Early September garden report 2023

Pear tree produce!

What a summer it has been. Edmonton has felt like its own little oasis. We have been really, really fortunate to have good rain for our gardens when many places around us have not. Climate change is impacting everyone on the planet in one way or another, and for us, it has meant some days where you don't want to step outside because the air quality is running off the scale in terms of unbreathable -- due to wildfires, of course. 

Just this week, someone from Texas borrowed A Prayer for Rain yet again. I guess In the northern part of the state they're having wildfires too, but we probably haven't heard about it because we're pretty focused on those closer to home, the many climate refugees who have come to us from Yellowknife, and the latest hurricane season. My heart goes out to everyone affected by climate issues, and to all who are feeling climate grief, as I am.

But what has been happening in our yard is a beautiful distraction from the challenges our planet is facing elsewhere, and I am counting my blessings! Here is my garden report for late August/early September:

 

The garden has outdone itself, and our pear tree even managed to produce some fruit. Last year's hard pruning helped, though there is still evidence of fire blight on a few branches that we will take out this weekend.

The garden reminds me that everything is gift, and that we have to appreciate what we have while we have it. So I'm not taking this wonderful produce for granted. I suspect I'll have to give a lot away, but that's a blessing, too, to be able to share with others!

If you're in my neck of the woods and would like some tomatoes or pears, just say the word!

Buy Nothing Day = Black Friday avoidance

I almost got sucked in this year. Almost. My inbox held a "Black Friday 15% off!" email from a company that I deal with on a regular basis for supplies, some of which are presently in need of replacement.

What stopped me? The words BLACK FRIDAY. To me, those words have become synonymous with the desire for too much. Excess. And now Black Friday is synonymous with my personal desire for less, not more.

Black Friday is the name of the consumer free-for-all that begins the day after American Thanksgiving, the day when many businesses offer consumers deals in an effort to move their profit margin ledgers from red into black ink for the year. And the more they make, the better they like it.

The problem is that many of the companies who use Black Friday sales strategies have bought into the idea that profits must grow year after year in spite of the fact that constant economic growth can lead to societal and environmental destruction, just like too much constant growth in the human body is known as cancer. Big corporations can offer discounts that small entrepreneurs can't hope to compete with, and the public buys in. Small businesses go bankrupt, the rich get richer, and I'm sure we've all seen coverage of Black Friday madness from the past. Now it's just moved online, and the stuff that's ordered online and rejected/returned too often ends up in our landfills.

It all breaks my heart -- this insistence on jumping from the Feast of Gratitude into the frenzy of consumerism. That's why I love Buy Nothing Day so much. It's a day to stop and reflect on all that we do have instead of all that we don't. To consider other kinds of gifts than the material ones Black Friday pushers want us to buy. To think about reducing our consumption for the sake of creation and future generations. To live simply, so that others may simply live.

I know that Christmas is coming. But this old poster from the now defunct Buy Nothing Christmas organization still makes me smile.

There are better ways to celebrate Christmas, for sure. If you want some ideas, I have many on my Simple Christmas Ideas page (click here). If I had the time, I'd revisit one a day for the next 31 days. But that ship sailed once (10 years ago, now how is that possible?), and they're still pretty relevant. Besides, I have many other things to do in the coming Advent Season that I love so much, including Simple Christmas Idea #12 for my kids.

But I'll start into it all by buying nothing on this Buy Nothing Day/Week. Join me? 

And I'll re-moodle this: 

Black Friday Prayer (2016)

How much did we pay
to see a new day?
It's a gift.

A breath of air? Free.
But we often don't see
it's a gift.

A life lived in peace,
the warmth of our beds,
the food on our table.
the roof o'er our heads.
all gift.

But 
through no fault of their own
many children have grown
to adulthood with
less than they need...
Still, some go out in haste
to add to the waste
of our earth
through insatiable greed.

Too oft we are told
"with the first one sold
the second is half price."
O God, help us see
that your best gifts are free
and settle for our given slice.

Remind us, O God,
that it's not for sale --
your beautiful creation.
It's already ours,
to be cared for and loved
and saved for the next generation.

Our sense of possession
was not your intention
because Everything is gift!

Teach us how
to remember it now 
and always.

+Amen

Easy (and excellent!) tomato sauce

Ready for roasting

My best friend, Cathy, has been a parish nurse for the last ten years or so. In her travels, she's met and helped lots of folks. Most recently, she connected with Molly, who is in her 90s, and who shared a wonderful recipe for tomato sauce, which Cathy passed along to me.

With the gazillion tomatoes my garden produced this summer, I've used the recipe three times already, and adapted it to make spaghetti sauce (adding some onions, peppers, herbs and lemon juice to thin it out a bit and provide a little extra citric acid for canning purposes). But the basic recipe is just so good, thick, concentrated and tastier than any paste in a store bought can) and I've raved about it to enough friends that it would probably be good to post it here in an effort to share something really yummy. The first time I made it, we put it on homemade pizza... and I will never buy any kind of pizza sauce ever again. Mmmm mmmmm!

Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce
(makes about 3 cups)

Ingredients:
12 vine-ripened tomatoes, in season
12 cloves of garlic, peeled
olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
herbs or other seasonings as desired

1. Preheat oven to 375° F, or 190° C.
2. Remove the stems from the tomatoes, making a hole into which you can insert a garlic clove deep into the tomato.
3. Insert the garlic cloves, and put the tomatoes into an oven-proof baking dish.
4. Brush tomatoes with olive oil and bake for three hours, uncovered. They may look a bit blackened in spots, but don't worry, this just adds to the flavour.
5. When tomatoes have cooled, use a slotted spoon to transfer them to a food processor or blender, leaving all liquid behind.
6. Process for about 10 seconds and taste. Add salt and pepper or other seasonings as desired.
7. Use immediately, refrigerate for up to five days, or freeze. (I like to drop my paste by dollops into paper cupcake cups and set in my freezer, then transfer to a plastic bag for freezer storage.)

Molly's recipe comes from an old cookbook page, probably long out of print, on which the author attributes the recipe to their uncle Uncle Bernie. God bless you, Uncle Bernie, wherever you are -- this recipe is better than gold. Gold could never taste this good! And thank you, Molly and Cathy, for sharing it with me.

If you could design a new world...

What if you were given a superpower that would allow you to design a new society? What would your blueprint look like? What would you keep from our present way of life? What would be unnecessary? What would you add?

There's so much dysfunction in our present existence (especially the US election news these days!) that it sometimes looks like the dystopian novels my young adults read. From the disintegration of families to the breakdown of the environment, the polarization in politics to the rampant over-consumption of our earth's resources -- the hectic and harried pace of society as we know it has dragged us further and further from being soulful people who value life in all its forms. You'd think we could come up with a better plan, no?

Lucky for us, Mark A. Burch has written his own alternate society in his new novel, Euterra Rising: The Last Utopia, which is being released this week. It's a fascinating story of the beginning of something better than life as we presently know it, a renovated existence where people pull together, where everyone has enough, where humans cooperate with nature, and where beauty is appreciated and cultivated daily. I was fortunate to read early drafts of the story, and my initial response to Mark was, "Where is this place? I'll be there in a heartbeat!"

Of course, Mark's view of a simpler world is one that has resonated with me ever since I attended a workshop he gave on Voluntary Simplicity and Personal Wellness, ten years ago this month. He was kind enough to stay in touch because his workshop filled me with many questions, and thanks to the emails that flew back and forth between us, a deep friendship formed. Mark's desire for a world less focused on the material and more in tune with the values of simplicity and sufficiency will always ring true for people who give serious consideration to life's true purpose.

Besides being a wise man in the areas of simplicity and sustainability, Mark is also an excellent writer, having been published many times. It's not easy to pen a good novel that teaches without being overly preachy, but there's an abundance of fresh ideas and suspense in Euterra Rising: The Last Utopia to carry the reader through to the story's end. Chapters begin with wisdom sayings that seem to come from sages beyond our time. The establishment of Euterra is juxtaposed with its later existence and the arrival of an "outsider" whose appearance threatens the community's existence, making for a real page turner. And the bonus is that there's another book in the works, if readers want more!

I would love to see this book become a best-seller, simply because it carries the seeds for many long-overdue conversations about the kind of world we really want to inhabit. We're used to the status quo, to feeling like we have no choice but to go with the flow, but it's past time that we begin to envision and build a better future than the one that's coming down the pipe whether we want it or not. Euterra Rising: The Last Utopia is available via Kindle or in hard copy, with the possibility that Euterra book clubs could be the launch pad for a better world (book club resources are available on Mark's website).

For more information, see http://markaburch.ca/, or visit Euterra on Facebook and meet Nota Dorne, one of the book's characters.

Better yet, pick up the book for yourself, share it with friends, and start imagining and creating the world you really want to inhabit...

Simple Suggestion #142... Gather ye carbons while ye may

I think the wet spring and late fall this year has made for more autumn leaves than usual -- I've never seen a pile as big as the one we raked on Friday. All three of my girls could jump into it at once, and they're not little girls anymore!

Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year for many reasons, but here's a reason you might not expect: it's a great time to gather materials for composting! Leaves can be found in abundance in many neighbourhoods, and are essential to a well-functioning compost pile. If the rule-of-thumb ratio between carbon sources (browns like autumn leaves) and nitrogen sources (green plant matter from the garden or organic kitchen scraps) is 20:1, now’s the time to collect enough leaves to last until next fall. I think I went through about 40 big bags this year.

If you have a treeless yard and don’t have access to leaves in abundance, why not ask around? People who bag them for removal are often delighted to share, and it's always a good thing if garbage trucks don't have to create even more fossil fuel emissions because of all the leaves going to the dump. I can count on neighbours and extended family members to keep my composter supplied for the year! Leaves also make great moisture-retaining and weed-reducing mulch for perennial beds if they're wet down and packed so they don't blow around -- given a year or three, they turn into compost on their own, and they cost nothing, unlike bags of wood chips. Giving some thought to how you can put your carbons to use instead of trucking them away makes for a much happier environment all around, and I don't know about you, but I'm all for it!

P.S. For more Simple Suggestions, look here.