Lifescapes

Tomato powder

 

Making tomato powder is easy (thanks to Dawn for asking). Here's a quick rundown. The fresh sliced tomatoes (seeds, skins, pulp, and all) go onto the dehydrator tray. (This can be done in an outdoor solar dryer--you might want to google that.) I dry until they are nearly brittle, then remove. If I had a mesh insert for the tray, I would use that--it would make removing the dried tomatoes much easier. The dried tomatoes go into the freezer for an hour, to make powdering easier.

Then they go into the blender, in small amounts. I use a mini-jar (the old-fashioned narrow mouth pint jars fit my blender). I've also used the coffee grinder that I use for my herbs. The trick is to do it in small amounts; otherwise, the powder will gum up the blades: it is really, really hygroscopic. I store the powder in the refrigerator, tightly capped. I keep some in a small capped shaker bottle, mixed with a little salt and pepper, for shaking onto omelets, mashed potatoes, soups. A spoonful of the powder (straight, no salt) adds zip to many dishes. I've also made chile powder, kale powder, zuchinni "flour"--fun to experiment!

More heat here: 106 outside our kitchen door yesterday, 81 this morning when the dogs and I went out just before sunrise. Maybe a shower today--there's a cold front sagging down from the north. (I'm hearing thunder, and the dog just crept under my desk: he thinks a storm is coming.) But that's only a temporary relief. It's due to warm up again tomorrow, 100+. I'm reading about an El Nino developing in the eastern Pacific that could bring rain to us in October and November. The only hope for rain sooner is a hurricane in the Gulf, and nobody wants that!

Forward progress on the book, tieing off the dangling story ends, pulling things together for the conclusion, in another 10,000 words. Loving the dragon--he's a great character, with lots of life and energy. He's like an actor who brings a new kind of energy into the scene when he's onstage. He's also in The Tale of Briar Bank. You can see him on the cover there.

Reading note. After all these years thinking about drying food and planting and harvesting, I believe that the single most important thing each one of us can do to balance the world's food supply is to take more responsibility for securing our own food. By utilizing locally grown food, we can be more independent and self=sufficient. Each one of us can strive to minimize our impact on the planet. Grow food yourself or support those who sell at your local market. Money spent locally strengthens your community.--Mary T. Bell, Food Drying with an Attitude

Echinacea: In Bloom This Week

 

Do you know the echinacea story? The North American Plains Indians used the plant to treat poisonous insect and snake bites, toothaches, sore throat, wounds, and bruises, as well as measles, mumps, and smallpox. It was their "heal-all," the plant they turned to as a treatment for almost everything that ailed them. The settlers copied these uses of the plant, and by the early 1900s it was one of the most popular medicines available. When plant medicines fell into disrepute in the U.S., echinacea disappeared with the others, although the Europeans continued to find it useful. It was brought back to attention again in the 1990s--unfortunately, with a lot of hype. There's a balanced discussion of this herb here. 

Nice news from my publisher: the large print rights to The Tale of Applebeck Orchard have been sold to Thorndyke, and the audio rights to both Briar Bank and Applebeck Orchard had gone to Recorded Books. RB will be releasing both Spanish Dagger and Wormwood in audio in December, 09. I absolutely adore the British reader, Virginia Leishman, who narrates the Cottage Tales. Love the way she reads the animals--she brings them to life in exactly the way I heard them in my head as I was writing the books. Such a delight. I only wish they weren't so expensive. Please ask your library to get them, so they can be shared.

Making good progress on The Tale of Oat Cake Crag in the past few days, #7 in the Cottage Tales. I love the narrator in that series, who has become a character in her own right. She's so nosy and intrusive and has so many opinions (some of them wrong!) and isn't at all shy about expressing them. When the series ends (#8 will be the last), she's the character I'll miss the most. Funny thing, too: she's not something I planned in the beginning. She wasn't invited. She pushed her way into the books as they went along. Just had to get her nose in there, and then came the rest of her, like the camel under the tent. And now that she's in the books, and in my writing life, I think she may be here to stay. A new discovery. I wonder whether she'll push her way into The Darling Dahlias (the new mystery series, coming next year).

Welcome to my FaceBook blog followers, on NetworkedBlogs! Nice to have you linked in. Hope you enjoy Lifescapes and come back for more.

Reading note: Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do--the actual act of writing--turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

 

Growing a Gardener

 

This morning's harvest: tomatoes, green beans, zukes, tatume (summer squash, native to Texas and Mexico, does well in arid regions). I'm freezing the beans, drying the tomatoes, and eating the zukes. The squash is wonderful--will bake it for tonight's supper. And since it's a hot day, I'll do it in the solar oven.

A good harvest, and I do love growing things. But as I look at the garden and its produce, what I think about most is the growth of the gardener: in an awareness of what this soil needs (more nutrients, more humus), what kind of gardening does well here (raised beds), what my garden lacks most (rain). The lack of rain is a serious issue, for it means that in order to produce anything, I have to input water--substantial amounts of water. We have two wells--we bought an adjacent property and hooked that well with ours to improve output. But like most aquifers in the US, and across the globe, our Trinity Aquifer is threatened both by drought and by development. I don't like having to use groundwater ("blue" water, as water folks call it) to keep the garden alive and producing. I'd far rather have rain ("green" water). The yield would be higher, the plants more productive, the strain on our water system--and the aquifer--much less. 

But this morning, on a day that promises still more sunshine and a temperature of nearly 100 (and no rain), I am reminded that whatever else the garden grows, its most important growth happens in me, its gardener, as I grow, change, mature, learn, and celebrate all that is good on this earth, all that grows and gives us life.

Reading note, from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day...just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then...laid down their lives for our welfare and onward resolve. There's the miracle for you, the absolute sacrifice that still holds back seeds: a germ of promise to do the whole thing again, another time.

Storms and wandering cows

 

Not a tornado, but a microburst--that's what our weather gurus are telling us. Whatever, Thursday evening was definitely exciting, not at all the pleasant TV/reading/knitting evening I had planned. Bill is in NM this week--nice for him (it's cool there), nice for me (it's quiet here). But Thursday was anything but quiet.

What you see in the photo (click on it for a better view) is a downed mesquite limb, a broken cedar limb and one of the half-dozen metal sheets that were ripped off the porch roof. I spent a half hour in Archie Bunker (our cement storm cellar) with an indignant cat, hoping that the house would still be there when I opened the door. The dogs refused to go down into that dark hole and got shut up in a closet. Over in Bertram, three miles away, many of the buildings lost roofs and suffered structural damage. No power through Friday night, which made life very hot (Friday's temperature hit 95). No water, either, since our well pumps are electric. But we keep an emergency supply and have plenty of emergency lighting. All in all, we were lucky. What's more, because I couldn't write on Friday (no electricity for the computer), I cleaned up my office instead. I can see my desk for the first time since before April's book tour--no small triumph. I also got up on the ladder and fixed the remaining porch roof panels so they wouldn't blow away.

Cows on the lam. We have some neighbors who have cows but don't have very good fences. What's more, they don't live on the property where they pasture their animals, so they don't regularly monitor them. We have unwillingly hosted their cows a couple of times: there's a story in my memoir about their white bull, who came calling a few years ago, and when Bill and I got back from tour, we found a number of cowpies, evidence that we'd had company again. On Thursday night, the cows--seven or eight, including that white bull--got out of their pasture again and began drifting across Sharon's property (our neighbor to the south--that's her hillside you're looking at in the photo) and then on to our place. We had taken our south fence down to install a gate and hadn't put it back up again, since Sharon doesn't have any animals and our cows live in another pasture, securely fenced. Last night, when the temperature dropped below 90, I put the fence posts up and strung some clothesline in place of the barbed wire (easier for me to handle), with plastic bags tied to the line. I'm hoping this will keep the cows at bay.

 

Wandering cows, violent storms, drought, heat--you may think it's crazy to say this, but I dearly, dearly love it, all of it. This is all part of the land, the place, the terrain. It's what it is. It's real. And while I am often challenged by what happens here, the challenges help me learn who I am, what skills I have, what my resources are. Important things to know in a world that is changing faster than we can keep up with, faster than we can imagine.

Reading note. I explore the terrain where I live through myself, myself through the terrain.--Barbara Gates, Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place

Keeping a Series Fresh

When mystery writers sit down to talk about our craft, one of the topics that almost always comes up is the challenge of keeping a series "fresh." Writers think about this (some of us think about this a lot), because the opposite of fresh is stale, repetitive, boring, tedious, and dull. No writer wants to get into the habit of turning out repetitive plots featuring characters who are flat, stale, and stuck in a rut. For one thing, readers (most of whom truly enjoy reading books in a series) get tired of reading the same book over and over, even though the covers are different. For another (and this is a huge thing for me) if a writer writes the same book over and over, she loses spark, energy, vitality, and--yes--freshness.

The mystery genre has come a long way from the day when Conan Doyle pushed Sherlock Holmes over Reichenbach Falls because he was thoroughly sick of his character. (He later resurrected him because Sherlock was, after all, a money-maker and Doyle's other work--historical fiction--didn't pay very well.) We've also come a long way from the days of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, characters who stayed very much the same, book after book, decade after decade. In my years as Carolyn Keene (you know I've written both Nancy and the HB?), that was one of the most frustrating things about both series: the characters didn't grow, didn't change, stayed the same. Okay for kids, maybe. Not okay for adult readers or for writers. Now, the best mysteries have the richness and density of the best mainstream and literary novels, with multi-layered characters, interwoven plots, realistic and evocative settings, innovative styles, and themes that explore the ambiguities and contradictions of our culture.

So. Since I aspire to writing the very best mysteries I can write, I aspire to create characters who mature in some important way in every book; multi-level plots that look something like a three-dimensional glass chessboard; settings that evoke a strong sense of place and remind us that place (to a degree we don't want to admit) defines who we are and sets limits on what we do; styles that command our full attention; and complex themes that require us to think as we read and to test what we're reading against what we know about life and love and loss in our culture.

There you have it. My aims. My manifesto. What I want to do with my books. And since each book represents a large chunk of my life's time (measured in months) and experience and energies (unmeasurable), I spend that time and experience and energy thoughtfully, hoping to achieve at least one or two of these aims with every book. I know I don't. I know I can't. But I try.

Which is why each one of the China Bayles books--each one of all my books, in every series--is an experiment. I am a craftsperson experimenting with her medium in the same way a potter experiments with her clay, or a painter her oils or watercolors. I push characters, stretch settings, play with themes, vary tone and style. I don't want to create a shelf of identical books, like a tray of identical, mass-produced plates, cups, and salad bowls, or a wall full of identical landscapes. I want to learn something new about my craft with each book, and I want to share those discoveries with readers.

That's why Wormwood is not the same book as Nightshade, which is different from Bleeding Hearts and Spanish Dagger. They share some of the same characters, but setting, time, point of view--these vary from book to book. The Cottage Tales are different, as well: there, I'm playing with animal characters and with a nosy, opinionated, intrusive narrator. Each of the Robin Paige books was unique in its use of historical characters and settings.

Readers who want to read the same characters, settings, and themes in each book have plenty of mysteries to choose from. (I know, because I regularly sample mystery series and am regularly disapponted by what I read.) I welcome readers who want to be challenged, are willing to venture out of their comfort zones, and are NOT looking for an "easy read." (In fact, if you believe that you've found an "easy read" in the China Bayles books, I'd have to say that you are probably not finding all that's there.) If this isn't you--well, I'm sorry to see you leave the series, but I know you'll be able to find plenty of books that fit your expectations.

How to keep a series fresh? When novice writers ask me that, I say: keep yourself fresh, as a writer. Keep playing, experimenting, changing, growing. Your books will reflect your growth, and your readers will be challenged by it. And come to think of it, that's life, isn't it? Isn't that what makes us human?

Reading note. One writes in order to know why one writes. It's the same with life--you live not for some end, but in order to know why you live.--Alberto Moravia

Update: 6/15/09. Nina Garrett just sent me a reminder of that wonderful passage at the beginning of Josephine Tey's splendid Adam Grant mystery, The Daughter of Time. Detective Grant is in the hospital, and his friends have brought a stack of current best-sellers to occupy him. But as he looks through them, he sees that they're all predictable, repetitious, boring. In disgust, he thinks to himself:

Did no one, any more, no one in all this wide world, change their record now and then? Was everyone nowadays thirled [look it up!] to a formula? Authors today wrote so much to a pattern that their public expected it.The public talked about "a new Silas Weekley" or "a new Lavinia Fitch" exactly as they talked about "a new brick" or "a new hairbrush." They never said "a new book by" whoever it might be. Their interest was not in the book but in its newness.They knew quite well what the book would be like.

It might be a good thing, Grant thought as he turned his nauseated gaze away from the motley pile, if all the presses of the world were stopped for a generation. There ought to be a literary moratorium. Some Superman ought to invent a ray that would stop them all simultaneously. Then people wouldn't send you a lot of fool nonsense when you were flat on your back...

Thanks very much, Nina. I'm so glad to be reminded of this book, surely one of the very best mysteries of all time. Brat Farrar is another of Tey's successes (in my view), and none of her work could ever be called "formulaic."

Solarizing

 

The garden is growing--expanding, that is. I'm adding five new 4x8 beds, in an area that hasn't been dug before. The sod is fairly thick, so to reduce the labor of spading it, I'm solarizing the area. I've done this before, with clear plastic (which is maybe more effective), but this black weed barrier is what I had on hand (and I am NOT driving 30 miles to buy another plastic, oil-based product!), so I'm using it. Here in the Texas Hill Country, we're heading into a summer of many 90-100 degree days, so whatever material I use, it won't take long to kill the weeds, grass, and grubs. The fence (recycled hog wire) will have to be moved, too. We live with deer, rabbits, and armadillos, and they would all dearly love to visit the garden and get acquainted with the veggies. The fence is a necessity.

Harvested zukes, a few cukes, lots of beans and tomatoes this week. Thinking of cutting the kale back to see if it will put out a new crop in the fall/winter. If you've done this and it worked (or didn't) leave a comment and let me know.

Good progress on The Tale of Oat Cake Crag this week (#7 in the Cottage Tales). About that title (for those of you who are interested). I originally called it The Tale of Oatmeal Crag--which is a real place, an outcropping on Hill Top Farm. But I needed a spot nearer Windermere, the ribbon lake to the east of Hill Top and the Sawrey villages (Near and Far). I decided to call it Oat Cake and invented a story to explain the title. Here's my fictional tale: It seems that a group of Scottish soldiers marching to London with Bonnie Prince Charlie were dispatched to the crag, a lookout point high above Windermere. While they were there, they cooked some oat cakes--a flat bread, like pancakes or tortillas. Ever after, it's been called Oat Cake Crag. I always have a great deal of trouble with a book or a short story until I know the title. Seems to pull everything together for me. In this case, the fiction of those Scottish soldiers gave me an idea for a subplot. Fun for me, I hope for you too, when you read it. This book will be out in September 2010. One more Cottage Tale after that: #8, The Tale of Castle Cottage. No doubt about that title: it is the home that Beatrix and her Willie moved into when they married in 1913, and where they lived (very happily) until 1943, when she died. 

I got an email today from a reader who didn't like Wormwood because China Bayles is not the main character throughout. "I want China Bayles," she says, "not some Shaker chicks. Blech!" I'll be posting on that topic later this week. Stay tuned.

Watched What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire last night. A thoughtful, serious film (got it on DVD, from Netflix) about how we must change our way of life in order to survive and thrive in the coming era of energy depletion and global climate change. Highly recommended if you are thoughtful and serious about these issues. Did you watch Earth 2100 on ABC Tuesday night? I was surprised and pleased that a major network would produce and air such a program. Gives me hope. A little.

Reading note. For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it.--Patrick Henry