Monthly Archives: August 2020

Pesto

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This past week’s big garden project was making pesto. I’m not an expert on preserving food from the garden, but discovered that while oregano and thyme were easy to dry, things like chives and basil didn’t work for me to dry. But making pesto and freezing it has been great. We just finished using the last of our pesto from last summer, and it was time to make it again.

So here is my very loose recipe for anyone who might want to try it. First of all, cut big bunches of stalks of basil, parsley, and chives from your garden. And really, any combination of these will work, though I think of basil as the primary ingredient of pesto.

Basil & chives

Basil & Chives & Olive oil

Pinch the basil leaves off the stalks and place in a salad spinner–you can wash and dry them in the spinner. Do the same for parsley–I just cut the leafy parts off the stalks. Our garden is organic, but rinsing deals with any random bugs or dry leaves or other impurities that might be attached.

Parsley

Parsley in the salad spinner.

Chives can be rinsed briefly, and cut with a knife into couple inch lengths. Once these are ready, start with a blender. First, put in 1 cup of olive oil, and then reserve 1/2 cup for use as needed to keep the blender stirring easily. Add the basil and blend, add the parsley and blend, add the chives and blend. Or do this in any order you like. I also added 4 Tablespoons of lemon juice, salt and peper, 1 clove garlic, and some garlic scapes. I don’t do well with too much garlic, but you might want to add more if you like it.

Finally, I added one cup of raw hazelnuts. Traditionally, people use pine nuts, but they are more expensive and since we have hazelnut bushes, it seemed fitting, though our bushes haven’t produced any nuts yet. Later, when we use the pesto, we will add parmesan cheese.

Finally, I line a baking pan with wax paper, and put the pesto mixture on this paper in small lumps–like cookies. Place the whole pan in the freezer until the mixtures have frozen, and then I fold them up in the wax paper and store in freezer bags.

Pesto "cookies"

Pesto “cookies”

Through the winter, we take out the pesto cookies and use as many as we need with baked chicken, with zucchini noodles, with anything that could use a bit of bright flavor. I ended up needing to make two batches because I had so much basil. And the basil plants will grow back again, so we could make more later on. So much fun.

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Unraveling

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Waking in the night again and trying to make meaning of everything. Dangerous. I think I must be more of a writer than a gardener. Needing so much to make meaning of it all. But I’ve had a hard time writing lately. I can’t seem to find any words for what has been happening in our world. But I am sitting here in the sleepless dawntime trying to see what might come out if I put my fingers on the keyboard anyway.

I have been a protester most of my life: peace activist, justice activist, feminist activist, anti-racist activist. Perhaps ironically, given the current state of Christianity in our country, it was the teachings of Jesus that first opened my eyes to the problems in how we were living in the United States. I began to see the cracks in the American “building,” who was left out, who was pressed down, who was held under. And on the other side, I was imagining how we might live if we followed our deep values, if we cared for each other, if we cherished all of us. Sometimes I even got the chance to put that imagination into practice.

As an activist, I certainly had moments when I wished for revolution, wished for the whole unjust system to come crashing down. Of course I did, awake to all that was broken in our country. But that awareness meant I also didn’t pay as much attention to the parts that did work for the good of the whole. And now, it seems those are the parts that might come crashing down, might be unraveled. Who could have guessed the Postal Service would come under attack? I never imagined that we might need to defend the Postal Service. Especially now when we rely on it more than ever because of COVID 19.

We know that Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are also under attack. I feel vulnerable to that personally, because I now rely on Social Security and Medicare to survive in my older age, since I am no longer able to work.  I think Social Security is about 65% of my income, because I am lucky enough to also have a small retirement annuity. But according to SSA statistics, among elder Social Security beneficiaries, 21% of married couples and about 45% of unmarried persons rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income.  These are not perfect systems by any means. But they at least acknowledge the common reality that we all might grow old, we all face vulnerability to illness, we all need each other.

The thing is, right before our eyes, those in power are bankrupting the best parts of our country for their own personal gain. They are undoing the very idea of government’s purpose to uphold the common good.  Will there be anything left when they are done?

I am reminded of how, in the Work That Reconnects, Joanna Macy talks about the Great Unraveling, “the on-going derangement and collapse of biological, ecological, economic, and social systems,” caused by business as usual in an industrial growth society. It seems like 2020 has become the year of the great unraveling, what with the pandemic exacerbating everything. (And novel viruses are related to ecological habitat destruction as well–but that is another story.) However, this is not really a new phenomenon.

The Great Unraveling may be more apparent today, because of the accelerating rate of change and technological advances in communication, but the living systems of Earth have been unraveling for generations. Under colonial expansion and rule, indigenous, brown, black, and impoverished communities have carried the weight of the unraveling for centuries.

So I don’t know how to make meaning of all of it, how to respond to all of it. I feel the unraveling all around me. Perhaps I have been privileged enough to escape the worst of it before now, and in fact am still privileged enough to have a home, food, even air conditioning in this heat wave we’ve been having in Maine. But I still feel the unraveling all around me.

I usually like to include a photo in my posts, and this is the best I could do this morning: Back in June, the walkway to our front door started to collapse. When I took it apart, and lifted the pavers that had sunk down, there was a huge empty space beneath them. The foundation of the path had disappeared.

Broken walkway This is how it feels in our country right now too. The path crumbling beneath our feet. The foundations of common wellbeing disappearing. Well actually, it feels much worse, but I’m stretching for a metaphor here. And besides, this hole made it difficult for the mail carrier to reach our mailbox, so that’s a link.

Eventually, the walkway was fixable. I finally purchased some paver sand “base” and next layer sand (with curbside pickup), and then this past weekend, I dug out the loose sand, refilled the foundation under the hole, leveled it off with sand, and put the pavers back into place. It was hard work, but doable. Can anyone repair the breach in our country’s foundations?

Garden Lessons

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Today is the Celtic celebration of Lammas, the early grain harvest festival. I’ve always connected it to the early corn harvest–the time to start eating local corn on the cob in the places I have lived. Our little group that celebrates earth rituals together hasn’t met since COVID, and I feel sad not to see them today. But this morning I was able to bring some zucchini and kale to the Resilience Hub, where a volunteer was collecting produce from gardeners to share with immigrant families in the Portland area. That truly felt like the best way to celebrate this holiday–sharing the surplus of our own harvest for those who need it, in the spirit of reciprocity.

Myke behind the zucchini

Myke standing behind the hugelkultur zucchini! Photo by Margy Dowzer

Lately, I’ve been feeling rather overwhelmed by the gardening endeavor. Take note of my photo behind the hugelkultur zucchini–you almost can’t see me at all. There is watering to do each morning, and I’m harvesting raspberries, the last of the snap peas, chives, zucchini, and kale. Oh–and one cucumber so far.  I learned how to freeze zoodles (zucchini noodles) so that we can save some for the future. I am also freezing most of the raspberries and chives. So all that is wonderful, but still a lot of work.

Added to that, however, has been discovering that each new plant I add to the garden seems to come with its own ecosystem of insect pests and diseases. I was used to Japanese beetles, and shaking them from the leaves of trees into soapy water. I was used to picking off cabbage worms from the kale and squishing them. But then I learned about the squash bug and the squash vine borer. I don’t see any significant damage yet on the zucchini plants, but I’ve seen the bright red and black flying parent of the grubs that can burrow into the stems. This morning, there were some zucchini leaves with powdery mildew. Another yuck.

Now we also seem to have grasshoppers eating the carrot tops and the kale–except for a new variety of kale that I got from a friend, which is too prickly for my taste. (That is ironically maddening! Why don’t you eat that one, grasshoppers?) I did some research and if I wanted I could try garlic spray, or flour on the leaves. But right now I’m just hoping they don’t eat enough to wipe out all the plants. Also, I put more bird seed in the feeder in hopes that some of those birds might also eat grasshoppers.  But there is so much to know, and so many possible pitfalls, even in the context of our organic permaculture polyculture systems.

So like I said, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by all of it lately. I was thinking back to my original intention with this land–I wanted to restore our mutually beneficial connection to the earth, via this small piece of the earth we are lucky to live upon. And what I am learning is that it is not so easy–I’ve lost so much of the knowledge of plants and ecosystems that my ancestors might have had in the places they called home. I am sure there are long-time gardeners who find a way to learn what they need from the practice of gardening–but I am coming to it late in life, and I can feel that it could take a whole lifetime to become adept at working with ecosystems to nurture wholeness and balance.

It’s not all flowers and romance, this relationship with earth. It’s crabgrass and ticks and mosquitos and so many unknown insects, (beneficial or destructive?), not to mention diseases, viruses, bacteria.  Some aspects of earth are not so easy to love. It’s invasive species and drought and climate change. It’s beyond what I can learn and I’m discovering the limits of my capacity.  So I come to the garden like a prayer: sometimes with awe, sometimes with gratitude, but often with a cry for help, often with a deep painful longing for all that has been lost, often with loneliness. If I can pay close enough attention, finally, I come to the garden with surrender, surrender to this larger dance of life of which I am only a very small movement.