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

Step by Step

The weather has been stunning. Between rests I sorted slates and leveled the ground for replacing the path, whose larger stones I took for the patio.


When you walk around the corner of the garage, here is what you see. By mid-summer, the scaffolding should be gone, the fence should be up, and the flowers should be blooming. I'm planting hollyhocks and lupine, daisies and blanket flowers. A trellis will support morning glories. Violets and lily of the valley will fill in the blank spots along with whatever else strikes my fancy. Already my landlord has planted a small forsythia bush at one corner and a little rhododendren nearby.


When you come for tea and sit in one of the soon-to-be-painted chairs, this will be your view. By then the lawn should be grassy again and there will be fresh mint leaves behind your chair!

Slowly But Surely

A bout of bronchitis and a sinus infection coupled with a pinched nerve in my upper back have conspired to keep me indoors. Outside the grass has turned emerald under the falling rain and the daffodils have bowed their heads to the stiff wind. I catch the scent of wet earth and hear the birds chirping each time I open the door to let the cat in or out. Sometimes he curls up for a nap with me; other times he is as restless as I feel being cooped up.

Before I succumbed, I spent a morning laying out my new patio slates. Slowly the yard is being landscaped. When all is said and done, I will have a small, partially enclosed patio complete with flagstone terrace, several sections of weathered privacy fence and oodles of flowers surrounding an outdoor table and chairs. Above and below are photographs of the tentative flagstone placement. The smaller openwork cement squares will hold herbs. When it is completed, you're all invited to my new patio for a glass of iced tea.

Out and Away

It's spring! I'm headed out to the garden to plant spinach and early potatoes, chard and peas. The seeds I saved from last year's heirloom tomatoes have sprouted and yearn at the window in the sunshine. When the first seeds have been planted and covered with soft earth, I will head to northern Vermont and a few days of vacation with my 101 year old friend Lora. No doubt we will spend some of our time planting her own early vegetables. Posts here may be scarce as the light lengthens and the days grow warmer but I'll check in on rainy days and late summer evenings. I'm off to play in the great outdoors.

Making Memories

Packed away in a box marked “Easter,” are four baskets made of woven wooden slats. When they were new their colors sang together in bright spring hues of purple and yellow and pink. Now the colors are faded to soft memories and one basket is missing its handle. Each one still holds its nest of green, shredded paper “grass,” matted now and permanently indented with egg-shaped hollows where, years ago, heavy, handmade chocolate eggs decorated with swirls of pastel flowers lay in wait for Easter morning. There is a small crocheted chick in each basket. They used to snuggle over hardboiled eggs that had been dipped in colored water until the shells turned pink or green or heavenly blue

On Easter morning there were decorated, hand-blown eggs, the fragile shells painted with tiny skipping bunnies or miniature bouquets of flowers. There were also small, foil wrapped chocolate eggs, soft, sugary marshmallow Peeps, a handful of jellybeans scattered like fragments of a rainbow, and always a small toy—a plastic yellow chick that, when pressed down, laid a tiny white egg, a wind-up bird that hopped frantically about on stiff little legs, a gracefully sculptured rabbit painted robin’s egg blue with the faintest bit of pink blushing its long, delicate ears.

When I was a child, there was an exciting newness to Easter morning. New clothes were bought especially for Easter Sunday church services and the soles of new shoes had to be scuffed. Finding the carefully hidden Easter baskets was part of the excitement. It was the only morning I was allowed to have candy for breakfast. Dinner was traditional, too. Glazed ham alternated each year with roast lamb and there was fresh asparagus and a coconut covered cake baked in Memere’s cast iron lamb mold.

Even after they all went off to college, my kids would still come home for Easter dinner, and though the holiday had long since ceased to hold any religious significance for me, I clung to certain rituals. Early on Sunday morning the kids would drift sleepily into the kitchen, fetch cups of coffee and ask, just as they had when they were small, “Did the Easter Bunny come?” Then they would set off in search of their baskets, the same ones they remembered from early childhood. The Bunny never disappointed them. This year, however, with all my children far away and the grandchildren with plans of their own, the baskets will stay packed away in the box marked “Easter.” It is a landmark of sorts, the same way Christmases and birthdays away from home become milestones in the process of growing up. But, the baskets will keep, just as the memories have.


photo credit: www.bunnyrabbit.com

As long as you're wanting...

We all want. We all need. When want overpowers need, our perspective gets skewed. I say, want all you want - wanting motivates. However, need very little and you will almost always be satisfied.

Other People's Thoughts

My youngest daughter gave me a gift, a round paper box she embellished with dried flowers from my mother’s garden. It’s called BOX OF THOUGHTS and in it are dozens of scraps of paper printed with pithy observations. I keep it on my bureau and whenever I think to, I reach in and take one out to read. I wish I thought to do it more often. Today I read:

"A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner." Louis L’Amour

Ah, yes. My own head, house for my own thoughts, is decorated with cheery scraps of bright ideas amid the mundane, more serviceable notions I entertain. I reside inside my thoughts, creating with my hands a place for the rest of me to live. My mind is aswirl with thoughts that didn’t originate there but grew from seeds planted by others, notions heard or read that I’ve mulled over and mulched and pruned and grafted until they’ve become hybrids. They are my thoughts now, some as familiar as an old sofa, some as new as a housewarming gift. My thoughts, my things—looking at them this way is like coming suddenly upon my own reflection, realizing, “Oh! That’s me!” simultaneously with, “Is that what I look like?”

A Short List of Happy Things

Sunrises. I often wake before dawn. In those first quiet moments, as the dark fades slowly from the sky to reveal the familiar in a different light, I understand why we call it a new day. No two sunrises are the same, and everything looks slightly different than it did the day before. Watching the sun come up reminds me of the dual nature of life, its constancy and its change, and stirs in me a deep wonder.

Firsts. The first of anything is an occasion–first step, first tooth, first kiss, first time you drive the car alone, that first sip of coffee in the morning or of tea late in the afternoon, winter’s first snowflake, and likewise, the first shoots of green that brave our New England spring. When my days become mundane, I look for something I haven’t done yet, or some new way of doing a thing that’s become stale, so that there’s always a new first to look forward to.

Senses. I am often stopped in my tracks by the emotions certain sounds or scents evoke. Music pulls me out of myself, an unexpected bit of birdsong on a winter day can change my mood, the sound of laughter always lifts my spirits. I remember my delight as a child, coming home after church on a Sunday morning to the scent of roasting meat and fruit pie. Nothing makes me quite as happy as the smell of fresh earth when the snow melts in April or quite as melancholy as the scent of dying leaves in the fall.

Colors. Even when winter trees are leafless and all the ground is covered with snow, nature makes small places for my eyes to feast. The evergreens stand out greeny-black against the white, every shade of brown and gray shows off its luster where the snow has melted and the leaf matter is exposed, dawns and sunsets paint the sky in shades of crimson and purple. Cardinals and jays look like winged jewels in flight. And when that snow disappears? Oh, glorious green!

The unexpected. Sunshine when the weatherperson predicted rain, a card in the mail saying “thanks for being you,” a message on the answering machine that says, “Memere, I love you as much as the whole world!” all fill me up until I spill over.

No doubt there will be more major events in my life, but it’s the small things, the everyday, every-moment times that fill my life with awe and wonder.

Looking For A Reason

A fellow blogger sent this to me. What's your "bacon" ?

Mine changes. Sometimes it's necessity - it's a work day, nature calls in the midst of a dream, the cat wants to go out, etc. But mostly it's curiosity that pulls me out from under the covers. What will the day bring and how will I respond? Will I create or just float?

In All Seriousness

Reading about illness (mental and physical) at Jo's blog brought this long-ago published column to mind.

Pollyannas of the world, unite! There’s hope for optimists yet, even in a darkened world. Breaking news (albeit underground and via email), has it that what we currently suffer most from is over-seriousness, causing dis-ease. You can see it for yourself. We’re being terrorized, frightened out of our wits, threatened on all sides, subjected to prophecies of disaster and unless we do something about it, we're doomed!

Ah, but do what? Hit first? Knock some sense into our chosen enemy? Wage war? And if we don’t, what? We’re going to go under some dictator’s thumb? We had better be careful what we dread – arguing for our limitations brings them to our doorstep. With all due respect, you can’t wage war and peace at the same time. News of this new energy center has come at just the right time. It may sound silly and far too simple to be of any use, but go light a single match in a pitch-black room, then come back and read on.

What’s been discovered, according to scientists (who, until this catches on, wish to remain anonymous), is a new chakra. Chakras are energy centers located in the human body. This particular one is lodged between the heart chakra and the throat chakra and has a name directly associated with its function – the clown chakra. If your clown chakra is closed, you can expect major (and serious) problems.

It has been observed that when the clown chakra is open, every cell in the body wears a happy face; closed, every cell frowns. The condition of your own clown chakra is easily discernable on your face. Seriousness forces love out of your cells, making them say, in essence, “I lack love” (or ILL for short). The normal function of the clown chakra is to dispense joy in the form of tiny, red, heart-shaped balloons, invisible but potent.

It sounds like nonsense, and the email bearing this news was certainly light-hearted. However, there’s been enough medical research done to discover that our thoughts do indeed have a direct bearing on our physical selves and on the kinds of lives we choose to live. If I stand in reverence each morning, letting the light of the budding day wash over me, if I let awe creep into the ordinary, if I laugh out loud, my day is better for it.

Allowing myself to be happy doesn’t mean blinding myself to the world and what happens in it. But if, as our science is suggesting, every thought is a pulse of energy let loose in the world, I choose to send out tiny, red, heart-shaped balloons.

Comfort Food

I took eggs and milk out of the refrigerator, found the can of baking powder, measured out flour and powdered sugar. Mixing the ingredients in a bowl, adding enough milk and then water to make a thin batter, I could have been six instead of sixty, helping my mother make French pancakes in the old kitchen on Silver Street.

Mama was not a rise-and-shine person like my father. It took a cup of scalding coffee and a quiet half hour by herself in the kitchen before she was functional. It was the smell of that coffee, perking in the little metal coffeepot on the front burner that opened my eyes in the morning and drew me down the stairs. When she saw me standing in the kitchen doorway, my toes curling inside my slippers, my bathrobe buttoned wrong (I am not a morning person either), Mama would smile and set down her cup and give me a hug. Then she would ask me what I wanted for breakfast. If we hadn’t already had them three days in a row, I would tell her, “French pancakes, please.”

I learned to crack eggs making French pancakes. I was allowed to pour the milk from the bottle into the measuring cup, to make a well in the dry ingredients, to mix the batter with a big spoon. “Not too much,” Mama would caution. “The lumps will take care of themselves.”

Mama would light the burner on the gas stove and set the crepe pan, a round, shallow-sided, long-handled fry pan, on to heat. Then she would drop in a small dab of butter and when it melted into a yellowy puddle, she would tip the pan back and forth until the bottom was coated.

I climbed on a chair and helped her ladle a spoonful of batter into the browning butter. With deft movements, Mama made sure the batter ran right up to the sides of the pan. I stood and watched for tiny bubbles to cover the upper side of the pancake and when I called out that it was ready, Mama came with the spatula, worked its blade under a curling edge of the cake and flipped it over with a sizzling splat. The top side of the pancake was now a delightful golden brown and steam eddied in little curls from the edges of the pan. The first pancake was flipped onto a damp towel spread on a plate, covered over, and placed in the warm oven. As each successive pancake was cooked, it was stacked under the towel until the batter bowl was scraped clean.

The smell of them cooking, and my frequent yelps of, “Okay! It’s ready!” roused my brother and sisters out of their beds. They tumbled sleepy-eyed and hungry into the kitchen. French pancakes were their favorite, too, and we all ate happily, forking the thin, perfectly browned morsels of syrup-soaked cakes into our mouths. Some mornings we had bacon alongside, other times we spread the thin cakes with applesauce or jelly and rolled them up before eating them. Mama often filled hers with cottage cheese and fruit but I liked them best stacked, a little pat of butter melting into the top cake, and streams of amber syrup puddling on the plate.

I still do. This morning, by myself in the tiny kitchen of my cottage, I made a small hill of the dry ingredients, pressed a well in the top with the back of my spoon, poured in the water and milk and beaten eggs, stirred just enough to make a thin batter (“The lumps will take care of themselves,” said a voice in my head), and watched as a dollop of batter spread in the hot pan.

I don’t need to stand on a chair anymore, but I watched the cake as tiny bubbles began to cover its surface. Beside me, in a bathrobe buttoned wrong, stood the image of my child-self. “Okay! It’s ready!” I heard her cry and I took the spatula, and with a deftness that would have made Mama proud, flipped the pancake, letting its other side brown to perfection.