Sunday, July 31 2022. Week 30
It’s a quarter to 9:00 already and I’m just getting into my breakfast. Soaked lentils and buckwheat. Nothing new. I pulled up an onion from the garden. I also had one broad Bean off the stock. Green broad beans are tasty.
We indeed got a lot of rain last night. Perhaps not an enormous amount but a good amount. The whole field is wet and happy. My rain buckets are full and I am starting to have great confidence that I’m going to make it all the way to the end. I made a few mistakes this year but at least I was honest enough with myself to know that they were mistakes. Next year we will be better.
The ex partner is on her way up. It’s pretty wet and cold. I’m not sure how much there is to do but I’m sure she will keep herself busy.
Yesterday I had a day of non movement and I really needed it. What moving around I did, I did on crutches and that definitely helped as well. Today I feel a lot better.
I made a cooking mistake for my Friday night meal. It was just foolishness but I made it I’m sure because I was in excruciating pain by the end of the day and just out of my mind with fatigue. It’s funny how difficult it is to be perfect even in small things.
My thought was to put some greens in the water for some rye flatbreads. The plan was to make a dough ball that I could break pieces off and roll out and cook in an iron skillet. This is my preferred way of making bread. I managed to put some dill, some bolted spinach and a few young horseradish leaves into the blender and ground them up very nicely. This was supposed to be my wet ingredients. But then for some reason, and I don’t know why but I forgot that I had this green water in my blender and threw half a liter of water into the dry ingredients. As soon as I did it, I slapped myself in the forehead. What the hell did I waste that stuff in the blender for?
There is no way to take water out of a batter so I threw in most of the green water, I left the rest as a base for some hummus that I also wanted to make and then added in more flour. It was no use though. It was too wet to come together in a ball.
The only thing left to do was simply pour it out and bake it. Here though there was another error in thinking. If we’re going to make rye bread, even a hybrid rye, you don’t really want to mix it so much. Rye has gluten as does white wheat flour and the more you mix it up or knead it, the more glutenous it gets, the less it wants to rise for you. In a flatbread, you don’t mind if it holds together. In baked rye bread, you just don’t want it to be that hard.
In the end, it was tasting off with some sesame seed sprinkled over the top but it was a brutal bread. After breakfast on Saturday morning, I didn’t really want to eat anything until now. I had some apples and sunflower seeds for dinner last night but food was out of the question.
There was also one other problem that hit me. It was not from this bread or from the hummus that had some raw beetroot in there including the leaves. The problem came, I have decided, from that bloody napa cabbage. Last week I tried to eat what I could salvage out of a very bad napa cabbage. I should never have bothered with that. I should have thrown the entire thing out as a dead loss. I should have thrown the whole plant and all of the bugs living inside it into the compost heap.
If you don’t have a greenhouse and you are not willing to use pesticides, I strongly advise against growing napa cabbage. It is a wonderful food, it’s maybe the greatest supermarket cabbage you can buy, but it’s strictly factory crap and truthfully, there’s not enough real nutrition in it to even bother. You’re better off with spinach or kale or any number of things that willingly grow outside without requiring too much science to keep them alive.
Lena’s apples though were pretty tasty. They were simple green apples and a few of them had wormy cores. I’m not really worried about that. They tasted wonderful, semi-sweet, and got along very well with sunflower seeds. I have to remind myself to do something nice for her. I still feel bad for being ornery when she brought the gift over.
At any rate, for me at least, this is the beginning of August, the beginning of my new fiscal year and the beginning of a week that I hope will have some good luck in it.
This is the harvest season so I don’t really think I’m going to need any food externally. Perhaps a decent stock up trip will be sometime in the future but for me right now, I might as well take it easy and just take care of myself.
It’s a weird place to be. I’ve just done a lot of work to get to this place, I have been fighting really hard just to get to August. I’ve spent some money, most of it realistically. I’ve done a lot of physical labor and have taken an awful lot of pain. But it seems all of this work was simply to get to where I am right now. Basically, I have my own supermarket. All I do is go out and come home with fresh food. I don’t need to go very far, I don’t need to spend any money. I’ve got enough to eat and I’m pretty happy with the selection of food I have to eat. I guess this is what I wanted. I guess this is why I paid the price.
It’s not a let down. It’s not like I’m having some sudden revelation that all of this is somehow less than important or foolish in some way. It’s not. It’s been a very interesting year. Certainly there have been some absolutely miserable moments. From people, I have received more bullshit and witnessed more insanity than my consciousness needs to absorb. I really didn’t not need to be reminded how awful people can be. On the other hand, it’s good to know that you can indeed rely on science and math and numbers.
It’s not fake news to talk about climate problems or the causes of the crisis. It’s not arguable or votable or something that you click a like or a dislike about. There are facts and agreeing that facts are true results in some reasonable rewards. Yeah, it was a lot of work to get here but I had enough water to have what I have because I took the trouble to save my rainwater. There is no possibility I could have done what I did this year out of my well.
As far as how I can improve on the system I have right now, there are a few things that I could do to make things better. I can add a few more barrels under the barn to extend my capacity there and if I was extremely serious, I could add more barrels to the front of the house as well. I could also move the barrels inside the barn to protect them from the Sun and at least some of them could even go inside the house if I was serious about it. I would have to rearrange some things but it’s possible. I guess I could create a drip watering system that would save me from carrying a hose around. I could also augment the hose system that I have now to make it more reliable and less problematic. But basically I think I’m pretty okay with that aspect of things.
A couple of the fruit trees didn’t make it and I guess I could try to replace them. I could also do a better job of giving them a home to live in. I can be more extensive with the mulch I use. Actually, I could be more extensive with the mulch I use generally all through the garden. That was something I definitely learned.
I also want to pick up a few more berry bushes going into the fall. The way the garden is set up right now, I have a really nice place for berries but I don’t think I have made perfect use of the space. I can do better.
I can also do better in the boxes generally. I can do better in my selection of what I want to plant and I definitely think a little tenting or green housing might definitely be a good idea. When the temperature goes up and there is no rain, you have to do something to cut some slack for your veggies. I understand about growing things under plastic and how creating additional warmth and humidity is good for raising vegetables but I’m not really talking about that. I’m not really talking about maximizing my gains. I am trying to stay as natural as possible but I do need to give some sort of protection. Climate change means climate harshness and as long as I’m going to keep fighting to grow my own food, unfortunately, this Garden is going to need some help.
Well, it’s going to need artificial help until the trees come in. That will definitely make a huge difference. When the trees come in, we will have a lot more shade here. That was the point of planting a lot of trees in the first place. Even if we don’t get a lot of fruit and nuts, we will get birds and shade and as things do not seem to be wanting to change anytime soon, some shade might be at an absolute premium.
And finally, I genuinely think that roof structure might just have to be something to be done. I’m talking about building a structure for roofing panels to funnel rainwater to the base of my fruit trees. This was part of my original thought for having fruit and nut trees. I’ve kind of done something like this by putting some old roofing panels at the base of my trees. It turned out to be hit and miss. Some of the plants appreciated the extra water, some of the trees just didn’t make it because there was no extra water. I definitely think it’s wisdom and necessary but this is also something that needs to be looked into seriously.
What else? Nothing else really. The ex partner will be here in about 45 minutes. The sky is gray and overcast and the field is wet. Breakfast is done and needs to get cleaned up. My first entry of the week is now in the can. I guess that’s it.
I have some links concerning the war, food and even a little Alan Watts concerning the Bible that is worth giving a listen to. Alan Watts is a bloody pain in the neck but sometimes it’s hard to argue with his reasoning. So, I guess I will get back to work now. And if you are reading these words, thanks for checking in with me.
Well, no one told me about her, the way she lied
***
Yeah it’s about 12:30 and I’m just basically hanging around. I’m thinking about making some more bread. I really don’t have anything to do.
The ex partner is making herself useful. I guess she really looks forward to gardening on Sundays. It’s a different world when you sit at a desk five days a week. It’s a different world when you play the corporate game. I don’t play the corporate game. She’s not going to give up the corporate game.
There is absolutely no negativity between us today. Both of us settled our minds with great discipline not to do anything to make the other mad. There’s nothing really to be mad about. The world is how it is.
For myself, I used crutches yesterday to get around. Potentially I don’t need them and when I went to gather greens for breakfast and such, I just walked out there. But if I don’t have to harm myself, I won’t. So I’m kind of on crutches today.
We had a conversation about planning. I guess I took advantage of the extended discipline and she understood what I was getting at. We didn’t grow a bad Garden. In fact, I think I have the prettiest garden of any of my neighbors, if for no other reason then it is the greenest and wildest and therefore has the most life in it. I am absolutely uninterested in demonstrating some visual aesthetic to please others. I just want something to eat and something to do and a reason to hang around outside.
Next year certain things are going to be grown in abundance. We talked about beans today. If you’re going to ask yourself how many beans you eat in a week, let’s remember that I’m vegan please, we should probably try for lots of kilos. Probably I can make beans or at least many different varieties of beans my highest priority. Of course you can buy everything you want but perhaps investing in bean growing would be something worth doing here. I also think the cabbages are not a bad deal. I’m not going to bother with potatoes but I’m really interested in having some strawberries come up.
But there’s something different in this thinking. Saying these things to my ex partner and having the words go in seems to illustrate and bring out the point of all of this. There are many things to do in a garden but you have to enjoy the gardening. For some people, flowers are enough. I like flowers but I’m probably content with wildflowers to tell the truth. I am too lazy to fuss with the minutiae. I’m into food.
There is a problem though with just growing a lot of food in that you need a place to put it and a way to save it. There’s also the reality of how long certain foods last. Land Management is interesting.
I guess the more I think of things, the more I find myself dreaming and hoping to plan for perennials. I built some nice garden boxes and a pretty comfortable Garden to work in. Or at least, I could see where the garden would become a more calm and pastoral place to work in. But I can’t help thinking that perennials are the way to go. I am just too lazy to fuss and fight. I don’t think I’m looking for my garden to give me a workout. I think I just need a place to feed me the maximum amount of food for the minimum amount of work. That equation always works out to perennials.
Not only perennials. Beans are not necessarily perennial plants. And you have to move them around from year to year. Cabbages can sort of be semi-annual if you let them bolt. All I’m saying is that maximizing fruit, nuts and berries is probably the way to go. That’s maximum yield eventually for minimum work and abundant beauty and life with the least amount of fighting.
As far as my ex partner becoming an everyday gardener, I don’t see that as happening anytime soon. I don’t think it’s anything she even wants to do really. The woman likes money. You can’t blame her a whole hell of a lot. She’s not at the beginning of her life nor at the beginning of any philosophical understanding of life. She’s heading towards the finish line just a few years in back of me. She doesn’t want the money to stop and I don’t see her going entrepreneurial and frankly, I’d be shocked if anything I do led to enough to justify hiring her myself. We just don’t have that equation and never have.
So I have nothing bad to say. She seems pretty happy to be fussing around. All of the things growing in the boxes are her children. She likes to visit with them and take care of them. I can’t argue with that and I can’t blame her. In fact today, I can’t say a single bad word. Everything is exactly the way it should be.
***
Well, that was delicious. We had an early supper or perhaps a late lunch and it was spectacular. I took a second pass at making green bread, this is bread with simply some field greens blended into the water, and I got it right this time. A wet dough is fine, don’t knead it too much and then top it with sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and a tiny bit of salt. Rustic is hell but very, very tasty.
So with the green bread, we had to have some purple hummus. This is hummus with some beetroot plants blended into it. I made it super spicy which I don’t think my ex partner liked so much but I thought it was excellent. I think we threw an apple in there to add a little acid and the sweetness didn’t hurt one bit.
But the star of the show was our Superstar broccoli. This was a giant broccoli plant that was absolutely perfect to pick today. Our choice was simply to steam it, well after we cut it down to some giant florets, along with some broccoli leaves and two rather decent sized new potatoes from our no dig potato box. Are you a fan of new potatoes? Not everybody is but you cannot argue with the virgin creaminess of it all. I don’t usually dig around in there but my ex partner can’t help ourselves so she got in under the straw and found a couple of bombs. Glad she did, the steamed potatoes and greens were fabulous.
Well, this is a nutrient and calorie dense meal. It’s actually just a dense meal if you consider the bread part of it. If I’ve used the word rustic and its description, you should think rustic tomorrow morning when it’s time to go to the bathroom and you will see the true Glory of this fantastic meal.
Actually, it’s going to be my breakfast again tomorrow as well so I will have two days to play a song called “rocking the kushki”. It’s something that you tell your colon to let him know that you mean business. Look out below!
As an afterthought and almost as a joke, my ex partner collected one big bunch of chickpeas and we laid them out on the kitchen table where they will remain for a few days. We’re not hanging them or doing anything like that. I’m just going to give them a few days to dry out and then it is possible that our next hummus comes directly from our field. I would consider growing more hummus, chickpeas I mean. I will never grow lentils again except for a ground cover / nitrogen fixer. This is machine food. I am going to invest heavily in big beans. The little beans can keep the supermarkets in business.
While we were eating, I asked my ex partner if there was any news from town. I haven’t even thought about going there in 2 weeks and it’s almost like talking about a foreign country. Sure enough however, there was some news. My ex partner’s downstairs neighbor died. I know this is sad news but I can’t help but feel there is at least an element of humor in this.
My ex partner’s story was kind of interesting. The way she told it, her boss called her into his office to tell her that her neighbor had died. She had not known about this. He knew about it, because the neighbor used to be an employee of the same company. He then asked my ex partner to maybe say some nice words or to tell a story.
Well, there’s two stories to tell here. The first one is that the lady went to pension about 7 years ago. However, as I understand the story, she went for pension because she had gone crazy. I don’t want to speak flippantly, it’s called early onset Alzheimer’s. But the disease progressed quickly and she was granted an early release and her pension.
Okay, the reason I’m telling this story is that I know this woman because of a rather interesting sort of autistic habit she had about chanting “dunkadonkadonkadonkadonkadonkadonga.” Maybe his word had a g instead of a k but you would hear this in my ex partner’s apartment all the time. You’d be having a conversation or maybe watching a film and then from downstairs you would hear “dunka dunka dunka dong godonga dong godonga”. It was unstoppable.
So of course, we used to laugh and make jokes about it. I think I harmonized it on the guitar while I was staying there. It’s kind of a good song to dance to really. And then of course we would often think of what she was actually trying to say. Obviously she was complaining about the redundancy of something. Her own life, the world she had left behind. My best guess is that it was the sound of commerce. We wake up in the morning, drink some coffee and then go gongadonga donga ganga ganga ganga until you’re old enough to get your pension. Or go crazy trying to get it, right?
Anyway, rest in peace lady. It was a pleasure knowing you. Thank you for the good times.
My ex partner is putting the finishing touch on her day. I don’t know what she wants to take home with her but there’s plenty of food here. It actually feels kind of good sending someone home with a bunch of food. I’m not sure how she is planning to make her exit or when but she seems to be enjoying herself.
Sometime this week I’m going to ask Ghenna to knock down the weeds in that garden and transport them to the compost pile. That pile has broken down to about half its original size already. I guess we have optimum weather for compost making. It’s not very good weather to live under but it’s excellent to die and break down under. And of course, no matter what people think of my lazy way of managing my land and how little barbering I do to the wild grass, give credit where credit is due. I am a king in the compost business because I let my weeds grow tall before I pull them to become next year’s fertility.
I’ll be back this evening to button things up but basically this is the story from here.
***
8:30 is probably good enough. Today was a fine day looking back. Usually, I’m not a fan of this “create anger and then wait for the sweet resolve and the nostalgic hugs” game. I don’t push people to make them do anything. In fact, as far as participating in the daily drama of life, I’m a writer, not an actor. I don’t need my body to be on anybody’s stage. And as far as public opinion and allowing myself to get twisted into knots just to have some nostalgic resolve in somebody’s company who suddenly feels they’ve got some kind of hold on me? I do not buy the premise. I’m not investing in the company or taking responsibility for anybody else’s problems.
But yet, my ex partner does. There was even a moment on the couch where she brought up something a neighbor said and employed genuine seeable outrage wow talking about the encroachment of our respect. She was genuinely into it. I tried to tell her that she would be perfect for a full-time job and always would have been but she cannot leave the lure of regular money and she will not take on the responsibility of entrepreneurship. She’s from here and I’m not and the responsibility for myself that I treasure is the last thing she wants to take possession of.
I would immediately become an honored member of this community because my ex partner would be standing at the fence believing that the gossip meant something. She would bring relevance to my neighbor’s words in a way that I’m not even pretending to have any for me. She would come and tell me about all of the interesting things going on and suddenly all of the people in this village would take on form and shape. Their stories would be a part of our literature and suddenly the emotions generated by this tribe of eccentrics, glad-handed boozers and Nazi fascists would become the backdrop of my oh so boring and miserable life. It’s a job I cannot do myself and couldn’t even allow myself to try. I don’t have the energy or interest. She does.
Metaphysically speaking, SHE always does. SHE as a capitalized program is that great specter of love and relevance known as woman. The great manipulator and the endlessly manipulated. The other half of my stoicism. I agree that it’s better or even amazing to have a great woman around. They say behind every great man stands one.
But like Santana says: She’s not there…
Well, no one told me about her
The way she lied
Well, no one told me about her
How many people cried
But it’s too late to say you’re sorry
How would I know? Why should I care?
Please don’t bother trying to find her
She’s not there
Well, let me tell you ’bout the way she looked
The way she acts and the color of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool
Her eyes were clear and bright
But she’s not there
But today was a good day also because my ex partner enjoyed herself here. There was no particular need to inflict too much of myself on the lady. She was enjoying the company of the plants, checking in with her children and finding out all the gossip and how everybody has been.
There was a line from that screenplay called Paradise where somebody says that they appreciated the enjoyment that someone else got from the visit to their place. I wrote that 12 years ago and it’s still true now. It is lovely when someone takes genuine pleasure from a visit to your place.
But you know, there is some wisdom in that thought. If we believe that it is possible to take pleasure from another person enjoying your place, we would have to seriously pay attention to the situations that make such a thing possible. Forgive my wordiness but to cut to the point, they only really enjoy it when they have something to do there. If you believe sitting possibly and taking in the atmosphere as genuinely meaning something to somebody, you’re crazy.
I mean, you can go to shows and there’s something in the acting, music, dance, recital, even political speeches or intellectual discussions or book readings, you can enjoy the aesthetics and the texture of the moment certainly but there is no visceral feeling of happiness to note. You might see a nice mood, but it’s hard to say that anyone’s really enjoying themselves unless they have something to do there.
Or perhaps another way to say this, you can read to another person, do all the voices and all the characters and put all the drama you can as an actor into the reading, but it’s not the same thing as if everyone was reading and doing their best to play the characters.
Way back in the day, we threw a Christmas party one time. I don’t even think we had any Jewish friends and frankly, I don’t think any of them paid any much attention. We were all pretty christianized. But this particular Christmas party was a vegetarian/decorate-the-house Christmas party. The trick was we asked everyone to participate. Everyone should bring a vegetarian food dish and everyone could help decorating the house and the tree. I guess we could have called it a decorating party. But to me, I wasn’t looking to get free labor. I just thought people would like it better if instead of just standing around tripping on the aesthetics, they participated in building their habitat and community for the evening.
It was glorious. It was probably the best party I’ve ever thrown and I’ve always understood that the genuine reason was that I didn’t actually do much of anything except get a bunch of creative people together and let them enjoy their creativity and skills. Just for fun. Very communal.
Today was pretty great in that way. In a way, I got some help. But not really. She didn’t really do any work for me and she took home a lot of food which was excellent. Like I said I had a really good day because she had a really good day. She really enjoyed the place and that made everything just that little bit better. It made the jokes that much funnier and the hugs warmer.
By the way, the word for this evening’s meal is Lurlyder. That’s what we should call it. Lurlyder. It’s a jumble of the words late lunch or early dinner. We had a lovely Lurlyder.
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