her able hands

It’s definitely spring because Tyler has used half a box of tissues this weekend. Poor guy gets allergies like his father does, long and brutal. I feel mine cranking up too in the form of a headache that’s hung out in my skull for four days and an ever-so slightly scratchy throat.

What a spectacular weekend. We all spent at least eight hours outside both days and managed to get a whole lot of work done. The new wood playground is now in place with the swing beam and both slides attached. It took us four hours to put that blasted tube/spiral slide together and get it attached to the top platform. But it’s done and is already the neighborhood play zone—ten kids made wild fun on it after the birthday party next door.

Let’s see, what else? I’m not feeling particularly narrative this morning as I sip coffee in the dark and hope the headache will go away. I raked out half of the border beds and started a new lasagna bed along the back of the deck (more almost full sun). As I worked I thought about fruit tree placement around the property. I had originally planned to dig out the two ornamental shrubs on the south side of the house to plant the two pear trees as espaliers up against the house, but read in The Garden Primer that pears should not warm up too quickly in spring because of the risk of early buds and late frost damage. Apples might fare better in that spot. Thus the lasagna bed behind the deck. I can put four dwarf fruit trees along the back and espalier them, which will make a great living screen, but then, will also screen out the playground from the house, so maybe that’s not a great idea. Of course, it’ll be a few years before that’s fully filled in, so maybe it’s fine. It’s an ideal spot, facing east, plenty of sun, natural windbreak out of the northwest from the house, and in a dip in the property, so moist enough, but not too moist, it’s also very well drained.

I had intended to get some more seeds in the ground, but that didn’t happen. I’m going to leave work an hour early today and plant some radish, kale, collards, chard, turnips, rutebegas, spinach and arugala. The peas aren’t coming up yet, and I see that a bunch of the Fava beans got dug up by the squirrels. I really do need to fence.

Late yesterday, while all of the birthday party kids played on the swing set, and the parents hung out chatting, we moved the chickens to a new spot. I forked up the top layer of soil and dumped it on top of the cardboard for the new bed first so they had plenty of bugs. I need to get out there and take some pictures (have been so camera lazy lately). We have a huge new mattress of straw/manure bedding to work with—my next weekend project is to assemble a couple of quick and dirty compost bins with garden stakes and fencing. I want to be ready for the first lawn mowing when I’ll have some green to add to the layers of leaves and bedding and finally, finally get some real composting happening on the property. Instead of these random piles I have everywhere that seldom, if ever, get turned.

The chicken wire had rotted and we didn’t notice. When I went out across the back yard to bring some Sesame Noodles to the neighbors who recently had a new baby, I heard an incredible volume of rustling coming from the chicken tractor. They had busted out and were blissfully scratching in the dried leaves on the other side of the cage. Luckily they were so engrossed in their freedom, they didn’t really notice us corralling them and when we tipped up the bottom of the tractor, they all went right under. Chris cut new wire and attached it and now they’re on new ground with a fresh layer of straw and oats, some cracked corn the kids sprinkled for them, and I’m hoping they’ll start laying in earnest. This one egg every three days is just not going to cut it.

In other news, I had a conversation with a neighbor who happens to have worked for OSU extension up in Cuyohoga County, organizing community gardens in Cleveland. She offered to give me a hand if I need to do any grant writing. That same day we got another certified letter from the city about the senior village development. There will be another meeting the following week about an easement for the Residential 3 zoning, which calls for 30% open space with any building project. They’re looking to cut that in half to 15%. This could be a real opportunity for the city to put some sustainable building practices in place—to work on a model for land ownership, housing and community relationship building. My job this week is going to be to talk to everyone I can think of who might want to make this a pet project. I need to act fast because the first meeting is next Tuesday. People assure me that things in town move very slowly, but I don’t trust that.

We’re also talking to the homeowner who works for the housing developer who started this project five years ago. There are two lots still standing empty on the cul-de-sac and there has been zero interest in them for two years. He has made a proposal to the builder to put a playground/park on one lot to make up for the fact that the development will not be finished and the people who bought in with the promise of a community center and playground now have to drive to a park if they want to play like that (the yards are really too small). The other could be an excellent neighborhood garden. It’s wide open, graded, has water and electric. It would just need a shed and a faucet.

Of course, I also did a lot of thinking this weekend about the fact that most of these ideas I have will entail me being in a volunteer position. I really need to learn how to parlay this into for-profit work. I don’t need to get rich doing it, but I need to replace the paycheck I currently collect for my time in the cube farm.

More to say, but out of time. Must wake up the children and get ready for the day. Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

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I splurged recently on some new cookbooks because I hit a wall with my cooking repertoire this winter, and am bored senseless with my cooking library. I’ve wanted to bring Deborah Madison’s book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone into my kitchen for years now, but never wanted to fork over the $40. I ganked it on Amazon for $26 and I am so happy to hold that book in my own two hands. Produce season is almost upon us and this is the kind of book that I’ll be able to reach for when I come back from the garden with a basket full of whatever, look in the index for an ingredient, then choose between several simple, delicious recipes.

I did this the other night when I came home too pooped from a day of proofreading and mindless filing to stop at the grocery for some vegetables, even though I knew the coffers were just this side of empty (which I sorely wish my mind was right about now). I had pulled a jar of red lentils out of the cabinet the night before while searching for something else jammed in way behind it—a can of black olives for the pizza, I think. In classic Kelly form, I never put the lentils back in the cabinet and so there they sat when I walked into the messy kitchen, both glowing and glowering at me, huddled up with a dozen dirty glasses courtesy of the teenager who must always use a new glass for every drink no matter what. Not that I’m bitter about that fact or anything. Oh, no. Far be it from me.

So yeah, lentils. I remembered seeing a recipe for red lentil soup with lime while perusing the book that first day when I pulled it out of the Amazon box waiting for me on the front porch. I looked that up and did a quick fridge check. Yep. I had most of what it called for, so I got the lentils started. But first I changed into my fat pants.

Then I tried to figure out what to do with the two vegetables I had in any quantity: cauliflower and turnips (they of the I’m going to make another batch of pickled turnips this weekend purchase a month and a half ago). While flipping through the gratin recipes, I saw one for turnip and leek gratin with blue cheese, and one for cauliflower gratin. I love cauliflower mashed with blue cheese and knew I had a partial wedge of of that stuffed in the cheese drawer. I modified the turnip recipe (no leeks, added cauliflower, used less cream and I did end up running it under the broiler for a few minutes to crisp it up a bit).

The half head of lettuce torn into pieces and tossed with the last carrot, shredded and some garlic vinaigrette, and we had supper. Took about an hour and a half all told, and thirty minutes of that was just me poking around in the fridge hoping for more green. The boon was that I had a decent bunch of cilantro in there from last week’s shop and it wasn’t all black and slimy. That cilantro totally rocked the soup up a notch. No spinach, but I had a chunk of napa cabbage in there and I sliced that into very thin slivers and fried it up in butter, then added it to the soup. Also, no plain yogurt, but sour cream, which worked fine, though I think yogurt would have melded just a leetle bit better. Chris thought the soup tasted like something he would order in some exotic restaurant that he imagines must exist in another dimension. Sublime, I think he said. Man likes to be fed and when he talks all sexy with big words, I love to feed him.

The kids? Not so much. They hated it all. Too many sharp, strong flavors, I guess—a meal to put on the back burner for adult company. The kids will get pizza.

I love the fact that I have reached this level of confidence in the kitchen. It’s taken years of experimentation and scraping unfinished meals into the compost bucket to get to this point of freedom (not regularly, but you know, often enough to be uh…notable). Having good cookbooks has made all the difference in the world. And even more important, having friendships with other people who like to cook and like to talk about what they’re doing with their food that’s different and exciting.

I still have occasional dud meals, more this winter than at any time in my life since I first moved away from home. Let Chris tell you the story about my first independent, low-budget, starving student meatloaf sometime. Hoo boy. Let’s just say two pounds of cheap ground beef really shrinks under heat. We hungrily pulled that loaf pan out of the oven to find one and three quarter pounds of orange fat with a little quarter pound turd of not-quite-meat bobbing up and down in the middle of it. He still enjoys telling that one twenty one years later.

And because I can never buy just one thing on Amazon, I threw in three other books for good measure. But this post is long enough already. I’ll waste even more of your time another day to justify these purchases:

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning

Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick & Easy Indian Cooking

The Garden Primer Second Edition, by Barbara Damrosch

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Hoo boy, how did it get to Wednesday morning already? I meant to tell you about the seeds I finally started on Sunday, but I must have fallen down the rabbit hole again.

Lots on my mind right now as we wait for the family who thinks they might want to do a land contract with us to finish crunching their numbers and make up their minds. Chris is having lunch with the guy on Friday to talk dollar and time details. In the meantime, I’m in a heavy research and development mode. I need a plan. Let me tell you all what’s going on, it’ll help me to organize my thoughts and maybe some of you will have some suggestions for how I can move forward.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear around here how much I dislike spending the majority of my available time on this earth sitting in a beige/gray cubicle, under fluorescent lights, in front of a giant computer screen, doing mind-numbing, soul-sucking work that makes someone else rich and just helps me keep one nostril above water. I don’t really need to tell you any more about that. So I’ve been putting steps in place to hopefully transfer out of that debtors prison and into a more rewarding life of working from home. I’ve had a chance to work on some pretty cool projects, and I’ll be able to point you to them soon, they’re almost live.

But one thing has come crystal clear in this period of intense work at work and work at home in the evenings. I don’t want to sit in front of a computer all day, every day. And I need to stop distracting myself from the hard work of achieving my very real goals with all of this computer work. Part-time, yes. But all day? No. No. And no.

So what do I want to do? Food, garden, community. Grow food, teach people how to garden and build community. And I want to do it right here.

I’ve mentioned the acreage out back, right? The housing development that’s come to a screeching halt as the economy tanks and developers run out of money? Well, there are still five empty acres, starting behind my MILs property (where some of my garden beds are). It’s the land that the house we live in used to sit on before the owner sold off the greenhouse/nursery business and had the house moved to this location. There’s this gorgeous, old red maple and lots of perennials growing in the overgrown field. It’s a mess back there—dirt piles and boulders and downed trees—all going back to forest. It’s amazing how fast it grows up.

I’ve been thinking about that land since the day we looked at this house. I stood in my MIL’s back yard and looked out over the acres and pictured a whole lot of people busy growing food. I saw chicken tractors and kids and old folks and a little barn. Over the last two years (next month is 2 years from when we looked) I’ve wondered how to go about it all, but never spoken with anyone about it. The job keeps me so busy and jeeze oh man, it’s so much work just trying to build up our little homesteading act here.

But food prices are going through the roof and the land is just sitting there. I wonder. So I’ve started talking to people. And a whole lot of folks around here would be interested in a cooperative CSA program. We just need the land and some cash. No small order, that. We’re waiting to hear what the lot price is, but also found out that next week there’s a city meeting about the property. Another developer is hoping to put in either senior housing or apartments for students at the university, which is right over the hill.

I’ll be going to that meeting and I’m going to make an appointment to speak with one of the city council members who is a neighbor and has one of the most gorgeous urban gardens I’ve ever seen. I’m flying blind with my ideas and need to focus and take fast action.

If that land is not available, then maybe if it’s going to be a senior housing situation, the developer might be interested in donating part of the land, an acre or so, to a program that pairs the seniors with children in our community, growing food, flowers, herbs and relationships.

Since I began saying all of this out loud two weeks ago, my inbox has been inundated with articles about CSAs, urban farm and garden programs, sustainable food practices, food security and community. People have brought up wanting a CSA (the only 2 around here are full, with massive waiting lists). More and more people ask me what it takes to grow a garden in their yard and what they should focus on planting.

If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. Please bear with me as I figure out all of this stuff.

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The ice still clings to everything it touched and the stories of damage are starting to pile up. At the old house, the neighbor called to let us know that the whole hood and much of that entire region has been without power for almost 24 hours, and that the transformer and most of the power lines are on the ground by our house. I’m sure the basement is taking on water, but we don’t have anything stored down there anymore, so we’re just going to hope for the best and stay away until the weekend if they have the lines cleared up.

Also, one of our big oak trees lost a limb and it landed on our out-back neighbor’s brand new glass top patio table, shattering the glass and spraying it all over the back yard, and bending the table into a 4-legged V. So we’ll be buying a new table and chairs set, as well as paying to have some more tree-trimming done this spring. Thank goodness it didn’t hit their house, and it happened in the winter while everyone was safe and warm inside, not gathered around that table for a summer meal. Phew.

The potential better news is that we may have a buyer for the house—a land contract deal, but they have money to put down and good jobs. We’ll know more next week, but hey, if you’re feeling like you have some extra mojo to spare (I know, I keep begging your mojo, but I know all of those good vibrations have been building up into a wave and the wave is about to hit the shore, and my horoscope this month says this is it…this is the month the house will sell) thanks a bunch for sending some our way.

::sucks in air then apologizes for the really long sentence::

The also good news is that the storm didn’t discourage voters from turning out in record numbers for a primary in Ohio. While standing in line (for an hour) I overheard a vast majority of voters say that they are registered republicans but wanted to cast a democratic ballot. Several asked if they would be able to still vote republican in the general election. Spoilers abound, but that’s the game, right. So many lines get crossed, so many layers to so many issues, it’s all so hard to keep straight on top of the daily to-and-fro. But honestly, this is the first time in my adult life that I’ve felt anything other than deep cynicism. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still there too, but there’s also a vibration of encouragement, of dare I say hope? Well. I don’t know if I hope. Maybe I dream. But I played my part and cast my vote for Barack Obama, then slipped my way up the walk to the house and stayed put and warm for the rest of the night. Went to bed way before the results were in, with higher hopes than perhaps I should have had, but then, I’m seldom in the majority with anything I think or do. Especially in Ohio.

When I got home tonight, after a very long, very busy day at work, I grabbed the camera and skated around the yard to capture a few impressions of the storm.

I sure do look forward to having that barn up so we can get all of our tools and supplies under a roof. It’s a bummer to buy straw, then have the tarp blow away and have it ruined by the rain and ice, no matter how pretty it looks all bedazzled like this. As I walked around I counted more than 20 little piles of crap that need storage, and getting them under cover will certainly get rid of the hillbilly feel our property has taken on since we moved here. Things like chairs, rolls of fencing, extra windows, garden tools, bamboo poles, t-poles, stacks of empty cat litter buckets, hose reels, sleds, a seed spreader (ancient)—just to name a few. Cleaning it up and replacing those piles with plants will make me endlessly happy.

I can almost remember the feeling of this railing on the deck with the hot sun beating down on it, the warm smell of wood and grass and pollen in the air. Walking up from the garden with a warm colander full of beans and cherry tomatoes, maybe a wart-covered yellow crookneck and a stack of neat lettuce leaves and arugula balanced precariously on top, my bare feet slapping where those icy foot prints wait. The kids love to run up these two steps, across the deck, back down the other steps by the back door and then around to do it again. And again. Chasing, laughing, picking up dust and wearing themselves into a stupor that only a popsicle in the shade, swinging in the hammock, can cure.

I’m encouraged to remember that the spring is coming, that the ice may slow it down, but if I also slow down, come down out of my busy mind to look closely I can see that it’s best to just trust that the earth knows better what must come next—that she hasn’t forgotten. The sun is higher in the sky, maybe not high enough to melt this prismatic glaze, but high enough to awaken the senses and pull me out of my long winter slumber.

But not quite yet. Just a little more cold and shadow, just enough to make me bend into it so I can see what’s waiting.

* Steven Wright

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I don’t think I’ve ever been a very good listener, particularly with new people. My brain always has one ear turned to how it can latch on to some detail and then noodle it in a thousand ways, waiting for that inevitable pause into which I can thrust my own related (hopefully) thoughts. I doubt anybody I’ve met at a social gathering has walked away thinking, now that Kelly, she’s a really good listener. But I’m pretty sure more people than I (and they) care to recall have walked away knowing useless bits of my history like the time I waited on Judd Nelson, or the time the entire wait staff stampeded one another in the mad rush to get outside to pick Kate Hepburn up off of the sidewalk. Or that Fire Stix Jolly Ranchers and Mountain Dew were my favorite foods when I was 12. And that I was in labor with child the first for a month week.

I think I’m sick of myself. I wonder how people reinvent themselves? Do they start with something on the outside? Because I’m thinking that could be kind of fun. Would my thus far unsatisfied fascination with knit skirts and Frye boots be a step in the right direction?

Maybe if I feel absolutely confident in my body and convinced of myself I can learn how to be with people in a more genuine and present way. People like you. And you. And yes, definitely you. To learn how to not rush into connections in a bluster of me, to not just puncture a vein and spurt the story all over you in a river of images and feelings with no reference, no history. Hi, I’m Kelly and I’m a talkaholic. Maybe I can worry less that while you’re talking to me, my facial expressions are running away with themselves and revealing my inner insecure me. Is it weird that I want to discover the earnest listener inside of me? The one who hears all of the little details and instead of constructing her own story out of those pieces, stores them away as the pixels that redraw you in blooming color in her mind’s eye when you’re no longer there. I want to be the one who sits easy in her chair with soft arms and hands, eyebrows low and relaxed, mouth soft, not waiting or wanting for anything. Just being with you. Being easy with you.

But here…this is her counterpart, with arms crossed tensely across her belly. She’s not angry or holding or trying to block you out, she’s just trying to hide that protuberant tummy so her eyes don’t stray to it every five seconds. She hasn’t felt comfortable in her own skin for a bunch of years and she knows that fact creates a wall that not much passes through, not all the way. Maybe she worries there’s not enough room in there for you both. Even still, yes, she is listening—and no, not only so she can tell you what your storytelling has triggered inside of her own speeding mind. Though, as I think we’ve established…there is that.

When I first started blogging at Baggage Carousel back in 1998, it was for the love of stories—to be part of this burgeoning world of words and pictures, slices of past, present and future that people were sharing. I can’t believe it’s even true, but I feel like I’ve run out of stories, or have come up against the wall that has that sign on it that says: Do Not Enter. Or maybe it says: Enter At Your Own Risk. But there’s no disclaimer to indicate just what the risk might be and I don’t do well with that kind of uncertainty. All I know for certain is that I feel frustrated because I’m not expressing myself the way I want to anymore.

I love garden blogging and writing about food and my misadventures in the kitchen and in the soil. I don’t want to write much about the kids anymore because it just doesn’t feel like my story to tell and there are only so many ways I can be self-referential while recounting their escapades. And these things are only a part of me, not the whole of me and dammit all, it was a very long winter with no gardening whatsoever. I got in a serious rut with my cooking (pizza, pasta, beef stew, pizza, chicken soup, stir-fry, curry, grilled cheese, pizza, pasta, chicken soup, pizza). Hell, we even had frozen fish sticks one night. Yuck. I’m also in a rut with my writing—not just on the blog, but all across the spectrum. I guess I’m just burned out and so I’m looking at ways I can shake things up without walking away because I don’t want to not blog. I just want to find my way back to the stories.

I’m thinking about the reason I titled my blog Her Able Hands in the first place — because I was buried in my novel (no, I haven’t touched it in the last year) that I had given a working title Able Hands and because I was doing a lot of cooking and handwork and raising kids and noticing that my hands were always working on something and how good that felt. I was looking for a new outlet online because I was so tired of the baggage that went along with the first blog. Now here I am again with old stories looking for a new framework, knowing that I don’t want to go changing the whole damblam thing again. So stay tuned, I’m cooking up a little project that I’ll announce in another day or two, as soon as I can get a decent photo to go with it, and I sincerely hope you’ll all participate. That’s right…you. And you. And yes, you too.

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