A Final Garden Update: Potatoes, Oh My!

I've had a blog idea brewing in my head for two weeks now, but I haven't quite got to a place where I'm able to put my thoughts into words. For now, I wanted to share with you the final update of the year from my garden. It was a wonderful year. Here's a tunnel view of part of my garden:

 

A lot of what you can see above were volunteer plants, like the parsley, nasturtium (yellow flower), and alyssum (white flower) in the foreground. Below, you can see the huge stalks of cosmos that grew WAY taller than I expected. You can also see my bean patch and the potato foliage in the center right of the photo.  

 

I spent about 30 minutes digging potatoes yesterday and harvested a wonderful amount of Red Norlands and Rose Finn Apple and Russian Banana fingerlings. It was so much fun to dig around in the garden in the nippy, sunshiney fall air and pull up hidden treasures from the dirt: rose-tinted and golden yellow fingerlings and bold red potatoes.

Here are the potatoes spread out on newspaper in my basement to "cure" for a couple days. Curing potatoes helps them keep better in a cool dark place in the winter. I thought this picture was funny because it looks so much like a science experient! I can't wait to expand my science experiment into the kitchen...yum, chemistry!

 



 

I tried to take the picture below to show how tall my cosmos are. You can sorta tell. :)

 

I thought the texture of the petals on this calendula were beautiful. The fringed edges almost remind me of a lion's mane.

 

I was in my garden to harvest today for perhaps the last time this season. Each night, the temperature dips down a little farther. The heat in my house has finally ticked on, and my bed has three layers of blankets. The trees are starting to tint crimson and gold. I picked all my green tomatoes today to try ripening them inside. I cut all the blossoms left on my zinnias and snapdragons and added to them nasturtium, cosmos, and black-eyed Susan blooms in two Mason jar bouquets. The simple beauty of consistent flower bouquets in my house for the past three months has been a particular joy. I love that my garden can be a place of combined beauty, utility, and wonder. I pray I can take the wonder and beauty of creation into the hunkered-down winter months until the winds of change bring us the new life and green stubble of spring.

 

Thanks for enjoying my garden with me this year!

In the Thick of Lent

It's funny to me that spring is at once bursting with promise and notoriously lean. The bursting-with-promise part is easy to imagine as spring bulbs begin to pop up everywhere. However, the notoriously lean part only occurred to me after reading (or re-reading) one of my favorite non-fiction books, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. The second-to-last chapter in Kingsolver's book about eating locally with her family for a year is entitled "Hungry Month: February-March." She writes:

"January is widely held to be the bugbear of local food, but the hungriest month is March, if you plan to see this thing through. Your stores are dwindling, your potatoes are sending pale feelers out into the void, but for most of us there is nothing new under the sun of muddy March, however it might intend to go out like a lamb. A few spring wildflowers, maybe, but no real eats. Our family was getting down to the bottom of our barrel" (322).

She goes on to extol the wonders of the chest freezer, but I won't go into that here. :)

When I take my almost daily walks up to Whitworth's campus, it doesn't look like spring will ever come. The grass is dank and yellowed and it's hard to imagine it will ever be lush and green or that the trees will ever have blossoms and leaves. If you really do live off the land and what you have to eat is all in your freezer and root cellar, you have to be creative with what you have left. The root veggies of winter are wrinkled and woody and the asparagus, lettuce, and spinach of spring are only just beginning. It's an awkward, in-between time.

I'm definitely in the thick of my Lenten discipline. We're already four weeks from Ash Wednesday, but we're still two-and-a-half weeks from Easter. For one deprived of sugar on a daily basis, Easter seems especially distant. (As I write, my housemate is making double chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. Really? Is this fair?!) If I'm honest with myself, I am longing for Easter, but I also like that Easter feels distant and that my deprivation weighs on me and temptation surrounds me. These are the necessary and even, dare I say, good rigors of Lent. I love that the Church Year acknowledges the times in the course of a normal human life that are in limbo. It's not winter and not yet spring. It's not Christmas and not yet Easter. Primroses on racks outside Fred Meyer and royal purple crocuses are the only harbingers of spring.

That makes me wonder about the harbingers of Easter. When we look to Jesus' life and ministry, I would say baptism, temptation, cross, and grave. The road ahead of us to Easter is Lenten and is so very like this time between winter and spring. Where there is life after Easter and spring, we see only death during Lent. Yellowed grass and gnarled trees. Temptation and deprivation. Sin and selfishness.

But the great news about Easter is that it radically changes everything, and it's not just the appearance of things that change. It's not just that the grass becomes green and lush and the trees bud and the flowers bloom. It's not just that I can once again eat cookies and ice cream. It's that our very nature changes.

"We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ...for when we died with Christ [in baptism] we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him" (Romans 6:6-8).

Temptation gives way to victory. Darkness becomes light. Death leads to life. And, best of all, the crucified Christ becomes the Risen Christ.

January's Getting to Me

I heard radio announcers say earlier this week that Monday was supposed to be the lowest emotional day of the winter. Christmas is over, credit card bills are arriving in mailboxes, the days are short, the sky is gray, and spring is still months away. I don't usually suffer from the winter blues given my rather obsessive appreciation of the seasons, but January caught up to me this week.

In weeks previous, I've had plenty to keep me occupied, friends from college visiting, Owl City songs, and discovering a delicious pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe being the chief pleasures. However, reality started to catch up to me this week. Two of my housemates are moving out in the next couple weeks and we don't have new housemates lined up (partly due to my neglient procrastination). This certainly brings an increased financial burden; however, it's the lack of companionship I'm particularly mourning this week. One housemate especially has been a good friend for over five years and made my transition to Whitworth as a freshman infinitely easier and more fun. I pondered this reality--the soon-to-be lack of companionship reality--as I walked to my car after work this week under a steel-gray sky.

On Thursday night, I came home from work feeling noticeably tired. The rest of the week, I had been taking walks in the evenings around the neighborhood, but I simply didn't want to walk on Thursday evening. Instead, I ate my leftover Caramelized Red Onion, Prosiutto, and Goat Cheese pizza and watched Northanger Abbey. On Friday, I was home by 3:30 PM and knew I needed to take a walk to take advantage of the daylight. I hadn't had anything planned outside of work this week, which was refreshing for the introvert in me, but I was getting to be a little too introspective for my own good. I needed a fresh perspective on life and walking seems to be good for that.

I called my parents, to whom I often speak when on walks, but they were about to go out for a walk themselves. I wavered briefly in my resolve, but shook off my hesitation, jammed my feet into my boots and set off. In the daylight, I love walking in the large, hilly, open space behind Whitworth known as the Back 40. I trudged through the snow at the beginning of the walk, disgruntled and sulky. But the more I walked and breathed in the vibrant fresh air, the more relaxed I became. The open space of the Back 40, uncluttered by houses and trees, the nippy air, the crunching snow all did something to untangle my thoughts and soothe my rumpled spirit.

The funny thing about walking by myself is that I seldom think about anything profound. I don't usually have epiphanies about personal problems or take advantage of the time to pray for friends and family as they come to mind. Walking is a way to just be. In fact, the only epiphanies I usually have involve God.

I walked farther yesterday than I have in a while. I walked up the hill to Whitworth, through the campus, and came back down the other side of the Back 40, a distance of two miles. On my way across the upper Back 40 to start my descent into the neighborhood, I was suddenly struck by the difference in perspective from the top of the hill. The slushy mess of snow on the streets below faded, and I could even see a hint of blue sky. At the time, I didn't connect my walk to any spiritual revelation, but as I think back on it now, it seems that the change in perspective from the top of the hill was most striking because I could see more clearly where I had been before on my walk.

In the midst of the grayness of January and the unsettled roommate situation, my walk gave me a gift. It gave me the perspective to see that I have the choice to trust that at some point in the future, I will be able to see from the mountaintop what I couldn't see in the valley. This perspective, while it doesn't make me particularly happy or change the reality of my situation, does give me hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to have in the slushy cold of January.

Autumn

Autumn is here. I went on a walk/run after work today and it was cold enough to need a sweatshirt and warm enough to wear shorts and sandals. I've noticed that Spokane fall air smells dry and sweet, as if the golden autumn sun could impart a scent. The world takes on new depth and perspective.

In my long walks, when my thoughts are free and untethered, I connect the seasons to different life stages. Perhaps because fall is the transition from summer to winter, I connect it to a person moving from one life stage to the next. Like transitions in life, leaving summer behind is bittersweet. But fall, like a transition, is also lovely in its own right. Though we leave good things behind, the transition itself is worthwhile, too. With God's grace, I come to a better knowledge of myself in times of transition.

Women from my church meet once a month on a Tuesday evening to enjoy two hours together. Last night, we met for a wonderful dinner and time of sharing. The discussion leader read a list of words aloud, and we each took five minutes to share which word we identified with most at the present time. Most people identified with one of two words: loss and belonging.

The word I chose was transition, but as I reflected, I realized that the word "transition" for me encompasses both loss and belonging. On my walk today, I headed up the hill behind my house to Whitworth's campus. Two years ago, I belonged here. I lived, worked, ate, and played with friends here. I walked, talked, and struggled here. I marveled and anticipated here. But though the campus is still familiar, I don't belong there in the same way anymore. I belong to the tenuous world of adulthood. Tenuous because I'm still trying to figure out how it works.

There is sometimes a sense of loss, too. But only sometimes. Not because I'm not happy with life now, but rather because I can never go back to being an undergraduate student. A chapter in my life has closed and though it can be revisited in memory, it can never be re-lived.

Several of the women last night visited states over the summer where they had previously lived. Each one saw family members and old friends and felt that the visit had renewed the abiding, albeit long-distance, connections. One woman reflected, "When I was in Colorado, I realized that though I still belong with my friends and family there, I no longer belong to the place. It was a freeing feeling."

Her comment resonated with others in the room, and now that I think back on it, that's exactly how I feel about Whitworth. Though I belong with the people who are still at Whitworth, I no longer belong to Whitworth as a place. My daily life doesn't revolve around the school. And honestly, that's a freeing feeling. On Sunday, someone asked me if I missed being a student. My honest answer was, "No." There are things I miss about being a student, but overall, I'm savoring this time of transition between being a child and being an adult. With God's grace in this time of transition, I am coming to a better knowledge of myself.

Fall inspires me to think about these things. My life takes on new depth and perspective in the fall. Does yours? How?

Three Weekend Photos

I will post more about my family trip to take my younger sister to college soon, but I wanted to get in a couple photos just to give you a taste of what it was like.

We drove down to California on two different days.

We may or may not have been going crazy by the end!

 



 

 On Thursday night, we spent time walking around Azusa Pacific's east

and west campuses. It was a beautiful California summer evening.

 

 This is an instagram picture from the Candela service on Friday night,

a traditional part of Azusa's Freshman Orientation.We held our lit candles aloft

and proclaimed that the light and love of God faithfully penetrates a dark world.

 

 

 

This time of September is, without fail, a time of change and transition. Even if you're not in school or connected with those who are, there's still the subtle shift from summer to autumn. I was baking cookies this afternoon and stepped out on my deck for a moment. I was struck by the cool warmness (or warm coolness) of the air and how the sun had changed from hot and penetrating to golden and mellow. I'm excited for fall, but sad to see summer come to an end.

 

How about you? Are you excited for fall? Are there changes in your life that are bittersweet?