Being Grandma

Here's Quincy, the love of my life, our youngest grandson playing a drum. He's here for five days, and this is the end of day two. We are old, closing in on seventy, still spry (but not sharp as tacks, that description comes later.) He came on the day after we had arrived back from a week in New York City, exhausted from the intensity of so many people and so much wonderful stimulation of art and music and drama and old friends (and heavy colds we were fighting. )

So we are here in this rural paradise of intense green of early foliage, the vegetable garden full of too many vegetables to count. The birds crabbed at us to get those feeders going! Two hummingbirds actually landed on my wrist as I was hanging up their feeder with new nectar.

Quincy went out with us this morning after we hung out the laundry on the clothes line to check out the sand hill cranes nesting on the pond. We could see the two enormous eggs they are hatching in their big nest of sticks and grass surrounded by a mote. Quincy and I had our binoculars at the ready and we watched the parent birds changing places on the nest.

A young four year old listens to a different internal drummer. At the request of "Get your shoes on. We're going out now," he takes ten minutes. He has to find the shoes, and along the way, his attention is distracted by any number of things calling for his attention. We grandparents are learning to be more mellow (more ketchup?), and wait patiently for everything to come together.

Grandpa and Grandma usually lead a purposeful life where we devote blocks of time to our work. All this purpose flies out the window when Quincy is here. We negotiate for time; You take him while fixing dinner and I can get in a half hour to work on that quilt or painting. I'll be on tap for three hours in the afternoon. Andy is great with taking Quincy to do errands and a grocery run. My specialty is the bedtime routine of bath and stories and many hugs.

The most exhausting thing is the negotiation of everything and the "Why's". I appreciate these qualities, but I find it so tedious. You can't just jump into the car and go when you need to. With a four year old, you must first alert him to the plan, find shoes, go pee, find necessary items such as the favorite toy, and water bottle. Then you must install a car seat and insert the child, contorting yourself to click the seat belt. In doing a series of errands you must de-insert the child because, of course you can't leave a kid for even a few minutes alone in a car. After awhile you begin to think that no trip is worth it, so we'll look in the freezer and garden and make do.

After Quincy goes to bed, my life is mine again. I know that tomorrow he'll be awake early anticipating a hearty farm breakfast. I'll go up to his room and pull up the shades. We'll gaze out across the field and pond looking for the possibilities for this day. We'll smell the pancakes, and for once Quincy is out of his pajamas and into his clothes in a flash.

Secret Vices

I have been enjoying a new Enya CD. Those harmonious sounds leak out the doors to melt into the night of fireflies and stars, and the lilting beat lifts my spirits. Most of my family and friends would scoff at my choice. Andy's preferance are those very strident Bach harpsichord pieces that tear my ears to shreds and I must go elsewhere and listen to the sounds of the fields and forest. He's entitled to his space as I am to mine.

I listen to classical music as I work, and my preferences are usually quite mainstream. When there is too much of what I think of as 'watery' French romantic, (La Mer and it's ilk), I change to my own music, rock and roll, new age, hip hop, bluegrass. And always I come back to Mozart, and lately Mendelson's piano works.

This is one reason why I love having this room of my own, away from the main house. I can listen to whatever I want, no explanations necessary. Next, I'll sample the new Elvis Perkins album, "Ash Wednesday". No one here to make judgements from past voices.

I came from a family who had made belittlement their watchword. I quickly learned not to express what I really thought. When I came to make my own family I vowed to change this dynamic, and I think we did.

But dregs of it live on of course. I remember a few years ago when I called my daughter on her penchant for swarmy magizines about celebrities. I regret this. Who among us is so pure and "intellectual" we cannot be interested in the mainstream (low life?) take on these people who seem to have a more vivid life than we do? We know it's not so, but we do it anyway. And so, fine!

I am not sure about this new Elvis Perkins album.. Unfortunately, at my great age, I can hear when the singer is off tune, the lyrics mundane. But I rest my case. Never get into a comfortble groove.

Easter eggs

The Old Bathtub

Here is the old bathtub we rescued from our neighbor's field a few years ago. Usually it has colorful flowers growing there to attract the butterflies I watch from where I often sit at the computer. Right now, it is full of tender lettuces of the kind you can never find in a store or market. I cover it with chicken wire so the cows ambling by do not decimate it with their careless slobber, so eager are they right now for anything to eat.

This has been a wild winter with cold we haven't ever seen in the twenty years we have been here. The spring suddenly went hot and windy most days and so dry you can see the dust devils in the lane. We replanted several citrus trees that didn't make it through the freezes so we are having to water them daily so they'll have a good start. The new fish pond is already settled in with surrounding spingerei, pentas, lobelia, and the natives among the rocks. Quincy and I put in five tiny goldfish who seem happy to be there with the numerous mosquito fish and the water lilies. I like to sit on the bench nearby and meditate on this magical microcosm.

Despite the strange weather the migrating birds are coming back on schedule. We don't see so many cardinals and titmouses (titmice?) at the feeders. I think they are busy incubating their eggs. Bluebirds can usually be seen perching on the fence out front. The hummingbirds demand that their feeders be full by dive bombing us on the porch.

The most exciting thing, birdwise, is Bob and Emily's nest! These are our resident sandhill cranes who have been here for several years. But we have never been able to find their nest until this year. Last week I saw them tossing grass and small sticks around in a spot on the ground next to the big pond. Finally this afternoon we saw one of them sitting on the nest. Later, I went out to watch them and saw the two birds change places. Emily, slightly smaller, was on the nest. Soon Bob strolled into view (where was he all day?). Very slowly, very stately, he delicately approached the nest. When he got right up to it, Emily arose, stretched out her neck to Bob. For several moments Emily pecked at the ground, and then, very slowly, Bob sank down, the faithful spouse on duty.

I worry about these birds and their upcoming parenthood. There are large cows tromping around, and the pond is full of alligators. And coyotes, ye gads. We are going away for five days. I wonder how the time will go for these elegant birds? They'll sit on those eggs in ninety degree sun, or in the rain and thunderstorms that have been promised. And each morning they'll greet the day with their wild vocalizations.

The barn tonight is full of fireflies. And wrens nesting everywhere.

We had a salad tonight of red lettuce, snow peas and our first asparagus - a perfect accompaniment to Andy's thin crust pizza topped with the last broccoli florets from the garden. When we return the broccoli will be all gone to flowers which will make the butterflies happy.

I am so eagerly anticipating our few days in New York City! We have opera and play tickets, museums and galleries to explore, music to hear and friends to see. I love the energy and color and motion of New York, the buildings and noise and possibilities. But I know that at some point I will be ready to leave all that teeming life, that brushing against so many people, the blaring sounds, the restaurants, the hermetically sealed hotel. I will be glad to get back to this paradise of space and the subtlety of spring changing into summer.

Happy Easter!

Parts of my life

We are having the last blast of winter today. The gusts of wind have been so strong bringing in the cold front, a huge oak tree along our driveway toppled over. It was weak from lightning damage a few years ago. It's too big for Andy and Warren to slay it with the chain saws so the tree man has been summoned and will likely appear tomorrow.

I have been enjoying the land. I can see the pond while I hang out the clothes and enjoy the warmth of early sun. Ducks, anhingas, and other water birds are thick on the surface of the water. The cranes still hover around the edge but I still cannot see exactly where their nest is. Every few minutes they holler and flap. The vegetable garden is full of hummingbirds after the broccoli flowers they must make do with since other flowering plants are scarce so far.

On such a chilly day Lola, the dog keeps watch on everything from the couch. It's a good time for hunkering down in the studio, pictured today, to complete a couple of quilts that must go to the long arm quilter lady next week. Seems to be my blue period. I am trying to use up the fabric I have. The clay room is full of many Lacoochee kids' works drying to be fired next week while they are on spring break.

There is a lot to do here! Many acres, cattle, citrus, two houses, a pool, all the plants and gardens, stuff that always needs to be maintained and fixed. We have a lot of energy, but we do treasure any help we can find. Warren, the farm manager, is a partner, and can be called in a pinch to fix a valve on a pump or save the a/c when we have fifteen guests on hand.

Bruce, the wonderful handyman, can and will do anything. He 'exercises' the generator, maintains the water treatment machines, and remembers when we need to change various filters. He can build various imaginative solutions to our problems. He appears sporadically and we give him a list. I do not have to track him down and beg him to come. He just comes.

Since we have many guests (all wonderful!), we do have to think about maintaining the house and guest house. Dog hair, flying pollen, kids and general life take a toll. So, being as prosperous as we are, we thought it would be a good idea to have a cleaning person come once a week to hoe out, vacuum, dust, clean the bathrooms etc. For several years we had a neighbor woman come in. Often she brought her daughter and they were the twin tornadoes. The house sparkled. Then these two wonderwomen left because of other jobs. They left us with Tracy (someone they knew and liked from work).

It verges on the embarrassingly unseemly to complain about household help. (the servant problem, oh la!) Tracy, cheery and friendly, drives up in her really giant 4WD truck, gets out her caddy of cleaning materials. But nothing seems to get really cleaned. I have made check lists, supervised every time she's here, encouraged, suggested, flat out instructed. We had to get past the idea that she's to come on a regular schedule. We don't want her showing up when we are in the middle of a meeting here or have twenty guests who must raise their legs as the vacuum zooms by.

I tell her that I know she was not trained to do housecleaning (few of us are!). I tell her that I will never ask her to do anything I would not and do not do. I never ask her to shovel out mess; we are pretty neat. I give specific instructions. We pay top dollar for her services and all her social security tax. A pretty sweet deal, I would think. But, she is often late, comes on a different day, has to go to a funeral, has dental surgery, suddenly gets the vapors and has to leave after an hour etc. When she's in top form, she'll clean both houses in under two hours. (Try that!) I tell her that we pay her for four hours and if she can't see anything else to do, I'll suggest something. Such as dusting or maybe vacuuming the stairs. Maybe I am out of line?

Seems so churlish to complain. I do wonder about our American work ethic here. I am thinking of letting Tracy go and trying to get one of the Hispanic moms I know to do it. $100 a week plus more for special projects is not to be sneezed at. Maybe we'll do it ourselves. Andy and I are a famous cleaning team and together we can make everything glow in three hours. But I like and trust Stacy so I suppose we'll keep trying some more.

I am certainly acutely aware of the dire economic problems cascading upon us in this country. I am also very thankful to be o.k. Our pants are frayed and our cars are old and we don't eat out much. (Why would we when everything we consume is right here- and so fresh?) I think and divinely hope that we are truly resetting our impulses of greed and entitlement.

Nesting Time

One night of steady rain and crashing thunderstorms and somehow the world seems right again after this very cold winter and weeks of the Big Dry. The butterflies are foraging on the still meager milkweed plants, but they are here- the Queens, the giant swallowtails, even the Monarchs back from their winter in Mexico. The resurrection ferns flock the oak limbs and the pastures are green velvet.

Everyone here is nesting. I go into the feed room in the barn and a huge squawk goes up from the wrens who have decided upon the seat of the baby stroller stowed there. It's a tender time and they very definitely do not want any visitors! Bob and Emily, our resident cranes are building a nest on the side of the pond between the ghost trees. Emily turns around and around, packing down the territory. Bob is busy bringing straw and twigs. From time to time they twine their necks around each other and then Emily sits down to contemplate things while Bob flings thin bits of dry grass in the general direction of the nest. I wonder how long this process will take?

The seasonal bird visitors are in full throat. Bluebirds, great flycatchers, red wing blackbirds and hummingbirds are all here. In the first week of April the chimney swifts will return. (We have already cleaned out the fireplace and closed the damper in anticipation.) Many migratory ducks are on the pond. These are such shy creatures, it's hard to see them before they fly away in alarm.

The long shadows of late afternoon are fuller with the leafing of the trees. Who said that Florida does not have seasons? Spring happens in an instant, it's true. Blink, and it's gone. By tomorrow, the mid day heat will mean a watering of the vegetables is necessary, and I'll think about water for the flower beds, the orchids, and that small oak tree we planted that looks so peaky.

There is something about water from the sky that is magical. The vegetables grew several inches overnight. Suddenly, I knew that some of those large and beautiful collard plants and broccoli must go, so I cut them down and bagged them up for our guests to take home for their tortoises.

All of a sudden, so much is ready in the garden- golden beets, peapods, many varieties of lettuce, radishes, swiss chard, and the ever present broccoli and collards we have been eating all winter. The squash and cukes and carrots are coming along and there are tiny tomatoes on the vines. The asparagus bed is producing enough spears to satisfy me as I brouse there.

Vegetables, birds, our friends- so much to celebrate in spring. Last night we all went to dinner at the Blakes'. Phil, the seventeen year old son of our favorite guests was the designated driver. Norman Blake had made such an incredible dinner! Such a chef in our neighborhood! We all ate fresh greens from our gardens to go with the amazing crab wrapped in salmon fillets, Korean rice, brussel sprouts perfectly cooked, and kumquat pie.

While there at the Blakes, we walked around their 'compound' to see the garden and the building project of a house for their son. After dinner we strolled up to buy eggs from the Blakes' grandson who keeps a flock of chickens.

Spring- such a wonder!

The tortoises have come out of hibernation and I expect to see squirrels very soon.

Hard Times

This has been a week of 'the drama' in two of the places I go. My old school was just having the dress rehearsal for this year's Shakespearean play, everyone's favorite, The Tempest. At Lacoochee elementary, Ben Aguilar's after school group was polishing their fifteen minute musical they will perform on Saturday at the Pioneer Florida Museum. The ages of the kids in both schools is about the same, and the level of excitement from the kids and parents is beyond bounds for both groups. Otherwise, these groups are on different planets.

I am so delighted to be back in the midst of 'doing the Play' at my old school. The children are brimming with health and good teeth and they have all so easily learned miles of Shakespearean dialogue (with the good parental coaching). Their speech is clear and confident. At dress rehearsal they are all in beautiful and imaginative costumes with tasteful make-up so their faces will not be washed out by the lights in the small professional theater they are using. They have learned how to manage the wonderful set, made by parents and painted by kids, that turns around to become a rocky cave or a forest glen. They know the stage lingo, and for the most part they move seamlessly as a team. Clearly, they are enjoying it all enormously and are proud of their efforts. One child plays a Celtic harp during the performance and the director wisely lets the piece run a bit longer than necessary. These are children who have every advantage, as kids should, as did my own.

So, I wept in the community task force meeting at Lacoochee when I heard about the girl who was in intensive care with a 'brain bleed' from an untreated ear infection, or the other one this week who was in the cardiac unit of the hospital from complications from an untreated thyroid problem. The Ronald McDonald health truck may be cutting back on visits, and the school nurse is now down to half a day a week. (the school has more than 700 students.) The school social worker is retiring and her position will go unfilled due to cutbacks. The new school psychiatrist is paralyzed with having to deal with so many presenting issues with these children. Where do you begin? And what about the number of homeless children? This amazing community organizer-principal has figured out how to get the funding to bus these kids to their old schools. ("With everything else they have to endure, they don't need to change schools and friends.")

This community school principal, not daunted at all, goes about working and persisting with these difficult things. She is reaching out on many fronts. She's getting Charlie Crist and Bill Nelson to do a drive through of this misbegotten town in the middle of nowhere. She leads the band at the County Commission meetings when she has an issue on the agenda. Next time it is the cutbacks in park funding. Parks are crucial to the children and families here.

Ben Aguilar and Rachel Kurtz teach third and fourth grades. They are not the ubiquitous title one teachers who are too tired to teach well and have long exhausted any spark of energy they might have once had. In their after school program they invite parents and kids to participate. I have never been there when any child was absent. They provide pizza and juice (I always bring fruit or vegetables for the kids to try.) These lovely young altruistic and idealistic teachers could be posters for the Obama program.

Neither of them had ever had any experience with drama, but they ploughed ahead with this motley crew of Hispanic kids and parents (no dads). One mom told me that this after school program was the most important thing she does as social life. Many of the moms do not speak English very well, and I do not speak Spanish very well. But we get along famously and help each other out linguistically. We smile a lot. These moms know that their kids must become fluent in English. When we are at an impasse about the costumes or any other issue, Ben can translate.

Everyone is set for the Saturday performance. The costumes are ready. I went to Walmart and purchased a lot of foam headbands to which we affixed faux cow horns or goat ears. I made chefs' toques and brought in aprons and old tee shirts of the appropriate colors and I showed the moms how to staple anything to anything. Voila! Pigs' ears or cow horns or chicken heads. They were on it! (Just like my private school gifted kids' moms)

This is another part of my life, not that I have left that other behind! I look forward to a few days in New York City and travels around the country coming up. I am so fortunate, though much less prosperous than we were. The really hard times are the ones I see around here in this small community.

I saw the first slow fireflies tonight, so beautiful and funny in the palmetto scrub. Yesterday, when I got off my bicycle to investigate the place I had seen bobcats, I walked into the woods to look for tracks. Along the cowpath trail I discovered a loaded handgun among the dead leaves. It was heavy and menacing so I put it into my bike basket and carefully rode back. We asked our ranch manager about it and he gave it to the Sheriff's department. When I returned from Lacoochee there was a sheriff's car in our yard. Apparently, there is an unsolved murder..

When I signed on for this life of mine I could not have said where I would go. But it is always intriguing. Even in hard times, there is much to do, much to think about, much to give, and much to be thankful for.

Dear Michelle

In a week of such terrible issues confronting this country (and the world), I was so heartened to read that our secretary of agriculture had taken a jack hammer to the concrete in front of the department of agriculture so that a vegetable garden could sprout there. Shortly after this, I read about Michelle Obama turning over ground near the White House for a vegetable garden. Months ago, I read a proposal from Michael Pollen that the new president should do exactly this. I hoped it would come to pass.

And so it has. Doing a garden is so homely. Anyone can grow stuff. You don't need to understand economics as we are now coming to know it. When you grow at least some of your own food you are growing a lot more than just that tasty salad. You are growing health for your family and health for our nation.

I have had a vegetable garden for many years. Andy and I had memories of the last of the "Victory Gardens" after WWII, when we'd toddle after our parents hoeing those weeds, and then canning jar after jar of tomatoes. So when we set up our own household, it seemed natural to try vegetable gardening.

Then, it seemed easy when we were all working full tilt to let the gardening go. It was a land of plenty, fast food, or anything you could possibly want in any season, carbon footprint not an issue. We reveled in knowing you could get Italian chestnuts, Peruvian asparagus, New Zealand kiwi fruit, blueberries from Chile.

We resumed having the vegetable garden. It was a pleasure to work in it after we got home from our jobs. Some years we participated in a community garden plot, my small daughter helping me. I began to notice that our kids were really quite healthy: no cavities, perfect eyesight, and hardly any colds. I like to think it was because of a diet rich in unprocessed food, lots of organic fresh vegetables everyone helped produce.

And now, we are elderly and still slim and healthy. Our vegetable garden provides almost all our meals. We do sometimes have to eat a LOT of broccoli or collards or beans or whatever is currently ripe. Here in Florida, we are blessed to have pretty much a full time array of vegetables. It has taken me years to find out what grows best when, and how to quell the bugs and critters.

Our morning orange juice is from freshly picked fruit off our trees, our toast from bread we make. Perhaps the eggs come from the two little boys in town who have a flock of chickens. I love being self sufficient and I know that many of our neighbors hunt and fish for food.

We have an ongoing compost pile, constantly providing fertilizer for the vegetables.

But we always came back to that garden in the yard. "What have you got today?" asks Andy the cook. Tonight it was Swiss chard and broccoli, a scallion or two and some herbs. For tomorrow it may be the golden beets and the now ripening peapods.

Michelle, you are wonderful. May you turn around the idea that Americans are the fattest people who have ever been on earth. Grow veggies!

Being Modern

Every year I resolve to try something new, maybe something hard, my hedge against getting old and set in my ways. I have taken classes to learn new techniques in something I love and in other things I have no aptitude for (ballet comes to mind), I have traveled to remote places and I have volunteered in rough situations.

Hardest of all has been trying to be comfortable with the amazing and rapidly developing technology. My eyes bug out like the proverbial kid in the candy store. A big part of me loves it all. If one were to ask me I would say that in my lifetime, outside my family and friends and work, the internet and all its ramifications, is the primo best thing I have experienced.

We were the first family on the block to get a computer, very expensive in those days. We sprang for one of the first Macs, not an Apple in those days. It was huge. The printer sounded like aircraft taking off. We all learned how to make our own programs. This was before games and all that bling took over, but gradually we became addicted to it. Then, we were early adopters of dial up. I even got a dedicated phone for it.

Time passes, and now I regard my computer as a very important friend, a window on whatever world I want at the moment. I spend hours each day in front of my monitor. The computer liberated me to write. It's so fast! Ticka ticka ticka! I can look up almost anything. When our satellite goes down, I go out and pace in my yard. Soon.. This technology certainly keeps me humble, though I now want everything in a nano second. When our electricity goes out I have to take a few deep breaths and think of Scrabble.

This year, for my technology advancement I took up Facebook. I think, instead, I should have signed up for a Chinese language course at the local community college. I am aware that the percentage of oldsters signing on to Facebook is huge right now.

In this age of twitter and poke, I am not sure I want to express myself or hear from others of the past and present in this way. I think I am too old and careful to tend to a garden of "friends" (who were never that close before!) The ever present whine of 'X wants to be your friend' makes me think of being a third grade girl.

One of my sisters has also recently signed up on Facebook. I miss really hearing about what's on her mind, though I could call her and find out! What I hear now is some truncated news with no nuance. Facebook asks, 'what are you thinking about now?' You see a tiny block to reply.

It's kind of weird to see that you have dozens of friends. I keep thinking there's a reason you haven't connected before this. Still, it's compelling to see that the old freshman roommate is on the site and wanting to be your friend. Or the spouse of someone you barely know.

But this is the internet. You don't have to respond unless you want to. And being the internet, you have to have decided that privacy is in sheer numbers.

Tell me your thoughts about Facebook, (but don't sign up to be my friend!) It's easy on my new blog to comment.

Most important: the hummingbirds returned from Mexico yesterday and now the yard is full of buzzing and tiny chirps.

Hostess Syndrome

We are bone weary tonight. We are suffering the effects of Hostess Syndrome, a condition diagnosed by my old partner and best friend, Marie. Here are the symptoms: before your guests appear, you obsess about the cleanliness and feng shui of their accommodations. You plan an array of interesting things for them to do. You plan menus. You look up the weather report so you can be prepared with enough blankets. When the guests actually appear you try to make them feel comfortable and welcome. You fold up that interesting newspaper column you were reading (forget the novel) and forego all naps because.. you are on hostess duty.

But, the thing is, we LOVE all these visitors and cherish their visits. It is all worth it. In this tourist season from Christmas on, we have rarely been without guests. They have been the best. Friends, family, some in enormous numbers, sometimes in couples, some just for the day and evening. We cook, gather things from the garden, take walks, sit on the porch and watch the birds and deer. The kids run around in the fields, fly kites, swim and hurl balls at each other.

I steal away to my studio, hoping for just a few minutes that it won't be populated with the wonderful guests who know that I am generous with my space and supplies.

But, it's true that when ever there is a sniff of guests here, Hostess Syndrome kicks in. Have to think of what dietary programs for each one ( vegetarian, vegan, no red meat, doesn't eat fish, is allergic to certain nuts, hates tomatoes, no pork, can't eat wheat etc.) We try to accommodate everyone. Andy, the cook, is spectacular with these food issues and there is always a wonderful dinner to share.

I am not complaining. I feel extremely blessed to have this enormous circle of family and friends. This season we have had an especially wonderful group of folks here. We have loved the visits from our children and grandchildren. We love their spouses. As I write this, Quincy, our youngest grandson is soundly asleep upstairs in the main house, probably dreaming of breakfast pancakes. (He'll eat anything!) But I am already thinking of events for tomorrow on which to hang the day. Will it be a trip to the train museum, or maybe a trip to the Pioneer Village, or perhaps a visit to Farmers' Feed to look at the baby chickens and turkeys and rabbits, and, if we're lucky they will have piglets for sale as well?

When we are without guests, or have low maintenance ones in the guest house, we have our weekend routine of spending hours reading the papers and working in our studios while listening to the opera. Many guests have contributed lots of effort to the ongoing work of the farm. They have worked in the garden, mowed the fields, cleared trails, and cut wood. We deeply appreciate these guests who are curious and reverent about the natural world that enfolds us.

Quincy, now four years old, is easy. Really, all he wants to do is spend time in the barn where he can climb on the tractor or get out all the cast off cardboard boxes, load them up in his wagon, and pretend he is a UPS delivery man. While this is going on, I can work in my studio, and occasionally get up to accept a "delivery". "Are there any charges?" I ask. Quincy smiles and says,"I don't think so! No charge."

He goes back to his business. No hostess syndrome issues here.

Sometimes a guest will offer me a plum of a gift. One of our latest guests, Claire, offered me some computer help, specifically on updating this blog. A gift of time and expertise like this is priceless.

Though I am weary tonight, I am full of the love these wonderful guests leave us.

Alligators and Spider eyes

No photographs this time; the satellite is behaving badly and refuses to download any images. (This is the only bad thing about living so far from civilization.) Just imagine three towards elderly women setting out on a balmy full moon night, flashlights clutched firmly, ankles redolent of insect repellent. We are off through the field to look for alligators in the pond. I warn against the cow pies so we step gingerly. At the edge of the pond I scan the water with my mag light. We hear the bull frogs sounding like fingers rubbing against balloons. Then, there it is- the red headlights of an alligator on the far side of the pond. They disappear and then come back, very satisfactorily and definitely an alligator. Seems to be only the one tonight. We head back across the field with our flashlights on our heads between our eyes looking for spiders. You see them in the dark as diamond bright lights. Then you home in on the light you captured, and voila! There is a wolf spider! So cool, my friends exclaimed. We looked at the night sky and headed towards the gopher tortoise burrows, hoping to see one of them bedded down for the night, but they were too far underground to reveal themselves.
I love these guests! Andy's sister Nancy and her partner, Claire, my brother and his wife Carolyn, have been the bookends to a long tourist season of family. I love my children and their progeny beyond imagination. There is something special, however, in the connection to our siblings. They are all so curious and forthcoming about their lives and ours. We are adults together and our tracks through life are intertwined with the long history of shared family stories.
We take field trips, forays out from this farm (that is paradise!) and have a wonderful time together. Today we went to visit Selby Gardens, an incredible semitropical horticultural garden, different, but just as interesting as the trip to Wakulla Springs with my brother and Carolyn.
For me, the most wonderful part of our drive was hearing about Nancy's experiences last month as she was on her way to Burma to teach students who were preparing to study in the USA. It was a compelling lecture (in the best sense) where I could interject a question or two. She was so generous to me, considered my level of interest. I wanted every detail.
Without little kids who always need to interrupt or be put in and out of car seats and straps or go potty or cajoled into doing what you want them to do, I relax and enjoy and forget about being the one who has to think about everyone's happiness.
These 'bookend' family guests disappear for hours to read or play the violin or whatever. They don't complain about the weather or bugs. They don't want to occupy the spaces where we generally work. They cheerfully clean up after supper. (Not that our kids don't.) But, it's kind of restful. And, at the end of the day they quietly join us on the front porch to enjoy the deer and birds and they don't mind eating whatever is in the garden for supper.
We are so fortunate to have this large and amazing family who come to visit. But I must say that my youngest grandson, Quincy, who is the most frequent visitor is possibly the biggest under my heart, (along with his oldest cousin, Diego), has a special place here. His tracks are everywhere; there is the nest he made out of Spanish moss under the crape myrtle tree, and the shelf full of boxes in the barn so he can be a delivery man, and toys upstairs, and stacks of library books we chose last week, a bike and helmet, and tiny surprises left everywhere for me to discover. And, where are all the flashlights?

Cow in the Yard!

Quincy, my adorable four year old grandson, has been visiting for the last three days. He had strep throat and I knew his mom, who was also sick, needed to have a break. When the amoxicillin kicked in he was the cheerful outside boy we know. Yesterday he pulled handfuls of Spanish moss off the crape myrtle and arranged it into a big rough nest. He got some round stones I had left on the edge of a planter for "eggs". He told me he was the daddy bird and he leaped around the yard flapping his arms and making tweeting sounds.

This morning, hopeful for a quiet adult moment before Quincy awoke, I went out in the yard with my coffee to watch the dawn and listen to the chorus of birds. To my dismay I saw that an almost grown calf had gotten into the yard through the gate Quincy must have left open. This calf, the last offspring of Freckles who died soon after of old age, and Curley who had to be put down from a bad hind leg, is the curious and bad personality heifer of the herd (considering her parents).

She thought she had entered the pearly gates. She was so ecstatic to find lots of moss, green grass, oranges on the ground and flower beds trying to come back after the frosts. I put my coffee cup on a fence post and tried to talk her into exiting. No good.

Frankly, I am somewhat wary of a 750 pound cow. How do you get a cow's attention? I tried whistling. (Could I pull her by her ears?) This cow was happily eating the crape myrtles dripping with moss and she had no interest in following me out the gate. I ran up to the vegetable garden and quickly stripped off a dozen collard leaves because I know those cows love collards. Back down to where the calf was I tried coaxing her with the leaves. She loved the collards but she wouldn't budge. I ran back and got two brooms and packed corn kernels into the pockets of my vest.

Meanwhile Quincy has waked up and Lola, the dascshund is at the ready with lots of barking to help herd anything interesting- and this certainly was interesting! Quincy is on the porch shouting for the cow to leave his"nest" alone. The rest of the herd is surrounding the fence so I cannot leave any gates open or they will all be in the yard.

I take some deep breaths and realize that this is beyond me so I call warren, who actually owns these beasts. He doesn't pick up his phone. We watch the progress of the cow and I see her nearing the water lily pond (and Quincy's nest). She looks interested in the $20.00 iris I just planted. I rush out, brandishing the two brooms and she just looks at me with liquid brown eyes.

Defeated, I say to myself that all will be revealed in time so I go in and prepare a banana strawberry smoothie for Quincy and put down some kibbles for Lola. I go upstairs to make the bed and pack up Quincy's clothes and I look out the window and see the cow heading for the vegetable garden! War is now declared. I run down the stairs two at a time, pick up the brooms, and I am out of the house in a flash. Screaming and flapping I head that cow off to the back gate I nimbly open in advance. As she exits, she gives me an even gaze as if to say, "Thanks for the adventure!"

As I huff down to where I originally parked my coffee cup Warren drives up, we giggle, and he turns around and goes home to his own hot coffee.

Later, Quincy and I drive down the hour or more trip to his house. You never know what may happen at grandma's house. In the rearview mirror I see him napping, his stuffed penguin gently clasped in his hands.

Neighborhood folks

Here are Robinson's Paddling Pigs at the Pasco County Fair. (The black one is Sarah Padlin). These pigs run around a course and then dive into a pool and swim twenty feet before exiting into a chute where they are rewarded with oreo cookies.
This is where we live! Our friends in the big city, where we still have half a foot, don't get it at all. It's not that we spend every available moment gazing at trick piglets, or that we are not interested in big city culture. Indeed, we live with classical music, go to concerts, visit museums in major cities of the world, and read the local and national press.
We love working hard to keep this small ranch going. It's intriguing to us to know these folks who are our neighbors, the ones who know all about cows, hunting for the meat they eat all year, who trade vegetables with us, had McCain/ Palin signs in their yards and speak in the mellow southern cracker cadences they were born to. I love these folks and we would do anything for each other.
But it's true, we do need more. And it's coming to pass that we are making friends in this community among educated people who "get it" about living the rural life. This evening we had a wonderful supper of collards and salad from our garden, local strawberries and other bounty grown around here, home made bread, some fish too. Our guests were the usual science geeks. Before dinner we sat out on the front porch as the light faded, watching the cardinals and listening for the cranes and owls. For once, none of us talked much politics, though there were references to columns in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.We spoke of the gardens we all have. I'm loving these last minute gatherings where someone brings oranges from their grove, another one brings the shortcakes to underpin those wonderful strawberries. Everyone pitches in to help set the table or clean up afterward.
The stars are brilliant and splendid, but I know it may cloud up and perhaps rain tomorrow (we hope!) I never imagined that I could be so happy.

Neighborhood folks

Family reunion

Here we all are- the part of the family who came to the February gathering at the ranch. We had all our children and their offspring, aunts, uncles, niece and nephew, sister, in- laws and dog. We had come from a large sit-down dinner with birthday cakes and I made them all sit still for this photo.
Doing this sort of thing is arduous but full of love. Everyone has to have a place to sleep. Some of them just came for the day. As Tolstoy said, happy families are all alike. Well.. maybe. Certainly ours is not dysfunctional. No one shot anyone and there were not even any hard words spoken. We laughed a lot and the young cousins played with each other and the hot tub was full of family. We even managed to have some moments to really hear what these kin had to say.
It seems so strange to me that Andy and I have the role of being the pater/mater familias to this large family. (In my heart I am still ten years old!) But now, as we are approaching seventy, our children still see us as seamlessly able to do anything, pay for anything, maintain a wonderful life in perfect health.
So far so good. Hard to tell them that, as with so many, we too have lost out to the bad economy. The 529's for the grandchildren have shrunk as also have our investments for the rainy day. We worry, and like everyone else in these times, we economise in many ways.
Our children will have to negotiate a pretty different world from the 'enabled' one they were accustomed to. Their kids haven't yet got a clue. They are still honking about the latest electronic thing they want.
When Japan had the economic downturn in the 90's and there was the bad decade, everyone got used to not spending. They are still in this mode. And we in America will do it too. Hey, what have YOU bought recently? Probably not much.
What this has to do with family is that we are in new times. We must talk to each other, trust each other (unless they are bankers!), and help each other out. Mom and Dad might not be the financial rock they once were. Kids may have to take jobs they might have once thought beneath them. We'll get through this but it may take some time. Remember, we have an extremely intelligent president and team who think about this night and day.
As with this wonderful family of mine, our country will prevail.

Valentine

Here are Andy and his youngest grandchild, Quincy, fixing a broken part on the wooden truck Andy made for him. It was a horrid task to do but Quincy persisted and he and Andy got out the tools and set to work.
I love to see the two of them, so trusting and loving of each other. Having grandchildren gives you another shot at repairing the idea of your better self. When our own children were young, we so often did not have the time to fix stuff for them..
This old white haired guy is still the love of my life. We have known each other for fifty years, since we were in college. I knew immediately that this man was a good and interesting person and we could be in the long haul together. We navigated the world of being in the "sandwich" generation: just between our parents who took it for granted that the wife would raise the kids and do everything domestic and the husband would bring home the bacon, and the next generation who negotiated everything. With us, I always worked outside the home, but also I expected to do everything domestic. It was exhausting, but at the time it was expected.
Gradually, our deal shifted. We became equals. We talked our heads off! We came to be able to do the domestic things we wanted to do and were good at. Andy is a wonderful and creative cook and he does that. I love to be outdoors so I do the garden. I like to clean up stuff, so I do that.
But whatever deal a couple feels is right, the main thing is being interested in each other. When both of us were working full tilt, we often felt unappreciated by each other. This happens and you begin to feel that you would do better elsewhere. Kids ravage a marriage as everyone knows. Kids also are so incredibly wonderful (even as toddlers and teenagers!), you clutch each other in bed late at night, holding your breath for the fragile magic of them.
Then the children go, and you hope you have given them your best. They may or may not like you. Parents wish them well, and if you are as fortunate as me, you now have a lot of time with this guy you married so many years ago.
I love the rhythm of the days we spend together, our routines, our friends, the wonderful place where we live embedded in the natural world. I love our many conversations about everything and anything. I love the edginess of our conversations, I love our questions to each other, and our observations. I love talking about people, books and the articles we read. I love our arguments and our walks. I still find him fascinating.
In the almost fifty years of our marriage I have never, not once, doubted Andy's integrity. He has never cheated on taxes or me. He always conducted his company in the most honest manner. He never wanted to shoot anything and he never kicked a dog(No skeletons in this closet!) He has never taken a short cut. He is extremely generous to the community and to our huge family.
Sometimes I wish my husband was more demonstrative, but, hey, everyone knows this is a guy thing.
In the long run I believe that the most important thing for a long term relationship is that you keep up the respect and communication and that you actually have stuff to TALK ABOUT, and laugh about.
So, I celebrate Valentine's day. We will not give each other roses or Hallmark cards. We will have a spell in the hot tub, massaging each other and enjoying the waning moon overhead. We will then sleep in our lovely bed (with the dog) and think of the day tomorrow when all our progeny arrive.
Happy Valentine's Day!

The Coldest Day Yet!

When I drove out to get the papers this morning it was 21 degrees! Turned on the seat heater and wished there was a steering wheel heater as well. Since we have so many below freezing nights we have not smelled that acrid odor of the first freeze. But this morning I did. I supposed it was the swan song of everything green left. Even the strong vegetables that have indeed 'hardened off' were a bit limp. I read that this is the coldest it has been in ten years. The mounds of hay I put over the vegetable garden really kept most things alive. We'll watch the citrus and hope it isn't as dead as it seems now. My flats of seedlings really need to be put out, but I am going to give them a few more days inside and see if this wonderful warm weather holds.

Ten years ago we were oblivious to everything but work. We were living in that sprawling funky house in south St. Pete, and only came up here on the weekends. When you don't live day to day in a place, you don't understand the rhythms of live there. So I can't remember any freezes.

A new saw was delivered to Andy yesterday. This is the mainstay saw of his workshop, replacing an ancient one that finally gave out. He spent a day happily assembling the thousands of bolts and gismos, then rearranging the various machines he uses in his furniture building. I have a new camera with many amazing features. So both of us are getting acquainted with our new tools. We are helping the economy, I say. But really, each of has carefully researched these tools we need. Our old ones had ceased to function.

Stay tuned for some changes to this blog. I want to include more information and recipes for locally grown food, more links to other stuff, something about books.

Look for robins returning and keep you fingers crossed for great weather.

Obfuscations and Confabulations

This evening as I was sitting around small tables in the media center (library) of the local school where I participate in community organizing we were eating gorditas. These small round culinary bombs had been prepared by some of the mothers and there was a bowl of lovely green sauce I liberally applied to the top of mine. At the first bite, my eyes nearly left my head. As the tears poured down my face, I assured them that yes, I really like things hot!

My task this evening was to help with a drama program for kids and moms. They were in the early stages of producing a play about barnyard animals, complete with singing and dancing. The moms were there to practice English. They were supposed to be paying attention to the Rosetta Stone computer program for English while their kids rehearsed with their drama coach, a lovely young man who teaches third grade. But the moms took this opportunity to have a 'girls' night out' and they chatted and giggled in the background. Everyone was having a great time, talking about their kids and recipes. Just a lovely simple evening activity for everyone there. The kids were happy. No one was discussing the economy or taxes. These Hispanic farm worker families have major problems in getting through life issues sometimes. It takes years to get these families to have enough trust to be able to come to these events.

Spending time with this part of my community is a great corrective for me. Who are those people who won't have t.v. when the digital signal goes into effect? They are here in this little desperately poor town.

We have become so embedded in the bureaucratic web, nothing seems easy - especially to people on the margin. They do not regard the internet as the most important advance in their lifetimes, they do not fill their leisure time fooling around with this new computer application or that program. And they certainly do not have the stretch to master the intricacies of all the forms that one must hurdle, especially if one is poor.

When Tom Daschle got into his tax problems, I was not very sympathetic. Ditto for the many others. However, as I spent a whole morning filling out the federal tax forms, Florida unemployment tax, and W-2 for a woman who cleans our house once a week, I had more heart. There are manuals as thick as my thumb and they require constant flipping back and forth and trying to decipher the meanings of what in hell to put in Box 5A? And of course, one has to keep records of all that is paid out and when. I think every year as I do these things that I should apply for a job as translator for tax bulletins. The difference between me and the ilk of Tom Daschle is that I believe in paying taxes; it's the responsible thing for a citizen to do. Not paying taxes for the people who care for you or your family is criminal, unethical, and inhumane. No excuses for this.

That said, it's hard to be on the right side. It's just easier not to pay because the paperwork is so tedious and hard to understand. Why can't this be a LOT easier??

I cannot even imagine how hard it would be to apply for unemployment benefits, food stamps, SChip or Kidcare. I cannot imagine how someone who had lost their house to foreclosure could wend their way through the new stimulus money to maybe get a decent place to live.

There is a disconnect between the goal and the process and so many get lost in it. Getting there has got to be easier!

So, when my husband severely cut his hand on a band saw a few days ago, we went to the local emergency room. Here was a guy bleeding and in pain and they needed to interview him (for the paperwork!) as he held his hand in a bloody rag. In this country we have the capacity to deal with incredible things! Obama's desire to digitize the health system could have helped here. Just tend to the presenting problem and then, when the name of the patient pops up on the computer, the complete record from wherever comes up. I asked the interviewer if she could access Andy's primary care doctor. Of course not. We have a Medicare Plan, and no doubt we will be billed in dribs and drabs over the months to come.

But what about those moms and kids at Lacoochee Community? Will they have done the voluminous paperwork to be enrolled in a program for health insurance for their kids. Will they even know about it?

All I am saying is that in all these wonderful programs I hope will be forthcoming, they need to be understandable and doable.

Still Frozen

The sand hill cranes don't seem to mind all this frosty weather we find so unusual. Like the humans who have come for the big game today, they seem to find it balmy compared to those northern places they come from. They are pairing up very noisily and soon we'll begin to see those fuzzy reddish chicks.
Another morning of below freezing temperatures. Even Lola, the canine bed warmer, couldn't take the edge off the chilliness. Our twenty year old house is not geared up for the cold. The heat pump mostly puts out cold air. When Andy started poking around in the fireplace to add more logs to what had burned down during the night, a mouse scampered out. He promptly trapped it, another trophy. Outside, under the orange trees there was a very large and snarling raccoon in the trap. We have been giving these critters to a neighbor who distributes them to people he knows who actually think of them as food. (along with squirrels, possum, and rabbits, I'm told.)
I know that lots of the people who make their lives in this rural area have always relied on local food sources, and we see more of it now that so many have lost their jobs and credit. Many of these folks hunt and freeze the wild hogs and venison to eat all year. They put up jars and jars of collards and greens and field peas and tomatoes. I have always wondered why they do this since vegetables grow here year round. They fry the turkeys they kill in fryers filled with oil.
We have so far saved the vegetable garden. Every morning when the sun gets a bit of warmth, I remove all the sheets doing warming duty on the beds of lettuces, greens, peas and broccoli. The beets and collards are hardy enough to take anything. I was so pitiful about the loss of the orchids and pitcher plants that my friends and family who visit these days arrive bearing wonderful blooming orchids. These are now safely taking up room in the kitchen and I smile every time I see them.
The situation in Kentucky where the severe weather knocked out all power for so long does humble me. I know that warm weather will eventually return. Meanwhile I can enjoy what I once thought was a pretty ridiculous feature of my car- heated seats.

Organizing a community

Today, making the ten minute trip north from our place to the monthly Community Task Force meeting in Lacoochee, I loved the slightly rolling land, now brown and sere from recent freezes with an occasional blooming fruit tree here and there.
Turning off the main road, I can imagine that I have somehow found myself in the outskirts of Belize City, that place even the guide books tell you to avoid. Crossing the railroad tracks, the town looks particularly grim. It is just beginning to rain and everything I pass seems dispirited. There are clumps of trash plastered along the road, a few young men with extremely low riding pants lounging under the trees, a few rangy dogs, and some left over evidence of meager life lived here.
I turn in to the school compound, a cheerful beacon, and go into the office to get my visitor badge and have some cheerful chat with Annette who runs the front desk.
I have come to love these meetings. For so many years of my efficient life I have run meetings, and all issues are quickly addressed, no running over the margins.
This is a whole different deal. We begin by serving ourselves from a big pot of soup. (If you're vegetarian, ladle it off the top and if you want the chicken, dig to the bottom.) Everyone takes a place at the tables in the multipurpose room: the officer friendly from the Sheriff's department who runs the Boy Scouts, the earnest man who runs the Boys and Girls Club, the enthusiastic woman from United Way, whose mission is to get funds for Lacoochee, the retirees who run a food pantry from a local generic church. I see that the long-winded guy who runs the neighborhood watch program is absent today. The school/community liason person is there. I love Andrea, so devoted to the cause.
But the big star is Ms. Marler, the principal of the school. Karen Marler is a native of Lacoochee and came back to run this struggling school. Her heart and expertise is in community organizing. "Everything is about the kids," she always says. I used to think, when I was first a volunteer in this school, that something was lacking in the leadership of this school. But I didn't understand where she was coming from.
This day, she is full of her experience in taking a busload of local officials and executives who may be able to invest in this community on a tour of the town. She is lovely in a Dolly Parton sort of way and she has that chewy Florida accent. Talk about a steel magnolia! She seems to have no limit to the time she spends with our group, but she gets everything done, and everyone at the meeting leaves inspired. We have decided to do a community garden, we know where to get grants for the cheerleader costumes, and benches for the football players. Marler listens!
I am humbled by it all. When I think of all the small groups like this who are meeting around our country and who are doing just these things, I am amazed and heartened.
The poster boy in the picture is one of many I have known here at Lacoochee. Most of the kids are Hispanic. He, and all the rest deserve the best!
One of the best things about this day was meeting a young teacher (third grade), Ben Aguilar, tall and handsome and brown like my nephews. He was the brightest and best in Lacoochee when he was a kid. He went on to college and felt called to return and teach there. He runs an after school program in drama for parents and kids. I signed up as a volunteer! How could I not? Stay tuned.

Organizing a community

Big Freeze

The fields are covered with frost. For three nights there has been a hard freeze warning. In all my forty years here there has never been such a happening. All the orchids are dead, the palms have been hard hit, the ferns are toast. I can see that we have lost some citrus trees. I did not plant anything in the vegetable garden that couldn't tolerate frost, and I have dutifully covered the salad beds.
But we smell that acrid smell of bursting cellulose. Maybe this is an opportnity!
My brother and his wife are visiting us from California. They wanted warm and tropical weather, and at the last minute they included sweaters. Little did they know! We have unearthed all the shirts and jackets we have.
Undaunted, we went on a field trip to north Florida, leaving the plants covered and the dog warm with the house sitter. Our destination was Wakulla Springs Lodge where we would spend the night and welcome friends from Tallahassee for dinner.
Wakulla is a fascinating place, a state park. Our family has been there many times, only in the warm weather. We arrived in time to take the famous boat tour up the St. Marks River. It was not much over 40 degrees but the boat went slowly so we were not buffeted by wind. This boat trip is just as interesting as a trip on the Amazon; there is so much natural flora and fauna to see, and in such magnificent numbers. Alligators, deer, hundreds of birds, fish, turtles, wonderful aquatic plants, ancient cypress trees. We loved seeing the anhingas spreading their wings, an eagle soaring overhead, ibis looking for food, coots and moorhens bobbing about on the clear water. We loved seeing many manatees enjoying the warm spring water. Mothers and young came up with their funny snouts next to the boat.
The lodge itself was an adventure. We had engaged the two 'best rooms' that overlooked the spring. The building itself is lovely, the Ball Estate originally. It is now part of the State Park system. As I say, it was an adventure. In the vast lobby there is an ancient alligator in a case, "Old Joe", well varnished, maybe 20 ft. long, maybe fifty years old. Then there is the huge fireplace burning bright and hot. There are a few communities of sofas, some strange aggregations of high backed chairs, a few tables where checkers can be played, a large t.v not playing to anything, and some stacks of tables. The floor is wonderful and cold marble tile with not a suggestion of a softening area rug. When you look up the ceiling is beautiful carved wood, dark and colorful. This is not an intimate place, but it has possibilities.
Our rooms were gigantic, way larger than in any motel or hotel.( and a lot cheaper) My brother read the guest log in his room and found a recent entry that said, "Warning! Warning! There is a mouse in the bathroom! My wife has never packed so fast! This was at least a mouse, or maybe a squirrel with a bald tail!" We all laughed but my sister-in-law said the next morning that she'd heard some scrabbling in the bathroom..
The dinner provided by the lodge was wonderfully awful. We had known not to expect anything gourmet, maybe true southern (and all white) at best. But the main thing was the company which was stellar. Richard, at the far end of the table, and I, had ordered the pecan crusted grouper. Both of us love fish. Heavy brown logs arrived before us, nothing anyone could imagine other than the bubbly buttery nutty sauteed grouper we were expecting. Dismayed at finding that our entrees looked more like a second rate Spanish moss fabric art form than actual food, we soldiered on, and pushed it from side to side on our plates. The others were struggling with strange chicken parts, small game birds, and (Yikes!) liver. My brother had to remove the hard casings from his southern fried chicken and they lay on the edge of his plate, thick exoskeletons.
This morning we awakened to the fact that the power was off. Our car was covered with frost and ice. We left, thinking we'd get breakfast along the way, and could decently leave the lodge and the breakfast of leaden biscuits with gray gravy.
I love these road trip adventures. Not your usual motel. But I do think that in this new era of CHANGE, we might be able to make this special place, Wakulla Springs Lodge, a state park, into a really spectacular destination with at least acceptable food and decent accommodations (no mice).

The Humility of Gardening

There was a light frost on the fields this morning. If you squint a bit, you can almost believe it's snow. By nine a.m. it was all gone. The night before, expecting cold weather, I had placed sheets over the tenderest of the vegetables, and now I needed to remove them so the feeble rays of sun could give them a boost for the next two days of predicted really cold weather. I will put them back on.
I have been so proud of this winter garden, mostly all brassicas- collards, broccoli, and the mustard greens and beets, and two lovely raised salad tables, now bursting with many kinds of lettuces, chard and mizuma. I have put in a row of snow peas because I know they can take the cold better than any plant. The deep hay mulch keeps the weeds at bay, or at least hidden. This hay roll was a gift from my wonderful neighbor, Warren, and hardly a day goes by when I don't put another load on the garden. Tonight I have covered the hardiest vegetables with a thick layer of hay. I wonder if it will keep those babies safe. I have spread a lot of bed sheets over the salad tables and the broccoli plants now covered with florets.
The orchids live next to the pool and I hope they will not freeze. I have covered them with sheets, but they are pretty hardy plants.
I know that when I go out tomorrow morning I will smell that acrid odor of frozen plant cells now bursting. I know that the ferns will have that shiny look of death by cold. The bird bath will be frozen stiff, the milkweed flowers limp. The pastures will be sere and brown and the cows will need more feed. The bird feeders will need filling. The cardinals will relentlessly remind me.
It has been a wonderfully warm winter, after an usual blast of frost in November. The plants had no clue about what to do. Even with the short days of winter, they leapt up in the warm sun. We've been eating our own salad every day and have those collards in every way we can imagine. Broccoli is on the menu several days a week. The deer and armadillos have left the garden alone, the dogs bark off the rabbits, the bugs are waiting for warmer weather, and we have been eating well. My spring seeds have come in the mail and the tomatoes and peppers are sprouting in their plastic pots that live for now indoors on the bench in the inglenook.
But! Now we face some extreme cold weather for the next few nights. Those crazy colored bedsheets over everything will not be enough. I know this. My husband reminded me today that probably we will lose the garden but life will go on.
I have the new seeds ready to plant and those sprouts coming along. I love this aspect of living dangerously embedded in the natural world. It keeps me humble. I cannot count on the weather in winter. (In summer I can always count on the weather being totally hot and humid and full of bugs and mildews and blossom end rot, not to mention malignant flinders.)
The garden keeps my balance. This is a good thing because my head was in danger of being swollen too big this week. My daughter hosted a book signing party for me and my new book, "A Good Day for Uncle Elmo: Stories from a Schoolteacher's Journal". It was a very fun party and so affirming of the work I loved. Got back home, tended the garden, and replied to requests for a couple more book signing events. I'll do them because all the proceeds go to the school I wrote about.
Now, my small grandson is about to arrive to spend four days with his grandparents. I am thinking about French toast and fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast and then, perhaps a trip to the library and the train museum and maybe make cookies. Let's not forget the hot chocolate on a frosty morning. Candyland is the game of the day and I have rented "The March of the Penguins" we can watch together.
Vegetables and kids growing. My head is getting back to the right size but my heart grows with the bounty of life.

Clothesline

Last year I decided that we should install a clothesline in our yard. I wanted to save electricity and reduce our energy footprint. In Europe, as you can see here in Italy, everyone hangs out their clothes, no matter how small the space is.
But we have loads of space and have always thought we had loads of energy. The clothesline was installed, one of those windmill things, next to the vegetable garden and a short schlep from the washer.
I thought I would hate having to hang out the laundry every day, another chore. But it didn't turn out that way. We start the laundry washing before breakfast, and by the time we are finished eating and cleaning up the kitchen, the laundry is ready to be hung out. This is my best chore: we both love it! We get out there in the first sunny and warm moments of the day. The sand hill cranes are just zooming in with their wild cries and the vegetable garden is so green and verdant and all of life is full of possibilities.
The best thing for me is the artistic arrangement of the clothes to be placed on the line. I love it when we have colorful sheets and towels, maybe a tablecloth or two in brilliant colors. I even love those blue jeans that will flap in the breeze, my black bra, Andy's red underwear and the socks neatly pinned together in pairs. We have our system- socks together, the heavy things towards the sun, the colorful things on the outside to be seen as an artistic gem.
In a few hours, just before lunch, I'll take everything down, folding them from the line into neat stacks, everything smelling sweet from the sun and breeze.
Our parents always dried clothes outdoors. Probably only our mothers did this.

Growing things

Walking out in the woods today I saw so may of these reindeer moss areas. These small light mosses lie on the forest floor to delight the eye. When the day is moist they are soft, but when it is dry they are brittle and you might think they would blow away.
I often take my mini walks to areas close to our house and I am coming to know the territory. I know where the reindeer moss grows, where the cardinals nest, where the tortoises and black racers have buried their eggs, where the turkeys have sex in the morning, and where the cranes dance their loud trumpeting love calls.
But nothing here engages me more than the daily tending to the gardens. Even in winter with the constant possibility of frost, we have an amazing vegetable garden. Daily, I announce to Andy, the cook, that we have collards, broccoli, lettuce and green onions. That's it for now. And that's what we eat every night. Up north they don't even have that!
The winter garden is neat and productive, everything carefully mulched with hay. I have ordered the spring seeds and look forward to those warm weather vegetables, the tomatoes and peppers and beans, squash and eggplants. But for now, I love those verdant greens.
For the last ten days we have been dog sitting my daughter's two dogs. One is a very large and beautiful black and white pointer mix, and the other is a four pound teacup poodle. Our own dog is a small wiener dog. The visiting dogs are totally neurotic and want to follow us everywhere and the tiny poodle has no sense of being house trained and is so bony and icky one wouldn't love to touch her. And she has an incredibly shrill and sharp voice! The visiting dogs are 'door bounders' and bark at everything. We are exhausted with all this. I say to them, "Get a life!" But their life is us. I cannot wait for them to be reclaimed by my daughter. Still, I do love animals, and I like to take the big dog out with me on my forays into the woods and fields. But I cannot wait to be just us, the family of two with one small dog who doesn't bark much (except at armadillos) and has a life that doesn't include following us everywhere.
Dogs or no, this is an incredible place! This evening I saw four deer under the feeder, the sand hill crane couple dancing, a turkey gobbler showing his stuff, gobbling (and still jumping on the female), and so many cardinals at the porch feeder, I can't count them. Venus is the brightest light in the sky and Orion shines bright. This feels perfect.

The Big Fish

I know, I know, this is not a photo worthy of a food article. But I just wanted you all to have a small vision of this lovely eleven pound red snapper (snapper Veracruzana) we had for Christmas dinner. What you don't see is the four men it took to hoist this lovely thing from oven to table.
Years ago, I got the idea for this from my Chilean friend, Nidia. She described the green rice that should accompany it, and the dessert flan. I held this idea through those English dinners of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and plum pudding and all kinds of other puddings, most with sauces or gravies. Along the way I had become a 'half' vegetarian and ate no red meat. So, this year we went for the red snapper, the Mexican Christmas dinner. We did not have a platter wide enough for the green rice (made with cilantro, spinach and parsley) so it was served on the side. We also had collards and salad from the garden and the sinful chocolate pecan pie that Anne made. That dinner was just the best. All ten of us helped in some way and we loved the event.
Ten of us sat down for dinner. Our ages were from four to seventy. The four year old, my grandson Quincy, was excused early to watch a new video, and the rest of us truly enjoyed the fish and all the fixings and each other and the ideas swirling around the table. The college student who had just returned from some months in Cuba had stories to tell of his experiences, and the scientists among us talked of turtles and other environmental issues.
After dinner everyone pitched in to clean up the kitchen and get that first load into the dishwasher before going to sit on the screen porch with the armadillos rooting in the ferns and the five dogs alert, and continue the conversation.
I love these gatherings of friends and family. It's a good thing that I do because the next night, we had another and different ten guest dinner. This time it was a lot more ad hoc. I made Hoppin' John with the black eye peas and rice and everyone else brought stuff. Again, we had collards. And again, everyone loved them and they were all eaten.
Here's the recipe. You'll love it!
Take about 15 big collard leaves. Cut out the center ribs and roll up the remaining leaves and slice them thin and then cut those slices into small pieces. Leave those on the side. Now, in a large skillet or dutch oven put a medium sized diced onion and a LOT of minced garlic ( about five cloves) with a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil. Fry these until softened and beginning to brown, about two or three minutes. Add the collards gradually, and then about a cup of broth (chicken, or water or vegetarian). Add a little bit of salt now. Bring to a boil, cover, and stirring occasionally, cook for about 25 minutes on low 'til greens are tender. Remove the lid and turn heat to high and stir occasionally while the collards are cooking down. The pan will be almost dry. Take the collards off the heat and stir in some lemon juice, a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Your guests will rave!
Other than food.. So many wonderful friends have been here for the holidays. We have taken many great walks through the woods and fields. Our local sand hill cranes bugle noisily every morning (louder than parrots!), and we hear the deer barking at the edge of the fields. The cardinals devour the seeds in the feeders each day. We are all enjoying the warm weather after some days of frosts. The vegetable garden has been feeding the multitudes, and the orchids, hardy plants they are, are in great bloom. Even the rye grass we sowed under the clothesline looks perky and green.

Happy Christmas

Though it has been in the eighties today, the landscape is sere and brown from previous frosts and freezes. The vegetable garden is lush with broccoli and greens.
This Christmas Eve of this amazing year is to us quite modest. Tonight we packed the traditional stockings that earlier had been laid out on the hearth by four year old Quincy, now soundly asleep after a hearing of 'The Night Before Christmas'. Sox, toothpaste, wood putty, rubber bands, nail polish, a squeaky toy for the dog. No diamond tennis bracelets, no keys to a sports car.
Christmas pulls me back to my early Christian heritage and I love to hear the Nine Lessons and carols beamed from some cathedral or other.
Sixty years ago when I was a small child with an even smaller soprano voice, the midnight mass was a big deal. Those of us in the church choir gathered in the sacristy proudly wearing our freshly starched collars over our scarlet choir robes. Some of us wore our gold crosses we had earned for perfect attendance at choir practice and church services. We were issued our candles, and reminded again by the choir master to heed the important rest in the cantata. We were ready for the processional around the church behind the cross bearer. This was magic to me. The church was dark except for all the candles on the altar and the ones we carried. As we processed to the strains of 'Oh, Come all Ye Faithful', I was amazed to see the packed church this night. I can still smell the candles and the whiff of snow and cold brought in by the churchgoers.
We processed, finally, up the center aisle, by the creche in front of the altar, and took our places in the choir pews.
The mass seemed to take forever as I recall it now. I was thinking that back at my house we had already hung up the stockings, and was Santa already there? We got through the cantata and no one jumped the rest. By the recessional I was so sleepy and glad to jump into my father's arms and be carried home in the snow and put into bed.
I love this legacy from my parents. I grew up and became an agnostic, unable to give my own children and grandchildren any certainty in religious faith. But at Christmas, I shamelessly have all the trappings, mostly secular. I will not be going to any church, but I look up at the bright stars tonight and hope for humankind that we will prevail and care for each other in these hard times.

Masters of the Universe

This morning I drove up to attend the monthly community action committee meeting at Lacoochee School. (Oh, horrors! Community organizing!). As I went along Cummer Road towards the school I noticed the many Christmas creches in front of the houses. I slowed down right after the railroad tracks to look at a peeling vivid green block house surrounded with tan beaten earth. A dirt colored pit bull was chained out front, out of range of the creche that was carefully arranged in front and surrounded with hay. Somehow, this Christmas presentation, so tasteful even on the bare ground, so brave and affirmative, brought tears to my eyes.
The meeting of folks dedicated to helping this small rural community and school reported on their progress in establishing a boy scout troop, a football program, how the Girls and Boys club had a Christmas party the night before. The food pantry needs, needs, needs. A group of volunteers opens a daily office to help people get their food stamps and sign up for unemployment.
The school principal, a woman whose real talent is community organizing, affirmed all the participants. A tour de force, she has her heart and mind firmly set on what will be best for those 600 kids in her Title One school where over 95% of them are on free lunch and breakfast.
We volunters do what we can, and it is never enough. Here are kids who have never even been to Tampa! Some of them are always hungry and they don't even have the basic necessities. On the principal's wish list are sweat suits from Walmart so the kids can be warm!
After the meeting we were served a fine lunch with many many pecan pies. I took my plate and sat down with "Miss Lily", a huge black grandmother. She's huge in the community and is the mother, grandmother and foster mother of many. She's a person one listens to. I just loved her stories and I hated to leave.
Back home, I stretched out on the porch couch with the dog to read the New York Times. On the front page was an article by Louise Story about the compensation of the Wall Street wizards, the masters of the universe. We have known about these excesses for a few weeks but in today's story it was so detailed and spread out in front of me I leapt up in outrage!
I want to know a few things about this greed. Did these people grow up with no values, i.e. knowing right from wrong? Were these people so entitled from day one they didn't have to think about anyone but themselves? Did they go to Brearley or Choate or any of the other super expensive schools and then to an Ivy college and think they could just continue being oblivious to general human kindness and consideration? Did they think that having corporate jets and personal yachts and multiple homes and expensive cosmetic surgery and Patek watches was o.k.? Did they ever think of the concerns of such places as Lacoochee? ( One tennis bracelet would fund a field trip for ninety kids) No, they were concerned with the silliness of having the correct $500 stroller for their child, and to make a small bow to the vast unwashed, they spent a few of their many millions at charity balls.
There are a few vastly rich people who have made incredible difference in our society. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet come to mind, and there are others. But still, one wonders how many hundreds of thousands of others were the backs on which these titans walked.
I think it is going to take a long time for our society to correct itself. I still do see many Americans, like the folks in Lacoochee, who truly do know how to do the right thing. Maybe our models will have to come from the bottom up. Certainly, our models have not come from the financiers. We will all have to speak out when we see that the emporer has no clothes. We really knew that many people could not afford those mini mansions and we really knew that those New York people were fakes. But we chose not to see.
I remember one time that my husband's boss said in an economics discussion, "Everyone wants to be comfortble." Yes, sure. The thing is, though, we have to make a society where everyone can be comfortable, have a home, food, work.
I'd like to have these masters of the universe, those failed Wall Street financiers, these cynical multimillionaires have to spend some time living among the homeless under the bridges of America.
We are all responsible and we can't escape that. We can blame it on Bush, but we let this disaster happen because we were all too comfortable. I can't wait for Obama!

Pundit Fatigue

We saw the movie "Australia" today. The first two thirds of it was a predictable and lovely western and the last third was suddenly about WW Two. Such handsome actors, and you never thought for a minute that everything would not turn out o.k., and as a bonus you laughed and cried and loved the scenery and that wonderful kid. We were there for three hours and out of our normal time. As we drove home we said to each other that we needed more time away from these everyday concerns. We should take a vacation where there were no newspapers or NPR or TV. We need a rest from the news articles, and especially we need a break from the pundits who constantly explain and opine. But we are addicted.
There is a full moon tonight and as the moon was rising huge and yellow, four deer were cavorting on the edge of the woods. I think anxiously about the state of our American society. Are we heading toward the bottom of everything? Who are you out there on Face Book? I know you do not even know what an incredible mind Thomas Friedman has, or track any of the other commentators who think seriously about the American predicament. You only look at short comments on the "wall", or communicate in short text and twitter messages.
Be aware. The world is changing. It will not go back to the old times when it was necessary or automatic to be frugal. And this recession will change us.
You young people have an interesting time ahead of you. Materialism seems to be doomed for now and it won't come back as we have known it for a long time. Talk to each other, slide ideas past each other and don't be afraid to take the high road of doing the right thing, whatever it seems to be at the time. Be not afraid to think seriously about our hard problems. I am not so sure that our economic crisis will have the happy ending that "Australia" did. We could all be shot in the back. We've got to be serious, and serious does not come in tiny Face Book wall items and Fox News bites.