Alaska

Gardening: The definition of hope.

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(Happy Throwback Thursday! This post originally ran on May 6, 2021. Since it was snowing this morning, I decided to re-read this post for its reminder of hope. And there IS reason to hope: We have celery seedlings popping up, and DF put tomato and marigold seeds into little peat pots this morning. Sooner or later, the snow will melt and the ground will warm up enough to accept plant starts. Hope it’s sooner.)

(Note: This was a gardening post I started to write and then dropped. It was begun in the second week of April and picked up again on May 3. Sorry for any confusion.)

It was nine degrees when I got up today. And we’re at sea level! And it’s April!

Then again, it was minus 18 in Fairbanks this morning. So I guess I’m still ahead on points, but come on.

Fortunately, DF bought flowers for his mom on Easter and thought they looked so nice he’d get some for us, too. They stuck around for a long time, and having them on the table to look at was a good antidote to weather-related grumblies.

Nearby is a miracle plant: a pot of snapdragons that we nursed through the winter. The foliage is a bit pale, but it survived despite low-to-no light levels. The plant had widely spaced buds instead of the usual tightly packed stems. As a result, each bloom was wide-open and on its own, looking as though it’s ready to take flight.

Sun and semi-warmth returned on April 21, so we put the snaps outdoors to take advantage. (Brought them in at night because cold.) On April 22, I got a photo of the first honeybee* of the year.

I think it was pretty confused: “Flowers? At this time of year?!? HELL YEAH!!!” 

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Easter giveaway: Alaskan artisanal chocolate.

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Why should kids have all the fun at Easter? For the grownup palates in my audience, I’m giving away a delicious treat from Chugach Chocolates, a bean-to-bar chocolatier right here in Anchorage, Alaska.

(In fact, it’s located down the street from me, which may or may not be too close for comfort.)

I’ve given away Chugach Chocolate items in the past, as part of my desire to support the local economy. Given that Easter is on April 9, I figured it’s time for another chance at delight.

“Bean-to-bar” is exactly what it sounds like: The company roasts raw cacao beans and turns them into fascinating flavors. Some of them, such as the Alaskan Kelp and Cayenne, sound a bit scary. But that bar – like the others Chugach creates – is in fact great fun. 

Chugach has single-origin bars made with beans from Fiji, Guatemala, Madagascar, Vietnam and other countries. As for its Alaskan flavors, you could sample flavors such as Dark Chocolate with Alaskan Birch Syrup Toffee, Dark Chocolate with Mat-Su Valley Potato Chips (that’s a local chip company) and Dark Chocolate with Prince William Sound Sea Salt. 

The winner gets to choose one of the following items:

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Aurora sightings.

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As you may have read, an intense solar storm has caused the aurora borealis (aka “northern lights”) to be glimpsed as far south as London, England. Apparently the aurora put on quite a show at Stonehenge, too. The image that came to mind was a bunch of neo-Druids pointing and yelling: “It’s the elder gods sending a message! Does anyone speak Aurora???”

The photo in the illustration was taken by my niece, Alison Willis, and is under copyright so don’t use it to make a T-shirt or something. The colors would likely have been brighter outside of town, due to Anchorage’s light pollution, but it was past 10 p.m. and she didn’t feel like driving an hour or two out and back on a school night.

Instead, she took these photos at Earthquake Park here in town. Throngs of other shooters were there, and the roads to Pt. Woronzof and Flattop (also here in town) were apparently parked on both sides for up to half a mile out.

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Midlife love rocks! (Ask me how I know.)

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(Happy Throwback Tuesday! I know it’s generally “Throwback Thursday,” but my playground, my rules. This post originally ran on Valentine’s Day in 2013. It’s a message that bears repeating, I think.)

I find myself in the middle of a Lifetime movie: Middle-aged woman leaves long-term abusive marriage, goes broke, wins a scholarship, stumbles into an unexpected career – and finds a man who’s perfect for her.

A man who’s smart, kind, funny, well-read, musically talented, astoundingly physical and – bonus! – extremely handy around the house.

A man who only gets her jokes but embroiders on them, and who wrote a smutty double dactyl in honor of her birthday.

A man who wants her for who she is, not for the person he thinks he can turn her into.

The experience has been startling, and humbling, and oh so gratifying. I never knew emotions came in this size.

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Easy(ish) food preservation.

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Recently a neighbor offered me a Lowe’s-sized bucket of apples and a gallon of pie cherries. The former became eight pints of applesauce and the latter a 10-inch pie. At some point that day I got a Facebook message from an old friend; while e-chatting, I learned she, too, was elbow-deep in food preservation that day: tomatoes, corn and green beans.

The coincidence made me grin, especially since her early life goal was to become a big-city journalist and live the single-gal life. (She did become a journalist, but spent most of her career in a small town.)

I asked her if she’d ever pictured herself using a pressure canner, or was that something our moms did. Her response: “We are lucky we grew up the way we did, so we can survive. I rarely shop but when I do it’s only for what I can’t grow myself.”

Those are thoughts I’ve voiced myself. Growing up fairly broke got me through single parenthood and a protracted midlife divorce. Now I’m no longer jobless or broke, but the soaring cost of food (and other stuff) is making me really nervous.

Not everyone is able to (or wants to) freeze, can or dehydrate. But hear me out.

For starters, think about broadening your definition of “preserving” food. In my opinion, bulk buying, stocking up during sales, and combining sales with rewards programs are all ways to “preserve” food. As in, you’re making sure you have the groceries you need at the best prices you can find.

You’re preserving your budget along with the food. The money you don’t spend on grub is money that can go toward other essentials. It’s unlikely that many of us will starve in this country, but a whole lot of people will be mightily inconvenienced, in a couple of ways: 

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Relishing summer’s bounty.

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A reader named Ringo apparently misses the garden updates, and asked whether we were still growing fruits and vegetables. Yes, and I’ve been taking pictures like mad – but still haven’t organized a major “looking at this year’s garden” post. As a stopgap, I’m going to write about relish.

Why relish? After all, we’ve frozen peas and raspberries, made rhubarb leather, and canned rhubarb compote and raspberry jam. We’ve eaten some very good tomatoes, lettuces, greens and strawberries. But the relish might be the best thing to come out of this summer, because we may have invented a new recipe.

Relish was never a huge thrill to me. It was just something to put on hot dogs and hamburgers. But last year our Chelsea Prize cucumbers, an English variety from Renee’s Garden Seeds, produced so heavily that I decided to look for a bonehead-simple relish recipe. (As a Renee’s Garden Seeds affiliate, I receive a small finder’s fee for sales made through my link.)

Found one, too. And then DF improved on it.

He improves on so many things in my life, as I’ve written before. When I described the relish recipe DF said, “You know what might be a good addition? Some jalapeño.”

We have pickled jalapeños in our fridge – a can we’d found in the dented-can bin, because that’s how we roll. So I diced up a bit of pickled pepper and added it to the mix.

The result was delicious: sweet yet pungent, mellow but with a peppery zing! that turns even the cheapest hot dogs into a decent meal.

Sometimes we nibble it by the forkful, like a salad. Which I guess it technically is, being made of cukes, onions, garlic, sugar, and mustard and celery seeds.

Our enjoyment of this humble condiment reminded me of a passage from Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine”: 

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2 illnesses (one COVID, one not).

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Let me say upfront that I did not have COVID. My poor niece has it, though, and she’s been suffering. Ever the momma, though, Alison opted to quarantine in a tent in the yard (more on that in a moment) rather than expose her two children to the virus.

My own illness was far more plebeian, though fairly uncomfortable in its own special way. It laid me low for most of last week and has left me fatigued and cranky. Which is one reason that it’s been, good grief, 11 days since I last posted here.

Still trying to form coherent thoughts, as well as to catch up on assignments whose deadlines I missed. I’ve also been dropping off things I think my niece could use: ice for the cooler, washed grapes, chicken noodle soup, Ritz crackers and, for fun, a sleeve of Otter Pops. (We’d been reminiscing about freezer pops recently, so when I saw a box of 80 OPs for just $3.29 in the “manager’s special” bin, I snatched it up.)

I don’t go into her home or her tent, or even near them. Instead, I set the stuff near the front door and text her kids to come get them. They come out with masks on, chat briefly (from a distance) about how it’s going and go back into the plague house.

About that tent: A friend of Alison’s referred to the quarantine tent as “the ’Rona Cabana,” and that earworm* would not leave my head.

The only way to get it out was, of course, to write about it. 

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Vernal equinox: The (cold) shoulder season.

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Happy first day of spring, also known as the vernal equinox! Doesn’t our yard look…equinoctical?

At left is a view of our snow-covered garden, shot through the living-room window. The cage at the back surrounds our two apple trees, which look spindly now but will produce a startling amount of fruit once summer arrives.

Summer will arrive again, right? At this time of year it’s easy to second-guess the seasons. Yesterday it sure felt like spring, hitting 47 degrees – and on a day when the sun didn’t set until 8:14 p.m., it was easy to imagine that the best season had somehow sneaked up on us. That is, until I had to tippy-toe down our partially glaciated driveway to check the mailbox.

We mostly refer to spring as “breakup,” as in ice breaking up on a river or lake. Indeed there are huge puddles during the day as winter’s accumulation starts to disappear. But there’s still a lot of snow left, and we are ready for it to be gone.

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Valentine giveaway: Alaska-made jewelry.

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Welcome back to the “support the local economy” giveaway series. This time around, we’re going for a Valentine’s Day theme. Specifically, a trio of heart-shaped earrings made by Cypher Alaska.

That’s the business run by my friend Linda B., who started out with freeform bead-weaving and has added things like traditional beading, resin capture and metal work.

Once she picked up a bunch of flashing at the Habitat ReStore and turned pieces of it into jewelry (Linda has quite the collection of shapes and punches). Then there was the time she purchased a piece of copper piping at the home improvement center, capped both ends and beaded around the middle.

What I’m giving away this week is a bit simpler, though. Three winners will each get a pair of hammered metal heart-shaped earrings. From a distance, these things look like just metal hearts. When you get up close, you can see they bear multiple divots that add texture to the metal.

That’s not a bad metaphor for Valentine’s Day, or for love itsownself: After all, many a heart has been dented in the name of l’amour.

If you’re lucky, that never happened to you because you met The One and immediately paired up. Or maybe you escaped a heart-hammering because you have the ability to shrug over a lost love and say, “Plenty of other fish in the sea.” Or possibly you don’t have much interest in the whole love thing from the start, living just as long and dying just as happy without romance (shout-out to the aro folks among us).

But back to Valentine’s Day. If you’re interested in gifting a pair of shiny earbobs to your Valentine – or to yourself – on Feb. 14, read on to see the goods and enter the drawing.

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