My continuation of Sharon Astyk’s now-completed “Independence Days” project (June-Aug 2022), which offered a framework for recognising how we’re building resiliency, community, and accountability that will make our lives better now and in the future. Many of Sharon’s categories are (or could be) related to gardening, so it seems to fit here on this blog. Equally, none of them has to do with gardening. They’re all multifaceted.
I’ve modified Sharon’s categories to better match my own life and community; I may continue to tinker with the framework as time goes on.
- Plant something: plant, start something
Nothing planted but my store-bought parsley has been pertly standing in water for almost a week if that counts. I hope it counts. Even when I forget to water it and it starts to wilt, it rejuvenates when watered. My kind of plant.
I started and finished two biggish projects this week: I addressed and mailed 80% of our Christmas cards on Friday and Sat., and on Sunday I wrapped and mailed all our Xmas gifts that aren’t local or delivered directly by a 3rd party (for mailing Mon/Tues).
On Sunday, I spent an hour looking over my recipes for cookies, nuts, and potluck foods to choose some to make this holiday season. Holiday baking has not yet commenced, however. Next week, hopefully.
- Harvest something: harvest, forage, glean, or bring to fruition
I actually did harvest several sprigs of winter thyme from under the snow in my garden on Wednesday, for an herbed risotto. And we’re still eating hazelnuts harvested from the yard in September.
- Preserve something: food, local community resources
Local resources: Shopped at the farmstand twice this week (Wed. and Sat.), at the local bakery twice (Friday and Sunday), and at the local charity thrift shop on Wednesday.
- Waste Not: reduce waste, reuse, salvage & repair, give away
We managed to eat our grapes and blueberries before they went bad! Husband mended a PJ top and a shirt of his. He also spent two hours on Friday repairing/re-roping the scratching posts on the cat’s condos, and they look stellar now. I wish I had taken before photos.
- Keep Stocked Up: with food and emergency supplies, financial resources, and experiences that make life worth living
Supplies/Finances: Well, money is draining away at a rapid rate (Christmas, travel, groceries, heat) but I am feeling well-supplied with most household items and food. We could store more water, though, and we could remember to either rotate it through regular human use or replace older jugs (that may have become unpotable; six months seems to be the limit for storing potable water in plastic jugs) with new ones and move the older waters to the sunroom to use for watering new plants next year.
Experiences: No trail or lake walks this week, but I did take three longish walks in town — about 4 miles on Wednesday and Saturday and 3 miles on Friday. It’s satisfying to run errands by walking instead of driving.
I’ve spent a little time on the jigsaw puzzle and expect to finish it next week. It’s very Christmasy looking. And I finished reading Patricia Cornwell’s Unnatural Death, the 27th in the Scarpetta series, on Friday; I love immersing myself in their world, at a safe distance of course.
I decorated our Christmas tree on Tuesday night for a couple of hours, taking my time, listening to a couple of Spotify playlists of winter music, with the cat, which was soothing. I’m still loving the Advent calendar.
I invited a friend over for tea on the spur of the moment on Wednesday afternoon and it was good to catch up with her for a couple of hours.
Also good to meet (in person) with two friends for Salon on Friday afternoon and on Zoom with my permaculture group (7 of us this week) on Thursday morning, starting our new book, Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows.
- Food Stuff: learn new food skills, try new recipes, use what’s available in the pantry, use what’s grown/made locally and what’s seasonal
I made a potato & herb risotto on Wednesday that I hadn’t made in a couple of years. I love it, but then I think, rice? AND potatoes? It’s a lot of starch. But it tastes so rich and herby. And I added shrimp to it for protein (white beans would be a good addition, too). It was fun to shovel snow off a thyme plant and cut some sprigs. We ate the risotto on Wed., with fresh local spinach sautéed in oil with our garlic, on Thursday with sautéed broccolini and our garlic, and one of us had it on Friday with a frozen winter blend (cauliflower and broccoli), steamed.
Monday I made a one-pan orecchiette dish with chickpeas, kalamata olives, tomato paste, rosemary — I got the very last two rosemary sprigs from the grocery store, and they weren’t even wilted, which felt like a win — served on a giant bed of arugula, and we also had that on Tuesday and one of us had it on Friday, with the winter blend veggies. Saturday and Sunday were takeout pizza and big green salads with lots of veggies and red beans in them.
My husband made crêpes all week, which we had for desserts with bananas and blueberries, and whipped cream (and a little maple syrup on a couple of nights).
He also started a 24-hour sourdough bread process on Sunday night.
- Be Neighbourly: contribute to community support systems, look for ways to help neighbours and others
Several friends (most local, some not) and family members (neither local) had surgeries, medical procedures, MRI and CT scans, or other important medical appointments this week, and one friend got Covid (and lots of friends-of-friends and acquaintances have it). Other close friends are dealing with a hard and unfolding family situation. I’ve tried to lend moral support as well as I can (by text, phone, and email), and if requested, by researching lab and scan reports.
- Skill up: learn new things, especially skills or knowledge that remind us of our place in the natural world and within the social fabric
Three webinars this week! Monday evening was Virtual Birding (through Maine Audubon), looking at birds at feeders (footage from earlier that day) in northern Maine, upstate New York, Ontario, and Czechoslovakia. That was fun, particularly watching flocks of pine and evening grosbeaks at a feeder in Ontario and comparing our chickadees with Europe’s great tits and blue tits, which are related to them.
Thursday was a double feature, with a Xerces presentation in the afternoon on the biology and migration patterns of eastern monarch butterflies (learned some new things) …
… and Benjamin Vogt’s “Garden Design for Winter” at night, which reminded me of the importance of texture, structure, and varying heights of shrubs and trees. All three were worthwhile.
My husband is still exploring the weird world of sourdough and trying to make ours more sour.
- Tend & Maintain: maintain our bodies, minds, and relationships to keep us resilient; and do what’s needed in the house, yard, and elsewhere to prevent failure/breaking/hassle down the line
Bodies/Minds: I worked out 4 times (4 hours) this week and took three longish walks.
House & Garden: Husband cleared about 5 inches of snow Monday morning from the driveway. He took things to the dump/recycling on Wednesday. I cleaned the shower floor (tile) on Wed. We both vacuumed various rooms. We’ve been checking the Christmas tree’s water levels at least twice a day. Husband ordered a new remote for the TV from the cable provider — the old one has been sticking and slow to work for a while now; it arrived this week and works great!
Relationships: I’m focusing a lot on my family, with serious medical issues taking center stage right now. Talked with my sister on the phone this week for about 1.5 hours total, and texted and emailed her, my other sister, and a few good friends quite a bit this week. Having a friend over on Wed. felt cozy and warm.
I like sending Christmas cards (though I don’t write much on most of them anymore), because it is a connection — sometimes it’s the only connection all year, sometimes it reinforces the connection that’s ongoing all year, but either way, sending these cards feels important to me, one way to strengthen the filaments of webbing that hold us together, however tenuously.
- Winter is coming: notice Earth’s seasons and our own seasons of life and daily rhythms, and look ahead to what’s needed now to make life better in the future
I’m almost finished ordering/buying/making/thinking of Christmas gifts, and now comes the funner part, the little add-ons that occur once the pressure is off and that feel very pleasing to give. It’s also time for end-of-year charitable giving and membership renewals, which I enjoy doing.
The fruitcake, the panettones, the sharing of homemade cookies and nuts, the port and Christmas cocktails, small gatherings — it all feels so sumptuous, so comforting; and this year, as many years, it also feels deeply wrong to enjoy so much, to have so much, so much, while so many people — those I know, those I don’t know at all — are truly suffering terrors, horrors, and complete upheavals of their lives, and it’s incomprehensible and it’s ongoing and it may well get worse.
I read a piece by Bess Kalb today that expressed some of what I feel, though perhaps not as deeply as she does; this is a paragraph from what she wrote: “I believe it is more important than ever to cling to the people we love and to luxuriate in their safety with an awareness of how quickly it could all go away. I can only stomach being around people who are also wrecked by the horrors, and I don’t think I am alone in that. This holiday season, when joy feels obliterated, I hope you can find community and camaraderie amongst people who are starting from the same baseline of devastation.” She writes that she is “Struggling, but trying to stay grateful.”
I do feel joy, even comfort & joy; and sometimes I do feel wrecked by the knowledge of the cruelty and violence in the human heart, unfolding on the earth in many places and many ways. I am very grateful for any modicum of peace and calm I experience right now (and I’m really bowled over by delicious food, the warmth of close friends and family, and pretty or useful things), knowing it could all be otherwise, and it is already otherwise for many of us.
A pastor friend, Adam Ericksen, wrote this recently:
“When God was born into the world, God showed all people – but especially the marginalized and the poor – our inherent worth. God became a homeless Palestinian Jew who suffered violence as opposed to inflicting violence upon another. He became the outcast to show us that God is with the outcast because even outcasts have infinite worth.”
Life won’t be better until we really see the inherent infinite worth of all beings, humans and others, whatever their status here on earth.
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