Lisa by the Meadow
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 …
Author: Leslie Kimel
New Patio and Paths
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 …
Blackberries and Biscuits
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.
Sugar-Free Vegan Blackberry Sauce
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.
Preparing the Yard for Spring
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 …
Sugar-Free Vegan Banana Bread
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 …
Christmas Decorating 2023
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.”
Sugar-Free Vegan Banana-Walnut Muffins
Today I took the day off work and, to celebrate, I made some healthy sugar-free muffins using a recipe I found on The Conscious Plant Kitchen and modified just slightly. I also picked some of our homegrown Meiwa kumquats and enjoyed breakfast out on the …
Slow-Living Sunday
Last Sunday, I had the best day ever, not because anything exciting happened but because of how peaceful I felt in my heart. I played with the cats, polished the furniture, carefully cleaned and rearranged my collection of Fiestaware, and hung a little garland of …
Treasuring October
October is a magical month here in North Florida. The temperatures are pleasant, the leaves and grass are still green, and the meadows, vacant lots, and roadsides are abloom with yellow and purple wildflowers. After the long, hot, hard summer, the world seems fresh and new, and every little thing you do is more fun because the days are so cool and sparkling. Here’s how I’ve been enjoying this awesome time of year:
I made this little felt bat, a Halloween ornament, on a special day off, a Friday. It was so much fun. I got up way before dawn and sat sewing by lamplight in the living room in my pajamas as I watched a dumb Christmas rom-com called Something from Tiffany’s. Meanwhile, Buntin, my devoted tortie, snoozed beside me in a shoebox full of embroidery thread. Of course, she was sleeping on all the colors I wanted to use, and when I tried to very gently fish them out from under her, she growled softly, with her eyes closed. She was so cozy and cute in her little shoebox bed. When I petted her, she nibbled my hand, which is her own way of petting.
I’ve been thrifting and antiquing on my lunch hour. During one of my recent expeditions, I bought this little antique travel desk at Rabbit Creek Market in Tallahassee. I’d had my eye on the desk for many months. When it’s closed, it looks like a plain wooden box, but when you unlock it, it unfolds into an elaborate laptop desk, complete with a leather writing surface and cubbyholes to hold your ink, paper, and other supplies.
Last week I solved a problem in the sunroom that’s been vexing me for years! I could never figure out what to put against the north wall. For a long time I had a little green-painted chair there, but the chair was low and the wall above it looked stark and empty. Well, last Thursday during my lunch hour, I found a neat pagoda-shaped knickknack shelf that I thought I could hang above the chair to fill in the empty space. I rushed home from work that night and hung the shelf, but there was still some awkward emptiness above the chair. Darn. It seemed like the new shelf was a bust. I stared at the wall for a long time, and finally I hit on a solution. I moved a plant stand (with a big fluffy fern on it) under the shelf, against the wall, then placed the low green chair beside it (to the south). The fern and the plant stand did a perfect job of filling in the empty space! I can’t tell you how proud I was of solving this “enormous” problem. I took pictures and bragged and boasted to Rob. Ha ha, I felt like I was on par with Einstein himself!
The high point of the month was the annual Farm Tour. Mom, Bunny (my sister), and I got to tour four local farms on a sunny Saturday. We picked armloads of zinnias at Orchard Pond Organics, and a big bucket of Fuyu persimmons at Perfect Persimmons. We also got to see—and pet and feed—some adorable animals. At Redemptive Love Farm, a rescue farm in Miccosukee, we played with a litter of baby pigs!
“Look at their tiny tails!” Bunny said, delighted.
“And look at their tiny hooves!” I said. “It’s like they’re wearing dainty high-heeled shoes.”
Bunny nodded. “Their spots are so cute.”
“And it’s cute how they like to hang around together,” I said. “See how they’re strolling about the pen with their little sides touching? That’s too cute.”
Bunny agreed.
We also got to spend time with some llama ladies at Redemptive Love. As we walked near the llama enclosure, a beautiful white llama approached us in the funniest fashion. She spied my bag of food with her lovely large black eyes, then ran—fast, gracefully, and noiselessly—toward me, gazing intently at me as she went.
“Strong eye contact,” Bunny chuckled.
The llama ran right up to Bunny and me. She stopped about two inches from our faces. She was taller than we were.
“She’s so pretty!” I exclaimed.
“And kind of intimidating,” Bunny chuckled again.
We ended up falling in love with the llamas. We fell in love with the whole farm.
“Well,” Bunny said, as we walked reluctantly back toward the car at the end of the tour, “I guess this was the best day ever!”