Wooded and Worded Wonderland

books, nature, travel, , , , ,

I’m back up at Pippin’s place as of last night, and this morning took Baby Scout for a walk in his jogger. It was an hour’s walk, but that doesn’t translate to much exercise when you figure in all the stops for gawking and picture-taking. On my drive up I listened to most of My Ántonia and was struck by the evocative descriptions of the prairie; here the meadows are in their late summer glory of gold tones, with runnels of pale green. My photos don’t serve nearly as well as Willa Cather’s prose in conveying a scene.

In this case there were jays scraping the air with their calls, and smells of drying grass and a dozen trees coming at me in the breeze. Scout hummed as we bumped along. The air was crisp at first, but the little currents of warm spread out to fill the morning so that it soon felt like an August day.

I couldn’t precisely identify any of those aromas; it made me envy the animals with their good noses –but when I do get to know a plant, I can also have the word for it, and that makes me happy. Fact is, I don’t know the word for very many of the thousands of lovely things around me. Like this tiny flower that I spied on the roadside, and a while later in Pippin’s tomato garden, volunteering along with mullein and ferns.

In the meadow I saw a place where the grass was all mashed down. Maybe the deer had rested there, maybe even the one I saw munching on tree branches by the side of the road. She gave me one look, and then refused to pay any more attention to me, even though I kept asking her to look at the camera.

I slept through the woodland noise last night, of Mama Bear tearing down bird feeders to spread the seed on the patio for her two cubs. It’s the second time this week, which pretty much means the end of watching birds close by the kitchen window. That’s about the only way I can seem to notice them, as I did last May when I took this picture. Birds are more fun to watch than bears, for many reasons, one being that you don’t have to be wakened at midnight in order to see them.

Certainly one of the warm smells on our walk was of oak trees. Oak was likely one of my first nature words, as I lived most of my childhood under a giant oak in the Central Valley. I think it was a Valley Oak. There are only nineteen Quercus native to California, I just this minute read in a tree guide, so perhaps it wouldn’t be impossible, as I have previously thought, for me to learn which are which. This one I photographed today is certainly not a Scrub, Live, Leather, Muller or Blue Oak…perhaps it is a California Black Oak. Hello, Mr. Oak; I hope to get to know you better.

The Wedding

family, nature,

Soldier Son has married his true love, Joy. I am still too tired to think of anything philosophical or deep to write, except for Thank You, Lord! My son was a gift to us his parents when he came into the world, and he himself was gifted with a heart towards God, and many other graces.

His Heavenly Father has given him a woman for whom the word pure is fitting, and as a consequence our whole family, and indeed the world, is the richer for their coming together in the fear of God and under many prayers. I’m very aware at the moment that life, and His Life, is all a gift.

 

The setting was amazing, on a hill five miles from the Pacific, surrounded by beautiful and rustic plantings and with a long view of layered valleys and slopes.

A week before the wedding we visited the site and I took pictures of the flowers close up, but that day was too foggy for me to get views like the one above, which gives an idea of the looks of the place.

The weather is often drizzly and cool so close to the North Coast, but the sun was shining for the ceremony and during the reception, which featured not cake but — ta da! — homemade pie! Pearl and I even collaborated the day before and managed to contribute two berry pies from our family.

It was a joy to have all our children in one place, something that hasn’t happened in perhaps five years, and a bunch of us stayed up late after the wedding, sitting around the table enjoying our time together, doing nothing.

Just being thankful family. And now we are increased, glory to His Name, and feeling His love shed even more broadly in our hearts.

We Need Food of All Kinds

church, my garden, quotes, writing, , , , , ,

Soldier’s wedding will take place in a few days.  Mr. Glad and I are just trying to get ourselves and the house and my father-in-law ready for the Joyous Event–and trying at the same time to get over our summer colds. I was pleased to pick the first lemon cucumber and add it with our arugula and the multi-colored cherry tomatoes to some lettuce last night, to fortify us for the work, and for the happy busyness ahead.

This morning I was well enough and eager to get back to church, where we remembered the life of St. Lawrence of Rome. God has filled my cup with delights like this–how many parishes are able to celebrate on a Tuesday morning?

St. Lawrence was a deacon serving with Pope Sixtus in the third century; his life and martyrdom are peppered with several encouraging stories. He seems to have had a good sense of humor, and among the various groups who call him patron are comedians.

G. K. Chesterton said it is the test of a good religion, whether you can joke about it. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything like mocking God or His salvation. But being able to laugh at oneself is a sign of humility, and I think it might be a collective form of this humor he is talking about. The whole subject of humor is something mysterious to me, and I would do well to study Chesterton’s other writings about it. For now I will change the subject after my favorite pertinent quote, also from him: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”

I came home from the feast and noticed the hyssop flowers having grown taller and taller. Bees were drinking nectar from the blooms, but bees are hard to photograph–one has to take time and a couple dozen pictures in hopes of getting one without a blur of bee, and I have lots of housework yet to do.

My life is like my garden. It’s full of beautiful and colorful things and events, ever changing, and I notice so few of them. Fewer still can I pick and show anyone else. My sociable or communicative side I find is always writing script in my mind, for how to tell other people about my discoveries and joys. But when the foliage and flowers grow so fast, events tumbling and intertwining with each other like a jungle, the feeling of not keeping up has been a gift in itself. From a feeling of helplessness, God has given me grace to just stop that script-writing for a few minutes at a time and direct my noticing and my thanks only to Him. Let me be like the bee, blurry if need be, but doing my job of imbibing the sweetness.

Berry Pies

family, food and cooking, , ,

It’s traditional for Mr. Glad to have homemade blackberry pie for his birthday, which arrives at the peak of the wild blackberry season here in Northern California. As a young couple we did our first picking up near the Eel River when we were just making hopeful forays northward, thinking about where to move to when our college days were done.

Later we had the bushes growing like weeds in our back yard and neighborhood, and the children could bring in plenty, so much that there were many more berries than I could bake into pies.  I developed a recipe for blackberry syrup to process in jars so that year by year we had it to pour on pancakes.

Twenty years ago we moved to a less rural part of the county and now have to make more of an effort to collect our pie ingredients. In the last few years it has twice happened that one or two of the children made heroic efforts against busy schedules and blazing heat to collect buckets full enough for me to bake the customary pie or two.

One year I carted one of these pies up the mountain for our Yosemite family camp experience, and forgot the birthday candle. Someone carved a sort of long matchstick from a twig to use instead, but it was pretty much a failure.

Just above is the time I baked a blackberry pie at the high mountain cabin where I like to go for solitary retreats or for family gatherings where cooking is appreciated.

This busy-busy summer, there was hardly time for a spark of thought about going berry-picking, so I picked up two bags of mixed frozen berries at Costco with plans to make four pies for the big party that the children would give.

 

 

I’d used this berry mix once before, to make my usual blackberry pie recipe, the result being a kind of gummy candy wrapped in pastry. As the berries are individually quick-frozen, I speculated that they lose a lot of moisture in the process and must need less thickening than what I’d automatically put in the bowl.

So this time around, I used less than half the amount of tapioca granules called for in the original Joy of Cooking recipe. A little runny would be better than globby. And the pies were a little runny, so if I do it again I’ll use exactly half the thickening.

Getting the edge of the crust to look nice is not the easiest part of pie-making. It took me quite a few failed attempts in my youth before someone showed me to hold the top and bottom layers of crust together as one, while you fold them under, against the edge of the plate. Now you are all ready to flute the edge, if you want. My pinching technique is shown at right in a photo I had Mr. Glad snap for me. Click on it if you want to see it large.

It seems hard to bake a berry pie without the blue showing through the top crust. Two of the pies I put an egg wash on, and two not. Two had a little less butter in the crust. But they all came out looking about the same.

 

 

 

What was really different was baking them in a convection oven. With the first two pies, I experimented and used the foil collar on one and not on the other, and they baked equally, beautifully brown. So I may not use foil collars ever again!

 

The flavor was excellent, a composite of blackberries (Marionberries, to be precise),  blueberries, and raspberries, with butter seeping in from the crust, and a bit of cinnamon with the fruit. I go lightly on the sugar so that the sweetness doesn’t overwhelm the taste buds.

 

It was a wonderful party the children had for their beloved father, and he was very pleased not to have to go without his pie.