Jammin’

It’s that time of year - the berries are ripening fast, and good homesteaders are assembling the jars and canning pots to preserve the harvest. I was excited last January, when I saw the bushes growing out of the lawn, and envisioned mega-crops of raspberries, boysenberries and strawberries. I had conveniently forgotten both that I tend not to eat fresh fruit (I prefer coffee and potato chips) and that my last several “brushes” with canning and making jam had ending in the kind of sticky chaos usually reserved for pre-school lunchtimes. I suppose it’s like childbirth pains (not that I’d know) - we forget the worst of it and put a golden glow around the rest.

I started as I usually do (as befits my Attention Deficit makeup): I grabbed some berries, threw them into the Cuisinart and then into a pot and started to cook. While they were heating, I rummaged around for the Joy Of Cooking book in order to find out what was next. (note to experienced canners: stop here unless you want to give yourself a headache.) It reminded me that I needed almost equal parts sugar, depending on how sweet the berries were. Apparently one doesn’t usually blend strawberries and raspberries, but I didn’t have enough of each, so what the heck… I hadn’t measured them, either, so I did a visual approximation, and poured white sugar into the hot pulp. As the mess - uh, mix - started to simmer then boil, I realized I needed those canning jars that were in the garage, and probably the canning pot as well… with a quick glance at the stove, I raced out to get them - of course they were buried under my last project and it took me a moment to unearth them. The canning pot lid was nowhere to be found, so I hauled the rest of it back into the house, where the jam was boiling like red soapsuds. It smelled great (except for the faint hint of burnt sugar) and I gave it a vigorous stir and checked the recipe book again.

The quantities called for seemed much larger than what I had - in fact, putting a couple gallons of water on to boil up two half-pint jars seemed hardly worth the trouble. But I did put the canning jars in the water, turned on the burner (it was about half the diameter of the pot, which made me a bit worried about how long it would take to boil), and raced out to the garden to see if any more berries had ripened overnight. Fortunately quite a lot had, and I fumbled with the bird net, trying to reach the ripe ones (the bird net does not seem to have stopped the birds, but it sure has me flummoxed). With another pint in the container, I raced inside. The smell of burnt sugar was stronger now, but when I’d washed and tossed the new berries in, crushing them in the pot to save time, the bubbling mixture subsided a bit. The canning water was still tepid around the empty jars - in order to raise the level of the water without pouring in another gallon, I had added about five quart jars that I knew I wouldn’t need - finally, my high school geometry class paid off!

I remembered that I wanted to do mini-jars for gifts, so again I raced to the garage- I’d bought new ones of these, so they didn’t need washing (I hope). By then, the mix had thickened - Joy of Cooking has this test: if the mix falls off the spoon in one drop rather than two split drops, it’s gonna gel. That hadn’t worked in the past, but hope sproings enternal, as they say. So I spooned the mix into the baby jars- damn, that stuff was goopy! Probably as much fell to the counter, and I was really tempted to re-capture it using a piece of bread (that was months of watering, growing, and a fair amount of fertilizer - wasted on the counter!) but I restrained myself - only a couple finger-fuls hastily lapped up. I screwed the lids on the jars, remembered that they stick when they’re goopy, unscrewed them, wiped off the threads (isn’t that what they call the long lumps of glass around the rim?) and re-sealed them. I dumped them into the large canner pot, where the water was finally a bit too hot to touch (and how was I gonna get them out of those many gallons of boiling water?? I’d burn that bridge when I came to it). Then I hemmed and hawed -- the larger glass jar had not had its pre-requisite boiling before filling. Reasoning that this jar was for myself alone, I decided to take the risk - the jam mixture was already congealing on the sides of the cooking pot. So I spooned the rest of the muck into the larger jar - of course there wasn’t enough to fill it (how do cooks get these dang things to work out evenly?? I suppose that’s what the specific quanitities mentioned in the recipe are for?)

Once again, it seemed very sad to have boiled all this water, and dragged out all the jars, strainers, etc. for such a small batch… so I grabbed the oranges sitting in the bowl and decided to follow it with marmalade. The recipe said the oranges had to sit for 15 hours after they first boiled, but I decided I could skip that part. They were scrubbed, quartered, thrown into the food processor, and the lumpy orange goop poured into another pot. Here we go again… What with all the taste-testing and spoon licking (not to mention the counter), I now had enough sugar in me to spin out a whole classroom of kindergarteners. While the jam was getting up to sterilizing temps, I stirred the marmalade down, then filled a mini jar and an actual quart jar (but I live alone - when will I need a quart of marmalade??) then sealed and plunked them into the canning pot. While waiting, I re-read the recipe… and realized there was no mention of canning/boiling after sealing the jars! Apparently, that’s just for vegetables… all that water, boiled for nothing. Sheesh… With much difficulty and a couple of burns, I fished the jam and marmalade out of the pot and let them cool on the counter for a bit, then tossed a couple in the freezer and some in the fridge.

I really hope my family is happy with their gifts of homemade jam. It’s not that I mind all the chopping, stirring and boiling -- but having to wash three sinkfuls of jammy pots, pans, ladles, bowls and spoons is what I call a major pain in the canning jar!

The Lazy, Hazy, Crazed Days...

Well,we’ve reached what is called summer in the Pacific Northwest: the moss is healthy and green, the slugs have reached their full 5-inch length and are making squadrons of replacements, the East Coasters have overrun the place… by which I mean the quack grass, Himalayan blackberry, morning glory, buttercup and other European-by-way-of-Ellis-Island transplants. Because they have no competition out here, they have basically taken over - and being from NJ myself, I know that Oregonians have few ways of dealing with our, shall we say, slightly more assertive stance on everything. I learned the Oregonian way to address these invasions, now that the New Jersey favorite, DDT, has been banned. I tilled the areas where the plants appear, killed off all the seedlings (a pitched battle) and planted natives. However they are as laid back as most Oregonians, and the weeds keep appearing daily. Their battlecry: “You want that bit? No? Okay, I’ll take it!”

But today -- for three days only! (sounds like an applicance sale) -- we have NJ temps (though thankfully not the humidity), so I’ve started off early to water those delicate Oregon-optimized peas, cabbage, tomatoes and other veggies which are bred to endure 60-degree summers. They are handling the 100 degree temps about as you might expect: keeling over like a grandmother in a NYC subway (okay, not from being clubbed and robbed). I have risked burning out my well pump in order to provide them this deep moisture -- I was told by the inspector, a young woman barely 20, that using a sprinkler or soaker hoses will cause the motor to turn on an off and shorten its life… she did not tell me what the other alternative is, so I listen as the motor goes on and off, and wonder when I’ll be needing to call the pump guys (probably not until visitors arrive on a Sunday). I am also enjoying the coolness before it shrivels in the sun, batting various spiders away from my laptop (everyone’s a critic, I tell you…) and watching the mosquitoes circle. Despite the new deadly illness du jour, I’m not wearing bug spray. First, I fear the chemicals they’ve invented more than the bugs (Remember: “__Insert Chemical Name Here__ is Your Friend”), and second, I have the kind of blood, or personality, that apparently makes me an absolutely last resort. Rarely get a nibble. Personally, I think it’s the coffee, but most people have suggested the acerbic wit that infuses my veins and my emails. In fact, I just watched a moquito attack my coffee cup (rather than me) so my friends must be right.

As idyllic as this is, it just can’t compare to the summers of my youth (do they still play “Roll out those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer…“ anywhere on the radio?) I’ve been musing about why that might be. One possibility is that I’ve truly entered my dotage, and am blithering. One obvious one is that I now have charge of the checkbook, which is attached to the pile of bills, which is like holding on to a gently hissing stick of dynamite. A certain tension results. Even though as a girl, I was expected to cook meals, I wasn’t expected to figure out where they came from. And of course there is the ever-true, “the world was /safer/quieter/simpler/saner/ when I was a child.” And it was… most drug addicts and alcoholics stayed at home (I know - our family visits got mighty interesting), the stores actually closed on Sundays so there was one day at least that you couldn’t shop until your brains fell out, and there weren’t closed circuit cameras and computer keycapture software ready to play your life back at you and the general public on a whim. And once you need a refresher course on the basic skills needed to get through the week, you are “past it”. At a certain point in one’s maturity, one realizes the world is going to Hell, handbasket optional. “Hill? What hill?” my friends and I joke, but when you wake up and can barely unfold yourself from the bed without needing ibuprofen, and when the price of a pizza is the same as what you spent on your entire back-to-school supply list, you know you’ve passed the torch (or the gently hissing stick of dynamite) onto the next generation. Heck - when they advertise car loans now, they are talking about the $100 gas tank loans! ...Oh dear, I seem to have lost my train of thought... back in the summers of my youth, we didn't have to worry about trains of thought, I can tell you -- we walked everywhere!

-- and now a tiny spider has crawled under my F4 function key, so I’ll have to stop and do excavation.

The Seeders of Lebanon

I am now four months into my planting season (how would I know in February that I was planting two months too early?? We had warmer temps back then than we do now!), and it has become obvious that my attempts to plant from seed have been, well -- a debacle. I think it was an tremendous amusement for the local birds, who have rubbed salt in my wounds by planting sunflower seeds that are doing better than anything I put in the ground. Anyway, this past weekend, I finally caved in and bought “cheaters”: three really fat and happy tomatoes, a 2-ft. pepper, an eggplant with 5-inch leaves, and a couple of struggling basil (apparently, it‘s a bad year everywhere for basil). I know it’s probably heartless to stick that 3-foot tomato next to the 4-inch jobbie that’s still struggling to get launched after our Ultimate Rollercoaster of Weather this spring. Likely create a huge inferiority complex -- do tomatoes get Short Guy Synrome? I’ll watch for attempts to jab me in the eye while I’m eating.The eggplant seedlings never made it out of the greenhouse/shed, so they won’t notice the Green Hulk who’s moved in.

What I want to know is how do these other gardeners - from Lebanon, the next town over - manage to get their plants so fat and happy? Some were commercial plants, and I guess those are treated like Olympic team members: all the food they can eat, the perfect conditions for working up big muscular physiques, and no extraneous duties. Oh, and probably steroids. But some were from the farmer’s market, where supposedly some of my townmen were supplementing their more exotic plant business (conducted nocturnally, on less populated streets) with some prosaic herbs (a way to justify the lights setup to the IRS, I suppose…or not. I hardly dare ask, because I am afraid to find out that an entire room of their house is given over to halogen lighting and hourly feedings…) As a typical suburban gardener, I used to follow the Memorial Day orgy of four-foot plant sales and instant vegetable gardens. But coming to my new place, I had dreams of becoming “more real” - actually being able to plant from seed and save seed for the next year. (At this point, the only way I’ll be able to save seed is to dig it back up and put it back in the envelope.) Not to mention, learn to identify the plant from the weed at seedling stage… I have figured out that if fifteen million of them come up, it’s a weed. A Storm Trooper Invasion of Weeds, to be exact. And all those bits of good advice about how to hoe up the weed seedlings so they don’t get a headstart on your plants -- do you know how many times I’ve replanted the damn radishes?? Granted, my non-standard (read: weird) layout means I can’t just roll a mini-tiller down my ruler-straight rows. I did attempt to follow the advice about mulching to save watering (although when you’re getting six inches of rain per week, it’s not that big a deal). Now I find the neighbor cats really like straw for kittylitter! I thought it would be too scratchy… live and learn…

Pay Attention to This One!

They keep saying that business is becoming a science, but they’ve got it backwards. Science is becoming a business. If by business one means a method of making money for both the managers and investors; a way which involves continued self-justification and enhancement. When I worked for an ad agency (back in the Dark Ages), one job was to continue to find new uses for the products we advertised - new ways to make them irresistable. It’s taken science a while, but I think it’s gotten there. I read a NY Times article today quoting someone who apparently is “a leader in the new field of interruption science.” And of course, that person has written a book which they hope will make a lot of money. Interruption Science? Excuse me?? Well, any culture that accepts “shopping therapy” and “massage technicians” is unlikely to notice the corruption of the scientific method by slicing it into ever-thinner specialities, each of which seem licensed to a particular company which of course has perfected some product to make life more complete… you sense cynicism? Okay, read on.

From the NYT article: “The first step is to learn to speak a language of attention.” Oh, yes, that is exactly what we need - a new cacaphony of jargon by which to impress the consumers - ah, public. Ohmygawd… This humble wordsmith strongly suspects this is the science equivalent of the advertising slogan or jingle -- once we have you talking our language, you’re putty in our hands.

“The exciting news is that the enigma of attention has just begun to be mapped, tracked and decoded by neuroscientists who now consider attention to be a trio of skills: focus, awareness and so-called executive attention.” Divide and conquer (government had that one figured out years ago)… take apart the process and attach labels, much like the information technology field has sliced and diced clerical processes so that the poor secretary (oh, sorry - administrative infomatics specialist!) is afraid to move from “input validation” to “data reiteration and consolidation” without checking and rechecking the flowchart. And everyone knows executives never pay attention - that’s what they have slaves - er, secretaries - er, administrative specialists - for.

Another NYT piece on ADD mentions it feeling “like having a bank of tvs in my mind and I don’t have the remote” - which could be why I don’t have an actual tv in the house - it would be superfluous. The gist of the piece is that we are all in danger of losing our minds to distraction. As someone who has had Attention Deficient Disorder all her life, I say, “Welcome to my world.” I’ve always strongly suspected that the Musak slyly introduced, first in elevators and then throughout every public building and store (sometimes a different damn song in each department!) was a ploy to soften our brains with distraction, such that we didn’t actual notice how much we were buying.

Except now with cloned stores full of cloned products, I'm having a hard time tracking which store I'm in. And we've gone from being occasionally interrupted to be brought a Special Media Bulletin to having the pixelated equivalent of a gaggle of teen girls chattering at us on every web page, every text page, and sometimes even in public bathrooms! (The teen girls are there all the time -- the advertising posters and flat-screen tvs are the newcomers.)Move over, Ring Around the Collar, Housitosis, and Feminine Itch. Now that they've given us Distraction, they're gonna make us pay to get rid of it.

Withy Dell

Well, I just found out my house lied about its age… many of us middle-aged do that, so I can’t hold it against her (homes, being the realm of Vesta, are female). I ran into someone who had come back to take photos of the neighboring house and told me he’d lived there (in the neighboring house) in ‘51, and my house was there, a good four years prior to the supposed build-time of the place… It was fun to hear about the neighborhood and how it looked then. I have always been a home historian -- if I can find out about how the place was built, or changed or who lived there, I have a great time. I can’t find any permits on record for the building, so I’m guessing it was all gerry-rigged. The last owner was a retired Boeing engineer, and we all know what that means! I’m finding “engineering kludges” all over the place, such as the old truck topper used as a shed, and what looks like a miniature railroad segment used to hang tools in the garage… oh, yes - and the iron pipe that sticks out of the wall on the outside of the kitchen which (I found out four months after I got here) actually drains all of the water from the kitchen sink… and since the water barrel that he must have had there was sold in the estate sale, has been pouring water down under the foundation all winter! I’ve duck-taped an old gutter pipe to the outlet “for now” - truly ugly, but a classic kludge, so I’m kinda proud.

Anyway, the place has the feel of a cabin, mainly because of the knotty pine walls and the old iron woodstove with the cabin scene embossed in relief on the side. It’s cozy because the former owners did insulate; I’m grateful for that, especially since the two bedrooms are unheated… but there’s another classic “kludge”: an old motor rigged to an old box fan has been “inset” (okay, jammed) into a hole in the wall near the woodstove that opens onto the back hallway. Now anytime I want to enjoy the sound of a busy airport, all I have to do is flip a switch and the fan will send the warm air from around the stove through the hole and into the hall at speeds that turn it into air conditioning…

Also, unlike me, the house got a facelift sometime in its past. Recently, one of the 50’s style concrete shingles came off, and I discovered solid pine beadboard siding underneath. So now I am in a careful but exuberant process of taking off the retrofit to reveal the cottage underneath. All things become fashionable again… but you won’t find me wearing hip-huggers or mini-skirts, even if they are all the rage!

So far, the excavations haven’t revealed too many nasty surprises. Still, I feel like those scientists who are checking out the near-miss comets: will “Comet Repair” impact my wallet, or will I be able to adjust the flight path to a near-miss?

Oh, and in case you’re curious - I’ve named the place Withy Dell, using the centuries-old tradition (still widely used in real estate) of giving a sow’s ear the name of a silk purse. I have enough saplings in the yard to create a small woodlot by the time I croak, and although I am cutting them down as fast as I can, I am trying to re-use my “withies” for various staking tasks. And it’s low enough to count as a dell -- nothing to do with the computer company, you nerds. Although… with all the kludges… who knows??

If You’re Happy and You Know It… Shut Your Trap!

I read a blog the other day that attempted to frame some concepts of good country living with those contrary examples that pervade children’s literature (although this was supposedly for adults): Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Hopeless. As a child, I read about “David Do-good” and “Donny Dumb-ass”, and “The Goops’ Misadventures”, etc… all to “give life to” the author’s opinions about the right and wrong ways to do things. This particular blog/lecture concerned (I kid you not!) “Mr. Happy” and “Mr. Grumpy” -- or “Mr. Half-assed” which I’m sure was his real point of view. Mr. Happy had all his jobs done so well that he sang through the day, while Mr. Grumpy ran into one snarl after another -- all, (you guessed it) because he had not taken the time to “do it right”.

I gotta speak up for the Grumpies of the world here. Firstly, if The Great Farmer had meant us to sing through the day, he’d have invented karoake machines much earlier. Second, sometimes compost just happens. If you‘ve read any of my other entries, you know I empathize with (or epitomize!) Mr. Grumpy, and his piles of wickedly clever obstacles -- as someone who tries to saw boards on top of half-collapsed cardboard boxes (because proper sawhorses need a) money, b) time to build and c) room to store and use), I understand that what seems to be incompetence is in fact a calculated gamble that the falling House of Cards will pile up right where you need a card pile, at least for a moment. Alright… not so much “calculated” as “gamble”.

I noted that the Happy author never mentions where Mr. Happy had found the time to do all these things “right”… because one of his points was that it does take extra time “at first” but it “pays off later”. Just like those poor folks who can’t invest in a top-of-the-line appliance that “saves money over the long run”, maybe poor Mr. Grumpy just didn’t have the time to spend perfecting every task! Maybe he didn’t have slave labor in the form of a wife and four terrorized - er, “well-behaved” - kids to assist exactly when he needed them. And Happies probably also start with at least a Journeyman’s level of construction competence, rather than a stack of Handyman magazines and some half-rusting tools from Goodwill.

I wish the Happies -- or, lets face it, the Smugs -- of the world would find a better use for all that free time they save by “doing it right” . Stop wasting it chortling about the rest of us!

The Happies never have a day that starts with putting bread in the machine to bake, then having the pest man come and inform you he has to fog and you have to leave - now - and no, the bread probably shouldn’t be baking while he’s fogging…. [Note: Hauled the batter out to the overheated greenhouse, hoping that a couple hours there would be similar to the “rising” part of the cycle - rather than part of the “compost” cycle. It worked, sort of… as in, I ate it and didn’t die. Tasted like sourdough.] The Happies don’t have psychotic bluejays that persistently peck at their sideview mirrors and then their studio windows, causing the tension rod holding up all the handmade necklaces to slip, cascading the whole lot to the ground and taking half the birdhouses-in-progress with them! (But Happies never start anything they don’t finish… I forgot). Happies never get everything out to mow the lawn only to find their grass-cutting clothes (so designated because the non-shielded weedwacker creates permanently grass-encrusted jeans) have just come out of the washer and are on the line to dry for two days in the damp summer chill.

But you know, I’m guessing that Happy is not a family trait. In fact, I can just hear Mrs. Happy now: “David - have you stopped to fix that gate? I need you to fix my clothesline!”
“You’ll have to do that yourself, dear. I need to Do this Right.”
“How long will it take? It was your turn today to pick up Hulda at ballet.” (okay, 4-H)
“It takes as long as it takes, dear. Doing it Right is worth the time.” (He’s one of those who can Talk in Capitals.)
“Easy for you to say - I‘ve got the wash, then lunch… and now kid-chauffeur?!”
“But think of all the time you saved, dear, because I got your butter churn to seal perfectly and your spinning wheel to turn without friction.”
“I’ve already spent that time - drinking your homemade vodka. To drown you out.”

Intention Attention

The optimism sites keep insisting that writing down your intentions gives great power to them and helps the Universe to grant them… does it make a difference to the Universe if your handwriting is illegible?? I have been writing over and over that I wish to make a good living with my writing, however, it might be read “with my wiring”… and I worry that someone might suddenly show up and ask me to donate my nerves for scientific research.

Unfortunately, this written repetition of intentions brings me back with excessive clarity to my first grade classroom where I had to write 100 times, “I will not talk in class”… and on that double-lined paper that allowed six sentences to the page, I went through my whole notepad on the second day! The humiliation and the writer’s cramp never seemed to cramp my mouth, but it’s probably what cramped my penmanship for these last 45 years.

And, because it’s impossible for a writer to resist, I keep editing the damn intention so that when I get down to the middle of the page it’s gone from, “I intend to support myself by my writing” to “I intend that my writing will be received with acclaim and great financial reward”… and by the time I get to the bottom, it’s shrunk to, “they’ll pay me for writing” -- and I have to go soak my hand to get rid of the writer’s cramp.