Month: April 2015

What’s Just Around the Bend?

Having worked through the whole weekend, I declared yesterday Sunday #2, put on my grubbies and did whatever I felt like doing. One of those things was a long walk with Annie way past where we usually go. We traveled from our home in South Beach Oregon down what used to be called Thiel Creek Road, the creek burbling along beside us under ferns and skunk cabbage leaves. The views were so stunning I have to share some pictures with you.

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I don’t know where this road goes. A steel fence and no-trespassing signs block the entrance, but I’d sure like to find out. Annie, below, was determined to find a way in.
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The spring growth alongside the road is lush this time of year with every shade of green.

IMG_20150427_172429213[1]The road goes much farther. I have driven it to the end, but walking gives a whole different perspective. I think I live in Paradise.

All photos copyright Sue Fagalde Lick 2015

Our Food is Worth Paying Attention To

I rarely think about all that goes into my food. I am usually reading a book as I eat, but today as I stop to say thank you for my breakfast of half a ruby grapefruit, homemade bread and herbal tea, I consider the complex origins of this simple meal.

This fat juicy grapefruit grew on a tree from seed to green fruit to ripe, heavy fruit that someone picked off the tree in Florida, put into a box and shipped all the way to Oregon, where it came to the Thriftway Market in a truck to be placed in the bin by the man with the green apron for me to squeeze and find worthy to go into my shopping cart. ThisDSCN3943 morning, I removed it from my refrigerator, cut it in half, placed half in a container to save for tomorrow, half in a small white bowl, cut around the edges with a sharp knife, then sat at my table to savor the fat juicy bites that wake my tongue and call saliva from the back of my mouth. What if this grapefruit had fallen to the ground, to be bruised and eaten by bugs? What if the sun wasn’t warm enough or it rained too much? It would not be here on my table now.

As I finish eating my grapefruit, the tea kettle squeals. I pour boiling water over a Red Zinger tea bag, watching the water turn red. This tea is a blend of rose hips, licorice, chamomile and other herbs grown in sun and rain, harvested, dried and blended in a factory in Colorado, put into filmy paper bags and a box that ends up at the market for me to buy, brew and drink at my table. Afterward I will throw the bag away, its contents squeezed until they run white. What a miracle that I have this tea every morning to drink.

My bread took four hours to make a few days ago. With blues playing on the radio, I mixed yeast, flour, sugar, oil, water and salt into a big lump which I kneaded with my hands, let rise, shaped into braids, let rise again, and baked. Each ingredient was grown and processed by someone, sold to the grocery store and sold to me to be combined into this mouth-pleasing substance that I warm one slice at a time in the toaster oven and spread with a butter substitute made from yogurt, oil and other ingredients, each harvested, cooked, shaped and packaged far away. Each bite is soft in the middle, crunchy on the outside, slippery on top, satisfying to my body and soul.

So much effort, so much life, has gone into this food that I eat at dawn, the smallest and least complex of my meals. Although too many people have nothing to eat, I never question that my food will be there every morning, that when I run low I can go get more. How dare I not pay attention when I should be thankful and awestruck with every bite?

The Attack of the Compost Cart or People are Biodegradable, Too

I’m weird. Who else do you know who yearns for a big green compost cart from the garbage company? Here in the wilds of South Beach, just outside Newport City limits, we watched our city friends and neighbors getting carts, but not here. I called.Compost cart

“When can we have ours?”

“You live in the county. Maybe next year.”

“But what am I supposed to do with my grass and tree trimmings in the meantime?”

“You can bag them up for the landfill or drive them to the dump.”

I chose to let them pile up in the yard, with vague plans to buy a burn barrel and fill the neighborhood with smoke and ashes like some of my neighbors do.

But finally, finally, the compost carts came to our neighborhood. Except my street, all four houses. I called.

The lady on the phone laughed. “Most people are calling to complain that they don’t want them. We will deliver your bin on Friday.”

Wahoo!

It was like waiting for Santa at Christmas. I looked out the window every five minutes until finally, a little after noon, there it was, a 96-gallon monstrosity that dwarfed my 65-gallon recycle cart and my 24-gallon garbage/landfill cart. I couldn’t wait to start piling stuff inside. Soon my yard would be so clean and neat. As soon as the rain stopped gushing down, I’d get to work.

Saturday morning, I put on my sweats and garden gloves, said hello to my pristine compost cart and started piling in branches, mostly out-of-control wild blackberry vines I had trimmed away from the house. Then I moved to the big pile that has been composting naturally on the side of the house for years and started shoveling in branches, dried-out hydrangea blooms, weeds and grass.

The trouble arose when I decided to move my three-quarters-full, chest-high cart without shutting the lid. Somehow, it became unbalanced and tipped forward. At the same time, the lid clopped me in the face and I fell in, banging my shoulder hard and my knee almost as hard. Down we went, me and the cart full of thorny branches. Bang! Crap! Ow! I was in the cart.

Slowly, I pulled myself out, hoping I wasn’t broken. I could feel my pulse in my cheek, an ache in my knee, a twisted-out-of-whack feeling in my back, and serious pain in my shoulder. Not good for a musician who would be playing the piano at church in a few hours. Gingerly I moved my limbs and determined that I was not broken, only bruised. I thanked God.

I pulled up my cart, dug my gloves out from under the greenery, and gently shut the lid. Okay, cart, you win this one, but I’ll get you on Thursday, when I stuff in more grass, add my grapefruit rinds, tea bags, and chicken bones and haul you to the curb with all the other carts. Then the garbage truck will lift you up, dump you out, and smack you back to the ground while I relax on my loveseat with the dog.

Today I’m fine except for a sore but functional shoulder. Sometimes I feel like a very small woman trying to maintain a very large home. A condo somewhere with other old widows and a staff of professional maintenance people is starting to look more appealing every day. Also, it occurs to me that someday I will be compost, too. But not yet. I have to mow the lawn. And yes, I do get the irony of trying to control what grows on a one-third acre parcel in the middle of the forest.

The Easter Bunny Missed Me

Christ is risen. Lent is over. I can go back to watching daytime TV and doing online jigsaw puzzles when I’m supposed to be working, except I have discovered that “The View” isn’t any good anymore and I get a lot more work done if I leave the puzzles alone. I can also eat meat on Fridays again, but I have discovered that eating fresh albacore tuna is not a punishment. I might have to go back to giving up French fries for Lent, which is truly six weeks of misery.

When you’re a church musician, Holy Week is like the week before April 15 for a tax person or the Olympics for a gymnast. So many Masses, so many songs, so many solos. One minute we were in the hall getting our palms blessed for Palm Sunday, the next we were venerating the cross on Good Friday, the next we were all dressed up singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” All with a minimum of sleep and not enough practice.

The rest of the world does not understand this. They schedule meetings, games, jams, and all the usual activities as if this massive event of Christ rising from the dead were not happening. Easter for most people, if they notice it at all, focuses on chocolate bunnies, egg hunts, and maybe a family get-together. Or perhaps they’ll just stay home and mow the lawn.

No lawn mowing here. It was raining.

Easter is always tainted with loss for me. My husband Fred died on Holy Saturday four years ago. It was a little later in April that year, but still, I remember getting the call during the Good Friday Mass that he was failing and the final word early the next morning that “Mr. Lick has expired.” I also found out my mother had cancer on Easter 13 years ago. Christ rose from the dead, but they did not.

As with most holidays and birthdays lately, I wound up alone. I don’t recommend it. Solo holidays invite all the demons of grief and loss to pounce. With no husband or kids, my family far away and all the friends I might have spent the afternoon with either out of town or sick, I filled the weekend with reading, movies and puzzles. I did the laundry. I walked the dog. I had a BLT for lunch, chicken for dinner. I bought myself a box of chocolate eggs filled with a mysterious substance called “fondant,” and I ate one. Delicious.

I got up this morning, walked out on the wet deck, looked up at the blue sky fighting to emerge through the clouds and said, “Thank you God, it’s over.” I’m safe till Fourth of July.

P.S. The book I finished this week was Anne Tyler’s latest, A Spool of Blue Thread. As enjoyable as a long hot bubble bath. Check out my review on Goodreads.

The movies, all Academy Award nominees:

Whiplash: Aspiring drummer vs. sadistic teacher. Very upsetting to watch. Just picture blood dripping on the drums. J.K. Simmons, who won the Oscar, is amazing.

Gone Girl: Wife in troubled marriage disappears, husband (Ben Affleck) is charged with her murder, but he’s innocent. Or is he? Suspenseful to the last second.

Boyhood: Patricia Arquette, who won for best actress, is divorced with two kids. We watch those kids grow up, bounce between their fun father (Ethan Hawke) and a series of drunken stepfathers until they’re adults. Pleasant enough, almost three hours long, but I’m not sure what the point is.

How was your Easter? Feel free to share.