Fading into fall - Gardeners witness life on the fast track

A glowering sky, a stiff breeze, and plummeting temperatures brought an early look at what was to come.

Clear skies soon returned, which meant glorious Indian summer afternoons but also frost and serious trouble for tender tomatoes and peppers.

Fall  arrived in Southern Oregon in its usual drama queen fashion on Sept. 29. After weeks and months of dry heat and scorching sun, it was suddenly cold, damp, windy, and dark. In 24 hours we went from shuttering the house against the sun to firing up the wood stove, from shorts to sweaters,  from gin and tonics to hot toddies. The seemingly endless summer was over, and the gushing garden was sputtering toward dormancy. Still, it looked great hanging on under the glowering sky.

To coax a few more days of ripening from our cold-sensitive babies, we covered them with blankies. (2016 update. We still do this, but not this year as it is already Nov. 13, and we haven't had a frost.) 

Attempting to stave off veggie decline is kinda like plastic surgery for the garden. You know that  the annual plants that so recently vibrated with life and glory are soon-to-be-goners. They're fading into twisted vines and dusky crumbles, and within a couple months will have disintegrated into compost to live again as nutrients for next year's garden—small comfort as they face the inevitable. But still, in the fall, you try to save them with props and denial.

This may be a stretch, but I see something similar happening with my peers as we too dry into dusky crumbles. We have the major props going on, and I am not above hair dye and serious exercise, but I have to say. Why bother? (2016 update. I still bother!)

What's going to happen is inescapable. Gardens are teachers. They are life on the fast track.

 For most of my garden friends, it's eight or nine months max, start to finish. We gardeners see all these beings through from their astonishing emergence from seeds in February and March to lusty water-drinking sun-soaking life hounds in July and August to dying dogs tripping on their tongues in late September and October. Check out these I'm-going-to-live-forever-sunflowers in July, then on their last legs in mid-October.

We're so beautiful! they seem to shout with all that July color and drama.

Same beings a few months later. Sad, yes? But that's life.

Then into the garden refuse heap awaiting the grinder and, finally, the garden, where they're tossed onto rows to decompose over the winter. Could they even imagine such a thing back in July?

The garden heaped with leaves and refuse from the garden that just died.

2016 update. We deduced that feeding one year's garden refuse directly into the next year's garden likely promoted disease and insect infestation. We now spread the fall garden onto the orchard/pasture and use cover crops, manure, compost, and fall leaves to enrich the soil for the coming year. 

It's hard to watch, but damn, you can't help but draw the parallels. Do you know anybody who's heading into fall? Me? I think I'm probably late August, early September. Too early to sniff out the compost, but about ready to look into frost protection. And I'm not even thinking about winter.

2016 update

Now watching spinach and lettuce emerge in the cold frame, eagerly searching for light.

Late fall has arrived, but in true optimist fashion, I think that winter will be a long time coming. I'm looking forward to seeing the spinach finally emerge and enjoying a tender salad of winter greens come March. 

Still inventing - New Mexico chili pepper casserole

I recognize that not too many people are loaded with their own garden-fresh New Mexico type peppers. If you are, drop to your knees and do the wave. If you aren't, hie on down to the farmer's market, where it is pepper season to the max. Peppers are the last to go in our southern Oregon summer garden. They outlast the tomatoes, cukes, melons, and zukes. Even if their leaves blacken, the peppers themselves are A-OK.  Frost has taken a couple of big bites, but our bedsheet cover-ups have saved the day. So I've fired up the grill and have been roasting like crazy. The freezer exudes the faintest whiff of roasted peppers, and the house tonight is redolent with rich pepper essence. I swoon. Here's a simple  way to use 25-30 mild green chili peppers, say Big Jim or Anaheim.

Inventing Dinner

For years PK and I have marveled at our daily fare. We think it is the best in the world, and I'm not kidding. That is SO swaggering, but please bear with me. I bow before you whose Monday plates and Tuesday repasts and Wednesday feasts and home-cooked meals throughout the week also bring you to your knees with gratitude and praise. O holy skillet! Masterful grill! Garden font! Made-up recipes!

We  unabashedly exult (no one is around to hear, so we really go for it it) and imagine frequently what it might cost to eat what we eat if we had to buy it in restaurants, if we even could get it. We are the most ridiculous home-cooking foodies I know.

We couldn't afford comparable restaurant meals, for one thing. I have eaten in a few great restaurants —Italy comes to mind. But in general,  I can't remember a restaurant meal that I enjoyed as much as what we eat almost every night, even though I risk sounding prideful because I am the primary cook. (I cook. PK cleans up. That's our deal. Together we grow the food.) But I create the meals, chop the onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes etc. etc. etc., and it is a Zen exercise every time. More on the pleasure of kitchen details later, perhaps. But on to  dinner.

Dancing Into Fall

This is my young friend Katarina dancing joyfully in the mint-scented grass last night while cool winds blew fall into Southern Oregon. Rain was in the forecast, chill was in the air, and we celebrated the shift with our favorite thing. We cranked up the outside speakers and twirled, twisted and stomped til exhaustion to the musical mix she'd put together for me from her favorite dance tunes—18 high-octane gotta-boogie songs by artists ranging from The Who and The Police to Sublime and Bloc Party. Fueled by a little syrah and a lot of synergy that happens when two girls who love to dance get together, dusk turned to dark and the hours fell away and I didn't think too much about the fact that she's 40 years younger. Than I am.

Fall always dredges up that fading-into-old-age crap that's difficult to ignore when the flowers wither, the corn stalks rattle, the squash vines crumble, and the tomato and pepper plants shrink in dread of the soon-to-bite first frost. It's a little too easy to draw parallels with the waning hair color, the wrinkling skin, and the sagging unmentionables. In the garden, it won't be long before all but the insect-and-disease-affected plants will be tossed into the compost or ground up to plow right back into the garden from whence they came. Their energy doesn't vanish, though, it just changes. Their life current persists, and they'll return next year in other vibrant forms.

That's how I think about music and dancing—as current that persists and wells up in rhythm that feels like life itself moving. Switch on the right music, and it plays me. It plays Katarina, too, and my son Chris, and yoga teacher, Denise, and another young friend, Parker, and a few others I know who are blessed (some might say cursed) with the irresistible need to move to music. It is good to reaffirm that since I am undeniably in my own fall season, I can channel the unfathomable power of rhythm and dance to juice things up and keep the green going and going and going. Will it ever be gone? Not as long as I can hear and move and turn on the music. Loud.

Chipotle, Southern Oregon Style

If the above looks like a pile of sun-dried dog do, skip on over to another blog. But if you recognize these units as amazingly flavorful freshly smoked dead-ripe jalapeno peppers— better known as chipotle— you've come to the right place. What you see is the result of about 70 days of Rogue Valley, Oregon sun and soil and 15-20 hours in a little Chief Smoker loaded with smoldering cherry wood. Ohmigod! Chipotles can be purchased, but according to Dave DeWitt's Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, they will be inferior to the genuine article, which in all humility, is what you see here. You gotta start with RED RIPE jalapenos, which I have never seen in grocery stores, but then I've always lived in Podunk, USA, beginning with Minot, North Dakota, and ending, happily, with small acreage outside of Rogue River, Oregon.

Green jalapenos are great, especially in pico de gallo and other salsas, when you can't wait for red ones, but they don't have the deep flavor and sweetness necessary for the quintessential chipotle. Some farmers' markets sell red jalapenos, or you can make a special request to a grower, as a friend did, to let the peppers ripen before picking. Best yet is to grow them yourself. If you have a climate comparable to the Rogue Valley (or Southern New Mexico), no problem!

PK is a pepper addict whose passion I've come by through osmosis. I use chipotle —and about a dozen other peppers—year-round in my own kitchen, and love giving chipotle peppers as a special gift to friends and family. Here's what a smoker load of about-to-be chipotle peppers looks like. The stems are removed, but that's it for prep. So pretty!

Once the peppers come out of the smoker, they are anywhere from brittle to slightly pliable. If they're still tacky, they should be stored in the freezer. I put most in glass jars. This year, the first batch wasn't out of the smoker for 10 seconds—we had a pent-up demand for chipotle, nerves were frayed—before I snared enough to stuff a pint jar, fill it with scalding water, and wait a few hours for those babies to rehydrate so I could make chipotle cubes.

Backyard Biking on Birdseye Creek Road

Cycle Oregon riders departed from their adventure yesterday, but I remain in the Mythical State of Jefferson, which is perfect because this is exactly where I want to be. Having 2,000 visiting cyclists in the region—and right here in the neighborhood—last week inspired reflection about the place I accidentally landed 30-some years ago. It made me appreciate home territory anew, and I looked with special fondness at my personal neighborhood workout hill—Birdseye (pronounced Birds-eee) Creek Road, classic State of Jefferson terrain, which is minutes from my backdoor. It's three miles uphill, down in a flash, and about 30 minutes max, start to finish. Doable even when I "don't have time" or "don't feel like it." But always a challenge.

I've burned enough calories on that hill in the past 25 years to equal several barrels of cabernet sauvignon and a gymnasium-sized slab of dark chocolate. (These are my major vices, but by no means my only ones.) It is a contest about what is going to prevail: my exercise or my excesses. So far I think, it's neck and neck. I eat and drink what I want and credit Birdseye hill (and yoga), with keeping me more or less in line.

I never tire of Birdseye Creek Road. It's a mini-topo trip through State of Jefferson bioregions, and with almost no traffic, even an aging but earnest biker like me can enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells along the way. To get to Birdseye, I navigate .3 of a mile of Rogue River Highway, which is sometimes an annoyingly busy road, but still offers a good look at the Rogue Valley's claim to fame: the Rogue River.

Birdseye Creek Road is a right turn off the highway and takes a sweeping curve past the lower pasture of the Birdseye Creek Ranch, where cattle enjoy lush pasture. I've seen cattle in the eastern Oregon desert and worse, in feedlots. Those cattle can't imagine such luxury as this:

The road climbs to a higher pasture, still part of the original 360-acre Birdseye homestead, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and also for sale.

Already the terrain is drier and madrones and oaks dominate.

I love madrones and the mixed woodlands where they prevail. This time of year—late fall—after several hot dry months, their bark peels in characteristic fashion, and the forest smells fresh— sweet and astringent at the same time. If I walked in it, the forest duff would crackle and release sweet fragrant oils. Climb, climb, climb, and the hills close in and the creek can be seen and heard and the woods look like this:

And this—mixed pines, firs, big-leaf maple and much more:

I can't see worth a damn, so maybe my sense of smell is heightened. But I know that each of these patches along 3 miles of country road has its own distinct perfume. I suck it in on the way up, and catch snatches of it on the way down. Then I go home and eat chocolate.

Cycle Oregon- State of Jefferson!

I'm a Cycle Oregon wannabe, for sure. The big pulsating Power-bar-eating snake of 2,200 riders moved thru my State of Jefferson neighborhood today, and I couldn't resist cycling along part of the bike route. I had a noon meeting in Grants Pass and allowed time to ride the 10.5 miles from my home near Rogue River to the meeting place in time to change into civilian clothes and spare fellow Rotarians my spandexed thighs. En route I hoped to tuck into a pace line, put my head down, blur my legs into a spin, and reach Grants Pass in record time. And also pretend to be part of The Ride, of course.

Alas, the snake wasn't on the road yet. So my pretending had to be that the drivers who passed me, and who certainly knew to expect Cycle Oregon on this road, were in awe that this older broad was leading the pack! What a stud! I flashed cavalier smiles and did that cool finger wave that cyclists execute without removing their hands from the handlebars. On my way home, however, the snake was on the road, and I lamented those pace lines rocketing by in the opposite direction. Sigh. A sag wagon passed me and flashed a sign warning, "WRONG WAY!!!"
I yelled, "I live here!"

And you know what? On all kinds of levels, I'm glad I do. Take friends, for example. A few minutes later, I got a flat. I can't remember having had a flat in 20 years. I didn't have a spare tube, tools, or anything else that I needed except a cell phone. A few minutes later, a rescue was in motion. I can think of a half dozen people I could call who would come to my aid at a moment's notice, and one jumped into immediate action. That's a huge benefit of living in the same place for 30-some years. You can count on people when you need them. And they can count on you.

But then living in the State of Jefferson has it's own rewards. It is a West Coast region that is seriously different from images that the words "West Coast" conjure. PR folks call it a "state of mind." It is mostly rural, although we have a number of small cities and towns, some of which are culturally sophisticated and upscale. It is a mixed bag philosophically and politically, although we're historically more red than blue, and there are quite a few who are stockpiling guns. However, we share a common love of forests, rivers, mountains, and the rich but quirky agricultural scene that's developing in place of the historic logging and fishing industries—everything from bison ranches to organic farms to the ubiquitous vineyards. There are places here that time has touched only lightly, and just about anywhere in the S of J, you can be in wilderness within 30 minutes.

Making a Mean Marinara- updated

Updated August 23, 2015
Email subscribers, please click on the blog title to get to the website where photos look better and text is easier to read. 

There's a lot going on here. Fresh cucumber/sweet onion salad, zucchini noodles, balsamic glaze drizzled over all, but the star of the show? Thick and rich homemade marinara.

We could about fill a bathtub with the tomatoes from our garden.  We could take turns lolling in the red, lush and lovely Romas, Celebrities, Early Girls and Brandywines to convert them to mush in preparation for making marinara. The sticky sweetness would drip from our limbs, and we could funnel some of the juices into our upturned and smiling mouths before diverting them into pots to boil and bubble into wondrous sauce for eggplant Parmesan, lasagna, spaghetti and so on to bring summer back during the inevitable dark, dank, dreary months.

Romas are the best choice for marinara as they are meaty with not as much juice to cook down.

But don't worry. You don't have to watch for hair or scabs in your spaghetti sauce, should you be invited to dinner. My best friend in the kitchen—the Cuisinart food processor—does all this squishing and smashing in a hot minute.

Process thoroughly to puree the tomato skins, which you do

NOT need to remove. Keep the fiber and the vitamins.

I ignore recipes when making marinara, especially any that require plunging tomatoes into boiling water first to remove the skins. DO NOT DO THIS! It adds immeasurably to the work and makes no difference in the end. Except for you've salvaged for your sauce all the fiber and flavor in the tomato skins.

Here's a rough guide on how to take advantage of tomato season to make a mean marinara for dinner and also the freezer. I'm not being coy with the "rough" stuff. So many recipes are approximations. When you're dealing with fresh garden produce, either from your own backyard or from farmers' markets, exact amounts depend on the cook's creativity. (Except, of course, when you're canning and absolutely must adhere precisely.) So here's how I make marinara, and you can adapt to fit whatever you have on hand.

Rich Delicious Marinara using Fresh Tomatoes

Ingredients

• 12-15  pounds of fresh tomatoes, mostly romas, cored and pureed
• 6-7 ounces of prepared basil pesto, without cheese. In the absence of pesto, process in a food processor 10-12 cloves of garlic, 2 packed cups of fresh basil, 1/2 + cup of olive oil, a 2 teaspoons of salt, and 1/4 cup of pine nuts or walnuts 
• 2 large winter onions, chopped fine
• a teaspoon each of finely crushed dried fennel seeds, oregano, thyme and rosemary
• 2-3 finely chopped jalapeno peppers, seeds removed, if you relish a little hotness. Or you could add pepper flakes to taste.
• salt and pepper to taste, using kosher, sea, or smoked salt. Smoked salt adds a whole new dimension.
• 1-2 tablespoons honey, if needed

A cheat: If you lack the patience or inclination to simmer anything five or six hours, add a small can or two of tomato paste early on. It'll still be a great marinara.

Directions
Start with dead-ripe fresh tomatoes, the redder the better. Roma types are best, but I also use round tomatoes that need to be used. Rinse, then cut off the stem end and core. Squeeze out seeds (and a lot of juice), tear or cut once or twice and load up the food processor. Process until there's nothing but air-fluffed tomato puree, then dump into your cooking pot. Often I have a couple pots going at the same time. Keep adding pureed tomatoes until the pot (uncovered, of course) is full.  Cook at low/medium heat until the volume is reduced by half.  Stir often to make sure it's not sticking. When the volume is about half add the rest of the vegetables and seasonings.

This is A LOT of pureed whole tomatoes! I had to scoop three 

cups out so it didn't spill over the sides. This large deep stainless

steel pan has become my favorite for making marinara.

That's it. Simmer until it is reduced by at least half the original volume. This can take hours. There should be very little watery stuff at the top. I always have to tinker with the seasonings near the end. Taste and adjust to your satisfaction. What we don't eat for dinner, I freeze flat in quart bags.

Bike ride with iPod - Ghostland Observatory

These are among my favorite people to bike with, and my favorite human beings in general: PK, of course, and Dave & Gail Frank. There they are posing by the Covered Bridge in Wimer, not really a town or even a village, but today, anyway, a lively locale with a packed and well-studied public bulletin board advertising 42 free laying hens, three free horses, goats-for-nothing, and more! A sad commentary on the rotten economic times, of course, but so rural and endearing nonetheless. I love the rural life and am sorry that so many are in distress. More on that another time. Today we reveled in our good health and good fortune to be here now and rolling along the dips and turns of East and West Evans Creek and Pleasant Creek roads.

We pedaled an easy 27 miles in glorious early fall weather through the Evans Valley. It was fine. But even without my husband and friends, I would have relished the outing because of this unit: my personal training instrument, my beloved musical companion, my very own dance partner - the iPod! This little number has revolutionized my workout life, and maybe even my life overall. I plug this baby in and dance on the bike. I dance in the garden. And in the kitchen. And on the trail. Almost anywhere, even if it's just to tap my feet. Today C.C. Adock got me pumping hard uphill just because - Y'all'd think she'd be good 2 me. And Dire Straits and Money for Nothing always get me going. No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I have to dance to certain music. And i mean HAVE to. Unfortunately, I don't get that many opportunities to actually DANCE, so dancing on the bike is an acceptable alternative to cavorting with a human being, namely PK. The playlist displayed is one I put together for my young friend, Katarina, who loves dancing as much as I do. If you love to dance, I mean LOVE, you oughta try these numbers, in addition to those displayed: Stealin All Day, C.C. Adcock; Pump it Up, Elvis Costello; A Little Bit of Riddim, Michael Franti; Moondance, Van Morrison; We're Only Going to Live So Long, Alejandro Escovedo; Life During Wartime, and MANY others by the Talking Heads. And Midnight Voyage and Sad, Sad City by Ghostland Observatory.

I'm sure that the two wildly talented young guys who are Ghostland Observatory would be shocked, perhaps delighted? to learn that a woman 3 times their age rocks out to their music, which is not at all like what she grew up with. But one of the greatest developments of the past decade is the erasure of lines between what music belongs to one generation or another. If I can listen to Ghostland Observatory on Austin City Limits, which I did, then download my faves from iTunes, then transfer to my iPod and rock out on the bike, woohoo! I love it. The songs listed are current favorites. I have more. Many more.

It's not cancer.

If you live long enough, there will come a time when you await a call from your doc regarding test results, and one of the results could be that you have cancer. PK turned 60 in June, and he is fortunate to have escaped this drama until now.
A week ago he had a routine physical. He's been worried that "something's wrong" because he's so damn skinny, which means he's worrying about having cancer. He is skinny, that bastard, while I wrestle with adipose. But he doesn't have cancer. That was confirmed today when his primary care FNP called with the good news that he has a kidney stone. Compared with cancer, a kidney stone is like learning you have to eat potatoes for a week rather than learning that you have to eat shit forever.

And when Mr. Kennedy learned he had brain cancer last year, he became one of the millions whose fate was not much changed by the cancer war. Despite billions that have been spent, the death rate from most cancers barely budged. New York Times, Sept. 4, 2009

But back to the beginning. A routine physical. A clean bill of health declared—or surmised. Then, a few days later, a confirmation that his test results were "all normal". And then, a few days later, an urgent notification that blood in the urine was discovered and an appointment for a CAT scan would be made for him the following day. And so he went to the hospital and was slipped into the CAT scanner for a few minutes, at a cost of about $1,300, of which we will pay a $750 deductible regardless of paying over $1,000 each and every month for private health insurance. But you do these things and pay this money because it could be cancer.

We go right to the Internet. There are no good options for blood in the urine, especially for a man of his age. Bladder, kidney, or prostate cancer. It could be a bladder infection, or a few other non life-threatening and unlikely options. We zero in on the idea that maybe he's pressed his privates into bicycle seats so often, including a 25-mile ride a few hours before he had the CAT scan, that blood was somehow forced into his urinary tract. We clung to this idea. But we saw not a word about kidney stones on the Internet.

So what do you do? You have the CAT scan. You await test results. You put your life on hold. If the call comes, and the news is bad, your life changes. Your focus is directed entirely at battling the cancer, which, of course, is a battle in which humans have not gained much ground since statistics have been compiled. I've seen too much cancer already, and I know this.

I'm writing on the same day that we learned the test results. (If the FNP had the results yesterday, why didn't she call?) I'm writing now because I know that by tomorrow, I'll have almost forgotten. Just like I've almost forgotten the time that I had "post menopausal bleeding" and was threatened with one of those horrible uterine biopsies, but didn't have it for reasons that include the availability of detailed online info about almost anything medical. And then there's every mammogram. And every Pap smear. The body can turn bad at anytime, and as we age, it most certainly will. But we hope later rather than sooner. And we hope it isn't cancer.

Sunflower Love

Here's PK snuggling up to some of our proudest specimens. The best thing about this garden forest? It was planted by BIRDS, and lots of them. Come spring, sunflowers will once more leap from the soil, and I will again transplant most into groupings, as I did with this bunch. Since the original plants had cross-pollinated like crazy, I had no idea what they'd look like. They did not disappoint. And the birds are jubilant.Here are a two from the clouds of American and lesser goldfinches that descend, chirruping in glee, upon our garden everyday. These seed-eaters adore the sunflowers, but are haphazard about consuming each and every seed. The ones they drop all over the place turn into next year's stars. About a third of our large garden is bird-planted or wind-planted, especially lettuce, which appears in random patterns in sometimes-shocking sizes:
This succulent head is nearly 24-inches across and tasted as wonderful as it looks. Dill is another garden commodity that we no longer plant because it emerges as if propelled by partying earthworms and seeded by rockin' robins: And flowers? I still plant a lot of annuals and perennials, but this year the landscape was dominated by rangy four-foot tall volunteer marigolds, which bear scant resemblance to their hybrid predecessors, and reliable four o'clocks, which jumped in with enthusiasm.
But back to the garden rock stars. The acrobatic finches hang down to satisfy their insatiable avian appetites.
The finches have a darting and undulating flight habit, dodging amidst the hummingbirds, who plummet and soar and hover and thrill while extracting nectar from the asters, cosmos, marigolds, and more. Every now and then, blue jays invade and intimidate. But overall, it is an ecstatic scene, and standing quietly in the morning garden is a deep pleasure. But wait. There's more!This sunflower is over 16 inches across. The blue jays covet it, chasing the finches off. Probably the seeds are too large for the finches anyway. This variety is the only sunflower we planted from seed. PK chose it because of its density and hugeness of the seedhead. Later he'll hammer what remains of the dried seedheads to the fenceposts as easy pickings for the birds when they really need a boost. However, here's how these depressed and frustrated sunflowers look now:That's right. They are sunflowers that can NOT follow the sun. How pathetic. They are so heavy, that except for the one mutant, they're unable to adore the sun as sunflowers are programmed to do. It will be interesting next year to see if any of this variety volunteers. I was surprised to see this one come back from 2008:One single shaggy sunflower plant (with numerous flowers) emerged about 20 yards from where it grew last year, and I am so happy! It makes a great cut flower,and the bees enjoy it, but I'm not sure about the finches, jays, chickadees, nuthatches and such, which are more attuned to the "garden" variety. Fall is upon us. The sunflowers will dwindle, but until the end of October, the birds will rule the garden. And this is what will sustain them: Thank you, sunflowers.

Eggplants to burn

The garden overfloweth, and the six eggplant factories in row two between the Brandeywines and the basil just keep pumping out purple/black shiny things. I marinate. I grill. I stir fry. But mostly, I make eggplant Parmesan, which is so much easier when you skip the salting-the-sliced-eggplant-then-rinsing-and-drying steps and also the dredging-in- flour-or-crumbs part.

I omitted the flour/crumbs step because of my carb-avoidance behavior, but discovered that dipping the slices in a beaten egg and frying in olive oil is just as good, if not better, than the carb-dredging routine. Oh joy! I left out the salting part when I was in a big rush and discovered THAT doesn't matter either. So right there you lop off 15 or 20 minutes and all those evil carb calories.

My eggplant Parmesan recipe is simple:
2-4 eggplants depending on size
olive oil for frying
2 beaten eggs
grated Parmesan and mozzarella cheeses, as much as you like
salt & pepper to taste
a quart or more of good marinara (I make my own. Another topic, another day. But here's part of what goes in it.)

Slice the eggplants about 1/2 inch thick. Dip slices in the beaten egg and fry on both sides til soft and golden. Don't throw away leftover egg; fry it and add to the casserole. Spoon a layer of sauce in a 13x9 inch pan. Layer the eggplant on the sauce, top with a mix of cheeses. Put the next layer of eggplant on the cheese, then top generously with sauce. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and top with cheese, mostly Parmesan, and return to the oven for 5 to 10 minutes, til cheese is melted.

There you have it - the mighty Rogue!

This is the Rogue at Horseshoe Bend, just around the corner from where PK and I camped earlier this month on the first night of a three-day trip down the Wild & Scenic section. The Rogue is known as a "family river" because it has just two Class 4 rapids but the rest of it is easy Class 2 and a little tougher Class 3, and much of its 33 miles looks a lot like this - flat, green, and gorgeous. Isn't it weird and terrible that I'm bored with it?

Because it was just the two of us, as opposed to the group thing we've done on approximately 150 other Lower Rogue trips over the past 30 years (Is that why it no longer thrills?), we tucked in behind a shade rock on a patch of sand not previously considered camp-able beneath a wide bench that's the popular Horseshoe Bend camp. On this afternoon, it was swarmed by a diverse commercial group, by which I mean that there were black people! The first I've seen on the Rogue ever!

One sorry thing about Southern Oregon is that we're racially/culturally homogeneous. We do have a growing Hispanic population, but our gradations are more along the lines of white trash, whiter trash, Rushbots, and right-wingnut conservative NRA "we don't like them other news organizations" types, in addition to all of all us other really big, cool, and excited white people.

We waved at our neighbors en route to the potty, which is on the far side of their camp and a major benefit in hunkering down within walking distance (but not earshot) of another group. Without the potty, we're honor-bound to pack out our crap. And we have what we need to do it, thanks to the "checkers" at the Rand permit check-in office.

I remember the pre-permit and pre-regulation days—the late 1970s— when i was rowing an old yellow Maravia raft while PK kayaked his blue Perception Dancer, and we always went with groups of 6-16. We dug fire pits and toilet holes. We cleaned up after ourselves in those days without BLM regulators, but we were greeted at numerous camps by stinky toilet paper gardens and firepits studded with trash.

Because anybody could go on the river at any time and do anything (we heard gunshots, saw fireworks), we jockeyed for camps and once ended up settling after 8 p.m. for a patch of sand stinking of dead salmon and with the warning "BEARS!!" scratched into the sand. We heard them all night—we all slept together around the fire for protection—and in the morning a mama and two cubs rambled through our breakfast en route to the salmon. We clanged pots and pans and yelled to no avail, and finally settled on rock-top observation posts and enjoyed the wildlife show. It was one of my best river trips. But that was then.....

Even through I abandoned an 18-year tradition of annual women-only raft trips and have somewhat grudgingly agreed to go with PK at least once a year, here's what I still love about the Lower Rogue.

• The color of the water and the diamond-y sparkle of it in early morning, late afternoon.
  
• The way the river smells - rich & musty, yet fresh, especially going through rapids.
• The osprey, eagles, bears, fish, and even the rattlesnakes. I don't really LIKE seeing the snakes, but when I do, it is always a big surprise and it doesn't hurt to scream like that every now and then.
  
• Camping. I like camping almost no matter where. I like cooking outside and I don't even care if it's windy or raining, so long as there's a kitchen tarp.
• Being in the wilderness. The Rogue is designated as such, even though you'll see people, including huge commercial boatloads of them below Blossom Bar jetting up from the coast.
  
• It's mostly quiet, though, except for the wind and the water and the birds.
• It's familiar. It's our backyard. Our sons grew up here. Well, one grew up. The other is still either on a river somewhere or thinking about it.
  

What I don't like and why I gave it up, much to the consternation of my former women's trip raft passengers, Laurie & Jeanne, and PK:

• Sitting for five or six hours a day, even if I'm rowing. So it isn't just the Rogue that's off my list, but almost any river. This is the most important reason, and why I now hike much of the Rogue River trail while the rest of my group is rafting.
  
• The sun and excessive heat. I don't like it anymore and never was a sun worshipper.
  
• Schlepping heavy coolers and gear over rocks and up steep banks, and the bruises and dings I invariably get doing so.

Ok. I'm done whining. Here's a look at the two class 4 rapids.
This is the entry to the mile-long Mule Creek Canyon. Those rocks are ominously named The Jaws, and the upper part of the rapid is The White Snake.






This is where you don't want to swim. Bad as it looks, it's pretty easy rafting and the only people who've drowned here are idiots without lifejackets who, incidentally, are often drunk.
More of the narrows.

Here's a boil in the infamous, at least to Rogue rafters, Coffee Pot, a surging piece of water that can suck down a raft tube and gives driftboaters a thrill. And some dents. Years ago Paul flipped his kayak here and when he tried to pull off the spray skirt while upside down, the ball came off in his hand. He was underwater a long time prying off the skirt, and I was sitting in an eddy with my heart in my throat, wondering how I'd raise Quinn alone. (pre-Chris days)



This is the top of Blossom Bar, the second Class 4 of the trip and about one mile downstream from Mule Creek. When entering Blossom at lower flows (around 2,000 CFS), this is what you see. Those rocks where the water is piling up are called the Pickett Fence. They're not terribly difficult to avoid, especially at this water level, but this is the exact spot that most people drown on the Lower Rogue. Don't freak out. A tiny percentage has any problem whatsoever. But sometimes boats flip or get pinned on the Pickett Fence, and people can get trapped in the rocks. For safe passage, you head straight for the unseen-in-this-photo narrow passage on the right, although the route can change at higher water.
Looking back upstream in Blossom, there's the Pickett Fence with the pour-off on the left that you want to get a boat through. Sure looks easy, huh? According to my son the extreme and crazy kayaker, this is SO nothing. But to most rafters, driftboaters, and kayakers, Blossom Bar is a significant challenge. It scared me every time I rowed it—at least 100 times—but now that I've given up the river except for maybe once a year as a special favor to PK, I can enjoy it for the adrenalin boost.
And finally, here's a salmon gulping cool fresh water where Rum Creek flows into the Rogue. It's a hot August day, the river is low, and even though fish are jumping, there are a lot of belly-up salmon. They don't go to waste. We saw a bear taking a huge fish up the bank into the woods across from Horseshoe Bend, and a bald eagle carrying one high above the river. I can't argue with the wonder of such sights.

Tomato & corn extravaganza

That’s my mom Lavone, age 92-and 7-months old, salivating over a slightly under-ripe Brandywine weighing in at one pound 9 ounces. (LaVone insists that after age 90, the number of months should be added to one’s age because 90 is when the months start counting a lot again, just like when it was a big deal if you were one year or 18-months old. More about that another time.)

Anyway, the garden is pumping out tomatoes like crazy. CRAZY. Paul picked about 70 pounds of tomatoes Sunday (Gee - wonder what I'll be doing today....) and that's just the beginning. I'm already feeling rich with tomatoes for winter and will soon be firing up the food dryer and hauling out the veggie roasting pan, and maybe even the pressure cooker. In the meantime, we have all the fixens for the best summer salads, like this extravagant delight.
It's called "tomatoes and marinated veggies with corn-raft garnish," and is from writer/artist Jan Roberts-Dominguez's syndicated food column, which I read in the Medford Mail Tribune. I rarely follow a recipe to the T, so here's Jan's renamed and abbreviated recipe with the modifications that saved me a trip to the grocery store and let me use one of those monster tomatoes plus a bunch of fresh sweet stuff from the garden.





Hot damn tomato/corn salad with marinated veggies
1 medium-sized cuke, sliced. No need to peel a fresh burpless cuke.
8-10 sweet small peppers, any color, cut into pieces, seeds removed. (Jimmy Nardello's sweet Italian is what I used. An Italian heirloom and sooooo good.)
1 med-sized sweet onion, chopped
3 ears corn, cooked, cooled & cut off the cob
1-2 large Brandywine or other heirloom tomatoes, sliced. (Jan's recipe calls for4 large tomatoes, but maybe her's didn't weigh nearly 2 pounds each.)
4-6 ounces crumbled blue cheese (good, but next time I'll use feta.)

Combine the cukes, peppers, and onion toss with a liberal amount of vinaigrette. Marinate for about 3 hours. (Use a bottled Italian-type dressing, or make your own like I did from Jan's recipe for dilled vinaigrette. Either way, add some fresh dill and/or a dollop of pesto. )

Boil the corn for a couple minutes, cool, then slice off the cob in chunks, like in the photo.

Slice the tomatoes and arrange in a single layer on a large plate. Use a slotted spoon to dish the marinated veggies over the tomatoes, then carefully place the corn on top of all. Crumble some blue or feta cheese on there and prepare to dazzle those lucky enough to be around your summer-harvest table.

Why Blog? Then and Now.

           Writing in my head during a 2009 bike ride.

The following is the second blog post I ever published. It was July 14, 2009, and four people read it! 
My first post a couple weeks earlier drew zero attention, and revisiting it, I see why. DELETE!  But this post is still relevant because every bit of the angst and obsession I described then is still true! My present day thoughts are in italics. I wonder if I've learned anything.

Why Blog? July 2009

I wrestle with this question. I think about it while riding my bike, chopping onions for marina sauce, and doing downward facing dog in yoga class. I think about it while wrestling weeds from the garden, buying wine at Grocery Outlet, and mowing what passes for grass in our so-called lawn. I think about it while doing these things because they are all on my ever-growing subjects-for-writing list. In fact, I think about writing multiple times every single day, so the fact that I rarely DO it weighs upon me. All still true.

Not that I haven't tried. I called my first blog attempt New Ventures, and the next one Part 3. These attempts were nearly three years ago, (now nearly 10 years)  but I was paralyzed with doubt and performance anxiety. Who gives a crap what I think? I'm not the snappy tweeter or the quipping commentator or among the swarming and excited political people. Some things never change

But I've been writing since age seven, and for most of my adult life, I wrote for pay. About 25 years ago, I left journalism and a weekly personal column, to start a writing and editing business, which has been nifty and even renumerative. I wrote business profiles, annual reports, magazine articles, company newsletters, executive speeches, clever ad copy and more. Except for a few columns for the local public radio station, I didn't write anything personal for publication. In the meantime, I've kept a private journal accompanied by photos that's bloating my hard drive. Now I journal only while traveling, mostly as notes for blog posts.

All this begs the question: Does writing require an audience? Obviously not, since most journal-keepers write privately with no desire for readers. But blogging? That's another story.

That's the question about blogging and what's been hanging me up. There are millions of writers and bloggers, all vying for attention and wanting and waiting to be loved! Who cares if there's another one putting herself out there? And what is it with this need to communicate?

But I've decided that it doesn't matter. Blogging isn't just about the reader. It's about the writer. It's about me. I've been writing since childhood and I'm not going to stop. I can't stop. For some unfathomable reason, it's what I have to do. If I connect with somebody, that's great. Hello, out there! I shake your hand and pat you on the hind, man or woman. If no connection occurs, oh well! Compulsive writing, whether in my head or on the page, is my curse or blessing. Anyway, I just freaking have to do it. And so I am.

December 2015
And so I still do, 246 published posts later, PLUS 112 in draft. 
My first year of blogging, readership rarely broke into double digits. Yes, it was discouraging to have four or five "regular readers", mostly family!  Now most posts break three digits, and some have climbed past four.  These are ones that recirculate, finding new readers year after year. Beloved Birkenstocks Bite the Dust, for example, has a life of its own, as do a few others. 

As you can see, I have not gone viral in any sense of the word. Still, I no longer fear, when I post something, that no one will read it.  Over the years, I've learned that I do care about having readers and feeling that a connection has been made. Comments are a bonus, even though the majority occur on Facebook, where I usually create a link to my blog.
If you're a regular reader, thank you from the very bottom of my trembling little heart. It means a lot that you've stuck with me.