Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Getting out
I just lost a post due to computer virus… so instead i give you the list it was based on. Make of this what you will.
Bookshed: Seeing Trees
Seeing Trees
By Nancy Ross Hugo and Robert Llewellyn
Timber Press, 2011
As you might judge from the video above, this is no ordinary botanical book – but a work of real beauty – a hyper-glimpse into the world of the plants which surround us. Created by two “tree-watchers”, Seeing Trees offers the reader new insights into the tree lifecycle and growth stages – using an innovative form of photography developed by Robert Llewellyn.
First on the photography – Llewellyn has created a rig that allows him to take macro photography of ever square inch of plant or plant-part which he then merges together using software. The result is a series of high-definition of photographs that seem to hang in 3-D on the page. This book is rich on the full-colour visuals, inviting both meditation and exploration on the pieces which make up these living giants in our yards and forests. Everything is included here: leaf varieties, tree buds and scars, bark patterns, seed pods, tree fruit and pollen grains. The photography is a reminder of what the naked eye just doesn’t pick up on, or in some cases can’t really see. The section of the book which goes in depth into ten different tree species is titled “Intimate Views” – which sums up perfectly the level of closeness with which you can *see* the tree parts in these photos.
Alongside this evocative photography, Nancy Ross-Hugo pairs her descriptive text of each species, inviting the reader to explore further what is going on behind the visual. She shares notes from her tree-watching journal, anecdotes from other tree-lovers she has known, as well as pointers on what to look for at each stage of the annual cycle. While Llewellyn gives us the incredibly detailed picture, Ross-Hugo tells us what exactly it is we are looking at – with a trained and loving eye.
The only unfortunate thing (to me) is that the focus of the book is on eastern varieties, for that is where this work was conceived and created. While Ross-Hugo notes this, she also explains their attempt to choose species that hide a wide range in North America – so we do get a Red Cedar, though it’s the Eastern Red Cedar. Pine and Oak trees are also found here, but different varieties than our western Canada natives. I would love to see a book like this focused on the Pacific Northwest – and more than trees too! But whether that happens or not, Seeing Trees definitely achieves the objective of giving the reader a new way of looking at and understanding the natural world. This book is inspiring and beautifully presented, making a good gift or just a treasure for the nature-lover’s own bookshelf.
Not writing.
I tell myself all the time that I don’t have time to write. That I don’t have space. That I don’t have enough unbroken minutes and silences to sit down and really work. Which is somewhat true. But what’s also true is that I feel foolish about writing. Really. Foolish. Because the voice inside me, the same one that says that I must find meaning, says this is meaningless because isn’t the whole human project meaningless anyway? And so I am silenced by an inability to take myself seriously in the face of the death-reality of human life. What a thing to face mortality every time I sit down to write!
Silencing that part of myself seems nigh impossible – especially these days with all the philosophy-reading and life introspection my grad program requires. Rather than turning off the questions, I feel like the universal taps have been left wide open and I am being flooded with rivers of why and how, and not that! Not quite drowning, though drinking enough in to get water poisoning overtime. I suppose that one way to get through it is to create characters who ask these questions and beat themselves up – therefore at least getting something productive out of my self-questioning. Making poetry out of existentialism though? I don’t know how to do that without sounding pretentious.
I suppose another problem is that I’ve fallen into the distraction trap of the Internet and writing means removing myself from some other pastime that I think I’d rather do. But like my channel-surfing teenage self, I don’t really want to spend my time in the zone of random information and video – and when I’ve spent an hour or two at it I really feel like I’m letting my life drip away, no matter how current or important what I’ve been looking at seems to be. When I putter in the garden for two hours, when I spend an hour organizing the kitchen, when I go to a coffeeshop and write pressingly into my notebook – I don’t feel like that. So what makes the Internet (or television for that matter) so compelling? I don’t think the answer is laziness but something else. Something related to my first point above and also to the fact that life (and all of these activities I just listed) requires a lot of work to make a go of anything. And also, it takes a long time to get really good at things. So rather than laziness, I think it’s more like inertia that keeps me glued to the Internet over living my real life. And once you get over that hurdle, the part that keeps one stuck down and unchanging, one is really over halfway to the point of producing. Bodies in motion stay in motion and all that.
Like right now, I was just sitting on the couch, vacillating between reading a really good book of current philosophical thinking on what makes us human, looking through some old journals and surfing the Internet. A part of me lately has been yearning to write, not necessarily even creative writing, but something that will give me an outlet for synthesis as I rack up ideas, images, arguments and (yes, even) self-doubts. The fact that I wasn’t settling on any one of the above things (reading, surfing, annotating past thoughts) tipped me off to the fact that I really wanted to be doing something else which felt more meaningful than any of those things. I could, of course, easily subsume that feeling into another round of Internet meandering, but instead I decided that although we have to go out shortly, and I don’t feel like installing myself in the silent studio at the moment – I could just sit up on the couch and write whatever came to mind. Which was this. Because I am attempting to figure out not only why I don’t write (and by that I mean – seriously, off the blog, developing narrative or at least lyric), but also why I am in a loop of procrastination in my life generally. It’s not making me happy – at work, or in my creative life – and yet there I find myself dog-paddling towards forty and trying not to have the predictable midlife crisis about it all.
Ultimately I think it’s about habits, and I’ve fallen into some rather insidious habits that allow me to stay in a mode of procrastination rather than moving out of it. I’m not really in the mood to make grand promises or pronouncements about how I’m going to fix myself (it is Saturday morning after all) – but I am simply making an attempt here to focus my own awareness on something that’s been eating at me lately. I need to write, I want to write, and yet I’m not doing it. And I’m not doing it because of existential issues, negative self-talk, and the lure of other things that involve a lot less effort from me. So there. That’s why I’m not writing, or at least part of the reason for it. Something that I would like to change about myself anyhow.
Eat: Pickled Red Cabbage
Last summer, I took one of my stellar red cabbages from the garden, and for the first time made pickled red cabbage – one mid-sized cabbage producing six 250-ml jars. Not only was I impressed by how far a single vegetable could go in food storage – but in the last three months I’ve become a bit of an addict for this condiment. Tacos, sandwiches, curries, burgers – this stuff really goes well with pretty much everything – which explains how we ran out in mid-January, still several months away from garden season.
On the plus side, cabbage isn’t pricey, and while it’s difficult to source local cabbage at this time of year, I was willing to make do with California-imported veggies in order to escape the fate of having to purchase cabbage pickle in the deli (expensive prospect at the rate we go through it). With one over-sized cabbage last week, and less than an hour of time, I put by another 5 500-ml jars and 6-250 ml jars which should get us through. This is probably the simplest pickle of all to make – though you do have to prep 24 hours before you want to actually make the pickle.
Recipe: Pickled Red Cabbage (adapted from Kitchn)
Ingredients:
Salt
Pickling Spice to taste (Make your own out of bay leaf, cinnamon, mustard seed, cumin seed, black pepper and a few crushed chilli peppers)
Pickling Vinegar or regular White Vinegar (about 3/4 cup per jar)
Red Cabbage
Steps:
1) Core and slice your cabbage. Make sure to get the thick white veins out – the larger the cabbage the thicker the veins and they don’t do so well in this pickle. Slice the cabbage thinly thinking about what texture, shape you would like your condiment to have.
2) Put your cabbage in a crock or a large bowl, sprinkle with salt (a few tablespoons, it’s up to you) and put a plate on top. Weight down the plate and leave for 24 hours. When you return to your cabbage there should be a fair amount of purple water in the bottom of the vessel. Pour the cabbage into a strainer and push to get any remaining water out.
3) Sterilize your jars – 15 minutes in boiling water. Run some hot water and soak your canning seals for a couple of minutes.
4) Prepare your vinegar mixture. 10 cups of vinegar to 6 tablespoons of pickling spice. Bring to a boil.
5) Pack your jars full of cabbage, leaving a 1/2 inch at the top – you can really cram it in because it shrinks somewhat with the pickling liquid. Once you have got the jars full of cabbage, top them up with the pickling liquid, ensuring that the vegetable is completely covered.
6) Put the canning seals and lids on, leave to cure for six days and it’s ready to eat.
Seriously, canning doesn’t get easier or more delicious than this – and I love the look of the bright purple jars on grey winter days.
Red Cedar 