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Calm
Calm is a useful concept for August. Often the air is still, the leaves baking in the heat. We sit a lot in August, drinks in hand, contemplating. Looking out over the lake or at the folks passing on the street. Watching someone else throw a Frisbee.
The speed dial on my electric wheelchair registers from 1 (tortoise) to 5 (hare). 5 is a pretty good clip, more than 6 mph, useful for rushing to catch the bus.
I’ve been in the habit of touring with the speed set at 4, faster than normal walking speed. It gets me places in good time.
But this week, I notched down to 3. The new speed changed everything. Now I am walking, not speeding. But more than that, my perspective has shifted. I take in the landscape, noticing as I always do, but at a slower pace. It’s meditative.
I arrive home in an altered state, charmed and changed by the experience. Why was I in such a rush before?
Fruit
In my travels, I see fruit trees, many bursting with ripeness now that it’s August. Cherries, apples, plums, pears, figs, catkins, cones. I saw an apricot tree this week, unusual in Portland, but I forget where. Probably the Kenton neighborhood, where I was exploring.
Spring raspberries are gone. Blueberries are coming on. Grapes will arrive later. Oregon grape, also known as Oregon grape holly (Mahonia aquifolium) has blueberry-like fruit that is pretty and edible. I tried a few berries; they taste bitter and astringent. The plant is widely used for landscaping.
Rarer by far than apples are fat crabapples, good for pickling. Tiny dolgo crabapples are useless for cooking. I mistakenly planted dolgo crabapples in my yard when I lived in Southwest Portland. I waited years for the fruit to appear, and then it was these pinheads. The spring flowers are gorgeous, however, and the fruit attracts birds.
I love pickled crabapples; they are fine holiday treats. And I haven’t been able to make them for years. I can never find crabapples. If you have access to some, I recommend this recipe:
Pickled crabapples
Adapted from the Kerr Canning Book Choose sound crabapples uniform in size. Do not pare. Make a spiced syrup by heating 1 quart vinegar, 3 cups water, 4 cups sugar, 1 tablespoon each cinnamon and cloves, and 1 teaspoon each mace and allspice. Tie spices loosely in a cheesecloth bag. This is enough syrup for about 5 pints. When cool, add crabapples and heat slowly, being careful not to burst the fruit. Let stand in syrup overnight. Next morning, remove spice bag and pack apples without reheating into clean pint jars, filling to within 1/2 inch of top of jar with syrup. Screw two-piece caps on firmly. Process in water bath at simmering (180° F) for 20 minutes. About the ingredients: I think the spices are supposed to be whole, not ground. The vinegar that would work best is apple cider.
Pickles are good for you
Anything with vinegar, even if it includes sugar, is good for your system, as are fermented products. I make all manner of fermented items—sauerkraut, kimchi, jun (honey kombucha), coffee kombucha, yogurt, water kefir—even kvass, a drink made with beets.
These are energizing and flavorful and good for your gut. They are also keto-friendly (see my note on the No Carb Blues poem further down).
Untidy fruit
Portlanders love their fruit trees, but, frankly, they can be messy. No one can capture all the fruit before much of it hits the ground. This makes yellow jackets happy. I try not to track fruit detritus into the house on the wheels of the power chair.
If you are fortunate to have a fruit tree, a food dehydrator is a good investment. Unless you can or freeze your bounty.
Hydrangeas
Hydrangea season is coming to an end. The big globular blossoms are turning from pink or blue to white in gardens all over Portland.
You may remember, from middle school science, testing the pH content of various substances. The little paper strip would turn pink or blue depending on whether the substance was alkaline or acidic.
Hydrangea color is like the pH test strip. French hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) have blue blossoms if they are grown in acid soil (below a pH of 6). Most of the ordinary hydrangeas you see in Oregon gardens are blue. That’s because it rains a lot (during certain seasons) and the soil is acid.
However, if a gardener takes the trouble to amend the soil with calcium carbonate, also called lime, the blossoms will be pink, or even maroon.
Likewise, working some sulfur into the soil will make it even more acidic, for a deeper blue color. More likely, the deepest blue flowers are those of the popular “Nikko Blue” cultivar of H. macrophylla
Some hydrangeas are white. This stunning shrub is H. paniculata “Limelight.” As other hydrangeas are fading, it’s going strong midway through August.
In the Sunnyside neighborhood, a white peegee hydrangea (H. paniculata) keeps company with a collection of bird houses.
Poems
Underneath August
The cavern beneath you Your innermost thoughts Whispers of regret Shouts of rage and impotence. What brings the summer, Grass dry and rustling? Thirsting in August, Relying on rain. But rain is withheld now, Dust on the leaves. Dust in our hearts Full of August grief. Grief of the passing, Grief as we live now Grief for tomorrow Because we can’t know. We can’t keep from picking At minuscule scabs While bigger wounds fester, The ones that yawn wide.
Calling cats
Kitty, kitty, kitty, Will some kibble do? Do you want the moist stuff? Or I could mix the two. Don’t feed milk to kitties It can make them sick. Fill the bowl with water; That should do the trick. Don’t expect your pussycat To get with what you wish. They’re busy baiting dogs And dreaming dreams of fish.
No carb blues
I’ve been on the keto diet—lots of fat, medium protein, hardly any carbohydrates—for more than a year now. I feel better and my blood glucose is lower. I don’t care about bread and pasta, and I love my vegetables. But still . . .
I miss pie Nothing is finer— Except croissants And I miss them, too. Bereft of carbs, At least I feel better. Still, I miss lentils And, of course, candy bars.
If you asked me, I could write a book
I just read an old book, one with a memorable title: May You Die in Ireland, by Michael Kenyon. I read it in my teens as a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book. It was published in 1965 and for some reason it popped into my memory.
I found an old copy (the whole book, not the condensed version) on Better World Books for a few bucks. It turned out to be a crisply written thriller. An American visits the ancestral island unwittingly carrying a microdot (remember that old plot device?) on his travel agency brochure. But he removes the stickers that contain the info, and when the bad guys search his room, they can’t find it.
The plot is both inventive and stale, with a pallid romance with the only young woman character. Still, I’m not sorry I took the time to revisit it.
And it got me to wondering: why do we put so much effort into writing books—or other creative endeavors—that will, except in very rare cases, be forgotten within a few years, even months? Unless you’re Dante or Shakespeare or Emily Wilson, your work is most likely destined to be forgotten. Once you are gone, who will treasure your hand-knit sweaters or painstakingly pieced quilts or care about that lasagna recipe you so carefully developed?
The creative urge
Yet we keep trying. We keep creating. We bake some more sourdough. Tie-dye another T-shirt. Design bulletin board displays. Play a Sunday afternoon concert in a community orchestra for an audience of friends and family members.
We create television shows and movies so more of us can squander our creative hours watching instead of doing or creating.
But, no, wait. Watching can be more than passive; it can be a creative act. By watching and understanding and absorbing, we engage in the cosmic dance of creativity.
It’s often said that there are only a few plots, a limited list of motivations, a heroine’s journey that’s taken over and over with the same narrative contours.
Something collective connects us, all right. And we recognize this, over and over.
So, sitting alone before a screen can be an act of connection as much as of distancing.
I’m watching “The Closer,” an old cop series. Again. The music is annoying, but I love that the ensemble of actors coalesces from the first episode, each with a specific role, pirouetting in a dance of archetypes.
This is why we create, to make connections, to share ourselves.
We want to connect. It’s in our hearts.
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Dog days
The Old Farmers Almanac defines the dog days of summer as 40 days from July 3 to August 11. During that time, the Dog Star, Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, rises at sunrise. It’s doubtful that Sirius contributes to the extra heat of these days; its appearance is coincidental.
In honor of dog days, I found a few dogs to share with you.
Nope, no nagging
Either you are writing and being fulfilled and discovering new things about yourself every day. Or you are not.
I love to write, and the more I do it the more comfortable I am with it. Words well up and spill out. Many of them make sense. This is what I wish for you, too.
Sharing my joy of writing is like sharing the goodness of strawberry ice cream. The kind made with Oregon berries. Nothing can top that.
—30—
Housekeeping
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I think anything that touches us, even in some minor way - finds its way to fueling our creative spirit. thx for the lovely read.
Lovely hydrangeas. A fun little science lesson to boot!