Obama doesn't walk on water

But he's trying to make good on his vision for a country with a decent economy, full employment, universal health care, and the strength to go forward with what is needed for global attention to climate change. A lot on his plate. He's got to be pragmatic but I'd love to see him in passing gear.

I watch on t.v. and read many papers each day. We have such a destructive legacy of partisanship. Mostly by the old white guys. I think that most of the people in our congress are TOO OLD! They have been 'carefully taught' in the words of the old song from "South Pacific". So much of what they say seems so knee jerk. They call it wisdom. (If Obama selected a nominee for the Supreme Court, she must be bad for the Republicans, or good for the Democrats.)

These days, as an "old" person, quite idiosyncratic and prone to pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on, I am, first of all, thankful that I do not have to watch everything I say because of the partisan and media sharks out there. But I do wonder as I watch these senators and congressmen and pundits on t.v. - Could they ever be really honest?? Are they always covering their backsides for political reasons??

For example: Why didn't anyone clearly say the obvious long ago that Sarah Palin was really quite stupid, and certainly not up to the notion of being a heartbeat away from the presidency? Why is the Congress so intransigent about what needs to be done about Global Warming? Doesn't anyone really pay attention to how we can address our energy needs? We are pandering to Big Pharma and private health insurance, Big Energy. You can be assured that most members of congress and the senate are feathering their own political nests. (These guys are WAY too old to remember they might have dealt with a pregnant daughter with choices to make or a drop-out kid, or, or..)

Younger people, new people, of all colors and stripes might be able to look at each issue without the old white baggage of partisanship. You young people need to stop rolling on your backs in surrender. Get up there and bark for what's needed.

This is an amazing country! We have the chance to reset and I am hoping against hope that the young will latch on.

My Birthday

I would post a new photo but it takes a LOT of time to haul the photo from the archives these days; the flip side of living so far out in paradise is that the satellite is so slow.

But, here I am, still strong and now 69. Time to take stock. In so many ways I am still the person I was at 10. And in so many ways I have accrued the barnacles of age. I can now begin to understand how I am perceived by others- and it takes a lot of living to understand this. I am not an easy person, not an easy friend though I did not see this for most of my life. I am crabby, judgmental, high energy, extremely efficient and organized. Sometimes I scare people with my sharp questions.

I do see myself as a generous and curious person, mostly competent. I am always feeling that I could do better, do more, produce more.. Who doesn't?

On my birthday I bask in the arrivals of weird cards and calls and gifts. I loved the birthday night of my family and friends making crepes suzettes for me and singing the birthday song as the brandy burned off. I loved the gift my husband gave me of a lovely wood bench that allows me to get high enough to work on my wall of fabrics. I loved the gift my daughter gave me of her time to work on the technology of my phone. I loved the used and irreverent Sara Palin tee shirt from my son and the cards from my preliterate grandchildren. I loved the candle holder from my sister, who knew I coveted hers. I loved the call from my friend Jeff who offered to come here and work on my computer issues. I loved the visit from my brother and his wife. I loved the visit and hug from my neighbor, Warren. (Who said, "Are you sixty yet?") I loved the calls from young people who still want to connect with me.

I love and hate being this age. I hate the wrinkles above my knees and elsewhere. I am no longer at that invisible part of life that is middle age. Now! I am an old lady and I find it lovely to be respected for that. Idiosyncracy lives!







Another birthday and I am totally happy

Attention Must be Paid

Fifty years ago when I was in high school we all took the Kuder Preference Test. This was a survey of our interests and might predict what paths we should take to find fulfillment in our lives. The results of my test were evenly divided between Forest Ranger (What?) and Social Worker (Egads!). I had thought I wanted to be an artist, preferably a window dresser at Macy's in New York City. I was always adept arts and crafts things and had won local awards and prizes, nothing big. Mine was an artistic flair of the second tier, and in my heart of hearts I knew it.

I went on to a highly competitive liberal arts college in New England where I first majored in biology, quit that when the going got tough in Chem 2, segued into art history. As I walked each day from where I lived to the campus I noticed with delight the changes in the plants and trees and searched for the tracks in the snow of the many creatures who lived in that suburban ecosystem. To this day I could say where the fiddleheads would come up in the spring, where the crocuses were, the scylla in their glorious purple, and where to look for the earliest snowdrops. In late days of spring I loved to walk under the maple trees and pick up those winged seeds, split them open and stick them on my nose. In the fall I stopped to look at the fallen horse chestnuts all spiky and green. I knew how to gently squash them underfoot so that the nuts fell out in shiny mahogany perfection. As a kid I would do this and collect bags of them.

After college I went to art school on a scholarship where I had to put in a lot of time working in the education department of an art museum. My artworks were critiqued unmercifally and I loved it. But what I really learned was that my connection to kids in the museum's programs was what I wanted to do. (I was still walking slowly to class so I wouldn't miss the birds nesting in the vines and the flowering of the lilacs.)

I became a teacher (social work!). A great joy was being outdoors, camping, hiking. Teaching, as I have done, incorporated the things I love most.

As an older person (wrinkled and idiosyncratic), I look back and think that for many reasons I did not pay attention to some of what I really wanted to do. I should have been a biologist or a botanist, or a forest ranger. It could have been my focus as a teacher. I had my parents' voices in my head too much. ("Be anything you want. But it should be something really abstruse - a classicist, a writer of dry historic..")

Now, as a wizened old person, I regret that that I did not pay attention to what I really wanted to do. Fortunately it has turned out well: I roam the wild acres we live on and revel in it. I have introduced generations of children to the natural environment. I have time to make my art such as it is.

But I very much regret that I did not pay attention to the world or the U.S. for great stretches of time. I had been involved in the Civil Rights movement, I protested the Viet Nam war, I dragged my toddlers to the Nixon Counter Inagural and exposed them to tear gas. I was a community organizer for education. I was oblivious to the recessions of the eighties and I practically slept through the nineties.

As an addend to my powerful spouse I went to a White House dinner in the Clinton era and we hiked two summer weekends with Bob MacNamara and I was anxious a few times with Kay Graham in her salons. I traveled the world, marveling at everything, shaking the hands of presidents and scoundrels. But I did not pay attention!

After a ceremonial trip to many South American countries, my eyes were opened to this wonderful continent. In the years following, I visited as many equatorial countries as I could. I went with my friend, Marie for many trips- Peru, Equador, the Galapagos, Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil. These were not ceremonial trips, they were bare bones, out houses with tarantulas, fer de lance snakes on night hikes, riding horses through caman infested waters, cities in the midst of coups, and wonderful birds and tropical plants. I paid attention!

Attention must be paid to our present American situation. We have a president who is among the best of American statesmen. It's early to tell, and Obama has the hardest row to hoe of any president so far. Yet, he's still energetic, idealistic, pragmatic, articulate as we have never seen before. We must pay attention to the health care issues all of us care so much about, and we must pay attention to honesty and ethics. We must pay attention to children and having rigorous standards of education. We must not let our loving attention to our country be deflected by the selfish, dewy cheeked, dumb likes of Sara Palin or the shrill and cranky agenda of Rush Limbaugh.

We must pay attention.

The new Health Plan and other things

The Obama administration has been so out there promoting the ever evolving health plan that no one could fail to be aware that we must think about all of this. It dings us every day because we know people who have such severe or not severe health issues and they cannot pay.

To begin, this spring I began to feel really crummy, as did my partner. We thought it was some kind of mild bronchitis and we soldiered on, and took some plane trips. Big mistake. We went to the doctor and he diagnosed pneumonia and said I should get tests involving x-rays. He knows that I DO NOT DO ANYTHING INVASIVE, so he prescribed a powerful antibiotic I took for ten days. I looked this up on the internet and it cost less than $50. My prescription provider said it cost almost $260, of which I paid $25. How crazy is this??

At this point we were still not feeling very well, though the pneumonia seemed to be gone and lungs were clear. Our ears were plugged up. Another doctor visit and more antibiotics (amoxicillin) for middle ear infection. Ears slowly clearing and we are no longer feeling like Mr. Mcgoo and his wife. Then we went on another plane trip, more ear problems- a dysfunctional eustacian tube? On to Cipro.

Actually, I am now feeling pretty much back to normal (though still fairly deaf in one ear). In all of this we have had Medicare pay, except for a low co pay. Our prescription insurance pays most of drug costs. But we know that Big Pharma costs WAY more than it should.

A dear friend of mine who is over 65 and presumably on medicare, went to the dermatologist for routine skin scanning, had a number of moles and issues, got them biopsied. Apparently, she did not get referred from her primary care doc ( who knew??) So her insurance will not pay the $2000 incurred from this visit. My friend has no choice: she will not get those squamous cell carcinomas removed, she will not get those precancerous moles removed. And she'll have sleepless nights wondering how she'll pay the dermatologist (who couldn't in the end help her.)

And how does one get dental help?? Our new neighbor up the road seems to have very few front teeth. Who would want that?

How could anyone in our country want less than easy access to medical and dental help? I don't know about any of you, but I find this a hard thing to do.

Another topic! Sara Palin! What do you think? Is it money, sex, or ethics?

Grandparents on Duty

Quincy is here for the week. Now that he is four and a half years old, life is golden. We went to Weeki Wachee State Park to see the mermaids today. Quincy tells me he has never seen any mermaids and he was eager to go. He was dressed and had his sandals on when he appeared for breakfast. He had his special catalog (many pages of Play Mobile stuff) laid out to go.

The last time Andy and I went to Weeki Wachee was at least thirty years ago when our sons were little, way before we had our home here in Dade City. The drive, about forty-five minutes from here is beautiful through the rolling green hills with very little development. The park, now a state park, is unchanged except for a modest water park addition where there are slides down to the sandy beach on the edge of the freezing cold spring. The water has no odor of chlorine, because the water comes from deep in the aquifer.

It is old Florida, funky but nice. There were people there, but nothing like the throngs at our usual theme parks. We took the boat ride down the river and back. Quincy was interested in all the birds and fish we saw in and along the crystal clear water. But the best part was the mermaid show you see from the underwater theater on the edge of the spring. The story line was a loose interpretation of the Hans Christian Anderson Little Mermaid.

Nothing, to my mind, can top Florida springs for natural beauty, funked up or not. I was up for this! The mermaids appeared and swam so beautifully. The natural creatures of the spring appeared. A couple of turtles swam among the mermaids, and were quite bothersome, pecking at their heads and bellies. The mermaids swatted at them, but they always came back. The clear spring and the bubbles and the mermaids and the prince were lovely. I watched Quincy being enthralled with all this. He covered his ears when the wicked witch took away the little mermaid's voice. "Don't worry," I whisper in his ear.

Quincy liked the peacocks wandering around the premises, occasionally blaring out their happiness with being in this odd place. As Andy dodged a bird outside the men's room he and Quincy had just left, Quincy says, "These are my friends!" Andy cautions him about getting too close to these birds we know to be really dicey.

Quincy sees nothing to entice him in the souvenir stand. He's not an "Iwanna" kid. He reads his catalog all the way home. I tell him that I need some time to read the science section of the NYT so he should play quietly with his trains. And then we put out a huge puzzle on the table in the kitchen and we complete it. Quincy does most of it while scooting around on the the table.

We take time to swim and play by the pool, go on a golf cart ride around the property to see all our favorite places: the blackberry crop (all eaten by racoons), the spread of small pine trees planted by nature from the huge mama pine tree, the pond where the cranes had their nest and hatched their eggs. I had dreaded his questions about this but he was satisfied when I told him that the cranes had flown away and gone north for the summer. "I know where north is," he says. "Are they coming back?" I tell him that they will be back before Christmas. So we slowly move on and pay attention to the cow who will have a calf any day and we know this because the cow looks fat and her udder is huge.

I love having this interesting and beautiful child spend time here. He picks peppers in the garden, looks for tree frogs and gopher tortoises. He is never bored, unfailingly polite, eats anything and sleeps reliably for twelve hours. I have had this pleasure from other grandchildren and it is the spice of life.

Being here on the ranch pretty much full time this year has meant that I could see the tiny increments of the progress of the natural seasons, all tied to the availability of water, and most of all to the light we have in this part of the world. This photo is of one of the raised flower beds. Everything is self-seeded and volunteer. I did plant a few zinnia seeds and they are now in full flower. The humongous cosmos are self seeded and in a few weeks they will be as thick as trees and covered with enormous yellow blossoms. By that time the blanket flowers will have died down and the Mexican petunias will be three feet tall and blooming like crazy. This bed needs no extra water or attention.

The vegetable garden has been the best yet. Tonight we had eggplant, peppers, onions, beans, tomatoes, and the last of the lettuce. I keep thinking that we have gotten the last pickings and then I discover that there are enough beans to feed an army. (I am beginning to hate beans!) But as the last of the vegetables are harvested, there are still more! Throughout the summer we will still have onions, okra, collards, eggplants and peppers. The gourds have become a menace as they climb everywhere, under and over. The bugs have just about given up, having devoured or spoiled the tomato crop.

A few days ago when Andy was going to the grocery store I asked him to buy some asparagus. What?? You, locavore, you want asparagus from maybe Peru or Chile?? Give me a break, I want some different vegetable. We do grow asparagus, but in Florida it is thin pickings and I always speed them directly into my mouth, no extras for the table.

In June I must throw out the vegetable plants that are no longer productive. The compost pile is thick with old bean plants, tomato vines, squashes and weeds. I throw out the household compost and hoe everything under. I notice that next to the compost pile there are a number of volunteers: acorn squash, tomatoes, cucumbers. In that place I let them live if they can!

Here, there is no slack season. There is no time when everything is conveniently dead and dormant. Yes, in January, growth is down to a dull beat, but that is when one puts in the spring garden and then has anxiety fits if it freezes those tender plants! If there is a dormant season it is from late July to early September. But at this time you have to worry about hurricanes, and then all bets are off.

I love this rugged part of America for the fascinating natural world it is. I am appalled to think of how retrograde this state is, how ignorant the electorate, how lightweight is our current governor. I am devoted to reading all letters to the editor in three papers. So many folks think only of themselves and have no clue about the larger good.

If any of you out there are interested, please consider Alex Sink for governor. I have known Alex forever and think highly of her. She's smart (actually brilliant), honest, down-to-earth, modest, possessed with incredible energy, and she knows so much about the finances of the state. Here's something you may never know in the press: little factoid dept. Alex's grandfather was one of the famous Siamese conjoined twins. Eng and.. I forget. Pretty fascinating stuff. Look it up.

Long Haul

No photographs today; just imagine a black arm band. I said I wouldn't keep on and on about the crane family, but here's the last update.

Yesterday, after first light I went out to the pond to check on them. To my horror I found a huge alligator on the crane nest just finishing off the last chick. Bob and Emily, the parents, were striding around, bereft and twining their necks around each other. I knew there were so many dangers in this long process of creating new life. I worried about everything that could happen: cows stepping on the eggs, pond predators, vultures, coyotes, fire ants and of course, alligators.

At night I went to the pond to shine my flashlight across the water to check for gators. I never saw any of a size to be a problem. Sometimes I saw our neighbors watching too. We have all loved this spring of the cranes and we celebrated the hatching of the two chicks. One died for no reason we could discern, but I got to hold it and look closely at the amazing red down.
The alligator perpetrator died of lead poisoning within minutes of the crime I am glad to say, thanks to Warren. Bob and Emily have gone away, hopefully to a vacation spot somewhere. I hope they will return and try again next year to have the family they were meant to have.

This is the first day in two weeks when we have not had a lot of rain. Everything is green and growing. The vegetable garden is now past except for the tropicals such as peppers, eggplants and beans. Sweet potatoes and okra are yet to come. It was a big mistake to put in gourds. They have taken over everything and in the mornings I must disentangle their tendrils over the garden door to open it. What can one do with hundreds of luffa gourds?

We have both been sick with pneumonia, middle ear infections, and general crud, all of which keeps our energy down. But, slowly improving.

I am loving my newly renovated studio and have several painting projects underway. One is a beautiful cypress and oak bench Andy made as a wedding present for some young friends. I am painting the top of it with images of tomatoes and peppers. I am also working on a large painting of Quincy and Elizabeth. We have had visitors every weekend for months, but this upcoming one is all ours just to keep the momentum of recuperation going.

The Pond

After first light, in the dawn chorus of the birds, I head down to circle the pond. Always an adventure, I know that always there will be some of the familiars, and sometimes something I have never seen there before.

I check out the sand hill crane family who are elegantly strutting around the periphery with junior who scuttles behind and under them and frequently taps on their heads for food.

There are many wood ducks and Florida ducks and purple galinules paddling on the surface, oblivious to the alligators I know are there. The kingfisher flashes it's blue as it flies low over the water. Today I see a lone wood stork, a great blue heron, and the otter turning and splashing in the shallows. Five deer gallop across the field.

We have had major rain for the last two weeks so the pastures are verdant and we hope the Green Swamp is sucking it in. The vegetable garden is over watered from god and the tomatoes on the vine are splitting with so much moisture. The lettuces are bolting but the beans are so prolific that we give every guest a bag of them to take home. The tropicals- sweet potatoes, okra, peppers and eggplants will be our vegetables for the long hot days ahead.

I love this place, and as I look out the window at the moment I see an intense red sky to the west, promising more rain.

This weekend we had a visitor, our good friend Ann. Both Andy and I have loved this woman for decades. While Ann and I spent time in my studio, catching up as the torrential rains fell, Andy made a dinner that was the best ever!

First, we had squash soup from a volunter acorn squash that appeared next to the compost pile. He had put just the right amount of garlic and curry and cream into it. So creamy and delicious! Then we had his home made pasta pillows stuffed with collards from the garden and toasted pine nuts, topped with garden tomatoes and onions. To accompany, there was a side dish of green beans and carrots from the garden and a salad of light green lettuces and crispy cukes from the garden. Fresh baked bread Andy made, and we all indulged in butter. To guild the lily, we had dessert of an impressive lemon souffle! Hey, there is some good cooking going on in East Pasco! Michael Pollen would be proud.

Circle of Life

Quincy has just put six candles on his grandfather's birthday cake and he is ready for the huge salmon grilled by Jay in oversize collard leaves. The family has gathered for this seventieth birthday; everyone has been running around between the grill and the pool and the kitchen where my sister Maria is setting the table and vegetables from the garden are being prepared. On this evening, the regular cook, also the birthday boy, has been instructed to do nothing!

I am recovering my energy from a month of what turned out to be pneumonia and this weekend was perfect. The new floor in my studio is complete and very beautiful and for just this tiny instant the organization of the space is all inviting potential. It was a lot of work to move everything out, and then back in.

As the family and friends arrived I was excited to show off the floor. But I was more excited to introduce them all to the new born sandhill crane chicks, now three days old and tottering along with the parents who kept their little family close to the pond. Quincy was very interested to see these birds whose eggs he had watched for weeks. The fields were splendid after the recent rains and the birthday song was sung mostly on tune and certainly with lots of love.

The next day, the only people left were our friends Peter and Susie, both avid birders. Of course we all went down to the pond to watch for the otter and see the cranes and whatever else might be around. Deer were under the trees and a gopher tortoise was hightailing it across the field. After breakfast and a good read of the Sunday papers we went out on the front porch to watch the cranes on the brow of the hill. We could only see one of the babies but we thought it was lower and out of view. Through the scope we could see the parents picking at something. They seemed to be urging one of the chicks to move. Susie and I looked at each other, knowing instantly that something was the matter.

After a decent amount of time, maybe a few minutes, Susie went out to see what the problem was. Of course both of us were thinking about rescue, trip to a bird sanctuary, etc. The parent cranes finally left the area, followed by the other chick. Moving on. We found the troubled chick, now dead on the hill. We picked it up and looked to see what happened. This looked like a perfect baby, so incredibly soft with that thick down that seems like fur. What could have happened?

We left it under a nearby palm tree. Within minutes the buzzards came. The crane family of three was grazing near the pond.

I think I really knew that this perfect bird experience would be like anything else in the natural world here. Birth and death and nurturing, storms and drought and the beauty of life enough to 'stagger sextillions of infidels'

Birth Announcement

The first baby sandhill crane hatched late this afternoon! It has been punishingly hot and dry for days but those elegant birds stuck to their job, trading places twice each day. Sometimes it was so hot the bird on the nest would gracefully arise, step out into the moat surrounding the nest and sink neck deep in the cool water for a few moments. This is when I could see the two eggs I had started to think were duds.

Today there was red in the dawn sky and rain was forcast for the afternoon. I noticed that both birds were in close attendance. As the huge dark thunderheads rolled in I went down with my binoculars and there it was! The first chick. Her name is Roberta, after Bob, the dad. (I have no idea what gender this chick is, of course, and probably neither do the parents.) This is probably the cutest of all baby birds I have ever seen with the possible exception of penguins. This chick is very small, about ten inches tall and is covered with fluffy strawberry blonde down. Her fuzzy wings hang down like a baby's arms in a snowsuit with mittens. The mom, Emily, still has the other egg to hatch so she tries to keep the chick under her wings, but I see it peeking out from time to time.

I had to leave the scene when the thunderstorms swept over. When can I stop worrying about these birds? This evening with everything seeming new and green from the rain, I went back to see how the crane family had fared in the storm. Roberta was teetering on the edge of the nest, Emily was doing some housekeeping, flipping pieces of straw on the nest, rearranging things. Bob was poking at his chick to keep it from getting in the moat. Emily turned over the remaining egg, gathered in the chick and settled down. Bob was standing by for the approaching night. The birds don't seem to mind me watching them and let me get quite close.

In the distance of the pond an otter turned over and over in the shallows and the wood ducks with their wonderful colors glided among the water lilies. A kingfisher buzzed the water's surface. Only missing from this scene in the Peaceable Kingdom was my grandson Quincy who has been as interested as I in the crane family and who has spent so much time with me (and his plastic binoculars) looking at birds and the natural world.

The vegetable garden must appreciate the natural rain. This morning Andy brought great loads of hay to replenish the mulch. He took out all the huge collards, now with stems eight inches in diameter, and some of the broccoli gone to seed and threw them all over the fence for the cows. I tied up the gourds, tomatoes and cukes. Everything is like the Little Shop of Horrors, so large and fruitful. I found a zuchini bigger than a cricket bat and picked several pounds of beans and a bale of swiss chard. So far there are no major bugs on the tomatoes, always the biggest challenge. Discovering the screening trick over the lettuce beds was key to having lots of lettuce still for our salads.

Perhaps to morrow I will be able to have a photo of the baby crane. It was too dark when I last looked.

Saving Stuff

After stewing about it for many months I am getting a new floor in my studio. Three years of hard wear on the painted concrete has taken a toll. It will be covered with clean laminate and vinyl. The local flooring guy came by with samples and encouragement. This is the time in the bad economy to fix your personal infrastructure. People are eager to come and do the work and you don't have to wait months.

The clay room has to be cleared so I have spent some time moving out buckets of glaze, many tools, bats- all the stuff I need. The tables and shelves are now in the barn. That was the easy part. When I put it back I will try to have everything as dust free as I can make it. The vacuum has sucked up lots of brown recluse spider eggs, mice droppings, dead roaches, bits of cloth and thread, old peanut husks carried around by the mice.

The clean room (so called) where I sew, write and paint can have its population of furniture and computer components moved back and forth as the laminate is laid. The big problem is the filing cabinets! I have been procrastinating on this for years and I just kept moving them from house to house, place to place, vowing to clean them out when I got around to it.

What if I died in an avalanche? Or a tsunami? Would I hate to think of my progeny having to go through all this stuff? The time has come and so I am here blogging and procrastinating. I have put everything from six large file drawers out on my work table. I know that two drawers are still full of the journals I kept all my work life. I used this stuff fairly recently while writing a memoir. But the book is published. So can I decently throw the journals away? I have a large black plastic bag ready to dump them into. I think I can actually do this - tomorrow. But I get distracted by a journal entry, never used in my book. Shall I keep it? What about all the files of writing ideas?

There is just too much of the written word out there! I am not Mark Twain with unfinished gems some scholar will want to discover in fifty years. Yes, that stuff has to go. Think of how light it will be to have a sparse filing cabinet with practical folders of current tax and banking information, only the most pertinent paper from board meetings, current volunteer efforts, medical records, current information about the electronic stuff I use. (Get rid of the manual from a camera I owned five years ago! And get rid of old electronics no longer of any use.)

I think that the main thing about culling papers from your life is having a large dose of humility, and the practicality to go along with it. You have to ask yourself, "Would the world still go round without this?" or "Will I ever actually make the effort to figure out what to do with some one else's papers?" (Yes, I did go through my father's papers, maybe too quickly, but steady enough to realize he had some books ready for publication, and I made them happen.) But, I am ready to be through with saving the dust-catching load of stuff.

I will enjoy a morning of reading and keeping a few papers. I will happily discard old bank statements, and I will still keep a few files of letters and memorabilia from old students and family. I think I can throw out a huge amount of photos. I will not obsess about having an identity theft if someone at the dump paws through old records of teeth cleanings and vet visits for a dog dead for twelve years.

It hasn't happened yet, but tomorrow is a new day. I keep envisioning the new clean floor and I already have the canvass and paint to get started on a new project.

For those of you who are birders, the eggs have not hatched yet! The cranes,Bob and Emily are still on the nest. I saw the eggs this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow? I will be so sorry if those eggs are duds!

Waiting for rain

We are waiting for the rains. Every afternoon we are teased with the big dark clouds that don't deliver. Our fields and paths are dusty. The pastures are hoping to become green. We see the dawn with the sun trying to emerge into the morning through the mist.

When I drive to town, a few miles away, I pass the houses and trailers along the way that take the brunt of all the dust kicked up from the wheels of vehicles.

Living rurally, we pay attention to the rhythms of the weather. We worry about the dryness of the orange trees and we water what we can. I water the vegetable garden, our existence! Last night we had a celebration of vegetables for our friends. The garden is producing everything imaginable so we had platters of lettuce, beans, snow peas, beets, squash, eggplants, carrots and peppers. Our friends bring us fresh eggs and oranges.

The sand hill cranes are still incubating those eggs! I begin to wonder if they are duds? I went out with Lola, the dog, to check on them this evening. The mom, Emily, is still firmly on the nest, and her mate, Bob, is standing nearby. The ducks and the anhinga are nearby. Maybe soon?

The Cranes

Yes, yes, I know these images are not National Geographic quality. I have been so delighted and interested in the sand hill cranes' process of the courtship, nest building, and incubation on our pond this spring. So these are a few of my clumsy attempts to show what's happening. In the first photo the two large eggs can be clearly seen. In the next photo you can see Emily the female with her constant sidekick, the moorhen who keeps watch day and night. In the third picture, there is just Bob, who has just changed places with his mate. They look very much alike but Emily is a bit smaller and does most of the incubation. I have been able to get close enough to hear a strange low purring noise they make, a contrast to the wild loud trumpeting call when they greet each other or fly off to peck for food.

The bird books say that the eggs hatch after 28 to 35 days. Should happen at any moment as I calculate it. The buzzards are still hanging around and this makes me really nervous. Maybe by tomorrow there will be two more red heads around here. (Quincy is coming for the weekend.)

I think I have never been so 'in the moment' as I have been here during this amazing springtime. After the long cold winter plants behaved differently. We still have some oak trees dripping pollen, there are no mosquitoes and a very short firefly season. The hummingbirds and chimney swifts and whipoorwills appeared on schedule. The 'cold weather' vegetables are still prolifically bearing. We still have lots of broccoli and pea pods, and the lettuce, now under shade cloth, continues on. We are starting to harvest beans, chard, cucumbers, zuchini. Tomatoes look promising and so far have not been found by the hornworms. Lots of peppers and eggplants. The onions are up.

We continue to trap the critters who dig up the yard and steal the bird feed. Andy swears he will get a 22 and dispatch them. So far, we just take the full traps up the road and let the raccoons, opossums and armadillos go.

There are wonderful wild flowers in bloom but you have to look for them, as most are not large. When the rains start, we'll have all kinds of fungi, but now everything is as dry as dust.

When I get up in the morning I am always eager to be outdoors, checking things out, seeing the deer leaping across the far pasture with their distinctive breathy call, listening for the dawn chorus of dozens of birds I can't identify, looking for footprints in the sand of the creatures who were here last night.

I sit on the porch and read the local paper, then head out for some gardening or hanging out the clothes.

Then I love being in my studio working on something or other, and going up for lunch with Andy and my 'nap' on the couch with Lola, the dog. That's when I read the New York Times. Afternoons are for working in the studio. We have our routines! Even when Quincy is here he falls into our life. Such a pleasure to add a little boy bath and story time, or have a little guy at meals, or playing outside my studio.

In the late afternoon I bring Andy the day's vegetables from the garden. Salad? Beets? Snowpeas? I wash and prepare them for cooking, confident that the cook will do his best.

Late afternoons, we take our swims. The pool is yet very cold for me.

We are still having trouble with all the things on our calendar, trips to 'the city' and trips elsewhere. I hate the process of shutting up and locking everything for our trips away from here. When we come back and open the gate and start down that mile long lane with the overhanging oaks dripping with Spanish moss, I breathe a sigh of contentment. Home!

We are slowly making our way in this community, a pleasure. We volunteer in community efforts and meet a lot of interesting folks. Having loved my work life so much, I could not have imagined that another phase of life would be so compelling and satisfying. Of course, we still flop around in retirement somewhat. Our good friends, some still working, others retired, want to know how we can be content with the rural life?

How can I answer this? Perhaps, being elderly, I can at last do what I like. The voice from my mother's head gets ever fainter. Our marriage, after nearly fifty years, gets stronger. We have never talked to each other so much- from politics to poetry, agriculture and family. Music is very important to us, though we no longer attend the Symphony. We need live theater and art museums and shows. We need to see an opera in NYC every year.

And then, there is this magical and compelling place where we live. So I go and visit the cranes' nest several times a day, full of the wonder and fragility of it all. I am smaller than an ant, larger than the gibbous moon, and happy as a clam at high tide.

Lacoochee kids

On Thursday evening I took to school the bisque fired clay pieces to be glazed. The kids were thrilled to see their works of art now strong and ready for the glazing. These kids and their parents (this evening there were five dads among the number of moms) were so glad to claim their clay pieces and begin the process of glazing them. They listened to me as I explained how they were to use the glazes. I never had to say anything twice. I was speaking in English, not their first language, and some of the terms were foreign to them. But with good will from us all we figured everything out and the pieces were glazed. The parents and kids finished up and everyone cleaned up and helped me transport the pieces to my car. They know that next week I will appear with their finished clay works. These are not entitled kids, nor are their parents helicopters.

I love this group of kids and parents, and the facilitators, Ben Aguilar and Rachel Kurtz, those wonderful young people who have made this after school program possible. We are already planning to have a celebratory end of the year happening at our farm. We'll have a pot luck of those great hispanic foods, swimming, and my signature exploding volcano cake.

Lots of trips recently for me. We went to NYC for a week of culture, then back to spend a few days with Quincy. A few days later I went for a weekend with my 'girl friends' at a friend's beach house on the Atlantic. This place was certainly a close second to our paradise here in central Florida. I do love the huge beach and the constantly changing colors of the sea. I walked miles, always searching for shells and anything interesting the surf threw up. I went on a long bike ride. (My thighs are huring!) But it's not my paradise!

When I returned this morning from Daytona, I immedately went out with my binoculars to see how the sand hill cranes were doing. Bob and Emily are still on their huge nest on the edge of the pond, but I was alarmed to see buzzards and crows on the trees overhead. Do they know that the hatching will happen at any time? It has been twenty-six days since Bob and Emily settled down on the nest they built. My bird book says that the babies will hatch in twenty eight days. It's been so hot in the middle of the days I really want to set up a shade umbrella over the nest! I think I won't be able to stand it if anything happens to this nest and the two eggs don't survive for one reason or another!

My daughter called to tell me that she is worried about her many monarch butterfly chrysalises now hanging in her butterfly bushes. I guess we are related!

Still Being Grandma

Here is Quincy, the red head on the right, helping me be a volunteer today at Lacoochee School. We are planting a garden and have put in zinnias, black eye peas, peppers, radishes and cucumbers. Everyone had such a good time! Quincy, my horticultural side kick knows all about making a garden. Just today he pulled up a bunch of carrots he planted weeks ago and we put them in the salad. He's eager to share his expertise, and the kids are so welcoming to him, though they are four years older than he is. He is thrilled to be a part of all this, such a social boy.

He has recently left his Montessori school; a bad fit all around, and he will start a new school tomorrow where all the family knows he'll be safe and happy. He was a bit confused today. He thought that this school he was visiting with Grandma was his new school. Eager to do right, he volunteered a lot of information, and when the planting and watering was over he quickly found an unoccupied desk in the classroom. He raised his hand properly to make a comment, and when he saw a boy go into the bathroom and come out, he asked if he could visit the bathroom. (He left the door open, much to the amusement of those third graders.) "Hey, he's little," I said. Then the kids told him to wash his hands, which he did - in the drinking fountain! The other kids told me in great detail about their little brothers and sisters. Much hilarity there.

So, it has been a wonderful and exhausting five days with a four year old. Quincy is never a problem. He eats anything, sleeps twelve hour nights, is never destructive. He talks all the time and asks so many questions! For long periods he is happy with his imaginative play in the doll house, or outside with his trucks and little plastic guys on the edge of the garden I am weeding. He spends lots of time in the barn where he has his post office and delivery system. I always think I can get in a bit of work on my quilts, but there is always a new mail delivery by a small postman in a wagon, or he needs some rubber bands or has a question about armadillos. So I find my nature books and we look it up, distracted along the way by a photo of a man and child looking at something with their head lamps on. We decide we'll buy some of those head lamps and discuss all the stuff we'll see. Another morning shot with nothing purposeful to show for it but the sweet necessity of a loving and curious child.

My pedometer averages 15,000 steps these days. I think most of them are from the trips up and down and up and down the road behind Quincy's little bike. At first Quincy did not want to ride this bike. But we adjusted it so it was friendly and his feet could reach the ground. I found an objective he wanted to reach, a pile of lime rock we use to fill in the potholes on our road. We ride the bike to the pile and Quincy plants some sticks in his "rock" garden. He is thrilled to be able to ride this uncertain bike that wobbles and throws him to the ground sometimes. I am right behind him but as the trips increase he is more and more confident and I am letting go and by the end of this last day he is flying!

His speech is sometimes so unclear we come to an impasse, even after many repetitions. He wants so show me stuff: the gecko on the wall, how he's set up a game board, a restaurant he's made out of little cardboard boxes and small stuffed animals. We make a book with cut out pictures and a stamp pad for the captions. We take several trips in the golf cart each day to check out the nesting sand hill cranes on the edge of the pond. A couple of times we have seen the two very large eggs in the nest as the bird takes a break. "What is the daddy doing now?" asks Quincy. The female we have named Emily seems to be doing most of the work! We scout around and spy Bob, the male, pecking in the dirt. "I think Bob is finding bugs for Emily", I say.

I wonder how his mom, a single parent, can do this? I think back of my own new work life and childbearing and I have amnesia about it. Somehow it gets done.

Loving the silence of the evening, I will go to bed soon. I will miss the last wonderful visit to the grandchild asleep in his bed upstairs when I check his covers and that everything is well for the night. I kiss his sweet cheek close to all those stuffed animals and a bunch of favorite books we've read so many times. I think of that dimple that will show when he sees the waffles Grandpa will make for breakfast.

There are so many new adventures for the next time he's here. But tonight he was very happy to go home to his mother, as were we.

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.