hump day nuggets: little bits of the season in photos and words about the last week
I didn’t cover my tomatoes the night of the first frost. It’s so painful. Pounds and pounds of wasted food. I try to make myself feel better by knowing the chickens will eat them but, really, I feel irresponsible and bummed.
Perhaps it’s a testament to the number of balls my family us juggling right now. We’re in this lovely and crazy-making FULL space: Andy is a few months from completing his arduous four-year electrical apprenticeship and he has his first solo museum exhibit next year. My writing and sewing endeavors are growing. There’s the stuff that is so at the bottom of the list but always talked about like our backyard fence that has been about to fall over for three years and Ruby’s placenta in the freezer. And then we have these two kids who have taught me a deeper understanding of words like busy and tired and happy.
Andy and I have always been big dreamers. I wholly believe that if you say it out loud and commit like there’s no going back, there’s a good chance it’ll happen. So, in that spirit: In five years, Andy will be painting full time, I’ll write a book and we will travel for many months in a VW Eurovan in South America.
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| Andy’s most recently finished oil painting. His exhibit will be at the Holter Museum in Helena in 2011. |
But, first, I will drink coffee, forgive myself for not covering the tomatoes and hang out with my kids like today’s all we’ve got.
nuggets.
:: We lost the last of our tomatoes but we did manage to eek out a few last-minute cauliflower.
:: And the beets! Oh the beets this year are off the hook.
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| Wouldn’t this make a fabulous wedding bouquet? Washed up of course. |
:: When Ruby materialized I imagine Alice was like oh great another loud, needy creature to compete for mom and dad’s attention. But she quickly remembered that these little ones eventually eat food and are uncoordinated. She rarely leaves Ruby’s side.
:: This time of year I am *obsessed* with unpicked fruit trees. Andy tires of my repeated exclamations. Did you see that plum tree?! Do you think they are going to pick it? Turn around. I’m going to ask.
They almost always aren’t going to pick it and are psyched to give.
It feels like when we were in college looking for a place and my radar for a for rent sign was skillfully astute. I can spy an unpicked fruit tree like nobody’s business.
:: The chickens are stoked gardening season is over because that means unlimited free rangeness. They gossip and prance all day long.
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| Maude is one tough chicken |
:: We harvested our giant pumpkin.
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| hat for sale in my shop |
:: Margot is at the bike-riding age so when we the opportunity to review the Sevi Push Bike emerged, I squealed with excitement.
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| Margot immediately took to it but she isn’t speedy just yet. |
It’s great and we love it. It came assembled (and not a ton of packaging which I always appreciate). We wanted a balance bike (instead of a bike with training wheels) because we like how they allow kids to explore balance and get comfy with two wheel-ness before moving onto the real deal.
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| It’s adorable, well made and light weight! |
:: Corn! I just keep buying and preserving more and more. It’s so easy and delicious and with a corn farm just down the street I can’t help but happen in there all the time. And I buy corn.
In response to questions: to preserve we blanch for a few minutes, cool and cut the kernels from the cob.
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| Easiest way to remove kernels: balance the cob on a bundt pan |
And then freeze on cookie sheets, remove with a spatula and pop in freezer bags.
And so there are balls in the air and some fall and splat like a frost-ruined tomato. That’s life. Or, at least that’s my choice. I’d rather juggle lots of balls flying all over the place and some falling than a select few balls safely secured in my palms.
I quote her, this poem in particular, regularly but here it is again because it’s just so poignant and perfect.
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
44 Comments
What a great photo of the pumpkin and your gorgeous girls !
Have a great week 🙂
Very cool painting by your husband! Post more for us to see. I wish I could take you to VT with me and show you my parents’ apple orchard. No chemicals so the apples aren’t perfect but there are hundreds and we grabbed as many as we could last weekend. I wanted to post a while back when your friend told you (paraphrasing here) that a mom who looks perfect is a mom you do not know very well. So true! Take care!
Upstate NY Fan
my husband and i used to do that all the time…one of us would spot a tree and he’d run up to the house (he’s the extrovert) and ask if we could pick the fruit..one of our neighbors on the northside had the MOST AMAZING white peach tree and they didn’t want ANY of them!! it was the best find ever.
and also, love love LOVE that mary oliver poem…one of my faves:)
I’m certainly no expert, but I would imagine your goal for Andy to be painting full time in 5 years will be met easily. What an amazing gift he’s got. What a talented family, all around. Lucky kiddies living over there with awesome genetics 🙂
wow your husband is VERY talented! such an interesting picture. i thought it was a photo.
nici! so funny you said that about the beets being a wedding bouquet – i don’t read wedding mags so maybe that’s a real thing people do, but a few weeks ago at the farmer’s market i saw these amazing multi-colored and sized radishes, and i told jake that i wanted that as my bouquet if we ever get married. maybe you can grow them for me!
what extraordinary talent – that painting is amazing! please take some more photos of your hubby’s work to show them to us!
i totally love your pumpkin, and especially the picture of it iwth the girls – Ruby’s face looking up at her big sister Margot is just too sweet.
Thanks for giving me the freedom to drop a few of my own balls in the air so I can live life to the fullest!!
Good luck on your goals!
1. A-ha! Bundt pan. That’s the answer to my flying corn dilemma.
2. I’ve been reading “Why I Wake Early” by Mary Oliver this past week and loving it.
3. I really enjoy your weekly nuggets.
Thanks Nici!
“OH MY GOSH MOMMY! LOOK AT THAT PUMPKIN!”
Quote from my almost 3 y/o Ivy. It excited her so much she said she wanted it at her birthday party this weekend.
A bundt pan! Genius. Was just de-cobbing (is that even a word?) corn last night & it kept going everywhere… next time I will use your trick.
That is a bummer about the tomatoes, but one of the best parts about having chickens (besides the eggs!) is that nothing really goes to waste. Wish we could have our own but for now are content to visit Grandma’s chickens… as well as picking all of her apple trees. Love knowing where my food is coming from… it shouldn’t be a luxury, but it seems to be these days, doesn’t it?
And oh how I love Mary Oliver… and that poem in particular. I just picked up two of her books at the library the other day. Currently poetry is the perfect cadence for my busy day… easier to sneak a minute here or there to read a poem where an actual novel seems unattainable these days.
Happy Wednesday!
Kate
One day sooner than you think, Andy will be a full time painter, you will be a full time writer, and you will all be full time vagabonds in your van! Take it from someone who knows…(Don’t ask me how, I just know!) And in the meantime, your life is pretty gorgeous!!
xox
Melina
http://www.thewildercoast.com
You’ve got to pick your battles, right?!
Your five-year plan doesn’t seem out of reach to me. I think you’re headed down the right road.
Those heads of cauliflower look AWESOME. And a beet bouquet would be so cool!
🙂 I’ll be back…..xoxo
Frost! I can’t imagine frost in October, but I’m in Austin, TX so the frost likely won’t find us until at least December.
I’d never even thought of preserving corn. What a great idea!
Love it!! the photos at the museum remind me of the book OLIVIA…maybe the book you write will be a children’s book and Andy can do the illustrations??. That author is an illustrator for the New York Times I think, or maybe I’m confusing the author, but Anways you can do a book tour in the VW!
Wow! Your husband is an amazing artist. I thought his painting was a photo! Love the pics of your sweet littles and the pumpkin you grew. Oh how I wish we had a garden! Thanks for sharing!
Awesome awesome pumpkin!
Thanks so much for the bundt pan idea, will make it so much easier!
OMG, your husband’s painting is AMAZING!! Gerhard Richter is my favorite artist- I very much appreciate a painting where I have to double take on if it’s a photo or painting, and I did. Beautiful.
Thanks for the nuggets–I so appreciate your ability to savor life in the midst of chaos. And the bundt pan?! Flat out brilliant!! I’ll know better for next summer.
My nuggs weren’t ready with my coffee this morning. That’s okay…I waited and they delivered.
Loving…
* “Darker Pink Panda Bear”
* The tree-picking pic
* Seeing Ruby wear the hat we got * Margot way back when I “barely” knew you.
* Making 5 year dreams
* Smiling as I see our brains are strangely in the same place again. Library this week…except I found a new tiny old one near the beach where it’s quiet and I don’t feel so intimidated to face my overdue fines with a line of people behind me when I check out.
xoxo
Some more info about my talented, brilliant husband:
The neglected blog (that I started for him) he *thinks* about contributing to: http://andycline.blogspot.com/.
A post I did a while back that has a few of his paintings: http://www.digthischickmt.com/2009/01/and-my-man-paints.html
I miss oil painting…. Such a great release to create.
I LOVE THAT PUMPKIN! :o) I love how it is transforming in front of your eyes from that deep green to the vibrant orange. Just beautiful.
Now, about that placenta in the freezer…. What is the plan? I thought I read somewhere, not sure where, what people do with them.
I don’t see not covering the tomatoes as a mistake…. The chickens need them for their egg producing to give you awesome eggs! :o)
Andy’s paintings are simply amazing. Ah-ha! Using a bundt pan for the corn shavings, brilliant! I was doing on my cutting board and those blasted kernels were shooting all over.
Mary Oliver. Her poems really are worthy of frequent re-visits. An old friend of mine who is no longer of this earth shared this one with me, it was my first introduction to Mary Oliver.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Loved this entry, particularly a poem by Mary Oliver concluding it. I love Mary Oliver and I actually shared one of her poems this morning (When Death Comes) with a friend of mine.
The more I read about your garden and how often you harvest, the more I want to grow that many things for myself. I just don’t have the space or the light at the moment. Maybe at the next house…
What type of book do you plan on writing? I’m a writer myself with a blog of my own and working on a book, both of which I get to when I can (I have two girls myself).
Wow. You’re husband’s paintings are so real!
Thanks Nici for the links to Andy’s sites. His paintings are magnificent! Such talent. The details are amazing. Each of his paintings are exquisite~ pulchritudinous!!(lol..nod to Kelle). I think I’m gonna start a Word Of The Day on my blog.
I love the library and museum pictures, the pumpkin delight, the beet bouquet.
You are a brave soul to be making five-year plans.
Your piece on the pink headband was beautifully written, and I share your aversion to “stuff.” The NYTimes recently ran an article about the “100 things challenge,” which you might find interesting.
Unpicked Fruit Tree Stalkers unite!
Have you made a Fallen Fruit map for your area? I did that so that I wouldn’t miss a single tree when they got ripe again. Also so that I don’t fall victim to Bubba’s suggestions that we plant every kind of fruit tree because LOOK – there’s a fig tree 400 yards from our house! And what not.
And I loveLOVElove that photo of Ruby squealing at the pumpkin. I’m with ya, kiddo – big pumpkins are kick ass.
MyRay, We buried Margot’s placenta under a flowering plum tree in our front yard. Had a lovely little moment with the organ I grew for her on Mother’s Day a few years ago. We’ll probs do something similar with Ruby’s. No, I am not going to eat it!
Ellie, do you think it’s brave? I think I’d go nuts if I didn’t have five year dreams. Off to check out NYT piece! Thanks!
Finny, Fallen Fruit Map! Your brilliance never ceases to amaze me.
Your pictures make me smile. I feel like I know your girls.
Also, so much synchronicity because
1) our chickens are set free now and loving it
2) we just picked apples yesterday because we drove by a loaded orchard and I told Dan to slow down and I asked and they said yes.
3) so many balls in the air and sometimes it makes my teeth ache but mostly keeps me laughing and inspired.
And, your husband’s art is truly amazing. I love the intersection of humanity and mountains.
And the Mary Oliver poem makes my heart shiver.
Andy’s paintings always blow me away. Can’t wait to show this one to Eric. 🙂
Love the balance bike. That’s what we’re thinking of getting Theo for Christmas this year.
I also share the VW dream (via reality) with you. I want to do it with the boys when they’re a bit older; tour the western national parks for a summer.
Write a book…I can totally see a Pam Houston type read, but more about mamahood. Love it!
I realize that the articles is not exactly easy to find with the NYTimes search engines:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html?scp=1&sq=but%20will%20it%20make%20you%20happy&st=cse
It’s a great article on many levels.
Nici, I’m sorry to hear about the tomatoes, particularly because your recent Preserving Orgasm post hit me right in the spot, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about tomatoes since. But I so appreciate your forgive and move on attitude.
I have my own set of too many balls I’m juggling, and they are so vastly different than yours. But still I am immensely comforted reading about the chaos you deal with daily because it is the state of mind you approach it with that makes all the difference, and this is such a good reminder for me. I look forward to your posts, which are like a forced time-out for me, a rare moment of indulgence in introspection. Thank you for that.
I recently started a food blog, and your tomato post prompted me to write a tomato post (including a link to my muse). If you’re interested … http://winecountryeats.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/tomatoes-tomatoes-tomatoes/
Ah! Thanks for that info on the placenta. That is what I heard someone else do, buried it under a plant. You refreshed my memory!
:o)
just reread your post and I have the same thought about a lovely fig tree that grows in a yard on my running route and always seems full of fruit!! i want to ask but I don’t just don’t know how to start by ringing the doorbell!! 🙂
Hi! Found you via Kelle’s blog and so happy I did! I am grateful for so many of your go get ’em phrases. “I can rally” and “…hang out with my kids like today’s all we’ve got.” are two of my new favorites. Have a great weekend!
your pix are always phenomenal and touching. check out http://www.portlandfruit.org – a group i volunteer with, you’ll love it! inspiration for your next chapter?
Thanks for reminding me to revisit Ms. Oliver.
“I don’t know how to pay attention……what else should I have done?” is such narration for Ruby, Olive and all the other almost-one-year-olds.
I’m not sure if I’m more excited for the stories you’ll write or the paintings Andy will produce from your VW trip. Wow, can’t wait.
Love the walking bike. Lucy is truly unstoppable in hers. It’s really the only thing that makes sense. At first, L. tip toed and now she glides, glides, glides.
Love nuggets.
awesome nuggets!!! the girls are getting so big. are you going to eat the giant pumpkin? you inspire me to make our vege plot overflow with yummyt goodness- although its mostly looking sad and unfruitful at the moment. i would love to read your book, and your husbands art is truely amazing- a great intersection of nature and humanity- plus, i thought it was a photograph at first- amazing!!! would you consider coming down to australia for a year of roadtripping??? its pretty amazing down here too and very family friendly :O) I had only heard bits and pieces of mary oliver before, but she is wonderful. keep sharing the love, its wonderful inspiration.
I love the photo of your daughters next to the giant pumpkin! Adorable 🙂
Please pickle up those beets. And roast some, too. Slather them with goat cheese. Pile them up with orange slices. I want to get married all over again (same man, of course) just so I can carry your beet bouquet.
ps- Presently eating a bowl of left-over homemade minestrone and it’s the cat’s meow. I think you’d have to agree. I’d totally share with you, if geography allowed it.
that painting is AMAZING! I thought it was a photograph at first
here I am…..
Holy Pumpkin Pie…what a Gorgeous Gourd! & in my opinion, the perfect shape for carving too! AS always love your photos Burb with ALL my favorite gals…Alice you are a dear, sweet pup! A call out to my fowl girl friends too, if I lived closer I would be gossiping and prancing with you! I believe in your 5 year plan and not only know it will happen but predict, because of the way you are going, that your next sponsor will be VW and the Eurovan will be sitting in front of your boulevard garden!
Andy~MY God you amaze me, I swell with pride over your talent! xo
Margot~You are whipping up a quite a “Pink Panda Pie” there! I love the little girl I see in each new post. Don’t you just love growing up in Montana? I still get tears in my eyes when I fly home over the Rockies. When you get old enough to read this I know you will be nodding your head in agreement! I am planning a trip to Montana soon, I am thinking early December….see you then! I Love You A Bushel & A Peck! (LOVE your new bike too)!
Ruby~Love,love the photo of you in the little blue cable knit sweater that your Great Grandmother knit your Uncle Trav, your mama shook her head in wonder how I saved all those special “things” that she and Travis wore…I am glad I did! You are by far the cutest pumpkin in the pumpkin patch! Soon those pumpkins and cabbages will be replaced fluffy white stuff …& you will be romping in the Rocky Mountain snow with your big sister and Alice! See you soon….You Are My Sunshine!
Love to all!
xoxo, Mom/Gram