Hello!
My mind is boggling at the fact that it’s nearly Summer Solstice. My wife and I will have been married for a year-and-a-half (exactly) as of ten days from now. Tomorrow night, I’ll be cooking our first Bunny Of The Month Club rabbit – I’ll be consulting the Joy of Cooking on that front, I think – and probably doing it in the cast iron Dutch Oven (the one I used to cook last week’s Fabulous Friday braised pork shoulder roast in) with mushrooms, rhubarb, onions, chunks of parsnip and potato… but I’m not sure what-all else. We’ll probably eat it with a vidal and I’ll do a rhubarb pie for dessert.
It’s… strange. It doesn’t feel like Midsummer.
Maybe that’s the stormy weather we’ve been having lately, with its overcast skies and chilly, wet winds. Or maybe (likely) it’s the fears that I’m living with about money and employment.
Rhubarb Moon is supposed to be “everything’s coming up roses”. All hope and expansion and great sex, all rocketing towards fruitfulness and first harvests. All that stuff that one started working towards back in February, all the dreams that one planted and started cultivating at Spring Equinox and through Beltane, those are supposed to be moving – fairly clearly – towards fruition of one sort or another.
While I realize that “supposed to be” is a phrase at-which the gods, generally speaking, probably laugh their asses off, it’s still kind of sitting heavily with me that nothing that I planted is doing much of anything. Not that I’ve been “planting” very much.
Our chest freezer remains in the storage locker – which means no CSAs this year (again); the ritual group that I joined has… not done a whole lot (I need to get in touch with people and suggest that we do an afternoon Thing instead of an evening one, this time, as I suspect it’ll work out a bit better). The presentation I made in February – a sort of “Where do we go from here?” discussion with area LGBTQ Service Providers – has lead to me getting downsized so that I’m spending my “coming to fruition” time looking for new sources of income/employment. Our casual search for a less buggy, yard-posessing place to live has, so far, turned up fairly fruitless… and that’s not the whole of it.
You can imagine that things are feeling a little bit stressful and a little bit demoralizing at the moment.
Which doesn’t mean that there’s no hope, and it doesn’t mean that there are no Nice Things to be had.
The serviceberries are ripening all over the neighbourhood. In 2-3 weeks (right around the time that Serviceberry Moon starts) I’ll be able to stroll through my neighbourhood and pick bags of sweet, purple tree berries to freeze, eat fresh, and turn into jams and chutneys and pies as I will. A neighbour up the street passed me a big handful of Vietnamese Garlic (the same stuff that I use to make asparagus relish[1]) and I was able to make pizza[2] for the first time – it was such a hit that I’ll probably start making it on a semi-frequent, regular basis[4]. This weekend, my lovely with and I are going to a 12-hour telling of The Iliad – which will be thoroughly awesome – and then, a week later, I’m visiting my Aunties and picking up a gorgeous antique cabinet (heirloom – otherwise we’d never be able to swing it) to bring home[5]. I might even have a chance at a part-time job for a month or two (or six) depending on how things go. Fingers crossed. 🙂
So all is not lost, as they say. 🙂
Where are you finding hope and joy at this time?
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
[1] I’ll post the recipe in a bit, if I haven’t already.
[2] The dough was just some extra bread-dough that I had lying around – not quite enough to make a third loaf, but enough to be a pizza crust, so I went with it. I used some of my roasted-garlic balsamic tomato sauce for the sauce – just as-is – and added some of the above-mentioned home-made (vegan) pesto[3] along with dollops of labneh (accidental yoghurt-cheese), button mushrooms, rounds of turkey sausage, and some discounted “cooking mozzarella” that I picked up (with the mushrooms and sausages) from the store.
[3] Basically, you take 3 cups (ish) of garlic chives (AKA Vietnamese Garlic) and chuck it in a food processor with a quarter cup of oil, a quarter cup of crumbled walnuts, 2 tbsp nutritional yeast, 1 tbsp cider vinegar, and a pinch of salt, and then you puree the heck out of it. I froze the first batch, and then made a half-batch to put on the pizza. It works! 😀
[4] In the same way that our Bunny of the Month will likely be eating on, or near, the Full Moon, I may do a monthly Pizza Night that happens on, or near, the New Moon (that’s amore?), in the interests of marking these recurring events with recognizable foods. My lovely wife has suggested doing pizza using chutney – like rhubarbicue sauce, for example – and roast turkey or pork (or chicken). I kinda love this idea as it would be a way of acknowledging the Lunar Cycle in a very literal way: Serviceberry Moon might be begun/marked with a pizza topped with serviceberry chutney (in lieu of tomato sauce), a layer of whole grape leaves (or shredded other greens), chunks of chicken or turkey, halved baby tomatoes (or not), and a sprinkling of fresh (or dried) sage and thyme. Thunder Moon might involve tomato sauce, sure, but couple it with slivers of zucchini, chunks of tomato, whole squash blossoms, and fresh basil, with corn meal added to the crust. Apple moon might use apple butter (very sweet) for the sauce, and include barbicued pork, raw cranberries, slivers of onion, and shredded kale or nappa… You get the idea, I’m sure. 😉
[5] At least that’s the plan. It’ll go (some way, some how) in our Living Room and be used to hold either leatherworking supplies OR fibre and chandalry supplies & various oils and essential oils.
Urban Meliad 