basilbias.com

In fewer than 20 days, these will be french breakfast radishes (or so says the packet they came from.)

Already, I think they’re even cuter than their name.

When my mother informed me on the phone that she had stopped using her dryer,[1] I pictured my parents’ tiny first floor laundry room that doubles as a guest bath thick with clotheslines and garments in varying states of dampness.  In the dead of a Midwest winter, they couldn’t have installed a clothesline outside, right?

It seems I underestimated my parents. When I arrived in Madison a couple days ago, I discovered that they had indeed put a clothesline on their screen porch. What’s more, the towels and clothes they had hung on it in frigid temperatures miraculously hadn’t frozen. ‘They feel a little clammy, but they’re dry’ my mom said as she pulled some jeans off the line. ‘It just takes a little longer in the winter.’ [2]

Having thus defied the laws of physics, my parents moved on to a few other improvements. Food scraps, which for years went down the disposal or in the trash,[3] are separated into soup stock makings and compost, and are collected in a couple coffee cans in the freezer. The compost gets brought outside to the compost bin periodically. My dad has had more luck than me making soup stock that doesn’t taste funny, even though he flouts all the rules about what should and should not go in it.[4]

They also got the back stairs refinished by Mr. Sandless,^TM a company that uses certified low VOC finishes. ‘It smelled like orange juice instead of polyurethane,’ my dad says.

---

[1] When asked why, she said the thing about EnergyStar not even certifying clothes dryers bothered her, especially in light of the fact that dryers are unnecessary. ‘When you really think about it,’ she commented, ‘it’s like using a hair dryer to make your clothes dry a little faster.’

[2] My mom says that when dryers first started appearing in houses in the fifties, women of her mother’s generation used them as a last resort, preferring the fresh scent and crisp texture of clothes dried en plein air. She remembers my grandma’s sheets freezing in the winter occasionally when she took a chance and put them out to dry in spite of the weather. It’s funny how we still think of the aesthetics of ‘real’ living as ideal in our chemical age- even dryer sheets, which couldn’t be more fake,  sell themselves with allusions to fresh breezes and cool mountain air, and more often than not portray clothes on a line on their packages.

[3] We had a compost bin when I was growing up, but over the years my parents lost interest in keeping it up. What it was about decaying vegetables that couldn’t hold their interest for longer I’m not entirely sure…

[4] When I told him that the cauliflower I was chopping up had to go in the compost, not the soup stock bin, because cauliflower is cruciferous, he looked at me like I was nuts. ‘It’ll get bitter!’ I insisted. I think he threw it in the compost just to humor me. This is the man who taught my mom how to cook, but who can count on one hand the number of times he’s followed a recipe in his life.

A lovely piece on food in America, by Maira Kalman.

These are the stragglers that didn’t seem to be ripening in situ. So I finally decided to pick them and give them a chance to ripen on the kitchen sill. If that fails, there must be something you can do with green tomatoes besides frying them…

Our bikes caught their breath as we picnicked in the sun…

Our yard made strawberries! (Berries picked and photo taken by Fig.)

My new reusable produce bags (made with the rainbow thread that came with my vintage machine…)

Making a plaid punk rock reusable pad this morning.

It’s almost as if my bike took it…

Sometimes it amazes me that things just dry, all on their own…