The Annual Slightly Strange List

I am thankful…

… for the privilege to go “home” for Thanksgiving, even though I never lived in that house, to unpack in my parents’ guest bedroom, put my feet on their coffee table, and visit long and slow with them and my brother Nate’s family.

… that my husband, who was supposed to work Thanksgiving Day this year, had the choice to work the day before and the day after, so that he could join us for a beautiful feast on the actual holiday.

… that my son made it back in time from a harvest job out West, driving 14 hours so that we could all be together for a day.

… for shared memories and old jokes and photo albums full of snapshots of a funny childhood that wows our children and their cousins with its quaintness.

… for words: quirky, hilarious, perfectly descriptive words discovered in a game of Balderdash in the living room. And for the antics of the children we have produced who entertain us regularly with their almost-adult selves. Not to mention hearing them voice their own refreshing, occasionally startling opinions

… for colored glassware, and that the pieces I bought at a thrift store to decorate for Christmas did not quite all break when the box fell out of the back of an inexpertly packed Suburban when we opened it. At least one survived, and also the white pedestal bowl for fancy serving.

… for the meat sale I managed to hit while I was “home” for Thanksgiving, so that I could pick up cases of chicken at unbelievable prices just before we hit the road to come north again. Which, incidentally, is when the box of glassware fell out of the vehicle, along with a lot of other things that were not secured because we needed a space in the back for the meat, and our leaning tower of baggage did not have structural integrity when the hatch was opened.

… for a sense of humor because when I came through the parking lot with the trolley of meat, I texted my son to open the back, he complied, and everything spilled out. The space behind our vehicle looked as if a gypsy caravan had disgorged its contents: suitcases, baskets of dress-ups that the girls had sneaked along, boots collected and thrust in at the last minute, and a bag of vintage fabric scraps spilling out. Also the box of glassware. And I stood there and giggled helplessly while I tried to assist my son who was grimly reloading and muttering under his breath about his sisters who cannot pack lightly.

… for a pressure canner so that I could make short work of processing a lot of chicken for quick meals this winter.

… for having found a kiln repairman not terribly far away who replies to my questions and plans to come as soon as possible to check out what is wrong with my kiln that it keeps giving me grief at extremely inopportune times.

… for having had a premonition to not take any custom pottery orders, because if I had, I would be stressing about the Christmas deadline.

… for try before you buy, and cyber shopping because shopping in department stores gives me the actual heebie jeebies on Black Friday. But when you need boots, you need boots, and the sales right now really are phenomenal. And when your child has no boots either, you need to figure out something before the snow flies. Also flannel sheets, because it’s coming, oh yes, it is!

… for the amazing resources we have to have comfort and cheer. I feel gratitude every time I pull on wool socks, don a colorful cable-knit sweater, wrap my hands around a hot mug, light a candle, or turn up the heat.

… for knowing people who look and sound like Jesus, and inspire me to become more like them. This week a friend I have known since I was a tot lost her mom in a shockingly sudden way. “Linda’s mom” is how I think of Iva, who was unfailingly glad to see me and catch up with me, “Linda’s friend.” I remember a time in childhood when we were at their house, and the adults seemed a little stressed, possibly about church issues or maybe a business problem. Iva was pulling an amazing concoction of graham crackers, butter, and brown sugar out of the oven when we got there. I kept running in and out of the kitchen to sneak more bars until my mom saw me and reproved me because I was being a piggy. Iva just laughed and took my relish as a compliment. The impression I got was that they were so easy to make that she would be honored to make another panful of bars if I ate them all. Her whole life was characterized by giving freely and it was because she loved the One Who freely gave to her. There was never a question about her motivation to love, and I am grateful to have known her.

… that our house is south-facing so that every time there is even a stray ray of sunshine in the wintertime, I am aware of it, and so are the plants that line the windowsills. Like right now when I am sitting in an armchair in a puddle of golden light.

… for hope, and for goodness that is given in so many perfect gifts from Above. Graces that surround me and mine, mercies new every morning. Yesterday when we were getting close to home, I saw the solid cloud cover up ahead, compliments of our Lake Erie weather system. I took a picture, and I asked the Lord, “What would You like to teach me about this?” You may wonder at His answer, but He said quite clearly, “It’s a blanket. You can get under it. It’s safe.” And so I say, “Thank You.”

Winterizing

October was a magical month, all but the week I spent either being sick or feebly trying to get strong again. That week did bear some fruit in the list I compiled of Things To Do Before Winter. It was long, detailed, and discouraging, according to my offspring. It also included something really fun that I have been hankering to do ever since we moved.

My view from the chair in the living room included this wall, with outlet covers, of course. I decided the time had come, and my eyes hurt too much to read or watch something, but they were fine for scrolling on Etsy. Gabriel was working, so I sent him screenshots of various wallpapers and we agreed on a whimsical one that was on sale. (Clinched the deal, that did. Have you looked at wallpaper prices since it has come trending back onto the scene? :O)

I admit, my choice was influenced by the colors and patterns that will spark joy in the dark of winter. However, it is just as I envisioned it with the antique sideboard I bought at Salvation Army and cleaned up with much sanding and washing. Comments have been varied and polite: One son walked right past after work and didn’t notice the wallpaper. The other son said it was nice, but might look dated in a few years. My husband and the girls are solid fans, so that’s a win.

I have a few observations about peel and stick wallpaper. I’ve hung murals before, and it wasn’t that bad, but this was a lot trickier. For starters, it was Very Sticky. Removeable, yes, but the first strip had to be pulled off and repositioned a few times to get the edges perfectly straight. It pulled a bit of paint off in the process, therefore we also had a few spots that were no longer sticky. Once that was up, it was easier, but the wall has a slight bulge in the middle, due to a cast iron plumbing pipe that the dry-waller had to bend his work around. The fourth strip was impossible. It matched on the top and on the bottom, but not in the middle where the bulge was, and there is no stretching or repositioning peel and stick. Olivia and I sweated it until we both were hot and bothered and needing chocolate to soothe our feelings of outrage. Unfortunately, the only chocolate in the house was a bent-and-dent store gamble, and it was white and crumbly. We had to soldier on without reinforcement, but we got it done. There were a few small bubbles that we just pricked with a pin and smoothed out. My conclusion: peel and stick is best saved for small spaces. I much prefer working with pasted wallpaper sheets that can be pushed and moved a bit on the wall as I apply it.

Was it worth it? Yes, it was.

The winterizing list included things like “dig the last potatoes”. Check. I had a row that I hilled in the traditional manner of gardeners, and the rest were Ruth Stout’s (tiny little lie alert) “no work” method of mulching. The idea was to see which method produced better/more potatoes. The mulched ones should have gotten more mulch, for sure, which may have produced better results, but the hilled ones were bigger and more plentiful, no question about it. So maybe next year I will try hilling first, then mulch so that we can avoid the weeds that were a problem this year. At any rate, this is the first time I have gotten bushels of potatoes for my efforts and I like the feeling. Do your worst, winter. We are set for carbs to stave off starvation.

Another project was cleaning up the leaves that didn’t fall for a long time due to a late frost. I lived in a shagbark hickory grove as a child, and I Know What I Know about raking leaves. Hickories are not heavy until they get wet. My children did not understand my urgency, but we did shifts with the leaf blower for hours. For days. Our trees are impressive and tall. Some of the leaves were chopped with the lawnmower and went on the garden. Some were blown into the edge of the woods where the multifloras hold them like a rounded caterpillar. Finally we just burned some. We also burned our hickory leaves when I was a child, and it brought back memories of pyrotechnics created with a metal rake dug into the burning pile, the last little smoldering nuts at the end. We finished up the bulk of the leaf cleanup on October 31, and the next day it snowed. Sometimes it feels so good to be right.

The biggest item on the winterizing list is ongoing. I took down the moveable electric chicken fence and scooped up the rich compost with the tractor bucket, spreading it on the garden. Then Gabriel began his work of cutting down the rotting cherry trees that leaned over the chicken yard and the privacy fence. Last year a huge tree fell onto the shop, bashing in the roof where Gregory’s forge is. It split off of a clump of trees and revealed that the entire interior was decayed and full of bugs. There are about five of these trees behind the shop, and they bother us with their air of disaster waiting to happen. One of them leans over the neighbor’s trailer, and we will need professional help with that one. The rest require skill and ingenuity to take down ourselves. Gabe is very good at felling trees, but I get nervous when I am the one asked to position the tractor bucket or tow a rope attached to the tree on one end and the Suburban with the other. It’s simple. No pressure, or anything. Just watch the branches and ease it forward when it starts to fall.

We have a humongous pile of firewood to burn in the fireplace, and a lot still to clean up. This spring we got a small DeWalt chainsaw that runs on a battery, and it is my pet. It cuts small limbs like a breeze and has made it so much easier for me to help with outdoor messes without yanking my shoulder out of the socket to start a saw. I helped cut up the trees, not paying attention to the vines that twined all the way to the top. The trees were covered in grape vines, but with the leaves off, I didn’t notice that some of the vines were hairy and lethal. It has been years since I had such a miserable case of poison ivy. Last night during cell group I had to keep excusing myself to go apply cortisone lotion. The alternative was to sit there and scratch shamelessly, which I couldn’t do.

We did fun things in October, too. We celebrated our twenty-second anniversary with a few days in a sweet cabin in a small town nearby. We have fought for our marriage in many ways over the years, not just fought against the marriage destroyers, but also for the marriage builders. It is possible to be twenty-two years in and enjoy each other more than ever. There have been times when anniversaries were a taking stock and feeling like we’re not getting the mileage out of our relationship that we want to, and the catching up is as painful as it is necessary. If we have learned anything, it is to keep short accounts. Life is just better when you have fun together, that’s what I say.

We celebrated Gregory’s nineteenth birthday and got the glad results of zero seizure activity on his most recent EEG. We surprised Gabriel’s dad for his sixty-fifth birthday and had a short time with loved ones. Alex was here twice on his way to and fro a harvest job in Wisconsin. Like my friend Tina says, “You just need to lay eyes on your adult children every once in a while.” The girls did first quarter exams and finished up their volleyball season. Olivia decided that she wants to learn about sourdough and produced a first loaf that was swoon-worthy. Occasionally we even took off and just soaked in the clear blue air, shuffling the leaves on the trail with our feet.

I did not get the whole house cleaned thoroughly, but that part of the list was a little far-fetched anyway. So, do you get winterizing urges? Or do you get to live somewhere without cold and dark?

More Verbs for the End of September

After we got home from our journeys in the middle of September, we…

resumed school books

dug into lessons we had waited to start until a more convenient time

picked up the felting needles and wool and made clever little creatures during history lectures (the girls, not me)

went to volleyball practice with a bunch of other homeschoolers

celebrated Olivia’s sixteenth birthday

blessed her as much as we could while simultaneously catching up and sprinting ahead

picked the beans pretty often because I planted them late

dug the potatoes, two bushels and another row to dig someday when we have stamina

pulled the tallest weeds in the garden

mulched the empty spaces with grass clippings

trimmed the raspberries that were growing through the privacy fence into the neighbor’s yard

dried the rose hips for tea

made corn relish with the big kernels on the cobs of sweet corn that weren’t ready when we left for our travels

fixed a car exhaust system (that is, Gabriel did)

washed the grasshopper goo off the Suburban with (hot tip alert) Totally Awesome from the Dollar Tree, which is the best degreaser of bug innards we have ever used

roasted chickens and new potatoes and shared some of it with new moms

held the most delightful babies, twins and a newborn

loaded up the tents and gear again

staked a claim at a park with friends in the sites around us

shared campfire stories and goals and hopes

ate a lot of great food

put it all away again in our camping totes (we’re getting good at that)

collected our first pullet eggs from our half-olive-egger hens and gloated over the colors

gleaned apples from an abandoned orchard (with permission)

loitered on the Erie shore and explored as far as we could walk

picked three bushels of grapes in fifteen minutes

steamed those grapes into juice, fifty-four quarts

bought more jars and got some extras from my mom

caught a pike! in our tiny creek in the backyard

crammed the month full of living

opened our hearts just a crack to fall, and lo and behold,

It is October! (Technically it has been for a while. I’m still working on the catching up part.)

September Action Verbs

September was so packed full, I decided to do a list to try to condense it a bit. The traveling actually started on the last day of August. Hope you enjoy.

· made many lists of things we need to be comfortable when camping with no amenities

· packed up a prodigious load of gear in a little trailer we borrowed

· prayed our Suburban with very high miles would get us where we were going safely

· journeyed six hours toward the Midwest

· stayed with lovely friends for a night in Indiana

· snuggled the babies and played the games we used to play when they were our neighbors

· hugged everybody and said good-bye after breakfast

· drove another six hours westward

· wandered through Amana Colonies, Iowa, for the Handworks Festival

· bought tools from vendors and beautiful woven things at the woolen mill

· ate German food that blessed our little German hearts, every dish cooked to perfection and extra delicious because of our great hunger

· camped close to a river under tall, tall trees with no rain flies on the tents because it was so dry and breezy and the stars were so bright

· drove another seven hours

· reconnected with dear ones in South Dakota

· sat in their living room to catch up with our lives until we were literally too fatigued to talk

· reacquainted ourselves with nieces and nephews who seem familiar, almost like our own children

· drank so much coffee, even the little guys

· shared meals that my sister-in-law produced out of her amazing spiritual gift for welcoming people into their home and feeding them

· picnicked beside/swam in the mighty Missouri River on a very hot and windy day

· walked the dusty road at sunset

· savored late summer produce from their garden and took a lot of tomatoes with us in our ice chest

· drove an hour to a Walmart for groceries, a novel experience compared to our usual two-minute drive

· bade everyone fond farewell after three days

· travelled further west

· wished fervently that it weren’t so hazy with wildfire smoke

· enjoyed the Badlands anyway, in the moderated weather that was a result of the haze

· set up tents on the very rim on the western edge of the Badlands to we could hear the coyotes in the valley and watch the sunrise

· marveled at the resilience of the sodbusters who settled that country by sheer grit

· meandered even further west into the Black Hills

· rented a UTV with six seats to explore trails

· boondocked on range land beside a rushing creek rather far from civilization

· cooked our meals with propane because fires were verboten in that dry land

· washed ourselves with creek water

· ate brook trout Rita caught with grasshoppers in streams so narrow you could step across them

· blessed the Lord for clear skies again

· drove hours on the UTV through clear, fresh air to see Mt. Rushmore

· toured Custer State Park

· kept out a sharp lookout for exotic wildlife

· saw mostly range cattle, with a few pronghorns and a herd of bison far in the distance

· packed up camp a day earlier than planned, just before a downpour of Biblical standards

· retreated to a city with a motel for showers and white sheets and food that didn’t come out of the ice chest

· started the trek eastward

· drove across country on small roads instead of interstate

· wondered at a land and culture so different from our eastern one

· relieved our bursting bladders between two rows of grain bins in that land of no service stations or bushes to provide cover for what seemed like hundreds of miles

· ran out of the gas at the very edge of a town and managed to coast right up beside a gas station

· fulfilled a long dream of mine to tour the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet

· imagined I was Laura, or maybe Ma Ingalls with her very brave spirit

· ate our last food out of the ice chest with little enthusiasm

· drove the rest of the way home through the night, seventeen hours

· stopped only for fuel and potty breaks and odd selections of snacks at gas stations

· found ourselves at home, sweet home, by morning

· checked on the chickens and the rabbits and the garden

· picked up the mail and the dog

· mowed the yard

· washed clothes for days

· unpacked and sorted gear, also for days

· slept and slept and slept in our own beds

And that was the first two weeks, which were rich and full and exciting. I have a list of verbs for the last two weeks in September too, mostly about trying to catch up with normal life, coming soon.

The Mighty Missouri River at Sunset
Cousins Playing “Winter Shelter”
Hazy Sunrise over the Badlands
UTV Tou
From the Tent Door

Camp in the Boondocks with Greg’s Tent on the Cliff

Home, Sweet Home

I Am Waiting…

…To eat the first ripe tomato in my garden. One that is bigger than a cherry so I can slice it for my sourdough toast. I do not remember ever waiting this long, and if checking on them could produce results, I would have had slices of vine-ripened tomato weeks ago. They are large and green, very green, but apparently we have not had enough hot sunshine yet. Even the dog who loves tomatoes has become impatient. Yesterday she picked an enormous slicer, very green, and brought it guiltily to me.

…For Greg’s car to sell so I don’t have to move it to a different spot in the yard every time we mow. There have been many interested parties, but when they hear that it needs a new exhaust system, they turn sadly away. Or they turn away, sadly.

…For my neighbor to notice that we are perfectly capable of mowing our own grass. He is a good neighbor, especially because he has a personal vendetta against chicken-stealing raccoons, of which there are many in this area. He simply cannot resist mowing a stripe along the front of our lawn as he passes to mow the other neighbor’s lawn, with his deck set much lower than we do. It may be a picayune thing to be bothered about, but it does bother me. It has just occurred to me that Gregory parked his for-sale car on that side of the lane yesterday, straddling the stripe. Maybe we have solved the problem without any hard feelings, because surely he will not attempt to mow around a car…? Stay tuned for further bulletins on this country drama.

…For the guy who said he could come fix our driveway in mid-July. Now that it is mid-August, I am guessing a suitable amount of time has elapsed. I am curious why contractors of services do this? Are they ever early? Is it so that people are duly impressed by how busy they are and extra happy to pay them for the work that they didn’t do in the time they said they would? I just wonder about these things. Would it really be so hard to put a buffer into your calendar so that you can show up when you said you would?

…To use the bagged mulch I bought on clearance and stacked under the sunporch awning. It has an assignment: the borders along the lane, but I can’t use them until the guy who fixes driveways comes.

…For inspiration to braid the garlic that is drying in the shed, and to make more pickles with the accumulation of cucumbers in the fridge. Unlike the tomatoes, the cucumbers are having a heyday of a summer.

…For my probiotics to do all the amazing things that they said they will do. It would also be nice for my body to figure out how it’s going to behave for the rest of my life. Does anybody know how long that wait will be?

…For a slightly slower pace of life where we can pick up our morning read-aloud tradition before we do lessons. When Addy confided in me with shining eyes, “I think this school year is going to be really fun,” she was thinking about extra stories, tea and poetry, and fun supplies from Walmart. She was not thinking so much about getting in some serious progress in the math books in August so that we can travel without math books in September, but here we are.

…For our Walmart to get its act together and stop remodeling and just have things where they are supposed to be so that I can find matches and toilet paper without hunting through half the store. My sympathies are with the elderly gentleman who grumped to me, “They are just doing this on purpose so I have to walk all over the place and see more stuff to buy.”

…For a good place to sell some of my extra chickens, but not the sale barn, because I took five of my prized pullets there, almost old enough to start laying olive-colored eggs. The pullets I babied and hand-raised after their mother got eaten by a raccoon, and I got two bucks apiece for them. It appears they kept half as a fee so that my check in the mail was five dollars. Hilarious.

…For my dahlias to bloom. They are really underachieving this year, and the only reason I can think of is that they are planted closer to the other perennials because I didn’t want them to get destroyed when the driveway gets fixed, only they would have been fine in the normal place. Maybe like the tomatoes, they have not had enough brilliant sunshine in this summer of overcast skies from wildfires and abundant rain. Normally I take in cuttings all through August, but they are only just starting to bud a little bit.

…To taste the blackberry kefir to see if it is as special as the raspberry was.

**********

In which both the potential glories of dahlias and tomatoes are captured in one photo.

I learned about making “I am waiting” lists in the writing course I took this spring. It is an interesting way to explore what is going on inside. This list happens to be a trivial one of everyday waits. They have their merit; they shape character, as anyone who has waited for their first taste of a vine-ripened tomato knows. They are not like the earnest yearnings/waitings of the soul: for slaves set free, for tears wiped away, for peace on earth, for equality, for all Creation to be redeemed. There are things I am one hundred percent convinced God will do in His time. I keep faith, and I wait.

(Maybe the longer we wait for the desire to be fulfilled, the greater the glory.)

What are you waiting for?

24 Hours

1 hour, first-thing, reading in the stillness on the back deck

6 people milling around, fixing tea and coffee in the kitchen

1 son leaving for work

50 =AQI for today, so much better than 130 yesterday

2 small people coming to be babysat

5 hens scratching through yesterday’s watermelon rinds

4 eggs, triumph in the molting season

3 adolescent roosters sounding like squeaky hinges

6 pullets eating, eating, eating, while still not laying any eggs

15 chicks, Rita’s project, being fed Japanese beetles as we pick them off the plants

10 cucumbers swelled to pickling size overnight

1 escaped and recaptured rabbit with burrs all through its fur

2 girls tenderly washing and brushing the rabbit

1 broken mug fixed with epoxy glue

4 quarts of kefir starting second ferment with raspberries

1 refrigerator emptied of leftovers for lunch

3 cupcakes for

7 people

1 small girl licking her brother’s cupcake paper

45 minutes reading stories to Little Bee, fighting sleep at nap time

2 mango popsicles before their mom picked them up

90 minutes helping my husband clean up brush

1 shaky climb up a ladder to give him a different chainsaw

71 gnats intent on crawling somewhere on my face

2 trips to the mailbox, and still nothing

1 tiny yellow tomato, sweet as candy

8 batches of play dough for VBS craft tonight…

12 cups of flour, 4 cups of salt, 1 cup of oil, 8 T powdered alum, 12 cups of water

1 dismayingly messy kettle

4 beautiful quarts of red raspberries for the freezer

9 kale balls, flash frozen for soups

1 button missing on my shirt

2 cups of rice cooked in

4 cups of broth for our haystack supper with

1 pound of taco meat and

1 head of chopped lettuce, the very last before it turned bitter in the garden

7 miles to VBS

12 children, ages 5-6, kneading Koolaid powder into play dough

7 miles home again

29 poultries in various stages, shut away for safekeeping from raccoons and possums overnight

15 minutes of kitchen clean up before

8 hours to spend in blissful sleep

1 good day

Pinky Purple Days

I sat outside on the deck until the last light faded out of the bits of sky I could see through the towering hickory trees to the west. It was the longest day of the year; there should have been some sort of solemn ceremony as it passed. But the mosquitoes were biting me in the evening chill. I did the prosaic thing and came inside. It is difficult to realize that we are already heading toward the tedium of winter darkness: ugh.

Right now we are in the blessed noonday and it is glorious. This is what we waited for all through the dreary months. The garden is silvery, pink, and purple, with one scarlet Oriental poppy lifting its showy head. The sort of flowers I like to plant are cottage garden flowers, kind of shy and old fashioned, but I cannot resist a poppy, even though it is a bit of a braggart. My neighbor gave me red hot poker roots and I dutifully planted them. They looked so out of their element in my purple coneflower and Russian sage border that I took a dislike to them and tossed them to the chickens.

We are deep into the spindly, ethereal florals, some with scents so cloying you cannot really bring them inside. The bees are not wasting a minute of it, and its a good thing too, because it’s only a matter of days until the Japanese beetles crawl out of the ground to ravage the sweetest blossoms. Rita brought in my favorite sort of bouquet today, and I love how it looks with that white valerian in it, but it is so powerfully scented I will have to banish those.

Our hummingbird feeder broke in storage over the winter, so we decided to plant hummingbird feeders instead. We looked for trumpet-shaped flowers and I have seen hummingbirds at every one of these. It’s the best reason for planting the ubiquitous petunia. I don’t even know what some of these blooms are. They just sort of slid into my wagon at the greenhouse and I didn’t argue with them.

Today I noticed that the first baby yellow tomato was ripe, and I ate it without even showing it to anybody else. I paid a foolish fifteen dollars for a large plant that was blooming already back in the chill of spring because I do weird things like that when I am fed up with cold weather. It would be premature to say that it was worth the money, but if it continues to produce such sweet orbs of tomato-ness, the summer is looking promising.

Last year I bought strawberry plants at the local hardware store and I wish I could remember what they were called so that I could warn you not to bother with them. After all the watering, weeding, mulching, fertilizing the plants, covering them when it frosted, I am picking the weirdest, smooshiest berries I have ever grown. (There aren’t many, because of the late freeze I didn’t see coming.) A day in the fridge leaves them looking so tired and wilted I am not even tempted to eat them. The best way is to stand in the garden and eat them immediately. “If you don’t expect them to be strawberries, they are good,” Rita concluded. I do not quite know how to do that. Shut my eyes? Hold my nose? Because they are perfect, red, seedy, and smell right. It’s a texture thing. This week I showed Little Bee and her brother where the strawberries are and they obliged me by eating them all that day, foraging up and down the row and experiencing no difficulty with unmet expectations.

Speaking of expectations, there is a small fruit stand a few miles west of us, run by an Amish family. On Saturdays they sell donuts and I have seen the sign often, but never happened to pass on a Saturday until last week. I took a look at the donuts and promptly bought a half dozen. They were enormous, glistening things, with hardened glaze drips at the edges, and I could hardly wait to give everybody one when I got home. My first bite revealed a sorry truth: they were obviously fried in rancid lard. I took another bite and weighed the question, “Are these worth the calories?” But surely, so I took another bite. I got some milk, and I ate the donut. Almost it was not worth the disappointment that was every bite, but I had paid for an experience that I was reluctant to give up. In retrospect, I paid for a lesson but it isn’t clear what it is. Maybe it will come to me the next time I am picking the strawberries I don’t like.

This spring I needed a strong new stick teepee for my cucumbers. Gabriel and I started with bigger saplings and screwed them together instead of tying them with twine. It took longer this way, but I hope it holds up. He also made a beautiful new arbor for the hardy kiwi vine after I had started it on my own when he was working. My arbor panels were pitifully lacking in structural integrity. When I asked for help to assemble the lot, he was kind enough to lay aside his work in the shop and spent hours finding some stronger supports. We cut down most of the sycamore saplings down by the creek for this project, and I pulled wild grapevines out of the woods for the finishing touches. I am really liking the homegrown look of these supports.

It’s early days in the garden, but things are flourishing and by the time the dahlias do their thing, it will be full to bursting. Every day I walk around and marvel at what is happening, how the leaves unfurl and buds form, some puffy like marshmallows and some spiky like chestnuts, but all brilliant.

When I was a child I had a startling thought one day, “If God had made everything brown, would we even know it wasn’t pretty?” I can’t say for sure when my lifelong yearning for color started, but I was too little to even know what it was. ( I just knew that I hated my grey double-knit dress that made me feel ugly.)

God walked in the garden too, you know. It’s a great time to lay down my smallness and offer to join my work to His great work. I’ll just keep planting the pink and purple things in my bit of earth.

You Shouldn’t Forget the Marshmallows

Last week was a summery one, hazy skies of smoke one day, glittery sunshine the next, warm breezes, earth so dry that driving in the lane raised a cloud of dust. We planned a camping trip with the cousins at a park between our houses. Gabe is currently working in Altoona, so he was going to meet us at the campground after his three shifts were finished for the week.

With that in mind, we made lists and gathered supplies for camping before he left for work. My contribution is always the food and the comforts, such as bug spray and sleeping bags and making sure everybody takes jackets and socks for the nights. I have a tote with just camping gear: old dishes and utensils, cracked mugs, lighter, ratty tea towels and dishcloths, soap, bucket, dishpan, plastic tablecloth, foil, salt and pepper, etc. But I always have to inspect the tote to be sure nothing has gone AWOL or been emptied.

I’m also in charge of provisions, and experience has taught me that starving people aren’t very fun to camp with, so the criteria for meals is simple and nutritious. I can only pull out the Ramen or the instant oatmeal so many times before there are problems with the protein intake. With that in mind, I planned to make my Saturday meal mostly on our Coleman stove: grilled chicken breast, fettucine with Alfredo sauce, and green beans. Actual vegetables toted into the wilderness. I lofted my nose into the air at the thought of using canned Alfredo and bought cream and parmesan instead. This should have been a red flag in my own head that something was not working properly in my brain, but apparently it didn’t flag insistently enough.

I had a huge distraction in my week, because I realized that I would have to put my Father’s Day mugs on Etsy quickly so that I could ship them before we left so that people would get them in time for gifts. It wasn’t very many, but it took brain space and a number of hours posting and packing them. Would you like to see how they turned out?

This spring I messed with underglaze transfers on mugs and I was pretty happy with the result, even if they were fiddly. Anyway, I got the mugs sold and packaged, took them to the P.O. and then went right to Aldi’s for the groceries for camping.

I was keeping a list of things in my mind that I hadn’t written on my list, always a risky thing to do, especially when planning to cook things like Alfredo sauce in the woods. The girls and I gathered everything together for Gregory to load on the fishing boat as soon as he got home from work. I kept thinking of last minute things like shoes, a mattress cover for the air mattress so it isn’t so chilly, towels for the showers. Seriously, camping in a civilized manner means so much to remember! We got everything loaded and strapped down, the huge tote of tents and sleeping bags in the boat, two kayaks on top of that, and our backpacks and food in the Sub.

Setting up camp is always a jolly thing. Gabriel is a master at putting up tents and figuring out where the best places are for each thing. He did notice that I had bought the wrong kind of fuel for our aging camp stove so he and Greg went on a ride to pick up camp wood and the right kind of fuel.

The girls have a small tent they can erect by themselves and so does Gregory. I put the bedding on our mattress and noticed that I forgot our pillows, but oh well, we can always wad up some jackets or something to put under our necks. We circled our camp chairs around the fire and chatted with the cousins. Good times. Deluxe hamburgers and strawberry pie for supper made by my sister-in-law, Ruby. Enormous trees arching overhead, foxes yipping in the woods, cool air swirling. Ahhh.

At some point I French-braided the whole row of girls in what we call a “three-day-hairdo” and they hit the woods swathed in tick and mosquito repellent. The play was dramatic and absorbing. Lady took on the role of sniffer dog. I heard one small girl say to the dog, “Go find them, Killer.” The fiercest thing about Lady was her vicious tail-wagging excitement at being involved in the game, but she obliged them by sniffing everywhere.

We discovered that the camp bathrooms were the grossest we have ever experienced at a campground, and we have seen dozens. A dip in a river or a lake would be preferable for cleanliness, but at least the water was hot and you could wear flip-flops in the shower.

Bedtime was late, and the pillow situation was more problematic in our middle age than it used to be in our youth. We coped, though, and settled onto our mattress. Our new, inflatable mattress, I might add, that fits just right in the tent because Gabe did his homework and got the right size. I shouldn’t have read the reviews, because I was skeptical from the start, but that mattress definitely seemed to be losing air, just like the reviews said. Gabe was sleeping before we hit the ground, and I tried to sleep for a few hours, but gave it up as a lost cause about the time the raccoons found the tin pie plates from the strawberry pie and rattled them around. We had neglected to stow the trash out of reach and they were ready for the party.

Astonishingly, Gabe slumbered on, so I decided to crawl out and find a zero gravity chair for a bed. That woke him, and he did some troubleshooting, discovering that the one inflation valve wasn’t properly shut. After he inflated the mattress again with the last gasps of battery in our air pump, I gave it another try. It was better and I slept a few hours before we hit the ground again. That time I did crawl out and find a chair to tilt back for sleeping.

I drank real coffee that morning after my daughter suggested that I may be a little grouchy. It helped to enliven my weary bones and we had a lovely day. As I was assembling my ingredients for supper, I noticed a conspicuous lack of garlic. If you have ever had Alfredo without garlic, you haven’t had Alfredo. The small town of Tionesta was nearby, so we ladies went questing for garlic and found a cute thrift store with tiny withered ladies presiding over it “for the church”. Most things cost less than a dollar. Books for 10 cents? Is that even a thing anymore? Gabriel texted me to check if they have any pillows there. I didn’t see any.

When we got back, I assembled my ingredients. Gabriel tried to start the stove a-burning, but it would not hold the pressure needed to ignite the burner. After much trying, we gave up and made a plan for cooking over the fire. First the sauce, then the green beans, then we grilled the chicken and lastly made a blazing fire to bring a pot of water to a rolling boil for the pasta. It took forever. By the time the noodles were cooked, the rest of the food had cooled considerably under its foil covers. But it was good anyway.

The girls had seen a recipe for making Mexican s’mores by putting mini marshmallows and chocolate chips on a smear of peanut butter inside a tortilla. You fry them to melt all the gooey things together, and they had their hearts set on that even though I also had the ingredients for doing strawberry cheesecake dessert tortillas. Guess what? I forgot the marshmallows. By this point, I was ready to admit that my head was somewhere else when I was packing. I am quite sure it was busily thinking, because I was with it, after all.

Gregory saved the day by driving to a ubiquitous Dollar General about a mile out of town. Which raises the question: are you even camping if you are that close to a D.G.? And the answer is yes. In our neck of the woods, you practically trip over them all over the countryside and they are very handy too. If only we had told Gregory to get pillows.

We inflated the mattress again with a recharged inflater, very full, and very hard. That night it held. We stayed suspended on a brick, four inches above the ground for the whole night. The raccoons didn’t show up either, so we slept.

It was a good time. Relaxing, visiting, eating, drinking tea, and washing dishes in tepid water with questionable floating things in it. Everything packed down nicely and we came home to run the washer and the shower and to scrub the blackened cooking pots.

I was sinking into our wonderful bed when I got the text from my mom that her brother, Paul Miller, had died suddenly while taking a walk. In an instant, their family is changed forever. The shock and sadness of it kept me awake for quite a while, thinking.

What did it matter about pillows and marshmallows? What does anything matter in the face of loss and death? And how is it so easy to forget that we are all marching along to our graves?

My uncle Paul loved Jesus and he loved people. He had a tender heart toward anybody who was hurting or lonely, spending hours on the phone to stay connected with loved ones. That will be the part of him that will live on: his kindness and love.

I was thinking about this, and about the indisputable fact that we have to keep living in the world, living well, even though it will all pass away in the end. We buy Pampers for the baby shower, make finger jello for the picnic, and pick flowers for the table, all while marching step by step toward the day when we meet God. We do impractical things like setting up housekeeping in the woods and letting our children get gloriously dirty, making memories with their friends, presumably because we love them and we have only a certain number of days with them.

We keep living and we keep loving because that is what we are supposed to do. We are given this one wildly precious life and the people around us to share it. We pour out our love with funny things like marshmallows and story hour and French braids. I do not know how God takes the raw ingredients of what we offer to Him and to our loved ones and makes them a beautiful thing.

That is His work and He is good at it.

Straight on to Summer

We have had a beautiful spring that lasted about 11 days, and now we’re smack dab in summer. There hasn’t been any rain for almost 2 weeks, and with temperatures in the ’80s, we’re doing a lot of watering already. I was told by many people that northwestern PA is extremely wet, especially in spring. I did not expect to need drip hoses in my garden or watering cans on the daily for my potted plants. I am very grateful that we have plenty of water in our well and a creek where we can fill buckets for the baby apple trees we planted this spring.

I determined to finish planting every single thing by June 1st. At 6:00 tonight I was staring down the calla lilies my neighbor brought me, and the pink petunias I bought for the hummingbirds, and three packs of parsley, basil, and celery. I asked Rita, “Why did you let me buy this stuff?” I must stay away from greenhouses now, because I have an incurable urge to reach out and pick up plants when I see something new that I would like to try.

Happily I can say that I pushed through and 2 hours later I was watering and cleaning up. The garden is chock full, and the only seeds I didn’t plant were a few sunflowers that I decided we can live without this year. At this point I think I have planted every bit of space, but it remains to be seen what comes up. I can’t quite get used to waiting until after Memorial Day for a frost free date, but I learned my lesson last week when I got up one morning and saw actual ice crystals in my garden. I had to replant most of my tomatoes and peppers that I hadn’t covered because the forecast was a low of 40.

I repotted my house plants that are root bound and put them on the porches for the summertime. I like how it makes the house feel cleared out and the porches feel cozy.

I feel like I can take some deep breaths, just watch things grow, and pick herbs, and put bouquets in the house. It’s my favorite!

Rita has been mothering a baby robin that fell out of a nest very high in the tree. It had a small wound above its wing, and I was afraid it wouldn’t be able to fly. She has been very dedicated, feeding it worms and ground turkey and bits of bread (when she wants to give it a treat) every half hour for a week. Thankfully it sleeps all night, but it wakes up bright and chipper at 6:00 AM, gaping its little beak and begging for breakfast.

Tomorrow this girl turns 14, and she really wanted a parakeet. It has been over a year since hers died, and the pet shop in town didn’t have any when we checked for a replacement. Today when we stopped in, she found the yellow budgie of her dreams. I made a deal: the robin now lives on a low branch in the tree, not in the birdcage in the house. Everybody’s happy: me, the girl, the parakeet, even the robin.

This past week I saw a blurb someone had written about parenting. “My baby is growing so fast, we ought to get a one month leave from work every 6 months just so we can figure out how to parent for the next half year.” I understand what he was saying, but we don’t get to do that. I hate to break it to you, man, but you’re going to have to figure this out on the fly and that’s not all bad. I think about the bright little Amish children I see helping with their parents’ cottage industries, whole lines of them stair stepping. I can see how important they feel because they are helping the family and they know how to do things. It is a different sort of importance from what a child feels when his parents arrange their entire lives around his wishes and hopes. Pardon me, but I know which kind of child I prefer to spend time with.

I am at that stage of parenting where I am praying for grace to cover what I missed when my children were little, even as I continue to rely on grace for wisdom as they grow more independent. It’s all flying by and some day soon I’ll say, “It feels like it was about 11 days and then we hit another season.”

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I want to remember this season, of dependent yet independent children.

I want to remember how the girls sleep in their camper playhouse, or in the sun porch, or in tents, just anywhere is preferable to their bed in this freedom that is warm nights and no school schedule.

I want to remember them sitting at the table having a tea party with friends all proper, then running outside to the woods and cooking crayfish and snake steak over their fire for a snack.

I want to remember how it felt to have a yard sale and there were three cashiers that were not me, and yet they were still cute enough to sell iced tea and brownies.

I want to remember the lists I make for all this energy to be put to good purposes, and then the library runs, the reading breaks, and the easy, restful days because we have been diligent and the laundry is done and the dishes are washed and the floors are clean.

I want to remember and watch and be like Mary and keep things in my heart, and hope all things for them as they grow.

It feels a lot like gardening, and Jesus, please send rain.

Trying to Keep it Together

I have a soft spot in my heart for older gentlemen who wear both suspenders and a belt. Whatever else may be falling apart, they will endeavor to keep their trousers up, and I appreciate that code of honor.

This week the girls are finishing up all their school lessons. When I made their last fifteen assignments, they got a gleam in their eyes and started working like mad to finish up long before the three weeks in which they were assigned. I didn’t care at all, but found myself caught short with the customary celebrations. We have been homeschooling for fifteen years, and I have never before forgotten to order books for each child to unwrap at our end-of-school party, but this year somebody hinted and I looked foolish for a minute before I admitted that I forgot the party too.

The girls were chill about it, but a little disappointed, so I quickly opened Amazon and got on the ball. Addy wanted a detailed coloring book, and she actually got to choose her own. Olivia wanted books to read, of course. Rita was more desirous of a new hot plate for her cooking experiments in the playhouse. I worry about what this world of two-day shipping gratification will do to our children, but I also appreciate it. The ease and endless resources on the internets fuel a constant tension: help or hindrance?

I read an article this morning called “Social Media is Attention Alcohol” and it gave me lots of food for thought and a prick of conscience about wasted time. I kissed Facebook good-bye years ago, although I haven’t closed out my account because I want to be able to look back at my timeline for reference and photos. I am sure there are many who use this platform for good, but it no longer blessed me, so it wasn’t that hard.

However, I love Instagram. I unfollow any accounts that start to smell fake, although realistically we probably all put our best foot forward on this platform. I refuse filters and try hard to keep myself sternly real. And I sell my pottery mostly to my Instagram following (Black Oak Ceramics (speaking of which: I promised to let you all know when I do an Etsy shop update and I plan to do that this weekend, in time for Mother’s Day) ). So Instagram is a free and simple marketing tool for me. Not only that, but I get a lot of creative ideas from following others. For a self-taught potter, inspiration often comes from seeing what is possible if I work long and hard, but it can also plunge me into despair because of how little I know.

I ask myself if this is an attention hog in my life, and yes, it is on some days. It feels exactly the same as falling into story grip with a book, not all bad until the undisciplined ways catch up with me and interfere with healthy life and relationships.

I have hinted at the wacky hormonal issues of mid-life that nobody really wants to know about, but these issues have a way of bossing me around that was unfathomable to my young and well-regulated self. (There, was that ambiguous enough?) Anyway, I found myself at the beginning of the year with a quality of life that really cramped my style. I was lethargic, anemic, sleeping poorly, and not able to take a flight of stairs without feeling short of breath. I wasn’t sure I would be able to garden or take hikes, etc. come summertime, and I needed help! The doctor had nothing for me except, “It’s to be expected and it will probably last for years.” Cold comfort. “Maybe take iron or eat organ meats, and go on birth control to regulate your hormones.” Eww. I always hated how iron upset my stomach when I was pregnant, and so I started drinking spinach smoothies and trying to summon the strength to eat liver and onions.

About this time my sister told me about a product she saw on social media. (Imagine that!) It’s a freeze-dried beef liver supplement that is much easier on the queasy than the fried version. I was desperate, and hopeful and skeptical all at the same time. If you read reviews, you know how confusing that can be. Well, I have been taking these little liver bits in capsules daily for three months, and it seems to have been exactly what I needed. I am so very grateful to have energy and stamina again, and a normal life. I wouldn’t have heard about this or had any idea where to buy beef liver capsules without the internet. Nor could I have shared with you out of the love in my heart to spread good things. If I read the delicate references in the comments correctly, I am not alone in my quest for equilibrium in this season. 😉

Meanwhile, if you feel a bit beleaguered by the ordinary troubles that beset you despite your best efforts, consider this cardinal mother-to-be. She built her nest in the lilac bush, snugly under the awning. In the last week the leaves have opened and in the days and days of rain, they weigh down the branch enough to swing it out into the weather, just where the rain drips off the awning without relief. I feel so sorry for her, but she is steadfast, unmovable, abounding in the work the Lord has given her. The nest is tipped at an awkward angle, but her 21 days are almost up and there will be babies soon. I wish I could tell her that tomorrow the sun is supposed to shine.

I am letting nature preach to me, loud and clear. This is what she says:

Keep on with the good work. Get that party planned for your children. Pull on your suspenders or take your beef liver capsules, whatever it takes. The world won’t stop turning if you cop out, but there will be glory missing that is supposed to be there.