Sharon's blog

Heart Trip
Posted on Oct 14, 2011 9:25 AM

I always get a little restless in October. The summer is winding down, my heart remembers the scent of fall in the mountains. There's nothing like that scent; it's a mix of earthy fallen leaves, damp in the wild brush of undergrowth, fungi popping up overnight. It's the wood smoke from newly wakened wood stoves and fireplaces that take the nip from the chilly misty mornings. It's my mountain memories that won't let go.

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I was all caught up, I had some extra time, and the leaves here in western Kentucky had not really started their colorful fall parade. More than the color, though, I missed the scents of my childhood; the scent of the mountains. I had planned to visit some college friends in the eastern part of the state but one of them was sick and we decided to postpone our gathering for another time. I was left with empty days full of some kind of longing, an ache for my mountains.

It was only 300 miles to the edge of my mountains, I reasoned. Only 300 miles and I could be there. I know people all across the state; I'll just get in my car and drive. So without making arrangements for my kitties, knowing they'd be fine for a couple of days, I took off. I needed my mountains, if only for a day. I could do this, oh yes, I could!

And I did.

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I have no idea what the tree in the above right is. The misty morning air took away some clarity. It looks like giant magnolia leaves, and the seed pod is similar but smaller. Magnolias are evergreen, so what is this giant leafed tree with its fading leaves?  I was driving though, and didn't take time to really get out and explore; this was a heart trip, not a plant ID trip.

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I drove on, following the scent, stopping when a color caught my eye. Tiny though they were, the wild blue gentians grabbed me.

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And finally there it was, the color, brighter as the sun rose over the mountains clearing the mist; the day unfolding, just as days did all those years ago.

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And the blooms, those tiny fall blooms that one has to search for before they disappear into winter.

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Thistles and wild asters and scarlet sage!! If the morning mountain mist hadn't left everything so wet, I would have sat right down in the middle of all of them. It was that beautiful. My heart felt so huge, as if one more thing would make it spill over, and then there was one more thing.  A little mountain fed creek:

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It was the perfect day. Sometimes when we do the unexpected, even if it is only for a short time, we do more for ourselves than we could ever do with an itinerary and a plan. I only wanted to see my mountains, to smell the scents, to soak in the colors, to find my roots. That's all I wanted, all I needed. I crammed my heart full of memories, I found myself again.

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Looking now at the images, I realize I was craving nature's landscaping. I look around here and see my own feeble attempt, but I needed to see what nature does, not what I do. My roses have a heavenly scent, but it doesn't compare to the scent of fallen leaves, earthy and damp. And it doesn't compare to wood smoke wafting through the valleys and over the tops of trees. It's nature's own magic I needed.

Life can go on now.

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Hunter's Moon
Posted on Oct 9, 2011 11:36 PM

 

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The Hunter's Moon has been teasing me through my kitchen window this weekend, about 30 minutes later each night. Tonight it's making me wait, most likely till long after midnight. Sixty years ago right about this time I was out in the cane field watching Uncle Doc's old mule go round and round crushing cane till the juice dripped into the boiling pot below the crushing stones.

The Hunter's Moon is the first full moon after the harvest moon, which is the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox. That puts it right about the 10th or 11th of October. Seemed like it happened every year, we'd get a dry spell and that cane would be good and ripe and then it was time to make molasses. We've had a good long dry spell this year, I wonder if anybody is harvesting cane.

A lot of people used the nights of the Hunter's Moon to hunt, stock up on wild meat for the winter, mostly birds since they were most likely migrating about that time. And it was also a time to finish harvesting crops. A lot of people in those days lived by the moon, most of them didn't bother with a clock or a calendar.

   
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I wasn't interested in killing animals or stockpiling meat, but I was excited about making molasses. Seems like everybody came from all around and helped. It would take about all night long and the light of the fire beneath the boiling pot of sugar cane lit the faces of all the older men and women, feeding the fire, stirring the pot, making them seem like our red skinned ancestors conducting an ancient ritual.

The mountains were so tall I never could see much of the sky, but I knew as soon as the time was just right, the moon would peep over the rim of trees high above my head, and its light would brighten my world in the head of that holler. By the time it reached the other mountain and started falling out of sight, moms would be herding children, taking them back home to their beds. The men and some of the older grannies stayed and stirred the pot, fed cane into the crushing stones, making molasses. And the old mule went round and round.

The sweet sticky scent lingered in the holler for days, along with hickory smoke that took up residence and hovered over the roofs of our homes. By the time the moon waned till it was only a sliver, the smoke had drifted away, but the sweet tangy scent of boiling sugar cane lingered on the falling leaves and left behind only a memory.

Red faces, a tired old mule, the bright sizzle of a drop of boiling cane syrup hitting the fire; I can see it all reflected in the face of the same Hunter's Moon that hangs low over my house tonight. If I close my eyes, I can smell the tangy sweetness mixed with hickory smoke, and I can remember the first taste of hot molasses and homemade butter on Ninna's homemade biscuits.

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Purple Passion
Posted on Oct 8, 2011 11:57 AM

It was just a little plant, maybe 6 inches tall, and I'd been told to keep it inside. Mom said it wouldn't grow very big, but might vine a little and when it did, I should just trim it back.

It was the 70s. I had two very young children, babies really, and I was also teaching at that time. My husband traveled a lot for his job and sometimes he'd be gone a couple of weeks out of a month, maybe more. That left me alone with two children and a couple of hand me down houseplants, a teaching schedule and not a lot of time on my hands. Certainly not enough time to worry about houseplants.

I remembered to water the two plants occasionally. One of them was in a corner somewhere. It was a Snakeplant, known more formally as Sansevieria. Mom said it would just grow tall and I didn't have to worry much about it. It was an inside plant, too, she said.

I'd placed the vining plant, Mom called it Purple Passion, on my nightstand, just beneath an east facing window. She'd said it needed a little more light than the Snakeplant, in order to keep its deep purple velvety color. One morning I noticed that it had grown a little and was slightly dropped down behind the nightstand. I meant to trim it back as she'd told me but I was so very busy with growing children and a house to maintain I soon forgot about a growing vine.

I did manage to keep it watered. A couple of months passed. My husband would be home for a week here and there and the children were growing and I didn't have time for keeping an eye on houseplants.

Eventually I noticed a corner on my husband's side of the bed that needed straightening. He'd left papers and books and other assorted debris stacked there just beside his night stand. Ties, a sock or two. He was neat and never left clothes in a pile, but he was packing and unpacking often and quickly, so a sock or tie or a travel itinerary misplaced and left behind wasn't unusual.

I started cleaning that corner. I got to the papers, magazines, mail, and noticed smudges of purple on some of them. Purple ink? It wasn't likely that he would be using purple ink, but the purple stain was everywhere.

Purple Passion, Gynura aurantiaca, it had fallen to the floor behind the bed and had grown from my side of that king sized bed to his. I rescued what was unsmashed by books and papers, socks and ties, it must have been about 10 feet long, more green than purple. I remembered Mom telling me that it would root easily in water. I chopped that long vine into lots of small pieces and stuck them in water. They didn't even blink. They rooted and I had more Purple Passion than I knew what to do with. Every friend and neighbor anywhere near me got a beautifully potted purple plant that Christmas.

I told all of them it was a plant that grew very well if placed on a nightstand in the bedroom.

I don't have it anymore, and I can't remember what happened to it. Its descendants might still be in the neighborhood, but maybe not since most of those people I gave them to are no longer here. Now that I have more time and more space, I might take a look around and see if I can find another. It might enjoy life growing with my Pothos, Epipremnum aureum, on my nightstand.

   
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 I wasn't into picture taking this morning, and I didn't have Purple Passion around here anyway, so I borrowed images from Wiki Commons.

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Figaro
Posted on Oct 6, 2011 1:11 PM

Meet Figaro.

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He's a houseplant who spends May through October outside on my deck. The other six months are spent inside in the same spot beside the glass doors every single year.

I've had him for I don't remember how long, but years and years. He's now above the roofline of my house.  Once or twice I've pruned him to shape him up a little, but he doesn't take kindly to pruning and seems to revert always to his ungainly shape every time. It's useless to prune Figaro.

So then I started cutting back his top. He out grew my ceiling.

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That worked for awhile. The biggest problem I have is moving him. He's too heavy to lift; he should have been put on wheels years ago when he was a tiny little sprout. I just never thought he'd be with me this long.

He provided the perch for kittens. One time he housed my son's irate iguana for a few hours until son coaxed Oscar Iguana down and back into his cage with a bit of cantaloupe. At the time that iguana was about 3 feet long including razor sharp tail.

Critters and plants and children seem to grow fairly large in this house.

So it's October and Figaro needs to come inside. All my pleading and coaxing haven't even budged him. The weather around here is highly unpredictable and I don't want Figaro to freeze. He housed two families of cardinals in the spring. I want him to live to do that again.

Maybe if I remind him of his winter purpose . . .

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Sometimes I think plants, like critters and children, have a mind of their own.

I might never get this ficus inside for the winter.


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Painting and things
Posted on Oct 5, 2011 11:26 AM

Sometimes I get bogged down, glued to the computer, fingers flying over keys. Sometimes I get stuck in plant files, discovering new things to covet, new plants of interest. Sometimes I simply need to take a break.

Now that gardening chores are diminishing, now that there are no new blooms, now that the sun lays low on the horizon, the outside doesn't call to me as it did earlier.

So I paint. I write for an hour and I paint for an hour.

It keeps me busy, keeps my mind happy, and my fingers are glad to be doing something new and different.

This painting is a commissioned piece, and at this point only the far background is recognizable. You see, I paint from the back to the front, overlaying paint as I go. It will be a bit abstract, but the colors are to match the linens that decorate a room. It's a lake scene, but with abstract colors. As I move from the back to the front, the foreground will eventually show birch or sycamore trees lining the edges of the lake. A yellow lake? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

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And here are the colors I'm working from.

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Stay tuned.


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