Trees for the forest

Green carpaccio

This morning, I was reading Orion Magazine while eating a mushroom and parsley omelette. There was a review in the magazine of a book called “Recipes for Geese and People” by Natalie Jerminjenko (reviewed by Eric Wagner).

No recipes for goose, cooked or raw, will be found in this book. Rather, it is about the overlapping foods of people and geese. Nice. Pointing out our common ground — quite literally – here is a recipe for a green “carpaccio” taken from the review. In this case, the recipe references the habit geese have of walking on and smashing the fresh green grasses and other growing things in their environment and then eating them fresh, flat and juicy.

Carpaccio typically refers to raw meat (usually beef), smashed flat and thin in parchment paper, then sprinkled with olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper. As you might expect, though, this carpaccio is vegetarian (as are geese).

Here’s the gist of the recipe as reprinted in Orion, modified and paraphrased to suit my mood.

Take a variety of fresh greens — chard, spinach, cabbage, mint, basil (whatever is appealing and available). Wash, trim the tougher stems, blanch briefly in very cold water and pat dry. Lay the leaves flat on a sheet of parchment paper (sturdier leaves on the bottom). Cover. Smash with your hands, then with a rolling pin. Basically you’re massaging the greens to pull out the juices. Peel the paper off, lay flat on a plate, drizzle a bit of olive oil and lemon or balsamic, salt and pepper and serve, as a pesto, or on some very thin crispy crackers, I would think.

I should say that although I am not vegetarian, I am a bit tender about geese (you will know this is you have been reading along). So for me this is a friendly concept that reinforces my sense of geese as part of the larger flock of social animals. Geese and ganders as gourmands not viandes.

What's for dessert?

Ingredients:

1 pt. fresh raspberries
4 oz. fresh unsweetened goat yogurt
1 C ice
4 oz. juice (apple or other clear juice, not sweetened or artificial)

Put all of the ingredients in your blender. Put the ice on top, unless your blender is turbo powered. Blend away. Add water or juice (sparingly) as needed to achieve your desired texture.

Makes two 16 oz. servings.

Serve with a little protein on the side to help regulate blood sugar (soy sausage, a hard-boiled egg, a bite of ham, whatever you’ve got that is relatively high in protein but doesn’t add more sugar to this breakfast recipe.

Substitute mango, peach, or any other berry as you wish. Citrus fruits curdle in yogurt, so they don’t really work. Substitute cow yogurt if you must, but goat yogurt is truly excellent in smoothies. Bananas are such a dominant flavor that I do not use them in summer smoothies. In the summer when so many fruits are available fresh and full of their own flavors, choose a fruit that is light and balanced and seasonal.

Fresh foods, prepared simply, simply taste best.

Well, the chicks, guinea keets and goslings are all peep-peeping in their new coops. The grown geese and ganders are standing guard. All is secured. The goslings grow inches overnight. They are two weeks old — the guinea keets and the chicks were just hatched Tuesday. About the size of a golf ball right now. 

I’ve made a commitment to blog every day in July. Maybe twice today will catch me up?

The topic on nablopomo (huh?) dang - let me get back to you on that, with link - anyway, for the month of July, is food.

I can write about food. No problema, chicos y chicas. I can write about food chains, about predators, about bechemel, making a proper roux, about grilling fish, about what chickens eat. Ah — a starting point!

Today: food for hatchling chicks

Ingredients:
Starter scratch
Water

Preparation:
You’ll need tiny little watering jars, usually a standard mason jar with a lid that has a specially designed lip to provide water for the peeps. Fill the jar with water and turn it over. It must be teeny-tiny or new-hatched chicks will fall in and drown. Do not assume instinct will inform them. It does not.

Notice:
Keep hatchlings separate from your other birds. They need more heat and protection. They are easily stomped to death, and are prone to die with very little provocation in those first few days.

Next:
You will also need little feeding dishes, also made with mason jars and chick designed lids. You can buy these at your neighborhood feed store. They will also sell you incubator lights and guide books on how to raise chicklets. Now, if you live in a city, don’t assume that you can’t have chickens. In most cities, hens are fine, but roosters are not. You can order your chicks sexed (funny job, that), online or through your feedstore, and even hens who do not have roosters will lay eggs every spring. They will also eat bugs and provide manure that can be used in your garden (another topic for another day).

Pics of chicks as things evolve.

I’ve got a new job and a bunch of other stuff too, but for now, think about baby birds. Peep-peep!

IC 2948: The Running Chicken Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Steve Crouch

……. and rain, and rain.

On Tuesday, as the wind is whipping up but before the rain begins, Mrs. Bosquechica spends hours climbing around on the roof in the heat (93F/33.88C), setting up the swamp cooler. I am on the ground, handing up wrenches and wire brushes and hoses. The carpenters are work demons - the first dumpster is filled, hauled off and a second dumpster is delivered. The afternoon heat rises, the winds are gusting, but the rain has not yet started. We brilliantly decide this would be a good time to clean out the pump house, which acts as household storage. We pull everything out and put it in the driveway.

Over the course of the next two days, the temperature drops 25 degrees. The wind howls. The driveway is full of half sorted storage, there are vacuum cleaners and fans scattered on the lawn, next to a partially cleaned woodstove that has been sitting in the barn for 20 years or so. The winds are up to 45 mph as the rain begins. The rain turns to hail. The ancient cottonwoods wave their arms and threaten to come down on our heads as we run around in the weather gathering armloads of soggy guilt. The dogs circle us in muddy galumphing joy, helping out by biting each other in the head and running in and out of the house with their big wet dirty feet.

Around that time, the toilet in the main bathroom breaks. The rain continues to come down, the wind is still blowing madly. Lightning strikes. My old laptop takes a hit during the storm, the OS is fried and it is now past time to buy a new one.

The carpenter is making sucking, picklish faces that make me wonder about his sciatic nerve and his prostate, both. His helper is soaked through but having the greatest time rummaging through our giveaway pile, presents for his wife. A lighted misting bowl on a copper pedestal stand! An arm bicycle! A black lacquered TV stand from the 1990s! A terrarium! A doghouse! A pump that almost works!

On Thursday morning, we call a plumber and a house cleaning service, and spend the day rummaging through the wet heaps still lining the driveway. By Thursday evening, the missus and I are so exhausted we can barely move. We sensibly take ourselves out to dinner, where we suddenly break down in a humiliating squabble over a shared hamburger. We sound like the geese attacking a UPS guy – honking honk HONK HONK or maybe even more like the guinea hen who makes a rusty crackling nervous KAH-KAH-KAH sound, very resentful and critical. All because the momentum created by even starting this project must mean we are insane. We collapse in the bed, face down and drooling, the instant we get home from the restaurant, and fall into a deep sleep.

Around 2 a.m., the cat shrieks suddenly at a skunk sneaking by outside the bedroom window. The skunk reacts, the window fan pulls in the fumes, the bedroom reeks. We put pillows on our heads and go back to sleep.

On Friday, the plumber replaces the toilet without drama - thank you, kind plumber! The housecleaner walks through the house, raises her eyebrows and her phone estimate by 25%. She quickly leaves in her enormous shiny expensive new truck with the huge monthly payments and does not look back. The carpenter’s helper tells me his wife loves her new arm bicycle. I get in my 17-year-old Toyota and go to various banks moving money around to pay for the first week of coop building. Kah-kah-KAH!

These are the most beautiful goose coops ever. And no, they are not done yet!

Ah geez. First we cleaned out the barns. Then we brought in a monster dumpster. Then we filled it up and brought in another monster dumpster. Then we cleaned out the pump house. Then the wind started. Everything is in the driveway. The goose coop is halfway along, the carpenters must be insane, the house is full of elm pennies, there’s an ancient woodstove in pieces in the front yard that wants to move into the kitchen and vacation is already half over.

More to come.

Here I am, stopping in to say hello to my personal blogging self.

Hello Chica, where the hell you been?

Funny you should ask. Seems like I never see me anymore. All the time on the go. I passed me on the way out the door a week or two ago, had to pretend I didn’t see me cause I didn’t really have time to stop and chat. Been playing phone tag with meself for a month.

What, is e-mail better?

Sure, but I never answer e-mail. You should know that.

Any relief in sight?

Well, today almost everyone cancelled on me. That helped a lot. My house is a pit though, and the wife is hiding out in the study trying frantically to finish her GPS final, which she put off til the last possible minute. I push a tray of food through the door every 12 hours or so, then back out quick.

The dogs have a message for you: Pay attention to them or they will be forced to have a big fat meltdown involving sneaking out and wandering in heavy traffic or possibly just incessant head-biting games til someone puts an eye out.

Right. Well, I know that.

What about your friends, family, the geese? What about the iguana, your mom, what about going to a movie once in awhile maybe? I notice everyone’s starting to give up on inviting you to anything. Anything you want to tell them?

Not much. Just working for a living. Well . . . vacation is coming up. 10 days off, in the middle of May.  

Gonna do the happy dance?

Believe I just might. Dogs’ll probably join me, right? I mean, if they still remember who I am.

On my fiction blog, Cuentos, I am in the habit of tossing in freewrites without judging or editing, and this has worked well for me, I think. Here at Trees, though, where I am theoretically exploring creative non-fiction, I’ve got actually dozens of drafts rotting in my manage files, and I am afraid they are stuck there. Why is that? I am somewhat reminded of my journalism internship back in dark wet moldy Seattle. I believed I was an unreliable source of factual information, and found myself wretchedly unsure of my ability to report the facts of the council meetings and “about town” features that I was assigned. To report “facts” at all, actually. I’m given to hyperbole, equivocation and dithering (the robin was 7 feet tall, well almost, well metaphorically, and maybe it wasn’t a robin, maybe it was a shadow or something someone told me or I just heard it somewhere). And sometimes I say things because of how they sound instead of how they mean. I’m pretty sure my internship advisor would still shudder and turn away if she ran into me in a back alley somewhere.

So for no other reason than here I am, awake and ungrounded, here are a few fact-lets (or they may be fict-lets) about my life of late:

1. The geese are frisky due to spring. This is a good time to pat their soft chests (they come running when called) and chat, but a bad time to turn your back on them (they do not ask for your phone number first, they just grab ass and go for it).
2. The elder patients are feeling good with the warm sun heating their bones. Less dying, more sparking.
3. The babies are rowdy and physical, and prone to throw things in one’s face. Exuberant, but no finesse. One split my lip a couple weeks ago. Ha-ha-ha-HA! he said. Little heathen.
4. The lilac is in bloom. It is too big to be a bush now, more like a lilac tree.
5. The friends are lining up to visit. Ah, the bosque in the spring! Warm, green, sleep with the windows open.
6. The missus and I will take a week off in May and stay home to play lady farmers together. Don’t tell anyone, cause we want quiet time in the garden together.
7. We rented our friend’s fire station to a children’s theatre troupe, because they will use the dance floor (used to be the firetruck bay) as it is intended to be used. And because we liked them. They have a St. Bernard named Menaleus.
8.  I am paying attention to the primaries, but even thinking about what a mess it is makes me want to talk about the seven foot robin mentioned above. So never mind.
9. My mom has moved home and is walking, making her own meals, dressing and bathing herself, and getting physical therapy at home three times a week. Pretty good after almost five months in a nursing home.
10. I’m saving money to build a new chicken coop. I’ve almost got it now, but usually something happens to eat the money before it gets done.
11. Our very sweet nephew, Ed, graduates from high school next month. He wants a membership to the ACLU for his 18th birthday, and cash for graduation. He is a good boy. In my head he is often still six years old, playing pirate in the yard.
12. I think I’ll give up private practice and go work in the schools for a while. Summers off. Benefits. Still ambivalent, but the academic schedule is very appealing. Last summer driving around all day doing home therapy was like getting in and out of a pizza oven. I’m dreading the coming months already.
13. It’s about time for another all-day writing retreat here at Casa de Bosquechica. More planning this time - the last one needed more structure.
14. Mrs. Bosquechica is looking for a job. Her funding is way gone now. Anyone need a brilliant systems analyst with a background in medical research?
15. I’m in the mood to go hiking, biking and camping, but have been spending weekends working. This seems fundamentally wrong.
16. I’d like to go back to sleep now, or if not that, I’d like to write a great play or a poem, or decide what to be or do next with my life. Maybe that’s the problem.

Goodnight or good morning, wherever and whoever you may be.

On Friday, I was shopping at Smith’s on my way home from work. I bought tortillas, sour cream, guacamole, wine and ice. Company expected. On my way out, I paused at the freezer to pick up my 10 lbs. There, I was stopped by a tiny old man with a snowy white beard. He was riding a red electric scooter chair, and his eyes were a sparkling, electric blue (not unlike my husky’s eyes).

“Whoa,” he said. “I gotta follow you for a little while.” I looked at him and smiled absent-mindedly, thinking more about my house and how to get ready for guests with less than an hour to spare. I crossed the parking lot, stopped at my car and opened the trunk. Then I realized that the little man really had followed me. I looked at him again and he looked back with those sparkling eyes, big smile.

“Excuse me, but I just had to tell you that there is a golden glow shining all round you, and following you, too. You are beautiful!”

“Thank you,” I said. “You know, you remind me of my friend Eunice F.”

“Why?” he asked. “What’s wrong with that person?”

“Not a thing,” I said back. He did a nice little preen, put his hand up against the back of his head as if puffing up his hair, and said “Well, thank you kindly” and looked delighted.

“You have a nice weekend, now,” I said. He scooted on to his own car, right next to mine, and put his things in the back seat. His license plate had DAV plates (disabled veteran) and a bumper sticker that said “Honor the dead, heal the wounded, end the war”.

I went home feeling decidedly perked up by this exchange, and thought about his strange similarity to my good friend Eunice F. Eunice F. is the seventh Eunice in a long line of Eunices. She is 63 years old, with electric blue eyes. She attracts lightning, and has been struck several times. She is an apple-faced hippie lady who lives in a stone cabin in the mountains east of Albuquerque. She is a doll-maker and an artist. She has a beard (not snowy white) that she does not remove, and she is a calm and moving storyteller. She is very poor, hauls water and raises chickens. At 63, she is suffering from the effects of a life of hard labor, and she has a lot of physical pain. She made me a doll with wings who flies around the house and appears here and there on window sills and mantlepieces, apparently at will.

I went home and told Mrs. Bosquechica about my strange meeting and she was amazed on many different levels. First of all, who gets stopped by total strangers with that kind of comment? Second of all, another Eunice F.? Astonishing! Funny thing is, though, that like Eunice F. and her repeated encounters with lightning, I have been stopped periodically with the “you are glowing/beautiful/ or something equally surprising” by total strangers, both men and women, since I was very young. Not, you know, weekly or anything, but about every two or three years someone does this. It’s been awhile, though, longer than usual, and I started thinking about that and about Eunice and the little man and his bumper stickers, and healing the wounded and electric scooters and lightning.  It occurred to me that, like the storyteller doll that Eunice made for me, maybe I have started flying again, maybe there has been time for healing and resuming whatever that glowing thing is that attracts lightning to some and odd compliments to others.

And here is the amazing Eunice F., for those of you who have made it this far.

A few thoughts about writing:

I’ve started writing fiction and poetry in small groups again after a long break. In these I work freewrite style, loose and open associations with timed writings — see Red Ravine for more on that, they are the awesome goddesses of writing practice. I love fiction and poetry, and often have no idea what I’m writing about until I’ve read it aloud.

My latest piece of timed writing, The physics lesson of Australopithecus, (written Monday in 30 minutes) is sitting percolating over at Cuentos, my fiction and poetry blog. It is a circular prose poem about time and evolution (I think). The phrase “apes and aphids” is tucked into the piece somewhere and it caught my eye.

Now, in writing practice it’s not unusual to write things like “apes and aphids” without thinking about it, and then wonder where the phrase came from. Typically, I can’t resist the urge to google and today found that ”apes to aphids” referenced both other poets and the biological sciences. Nice. I am a poet with a background in the sciences; it all makes sense.

Then I keep looking: From the Universidad Completense Madrid, I find lists of published works on the biological sciences, housed in the Royal Society of London.

These include:

Self-sacrificing gall repair by aphid nymphs;
Humans deceived by predatory stealth strategy camouflaging motion; and
A naked ape would have fewer parasites

I love all of these titles.

 Then, as I’m fiddling around linking at will, I discover that wow, Red Ravine is writing about bugs today too! Coincidence? But then again, I just stepped on a bug in my hallway in the middle of the night and had to scrub my foot in the sink (ugh), so I guess it’s just spring.

In summary, isn’t writing amazing?