Sharon's blog

Trees and color and waiting
Posted on Oct 28, 2011 4:49 PM

It's mostly been a dreary fall, till today.

Suddenly today it snowed in northeast KY, several hundred miles from me. I was jealous, how could they have snow when I haven't yet had fall? Some of the trees were turning here, but most were that dull gray green color that leaves become when they get tired.

We've had strange weather again this year. Floods in April worried all of us here in western KY since we are surrounded by rivers and lakes. They were fatal floods, too, taking lives and destroying homes and farmland.

That was followed by the heat of summer and the drought of August and September and cats on hot tin roofs.

I have a lot of trees, the largest are maples, three of them, two yellows and a red, and the old cottonwood that is as moody as a cranky old man. Sometimes he drops his leaves for no apparent reason, just because he can. But the other large trees are pretty predictable. In October they begin their subtle color change.

Not this October. They remained that dull dark green, defying all predictions of frost.  Finally the huge Japanese maple that was supposed to be only at most about 6 feet tall but is now nearing 20 turned from green to burgandy to red. It at least was following directions.

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In front, I have one defiant maple and one that seems to conform to the calendar. The defiant one is of course remaining green, even while it snows a few miles east of me.

   
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Oh but in the back yard the color is beautiful, gorgeous even, like it picked today here in the tail end of October just to make me laugh out loud.

   
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I think everything will be OK now.

It's all about Trees!

 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

Thank you, Joyce Kilmer!

[ Permalink | 7 comments ]

Another day
Posted on Oct 26, 2011 4:42 PM

So I'm not the most domestic creature that ever graced a kitchen, but when my Granny Ninna's cooking gene kicks in, I love to bake. I've been thinking about baking for awhile now, ever since my long time best friend made homemade waffles for me. I even thought so long and hard about it that I baked myself biscuits last night. And when I saw some starter for sourdough bread a few weeks ago, I grabbed it. It was one of those envelopes that held something somewhat dry and I'd never used it, but the other day I followed directions and started the starter. Sat it somewhere back in my fridge after the first day. I kept up with it, didn't forget it as I usually do.

Today was one of those ho hum, cloudy, dreary, all caught up, what am I going to do next, headachy days. My thought was to clean the fridge but it's fairly bare anyway, not much to clean. I caught a glimpse of the covered bowl back in the corner. The starter. 

I'd really rather be baking applesauce oatmeal walnut muffins, but the squirrels got into the walnuts I was drying and very few are left. I like a lot of walnuts in my applesauce oatmeal walnut muffins, so I'll save that for another day

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An apple stack cake crossed my mind but I have not a drop of apple butter and what's a stack cake without apple butter? One more saved for another day.

Or a blackberry jam cake. It's been awhile since I had the one in Iowa, middle of May, I remember. But I have no blackberry jam, another cake for another day.

Bread pudding, I'm the best at bread pudding, it's one of those making do things to bake, when you have no ingredients except leftover bread and raisins. But I had no leftover bread. Probably no raisins either. Another day.

Oh but!! If I make sourdough bread and have it leftover, I can make bread pudding, if I have some raisins. So sourdough bread it would be.

Did I tell you my cupboards stay bare? But I have a couple kinds of flour, some yeast, I don't need much else with the starter.

I made a loaf of sourdough bread! Heh! It's gorgeous and it tastes like heaven. A little butter, a spoonful of honey straight from a local beekeeper, and I will be eating like a diva tonight. Actually I already did eat, just a slice, just enough to make sure it was done to perfection.

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That was 2 hours ago. There's 7/8+ of a loaf of bread left. Ugh. I hardly ever eat bread.

But I'm thinking, tomorrow French toast, and maybe on Friday I'll just turn it all into bread pudding. I already have cinnamon. And nutmeg. A little brown sugar.

But the raisins are all dried up. Whoever heard of bread pudding without the bourbon raisin sauce?

But then I have no bourbon either.

Another day.

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[ Permalink | 35 comments ]

Mambo
Posted on Oct 22, 2011 10:32 AM

  Mambo
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This isn't about gardening.

Late yesterday afternoon I heard a scratch at my door. I wasn't expecting anyone or anything but I heard it again.

I opened my door and there on my doorstep was a very big black dog, eyes looking a little timid, tail wagging downward, head cocked a little tentatively.

On the other end of his leash was my son.

I stepped outside. My son doesn't have a dog. He gently tugged the dog back and  then he dropped the leash.

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One leap from the dog; I landed in the grass with about 70 pounds of black fur leaning against me.

"Hello Mambo," I said.

I don't know where that name came from, it just bounced from my heart to my lips.

"We just picked him up from the shelter; he's had his shots and a bath and the vet pronounced him healthy and well and about 8 months old. What do you think, Mom?"

By this time the dog was fairly well draped over me, neither of us planning to move anytime in the near future.

I knew the dog wasn't for me, my son knows I can't very well handle an animal who is nearly as big as I am. When Mambo finally un-velcroed himself from me, I could only answer my son, "He's so beautiful."

And indeed he was, this gorgeous mix of black lab with the speckled feet of a British spaniel, though the vet had said he looked to have the appearance of some Great Pyrenees blood flowing through.

They visited through the evening, my son, his girlfriend and Mambo. The dog had been 'dropped off' at the shelter that morning because he was getting too big for his 14 year old owner. He was a little hesitant but playful, chasing a ball, afraid to walk on wood flooring, leaping over brick steps, and settling on carpet.  When he began to feel comfortable, he decided to 'mark' his territory. They took him outside again then followed after him with a towel.

By the end of the evening he was a smiling, happy dog.

I wonder about people who 'drop' animals off. Mambo had been dropped off in the morning, left lonely in a place he didn't know. He'd been picked up by my son, taken to a vet to be poked and prodded and bathed. He'd ridden to a strange neighborhood and landed in my lap. Through it all he remained calm, if a little hesitant, and he never said a word.

Over the years I've rescued many birds and animals. They seem drawn to me as if I were magnetic and they land in my lap or on my shoulder or in my arms. And then they settle down in my heart.

Same thing with plants. My neighbor threw a rose away because it wouldn't grow in shade and because it wouldn't bloom and because it 'sprawled'.

I rescued it and planted it in sunshine and gave it a trellis where it lives and blooms and grows boundlessly as the climber it was meant to be.

And the vine that grew spindly and leafless in the dark corner of a friend's home, grows lush and full in the window of my bedroom.

And my cats. One weighed 14 ounces and I rescued her from a man I didn't know whose gun was aimed right at her.

I don't know what it is about gardeners but I think we are all in the rescue business. Who else finds old seeds and soaks and babies and begs till they sprout even if they've been hidden in an old envelope in the back of a drawer for the last 4 years? And who else goes out in the wild windstorm to prop up an over blown iris? And who else picks up a thorny cane from the ground, ties it to a trellis, and walks away with a smile in spite of the blood that drips from thorn pricked hands?

And who else would sit still as a stone and allow a hummingbird to chatter in her ear?

Only a gardener, one who boundlessly loves all of nature and its critters and its plants; we all seem to be in the rescue business.

So Mambo isn't mine, he'll live with my son and tomorrow he might have a different name; but at the end of the day, I think he realized he'd found a home in our hearts.

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And I'll bet that owner who dropped Mambo off at the shelter doesn't know a thing about gardening.

[ Permalink | 44 comments ]

Figaro, part 2
Posted on Oct 20, 2011 10:02 AM

  Figaro
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It took hours. Hours of huffing and puffing and begging and pleading and words I don't dare write.

But finally and against all odds, Figaro is inside for the winter.

It was rainy and cold but on Tuesday I hosed down the potted ficus and let the rain rinse him off. That was while he was still on my deck.

Wednesday wasn't much better but in late morning he and I began our trek across the deck to the door. Now my door has a ridge at the bottom frame, just high enough off the deck to cause a bit of a dilemma. It took another hour before I could nudge Figaro over that ridge.

In the meantime, my two house cats, neither of whom would step paw outside even if their lives depended on it, watched, knowing somehow that those words I can't print weren't directed at them.

Somewhere along the way, I lost the saucer that Figaro's pot sits in. I found it back somewhere on the deck and brought it in, placed it in the spot where Figaro would reside, just as he does every winter.

The saucer is large enough to accommodate his large pot, which also means it has a lip of about 2 inches. I wedged the saucer against my feet and started pulling Figaro upon it.

Figaro tilted, knocked the yellow lamp and orange watering can of poppies off the table. The poppies are silky fakes and the can is metal, so's the lamp, so that didn't matter. The cats thought the world had come to an end though and one jumped clear up into Figaro, screeching when he could find no foothold.

Figaro uprighted himself and left the saucer tilted upward. I'd only managed to get the edge of the lip beneath the pot.

By now the cat's outta the tree, leaving a mangled limb or two, but that didn't matter either since Fig has lots of limbs. I began trying to push that saucer and pull the pot so they finally would be in their rightful positions again.

It didn't happen.

I rested, had lunch, looked outside to see if a neighbor might be home.

Nobody.

By this time it was early afternoon, I was a little disheveled and disgruntled to say nothing of being highly irritated.

I started all over.  Again.

Same thing. The lamp fell over, the watering can rolled off and the cats ran for parts unknown. The saucer still tilted.

I called my neighbor. Between the two of us we got Figaro upright and in his saucer in a matter of, oh say, maybe a half hour.

"Do you need help with the other two," she asked.

"Huh? What other two," I gasped.

"The pine and the other ficus," she who was still full of energy said.

"No thanks," I lied. "I can handle them."

With a renewed sense of rightous indignation and determined that I would not again be outwitted by a plant whose life and death I held in my own hands, I walked her to the door.

By dark I had the other two reasonably cleaned, inside and in place. The cats were in hiding. The floor had been swept and I'd managed a shower after clearing the air of those blue words.

I glanced around.

I had forgotten to trim Fig's top. It was bent at the ceiling.

Norfolk pine Other ficus
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I'd used the ladder on Tuesday when I was cleaning Figaro. It was back in the garage and I'm not real excited about dragging it inside right now.

Later.

Figaro is just going to have to live with his bent top.

Let the winter begin.

[ Permalink | 17 comments ]

Heart Trip 2
Posted on Oct 17, 2011 11:49 PM

There's something about sunrises and morning moons; they simply touch my soul. In the midst of world chaos, my heart and my soul need that caress. My trip continued for a few more days; when one is searching for balm for the heart, miles don't matter much.

I found what I needed in the silence of early mornings. The sunrise whispered promises and the morning moon seemed to float just long enough to gently wish me good morning.

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It was such a little thing really, straight from my childhood. I could almost hear Aunt Bett and Uncle Doc arguing over chicory. Uncle Doc hated to dry it but loved to drink it. Aunt Bett didn't mind drying it and always kept it handy. It's just that she didn't really want to share with a lazy old man who should be drying his own. They werent related, they were only neighbors; one from one side of my family and one from the other.

"Go tell Betty Ann I need summa that chicry," he'd say.

"Here's the chicry, now you tell that lazy ol' man to dry his own," was her reply.

And I was caught in the middle, every single time. I loved it because when I walked in the door with that dried chicory, Uncle Doc pushed a can of sugar candy canes across the table to me. I used it to stir the half cup of chicory he always shared. It's no wonder I love strong coffee with just a hint of sweet.

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And isn't chicory's bloom the most beautiful shade of blue? I felt just like it added one more drop to my already full to the brim heart. 

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It was only a culvert, a very old one. The road that crossed it looked down on the mountain fed stream. I'd already dangled my fingers in the cold wet water, then I took a closer look at the stones. Someone cut those stones, placed them just so, perfectly arranged to hold the road back and the bridge up. They've been there probably close to a hundred years, patiently doing their job, never failing. I always notice the little things, those things that make a difference by merely doing the same job day after day, year after year. Lasting things, left behind by those who knew the importance of doing the best job they could do, no matter what it was.

And the fence, the steps, weathered only by time;  blending and working well with nature that surrounds them. I like to think we can do that, blending and working well with nature that surrounds us. I like to think that we don't hinder, don't take away, but instead we contribute, we support, and we protect.

   
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Heart trips are good for the soul, and if you look closely and listen carefully, you'll see and hear the bird that you didn't know was there, the one who says 'Thank You' to the rising sun and the morning moon.

 

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