Dear Sunday Letter friends,
Is it just me or did the past week zoom by like a comet? If I didn’t scribble in a journal, I’d have no memory of anything from the past seven days. These days, my memory seems to exists only on paper.
My short term memory, anyway. I have no problem remembering details from forty years ago. I’m pretty sure this is a sign of my “maturity”.
Quietude
Recently on Instagram, my friend Sarah Shotts mentioned she had begun observing #100daysofquietude. Her aim over the next 100 days is to make time for silence and reflection by doing something simple and unplugged from social media. I LOVE this idea so much I decided to add it to my Sunday Letter so we can all commit to quietude.
I’ve long held there’s too much chatter in our world. Too much noise. Too much talking simply for the sake of hearing the sound of one’s own voice.
Every day this past week, I’ve tried to spend a few minutes in quietude whether digging in the dirt, writing, reading, or listening to the birds. One warm, breezy afternoon, I even took a short nap on the back porch. When I woke, the first thing I saw was this cloud overhead. It reminded me of summer afternoon’s spent cloud-watching with my sister. We loved to lay on a quilt in the front yard and identify shapes in the clouds. Things were so quiet then, and this was a busy activity for us.
I thought this cloud looked like a bare foot.
Maybe we see what we want to see, and I’m looking for warmer weather. Here in Fayetteville this morning, we are below freezing. Again.
Comfort Coffee
We all have our favorite comfort foods, right? I now have my favorite comfort coffee—the Honeyblossom at Mama Carmen’s in Fayetteville. Oh my. This rich latte is flavored with honey and a hint of lavender! I tried to sip it ever so slowly to make it last and to not disturb the heavy cream blossom artfully designed on top.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
You never know where life will take you, and what you’ll accumulate along the way. As of this moment, John and I own a stand of bamboo. While we love the way it sounds rustling in the wind, the way birds hide inside it, the serene shade it creates, we don’t love how crazy invasive it is. It pushes up through the deck, shoots up mid-yard, would likely come on inside the kitchen and eat supper with us if we allowed it entry.
So we have a plan to better contain it. The plan includes a heavy duty barrier. (I’ll be posting about this later.)
After days and days of digging this impressive trench, I realized John and I are now living in a galaxy far, far away from our former world. We wrestle bamboo in northwest Arkansas rather than fight traffic in Dallas. I’ve been in Fayetteville for over three years now, so this has become my normal. But for John, in six months he’s gone from investment banking to digging a moat. This is a picture of his quietude.
Atomic Tomatoes
Last summer, tons of volunteer tomatoes popped up in our front flowerbeds. It was the craziest thing! I have no idea if they’ll be back this year, but to add to whatever tomatoes come, I bought a packet of Tomato Brad’s Atomic Grape Tomatoes from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
The colors! They make me smile. Yes, sometimes I choose books based on the covers and seeds based on the pictures.
These atomic tomatoes will be perfect for this new world of ours. We simply need spring to stop teasing us.
School Kitchen Textbook Tip
Recipe No. 31. How to Make Coffee
2 tbsp coffee to 1 c. boiling water. (Reduce the proportion of coffee, when several cups are required.)Mix the coffee with one clean egg shell or one inch of fish skin. Put it in the pot, add the boiling water, and boil only five minutes. Set it where it will keep hot but not boil. Add one half cup of cold water. Pour out a little and pour it back, to clean the ground from the spout. (The School Kitchen Textbook: Lessons in Cooking and Domestic Science by Mary J. Lincoln, 1917, | Lesson VIII Water, p. 116)
Seriously? Has anyone ever heard of putting fish skin in coffee??? I’d bet a mile of homegrown bamboo and a bushel of atomic tomatoes there’s no fish skin in Mama Carmen’s coffee.
Later Sunday Letter friends,
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
(This is not a sponsored post. I simply talk about things I enjoy.)
[tweetthis]Today’s Sunday Letter: comfort coffee + a new world + atomic tomatoes @rareseeds @sarahdshotts #SundayMorning [/tweetthis]
Musical Pairing:
Flock of Seagulls, Space Age Love Song
The fish in the coffee ruined my idea of more fish cakes in the near future! Lol.
Love the comments on quiteude. I wholeheartedly believe in the concept. The last two days have been hard to have a quite respite due to the crazy weather. We were in the storm cellar two hours last night and me and Wendell (Ricks outside Manx cat) got well acquainted snuggling up together. I even told Rick I had never been around a cat that long without my allergies going haywire. (But I spoke too soon as the rest of the night I was washing out my eyes with cold water.) Ugh. Wendell was scared because the wind was howling and she insisted on cozying up on my soft belly. Lol. I fell in love again and hated to leave her outside when we finally came in. Everything was ok but the dang wind is STILL howling. I’m tired of being cold so I’m ready for warmer weather. (Never in my life have I said those words!)
The trench/moat John is building looks labor intensive! My back hurts just to look at it. Good job!
I thought your coffee looked like a cotton boll on top. Looks delish too!
Love your blog and Sunday letters. You are so FUN!
Love to You and Yours,
Cousin Cindy Lu
PS…Grrr…Wendell is a “he”. lol
As you can see, I’m way behind in my reading! But I’ve been enjoying taking things slow. I thought that cloud looked a bit like Puff the Magic Dragon. I cannot believe that trench John dug. Incredible.