Day Twenty-Three: Paint and Chlorophyll

Today was warm, springy, and busy.

I had two meetings for work. The first was in the morning, and I wandered around my yard weeding while on the phone. It’s a confusing time at work, not really knowing how best to help farmers. I pulled up chickweed and grass from around my strawberries and radishes as I listened to my coworkers try to figure things out, contributing an observation or two, but mostly feeling powerless. One thing this crisis highlights is how important it really is to be a low-input farmer, not dependent on factory fertilizers and chemicals. When everything shuts down, it’s important to be self-reliant and have very short supply chains, like farmers used to. But how to pivot back to that so suddenly? When farmers already are operating on the slimmest of margins, if not operating in the red? That’s quite a quandary and not one to be solved quickly.

Jeremy took the kids and Daisy for a long walk along the creek while I was on the phone. They came back an hour later with walking sticks, rosy cheeks, and stories. Daisy had a long drink of water and flopped down for a nap.

I had gotten two more loaves of bread started while they were gone. I followed the instructions more carefully this time, getting the order of ingredients to be added correct. I got a little experimental with one loaf, and folded in dried cranberries and pecans. My impatience with the proofing, though, resulted in the loaves splitting on the side. Still delicious, nothing tragic, but Paul Hollywood would have shaken his head at them. Next time, I’ll let them rise longer.

I had another meeting at noon, and then after that I focused on the kids. We got out some paints, and they gleefully made colorful dots and circles and squiggles for a while, before moving on to painting their hands and making hand prints. Then Taiya painted her whole arm, then did some face-painting, then she decided it should probably be bath time. She was becoming a lot more purple than was natural in a girl. 

Baths have become recreational around here. I filled up their metal tubs and they played in the water for quite a while, squirting each other, throwing bubbles at each other, squirting Daisy in the mouth, getting pruney. While they were occupied in their baths, I made hummus, roasted cauliflower, and put together another dinner based around sourdough bread. Bread slices, hummus, carrots, cauliflower, cheese, cold smoked meat, and the red clover sprouts that I had been rinsing to life all week. We sat outside in the late day sun eating and chatting.

Dinner times have felt so much more relaxed since we started staying home. Before, Jeremy and Taiya got home at four-thirty every day and Jeremy made dinner. William and I got home at five-thirty or six, dumped all our stuff on the floor, and sat right down to eat. Usually the kids had snacked and weren’t hungry, and they’d pop out of their seats every two minutes to fiddle around, and we’d just rush through it so we could move on to the next thing. Now, it’s a nice time to all come together again, without the rush, without the frantic school-week work-week energy. Some days we (we adults, mostly) feel a little harried by dinner time, but today it felt quite Mediterranean. If only we were looking out over a sea.

Taiya and William decided to watch Frozen 2 again after dinner. I want to make sure I write down every time they watch that movie while we’re stuck at home so someday I can go back and tally their Frozen 2 count. I think that will be a funny metric to look back on. Jeremy and I sat on the porch, discussing the day, the current state of affairs in the world and on the home front. We still know that the worst is yet to come in our region, and it is like being in a bad dream where everything moves like molasses and you know things are bad but can’t do anything to stop it. 

So what do we do? We wait, and try to not waste energy stressing out. We offer whatever help we can from a distance. We laugh with each other. We take in the beautiful moments as they come. Right now, the leaves are pouring out of the trees, the forest turning from grays, browns, and deep mossy greens to the bright, light, fluttery green of spring. My favorite form of meditation, or therapy, or whatever you want to call it, is what I call chlorophyll therapy. This involves nothing more than sitting in a nice spot or lying in the hammock and staring off into green, leafy space. Try it, and you'll see it's a powerful way to unravel brain-knots. I have a feeling I’ll be practicing a lot of chlorophyll therapy in the next few months. Thank goodness it’s spring.