The Winding Road

photo by Lorraine Alford

A while back when I started this blog, before any of the UkrainianVancouver, or UkrainianChicago blogs were up and running, I felt an urge to write.  There seemed to be so much information emanating from the north of Ukraine, and very little cross-North America news.  I know that Bohdan at Yevshan started a Ukrainian community events calendar shortly after, but there wasn't anybody just chatting about stuff. So I found my niche.

Father Taras Krochak

Meandering thoughts about community, connections, long tendrils of acquaintance-friendship-relationship circled in my mind.  It seemed that so many of the people in the Ukrainian community knew each other!  Sadly, across time and distance we would mostly say - haven't heard about them for a long time!  Quiet moments full of rich memories....where are those formerly dear friends now?

My dearest friend, Mom, is up to her eyeballs in garden, grandchildren, and genealogical studies. I took a photo of her glorious bar-v-nok to use as my blog's calling card.  Long, tender yet resilient vines of green bursting out of the ground and reaching with their endlessly beautiful periwinkle coloured blossoms - stretching across the garden path.  Seeking what? Seeking the future?

Korovai by Luba Macewko

Preparing for my daughter's wedding last summer, many dear friends contributed their garden bar-v-nok, to braid and curl, twine and twist the pliable filaments for the traditional regalia to be used at their Marriage Sacrament - the Crowning.  I couldn't believe how long the vines stayed beautifully green!  No wilting, no drooping, the crowns retained their vitality well into the second week after the wedding and further!  I am reminded that they are evergreen, but wow do they stay long!

When I got married, my grandmother had laboriously tended and babied a myrtle plant in her house in Manitoba to use for my wreath! Smaller vines, grown on a firmer stock, but equally beautiful, if more fragile looking.  She watered the vines judiciously to exact the precise firmness - not too tender and slender, but not too tough or impliable - retaining the family wisdom about a proper match, of course.  Then my friend Ken, the florist thought to apply gold leaf to the myrtle leaves, which Baba, in all humility thought would be too ostentatious. Ken did apply miniature white blossoms though - the wreath was simply stunning.

The resilient vines of barvinok in my garden took on a deep, thick green over the winter, but now their gyrating filaments are warmed and nourished in the spring rains. It is hard to tell where one slender shoot ends and another begins.  Life is like that too.  Grafted onto the vine of life, the barvinok reminds us to stay connected to the vine, even in the cold of winter because the spring will return with its luscious growth, time, after time, after time.......

Seeds for the Future

Ah, the lovely smells of Autumn!  Leaves of golden yellow, fields of stubble, the harvest bounty brought home - such a time of plenty.  Time to thank, appreciate, and then put the gardening tools to sleep for a winter's rest. 

Hopefulness comes of this time.  Time to think  - well that patch of garden space really needs to rest, or...that section of the garden would be great for runner beans next year.  Ah, dreaming of next year's planting season.

I am not a seed harvester, however perhaps you could be.  I remember Baba saving tomatos for their seeds, and harvesting beans to dry some for next year's seeds.  This involved hopefulness, planning, dreams for a better tomorrow.

The bad news, however, is that there are major seed-developing companies that are already introducing "terminator technologies" into Canada so that every time you want to grow a grain or vegetable or a flower, you will have to purchase new seeds.  These seeds will produce, but will not reproduce!!!  The seed will be sterile!!!

This scares me a lot.  When you consider the accumulated agricultural wisdom of our Canadian prairie producers, and place that against the HOLODOMOR experiences of Ukrainians in the last century, our food security is a huge issue!!  Who controls our food security??

The National Council of Women of Canada (www.ncwc.ca) , and the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada (www.uwac-national.ca) have asked the government of Canada to ban terminator seeds in Canada.  In the upcoming session of Parliament, Alex Atamanenko, NDP MP for BC Southern Interior, has sponsored a private member's bill - Bill C-434 Terminator Seeds Ban.  This is "an act to prohibit the planting, cultivation, release, sale and importation of seeds incorporating or altered by variety-genetics use restriction technologies (V-GURTS) also called "Terminator Technologies". 

Normally private members bills have little chance of passing, however you can help this one pass but flooding your MP's office with phone calls, letters and emails in support of this bill.  Be assured that the grain companies will be lobbying very strongly against this Bill.

Chamomile Tea

Chamomile is the English name for several daisy-like plants that grow, sometimes wild, in gardens across the prairies.  The lovely little plants have a soft fragrance, but since ancient times, chamomile has been used for its medicinal and therapeutic qualities.  Some people use dried chamomile flowerets made into a tea, which is commonly used to help with sleep.  Serving it with honey or lemon is delightful. 

There are other uses for chamomile too.  Treating indigestion, insomnia and cholic are common uses, but did you know my grandmother had a folk-medicine approach to chamomile use?  Of course, she would. 

When "stomach issues" plagued me as a young teenage girl, my grandmother would regularly brew up a pot of chamomile tea.  Serving tea in fancy tea-cups, I wonder whether tea was served for its medicinal qualities (calming cramps), or for the wonderful, soft social aspect of grandmotherly attention.  We would sit and talk, after which it was usually time to take the spent chamomile tea, dilute with rain water, and rinse my blonde hair.  She said the chamomile would make my hair bright and shiney.  Since then, of course, I have found chamomile used in a huge variety of cosmetological products - shampoo, soaps, etc.  Baba was actually pretty savvy with regards to chamomile.

Did you know that chamomile is a general "healer" plant?  It seems that if you have ailing plants in your garden, planting chamomile beside them restores their general health!  Didn't know that!

Chamomile appears in Ukrainian folklore, folk songs and folk art too. "Roman", "romashka", "romianok",  these are all names for the daisy variants.  "Romianok"- the littlest ones, seed themselves generously through gardens, unfortunately we usually weed them away.  Too bad, they are a great little sparkle of joy! 
 

Kalyna - High Bush Cranberry

Lamont Travelogue by Darby 2

Our home has been graced with the company of special friends lately, forever friends really.  Travelling to Calgary from their homes far away, these are true friends, and we have deep abiding love and understanding for each other. Like the best friendships, between the laughter and tears, are layers and layers of common understandings.  Stuff we do, food we eat, art we display, our celebrations, our sorrows, songs we sing....

Metaphors and similes are encased in almost all Ukrainian songs.  One of the special botanical symbols is the kalyna – Viburnum-Caprifoliaceae L. (the high bush cranberry).  Kalyna is part of Ukraine’s wealth of life sustaining, rural, agricultural riches.  It has been known and used over millennia as part of ancient rites, rituals, magic and medicine.

In Ukrainian, nouns have gender, so the word “kalyna” is a feminine noun.  Kalyna grows in wet woods, along streams and wooded hillsides, and requires moist but well drained sites for best development. Kalyna blossoms are snow white, lace-cap flowers that form a ball-shape.  Ancestral Ukrainian folk songs of courtship, engagement and marriage anticipate the ripening of the kalyna berries, referring in hopeful terms to the whole concept of maidenhood, virginity, the nuptial bed, happy, fruitful wedded life.  The cycle of ritual songs and ritual embroideries celebrate the blood-red, the love, and life ahead.  Medicinally, the bark yields a powerful antispasmodic, a water soluble preparation containing a bitter compound called viburnine, which is used for the relief of menstrual and stomach cramps.  At the same time, however it is interesting that in the fall, the ripened berries weigh down the kalyna and the branches bend gracefully to support the tree - clearly imagery to do with birth, and the future, with all its complexity and sorrows. The fruit is best gathered when slightly under-ripe and sour.  If it is gathered after a heavy frost, the fruit is sweeter, and has a musty odor during cooking.  Wildlife waits until there have been several frost/thaw cycles before indulging in the dried fruit.   

In his amazing collection and analysis of Ukrainian traditional folk songs, Filiaret Kolessa refers to “parallelism”, where nature comes to represent all of life. Decoding becomes even more complex, the deeper one gets into literary symbolism. The Great Kobzar Taras Shevchenko was one, from among Ukraine's literary giants to have employed this imagery, and now ancestral images stand beside contemporary art works and seem to reflect not only individual love, but love for one’s people, for one’s country.  Many symbols are universally loved in Ukraine, probably none more than the kalyna.

Here are some favorite Kalyna songs to enjoy – consider the symbolism in the lyrics and think “to life!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kepx3vYsAD4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0_O4wGjsn0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZzlKzI4HiU&feature=related

Gardening in Ukrainian Calgary

impressive horseradish - but not mine!

These sunny, hot Calgary days are forcing me to spend more time outside, which is wonderful, but it makes it impossible to overlook the overgrowth.  Time to look at improving our landscaping plan. The yard is great, but all the plantings from over the years are overgrown, or have lived their life cycle and need to go to the great compost heap in the sky (actually backyard). The spruce trees had a disease and stopped flourishing.  The mayday (I thought it was a chokecherry) lived a good life, it got cut down, as did the second one. Now the ornamental crab, though it had the most spectacular mauvy pink blossoms, and was the most beautiful tree in the neighborhood for a while, has aged and looks scruffy at best. The nicest large plantings on our yard are one huge Manitoba maple that gives shade to the front of the house, and its little sibling which will shade the front corner. So with a landscaping rethink, I decided to consider which traditional Ukrainian horticultural elements we would want to feature.

As I recall, every Ukrainian folk song or folk tale uses symbols from nature to underscore relationships. The way the boughs on a tree bend and bow, the order of flowers growing, the sunflower gracefully tipping its face upwards, the water rushing over the roots of a tree, everything has meaning. Silly, I know, but I have always wondered at the garden choices of my Baba, my Pra-Baba, and even my mama.

Pra-baba's garden was amazing, it even had a cold frame which she used to nurture little seedlings through tempermental springs on the prairies.  Beets, potatoes, cabbage, beans, peas - these I remember.  Sunflowers too!

I know that my grandmother insisted there should be schavel', wild sorrel on the yard. So she brought plants here to my home in Calgary from her cute little house, and amazingly huge garden in Manitoba. And raspberries, because she knew they are my absolute favorite fruit. And my uncle gave us horseradish to plant somewhere, and though it seemed right, the Baba-team warned it should only go into the alley-which it did, and promptly died. I have never heard of khrin dying, but in this Calgary back alley it did.

Now you know where there has been a good "hospodenia" gardener, when you see horseradish in the backyard that looks as impressive as this!!

Mama gave me mint and told me to plant it where it wouldn' t go completely berserk and take over the property. It gets used all summer long in cooking recipes like chortopita (the wild-greens version of spanakopita that my family loves). I also dry the leaves several times a season, when it gets overgrown, for sipping on mint tea all winter long. Just loved it when my mama would send up bags of the dried green stuff, my kids would just laugh when mama was getting her new "stash"!

chamomile

Then somehow some little chamomile plants hitch hiked here in a pot of other things.  It sows itself, and when there is enough I collect and dry the flowers for chamomile tea, really!!

My husband planted hollyhocks because he remembered seeing them grow in Baba's yard. Mal'vi, as they are called in Ukrainian, are puffy like mallows, and a pretty pink, but with the windy weather in Calgary they tend to fall over. The gladioli did too! So I have delphinium. But what are they called in Ukrainian?

periwinkle - barvinok

Then there is the poppy!  With all the famous recipes calling on ground poppy seed, kutia, poppyseed chiffon cake and poppyseed tortes - but Canadian law says it is illegal.  darn!  So I have to restrain myself to the other traditional flowers used in a Ukrainian garden all seem to be popular plantings here on the prairies!   Marigold, peony, bluebells (campanula carpatica!), chamomile, periwinkle (barvinok), and iris, which, wouldn't you just know it, most of which grow in the garden already!!  Maybe I am on track already??

Ukrainian Schavel' - Wild Sorrel Soup (Green Borsch?)

Schavel from my garden in Calgary

My schavel' is growing so quickly in my garden this year - it must be because of all the lovely spring weather Calgary has been having.  Such lush and healthy green!  Time to make soup!  It always makes a summer supper better to have fresh garden soup as the first course.  Will another year pass before I actually enjoy this treat?  I think not. 
A little basket and a small knife, and out to cut the common garden sorrel - schavel'.  I am not sure which of the technical names to use, but there are several wild sorrel - schavel' species growing in North America too.  I'll need a fair bit - it has to cut down to about 8 cups chopped.  

I make a great green borsch in the springtime, use up all the sorrel - schavel' on the garden.  It is a green spinach-like garden lettuce.  Tastes lemony and has a good tang. As you might expect from a vegetable this tart, any recipe using schavel' or sorrel will use cream or milk to temper the tang. With the cream or milk, the soup becomes such a bright, sparkling, green borsch - the spring borsch to wake all those digestive enzymes. 

Some articles on line call it Wild French Sorrel.  Puzzles me, why French?  Gotta think back in history, way back to Anna Yaroslavna - she was the daughter of  Yaroslav the Wise - Kniaz of Rus' way back a thousand years ago.  At the time of Kievan Rus', the Rurik Dynasty had impressive ties with the royal houses of Western Europe.  All the royal families of Europe wanted to foster familial ties with Kievan Rus'.  So, a King of France was married to Anna Yaroslavna - the daughter of the ruler of Kievan Rus'.  She, and her entire retinue went across the European continent and brought many treasures from Ukraine.  She became Queen of France!  Until recent times, the Bible she brought - written in Old Slavonic - was the Bible used for the official oath taking of Kings, and Presidents.  Not sure whether that is still the case, but an interesting fact.

In any case, whether Anna Yaroslavna brought Schavel' to France, - or whether Schavel' is a French food brought to Ukraine - it has been in the recipe box for about a thousand years.  Hope you enjoy!!

You will need a fair bit of sorrel - schavel' to make this recipe, it cooks down quickly.  You can purchase it at some supermarkets, sometimes at the farmer's market in the spring, but the best way to assure you have some in the spring is to have some in your own garden.  All you need is one or two plants stuck somewhere in the corner of the garden and it will produce for years.  You can plant it from seed, but I got the plants from a Ukrainian woman from church.  Thanks Pani O. ).

Nadia’s Hot Sorrel Soup  - Sorrel Soup (Schavel’)

Yield: Makes about 8 cups

Ingredients:

1 cup finely chopped white and pale green part of green onions, washed well

½ cup finely chopped onion

2 Tbsp. butter

1 pound boiling potatoes (peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces)

4 cups chicken broth

2 cups milk

½ pound fresh sorrel  - stems discarded and leaves rinsed, spun dry, and shredded course (about 8 cups)

1/2 cup cream

¼ cup snipped fresh chives or to taste, plus, if desired, additional for garnish.

Preparation:

In a large saucepan cook the green onion and the onion with salt and pepper to taste in the butter over moderately low heat, stirring, until the vegetables are softened, add the potatoes, broth, and simmer the mixture covered for 10 – 15 minutes, or until potatoes are almost tender.  Stir in the milk, heat til scalded, then add sorrel and simmer for 1 minute.  Puree the mixture in a blender in batches, transferring it as it is purred to a bowl, and let it cool. (I do not puree the soup, because the sorrel pieces floating in the soup are nice.)  Stir in the cream, chives and salt and pepper to taste.  I like the soup served hot, but you can chill it, covered, for at least 4 hours or overnight and serve it sprinkled with additional chives.