Citizen of the Covid-19 Pandemic - Delightfully Unimpressive

Me to a T - thoroughly unimpressive, and completely feeling Leah Fessler’s “The Power of Low-Stakes Productivity” from the New York Times.  This weekend was the epitome of that.

Friday arrived, and rather than stretch to do more work, I did only what had to be done, having already hit my goal utilization for the week.  (How I dislike the billable hours concept.)  The day started early with a medical appointment, and the negative news was disappointing, and tiring, so I took the time, my time - I don’t get paid to work Fridays, after all - to process, to nap, to hatch a plan with my doctor.

Ostensibly, though, it was to prepare for my mortgage refinance.  I took some baby steps in that regard, too - trying to keep the ball moving, cleaning, staging vignettes at just the right angle for the alternative appraisal.  Significant savings if I can get this thing closed; it would be helpful on multiple fronts, to have some extra cash - maybe make the difference between staying in my apartment in the city, seeing it through to its potential, versus strategically moving out toward the Mothership in eastern Queens to a belt tightening lifestyle.  Certainly hundreds of extra dollars each month will be helpful in any event, but particularly if The Project comes to fruition.

So there we go - little accomplishments, nudging the ball forward with the low stakes, but impactful, productive tasks.  Small investments, larger rewards long-term.

“Urban Gardening Through the Apocalypse”

This piece by Jennifer Weiner in the New York Times speaks to the refuge that is the Jardin in these COVID times - for those of us who have always loved nurturing green living things, for people who are new to it and putting in their first victory garden. 
There is a visceral pull to the dirt and the plants.  And maybe it’s an evolutionary thing, a survival and instinctive draw - for my memory of this year’s garden will be the edible plants, the ones that I planted as a hedge against an unstable food supply chain.  My plan for this year had always been to try to start to intersperse the veggies with the flowers.  It became an imperative this year, maybe even at the expense of the flowers.  Next year, maybe a better balance, to draw in more pollinators, and add a bit more cheerful color.  Maybe next year nursery visits will be safe again and there will be new flowers to cover.  Though the financial situation may dictate otherwise ... maybe I will dig into the seed packets that I found in organizing this year instead, or collect from the Mother Garden.
In any event, this year, the Jardin has been my salvation, one of the diversions that has pulled me through this far.  That’s what I will remember.  Thank goodness for the terrace.

On the Way Out, On the Way In, and Guests Just Stopping By

From the Jardin over the prior week ...

A grasshopper that stayed sunning on the peach rose pretty much from dawn to dusk.  It was there when I did my morning walkabout, still there at the end of the virtual workday...

The ring hydrangea bloom, definitely on its way out ...

The clown violets, just coming in - and different varieties!  Both white dominant and purple dominant!  Letting things come up from seed yields fun surprises...

And finally, the lovely, fluttery little butterfly that found the catmint flowers.  In years past there were bees that came for them.  Few bees this year, but butterflies will do.

Eat, Grow, Eat

The other day’s rainy day lunch was uniquely seasonal, but also inspired by the beginnings of a kitchen clean up (the appraiser for my mortgage refinance wants photos, and the kitchen is long overdue for some maintenance) and two different cooking shows I have watched for years - my decades of viewing PBS cooking shows and the Food Network pay dividends!
Produce-wise, one of the times of the year I most look forward to is sugar snap pea season.  With COVID-19 isolation this year and fewer trips to the market, I almost missed it, but snagged some weeks back when I saw them, eagerly anticipating having their crunchy goodness with the “magic sauce” that Molly Yeh uses on her green beans - it IS liquid gold!
Alas, it’s been a really demanding few weeks in the virtual office, and the sugar snap peas languished and they started to get slimy.  I abhor food waste, especially in these times of pandemic food insecurity.  So I had already gone through and picked out the best of the peas for an earlier lunch - just raw sugar snap peas with magic sauce - tossing out a few icky ones for compost as I came across them.  But the dreaded task of going through the rest was the other day’s mission - far fewer good candidates, much slimier, so only the dregs were left.  Then I remembered there are actual peas inside the shells; sure, the attraction of sugar snap peas is eating the shells too, but not a necessity.  There were far many more salvageable peas than shells.  Some shells were practically disintegrating but the peas within still protected and firm.  The process revealed some peas so far along in a disintegrating shell that they were starting to sprout...

...But without most of the shells, not enough heft for lunch...
Serendipitously, that day’s episode of ”Jazzy Vegetarian” had a soba noodle with peanut sauce recipe featured. Aha! Cross pollination of cooking shows and fridge clean and pantry raid yielded soba noodles with sugar snap peas and salvaged celery, also on the cusp and too long in the fridge, all dressed in magic sauce! Exactly what my rumbling belly needed!
And then, inspired by some of gardeners I follow who are already planning their Fall gardens, and after consulting Fall planting calendars and finding peas on them for 7b, it occurred to me that maybe I could try for sugar snap peas as soon as this Fall... so, armed with the sprouting peas, the sugar snap babies are getting a shot.  The tomato plants that never thrived, and so never got to leave their seed cells, got evicted from the pot that was earmarked for them, and in went the eight sprouting sugar snap peas. If they take, they can climb up the tomato cage that were earmarked for the tomatoes.

While out there planting, I also caught sight of some red amaranth broken by the heavy rains. So those got harvested, and were a nice addition chopped raw and wilted by the heat of a fast polenta, over which was poured “beefless beef tips” quickly heated in the microwave with baby carrots. A satisfying dinner at the end of a day of stretching store bought and Jardin-grown veggies.

Small accomplishments.

Isaias Casualties - and Resurrections

Hurricane, then Tropical Storm, Isaias came through, and cut a swath.  It was more powerful than I expected, than I think a lot of folks expected.  Trees down all over the place, and, sadly, some fatalities... including in our original New York City neighborhood.

Here, fortunately, we were mostly spared.  All in all, it was not too, too bad - some tomatoes jumped the vine for a soft landing at the base of the honeysuckle.  I guess I have an excuse to taste them sooner than I would have harvested them.

The big casualty was the plastic storage "shed," which blew right over, even though it was backed up against the wooden fence (that is screwed into metal supports that are screwed to the building) by Miss Kind Neighbor's.  We ARE near the East River, but, man - that was significant wind velocity to just blow the thing over through the fence.

An early morning walk through the park saw limbs scattered all over, so Isaias delivered quite a wallop.

Happily, at home, Sissy has helped to make everything right again, during the small window when we were certain to both be able to work together to maneuver it back to standing position. 

Daily Greens, and Reds

A simple harvest of pumpkin shoots, Malabar spinach, and the first of the amaranth leaves.  

Since this is at least nominally on occasion a gardening blog, a plant review every now and then seems in order.   So ... I am quite happy with these new-for-this-year “crops” - all easy to grow in my modest size containers, they produce abundantly (for a one, or two-person household), and add visual interest, too - the red of the amaranth, the vines of the Malabar spinach that climb beautifully up the trellis (and it's shade tolerant - total bonus), the vibrancy of the pumpkin shoots.  AND, they might be prolific enough (if I plan properly) to take the place of purchased greens that wilt so quickly in summer; I think all can be harvested a bit at a time and still produce new growth - so no overabundance or need to consume a ton within a tiny window (love me tomatoes, but there bumper crop, ripen all at once timing can be overwhelming).  These greens will be on the plant roster again for next year... (and I will plan for the pumpkin shoots to have a permanent home, rather than leaving them to struggle to emerge from the compost bin - if I gather seeds and stagger their planting, seems I should be able to have a supply of shoots through the season).

All in hopes of avoiding the mistake this year of purchasing tub after tub of kale or spinach with all intention of making a veggie lasagna, never getting to it, and having them go bad.  The guilt of food waste when so many don't have enough.  Sigh.

...Turn Back Time

This week - took a chunk out of me; it was mentally exhausting.... Nothing like the untimely death of a classmate (one week after his birthday; he left behind three little kids) to throw the mind into spirals of thoughts - about my own mortality, my life choices, how to spend my remaining time, if my luck should hold up.  No wonder, then, that the brain should defensively crave quiet, ways to slow everything down.  As it happens, I had a prescheduled, uber corporate, frou frou, work event: a Zoom guided “origami as a meditative and therapeutic exercise” session - how to slow down with paper folding, and I cherished it.  

And the Jardin - throughout this whole awful pandemic, my little terrace that I have always appreciated has been a godsend.  It is my connection to nature, my tangible reminder that life can triumph, my refuge for quiet contemplation... For a change, sunRISES from the Jardin, the rare eastern light show in the calm of early morning (usually I am asleep)... 

...Gathering the prolific shiso, washing and drying and chiffonading it, mixing the marinade for Korean ban chan-inspired pickling to punch up a “beefless beef tips” meal (shiso and beef are a classic Vietnamese pairing) - slow meal prep and cooking as self care... 

...And taking note of the little creatures who stop by - the dragonfly, ...

...the snail, ...

...Nature’s children who get even less time on this earth than do we....

My friend loved his babies and his wife more than anything; it was abundantly clear and came through, even though our interactions were only through social media - you just knew.  That they won’t have him anymore is devastating.  In this time, condolence messages are also through social media - I tried to put as much care into my messages as I could muster; only right - and so those babies can read it all later, and know, how much their daddy loved them.

He also really enjoyed barbecue.  We, our class, had bounced around talk of a reunion event over a BBQ showdown between him and another classmate BBQ aficionado.  Now that will never happen.  Maybe we’ll just have BBQ and remember him, and our other classmates, gone too soon.  Maybe the last of the 690 of us standing will still feel that the others had gone too soon ... May that person have the vigor and joy of life on that faraway date to feel s/he was called too soon, and not too late.