Category Archives: seasons

carry on, girlfriend

06 Wednesday May 2009

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My friend Joan’s stories been such a joy to read from day one; with each story I learn more about her as a woman, a parent, a survivor and a friend.  She writes with an honesty and humor that I find refreshing.  Recently she wrote a sweet story of how one word has epitomized each stage of motherhood for her.  She carries on, following her path even when the turns ahead are not yet clear.

dsc_00541Sometimes we all just keep going out of faith that our efforts will pay off in the end.  I planted these flowers at the end of last season.  The grocery store was giving them away, because it had reached the time of year when no one in their right mind would still plant pansies, even though they can overwinter in this zone; it depends on the year.  I took three flats worth and felt very lucky to have shopped there that day. I am a sucker for unwanted plants; I think it is an odd personality trait.  I will take any unwanted plant and find it a home, on my property or at school.  This soft spot for unwanted things is a compelling reason for me to not volunteer at an animal shelter… it would be disastrous for our household!  Also, I should not work at Goodwill.  Or the library book sale.

I knelt on the cold ground and tucked in the sad little flowers.  They bloomed a bit late last fall, but the snow soon came and frankly they all looked like goners. I silently berated myself for once again spending time on irrational pursuits instead of the dozens of unfinished projects I have around here.

Spring came, and some didn’t make it.  But some did.  Each time I walk out my front door, these beauties say to me,

“Voila!  Violas!”

They bring me more joy than many of the expensive plants that I just expect will come up each year.  They say to me, “Just carry on, and some things will work out, and others won’t, but there will be beauty if you look down at where you are.”

Like Joan, I find that stories bubble up from underground.  There are so many stories waiting for the right time to pop out and surprise someone.  The ideas are there for the taking; they just need a place to grow for a while before they bloom.  They just need me to set aside my logical pursuits and let them be.

a plot

29 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Foodies, good reads, seasons

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We broke ground on our first vegetable garden plot last night.  I use “we” in a loose sense, just me pointing my finger and Big D with a shovel and a mission.  That man works harder than anyone I have ever met.  He knows I’ve wanted to try vegetable gardening for years.  Plenty of flowers around here, but the vegetables and herbs were all in containers on the deck.  There were the years of volunteer tomatillos growing by the front door, but that is another story.  I like to think that the White House garden subconsciously inspired us to make this the spring to try it ourselves.

Most years we buy a share at the wonderful local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm, which gives us a bountiful basket of vegetables every week from mid-May to mid-October.  There are so many smart aspects of buying fresh and local; one beauty of “buying all that they grow” came in the form of vegetables and herbs both familiar and unfamiliar.  One vegetable last year had us searching online for a name — the long, green curlicues turned out to be garlic scapes, delicious, with a flavor of both garlic and onions.  I put it in everything while we had it;  and I know I would not have been likely to pick it up from a market on my own.

If you are interested in reading a fascinating account of a family’s adventure in eating completely local for one year, check out Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  I loved the book’s mix of themes: gardening, recipes, motherhood and family dynamics, juxtaposed with a journalistic investigation of the effects of food production on the environment and economy.  Oh, and it’s funny.  I like that too.

I have no delusions that our small plot of earth will yield much this first year, as it is a new adventure. We are giving it a casual try, with my characteristic fear of commitment.  It may just be a bunny buffet.  We have both read the hysterical book The $64 Tomato by William Alexander, about the perils, trials and tribulations of Obsessive Gardening Disorder.  We plan to keep each tomato under $10 each.  We’ll also plan to go to the farmers market as usual.

Now, perennial gardening?  That is where my time has been happily spent for years…

welcome, friends

swimming laps

14 Tuesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Motherhood, Photography, seasons

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dsc_0025Ahhh, the zoo in the springtime, for me the best time of year to go.  The summer — not so much:  heat and  humidity don’t mix well with the wafting aromas of african animal feces.  But now, the zoo puts on a wonderful floral show with the daffodils, tulips and hyacinths sharing the grounds with the flowering pear trees, magnolias and forsythias.  Oh, and the animals are more active when it is not stinkin’ hot.

Bonus!

This polar bear was doing laps around her enclosure.  I’m guessing summer in the midwest is not her favorite time either.  We watched her for quite a long time, from two different vantage points; we were fascinated by the methodical way she did the circuit.  The arm strokes were nearly identical on each pass around, and she would touch certain rocks along the back wall in exactly the same place each time.where's the exit?

At the risk of anthropomorphic musing, I could not help wondering what she was thinking or feeling or whatever polar bears do.  Did it bring her comfort, in these artificial surroundings, to go round and round in a pattern?  Did swimming laps work all the energy out of her body that must be pre-programmed into a polar bear’s DNA for survival?  Was she just bored out of her mind?  Whatever the reason, she was still swimming the same loop when we walked by two hours later.

We have not been to the zoo very often in the last few years ever.  Trips to the zoo never ended well when the kids were little, so I became zoo-averse early on.  When I see young mothers now, pushing their strollers with 1…2…3… kids in tow, none of them look like they are having a nervous breakdown.  Huh.  I’ll just say it is so much more fun to take the kids to the zoo now that they are a) ambulatory  b) able to read all the cool information about the animals themselves  c) not obsessed with riding the mini choo choo zoo train umpteen times at $5 a pop.  Other than the Little One being suddenly starving every 100 yards (because there is SO much delicious, affordable food at the zoo and the smell of monkey poo really whets the appetite);  it was a fun day.  We’ll just assume he was growing another inch taller that afternoon.

easter baskets

12 Sunday Apr 2009

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My Easter basket always contained a can of ripe olives.

Sure, I was a big fan of the chocolate bunny (hollow or solid), the peeps, malted-milk-ball robin eggs the and jelly beans.  I loved the egg hunt around the house for real, brightly dyed, hard-boiled eggs.  We would usually find almost all of them, which only became problematic a few days later.  But the ripe olives were my favorite Easter treat.  At the big Easter family dinner, there might be black olives in the relish tray along with the carrot and celery sticks;  however I could really only eat five of those in good conscience (one stuck on the end of each finger), since they were for all the guests.  But that was OK — I had a can of my own to eat later.  I think I ate the olives and peeps in separate sittings.

Santa never got the tip about how much I liked olives.  He could have saved the elves a lot of toy-building (and skipped the pink turtleneck) by just leaving me a case of pitted mediums under the tree.  Holiday hindsight = 20/20.

Wishing you a basketful of whatever makes you happy!  I’ll offer tulips for a start.

tiptoe thru the

six degrees of bloggeration

11 Saturday Apr 2009

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For me, one of the wonders of the blogoshere is this ability to find kindred spirits anywhere in the world.  Until very recently, I met people through the traditional walks and walkings of life, made many wonderful friends and interesting acquaintances — but my web of connections was based on where I lived, where the kids went to school; plus fate, luck, destiny, divine intervention and those six degrees of separation.  Along my merry way, I had not yet managed to meet someone who shared my vintage cookbook fetish, cooking contest winner fantasy, librarian aspirations and who is also an accomplished author who incorporated her love of food into her stories.  I did not spend much time thinking about the existence of such a person; but really what are the chances? And even if she did exist, how likely that our paths ever cross??

Viola!  Through fate, luck, destiny, divine intervention, the internet, blogs, and Karen’s trail of bread crumbs, I found such a person!  Does she play the harp?  We don’t know yet!  But just thinking about how wildly random this is makes me think in exclamation points!

The blog Vintage Cookbooks by Amy combines recipes from by-gone eras (the 70’s do count), vintage photos (photographic food styling in the 1950’s is quite amusing), cheeky commentary on culinary choices and… reviews of YA novels.

This is my kind of blog.

So, just in time for Easter dinner, check out her posts on Bunny Breads, and Baked Glazed Hams trimmed with candied orange daisies, and salad baskets with green pepper handles.  I find this so charming; you may be befuddled.  To each their own basket of goodies.

My friend Joan says that we all meet for a reason.  Tell me, have you ever unexpectedly found someone that shares your uncommon combination of interests?  I’d love to hear your list, and your stories…

spring is all a-Twitter

27 Friday Mar 2009

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My new friend Karen introduced me to a new word: * twitterpated *.  We were discussing flutterbys vs. butterflies and somehow twitterpated was suddenly in context for the conversation.  I don’t know how I went through four decades and never heard of this charming word.  Urban Dictionary has 17 definitions for twitterpated;  my favorite is “that happy, jumpy feeling you get that causes you to smile uncontrollably.”

Here’s a quote from Bambi, an early cinematic proponent of twitterpatedness:

Flower: [about two birds fluttering around] Well! What’s the matter with them?
Thumper: Why are they acting that way?
Friend Owl: Why, don’t you know? They’re twitterpated.
Flower, Bambi, Thumper: Twitterpated?
Friend Owl: Yes. Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime. For example: You’re walking along, minding your own business. You’re looking neither to the left, nor to the right, when all of a sudden you run smack into a pretty face. Woo-woo! You begin to get weak in the knees. Your head’s in a whirl. And then you feel light as a feather, and before you know it, you’re walking on air. And then you know what? You’re knocked for a loop, and you completely lose your head!
Thumper: Gosh, that’s awful.
Flower: Gee whiz.
Bambi: Terrible!
Friend Owl: And that ain’t all. It could happen to anyone, so you’d better be careful.
[points at Bambi]
Friend Owl: It could happen to you…
[points at Thumper]
Friend Owl: … or you, or even…
[Flower looks at Owl shyly]
Friend Owl: Yes, it could even happen to you!
Thumper: Well, it’s not gonna happen to me.
Bambi: Me neither.
Flower: Me neither.

Ahhh, spring in 1942.

Addictionary offers a different definition of twitterpated, and I am guessing that we are living the first spring where this definition is accurate:

*

twitterpated by Shelley Ryan at The Marketers Addictionary

adjective, So distracted by twitter you forgot what you were supposed to be working on.

*

Ahhh, spring 2009.

migrations

21 Saturday Mar 2009

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For those of you in the United States and Canada, I found this site to track the hummingbird migration for 2009.

I do not have an official map from the AARP, but I think the retirees heading north from Florida should be following roughly the same migratory patterns.  We have found that if you feed them, they will stay for approximately 48 hours; then they start checking the Weather Channel for good driving conditions.

The butterflies cannot be far behind.  Happy Spring, everyone!

daffodils

bookish

16 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by in good reads, Motherhood, seasons

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My fascination with books started early; in the summers of the 70’s, I would look forward to the bi-weekly visits of the Bookmobile to my tiny Wisconsin town.  I guess it was literary outreach for the distant corners of the county with no library branches.  (Do bookmobiles even still exist?)

This beloved bookmobile would park in the bank parking lot a short walk from my house.  I can picture the inside of that Rolling Bus of Books as clearly as any other memory of my childhood.  In retrospect, it is amazing how many pounds of books a 57 lb. girl could carry home by herself.  The titles themselves aren’t as clear in my memory;  I read so many books, back to back, that they eventually became onelongsummerstory.

It is possible that I should have spent more time playing outside with real people.

Fast forward to another century, and my fascination for children’s books has not faded.  Before my kids were born, I was collecting books for read-alouds and looking-throughs.  Books that had received the Caldecott Medal for Illustration always seemed like a good place to start.  Then started the early readers and beginning chapter books.  Soon, I was collecting Newbery Medal winners and Newbery Honor Books.  Oh, the world of YA novels!  There is a great list of award winning titles here, including 1922-present.  Of course, sometimes I will pick out children’s books simply because the title, or the cover art, or the subject will jump to be chosen.  Many of our most-thumbed copies have no award other than “Our Favorites”.  There are so many organizations that recognize talented children’s book authors and illustrators;  peruse this list to see many more.  Buy books for kids!

My kid book library is now quite extensive.  I am so lucky and proud to have voracious readers of my own.  As they grow older, it is still a joy to share books with them, albeit in a new way (they read the book first, then recommend it to me).  Someday we will have to decide which books they want to keep for their own libraries, and which ones we will donate.  Or, maybe, I could be the little old lady driving my own bookmobile…?

spring is in the air

05 Thursday Mar 2009

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Here’s a little ditty from my youth:

“Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.  I wonder where the flowers is?”

Wow, that looks even more bizarre written out than it did playing over and over  in my head the last 40 springs.

Yes, folks, now we know why I became obsessed with grammar and words.

Anyway, the flowers are riz blooming.  The gold, then the yellow, followed by white, lavender and purple crocus, opening in that order.  That — plus the cat weaving maniacally around our ankles and purring like an outboard engine — both sure signs that spring is nearly here.

crocus bloom

hope springs eternal

04 Wednesday Mar 2009

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I have planned to snap some photos of the crocus in my garden as they begin to peek out from the cold ground.  Crocus are my favorite flower;  they are to me the first beautiful color after the winter of gray and brown and white.  The grand idea was to document their emergence as a symbol of hope that spring will, indeed, arrive on its own time — with day-by-day photojournalistic updates of them poking out their little green arms and gradually exploding in bloom.  Now that I write it down, it does not sound that exciting…  (as in, maybe this summer I could take pictures of the lawn and you could watch the grass grow, etc. etc. )

On my way to the *mailbox* today, I learned something:  instead of spending my time stalking the mailman, if I just look down at where I am, today, I will find what I am looking for.

It’s too late for the crocus cam, but never too late to learn.

hope