215. My Garage and Patio

Here, in Potlatch, we can get quite a bit of snow—nothing extreme like the nearby mountains, but enough to keep you busy shoveling. We’re going to have a white Christmas this year (as we do nine out of ten years) and I’ve just come in from shoveling the drive. Don’t get me wrong, I love the snow, but we have a new two car garage that’s just over a year old and I really love it. Potlatch is a company town built at the turn of the twentieth century so the lumber mill workers would not have had cars and the houses were not built with that in mind. When we bought our house 28 years ago we could not afford to build a garage, so we’ve lived here for 26 years parking on the street, getting plowed in several times a winter and having to dig one to four cars out. (The number of cars we’ve owned might also account for why we couldn’t afford a garage…) Being able to get the drive shoveled and into a snow free car has been a great luxury and pleasure for our retirement. I still have plenty of snow to shovel, so I’m not getting soft in that regard, but I do love my garage.

We built a car port on the house side of the garage that we use as a patio for the most part. Since we live on a hill, we also built an extending deck to the back door of the house so that when needed we have wheel chair access to the house as well as steps down to the back yard and garden. It connects right to the street side ramp that we built for wheel chair access from the street. While wheel chair access wasn’t a concern at all when we bought the place, it is now since our youngest son has a mitochondrial disease and at times has needed his wheel chair to get into the house. This became clear to us when he broke his ankle a few years ago which is why we built the deck ramp from the street. It looks just like a deck that extends into a walkway, so it isn’t at all clunky or emergency-handicap-accessible looking.

Because we built the car port/patio on the side of the garage and our property is on a hill, the roof slope required us to build high. That also means that there is plenty of vertical space inside, so we built storage shelves on both the house and ally sides. They are like lofts and you can walk around on them, though you do have to duck a bit for the beams. You also have to get up there with a ladder. We have our oldest son’s furniture stored up there now while he’s away in medical school. Since the garage replaced an old garden shed, I also use it to store my rototiller, lawn mower, and garden tools. I have a portable work bench that I start seeds on beneath the single window on the southside and it also works as a table on the patio if we so desire. I have a beer fridge and a deep freezer. I store our winter pellets for the stove in there and I also store a little bit of fire wood for our outdoor fire pit. When both cars are parked inside it can be crowded, but that’s when I pull one of both cars out and work while the door is opened.

The patio is wonderful. We bought a patio heater to sit under when the COVID lock down started and we had friends visit outside to be safe. The gas grill is there and I can cook on it at any point in the year if it’s not too cold. While the sun does shine on all parts of the patio at one point or another during the summer, because we have a big maple tree nearby, you can sit at one spot or another at any time of the day and be shaded. It’s become our perfect outdoor living space because of its easy access to the house with wheel chair accessibility and the possibility of heat or shade at any time of the year. I keep it decorated for the seasons as well. In spring and summer, it has hanging planters and in fall I put up corn stalks and pumpkins. Now that it’s Christmas time I have it decked with lights and evergreen boughs. Because I love being outdoors it has become the perfect addition for me. I love my garage and patio.

214. Apples

It’s that time of year when apples are everywhere around here. They are such an ordinary fruit, that like grass you just kind of forget about them. But I really do love apples. I live just a few miles from Washington where the apple is the state fruit and it’s known as the apple state. Apples are also grown all over Idaho, just as potatoes are grown all over Washington. In fact, this little unincorporated place in Idaho called Mesa in the southwest part of the state had the largest apple orchards in the country during World War II. So, like I said, apples are everywhere around here. You find stray apple trees growing all over because it used to be that everyone had at least one apple tree at their home and didn’t rely on orchardists to provide them with the common fruit. I know many people turn their noses up at things that are “common” but I think overlooking the common instead of appreciating it is a great detriment to ourselves. In reality, nothing on this earth is “common” or we would have definitively discovered it on other nearby or distant planets. Everything about us and our earth is uncommon.

Where do I start about what I love about apples? I like eating a fresh apple at lunch time. I love apple pie, especially a la mode. Apples make great desserts like apple crisp or apple dumplings or apple cake. They’re as easy to come by as a potato, so they are easy to go to for a quick homemade dessert. They make a great snack with popcorn or cheese. You can cook them with a roast, poultry or pork. You can process them into applesauce, adding a little sugar and cinnamon—or not, just process them for a good baby food. Most of us probably started eating apples before we were even aware of it.

Pressing apples into cider is a great autumnal activity and there is no more exotic drink than fresh apple cider. I’ve noticed that people are going back to the hard ciders as well. That’s something we lost here in the US during prohibition and it took us a century to get it back. Hard ciders are kind of like beer and wine in that there are such variable flavors based upon the type of apple and the fermenting processes just as beers vary by their hop varieties and wines by their grapes. It is fun to see the cideries experiment and make new flavors. Something as common as the apple can make such varied and unique ciders. The apple is definitely a versatile fruit.

I also live right near Washington State University, a premier university in research and study of the apple (and viticulture as well), so it’s nice to know that the apple isn’t going out of vogue anytime soon, just as the potato is studied at the nearby University of Idaho. The saying of how you can’t compare apples to oranges doesn’t apply to apples and potatoes around here, at least if you consider how they can be used to drive the economy.

I’ve often wondered what I would do if I fell on hard times and had little to no money to buy food. I think I could get around and do some foraging for apples, fish a bit, find mushrooms and other edible plants here where I live and make it just fine. There’s something wonderful about the plentitude of apples and how they have become not only a part of my daily existence, but also a part of my imagination. Clearly my life would be very different without apples. So, what do you think about them apples?

 

213. Gonzaga Men's Basketball

 I love Gonzaga men’s basketball. I like the women’s program a lot too, but I just can’t seem to get enough of the men’s program. We just got home from Seattle yesterday because we had gone over to watch “The Battle in Seattle” that has been on hiatus for a few years. You can’t get into the McCarthy center (“The Kennel”) in Spokane very often unless you already have season tickets because that’s how popular the men’s program is. So, the Zags go to Seattle so more of their local fans can actually watch them live. It’s crazy that I live only an hour from Gonzaga but I have to often travel five hours across the state of Washington to watch them play.

This year they played the Alabama Crimson Tide, so yes, they play very famous teams. They are now one of those very famous teams. Unfortunately, they lost this one, but I’m still glad I got to be part of the 18,048 fans at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. The excitement of a Zag game with that kind of crowd is just electric, like you’re about to be struck by lightning at any moment! There was quite a student crowd there and the cheerleaders were there. One thing missing was the band. I have never before been at a game that the Zags lost, but I haven’t been to all that many live games because they’re hard to get into. I’ve been to one men’s game at the McCarthy Center when my oldest son was a student there. His attendance at Gonzaga has made me feel a big part of the Zags because I now have financial investments in that university. 😊

The other live games I’ve been to have been right here at WSU when the Zags used to play the Cougs every year. We also made a trip to Las Vegas one year to watch the West Coast Conference tournament which the Zags handily won. I do sometimes think the intense national spotlight on them can be a bit much. This year they were ranked #1 before they even played a game and now they are #5 or lower after losing to Duke and Alabama.

I have been attached to this program for a long time. I like how so many of the Zags stick to their alma mater in one way or another. Dan Dickau often reports on them on live television broadcasts. Adam Morrison always reports on them on live radio. These two are legends in their own right. So many Zags are playing in the NBA right now that I can’t even keep up with what teams they are on. Cory Kispert, Rui Hachimura, Jalen Suggs, etc. Others are playing abroad like Kevin Pangos and Przemek Karnowski. These guys just keep the magic rolling as they take great pride in the fact that they are Zags. And rightfully so.

Coach Mark Few is largely responsible for all this fame. The best thing about it all is that he stays with Gonzaga where he probably doesn’t make half as much as he would in a larger university. He seems to love Spokane and his job as it is. It’s not about the money for him, but the success of the young men in his program. That’s the kind of guy I admire and the kind of guy I hope I am.

The truth is that I like basketball and Gonzaga has given me a team to pin my hopes to. It’s a small liberal arts college with a faith-based background that strives to help young people become servants to their communities to make this world a better place. Like many, I tend to see athletics as slightly over promoted at the expense of other aspects of education. The joy of the game, the competition and the sportsmanship at any Zag game will show, however, that good things are promoted in friendly competition. Friendships are formed and bonds are made even when we might not know the players or the coach. Gonzaga is achieving its goals of making the world a better place through all of its sports programs and the window into that wonderful university is opened just a little wider through its basketball program. I’m proud to be a part of Zag nation and I love the Bulldogs. Go Zags!

212. Thanksgiving

 

Thanksgiving is a distinctly North American holiday that we Americans celebrate in November and our Canadian cousins celebrate in October in conjunction with what we Yanks call Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day. For we Americans the whole idea is to give thanks for our ancestry and their arrival on these shores along with a bountiful harvest after a difficult period preceding all that. It’s important to give thanks for surviving tempestuous events in our lives. Our Puritan ancestors celebrated what we now call the first Thanksgiving a year after their arrival in Massachusetts Bay. I love that story (highly mythologized) that has natives and colonists celebrating in harmony, but I know that our land has always been a land of tensions and conflict settled by obnoxious human beings bent on extreme tribalism. I’m still thankful for the holiday and grateful that we North Americans celebrate it.

While it’s over this year, my pastor did call it one of the few unsullied holidays. I suspect he meant that it’s unsullied by commercialism. That does seem to be true. About the only commercialism that comes with the holiday is the sale of turkeys, cranberries, and other autumnal foods that we enjoy cooking in a variety of ways. If you’re lucky you might find a few table decorations on sale, but typically those are overwhelmed and hidden between Halloween and Christmas decorations, if they’re even there at all.

This year we went to Seattle to celebrate. We actually ate Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant, something my wife and I had only done once before (before kids). I do, however, remember working at such banquets for Thanksgiving during my four years in college. It meant my own festivities with family had to be squeezed into a portion of the day instead of a full day of eating and being with family. This year the celebrations were just a quiet gathering of the four of us. Of course, we still had plenty of pumpkin and squash for treats and we did cook a turkey before the holiday for leftovers. I think what we ended up doing was extending the holiday to a longer eating festival.

It’s definitely the eating that I like about Thanksgiving. Of course, the gathering of friends and family is super important and fun as well but if it weren’t for the shared need to eat we probably wouldn’t do the big gatherings. In fact, we didn’t do the big gathering thing this year. We did lots of little gatherings here and there with friends and family. To me, that was just as fun because we had already started the everything-pumpkin season and then we added the turkey and cranberries. Now, when you get to the day after Thanksgiving, the crazy commercialization of Black Friday begins. I am not a big participant in Black Friday shopping and this year was no exception, but we did go to IKEA on that Saturday just because we were in Seattle. The shelves had already been cleaned out! It’s ok to do the shopping thing if you go slow, have fun, and remain happy. The whole idea of being thankful should prevail.

It’s not like we haven’t been going through an extended rough patch for the past couple of years with the pandemic, but I still have a lot to be thankful for. I’m thankful that I have remained healthy and been able to keep my family healthy. I’m thankful that I was financially stable and able to retire so that I could keep my family and myself healthy. I’m thankful that I have enough to do and a creative mind so that I am not bored. I’m thankful that my family and friends have weathered this storm of the pandemic fairly well and that we are able to get out and about now. And I’m grateful for this season that has brought me happiness and for Time magazine and its little article that encouraged me to think about what I’m grateful for.