While adventuring along the Skalkaho Road (Route 38) Rose Hip season is in full swing. That means, it’s time to harvest and process all these beautiful end of summer/beginning of autumn fruits. For further reading, I’m going to refer readers over to this article on processing Rose Hips on The Spruce.
Rose hips were one of my grandmother’s favorite foods. My grandmother was the daughter of a feminist, progressive “woman’s doctor” in the Deep South (Alabama). She told me a story once about how the blood and other body fluids from miscarriages and complicated births were used to feed/fertilize her family’s rose bushes while they were cleaning the surgical delivery suite in the family’s basement. Traditionally, especially in the South, human blood and animal blood was used as fertilizer for roses. You can find instructions on using blood meal to fertilize your rose bushes here.
I could go into great detail about the religious and spiritual significance around the use of blood to fertilize rose bushes that would then be used to grow and harvest the eventual resulting rose hips from the flowers. There is something truly beautiful about this cycle of life and connectedness between the earth and this particular food, especially as we enter a season where “the veil thins.”
A word of advice: if you collect wild rose hips soak them in water overnight unless you like extra protein. Use a slotted spoon to lift them from the water. You’ll see the grubbies at the bottom of the container. Pour this out, or strain them out.
I’ll add another update with preparations of rose hips including tea, jam, and cordial soon. I need to go back out and collect more rose hips before I can write about these preparation processes, specifically the cordial.
What seasonal foraging foods do you like hunting for in autumn? Are there any family favorites? Any traditions?
This piece of prose is meant to serve a dual purpose: provide a life update and artistically reflect on 2020.
Have you heard of this thing? It’s called, “Slow Food.”
I shake my head. “Isn’t that cooking?”
“No, no. Not like that.” Judgmental tuts put me in my place.
People are always waiting to tell other people they’re breathing the wrong way because it isn’t the way they learned how to breathe.
I stare at my ceiling as my partner falls asleep. “Is my food meant to be causing constipation?” What is meant by slow? Sounds uncomfortable.
2020 distorts time like light passing through water and glass – the concentrated pockets brighten momentarily, but fade into the surrounding textures and patterns. I’m reminded of Bay Time – of a place in my past that no longer exists – when waking up during the blue hour meant a circuit of nets and crab pots, checking juvenile oyster baskets for conchs as they float tethered and returning by mid-morning on a clear day – when our family’s laughter sparkled off the water for hours as we chattered and picked steamed crab from exoskeletons. Hand-packed. Frozen. Thawed. Remembered.
Did I remember to respond to those emails last week? What about those interview questions I was going to write? What is Slow Food?
I create daily menus as my partner’s coworkers abandon ship for economic mirages. The grass is always greener… says the cow chewing cud.
What started as a chance to write 6 books turns into 6 unfinished books and 4 shelved ones. No one reads this. Why would anyone want to? Is there a world where my words matter?
“No, no. Not like that.” Say the rejections I receive.
I search for staff writing and editing positions at places that might acknowledge and apologize for microaggressions. Where I would feel safe bringing them up. I try to imagine a writing position where I could continue to find growth. I take two weeks off wondering if they’ve realized I’m the only staff editor they didn’t acknowledge the birthday of yet.
“No, no. Not like that.” Says the writing group I try out, but don’t feel comfortable going back to after the group leader says those that are talented at writing fiction are narcissists… after she compliments my ability to write fiction.
I read antique poetry books for inspiration and tell myself I’ll finish A Hundred Different Skies. I’ll finish at least one to be sure. But no one will read it. Why would they? Not even my family supports me anymore.
I stop getting on Twitter after our friend dies. He’s not the first death this year. My heart hurts. I’m told to take care of myself, but in isolation it’s not that simple. The words don’t come when I try to talk about the brick building on Poquoson Ave. I begin seriously considering mortuary school again.
“Have you tried Slow Food?”
“Isn’t that cooking?” I stare at these pages of unpolished text.
I lose a close friend to schizophrenia. She creates 15+ phone numbers and iMessage accounts to call and harass me about how I am the grey goo in her computer — about how I knew about the people living in her walls — about how the literary magazine I gave her in Summer 2018 predicted all of this. I try not to dwell on wedding pictures. My voicemail box fills regularly to the point my doctors can’t get ahold of me.
For the first summer since undergrad I lose count of the number of times I’ve been camping. This feels like the correct number of times. I start to wish I didn’t have to go home and find myself learning how to do seasonal prepping of food for the winter. I already knew.
“Have you tried Slow Food?”
“Isn’t that cooking?” My entire life has changed, but I haven’t found a new normal. Nothing is normal, and the only thing “slow” is Schrödinger’s Time in this box of a year trying to tell me everything is both fine and not fine at the same time.
But “No, no. Not like that,” says the world as it spins madly on.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my writing today. If you enjoyed this piece, please like, comment, and/or share it. This helps me know which posts my readers enjoy the most.
At any given time the major cities around the globe are lit up on the Twitter activity heat map. They don’t sleep, but you’ll see after 5 PM things start to get busier for countries that run on a Monday through Friday work schedule.
For those of you losing your minds over that last statement, there are, in fact, countries that don’t run on the stereotypical Western work week. While I would love to get into how this is a detail I have yet to see a single author include while writing about these cultures, for now I will link the Wikipedia article here.
One of the great things about Twitter is that we can use it as an analytical tool to see what people are talking about across the globe and where they are having these thoughts exploding out of their brains and into a space limited to 260 characters.
So let’s go on an exploration of where the world is having deep thoughts reduced to hashtags/keywords using the free analytics tool One Million Tweet Map. I do recommend everyone to have fun and repeat this with hashtags and keywords you’ve selected. Please pick more positive/silly words than I did. I’m still questioning why I went the serious route. If you do repeat this, please tell me about it in the comments!
As a few notes before we begin, I took these map samples at a few different times to try and get the most interesting maps I could to then research what the related current events in the countries lighting up could be.
A Quick Survey
1. #covid19
Source: https://onemilliontweetmap.com/ at 3:52 PM US MT with search inclusive of all tweets using #coronavirus #covid19 #pandemic #covid #virus #socialdistancing #stayhome #corona #quarantine #lockdown
The coronavirus global pandemic is in full swing with the second wave commencing.
Top 5 countries tweeting about this are:
United States – well this one makes sense. The pandemic hasn’t calmed down much here. Our case growth rate has increased to 2% (at the time of writing) from when we had it down to just under 1% for that brief glimmer of hope amount of time… before everyone who doesn’t understand how disease transmission and eradication decided it was time to “go back to normal” without sufficient social structures and a Health Belief Model in place to protect everyone – specifically the most vulnerable members of our population.
India – Currently holding at a 2.3% mortality rate, India has 1.5 million cases compared to 4.5 million in the United States. To put this in perspective, the population of India is 1.35 billion and the population of the United States is 327 million. It’s coming up in the news because, much like other disease outbreaks in India, the populations most impacted are directly linked to socioeconomic stratification. This is drawing media attention.
Australia – Economic news out of Australia tells a different story compared to the rest of the world. Expecting contraction and deflation, Australia expects only a 5% decrease in GDP. But that isn’t the whole story. Large numbers of Australians are unemployed and underemployed and others predict that Australia is approaching a fiscal cliff.
I’m going out on a limb here and saying people are talking about New Zealand for reasons that have not that much actually having to do with events going on in New Zealand… Just a hunch… After looking at articles and deciding they were too depressing to list here.
United Kingdom – It appears that there is a national food strategy for combatting shortages. This is stirring up some conversation about the resilience of supply chains and commerce. Some are worried that Brexit will make matters worse as record numbers of individuals in the UK can no longer afford food.
It’s helpful to think about the world beyond our own individual experiences. We cannot live in a society where we think about everything with ourselves at the center of our personal universes. It is important to instead consider the experiences of those elsewhere – places we have never seen and may never see in our lifetimes. We are all interconnected and nothing we do exists in a bubble. Nothing.
Go forth and search for more positive things. I will try to do the same.
Thank you so much for reading my post today. If you enjoyed it, please like, comment, and/or share. This helps me know which posts my readers prefer and can help me cater future content.
