Things That Won’t Stay

church, history, poetry,
Moon with Venus, from astronomy-pictures.net

The Night Will Never Stay

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.

-Eleanor Farjeon

Maybe this poem popped into my head in the shower this morning because I was thinking about the passing of Summer. Some people are ambivalent about Summer or plain dislike it, as they love another season so much more. But it doesn’t last.

Even though we Christians are “children of the day,” night does not belong to evildoers. My friend Tim taught me to consider the darkness of Deep Heaven (C.S. Lewis’ preferred term for space) or the night sky not as empty, but rather, full of angels.

In the days before electric lights the night was long, especially in winter. It was common for people to spend many hours on their beds, but not sleeping all that time. In the middle of the night they would have the opposite of a nap, a period of being wide awake. During this time they would think or pray, during what the Psalmist refers to as the night watches.

Of course there is much physical beauty in the stars and moon, the smells and sounds of the night. There is nothing like sleeping outside on high mountains–especially if you can have your night and summer at the same time–and contemplating the glory of God in those uncountable stars. It’s hard not to pray then.

What Am I About?

crafts, food and cooking, garden, home, housework, my garden, quotes, ,



When a man is in earnest and knows what he is about, his work is half done.   –Mirabeau

My trouble is, I don’t know what I am about. Or as we moderns would say, I lack focus. Some days the thousand details to be seen to, the hundred or so projects unfinished, don’t bother me. But today is another matter.

Maybe I am in transition from a heavy thinking period into a time when I need to attend more to housework and at least a couple of those tangible projects. The philosophical questions, and the writing projects–I assure you, just cranking out a few good paragraphs for this blog is a Project– can wait. It occurred to me that I should shut just down the computer for a spell, but then I remembered that if I write even a few words on the subject, it will help me come to grips with my “problem.” And in the process, I’ll share a few things from my week, somewhat haphazardly.

I recently started a new project, just to make things more difficult. A baby quilt for which there is a deadline, of course. Deadlines are just a facet of time, and time is not a bad thing. Christ sanctified time, if that were needed–and I don’t want to start thinking too much here!–when He entered it. So time, and deadlines, are all part of being human, and I mean that in a good way, as Christ was The Human. He had a deadline, the cross, but He never hurried or fretted.

This photo is one of two baby quilts I’ve made, both more than twenty years ago! I don’t want to show you the fabric for the current one yet, because I want it to be at least partly a surprise.

The photo of melon and blueberries is a beautiful image, yes? Those two just seemed to belong together. But it was an idea based solely on the visual sense, and failed completely when tested by the tongue. The honeydew was SO yummy by itself, and the blueberries were perfectly sweet and distinctive in that flavor that blueberries have. But together they clashed, or rather, the honeydew completely ruined the blueberries, and you wouldn’t know by that bowlful of color that blueberries were anything but flat and sour at the same time.

The fruit bowl surprise ties in to another somewhat philosophical point–about our western emphasis of the visual– that will have to wait. If I ever get back to that part of what I am about I’ll post the picture again. It’s pretty enough for a repeat.

There are two types of basil here. The green one is growing in my garden, and the purple-tinged bunch was given to me by K.

I washed it and spun it dry and did make pesto, though she wasn’t sure the flavor would be right. “Everyone” has a pesto recipe so I am not going to post mine. I got it about 30 years ago from a weekly very small-town newspaper, a recipe from a local woman who used sunflower seeds instead of nuts. Since then I have adapted and changed the recipe and switched to walnuts and then pine nuts and back again.

Pesto is infinitely variable. Depending on what you are going to do with it you might want to use more olive oil–or butter, as an Italian lady I knew used to do–to make it more runny. You might like to add some parsley or use toasted almonds as the last recipe I looked at did.

This time I was putting it on toast. We thought the flavor was outstanding. And just for good measure, I’ll show you the pan of zucchini I served that night.

I’ve lately noticed a phenomenon repeated from the past: one spends so much time cultivating the vegetables that it’s hard to get back in the house to cook them into the dinner. B. used to come out in the garden looking for me, asking if there was a plan for dinner that night?

Today I knew what I was about when I did my gardening in the morning! Tonight I will be ready.

I watered the vegetables and made a second picking of Blue Lake beans–wait! Do those look like Blue Lakes? You’re right, most of them certainly do not. A few, from last year’s seeds, are true to type, but my packet was mislabeled. The beans I am getting are mostly sticky, coarse and with a flat profile. They will probably have a bean-y taste, if they resemble Romanos across the board.

Hmm…another surprise in life. If you can’t get what you like, you have to like what you get. I’ll just slather them with pesto and everyone will love them.

Anyway, the green bean tower-tepee looks pretty, especially with that Celtic cross my friend H. gave me in the background.

This last picture is of my favorite flowers this summer, some nasturtiums and lobelia in a big pot that was a bargain at Food Maxx of all places. Year after year I try to get new varieties of nasturtiums to grown from seeds or plants in many places all over the garden, but they never take. Instead, the standard variety keeps growing in the cracks in the concrete around the pool pump where no one sees it.

nasturtiums+ 09

So this year I put two healthy starts in a pot, and with more TLC they are thriving. I’m wondering if I should place the pot over against the fence and encourage some seeds to self-sow in the ground…

Now for a closing thought, before I leave you to attend to the other kind of work–or toil:

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.  —Herman Melville


Too Many Big Books

books


Returning books to the library unread always gives me a feeling of sadness. I hated to send these back without a farewell, and perhaps an honorable mention here by way of a photo. They didn’t go completely neglected, either–I skimmed and read bits here and there.

When I had put several volumes on hold during snatches of time away from my couch last month I didn’t take the time to notice how many pages were there waiting to be tackled. Today when I hauled them from the car to the deposit slot my elbow nearly popped out of its socket from the weight.

But I did keep one by Coetzee, one on Hawaii, and one on Africa, with hopes of reading on a retreat this month. And now that I can gaze long at food blogs again I don’t need a whole book on risotto, do I? The top two items are sets of tapes I thought we might listen to in the car on trips, but that didn’t happen.

There are many thoughts stewing, to be written about the books I actually did read during that intensive period. But this nearly empty communication is far easier to accomplish.

Recalling Pies and Martyrs

food and cooking, , , ,

This week’s pies probably aren’t anything you will want to imitate, but I couldn’t miss the chance to add a post to the Pie category.

First there was the Lenten Pie Challenge. For myself, I would not bother baking or eating a pie made without butter, or at least eggs, and would wait until after a church fast to eat the real thing. But today at church we were commemorating Saint Lawrence of Rome, patron saint of our rector, who loves pies. We are in the middle of a short period of fasting, so if we want to show our appreciation by baking pies for him, they need to be vegan.

Let me interject a story about today’s saint, who lived in the third century, and an icon that is painted on a door in our church. It shows St. Lawrence and also the first martyr Stephen. Click on it to see more detail, and their names.

The Jewels of St Lawrence

After the death of Sixtus, the prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence turn over the riches of the Church. Ambrose is the earliest source for the tale that Lawrence asked for three days to gather together the wealth. Lawrence worked swiftly to distribute as much Church property to the poor as possible, so as to prevent its being seized by the prefect. On the third day, at the head of a small delegation, he presented himself to the prefect, and when ordered to give up the treasures of the Church, he presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering, and said that these were the true treasures of the Church. One account records him declaring to the prefect, “The Church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor.” This act of defiance led directly to his martyrdom.

Last year for this celebration I made some apricot pies with lots of walnuts. They would have looked much like the picture below but for the walnut meal on top of the pies that didn’t get photographed. This year I decided to try something with coconut and pineapple. I used canned pineapple, shredded dried coconut, coconut milk, and some other things. The challenge was mostly knowing how much thickening to include. I made two, and they were well-received at the brunch following church, but I’d like to improve the recipe before I pass it on. It’s unlikely, at any rate, that many of my readers are holding their breath waiting for vegan pie recipes.

It didn’t feel right, making pies to take to church when my dear laboring husband was not there to partake–even though he did assure me that my weird pie did not appeal. So I made him a cherry pie today that he and his father could share.

On rare occasions I have been given fresh pie cherries and without a doubt they make the best pies. But the menfolk around here are perfectly pleased with the results that come from using canned pie filling, so I often settle for that. There’s no recipe to share, except to say that for one 9″ or 10″ pie you must buy two cans of filling at a price that is likely outrageous these days. I recommend finding a generous friend with a cherry tree.

Still, the pie is homey-looking and you can almost smell the butter. In my past pie-posts I forgot to tell you that when I bake a pie that needs to be in the oven for the better part of an hour I put some foil collars around the fluted edge of the crust, to keep it from getting too brown. Many people don’t eat this part, but for the sake of us who do, I want to keep it edible and beautiful. A pie doesn’t seem too appetizing to me if its crust is approaching the color of the bottom of my oven. This task takes a few extra minutes, because one has to be careful not to smash the dough with the foil. You might decide that it’s not worth the trouble.

You have to watch the pie in the oven and decide whether to take the collar off a few minutes before the pie will be coming out. It can happen that if your pie dough recipe doesn’t have sugar or milk in it, the crust will not brown as much as you want if you leave the protective collar on until the end of baking. This pastry recipe uses sugar, which is probably why the crust browned nicely even with the foil reflecting some of the heat. I didn’t remove the guard until the pie came out of the oven.

This cherry pie might have kept a sharper fluted edge if I’d stuck it in the fridge for a while, but I was too impatient. And I don’t mind the relaxed look.