Wow, I just got a check from my gallery for the first time in six months. I’d forgotten that I still had work out there!

Not that it makes me rich or anything. Does make me inspired, though, that somebody’s still interested in my beaded jewelry.

I’m turning my old web site, the one that I started ten years ago and have neglected terribly since beginning this blog, into its own blog. I might as well, since I renewed the domain name for five years under the impression that Sandy wanted to take it over. He changed his mind.

I’ll post new photos and have some of my old artwork and jewelry up on it later this summer and will post the link then. It will be sort of a combination of business and funny dumb stuff for those who I’m not comfortable sharing the more personal stuff with.

Now I’m going to go bake cookies for a Slow Food potluck tomorrow and try to get in some weaving.

Wow, is it THURSDAY already? My, how time flies when you’re having fun.

I’ve been spending at least a couple of hours in the studio each evening, then coming in to fix a late supper. The last couple of nights, dinner has revolved around sirloin steaks from Rocking F Farm. The first night I marinated them and pan-fried them in an oiled cast iron pan with chopped Vidalia onions, garlic, and mushrooms. I served them with mashed potatoes, adding a little cream to the potatoes and the pan juices to make sort of a sauce, and a salad from the Back Forty with lettuce (yes, I still have lettuce, I’m amazed it isn’t bitter), carrots, and tomato.

The next night I sliced the leftover steaks thinly, sauted them with Vidalia onions, garlic, and sliced carrots, added some five-spice powder, basil, and teriyaki sauce, and stirred in some coconut green curry sauce that I stuck in the freezer who knows how long ago. Served it over basmati rice. It’s a shame that I’ll never be able to recreate this one, because it was easy and good.

In the Back Forty, the okra and beans that I planted only a few days ago are all coming up. I keep my soda bottle greenhouses over the okra to protect the seedlings from critters until they get tougher. You have to do this from the time you plant the seeds. You’d think that these extremely hot temperatures would fry them, but okra is African in origin and likes hot temperatures. I do make sure that they don’t dry out.

The Amish Paste and Roma tomatoes are beginning to get ripe, a little at a time. The first ones had blossom end rot, but they seem to be okay now. I’ve been putting eggshells and coffee grounds in the pots to give them an extra boost, but the drought sure makes it tough to keep the pots watered sufficiently.

Golden Rocky wax beans are still producing like crazy! Amazing.

Somebody called the city on my next-door neighbor about her back yard, and she is hopping mad. It had to be the woman who lives on the other side of her, since her yard wraps in an el shape across our back property lines, and she’s asked me if our mutual neighbor’s disinterest in mowing her yard bothered me. But when confronted, they said that it wasn’t them, according to aggrieved upset neighbor, so who does that leave? Me!

However, I have no interest in the city poking around my property either, not that I have anything to hide. And definitely no interest in provoking my mentally ill neighbor with whom I’ve made a huge effort to gain her trust so she won’t flip out on me anymore. This ruined several years work.

The first thing I said to her when she confronted me was “Did they come over here?,” not quite understanding. Then I told her that I would talk to her directly if I had a problem instead of going straight to the city, giving her the example of talking to her about the leaning peach tree. Then I made the mistake of saying that I would appreciate a little help with controlling all the vines that were coming over the fence. That was the point when she started talking about devils and death and destruction, and I lost my patience and told her that she was overreacting. But that is typical behavior for her. She is a sad case, and I need to be more compassionate. It was bad timing because I hadn’t had my coffee and I needed to leave for work.

No wonder the other neighbors went directly to the city. Or maybe they did talk to her and she didn’t get it - who knows. She has never understood about the difference between invasive weeds and desirable plants. She explained to me how easy it is to control the ornamental grapevine, and offered me some after watching me yank it out for two hours. It’s causing damage to her house, covering her shrubs and bushes, and it is all over the neighborhood from birds spreading it. I don’t mind her yard THAT much - I consider it a semi-wild place that is needed in an ecological system. But damn, it’s a lot of work to keep it from taking over my yard. The other neighbors probably feel the same way, but with less sympathy.

I’m really thankful that I got all that nasty clean-up work done in my own yard last week. It would be brutal to have to do it now in this heat (and unhealthy air advisories). I hope that she will let me follow up on helping her pull her peach tree back upright. It would be a shame to have to saw it off, but it is blocking the sun from my Seckel pear, and if I have to, that’s what I’ll do.

ANYway, my point, and I do have one, begins here: I have found myself in a comfortable place in my life at last.

I looked out my back door Sunday morning, and I realized that I had created something that I had thought about ever since reading “The Secret Garden.” I did it without spending a lot of money or hurting myself too badly. The secret was that I had a vision and I pursued it a little at a time, expanding when I felt that I was ready for it. I followed a dream.

Hence the quote by Thoreau at the top of the sidebar.

So I decided that it was time to expand into Phase II of my dream - my weaving studio. You know, the one that I said that I was going to begin working in a year and a half ago? The problem was that I was thinking of it as work, an obligation to use those looms that I paid so much money for years ago. What a waste that they were sitting there gathering dust and cobwebs! What a waste not to use that delightful little house in the back! Shame on me!

Well, shame is not much incentive, so I decided that it was time to begin playing in my studio. To make it my refuge. To make it a place that I wanted to spend time in.

Sandy and I moved the little window air conditioner to the studio, and I put a radio/CD player back there. In the winter, I can heat it with an oil-filled radiator heater easily. I can pick up WVTF back there and I’m thrilled because they have such great programming. I did a little cleaning and reorganizing from the months of using it for my gardening storage. After I work in the heat of my garden, I can retreat into the cool of the studio, turn on some jazz or bluegrass or swing or Fresh Air or Mountain Stage or Gillian Welsh or Lyle Lovett or Marvin Gaye and weave!

And that’s just what I’ve been doing. I have a dog on my 8-shaft loom that is years old and I’m weaving it off. Then I’ll consider selling the loom, because I really don’t like the hand levers. I warped up a quick scarf on my 4-harness Baby Wolf and it is shimmering color.

I sent off my application to Gerry at the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market finally. I figure that I’ll sell my excess produce there and also put some handwoven scarves, hats, and kitchen towels out for sale. If they don’t sell, at least they might draw some attention to my table. And if it is not fun, I won’t do it.

And I’m saving to go back to Spannocchia next summer, baby! Suzanne told me that she has four people committed, not including me, so it sounds like the book class is a definite go!

So, getting to the point finally…find your dream of what you want to do, not what others expect of you. And then work play toward it and make it your reality.

For most of my life, I was not happy or content and I did not like myself. About twelve years ago, I decided that I would have to make some tough, serious changes and deal with the aspects of my life that were getting in the way of my happiness. This is a big project and I’ve been working on these changes step by step, inch by inch.

I had the voluntary simplicity part about making career choices that would allow me the time and energy to pursue my creative pursuits down pat. There were times that I struggled with it for practical and financial reasons, but I always had the basic foundation in mind that my life did not equal my job. A few times I was coaxed or forced into taking jobs that didn’t suit me, but I finally came to the absolute conclusion that career ambition is off my life list for good. As long as I’m making enough to get by and I’m reasonably happy, I don’t need many of the things that other people seem to be driven to acquire. It was a long search, but I am thankful that I have a secure job in which I am comfortable.

I wasn’t looking to become a perfect person, but it seemed necessary to regain some control. The first step, I thought, was to quit smoking. I smoked heavily, with many attempts to quit, from age 16 to 34. I knew too well what the challenge was - part of what made it so difficult was that I was also a heavy drinker and I had some relationships that repeatedly led me down paths that abused my self-esteem. Both problems tended to derail my attempts to quit smoking, and they were huge problems in their own right. So I had to deal with those at the same time.

I stopped going to bars for a while and stopped going to friends’ places where the main activity was drinking to get drunk. I ended a toxic relationship with my best friend. I stopped pursuing people for friendship who didn’t show reciprocal interest, which meant that I lost another very old friend who had befriended and dumped me several times throughout my life. I simply stopped calling, and when she made overtures four years later to renew the relationship, I was cold. I had held on to these two relationships because I thought that they were friendships, but I finally understood that friends didn’t treat each other that way.

I thought that no matter who might be with me when I died, that I would ultimately be alone so I would need myself as my best friend to comfort me. I began working on regaining and nurturing that friendship with myself that I had lost so long ago. In hindsight this was not as brilliant as I thought at the time, because I took it too far and cut myself off, became agoraphobic, and stopped trusting people. However, this overreaction helped me cut the unhealthy ties and give myself the time and space to rebuild that trust in myself. As it turned out, THAT was the first step that led to all the others.

It was one of the hardest things I ever did, but I wonder if I would have ever made it to today if I had not done it.

(Full disclosure: This meal was actually served last Sunday, but the One Local Summer started today. I had already written it up so I changed the date!)

The beans from my garden are much more beautiful raw than they are cooked, when the bright deep purple ones turn an ordinary green.

This is the account of my first 2007 One Local Summer meal, the second year of a project that Liz began at Pocket Farm. The idea is to prepare one meal totally from local sources once a week and blog about it.

I am more of a gardener than a cook. Normally I buy my meat and poultry from the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market, but I missed a couple of weekends because I was out of town. I was also very busy on Sunday trying to play catch-up with laundry, groceries, etc. so I wanted a simple, easy meal.

So I bought Alison’s Farms chicken breasts from Earth Fare. They are from North Carolina, humanely raised, and reasonably priced. I browned them quickly with some non-local organic canola oil and baked them with some Hot Bone Suckin’ Sauce, manufactured in Raleigh, NC. (Man, I wish that I had thought about that name and the search hits that I’ll get before I bought it ::shudder::) It was one of the only local prepared sauces that didn’t have high fructose corn syrup on the label (molasses and honey are the sweeteners), and it was very spicy and delicious.

The beans were from my garden and the potatoes were given to me by my mother. She said that Trudy, who is helping her with her garden this year, grew them in her garden. So they are from Robeson County. This sidedish needed some more zip so I’m adding garlic scapes and parsley from my garden to the leftovers tonight.

I normally drink milk from my secret cow but I missed my pick-up because of vacation, so we’re drinking milk from Homeland Creamery, a local dairy in Julian, N.C.

And the zephyr squash from my garden? It was blanched with some chopped Vidalia onion and frozen for a future squash casserole, so it didn’t make it into this meal.

Chef Bryan was wonderful and everybody really liked the food, so it was well worth the pain of standing on cement without a break for six hours straight! I think that we changed a lot of minds about grits. The grits from Old Mill of Guilford are milled from corn raised near Yanceyville and are full of body and delicious, nothing like the insipid “quick” grits that are not much quicker to prepare. The instant kind is inedible, in my opinion. So many people who don’t like them have never tried stoneground yellow grits. Or worse, were served “quick” grits plain and didn’t realize that grits need butter or gravy or cheese or some kind of seasonings to flavor them.

Chef Bryan made the grits, folded in cream and butter, and spread them out in greased pans the night before. The next day we cut little round “grit cakes” with a cookie cutter, which he warmed up on a griddle greased with a little canola/olive oil. This gave them a nice crispy outside and kept the inside creamy.

Then we topped them with a ratatouille (although we kept calling it different names all morning) made with eggplants, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, onions, and garlic donated by farmers in the market that morning, sauted in butter from the Molners. We added herbs from my garden: parsley, basil, oregano, garlic scapes, chives, and lemon thyme.

I’m really sorry that I didn’t check my camera batteries before I went. The one minute I had time to get out the camera, it was dead. However, I rescued one eggplant that was donated for the ratatouille (I’m considering this my “payment!”) that is the perfect Slow Food eggplant, at the top of this post.

Early tomorrow morning I’m going to the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market to assist Chef Bryan Dahlstrom in the Chef’s Showcase for VeggieFest. The idea is to promote Slow Food with the senses that matter most to us - smell and taste! Lavonne and Mary Ellen did most of these Slow Food booths last year, and they were a roaring success. I’m not sure that I can follow that, but I’m using Lavonne’s excellent display materials and I’m actually packed and ready to go at 6:15 a.m. so I feel very good about it and not nervous at all.

The other reason I feel good about doing this particular information booth is that I love the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market. I love going there and I love the vendors and the farmers. I often see old friends coming through and the customers are loyal repeat customers. It is really and truly a local food community in itself. I missed it the last two weekends and the world just wasn’t right.

Chef Bryan is going to make grit cakes with a vegetable ragout of whatever we pick up at the market. He made the grits today from ingredients that Gerry brought him from the market (with cream and butter) and spread them out into sheet pans - we’ll just cut them and fry them on the griddle and concentrate on the toppings.

I harvested some carrots from my garden for the morning since I seldom see carrots at the market and I have a bumper crop. I pulled all the Atomic Red and most of the Danvers Half-Long earlier in the week, and today was the first harvest of the Over the Rainbow Mix. Aren’t they beautiful? I gathered lots of different herbs for our use and decoration tomorrow - we’ll put them in Mason jars and use them as we get the urge.

Other than that, I hope to get my studio cleaned up this weekend and in use. It is getting to the point when the mosquitoes will run me out of the Back Forty for any long period of time, so I’m gearing up to throw that creative energy into weaving again.

Happy Summer Solstice!

It’s been a pleasant evening. I cleared out a bunch of weeds in the back around the studio, just before they went to seed and they were just big enough that I hope the debris will naturally mulch the area. And I tackled the jungle of vines that were way out of control on the south side. It’s not finished, but it was a nasty job with lots of bug bites so I’m happy that the bulk of it is behind me. There was a solstice celebration over at UNCG and I got to hear the music as I worked and watered.

I need to get down what seeds I planted yesterday:

A note about the Borlotti and Toscanelli beans - These are beans that I bought at the Mercato Centrale in Firenze and I have no idea if they are bush or pole, so I planted them around the tobacco stick teepees I made just in case. I’ll see how they do this year and if I’m pleased I’ll try them in bigger quantities next year.

Jacob’s Cattle turned out to be bush beans. That’s okay. Maybe the poles will discourage critters.

Still picking the Golden Rocky wax beans, Soldier, and Black Valentine, but the lovely Royal Burgundies seem to be done. I’m impressed with both the production and the quality of the Golden Rockies, so they will definitely be asked to return.

Tonight I made a tzatziki sauce with the cucumbers from Mama’s garden and garlic scapes and dill from mine. We topped baked marinated Sockeye salmon filets with it, and the garlic scapes went into that olive oil/lemon juice marinade also. Did I mention that I’m thrilled with the garlic scapes? The rest of them went into the green/yellow beans and potatoes. MMMMMMM.

Hoo-whee, is it ever-lovin hot! The heat index is at 100 degrees, it’s humid, and the ozone alert is code orange. Writing about the Back Forty will be so-o-o-o much more pleasant than actually working in the Back Forty this afternoon.

The growth spurt was very noticeable when I came back from vacation. We must have had some rain, but I don’t think it was a lot. The “fertile crescent” (at bottom) in particular is looking much better, with the artichokes big enough that I could take away their cage protection and the basil big enough to start harvesting.

I pulled up half the beets before I went to the lake and pulled most of the rest yesterday. The bright red are “Chioggia” and the dark red are “Red Ace.” Usually I’m totally happy with plain boiled, peeled beets, but I thought that I might try Caramelized Beets With Garlic. Since I planted some hardneck garlic, I have a few garlic scapes for the first time this year.

I’m not a big green bean fan, as far as eating them goes. But I’m fascinated with growing them. I even like picking them. Last fall I tried some different varieties very late in the season, and I’m now harvesting my spring crop of beans. I’m just crazy about the colors. The Golden Rocky Wax beans are delicate and stand out. The Royal Burgundy beans are actually a gorgeous deep eggplant purple. They turn an ordinary green when cooked.

Since I’m sort of testing the waters for a little urban micro-farm here, I’m considering growing a lot more of these next year to sell at the Farmers’ Market during the summer. I could probably take a little vacation time to do some Wednesday morning markets when it won’t be so crowded. I know, a crowded market is supposed to be a GOOD thing. You’re not dealing with a normal woman here.

The sweet snap and green peas are done, and the field peas and lima beans are coming up.

Failures: there is a virus running through the Pineapple and a few of the mystery heirloom tomatoes, I think. However, they had some rotten luck in my neighbor’s peach tree bending over to block much of their sun, so that could be a big factor. The pimento peppers did not make it at all. The tromboncini squash is also struggling. I’ve replanted it twice. Zucchini didn’t even bother to come up. The broccoli is not happy where it is planted this year. In the same bed, the beets and chard are not doing as well as their counterparts in other places. Maybe it will do better next year when it’s more than a year out from being a lawn. It takes a while to develop an organic garden.

Although I screwed up with the leeks when I planted them this fall, I am enjoying the beautiful blossoms. I can still use the leeks to flavor stock.

Cabbage likes where the broccoli liked it last year. I don’t have that much room in that area because of a huge and growing rosemary. It may have to be moved.

The black beans that I picked up off a farm road in Tuscany are coming up. I made a mistake and planted them beside other beans - now I realize that I might not get true seeds to save, and I didn’t have but a few to begin with.

The peppers in the containers are doing much better that the peppers I planted in the ground, and the tomatoes are starting to get ripe, but they have blossom end rot. Last year the same thing happened with this variety (Amish Paste) but it turned out to be okay, so I’m not panicking. Lots of little green tomatoes on my container tomatoes, including the ones that are looking puny.

But the Brandywines are so healthy and vigorous that it is flat out blowing my mind.

I have just enough zephyr squash to make me happy, and since I bought some local squash at the grocery store at Lake Waccamaw (which I bought because I needed an excuse to tell the produce manager that I appreciated her buying from local farmers, and the only other local produce was green beans), I blanched some with chopped Vidalia onions to freeze.

Calendula, day lilies, nasturiums, yarrow, echinacea, coreopsis, feverfew, soapwort, black-eyed susan and bee balm are blooming. So is the big cardoon in the middle of the flower bed.

I have some planting to do where the spinach, peas and fava beans came out but I’ll save it for later this week when the heat doesn’t give me an instant headache.

I wove this bulrush hat while at Lake Waccamaw, incorporating driftwood, little sycamore balls, Spanish moss, and a mockingbird feather. The ducks were hanging on to their feathers, and I’m surprised that with all the fights the mockingbirds didn’t lose more.

The unmercerized cotton band was intended to be green, blue, and purple to represent the shores and waves, but my inkle loom tension bar blew out and I had to use the first band I wove. Not bad, but when I get my new tension bar, I’ll ditch the red and replace it with green.

I also wove a flat bowl with a twill pattern in the center, twined for several rows, and finished it off with a five strand woven edge. It looks rough because I was trying to use up the rest of the soaked bulrush, which was getting really funky, and because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing half the time. I can’t blame it on beer, but it looks pretty drunk…oh all right, here’s a photo.

While I was there, I gathered honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, and green briar vines to bring back. The green briars are fairly wicked, but if you work back from the tip where there are no briars, you can snap off each thorn easily and strip the leaves where more thorns hide. The vine itself is very sturdy and will probably make good spokes but I have not tried weaving with it yet. Jan from the Folk School suggested that it could be used when we took our basketry materials identification walk.

One of the reasons that you have to be careful when gathering Virginia creeper is that poison ivy likes to hide in it. A leader in a local outing club argued with me once that Virginia creeper was poison ivy. He was wrong and wouldn’t back down, but I can see why he was so convinced. Here’s a photo that shows why - the shiny darker three-leafed vine in the center is poison ivy surrounded by the lighter five-leafed Virginia creeper. I left this alone!

I made note of all the cattails and creek willows growing in roadside ditches for fall, when hopefully water moccasins won’t be a big issue, but as we zoomed down the road I noticed the big gummint mowers were whacking them down. Maybe there will be some in Marietta. I just don’t want to wade into swamps and fight gators for them.

Now, I’m way past due for a Back Forty update, so that is next on the agenda.