Late Winter

Here is the view from our house these wintry mornings. No frost since the last devastating freezes of December, but it is still cold in the mornings and I don't want to get out in the garden and dig. I did put in a long row of peas and a bed of beets and the new collard and broccoli starts are doing well.

We have had two weeks of guests that I love. Still, it takes energy and lots of rearrangements so we are getting back to our usual routines.

More than ever I am embedded in our local school, Lacoochee. Each Tuesday I go to a certain class and we cook something and spend a lot of time reading out loud. This week, while the mac and cheese we made from scratch bubbled in the oven, we read several chapters of Little House on the Prairie.

Why won't classroom teachers read to kids every day? It's by far the most effective thing one can do to promote reading, as all the research shows.

The kids leaned on me and there was total silence as I read. (I am a very dramatic reader.) Then, we served the macaroni and had conversations. By now, some of the teachers know about these Tuesday afternoons, and they come, supposedly to work on their computers. But, really, they are listening intently, as are the kids, to the story. And they love the food, too.

After my classroom gig I went to inspect the small garden project for parents. Yes, all the plants are well cared for and I see many flats of plant starts also there. So amazing!

On Monday I will go to the meeting for parents and I will bring more seedlings and seeds. I will tell those parents in my halting Spanish that this week we'll have more containers for their gardens, a better hose, and a garden shed for their tools. All free! I have a Vista worker on board to help. I am imagining that eventually we'll have a proper tilled vegetable garden, but for now we are going for containers.

The folks in the Lacoochee administration are great and give me free reign. Parents are on board, kids help.

Meanwhile those teachers struggle with a mountain of paperwork about the FCATS and they never have enough time to do what they really want to do with their groups. Everyone hopes devoutly that the FCAT and NCLB will pull back and actually let teachers teach!

Quilts and craziness

I am still despondent about the state of the world and the state of the union. Go have your tea parties, pack guns and dismiss everything that you fear and do not understand. Shoot yourself in the foot. Climate change will undo you but you will drive your huge SUVs into the polluted sunset. I devoutly hope I will be dead by then.

So, here is a photo of the beginning of a quilt for my dear friend Julie who is struggling with a rare blood disease. Making this is a positive thing for me. While I sew I think of this wonderful and intelligent woman who has shared such wisdom with me.

In this season of my despondency the best things are working in the vegetable garden, weeding out the dead stuff from the prolonged freeze and renewing the beds, planting new collards and seeding the lettuce beds. I have small seedling containers, now full of shoots.

This is a renewal of life going on and I rejoice in this.

Where are you young people who should be revolutionaries?? Why are you not out there in the front telling the nation what you think can be done?? Are you only hunkered down with your Facebook and Twitter and buying things online and you tube on inconsequential matters? It makes me sad.

Saving the Turtles

Here is a green turtle on a quilt I made a few years ago for these amazing people, the Meylans, the only famous herpetologists I know. (Actually, I don't know any other herpetologists.) And here is a portrait of the heroes, Peter, Anne and Stephan.

In this beginning of the new year we had such a dreadful freeze that decimated crops and gardens in Florida we could hardly keep abreast of the magnitude of the stress in all our wildlife. When Anne and Peter and their sons came for a visit today they were full of the heroic stories about how the sea turtles of Florida were saved after the freeze.

Some four to five thousand sea turtles, mostly green turtles, but some loggerheads, were in terrible distress from the cold. Many were dying and the living ones were cold stunned and lying listless in the sea grass mats near shore and in the estuaries.

Peter Meylan, a professor at Eckerd College, enlisted the help of students in his reptile class. They went north to the Panama City area, where with the help of government and environmental groups and volunteers who scoured the lagoons and weed mats, they rescued many turtles, bringing them to the Gulfworld Aquarium in Panama City to warm up before release.

Meanwhile Anne Meylan from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation, and her son Stephan (on winter break from college) needed to take 92 cold stunned turtles from Pinellas to Ocala and the Wakala fish hatchery where they had the tanks to revive the turtles. On their wild ride to Ocala with the turtles they described having those huge hundred pound turtles barging around the floor of the van, getting under their feet, lunging everywhere.

After their turtle drop off near Ocala, they went to Merrit Island where there were hundreds of sea turtles, also cold stunned. Here, NASA let the sea turtle rescue operation use the NASA orbitor warehouse where there was a warmer. Seaworld, Disney, and others helped with their resources. There were lots of veterinarians who helped in the tagging and getting blood samples for genetic testing. Many of the turtles had fibropapiloma tumors, a contagious condition, and these turtles had to be separated from the healthy ones. This was the first time Stephan had had to do really fast work to pit tag these huge sea turtles. (This is the same thing we do to microchip our dog and cat pets.) The rescue operation painted numbers on each turtle after tagging. This took days and cold nights warmed by adrenalin, no doubt.

After warming and the data gathering, the turtles were released into the sea again. The dead ones had to be taken to the dump. Anne spoke of the steady volunteers who helped with this awful chore.

I have probably made mistakes in the telling of this. But what I know is that many many folks here in Florida stepped up to save a huge population of sea turtles. Eighty-five percent of them were saved!)

The Meylans are exhausted. We fed them a supper of rice and beans and listened to their stories.

The best stuff one ever does in life is responding to crisis. We Americans are so good at this. There are legions of ordinary folks who trundle off to New Orleans to rebuild houses, or cook for the homeless, or save manatees, or go to third world nations to repair cleft palates or fistulas. We take simple stoves and water purification and bed nets to places in need of these things. We believe that thing by thing, one by one, we can make a difference. And we do.

But we must also think over the long haul. We cannot just respond to a crisis, and this is certainly good. For Haiti we need to keep on giving in a responsible way after the water and food crisis abates.

We are global, we are our neighbors.

January Blues

Collards covered with frost for the tenth day! How discouraging to all of us who are trying to grow anything. The Glavitches who farm vegetables and sell them in a farm stand told us that the temperature in their strawberry fields was 13 degrees this morning! But still, they had the cherry tomatoes I needed for an old fashioned egg strata I will take to the garden club tomorrow.

We went over to Warren's orange grove to pick fruit to squeeze. At mid afternoon there were still columns of ice around the young trees from the all night watering he's had to do to preserve his grove during this prolonged freeze. But we were all happy to be out with Warren and his big gentle dog and the long handled pickers, getting a little warmth from the late sun. We cut into a few oranges to see if they were damaged beyond salvation. They seemed fine to me, and I know that my students tomorrow will enjoy making juice from them that they'll drink with the bread and butter they will be making.

These doings are small and beautiful gems of hope and pleasure in what I increasingly see as a depressing world. I have begun to think we have reached the tipping point (to what?). The age of civility has definitely passed. I used to love the so-called American spirit of independence, generosity and competence. Now, I don't know where it's gone.. Americans get their information from quick twitters, rumors, and charlatans, aka talk show hosts, pundits and bloggers.

We have "tea party" politicians who oppose abortion in a knee jerk way, and yet can't do the hard work to think through and act to protect the kids we already have. (More than seventy kids in Florida died or were killed last year through neglect or abuse!)

Seems everything is about politics and getting elected next time. I am not sure that our politicians are listening to what people really want. (We all want lower cost and predictable health care! Anyone would love a public option or single payer health care where you could just go and get the health care you need!) Problem is we want everything for free, no new taxes.

The world is just going too fast. How can we think about health care, the wars, climate change and the economy all at once? We don't need this constant yammer about who said what and did what and slept with whom and took what performance enhancing drugs. We need to let our current administration lead us and focus on what NEEDS TO BE DONE to keep our country on track without constantly fending off the gnats.

I did not vote for Bush, but I knew that when he was elected (sort of), he was our president and that the office of President must be respected. I am an American. It seems that so many in Congress are just trying to undermine our magnificent Constitution. We are all a People and this partisanship has elevated to very dangerous levels. Republicans and Democrats- come on! We are all Americans, not out to shoot each other, but to hunker down and work on some hard problems we all have whatever political stripe.

I am discouraged because I now think that in almost all cases our politicians can be bought for the right price. They are beholden to the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies, big oil, local companies. There is a scandal every day. (Did we forget how to be honest? Was integrity forgotten in the wild days of the last decade?)

My husband often reminds me that history replays itself. FDR was hated by many but he navigated the country through a depression that lasted far longer than this current recession will. Lyndon Johnson put in place many social reforms that we now take for granted. I was appalled that my own child had no idea who Lyndon Johnson was and what a long lasting stamp he put on our social policies. What happened to social studies education? Belatedly, she got this information by visiting the LBJ library in Austin.

Is all knowledge of history a thing of the past, so to speak? Do we have to reinvent the wheel over and over again? Has our instant world of the internet and trivial knowledge supplanted everything? Can we have it both ways? Our small grandson has technological know- how beyond mine, but still, we ride around and he asks me the questions of the ages: "Who is god?" and "Do starfish have eyes?" and "When will my mom be back?"

I am not at all sure that I would want to have kids if I were now of childbearing age. I can't see clearly that our values will prevail. I love each day living in this wonderful place, probably an anachronism.

Winter Garden

For the last few days we have awoken to the sight of frost on the fields and that dreaded acrid odor of frozen vegetation. I drive the mile up our driveway to get the newspapers, glad of those ridiculous heated seats. I can see that the day will be brilliant blue but I know that it will be cold all day and we'll be wearing those oddly assorted layers of all the winter gear we Floridians can find. Last week I was wearing shorts and this development makes me crabby.

After breakfast I make the rounds to mourn the demise of the Mexican petunias, the beach sunflowers I have enjoyed all summer and the succulants around the water garden. The pentas are limp and blackened, the ferns possibly hanging on until they are killed by another couple of frosts forecast for the rest of the week. The plumbago is still bravely blooming as are the knock out roses. We covered the newly planted citrus trees and the big begonia. I had taken all the orchids into the house. But there are so many plants and not enough sheets and clothespins to save all the plants.

The vegetable garden has been hanging on with the collards, broccoli, spinach and peas. The carrots are safely in the ground and the cabbage is clearly loving this cold weather. It would be nice if the weeds were to go! All those incredible butterfly attracting flowers are dead, but no doubt they will come back in the spring. I wonder where the butterflies go?

The electric company trimmed back trees last week and left us a huge amount of newly shredded mulch. When it warms up I will down load many wheelbarrows full of it and get the place ready for the spring garden. I have ordered the seeds and have the starter pots ready to place near a warm window. As usual, when all is potential, I have grand fantasies that this year I will have tomatoes in such abundance we will make salsa and juice and ketchup and sauce with enough left over to give away to all our friends. There will be no horn worms, no stink bugs, no blossom end rot. The eggplants will behave and produce only a moderate harvest, not twenty fruits each day. The lettuces will not bolt overnight. The armadillos will not root up the beans.

As my friend Virginia said, "Vegetable gardening is a slow learning curve." After many years you really do get to know what actually grows well in your site. You know that those weird cultivars that look so magnificent in the seed catalog and make you drool just thinking of eating them are probably not going to do well. There is a reason that Farmers Feed store sells pacman broccoli seedlings, never that "new" golden broccoli you see in the seed catalog. So mostly I stick with what is locally available, tried and true. I yearn for the interesting mesclun lettuces and have been pretty successful with growing them in raised salad tables. I keep trying the heirloom tomatoes but I really know that the local Homestead and Big Boy and Early Girl are the ones that can really produce (barring the bugs).

So, even as the frost relentlessly appears each morning, I await my package of seeds and the endless possibilities in those packets. I believe the frost killed plants will rise again in the warmth of spring days. I am not too daunted as I crunch across the frozen fields.

Holidays!

In no particular order here are some images from our holidays. First, the cats, Lewis and Clark, who are the owners of our good friends, Richard and Lucy. We drove up to North Carolina, a four day trip to celebrate the New Year and our friendship. After two weeks of non-stop parties (ours), we looked forward to the road trip in winter. The landscape changed from Florida green to the colorful and sere winter trees along the way. Our dog, Lola, was thrilled to be in a new motel along the way in Athens, Georgia. As we approached our friends' home on a mountain top, we saw piles of old tired snow from a previous storm but the twisty gravel road was clear. And then, there was the glorious view of layers and layers of smokey mountains and wet black skeletons of deciduous trees. I didn't know how much I have missed this image.

Our Christmas was quite traditional, though secular. We loved having so many family members and friends around. Quincy, our youngest grandchild was here on Christmas Eve, helped lay out the stockings (knitted by Lucy)by the fireplace, and put out a carrot for Rudolph. In the morning, he awoke to the stuffed stockings and a shiny new bike. What he loved best was the slinky he found in his stocking, and the tiny stuffed frog. Kids! The hall was clogged with the huge motorized crane from his uncle and aunt and he quickly figured out how to hoist that tiny stuffed frog into the nether.

The next day we had the traditional immense red snapper with green rice to be eaten by twenty friends and family. Norman and Virginia provided the fish, the Meylans brought a wonderful ham, Andy and I cooked collards, Elizabeth made the potatoes, I made strawberry shortcake and the Betzers brought many chocolate items. (A food group!) Everyone helped, the green salad was from our garden. We had NINE dogs in attendance! A record. They were all well behaved.

Before the dinner we all (dogs included) go out for a walk through the fields and woods. We laugh and talk and touch each other and I am thinking how blessed I am to be here right now. Here are old friends and some new ones, all ages, life goes on, the natural world around me is amazing. Quincy finds a small skull and Peter Meylan and Susie Betzer explain. He is clearly enthralled and wants me to keep this skull in my pocket. I hold out my hand and it is immediately filled with his small warm one. I look ahead and see the rest of the group and the long rays of the afternoon strike the golden head of Stephan,Peter's oldest son, just on the brink of adulthood. In this decade I have watched this boy grow up, and I rejoice. I see the daughters of us all there. How we love our children!

The next day after most of the crowd left Andy and I drove up to North Carolina. This last photo is of Lola, our dog, who has never before experienced snow. We made her wear this "dress" and she hated it and was clearly embarrassed to be seen in it. Lola is used to being the alpha dog in any situation but the twenty pound cats bested her!

This is a new year and a new decade, and so many of us hope for a better time. Many of my friends, this last year, have struggled with life threatening health issues. I am thinking of two Julies I love who are recovering. I am thinking of Juliet, my old childhood best friend, who's husband is facing cancer surgery tomorrow. I am thinking of young friends who have untimely lost their mothers. I am thinking of all the friends and family who have lost jobs.

And I am thinking of our president who has such a heavy load to bear. We need to be civil and supportive of each other, we Americans. We are it, that's all we have. Give thanks and be generous, that's what we can do.

Peace and happiness in the new year.

Happy New Year, happy New decade

ve a very wonderful new year!

Smells like Christmas

Here is my guy serving up one of our delicious company meals he has cooked. It is a cornucopia of wonderfully tasty food we have grown and cooked. In this week to come we will host another meal and our friends will burst in on cool breezes carrying additions to the meal and suddenly the air will be full of loud and loving talk and catching up and a lot of laughter. Peter will bring his signature chocolate cookies, others will come with armloads of fish and ham and we'll have greens from the garden. Our grandson, Quincy will run around, happy with the many Christmas presents he received.

I love this season, second only to Thanksgiving. Christmas is not very stressful to me because I do not decorate much or obsess about wrapping the few material gifts I give. I am so grateful for the wonderful family and gifts I have.

What I do obsess about is the expectations we all have. Today I went into our small town to volunteer as an art instigator for a group of twenty orphans, in age from nine to seventeen, from the Baptist Children's home in Lakeland. These kids were here in our town for a wonderful day. First, they went into a local bank lobby where there was a Christmas tree and gifts for every child, provided by local businesses and families. It was hard to tell who the guests were but I could certainly see that there were many photographers and P R people there. All proud to be the sponsors of Orphans at Christmas. The kids pretty much ignored them, but I could not help thinking that these kids were used to being poster kids for the needy at Christmas. (Other times of the year we conveniently do not think about them.)

After the gift distribution, the kids walked down to the art gallery where we had a hands on art activity. I had brought many skeins of yarn, craft sticks and all the rest so that these kids could make (and take) god's eyes. Many of the kids really took to this activity and made professional looking works of art. Those huge male teen agers really got into it, quickly learned the moves and helped the other younger kids. Time passed in a flash and when they needed to move on to their next activity they wanted more. So I filled their arms with many balls of yarn, the left over craft sticks and their brains full of how to do it. I think after this day they will most remember that they learned how to make something beautiful.

And I really do know that what these children want most is to have their very own loving family. It kills me.

I guess it's kid by kid that will save the world. And if you think you are doing it, be quiet about it. We don't need P R and plaques, hand shakes in front of audiences. It is enough to just do it. After Christmas, maybe into March, let's see what those orphans need. Maybe not a fake Christmas tree in a bank lobby surrounded by plastic gifts from China. Maybe they could use and love a few days in the country and learn to ride a horse or plant a garden or look at the night stars and be with a real family. And be treasured. It would be harder, uncomfortable, but worth it.

So much better than candy canes!

Christmas is a gift. Think carefully about this.

Happy Christmas to all.

Waiting for the holidays

It's a new tradition for us, but it seems just right. We all order the red snappers and fix them Chilean style, surrounded by green rice, tomatoes and collards. This year we'll have twenty people the day after Christmas, so we are augmenting all this with a ham.

Now, five years since we retired, we still flop around somewhat, but we are making a wonderful new network of friends here and connect with our old friends (some are young!)

Every day I get up and greet the wonderful possibilities of the day ahead. By the time I get down to my studio the sand hill cranes have noisily flown in to begin their day of elegant striding and pecking. They would love it if I would ever open the vegetable garden gate so they could nip off the new lettuces. But of course, I won't.

I have bought a few poinsettias to line the walk to the front door now decorated with a wreath. Everything looks very festive and ready for the several holiday events about to happen here.

I am generally not into holiday decorating, but this year, thanks to Quincy, we have a Christmas tree. I may replace the tired candles on the mantle with something more festive, and I will display the wonderful Christmas stockings (even one for Lola, the dog!) knitted by our dear friend, Lucy. I have installed the holiday towels in the bathroom. I'm ready.

Just before Christmas our middle son, Ben, is coming for a few days, and our daughter Elizabeth and her son, Quincy. I rejoice in this. We do not require all the family to gather at Christmas or at any other time. We have had many Christmases when we did this, and it was lovely, with the sheer expansiveness of it all. And, when our kids were young we had the set traditions of Christmas with the stockings and gifts. That was a fun time, but then we all fanned out and the children began their own traditions in their own places.

Now, we have even curtailed the amount of gifts given, and we let all the family know that we do not need or want for anything. I have taken to sending my young relatives notification that they are the recipient of a gift to Heifer International of a goat or a water buffalo or a llama. We don't know what they want!

I walk out into the field and see the red berries so thick on the holly. It is the holiday season and I am truly satisfied.

Lola, our dog, the perfect dog

O.K. this is an old subject for so many of us. I don't have a picture of Lola to head this because my new computer has prissily sent my picture files elsewhere because I didn't label them. You'll have to imagine a very small dachshund, still with a waist, a double silver dapple, ( a mix of black and white spots) and one blue eye and one brown eye. Unlike her owner, she still attracts attention.

She is totally devoted to her humans and is overly social so sometimes when we have guests she particularly loves I tell her to get in her kennel and cool down. "Get packed!"

At eleven years old she is still sparky and loves our daily walks. She looks between Andy and me to see that we are really going somewhere, and then she's off! Today we walked along the edges of the fields and then took a cow path through the palmettos. Lola is so small she avoids the spider webs and can scramble under the underbrush. Like all of her breed she's stubborn so when she ferrets out an armadillo she really wants to bark at it endlessly and she won't get with the program of just taking the walk, unless I speak to her severely.

When we come out into the pasture with the long grass Lola likes to scrunch down and hide and she's totally invisible. The game is that we call her and There she is! She lopes along, soft ears flying, nose to the wind, short legs pumping.

She came to us as a six weeks old puppy we immediately fell in love with. The first night we put her in the kennel in our bed room and there was much whining, so pitiful. "If I had wanted to sleep with a dog I would have married one," my husband said. Ten minutes later he relented and Lola quietly and comfortably settled down under his chin like a small loaf of warm bread. And she's been our bed every night since. In cold weather we appreciate how dogs run hot and in the summer we grumble.

I took Lola to work with me every day for the first years of her life and the kids in my school really socialized her. Now, she's mostly here on the ranch and has complete access to the outdoors. I spent many hours teaching her to be a good dog while I stood out there in rain and iffy weather. In town, I spent a lot of energy teaching her how to walk on a leash, well worth the effort. And, horrors! we spent lots of time in the dog parks where Lola learned that the part for small dogs was really O.K.

We had another dog before Lola but I had tons of kids in my face, no time and no energy to spare to carefully train an animal. That dog was lovely to us, but I regret my lack of caring.

So we now have this eleven year old dog who is still young and she is still funny and such a big part of our routine. In the mornings she nags us until we get up from the table and sink into the couch to read the papers. She hops up to warm my husband's hip. Then she wants to go out on the front porch to get the sun rays and she lies there, a small spotty burrito next to the door in the sunshine. After lunch she comes into the kitchen to tell me that It Is Now Time for Molly to lie down and read for an hour because I, Lola, will take a nap on whatever sofa Molly has chosen.

After dinner, Lola is again warming Andy's hip and thinking that soon, soon! she'll go out to pee and then we'll lift her onto our high bed and she can burrough down under the covers, warming up the bed until we come.

A dog's life, so simple and comical.

We Americans love our dogs, large and small. We stroke their wonderful fur and put up with their nonsense. These are the creatures who love us unconditionally and they make us happy.

Yard Birds

Here is Bob, the crane, just preparing to cross the cattle guard into our yard. Emily, his spouse has already crossed, elegantly stepping out like a careful queen. For the last week this pair has spent most of the day pecking in the sparse grass right outside the door to our house. I am quite sure this is the same couple I obsessed about last spring as they tragically tried to become parents. The male is slightly larger than the female and of course they look identical to every other sand hill crane. But I am convinced that these are indeed Bob and Emily. They have certain personalities I know. For the most part they are loving and amicable, even to doing a few dances in the front yard. And then there are the marital spats accompanied by such bugling it causes us to run out to see what the hullabaloo is all about. By mid afternoon they climb carefully to the top of the mulch pile, flap their huge wings and depart over the barbed wire fence and head for the pond.

No day passes when I don't rescue the frogs and lizards and spiders and stick insects and snakes that mistakenly appear inside. "You don't want to be in the shower," I say to the frog as I scoop it up and release it outdoors.

I have had a happy accomplice this week- my grandson Quincy. He sees that these useful critters are not to be feared or tormented. He's not one of those kids who wants above all to catch frogs or lizards to hold them. He just regards them as a part of the natural place. He and I look with wonder at spider webs and mole trails. We wonder if bats will ever come to live in the bat house we put up during the summer.

The vegetable garden is looking a bit frayed. We still have lettuce, broccoli, carrots and collards with peas and cabbages to come. But I have given up on weeding the pathways and have given them over to the zinnias and weeds. I need a new round bale of hay so I can cover the weeds.

The orchids by the pool are still beautiful and the roses appreciated all the rain we had this week. Seems that these knock out roses will tolerate anything. Even the deer don't touch them. The perennial beds are dying back but the plants around the water garden look fine. Our orange grove got such a hit with the frosts last winter, there is not much fruit this year. Our neighbors have been generous so we are juicing every day.

Who would have thunk it? That a person with a background of urban digs in Beirut, New York, Paris and Washington would find such a perfect niche in rural Dade City. I love visiting big cities and I need the urban fix every so often, but here is what I truly love. I especially love to share my life with the many friends and family who come and appreciate this paradise. Those yard birds say it all.

Saving the world, kid by kid

Of course, in our lives we want to make a difference in our small bailiwick, and we have big dreams of making a huge global impact. Bill and Melinda Gates can do this as can others who have oceans of money. But there are legions of us small potatoes who are making change and doing good.

Volunteering is one of the greatest pleasures and hardest things of life after retirement. Americans are the most generous people (also the meanest and tightest!). There are so many of us who go out on a regular basis and deliver Meals on Wheels, cook and serve food to the needy, coach kids' teams, teach people to read, serve on community committees, clean up the coasts, volunteer in schools, rescue wildlife and do so many things that enrich our communities.

We do not do this to accrue plaques of appreciation. We do it because we believe we can make even a small difference in the quality of life for the people we serve. And also we do what we do because it is interesting to us and brings intrinsic rewards.

The photo shows kids immersed in a science project - not something in their regular curriculum, but something a volunteer (me!) could do to enrich the teaching. As a regular volunteer in two schools, one, private and middle class, the other maybe the poorest public school in Florida, I see that all kids are the same in their eagerness to learn. This photo is of the middle class and privileged, but if you colored the faces brown the photo would be the same.

This week in Lacoochee School we had the kick-off of the community gardens project, near and dear to my heart. I have this vision of a large community garden in this very low-income community. If people can grow and harvest their own food they will be physically healthier and it will be such a community bond. The principal of the school who is first and foremost a community organizer ("The bottom line is the kids"), is behind this and will gladly make part of the school yard available for the garden. But I am thinking that this garden should really be located between the rows of public housing units. I am going to talk to the person in charge of this. What nonsense it is to prohibit having a garden there! Why our own family vegetable garden works is that it's so near our kitchen!

So, after my gig in my adopted fourth grade classroom, I went out to the small beginnings of a container garden with my flats of cold-hardy broccoli and collards. I prepared the dirt and planted those seedlings and waited to see if anyone I had invited would appear.

And then the Mexican women trooped over to this small beginning next to the side of the school. The school care takers had generously and promptly supplied a hose for watering.

We stood there around the plastic kiddie pool and the other containers with the brave collard and broccoli seedlings. We spoke of this small beginning that could be the start of something big. They decided to have a rotation of people who would water the plants and keep an eye out. I volunteered my husband to build a compost container.

As I left, I told them that now, it was up to them. I walked down the hill to my car and I saw them still standing there, talking animatedly.

Volunteering to do an actual something is quite different from just writing a check (though that is important also). Doing hands-on stuff keeps you humble and polishes your heart.

The Season for Celebration and wonder?

Thanksgiving was just as predicted. No need to send out that photo of the nicely browned turkey and the large salmon fillet, all the side dishes familiar and strange, and all of us, more than twenty sitting down to the mismatched dinnerware with arms around our young ones. Just imagine the love and boisterousness permeating our farm house. An American Thanksgiving, and the best.

Today we have been trying to figure out what health plan we should adopt to supplement Medicare. We have been to informational meetings, read the stuff from the various insurance companies. For every plan there is a 'gotcha' so there is no clear best one. Our retirement health plan from my husband's old work place was canceled due to the economic situation. We have pretty much decided to go with traditional Medicare and add a prescription drug plan to it. This should be simple..

Even if one selected a more pricey drug plan, it is still incredibly inexpensive compared to the health plans those folks under 65 need to have. There is a deduction from my social security benefit of about $300 a month. (Less for lower income folks.) Then, on top of that I would pay about $40 per month for Part D which is the prescription drug benefit. So, I will be paying under $350 a month for health insurance. And, like everyone else, I'll pay the modest co-pays when ever I visit a doctor or order a prescription drug.

Of course, I wonder about all those people who have no clue about what to do, or have no money at all? The government option that all seniors have- it's called Medicare- automatically deducts the standard Medicare premium based on income. I have been impressed with the user friendliness of the Medicare website and the folks in the social security offices.

What appalls me is the level of difficulty for young people and their children to wend their way through the system of private insurance. The premiums are so expensive! So many of our citizens haven't a clue about what to do. They have no money and are powerless. When the baby is desperately sick they go the nearest emergency room. They don't have the $20 in their pocket even for a co-pay.

What are we thinking? What a sad and miserable country this is that does not treasure our children and young people. I despair of having any health care reform bill pass. It is being nibbled to death by ducks (the old white guys in suits who pander to their election in the next campaign).

In my dreams I envision a culture in America where children and families are valued. They have access to first quality health care, their teeth are cared for, they eat nutritious and whole foods in their schools. In my dreams I see legislators thinking altruistically and pragmatically about these issues and not pandering to special interests (the pharmaceutical industry,big business of any stripe, the right and left wing nuts etc.)

All is not to despair. I live in a community that has many caring people who think about these issues and put in their time and thought and energy to change the status quo. They work by challenging the local politicians, making their voices heard. They work for change, and sometimes it can happen.

Thankful

These orchids, given to me by my best friend are in profuse bloom these last days of autumn. Every day I look at them and I am thankful for the friendship they signify and for the beauty of them in my life.

Since I was of the age to be at all sensible I have always loved Thanksgiving above all holidays. Even now, no one has figured out how to make this holiday extremely commercial. After all this time, Thanksgiving is still about family and giving. I read about how dysfunctional families snipe at each other, hunker down and watch football, remark on who eats or doesn't eat. Here, no one ever turns on the t.v. at Thanksgiving, and we are all foodies. After dinner we all go out and look at alligators and frogs.

I have hardly ever had a bad time at Thanksgiving. There was one I remember when my sister was born and my dad cooked a duck that was slightly raw! And then there was the Thanksgiving when we lived in Paris, specially ordered a turkey and when we picked it up it had feathers, legs, feet and a beak! Our kitchen was a tiny place and I remember how we addressed this situation, like surgeons, so serious! The turkey was good as I remember. Then there was the Thanksgiving here at the ranch when our soon-to-be ex daughter in law made it so uncomfortable that we all fanned out over the pastures and wept.

But mostly, Thanksgivings in our family are wonderful and affirming. For so many years we did not have any kin to come so we made a feast with friends. Now, we have a number of family members who live in the vicinity: a sister and her husband, a daughter and her son, a nephew and his wife. And the old friends who have really been our family all these years. And new friends.

We will all gather here for the day. Some will spend the night. Many will bring dishes to share and the kitchen will be hopping! We'll move the dining table from the kitchen to the hall and install a couple of extra tables, find the high chairs for the twins, gather chairs from all over the house, spread out mismatched tablecloths and table settings. It won't look like a state dinner at the White House, but it will be fine! The turkey and the salmon will be presented. Everyone will love the gravy and the mashed potatoes and the many other dishes, many from the garden. They'll love the pies and cake. The kids will jump around and behave like all kids do.

Most of all, we'll be thankful to be here in all skin hues together in this ragged country with a pragmatic president who is basically a good person. I give thanks for all of this.

On being a Senior Citrizen, Some Thoughts..

It has been spectacular weather these last few days- what we come to Florida for. The nights are so cool we put on extra covers and welcome the dog who runs hot at our feet in bed. The early mornings are foggy and the blackbirds scream and chuckle as they pass by. The cool weather vegetables such as peas and lettuces are thriving. The garden is still full of butterflies.

We have our wonderful routine of breakfast and then reading the papers. Then I have many plans for the day: weeding the gardens, clipping, fertilizing, and then working in my studio on whatever quilt or painting or photographs or writing project I have going. Some days I have my volunteer work in our local school and I love this! My new knowledge of Spanish has helped me enormously. I am energized to be of help. There is never enough time to do all I want to do.

Yet, to be a senior citizen, someone who has been a long time worker (for a wage!), has its complexities. There are many aspects of being retired that we all love. You surely cannot miss those staff meetings or those stomach turning events when you have to fire someone or you know you have screwed up or you have to do way too much in a day, and we wonder what we'll do.

So, here we are, retired, full of experience and some wisdom and on Medicare and Social Security. What will we do? For the first couple of years we flop around, thankful not to be on a work and commute schedule, and we cast around for what will make us feel purposeful. We try various volunteer activities and some of them stick. You cannot make a life out of baby sitting the grand kids.

I think women have a better grip on this period of life. Because we are in this generation we have known what it is to have been in the first cohort of women who worked and also had to do the work of being the wife and mother (as our mothers did). And so we have a great deficit of time for ourselves. While we were raising the kids and going to work we dreamed of having time for ourselves. And now we do - and we are going for it!

Our husbands who made the lion's share of the household economy, and worked so hard for their families got left out of even thinking about what else beyond the work they were doing they could do in the future. Shuffleboard isn't enough.

I know so many women my age whose husbands are now so bereft in retirement. I see these men following along behind their wives in the grocery store. Women tell me that their husbands don't do anything, just sit there and read magazines or watch t.v. or play golf. Are they waiting to be invited to the great platter of life?

I think that the next generation prior to the baby boomers will be better prepared for the long and glorious generative years than we are. They will have the experience of being unemployed, scratching for their roles in the family. I only hope they will have the wonderful benefits we do (Thanks to the government !).

Almost Thanksgiving

When I go out to visit the vegetable garden I am stunned by the number and variety of butterflies still flitting around. Last spring I planted a small space for zinnias (I love these bright easy tacky flowers and so do the butterflies). In the heat of summer all those zinnias died back but hundreds of volunteers sprang up from the spent seed heads this fall. Of course I could not bear to turn them under so they are in profusion with the milkweed and red sage among the collards and broccoli and collards. I beat them back from the carrots and peas. The lettuce is doing well, some of it has bolted in the heat but each day I plant more seeds. I think we are set for salad through the winter, if it doesn't freeze hard.

What I love about gardening is that it is never the same from year to year. You never know about the weather! The only things I plant regularly are tomatoes in spring, collards, beans, onions, carrots and broccoli, and of course, many types of lettuces. Last garden we had beets. This fall we have kohlrabi and broccoli raab and, hopefully, peas. I love potatoes - such an adventure to dig them out, feeling through the soil to find those tender and tasty globes. I plant these in February.

In some gardening rotations I vow to have a really neat garden- no weeds in the paths, all the beds well mulched with compost - and NO zinnias! But in this fall garden the place is ample with flowers along side the vegetables, even morning glory volunteers triumphantly climbing the fence.

Quincy, my grandson, is here for a weekend. Maybe I can get him interested in weeding. Whatever we do, it will be outside in this glorious weather. Perhaps we'll take some of the water weeds out of the fish pond. We'll collect pine cones and look at frogs, ride our bikes down the road. And we'll go out adventuring after dark to look for alligators and spiders. He loves to wear his head lamp, so bold, but I feel his warm hand in mine and I think about that delicious time after his bath when we cuddle down to read a story. I tell him that tomorrow's another day, Grandpa's going to make pancakes and will need help squeezing the oranges for our juice. He'll appear early all dressed and ready for the day.

So many hard things are happening right now about being... Living on a farm and having a five year old you love beyond the beyond come to visit puts me in the here and now, and it isn't bad.

New Boy!

Here is Seattle Brooks Bazely, a few minutes old, my newest family member, my great nephew. He's an Australian citizen, how amazing! He's a poster boy for government health care. Look at those beady watchful eyes. He's thinking about what the USA, his other country, will decide about the many challenges it faces.

His mother, Shady, spent a year living with us when she was eleven. Lots about that year were hard for us all but we put down the basics for a lifetime of caring for each other. I remember that when she went home to visit her Western family, I wept as I put her on the plane. She had become such a part of our lives I could barely part with her even for ten days. When I brushed her hair, I marveled at the roundness of the back of her head, so different from my own children's. I cooked dinner to the sounds of her practicing piano.

She ultimately married an Australian, a lovely man, and she became a professor of English in a university in Australia. She's written a book, become a fine musician and made Australia her home. From time to time she visits the United States and her western family in Seattle. She's also come here to Florida with her husband. We have visited them in Australia and they certainly showed us a grand time.

Two years ago for Thanksgiving we met Shady and Scotty in Wellington, New Zealand, where we were visiting New Zealand friends. How fun that was shopping for a traditional U.S. Thanksgiving in the Wellington markets. Some stuff was hard to find (Cranberry sauce?!) Many of us gathered in a strange ultra modern time-share overlooking the harbor. We had traveled to New Zealand with my brother and his wife, making our way from the north island all the way to the end of the south island. Wellington in the middle, and Thanksgiving for the expats was a treat. I was so excited to see our old friends from the U.S. and the big bonus of seeing Shady and Scotty.

We keep in touch, mostly by e-mail. And now Shady and Scotty have baby Seattle they are in love with! Shady was in the hospital for three nights and four days. They keep all new mothers this long. The labor was long and hard, but no knock out drugs, no Cesarean. In Australia and New Zealand and in most European countries, they keep new mothers in hospital until the milk comes in and the new moms get the support of lactation specialists. (Here in the USA you are lucky to be in the hospital after a normal birth for about twelve hours. Insurance.)

When I spoke with Shady today, five days after Seattle's birth, her midwife was just coming to check on the breastfeeding and the well being of baby Seattle. In the background I could hear those dear little chirps and sucking sounds. Shady will be on maternity leave for a YEAR! Scotty will have three months of paternity leave from his job.

Our young friends in New Zealand who have two small children are equally blessed by their health care system. One of their boys seemed to have some language delay. On their national health service, no problem, a speech therapist came to their house for several years. There was lots of support, and now this little boy is just fine, speaks as well as any young New Zealand citizen.

I can't help thinking that we in the United States are so sorely lacking in the care of our children. What is the matter with us that we do not take care of our kids?? Some on the extreme right holler about abortions, but I wonder what they are thinking about the kids that are actually here? We put children at the bottom of all priorities. How sad. How venal we are!

Today I went to speak to a group of forty Hispanic parents in our local school about nutrition. These low paid and unemployed folks care just as much as anyone about their kids, but they get no help. (I am imagining a scenario where a speech therapist shows up at one of the public housing units.) Couldn't happen here. This is the US of America where we love our scoundrels in the insurance and finance realms. And we do not really care about our children (our legacy!).

Sometimes, I believe that people are acting and reacting because of a t.v. mentality: everything's fake and plastic and so many can't think or question on their own and so take their opinions from talk shows that confirm their fears. Internet screeds feed their prejudices.

Meanwhile, I'm out to save the world, at least my little corner of it, by volunteering, giving and engaging. And, mostly, I try to remain humble and open to new ideas.

Seattle, welcome to a most difficult world. Your parents are so brave and optimistic! Perhaps you can make a difference. I am counting on you!

(0 unread) Yahoo! Mail, ranchmolly

(0 unread) Yahoo! Mail, ranchmolly

Health Care

We are down to the wire on health care reform. It has been a dizzying time. There have been so many issues, most of them so hard to understand! Most of us look at this issue through our personal prisms. If you are young and 'invincible' and only watch Fox News or listen to the hard right radio shows, your knee jerk reaction is that all this smacks of the dreaded word, which you actually never looked up: "socialism", let alone thought about.

Or maybe you are young and invincible and have no health insurance, and still don't think hard about any issues not pertaining to you so you just think "Whatever.. Doesn't apply to me." You need to get on board.

In a Kristoff column in the paper today I noted some statistics. The United States is lagging far behind every developed country in every area of health. We are so behind many other countries in the benchmarks of infant mortality, healthy births, etc. We lag in these milestones until (UNTIL!) we look at our elderly population - the folks over 65, and then the United States comes out on top. Could this be because of Medicare, the government program that ensures that every single person over the age of 65 has access to decent health care??

This week I have had some health issues, nothing major, and I will tell you that I have had personal experience of splendid care on the Medicare dime. I go to a local clinic to a family practice group and I have rarely ever seen a child there. I believe this is because the families in this area do not have insurance. In emergencies they go to the ER at the local hospital.

But we oldsters confidently step up to our local doctors and clinics, pay a nominal co-pay, and in many instances pay nothing. And so we avert health disasters, and if they strike, we can deal thanks to Medicare.

Why are we talking about sending Granny off on an ice floe?? Granny is just fine on Medicare (and she knows that Hospice is always there just in case). What we really need to think about are the kids who rarely get to their checkups, never see a dentist. Their parents need to have checkups as well, need to have dentistry, need to have the option of taking their kids to a family doctor (such as I have!) who knows them and is following their health history. What we need is Medicare for everyone.

The so called government option is great! Just ask anyone sixty-five or over. That's all I'm saying.

Flubber! At Lacoochee on kids' time.

These kids are enjoying an afternoon last week of making and playing with Flubber. We made it from Borax and white glue and food color. This polymer has so many amazing properties that intrigue kids. They are playing with this amazing stuff, figuring out how it operates. We talked a bit about what's in the ingredients and why it might behave the way it does and I asked them to experiment at home with it, i.e. freeze it, put it in the microwave, let it sit, etc.

This week when I appeared some of the kids wanted to tell me about their experiment I had encouraged them to do at home. The flubber they froze became hard and when thawed was as usual. The Flubber they cooked in the microwave bubbled and never recovered its original property.

There is never enough time. I have an hour and a half to address these interesting observations. We could spend an entire week, all hours on this, and the kids would have an insight about the science of life! But, no, their remarkable teacher, Rachel, must hue to the exigencies of 'What one must do as a teacher in these days'.

In today's educational system, there is no paying attention to the 'teachable moment'. This is when a kid comes into class with a praying mantis he/she has captured. In the teachable moment the teacher puts aside the lesson plan for the moment and directs the kids to look carefully at this interesting insect. There are all sorts of ideas that can be pursued. Science? Ecology? General knowledge? So many ways to go! And where kids go shouldn't be always constricted by the schedule.

Each week I do a cooking project with these nine and ten year- olds. They love the chopping and the mixing and everything hands-on. And they especially like eating what they have made. It is worth it to shlep in all the pans and pots and ingredients. There are two volunteer parents who usually show up to help and I adore them!

Aside from this very satisfactory volunteer activity, and others, I am loving this wonderful Florida autumn when you don't die if you work outside. I spend an hour at least in the vegetable garden, a third of which is now given over to the butterflies who flit in the milkweed, red sage and zinnias. We eat every evening from a choice of broccoli, rappini, beans, collards, eggplants and lettuces.

When we visited Colombia I vowed to make in this year a renewed effort to really learn conversational Spanish. On line I found a program (Pimsleur) that would seem to fit. I ordered it for $9.00. And what a deal! I look forward to each day when I can do another unit. Now I am on lesson 7. There are only eight! Today at school I was able to actually speak to the volunteer women who help me in the cooking.

This program just sucks you in, it's so compelling. In a stellar program of marketing, they sent me the next twenty lessons just as I am about to finish the $9 program. They give you 30 days to review it, no money. Hey! I can do these next lessons, a day at a time, send it back for free. I would pay the $275 they want for this. It's worth it. But, if I continue tomorrow, and on, and I will, I'll have fluency in Spanish before my thirty days are up. (But, maybe they are on to me and will send the next bunch of CD's with a sheriff!)

Always interesting to be in my skin.

Grandsons visiting!

Here is a drawing my sixteen year old grandson made in the day and a half he visited us on his long weekend to look at Florida colleges. Diego arrived very late on Friday (we were asleep). He appeared in the morning, many hugs and kisses. We were so glad to see him after three months since the last sighting of him in Puerto Rico. After a decent interval of our questions and his answers about how he was and what he might expect from these few days of looking at colleges here that he might apply to, he drifted off to my studio where he feels comfortable. I knew that my art space would be his for the duration.

He's been here many times, and always spends the most time here where there are so many art materials - papers, inks, paints, cloth, and everything anyone could want. His productions are stellar. This time, he only really had a day to work.

He sits there at the big central table thinking for awhile. Then he starts to assemble his tools and materials. He knows where everything is. All the while I am working on my current quilt project. It is companionable- the elderly grandma and the young one. The large art table spills over with crayons, inks, scissors. Sometimes we talk and sometimes a friendly silence falls when you could hear only the whir of the sewing machine or the scratching of crayons on an interesting surface. We often listen to classical music.

Out of the corner of my eye I am watching how my grandson explores the media he has chosen, always thinking, always thinking, trying out various techniques. Sometimes we talk about what we are doing. Sometimes I direct him to some new art supply I have. Occasionally I ask him about his life and school. We discuss theater techniques and books and plays we have read, his family, his friends, details of life. He's sixteen, he never asks me anything about our lives, but he's so observant about all the tiny changes here since he last visited I can forgive his incuriousness about us. He knows we will always be there. (Hey, you've got wrinkles, are you about to die of something?) Kids cannot think about this, I know.

I think that this wonderful connection Diego and I have is not built on grandma/grandson stuff, not on 'Are your grades good?' but on the fact that we really really like each other and have a commonality of interests. We are comfortable together and I would never dream of asking him anything that would make him cringe. And I learn a lot. (I could be stranded on an island with him, my bottom line.)

After one pure day of Diego with us, his aunt and five year old cousin Quincy, arrived. Diego is stellar with small kids (he has a much younger little brother he adores). Quincy loves Diego and the two of them spent some very hot moments with Quincy riding his bike a quarter mile up the road to show off his 'stick garden' to Diego. (Quincy has artfully placed sticks in a mound of rocks we use to fill in holes in the driveway)

It was certainly a very special day for me to have these two kids- my oldest and youngest grandsons- enjoying each other and loving being here in this perfect place together.

I dare not think, I dare not hope, that Diego will choose to go to college here in Florida. So smart and accomplished, he could go anywhere. But it is his decision, he knows what he needs and I respect his decision, whatever it is. We would all love it so much if he would be part of the Florida family.

Being a grandparent is the best! Two of my grandchildren, Joe and Caroline, live so far away we rarely get to see them. I must be content with frequent photos and phone calls, and knowing that the other grandparents who are closer are keeping watch and celebrating them on each milestone. Perhaps, one day Joe and Caroline will be in our neighborhood. I hope!

Our east coast grandsons are known to us; they visit often enough to keep the family vision fresh and we have so many tracks of them on this property. Perhaps one of them, or their western cousins, will be interested enough in this magnificent place to make a claim. We'll see.

My daughter and I spent some time in the so-called vegetable garden this afternoon. There must have been twenty kinds of butterflies. We smiled!

The Responsibility for Other People's Happiness

We have recently bought Gail Collin's book on the history of women during the last fifty years. Andy is engrossed in it and I am itching to get my hands on it because this was my time in history!

I was in the 'sandwich generation', squeezed between what was and what is now for women. I was fortunate to be able to look forward and determined to get all that I could. I never wanted to be like our mothers, though I have taken in my mental baggage many wonderful things from them.

Coming of age in the early sixties, and pretty idiosyncratic even then, I knew that my own personal bottom line was that I needed to have good work that would financially support me and the kids. (If Andy were to fall off a cliff!) Of course, this was not necessary. My husband was the primary bread winner. But this fact never deterred me from working every single year of my life. And it was up to me to figure out what to do after working a full day, about child care, cooking, shopping, house maintenance, and the daily crap of taking kids to their athletic, educational, and artistic places, and taking care of the pets. But work was sustaining.

The most tender and meaningful thing my husband ever said to me (and he has said it often) is that he didn't know and was oblivious at the time. So were all men then. My husband made five times in salary what I did and so I thought at first, anyway, that this was what one settled for. We so often thought then that there was a numerical value to what one did. i.e. I am a woman and I make a lot less than a man and so I am of less value.

I see our daughter, now in law school, who never doubts the fact that she will ultimately be responsible for making her life. No one ever told her she would have to settle for less because she's a woman. She doesn't have to make any sense of this crap we put on ourselves back then. We expect her, of course, to be as responsible for her choices as her brothers.

I see my assertive grand daughter who will never know about all this. She'll take her place as a person in America, same as her brother. She'll be able to do anything!

I still have the legacy of my age in being responsible for other people's happiness. I constantly think about what would please others. Tentatively, I am now being assertive about not doing the things I used to do (and hated!). I will not go to loud banquets seated at tables of ten.

Ten years ago, my same-aged friend, Marie, and I began taking annual trips to Central and South America and other places. We experienced many amazing things, but most of all those times were time outs of having to be responsible for the happiness of others. Those times have been so golden!

Our daughters most likely would have no idea what we were about. And this is what we have wanted all along; we want our daughters to be truly on an equal footing with men - and they are!

And yet.. women have always been the care-takers and the ones responsible for others' happiness. In some ways this is the best.

What do you think?

Friends

The wild flowers and the butterflies are wonderful these last hot days of fall. In the vegetable garden the flowers are rampant above the broccoli and beans and eggplant. Lettuces are available in abundance. We are in the dry season so each day I must water all the gardens.

I am thinking about so many wonderful friends I have in my life. Connecting with them takes hours each day, lots like watering the plants. If you don't do it, they will dry up and die. Each weekend brings friends to our guest house and each day brings e-mails and phone calls. When some friend or other is in crisis, the messages and calls fly back and forth. Our near neighbors drop by with produce and local talk.

In some ways, I am quite a hermit here, loving this place as I do. Sometimes I know that I have a few days that do not have anything on the calendar that I must do. But it doesn't stack up quite like that.

We have been working on the gardens every day, clearing out the debris and cutting back the wild growth from the summer. Andy cut and stacked logs for the fireplace today. Our weekend guests, who are staying on, always help out with the things that need attention.

Tomorrow is my volunteer day at Lacoochee. We'll be making pasta, and I'll read to the kids. The next day, I'll be volunteering at SunFlower School in Gulfport and I'll be making Flubber!

To be truthful, I am finally beginning to love retirement.

Those Lacoochee kids

Today I went to do my usual Tuesday gig with a class at Lacoochee Elementary School. Each Tuesday I go to do some cooking with Rachel Aguilar's class. Though I never cook at home, I am still pretty competent. We are putting together a class cook book to include all the things we have made. So far: fruit salad, green salad, and smoothies. Next week, we will make pasta with tomato sauce. (The kids suggested doing huge gooey sundaes, but I demurred. They know I am into healthy fat-free cooking.) There are two classroom volunteers, wonderful Mexican ladies who are very helpful without being asked. I have invited them to help me prepare some Mexican dishes. Their eyes light up and I know that we are going to have a great time with this.

The kids, like all kids, love the hands-on stuff. And so do we all! What will these kids remember about this week? The smoothies, of course. They will not remember the drudge from the dog-eared science or social studies texts. Kids are like adults (but they are beaten back!) : they respond to the immediate and interesting in their environment. They tune out the boring and repetitive stuff.

I certainly get a good feeling in this classroom. The kids want to please and most of the time there is a harmonic hum going on. They love their teacher and they see in her such possibilities. In fact, it is such a good classroom, I think these kids could do a whole lot more in terms of investigating everything and anything.

But we have the dreaded FCAT and all its many tests and preparatory tests and prepreparatory tests etc. Teachers, nowadays are considered to be idiots, and must be led through every part of teaching. (Thanks to Houghten Mifflen and the others who rake in the money) These teachers are NOT idiots, and given the task they have, they do their best.

They do not have enough time on the present schedule! They cannot read out loud every single day to the kids (though all the research says that this is key to making good readers). Most kids do not have time every day to hunker down and read their good book. There is not enough time for kids to explore math or science or social studies. (When, in this public school, have I seen the kids working on a project about Lewis and Clark or John Adams or de Soto or Columbus that was not something canned and on a worksheet to be filled out in fifteen minutes?)

These things take time, not just 30 minutes. A kid could spend the whole day or a whole week or a whole month researching what people ate on the trail out west with Lewis and Clark. And on and on. FCAT does not take into consideration how children think and act. Or, teachers, for that matter.

Our teachers, so stellar for the most part, need to get up on their hind legs and say, "Enough is enough! Let us teach!"

Cold front!

Today is what we Floridians have been wishing and hoping for. Last week we had a hot spell that made all of us think we were in Puerto Rico in July. We complained like crazy as the beads of sweat poured down our armpits and we couldn't think of how in the world we could ever venture outside in such heat. And now, it is cool, even cold! We all spent the last two days outside in our gardens, reducing the biomass, pruning stuff, actually looking at the damage the heat and drought brought. We all found those sweaters from last year, old friends.

The giant mutant cosmos you see in the photo are full of butterflies. These plants are so heavy , that many of them have toppled over. Soon, when they have finished their profligate blooming, we will uproot them and throw the carcasses over the fence. This morning I tackled the water garden and took out at least half of the plants. I discovered many treasures in the process. The pancake plant had many pups and a monarch coccoon and a very cute jumping spider. I replanted this, cut off the pups to be planted in a different place.

Andy spent the morning pruning the dead wood out of the citrus trees that took such a hit last winter in the freezes. Tomorrow I will attack the asparagus bed, so overgrown over the summer.

The vegetable garden was so wimpy during the last heat wave, but, now, in just a couple of days, it has perked up. Tonight we had eggplant, beans, lettuce and herbs for dinner. I am emotionally unable to remove those wonderful butterfly attracting volunteer plants in the vegetable garden, so when I work out there, I am surrounded by Monarchs, Queens, yellow sulfurs, zebra long wings, tiger swallowtails, black swallowtails, and so many others. They are all busy with the red sage, volunteer zinnias and milkweed. How could I possibly remove their food source? The peas seem to love these cool days and cold nights and are tightly clinging to the fence.

The armadillos are working at night digging up the yard. I have managed to trap one big mama and I have released her far from here. But more come. At least they haven't so far breached the fence around the vegetables.

The night is full of stars and bats. The insects that call in the evening are in full cry. The green tree frogs are massing on our windows, intent on catching any moth that comes by. I am thinking that soon I'll be under my quilt with my husband and dog, all of us happy to be here in this magical place.

The Last Milestone

When we walked the mile or so to our newspaper box up the road this morning I rejoiced to see so many wildflowers blooming along the way. I scattered the seeds for these more than a year ago in honor of the passing of the mother of one of my friends, and now they are flourishing in tiny bursts of yellow and blue and white. I think of this area as Trudy's place.

Nearer to the house I tend the small orange tree we planted in memory of Ray, our neighbor for many years, who lived well into his nineties. I have memorial plants all over the place: some were given to me by the people who have died, and the plants live on. Others have been planted in honor of people I have known who have passed on. My mother-in-law, my old best friend, lives on in a tree planted in her memory on a Connecticut hillside. Betty's tree.

I made a decision many years ago that I could not attend funerals for the parents of my friends. I think I am better at planting trees or wildflowers in their honor, or maybe just spending time looking at the stars on a clear night, knowing that one of those stars is the essence of the person who has lived and died.

This seems to be the season of the end of life for the parents of many of my friends. I have been through this season a few years ago because I was a late child of an old mother. My mother died at a ripe old age and I was privileged to be present in her sweet last days. She died in the west, and we had a raucous musical memorial there, but her last wish was to be buried next to my father in North Carolina. So, I dutifully accompanied the casket across country (with two changes!)

On a cold wet day in November, colorful leaves plastered to the ground, my daughter and I witnessed her burial next to her husband. All my tears had been shed.

Every death is different, and yet has common elements. Right now I am cheering on the mother of my best friend, who has such life force, despite being eighty-five and on dialysis.

We willingly take on the responsibilities of caring for our parents in their last days. What we don't know until the last of our time with them is how much it means to us to have these moments with them as ours.

After your parent dies you quickly get over the grotty details. My mother told me such a lot of things about our family and who she was and a lot about the books she read and funny stories. I would not ever have missed this time with her! We laughed a lot. I never think much about the moments of turning her in her bed, bringing the bed pan.

I am not attending funerals and memorials. I am planting things and thinking about how much these old people have contributed to our life, not to mention life itself.

After the death of a parent, after the raw grieving, there comes a time to think or say, "Mom said.. Mom thought.. Dad used to.." And then you know that generations pass along, you're just a part of it, and it's up to your kids.

Generations

Here are Devin, 21, and Quincy, 4, riding their bikes in the extreme heat of this Florida autumn. I snap this photo today and what is on my mind is the concern I feel for their generations. Devin is working on her senior college honors project in ceramics, and Quincy is nearly new and works hard at everything. What in the world will life hold for them? Right now they are smiling and moving forward at a rapid pace to get a glass of ice water. Soon, they'll be moving forward into life as citizens of this planet.

I awoke to the news that Obama had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace! Twelve hours later the pundits and the nattering nabobs say their pieces as they will. Some say it is all political as a powerful message that Obama should take this as a boot for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan, or whatever..

What I choose to believe is that the Nobel Committee simply recognized the power and drive of this good and brilliant man to make a better world for mankind. He's not been able to accomplish much yet, having had to face enormous tasks and the opposition and fear of change from people, especially Congress. I hope Obama will navigate these extremely difficult times. He's a pleaser for sure. He must carefully tread the delicate line between what he sees as the best way to make this world a better place, and the noisy naysayers who are out to thwart him at every turn. But he is a good man, and I think is genuine in his desire to bring everyone to the table of good conscience.

In this era that brought so much greed and corruption culminating in such an economic decline, our ship of state is large and slow to turn around. I am privileged to have lived to see this time. I feel confident that if anyone could do it - pay attention to global warming, the economy, health care, and our involvement in Afghanistan, and begin to find solutions, it will be Obama.

Devin and Quincy are counting on how this turns out. Their world will be different from ours, for sure. We cannot leave to them a world with nuclear weapons always threatening to annihilate us all, or a country that leaves so many with no health care, or a planet that becomes ever hotter and polluted, or belief systems that disparage segments of human populations.

Tonight, I feel just a small bit more optimistic.

The "defectives"

To get to our place (paradise!), you have to go over the railroad tracks and wend your way through rural America. You'll see plenty of trailers and small block homes, citrus groves and yards of chickens. For the most part these places are house proud and neat.

But there is one place that fascinates me every time I pass it. It is so politically incorrect, but we call the people who live there "the defectives". I don't know them and I have never spoken to any of them. The many children who spill out of the yard and into the road never fail to give any passerby the finger. They don't return our neighborly waves. There is a man in a wheel chair who sits under his confederate flag. I had thought he might be a Viet Nam vet, but I find out he became disabled as a result of a drunken driver event. He is covered with tattoos.

The house is a small wooden shack and in front is an amazing array of derelict plastic toys, broken bikes, trash, pit pulls chained to a post, and old cars with their hoods up, exploding automotive innards. Usually there is a fire burning in the beaten earth yard. Right on the dirt road is a dysfunctional play set placed in the tall shrubs. Whatever the hour, day, night, morning or evening, a posse of young adults lounge there.

I could completely bypass this house by going the other way, straight up Puckett Road to the main paved road into town. But usually, I do not because I am interested in the lives of these people and I am a voyeur I suppose. I am expecting something to happen. Last week, it did. One of them tried to shoot someone else. This person was arrested and no one was actually shot. Of course the obvious thing here at this place must be something to do with the manufacture or sale of drugs.

But now, the posse still sits there at all hours, the kids come and go (looks like a couple of them go to school, and they look like any kids on their way to the bus with their backpacks.) All summer I worried about all those disheveled people without a/c, and the kids out in the road.

On my slow way past this house (no way am I going to run over a child!) I imagine stopping and talking to them, maybe offering them some vegetables and fruit from our place. I have imagined inviting the kids to come for a swim in our pool. But I don't.

Such a vast chasm in our country between the rich and the poor. I see it every day and feel powerless.

Tending to the gardens

At the end of the month I am going to get a new and very much more powerful computer! Look for changes to this blog.

Meanwhile I am still spending a couple of hours each day weeding and tweaking the gardens. The vegetables are coming along. No longer will we have to buy the pitiful lettuces picked days ago in California. Our ugli tomatoes are ripening and we have enough eggplant to supply all of Italy. The beans are in blossom and the greens are getting big enough to peel off some leaves. Broccoli is starting to make heads. I have to figure out how to harvest the sweet potatoes that have been growing all the hot summer.

I have heavily mulched everything with the cheapest hay I can buy from the feed store and the cuttings from mowing the grass. I enjoy the many butterflies zooming around as I weed and mulch and water. The colorful monarch caterpillars are busily eating the milkweed that I could not bear to pull up. Their chrysalises hang everywhere. The volunteer zinnias have inserted themselves in every corner of the garden, even in the paths. The butterflies so love them, I can't pull them up just yet. I apply the summer's worth of compost around the plants.

It is still beastly hot so all this activity must happen before mid morning when I could keel over from heat stroke. I vow every day that I will weed and feed the asparagus bed, but so far nothing has happened. I have weeded the rose bed and mulched it with grass cuttings. Tomorrow I will sort out the rampant growth around the lily pond, though I do love the sheer exuberance of all those flowers. The giant mutant cosmos are now eight feet tall and in full bloom.

We put out the bird feeders for the new migrants from the north and all winter we'll enjoy these noisy birds. The hummingbirds have returned to Mexico and we have taken down their feeders. Soon, the chimney swifts will vacate in time for the fall fires we hope to have in the fireplace.

The fall wild flowers are blooming like crazy. I can't identify most of them yet. The wildflower books are no help, so I just enjoy them as we do our two mile morning walk to get the newspaper.

Tending the garden is a lot like the tending I do for family and friends. It takes every day time, a lot of it. This week I reconnected with two wonderful young friends, Hey-soon, and her brother, Jeh-whan. Former students of mine, they are now launched and both engaged in horticulture and solar energy, some of my main interests. And, Laura, my old book editor, now graduated from college and about to launch into-what? And Nick, in high school now on the straight path to something brilliant. I love these young people who come to visit and keep in touch and require things and trade books with me and know I will always have room for them. At times it is exhausting.

Sometimes it feels weird to be so old and to have young people actually want to visit so often. I am not particularly wise or anything, and not of much use to society anymore. Probably I am still fun and I am a good listener and I challenge them. Whatever, I love having them visit and we feel blessed that this peaceable kingdom is a place where people want to come. We tend the gardens.

It's a lot of hard physical work, but also a kind of meditation to tend to your garden. In every way.

Being in the garden

Here is a photo of the first quilt I ever made and it hangs in our bedroom now. It represents the vegetable garden from the top to bottom. The actual quilting was so awful, I recently reprocessed it as a wall hanging for our newly painted green bedroom. I made the panels a few years ago, one by one, as I traveled, and it represents my garden from top to bottom.

I am still there. I am still planting those same veggies and a lot more. I have learned so much since then. I know what will grow in our climate and I know about watering and fertilizing. I know, for example, that one should not grow tomatoes in the fall because as late bloomers, they will die in the December or January freezes.

Today I went to my favorite store, Farmers' Feed, where they had a cornucopia of seedlings. I bought all sorts - kolrabi, spinach, red cabbage and many onion sets. Tomorrow I will plant everything, poking holes to place them in the heavy hay mulch. The broccoli, beans, carrots and collards are doing well and the left over eggplants and peppers are really producing. (With thirteen eggplants on the table, the cook (Andy) made an exquisite eggplant casserole for dinner.

I am still thinking about having chickens, especially after reading the Susan Orlean article in last week's New Yorker. My family continues to be negative on this issue.

Everyone in our neighborhood has been absolutely manic about the first cool days of fall. We want to go out and DO. And I will go out tomorrow and plant those seedling vegetables in the cool of the morning.

We live in a terrible summer climate, but when the change comes, we know it's paradise for the next six months.