I love it too. Do you like poetry? I meant to write about this in this post and then forgot. I have a cold, and it is really smoky outside, so it's a one foot in front of the other kind of day. But...your words reminded me of what Ada Limone says in her Krista Tippett interview. She was able to revisit her parents' divorce and see it not as scarcity but as abundance- pretty cool stuff. https://onbeing.org/programs/ada-limon-to-be-made-whole/
Thank you for sharing this. And perfect that you shared something with audio as I find that when it comes to poetry I'm much more engaged when it's read aloud rather than reading it myself. I rarely enjoy just sitting and reading poetry but listening to it online and especially in live readings from poets helps it touch me in a powerful way. So even though this is a conversation and not a poetry reading, it feels relevant that it's in audio.
I love the part:
"It’s got breath, it’s got all those spaces. The caesura and the line breaks, it’s breath. And then that’s also the space for us to sort of walk in as a reader being like, “What’s happening here? Why are all these blank spaces?” It has silence built all around it. Silence, which we don’t get enough of. When you open the page, there’s already silence. And we think, “Well, what are we supposed to do with that silence?” And we read naturally for meaning. I mean, that’s how we read. We read for sense. And poetry doesn’t really allow you to do that because it’s working in the smallest units of sound and syllable and clause and line break and then the sentence. So you get to have this experience with language that feels somewhat disjointed, and in that way almost feels like, “Oh, this makes more sense as the language for our human experience than, let’s say, a news report.”
I'm exploring a lot around the silence and spaces in art and in life ...
Love this, Mary. Thank you. Favorite ice cream right now is a homemade coconut lime sorbet I forget about until summer rolls around. Favorite yoga instructor is Adriene, too.....
I love how there will be one Adriene to unite us all. You win the prize because you spelled her name right. :) That sorbet sounds delicious. Thanks for reading and restacking.
1/8 t salt (recipe calls for sea salt but any will do)
1 T lime zest
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
Chill ice cream container. In medium saucepan over medium heat, add coconut milk, sugar, salt, zest. Stir occasionally until sugar dissolves. Transfer to medium bowl, add lime juice, and chill over ice bath. Transfer to ice cream maker, and churn as recommended for sorbet. Enjoy right away or freeze for later.
(Note: I find the lime zest clumps, so am experimenting with adding a little to the mix, then more towards the end of churning.)
Thank you for sharing this. I love using my ice cream maker and coconut ice cream is a family favorite. We used to go to a Burmese restaurant outside of Washington DC that served it in real coconuts. We still have a coconut or two somewhere.
So, this is the first year in what seems like forever that I did not plant a garden. Last year, after my husband died, his brother and I worked together to plant the garden. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I watered it and weeded it, and worked hard to maintain it, and there was a bountiful harvest. Tomatoes, peppers, greens, so many herbs and eggplant. Then I became overwhelmed and gave so much away; much to my brother in law and his family. I knew eventually I would have to make sauce and I did, but it was heartbreaking doing it alone. We’d always cooked together and now it was all me. The eggplant was the most difficult. Eggplant parm is my favorite and Joe was a great cook; his was delicious. We each had our jobs in the prep process working side by side. I finally took the plunge and made it but it took over 3 days. It was emotionally draining, but finally it was done and I enjoyed eating it over the fall and winter. But then spring came, and the prospect of the garden seemed too much to handle. I finally gave myself permission to let it be. I did not plant a thing and I stopped judging myself for it, but boy, do I have garden envy when I look at my neighbor’s bounty. Everything is growing beautifully and it is a feast for the eyes. I am jealous and a little regretful as I look at my barren backyard save for thyme and oregano which have continued to grow. Then something beautiful happened. For the past 15 months, every time I’d opened the freezer I saw the pesto Joe had made in September 2021, with basal and hot peppers he’d planted and harvested and prepped. I often asked my daughter to take it and use it, but she refused, saying there will come a time when it’s right to use it. A few days ago, our nephews and great nephew arrived to stay with us for a few days. The family gathered and we ate all three containers of Joe’s pesto and it was delicious and wonderful and very meaningful. And it was enough; more than enough; to fill our bellies and our hearts!
I’m so glad you shared this story here. I love that the thyme and oregano keep growing and that you gave yourself permission not to plant.
You could scatter some sunflowers or native wildflowers this fall if it feels right. Keep listening to that wise voice within. Thanks for sharing her wisdom here.
James’ poem speaks to the sister lives idea you wrote about last week: we might have had an amazing life if we had made that other choice, but the amazing-ness of it might be in our minds because our current life is hard in some way.
I have massive garden envy when I walk past certain homes. Recently though, a neighbor commented, “You have the best wildlife in your yard!” after seeing baby turkeys, a pair of ducks, and 5 or 6 species of bees on my curb strip plants. My fantasy garden isn’t compatible with my values of not using chemicals and using very little water (Spokane is arid, y’all!). So while other people’s gardens look lush and magazine-worthy, mine has wildlife.
And that circles back to the post about creating a backyard habitat. Look at you doing it naturally. Sometimes what we value needs to be turned upside down, so thanks for that reminder.
Aug 20, 2023·edited Aug 20, 2023Liked by Mary Hutto Fruchter
"Enough" and "good enough" are two concepts I'm learning to embrace in this final act of my life. Much more peaceful and saner than the crazy-making "more" and "perfect" that haunted my younger years. The delights of summer are ever more precious as the days grow shorter and the light fades. The single nodding daisy reminded me of Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince. How much we will cherish the last one! My favorite ice cream? A good vanilla with freshly picked blackberries. My version of perfection ;-)
Hi Joni. I want to eat that ice cream now. That is one think I can certainly do with my blackberries. I love quality Vanilla ice cream. Thanks for the reminder of The Little Prince. I love that book. Have you heard of this book? The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse https://www.auntiesbooks.com/book/9780062976581 I have a feeling you might love it, if you love The Little Prince.
Oh, yes! Boy-Mole-Fox-Horse is such a lovely story of acceptance and compassion, and the soft, gentle drawings are delightfully comforting. Thanks for reminding me about it :-)
I make a mean zucchini bread just like my grandmother once did. I have cut the sugar in half, but it is still quite good as I add dark chocolate chips or sometimes lemon balm. I hope to share some with you someday if you don't get too famous for me.
So glad I made it to this post if a little late. So interesting that sharing your experience with scarcity can generate abundance because so many of us resonate with your words.
Love Adriene. I had to stop because I was enjoying myself so much that I did 3 of her 30 day challenges back to back and my wrists and back finally gave out. If I go back to it, it will be a few days a week, not 7!
Love how the poem fits so perfectly with your words.
Loved this, Mary! Adrienne is one of my favourite yoga teachers too - that lesson of being enough is one we all need on repeat, right?! Jessica Rose Williams wrote a lovely book called Enough (have you read it?), would definitely recommend the book (and Jess's content on Substack and YouTube) if you haven't already read it. ☺️ Also, your bread looks amazing!
Hi Charlene. Thanks so much for reading. I put Jessica’s book on my good reads list, and I look forward to checking out her Substack. The bread is pretty darn good. 🤗
I read this late this week, a sign of summer coming to an end and me not having "enough" time. Thank you for this positive outlook, I am needing it this week. Beautiful writing.
Oh, this last week of summer is so hard. I lost my optimism with the smoke and found it again with the rain, but I can’t quite put to words the feelings about letting go of summer and its hopes and dreams, what it was and what I wanted it to be. Thanks for the comment.
Beautiful post. I wrote recently about wanting to eat things from the past and I remember the first time I had pistachio ice cream (with tiny marshmallows) about 40 years ago. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever tasted in my life.
Thank you for all these great reminders. I’ve had many things go wrong in my garden these year, but I have to keep reminding myself it’s been a sideways year with extreme disruption. I’m grateful to have anything growing at all, to be honest.
The thing about gardening is there’s always next year. I’ve learned to be patient with myself for not getting out of it what I intended, making small adjustments for next time, and not holding myself in contempt. I’m also trying to see it as something to look forward to next year.
So much hope in this Jen! Love it. I am trying better to take notes for my future self. Recently, I had the idea that my content summer self should write a letter to my full-time working February self. I think I want to record the good more, so when I'm struggling, maybe I can taste just a little of that elixer, not sure if it would work. And for the garden, I feel like it's as simple as writing, definitely get those Snake River tomatoes again but maybe stop with the swiss chard because it never amounts to anything.
Ha, thanks for the shout out. I have so many cherry tomatoes this year, but only one larger tomato. What gives? I don’t know. And I bought a small chamomile plant this year, fantasizing that I would make herbal tea, and it burnt to a crisp LOL
I love Yoga with Adrienne! I do her January challenge to start each year.
Who knew Yoga with Adrienne would bring us all together. I don't grow large tomatoes anymore. My tomatoes this year are my fav ever, so I need to write that down for future me. Poor little chamomile- been there a few times. I actually had a few plants fail this year, and I returned them. That showed growth for me because I knew I was truly trying to tend them. Sometimes things just fail.
I love Yoga with Adrienne! She's my yoga guide too. Thank goodness yoga is something we can do inside during the fire season! I think you would enjoy Ammi Middestoke's book All the Things. Someone left a copy of it in our little library this week. Her essays about her garden are funny and make me appreciate the handful of cherry tomatoes and beans that my 2 small raised beds have gifted me this summer.
That book is on my To Read list, so thanks for the reminder. I also think I would love it. I resonate with all of this. I actually just purchased a Little Free Library, but we haven't put it together yet. I need to paint it first, and now will probably be waiting for the smoke to clear, at least a little. I find that doing Yoga with Adrienne or having a daily yoga practice has really helped me this year, especially when I was traveling and out of routine. I really didn't do yoga before this year.
My zucchinis are settling down, but the tomatoes are now out of control. There are just too many of them. I love your description of your blackberries, just enough to be appreciated, but not so many as to be a burden.
Are you going to make sauce? We don't get enough to make traditional sauce that will keep, but my favorite summer recipe is a pasta dish with some simple ingredients and one of them is a few roasted tomatoes. I was also going to put this, in this post, and then it got away from me, so maybe I'll have to do a follow up on cooking simply from the garden.
Thank you for your wise words, your beautiful photos, and for sharing James's poem. I too am trying to appreciate the garden I have vs the vision in my mind. Some days are easier than others.
I so very much love the lens of recognizing that what felt like scarcity is enough, is abundance even.
I love it too. Do you like poetry? I meant to write about this in this post and then forgot. I have a cold, and it is really smoky outside, so it's a one foot in front of the other kind of day. But...your words reminded me of what Ada Limone says in her Krista Tippett interview. She was able to revisit her parents' divorce and see it not as scarcity but as abundance- pretty cool stuff. https://onbeing.org/programs/ada-limon-to-be-made-whole/
Thank you for sharing this. And perfect that you shared something with audio as I find that when it comes to poetry I'm much more engaged when it's read aloud rather than reading it myself. I rarely enjoy just sitting and reading poetry but listening to it online and especially in live readings from poets helps it touch me in a powerful way. So even though this is a conversation and not a poetry reading, it feels relevant that it's in audio.
I love the part:
"It’s got breath, it’s got all those spaces. The caesura and the line breaks, it’s breath. And then that’s also the space for us to sort of walk in as a reader being like, “What’s happening here? Why are all these blank spaces?” It has silence built all around it. Silence, which we don’t get enough of. When you open the page, there’s already silence. And we think, “Well, what are we supposed to do with that silence?” And we read naturally for meaning. I mean, that’s how we read. We read for sense. And poetry doesn’t really allow you to do that because it’s working in the smallest units of sound and syllable and clause and line break and then the sentence. So you get to have this experience with language that feels somewhat disjointed, and in that way almost feels like, “Oh, this makes more sense as the language for our human experience than, let’s say, a news report.”
I'm exploring a lot around the silence and spaces in art and in life ...
Yes to all of this! I’m so glad it connected to your creative life. Thank you for sharing what moved you.
I listened to this podcast and loved it! Thanks for your recommendations! 💜
Love this, Mary. Thank you. Favorite ice cream right now is a homemade coconut lime sorbet I forget about until summer rolls around. Favorite yoga instructor is Adriene, too.....
I love how there will be one Adriene to unite us all. You win the prize because you spelled her name right. :) That sorbet sounds delicious. Thanks for reading and restacking.
I had to look it up to check...!
The sorbet sounds delicious! Can you share the recipe?
3 cups (1.5 cans) unsweetened coconut milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1/8 t salt (recipe calls for sea salt but any will do)
1 T lime zest
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
Chill ice cream container. In medium saucepan over medium heat, add coconut milk, sugar, salt, zest. Stir occasionally until sugar dissolves. Transfer to medium bowl, add lime juice, and chill over ice bath. Transfer to ice cream maker, and churn as recommended for sorbet. Enjoy right away or freeze for later.
(Note: I find the lime zest clumps, so am experimenting with adding a little to the mix, then more towards the end of churning.)
Thank you for sharing this. I love using my ice cream maker and coconut ice cream is a family favorite. We used to go to a Burmese restaurant outside of Washington DC that served it in real coconuts. We still have a coconut or two somewhere.
Thank you!!!!
So, this is the first year in what seems like forever that I did not plant a garden. Last year, after my husband died, his brother and I worked together to plant the garden. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I watered it and weeded it, and worked hard to maintain it, and there was a bountiful harvest. Tomatoes, peppers, greens, so many herbs and eggplant. Then I became overwhelmed and gave so much away; much to my brother in law and his family. I knew eventually I would have to make sauce and I did, but it was heartbreaking doing it alone. We’d always cooked together and now it was all me. The eggplant was the most difficult. Eggplant parm is my favorite and Joe was a great cook; his was delicious. We each had our jobs in the prep process working side by side. I finally took the plunge and made it but it took over 3 days. It was emotionally draining, but finally it was done and I enjoyed eating it over the fall and winter. But then spring came, and the prospect of the garden seemed too much to handle. I finally gave myself permission to let it be. I did not plant a thing and I stopped judging myself for it, but boy, do I have garden envy when I look at my neighbor’s bounty. Everything is growing beautifully and it is a feast for the eyes. I am jealous and a little regretful as I look at my barren backyard save for thyme and oregano which have continued to grow. Then something beautiful happened. For the past 15 months, every time I’d opened the freezer I saw the pesto Joe had made in September 2021, with basal and hot peppers he’d planted and harvested and prepped. I often asked my daughter to take it and use it, but she refused, saying there will come a time when it’s right to use it. A few days ago, our nephews and great nephew arrived to stay with us for a few days. The family gathered and we ate all three containers of Joe’s pesto and it was delicious and wonderful and very meaningful. And it was enough; more than enough; to fill our bellies and our hearts!
I’m so glad you shared this story here. I love that the thyme and oregano keep growing and that you gave yourself permission not to plant.
You could scatter some sunflowers or native wildflowers this fall if it feels right. Keep listening to that wise voice within. Thanks for sharing her wisdom here.
James’ poem speaks to the sister lives idea you wrote about last week: we might have had an amazing life if we had made that other choice, but the amazing-ness of it might be in our minds because our current life is hard in some way.
I have massive garden envy when I walk past certain homes. Recently though, a neighbor commented, “You have the best wildlife in your yard!” after seeing baby turkeys, a pair of ducks, and 5 or 6 species of bees on my curb strip plants. My fantasy garden isn’t compatible with my values of not using chemicals and using very little water (Spokane is arid, y’all!). So while other people’s gardens look lush and magazine-worthy, mine has wildlife.
And that circles back to the post about creating a backyard habitat. Look at you doing it naturally. Sometimes what we value needs to be turned upside down, so thanks for that reminder.
"Enough" and "good enough" are two concepts I'm learning to embrace in this final act of my life. Much more peaceful and saner than the crazy-making "more" and "perfect" that haunted my younger years. The delights of summer are ever more precious as the days grow shorter and the light fades. The single nodding daisy reminded me of Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince. How much we will cherish the last one! My favorite ice cream? A good vanilla with freshly picked blackberries. My version of perfection ;-)
Hi Joni. I want to eat that ice cream now. That is one think I can certainly do with my blackberries. I love quality Vanilla ice cream. Thanks for the reminder of The Little Prince. I love that book. Have you heard of this book? The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse https://www.auntiesbooks.com/book/9780062976581 I have a feeling you might love it, if you love The Little Prince.
Oh, yes! Boy-Mole-Fox-Horse is such a lovely story of acceptance and compassion, and the soft, gentle drawings are delightfully comforting. Thanks for reminding me about it :-)
Now I’m craving a delicious slab of zucchini bread.
I make a mean zucchini bread just like my grandmother once did. I have cut the sugar in half, but it is still quite good as I add dark chocolate chips or sometimes lemon balm. I hope to share some with you someday if you don't get too famous for me.
I look forward to that!
So glad I made it to this post if a little late. So interesting that sharing your experience with scarcity can generate abundance because so many of us resonate with your words.
Love Adriene. I had to stop because I was enjoying myself so much that I did 3 of her 30 day challenges back to back and my wrists and back finally gave out. If I go back to it, it will be a few days a week, not 7!
Love how the poem fits so perfectly with your words.
Loved this, Mary! Adrienne is one of my favourite yoga teachers too - that lesson of being enough is one we all need on repeat, right?! Jessica Rose Williams wrote a lovely book called Enough (have you read it?), would definitely recommend the book (and Jess's content on Substack and YouTube) if you haven't already read it. ☺️ Also, your bread looks amazing!
Hi Charlene. Thanks so much for reading. I put Jessica’s book on my good reads list, and I look forward to checking out her Substack. The bread is pretty darn good. 🤗
I read this late this week, a sign of summer coming to an end and me not having "enough" time. Thank you for this positive outlook, I am needing it this week. Beautiful writing.
Oh, this last week of summer is so hard. I lost my optimism with the smoke and found it again with the rain, but I can’t quite put to words the feelings about letting go of summer and its hopes and dreams, what it was and what I wanted it to be. Thanks for the comment.
Beautiful post. I wrote recently about wanting to eat things from the past and I remember the first time I had pistachio ice cream (with tiny marshmallows) about 40 years ago. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever tasted in my life.
Here's to "enough". I will hold this thought today.
Thank you for all these great reminders. I’ve had many things go wrong in my garden these year, but I have to keep reminding myself it’s been a sideways year with extreme disruption. I’m grateful to have anything growing at all, to be honest.
The thing about gardening is there’s always next year. I’ve learned to be patient with myself for not getting out of it what I intended, making small adjustments for next time, and not holding myself in contempt. I’m also trying to see it as something to look forward to next year.
So much hope in this Jen! Love it. I am trying better to take notes for my future self. Recently, I had the idea that my content summer self should write a letter to my full-time working February self. I think I want to record the good more, so when I'm struggling, maybe I can taste just a little of that elixer, not sure if it would work. And for the garden, I feel like it's as simple as writing, definitely get those Snake River tomatoes again but maybe stop with the swiss chard because it never amounts to anything.
Ha, thanks for the shout out. I have so many cherry tomatoes this year, but only one larger tomato. What gives? I don’t know. And I bought a small chamomile plant this year, fantasizing that I would make herbal tea, and it burnt to a crisp LOL
I love Yoga with Adrienne! I do her January challenge to start each year.
Who knew Yoga with Adrienne would bring us all together. I don't grow large tomatoes anymore. My tomatoes this year are my fav ever, so I need to write that down for future me. Poor little chamomile- been there a few times. I actually had a few plants fail this year, and I returned them. That showed growth for me because I knew I was truly trying to tend them. Sometimes things just fail.
I love Yoga with Adrienne! She's my yoga guide too. Thank goodness yoga is something we can do inside during the fire season! I think you would enjoy Ammi Middestoke's book All the Things. Someone left a copy of it in our little library this week. Her essays about her garden are funny and make me appreciate the handful of cherry tomatoes and beans that my 2 small raised beds have gifted me this summer.
That book is on my To Read list, so thanks for the reminder. I also think I would love it. I resonate with all of this. I actually just purchased a Little Free Library, but we haven't put it together yet. I need to paint it first, and now will probably be waiting for the smoke to clear, at least a little. I find that doing Yoga with Adrienne or having a daily yoga practice has really helped me this year, especially when I was traveling and out of routine. I really didn't do yoga before this year.
My zucchinis are settling down, but the tomatoes are now out of control. There are just too many of them. I love your description of your blackberries, just enough to be appreciated, but not so many as to be a burden.
Are you going to make sauce? We don't get enough to make traditional sauce that will keep, but my favorite summer recipe is a pasta dish with some simple ingredients and one of them is a few roasted tomatoes. I was also going to put this, in this post, and then it got away from me, so maybe I'll have to do a follow up on cooking simply from the garden.
I don't really have enough to can either but a simple sauce to eat right away is on the to-do list.
Thank you for your wise words, your beautiful photos, and for sharing James's poem. I too am trying to appreciate the garden I have vs the vision in my mind. Some days are easier than others.
I think your garden always looks so pretty in the photos you share. I imagine you would say the same about mine. That is the nice thing about friends.