Tomato Friends, Farewell!

Posted on October 11, 2011 by literarylee

I bid a fond farewell to one of the smash hits of the garden this season, the now nearly bare tomato vines.  The fun (maybe the best word to describe my tomato year) began last Christmas when I received the tomato seeds as a gift.  My aunt works in a garden store and had salvaged a large bag full of all sorts of seeds, packaged for 2010 and therefore destined to be thrown out.  She gave me more than I possibly could ever have used in one season, without an acre homestead and a greenhouse, including several tomato varieties.  I did not need to buy many fresh seeds this year.

You’d be amazed at the many and diverse tomato varieties.  I’ve seen seed catalogs dedicated almost exclusively to the hundreds of different tomato types.  They come:

  • in many colors like red, pink, yellow, orange, green, purple and various combinations of mottled;
  • of many sizes: cherry, grape, plum, pear, Roma, small, medium and large round ones, beefsteak, heart-shaped and more;
  • and with many uses: sauce, salad, slicing, cooking.

I was satisfied growing three varieties:   Roma (for sauce), Better boy (a large, round slicer), and Brandywine (an heirloom beefsteak).

The last tomato harvest, both green and red, comes when you pull the vines.

Continue reading →

Posted in Garden: A Love Story | Leave a comment

October 7: Okra, Green Beans and a Sweet Pepper

Posted on October 10, 2011 by literarylee

Maybe it’s no big deal, but I want to note how late I keep harvesting garden produce I planted this summer.  The other evening for supper we enjoyed a sweet pepper, garlic, onion, green bean, butternut squash stir fry over acini de pepe pasta.  I grew all but the onion and acini de pepe.  The meal was delicious and satisfying, all the more because most came from the garden.

Okra Sunrise, Number 9 (photograph by Argyle Schield)

Did I mention we ate fried okra for appetizers?  The okra continues to grow and produce an abundant amount of fruit.  I planted it late so it took a while to rev up the okra machine but now, it’s chugging away, full-steam ahead.  Every morning for the last week or so I’ve peeked out the kitchen window to see a dozen or so blossoms in the okra patch.  Each blossom becomes an okra, four or five days after the bloom, which means every few days I’ve been able to pick one or two dozen fruits we mostly fry, covered in corn mean, in olive oil.  What a treat, especially sweet one week into October.

Taken at eye level. Many of these October okra plants tower above the gardener himself.

 

Posted in Garden: A Love Story | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Permission to Fail, Create, Believe

Posted on October 9, 2011 by literarylee

I am coming to think that part of living is giving yourself permission to do certain things.

I am learning the importance of giving myself permission to fail.  This culture, our society, maybe people in general want to get it right, do whatever they do perfectly.  From keeping a house to keeping a blog, from being a student to being a parent or a spouse, from daily work to living as a responsible person in society, we place a high value on doing it wonderfully.  It’s o.k. to try for excellence, but I can get paralyzed and do nothing if I don’t let myself risk failing.  In a sense, allowing for failure (which will happen sometimes, maybe a lot) allows me to let go of my fears and try to do the best I can.

I am learning the importance of giving myself permission to write, to photograph, to create.  As I’ve given myself that permission, I have found myself learning the techniques and trusting my innate sense of what sounds or looks good.  Acting creatively, whether writing or painting or making music or making your home beautiful or a score of other things, transforms the daily drudgery (life isn’t always common and boring, but the necessary routine usually becomes just that: a routine) into an adventure, a captivating path where the current moment fascinates and the one to come is an eagerly awaited mystery.

I am learning the importance of giving myself permission to trust God.  I don’t know how God does what he does.  I can’t understand his ways of operating.  But I know God, the Creator and Source of life and creativity, works in my life and in the lives of a vast community of people stretching back centuries and centuries.  I can give myself permission to trust God to work in my life.  I don’t need to know whether to look for a sign or to step out and do whatever it is I’m considering.  I suspect God does it both ways and likely a lot of others I haven’t even thought of.  I can give myself permission to know he is active in and with me.

Permission to fail, permission to create, permission to believe, three things I’m learning to allow myself to do, three gifts I’m practicing giving myself and the people around me.

Posted in Artist's Notes, Devotion, Life | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Among the Liberators: Bolivar the Great

Posted on October 8, 2011 by literarylee

(The previous portion of this series: The House of the Americas)

Listen: I’m not your mother.  Really, I’m not.  I think you know that already.  And honestly, I don’t want to be.  Not in the least.  I only say this because I’ve got the nagging feeling, a sneaking suspicion as my father used to say, that I might be putting you in harm’s way by suggesting you take this walk down Virginia Avenue.  So let me go ahead and say the eight little words I can no longer, even though I’m not your mom, resist saying:

LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE YOU CROSS THE STREET!

I feel better.  I mention this for two reasons.  One, if you are carrying a printed version of this guide while walking, I worry it might be too easy to become absorbed in the words (my brilliant, riveting prose) or the features they are describing, and not focus on traffic.  But also, a pedestrian strolling along Virginia, a street set on a diagonal line relative to most of the other streets, needs to keep an eye out for the unusual intersections with odd crossings.  These sometimes five and six way intersections add to the street’s charm, but can make it a challenge to get where you want to go.  I’ll note those crossings as we progress down the Avenue.  For now,  Stop Reading This for a minute, and carefully cross 18th street where you begin the 1800 block of Virginia.

Virginia Avenue: The Capital's Plaza of the Americas

Continue reading →

Posted in Among the Liberators | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Apples, Candy Corn and Pretzels

Posted on October 7, 2011 by literarylee

Once upon a time for about five years, in another life I sometimes hardly believe I lived, my office was a car, and my place of work, a couple thousand square miles of Appalachia in portions of West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.  Imagine the joy a fall aficionado like me experienced driving daily through such eye-worthy terrain.  I think my idea of home will always be set in a place with forested mountains that turn vivid colors in Autumn, valleys and hollers tucked between hills, and winding roads through green pastures and woods.  I drove from stop to stop in such a place, plying my trade as a pharmaceutical sales representative.

Besides the rich daily beauty, particularly in fall, of that dear terrain, another gift that place gave me was apples.  Many of the roads I traveled took me through the heart of West Virginia apple country.  It was simple to stop and pick up a peck or more of fresh, crisp, perfect fall apples.  Apples and me go back a long way.  It’s hardly fall if I don’t eat and also pick those juicy-sweet joys of September and October.   Continue reading →

Posted in Autumn | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fall Display

Posted on October 6, 2011 by literarylee

I think I’ll blame my mother.

O.K., maybe not blame.  How about attribute or credit?  Or thank.  Every October, I like making a little arrangement of autumn items I call my fall display.  I do it partly because I love this time of year’s colors and paraphernalia.  I also do it because it’s how I was raised.  I thank my mother for this annual impetus to set out gourds, Indian corn, and more, because when I was a kid she decorated our house at different times of the year, appropriate to the season.  I’m not talking just the obvious ones like Christmas and Easter, we all decorated on those holidays, but at other times too like St. Patrick’s Day, and Valentines (she loved that one), Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, and don’t forget spring and summer and, well, yes, fall.  I don’t think a little autumnally inspired cliche would reflect too badly on this writer (who tries to avoid cliches like the plague): the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Beyond this part of my history whispering to me each year to set up the display, I have adopted this harvest habit as my own for other reasons besides, as I’ve already mentioned, loving fall stuff.  I think one reason is my on again, off again, love/hate relationship with time.  I am not always happy with how time moves around me.  It usually goes too fast or too slow for my liking and comfort, but I live with it.  More than that I try to ride time, like a body surfer at the beach.  I wade out into the ocean called living and watch the waves approach, then, just at the right moment, I jump in and I try to swim or sometimes just let it carry me to shore.  So now, I’m riding the Autumn waves in, moving with time’s rhythms, marking this season with a pile of fall things.

Fall Display, 2011

Continue reading →

Posted in Autumn, Garden: A Love Story | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hark! Hark! Commuter Song

Posted on October 5, 2011 by literarylee

Hark!  Listen!  Do you hear it?  Commuter song rings through the bus. 

I hear the sweet-cynical laughing chitter-chatter of jovial workers traveling to the Federal mines, endless warrens of office after office after office, sunless caves they burrow into day after day.  In the dark recesses, word-mining functionaries hammer, chip, pick, blast, searching for veins of bureaucratic ore, hoping and striving to extract nuggets, spoonfulls even, of precious government jewels, shining policies, procedures, and pronouncements, regulatory treasure to last a lifetime.

Posted in Daily Sentence, Whitecaps on the Potomac | Leave a comment

Duck 19

Posted on October 5, 2011 by literarylee

Ducks at Dusck

Duck Series Gallery

Posted in Duck Series | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

NaNoWriMo

Posted on October 4, 2011 by literarylee

I’m going to write a novel.  I promise not to say: “What a novel idea.”

A few days ago, friends told me about an organization that sponsors National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short.  I suggest you browse their website (NaNoWriMo Homepage) to learn more about the group, but I’ll give you a quick low-down.  In 1999, a small group of students, and aspiring writers in the San Francisco area came up with the crazy idea of writing a 50,000 word novel in one month.  The point was not (and still isn’t)  to produce a polished, finished product or even do any editing at all.  The point is writing a novel.  Just write it.  As they say on the site, it’s all about quantity, not quality.  The larger point is not to worry about perfection, but just to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, and give yourself permission to write.

I was intrigued.  At first I thought how could I possibly do that with a day job, and then I did some advanced math, spent time crunching numbers and running some pretty intense equations, and realized that to come up with 50,000 words in 30 days, I only need to write 1666 or 7  a day.  Honestly, I can write a 600 word rough draft of an essay during the 20 minute bus ride from home to where I get off the bus.  If I have some sort of outline or rough sense of where I’m going, I can write 600 words pretty quickly.  My shorter posts are around 400 words and the longer ones , 900.  Letters from Jerusalem and Bombay tend to run 1100 to 1200.  Words aren’t usually a problem for a word slinger like me.  The difference between the time I spend on this blog and writing a novel for the NaNoWriMo event is I won’t edit the 50,000n words.  The organizers are very specific about that.  Those 600 words I write in 20 minutes on the bus, take two hours or more to make ready for the blog.  Some posts I start, edit, and let sit for a few days, weeks or even months before publishing.  To make it to 1666 per day, I can only draft.  No perfecting allowed.  I minimally edited (though more than I will edit the novel next month) this post as an example of what it looks and feels like.  (Though this sentence I am writing 18 hours after wrote this, in the process of editing.  Since this isn’t NaNoWriMo yet, there’s no reason not to smooth this out a bit.) Continue reading →

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Saturday Night After Rosh Hashanah

Posted on October 1, 2011 by literarylee

October 2004

Hello from Jerusalem,

My daughter called it outrageous.  I felt a little intimidated.  We  were both amazed and delighted by what we had, serendipitously, seen on the Saturday night after Rosh Hashanah at the end of Sabbath.

We are getting accustomed  to Jerusalem becoming a ghost town from five or so on Friday evening (Sabbath starts at sundown) until sundown on Saturday night.  I remember the morning of our first Saturday here trying to catch a taxi , we walked up and down deserted streets near our home thinking we could probably play a game of chess in the middle of the street if we wanted to.  These past three days of Rosh Hashanah observance have been just like that: hardly any cars on the roads, few people walking except in their Saturday Best on their way to worship or perhaps to share a meal with family and friends.  In fact, every Saturday since I’ve had access to a car, I’ve used traffic-less Sabbaths to drive around town getting lost, finding my way back, discovering new places, learning routes to here and there.

We left at 8:30 Saturday evening.  I was going to take Katie downtown to meet friends.  I knew the roads would be busy, but I had no idea how busy.  We live a five minute walk from the biggest mall in the Middle East (I’m definitely not bragging) and we’ve seen how the place fills to the gills with people, people, people, especially on Saturday evening.  Eager shoppers released from their Sabbath rest descend on the place in droves, consumer locusts eager to devour clothes, electronics, you name it.  It’s a plague of Biblical proportions.  Tonight, however, traffic was much worse than usual because of a soccer game at the stadium across the street from shopping heaven.  You can’t believe how people park.  The line down the middle of the road becomes parking for two cars abreast.  Soccer fans pull up to curbs sometime one or two wheels up on the curb itself.  Two lane roads become one lane roads because of the ad hoc parking and endless traffic. Continue reading →

Posted in Jerusalem Letters | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment