soup for a cold and wet day

I don't mind the cold. Bring on the coldest, wintry day and I'm just fine--as long as the sun is shining. But today is one of those chill (45 degrees F), wet, autumn days and I'm cold! When this happens, it's time to bring on the soup.

Today, I foraged through the bountiful contents of my fridge and pulled out carrots (just dug from our garden yesterday evening) and celery (alas, from the store), grabbed a few homegrown onions and cloves of garlic and began to chop. It was beginning to look like a standard minestrone, but I really wasn't in the mood. As the veggies began their saute, I threw in a handful of fennel seed and thought "the fennel!". There was one more bulb of fennel in the backyard garden and I went for it. Thinly sliced and added to the saute, I gathered the missing ingredients: chicken stock, diced potatoes, pre-cooked "Tongues-of-Fire" beans, and pre-cooked whole grain kamut.

The result? A golden-hued soup with hopeful bits of spring green from the fennel, a delicious nutty, chewy texture from the kamut, and the utter satisfaction of fresh-dug potatoes. This soup is a keeper.

Kamut and Fennel Soup
serves 6-8

1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, washed or peeled, sliced
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 TB olive oil
1 TB fennel seed
1 tsp dried basil
4 c chicken stock
2 cups water
1 tsp sea salt, or to taste
black, or white pepper, to taste
2 medium potatoes, washed or peeled, diced
3/4 cup cooked beans ("Tongues-of-Fire" are great in this, but any white bean will work)
3/4 cup cooked, whole grain kamut (rice makes a good substitute)

Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil over med-high heat. Add carrots, celery, fennel, fennel seed, and basil. Turn heat to med-low and cover. Allow vegetables to steam for several minutes, until tender. Pour in chicken stock and 2 cups water and bring to a boil over med-high heat. Add potatoes and simmer about 15 minutes, or until tender. Add beans and kamut, simmer 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

a love list

Snuggle time with T where he reveals his deepest paleontological theories ("...maybe T-Rex doesn't really have short arms, maybe they just haven't found all the arm bones yet...").

Breeze at the garden that makes the pigweed do a twirly dance on the stem.

Pears getting good and ripe on the counter.

Tiny bits of colorful knitting found all around the house (evidence of J's prolific creating).

Calypso beans snug in their crackly cases on the vine, becoming themselves again (from yin-yang patterned, to green, back to yin-yang).

there is rain

There is rain and I feel my soul lapping it up, the parched garden drinking it in. There is Ruckus and inspiration for a game all our own, woodland animal illustrations on each. There are harsh words between sister and brother in the next room and my stomach tightens, feeling pulled, but I sit instead. There are crackers, made and tasted. There is laundry tumbling in the warm cocoon of the dryer. There are hopes and intentions. There are dreams to build a business like a tree house. Limb to limb, layer upon layer, generations of great grand-others holding us up on their strong shoulders, tossing down apples for pie, their stories shared or else imagined.

blueberry trance

I picked blueberries this week with my kids, and with my sister and her two girls. The sun was blazing. Sweat dripped into my eyes and I blindly reached for the bluest on the branch. All stages and ages of ripeness were held on a sprig--green, red, pink-purple, blue. Mosquitoes stung my neck and arms and eventually I stopped swatting at them and fell into the blueberry trance. I noticed when my eyes adjusted and my picking pace quickened. I was feeling the pull-- the blueberries really had me now. My kids gave up and flopped in the shade of the towering bushes and I gathered the bountiful, ripe fruit. Just. One. More...

dwellings, dwellers, dwell

I have been dwelling--as we all do--habitating, residing, staying a while.

The chickadees have returned to dwell in the bird house outside our kitchen window while they incubate and brood their young. A female killdeer is dwelling in the Project Grow garden plot across from ours. She is sitting on four black and white speckled eggs. In about two weeks, her babies will emerge from their shells running. Running! And following mama in search of food. After a while, though, they will move on, no longer dwelling.

Dwell. Such a funny-looking word. Or maybe I've been staring at it too long. Dwelling on it. Lingering, pondering, staying perhaps a little too long. That kind of dwelling. It is spring and I have the uncontrollable urge to run like the baby killdeer. A dwelling is a nice place to stay for a while, all safe and warm for the winter. And now it is time to move on and see what lies ahead.

tornado facts

Scrupulous note-taking by J. Owl while reading a book about tornadoes.

making it real

Tiny dwellings for tiny folk. My daughter, J. Owl spent a focused three hours in the yard creating these fairy houses. She gathered and moved moss, made mud cement to hold support beams together, and thoughtfully added fluff to sleeping spaces. As I watched from the back door I sometimes saw her mouth moving--intoning or play acting?

Later that evening, in the blue-grey dusk, she went out to visit the houses. She returned suddenly, breathless and excited, saying she heard the grass "crunch" near this underground shelter. Could it be?

trio of 2 x 2 paintings

2 x 2

I am working on a series of 2 x 2-inch paintings. The idea is to make one each day and then see what the collection of paintings wants me to do with them. I can imagine groupings by color, by shape, or by subject...