The Garden in Winter

Who would ever think there would be pumpkins and tomatoes this time of year? But there it is, the big pumpkin, getting fatter every day. We have already harvested several others and made pies and soup. And the tomatoes keep coming, though they are not nearly as prolific as they were in hot weather.

The vegetable beds are bursting with sparkling greens and lettuces and broccoli and it all keeps us eating well.

We have had a few cool nights, some rain, so everything in the vegetable and flower gardens is happy and growing despite the shorter days.

My grandsons and other young friends have worked on transporting huge quantities of mulch for the veg garden floor so it will be awhile before the dollar weed surfaces. I keep on planting more lettuces and mesclun. Quincy, the nine year old vegetarian, spends time in the garden picking and always eating the pea pods there.

The flower gardens are evolving as well. The orchids are mostly in full bloom on the pool deck and the native orange shrimp plants are just getting into full throttle by the screen porch.

Up north where folks are battling below zero weather, ice storms and such, they do not have to think about their gardens! All is silent and dormant there.

But here, we have continuous garden activity, ever changing and always needing something.

This place is amazingly beautiful in all seasons - so lush during the summer rains and heat, and now just at neutral. We always expect a freeze or two here in central Florida, but so far it has not happened and the pastures are still green. Red bud trees are beginning to flower and we are seeing flocks of redwing blackbirds and robins. Every night there are at least a dozen tree frogs on our bathroom window.

The alligators and turtles in the pond are basking in mid day and the reptile world is everywhere.

After a two week period of major family visits and incredible happiness to see them all, I am content to hunker down on my beloved land.

Happy New Year to you all!

Nine

Here is Anna, nine years old, with the pumpkin she carved all by herself with a sharp knife and her personal vision. Anna has a sturdy sense of herself. 

Among all these twenty kids we deal with two times a week in the junior garden club at the elementary school, Anna stands out. She is the one who can plant seedlings, no problem with extricating them from the nine packs. She seems to know the spacing, the depth, how to firm the earth around them. Anna's spouts will always grow. She knows how to plant seeds at the right depth and pat them down. 

Last week the garden club had a soup extravaganza featuring vegetables from the garden. We had spent an hour cooking everything and setting up for the expected parents and friends who would attend. 

This was a beautiful event. Many of the parents and siblings came, and by now the kids have learned a few table manners and are not so wild. 

Near the end of the afternoon, when everyone was full of collards and had said how much they loved this soup and salad and garlic bread, all made by the kids, Anna came up to me and asked could she say a few words. 

So we got everyone quiet and Anna stepped up in the front of the room. Anna's family did not attend, but if they had, they would be so proud of her.  With no notes, no hesitation, Anna proceeded to tell everyone how much the garden meant to them all, how thankful she was to have had this experience, how much she treasured the fellowship. I was blown away! Worth living for.

My own grandson is also just nine, and this time when he is staying here (not just a visitor, he has his own room), we have noticed such a change. He is no longer just a lovable kid. Yes, he's still that, but now he is a real partner in the workings of our place, takes his place in the chores and business of being a part of this household. And we have such wonderful conversations and partnership in learning new stuff.

One dinnertime he asked us something very few of our friends or family ever have: "When no one else is here and you are just here together what do you do?" He really wanted to know! It's still a big stretch for him to think that we have a routine that includes an hour of exercise, foreign language learning, etc. But he can relate to the hours we spend outside in the gardens and mending fences and tending to the land. He wanted to know when we did this. For all the many years he has often visited, he has known us as the folks who make delicious breakfasts, engage him in many activities, read aloud to him for far longer than a parent could, and try to explain just about anything. I think it is the greatest affirmation when someone, even a nine year old, really asks about you.

So, this is the beautiful NINE! I love it.

The Madness About Gift Giving for the Holidays

This stuff about shopping for the holidays is crazy! Why do we think these ideas of blockbuster sales, get this or that in the next nine minutes, leave your Thanksgiving table to stand in line overnight for that flat panel t.v. are all so great?

My daughter came for the weekend to hunker down in my studio to make many wonderful gifts. There were bags and puzzles and useful holders for this and that. There were stuffed animals, all amazing and lovely.

"Who are these things for", I asked her. They are for distant family members she barely knows, but she feels obligated.

Where did this come from? This obligation everyone seems to have this time of year?

When I was a kid soon after the end of WWII, no one had any money. My folks strived to make Christmas special for their five kids. My dad, who was never a carpenter at all, sawed maple 2x4's into a huge set of blocks. He spent his evenings from Halloween until Christmas in a neighbor's basement, sanding these and waxing them. A month before Christmas my mom sneaked away all the dolls my sister and I had and made new clothes for them, and dresses to match for us, to reappear on Christmas morning. One Christmas I found an entire Girl Scout  outfit my mother had made right there above my stocking. Another Christmas there was a bicycle for me - a lovingly restored used bike. To tell the truth, I was always just a bit disappointed because I really wanted the new and store-bought.

Now that I am old and have no need of anymore stuff, I find it harder and harder to understand what this impetus is to GET MORE STUFF!

I think that many folks rely on the holiday gift exchanges to  get things they need and luxuries they crave. We spent last Christmas with some in-laws of our family and we were amazed at the sheer volume of the gifts and the obvious expense and thought that had gone into this extravaganza. Giving these things (and receiving them!) is a part of doing the expected thing in so many families.

So, back to the hand made items, the repurposed things, the regifted and the giving of old family treasures. Everything has a place in this crazy holiday frenzy. I just wish there was not so much stress about it.

Free Day!

Once in awhile I have a free day, no meetings, no classes for kids, no commute the 65 miles to see friends in my old community. And so, I hunker down in my studio and paint. Right now I am painting a large vision of Victorians, stiff and sitting for their portrait. Right now it is all potential. Tomorrow I will have to remove it from the table so it will be free for a clay workshop when ten people will come to make earthenware planters. These folks will come and have some hours of creativity, energetic talk, and a soup and salad lunch from the garden.

I really enjoy these adults, so different from the needs of the kids in my class you see in the photo here who made scarecrows to discourage the sandhill cranes from all their pecking in our community garden for kids. But what they all have in common is the desire to make things. The kids have made wonderful clay planters, kind of rough, and they are waiting in the queue to be fired.

I have rolled out the clay slabs in anticipation for the group to come. I love it that adults who have no experience with sculpture/clay take a chance and end up loving it! Unlike the kids' classes, I do not have to get my energy up to make it happen. It is a gentle thing to conduct a class for adults who want to be here.

Free days mean I can exercise my three miles with weights, do my language lessons, do my meditation walk in the woods, and anything else. So great to be retired!

Beat with a buzzard

Here is Lola, fifteen years old. Today she had ten! teeth removed. Maybe it was worse for me. Used to be when I asked my mom how her day had been, if it was awful, she'd say, "I feel like I was beat with a buzzard".

Well, today I was beat with a buzzard. I had no choice. It seemed that this wonderful one blue eyed lovely dog had major tooth infection and she was in pain. When I signed her into the vet, I assented to the disclaimer that sometimes something happens!  So I went to a political luncheon in Tampa with my phone on vibrate.

The vet's office called me and said that all was well, she was in recovery, and I could pick her up that afternoon.  When I got there and she heard my voice from the office she began what we call the dog opera. I was so glad to hear her saying that she was o.k. I could hardly pay attention to the post operative instructions. (Do you want to save the teeth for the tooth fairy?) Gak!

We all love our animals so much. As I left off Lola this morning there was a couple in the next car in the parking lot. They were telling their huge black dog goodbye and they were shaking with tears. I touched the woman and told her how very sorry I was. I know that I will be there in that same place sooner than I'd like.

Even this evening, I have hunkered down next to Lola's crate where she's holed up in some pain. I stroke her ears and tell her what a good girl she is, how much I love her, and that tomorrow will be better. A small amount of blood from the surgery drips from her mouth and I am not sure she'd do well sleeping in the bed with us (as she has for her whole life). But I will ask her. I know I will check on her many times during the night.

I had thought that at Lola's advanced age this kind of dental surgery would just be over the edge. But our vet said that this would be fine and she'd feel a lot better for it. So, you take your chances. I keep feeling Lola's side to see if she's still breathing..

I am imagining that young dachshund who ran and leaped and had fun with toys, who spent many miles with us as we walked in the Green Swamp. Don't think this will happen again, but, hey, she loves her rides in the golf cart!

Grandma with the Middle Ones

Three cousins, second, third and fourth graders now get together a couple of times a year (they live at opposite sides of the continent) and I am in wonder at how they take up just where they left off! They swim like fish and spend hours in the pool and hot tub. They have amazing and inventive games going all the time. This year it seems to focus on Greek gods and goddesses. These imaginative games seem to seamlessly segue from the fields and gardens to the pool to the upstairs playrooms and bedrooms where they have spread out Legos and blocks and villages and trains. Then, suddenly, like birds taking off, they all ride bikes like mad up and down the road and over the fields. Or they appear at my studio where they can find anything they want - paper, paints, clay, glue, scissors, yarn for some project or other.

Our usually tidy place suddenly has bikes thrown in the bushes, swim towels left in heaps, tiny bikinis on the couch. At the end of the day I grump around and all is put back in some semblance of order. I love to read to them before bed- seems like something I have done forever with kids. I always try to read some book that has not been made into a movie or game. The three older grandchildren remember when we read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. And there were many others. Because my grandson, Quincy, lives nearby and spends a lot of time with us, we've been through the whole Little House series and a whole lot else. Cuddly night by night.

Our children, who had been read to through all of their childhoods really seem to understand how important this daily event is. But they are tired at night after their work and some of the time this daily reading doesn't happen with their kids, the books pile up and get scattered under the laundry etc. So, I am pleased to have this grandmotherly task, among others.

I always knew that I would be a rotten home school Mom. And I never was.  So being Grandma all day for a number of days is a new and exhausting experience.

When I awake I think about all the stuff we'll do today. It begins with enormous breakfast that lasts for an hour. (Usually, I would be into my exercise routine for an hour, then half an hour of Spanish on line, then some brain games, and then tending to the many gardens.) So, none of that today. Pancakes or French toast it is.

And todayI have promised to fix the stuffed horse made so beautifully and lovingly a few days ago by my granddaughter out of an old cashmere sweater. It has suddenly gotten a tear in her neck.

Today we'll go to the library and then visit Patty Cakes (the Cake museum) and then do a few errands. Every time we have to get out of or into the car there are the issues of the booster seats etc. I forgot about this.

I am too exhausted by now to be able to think about going home and figuring out lunch, cleaning up after it, so I say I will take them to McDonalds. (They are aghast! They know that I never do this. Well, this is the first time in three years.) We order for the two vegetarians, after asking about what fat the potatoes are fried in, the really picky eater who eats only white food. My bottom line is no sugary drinks. Actually, it was O.K. We threw away the trash and all was easy. I love those conversations I have with kids and at lunch we discussed David and Goliath. And, also, was Jesus real?

So, we try to pick up the tire that was supposed to be fixed, and then head home. I was imagining a period of lying supine on the couch and reading the NYT. It kind of worked but I heard lots of small shrieks as the posse went from here to there.

But there is a whole afternoon to explore in the fields and in the garden and swimming in the pool before dinner. My husband monitored the pool to give me a break.

The best time of the day is when they are in their p.j.s, teeth brushed, ready for the story to be read aloud.

I love thinking that these kids and the other older grandchildren who have also spent so much time here will have these idiosyncratic grandparents to remember. And I look forward to having those very youngest ones have this experience too.

Overwhelmingly Grandma

Here is Caroline, seven years old. You can see the stuffed horse she made today out of some old mice eaten cashmere sweaters. She loves it and takes it everywhere. This is a grandchild I don't yet know very well; she lives across the continent as far as one can go from here and still be in America. So I treasure her visits.

I think our time (a whole week!) will be spent in my studio where she is already feeling comfortable finding out where everything is. She drew the picture of the horse she wanted to make and we carefully translated it to the soft knitted cashmere and I sewed it up on my sewing machine - the body, the head and the legs. Caroline carefully stuffed everything with polyester filling, I sewed them together, and then she decided on the ears, nose, eyes and the mane and tail. And, suddenly everything came together and she now has this wonderful horse (Esmerelda) that now goes everywhere with her.

Yes, I am deft (daft?) to eagerly help kids make stuff. But it is so satisfying to send him or her off with a real product they have had major input in making.

Caroline is fascinated with everything that hops, wriggles slithers or flies. Our tables are covered with shed snake skins, screened jars of monarch caterpillars about to pupate and containers of tree frogs who are just visiting for a little while. After two days this little girl knows everywhere to find lizards, skinks, frogs.. Of course, I love this child after my own heart!

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?  Such joys of being a grandmother!

I could keep this essay purely about Caroline, but, actually she did bring her dad and brother with her, and this weekend there were many relatives visiting. But maybe my time so far with Caroline is pure. We connect - who would have thought?

NOT FUNNY

O.K., I am an old fart with lots of experience in the world. I am not of the millennial generation.

To dismiss and make fun of anything that might help the poor and disadvantaged as as been done by the Daily Show and others is just plain unconscionable. Those folks in the media go home to their expensive Manhattan apartments, smiling like cheshire cats. What do they know about empty bellies and empty minds? Their kids go to private schools, get picked up in limousines, and eat wonderful food. Eventually the kids will go to Yale.

Here, in this poorest of rural communities in America, kids are hungry. They never have enough of anything. Many of these kids and their families are undocumented. They live in fear every day.

But these parents, like all of those at the Daily Show, want the best for their kids.

The Affordable Care Act has many problems, we all agree. But, please give this idea of helping so many a chance.

The other day I was in a place that cares for kids after school. There was plenty to like there, but what was so bad was a staff member who made small kids feel small and incompetent when they were doing what little kids do.

To me, it is not funny to make fun of the best instincts we Americans have. Seems to me that it dismisses the best about our young generations. Should we think that they can only connect to the important issues of the day with broad satire, tweets, etc.?  What is happening is pandering to the commercial and the money.

I would love to have some of these folks who make fortunes from japing serious problems in our society to live for a week in public housing with $100 a week for a family of seven.

Empty Bowls

It was one of my best teaching days but it broke my heart. Here are kids at the Lacoochee Boys and Girls club, where they come every afternoon after school. This day I was to bring clay so that the kids could make little bowls for the Empty Bowls project, which in this community funds the money for food for these kids. So they are making these bowls for a fundraiser that will take place in town at the steps of the courthouse next month. And they understand that they will not be there to experience it.

Prosperous folks will come and eat soup and bread contributed by philanthropic souls. For a contribution everyone will get one of these clay bowls to take home. The kids ask, "What will they do with the bowls?" I say that they will put paperclips in them and remember that lots of kids (including you!) may not have enough to eat sometimes. They don't really know that the food they eat at the Boys and Girls Club must be paid for.

But they love making anything out of clay! They are starved for creative work. They hunker down and, middle school students down to five year olds, work hard on these bowls. Most have forgotten the goal and some of the little girls are putting clay eggs in their bowls and the boys are thinking how they can include a stele. All the time this is happening (75 pounds of clay, yikes!), there are many wonderful conversations and I am charmed by the beauty and outgoingness of these children. Some of them know me from other venues and we are so comfortable together.

But I look around this place, that a year ago was so dismal and actually frightening to me, and see such improvement. But everyone really looks foreword to being in the new community center that will be complete by the year's end.

I look around and see that the space for the little kids has less richness than our upstairs hall playroom for visiting grandchildren that is full of books, blocks, Legos, games, trains and trucks and dolls. I could cry.

Most of the folks who work here are tender and supportive to kids. But there was one staff member who seemed so toxic to kids. She never was polite or respectful to them, outright angry. I thought I would never let a kid of mine be anywhere near her. I felt the devastation that the five year old kid who spilled his meal might have felt. He couldn't help it! No one offered to help him clean it up ("Hey, no big deal. Let's clean it up. You get the broom, I'll get the dustpan. And you can still have lunch!) But no, that tiny kid's day was ruined. When I spoke of this to the administrative staff they said they were working on it..

Empty bowls.. The food that is served there daily does fill bellies. What I saw being served today was a menu of doughy cheap hot dog buns topped by the cheapest of generic hot dogs, melted velveta cheese and ketchup on top. On the side were generic crinkle cut fries from a big box store. I had brought $10 worth of grapes and they were served as well. The drink was kool aid. Lots of empty calories but those bowls were really empty. I could cry. This is not food for growing bodies and brains!

We nourish our grandchildren with fresh organic foods from the garden, no manufactured food, certainly none of those hot dogs made out of who knows what? We are so privileged!

So, I keep on trying with the community garden. Keep on being there for the kids.

You Are What You Were

Elderly grandma that I am, I still inhabit the soul I was given. From the time I was aware at a very young age, I was always outdoors looking at everything. In our first family house there was a large unkempt yard out back. We kids had a huge sandpile in which we made habitats with small toys. What interested me more were the hollyhocks that bloomed next to it. I watched those wonderful blooming flowers and I noticed when they evolved into those round seeds closely nestled next to the stalks. I would peel these off and look at them, wondering at their disk shaped seeds. I planted many of them, but I don't know if they ever came up. I was four.

Throughout elementary school when I had a huge range to explore in our small town, I rode my bike daily to the woods on the edge of town, usually with friends. We explored, observed, made fires and smoked corn silks. All the time I was observant of the plants that grew there in upstate New York. I looked for the rare pink lady slippers, the white bloodroot that bloomed in early spring. I loved the trillium that bloomed in the woods.

Back in the town I noticed when the earliest snowdrops bloomed, and then the scilla and then the crocuses. I could go back there right now and tell you where to find them.

But many years pass and these interests in the natural world took a back seat to changing locales, the business of coming to be a grown-up, having a career and a family. But these interests have always been with me.

Today as I was walking in the woods, which I do every day, I rejoice in the wildflowers that I know like the back of my hand. Here are the snakeroots, the blue curls, the farewell to summer, the Caesar weed and all the mosses and epiphytes. I have to dodge the huge golden orb weaver webs where the inhabitant is large and getting ready to make an egg sack for the next season. I see a lovely red rat snake dancing across the barn floor.  The deer and the turkeys and the fox squirrels are always there somewhere. This is where I was meant to be!

I think that people need to look at their earliest interests to know where they are meant to be. I have always told my students that they need to examine what their passions are to see what they should study and pursue. Sometimes I am talking to a student who seems to be interested in manicures and hair and I think.. O.K. you are interested in the personal and physical lives of people. Maybe healthcare?

When I am doing my volunteer activities with kids I can sometimes clearly see where a given kid is going. That girl who is such a great observer may be going into science. That lovely little nine year old boy who cradles a bug in his hand may become an ecologist. The boy who talks only of violence, guns, and mayhem might be..a tea party person, or could surprise everyone and be a good dad and a birder?

We need to ask kids, and each other, what their real passions are. Whatever age you are, if you reflect on this, you'll know more about yourself.

Short Timer

Sunday night and I'd like to watch Sixty Minutes but the football games go on  and on.. I have no time for that. Long ago I decided that my opinion of football (with the concussions and greed), could be not mentioned.

I am a short timer! I want every day and every hour to count! I have no time anymore to sit through meaningless awards ceremonies or banquets. Been there and done that. I would rather be out working in my extensive gardens and walking through the woods to admire the fall wildflowers. I would rather be in a group of kids I can teach and learn from. I would rather be in a conversation with good and old friends. I have never been good at 'hanging out' when folks speak of inanities and sometimes keep checking their phones.

This evening, the dining table had been newly refinished and the coating was still tacky so we ate our wonderful dinner on the screen porch at a table there. We had candles and great food, lots of green beans and lettuce from the garden, and a pork stew with potatoes and carrots. The dog at our feet. And we had great conversation about the news today and family matters. I love every minute of these times we come together. On the screen porch. eating dinner, the birds and the owls were at full throat, and we felt so happy with it all. Such are the pleasures of a long time marriage.

When I was out weeding in the vegetable garden today something stung me on the hand. It hurt, but I paid no attention, but now, my hand has ballooned to twice its normal size. Maybe I am really a short timer! Stay tuned.

Everything changes all the time!

These kids are two of my eight grandkids. Next week they are coming to visit, and now, they are much bigger, several million words advanced from then - and still, just as cute, now connected to Kindle Fire.

I wish I could say the same about my life in the digital world! Everything changes, but it is not as cute. A couple of months ago I replaced my old p.c. laptop with a new and wonderful desktop Mac with a huge screen. There were no instructions whatsoever - because Apple is intuitive! It always works fast, no problems with viruses.

But I have so many issues! With my iPhone and iPad I have been charmed by their seemingly seamless interfaces. However, since my iPhone was recently updated, I can no longer download photos to iPhoto on my computer. I don't know how to make the wireless printer work with these things. I can't send email on my iPad. And in the iPhoto program I still can't send photos as an album. Of course there are many ways around Robin's Hood barn with a Mac and I try all of them. No luck. I have asked my young friends with Macs who visit to have a go at helping on these issues, and eventually, they seem as clueless as me. The outcomes are strange and I have to reconfigure what I know. On line help is useless to me.

Yes, I could take some classes on Mac use if I went on an hour and  half commute each way to Tampa, but there I would not have my own computer or my own internet access or printer - aargh! I really need some friendly knowledgeable person who could come here, hunker down with me for a couple of hours, and fix these issues.

Many of my elderly friends have taken a different route. The have basic cell phones, old computers that at least do email, maybe print out stuff. But I want more! And I want to know how to do it!

But I have a pretty good attitude about all of this by now. Life goes on and mine is pretty good, and maybe, one day soon, a Mac person will show up (or I'll figure out how to find him or her) and all my issues will be resolved.

Everything changes all the time, it's true. I want to be in the midst of those changes and that's true too.

Overload

As I was out doing errands today to buy stuff for my volunteer gig at Lacoochee Elementary School, I was listening to the Diane Reim show on NPR and a caller on the line asked a sort of 'the emperor doesn't have any clothes on' question: why are the republicans in congress so against the ACA?

Seems like everyone dodges this question. Why, indeed, would we not want to have affordable health care for everyone?? Yes, this law will have many glitches as it moves into our lives just as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have done. Along the way there have been many tweaks to these programs. We forget.

So, there is the philosophy of conservatives that less federal intrusion is better- a tenable stance. But what is happening here and now, tonight, is the dregs of folks who want to thwart Obama in anything. Why is this? I believe it is about race and a fear of elitism.. It is also about the perceived need to pander to the tea party base. I believe it is also about deep ignorance. (These tea party folks do not "believe in global climate change' or the science of Darwinism. They are creationists. They are afraid of gays. They are afraid of women's' rights to control  contraception. They are afraid of tree huggers.)

These folks are profoundly entitled.  "I've got mine" could be their motto. Probably, most of the House Republicans, all white, mostly men, have never walked in the shoes of so many Americans, the poor, the undocumented, the people of color. They have never had to do without medical care because they did not have two nickels to click together. They have never had to wait for hours in an emergency room with a sick kid. They have never had to forgo orthodontia or glasses for their child because they could not afford it.

The tea party folks are mean spirited.

Hair

 

I love hair! I love looking at it and touching it. It is our crowning glory to have it.  My husband has a full head of curly white hair, though he often states that it is getting thin on top. In the sixties and seventies and beyond I cut his hair when it became too much. Now, we both go to a local salon and Angie and Danny tame our locks.

My own hair stays the same, blonde going to white, curls all over my head so that I never even need to comb my hair after a shower. My hair is the only thing that stays the same as I age.

A few decades ago we all had wild and unkempt hair. Our beautiful sons had shoulder length hair until I chopped it off. Our daughter had long blonde hair - such a trial to braid it or tame it into something manageable.

Then I came to know about black hair and all the issues with that! Straightening! Chemical doses! Can't swim! What happened to those beautiful little black girls in my class who sported lovely 'naturals'?

My favorite hair styles were those of little girls with very long hair whose moms or dads carefully braided it every day. I love the cornrows of so many black girls in my class. I love the wild curls parents allow on their boys and the straight dark falls of hair on the Asian kids.

And I especially love the longish hair on boys. I know that in the cities of this country parents prefer to have their boys wear longish hair. It is a marker of socioeconomic class. When we picked up my grandson from his (elitist!) camp last summer, I noticed that all the boys had shaggy hair. Of course these kids had been away from barbers for several weeks.

In my volunteer work with a poverty stricken stripe of rural America, I notice that hair is definitely a marker. Boys with buzz cuts or strange buzzes and long hair, sometimes dyed, always catch my attention. These kids are often the troublesome ones and I have to look at their families. (Why is their priority to have their child have a blue-tipped Mohawk hairdo?)

How people do their kids' hair tells me a lot. But, really, it's only hair.

Philanthropy and Volunteerism

Here are Lily and Deshawn planting some of the new seedlings we have for our fall school garden. Another child is getting water for her newly planted starts. When the beds were planted they looked so promising, and now, a couple of weeks later, and many inches of rain later, they are up and perky.

This group of kids, almost twenty of them, come to the 'Garden Ladies' two days a week after school. We are planting and caring for this school garden, cooking and eating the harvest, learning about nutrition and botany and each other.

At least, this was our vision! The photo you don't see is the one when we made popcorn and constructed lovely bean artworks. Total chaos! The kids glued their multicolored beans onto paper plates in less than five minutes. No one had listened to the instructions and they poured on the glue and scattered the beans over it. Done! They looked like preschool creations. No matter. On to the popcorn with so much grabbing and screaming and pushing. No child wondered why popcorn pops. Many of the kids sat at the tables and screamed for us to bring cheese and butter, more popcorn. No child helped in the massive clean-up.

Regroup. Several of us, all retirees and volunteers from our local garden club, have committed for this project. Most of us have teaching experience and we feel responsible to bring good food, nutrition know how and expertise to this very poverty stricken community. The kids are far behind the ordinary middle class kids I have taught for thirty-five years. These are hungry for food and attention and they have no idea how to behave or listen or focus or tend to their own needs or those of the community in which they find themselves. The idea of cleaning up their spaces is unknown to them.  It seems there is no room in their desperate world for curiosity and wonder. And the child world of today, even among the less fortunate, is quite different than it was.

So we garden ladies are addressing these issues. Yes! The garden will be spectacular, and when the harvest is coming in, those kids will have some tools of competence and cooperation. No more chaos, just conversation about the tasks at hand.

It is way easier to just press the Donate Now button to give to one's causes. It's harder to be out there on the line doing community clean up projects, hosting a community coffee shop, constructing a garden, reading to kids in a classroom, working on a food line and in a food bank. It's harder to make  commitment to deliver meals on wheels.

But everything philanthropic is part of making the world better. The Gates Foundation, Doctors without Borders, Heifer, and so many other megabuck outfits are out to change our world for the better. But, drop by drop, those of us who are "there" in our communities make a difference.

Credo

The assignment in our printmaking class was to choose something that had meaning for us and make a 'broadside' of it. Of course, this was not something one could do in an evening or a week or even a month. We were young! Who knew what would have meaning for us? Professor Feldman told us that this major work could be an etching, a monotype, or any other kind of medium in the printmaking range.

I chose to make mine as a woodcut, so tedious and time-consuming to do, so fraught with the possibility of cutting oneself with the tools. I chose a large three by five foot board and for many weeks I thought and lived with mirror writing as I carved out those words and image and the curls of displaced wood fell to the floor.

My quotation was from Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass':

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars, and the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand and the egg of a wren and the tree toad is a chez d'oeuvre for the highest and the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, and the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, and a mouse is enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

To this day, more than fifty years later, this woodcut hangs on the wall in my studio and I see it every day and wonder afresh. This quotation has more meaning for me now than it did then as a newly aware person beginning to understand how important in my life these ideas would be.

What I would add to this Credo now would be: I believe that all children born are perfect, and have the right to become healthy people of dignity and opportunity. This I believe.

Getting old and staying spry and sharp as a tack

Here I am on our annual houseboat trip on the Swanee River last year. We hope to do it again this fall when the six of us old friends heave off and slowly wend our way north on the river. This four or five day time is amazingly peaceful and slow. We inspect the banks of this pristine Florida place and we have a good time cooking and eating, reading, fishing, doing puzzles and games, swimming and visiting springs. In a small boat we explore the tributaries of the Swanee.

At night I love to go up on the top deck with my head phones and iPod and dance by the light of the moon. No one sees my wrinkles then.

All of us love the tradition (and each other). This is something we all treasure as a tiny piece out of time without any relatives.

The annual houseboat trip is emblematic of retirement for me.

I know I am getting old and wrinkled and it takes me half an hour after I get out of bed to stop feeling creaky. But then I am purposeful and get to work in the new vegetable garden here or I go to the community garden at the local school.

And then I spend a few hours in my studio making quilts or painting.

This morning I rode twenty miles on a recumbent trike with a friend along a great rails-to-bike trail and it was just such a meditative kind of physical activity. I am thinking of getting such a bike for me.

In retirement, I think that each year, or lump of time, I must do something new. I have written a book, learned a new language, begun another, struggled with the digital world, spearheaded a community garden, worked for community development, made many new friends in this community. We have traveled to many countries.

I love the place we live now and it takes a lot of energy to keep it current. Our surrounding gardens are wonderful and they take enormous amounts of energy.

We have many social evenings when my husband cooks wonderful meals for friends, and we often have our grandson for weekends or longer days. We are blessed.

We rejoice every day in the beauty of the surroundings we have created. We are pleased to be able to give back to this community.

It is amazing to me that others think of me as OLD! I think of my physical self as the ten year old I was. I see the wrinkles everywhere on my body. I am as slim as I was at eighteen- but everything is differently configured!

The kids at school love me no matter what wrinkles I have. They know I am a fun person and sharp as a tack, I know each of those hundreds of kids by name.

We are both depressed by the situation in Syria and the dreck that is Florida. I cannot imagine that going into Syria with bombs will have any good outcome.

Thinking Family Reunions

For my sixtieth birthday, more than a decade ago, I decided to have a blow out birthday and invite the whole family to join me at a manor house in the English countryside south of London. I planned it, we paid for all the airfares and all the food. I arranged all of it on line. I found a lovely place - one of those immense semi palaces that had fallen into desperate financial straits so their owners had to rent out to tourists.

I made charts and lists of who would be arriving when and where they would stay and where they would get their rental cars. There were over twenty people.  And I was flying blind. At the time my spouse was at the peak of prosperity, we were both still working, and I thought "If not now, when??" So we did it, and I will never regret it.

M y husband and I and a nephew were the first to get there, needing a couple of days to get the lay of the land. From the first moment we saw this immense stone mansion we knew that even with some glitches, this would be one of the most memorable and fun events of our lives, definitely furniture for the mind.

There were a dozen huge bedrooms for us, each with involved (dusty and lumpy) canopy beds and ensuite bathrooms with ancient plumbing. There were HUGE portraits of the royal family on the walls, tapestries, rose garden, tennis court, swimming pool and croquet court. There were so many cupboards and closets full of linens and dishes. The huge public rooms were covered with antique oriental carpets and the lamps had amazing fringe. Such a fantasy!

All this was set in the countryside not far from a perfect English village. To walk to the train station to go to London we had to dodge many sheep and their pies. But this place was kind of funky in a way. And it pleased us immensely.

We loved exploring the manor. We loved a secret sliding panel in one of the sitting rooms from which a 'servant' sometimes appeared to tell us not to do something we were doing. We loved it one night when one of the immense grandfather clocks kept on chiming and chiming and eventually all twenty-five of us gathered in the great hall to investigate and finally figure out how to silence it.

The kitchen was pretty minimal for such a large and grand place. I was expecting something from the likes of "Upstairs, Downstairs'. There were so many sets of china and glassware it made our heads spin. Each evening, when we sat down with twenty plus of us, in the formal dining room, we had a different set of dishes! It was actually fun setting the table.

Everyone helped, everyone shopped and cooked under the direction of my spouse. In the evenings, after our daily croquet match, and then dinner, we gathered in the most comfortable sitting room and read Harry Potter out loud to the kids (and the adults, too).

During the days of our two weeks together there, different configurations of family went on the train to explore London, or the Downs, or Bath, or other destinations. I remember taking young grandsons to the Battle of Hastings site.

It was interesting to get all these relatives together. Of course I remember the rough spots and the insights I had about my children and grandchildren and other relatives.

Since that trip the configurations of our family have changed. New members have been born, new spouses have been enfolded. parents have split up. But for that amazing couple of weeks, for whoever was there, it was a memorable time.

Would I do this again? Definitely not. It was a once in a lifetime thing and I loved it!

NYT today reports that a major proportion of folks are negative about family reunions. Hey, just do ONE and make it the best!

Digital photos dont't work!

We all have mountains of digital photos that are stashed here and there on our computers and cell phones and on Cd's and in the cloud and god knows where. We just dumped them wherever, and when we changed computers, these photos became ever more distant. (But they were there! Somewhere.) It's supposed to be the modern way and accessible through time.

Last week when many members of my family were visiting, my daughter hauled out a huge bin of actual family photos. Some of these had been handed down to us by our families. Many others were snapshots I had printed out over the years since I had at one time carefully made annual photo albums of family doings.

The kids were hunkered down on the rug in the living room, pawing through these photos. "Look at this! Me when I was a baby!" So I had to tell this grandchild about the day he was born, how cute he was, and how his brothers and I went to Publix and bought him a birthday cake. His older brother remembers this event.

We see photos of relatives long dead and photos of people no one can identify. We see photos of events we all remember fondly and extend upon. This is such a family bonding. Everyone is talking at once, asking questions and explaining. "This is Daddy?" And I have to tell the story about this newborn son of ours who was born during the race riots in D.C. in 1968 and how it was.

These are the family stories. So many times these come up by looking at old photos. Our grandson, Quincy, who spends so much time with us, often tells me that he loves these family stories! He especially loves me to tell him about my adventures in the Amazon (where I went several times). He loves to hear about Grandma climbing up trees to visit parrots and seeing huge snakes.

When my kids send me dozens of their beautiful photos on line I am charmed and extend the seconds of the slide shows. I am in the loop. But what I truly treasure are a couple of real photos of those lovely grandchildren that I carefully download and print out.

I think we are in overload on photos. The photographic details of our life become meaningless when there are so many!

We have one wall in our house plastered from ceiling to floor in family photos- all framed. We all look at this! From time to time new photos are added, some deleted. Of course, anyone could see these and thousands more on my computer. But they don't.

I have a good friend who is the most amazing photographer! He posts many of his photos on line and documents everything in our community. His pictures have an immediate purpose and we all love them.

He has given me a couple of enlarged photos and I constantly look at them, and they inspire me. So much more relevant to my life than looking at slide shows from the web. I think we have to be able to really take time to look at photos, really pay attention. And who can do this in one second?

Thank god for iphones and the cameras and instagram and all the rest. But do keep on printing out some of those photos. Those are the stuff of family history.

Cat Man

Many years ago, when we first came to Florida, we were cat people. From the north we brought our cat, Rosie, a huge black cat with a few white markings and extra toes. Along with the box turtle and some small rodents we arrived at our new home here in Florida.

Eventually, Rosie died, having lived through orthodontia, small boys,  and many close scrapes with cars and critters. We buried him in the yard and I read the kids that wonderful Judith Viorst book, "The tenth good thing about Barney".  I mourned that cat who was the most beautiful creature with his long hair and swishy tail and willful personality.  Several months before Rosie's death my father died, much too young. It wasn't until Rosie's death that I could cry, really cry, and shake my fists at whatever god that was so unfair.

Sometimes our beloved pets give us permission to accept the inevitable and the unthinkable.

Last week we visited dear friends who live ten hours north of us in North Carolina. We had thought we would be going to help them deal with a recent knee surgery. We were up for helping out with the cooking and errands and needed household stuff.

The real agenda was the death of a beloved cat. This cat, one of two that live in their house, is a Siamese. He and his beautiful brother were adopted as kittens. From the start, one of the cats was clearly the one who cleaved on to the man. They were tight for so many years. Of course, the two cats were a pair, but this particular one was this man's special friend and delight. Nothing was too much to do for him.

Over the years when we visited our friends, we came to know these lovely cats, so different in personality.  This year we knew that the man's cat was in an end stage of renal failure. When we arrived this cat was looking beautiful as always but was not eating. The vet thought he was done for, no hope at all.  The vet gave the cat a shot of antibiotics and some fluids and sent him home to have a few last days. So for the whole visit this cat was seemingly o.k. He presided on out hosts' bed.

Sometimes I checked up on him and he seemed alert. But everyone knew that he was failing. Each night we hoped that he would just die peacefully. But, no, he was waiting with his man, his best friend, for the last crumbs of affection and life with the one he loved best. The man made an appointment at the vet for euthanasia. This was so hard. The man's wife was so tender, knowing how much this pet meant.

The night before the death of this amazing cat, we sat out on a porch looking out at the Blue Ridge Mountains lit by moonlight and the fading of the day. And we talked about our children and grandchildren in revealing ways we had never really spoken of before. We spoke of the tragedies of the deaths of children and young adults. But mostly, we heard stories about the wonders of being able to really enjoy every moment we had the privilege to be with them.

It was the last night for the wonderful cat to be alive. While we talked the cat was comfortably ensconced on the bed in the place his master slept. Seemed he was giving us all permission to speak our hearts.