Garage Accidents

Well, I did it again.  I've had an accident in the garage.  That is where my "car wrecks" happen.  Somehow if I can just get in or out of the garage, I have no problems on the road.  I've bumped mirrors, broken tail lights, and knocked the door frames.  Today it was the garage door.  It wasn't quite up as I pulled out and wouldn't you know it - CRUNCH.  Thank goodness, my dear brother-in-law was able to get the bent and hanging bottom panel back on the tracks.  Grandpa Swift just sighed when I called and told him what had happened.  He knows my depth perception is not the best.  Since it has been years since I've had a garage that I can actually park in, I was worried that I would do something like this.  So there it is.  The bent panel can be fixed, the car is fine, and I will not get into the car from now on unless the door is up!

Elephants in the Pasture

Last spring, as I spun along the interstate headed home from work, I noticed some "cows" that didn't look quite right grazing in a pasture.  They were mamoth and moved slowly across the field. I did a double-take.  Those "cows" turned out to be elephants!  The big pasture and barn along the highway are used by a small circus for their winter quarters.  That bright spring day, the elephants were out enjoying a bit of green grass and a bit of sunshine.

The elephants are back now.  The circus is once again in its winter quarters, and I purposely drive home on the interstate to see if the elephants are out.  I get in the right lane and go as slowly as safety allows just to get a glimpse of them in the pasture or by the pond.  It is a novelty to see elephants where one normally sees cows.  Somehow, as the days get shorter, and life falls into the routine of work and darkness, the idea of elephants in the pasture is just the spark I need to keep life from becoming dull.

The elephants are out of place in a sense, and I like that awkward balance between what is expected and what actually is.  So, I look for the elephants.  I keep looking for the unexpected.  It brightens the dull winter days and keeps me expecting surprises.

Starting New

Grandpa and I have moved to town.  With a new neighborhood and a new town, I'm trying to add some new, positive habits to my life.  I don't have my garden here yet, but I know where it will go, and on nice days as the winter progresses, I will work on it.  I want to be ready to plant lovely vegetables when spring does arrive.

In the meantime, I've joined the YMCA and am trying to exercise.  I am NOT an athletic person.  I don't mind sweating and getting dirty in the garden, but just running on a treadmill makes me feel like a hamster.  There is no joy in that.  So, I'm trying some of the activities available at the Y.

 I tried the free weights.  That was my biggest failure.  Even with no weight at all attached to some of the machines, I could not move them.  I moved from machine to machine trying to find something I could do!  I found one.  That told me I should find something in a hurry to build my muscles and keep my bones strong!

I tried the stationary bicycle.  That went pretty well.  I enjoyed looking out the big window over the roofs of the business district while I pedaled, but it didn't feel like much of a whole body exercise.

I tried racket ball.  Well, I was on the racket ball court with a ball and a racket.  My daughter tried to teach me along with my 6 year old grandson.  I swished the ball as much as he did, and sad to say, by the end of the hour, he was doing much better than I.

Persevering, I tried the aquacise.  Now, I may have found something I can actually do.  I'm pretty good at it in the shallow end, but once I get into the deep water I have a tendency to move all over the pool as we float and swing our legs and bodies.  If I can learn to stay in place, or at least in a smaller area, I may actually succeed at this. 

At any rate, I am trying to move my body and keep my heart and bones at least as healthy as they are now!

Chicken Soup

We are experiencing our first real cold snap.  The temperatures have dropped below freezing for two nights and that trend is expected to continue for the next two nights.  My solution to the chill is to make a big pot of chicken soup.  In the past, every pot of chicken soup I made tasted like just boiled chicken in broth.  It wasn't bad, but it was boring.  I've finally hit on a combination that renders a wonderful pot of soup every time.

I being with a tablespoon of butter and slowly saute an onion, 2-3 stalks of celery, and 3 -4 carrots in the butter until they being to soften. I then add cooked chicken to this mixture and saute the chicken with the vegetables. To this add about 2 tsp of sage or poultry seasoning. I then add 4 cups of good low sodium chicken broth and heat.  To this I add about 1-2 cups of prepared Uncle Ben's long cooking long grain and wild rice (original recipe).  I also add on pouch of Swanson's chicken flavor boost.  Sometimes I will add peas or other vegetables that I have on hand.  Let this simmer for at least 30 minutes and serve it with a crusty roll. 

So yummy on a cold night!

Sweet September Rain

At last the September rains have come.  After such a long drought, I feared more drought as autumn approaches.  But, gratefully the rain has come.  Even after such deadly heat and such a deep drought, the hard patch of ground that is the back yard has sprung to life.  Water makes all the difference.

With water, the grass greened immediately, and as the rains have continued to come regularly, the crepe myrtle has bloomed.  The penta and salvia have lifted their colorful heads again and are giving a last show of color before the frosts come.  Even the day lilies, which are no longer blooming, are putting up little green shoots of leaves and storing up nourishment before the cold arrives.

The rain has cooled the air, refreshed the earth and the people and relieved the animals who move now with more vigor.  Thank goodness for the rain.  It is beautiful.

Blessed Rain

At last, a real rain!  It has rained off and on all day and the clouds have kept the precious moisture from being sucked up into humidity before it could soak in.

 In all of my life, I have never seen the ground so hard an so dry.  Many trees are dying, and some that have survived are already beginning to get their fall color a month or more early.  That must be their defense against the drought; they just go dormant.  Maybe the September rains will come and quench the earth again. The weatherman says that just since June, we are 11 inches behind our average rainfall.

One of our sons gets his water from a spring on his property, and he has been without water for almost 6 weeks.  He has had the local fire department bring him 2,000 gallons of water to replenish his cisterns and holding tanks.  He is very frugal with his water and saves as much as he can.  Our well is holding up, but we have always tried to never waste water.  We turn off the water when we brush our teeth, and I water the flowers with any left over water from dinner or from the tea pot (after it cools or I pour hot water on weeds around the stone path to kill them).  Water is a precious resource, and it is good to see it rain again.

Drought

Day after day it is hot and dry.  Everything that should be green is turning brown.  In all of my life, I have never seen it so dry and hot for so long.  Yesterday we had a brief shower - just enough to dampen the porch, but the earth and vegetation is so dry that when I walked through the grass immediately after the 2 minute shower, everything was dry.  It was like no moisture had fallen at all.  I dug up some of my perennials to put them in pots where I can get some water to them to try to save a start of a few of them.  I was shocked at the lack of moisture in the earth, and even after digging down about a foot, the soil was bone dry and cracked.  No wonder the trees are going brown.  Some will die from lack of rain.

The wasps come to the bird bath and drink and drink.  The birds come too and sit with their wings out and their feathers fluffed as they pant through open beaks.  It is pitiful to see them suffering.  I turn on the sprinkler in the evenings to water the garden, and the birds come to sit in the cooling water and preen themselves.  So far the well is holding out, but we are more careful with water now. 

The garden is still producing a few tomatoes, but everything has stopped flowering.  I keep watering hoping that when the 100 plus degree heat finally breaks and the rain returns we might get more vegetables. There are cumulus clouds building in the sky now, but so far no rain in sight.  Pray for rain.

Sweet Talcum

Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting of sweat and sweet talcum.   from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee  

Days and days of 100+ degree weather is wilting the peppers and tomatoes in the garden and has made the yard nothing but a patch of dry, crunching fiber.  It wilts me too.  The heat is invasive even when I stay inside where the air conditioner moderates the temperature.  Somehow, the heat glazes the windows and pokes fingers of blasted air around the doors defying the cool inside.

I try to work in the garden early in the morning when it is relatively cool.  By nine or ten o'clock the heat begins to bake everything.  I head for the shower drenched is sweat and ready to feel the cool water.  When your head is baked by the sun and you've worked outside until the sweat runs down your back and arms, there is nothing like standing under the cool stream of water in the shower.  But the best part of a summer shower is the talcum.  I might be one of the last people in the world to use talcum;  that soft powder on freshly dried skin is a silken coating that defies the heat.  Pampered by its slippery smoothness on my parched skin, I think of the ladies of old.  Talcum and a cool bath was all the relief they had in the heat of summer.  My grandmother used to use big fluffy pad to apply the loose powder to her skin.  I remember watching her standing in her slip on a hot day in a cloud of sweet talcum as she moved the puff over arms and neck.  My talcum comes in a shaker bottle, but I think back to those wise women who knew how to fight the sticky summer heat and follow their lead  with a dousing of sweet talcum on a hot summer day.

Too Hot

Everything is wilted.  The pink dogwood is badly burned from the heat and the bald cypress tree is going dormant already. If I don't water twice  a day, the flowers and vegetables hang limp by the end of the day.  This heat is relentless.  When a temperature of 95 degrees feels like a cool spell, something is wrong. 

I've been reading a book about the Dust Bowl, and it describes years of drought and high temperatures and dust storms.  It is a bit scary when I think of the high temperatures and wild fires and drought we are currently experiencing.  I buy my meat from a farmer who raises grass fed beef. She said her pasture is almost gone and the springs on her property that have run for two generations are now dry. There are lots of folks who know more about this than I do, but I just wonder if we need to look at how we are using our land and water resources.  I continue to water my garden and my shade trees, but I will let the grass go brown. I would rather have my vegetables than a green yard.  And I will pray for rain.

Zucchini Cake

The zucchini is spilling out of the garden.  The big, luscious vines are providing beautiful dark green fruits everyday.  With zucchini if you miss picking one, in 24 hours it will be big and overgrown.  One of our favorite uses for the big fruits is to make cake.  I make the entire cake in the food processor, but you could also use a regular mixer.  Even folks who do not like zucchini will love this cake, and if you don't tell them the zucchini is in it, they will never guess that it is there!

Zucchini Cake

Grate 2 cups of zucchini and set aside

Cream together:  1/2 cup of butter, 1/2 cup of oil, 1 3/4 cups of sugar. 

Add 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup sour milk (add 1/2 Tbls of vinegar to the 1/2 cup of milk and stir).

Mix together 2 1/2 cups of flour, 4 Tbls cocoa. 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt.  Add dry ingredients to the egg mixture and stir until thoroughly incorporated. 

Stir in the grated zucchini.  Pour into a large jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet with a rim.  Sprinkle about 3/4 of a large bag of chocolate chips on top.  You may also want to add some pecans.

Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes.  Be careful not to over bake. (I find that 35-40 minutes works in my oven).  This is delicious plain, but is also good topped with ice cream.

Vegetables

This morning we had 3/4 inch of rain.  It is so welcomed after long, hot, dry days.  I've watered every day, but that is just not as good a rain.  Despite the dry weather, I have an abundance of produce from my own garden and the farmers markets.  My kitchen cabinet is laden with zucchini and sunburst squash, cucumbers, green beans, peppers, tomatoes and blueberries.  The sunflowers are beginning to bloom and everywhere the bees are still working their magic on the blossoms.  I love this time of year.  The garden is so plentiful, and it makes everything look hopeful and secure.  We feed ourselves and can put some up for winter too.  It is deeply satisfying to see enough food on your cabinet, grown in your own garden, to feed the family for several meals.  It goes to something primal beyond any other work I've done to be a part of the life cycle in planting, growing and harvesting.

Midsummer's Night

It is almost dark.  The last of the color is fading from the trees and grass, and soon the whole scene will go gray and then black.  But just as dusk pulls the shade on another day, my yard is alive with the tiny golden light of the fireflies.  Dozens of lights dance from the grass to the trees and into the deep woods beyond the house.  I think  for a moment about grabbing a jar and running barefoot into the dewy grass to catch the tiny lights and keep them in the jar with holes punched in the metal lid as I did when I was a child.  One summer when my son was quite young and was very ill, I caught  a whole jar of fireflies and then turned them lose in his room.  In his illness that night, the tiny jeweled lights flying across his walls and floating over his bed eased his pain and helped him to sleep.  Tonight I just enjoy the show and wonder where these delightful insects recharge during the day.  They have no idea how many children they have thrilled with their magic lantern dances in the night.  Or how many adults still drift back to childhood just watching the fireflies of midsummer dance.

Fruitfulness

Although we have not had any rain for a month, the gardens and orchard are fruitful.  The plum tree is bearing for the first time.  The plums are not the big things one can buy at the store, but the sweetness is beyond compare.  I am so thankful that the electric company spared the plum tree when they ravaged our trees and the orchard.  I am having to beat the squirrels to the fruit; they tend to take more than their share.  But I don't want to pick the plums too soon.  They are so much better when left to ripen on the tree. 

The garden is starting to produce too.  The sugar snap peas are almost done bearing, and as the heat is beginning to set it, the vines will soon dry up.  But the green beans, squash, peppers and tomatoes are thriving in the heat.  Last year it was too hot for the beans to bloom or pollinate, but this year we have lots of young beans already on the vines.  We should have our first mess with some new potatoes this week.

Last night everything on the table came from the garden or from the local farmers.  We had a delicious meatloaf (The eggs in the meatloaf were local and the milk was regional. Only the oatmeal was from an unknown origin.)  Roasted new potatoes from the garden with onions and carrots from the farmers market.  Corn that was raised locally last summer that I shucked and froze was still yummy and fresh tasting.  The salad greens were from the garden along with the snap peas and radishes.  The carrots and tomatoes were from the farmers market.  The hamburger for the meatloaf was raised locally.  I've visited the farm, and they are happy, grass raised cows whose meat has more omega 3 than fish.  It was a lovely, tasty meal. 

That is the best part of summer.  The eating is soooo good and soooo fresh! 

Grandma's Meatloaf
1 pound of ground beef
1 package of dry onion soup
1 egg

Mix these together.

Add:  old fashioned oatmeal --- just enough to help bind the meat.  I use about 1/4 to 1/3 cup.  Mix. 
Add:  Milk until the meat is moist and everything sticks together.  Do not add too much milk; add a little at a time.  I add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup depending on how much oatmeal I have used.   The leaner the meat the more milk you may need to add.  You know you have the right amount of mile when you form a ball of meat and it is just a bit sticky. (Milk tenderizes the meat, but too much will ruin the meatloaf.)

Form the meat into a ball and place in a 9X7 oven proof pan. Press the ball into a loaf shape.  Top with catsup. (Sometimes I add green pepper slices as a topping too).  Bake at 375 degrees for about an hour.  Remove from the pan and place on a platter and let it sit for 5 minutes, then slice and enjoy.

Reading Blackberry Leaves

Some people say they can see the future in tea leaves.  I can see the future in the blackberry bushes. The blackberries are in full bloom, and some even have tiny green berries showing the promise of big juicy berries in a few weeks.  The berry patch is full of butterflies greedily sucking the blackberry nectar.  Later the birds will try to beat me to the succulent berries.  They don't know that they will have to compete with a grandson who will inhabit the patch when he is here stuffing the big black berries into his mouth.  This time of year, he begins to make his way to the patch on every visit to see if they berries are ready.  There will be enough for the grandson to eat while they are warm and juicy and for the birds and for a sugary cobbler.  Right now the berries are just a promise, but I can see the future in the blossoms.

Honeysuckle

I become intoxicated every time I go outside these days.  The honeysuckle is blooming, and the heady, intoxicating  scent is almost overpowering.  If you have never smelled drifts of wild honeysuckle, you are missing one of the loveliest scents in the world.  How can I describe the smell?  It is not as citrus as magnolia, but more so than lilac.  Perhaps it is more like a lemony rose.  The scent blocks out every other smell.  It takes you to another realm.  And this wonderful scent keeps me from pulling out all of the invasive honeysuckle vines. The vines are as bothersome and mischievous as the scent is romantic.  The vines  entwine themselves around anything- fences, trees, shrubs, buildings.  They suffocate whatever they grow on.  The sheer mass of the vines can take down a fence or a building.  The vines overpower their surroundings.  The scent is just as overpowering, but it is so sweet and so pleasant, I am willing to submit to the fragrance every spring when the honeysuckle blooms. 

Worms, Asphalt and Hay

Spring.  Nothing is predictable this year.  Several farmers in the area are cutting and baling hay already.  I've never seen them put up hay this early.  That sweet smell took me by surprise last week as I drove the back road home, and sure enough there were the tractors out in the field rolling the long rows of cut grass into large, round bales.

Another sweet smell greeted me in the last few days too. Asphalt.  Yes, the acrid bite of hot tar and the crunch of the fine pieces slapping the side of the car were beautiful.  It means that the pot holes that have plagued us all winter on the country roads are gone.  No more swerving to keep from being swallowed up by the big holes.  No more driving on the wrong side to find a bit of pavement still intact and not totally eaten away.  I had become so used to avoiding the pot holes that I find it difficult to just drive our roads normally! 

What is becoming a perennial sign of spring here is the defoliation of the pine trees.  We have an annual infestation of small worms that eat every bit of green from the pines except the new shoots at the end of the branches.  Right now the trees look ruined and dead.  They just hold out their tender green candles and hope to survive the worms.  With any luck, they will be back in full needle in a few weeks.  Right now, they are a pitiful sight.  The foresters say there is nothing we can do outside of an aerial spraying, and who would want to be coated in insecticide?

So spring continues, and I wait for the next surprises it will bring.

Vegetable Coats

Here it is the end of April and we are still bouncing back and forth between summer and winter.  The temperature at night, which has been balmy, is now flirting with freezing.  I've scraped frost off of the car windshield and had to dig out my heavier coat again.  The coats for the vegetables are less than flattering.  I keep a box of rags, and so on these near freezing nights you can find the tomato towers wrapped in old, frayed towels.  The squash plants are covered in bits of old sheets while the peppers sport an assortment of wash cloths and hand towels.  The garden looks like someone dumped the rag box on it, which I guess I did!  Although it is not beautiful, the old rags have kept the plants safe from the frost. The tomato blossoms seem to have survived, and those bundled up vegetables look beautiful to me on a frosty morning.

Morel Mushrooms

They say April is the "cruelest" month.  It might be because the weather is so fickle.  One day it is 80 degrees and the next day it is 50 degrees.  Maybe April is cruel because the showers that are promised in the rhyme to bring the May flowers sometimes inundate the fields or bring hail.  But I think the real reason that April is cruel is that just when I am dreaming of their sweet buttery goodness, there are no morel mushrooms to be found.

The environment here is not right for morels.  I've tramped my woods and looked next to every dead log and under all the May apples, and there is not a morel in sight.  For one thing, we don't have good deep black dirt here.  We have red, chert rock filled soil.  Not a good morel seedbed.  Even though it has been years since I lived in good morel country, in April my mouth still waters for the unique flavor of the little sponge looking caps.  

If you are lucky enough to find morels, you have to soak them first in salt water before you cook them.  Ants tend to like to live in the sponge like folds, but a good soaking removes anything lingering there.  Dip the sweet morsels in flour and fry in butter.  It only takes a few minutes to have a crispy sweet bite that rivals anything else on earth.  My mouth waters just thinking about them. We used to find them by the sack full, and every night the main course was fried morels.  In about a week the season was over, but the joy of those delicate fungi lingers.  Alas, but another cruel April will pass, and I can only dream of morels.

Apple Blossoms

It was a beautiful morning this morning.  There have been many beautiful mornings during March.  The temperatures have been in the 80's, which is more like those we normally see in late spring!  Terrapins, normally out in late May and early June, have been awaken by the warm days and are already making their walk-abouts across the country highways and through the fields. The plum tree has already bloomed and there are tiny green globed fruits hanging among the leaves.  Now the apple trees are in full bloom.  The ground is covered with the spent white blossoms - a soft, scented spring snow.  Sitting under the tree this morning taking a respite from weeding the garden,  I sat and studied the apple tree.  It's pink and white blossoms were alive with all types of bees and moths and butterflies.  The light breeze and the movement of the bees made the trees tremble with the expectation of fruit to come.  The bees moved from flower to flower with saddle bags of yellow pollen on their legs.  I don't see how they can continue to fly with such loads!   The martens were busy overhead examining the bird house like a couple selecting their first apartment.  They went into every hole and chirped and sang as they tried to decide where to nest.  The cat simply sat and watched it all flicking her long tail and simple enjoying the moment.  It was a good day in the orchard.                                                                 

The Waxing Spring Moon

The moon is in its waxing stage.  That means it is moving past the dark, new moon stage and getting brighter as it moves toward the full moon.  Many gardeners plant by the moon and the signs.  I don't use the signs too much, and you can consult an almanac for what are the correct dates for your area.  Generally, my grandma said, "Waxing moon, plant things that fruit above ground; waning moon, plant things that fruit below ground."  So since the moon is waxing, I was in the garden first thing this morning checking to see if I might be able to plant some more lettuce this weekend.  I think I can as soon as the soil dries a bit from all of the heavy rains we have had.  My raised beds drain very well, so I should be able to poke a few seeds into the lovely black soil.  I'm using pelleted lettuce seed this year.  I've not tried that before, so I'm anxious to see how it germinates and grows.  It does make planting lettuce easy and the spacing of it a breeze.  Hopefully, it will mean much less thinning, which I always think of as a waste of perfectly good plants.

This week I was at a national education conference, and I had the opportunity to visit with some women from Wisconsin.  Although they had only 7 inches of snow this year, they had not even started their tender plants inside yet.  I could see the anticipation in their eyes as they talked about being able to put those first tomato seeds in flats in a few days! As I walked to the garden this morning looking for signs of my potatoes sprouting and marveling at the peas and early lettuce coming along, I thought of my Wisconsin friends just waiting to get their hands in the dirt and begin that cycle of planting and harvest.  I didn't have the heart to tell them that my pepper plants, still under the grow lights are 6 inches tall.  The tomatoes and eggplants are about 4 inches tall.  I know the anxious anticipation of planting.  I just crumbled the dirt in my hands, said a prayer of thanks for sun and rain and came in and sorted the seed packets for about the tenth time.

Destruction

Beware the ides of March is what Caesar was told.  It was a warning I should have heeded too.  Today the power company came to exercise it's privilege of right-of -way.  There are transmission lines running over the front corner of our property near the road.  For 20 years no one has said a thing.  But today the men in the trucks came to clear 100 feet under the lines.  We lost two beautiful, big white pine trees, two big bald cypress, a short leaf pine, and two trees from the orchard.  It was so sad.  I feel worse about these tree than I felt when the dog died! I think of the habitat for the birds, the carbon they were storing, the shade a beauty they gave us.  It makes me weep.  But at the same time, if a storm blew them into the power lines and the little man down the road couldn't use his respirator, or a sick child had no heat or air, I would feel terrible.  I have to consider the trees my sacrifice for the greater good of the community.  But still I am incredibly sad.

So time to replan the space.  Nothing can be planted there.  But wildflowers might work.  They won't bother the power lines, and they will still add some beauty.  I will have to think about this, but I think wildflowers or big sunflowers might work.  They are seasonal like grass.  Of maybe I can plant grasses for quail habitat.  There are possibilities.  When one thing is destroyed, we must mourn it for a while and then plan and create and grow something positive from the dust.

Daffodils

"Daffodils" 

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth 

 

Spring

Spring is here once again.  All the typical signs are evident:  the peepers are singing in the ditch, the crocus and daffodils are blooming the country roads are littered with dead skunks.  It baffles me that of all the beauty spring brings, the flattened bodies of skunks are one of the first signs.  I guess it doesn't pay to be one of the first ones out in spring.  On a brighter note, this morning there were rabbits grazing on the few green shoots of grass out by the garden.

Today it is in the low 60's and the early seeds sitting on the counter were calling my name.  So since the moon phase is almost right, the ground was not cold, the soil had just the right tilth and I could no longer resist the call to get my hands in the dirt, I planted some peas.  Just one short row.  I have plenty of seed, so I will probably have to plant again, but just working the soil and placing the plump, wrinkled seeds in the earth was wonderful.  Sun and rain and they will grow.

The early seedlings I started indoors are coming up.  The tiny necks of the plant poke through the soil and then lift their head and unfurl their first two leaves.  I always feel that life is affirmed when a seed sprouts and begins its life.  Grandpa and I bend over the young plants and marvel at how such a tiny seed will become a sturdy pepper plant or a ranging tomato that will take over the garden.  All is takes is someone to plant the seed and give it food, water and light.  People are a lot like that too.  All we need to do is give each other care and food, water and light.  Affirm life.

Is It Spring?

A lovely, mild winter.  Everyone is loving the warm, pleasant weather, but everything is out of kilter!  My spring bulbs, which are usually just beginning to peek out by this time, are 4 inches tall.  The birds are singing in the mornings as if it were spring.  And beyond any reason, I planted lettuce! This shirt-sleeve weather has me sorting seeds, puttering among the garden beds and getting out the peat pots to begin starting seeds for the garden.  But it is too early.  They say a big storm is on the way.  Perhaps, but just in case it misses us, I am going to plan for an early spring!

Stars

The stars have always fascinated me.  When I was a child, we lived near an observatory, and often my parents would take us to the public programs offered there.  On of my fondest memories is sitting through a lecture about what we were to see then climbing into the big dome with it silver eyelid open to the night sky.  In my dress, patent leather shoes and cardigan sweater I climbed the black metal stairs to peer through the tiny eyepiece.  I recall the first time I saw a miniature Saturn and its rings there before me.  It was magical and spiritual all at once.

I've forgotten much of what I learned during those lectures, but still on a cold, clear winter night I love to look at the night sky.  The winter sky is my favorite, and although I can still find the dippers and Orion, I mostly just stand bundled in my coat and scarf with my head back in wonder.  In winter the stars are twice as bright and seem close enough to touch, and from our driveway in the country away from the city lights, it is as if they were strung across the jet black night just for us.  I marvel at them now as I did looking  for the first time through the telescope.  It is still spiritual and magical all at once.