On Sunday morning, at about 11, I was weeding the meadow and Rob was loading the weedeater with some new string when we saw Famke leading her kittens out of the garage, their cozy, messy (temporary) home. We knew she was taking them on one …
In my last blog post, I mentioned that my sweet stray-cat friend Famke had had kittens and that she’d hidden them somewhere in our yard. At that time, about a month ago now, I was wishing that Famke would trust me enough to show her …
I’ve been eating a lot of baked oatmeal lately. It’s so satisfying and easy to make that I decided I’d share the recipe with you. Of course, this meant that I needed to get a blog-worthy picture of oatmeal, a tall order.
I did the photo shoot on Saturday morning, heading out early, before it was even quite light, to set up the scene. The air was refreshingly cool at this early hour as I squatted among the oxeye sunflowers by the breezeway, tinkering with china plates and my vintage orange-juice set painted with oranges, trying to get everything just right. Pretty soon, Famke, my little stray-cat friend, joined me. I went inside to get her some Fancy Feast, and in a moment she was nibbling and purring beside me. She’s so cute, probably only about nine months old, dainty, with a tiny pink nose and tiny pink mouth. She’s white with silver tabby splotches. On Monday or maybe in the wee hours of Tuesday, she had kittens. They were hidden somewhere, and I hadn’t seen them yet.
I kept fiddling with my photo props, squatting near the little table I was using and moving a plate or a glass a fraction of an inch. When Famke was done eating, she came and stood very close to me so that her warm side was touching my thigh. She purred and rubbed against me.
Then another friend entered the scene. Shelby, my favorite box turtle! She’s small, very petite, a yellow stripe running down the center of her shell. Her face is sunny yellow and always has a little smile! I rushed inside to get her some organic blueberries. She ate those, even though I was right there, watching. She wasn’t scared of me. But what she was really interested in was Famke’s cat food (Famke hadn’t quite finished it). I went inside to get her some more blueberries, and when I came back out she was stuck in/on Famke’s bowl! She was truly stuck, her head in the bowl and her butt on the edge of the bowl. She was flailing all her limbs, including her adorable little tail. She was flailing them in the air, trying in vain to get out of her predicament.
“Oh, no! Shelby!” I cried. And I rescued her from the bowl. She started eating the new blueberries I’d just fetched.
I made a mental note to serve Famke’s cat food on a plate from now on, just to prevent any more mishaps with turtles, and to try to remove the food as soon as Famke is done eating. Turtles shouldn’t be eating cat food. I’m sure it’s not healthy for them.
Later, I told my sister Bunny about Shelby getting stuck.
“She was flailing her little . . . “
“Oh, her little flippers?” Bunny said.
“Yes!” I said. “It was sad but so cute. She was even moving her little tail! She was trying every tool at her disposal to help herself get out of that pickle.”
“Luckily you were there to save her,” Kris, my other sister, said.
Anyway, after rescuing Shelby, I went back to taking pictures of my baked oatmeal as Shelby ate her blueberries and Famke rubbed against my thigh. Then Famke ran off. I kept taking picture after picture because I wasn’t satisfied with the lighting. I kept hoping a sunbeam would hit the little table and add some razzle dazzle to my shot. (None ever did.) I was snapping away when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was Famke with something in her mouth! A little gray fuzzy ball! It was one of her kittens!
She was coming toward me with a kitten! But as soon as I realized what was going on, she froze, then turned around and started running away! By the time I got to my feet, she was gone and I couldn’t find her.
I think she had wanted to show me her kitten but then got scared and changed her mind. I had to leave (I was going shopping in Monticello with Mom, Kris, and Bun), but I was so excited and happy. As soon as I got home, I’d find her kittens, I thought. I’d spend time with Famke and take care of her and she’d show them to me.
The morning had been so wonderful and so eventful. I love going outside very early, when the air is still cool and fresh. The early morning is a magical time in the yard, and I’d felt marvelously un-lonely hanging out with my little friends Famke and Shelby.
I was terribly excited about Famke’s kittens. All day I was extra giddy, because . . . because I felt I’d been witness to a miracle—a kitten, a brand-new being, a precious thing. I was full of awe at the great mystery of birth. And I felt special because Famke had trusted me and had been about to show her kitten to me until she got scared. I made happy plans to win her full trust.
Anyway, it was the most delightful few hours out in the yard. It set the tone for my whole day. When I got to Mom’s house (where we were all meeting before going to Monticello), I announced, “Oh, my gosh, you will not believe the sh*t I’ve been getting into this morning!”
Oh, well, here’s the recipe for the oatmeal:
Ingredients:
3 very ripe bananas
1 cup almond milk
1 tablespoon melted coconut oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups rolled oats
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup sliced almonds or chopped walnuts
2 cups fresh blueberries
Directions:
Mash the bananas in a large bowl. Then add the almond milk, coconut oil, and vanilla and stir to combine. In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients—the oats, flaxseed, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, and nuts. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and combine. Then stir in the blueberries. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan and pour the mixture in. Bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees.
For the last month or so, I’ve been spending all my free time painting this picture of my teddy bear Lisa posing by the meadow garden. The whole process was so much fun! For two or three hours every day after work (and longer on …
After years of dreaming and planning, Rob and I recently had a new brick patio and paths installed in our backyard. The work was done by Mark Clark Construction and, boy, did Mark and his team do a great job! The patio and paths are …
Last Friday I took the day off work and made blackberries and biscuits for breakfast. I whipped up the biscuits using this lovely recipe from Holy Cow Vegan, then topped them with a warm blackberry sauce containing no added sugar.
The sauce got me feeling nostalgic. When I was little, Mom, Kris (my sister), and I would go blackberry picking in a vacant lot in our Tallahassee neighborhood. We’d ride our bikes there and fill old coffee cans with ripe berries, which grew wild in the sun.
The vacant lot was a sprawling, hot, brambly place, bordered on one side by a shady, quiet dirt road. The road and the lot were always deserted. Mom, Kris, and I would be the only people anywhere around. As we picked, we’d sing to scare the snakes away—”She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” “Goodnight, Irene,” and hymns we knew from church.
We weren’t supposed to eat the berries while we picked; we were supposed to save them for a pie. But I never had any self-control; I always ate a ton. Luckily Mom was really disciplined and good at picking (she grew up on a farm), so we ended up with plenty—at least one full coffee can. With the coffee cans perched in Mom’s bike basket, we’d ride back home. Then Mom would stir up some limeade to cool us off, and we’d start in on our baking. In addition to the big, main pie, we always made some little hand pies that Kris and I were allowed to eat right away, as soon as they came out of the oven. The hand pies were half-moon shaped and topped with glittering sugar.
Blackberry-picking days were some of the best days of my childhood summers, and eating blackberry-topped biscuits now, fifty years later, brought them back to life for me. Instead of having just one chilly Friday off of work, I felt like I was in the middle of a long, leisurely summer vacation.
Ingredients:
16 ounces frozen blackberries
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon agave nectar, optional
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 cup water
1 tablespoon vegan butter, melted
Directions:
Place the blackberries in a saucepan, then add the lemon juice and agave nectar. Cook on medium heat for a couple of minutes. Mix the cornstarch and water together and add it to the blackberries. Simmer on low heat for about 8 minutes, or until the sauce thickens. At the very end, stir in the melted butter.
Last weekend I helped my yard wake up from its long winter’s nap. I swept thick layers of leaves off the paths, did hours of pruning, pulled up loads of winter weeds, and planted pink and white dianthus around my three stone birdbaths near the …
On Saturday morning, I baked some sugar-free vegan banana bread. It was so good—mildly, pleasantly sweet due solely to the bananas, and nice and hearty and filling because it was made with whole-wheat flour. “It’s really good with butter on it,” Rob said. “Yeah,” I …
On Sunday, Rob and I put up our Christmas tree! As we worked, we listened to Christmas music (and the thunder and rain) and chatted about our childhood Christmas memories.
“We’d always put up our tree on a Friday night,” I said. “Back then, a Christmas tree lot was so festive that picking out the tree was a big part of the fun. The lot would be lit with strings of white lights, the trees standing tall, in rows, as if they were still alive and growing in a forest far up north. A fire blazed in a metal barrel, and Kris and I would run around and play in the shadowy, fragrant Christmas tree forest, dressed in our pajamas and winter coats.”
“The people selling the trees were always from Michigan or Minnesota or someplace like that,” Rob said. “They’d grown the trees themselves and hauled them down to Florida. You’d find that out because your dad or somebody would strike up a conversation.”
“I know!” I said. “The tree people were always from the North—from the North Pole, it seemed to me. I thought they might even know Santa, that they were in league with him somehow, kind of like the elves.”
“Yeah,” Rob said. “There was something magical about them, the way they appeared so suddenly at Christmastime . . . and disappeared just as fast.”
“We always chose a cedar tree,” I said, “because that’s the kind of tree Dad had as a boy in North Carolina. A cedar tree makes a really nice Christmas tree. It has a sort of delicate, ethereal, fairy-like quality, especially when you’re really liberal with the icicles.”
“I think we always had a Scotch pine,” Rob said.
“Kris and I always named our tree,” I went on. “And talked to her every day. And tried to plant her in the yard in January, even though she had no roots. And then she’d inevitably turn brown and fall over and I’d cry and cry.”
As we talked and decorated, the cats were up to their usual Christmas antics—climbing the tree, batting at ornaments, and napping on the tree skirt. Rob and I hung only tough, unbreakable ornaments, in case our furry friends ended up knocking the tree over.
“It’s too bad we don’t have any treats to eat while we decorate,” I said after we’d been working for several hours. “When you were a kid, did your mom used to serve any fun tree-decorating snacks?”
“We’d usually have Christmas chocolates of some sort,” Rob said. “Maybe some Christmas M&Ms . . .”
“Oh, that sounds good,” I said. “And when you were done decorating, did you go and stand in the street so you could see how the tree would look through the window, to people passing by?”
“Of course,” Rob said.
“It would be so late,” I said, “but we always had to do that, at the end. That was the last step. We’d stand in the street and gaze at the tree glowing through the living-room window and say it was our prettiest tree ever.”
