Livin' the Life

A New Link

2009-09-11T16:11:00.002-04:00

Well, hello again. It seems like I've been away longer than I really have. Perhaps that's because so much has happened since I left off. To read all about it and all that is yet to come, please check out my NEW blog, The Art of Rustic. I look forward to seeing you there!

So, Here's the Deal-io

2009-06-07T20:11:00.004-04:00

I've been thinking about this for a while and have come to the conclusion that I need to put this blog on hiatus for a short-ish time. I feel something different coming on and I'd like to transform the blog to reflect that difference. I am not exactly sure what the changes will look like, but the ideas are simmering. I feel the steam building in the back of my brain. My goal is to be up and running with a new format by the end of August. I'm going to wrangle a few lessons in html from Sarah when she's here and work on some new content over the summer.

It has been one year since we moved out here (can that be?!) And almost one year since I started this blog. I've had fun keeping track of all the eye and heart-opening experiences that have taken place in this first year of our new life phase. I'm still in complete awe that I live here.

I'm so grateful to those of you who have read this blog and commented on it, whether in person or via the comments section. Thanks to all of you!

I will be keeping up with all of your blogs and I will be back in touch soon.

Cheers!
Meg

Be Still, My Heart

2009-06-01T13:38:00.008-04:00

This arrived in the mail today ~

And this happened over the weekend ~

I dream about the horses almost every night. I wake up filled with the sense of horseflesh close by. I wonder if those two can feel my attention beaming at them all the way in Texas?

Holiday Weekend Fun

2009-05-26T12:08:00.006-04:00

Work, work, work--that was our fun. And it was fun. Or it felt good anyway. It made the reward beers at the end of the day taste great.

John got the garden DONE! No pictures of that here. I'd like it to grow in a bit first. You've all seen it in raw form plenty of times so I won't regale you with yet another picture of a bed of dirt and tell you that seeds are in it.

While John was busy with the garden and a whole lot of other things, I started on the Porch Project.

This is the side porch that will become a screened-in porch very soon. The first step was to clean out all the bittersweet vines that John had stored there. Have you ever tried picking up more than one long, twisty vine at a time? Yeah, it doesn't really work that way. One at a time, steady as she goes.

Next step was to fetch the old floorboards from John's workshop that were stored in our old barn. Then, cut them into 130 pieces, 22 inches long. Yay! I love a challenge!

Only ten more piles to go!

Next step was to store those boards on the porch so they don't get wet in the rain that the computer says we are getting, but that never seems to come.

And now I wait until the carpentry boss is available to help me use the brand new nail gun to install the boards around the bottom of the porch. I think it is going to be a noisy piece of equipment that will make me feel p o w e r f u l.

Lavender (salts) and Lace (doilies)

2009-05-21T19:02:00.008-04:00

My mother-in-law, Mildred Menkedick, has given me a lot of pretty, useful things over the years. She knows that I like the old stuff and she hates to throw things out, so we make a good pair. Years ago, she gave me a mother-lode of hand embroidered linen dresser scarves and a passel of handmade doilies. I've never counted them, but I'd say there are twenty-five or more of these beautiful things.

A small sampling in their un-ironed glory:

I have used them for a variety of purposes over the years--I hung some dresser scarves over the screen doors of a pie safe in our old house--I scattered a bunch of the doilies down the middle of the dining table one year as a runner--and today I solved some curtain issues with them. I slung some short scarves over the rod between two curtain panels in the living room, and I made a weird combo that seems to work in the downstairs bathroom.

The side panels are made from leftover eyelet and they push aside to let light in.

When we were creating this house in our heads, I wanted a big window near the bathtub so that I could look out at a beautiful scene whilst relaxing in lavender salts. Well, I got the tub, I got the window, but the scene turns out to include the cars parked on the gravel in front of the wood pile and the bikes and some leftover gutter piping. Hmmm. Not exactly the scene I had in mind. Truly, I don't take baths in the middle of the day anyway, so what I really needed was an inspirational curtain to keep the moths and the owls from looking in at night. And that's what I got.

I love to think of the women who made these items, my "grandmother-in-law," and John's aunties looking at me from wherever they might be and feeling satisfied, maybe, that they are still serving a pretty purpose. Unless, of course, they disapprove of my unorthodox ways, in which case I guess I'll hear about it later. : )

Well, dang

2009-05-20T16:35:00.008-04:00

Something is in the air, or the teeth as it were. Poor Alice at Living the Rural Dream is temporarily grounded from her travels due to dental woes, and my friend Karen who was the "dear old friend" I mentioned in the last post never made it to visit me in Columbus due to...you guessed it, a bad tooth! I really missed seeing Karen, but I made hay in the city while I could, visiting my cute little grandbabies and having that cappuccino with my funny, sweet son. And yes, I made it to a thrift store and scored a couple of summer shirts, the best being an Ann Taylor Loft thingy for a buck fifty. I'll be fancy on the porch this summer after the work is all done for the day : )

Big strong husband has been working hard on the garden.

I helped him put the wire fence up before I left. Ain't no deer getting in our garden, man. The thing is over my head. We could only get it about six inches into the ground due to the hardness of the clay. At first I had wanted it sunk about a foot. The best laid plans, though, change when you hit the stupendous clay base around here. It makes you say, "Aw, &^*k it! That's good enough!" If any groundhogs make a go for it, I'll just shoot 'em. (only kidding.) Maggie at Mamma What The might be shaking her head at the relative permanence of the fence, since she advised me otherwise. However, I have felt it smart to let John do what he wants with this project, given that he's doing it. Not to mention that I'm kind of losing confidence that I will be able to grow much of anything around here except my pampered house plants. I planted up some nice containers last week with annuals that I bought from the FPC plant sale and do you know what? They FROZE in the FROST we had out here last week.

You would think I would know by now that it is a good ten degrees cooler out here in the country than it is in the city. I have felt the truth of it many times. Even the hottest summer days cool off to the point where you want a long sleeve blouse maybe to cover your arms if sitting on the porch after the sun's gone down. I guess I was just feeling entitled to frost-free nights given that we passed the Mother's Day mark. And if I had planted those pots in the city, I bet the coleus would still be perky and the tomato plants a beautiful dark green. Alas, they are looking pretty bad right now. Several tomato plants are goners. I pinched back the coleus and I think they might rally.

Anyway. I'm going to direct-seed most of the things I want to grow in the garden this year, simply because if I bought everything in plant form I would have to take out a small loan, and we all know how that's going these days. I sure hope it works. Next year, when I am sure that the garden is there, I can start the seeds early. This year, it's a wing and a prayer. Keeps life exciting, huh?

In the meantime, check out the Japanese iris (planted by the previous owner, and they need to be thinned) growing next to the old red barn. The color combination knocks me out. You can't get that red from a paint can. And the purple, well...

Of Misty Mornings & Pizzas Unique

2009-05-18T09:27:00.007-04:00

So, I'm posting once a week these days. Is that so bad? Does that make me a horrible blogger? Don't hate me because I'm gestating. Gestating what, you ask? I don't know. I'm di-gesting pizza...

John and I work pretty much non-stop these days. It's fun and we like it, but around 6:00 p.m. it's John who always asks, "What were you thinking of making for dinner?" And I'm like, Dude, I don't know. What were you thinking of making? Of course, I am not as sarcastic on the outside as I am on the inside, so what I say out loud is: "Oh, gosh (*sigh), I dunno." And then we go about fending for ourselves in the kitchen, bumping into each other as we travel the triangle--refrigerator, sink, stove.

While John is a good cook when he wants to be, he is a master at what he calls "slop." It is bachelor food to the extreme. It always involves cream of mushroom soup, and usually includes lima beans and corn, though you can also substitute frozen spinach. Add to that mixture some sort of starch (oh, wait a minute, we already have starch...) like spaghetti or rice or whatever is leftover in the fridge. Now, throw in some protein for good measure, canned tuna will do nicely. Mix it all up and cook it until hot. Pour it on a plate and put copious amounts of pepper on it, along with some hot sauce, and Bon Appetit!

John made some slop for himself last night while I made the little Boboli pizza you see above. Look closely and you'll see that I stole some of his lima bean and corn mixture as a topping. Yes, folks, I've hit upon a new sensation: Succotash Pizza. I added sliced red onion and topped it with dilled Havarti and provolone cheese. I washed down with some cheap Merlot left over from John's buddies who visited the cabin last week and it was dee-licious!

Now, I can imagine that you can imagine why I didn't want any of John's slop. But, why, you might be asking, did John not opt for one of my little pizza sensations? Well, he says that pizza really does him in on the blood sugar reading he has to take every morning to track his diabetes. I've seen it happen enough times to believe him. What I can't believe is that his slop dinner doesn't do the same. Magically, it seems to agree with him. Oh well. More pizza for me.

I leave today for the big city (or, Columbus). I'm meeting a dear friend to spend a few days drinking cappuccinos and catching up. I'm going to see if I can hit a few thrift stores while there. I'll dutifully report any finds. Wish me luck!

Here is a picture of my "Dark and dusty, painted on the sky/ Misty taste of moonshine/ Teardrops in my eye" moment this morning upon awakening. (disregard the blob of whatever is in my camera and shows up on the upper left corner of all my sky pictures)

I'm tucking it in my mind's pocket (which is deep and has some lint) so I can pull it out and look at it when I wake up tomorrow in the shuttered bedroom of the apartment.

We're in the Month of Bliss

2009-05-13T08:03:00.004-04:00

The Ecological Calendar calls the three month spread of April, May and June Trill, Bliss and Bloom.

I think mid-May might be my favorite time of year. Even though I could go for higher highs temperature-wise, the freshness and tidiness of new green growth is so...hopeful, to use a cliche. Everything seems manageable in terms of growth, as if everything will stay petite and contained and lovely all year. It is a delicate tasting on the tip of the tongue--not the voracious gobbling of huge summer mouthfuls. The woods are exquisite. The leaves are all out, but still small, allowing a generous filtering of light to the forest floor where the undergrowth is demure. The meadows are green, grasses not yet gone to seed as they do surprisingly early in June. When the breeze blows, a tide of dark green billows across the hill. It is simply lovely and one is right and lucky to be outside when it happens, holding on to her hat with one hand and a camera, useless to capture the scene, in the other.

We are working outside, cutting up dead locust trees in the woods to use as fence posts, planting containers, painting windows (with the windows open) and staking and re-staking the horse barn site.

A twig-mimic caterpillar crawled up my arm in the woods. John flushed a field sparrow off its precariously placed nest in the grass. I walked the lower woods trail and heard and saw so many different birds busy with their lives. I slipped into "don't know mind" and enjoyed it all without any striving to name it.

The month of Bliss indeed.

Look at That Man Go

2009-05-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

Ain't he somethin?

That was some hard packed clay soil, people. It is now ready for some fine tilling with the Troy-built, which, theoretically I should be able to handle.

I'm going to keep that husband of mine around, though. He is a super-nice guy and I like him.

Stitched Together

2009-04-30T10:19:00.008-04:00

I've been thinking lately of the ways in which women bond with one another over different pursuits. Obviously horses have been on my mind, but so has cooking and writing and...sewing.

On one of the many childhood trips to my grandmother Baumie's farm, there were three sewing boxes waiting for us, one for each of my two sisters and one for me. Though it was the smallest, I thought mine was the best. I still have it. It's a little wooden box, 6x6 inches, covered in fading wallpaper with pink roses and green ivy. There is a heart-shaped cut-out, maybe from an old Valentine, glued to the front with a tiny farm scene in the center. The box is lined with light green fabric, gone dull with age. When I open it, the smell of musty cloth and old wood is the same as it was when I first opened it as a little girl. I still have the small tomato pincushion that came with it, but the other supplies are long gone.

The sewing boxes were a surprise as far as I knew, an activity that Baumie thought would be fun and edifying for us over the long weekend visit. I remember learning some simple hand stitches and the pride I felt at the accomplishment. My sisters probably got busy on a sewing machine trying out more advanced things. Both of them learned to sew quite well-- me, not so much. When you're the youngest, you tend to dabble in things and then off you run. Adults indulge you, or else they're busy working with the older kids and don't mind if you get lost.

My mother knew how to sew and she helped teach my sisters, too. They layed the tissue paper patterns out on the living room floor, pinning fabric to the pieces and painstakingly cutting the pattern out just right. I played with the tools--I loved the rotary marker that made an indentation of a dotted line on any giving surface (including the dining room table).

In high school, I took typing class in lieu of Home-Ec. (So that I could become a secretary instead of a seamstress!) Mom had passed away in my freshman year, and my sisters were off at college. I'm sure that Baumie would have taught me to sew if I had asked, but it seemed to me that there were more important things to think about at the time, as you might imagine.

After I graduated and got married, it warmed my heart that my oldest step-daughter assumed that I knew how to sew and brought me small things to fix--a missing button here, a ripped seam there. I could handle the small repairs, so there was no need to tell her that, no, I don't really know how to sew. She was so grateful and so awed, I just decided to bask, surreptitiously, in the power that accompanies great sewing ability.

But I knew who to ask when the big guns were needed. Not long into my married life, we had a couch and chair and ottoman that needed to be recovered. Enter the queen seamstress, Baumie. I made her tea, cleaned up the scraps and sewed the piping. She taught me how to sew piping.

I always feel a little out of place at fabric stores, but I call upon my minimal reserve of sewing knowledge and that allows me to put up a good enough front. Good enough I guess to cause the woman cutting my yardage at a JoAnn's recently to strike up a conversation. "These look like little girl's dresses," she said as she measured out the blue searsucker and floral print. "They are!" I exclaimed. "Or, well, they are for a skirt that I'm making for my granddaughter."

"I'm making pajamas for my granddaughter," she said. And then she sighed a confession: "All I want to do is sew. I wish that I could just stay home and do only that. I sewed all of my children's clothes when they were little. I'd have them playing on the floor nearby and I would just sew all day. Now that they are grown, I don't have any time at all it seems!" Her wistfulness over that time in her life was palpable. And though I didn't have memories of sewing with little children underfoot, I could still feel nostalgia for my own memories of making it through young motherhood with whatever pluck I could muster. I nodded and murmured in genuine sympathy with her, my spotty sewing background still a safe secret.

Earlier this week, my friend MJ told me that she had something to give me from her mother, who passed away recently. MJ was telling her mother about me and how I was taking up sewing (later in life!;) Her mother said, "Oh, I have something for her then." It is a book, a basic sewing book. And a thimble, too.

I am so touched at this gesture. I think it is an extreme example of the easy generosity, both material and spiritual, that flows in and around this, I'm going to call it female art form. MJ's mother didn't know me personally, but I am her daughter's friend and I am taking up sewing, so...she has a book I might find helpful, "and give her a thimble, while you're at it!"

I think that I will always feel like an imposter in the world of sewing. It is hard to attain the same expertise of women who have been doing it since age four. But, I will tag along at their heels and accept their gifts of knowledge, supplies, and belief that "why of course you can do this!" gladly.

I am closing with a poem that MJ wrote that is, like all good poems about a lot of things, including this time, sewing and mothers and love...

Please enjoy, and special thanks to MJ for permission to reprint it here.

*My Mother's Jumpers*

In her bedroom
my mother sewed jumpers
encircled us with her yellow tape
mended our pants.
We grew up amid doll quilts,
Tammy clothes that matched our own,
ric-rac trim and searches
for her thimble.
Snips of thread ran through our rugs
like lost veins.

While her machine gathered our sleeves into cuffs
traced our middles to make a dress
of a bodice and a skirt,
I lolled on her high bed with the cherry posts,
keeping her company
as the venetian blinds striped the wall,
the stale smells of passion safe
beneath the white chenille spread.

She never told us she loved us
not straight out.
I grew up thinking those were words
for when the bedspread lay folded back—
love for children was assumed
like the cup of water I boiled for my father
as soon as I got up.
How could she know we’d search our childhoods
for a single phrase?

I think about her
when I draw the covers about my son,
practice telling him I love him
while he is too small to know
I am still trying out the phrase
tugging its seams
searching its pockets.

--- MJ Abell

You Give Me Fever

2009-04-28T18:05:00.011-04:00

I don't know why it moves me so, but watching big, fit horses gallop by and negotiate massive jumps makes my heart catch in my throat. I don't care how many times I see it, it never fails to move me close to tears.

Did you know that, at the gallop, all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time? Unlike a racetrack, you can get very close to the horses at a cross country event. You can watch them fly, literally, right past you. They devour the ground with huge strides and fly for a moment, all four hooves tucked as they sail through thin air before hitting ground and pushing off for the next stride. The riders are a talented bunch too, but it's the horses that catch your eye and steal your heart. They are athletes at the peak of fitness, putting heart and soul into their effort. Watch their faces as they gallop towards the next set of obstacles--ears are perked, eyes are bright--they soak in the cheers and applause after they've leaped an embankment and sailed over a fence with only one stride in-between. Amazing creatures with the biggest hearts...where did they come from? How did we get so lucky, we humans?

Aunt Lainey told me, "there is nothing like coming up on a fence with some trepidation about whether you can make it, and your horse just takes the bit in his mouth and tells you, essentially, 'I've got this'."

Needless to say, I had a blast at the Rolex horse show. I riddled Mindy and Aunt Lainey with a million questions about my (very near) future horsey set-up, enjoyed steeping in equine culture, and managed to purchase some cute things at the trade show.

A pretty ceramic pendant:

Some fun wellies (for Alice's sake!)

And some guy gave all three of us free pocket knives with our names engraved on them...

This item cracks me up, because it is, to me, the epitome of what I call cowgirl style--useful things that you will definitely use--all prettied up with, say, your name engraved in a scrolly font. Love it.

I finally made it back home, after finishing up a long weekend in Columbus, and everything has popped! The lilacs are blooming, the redbuds are profuse, dogwoods are coming on, and the woods are filling in with green. A light rain is falling now and will likely continue all week. The door to the study where I'm sitting is open and a cool breeze comes in here and there. It feels very good to be alive right now.

Delayed Re-entry

2009-04-22T12:59:00.007-04:00

My sister Kathy and her husband Rick came to visit over the weekend. We had a marvelous time working and playing. Those two were great sports and helped us move not one, but TWO piles of wood to the drying shed. John has stacks of old barn siding and smaller barn beams scattered about. Tom and the boys used them while building the house and John will use a lot of it to do finish work and build cabinets and such. However, they were real view-killers sitting in front of the house and on the walk to the cabin, all piled up and covered in their blue tarps, not to mention the fact that they were getting wet and moldy. It was amazing what a difference four sets of hands made in getting those things moved. Thank you Kathy and Rick! John was able to get more grass seed scattered and Kathy even helped him scatter more straw. (She felt bad sitting at the kitchen table watching John work, whereas I am quite practiced at it : )

They left at lunchtime on Monday. I threw myself onto the yoga mat after they left, and that evening, John and I drowned our sorrows in gyros and chocolate peanut butter pie at Theo's Restaurant in Cambridge. I'm always a little blue after family and friends leave, so when John left me the next morning to head to Columbus for work, I threw myself into painting furniture. Here it is Wednesday, and I simply must get back to some semblance of a responsible life-style even if the weather is grey and depressing. So, I'm paying bills, blog posting, and...making plans to travel again this weekend! Yes, country mouse is on a roll this month. This time, I'm heading to Kentucky with my other sister, Mindy, to meet up with the other horse-crazed member of the family, Aunt Lainey at the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event . For those who don't know, it's like an equine version of a triathlon. Horse and rider compete in dressage, cross country, and stadium jumping over three days. We'll be watching the cross country event on Saturday. I can't wait. It stops my heart and brings a big lump to my throat to watch those gorgeous horses leaping fences at a pounding gallop. You can stand close enough to the course to feel the ground rumble as a horse approaches. It's awesome. Plus, there's shopping. Vendors upon vendors of all things horsey.

And tomorrow, the county extension agent comes out to advise on my own little bit of horse heaven. Updates forthcoming. If I don't make it back here before next week, have a great weekend everyone!

Mementos from the weekend and the ensuing fallout:

This view used to be "mud with woodpile" Now look at it!

Kathy and I squeezed in some antiquing and she bought me the cutest little blue vase you ever did done saw...

Here is the chair I painted and plan to fix with perhaps an old feed sack for upholstery a la this cool one in Country Living magazine:

Detail of the bed table painted in the same antique white:

My Garden Plans

2009-04-15T16:03:00.007-04:00

This is the future garden plot (inside the white square) as seen from the star-gazing deck:

Here it is from the ground, looking south. Imagine you are standing in the arbor, under a prodigious wisteria vine and there is a table in front of you--might as well set it with a lovely dinner and a nice bottle of wine:

It is a 20 x 30 ft. plot. I want to start small so as not to get discouraged (I know me so well). It will have a fence about five feet high, and that descends about twelve inches below the ground. I'm trying to thwart deer and groundhogs, respectively. I hope to make the fence pretty somehow. I may call upon John's talent with bittersweet, or simply grow plants over it. My plan is for a 2 ft. bed around the inside edge, and four, 4 x 8 ft. raised beds within. If I have space, I'll put a focal point in the middle.

It will be a potager--a French word for "kitchen" garden. I want to grow food and ornamentals together, though I'll try to make most of the flowers edible, too.

As you can see, we started tilling. The old Firestone rototiller we bought so many years ago from Emmet Hay, a farmer in Hanover, Indiana, kept stalling, though. I hope we (read: John) can figure it out. Once the soil is in there, I can take over. Sort of like those rocks up at the cabin...remember them?

I need a little help with the initial back breaking work, but then I'm good to go.

I love the placement of the potager plot. It is between the house and the cabin. In the summer, you can sit on the upper deck and gaze upon it. You can walk right out the kitchen, through the screen porch and pick some fresh food for dinner. It sits on the hill, facing south, so it will have a nice breeze and a great view. It is the one thing around here that was a no-brainer for me in terms of location.

Oh, plants are great things! Every year, the gardeners I know are full of plans. Even the experienced gardeners who know that, by August, things will be much different than they envisoned, even they are stoked in April. Even if all you're going to do is a couple of containers for your porch, it's still something to design, something full of promise. You get a fresh chance. Every year.

Back Home Again, Again

2009-04-14T14:39:00.010-04:00

Yesterday I was navigating my way through DC to catch my flight home from the Baltimore airport. Today, I took a walk through the moody, wet, spring woods to the sounds of woodpeckers knocking on trees and wild turkeys gobbling on the far hill. Jeez, I really am living the life! To be able to visit cities and live in the country has always seemed the best of circumstances to me. Thanks to John's travel schedule, the frequent flier tickets are plentiful. And thanks to all the amazing young people in my family, I have lots of people to visit in marvelous places.

I visited my niece Emily who lives and works in Washington D.C. over the weekend. I was supposed to help her paint her new condo, but an eleventh hour real estate debacle occurred (as they are wont to do) and we ended up playing instead of working. I didn't bring my camera, so she has all the incriminating photos. It was such fun to walk the city, eat at great restaurants, browse bookstores, drink cappuccinos, and meet her friends. We got in some salsa dancing (which I have no idea how to do) and mojitos (I found out in Mexico that those taste very good) and the American Indian Museum (beautifully designed) and a drag show brunch on Easter (don't ask), and a little bit of shopping...it was a blast.

Back here, at a much quieter pace and during a lull in the rain (which has begun again in earnest) I took a walk through the woods and fields. I love doing that after returning from several days away from home. It quiets my soul to say, "Hello," again.

I love the way that beech trees retain their leaves until the following spring when new growth finally pushes them off. The leaves are a delicate, butter yellow against the smooth, silver grey bark. The overall effect of them weaving through the other, bare branches of a crowded woods reminds me of lace.

May apples are coming up! They look like alien pods all writhing and weird to me.

Little wood violets are out, too. Their heads were hunkered over from the rain, but that color was unmistakable. Soon, they'll be everywhere--enough to make a small bouquet in a tiny vase.

While I was gone, John was busy finishing the stairwell in bittersweet vine. It is impossible to photograph. You'll have to come see it in person.

I'm with LeRoy in thinking that it is the coolest thing ever. I feel like I'm walking up into a treehouse every time I climb the stairs.

And we won't have to worry about small children falling off the stairs anymore. He's still got some work to do finishing the railing around the whole upstairs. Guess I'll have to travel off again for a long weekend so he can get busy!

The Kitties

2009-04-09T08:15:00.010-04:00

Oh, the kitties. They are as happy as we are that spring has arrived. Clarabelle is making tentative forays into the big wide world again, and it is hard to get LeRoy in at night when the temps are in the fifties at 9:00 p.m. Lately, it has been in the thirties or even twenties at dawn and dusk, but that doesn't bother me too much. Spring is here. There is no stopping it.

When we left for Mexico, we dropped LeRoy at the vet's for boarding and...substitute LeRoy and Clare for the dogs in the car and yard, respectively, in this good old Far Side cartoon:

When we picked him up upon our return the woman who brought him out in his carrier said, "Who wants LeRoy?"

Uh, we do?

"He's a real..."

Piece of work?

"Well we didn't take any of the ornery out of him, but we didn't put any in, either."

Thanks.

It seemed for about a week that he had matured. He laid down and gazed pensively, blinking his eyes in recognition of you, just like mature, zen-like kitties do. He wasn't jumping Clare every five minutes. He purred bodaciously when you stroked his pretty fur.

Gradually, though, he's reverted back to his very ornery, playful, and sometimes ridiculous self. He wrestles Clare (poor old gal), jumps up onto the kitchen counter and table, looking for scraps and leaving muddy pawprints, and climbs halfway up trees like a madman when following us on walks.

He has a new "toy" in the house. John is building the staircase, slowly but surely, out of bittersweet vine (its gorgeous). LeRoy thinks that he is doing a swell job and highly approves of the work. When you think about it from a cat's perspective, this whole house is one big scratching post. It is nice, from a human perspective, that I don't have to worry about them ruining the woodwork. These old posts can take cat claws and then some.

And he loves playing in the bathtub with the rug that Sarah and Jorge gave me for my birthday in Mexico. I have it hanging over the tub, whereupon he pulls it in and wrestles around with it making all kinds of racket that causes one to look up and ask, "what in the world...?"

Meanwhile, Clarabelle sits by the stove, wondering why we don't have it cranking at 500 degrees for her. She makes a tasty target for LeRoy--who wouldn't want to jump on that lump of sleeping adversary? I throw my slipper at him. Clare looks up, thanks me with her gaze, and goes back to sleep.

Ah, the kitties. What would I do without them?

PS: Thanks to Heather for the Picasa tip. I'm still learning! It's fun!

I Believe in The Way Things Work

2009-04-08T11:53:00.005-04:00

Everyone has their lessons in life--the ones they seem to have to learn over and over again. Goodness, there is patience somewhere in the Universe. Huge stores of it that guardian angels have to go take hits of on a regular basis. I am sure of it. I had to learn one of my lessons again this past weekend.

Here's what happened: John and I got all busy. And when we get busy, sometimes we bite off more than we could possibly chew in a hundred years, much less a weekend. Around here, there is so much possibility, so many things to fix up, so much that we want to do. And John and I are doers. That's how we got here. We don't usually sit around talking about what we want to do and then just go have a cup of coffee and a smoke...

And like everything in the world, that quality, that thing, has a light side and a dark side, or good and bad if you like. The light side is, you know, we get things done. The dark side of it is more complicated of course, and harder to put my finger on exactly. It has to do with worrying about the end product all of the time instead of enjoying the process, or realizing that the process is all there is. Because end products are all ephemeral anyway, even if some take more time to disappear than others.

We started to stake out the location of the horse barn on Sunday. The speculative nature of the task brought back a rush of feelings similar to what I felt all last year as we navigated the building of the house. "I don't know," was my response to everything. Should we put it here, or would it be better there? Should we put the hay storage here, or here? Is eight feet wide enough for a grooming aisle or not? At one point, I threw up my hands and cried, "Oh my god, let's forget this!" As much as I want horses back in my life, I felt so overwhelmed by yet another project where I'm asked to envision three-dimensional space, which I suck at. Real bad. (And then the rototiller kept stalling while we tried to till up the garden, and then I mis-measured a curtain for the bathroom and had to tear the stitching out--two times. Process? I got your process right here!)

This might not sound like a big deal. But it's my lesson and the tide was gathering, dragging all sorts of notions that I have about myself to the shore with it. Notion one: I am not actually capable of anything outside of normal, safe, suburban life. Notion two: I need to make this place perfect so that everyone will like coming here. Notion three: I'm too old to be doing all this. Who do I think I am anyway? And a few more variations on those themes.

After some gin and popcorn, we settled down. That night, I had this dream: I was fixing a large, unwieldy display of some kind. It was like a holiday display at a department store or something--I couldn't see the whole thing. I was applying a wet, sticky cement-like spackling to it, trying to seal it up, make it tight. It wasn't working too well and I realized that I had to get help. I ended up talking on the phone to an old gradeschool acquaintance who owned the Oscar Meyer company. He remembered me right away and as I talked to him, the spackling started to work.

So...I'll leave you to analyze that as you may : ), but I will say that it made me feel good, upon awakening, that I apparently have psychic access to an astute businessman who remembers who I am and can make the spackling work.

Breathing deeply the next day, I called the county extension office to ask if an agent could come out to advise us on the location of the barn. He's coming April 23. And then, the most beautiful, wonderful, blessed thing of all occurred. I received an email from my Aunt Lainey in Texas. She wanted to know, did I want two horses instead of one, and would I perhaps like for Uncle Jack to come up and help build the barn?

Wait a minute. Are you kidding me?! (you gotta know that Uncle Jack is really, really good at building barns, houses, you name it. And you might as well know that we wanted a horse for John, too, and that horses need company anyway.) Um, yeah. Yes. Two horses and Uncle Jack, we'll take it.

So, I got to learn my lesson and eat it too? I'm not sure why or how things work out the way they do around me. All I know is that I am grateful. I've learned my lesson again. For now. Even though the end product is coming into clearer focus, I'm not worried about it anymore. This is just a place to live. These are just things to do. I'm just living a regular old messy life and taking my lessons in the form that they come in around here.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Botanical Wonders

2009-04-01T13:33:00.018-04:00

Did you know that Oaxaca is a hotbed of biodiversity? I can't remember the numbers or percentages exactly, but it is always in the top five spots on the globe for the number of species of this plant or that animal. Someone gave me a copy of Oliver Sacks' Oaxaca Journal before our trip. It is an account of his participation in a botanical expedition to Oaxaca in 2001 with members of the American Fern Society. Because, of course, the region has the largest number of fern species in the world. Go figure, right? Ferns? In hot, dry Mexico?

The biodiversity is there in part because of the varied terrain throughout the state--an arid central valley to cloud forests at the top of the mountains and several different zones in-between. There are two seasons: rainy and dry. We were there at the end of the dry season, so it felt very desert-like to me, and yet there were tropical plants everywhere. In the dry season, the tropical plants drop their leaves and put their energy instead into flowers. Those are pollinated, then the rains begin and leaves and seed production get underway. It is astounding (to me) to see how well adapted the moisture loving tropicals are to the dry season. They hunker down like the cacti and wait.

One of the treats afforded to me by my old job at the Conservatory is the ability to appreciate the sight of plants very foreign to Ohio in their native habitats. The horticulture staff does an amazing job of growing all different kinds of plants in the greenhouses, but they can only do so much in terms of height and width and bloom with the paltry light conditions in Ohio for sixth months out of the year. Also, plants with the ability to hunker down grow very slowly. So, numbers count. The more Century Plants you have in one place, the more likely you are to see them in bloom.

I'm pretty sure that what the Mexicans call "Maguey" is the same species that we call the "Century Plant"--Agave americana. I thought I saw different bloom stalks on plants that others called Maguey. Either way, you can make mescal and tequila from both. It has plenty of other uses, too--fibers to make rope, shoes, floor mats, thatch for roofs, etc., etc. You can even use the plants as a fence line as they did here in the Sierra Norte.

John and I took a guided tour of the Ethnobotanical Garden housed on the grounds of the old Santo Domingo Convent. We saw all those wonderful food crops that came from Mesoamerica--beans, corn, squash, tomatoes, chilies, amaranth, and more. They did not have a cacao tree growing there, though! And surely that is one of the finest gifts to mankind from this area of the world. But, we saw plenty of other things to make up for it...

My first Kapok tree with actual seed pods (where the soft kapok fibers come from). The Mexicans call it a Pochote tree. There was one growing in the middle of the restuarant we ate at almost every day. Those are not seed pods, but a more impressive photo of the thorns that grow on the trunk.

Plumeria, or Frangipani in full-on bloom (made me feel like I was in Hawaii!)

Stupendous cactus plants.

Along the streets and in the parks and on the mountians we found dozens of other wonders.

The Guaje trees, which Oaxaca is named after supposedly, have pretty hibiscus-like blooms.

Here they are growing on the hillside of the Cerro Fortin where we hiked.

Bromeliads on the trees in the Sierra Norte. They don't have roots in the soil. They perch on trees and gather nutrients from the moisture in the air.

Lupines on the same road.

And a Jade Vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) in bloom in the courtyard of a cafe!

The famous tree at Tule--a member of the cypress family. It is thousands of years old and it is huge (this picture isn't even half of the tree). There are hundreds of birds living in it, like some avian version of ancient cliff dwellers with apartments high and low.

I saw a whole lot of topiary there, too. All of it ficus.

A bird peeking out of a nest--or, I thought, cuckoo clock.

I could go on, but it is time to quit as anyone who has posted pictures on blogspot knows (oy, the scrolling!). I leave you with a shot of Sarah gazing from a perch in the Santo Domingo convent onto the botanical splendor of her current home.

Where To Begin?

2009-03-31T12:51:00.018-04:00

Wow. I don't know where to start on the Mexico trip. There is too much to put into one post so you'll have to bear with me as I try to organize it into something that I can understand over the next week. Overall, it was fantastic. I am in awe of my beautiful, intelligent, and intrepid step-daughter. I truly don't understand how she musters the energy to face completely new cultures over and over again and stick with it until she becomes as close to a local as an outsider can be. Because it does take energy to make your way through a foreign place and people--no matter how beautiful, compelling, friendly, etc. We visited Sarah when she lived in Aix en Provence for a year and it was also a foreign place, but the culture was, on a scale, much more similar to my own than was Mexico. I am of European descent after all. The faces looked like mine in France.

Mexico was so different and I don't know enough about it to tell you why exactly. I was humbled and amazed. Humbled by the fact that these people are our neighbors and I hadn't ever met them before, and amazed at the richness of their history and how that history has trickled down to the present in certain behaviors and in architecture and cuisine, etc. It was also just plain fun to experience so many new things, and I am sure that the level of fun was in direct proportion to the fact that we had a wonderful set of guides in Sarah and Jorge.

Okay, so. I'll begin with some pictures of walking through the streets. We did this everyday. Similar to European cities, you walk everywhere in Oaxaca. That right there is different enough from the US, no? A portrayal of our walks would not be complete without a strong mention of The Stella--our tireless walking companion. (And for that matter, the graffiti.)

We leave Sarah's apartment and descend into the city...

We went to a gigantic market in Tlacolula on our first day. There is my hair sticking out like a sore thumb. I'm quite positive that the Mexicans, if not ready for my hair, are used to the look that was surely on my face--eyes agog and mouth slightly open.

On our first day, I was also stunned by what sounded like a gunshot close by. Sarah and Jorge stood, unfazed, as I clutched at my heart. "Oh," they laughed, "those are fireworks. Someone is always setting them off." Indeed. They often alerted people to the presence of parades or protest or pride marches that you might stumble across anywhere.

And everywhere, I mean everywhere, a church. Those Spaniards weren't taking any chances, I guess.

Stella was always an object of attention. Here on the Zocolo, or main square, a boy keeps asking, "Does she bite?" And despite Sarah's repeated assurances that she didn't, he could not bring himself to touch her.

We had some fun with the street paintings, or at least John did : )

And oh, the colors! Holy God Almighty, the colors!

On two occasions, we walked the Cerro Fortin, Sarah's running route. It is straight up, oh I don't know, five hundred or more steps. Besides the exercise (which we really didn't need at that point) there was an almost 360 degree view of the valley and that was worth it.

And there you have the merest taste of the streets of Oaxaca. At the end of the day, we slogged back up the hill to Sarah's house, tired to our bones, and ready for some cold beers and warm sopes.

Next up: a botanical extravaganza! All you biophiles get ready.

"One More Lap Around"

2009-03-19T15:13:00.010-04:00

If you live in Ohio, I don't have to tell you how beautiful it has been these past few days. This morning was no exception, though it was a little cooler--and more seasonable to be honest. Before we leave tomorrow on our trip, I took one more walk around the loop: through the orchard to the back pasture and up through the woods trail that spills you back out at the cabin.

The ground was spongy soft with moss that is thriving on the dew and warming temperatures. The understory of the woods sparkled with the leftovers of an early morning rain shower. The sun was noticeably warm on my backside. LeRoy ran ahead of me through the grass and leaves, scampering around like the puppy he is apparently channeling.

"Just one more lap around!" That was what I used to say to my dad when I was about seven years old on one of our family vacations at Lake Dunmore in Vermont. Dad would let me steer the little outboard motor on our rented rowboat around and around the inlet in front of our cabin. Thanks for that, Dad.

I could take "one more lap around" my loop a million times and never tire of it.

Lilac in bud, check.

Naturalized daffs coming up, check.

Misty, lacy, dew-dropped woods, check.

Fairy orbs in place, double check.

And look at this fabulous nest from last year. Heather of the Hills, if you're reading, do you know what made it?

And what does it use to glue it over the suspending branch like this? Amazing!

Well--there you go, until March 31 or so. Have a GREAT spring equinox tomorrow everyone! It's here!

Morning Unfolds

2009-03-17T09:21:00.005-04:00

The moon has been glorious this past cycle. It is starting to wane now (which will make sleeping a more reasonable expectation) and it hangs around in the morning sky:

The mists hung in the pastures this morning in a more warmer-weather manner:

Until the sun came over the hill and burned them up:

Still looking pretty brown, though. So...we turn to the orchid for inspiration:

Or, we visit Sarah's blog for some south of the border color infusion. This is worth a look/read, oh ye northern people deprived of the full spectrum of UV light for the past six months.

And yes, John and I are going there (Mexico) this Saturday for a week-long visit! Can't wait. I'll take lots of colorful pictures and bring them to you via this blog--promise.

Birthday Month Musings

2009-03-13T13:39:00.003-04:00

As I state in my profile, I am in the “second half” of my life now. I put it in there because it is an important part of the story. Obviously it describes many of the outer circumstances of my life—John is close to retiring, our youngest kid is in college, we’ve got two grandchildren, etc. But what I intend by calling out the fact is to be conscious of the spiritual, or psychological shift that “second half of life” implies. For me, that shift has been huge. And, of course, it is still going on, still unfolding.

During my thirties, I recoiled when my decade was referred to as “middle-aged.” Even now, I think of people in their thirties as simply adults, not middle-aged adults. In my forties, however, I’ll admit it. I am middle-aged. I’ll say it out loud to anyone, although it took me until forty-five to do so. I felt great when I hit forty—like it really was “the new thirty.” But, as I turned forty one, then two, then three, it dawned on me that time was moving in only one direction. Forty was not the new anything. It was forty, and then comes fifty, and so on.

This realization caused me some anxiety for a few years. Part of it was vanity. I caught sight of myself in the mirror in certain harsh lighting and would gasp, Oh my god! What the hell?! Even now, I give myself “facelifts” by pulling everything back with my hands. I turn to John and ask, “There, doesn’t that look better?” He rolls his eyes and says no, it looks freakish and that he’ll divorce me if I ever do anything like that. I won’t do anything like that and not just because I don’t have the money. But given our culture, it takes a certain vigilance to keep sane about the physical signs of aging, especially—do I even have to say it?—for women.

The other part of middle age that was causing me some anxiety, though was harder to define. It was a restless feeling. Sometimes it was despair and often it was frustration. Over what, I couldn’t say exactly. One day, while getting a book from the library for a project at work, I saw another book—the one I was really meant to get—on a nearby shelf. (This is my secret method for finding a book that I need to read. I will wander the library and browse along the shelves until I find it, Bingo!) The title was Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up, by James Hollis. Now, get this: I still wasn’t sure that I should be reading a book with that title. I mean, second half of life? Am I there yet? Ha ha.

Indeed, I was there already, and the book changed my life, or the second half of it, as it were. Hollis is a post-Jungian, depth psychologist. I've heard him speak and he is one of those people who speak like they write with clear, flowing, packed prose. He offers a lot to think about. I won't try to summarize the book. It has been a while since I've read it. One of the main ideas though is that the second half of life is an opportunity, one that you're lucky to have, to contemplate and more fully embody the meaning of your life. It is a chance to become more spiritual and less material in the sense that once free of the need to establish material security, you become freer to inquire inward. All of that is relative of course, but in general, I think, true.

After reading the Hollis book and delving into my own life more deeply I have become increasingly more comfortable with aging. I'm very happy to be almost 47. (Like somebody said, "Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.") Knowing a little more about the task of the second half of life makes me excited for the journey. I get to keep practicing!

Moving out here was an outward shift that mirrored the inner one. Or, maybe it was a catalyst to the inner changes. Yes, moving was the gesture. The experience is the catalyst for the life I now create.

What Prodigious Mowing (of the real, not metaphorical kind)

2009-03-06T12:49:00.010-05:00

It is 67 degrees out today (that's sixty-seven). The sun is shining too, even though it looked dicey early this morning. The breeze is blowing like a spring breeze--gusty and moist--and I am just so happy. I try to maintain optimism throughout winter and I think I do pretty well. But I will not lie: My soul comes alive again as winter ends. I wake up, like the hibernating animals, and shake off the long-seeming dream of the past months.

I mowed some of the pastures this morning with the old, blue Massey-Ferguson tractor.

John got me set up with all the weird controls. It is a little hard to drive--I have to stand up to get the clutch and the brake all the way down. (Do you like that tin-foil around the gears?)

But it's cool. It is fun to sit up so high and cut such a wide swath while the breeze tosses your hair. And it does my little Aries heart good to see all the progress!

You may not be able to tell from the picture, but I mowed all that!

Here's where I started--it is the future site of the horse barn:

We try to maintain the meadows for wildlife, which means that the best time to mow is early spring, before the birds and insects and animals start building nests and having babies. Sometimes we mow in the fall, but leaving the dead vegetation up all winter offers cover and food (all those seedheads) to lots of living things. Mowing is one of those chores that you have to jump on when the time is right. You might have one good weekend in the spring to get it done, before everything turns into a soggy, tractor-sticking mess. It is great to be living here this year--our first spring!--and be able to take advantage of the weather.

My imagination works steadily most of the time, but while mowing today I could've sworn that the dead grasses and stickers and weeds were grabbing at my legs with their bony hands screaming, "Noooo!" as I cut a path through their skeletal kingdom. I didn't have any mercy for them, though. "Get thee to the Underworld! It's time for new growth!"

It's Curtains For Me

2009-02-26T13:17:00.006-05:00

I've been making curtains.

Breezy, flowing curtains for the bedroom...

And little checkered numbers for the cabin, complete with a ruffle...

I like the shadows of John's twig arbor showing through the panels in the cabin kitchen window...

I bought the red and tan check fabric at Hobby Lobby which was having a 30% off sale. It was just what I wanted for the cabin, but they had only three yards left, which wasn't quite enough. So I punted with some leftovers that just happened to match and instead of a ruffle, I made a straight band.

I think that what is most satisfying about making things is the problem solving that is always required. Working with what you have on hand, fixing a mistake, making adjustments to fit what your particular needs are--that's kind of fun. If it all goes according to pattern, the victory is a bit hollow. Hmmm, does that say more about my personal psychology than it does about art-making?

Next up: I'm learning to work the band saw and the table saw in John's workshop! Yikes! It's big fun. Big, scary fun. I'm going to take a stab at making some simple things and re-vamping some junk store furniture. Can I have my own TV show yet?

The Baumie Posts

2009-02-23T11:28:00.005-05:00

Caveat: There are women out there, reading this blog from time to time, who knew and loved my grandmother well. They will find factual errors in these "Baumie Posts" and they will know more details than I do about different scenarios from the past. I hope they will correct me or add those details when they see fit. I hope, too, that they will enjoy thinking about Baumie and feeling her spirit move in us as we remember her together.I want to write a little bit about my grandmother, Helen Jackson, or "Baumie" as we called her. I’ve been thinking a lot about her lately. She is one of the main reasons that we have this little farm. I frequently offer a silent thank-you to her while wandering the breezy pastures in summer or gazing at iced-over trees glinting in the winter sun. And I think about her as I learn to sew and build my own furniture and plan a garden and a horse barn and all the other things that come up in a creative life--not just country life.

Baumie was an extremely creative and accomplished woman. I was talking to my sister Kathy the other day and said that we come by our varied interests naturally--just look at Baumie. "Yeah, but Baumie did all those things really well," said Kathy. And it's true. She could cook anything from scratch, she could sew, knit, crotchet, tat lace, she could play the piano and organ, she painted in oils, she rode horses, she gardened, she decorated, she ran an antique shop for awhile, and so on.

And when I say she sewed, I mean that she sewed fitted suits and ball gowns and quilts of her own design. When I say she decorated, I mean she made all her own drapes, and hooked rugs and braided rugs. She reupholstered furniture. In her living room, she had a winter palette of reds and golds that switched out to blue and green for summer via slipcovers and new drapes and throw pillows. When I say she played piano, I mean she was good enough to teach it, and so on.

Baumie had a 200-acre working farm in Indiana. She grew up there and she returned to it many times throughout her life before taking it over herself as an adult. She told me more than once that the farm was a real blessing to her and her family. It was good to know that she could return to it if times got hard financially, or even spiritually. When she was pregnant with her first child (my mother), she and my grandfather were living in an apartment in Chicago. She was suffering from a bad case of morning sickness that was exacerbated by the fact that the elevator shaft was connected somehow to the exhaust fans for the kitchens. Every morning she had to ride that elevator filled with the smells of other people's breakfasts. Every morning, she'd have to find a bathroom and toss her own. Miserable, she returned to the farm--to clean fresh air, to wide open spaces, to a quiet and lovely house. She got over her morning sickness there and was able to join her husband again.

Baumie owned that farm until I was about twelve years old. It was, is, an iconic place for me. The farm was Baumie and she was the farm. I loved going there because I loved being outside and around animals and barns. I also loved being in a house that was a creative expression of the person who lived there. And it was a well-developed creativity, fully expressed. That was magical.

I've realized, especially since living here, that my grandmother is one of the most influential role models in my life. I can't hope to do all the things she accomplished. I'm starting late! And she grew up in a different time. But that fully expressed life--that's what I'm striving for. That's the prize I keep my eye on.

More to come...

My Shoulders are Sore

2009-02-17T09:54:00.008-05:00

And here is the reason why:

What did we do on the weekend? Well, on Valentine's Day we got rid of the pile of construction debris that had been sitting in the driveway since last summer.

yay!

The next day we shoveled gravel from the back of the truck onto some of the pathways around the house.I will be honest and admit that John did most of the heavy work (someone had to take pictures!), but I did enough that my shoulders are very sore today. It is the delayed soreness that comes from true muscle trauma. The next day you feel it, but the second day, you really feel it.

At my old gym in Columbus, the owner offered something he called a "dino-workout," as in dinosaur. It involved lifting and carrying extremely heavy things for as long as you could. Different objects, like giant tires, rocks of varying sizes, bags of sand, etc., worked different muscles as you struggled to push and pull and carry them across a line. (I never took part in this workout, mind you.) Ironically enough, this sort of exercise routine is also called a "farmer workout."

I would like to put an open invitation out there to all the "dino-day" guys and gals: Let's schedule three or four weekends through the spring and summer and get our workout on! C'mon, whaddya say?! It'll be fun, dude!

Everyone is Georgia O'Keefe...

2009-02-15T18:47:00.008-05:00

...with an amaryllis in bloom around, that is.

Or maybe Joyce Tenneson...

Now, I'm not a religious person, but this flower makes me want to clasp my hands together and say, "Thank ya, Jesus!"

Happy Sunday night/Monday morning.

So Much More is Going on Than Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...

2009-02-11T15:45:00.010-05:00

I have wanted an Ecological Calendar ever since I found out about it several years ago. I finally purchased one (it was only $14.99 for heaven's sake) and it arrived last week. If you've never seen it before, I urge you to click on the link and take a look. It is "the first" calendar to display the year in four astronomical seasons. It is a calendar from the Earth's perspective, if you will. Along with listing the traditional Gregorian days and dates, it offers up a poetic contemplation/celebration of natural phenomena in three-month increments. As I return to it over the days and weeks, I learn new things about my world and I am moved to meditate on the Earth. What's she doing now?

The website offers a peek at the Winter panel which begins on December 21 with the Winter Solstice. All of the months have names that suggest their mood: January, February, and March are called Celeste, Sleet, and Bluster respectively. The days, too, have names in addition to Monday, Tuesday, etc. Today, February 11, is called Mountain Quail. I'm not exactly sure why, unless it is simply to bring my attention to the fact that Mountain Quail exist in my hemisphere. They've come up with 365 names, one for each day, which after all is only a small sampling of the diversity of living things and phenomena that exist on our planet.

Today doesn't feel like winter--it is 63 degrees! It feels like a raw spring day out there. It feels like Bluster. I know that it is only a tease, though, and I'm keeping my enthusiasm in check lest I come into despair when it snows next. The ground is squishy with water. The water sits on top of the saturated earth in shiny puddles. This afternoon, I put on my brand new LL Bean boots, the ones I broke down and spent the money on after the rubber toe on my cheaper duck boots split like a rotten melon, and took a walk through those puddles and all the mud slicks that are waiting for grass seed. I wanted to photograph the spoils of the winter storm we had two weeks ago.

A big maple tree near the edge of the woods split in two and fell--this way and that:

It is sad to see a tree that size succumb to the elements, especially since our woods doesn't have that many big trees in it. I am not sure about the age of our woods. I want to say that it has been growing for forty years, but that is a guess, or a number remembered from a casual conversation with the previous owners.

One of the things that concerns me about some of the maple trees in our woods is that their trunks look like this:

Like they are soaking wet, but it isn't raining. In the summer, they look drier, as if they were charred in a fire. I assumed it was fungal, but a search on the Web suggests that it might be a "bacterial wetwood infection." Sounds dire, and it is. There is no cure for it.

Well, at least the tree will help keep us warm next winter. John (with help from Jack--get ready Jack!) will cut it up for firewood. The pieces that are too large or too small will rot back into the ground, with help from gorgeous decomposers like these already at work:

And those leftovers will nourish the saplings nearby.

I am at my best, I feel, when one thing is changing into another. And so, I am happy now, as Sleet turns to Bluster, as the moon begins to wane after a spectacular fullness, as the ground swells with moisture, as fallen trees lie in wait. Time is circular after all. Round and round we go.

In Bud, Unfurling

2009-02-10T14:35:00.011-05:00

My house is pregnant with promise. I brought only a select few of my houseplants with me when we moved, most of them orchids. Several of them have flower spikes now and I couldn't be happier. First, let's get the amaryllis out of the way:

We'll see what happens with it. It was one of those hybrid monsters with four giant blooms on one stem--one bloom for each of the directions. I have no idea if it will ever have the energy to do that again. It is a lovely peach color and I'd be happy with just one bloom in this grey time of year.

As with most of my plants, I got the amaryllis free from the Conservatory. It was one of the perks of working there--free plants to good homes if you were in the right place at the right time. I had some connections within the horticulture department, so I was able to score more than once (wink ; )

I learned about (and fell in love with) orchids while working at FPC. I had to learn about them since I was responsible for writing the signage for the annual orchid exhibition (going on NOW). As with so many things, the more I learned, the more I came to love them. Weird, rooty plants that look pretty much like crap when not in bloom, produce these curious flowers of complex design and hearty constitution. Everyone thinks that orchids are delicate, finicky plants that are hard to grow. But that is not so. If you understand their native growing conditions, even just a little bit, then you can grow them easily in your home. Some are more tricky than others, simply because most people don't have the humidity and light levels of the rainforest canopy in their homes. But others, like the phalaenopsis, oncidiums and paphiopedilums (slipper orchids) are forgiving, steady plants that will reward you with freakishly amazing blooms that last for months.

Thanks to my dear buddy Dave, the orchid specialist at FPC, I have this little phalaenopsis that produces a dark fuchsia bloom. There is the flower spike growing toward the light.

Here is a larger phal that I got after that first orchid exhibition. It is called "Kaleidoscope" and it has red veins on cream petals with a red lip at the center.

Wait until it blooms and I post a picture, you won't believe what those unassuming buds turn into.

And here is my slipper orchid--the only orchid of mine that I purchased outright--in bud.

Here it is unfurling....

And upright in all its bizarre, striped, dotted, hairy glory....

Who needs spring with this show going on?

(well, I do)

Makin' Things

2009-02-04T13:55:00.020-05:00

I've had a sick little grandchild here with me since Monday. She commandeers the laptop to watch her princess dvds, so that's my excuse this week!

We've been busy. The fabulous Lindsey's were out last weekend and along with drinking tasty winter brews and eating pizza, we went tubing and made a snowman. (Well, Jen and John made a snowman. I made the head, but that wasn't much work and Linnette went inside to read Pablo Neruda poems by the warm and dry fire.) He was quite dashing, the snowman, complete with a pipe, arms, and scarf made from bittersweet vine.

LeRoy watched from a perch in the apple trees.

I had my second sewing lesson last Saturday, wherein I made an apron. My sister Kathy graciously donated her old sewing machine to me last summer, and my neighbor Sharon knew a woman nearby who gives lessons in her home. So, here I am keeping my brain fresh by learning new things at my age! (And John can attest to the cursing that goes along with that...)

Just for practice, I halved the pattern and made one for Maria, too. I'm glad that no one can see these things up close, because there are plenty of mistakes. But, hey, they're aprons.

I also made myself a new journal. I took a bookmaking class last winter at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center. If I still lived in Columbus, I would take the ongoing class all year. As it is, I make-do with my own version of the kettle stitch. See, I've forgotten how to do it exactly, but I make it work somehow. It's just one move near the beginning that I can't remember....
Don't look too closely!

I have often wished that I was interested in only one thing. I envy people who are focused on, or obsessed even with one subject and make it their life's work and passion. It would be easier that way. Or so I believe. I'm not sure there are many people even like that in the world. I only think so in times of despair over doing one thing really well. I'm cursed with a Jane-of-all-trades desire. Here are just some of my answers to the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Interior decorator/designer

Musician/singer

Master Gardener

Chef/owner of a health food restaurant

Biologist/Naturalist

Farmer/artisan cheesemaker

Well, I could look at my affliction this way: I've got plenty of things to keep my brain from turning to mush as the years go by! Although there could be some cursing along the way.

In Which a Winter Storm Hits...

2009-01-29T07:43:00.019-05:00

...and leaves us encased in an opal. Blue, pink, orange and yellow flicker behind a screen of creamy white.

The ice-covered trees clack in the breeze like castanets.

A thistle clings to its spot.

The old lilac bush spreads like sea coral.

The barn looks like an abstract painting.

Sunset comes on the tail end of the front and glints on the icicles hanging from the eaves.

Where Have You Been?

2009-01-26T17:18:00.009-05:00

Apologies, gentle reader, for the lack of posts. I have no excuse except that things were busy and I didn't have much to say. I still don't have anything approaching a theme, but I can ramble with the best of them.

I don't spend a lot of time outdoors right now, because cold air hurts. I braved a walk to the bottom of the front pasture with John last evening, though, and the colors were amazing. I had just been looking at a Better Homes & Garden magazine and studying the palettes they used in a room I liked. Walking outside was like walking into the biggest, most color-inspired, coordinated, complementary room ever created anywhere. The sky was grey blue, the snow was white, the grasses in the fields were purple and gold, and the branches of the bare trees were black. But to say they were blue, purple and gold is not saying enough. The saturation of the colors, the way they melted into one another, or stood out in relief--it was so beautiful as to make me cry. Winter is cold and I prefer the other three seasons, but I can't deny its beauty. And living out here lets me see the beauty of winter more clearly.

These are pictures of another winter moment--when the trees were covered with ice one morning last week (taken from inside the front windows--no fingers were frozen in the making of these images):

Grandgirl Maria spent the weekend with us and she and I bundled up and took a walk up to the cabin just to get out a bit. The windchill was shocking. We quickly turned around and headed back to the main house where the fire was burning. "Oh, I can't wait till spring," I said. "And summer!" she added. And then, "It's freezing cold out here!" She had her hands tucked into her pockets and looked like a little pink gnome heading down the path.

We played princesses a lot. I had to hold two of them and make them be mean to the third, which she held. The mean step-sisters got to go to the ball and dance with the princes while Maria's victim stayed home and cleaned. At least we rotated out the princess who got the short end of stick. I tried to put in some "stand up for yourself" lessons in there, but she wasn't having it. If it was your turn to play the Cinderella role, then tough luck, sister.

She found my reading glasses and put them on. I said, "Oh, let me take your picture!" And here's what she did--she put her hand up. Like the smart girl in class.

LeRoy was in heaven with his playmate, Maria, here. He lets her pick him up and drag him around the whole house, over and over. And then he crashes nearby. Here he is on the new living room chair:

He is a handsome devil, I think.

And here is a detail of the new couch that goes with the new chair. It is heaven to sit on a couch again! And yes, Maria and I snuggled up and read books on it, just like I promised we would.

So, while it hasn't been a full-fledged funk, a bit of winter "Where am I?" "Who am I?" has settled over me like a fine dust. Here's hoping that you, reader, are making it through your own winter doldrums in the best way you know how.

Winter Waiting

2009-01-19T09:09:00.007-05:00

I've been known to say: "If it's winter and cold, there might as well be snow on the ground."

Well, darn right. There is snow on the ground and it isn't going anywhere soon with temperatures in the teens and twenties for the foreseeable future. I do like it. I'm not sure if I'd like it where my niece lives in Minneapolis. We've got about three to four inches covering the rolling hills in a most picturesque way. I'm not sure how many inches she has to dig through to get to her car, but I'm sure it's more.

John and I are pleased that the house is passing the test of its first winter. We stay warm and snug in here, even when the wind is howling and the temperatures are at zero or below. (And we still have some caulking to do!) Sunny days help. The big, south-facing windows catch all the warmth and light available. Everywhere you go in this house, you look out a window. When the snow falls straight down at a steady speed, it looks like we have moving curtains--some kind of groovy thing you might buy at Ikea.

All that said, I looked at seed catalogs yesterday and became giddy at the prospect of my garden. I bundled up and went outside to pace off my potager plots in the snow. I think I have it figured out. Gardens are funny things. The distance between your dreams and reality is huge. The garden in my mind is gigantic and lush and varied with surprises around every corner--well established in other words. I know from past experience that I need to start small and build it slowly over several years. If I try for gigantic the first year, I'll be overwhelmed and disappointed. That probably won't stop me from overreaching, though. Gardeners are a hopeful lot.

After pacing off the garden, I took a walk to the back pasture to fetch a winter bouquet for the table. There was a hush in the fields as dusk fell and a few snowflakes blew eastward. The air was moist and fresh. I was content to rest in winter waiting, but I felt the flame of spring flickering deep down--deep inside both me and the world. It is a warm and delightful feeling.

Conflicted

2009-01-14T08:27:00.004-05:00

LeRoy ate a mouse this morning. A whole mouse. I was happy he caught it (in the mudroom) because I don't want mice in the house if we can help it, but also horrified at the spectacle and the suffering.

About three weeks ago, I started putting LeRoy into the mudroom at night. Well, to be truthful, I put him in there several times throughout the day. He is full of kitten-powered energy and Clare and I get tired of him. He rarely sits still, hardly ever naps, and mostly prowls around looking for trouble. He jumps Clare and attempts to eat her head. Clare yowls and screams and hisses and then the two of them gallop across the floors and crash into all the stuff that is still laying around. If he isn't pestering Clare he is pawing at my necklaces that hang artfully from the old planter, or he is up on the bathroom sink looking for something to bat around--maybe a bottle of medicine that he can knock under the dresser. You get the idea.

For the past two days when I opened the mudroom door to get more wood for the fire, instead of finding him asleep in his pile of old sweaters on top of the potting bench I've found him crouching by an old box that sits in the corner. Uh oh. Mouse alert.

This morning when I opened the door he was playing with a terrorized and injured mouse. He seemed tentative about biting down hard on the moving mouse, but of course he wasn't letting it go, either. I thought I would take the poor thing outside and let it die quietly behind the woodpile--they say freezing to death is not a bad way to go. When I went to pick it up, however, LeRoy was having none of it. It was his mouse. He became resolute and took a good hold of it with his mouth. I opened the door to the outside and he took it out there.

It was a clear, cold morning with a good covering of snow on the ground. The cold air and the expanse of Outside seemed to trigger a more serious response from LeRoy toward his prey. He trotted off with the mouse and I let him. Of course he didn't go far--he took it around to the side porch onto the scrap of rug in front of the glass doors. And there he proceeded to eat that mouse. I watched for a brief moment, just to be sure that it was really happening, and then I turned away. Jeez, all this before coffee.

Next time I looked there was no mouse. And no blood. Nothing. Except a cute little kitten begging to come inside.

You know how you feel when you watch Nature on PBS and the hawk or the fox hasn't eaten in a week and really needs to catch something, so you root for it while it chases the bunny, but when it catches the bunny you feel terrible about the suffering that ensues? But the predator finally got a meal so you are happy...but the bunny had baby bunnies so you are sad...
Finally you end up sighing with the realization that life is hard here. Existence is a rough game. No getting around it.

LeRoy wasn't starving, but he did what predators do. I guess I was glad that he actually ate the mouse instead of killing it and letting it go to "waste." I don't mind that he keeps the mouse population down, but this spring I hope I don't find bird remains. Someone asked me once if we were going to put up bird feeders near the house. I said No. No we are not. Binoculars work just fine, thank you.

Gittin' 'er done

2009-01-12T17:57:00.012-05:00

I don't have many words today. We did a lot of work over the weekend. Here are some images of what we got done:

We purchased a kitchen table and chairs at the Antique Mall in Barnesville. Yay! I wanted a pedestal table real bad, and we found one...

John put up the pot rack in the kitchen and changed some of the wacky light switch placements while he was at it. Thank you, John!

I washed down the old sliding barn doors that we use on the bathrooms and polyurethaned them so that they won't flake paint everywhere (John did the second coat).

John put together my grandma's wardrobe in the bedroom so that I can get to Narnia when I need to.

And while we're in the bedroom, here are some more recent views...Clarabelle in a familiar pose:

New use for an old planter:

Mmm, yellow beads in a turquoise dish:

Whoops! Time to wake up! The latest addition to the infamous collection of all things rooster:

Something to Think About

2009-01-07T17:02:00.004-05:00

In the midst of the move, I came across books I had forgotten about. One of them was Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered by Bill Devall and George Sessions. It was one of Sarah's books from her undergrad days at University of Wisconsin. It contains excerpts from many sources, each offering a different perspective on the human relationship to environment. There is a "test" in one of the sections that intrigued me when I first read it called "Where You At?" It intrigued me because not only could I not answer several of the questions, but it hadn't occurred to me to ask them. It caused me to reevaluate my entire relationship to where I live, to perk up and pay attention to different things. And even if I still don't know some of the answers, I am now more aware of my ignorance--which is a step.

Here is the test. See how many questions you can answer about where you live.

1. Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.

2. How many days until the moon is full (plus or minus a couple of days)?

3. Describe the soil around your home.

4. What were the primary subsistence techniques of the culture(s) that lived in your area before you?

5. Name five native edible plants in your bioregion and their season(s) of availability.

6. From what direction do winter storms generally come in your region?

7. Where does your garbage go?

8. How long is the growing season where you live?

9. On what day of the year are the shadows the shortest where you live?

10. Name five trees in your area. Are any of them native? If you can't name names, describe them.

11. Name five resident and any migratory birds in your area.

12. What is the land use history by humans in your bioregion during the past century?

13. What primary geological event/process influenced the land form where you live?

14. What species have become extinct in your area?

15. What are the major plant associations in your region?

16. From where you are while reading this, point north.

17. What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom where you live?

18. What kinds of rocks and minerals are found in your bioregion?

19. Were the stars out last night?

20. Name some beings (nonhuman) which share your place.

21. Do you celebrate the turning of the summer and winter solstice? If so, how do you celebrate?

22. How many people live next door to you? What are their names?

23. How much gasoline do you use a week, on the average?

24. What energy costs you the most money? What kind of energy is it?

25. What developed and potential energy resources are in your area?

26. What plans are there for massive development of energy or mineral resources in your bioregion?

27. What is the largest wilderness area in your bioregion?

We had a terrible ice storm in my bioregion about three years ago. Trees were down, roads were closed and electricity was out for weeks across a large swath of the Midwest. John and I went to the grocery store and I was shocked to see the shelves so sparse, the produce picked over, the refrigerated items absent. I felt, for the first time, how dependant I am on an unseen (by me) network. I have no control over my food and heat and water. I take its easy presence for granted.

I am slowly becoming more aware of the systems that keep me alive and healthy. It isn't always fun or easy to learn about them. We put in a composting toilet in the new house. It is a remote system--the composting bin is in a basement of sorts. We have a composting toilet by the same company in an outhouse that John built up by the cabin and have had no trouble with it. Not so, this new system. It vents through a pipe that goes up through the roof and when the winds are right (or wrong), you can, um, smell it. John, dear man, has gone down to the basement to check on things and all I can say is, thank god, because I'm never gonna do that. We're working out the kinks (I won't go into details) and haven't given up yet on this "green" technology, but there is a part of me that just wants it to go away.

Like I want my garbage to go away. Like I want my food to appear on the shelves. Like I want my water to come through the pipes, clean and ready to drink. Like I want to drive my car wherever I want, whenever I want.

Sometimes I feel like a petulant child, arms crossed, and pouting when I'm asked to confront responsibility for my human presence on the planet. But, you know, the time is here. I'm going to work on answering some of those questions in "Where You At," and I'm not going to let a little bit of crap scare me. It happens, right?

Rockin' Weekend

2009-01-04T19:42:00.023-05:00

After a quiet New Year's Eve with just the two of us, we've had a company-filled few days, and what a blast it was. We had Maria out for a two-night sleepover starting on Friday. She was so excited to be here because some of her favorite people were visiting at the same time. Jack and five of his friends came out for a long weekend in the cabin. They brought their instruments and recording equipment and made a CD, in addition to hiking, eating, photographing, sitting around the bonfire, etc. The eating was done down here at the new house and I have to say that I've never, ever cooked for a more appreciative audience. All at once, I understood how women become addicted to feeding people. There is something satisfying about having a large pot of chili devoured by a group of grateful 20-year olds. I felt like an Italian mama and found myself wanting to offer them more--Here, eat! You need to eat!

Spencer and Tim had their cameras and captured some of the best moments of the weekend. I leave you with their images...

the Band

For the cd insert

During the breaks

The farm through their eyes

That's what I'm talking about, people.

Winter Walk

2008-12-31T09:12:00.014-05:00

I took a walk yesterday, seeking beauty in the brown world of winter. I found it.

Palettes of color, form, and texture behind a scrim of tree trunks

Beds of moss with a hairy covering of sporophytes

Gill o' the Ground under the protection of fall leaves

LeRoy followed me like a dog.

And clawed his way up my leg like a cat.

Blooms of blue-green lichen on rotting branches

Perfect dinner-plates eaten out of oak leaves

Remember this goldenrod from a post last summer?

It is just as beautiful now

Along with the milkweed seeds

All glowing in the slant of late afternoon winter light, warming towards spring

Christmas is for Kids

2008-12-25T21:23:00.009-05:00

I'm in the city, sorting through the photos from today's festivities and can't help but post a few.

Mario, looking straight into Peepaw's soul:

Maria, wearing her princess demeanor if not the clothes:

Jack, just as excited as Mario over the racing cars:

And Maria again, about fifteen minutes ago, on the couch "watching" Dora on the TV. She's spending the night with me at "the partment."

Happy Christmas!

Happy Solstice

2008-12-21T12:14:00.003-05:00

How fitting that the sun is shining today. It showed its face for about five minutes on Friday after the big Break Up, but went undercover again until now—Solstice Morning. It may not stay, clouds in varying sizes are moving across the sky, but to see it shine even for moments on the ice-covered trees is heart-gladdening.

I’ve been thinking about the solstice a lot this year, perhaps because I am more aware than ever of the Earth. Everywhere I look, I see earth and trees and sky and meadow. And so I wonder about it more often. I marvel how human culture is tied to the cycles of the planet. Even though we’ve forgotten the original connection of our customs to the rhythms of the earth, it is there. The Christian celebration of Christmas sprung from midwinter celebrations of all kinds. Seems that many cultures, especially those that thrived in northern climates where the winters are darkest and coldest, celebrated the winter solstice with a sense of relief and happiness, and used it as therapy for the winter blues. SAD is not a modern malaise!

I looked up solstice on Wikipedia and under a heading, “Therapeutic,” was this paragraph:

“Midwinter festivals and celebrations occurring on the longest night of the year, often calling for evergreens, bright illumination, large ongoing fires, feasting, communion with close ones, and evening physical exertion by dancing and singing are examples of cultural winter therapies that have evolved as traditions since the beginnings of civilization. Such traditions can stir the wit, stave off malaise, reset the internal clock and rekindle the human spirit. [5]”

That last sentence is what gets me—oh, how we try to make the best of things. Let’s be “the glass is half-full” kind of people. I like that response. But it isn’t just blind optimism; the sun really is coming back. The days really are getting longer. We will not perish in darkness. Food will grow again, birds will sing, flowers will bloom. My calendar calls December 21 the beginning of winter, but I’m sticking with the title, Midwinter. I’m siding with the optimists.

While listening to NPR the other day, a Jesuit priest bemoaned the growing tradition of sending Christmas, or holiday, cards with pictures of your family on them. “More of the holy family and less of your family” was his complaint. Even though I haven’t been a Catholic for years, I still felt guilty. (Ah, that Catholic guilt—once instilled, it never quite leaves!) Reading and thinking about the solstice, though, has given me a new appreciation and perspective on the “holiday” season. There is something special about this time of year, and it doesn’t belong solely to followers of Jesus or any other religion. Celebrating this season is a deep part of our human nature, and a deep response to our place in the natural world. Sure, if you’re a Catholic, you may want to focus more on the holy family—but if you’re not, your participation in the festivities is just as valid. Sending and receiving pictures of loved ones is a way to connect with others when travel may be difficult. Feasting and gift giving, lighting up our homes and decorating with greenery serve to raise our spirits and give us something to do besides curl up with the covers over our head.

I love, too, how this time of the year makes us reflective. With the return of light, there is a kindling of hope and resolve deep within most people I know. The older I get, and with this move to the country, I reflect more on the planet and my involvement with it, for better and for worse. I would like to get to know my patch of land better this coming year. I would like to grow in sensitivity to it, learn to read it better. Through that process, I’m sure I will get to know myself much better—the good and the bad.

John and I have argued over which side of the bed we get to sleep on in our new bedroom. I’ve argued for my standard side, which is the left if you’re standing at the foot of the bed, looking towards the headboard. Ultimately, I’ve had to compromise—we’ll switch every month. And here is why:

That is the sunrise as seen when waking up on the left side of the bed, unfettered by the lump of your beloved under the covers.

Happy Solstice Everyone! May your view of the sunrises be lovely this year.

Breaking Up

2008-12-19T12:49:00.007-05:00

The nice thing about our view of the sky is that we can tell what kind of weather is coming our way within the next thirty minutes to an hour. It comes mostly from the west/northwest. I could have school kids out here to learn about weather fronts, it is that obvious. The front comes at us with a wall of clouds looming over our neighbor's hill. We spend some time in the middle of whatever the front holds--rain, wind, snow--and then we watch it leave us, trailing over the hills to the east. I can often see the edge of the front, like the line of a shelf, to the south. Around noon today, I was happy to see the rain clouds breaking up and trailing off in their usual pattern. Until then, a steady deluge of rain slashed at the windows and filled up the puddles in our construction zone of a front yard.
Mmm, pretty.

I used to complain about the clay soil in my Columbus yard. To that, I now say: Ha. Ha. You want clay? Come on out here, and I'll show you clay. It sticks to the bottom of your boots like cement. People have made use of it--this area is known for its pottery--but I've got some serious amending to do before I can garden.

I am looking forward to seeding the bare soil around the house this spring. This past summer was so hot and dry that we couldn't very well seed then. By the time the rains came, it was after the frost date. This spring, my goal is to get rid of opportunities for stepping in mud anywhere around the house or cabin. It has probably been a good thing to see what kind of havoc the mud can wreak this year. I'll know how to avoid it next. I am just soooo happy that we built the mudroom afterall.

The upside of all this rain? Our water tank is full. Full, I tell you! The pump is on, but not pumping because the tank won't hold anymore water. We had a head start with a second fill-up this fall, but still. I just might take a long, hot soak in my crackled up clawfoot tub this weekend. Luxury!

Happy Friday. Have a great weekend.

Explorations

2008-12-15T10:15:00.005-05:00

Well, as promised a few weeks ago, posting has been light!
We've been busy with the last leg of our move. I mentioned to John this morning that it has been one year since we began this journey. It was last year this time that I was in negotiations to go part-time at work and we started writing our to-do list for selling our Columbus home. And now, here we are, getting our last boxes from the cabin and the storage room at the Columbus apartment, and putting things in place in the home we hope to live in for many years to come.
Wow, no wonder. No wonder that we sometimes feel exhausted, physically and psychologically, but also happy down to our bones.

Yesterday we took a break, just the two of us, to explore Marietta. I had never been there before and it is only forty-five minutes from here. I love exploring the small towns around Ohio. Or, I should say, the small and smaller towns--size becomes relative when you get outside the large metropolitan areas. Heck, Quaker City is pretty darn big compared to Salesville, and Marietta is downright huge! The larger small towns ususally have a Main Street, even if it isn't called that, with historic storefronts and a courthouse. Thankfully, the Burger Kings, Wal Marts, and Radio Shacks are built along an outerbelt of sorts. I love finding antique and gift shops and restaurants along the Main Streets and marveling at the odder tenants ("Tanfastic" is my favorite shop name in Cambridge). And I love finding the mansions that always lurk in the surrounding blocks. If a town has any size or any historical significance at all, there are always these gorgeous, turn-of-the-century, gigantic homes in the few blocks right off of its Main Street.

I took the camera with me, but didn't take one photo yesterday (yay for me). However, I found the website of a wonderful photographer who has done a much better job than I could ever do. Take a look here to see some of the homes that I saw yesterday. Marietta has quite a few of these beauties, since it was the first settlement of the Northwest Territory (from the Eurocentric point of view anyway).

Along with home-ogling, we had a micro-brewed beer and locally raised buffalo burger at The Marietta Brewing Company. That was after some antique malls and a leather store where John got his Christmas Present From His Mom--always a challenge. He got a Tilley Winter Hat in which, I must say, he looks dashing.

And now it is Monday. Back to work. I've got Christmas presents to finish up and some major organizing of the desk to accomplish (so that I can find the bills). I am anticipating the solstice in just a week. Longer days, even if imperceptible at first, will be most welcome.

Moving Haikus--Sort Of

2008-12-08T18:07:00.005-05:00

Stompin' through the snow,

up to the cabin and back again,

arms laden with clothes, books, cooking utensils,

towels--haven't I gotten it all yet?

Cheered on by bluebirds,

red barn, white snow, blue sky.

Yes, it is a leaner.

But, not that bad.

Yet.

Will we be able to fix it

before it falls clean over?

Horses on the Brain

2008-12-03T18:18:00.010-05:00

Okay, we're in the new house--now our attention can turn to what's really important, to the real reason we moved here...horses!

I got my horse nerve all agitated at Thanksgiving. My sister Mindy owns three horses and keeps them on her property north of Cincinnati. After eating our turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, we headed out to the barn for some trips around the ring with the kids.

What is it about the smell of a horse's neck that is so intoxicating? I think that the smell is one of those things that people either LOVE or don't have an opinion about one way or another. Is it genetic? Is there a marker on some gene somewhere when, if turned on, causes people to love everything about these large animals with sensitive eyes and big, fluttery nostrils? Their smell is sweet and warm. I always want to describe it as vegetarian--it reminds me of dried grasses and oats--what they eat. It is mixed with something else, though, something particularly horsey. There is nothing else in the world that smells like a horse. I think cows stink. Pigs really stink. I've never had the opportunity to smell goats or sheep.

Mindy's horses are kind and well mannered, attributes of horses that are loved and happy. She has been working towards "natural" horse care lately and it shows. I was musing about what kind of barn to build and she said that if she had to do it all over again, she'd build a run-in for the horses and a separate tack room and grooming aisle. She gave me some books on natural horse care, which includes keeping your horses barefoot. I was so excited to hear this. After building this house for three plus years, I am not ready to embark on another huge building project. Ever. The idea of a three sided run-in (with maybe a fourth half wall so that they have a corner to get into when the weather is really bad) sounds so easy and quick and less expensive. According to the books she gave me on barefooted horses (that means unshod), maintaining good hoof care includes letting horses be horses--giving them access 24/7 to the outdoors among other things. I'm devouring the books and dreaming of my future babies.

John picked up a "Farm and Dairy" monthly at the hardware store the other day. It is quite a publication! There are several columnists sprinkled throughout and they provide some entertaining reading. John browsed the auctions and I went straight to the livestock section. I will have no trouble finding my horses when the time comes next summer. Here's one in my price range (under $1,000): 8-year old bay Thoroughbred gelding, very friendly, 16 hands. And here's another: 6-year old reg. Quarter Horse gelding, very friendly, excellent ground manners, 14.3 hands. And this one might be interesting: APHA reg. (that's an American Paint Horse), 11-year old flashy sorrel and white mare, lightly ridden in the last 3 years, needs tuned up, excellent broodmare, 15 hands. Ooh, now that's got me dreaming!

Ah, it's gonna be a long winter...

Here We Are...

2008-12-01T15:57:00.009-05:00

...in the new house!

We are feeling exhausted from the marathon of activity, but this morning we enjoyed coffee at this table, watching the sky change outside the huge windows:

You know, back when we moved here in the summer it was one of the hottest, muggiest days of the year. For our move down here, there was a steady rain all day which equals mud-city. We know how to time it, don't we?

There is still sooo much to do. The cabin is a wreck--there is mud tracked all over the place. And everything down here at the new house is the definition of make-shift (we have to wait a week for the upstairs floor to cure before putting furniture on it). But it is so comfortable, warm, spacious, light-filled! I love it!

Right now, I am listening to the quiet swish of my new washing machine doing its job upstairs. Is it possible to be in love with an appliance? I smile everytime I look at my stacking washer and dryer.

And the kitties--LeRoy luvs the place! He walks across the beam that connects the two lofts upstairs and also walks the lower railing, balancing like a pro. Clare ran back up to the cabin as soon as she had the chance and stayed up there until I dragged her back down here. She is now sleeping on the bed with LeRoy and seems to be in a state of acceptance. (I couldn't get the two of them in the frame, and LeRoy is just so photogenic...)

John spent the day working at his real job at the temporary office set-up we put together. The wireless is working seamlessly. No more worrying about whether the barn door is open or not to get reception.

I'm resting my weary bones and muscles until heading up to the cabin for yet another trip to get stuff. It might have to wait til tomorrow, though. I'm plain tuckered out. I think it might be time for a cold beer in front of the warm fireplace. Ahhh, there's no place like home.

Grateful All The Same

2008-11-24T16:20:00.005-05:00

Drear. According to Wiktionary, that is the obsolete form of the adjective, dreary. But, to me, leaving off the "y" makes it sound more dread. Dread and drear. And that is what the weather is like today--rain with temperatures in the 40s. My least favorite kind of weather. Unfortunate, because that is what winter is often like in Ohio. Oh well, we make up for it with spring, summer and fall.

John and I are in the homestretch of getting ourselves into the new house and out of the cabin, and it is going to involve some tricky logistics (so what else is new?). We will be juggling the following over Thanksgiving weekend: polyurethaning the staircase; driving to my sister's for the holiday; sanding, staining and polyurethaning the upstairs floors; winterizing the cabin (turning off water, flushing pipes, mouse-proofing, etc.); oh, and throwing all of our stuff into boxes and hauling it through the mud down to the new house where we will put it on the floor in said boxes and live out of those boxes until...until...we put it on folding tables for awhile. Sounds fun, huh? But, you know what? I'm still looking forward to it.

On her most recent visit, my three-year-old granddaughter Maria, walked out of the kitchen on a Sunday morning after two nights here in the cabin and said, "We need a couch." It is something that I have said more than once since moving in June. John and I browsed a furniture store the other night and the fact that we are that close to getting a couch again makes me all warm inside. When we do have it, I'm going to make Maria close her eyes, and I will carry her inside the house, stand her in front of the new couch and say, "Okay, you can open them!" And then I'm going to cuddle up with her on it and read some books. I can't wait.

But first, I've got some work to do. Obviously, posting could be light the next week or so.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone. I'll close with some pictures of the sky last week before the Great Drear set in.

I've Been Tagged

2008-11-19T16:49:00.003-05:00

The snow is still here in patches. I'm sick with a cold and had a migraine headache this morning. All of a sudden it isn't as dreamy living in this, rather drafty I now see, cabin! The "boys" did the nicest thing before they left today, though. They brought me up a pile of wood from the woodpile which happens to be down near the new house. (John is away for the week in sunny Arizona, so they felt sorry for me, I guess.) I think I gave one of them a fright this morning when he came to see if I had a D battery they could use for the ceiling fan they installed. I answered the door in full sick-bed regalia--robe, slippers, and my snot rag in hand. Hoo boy!

However...I've been "tagged" by Alice at Living the Rural Dream (and Fanciful Alice) and so I have something else to do but whine about being sick. I agree with Alice that tagging is a bit chain-mail-ish, but I've seen lots of other tag games ("ghosted" is a good one) and they're sort of fun. (And no one promises dire consequences if you don't pass it on!)

So--here are Six Things About Me (the basis of the tag). Read on, or click on outta here--you've been warned.

1) I love horses with an illogical fervor. I was one of those girls with horse pictures plastered on my bedroom wall, a collection of horse figurines, etc., etc. I even studied horsemanship for a year at Virginia Intermont College. How it has taken me so long to get a horse back into my life, I'm not quite sure. I hope that next summer we are ready to take the plunge and saddle ourselves (ha!) with the responsibility of owning a horse or two. I just want to breathe in their smell and look into their big sweet eyes and listen to them chew hay at this point in my life. No competing.

2) I have a mild case of Raynaud's disease. That's where your fingers and toes (or hands and feet if you've got it really bad) go white in the cold. The blood vessels shut down and circulation stops altogether. I run my hands under hot water, or stick them somewhere warm when it happens. Obviously, I'm thinking about it now that the weather has turned--ergh.

3) "I often make light of my chemical dependence on caffeine." That is the quote on a coffee mug that I purchased from The Onion store recently. I thought it was hysterical, because it's true.

4) Adding to the above, I love coffee houses. My favorite one in all the world so far is Stauf's Coffee Roasters in Columbus. I love that coffee shops are a place where you can go to be alone within a crowd of people. You can sit by yourself for hours and no one gives you a second look. Lots of other people are there doing the same thing. I also love having long conversations with people I care for in coffee shops. It is one thing about living in the city that I miss.

5) Even though I am a gregarious person, I need a lot of alone time. It has always been this way. I am happiest when these two sides of me are in balance. If the scales have to tip, I would prefer they go towards the being alone side.

6) When provided a choice of colors, I always go for the warm ones. Reds, golds, yellowy greens, toasty browns, and greeny blues if I have to choose a blue.

And now I will tag just one other person...Siobhan at Flying Solo--you're it!

Aww, No It Didn't!

2008-11-17T21:04:00.006-05:00

Yes it did! It snowed! I stepped outside early this morning to load up the car for a trip to Columbus and was met with this lovely sight (that's a falling snowflake blurring the upper left quadrant)...

Here it is out the upstairs bedroom window...

And here is the cabin looking, I think, like a cozy place to have around...

The snow was gone by the time I got to Columbus. But on my way home, I hit it again right outside Cambridge. There is a thick dusting over everything out here. It is pretty wet and slooshy, but so pretty. I hope it sticks around tomorrow so that I can look out from my warm cabin and dream. The first snow is always welcome by me. Come February, I'll have a different response, but for now...ahhhh.

Foto Friday

2008-11-14T09:08:00.012-05:00

Time for some visual.

The moody skies...

The dying grasses...

The comical cats...

And the big oak tree, hanging on to its bronze leaves at the top of my favorite curve of land...

all seem to conspire for my delight.

Happy Friday!

I Choose...Warmth

2008-11-12T09:33:00.007-05:00

I returned from the city late last night to one very cold cabin and two very happy-to-see-me cats. I got the woodstove cranking and turned on an electric heater in the bedroom upstairs. It took a while, but the chill began to fall away and the cats began to purr. I had to set the alarm for a middle of the night re-loading of the woodstove. We got a small stove for the cabin when we bought the place six years ago. It won't hold hot coals overnight, meaning that you have to restart it in the morning with paper and kindling, unless you get up and keep the fire going in the middle of the night. It's not so bad...if you're just visiting. Living here is a different story of course.

The woodstove in the new house is a marvel. It's big and made of soapstone, polished to a sheen on the outside. Here is a picture of "The Mansfield" from the Hearthstone website:

Soapstone has different colors in it, similar to marble or quartz. Ours is mostly green with white and cream and black variations. The stove in the picture has a shiny brown frame, but we chose a matte black metal. The marvelous thing about soapstone is that it radiates heat for 24 hours after the fire goes out. The box of our new stove holds about three times what the little stove in the cabin holds, so no need for middle of the night stokings. And the fire really looks like that through the window--large and lovely with a slow, smooth flickering. The cats are going to love it.

We also have a few strategically placed electric baseboard heaters in the new house so that we can leave the place for several days if need be in the wintertime without freezing the pipes and/or cats. It is a nice set-up.

I bragged to my son, Jack, that I had an apartment in my college days that was so cold in the wintertime that I actually saw my breath for about a week during a particularly brutal cold snap. I asked him the other day if he had turned on his heat yet. "No way! I'm not doing it until I see my breath." I hadn't meant to throw down a gauntlet, but apparently that's what I did. Well, he can tough it out all he wants. I'm going to stay nice and cozy, thank you. Me and the Mansfield--best friends forever!

Got Mice?

2008-11-09T17:36:00.005-05:00

We've got them. In droves. They tend to live at the edges of the cabin in the summer, but they really burrow in when winter hits. When I'm home alone doing something quiet, I hear them gnawing away at the walls, in the closet under the stairs, underneath the kitchen sink. They leave their little tell-tale poops around the cat food dish (the nerve!) and will chew into bread bags, or even this summer, ripe peaches if left out on the counter. It makes one a better housekeeper, in an inverted way, having mice.

The wasps and the ladybugs that aren't true ladybugs, but an invader from Japan, and houseflies are also coming in from the cold. They don't last as long as the mice. I've been stung by more than one wasp wobbling across the dark floorboards, wondering where it has got to. I crush them on sight with the heel of a shoe. I have to repent their deaths everytime I bow my head at the end of yoga practice and say, "Namaste." (hypocrite!)

I found a poem this summer by Marge Piercy in her book, My Mother's Body. I find myself thinking of it everytime I get all high and mighty about extermination. The poem is called "Cowering in a corner." In it, she chronicles all the spiders she sees in her house and wonders, "What do they eat?" After denying that it is the mice, ants, wasps, etc., she concludes that it must be "the other/nine hundred thousand inhabitants of what/I foolishly call my house."

Mmm, hmm.

For Sue

2008-11-06T10:09:00.007-05:00

For those of you who knew her, Sue Menkedick lost her six year battle with cancer on November 1--my sweet sister-in-law, the wife of John's brother Bill, the mother of my niece Kerry, the grandmother of Annalise and Ben. I miss her. She was a funny, warm person with a generous nature. I always enjoyed seeing her when our families got together. We would compare notes on our kids and grandkids, admire each other's house and outfits, and compliment each other on whatever recipe was on the table. Simple things, some might say surface things, but the current beneath the talk was always loving and accepting and supportive in a very female way. Sue and I were different in many ways, had different tastes in our decor and our clothes and our jewelry--the surface things in life. But we were very similar in that we wanted to be happy. We wanted to love our families and our life. We wanted to make a cozy home that we enjoyed being in, wanted to raise our kids to be good people, wanted to enjoy our grandchildren, wanted to remember always what was underneath the surface of everything we had and did in life. We saw that in one another and that's what we responded to and built a relationship on.

I had a conversation with Sue a few weeks before she died. We dropped the small talk and got down to what we really wanted to say for a few moments. We both agreed that everything that happens to us is supposed to be for a purpose, that it has a meaning, that we chose it somehow--even if all of that is indecipherable in the present moment. "Sometimes I wonder, what the heck was I thinking?" she said to me in response to this mystery. What kind of lesson was this that couldn't have been learned in another way? What kind of "gift" was this? And can we take it back? There are no answers to those questions, only the asking of them, and sitting with the feelings that arise when you give in to their mystery.

I can tell you one gift that I received from Sue's ordeal. It was the gift of being able to contemplate this mystery with her. To sit for a moment and feel the enormity of a life. To be able to tell her, "I'm going to miss you." She allowed me to do that. She honored me by letting me feel what is really important in life in her presence. I am not suggesting that the reason she died was so that I could have this gift, but I am saying that she gave me this gift as she was dying. And I will carry it with me always.

In the past, I have responded to death with pessimism about life. Why bother? None of this matters if we all die anyway. But Sue gave me a much richer and more mature response to death. She reminded me how lucky and blessed I am, and that I shouldn't take anything for granted. She reminded me to love my life because of death. Love my life even more. Live it as fully as I can possibly handle in as many moments as I can remember to. That is what I hear Sue telling me to do. That is what I will think of whenever I think of Sue.

I really do feel that she cavorts with angels. It seems to me that angels have that kind of energy--an energy that doesn't deny the problems of life, but responds to those problems with a deep and abiding sense of generosity and helpfulness and love.

She told John and me to enjoy our new home and that she would be keeping up with us, just from a different perspective. I believe her. And I am so grateful for her presence in my life.

Look What We Did

2008-11-03T09:22:00.006-05:00

We applied a water-based polyurethane to the beautiful tongue & groove ash floorboards in the downstairs of our new house!

Looking this way:

Looking that way:

It is becoming real--this moving in thing. Counting down to about three, maybe four more weeks. I won't have kitchen cabinets right away, but at this point, I care not. Just want to get in there and start to feel what it is like to live in the place down the hill from my cabin.

Happy Monday, all.

Man Places

2008-10-30T11:24:00.004-04:00

I like to gush about country life, right? All my walks, the changing of the seasons, the wildlife, even the challenges of learning new ways of doing things once taken for granted, like obtaining water are the best things ever. Okay, well here is something that I don’t particularly care for: Man Places.

One would think that there are Man Places in the city, too, and there are, but not like in the country. At least not that I’ve ever found. Lowe’s and Home Depot are not Man Places. They are too big, too diluted in character to be a contender. And here is my disclaimer right up front: this is my perspective. Another woman might march right into a Man Place and have no problem with the vibe at all, in fact not even feel the vibe, so strong is her sense of self and her place in the world.

Well, that’s not me. I have a fair amount of anxiety upon entering a Man Place and if I had my druthers, I would never do it again. Not knowingly at least. But, I am sent on a lot of errands during the building of our house. I’m not up to the task of, say, installing plumbing without some tutorials that we don’t have time for, but I am capable of driving to the plumbing supply store—a Man Place!—to get the needed parts while someone else keeps working on the project. (I will not name the Man Places I’ve been to out here, though someone familiar with the area would be able to guess the places I’m talking about. There aren’t that many stores, after all.)

The other day I had to go to the lumber supply store to buy a case of floor glue. I pulled into the gravel parking lot with my tiny, hatchback Honda and parked it between two large pickups. I got out of the car and walked to the door of the place while being watched by two men with their hoods up standing out back where the lumber is stored. They don’t wave, they don’t leer, they just stare. I went immediately into my, Oh god, I’m in a Man Place comportment. Don’t give a little hi-hi wave, don’t smile, look straight ahead and act like you know what you’re doing. There. Okay. I’m in the door. Oh, shit, this is the wrong door! Damnit, I do this everytime.. Okay, walk around the front of the building and head straight to the desk. Don’t try to find this stuff on the shelves, because you’ll never do it and they might think you’re trying to steal something.

To be fair, once I make contact with the employee, or as is often the case out here, owner of the Man Place, things go smoothly. They want my business after all. They are there to help. Everything is O-KAY. But the customers (all men, always, in a true Man Place) still look at me askance. That happened in the plumbing supply store the other day. It was so thick with Man Place vibes in there I thought I would explode from the pressure.

I knew it was a bad sign when I walked in and saw no one. No one except an older man, very grizzled, who sat down on one of the stools they have at the checkout counter for customers. (That there is another bad sign, don’t you think? Is service so slow you need a place to sit down while they compute your order?) The man had two pipe pieces on the counter in front of him, so I assumed that someone was helping him, or would be helping him soon…I took my cue from him, in other words, and had a seat on the stool closest to me and waited. Patiently. The man and I stole glances at one another, but no direct eye contact, no smiles, no way. After several minutes, some employees started appearing. All of them were apparently busy scuttling around the back aisles of the store, fetching things for called-in orders like mine, and for this lone guy. One employee asked me if I’d been helped yet and that started my transaction. Ends up I was glad for the stool as it took a goodish amount of time to rack up the bar codes. In the meantime, I became almost dizzy with the pressures that ensued.

The bell that sounds as someone enters the store kept ringing as man after man arrived. (Who knew that so many people needed plumbing supplies at 4:00pm on a Tuesday? And why aren't any of them women?) One of them looked like a real character with an extremely long grey beard and long hair under a fedora-style hat. The guy ringing up my order called to him by name. The man answered him pleasantly, then stood, hands folded in front of him, about a foot away from me and waited for his turn. So patient. So close to me.

Then another single guy came in. Then a whole group of guys. That group stood around behind me and the bearded man, milling and talking low and being all guy-like. I was keeping it real cool by now. Do not look at anyone! I’m not a robot, though (see here for a very funny Onion story on Cindy McCain) and so I did turn to glance. One of the guys smiled at me. I smiled back, but did not think it a good idea to really smile and get all relaxed and start chatting people up. Please, please, is my order done yet? What’s the damage, c’mon! was all I could think.

$449. 56. Whaaa? Are you sure you counted all those parts right? Oh god, no, don’t do it again. Here’s my credit card. Just get me outta here.

The guy who rung up my order helped me to the car with all my (expensive) supplies, and we got it loaded into the hatchback (including a ten-foot section of pipe) and he was really nice to do that and the guy who smiled at me was really nice to hold the door for us and nothing is really wrong with Man Places, I’m just not comfortable in them.

I will get John back for all these errands to the dreaded Man Places. There is a cute little quilting supply shop I know of and one day, during a quilting crisis, I will make him go fetch me some fabric. “Look, you can sew this quilt if you want, or you can go get me the needed supplies. Which will it be, buddy?” Oh, he’ll be shaking in his boots.

Autumn Rambling

2008-10-28T13:15:00.010-04:00

After a glorious fall weekend, it's a bit gloomy these past two days. I like it, though. After checking on the boys at the house this morning, I trucked off through the pastures in the cold, moist air. The sky was all slate gray and blue. The ground is starting to become more brown than green. The trees still have some yellow and bronze leaves that rustle in the nippy breeze. I can't really call it a breeze anymore, though. Wind. It is a cold wind that blows around and through our valley now.

I scared up five deer, at least, from their haunts in the back pasture. Their white tails flashed like exclamation points popping up in bad high school prose as they made for the woods. I guess they were resting in the tall grass, even though it was spitting tiny raindrops.

I meandered all around the paths that John mowed recently encircling a copse of trees laden with bittersweet vines. The red berries have popped out of their orange skins in their festive way. "Come taste me!" they call. Or, as I hear it: "Hang me up in your house as seasonal decoration!" Either way, they are successful in evolutionary terms. No one need worry about the bittersweet. It is everywhere.

Returning through the apple orchard, I thought about this wonderful blog entry I read last night about a Most Loved Old Apple Tree, and I spoke a few words of encouragement to ours. They looked like old gnomes with their gnarled branches and lichen-covered bark. They've spent many years weathering the winters on their gentle slopes.

I promise (right now) to prune them next spring, right before the sap starts flowing again. We'll use the dead branches for another bonfire, like the one we enjoyed this past weekend with our friends, the Lindsey's.

John and I have a hunch (a hope) that winter will be a little more tolerable out here, a little less depressing than it has been in the past, in the city. There are graceful lines of earth to see in the winter, when the vegetation dies back. Lichens, mosses and fungi create a palette of color in the woods when the leaves melt back into the soil. The sky is on parade in winter, with subtle variations of blue and gray, mauve and purple. Everything is quiet, hunkered down, resting. There are things to love about winter.

That said, here is a final celebration of chlorophyll in all it's photosynthesizing beauty--taken as recently as two weeks ago on my front porch. We'll miss it, won't we?

And Leroy Was His Name-O

2008-10-24T10:55:00.011-04:00

John came home to meet "Pumpkin" the day after I brought him across the road and promptly said, "I don't want to name him Pumpkin." He wanted Clyde. I suggested Leroy. When I say it in my head I pronounce it--la ROY--accent on the second syllable as if we are in the South. It doesn't come out that way when I call him, but I like thinking it in my head. Le Roi--the King, en francais, n'est-ce-pas?

I am relieved to report that Clarabelle seems to have relaxed and accepted the little shit, I mean kitten! just fine. Of course, I have to admit to using kitty drugs to help the process along. Yes, high grade kitty drugs. I took both cats in to the vet--Clare was due for a rabies booster and Leroy needed some ear mite medicine--and she suggested this product:

It is a "synthetic analogue of F3 fraction of Feline Facial Pheromones" in a diffuser that you plug into an outlet. According to the package, "when a cat feels safe in its environment, it rubs its head against the furniture, the corners of walls, on the bottom of the curtains, leaving substances called facial pheromones. These pheromones convey a message of well-being, calm and abscence of stress." The diffuser pumps these things into the air and cats are supposed to feel the effects of them, even though they sure didn't produce them. "It's like kitty pot," said my vet. Well.

"Can I just use catnip," I asked, knowing that Feliway would cost me.

"It's not quite the same," she said. So, I sucked it up and bought it ($45) because I really wanted Clare to relax. She's been so happy out here, I didn't want the whole thing ruined for her. And so far, so good. She still growls at the kitten if he jumps her (so do I), but they have actually sniffed noses and meowed for food together and Clare seems to like watching him play like a little madman with his toys. Now, who knows if it's because of the phermones, or simply the passage of time. I'm sticking with the phermones. It can't have hurt.

To that point, I also picked up a good old fashioned catnip toy, which Clare loves.

And this is the toy I got for the kitten. There were three of them in the package, but this one with the feathers is my favorite. They bobble around unpredictably and he loves them! Clare even took some time batting one around.

Okay, without further ado, here are the latest pictures in the cute-fest we are currently living through.

Everyone sing together now~

Everybody wants to be a cat

Because a cat's the only cat

Who knows where it's at

Everybody's pickin' up

On that fe-line beat

'Cause everything else is obsolete

Garden Update & Check it Out!, Part II

2008-10-23T14:01:00.010-04:00

There is one thing I got done before fall hit, and that is the rock garden on the side of the cabin. Remember when I was moaning about my lack of farmwife fortitude when it came to moving rocks that were sunk into the earth after years of neglect?
Well, here is the same garden today: Ta Da! I am pleased enough. John dug up all the rocks and I put them into formation and hauled away (almost all) of the little ones as agreed. Our partnership worked pretty well. Next year, this is where the cinnamon ferns and hostas and hydrangeas will live. I transplanted the Shooting Star hydrangea that my sister, Kathy, gave me on the Fourth of July. I hope it survives. I had it in a large pot all summer, and just put it in the ground last week. Not sure I’ve given it enough time to establish itself in the big cold world. I will protect it with burlap this winter and keep my fingers crossed.

On to antiquing successes—we found a clawfoot tub for the new house. If you’ve ever looked for a clawfoot tub, you know that there are plenty around. It’s just that they come in a variety of conditions. John bought one several weeks ago and hauled it home in the back of the truck. Trouble was, it was six inches shorter than the standard size. I sat in it and my legs could not extend. (I’m not that tall.) This simply wouldn’t do. I am a hot bath girl in the winter time. I love the ritual of filling the tub with lavender salts, lighting candles, and sinking into the amniotic embrace of hot water. I’ve saved a good deal of money on prescription anti-anxiety drugs with hot baths over the years. So, the search continued.

We had to go to Lowe’s (again) on Saturday, and I suggested we stop at the antique stores on the way to see if they had a clawfoot. Can you believe it, but they did! And it was the right size and it had the most spectacular, original crackled finish I’ve ever seen. I kept marveling about the crackle finish and John warned that we better tell the guys not to scrape it off. He said he could hear them saying, “Hey, we scraped most of that chipped paint off for you. There’s still a little more to do.” And sure enough, when they were getting it out of the truck on Monday, the guys laughed that it was the first thing they said when they arrived and saw it there—“Well, it needs to be scraped, but it’s okay on the inside.”

A few more treasures from the antiques stores... Another red & white plate for my random, red & white plate collection (posed with a kitty):
And a bowl with gold polka dots, hel-loh!

So, if you are in the market for a clawfoot tub to wash your kids in (or if you are 5' tall or under), let me know. I've got just the thing for you.

Bringing it Inside

2008-10-22T13:36:00.003-04:00

So, the season has turned for real. September was endless summer and the beginning of October was warm enough to allow for the illusion that we had plenty of time yet before the first frost bit. Bite is has, though. The mornings are beautiful, but I can’t sit on the porch to watch them unfold, even with the sleeping bag I was wrapping myself in for awhile, steaming coffee mug warming my hands. The frost silvers the grasses in the meadow (which John still hasn’t quite found the time to mow) and the sky is showing its winter colors—baby blue and soft pink. I take a refreshing breath of cold air through my sleep-stuffy nose when I open the door to get some fresh kindling and firewood off the porch at six a.m. That is now my encounter with the morning. And I always, always, think about my future animals at that time…Hmmm, I’d have to trudge to the barn right now if I had horses, goats, chickens. Well, maybe I could warm up for a minute or two before bundling up and heading out into the frosty air to feed, water, and check. A mere human could be allowed a little coffee first, no?

This week, the days have been lovely and warm enough to work outside by the time the sun hits the zenith. John and I did so this past weekend. I put a first coat of paint on the front door of the new house and he cleaned up behind the workshop in preparation for stacking wood. Still, I am aware that the stakes have shifted in favor of winter and I feel almost a panic somewhere down deep. I feel like a squirrel wondering, have I stored enough nuts in the right places? I walk around and see things that I thought I’d have plenty of time to do, like till up next year’s garden, and plant the rock garden with ferns (or shell those walnuts!) and realize that it is too late. Those things will have to wait until next year. The other part of it is a feeling of, hurry, hurry, save this! I’ve got to get the paint out of John’s workshop or it will freeze. I’ve got to put the amaryllis bulb and the voodoo plant in the root cellar. What else…what else? I scan the yard for S.O.S. signs.

Inside the cabin, it is a different mood. I’m feeling that familiar surge of creativity that has always come to me in the fall. I still have several weeks to wait until I can have the new house to store non-decorative things like file boxes in, but I got busy one night last week despite that fact. I’ve had these plain white pillows in the cabin for a long time and have always wanted to warm them up, so I took some old yellow and red toile fabric and some buttons and had at it. It is amazing what color will do to help tie a room together. I’m certainly not done yet, but it has already helped the burgeoning color scheme of the cabin’s main room.

Next spring, I’ll probably have a pile of half-finished projects like those pillows, that I thought I’d have plenty of time to get done over the long, dark winter months. And they’ll have to wait until next year, because the outdoors will be calling with all of its chores and charms. I hope I’m that lucky.

Pumpkin. Or Wags. Or...?

2008-10-16T09:59:00.008-04:00

In September, at the birthday party for my friend Colette's father, I had a conversation with her young neice, Sedona. We bonded for a moment over that fact that we were both going to get kittens soon. Sedona had been waiting for her kitten for a long time and was keeping her fingers crossed that her parents would come through on their promise. She had, after all, done all that had been requested of her--cleaning the litter box for their current cat, taking care of her room, and generally being a "good girl" (which isn't too hard for Sedona). I, of course, had no such requirements to fulfill. I just started talking about the four-week old fluffball at our neighbor's house as if he were already mine. Somebody, maybe it was Mary, asked, "Are you really getting a kitten?" and John simply rolled his eyes and said, "It's a done deal." If I were Sedona's age, I would have squealed. Maybe I did anyway.

I waited until we got back from California to fetch him. He's about eight-weeks old now and as cute and cuddly as can be. My granddaughter Maria has seen (and wrangled) him many times on our visits across the road. I asked her what we should name him and she suggested Pumpkin since he is orange (kinda). I am willing to let that be his name if she still thinks it fits. He has this darling habit of wagging his tail like a dog when he walks, though. It seems to signal a naming opportunity. We'll see.

Clarabelle is, well, pissed off. As to be expected. She growls and hisses at him and sits sullenly across the room, glaring in his direction. The kitten is oblivious, given that he's grown up around several cats. I know Clarabelle, and I think she'll settle down soon enough. She acts normal upstairs when he is downstairs and out of sight/smell. I'm giving her lots of attention and keeping it light. "Nothing to see here! Move along folks!"

So, here he is, sitting on the shelf of the computer docking station. How freakin' cute is that?I haven't had a kitten in so long. They play with anything. It's like having a baby--you can give them the keys from your purse and they're like, "Wow! fascinating!" It is delightful to have him here. He is mellower than your normal kitten, too, again from the fact that he's been raised outside with other cats. As I write this, he is sleeping on the same computer shelf. Take the photo above and curl him up in a ball and close his eyes. And then feel your blood pressure drop.

And yes, Sedona got her kitten, too. But of course she did!

Home Again, Home Again

2008-10-13T11:25:00.017-04:00

It's Monday and we are truly, officially not on vacation anymore. We arrived back to Columbus on Friday night, drove out to the farm on Saturday morning, and spent the weekend coming back into ourselves.

California was lovely and our friends were even lovelier. One of the first things we did in Los Angeles was set out for a walk. It was misting, of all things, so we had to don some chapeaux.

There is Col in her infamous kitty hat.

And after that it was non-stop. We ate at fabulous restaurants--how can you not in such cities as LA and San Diego? We saw a hilarious show at the Groundlings Comedy Club. We visited the neighborhood coffee shop every morning to get our coffee on (girl got to get her juice!) And we did something I've never done in all the times I've visited Col in LA--we took a hike. Stough Nature Preserve sits on the hills above Burbank. We walked straight out of the parking lot up some fire roads. The colors were soft and autumnal in a desert-like way.

At the top of one of our hills was a picnic table near a lone pine tree. On the picnic table was a box where people wrote their thoughts on paper and left there for others to read. We had a nice rest there, ate some berries, and of course left our own thoughts on a scrap of paper.

The next day we drove north to wine country in the Santa Inez Valley to do some tasting with some of Col's friends. Yeah, that was hard. That was a really hard day. Mmm hmm.

And then we were off to San Diego. John and I drove our rental car to San Juan Capistrano to sight-see at the Mission before meeting up with Karen. I visited missions near Santa Barbara with my parents when I was a kid. They bought a painting on one of our trips and it hung in our home when I was growing up. I loved looking at it and remembering the cool stones and hot sun, the yellow adobe and fuschia flowers, and the endlessly interesting play of shadow and light across the pathways. This shot reminds me of that painting, and is, for me, the quintessential Mission image:And there are those fuschia flowers (with the addition of a sweet hubby).We stayed in a little motel by the ocean that night and watched a sunset. You can't have a travelogue about California without a sunset shot!The next day we continued down the coast and met up with Karen in San Diego. We took another hike--this time along the coast. We began up high and travelled down to the beach. It was another glorious day, although a little hot. Thank goodness we didn't run out of water! Karen!

We returned to LA after a delicious meal at a Mexican restaurant that one of Col's friends recommended--El Agave. We each had a different mole. I wanted to lick the plate, it was that good.

On our last day, we took it easy with Col, laying around, eating one last meal with one last bottle of wine. And then we flew home.

Thanks to Col and Karen for your hospitality and energy. It was so good to see you both. Friends like you are priceless. Thanks, California, for your rugged beauty and for giving me a new reflection of myself. Hello again, Ohio, my undeniable place of heart. It's good to be home.

Vacation, for real

2008-10-03T16:56:00.003-04:00

Events conspired against a posting today. I wanted to chronicle a lovely walk in the woods that I took yesterday, which included the antics of this deer:Alas, it is not to be. I am hastily doing dishes, putting toiletries into 3 ounce bottles and avoiding the cat as she mews plaintively at me for food. Yes, that's right, I'm preparing for a plane trip. Clarabelle is going to the city apartment with us tonight so that Jack can take care of her for us while we spend a week in...sunny California! (I can't feed her, due to the aforementioned car-sickness from which she suffers [or is it us?]). She'll thank me later.

John and I were going to take this trip back in August as a "yay! we moved!" trip, but for several reasons, it didn't happen until now. Since today, October 3, is our twenty-first wedding anniversary (!), we have re-named it a "yay! w'eve been married for a long time!" trip. Either way, we are looking forward to it. We'll be visiting best friends Colette in Los Angeles, and Karen in San Diego. I am not taking a computer (*gasp), but I will have loads of pictures and stories to share upon our return next weekend.

Until then...

Okay, just one more

2008-09-29T15:10:00.009-04:00

I found not one, but two saddleback caterpillars (Acharia stimulea) munching happily on a dogwood sapling underneath the pear tree the other day. Is it not the most crazy looking caterpillar you've ever seen?

Back in the '80s, I would have so wanted a pair of earrings in their likeness.

They turn into this moth, which I've never seen. Notice the weird little circle on the body of the moth. I wonder if it is left over from the "saddle" on the back of the 'pillar?

I felt a small triumph at spotting these guys. I felt primed to see them because I've been flipping through all the glossy pictures in my identification book, going, "Ooh, ahh," and "I'd like to see that one in real life!" The saddleback was one of the latter. I was fiddling with the hose out by the new trees one evening and happened to glance over and spot them. It was an example, I feel, of that maxim by Louis Pasteur: "In the field of observation, chance favors a prepared mind."

So, I am prepared to spot caterpillars. Woo hoo!

The Current Moment

2008-09-26T10:24:00.010-04:00

I'll close out history week by taking us up to the moment on the progress of the new house. Here is the view of it that I get all the time, walking from the cabin...You'll notice the lounge chairs on the star-gazing deck. I climbed up there and read my book yesterday evening, looking out on the future garden, imagining the best routes for pathways and placement of beds. Instead of a ladder, I was able to use the NEW STAIRS to get to the second storey.John will work his magic on the wood, sanding and staining until the lustre of the oak is restored to a rich, chocolatey hue. This is the same wood that he used for the front of the gift shop at Franklin Park Conservatory, a picture of which I will shamelessly post here. This was just after installation. It looks even better with all the earthy, organic merchandise they place around it.

And here is our bedroom--notice the floor almost done.

And here is the study--will I be able to concentrate with the doors to the deck right there, beckoning?

Who knows when we'll get in. I hope before the really cold weather hits. My friends at Living the Rural Dream have got me thinking about cozying up to the fire. I would love to have the choice of doing so at the new place. Having this stout little cabin for shelter, though, is a comforting thought.

Happy weekend everyone!

The Abandoned House

2008-09-25T10:49:00.017-04:00

In keeping with this week’s history theme, I am featuring the Abandoned House. That’s the name we gave to a once marvelous, Queen Anne style, two-story-with-an-attic house that is melting back into the woods about a quarter mile up Township Road 166 past the cabin. The township road is also abandoned. It turns into grass after our driveway and disappears into the woods altogether after it passes the Abandoned House.

As late afternoon was turning into evening yesterday, I put on jeans and a hat and found a branch to carry in front of me for the trek up the hill. The branch is for the cobwebs that hang like fishing net up the relatively open trail. Even with the branch, I took a few across the face—blech! Here is the road as you head up the trail:

And here it is looking back down: I made a huge racket crunching through the dry leaves. I thought of those frontiersmen I’m reading about and wondered how they managed to move silently through the woods in fall. Every so often, I stopped so that I could hear the sounds around me. There was an eerie feeling in the woods despite the warm glow of the early autumn sunlight. A breeze moved high up in the trees. I shivered a little and looked right and left. I felt the ghosts of the people and animals who traveled this defunct road long ago moving through the trees. I could hear the wagon wheels crunching gravel, the jingle of harness, and the calls of men. I could see children playing and dogs looking for scraps. All these ghosts of the past were busy once with worldly concerns just like me.

The path that cuts off the old road to the Abandoned House is always farther than I think it is. Deer trails scattered up the hill fake me out, too. With the autumn wilt of the vegetation, though, I found the trail easily last night. It isn’t long before you duck under some saplings and the house comes into view.

She's an old, late Victorian lady defiant in her finery. Miss Havisham with a bedraggled lace scarf framing her haggard face.

She is the witch who caught Rapunzel and now the twisted braid of her jealous soul is pulling her down into the earth.

She's an old beauty queen...

with an alchoholic past.

I don't know anything about the Abandoned House except that it was liveable in the 1970s when the Neff's bought the cabin. Wouldn't it be something to live in a "painted lady" tucked up in the middle of the woods at the end of an old township road? Too late for that, obviously. We did get permission from the woman who owns the land that it sits on, however, to harvest pieces of the house, and so a little of it can live on with us. We've got some of the decorative moulding and slate from the roof to make something pretty with in our new house. I know that John is still coveting the beautifully weathered wood off the carriage barn that is falling down in the woods next to the house.

Before the light faded too far and things got downright scary instead of just creepy, I headed back. At the bottom of the hill, I viewed my cabin from the old road--the same vantage point as all those ghosts from years past. I was cheered to know that my cabin is still happily inhabited by flesh and blood people.

History Lessons

2008-09-23T18:42:00.009-04:00

When we arrived here in June, I kept lots of stuff packed away in boxes with the idea that I would get it out once we were in the new house. We already had dishes and pots and pans here, although they were all my castoffs from home—the cheaper, worn out things that you use at a cabin on vacation. Slowly, and because it is taking longer than expected to get into the new house, I’ve been unpacking all my better stuff and using it now in the cabin. I needed a cake pan, then the hand mixer, then a muffin tin, and oh, hell why not bring down the blender while I’m at it…

Today, I hooked up the HP Photo-smart printer/scanner—something that was waiting for the office in the new house. I had to, though, because I can’t wait any longer to write this post about the history of the cabin and our little patch of land. My eagerness comes from the book I’m reading: The Frontiersmen by Allan Eckert. I knew about Eckert from his book That Dark and Bloody River, a history of the Ohio River Valley. I had no idea what a prolific writer he is, though, as well as a “noted American naturalist” according to his website. He was nominated seven times for the Pulitzer Prize—one of those times was for The Frontiersmen. It is a historical narrative about the opening of Kentucky and the Northwest Territory (including my patch of Ohio) from 1755 – 1836. Our cabin was built in 1828. It is fascinating to read about what it was like back then, and a joy to have it written so well. Eckert writes with respect and admiration for both sides of the conflict—American Indian and white settler, in particular the frontiersmen Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone. Though it was inevitable that North America was invaded by Europeans, I wish that they would have done it with a lot more respect and tolerance. What a shame that we’ve lost the rich culture of the indigenous people of this part of the world. I think about them when I walk around our woods and meadows. I wonder what they did here—whether any villages sat here, or if it was a hunting ground, or an important trailway.

I also wonder often about the people who built this cabin, Abner and Jane Williams.

The cabin and differing portions of the land was in Abner’s family until we purchased it in 2001 from his great, great granddaughter, Mary Lou Neff and her husband, Bill. Bill and Mary Lou bought the property in the 1970s and worked hard to get it listed on the National Register of Historical Places. They were successful…
The Neffs were so friendly and shared a lot of information about the property. Mary Lou made color copies of the two original land deeds for the farm, signed by presidents James Madison and James Monroe. They were too big to scan, but I’m planning on framing them and hanging them in the cabin for visitors. She also gave us copies of pictures—of Abner and Jane above, and a long view of the land from sometime in the past. Lots of deforestation, for sure! The above is a shot from our neighbor's land across County Rd. 761 which doesn't exist in this picture. The old Township Rd 166 follows the tree line you see going past the cabin on the far left. Below is a closer view of the cabin and the barn from the picture above.Mary Lou also gave us copies of the application for the National Register designation. From that I learned the following:
“According to family records and Noble Co. History, Abner Williams (a Quaker) acquired the land in 1827, so presumably the house was built in 1827 or 1828. Abner was one of the first two Justices of the Peace for Wayne Twp (1851). Abner and his wife, Jane, had nine children who were raised in the house. One daughter died at age 16. A son, Aaron, died in the Civil War (Co. G., 78th Ohio Vol. Inf.). Another son, Thomas, represented Noble County in the State Legislature in the 1880s.

“The house is a fine specimen of the log architecture of the period. The foundation has been repaired (with logs from an old log building nearby). Some of the original hardware remains on doors. There is original flooring on the second floor, and doors and two of the windows appear to be original. Planned restoration includes removing additions of a kitchen and lean-to, also restoring original fireplace which was converted to a smaller parlor fireplace when kitchen was added (probably mid-1800s).”

When I read about the people who built this place that I’m sitting in 180 years later, I think several things. First I think: Nine children. Wow. At least Jane had a parlor fireplace. That was nice. And then I simply marvel at the passing of time and generations and cultures. What would those people say if they could visit their home today? They’d see me typing at my computer, scanning a worn picture of them on my Photo-smart, and drinking an espresso made on the electric range. And I’d have to tell them that my husband is off making a living for us in the nearby city. And that, oh yeah, I’ll be getting around to shelling those walnuts in just a few days. Jeez, give me a break, Abner! This land has been here for a long time. I presume that the Indians knew it intimately. The settlers came and got to know it in a different way. One family lived on it for generations. And now I live here. I feel a responsibility to learn more about the history of this place—not only about the people who have lived here, but of the land itself. History is as big as you want it to be, I guess. I don’t have any detailed plans on learning all the things I want to know, but I delight in finding tidbits here and there and pondering them while I sit listening to the late summer crickets and watching the colors turn yet again to those of another season.

Another Moth Moment, brought to you by a local sponsor

2008-09-18T09:01:00.007-04:00

I was so happy to have my caterpillar identification book on hand when I found this creature struggling along in the mud down by the new house the other day:

I was able to identify it as this moth that we found several weeks ago:

It is a Pandorus Sphinx moth (Eumorpha pandorus). My book says that the caterpillar (about 3.5 inches long!) is "frequently encountered while it is wandering in search of a pupaton site." It also says that grape is a common host plant for it, so I left it by the grapevine in front of the cabin in the hopes that it would find that a suitable site for its metamorphosis.

Pretty cool, huh?

Stormy Weather

2008-09-17T11:26:00.007-04:00

I was in the basement of my old parish church in Cincinnati, Ohio when the big wind storm, the fallout from Hurricane Ike, hit the Midwest on Sunday. I’m tempted to give that coincidence some meaning…old ways uprooted, the past turned over for examination, the danger of life’s flying debris. I was celebrating the 90th birthday of my best friend Colette’s father. The party was in the undercroft (basement) of St. Antoninus, the church I attended all through childhood. When I was a kid, the undercroft was the church. There were always plans to build the fancy new church on top, but that didn’t happen until many years after I left the area.

Because we were in the basement, we didn’t hear the storm at all. When we left the party at 3:00 in the afternoon, we were stunned. The wind was tearing at the pansies in the centerpiece I took home with me and uplifting the skirt of my dress. Fully grown trees were uprooted and lying on the ground across roads and driveways, cars and electrical wires. Smaller branches were scattered everywhere, green against the browned grass of late summer. What had we missed while eating ham sandwiches and laughing over pictures from the Whitaker family’s archives?

My own Dad had accompanied me to the party and the two of us got in the car and began to make our way back to his house, north of Cincy. We took a detour before leaving the area, though, and drove past our old home on Beechmeadow Lane. As is often the case when you visit childhood landmarks, everything looked tiny. The giant hill that my friends and I flew down on our bikes and huffed and puffed back up was a mild slope. The mansions on Ralph Avenue behind our house looked like regular houses, a little worse for the wear. Dad suggested we drive past Seton High School, the scene of many crimes by (and against) me and Colette. The area around the school looked pretty much the same, but the school itself must have had a very successful fund drive. The lawn where we practiced archery is taken up by a big new addition. I assume it is a new gym and cafeteria and something else besides.

I dropped Dad off successfully, though his house had no power. I got back in my car and headed up I-71 to Columbus. Counter-intuitively, everyone was speeding along at 80 mph. I guess the wind speeds were setting the pace. Plenty of trees were down along the sides of the highway, and corn shucks were flying through the air, Wizard of Oz-like. Yellowed sheaves swirled off the fields to the right and left of the road, flying past the windshield against a backdrop of bruise-colored sky. It was ominous, a melancholy reminder of the coming season.

No power at the apartment in Columbus either. Mary and Jon had some, though, so we had a farewell pizza party for Sarah at their house. We dropped Sarah off at the airport at 5:00 the next morning, with a hope and a kiss that her flights were all a go. Jack and I went back to bed and by the time we woke up, we had power again, as did Stauf’s. Whoopee! After cappuccinos and a bagel, I was back on the road towards home.

My quiet little farm, how I miss you when I’m gone. I took a walk to survey the damage. It was much less intense here, but there was evidence of the storm. The gnome homes were swept away—yikes, poor gnomes!—and lots of branches were down in the yard around the cabin and along the woods trail. There were a few trees, tall skinny ones that were uprooted or snapped off near the base, lying across the trail. And walnuts everywhere! I thought about how the settlers might have appreciated that effect of the storm. I twisted my ankle on one yesterday while walking through the yard, so I’ll be picking them up today. I’m going to try cracking them open. I hear it is a lot of work, but worth it for the freshest walnuts you’ll ever taste.

I found this stick while on my walk.
You can look at it this way:
And this way: The camera doesn't quite capture the lovely mauve color of the underside of the fungus. It is quietly beautiful—another small gift from a big storm.

So, we’re safe out here in the country. Many of my friends and family are still without power in Columbus. And of course, the people in Texas are suffering greatly. After seeing the destruction from the aftermath of Ike, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be hit by it directly. I only hope that the victims of the storm will find small gifts somewhere, left unexpectedly in their path.

Vacation by Proxy

2008-09-11T09:21:00.013-04:00

Don't you love it when someone visits you, and though you are not technically on vacation, you feel as if you are? That's what this week has been like with Sarah here. We've gone out to eat, taken hikes, played Scrabble. I've felt entitled to purchase souvenirs, put off chores, and sleep in late.

John actually did take two days off and the three of us had some adventures. We took a hike up the now dry stream bed.

Some beautiful blue flower was blooming on the banks. I can't identify it with the one book of wildflowers that I have, so we'll just have to enjoy it with a Beginner's Mind.

X marked a good spot!

Hints of fall were everywhere.

Yesterday we took to Seneca Lake. It was a gorgeous Indian summer day with clear blue skies after a cleansing rain, warm sun, and cool shade. We saw a pair of pileated woodpeckers in the pines when we were unloading the canoe. A great blue heron was wading in the lake and we chased him down the shoreline as we struck out. He squawked in irritation after being rousted out of his fourth put-down. (Sorry, heron. If you would stay still, I'd take a picture of you, that's all.) Kingfishers swooped by several times, skimming the surface of the lake like small planes. It was altogether glorious.

I scored the Queen's seat in the middle of the canoe.We're heading to the city today for a long weekend of visiting before Sarah flies back to Mexico on Monday morning. Ah, vacation! Wish it would never end.

Our Wayfaring Stranger

2008-09-08T15:10:00.004-04:00

Posting could be extra light this week, because Sarah is in town! After a 10-month teaching stint in Beijing, she is back in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is what she calls home these days. She came "home" to us last Friday for a 10-day visit. We haven't seen her in beautiful Ohio for more than a year, so we're soaking her up. As I write this, she is napping in the hammock, and Jack is snoozing on the porch after we all took a walk through the woods and the hot sunny meadows. I made us grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches before we left, while they played frisbee. I feel like a mom again : )

In the meantime, click here to read the article that Sarah published recently on the webzine, Global Human.

Some Splainin'

2008-09-04T21:23:00.017-04:00

Gosh. If there are any entomologists reading this blog, I'm sorry. I've misnamed a few insects and made wrong assumptions about others. Not a huge crime, thankfully.

Yes, my insect identification books came in the mail and I've been flipping through the pages, marveling at all the amazing caterpillars that are apparently chomping happily through the vegetation right under my nose. (How do people learn to see these things?) Here are a few things I've learned:

This guy is not a butterfly at all, but a day-flying moth. An Eight-spotted Forester (Alypia octomaculata) to be exact.

Do you remember my little experiment with feeding the caterpillar many posts ago? Well, the caterpillar was languishing in the makeshift home I gave him, despite fresh walnut leaves everyday. I set him free rather than have him go the way of my childhood experiments--moldy messes of food-colored concoctions. But, I believe I've identified him as a Hickory Tussock Moth (Lophocampa caryae). And it is no wonder the birds didn't eat him--those little hairs can cause rashes and itching. Speaking of tussock moths, check out the cleverly named White Marked Tussock Moth caterpillar (Orgyia leucostigma) I found on the screen door to the cabin just this evening.

And then there is the Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva punctella)

And the Painted Lichen Moth (Hypopepia fucosa)

It is endless, folks. So many pretty things right in front of me. I'll leave you with some images from my walk in the back pasture this morning. The light was gorgeous and the spider webs were sparkling. The thistle was blooming and the butterflies were warming up for one more day of nectaring. That's what I want to have always--just one more day of nectaring.

Busy as Bees (or Squirrels)

2008-09-03T15:58:00.011-04:00

As the summer winds down, John and I are joining all the other creatures busily going about their fall chores. I'm not going to be outdone by the squirrel who is storing walnuts between the bricks of the chimney and the wall of the cabin. Whenever I hear his scritching and scratching from inside the bedroom, I run outside to shoo him away. He sticks his head out from around the chimney and looks at me curiously. In my head, he has a New York accent and he is saying, Whaddya want? These here are my nuts, lady. Go get your own.

I'm not gathering nuts, but I'm getting some other things done while the getting is good. I spent the larger part of today canning grape juice under the guidance of my neighbor, Sharon. She was over the other day and drew my attention to the falling down grapevine in front of the cabin. I said I didn't think the grapes were ripening, but boy was I wrong. I casually said that I should make grape jelly, and Sharon gently suggested I start with something simpler like grape juice. She described an easy sounding recipe and said she would help me make some if I wanted to try. Later that day, her youngest daughter, Sarah, ran a jar of their homemade grape juice over so that I could taste it. I poured a glass a few hours later after getting hot and sweaty helping John plant trees, and I'm telling you that the heavens opened up and angel music sounded. It was the best grape juice I've ever had in my life. In fact, after tasting this stuff, I hestitate to say that I've ever had grape juice before.

So, the next day I picked a large tupperware bowl full of grapes.

And today, Sharon taught me how to turn them into grape juice.

The juice will turn a dark purple and the grapes will sink to the bottom over time. I had some grapes left over and I'm going to try to make raisins with them. If I'm successful, you'll see the results posted here.

As for the trees that John and I planted, ta da:

Aren't they cute? One day they will grow up to become a large, green, and "firry" screen to hide the new buildings from the cabin, and shield the cabin from the road.

We also planted a spruce tree which looks pretty pathetic from this angle...

But look at it this way...

Very impressive!

And that is the report from a tuckered out farm girl, soaking up the last of summer.

Pretty Pictures

2008-08-28T13:31:00.011-04:00

I'm in the city for a few days and thought I'd post some pretty pictures from the country for myself as well as y'all.

Check out the crazy oncidium orchid...

Like everything else out here, I think it likes it. I've never had such a big spike with so many branches on it before. Could have a lot to do with the increased sunlight, though. I had it on the porch all summer. Its nickname is "Dancing Doll." Do you see her?And here is a leaf that looks like a butterfly.And here is a butterfly! This little guy came by earlier this summer and perched on my finger for a long time. I've ordered some insect i.d. books from Amazon. They are coming soon and then I'll be able to post the names of all these creatures I come across.John's birthday bouquet--fresh from the meadow.Dinner anyone?

Enjoy the long weekend!

Initiated

2008-08-26T10:08:00.005-04:00

Well, it happened. We ran out of water. The night before last, right before bed, John called down from upstairs, "Uh oh." He walked down to the new house and turned on the pump which pulls water from the spring to the holding tank. It ran for about fifteen minutes. That's about 15 gallons. Right before leaving for Columbus at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, he ran it again and we got about 5 more gallons. Then he gave me a hug, grabbed his coffee and said, "Bye."

Our neighbors, Gary and Sharon, haul their own water in a 300 gallon tank in the back of their pick up. They make the fifteen minute drive to Quaker City and buy the water from the fire department. I'm not sure how many times a week they go. They are a family of six, so I think they go a lot. Our holding tank has a 2,500 gallon capacity--which would last John and me a long time. It hasn't rained here in weeks, though. The ground is dry and cracked more than an inch wide where the bare clay is exposed. The grass is brown and brittle. I knew that the neighbors would haul a load of water for me if I needed them to, but I really wanted to fill that tank to the brim. It doesn't look like rain anytime soon.

I spent the morning reading, writing, doing some work for work, and calling the Quaker City Fire Department, the Quaker City Municipal offices, the Quaker City Water Works, and the Old Washington Fire Department. Not one time did anyone answer their phone. Hmm.

So I finally called the neighbors just to ask if they knew whether the fire department would indeed deliver water if someone needed it. I got Wade on the line, who didn't know, but would be happy to drive down there with me to find out after his dad Gary got home from work at 2:00. We could take their truck just in case the answer was no. When Gary got home, he happened to have a local newspaper in it with an ad for water hauling service. "If this guy is too expensive, let me know and we'll find you the number of the lady we used to use."

Jeff Martin answered his phone right away. He could come by that evening after picking his son up from football practice. His truck held 2,700 gallons of water, so I could get a full fill-up. Hallelujah! I gave him directions, which didn't leave me feeling as confident, but I held the faith. He showed up in his big shiny truck around 7:00 p.m. We hit it off famously. Turns out he sells all natural beef from his farm in nearby Cumberland. "Why, I was just reading a book that made me think I needed to find a local source of meat," I said. (see previous post re: The Omnivore's Dilemma.) And he just built a hunting lodge for private lease hunting (lots of turkey there, guys!). He told me I needed some chickens and I replied that, "Yes! I want chickens and goats." He does some consulting on small farming operations and his son 4Hs on goats. (He used 4H as a verb). And of course he would be happy to haul water for me again. I got all this--precious water and valuable information--for $125.

My neighbor Sharon called me later that evening. "I just got home and heard you're one of us now," she said. "Yep," I answered proudly, "I ran out of water!" I'd been baptized, so to speak. But into what? The pains in the butt particular to country life? No. The playfulness in Sharon's voice and my small feeling of triumph indicated something opposite. My water problem had been an opportunity to settle into the ways of this place a little more deeply.

Problem solving out here leads you down weird paths. It is hard to get people on the phone, and not many businesses are listed in the phone book or on the Internet. You have to ask somebody in person and then the chain of events will begin to roll. The people you meet along the way are all wells of knowledge and information and, often, good humor. They are resourceful and entrepreneurial and generous and they really love it out here. Many of the families have lived here for generations and they know the history of the land and buildings and other people who live nearby. I'm not used to that. I'm used to more impersonal dealings with people who know about as much as I do about whatever.

I was happy last night. Happy to have water again, happy to know about a source of local, natural beef, happy to have met someone nice, happy to have kind neighbors across the road. It wasn't a full dunking, maybe, but my toes are definitely wet in the waters. When the next problem (opportunity) comes along, I'll be ready to dive in, head first.

Garden Fever

2008-08-25T11:19:00.007-04:00

It’s that wonderful time of year when everyone shares the overflow from their gardens with neighbors, friends, and heck even enemies when it comes to zucchini. This yearly act of generosity always makes me think, dang it—next year I’m having a garden!

I never did get one at our Columbus house. The backyard had a gigantic oak tree in the middle of it, and a mature maple in the corner. It made for shady sitting on hot summer days, but really terrible vegetable gardening. The front yard was blazing sun and would have made a great site for a potage garden where vegetables and herbs grow alongside ornamentals in lovely arranged beds. I knew myself too well, however, to let the fantasy of a well maintained potage garden, the likes of which you see only in glossy garden magazines, turn my front yard into a thing that would have the neighbors complaining anonymously to the city officials.

But next year…my garden is going to “kick ass” as the Anne Taintor button says. The site is all picked out—you’ll be able to look down on it from the star-gazing deck. You’ll meander through it when traveling up to the cabin from the new house, and back again. It is going to have a rustic arbor in the middle of it with wisteria (or grapevine, haven’t decided) growing over it and a table in the middle of it for al-fresco dining. It will have some raised beds for tender things and I’m going to start amending the in-ground beds this fall with leaves and cover crops. I’m going to have potatoes, melons, peppers, carrots—you name it.

And it will have a fence. A good fence that goes underground to thwart the groundhogs and that has little sacks of human hair hanging from it like shrunken heads to ward off the deer. Because, actually, I did have a little “garden” this year…our builder, Tom Shingary, brought me some tomato plants in the middle of July. They were leftover from what he planted of the leftovers from another person’s garden. I was not optimistic about getting tomatoes from plants put in our hard clay ground in the middle of July, but what the heck. They surprised me by growing quickly and steadily. They had several flowers and some green fruit and all was going well until one morning when we walked down to water them (they are in front of the new house) and our jaws dropped open. Regard the carnage wreaked by the “Fearsome Five,” our little band of deer that visit the meadow every morning and evening: They even ate the pokeweed nearby. It was dessert I guess. Since we have an apple orchard and a few pear trees already, I’m reading books about growing fruit and I admit to a modicum of despair. It seems technical and picky and so very hit-or-miss. But, without doing one thing to our trees, look at the bounty they are bestowing on us newbies: Along with the tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, plums, and yes zucchini that my friends and neighbors are sharing with me, I have also been inspired by the book I’m currently reading: It is eye-opening, and often jaw-dropping. Read it if you dare to understand where our food comes from. And look out, it might just make you want to start a garden of your own.

Into the Woods

2008-08-20T11:45:00.010-04:00

Deep summer and the forest is dark and dense. It covers the hillside to the east of the cabin and rolls along southward till it meets another line of woods that heads west. In winter, you can see the top line of the hills and all the ground below. In summer you see only the trunks of the nearest trees and behind them, a curtain of deep, dark, mysterious hush. In summer, it is the forest of fairy tales, the archetypal forest that characters must enter for one reason or another. All sorts of magical things happen under the cloak of the aestival forest.

I’m sitting in it as I write this. In this chair: John is working from home and the infernal “conference calls on speaker phones” have begun (in quotes because I think it could be the name of a band—an awful punk band who plays dissonant, screeching chords over screaming vocals:) I moved to the bench under the apple trees with my trusty laptop, but the boys are playing the radio and making a racket at the new house. So, I escaped to the woods. It is another world, right next to the one I was just in a second ago.

The threshold to our woods has been celebrated with one of John’s arbors. As well it should be, because there is a distinct difference in tone as you cross over from open meadow or lawn to woods. Immediately there is a shift in perception. Some liminal awareness in the brain is roused. The meadows are all noise and light and color and movement that hold pockets of silence here and there. The woods are the opposite. They are quiet and dark, mostly green and brown, with small darts of movement and shivers of sound that startle and catch the eye. In the meadows I am looking at everything. In the woods, everything is looking at me. We’ve got a lot of multiflora rose in our woods. And bittersweet vine and grapevine and Virginia creeper and another type of vine whose name I do not know. All of that is unfortunate, but not unusual for this part of the country. The old growth forest is long gone (except for the logs of our cabin!) and those nasty invasives have taken hold. We make the best of the bittersweet and grapevine, though. John makes his wonderful furniture and I cut swaths of the red berries haloed with orange petals from the bittersweet in fall. And I have to admit that the shapes of random grapevine make me want to craft on the spot.
People are talking about summer winding down and I begrudgingly admit that it is. The warm weather will stay around for awhile, I know, but the days are getting shorter. You can sense the plants beginning to draw back into themselves. The beauty we have to look forward to, though, is the glory of fall. The woods will change moods along with its clothes. I’ve seen it before, but this year, I’ll be here for all the subtleties and I’m excited about that. Another simple pleasure (that is somehow complex) of living here year-round. I’ll report back on the changes.

Cassandra Marie July 1992 - August 16, 2008

2008-08-19T07:00:00.002-04:00

I have a heavy heart. Our sweet dog, our coonhound mix Cassie, is gone. We had to put her down this past weekend. We have been agonizing over whether and when to do it for a long time. In true coonhound fashion, though, she kept hanging tough, fooling us into thinking she could keep going for another day, another week, another month—who knew how long? It became apparent on Saturday morning that her time had run out. After the second seizure, John walked down to the new house where the boys were working and asked Tom for the name of a good vet. “Hopefully they can do something,” Tom said, even though John had made it clear that it didn’t look good. Those guys really liked her. Everyone really liked her.

We found Cassie at the pound sixteen years ago in Columbus. We had just moved from the country and had to give away a little terrier we had there. John and I were thinking we wouldn’t get another dog. Everyday life was easier without one. I’ll never forget what our passionate middle daughter, Sarah, who was ten years old at the time said about that decision: “We are NOT the kind of people who don’t have a dog!” It was such an adamant declaration of our family’s identity—or Sarah’s perception of it at least—that it settled the matter. Soon after that, John called me from the pound one afternoon and said, “You have got to come see this puppy.”

Cassie with the velvet ears and sad brown eyes.
Cassie with blue-ticking poured over tree-walker brown and black.
Cassie with the paws of a larger dog on her short body, the sway back of a basset hound and face that people mistook for beagle, unless they were from the country.
Everyone from the country nodded their head at her and said, “Nice coonhound.”

Cassie the food-stealer, baby licker, bird hunter.
Cassie the dog that people who don’t like dogs found themselves liking.
Cassie the pack-hound who couldn’t stand it when the kids would hike the trail ahead of the parents, and would run back and forth between us, barking her disapproval.

Every time we picked her up from vet after boarding her for our no-dog vacations, she made the receptionist laugh so hard because she stood there in the waiting room and chewed us out. Bark, bark, bark! Where the hell have you been? Don’t you ever! And then she would stop, lecture over, and pull us to the door with her leash looking all the world like a mother who had just put her foot down with her unruly children for the last time!

It was that love of being with the pack that helped John and I make our decision. We did not want her to die alone, in her kennel where we had to put her when we left the house to help her feel secure and to keep her from soiling the floors. Instead, we were with her, whispering what a good, good dog she was. And even though she couldn’t hear us with her ears anymore, she was listening with another part of her. She was calm and quiet and ready for rest. A well-earned rest in whatever heaven that dogs can imagine.

House Update

2008-08-15T12:30:00.013-04:00

Construction on the new house is speeding right along, as fast as three guys, one with bad knees, can make it go. I can hardly wait to get in there and start decorating. I have a little while to wait yet, but when you consider that it has taken three years to get here, a few more months is nothing. It is so close I can taste it, and my saliva glands are working overtime.

The story of our new house goes something like this:
John found a dismantled barn for sale in the newspaper about five years ago. He called on it and arranged to meet the guy who owned it at a barn in Pickerington where it was stored. The guy had dreams of putting it back up again someday, but he ran out of time. The people who owned the barn where it was stored wanted to move and they needed it out of there. The guy had marked each beam and photographed each step of the process. It was just what you wanted to find in a dismantled barn. In addition to the 24x36’ structure, he had a 16x16’ building available, too. John took them both plus some oak flooring and other “vintage” lumber. We thought we would use the bigger one for the horse barn and the smaller one for John’s workshop. We’d buy another dismantled barn later and turn it into a house. (la di da!)

Now all we (John) had to do was move it. Getting a dismantled barn loaded into the back of your truck is one of those “easier said than done” things. All I remember about it is that one snowy Easter weekend, John and Jack used a canoe dolly to move several thousand pounds of barn lumber in a rented U-Haul. There was a huge snowstorm going on while they drove along back roads in the dark. Once they arrived at our farm, they had the pleasure of lifting all the beams one more time to load them into our old barn for storage. Good times, good times.

John had the idea for a while that he would put the barn back up himself, perhaps with the help of some Amish people for the main beams. Hoo boy, to think of that now makes me laugh. Or shudder. As it turned out, he asked around at the local lumber company for someone who could put up an old barn. Yes, there was an Amish man he could try, but there was another name that kept coming up: Tom Shingary.

We met Tom at the farm one weekend to discuss the project. He drove up in his maroon and cream conversion van and got out to meet us. He had a ball cap on covering his thick white hair, large blue eyes lined with black lashes, and a round nose. He had a friendly gruff voice, like a grandpa you are a little bit afraid of, but who you know will soften and give you whatever you want if you ask for it politely. After we looked at the beams stacked in our barn and talked at length about what we were planning, Tom asked if we wanted to take a drive and look at some of the other barns he had reassembled—some to work as barns again, and some to work as houses. After that tour, we were convinced that Tom was our man. A year later, he started work with the help of his brothers who own an excavation company, his son who owns a gravel company, a few workers who have changed over the years, and his teenaged grandson from time to time.

The original plan of making it the horse barn changed when we saw what a bulldozer does to the land. John and I were stunned when we came out to the farm one weekend and saw our little hilltop that the barn was supposed to sit on gone. They ran into some limestone rocks while trying to level the site and so it went deeper and deeper until the site was downhill rather than uphill. We cried when we saw it and felt so guilty. We learned a good lesson: go slowly and think it through, because you can’t put it back once you bulldoze it.

To quote John’s famous saying, though, “it couldn’t have worked out any better.” Because we realized that we should make it into our house. The site was perfect—it was the right distance from the cabin, it had a fantastic view, the major upheaval of the land was already done, and who wanted to find another dismantled barn and move it again for our house? We could build something smaller for the horses later. And so our new house was conceived. It has been gestating for a few years, and now it is almost arrived.

“The boys,” as we affectionately call them, arrive every morning, Monday through Saturday, around 7:30 a.m. and work until 3:00 p.m. I hear them laughing and guffawing in-between saw cuts. I hear the radio playing oldies rock some days. They love Cassie, our old coonhound, who ambles down there several times a day to beg food. “We know it’s lunchtime when she comes down here!” They like the house they are building for us, and take pride in doing a good job. I clean up their cigarette butts and pop cans after they leave. I took fresh baked cookies down one day (after Cassie stole one of their lunches). I suppose I’ll miss the boys a little bit when they don’t show up every day in Tom’s white work truck. But, I think I’ll live.

Here are some pictures of what it looks like now…

The view that you get when walking to the house from the cabin (That's going to be the screened in porch below and the star-gazing deck above)

And the other side of the house, facing the road. That is the cedar siding going up on the bottom half. We're going to just let it turn gray over time. Mmm, patina.And the front of the house with the awesome dormers

And there is Tom in the white shirt. The other two have sinced moved on--the fella in the cap became ill with cancer, and the other guy, I'm not sure. They did not want their picture taken. Can you tell? This was taken several years ago, as evidenced by the post and beam still visible on the left. Tom has trimmed down since, after a scare with heart surgery. He's looking good, though he is the one with the bad knees I mentioned. He gets the young guys to climb the ladders.

And here is John's tidy little workshop completed in the same cedar siding as the house. Add the almond windows and a red door and some landscaping to it and you'll know what the finished house will look like.

As a final note on this fifteenth of August, Happy Birthday to John! We'll be celebrating tomorrow with Mary and Jon and the kids and Jackson, too. Pictures forthcoming!

Strange Changes

2008-08-14T11:18:00.012-04:00

We don’t have a TV here in the country. Our old set is at the apartment in Columbus and it still works for channels 4, 6 and 10, but it is a dinosaur in the land of electronics and I’m not going to move it here. I think we will get a new TV when the new house is ready, but I’m not sure of that. I don’t want to miss anything because I’m watching TV.

I don’t want to miss the deer that come to the orchard in the morning mist.
I don’t want to miss the milk snake crossing the driveway.

I don’t want to miss the colors of the sunset reflecting on the clouds across the meadow.
I don’t want to miss seeing the crazy collection of moths dressed in their Erte cloaks resting against the back of the new house.

My life here is definitely different. My habits are different. When I go to the apartment in the city, the TV sits on a table in the smallish living room and I automatically desire to turn it on. Like an alcoholic seeing a bottle of gin, I guess. I want to zone out, numb over, forget. Out here, since I don’t have a TV, I end up sitting quietly on the porch, looking at the meadow and noticing the thoughts flickering across my mind and the general feeling in my heart and my body. It amazes me how much time I have spent avoiding this kind of introspection. Even though I crave it, if given the opportunity to avoid it, I will—through a variety of means that the city offers in truckloads: shopping, eating, drinking, watching TV, working out. None of those things is bad in and of itself, but I have used them all to avoid quietly sitting.

One of the reasons I wanted to move to the country was to cultivate this art of quietly sitting, and it is one of the things that is changing me the most. When John is in town at the office and I’m here all alone, the quietude really spreads its fingers wide. A deep well appears and so far, I’ve just peeked over the edge at the dark waters below. It is both restful and energizing in a way that I don’t have much experience feeling. And because of that lack of experience, it can be a little scary. It is intriguing enough, though, to keep me tuning in.

Before anyone gets too aggravated with my rhapsody, I want you to know that I understand what a bit of grace it is to be able to do this. I don’t have kids to haul around and cook for, and no full-time job sapping my last bit of creative energy. And for that I am grateful to the marrow (the job part especially--I love my kids :) I just wanted you to know that I’m not wasting my dose of grace on TV. Maybe when winter comes and the dark settles early and the new season of House begins, I will change my tune. For now, I’m allowing the exterior change in my life to affect the interior, too. And I am here to report that the process is surprising and amazing. I have the feeling that it would take me as far as I wanted to go. That somehow, it wants me. It wants all of us and is waiting patiently for us to pay attention so that it can reveal wonder after wonder.

BFP aka Miss Clarabelle

2008-08-09T12:42:00.001-04:00

I’ve had a request for a feature on my kitty, Clarabelle. My friend Colette calls her “big fat puss,” and if you’ve ever met my cat, you will understand the nickname. She wasn’t always a bfp, and she slims down to what I call her “summer weight” some years, but mostly she is a wonderful puddle of tortoise shell kitty who is a delight to cuddle with on winter days.

John and Jack found Clarabelle for me at the SPCA in the spring of 2000. After my college cat, Mia, died in 1999, I needed to wait awhile before getting another. Mia was special and I’d had her for close to twenty years. I was also working as a long-term sub in a large high school and had no time or energy to tame a new kitty. But, I had my request in to the cat network—that unseen force of the Universe that links up the right people with the right strays. I wanted an older cat, a tortoise shell, and preferably a female.

Clare was a beautifully marked torty, close to a year old, spayed, and de-clawed on the front. Because of all that, I have always thought that she got lost one day and never made it back home—that she wasn’t abandoned. I wouldn’t de-claw a cat, but I have to admit that my wicker chairs still look good, and for that I am grateful. She has lost almost all her teeth over the past eight years. They just rotted and fell out. Despite her lack of weaponry, though, she can keep dogs at bay with her growl and her glare, and she recently caught what I might call a school-age bunny rabbit. Lucky for the rabbit, she couldn’t kill it, but she brought it half-way to the porch in her gums before dropping it on the ground.

Clare visited the farm a few times before we moved here. When we came out for a week in summer, or for four-day weekends, I would bring her along. She would have to sit on a towel on my lap for the car ride. The last twenty minutes on the way here from the city is up and down and all around, and poor Clare would puke every time. When she is on my lap, it isn’t as bad as when she is in her carrier, so I would brave the coating of cat hair and the discomfort of keeping my legs in one place for over an hour for her benefit.

In fact, I have always bent over backwards for Clare, and have let her get away with just about anything. Jack notices this and calls me on it. “If the dog curled up on the clean laundry for a nap, you’d go crazy!” Yes, I would kill the dog if she did that. But, how can you be mad when you come upon Clare all curled up in a ball with her paw shading her eyes in a basket of laundry that she had the curiosity to find on her own? And when you say, “Clare, what are you doing in there!?” she lets out a little purr and moves her paw so that she can see who it is, then scoots around on her back and offers up her belly with the soft yellow spot. Who could resist?

And the accommodations for the car sickness were worth it, because Clare loves it out here. She is in heaven. On one of the first nights here after the move, she and I were both sitting on the front porch watching fireflies light up the dusk. I was in the big red chair and she was sitting just at the edge of the porch. It was one of those moments where we looked at each other at the exact same time. She turned her head and I glanced down. I swear she had a smile on her face. She blinked once in the slow, communicative way that cats do. In the way that says, “I am satisfied.” And then she turned her head back and resumed contemplation of her good fortune.

Colette says that Clare is “the perfect cat.” I’m not sure exactly what that means for Col. For me, it means that she has a pink nose and green eyes. She has a yellow patch on her chest with a darker yellow stripe in it. She has round black paws that remind me of the stockings on French can-can dancers. And she talks. You can ask her a question and she’ll respond with a scratchy little “mah” that sounds just like “yeah.” And come winter time, she is the best lap warmer around and will put up with much shifting of weight and rearrangement of books, coffee mugs, etc.

Clare’s farm life consists of lolling about on the porch of the cabin, stalking insects in the tall grass, exploring the old barn and other outbuildings, cackling at the wrens when they are nesting near the porch, and making forays underneath the cabin where she picks up cobwebs that hang comically from her whiskers until I pull them off. Oh, and eating at regular intervals. She is what we call in the horse world an “easy keeper.” A small handful of dry food and one third of a can of wet keep her nice and round. And, I wouldn’t have her any other way.

I Need Monet

2008-08-06T08:00:00.001-04:00

The cat has acquired a new habit since moving here. When I open the door to let her out, she swivels her head back and forth, from side to side several times, continuously as she steps slowly, carefully across the threshold and out the door.

I know how she feels. There is so much to look at. When I walk in the meadows, which are glorious right now, I do the same thing. My pace slows, sometimes to a standstill, while my eyes try to take in everything, every detail, every nuance in the landscape—the long views, the macro views, this leaf, that flower, this grass, that tree in the distance.

It is a matter of texture: there are thousands of them in every square foot—hairy thistles, smooth grass blades, fuzzy seed heads.
It is a matter of shape: circular discs of clover leaves, candelabras of ironweed blossoms, fountain sprays of goldenrod getting ready to burst into full feather dusters.
It is a matter of color: purple coneflowers dying back to brown, green apples with the first blush of red forming in the trees, bright yellow surprise of Jerusalem artichoke waving on stems as high as the ironweed, all against a background of chlorophyll in every shade imaginable.
It is a matter of pattern: how many thousand—five, ten?—round heads of Queen Anne’s lace bobbing in the breeze on a plane just above the tallest grasses.

I can’t see it all! My eyes are like hungry puppies that can’t gobble their food fast enough. I could look and look and look all day. If I had my books with me, I’d rustle up a quote from E.O. Wilson’s, Biophilia, about how we humans evolved in the midst of all this creative variety and artistic juxtaposition that exists in nature, and therefore in us. No wonder our brains are so complex. And no wonder that we need nature in such a fundamental way, that it inspires us still.

Or, forget E.O. Wilson, and think of Captain Kirk visiting that planet that was so like Earth. After all those barren outposts with rocky terrain and red skies, they came upon a planet soft with vegetation and ringing with birdsong. The crew went native and was in danger of forgetting the Enterprise altogether, of chucking interstellar travels in exchange for fresh air and moist dirt. Even Spock’s half human side was awakened by the lush forests, warm sunshine, and cool streams. It was home at the deepest cellular level. (Of course a pretty lady was involved, from whom Kirk had to pry himself away to save the Enterprise, but that’s another piece of nature I’m not talking about right now.)

Before we moved here, I wondered what it would be like to be able to watch the meadows unfold all year long. I wondered what I was missing when we couldn’t make it out here for weeks at a time. I guess this post makes it clear that I have not been disappointed. The only thing missing is my painting skills. About every ten feet, while taking my walks, I stop, hold my hands up to make a frame and say, “Now that would make a beautiful painting.”

I feel that one of the raisons d’etre for humans is to notice and sing the praises of this most remarkable planet. I almost feel an obligation to learn to paint for that very reason. Because photographs can’t capture the subtleties, I should move to paints. If only my grandmother were here. She’d set up an easel and get busy. For now, I'll have to be satisfied with my Fuji Finepix camera and mere words.

What I Did Today ~ A List Poem

2008-08-04T17:36:00.006-04:00

Today I…

Did not get in a car.
Painted the rocking chair black.
Unearthed the brick patio
on the side of the cabin.
(It looks like a blanket
lying over the uneven ground,
worn with the heaving
of earth over time.)

Listened to John’s conference calls
on speaker phone for too long.
Made roasted vegetables with zucchini,
carrots, onions, potatoes and red peppers.
Baked an upside down cake glistening
with peaches and strawberries. swimming
in brown sugar and almond paste.

Drank a good amount of water.
Felt culpable for all sorts of crimes
against myself and the world.
Tried to figure out what bird
makes the “bob white” sound
but isn’t a bobwhite.
Flushed two grouse from the wet
and shady spot between the two pastures.
Thought of myself as someone else
so that I could more easily forgive
my crimes.

Found Indian Pipe on the trail where the beech trees live.
Worried about the health of my elderly dog.
Had the feeling that John and I are secret friends.
Thought that I should do yoga.
Felt as if my time here is limited,
which relieved me of the burden of making
this be it forever and ever.

At Play

2008-08-02T11:12:00.000-04:00

Last year this time, Franklin Park Conservatory (where I used to work full-time) was gearing up for an exhibit called The Enchanted Express. It consisted of model trains going around miniature landscapes made from natural materials. One of the artists who created the landscapes is Diana Heyne. She is a delightful person and a wonderful artist. She is a multidisciplinary artist, but she also creates collages and other pieces out of found objects and materials that she gathers from nature. Last fall, in conjunction with the exhibit, she led a class called “Gnome Homes and Fairy Furniture.” My friend Jen and I were so intrigued with Diana’s art and person, that we just had to take it.

It was the most fun I think I’ve ever had at a craft class. Everyone in the room, about ten women from their 20s-50s, three girls around age 12, and one (remarkable) dad, exhibited a willing suspension of disbelief as we all got serious about creating spaces for the gnomes, sprites, and spirits of our imagination. Diana walked around the room saying things like, “Well, they don’t like right angles, you know, so it’s okay to be off a little.” And participants said things like, “I want them to have vertical space, too, so I need to find a way to put in a second storey.”

People made chairs out of turtle shells and down feathers, tables out of bark, windows out of mica, walkways out of snakeskin, and beer mugs out of seed pods with tiny grapevine handles. Garden snippers, glue guns, and sheet moss for covering up the seams were the only tools needed. I ended up making what I called a Faerie Altar—a place where the forest faeries offered up some of their garden bounty to the gods.

Some of you will understand that gnome home making is addictive. (And some of you will not…) Yesterday, I made another gnome home with things I found on the farm. This one is a little scary—a Bone Finder’s cottage. (You have to go with whatever suggests itself to you when making gnome homes.) The Bone Finder is one of those entities from the shadow side—a little frightening, but necessary to have around. Or at least, impossible to deny.

I have the feeling that a whole village of gnome homes might pop up out here on the farm. Next time you visit, keep your eyes open. You never know who’s watching from under that leaf!

Country Girl in the Making

2008-08-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

One of our fondest hopes about this farm is that our grandchildren will like coming here. I know that that hope is loaded with psychological projection—we like the farm, so you’ll like it too! We had fun at our relative’s farms, so you’ll have fun at yours too!—but I like to think that our hope has to do with something bigger than ourselves and the satisfaction of our grandparental egos.

By now, lots of people are familiar with Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods, in which he coins the term “nature deficit disorder.” The book hit a nerve because he gave voice to something that everyone knows already, but couldn’t quite remember in the midst of our modern lives. We need to be near nature on a regular basis. Kids need to be in nature as part of their normal development. Preferably, they need to have unstructured play time in nature, time to make up games, sit in trees, build forts in the woods, explore rotten logs, discover weird bugs…all the things that used to happen more often, even in the suburbs, just twenty years ago.

Our grandkids get outside a lot, thanks to their intrepid mom, Mary, who likes to be on the move always. She plunks Maria and her little brother, Mario, into the stroller, into backpacks, into snugglies, and heads outside in all kinds of weather to the park, the pool, the playground. They are learning to be adventurous kids and now the farm gets to be part of their repertoire. I hope that as they get older, they are able to enjoy a passionate relationship with nature here. I hope that it lights a quiet fire inside them, a deep connection with and love for the Earth that stays with them into adulthood. And I hope that connection is a support for them as they grow and mature and wonder what it means to be a human being on this planet.

Maria, age three, spent the night with us this past weekend. She was recovering from a bout of strep throat, so she was lower-key than normal. It was the second time she spent the night with us at the farm, and this time she was more at ease and did not look at me every hour with a worried expression and ask, “Mommy?”

One of her favorite things to do is go across the road to our neighbor’s, the Bishops, and take the tour of their animals. That includes kittens, puppies, rabbits, ducks, a horse, chickens, and Maria’s personal favorite, newly hatched chicks. Whenever we return from the Bishop’s place, she always asks me, “Where are your horses?” And, “Where are your eggs?” Ah—all in good time, little one. Didn't you read my last blog entry about how much work this all is?

Why I don’t take my camera with me when we visit across the road, I don’t know, but here are some highlights from our place…

Cutting paper is always fun.

And here is a good one: Soon after she and I are lying down for bed after a no-nap day, Grandpa calls up the stairs, "Hey Maria, want to sit on a horse?" Our neighbor, Ernie stopped by with Casey, a retired barrel racer. Miss Maria, complete with bed-head hair was all for it, yes.

We love the tractor...

Till next time, little girl!

City Mouse

2008-07-29T20:24:00.000-04:00

I am in Columbus for the first part of this week, working on a small but pressing project at the Conservatory, using one of my yoga passes, visiting with my niece before she moves, partying with the grandkids at Music on the Lawn, and grocery shopping with Jack. City mice are busy mice.

I am looking forward to heading back to the farm tomorrow in time for late afternoon tea with John. He will head into the city on Thursday morning for two days of his own (large) pressing work projects and then we’ll have the weekend together.

We spent a lovely Saturday and Sunday with our granddaughter Maria and I brought the camera with me so I could write a post about it while I was here. I forgot the cord with which to upload the pictures onto the computer, though, so it will have to wait until tomorrow…until my tea is finished…until I’m a country mouse again.

What to do first?

2008-07-25T12:12:00.000-04:00

There are times, during this country life, when I become frozen with terror for just a moment. I gasp a strangled breath and think, oh my god, what are we doing? Sometimes I think the house is too big. (Stop! Stop building!) Sometimes I think we are crazy to even think about getting animals. (We’ll never be able to leave. The expense. We don’t know what we’re doing.) Sometimes I look at the fence falling down around the cabin yard, or the old barn listing to the side, or dead trees that have fallen near the driveway, or the eroding mud around the new construction that needs to be planted with something, soon, and I just go blank. I’m sure that my face has the deer-in-the-headlights look and old timers would laugh and shake their heads if they could see me. What was she thinking it would be like? Country Living magazine?

I can usually calm myself by taking slow, deep breaths and remembering the Alcoholics Anonymous saying—“One Day at a Time.” In fact, sometimes I break it down even further and think “One section of the day at a time.” I have big dreams is the problem. Or not even big dreams necessarily, but several dreams. Yesterday’s trip to the library proves it.

I returned a relatively benign batch of books—a novel, short story collection, and poems, and took out the following: The Backyard Orchardist: a complete guide to growing fruit trees in the home garden; Backyard Fruits & Berries: how to grow them better than ever; Storey’s Guide to Raising Dairy Goats: breeds, care, dairying; and Horse Housekeeping: everything you need to know to keep a horse at home. I’m not planning on doing all of this at once, mind you, but I wanted to get a head start on the subjects so that I can be planning ahead, keeping my eye out for things we might need, foreseeing potential problems.

Foreseeing potential problems? Are you kidding me?

For one thing, there is the problem of brute strength. I began digging out the small herb garden that Mary Lou Neff, the previous owner, had put in many years ago next to the cabin. It was ringed with sandstone rocks that have sunk into the ground over the years. I haven’t done a thing to it for the past six years, so sod was beginning to take over the rocks as well as the brick landing she laid between the garden and the porch. I found the shovel and started unearthing the stones. These big old sandstone rectangles that were used as foundation stones in barns are h.e.a.v.y. I struggled with the dolly and a shovel for close to an hour and had some success. I got to the place where the sod was thick and every place I stuck my shovel into the ground, it hit rock. Where are my eleven farm children to help me with this chore?
I walked down to the new house where John was scrubbing beams…yes, that’s right, scrubbing beams. Old barns have bird poop and other sundry things on them which you (I) want to clean off before living in them. “I can’t dig out those rocks. I can’t physically do it,” I complained. “I can move them around once they are set free, and I can work the soil with the small tiller and I can plant it, but I can’t get the rocks out.” John promised that he would dig the rocks out, not to worry. He said not to feel bad, it was hard to do. I felt a little less defeated and decided that the least I could do was go make dinner. It occurred to me then, that this is how cooking duties always fell to women. What do you want to do—extremely difficult physical labor, or go shell peas?

I am positive that any farm wife from half a century ago could beat me with a stick in a contest of physical strength. I press lots of buttons in my kitchen. No butter churns for me. But, the point was made. I wasn’t indignant about it, and neither was I then advocating that it should be the same way today. I was just willing to go make dinner if he would dig out those stones for me. And I was happy to have a strong, healthy husband to do it, in lieu of eleven children!

My Uncle Jack, who lives on the horse farm in Texas with my Aunt Lainey, says, “It’s just work. You have to do something everyday anyway. Just pick what you’re going to do today.” I used to remember that when I worked full time in my office job and things got overwhelming. It appears that things are the same everywhere. There are always a million things to be done if you are living a full life, whether in the city or the country.

And, as some old-timer John once met said, “It’ll get done. And if it doesn’t…oh well.”

Check it out!

2008-07-22T20:59:00.000-04:00

Another great thing about living in the country? Antique Stores. They are everywhere in close proximity. Every little town you drive through has something to offer.

Antique stores are my reward for doing other, more difficult, though necessary things in life. On the weekend, John and I drove to Zanesville to shop at Lowe’s for a front door for the new house. Yes, yes, it was fun. At first. Then it was really boring. Those big box stores with their cement floors and unnaturally high ceilings and stale air just suck the life out of me. I collapsed in a chair while John negotiated with the salesguy. He was nice, even funny (the salesguy), but it was no fun to stare at the computer screen while he clicked on various options to compare prices and quality and warranties. My interest comes to an abrupt end when that level of sale begins. John can really hang in there and will find the best deal after exhausting most possibilities—thank goodness we have him.

After the marathon Lowe’s trip, we stopped at the antique malls near the Zanesville Pottery place off I-70. Hoo boy! And we were driving the truck! Harvest table anyone? My feet were still sore from standing on cement for three hours, but somehow, I could deal with that. I walked into the first place and inhaled the antique store smell—a mixture of old wood, apple cinnamon spice candles, starched linen, and an undertone of basement must. Then I scanned the place with my eyes to get the lay of the store. High end finished pieces in the main room, lots of dishes and linens in the back, and on the left, the stairs to the basement. I always like to get my path figured out in those first moments of entering, figure out how to move through the store in an efficient way without missing anything.

Someone’s booth in the back had some great vintage clothes. I wanted a purple dress I found, but could not seriously think of one place I would wear it. Another little dress I would have worn, if my waist was 14 inches. And then I scored—a topper coat from the 40s or 50s for $15 bucks. It is a swing cut with a wide collar and slit pockets on the side made out of this awesome material (John asked if it was old drapes). The mustard colored buttons are almost the best thing about it, along with the tag. Imagine it with jeans, a white shirt and brown boots this fall... We also bought an old oak door with leaded glass panes and engraved metal hinges for $30. Don’t know where we will use it yet, but I have some ideas.

Today I had to go to Barnesville to do laundry and what do you know? There is an antique mall on the main street. As a reward for doing two weeks worth of laundry (including John’s mud-encrusted shorts and jeans), I let myself slip inside for a look-see before driving home. Look at the beautiful Willow Pottery vase I found for a song, because it has a hairline crack in the rim…
And sweet little red & white dishes with the muted red color that I love, for a dollar apiece…
And a wooden candle holder that will look awfully cute on a bedside stand when I take all the modern stuff out of the cabin and turn it into a glorious bed and breakfast for all our friends and family… Tomorrow I have to go into Cambridge to return some library books and pick up supplies for some weekend guests. If anyone wants to go with me, perhaps we can swing by the antique shops in the old part of town? Just to see what they have…

Inner Children will be Children

2008-07-21T10:23:00.000-04:00

I woke up the other morning to caterpillar acrobatics and bluebird feeding lessons. Groggy with sleep, I muddled through making the morning coffee then took my mug onto the porch to finish waking up. The sleep began to leave my eyes with every sip of espresso, like the mists that rise gently from the valleys in the meadow and waft away with the sun’s heat.

What in the world is that? There were one, two, three comma shapes hanging in mid-air in the front yard. Are those caterpillars? I picked up the binoculars and looked. Sure enough, they were the fuzzy white caterpillars I often see scooting along the porch furniture. They were hanging from threads of their own making, like spider webbing, from the walnut tree. Were they climbing up or lowering themselves down? In the twenty or so minutes I watched them, I couldn’t tell. I got off the porch and walked over to where they were gliding in the breeze. From what I could see, they were working hard at climbing back up the thread. I watched a caterpillar shed its skin for the final time once, before turning into a chrysalis, and I can tell you that it looks like hard work. This was no different. Little guy was doing ab-crunches over and over again like some version of Pilates torture, and didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Tired just watching, I went back to my soft chair on the porch and sat down. Now my eye caught sight of two more caterpillars swaying in the breeze a little more to the right. Five caterpillars in all, moving up and down their invisible threads in an early morning dance. The wrens were chattering and bringing insects to their babies, and didn’t seem at all interested in the bait hanging from the tree where they nest. It was a peaceful, routine morning with the added fascination of a caterpillar trapeze act.

And then the squad arrived. Three bluebirds, two juveniles with a parent, flew up and landed, one at a time, on the branch of the walnut tree with a view of the caterpillars. I heard them as they landed, flump, flump, flump. Uh oh. This was looking like a Marty Stouffer moment in the making. And I hadn’t even finished my first cup of coffee. Two of the bluebirds swooped from the branch. I turned my head part way, squinted my eyes—I didn’t want to look, but wanted to see what would happen—and Hey! The bluebirds flew right past the caterpillars towards the front porch and hovered about a foot above the ground. They wanted some insects that were in the grass there, but Clarabelle the cat was sitting two feet away on the front step watching the whole thing with me. The birds flew back up to the tree branch, made a few more passes at the grass until Clare got up and left, unnerved by the spectacle.

Soon there was another parent and another juvenile bluebird and all five of them hunted for food in the front yard. I watched them through the binoculars and marveled at how big the babies were. Their brown speckled breasts were giving way to pretty blue wing feathers. They were doing a good job of hunting. No more sitting squat on a branch and shaking their feathers till mom and dad brought them a snack. These guys were showing their stuff.

With the threat of imminent carnage past, I began to think about the caterpillars again. What kind of butterfly would they turn into? Could I find out what their rappelling act was all about? Why didn’t the birds eat them? Were they poisonous? Questions that would make an inquiry-based classroom teacher get all tingly with excitement. Like a good student, I decided to catch one and raise it. I’d see for myself what kind of butterfly (or moth) it would transform into.

I searched through the kitchen and decided that the Red Vines container would make a good caterpillar home. It was clear plastic and large enough to let a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. I had to throw away the remaining licorice (sorry, Dad) and throw the lid out. I cut some window screen off a roll in John’s workshop and attached it with a rubber band around the top of the container. Assuming that their host plant is walnut, I snapped a branch off the tree and put it in there. We’ll see what happens next.

Now, I know that there are people who could tell me right now what kind of caterpillar this is. And what their dangling act is all about, and why the birds weren’t eating it. But, I want to find out for myself, preferably through observation. When I was a kid, I used to rearrange my bedroom on a regular basis. Sometimes, I would set it up so that I could be a scientist. I devoted space on the dresser for lab experiments and put a clipboard and paper on my desk for note taking. I loved the sense of order and purpose it gave to my life. Of course the “experiments” I concocted—potions made with the toiletries on hand in the bathroom along with food coloring—would get moldy within a week. I was not, nor have I ever been, a scientist. But I still have a love of what science finds out about the world and a great admiration, I suppose, for the patience it takes to get an answer. I think I can be patient enough to observe this caterpillar for a week or more and fulfill my urge to perform citizen science.

Or maybe the attraction of this latest experiment is simply that I get to be a kid again. Living here with the meadows and woods right out my front door lets me be childlike, exploring the nooks and crannies of the world, dragging home caterpillars and egg sacks and interesting rocks, setting them on the front porch for further investigation. It is exciting to play like this again. The world seems to hold endless miracles and fascination and every day is yet another chance to discover something cool or gross or beautiful or mysterious. Who knows what will present itself tomorrow morning while the coffee pot gurgles to life and I bring my forty-something body with the nine year old inside out onto the porch?

Ah, Summer

2008-07-15T23:14:00.000-04:00

It is high summer. I know that ever since the spring equinox on June 21, the days have been getting shorter, but I feel like they are longer in July than at any other time of the year. Maybe it is the heat—I end up staying outside longer and so I notice the lingering light. Watching the moon rise above the woods to the east has been our evening entertainment this past week. That, and the nightly show by the lightening bugs. They twinkle like Christmas lights against the dark mass of the woods. The cat sits on the porch all tidy with her tail wrapped around her body, watching the display too.

The grasses are going to seed. Their colors shift and change into clouds of light purple and gray, beige and sage green. The cicadas are singing—one of my favorite summer sounds. I stepped on one in the grass the other day while wearing sandals. Something buzzed on my toes and caused me to startle backwards. I looked and saw one sitting in the grass with its beady eyes staring up at me. Its lightweight, translucent wings looked incongruent next to its chunky, armored body. I admired the purple and green on the wings, iridescent like an oil slick, before stepping back and moving along. I used to pick those things up when I was a kid, but no more.

Flowers bloom all year in a succession across the meadows. Here are the latest highlights.

Bees buzzing on the butterfly weed

The hostas by the house are safe from deer this year since we humans are there. Hummingbirds come to visit their fluted shapes.

A patch of rudbeckia and daisy fleabane grew where John removed some old wood he had piled high for a few years. It has been flourishing for weeks now.

The frittilaries are all over the coneflower at all times of the day.

A close up of a shooting star hydrandgea that my sister Kathy gave to me. I love the hint of blue in the center.

Another close up of the echevaria that my Aunt Lainey gve to me.

Happy mid-summer everyone!

Let There Be Light

2008-07-12T16:14:00.000-04:00

The windows came for the new house! I knew they were going to be big, but man, are they big! I love them. They are my new friends. Aluminum clad on the outside, wood on the inside, casements, no grids, color: almond. The new place is going to be full of light and if it had an American Indian name, it would be A Breeze Runs Through It.

When the house first went up—the barn, I should say—it was the embodiment of promise. The simple post and beam structure was handsome and elegant. The skeleton of it rose into the air with grace and yearning, like a yoga posture, if buildings are capable of such a thing. It was the ruins of an older life rebuilt, transformed, modified, retrofitted, made to work beautifully again. Part of me was loathe to do anything more to it. I wanted to leave it open to the birds and the wind. I wanted to sit in it, climb on it and dream and pretend.

Work proceeded however, and we got the concrete floor poured and a layer of painted plywood on before letting it sit for a few years until we sold the Columbus house. And now good old 1055 Glendale is giving back—work is progressing steadily. I think it is never going to be done, because I am impatient. And, we keep adding on to it. We are building a bump-out so that we can use a remote-system composting toilet—it has to have a direct drop, and will do so into a bin in the “basement,” which is a concrete holding tank with a door cut into it. And now I think I’ve talked John into adding the mudroom onto the other side at the same time. (“You know, to make it uniform on the outside—while we’ve got Tom here—we really could use a mudroom—I’m just sayin’…”)

I’ve been learning lots of lessons through the process of building a house from scratch—with no fancy architects, no drawings, no clear idea of what I’m agreeing to or not. I am not good at envisioning three dimensional spaces. I have big ideas and I flag pages in magazines of things I’d like to have in my house, but transforming ideas into reality and adjusting my expectations as we do that, has been a challenge.

One of the main lessons is that there is no such thing as perfection. I often comforted myself with the thought: in the new house things will be perfect! But, here I am, at the “in the new house” stage and guess what? Not only is it not perfect, it is sometimes the epitome of messy, jerry-rigged, patched up craziness. At one point, while the guys were digging trenches all over the place getting the water situation handled the thought occurred to me that the whole human world is jerry-rigged. Even in the suburbs where things look tidy and orderly on the surface, underneath is a tangle of wires and pipes and “oops, we don’t need that—just bury it there.”

So…out here in the country, I’m trying to let go of my obsession with perfection. It helps to have the cabin porch to sit on and the woods to trompse through. Nothing works better at bringing me into the present moment. A light breeze across my face, the sky changing subtly as the clouds move in slow motion towards the east…my brain settles down and my heart takes over and then everything is a different kind of perfect. The kind of perfect I could really come to love.