What a Difference a Week Makes

One hundred and sixty-eight little hours.  

It's amazing how much our surroundings can change in seven days.

Last week, I picked blackberries on Sunday morning.  Practically popping off the vines, they looked plump, glossy and plentiful.

After a week of scorching temperatures, the picture had changed.  Imagine:

• sun-blasted and dried leaves of orange/brown/red
• stunted and shrivelled up berries no bigger than the end of my pinkie
• slim pickings all around

Like most of the country, we're praying for rain.  For the sake of the farmers, the gardeners, the livestock, the produce, the wild berries.  For all of us.

All of us are in this together.

Thinking about our need for water, I had some Norma Gordon moments that past week.  For those of you who don't know her, Norma is my amazing mother.  She's my mentor, friend and inspiration.  I've learned so much from her over the years.  She still teaches me. 

She's been a conservationist all my life.  In my teens, we were the only folks on the block with a backyard compost pile.  I recall her collection and use of gray water from the kitchen sink and the showers and tubs to water to her garden and herbs.  She used every scrap of food to create a meal and nothing went to waste.  A soup pot often simmered on the back of the stove made of leftover vegetable stock, scraps of meat and vegetable odds/ends thrown into the ever-evolving concoction.  She made her own soap from leftover bits.  We always had a brick in the toilet tank to raise the water level to decrease the amount of water needed for flushing. 

With our own drought here in Missouri, I'm borrowing from Norma's book of common sense.  Plastic jugs have come out of the recycling bin and made their way into our showers and bathtubs.  I created a soup on Saturday night of:

• the nearly burnt sausage patties
• the leaves from the brussel sprout stalk I got from the farmer's market
• some crook-necked squash that only I will eat
• already cooked corn on the cob that was drying up
• several funky looking carrots from the farmer's market
• herbs from my window sill garden
• almost gone asian spinach and kale
• leftover chicken stock
• and some yukon gold potatoes thrown in for good measure

Mom, you do me proud.  Next on my list?

Knitting down the stash.