More Abundance

I shook my head. I mumbled under my breath…mostly, “why.” I worried it around in my head for days and finally, (I’m not known for ‘not’ speaking my mind) wondered out loud about all the cabbage my husband was planting. We usually planted eight cabbages and had more than enough to eat and give, give, give away. Ours is a small garden. We try to maximize every inch. It seemed such a waste of ground.

Cabbage isn’t for everyone, right? Myself, I didn’t like it as a child or a teen either, except as coleslaw, and only after learning the secret to cooking it, did I learn to love it.

And then, I had homegrown. Homegrown, cooked just right, is sweet and yummy. Smothered with black pepper and butter—heaven, but still, what were we going to do with twelve cabbages the size of an overweight basketball, heavier than a medicine ball. Even sharing it with family, that’s a lot of cabbage.

The late cabbage came on just as everything else in the garden was at peak production. We had chard, spinach, lettuce, zucchini, beans and cabbage. I juggled different vegetables every night, shuffled extra to sons, brother-in-laws and neighbors and finally, tucked a nice tight, heavy head of cabbage to the fridge downstairs.

It’s a sad thing to pull up the dying tomato vines, the dried up, battered bean plants and know fresh vegetables are gone for the year. Little did I know about the sweet rewards coming in the form of apples. Sweet, crisp apples. A wonderful quid per quo.

A large sack of red and yellow Delicious given to us by a brother-in-law and more…the culls—imperfect bruised, blemished apples. When my kids were small, and the place was my father-in-law’s, he’d let me gather all the culled apples from under the trees. My mom and I would wash them, cut the blemishes and bruises off and make apple juice. We didn’t even peel them, just tossed them into the juicer. What that mix of yellow and red Delicious produced was the most beautiful pink apple juice, so sweet all on its own that all these years later I still remember it.

I’m really not up to that anymore, but the culls do make wonderful apple pie filling for the freezer, tasty fried apples or rustic apple pie. And those beautiful, perfect apples? They're just right for snacking at the computer, juice running down my arm and all.
So, tonight there will be sautéed cabbage and Rustic apple pie. Talk about abundance. Next year, I will not shake my head, mumble, question or complain. I’ll dream about apple pie and abundance.

Sautéed Cabbage: Strip off outer leaves, wash, then cut in fourths and rinse the inside well. Slice very fine and place in a frying pan. Have a cup of water or chicken broth on the counter by the pan. Sauté on medium-low, turning often, so not to let any of the leaves burn. At first, there is enough moisture. Make sure there is always moisture in the bottom of the pan, but just a teaspoon or two using the water or chicken broth as needed until the cabbage is to your desired doneness. I like it tender-crisp.

When I have it, I’ll start out with a few teaspoons of olive oil and butter and slices of onion. I cook the onion until it’s translucent, then follow the recipe for the cabbage. Serve with black pepper and butter. It doesn’t need much. If you are using store bought cabbage, add a pinch of sugar to the liquid you are adding.

Rustic Apple Pie: 1 refrigerated piecrust, 3 Tbsp. sugar (I use brown sugar), ¼ tsp. ground nutmeg or cinnamon, I prefer cinnamon and I use just a touch more than called for-I love cinnamon, 3 golden Delicious apples-about 3 cups, give or take, 1 Tbsp. butter, cut into pieces.

Heat oven to 450º. Use an ungreased baking sheet. I put aluminum foil on the baking sheet. Easier clean up. Unroll the piecrust on baking sheet.

Mix the sugar and cinnamon. Peel and core the apples. Slice them ½ inch thick. I like the imperfect, rustic cut, but here you can arrange the slices prettily, if you’d like and sprinkle with the sugar mixture. I prefer to mix it into the apples, stirring until the juices start to flow and then let it sit for just a few minutes. Then I pour the mixture into the middle of the crust and fold the edges of the pastry over the apples, crimping the dough to fit. I like it to be rustic looking.

Bake 15 minutes, then reduce oven to 375º and bake 25 more minutes. I brush the crust with milk and sprinkle sugar on it for a pretty look before baking. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. My mother would serve with a slice of cheese, too.

Abundance and Enough

A garden teaches. It teaches failure and patience. The asparagus failed—miserably. The few sprigs that survived weren’t enough to feed anyone…well; maybe, hope for next year, but there’s so much to consider about replanting what didn’t grow. It was an experiment. Cost, time, effort and the space must factor in. Our garden is limited and we try to get the most out each little inch. We feed many with our little 20 x 30-foot garden. Four families, plus neighbors.

Years ago, the garden was more than twice that size, but I canned and put by a lot more than I do now. Over fifty-two bottles each of beans, potatoes, carrots, grape, apple and apricot juice, bushels of pears, peaches and apple pie filling. We were younger and we had captive help. Nothing teaches life lessons better than a garden and I took full advantage with my kids. They helped.

But we had enough and abundance. We have it still. Nothing is quite like going to the garden for ingredients for your dinner.
So, it was with sadness we pulled the tattered tomato plants, dug the carrots and scallions, cut the lettuce, maybe, for the last time. And picked the sugar snap peas. None of those got to the table though. I popped each fat green pod straight into my greedy mouth. The next day we rototilled the garden and raked a patch for garlic.

Garlic is a crop of complete faith and hope. Planted at the changing season with the crisp air nipping at your heels, but done (anyway the way I find best) on bended knee, close to the dark, rich earth, the paper dry skins fluttering away in the wind, the dirt moist enough to cling to your gloves, the earthy smell drifting into your nose. Sixty-three cloves planted. Next year’s garden all ready begun and banked on: that next year they’ll emerge after the thaw, that you’ll be here to watch the first green shoots.

Out front is another lesson of abundance and enough. The thirty-five year old walnut trees are giving up their fruit, in abundance and more than enough. We share. The neighbors, magpies, crows, blue jays and raccoons feast on the leftovers. We don’t mind. We can only manage to crack and use one small twenty-five pound onion sack full and for most of the winter, our cats and we… have free entertainment. Plus, my husband might forbid me to feed the birds because of the mess, but I have found a way around him once more.

How does any of this relate to writing? I write as I plant garlic, with hope in my heart. Hope for each piece I write, for its future. Hope for my dream. That dream of being a writer. Abundance: I write every day. I am a writer living my dream and that is enough.

How Will You Live Your Writing Life?

Are you like me? You know, even agonize over, the things you aren’t good at, don’t know or just cannot do.(you probably can) Now, I’m mainly talking about my writing, but it really pertains to anything we attempt to accomplish.

I’m not particularly good at grammar, I miss mistakes all the time, which just drive me crazy and I’m not much for the whole networking thing. I do this blog and I make fit and start entries in facebook, when I remember and when I really feel like I have something to say. I don’t feel compelled to do much more than that. For one, I’m just too busy.

Now, that’s not to say everyone else isn’t, it’s just that isn’t how I want to spend time usually. I’d rather go for a walk, work in the garden, read, fuss with my houseplants, do some baking or cooking, play with my pets, actually, almost anything else. It just seems more…active. Sometimes, especially after reading The Writer or Writer’s Digest, I feel a little guilty and a whole lot hopeless. It all has to do with your platform and getting it out there. That’s important in today’s publishing world. The common opinion is without a platform and a viable, accessible one, it’s going to be even harder to get published.

As usual, I seem to go at it the hard way. I guess my platform is: the only platform I have is writing. I love writing. I love rewriting. I love sitting at my desk and imagining invisible chains keeping me there, so I don’t figure out some stupid thing (like checking online, facebook, blog visits and all the other things around now that wastes time and that I really don’t get any joy out of. Something about all of those things feels a lot like a gun to the ribs. More so because we are told we must keep current, we want to be in the know, with it, in the digital age, in the loop.) I have to do, rather than sit and write.

I love banging my head against the desk trying to think of that darn word on the tip of my fingers that I cannot remember and realizing it was the, then wondering if that’s the first signs of Alzheimer’s or just some unknown writer’s condition. I love my thesaurus and I even love that word: thesaurus. It sounds positively Jurassic, dinasaurusic, prehistoric, solid and come-beforeic.

So I’m not good at networking and there is this touch of desperation that I really must do it if I want my writing to go anywhere. I do, but do I really need to do more than the best writing possible? That seems wrong. I keep hoping, but because everyone says different, I do the minimum I can. It’s probably not enough. I acknowledge that, but I feel I’ve made the compromise and I, sometimes, recent it. I wonder, am I alone?

I did something about my lack of grammar skills. I’ve taken a course, I’ve bought and read books, I keep some great references close at hand. Still, I’m uncertain, would never tell anyone not to or how to split an infinitive. (See, you’re not suppose to, are you?) I suspect I do it all the time with utter ignorance. Saying sorry doesn’t help a thing.

Mistakes are made. That’s my bitter truth.

I don’t network much, choosing to spend my time the way I must. Writing, carving out time for those things in my life I love as well: doing my daughterly due diligence, doing due diligence to my life, reading, distressing, staying well and remembering there is more to life than being published.

And I try to remember the things I can do:

I can write every day.

I can make sure I read often.

I can read my writer’s magazines, but not take to heart those suggestions that do not work for me.

I can work hard to remembering what is truly important to my happiness and life.

I can honor my love for writing by concentrating on the writing, by producing the best I can.

I can let go of the guilt about those time stealers I don’t enjoy. Maybe, I’ll be sorry I don’t spend more time blogging, facebook, networking. I don’t think so. Down the road, I could blame my failure on the fact I didn’t do enough of it, but I won’t.

I want a writing life on my terms. I can do that.

Pink
It must have rained during the night. Not unexpected. It had been raining most of the last three day, but I had really hoped the rain, at least, would stop. It was cold. Clouds masked what little light false dawn provided. I pulled on bottom thermals, black running pants, black V-neck shirt with pink patch, black jacket, socks, walking shoes. I ate a yogurt, a cereal bar (homemade. To be honest, just a cookie, but it had peanut butter and Rice Krispies™ in it. That it, also, had butterscotch chips, chocolate chips and powdered sugar, was beside the point, don’t you think? Me, too.) I packed gloves, hat, pink hoodie, umbrella, water, tissue, antibacterial wipes, wallet with money, credit cards and ID, camera, notebook and determination. A good pair of walking feet, too and a goal.

Picked up a daughter-in-law and granddaughter and headed for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. If you know me, you know the challenge is the driving. Once driving to Salt Lake was second nature to me, but as my mother has aged I’ve found the distance I drive has narrowed, a little more each year and when you don’t do something, you don’t stay comfortable doing it. And I’ve never liked driving in the dark. My sense of direction is so bad when there are no landmarks. I am directionally challenged and always have been, but off we headed.

The drive was much easier than I worried about and thankfully, the rain had stopped. It warmed up, too. The crowded wasn’t quite as big, most likely due to the weather, but the experience was just as inspirational. I don’t know all the personal stories, but, with my writer’s mind, I imagine them. And it is not just the survivors, though their stories are the ones you see most clearly. The story, any one of the stories, is about the supporters, too.

And you see it there: The grandmother with the survivor sash across her chest being helped along the 5-mile walk by her granddaughter, the woman…no, the girl, really, with a survivor ribbon walking with a man wearing a shirt that said: I’m walking for my girlfriend. ( I say, hold on to that man) The ten women walking with shirts that said: for Amy. The tall, blonde in the middle with: for me on her shirt, surrounded by them, looking strong and healthy and protected.

It’s October. Save the ta-tas, Save second base, Save the breastesus. Get your mammograms, do self-exams (ignore the recommendations and take the battle into your own hands, so to speak) eat right, get out there and walk. Fight the battle. Fight like a girl.

A Blue Pencil Year

I think I said it before. My goal for the year was editing and not just my writing. Truly, I have lived up to that goal. I have polished, modified, reworked and condensed little by little my garden, my office, the organization of my desk, including my computer. Right now, I’m in the middle of cleaning out my utility cabinet in my office. My office looks like a tornado hit.

I still have a long, long way to go, but I see how much the work has improved my writing and my life. I’ve worked hard on the edits to Ella and the Tie-down Man, even to the extent of sending it out and then, giving it another look. Something was bothering me, nagging at my sense of accomplishment.

That second look has proven such a good call; I’d almost like to say it was providence. It’s delayed me getting the novel back out there, but not by much. As I put in place the finishing, polishing changes I feel a ton better. Not to say I’m not still anxious and wary of the whole process, but whether it’s published or not, I can confidently say it was the best I could make it.

And that’s really the key, for me. I’m not stupid, blind, or unaware of the difficulties of being published in this day and climate. My chances suck. But, see, I can take suck, I can ‘fail’, if I’m certain I did all I could. Earlier this year, I just didn’t feel that. Something just kept nagging at me. Nothing concrete, nothing I could put my finger on, but, listen: the publishing world (really, a whole lot of ‘worlds’) are going through a kind of revolution. There is change afoot. The internet has changed everything, some in a big way, some small. And how I fit in is anyone’s guess.

The act of reading has changed. We’ve been hearing the doom drumbeat about the paperback books and just hearing it saddens me. I was reading paperbacks during the paperbacks hey days. I have a stored box of old paperbacks if I open and take a whiff of the dried-out, yellowing pages, it take me back to shopping trips with my dad when I was a teenager, shopping trips with my mom, my babies in tow, stay-up-all-night books (Thanks, Lavyrle Spencer)I just couldn’t put down, books that helped me stay awake while I put up the last batch of green beans, books that kept me company as my husband traveled on his job. I couldn’t have bought the books I did, if they hadn’t been in paperback.

And the act of writing has changed since I first started writing in earnest. I’m one of those writers who always knew I was born a writer. I have always written poems, stories. Always fed on words. But translating that or even keeping up with sending your work out and publishing—that’s another story. A challenge. First, after, raising my kids, (although I wrote every day as my kids came along and grew) I had to catch up with the new world and I had to do it by DIY. That was the only option at the time. The romance genre was in constant flux. It still is.

Truth of it is. I really just want to write. The idea of all the schmoozing, promoting, online presence overwhelms me. In fact, it scared the bejesus out of me for more reasons than I’m shy. It also scares, worries and overwhelms me when I think of actually selling one of my novels and dealing with my own life's little reality. Oh, believe me it is a reality not so different than anyone elses. I’m a mother with adult children struggling with the new economic world. I’m a grandmother, a sister, a friend and I’m the primary caregiver to a ninety-four year parent. Each year I’m spending more time caring for her needs and less time on my writing. No pity party, just the reality of what is right now. But, and this is a big but, the writing keeps me sane, less stressed, less bogged down in the caregiving. It’s the thing I do for me.

Like I've said so many times, I feel like the parts of my life are not compatible. Yet, I can’t stop any of it, nor do I want to. That reality has always caused me worry and no little bit of stress. I tell myself it will all work out. That it is really just me calling the shots. I write and I don’t have to do anything more than that, even if I’m eventually published.

So, editing is a bit of getting rid of the things that no longer work, isn’t it? Books you’ve read and won’t again, blank floppy disks, old cable cords and worries. Editing it all, make it what you want it to be, including your life.

Then, do it all again the next day.