HOLIDAY GARDEN [APRES CHRISTMAS] 2018...

 I am digging back into the studio after the holidays, 

as seen with the pile of garden cuttings 

impulsively spray-painted 

silver, for a decorative "arrangement" now languishing 

while I ponder being safely rid of the leavings...

T'won't compost & probably ought not to be burned. 

I did not think that one out very well...

Solstice has long been the heart-fully factual event for us. 

This year we attended a lively party with a large group of

 good friends... Enjoying much fine conversation! 

On our way home we walked the path around a large pond 

where one Islander gifted the night's magic... 

a millennia of flames... luminaria 

flickering harmony with misty light of full moon! 

Then home to our own lamps for a long recuperative sleep!

Thus Christmas was happily celebrated quietly. Just the two of us at home here at Soundcliff... a very rare thing! The first time in many years that we have not been traveling, either to spend time with family... or seeking to avoid any additional rush of festivities after the period when the Island's Studio Tour absorbs so much of the calendar with the hard work of cleaning & preparing for two intense weekends of "showtime"... ringing in, ringing out & ringing up the bells' business!

We've tried escaping to various parts of the Orient, only to discover the universality of Santa & various versions of decorated trees, even if oftentimes they are more entertaining than in this country. So it is probably easiest to just sit tight & ignore the fuss where we have the most control! 

Our weather, while quite wet, has been mild, so the garden has continued to produce & bloom. I picked greens & salads for the meals to which we treated ourselves. Stephen made a big batch of his specialty crab cakes. There was fresh salmon & ahi for the succession of nights... sweet times!

The reliable gift of produce in this season is Mashua, the starch crop I've grown since learning about it at the Mother Garden in Sonoma County, when I lived in northern California 25 years ago. The abundant foliage climbs high all summer, giving its spicy nasturtium zip as addition to salads, but in late autumn it develops happy blossoms, signaling that its roots are making the tubers for which it is generally raised by the Peruvian gardeners who more famously gave us potatoes.

 

These beautiful organic packages of intense flavor can be eaten raw... I like them thin sliced like winter "radishes" to make toothsome crispy zippity-do-da salad nibbles... 

but are more usually served as a cooked vegetable. Sauteed or better roasted, 

both the flavor & texture soften & sweeten rather ephemerally.

 The hexagonal raised bed produced Trout's Back lettuces & Baby Bok Choy...

The Wasabi Arugula blossoms went in the salad to accompany the Ahi well!

Pineapple Sage blossoms color holiday salads festive...

The small Camellia started blooming to add more red to our view.

One stalwart patch of pansies held-on!

 I brought the Abutilon into the studio to protect 

& display its bell-inspiration during the show...

But this fuchsia made a lovely small show 

spiting difficulties from lack of light & temperature.

I've been celebrating the small mountain of cedar sawdust which covers the new hugelkulture Tom helped build during a week of Indian summer... an experiment in re-sculpting the contour of one large section of the garden from "sagging swale" into a more visually sturdy "rib". A long term project!

Reminding the sweet welcome in/out my plane window as we came home from Thanksgiving in Florida. Tahoma is our beautiful mother mountain... we watch her from Soundcliff's windows every day she isn't hiding in the clouds with which she dresses for her constantly evolving fashion!

These Ibis & Pelicans joined us for lunch at a dockside restaurant one afternoon down there...

Reminding me of the sculpture hiding silhouetted behind the mylar sheet we use as a sun shade in our bedroom window... not needed often during this dark time, but useful when we are journaling & reading on rare enough mornings desiring celebration of any such intrusions of light returning!

Early Bird Blessings For this New Year!

NORTH WETS, SOUTH KEY SUN & NETTLE SOUP...

Creative work at the wax desk has been more difficult to establish this winter. I began the the long dark hours of traditional deep design time in the studio suffering some bizarre symptoms of a fine case of shingles which tantalized the right side of my forehead & that eye with nervy sensations suggesting I'd blown a fuse in my aura or had ants walking on my eyeball... not a state conducive to my best concentration!

Our wet was unusually cold & we had too much snow. Of necessity I let myself be slow. I elected to stay home from events I would ordinarily have attended with Stephen. It furnished excuses with explanations I can rarely find better to secure the hermetic space so essential to my preparation toward such work. I know well that non-social time is so foreign & frightening to some that they simply are incapable of realizing the mirroring wealth of true solitude. I'm happily omnivorous on that score as well!

I knew there was a break scheduled, ready or not, to meet him in Florida after his Journalism That Matters Conference in Saint Petersburg several weeks ago. [See his blog for that story: http://ssilha.blogspot.com/] for a week visiting Mother Helen. His brother Mark also joined us for some great & welcome sunny beach time on Long Boat Key, near Sarasota, where they all have spent winter holidays for some 40 years...

Of course, the calendar didn't respect that I was just finally beginning to see some progress on the waxes & would happily have stayed put to continue working in the studio, but there was this gift of a ticket...

Happily this year we scored with the weather department & I brought home a bit of a tan line! It's rusting as I write, even though I'm happy to be back waxing, so ultimately I wasn't ready to come home... such ambivalent signs indicate having had a good vacation.

The social life continued with a weekend pairing back-to-back overnight guests for whom I felt inspired to cook. Still, I managed to steal carving time in useful increments, finding some of the balance so essential inside the complexities of the life I choose. I celebrated spring by impulsively going out between Saturday morning's rain squalls to pick nettles for that soup, which has become a tradition using those weeds from our slope. I varied the recipe this time, gaining kudos from both Stephen & our guest, Kana. The original recipe follows, although I used dried Shitake mushrooms in the recent version...

Erica Meade's Nettle Stew
1 large sweet white onion chopped finely
5 large cloves garlic, chopped or pressed
4 med sized Yukon Gold potatos diced
1 large bag fresh picked nettle tops
3 tbs. quality cooking oil
aprox 2 qt water
1/4 - 1/2 c white miso
1/4 - 1/2 c high quality sesame tahini

heat oil in large soup pot. add onion, garlic,
potatoes. saute until tender. add nettles.
simmer covered for 15 min or until nettles
are limp and have no sting.
boil remaining water in tea kettle
and add to pot. in mixing bowl mix white miso,
tahini and 1c. water. whisk until
lumps are gone.3-5 min before serving
add the tahini/miso
mixture to the pot. do not boil.

[I never measure, so
all measures are approximations.]

The HUMMING BIRD wax has evolved considerably in detail & I've got the clapper mostly carved as well. I'm still feeling quite slow against various impediments. There won't be a bumper crop of bells this year...

To attempt capturing gesture as both solidity & whir is proving to be a challenge...