Are we too often mired in absolute stasis?

Yin and Yang, dark and light, female and male, wetness and dry air, cool and heat.

Until Sunni brought up the exploration of yin and yang, I honestly hadn’t given it much thought. Not in those particular terms. The symbol was, in my mind, associated with badly drawn ink, stickers from gum ball machines and a vague sense of “good versus bad.” Thinking of yin and yang within the thought of complementary opposites is an interesting exercise.

Yin and yang are complementary opposites within a greater whole. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, which constantly interact, never existing in absolute stasis.

Lew and I, our relationship, is an interesting study of yin and yang. He moves forward and learns by doing, at times by wild trial and error. This includes some button pushing =). I move forward with an air of caution, wanting to study the situation, read a little about it and maybe talk to someone who’s dealt with the particulars of the deal in question before. Yet, I’d say that we both learn better by doing. He leans toward the quickest route that provides spot on accuracy. I lean toward memorization and habitual repetition; once I’ve mastered that, I’m ready to learn the quicker route. He seeks finite accuracy and I seek good enough. What’s 1/16″? Both groups of thought are necessary to complete the task, ironically.

Musically, we both are drawn to complex, hard-driving, dynamic music. On the surface, it appears that we both listen to genres that are musically connected. The more I listen to Lew’s music favorites, it’s fast paced, driving, aggressive, yet complexly controlled. Metallica, Yngmie Malmsteen, Gary Hoey, Jerry Cantrell, Steve Vai. You’d noticed if the guitarist flubbed it. Punkishness is my first musical love— the raw emotion, the chaos, the percussion, the anti-establishment appeal . X, Nina Hagen, the Ramones, Oingo-Boingo, the Violent Femmes. Errors are not hidden but embraced, made the focal point sometimes. My musical feel good meter morphed over the years to include PUSA, Primus, the Beatles and Tom Petty’s whole discography. Lately, I’m drawn to instrumental pieces, from the jam sessions of Galactic, to the new-age electronica of Ratatat, to the instrumentals of Apocalypticia, Vitamin C Quartets and The Section Quartet. And flamenco guitar styling. This new musical yumminess of mine, along with our mutual affinity for Buckethead, shouts never existing in absolute stasis in my opinion.

I could go on and on. I read books, Lew reads magazines. I read for pleasure mostly, he reads for information mostly. He’s drawn to fun, fast cars. I’m drawn to fun, functional cars. His favorite colors are red, black and white. Mine is green. His timing in the kitchen is stronger. More of the food ends up on the table, warm, at the same time. I’m better at orchestrating the chopping, mixing and clean-as-you-go. He’s the cat whisperer and I’m still getting used to sharing my home with a cat. I promoted heavily for sharing our home with pups– he wasn’t so sure. We’re both head-over-heels in love with our canines.

Think about any relationship you’ve had that’s deep, refreshing, frustrating, emotional, fulfilling and continually evolving. I’m not referring specifically to people you’ve been romantically involved with, either. Do you see the qualities of yin and yang within the perimeters of the relationship? I bet if you mulled it over for awhile, you’d see a bunch of yin and yang spill out of your memories. Is this perhaps where the cliche opposites attract may have found its beginning? Opposites may attract, but without the yin and yang, or the open-mindedness to look for it in both the good and the bad times, what may have the potential to become complementary opposites may devolve into polar opposites. Complementary opposites complete each other. Polar opposites repel each other. In the yin and yang of life, both modes have the same humble beginnings; yet through the exercise of free will, stumble down the lanes they decide to navigate.

One victory out in the garden

Look at those luscious little gems! The photo is of my fourth harvest of our strawberry patches, and the biggest harvest to date.

The biggest berries came from the plants I gave up for dead last year. They didn’t like the place I planted them previously so I moved them to a nicer, sunnier spot in the yard. They promptly turned brown and looked devastatingly deceased. And then this miraculous thing happened. One by one, new, fresh, richly green leaves emerged from the brown crumbles to form the kick-ass strawberry patch it is today.

The little berries are the sweetest ones. I think they are small due to the amount of shade they are bathed in daily. I’m thinking of moving those plants to a sunnier lo-cal in the fall…. but will the berries remain as sweet? Don’t let their diminutive stature fool you. Those berries are incredible!

Best of all, I didn’t have much to do with these plants’ success. They just needed some time and water to do what they do best— grow amazing strawberries for my family to consume.

Exchanging G’day Mate for Howdy Y’All

Here we thought Mr. Skeeter was a regular pup of mainly Australian Cattle Dog origin. The last three weeks have been interesting, as Mr. Skeeter made the decision he’s an Australian Cattle Hound Dog. He’s been baying like our hound doggie, Miss Virginia, but in the cattle dog’s higher pitched voice.

While we find the auditory spectacle hilarious, having both dogs bay is loud. I’m sure in this warm summer, open window weather that the baying is quite annoying to our neighbors. One of the many downfalls to suburban living.

While the saying goes, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” it states nothing about the old dog teaching the younger one new stuff. Our hound dog has passed on her deep south, hound-y legacy to a younger, more southerly, generation.

Dehydration saves the day

For dinner, we had this amazing lentil dish a good friend gave me the recipe for. There was one hitch, I discovered mid-stream. We were all out of fresh garlic and garlic powder. Yipes! I was prepared, however. Back in October after I penned this, I followed some advice from Linda Gabris’ article and sliced up several garlic cloves. The slices dried nicely on a cookie rack within a few days and I put them in a glass jar for one of those days. And today was one of those days, to my surprise.

I took 6-7 slices and whirled them in an extra coffee grinder I keep around to grind herbs and seeds in. A few seconds later, ta-da, I had my own home made garlic powder. It had a terrific flavor and complimented the dish nicely.

There were only three of us at the dinner table this evening, Zander, Rosie and myself. Rosie gave dinner a 6 out of 10, so she liked the dish well enough but it won’t make her favorite list. Zander said, “It’s not bad,” and subsequently ate two good sized portions and cleaned his plate, a rare occasion for him. I loved it myself. I especially liked the thyme the recipe called for. That is an herb I’m now exploring after relegating it to holiday turkey dinners for far too long.

I picked up a dehydrator from a craigslister on Monday. I’m drying fruit in it right now, but after I get some more garlic cloves, garlic is high on my list of things to dry. I only filled a little jar less than a quarter full on my first foray into dehydrating.

Getting my garden groove on

I put some plants in the ground yesterday. Lew and I visited a master hobby gardener and bought some of her organic tomato plants (they’re gi-normous and most have some fruit on them already). We brought home a yellow pear, roma, two beefsteak and a brandywine. They all needed to be staked in some way, although the roma and yellow pear had small stakes already. I used tomato cages to stake up the beefsteaks and brandywine. I hope the cages will help give extra support as the fruit grows; those varieties tend to grown large fruit.

I also picked up from a local farm stand three different types of squash (hubbard, acorn and zucchini), three pepper plants (jalepeno, sweet italian and one other red pepper, the name escapes me now), another thyme, two fennel plants, and 4 creeping rosemary plants. When I watered tonight, they all look happy. I hope they all are bountiful. My next task is to get some compost out and about, to help keep the garden gang happy.

Our strawberries are amazing! Lew and I picked a bunch more yesterday, filling a good sized container, plus giving some to our neighbors as a thank you for the incredible black bean salsa they brought over to us a week ago. At the farm stand I also picked up some fresh rhubarb, so we’ve been rolling out the rhubarb/strawberry crisps.

Here’s the recipe we use, with some twists. We add a cup or so of fresh strawberries with the rhubarb and cook the fruit in the sugar and water mixture, so it’s softer. Sometimes rhubarb is woody and stringy, like celery; we like it softer. When I made the crisp this evening, I subbed 1/2 cup honey for the cup of sugar in the fruit mixture and I cut the crust’s brown sugar to 3/4 of a cup. Lew made last night’s crisp, following the measurements laid out and it was awesome but on the sweet side. We also made it wheat free by using garbanzo bean flour and spelt flour (1/2 a cup each).

Tell me about your gardening and farm finding adventures! I’d love to hear your stories.

New blog in the blog roll; it’s hip with gardening, pets, biology, self-sufficiency. Go take a look now…

….The Quill . I’ll wait.
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So, what did you think? Cool, huh? I've been enjoying the reading material over there. Check it out often.

Summer pick-me-up

I bought a small bouquet of lilies at TJs the other day. The yellow flowers and greenery were eye pleasing but looked a little lonely in the vase. From my own garden, I added a couple of roses, two peony stems with multiple flowers on them, and some magenta sweet william to fill out the arrangement.

PS: Peonies smell incredible!!!!

Indulge me for a moment, please read my TMI and think about it

Today is the first day off I’ve had since Memorial Day weekend where I did not have to be somewhere. It was semi-glorious to be able to sleep in a bit. Bark and howl does go on, as scheduled, but I tried to ignore it for a while. I was fairly successful in dismissing the noise this morning.

As you know (post below) first thing I did this morning is put the coffee on and go out to the yard to pick strawberries. I’m still rolling around the glow of such coolness. Does it ever wear off? If it does, don’t tell me. I hope I get the same kick from it when I’m 80!

In the past few weeks I underwent a colonoscopy. With my mom’s recent bout with colon cancer , plus some symptoms I was experiencing, my doctor recommended (months ago) I get one done. It’s a bit of a process to get to the actual test day. I called in February to make the appointment with the GI doc, couldn’t get one until March and was put on the schedule for a colonoscopy in April. The next delay was mine. I wanted to take care of some finance stuff before having the procedure since a good chunk of the bill payments will come out of my pocket. It appears I shall meet my deductible this year, a first.

The prep and test itself was not as bad as I first anticipated. A few friends gave me handy tips on how to go about drinking the prescribed solution, and advised me to not finish the solution if it had done its job properly. I decided to not choke down the last 8 ounces of the stuff and I was still sufficiently prepared for the test. I even got a compliment about my preparation on the paperwork the doctor sent me home with, after he administered the test. The test— I remember very little of it. There was a moment of discomfort I have memory of, but I mentioned it and that was the last thing I have a recollection of until I was in recovery. All the staff was top notch nice and the doc found one polyp, which he removed.

The pathology report dribbled in yesterday, after a round of phone calling. The polyp was a adenomatous one with a stalk, which is referred to as pedunculated. After the testing done on it, the pathology reported the polyp tissue was tubulovillous. Adenomatous polyps can be either tubular or villous; if it has features of both it’s called tubulovillous. The risk of becoming malignant increases with the amount of villous tissue the polyp has.

I didn’t mean to go on with the anatomy lesson; the point I’m heading toward is to take care of yourself. Don’t ignore a seemingly small symptom. Expenses play a factor, yes, but don’t not look into a puzzling symptom just because of the cost. I figure the few thousand shekels I’ll hand out now are much better than the alternative if I’d waited. There’s so many options out there for us, naturopathic, holistic, homeopathic, allopathic. If something is bothering you, talk to someone about it. If you don’t find an answer, talk to another professional. Do your own research. Just don’t ignore the problem. It’s pretty difficult to seek freedom, love life and learn more about self-sufficiency if you’re gravely ill.

Okay, I’m off my soapbox now. I’m off to the showers and then I’m going to try and put together my drying rack Lew gave me for my birthday. The mint, oregano and sage all need haircuts.

Guess what I had for breakfast

Pancakes?  No.  A bowl full of peanut butter Cap’t Crunch?  Thought about it, but no. Nothing?  Wrong-o.

I had Bob’s Red Mill Creamy Brown Rice Farina, with a small handful of cashews and dried cranberries tossed in, about two teaspoons of ground flax seed sprinkled on and fresh, just picked strawberries, sliced, on top. Before adding a little soymilk, I mixed in about two teaspoons of clover honey.

Carefully stirred together, the steaming bowl of cereal beckoned me to sit at the kitchen table and admire it’s beauty for a moment. I sipped a cup of freshly made coffee, the light aroma of rose and peony emanating from the bouquet on the table tickling my nose, and just looked at the good food set before me. The first bite? Pretty close to Nirvana. Sweet and a little salty, crunchy bits and warm, soft gooeyness. And distinct fresh tastes of summer, to borrow a line from Miss Rosie. Strawberries fresh from the garden taste like summer; freshly mowed grass, intense sunlight, fragrant floral breezes and warmed soil.

My neighbors may not have enjoyed the view: my hastily contained bed hair, sandals and lounge shorts, a hooded sweatshirt haphazardly pulled on over my head. If they had a bite of my breakfast, they’d then understand. I just had to pick the strawberries waiting for me while the coffee brewed. Their siren song called me.

I can’t remember where I read this jewel, if it’s yours, please take credit in the comments. Perenniels first sleep, then creep and in their third year they leap. My precious strawberry plants are going on year three. Despite my lopsided approach to gardening they are doing their thing and doing it quite well, I might add. And we get to reap the immense joy from these little plants. Thank you for such wonderful blessings.

My sprout has a first name, it’s M-U-N-G-Oooohhhhh

What are your hobbies?

I like walking on the beach, sunsets and fluffy, little puppies.  And I grow sprouts. Well, I kind of grow sprouts. Errrr, I thought I grew sprouts, until I dabbled in mung beans.
I like walking on the beach…

Growing your own food is a kick.  Sprouting is a great way to get your gardening fix during the winter months, if you lack space, dislike soil (bugs, worms, getting dirty, insert personal dislike here) or are new to gardening and want some instant success.

I thought I was approaching the intermediate class of sprouter until I met the mung. I’d grown lentils, garbanzo beans and barley with nary a hitch.  We cook and consume a good amount of Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese dishes, so the leap to mung beans was natural.  Fresh sprouts add so much to the finishing touches of pho, pad thai and a basic stir fry.

Growing the mung has presented its share of problems.  If only I had read the directions first. My batches have been puny, and the remaining beans on the hard side. As it turns out, I’m making several mistakes. 1) homegrown mungs will not match the store bought ones because of the processing (who would have thought?!) of them prior to reaching the market. 2) I have been putting them in a closed cupboard for the darkness, per my beginning sprouting instructions from a book I read. Horror of horrors, *gasp* there’s contradiction on the sprouting front. The directions from the SproutPeople state that complete darkness in sprouting is an over-rated element. So, to my chagrin, I’ve been picking complete darkness over the uber-necessary airflow. 3) I do not have the best sprouter to grow big mung monster sprouts. I chose to go old school (mason jar) with one slight improvement ( upgraded from cheese cloth to plastic screen) for convenience and portability.

I also have been a bit willy-nilly about rinsing time and it appears our friend the mung is a stickler about prompt rinsing. I shall reign myself in and stick to a proper rinse schedule.

Growing your own food is still a kick. Sometimes it’s a bit of a bitch, but what doesn’t maim you builds up your character and your skill set, right? Yup, that’s what I keep telling myself.