a few flowers to brighten your day.

Looking outside my window the world is huddled under a blanket of  white powder.  The sort that freezes your bones and after making snow angels and fairy igloos for hours you want to retreat from, at least for a little, to warm your fingers and toes.  During a winter wonderland induced hibernation I have spent some time plotting for next summer's backyard flower farm.  Yes, I know, or suspect, it will not be a full scale flower farm, but rather a step in the direction of expanded cultivation.  My plan is to till more of our lawn into beds and intersperse flowers between the fruits and veggies already under cultivation.  I'd also like to fill many of the little spaces between and amongst other plantings with FLOWERS!  And maybe someday, perhaps not this year, I'll dream up a flower maze for our front yard, one that will thrill birds, bees, butterflies and neighbors alike.

Oh did I mention bees?!  I have dreamed of keeping bees for, well let's say in honest the past four or five years, but  probably long before that the itch began.  This being said I don't like being stung and I fear swarms.  I have done lots and lots and lots of reading about bees and talked to many a beekeeper.  From all of this I've concluded that Top-Bar or Warre style hives are the route for me.  Perhaps these too will come to be, all the better to pollinate our neighborhood.

So what say you, will I actually do with all these flowers?  First and foremost I'm hoping to expand the local habitat for the birds, the bees and the butterflies.  In this urban-ish neighborhood we aren't exactly festooned with eating opportunites for these creatures of our biosphere.  Concrete doesn't serve well as sustenance.  So, I'm intending to sustainably and organically cultivate flowers in an urban-ish environment that will attract insects and avian creatures alike.   Then I hope to harvest blooms for enchanted flower portraits, more flower mendings, and experimentation with suspending flowers in sap resin on a small, medium and large scale.

Yes, these are my dreams as I walk stealthily through fresh fallen snow and brave our lake front Tundra.  I am embracing winter in all her beauty, but hold a little longing in my heart for the bounty of the growing season.

come in. please wander. take your time. would you like a cup of tea?

Oh goodness me, I've been meaning to invite you in for quite some time.  I wanted to show you around and share a glimpse into this little space I've carved out for myself.  Way back in October our town hosted a Saturday afternoon Open Studio where I was one of the stops on the trail.  During that day a hundred or so folks stopped by for a gander and a frolic.  It was delightful to share my work and my space.   It also provided me with a lovely opportunity to clean out and re-organize my studio.  

During the open house I showcased Flight Plan, a constructed environment intended to invoke a sense of chance encounter, the potential of love and attraction, the magic of winter exploration and the possibilities of flight, in our living room.  I wasn't able to gather all of the pieces that are apart of the installation into one space, but it was enough to enchant and inspire several of the souls who passed through.  Someday, I'm not sure when, I'm not sure where, I hope to share the piece in it's entirety.  I'll let you know when that day comes.  Until then I'm going to do my best to share smaller and individual pieces in more public places than my home.  Perhaps that is my goal for 2015.  Show more work.  So this is my first step in that direction, sharing this space with you.

Just a note that many of the spaces in my home don't let in enough natural light for beautiful picture making, but hopefully this gives a little bit of a sense of the world where I gather and hone and imagine and make.

Thank you for wandering through.  Come by again sometime.  Maybe next time we can sit and stitch together.

red.

Our natural environment has been put to bed for the season of hibernation.  Trees have quietly slipped off their summer cloaks and eased themselves into an introverted state.  Indications of dormancy and slumber are everywhere around us.  But wait, still, there is the crocus of color in Autumn tumbling toward Winter.  This color hollering that she, and thus we, are still very much here and alive, is brilliant red.  She is everywhere painting our streets, wrapping our bodies, drawing our attention, captivating our hearts, bright as our blood.  And so when the root children and flowers are under Jack Frost's spell we can still hunt and gather luminous bits that abound in our constructed environment.

This hunt for color and colors will be my winter balm.  Will you join me in chronicling color in these frosty months?

bee balm & herringbone hit the road.

Hello friends!

Just a quick little note to say how excited I am for this piece to be making a journey across the world to participate in Rooting (India) - The Knowledge Project  which brings together artists, activists, and farmers from South Asia and the United States to address the specific challenges faced by farmers and consumers in India as well as in the United States. This “knowledge hub,” shares artistic projects that bring accessible, solution and knowledge based information to agricultural concerns to create a public forum that generates public awareness, discussion, participation, and action. The drawings, diagrams, artists' books, videos, and pamphlets are curated by Chicago curator Tricia Van Eck, with Chicago artist Deborah Boardman and Indian artist Akshay Raj Singh Rathore. Rooting (India) - The Knowledge Project, offering free tea and coffee, encourages casual conversations and creates a meeting space for planned public discussions and workshops around various aspects of agricultural concerns.

Since the industrialization of agriculture is in its early stages in India, unlike the United States where food production is almost entirely industrialized, we believe it is an opportune time in India to gather artists, academics, activists, and citizens to address these issues. Because Kerala has a mix of climates, a strong fish trade, provides 45% of India’s plantation crops, has a rich heritage in herbal medicine and Ayurveda, and tourism related to health and spirituality, Rooting (India) - The Knowledge Project does not aim to offer singular simple solutions. Instead it presents the work of artists and collectives who are redefining the critical needs of their communities and in turn are devising their own solutions for long-term sustainability. 

A little bit on my thoughts behind Bee Balm & Herringbone:

As we, with increasing speed, dismantle our environment, destroy the very biosphere that gives us life is it possible, still, for us as a world community to change our trajectory?  Can we mend our ways?  Can we bring back plants and animals brought to the brink of extinction?  Can we salvage the power and beauty of the dying?  Are there small steps we as urban people can take to treat the land and ourselves more sustainably?

These are questions I have asked myself as I embark on a project entitled, In The Time of Flowers where I explore the history of flower preservation, humanity’s enchantment with botanicals, the sustenance florals provide for us as a race as nourishment, medicinal balm and in their uplifting beauty, and if there is a way for us to mend, to bring back the flowers we have lost. Lost, meaning the flowers that have died because we have plucked them for our own delight and thus they’ve been denied the opportunity to reseed themselves, but also the seeds we have lost through time and in the changing landscapes of agriculture, and flower businesses need to alter that which was naturally occurring to theoretically better suit the consumer markets.

Above is an image of Bee Balm in conversation with embroidery stitches.  Bee balm is an edible and medicinal plant.  The stem, leaves and flower are edible and often used in salads, teas, oils extracted for their scents and medicinal balms and tinctures.  This particular bee balm was grown in a backyard urban garden as part of a long term effort to feed my family from foods we grow ourselves.  On this page the herringbone stitch is in complementary conversation with the leaves of the bee balm, hopefully highlighting the flowers angular beauty and possibly returning some life to its dried form on the page.  The herringbone stitch is a cross-stitch commonly used to secure a hem, and hems being what keep our clothing in tact, possibly prevent a garment from fraying, but also something that can be let down, released to make a garment last longer as our bodies grow and change, thus I am using the stitch to represent an effort to preserve the power and possibility of the bee balm.

autumn adventures.

When you live in the city sometimes it feels essential to escape.  Being a girl who has roamed far and wide I often find the Midwest a little disheartening.  There isn't the beauty of mountains and valleys, canyons and riverbeds, the quaintness of New England or the proximity of my beloved family and friends. But there are large swaths of open land dotted with beautiful tumble down barns, there are rolling hills planted with endless acres of crops, a fruit basket of grapes and apples and berries so beautiful in its abundance.  There are unglaciated regions like the southwest of Wisconsin with its caves and springs and undulating land.  Outside the city and away from the coasts of our country the pace of time slows, the life choices and values shift and community seems to strengthen.  Much of this community, in what I've seen of the Midwest, is religious and conservative in a way that I am not, in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable and a bit reactive.  But there are pockets that are not and those are the pockets I search for, while also, sometimes, stepping outside of my own comfort zone and reaching across the differences I am resistant to, to find a space of common ground.

Last year as winter lifted her shroud I took my girls on a day long adventure to a magical place that also happened to be an innovative puppet theater and small organic farm about 2 hours from home.  On our journey out to the farm my girls gazed out the window and my older daughter began musing about what she would do if she lived amidst such beauty and open space, what it would be liked to be unleashed, to be free, to wander without reservation, without restraint.  And so, although we are city folk for now, and likely evermore, I try to give them a taste of this wandering life every chance I get.  We are lucky to have connections to several farms in our region and hold dear the chances to spend time at these oases, to feel connected to the land that feeds and nourishes us on every level.

To that end we have an ever expanding garden in our backyard so that when we are hungry during the growing season we can go harvest a meal of peas, zuchinni, beets, onions, tomatoes, green beans, various leafy greens, raspberries, apples ( a few), cherries (some), asparagus, rhubarb, herbs and other miscellaneous nourishment.  Throughout the season of bounty we do our best to put up food for the winter.  We jam, we pickle, we can, we freeze and now with snow on the ground we are digging into the stores.  Before the snow fell we made a harvest pilgrimage to an organic apple orchard where we gathered bushels of apples that were later sauced, buttered and massaged with butter, cinnamon and raisins and baked.  To have this opportunity to connect with our food system is a privilige and honor.  This abundance and quality is rare in the world where our food production and consumption is increasingly industrialized and processed denaturing the very thing that gives us life.

It seems that the more we develop as a world, build walls around ourselves and hide in the sanctuary of technology, the more we loose ourselves.  We immerse our very being in a world of action and happening of constant change and possibility, of having and wanting and needing.  And as we stick our head in this proverbial sand, we loose sight of what is most important: the air, the land, the eco-systems that support us, maintain the very possibility of our existence on this planet at all.  We are all subject to this immersion in the world we have created.  It is hard to stop and step outside the now to look at the bigger picture and think about how we can act in this world, as individuals, to create positive change for all. It is also easy to be consumed and paralyzed by the devastation we have reaped upon our planet, think carbon footprints, extreme weather events, climate change that may well put humanity's existence to sleep.  So then, how do we agree to make large scale change to preserve ourselves as a race?   Can we step outside of our individual everyday and the whir of information innundating us to connect with the notion that we may well develop ourselves into extinction, destroying our food system, our environment  because we are to busy to deal with the consequences of our actions.  Is there a common ground where the climate change deniers and believers meet?  Where hard science is understood and concrete agreements made and abided by, convenience and capitalism exchanged for a worldly good, investing in the potential for future generations to thrive. I don't know if this is possible.  I'd like to think that the CEO's of  companies extracting fossil fuels from the earth might want to believe in a future where enough natural resources, like water, still exist for us to be able to feed future generations, but I'm not sure their current bottom line cares to see beyond this year's earnings.  

During an Autumn visit to Tryon Farm, a sustainable collective farm community in Indiana, my six year old daughter and her best friend were talking about their American Girl dolls (a brand that had its heart in the right place when it began, but now just seems to promote needless consumption to little girls) and homemade computers and cellphones.  Yes, homemade, out of cardboard with detailed hand drawings of screens and keyboards, a longing for access to technology that has inundated and permeated every ounce of our culture.  And their conversation was killing me, listening to this prattle about stuff, longing to have more junk to clutter up their lives, craving computers and phones because this is what they see around them.  They see other kids with mountains of toys, they see adults always on computers or people picking up their phones constantly to communicate or check on this or that. They want to be a part of the action too.  Even though they are not kids with an excessive glut of belongings, even though they deeply value and cultivate intimate relationships with dolls they have spun identities and adventures for, even though they were innovative enough to make their own versions of what adults have and pretend to use said things, I needed the conversation to shift deeply and so we had to stop, to inhale into our surroundings, to be quiet, to listen and then sink deeply into our experience of the there and then, without straying back into our world beyond that moment.  I needed all of us to have the chance to be present where we were at that very moment because it is such a unique and rare opportunity when you live in the rhythm of the urban globalized world to connect to nature.  And so I enforced a rule, just for those two hours while we walked, that they had to open their eyes to where they were, that they were not allowed to talk about any brand or thing that they wanted, that they were not allowed to talk about phones or computers, but instead see what was around them, explore their immediate surroundings, gather leaves, find something to collect, ignite a little of the magic that is in the dirt at our feet.  The rest of the walk, was, well, pretty darn fabulous.  There was silence and wonder and curiosity and collecting of acorns and little berries and discussions of building things and awe at nests we saw, and a deep listening to the sounds of animal rustles and tumult in the thicket.  It was magic that planted a seed of reminder, planted a memory to come back to, a space of understanding that this is the land we come from and man oh man do we want it to be here for us, to feed us when we are hungry.  

Three weeks after this walk my older daughter turned to me and said, "Oh Mama, I loved that walk..." and proceeded to list off the vivid memories of things she touched and saw that day, the deep sense of being held in the arms of the forrest and the prairie.  So I'm wondering if we might all find a crazy earth mama to yell at us, to force quit and reboot, just long enough so that we might salvage what is most important and essential to our existence, an understanding that the earth matters not just because we want to wander barefoot in the woods or pick apples and make sauce, but so that sea levels don't rise and sweep away our coasts, draught doesn't leave us thirsty withered and without food, epic weather events don't destroy our homes and otherwise make them uninhabitable and antibiotic resistant disease doesn't wipe out large segments of our population.  

I'm not exactly sure what any of this looks like, this crazy earth mama yelling at the world, but I'm hoping we'll listen to her just long enough for all of us driving the train of environmental destruction to pause and invest in radically decreasing our carbon emissions.  Is it still possible for humanity to find the voice of childhood whispering in it's ear?  Can we force ourselves to stop what we are chattering about, take a deep breath and change direction.  It will make all of us in the developed world uncomfortable, I'm sure.  There are things we will have to give up, I don't know what they are, but in so doing we will gain the possibility of life and a future beyond ourselves.  We might even gain common ground.

conversations with the dead.

It is easy this time of year to slip into meditations on death and dying.  It is autumn and leaves cover the ground, a few trees still cling to their leaves but whips of wind will strip them bare in a few short days.  The gardens have been put to bed and the last of our kale was harvested for breakfast this morning.  We are surrounded by signs of what no longer is, of life lost.  This is the rhythm of seasons, of change, but as I get older I seem to fear this change, this loss of life, a little more each year.  I have spent years living in places where the variation in temperature does not swing it's pendulum as extremely as it does here.  To be honest though, at least then, I craved winter.  I craved the hibernation that never came.  But as we stand on the doorstep of winter's silences, life laid dormant, I am holding, fists clenched, at least for the next few weeks as I adjust to the internal drive to be outside and the psychological resistance to bone chilling cold, on to the vibrant memory of the glory days of Spring, Summer and Fall.

Last summer I spent some amount of time culling flowers from the earth and pressing them between pages of absorbent paper and cardboard lashed together with cotton straps.  As of this week the last of the flowers in our garden have given way to crumpled vestiges of their former selves.  It was the Black-Eyed Susan's and the flowers of bolted Parsley that held out the longest, but now they hang slack leafed and wilted, waiting their turn to return to the soil below.  I have to continually remind myself that flowers, by their very nature, bloom so that they may reproduce.  Their dying is also an act of re-seeding.  Dried flowers stand sentinel on their stalks as the wind picks up their seeds and scatters them near and far to grow anew.   Surrounded by these images of life snuffed out, waiting for new growth and having spent a little too much time recently reading depressing articles on climate change, I find myself compelled to find a way to hold on to the beauty that was last season.

I have slipped the straps off of my flower press and sorted through the flowers found in fields, purchased at the farmer's market and grown in my own back yard.  There are many.  Some have held fast to their colors, others have faded.  Some are hearty and their petals strong, while others crumple at my touch.  I know the names of many, but others are strange beauties that intrigue me and I long to know better.  Thus begins a conversation whispered between brittle leaves and lingering needles.  I stare at these fragile lives quieted by my press and the passage of time.  They are not as vibrant as they were a few short months ago when they stood in full feather on their stalks en plein air, but they are here before me.  Their shape has changed, but they still speak volumes in color and contour. I have meditated on their petals and leaves, pistils and stamen and found stories echoing loudly, longing to be told.  In response to these echoes I gathered needles and yarn, paper and glue and set to stitching conversations on to the page reflecting color and configuration.  

These are the results and I am a bit excited about them.  Sure they don't bring the actual flower back to life, but maybe they give it some new life or harness the essence of what it once was.  I have a stack of flowers waiting to tell their stories and listening to their echoes is sure to help me through these winter months.  I guess it's one way of dealing with the winter blues.  That, and dreaming about the seeds to be planted in the Spring.

as seen: grand rapids, mi.

There are few things I love more than to wander at a moderate pace with no other distractions in my mind than the world immediately around me.  Unleash me on a city without family at my heels and I can go for days.  I need little sustenance but the stories spun from the landscape consumed step-by-step down a city street. In an unfamiliar place there is chance and opportunity around every corner.  I hunger to find the unknown and unexpected in unfamiliar territory.  My life, at this moment in time, has a pretty consistent rhythm and balance of family and food and movement and studio time, but sometimes everything gets turned on its head and we unfold into the opportunity of what is beyond the great familiar.

I long to invite adventure into our lives and so I tend to spend spare moments conjuring how we might explore the world.  Oh that we were one of those families who stripped life to the bare essentials and traveled the world on a shoestring doing service projects in various locales, finding ways to connect with a  culture and unpeel the mystery that lies before us.  But it seems, for a mountain of reasons, that is not us, at least not now.  For the moment I am the one who longs to discover the tangible world beyond my doorstep and beyond beyond my doorstep.  My girls are game for adventures and willingly oblige when I announce that we are setting out on a train to St. Louis or to an orchard in Michigan or an isolated spot far far away.  But their stamina for long term adventure is limited.  The familiarity of home, the rhythm of the known is reassuring to their little hearts.  My husband too finds great comfort in the stability of home.  There is infinite possibility in our home when we all retreat into our little worlds.  We imagine and create and swim into our interior unknowns.  And then there is so much exploring in the immediate vicinity, people to know, places to absorb, things to learn and grow into, chances to practice and practice again a skill, opportunities to connect with wounds that are not our own, to be harrowed by them and to offer support on a long and painful road. The great wide world can be too much sometimes, too much intensity, too much possibility, too much stimulation.  And so with an eye to keeping my crew in harmony, extreme upheaval will have to wait. 

In the interim my curiosity can be sated by a small town just beyond the horizon.  I am infinitely intrigued by that which I do not know, the place where I have not been, the people I have not said hello to.  There are boundless opportunities in the small towns and national parks in our own country to learn, see or experience something new.  I've lived in this country for almost 40 years and how much of it have I deeply explored?  Not so very much.  I have made home on the East and West Coast, in the South and Midwest, hiked and camped in the Southwest, driven cross-country, but I still feel the pull of all its peculiar nooks and crannies to dive deeper, to revel more fully in its vast expanses.  Flying cross-country on a clear day is a birds eye view into the infinite unknown, into the creeks and valleys and farmlands and forests.  I long to be unleashed upon this landscape.  To journey deep into this countryside with a camera, a change of clothes, a water bottle and some snacks.  Imagine.  Imagine drinking up the grit and the beauty of each ounce of city block, each curve of path, each bend in the river.  And so when my beloved decided to run his fourth marathon, I thought hmmm, where shall we explore?  What town can I wander through and possibly find something old, something new, some source of sustenance in?

And so we landed in Grand Rapids, MI. It was a three hours drive from here to there through the industrial burn out of Gary, IN and on into the rolling beauty of Michigan's abundant fruit basket.  As we approached the city I wondered when the slowly increasing density of outer suburbs would begin, but it was almost as if we emerged from the verdant farmland right into the city.  A place of wide streets, because here in the Midwest we are less confined by our geography, space opens her arms wide to urban planners and says lay down your streets, we welcome the broadness of your back.  And in 1831 when the 72 acres that make up the configuration of downtown Grand Rapids was purchased, that space became defined and began to be constructed.  

Today Grand Rapids is a fascinating little oasis of art and culture amidst agriculture.    There is a rich history of furniture design and production, several art museums and galleries, a thriving farmers market culture, money for the most incredible YMCA in the country, I'm sure of it, a number of universities, sweet places to eat, what looks like a cutting edge children's hospital and oh so much more.  Upon our arrival I was chomping at the bit to catch a few hours of exploring before the fleeting light left us in darkness and in need of rest.  My family, not so much.  I promised samples of Loves Ice Cream or the Grocer's Daughter Chocolate, playing in parks and adventures in museums, but what my girls really wanted to do, I mean really Really really wanted to do was draw for a few hours, swim in the pool, explore the lobby of the hotel in all its splendid grandeur and eat take out sushi, so rather than struggle, coerce, cajole I let it be.  They felt like they had just arrived at a little magical hub, a sort of Eloise meets some unknown swimming adventure story.   They wanted to settle into this place, to draw what they thought its visitors of yesteryear might have looked like, to find a space of sanctuary in their momentary home.  And so my illogical bribery with sugar lost an unnecessary battle and I took up the mantle of the loan adventurer. 

The morning's rain had dried up and the light had begun to shift, sinking back toward the earth.  I had a few short hours to get lost, find beauty and return, so I grabbed my camera and made like the wind.  And oh my goodness, oh my goodness did I ever loose myself in the enchanting light of autumnal early evening, the bricks and mortar buildings reflecting stories of lives lived, lost and reimagined, the brilliance of innovative small businesses, bits of art left behind from the recently celebrated ArtPrize, the humble beauty of Heritage Hill home to some 1,300 homes once slated for demolition now lovingly restored and inhabited by those who are contended to be surrounded by walls that echo stories of once upon a time before.  It was a glorious two and a half hours that left me with an itch to return.  

As a city it seemed to hold infinite possibility.  There was space and opportunity for one to start something and be unique, to possibly offer something that others wanted to be a part of and have it take off.  Maybe I'm being romantic and idyllic and provincial, but having lived in great urban centers for most all of my life there is something intriguing about these smaller clusters of inhabitants.  Sometimes I feel lost in the hub-bub of the big city, like there are so many of us that nobody is quite so distinct and that to not be washed over you really have to stand up and shout.  I think I'm not the best shouter.  But, I have been to a few smaller places that are rich with reflections that inspire me, where perhaps there isn't the buzz of New York City, but there is the community and affordability and commitment to one's practice to allow for the chance to thrive.  Viroqua, WI embodies this ideal for me.  A small town of 4,000 with a huge organic co-op and thriving community of makers and artists.  People are living rich dynamic lives with a certitude of space and quiet and inspired interested people who want to connect and adventure together, to share in each other's successes and failures.  But I digress, let me get back on track here.  Yes, during our sojourn in Grand Rapids I had a strong sense of the potential to be a big fish in a small pond.  

This sense was fed by the absolute gems that I encountered while wandering.  That they existed in this place I knew nothing about, that they were supported and thriving made me feel a sense of hope and probability.  I'll just share two and then be on my way.  The Downtown Market: This LEED certified building houses a number of independent local foods vendors making delicious things, beautiful community spaces, several rooftop greenhouses, a kids demonstration kitchen, and a number of classes and opportunities to commune.  It is geothermal to boot.   It all began as the idea of a few determined and devoted community members with a vision.  The other spot I almost stumbled past warmed and inspired my heart to no end.  I felt as if the vision and sensibility of the place was so deeply kindred as to be eerie.  Have Company is a sweet little store front and gallery offering residency opportunities for artists, classes taught by said artists and beautiful hand-crafted goods.  The vibe was so rich with a diversity of makings, so delightfully curated and so inviting as to feel like home.  That I otherwise knew nothing about them made the encounter unexpectedly blissful.  This space seems to have been conjured from a beautiful sense of integrity and community.  I love this little tid bit from their website, "The shop is filled with fine art & goods that we truly believe in.  Many of the items you will see in the shop are things we use in our own home, made by our friends.  We hope that when you take something home from Have Company you are filled with the desire to make."   

And so it seems that I found a bit of the familiar in the unfamiliar.  That we can journey far afield and find points of connection makes the blazing candle in my heart burn bright and hopeful for all of humanity.  Oh and I nearly failed to mention that my beloved ran his fastest marathon yet.  Goes to show that we, like good wine, get better with age.

summer fades to autumn, but flowers still bloom.

Every ounce of my being knows that it is fall.  The light has shifted and fades ever faster.  A few nights ago we were sitting around the dinner table and it was dark, fully dark at 7p.m. My heart ached in an expansive cavernous way, a way that feels the tug and fear of hibernation.  I hold a deep love for the quiet, contemplative life a brutal winter brings, the focused studio time, the slow braising beans on the stove, nestling up on the couch with my girls, piled under blankets reading stories of great adventure.  But I am not ready for it.  Thankfully we have some time before snow, before boots, before woolen sweaters must be worn on a trip from bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  So for now I am savoring the fading blooms of summer, savoring the beauty of golden light, the chilly mornings that turn into warm days and the flurry of festivals and activities happening out of doors.

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of attending a workshop hosted by the brilliant lovelies at Field & Florist.  They seem to have created the perfect business balance.  Not only do they farm a half acre field of organic flowers a short drive from Chicago's city limits, but they sell flower shares, much like a CSA where instead of a weekly box of vegetables you get a bouquet of flowers. They also sell wholesale blooms and provide flowers and floral design for events and weddings.  These two are a dynamic powerhouse who have cultivated a beautiful aesthetic and unique business model in the flower industry.

So I have to admit that I was absolutely giddy at the chance to frolic in the fields with them and their know-how.  We talked about the nitty-gritty from cover crops to irrigation to pest management to tuber storage in the winter.  They told stories of hardship, a snow fall in the spring where they were out with blow dryers warming frozen plants, and running over irrigation lines with the tractor tiller, but every ounce of their joy and love of what they do shined through. They shared their favorite blooms, favorite books and favorite sources for seed.  And then we really got to play.  Our group of twelve was unleashed on the fields to harvest a bucket of flowers that we would then turn into an arrangement.  I have made hundreds of bouquets in my life and of late, spent much time playing with flowers, but arranging in a small wide-mouthed chalice was entirely new to me.  I couldn't help but laugh at myself as I tried to contain my slightly disheveled wild nature into this sweet vessel.  I had lots of leggy blooms leaping out of the pot and rouge grasses swaying in the breeze, but in the end it seemed to come together as an expression of a vision I didn't know I had.

After the workshop I collected a few more blooms to bring home.  Three days later I pulled them out of the garage and invited a beloved friend over to be my muse.  She slipped into the role without hesitation and brought her full spirit to bear.  Zinnias, cosmos, hydrangeas and dahlias oh my!  I am deeply grateful for such a wonderful friend.  The spirit of adventure and possibility she allows sets me free, free to explore what is both before and behind my lens.  I am excited to continue down this path of making pictures of women and flowers, women old and young, the clear faces of babes and the lined faces of wizened women who know themselves deeply, each entangled with the botanical realm treading on the edge between this world and the next.

untitled, in history.

consider the flowers.

from the earth.

May you find a spot of sun to lay in and a bloom to hold in these drifting fleeting days.  Revel in it, behold it, cherish it.  Cheerio my loves!

flowers in the field.

On our adventures and meandering this summer I had the great pleasure and opportunity to spend time in the fields of a couple of very special spots where flowers are planted, irrigated, coaxed into beauty and harvested.  I am a bit enamored with the romantic notion of a flower farm, the gritty, often painful labor of trial, error and loss, the bone tired, dirt under the fingernails, not particularly lucrative nature of it all, for the love and beauty of flowers.  I suspect this is related to some of the deeply enchanted moments I experienced in the fields when the work of the day was done, but bees were buzzing and swallows diving as the sun skulked slowly lower in the sky.  I spent three evenings wandering different fields at this hour of day and it was nothing short of nirvana.  

Such beauty provoked a curiosity as to why it is that we humans are drawn toward cultivation?  What are we growing when we push a seed into the earth?  Sure as regards food, we are cultivating our own vitality, but is there something deeper especially when it comes to the ornamental? Is it that we reap happiness when we plunge our hands into fertile soil or that the act of growing something from seed is an act of hope, believing in the future?  Apparently there are soil bacterium that we absorb through our skin when our hands are in the dirt that spurs the release of seratonin.   And, historically in times of war people have cultivated victory gardens as a means of food independence, but there are also stories of flowers being grown on the front lines.  Even in times of great distress we need beauty to ease our stress, we need the hope that when we plant a seed we will see it through to bloom. Over the past decade or so there has been a rise in organic farmers cultivating small plots of land.  We are in a general state of climate distress and change that is both terrifying and often crop obliterating, yet some, possibly many of us are eager to move back toward the land, to be in sync with the rhythms of the seasons.  Hope and happiness seem like vital reasons to invest in our local ecosystems.

So with this longing toward the hope and happiness of flower cultivation, I have nosed around and glimpsed the work of others with similar aesthetics and dreams.  Perhaps their are apprenticeships at World's End or Tea Lane farms in my future, perhaps I can lease an acre or two at Tryon Farm to grow flowers or maybe I should turn our yard into a flower field.   There is this journey of growing, making and sharing beauty in the world through the wonder of fresh flowers that deeply moves me, but there is also this dream of using the cultivation and language of flowers to experiment with their preservation and usage beyond arrangement (even though this compels me to the core.)  

Alexander McQueen used fresh flowers to adorn dresses in his 2007 show, Sarabande, stating, "Things rot. It was all about decay. I used flowers because they die."  To pour one self into the complicated making of something with a brief existence is something we humans do over and over again.  People commit their lives to making a mark, leaving something behind, but after a time most of us leave nothing behind.  Glory fades quickly in a time of abundance.  The world echoes with the intangible.  There are flower festivals all over the world that showcase this.  Extravagant decorations are made, years, months, days are involved in the planning and actualization of a vision that is briefly reveled in and then disappears.  I often wonder about what happens to the floats from the rose bowl parade after the festivities are over.  I think they are unceremoniously dismantled, slipping back toward the earth.  Maybe it is all a metaphor for our own lives.  

Any which way it is a glorious opportunity to be here amongst the flowers.  To behold the abundant beauty, to create, share and celebrate it with all the many creatures on the planet.   I am filled with gratitude and an armload of flowers extended your way.

plucking, gathering, arranging & dying: finding the order of things.

I remember when I was a child gathering daffodils, Lilly of the Valley, Queen Anne's lace and Black Eyed Susan's at my grandparents' farm as the seasons progressed.  We'd make bouquets and fill vases.  My grandmother had three distinct areas of her home where she cultivated flowers, her greenhouse which later on was expanded with a potting shed, her front porch which was enclosed in the wintertime and felt very much like a walled english garden or solarium and her rainforest garden.  She also had a vegetable garden and various patches of flowers on the farm, but from what I recall she had a few distinct loves: orchids, lilies and hibiscus, each cultivated in a specific location.  She tended these loves with great attention.  Once when I was a child in the summer I remember laying in the rainforest garden just after the hanging orchids had been watered gazing up from a bed of moss as droplets fell on my face and I stared in wonderment at the tangle of hanging roots.  She nurtured these plants with a singular devotion and when they were in bloom there was no greater beauty.  I remember her moving through her greenhouse, transplanting and watering, on her knees amongst the zucchini, the delicious succulence of her raspberries.  She spoke the language of flowers with an abandon and fidelity that few today herald. The natural world enchanted her from birds, to shells to flowers and she found many ways to dive deep into this enchantment.  She was curious about the patterns and habits of our earths ecology, intrigued by the myriad ecosystems in our biosphere.  

Me, I never used to be a flower person per se.  I appreciated floral beauty as much as the next person, but I have spent much of my life in cities and moving from home to home.  There has been concrete and uncultivated earth in my midst.  When my love and I moved into our first home together I remember scattering seeds and hoping something might grow, transplanting dahlias but knowing nothing about feeding and watering.  Some how my grandmother's green thumbs alluded me.  Buried inside a curiosity about the botanical world churned, but only now is it bubbling to the surface.  And I am enchanted, and I am eager, and I am overwhelmed by the world of botanicals.

This world utters softly and screams, it soothes and prickles.  Once when I was in school in Mexico I bought a sick friend calla lilies, having no idea of their association with the resurrection of Jesus and common usage as a funeral flower.  I was reprimanded for my foolishness and to this day have not purchased calla lillies again.  Truth be told they have a more nuanced meaning then I then perceived, but at that time I came to understand that there is a layered language of flowers that harkens back to eons before now that I might want to explore.  During the Victorian Era flowers came to express a symbolic language all their own.  If you gave somebody a certain flower you need not accompany it with a lengthy letter explaining yourself, the bloom spoke for itself.  Today we have reduced that language to roses equalling undying love, poinsettias having something to do with Christmas, and Lilies beauty, but I don't think we have common cultural knowledge of flowers symbolism much beyond this.  Floriography is lost on us.

Despite this fact, there is indeed an intrigue and appreciation of bring fresh flowers home.    We might no longer engage in the exchange of Tussie-Mussies, small bouquets ordered around the meaning of particular flowers and herbs then gifted with intention.  But, I think we are still eager to absorb the underlying messages, to be amidst such beauty even if it is a forgotten language.  It amazes me the voice each flower has, the feelings they conjure both in their fresh from the earth vibrance and as they decay.   I am smitten with the plucking, gathering, arranging, selling and decaying of flowers.  There is a symphony out their asking to be ordered, asking to be celebrated, asking to be held.  And once we have done so, inhaled deeply the fresh perfume, there is a certain scent of flowers decaying on the kitchen table, a pungence plunging toward putrid that tickles the nostrils and urges us to move our blooms into the compost pile.  But of late I have wanted to let them linger, see in their loss of life what shape they might take, how their leaves might furl, blooms might brown and stems may crumble.  I hope to move ever closer toward an understanding of this language, to plunge my hands into the earth, to coax and nurture blooms into being.  Floriography, you intrigue me.

flowers at the wedding.

for the chickadees.

In my last post I waxed on about the flowers at my sister's wedding, but did not actually show the flowers "at the wedding."  As we tumble toward fall I am savoring this time of flowers even more, wanting to harness the warmth of the earth, the sun induced stress of plants that urges them to flower, the harvesting and holding on to the beauty of such blossoms for brief moments before they wilt, decay and shift back toward the earth.  Rather than go on and on about the divinity of the flowers from the wedding, I'll let them speak for themselves.  May I introduce the amazing, glorious, ever enticing beauty of August flowers in the Northeast of the United States: ranunculus, anemone, tea rose, columbine, zinnia, strawflowers and oh so many more.

flower delivery.

bridal bouquet.

four crowns.

arranged.

flower creature.

girls.

in her hands.

usher.

fully arranged.

toward dusk.

hung.

a reason to celebrate.

Happy Day to you!

flowers after the wedding.

It has been almost a month since my little sister got married.  She is no longer little, 'tis true, but still very much my beloved sister.  She embodies a certain elegance and grace, a clarity of style and distinct vision that she has used to inform her work and her life.  Since graduating from college in photo journalism she has shared her perspective on the world through insightful and thoughtful capturing of images.  From weddings to farms she harnesses the essence of a moment, the spirit of what is, all with a devotion and eye to finding the fleeting beauty in each instant.  And so her wedding was an actualization of her grace and distinct vision for each of us to live within over the course of three ephemeral days.  We gathered in a greenhouse for the rehearsal dinner, hiked through a cow field overlooking the ocean to celebrate her union with her beloved, danced the night away in a 200 year old barn at the reception and brunched in the house my great grandmother bought in the 1940's hovering above the ocean.

The time was nothing short of dreamy and divine.  Each moment more enchanting than the next.  And the flowers, oh the flowers!  Krishana Collins, the woman who grew, harvested and arranged the flowers is a wood sprite of the highest order.  Knowledge of botanicals runs through her veins, and it seems that having her hands in the earth provides her the most profound sustenance.  I dream of someday working under her tutelage, learning the names of various flowers, nurturing plants along their path to bloom and harvesting and arranging these naturally occurring works of art into transient sculptures.  Oh I digress into romantic dreams.  But the flowers, they were alluring.  Krishana and her team at Tea Lane Farm conjured almost mystical arrangements that were strategically placed throughout the celebration space.  The wedding party was adorned with an array of petals from flower crowns and boutonnieres to beautiful bouquets.

The day after the wedding as the sun sunk low in the sky, my mother, daughters and my sister's dearest friend, Kate, journeyed back to the site of the wedding.  The land was rich with the energy of the day before and we wandered the fields toward dusk.  But before we went wandering there was work to do, a gathering and dismantling of the remnants left behind.  Clusters of tiny vases, silver and glass, porcelain and wood, were flocked outside the barn doors.  We spent a good hour at play, disassembling arrangements and rearranging them in the grass, strewn over each others' bodies, tossed in the air to see where they fell.  Somehow I cajoled one of my daughters into playing the role of an ethereal nymph, and Kate gamely obliged my request as well.  I can't even begin to explain how powerful these remains of the day before were.  They held a bewitching energy  beyond any words I might share with you.  I organized and repositioned, strategized on how to coax the right expression from the lovely creatures captivated amongst these petals and stamen.   And some how the magic of these blooms seemed to vibrate and we were hooked.  For days afterward I offered ice cream and adventures to my daughters and niece in exchange for their playing along and wandering into flower land with me.  I think each of us found something to savor as we dreamed our way into a surreal world of botanics.

in the time of flowers, updated.

encaustic allium pounding.

My experiments with flower preservation have been a meandering journey of curiosity and whimsy.  It is July in the Midwest and we are in the time of flower abundance.  Our yard is filled with beebalm, allium, echinacea, hydrangea and an assortment of other blooms.  Over the course of the past six weeks I have honed my flower drying, pressing and pounding techniques.  I have photographed flowers and coated said photos in wax.  I have pounded flowers into hot press watercolor paper brushed with a wash of alum then adhered these pounding to birch plywood and coated them in beeswax.  I have pressed flowers between pages of book and pieces of blotter paper and weighted down cardboard. I've stitched tried and true mending and embroidery stitches onto paper and paired these stitchings with pressed flowers. The results swirl around me now and crowd my studio with  ghostly whispers of the flowers that once were.  The wax coated poundings seem to echo stories of long ago while the mendings with pressed flowers hold more possibility, like they've been given a second chance, a new opportunity, a chance to explore being from a different perspective.

encaustic photo of drying zinnias.

castilleja two ways: pressed with threaded backstitch & pounded and encased in wax.

pressed daisies & dandelions with basic weaving.

  market flowers & mini-weaving.

 poppy with basic weaving.

wild grasses & square chain couching.

I'm excited to continue this exploration of giving new life to that which has lost life.  There is so much to learn about mending stitches and working with wax.  In moments I feel discouraged by the slow pace of my stitching, but remember that the time is what imbues each piece with its new life and energy, gives it a sense of longevity.  I also have crushing moments struggling with the uneven and rippled surfaces of wax on substates, but hopefully with patience and time I will find a smoother surface, achieve a more refined actualization of visions dancing in my head. Here's to the imperfection of each piece and the journey of attempting to make bits of beauty and light to share with you.  

dressed: a series in dolls.

The passage of time weighs heavily upon me.  I think about it often.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to be a young woman in the 1920's dancing the Charleston, schucking off constricting undergarments for short fringed dresses or billowy tunics.  I wonder if I would have enjoyed carousing in Paris in the era of Ernest Hemmingway and Gertrude Stein. Or what the pain and pleasure of a 1950's housewife would feel like, making home for family and husband on a suburban cul-de-sac.  Would I have been like the Kate Winslet character in Revolutionary Road, devastated at the imprisonment of infinite domesticity or would I have created a world of intrigue for myself amidst the seeming consistency of it all.  Or to inhabit the brain of  Marie Curie, conducting obscure research on radioactivity, a loving and intellectually rigorous partnership, 2 Pulitzers.  These are some of the infinite imaginings that peak my curiosity, trying on different identities in different times.

I consider the passage of time upon my body and on those around me; watching my grandfather steadily shift from a man who could do back handsprings on a summer day well into his late-50's to a man, at 90, who is determined to navigate the halls of his home without the assistance of walker.  I study the faces of women around me for the marks of their lives etched finely, creased steadily deeper.  I wonder at the unmoving lineless face of a woman in her 70's, elegant and graceful like a tableau in Madame Tussauds.  Such preservation is not for me, but I sometimes struggle with the superficiality of aging.  I love deeply and dearly the lines of women I have known for many years, watching their faces gain wisdom and beauty as they shift, become more deeply themselves, youth a distant dream.  The strong confidence exuded by a proud head of white hair.    But there is still a coming to terms with the limits of self-care and self-preservation, an acceptance of the beauty of time trundling slowly by.  I recently had a conversation with a Canadian Naturalist about the social pressures of aging.  He turned sixty-four this year and received a notice from the government letting him know his pension payments would begin shortly.  This has turned his sense of purpose on its head as he still feels the drive to persist, to work, yet is being told that he is no longer essential, vital, no longer needed.  This plus the steady breakdown of the body and a longing to regain some of those years of directionless we all have in early adulthood, time we used imperfectly perhaps, add up to a struggle against time.  Oh that we used our time always with direction and purpose, ambling toward a distant light.  Sometimes I I wish I could fast forward the middle years of forty to 60, not because I don't want those years, but so I could be settled more deeply into myself.  If I could preserve my functionality, guarantee the plasticity of my brain, I would like to live a la Tuck Ever Lasting, on the verge of sixty to be fully lined, to live in a rural cottage surrounded by flaking paint and a creeky old pup, a big studio, bountiful gardens, family and friends coming and going as they will.  That might be the sweet spot, the shroud of youth dropped away, the wisdom of years in my bones, skill at my finger tips.  Would you come join me in the studio for an afternoon?  That would be fun, a chat, shared food and some quiet time to make things together.

For now I'll have to settle for working with things that have seen the passage of time, that bare the marks of an era, have endured the rotation of seasons turning round the sun.  And so my doll project commences, a space to bring alive characters dancing in my head, to take fabric from other peoples past and reimagine it into lives not yet lived.  I have loved the dolls of Manon Gignoux since I first laid eyes on them nine years ago.  They are odd, quirky, hailing ancient art forms, an archeological dig of sorts, something you might find in an Egyptian pyrimad.  They speak of an ancient need for play things, how characters can be so simple and yet create the opportunity to imagine a world around them.  

My dolls are each created from remnants that I have gathered over the years and stashed in the attic.  Many of their garments were once my grandmother's, other bits have been thrifted and accepted as donations, and then there are a smattering of new infusions, mainly Liberty of London fabric, as its patterns speak of times past.  I'm hoping to do a series of fifty, each one deeply herself, yet completely unknown in some way.  As I unfold each fabric, find a conversation between the different bits and slowly stitch each creature into being they whisper to me of their love and longing, of their whimsy and dreams, of deep passions welling up and burbling over, eager to be in the world. I hope to hear these whispers, to listen closely and share each imagined life, to find lightness along the tunnel of time where it doesn't always live.

in the time of flowers.

Oh me, oh my it has been a lush and wonderful Spring here in the Midwest.  After deep Winter, polar vortex and a slow emergence from hibernation we have been surrounded by growth.  Buds slowly opening, lavishing us with their fragrant blooms, reawakening our senses to the smells of a living, breathing earth.  It is so easy to forget how deeply I am effected by the changes in our environment, how easily mood can dip and shift as the clouds pass over the sun, winds whip and snow cloaks.  But here we are, we have finally arrived in the time of flowers.  It begins slowly and we watch for crocuses, daffodils, tulips.  We hold our breath as the magnolias begin to bud, a slow and steady crescendo to a brief extravagance.  Then there are apple and cherry blossoms, flowering trees drop their snow and we amble toward irises, columbine, inching to allium, poppies then settle into hydrangeas, cone flowers and black eyed susans.   A brief summer submerges us, plunges us into her essence, a scent enlivening yet fleeting.  We are out of doors, we commune, alive with the wonder of our world.

As the seasons shift from one to another I always think about the different ways to harness the spirit of a season.  Is there a way to store a piece of each season within to draw on as needed?  How do we reference the moment we are not in? Flowers, such fragile structures, represent phases of the season from which they hail.  They are alive with that moment in time where nature has coddled them under her eves, nurtured them along to the exact moment where they burst forth chanting March, April, May, June and so on.  How exactly then might we capture that moment in time?  Is it possible?  Is it possible to preserve what slips through our fingers so readily?  Can we pluck something from its environment yet still preserve the essence of what it is? 

Flower preservation has a long and storied history and methodology from drying to pressing to pounding to waxing. For eons artists have sought to harness a bit of the botanical spirit, to represent the beauty and quintessence of what so stimulates our senses.  The work of Carmon Almon enchants me to no end.  I remember discovering her on a steamy summer day, feeling how deeply she understood flowers as her renderings depict them so closely yet go further to the place beyond.  Not only does she enshrine their beauty and spirit, but she reveals a haunting under layer that speaks of their power to hold our attention.  As flowers bloom all around I feel compelled to enter this fray of harnessing a bit of that botanical essence.  

But how and what exactly is it that I seek to represent?  There is a ghostly and ancient spirit that lives and breaths within each flower, a phantom that utters a primal syllable tickling us awake.  When we pull a flower from her place, uproot her from her life blood, how might we do her justice as her life is snuffed out?  I am intrigued by this effort.  Dusting dirt from roots, I think about how we can repair something we have intentionally destroyed.  How might I stitch her bits back together, salvage the colors leaching from her petals?  It is this that I have begun to explore, slowly experimenting with various forms of flower preservation most to imperfect effect.  

I have pounded floral bits into hot press watercolor paper, dunked delicate blooms into 130 degree wax, sandwiched weeds and wild bouquets between heavy pages and strung a garland of blooms across my kitchen. The results are indeed intriguing and layered and reference the spirit of the flower, but I am left wondering if there is a way to mend that spirit into completion?  To shout her beauty from the page and have it echo back with a resounding, "YES, I am still alive!"  As we destroy our fragile eco-systems and deplete our quality of life efforts to preserve what was steadily emerge.  People plot the rewilding of large swaths of land, freeze their wounded bodies in a cryonic hope that someday somebody will be able to restore their health.  And in that vein, I continue to fear the snuffing out of our blooms and how once they are gone we might remember them and later still, bring them back.

cooking with you.

I'm over the moon about the cropping up of Spring produce.  I mean to say beyond words excited , alive with the desire to consume sustenance from our local terra.  I am hungry for the deliciousness that we nurture from the earth.  Winter in the midwest, although wonderful in so many ways, presents a somewhat depressed food economy.  Trips to the store find labels from far off lands.  We are unable to feed ourselves locally in the winter.  

I do my best to preserve food during our growing season. Last year I put up 30 quarts of applesauce, 27 quarts of tomatoes, 100 pounds of blueberries, another hundred of sour cherries, made 16 pints of jalapeno-onion-sweet pepper jam, 5 pints of corn relish, 8 pints of sweet pepper relish, 7 quarts of cucumber pickles, 4 pints of pickled green beans, many four ounce jars of pickled beets, roasted pureed and froze umpteen kabocha and red kuri squash, and oh the pesto, was there ever pesto, mint, basil and parsley varieties.  

So Spring.  Here we are, and I am going to eat it up!  Did I mention that I love simple delicious food.  Well sometimes I like things a little more complicated, but generally I tend toward helping ingredients to reveal their flavors.  I'm some what of an intuitive cook, every now and then taking inspiration from recipes, but not necessarily following them to a T.  That being said I have been deeply inspired by other peoples approaches to food.

Did you read or see the movie Julie & Julia ?  It is the story of one woman, Julie Powell, who is drawn to the food of Julia Child.  She spends a year cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  It is a love affair of sorts, a striving to create and master a certain artistry, an adventure in feeding herself and her love.  Well, on many occasions I've had a delicious meal somewhere and thought, oh dear goodness me I want to apprentice myself to this or that chef, cook in their shadow for a year and then bring all sorts of new and wonderful skills home.  I don't really actually want to do this, but that is what's great about cookbooks.  You can apprentice yourself to a certain chef by traipsing through their work at your own pace, reading between the lines, delving into and applying the practical knowledge laid out before you.  I believe after Julie & Julia a certain trend of cooking your way through a  book was kicked off.  I remember hearing about people cooking their way through Ottolenghi's Jerusalem, starting food clubs and inviting fellow Ottolenghi lovers to join them to sample his recipes.  I love this concept, expanding the restaurant into the community.  Engaging in a larger food conversation. Cooking together, cooking for each other as an act of creativity, as an act of generosity, as an act of gratitude.

I would venture to say that I've had devoted love affairs with a  few cookbooks.  Over the past couple of years: Plenty by Ottolenghi, Small Plates & Sweet Treats by Aran Goyoaga, and Salt to Taste by Marco Canora.  Last year I marked up and preserved with Saving the Season by Kevin West.  And for delicious and nutritious gluten free baked goods I often refer to the Gluten Free Goddess blog.

A few weeks ago I was invited to an evening discussion of canning and strawberry jam making demonstration by Marissa McClellan.  She is the host of the blog Food in Jars and has written a book by the same name.  Most recently she published Preserving by the Pint.  I can not say enough good things about her work.  I had not experimented with any of her recipes prior to attending the event, but me oh my, I am now a devotee.  (Yes, I have a moderately obsessive personality.)   Preserving by the Pint is organized by the season and begins with Spring.  I don't suspect I'll make every recipe, but I might come close.  I've begun studying the book and tabbed the pages of things I am committed to making.  Thus far I've made and made again and then made again in a triple batch her oven-roasted rhubarb compote, seven batches of ramp kimchi, four batches of pickled ramps, a double batch of butternut squash butter, pickled spring onions, a double batch of mustardy rhubarb chutney,  blueberry maple jam, and from her blog, rhubarb orange butter.  

I am usually so excited to have fresh local produce in the Spring and so many early season crops are short lived, a wake up call to the palette, that I never think to attempt putting them up.  But this year, this year is different.  I might venture to say Marisa's inspiration is changing my approach to food.  I've already started adding more fermented foods to the side of my plate at most meals.  For years I've read about the benefits, but have not been sold on fermentation only because my childhood picky-eater self crops her head up and draws a firm line in the sand, you will not eat that.  Every now and then when I go out to eat, which let's be hones,t is really Really not very often, if we are having a tasting menu, from a forager's delight sort of a place like Elizabeth, I resolve that I will try whatever is put in front of me.  That means I've tried a few more organ meats than I might have otherwise, and a crudo or ceviche something or other that definitely would not have otherwise graced my palette.  But, even if I end up not liking a given item, I have learned much about preparation and presentation and that both can really sway the oral experience.  Things that I might never have considered trying ten years ago, I am slowly learning to incorporate into my own diet.  Steps I would have rejected out of hand, like soaking and dehydrating nuts, have become common place.  The other day I was having a conversation with my husband about kimchi and fermented foods in general.  Over the past few years we've dabled in fermentation, thanks to the inspiration of Sandor Katz.  We've made beet kavass and attempted coconut water kefir, to good and not so good success respectively.  But after reading parts of The Art of Fermentation I still wasn't confident in my ability to make something both tasty and fermented.    I also get a little skeeged out when opening a commercial fermented product as my nose is a little skeptical about what bacteria might be running around in there.  But after making ramp kimchi from Preserving by the Pint and having it with my eggs for the past week I am sold.  I believe I can populate my gut flora with so many divine bacteria  and not feel like I'm eating it just because it is good for me and I will someday acquire a taste for it, but because it is delicious and well I made it. Thank you Marisa for coming up with and sharing such deliciously flavorful and easy enough to make recipes!!

So here we are, in a time of growing.  And next winter, when we are eating mountains of kale from California and our chickens have stopped laying I'm hoping I'll pop open a jar of rhubarb compote or pickled spring onions and be able to taste the sheer excitement of the beginning of Spring.  Tell me, have you done much in the way of Spring food preservation?  Have you had an unexpected love affair with a cookbook or style of cooking?  Just curious.

chronicles of a sub-urban grower.

I cringe to call myself suburban, but when we get to the heart of the matter, it is true.  I no longer live in a fourteen story pre-war apartment building in New York City, a Victorian in San Francisco, a Craftsman in Atlanta, or a brownstone in Chicago.  No I live in a house built in 1894 in the town of Evanston.  Evanston, although it abuts Chicago is decidedly a university town that happens to share a public transportation system with the city of Chicago.  As somebody who has a strong draw to urban life and the cultural access that comes with proximity to a city, this place where I can walk and ride my bike most places, has become home.  Yes it is true that I dream of living in the country.  Perhaps in a co-housing community on an organic farm.  Perhaps in rural Wisconsin with a great big old barn that has been converted into an art studio and gallery space.  But for now, this is where our roots are.  This is where we will grow.

As the mid-western growing season ramps (no pun intended) up, I have been thinking a lot about growing ones own food as a creative act.  Each year our attempts at gardening have expanded.  When we lived in Atlanta I thought for sure if I threw seeds at the earth and never tended to them something would grow.  I was disheartened when zinnias were the only thing that really took root.   Oh and there was the year of ordering tomato transplants by mail  and growing one beautiful Cherokee Purple.  I think that was a $30 tomato with a larger carbon footprint then I would have intended.  

My paternal grandmother was an amazing gardener.  I remember her rambling zucchini plants, vining green beans and well pruned raspberry brambles vividly.  But growing skill is not genetic in my case.  And since I have only really come to growing our food since her passing. I can only conjure her in my planting, not stoop by her side in the garden plugging seeds into the earth.

All of this to say that I am not the worlds most astute gardener.  I do not take well to following directions, paying attention to certain details or organization, but oh I am inspired.  I am inspired by urban growers everywhere from Detroit to Milwaukee to the south side of Chicago where just last week an ordinance was past whereby vacant land can be sold for a dollar for civic use or otherwise. I am inspired by the urban farm movement of the special period in Cuba where people with little and little capacity to import food grew their own. I am inspired by those who have left big cities as part of the contemporary small organic farm movement whereby people who love good food and believe in sustainable practices, that do not deplete the soil, grow food and sell it. I am inspired by four season growing pioneer, Elliot Coleman, and the Locavore movement.  I am inspired by the act of putting a seed in the ground, watering it, nurturing it and watching it grow to maturity.  I am inspired by the chance to harvest a meal from my own backyard.  Although I might be a lazy grower in part, there is an itching determination to learn by error and to grow, one meal at a time.

This year I thought it might be a worthwhile experiment to better track our growing efforts, to keep tabs on what fails and what succeeds, to observe the change in our growing plots through the Spring, Summer and into Autumn.  And, well I thought I just might share  a little bit of that here.

Thus far our herb boxes are overflowing with mint, oregano and chives.  The parsley, thyme and lavender are struggling to make a come back.  The apple and cherry trees I planted four years ago are blossoming, and the seeds we planted a couple of weeks ago are sprouting.  I've ripped out more raspberry brambles then I care to mention and am doing my best to contain these rambling wanderers.  This past weekend our first outdoor farmers market got me so excited I decided to plant three rhubarb and nine asparagus crowns.  I love early spring foods, ramps most especially, and always long for more of them.  Who knows how I would feel if we had access to asparagus and rhubarb year round, but since we don't they are dear treasures.  Treasures I hope to cultivate and harvest and share.

Last year I came to terms with the fact that my efforts to grow peaches, peppers, eggplants, potatoes, carrots and corn were somewhat futile.  This year we are sticking to what I have firmly established I can actually grow.  So our list of foods that are in the ground and I feel confident will provide some degree of sustenance are: collards, kale, swiss chard, lettuce, beets, snap peas, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, cippollini onions, strawberries and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.  Oh and there is one moon and stars watermelon. Let's keep our fingers crossed for her.  Much of this is from seed, but some are transplants.  To date my efforts to grow seedlings indoors and properly transfer them have not been successful.  I have ideas and plans for the years to come, but for now we are a seed and other peoples' transplant sort of growing establishment. 

I am eager to nurture our little vegetable patches along and to harvest summer meals from our garden.  We are fine tuning our irrigation system for optimal efficiency of water usage and already harvesting mint for salads and smoothies.  Oh how I am looking forward to all that will come from our growing efforts.  I wonder at all the possibility of what we can make on this little patch of land we call our backyard.

spring has sprung.

Like so many in this neck of the woods I have been looking forward to Spring and when the Equinox rolled around, I was eager, but underwhelmed by the lack of blooming springiness in my midst.  In fact it was very much still winter here.  I have a sign that I stitched many years ago that I usually hang up around late February after all the Winter Solstice/Welcome Winter decorations have been taken down that requests, Come Spring.  Or maybe it commands, or begs, I'm not entirely sure.    The equinox is when the light seems so obviously to have crept back to us.  Our chickens orchestrated a laying protest during the last month of Winter, not a single egg.  Then suddenly the light shifted and temperatures steadily began to rise and voila we were back to almost an egg a day per chicken.  And so the first month of spring has come and gone and we are well on our way to bloom and grow.

Last week my sister, brother-in-law and two nieces came to visit.  There was plenty of mad chaos and delight for everybody, plus lots of delicious food cooked, adventuring about and plenty of time to commune at home.  For me this time of year is about reemergence, celebrating the light, planting seeds.  It is a time to reflect on the fertility of the earth and the potential of all beings, the freedom to comfortably be out of doors for long stretches of time, the reimagining of connecting to and participating in my community.  As a mother of two young children I think a lot about what traditions we are creating as a family and for our children.  I think about how to give meaning and shape to the year as we shift through the seasons.  I grew up celebrating Easter, but admittedly I have searched outside my childhood box for spiritual meaning and sustenance.  My husband grew up a cultural Jew in New York, steeped in the rigor of communist thought and intellectual inquiry.  But, organized religion does not feel like a genuine connection point for us and so we have sought to create something else for our family.  I'm not exactly sure what this something else is, but I know that it has something to do with community, food and making.

This year as our Welcome Spring, not quite Passover nor Easter, but a subtle homage to the two and more ancient traditions, Celebration we decorated eggs.  I talked about the chickens laying more eggs, the abundance of bunnies we are suddenly seeing around town, how the earth and animals seem to be bursting with life and how we too seem to be just as eager to embrace the world outside our door.  Happy Fertility and Blooming Day was heard more than once in our backyard discussions.  But really it was about the chance to make art together.

And I think we did a pretty good job of making said art.  There was a good amount of set-up required, but the results were worth it.  I have an affinity for natural dyes and making everything myself, sometimes it works like a dream, and other times, not so much.  Three years ago we experimented with beets, tumeric and blueberries to imperfect effect, but I've steadily honed my craft and this year tumeric and red cabbage created deep and satisfying colors after an overnight soak in their color baths.  

My girls were in the market for more of a quick fix and although factory farmed conventional eggs and kool-aid aren't exactly things I have any desire to support, sometimes I bend a little.  Paint pens from the local art store and kool-aid mixed with oil helped us create pretty dreamy marbleized and patterned eggs.  We also experimented with collecting leaves and blooms from around the neighborhood, pressing them to our eggs,  then wrapping and securing old stocking around the egg to hold the plant matter in place.  These eggs were dunked in kool-aid and when peeled apart created cool shadow prints!

It feels as if a solid foundation for our celebration of spring has been laid.  I look forward to growing these traditions with my extended family in the years to come.  How do you and your family welcome spring?  I'd love to know.  Feel free to leave your stories in the comments section.

decay to bloom.

As the snow peels back and a rich and sleeping earth thaws to reveal itself, leaves and branches in various stages of decomposition stare me in the face.  Last summer's oregano and hydrangeas reach stringy brown arms in a spray of limbs around our dormant garden.  This past weekend I hacked out the long legs of last year's raspberry brambles, pruned back all manners of flower stems, turned the soil in our vegetable beds, and made a mental list of all that needs to be done in order for our summer garden to bloom.

While I snipped and raked, the growth of seasons past sifting through my fingers, I had a sense of wonder at all the surrounding decay.  The sky was gray and mysterious, thunder rumbling in the distance, and I was there with the past.  The echoes of last year and the year before whispering their stories in my ear.  

I am forever wondering at these vestiges of the past, how they color the present and allude to infinite possibilities.  It is these reverberations that guide and provoke.    As things are destroyed, beloved clothing moth eaten or worn to a thread, last years flowers, pedals long gone, a beautiful skeleton, an opportunity comes to imagine something new.  

Amidst all that is broken down, chives and tulips creep up from beneath the bed of leaves, buds begin to burst open, the grass is looking greener and in the quiet between the bird song and raindrops there is the hum of new life- fed on a healthy diet of yesterday.

urban tundra.

 Every year I eagerly await the arrival of our local urban tundra.  Chicagoland may not exactly be the Arctic circle, but sometimes it resembles such vast, flat, frozen land.  At the height of winter one can sometimes find twenty foot tall ice walls, temporary caves and icebergs along our lakefront.  This is my eighth winter here and each year is different.  Last year there was little sign of the beloved temporary glaciers as our winter temperatures never stayed below freezing for long.  Given that we are steadily warming our planet, to devastating effect on a large scale, I feared our scenes of winter might never return.  But this year, while the warmest winter on record for so many areas of the world, was full-fledge, old-school winter here in the mid-western United States.  We had four days where the temperatures plummeted to fifteen degrees below zero and almost three months where we never broke freezing.  That said, this was an epic year for our urban tundra.

I had grand plans to closely chronicle the ebb and flow of said tundra, it's beauty and detail in different lights, the mounding shattered ice piles as they stretched ever further out into the lake.  Alas, there were many occasions when I failed to have my camera in hand at the right moment, and other days when the cold was anything but persuasive at enticing me toward the lake.

I did make many pilgrimages to our fair frozen land.  It's massive size, colors ever changing to reflect temperature and weather, are a source of grounding, solace and context for me.  We don't have great mountains here or epic canyons or briny seas, but this body of fresh water serves as a primary connection to nature here in the Midwest.  In late August there is no greater freedom than swimming out towards the endless horizon at sunset.  But, winter's waters offer a different form of meditation.  Some mornings the lake appears almost haunted, a subtle sheet of fog hovering over the icy sheets and other times stark and bright, fully revealed.  

And so we watch it grow, waves slapping against the shore forming sculptures that join hands with themselves climbing higher.  We strap on crampons and scale sheer faces, look for our reflections in the bluey cold, and slide joyfully down frosty mounds.  Until one day it begins to slowly fade.

Ice chunks break apart and drift off into warming waters.  Mountain faces slip back into the blue abyss and we watch it go.

Then one day rising temperatures ease the last jagged edges back into rolling waters and we are left with wind and waves.  I know that I am eager for the warmth that Spring brings, the joys of new growth and the possibility of casting off coats and substituting winter boots, for rain boots, for clogs, for flip-flops, but in this loss I feel a little bit of heartbreak, a little fear that this may be the last year of the giant glacier.  So, as I dream of planting seeds and growing sunflowers and tomatoes, I will squirrel away my hopes for urban tundra, pack it tightly in the nest of my heart like so many nuts, ready and hoping for next winter.