Dogs

Today was a shitty day for so many reasons I can't detail them all. But mostly, I'm just getting really, really tired of being broke and relying so completely on Rob. I've applied for every job that I see that I think I could actually do but so far no luck. I even signed up for a study I don't want to do. It's depressing.

Anyhow, I thought that going to the community garden would make me feel better because it usually does, if only a little. Today I was disturbed to see that my garden seems to be strangling itself to death. The "bush" beans have turned out to have serious climbing ambitions and are flopping all over the place, strangling the flowers and blocking out all of the light from that end of the garden. The tomato plants have all fallen down, taking their laughably tiny "cages" along with them.

As I stood looking sadly at the green chaos, I heard a woman barking orders to her dog: Come here! I said COME HERE!! Leave it! I said LEAVE IT!! Get over here! Sit down! I said SIT DOWN!!! I thought, well, maybe she has one of those hyper dogs who need constant direction to tire them out... but then I noticed that her dog was actually obeying her every irate command and that he didn't seem particularly hyper or badly behaved. This didn't stop her from kicking him when he didn't sit down quickly enough; I heard the impact of her boot; the dog yelped piteously. Then she stood over him, swearing at him as he cowered. I said, "Jesus lady, I hope you don't have kids." but she was already on her way home, dragging the dog behind her. I guess that was his ten minutes of exercise for the day.

I was done looking at the garden. I had about a hundred mosquito bites already. It was too hot for weeding and I'd picked every sizable bean I laid eyes on. I picked some nasturtiums and purple basil to make confetti butter, cut some chard leaves and climbed on my bicycle. On my way out, I couldn't help noticing another depressing thing - the garden is full of produce that isn't being picked. There are overgrown peas and beans covering the plants. I was tempted to pick some peas but I didn't; it would have felt wrong. Somehow even more wrong than leaving them there to rot on the vines.

Another thing eating me is that my dogs are getting so old. I've lived with them for so long, in such a congenial way, that I don't know what I'll do without them. They are there in the morning, (and always happy in the morning; as though they are just glad to be starting another day...) they keep me company throughout the day and they are there at night, when they seem always glad to go to bed. They used to be so springy and resilient; now they are creaky and clunky. They have lumps and bumps. They smell worse. But somehow they are sweeter than they were as young dogs. They seem more affectionate, more trusting, more gentle and loving; happier.

I wonder if that dog I saw today will get to be an old dog. If he will get sweeter as he ages, or if he will be dropped off at the pound with a broken spirit and a bad rap sheet. I wonder sometimes if dogs ever regret having hooked up with us humans in the first place.

Fava Beans

So, I actually grew fava beans once. Last year, I think it was. I had a bit of a garden out at Karen's place and for some reason, even though I had NEVER EATEN THEM, I decided that I should try growing fava beans. The plants grew well, flowered early and formed a few large, fuzzy pods at some point... (I think I was out of town for that, but anyway), when harvest time came around, I picked about twelve bean pods, all different sizes from the fava bean plants. I think I shelled them, getting perhaps 30 beans of various sizes - I ate a couple, found them bitter; it seemed so pointless that I think I gave the rest to the chickens.

Last Thursday, I worked with my friend, Carole, at her coffee booth at the market. Before leaving, I wandered amongst the fantastic bounty of St. Jacob's market and noticed that one of the vendors had many baskets of fava beans for sale. Honouring my bean fixation, I stopped to look. Before I knew what I was doing, I had purchased two 2 quart baskets (2 for $5.00) and was walking away whistling. Fava beans are so enormous that my huge bag, bristling with fuzzy pods seemed like quite a deal for five bucks. At home, the shelling began on the front porch. I sat on the porch step with a colander and my bag of favas, a frosty beer at my side. All seemed well with the universe.

After about half an hour, I looked down at the colander and wondered if I was missing when I dropped beans into it; there was an awfully small pile of pale beans at the bottom. The compost bag beside it was bristling with the fat, empty pods, however. Obviously, I needed some livestock to feed. Probably pigs would do the trick. The shelling continued, unabated, for perhaps another hour until at last I had pried open the last fat pod and dropped the last bean onto the little hill in the colander.
We boiled them for about three minutes, then I tried one. The skin was thick, tough and bitter. The little darlings needed to be skinned! So, another 15 minutes or so went by as we skinned the little buggers. By the time we were done, we had such a small pathetic pile of beans that I said to Rob, "These things are a rip-off! I'm never buying them again!"

I had sauteed a pile of onions and garlic in olive oil, with a couple of nice tomatoes and a bit of salt. We tossed in the fava beans and mixed it all up. We cracked a bottle of white wine (in Italy, fava beans are eaten with white wine...) and a loaf of crusty bread and sat down to eat.
The beans were like nothing I have ever tasted. A little bit sweet, a little bit bitter, a little bit nutty, soft and buttery, totally delicious and very, very satisfying.
By the end of the first bowl, I was eating my words along with the beans. "I'm definitely getting these again!" I said. "We should be growing these things! They're fantastic!"
Rob nodded in agreement, his mouth too full to speak.

In Search of a Better Me

I think that one of the best things about having the "right" person in your life is no matter how cliched it sounds, the right person inspires you to be a better person yourself. Like most things, this turns out to be a double edged sword. Standing beside a really great person kind of highlights what a twit you are, yourself.

My partner, Rob, is one of the best people I know; one of the few real heroes in the story of my life. I say this not only because he is honest and funny and kind and generous, but also because he is flawed and knows he is flawed. We all are, of course, but some of us hate like hell to admit it.

Last night, we had an excellent dinner with good friends. (The dinner included homemade linguine and pesto, epi bread and fancy cheese, a raw broccoli and apple salad and gelato from the Italian place in Waterloo. It was fantastic.) After dinner, Rob told a story about riding his bike up to Paisley (a 7 hour trek) and having one incident on the road; a guy yelled, "Get off the road!" at him. Rob said, I tried to yell back, "Share it with me!" but what came out of my mouth was, "Fuck you, dick!"
Everybody laughed. It was a funny telling but what was really funny about it, is that Rob hardly ever swears like that. He is a very controlled person, and while he does swear occasionally, it is rarely in anger and even more rarely directed at anybody.

I, on the other hand, am quite a potty-mouth by comparison. I have to bite my tongue about a million times a day to keep from chewing out everyone who comes into contact with me and I fail regularly. And, as it turns out, I'm also less honest, less funny and certainly less generous than Rob. (They say you shouldn't compare yourself to others, but really, who can help it?) And if I hadn't met Rob, I might never have figured out that I'm not quite as great as I thought I was; I used to think of myself as really honest and quite funny, and at least somewhat generous. (Umm... fail...)

So I'm writing this because I'm trying to get up my nerve to go to my community garden. I'm afraid to go there because I haven't been in a while and I'm pretty sure that it's out of control by now. Specifically, I'm afraid of my tomato plants, although the prospect of the weeds and my "bush" beans is also alarming. But, look at me, I'm going to take a page from Rob's book and overcome my fears and do the right thing. I'm going to gather up some trellis and some twine and a trowel and I'm going to ride my bicycle over to the garden and I'm going to whip it into shape! Yes, I am! Just watch me!

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Three (3) hours later... did I mention that it's 27 degrees outside? With a humidex of 33? Did I mention that I'm a menopausal female? With a propensity to sweating? And cussing?

Well, anyway, I did it! And I'm back to tell the tale!
Now that I am seated calmly in front of a computer with a cool soda in hand, it seems less terrifying than it was but still... it was pretty bad. You may recall me bragging on how nice my garden looked earlier in the season and even how some of my neighbours' gardens at the community plot looked a little... well... *untended* by comparison. Well, I'm bragging no more. My plot is now second only to the group home's for sheer neglected chaos.
First of all, my best crop turns out to be purslane, which is EVERYWHERE. I actually brought a bag home, planning to eat it in revenge. My tomatoes have curiously decided to both mutate and mutiny. I neglected to be ruthless in my suckering and as a result, today I was forced to tie them up with yarn and hack off some of their limbs with a nail file. (I forgot a knife.) It pained me to do it but I can't have them acting like something out of "Little Shop of Horrors". Still, a few of them have elected to crawl across the path and lie down in my neighbour's garden. Fortunately, she is about 80, blind and very kind, so she might not object. I told them I'm coming back later with some serious bondage equipment but they only snickered.
My Tongue of Fire bush beans are finally blooming prettily but they are also sprawling around smothering things for no good reason. I put in a couple of bamboo stakes and some trellis for them to lean on. My neighbour across the main path planted purple bush beans and hers are very well behaved and are covered in small purple beans already. Another neighbour, Bill, planted scarlet runner beans (which I love) and they are already eating size. I'm envious. My pole beans are taller than I am, finally, and beginning, very shyly, to bloom but they are also looking much less robust than I would like. Bill's scarlet runners are looking very hale and hearty.
The rhubarb chard is finally big enough to harvest and I ripped off some chard stems which we'll eat tonight with the purslane. (I must remember to take a knife next time, if only to threaten the tomatoes.)
The nasturtiums are starting to bloom at last and I was able to pull out most of the remaining french breakfast radishes, thereby freeing up a little space for walking. The marigolds still look stunning, although some of them are now being shaded out by the tomatoes. My tomatillo continues to bloom madly but (unlike Michelle's) is not setting any fruit. (Why the hell not?)

Finally, I intended to take the camera with me to capture some of the joy and horror of the community garden, but in the end, I forgot it. So, for now, a photo of my better half will have to suffice.

Some things I will never do

There are a lot of things that I would like to do, in this life, but will probably never get to do.

Here is a partial list:

1) Write a best-selling novel
2) Learn French
3) Build a bottle house
4) Make my own clothes
5) Get a black belt in any martial art
6) Travel North America in a horse-drawn wagon, like the pioneers, or the old-time circus folk and document my travels with compelling photos
7) Make short animated films
8) Write songs that change the world
9) Speak fluent Spanish
10) Rule the earth as a (mostly) benevolent dictator

Today the humidex reached 42, which I think means about 110, farenheit... (the thermometer measures the actual temperature; the humidex measures the degree to which you wish you were dead...) I do not handle the heat particularly well.

The thing about this kind of heat is that it saps your energy so thoroughly. I do not normally watch sports on the television but I'm actually grateful for the World Cup games because they are such a pleasantly mindless distraction from the things I should do but don't have the energy for. My plan for today involves writing a cover letter for a job that I will probably apply for. I'll be lucky if i accomplish this; I have already screwed up the few small tasks I had hoped to accomplish today... this heat also makes me stupid.

There are some other things that I would NOT like to do but sometimes fear I may. Here is a partial list:

1) Scream loudly in the supermarket
2) Chastise people I see in the grocery store, based on the contents of their carts
3) Get so drunk that I actually feel no pain
4) Forget how to speak
5) Write a book that I love but no one will ever publish
6) Overdose on pizza
7) Alienate Rob
8) Make a "surprise" dish that turns out horribly
9) Kill somebody
10)Forget to thank everyone for tolerating me

Sweat

We were away from home for a few days and when I stopped by my community garden this morning, I noticed that my tomatoes appear to be taking over the world. Yes, I started them early from seed and yes, they are all indeterminate varieties but still I was unprepared for the frightening amount of growth they have put on over the last week! They are as tall as I am, twice as wide, and many times more vigorous, stretching their furry arms out into the paths. I will have to reign them in a little, with stakes and rope, lest they smother the gardens of my neighbours.
On the other hand, my beans, which I started a little late, are lagging behind the beans of the other gardens. The pole beans are beginning to climb but have no flowers yet, unlike the beans across the path, which are blooming madly. My so-called bush beans have developed some distressingly viney growths which make me think I will have to give them a trellis to climb on. However, it is 31 degrees outside, with a humidex of 37. (In case any of you are older than I am, that is 88 farenheit, and it feels like 100.) The air quality is disgusting, by any measure and the UV index is very high. I am therefore not enthused about the prospect of dragging a trellis several blocks for the sake of my confused and malfunctioning bean plants.

Ever since my appallingly premature menopause, (starting at 41) I have been what can only be called sweaty. As soon as I eat or drink anything hot, (or spicy) or experience temperatures even slightly above cool, I begin to sweat freely from pretty much everywhere and I don't stop until I'm sorry I was born. Fortunately, I'm not disgusted by sweat, as some folks are. I've never worn "antiperspirants" and I was not surprised to hear them being implicated in various cancers. Smearing a paste of aluminum and other dubious metals and chemicals all over your lymph nodes can't be a good idea. And the skin is a semi-permeable membrane, selectively allowing direct access into your blood and lymph circulatory systems. Your armpits are full of lymph nodes. I'm not sure of the relationship between lymphatic fluid and sweat but I am sure there is one.

For eleven years, until this January, I was a registered massage therapist. There is quite a bit of sweat involved in massage therapy and I have to say that I don't miss that aspect of it. If I am to be really honest, I don't actually miss any of it, except the earning of money, which in my world is a necessary evil. I have always liked working on people's feet though and I might miss that part, although I often found that my hands smelled like feet for hours after work, no matter how much I washed. I think this must be another example of the semi-permeable membrane in action. (If so, we must be exchanging molecules with one another each time we touch, mustn't we? I wonder what scientists say about this.)

Anyway, I must turn off this hot machine and go rinse the sweat off. This morning, I took the dogs for an early walk and we watched a young doe walk along in the water on the other side of the river. She was browsing in the shade of the trees and many swallows were darting low over the water, eating bugs. When we left she was standing up on her hind legs to get at some particularly appealing leaves. I thought that would be a nice way to breakfast; standing in the water, eating leaves and listening to the sounds of birdsong and the river passing by.

Heat Wave!

The fifth of July brings with it an extreme heat alert. I am unimpressed; the air feels like gritty steam escaping from the devil's laundromat.
We spent the "Canada Day" long weekend visiting friends and family out of town. How lovely to get out of the city and enjoy the cooler, cleaner country air. My dogs were happy about it too. They like to just lie around in the shade and watch the chickens go by. Plus, they hate the "fireworks holidays" so it's nice to get them somewhere quiet.

Tonight, we elected to barbecue on the back porch instead of further heating our house by using the stove. We don't have air conditioning but the house we live in is old and covered in vines (see "Mulberries & Bicycles" for a photo) which help to keep the house fairly cool until we get a serious heat wave, like this one.
Our weather is going crazy, in case you haven't noticed. We're having more floods and tornadoes and at the oddest times. This year, all the rivers here flooded at the end of June. Highly unusual. I've read enough to know that this is the climate change we keep hearing about. I am kind of appalled by the number of things that I, personally, do to contribute to it, without even thinking about it. I'm consciously trying to limit my "footprint" and to be less impactful wherever possible but every now and then I find myself doing something that I realize has got to stop.

So, ironically, (she blogged...) I kind of hate computers. I spent a LOT of time today trying to transfer some photos from my old iMac onto Rob's newer PC. What a headache! I was tired of trying to match my Guatemala trip photos to my blog posts that mostly take place here in Ontario. (Above you see a resident of Caye Caulker, Belize, basking on a lounge chair...) But my efforts were unsuccessful. I'll have to try again another day. And for now, my travel pictures will have to suffice because as I sit here, I feel the heat coming off of this computer and realize that it should be shut down soon, if I'm going to keep this place bearable. All these electrical devices emit heat, even the fans we use to circulate the hot air.

One thing I miss about eating meat is hamburgers. Tonight I made veggie burgers for dinner. I make them out of lentils and nuts and tofu that has been frozen and shredded, then thawed and marinated. This gives it a meatier texture and it picks up the flavour of the marinade. I also threw in some chopped, re-hydrated dried shiitake mushrooms, breadcrumbs, eggs and a bunch of seasonings. They turned out really well which is nice because I made too much and we're going to be eating them for a couple of days. In the past when I've made too much of the mix, I've made a sort of faux meatloaf from the leftover mix but I don't dare turn on the oven in this weather. We're stewing in our own juices as it is.

This post is clearly just a front for bragging on the success of my veggie-burger recipe. I keep saying I'm going to perfect them and then to try to market them. I want to do this because there are a few places in town that serve veggie burgers that actually suck. One tony place even serves a mediocre, frozen store brand patty. They overcharge for it, too.
In an ideal world, I would have a little neighbourhood pub where I would serve veggie burgers and delicious salads and freshly squeezed juices. Rob would tend bar, mixing the fabulous clinky-drinks for which he is locally famous. We would play cool music and talk about life and politics, love and peak oil.

But for now, I'm going to go around the house, shutting things off and closing windows and blinds. In a few hours, this heat is going to be insufferable.