Just lolling around in the thoughts, feelings and wishes of harvesttime. Just wish it for all mankind. Just remember to be thankful. Just feel rich and be generous. Just find a place of peace. Just…
A Bowl Of Tomatoes
All posts by Phil Volker
A Plethora Of Plums
OK, I’m ensconced in the hammock digesting dinner. We had some chicken sausage from the market but other than that it was food from our garden or neighbors gardens. Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and corn. Man, this is a great time of year for the eats.
And we picked plums this morning and My Rebecca is turning those into jam or conserves or something. Everyone is overloaded with fresh produce and scrambling to find homes for it all. Freezing, canning, drying, giving away is the order of the day.
The clouds are moving in and it looks like we will have a rainy weekend. That’s why I thought that I would check out the hammock maybe for one last time. We are all hoping that some of this rain will reach the wildfires in the inland.
I am having an amazing sense of peace today. I know that Father Tom or Padre Tomas is praying up a storm for Our Jennifer and myself, our Commando Team. He is doing a heck of a job.
Might be a good sunset tonight with the new clouds and the smoke from the wildfires. Beautiful evening. There is supposed to be some visual event happening with Mars and the moon tonight, looking like we have two moons. Can I stay up for that?
Well look, it all seems good at the moment. Hope that you have that peaceful feeling also. Thanks for putting up with me. You are a plum of a love, Felipe.
OK, OK, Here Are The Baby Pix
Well there, you asked for it and you got it. Time for a nap, love, Felipe.
Another Day In Paradise. What To Do?
It’s a common greeting between Vashonites, well, in the good weather of summer. “Another day in paradise” sort of the Buen Camino of our local walk. It becomes more rich as the days of summer become more rare. It’s the end of August now and September can be very beautiful here also but we begin to savor the situation.
Savoring the situation, that’s nice. Why don’t we run with that for a while. I find myself more in this sort of zone as my own personal walk progresses. Glimpses of truth, goodness and beauty become important, vital. Relationships become important. My fellow walkers progress becomes important. Many things have lost there value, their attraction. I find the timeless values of the Camino to be fertile ground for me and others. How fortunate am I, are we, to have stumbled across this jewel after all this time of wandering. Thank you to you St James, companero of the Christ.
Oh me oh my, I’m a fool for you baby. Love, Felipe.
Jennifers To The Rescue
A multitude of Jennifers are here with us. It seems like more but there are really only two but they are heavy hitters. One is here with me and one is with PFJuan in his network. So I received this work from PFJuan and from His Jennifer. I think she wrote it but I don’t know for sure. But whoever wrote it, well done, you left me in a puddle.
“The fine art of pilgrimage, warm manchego, honey, bread, and red wine, will sustain us through many days. Breaking bread with fellow pilgrims, drinking in views over the Pyrenees, with clinking cattle and sheep bells. Cafe con leche, toast and jam, red table in the sun next to the road, feels like an old Michener novel. End of day climb aching for rest, a gift… a bed at a monastery, next to an open window. A window with a cool night breeze, sleep will come with the hourly church bells, then wake to the crowing roosters. There will be sacrifice and pain and there will be, “WHY am I doing this?”, for the magic, Pilgrim, for the magic! And the pilgrimage continues, we are all just walking each other home. The Way… where the soul meets the road. – Jennifer xo”
“where the soul meets the road”, wow! I’d give my left arm to write stuff like that. Well, I’m sorry to put that piece up without permission but you guys know me well enough by now that nothing much is safe. If I like it and I think that you will like it then it’s on the blog.
“we are all just walking each other home”, how about that?!? I am just overcome with emotion. I haven’t felt this pierced since my reentry days. Our Jennifer and I were talking about this subject today although we used other words. Same day and I am getting hit with both Jennifers.
For the magic, love, Felipe.
Back To The Meseta
Our thoughts and prayers are with Our Anamaria as she navigates the wide dry plain in August. She sent these two pics to us. The pic of the sunset, gorgeous. And all those trees in one spot, probably three quarters of all the trees for a hundred miles.
Then Anamaria sends this pic entitled, “The decorated feet of a peregrina”. Ah, yes, our stigmata as Mary Margaret used to say. It’s a thing of beauty really, in the sense that the pain is a certain gateway or portal to further understanding. We know that Anamaria is really working it now. We think of you. We pray for you, Our Anamaria and your fellow pilgrims.
We are doing some more filming today for the documentary and it is time to work on that. St. James is afoot, love your blisters and scars, Felipe.
Back to Corn
Here is a post that I owe you for yesterday. It was Jennifer ‘s birthday and we gave her a canoe ride and My Rebecca made a plum pie birthday cake. Here is a couple of pics and then the basic sweet corn ice cream recipe that Jennifer dug up somewhere. We are thinking it needs salt and butter flavor so we are still playing with it.
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
2 ears corn
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preparation
1. Set a box grater in a large bowl. Using the large holes, grate corn kernels (and their “milk”) off the cobs. Discard cobs.
2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine cream, milk, and corn. Bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk sugar and egg yolks until pale and thick. When cream mixture reaches a simmer, slowly ladle 1/2 cup of it into egg mixture, whisking constantly. Repeat with another 1/2-cup ladleful. Reduce heat to low, whisk warmed egg mixture into saucepan, and cook, whisking, until mixture thickens a bit, about 5 minutes.
3. Pour mixture into a medium bowl, stir in vanilla, cover with plastic wrap (letting the wrap sit directly on the mixture’s surface), and chill at least 2 hours and up to 1 day.
4. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Serve immediately or transfer to an airtight plastic container and freeze up to overnight.
Our Cancer Camino takes us back into Seattle today to the hospital and then to a visit with Sister Joyce. That is always fun and productive. OK, off to our day, love you, Felipe.
On Assignment
It’s 1:39 in the afternoon. We’re all snuggled down in our cocoon of chemotherapy. Jennifer had fixed a great picnic lunch for us, it was her turn. We are hanging out as the sunshine pours in the big windows. Sort of savoring things at the moment, happy to be alive and alive in a happy way.
We will be back on Vashon in a few hours to our regular existence. On second thought that could be debatable, the part about Vashon being regular. Mainland people have their thoughts about island people. There is a popular bumper sticker around, “Keep Vashon Wierd”. Then there was, “Keep Vashon Wired “. And then, “Keep Vashon Normal”. And as Our Anamaria said last year after her first visit to the Camino, “What is normal anyway?” Yes.
Corn is normal. OK, we know that for sure, right PFJ? Let’s remember that. Love you, Felipe.
Starting Over Started Sunday
I am including some pix of Sunday afternoon’s walk. A new beginning it was. I am searching for some structure that the original Phil’s Camino provided. I’m thinking walking for a reason is better than just walking. And walking for a good reason must be even better, right?
Tomorrow our Camino will take Jennifer and I to Swedish Hospital. I will try and blog from there. Thinking and praying for you, love, Felipe.
Woman On Dusty Road
I opened my emails this AM to find this lovely pic of Our Anamaria on the Camino de Santiago. This is current as in a few hours old. Yesterday we had a couple of pics from Burgos of the wonderful cathedral there and then today we are walking westward with the morning sun at our backs.
In a certain understated sensibility, the pic might be entitled “Woman in the Morning Sun” or perhaps “Woman on a Dusty Road”. But as I look at it this AM with a sort of two cup of coffee practical outlook and knowing that very spot depicted intimately, details and memories are coming forward. It was just a year ago that I was in that exact location, Kelly at my side or within a kilometer.
Kelly would be grading that road surface as he walked as he graded his students in his past life as a teacher. I think 5 was the highest which we only experienced one time which was flat and level AstroTurf (artificial grass), a tiny patch in front of a fancy hotel. The points would go down from there depending on the all the factors which we became intimately familiar with. So speaking for Kelly here, I would say this is in the low fours. It looks in the macro sense almost perfect as in level, straight and good width. But that crushed rock is killer on the bottoms of the feet when unexpectedly a perfect pyramidal shaped rock contacts your perfectly formed blister and swear words appear that you didn’t realize you possessed.
It is a cloudless sky and the time is late morning and the heat has been building from the comfortable temp at dawn. There are more windmills than trees, maybe no trees, maybe those are just bushes in the distance, translates to no shade. It is that time of day for the pilgrim when the early stiffness, doubt and pain have magically disappeared in a second wind of giddiness. A time to be enjoyed before the eventual exhaustion later in the early afternoon. And then to be somewhere in the shade when the heat is at it’s worst.
Anamaria seems too fresh after the recent start in Burgos to get into this zone yet but the Meseta stretches on always standing ready to wear you down. This all sort of sounds like a bad thing to the outsider , the casual observer but it is really one of the blessed obstacles that is there to be wrestled with.
Well out of time, have to go walk myself and I hear a car coming down the gravel driveway, Catherine I think. Dusty loves, Felipe.