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Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

gardening

What we can imagine

August 19, 2021

The kitchen grew steamy as I chopped four pounds of tomatoes we’d picked from our garden over the weekend. I had only a few days left before going back to work for the school year, and there are only so many tomatoes you can eat in a day. I’d already made fresh salsa and sliced up a few to accompany meals. So, it was time to can a few jars–to “put them up” for the winter as they say around here. (Do they say that other places?)

It took hours by the time I washed and diced the tomatoes, filled the canning jars, located the canning supplies and processed them. Those four-ish pounds of tomatoes only made four pint jars and a part of me wondered why I go to all the effort. We planted the seeds months ago. We watered and weeded and tended the garden all that time. And here now I was spending more time creating something that I could easily drive to the store and buy. It’s not even about saving money when you count the cost of the plants and the time spent.

Why? Why do I go to all the effort to can four jars of tomatoes to use this winter?

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

—

A day earlier Phil and I went to the store. It was a quick trip after dinner and back-to-school night at the elementary school. We needed milk for breakfast the next morning, which always leads to more purchases in the dairy aisle. This seems to be the reason we go to the store most often, to replenish things like milk, cheese and yogurt.

Only self-checkout lanes were open when we had finished our list. This is usually fine with me. I prefer the self-checkout most of the time, but I found it odd that there was no cashier working at all. Granted, it was late in the day and there are staffing shortages everywhere, but it almost felt eerie.

“This is how the robots take over,” I said to Phil as we crossed the parking lot. I was joking. I think. There’s a fine line sometimes between dark humor and cynicism and I don’t always know the difference.

As we watched baseball that night after the kids went to bed, a commercial came on for a rowing machine that offers picturesque backgrounds and encouraging coaches, the rowers’ answer to Peloton, I suppose.

“We’re never going outside again, are we?” I remarked. By “we” I meant “humanity.”

Now, let me be clear that I don’t find fault with anyone who buys and uses such a machine. I’m all for health and fitness however you can manage it. I use empty juice and milk jugs filled with water as my dumbbells because I hate the idea of going to a gym to work out and there was no weightlifting equipment available for purchase that was in my budget during the pandemic . When my kids were little and sometimes even now in the dead of winter or on a rainy day, I think I would give almost anything to have a treadmill or other kind of exercise equipment in our house. That we have neither the money nor the room for such a machine is only one obstacle. Personally, I prefer the outdoors, even when it’s cold and rainy.

Maybe humanity isn’t on the brink of collapse because of self-checkouts and virtual rowing machines, but in the midst of a pandemic (yes, we’re still in the midst of it), it’s not hard to imagine a world like this–where machines provide our connection to humans or replace them all together.

I don’t want to live in that world.

—

Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash

I recently read Glennon Doyle’s latest book, Untamed, and there’s a lot I could say about it, but one of the chapters that stuck with me had to do with imagination. She says that when we look at the visible order of things happening around us–violence, injustice, that sort of thing–and believe there is a different way, that’s faith. “This is not how things are meant to be,” she writes. “We know that there is a better, truer, wilder way. … Perhaps imagination is not where we go to escape reality but where we go to remember it.”

I’m stuck on this idea that when we picture the world in a truer, more beautiful way we aren’t just daydreaming, we’re remembering.

She continues: “Let’s conjure up, from the depths of our souls: The truest, most beautiful lives we can imagine. The truest, most beautiful families we can fathom. The truest, most beautiful world we can hope for. Let’s put it all on paper. Let’s look at what we’ve written and decide that these are not pipe dreams; these are our marching orders. These are the blueprints for our lives, our families, and the world. May the invisible order become visible. May our dreams become our plans.”

—

This brings me back to the tomatoes and the canning and the virtual rowers. In the truest, most beautiful world I can imagine, humanity reconnects with the earth. There is something almost magical about growing a tomato then saving it in a jar for later. Tasting a canned tomato from summer in the middle of winter is a kind of remembering because no red-looking tomato in the store in December tastes as good as one fresh off the vine in August. 

“Ah, yes,” my tastebuds say. “This is what a tomato tastes like.”

Photo by Avin CP on Unsplash

Most of my food comes from a grocery store, it’s true, but sometimes I need to be reconnected to the source of that food. I need to go to the garden and pick the vegetables we eat for dinner. I need to know the farmer who raises the meat I eat. I need to learn where the food I buy comes from, what impact it has on the environment, how I can be a responsible consumer. I need to remember that food does not magically appear in the grocery store. That there is a long line of people involved in the process–from the grower to the picker to the factory worker to the trucker to the stocker.

And I need to see the world around me, not just in pictures and not just through my phone screen, but really see it. And smell it. And feel it. I can listen to the ocean waves through my earbuds and it calms me, but until I see it in person, I forget how vast the ocean is. How small I am. My soul is lifted by pictures of trees, of forests, but nothing compares to the damp, woodsy smell. How my lungs expand taking in the fresh, oxygenated air provided by the trees. When I walk through the woods, my feet remind my brain that this world is not new, that generations have walked these paths before, that we do not own the earth. The land does not belong to us, and how we use it says a lot about who we are.

Even “ordinary” woods are magnificent to me

When I touch the earth–balancing on a rock or running my hand through a stream or sifting through the soil–I remember that this place where I live, this planet that sustains life, is itself alive. And I have a responsibility to care for it.

In the most beautiful world I can imagine, humanity is in harmony with the earth. 

—

In this world I can imagine, I am a creator. Words become sentences become stories. And not as a commodity. At least, not just for that reason. In the truest, most beautiful world I can imagine, I create for the sake of creating.

Photo by Rachel Struve/Rachel Struve Photography

I think of this sometimes as I sit on the couch watching TV and completing cross-stitch patterns. I do this as a way to occupy my hands while I’m engaged in a screen, and because I like watching a blank canvas become something, little by little. I don’t create my own patterns or sell my creations. I’ve given a few away as gifts, but mostly I do cross-stitch just for the sake of doing it.

I do not yet see my writing this way, but I’m trying to imagine it.

Could I create a story for the sake of creating, without the expectation that it will someday be something to sell and market? (I don’t know if I can fully separate this latter thought from my writing because I still feel like writing is meant to be read.)

But like the canned tomatoes, there are easier ways to fulfill my need for story. Reading what other people have written is like buying canned tomatoes from the store. It’s more convenient than doing it myself.

But it’s not as fulfilling.

Something happens inside of me when I take that tomato off the vine and bring it into the kitchen, when I collect pounds of them and fill several jars with diced tomatoes. I feel good. Confident. Like I’ve tended something in my care and tended it well. Preserved it for the future.

Could I say the same for my words?

Could I pluck them out of my head and fill pages with them, preserving them for some future use? It takes more time and effort, yes, but something happens inside of me when I do it. It’s part of what makes me alive.

—

I know that for a lot of us, what we can see in the world right now doesn’t look true or beautiful. And that can cause despair. Or indifference. Sometimes it’s easier to look away than to look at the hard things directly. Sometimes it burns like when we stare at the sun.

But what if we looked at the world and said: It doesn’t have to be this way.

And if it doesn’t have to be this way, can we imagine the way it could be?

What kind of world can we picture when we let our imaginations run free?

And how can we make it so?

Filed Under: beauty, gardening Tagged With: canning, connecting with nature, creating, garden tomatoes, gardening, glennon doyle untamed, imagining a better world, writing

A month to remember: A lot of firsts for our family in May

May 31, 2021

I forgot how overwhelming and busy the month of May can be when life is closer to normal. Last May was nowhere near normal, so I was unprepared for how exhausting (mentally, emotionally, spiritually) the month would be. But here we are, at the end of it, and we made it. Summer is knocking on the door, and I’m hopeful for some rest and rejuvenation. Before we hit summer hard, though, here’s our round-up of May: What We Did, What We Ate, What We Watched and What We Read. Buckle up! It’s a ride.

What We Did

One of the first things the kids and I did was re-organized and cleaned out the pantry. Confession: we had a small ant situation that necessitated this action, but overall the pantry shelves become a catch-all, especially after a significant grocery trip. Stuff gets forgotten and pushed to the back. It was in desperate need of cleaning and re-organizing. I did not take a before picture because that would have been embarrassing. The three of us worked together, and my son’s main contribution was taking each item out one at a time and reading the label. Out loud. “This is fun,” he said. Meanwhile, I was holding in a scream.

After we reorganized.

Next up was a trip to Longwood Gardens. At the end of April, we purchased a membership for the year. It was a retroactive birthday present for me since last year I was supposed to go see Hamilton in Washington, D.C. We repurposed the Hamilton money and bought a membership, something we’ve been wanting and meaning to do for years. May 2 was the last day of the spring blooms exhibit at Longwood, so we made the day trip. We had never wandered the meadow trails and honestly, these were some of the best moments of the day because fewer people were on those trails. The main garden area was packed with people in various states of COVID compliance. Stay tuned for future visits because we can.

I love tulips.

May is a month of celebrations, and first up is MY birthday. I took cupcakes to work to share with some friends and some of those friends treated me the next day to lunch and bought balloons for my desk.

I was told I’m supposed to announce my birthday so my co-workers can help me celebrate.

Quarantine. Again! No, that’s not a holdover from last month. Our daughter had a second quarantine just two weeks after her previous quarantine. It’s wild times we’re living in.

All-day lacrosse tournament. (Twice.) I was sort of dreading it, but they turned out to be mostly enjoyable. The first one was cold but fun, even though our team lost all of its games. I enjoyed being around the other lacrosse parents and cheering on our sons. The second one we were at for 10 hours total. So much lacrosse.

One of our firsts in May is that I got tested for COVID. I woke up one morning with cold-like symptoms that had developed overnight. In normal circumstances, I would not have thought twice about the symptoms but it was the worst I’ve felt in a year (even though it wasn’t that bad). After a video call with a health care provider, I got a COVID test. It was negative so it must have been just a body-shutting-down end-of-school-year cold.

We had a FaceTime Uno date with our niece and her parents. One of my favorite things about quarantine is learning how to play games with people via video call. I want to do more of this.

Another first: our daughter got her first dose of COVID vaccine. She will be fully vaccinated by the end of next month, which will bring us great relief.

Phil stopped at a record shop after getting the car inspected and added to his cassette tape collection. Either that or he time-traveled.

I said “yes” to an invitation to drink margaritas at a friend’s house with her neighbors. I usually need a lot of encouragement to leave the house on a Friday night. I have no regrets about this decisions. I met some new people! 

Apparently trying new things with new people is another theme for the month. Since January, we’ve been attending a new church online. This church hosted the first of its summer hikes in May, so the kids and I went. Meeting strangers in the woods? What could go wrong? The answer was nothing. The next day we attended that church in person and have now been there in person twice. It’s not easy being the new people, especially during a pandemic, but this return to community has been encouraging already.

We were nervous, excited and awkward … so you know, totally normal.

We took a virtual adventure to Myanmar (Burma).

And finished the lacrosse season. As fun as it was, it is so good to be done for the year.

Another celebration: our anniversary. I took the day off, and Phil and I went hiking together at Otter Creek Nature Preserve. We hiked for an hour and a half then stopped for a picnic lunch that we had purchased at Wegman’s. Then it was another couple of hours of hiking. Four hours total on a 90-degree day and we ran out of water while hiking because we packed too little with us on the hike. (There was plenty in the car.)

At the Urey Overlook of the Susquehanna River from the York County side of the river.

Then, date night! For the first time since pre-pandemic. We sat on the porch of a local restaurant and ate and drank while it rained. But the rain only added to the experience, and I could eat outside most of the time for the rest of my life and not be sad.

Did I mention that this was my first time eating out since pre-pandemic? We’ve done a lot of take-out.

Isabelle and I ran the Race Against Racism virtual 5K. It was after the reporting window for the race, but our spring was a little bit cray-cray so we ran it on Memorial Day just to say we did.

Before we started running

Then we weeded the garden.

Maybe it won’t be a lost cause after all

And went for ice cream at Lancaster Sweet Shoppe. They were having an anniversary sale. Does BOGO ice cream taste better? Can’t be sure because the ice cream at the sweet shoppe is always good.

I thought we were done with the tongue photos, but apparently not.
I cannot begin to count the number of ice cream photos we have of him.
Her Insta photos always look better.

What We Ate

While we were visiting Longwood Gardens, we bought food there, another thing we’ve never done, mostly because pre-pandemic you could leave and come back, so we would picnic. Among the four of us, we had a wood-fired pizza, smoked cauliflower bites, parmesan truffle wings, a brisket grilled cheese, Hershey chocolate ice cream, and two ice cream sandwiches from a local place called iSwich. We will now be searching for their ice cream closer to home. It’s pricey but all the food was delicious and we needed the fuel for all of our walking.

So. Many. Cupcakes. I had three from Lancaster Cupcake in less than 24 hours: a London Fog, a Cannoli and a Vanilla Party Cake.

I also ate peanut butter pie and a southwest salad for my takeout lunch at work.

We did not light the candle because I was not about to be the reason the fire alarm went off.

And we ordered from Annie Bailey’s Irish Public House for my birthday dinner. I had the Irish nachos over waffle fries. Two of the family had bangers and mash, and our meatatarian ate a Beyond Burger. He is sold on this plant-based protein initiative and I am all for it.

What’s not to love?

Pizza and stromboli from Pasquale’s because of lacrosse tournament number one. It normally would have been a pizza night from our son’s menu but we figured none of us would want to cook after being gone all day. (We were right.)

Mother’s Day breakfast: Eggs Benedict, potatoes O’Brien, danishes, donuts, fresh strawberries, chocolate milk.

I didn’t have to cook: my favorite kind of breakfast

Frisco’s Chicken with some delicious sides: mac and cheese, chicken fried rice, plantains, yuca fries, empanadas.

Smoked turkey breast. Phil did the smoking. We pulled it and made sandwiches for one of our busy lacrosse nights.

Chicken biryani for our virtual adventure to Myanmar.

It was a Burmese take on chicken biryani and we ate this for an entire week as leftovers.

Ice cream at Freeze and Frizz with the entire lacrosse program in our school district. It was 50 degrees outside.

Meat, cheese, bread, almonds, nectarines and a ganache cheesecake for our anniversary hiking picnic.

We made our own charcuterie for hiking.

And then we went out to anniversary dinner at Quip’s Pub, a local British pub. We shared crab dip for an appetizer. Phil had fish and chips (wrapped in newspaper!) and I had Miss Lacreevy’s chicken (chicken with ham and brie and asparagus, topped with balsamic and served over mashed potatoes). And beer. Because it’s a celebration.

What We Watched

More WandaVision. If you read last month’s description of the show, it was not inclusive of everything the show is about. I mean, after four episodes, I don’t have a clear idea of what the show is about. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. The opposite in fact. Compelling. Good storytelling. Every episode leaves us with a “WHAAAAT??” feeling. We finished it, and we still have that feeling.

The Nate Bargatze episode of The Stand-ups. More laughter. Some backstory for the jokes he told in the longer special we watched last month, which I now want to go back and watch again.

And his other comedy special The Greatest Average American. Again, lots of laughs.

Footloose in Switzerland with David and Debra Rixon. Do I now want to move to a Swiss village in the mountains? Yes.

Call the Midwife. 

Kim’s Convenience. I laughed out loud within minutes of the first episode. I’m always reluctant to start a new series, even when I’ve heard good things. So far, this one doesn’t disappoint. One thing that’s hard for me is the accents because I think I’ve only ever heard Korean accents in television in a mocking sort of way. So, it’s jarring to hear them used in everyday conversation as part of the show and not be internally offended. We finished season 1 and are already several episodes into season 2. I’m stilling LOLing.

When Calls the Heart. I was so bummed when the show was pulled from Netflix. I had watched up to season 5 (heart-breaking!) so earlier this year I bought the DVD boxed set and shared it with friends. When they were finished watching, it was my turn. I picked up where I left off with the Christmas special at the start of season 6. And continued watching a few episodes in that season.

The Africam at Neledi Dam, South Africa. In keeping with our birdcam obsession, a wildlife cam in Africa came up on our suggested list and we watched for many minutes and now I’m going to be obsessed even more. I’ve since tuned in to other African wildlife cams. I can’t stop. I’ve seen birds sleeping near hippos, giraffes just eating till they can’t eat anymore and warthogs.

For our virtual adventure, a documentary about the Burma Road that is being built by hand through Myanmar to connect China and India. Fascinating.

Another episode of History of Swear Words. The “b-word” this time. My favorite part of this show is how academic and professional people talk about these words and their origins and usage. I’m also learning about all kinds of jobs I think I wish I could have had.

What We Read

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny. It left me with questions and an immediate need to read the next book, which I requested from the library.

Evicted. Finished it for book club and am still reeling from my second read-through.

Truman. Continued. Slowly chipping away at it. Will I finish it before summer is over? Stay tuned!

When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn. Bridgerton Book 6 and is it repetitive to say that each one is better than the last?

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. It was like reading Hemingway’s journal. And he made Paris come alive at a time when it was filled with American writers. Enjoyable.

Come Back to Me by Jody Hedlund. This is the first in a new series by one of my favorite authors. It has echoes of Outlander themes in it (modern woman time travels to the past, meets handsome rescuer, struggles with decision to return to her time). Not a substitute for Outlander but a strong story that tugs on your emotions in all the right places.

It’s In His Kiss by Juila Quinn. Bridgerton book 7. Not my favorite of the Bridgerton books, but I’m nearing the end and I won’t stop until I’ve read ’em all.

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. I’m already about a third of the way through it, and I cannot stop reading about Inspector Gamache.

Bonus book treat: I did not read all of these books yet, but on a particularly stressful day at work, I went shopping at the BOGO (buy one, get one) book fair at our school. I have no regrets.

This stack does not include the books my daughter bought. Do we have a problem? Nope!

Thanks for reading along with our May happenings. Next month brings the end of school and the start of summer and what I hope are more adventures. Till next time!

Filed Under: family, gardening, monthly roundup Tagged With: anniversary, birthday, celebrations, hiking, new experiences, pandemic life, quarantine life, spring sports, virtual adventures

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Hi. I’m Lisa, and I’m glad you’re here. If we were meeting in real life, I’d offer you something to eat or drink while we sat on the porch letting the conversation wander as it does. That’s a little bit what this space is like. We talk about books and family and travel and food and running, whatever I might encounter in world. I’m looking for the beauty in the midst of it all, even the tough stuff. (You’ll find a lot of that here, too.) Thanks for stopping by. Stay as long as you like.

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