Betty Basement and the Flower Designer

The flower industry is bereft with irony. Flowers are symbols of Nature. We bring them inside to remind us of beauty, of simplicity and complexity, of our connection to nature. Yet the flower industry is a giant petroleum burn that comes out smelling like roses. Starting, often in the laboratory with some genetic manipulations, most commercial flowers are grown in the slave labour greenhouses of South America. They heavily douse the product with pesticides and fungicides, fertilzers and growth hormones, most of which are petroleum based. Once cut, the flowers are treated, packaged in disposable plastic, stored in massive cooler systems, then sent on the private commercial cargo flights to the North American auction sites. Trucks and coolers support and transport these precious cargo, guzzling the hydrocarbons, until the flower arrangers and designers set their minions to treating them again for retail.
The flower shop. I have worked in a few now. The first one I worked for here in Ontario was The Flower Basket up in the strip mall. A bunch of clucking old birds doing funeral wreaths with babys breath and carnations gives you a bit of a picture. One day I was asked to make up a planter in a lovely zen-style basket. When I finished, the proprietor asked me to give it a little spray with Floralife Leafshine. I read the contents: propane, butane, heptane, propranol, isopropranol. So I went outside to spray. Around this time I was studying the Holocaust. Suddenly I could understand part of how the atrocities happen: there I was spraying petroleum on a living creature because I was told to, and with an attitude that it is a small and necessary compromise.
A few days later while working there, I witnessed the owner make one of the most cliche racist statements I have ever heard. An Indian lady came into the store and was asking some prices. She left without buying anything. Once gone, Julia said, "Just like that other Indian lady that goes to Janice's church... It is something in their very ethnicity that makes them want everything for nothing. Always." Well I didn't quit on the spot, I am ashamed to say. I waited until I cooled down, and then spoke to her the next day. She was as defensive as you can imagine, and so I wrote her a two page letter on how I want to approach all things from a place of compassion and integrity. I dont make beauty for people who speak hateful ignorance.

Okay, so the po-dunk flower shop was not a nice place. So off I go, seeking another lovely flower shop where I can play amidst the beauty and life. I want to twist up life and symbology, medicine and antiquity into art that makes you smile when you enter the bathroom....
And there is another flower shop near by that feels young and funky, more of the west coast style that I am used to. I checked back in with them, they called me in right away to work a day so we could all get the feel for each other.
It is a friday, one month before Christmas. The shop is busy like Granville Island flower shop on a Saturday. There are three ladies and the big handsome gay newfie owner. There is playful banter, but no asks me anything about myself. Until the big guy asks,
" So, are you a flower *arranger* or flower *designer*? Because there is a difference."
"Oh? What is it?" I ask.
" Well, a flower *arranger* just does it recipe style, you know. I think of Betty Basements. Flower *designers* are artistic and creative, they are creating art in their designs. When I hear flower arrangers I just think of Betty Basement."
I am thinking of the picnic table beneath the apple tree in the Hollyhock garden, and asking Pam, Denise and Nori which they are. I imagine this man saying he is a "flower designer" to them, and the slight raise of Nori's eyebrows. This haughty snob at the end of the life line, who deals in death to feed his ego and thinks it is beyond both.
When he calls me back to offer me work, I hope I have the wherewithall it tell him to take his whole teeny little ego trip of a world and shove it up his fat designer ass. I should phone him first and tell him not to waste his time thinking about me, because I couldn't fit into his world so small anyway.
Bah!

To all the Betty Basements out there, keep puking on their shoes, and keep your shit tight. We will usurp them without them even noticing, their heads are so fat and that world so small. To all the people still alive, praise be. The goddess is listening.

teetering owl and a whiskered kangaroo

yup.
the camera is good.
the girls are cute.
teetering and pouncing in this here ontario
town.
i get my bike tomorrow.
oh, am i excited.
hey jes and ali, i miss you.
kirsten nettle, you and emmett too.
cortes, manzanita, kw'as park...
here we are, art admiring itself while missing you.

the kittens

hey zoe, kdub

apple pie : love

apple pie.
crust is appropriated from JD's *pate brise* recipe









3/4 cup organic butter. unsalted.
3 or 4 teaspoons organic cane sugar.
1 and 3/4 cups organic flour.
intention.
love.
presence of mind:

With two silver, long pronged forks, using left and right arms, whole body in fact, cut the ingredients together, until they are in pea sized balls.
I was the dough, I was a farm mama, I was a church lady, making the best pie crust, the ones that people remark on and remember. "... yup. She makes a mean pie."
Apple pie was the all-american desert. I say was because I would guess some sort of fast food, pre-processed and packaged desert is now, like the donut or twinkie. But home baked apple pie! Back in the days of pioneers, the 13 colonies, of the America that grew its own food, apples were the main source of sweetness. In his book The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollen talks about Johnny Appleseed carring his canoe loads of appleseeds all throughout america. Applepie and applejack. Stories and these apples lace me through history, through farm mamas, housewives, mothers baking sweetness for their families: women and domestic detail: the variable genetics of apples carried along in seeds, and propagated in graftings; the story of the versatile apple; butter and flour, our metabolic staples; the alchemy that can be created by the different ways of processing these ingredients. I let my mind drop into the process of the butter and flour being cut together, forming little balls that would layer into flakes. Each bit of butter dusted in flour.
I do get immense pleasure out of doing a task with patience, intention, and observation. Doing it with integrity, careful selection of each part, guided by intuition, embeded in the craft. The pleasing feel of quality. There is for me a deep joy in being present. In sinking into the depths of the action, of the moment, the moment becomes eternal and the action becomes infinite.

The man pulling daikon
pointed the way
with a daikon.
Isso

So cut the dough until it is mostly all those little flour covered, pea sized balls.
Then, and here is the trick, instead of using 4 tablespoons of ice water, use cold, bubbly mineral water; I used Gerolstiener. (It also mixes very well with the Frangelico to sip while you work with the other elements to combine). I remember someone telling me to use 7up years ago; it is the bubbly the helps the flake. San Pelligrino would work. With the water tossed in, form it into a ball. I was concious of how the consistancy changed as I did. What new structure is forming? What pattern am I cultivating?
There is a balance between being gentle and forceful. Roll it out, put it in an ungreased pie pan, and bake it at 375 for 20 minutes or so. I tend to overcook mine. Don't forget to prick the bottom with a fork so that it doesnt inflate with air bubbles.

Baking two is better than one. The timing works out nicely. I make each separately, and it almost takes twice the time, but the clean up is better, and it feels a more rounded experience somehow.

Peel your apples, cut them how you like.
I laid pears in the bottom in a lovely starry dynamo, ( too bad I didnt take a picture, but duely noted), then chucks of apples, getting smaller for the top layers. I rolled all the apples in a sauce made of one shot of Frangelico (hazelnut liquour), and one shot of maple syrup, fresh ground cinnamon (lots), green cardamom, and a few cloves.
Bake at 375 for a while, until it is golden and fragrant. 40 minutes or so.

On half I layed slices of blue cheese. They were too baked to be of much flavor. Chunks of blue within the pie though, all baked in with the apples and syrup and liquior... ummmm.

I served it with pinapple cashew cream, instead of ice cream or whip. Cashew creams are easy to make, quick, vegan and raw, just healthy, and so tasty- creamy- rich. Soak some cashews and any dried fruit, like a date, in crisp water for the afternoon. Toss it into the blender...not too much liquid, and viola! Raw whipping cream. With pinapple. ( Joy showed me this).

* *

It moves me to tears to be able to make this. I have the time, I have the ingredients. I do. I am whelmed full. As we manifest ourselves, this manifestation of all that has come together to bring this to me. This manifestation of my love, of our love, of each of our choices, of the love that I have shown along the way to bring me to here. I pull it from the oven and serve it up, calling my lover from his studies. It is flakey and light and sweet and healthy and scrumptious.
To tears. My eyes pour forth with emotion nearly every morning and night. A story, someone's story, an email from a sweet friend. The openings whe hurl ourselves through, the emotional cliffs we leap, throw ourselves off; How a bit of support and sincerity from someone is like a gallon of clear, sweet water.
I am in love with life, with me, with my lover, with our choices. It is not all easy, I am not all sane, it is all terrifying in its way: and I love who I am, that I am here, and that everywhere I turn I have gorgeous friends who are full too. Ingrid, Sarahbee, Karen Louise, Kdub, Zoella...
(hey does anybody know how to put in accents into here? for the e in Zoe?)

Sarahbee wrote to me this, which is what inspired the recipe, and who is mainly to whom the blog was narrated. The beauty of it all is that it is all so connected, about so many things, to everyone; we all learn from each other so beautifully well.

it is raining slightly in east van, and the moss on the huge ornamental cherry outside my brother's living room window is bright, excited green.

i struggle sometimes to let myself be full - to express and be real.  to let emotion and thought stream out and in, full size.  taking the space they deserve.  respected.

i have apples that i bought at the apple festival on salt spring this fall... wolfe river and bramley's seedling... i was planning to bake pie this weekend - if you have a recipe, i would LOVE to bake a jayme style pie. a perfect physical manifestation of the lovin you have supported me with this week.  oh goddess goddess thank you so.

i'm off to study chemistry today, and fix bicycles.  i got an intern job at the local bike shop on campus. it's so much fun jayme.  if my hands can't bear traces of soil all winter, then bike grease will do just
fine.

i spent last night with ~*~ again.  i have so many fragments of conversations and gestures traced all over and through me.  i want to hold onto them all, document them all, savour and remember.... and i know i can't.  they fall away like cobwebs over time.  i guess i choose a couple, and hold them close.  then allow movement. life flows in such an intricate, yet simple, and beautiful way.

i like that as i grow older i know more deeply in my bones that it is all ok.  no matter what.  no matter what,
i was reflecting last night, as i rode my bicycle down hill in the darkness at incredibly fast speeds.... over wet pavement and leaves... that i felt fear of falling out of love.. fear of loss. and i realized, i've been through that before.  and it hurts.  and still there is joy.  there is movement through and beyond.  it leaves a scar, a tenderness and a heightened sense of compassion..  it brings depth to experience and being. and so, plummetting down the hill as i was, i spent a couple of minutes imagining separating from gavin. wishing peace and letting go.  and then, with that feeling and awareness laced somewhere inside me, i let myself go back into loving being with him.  walking on the earth with the intent to be grounded - as solid and honest as possible... and also to be water - to open and to let myself fall, to let myself be completely immersed in this experience, these feelings.

falling in love with someone is an incredible human experience - and i want to allow myself to feel it. consciously and wildly all at once.

and now my sweet - an ee cummings poems for you:

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which
grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)