These days I mostly try not to write. My life is so full of work and family and weeding. But every now and then, my brain starts to itch and the only way to scratch that itch is writing. This is where you will find my most recent scratchings.
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Grow More Strawberries!
Strawberry plants grow like weeds. But getting a good harvest of berries is another story….
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Strawberry Season
Homegrown strawberries are the epitome of thrift = thrive. Although strawberry plants are one of the easiest in the garden, practically a weed, getting a reliable harvest of berries from them year after year takes a lot of work. In fact I think they are one of the most labor intensive crops I grow. Which is why truly fresh, ripe strawberries are so expensive to buy. At the farmer’s market I would have to spend $3 for one tiny little pint of berries, which just one of my kids could demolish in less than 2 minutes. There’s no way I…
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Bloom
Early summer is rose season. I’ve always loved wild roses, and shortly after we moved to Eugene, I planted a Nootka rose. Rosa nootkana is the same species that grew in Alaska, the wild rose of my childhood, and it’s simple, fragrant pink flowers make me deeply happy. It grows about twice as big here in Oregon though, to almost eight feet tall, and spreads like a weed which also makes me happy. Harvesting the petals is pure joy. Standing out in the sunshine amid a lazy bee buzz, pulling warm velvety petals away from stames of spun gold, all the…
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Creating Abundance at Home
I’ve been thinking a lot about abundance lately, and the skill of thrift. The phrase “thrifty housewife” is stuck in my brain, and it feels like a solution somehow, or at least a balm for the bruises of today. Thrift can mean many things, but in my mind it means making more out of less, using skill and care to turn what might otherwise be scarcity into plenty. A stingy housewife focuses on the lack and hoards what she can get. A frugal housewife is careful with what she has, stretching it to meet her family’s needs. But the thrifty…
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Confession
Written in 2020, about a month into the Covid quarantine. These are strange times. So very strange, that I am still trying to understand just how strange they really are, or will be. I myself do not do at all well with uncertainty. When question marks crop up in my own life, I clamor to answer them with a period. As I have gotten older I have realized just how very anxious uncertainty makes me, and how intensely I crave predictability. Let’s just say, this year promises to be challenging for me. However, in the midst of all the…
calamity jane 