her family attended. One lovely takeaway line: "Joy and sadness often intermingle as we grieve." Too true.

Seth and I had such a great trip to Canada last weekend, road tripping together through the wilds of Washington. I am so very grateful for a teenage son who is so much fun to talk with, hang out with, listen to audiobooks and laugh with. We have done so many of these road trips together, and each one holds a special place in my memories.

I am grateful for sleep, which I know will come easily tonight.

I'm grateful for air conditioning during these hottest of summer days. I'm grateful too, that when I open the sliding doors in the morning, the cool of the morning will fill the house.

I'm grateful for husband, and his loving ways.

I'm very grateful for my faith, even as it is sometimes as short-sighted and ADHD as I am. I saw this video over on Donald Miller's blog this week, of Mark Wahlberg talking about his upbringing and decision to turn his life around and the role faith plays in that, and I was encouraged. So many people don't feel (especially in the public eye) like they can speak of their faith without a certain amount of scorn coming their way, and his matter-of-factness was refreshing.


I wish you a weekend of peace and gratefulness for wherever you are, and whatever life has brought your way this week, this month, this year.

Peace.

Midweek reminder: I needed to tell myself a long story about life

I learned to garden the way I learned to write--out of necessity. We needed vegetables and flowers, and I needed to tell myself a long story about life--I am still telling it--a kind of beanstalk that grows and grows, and I can climb it, both to escape the possibility of life at the bottom, and to find another world where giants and castles and harp-playing hens are still to be found.

Gardening, like story-telling, is a continuing narrative. One thing leads to another. Like stories, there is always something going on in the garden long after the gardener has gone to bed. The thing grows, unfolds, changes, develops a maddening life of its own. For me, as a writer, I go to sleep with an idea in my head, and it takes hold during the night. I open the back door in the morning, and the tulips that refused to look at me the night before, have opened in the sun.
-Jeanette Winterson

Guest post over at Sprout

y friend Chel at GingerBlue Studios asked me if I'd do a guest post for a gardening blog she writes with a couple of other people. I said, "YES!" of course.

Check it out.

Sunny Saturday in May

t was just the perfect kind of day to relax and appreciate the season... a little wander in the yard with my iPhone and Instagram app later, and my love of Walla Walla in the spring is at full bloom.

The one thing I wish I could have captured was a bunny frolic in the front yard. I caught two young ones hopping and jumping over each other in an almost-choreographed dance. Absolutely precious, but you'll have to take my word for it, as I was inside, upstairs, no camera within arms reach, and I couldn't pull myself away from watching to go and find one. A priceless moment.

I had brief hopes of a balloon floating over the house this afternoon (this is the annual hot air balloon festival weekend around here), as we are out of the flight path for morning lift-offs. In years past though, given the right conditions in the late afternoons, we've seen them land in the fields around us, quite close. Such was not our luck this gorgeous afternoon... 

What's blooming in your yard these days?

First fruits of the garden

We got home last night to 102-degree weather (outside of town, it got cooler as we approached the mountains), a wild and crazy pack of dogs and the garden having grown by leaps and bounds in just one week! We also were happy to be home to a better internet connection and the ability to upload photos without watching your hair turn gray while it happens! The simple pleasures... (And that wasn't a dig at Mayne Island, Mom and Dad, really. The connection in Kelowna was equally slow.)

I was quite surprised to see two good-size zucchini in the garden patch, and a few summer squash following close on their heels. A little sun, a little water--you'd think those things were weeds the way they grew!

Luckily, I knew just what to do with one of the larger zucchini. We went to a B.C. favorite last week while in Kelowna, White Spot. Seth has fond memories of the place (I think it's the giant milkshakes? Or is it the "endless" fries? Who can say...), and begged to go back, so we had a quiet little lunch, just the three of us. One of the favorites on the appetizer menu are deep-fried zucchini sticks. As I'm sure you've heard me say before, if something is fried, it's just that much better. Even zucchini.

Well, we decided that in the spirit of being home and back to being "good," we would try our hand at baking some zucchini sticks up for lunch. Turned out pretty spiff, and I dare say I didn't really notice that they weren't deep-fried. I know, there will be some skeptics to the comment, but it's true!

Seth did the honors:

I beat up 4 eggs and about 1/4 cup milk in a bowl and we tossed the zucchini sticks in there. This zucchini was about 10 inches long already, and so I cut it in eighths, then each eighth into thirds (following me on those fractions? This is where we're trying to have the young man's brain not turn to mush over summer break!). Then we just dumped (technical term) some bread crumbs in a bowl and dipped the zucchini sticks in the bread crumbs before placing them on a well-sprayed cookie sheet. We baked them for 15 minutes at 425, and I turned the sticks once to get some browning all around, and they were good to go! At White Spot they serve it with "zoo dip" (I think that's a rip-off of ranch? Since that's what it tasted like...).

Happy summer! The zucchini is only beginning, I fear... I would welcome creative zucchini recipes, yes I would.