Rituals

I’ve probably said it before, but it bears repeating. As I have gotten older, chores have become the treasured rituals that glue my life together. Many, many years ago, when my life was full of new jobs in new places, laundry was the one thing I could count on. No matter what other adjustments I had to make, I always had to wash my clothes.

I don’t do the laundry now. Left to my own devices, I did, and probably would still do, laundry every other week. Terry does not own that many clothes. He does laundry all the time. And I say, more power to him. It works out because I don’t have a lot of high-maintenance clothing, such as silk blouses.

One of my more comforting rituals is my weekly lunch preparations, which I do on Sunday. I usually make yogurt on Saturday so it can chill overnight. I put fruit in the bottom of five containers and aliquot the yogurt into them. I save a little plain yogurt to be the starter for the next week. If we have lots of eggs, I hard boil 6 or 8 of them for breakfasts. (Note: fresh eggs don’t peel well. As eggs age, air develops between the white and the membrane next to the shell, and this greatly facilitates the peeling process. The aging equivalency is one day at room temperature equals one week in the refrigerator. Three days/weeks is ideal. I put the eggs out on Wednesday night or Thursday morning to boil on Sunday.) I make five servings of carrot and celery sticks. I put the peelings and trimmings into a bowl for the chickens. The chickens think carrot peels are the very best thing ever! But of course, that’s how they feel about anything that comes their way, and I admire that about them.  

I also typically make a main dish, perhaps boiling some pasta to put with the individual servings of ratatouille that I froze last summer or making a frittata with assorted leftovers that need to be cleaned out of the refrigerator. I am looking forward to this week’s lunches for the next three days as I made pizza last night and have 6 pieces left!

With my containers lined up in the refrigerator on Sunday afternoon, I feel ready to face the week. I am particularly aware of the importance of my ritual because the weekend after Della died, I did not do my Sunday lunch prep. Classes were over, and between the grief and the lack of really needed packed lunches, I just blew it off. I found myself at loose ends all week long, wondering what there was to eat, and eating a great many things that I shouldn’t have. Rituals glue my life together.

Some rituals only happen on an annual basis. One ritual I complain about every year is putting down the drip irrigation. The drip lines are easy. Any crop that is planted in a row (carrots, beets, beans, corn, onions, garlic) gets a ¼” plastic hose with drippers every 6” or every 12,” depending on the vintage of the irrigation line. The 6” line is a newer product and much better, but I don’t feel right throwing the 12” line away.  Sometimes I have to move the drip lines on the main water line if the rows don’t line up, but that usually isn’t too bad a job.

The larger plants (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cantelope) get individual drippers. These are a literal pain in the butt. The drippers have a screw cap that needs to be adjusted so that just enough and not too much water comes out. Often by the time I am finished with all the drippers on one line, the first ones have to be readjusted to balance the flow to the last ones. As they get stored over the winter, air bubbles get trapped in the lines. I have to bleed each one by opening it up until the flow is sufficient to dislodge the air bubble, which causes the dripper to spit muddy water in my face and on my glasses, and then turn it down again to the right flow level. There’s a lot of bending involved with adjusting close to 100 drippers. However, it only needs to be done once, and I am awfully glad to have it in when the weather turns dry in July and August.

Dripper with too much water squirting out

Dripper with just enough water dripping out (note stream coming off the bottom)

We have been getting the garden in, working as best we can around the rain. And we are glad to have the rain, don’t get me wrong. I had to get the beans planted Wednesday, rain or no rain. I have discovered over the years that beans do better if I sprout them on wet paper towels in the kitchen for three days before planting them. If we plant the seeds in cold soil, they tend to rot before they germinate. Once the growth process starts, however, it seems to continue even if the weather turns cold. Once I put the seeds on the towels, I am committed to planting them three days hence, four at the most. If the sprouts get too long, they get tangled up and easily break when I try to separate them which, as you might imagine, ain’t good. I had to be at work all day Thursday (the only dry day all week), turning in grades for my late-start (and therefore late-end) online class and going to meetings. Friday would be too late.

On Wednesday morning, the weather girl on the news said that we would not have any “organized rain” until Friday. Terry and I made many jokes about “disorganized rain” as we were pelted by shower after shower while we put up the fences for the pole beans. We had to scrape 10 pounds of mud off our Wellies every few minutes. Once the fences were up, I put down landscape cloth between the rows (another dreaded ritual that reaps long-term benefits in time saved pulling weeds). I made the furrows, and Hilda helped me plant the bean sprouts. Are 15 varieties too many? The pole beans include Persian Lima, Christmas Lima, Golden Lima, Reverend Taylor’s Butterbean Mix, Scarlet Runner, Hidatsa Shield Figure, and Peregion. The bush dry beans are Vermont Cranberry, Calyso, Lina Cisco’s Bird Egg, Scarlet Beauty, Vermont Appaloosa, Painted Pony, and Black Turtle. I also planted half a row of Slenderette green beans. Going forward, I think we will plant half the dry beans on alternate years instead of planting all the dry beans every other year. It takes up a lot of space.

 It was a relief to have a rain day yesterday to rest and get groceries. I’ll be back out to do some weeding this afternoon. It’s too windy to try to put up row cover today.