THE COTTAGE BY THE HEDGE

1:50:02 PM EDT

When you start reading the meditations of a monk who was also a clear eyed social critic, you never know where you’ll end up. But, I think it’s going to be a heck of a ride

Psalm 50:18. “When you see a thief you join with him; you throw in your lot with adulterers.”

The root word for adultery comes from the Latin “to corrupt” and, the usual meaning of adultery is sexual. In fact most of the actions that our society recognizes as “sins” seem to be confined to the sexual. Who’s sleeping with who may be a sin, but that’s the least of our problems.

 I’m beginning to believe our social definition of adultery is a little too, shall we say, confining? Marriage is a covenant, a promise.  Can we take this past the sexual? What other covenants (promises) do we have as a society? Beyond the if you tell me I’m buying sugar, I better not find salt in the container covenant between seller and buyer? How about this one?

I, insert name here, " do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The wording comes straight from the Constitution.

And my little meditation doesn’t even cover the sweetheart contracts between our elected hired help and corporations that used to be run by some of the hired help. I guess they’re hoping that while we’re distracted by wardrobe malfunctions, the over the top antics of cable comedies, and  the potential unions of Molly/Holly and Adam/Steve, we won’t notice that some of the elected hired help have stolen everything that was and wasn’t nailed down. Including the nails.

Adultery in high places anyone?

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12:40:07 AM EDT

Figworts are a type of plant that includes snapdragons. I have no idea what kind of figworts the hermit was looking at.

 

Thomas Cowan included this story in his book Yearning for the Wind. There was hermit who lived by a lake in Ireland. Early one morning he set out with his boat in search of a fish for his breakfast. As he rowed he spotted the hermit from the other side of lake heading his way. Without a boat. The other man appeared to be walking on the water. Each regarded the other. The first man finally asked “what are you doing out here?” (apparently he refrained from asking the obvious-how are you staying above water) The second answered, “I’m looking for flowers for my alter. What are you doing trying to row a boat across the meadow?” When the first one replied that he was fishing for breakfast, the second directed him to a clump of flowers (the figworts, whatever kind grow in Ireland I suppose) with the comment that the fish were biting over there. The hopeful fisherman caught his breakfast and the dry shod worshipper found the flowers for his alter.

 

Perhaps the story of Jesus walking on water is as much a matter of perspective as faith. And perhaps there’s not much difference between the two.  

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6:44:04 PM EDT

Has it really been two weeks?

 

Yeah, I kind of fell off the radar for a bit here. It’s been an “interesting” couple of weeks. The Umatilla teacher sister came over for a short visit weekend before last. It’s the first time since the family moved to eastern Oregon that she made it over all by herself and stayed at our house. Not that staying with the in-laws is a real burden; Rick’s mom lives all of two blocks away.

 

But, the kids are pretty much grown and miracle of miracles, Rick is healthy this summer. We got to spend some good time together. Just as important, she was able to spend a lot of time with a long time friend who has been going through some tough times and she really needed a shoulder to lean on. Our biggest problems are time and distance. I’m nine years older, a completely different personality and they live half way across the state. It was a good visit, a really good visit.

 

We no sooner got her on the way home when the universe decided we hadn’t had enough lemonade or something. Thursday before last mom called me at work with three pieces of news: I was only expecting one. My nephew (Portland sister’s oldest) is playing his last year at the U of O this year and his family was coming down that day to watch a practice. That they were at our house was news I was looking forward to. Trouble is Lucky had to go to the vet and mom had just found out the transmission on the van was going out. Replacement cost? Oh, about $3,500.00. On a vehicle less than ten years old with less than 90,000 miles.

 

The cat is fine. It took a visit to the vet and some blood tests to find out she had an elevated white count, we don’t know from what and here’s a RX for an antibiotic. (sound of teeth grinding) We don’t know what the problem is but drug her anyway. If you can. I figure anything or anybody who can raise the kind of ruckusshe did can’t be that sick. I swear she knows what it sounds like when you’re getting the stuff ready and she definitely knows what towels are for. That cat could put Elvis impersonators to shame when it comes to the shimmy. And the stuff is banana flavored. When’s the last time you saw a cat chowing down on a banana? Not. Oh, hell drug is on Petmeds in pill form. Guess where I’m going if we need it again. I’ll slip it in her tuna.

 

As for that misbegotten excuse for a Oldsmobile? After careful consideration we traded it in for a 2007 Buick. Mom’s not ready to hang up her keys yet. It’s a good looking, one owner car and we went through the dealer she’s been trusting for about thirty years. So that’s how we spent last Saturday afternoon. Oh joy. I’d spent the morning waiting for the cable guys to show up and get us hooked up under a promo for digital cable. It’ll probably be worth it. Darned if I know yet. We haven’t watched enough TV this week to find out and we have another remote to keep track of.

 

The weekend wasn’t a total loss. Lisa from Coming to Terms was down for Scandie so we went out before it got busy and got in a good visit. We’ve made plans to go up north over Labor Day with a stop off to check in with dad. We haven’t made it to the cemetery this year. It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s going on but it feels kind of nice to check in with him once in awhile. LOL

 

It’s been hotter than heck Friday and Saturday. Hot, we expect but this part of the country is not known for staying hot all night. I keep telling myself tomatoes, tomatoes tomatoes as I drip. And it’s supposed to be in the seventies tomorrow. What a change.

 

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11:37:25 PM EDT

A story told by a man of deep, abiding and clear eyed faith.

A seventeenth century rabbi told this story. Two men were traveling through a forest. One sober, the other drunk. They were attacked by thieves who beat them and stole everything they had, including their clothes. When they finally reached the first village outside the forest the villagers asked them what had happened.

The drunken man (apparently still under the influence after all this time, but then this is a parable) answered first. “Everything was fine. Not a thing happened on the trip.” I suspect the villagers looked at him, each other, back to him and one of them shook himself a bit and asked the obvious question. “If nothing happened, why are you bloody, bruised and where in the name of all that’s holy are your clothes?”

The sober man broke in. “Don’t believe a word he says. There are outlaws in the forest. They attacked us. They took everything we had down to the last stitch of clothing. Be careful that what happened to us doesn’t happen to you”

Thomas Merton used this story in the preface of his collection of essays in Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice published in 1967 as the country entered the worst of the violence related to the civil rights movement and the Viet Nam War protests.

The drunken man was so blind drunk that he “slept” through the whole attack and didn’t realize he was naked. (heck I’m surprised he was able to move much less walk if he was that blasted: but this is a parable).

 In his essays Merton asked this question. Can faith, religious or political, act as blinders or an anesthetic? Do we see the violence, fear and anger in others while being blind to our own? Do we keep insisting that we must be free to defend ourselves by any and all means available while denying others the right to defend themselves? “Our violence is good, your violence is unacceptable.” Does this sound depressingly familiar?

 

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11:38:45 PM EDT

Spent some time with the camera yesterday morning. This is one purple coneflower plant and the bees totally adore it. I counted at least three dozen blossoms or buds from this side before I gave up.

The three busy bees. There were more, but these were the ones that sat still long enought to get the shot without using a tripod.

This shot is kind of cheating. My camera is set to create the largest possible picture. Then I can crop out what I want. I can end up with what looks like a true close up shot without having to fool around with my tripod. The blossoms were just loaded with busy little visitors.

 

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5:01:01 PM EDT

This has been kicking around for awhile, but I’ve had trouble bringing all the threads together.  I’ve a got a picture. Now if I can just fit it in a frame

Harking back to my entries on canning and stuff.  It was work, but it wasn’t. There was time between batches to kick back, read a little, harass a little sister (or be harassed), pull a weed or three, to just be. That’s how I was raised. That’s what families do; or did. And that’s what they did for generations. What really bugs me is that when the work gets entered in the balance sheet for gross national product, all that ends up in the final total is the cost of the materials. There’s no line in GNP for the creation of the ties between friends and families.

The work was done within the family or with friends. Think back on all those stories of barn raisings and quilting bees. The work got done, but no money changed hands. More than likely everybody went home with tired bodies, full stomachs, the satisfaction of a job well done and enough juicy gossip to keep tongues wagging until the next get together.

No income was recorded. No taxes paid. Well, in our case, dad got paid by Pope and Talbot for managing one of their cutting crews, but that information got put on a different line on the balance sheet.

I’m sure it wasn’t some sinister conspiracy, but somehow we’ve been convinced that it’s more productive for both parents to work outside the home and pay someone else to provide the things we did for ourselves. Or try to squeeze all that “unpaid” work in around the edges.

And no, we didn’t do it all. No family could ever provide everything they needed from within the family. They always had to fill in with what they couldn’t do themselves. And no, I don’t want to live in a country where the only job for woman is in the home. I like having the choices.

But, I get the feeling it’s a giant shell game. The same work gets done. But, now the national economy recognizes the value of the work because a dollar value can be attached to it and taxes get paid. And somehow the parent that stays home is seen as being less productive than if they were in the paid job market.

And I guess you need to push to have both parents in the job market while the pressure keeps building to turn pre-school into kindergarten and kindergarten into the first grade. Can’t have those pesky children taking too much time to become employable for the jobs we’ve decided are worth paying for. There’s very little room anymore for clowns, dreamers, contemplatives or other square pegs.

I truly believe we’ve lost even more. There’s a knowledge that comes from having to manage things. You don’t learn that in a class room. There’s a knowledge that comes from knowing you won’t always get what you want the way you want it. You just might have to settle for something else. You may have to wait awhile. And you just might find out that what you get is so much more than you expected.

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4:47:28 PM EDT

I’ve never seemed to hear the music that most other people hear. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually felt the presence of God (whoever or however you define “God”) inside the walls of a human built sanctuary. My spiritual search sometimes feels like I’m hiking towards that glow on the horizon with a herkin’ great pebble in my shoe and no matter how many times I shake out that shoe the pebble won’t come out. The darn thing moves around. Its size and shape seems to change with every step. So I keep marching along; stopping every now and then to shake out the pebble that magically finds its way back before I have time to take the next step.

I have a shelf of books on various flavors of Christianity, neo-paganism, pagan reconstructionism, Wicca, shamanism…..you name it; I’ve at least looked it up on the internet. There will be one or two pieces that speak to me and the rest leaves me cold.

And then I find this:

My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really understand myself.
And the fact that I think I am following
Your will does not mean I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
Does in fact please you.
And I hope I have the desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the
right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may
seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear for you are ever with me and
you will never leave me to face my troubles alone.

by Thomas Merton

And then I think that maybe someone else heard the music I hear.

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3:11:33 PM EDT

That last entry triggered some other memories of summers gone by. And it sort of grew like Topsy. This one sort of looks like the first chapter of War and Peace but, there was no good place to break it up.

Dad worked for Pope and Talbot as a logger and mom ran the house. Part of running the house meant ensuring that there was food in the pantry during the winter. My folks bought two things right after they got married. One was a sewing machine and the other was a pressure cooker. We still have the pressure cooker and it still works.

In a small logging town, actually any small town of the times, that meant keeping track of the garden, canning the produce and keeping an eye on the toddler (me) while you were doing it. Later, as sisters got added to the mix I got drafted into toddler watching duty along with mom. But it wasn’t all work. There was time to read. There was time to check out the dry creek bed down the street. When we moved to another place there was a culvert that ran under the rail road tracks across the street that just beckoned the imagination. There were also plenty of trips to the park at the other end of town on those hot summer afternoons. Oh, and television. Yeah, we had TV. Two channels, black and white, and if it blew a tube between paychecks it might not get replaced for a week or three. Imagine the horror these days. LOL

What we didn’t grow ourselves meant a drive into Eugene/Springfield and trips to the local orchards. The usual shopping list included corn, cabbage, cucumbers, apples, cherries, peaches and pears. The really good thing is that these don’t come on all at once. Cherries first, then peaches and pears, and apples anytime from August to November.

Funny, nowthat I think of it, they go in order of ease of processing. All you have to do is stem and wash the cherries. And they are canned pits and all. Peaches are scald, slice, pit and can. Pears are the hardest. Those little beggers are slippery. Apples will keep a couple of months if you keep them in a cool place. Oh, and fruit you can just do a half hour in a hot water bath. Pressure peaches and you get sauce. It still can behot and steamy work even if you aren’t keeping a weather eye on the pressure gauge.

And the corn, oh the corn. That was a trip. You blanch the corn in boiling water and then you cut it off the cob, pack it with a little salt and process it. We finally got smart and just moved the whole operation out into the driveway. We took the cutting operation outside because it’s a lot easier to hose down a driveway than get all those little corny bits out from under the cupboards. Corn flies.

The cabbage went for sauerkraut. That was usually the last up because the gal we bought the cabbage from wouldn’t sell kraut cabbage until after the first cold snap. Claimed the cabbage made better kraut that way. And who were we to argue. We may still have the kraut cutter. It looks like a washboard with blades.

The cukes went for pickles. I used a fork to poke holes in more cucumbers than I want to think about.

 And did I mention that the garden in Oakridge included strawberries, raspberries and boysenberries. They all went into the freezer or the jars. The neighbor kids were welcome to sample as long as they ate the ripe ones and didn’t mess with the green ones. About ninety percent of the time the kids went along with it. That’s good odds anytime. And there was always someplace around the edge of town where you could pick blackberries. With luck more berries went into the buckets than into us. They went into the larder, too.

There was a method to our madness. Once word got round in the family that we made good kraut, pickles, jams etc. guess what got passed around at Christmas? If all else fails, give goodies.

Some years when times were good in the summer the folks would order a quarter of beef. That’s literally one quarter of a steer folks. There isn’t a lot of steak on a quarter of beef but I don’t remember eating a lot of hamburger when we were kids. I think the tough cuts ended up being trimmed, cubed and canned.

You want tedious? Try nursemaiding a canner full of meat. Two hours at ten pounds pressure for each batch. It’s not like you have to watch it like a hawk just make sure it stays above ten pounds. Worth the trouble at the time though. It was fully cooked and ready to use; just open the jar.  And most important, it was there in the winter when the budget was usually pretty tight.

 Dad had coworkers who’d go to the coast in season and come home with a limit of salmon or other fish. Into the jars it went.

Oh, and the freezer was a full size <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Kenmore chest style freezer from Sears. Now that I think about it, just about every appliance came from Sears.  That monstrosity was about three years younger than me and it was huge. It was really something when I could finally get into the darn thing without having to use a chair, much less get at the stuff on the bottom without standing on my head.. It was big, clunky, and defrosting it was an all day operation.

Not thatyou spent all day on that job. We chipped, pried, wiped and dried between doing other things. I was in my mid forties before that sucker gave up the ghost. Something necessary finally crapped out and we couldn’t get parts for it. Heck, by then my sisters were married, raising their own families and we didn’t need something that big anyway. But, for heavens’ sake never give up on something while it’s still running.

I don’t want to make things sound better than they were. We didn’t get a dryer until Roberta (middle sister) was nearly out of diapers. That means the laundry got hung out winter or summer, sunshine or clouds. If it wasn’t quite dry, it got hung over chair backs and the like until was. If it was too wet it got hung on a laundry rack by the stove. Try drying heavy duty work jeans on a laundry rack. It takes awhile. I think we finally replaced the wringer washer when we moved back to Springfield when I graduated from high school.

There were times when dad’s clothes were so muddy mom had to hang them on the line and wash them down with hose before she could wash them. A fun job in the middle of winter.

Logging is not a life for a man going into middle age. It’s a life that wears you out, and it does it fast. If and when there were discussions about tight finances or fears for the future; and I know there were; they didn’t happen where we could hear them. Nature finally took any decisions or fears out of our hands when one of his knees went out. We moved back to Springfield, dad ended up on disability and mom ended up cooking for other peoples’ kids in a dorm kitchen at the U of O. I’m sure there were times when my sisters’ weren’t sure if I was their big sister or a substitute mom. Somehow we managed to get through it all.  We weren’t always smiling about it, but we did manage.

It isn’t and wasn’t a perfect life. It was just…..life. And it has never been boring. And if you were bored? You didn’t say anything where mom could hear you. She had sure fire cures for boredom. LOL Now that I think about it, she still has cures for boredom

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3:08:45 PM EDT

For those who may have wandered in recently. My original journal can be found here. I just had to blow off some steam this morning and the results fit better over in Pixels.

I got into journaling writing about politics. But, I haven't been writing much about it lately. Frankly, I got tired of repeating myself. There's only so much you can say about the current (and future) crop of elected hired help: very little of it good. Outside of voting, there's not much I can do to change things at the national level. So, I've been sticking closer to home with my writing.

My head's been full of garden stuff. When you're just learning the cycle of the season you spend a lot of time trying to get your head around a load of new information. Sometimes I think I need earplugs to keep all the new info in where it belongs. I was sort of familiar with the very simple basics. This summer has been a whole new world.

Gardening and canning could be considered radical actions the way things are going. Who'd a thunk it?

So, the gardening stuff will stay here. And the politics and just about to blow the pressure gauge off the canner entries will be in Pixels.

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4:57:48 PM EDT

It’s finally summer in the southern Willamette Valley. Boy, is it summer. The couple of years we get to oh, say the middle to end of June and the universe flips a switch. After a long, cloudy spring where we were lucky to hit seventy degrees we can’t get below eighty.

The garden is going absolutely freakin’ crazy. One day the radishes were great, two days later it was “fire in the hole.” Bye, bye radishes, hello compost. The lettuce, spinach, and chard are all growing together in one great, green square. The onions are past the little green onion stage and well onto the “take me to your leader size.” By the way, spinach, chard onions and mushrooms are really good steamed together.  

The bean vines have grown three feet in two weeks. Well, maybe not that much, but it sure looks that way when the vines reach the top of the strings and start waving at you. We should have beans before the end of the month.

At least with our own beans we won’t be faced with canning twenty five pounds at once. Having them on the shelf is great. But, trying to do them all at once is a real stretch. It’s not the canning; it’s the processing. Wash, put in jars, add a little salt, add hot water, put on the lids, repeat.  That’s fairly easy if a little messy in a small kitchen. It’s the processing after they’re in the jars that takes time. Beans take one half hour at ten pounds pressure and the canner holds nine pints at a time.

Twenty five pounds will yield about forty to forty five pints and you can figure about an hour per batch. Because when you’re done timing them you can’t just open the lid. Youcan do other things, just don’t leave home and keep an eye on the pressure gauge. Chick flicks are probably out, catching up with the laundry is in. Working on that carefully researched journal entry probably won’t be a good idea; organizing your e-mail for future reference should be safe.

Half an hour at a temp that’s just a hair too high can yield “impressive” pressure results before that thirty minutes is up. And when the thirty minutes is up you have to let them cool to below two pounds of pressure before you pull them out. It sounds worse than it is, really. I’ve been doing this What you have when you’re done is so much better than the commercially processed beans that it’s well worth the trouble.

I know it sounds messy, sweaty and a little complicated. The thing is I don’t remember learning these things. I suspect I absorbed it by osmosis before I was old enough to really realize what was going on. I don’t remember learning how to snip beans. Note: unless you’re really into arty canning and keep the bean whole; you have to snip off the stem end, the pointy end and break them into three or four pieces so it’s easy to put them in the jars.

I suspect that for mom it ran along the lines of: small child (me) is curious about what you’re doing? Let her pull a few beans out of the bowl with her slightly grubby little hands. With luck she’ll copy what you’re doing and more beans will end up in the bowl than in the kid. And don’t worry about kid germs; they get washed before they go in the jars and ten pounds of pressure will take care of just about anything.

We have a mutant strawberry tomato bush that I swear is trying to take over the south end of the garden. Frankenvine was less than a foot tall and one stem when mom planted it. It’s now two by four……feet. We trimmed back some of the vines yesterday and it was like “ok, where do I start?” We’ll probably get far more thanwe can eat fresh and I’m thinking “bring on the mason jars.” It least we won’t have to chop them before they go in the jars. The three Roma vines are doing very well, if they can just be rescued from their over enthusiastic neighbor. And most of the Romas will probably end up as diced tomatoes too. If we get that kind again it’ll probably be given it’s very own corner of the garden. And it’ll probably die of loneliness. Hmm, I may have to rethink that.

For what you can’t grow. A side trip of say twenty minutes north of town with get you this.

Six of the twelve quarts of dark cherries we put up. And we use everything but the pits. Save the juice when you serve the fruit next winter, add unflavored gelatin and you get something that doesn't taste anything like "black cherry jello."

If we’d had the time we could have knocked about thirty cents a pound by picking our own. Even with the full price I suspect the end result is about the same for cost. And I know what went into these and where they came from. The fruit was in the jars before five and the cherries were still damp and cool from early morning when I stemmed them out.

And I didn’t take pictures but there’s about fifteen pints of blueberries in the freezer from the same trip. We have blueberry bushes but they don’t yield enough to keep up with us. We’ll freeze what we don’t eat from our own bushes, but between baking and just plain eating them we’ll probably be out by the time the new season rolls around.

Ithink I went back to work this morning to get some rest. LOL

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