Beautiful Balloons

Dawn on Friday morning seen through rose colored clouds. Despite the red-sky-in-the-morning beginning, after work a friend and I drove 100 or so miles through the late afternoon sunlight to the Warren County Airport in Glens Falls, NY where the Adirondack Balloon Festival was in full swing.


We inched our way along the airport access road, one of hundreds of cars streaming onto the airport grounds. The balloons were already inflating and drifting upwards in the late afternoon sky. Wandering the grounds among the colorful envelopes spread out on the grass, we were captivated by the whirring generators, the whoosh of air from the big fans, the blast of fire from the burners. One by one the baskets lifted up as people cheered and waved.


The winds bore the balloons aloft and away until they looked like ornaments hung in the clear blue.


The next morning we rose at 5 a.m., hurried into our coats and hats and mittens and went out into the chilly dark. We should have risen at 4 a.m.! The line of traffic wending along the airport road was an immense snake of headlights stretching as far as we could see in either direction. Fortunately for us (but not for the balloonists), a dense fog settled into the valley, delaying the lift-off. Though we spent over an hour in the car, inching along just 3 miles in all that time, we were in time to see the majority of balloons inflate and rise through the sunlit mist.


Though the airfield is vast, the balloonists often set up side by side. The result is "kissing balloons" as the inflating envelopes jostle one another.

I've never taken a flight in a hot air balloon though I've climbed into a tethered basket and felt the quick thrill one gets as it ascends as far as the ground ropes allow. There's always one balloonist that stays behind to offer a taste of what ballooning feels like. Someday, perhaps. Someday.

Track Walking

I am four years old and skipping along Silver Street, holding my mother’s hand. We are going to see the train. My brother rides his tricycle along the side of the road and with her free hand my mother pushes the baby carriage in which my two sisters sit facing one another. The tracks cross our road down near the main road, not even a mile away from home, but when I turn around after we’ve passed the brook I cannot see our house at all so it seems a great distance. When we reach the tracks, we stand far enough away for safety but close enough for the engineer to see us and wave.

We can hear the train before we see it. There’s a crossing just a mile away in the center of town and another a few miles in the other direction in Connecticut. No matter which way the train is traveling, it must sound the crossing whistles – two long, one short, one long – to warn everyone of its coming. The deep rumble of the engine and freight cars follows quickly on the heels of the last whistle and I peer around my mother’s skirt to watch the engine chug its way toward us. It is very exciting.

The train pulls closer. Now I can hear the clanging of the couplings and the groans and creaks of the swaying cars. I can see the engineer high up in the engine, see him pull the rope for the crossing alarm and raise his arm to wave. The whole train is on us all of a sudden with a flash of metal wheels, the undersides of boxcars and tankers and open coal cars clicking past as we count them - one, two, three, four - all the way up to twenty on good days.

At night I lie awake and listen for the train to go by. In the dark, the whistle sounds lonesome and I think of the engineer high up in his seat, leaning out to wave at the stars and the moon.

By the time I am twelve, the parameters of my world have grown and I often go to watch the trains by myself. There is a factory building now on the far side of the tracks and sometimes a boxcar waits there for the train that comes up from Connecticut. When the door is open I can peer in. Usually the car is empty but one day a man is sitting in the car. He has a grizzled beard and his clothes are frayed and dirty. In front of him is a little Sterno stove and on that sits an opened can of beans. He looks at me and nods. I look around; no one is watching so I pull myself up into the car and sit down.

“Beans?” the man asks but I shake my head. His voice sounds rusty, as though he hasn’t used it in a while. I tell him my name and ask his.

“Beans,” he says, holding out a dirty spoon. I am afraid suddenly, though the man has not moved nor uttered more than those two words. Still, if my mother knew I was talking to a stranger… I hop up and go to the door, then turn back. “Bye,” I say. Beans just looks at me and nods.

As a teenager, the fastest way to walk into town is on the tracks. My friend Jeri-Lynn lives on Main Street but her house backs on the tracks so when I visit her, I go that way. I make a game of walking the rails, holding my arms out like a gymnast for balance. By the end of the summer I can walk all the way to her house without falling off once.

This morning the sun draws me out early. I breathe deeply in the sweet, chilly air when I hear a familiar whistle. I stand far enough from the tracks to be safe and close enough for the engineer to see me and wave. I count - one, two, three, four - all the way up to twenty. It is a good day.

Worth Repeating

From the Velveteen Rabbit:
"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all because when you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."


Well, okay then.

Seasonal Shift

The mornings are cooler now and often shrouded in mist. The seasonal shift came riding in on an August storm that broke summer’s fierce and humid heat. The day after the wind and rain, the sky was a deeper, clearer blue, the evening air had a new chill to it, and the next morning the mists rolled in, heralding the end of summer despite the calendar.

It is the same every year and every year it surprises me. The signs of change are all around - leaves look like once bright curtains left too long in the sun. They droop, tired and faded and still in the windless afternoons. A few young maples and older, diseased trees flare bright red and orange amongst the green. My flower gardens, rife with bright blossoms just a few weeks ago, now sport more empty stems than blossoms. The pink lilies, the papery hollyhocks, the bee balm’s riotous red flowers are all gone. A few brave fairy roses hold small pink and red faces up to be admired but for the most part the flowers’ season has passed. Next month I will plant a few iris corms, bank the beds with grass clippings from the last lawn mowing and hedge them with raked leaves. All that beauty and brightness will sleep through the cold, waking when the world turns warm again.


When I was a child, I resisted the change of seasons, never wanting the earth to turn as quickly as it did. Not yet, not yet, I’d think, wanting my wishing to have some effect. I still feel the same. Looking into the morning mist I plead with the rising sun, stay high, stay strong, just for a while longer. It doesn’t heed me – it never has.

Facing the Fear

In the face of dire reports (and predictions) in the papers and on the news, I've been thinking about fear and how it drives us. There are things outside myself about which I’m apprehensive such as drunk drivers on the same stretch of road, manic people with guns and knives and a grudge, global weather changes. There are internal things – killer viruses, toothaches, the occasional return of the sciatica that once paralyzed me for months, a second kidney stone, the creeping physical threats of old age. There are personal, emotional hurts such as the loss of a partner and the inevitable deaths of people I love, or being old and alone and ill. But these seem to me normal fears, worries that all humans cart around in daylight hours or take to bed with them as food for nightmares.

When I was small, I feared the monsters that lurked at the back of my closet and under my bed. As a teen I worried about forgetting my locker number, getting a bad grade, or never being noticed by the hunky hall monitor who stood in front of my math class. As a young mother I was afraid for my children; what if they got sick, lost, stolen? What if their arms got broken or their hearts? As a single mother I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to support us all. As a single member of the baby boomer generation, I wonder if I’ll be able to support myself on my SS check.

Many of the things I’ve feared have come to pass and I am still alive and whole and willing to get up in the morning. Digging around in my psyche, I realize that it’s not the things that come at me that frighten me, it’s more the anxious concern about how I will handle things that gives me pause. Will I be generous enough, kind enough, tolerant enough? Will I ever stop worrying that there isn’t enough of everything long enough to see that there’s an abundance of everything I need? Will I ever learn to trust again, or to hold my judgments in check?

I‘m not afraid of the dark anymore, and as a friend laughingly put it, I’m not afraid to die; I’m more afraid I’ll have to come back and do it all again. FDR was right – the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Angst can be our undoing.

What scares you?

Dividing the Pie

Starting back to work this week put me in mind of a time when I taught a class in fractions to seventh graders. We watched a video featuring a fellow who vainly tried to explain to his girlfriend why she couldn’t have 100% of his love. After all, he said, a percentage of his affections were wrapped up in his car, not to mention his bicycle, his cute science tutor, his mom and dad, his guitar, and, of course, his leather jacket. But, he promised, as he sang and danced around her, that the 8% left over was all hers.

What if your life was a big pie graph and you had to chart the outlay of your affections in fractions? How would your percentages read? Where does your strongest passion lie? Do your favorite possessions rank right up there with sweethearts and best friends and family ties? Where do things like your SUV or your new iPhone fall in the general scheme of things? Do you love things or just like them a lot? How large a piece of pie would contain favorite holidays or perfect places? What about chocolate?

These thoughts sent me running to fetch a sheet of paper, a dinner plate, a ruler, and a pencil with an eraser. I traced a circle around the plate, put a dot in the center, and sat nibbling the eraser while I contemplated just how I might apportion my adoration according to mathematical concepts.

It seemed expedient to begin with a list of whom and what I loved. I started with the obvious – family and friends – but decided the categories were too broad so I began a sub-list, identifying family members and then friends until I ran out of names. I drew a straight line from the dot to the edge of the circle and nibbled again. Where should the next line go? Did I spend the majority of my affection on my family? Should the number of names on each list determine the size of my pie slice or did the depth of my affection count for more? Where did the cat fit in? And what about concepts? I have been known to fall in love with ideas – which slice would they go in? I had room for 100% here and all of a sudden it didn’t look like enough.

I thought of all the things I love: waking up to birdsong on a spring morning, burying my nose in a bunch of bluets, taking that first sip of hot, sweet tea, green grass and pink sunsets and mud puddles and good stories, a cat curled on my lap, whipped cream on chocolate pie, my old blue sweater, kisses, movies, fresh asparagus, driving fast, warm hugs, walks in the woods, spiraling snowflakes, waves breaking on a sun-drenched beach, music, rare beefsteak, Christmas morning, mashed potatoes, birthday surprises, my old homestead, watching clouds as I lay on my back in a meadow, reading poetry, my fuzzy, leopard-spotted slippers, Mama’s old china teapot, snow angels… the list promised to be endless. And if I labeled each pie slice, would that make it immutable? What if I fell out of love with someone, or some thing? Would my percentages change?

I tore my paper into pieces. 25% of it went into the wastepaper basket. I crumpled the other 75% into a ball for the cat to play with. I felt 100% better.

There's the Door, What's Your Hurry?

I saw an article in a magazine the other day titled, “Bringing Nature Indoors.” I don’t have to bring it in; it walks in on its own. Or flies in. Or crawls in. And it doesn’t wait to be invited. Every corner harbors a spider, and, if the spider is lucky, an insect of some sort, destined to be dinner. There are ants climbing the walls and scurrying across the floor. Ladybugs inch their way across the table or fly dizzily about, landing in my hair or on my plate. There are gnats and bugs of all sorts either just passing through or setting up housekeeping. I don’t bother putting the vacuum cleaner away anymore. I want to be able to grab it quick and suck up whatever bug happens to be frightening me at the moment.

I’m not exactly frightened – more like grossed out. I don’t mind ants outside in the grass, but it gives me the willies to have several of them making a beeline in my direction along the bathroom floor while I stand barefoot making my morning ablutions. I have sprayed all the baseboards along the kitchen and bathroom walls with non-toxic ant repellent, and have set out ant traps. My hope is that word will spread amongst the ant kingdom that the lady of the house is not to be trifled with.

Spiders of every shape and size are making webs as fast as I can sweep them down. There are spindly-legged, pale brown ones; furry-legged, bulgy ones; teeny, tiny black ones; scuttling, chubby, round ones; creepy-crawly, fuzzy ones. They drop from the ceiling, inch across the floor, huddle behind the radiators, string filaments across the windowpanes, scale the sides of the sink, and lie in wait over the door. I no sooner dispatch one than ten line up behind me, waving their legs and plotting revenge.

Even though the open windows all have screens, every evening there is an onslaught of those pesky little midges that fit handily though the wire mesh. They cluster in hordes above the lamps and fuss about my face as I work at the computer. Moths bump and butt against the screens and when I come in at night, they flutter in ahead of me to commit suicide on the light bulbs. Mosquitoes line up at the door, fighting for the chance to whine in my ears the moment I drift off to sleep.

Parker, the cat, keeps the mice at bay, and there have been no bears in my backyard to date. There are bunnies aplenty but they keep a safe distance from the door, and though I made eye-to-eye contact with a possum waddling up the bank behind the cottage the other afternoon, it made no request to move in. The larger wildlings know their place. It’s the little guys – the bugs – that are bugging me.

Ah, life in the country. Nature indoors? Thanks, but I prefer mine outside.

Slacker Summer

It was going to be a summer of travel -to the west coast to visit family, to upstate New York for a week of camping, to Vermont to visit an old friend, to the eastern end of MA to visit the grands. When the longer, larger expeditions failed to happen, it became a summer of pure relaxation.

The vegetable garden, planted in the persistent June rain, failed miserably. Last summer at this time I was awash in tomatoes to be jarred, cucumbers to be pickled, corn to freeze. This summer I had exactly four cucumbers and just enough tomatoes for a meal or two. The good news? I didn't have to weed, to spend hours over a steaming kettle, spend extra on canning jars and lids. There is nothing so bad that some small good doesn't come of it.

The patio garden, on the other hand, flourished. There are five large yellow-orange pumpkins growing from the rogue seed in the compost. I have put fresh chives, parsley, oregano, basil or mint in almost every meal I've made. The flowers have grown splendidly, blooming first in shades of pink and purple and now in bright yellow as the Rudbeckia nitida 'Herbstsonne' reach for the sky. My daughter calls this the "clown" plant as the impossibly tall stalks support rather smallish blossoms in comparison to the height.


I have done some odd jobs from time to time, it's true - I've been tutoring a small boy weekly and spent time with the 93 year old mother of a friend, chauffering her to the doctor, the hairdresser, the grocery store. A former high school student brings her writing once a month or so for reading aloud and suggestions. I've been to see the grands, went to their swim meets and ball games. But the bulk of the summer vacation? I've mainly taken lessons from Parker the cat - eat well, sleep often, and greet each day with a contented smile.

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.