Not the Same as Being There

This past weekend was supposed to have been our annual Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference meeting. The location of the gathering changes every year depending on which church is hosting. We last hosted in 2014. This year, Seattle Mennonite was supposed to host, but because of the pandemic, we canceled the gathering and arranged to have a two-hour business meeting/delegate session via Zoom, instead. Kudos to our dedicated tech team, who set up a webinar-based format for the meeting complete with voting, Spanish translation, and an informal breakout session so we could “visit” with each other. (Singing, visiting, and eating are key elements of any Mennonite get-together.) They did an awesome job.

We also had an hour-long Zoom meeting with the old and new board members in place of our traditional board luncheon. Our pastor has been moderator for the past two years and his term is up. My four-year board term also ended. I was asked to serve another term but requested a break for a year or two. As the husband notes, however, I can’t ever seem to get away from these things completely. The new board was trying to find a time for its fall meeting. As you can imagine, trying to coordinate a dozen schedules can be difficult, at best. The board’s recording secretary couldn’t make any of the suggested dates, so I offered to fill in for her. We’d all love the opportunity to meet in person again, but the plan is for that board meeting to happen via Zoom.

I got most of the binding sewn down on that neutrals quilt during the meetings. When asked for some parting wisdom at the board luncheon, I said that someone was going to have to take over knitting or sewing during the board get-togethers. Our treasurer liked to say that “things are right with the world” if Janet was working on something. I did finish a lot of projects at board meetings over the past four years.

**********************************************************

Yesterday morning, before the meetings started, I went out and cut a big bucket of lettuce, washed it, and filled three gallon zipper bags. Elysian said I could put it in the market fridge up at the corner where she sells eggs and we would see if anyone wanted to buy it. The lettuce is growing faster than we can eat it. I can keep it from bolting, for a few weeks, at least, if I cut it back and let it grow again.

I weeded the other two rows of corn yesterday afternoon and that really helped to stretch out my back. It feels almost back to normal now. And look!—I have little ears of corn!

The Dirty Girl tomato that grew from seed Susan gave me is the biggest of all my tomato plants (I need to prune them this week).

I’ll save seeds in the fall and add it to the rotation again next year. It is my only potato-leaf type tomato. All the other varieties have serrated leaves.

We will have the first cucumber (Muncher) of the season soon:

My sense is that a lot of the crops are ahead of schedule this year. The corn is obviously early, although all four varieties I’m growing are old Native American varieties bred for this climate. We don’t usually have cukes until mid-July or later, depending on temperatures. I’ve already got tomatoes setting fruit, and we’ll have the usual bumper crop of zucchini. I really think that starting seeds in the greenhouse and allowing the seedlings to develop strong root systems gives them a running start when they finally get into the ground. Perhaps this year, crops will ripen on a more staggered schedule rather than all at once, which is just overwhelming.

All of these successes are making up for the fact that I cannot get cowpeas to grow in Montana.

**********************************************************

I made a honey-do list for the husband yesterday. I try to handle most things myself, not because he doesn’t want to do them, but because—at this time of year, especially—he’s usually working. I asked him to help me get my other industrial treadle base out of the storage container and moved over to the old garage so I could set a machine up in there. We need a shade hung in our bedroom. That’s one of those jobs that would take him five minutes and would take me two hours (an hour of which would be spent looking for the right tools), so it’s better just to have him do it and do it correctly. I also asked him to move half a dozen wheelbarrow loads of compost from the pile by the garden into the rows of corn. That’s another job I could do—and have done—but he can move three loads in the time it takes me to move one, so I am going to play the helpless female card there for the sake of efficiency.

We have an 80% chance of rain in the forecast for the next four days. I am staring down the gift of some extended sewing time and I have no idea what to work on. Stay tuned to see what I decide to do.