A Diet that Really Works!

Here are two red snappers, baked to perfection, peaches in between. I cannot remember the rest of the meal, but it must have been some wild rice, a side of vegetables from the garden, and a huge green salad.

This was a celebratory meal, and no doubt, we had a huge puffy lemon soufflé for dessert (and everyone scraped the last browned bits from the dish.)

When we retired (and moved to this restaurant desert), we no longer ate out- possibly once a month, if that. In not eating out you'll save at least a thousand of dollars a year!

My husband was, at 5'11", maybe 250 lbs. I was, at 5'6" closing in on 145 lbs. Not pretty. We never exactly decided to do something about this state. But my husband bought a stationary bike, and I invested in some exercise DVD's. We have been stalwart in our devotion to the morning exercise, and I have been a devotee of my Fitbit that tracks the number of steps and stairs climbed each day. It also helps that we have to do a lot of work on our property and in the garden.

But, I do not think that the exercise program is the most key thing. Right now, I am a slim 120 lbs and my husband has lost more than 80 lbs. The weight loss has left us maybe more wrinkled than we'd like, but we love being slim and fit.

When we were working full time, we ate out a lot, at home and on the road. At the end of the day, no one wanted to cook or shop for food.

O.K. THE DIET.

First, you do not have to count calories or be concerned with fat. You can eat anything you want, all you can eat. You do not have to be concerned with sodium content or fiber or vitamins.

THE BIG THING!  Everything you eat has to be made from scratch! This means no convenience foods, frozen entrees, rotisserie chickens, canned soups, Ritz crackers. (you can use panco crumbs). You can use canned or boxed tomatoes, especially the low sodium ones. You cannot use anything that has no more than three ingredients listed.

Of course, you can use flour, sugar, butter, olive oil etc. These are basic. You cannot use bottled salad dressings, boxed mac and cheese, frozen entrees, pancake mix, cake mix.

If you are not using any convenience ingredients, you'll have to be imaginative, and think ahead about what you'll cook, learn about the local vegetable purveyors. Your fridge will seem bare without all those convenience foods. There will be lunchtimes when you open the fridge and THERE IS NOTHING TO EAT! So, you'll just eat a p and j sandwich and vow to cook a few hard boiled eggs for the next day.

As you begin this diet, I recommend having lots of yogurt and cottage cheese on hand, also nuts.

So, as night falls and I am ravenous, I go up to the main house. "What's for dinner?' I ask. Tonight it's brown rice with chicken and oranges, a huge green salad with lots of mushrooms, black beans. Very satisfying indeed.

If you eat everything made from scratch you'll lose weight, I promise.

On Becoming a Naturalist

 Every day I walk around our property - the two acre yard and all that is beyond, and I am constantly amazed at the small and large world I see. Here in the pink Muhlie grass I see some new wild coreopsis with tiny yellow flowers, different from so many other wild coreopsis that may have red or brown centers. In the dark center of this photo is a gopher tortoise burrow and I think there is another entrance about twenty feet away in the old asparagus bed.

Hardly anyone I know is interested in paying attention to these small wonders; they see the splashy reds and oranges of the huge zinnias that are now blooming in the garden. These hardy flowers are out to please us all. A few days ago I brought in a fistful of zinnias for the table. I also included a couple of flowering dill heads (I love their smell).  A couple of days later I noticed that there were the tiniest of black specks on the table, and then, on closer inspection I saw that these specks were caterpillar frass. The dill blossoms were hosting several small caterpillars, probably queen butterflies. Each day I love to watch them plump out as I eat my cheerios and blueberries. Tomorrow I will take them outside so that they can find the right places to construct their cocoons. 

All my life I have been interested in these small and large natural wonders, and now I can spend time in observing everything around me here in a remote part of central Florida. I am becoming somewhat expert in knowing the wildflowers here, the shrubs and trees in the woods, some of the mushrooms, and every day I am quiet enough in my solitary rambles to see deer, wild pigs, bobcats.  I am good on the larger birds and the water birds on the pond, but, so far, I am defeated in the identification of warblers. Mostly, they are LBJ's (little brown jobs). I check out the footprints of the critters who have been around, and I have recently been consulting a book on scat. 

Some nights, after I have watched the bats start out, I love to put on my headlamp and walk to the pond to observe the red eyes of the alligators and the white eyes of the frogs. And I also love to train my light on the thousands of spiders making their webs in the grass which, by morning, if the dew is right , will be a magical carpet of silvery web.

As I brush my teeth at night I watch the dozens of green squirrel tree frogs hunting on the big window. When some of them get inside I am adept at catch and release.

I am interested when I discover a yellow rat snake inside the fertilizer container. He's fat and bumpy, having gorged on the frogs who usually live there. I am interested that a coral snake hangs out underneath and I don't bother it.

I think my life has been heading this way since I was very young. I still know where the snowdrops bloom in the town I grew up in in upstate New York and I could tell you where the butterfly plants grow in New Hampshire and where the best fiddleheads are in Providence, R.I. and where one can find lady slippers in the woods of western Connecticut. I noticed those things in a concentrated way. I did not notice anything architectural. When I was young and accompanying my father on his archeological digs what I noticed were the lizards and insects and the tiny wild flowers growing on the sites.

Being a teacher gave me a lot of scope to explore the natural world. I have been happy that so many of the students I have taught decided to make their way into science and ecology.

And still, the graduation quilts

These are the graduation quilts of four years ago, (for my posse) and since then there have been many more, but I do not want to post the latest because everyone loves a surprise.

When I make these quilts for graduations and weddings and births and other highlights of life's great moments, I think intensely about each recipient. I spend hours selecting and piecing and creating and sewing. Sometimes, I think about the tiny Asian women in sweat shops who make the quilts for Garnet Hill and such. They do not have the creative leisure I do, but I do appreciate those quilts.

It takes many hours to make a quilt. First the idea, and then a trip to the quilt store to add to the fabric I already have. The best part is trying out the colors. My "clients" often ask for certain colors or themes and I try my best to accommodate them. I am loathe to spend so many hours on something purple and dark green.. I never make anything traditional.

Over the years, and hundreds of quilts made, I have learned a lot about how to do this. It doesn't take nearly as much time now, and since I have my great collaborator, Laurie, who finally does the final quilting on her long arm machine, it isn't the tedium of hand-quilting the finished thing. And the product is much stronger.

My studio is now cleaned up after my last quilt - everything fairly spiffy, now ready for the next project, a baby quilt for a friend. She's having a girl and I'm thinking of not doing anything pink and princess.. I have a lot of sailboat fabric. (girls sail)

It is midsummer, rainy season here, and every afternoon the heavens part and torrential rain happens. The earth is soggy, the creek from the river is rising under the bridge to the delight of millions of frogs, and my hair curls.

The seed order for the fall gardens- both mine and the one for the school community, has arrived. This is the season in a central Florida vegetable gardening when we can relax and maybe take out the dead tomato plants, quell the biomass, and only harvest eggplants and okra for supper. With all the rain I never think about watering anything. All is potential! We have built some new planter beds, the compost is thick and ready to put on the beds for the fall garden.

I am loving my residence here in the steamy summer
with all the rain and dramatic clouds every day. I love the loud froggy calls and the constant buzz of the hummingbirds on the six feeders and in the garden.  As I came up to the main house from my studio for supper there were three deer were grazing in the pasture and a couple of turkey families with their young were pecking around.

The end of DOMA

We are celebrating the end of DOMA in our family.  Last August our daughter married Carissa in a lovely ceremony in the hills of Vermont. ( Where same sex marriage was legal)
Our whole immediate family was there to celebrate this event.

Our daughter and my husband's sister and our wonderful grandson are gay. The daughters of a great friend are lesbian, as are so many others I know. Strange to be singling them out, because these folks are just people I love. But right now, I celebrate the Supreme Court decision.

We straight people never really thought about how difficult life is for the GLTB folks. (They were in the closet.) We thought how liberal we were to accept the 'coming out'. But we never really knew the depths of it, the cussed inequality of the life they lead, and the everyday issues to deal with.

In fact, we never thought about this issue at all!  Our daughter went through all kinds of legal stuff to have her child adopted. She has wrestled with health insurance, taxes and so much more. For this wonderful little family, having the shelter of federal laws will be great. Unfortunately, living in Florida, those American laws will be hard to come by.

I believe that the outspoken tea party representatives in Congress and the evangelical preachers are spitting in the wind. Many, of course, are denying their own problems on the scale of sexuality. Many have never chosen to know that they have many gay and lesbian family, friends and acquaintances. When they acknowledge this, they soon come to realize that this is indeed not catastrophic. So, welcome your gay son or lesbian daughter, or even your transgender child. These are our people, in our families and in our communities. They deserve complete equality, and they are just like all of us - just people who are as able as any to raise a family and be a part of your community.

I rejoice this week to think that a substantial portion of Americans will be able to have all the freedoms and justice that everyone has.

And, now, on to the immigration overhaul!

Hummingbird Central

We live in paradise - visits from grandchildren- here the twins in baskets, the screened porch where we watch the hummingbirds zooming about in their acrobatic flight, and the endless conversations we have about every imaginable issue.

Wherever I look there is something interesting happening. This evening while the last moments of dinner preparations were happening, we sat on the front porch to watch the hummingbirds swooping and swirling, now and again stopping at the feeders, then interrupted by aggressive mates. I think that the first nesting season is over, and they are, once again, in search of a new mate. Hummingbirds are not monogamous, and when the first nest has fledged, those hummers are out to get the next  best female. So we now have dozens of them flying from the crape myrtles and zooming about doing acrobatics among the four feeders we have arrayed on the eaves of our porches.

We had decided that we were not going to do our usual summer camp this year. Our schedule  was choppy and we were feeling elderly..

NOT! Several times this week kids have appeared to swim, after calling first, and they politely appear at the studio door, clearly wanting me to be Ms. Camp person. One kid, Luis, immediately made contact with my husband, with whom he had cooked last summer at our camp. He wants more (ever so politely), and proposes to bring some Mexican recipes they can cook together. How can we resist?

The hummingbirds zoom and the kids return and how can we possibly not respond? We fill those nectar feeders and welcome those amazing kids. Life is sweet for us all.

The daily routines of senior citizens

Having been retired for a few years, and done the requisite flopping around to figure out the shape of our days, we discarded some stuff. Neither of us wanted to play golf or go to spas or shop. We knew we needed to put major time into this lovely place we now call home and so we mended the fences and dealt with long neglected maintenance issues. And we continue to do this every day.

We have worked on the house and thrown out lots of stuff we no longer need, an ongoing project. We try to keep the place updated, not beige and old. Andy has built many pieces of furniture to replace stuff we never actually liked. Every summer we have our favorite painter redo a few rooms and address the issues of mold and rot on the exterior. We have reupholstered a lot of the furniture.

Life has a rhythm. We get up early, turn on the coffee, send the dog out, shower outside on the back porch and enjoy the sunrise and the hundreds of frogs. Andy's job is to "prune" the shower curtain- a tangle of grapevine and moonflower vines. My job is to drive to the mailbox - a mile up the road- and retrieve the newspapers. Along the way with my first cup of delicious coffee, I really slow down to watch the birds and check out the wildflowers and look for what may be in the water under our bridge.

Sometimes I see wild pigs, maybe a bobcat, often deer, and in these rainy times, hundreds of ibis feeding in the swamp. Often there are cattle in the road and they are hard to budge, and then, up the road there are my neighbor's chickens fresh into the day. I keep my eye out for interesting wild flowers.

While I am gone on my wildlife foray Andy is making breakfast and putting the laundry into wash. I return and our dog knows it's breakfast time so I prepare that and take out the compost from the day before, maybe take out the recycling and trash if the bins are full.

Then, after breakfast, everyone goes out on the screen porch to read the papers. This is a favorite part of the day for our very old dog who cuddles up to Andy's hip. I only read the Tampa Bay Times, and then leave to check email and spend an hour and a half on personal development, i.e. Lumosity, an advanced conversational Spanish course, ( I can now say with ease that my niece has just finished her studies to be an engineer and is now going to take a trip to Ecuador and her brother is now divorced and would you like to take a trip to a national park?),  and an hour of aerobic walking and weight training. Andy does two crosswords.

And then there is the shank of the work day. Today we broke down an old and decrepit garden box and installed three new ones Andy had made. This involved very heavy work, lifting, prying, and lots of shoveling garden soil, and taking the old stuff away and installing the new planters with good soil, ready for the fall plantings.

Then we addressed the problem of the pool deck which was afflicted with black and red algae. The two of us working together, Andy with the chlorine pump sprayer, I with the hose, quelled it. It looks really fine - for the moment. Deck perfect, we shuck our clothes and do our daily swim.

By now, it is lunch time and we forage for the leftovers. After lunch, the dog and I stretch out on a couch to read the last of the editorials, and then I nap for a few minutes.

Afternoons (maybe some mornings too) I work in my studio on whatever project is up. Right now a graduation quilt for a young friend.

And in this mix is for both of us a deep commitment to our volunteer work in the community. This means that we have to attend lots of meetings, tend to emails, and think seriously about and act in these local institutions we have signed on for.

And, best of all, is late afternoon when I begin to feel hungry and I go up to the house and inquire, "What's for dinner?" Andy asks me what there is in the garden and I go out and pick beans or tomatoes or eggplant or whatever, bring it in, and know that he'll make something delicious.

In a way it was far easier when we were in our work life. You just knew when you had to get up, take time for exercise- usually in the dark-get ready for work, go, come back nine hours later, somehow make a dinner. Do some work in the evening, go to bed, repeat, repeat. Even if it was great (our work was!), it was relentless in the best way.

Sometimes we feel plagued with calendar issues. When is that meeting? When this week do I volunteer? Who is coming, when and how many, for the weekend? What people do I need to connect with?

We are incredibly thankful for our energy and for the new people and stories and events we never would have been a part of before this new retirement phase of life. We are so fortunate to be able to make a difference in our new community.

The Amazing Joy of..

Here they are- all eight of them, my grandkids.  I never knew how much I would love having these kids in my life. They are ever changing. The twins are walking now, the oldest grandson has finished his second year in a really great college, the little ones are losing their baby teeth. The middle ones are doing well.

This is not one of those holiday newsletters in which everyone is described as stellar. We are a regular family, and we have our problems as all families do.

The grandparents - we!  have wrestled with the problems of retirement and seem to be managing.

We are in a kind of "re-nesting" period in which we have devoted a lot of time and energy to making our beautiful property even more lovely. We devote a lot of time to the extensive gardens and pastures, and we are paying attention to all those delayed maintenance things around the house.  And we have the time and energy to have many guests here.

Mostly, we are still in love, and have an intense friendship full of talk and sharing.

This spring we had our mile long driveway repaved with smooth lime rock. We had several rooms painted, and lots of little issues from the usual Florida rot repaired. Our vegetable garden requires lots of attention and it is still productive with vegetables every day.

This is the 'generative' age in which we take care of the life outside. We are deeply embedded in volunteering in our community.

Life is good! But it requires constant attention. Here you see one of our of our middle grandsons who had some trouble in his adolescence, but now is getting on top of this, working on being that best that we all know he can be.

We often say to each other that we have so much to be grateful for, so much good fortune in our lives.  Certainly, having those grandchildren has been a wonderful part of this.  We did not expect this. Who does?

Eighty-four year old woman wins eight million dollars in the lottery! That would be me..

NOT,  even in my dreams. But we were thinking about what we would do with eight million dollars, an unexpected boon. It reminds me of that game kids play about what they would do with a million . They want fancy cars, a mansion with ten bedrooms, and then they cannot think of anything else.

A few years ago we came into an unexpected million dollars. Yikes! Then, as now, we were prosperous enough, frugal in our ways. What to do with this windfall? Early on we decided that we needed none of it. We gave modest amounts to our kids, young adults struggling with mortgages, school tuitions, loans and all the stuff one needs money for at that age.

We did not ask them in particular what they did with this money. The rest was fun to play with. We contributed to new arts and science buildings at local colleges, we funded a program for minorities in grad school, we gave a lot to the Nature Conservancy and to a journalism school. It seemed easy to divest ourselves of a measly million.

But eight million! A different deal entirely! My partner points out that our elite athletes have this kind of money annually - and we see what dismal choices they usually make.

I think that you could go the way of Joan Krock of the McDonalds fortune who gave so much to NPR, and threw them a lifeline when they most needed it. The Gates Foundation is trying so much in third world countries to eradicate malaria and bring health to African nations that are so needy. Gates also funds so much in education in this country. Of course they have way more than a paltry eight million.

But here is an eighty-four year old woman who shops in the same Zephyhrills Publix we do. She did go and get a lottery ticket there. We know that. And what is she going to do with it?

Of course she could just shift the most of it over to her church, after giving each of her kids mansions and jaguars and enduring the pleas from all her relatives who come out of the woodwork with hands out. She'll get out of that wretched trailer home in Zephyrhills and move into the house of her dreams, as she deserves.

But maybe this woman is possessed of energy and creativity and will put the most of this money into something magnificent and lasting. She could fund music and arts programs in every school in the county, she could start a sustainable program in which every child born in Pasco County would have a mentor for the family, making sure that the child would be well nourished and have books and language at an early age and a chance at the brass ring. She could fund incredible child care centers. She could make a huge donation to the Boys and Girls Club. And so much else!

Fun to think about. And will we ever know what happened?

What would YOU do with this windfall of eight million dollars? Let me know and I will publish your thoughts.

Who could ask for anything more than a wonderful family?

The Last of the Community/School garden

The school community garden will be finished in a week. Many beautiful vegetables grew in our raised beds in back of the school. The kids loved coming to the garden to plant the seeds and water and many of them toted bags of collards and lettuce and kale home for their families.

We could have said that this garden was a complete success, judging by the bounty of vibrant vegetables and flowers. We could have declared it a success because we won prizes for doing this project and everyone said how wonderful it was. It was featured at the County Fair. We were photographed holding up certificates.

But here is what really happened and how I learned from it. First off, all four of us "garden ladies" applied for and received the grant to do it and then put in steady work setting up the beds in the punishing heat of August, keeping the irrigation running, growing the seedlings to transplant, keeping the supplies in order, doing cooking groups with some of the classes, and with others, doing fun and interesting botanical lessons in the outdoor classroom. We really wanted to make a difference in this 'food desert' and teach kids that their food comes from the earth. We were as idealistic as twenty somethings out to save the world.

Quite early on it became apparent that no one in the school, except the kids, was very interested in doing gardening. We were not Alice Waters with a built in school population of Asian kids who already knew they loved vegetables.  Our kids did not eat or like many vegetables, they "forgot" to come to the garden when it was their turn. When they did come, the teachers regarded this time as a fun little activity and they seemed totally incompetent about growing anything , incurious for the most part, and left the garden strewed with trash, all the tools helter skelter, and the irrigation system askew. They let the kids put plastic into the compost.

No teacher ever thought of replenishing the fertilizer that we used to water the vegetables. No teacher ever pulled up a weed (what's a weed?) They had no idea about how to grow stuff! And we should have forseen this and conducted a gentle gardening/botany class for them. If you know about something, you have interest in it. In this I would say we failed miserably. We assumed too much.

But the biggest thing was that this whole school was intensely focused on FCATs. As the worst school in the county by the numbers, they were working, working on pretests, post tests, anytime tests to get this school up to scratch. We did not understand the burden of this. And this was the first major mistake we made. We kept wondering why in the world the science teacher would not give the garden a minute of her attention. Why didn't the scheduled classes show up? They had no time.

The school community coordinator, the second one in a year, was generally unhelpful, though she tried.

We also learned that kids need a lot of time outdoors in a garden. They love to dig and play in the mound of topsoil. They love to pick things. They love to think about keeping the butterfly feeder full, and they love bugs and frogs and worms. There were several kids from one class who came out regularly on their own to water and plant. What a joy to find them there!

We learned that we needed to really teach some of the adults about how to grow stuff.  For us seniors, it seemed so obvious, but many of these young teachers have no idea about growing anything because maybe everything worth knowing comes in 140 characters - or no one ever showed them. We needed to do more, much more, to teach these folks about gardening, and then pass on the responsibility to them.

We tried to have presentations about the garden for staff meetings, but it became abundantly clear that we were wasting their time. Eventually, the cooking groups, which were popular, stopped because we could rarely access our cupboard of pots and supplies. On vacations it was a major effort to get access to the garden to water it. Nothing was ever easy.

This week. we are pulling up the spent veggies,  sending the last of them home, removing the irrigation system, covering the beds with hay. We hope the families who tried to grow their very own earth boxes - with some success-will take them home. We are serving watermelon to the kids who show up to help with this. And the school? All they say is "Have you checked with the administration about serving melon? Someone might be allergic!"

Next year, next year.. Oy.

The thing is we are still idealistic and think about what changes we can make. I am thinking that if this school still retains the same administration, bound to a testing system that is going nowhere, maybe it is time to move on. Maybe just down the hill to the preschool.

In my fantasy life, I think of how great this garden could have been if the school folks could have seen what amazing learning happens when kids are outside learning and doing hands-on, and it is thought of as valuable.  Maybe the whole concept of harvest to table, and how to do it,  could work. Just maybe those scores would rise if kids could do something real and productive.

I have learned a lot this year doing this project. We have been saddened and we have felt unappreciated except by the kids, and I guess that's what it really is all about.

Trying to Understand the Rednecks

I so love all the ways my neighbors arrange life. They have all kinds of animals and crops, and they are so interested in anything rural. We talk about what they have planted in their gardens and what works. Their kids approach us to sponsor their animals in the county fair.

These folks are fiercely independent Americans and they want no truck with "government" and they want to have their guns at the ready. These people do not recycle and do not believe in climate change, or understand it. T.V. plays constantly in their dimly lit homes. In many cases their yards are full of trash and plastic.

And yet, these folks have many wonderful values. They take care of each other, and on many occasions they take care of us, whose values are wildly different. Some of them are truly caretakers of this land.

We call these folks "rednecks", though actually my neck is redder than most because I am outside most of the day. This term really is about education, or the lack of it. O.K. It's about the vast ignorance so many of my fellow countrymen have.

For years we tried to buy a contiguous sixty acres from an old and cranky guy who owned it. After having put in a lot of effort and money to have it surveyed, and a lot of energy removing trash from the property, he finally refused. We were planning to give away two thirds of it to his daughter, and to the man who put major work into restoring this land. This was disappointing, but we went on.

Some years later, we decided to place all our land into a conservation easement. This means that nothing more than what is here can be added to. We cannot build anything more on our 300 acres. This land can continue to be a wildlife corridor from the Withlacoochee River, through the Green Swamp. Annually, the water board comes to check on how things are going here. When and if we sell this place, the easement goes with it. We liked thinking that this paradise would be forever.

Since we made this decision we have enjoyed the burgeoning of the wildlife here. It is truly the peaceable kingdom where every imaginable Florida critter and wildflower thrive. I drive on our mile long driveway to get the mail and see bobcats, many deer, wild turkeys and every kind of bird. It was a good decision.

But now we are revisiting the desirability of buying that contiguous sixty acres. Over the last ten years, (who knew?), we became close with a family, all scientists, who more and more frequently came out to visit. We formed such a strong bond with them! They really "got it"! They helped in the work of the ranch - mowing and clearing trees, working in the gardens. We share meals, love their kids. They have become a very important part of our family.

They love this place so much they want to have a part of it for their own. They got a windfall and promptly offered a juicy contract on that desirable sixty acres ( a lot of it is swamp, but to herpetologists, so great!)  And that crusty suspicious redneck family still holds out! They never use it unless it is to shoot stuff!

The in-law son, Mac, now approaching seventy has Parkinson's. He's our ranch manager, owns the herd of cows and is here every day. I love him beyond the beyond and we would do anything for each other. If our younger friends could buy into that land, it would benefit everyone, especially Mac, in so many ways. If our "new" family lived here it could be such a win-win situation! The pastures could be mowed, fences fixed, the cattle pens repaired. We old folks could be staying here for a long time.

But these folks still say "No." They are not thinking about the welfare of Mac over the long haul. They are not thinking of Mac's wife who may need the money, and certainly they do not think about the stewardship of the land. These folks freely strew trash around. Makes me nuts!

It's hard being neighbors here! Stay tuned. There is always plan B, and maybe plan C.

Thinking about Syria

I see the photos of the terrible devastation of war in Syria and they grip my heart and I cry for those refugees now in Jordan and Lebanon. I have seen those places in another more peaceful time when I learned to love the stark deserts and the impossibly green spaces where water flowed.

More than fifty years ago when I was a teenager in Beirut, I accompanied my father on the trips he took to various archaeological sites in the fertile crescent. He was a classicist and was taking his knowledge on the road to various cities and towns that had been the cradle of civilization.

We would set out in the VW with various maps. It was always an adventure. I was responsible for the slide show and in each town we hired a translator. The venues were packed. (There was little else to do in these towns.) It was hairy getting from place to place, and I worried about my attire. I will always remember the dark shirtwaist dress and the black shawl I sometimes needed to cover my hair and arms.

We would set forth, through the lush Bekaa Valley of Lebanon and soon begin our trek through Syria and on into Iraq. We loved Damascus with its lovely buildings and the amazing maze of the souks- where I bought meters of cloth to take back home for my mom to sew into dresses. I learned to not notice the attention that was paid me for my wild curly blonde hair that kept escaping from my shawl.

We had a gig in Aleppo and enjoyed the town and its lovely leafy main street. Now this place is in ruins.

Lots of times our respite for the nights were sketchy. We were served roasted song birds and sheep testicles. We tried hard to enjoy these things, (my dad threatened me if I would not at least try them!) and the pay off for me was seeing the incredible blue to pink skies as day dimmed over the desert.

I was in all respects a typical teenager and I longed for my boyfriend back in Beirut. But, somehow I knew that these expeditions were part of the adventure of my life.

As we drove through the deserts of Syria and Iraq we saw a number of hills just jutting out of the landscape. My father told me these were called "tels"-ancient hills that covered up towns and cities, now lost to civilization. We saw so many of them! It piqued my imagination. What happened to the inhabitants of these cities? I wanted to get out and dig them up ASAP.

On one trip across the kitty litter desert after nightfall, we ran into a donkey, probably killed it, and it certainly did major damage to our VW. The donkey shepherd appeared out of the night, we paid him off in piasters, and we drove on without a windshield, shards of glass embedded in our clothes (the shirtwaist). The entry point into Iraq was fraught and we had to wait hours as they searched our car and constantly thumbed through our documents. Finally, we returned to Syria and Damascus where we had the possibility of getting the car repaired. A few days later we caught a plane back to Beirut, and eventually the VW was returned to us.

This middle east is so beautiful and amazing. I hate seeing so many places in rubble, so many people killed from the war, refugees,  and I know that so many of the iconic archaeological and natural sites have been ruined for all time. The wonderful people of the middle east deserve more. Our entire world deserves more.

And I do not know what to do about it!

Old Lady in the Digital World

O.K. I am trying my best. I was an early adopter of these things and I wanted my kids to have access to computers, so we bought the first computer, an Apple, more than thirty years ago. Of course, we were all hooked, we learned how to program games and we endured the clackety clack noise of those first printers. The internet was in its infancy.

Time passes and I have had many computers and gone from the very slow dial-up to satellite to DSL and beyond. My first computers were Apples and then for a long time I switched to Dells that had more currency in my work life.

While all this was happening I adopted the cell phone life, and was thrilled with my first smart phone!. Of course, it was able to do more than I needed and its interface was ever seeming too small for my middle aged eyes. Not to mention my fingers that refused to be able to text.  On to the iPhone and a steep learning curve of texting, Instagram, and all the rest.

And now I have a brand new huge Apple desktop and this is a wonderful toy. In these days they do not give you any instructions. You get to figure it out yourself, and if you can't shift those photos to another album you can always click help.

I used to think that my computer was my inside pocket of privacy. No more. If my Mac can automatically provide the correct spellings and even find faces in photos and find so much else, including where the photo was taken, I have got to revise my thinking.

When looking at Google Earth looking down on our very private 300 acres, I saw that every single cow, every single plant in the vegetable garden, is visible! Yikes!

I suppose that for most of us our privacy is in the sheer vast numbers of us out there in the digital world. and so we hide in the crowd. Who is going to look us up on Face Book amongst 600 friends?  And yet, I know that nothing on our computers is really private. Our comings and goings are photographed on security cameras many times a day as we go about our business in stores and gas stations and all the rest.

Now, being seventy-two, I have come to realize that all the stuff I have written is not important in this vast world of writings. My kids can read my book, the documents in my computer files are mostly temporary and I delete them as necessary. Maybe they are permanently in clouds. I do not need to keep vast files and I can delete them as I do the boxes in closets and the hangers of clothes no longer wanted.

This is a whole new world and I am at the tail end of it. Where is it going? What will this mean for our children and grandchildren?

Meanwhile, I am doing the best I can with this new technology and loving every minute of it.  I am thankful I do not have teenagers under my responsibility because they are so vulnerable, though I would love to have one of them sit by my side and easily tell me to click on this or that.

But Siri soldiers on, helping me navigate everything.

Thoughts about our Community/school Garden

Spring is here in Central Florida and everything is a startling green. Fireflies are about finished and the love bugs are about to appear as they always do about this time of year. And our community garden at the local school is beginning to produce something other than the ubiquitous collards.

We 'Garden Ladies' feel proud of what we have brought to this school. We got the grant of a few thousand dollars to set up the beds and the irrigation system, buy a load of garden soil, and a lot of seedlings and seeds, and the ancillary things one needs to keep a vegetable garden growing.  We put up a colorful garden sign and a place for folks to write about the garden. We have a large garden supply box where kids can find new seeds to plant, hand lenses to look at the bugs and whatnot, tools for digging, gloves to wear. Even band-aids.

It was way harder than we imagined to engage this school in gardening! The administration and the teaching staff was so enmeshed in their problems about the FCAT and how the school would be letter-wise, they had little time and interest in the vegetable garden that kept on growing out back. It took us some time to figure this out. Gradually, we found that some classes came out to the garden and enjoyed digging and planting and watering. Most of the teachers who brought kids to the garden told us they enjoyed it, and yet, many continue to let their students foul the compost bin with plastic bags and other non-compostable garbage. Often, we find lots of trash around and tools left lying out.

Out irrigation system automatically waters everything, but we have fifteen grow boxes along a corridor that are out of range of the water. These are supposed to be the property of individual parents and teachers and they need to be cared for. I am surprised that some of these earth boxes get watered and that whoever waters them never thinks to water those of their neighbors!

What I have learned from this project is that kids love gardening! They are interested in everything that is growing. They want to keep a few of our broccoli plants that have gone to seed with their beautiful yellow flowers for the hummingbirds and butterflies. One small girl has taken it upon herself to keep the hummingbird feeder full of nectar. Another regular kid turns the compost bin. They love to plant stuff and they love to pick what's ready and take it home to cook and eat. They love to dig in the pile of garden soil and they love to water with the fertilizer water that smells of fish.  They love finding frogs and bugs. These kids love to be outside in the Florida sunshine (Their classrooms are windowless!) These kids are proud of what they are growing!

I have found that a few teachers come out to the garden on a regular basis and harvest the lettuce or collards or whatever and take it home for supper! We have picked many vegetables and cooked them in the classrooms with kids chopping and cutting and combining. The kids love these cooking groups.

So, we rejoice in this.  We wish that the school garden might have been a more compelling activity for everyone. We wish that there had been more support of our work.  I do not think that our major efforts have been for nothing in this food desert. We just need to think that the vision of good nutrition happens little by little, and we have had a part in this.

Amazing Day

I have never named this school I write about in my blogs. But now, everyone knows that this is the same Lacoochee Elementary School that hit the front page of the newspaper today because of the fact that all the faculty will be let go because it has been a D school for three years running. There are a lot of unanswered questions. There is a lot of baggage there, a lot stemming from the previous Superintendent who constructed huge road blocks to progress.

I know that there are a lot of unanswered questions about this school! Why is this school at the top of the list to be restructured in some way? We need more information.

From the point of view from a long time volunteer who has been judgmental (because I have been  a school principal and I think hard about these things), I have been saddened and sometimes outraged about what happens in this school that I love.

So many times I have noticed how unfriendly I feel at this school. Very few "Good Mornings!" Many reasons I can't do this or that.

The students I have in classes are so enthusiastic and bright! They love the creative teaching I do with them. But the administration is hard to get by, to let me actually teach!

It has been a hard slog in this school! The four of us who got a grant and brought a community garden to the place have been barely seen, never understood or appreciated. We thought this would be an exciting and fun place, full of educational experiences about good nutrition and the science of botany.

Most of the teachers have never even known that a school garden was out there (So verdant and green and burgeoning with harvestable vegetables) The kids love being out there in the garden, but there are plenty of teachers whose kids have never been out there to water and pick off the bugs , learn about how to grow things, and take home bags of vegetables. No one but us takes any responsibility or pride in this. Makes me sad. Cooking the vegetables has been hard because there is always the issue of the locked (high security) room where we have our cooking supplies. Daunting.

We volunteers have noticed that so many times that if any kids come to the garden they are accompanied by substitute teachers. Why is this? The actual classroom teachers are in meetings?

The school garden is just an iconic thing about the general health of this school.  No one would ever bother to water the plants or think about what it takes to make anything grow. (Including kids!)

Why is this? It's not because people loathe vegetables or harbor ill will towards us who superintend the garden. I think some of them are proud of this work their students do. Some of them harvest food to take home. People at this school do not have any time! The school has been under state supervision this year so that it could make a better grade than a D. Those kids absolutely must do well on the FCATS or else! So the teachers are constantly in meetings with "the state" or preparing for meetings with "the state" or coaching the kids to be better test takers.  It's hard to find time to teach!

Or else! just happened. Maybe knowing that the other shoe has dropped the folks at Lacoochee can find some time for fun and some joy and a big bite of a fresh tomato.

The current principal tried really hard in a very difficult situation.

That said, I am thinking that in the best possible world a new principal will be appointed. He/she will be enthusiastic and affirming, speak standard English (maybe Spanish). This new principal will be very well educated and open to new ideas, read widely, and be able to guide the staff of teachers to new heights. This new principal will encourage the wild ideas of a creative staff. This new principal will be inclusive and energize the teachers and let them all know how important it is to affirm every parent , child and community member for what they do. This new principal needs to have a sense of humor and fun. And this new principal needs to have a strong support system in their administration - including a strong parent/community person who can seamlessly know what needs to be done. This new principal needs to have a vision of what can be done in this amazing community of mostly hispanics.


And this principal will have the time to lead and inspire a great team.


I am thinking that the best principal will know how important it is to have every single teacher be in his/her classroom every single day!  Pare down those "important" meetings.

This school is inhabited by the best children on earth. They are the brightest and best, like any others in our schools.

They deserve the best.

Getting Personal

I listen to and watch the news every day. Seems like we have hit the edge when some of those men in suits in our legislatures change their minds about those important issues that have engaged Americans for years. I am glad they do.

Everyone has their price, nothing new. But when one of those legislators has seen their grandchild's body splattered to death by an assault weapon in the hands of a madman, he has to think whether the rifle association with all it's money and support for the next election is ethically worth it.

Interesting, that with less money involved, so many of the "suits" have come on  board for gay marriage. I would bet that there is not a family out there who does not have some gay members. Who could be opposed to these civil rights?

We have for too long swept under the rug the issues of the undocumented folks who do our work so well, have really smart kids who will be the heart of productive America.

For the "suits", you only know that the undocumented folks mow your lawn and clean your houses and do extraordinary work on building your houses. It is easy not to see that these hard workers may actually be engineers or physicians, and are clawing their way up to be part of the American Dream.

But everyone has their price, money talks, and I am disgusted with our current lot of politicians who waft in the wind, try to appease their base and get the money from PACS and the rich who ferry them around in private planes.

What happened to ethics?

Fashions for Senior Gals

O.K. I know there is a website out there written by a great guy who loves old ladies of fashion. I am paying attention. But I do not ever want to dye my eyelashes orange (what there are left of them!) At 72, 5 feet six inches and one hundred twenty-two pounds, I am the same as I was at 22. But not really..

I have always wanted to have my own signature style. I imagined kind of flowing garments, Eileen Fisher, sweeping the ground, classic, suggestive. I liked the idea of being able to cover up my wrinkled body, but maybe not.

My hairdresser now knows that I want a short style for my curly hair that I don't even have to brush out after a shower. I am happy with that.

My closet is full of things - the lovely light pink maxi skirt, a fuscia sleeveless top, gold sandals. But everyday I pull out the Chico jeans and a White Stag cotton tee shirt from Walmart, shove my feet into Birkenstock Arizona sandals, put in some colorful earrings and I am good to go all day.

I guess this is my style. Swim suits are problematic. Mostly, I swim in the nude since there is no one there. Actually, I have a huge number of bathing suits - all bad in one way or another. I hate that horrid time of making all those straps and tight criss crosses behave. I will don a swim suit when guests are here, of course. Will I wear that modest polka dot swim dress that takes ten minutes to put on, or will I wear the "cute" boy shorts with that incredibly uncomfortable top?

Old ladies, even thinnish ones as I am, have to think about how we will display our upper arms and thighs in the clothing of today. I have muscular upper arms, no flab. All good. But there are those horrid wrinkles! You can't wear Spanx all day and not be grouchy and touchy. You can't wear a bag over your head!

So, back to the loose and flowing garments. Except that you can't garden or use major tools or hike in those. I guess it's back to the jeans and tee shirts, wrinkles be damned. I am elderly and I will be comfortable. My style.

Clay Night

Last night was Clay Night at Lacoochee Elementary School. As you can see there were about seventy people present. We invited the second grade and the fourth grade classes. The families of these children from grandparents to tiny babies came on time- and actually before.

Their kids have told them about this Ms.Molly and they know how much time and fun I provide in the garden and in other classes. So they brought their families last night. And what a good time we all had!

Maybe two thirds of the participants were the Mexican families. We did our best at translation. Some really beautiful clay objects were made, and afterwards everyone helped clean up and tote the finished clay things to my car. People told me that this was the best fun they have had all week.

No actual parent or community meetings have had this turn out of interested folks. I think how it would be to have clay/art nights once a month and include a pot luck supper from our garden harvest.  Last night there was a lovely feeling of community and family fun. People- moms, dads, families of all kinds, need to play

with each other.

Volunteering at the school, constructing a community garden there, teaching some classes, has been a very uphill endeavor for me and for the other volunteers. I love the kids and get tremendous affirmation from them. The administration often seems unwilling or unfriendly or not caring about our efforts. Hundreds of hours and dollars we have contributed to this school. In some ways I think that these beleaguered folks have all they can handle considering the fear of FCAT.

I do think that common courtesy might motivate them to communicate things to us volunteers. We ask, but it never happens. And, like Lucy and the football, I keep going back.

Clay night was wonderful! We could build on that if only, if only..

Need to Play

The four of us- 'the garden ladies' as we are known, because we secured the grant for this community garden, and continue to be there for a time each weekday, have been puzzled by the irrigation system problems. It was all set up, running beautifully, and timed to water every day, morning and evening.

But almost every day we notice that the spigots are turned off or the sprinkler heads are turned every which way. Last week when I was there with many kids what I saw was that they ran to the tools, got dixie cups from the garden bin, rummaged around to find every last seed, no matter what it was. And then, with a satisfied sigh they settled down to PLAY in the pile of dirt we use for the raised beds! They flung the soil about, excavated for worms and grubs, dug with any tools they could find, piled the dirt into the wagon and then dumped it out back onto the dirt pile. They loved it! Of course the irrigation system was discombobulated!

This is what we wanted, what a children's garden should be! By now, after a long harvest season  and the beginning of a new one, these kids are confident. They pick and eat the last of the broccoli and the pea pods. They break off the huge collard leaves, stuff them in bags to take home for dinner.

 They love to be outdoors, and they especially love the freedom to dig and get dirty. Yeah, they'll water and weed, but what they really want is a HUGE dirt pile, some tools, small containers, and maybe even some small vehicles and plastic people. Unfortunately, this is not to be in the careful and circumscribed world of FCAT. But we do encourage the digging and have rethought the irrigation system!

After this long year in the garden we have learned so much, most of it unexpected. But what I have learned all over again is that these kids, like all kids, need to play!
So much the better that they know that they can grow and eat good things along the way. They know where vegetables come from and they know that in the garden their teachers become lax and limp and cast a blind eye to their capers on the dirt pile. A triumph!

Our grandson, Quincy, is staying here for his spring break. He's eight, and unlike the public school garden kids I mostly see, he's a student at a private school that has a richness of play materials- blocks, clay, art materials, a school garden. But still, he needs to have uncounted minutes and hours to explore his own world which is now Lego. He spends hours constructing huge habitats. He explains them to me and I try to respond in appropriate ways. (What's a grandma for?)

Quincy knows that here on a ranch everyone has to do chores. So he pulls on his boots and gloves and cheerfully helps us clean up the downed trees from yesterday's storm. He's really learning to be a big help, he's strong and willing. I see him playing on the downed tree, reveling in his strong young body.  But I know he is really wanting to get back to his most important work- that imaginative play!

Here on our ranch, Quincy is kind of a prince .- and he knows it! But a prince has to set and clear the table, do some chores. And what he really gets here is the time to play.

We all need to play!

Carlos

Carlos first came to my attention in maybe the third grade. All the kids had the  assignment to present the biographies of their favorite celebrity. The class had many entries in this assignment: all were about the usual teen aged idols and a few sports stars. All were quite dismal and banal in their presentations.

And then, Carlos stood up with his hand written notes. He spoke about Gandhi, and suddenly the room was quiet. The other kids clearly had no idea about this man and his ideas, but they were enthralled by Carlos' and his enthusiasm and careful research.

The school knew that this boy was exceptional, but in this tiny impoverished place, no one knows what to do with the few gifted kids that pass by their purview.

I tracked Carlos through his elementary years and we became friends. He is a Mexican boy, and entered this country illegally on his mom's back. Later, I became friends with his mother who has helped us with our summer camp, and since then has become the best housekeeper we have ever had. (If she were a legal citizen she would be running something, no doubt.)

Carlos has gone on to middle school, the one that enrolls all the Lacoochee Mexicans. I worry that he is not being challenged and from time to time I make it possible for him to be a member of the soccer team, or go to camp, or go on a trip to Washington, D.C.

Carlos, even with the backing of a strong but struggling family invested in education, needs to have the vision of that wide wide world that may be possible. From this family and their community, I have learned how difficult it is to be undocumented in America, how terrified they are, like so many others, to contemplate the fate of this highly gifted kid who could soar. But he's illegal and they worry about this all the time.

As we read in the NYT today, so many high achieving but poor kids just do not have any idea that they could go free to the most selective colleges. (They have not heard of Smith or Yale or ..) They settle for the local community colleges, and there is nothing wrong with that in most cases. We need to ask why those so-called college advisors in the high schools are not directing these gifted, but poor kids to the highest and best.

But, Carlos needs more challenge, and if I have anything to do with it, he'll be there one day at MIT or Brown or wherever.

I am doing what I can. I am trying to give Carlos  some vision about the future.

Twins visit!

Here are Emilio and Valentina in baskets. They are about to break out and crawl like crazy around the house. Emilio will head for the book shelves and if there are any loose books he'll pull them out. Valentina, who crawls even faster (maybe 20 mph?) will search for the dog.

It was such a wonderful visit! These kids' parents are endlessly patient and loving, talking to their children in two languages and seeming to savor every moment, nothing too hard to do for them. We provided vegetables from the garden that were ground up in the baby food grinder, just so, and the kids mushed all the food into their mouths, splatted blueberries on the floor and all the fourteen of us, the critical mass including my best closest grandson, eight years old now, enjoyed it all immensely. We all cooked enormous communal meals.

March in Florida is totally glorious, though a tad chilly right now. Emilio and Valentina seemed very interested in the outdoor life here as we trundled them around in the stroller and the golf cart and in the back of the pick up to explore the property. When I took Emilio out to the vegetable garden to gather the vegetables for dinner, he started cramming lettuce leaves into his mouth, flinging the unwanted ones away.

It was somewhat exhausting with so many folks here and the necessity of leaping to keep the twins from harm and keeping the house and kitchen going. But everyone was on duty to help. I certainly enjoyed every minute. Grandma talking. I love it!