Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.
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A while back I mentioned how I got the bright idea, to drive out to the farm and buy some Gravenstein apples, a specialty variety that comes on early and is definitely not a good keeper. Those apples have the most appley flavor and make sauce that needs no added sugar. But because I’m not thinking about apples in August I always miss them. It was too busy a week, as I realized eventually, and dropping that project — and the resulting extra kitchen work — from the to-do list brought great relief. I knew I would manage to go sometime in October or November and bring home a box of apples of some other type.
Then when my sister Nancy was visiting last week, I thought what a nice thing to do together, to drive through the beautiful countryside and visit my favorite orchard. When we arrived, we found that the apples are late this year, and the only variety they had so far (out of dozens that they grow) was Gravensteins!
I’ve made several jars’ worth of sauce so far and eaten many out of hand, mealy as they already are. So, so yummy, and a special treat for me. Next year maybe I will try to get them earlier, but there’s no way to predict what week that might be, this far ahead. So I’ll just be ready to receive whatever gifts come my way.
The fig tree towering over my garden is loaded with fruit — but wait, what is wrong here? The figs are turning purple while they are still very small; they stay hard, they stay small, and they fall on the ground. You can see in the photo below how they don’t have enough water content to droop at all, and the sign of a ripening fig is that it droops more and more on its stem until it is hanging quite limp and juicy and sweet. I am distressed about the situation, but from what I’m reading the tree has been stressed. And I think I know why.
My wonderful new landscaper who turned out to be not so wonderful, adjusted my irrigation settings several weeks ago, and since then I’ve been concerned about a few plants that don’t look happy. When I checked the control box it appeared that everything was horribly mixed up, but I didn’t trust myself to understand it, so I had my neighbor down to look at the setup, and between us we got it straightened out.
In the meantime the poor tree was very thirsty. Evidently when this happens the tree itself doesn’t show signs of stress, but it neglects the fruit ripening process. I have followed advice online to remove the smallest fruits at the ends of the branches, farthest from the tree; many of these were only 1-2 centimeters in diameter and probably would not have ripened before the frost anyway. Removing them lets the tree pour more energy into the larger fruit, and I hope at least some of them will ripen. I gave the tree a deep watering with the hose, too.
My newest orchid.
We’ve been having nice warm weather for a week or so, but at this moment it is raining. This afternoon the sun was shining and I had a young family for lunch. The children played in the garden and the playhouse, arranging salads on the little plastic plates. They’d collected snippets of parsley, mints, cherry tomatoes, rosemary, lavender, and even kale, and to top it off, asked me to cut up a lemon for them to squeeze over. They liked their salads better before the addition of lemon.
I showed them this bird’s nest that I found in the fig tree. It doesn’t look as though any baby birds hatched in it. It is very clean, and a unique building project. I see familiar materials from close by: cast-off garden twine (two types), needles from the Canary Island Pine, long Bermuda grass stems, and even dried nigella flowers. The strangest element, and not something I’ve seen outside here, is steel wool, forming the center of the bottom.
At least half the garden is in transition and upheaval right now; I will soon have all of the irises out and will amend the soil in several places before I put those back, or install the many new plants I have, or transplant old ones to an environment with more suitable amounts of sun.
milkweed
The tarragon has flowers! That was a surprise; it’s evidently a bigger plant than I can make use of anymore. It will go dormant soon…
Tarragon flowers
I finally took the time to cut zinnias and bring bouquets into the house, for the sake of my lunch guests. They are like much of my backyard garden now, not getting as much sun as they used to, and they are leggy — but plenty productive. Yesterday I was able to spend quite a while, in the 90-degree heat, tidying up all over the place, so I feel better about the stuff that remains undone. And there are still twelve days left of September ❤
“The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.”
“Whenever I see someone reading a book . . . I feel civilization has become a little safer.” Matt Haig, How to Stop Time
You turn the page because you have to know— because the youthful wizard is in trouble, because the wife’s about to pack and go, because you just like living in this bubble of graceful prose and other people’s ills and joys, because turning the pages makes you see things from a new perspective, fills your mind with more than you, and maybe breaks your heart or your routine, or breaks apart what’s rusted shut, or else draws a connection where you thought there was none. And once you start, the pages lead you to the intersection of art and life and your own empathy; the pages turn you toward humanity.
-Jean L. Kreiling
Jean Kreiling expresses so many of the reasons that we love to read — Did she leave anything out? I do like very much — often, but not constantly! — living in this bubble of graceful prose, even when the bubble doesn’t contain other peoples’ ills and joys. I hope my reading is doing all the positive things the poet sees. I read this poem Sunday afternoon to eleven fellow readers, when our parish women’s book group met on my patio and enjoyed our usual lively discussion of such pleasures. I’m also keeping it tucked in my purse to share with any friend or stranger I might meet, anytime our conversation turns to our latest favorite books.
Gladsome Lights 