Author: Robinne Weiss

Walking Around Town at Dinnertime

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Kids on the trampoline
Windows open
Chicken, potatoes, and minted peas
waft to the street.

Apartment block
Curtains flap from
Second storey windows
Sending frying bacon
And curry
Skittering through the air.

In front of the rest home
Tinned beans
And tea
Sit heavy,
Cling to my shoes.

Past the shops
Grease from
Restaurant fryers
Coats every surface
And makes the sidewalk slick.

Beer and cigarettes
Billow from the pub.

I turn towards home
Where soup and bread
Pool in the potholes of the driveway.

Winter Cat

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

The cat has decided it’s winter. We’ve had a few chilly nights, and some drizzly, overcast days, but the daytime temperatures have been pleasant, even in the rain.

The cat, however, thinks it’s time to hibernate.

He has distinct winter and summer behaviours. In summer, he spends day and night outdoors, coming inside only to eat or for the purpose of irritating us by demanding to come in and go out every three minutes.

In winter, he spends his days sleeping on my daughter’s bed or in my office, and his nights in front of the fireplace, going out only briefly so that he can demand to be let back in again once we’re comfortably engaged in something else.

The past few days, he’s been spending time on the couch and, last night, he stretched out in front of the fireplace, though there was no fire. Today, he claimed my office chair before I had a chance to sit down.

Never mind that it’s still warm enough to have the doors and windows open. Never mind we’re still eating summer vegetables from the garden. Never mind that autumn has hardly begun. The cat says it’s winter.

Rangitata

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Boulders like
Some great migration of hump-backed
Turtles
Lumber through the shallows.
Wading
Only to the knees.
Wary
Of the laughing burble of
The deep channel beyond.
Their cousins crowd the opposite bank.

Watch.

One will push another in
If you wait long enough.

Flying Saucers in the Garden!

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned these wee beauties before, but they deserve their own post. This is my third year planting extraterrestrials in the garden. Flying Saucers is an unusually shaped variety of scallopini (aka patty pan squash), developed in 2000. Its exaggerated ribbing gives it a spiky appearance. I’m not sure it’s particularly UFO-shaped, but it is bizarre-looking.

Like all scallopini, Flying Saucers has a lovely, nutty flavour and a firm texture. It does well in stir-fries, soups, pasta–anywhere you would use zucchini.

The ribs are most dramatic on young fruits, so pick them small (5cm/2in diameter), for maximum visual effect. If you pick them small enough, you can cut them in ’rounds’ that look like stars. I’ve also seen them used to great visual effect cut in half, hollowed out, and stuffed, creating beautiful star-like stuffed squash.

The seed catalogues say they are more green, less yellow when nighttime temperatures are high. Our nights are always chilly, so I don’t know if that’s true–mine have just a touch of green on the ends.

Flying Saucers is my scallopini of choice, since I discovered it. How could I resist such a brilliant squash?

Painted Mountain Corn

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Last year, I tried planting a coloured corn, but the rats ate it all. This year, with some protection for my seedlings, I managed a crop of Painted Mountain. Though it’s popular for autumn decoration in the US, I’d never grown it myself.

I wasn’t certain it would produce well. The plants are shorter and faster-maturing than sweet corn, and they looked stunted. They were beautiful in the garden, though–deep burgundy-coloured stems and light green leaves. Dark red silk peeking out of the husks.

The beauty didn’t stop in the garden. My daughter and I sat on the porch yesterday evening and husked the harvest, exclaiming as each new cob was revealed. It was like Christmas, never knowing what surprise would be in the next package. The variety of colours and arrangements of colours was amazing. I’d seen all this before, in the “Indian corn” my mother decorated with each fall, but there was something magical about seeing the diversity emerge from one small crop I’d grown myself.

I have no intention of using this corn for decoration. It is beautiful, and I will enjoy it as it dries, but it is destined for more interesting uses. Painted mountain is a starch corn. Once it’s dry, I’ll grind it into cornmeal.

I have visions of beautiful, coloured corn chips, red cornbread, rosy polenta…mmm…can’t wait until it’s dry.

Summer Soups and Stews

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

One of the nicest things about the end of summer are those autumnal days that make me crave hearty soups and stews–dishes I haven’t particularly wanted to eat in the heat of summer.

To have a chill in the air, but still have a garden bursting with summer vegetables means we can make wonderful warming dishes with the very best of summer flavours.

We’re into our third day of rain, with temperatures hovering around 11°C (52°F), and enjoying the possibilities the weather has offered.

First up was a beautiful tomato soup, made with a king’s ransom of fresh, garden-ripened tomatoes, and handfuls of fresh herbs. It was amazing for dinner and made a wonderful warming lunch the following day, too.

Tonight it was black beans from this year’s harvest, cooked with more fresh tomatoes and herbs, accompanied by corn bread and our own melons.

It makes me look forward to more rainy days to come!

 

Ode to a Rainy Day

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Rain, Rain, here today
A fine excuse, inside we’ll stay.
Play a game,
Bake a cake,
Do some sewing,
The yard’s a lake.

Drip and drop, it patters down.
Might be a day to go to town.
Catch a movie,
See some art,
Stop off for
A neenish tart.

Paddocks brown all get a drink.
Best to stay inside, I think.
Read a book,
Drink some tea,
Have a chat,
Just you and me.

Crazy Cake Season: Cake #3

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

This is the ‘adult’ cake of the season. He asked for something along the lines of devil’s food cake–chocolate and cherries. He was expecting an ordinary layer cake.

Hehehe…

So here it is–a chocolate genoise sheet cake rolled around whipped cream and cherries. I couldn’t resist the meringue mushrooms and chocolate leaf litter for my soil ecologist.

With his favourite cream cheese frosting (in chocolate, of course), this dead log looks good enough to eat.

Taking Life Seriously

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

These hands were made for walkin’

Life is full of serious stuff. Hard work, difficult decisions, earthquakes, fires, death, politicians, lawyers, and accountants…it’s easy to be overwhelmed by it all, and to walk through life with a frown.

So I’m thankful for those who can show us the proper way to take ourselves seriously…

Like the fellow in front of me at Farmlands this morning, who was buying fence posts.

“Anything else?” the clerk asked.

“Yeah, I’d like matching holes to put them in.”

Or the man I once caught stealing a marker flag off a research site. Surprised in the act of untying the flag from the tree, he smiled impishly, shrugged, tied it back on and walked off.

Or the awesome women I see around town with their hair dyed fuchsia, peacock blue, or lime green.

So, In an effort to take life as seriously as these leaders in the field, I’ve decided to tackle an issue that has bothered me for many years.

Handstands.

Yep. The important issue of our time–our orientational and gravitational challenges.

Oh, I can do handstands, and I can walk on my hands for half a dozen steps, but I lack control and finesse upside down. It bothers me that I can’t just stay on my hands for as long as I want, like I do on my feet. Eventually, I lose my balance. That shouldn’t happen. I should be able to remain in a handstand long enough to sing every last verse of Ratlin Bog. Long enough to read the entire front page of the New York Times (which would probably seem much less serious from that perspective). Long enough to do the bunny hop around the room. Long enough to thoroughly embarrass both my teenage children. Long enough that they deny they’re related to me, or that they’ve ever even met me.

So if you find me upside down at odd hours of day and night, please understand I’m just doing my best to take life seriously.