Mulberry Jam

At this time of year, I hardly recognize my garden. The neat rows I laid out in my vegetable garden with pegs and string are gone, obliterated by the growth of squash vines and tomatoes. The plants that were carefully placed with what seemed plenty of breathing room in springtime are now tumbling on top of one another in crazy disorder. The daisy-like purple coneflowers have turned into stiff and spiky black seed heads that look like plant life from another solar system. Even my birds are changing. The lemon-bright goldfinches of summer are morphing into their dull olive brown winter colors. I catch glimpses of these newly drab birds at my feeder and think, what are they?

I the gardener am almost unrecognizable as well. Whereas in April I was eager to leap into my garden with spade and trowel, now I give even important tasks short shrift. Although I know I’ll pay for it next spring, weeding gets only a lick and a promise these days. For weeks now, I’ve been averting my eyes from the jungle-like mess of my front flowerbeds. I bat the overgrown helianthus aside from my path as I walk around the garage, thinking I really must get around to trimming them one of these days. Even tomatoes aren’t being brought inside with the kind of fervent anticipation they once received.

In my defense, the late summer was hot and extremely dry this year, adding to the malaise I often feel in late September. It’s hard to get enthused about running out with my weeding and transplanting tools when the ground is hardened like cement. Weeks of wrestling daily with a garden hose have sapped my morale. After a certain point, no matter how much watering one does, it becomes nothing more than life support. My shrubs and perennials look like chronically ill denizens of a nursing ward, rather than the vigorous and lush plantings of only two months ago. I’m starting to think the merciful thing may be to pull the plug in some cases and put these tired plants out of their misery.

But somehow this fall when I began to castigate myself for laziness and lack of discipline, I felt differently than in most years. Maybe it’s the natural consequence of the brilliant sunny day I’m enjoying this afternoon, but I’ve started to think that this is just nature’s way of preparing both the plants and the gardener for winter. The rain slows, the leaves die back and the plants begin to go dormant so they’ll survive the cold of winter when all moisture is locked away in ice. Something similar is happening to me. The browning edges of my tomato vines are preparing me for the heartless moment when I’ll rip them out and discard them, leaving the garden empty and ready for another year’s planting. I’m detaching myself from the garden gradually, day by day, and actually looking forward to the rest that I’ll have with the coming of frost.

I think this is what we mean when we Easterners say we like the change of seasons. We like all the changes, even the ones that take warmth and open air away from us. I know that residents of sunny San Diego and Florida can understand why we grow tired of winter and long for the return of green in spring. I don’t think they understand as well that one can grow tired of summer, too. The abundance and warmth that are so welcome in May and June eventually become tiresome as well. We look forward to the crisp clean air of fall, to pulling our sweaters out on that first nippy morning, and to the crunch of leaves underfoot. And eventually, to the pleasures of being cozy, of sitting by a fire with a glass of wine and a book, listening to sleet on the windowpanes.

And planning for next spring.

I received many kind messages from readers after posting my last entry about the death of Miss Thing. Thanks to all of you who wrote with your sympathy. There are a lot of fellow animal lovers out there.

Today I wanted to write a little about Girlfriend, my surviving cat. She’s ten, the same age as Miss Thing, and still very healthy, thank goodness. Many of my closest friends have never really met Girlfriend, despite frequent visits to my home. She’s extremely shy with strangers, although not with my husband or with me.

Unfortunately for Girlfriend, a few months ago she was diagnosed with a skin allergy that meant I would need to start giving her medication. Her suspicion of all unusual foods meant that hiding the medicine inside a treat was out of the question. The only alternative was to give her a small pill, every single day. As I stood in the small treatment room while the vet explained this to me, my stomach fell. Girlfriend was returned to her carrier and I moved abstractedly out into the waiting area with my mind racing ahead, trying to envision getting anything into Girlfriend that she didn’t want to eat.

When I admitted to Lori, the woman behind the desk, that I’d never given a pill to a cat before, she told me brightly that she’d bring out their “demonstration kitty” to show me how it was done. I waited at the desk for a moment, and she soon reappeared with a real live cat, instead of the stuffed one I was expecting. This handsome gray male, didn’t put up any more fuss than a stuffed cat, as she gently tipped his head back and opened his mouth with one hand, putting the pill far back into his throat with the other. As she held his mouth closed, the cat swallowed calmly and the whole thing was over in seconds. “That’s all there is to it,” I was told.

The next morning I attempted to repeat the trick with my own feline, but things didn’t go quite as smoothly. Already disgruntled with me because of the previous day’s visit to the vet, Girlfriend eyed me suspiciously as I approached her with the pill on a small saucer. The second I set it down and knelt beside her, she took off like a shot and raced downstairs to hide under a bed. Down I went after her and spent an undignified few minutes trying to get her out. I’m ashamed to admit I finally resorted to encouraging her with a broom handle. When this finally succeeded, Girlfriend zoomed out from under the bed like an orange rocket and raced back up the stairs to the living room. I followed more slowly, closing the bedroom door behind me. As I appeared at the top of the stairs, the cat shot me a baleful glare and zipped past me to an upstairs bedroom to hide under another bed. By this time, both of us had lost our cool. Girlfriend was increasingly angry and determined, and so was I. Hair flying, the two of us charged up and down the stairs of my small house for five solid minutes. I didn’t have any illusions about my own agility compared to hers, but I thought I could prove to her that I had more stamina. After both of us were panting and disheveled, she finally allowed me to catch up to her.

Remembering the demonstration from the day before, I tried to gently tip her head back and open her mouth. She was having none of it. Brute force allowed me to get her stiff neck tilted back, but her jaws remained stubbornly clenched. I finally used my left arm to clamp her into position while my right forefinger forced her front teeth open. To her credit, she didn’t try to bite, but as her feet scrabbled for purchase on the floor, I took some collateral damage from her claws. Finally getting the teeth apart, I stuffed the tiny pill in and clamped her mouth closed again. The cat continued to struggle, coughing and working her tongue violently in an effort to push the pill back out. I kept her under my arm and held her mouth until she finally swallowed convulsively and I gingerly let go. With a bound, she leapt into a corner and backed up to face me, crouched low on all fours, gripping the carpet as though daring me to try picking her up again. This ended the first day’s skirmish. One point to me. The two of us spent the remainder of the day maintaining a dignified silence and avoiding eye contact.

The next morning when I went to look for her, she was nowhere to be found. After more than ten minutes of fruitless searching, checking all her usual hiding places, I realized she’d taken up a position in the cellar utility room behind the water heater. In this spot, she’s completely impossible to dislodge, since I can’t reach her or even see her once she’s wedged herself back there. No pill for her that morning. One point to Girlfriend.

She continued her boycott throughout that day, but by next morning she’d had to come out since both food and litter box are in the kitchen upstairs. Rather than confront her immediately at the food dish, I ran downstairs to lock her out of the laundry room. All other closeable doors safely shut, I was ready to do battle again.

Back upstairs, she saw me coming for her and ran for the laundry room. As I followed inexorably, she skidded to a stop in front of the latched door. In dismay, she pawed vainly at the door once, then gave it up as a loss and zipped past me heading back to the living room. She passed the bedroom and rejected it, since it hadn’t helped the previous day. I felt like the Frankenstein monster, lumbering after her speedy form. A few more times up and down stairs, and then she finally retreated to the living room corner behind an armchair. The running was over. She allowed me to reach in and pull her out without struggling, although her dead weight would have done Gandhi proud in conveying the spirit of passive resistance. With utter stoicism, she remained still while I held her head and tipped it back. Once again, I had to prize her mouth open in order to get the pill in, then quickly clamp it shut.

This time, there was no reaction from Girlfriend. No hacking cough or tongue rolling like the day before. But no visible swallowing either. I made the mistake of loosening my grip for a moment, only to watch as the little Randle Patrick McMurphy quickly spit the pill out and ran from the room. I was left with a soggy pill, a tee shirt covered in cat hair, and the embarrassment of being outsmarted by a cat.

There’s often a moment in the old Warner Brothers’ cartoons when Daffy will pause, look into the camera and say, “Of course you realize, this means war.” I knew I could never out-run her, but I also knew I could out-last her. No matter how many times she ran up and down the stairs, eventually she’d get tired and I’d make my move.

The good thing about Girlfriend is that despite the willfulness, she’s also a stoic at heart. Plus she can learn to put up with almost anything as long as it becomes part of her routine. So we’ve finally come to a workable arrangement. I get her at the same time every day, carry her to the same place on the carpet and tell her she’s a good girl in the same tone of voice. Thus it has become normal for her, and she actually waits for me in the same corner. We both get it over with early, before breakfast, and then we can go on with our respective days. Whew!

In a bitter piece of irony, the Tuesday that I posted my last entry with a light-hearted introduction to my two cats, the smaller one, Miss Thing, began to show signs of being seriously ill. On Wednesday I was concerned enough to make urgent arrangements to get her to the vet to be seen that day. Thursday morning the vet called me with the very unwelcome news that blood tests showed that she had kidney failure. She had stopped drinking water as her body shut down. Mark and I watched with pain as she tried to rally in response to our caresses, but she was increasingly anxious and exhausted. Friday we very sadly took her back to the vet for a final time and held her while her suddenly frail little body was put to sleep.

In many Eastern philosophies, we humans are advised to teach ourselves to be truly alive in the present moment. Miss Thing was the best example of this spirit that I’ve ever encountered. She radiated a sense of contentment and bright engagement with life that never looked forward or back. If I stepped on her tail as she meandered underfoot, she was incapable of holding a grudge. She seemed to have already achieved the enlightenment necessary for true uncomplicated happiness.

One of her most endearing qualities was her desire to be in the middle of any activity in the house. If there was laundry being folded, or a bed being made, she would leap to the center of the action with an irrepressible playfulness that was impossible to resist even when it was most inconvenient. When my husband worked at home he learned to type with a cat wandering back and forth over his keyboard, reminding him to take breaks to pay attention to the kitty! Often when he and I were locked in an intense or serious discussion, she would walk into our midst with a raised tail, as if to say no problem could be so serious while we had a cat like her around. She was an extraordinary sock hunter, and over the years retrieved uncounted socks from dirty laundry baskets. Each time she would announce her prize with loud meows that brought us to stop whatever we were doing and properly show our gratitude. "Thank you, Miss Thing," we would chorus as she proudly sat in front of us with her tribute.

So now I once again say thank you, Miss Thing. Thank you for the gift of your presence during the past ten years. We had hoped to keep you with us for longer, but truly is it written that none of us knows how long we will have with one another. In your next life I have no doubt you will come back again as someone’s beloved cat, which my friend Jack maintains is the peak of all earthly incarnations. For you, may there always be balls to chase and string to pounce on. May there be wide windows looking onto green gardens and many birds to watch. And may the lucky souls who live with you understand as we did, what a treasure they have in you.

I share my house with one husband and two cats.

The cats don’t quite have us outnumbered, although some days it certainly feels like things are being run for their convenience more than for ours. The two cats are females from the same litter, brought home from the local animal shelter. We had gone intending to come home with just one, yet somehow we wound up with 100% more cat than we’d planned.

I’ve been told that you never choose a cat as much as a cat chooses you. In my case, I was walking down a row of cat cages when a small orange paw reached out through the bars and gently snagged me. Okay, I thought, let’s see who’s so eager to meet me. As I was introducing myself to a charmingly outgoing three-month-old, the woman who managed the cats told my husband, “her sister is just on the other side.” So Mark went over to check out a kitten that looked exactly like the one engaging me. This kitten, however, was huddled in the rear of the cage, curled up into a tiny horrified ball of orange fluff. His protective instincts immediately engaged, he took the small cat, stiffened with fear, and rested her against his shoulder. As he petted her gently and walked up and down the room, he felt the tension gradually melt from her body and a barely perceptible purr begin. Within a few minutes he turned to me with a delighted expression and said she had fallen asleep in his arms. And with that, our fates were sealed.

The characters of the two cats have remained true to their behavior on the very first day we met them. Miss Thing, the outgoing one, is the most active and inquisitive cat I’ve ever known. In the first year we had her, the vet was concerned about her unusually slow heart rate during exams and thought she might have heart problems. After several exams and an expensive consultation with a feline cardiac specialist, he concluded she just doesn’t get too worked up about things. She’s happy go-lucky, impulsive, and not very bright.

Girlfriend, her more timid litter-mate, is similar in appearance and temperament-wise the complete opposite. Despite being a large and physically powerful cat, her innate conservatism means she treats all new situations and people as dangerous until proven otherwise. Her motto is “Same good, change bad.” She won’t take cat treats because they’re not her usual food. She makes a practice of hiding under our bed until all houseguests have left, and she can keep this up for days if necessary.

The challenge is, Girlfriend is also willful and extremely bright, for a cat. When I need to take her to the vet, I have to hide the carrier box lest she spot it and hide in an inaccessible location. In fact, it’s best if I get the box out several days in advance because she instantly recognizes the sound of the attic door where it’s kept and takes off, just in case. She has a sixth sense that tells her when I’m looking for her in order to clip her nails or do anything else she doesn’t care for. Miss Thing, on the other hand, is likely to climb into the pet carrier box without prompting out of simple curiosity. Only after we’ve closed her up in it for transport will she catch on and meow a protesting "Hey, wait a minute!"

Last week my husband and I were traveling in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State. I used to live in the area some seventeen years ago, when I was a graduate student in Ithaca. At that time most New York wines were pretty bad. There were a few exceptions, but on the whole wines from the area were cheap, sweet and simple. Wine cooler fodder, if you remember that mercifully brief fad.

Well times have changed, baby. Throughout a single day of tasting I kept having a strong feeling of dislocation. “Wait a minute—is this Napa Valley?” The wines were delicious, with absolutely nothing to apologize for. The tasting rooms were lovely, making the most of the glorious scenery. The winery staff people doing the pouring were proud of their product and good ambassadors for the region. I can’t wait to go back and continue my explorations of the many small producers that are making a name for themselves.

Our first visit of the day was to the Dr. Konstantin Frank vineyard, named for its founder, on the shores of Keuka Lake. Dr. Frank, a Ukrainian immigrant, was an early booster of the region and a pioneer in cultivating the European vinifera grape. Before his experiments in the sixties, the region was known only for its American grapes, like Concord and Delaware. While these grapes are fine for juice, they make terrible wine. Dr. Frank was convinced that he could grow the fine winemaking varieties even in a climate as challenging as that of upstate New York. Together with other pioneers at Cornell University and the Gold Seal Winery, he proved it could be done and made possible the growth of a new wine-producing region.

My husband and I had resolved we would only buy wines that were special in some way. By that we meant no wines that could be produced better elsewhere. I didn’t want wine that was pretty good for a New York wine, but wine that was worth drinking no matter where it was from. I thought that would be a pretty tough standard based on my past experience with the region, but instead we found ourselves struggling to narrow down the list as the tasting progressed and we grew more and more impressed. We know before we went that the Dr. Frank cellars are renowned for their German-style Rieslings. But when we found ourselves exclaiming over a subtle and delicate Pinot Noir, we knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Delicious red wine from a New York grower? Impossible!

After much debate, we came out with two cases. One full case was a non-vintage white blend under the Salmon Run label, which the Dr. Frank company creates using other growers’ wines. This Cold Brook White was a pleasant, off-dry blend of chardonnay and Riesling with a slight flinty undertaste I particularly associate with New York. I don’t think you’d mistake it for the product of anywhere else, which meant it fit our requirements. I look forward to pairing it with a wide range of food, and at $7 per bottle it will make a great every day table wine. The second case was a mixture of more refined wines under the Dr. Konstantin Frank label. We came home with the Dr. Frank Dry Riesling (2004), the Johannisberg Riesling (2004) and the Pinot Noir (2001). The Dry Riesling is a multiple-award winner, and it fully lived up to billing. Very dry, with little residual sweetness, it still had lots of fruit taste and a very winning delicacy. The Johannisberg Riesling I liked even better, which surprised me because I don’t usually care for semi-dry wines. This, though, had a roundness and a balance that was simply delicious. I can’t wait to pair this somewhat flowery wine with a simple meal of roast chicken.

The big surprise, as I’ve mentioned, was the 2001 Pinot Noir. At more than $21 per bottle, we felt we were paying a bit of a “pinot premium” (thank you “Sideways” for ruining pinot prices for next three years). Nevertheless, the medium body, berry fruitiness and clean finish made me think this will go beautifully with duck or a mild lamb. I wouldn’t bet on New York being able to produce a red this good in every year, but that vintage impressed the heck out of me.

A mere mile and a half down the road towards the small town of Hammondsport is the equally well-known Heron Hill winery. Heron Hill grows much the same variety of grapes as Dr. Frank on the same slopes by the lake, but the effect in the bottle couldn’t be more different. Here the standout was a Chardonnay. We’d tasted two Chardonnays at Dr. Frank and felt they were fine, but nothing special. Heron Hill’s Ingle Vineyard Chardonnay (2002) was fantastic, in contrast. Aged in European oak, the wine had vanilla warmth mellowed by a moderate buttery smoothness without being in the least bit gooey. We thought it was well worth the $15 price point. Our other favorite was the Riesling Reserve 25th Anniversary Vintage (2002). Bone dry and unbelievably delicate, I’d be very careful pairing this wine with any kind of food. It has a delicious austerity that could easily be overwhelmed. I plan to serve it as an aperitif, and only with my favorite fellow wine snobs. The rest of our case was filled out by a blend we were quite taken with, the Eclipse White 2003. Mostly Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, the wine has 15% Pinot Gris. Yet the Pinot Gris is at the forefront of the taste, making the wine taste like an excellent Italian Pinot Grigio, without a trace of the harshness that sometimes mars that style of wine. This wine will be terrific with light pasta dishes and white-fleshed fish.

By this time we had tasted and discussed a total of eighteen wines at the two wineries. Making our selections for the case we purchased took extensive and very pleasurable debate. Once we’d loaded the back of the car with our booty from Heron Hill, joining the two cases already there from Dr. Frank’s, we were done for the day. On to Hammondsport for a leisurely lunch at a sidewalk table beside the town green, and then a scenic drive back to our bed and breakfast.

I can’t wait to go back to the region to visit the many well-respected wineries we weren’t able to see this time: Fox Run, Hermann Wiemer, Wagner (famous for its Ice Wine), Chateau Lafayette-Reneau and a few others. Next time I’ll allow at least four days for roaming and tasting. And now to plan the dinner party!

I’m back posting again after more than a week off. To those of you who told me you missed my posts, thank you! I was refilling the well of inspiration by visiting my hometown in upstate New York and touring the Finger Lakes region. I plan to write more about my travels soon.

I’m writing today on my back patio, which is quite a novelty to me. Only yesterday a good friend was kind enough to set up a wireless network for my new notebook computer, and now I’m feeling so modern, tapping away out here in the dappled sunlight under my shady pergola. Behind me a small fountain is splashing. There are crickets in the flowerbeds and birds in the trees. With all these organic sounds, I hardly notice the background city noises that are part of living inside the Washington Beltway. Planes and helicopters go overhead regularly, traffic passes by in the street in front of my house, but the closer sounds are all natural.

I say I feel modern, but I also feel quite old-fashioned. The photograph at the top of today’s entry is of the porch where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings did her writing in the nineteen-thirties and -forties. She’s best known for her novel The Yearling, which was made into film at least twice (once with Gregory Peck). My favorite book is her memoir of her life in central Florida, Cross Creek. I have a treasured first edition I picked up for $1.00 in a used bookstore. It’s too well-loved to be valuable, and I’m glad—I wouldn’t want to feel inhibited from re-reading it as often as I do.

I went looking for the book after seeing a film based on her life. I saw it at an impressionable age, and it set my ideas of what writing life should be. I was seventeen in 1983, the year the movie came out. It starred Mary Steenburgen as Miss Rawlings, and I was so fascinated with the tale of a woman who’d left everything to take up a dilapidated orange grove she’d inherited in the middle of nowhere and concentrate on writing. The middle of nowhere was much more isolated in 1930 than it is in 2005. No wireless internet connections, no phone, few neighbors. Despite coming from what was at the time the wealthy industrial city of Rochester, New York, she settled into that retiring life with tremendous affection for its details. I’ve read her memoir over and over, and it’s been a major influence upon my own character. She showed that you can cultivate the life of the mind and still take pride in your cooking. She lived the life of an independent artist, while remaining a very feminine woman who enjoyed the company of men. She was a kindred spirit for me, someone else who appreciated the magic of the everyday, the mundane.

Mulberry Jam, the blog, is a direct response to her inspiration. In a way I’m still trying to absorb the principle that creation can happen wherever you are. Art can be made on a porch, or in a kitchen, or in an orange grove. Although I never got stuck with that image of the urban garret as the ideal locus for the creative life, I do sometimes need to remind myself that even here, on a suburban patio, I can build my own Cross Creek of the soul.