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I don’t really like to cook, but I have come to enjoy making soup.

We used to have a couple of places in town that made good soup, but when they stopped due to Covid, I realized if I wanted good soup, I was going to have to make it.

So now, usually on Sundays, I make a big  pot of soup.  Jon and I eat some and I freeze some.   I try to make sure there is always soup in the freezer.

My soup menu includes Borscht, Lentil soup, Pea soup, Chicken soup, and Butternut Squash in season.  My recipes are simple and basic.  As long as I can chop it up and throw it in a pot, I’ll make it.

This time of year, I can still get carrots, beets and onions from Edwin and Debbie who own Long Days Farm, at the Farmers Market.  And the Co-op always has bulk lentil and peas.

It took me longer than it should have to realize that the base for all my soups are basically the same, onions, carrots, celery. Although the last time I made pea soup I didn’t have celery and it still tasted good. I did notice that the more onions I use, the more tasty the soup.

Then, last week, I saw a recipe for Curry Rice on the bulletin board at the Co-op.

Like soup, all I had to do was add a bunch of ingredients together and dump them in a pot to cook.  And the recipe made enough that I could store two more meals in a jar.  All I had to do was add water and cook.

So now, thanks toBliss who posted the recipe from the Cambridge C0-Op Cookbook on the bulletin board,  I’ve added a delicious rice dish to my easy-to-make healthy homemade meals.

I’ve shared the recipe because it’s too good to keep to myself.

Fruited Rice Curry Mix  Recipe from the Cambridge Co-Op Cookbook

4C uncooked rice (I used brown rice)
1C chopped dried fruit (I used mango)
1C chopped almonds
1/2C golden raisins
1/4C dried onions (I used scallions)
2T +2t curry power
2T veggie broth or bouillon

Combine ingredients.

Put 1 3/4 C of mix, 2T butter, 2 1/2C of boiling water. Simmer for about 40 minutes.  Makes 4C of cooked rice.
(I cooked up some veggie based sausage and added it to the cooked rice.)

I haven’t been to Jon’s Meditation Class at The Mansion for a while. But I went today and brought with me the Mary Oliver Poem “Work” to read.

The class was special, (you can read about it on Jon’s blog here) the conversation thoughtful and even for those who were quiet, I could see how intently they were listening.  It felt meaningful to me and I believe to the people in the class.

I’ll be teaching my next art class at The Mansion in a couple of weeks. I was glad to be there today.

Below is just a short excerpt from “Work” by Mary Oliver

“I am a woman sixty years old and of no special courage.
Everyday-a little conversation with God, or his envoy
the tall pine, or the grass-swimming cricket.
Everyday-I study the difference between water and stone.
Everyday-I stare at the world; I push the grass aside 
and stare at the world. 

…Every-day I have work to do:…”

Rain sprinkled with bits of snow

The rain falls straight and hard
but the snow
drifts slowly
meandering through
the raindrops.

A pair of geese fly low over the barnyard

Their wings make a dull creak
and are close enough to each other to hold hands without touching .

The marsh is flooded

The fifth fence wire is underwater
A mallard couple swim through the reeds
where yesterday they would have walked.

It’s the first sprouts on the farm.  A bunch of chives that I planted last year on the south side of my studio.

By the end of last summer I had a nice garden growing under my windows.  Most of the plants came from Jon’s raised bed garden.

But the hens have spend the winter scratching up the soil  beneath the bird feeder where many of the plants were.  I had a small wire fence around the garden, but the hens plowed though it, knocking it down and pushing it aside.

The chives have survived and maybe some of the other plants did too.

I still think we’ll get some snow.  I don’t know much about chives, but I bet they’re hardy and even if they wilt with a bit of spring snow, they’ll come back again.

One more toe.

Jon got the bandage taken off his foot today and the stitch taken out of this toe.  Maybe his last toe to have the Flexor surgery, which cuts the tendon to make the toe stick our straight.

Dr Daly doesn’t think (at this point) that the fifth toe will need the procedure, even though it is curled like the others were.

“Three months,” she said, after plucking the stitch and reinforcing the incision with a butterfly strip. We don’t have to go back for three months.

Jon’s had so much work done on this foot, snipping the tendon is all but routine.  We know the drill.  Keep the bandage on, walk only in the special shoe, no showers for a week.

The special shoe irritates Jon’s foot and throws out his back.

But we both know by now that is the way of things.  It’s a give and take.   And Jon gets to decide if what he ultimately gets is worth the pain and discomfort it requires.

He does this with less complaint than I might.

“If it were me,” I say to him on the way home in the car, “when I got home I’d take a long shower.  Not because I’m not clean (Jon had a sponge bath everyday), but because I’d miss the water.”

I can’t wait  put lotion and a clean sock on his foot free of its bandage.

It seems to bother me more than him.

I think what he must be feeling but I can only do that from my limited experience.  I only know the discomfort I can imagine.   For me it’s about showers and warm socks, for him it’s about being able to walk with as little pain as possible.

I am truly ignorant about what he is feeling. How could I know.  I’ve never experienced what he has.

We want to celebrate the good news.

If the ice cream place with the sugar-free ice cream  were open we’d get some. But they won’t be back until the beginning of May.  We had lunch on the way in. Our way of making the day a little more fun. ” I guess that was our celebration,” I say.

Still I stop at the market when we get into Cambridge and I buy a chocolate bar.  Dark chocolate with almonds and salt.

We say we’ll take it easy the rest of the day.  But after feeding the animals, bringing in wood and picking up fresh  bread from Keane (we drive over a covered bridge to get to her house) we both sit down to blog.

And that’s what we’re both doing now.  The day already gone to night.  Dogs sleeping at our feet, the music of rain on the roof,  the wood stoves keeping us warm.

Jon called me on the way home from his doctor’s appointment. He was going to have his hearing checked  which he’s noticed isn’t as good as it used to be.

I feel like I’m fortunate to be married to someone who isn’t afraid of dealing with aging.  Not that it’s always easy, but when Jon recognizes a problem he is having it doesn’t usually take him long to try to do something about it.

He told me that he doesn’t want to be annoying by always asking me what someone said, or not hearing me when talk to him.  I knew when he started looking into his hearing that he was doing it for me and us, as much as himself.

Although I haven’t experienced it the way Jon has, I understand that even just admitting that there may be a problem is difficult.  It’s opening a door that most likely won’t be closed again.  But Jon also always talks about how he avoided doctors for years and now that he takes his health seriously, he is living the benefits of getting help.

I learn from Jon each time he takes on something new.  Which is all constant.  And it’s not just his health.  It’s his creativity, his writing and photography.

I think it’s because of that and his attitude, that I don’t think of him as being old.  Which can probably be annoying sometimes, because I have to remember that even though his mind and heart are right where I am, his body has a harder time doing things than it used to.

I hope that I will be able to face the issues of aging with the same grace, awareness and honesty that Jon does.  And even as my body gets old, I hope my mind and heart can remain as open and curious and creative as Jon’s.

You can see Jon’s photos of the tulips and read what he wrote about his hearing here. 

In this picture that I took out my studio window you can actually see Jon, Zip and the tulips.

Last night Jon put up some of our once read books for sale.  I was at Bellydancing Class so I didn’t get to post them on my blog.  Two sold, but we still have two available.

This is the second time I’m writing this.  In my first post, which I have deleted, put up one of the sold books for sale by mistake. So if you got that post in your email, you can just ignore it.

The two books that are for sale are:

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai Sold

Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton Sold

Both two books are in excellent condition.  They are $10 each + $5 shipping.  If you are interested in either of them, just email me at [email protected].   Tell me which you’d like and let me know if you’d like to pay with  a check, PayPal or Venmo.

Jon wrote descriptions of these books on his blog, you can read them here. I just finished reading “I Have Some Questions For You” and loved it.  It was readable, smart and thought provoking.

These long, warm February days invite the hens to lay eggs.  I’m checking their coop daily again.

It’s light by 6:30 and I’m waking up earlier too.   There’s a Mary Oliver poem called To Begin With, The Sweet Grass.  In it she writes…

“One thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.”

When you invite the natural world into your life it begins to take over. Like an untended field, we become a little more wild. Our bodies respond less to human constructs and more the rhythms of the earth.

When I first got to my studio this morning it was so cold I had to turn my heat on.   But an hour later, I had the door open letting the warmth in.

Early in the evening, after feeding the animals, Jon and I sat outside again.  The wind was soft and the air warm.  We watched a flock of migrating Blackbirds and Starlings fly back and forth from the trees on the edge of the pasture to the maples that tower over my studio.

As the sun was coming up over the tree tops in the east, February’s full moon, the Snow Moon was lowering behind the trees on the hill in the west.

It was so soft and yellow, if I didn’t know east from west I could have mistaken it for the sun.

There’s is a Bellydancing move called the Ghawazee.  It’s a strong and grounding hip throwing, earthy dance step.  The bigger your hips are the better it looks.  The dancers arms are extended out on either side of them, palms up.

When I saw the Snow Moon and then the sun opposite it in the east, I pictured a Goddess big enough to hold the moon in the palm of one hand the sun in the other,  shimmying her hips from side, to side,   doing the Ghawazee.