Tag: summer

A 1970-Something Summer

~ Katherine ~ Leave a comment

 

 

When I was little and it was summer, I would run.  Run to get where I needed to go.  I was always up for a game of tag–of running bases between the sturdy poles of the clothesline.  I would run barefoot over the grass for as long as I could (before the grown-ups would insist I put my shoes back on).

You would think with all this running that I grew up on acres somewhere in the country.  But I didn’t.  I am from a small backyard, squished between two other small backyards each with their own secret things.

One side of my yard was a wooden wall–the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream.  It was the wall of the neighbor’s garage.  We had pussy willow growing against it.  And one day, Nick ran too fast–tumbled right into those woody branches and got one caught in his leg.  I followed him inside, while holding my ears against his screams as the flustered moms, interrupted of their coffee and cigarettes, pulled it out.

There was a low fence (made of chicken wire, maybe?) that lined the backside of the yard.  Along it grew our vegetable garden–peppers, tomatoes, eggplants.  This fence was not sturdy, and any strong, lithe and backyard-wise girl of eight or so, knew instinctively not to climb it.

The third side was built of a rusty cyclone fence softened with sweet, yellow and white honeysuckle. This belonged to Grandma and Grandpa.  Just on the other side grew rose bushes, blue hydrangeas and delicate Lily of the Valley–pretty things that don’t belong where children play.

Most days I was happy enough contained within a space of those sweet honeysuckle, blades of grass, bitter dandelion, and blushing clover.  I tasted it all, took sips from the hose and delighted in my self-sufficiency.  I didn’t know it then of course, but I was learning how to feed myself.

 

 

 

 

The Kitchen Is Quiet

~ Katherine ~ 1 Comment

IMG_3260

The kitchen is quiet.  The garden is wild.

The house is straightened, piano is dusty, four baskets of laundry wait around lightly folded.

The kids in their swimsuits kick soccer balls over the lawn

past dusk, the goal stretches into the neighbor’s backyard.

Cheeks and noses glow pink on their pillows.

Brown shoulders and backs — their bodies tattooed by the sun are lean.  They sleep in their beds, so solid must their dreams be, while the cool night air, like a mother’s soft hand,

brushes back their curls (tousled and French Toast – golden) from their smooth foreheads.

The kitchen is quiet, except for clinking spoons in empty cereal bowls, scrunching of cheese stick wrappers, tin foil yogurt lids being ripped off,

peach pits, egg shells hitting the trash can sometimes smacking the tile floor beneath, empty bags of cashews, baby carrots — wadded up like mini basketballs and tossed — all net, but sometimes backboard too, empty jars of peanut butter left for me to wash.

The garden is wild with salad greens, basil, nasturtium leaves (no flowers, but hope is alive), chives, tender green, fuzzy tomatoes grabbed and fondled by four lush, strong, adolescent, hopped-up cucumber plants.

 

 

Late Summer’s Garden in the Midwest

~ Katherine ~ 2 Comments
Hollyhocks along the garden fence. I planted too late so don't believe I'll see flowers this year.
Hollyhocks along the garden fence. I planted too late so don’t believe I’ll see flowers this year.

I came to the flower garden late this year.  And I am waiting for a show of color even though I know it may not happen this time around.  As for vegetables, green tomatoes on the vine in August – and I wait still….for summer to finally turn up the heat and bring forth brilliance.  Gardening teaches me how to wait, but more than that how to have hope even when it all looks very, very green and small.

Waiting....
Waiting….

While I wait, I read.Onward and Upward in the Garden by the late New Yorker editor, Katharine S. White. – a compilation of the fourteen essays she wrote for the New Yorker from 1958 – 1970.  This book is  filled with facts enveloped in her opinions and personal reviews of seed catalogues, seed companies, books and authors dating as far back as the 19th century.

The Writer in the Garden, edited by Jane Garmey includes essays written by authors as varied as Edith Warton, Michael Pollen and W.S. Merwin.

I am lost this summer in these great books, I am lost in the fiction that is a garden.

Nasturtiums in a pot on the deck.
Nasturtiums in a pot on the deck.
Basil just beginning to look full and fragrant.
Basil just beginning to look full and fragrant.

I leave you with a thoughtful quote on what a garden is to W.S. Merwin…..

….an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, its appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty.  It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows.  It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden.  But a garden is a relation, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.

 
This has however been the summer for cucumbers.
This has however been the summer for cucumbers.

 

Never finished!

Summer Wild!
Summer Wild!

My Mother’s Advice, 50 Shades Wrap-Up & Arugula, Spinach, Strawberry Salad

~ Katherine ~ 3 Comments

My mother and my biggest fan texts me the following after reading my last review of 50 Shades of Grey, ” Keep reading.  You’ll change your mind about Christian Grey at the end of the book. ”  And then she adds, “Who knows?  Maybe it will put a little excitement into your marriage…if it isn’t there already.  Wink.”

Ugh.

And finally when I don’t think I can take much more and am considering going off-line with my writing forever, she completes her motherly advice with, “Oh, don’t be such a prude.  I’ve read all the good scenes to your dad at night when we’re in bed.  It’s fun!”

Ewwww.

Final Thoughts on 50 Shades….This is a dark romance, a deep-down psychological challenge – a game.  Before reading this book I would ask myself the following:

Do you want to play?  Will you be honest with yourself and consider how you too might feel about riding pain to the edge – maybe way beyond your threshold for a chance to feel a rich pleasure you’ve never known?  Are you willing to take that risk?

Will you allow the author, E.L. James, to twist and bend your psyche, tighten your belly every time she puts her two main characters in the same room together?

Are you ready for James to show you who you really are?

Ana will let Christian spank her if he agrees to tell her more about who he is.   I can’t imagine giving up my ass so easily.  Here’s my offer to my husband-  I’ll let you spank me if, for one week,  you clean the house, do the laundry, wash the kids, go grocery shopping, make dinner, bake me a chocolate cake and listen with an abundance of interest as I tell you all about my day.  Oh and throw in a week’s worth of uninterrupted naps for me as well.

After a few days have passed, my mother calls me.  “I’ve made the Arugula, Spinach and Strawberry Salad and it is delicious!  You have to give your readers the full recipe.”  We are done talking about 50 Shades and back to talking about food.  Whew.

So here it is – Mary Ann Esposito’s recipe for Arugula, Spinach and Strawberry Salad.  Eat this salad and pick up a copy of 50 Shades of Grey before the last of summer’s heat is extinguished. Oh, and feel free to use my mother’s advice while I go make another appointment with my therapist.

from the June 2012 issue of Taste of Italia

1 tsp. unsalted butter

1/4 cup pine nuts (my mother used walnuts instead)

2 cups arugula leaves, washed and dried

2 cups spinach leaves, washed and dried

1 cup thinly sliced fresh strawberries

2 Tbsp. honey

2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

1/4 tsp. salt

In a small saute pan, melt the butter and toast the pine nuts (or walnuts) until they are lightly browned.  Transfer the nuts to a small bowl and set aside.  Tear the leaves of the arugula and spinach and put them in a salad bowl.  Add the strawberries.

Heat the honey and balsamic vinegar together in a small saucepan just until the honey melts (I wiped the butter out of the saute pan that I browned the nuts in and used that one instead of having to wash two pans later).  Transfer the mixture to a small bowl and whisk in the olive oil 1 Tablespoon at a time until an emulsion is created (I added an extra Tablespoon of olive oil to cut down on the sweetness a bit).  Stir in the salt.

Just before serving, pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently.  Sprinkle the nuts over the top and serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.

* To make this a delicious Autumn salad I’ll use thinly sliced green apples in place of the strawberries, toasted pecans in place of the pines nuts and add a sprinkle of gorgonzola cheese.

Enjoy!

A Change in the Weather and Summer Pasta

~ Katherine ~ Leave a comment

There is still a good month left to this summer.  We are finally getting rain in this part of the Midwest.  Thunder and lightning wake me in the middle of the night.  Thunder roars differently out here, I think.  Something with big meaty fists pounds our roof and then rolls away slowly, clumsily over its knuckles, glaring at me over its fat shoulder.

It snorts-Take that, Jersey Girl.

Lightning is fantastic in the big, big sky.   In an instant and without warning, white fills my eyelids like a camera’s flash, transports me right out of a dream and back into the blackness of 3 am.  Hopefully all this rain hasn’t come too late for the farmers who are relying on their corn crops.  After living here now for two years and reading the local papers, this is what I think about.  Maybe the farmers actually sleep better to the sounds of a storm.

Amid all the heavy roar and sharp cracks outside my window, I begin to drift off again.  There’s an old farm house out here somewhere waiting for me.   There’s a hot, orange sun beginning to set over a field, a wrap-around porch painted white wearing pots of lush ferns like earrings, a brightly-colored woven hammock sways gently in the corner.  And just outside a squeaky front gate, there’s a country road that goes on and on.

In the meantime, there is our apartment, a hub this summer for all our coming and going.  A place to hang up damp bathing suits and pool towels, a place to drop off the bass guitar after lessons and a dusty baseball bag after a night game under the lights.  An almost too big table that just fits on an almost too small back deck where we share our summer supper.  Where I notice the dirt still lingering beneath small fingernails and think to myself – Another good day.

A place for me to write, a place for my books and shelves for my cookbooks and food magazines.  A place to make a quick, small meal last night, that-turns out- has big flavor.

It begins with pasta – small penne cooked al dente then tossed with bite-size pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil and juicy tomatoes all from the garden – chopped.  A clove of garlic from the farmers’ market – minced, a bit of salt and pepper, a drizzle of olive oil.

Summer in a bowl.

Recipe adapted from Giada DeLaurentiis

Stay Here in the Heat with Me

~ Katherine ~ 5 Comments

It’s going to be another hot one today in Madison, Wisconsin.  Temperatures are expected to climb and claw their way into the very high nineties.  Early morning and already the humidity is beginning to tease and tighten the tangles in my dark hair.  It is time to give in to the heat.

I didn’t make it out of Chapter Two of Fifty Shades of Grey last night before falling asleep.  Maybe it’s the thick air that makes my eyes so heavy and leaves my will tired and weak as soon as I turn on my bedroom lamp.   Or maybe it’s lines like “Ground swallow me up now!” and “-my mother is all about new business ventures.” that are like a double dose of NyQuil for me.  This is how I feel so far – twenty-two pages in.  I am not afraid of changing my mind.

This morning I am re-reading the first few pages of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I’m sure the last time I read this was two summers ago and yet I can’t recall names or descriptions of any of the main characters.  This lack of memory worries me.  I know I read it because quite a few page corners are turned down to mark where his words come together in a way that gives me new understanding of the truth of our human-ness…

 “Little by little, listening to her sleep, he pieced together the navigation chart of her dreams and sailed among the countless islands of her secret life.”

Like I said it’s summer and it’s hot.  Rather than keep cool all day in the air conditioning, I prefer to sit still outside and read books that give off heat.  Authors like Garcia Marquez and Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) inspire me to pick on fresh fruit and cheese right from the fridge then sip a cool drink – allowing its icy sweat to drip down my fingers while swinging gently in a hammock on a lazy afternoon in July.