tomato children haiku.

this is cross-posted from poetry with jennifer hetrick. very, very long time no blog, yes-hmm !

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i glimpsed first signs of heirloom tomato plant children in my garden, a sight of farm and earth gifts possible in a small backyard in a borough. every year, i order tomatoes from erica bowers-lavdanski of b&h organic produce in caernarvon township at the edge of berks and chester counties.

this particular plant is called matt's wild cherry. i plan to save some of the eventual tomatoes for my one brother since this is his name, too. i'm also in people's gardens sometimes, as well, and point this out when i notice myself sprawling in a landscape. creeping jenny. =) i may save brain-space for a creeping jenny haiku in the future.

here is a tomato children haiku sparked from this eye-scene.

visit your own garden for some poetry-whisking ideas.

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green globes hold tightly 

to matching leafy-topped

crowns stretching skyward

a cherry lime smoothie recipe born in lancaster county.

busy-bee syndromes are strong (the reason i find my way to this blog-ish space so infrequently). many nowadays know this but don't necessarily think about in depth—i'm working on a way to explore that in the form of an article to pitch, when i have some free life-minutes to discuss the evolution of our too-busy-to-exist lives with some local therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc.

but—

at least there is this cherry lime smoothie, with the recipe prepared by phoebe canakis of phoebe's pure food. once you have the ingredients lined up, you can freeze or refrigerate most of them to last for a while so that you can keep blendering up the recipe until you run out of what it takes to make it. i create it in my kitchen every week or two, and as i finally run out of the foods it involves, i buy more.

this brightly beet-rich smoothie reminds me of comforting breakfast in non-rushed moments, mingling with how miraculously delicious fruit+fruit+more can be. 

it incorporates cherries, orange parts, raspberries, shredded red beet pieces, red grapes, cherry juice, freshly squeezed lime juice, and optional maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, (black) cherry greek yogurt (that's what i use), granola, hemp seeds, and chia seeds.

phoebe also has a podcast called two weird hungry girls. i often mistakenly call it inaccurate titles like two girls who are really hungry. so i always have to google it to make sure i'm saying or writing it correctly. but either way, it bursts with its obvious fun-persuasion just by its name, even if my memory skills with its title are sometimes a bit off.

she is also the host of pure food for thought with the people chronicles, where she explores local people's life stories and how they're laced along the way with food-stirring memories.

she's also just completely fun as a human being, which is a major plus nowadays.

freebie tomatoes are the thing sometimes.

i would really love to come back here more, to this blog. this weekend, i scheduled no interviews, hiking, or other plans. the hours of this weekend will be dedicated exclusively to gardening and yard cleanup and hopefully not burning to a pennsylvania dutch and irish crisp, with the help of some sunscreen and the floppiest straw hat i ever owned. and some sunglasses. 

i love when tomato parts mate and make new children. these are two happenin' offspring from near my compost area last year. the freebie plants that popped up via kind nature-efforts this year are still in the process of growing and are apparently leaning toward being more sizable. 

now that i think of it, maybe these tomato kids weren't in fact hybridized but instead ones that had blurred seed parents making their way to my yard from my neighbor's garden. either way, they were free. and i love when food ties in such freedom.  i am a grateful eater. nommm.

an ode to those little orbs of rainbow parts.

x-posted from news, not blues:

bubbles are everything that is fun in the world. 

go make some happen. seriously, though.

s'now way-- yet again.

i missed posting for a year. too many things to do, ah.

this winter is compensating for all the easy ones that came before it. a whopping snowfall today will soon have another one following it, just a few hours later.

i never expected to love a machine so much, a snowblower from a friend who was kind enough to give me very affordable pricing, and it was almost new when i brought it home.

today's revving and augering took more than two hours. thank lordisa for the snowblower. the thing deserves a name. i'll work on that.

while i now have social media dwindling due to liking privacy better, this blog may not be something even a few people stumble across if i begin posting again more, which is my hope. but that works for me. i really have missed this place and spending some energy on nature-swept eye-scenes and word throwings. it all benefits the heart and peace the world needs.

goldflame honeysuckle moves along in song-speak sometimes.

life-minutes for words about the two-toned sweet-smelling petal love here may be few, but at least some of the garden kindly takes care of itself while i'm working many a job and trying to squeeze hiking and other good times in on weekends.

take the good of the world and your garden with you in every new day !

Heirloom fruits & veggies are relics.

Before the food-growing industry's most practiced approaches were rewritten, fruits and vegetables took on a diversity of impeccable flavors, curious colors and skin patterns, and unexpected yet eye-piquing shapes. Heirlooms are the name given to those that survived.

The last century's strong commercial push involved seeds for crops being developed into hybrids intended to yield high amounts with sturdier outer skins.

This large-scale shift in agriculture, starting with the seed, led to a lot of sacrifice in taste while sometimes diminishing the nutritional value per plant.

Heirlooms are food relics all their own. They behave differently than mass-produced garden and field crops by having less-standard mature growth sizes and food-bearing periods.

To read the rest of this article, visit this lil' link.