In Praise of Apricots

Posted on March 1, 2022 by Samantha

I am in love with apricots: tree, flower, and fruit.

Long ago, in a house in Tunis, we had an apricot tree. My family was only passing through, residents in the house for two years, but I remember the garden. It had a fig tree with a bough thick enough and horizontal enough to sit on. It had loquat bushes, mysterious and fuzzy. It had a walled garden where plants that looked like water lilies of the air suddenly appeared and bloomed with bright red and yellow flowers. (I’d never seen a nasturtium before.) And it had an apricot tree.

Delicate, scented white blossoms, followed by a shower of petals like something out of a romance or a fantasy novel. Heart-shaped leaves. And finally, small orange fruit. More velvety than fuzzy, and not tasting like tiny peaches but with their own distinct flavor.

Alas, I didn’t settle in a Mediterranean climate. There are no local apricot orchards. Despite the cautions listed on the Extension website, I did try to grow my own. I planted two trees. They grew, they bloomed, they fruited. I even got to eat some rather speck-marked fruit before the squirrels discovered them, and before the year that both trees died, probably from shot hole disease.

Not wanted to kill another apricot tree, I planted a fig in its place. And wow, has that fig grown!

But when you love something, it’s really hard to give up on it. Every so often, I buy apricots in the store, hoping that this batch will be ripe enough. I am usually disappointed.

The last time I did so, I saved some of the pits–just because. I chilled them in damp coffee filters for a month or so, in case they needed cold treatment, and planted them. Now I have three seedlings growing in my window. I know fruit varieties are usually grafted, so I can’t expect to get the variety I planted, but I am eager to find out if they will eventually produce those lovely delicate blossoms.

Apricot blossoms after an ice storm

Here’s the puzzle. If I love apricots, should I keep trying to grow them even though they are poorly suited to this climate? Or should I accept my situation and stick to the many plants that will flourish here?

And another puzzle: why is it so hard to give up one’s fantasy garden? Be it fields of English bluebells in the Midwest, or posies of sweet peas in the scorching South, or fresh ripe apricots in an area of many false springs, is it partly because they are just out of reach?

Till next post.

Pruning My Library—every so often, some books have to go

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Samantha

Going, going,…

I’ve been going through my overcrowded shelves of books recently and “pruning,” as my mother likes to put it. It’s difficult. At this point, I’ve gotten much better at getting rid of books I’m not really thrilled with shortly after I read them, which means most of the books I’m sorting through are 1) books I’ve had for years already and am sentimental about, 2) books I haven’t read yet, and 3) books I’ve loved, either recently or in the past.

The first category, books I’ve had for years, is composed of books that have already made it through many previous prunings, one as recent as 2017. Clearly I have some sort of attachment to them. (See “Books, Nostalgia, and Death.”) Most of these titles will make it through this pass as well.

Not all of them, though. For example, I’ve decided that while I enjoyed Noel Streatfield’s Gemma series, I’ve been keeping it all these years partly because I’m keeping her Ballet Shoes and A Vicarage Family, which is not a good enough reason for keeping Gemma. How much do I even remember about the series? I remember Gemma’s initial difficulties in a new school, the chair outside the headmistress’ office, something about a pink sweater, and a difficult decision between going back to acting or staying in school… but if I had to decide between rereading the Gemma books and reading a new middle-grade novel off my wish list, I would probably read the new one. That means it’s time to hand Gemma on to the library, and hopefully from there to some middle-grader who will enjoy reading about her for the first time.

The second category, unread books, probably numbers fifty titles at the moment. I bought them because they looked promising, and chances are they still do. The best way to decide is to compare each book to other shiny new options and ask myself, “Which would you rather give your time to?” Maybe I’m no longer quite as interested in art forgery as I used to be. Maybe I’ve already read enough books about dogs and their abilities. Maybe it’s time to move on. If not, at least by looking at it I’ve reminded myself that this book exists and that I want to read it someday.

Most of the third category, books I’ve loved, gets an automatic pass. I still have enough shelf space for the books that filled my early life, even if I haven’t read them for years and possibly never will again. Will I reread the entire Dragons of Pern series? I read it many, many times as a teen and I can’t let go of it yet, even if I haven’t reread it for decades. The Deryni series? Dune? They can stay, for now.

The Little House books were a staple of my childhood and I still open them up now and again. The Far Side of Evil, the Prydain books, Heidi… those too can stay, though I’m suddenly wondering if I need to keep the copy of Heidi. Surely I can get it from a library if I really want to reread it.

No, it stays—for now.

Books I’ve read (or re-read) recently and loved are absolutely keepers. Howl’s Moving Castle isn’t going anywhere. (Haha.) Neither are The Two Princesses of Bamarre, or My Friend Flicka, or that interesting books about pigments, or that other interesting book about flavors. (I don’t just read fiction.) All my Louise Penny mysteries are staying, as well as the Rivers of London series.

In the process of pruning my library, I’ve realized there are some principles that help me make the decision to put a book—or any item—in the donation box. I discussed these before in an earlier post, “Decluttering: on the one hand and on the other”, but to remind myself, I’m going to write them down here as well.

First, space has value. While I’m not paying extra to house these books, the piles of books outside the bookcase take up work space, floor space, and mental space. Clutter is distracting. If I can reduce the volume to fit the shelves, I will breathe easier and have more space for working on craft projects and moving around.

Second, it’s easier to find the books I really want to read if those are the only books on my shelf. Why spend time on a so-so book when I have all these books I really enjoy?

Third, keeping all these books around is a waste of resources. The Gemma books have been sitting on my shelves for the past forty years, and it has probably been at least twenty or twenty-five years since I’ve re-read them. Other people could have been reading them during that time, if they had had the books. I should free them up for someone else to enjoy.

And so, onward with the book pruning. At this rate, I might get through it all by the end of the month. Oh wait, I forgot the books tucked away in the guest room…

Till next post.

Stay at Home and Have Cake

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Samantha

“Stay at Home.”

Back in April I was experimenting with decorating cake using the batter itself, thanks to watching too many episodes of the Great British Baking Show. I was trying a technique that seemed to have many names: joconde imprime, Japanese Jelly-roll, and inlay cake. The writing above was not made with that technique. Rather, I took the leftover vanilla batter and piped it on top of the chocolate batter to express the concerns of the moment.

I never did write a blog post about the decorating technique, or at least, I never finished one. But the motto is even more relevant now than it was back in April.

Not everyone has the option to stay home, but for those who do, it is a contribution to fighting the pandemic. I know we went over all this back in March and April, but to repeat–if all you can do is avoid getting COVID yourself, you have still done something to help stop the pandemic. You have created one less source of infection, one less draw on the increasingly limited COVID-related resources.

(That should have been “fewer”, shouldn’t it?)

Everyday life goes on… and on… and it isn’t possible to postpone everything. There are dental visits, doctor visits, and sometimes you have to call the plumber in. Sometimes you really want to pick out your own groceries, and sometimes you want to see a friend–even if it has to be from a distance, masked. But you can still choose to be careful and limit your exposure, especially right now when the risk is higher than ever for most people. If it made sense in April, it makes even more sense now, when there is almost ten times the risk, on average, of catching it.

In the interests of ending on a positive note, I’m going to tack on some of the photos from April’s baking experimentation. Maybe eventually I’ll have another try at the technique, but till then…