Author: carin

places i will not be this weekend

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

If you’re looking for me, don’t look here—

1— Eden Mills Writers’ Festival. I can hardly discuss this, so disappointed am I to be missing it. I was especially looking forward to hearing Karen Connelly, Dionne Brand, et [so many] al, as well as Kerry Clare  who’ll be reading at the Fringe Stage. I read there myself in 2008 (aka the ‘wet year’) and it’s an absolute favourite part of the event for me. Not the rain, but the Fringe.

2— Thin Air, Winnipeg’s annual writers’ festival. Have I mentioned that I love Winnipeg? I’ve only been once. It was a September, the season between mosquitos and winter. I attended Thin Air, saw the masonic weirdness and beauty of the Legislative Building (built in the geographic centre of North America), had a few ‘nips’ on the Red, was happily surprised by the local foodie culture, the theatre, the commitment to the environment, the largest collection—stunning—of Inuit carvings in the world. And this is just what I remember without really trying.

3— Words Alive Literary Festival. Have never gone; am very curious.

4— Peterborough Arts Week. Just because I love Peterborough.

4— Garlic Festival, Stratford.  Sigh.

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All of this due to my knee.  (Well, okay, the Winnipeg thing wasn’t going to happen even if I hadn’t mucked up my leg…)

But to anyone who does attend any of the above, detailed reports will be welcome. Vicarious travel is the next best thing to being there…

can and cannot

~ carin ~ 8 Comments

11 Things I’d Like to Do that I Didn’t Know were Important Until the Other Day When I Tripped Over a Curb and Royally Screwed up my Knee and Now Can’t Do Because, Apparently, Unless I Stay off it as Much as Possible it’ll Never Heal…

— pick apples
— weed the garden
— make zucchini soup
— make apple crumble from freshly picked apples
— iron
— walk on beach
— walk in ravine
— walk through art gallery
— walk to library
— ride my bike to store for a fresh baguette
— sit on above-mentioned beach—with a thermos of zucchini soup, hunk of buttered bread, piece of apple crumble, watch gulls and geese and sometimes swans—in the half lotus position

11 Things I Can Do

— read
— write
— hobble about
— stretch and breathe and make pots of tea
— write some more
— revise
— hear my cats purr, watch their smiling sleeping faces while I read and write and drink tea
— downward dog (although I probably shouldn’t)
— eat ribs and cherry tomato salad
— finish ms
— be grateful for working knees (and other equally valuable parts)

Notice pointing finger -- as if swollen-to-twice-its-size leg might be missed otherwise...

a loveliness of ladybirds…

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

—a flutter of butterflies (there were two in the general vicinity but do two flutterbys equal a flutter?)

a risk of lobsters
an intrusion of cockroaches
a mite of mites
a knot of worms
a rope of onions
a punnet of strawberries

—and because the ‘sky dance’ season is about to begin (I saw my first starlings of the year gathering in some reeds this morning)—a murmuration of starlings…

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And other collective nouns because how else to describe things but properly?

Unless of course you feel like making something up. A ‘scratch’ of bedbugs? A ‘séance’ of tea leaves? A ‘warbling’ of words?

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red and yellow and tomatoey all over

~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Very ‘connected’ to our tomatoes this year as Peter grew every one of them from seed—coddling the seedlings through the last weeks of winter, convincing them that, yes, they must go outdoors, easing them into the sunlight, into small pots, larger pots, and finally into the big bad world of real soil with its inherent bugs—and worse. And all of them heritage plants, which made them very different from what we’re used to. Not as plentiful on the vine as the hybridized versions, nor as perfect or uniform in shape, but delicious (and beautiful). Along with the usual red variety, we had orange and green striped, plain orange, and yellow. Made some very nice salads.

And even though things are slowing down a bit—picked the last big bowl of cherry tomatoes yesterday (it’ll be small batches from here on out)—for the moment it’s still fresh bread, butter, salt, and occasionally some onions and a drizzle of oil—as the tomato festival continues (thankfully) just a little longer…

“One of the joys of summer is to go roaming through the garden, pulling ripe tomatoes off the vine and biting in. Juice and seeds drip all over your nice white shirt, but who cares? In summer the idea is to eat as many tomatoes as you can and enjoy the luxury of getting sick of them…

“My own idea of pure bliss is the tomato sandwich, which is good on any kind of bread… This sandwich can only be made with ripe tomatoes, luscious and full of seeds. The bread is slathered with mayonnaise, then dusted with celery salt and layered with thinly sliced tomatoes. I prefer this sandwich open, but it is fine with a lid.

“My favourite salad is the ubiquitous salad of the Middle East: diced cucumber, onion, and tomato dressed with salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon juice. If you fry up some squares of pita bread in olive oil and add some flat-leafed parsley and a little fresh mint, you have a salad called fattosh, which is ridiculously delicious and extremely simple to make.”

—from More Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin (who, in the same book, offers up a recipe for Tomato Pie that is next on my To Be Made list)

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all vines are not created equal

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

No need for panic but you probably should know—

Dog Strangling Vine wants to rule the world.

We mustn’t let it.

There are very few good reasons for using pesticides. This is one. Maybe the only one.

This very badly behaved stuff climbs up trees and bushes and chokes them. Given enough (surprisingly little) time it covers entire ravines. 

Creates fields of itself, wiping out other smaller species (Queen Anne’s Lace, Goldenrod, Asters, Daisies, Buttercups). Not to mention getting in the way of a good walk. Especially if you’re a dog. Hence the name. Worse, it has no enemies; it’s an import that befuddles our native species, though bioligists are considering importing a beetle that might eat it. Hmmm, sounds tricky. (Just noticed the litter in bottom right; didn’t even see that on my walk, so distracted was I by the invasion…)

About this time of year the green pods are turning brown and dry, inside which are milkweed-like fluffs with seeds attached; hard to tell them from the milkweed ‘santa clauses’ when they’re flying about. The bounders.

Thing is you can’t pull this plant out. The roots are deep and can only be killed by a spritz of poison on its leaves. If you see it in your garden, you’d be wise to spritz with merry abandon. Or dig it out. Best done in spring when the things are small, but still, better late than never.

Fore-warned and all that…

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the best case this tea drinker has heard for coffee

~ carin ~ 3 Comments

“When I was a sophomore in college, I drank coffee nearly every evening with my friends Peter and Alex. Even though the coffee was canned; even though the milk was stolen from the dining hall and refrigerated on the windowsill of my friend’s dormitory room, where  it was diluted by snow and adulterated by soot; even though Alex’s scuzzy one-burner hot plate looked as if it might electrocute us at any moment; and even though we washed our batterie de cuisine in the bathroom sink and let it air-dry on a pile of paper towels next to the toilet—even though Dunster F-13 was, in short, not exactly Escoffier’s kitchen, we considered our nightly coffee ritual the very acme and pitch of elegance. And I think that in many ways we were right…

“…It was the last time in my life that coffee slowed the hours rather than speeding them up. Those long, lazy nights—snow falling outside on Cowperthwaite Street, the three of us huddled inside a warm, bright room, talking of literature and politics until the rest of Dunster House was asleep—were an essential part of my college curriculum. After all, wasn’t education a matter of infusing one’s life with flavorful essences, pressing out the impurities, and leaving only a little sludge at the bottom?”

—from At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays, by Anne Fadiman

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