BikeWalkBakeBarb

A Rose Amidst the Thorns: Poems about Beauty Balancing Pain

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 21:58:00 +0000

In the face of horrors visited upon our world daily, in the struggle to protect our loved ones, choosing to let in joy is a revolutionary act. Joy returns us to everything that is good and beautiful and worth fighting for.
— Valarie Kaur

Poetry often gives us implicit messages. The takeaway is there if you think about it, as many an English teacher tries to convey, teaching us to read between the lines.

At other times it's right out there. This collection of poems falls into that category: poems in which the poet reflects directly on the stark contrasts between the many beauties in the world and its many agonies and cruelties.

John Ruskin, a prolific English author, poet, painter, philosopher, and social critic, wrote a book he titled The Duty of Delight. Critical of the Victorian Christians of his time, he wrote that they “dwell only on the duty of self-denial but exhibit not the duty of delight.”

Social activist and writer Dorothy Day used this phrase often, including as the title of a collection of her journal entries (*affiliate link). From a footnote in the book: "this phrase came to serve for Dorothy as a call to mindfulness in the face of drudgery and sorrow."

Or, as the Buddha said, "No mud, no lotus."

Sojourner Truth may have said it best: “Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.”

These poems remind me of how incredibly fortunate I've been for the majority of my life, and how many don't have that same good fortune.

They remind me to recommit to working for justice.

They remind me to pay attention.

As always, I've shared a brief excerpt from each poem. Follow the link to read the complete work.

"A Brief for the Defense"
Jack Gilbert

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.

"The News"
Emilie Lygren

Each morning we listen for what is breaking—

the sound of a thousand tragedies fills the air,
shattering that never stops,
headlines, a fleet of anchors tangled at our feet.

"Everything is Plundered, Betrayed, Sold"
Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz

Why then do we not despair?
By day, from the surrounding woods,
cherries blow summer into town;
at night the deep transparent skies
glitter with new galaxies.

"Testimony"
Rebecca Baggett

I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness,"
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

"Adrift"
Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat.

"Fear and Love"
Jim Moore

I wish I could make the argument that a river
and a sunset plus a calm disregard of the ego
are enough. But whatever comes next must include
tents in the parking lot, that homeless camp
on the way to the airport,
and the hole in your cheek
from the cancer removed yesterday.

"September, 1918"
Amy Lowell

Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.

"Prayer"
Teddy Macker

dear lord in this time of darkness
may we be unafraid to mourn and together and hugely

may dignity lose its scaffolding
faces crumble like bricks

dear lord let grief come to grief

and then o lord help us to see the bees yet in the lavender
the spokes of sunlight down through the oaks

"Sometimes"
David Budbill

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be
taken from me, and therefore I've got to say, right now,
what I feel and know and see, I've got to say, right now,
how beautiful and sweet this world can be.

"Sweetness"
Stephen Dunn

Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

"Please"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

We need you to remind us we can
be furious and scared and near feral
over injustice and still thrill at the taste
of a strawberry, ripe and sweet,
can still meet a stranger and shake
their hand, believing in their humanness.

"Thanks"
W.S. Merwin

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

A question for you: Do you have a favorite poem, or one that's painful to read, that belongs on this list? I have the memory of reading another one that has been reprinted many places that I now can't find so I'd love to get more titles and links.

Related reading

*Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you purchase through this link I receive a teensy tiny commission. Any commissions received will be donated to nonprofit organizations working for social justice and transportation equity.

Winter Solstice 2025

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 15:29:00 +0000

In Western society we give ourselves assignments at the new year to make a whole new self. Unrealistic assignments, of course. Between one day and the next we're not really going to flip a switch and go from zero exercise to five days a week at the gym. If we manage that for a week we'll pay for it in aches and pains anyway.

Instead of commitment by calendar, and instead of "improvement" schemes, I'm practicing other ways of marking turning points. This year I got the book Requiem, Invitation, and Celebration: A Collection of Seasonal Practices by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee and Lucy Wormald, from the publishers of Emergence Magazine. It's a collection of 50 practices grounded in the evolving cycle of the seasons. (More about the book in a talk by Vaughan-Lee)

The book includes "Savoring Light, for when it's the shortest day." The practice:

"Take a walk in the afternoon for as long as the light is present. Give attention only to the rhythm of your breath and footsteps until your mind softens. Take in the presence of the light. Mid-winter, how does your body instinctively savor it? As the light of day quickly becomes dusk--the light grainy, the world looking like it belongs to a roll of old film--what does the fleeting quality of the light open in you before you are lost to the dark?"

I have to say that I'm not "lost to the dark," though, as the sun slips below the horizon, our part of the globe rotating away. I'm simply in the dark, which has its own sounds and sensations. Without the darkness, the glowing lights on my neighbors' homes wouldn't gleam so brightly. Owl wouldn't fly to find food. The coyote pack that sets up a chorus each night in the nearby park wouldn't sing their laughing songs.

The globe keeps turning, and we're really always turning toward the light.

Poems and readings for this year's Solstice, with brief excerpts and links to the full pieces:

I read a lot of poetry but have relatively few committed to memory. One of these--ish--is Robert Frosts's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". The "ish" led me to look it up to refresh my memory of the spot where I usually get stuck "between the woods and frozen lake." I know the rhyme scheme so if I can get past that I can keep going.

For some reason, reading it this time I realized it's actually a winter Solstice poem. Why, you ask? This line: "the darkest evening of the year."

"Solstice Poem"
Margaret Atwood

This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,

the year’s threshold
and unlocking

"Winter's Cloak"
Joyce Rupp

This year I do not want

the dark to leave me.

I need its wrap

of silent stillness,

its cloak

of long lasting embrace.

Too much light

has pulled me away

from the chamber

of gestation.

"Winter Solstice"
Kate Belew

Winter is magic

in decay, look what changes,

on the threshold of the year. Oh holy,

hinge. Step across the hearth

(earth and heart as one).

"How the Light Comes"

Jan Richardson

I cannot tell you

how the light comes,

but that it does.

That it will.

That it works its way

into the deepest dark

that enfolds you,

though it may seem

long ages in coming

or arrive in a shape

you did not foresee.

And so

may we this day

turn ourselves toward it.

"On the Winter Solstice"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And I have been waiting—

which I might have denied,

snuggled in deep as I was,

drowsy and night-drunk,

certain of my joy in the dark,

but oh, such a way to wake,

discovered by the light of a star

Brianna Kocka, in What the Winter Solstice Asks of Us, provides suggestions for how we might mark the day with rest (all seven kinds), ritual, and restorative practices.

From Starhawk's Winter Solstice Message, a reminder that this year Solstice and Hanukkah occur together, both reminders of the light, and these lines:

"And the message of Solstice, retold every year, is that just when the world grows darkest, the sun will rise again.

"We are each a little light, a small flame that needs sacred fuel to burn. Yet we can keep that flame alight, longer than we might expect, if we commit to acts of courage and compassion. On this longest night, as the Great Mother labors to bring forth the sun of the new year, we are midwives. We tend, we comfort, we empathize, we do the work. Let us bring to birth the warmth of compassion, the fire of commitment, the light of truth this year. The wheel is turning. After each night comes a new dawn."

Jennifer Hall's Lessons from the Universe essay "The Winter Solstice: Sacred Pause Before the Light Returns" reinforces the idea that we can sit with who and where we are without seeking improvement in a season of rest. She offers this invitation:

"The Winter Solstice isn’t here to rush you into the future.

It’s here to remind you that light is inevitable, even when you can’t yet see it.

Honor the pause.

Trust the dark.

Let the return of the light meet you where you are.

That’s how cycles close with grace.

And that’s how new ones begin with clarity."

Brigit Anna McNeill shares beautiful illustrations by several artists in her piece "Winter Solstice: The Long Night that Knows Our Names." She closes with this blessing:

"May this solstice meet you gently.

May it remind you that you are not late, broken, or lost.

You are wintering, as all living things must.

And somewhere beneath the quiet, the light is already on its way."

I went on a fabulous trip to England this fall with family and finally got to see Stonehenge, a lifelong dream. I couldn't go right up to it since they have it roped off. The benefit of that was that we could get pictures of the stones without people all around them. We also visited Avebury, a much larger circle although without the lintel crosspieces and much more worn, and the Rolling-Right standing stones, a small site. At Avebury and Rolling-Right we saw the remains of offerings people had left there at the equinox, just a week or two before we visited. This picture of Stonehenge isn't mine; I'm sharing it for the glow of the sunset through the stones, which people will view on the winter solstice.

When we watch the light pass, we have to remember to watch (and work) for the light to return.

Related Reading

Spiced Apple Butter Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 02:37:00 +0000

Admittedly not the biggest tweaks I've ever made to a recipe, but here it is. In this year's food preservation I found myself going back to last year's canning posts for recipes and links and I'll keep this running tally going.

I had rounded up quite a few apple butter recipes when I invented my Chai Apple Butter Reciped last year. I wanted one that used apple cider vinegar for the extra tang; some recipes don't include that, or don't use much. For this batch I started with The Pioneer Woman's apple butter recipe.

Since I was simultaneously working on two other recipes I used the slow-cooker method that Food in Jars uses for her Salted Caramel Pear Butter (made a batch of that two days ago). My slow cooker has a steam vent hole in the lid. For the first stage of cooking in this recipe I block that with a chopstick to keep the moisture in and cook the flavor into the flesh of the apples. That comes out for the later stage when I need the liquid to cook off.

The Pioneer Woman calls for adding a cup of water. I substituted apple cider. Why not make it even more appley when you have the chance?

Earlier this year I processed a lot of gleaned apples with my corer/slicer and had both skin-on and peeled in the freezer. For this recipe I used the ones with the skins, for the extra pectin and flavor. This saves the peeled ones for a future apple pie or other dessert use. Go with what you have and what you prefer. You can run the cooked mash through a food mill if you started with unpeeled apples and don't want the extra fiber.

Of course, per the title here, I oomphed up the spice. She called for 1 teaspoon of apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice for three pounds of apples. I drew some inspiration from British Mixed Spice, discovered along the way in my never-again-will-I-make-ketchup research. I wanted it to be cinnamon-forward. This might sound like a lot of seasonings but it didn't taste overly spiced with that dusty quality I've created at times with over-enthusiastic perusal of the spice drawer.

I needed to deal with the aftermath of the Great Freezer Defrost of 2025, so my quantities are larger than my starting-point recipe: 4 pounds of apples. More than this quantity of pears had worked just fine in the slow cooker. You can scale this back to the quantities in The Pioneer Woman's recipe.

Ingredients

4 lbs. apples, chopped. These can be frozen or canned, skins on or off according to your preference

1 c. apple cider vinegar

1-1/2 c. apple cider or apple juice

3/4 t. salt

1-2/3 c. brown sugar

2 t. vanilla paste or vanilla extract, if you have it on hand

2 t. flaky sea salt or kosher salt

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. black pepper

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. mace (optional; for me this is the essence of pumpkin pie spice)

1/4 t. cardamom

1/8 t. cloves

Directions

Place apples, vinegar, cider/juice and salt in slow cooker and stir to combine. Turn it to high. Cook for 60-90 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want the fruit to be soft enough to be blendable.

Blend with an immersion stick blender if you have one. Or remove a couple of cups at a time, blend in a blender or food processor, then return all the blended sauce to the slow cooker. Be careful when blending hot semi-liquid foods. Don't fill the container at or above the halfway mark, keep a towel over the top, adjust the lid so you're letting steam escape rather than build up. All of this is why I prefer my immersion blender.

Mix the dried spices together, then add the brown sugar, vanilla and spices to the pot. Prop the lid slightly ajar so steam can escape, maybe with your spatula or a chopstick laid crosswise so the lid can rest on it on one end.

Cook on high, stirring often, until it's the color and consistency you want. If you want to be thick and spreadable this will take a while, 2-3 hours. If you stop much sooner, congratulations! You have made a spiced applesauce.

Stirring often means every 15 minutes or so. Food in Jars says to stir every 30 minutes but if I waited that long I'd have apple butter stuck on the bottom of the pot. You can let it go a bit longer early on when the pot has plenty of liquid in it. The more it cooks down and thickens, the more you need to be sure to scrape the bottom thoroughly.

How hot your slow cooker gets will be a factor only you can judge, and that will affect your stirring frequency and total cook time. Food in Jars blogger Marisa notes that the older Crock-Pot had a gentler low temperature than newer ones. That's my experience with my newer model; I really can't go off and leave it.

Prep your jars for canning according to the safe canning practices from the National Center on Home Food Preservation. Process 15 minutes at full boil.

My yield: 4 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints, 1 6-oz. jar in a reuse experiment from a commercial product (nice straight-sidded jar)

Canning posts usually show something like this as the triumphant closing shot, or maybe a close-up of the delectable contents.

In reality the closing scene is more like this.

I should have taken a picture even earlier I was making full use of every flat surface in the kitchen and had three recipes going at once. Maybe next time.

Related reading and recipes

Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 04:40:00 +0000

I may have noted recently that I don't think green tomato ketchup is worth the effort.

Also noted: Large quantity (~6 pounds) of green tomatoes plus chopped onions plus canned apples, all prepped and in the fridge under the assumption that I'd be making another ketchup recipe.

Third note to file: Lots of green tomato chutney and green tomato/tomatillo chutney already on hand in all their chunky goodness from last year and earlier this year.

Hence the thought experiment: What if I followed a chutney recipe but then blended it to make it smooth like ketchup? I should have some pretty screamin' awesome sweet/tangy sauce that would be great with fries, tofu, on oven-baked yams, maybe over rice, with cheese on crackers if it wasn't too runny to sit there, blend with yogurt to make an interesting dip. Many possible uses! Although not a ketchup! (And yes, blended green chutney sauce looks quite a lot like split pea soup.)

I give quantities as if you had diced or chopped things. I heartily endorse throwing ingredients for this into the food processor and whirling them up to save time. You're going to be pureeing and smooshing to get the lumps out anyway.

This makes a big batch! I'd already committed myself with the earlier prep. This could be cut in half with proportionate adjustments to everything. Cook time will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are.

Inspirations

Green Tomato Ketchup recipe by From the Larder
My own Green Tomato Apple Chutney Recipe, developed last year
Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup, which was the winner of the two recipes I tried last weekend

Wet ingredients

Green tomatoes: ~6-8 cups, yield from ~6 pounds
Yellow or white onion: 1-1/2 cups, diced
Apple: 2 cups, diced, canned, or even applesauce if that's what you have
Green bell pepper (or another sweet bell pepper color if that's what you have): 1 whole pepper, diced
Dried fruit: 1 cup of whatever turns your cranks. I like a combination of dates and dried cranberries
Vinegar: 1 cup. Malt or apple cider vinegar preferred; white vinegar will be sharper; red or white wine vinegar is fine. Just needs to be labeled 5% acidity.
Brown sugar: 1-1/2 cups. OK to substitute white sugar if that's what you have
Green or red chilis, optional: 1-2, diced, if you want to add some fresh chili heat. Substitute 1-2 t. crushed red pepper, tasting and adjusting for your heat preference as the recipe cooks down
1 T. fresh grated ginger, or ginger paste from a tube (so handy!)
4-5 garlic cloves, crushed, or 1 T. garlic paste from a tube
Optional: 1-1/2 T. vegan Worcestershire sauce, if available. Regular is fine if you don't have vegan, but then you should label this for any gift recipients who might prefer vegan
Optional if you want a thinner sauce: 1/2 c. sherry, cooking sherry, or something you routinely substitute for these (apple cider or apple juice could work here)

Dry ingredients/Seasonings
Stir the dry spices together in a small bowl, then add to the wet ingredients. Yes, yes, you can absolutely dump the measurements straight into the sauce without mixing them first, but combining them first gives you a better distribution in the liquid than if you end up with a surprise clump of ground ginger.

1 T. fennel seeds, whirled in a coffee grinder or pounded with a mortar and pestle
1 T. ground mustard
1 T. salt
2 t. ground cardamom
2 t. ground black pepper
1 t. smoked paprika
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. ground cardamom
1 t. ground ginger (or increase fresh ginger above)
1/8 t. nutmeg
1/8 t. cloves

Put all ingredients except for the optional sherry or apple juice in one big stockpot (takes longer) or divide across two pans, preferably wide saucepans or Dutch ovens with plenty of surface for evaporation of the liquids.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a rapid simmer/low boil, and cook, stirring often, for around 60-90 minutes. Tomatoes spit when they boil so wear mitts, pay attention. Don't cover the pans; the goal here is some evaporation. Frequent stirring is essential to prevent some of the sauce burning to the bottom of the pan. Ask me how I know.

At 60-90 minutes the vegetables may not be entirely soft yet. Taste the seasonings and oomph up flavor notes you'd like to have a bit more of. Go carefully here, maybe 1/4 t. or 1/2 t. at a time if it's something that could nd up overpowering.

Continue to cook until everything is soft enough to blend. I tried my immersion blender first, then went to the regular blender. Be careful blending hot liquids. Put in less than half the container's capacity, have the lid cracked open a tiny bit to let steam out, start on a low pulse and step it up as the contents puree and liquify.

Return to the kettle and cook a bit longer to reach the consistency you want. This is ready to can now, though.

If it's thicker than you want and you'd like a more pourable sauce, add 1/2 cup of sherry (idea borrowed from the Creative Canning recipe linked above), apple juice or apple cider, and cook another 5 minutes or so.

Follow safe canning practices from the National Center on Home Food Preservation. Process 15 minutes at full boil.

Yield will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are. My yield: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.

Related reading and recipes

In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 21:31:00 +0000

I knew this. I knew this. I'd made a batch of homemade tomato ketchup years and years ago in Spokane and learned just how very, very long it takes to cook down. (Why specify "tomato" ketchup? Because, as I learned from The Joy of Cooking, whether you call it ketchup or catsup it's any savory smooth vegetable sauce. Mushroom Ketchup? It's a thing.)

But oops, I did it again. Had a lot of green tomatoes and remembered last year's idea of making green tomato ketchup. I'd even rounded up the recipes. And I still have plenty of my beloved green tomato chutney on hand, supplemented by some green tomato/tomatillo chutney that's a bit sharper, but still good.

Last year I tried making the dehydrated seasoned green tomatoes linked in that same post. Blech. And we'd been saying we'd like to have ketchup on hand without ever actually getting around to buying any. I can fix this!

Sunday I headed out to the yard to pick the many, many green tomatoes left and do a bit of cleanup of the raised beds. Since I started my seed snail 'speriment a bit late, the Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomatoes hadn't had enough time to ripen. They're huge and beautiful and I'll be starting those seeds earlier in 2026 so I get the payoff in ripe red tomatoes.

So, yeah, around 24 pounds or so of green tomatoes.

Brilliant idea: Make batches of three different recipes in a head to head taste contest, then use the last batch of tomatoes to double down on the winner.

Dear Reader, this is not how I'll ever spend another Sunday.

I got through two of the three recipes. Neither of them makes my heart beat faster. One was the winner with Sweet Hubs. Fortunately, that was the batch that had more tomatoes based on the recipe's proportions. I added more sugar to both recipes. Neither of them is a giftable product, which is my yardstick for success.

And the labor! So many steps. So many. The two recipes used two different approaches, too.

Mamta's Kitchen Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook the tomatoes, onions and garlic until soft, which didn't take nearly as long as the four-hour Creative Canning recipe. Put through a food mill, then through a sieve to get the smooth sauce consistency, then cook with spices, vinegar and sugar. This batch had a smaller quantity of tomatoes. I doubled it to 2 kg and was able to fit into my deep saucepan. I normally wouldn't double an untried recipe but I had so, so many green tomatoes and the spice mix sounded really good. Garam masala, mustard, and more.

The recipe indicated that 1 kg of tomatoes would produce around 2 liters of sauce before adding spices etc. My tomatoes must have been super juicy, as I started with 2 kg and ended up with not quite that 2-liter mark. I seasoned based on volume produced, not volume I started with. I added more spices after tasting; mine are getting old, I know.

Yield from all of that: 2 half-pints, 1 quarter-pint.

Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook everything everywhere all at once for a long, long time (four hours), stirring frequently so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. This started with 6 pounds of tomatoes so I used my Dutch oven. I'd already done the food mill + sieve steps for the Mamta recipe. This one called for pureeing ingredients in a blender, then putting it through a sieve. Much easier than the (manual) food mill process. I'd started with more tomatoes so it isn't a completely parallel comparison but I know I threw a lot more tomato skins/seeds/solids into the compost with Mamta's recipe than with this one.

This one was sweetened with honey. I added another cup of sugar after tasting (one-half cup at a time). It came out the flavor winner and was a much brighter green color.

Yield: 6 half-pints.

If I were making either of these again, which I will not be doing, I'd use the blender + sieve technique from Creative Canning. I might use the cooking approach from Mamta's because it was so much faster, but then again that might be a function of the tomato quantity.

I couldn't tell you whether having the seasonings in from the beginning can be credited with the better flavor of the Creative Canning approach. I'd actually think it would be the opposite because seasonings added too early can disappear a bit. Mamta's recipe made the point that sugar and salt both darken the end result, hence adding them in at the end, but the spice profile with several brown spices and blends meant hers was the darker brown sauce anyway.

Another lesson learned: I had purchased cute little 8-ounce stout bottles from Fillmore Container, planning to bottle whatever sauces I might make this year as a change of pace from chutney. But the ketchup was thick enough that it wouldn't pour easily out of the bottle and I realized it would be far easier to can it in my standard jars. I'll use those bottles for something runnier.

In a side note, I couldn't find instructions for headspace with that smaller mouth, which worries me. Need enough air to suck out for the vacuum, not something that creates so much pressure the bottle gives way in the kettle. The functional headspace with a much smaller circumference is obviously less so I think I need to do the geometry calculation to figure out how much headspace yields the equivalent air volume of a 1/4" headspace on a regular mouth jar. I'll keep poking around to find that or do the math before I try making some other sauce.

I did the prep for the third batch while the others were cooking down. I'd always known it would have to wait, given the amount of time it takes ketchup to cook down. So I whirled the tomatoes and onions in the food processor and stuck them in the fridge.

Know what I'm going to make with them instead of the third ketchup recipe?

Chutney.

Related reading and recipes

When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 22:34:00 +0000

I spent much of last September in a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for heading out of the country to England.

October? Also not a canning month. That two-week vacation went into mid-October, then we had a family weekend trip (which involved giving away jars of tasty treats), then I had a business trip.

Oct. 31, however, brought me a nasty surprise that meant November would start with a lot of canning. Went out to the freezer and discovered the door was open a tiny, tiny bit. Just wide enough for long enough to have defrosted every last thing, including all that produce I'd prepped and frozen earlier in the year. My visions of cozy winter weekends making a batch of this and a batch of that when the mood struck turned into a salvage situation with the clock ticking.

I made some fast decisions about how much I could get through in a weekend and put those thawed bags into the refrigerator. I figured since the apples and pears were mostly destined for apple-pear butter they could stand the freeze/thaw/freeze cycle a bit better than berries and tomatoes, so they stayed in the freezer to go back into their cold slumbers.

Saturday production:

Blackberry Jelly 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints. This no-pectin recipe jelled like a dream. I usually make jams but I had two big bags of blackberries and I still have seedless blackberry jam from last year, or was it the year before? The pulp and seeds will go into fruit leather with some plums a neighbor gave me.

Tayberry Jam: 16 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints. Pruning those bushes really paid off in production! The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. My experience has been that it takes much longer to get to the jammy stage than her recipe suggests. I use two tests: Does it run together in a sheeting action when I dip some up in a spoon, and does it hold together and slide down a plate from the freezer without a lot of juice separating out when I tilt the plate? I picked the latter tip up from a recipe somewhere and really like it, as it doesn't involve burning my finger in the jam.

Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: 5 quarter-pints, 2 half-pints. The cherries are courtesy of a Buy Nothing you-pick offer. I didn't get a lot, around 3.25 pounds. I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen. Honestly, a tiny bit disappointed on this one. The sour tasted more of the lemon juice than the cherries to my tastebuds.

"Razzbuzzy" Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Going with the "let's add liqueur to jam" theme, I made the Classic Raspberry Jam recipe from Creative Canning. I only had about 2.5 cups of raspberries. I used a 1:1 fruit:sugar ratio per the recipe and added 3 T. raspberry liqueuer. Not all the alcohol cooks out, or so I've read, but this isn't really enough for a buzz. It's just a fun word.

Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Another tiny batch. I had just about 1.5 pounds, perfect for one of the Food in Jars small-batch recipes.

I'll cover Sunday production and beyond in another post.

Related reading and recipes

My Circular Economy of Apples

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 22:09:00 +0000

Every apple recipe I made last year—and that's a long list—started out with fresh apples to which I applied some labor. Peel, yes or no depending on the recipe. Core, yes or no depending on the recipe. Slice, dice, or shred. Cook with spices. Discard something.

Bear in mind that my parents grew up during the Depression and raised me to be thrifty. I minimize my food waste as much as possible. What there is of it goes into the garden beds in the central composting square. I use the keyhole gardening technique, AKA dump food scraps into a space in the middle of the raised bed, let Mother Nature and Father Time do their thing. (My raised beds are rectangular, built by my Sweet Hubs from a kit, rather than the round shape most often illustrated. Compost happens either way.)

But why compost before you've gotten every last possible bit of use? Although there's such a thing as taking it a bit too far. I present my lessons learned for your entertainment and possible benefit.

A typical two-day cycle starts with the apples I glean from various roadside trees and pick up when a neighbor leaves a bag by the curb. (So really, it's a three-day cycle. Day one, collect apples.)

First, I use my handy-dandy apple corer without peeling and prep 8 lbs. of sliced apples to freeze for later use in apple-pear butter, or possibly this Apple Caramel Sauce from Food in Jars, which sounds scrumptious (recipe can be made using other fruits too!).

Put all the cores in a bag. Plenty of apple-ness left there that can be rendered into juice.

Use the apple corer with the peeler setting to slice another 4 pounds of apples, then dice those up to macerate overnight with sugar for Apple Cardamom Rosewater Jam. Throw the peels in the bag with the core; they carry pectin that will help the juice jell.

Simmer those cores and peels until soft with some ginger in preparation for Apple Ginger Jelly. I made this one last year and it's going on annual repeat. Set that up to drain overnight.

The next morning, discover that the apple juice is maybe a trifle bland. I really should have gotten fresh gingerroot, not just used the ginger paste from a tube that I had in the fridge. Okay, I can fix this, I still have pounds and pounds of apples. Quarter a bunch of the smaller ones and throw into the strained juice so it will reduce and pick up more appley goodness. Add more ginger paste. (Really should have biked to the store.)

Update on Apple Ginger Jelly: Sweet Hubs ended up running to the store and getting gingerroot. Sliced that up (the recipe calls for 3 oz. to go with 2 lbs. apples, and I had 3 lbs.) and simmered it in with the apples. Makes all the difference!

In the meantime, use my food mill to smoosh the cores and peels and squeeze out every bit of apple pulp I can. I figured I'd throw that into the future apple-pear butter, but hey, that looks a lot like applesauce! Granted, these apples have already given up some (most) of their flavor. Here comes the Maple Applesauce recipe from Food in Jars to the rescue, with its cinnamon sticks and maple for some extra flavor oomph.

But wait, those apples I added to the juice are also going to be nice and soft. Slow my roll on the applesauce plan until I can get those smooshed up too. Ideally they would drain for 6-8 hours per the recipe, but y'know, it's okay if some of the juice goes into the applesauce.

After tasting the apple mush, though, I decide it really has lost almost all its flavor. Even the addition of the apples that had more flesh and a tablespoon of lemon juice didn't really fix it.

At that point I have a few options: Blend up some blackberries with the bland applesauce and make fruit leather. Freeze this stuff in a muffin tin, which makes handy half-cup quantities, and save it to bake into future muffins and breads, recognizing they'll need more spice. Bake a batch of muffins or bread right now, for that matter. Or head into a fresh batch of applesauce with whole apples that I can mix this into and resist the urge to restart this whole circular economy again.

I do have an entire bike pannier full of apples still to process....

Clearly Indian Apple Chutney lies ahead. I made that last year and it tasted fantastic with some Cougar Gold aged white cheddar on a cracker. But not today. Chutney takes a while to cook and I have apple mush to deal with. That muffin tin of apple mush for the freezer sounds like the easiest way to go. I just have to label it with honesty: "Bland Applesauce 2025".

Recipes in this post

Apple Caramel Sauce
Apple Cardamom Rosewater Jam: Flavor notes to read before you make this!

She says to cook 40 minutes minimum, longer for deeper color. I probably cooked twice as long to get it to a consistency that looked like jam and yet still had some apple bits. Cook for the texture you want in your jam.
She calls for 5 cardamom pods. I used 8 pods and it was so subtle I couldn't taste it, but my pods were a bit old. Ended up adding something like 3/4 t. ground cardamom. Definitely a taste and adjust seasoning.
She calls for 1 T. rosewater or "a splash". I appreciate subtle rosewater, but too much and it will taste like hand lotion for me. I started with 1/2 t., stirred in, let it cook a minute, tasted. Did this until I was at 1-1/2 t. rosewater, so half what she called for. Most definitely a taste and adjust seasoning.

Apple Ginger Jelly: I didn't have fresh ginger root on hand (gasp!) so I used the ginger paste in a tube I find so, so handy. That really didn't cut it and I had to do make some amendments (add more apples and cook down more juice with gingerroot). Get fresh gingerroot.
Maple Applesauce
Indian Apple Chutney

Related reading

Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 02:28:00 +0000

In last year's "canstravaganza" I made strawberry rhubarb jam, courtesy of the abundance in my garden, along with raspberry jam and tayberry jam. I pruned the tayberry and raspberry bushes for the first time this winter and they rewarded me with an explosion of berries this summer. Since I could see that coming, I ate the strawberries fresh as I picked each day's batch and stashed rhubarb and the berries for a combination to be decided later.

Tayberries have a wonderful floral sweetness that really comes out when they're cooked. I thought that would balance the rhubarb well. I did a bit of exploring for sample recipes involving tayberries and rhubarb and couldn't find one with that exact combination. Time to develop my own, with my usual research on fruit:sugar ratios and other elements. Since tayberries are a cross between blackberries and raspberries I started with recipes for blackberries, then looked at other berry/rhubarb and tayberry/something combinations, bearing in mind that rhubarb is tart and other berries vary in sweetness. Food in Jars, my go-to, commented that a 1:1 ratio could work fine in a strawberry rhubarb recipe.

I hoped to avoid using pectin so the jam wouldn't end up too solid and jelled. I've overshot before on this and I want spreadable jam, not rubberized fruit you can stand a spoon in. I've also had trouble reaching the jelling temperature at times and have added a bit of pectin late in the process with success. According to one recipe I read blackberries have more pectin than their red cousins. Tayberries are purple when they're ripe so I'm treating them like blackberries.

My sources:

Low-Sugar Blackberry Rhubarb Jam with low-sugar pectin, Food in Jars. Blackberries:rhubarb 1.5:1 by weight. Fruit:sugar not provided in consistent measurements; 2.5 pounds fruit:1.5 cups sugar.
Blueberry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: Blueberries:rhubarb:sugar 1:1:1 by weight.
Tayberry Lemon Jam, no pectin, Anchored Baking: Tayberries:sugar 2:1.

This one is worth reading for its great photo series illustrating the various stages of jam testing with a chilled plate. It takes a different approach than the usual "run your finger through, look for the wrinkle" technique. Instead you put the jam on the plate, chill it in the freezer for four minutes, and observe what it does when you tilt the plate up. If the jam stays as a blob and slides down the plate without a bunch of juice separating out, it's jam.

Tayberry Jam, Little Berry Blog, no pectin: 2.25 lbs. tayberries:2.5 c. sugar
Tayberry Jam, Chef Heidi Fink, no pectin: 5 c. tayberries:3.5-4 c. sugar
Tayberry Raspberry Refrigerator Jam (no pectin), Jam Blog: Ratio of raspberries to tayberries was strictly a function of how many they were able to pick. Berry:sugar ratio 2:1 by weight
Strawberry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: Berry:rhubarb ratio 2:1. Fruit:sugar ratio also 2:1. Measurements by volume, not by weight.

From a mention of vanilla in this Food in Jars post and the next one listed I'm taking away the idea to include a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste for every 6 c. total fruit.

Sweet Cherry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars. Cherries:rhubarb 3:2 by weight. Fruit:sugar 5 lbs:3 cups, or an estimated volume comparison of 14:3 cups.
Small Batch Vanilla Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: 1.25 lbs. rhubarb:1 c. sugar
Rhubarb Hibiscus Jam, with pectin, Food in Jars. 2.25 lbs:2 c. sugar

With all this in mind(ish), I settled on 1.5:1 tayberries:rhubarb as a good ratio for the fruit, and 2:1 fruit:sugar as a starting point for the sugar. The jam is really delicious although the rhubarb tartness doesn't show up the way I thought it would. Tayberries are pretty powerful; next time I'd make it a 1:1 ratio, maybe even 1:1.5.

I have a lot of tayberries on hand. Even after making this I'll be doing something else with them. Hence the large quantities here, which I split across two pots. Many jam recipes tell you not to double the recipe in one pot because it will take so much longer to cook down. They're right, it does, and I've cooked various too-large quantities of chutneys and jams and paid the price in time.

Feel free to reduce these quantities! This is geared around how much rhubarb I had on hand.

Several of the recipes call for lemon, often expressed as the juice and zest of one lemon. I don't always have fresh lemons on hand; I'm using 3 T. bottled lemon juice to stand in for a single fresh lemon zest + juice. This gives a boost to the pectin levels without adding commercial pectin, which I prefer not to use.

Tayberry Rhubarb (Taybarb) Jam

Prep

Macerate the fruit overnight if you want to. (Notes* at end of recipe)
Get your hot-water bath canning setup together. This blog isn't your home for full canning safety information. Consult the National Center for Home Food Preservation for detailed instructions.
Put a small plate in the freezer to get cold for the wrinkle test you'll use to check jam readiness for canning.

Ingredients

Rhubarb: 2.6 lbs, a hair over 8 cups, diced fine
Tayberries*: 3.75 lbs., 12 cups. Fresh or frozen both work. Other berry varieties also good here!
Sugar: 7.5-10 cups (taste and adjust based on berry sweetness; if you picked your tayberries when they were red, not dark purple, they weren't fully ripe and will be more tart)
Lemon juice: 1/2 c. (1/4 c. per 10 cups of fruit)
Vanilla bean paste (optional): 2-3 t.

Yield: 8 half-pints, 9 quarter-pints

Cooking instructions

Gently mix the rhubarb, berries, sugar, and vanilla bean paste if you're using that together.

Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring regularly. Turn down to medium heat.

Add the lemon juice (or juice/zest if you're using that).

Cook, stirring regularly, until the fruit softens, reduces, and breaks down to a jammy consistency. Be sure to stir clear to the bottom. I use a rubber scraper to be sure I'm getting everything up, especially as it starts to thicken and stick more.

Depending on whether you start with fresh or frozen fruit this could take 20 minutes or so up to 30-45. If it spits at you, which hot fruit can do, reduce the heat slightly. The rhubarb should more or less dissolve and the liquid thicken.

As the fruit softens use a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon or rubber scraper to break up bigger chunks. If you want a smooth jam, you might very carefully use an immersion blender. I'd protect myself with a lid or towel covering the pot if I went this route to avoid getting splattered with boiling jam. I didn't do this and my jam was a nice spreadable consistency.

Continue cooking until it reaches 220 degrees or passes the freezer plate test. I can generally get my jam a bit north of 200 and then find it's jammy enough to pass the freezer test and sets up just fine, not rubberized.

Ladle into clean, sterilized canning jars, wipe the rims with a clean damp paper towel or cloth, put on the lids to fingertip tight. Put in the canning kettle, bring to a full boil, and process for 10 minutes.

About the foam

For the prettiest jam, recipes tell you to gently skim off the foam that forms on top. I chase it to the edge, trying not to pick up any bits of fruit, and put it into a small jar that then gives me foamy jelly—delicious! Not something I'd give as a gift but I pop it into the fridge and enjoy it. I've also completely skipped this step and stirred the foam into the jam as it cooks. It does end up rising to the top when I put the cooked jam into the jars. You could skim at that step too, I suppose, to preserve your culinary esthetics reputation. This time around I did a decent job of skimming; image below is a "before".

Note on jars and lids

One of my most satisfying discoveries last year was the Fillmore one-piece canning lids with the buttons. They seal with a very satisfying pop within minutes of coming out of the hot-water bath, sometimes within seconds. These make my jars look nicer as a gift item, since the recipient gets a very reusable jar/lid combo. This, of course, means it's possible fewer of my jars make their way back to me. I figure the canning-jar economy is a pay-it-forward setup and don't worry about it.

I discovered these thanks to a Food in Jars post on canning with one-piece lids. I have lots of rings left and I'm using those on non-jam products like pickles, applesauce, and salsa that I can in pint or quart jars. The Superb brand lids Fillmore also sells are very high quality and also have a solid pop.

I also really like the Fillmore square-shouldered half-pint jars and their smooth-sided quarter-pint jars, all made in the US. The quilted ones by other jar manufacturers are pretty but I have a hard time getting the dissolvable Avery labels I use to stick if the size goes beyond the little smooth oval onto the quilted surface.

*Optional added steps

You can do one or the other of these but not both, since you wouldn't want to lose sugar in the process of squishing berries through a sieve. I didn't do either and it turned out fine.

Maceration: Mix the sugar into the tayberries (and rhubarb too, if you want) and let them sit for several hours or overnight. This will release the juices. Don't discard the juice! You want that tasty liquid to cook into the jam as it cooks down. The maceration step speeds up the cooking time a bit.

Seedless option: Another step I skipped that you could add if it's your preference: Gently cook the tayberries alone for a bit to loosen them up, then squish them through a fine sieve with the back of a soup ladle to remove the majority of the seeds. Tayberries are a blackberry cross and their parent's seediness does show up in the jam.

Why the sieve and spoon method: I've tried a food mill; I don't have plates fine enough to get the seeds out. I've tried a KitchenAid seed removal attachment. Himalayan blackberry seeds backed up and eventually blew the attachment right off the front of the mixer. I'm just lucky I wasn't standing in front of it at the time. It blew with a sound like a rocket going off and likely could have taken an eye out, or at least done some serious damage.

Related Reading

Flying High with Bird Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Mon, 19 May 2025 20:21:00 +0000

I wouldn't describe myself as a birder. That to me implies owning high-end binoculars, planning vacations around migratory patterns, trying to find that one bird that eludes me with a persistence that baffles other humans. Having recently watched "The Residence" with the wonderful Uzo Aduba as a consulting detective who applies the skills of a passionate birder to her examination of human nature, I know I'm not that.

I don't have to be a birder to enjoy looking for, listening to, watching birds. (Just as you don't have to be a self-described "avid cyclist" to enjoy a bike ride!) I've always thought they were amazing and beautiful, always looked up when I caught a glimpse of winged shapes overhead out of the corner of my eye. Seems to me there's something in all of us that wants to soar.

In 2013 living for a while in a house that had a tree right outside the front window led to purchase of a bird feeder and a bird book for identification. Sweet Hubs entered fully into this new activity, looking up birds when he saw them and marking the date seen. We were both thrilled a while back to spot a kingfisher in the Budd Bay inlet we walk along as we head toward downtown and the farmers' market, love seeing a blue heron standing in the shallows, a patient fisher.

He started calling crows my "corvid escorts" at some point because of course we see them on every walk. I do love crows, and pre-COVID I had the incredible opportunity to go on a trip that included time in London so I saw the ravens at the Tower of London.

Our yard has a bird bath, a hummingbird feeder on the back deck, multiple feeders in the tree outside my home office window (yay, another house with a tree right there to let me watch them swoop and land!). As I record delights in my journal I often have notes about bird songs or sightings. Just the other day a Steller's jay and a robin had some sort of altercation on the wing just as I stepped out our front door, flashing across our little cul-de-sac with a lot of sound and fury. The jay landed in the neighbor's hawthorn tree while the robin swooped in to sit in the middle of the road. I think the robin won.

The book Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds* crossed my path after I had started my own collection. Edited by Billy Collins and illustrated by David Allen Sibley, it's a beautiful work. Highly recommend and I don't think I have many duplicates here. Later I found The Poets Guide to the Birds*, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, another wonderful collection that you're most likely to find from a bookseller who sells used books. My poetry book collection grows and grows alongside my appreciation of our fine feathered friends.

"Crows"
Mary Oliver

Crow is crow, you say. What else is there to say?

"Canto for the Chestnut-Eared Laughingthrush"
Hai-Dang Phan

Hidden somewhere in that mystery must be
Our very own Chestnut-eared Laughingthrush.
Garrulax konkakinhensis was our day’s journey
And query, who appeared in our dreams calling.

"Fifty Robins"
Amber Coverdale Sumrall

The first robins of winter descend like drunken paratroopers;
I imagine they’ve been feasting on fermented pyracantha berries

the way they drop, woozy and chortling, to the ground,
gleefully snagging drowning worms from the saturated soil.

"Evening Walk, Mid-March"
Sarah Busse

But the sky is full of occasion—robins.

Robins invisible
in the still-bare trees, twittering, chirruping
cheerily around the entire suburban block.

It couldn't be called song,
that curiously bubbling chatter-sound they make,
waxy and bibulous as a pubhouse or bridal shower.

"Baby Wrens"
Thomas R. Smith

I am a student of wrens.
When the mother bird returns
to her brood, beak squirming
with winged breakfast, a shrill
clamor rises like jingling
from tiny, high-pitched bells.

"Sixty Years Later I Notice, Inside A Flock Of Blackbirds,"
David Allan Evans

as the flock suddenly
rises from November stubble,

hovers a few seconds,
closing, opening,

"Great Blue Heron"
T. Allan Broughton

.... I’ve seen
his slate blue feathers lift him as dangling legs
fold back, I’ve seen him fly through the dying sun
and out again, entering night, entering my own sleep.

"Once" by Tara Bray

.... The heron stood
stone-still on my spot when I returned.
And then, his wings burst open, lifting the steel-
blue rhythm of his body into flight.

"Our Heron"
Willam Olsen

Then a heron. Pulled forward by fish, the baiting saint of the shallows.

"Not Knowing Why"
Ann Struthers

Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings,
lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger.
What danger on this island in the middle
of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel
the lift of wind under their iridescent wings,
because they were born to fly,

"Poor Patriarch"
Susie Patlove

The rooster pushes his head
high among the hens, trying to be
what he feels he must be, here
in the confines of domesticity.
Before the tall legs of my presence,
he bristles and shakes his ruby comb.

"The Birds"
Linda Pastan

as they swoop and gather—
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.

"Praise Them"
Li-Young Lee

The birds don’t alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace.

"Waking Up"
David Allan Evans

We wake up again to the sound
of those same birds just

outside our window. I can’t
name them, wouldn’t need to

if I could,

* That's a Bookshop affiliate link just in case you don't have a local bookstore or library. Any commission I receive from book sales will be donated to organizations working for safer, human-friendly streets and transportation equity. Making it safer for people to walk and bike is good for the birds, too, since those are the cleanest and greenest forms of transportation.

Seed Snail 'Speriment: Episode 2

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Thu, 08 May 2025 03:56:00 +0000

Episode 2 will be short and sweet: Seedlings! Eight days by the calendar after the planting April 28, although that was an evening project so it's more like 7-1/2 days.

The morning of May 6 as I misted the coils I spotted three tender stems still bent over, tops buried.

By the end of the day the biggest of the three had lifted its leaves to the air.

By the next morning, May 7, those leaves stood taller, a second one had freed its top, and the first green bent-over stem appeared in the golden straightneck summer squash.

By the evening of May 7 that first golden summer squash had stuck its leaves up in the air although they're still a bit bent over, a second was visible, the Mortgage Lifter tomatoes had sent up a couple of tiny threadlike stems, and the Black Like Tula tomatoes had the tiniest hint of green at one spot. Time to capture this for posterity. This is happening!

I do need your reassurance that you also see the Tiny Tinerton Tomato seedlings here, if your eyes are that good.

Okay, okay, here's a close-up.

For real, I swear, there's a tiny spot of green coming up in the Black From Tula Tomato.

As exciting to watch as when I was a kid poking seeds straight into the dirt of the family garden!

Seed Snail 'Speriment: Episode 1

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:17:00 +0000

Kind of a gutsy move to name this Episode 1 given that I don't know whether I'll have any reason to write Episode 2, but here goes.

My acupuncturist and I were talking about gardening and she mentioned using "seed snails" as her technique to start plants from seed this year. She has a greenhouse, which makes her A Serious Gardener in my book. She said this technique gave her much stronger starts last year than the usual system of little individual soil pots.

I'd been thinking of starting seeds but couldn't figure out where I could possibly do so, with no real room in the garage to do a grow light set-up, almost nowhere in the house that Bad Cat can't get to that would have the kind of space I'd need for big seed flats. Rolls of seeds saving a lot of space and getting good results? This sounded as if it would be worth a try.

At least it will be a leg up on my usual "poke them in the soil, hope the growing season is long enough for them to produce something" method which netted me only a couple of zucchini last year, and who can't grow zucchini?! Me, that's who. I've also been reading Vegetables Love Flowers and am a bit more attentive to soil temperatures than in the past (another reason not to poke everything into the soil just yet).

A quick visit to Dr. Google and I had some how-to on the snail seed-starting method from Rural Sprout. I also had a DIY recipe for seed-starting mix, also from Rural Sprout. A trip to Eastside Urban gave me perlite and vermiculite that didn't have any extra unwanted ingredients.

The Rural Sprout post gave me most of the information you'll need if you want to try this. I'll add a couple of notes on things they didn't specify or that I did a little differently.

How much mix for how many rolls? The ratio is 2:1:1: coconut coir:perlite:vermiculite. I made a total of 2 quarts of mix. This turned out to be more than enough for the 10 rolls I made. I think I should have made the mix a little bit deeper so I'd probably make this amount again for the same number of rolls. I used the extra in one of my big planter pots where I was putting in a couple of lemon thyme plants.

Wet coir, or dry? If like me you buy it in compressed blocks, not shredded in a bag, the picture doesn't really tell you. I had to wet down the coir to get it to break apart, so that's what I went with.

Dampen the mix before making the rolls. This makes it a bit clumpier and easier to work with.

How much twine will you need? A length a bit longer than the length of my paper strip gave me enough to go around the roll twice and tie off.

What kind of paper/cover. I cut up a couple of brown paper sacks and ended up with 10 strips. The piece that had been the bottom of the sack was a bit tougher to roll up since it was stiffer but it worked.

Poking the seeds down into the mix: That's tricky in these skinny spaces. I used the end of the plastic stakes I was using to mark the varieties to poke the seeds down in. Could have used a chopstick or something similar, maybe a toothpick.

This isn't a completely scientific test of the process. I used seeds I had on hand that are at least a year old, some of them possibly older. Sweetie scored some packets of heirloom seeds at the community garden when he was dropping off some food to give away last year and they don't have dates on the packets. They're all heirloom varieties except for the jalapeños and those are from Ed Hume Seeds based in Puyallup, so they're pretty local.

What I planted:

Tomatoes: Cream Sausage, Black Sea Man, Black by Tula, Thorburn's Terra-Cotta, Mortgage Lifter
Peppers: Datil (hot! 100,000-300,000 Scoville heat units) and jalapeño.
Squashes: Golden Straightneck Summer Squash, Rheinau Gold Summer Squash, Genovese Zucchini
Mystery Melon: I saved seeds from a really sweet Italian melon similar to a cantaloupe that I ate in the summer of 2022. I didn't write down the name of the variety, but at the time I looked up and found it was an heirloom variety and the seeds would be true if I saved them. I dried and saved them in such a good spot I forgot about them in 2023. In 2024 I planted some in a bucket, got small plants and one small melon that I didn't pick in time to eat it so it self-composted. Trying again!

I set the rolls up in a couple of pie pans in our big kitchen window. It faces north so it gets light without being too hot. Now to wait and see.

Root, Trunk, Branch, Leaf: Poems about Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 15:36:00 +0000

Trees amaze me. Their shapes, size, leaves, colors for starters. Then there's all they do that supports life on earth, like make oxygen we need to live. Their underground communication networks, the beneficial phyto-somethings they emit. Truly a source of awe and wonder.

I have fond memories of the trees of my childhood. I grew up outside Lewiston, Idaho, in a home surrounded by 8 acres or so of pasture, garden, and lawn dotted with lilacs, a big snowball bush, my mom's roses, and trees. The hawthorn protected a gate into the big pasture, the giant willow held a tire swing, the crabapple supported a hammock my middle brother brought back from one of his Latin American journeys, the honey locust the "Freehouse Treehouse" my brothers built for my younger sister and me. We'd haul a bag of books and snacks up the boards nailed to the tree to form a ladder and read for hours surrounded by the buzzing of bees drawn to the sweetness of the cream and yellow blossoms.

Later we lived in the Spokane Valley on a lot with sparse Ponderosa pines. Sparse was good, it turned out, when Firestorm '91 swept across the valley and got stopped just across the street from my parents' home. The fire was stopped there in part by the green space created by their lawn with trees far enough apart that the flames didn't jump the road and keep going, and by my dad getting on the roof with a hose and wetting it down repeatedly.

Since then I've lived with more Ponderosa pine than any other tree, I think. I'm now in a neighborhood with trees all around but can happily report I have no pine needles to rake. When we bought the house it had a couple of cherry plum trees, no doubt chosen by the developer 25 years ago for their dark red leaves, and a maple in a back corner. We've added a nectaplum (a newer hybrid of nectarine and plum), hazelnut, almond, and paper-white birch to add food, shade, and beauty to the landscape. The food hasn't appeared yet but it will someday. Trees teach patience.

I really appreciate trees when I'm on a long walk or bike ride on a hot day, and hot days are increasingly common in the Anthropocene epoch, with climate changes caused and accelerated by human actions. Our actions can include planting a tree, though, to add to the lungs of the planet. Tree cover makes a difference for shade, for habitat, for personal and community health and happiness. You can find out what kind of tree cover your hometown has in this Washington Post article. The Olympia-Lacey area has an estimated 36.8% tree cover, over 4% higher than the average in comparable cities, so yay for that!

I'm fortunate to live close to Squaxin Park in Olympia. I can take a lunchtime walk in a forest that isn't old-growth (over 160 years old as defined in western Washington, like the rain forest around Lake Quinault where I walked in February), but it's legacy forest.

A legacy forest was lightly logged about a century ago; left undisturbed since then, it's had time to regenerate complex ecosystems. You might think of legacy forests as the old-growth forests of the future, or at least they will be if we don't log them again. (More on legacy forests)

A while back I went to a talk on trees given through Olympia Parks and Recreation. Julia Ratner, a member of Friends of Trees (a local group working to conserve forest lands), shared recordings she made of the electrical impulses of trees translated into musical tones with an Italian-made device called Plants Play. You can listen to a Sitka spruce left isolated by a clearcut and a cedar in an undisturbed forest at the Friends of Trees link.

As I walk I hear squirrels scolding me, an insect buzzing past, leaves rustling, wind in the trees high above sometimes sounding almost like the ocean, my feet making a gentle pad-pad-pad sound on the trail, water trickling if it has rained recently (and this is in western Washington, so that's likely). I don't hear the communication of the trees but I know it's there.

I've told my family that when I've died I'd like my compost or ashes or what-have-you to be buried under a Susie Tree in a park or reforestation project somewhere. This will give them a place to visit, if they like, that does more for the world than a slab of stone that requires mining and transportation. It's also a nice callback to the first full-time executive director of what was then the Bicycle Alliance of Washington. Susie Stephens also came from Spokane and loved trees. After I became the executive director at what we later renamed Washington Bikes I learned a bit of her history from her mother, Nancy MacKerrow. "Tree Cemetery" by Wu Sheng captures this idea perfectly.

As with all my collections of poetry I've selected a few lines, not necessarily the opening ones. To read the complete poem follow the link.

"When I Am Among the Trees"
Mary Oliver

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

"Elegy for a Walnut Tree"
W.S. Merwin

and still when spring climbed toward summer 
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers 
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened 

"Tree"
Jane Hirshfeld

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

"Trees"
Howard Nemerov

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one's own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;

"Planting a Dogwood"
Roy Scheele

For when we plant a tree, two trees take root:
the one that lifts its leaves into the air,
and the inverted one that cleaves the soil
to find the runnel’s sweet, dull silver trace
and spreads not up but down, each drop a leaf
in the eternal blackness of that sky.

"Crab Apple Trees"
Larry Schug

I’m tempted to say these trees belong to me,
take credit for blossoms that gather sunrise
like stained glass windows,
because eighteen springs ago
I dug holes for a couple of scrawny seedlings,

"The Bare Arms of Trees"
John Tagliabue

The bare arms of the trees are immovable, without the play of leaves,
without the sound of wind;
I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist
between tree and tree,
As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk.

"Sequoia Sempervirens"
Tamara Madison

Some of these trees have survived
lightning strikes and forest fires
Some of these trees house creatures
of the forest floor in burned-out caves
at the base of their ruddy trunks

"Honey Locust"
Mary Oliver

Each white blossom
on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed-
a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower
holds a flask
of fragrance called heave, which is never sealed.
The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy
with gratitude. They are working like farmers.

"April Prayer"
Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world

"Tree Cemetery"
Wu Sheng

Plant a tree in place of a grave
Plant a patch of trees in place of a cemetery
Put a flowerbed around each tree
Lay the ashes of the deceased to rest by the stump

"What's Really at Stake"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here

March Delights

noreply@blogger.com (Barb Chamberlain) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 13:30:00 +0000

The second day of March gifted me with the perfect poem to capture what seeking out delights offers in each day.

"The Good News" by Thich Nhat Hanh comes my way courtesy of reading poetry every morning. At some point in the early COVID era I found A Year of Being Here, a site at which Phyllis Cole-Dai posted a poem that supports mindfulness every day for three years. Ever since I've been reading each day's poems. It turns these poems into old friends, this one reminding me that I can choose to greet a dandelion as a delight:

From "The Good News":

"The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity."

And then there's the poem by his student Marci Thurston-Shaine, "More Good News".

"You and I are flowers of a tenacious family.
Breathe slowly and deeply,
free of previous occupation."

These poems go so well with March, when dandelions are popping out in our lawn to provide some early spring food for the bees. Such an ordinary, everyday flower, treated with scorn by lawnkeepers who attack it for daring to interrupt their smooth swards. And yet they keep coming back, persistent, blooming.

Other early flowers provide more obvious delights. The cherry plum tree I see looking out of my office window is popping with pink, blooming at a rate I almost feel I should be able to see in real time. In the back yard we have a tree dubbed the "Seuss tree." Its slender, lithe branches rise up and then droop over. We keep the bottom trimmed straight off so the branches don't drag on the small deck. This gives the tree the overall effect of a bowl-shaped haircut, resembling many of Dr. Seuss's classic characters. That tree is popping tiny white flowers, somewhat behind the cherry plum. Spring flowers bring so much delight, just waiting to be noticed.

Each morning I visit sites that bring me new poems, some of which find their way into my themed poetry collections. I'm a bit surprised that I missed "The Good News" when I compiled poems that celebrate the everyday and ordinary in life.

The site grateful.org also makes up part of my morning routine. The question of the day sometimes relates to poems I've already read that morning, or reminds me of a poem I've read in the past. The question always inspires attention, notice, appreciation—all essential elements of finding delights.

One day in March the day's question asked, "When I shift my focus to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary, what do I notice?" My response:

Simply paying attention shifts focus. Thinking of how things came to be, and came to me, shifts focus outward, to a broader awareness and appreciation. So many, many steps, coincidences, choices, decisions, happenstances if that’s a word, natural processes, sunlight and air all aligned and here I am, here we are, here is my afghan and my sofa and the coffee in my cup and the cup and the table. Extraordinary and ordinary, all at once.

Each day's delights are both ordinary and extraordinary.

Related Reading