I wandered into the dark kitchen at 3 AM. Automatically, I pushed the button on the pot to start coffee, before I turned on the light over the sink. On the stove was a cast iron deep, fry pan. A dishtowel was draped over it, and the towel swelled upward pregnantly. I had started sourdough bread last night, and let it rise all evening. I turned on the oven, pulled back the towel, and sniffed the pungent odor of the rising dough.

Yesterday was a day for taking care of little projects, not maintenance, but jobs with future results. I transplanted some bean and tomato plants to outside pots. Its early for the small sprouts, but I’m making a test set to see if the still cool evenings will wilt them beyond repair. Later, I fed my sourdough starter and let it sit out so a good fermentation would develop by dinner time, when I would mix and knead the dough to bake the next day. Then I spent a good deal of time on the phone, moving travel plans forward, with the hope that the Covid-19 would become a thing of the past by the time were going to travel next.

A good Zen might say that I’m living too much in the future, rather than focusing on the present as reality,(if in fact there is a reality at all), the future just a false hope/dream. I don’t know. I certainly tried to focus on each project: running my fingers through the warming dirt, dribbling water around the shoots, enjoying the process of making the starter begin to re-bubble. Planting and baking are a bet on future existence, a coin thrown into the hat of tomorrow. We are simultaneously in the future and the present, (and yes, the past also) and don’t really know for sure which it is until the lid comes off I suppose.

At any rate, I am hoping for enough beans and tomatoes to can in the fall for future dinners, a few zucchini, to make relish and stir fry, and with luck, enough cherries from the tree to fill a bowl. Nothing better than cool cherries on a warm afternoon while reading a good book and spitting seeds off the deck.

The bread came out of the oven about 4:30. I tipped it into the wire rack, exposing the dusting of flour on the bottom. It needed to cool, but I immediately cut off an end and covered it with butter, a must do ritual in our house. I settled in my chair, opened my book, and took the first warm, crunchy bite. I was definitely living in the present.

 

Blessings

Unwanted Travels