Near California

Bakersfield, Kern Riverbed 

I am taking an art class from a fellow named Art Sherwyn.  You can look him up; he is good, has written books, gives art retreats, and classes.  I went with him last summer on a camping art retreat in Sequoia Forest (near the national park, but not the national park).  I have scars to prove it.  I don’t mean from him, although let’s say we have different styles, like him being good and me being mediocre and sometimes just realizing that is a little scarring (but all part of the process of getting real and learning something).  But in June during the appreciating heat of the new summer the biting flies come out, and let’s just call this hatching of flies plague like, and being there in these June days was a lot like being an Egyptian from a Sunday school lesson.  You get the picture.

Puddle in Riverbed

I returned home one night early, swollen and deformed with some dirty attempts at landscape pastels.  Memorable. 

Anyhow, I signed up for a class once again, but carefully selected an indoor experience at our local and tiny Bakersfield Museum of Art.  I am limping along and wondering what in the world made me sign up for 6 weeks of humility, or humiliation depending on how I try to spin it.  Humility is maybe a good kind of hard that makes you want to try more, but humiliation is hard and it can be a little defeating.  It takes a careful balance between teacher and student and I cannot seem to find it.  But what I am enjoying is the group of 20 people who are also taking this class.  I am amazed at the natural talent and I love seeing how hands and brains working together can produce meaningful art.

Near Paso Robles

One of the women in this class has a lovely accent and tremendous talent, of which I am envious. I kept trying to guess her accent in my head: Italian, Russian?  No, when I got the nerve to ask, she is Columbian, from Bogota.  Her husband is with Occidental Oil Company, which in Bakersfield speak is Oxy. (Like, “He works for Oxy.”) She has been here 6 years.  And as if I needed proof that 6 years may make one a true Bakersfieldian, when she asked me if I liked Bakersfield and I said it is nice, but I missed nature (which is my best and least offensive answer), she responded by saying, “But the good thing is it is near California.”  She meant Bakersfield is near so many other Californian cities, but I think the way she said it is more apt. 

Cambria, CA

Fiscalini Ranch Preserve, Cambria

I mentioned this before.  I have heard regularly the best thing about Bakersfield is how close it is to all the other places.  Meaning the best thing is leaving and going somewhere fairly close by (meaning 2 hours or more).  And this is true. Keith and I went to the coast near Paso Robles last Saturday and it was 2 hours and we spent the afternoon hiking above the Pacific and watching the porpoises jump in gray arcs above the waves.  No kidding, it was amazing.  Just 2 hours away we saw nature and porpoises.  And (add Bethoven’s 5^th da da da dahhhhh) then we returned to Bakersfield, which thankfully, or on the bright side, is near California.

Seasons

I have been meaning to write, and actually I am always meaning to write, but I  just can’t seem to make myself sit down long enough. But meaning is not doing. So it is early morning, still dark, and Keith is still sleeping and writing has been on my mind.

What I have been meaning to write is about food and it is funny how often I am thinking of what is next to eat and what I can create and who I can give it to, or how can I possibly eat all this food.  I have been painting food, and when I am not sketching quick renditions of Lucy the dog and Keith, I am contemplating just how beautiful kale looks when the sun shines on it, or lemon slices, or fresh baked loaves of bread, or… you get the point. 

Walking Trail with Pumps

It doesn‘t help that I have moved to the land of abundance.  Right now we are in the middle of citrus season (or near the end I should say, although my Meyer lemon is still full because I haven’t come up with a good plan yet).  I made 16 jars of marmalade (Meyer lemon and undetermined-type orange from the neighbor’s tree) and I have been eating marmalade on oatmeal, toast, and I haven’t tried sweet potatoes, but that sounds good too.  I try sneaking marmalade into Keith’s food as much as possible and I am looking for cakes or tarts or whatever that a spoonful of marmalade will round off.  I have also been giving it away to neighbors and tennis partners and other new people in my life in this new town.

Then there were the green tomatoes.  Throughout last summer, my tomato garden set one tomato; one.  I added fertilizer.  I sprayed with organic pesticides (is there such a thing? That is what the label said.).  I watered, I stopped watering, I watched and waited and nothing; day after day, week after week.  Then in mid October when the temperatures dipped below 90 degrees, I got ready to tear out the plants thinking despite my efforts I had given things a more than fair dose of time and patience and effort.  As I grabbed the viney, barren stalks, I saw tiny green baby tomatoes hatching all over the place, like 20 weeks was the perfect amount of time, rather than the 2 ½ months promised on the little white tags with pictures of perfect tomatoes and with singular instructions like full sun, which made every thing sound easy.  My North Carolina tomatoes were lovely. I knew it wasn’t me (or at least I didn’t want to admit it wasn’t me).  Stupid sandy loam, stupid worm infestations, stupid mineral deficiencies.  So needless to say, I left the vines to produce these late toms.  And I waited.  And waited.  And although the tomatoes got bigger, they never turned pink or hopeful or anything.  Then December arrived and our first warning of frost, the vines had to go.

Yet, couldn’t I salvage something?  I wondered and then at the library I found a book called The Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen who runs a cooking school in Ireland.  Green tomato Chutney…there it was in all its glory. The perfect recipe to bring value to my hours of tending to the stubborn vines.  I have now given that all away too and I discovered in the process that people generally prefer chutneys over marmalades. Maybe you do too.  But I personally find the look of topaz colored preserves more appealing than brown gobby stuff, although the brown gobby chutney was very good with cheddar cheese.

Marmalade

I can’t ignore the seasons in a place where fruits nearly explode in my face.  For Christmas one of my neighbors gave me pomegranate jelly from his pomegranate tree and another a bottle of just pressed olive oil from his olive trees.  My other neighbor brought lamb chops, her husband is a shepherd or something.  Have I moved to heaven, albeit a dry, industrial heaven?  In a few weeks time, right after Easter, the usually heavy air here will begin to smell of citrus blossoms and for one week our poor air quality town (worst in the U.S.), smells like sweet goodness.  Then the strawberries come, and the apricots come and then the figs and then the pomegranates and then, and then, and then it all begins again.