A Sunday In The Life Of

August mornings are often shrouded and mysterious. Today the sun was a glimmering disk, incandescent behind its misty veil. Once it broke through the fog, it pointed with golden fingers to spider webs spun overnight, sparkling like circus tents for fairies. It is easy to believe in magic and other worlds on an August morning.


Before the heat clamps down like an iron fist, I take a leisurely ride on my bicycle along the edge of the pond. The currants are ripening in a purple tangle. I pick some and nibble at the clusters of tiny, tart-sweet berries. The gentle roar of a small plane makes me look up. As I watch, the little yellow airplane heads straight up into the clear blue sky and then ever so slowly tumbles backward and dives again before leveling out and moseying off to its private grassy airfield a few miles south.

(I found this image of the actual plane on flickr.com/photos/37309693@N00/238961338)

Watching that plane roll and turn makes me think of the worlds within worlds we inhabit. Though I've been in a small plane myself and can identify with the thrill of flying, I can only guess at the pilot's thoughts as he tumbles through the blue like that. It looks so effortless and yet he's all concentration. There he is, in a world of dials and instruments and a knowledge of updrafts and tension and wind speed, while I, with my feet firmly planted on the ground think about how blue the sky is, what might tempt me for breakfast when I return home and how fast I have to ride to dodge the mosquitoes.

The middle of the day will be hot - the temperature is predicted to reach into the 90s - making a nap in the screen tent a necessity. A swim to cool off, either in my brother's pool or at a nearby lake will round out the day nicely. Sundays are rest days, after all. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I'll clean the cottage and do the laundry and pull weeds. Today I will simply fly free.

Field Notes From the Cobble

The air is hot and muggy and full of mosquitoes. Walking in the woods is out of the question so we walk the road to the bridge. The Housatonic River rolls under the road there and winds it's way, snakelike, through a series of meadows. Farthest from the edges of road and river, the mosquitoes are fewer and it is possible to stand still for a moment to watch the water dimple and swirl over rocks and gravel as it makes its way to the Long Island Sound 100 or so miles away.


On the opposite side of the bridge is a bit of marshland bordering a vast corn field. Common egrets feed there, and a blue heron. Possums and raccoons forage at the water's edge, and foxes and coyotes hunt the small mice and voles that hide in the tall grasses. We bend over tracks left in the mud, now dried and cracked. A wild turkey has been there, and a coyote. A possum has left small starred marks and an egret landed, leaving its splayed three-toed sign.



In August the roadsides are awash in shades of white and blue. Queen Anne's Lace holds wide, saucer-like flowers to the sun. Wild blue chickory (we call them cornflowers) always grows in the same place. Goldenrod plumes glow yellow even though the sun is hidden behind a thick haze. In the distance, low clouds kiss the tops of the mountains. The harsh call of a crow breaks the silence. A duck answers from the river.


If one is still enough and quiet, the river and meadow will yield their secrets. The industrious bee, the stinging mosquito, the feeding birds, the transitory water all have stories to tell. I import them into my own day's tale and share them here with you.

Flying With the Moon

The full moon rose up through a feathery purple cloud at the same moment we lifted off the runway. You'd think the night sky a silent place and perhaps it is but the steady whonk whonk of the small engine filled the little cockpit, making talk nearly impossible. We resorted to a touch on the arm and a pointing finger. Look, look, there where the moon path is dancing on the water, or there where the lights of a town look like Christmas lights scattered by the hand of a giant. See where the road winds with its tiny cargo of cars, their headlights shining in the dark like radiating lines drawn in a cartoon. And there where beacon lights are flashing their warnings from steep mountain ridges.

Back on land, close to midnight, the moon rode high and distant, it's rising gold muted to silver. But oh, I rode the night sky with that moon. I spent time in its great, wide space, kin with the cold light that looked warm close up.

Duck!

We've been having frequent and severe thunderstorms. Every afternoon the clouds build in the heat and every evening the lightning flashes, the thunder echoes between the mountains and the rain pours down. A few years ago, when I was living in what had been my childhood home, the house was struck by lightning. It had been a windless, hot day. There were clouds in the distance but nothing to indicate the kind of lightning bolt that came out of the blue (literally) and struck the peak of the house.
Burned scar just to right of roof peak where the lightning struck

I was on the front porch putting a batch of just picked tomatoes through the separator. I had my hand on the metal handle when the bolt struck. There was a tremendous BANG! My daughter came screaming down the stairs yelling about gunshots and I felt a horrible pain shoot through my arm and straight down the middle of me. Every hair on my head and arms was standing straight. I could not let go of the separator handle - it was as though my fingers were glued to the metal. Once the lightning bolt funneled through me to the ground, my hand came away from the handle, my knees crumpled and I fell to the floor.

My then partner Bob had been sitting in a chair on the porch, reading bits of the newspaper to me as I worked with the tomatoes. I remember catching a glimpse of his face as the lightning coursed through me. He said afterwards that he, too, thought the bang had been a gunshot and that I'd been hit, though he had no idea why my hair was "doing that funny dance" on my head. He rushed to help me off the floor and then, with thunder crashing and lightning suddenly sizzling all around us, he saw the boards that had been blown off the house. They were still smoking.
Bits and pieces of burned wood and the blasted off fascia board

"Fire!" he yelled and we sped up the stairs to the attic. An old mattress that had been leaning against some boxes opposite the window had a large, smoking hole in it. We grabbed it and hustled it down two flights of stairs and out into the pouring rain. Then we ran back in the house to see what else was burning. Under the attic window we could see the scorched path the bolt had taken. In the bedroom directly below, the bolt had exited just beneath the window, sending plaster dust clear across the room and embedding several rubber coated curtain hooks into the oak floor. We had to get a screwdriver to pry them out. Bits and pieces of charred wood littered the side yard.

The hole in the mattress where the bolt struck as it separated.

Almost all the appliances in the house were damaged. The well pump had been hit, the answering machine and the television would not work, and the stereo that had been plugged in but not turned on had its insides melted. It hissed and crackled until all the lightning in it ran its course. An insurance adjuster came to assess the damage. He said the heat inside the attic had attracted the lightning and added that it was a good thing the huge main bolt had split on impact. After it blew the fascia board off the roof peak and hit the mattress, one fork ran down the wall and emerged in the room below. The weakest fork hit me. "Otherwise," he said, looking at me and wagging his head slowly, "you'd be pfffft."

I wasn't pfffft, just badly frightened. I did have two small burns, one on the sole of each foot and for weeks afterwards my feet ached. Oddly, I began to remember things like long forgotten book and movie titles and events that had happened in childhood. I saw objects and colors with a clarity that has long since faded.

When I hear thunder now, I cringe and look about for a safe place to hide. The soles of my feet tingle and the hair on my arms begins to rise. I turn off the appliances and huddle under the kitchen table or curl up on the sofa with my eyes scrunched shut. I used to love the wildness of storms. Now they just scare me to pfffft.

Rogue Wonder

My vegetable garden was pretty much a bust this year. There were peas but not enough to freeze, the spinach, doing wonderfully well in late spring, was shredded by a surprise hail storm. Much of the lettuce succumbed to slugs, and the cucumbers, the squash, the eggplant and the peppers languished in too much rain, putting out pale, puny flowers only last week. The tomatoes, huddled in their cages, finally have small, hard, green fruits and the potato tops have died down early. It will be a meager harvest.



Though all my careful planning and vegetable planting has come to naught, there is one vine that has triumphed. The patio garden, meant for flowers and herbs only, is host to a rogue pumpkin plant the size of China. The seed must have been buried in the compost. The leaves are immense, swamping the rhododendron bush, shading a whole pot of petunias, and serving as umbrellas for the phlox, the morning glories and the hollyhocks. Bright green tendrils curl along the fence and a single blossom could, if fried, feed a family of six. Already there are six small pumpkins forming and at least five other flowers blooming in orangey yellow profusion. It is the miracle of a single seed and a marvelous reminder to grow where you are planted.



For those of you who couldn't make it to the patio this summer for minted ice tea, maybe you'll come for pumpkin pie!

What is Now

There is something to be said for contemplative time - quite a lot, actually. After the hurly-burly of the school year, the early risings, the hurried morning ablutions, the meeting of deadlines and timelines, it is marvelous to sleep until I awaken naturally, to practice yoga before breakfast, to sip my first cup of tea as the first rays of sunlight wash over me, to bring my food to the outdoor table.


I am surrounded by flowers and green growing things, by songbirds and rooster crows at dawn, by areas of intense sunlight and of deep greeny-black shade. Underneath it all is the silence of the rural countryside, a silence undisturbed by surface noise, a silence that holds the singing brook, the laughter of flowers, the sighing of the wind, the whisper of passing clouds.


Some days I plan projects, on others I let the hours unfold, waiting to see what might happen. I spend a lot of time with books, reading piles of them from the library, picking up paperbacks at tag sales, pulling old favorites from my bookshelves. I write poems that appear sometimes fully formed first thing in the morning. I write entries in my daily journal, make comments in the margins of books. Ideas find their way onto odd slips of paper that I collect and put near my computer.

In the afternoon, after a nap (an hour drifting in dreams) I hop on my one-speed (mine) double-cheek-seat, pedal brake bicycle and tour the neighborhood. One four mile trip takes me through town, another skirts the center of the village altogether, leading me instead past the river and along the edges of cornfields and hay meadows. A third takes me a straight two miles one way and another two back.

On Monday afternoons (and sometimes on Fridays) I spend hours searching the database at the local Historical Society looking for our ancestral link to a Civil War General. I have been writing what family history I know for my children and grandchildren, learning things along that way that might explain my propensity for dreaming rather than doing, my vast affection for the out-of-doors, my need for alone (and contemplative) time.



Fall will come soon enough and with it the return of the rushed mornings, the time-dictated days. For now, I will relish every moment of summer freedom I have, delighting in the morning mist that slows the sunrise, the brief beauty of my garden flowers, the happy splashing of the catbird in the makeshift birdbath, the hours that unwind in shades of gold and green, the quiet time spent with books and pen, the hovering visits of the hummingbird, the dusky silence that greets the evening, the last kiss of sunlight on treetops.

Summer Night

The sun set tonight in a blaze of peach and apricot and bright vibrant pink. The whole sky was tinged with color and the still water in the pond reflected back with such intensity that it was hard to tell where the real color ended and the reflection began.

On nights such as this, surrounded by a beauty that leaves me breathless, I wonder what it's all for. And I wonder if the fireflies blinking in the gathering dark notice the sunset or if my friend, dead since January, is still somehow aware of all the things about this place he loved - the long warm summer evenings, the way the grass smells just after it's been mowed, the sweet, chilling taste of ice cream, the sound of crickets singing. This was the sort of night he had to be out in, the way I have to be out in it.

In the distance an owl hoots. The mosquitoes whine and bite, driving me inside. Before I go, I look up, up into the darkening sky, searching for some sign I can believe in, some reassurance that there is more to this world than meets the eye. There is comfort in the star shine, comfort in the rising of a familiar moon, comfort in the fact that even if he cannot know it, I am remembering this summer night for both of us.

Garden Watch

mint, basil, and lettuces

There is something to be said for having an herb garden right outside the kitchen door. Breakfast eggs are embellished with fresh chives and parsley, as are supper's potatoes. The oregano grows rampant in another section of the garden and seasons, among other things, a delectable eggplant dish made with tomatoes, onions, and Swiss cheese. The lemon mint that is growing to bush size will be transplanted elsewhere for next year. Its leaves find their way into glasses of iced tea. At lunch a few chives added color to a curried chicken salad on a bed of freshly picked lettuce leaves. Tonight fresh dill flavors a cucumber salad.

A rogue squash seed buried in the compost that was spread around the patio to nourish the flowers has grown monstrous and threatens to take over the yard. So far three round globes are forming. The vegetable garden over at the farm is puny this year - too much rain. I did have a fine mess of peas but not enough to freeze, the hail a few weeks ago decimated the spinach and the peppers and eggplant, though growing, have yet to flower. The tomato plants are enormous and if all goes well the potato crop will be twice what it was last year. Come for iced tea - stay for dinner!


chives, parsley and miniature strawberries

One Perfect Day

My daughter gave me a gift of scone mix one Christmas, accompanied by a new book, a packet of my favorite tea and a handmade card describing the perfect day: Read, eat, drink, nap. The scones and tea have long since been consumed but today seemed a good time to try out the "perfect day" formula.

It started with pecan waffles and tea...

I cheated a bit and threw in a load of laundry (the sun was shining for the first time in weeks, making it a perfect drying day), ran the vacuum over the floors, and did up the breakfast dishes. Then I grabbed a good book and headed for the screened tent where I spent two delightful hours reading. Of course I had to keep looking up from the pages to admire the flowers and watch the birds splash in the birdbath, and follow the hummingbird's darting wings.

The screen tent is my mosquito-free summer "room"

Lunch was little rounds of crusty bread topped with a drizzle of olive oil, fresh basil from my herb garden, a slice of tomato and another of cheese, all tucked under the broiler until the cheese melted. After lunch I took a bicycle ride up one country road and down another along meadow edges ablaze with daisies and black-eyed susans, under cool, green tree canopies, and always back into the sunshine pouring down from the blue, blue sky.



Home again and back into the tent for a few more pages before giving in to the urge for a nap. Parker the cat curled into the curve of my knees and we both slept for an hour.



Supper will be a turkey burger on a bed of lettuce accompanied by roasted asparagus spears from the garden. Life is better than good - today it was perfect!




waffle photo courtesy of www.readersdigest.com.au. I ate mine before I thought to photograph them! Parker's beautiful face courtesy of Dave Bushell's keen eye.

Vermont Visit

Lora at 101 and me ducking in before the camera photographed us.

I've been away for a week, visiting my 101 year old friend Lora. We had a busy time together working in her garden, shopping for and preparing meals, organizing her papers at the request of her estate executor and renewing her driver's license. (Hint: if you want a picture on your license from the state of Vermont, you have to have been born AFTER 1908!)

Lora tilled and planted the garden space well before I got there. This is the before look...

and this was how it looked once we'd attacked it with hoe and garden fork.

We actually saw the sun two of the seven days I was there but only saw one sunset.

One Summer Day

sunset...

The day's work is done. I was on my knees weeding the gardens around the patio at 7:00 this morning. The heavenly blue morning glories have sprouted against the fence, the violets planted in early spring have finished blossoming but their leaves make lovely patches of green. The chives, the basil, the mint, and the oregano are thriving. I have breakfast there very morning and often eat supper there as well.



Two loads of laundry have been washed, line dried, folded, and put away. I mowed the lawn, weeded the vegetable garden and replenished the hummingbird feeder. Cleaning and baking will have to wait until tomorrow's rain keeps me indoors.

there was even time for a nap in my screen house

Vital Statistics

Dick posted his own and asked who's next. Here's my list so now it's my turn to ask... who's next?

I drive
a sporty little Subaru Outback Sport

If I have time for myself
I read, write, draw, take a long walk, nap

You wouldn’t know it but I’m very good at
washing dishes by hand
sewing my own clothes
finding creative new uses for used or discarded things

I’m no good at
math (numbers multiply and divide with impunity)
hurrying (I prefer life in the slow lane)
caring for the sick (I get sick right alongside them)

Books that changed me
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Collected Poems of Rumi edited by Coleman Barks
Lives of A Cell by Lewis Thomas
Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard
Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick
Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos by John Briggs
a hundred others (at least)

Movie heaven
Love Actually
Sound of Music
Spirit
Hearts and Souls
Monsters, Inc.
Everafter
etc. etc. etc.
(You can tell I see movies purely for the entertainment factor. If I want to be informed, I read)

Comfort eating
mashed potatoes (preferably with gravy)
macaroni and cheese
pie of any sort (except for banana or raison)
pasta with rich meat sauce

When I was a child I wanted to be
A hermit (sometimes I still do), a writer, a teacher.
(Two out of three isn’t bad.)

All my money goes on
paying off what I owe!

At night I dream of
ridiculous things like driving large vehicles with no brakes, trying to discipline children, or kissing someone I shouldn’t

My favorite buildings
after my childhood homestead? Canterbury Cathedral, the remains of Tintern Abbey in Wales, the “Painted Ladies" near Alamo Square, San Francisco, California

My biggest regret
falling in love with the “wrong” person

If I wasn’t me I’d like to be
someone with a small nose and a very large income

My favorite works of art
the drawings done by my children and grandchildren

The current soundtracks to my life
I’m hopelessly given to oldies (of the 50s and 60s), folk and fiddle tunes, and almost anything classical

The best inventions ever
the bedstead, showerheads, paper and the printing press, the contraption for boiling off maple sap

Of Meanwhiles and Memes

There are cat birds in the birdbath, black bears in the side yard, and a possum the size of carry-on bag roaming the woods between here and the neighbors. The daffodils have faded, and the lilacs, but the iris are blooming in purple profusion and the day lilies are putting out sheaves of spear-like leaves. The whole land smells sweet and green. Evenings are mellow and fragrant and heady with bird song. I am out early in the morning and not back in until darkness and the mosquitoes descend. Blogging regularly has fallen by the wayside like new-mown grass.

However, I still read my favorites before I head out and after I come in (if I'm not in a tear or too exhausted to keep my eyes open, both states in which I find myself far too often). Dick of Patteran Pages posted two intriguing memes, one of which came from Dominic's blog. Here's my "appropriately embarrassing photo" from my own youth. The Vital Statistics will have to wait for another post. Darkness and my eyelids are descending...

I'm 18, newly graduated from high school and have no clue what lay behind that silly grin.

Progress Report

It's been a successful day - the two patio chairs (white metal and free from a tag sale) are now painted green to match the table. The two wicker chairs rescued from the transfer station are pale yellow and pale blue. The basil and parsley have been planted along with mint and chives in the patio herb garden and the lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, swiss chard and beans will go into the garden tomorrow morning. Come for iced tea!

Day's End

I am wakened every morning by bird song and in the evening, the sun is sung down by the robins and the blackbirds, the finches and the orioles, the doves and the warblers. Deep in the woods the vireo calls good night, good night and if you're lucky, you'll hear the whip-poor-will sing.

You might catch a flash of blue as a jay wings its way home or see the swallows flash their feathers over the pond water in the waning light. The sun sets slowly through the clouds, turning them pink and then mauve. They float along the horizon like galleons in full sail, headed for tomorrow.





bottom photo: my yard at sunset

oriole photo credit: www.kiwifoto.com

Scent Drunk

I dusted off my double-cheek seat, pedal brake bike this evening and took an after dinner ride. The air was balmy and perfumed. Lilacs are growing in profusion in yards and at meadow edges. The purple and white blooms are heavy with burgeoning florets. A large vase of them on the kitchen table and a smaller one on the coffee table make the whole house smell sweet. Lily of the valley and violets are thick along the roadside and bright yellow dandelions glow like little suns among them. Apple trees are also in full bloom. I passed one house where the drive was planted on both sides with crab apple trees. At the very end of the curve near the house, a spill of pure white orchard apple blossoms created the illusion of a bride attended by a bevy of pink-garbed bridesmaids. The plowed fields of the lettuce farm smell rich and brown and earthy; everywhere else an abundance of green growing things fairly shouts with the exuberance that is spring. This time of year I am punch-drunk on scents.

Sonnet to the Bean

A fellow blogger, Genie, mentioned in a recent post that she was attempting to compose a sonnet to the bean. It tickled my fancy. Herewith is my first attempt. I find the rhyme scheme of a sonnet difficult and awkward (Shakespeare is a tough act to follow) so this may be modified at some point.


A bean seed buried deep will yield a plant,
and every plant may yield two dozen beans;
thus every bean bush rising is the means
of filling dinner plates that will enchant
the masses who have found them to be scant
through snowy winter months without some greens.
Now every diner at the table leans
in the direction of the simmering plant.
A bean is such a small thing and it can’t
compare itself to garden kings and queens
like the cauliflower’s pale unfolding scenes
or like the princely pumpkin’s gaudy rants.

The humble bean holds up its purple flower
and silently awaits the cooking hour.


photo credit: www.victoriananursery.co.uk

Ownership

mine is a life of things—
my grandmother’s eggbeater,
the green painted handle
worn smooth
by the same hand that fed the hens
and gathered the eggs,
that measured the salt
the flour, the milk
and flipped the pancakes
as I do now

things
like the cradle fashioned by
my grandfather’s hands,
that held first the grandbabies
and when they had grown,
the great grandbabies

and now cradles my childhood dolls

things
like the jackknife that lived
in my father’s pants pocket—
that freed tangled kite strings
and fishing line, opened can tops,
cut forked branches
for roasting marshmallows


things like my mother’s
green china teapot—
memories pouring from the
spout, as warm and welcome
as the lemon cookies on
the saucer underneath my
own cup