Herban Sprawl

8 June 2010

Happy Birthday (yesterday) to my favorite Italian crooner, the incomparable Dean Martin.

Happy Birthday (today) to my favorite guitarist, Tony Rice, and to the infamous genius, Frank Lloyd Wright. (There is a certain symmetry here!)

We have had some real shockers in the news lately. First the announcement that after 40 years, America’s favorite solidly married couple - the role model we all admired - Tipper and Al Gore, have decided to separate. While everyone is busy wondering if marriage as an institution is dying on the vine with the aging of the population, I’m wondering why everyone is jumping the gun. A separation is not a divorce. I haven’t heard that word. Sometimes a separation is what people need.

Even in our fairly pedestrian family, my folks took separate vacations. Dad went to Canada to fish or hunt with his buddies. Mom went to Vegas to spend time with her gal pal, hitting the shows and wearing her Vegas outfits. No one ever freaked out about that, and it was the tight-assed fifties, f’ Pete’s sake. Dad came home with Spode for Mom, Scottish plaid skirts and dyed to match cashmere sweaters for my sister, and moccasins for me. Mom came home with autographs, souvenirs and slides from the casinos. It was win-win.

So, if they need to “take a break” from the formality of marriage and the work of holding it together, more power to them. I hope they don’t split up permanently, but if they do, they do. It’s their call. Meanwhile, do visit Tipper’s website and view her photography portfolio. Wow!

The other huge news has been the resignation of the venerable reporter Helen Thomas after a huge verbal blast aimed at Israel. Helen Thomas has been the most influential and feared White House reporter for years, and her retirement from the AP and move to Hearst was not enough to push her out of her front and center seat in the White House briefing room. This little episode has done it.

I want to state up front that I am not an anti-Semite by any stretch. If anything, I admire Jewish religion and culture and find much to appreciate and emulate. This is a group of people who sprouted the likes of George Gershwin, Louis B. Mayer, and Bette Midler. That was the fluff of the crop. Consider the meat and you are likewise awed by the level of accomplishment, yes?

However, the state of Israel leaves me feeling exasperated and angry. The United States has tried and tried and tried to broker peace among the Israelis and the other Mideastern nations. It seems they are determined to stay at war with one another. What Helen Thomas stated out loud is what a lot of other people are thinking and afraid to say for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. The forebears of Helen Thomas, the Lebanese, have certainly had their issues with Israel, so maybe what we heard from her is what is being said privately in many other circles.

The flap over the humanitarian ships being blockaded by the Israelis is huge and has attracted the attention of the entire world. Quite frankly, it’s making the Israelis look like the punks of the Mideast. While I might have chosen different wording, I can’t disagree with Helen Thomas. Of all the people to have her finger on a LOT of information, and to have the ability to draw intelligent conclusions from it, she is one that I respect immensely.

What saddens me is that I have heard someone try to excuse her by referring to her age. She is nearly 90. Has she lost her faculties? I really do not think so, and I resent the hell out of another, younger, woman even hinting at it. It may have been her way of excusing the master reporter, but it was insulting. Wait until that little snip hits the big numbers on her birthday cake. How will she feel when she is dismissed that way?

Regardless, this has been big news. No feminist worth her salt can let this go by without watching very carefully to see if Helen Thomas is now marginalized and vilified. If she is, it’s going to teach us a valuable lesson: men can blow it verbally and eventually be forgiven; women cannot.

Pay attention, ladies. Helen Thomas has always been the leader and the flag bearer for our causes by virtue of going forward and pushing the envelope. How she is treated will be a harbinger of things to come for all women. She may have run an idea up the flagpole, but it may leave the rest of us up the creek.

I got a few pats on the back for awarding Hizzoner da Mare of Roanoke the Herban Sprawl Mensch Award because of his genuine and heartfelt expression of sympathy and attempts at bridge building yesterday. Thanks to those who feel as I do that the Roanoke Times goes out of its way to highlight his gaffes, but totally ignores what he does absolutely right or above and beyond the call.

Our message to Hizzoner: sidewalks, curbs and gutters on Colonial, Brambleton and some other similarly heavily traveled streets would keep pedestrians safer. We believe they trump non-essentials like an amphitheater or a water park or a Mill Mountain restaurant for the affluent. We’d also like to encourage him to continue thinking regionally and to push for county participation in Valley Metro in order to provide public transit to jobs in outlying pockets, and also to extend those hours to the third shift which is so essential for the economic well-being of the entire valley. The entire Valley needs to reduce its dependence on the automobile. Sidewalks are a start and improving public transit is a worthy goal.

28 May 2010

We gathered this afternoon to pay our last respects to our good friend, Ginny Craig. Some of us were her Master Gardener pals, some from the Herb Society of Southwestern Virginia, and some from American Association of University Women. Many were the friends and political rivals of her beloved husband, Bob. One thing united us and that was a profound sense of loss. Ginny was one of a kind, and the best kind at that.

Around ten years ago, when Bob retired from the Marines, they bought a home here in the Star City of the South. As their son Michael noted, it was the first place they’d lived for longer than three years. I met Ginny when our friend Doris bought my tea party at the Herb Society’s annual fundraiser auction. She was one of Doris’ guests and I found her simply delightful! We had a lot in common!

One of the things her rector noted was that Ginny had a lot of questions in any of the classes she took. I silently roared. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face, actually. Whether it was at an outing at Buffalo Springs Herb Farm, one of the monthly programs, or an AAUW program, Ginny had questions! Millions of questions! Good questions, too! She had the kind of intellectual curiosity that came of a person used to finding out everything she needed to know in order to live in a place.

Thanks to Ginny, there is a list of books that I’ve read. Thanks to Ginny, there are things I have looked up and investigated. If I had to present something, I was extra-special prepared because I knew Ginny would have questions that went beyond the superficial.

Her viewpoints were decidedly liberal, although she had a streak of common sense in her that smacked of moderate Republicanism. You just couldn’t pigeonhole her entirely because she examined each and every issue and determined her views based on the information she gathered, as well as her uniquely spot-on intuition.

There are three pictures of Ginny that come to mind. One is her sitting in a chair, guarding the back door of the AAUW annual book sale, reading cookbooks. She was in her denim skirt and a smartly ironed shirt. (Ginny liked to iron.) Another has her in her sharply pressed khakis and a plaid shirt, with me nearby wishing I had those long legs. The third is of Ginny in a simply luscious light blue wool pantsuit from Talbots, which she proudly informed me she’d gotten at 75% off. I’m never going to remember her any other way, although AAUW members who always made it to the annual pool party at Beth Ann’s will be able to add a picture of Ginny in the pool. This is the Ginny we saw.

The Ginny we experienced was an intensely curious and exceptionally well-read woman with a sly sense of humor that could leave us gasping for air. Ginny, attending the cocktails and movie gathering I cobbled together when the first Sex in the City movie came out, holding forth with a cosmopolitan in her hand. Everyone thoroughly enjoying her tales of moving all over the world with the military, Ginny held out her glass for a refill.

I’m devastated that we have another movie opening this week, and she won’t be with us to down our cosmos and enjoy the shallow and fashionable quartet. Herb Society meetings and AAUW programs will never be the same. Maybe it’s time to learn how to ask really good questions - in her  honor.

An Aside: I want to extend the Herban Sprawl’s Mensch Award to Hizzoner da Mare of Roanoke, David Bowers. Ginny’s husband, Bob, was a city council candidate this spring, from the opposing party. For those who doubt I’m right when I say he knows what his job is and he does it exceedingly well,  Hizzoner was present today, wearing his feelings on his sleeve, taking communion and bringing the heartfelt wishes of their adopted city to the Craig family. Politics aside, Mayor Bowers knows that when the chips are down, Republican or Democrat, all his citizens need to feel as though they are surrounded by people who care about them. Only a Mensch like our mayor does that with no concern for who’s watching.

25 May 2010

Regular visitors to the Sprawl know that food plays a huge part in the lives of Big Kitty and me. If we’re not toting a dish to the Italian-American Heritage Club, we’re gearing up for a dinner party. Maybe it’s the simple day to day stuff, but whatever, food is a big topic around here.

This winter we got a brochure in the mail from a cooperative in Floyd County, mecca to the locavores. We perused it seriously because this is something we’ve been threatening to do for a while. Our friends, Spike ‘n Jane, have bought shares for a couple of years now, and Jane, being the ultra fab cook that she is, is delightfully challenged to find recipes for her weekly treasures. One week they were unable to retrieve their bag of food, so I went to the drop off spot and got the goodies for them. I was intrigued, to say the very, very least.

We read through the brochure and decided we wanted to participate. We figured a half share would do nicely. It was expensive - a bit over $500, but I’m one of these average-it-out-over-the-life-of-the-product shoppers. By my reckoning, it would be well worth it. So, I filled out the form, wrote the check, picked my preferred delivery day and location and waited to see if we were in. (There are only so many shares, you see.) Pretty soon I got an email. We couldn’t have Tuesday at that location, but we could have Saturday. Good enough.

Two weeks ago we got our first bag of produce. There was a bag of the mixed greens that are always so half dead at the store. There was a bag of spinach. There were hydroponic tomatoes, a hydroponic seedless cuke, and a bunch of thyme that was picture-worthy. We are our way through that bag with gusto. I hadn’t made spinach salad in eons, but for this fresh stuff, I boiled a couple of eggs, nuked some bacon, chopped some red onion and mixed up a vinaigrette. We wolfed it down like oinkers.

The maters were really good. I put them on the windowsill, and unlike grocery store maters, they did what home grown ones do. They ripened beautifully. The cuke was skinny and crunchy. Deelish.

On Saturday, I jumped out of bed and got myself out the door early. I wanted to see what was in there so I could plan meals. More spinach, more mixed greens, more hydroponic maters and a matching cuke, AND a quart of strawberries. Sacre coeur!

Today I made some orange almond scones. They are big, fat and perfect for splitting in half for shortcake. I cleaned up the strawberries, and popped one in my mouth. Sweet! I hated to put any sugar on them, but a tiny amount of powdered sugar helps their juices run, so I was very stingy with the sugar and stirred it in carefully. These are not the huge, tasteless berries from California or Florida. These are the tasty ones you pick yourself in the fields locally. These are the ones I routinely miss because my stubborn Midwestern mental clock says strawberries don’t arrive until June. Yeah, well, here in the Roanoke Valley, they show up in May. Ya’d think I’d get it straight. The farmers fixed me up. I’m purring.

The concept of community supported agriculture is gaining traction all over the country, and foodies everywhere are realizing how much better the food tastes when it comes straight from the farmer. I used to shop at the farmers’ market downtown, but what I learned was that many of them relied on lots of chemicals for weed and pest control, not to mention fertilizers that were derived from petrochemicals. I’m not a huge organic freak, mind you, but not all of that locally grown stuff was that great. What we get from our CSA is organic and from a group of farmers who are committed to working with Mother Nature, instead of against her. By buying shares, we are supporting them ahead of schedule and insuring they’ll have a market for their produce. It’s a leap of faith on our part because Mother Nature can get kind of fickle, but we can trust these folks to do their best to deliver $500 worth of food over 22 weeks. We’re all gambling here.

I didn’t make salad tonight. I was a little tired of greens, but tomorrow is another story. The fresh greens happen now while the weather is a little cool at night. Soon the focus will shift to hotter weather veggies, and we’ll be pining for those crunchy salads of spring. Meanwhile, I’m hoping we’ll see asparagus in next week’s bag, but if it’s strawberries again, you won’t hear me whine!

Our CSA is Good Food, Good People. We highly recommend them!

21 May 2010

I was in the middle of trying to figure out why my African violets were looking so puny when the phone rang. Some guy with a south Asian accent being friendly and wanting to talk to me about a much lower mortgage rate. Eh?

I blew him off.

A while later, no closer to understanding the plight of the African violets, I took to the Great Goddess of Information, the internet. The phone rang. I absent-mindedly picked up the phone. The same guy, the same company, Mortgage Solutions calling to “help” me lower my mortgage payments.

“Look, Kiddo,” I said rather firmly in that seventh grade teacher voice that occasionally surfaces when I am exasperated, “we are on the National Do Not Call List, so you have no business calling. Get the hell off the phone and do not call me again, capice?”

I don’t know that it helped any, but I’m left scratching my head wondering how stupid anyone would be to flagrantly ignore that kind of thing. My guess is that somebody is dopey enough just often enough to make it worth their while to try it anyway.

My pal over in the Independent Republic of Salem has been running in circles with SunTrust over a mortgage for one of his clients. He needs to call Clarice and get Clarice to transfer his call to someone with some authority. I wonder if all the mortgage people have been affected with some kind of seasonal mortgage lender disease that renders them brainless.
I’m no closer to a solution for the violets, but I’m going to repot them with fresh African violet potting mix and hope for the best. I’ve had these plants a long time and I’m kind of attached to them. I hope it isn’t some kind of seasonal affective disorder for these things, too!

19 May 2010

It’s been busy hereabouts. We elected a couple of new city council members, the Local Colors Festival went on with nary a rain drop, and I’ve been a shrub thug, whacking and trimming.

The Italian American Heritage Club sold a variety of homemade cookies and went home with empty containers. Our president set up a bocce court and we had a steady stream of customers anxious to try the deceptively simple game. What pleased me to no end were the dads who asked where one got a bocce set and who left discussing who had the flattest yard for setting up a court for the kids.

While lining up to march in the parade of nations, I had the distinct honor of being ignored by Hizzoner da Mare. I was standing with his former secretary and the slight was deliberate. As I told Ruth, he’ll have to do a whole lot worse to lose my vote! I then proceeded to tell her that I had been a pain in the neck complaining about the city Democrats. We had a good laugh.

Okay, I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. Our mayor knows his job and he’s good at it. Who the hell else on city council would be such a good sport? He helped pull Pearl Fu’s rickshaw to the stage! City council member Court Rosen, who is doing a creditable job on council, spoke, but he was as dry as a desert. Hizzoner got up and did his thing with gusto. He makes you glad you live here because he’s so glad he lives here. This is what a mayor is supposed to do and Hizzoner, who wears his emotions on his sleeve, is the best ambassador we could have. So go ahead and ignore me, Old Friend. As long as you keep doing what you do, I’ll have no reason to cheat on you!

We have also had a lot of rain lately, which was heaven sent. Things were reaching a bone dry state and we gardeners were hauling hoses and running up our water bills. This rain was just dandy and thanks to it happening over the course of a few days, I dabbed a little Eau de Off behind my ears and, handy Japanese weeder in hand, was able to cultivate with ease.

That wasn’t all, though. I spaded out a line where railroad ties had rotted out and put up a two block high wall today. It isn’t straight, and it’s not exactly level, but then neither is the Great Wall of China! It is long, though, and goes right to the property line, just under the quince that had one of Fatso’s burrow holes. The clay was just soft enough to facilitate plopping down blocks and getting them more or less even and level. I didn’t even bother with using a string or the level - I just eyeballed it and am happy to have it up and done.

Next up is the spot where I can build another terraced bed above this particular garden. However, since the clay is so pliable, I’m thinking forking up the lower bed and sifting out the wild mint roots, the spiderwort roots and the violets might be a good thing to do first. Definitely, this is stuff to do on overcast, cool days like today.

Digging around and building stuff like this is good for parsing out problems and thinking about the issues of the day. It’s also good for counting blessings. I did a lot of that today while I hauled big heavy blocks downhill and jockeyed them around. My achy and creaky joints got a workout, and I noticed a few muscles that probably needed some working in order to build strength. A guy I went to high school with went head over the handlebars of his bicycle about a year ago. He is a quadriplegic now, and no longer able to practice his trade. I know he’d swap places with me and my little aches and pains in a heartbeat.

And that’s what we always have to keep in mind when we find new muscles we never knew existed until they rebel. It’s truly a privilege to be able to move about freely, even when it means learning to compensate for weak lower back muscles, or stiff quads or hams. Building a wall, even though it isn’t ruler perfect, is a big job, but it was a pleasure to be able to move dirt around easily and to heft big ole blocks. I even found a railroad spike!

My most recent angel card is beauty, and that’s another thing this type of work facilitates. One can ponder the beauty of nature. On Sunday I was giving the maters and basil a thorough drink of Miracle-Gro when I was visited by an annual visitor. She hovered around the red tomato cages, which had caught her eye, and let me know she was baa-aack. I finished watering the one plant, dashed inside and fixed the feeder. Ran back outside and hung it up, then went back to my fertilizing job, keeping an eye out. Where else but in my garden would I be inches away from a hummingbird who wanted me to fix her some dinner?

Looking at my wall from the den window, I am struck by the idea that it’s a metaphor for most of life. We spend a lot of our time, trying to keep things from eroding or tumbling hither and yon. Walls don’t have to be beautiful; they just have to get the job done. If they keep soil in place, or provide a protected spot for a tender plant, they’ve done what they’re supposed to do. When the mayor pulls a lady with Parkinson’s disease in a rickshaw to kick off a festival she founded 20 years ago, he’s holding up his end in more ways than one. I call that good building.

7 May 2010

This evening’s cocktail experiment is courtesy of Ina Garten, the doyenne of “good” ingredients.  In her latest book, Back to Basics, she commented that she hates one drink recipes. Her idea, which given her penchant for entertaining, is to make a pitcher of something and dole it out. I like her thinking, actually.

Now I must admit that the last time I tried a pitcher of one of her recipes, it was margaritas, and for the first time in my entire life of wanton dissipation, I found myself clutching the porcelain convenience. It was a humbling experience, to say the very least, and one that I am not likely to live down. Big Kitty found me, in the dark, dozing over the bowl. My fabulous Tex-Mex dinner having gone on its merry way to the sewage plant. What a waste.

But last night I was persuing her chapter on cocktails and one caught my eye. It’s called Juice of a Few Flowers. The originator of the recipe used gin, and he dispensed the juice aspect of it - sans booze - to the kiddies for a very lovely mocktail. Ina’s comment? Classic Ina: “How charming is that?”

Here is the recipe, with our gratitude:

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime  juice (about 2 limes)
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1 lemon)

1/2 cup freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice

1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1 cup good vodka (she suggests brands, but more on that later)

Extra lemon juice, granulated sugar, fresh mint sprigs

Ina gives directions for shaking in a cocktail shaker, but I dumped all this into a glass pitcher, added ice in a moderate quantity and stirred vigorously, to mimic shaking in a device. I had also changed up the rimming detail. Where Ina wants you to dip the rims of the glasses into a saucer of lemon juice, I ran a piece of lime around the rim before sugaring it. One less dish to clean, dontcha know. I chilled the glasses with their sugared rims, and that helped keep these nice and cold.

Ina says this serves four, but honestly, look at the quantities.  We’re talking 2 1/2 cups of liquid before the ice melts. I’m going to go out on the limb and think your martini glasses are about the size of mine (good ole Luigi Bormioli barware) and if that’s the case, you have at least six drinks in that pitcher.

I mixed up a pitcher and bustled next door to try this out on my neighbor and her friend, a guy from Skokie who likes “perfect” martinis. Both pronounced this a winner because it wasn’t sickening sweet. If it packed a wallop, they weren’t aware. (It did, but I’m a cheap date, so don’t go by me.) They trotted off to a dinner thing and I got dinner ready before BK got home. I greeted him with the news that he could forego his beer and try this. BK doesn’t like umbrella drinks. I had neglected to put the mint garnish in, but it really didn’t matter. What we both thought, however, was - and we must have had juleps on the brain - that muddling some mint in the pitcher and then adding the juices would be interesting. We also thought that the original spirit, gin, would be great.

I’d also like to try this with muddled mint. Aside from that, this is definitely a good cocktail for a group and all four of us highly recommend it. You can forget the “good” vodka, though. We all agreed that with that amount of fruit juice, “good” vodka would be wasted.

Another addendum to the recipe - I used fresh limes and a lemon, but for the grapefruit and orange juice, I used Florida’s Natural.

Enjoy!

3 May 2010

The Commonwealth has entered into the rebate for Energy Star appliances program and our fridge, of legal drinking age and then some, certainly isn’t easy on the power bill. I decided to see what Consumer Reports had to say.

For all the bells and whistles that are out there, I have come to the conclusion that rebate or no, energy consumption be damned, we’re better off waiting until this one just plain expires. It isn’t that CR had anything revealing to offer, it was the customer reviews that told the tale.

We’re all pretty much past the stage where we replace an appliance just because there is something out there that is so far above what we have had and I believe, if the reviews are any indication, people who do so wind up bitterly disappointed. If they hadn’t just spent upwards of a grand on a new kitchen appliance, it wouldn’t hurt so badly, but when none of them in that price range garner raves, it is pause for concern.

It was at that point that I decided to review the stoves. Three years ago I bought a new Maytag gas range. My local independent appliance dealer is a nice guy and his staff is truly wonderful. So, I dropped in when Rah told me my elderly Amana range was ready for last rites. They had a low end gas range with five burners. Five on a standard-sized stove is ridiculous, I thought, but I was willing to consider it.

I went home and pulled out the pots and pans that I routinely put into service when I am doing a big cook. With my standard modus operandi pre-Mardi Gras dinner party gear in the trunk, I showed up. They stifled a few guffaws, but learned that someone who is serious about cooking has some basic needs. The five burner thing wasn’t all that and a bag of chips. In fact, it was the most useless feature I could ever imagine. Nothing else, save a two quart  - or smaller - saucepan would fit anywhere else while the middle burner was in use.

Consumer Reports advises us to never buy features we don’t need because all they do is drive up the price. But here is the rub. If you want a convection oven, you have to buy the five burner model. Only thing is, I didn’t find that out until the four burner model was delivered. No one in the store bothered to point out that I sacrificed what could have been a great feature when I eschewed the useless one. But it gets better.

A week into the new stove’s llife, I realized the oven was off and that the clock didn’t work right. In fact, the clock kind of reset itself at will. I called the store. Rah came out and replaced the whole digital mechanism. That one didn’t work, either. The oven was still off by five degrees, plus or minus, depending on which side of 350 you were looking at. The clock still played around like an errant seven year old. Rah came back. Mechanism number 2 was also a dud. We’re on #3 and I’ve given up. I have a chart for the oven, keep a pair of thermometers in the oven and I deal with it. Maffa resets the clock when she comes and the minute her back is turned, it thumbs its nose at her and resets to whatever time it has decided it wants to be.

The hottest burner has a hot spot. I have to constantly turn my saute pan around so it doesn’t get ruined. The feature of having a regular burner in front and a small, simmer burner in back is stupid if you want to use a two burner grill pan. It’s impossible to set the two burners to an equal temperature.

Who designs these things, anyway?

So, following the fridge review let-down, I decided to see if the stoves had gotten any better. What I learned is that I could have paid about $600 more and gotten a GE Profile whose burner knobs melted down on the self-clean feature! The customer complaints across the board on the ranges were pretty damning and I began to see that even the high end ranges - the ones I had been lusting after but couldn’t bring myself to buy - were duds.

I’m beginning to think that our sense of outrage is being wasted on politics. I think we need to rethink things. It’s our products that need revamping. It used to be you could find a reliable, “run-of-the-mill-made-in-Kewanee-at-the-stove-factory” stove for a decent price. They made all the brands and models there. The only thing that differentiated a Tappan from a Magic Chef was the detailing in the design and the shape of the knobs. The appliance store ran specials at the end of the model year and you could buy a decent stove for what it was actually worth. You rarely needed the serviceman. Not anymore. I have Rah’s cell phone number, for crying out loud!

The design isn’t even any good. The new ones with the continuous grates are amazingly bad. The grates are porous and impossible to clean. Y’know, people, those went out when they perfected enameling the cast iron grates for a really good reason. Why are they back? Three racks in the oven? Why? It’s almost impossible to bake anything well with something on two racks.  Now, in all fairness, with a convection oven this can work fairly well, but from what I read, not all convection ovens are created equal, either.

We have iPhones; we have digital technology that is better than our wildest dreams. But we have absolutely lousy kitchen appliances. No wonder people don’t cook anymore.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Ellington~

29 April 2010

Every now and then we mere mortals are lucky enough to meet people who not only share our interests, but have the gift of helping us expand them into the all-encompassing, life-changing focuses of our being. Such was the case when I bought three tarragon plants from a lady with dysphonia on the city market in 1988. She in turn introduced me to a friend of hers who became the focus of our lives by means of his nursery, generosity to our herb group, and the sheer force of his knowledge and enthusiasm for that which grows.

Through circumstances too personal to relate here, we had a parting of the ways. It wasn’t anything either of us wanted, but we needed breathing room from one another. You could call it a separation of necessity. But for me, even though we didn’t have contact, my friend was with me every day that I worked in the yard. From the bleeding heart he planted when he sped to my side the day the cat died, to the vitex that looms over the corner of the garage and porch, he has been here with me. From the partial circle of Stella D’Oro daylilies we planted to the Queen of the Prairie that hangs on in spite of being in the wrong place, he has been a presence looking over my shoulder. When I “moved out” of my house, emotionally, I felt guilt about neglecting things. Somewhere in there, the climbing hydrangea he planted finally decided it was time to bloom. I fretted about the nandina that he stuck in next to the porch every winter has heavy snow bent it over like an old woman with a dowager’s hump.

Some personalities just don’t leave your life, even if their physical presence has. We’re supposed to not like it when that happens, right? We’re supposed to try hard to suppress that presence. I never could, and I just never tried. Even if we weren’t speaking, he was still here, along with the hostas we stuck in under the dogwood in front.

This week I realized he was on Facebook. Facebook - that bane of our modern society. I just couldn’t walk away from that opportunity. The planets were aligned and it was time to thank him for all that he had given me. So I took a deep breath and sent him a missive telling him about the triumph of Uncle Doc’s Garden and told him that if he’d be my friend, he could see the pictures. Then I hit send and did what I do best. Worried.

It was a tough rift. I wasn’t sure if he could trust me enough to take the leap. But when you love a friend, you have to give it a try and just hope that the divine spirit finds that place of forgiveness in our hearts and punches the Activate Button.

It’s been a long time and a lot has happened since then. He moved away, I quit my job, my dad died, the kids got married, Uncle Doc got me hooked on hostas and unusual trees, my knees acquired some ‘art-ritis’ and heaven only knows what all. I was afraid he’d grown away, but the fact that he was ‘friends’ with two other pals on Facebook seemed to indicate he was hanging onto some of his old ties. I buried myself in the task of making cards for the upcoming herb festival where a friend and I are going to try to sell our art work.

Then I got a reply. He’d accepted the friend request. And a little later, he responded to my message. Every November, he said, he thought about the old Ann Landers day of reconciliation… Okay. I admit it. I cried. I just really, really wanted to hug that ole bag of bones.

There is so much to say and so much to catch up on. It’s hard not to just spend an entire day writing the history, but these things take time and I’m just grateful we’re both willing to heal the breach and carry on. That wicked sense of humor, encyclopedic knowledge of garden stuff, fabulous sense of what goes with what…I want it back. In return, I’m not sure I have that much to offer, but I can give my heart to a friendship and feel very, very lucky to have that chance. Like I said, he never really left. I’ve got the yard to prove it.

Surf Rider

3 ounces vodka

1 ounce sweet vermouth

juice of one orange

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2 teaspoon grenadine

cracked ice

3 maraschino cherries

Pour vodka, vermouth, grenadine and fruit juices over ice in a shaker. Shake until frosty. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass Garnish with cherries.

Here it is. Over cocktails you get the opportunity to talk about the things that you might otherwise keep to yourself. Alcohol opens the curtains we keep carefully drawn to maintain secrecy.  The plus side is that the discussion reveals how close we are to one another in the human drama we call life. It helps us find the commonalities that we had feared would create bigger barriers. What a lucky thing for us, eh?
This evening we experimented with a new cocktail that is very heavy on the vodka and founnd we all come from highly dysfunctional families, and boy-oh-boy, didn’t we turn out well in spite of it all! It helps to share a simple but tasty meal, of course, and it also helps to kill a bottle of some pretty passable sauvignon blanc in the process. Nevertheless, the commentary is good and conversation is empowering, and the company is great.

Our potluck guest picked out tonight’s cocktail and none of us had any idea what was in store. The Surf Rider is a tart drink, with its sugars coming from the citrus juice. It also packs a bit of a wallop because the amount of vodka sneaks up on you. Still, this is one we’ll probably trot out when the oranges and lemons are in season and the taste benefits from the that fresh off the tree flavor.

Highly recommended for those who eschew umbrella drinks, but enjoy citrusy combinations. Especially recommended for causing good conversation and bonding!