i arrived home in Calgary on Friday to a warm, sunny evening, and then quickly discovered that i hadn’t needed to fret about how i was going to fly home with all my bedding (down duvet, etc) from planting camp.

…No, i hadn’t needed to worry at all. i had forgotten that unlike the mountains, cities generally do not cool off considerably at night, or at least, as considerably as in camp (ie. 30C days dropping to 1-2C nights). And so, i (and my houseguests from Vancouver) have sweated out the weekend in my 2nd-story sauna…er, apartment. The biggest challenge has been the lack of any crossbreeze, since my south-facing living room picture window does not open, meaning that half my apartment gets woefully stuffy without due diligence…and in the worst heat, even despite it. Needless to say, we spent a good chunk of the last few days trying to escape the sauna!

Thanking my mom, Laura Ingalls (of Little House.. fame), and latin-siesta-loving cultures everywhere for great, simple ideas to beat the heat, here is my list for keeping cool:

1: Get outside and go walking…if the breeze doesn’t come to you, then make the breeze happen by walking through the air!

2: Open windows, blinds, curtains at night to let cooler air come in, and then during the day, shut the windows and cover them with heavy curtains, fabric, whatever you have to trap the cool air inside and block the sun out.

3: If you have a moveable fan, place it blowing in at night, and if you must have a window open during the day, use the fan to suck warm air out of the house, and blow it outside.

4: Spray your curtains with water, or hang a wet sheet in front of the window to cool the air passing through

5: If your fan is enclosed, place a damp pillowcase or other small piece of fabric over it to cool the air its blowing around

6: Night is the worst for me. If i’m too warm, i just can’t stay asleep. It may be a little weird, but try getting a sheet soaking wet, then wring it out and sleep under it. It works like a charm for me….perfectly chilly all night long!

7: #6 too weird for ya? Do as the Thais do: shower in the evening, and lay on a towel, still wet, to go to sleep

8: Make using a personal paper fan your new fashion statement

9: Sunburns don’t help; wear loose linen or cotton fabric that covers your skin instead.

10: If there’s one thing that i’ve learned to appreciate about early mornings in camp, it’s this: if all the cooking/baking work is done before 9am, chances are you can keep your indoor temps at least the same as outside, if not lower. So if you HAVE to cook, do it early in the morning or late at night.

11: Dont’ cook. Learn to eat (and enjoy!) cooler, raw (or previously cooked) food. Cool fruit soups (and gazpacho….and cool white wine and cheese dinners…and nutty salads…and cold meats, mustards, and ales…)are delicious!

12: Sleep during heat of the day, socialize late into the night

13: Freeze your fruit, and enjoy it as-is, or as gourmet ice-cubes in iced tea/tisanes, or blended into healthy, nutrient-packed smoothies.

14: Mint tea….hot or cold, it makes your mouth feel cool!

15: Make sun-tea. Avoid boiling the kettle by placing a jar of water with tea bags and/or herbs (lemon balm, mint leaves, rosemary, lemon wedges, etc) in a sunny window or sunny spot on a patio in the morning, and pour over ice to enjoy all afternoon and evening!

16: Visit your local museum, bookstore, library, art gallery, etc. Chances are, their buildings are air- conditioned or ventilated to keep cool.

17: Go underground. Have a basement? A parking garage? A subway system? Keep your mind open - some of these really unorthodox places can be quieter, or more interesting than your own sweltering abode, are certainly cooler, and well, sometimes choosing these places to hang out can inject your day with that little bit of weirdness that keeps things interesting!

18: Visit your local rec center and go swimming

19: Catch up on films. Movie theatres are often chilly enough that you may just have to bring a wrap or sweater!

20: Turn off your lights, or switch to energy-saving bulbs.

21: Wear a damp bandanna to keep your head cool.

22: Eat spicy food, and embrace the cooling sweat!

23: Eat lightly, and give your digestive system a break

24: Drink water, and lots of it!

25: Have fun. Complaining apparently doesn’t help anything!

It was a bit of a ridiculous endeavor, these doughnuts - seeing as i could not simply make one kind and be happy with that. Oh no, i had to pull out all the stops and go for freakin TimmyHo’s 
The verdict:

Cake Doughnuts: easy, light, delicious, and quick

Yeast Doughnuts: oh my. Definitely needing practice and streamlining techniques. They were heavy.

Crullers: a miserable project that ended up 95% in the trash. Odd, considering i use cruller (choux) pastry successfully in a lot of other recipes. C’est la vie

A&G camp 2007: kitchen, originally uploaded by jessica anne matthies.

i am connected! Online! Live, if you will.

Tis a rare thing to have internet in camp (i had it for a week, about 3 years ago), although perhaps it’s becoming more and more common.  It was an exciting moment this morning when the planter who bought a satellite set-up last week informed me that if i check my computer, i should have a weak signal in the kitchen, and a good one in my trailer. Within moments, i was looking Google in the face.

And its been an exciting day, full of instant chit-chat, emailing, online radio, and other wondrous things.  Definitely, wireless satellite internet makes me one happy camp cook.  That being said, i wonder if it’s truly a good thing.  Summer is a good time for me to get away from my little internet addiction and re-learn that the world will not crash down around me if i don’t get to post to flickr, or check out the latest on Apartment Therapy.  i spend more time reading, identifying plants, playing music….and, well, sleeping when i should be (like, now).  Those are the things (well, excepting the sleeping part) that i really love and remember about planting camp.
But who am i kidding?  There’s a week and a half left, i’m working without an assistant again, and there’s no time for reading books between the baking, cooking, and dishes.  So that leaves blogging when i should be sleeping.

G’night all!

Yesterday i finished shopping for Week 5 of camp this summer, which means that i am now exactly half way through my ninth season out in the bush. i’m not so sure why i like these milestones so much, particularly when i hate number crunching as much as is do….but i digress.

As i was shopping, i realized that i am going to have to start getting intentional about cooking up all the menus that i have planned out, as well as working in a couple of repeats. Over the years, menu planning in camp has become one of my favorite activities, with a whole set of philosophies around food and foodservice and creativity surrounding the endeavor.

To date, the planters in my camp have been the recipients of myriad foods ranging from burgers or pizza nights to straight up Roast Ham or Beef to African Chili-roasted Plantains to handmade bistro-style Roasted Garlic and Shiitake Potstickers, among others.

This week, the camp will be dining to the sultry wails of middle eastern music on Lebanese night (donairs, falafels, tabbouleh, dolmades…), picking from lineup of modern hippy-styled goods on Dragon Bowl night (grains, rice noodles, raw veggies, slivered meats, asian sauces, nuts&seeds, etc), chowing down on Fish&Chips on English pub night, savouring Maple-Miso Salmon and Avocado Fettuccine on Bistro night, and partying with Burgers on Thursday, which incidentally happens to be the day western Canada’s 6 billionth tree is being planted.

All new meals this week, and i’ve been looking through my papers at so many more that i want to try out, while realizing that if the planters want to have another Mexi burrito night, i don’t have much more time to fit it in. i often wish that i could do this job for more than the little 2 or 3 month season, something more like 4 or 6 months at a time, or part-time year round. These are the times that thoughts of a little cafe somewhere start to tumble around in my brain…something like the Moosewood in Ithaca, NY, or ReBar in Victoria, where the menu is constantly evolving and reflective of the creative staff and curious clientèle.

But for now, i return to camp for another week, ready to dream up delicious dinners and delightful breakfasts, exciting lunch treats and comforting snacks….

See ya next week

i’ve had a lot of down-time lately. Although my leave from BaseCamp started on April 6, the planting season has been continually delayed due to cold weather (most recently, until May 1). i’ve been out to camp for a couple days to clean up and set up, but now i’m back in Kelowna with Rease & Tanya and facing a few more days of free time, trying not to worry about how bills are going to get paid.

Tanya and i spent the afternoon churning up soil and digging in compost for a new garden. It was pretty much heaven.

We started tearing out the overgrown grass last weekend from a pre-existing garden bed. Today we grabbed Rease’s old beater truck, drove out to the dump, and got a yard of compost - where we were helped by a backhoe driver who watched us incredulously as we took off the canopy and replaced it when the truck box was full of the compost. Apparently, we were the ’strongest women [he'd] seen in a very long time’ [and Tanya weighs *maybe* 100lbs, soaking wet]. Yaaaahhh….it doesn’t take a lot of strength, just a mindset that doesn’t tell you “oooh, maybe i’ll break a nail…” But i digress.

i’ve been dreaming about gardens lately. Spaces of land, plotted out into vegetables, herbs, flowers, fruit… ground that yields up a meal, or fare for a market or cafe….maybe my own cafe. A cafe where all the produce is grown within sight of the tables….maybe where interns and/or teens spend time creating food out of the days’ harvest….where people can re-learn an ancient art of putting seeds in the ground, tending to them, and enjoying the result of a kind of labor that leaves your hands dirty and your heart happily full of the knowledge of being visibly productive.

I’ve been dreaming about gardens perhaps because they seem to encapsulate my ideas about living well…they require research, planning, intention, preparation, hard work, more hard work, faith, watchfulness, patience, flexibility, more hard work, and finally, the ability to sit back, be thankful, and thoroughly reap and enjoy the rewards of a job well done. Gardens demand cycles of action/reaction. You sow, you reap. Control is yours for a moment while you weed…but taken back forcefully by a random frost or hailstorm. Work is necessary during the day, and necessarily stopped at night.

So much chaos that we create for ourselves in the modern world is forcefully righted by the diligence of caring for a piece of land; laziness is not tolerated, but then a garden in January doesn’t really support the continuation of workaholic 60-hour weeks of labor, either. Dirt and beauty are coexistant, not opposing. Cooperation benefits gardening tasks exponentially, and creativity is inherent in the tasks of conditioning soil, rotating crops, dividing labor, dealing with sunlight and shade and aberrant weather patterns and all the other random things that happen when coming into direct contact with the earth. And, i believe that God is evident in the unlikely intuition and persistence of new seedlings and grasping vines, metamorphizing blossoms and decaying roots. From pea plants in plastic cups to full blown orchards, accepting the mystery of growing things is inherently educational and therapeutic to a cluttered mind and a life filled with insignificant activities. To watch the re-creation of life - to really watch it, observing both the simplicity and complexity, wondering why the sprout goes up and the roots go down - there is something about this that whispers fiercely of what is good, what is healthy, what is right and true and worth working for. i mean, a garden is where life was first created, and the last place anything was flawless…surely we can learn something from this!

i’ve been dreaming about gardens, and contemplating how this dream corresponds to the work i do with kids. Over the last eight months, i’ve had a lot of mixed experiences at the addictions treatment program that i’m working with, and while i’m not willing to pull a full-stop on working with youth, i have been facing a lot of frustration with this job that i claim to love, namely because it is difficult to see the effectiveness of what i do. When kids come into the program and stay for 3 months, a lot of changes are often made….and a lot of relapsing also occurs. i vacillate between hopefulness and cynicism that when the kids graduate from the program, they will stay clean and make healthy decisions in their lives. i wish that i could grow to care for these kids deeply instead of shrugging it off when they blow out of the program, but three months is a blunted opportunity for relationship. Digging in the garden, i’m reminded of how much and how little happens in three months….sometimes activity is frenetic, intense, and rewarding, and sometimes the only necessary activity is waiting for the spring thaw.

Though i’m happy enough with where i’m at now, working temporarily in a friend’s garden poignantly reminds me to think of where i want to be in a few years time…and pouring myself into short-term personal investments is not where i want to be. Perhaps it’s just a stage of life thing. Maybe it’s the ol’ biological clock ticking, or could it be that interest, passions, skill sets, and other life factors are simply lining up in a way that tell me to go out, get a piece of land, find people to work with,  invest in growing things over an extended period of time, and live life well? Right now, i’m thinking that it’s probably a bit of all three, and i’m okay with that.

In the meantime, i’m going to go get some seeds…

g’mornin, April 10…, originally uploaded by jessica anne matthies.

Before i even opened my eyes this morning, i recognized that it was snowing heavily outside. i’ve grown accustomed to the sounds of a sudden, heavy snowfall: slowed traffic, the low growl of cars grinding their way up the hills in low gear, the high pitched squeals of tires spinning out, the soft crunch of footsteps through the shortcut-path behind my apartment…

i heard the heavy footsteps of the roof repairmen above me, and wondered if they would actually figure out a way to work in this. It wasn’t long before they packed up and left, leaving me to my quiet morning.

These snowfall sneak attacks make me smile, savouring the beautifully prolonged presence of winter. i like the way they force everybody to slow down, forget about a schedule for once (or at least, this happens in my idealizing mind), and come up with new plans for the day.

At least, the snow eliminated one of the options that i was debating last night – whether to stay inside one more day and keep cleaning up my apartment, or head out to my trailer to continue the fix-ups/painting. Over a foot of snow outside means the apartment wins out today.

Or at least, i hope that the apartment wins. It (and i) are fighting a war against accumulated junk, and right now the battles seem split. i spent the majority of yesterday afternoon and evening working my way through several BOXES of junk that have been packed up and hauled around from place to place for the last few years, ugh. Check one major win for me. But in this process, i came to realize that my newly bare floors and dresser-top left me feeling slightly anxious. The floors i can handle – no, wait a sec, i LOVE the bare floors, cleared of laundry and junk and boxes, cleared of the caution it usually takes to protect my feet when i crawl out of bed, or try to navigate a path through it all.
But the empty surface on the dresser? What does one do with that? i don’t want useless stuff there, but I have no idea what useful thing goes on a dresser top. Even having a dresser in my room is a luxury that i haven’t had since i was 18 and in my parent’s house. i seriously don’t know how to use that space functionally. My decorative collections are in the main room, my books all have a bookshelf, cosmetics are in the washroom, plants all die when i’m away at work for 4 days at a time… Nothing really seems to fit.

But more than that, it felt like a finished task. Empty surface=no more cleaning project. Then i quickly realized that if i get through all the paperwork junk, and finish up my studio areas, that will be the end of that too, because instead of just cleaning/storing, i’m actually getting rid of junk….and the goal is not to re-accumulate it. Potentially, i could be living with a relatively clean space – ALL THE TIME.

This is a novel concept to me. In fact, i do not remember a point in my life where i have not either been told to clean up my stuff, or otherwise didn’t feel like i had to anyway.
i am a messy person.
And, i am now attempting to change that to “was a messy person”.

i’m not sure I’m ready for this. This is scary – and before you laugh at me too hard, know that being messy has it’s upsides: it’s relaxed, it’s a great excuse to be involved in major cleanup projects, major cleanup projects are a great excuse not to have to leave the house, and not having to leave the house means i don’t have to face being in this city by myself.

Whoops.

Did i stumble onto something there? Oh boy. You caught me red-handed. Guilty as charged: i have a whole can of worms when it comes to trying to figure out how to feel at home and make friends in this city. So staying inside, working on my apartment (that I love) really does give me a sense that i am purposefully working towards being more at home here, without any of the daunting challenge of trying to recreate a new community for myself. But when i’m finished….well, I’ll be back at square one.

i don’t know whether or not completing this whole Apartment Therapy clean-up thing will give me the impetus to actually get out and get back into meeting more people again. i also don’t know that if i do move on, move forward, recreate a little community action, that i’ll find a new excuse for being messy. It’s likely that i will, and then i’ll have to cross that bridge when i come to it, i suppose.

i do know that i love the snow, that i love my quiet mornings, that true to Calgary form the sun is coming out once again, and that i’m feeling ready to pitch back into today’s battle against the paperwork junk. oh gosh.

 

A&G camp 2007: home sweet trailer home!, originally uploaded by jessica anne matthies.

So, in my perpetual quest to create beautiful spaces, i signed up for Apartment Therapy’s Spring Cure a few weeks back. You can read more about it here and here.
i’m feeling a lot of ambivalence towards the Apartment Therapy cure right now, mostly because while i enjoy creating new workable spaces, i also feel limited by my status as a renter: no painting, be careful about holes in the wall, nothing too crazy!

However, i recently realized that i could funnel all this motivation to fix-up into my trailer/summer home!! Hurrah for paint! and new ceiling panels! and upholstery!

More photos soon

New journal, new space, new canvas: i love you. i hate you.

i love your clean, pure potential, the soft blankness.
i hate your expectations, your knowledge that greatness could occur here, if only i wasn’t going to put down some chicken-scratch drivel.

And so, what i really want to say will wait a few pages. It’ll wait for some old news to catch an eye, wait for the opportunity for first impressions to pass slightly less noticed. Wait to feel out the old, familiar frameworks and settle into making marks again.

It’s been a while, after all. And, well, no news is good news

…right?

———————————————

[a post i like to remind myself of from time to time]

-From September 21 2005:

Two things that make me sad:
1. not being able to make what i am thinking make sense when i say it
2. friends who pretend to be friends with people they really don’t care about, or don’t care to care about them in such a way that at least prevents them from idly cutting them down.

On that note, i so wish that i could have make a coherent statement in Sr. Studio today about my thoughts on conformity and the concept of a counter-culture. i got so lost in trying to define my idea of how simply natural it is to conform to some level, that i forgot my main point that it is not the ACT of conformity that matters, but the choice of WHAT we conform to and WHY. There are billions of people on earth; at some level we need to conform in order to avoid complete chaos. Yet we have, especially as Christians, an obligation to choose wisely what we conform to, and why. Though our faith intrinsically involves a certain level of counter-cultural belief (”..be in this world, but not of it”..)Christ called us to take up our crosses and follow. What that looks like may then take many forms, according to our attitudes and motives. (St.Paul?) brought up the very relativist stance that for those whom it was ok to eat meat sacrificed to idols, it was ok, but for those whom this act caused stumbling, it was not ok……but to respect the choices of the believers around you as all being chosen to bring glory to God. What better way to remember to be humble in the way we advertise our lifestyles and preferences.
However, it is difficult to live in any such way that does not communicate those preferences at all. Indeed, if one was to actively conceal those things, that individual would then be criticized for being “non-authentic”: the ultimate post-modern crime. Yet the danger of advertising our choices in life means the development of pride, haughtiness, cultural elitism.
What then does this mean for those who chooses to live in such a way that often gets slammed as “trendy” or “counter-cultural (but such a see-through-sham)” or even the oh-so-maligned “evangelical” or “suburban”? Oh horror of horrors to actually be considered mainstream! (…and OH, how i do struggle with criticizing the ‘mainstream’) As a Christian, i think the solution involves a dual responsibility: that of the individual to actually think through the logic of their choices, having a coherent defense that involves a God-glorifying rational, as well as that of the surrounding community to receive individuals with cortesia - courtesy and hospitality - giving respect to the Other by listening before entering into a dialogue of discovery and mutual search for Truth. At that point, the individual’s act of conformity becomes a non-problematic issue; it no longer becomes a matter of conforming to the ’system’ or to a ‘counter-cultural trend’, but rather a starting point for an exploration of faith and reason.

So yeah. That’s what i wished i could have said in class. In other words, there’s gotta be love.

….and yeah. that would solve problem #2 that makes me sad.
…so now i’m off to go change the world. in my dreams. cuz i need to get up early for work tomorrow.