Epic Fail

     This is one of those times when my effort, my intense desire to "make" like Grandma did, to connect with her and Mama - results in an epic fail.

      Saturday I made a rare trip to the farmer's market to get some herbs & collard greens, or kale if collards weren't available.  But it was collards I wanted and collards I was thrilled to get, a nice big dark green bunch, freshly cut that morning.

      As soon as I got home into a tub of water they went.  Grandma had taught me they needed to be soaked and rinsed over and over and over and over to eliminate any sand, clay or dirt.  So every few hours I'd dump out the tub, holding the greens in place, then refill it with cold water to both clean them and keep them from wilting.

     As happens more often than not, I ran "plumb out of" the few "spoons" I wake up with each morning, and my spine was flinging foul epithets at me to boot.  The greens would have to be cooked the next day.

     And the next day, an entirely different bunch of collards greeted me.  Some were limp.  Some were turning slimy and black.  Some were yellowing.  All had holes in them.  Holes that weren't there when I bought the bunch.  I poured out what should have been perfectly clean water.  It was tinged green, littered with bits of dark green leaf and slimy threads of lighter green waving off the stems, and a layer of black grainy specks at the bottom of the tub.  Odd.  Very odd.  Well.  Dan Gill says 'It's okay to eat the holes.'  So I rinsed the collards again, and turned to get a pair of scissors and a knife.  When I turned back to the tub, movement caught my eye.  I did a double-take.  A pair of dark, slick antennae waved and crept up one of the leaves - followed by a repulsive, slime-covered body.  I nearly puked.  Ugh!  A slug!

     I knew that they love to feast on hostas.  Never would I have expected to see one on my precious collard greens!

     Remembering Gill's words, and trying very hard to not be a wuss, I lifted away the disgusting beast with a paper towel and dropped it in the kitchen trash, then began picking the leaves out one at a time, intending to salvage as much as possible. But with each leaf lifted from the water, hope for a nice meal of "cornbread & collards" circled the drain faster and faster.  The lower part of most of the leaves had been gnawed off and the stems macerated - hence the long fibrous strands swimming in slime - and of course the dozens and dozens of holes.  By the time I finished, only about a third of the bunch remained, and my gag reflex was fully activated.  Even if the greens were "safe" to eat - nope.  Wasn't gonna happen.

     I burst into tears.  When everything you do is five times as hard as it used to be, or just plain impossible, or it hurts like hell to do it and then you pay dearly with even more pain than usual for the rest of the day, and four dollars were wasted - a loss like this feels ridiculously hard.

    I just wanted some fresh collards.  Next time, I'll buy them at the grocery store, pesticides and all!

 

Little Free Library!!!

    Yes, it's been a year since I last posted.  A lot, a lot has happened since then, and in a nutshell, I'm profoundly grateful that my beloved and I are both still alive.  While I have the mental and physical energy to do so, I'm posting again.  It was very tempting to just give up and abandon the blogging thing, since I can't do it consistently.  But I just plain enjoy it!  So I will.  Who cares if no one looks at it but me - it gives me pleasure, and that's enough.  And if my memory continues to falter, these posts will serve as repositories of a few of the things that give me joy.

    Long before we moved here to the housing project, when we still owned our own home, I dreamed of building a colorful "Little Free Library" (LFL) on our front lawn, with a curved bridge across the ditch, a bench for visitors to sit on while they peruse books, and an herb garden with scissors that passersby could harvest from... and sketched out my ideas in a sketchbook.  But obviously things didn't work out.  The biggest obstacle was that we couldn't figure a safe place for people to sit out there... the danger from limbs falling off of nearby aged, diseased water oaks was just too great.  It was one of many dreams I've had to let go of.

    But the universe seems always ready to offer an alternative to those with eyes and hearts open to new possibilities.  I am still a maker, if only for minutes at a time, and welcome any opportunity.

    A delightful white-haired maintenance man who worked here - for it seems just a few weeks - told me that someone had built a Little Free Library out in front of the community center here, and its steward had made a habit of looking for a specific author's mystery novels he liked to read and stocking them in the LFL.  How wonderful!

    So my beloved and I walked over to take a look. I nearly burst into tears of joy to see this LFL, just a short walk from our apartment, to which I can donate books.  What a gift, that someone else did what I cannot do!  I'm too fatigued to even imagine building anything right now - simply walking from the back of our apartment to the front and a few yards out to the sidewalk is exhausting.  So I adapt and do what my body will let me.  Lately, that's small things, done while seated.  One of my moments of making in the last few months was printing out these LFL labels onto copy paper and coloring them in with markers.  I'll glue them into the inside front cover of each book I donate.

Coloring them in was a quiet, calming, meditative experience.

    Today, cutting them out on our old paper cutter today was equally soothing, enlivened by the anticipatory delight of imagining gluing them in and delivering them to the LFL.  I can't wait!