Misty Morning :: Daybook

Outside my window ::

Low flying geese lift an early morning mist as they pass overhead, giving way to blue skies and delightful sunshine by midday. A lovely breeze sends the fallen leaves tumbling across the yard. The accompanying chill, though slight, warns of coming November gales. Soon and welcome.

I am wearing ::

Black yoga pants (although I do not do yoga), a kelly-green t-shirt, gray zip-up sweatshirt and my old Nike sneakers.

On Pandora ::

George Winston Radio

Around the house ::

Work on our basement resumes. J installed a very nice looking french door to replace the slider. 

I'm not sure I can live with the wall color. It definitely did not turn out as I had hoped. It hums violet or mauve under the influence of the basement lighting. Hmm.

From the kitchen and garden ::

I've been making lots of soup lately. We're still harvesting tomatoes, so I made Ina Garten's cream of tomato soup. Very yummy! The recipe is on the Food Network website. I also recently made an acorn squash soup that was to die for and a beef, Italian sausage vegetable soup that was also very good. I have my eye on a beautiful butternut squash currently taking up residence in a large, wooden salad bowl on the kitchen counter.

J made pickles on Labor Day weekend, as he does every late summer. This year, however, he had to buy a bushel of cukes from a lady at the local farmer's market as tragedy struck our garden mid-summer. His poor cucumber plants fizzled out. Over-watering is our guess.

Resting by the front door are two very large pumpkins plucked from our vegetable garden a few weeks ago. A smaller one, that grew up between the bushes in front of our porch, went home with two happy tykes - Isaac and Margaret - late last week.

I am hearing ::

Holly tittering about. Little doggie nails, click-clacking along the wood floor. I suppose she wants to eat as I have yet to feed her.

I am reading ::

 I just started a book by Joel Salatin - Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food

I've only read the Foreward (by Michael Pollan), the Introduction and Chapter One.

I will share my thoughts as I go along. For now here's only one of the many striking thoughts from Pollan's Foreward:

"Why should local - rather than, say, organic - be the linchpin to this revolution? Because a farmer dependent on a local market is far more likely to raise a variety of crops, rather than specialize in the one or two plants or animals that the national market demands. That system wants all its apples from Washington State, all its lettuce from California (and make that Iceberg, please) and its corn from Iowa. Well it turns out the people who live in Iowa can only eat so much corn and soybeans; if Iowans were eating locally, rather than from the supermarket, their farmers would soon learn how to grow a few other things besides. And as soon as they gave up on their monocultures of corn and soy, they would quickly discover they could also give up on their pesticides and chemical fertilizers, because a diversified farm will produce its own fertility and its own pest control.

Almost all of the problems of our industrial food system flow from the original sin of monoculture. Monoculture may be a powerful industrial idea - it produces economies of scale and all sorts of other efficiencies - but it runs diametrically counter to the way nature works, which nothing in this world can do indefinitely. Insect resistance, agricultural pollution, food-borne illness, and antibiotic resistance are what happens when the logic of monoculture runs up against the logic of nature. Monoculture can't survive this encounter without one industrial Band-Aid after another - beginning with chemicals and ending (well, one can hope) with genetically modified crops and irradiation. The answer to the problems of monoculture is polyculture, and, to get back to where we started, the way to support polyculture is by buying food from local farms that practice it."

I am hoping and praying ::

For safety, spiritual and physical, for Megan as she travels far and wide beginning tomorrow.

I am pondering ::

When big government fails (as is currently the case) and (extra)ordinary citizens and state and local jurisdictions jump in to right the wrongs, it gives me a glimmer of hope and restores my faith in humanity. Neighbor helping neighbor, as Christ teaches - that's what will save this country not piling on more and more federally funded and sponsored entitlements.

I am grateful ::

For God's love and mercy.

A few plans ::

J and I are driving down Sunday to witness Erin's and her fellow medical students' white coat ceremony at Campbell University. So very proud of Erin and we're looking forward to being a part of the festivities.