A Separate Nation

As I've pointed out before, one of my favorite nature writers of all time is Henry Beston. His thoughtful prose can send your imagination off in very different directions. Or let you see a fact from a completely new perspective.

Last night, I was savoring his Herbs and the Earth. He was talking about sage, an herb with a very long history as a medicinal plant and as an adjunct to taste in the kitchen.

This led him into the observation that the spices enjoyed by the ancient Romans because of trade with the Middle East disappeared from the European diet with the fall of their empire. But the fact that made some of my synapses sit up and take notice was Beston's pointing out that the Dark Ages—the early Middle Ages—were a time of continent-wide poverty. I had never had reason to think of that before.

Oooh, I just love the sensation of having the inside of my head scratched.

Which brings me to this photograph, taken this morning, of a pair of cedar waxwings taking a minute's rest in their restless hunting of the insects that hover over the river's surface. Watching them made me think of this passage from Beston:

"The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."

I've long thought that humans who believe that animals and plants are beneath us because they don't have "feelings" like ours or who can't "think" like us are pretty stupid. It is us who do not understand. It is us who are the arrogant idiots who make the world uninhabitable for ourselves. It is us who won't be missed when our tribe finally blinks its last on this beautiful planet and finally leave it in peace.

I have no idea what it is like to flit from a branch on a river. I have no idea what the glint of the water looks like from these birds' perspective. Try as I might to be attentive, most of what nature does goes unnoticed by me. I cannot read the weather like these creatures nor would I be able to protect myself if caught in a storm as well as they do.

I cannot speak bird but they obviously know something about humans because they will not let me come too near. I am the untrusted stranger in their nation. It is I who needs to be respectful.

The term "save the Earth" is another example of our patronizing outlook on life. The Earth is going to be fine. Lady Nature will recover in time from our plundering and looting. We should really be talking about saving human life—if we think it's worth saving.

We are the trespassing nation.

Burdock

Arctium lappa is one of the hardiest plants around here. I love the flowers—a spurt of purple among the green prickles—and the leaves and stems are handsome.

But in the fall, those prickles are just outrageous if they get in Goldie's fur or on a sweater or in your hair or on your socks.

The balls of hooked burrs separate into slender needle-shaped individuals that weave their way into anything with a looser weave (like a sweater) or in hair. When Goldie was just a pup, she once got into some downed burdock so bad, it took a couple of hours to pull and cut it out of her fine fur. And boy, did she have a bad haircut when I was done.

The root is well-regarded by herbalist for its healing properties, especially for muscle soreness or conditions such as arthritis.

The Uncertainty Principle

When I was a younger woman, I felt angry a lot. Sure, there were some good reasons to feel angry but I never liked the out-of-controlness of it. I also realized that my anger gave other people more control over my actions than I had.

So I started working on feeling less anger. It's taken a lot of years, and a lot of focused attention at times, but anger is no longer my almost-constant companion. I still get angry but I've learned to get ahead of that emotion under most circumstances, taking whatever time it takes to evaluate a situation in order to determine whether it's worth the energy it takes to get angry about it.

Most of the time, the answer is no. In fact, pouring anger on fractious circumstances just makes them more fractious, and puts people on the defensive because anger is an attack mechanism.

When I was a younger woman, I was always impatient—with myself as well as others. Nothing seemed to move smoothly enough or happen fast enough. I became (and still am) quite impatient with office politics, the endless friction that occurs among people crammed in close quarters but divided up among those who rule and those who serve. To my mind, office politics (and this includes squabbling among members on a board of directors) is a complete waste of time. This explains why I work for myself.

Of course, my impatience often made situations worse, often to my own detriment. So I worked on this skill—and worked, and worked, and worked. Still working though I have to say that I have learned, as St. Augustine once pointed out, that the reward of patience is more patience.

This brings me to a book (of course) that I read in my late 20s that is still one of the most important things I've ever read. It's Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda.

Now I know that long after this title was published in 1972, evidence came out that it was a work of fiction, and not a memoir at all. To tell you the truth, I don't care in the same way that people who are Christians may realize that most of what happens in the Bible is not historical truth but allegorical truth. Journey is allegorical truth to me, and since mine is the only opinion that matters in this discussion, the subject is closed.

There's a place in the book (and I'm quoting from memory here because I haven't re-read it in a long time) when Don Juan talks about the enemies of the self that one needs to conquer. I know that that list is different than mine but I appreciate the idea of discovering one's internal enemies—the ones that get in the way of our well-being—and working to conquer them.

Which leads me to my discovery of the latest entry I need to make to my list: doubt.

When it comes to things spiritual, I've spent a lot of my life being a fence sitter—astrology may be true, it may not. Buddhism may be the cure for what ails ya, it may not. Paganism bears some truth among its teachings but why does one need to be naked to appreciate it? Zeus up on Olympus may be worth worshipping or it may be a thing called God.

As I've studied and read and thought, all spiritual solutions have become one and the same to me, all false, all true.

Doubt—the easiest position to take.

Without my noticing it, this fence-sitting, this unwillingness to commit has extended its reach into other areas of my life—faith in myself, my abilities, what I know, what I don't. If you take this approach far enough, if "I don't know" becomes the answer to life's persistent questions, you can't move because you haven't given yourself a reason to move.

So I've come to the realization that doubt is crippling. Skepticism about what someone else tells your or tries to sell you is worthwhile. But doubt about what you believe about yourself is another form of fear, a self-imposed form of inertia that makes it too easy to have neither succeeded or failed.

This principle of uncertainty breeds anxiety. Worry. More doubt.

So I've been poking this with a stick, allowing myself the experience of faith, truly believing. And you know what? A lot of tension gets dissipated by faith.

Interesting.

Update on the Hookah-Smokin' Caterpillar

OK, just a quick followup on our friendly caterpillar. Come to find out, from Vermont's state entomologist, this is a Cecropia caterpillar, probably in its final molt.

They are the product of the largest moth native to this part of the planet, a critter that spends most of its life as a many-legged worm munching on plant life instead of a two-winged beauty.

When newly hatched, the Cecropia caterpillar is dark brown and small. On each successive molt, they turn greener and the spiky lightbulbs they sport grow more colorful. It's a lot like pulling away from the crowd mentality that's endemic among teenagers where everyone struggles to look like everyone else (and fails utterly) to grow old enough to feel comfortable sporting your most outrageous costumes at a meeting of the Red Hat Society.

Of course, no surprise here, the Cecropia moths and their caterpillar progeny are endangered because of what we are doing to Lady Nature. (Can we say insecticides boys and girls? Sure you can.)

We're continuing to feed our Cecropia and will make sure it's in a safe place to overwinter until the moth emerges for about a week sometime between May and July of next year. The moths don't eat so they don't last any longer than it takes to have sex and die.

Fascinating, eh?

Blueberries at Moore's

Every year at this time, we set our faces toward the west and drive up the hill to Moore's Orchard to pick the best blueberries.

The Moores, as an extended family, are among the first settlers of the beautiful small town of Pomfret. Literally set among rolling hills with breathtaking scenery, it's one of my favorite excursions all year.

Being a fruit-aholic, the end of July through the middle of October are nirvana to me. There are blueberries (of the Vaccinium family—impossible to tell the variety), these great peaches at our Co-op that they get from Pennsylvania, currants, raspberries, melons, and the first of the apples (Paula Reds) should show up soon.

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes!

Black-Eyed Susan—Rudbeckia Serotina

Even though we're in the midst of a real summer (defined as one in which swimming in the river is part of your day because it's warm enough to enjoy it), the flowers around here remind us that all seasons pass.

I know when I start to see Black-eyed Susans that we aren't in early summer any more.

This is the same family of plants that includes echinacea (purple coneflower) and so many other rayed blossoms with raised centers. Notice the darker yellow within the lighter. Nice touch, eh?

Really, after spending an evening taking pictures of human architecture in White River Junction, I count myself relieved at being back in the natural world. The forms and structures of plants just fascinate me, how each one serves a different purpose, grows in a particularly suitable location, that geography brings forth certain forms and fragrances.

Nothing that humans do compares to a plant.

Photowalk in White River Junction-A Journey in Pictures

That Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar

I sure hope you can all see this caterpillar because it is amazing. Jay and I went blueberry picking this morning up at Moore's Orchard in Pomfret, Vermont and Jay found this critter munching away on blueberry leaves.

Neither one of us has ever seen anything like this. It has these sticking-up things that resemble thorny lightbulbs all over its body. They're this wonderful blue underneath, yellow along the top and red on the front of what we guess is the head.

All I could think about was Alice in Wonderland and that line from the Jefferson Airplane song Go Ask Alice: "And that hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call. Go ask Alice when she's ten feet tall."

I have got to design an appliqué pattern based on this creature and can't wait to see what it turns into. We brought it home where it's sitting in a plastic jar now filled with fresh blueberry leaves taken from a moribund bush in our yard.

Maybe it's an alien. Or Rita Skeeter from the Harry Potter books.

Cool, huh?

The Next 60 Days

I'm working on a book about book publishing. Really, I've been in the business for over 20 years and can write, design, print and sell books of my own creation or anyone else's, for that matter.

This is the working cover for that book and by the time I reach the end of the second set of 60 days in this yearlong journey, this book will be completed and ready for release on Amazon as of October 5.

So from time to time over the next 60 days (well, actually it's down to 58 now), I'll be talking about The Hands-On Guide to Book Publishing for Everyone since it's taking up a big chunk of space in my life right now.

If any of you have rummaged around in the pages on this blog, you'll have gandered (if Palin can make up words, so can I—really, that woman is amazing—fraudulent, nasty, hate-filled, ignorant and taking so many willing victims to the cleaners that I can only watch with my mouth open at the intractable nature of stupidity) at the six projects I set for myself.

And if you've visited more than once, you may have twigged to the fact that I've changed one of them a few times, flailing around for just the right one. Well, this morning, I realized it was staring me right in the face—six goals, one for each of the 60 day segments in the year.

The first, though unspoken, was developing the habit of getting on my blog every day. And except for two days in June when I was on the Cape visiting my Mom (and coping with the fact that she was, indeed, working her way across the spiritual finish line), I did that. So, I'm going to call that one fulfilled.

And for my next trick, I will finish this book so I can use it for teaching this fall. Onward!

Joe Pye Weed and Friend

One of my favorite definitions of the term "weed" is a plant that we haven't found a use for. You'd better believe that if someone discovered that crab grass was a cure for whatever ails ya, that noxious garden weed (I do have my standards) would become the darling of Big Pharma.

So I object, strenuously object, to the word weed being attached to the common name of Eupatorium purpureum, Joe Pye weed.

What more could you ask of a riverside staple that's got a not-too-sweet fragrance, attracts bees and butterflies like you wouldn't believe, has a wonderful color sense (deep red/purple stems, bright green leaves, soft pink flowers) and can stand up to the high winds that can rip down the river canyon.

I have long wanted to coax this beauty into spending time in my garden. It likes moist soil though I understand it will tolerate dryer conditions. So I've got my eye on a clump near our swimming rocks that I may try to dig up when the flowers go by. And I'll watch for the tiny, tiny seeds that appear at the base of the flower stalk a little later this summer.

Very cool plant, another one we imported from Europe that escaped from the garden a long time ago.

Orange You Sweet—Daylilies

OK, I know that this plant with the wickedly cool addiction to the color orange is considered invasive. But I love Hemerocallis fulva, the orange daylily.

My patch started with a few roots given to me by my friend Ruth who had dug them out of her garden when she lived in Norwich. I plunked them in a few holes across the front of my yard where it meets the road back when my yard was hot and open and nothing but grass.

(I saw this great quote from author Michael Pollan about lawns. He called them gardens under totalitarian rule. Couldn't agree more.)

Over time, I connected these selectively dug holes until I had a long strip across the front of the yard. Every spring, I planted something else in the space—one year hollyhocks, another red bee balm, lupins, yellow loosestrife, sundrops, garden phlox—and the daylilies spread through the space.

Now they're dominant and I try to limit them to that space and nowhere else in my gardens. In the fall, when I cut them to the ground, I always find an abandoned mouse nest among the dying leaves.

They are hardy where I need hardy because of the road salt of winter. So we coexist. They give me orange fireworks in early summer and a wonderful visual break from the road and the rest of my gardens. I give them appreciation and respect.

Falling off a CLiF

Nope, that's not a typo in the title. It's the abbreviation for the Children's Literacy Foundation, this incredible non-profit that I've been involved in since its beginning.

As you may have guessed, books are as much a part of my life as breathing. They are my oldest friends so getting kids to read for fun is incredibly important to me. I mean, if you can't read, you're locked out of so much in life, not just ripping good novels.

CLiF started with a single idea—putting collections of new children's books in rural public libraries in New Hampshire and Vermont. Between the two states, we have something just under a bazillion that fit into that category.

From there, the new-books-for-kids idea grew to include homeless shelters, food shelves, daycare centers, low income housing projects, bookmobiles, and prisons where children come to visit parents.

Up here, the landscape is littered with artists of all kinds, including lots of children's book writers and illustrators. CLiF arranges visits by these folks in the public schools. Believe me, I've been to a few of these events and the kids are awed by meeting someone who does this kind of work "for real."

And we have a small but incredibly good group of writers who present workshops in the schools, and you just wouldn't believe what amazing poetry and stories get created in CLiF's wake.

This summer, CLiF served its 100,000th child. My husband and I were figuring it out the other day and the oldest of the first kids CLiF entertained with stories and introduced to books are in their mid-twenties now.

On our website, www.clifonline.org, you'll find a great list of children's books so if you're looking for the perfect gift for a young person on your favorite-people list (or you just want to check out some of the best in young adult fiction), you will find a good one there.

And check out the pictures taken at CLiF events, like the one up top of the young man who's totally into what he's reading.

I know just how he feels. It just doesn't get any better than this.

Honeysuckle—Lonicera maacki

I know it's pretty, and this year, the berries are plump and abundant. But this shrubby, flowering bush is yet another of the virulently invasive species we've inherited from Asia along with Japanese knotweed.

Even though we own 14 acres of land on both sides of the White River and an island in the middle, only an acre or so is considered buildable. The rest can—and has—flooded from time to time. So eventually, everything that's invasive floats downstream to take root here.

In addition to this honeysuckle and the Japanese knotweed, we have barberry and garlic mustard and now we're starting to see that giant hogweed. I could spend my life weeding the woods and I do take a machete on my walks from time to time. But it would take an army of volunteers to do just one sweep through our flood plain, and it would be pretty naked down there when we were done.

The Real Value of Water

All last winter, my husband kept saying he hoped we were going to have a nice warm summer so we could spend time in and on the river. Well, he got his wish and then some.

It's been hot, hotter, humid and warm and for the first time in three years, we are spending time down by the river. We've got a nice spot for a table and chairs that's in the shade by two in the afternoon. There's a point of sandy beach that extends off our swimming rocks. There are rapids off the swimming rocks too and you can easily swim over to a patch of gravel that's accumulated over the past four or five years where tubers and kayakers stop on their way downstream.

It is a perfect spot. We can look upstream through the valley to hills to the west. The water reflects the green on the banks and the rocky ledge that rises from the water reflects the shimmering light in its turn.

There's this one spot where I love to hang out just to the left of one of the rapids. I float over in a tube then hook my heels on the rock. At that point, I'm at eye level with the water just upstream. Turn my head and I can watch this amazing substance foam and curl. Drops reach for the sky, air churns, and my ears are filled with nothing but the river's voice.

I love nothing more than this place, and feel its embrace in return. What can ever be more important than water? Oil? I think not.

I Can See Clearly Now

Oh it was such fun—reggae master Jimmy Cliff in concert outdoors on a mountain with the regretful name of Suicide Six, just over the hill from us.

The crowd was great fun with all ages from a couple of babies (and one that should be born any day now—my back started to ache just seeing the way that Mama was leaning) to some of us (actually, a lot of us) old enough to be grandmas.

The band that opened the show—Refugee All Stars, from Sierra Leone—were just fantastic. I love really good percussion, the kind that gets inside your body and moves with it.

The second band, Trevor something or other, was awful. But then the sky cleared (though it was some humid) and everyone danced and danced and danced.

We got there early and settled on this upslope so we could see over the crowd to the stage. It was perfect. We're going to see Natalie McMaster there in August, the fourth of our four concerts this summer.

"I can see clearly now, the pain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way."

Oh, it was so great to be out with good music. Thanks Kristin for getting us to go!

I Believe in Gardens

The bounce that my Mom got from having so much of her family around last week has faded. Mom is confused, uncertain of what is going on around her, the sequence of events, the time of day.

During a long talk with my sister last night, after she got home from seeing Mom, she told me how she got the feeling that Mom is trying to figure out how to outwit death. Mom has always managed to get her way by saying what she thinks people want to hear then doing what she wants to do anyway. This may not sound significant on its face but my Mom has never talked about dying or what she believes happens after we shuck our earthly bodies.

For once, she can't say what she thinks people want to hear then do what she wants because death is a one-way conversation. This uncertainty, we think, prevents her from acknowledging what's going on and why people from Hospice are visiting her room.

The discussion with my sister prompted another with my husband who veers from an interest in Buddhism to disgust with organized religion to a sometimes-profession of atheism. "I suppose it's easier for religious people when they face death," he said, "because they think they know what's going to happen next."

I disagreed — not with the issue of belief but that it's easier for religious people (a group that I don't count myself a part of) to face the end of life because of their belief.

For me, organized religion doesn't have anything to do with it because I can't remember a time when I wasn't absolutely certain that when I die, the energy that makes me Sonja continues, not necessarily as Sonja but as energy. And at some point, it gets recycled in some new material form. (I'm hoping to come back as violets or river willows or raindrops on Lady's Mantle myself.)

I base this belief on what Lady Nature has taught me about energy. She reuses everything in patterns that spiral and circle through us every minute of every day. Every year the moon waxes and wanes thirteen times between January 1 and December 31. Every year, the stars shine in the sky, clouds bring rain, ice on my driveway is slippery underfoot.

Her lessons are reinforced by what I watch happen in my gardens every year—the total die-back in the fall, the peace of winter, the excitement of watching what comes back in the spring, the leafing and fruiting and seeding of summer.

The first person I remember dying in my family was my Uncle Wes, a lovely man. But the death that shook me the most in my early teens was my Grandmother Hakala's, a woman who was almost as big a part of my life as my own mother. I was fourteen at the time. Grandma died of a heart attack, leaving my whole family in shock.

About a week after Grandma died, I suddenly realized that some of the words coming out of my mouth were hers. That some of the ways I looked at the world around me bore her influence. And I understood that even though I couldn't go to Grandma's house and see her knitting slippers for her grandchildren or eat her incredibly exquisite dinner rolls again, I did carry a piece of her inside me.

Her energy was now a part of me.

I think she would have understood that. Grandma was a gardener too.

Nature Printing

This year, I've had to retire three T-shirts from my closet because they were stained or faded by the sun.

So I decided to try my hand at nature printing one of the shirts just to see how it would come out. My tools are an ink pad with pigment ink that will stay on the shirt while it is laundered, some leaves with prominent veining because they pick up ink the best and leave great images (wild strawberry leaves are perfect for this), a sheet of paper that I lay over the leaf when it is on the ink pad, an embroidery hoop which will keep the fabric of the T-shirt from moving, and a handy stone that acts as a breyer when I'm inking the leaves.

First you slide the outer part of the hoop inside the shirt, centering the stain you wish to obliterate with an inked impression of a leaf.

Second, you push the inner part of the hoop into the outer and tighten the mechanism so the shirt fabric is held in place.

Third, you select a leaf and place it vein-side down on the pad. Cover this with a sheet of paper then roll your stone over the paper to make sure there's ink on the back of the leaf.

Fourth, carefully lift up the leaf by its stem and place on the sheet. Cover the leaf with the top of the ink pad and press down on it.

Continue until you've covered as much of the shirt as you wish.

Voilá! A more interesting shirt than you started with. I've long loved nature printing with the leaves and ferns I find around here so I'm off to experiment with more.

Harry Potter 3

I realized the other day that books are my oldest friends. I turn to them for comfort, information, laughter, thoughtfulness, play.

And sometimes the comfort of an old friend is just what you need. So when I was on the Cape helping tend to my mother, I turned to Harry Potter because I needed an escape to another world for a while.

The new HP movie is coming out in November so I want to have re-read all seven books by then. Finishing this one means I'm just about halfway there.

Birth

Just before the 4th of July, my husband was down in our swimming area cutting back some of the plant life so that we could put a table and chairs in the shade. At the edge of this space, close to the shore, he discovered this nest of tern eggs.

Once we got down there, we quickly erected some visual barriers so that no one would tread on them. We also covered the eggs with some plant material laid over upended rocks to provide shade without adding any weight.

Mama flitted around all day and, we assume, quickly returned to the nest as soon as we left. The next morning, when Jay walked down to the river, she bolted from the weeds.

Two days later, he found these babies lying where the eggs had been. If you look carefully at the second picture, you can pick out the heads of three chicks though we believe that all four hatched. The next day, everything was gone, including the eggshells.

But we know the babies are around in the weedy stuff because Mama is on the swimming rocks doing her drama routine of dragging her wing to draw us away from the babies. We steer clear and wish them well, still amazed at how fast Lady Nature moves when it's on the wing.

Small Changes at the Last Minute—A Six-Sentence Story

She reveled in making resolutions on the first day of each year with that exquisite rush of anticipation that accompanied organizing her life.

Lose weight—yeah, that was an easy one, always at the top of the list though never achieved.

Work more on the stuff I want to do—that one was always there too, usually overtaken by life events in February.

Then at the end of the year, when she pulled her journal out from the bottom of a pile of books to read through her resolutions list, there weren't many to check off. Then she got to number 27—smile more.

Ah yes, the one resolution she'd kept, the one small change that made a difference.

Siblings

Just got back from visiting my mother and spending time with my siblings. Mom is doing a slow fade-to-black but she's given us the gift of spending time with her so we can share one more laugh, one more silly story, one more visit.

Over the past five days, I've been able to spend lots of time with my sister as well as with three of my six brothers. It's remarkable how much we love to tell stories, how many memories we share. One of us will start a story, the next chimes in and a third will finish it. We all laugh.

I was OK all week until yesterday when I was alone with Mom and we were talking about her being a Mom, the only job she ever really wanted. She made me promise that all eight of us will look out for one another, and I know that in our own ways, we will.

But that habit of looking after is larger than just the eight of us. It includes the families we've formed, our children, and our friends. As Louis Armstrong once sang: "It's a wonderful world."

Lysimachia punctata

Loosestrife of the purple variety is a scourge. But loosestrife of the yellow variety is welcome in July. This pretty yellow, starlike flower does spread (as does every plant, eventually) but slowly.

It's more shrub-like and like its neighbor in my garden, the orange daylily, survives the salt and sand from the winter plowing.

The one downside of this plant is that it attracts this bluish-gray caterpillar after it blooms. The caterpillar, if left unmolested, will strip all the leaves from the plant. I try to cut the yellow loosestrife back to the ground when the caterpillars appear to try to interrupt their life cycle.

But even if I don't, the lysimachia punctata will return in the spring.

Valeriana officinalis

I got introduced to this incredible herb nearly 30 years ago, soon after my son was born and I was experiencing some postpartum lows. My midwife recommended valerian tea to help.

Now no one would ever claim that valerian tastes good. As a matter of fact, the tea (made from the plant's roots) tastes awful.

But the flowers are wonderful, a light sweet scent, and the plant is tall and airy in profile.

Nowadays, valerian is widely available in capsule form. No taste but this ability to wipe away the lows. You don't feel high or impaired. You just realize that whatever was making you grumpy no longer makes you grumpy.

Faerie Wars

OK, I admit it. I'm a sucker for books with the word fairy spelled Faerie so when I saw Faerie Wars at the Five Colleges Book Sale for only $.50, it was a no-brainer.

I wasn't sure I was going to like it at first but the author, a prolific guy named Herbie Brennan, manages to tell a story with enough twisty stuff to keep it interesting. And like J.K. Rowling, he tethers enough of the tale to this world to make the stretch to the land of Faerie an easy ride.

This was also a good read for these days on the Cape with my mother in her last journey and my siblings joining together to spend some time with her. Interesting enough to keep me engaged but not sad. Even though we're celebrating Mom and tending to her needs, there's enough sadness to not want to add more.

Will I read the sequel? If I find it at the next book sale, sure. I'd even go up to a dollar.

Red Bee Balm—Monarda didyma

One of my favorite plants, deep red, sometimes with double flower heads like the one shown here. The scent is difficult to describe. Clean and spicy, I guess.

Its roots run along the top of the soil and after a few years, it exhausts its earthy home. But then you dig it up, replant and in a couple of years, it's back.

I used to have it interplanted with orange daylilies in my street garden but then the daylilies crowded it out. But now it's back.

Really special plant and the hummers just love it.

Down by the River Over the 4th of July—A Photo Journey

Heart Full—Thinking About Mom

I got a call from my sister about an hour ago and we believe my Mom got up out of bed for the last time today. I will probably be driving down to the Cape tomorrow because I don't want my last conversation with her to be on the phone. I just can't do that.

This is a picture of her taken in 1946 when she was 19 years old. She was beautiful, wasn't she? I remember watching her dress up in this blue satin dress to go to parties with my Dad when I was a little girl. She was beautiful then, too.

She's still beautiful now though in a deeper way. Since my Dad died in 2002, I've had the chance to forge a different relationship with Mom. She told me about a month ago that she felt she could talk to me about anything, that she could call me to talk any time. After so many years of difficulties between us—this fiercely independent daughter and this fiercely protective wife and mother—I finally felt that I could talk to her about anything.

I'm so grateful we got here. While I weep, I try to remind myself that at least we had this time.

Mom became the still center of our lives in her later years, the one place where all "News Hakala" could be discovered and discussed. Since the beginning of the year, she's given us time to come to terms with the idea that she's leaving us. This time is her last gift to her children.

I have no more words so I've turned to the poet Mary Oliver to help me finish this blog. This is an excerpt from "A Poem for the Blue Heron" from her book American Primitive.

Now the woods are empty,

the ponds shine like blind eyes,

the wind is shouldering against

the black, wet

bones of the trees.

In a house down the road,

as though I had never seen these things—

leaves, the loose tons of water,

a bird with an eye like a full moon

deciding not to die after all—

I sit out the long afternoons

drinking and talking;

I gather wood, kindling, paper; I make fire

after fire after fire.

A Writerly and Photographic Journey into Lutherie

I got the latest copy of Upper Valley Life magazine in the mail the other day and discovered that the story I wrote about the Vermont Instruments School of Lutherie was on the front cover. And I also discovered that the photographer for the piece was Jim Block.

My husband and I have both taken classes from Jim. (That's his picture with the camera above. Mine's the one at the top taken a couple of winters ago.)

Jim's a wonderful photographer and what I would call a Photoshop adept. He not only understands HOW the program works but when you take a Photoshop class with him, he explains WHY you would use one technique over another to achieve a certain effect. Needless to say, I learned a lot.

The UVL article is not online but I've copied my version below (there's hardly any difference between this and what is published). And I would recommend taking the time to see Jim's photos of the lutherie school on his website. Be sure to click on the slideshow icon then sit back and enjoy.

And I hope you're all enjoying this Fourth of July. It's hot and clear here so my husband and I are heading down to the river to spend our 31st wedding anniversary on the water.

*************** here's my story ********************

A Harmonic Convergence in Post Mills
Sonja Hakala

Unless you’re a resident of Post Mills, Vermont, you could be forgiven if you didn’t know there’s an internationally renowned school of lutherie snugged down in a woodsy setting not far from the shore of Lake Fairlee. Lutherie? Sounds like something from an age with castles and troubadours, doesn’t it?

But lutherie—the art and skill of making stringed instruments—has a long tradition in this small Vermont village. Established in 1982 by George Morris, the Vermont Instruments School of Lutherie has a well-earned reputation for teaching all the skilled artisanry needed to cut, carve, glue, clamp, brace, string, and finish a professional acoustic guitar that clearly expresses the personality of its builder. And when Morris added business partner Adam Buchwald in 2008, the lutherie school expanded its offering to include mandolin building, banjo building, instrument repair, and ukulele building.

Ukuleles? Didn’t they have their heyday with Arthur Godfrey?

Buchwald grinned at the question during a recent interview at the school with Morris. “They’re amazingly popular again and a lot of bands now include ukuleles.”

Even though the school’s tenor is low key, the courses it offers are anything but. The guitar-building course, which Morris developed and taught for 26 years before Buchwald joined him, emphasizes high quality handwork based on a knowledge of the nature of wood, music, and a little bit of physics. In other words, students not only learn how to make a guitar, they learn why certain steps and choices are important.

The guitar- and mandolin-building classes are three weeks long, banjo and ukulele building courses are two weeks, and the repair course lasts a week. It’s not necessary to have either music or woodworking experience to take a class, Morris and Buchwald explain.

“We teach our students how to do everything so they can go back home and keep on doing it,” Morris said.

All students (a maximum of six at a time) live on campus while they learn. The dorm is actually a home built by Morris with a large, open room at its center with loft space upstairs for sleeping, and a full kitchen downstairs. Morris and his wife also live on site, and the hub of activity—a fully equipped shop—is a quick walk down a garden path from the living quarters. Between classes, Buchwald and Morris host a small number of concerts by virtuoso musicians from a number of acoustic disciplines in the dorm’s great room. No food or drink is served so the focus is strictly on the music.

“This is really for listeners,” Buchwald explains. The concert program began last year, and both men were pleased with its early success.

Each guitar-building class follows a similar path. Morris begins with an orientation lecture so students can appreciate the particular joys and challenges of working with wood. For stringed instruments such as guitars, only certain woods (spruce or cedar for the top, hardwoods such as maple, cherry, walnut, rosewood or zebra wood for the back and sides, ebony or mahogany for the neck) cut in a certain way (quarter sawn) are suitable.

“They’re more stable, stiffer, and better acoustically,” Morris explains.

By noon on the first day, students are choosing the woods for their projects from the supply kept by the school. Then patterns are made, edges are jointed, curves are cut, and the basic pieces of a guitar appear by the end of the first week.

As the second week began in a recent class, student Dale (DJ) Dunnells of East Parsonfield, Maine stood in front of a drill press, the mahogany neck of his guitar-in-process clamped to the table of the tool. He leaned forward, concentrating on the upper neck where strings will one day join their pegs. His right hand slowly and carefully lowered the drill bit to the wood, just kissing its surface as Dunnells eyed the future hole’s trajectory. Unsatisfied, he sighed and raised the drill bit.

“It’s a bit nerve wracking,” he admitted with a grin.

“To me, the hardest part about building a guitar is making sure it doesn’t get beat up before it goes out the door,” Morris explains to the class. The wood surfaces are delicate, he goes on, and if you lay your top down on a tool or it gets bumped, you’ve got a scar that needs healing.

“I’ll never forget the time I was repairing one of my own guitars, and the pencil behind my ear slipped out,” he said. “Embedded its point right in the top.”

Morris and Buchwald followed a similar trajectory on their paths to Post Mills. They’re both from New York, both are musicians, both love building things, and both wanted to live in Vermont.

“When I wanted to learn how to make a guitar (back in the 1970s), there weren’t many places to do that,” Morris said. “But I finally found a school in South Strafford, Vermont, owned by a man named Charles Fox who was an art teacher in Hanover, New Hampshire at the time.”

After Morris learned the elements of the craft, he stayed to teach in Fox’s school. That relationship lasted until Morris left because his philosophy of building differed significantly from Fox’s. “He wanted to grow bigger and was into production. If there was a way to use a jig (a device to ensure the accuracy of a repetitive process), that’s what he did.” Morris shakes his head a little. “I wanted to grow smaller.”

For his part, Buchwald found his way to Vermont through that big university in Burlington. “I’ve played music since I was a kid but classical guitar was the only thing I stuck with. Then when I got to UVM (University of Vermont), I majored in jazz guitar and bluegrass and started playing the mandolin and banjo.”

Buchwald’s family owns a metal stamping company in New York City, and he started working there while he was in school. After graduation from UVM, Buchwald returned to the city and started playing in a band with a man named Bob Jones. In addition to his impressive music credentials (bluegrass and folk), Jones is also a renowned healer and restorer of fretted instruments.
Buchwald wanted to learn instrument repair and eventually wormed his way under Jones’s wing. After working with Jones, Buchwald landed a job as the head technician at Retrofrets, a vintage instrument reseller in Brooklyn.
“I repaired everything,” Buchwald said. “If it had strings, I fixed it.”

In the midst of this, Buchwald returned to Vermont for Morris’s guitar-building class in 2004. Soon after, he married and when his first-born arrived, he began to yearn for Vermont.

“The city’s great but I didn’t want to raise a child there,” he said. Searching for job opportunities, he called Morris.

“At first, George asked me about buying the school,” Buchwald said. “But after we talked it through, we came to the conclusion we’d be better off in a partnership.”

Buchwald immediately introduced the one-week repair class at Vermont Instruments. He recommends students take the repair class before the building class if they can. “You gain a lot of confidence in yourself if you learn how to take a guitar apart first,” he explains. “And if you’re going to build, you’ve got to know how to repair.”

Even in these tough economic times, the Vermont Instruments School of Lutherie attracts students from the U.S., Canada, and points farther afield. It seems the human desire to create beauty—and music—with the hands is just as strong as ever.

Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'

This year, we are finally having some real summer weather. The last two summers have been cold and very, very rainy. But today is hot and the next few days are expected to be the same so I'm outdoors where I should be.

This is a picture looking upstream from the northern-most point of our land. It's my favorite view around here. Thought you might enjoy it.

If Toad of Toad Hall Was a Member of Congress—Poop, Poop

Reading The Wind in the Willows gave me the chance to get reacquainted with one of literature's most memorable characters, the infamous Toad of Toad Hall.

For those who may have forgotten or who have never had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, Toad is an absolutist about enjoying life. He gets swept up in every moment, regardless of consequences, and lets his passions be his guide. He's conceited, completely narcissistic, and just thinks he's the most fabulous creature that ever lived.

Just like many of our national politicians, corporate sleazes-in-chief, and celebrities—except for one significant difference. Toad, when confronted by others about his faults, remains completely unapologetic.

Imagine, if you will, what the press conferences from people such as Michael Steele or Tiger Woods or Andrew Skilling would be like if they shared Toad's refreshing devotion to honesty. Here's an excerpt from The Wind in the Willows. As you read, substitute your favorite cad of the moment for the word Toad and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

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

"There's only one thing more to be done," continued the gratified Badger. "Toad, I want you solemnly to repeat, before your friends here, what you fully admitted to me. First, you are sorry for what you've done, and you see the folly of it all?"

There was a long, long pause. Toad looked desperately this way and that, while the other animals waited in grave silence. At last he spoke.

"No!" he said a little solemnly, but stoutly; "I'm not sorry. And it wasn't folly at all! It was simply glorious. . . . I've been searching in my mind, and going over things in it, and I find that I'm not a bit sorry or repentant really, so it's no earthly good saying I am; now, is it?"

A Hurry-Up Quilt for Mom

When you're doing not much else than sitting in a chair all day in a place that's got the air conditioning cranked up, you get chilled.

That's my Mom at this point, sitting in a chair where she naps, watches her world go by, talks to family on the phone, watches TV — and gets chilled.

When I was there at the beginning of June, I saw this towel on the arm of her chair and found out she flings it over her shoulders to keep herself warm because putting on a sweater is difficult.

The towel's gotta go, I thought.

I needed to get something made, quick, so I rummaged around in my Level 3 Scrap Drawer. This is the place where I have odd blocks, block starts, things that have some work into them. And I found these Log Cabin variations left over from my Teach Yourself Visually Quilting book from Wiley.

They're weren't quite enough to make this towel-sized quilt long enough so I added the pink (her favorite color) squares on either end, did a very quick quilting job and will bind it tonight. Our son's going down to visit her over the 4th of July weekend and can take it with him on Saturday.

If I had the time, this would have been all-new Log Cabins in pinks but since I had less than a week to get it done, this will do.

Whew.