A Return

It has been three years. It seems to me that so many blog posts are of this variety: "I'm sorry I haven't posted for months, but I'm posting now, and I'll definitely keep posting!" And then the posts stop again. BUT here is another such post, and though it may be like those others, I am not ashamed to show my face again.

In the last three years, I've been to the depths, and I've come back out again. I've been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and PTSD. (Never been to Afghanistan but still get a PTSD diagnosis? Woot! Wait. Maybe this isn't something to celebrate.) Much of my journey back out has depended on two therapists, a doctor, a chiropractor, a Reiki master, several other treatments from other specialists, the assistance of The Emotion Code and The Body Code, and the kindest friends.

And I can't discount my own work! Change takes work, patience, more work, and many prayers. Plus bravery. — I am the one who chooses to ask my boss for a rearranged schedule so I can make all these appointments. I am the one who chooses to drive to them, to work through them, to cry through them, and then to go back to work and keep working. Disassociation still prevents me from fully recognizing that it is me who does all of this. But light is slowly working its way into my world. — 

In the middle of this last winter, I bought a tomato. When I cut it open, many seeds had sprouted! I planted a few. One of the plants is big. BIG. Big for being an inside tomato plant that gets a whiff of fresh air every day but has never seen a bee alight on its blossoms. And yet, my tomato plant has a little red tomato, and it's growing a bunch more. 

Today I read a bit about Plato's Cave again. Remember it from 11th grade English? It's about a group of men who live in a dark cave with only a fire for light, so all they see are shadows on the cave walls. They think shadows are reality. One man leaves, discovers the real world outside of the cave, and returns to tell the others. Without leaving the cave themselves, it's hard for them to understand.

Plato's cave man's new sight is like the process of healing from abuse. Bit by bit, I discover pieces of the reality that always existed, which I never saw before, and it blows my mind. Then it happens again. And again. And again. — Some days, there is no light, not even that which I thought I'd gained. Some days, I practice my techniques and pray for help over and over, but seem to move very little. And some days, that blossoming new light awes and overwhelms me with its sweetness and truth. 

Today I thought, "What if I could rewrite Plato's Allegory of the Cave in Goose Girl style, expand the story into a novel, and make it tell the story of the continuous disorientation of abuse, life after abuse, and all the stages of healing?" Then I wondered if such a novel would be as strange and disorienting, as hard to follow, as Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. (Read Rachel Falconer's essay "Underworld Portmanteaux: Dante's Hell and Carroll's Wonderland in Women's Memoirs of Mental Illness!")

Nevertheless, perhaps I should write it. 

Or perhaps not. Maybe this journey is better characterized by a seemingly lonely tomato plant, growing out of the limited soil of a half gallon milk jug, reaching for wintery sunlight through a closed window, producing fruit in spite of it all, willing to work hard to change and grow, and accepting the nature of the long, long process.

But actually, both stories are true for me, that of the tomato and that of my imagined Cave novel. Healing happens through adding upon and peeling away, here a little and there a little, while the light steadily plows furrows through the oozing fog and the cacophonous unrealities.

Thank goodness for the light!

P.S. See how the grow light is supporting the tomato plant behind it, which I've just turned around so it won't lean too much toward the light and tip over. And then, see that tall scary cactus in front of the grow light? Yup! You've seen it before, four years ago! It is a break-off of my seed-grown cactus featured here. It's crazy how much this one spiny plant has grown in four years. 

to make lip balm

I decided to make lip balm this evening as my Sabbath evening activity. My original recipe comes from genegenejr of this location: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Make-your-own-lip-balm-kit-24-tubes-w-beeswax-w-recipe-/121251434307?pt=US_Skin_Care&hash=item1c3b260f43. His recipe is excellent.

I have been experimenting with the original recipe. This time I wanted to use coconut oil to see if that would make the lip balm more creamy. Coconut oil smells really strong, so I wanted to play it up rather than try to hide it. One of my favorite things with coconut is German chocolate cake frosting. YUM. Therefore this lip balm recipe has coconut oil, vanilla, and walnut and almond flavorings in it. Roommate suggested putting organic raw cane sugar in it as well, but I didn't. Maybe I should have, though. This lip balm smells like German chocolate cake, but it doesn't taste like it!

One or more of the flavorings doesn't dissolve or disperse in the lip balm mixture. I suspect the vanilla and black walnut. Oh well. It makes some of these actually look like German chocolate cake. Almost. Here is a picture.

It gets a little messy. But it's so fun to have this at the end!

I made a few orange vanilla coconut tubes tonight as well. Yum.

another beginning

Writing on the blog again feels like starting over.

My aunt Sandra passed away a week and a half ago. The funeral was Friday. 

On Saturday, we went cross country skiing. We skied for three hours! I bruised my elbow in a fall. Then we went to see more family.

On Sunday morning, I left my aunt Ellen's house with two very nice plants from the funeral. It is my job to take care of them now. 

On Sunday afternoon, I came home to find that my lemon tree is making new little leaves. In October or so, it lost all of its leaves but two. Then it put out about a hundred blossoms. There is one left today. And now, it's making leaves again. 

And the lime tree has four tiny limes just starting to grow. Hooray!

Pictures to come. Perhaps.

on creativity—a thought

Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit.

Have you seen this book? It's my current favorite. I'm about halfway through.

Roommate 1 (as opposed to Roommate 2, of the tomato potting) does this creative thing once a week all summer long. She chalks a poem onto the nearby frequented sidewalk. I never thought too much about "creativity" before reading Tharp's book. But when I went to look at Roommate 1's work of this evening, I was struck with wonder at the layers of creativity and the two artists who created this.

Check it out. The text is huge, though it looks small in the photo.

"Ah, but I was so much older then.

I'm younger than that now." 

 ~ Bob Dylan, from "My Back Pages"

The two artists at work are Bob Dylan and Roommate 1. At some time a long time ago, Bob Dylan, through his own creative process, wrote these words and set them to music. Roommate 1 found the words, decided they were appropriate for this week, chose a font and colors, and put Bob Dylan on the sidewalk.

Roommate 1 searches out poems all the time. Her bookshelf includes the anthology Good Poems, American Places, compiled by Garrison Keillor, and many many others. We used to take turns posting a "poem of the week" on the fridge, at her suggestion. I don't know her full creative process, but I know that she searches out meaningful bits of poetry and picks fonts and colors to use to give them shape and color. She's very good at fonts and styles. Her work usually lasts about a week or until it rains. As long as it stays, it offers inspiration to every walker who passes and pauses to look.

water cages for tomatoes

Yesterday, I wrote that I had used water cages for the tomatoes for the first few weeks, while the plants were still in danger of frost. Those water cages must have simmered in my mind all night. Today I went out and cleaned the dirt off the water cages, filled them from the hose, and placed them around the tomatoes again. I made the water cages stand as open as possible (rather than as closed little tipis) so that the plants may still be encouraged to grow upwards.

Even though I haven't done research on the specifics, I'm guessing that tomato plants + heat = more production. I've seen a roadside "pick your own tomatoes" place near Wellsville, Utah, where they cover the tomato plants all season long with a thick greenhouse-looking layer of plastic. At the end of the summer, the plants are thick with huge tomatoes. The people come buy them. When my plants were new and tiny, they grew blossoms. The water cages must have given them enough heat that they thought they could produce. Now that they're bigger, they can better support fruit, and the water cages will provide a lengthened heat day, which will encourage the plants to make tomatoes. Woot!

to tomatoes!

And now, to tomatoes!

I made most of my vegetable-planting decisions this year based on the results of last year. At my rented house in Cache Valley, there are few sunny places to plant vegetables. There is a raised garden bed in the backyard, but it's overshadowed by a tree planted smack in the center of the backyard. Last year I put potatoes back there. They did produce, but not a ton. And they fell over early on in their search for sunshine. The best place to plant is along the side of the house and the back patio, which gets a few hours of sunshine each day despite the neighbors' large pine trees to the south. Last year I planted tomatoes next to the house and squash next to the patio. The squash did well, but the tomatoes produced only a few fruits that did not mature. I can't say why except that I planted the small plants late in the season, sometime in June, I think. They were large-size and/or heirloom varieties, so they probably needed a much longer growing season. The plants grew, but not super large. Also, they may have never got enough sunlight or heat to feel up to producing.

So this year, I switched the positions of the squash and tomatoes, squash next to the house and tomatoes next to the back patio, and I bought and planted the tomatoes at the beginning of April, I think. (I can't remember the dates, and I didn't write them down!) I also protected them with standing-water cages until I thought that the danger of frost was past. They seemed to love the cages. Those cages must have provided much more heat than I thought possible, because the little plants grew in them and made blossoms. They seemed unhappy when I removed the water cages (after a warm weekend, because I thought we'd have warm weather from that point on) and they had to survive for some weeks through cool spring rain storms. But as of this evening, the plants are doing well. They have kept growing, all of them display blossoms, and two of them have little tomatoes! Here are the orange cherry tomato (top) and the early girl (bottom).

I chose different tomato varieties than last year as well. The orange cherry tomato has a "to production" time of 55 days, and the early girl is similar. The third plant is a big boy with a slightly shorter production time than some of the other large tomato varieties. With all three, I have a cherry, a medium, and a large tomato. I hope the big boy produces fruit this year, and its blossoms are hopeful signs. Although at this point, the plant isn't yet large enough to support large fruit.

In April when I planted these three plants, the roommates and I were unsure if we would live in this house through the full summer. I thought I would just plant three plants, just to see how they did. Nothing too ambitious. If we moved, it wouldn't be a big loss, and if the plants produced and we stayed, that would be lovely. I stuck to this idea of only three plants for a few weeks. But new ideas assailed me, and I gave in, with pleasure. And enthusiasm. What follows are two more tomato experiments....

In early May, I went to Valley Nursery in Ogden, Utah, in search of citrus trees. They didn't have the trees in yet. But I found seed packets with seeds for several varieties of cherry tomatoes. I have a few large basic planters, so I planted some of the seeds in one planter. I have tried to keep them moist (and to talk to them often). I placed the planter on the front porch in full view of the noon sun. Nothing happened for more than two weeks. But now, several seedlings have sprouted.

I have already thinned them out, and a few more have come up. My idea was to allow three of them to grow, and to support them against the three stakes of the tomato cage in their pot. The third "cluster" of seeds, which should be to the right, hasn't produced anything yet, so perhaps it will just be two plants instead. My idea in planting many cherry tomato seeds all in one pot is that whatever seeds sprout, perhaps those are the varieties most suited to grow in this Northern Utah climate on my front porch in a pot. And whatever don't sprout/are smallest, are less suited to grow, and I can remove them. I have no idea which varieties I'll end up with (if any plants do get big enough to produce), but if they produce, I'll find out which varieties they are. Plus, the idea of three different little cherry tomato plants growing together is just cute.

One week ago, on Saturday, Roommate 2 and I went to the Cache Valley Gardeners' Market, the local farmers market. We found quite a few wonderful things including two tomato plants, a Piedmont Pear and what I think is a Costoluto Genovese tomato. The vendor's picture of the Piedmont Pear looks like any other yellow pear tomato, but I shall see what it looks like if I get fruit. The Costoluto Genovese is an Italian heirloom, which we picked because we wanted a tomato with the deep lobes. We planted each plant in large pots, and one week later, both plants are doing well. The Costoluto is growing, or at least, it's making a lot of new little leaves (on the left). The pear (on the right) had its main stem broken off before we bought it, but it is putting out new leaves as well!

These plants are in the best location of all, in the window box on the south side of the house, with the most sun all day long. I don't know how they will do in their pots, if the soil will get too warm or not, etc, but I'm sure that the tops will like the sun, at least.

And, speaking of these planters, I tried something new with them this year. Last year I had purple potatoes in a planter on the front porch. When I emptied the pot at the end of the season, most of the dirt was smelly (growing something besides potatoes) and, I'm sure, useless and perhaps harmful to the potato's roots. So, I devised a way to keep the water flowing through the pots this year. Roommate 2 helped with the whole process. First, I tried to create drainage holes by burning the plastic with my lighter. Pyro that I am, I enjoyed this. But Roommate 2 had a much better idea—pull the bottoms right off! It turns out that these basic planters are made to do this! The bottoms go right back on if you want them to. So we pulled bottoms off of planters. The pots have four drainage holes and four bottom-attacher holes, or eight in all, making for quite a lot of drainage.

I wanted to not only have holes so that water could drain out, but to eliminate the mass of smelly soil from the interior of the pot and allow the water to flow right through the entire thing. I devised this structure.

There is a small pot in there to take up a little space and hopefully help to cool the inside, and then the pieces of cinder block should help with drainage, as any rocks in a pot will do. We put the tomato cage right down in the bottom and then put in the cinder block pieces in, reasoning that the blocks and the dirt would help hold the cage in place, and we wouldn't struggle to put a cage in later, after the plants grew bigger. After the cage, the little pot, and the cinder block pieces, we shoveled in garden dirt from the back vegetable bed, then put in the two plants, and then placed nicer potting soil around them. Soon I will fertilize them. Here are the tomatoes right after we planted them last Saturday.

Because these are heirloom varieties, they may need a longer growing season than they will get. But at least in this location they will get plenty of sun and warmth. Hopefully they will produce a few tomatoes.

planters I

In all of my recent cactus-planting and other endeavors, I've found that I prefer planters that drain well and have an attached plate, like the pot the cacti are in. They can sit on the carpet and not endanger it with mud spills. If I felt that I could spend extra money on a second planter for the orange mint (in the blue pot), I would have done it. But these planters with attached water-catching plates are usually expensive because they're made of ceramic. Plus, I really dislike most of the styles I find in stores. 

So I decided to make my own! That way, if I dislike the style I come up with (or fail altogether), I can only blame myself for failing and not the local garden center. :) I researched online to find what a few others folks have done. These "city planters" are a great idea, but not what I had in mind at all. I love the style of these little guys from PottedStore.com, even though they don't have plates underneath. This is more the idea, and it's really fun, even though I don't want to make this style. And I love this style. I think making something like this (but with a plate) would be fairly simple; if I wanted to copy it exactly, the glaze job might be the most difficult part. 

And of course I don't want to copy it exactly. But I do want to do something of my own. So I signed up for the Lifespan Ceramics class available to the public at Utah State University. 

I have taken a few ceramics classes in the past. I'm not great. I have never taken the time to refine my technique. I went to the first class a few days ago intending to just practice making cylinders. If I was able to make any at all, that would be great. If I didn't make anything, I would have tried, and that would still be great! 

Whatever skill I had developed must have simmered in my brain for the last few months since I'd been at a potter's wheel, because it came back easily and then some. Within the first evening, I had made five cups and kept two! I went back two days later and made three more cups, a partly-closed bowl, and a plate. The next day I made four more little plates. Here they all are together. 

I left them to dry a little for a few hours. Then I came back and trimmed feet into the bottoms of all of the plates and one of the cups. I attached the bowl and the other four cups to their respective plates, sprayed them, covered them, and left them. I forgot to take a picture of them attached; but I'll do it soon. When I go back next time, I need to cut the drainage holes into the bases of each cylinder. Then I will let them dry, then fire them, then glaze them, and fire them again. 

I like the cylinders I made, especially the simple elegance of their slight angle outward. It's a pretty darn good shape for a small planter. I'm very pleased with—and proud of—this first start!

(Someday I would like to be able to do this!)