You know who he is?

Friends J&N came over and made eggs benedict.  That's my fresh local organic rye bread in foreground.  Yes, I do like to brag about my bread.  Also generic Thai sriracha on the condiment tray, garlic hanging in the window, Aroostook potatoes in the cast iron, and K&N making hollandaise.  Good times.

K. and I drove to Marion yesterday, for a vacation among family, an extended vacation, which, if everything goes according to plan will take me Rhode Island, Illinois, a road trip to Chattanooga, and then a second road trip back to Camden, Maine, via Maryland.  That's the plan, at least.  We came bearing a van full of produce:  whole kale plants upended in buckets full of water, bags full of chard, carrots, turnips.  We came towing the dory, as yet officially unnamed, which I'm hoping we'll get to sail across to Martha's Vineyard (she says, half tongue-in-cheek) even though I'm still on the DL, limping along and unable to lift heavy objects with my right arm.  Or light objects from high or low places.

Nonetheless.  I refuse to allow it to stop me anymore, although it did exactly that for three months.  Although it also, essentially, took the harvest.  As usual, I'm realizing how much guilt has power to take the garden away from me, and pretty much, once July rolls around, guilt is a constant in the garden.  Everywhere I look, I see all of the things I could have done, all of the things I haven't done, all of the things that have gone by.

Harvesting the day we left was the same.  I strolled past at least a dozen cucumbers, left out for the frost, that I could smoosh with the tip of my toe.  I cut a bag of beautiful rainbow chard, not affected by frost, vivid orange and dark red, not a leaf of which we'd eaten.  Head upon head of cauliflower left brown and unpickled.

It's enough to bring on despair, and it did, for several months.  I don't know how many summers it'll take for me to learn the lesson that doing something small is better than doing nothing.  Or maybe I really did need three months of absolute rest.

Farewell, perhaps Ashokan

Tomato trying to grow in the glass room

Will it see fruition?  I doubt.  But then again, I always doubt.

Tonight I'm trying to decipher which versions of Ashokan Farewell and Amazing Grace are included on random mix cds bestowed on me by my siblings.  Surprisingly, there are more than one of them.

Snow flurries predicted tomorrow.  The maple leaves are half on the ground.

Dinner should be broccoli, but the best we could do was cabbage in the salad.  We are more than ever convinced that cabbage is merely a variation on iceberg lettuce.

X-rays today.  Maybe they'll tell me what's wrong with me.  Or maybe I need a psychic.
Cedar burning in the wood stove.  The neighbor says, "The only good thing about winter is the smell of woodsmoke."  I disagree.  There is also snowshoeing.

We always keep hollow

I have a feeling tonight of:  where have you been all my life?

[The same feeling I had the first time I heard Bob Dylan's "If Dogs Run Free," with its undercurrent of a jazz strumming on a bass guitar--who knew Dylan sang jazz?  Is there a way for this here internet-thingy to play you the song?  Yes, here it is:

And now go give 99 cents to the artist, even if he is a millionaire:  http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/if-dogs-run-free#]

Where have you been all my life, I asked Environment Maine, as now all of a sudden I feel like I have a community, people on my side.  Of course I could have had this last year, if I'd bothered to look up this event, when they tried to get an initiative on the ballot for 20 percent sustainability in Maine, I could have found out about them a year ago, and I could have seen this map:

With a better explanation here:  Extreme Weather's Local Impact.

I've been wanting to do another big climate change post, but let's just say I turned off the debate in about ten minutes when a candidate said he was a "big fan of coal--clean coal."

I've been compiling a list of things to post, proof of the climate change.  Maybe this is becoming an obsession.  Maybe everyone should go give money to your local environmental charity.

Tonight broccoli stirfry for dinner.  How come when I feel guilt about the garden's abandonment I feel prideful about bragging about garden meals?  Here's what was leftover: