It’s the grande allée between green bean and Hubbard squash season. Maybe my favourite vegetables. Sorry, celery root. 
 
I like to blanch beans, quickly fry them with garlic, and snug them against a roast chicken. Good hunger is standing beside my friend Ghaithaa at the stove while she makes Fasoulia with the flat green beans she loves. Sizzling heaps of thinly sliced garlic and green onions in ghee.
 
An embarrassment of salted butter is all a roasted Hubbard squash needs. 
 
The garden grows like a fever in September. A desire path, a wheelbarrow tire wide runs between it and the kitchen.
 
***
 
Scarlet rosehips are luminous in the dinnertime sun. A geisha’s lips. Spent blooms hang like an Issey Miyake among them. The Rosa Blanda metamorphosis. The scent on a hot July night hangs in memory’s closet.
 
***
 
I recognise myself as a writer while reading Duncan J. Watts, Five Feet at a Time. I’m working on a project and striking out in several directions, like the ink blots. A colleague once commented on my mind-map note-taking. My concentration on one thing caps out at three hours. Of course, I can get caught in a flow that lasts a day. But in figuring out how to be productive, I’m learning to flip the switch. And the solo climber metaphor he uses in the title is the way. 

***
 
I don’t have much extra, but there’s always enough for: 
 
Eating cassis sorbet in Trinity Bellwoods. The French know how to extract the lush essence from fruit. Ripeness has to rise above the numbing effect of cold. In flavour and texture, sorbet is a masterclass.
 
Stopping at the Polish deli for a raspberry donut. Two quarters change back from two dollars. A cheap thrill. Puffed like a foam pillow stuffed in a velum sugar case. Carried home in a small brown paper bag. Eaten while I make coffee. 
 
***
 
The songs go out to a friend from high school.

​“Their increasing liberation makes the country itself more beautiful.” 
 
Sentiment for the times. 
 
Rebecca Traister on Thelma and Louise. Maybe the best paragraph about a movie ever written:
 
“It’s not just that Thelma and Louise get inarguably hotter with every discarded lipstick, floral blouse, and trapping of conventional femininity; it’s that, in Khouri’s script and through director Ridley Scott’s lens, along the geographically impossible road from Oklahoma to Mexico, their increasing liberation makes the country itself more beautiful, both to them and to us. These women and their willingness to disobey, hang up on, laugh at, and even kill the men who degrade and underestimate them are not a blight on the nation; rather, their trek west, toward imagined freedom, flatters America, lights it up from within.”
 
***
 
Eating three perfect Ontario peaches in two days in the last week of August is haute seasonal. Like Gucci, but fruit. A Las Vegas fountain for the taste buds — passionfruit and tamarind and lime and agave and what-else. 
 
A few days later, they were mealy. The season comes to a smoke and screeching tires halt. Louise behind the wheel of the Tahoe Turquoise 1966 Ford Thunderbird Convertible — "peaches."

Stories of the week: 
 
“This paragraph took three fucking hours.” Ed Yong on practiced intentionality. Crazy good.
 
A guitar and a mahogany tree from The Met.
 
***
 
There was a trickle of emails waiting for me on waking last Sunday — messages about orchards. Thank you, universe. 
 
One from a friend telling me of a heritage apple tree they inherited with their Wolfe Island property — a St. Lawrence. The poetic embrace of location and tree. The watercolour by Deborah Griscom Passmore is on page 144 of The Ghost Orchard. 
 
If you’d like to get today by email, please send me your address. Then check your junk mail.
 
***
 
Music from two women. The Maya Delilah song is a new jewel. Phoebe Bridgers singing Metallica.

For the last two years, when I pass this tree on the Humber River, I put my hand on it to express solidarity with it in age and spirit. My admiration is more urgent this year because there's no fruit, the charcoal limbs are knobbly-arthritic, and the leaf cover is thin like a bad comb-over. Two days ago, I put my arms around it and hugged it proper.
 
It's part of a ghost orchard — five trees from an orchard planted in the 19th century. They are wild now and produce green apples the size and consistency of a jawbreaker. Before they hit the ground there are copper blemishes marking insect feasts. Starting in late August, the scent of fermentation is in the air.  
 
I might see this tree pass. I don't know the tree plan for parkland in the west end. I bet it's safe and economical. Why can't we establish orchards in city parks? 
 
I went on a Saturday outing to Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard. It's right across from Eglinton West station. Volunteers care for it. There's a beautiful pollinator garden, too. I strolled back downtown along the Cedervale Ravine. 

​​My love of orchards goes back to my Niagara childhood.

​***
 
"It was more powerful than I had imagined finding Frost's last orchard still thriving…All praise and all miracle...The poet may die, but the poetry continues."
 
A passage from Helen Humphrey's The Ghost Orchard about the thrill of standing in Robert Frost's orchard at his Ripton, Vermont writing cabin.
 
***
 
You can't imagine the talks I've heard on addiction in nearly 30 years of recovery. None have expressed more compassion than this talk from Tara Brach. She expresses humanity beautifully. 
 
***
 
I like the way these songs sound together. Adrianne Lenker is something.

The ribbing is seductive. I leave it on the table until I smell a jasmine aura. When it’s juicy as a peach and there’s no struggle scooping out the guts. Eat it all in a day so that it won't sour or, worse, need refrigeration. Ripeness turns quickly to rot.
 
The first time I went to the market in Cannes and bought a melon the woman asked me when I would eat it. I was confused. Why did she need to know that? It was like a lesson in magic. Knowing when it was ripe was her job.
 
Ripeness is a state at odds with travel. Consider the care needed to drive anything ripe and tender the few short miles from roadside stand to home. It's like transporting a stack of porcelain tea cups.   
 
Growers who ship their produce might harvest fruit before it reaches its "last, intense phase of life."[1] The essential pleasure remains in the field. The natural cycle foreshortened. Edward Behr writes that "a melon that's picked only partly ripe will gain in juice off the vine but not in aroma or sugar."[2], so under ripe specimens will never realize their potential as a "feast for our eye and palate."[3]  Niki Segnit in The Flavour Thesaurus writes, “Melons…share cucumber’s green, grassy flavor notes.” I want to make melon jam according to Christine Ferber.

You should see my mom’s smile when I talk about cantaloupe and ice cream. We like a scoop of maple walnut or pralines and cream in the glorious orange bowl made by nature. To amplify the fruit’s caramel finish. It tastes like a rocket ride to childhood.

Blanket flowers and cantaloupes share the season. In colour they’re cousins. I took that sexy photo.

Found inspiration in a refreshing Syrian beverage:
 
Cateloupe + organic plain yogourt, + lime juice + rosewater + too much ice + sparkling water or kombucha + mint.
 
***
 
When I pull over to park on the shoulder of Highway 8 or a Lincoln County Road near a roadside stand something snaps in me. I want it all — six of this and two of that and a basket of something.
 
I remember the region in an earlier agricultural time when the fruit trees towered over you and people from all corners of the globe grew grapes for Brights, or for wine at home, and had big gardens. When E.D. Smith was booming.
 
My dad was always a solid gold passenger in the country around Grimsby. We'd drive through orchards near the Lake Ontario shore and past wineries heading toward the escarpment. Behind the wheel of his Black Buick Regal with the red leather interior. My family has lived in the Niagara region since the 1930s — closer to the locks and shipyards. I’d give a lot to do that with my dad again or with anyone in my family.
 
***
 
"I’ve tried everything but therapy." We know. Thank you, Teddy Swims.

​
[1] McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. (New York: Scribner, 2004) p. 353
[2] Behr, Edward. 50 Foods. The Essentials of Good Taste. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013) p. 84
[3] McGee, p. 353

Do you know what a lighter is as it relates to lake boats? I didn’t until a conversation last week with my uncle about running aground in the Detroit River. Now I’m an expert almost influencer.
 
I’m not, and I know more than your average bear. I’ve spent most of my life living on the Great Lakes. I ask real conversation starter questions like, 'How often were you on the Detroit River?'
 
I’m proud to have family who can answer that. Boat talk is like a breakfast of fresh sourdough with tangy cultured butter and a wedge of cantaloupe that tastes like tea roses and honeycomb and sunshine. It’s the lush fat on top of yogourt. Plain and good and often brings on laughter.

A lighter is a boat to offload cargo, allowing a stuck boat to rise in the water.
 
I think about my grandfather Harry trying to rock the boat off the riverbed. Throwing the laker into forward and reverse, like you do with a car. Growing a Molson Golden thirst in the swelter of the engine room. Calling a lighter or a tug is likely a costly last measure.
 
It got me thinking about water levels:
 
“Climate models indicate that lake levels could drop as much as a metre and outflows could be reduced by 30% in the next fifty years. Water diversion to areas with drought may further lower lake levels.”
 
Lakes are always in flux. Even with state-of-the-art equipment, hitting bottom is inevitable. Search Google for ‘freighters stuck in the Great Lakes,’ because there is a flotilla or two worth. The proportions are Ridley Scott. Just another day at the office.
 
The work of a lighter is poetic. I’m grateful to the humans who help me get unstuck.
 
***
 
August is the season of hollyhock thirst. Plant me a yard full of flowers to tower over me. 
 
***
 
A beautiful mother with two young children on the subway randomly told me my eyes were stunning — just like that. I was out on a solo ice cream trip.
 
Twice lately a person I respect has called my writing “breathtaking.” A word in the dictionary. 
 
Trying to notice the ways I’m seen.
 
***
 
A New Kind of Slavery.
 
This reporting on temporary foreign workers from Ghada Alsharif of the Toronto Star is important. (For hospitality and farm workers who can’t afford the newspaper subscription, you can access it through Canadian Newsstream at your local library online.) There are other writers who have been thoughtful on this subject.
 
I am using my letter writing skills for good now. Being of service. Practicing another kind of influence.
 
***
 
This came to me in radio mode a week ago. I have always loved Chicago. The piano off the top is a tease. Look at this album jacket.
 
The second song lightens my heart. The title is my message to a friend.
 
And that last song...

I know it. Anticipation. 
 
That thought sends me straight to cookbooks to find these Nigel Slater sentences:
 
"…the feel of the peach's soft fuzz on first my upper and then my lower lip, the way the skin puckers as I bite, a teasing prelude to the sweet flesh that will follow. And all this before the juice — sweet, cool, sensuous — even touches my tongue."
 
I want to associate taste with varietals where the need to travel is not imperative. In southern Ontario local could mean eating a peach called Harrow, Garnet Beauty, Redhaven, or Vivid. The names of starlets at central casting.
 
Calling them peaches is like calling us humans. Why don't we all know the varietal at all the stores? What's the commercial benefit of a generic identity? How hard is it for fruit growers to flip the consumer switch? 
 
I'm eating organic Saugeen Country yogourt and Ontario peaches for breakfast. Lux over here. 
 
***
 
My blinds are down, and I've been fantasizing about Italian marble floors. Sitting in front of a fan, listening to air conditioners, traffic, and global climate news. A big jar of lemon ice water is sweating into a puddle on a coaster. Outside it's gem lettuce and fava bean green with hollyhocks and sweet peas.
 
How does an increase in rain affect an orchard, long-term? Are we scrambling or prepared?
 
***
 
It began with the stories I read in Creem and Hit Parade as a teen. Rock and roll journalism is way up there for me, On tier 'crème Chantilly.'
 
This podcast — The True Story of The Fake Zombies — is special. What a story...and teller. It's high on craft.    
 
There's nostalgia in it, too. It's a reminder of 11-year-old me living in a new town on Lake Huron where the taste of isolation was metallic. A place hard on a tender spirit. A night DJ led me toward Detroit, glittering on the choppy cuttlefish ink water. Bob Seger and Motown walking me toward sleep. A music city on the Detroit River.

I had some high quality lake boat talk tonight with an uncle — always a pleasure. He and Harry passed through Detroit often. Probably Theo, too. 
 
Here's to The Zombies. Colin Blunstone's voice and Rod Argent on keyboards. I went looking for covers and fell for this one.  

This morning, I came across a terrible index in a cookbook. I want to read or write a long-form piece on the subject.
 
Index makers are heroes. They are map makers of a sort. Never underestimate their contribution. Like plumbing in a restaurant, it is not a place to skimp or bargain shop. A book without an index is fatally flawed.   
 
***
 
I am between two worlds. Working out how to get over, in a good way.
 
Among the problems I have right now is that all my ice cream buddies are on holiday at the same time, and I keep thinking about black currant or apricot sorbet.
 
I can take myself out, no problem. But ice cream and company go together real nice.  
 
***
 
I was like a bobblehead of agreement listening to this podcast — sent it to girlfriends. Thank you, Sarah Manguso, Laura Good, and the woman on Bluesky who told me about it. They spill the tea on marriage, divorce, and being a successful creative woman. I will never forget the term "chaos janitor."
 
Listening is hard because the main character must reckon with her choices, having called in a partner trying to derail her creative power. Living in that terrible human place she must see in order to change. 
 
It reminds me of a line from Lauren Elkin's Art Monsters:
 
"To be a good wife is to accommodate yourself to someone else's story, a story in which you are not an artist."
 
I put Liars on hold at the library.
 
There's a whole other discussion to have about how our culture makes a leg iron out of professionally winning for men.
 
***
 
Birdy and Sweet Baby James.

Among the newspapers and books piled on Theo’s footstool in her living room in Fonthill were copies of Canada’s History magazine. She was a subscriber. My love for the subject is another inheritance. I have a story I'd like to write for them in time. Imagining my grandmother after dinner with her feet up, apron on, inhaling a Peter Jackson while reading it is a pleasure, like eating poached apricots and custard in July.    
 
***
 
A good memory from first-year university is sitting in a Catherine Parr Trail College classroom and listening to Alan Wilson share his passion.
 
The class was small enough to be held in the history department office. Maybe 12 of us around a large teak table in a quiet room with Danish floating bookcases, woven wall hangings, and big windows with a lush backdrop of trees and shrubs. A seasonal theatre for his animation. Canada came to life in that room (mostly settler history in 1983). One of the essays I wrote for him was about Nellie McClung. Teachers like that are a gift. 

***
 
Going to the Toronto Reference Library beats the loneliness of my desk by a lot. I'm reading a dense and delicious book over visits about how we tell history, The Past Is A Foreign Country, by David Lowenthal. It's adjacent reading and has made me laugh out loud in the Quiet Area.
 
***
 
Women
Non-White
Non-binary
Immigrants
Refugees
Journalists
Academics
Librarians
Anyone in a war zone

Among the people I worry about, along with all the other stuff in my life. Being of aid to humans fleeing oppression might happen on a scale. Are you having those conversations? History is each day that passes.
 
***
 
I wish the Jacob Bank's song went on — I could listen to it for an hour. It led me to versions sung by Mahalia Jackson and Elvis. The horns and percussion on Loaded are all that. Stitching these three together was nice.

In my first year of university, I worked part-time in a health food store. My cookbook collection at the time filled half a milk crate and included Moosewood, Laurel's Kitchen, and the Tassajara bread book. I was mostly vegetarian (and I still cook that way). 
 
I was 21 and was hired just as the business was derailing. That didn't come up in the interview.  
 
The manager called me late one Saturday night, asking where the cash bag was. After closing on the busiest day of the week I'd hid the brown paper bag of cash and coins in the usual spot in the dry stores, and it wasn't there. That had nothing to do with me. I don't know what happened after I locked the door that evening. But the call was my first clue that something dark was going down between the partners. They folded soon after. I don't remember if any of us got our final pay. Sometimes endings are messy. 
 
***
​
www.estherperel.com/podcasts/hw-s2-episode-8-im-your-special-one

This conversation Esther Perel mediates between artist and gallerist is honest. I felt like I was listening to myself when they discussed work, children, and intimate partnership — a subject ripe with complications for women.
 
I was sure I did not want children long before I began cooking in restaurants. It was a solid gold decision — young wisdom that calls for a party and lots of gifts. 
 
As a cook, the disadvantage was obvious. Women who left the line to have babies rarely came back. 
 
***
 
WAIT: Why Am I Talking?  
 
An acronym via Anne Lamott. Also, a good question. 
 
***
 
I had a new release lined up — a rock and roll anthem that makes me feel like a teenager. Then, in radio mode, I was reminded of Donny Hathaway. My father played the duet album he recorded with Roberta Flack often. I hope this remix makes you want to turn it up and dance. The second song is extraordinary and was written by Leon Russel.

Ripeness lasts the length of a shiver with strawberries. A light jostle, and they bleed. Someone who knew a few things about their business tossed these with a whisper of sugar.  
 
I stumbled into a strawberry social at a small church — a homely wooden building with half a dozen pews. On a grassy slope behind the rectory was a scattering of white plastic tables under craft fair tents. Everyone was cast in a blue watercolour wash, sitting under their shade. 
 
The person in charge of crème Chantilly had a big spoon and generous heart. We know the same hunger.
 
The chiffon cake was ethereal — light, buttery, and hardly sweet. I went looking for the baker to extend congratulations. I was told many people in the parish bake according to their own recipes. I'm thinking of all the cakes arriving through the morning. Sitting on melamine counters alongside flats of berries. The scent of a few weeks in the season. Parishioners bringing them through the kitchen door. The local chatter competing with the whirr of an electric mixer. 

I am no big church person but good things can happen in their basements. I've met wise and loving humans in a few of them. 
They helped get me here. 
 
This photo is filed under well-being in my dictionary. An earthly blessing.

***

One of the best parts of writing is research. It can also be frustrating — a time suck and you have to establish limits because the distractions are real. But the Stacks at the Toronto Reference Library is a place that makes me believe in magic. I try to imagine where the books are stored. How much space does it require? What determines the life cycle? The business of a library is fascinating. 
 
This week, I went looking for three books. The first had a sixty-page chapter that addressed a specific interest. It was a bit academic and just what I needed. The second book was written by a statistician. There was lots of information, but it was super dull, and I returned it quickly. After finishing the first chapter of the third I found a copy used online. I love a good historical story — especially one starring women — and I'll gallop through it in a day or two. 
 
Things come up while I read. I scribble ideas longhand in a journal beside me. Pulling on those threads might lead to more discovery. 
 
***
 
I'm late to this wonderful Design Matters interview Debbie Millman did with Gloria Steinem last year. It's moving listening to her talk about her mother and the unlived lives many women of that generation faced. Not too long ago my mom told me she had to quit her job with the Bank of Canada in Shelburne, Nova Scotia when she got married. What the... 

https://www.designmattersmedia.com/podcast/2023/gloria-steinem
 
***
 
I heard this song last weekend. Not for the first time. It fits my mood right now.