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Pears, Pears, Pears!

Starting point: three bags of pears a neighbor left by the street free to any passerby and the timeliness of passing by on my bike with plenty of carrying capacity. I dug into recipes for pears, thinking of the bland, gritty canned pears of my childhood and determined to do something much more interesting.
Watercolor painting in older vintage style of two ripe golden pears with their stems and a green leaf

One of the challenges of fruit preserving recipes is that some measure in number of pounds before prep, some in pounds after prep, and some in cups. Working with gleaned or windfall fruit often means cutting big chunks off to avoid bruises. I have to work my way through the proportions, measure what I have when I'm done with prep, and adjust.

A search for pear recipes led me to:
  • Salted Caramel Pear Butter from Ball Mason; made in the slow cooker, which I think gave the sugar a slightly burned edge that I'm not crazy about so I should have turned it down to low much earlier; added 1 t. salt and 2 t. vanilla bean paste toward the end, the former to increase the salt factor and the latter hoping to offset the burned-ness. My home taste tester, Sweet Hubs, said it's fantastic anyway.
  • Cinnamon Cardamom Pear Jam from Food in Jars; reduced sugar by 1 c and cinnamon by 1 t, added 3/8 t cardamom
  • Gingered Pear Preserves: my version below
  • Pickled Pears: my version below
  • Pear Vanilla Caramel Sauce: Haven't made this yet but if I score more pears this Food in Jars recipe is first in line because it sounds amazing.
I didn't make all of these in one blow-out weekend. Some of the pears were ripe and I started with the pear butter and pear jam. A week later the rest of them were ready for me to turn them into gingered pear preserves and pickled pears.

Gingered Pear Preserves

Working from Ball Mason Jars Gingered Pear Preserves Recipe, based on the sugar proportions from NCHFP and the white/brown proportions from Serious Eats Pear and Ginger Preserves Recipe, I ended up with:
  • 8 cups chopped pears, the yield from approx. 10 pounds of pears with the bruised bits cut out
  • 6 T. crystallized ginger, chopped fine (I started with 4 T., increased toward the end after tasting; this is all about personal preferences)
  • 2-1/2 T. ginger paste (from a tube; go for it if you want to spend time peeling and chopping fresh ginger; don't put all of this in to begin with so you can taste and adjust)
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 8 T. bottled lemon juice (bottled because that has a consistent acidity level, which is important for safe canning)
  • White sugar: 2-1/2 cups
  • Brown sugar: 3/4 cup
The gelling time in the Serious Eats recipe was much more accurate for me than in the NCHFP recipe--definitely not gelling 15 minutes into the cook time. It went more like 30 minutes and to be honest I'm not sure I really reached the full gel stage when I look at the movement of the product in the jars. My impatience may have gotten to me at that point; I've done a lot of canning since the beginning of September.

My yield: 4 half-pints, 6 quarter-pints (so cute, that size! and great for gifts)

Pickled Pear Recipe

Some recipes use whole spices, some use ground. Ratios of fruit, sugar and vinegar vary across recipes. The National Center for Home Food Preservation is a trusted source with testing behind every recipe. Their proportion is 8 pounds fruit, 8 cups sugar, 4 cups vinegar, 2 cups water. The thing is, the sweetness of the fruit will vary a bit. Since this isn't a preserve that needs to gel, the sugar functions for flavor balance with the vinegar. That to me says it's safe to reduce the sugar if the fruit sweetness is high. Where I landed:
  • Pears: 4 lbs, peeled, cored, cut in slices or chunks or left in quarters or eighths, depending on the size of the pear 
  • Vinegar: 1-1/3 c. (I used white wine vinegar; you could use plain distilled white vinegar, or one of the darker vinegars if you don't mind the color effect; could even deliberately go for a pretty rose effect using red wine vinegar or an unsweetened berry vinegar like raspberry vinegar or blackberry vinegar)
  • Water: 1 c.
  • Sugar: 1-1/4 c.
  • Cinnamon: 3/4 t.
  • Ginger: 3/4 t.
  • Cloves: 1/8 t.
  • Mace: 1/8 t.
  • Salt: 1/4 t.

Yield: 3 pints that I haven't taste-tested yet.

More Pickled Pear Recipes


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Future Marmalade

"If you'll save the peel from your mandarin oranges for me, it will come back to you as future marmalade."

Not something you hear at every staff retreat in a typical office building in downtown Seattle.

The more I cook the more I loathe food waste and the more I discover that things I've chucked into compost for years are perfectly good food. A few examples: 

  • Stalks of fennel? Pickled fennel agrodolce. It keeps for at least two years with a super-simple technique and no hot-water canning! I went through a bit of fennel overload in around 2021, made a lot of batches of this Fennel Lentil Lemony Salad, and couldn't stand the thought of throwing out all those stalks that also taste of licorice. I still have a couple of jars of agrodolce. I use them in pasta sauces and soups.
  • Fennel fronds? Fennel fronds pesto. Great on pasta.
  • Cauliflower leaves? Roast them right along with the rest of the cauliflower, crisp them up separately as a crunchy chip, or throw them in the food processor with everything else you're turning into cauliflower rice or a great vegan broccoli-cauliflower soup.
  • Broccoli leaves? Chop them up right along with the rest of the broccoli (I've been using the stems in all my broccoli recipes for years and years--peel if super tough, dice) for the outstanding vegan broccoli-red grape salad from Hummusapien's appropriately named Best Broccoli Salad Ever Recipe. Or they could go into the oven with the cauliflower leaves if you're doing a batch of something that involves both and you'll have mixed chips.
So, yeah, future marmalade. In some chat thread I ran across someone saying how much they hate food waste and that they save all their orange peels and then make marmalade. Last year I made a batch of mixed citrus ginger marmalade that I loved (first marmalade ever). Why not plan ahead for future marmalade?

All those lemon wedge garnishes on the side of a glass of Arnold Palmer (half and half if you're in the South), orange slices adorning a plated restaurant meal, bit of lime from some cocktail...I brought them home (learned to carry a plastic bag in all my backpacks and panniers), did the work of getting rid of the bitter white pith and slicing into thin strands, and put them in the bag in the freezer labeled Future Marmalade. 

If I had some mandarins that were starting to head toward soft? Into the bag, segments and prepped peel both. Lemons ditto? Ditto. Turns out I'm not very good at using up citrus fruit quickly so it's a good thing I discovered this food-saving trick.

The beauty of this approach is that making marmalade now means I start with the vast majority of the prep work done in little five-minute increments instead of facing a morning of peeling, slicing, dealing with pith, segmenting (I'm not very practiced at supreming, a term I learned reading marmalade recipes). I did want to make sure I had enough flesh to balance the peel so I bought a couple of big ruby red grapefruit (a citrus not yet represented in the Future Marmalade bag), an orange and a lemon and prepped those.

Another time-saving labor-distributing step: Tender peels are essential to good marmalade. Most recipes call for a long, slow cooking phase for the peels in water alone. One of the recipes suggested prepping the peel and soaking it overnight for a big head start on the softening stage. Perfect. I got that put together, including the bundle of pith and seeds from the fresh fruit in cheesecloth that will release pectin needed for this all to set up, and let water and time work their magic.

Photo of a large blue Dutch oven with a white interior on a stove. It holds a yellow and orange mix, with a wooden spoon resting in the pot. Next to the cooktop, a large glass measuring cup full of shredded orange and lemon peel with a pair of tongs resting in it.

One more thing that can save some work: Fresh ginger paste in a tube! I've had so many chunks of ginger root either go bad in the produce drawer or shrivel up in the freezer wrapped in foil. I'd agree that fresh ginger you grate yourself is wonderful, but if that's the step keeping you from using fresh ginger in a recipe I say go for the tube. They sell cilantro in a tube, too, and that's another item I've had to put in the compost heap occasionally because I didn't use it fast enough and also didn't get around to chopping and freezing it to save for future salsa. Life, time, and food prep labor do not always align neatly.

I went back to the original mixed citrus ginger marmalade recipe and read a few more for good measure. The ratios of fruit weight to water and sugar varied a bit across recipes from 1.5 to 2 times the fruit weight. Searching for information I found another would-be marmalade maker on Reddit asking why the fruit/sugar/water ratios vary so much and getting some helpful answers. I knew it would depend on how much sweetness I have from the actual fruit. Given that I have a lot more peel than fruit, that was going to push toward more sugar.

When I read recipes I read a lot of them as well as the comments to check for what others learned following it. In any of the preserves or jams I'm looking in particular at the proportion of main ingredient to other ingredients. All of this helps me develop the tweaks I'm likely going to make. 

Photo from above of yellow and orange marmalade cooking inside a blue Dutch oven with a white interior. A large bundle of cheesecloth floats in the marmalade and a wooden-handled rubber scraper rests in the pot.

For this batch I was planning to pick up the idea of using both fresh and crystallized ginger from My Darling Lemon Thyme. I almost went for the fresh chili addition from Lembit Lounge Cuisine but I'm making a lot of chutneys this year and some tomato jam that involves pepper seasonings so I decided against that. I want some variety in the spicing of my various preserves. I would leap at the cloves and cinnamon used in Recipes by Hosheen but again, chutneys, and I also have a tendency to over-season things so I should have a few items that have clean, fresh flavors that stand alone.

Resourcefully Sourced Multi-Citrus Ginger Marmalade

Flesh of mixed citrus fruits with their juice: 4 cups

Peel of mixed citrus fruits: Started with ~3 pounds, or a one-gallon bag full plus a one-quart bag full (although this included some of the flesh accounted for above). After cooking this turned out to be nearly 8 cups of peel. I decided I didn't want twice as much peel as fruit--that seemed like I'd be overdoing it. I stirred it in a cup at a time until it looked about right and reserved 3 cups of the peel for other uses, thinking I'll throw them into a chutney or have a head start on a future batch of marmalade.

Ginger paste: 5 T. I started with 2 T. based on Garden Betty's recipe with 2 T. ginger to 4 c. fruit, tasted at the end after stirring in the peel and kept adjusting up.

Crystallized ginger: Whoops! That was on the kitchen island behind my primary work zone thanks to my sweetheart's grocery run by bike to get this for me along with other ingredients I need for future recipes. Totally forgot to chop and add it. That's what happens when you're synthesizing multiple recipes and hopscotching from one browser tab to another. 

No wonder I had to keep increasing the ginger paste. Crystallized ginger would have been Just The Thing to take this across the line into AmazeBalls Territory. You know what this means--I have to make another batch pretty soon.

White granulated sugar: 5 c.; I wanted to be sure I offset the potential bitterness created by having such a high peel-to-fruit ratio. One of the recipes I looked at actually used half as much sugar as fruit; I could have started there, but the sugar really is part of the setting-up chemical reaction and I had my doubts.

Actual cooking process

In my 6.5 quart Dutch oven I covered the peel with water and left it to soak overnight. To start the cooking process I added a bit more water since absorbing water overnight meant it wasn't all under water. I boiled it for an hour, stirring every so often and testing the peel until it was very tender. When I drained the peel I had 2-1/2 cups of very citrusy water.

Following the instructions from the majority of the recipes I checked, I put the citrusy water, flesh and juice, sugar, ginger, and packet of pectinizing pith and seeds into the pot. I brought that to a rapid boil and kept it boiling, stirring every so often and smooshing down on the cheesecloth-wrapped packet to push pectin out of it and into the pot. 

Checking the temperature worked better when I let it come to a full boil and stay there rather than stirring it down and introducing cooler air. I cooked it for over 30 minutes and got it north of 210 degrees, maybe around 214 degrees. Not quite the 220 degrees every recipe said to get to but y'know, after a while you just want to be done.

Yield: 6 half-pints and 6 quarter-pints, or 4-1/2 cups of delicious product all told

Photo of jars labeled Citrus Ginger Marmalade stacked to make a pyramid

Citrus Marmalade Recipes for Reference



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A Year of Poems: September

The back-to-school month, the month that bridges from summer to fall, Warm days, still, but shorter. The slant of light changes, softens. The day may be hot but the night cools the earth. September is here, and the hillsides still abound with fruit on the blackberry bushes I picked in August.

To compile these monthly collections I read a lot of poems I don't link on the page. A poet may mention September as the date of an event but the poem itself doesn't evoke this time of year. Or it's so archaic I just can't get into it. The ones I link speak to me in some way that may or may not be reflected in the specific lines I excerpt here.

My process includes some research as needed. I recently heard someone hesitate as they started to use the term "Indian summer" to refer to the second summer we sometimes get after a frost in fall. I felt the same hesitation, not knowing if that term (like so many in English) embeds a painful history. 

This phrase appears in poems about September and I wanted to know if it gives offense. The words of poetry reflect the understanding and eras of their authors and a poem may have beauty worth savoring, but I stumble on terms that reflect the bias of those times.

Adam Sweeting, the author of a book on the cultural history of the term "Indian summer", tells us yes, it's offensive. In fact, in 2020 the American Meteorological Society issued the recommendation that we refer to "second summer". Sweeting also notes that the idea of a frost followed by a second summer is less likely, given climate change. We're more apt to experience an extended hot period without the cooling temperatures, then plunge abruptly into winter.

I'll indicate below when a poem uses the term.

[Updated to add this] Another term I learned from Island Martha on Mastodon: "Old Women's Summer" is used in Estonia. I couldn't find the background searching so I asked her if it was considered insulting. She said, "Old Estonian women getting a 2nd chance to sit in the sun with their neighbours AND getting credit for it. What do YOU think?" I think it sounds delightful.

"September Meditation" by Burton D. Carley

Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:
"What can you tell me about September?"

"And Now It's September," by Barbara Crooker

The ornamental grasses have gone to seed, haloed
in the last light. Nights grow chilly, but the days
are still warm; I wear the sun like a shawl on my neck
and arms.

"To the Light of September" by W.S. Merwin

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings

"I haven't met anyone who hasn't offered me her humanity" by Gary Margolis

To see a storm

of maple leaves as the tides they are.
The apples, at home, their own kind
of burnishing, rented pear.

"Porch Swing in September" by Ted Kooser

and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it's time that the swinging were done with,

"September Tomatoes" by Karina Borowitz

It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready
to let go of summer so easily. To destroy
what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months.
Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.

"Green Pear Tree in September" by Freya Manfred

He planted it twelve years ago,
when he was seventy-three,
so that in September
he could stroll down 
with the sound of the crickets
rising and falling around him,

"September Sunday" by Lucille Broderson

I've done what I can,
picked berries in season,
cut back canes, snapped beans,
scrubbed down the mud-spattered walls.

"September, 1918" by Amy Lowell

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.

"September Water" by Elizabeth Bohm (click the arrow at page right to get the rest of the poem after what begins on this page link)

In the quiet sunlight of September
The harbor's top is blond and burnished stone,
Any swimmer who cuts that width of stillness
Is scorched with cold to the marrow of the bone.

"September 2" by Wendell Berry

up the birds rose into the sky against the darkening
clouds. They tossed themselves among the fading
landscapes of the sky like rags, as in
abandonment to the summons their blood knew.

"The Imprint of September Second" by Ethan Gilsdorf

Second of September, I ate the last berry of summer,
the sun still dreaming it's July twenty-first,

the blackberry bush stiffened by heat, losing suppleness,
the berry hard as corn, the seed living in wisdom

teeth that afternoon, me glancing at the scene
glancing back at me, red leaves against a hard green grass, 

"Blackberry Eating" by Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,


why not say cluster of leaves still clinging
to the tip of one branch (the others bare
that bloomed crimson last week) slowly turning
red to brown, 

"September Midnight" by Sara Teasdale (uses the term "Indian summer")

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

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A Year of Poems: August

August is the season of ripeness where I live. I'll be picking blackberries this month, free for the taking all over western Washington where they're non-native and invasive as all get-out. But they're worth the trouble to mash through a sieve and turn into seedless blackberry jam. Or mix with other berries to make bumbleberry jam. Maybe I turn them into fruit leather. I may make some berry-flavored vinegar while I'm at it. Or wait, I found this page with several recipes including a blackberry apple chutney that sounds really tasty and I do love chutney....

I'll be thinking of Mary Oliver as I pick.

"August" by Mary Oliver

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, 

"Ordinary Time" by Jay Parini

I shift through woods, sifting
the air for August cadences
and walk beyond the boundaries I’ve kept

for months

"You Can't Have It All" by Barbara Ras

and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so.

"Cherry Tomatoes" by Anne Higgins

Suddenly it is August again, so hot,
breathless heat.

"August Morning" by Albert Garcia

Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.

"Under a Sturgeon Moon" by Mike Orlock

The month has the feel of compromise
and yield, as we mark time in a steady march
to the inevitable surrender of fall.
But that moon!

"August Moonrise" by Sara Teasdale

The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,
And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.

"California Hills in August" by Dana Gioia

I can imagine someone who found
these fields unbearable, who climbed
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade.

"Late August" by Mary Chivers

Even on the most tranquil
late August afternoon when heavy heads
of phlox bow in the garden
and the hummingbird sits still for a moment
on a branch of an apple tree—
even on such a day,
evening approaches sooner
than yesterday,

A Year of Poems

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Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever

I grew up with my mom's bran muffin recipe that was perfect for a big family: Make a batch of the batter, keep it in the fridge, and bake a dozen when the mood strikes. The batter keeps for at least six weeks, although not forever, and they're tasty enough that you likely wouldn't have it in there too long anyway.

These muffins are really the best. Soft and delicious, filling and satisfying. Good just dripping with butter, or topped with some homemade jam, honey, maple syrup, peanut butter, whatever you like on your muffins. They're not overly sweet and cupcake-like; if I'm going to eat a cupcake I want frosting, dang it.

One day out of curiosity I went searching for the recipe online. Mind you, I've made it so often over the years that I have it memorized. Since it involves copious quantities of All-Bran and Bran Buds I figured the website of the cereal manufacturer who gets my money every time I make these would have the recipe. But no! They have a couple of recipes including one they call the "original" but neither is the one I grew up with. My family recipe isn't even a combination of their Bran Buds Muffins and Original All-Bran Muffins recipes.

The world clearly needs this recipe captured for posterity. Sharing it now, with an * to mark where I adjusted something in the original Mom-approved recipe. Those are explained in the notes below the recipe.

This is a lot of batter. I use my Kitchen-Aid to mix. Don't overmix or you'll toughen the batter, but if you have a stand mixer of some kind feel free to let it help you. 

Yield: I'm not sure of the precise yield since that partly depends on whether you fill the cup to heaping to get a tall dome, whether you make some mini-muffins along the way because they're just so darned cute, and other factors. I'd guesstimate around 4 dozen or so regular muffins.

Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe

2 cups boiling water

2 cups Bran Buds

4 eggs

1 cup granulated sugar*

1 cup brown sugar* 

1 cup vegetable oil*

4 cups buttermilk

5 cups whole wheat pastry flour*

5 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon sea salt

4 cups All-Bran cereal (sticks)*

Put the Bran Buds in a bowl and pour the boiling water over top. Stir together aet aside to soften; they'll turn into a bran mass within about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, beat the oil and sugar together until well combined. (If you're using butter you get to cream the butter and sugar together; I don't have a tasty verb for what happens when you're using oil.) 

Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each one. (Yes, yes, you can dump them in all at once. But here's why you want to slow down and add eggs one at a time.)

Add the 4 cups of buttermilk and mix in.

Add the Bran Buds mixture in small spoonfuls, beating/whisking to distribute through the batter.

In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. (Or, to be honest, if you're like me you dump in the flour and sprinkle the other things across the top of the batter and you know what? That totally works. I do it one cup plus one teaspoon at a time for the flour/baking soda; just don't accidentally put in 5 teaspoons of salt.)

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix gently until combined. 

Fold in the All-Bran.

Cover or transfer the mixture to a sealed container and refrigerate the mixture for at least 8 hours. 24 hours to two days is best.* 

Bake in the center of a pre-heated 400°F oven for 16-18 minutes until the tops are no longer wet and when you touch the muffin top it feels done, not soggy. You can also test with a toothpick the way you would a cake. I've never made these in the giant muffin tins; adjust baking time based on your experience with other recipes if you use one of those.

These work in a mini-muffin tin too, for a cute snack size. Set the timer for 15 minutes and check since the little ones bake faster.

Notes

*Sugars: Original recipe called for 3 cups granulated sugar; I reduced by 1 cup and made it half brown, half white. Do not reduce sugar further; I can attest that the batter will sour quickly.

*Oil: The original recipe called for butter here. I use canola. I've also tried using coconut oil and it worked. (If you haven't baked with it before, refined coconut oil doesn't add a coconutty flavor; it acts like shortening.)

*Flour: Original recipe called for regular all-purpose flour and it's fine to use that. When I've been out of whole wheat pastry flour and too committed to the idea of muffins to wait for a grocery run I've used half white, half regular whole wheat, and it worked fine.

*All-Bran: I've successfully substituted Fiber One cereal. Basically you want bran-based sticks here.

*Letting the batter sit before baking: You can bake right away and they'll taste great. The extra time is to enable the moisture in the batter to break down the All-Bran a bit. I've tried using the buttermilk to soak the All-Bran the way the boiling water soaks the Bran Buds, but realized that meant the flour wasn't getting really hydrated the way it should.

Mix-ins and flavors: If you like muffins with cinnamon, you can add it to the batter or make a cinnamon/white sugar mix and sprinkle that on top before baking (1 teaspoon cinnamon to 1/3 cup white sugar is about right). Other spices would work too. Use your favorite muffin recipe's seasoning and adjust for the larger amount of batter in this.

Vegan option: Use flaxseed or chia seed eggs in place of the eggs. Use vegan buttermilk (make your own with help from Minimalist Baker). I've made it this way and they turned out fine, although I think I get a bit more rise with real eggs holding everything together.

Other recipes I reviewed but didn't bake, so I won't attest to their flavors

Other recipes I've shared


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A Year of Poems: July

No poems about the Fourth of July in this collection. As I've noted in previous posts in this series, I hunt for poems that say something about the month itself: its place in the cycles of the seasons, the sights and sounds and smells of the Earth's rotation at this particular point in its trip around the sun. 

The designation of a month's beginning and end is a human artifice imposed on rotations too big for us to feel, except if and as we tune into those messages from our senses. Some of these are less about July than about something else happening in the poem but they have those lines that capture the rising heat, the baking, the ripening. Some have that sense of the calendar I still feel from my schooldays: June brings the energy of new freedom but with some uncertain weather, back to school looms in August, but July is solidly summer. And it is fire season, as Forrest Gander reminds us in his poem.

"July" by Michael Field

Learn more about the collaboration of two women writing under the pseudonym "Michael Field."

There is a month between the swath and sheaf
When grass is gone
And corn still grassy;
When limes are massy
With hanging leaf,
And pollen-coloured blooms whereon
Bees are voices we can hear,

"July Day" by Babette Deutsch

The afternoon sways like an elephant, wears
His smooth grey hide, displays his somnolent grace,
        weighing
The majesty of his ponderous pace against
The slyness twinkling in an innocent eye.

"Morningside Heights, July" by William Matthews

Haze. Three student violists boarding
a bus. A clatter of jackhammers.
Granular light. A film of sweat for primer
and the heat for a coat of paint.

"Breathing Space, July" by Tomas Tranströmer

The one who’s lying on his back under the tall trees
is also up there within them. He’s flowing out into thousands of twigs,
swaying to and fro,
sitting in an ejector seat that lets go in slow motion.

"Moment in July" by Elise Asher

And in my drowsing ears resounds
Time's tick through fleshless spaces
And now slack energies within me faintly stir,
Still, budge budge I cannot budge—

"Answer July" by Emily Dickinson

Answer July—
Where is the Bee—
Where is the Blush—
Where is the Hay?

Ah, said July—
Where is the Seed—
Where is the Bud—
Where is the May—
Answer Thee—Me—

"A Warm Summer in San Francisco" by Carolyn Miller

It was sometime after that, when

the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves

for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,
in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights
it was too hot to sleep, 

"The Ubiquitous Day Lily of July" by David Budbill

There is an orange day lily that blooms in July and is
everywhere around these parts right now. Common.
Ordinary. It grows in everybody's dooryard—abandoned
or lived in—along the side of the road, in front of stone walls,
at gas stations and garages, at the entrance to driveways,
anywhere it takes a mind to sprout.

"July" by George Meredith

Blue July, bright July,
Month of storms and gorgeous blue;
Violet lightnings o'er thy sky,
Heavy falls of drenching dew;

"July Rain" by Tere Sievers

The sudden storm
flashes and rumbles
the ozone air a tonic
for the humid afternoon.

"A Calendar of Sonnets: July" by Helen Hunt Jackson

Some flowers are withered and some joys have died;
The garden reeks with an East Indian scent
From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent;
The white heat pales the skies from side to side;

"A July Night" by John Todhunter

The dreamy, long, delicious afternoon
That filled the flowers with honey, and made well
With earliest nectar many a secret cell
Of pulping peaches, with a murmurous tune
Lulled all the woods and leas;


When the scarlet cardinal tells
Her dream to the dragon fly,
And the lazy breeze makes a nest in the trees,
And murmurs a lullaby,
It is July.

"July" by Madison Cawein

Now ’tis the time when, tall,
The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam
Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream,
In many a fragrant ball,
Blooms of the button-bush fall.

Green spring grass on
                    the hills had cured
                              by June and by July

                                                                          gone wooly and
                                                                brown, it crackled
                                            underfoot, desiccated while

"The Last Things I'll Remember" by Joyce Sutphen

The partly open hay barn door, white frame around the darkness,
the broken board, small enough for a child
to slip through.

Walking in the cornfields in late July, green tassels overhead,
the slap of flat leaves as we pass, silent
and invisible from any road.

A Year of Poems

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Summer Solstice Readings

Photo: A gently sloping mound covered with green vegetation. In the center, large stones surround the mound on either side of a narrow opening through which the rising sun can be viewed as a bright golden glow.

The longest day, the summer solstice, takes place in late mid June in the northern hemisphere where I reside (June 20 in 2024). I remember as a child thinking how strange it was that people in the southern hemisphere had summer when I had winter and vice versa, which Ellen Dudley touches on in her work below. 

Poets have celebrated the way the darkness and light sit perfectly balanced, in equipoise, and the lushness of the summer season's heart. I share a couple of lines here; follow the links to read the whole work.

The image above is of Bryn Celli Ddu, a chambered Neolithic tomb constructed around 3000 BCE in alignment with the rising sun on the summer solstice. I share it in honor of my Welsh ancestry on my maternal grandfather's side.

"Summer Solstice, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka" by Marilyn Krysl

Surf sounds like erasure, over and over.
I lay down and let go, the way you trust an animal.

"Summer Solstice 2006" by Jim Brown

The earth, the sun, in far off temporal frames
we cannot imagine,


Everyone here believes that the roses
are blooming only for them,

"Solstice" by Ellen Dudley

On the first full day of summer the sun is up
the sky as far as it will get and now it will
head south to warm the Antipodes, where today
it rains and  gales blow up from the Antarctic.

"Summer Solstice" by Rose Styron

Suddenly,
there’s nothing to do
and too much—
the lawn, paths, woods
were never so green
white blossoms of every
size and shape—hydrangea,
Chinese dogwood, mock orange
spill their glistening—

"Solstice" by Tess Taylor

How again today our patron star
whose ancient vista is the long view

turns its wide brightness now and here:
Below, we loll outdoors, sing & make fire.

"Solstice Litany" by Jim Harrison

Solstice at the cabin deep in the forest.
The full moon shines in the river, there are pale
green northern lights. A huge thunderstorm
comes slowly from the west. Lightning strikes
a nearby tamarack bursting into flame.

"Summer Solstice" by Ellen Bass (entire poem here)

If you stand at the edge
of the sunrise and shout
with a full-hearted pleasure,
hurling out cries of delight,
over and over, your joy,
like stones from a ledge,
will cause circles to widen out, reach
the horizon, light the morning.

For some readings at the other end of the year, visit my 2023 winter solstice collection of readings and my 2022 winter solstice collection.

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Reruns: June Posts Worth Revisiting

I started my reruns in August 2023, taking trips down memory lane to reread old posts and find the ones that hold up when I read them years after first writing them. This gives me some nostalgia bumps, like reflecting back on a great bike touring trip I took with my sweetie in 2018 and reading posts I wrote after moving to Seattle in 2012.

Going back to my older posts also reminds me how much I was thinking, reading, and writing about transportation well before working professionally in that realm. Starting to bike commute, creating Spokane Bikes, and participating in local transportation work groups really laid a foundation for the career path I'm now on. 

June keeps rolling from National Bike Month in May to provide plenty of inspiration for riding, if not always writing. The 2018 bike tour links below pick up where the ones in May's reruns left off.

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A Year of Poems: June

"And what is so rare as a day in June?" Quick, name that poem!

Nope, I couldn't either. I knew the line but not the poet or the poem. Thanks to this month's research I now know it's by James Russell Lowell, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal." I'm sure you've read it, right? I'm the only one who hasn't.

"from The Vision of Sir Launfal" by James Russell Lowell

No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;

If you want to read the entire "Vision", here's the Project Gutenberg copy of the whole book of Lowell's poems that includes it. I have to say this part is the most accessible in the work, although the two lines right before the famous line are worth sharing:

No price is set on the lavish summer;June may be had by the poorest comer.

As with poetry about May, a lot of June poems are full of flowers and floweriness. I chose to skip most of those. June is a changeable month, with thunder and rain as well as roses and sunshine. 

I've chosen a few lines to share here to tempt you into following the links to the full poems. 
"After Many Springs" by Langston Hughes
Now,In June,When the night is a vast softnessFilled with blue stars,
"Wildflower" by Stanley Plumly
It is June, wildflowers on the table.They are fresh an hour ago, like sliced lemons,with the whole day ahead of them.
"June Thunder" by Louis MacNeice
The Junes were free and full, driving through tinyRoads, the mudguards brushing the cowparsley,Through fields of mustard and under boldly embattledMays and chestnuts
"June Rain" by Richard Aldington
Hot, a griffin's mouth of flame,The sun rasped with his golden tongueThe city streets, till men and walls shrivelled;The dusty air stagnated.
"June Wind" by Wendell Berry (presented in its entirety here)
Light and wind are running
over the headed grassas though the hill hadmelted and now flowed.
"June 21" by Robert Beverley RayNow it is completely summer.
The hot windy days, haze and white skies,Have given way to something cooler,
"On June Blossoming in June" by Karen An-Hwei Leein glowing strokes of  late June lightfringed by the noise of peninsula traffic on the harbor            laced by grease and silt from the machinery of  life—the sea isn’t far away though only gulls could spy it from here—
"What Is June Anyway?" by David BudbillAfter three weeks of hot weather and drought,        we've had a week of cold and rain,just the way it ought to be here in the north,        in June, a fire going in the woodstove
"Twenty-first of June" by Elton Glaser
Air that blisters in the sun;Already I can feelThe sweat
Slide down the face of summer andPool in the steamy streets.
"In the Moment" by Billy CollinsIt was a day in June, all lawn and sky,the kind that gives you no choicebut to unbutton your shirtand sit outside in a rough wooden chair.
"From a Country Overlooked" by Tom HennenThere are no creatures you cannot love.A frog calling at GodFrom the moon-filled ditchAs you stand on the country road in the June night.The sound is enough to make the stars weepWith happiness.

A Year of Poems

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Reruns: May Posts Worth Revisiting

May is National Bike Month, which may be why some years I didn't do a lot of writing. I did write more posts than I'm listing here but they're often specific to an event so they don't hold up over time. In 2018 I did some bike travel so you get the start of the trip here, the rest in June. 

A name-change note: I went to work for the Bicycle Alliance of Washington in 2012, then led the organization through a name change to Washington Bikes in 2013-2014. I've left the two names in my archive links for historical accuracy and the bit of nostalgia.

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A Year of Poems: May

If April is the cruellest month, May is sunshine and spring, hope and flowers, and quite often the subject of a poet's celebratory observations. 

Here's my problem with poems about May: They're so often sappy. Flowers and birds in rhyming couplets. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers and birds and I'm not against the occasional rhyming couplet but it gets repetitious. I skipped over a lot of May poems that were a little too hop-te-skippety for my taste. And so, so many are named "May". So many. 

You're getting some birds and flowers and spring. I also had to include  "May 1968" by Sharon Olds, which isn't about the month at all but about events in May, and "May 1972" by James Schuyler, which is as timely now as it was when he wrote it.

"May and the Poets" by James Henry Leigh Hunt

May's in all the Italian books:—
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,
In happy places they call shelves,

"May Day" by Sara Teasdale

For how can I be sure
  I shall see again
The world on the first of May
  Shining after the rain?

"In the Month of May" by Robert Bly

In the month of May when all leaves open,
I see when I walk how well all things
lean on each other, how the bees work,
the fish make their living the first day.
Monarchs fly high; then I understand
I love you with what in me is unfinished.

"May" by Jonathan Galassi

Ivy from last summer clogs the pool,
brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch
soft to the touch

and rank with interface of rut and rot.
The month after the month they say is cruel
is and is not.

"May Day" by Tess Taylor

white lilacs curdle in pre-summer heat.
The parade I barely noticed was beginning
is already halfway down the street.

"May to April" by Philip Frenau

Without your showers, I breed no flowers,
    Each field a barren waste appears;
If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep,
    They take such pleasures in your tears.

As your decay made room for May,
    So I must part with all that’s mine:
My balmy breeze, my blooming trees
    To torrid suns their sweets resign!

"Under the Willows [May is a pious fraud of the almanac]" by James Russell Lowell

May is a pious fraud of the almanac,
A ghastly parody of real Spring
Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;
Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,
And, with her handful of anemones,
Herself as shivery, steal into the sun,
The season need but turn his hourglass round,

"Song on May Morning" by John Milton

Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,
  Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
  The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.

"The Month of May" by Wendy Cope

So carpe diem, gather buds, make hay.
The world is glorious. Compare, contrast
December with the merry month of May.
Now is the time, now is the time to play.

"For a Day in May" by Ruth Earnshaw

Shadow of white lilac
cast by May moonlight,
fettering me, dancing 
in the dew-cold grass
never let me go.

"To this May" by W.S. Merwin

it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time

"May" by Kerry Hardie

All hardship, hunger, treachery of winter forgotten.
This unfounded conviction: forgiveness, hope.

"May 1968" by Sharon Olds

When the Dean said we could not cross campus
until the students gave up the buildings,
we lay down, in the street,
we said the cops will enter this gate
over us.

"May 1972" by James Schuyler

Soft May mists are here again.
There, the war goes on.
Beside the privet the creamy
white tulips are extra
fine this year. There,
foliage curls blackened back:

A Year of Poems

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Earth Day Poems for Every Day


Photo graphic created wit a program. Foreground, a hand holding the bottom half of the globe, a large green tree growing out of it. Top text "Go green before green goes". Bottom text "World Earth Day". Background soft focus earth and grass.


Every day really is Earth Day. What else could it be? Knowing that, how will you choose to live?

As with all my collections of poetry I've chosen a few lines to excerpt, not necessarily the first lines in the poem. Follow the links to read the full work.

"Earth Day" by Jane Yolen

As long as life,
As dear, as free,
I am the Earth
And the Earth is me. 

"Make the Earth Your Companion" by J. Patrick Lewis

Make the Earth your companion.
Walk lightly on it, as other creatures do.

"Gravity" by Donna Hilbert

This is why we call the earth Mother,
why all rising is a miracle.

"Treat Each Bear" by Gary Lawless

Treat each bear as the last bear.
Each wolf the last, each caribou.
Each track the last track.

"School Prayer" by Diane Ackerman

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,

"For All" by Gary Snyder

I pledge allegiance to the soil
            of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
             one ecosystem
             in diversity
             under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

"Love in a Time of Climate Change" by Craig Santos Perez

I love you as one loves the most vulnerable
species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.

"Beginners" by Denise Levertov

-- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

"Untitled [Earth teach me stillness]" by Nancy Wood

Earth teach me caring
    as the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
    as the tree which stands all alone.

"When the Animals" by Gary Lawless

When the plants speak to us
     in their delicate, beautiful language,
     will we be able to answer them?

"2007, VI [It is hard to have hope]" by Wendell Berry

Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.

"Map" by Linda Hogan

This is the map of the forsaken world.
This is the world without end
where forests have been cut away from their trees.
These are the lines wolf could not pass over.

"Anthropocene: A Dictionary" by Jake Skeets

diyóół        : wind (

                         wind (more of it) more wind as in (to come up)
                         plastic bags driftwood the fence line 

"Makers" by Pamela Alexander 

We dried rivers or dammed them, made
music, treaties, money, promises.
Made more and more of our kind,
which made the cars and the wars
necessary, the droughts and hurricanes.

"Nimbawaadaan Akiing / I Dream a World" by Margaret Noodin

Nimbawaadaan akiing
I dream a world

atemagag biinaagami
of clean water

gete-mitigoog
ancient trees

gaye gwekaanimad
and changing winds.

"Dead Stars" by Ada Limón

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

"Mending Mittens" by Larry Schug

Blessed be those who have laced together
the splits at the seams of this world,
repaired its threads of twisted waters.
Blessed be those who stitch together
the animals and the land,
repair the rends in the fabric
of wolf and forest,
of whale and ocean,
of condor and sky.
Blessed be those who are forever fixing
the tear between people and the rest of life

"Testimony" by Rebecca Baggett

I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness,"
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.
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