Mulberries, again...

Today I made a horrible discovery. One of the best mulberry trees in my neighbourhood has been cut down, in its prime.

I'm so disgusted. I know why it happened; it was dropping mulberries onto some ugly old muscle cars that were being worked on or fixed or left to die in the parking lot where the mulberry tree had the misfortune to grow. This is something that happens a lot in the city; productive fruit trees get cut down all the time because they are "messy" even though there are lots of people in this city who can't afford to buy fruit. I know some of them; sometimes I am one of them.
According to Canada's "food guide", we are all supposed to be eating something like 5 servings of fruit every day. Hmmm. I don't know anyone who eats that much, except maybe during mulberry season when fruit is plentiful and free for those who want it.

This especially galls me when I think about how we are inevitably coming to the end of this time of cheap oil and year-round cheap produce. If we had any sense, we'd be learning about which local "weeds" are good eating, which local fruits are plentiful and nutritious, when to harvest local nuts, and then passing this knowledge on to our kids. Instead, we're spraying herbicides on our "weeds" and cutting down old orchards. We're teaching kids that trees are messy nuisances that need to be cleaned up before they spill their fruits onto our cars. What's wrong with us, anyway?

I'm lucky because my parents were both raised during the depression, and both grew up essentially on farms. When I was a kid, we ate dandelion salad, ritualistically, every spring. We went mushroom hunting on the May long weekend, and found lots of delicious morels. We ate apples, pears, plums and grapes from the trees and vines that grew in the orchard behind our house. We ate fiddleheads and mayapples and we learned to forage responsibly. In the fall we picked up the walnuts and butternuts that fell from the trees and we husked them and cured them in our basement. And sometime around Christmas time, my dad painstakingly cracked them and made black walnut fudge. And it was DIVINE.

This made a great enough impression on me that foraging is still a big part of my life. We eat a lot of foraged foods in my house. (Thank you, mom and dad! Thank you, Gaia!)

My dad died in the spring of 2008, at dandelion salad time, about a month before the first morels appeared. But a couple of winters before that, as my own black walnuts cured on the basement floor, I called him and got some of his fudge secrets. Then Rob and I made a great, smooth, creamy black walnut fudge and sent a chunk out to Victoria for my folks. They called us to tell us how good it was.

Mulberries are an excellent source of vitamin C, high in bioflavonoids and fibre, and low in calories. They are sweet, juicy and delicious. Their fruit doesn't ripen all at once, so that one tree's bounty can be enjoyed for a few weeks running. The "red" mulberry is native to Southern Ontario; songbirds enjoy it's fruits, it has few pests and the wood is hard and straight-grained. I wish we would plant more of these pretty little trees, instead of systematically removing them from our cities.

Mulberries & Bicycles

Both Rob and I have a complicated relationship with mulberries. You might even say a sort of a love-hate relationship.

There are quite a few mulberry trees in this area. Most of them are black; some are white. White mulberries are not actually white, but have a mauve cast to them and purplish stippling. When it comes to flavour, they have less character than the black mulberries, which are a deep, nearly black, purple. They stain a dark purplish blue and they stain readily. They are sweet, juicy and full of vitamin C. They can be a bit insipid but it is easy to eat a lot of them. Perhaps I should say it is easy for ME to eat a lot of them. *Normal* people, like Rob, get tired of eating mulberries after about five minutes. (By normal, I mean not completely obsessed with food.)
Unfortunately for him, he has very long arms, which means that he is the very best person to pick mulberries with, because he can reach the high branches, loaded with fat, luscious fruits, and pull them low enough for me to pick the berries off. So when he is ready to go, I am still clamoring for more and begging him to reach "that branch, up there, with the really big ones on it!"

One day in June of 2005, Rob and I rode our new bicycles across town and stopped at a couple of mulberry trees where we stood picking, talking and eating. Rob likes to say that we "went innocently 'round the mulberry bush" and when we came around the other side, Rob's new Brodie bicycle had been stolen. Mine was still lying where I left it. (I am about five feet tall; only a dwarf would steal my bike.)

This particular bike eventually came back to Rob, or rather some parts of it did... he had moved on by then and got another bicycle, which was also stolen, but that is another story.

Anyway, I believe that this incident has permanently poisoned Rob's relationship to foraged fruit. For a couple of years after the "mulberry bush" incident, even the word "mulberry" would elicit a visible wince and he still gets an anxious, furtive look in his eye if I suggest that we stop at a mulberry tree. The painful loss of his much loved bicycle will forever be inextricably linked to free fruit, to sweet, juicy little mulberries.

I still have my little DeVinci bike and I still stop at mulberry trees whenever I ride anywhere in June. But I usually do this by myself. (In fact, I suspect that Rob will actually detour in order to avoid passing certain mulberry trees. But even if this is so, who could blame him?)

Today, I stopped at a nearby tree and ate as many mulberries as I could reach. Many more of them were squashed under my feet as I picked; the ripe ones fall and cover the ground where they form a blue-black mash. The fruits are very soft.
I had been at home for more than an hour today when I found an intact mulberry on the washroom floor; I believe it must have stowed away in my hair. I didn't notice it fall. Last Saturday I found a whole, perfect, white mulberry on the driver's seat of my car. How did it get there? I think it must have tucked itself away in a shirt cuff, or perhaps in my hair, while I picked, then arranged itself on my seat when I wasn't looking.
I am starting to think the mulberries have something to tell me, about secrecy or trust; that they have a message for me and are trying to convey it. Perhaps if I keep on picking and eating, it will eventually come clear.

Me and the Beans

This year, for the first time in many years, I have a real vegetable garden. In fact, two gardens. One is my community plot and the other is my dry bean garden at Karen's place.
I discovered in the process of creating these gardens, that I have something of a bean obsession. I kept finding myself at the library, looking at vegetable books (the bean section...) or online doing bean research... or calling people on the phone to talk about beans... (this last is significant because I loathe the telephone and avoid talking on it whenever possible.) Anyway, I was not able to find all of beans that I wanted to plant but I did find some of them.

Here is a list of the beans I am currently growing:

Rattlesnake (pole) I was obviously attracted to the name of this bean.
Northeaster (pole) A variety bred to do well in cool, wet environs... also supposed to be delicious. Sometimes we have a cool wet summer here.
Tongue of Fire (bush) Again, what a great name. Rumoured to be from Tierra del Fuego, a place I visit in my dreams.
These are in my community garden. The pole beans are for eating green, or as snap beans; the bush bean is best consumed as a shelly bean. (Prior to my bean research, I didn't know what a "shelly bean" was; now I am a know-it-all...)

The following beans are my "dry bean garden" that I have out at Karen's place. I am growing them to eat as dry beans. We eat a LOT of beans now that we are mostly vegetarian. I wanted to try growing something different than the usual varieties you find at the grocery store. And I figured that dry beans wouldn't need a whole lot of looking after and molly-coddling. (Let's hope...)

Thibodeau de Compte Beauce (bush) I no longer remember what attracted me to this one; it was probably the lovely french name. I have always wanted to learn french and I frequently fantasize about moving to Quebec and becoming a francophone. I admire the culture, if not Celine Dion.

Jacob's Cattle (bush) These are some of the prettiest beans in existence. A bag of them could make a strong man cry.
Tongue of Fire (bush) I had to have some of these as dry beans, too, just to see. (What if that whole "shelly bean" thing doesn't work out?)
Soybean (variety unknown) So, I was in a bean-planting frenzy when I ran out of beans. Karen had a big bag of organic soybeans that was left behind by another friend, so I planted a whole row of these. I really love soybeans as edamame, (or eaten while green) but I don't know if this variety will be good for that or not.
(We like to steam them briefly in a bit of boiling saltwater, then smother them in olive oil and sea salt and suck them out of their fuzzy pods...)

Sadly, I was unable to find "Lazy Wife" although I think I have a source for next year. We have had very good weather for beans this year, so I am hopeful for my gardens. It has been quite hot and we have had plentiful rain. My pole beans are climbing the bamboo teepees we made for them.
I feel a sense of order in the universe.

Earthquake!

There are some days on which I feel as though everything is ultimately going to be alright; that no matter what craziness life throws my way, I am equipped to deal with it; no matter how hard it rains or how deep the snow falls, I am prepared; no matter how weird things get, I'll get through it.


Then there are the todays.

I am a hopeless, frustrated, thwarted basket case. My every communication is garbled and hence misunderstood. My thoughts are mired in mud. Everything is deeply personal. I am pissed off at the world and everyone in it.

So, how does one reconcile these two realities? There is a lot of pop psychology out there that tells you to act like the person you want to be. Put on a happy face and you will be happy. But what if your happy face won't be put on? What if it is an ill-fitting, distorted mask that makes you look like a demented clown? If little children shriek and run away when they see you?

It is really hot and humid outside today. We are expecting "severe" thunderstorms this afternoon. I am scheduled to drive into Guelph to cook dinner with an old friend. We will hang out in her newly renovated kitchen, talking and drinking wine, cooking dinner with her kids... this should be a rewarding, fun, relaxing activity. However, instead of looking forward to it, I am brooding over it. My distorted thought process goes something like this: What if I don't have anything interesting to talk about? God, my life is so boring... she's going to think I'm such a pathetic loser... and what the hell am I going to make, anyway? It had better be good. What if her kids are picky eaters? Will we have to cook something else for them? I'm not feeling that energetic... and we'll probably have a power failure or something stupid... why do I always pick the worst possible time for things like this...?

You get the idea. Neurotic negativity. Putting lots of unnecessary pressure on myself.

Why do I do this? On another day, I wouldn't. I would plan an enjoyable evening with my old friend, and that is how it would unfold.

So, I took a break there, saved that as a draft and went out to run errands. While I'm out, running around swearing, getting groceries and bitching about what a headcase I'm turning into, we have an earthquake! No kidding! An honest to goodness, actual, ground-shaking, building-trembling earthquake!
And suddenly that's all anyone is talking about, "Did you feel it?" "Where were you?" "I heard it was a 5.7!" "I heard 5.0!" "It was a good one!"

And suddenly, all of my stupid neurotic little worries are kind of washed away. An earthquake! Cool! On my way back home, it starts to rain a little. We might get a LOT of rain today; they're calling for several centimeters! That should make my trip to Guelph extra exciting... this is turning out to be an exciting kind of day...

Re-reading this post, I think "So, you're hopelessly fickle. Do you think people will find that endearing?" The answer is I'm trying not to care. I think people are crazy, all of us. I just keep hoping that if I write enough of my craziness down, I'll start to understand it. And maybe someone else will understand it too. Then we can be friends and cook dinner together on earthquake days, and talk about how sometimes we stress over stupid little things. That is my fond hope.

Guatemala

In January, we went to Guatemala. Surely one of the most intensely strange and beautiful places on earth. A riot of colours; flowers, fabrics, markets of fruit and vegetables, painted buildings, old stone ruins crumbling into flowerbeds, school buses painted up brightly... music and firecrackers in the evenings and stunning, striking views everywhere you look.

Probably this blog is just an excuse to post some of my Guatemala pictures.

Anyway, I want to go back. When we came back to Ontario, in February, I couldn't get over how ugly the landscape seemed; so gray and flat and cold. The people looked sickly and pinched; even their clothes looked drab and ill-fitting. Now we are approaching summer solstice and everything here is lovely and green but it still can't hold a candle to Guatemala.

So, yesterday, I spent the day weeding and mulching two very long, very weedy rows of beans. I have a dry bean garden out at Karen's place. I picked up my mom in the morning and we drove out to Karen's for a visit. We drove through some of the prettiest countryside I know of in Ontario - the pastoral farm country of Waterloo County, past Mennonite farms with their huge, well cared for gardens and barns, fields of corn, wheat and soybeans, vast expanses of yellow canola blossoms, apple orchards and stone farmhouses with lines of clean laundry blowing in the wind.

You have to hand weed around beans if you don't want to disturb their shallow roots and even then, I disturbed a few of them. I hope they'll get over it. At the end of the day, we all went out for dinner to a popular little place in nearby Belwood. We were just about to order when a hummingbird smacked into the plate glass window.

There were some curious little kids fooling around nearby and they seemed about to descend on the tiny bird so I went out and scooped it up in the hood of my sweater and walked away to a quiet place in a sunny field. I sat there with it perched on the sweater and looked at it. It was a young ruby-throated hummingbird with an iridescent green back and a long, thin black beak. It was quite thoroughly stunned and kept jerking its head as though trying to shake itself awake. It was incredibly, shockingly tiny and perfect. At one point it extended one of its inch-long wings, then turned its peanut-sized head to look at me. I could hardly breathe. I finally did breathe, when it suddenly lifted up and flew away with a faint buzzing hum.

It made me think of Guatemala; the brightness, the impossibility of it. So much beauty packed into a space the size of my thumb. Something so small that not only lives but flies so fast and sure, that is not only covered in feathers but in feathers of metallic, iridescent colours, that not only eats but eats the nectar of flowers with its perfectly adapted bill. How impossibly fantastic.

Yet, there it was, in the heart of drab Ontario. Not-so-drab-after-all Ontario.

The tiniest things in nature tie the whole world together.

Temporary

Today was one of those totally surreal days, from this morning's interaction with the cop who thought my car was stolen, to saying goodnight to my mother this evening on the front lawn, as the Snowbirds flew over, practicing for some airshow or another. In between, I worked my first shift at a friend's coffee stall at the market, convinced the cop that I do own my car, watered the dill transplants in my community garden, did a little grocery shopping and had several increasingly bizarre telephone conversations with people I don't know. The last one was with a man who I will call a cemetery manager for lack of a better term. The conversation revolved around the disposal of my late father's ashes.

My dad was cremated last year. My mom, who will be 85 in about a week, brought his ashes with her from Victoria, to be buried in the plot he purchased for this purpose, many years ago, before they moved out west. We had a sort of family meeting where we all sat around and grumbled about what to do next and realized that none of us had a clue about how to proceed. Did we just take the ashes to the cemetery and dump them? Surely not. Did we need to bury them? In what? Are there regulations about hole depth and so on? Would we be needing a marker? Where exactly was this plot my dad had purchased, anyway?

One of the things I wish we could change in this country is the way dead bodies are disposed of. First of all, nobody talks about death as something that happens to everyone. We talk about it as though it only happens to the unlucky. We act frankly astonished when someone dies.
"Remember (insert name here)? Well... you won't believe it... HE DIED!"
Then, we perform a series of bizarre rituals on the body, starting with embalming (eww...) and ending with the burial in an absurdly ornate and indestructible casket. We place this casket in a large, deep hole, occupying a piece of land that can never be used for anything else. To ensure this, we plunk a big granite marker on top, all engraved with words and decorations, permanent enough to be admired until the end of time.

I think it is high time that we started planting people like seeds when they die. Don't embalm me; (please!) instead, wrap my body in a biodegradable shroud and toss me in a small deep hole. Then plant an oak tree on my head. Leave me in the food chain, please. Don't render me useless to the planet I love and call home by "preserving" my body with pickling poison and air-locking it in a vault made of virgin timber. Please!
My dad's ashes are in a plastic urn with a label that says something like, "This is intended only as a temporary container" as though it will suddenly evaporate if we try to keep them in there for any amount of time. Why? We all know it takes plastic a long time to break down. I guess the idea is that you're supposed to feel like a cheap cad if you leave your loved one's ashes in the "temporary" container.

The human body is a temporary container.

I wish we could all get over ourselves and start facing death in a more realistic way. There are so many billion of us now that I guess we'll have to, one of these days.

Lightning Bugs

I can't stop thinking about fireflies. Or lightning bugs, a name I love.

When my sister, Karen, lived in Honduras, I went to visit her during a very hot time of the year. She taught at a little school in the middle of a palm oil plantation - her backyard was bordered by a jungle. One night we watched fireflies that looked like floating lightbulbs, meander through the palms. They were so much bigger than the fireflies here. There was no ambient city-light to interfere with the opaque blackness of the jungle or to diminish the beauty of the fireflies.

I miss fireflies. When I was a child, we used to see them in the overgrown apple orchard behind our house. Then I moved to the city and stopped seeing them. They are hypersensitive to pesticides, which I think is why they are less common than they used to be. I saw them again, in abundance when Karen and I lived at the Donkey Sanctuary, near Guelph. And now that Karen has her own 17 acres of property, some of it wetland, she has fireflies again. And plenty of them; we sit up on her balcony and look out over a little sea of floating, blinking lights. It's wonderful.
But what troubles me is that I don't see them anywhere else. When I make the hour long drive home from Karen's place, I say goodbye to the fireflies and I don't see even a single one all the way home, past farms and drainage ditches and forests and houses and suburbs...

Will they come back? I really want to know. I have this anxiety about them, a "what if they don't EVER bounce back?" anxiety. We have a pesticide bylaw now in Ontario which should work in their favour but I keep hearing that people don't respect the bylaw and use pesticides anyway. And farmers are still spraying pesticides and herbicides on their fields; that's not likely to change anytime soon...

Some days I feel like I'm just putting in time, waiting for the fireflies to come back. Then maybe I'll be able to relax.