26 May
Remember the change I mentioned last week? It has discombobulated me a bit more than I thought it would. Side note — isn’t discombobulated a simply delicious word? I love it!
Anyway, here I am, a full week in and I made the mistake I always make, I thought I could do everything with a dash of even more. Usually this starts well enough, but ends in flames. I think, maybe, perhaps, I caught this before I exploded into a fiery ball of burn out and exhaustion. How did I do this? I’m taking a day, today in fact, to sit around and restructure my time and to freaking relax.
It’s raining, that pleasant and invigorating rain of early summer. Playing hooky today is also invigorating, as any sort of rebellion tends to be. Wish me luck!
Writing Updates:
No weekly Medium essay this time. This is part of my playing hooky and reassessment of my time usage. I fully expect to be back in fine fettle next week, so I shall deliver an essay then.
My other main writing work has been either for our friend the Ragman, or it has been personal exploratory work as I figure out the shape of my life for the next few months, at least. Not the sort of stuff I share publically, although it is the sort of stuff that future essays are often born of. Think of exploratory writing as the Orion Nebula — a nursery for the future words that will ignite into new stars.
Reading Updates:
I finished rereading Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing. I’m still working through my reread of Mark Boyle’s The Moneyless Manifesto.
In new reads, as in I haven’t read them before, I am chugging away at Sanderson’s Elantris — I adore this book, but it is slow going because it is a heavier epic fantasy with lots of moving parts, and my summer brain isn’t quite up to the work. So a chapter a day, most days, is my limit. Still, read Sanderson if you haven’t. He’s a nice break from the “romantasy” that has taken over and watered down my favorite genre.
Of course, three books isn’t enough, so I also started reading Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach. I read his classic Ecotopia years ago, but wasn’t aware that there was a follow up. The suggested reads on openlibrary.org revealed it to me, and lo and behold, it was available to borrow for free!
Survive & Thrive:
Two words for you — rhubarb candy! We have so much rhubarb and it is mainly useful only when heavily sugared in a dessert. True, I like it sliced fine in a slaw, or stewed down as a base for a barbecue sauce or dressing, but its usage is fairly limited.
On a whim, I tossed some sliced rhubarb with some honey and chili powder, then dehydrated it in the electric dehydrator. Oh my! It’s a lovely tart treat with a flavor reminiscent of Mexican chamomile candies and a texture like a gummy bear! A delicious addition to certain rice and wild rice dishes, chicken salad, or any salad really. I even sprinkled some on top of a pesto pizza and it was divine. Anywhere that you would use dried cranberries, raisins, or a bit of tart fruit in a savory dish works well. I imagine it would do really well with pork dishes, too!
The rest has been standard — we transferred the rhubarb wine to a carboy to finish out over the next three weeks, then we shall bottle it. Our next decision is what to get into the fermenting bucket next! I gave all of our herbs a haircut and dried the excess for future use. The beans, peas, lettuce, mustard, and spinach germinated, but my cucumber and zucchini seeds may be too old so I will likely be picking up seedlings somewhere this week.
We had to put netting over the strawberry patch because the squirrels are eating all the leaves! Usually we don’t need to protect them until they start to produce berries. We also tended to a lot of chores. Like weeding around the trees, mainly to remove blackberry vines that tangle around the trunks. We also cleaned the moss and tree debris off our lane. I like how it looks, but that much debris is hard on the asphalt and it can become slick to drive on, so needs must.
There is also the usual weekly stuff I don’t really talk about — making all our meals at home, baking bread, tending the garden, foraging, fixing stuff that breaks, hunting down or making replacements for things that can’t be fixed (and preferably doing this without spending any money), drinking beer on the deck, chatting with neighbors and friends, playing darts, and practicing my fiddle. You know, the stuff of living.
As always, yours in hope,
Jenny Wren 