Tennis Milestone

That's how I want to be: Serena Williams. Oh, I know it's an impossibility, but I can dream, can't I? Just look at her! What an incredible twist, perfectly balanced. My tennis teacher said it's good to watch tennis (duh) but also look at photos of professionals to examine their mechanics, so you can imitate them. This visual reinforcement even works on your brain subconsciously (there are whole books about it). So now I Iike looking at pictures of tennis players in action.

Today was our last tennis class, and Barbara and I played a match. Well, we only got through one set during our hour class. She beat me, 5-1. But this was the first full set of tennis I have played, ever! There's so much to think about, besides just trying to hit the ball, like where it's going to go, and what's going to be coming back over the net after that, and what the score is. It was fun, and I have a lot to work on.

Haiku for Nov. 12

Sinking into soil,
Grins turned into grimaces,
Pumpkins don't last long.

Sibelius in Color

My son's youth orchestra just performed Sibelius' First Symphony and blew everyone in the audience away. Here is a description of the piece by Robert Bagar, quoted in the program notes, that sums up what I heard:
"...The young composer pours great melodies into his work, melodies that sing with the exultant joy, melodies that rise and fall with tremendous intensity, and also melodies that are nostalgic and mellow and suffused with a tender pathos. There are grace and lightness in the music as it comes rushing to the creator's pen. There are also wild, barbaric shouts, outbursts of tremendous passion, raging unbridled utterances that hurl themselves forward like the roar of giants winds."
Sibelius was one of the rare people who sees musical notes as colors (synesthesia). Experiencing this rich, complex piece just as sound was quite enough for me. I think it must have been hallucinogenic--maybe even frightening--to "see" it as well.
After the concert, my son reflected that a lot of the music we hear today Sibelius would find pretty strange. I said, "Don't you think he'd be pretty amazed that his music is still being performed all over the world in lots of different places by lots of different kinds of people?"
"No," he answered. "Composers are pretty vain."
Maybe he's right. Maybe one has to be to write music like that.

Carrot Soup

Although my carrot crop was extremely meager (about 1 pound total, due to faulty watering), I made a soup out of it. It was delicious. This is a modified recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison.

2 Tbsp. butter
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 pound carrots, thinly sliced
1 bay leaf
2 Tbsp. chopped parsley
3 Tbsp. white rice
1 tsp. sweet paprika
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
salt and pepper
2 cups chicken broth
5 cups water
1/4 cup heavy cream (optional)
chives for garnish

In a soup pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, bay leaf, parsley and rice; cook to soften the onion, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Add the spices, 1/2 tsp. salt, some pepper, and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add the broth and water, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 25 minutes.

When carrots are tender, remove the bay leaf and puree the soup. (I like it smooth and creamy, so I put it through a food mill after pureeing it to make it silky. You can also separate out half and puree it more coarsely if you like chunks of carrot.)

Return soup to the pot and add cream, then warm to desired temperature. Serve garnished with chives. You can also garnish with an onion relish that contrasts well with the sweet carroty flavor, but I didn't do that this time. Actually I served it with a dollop of whole milk yogurt and left out the cream because I didn't have any, but I prefer it with the cream.

Now I'm dreaming about next year's carrot crop, with purple carrots...

Poetry in Place

Photo by Stephen Ausmus.

Cloudscome over at a wrung sponge is hosting a Poetry in Place event for Poetry Friday at her blog. I was captivated by the idea. This is it: go out and post a poem somewhere where people will read it, preferably where people have to wait, like in front of elevators or on a bus. Choose a poem that relates to the place where it's being posted.

It's amazing where a web search will lead you. I decided I wanted a poem about food, but found I had to be more specific. How about carrots? I found one immediately:
Carrots
Have merits.
(Purportedly from a picket sign in front of a McDonalds located where there were no farmers' markets or fresh produce stores.) Anonymous, unfortunately.

But I dug deeper, past the lyrics to "Carrot Juice is Murder" by the Arrogant Worms, past the Carrot Museum (with a page of paintings depicting carrots through the centuries and some gorgeous photos of purple carrots which I vow to grow next season), and even beyond to a blog with a poem about weeding in a carrot field written by a 19th-century poet named Susan Pendleton. (And who had also read and enjoyed the carrot weeding poem? cloudscome! Is the blogosphere really that small?) But I finally settled on this poem by Cynthia Gallaher:

Volcanic Vegetables: Carrots

I never guessed there were volcanoes in Illinois,
until I found them in my own garden.
Now, it happens every fall,
when I’m led to tall crater tops
issuing feathery green smoke.

I dig around gently in pitch-black earth
and touch something just beneath the surface,
where emerges the orange-hot lava of carrots
urged out in thick, hearty bunches.
I always make sure to wear gloves.

It’s rumored carrots are good for the eyes,
yet who can’t help but see their radiance
when garden work is done
and twilight duskiness rises
like a dark mountain.

No matter how cold and crisp to the touch,
the carrots glow
like candles in my basket,
as they lead me up the
backstairs of my house.
I wash away a layer of mud and
pretend the carrots have been waiting all summer
to be released from their ebony underworld,
from their earthly wrap,
to their full expression on my brazen stove.

I slice each root,
carrot circles wink approval,
and the steamer collects a cache
which I cook and am paid
in richly colored coins to do so.

After dinner, I toss one from my plate
back into the earth for good luck.
Soon, the curling autumn fog rolls in, followed by winter snows,
cooling this upheaval of golden abundance
in layers of chalky ash.

by Cynthia Gallaher
Here is her blog. I found the poem at the carrot museum site.

It seemed slightly subversive to post this at the grocery store, so I did. It's in the s-l-o-w elevator (from the parking lot on the roof to the main level).

A Gaggle of Gardeners

The sale at Flowercraft was crawling with gardeners yesterday. All the urban gardeners rolled out of their beds and came to snap up starts for their winter garden, like me. There were not enough red wagons to go around. Gardeners can be a grabby bunch at these sales, especially the native plant sales at the botanical garden. I've had a pot snatched right out from under my outstretched hand. But this wasn't THAT great a sale--it's to make room for the Christmas trees--and everyone was being very civil, if eager.

I get very distracted at the nursery and forget what I came for and always come away with something I didn't come for. This time I did get the white cistus groundcover that my husband asked for. (I found them in the "Last Call" 75% off section; they're a little thatchy but perfectly healthy.) But I couldn't resist some other perennials for the side of house, which is looking very barren now that I took out the withered sunflowers. There's coral salvia (in front), yarrow (yellow flowers with grayish leaves in the middle), and scabiosa (those periwinkle-colored ones in the back). And I didn't even get any starts for the raised bed!

Things My Sons Forget

Lunches
Shin guards
Sweatshirts
Saxophone
Clarinet
Texbooks
Music

My sons are driving me nuts with forgetting their stuff. I'm not talking about forgetting to do stuff, like put away their clean laundry or do their math homework--although that certainly happens, too. I'm talking about forgetting their stuff. They have very busy lives with lots of activities--music, sports, school, and friends--and I know it takes a lot of energy to keep track of all the items needed for these activities. (Not to mention all of MY mental energy it takes to keep track of all the places they have to be at what time, but that's another issue.) I know they don't mean to forget, and there are lots of things every day that I'm impressed that they DO remember. But...it seems that nearly every day at least one of them forgets something.

Today my older son forgot his lunch, which wouldn't be such a big deal except I know for a fact that he has only $1 in his wallet that he owes to his friend for buying him a churro yesterday, and he has the big season semi-final soccer game right after school, so he needs energy. And no, I don't want to go back to school and drop it off to him! I guess he'll survive.

My younger son announced five minutes before we were to leave the house this morning that he had forgotten the combination to his locker, where he is supposed to put his backpack during the dance today after school. It seemed very strange to me indeed that he would suddenly forget his locker combination in early November, but it turns out he never uses it. He can't remember if he wrote it down. He can't remember where the little card with the combination that came with the lock is, except it might be in his locker. They won't allow backpacks in the dance so he has to find somewhere to stash it. What else can I do but tell him, "I'm sure you'll work it out."