What is it about August? There is something romantic, deep and residing about August. Historically, August days are usually sort of hot and dry and viscerally,  meant for reflection and just lolly gagging in general. A great month for the taking of summer vacations. June and July are usually having an identity crisis…are we summer or are we not? But August knows. August feels like deep inspiration and wisdom. August reminds me of a prophet warning us that autumn is on the cusp and take advantage of these lazy hazy crazy days now. Take time to watch the sunrise. Take time to soak up the heat. Take time to let your toes play in the grass, the breeze, the sand or the water. Let your hair blow in the wind…don’t take yourself or life too seriously in August. Get lost in a great story. Don’t think about September at all. Just live in the moment. Get married. Have a baby. Visit your great aunt and have tea on the porch. Swing. Water the flowers. This is not a time for cleaning the basement or painting the living room or doing a financial audit. It’s a time to have afternoon naps or pick berries and make pies. It’s a time to go fishing. Summertime and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high…. Put away all the trappings of the city and the hustle and bustle and slow down. Slow waaaay down. Listen to the birds and the crickets and the frogs. Listen to the night sounds as you lay on top of your sheets with the windows open and the fans whirring in the background. Better yet…sleep outside on the porch or the deck or the dock. Pick flowers – fill your surroundings with the sweet smell and luscious color of bunches of blooms. Paint…write…quilt on the porch. Wave to passersby. August doesn’t require hosiery, belts, stilettos or ties. Wrap yourself in flowing cool white linen or cotton and hide under a great big brim. Get out the lemonade and sip slowly savoring every drop. August is a time for abiding…abiding with our favorite peeps, abiding with the Lord, abiding with what is. Living in the moment. It’s a time of preserving. Whether its fresh fruit or fresh friendships…..preserve. It’s a time for deep meaningful growth. What you do in August will live with you for the rest of the year. It will sustain you during the hard, cold, busy winter season. August is wisdom and healing and restoration.

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I did not want to get out of bed today. The sky was overcast and I could feel the cool breeze blowing through the bedroom. I told myself it was too ugly for walking. It just felt so fine to lay under the covers and realize that I could do anything I wanted. Get up, not get up. Go for a walk, don’t go for a walk. I could just pull the covers back on and lay there to my hearts content. It was my choice. No one was expecting anything from me at all. I argued with myself for about an hour after Mike left for work. Sometimes we just need a good lazy day. How many times, when I was working, did I just long to stay in bed and hide from the world and all it’s responsibilities and expectations and harshness? I was now in a position to do just that.

But…. I dutifully forced myself to put feet on the floor, walk upright, because that’s just the kind of gal I am. I’m a creature of duty and guilt. I quickly made the bed, adjusting the sheets, duvet and cushions to perfection, lest I crawl back in. I sauntered down the stairs to the kitchen just to make sure I was fully awake and fully alive. Then I unlocked the patio door and wandered out onto the deck and then the lawn. I wanted to make sure I would not talk myself into returning to my comfy lazy safe bed.

I did some putzing around the house, rounding up a load of laundry to match one item. Did the dishes that miraculously appeared in the sink overnight. Ironed a top that I wasn’t planning on wearing today, I just wanted it to be ready when I did get the urge to wear it. Checked my emails, Instagram and Facebook. Made my daughters bed just because. I was stalling. What I really needed to do was slip (and by slip, I mean wrestle) into my lulus and joggers and hit the pavement.

I decided to treat myself and drive to the reservoir for my walk. I get tired of walking through the neighborhood critiquing people’s lawns and backyards. I needed to get into nature. Be surrounded by mountains or trees and water so I drove myself to the reservoir. I parked my car at the shopping centre bordering the reservoir and began my workout.

It was still partly overcast and windy and sporadically chilly. Looked like rain but I just tied my rain jacket with hood around my waist and set out. It wasn’t long before my eyes caught side of some purple wildflowers blowing in the long marshy grass along the trail. As I made my way at a decent clip along the path, I was passed by bikers and joggers. The paddle wheel boat from the park across the reservoir was out on the water blowing its horn. I kept walking until I rounded the corner to the sailing school. A perfect day for learning to sail. I took pictures and videos so I could rewatch these calming moments. Watching those crisp white sails shooting across the waves speaks to me of purpose and destination. Of skill and fearlessness. Of clarity and resolve.

I kept on. Past sailing students enjoying a BBQ lunch. Past some leaves already yellowing on August 4th. Past an elderly lady sunning herself with eyes closed on a memorial bench. Until I had completed the loop where I entered the path. I hadn’t been walking long enough so I paused to decide if I would go further or succomb to the call of Starbucks. I decided to go the extra mile (literally) because that’s the kind of gal I am. I pressed on. Past larger private sail boats moored in the water, moms with strollers, old couples with hats, holding hands, until I reached the Heritage Park end of the trail. That’s not actually the end of the trail but it was as far as I was going. I turned back, glad I’d made the effort. One deliberate choice after another.

Always feeling accomplished when I make the effort.  I know it’s good for me but maybe laying in bed until noon, just because I can would be good for me too?

 

 

 

 

 

Just reflecting recently on all the years, when the kids were school age, that I canned everything in sight. I filled my freezer with fall harvest. I can still visualize the vibrantly colourful shelf in the laundry room made so as a result of the neatly lined up mason jars filled with peaches, pears, cherries, pickles, pickled beets, homemade salsa and spaghetti sauce. The freezer bulging with homemade apple pies, frozen blueberries, saskatoons, strawberries, rhubarb and raspberries. I blanched and froze corn-on-the-cob. We bought sides of beef from a friends brothers cattle farm and roasting chickens from the Hutterites. We were set for the long cold winter. I always found such satisfaction, purpose and joy preparing whole, healthy food for my family. Proverbs 31:14-15 still reverberates in my conscious. ‘She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still night; she provides food for her family.”

I have fond memories of doing exactly that. Waking up while it was still night. 5:00 am. To get ready to go wait in line at Heritage Park with wagons and carts, to purchase fresh produce at rock bottom prices. We stopped first at Starbucks and then off to get a decent parking spot at the park. We laughed and joked and made designs in the air with our breath. The chill of fall nipping at our noses this early in the morning. When the gates of the park were finally opened wide, it was as if the people just fell in as a result of leaning on them. It was a mad rush for case lots of apples, peaches and corn and all other marvelous food fresh from the earth.

This harvest trip usually resulted in getting together with a friend the following weekend to spend a Saturday making salsa. I was always excited to have my house smell like an Italian restaurant (even though salsa is technically Mexican). We always made sure we had plenty of taco chips on hand so we could feast on the rich warm tomatoey substance before we filled all the jars. The aroma filled the kitchen and permeated my hair (as I found out in the shower). I could smell the salsa in the steam emanating from the water as it ran through my hair.

I felt like such a farm wife and I loved it. I had a very similar feeling yesterday when I decided to drive out to the Saskatoon farm to pick a few buckets of berries. The drive out was gorgeous. The rolling hills, ranch fences and fields of green and yellow lined with trees were layered in hazy tones of green and blue. It was going to be a hot one. I tried to arrive right on the dot of 9:00 when the farm opened its gates but wasn’t standing in front of my first Saskatoon bush until 10:30. The lady at the register informed me that I might have to go deeper into the orchard to find bushes still ripe with berries as these were the last days of the Saskatoon harvest. But I stopped at the first section of Saskatoons I saw and was amazed at how many awesome branches of berries had been  overlooked by previous pickers and I  set out to fill my first bucket. If it was too hot and buggy and sparse my goal was just one bucket. I found branches loaded with perfect purple and wine berries towards the middle of the bushes and low to the ground where they weren’t as obvious. I had a full bucket in no time and I was enjoying myself immensely.

As I listened to other mothers who brought their children along to pick I was reminded of the time I brought my own kids along to pick berries. They were not enthusiastic. It was the hottest day of the summer if I remember correctly and we were out at midday. There were bugs and it was hard work. All I heard was complaining. I think I finally has to bribe them to fill a bucket and I’m pretty sure that neither of them were even that fond of Saskatoon berries.

Yesterday I could hear one very patient and loving mom, on the other side of my aisle, instructing her toddler, Maria, on the perfect color of berry to pick and to get the ones close to the ground. All the while the mother kept saying to Maria ‘isn’t berry picking fun?’ and Maria agreed. Smart mom. Next time she says she is going berry picking Maria will probably cry if she doesn’t get to come. Soon after they left I heard another mom with a couple of little boys picking and talking to them. At one point the older brother wondered up to his mom and she asked where Jacob was and he said ‘Jacobs in the next row and he’s taken off his shorts and underwear’ and the mother set her pail down and ran to find Jacob and redress him. I was glad I hadn’t brought children along.

I filled my first bucket so quickly I decided to get another bucket for mom. It wasn’t really that quick but I was enjoying myself so….I did not realize the sun was burning a design on my back exactly the outline of my racerback tank top. The white portion of my white and black espadrilles was filthy as was I. But I just kept picking. The activity of picking berries made me feel like all was well with the world. I mean, I had time to pick berries. And clearly didn’t have any other crisis preventing me from doing so. I found it quite cathartic actually. It was reminiscent of the cotton plantations and the pickers singing to make the work go by. Not that I was there but I’ve seen a lot of movies. I know what they are referring to when they talk about back breaking work but no problem, I’m married to a back healer.

Once I had filled two buckets I tore myself away and proceeded to pay for my berries. At this point one is very possessive of ‘their’ berries. I was extremely grateful when the gal at the checkout tied a bag around each of my buckets easing my nervousness at spilling the lot.

Saskatoon berries are very near and dear to the hearts of my mom, myself and my siblings. The morning of my dad’s fatal heart attack he had been out on a walk around the reservoir and had picked a handful of Saskatoons to show mom they were ready for picking, with the intention of going back later that day to get enough for a pie. He returned home and showed mom the berries and that was his last act. As therapy, in the days following his memorial,  we all ended up at the reservoir picking Saskatoons and making pies and reminiscing about our dear father. Saskatoons still remind me of dad.

Once home I washed the berries and sorted them to remove the shrivelled ones and pieces of sticks and branches, not to mention spiders. I measured them into bags and placed them in the freezer. I think I’m getting the bug again. Now I want to can peaches.

After days and days of heat, when no one much feels like eating or cooking, even I was starting to get hangry. I decided I’d give roasted corn and tomato salad a whirl. It looked very enticing and healthy on my favorite authors Instagram feed. As it so happens she was featured in the last Magnolia magazine and shared the very same recipe. You can get most of the ingredients at the farmers market making it a natural summertime choice. And healthy too. So after I picked up a couple of things at the market and a drink at Starbucks,  I slipped into something cool topped off with my favorite red plaid apron, turned on the music and set my mind and hands to making some delectable food.

You’re actually  supposed to roast corn on the cob and then shave the kernels off but I cheated and bought frozen corn and sautéed it. I tossed cherry tomatoe halves into my favorite salad bowl along with some roasted cauliflower bits, green onion, cilantro, feta cheese crumbles , salt and pepper and of course, the corn. A treat for the taste buds and a feast for the soul. Thought I’d toss together another whole 30 greek salad as Lexie and I like to have that at the ready. We douse both salads with our default dressing -olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette and mustard. For optimum health we needed to injest some protein so I grilled some chicken breasts in my grill press for that BBQ flavor and we gathered round for some scrumptious hot weather sustenance.

I was on a summer menu roll so I decided to make some fresh peach pie and while I was at it, why not some homemade lemon ice cream? The tartness of the lemon perfectly complimenting the sweetness of the peach pie. Just slicing up the peaches was a gift for the senses. The scent of peach as well as the ombré color from the pit outwards. I cooked this into my own pie filling and filled the crusted pie plate to over flowing with the bright orange concoction. Nothing I like better than to play with my pie crust and invent unique designs for the top crust.

I grated the rind off four lemons and then juiced the lemons, using both juice and lemon rind in my ice cream. Working with lemons is so refreshing. I end up with about 1 cup of lemon juice and that seems to be just the right amount of tartness and color. We were invited out for dinner the next evening so a perfect chance to share our spoils with friends. Actually I just had another taste of the lemony goodness and am tempted not to share anymore but I will, as this is real food, full fat ice cream and I don’t want to be wearing it in the weeks to come.

Spending an evening putzing around in my kitchen creating nourishment for my family is extremely cathartic and satisfying. I guess you could say cooking is one of my hobbies and life’s loves. Putting separate ingredients together, that would not taste good alone, and churning out something delicious and nutritious is my  kind of magic.