Nutmeg

 

I like the smooth hardness of nutmegs, also the veining on the inside. We have a small nutmeg grater that was my Grandma's. Curiously, nutmeg grating was an activity at the Montessori preschool my sons attended.   Considering the number of times I have grated a knuckle along with the nutmeg, I am surprised they would have tots doing this. Both boys were enthusiastic nutmeg graters. They had a brilliant idea to open a nutmeg stand, similar to the ubiquitous lemonade stand. David said earnestly, " It will be so nice for people coming home from work who forgot to buy nutmeg at the store."

Obviously nutmeg is a nut. It comes from an evergreen tree native to the Molucca Islands. Like many of the Spice Islands plants, it is grown throughout the Indian Ocean region and in the West Indies. It is grown in Zanzibar (one of the best-named places) and is shown on the flag of Granada.  It was a valuable trade item since Roman times. The Wiki article states that "at one time, nutmeg was one of the most valuable spices. It has been said that in England, several hundred years ago, a few nutmeg nuts could be sold for enough money to enable financial independence for life." According to another source, in the 1800s in Connecticut, scamming peddlers sold wooden fake nutmegs.

Nutmeg is also the source of mace, which goes so well with oranges in baking. Mace is the brilliantly-colored inner coating of the nutmeg.

Apparently nutmeg contains psychoactive substances and has been used as a hallucinogen. However the unpleasant taste of an intoxicating dose of nutmeg, along nasty side effects and toxicity have kept it from popular use. This is why you shouldn't feed eggnog to your pet!  I wonder whether the Montessori school knew about this?

Cinnamon

I was wondering about our baking spices. We have all heard of the romantic Spice Islands, which could be smelled miles out to sea. But what countries are they? What do the trees look like, that produce these spices? How do they grow? In ancient times, spice traders kept secret the sources of their precious wares, but I have only to consult Wikipedia.

I began with my very favorite, cinnamon. We all have seen the little rolls of cinnamon bark, so we are quite certain they come from the bark of a tree. I looked it up and found that cinnamon trees are native to  Sri Lanka, that paradisaical isle with precious stones for beach pebbles.  Strange stories abounded in Western lands about the source of this valuable spice. For example, according to the Wiki, "in Herodotus and other authors, Arabia was the source of cinnamon: giant cinnamon birds collected the cinnamon sticks from an unknown land where the cinnamon trees grew and used them to construct their nests; the Arabs employed a trick to obtain the sticks." Indeed, cinnamon was distributed to Europe through the port of Alexandria in Egypt. The history of cinnamon is very interesting and worth reading about.

Cinnamon is cultivated in many countries around the Indian Ocean, including India and Indonesia, as well as Brazil and the West Indies. It is an evergreen plant in the laurel family (which, incidentally, includes avocados - who would have guessed?) The trees are coppiced to produce many young shoots. Their outer bark is stripped away and the inner bark collected and dried. This is our cinnamon, without which there would be no cinnamon toast! 

Soon I will write about nutmeg and clove.

Petite Musicians

Our house if full of musicians. Most of them are quite small, and some are strange. Here are a few:

How many homes do you know where a clown performs happily with a cat and a dwarf - accomplished string players all?

The little Dutch boy and the angel join in a jolly folk tune with heavenly descant

My favorites of all are the baroque ensemble. They are so elegant! They are mismatched in size but make such charming music together.

Winter Flowers

Hellebore and pieris. There is always something beautiful to be found in the garden. They are displayed in a sake bottle, but still so very English!

Time Spent vs Time Let Go

We talk about spending time. The expression is weighted with the idea that time is a limited and valuable commodity that will "buy" us something. Limited? Yes, certainly, but I don't care for this market-place metaphor. Time it there... what we accomplish during its passage is up to us. We are blessed if we can apply ourselves to things that we love to do. But we can also let it pass like water through our fingers trailing in a stream. We are often taught to feel guilty about "wasting time". Why?

Tim and I are trying an experiment that is a nod to the idea of Sabbath.  Tonight we will turn off the computer and the phone, sit down to a beautiful table and spend the evening companionably as if we were each other's delightful guests. No practicing, no chores. It is not that this doesn't happen anyway quite often, but we choose deliberately to set aside this time outside of time in that marketplace sense. How will this feel? Time will tell.

Pruning Lavender

Pruning lavender - now there is a remedy for winter blahs! Clogged with fallen leaves, with dried up flower stalks making a prickly halo, these little lavender bushes looked quite sorry. I pulled out the leaves and dead stems, trimmed off the old flowers, and they began to look much better. And I began to feel much better too, because every snip or snap brought a burst of fragrance.

I never would have guessed lavender would do well here. It only requires two magic ingredients - well-drained soil and full sun. Our clay would not even enter the running for well-drained soil, but before planting lavender and sage out in the parking strip, I mixed the top several inches of soil with a rough ceramic grit used at golf-courses to break up heavy soil.

I have seen lavender growing in a number of places I wouldn't have expected it. One is the northeast end of the Olympic Peninsula near Sequim. The Olympic Mountains are known for their rain forest, receiving 140 to 170 inches of rain a year, but Sequim is in the rain shadow of the mountains with only 16 inches of rain each year. The area is known for lavender.

Here in rainy Portland, I prune my lavender and breathe deep. It isn't Provence, but it is a little bit of heaven.

Organic Forms

I am looking out the window at a tree. It has mottled bark decorated with frilly lichens. The branches are wiggly and irregular, held out like the arms of a child reaching up to catch snowflakes. It is a twiggy complicated tree.

I am too much inside rectangular walls these winter days. I wonder what harm it does the psyche to be inside most of our lives. All these flat, pale lifeless surfaces! Today I am wishing I was in a cabin in the forest. It would have a moss-covered roof and low eaves, windows on all sides, and the sound of water running. Natural wood walls and simple furniture would sooth the mind. It would be comfortable and warm inside, but much more closely connected to the outside than our fancy house. There would be less stuff in it, but outside would be all the riches of nature.