Musical Deep Thrill

My era of big rock concerts is long past. The last one I saw was with my son and it starred the Dave Matthews Band and Santana.

Yeah, it was quite a show.

But one of the oddnesses of that concert was my reaction to the huge video screens onstage and at the back of the arena. I found myself watching them far more than I watched the stage. That's when I decided that too big was really too big.

So when I drove up to West Fairlee to do a story on the Vermont Instruments School of Lutherie and discovered they were hosting small, intimate concerts in their oversized living room, I was game.

And I have to tell you about the music we were treated to this past Saturday night when bluesman Scott Ainslie brought his collection of instruments, his incredible musicianship, and his vast knowledge of the history of blues to little West Fairlee.

The space holds no more than 60 people. There's bags of popcorn and bottled water out in the kitchen. Every seat is perfect.

Ainslie mixes his music with stories about the people who wrote the blues. He shows you how a mute on a steel guitar transforms it into an instrument that sounds distinctly African. He tells you how he made a one-string guitar out of a cigar box and a pool cue then shows how to play it.

He's got a banjo made out of a guord (with a wonderful, sweet sound). We learned about Robert Johnson and the difference between Delta blues and Memphis blues. He shared a few songs he'd written. He explained how Stephen Foster combined a gospel song he'd heard in a black church in the Old South with new words to make a compelling ode to mastering hard times.

It was, simply, one of the best concerts I've ever attended.

Seriously, check this guy out if you ever hear he's in town. Or you can listen to some of his music on buy it on his website.

Sundrops and the Power of Yellow

Sundrop, isn't that a wonderful name for a plant, especially one that looks like this. One of the other common names of this beauty is evening primrose but if you look that one up, you'll discover there's a wide variety of flowers in this family (the Oenothera) that slide around under the name evening primrose.

This particular beauty's Latin name is Oenethera fructicosa. It transplants easily, spreads rather nicely, tucks itself among the daylilies (which is quite an accompishment), and in the fall, it dies down to this bronze rosette that lies close to the ground.

One of my favorite plants and I figured it would brighten up your Tuesday.

One Good Joseph Bruchac Deserves Another

When I was growing up, my Grampa Hakala was the educational center of my life. He was probably in his late 50s when this picture of him with me was taken on the front lawn of his house in Boylston, Massachusetts.

Grampa had this way of getting you to do what you knew he wanted by setting the example and just simply expecting you to do your best. I think if I'd been smart enough to figure that out way back then and told him so, he would have been surprised, maybe smiled and then said to himself, "That Sonja. What will she come out with next?"

When Grampa "retired" from the factory where he worked, he went across the street to his neighbor and asked if he could plant a garden in the field next to the man's house. The neighbor agreed and the next summer, Grampa planted about three acres of strawberries, potatoes, squash, beans, onions, corn, you name it, in that field. He already had 75 cultivated blueberry bushes next to his own house plus several current bushes. (I swear I'm a devoted gardener and eater of veggies and fruit, locally grown if I don't grow it myself, because of Grampa and Grandma Hakala.)

Then Grampa built a stand next to the road where he could sell the produce.

Being the oldest grandchildren, my cousin Gigi and I (we were probably 9 and 10 when we started) took care of the stand. We also sorted strawberries, culling the good from the bad, because Grampa insisted on giving good value to his customers, who became legion. Seriously, they'd line up after church let out, waiting for us to bring the first berries in from the field.

We sold corn by the baker's dozen—always adding an extra ear for folks who bought less than twelve. We learned how to accurately add up the cost of three quarts of berries, two pounds of potatoes, some beans and beets, make change and treat people well.

And we witnessed how much others valued our grandfather.

He was my first and, I would argue, my best teacher. Many of my siblings and cousins get the same reverential tone in their voices when we talk about Grampa.

He's been gone for 30 years now and I still think of him nearly every day. I have a summer shirt of his and a winter sweater. The shirt is hanging in my closet right now and I touch it in the morning as I get dressed for the day. I do the same with the sweater in the winter.

Anyway, poet and novelist Joseph Bruchac obviously had a grandfather like mine and felt the same way about him. This poem is for them and it's found in Joe's book Near the Mountains.

Morning Song

My grandfather always rose with the sun.

It was his oldest friend.

The front door of the general store he ran

faced toward the east and he'd sit there

in a blue painted chair of pine cut from his woods,

waiting for those first rays to touch his face.

He grew stronger as the light moved higher,

hands moving like crickets coming back to life

among grass blades frosted overnight.

Then, before he'd stand to his long day's work,

he'd lift his palms and hold them there,

just long enough to cup the sun.

Birdfoot's Grampa

It's late and we just drove home after spending the evening with a dear friend over a wonderful dinner and watching the newest version of Alice in Wonderland, which was pretty good, actually.

The air is saturated, very humid, and it rained while were in Wonderland so the drive home was in and out of foggy patches. And they made me think of my favorite Joseph Bruchac poem. This is from his book, Near the Mountains.

Birdfoot's Grampa by Joseph Bruchac

The old man

must have stopped our car

two dozen times to climb out

and gather into his hands

the small toads blinded

by our lights and leaping,

live drops of rain.

The rain was falling,

a mist about his white hair

and I kept saying

you can't save them all

accept it, get back in

we've got places to go.

But, leathery hands full

of wet brown life

knee deep in the summer

roadside grass,

he just smiled and said

they have places to go

too

This Ain't Your Grandma's Nine-Patch: Quilt Festival, Part the Second

OK, to immediately give credit where credit is due, the incredible quilter who made this rendition of coneflowers (echinacea to all of you who use herbal meds when you have a cold or the flu) is Ann Fahl. For those of you who don't quilt or think that quilting is all about squares of fabric, I wanted you to know that the quilting universe is HUGE and full of color and incredible artistry.

This is just one of the many exquisite visual delights that got ooohs and aaaahs at the Vermont Quilt Festival (going on through tomorrow). The second tier of ooohs and aaaahs are what you can find at the vendors who are there for the weekend.

This year, I was not on a hunt for fabric because I had that major score just after my birthday. I was after tools. So this is my take (oops, just realized my porcupine quill didn't make it into the picture) from the festival.

This festival got its start the same year Jay and I got married, 1979. In this neck of the woods, it's considered one of the best shows of the year. Buses crammed with visitors come in from New York, New Jersey and Canada. You hear as much French as you do English which is really cool. Makes me think about Montreal, one of my favorite cities.

I met people from Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Québec, Ontario, Minnesota and every New England state. The teachers are just top-notch and everyone who took a class just raved and raved.

Years ago, Jay and I got introduced to this show by our friend Jenna. That was probably ten years ago, and I was deeply hooked. Been quilting ever since and enjoying it more every day. You could make a quilt a week (as if) and never do the same pattern or use the same colors in the same way twice.

And a Mom note for those who have been asking: I talked to her today and she sounded OK. She's getting a lot of help from the aides at the nursing home as well as from the nurses and my sainted sister Heidi. She's also getting a lot of visits and calls, something that really gets her juices going. When I told her our son was heading down for the 4th of July weekend, she oohed and then said "Oh my, what shall I wear?"

So we know she's fading but we're trying to make sure we all get time with her and her with us. She seems relatively upbeat for the circumstances. We were cracking jokes today, always a good sign.

But it's day by day and we all know that.

Quilt Festival, Part the First

Just got back from a day at the Vermont Quilt Festival and it was quite a day! I left at 7 this morning for my first of two stints volunteering (I was taking money for admissions) and got back about 8 p.m. after a second stint at admissions. You see, if you volunteer for four hours, you get first dibs for taking classes next year and with some teachers, that's really important.

Last year was rather dead. This year, the quilters were back with a vengeance! Lines at the vendors were two and three deep nearly all day and the vendors were all smiling!

And the quilts, as always, were amazing.

I was after adding tools to my growing collection of tools—a porcupine quill, a Purple Thang, a new kind of thimble (because I really need to use one but don't like to) and stuff I'll take a picture of tomorrow.

But I am beat so off to put my feet up for a while and then to bed.

And Now for Something Completely Schlocky

Like many women my age, I've been a mystery fan ever since I read my first Nancy Drew book. (Oh she of the roadster, perfect Daddy, and boyfriend named Ned Nickerson.) That was when I was ten and since then, mysteries have been my escape from reality, like television only much better.

But I'm not into the blood-on-the-page kind of mystery. I like my murders discreet, the characters at least moderately interesting, the writing worth reading, and the puzzle solvable by the reader because the writer plays fair and puts all the clues in the book. To do otherwise is cheating.

Some books fitting this description, such as In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson, really soar above the crowd. He's a really good writer, a Brit by birth who now lives in Canada, and for my money, Dry Season is his best book though everything I've read by him is worth the investment in time.

Other books fitting this description, such as Mrs. Jeffries in the Nick of Time (shown above and which I finished last night) are reasonably entertaining when you don't want to be taxed by too much thinking because you've got other things on your mind like your Mom's failing health and the poison ivy on your arms.

I couldn't read a steady diet like Mrs. Jeffries all the time. I'd be bored silly in short order. But there are days when they are perfect, like that dish of Ben and Jerry's when you're supposed to be on a diet.

Critter Sightings: Deep Thrill

First of all, I apologize for the really awful picture on the top left of this post but when I explain the circumstances, I'm sure you'll understand.

You see, there's a row of windows on the side of our house that look out over the White River. From our eating table (no dining room here so that term doesn't work), we look out over a comma-shaped rock outcropping where we swim and launch our kayaks, the downstream end of our island, and lying not far from the downstream tip of the island, there's a sizable gravel bank that's become pretty sturdy over time. That's what you see in this picture.

That and that darker spot topped with white in the center which is a bald eagle.

When my sharp-eyed husband spotted that bird early this morning, it was litterally standing-room only at the window as we all trained our binoculars on this spectacular bird.

If you're into Native American lore, the eagle is a very powerful sign, one to which you pay close attention.

A little while later, while I was working on my novel (I write in longhand), I heard a scratching sound, looked up and watched as a chipmunk ran across a screen window.

Still later, when I got Goldie so we could take a walk, there was a beautiful garter snake warming itself on the paving stones next to our house. Then I noticed that the first of the hundreds of day lilies that fill my garden closest to the road had opened. I just love these plants, beautiful, tough, resistant to pests, road salt, you name it. I am a big daylily fan.

And yesterday on our walk, Goldie and I almost ran headlong into a beautiful doe.

Critters and plants. They make the world go 'round.

Stones: A Complete Story in Six Sentences

We met on a riverbank one twenty-something summer, and you showed me how to make flat, round stones skip over the water. A week later, we took a walk along that same river where you delighted me by turning over white rocks to prove they were porcelain bits with blue feathers.

Over the years, we collected smoothed pieces of glass—mostly brown and green with the occasional blue—that accumulated in a jar we kept on our kitchen counter.

Our collection grew, and we added three children to our rock hunting tribe. Mae liked small greenish stones while Adam preferred quartz and Annie just liked to draw her name in the sand.

When you left this life during an afternoon nap, I found a round, flat stone cupped in your hand, and I knew you waited for me on the other side.

The Serene Footsteps of the Year

One of my personal goals in life is to slow down enough so that I can truly see what is going on around me. I want to do this so that I can watch the natural world's journey on this remarkable piece of land where I live with my husband, son, dog and cat.

For as long as I can remember, I have felt more at ease, more at peace, more alive outdoors than in. I know this is why I garden because I don't care what kind of snake oil anyone is trying to sell you, the only way to garden is at the speed of a biological organism.

Slow and observant.

I'm attracted to novels that do this, that keenly observe humankind. It's why I love Edith Wharton and E.M Forster and E.E. Milne and Alexander McCall Smith and others like them. They know it takes time to get to know people.

My favorite non-fiction writers are the ones who take me deeper into Lady Nature's domain and Henry Beston is, in my opinion, one of the very, very best at this. His Outermost House brought tears to my eyes the first time I read it because he saw, so very clearly, what damage we were doing to Gaia back then. He also was a witness to the power and beauty of the sea in a way that I've never read anywhere else. Barbara Kingsolver exerts this same power in her book of essays, High Tide in Tucson. Craig Childs does the same in The Secret Knowledge of Water and William Least Heat Moon in PrairyErth.

So imagine my delight when I found a copy of a new-to-me book by Henry Beston, Herbs and the Earth, at the Five Colleges Book Sale in April. This edition was published by a renowned book publisher, David Godine of Jaffrey, New Hampshire with exquisite woodcuts by John Howard Benson so it is truly a gem.

I've done some research on Beston and discovered he was married to one of my favorite children's authors, Elizabeth Coatsworth, that he was born in 1888 and died the year I graduated from high school, 1968. AND that he wrote two books of fairytales that I've got to go find.

This is an excerpt from the opening chapter of Herbs and the Earth for you to enjoy on this fine Monday:

***************

A garden is the mirror of a mind. It is a place of life, a mystery of green moving to the pulse of the year, and pressing on and pausing the while to its own inherent rhythms. In making a garden there is something to be sought, and something to be found. To be sought is a sense of the lovely and assured, of garden permanence and order, of human association and human meaning; to be found is beauty and that unfolding content and occupation which is one of the lamps of peace.

…The gardening ancients were wise. Flowers for them were but an aspect, an incidental loveliness of something near to man, living and green. Plants were identities, presences to be lived with, known, and watched growing; they were shapes and habits of leaves, powers, fragrances, and life-familiars. A sense of form gave the garden its tranquility, and one might hear there, in the full of one's own peace, the serene footsteps of the year.

Coming, Going and Gone: A Hot Air Balloon Odyssey in Six Pictures

Symphytum officinale (Comfrey)

As I've written before, the plants in my gardens arrived here from several different places. Some from friends, some from plant stores, and then others such as this comfrey that I like to think I rescued from the wild.

Comfrey leaves and stalks are among the fuzziest I know in the plant kingdom. Once the flowers bloom and the stalks reach their maximum height, somewhere between three and four feet, the plant goes into prone mode. If you don't cut it back, it will smother nearby plants.

But comfrey is like chives in that you can cut it several times during a season and it just keeps coming back for more. It's really a handsome plant and I love it in the garden. But beware that once it's established, it cannot be vanquished and you'll find smaller comfreys popping up here and there.

Comfrey's common names—boneset and bruisewort—reveal the plant's uses as a healing herb. The leaves, if prepared as a poultice and applied to a skin abrasion, are very soothing. Dried, powdered comfrey leaves (which include allantoin, a chemical used in some pharmaceuticals to promote cell growth) are also helpful for healing if sprinkled on a wound.

Blue Columbine

We're getting close to the end of the columbine season in my yard but before all of the blooms are gone, I wanted to add this to my list of sixty plants for the year.

The family name for columbines is Aquilegia and the one pictured here is a hybrid from the McKana family.

When the blooms first open, the outer petals are definitely more the in the world of purple than the world of blue. But as they linger in the garden, they age toward the bluer end of the spectrum.

In sun, the flowers grow to approximately hip height and sail airily over the leaves. In shade, they are about 10 inches shorter.

The idea for the year with my plant collection is to photograph them at different stages, to nature print the leaves (apply back of leaf to well-inked stamp pad then apply leaf to art paper) because it's not possible to print most flowers (too 3-D) and then create a small quilt of each plant with appliqué and embroidery during the winter. There are a couple of other parts of this project that I'm ruminating about but no decisions have been made.

So plant 2, Aquilegia: McKana hybrid.

My Mother's Hunger Strike, Month Four

My Mom is on a hunger strike in her nursing home. I'm not convinced she would agree with that statement per se. But she's not eating, hardly anything, she's rapidly losing weight, her kids are very concerned, and so is her doctor.

Let me lay out the scenario at Mashpee Rehab and Care for you. The building is about 40 years old, is pretty well cared-for (though it's got one of the darkest, least welcoming lobbies I've ever seen), the lawn is mowed, the hallways are clean.

The staff is thin on the ground—not by their choice but by corporate choice. Remember, the whole reason to house older people and folks needing rehab is to make money.

So if you need help eating because you're hands are weak or they shake so bad you can't manipulate eating utensils (like my Mom), forget it. At mealtime, the staff has little time to do more than deposit food (and I use that word with caution) on a wheeled hospital table then move on to the next resident.

I've been listening to my mother complain and complain and complain about the food at Mashpee Rehab for months and I have to admit, much of what she said kind of sailed right over me because my Mom is a renowned picky eater. But now she sends most of her meal trays away untouched. She says that just the smell rising from the plate makes her gag.

My sister agrees that the quality has been going downhill for a while but she didn't think it was as bad as Mom claimed. But now Mom's health is being compromised because she won't eat what she calls "their garbage." So I went to see for myself.

My Mom was not kidding, at all, not one bit.

See that picture at the top of this post? Breakfast. Waffles (straight from the freezer to a plate near you) that are so soft, they cannot be cut with the plastic (yep, plastic, how's that for waste?) utensils provided with every meal. No butter on the waffle (which wouldn't have melted anyway because it was stone cold) and syrup that my Mom cannot open.

Then there's the cereal. Carbohydrates on top of carbohydrates.

Then of course there's the toast. Hmmm, three carbs? Are we loading up for running a marathon or are we just cheap? The toast, white bread with no known nutritional value, is dry.

OK, let's say it all together—Yummy!!!

Now the other tray full of food (?) is supper. See that light brown circular thing toward the bottom of the picture? That is half of a frozen, fried, breaded, thin-as-a-dime chicken patty on a dry roll. No lettuce, no tomato, no mayo.

And if you watched the shows about Jamie Oliver trying to get good food into the schools of America, you know what chicken patties are made of—the leavings, the scraps, the guts and the bones left over after you take away everything that can be sold for a higher price.

See that little, covered plastic cup? That's mustard—for the chicken patty I presume, but who knows.

Then there's the veggie side dish, chopped cucumber. I touched it after I took this picture because I was sure the cuke was old. It was, as I suspected, slimy to the touch.

And then, of course, there's the dry roll over on the side to go with the dry roll that the dry chicken patty is sitting on.

And for dessert, oooooh it's everyone's favorite, synthetic-tasting pudding that honestly would have had no flavor at all if it wasn't for the powdered milk in it. When I asked my Mom if she knew what it was supposed to be, she said she had been told it was lemon.

Right.

So Mom's not eating anything they put on a tray and bring to her room. She's living on what my sister brings in. We're paying taxes for Medicare and Medicaid, both of which my mother depends on, for facilities that are understaffed, where good food has absolutely no place on the corporate bottom line, and where helpless people are used for the profit they make for others.

Now I ask you, what economic sense does it make to put crap on a tray that no one will eat so it can be thrown away instead of investing in good food in small portions (older people are not renowned for their huge appetites) that would help folks stay healthy?

Why, perfect economic sense if you're the owner of a nursing-care facility that gets a lot of federal money because—wait for it—you make more money on sick people. All those pills, the reimbursement on them means more for the corporate bottom line.

The corporation that owns Mashpee Rehab, by the way, is Sunbridge Healthcare in New Mexico. Not that I think putting their name here matters to them a whit. Shame isn't in the budget.

A Trip to Cider Hill

The pink, red and white peonies in our yard were a present from a dear friend who lives just up the hill from us, Vivian Moore. She gave us root stock of the ones in her yard after we raved about the luscious color of the red flowers she brought to our door.

It's been three years since I planted those roots—not knowing a thing about caring for peonies—with little more than the well-known gardener's prayer: "Please grow. Please grow."

The first year, I was delighted to get stems, stalks and leaves with a couple of buds that never opened. The first year is always difficult for any transplant whether it's a person, pet or flower.

Last year, the second year, we got some flowers. Success!!

Then this year, we got an abundance of incredible blooms and found ourselves falling in love with these beguiling flowers. So when we saw an ad in our local paper for a peony talk at Cider Hill Farm (www.CiderHillVT.com) down in Windsor, we knew we were going.

It poured, buckets. But as we drove down the twisty dirt road, the pretty was so pretty (as Jay says, there isn't much ugly in Vermont) and the rain didn't matter.

It mattered even less when we arrived. Cider Hill Gardens is the passion and project of Sarah and Gary Milek. Gary (www.GaryMilek.com) is a local artist whose renderings of our flowers and landscapes is well-known beyond the borders of the Upper Valley. And Sarah is a remarkable gardener.

Visiting their gardens is not like driving to your local plant emporium to pick up a six-pack of pansies and your annual supply of tomato plants. Nope, this is an experience in landscape. There's a garden of big-leafed plants surrounding a Japanese maple on the opening curve of their driveway. The garden shed looks as though it sprang from root stock instead of being built by human hands.

If you take a short walk up a rise, you get to wander among several inviting displays of hostas, unusual shrubs, and display trees. The principle peony bed lies on the downhill side of the house. That's where Sarah introduced us to plants with names such as Avalanche and Dinner Plate.

The photos here were taken by my husband, just a sample of the digital wonders he brought home. In the fall, after our new peony bed is dug, we'll return to Cider Hill to select a few beauties to take home.

Really, if you love gardens and idyllic settings, add a trip to Cider Hill Gardens to your list. You'll fill your quota of oohs and aaahs for the day.

Happy Birthday, Little Sister

My "little" sister Heidi turns 50 years old today. While she doesn't look too much like this picture (taken when she was about two), the haircut is about the same.

You'll notice, since this is called the Power of 60 project, that Heidi is ten years younger than I am. Under many circumstances, this age difference would be formidable and perhaps it was when I was 19 and she was nine. But over the years, it's disappeared and we find ourselves good friends with more than the average number of shared experiences.

Which is why I am making a Friendship Star quilt to give her for her birthday. The top's been done for a couple of weeks and it was a featured star at my quilt guild meeting where it drew a number of oohs and aahhs. But then it got hard to find the hours needed to get the back done then the quilting and binding. (My gardens were screaming and after a full day outside, it was all I could do to stay awake until bedtime.)

But the back will be done tonight and I can start basting the three layers together tomorrow night.

So it's very close to done and my dear friend and sister will have this to adorn her couch at home or in her RV very soon.

Happy birthday, little sister.

I love you.

Son

Lemon-Poppyseed Bread: An Improvised Recipe

I'm not much of a chocolate fan, a fact that baffles my husband and many of my friends. It's not that I don't like chocolate—on a cold winter day, there is nothing like hot chocolate (unless it's hot, homemade soup).

But I don't crave it above all other edibles. It's just that I like other things better—like lemon.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried a new-to-me recipe from a whole grains cookbook from a great Vermont-based business, King Arthur Flour (www.KingArthurFlour.com) that's located just north of us in Norwich. Among other ingredients, the recipe called for softened sweet butter (unsalted). Now this is something you have to plan for, softened butter, and at that point, I had the time so I let a stick sit on the counter for 30 minutes, and we were good to go.

But this past Sunday, my husband, son and I found ourselves together at home for the first time in a month, the house really needed a good cleaning (we get lax when there's so much to do outside) so we cleaned because it is much quicker with three of us involved. We call it the "divide and conquer" cleaning method.

The problem was, Jay and I were due at a strawberry party that friends of ours hold every year in June, I forgot to take butter out of the fridge, and time was growing short.

So I hurtled around in my other cookbooks and found a different King Art recipe in my old standby—The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. Honestly, if you love to bake at all, this is a classic. Their PDQ muffins and One-Pan Cakes are so worth the price of the book.

Anyway, I found a lemon bread recipe calling for melted butter (yay!) and adapted other parts of it to fit the ingredients I'd already assembled including my absolutely most favorite yogurt in the world, Butterworks Farm Lemon Non-Fat. (This is another great Vermont business, sustainable, wind-powered and organic. Check them out here: www.ButterworksFarm.com)

Here's the new-classic recipe for Lemon Poppyseed Bread.

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 teaspoon lemon or orange extract

1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about what you get from one lemon)

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups King Arthur unbleached flour (hey, it's an adaptation of their recipe!)

1 teaspoon baking powder (be sure to buy aluminum-free)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup Butterworks Farm Non-Fat Lemon Yogurt (or other plain or lemon yogurt)

grated rind of one lemon

1/4 cup poppyseeds

Mix the melted butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, extract, lemon juice, lemon rind and poppyseeds. Add the yogurt then the baking powder and salt. Mix well then add the flour and stir until all the flour is moistened.

Grease a loaf pan, fill it with the batter (it's thick) and pop into a 375 degree oven for 50 to 55 minutes.

After you take it out of the oven, let it sit in the pan for at least 20 minutes. Then slide a butter knife around the edge of the pan and take the bread out.

Serve warm plain or with butter. Also awesome with slice strawberries.

OK, OK, I Can't Read Just One...

...Harry Potter book in a row.

I finished number one, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, on Friday night and I was planning on picking up Henry Beston's Herbs and the Earth.

But the tug of just whipping through a book for fun was just too much.

Actually, I like re-reading books like this because I don't really have to pay attention to the plot. I can pay attention to details such as the way she handles dialogue (a skill that's more difficult to achieve than you'd suspect) and how details that become so important in the later books were right there from the beginning. She didn't waste anything.

So I'm off on number two, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, while trying to also finish a quilt for my sister. Getting there!

Purple Dragons

There is a family of plants called Lamium that creep along the ground and have variegated leaves. Their common name is dead nettle which sounds awful for something so beautiful but I think this may be because they prefer shade (older cemeteries are often shady) and when their flowers are past their bloom, they turn dry and brown.

The Lamium pictured here doesn't do that, the dry brown part that is. This is a cultivar (a plant bred for a specific trait) of Lamium maculatum called Purple Dragon. (Isn't that a cool name?) The individual flowers rear up like a head (this trait is often called a turtle head) and the color, well in my opinion this is one of the best purples you will find in the botanical world.

It grows very low to the ground, no more than 4 inches at its tallest, and the leaves are always this color. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it in the shady backyard of a house my friend Carrie owned.

It does spread but not too fast, loves shade, really does a good job of keeping weeds out, and blooms for a long time. Gorgeous, isn't it?

And a George update: our sixth cat spent five nights outdoors and last night he appeared just as my husband was walking from my office to the house. They meowed at each other for a while and Jay must have said something significant because George stationed himself by the front door and yowled to come back inside.

So we opened the door. This afternoon, on a suggestion from my sister who once had two cats who pulled the same stunt on her, we bought a whole new litterbox rig to make absolutely sure that the smell in the plastic was obliterated.

We've decided to let him out if he wants to go but when I opened the door for him this morning, he turned around and walked away.

We'll see how it goes.

On My Honor, I Will Try—Thrill Number 9

One of the best results—so far—of my Power of 60 project is actually this blog. Writing about incidents, sharing a perspective or my garden, talking about a beloved book means slowing down to notice details, really notice, and savoring moments.

A couple of weeks ago, the young women pictured here in their Girl Scout uniforms came to the Upper Valley SewOp for help working on badges that gave them the chance to revamp, revise or embellish clothes they found at one of our local used-goods places called Listen.

I don't know when you last had the opportunity to be in a room with ten young women all about the age of eleven but I do believe you could have powered a small city with the energy they brought to the room.

And that energy—and no-boundaries creativity—lifts you right off your seat which is a very good thing.

Last night, my co-volunteers and I attended the badge ceremony and fashion show these young women put on. This picture was taken right at the beginning, just before my camera's batteries failed, so it's precious.

And we got badges too plus some deep purple petunias for thank yous. Very cool.

All Together Now—Ooooh, Babies

The newest addition to my extended family—a second son for my oldest brother—arrived late last summer in a flurry of unintended excitement because he was more than a bit early. But over the past nine months, Christian has caught up with himself.

Last weekend, Christian became the center of attraction for a gathering of folks who are part of an RV club (recreational vehicles) that my sister and brother-in-law belong to. You would have thought that Elvis was back in Vegas for a new live show.

Every woman there cooed at least once, several held him, he got carriage rides from others and fed by one smiling face after another. You know how it is, a pair of sweet cheeks and you just wow all the girls.

Since I live further away, I've only had the chance to spend time with Christian once before. This time, I got to hold him while he slept, and remembered all over again that sweet peace that radiates from a child who trusts the world completely.

Thrill number eight, hardly cheap.

When Life Gives You Sour Milk, Take the Time to Smell Pink Peonies

It's been a static-filled week so far and it's only Wednesday.

There's the saga of the cat which I wrote about yesterday. There's the quart of milk I had to pour down the sink because it had started to turn. (When it floats in your morning tea, you know it's time.) A small thing but considering it happened on the same morning I took the cat to the vet, I decided it was probably a warning of a cold front moving through the atmosphere of life.

Then this morning, my husband discovered we've had a second tool stolen from our property. This story starts about the time of my birthday when we realized that a cordless drill left on the floor of his company truck was gone.

This morning, it was a missing antique block and tackle which we use for moving really heavy stuff. It was taken from our unlocked garage. (No one locks much of anything around here, until now.) So I called the police. Not that we're going to recover the tools, mind you, but it adds to the saga of the thief—IF he or she is ever discovered.

Then when Goldie and I reached the north point of our land on our morning walk, I find a local professional fisherman, who's been chased off our land before, standing there giving a customer a lesson. When I point out that he's on private property, he says "Oh, I didn't see your signs."

Which means, of course, that he knew it was private property but just hoped he wouldn't be caught. Living on a river means too many people think your land is public so they leave trash and destroy plants because the land isn't theirs. For 16 years, we've been pushing back with no trespassing signs, and when things get rough, calling the police to have folks escorted off our property.

And I'd be willing to bet we've heard every dumb excuse for trespassing that has ever been devised.

Dealing with trespassers always makes me feel invaded. Add that to the cat going weird and the thefts and it's been a less than stellar week.

Sigh.

I think I need to go stroll in the garden.

The Sixth Cat

My family is into animals. We all love dogs and cats. We got our first cat, an older lady named Lucy that we rescued from a pound, when our son was about eight years old. Lucy was an amazing hunter—she even brought home a dead snake once—but then one night she disappeared forever. We lived in a very rural area then, and had seen fox in the fields so we've always assumed that our little huntress was hunted in her turn.

Then there was Birdie, a long haired beauty we got from a local family. After a while, she decided she was a house cat which was fine except that we expected her to do her business outdoors in good weather. In the winter, we provided a litterbox in the garage attached to the house. But Birdie decided she never wanted to go outside at all so she started using the upstairs of the house for her business. An argument erupted between us, leading me to chase her every morning to put her outside. When she disappeared soon after we moved to our current home, no one in our house was upset.

Cats three and four were brothers, Freddie and Barney (yaba, daba, doo) who came to us through friends. They were absolutely fantastic. Freddie proved to be a remarkable gymnast, climbed everything. Barney was the more cerebral type. They took walks with us in the woods. Freddie even trailed us on the ice when we snowshoed to our island in the winter. I have a vivid memory of watching Barney investigate a pair of great blue herons who were fishing in the river one fall morning.

They were happy and so were we.

Then Barney disappeared. We looked, we called shelters, we put up posters, we called and called his name but Barney was gone.

I know that some people believe that animals don't grieve but I'm here to tell you that that's nonsense. Freddie grieved, hard. I remember one night, about a week after Barney disappeared, when Freddie crawled up on our bed to lay between my husband and I. He literally sighed and stretched out a paw toward my hand. I reached out my fingers to stroke the paw. He sighed some more while I cried.

Don't ever tell me that animals don't feel pain just like us.

Three months after Barney disappeared, just when we thought that Freddie was finally recovering, he was hit by a car. My husband found him very soon after it happened. Freddie was still warm when we buried him in our front yard near his favorite climbing tree.

No more cats, I said. Too painful.

But my husband started yearning for the sweetness of a kitten so for Father's Day, I found a sister and a brother in a shelter, both black, and brought them home. George and Gracie we named them. And they were going to be inside cats. No more losing our pets to the road or foxes or coyotes.

This pair proved to be a challenge—eye infections, heart murmurs, Gracie's vehement insistence on going outside, George's inability to keep food in his stomach no matter what we did. And finally, about four years ago, I discovered that one or both of them had decided to use a corner of our finished downstairs as a toilet. We had no idea which cat was causing the problem. We kept cleaning, consulted the vet, tried this and that but to no avail. Finally, at wit's end, we put them outside before our whole house smelled like a litterbox.

A week later, Gracie got hit by a car but lived to crawl home. After an agony of guilt and indecision, we had her put to sleep. My husband still agonizes over that decision. He was the one who held her, wrapped in a towel, as I drove us to the vet on a very rainy Sunday night. On the way there, Gracie was calm, looking straight at him as if she believed that he would save her.

She is buried in our front yard too, not far from Freddie.

The day after we buried Gracie, we discovered that George had a urinary tract blockage, and it's not too much of a stretch to figure that he was the original cause of the out-of-the-litterbox problem. A thousand dollars later, he was back home, eating very expensive cat food and taking Prozac to help ease him back into a normal routine.

Really, I think we should have been the ones to get the Prozac because giving George pills is very difficult. He's normally a placid cat but he becomes an enraged panther when faced with medication.

Fast forward four years to last month when I discovered that George's bad toilet habit had returned. I cleaned it up, cleaned everything having to do with that part of George's life, and hoped for the best.

A week passed and all was OK or so we thought. But when I was gone last weekend, my husband discovered that George had returned to the scene of his crime to commit it again. He was reprimanded severely and the area cleaned again. But he returned to the scene of the crime, and committed an even worse offense. When the solid waste was found, George was unceremoniously booted out of our house to sleep outside.

Yesterday, I got him to the vet to see if the original problem had returned but there was no evidence that there's anything medically wrong with him. On top of that, the vet said that the solid waste indicated a behavioral problem, notoriously difficult to cure in cats. It felt as if he was flipping us his middle finger in that universal gesture of disrespect for reasons that escape us entirely.

When I got him home, we set up a warm place for him to sleep in a shed with an open door, and put out food and water. We can't trust him in the house but I feel guilty and sad, as though a friend suddenly stopped talking to me and I don't know why.

This solution doesn't feel right and yet I don't think putting him in an already overwhelmed shelter is an ethical choice because it's our problem, not theirs. And yet abandoning him to the dangers of the outdoors when he's lived indoors all his life doesn't seem right either. Vets will not euthanize an animal because of behavioral issues, which I can understand, but I can't help but wonder if that would have been the more responsible choice in this instance.

I mean, what do you do with a ten-year old cat who has a heart murmur, who's into what one vet called "sport puking," and for reasons unknown, won't use a litterbox any more?

One thing is for sure—the no-more-cats vow will be upheld this time.

Update: George may have disappeared. We haven't seen him all day, and when we checked the spot where he was hiding before, he wasn't there. His food doesn't seem to have been eaten though the bowl was empty this morning.

Last night, my husband said that sometimes, animals want the freedom to go off by themselves to die. Is that what this was all about?

The Heroine with a Thousand Faces

In Persuasion by Jane Austen, her main character, Ann, observes that all books are written by men so the voices of women cannot be heard. That's not quite so true any more but it occurs to me, as I start reading Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the first Harry Potter book together, that there's no good definition of a heroine.

(Just a note that I often read two books at a time, particularly when I know that one of them, like Campbell's book, needs to be slowly chewed. I switch back and forth between the two books, depending on my mood when I get into bed to read.)

I mean, what would you put in a book called The Heroine with a Thousand Faces? Is Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett a heroine? How about the goddess Athena or the women fighters called Amazons? Even though Cleopatra is an historical figure, do the legends that surround her make her a heroine?

Then there are the females in fairy tales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood. Are they heroines? If so, what did they do to achieve that status? Are witches heroines or male interpretations of independent women as many feminists have suggested?

Are motherly qualities the defining characteristics of heroines? Actually, when you think about it, there aren't many folk tales, myths or legends about mothers. The usual fare are wise women who give advice, witches who wreak havoc or young women who stir up desire.

What is a heroine?

And One for the Guy Behind Me

I just returned from a weekend trip to Cape Cod to spend time with my mother and do some investigating into the living conditions in the nursing home where she lives. More on that as the situation develops because lots of us share these concerns.

But I wanted to share a thrill I got on Saturday morning on my way from my sister's house to the nursing home. There's a Dunkin Donuts on the way there, one of the few places you can stop on the Cape at this time of year where making a lefthand turn out of the parking lot isn't impossible.

My Mom loves good, black coffee. No lattes, no espressos, no flavors, just good black coffee. So I stopped to get her a small cup and a hot tea for me. As I started to pull money from my wallet, the man who had been waited on before me handed his debit card to the cashier to pay for his purchases and said "Add hers to mine."

I was surprised and immediately thought of doing that genteel refusal thing we all know so well: "Oh, no, that's OK. But thanks."

But then I stopped because a sweet, spontaneous gesture like that would die if questioned. My son, when he was a little boy, coined a great expression for times when something upsets an otherwise good day: "You broke my day."

Somehow, I knew that turning this man down would have broken his day--so I immediately accepted. The cashier and I looked at one another as he turned away to get his food and she mouthed the words "Do you know him?"

I shook my head and then she said "Isn't it a shame that when someone does something nice, we think it's weird or bad?"

I agreed but then said "Let's just appreciate this as nice."

When I told my sister the story, she related how a friend of theirs always pays the toll for the car behind him whenever he travels, just to do it. Now my sister and her husband do the same. So on the way home, at the NH toll booth in Manchester, I handed the cashier two dollars, one for me and one for the guy behind me.

In return, I got a smile on my face that lasted for several miles.

Taking Care of Our Moms

My Mom is 82 years old. This picture of her was taken when she was 16, about the time she met my father. You can, I think, understand the attraction.

She's had 8 children (I'm the oldest) and one miscarriage so her body's strength has been tested several times. My father died, after a series of debilitating health challenges, in 2002. About six months before he passed away, he and my Mom moved together into a nursing home in Mashpee, Massachusetts. My sister has, ever since, been the go-to person for my mother's care. Because I live four hours away, I function as her backup, the place where she can go for extra help, to talk, to commiserate.

We've been doing a lot of commiserating lately.

Mom is visibly fading, like a balloon slowly losing its air. It's where we're all headed so it must be accepted. But the thing is, the nursing home's quality of care has declined to the point where they are actively contributing to my mother's decline.

The place, on Route 28 in Mashpee (this is on Cape Cod) is on its third set of owners since Mom and Dad arrived. It was originally chosen because of its proximity to my sister's home and because its management and managers were running a quality facility. Not extravagent but caring.

Now it's owned by a firm called Sunbridge out of New Mexico. And it shares the same values as other corporations such as Wall Street and British Petroleum and Walmart. And those values can be summed up in four words: greed, greed, greed and greed.

I'm on the Cape now, visiting my mother for two days because I want to be able to talk with her while she can still talk back. I needed to see for myself whether this fading is self-induced (she's not eating at all and rapidly losing weight) or part of the natural process (that we've managed to make so unnatural) of dying.

I also wanted to investigate my mother's claims that the food in the place is inedible.

Conclusion: she'll probably be around with us for a while longer but the woman we rely on as the glue in our family is disappearing and no amount of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments will change that trajectory. She's on the last leg of her personal journey.

But her complaints about the food in the nursing home are spot on. And I've got the pictures to prove it.

A Little Alexader McCall Smith for My Reading Pleasure: Book Number 3 of 60

Moving through my bookshelves to decide what to read next in my 60 Book List is a lot like trolling through the line of a sumptuous buffet -- hard to make a decision but then, no matter what I choose, it's bound to be good.

Like most fans of Alexander McCall Smith, I got to know this Scotsman's work through The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. I like those books but when I discovered the 44 Scotland Street series, I was deeply hooked.

This particular book--Lovers, Friends, Chocolate--is in a new (to me) series of mysteries starring a woman named Isabel Dalhousie. (Is that pronounced Dal-hoozie or Dal-howzie?) I started snacking on it last night and found it to be just as delectable as McCall Smith's other work -- wry, a bit sly in spots, intelligent, philosophical and full of people I'd love to share a cup of tea with.

I find that as I ripen with age, my taste in books -- particularly in novels -- has changed quite a bit. I won't read scary stuff any more (Rosemary's Baby, Vanishing Act, everything by Stephen King except his book on writing--which is excellent) nor will I take on books where the driving narrative is full of graphic descriptions of the horrors that humans visit on one another (everything by James Patterson or mysteries like The Bone Collector).

In fact, I think that way too much of contemporary popular fiction is downright boring because it's all plot, plot, plot or ripped from the headlines garbage (Jodi Picoult?) that makes me yawn.

To me, these are the sorts of books that should go direct to an electronic device so that no trees need die to bring them to readers who think they want them.

If I'm going to invest time (how long does it take to read the average novel?) in reading, I want something well written by an author with a genuine interest in character who has interesting research to share or a fresh take on life in addition to telling a good story. It's the reason why I return again and again to authors like Jane Austen and Edith Wharton and E.M. Forster and Mark Twain.

People in novels, like people in life, take time to develop and savor. In way too much of today's fiction, it's all a big rush from page one to page last with not a whole said in between. Boring.

That's why I enjoy Alexander McCall Smith's books so much. He's a tour guide who wants to make sure that you notice all the details along the way because they make the whole.

The Fatal Flaw of Tyrants

Gandhi once said "When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fail. Think of it—always."

When situations in our country look bleak, I try to remember Gandhi's words and practice daily acts of defiance and small instances of courage because I believe that if we all add a little to the good side, it adds up. I was reminded of this as I finished reading the extraordinary Watership Down by Richard Adams last night. Really, if you've never read this book, drop whatever you are doing, find a copy and plunge in.

Adams captures the best and worst of human life through the prism of a band of rabbits who want nothing more than a good home, good grass to eat, and a future for their children, just like most of us. He follows the classic mythological plot with a lead character who, by all measures, should fail but through a combination of courage, kindness, and loyalty, wins the day for himself and his followers. In Watership Down, that character is named Hazel.

So what does this book about rabbits have to do with Gandhi? Like all good novels, Watership Down contains more truth than the best history because it reveals the innermost thoughts of its characters, thoughts that can only be assumed by a historian.

Gandhi's insight is played out in a character called General Woundwort. (Isn't that a great name? Really, English authors can't be beat when it comes to naming characters.)

Here's an excerpt from the end of the book that illustrates Gandhi's point. The lame rabbit referred to is Hazel who has come to talk with General Woundwort in hopes of saving his warren and the General's followers from destruction.

** from Watership Down **

"We are going to destroy you," said Woundwort.

"You won't find it easy," replied Hazel. "You'll take fewer rabbits home than you brought. We should both do better to come to terms."

"Very well," said Woundwort. "These are the terms. You will give back all the does who ran from Efrafa [Woundwort's warren] and you will hand over the deserters Thlayli and Blackavar to my Owsla [military police]."

"No, we can't agree to that. I've come to suggest something altogether different and better for us both. A rabbit has two ears; a rabbit has two eyes, two nostrils. Our two warrens ought to be like that. They ought to be together—not fighting. We ought to make other warrens between us—start one between here and Efrafa, with rabbits from both sides. You wouldn't lose by that, you'd gain. We both would. A lot of your rabbits are unhappy now and it's all you can do to control them, but with this plan you'd soon see a difference. Rabbits have enough enemies as it is. They ought not to make more among themselves. A mating between free, independent warrens—what do you say?"

At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit's idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him. The sun dipped into the cloud bank and now he could see clearly the track along the ridge, leading to the beech hanger and the bloodshed for which he had prepared with so much energy and care.

** Think about General Woundwort—who loses, by the way—as you read this morning's news. Then go out and commit a small act of courage.**

Yellow for a Rainy Day

Of all the friends who have contributed to my garden, none deserves more credit than Lauren. She's a professional gardener in the summer, and has become the go-to woman for plant knowledge by everyone who knows her.

She and I have slightly different approaches to gardening -- she's very neat and tidy, death to weeds, while I tolerate a certain number of "weeds" such as dames rockets, buttercups and violets in my gardens. Lauren most derisive term for a plant is "invasive" and yet there are delightful invasives such as evening primroses, bachelor buttons and creeping veronica that have a prominent place in my yard because their flowers are wonderful and they take little care from from me.

Lauren will stake. I'm not a staker except in rare cases -- such as my peonies and autumn joy. My figuring is that if a plant can't stand up on its own, it shouldn't expect me to do it.

Unless you're a peony from a special friend who lives up the hill who I'll introduce you to tomorrow.

But Lauren's botanical contributions are found throughout my yard -- including the bachelor buttons. She's responsible for almost all of my iris, including the yellow variety pictured here. As well as the yellow lilies. She's also shared coral bells and ladies mantle and catmint and this purple monkshood that won't bloom until Halloween.

Every time I walk in my gardens, I think of Lauren. She's a delight and so are her gifts.