Today I posted a video I created on “Mothering,” for all those out there who mother the world. I hope you watch it and share it.
My gratitude to all who mother me!
After picking blackberries this morning in the side garden, I thought I saw something different among the brambles,
so I pulled back a prickly branch
and then I pulled back another leaf or two,
and behold, hidden deep in the thorny brambles
a tiny bird nest!
May we all have the courage to create, twig by twig, for ourselves, even among life’s tangled thorns, such a safe haven to hide away in when we feel most vulnerable, when we are hatching out some precious new way of life, when we must make somehow secure that which we have been given to nurture in this world.
Thank you, little feathered friend, for this lovely lesson in planning, execution, and endurance. We’ll just tuck the leaves back where we found them.
Safe house, blackberry bush, Earthsprings 2012.
Several of you asked me for recipes from last weekend’s retreat. Here are recipes for Simple Pork Chops and Salmon Loaf.
Simple Pork Chops
Have ready: Slice enough onions (1/2 inch thick slices) to completely cover in one layer all the pork chops you plan to cook, plus a few extra onion slices.
Using any thickness of pork chops (this weekend’s were medium thickness boneless), trim away any fat bits around the edges. Wash the chops, pat them dry with paper towels, salt and pepper each chop, and rub a bit of dried powdered sage onto one surface of each chop.
In a heavy skillet that has a fitting lid, preferably one large enough to hold all the pork chops in one layer, place a thin film of oil.
(Now the question has come up before about “which oil” to use for what. All cooking oils have distinct flavors and characteristics. I suggest you experiment a bit with each kind to determine your preference as to flavor; for cooking, I use a light olive oil for Italian food and Mexican food, sunflower or safflower oil for a lighter, more subtle flavor, canola oil when flavor doesn’t matter at all, and sometimes peanut oil or corn oil for Chinese food. For these pork chops this weekend, I used sunflower oil. And, incidentally, I almost always use safflower oil to make the salad dressing and tomato marinade I make so often.)
Over medium to high heat, brown the pork chops in the very small amount of oil in the skillet, turning them once to brown them on each side. Lay the sliced onions on top of the browned chops, completely covering them. Add a small amount of water, enough to come up about 1/4th of the way on the chops. Cover the skillet tightly with the lid, lower the temperature to the lowest point under the skillet, and simmer slowly until the chops are very fork tender (more than 30 minutes), periodically removing the lid to check the amount of water and juice in the pan, adding a bit more water as you go to keep the chops from burning. The liquid accumulating in the skillet (the water, the disintegrating onions, the juices from the chops) makes the gravy, so don’t add so much water that the gravy is too weak and flavorless; just add enough water to keep the chops from burning and to end up with some gravy. If your chops are thick, you may need to turn them over once during cooking. Pull any remaining onions back on top of the chops, and keep cooking.
That’s it. I usually make mashed potatoes to go with this, as the pork chop gravy over the mashed potatoes is delicious.
Salmon Loaf
Ingredients: Canned salmon, bread, whole egg, salt, pepper, seasonings, crunchies such as finely chopped pecans, onions, parsley, chopped celery.
This easy, fun recipe allows you to experiment with what you have on hand. The trick is to get the right amount of liquid with the right amount of the rest of the stuff before baking it.
Drain and reserve the liquid off canned salmon. Put the salmon in a large bowl. With a fork, thoroughly munch up the salmon, then combine it with not quite an equal amount of thoroughly munched up dry bread. This weekend we had a person trying to limit his gluten intake, so instead of the usual whole wheat bread, I used scalded cornbread (see recipe below). Whatever bread you use, crumble or mush it up completely.
Add crunchiness (finely chopped celery, chopped pecans, chopped parsley, finely chopped white onion, etc). Add salt and pepper and any or all of the following or other seasonings to your taste: dill, tarragon, sage, nutmeg etc. Taste at this point; it should taste a little stronger than you want it come out. Add whole egg (one or two depending on how big a loaf you are making; the egg is the binder that makes it all stick together when it bakes), stir all together very well. The mixture should not be so dry it falls apart easily, but not be so liquid it is runny.
Put in a very lightly oiled loaf pan; bake in a slow oven (325) for maybe an hour or a little more, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and until the edges of the loaf are beginning to brown. The top of the loaf looks rather drab; you can put a bit of butter over the top for a few minutes before removing and let this brown if you like. (I usually cheat and cut a knife into the loaf to be sure it’s all done before taking it out, but I’ve been known to cook it too long and make it too dry or burn it. Just pay attention to it.)
The experimental salmon loaf sauce I made this weekend:
In a skillet over medium heat, place 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of white flour, stirring constantly with a wire whisk. Add salt and pepper. Cook while stirring until this “roux” turns golden brown. Add one cup of the reserved liquid from the canned salmon (add water to make a cup of there is not enough of the liquid). Continue stirring and cooking over low heat as you add … (oh, my, what all did I add this time??? onion powder, dried dill, sage, nutmeg, tarragon, cardamon, a pinch of brown sugar, a pouring of white cooking wine, etc.; honestly, I can’t remember, I just put a bit of this and that: you can too!)
After about five minutes of cooking and stirring, taste. If it still tastes floury, keep cooking, without burning. It should be a medium sauce, not a thick gravy. Set aside.
In a small pot, melt butter, maybe ½ a stick, until it turns golden brown. Add some of this to some of the reserved sauce, whisking thoroughly with a wire whisk. Taste, then adjust the amount of each, and adding more cooking wine if needed, or more seasonings, until you get it to your liking, whisking all the time.
To serve, reheat the sauce, whisking thoroughly. Slice the salmon loaf thickly, put a generous portion of toasted slivered almonds over each slice, and cover it about ½ way with the sauce, pouring a bit more sauce around slice, leaving some of the salmon slice unsauced. Parsley sprigs brighten up the drab look of the delicious dish.
Homemade cooked cranberries is delicious with this.
Scalded Cornbread:
Place in a big bowl any amount of cornmeal with a bit of salt. Pour BOILING water into the cornmeal, just enough to make the cornmeal stick together. Note: It is absolutely essential that the water be boiling or the meal won’t stick together. While the cornmeal is still hot, form it into flat patties about ¾ inches thick and about 2 ½ inches across.
These are near neighbors to hushpuppies, but hushpuppies are cooked by being immersed completely in a lot of hot oil; these flat patties can be pan fried in a very small amount of oil over high heat. They brown (or burn quickly); the outside will be crisp, the inside might be slightly mushy, but is thoroughly cooked already by the boiling water. Old timers in my family made these scalded cornbread cakes , over a campfire, on a freezing cold day when camping out or when out in the distant fields hoeing crops (sometimes these are called “hoe cakes” because the farmer or rancher, far from a kitchen, simply cleaned the flat hoe, then used it for a surface on which to cook the “cakes” over a low campfire; they got to be hushpuppies because the cook would throw one or two of the cakes to the ever-faithful but insistent dog standing at his feet, with a “Hush, puppy” command. Or so I’m told.). Think about the hearty old timers when you cook and eat these quick, easy, delicious corn cakes.
Eat the scalded cornbread cakes hot with butter and honey or cane syrup or molasses , or with fish, or crumbled up in black-eyed peas or butterbeans, or as “filler” in things like salmon loaf (or stacked up intermittently with onion, cheese ,stewed tomatoes, chili powder, salt and pepper and baked;this called “depression casserole” from days when meat was scarce).
Thanks for requesting the recipes. I loved the weekend.
Each day something new, each day something bloomed and gone. Each day I walk and worship and wish for you here to see and share. I think of a quote by Ted O’Neil in his little book Gardening Therapy:
“God also planted a garden in your imagination. You can create a wildflower meadow in your mind no matter where you are.”
Nonetheless, I send this along to inspire you from today’s blooming at Earthsprings:
All those springtime veggies are now available to us, and it’s time to fall in love again with simplicity. It’s also a time for experimentation. I hope you are checking out those organic yummies. Here’s how I made my lunch today:
Brown almond slivers in a toaster oven or broiler and set aside. (Careful not to burn them, as I often do…) In boiling water, cook an appropriate amount of pasta such as Barilla Plus Penne or Farfalle. While it is cooking, in a skillet sauté in a very small amount of a light oil such as sunflower or safflower equal portions of fresh thinly sliced onions, red pepper, yellow squash, and asparagus. Do not overcook; veggies should still have a bit of crunch. When the pasta is done, drain the pasta, combine it with veggies, toasted almonds, and some grated fresh parmesan cheese. It is so colorful! Serve with some fresh grapes or mango or other fruit,, and enjoy perhaps a glass of water with a hint of lemon or lime or raspberry or pineapple or whatever else you have on hand or like. This meal is so easy, and so light, tasty, and healthy! Enjoy. Then I hope you go out and smell the roses, the lilies, the other springtime flowers…Ahhhhh, breathe deep and sigh. It is spring!
I’ve been working steadily, picking up limbs, cutting brush, and mowing into the edges of the woods after the recent control burn, getting ready for another summer that could be like the last one with its fire hazard. It’s hard work, but totally rewarding. Now I see again how resilient Mother Nature is. Already the black on the ground is going away, grass is coming up, charred bushes are greening up again, and the irises are blooming everywhere. Maybe it’s important to remember that we are part of nature, that we too are more resilient than we realize, and that old sayings have truth; remember the saying that “God never closes a door without opening a window?” Well, I think the wild flowers are the ‘open windows’ here in this area; when something changes, such as a clear cut, a fire, snow, or whatever, the flowers come out almost immediately in such abundance, covering over the changes, giving us brand new reasons to rejoice. And it is so at Earthsprings right now. The wild flowers are more diverse and more plentiful than ever before. There are even bluebonnets and indian paint brush and some little orange things that I can’t name, and on and on. Every day a new miracle of beauty and abundance. And so, today, even in the rain, I ventured out with my camera let you see for yourself.
The control burn is finished, smoke gone, ash slowly dissolving, ant hills reappearing (white sand against black ash strikingly lovely despite my innate complaint with the pesky ants, though I do admire that they apparently really know how to go to ground to be safe from everything!)…and meanwhile, in the unburned portion of the land, blooming is happening, with something new and lovely every day, even the dogwoods I thought last summer’s drought had killed….
Yesterday was quite a day at Earthsprings Retreat Center, which is tucked into the corner of Davy Crockett National Forest. Because of the terribly hot dry conditions we had last summer when almost all of Texas was on fire, this spring, now, preventive “control burns” are underway all over East Texas. In these carefully monitored, low-burning fires, some of the fuel, some of the underbrush, fallen debris, and standing dead trees are eliminated without damaging anything else. This helps to prevent the horrific big fires that take down everything, as happened so much last summer.
Yesterday both Earthsprings and the adjacent National Forest received a control burn. I left for the day to avoid the smoke, spending most of the day thinking about the little plants, insects, animals, birds, young trees, asking forgiveness for causing harm to some in order to save the larger whole. (That kind of judgment is always dicey and never yields a comfortable decision.)
Shortly before dark, I went back home. For three miles, as I was driving on the road through the National Forest before getting to Earthsprings, I saw that the ground on either side of the road was blackened; a good burn day, I realized. It isn’t always so; the wind has to be just right, the humidity, the temperature, the wetness of the earth, all of it. Two years ago the burn at Earthsprings was not so good. This day, though, things had no doubt been very hot out there for awhile, there low to the ground. Lots of things burned back, some destroyed, no doubt. A solemn moment for me.
But just as I came to the gate at Earthsprings, a squirrel ran across the road in front of me, making me brake the car, and making me grateful to see that some small animals, at least, know how to survive such fires. Where do they go, I wondered, the squirrels, the birds, the rabbits, etc. Do they go up in trees, underground into holes, run fast to the creek, what?
And too, when I parked the car and stepped out, I noticed immediately and gladly the sound of many birds, the familiar, ordinary sound of birds making their twilight noises, settling into the still standing towering trees everywhere. “Talking about this day, though, I’ll bet you birds are chattering about it!” I thought.
But, it was a good burn, and everywhere I looked, smoke, blackness, ash. The ground itself looked black everywhere, except for some carefully reserved areas, like the green grass in the meadow and around the buildings, and the roads and the trails that were kept clear of fire and so now made long brown slashes through the black soot. And oddly there were certain kinds of bushes still standing stubbornly, apparently immune to fire, even some I had hoped would be tempered and thinned, like the hearty switch cane and the yaupon that reproduce so much and make such thickets.
I knew the blackness was only a surface layer of burned leaves and brush. I knew what to expect, because we’ve been through control burns before, and I know that in a few weeks everything will green up again, and one then won’t even notice anything burned. In fact, some trees and plants, like the longleaf pine, only grow after a burn! But it is always an eerie shock to drive up and see the top layer of leaves on the ground all burned, so that at ground level everything, everywhere is all black. Smoky air, gray ash. Eerie indeed.
I went hurriedly for a walk, all over the property, checking things out. Here and there, in the smoky, gathering dusk, I could see various low fires burning in fallen logs or dead trees. A scrambling sound, too loud to be a squirrel, told me that some bigger animal was making its way down from a tree as I passed by. Near the creek there were beaver footprints going from the mud into the ash; those busy folks are already gathering the now handy harvest of perfect-sized and trimmed (if slightly burned) limbs for their beaver dams, I thought. “So stop chewing on the rest of the trees, darn you!” I muttered at them.
Exhausted, just before dark, I stopped finally near an unfamiliar large standing oak that, I could see, was hollow, had been hollow a long time, and the inside of this hollow tree had been burning all day and was now all red on the inside! The outside of the tree looked perfectly normal, with its gray, cool-looking bark, while the inside was red-hot and glowing brilliantly! It looked like a tree geode. It was so beautiful!
I hurried back to the car to get my camera, and then I took pictures, trying numerous settings, hoping to get a good shot, despite the gathering darkness of the evening and the sharp contrast of the inside and outside of the tree. None of the shots did it justice, but here are two:
When I got very close to the tree, about a foot from it, to try to take a close up picture, the air sizzled and was quite hot, and I backed away, as a new flame emerged on the edge of the transition space between the outer and the inner realm of the hollow tree. Of course, I was talking to the tree the whole time, admiring this amazing sight, noticing how it was still standing so tall after obviously being hollow for a long time. The tree was leaning slightly away from me, toward the west. Then, suddenly, the thought came to me, as if, I felt, from the tree itself: “This is not safe. This tree, or any of these trees, could fall. If this tree fell, it would fall away from you, but it could kick back onto you its fiery base. Get back!” So I did.
After taking one more picture, and saying a prayer , remarking the enormity of transition everywhere (in the tree, in me, wherever the outside looks so normal, but the inside is burning, all of it beautiful), I went to the house to gather some things, ready to leave again until morning.
At the doorway I paused as I heard the familiar sound of deer nearby, one of them snorting out the familiar warning sound to the other deer, a sound that says “There’s something, something, we’d better pay attention, run quickly…” and I heard the deer running away , leaving hoof prints in the ashes I would see later, I was sure. Deer are so curious; they always come to check things out after a burn, almost while the ground is still hot. Usually they don’t run from me so rapidly, they know me, and know I mean them no harm, but it must have been sort of spooky for them too. “Thank you for letting me hear from you, though; I’m glad you are alright,” I thought.
Then, a few minutes later, just as I was about to drive away, I noticed in the darkening night another low fire, not too far from the Lodge. So I stopped the car, and then walked back over there to be sure all was safe.
And suddenly I heard, somewhere about maybe 100 feet or less, safely off to the left of me, a sound like firecrackers, and, looking, I saw a huge shower of sparks going up, and then there was the slow sound of this tree falling, falling through the surrounding pines, till it broke apart just as it hit the ground. It was the hollow tree, the one I had been with a few minutes earlier.
I stood in shock and amazement for quite a few minutes, then I thanked the spirit of the tree, the Spirit of everything, the spirit of my own innate intelligence…whatever…I thanked everything that I had not been standing there so close to that hot, heavy, dangerous tree when it actually fell.
“However,” I said aloud, finally, “I’m so glad I was here to witness, and to have been able to take pictures of your last standing moments, your last living breaths, fiery as they were.”
It was completely dark then, and I went away, but the image of that hollowed tree, radiant, burning inside, stayed with me, as a symbol, somehow, of all the dramatic changes taking place, all the controlled burning, and more than that, what stayed with me was the moment of warning, the moment when I felt that somehow the tree itself told me to step back, did not take me down with it and destroy me in its final thundering crash, even though I was the one to authorize the control burn that had caused its own falling now instead of later. I’ll keep that last image of the flame in the darkness always.
This morning I came back, and sure enough, the tree, when it fell, had kicked back about six feet, and its base now completely covered the place where I had been standing last night. The tree’s interior fire was out, so I could reach out and touch the base of the tree and, once again, let my wordless emotions pour out to the forest, to the ancient energy of the living forest, with all my love, devotion, promises of future care-giving, all of it. My relationship to the earth and to the forest is one of the strongest things about me.
And lastly this. I stayed overnight at my friend Christina’s house to be out of the smoke. After dinner and after I had fallen exhausted into bed, she came into the room where I was and reminded me that last summer I had left some clothes there at her house, clothes she had back then washed and left for me to take home, and I had apparently not seen them. “What are they?” I asked, too tired to go see for myself. “Oh, I don’t know, just some work clothes,” she said. “You can get them in the morning.”
This morning I got up at daybreak, quietly making my way around her house so as not to wake her. I decided to find those work clothes and put them on for the day. When I found them, there was a pair of my work pants. And there was a stained up tee shirt, one I’ve worn for years. It had come to me as part of a fund-raising effort for Earthsprings way back when we were selling tee shirts.
This particular shirt has a design printed on it, an image of a whole variety of animals looking out at you through some trees and brush. Underneath are the words, “The Living Forest.”
Seeing that particular shirt, those particular words, waiting there all this time, all unbeknownst to me, waiting for just this particular morning for me to see these animals and read those words—it felt like a whisper of grace, a note of understanding, acceptance, promise from another dimension where our actions and feelings and intentions and compromises and worries are all woven together somehow into a larger meaning, a larger whole, an inter-active universe—of preventive fires, and falling trees, and living squirrels and deer and beaver and birds, and even of this human person doing her elderly best to serve life, even when it is not easy to choose what to do.
The living forest. The woods here at Earthsprings are indeed still living, and the wild flowers are still blooming in the meadow, and I’m wearing those words next to my heart as I make my way around today, down to the creek, up to the wet northeast end of the land where the bogs didn’t burn so well but where maybe the fire drove the dangerous wild hogs away, for awhile, anyway. I make my way here and there, looking, listening, touching, praying, interacting always
The living forest. Living, in every sense of the word. May it ever be so, especially here at Earthsprings. And may I never, ever forget that I am co-extensive with all life, in all circumstances, and that all life is love, loving, ongoing, communicating, resonating, regenerating, and, especially, sacred, always.
After such a summer and such a fall, winter is just as unique here at Earthsprings. Who can tell if it’s really winter or spring? I still haven’t gotten my winter chores begun properly–cleaning up the garden area, adding hearty mulch and compost everywhere, tidying up the barn, checking out my seed catalogues, sharpening tools (after finding them wherever I left them when the weather last sent me scurrying inside) and already the meadow is full of paperwhites, the scent so intoxicating one is drunk on Spring just walking between the house and the medicine lodge! How bravely the plants are struggling back again after such hardship of last summer’s drought and unrelenting heat and all the rest, how brave they are. The first daffodil opened its bright yellow flag of hope only a few days behind the first violets and the first bloom on the tulip tree, all ahead of their usual schedule…and, well, really, I don’t have time to go on about all this, as I’m off to plant sweet peas and pea pods and lettuce and onions and…