A Tale of Two Authors

I haven't blogged about my work much in this space—I usually reserve that for my business website, www.FullCirclePress.com—but there's a potential author on the scene who's doing a dandy job of reminding me of the importance of boundaries.

This cover (which I designed along with the inside of the book) is for a collection of short stories by an author who's one of my favorite dudes to work with. Bill understands enough of how the publishing business works to keep the rose color off his glasses. This is his second book of short stories (the first is a gem called The Lamoille Stories that I also worked on), and I find myself enjoying, once again, his pragmatic approach to the issues of creating a good-looking book to complement his writing efforts as well as his no-nonsense approach to marketing.

At this point, I'm helping him set up his own, independent publishing company. This means that I take care of the mechanics of publishing (designing his books and covers, making sure he has all of the tools he needs for marketing) and he garners all of the royalties from sales as well as keeping all of the rights to his own work. That's a win-win as far as I'm concerned.

The flip side of this authorial coin is represented by another man whom I'll call  Marmaduke (Marm for short). Marm is in his seventies somewhere and has written a memoir about time he spent in Africa. I've met him twice and talked to him via email a few times.

Marm is a publisher's nightmare no matter what kind of publisher you are—traditional (as in Harper-Collins) or independent (as in Full Circle Press). He is, like Libby Hillman in yesterday's post, a legend in his own mind. When you ask him why he wants to publish his book (a question that can give me a bead on how to help an author), he wonks off on some tangent where he imagines he's being applauded at a conference on Africa or is getting a huge order for books from UNICEF.

He asks me questions about publishing then interrupts me when I answer. He asks the same question over and over. He wastes my time telling me what his book is about and how he wants to use it to get people's attention to some horrific events in Africa, information that has no bearing on the mechanics of publishing. Then he turns around and wants me to act as an agent for him to find him a publisher such as Random House or Beacon Press who will do the book exactly as he wants it on his timetable, a laughable idea at best.

All of this leads me to wonder whether I want to add Marm as an author for Full Circle. You see, publishing someone else's book is a lot like entering into a marriage because each party makes a longterm financial commitment to the other. Once I've published a book through Full Circle, I have to deal with the author for years afterward—printing books, paying royalties, answering questions.

So far, all of the authors at Full Circle Press have turned out to be variations on pleasant people. I enjoy them and their books. Marm has all the markings of a skunk at the picnic.

And I think I may have talked myself right out of taking him on.

Beware the Saffron Threads of Fame

Years ago, I took a job as the marketing manager for a midsized book publisher in Woodstock, Vermont called The Countryman Press. I had never marketed a book in my life when I was hired but I had all the skills they needed—the ability to write, a knowledge of what publicity worked and what didn't from stints as a newspaper reporter, a feature writer, and a reviewer as well as time as a magazine editor. I also had a background in graphic design, and a gift for for targeted blabbing.

What I lacked—and there was no other way to learn this—was experience with book authors.

Now I write books. I also publish books for myself and others. And I've marketed more books than I can remember. So what's special about this cookbook, The Best from Libby Hillman's Kitchen? It was the first book I ever marketed, and the author inadvertently taught me lessons about writers that I use to this day.

Libby's a nice woman. She taught cooking classes on Long Island for many years before moving to southern Vermont. And the cookbook is good though not really of the type I would buy for myself. (It's in the subgenre of what I call saffron-thread cookbooks—tons of ingredients that are expensive, fancy, and not likely to be used more than once.)

The owners/publishers at Countryman had taken the book on before I was hired, and one them was especially vulnerable to name dropping, as I later realized. And Libby could drop names with the best of them. According to her, she knew every important cookbook author and reviewer in New York, and all I had to do was send out multitudes of her books, the reviews would flow in, she'd revel in the glory, and oh-by-the-way, sell a ton of books.

Just before the book was sent to the printer, its editor and I traveled to visit with a renowned cookbook publicist who lived in the Berkshires. She (Lisa) and her then-husband (Lou) partnered in their efforts to garner the attention of foodies. While she sat and talked with the editor and I, he took the set of draft pages we'd brought and leafed through them. During a pause, he leaned forward and said "You have one big problem with this book."

Uh oh, what?

"You have exactly seven seconds (the average amount of time a prospective buyer spends perusing a book cover) to explain who Libby Hillman is and why someone should care enough to spend $25 on a book by her."

Double uh oh.

I'd already seen the correspondence between Libby and Countryman over the book's title and knew how strongly she'd insisted on having her name at the top of the book's front cover. So I could only hope she was right about all the reviewers she knew.

For weeks, she called me nearly every day with the name of yet another person who was dying to get a copy of her book. I sent them all out, each with a personal letter reminding the recipient of her/his relationship with Libby Hillman.

Nothing. Nada.

Libby became more and more frustrated by the lack of reviews, certain that I wasn't sending out copies. Countryman's chief bean counter was having fits over the number of copies I was sending out. I sent reminders about the review copies, made phone calls (most of which were never returned) and realized, over and over again, that Lou had been absolutely right.

As I get older, I find myself becoming more pragmatic by the day. And more skeptical of promises as well as leery of ego. Libby, as it turned out, was a legend in her own mind, completely uninterested in doing any of her own marketing (as are most writers), and ready to complain (as are most writers) about the lack of marketing efforts by her publisher.

That's why I decided, long ago, not to get too involved in marketing books or anything, for that matter, that doesn't come into being through my own efforts. So here's a tip for you: my latest work, Book Publishing for Everyone, will be out in January.

You are now part of my legend.

The End of the Silly Season Is in Sight

Have I ever written about how much I hate commercial television before now?

I do. I find most programming insipid. What passes for news is nothing more than a bad clown act. And every commercial assumes that the knocker on my front door is more intelligent than I am.

I once figured out that I've spent more than half my life not hooked up to what passes for the entertainment industry in this country. It's been more than ten years since we turned our Direct TV satellite dish into a bird bath.

We still have an appliance called a television in our house but it's hooked up to a DVD player and a VCR. No commercials. Everything watched on our time schedule. We pay only for what we choose to watch through Netflix.

I consider the absence of commercial television one of the core freedoms of life, and when I get to rule the world, televisions will be banned from public venues like secondhand smoke.

In four days, those of us who are going to vote but haven't done so early will trudge off to the polls to cast ballots for a set of people who all claim they are "going to turn this country around." I've heard that promise uttered in every election cycle of which I have a conscious memory. I figure we've turned around so often, we've made several complete circles by now which probably explains why nothing feels different about our government in 2010 than it did when I was in my 20s protesting the police action in Vietnam.

The hooting and hollering have reached their collective crescendo and everyone I know who watches commercial television is complaining bitterly about the head-pounding succession of commercials for one politician or another.

I smile because I am blissfully unplugged.

You can be unplugged too. Think of the money you'll save on cable bills and the time you will gain for yourself.

And the sanity, oh the sanity that is yours to be restored.

But do vote. Even if it's only to complain afterward.

Don't you wish our political system was carried out in a more sensible way? I do. But it isn't. One of the ways I voice my silent protest at the stupidity being carried out in our name is to not give away my time or attention to something that is not worthy of them.

You can too.

We Pause for a Last Few Moments of Autumn Glory

Water droplets from last night's rain give sycamore leaves striking moments of glory.

These leaves breathe in sunlight, exhale red

The colors of the landscape are more subtle but the barberry is glowing orange in the woods

Sycamore—Platanus occidentalis

We have two families of sycamore trees along our path. This is the first time I've had the chance to spend time with this intriguing tree, and I think I'm in love.

The bark of these elegant giants is quite different than what you find on a maple or oak. It's silvery in color and peels or flakes off in curls about the size of my hand, primarily in the spring.

Its seeds are packed tight in balls about the size of the ones familiar to anyone who golfs. And the leaves are just huge.

Their fall to the ground is timed between the early flurry of the maples, birches and sumacs, and the oaken blanket that will cover my lawn in about a week.

Most of the sycamores in our woods reside near the river but not quite on the banks, with one exception. There's one specimen that towers over the north point of our land, and it sends its leafy messengers down to the water's surface in a slow motion cascade. They land like delicate cups on the surface of the stream, swirl in the eddies that circle close to the shore, and then join the watery surge downstream.

Lovely, absolutely lovely.

Still Life—With Patterns

I read a great quote the other day that went something like this: They say that when one door closes, another opens. What they don't tell you is that most of life is lived in the hallways.

I'm certain it's a function of age (OK, maturation) but I realize more and more how much we rely on patterns for reassurance, for sanity, for comfort, the stuff in the hallways of life.

For example, when I get up in the morning, my first move is toward the end of the driveway where I fetch the daily newspaper (still a habit in this household). My second move is toward the stove where the tea kettle waits for my attention because life isn't life until I've imbibed that first cuppa (as the Brits call it) with milk and honey.

My last moments of wakefulness are spent making the rounds of the house to check on heat settings, the woodstoves, food and water for Goldie and George, that the doors are locked.

Whatever else goes on in the creamy-filling-center in the middle of my day—which can change minute by minute—I'm reassured that the cookies on either end of my waking hours are more or less the same.

Quilting heightened my awareness of pattern, a word that has several meanings in the craft: the way fabric is cut, the figuring on fabric, the way that color blends in a quilt top among pieces of fabric. No matter how much I do this, I still get knocked out by the way that three or four distinct pieces of cloth get blended by my eye to create another, completely different, color situation.

Taking photographs in the woods does the same because catching those moments in time is really a pause to appreciate somethings else's hallway: the color movement in a grouse's feather, the wavy changes in hue of a river rock, the rounded capsules that once held barnacles on a shell, the spiral in a conch's former home, spidery spalting on the inside of a piece of bark, and the rosy rings at the center of a piece of cottonwood.

Patterns in patterns in patterns, our worlds held together by barely visible details that matter more than all the great upheavals combined.

Transitions

This is the time of transitions. The tall stems of the evening primrose that glowed gold in the spring have succumbed to gravity and fallen to the earth. They leave behind these rosettes of red and green.

The milkweed pods have burst open, letting their seeds float forth on gossamer to find homes far from the mother plant.

Now that the showy maples have sent their leaves to the earth to make new soil for the spring, the oaks take their bows in a more modest—but no less thrilling—production. The russet reds of these leaves are a bit more somber in their display but then the sun hits them just right and you realize that subtlety is only in the eye of the beholder.

November Comes Calling

My husband often points out that every season in Vermont offers its own pleasures and beauties. Granted, there's not much that's beautiful in cut-back gardens like the one pictured here EXCEPT that their status ushers in the season of "no weeding."

The no-weeding season is closely followed on my list of seasonal joys by the season of "no bugs." And then there's the season of "long nights for quilting and crocheting and anything else I take a mind to do on the creative front."

In other words, next spring I will strain to catch the first glimpse of green rising from the earth, eager to enjoy the coming of warm weather. And next fall, I will look forward with equal enthusiasm to cutting back the gardens after months of sowing, weeding, watering and harvesting.

Up here, November is renowned for its eternal grayness and gloomy skies. Throughout October, we've had a lot of can't-complain weather with enough sun for us locals to have the pleasure of enjoying our foliage in all its stages from the glory that gets associated with large swaths of color on the hills (the kind that makes the tourists oooh and aaah) to the yellow-to-copper changes in the beech leaves to the russet reds of the oaks and the pumpkin shading on the tamarack trees.

But this week's weather forecast is one of cold, rainy, cloudy days. Today as Jay and I walked down on the land to rearrange the coverings on one of our woodpiles for the winter, the air felt icy on my cheeks. The sky is sodden and gray. November has come calling—just in time.

And the First Shall Be Last as Well

Like most soil and seed enthusiasts around these parts, I have chives in my garden. As a matter of fact, I have two patches of Allium schoenoprasum.

Depending on how spring opens, I've found the first green shoots of these plants pushing toward the sun through ice. (Rhubarb does the same.) Along with the wild leeks that grow all over our land by the river, chives are among the first plants I harvest. They are also among the first to bloom as you can see in the bottom photo.

Then, when I cut back my gardens for the winter, as I did today, I take a last swipe at the chives. The batch sitting in the colander in the top picture will soon be snipped into small pieces, placed in a covered plastic container, and put in the freezer for me to enjoy in my scrambled eggs and on my baked potatoes all winter long.

207 Days to Go

I just realized that I neglected to blog yesterday. My youngest brother and his wife were here visiting and we headed out in the morning, and ate a very late lunch together before they headed back to the Cape.

By the time I got home, anything to do with a computer completely slipped my mind.

As Bill the Cat used to say in the comic strip Bloom County: "Aaacckk!"

Today is my Mom's birthday. If she was still here in the flesh, she'd be turning 83. She had a difficult time wrapping her head around the idea that she was more than 80 years old so I have a hunch that celebrating 83 would have been a bit of a challenge.

But it's a good day to pause and reflect. It's been nearly seven weeks since she died and I have a little more than half a year left in this project, The Power of Sixty.

Dealing with Mom's last journey has been a lot like hitting a very large rock when you're riding a bicycle. The whole experience put me on a whole different trajectory.

Now that she's with me in a different way, where am I in this process?

The book writing, except for the Power of Sixty e-book which gets written in this blog (nearly) every day, is off course. My book on publishing has been languishing for two months but that will once again become part of my daily work on Monday. (That's books 1 and 2)

There's a complete novel that needs attention, and a novel in process. (Books 3 and 4)

The fifth and sixth books will be quilting books, one to accompany the novel in process. (Books 5 and 6)

My list of plants to get to know better is up to 21. I've deliberately held back on some of this collection so I can do a little more research and have some green to enjoy during the winter. I just did a quick count and I believe there are enough plants in my photo collection to get to 60 easily enough.

There are 47 creative acts left to go and this was a bit deliberate because the cold months, after the gardens are down, are when I come inside to crochet, quilt, sew and knit. Gardening is indeed creative but that wasn't how I defined this category.

Deep thrills went into suspended animation while I was tending to Mom though her memorial celebration was so deeply felt, I think it will stand as the deepest thrill of all this year. We lost her but we knew just how to celebrate her and we succeeded.

The Slow Fun experiences will pick back up as soon as the gardens are down this weekend and Jay has totally finished the roof. Then we are released back into the wild to hike and snowshoe.

And there are 38 books still to read this year. A lot have been started but reading got difficult during my time with Mom. I'm still not ready for too much that's serious but there are lots of other pieces to read.

So there I am, a bit more behind than I wish but it's OK because I got to spend time with my Mom. And that makes all the difference.

The Fog Comes in on Little Cat Feet

Years ago, I used to love Woody Allen movies. Then Jay and I tried to re-watch Sleeper and discovered how boring it was.

But there are three movies in the middle of Allen's career that I think stand the test of time: Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Small Crimes and Misdemeanors. The ones before and the ones since are, in my humble opinion, just plain dumb.

There's a scene in Hannah when the actor Michael Caine, who plays the philandering husband of Mia Farrow, recites part of a poem by e.e. cummings that includes the line "and the fog comes in on little cat feet."

I cherish succinct but rich descriptive phrases such as that. It's an appropriate description of this morning because there's a cloud bank oozing down the river so thick, I can't see across to the opposite side.

And it's silent, utterly silent.

Did you ever stop to think that the most important events in our lives happen in complete silence? The sun rises every morning (so far, that is) and there is no sound to herald the most important occurrence any of us will experience all day.

And it will set this evening, around 6:00 p.m. this time of year. Again, not a sound will accompany the end of day.

Jay and I once had a friend who suffered from a rare disease that sent him into temporary states of paralysis. He discovered these states were triggered, in large part, by stress. So he developed a philosophical approach to life that went something like this: If I do so-and-so, what's the worst possible thing that could happen? And what are the chances of that worst possible thing happening? Probably small, therefore I should not worry.

Jack, our philosopher friend, once told us that he spent some time figuring out the worst possible thing that could ever happen to him or to anyone. And he came to the conclusion that the sun not-rising was the answer.

Whenever I feel anxious or down, I think of Jack's philosophy.

The sun came up this morning, enveloped in the little cat feet of fog.

All is well.

Magic in the Air

Back in September when my siblings and I accompanied our Mom to the national cemetery in Bourne to be buried next to our Dad, three of us spoke to the gathered—me, my sister, and my oldest brother Don. (He's on the left in this picture.)

Don shared a very short prayer with us and then talked about his siblings (that's the other six of us in the picture). He talked about how much he loves us all, how he never feels as though we spend enough time together but that every time we are in the same space at the same time, we enjoy each other's company so thoroughly.

Believe me, the laughter you see in this photo is the norm when we get together, not the exception. We all inherited my Dad's sense of humor and our Mom's love of a good laugh.

Several remarkable incidents occurred during our weekend celebration of Mom. One was the power of the slide show my sister put together with photos of our Mom from about age two to a month before she died. Mom was a model when she was in her twenties, and she was quite beautiful. There were pictures of her with our Dad, of us kids at different times of our lives, of her grandkids. I watched it several times and never made it past picture three without tearing up.

The other power in the room was the instant bond among the first cousins born of the three children in my Mom's family. This side is quite scattered geographically from Alaska to New York to Virginia and Massachusetts to me up here in Vermont. So getting together is quite rare.

But my cousins Martin, Jane and Kate plus Martin's wife Nancy came to dinner at my sister's house on Saturday night. And it was as if we'd all been hanging around with one another yesterday. Then on Sunday, the remaining two cousins on that side, Linda and Bob, and their spouses arrived. And again, there were no boundaries among us.

It's true we have a shared history but that doesn't explain the pure joy we all experienced just being in the same room with one another, just like my siblings and I when we gather. There's something more at work than shared history here.

You could feel Mom and our uncles and aunts enjoying the scene. You could feel their happiness mixing with ours, their joy part and parcel with ours.

I once read that the definition of magic is a change in consciousness. I believe that. That's how I know there was magic in the air this weekend.

The Ladies from the Guild Help Out Again

Falling Leaves by Lynn Bohi

Shooting Stars by Jeannette Stillson

From Matisse by Madeline Boughter

Pointsettia by Rosalie Cutter

Stars by Marsha Biggs

Mom's memorial celebration yesterday was absolutely wonderful and I'll write more about it tomorrow but today, the members of my quilt guild are coming in for the pinch hit with more beautiful quilts for you to enjoy so I can marshall my thoughts.

Enjoy!

And I Say to Myself, What a Wonderful World

Mom's grandkids—Jesse, Brian, Terri Lee, Carter, Natasha, Andrew holding Christian

Sonja, Don, Natasha for her Dad Jim, Pete, Mark, Heidi, Paul and Dave

The Ladies of the Guild Come to my Rescue—Part 1

A fanciful garden created from scrap fabric by Fran Bashnagel

A group-designed and created quilt 

I'm a member of the Northern Lights Quilters Guild that meets in Lebanon, New Hampshire once a month. I've been a member for a bit more than three years now.

I doubt there's anywhere on planet earth where you can find more creativity than in a quilt guild. This group is pretty big—about 125 members—and there's enough diversity among us that all sorts of quilting gets represented from very traditional to interpretations of crop circles (you have to see these pieces to believe them) to very artsy and everything in between.

Last year, I coordinated a small show of quilts at the Lebanon Coop's cafe, a great space to exhibit art by the community. Based on the feedback we got, it was quite a hit so I'm doing a second one this year.

The show will be hung on November 1 so I've started collecting quilts from members to be shown in it. Since I'm going to be deeply engaged in the memorial celebration for my Mom over the weekend, I thought I'd share some photos of these lovely creations with you.

If you're in the neighborhood from November 1 through December 5 of this year, drop into the Lebanon Coop and check these out. You have to admit, getting a dose of color at this grayest time of the year is good for whatever ails you.

Chasms

It comes the turn of every generation when we step irrevocably from the lingering wilderness of childhood into the wilderness of grown-up-ness. It happens when we lose the significant people in the generation before our own.

One of my six brothers called to chat yesterday. He's been busy investigating the genealogy of my mother's side of the family, an interest that we share.

Somewhere near the close of our conversation, we were talking about how Mom was our "gossip central," a joke we had among ourselves and a term that even Mom would use to describe herself once in a while. We all knew that if you had news you wanted all your siblings to know, all you had to do was call Mom and the story would be spread. Sometimes the details weren't quite right but the gist of the message got through.

Now with Mom gone, that core communication has disappeared with her. "Who's going to do that now?" my brother asked.

My answer was "All eight of us have to take the responsibility."

But I know in my heart of hearts that that won't happen. I talk regularly with my sister and youngest brother by email and phone. The brother who called yesterday seems in need of sibling contact and we're both enjoying our conversations. I think we'll both make an effort to continue that.

But for the rest of us, I'm not sure. And I feel the edges of the chasm that Mom—and her love and care—has left behind. What shape will my family take in the months and years to come?

Sunflowers

My Mom adored flowers. She could and did grow African violets like nobody's business.

Every Mother's Day, she got pink roses from Dad.

Her favorite Mom's Day gift was when Dad led his kid crew in a daylong effort in a rock garden at our house during which we planted plants so that they spelled out the word "Mom."

She was an autumn baby and along with her passion for pink, she loved fall colors. And one of her all time favorite flowers was the sunflower.

This picture was taken of the sunflower that I brought home with me from the Cape the day of her funeral. I'm rounding the corner on the bling bags and need tags to attach to them for the "To" and the "From."

So Mom's sunflower will grace them.

It sounds as though we're in for quite a wonderful celebration of her life. She's gonna love it.

Why Is It?

Two weeks ago, my desk was a bit less cluttered. (I've never achieved perfect uncluttered-ness no matter what any of my friends may think of my organizational skills.)

My workload was at a pace both interesting and not-too-stressful. I wasn't scheduled to go away anywhere but had time to do the work necessary around here in the fall-going-into-winter phase of the year.

So this weekend is the memorial celebration for my Mom. I'm nearly done with the bling bags we're using to re-gift her jewelry. But I have name tags and cards to make, an apple crisp to bake for Saturday night supper, pictures of Mom to find.

And now my phone is ringing. There are wonderful folks interested in having me work on their books. The piles are starting to tower on my desk.

And the deadlines which were not part of my life two weeks ago are now all occurring on the same day—when I won't be available because we're celebrating Mom.

Did you ever notice how hard it is to go away? Even escaping for a weekend can mean a relentless week of packing, coordinating, planning and deadlines.

Coming home means more of the same.

When our son was a little guy, he used to point out that whenever we were on vacation, someone always put time on fast forward.

I want to talk to whoever is in charge of the clock!

One of Brother Cadfael's Favorites

I have a couple of different Monkshoods in my gardens. There's a pink one that blooms in late June/early July. But my favorite is this blue one.

It sits amidst a supporting cast of garden phlox at the furthest end of my yard, spending nearly all summer in dappled shade. About this time of year, I check it daily because it sits near the top of the steps I take down to our riverside walk.

It blooms slowly, deepening in color as Halloween approaches. And I suppose, given its well-deserved reputation, that Halloween is an appropriate time for Monkshood to bloom.

You see, Monkshood (or Aconite, to give it its proper name) is poisonous. All parts of the plant—roots, stems, leaves, flowers—are troublesome. When I finally cut it back in early November, the last garden plant to be felled with my shears, I always wear gloves and keep the dog inside because she likes to chase everything.

Once it's in the compost pile, I don't think about it again. But until then...

I first learned about Aconite from one of the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters. In fact, the book is called Monk's Hood. It's also appeared in more than one Agatha Christie novel as the poison of choice.

No matter. I love the plant. It has a blossom like no other. And it delights long past the time when every other bloom is but a memory.

Enjoying the Pleasures of Autumn—A Photo Journey

A shiny beech leaf in the path. Most of a beech's leaves stay on the tree until the following spring.

The waters of the river are still warm this time of year, relative to the air. Every morning, misty ghosts rise from the river, blotting out the sun's warmth until nearly 10 a.m.

The larger ferns, such as the fiddlehead (ostrich) have long faded away. Now it's time to appreciate the smaller ferns that stay green near the ground longer.

Japanese knotweed is an obnoxious, invasive plant. The only time I can appreciate its beauty is in the fall as it fades from green to yellow and then tawny brown.

I love the backlit sensation of autumn foliage when tress glow in the woods.

The woods are full of seeds, the promise of spring.

The woodpile stacked in readiness for next year. It will dry all winter.

Frugal vs. Cheap

I have a friend, a longtime friend, who barely makes $10,000 a year, an income level she has maintained forever. Back in July, she bought her first home—for cash—no mortgage. The house is all hers.

She closed on the house earlier this month and told me that some of the money she used to pay for that house has been in her savings account since she was a kid. Needless to say, my friend can make a penny go further than anyone I have ever known.

I respect her approach to economy. It works for her. She never buys any article of clothing that doesn't come from a second hand store or a yard sale. I've never known her to indulge herself in any way either by eating out (she does occasionally but it is carefully planned in advance) or attending a play or taking in any but the most infrequent movie.

Now I'm an LL Bean girl with side trips to Lands End from time to time. My friend has expressed shock at the fact that I have paid as much as $20 for a pair of pants. I'm sure, without her saying it, that she thinks me extravagant while I think of my LL Bean purchases as frugal, an investment.

There are times, I admit, when I have thought her cheap to her own detriment because as careful as she is, the secondhand stuff often has a short shelf life, a fact she bemoans. It's also important to note that her careful shopping habits are possible only because she has time to invest in rooting around secondhand shops.

To me, our shopping habits illuminate the difference between cheap and frugal. To me, cheap comes at the expense of ourselves or others. Cheap is the junk at Walmart with its planned obsolescence which forces folks who either choose or must shop there to buy twice. Cheap is taking advantage of another's distress to save or make money (see corporations and financially corrupt institutions on Wall Street). Cheap is spending a half-a-day picking through secondhand stores to find clothing for less than a dollar that doesn't last very long.

Frugal, to me, is being mindful of the ways you spend money by thinking of your purchases as investments. Which brings me to these nearly-twenty-year-old pants.

When I bought these pants, there were a deep khaki green. The fabric is sturdy. They are comfortable, fitting in all the right places. Even after all this time, only the edges of the  zipper's placket and the bottoms of the legs show any wear at all.

They have long been one of my favorite pairs to wear, akin to my beloved blue jeans on my list of perfect clothes. But about three years ago, I finally had to admit that they had become a bit shabby so they became my gardening pants.

These pants probably cost less than $20 but let's say they were even that price. I'll get 20 years (at least) of wear out of them. That's $1 a year investment for rugged comfort. That's frugality, in my book.

Don't get me wrong, I shop at secondhand clothing stores and secondhand sales too. In fact, I bought a white dress shirt for my husband yesterday at a secondhand store for only $3.25. He needed one to wear as part of his "uniform" to usher at a local theater this season, and I was not willing to pay full price for something he needs only to satisfy some dress code for a volunteer gig.

My point here is that buying wisely means taking the time to understand what you need, the purpose of your purchase, and then getting good and proper value for your money. That type of buying doesn't always mean seeking out the lowest price possible.

Orange You Sweet—Carrot Harvest

This weekend is a holiday for most folks but here at the Fiddlehead Cottage, it's always a weekend of work.

First of all, it keeps us out of any traffic that's congealing in places like Woodstock or along Route 4. And you just don't cut back gardens or put lawn furniture away in August.

So I dug up the carrots yesterday and vowed to plant more next year. Nothing—absolutely nothing—in the vegetable world tastes quite as good as a newly picked carrot that's been washed in cool water.

The crunch is exquisite and the taste is sweet. I plant Sugar Snax seeds and they certainly live up to their name.

I also picked enough basil yesterday to make our first batch of fresh pesto, and it came out really good.

Well, it's off to chores! Just wanted to post before complete exhaustion set in.

Acts of Recycling

If you pay attention in the woods, you learn that the systems present within it change constantly. I've always had an affinity for trees, and love no place more than a forest.

Even though I've spent sixty years tramping in the woods, I am simultaneously amazed and reassured by the way Lady Natures wastes nothing. And her acts of recycling are works of beauty.

When I put recycling at the curb for pick up, it's junky looking—bottles, paper, cardboard, cans. Yeah, I wash everything before I put it out but let's face it, there is absolutely nothing pretty about human garbage.

But when a tree falls to the ground, nothing is wasted. Insects bore trails through the timber. Birds eat the bugs. The trunk eventually sheds its bark like a stripper in slow motion.

Then the branches become brittle, littering the ground. Plants than inhabit the forest floor crowd close, and eventually, the wood grows soft and punky. That's when the moss and fungi show up. That's the beautiful part.

Here on the river, our accumulation of dead fall is at varying stages of decay. Over the years, we've watched a number of logs become "mother logs," hosting a wide variety of moss and fungi. The next step is soil, rich loam that fertilizes the earth so that the next generation of trees have a good start.

To me, these silent circles of life are the great promise of life, the reassurance that it can and will all begin anew.

Stocking Up

This tale has a long taproot so bear with me for a moment of history.

In 1936, a group of folks who lived in Hanover, New Hampshire and affiliated with Dartmouth College created a small cooperative for the purpose of buying citrus fruit at a price they couldn't get separately. This was during the Great Depression (as opposed to the Great Recession, which is where we are at the moment though I believe the difference is merely one of semantics) so pooling their purchasing power made a great deal of sense.

In fact, it made so much sense that the group began to purchase other difficult-to-afford commodities together. The idea, as good ideas will, grew into the necessity of housing the coop in a garage and then in a storefront on Main Street in Hanover and then in a freestanding store.

When we moved to the Upper Valley in 1986, the only coops we knew were small struggling operations that faded when the central volunteers burned out. So being able to shop in a single store where you could buy fresh meat packaged to your specifications, flours, rice, and cereals in bulk, and local produce was a revelation.

As I said, good ideas attract followers and lots of other Upper Valley-ites were having the same epiphany. Soon the store had to hire a parking attendant to direct traffic on weekends and holidays, and getting in and out of the Coop became a serious challenge.

Since this is a membership-owned grocery store run by an elected board and not some who-cares-as-long-as-we're-making-money corporation, we all get to decide the Coop's future, and the crowding issue in Hanover assumed a permanent position at the top of everyone's agenda. In 1996, we voted to create a second store about two miles down the road just over the town line in Lebanon, New Hampshire. That's where this picture was taken this morning.

So what does this have to do with stocking up? Every October, the Co-op returns to its roots by holding a caselot sale. It's arguably the most popular event of the year.

It's all part of the mindset that invades our brains when the leaves start to droop from the trees—harvest the basil for pesto, cut back the gardens so they're ready for spring, put the lawn furniture and the kayaks away, stack wood.

It's also the time of year when I tick off the chores that disappear for a while—mowing, weeding, maintaining the trail in the woods. My fingers itch for yarn and fabric, an itch I scratch with abandon. Late fall, winter and early spring—time to stock up and tuck ourselves in so we can enjoy the pleasures of cold weather.

Yeah, I'm ready!

Different Tribes

Human beings love pattern. We read, in part, because we recognize the patterns—the shapes—of words and letters.

We develop and follow routines—get up in the morning, yoga, journal, shower, breakfast, go to work— because they are reassuring and, on a certain level, we get things done on automatic pilot so we can dwell on the more riveting aspects of our lives in the foreground of our minds.

We've lived here on the river for sixteen years now, the longest we've dwelled in any single place since my husband and I started cohabitating more than three decades ago.

We cut a path that meanders through our woods and along the river the first summer we lived here. Goldie and I walk it nearly every day. Our pattern.

I've gained a deep appreciation for the intricacies of Lady Nature during our daily visits together, of how the water flows at different times of the year (cold water appears to move in a flatter, oily pattern than warm), of the spot where the yellow dogtooth violets appear every year, that the large sycamore leaves will be among the first to float to the forest floor.

The pattern you see in this leaf reveals the minute veins that carry water during the spring and summer. At this point in the season, when the tree no longer needs its leaves because the coming months are darker, a cork-like barrier develops between the branches of the tree and the stems of its leaves. Bereft of water and nutrients, the chlorophyll begins to die and the yellow or orange or red that's been in the leaf all along reveals itself.

If you catch the process at the right moment, you get to marvel at how similar the veins of a leaf are to the veins in our own bodies.

We are not so different from our vegetative neighbors. We're merely members of different tribes.

The Serious Business of Joy

Our little cocker spaniel Goldie is now 8 and a half years old. The day we brought her home, she weighed about five pounds. We put her on the floor of the living room, she nosed out one of the cats' toys—a small yellow ball—and dropped it in my lap.

I rolled it into the kitchen. She chased and retrieved and we've been playing together ever since.

To Goldie, play is the serious stuff of life. Nothing else ever takes top place in her agenda. She chases sticks year-round, snowballs in winter, water droplets from the river in summer, and this time of year, it's playing in piles of leaves.

Photo 1: Notice the concentration. She's on one side of a small pile of leaves under an ash tree in our front yard. She is zeroed in on my foot, waiting for the kickoff that signals the start of play.

Photo 2: The kickoff and the play. (Note booted foot in bottom right corner and jumping dog in top left.)

Photo 3: It's back to earth and circling around to get ready for the next kick.

We've always enjoyed Goldie's intensity as much as her goofiness. She's a potent, daily reminder of the fact that fun is equally important as work. And really, if you get right down to it, they should be the same thing.

The Peace After the Chaos

Moving is such a chaotic experience. You have moments of "What in the world have I been saving that for?" and "Oh, so that's where I put that!" and "I put that in a safe place and now I can't find it!"

My son Jesse and I had lots of those moments over the past two days because it was our stuff we were moving. Jay was most ably assisting but his stuff wasn't involved in this move.

By the time Jay and I collapsed on the couch Saturday night with glasses of dooryard cider from our friends at Poverty Lane Orchards and a mindless DVD, the three of us had moved what felt like mountains of books (Jesse and I are both book-aholics), fabric (me), clothes (Jesse), and files (both of us).

We managed to have my desk and the stuff I need to work pretty much intact by the end of Saturday and Jesse could find his bed but the rest resembled the worst jumble sale you've ever visited.

Now I can't work in chaos. Drives me nuts. I can and do make messes but beyond a certain threshold, my need to know where stuff is takes over and any creativity stops dead. So yesterday was just as long a day as I labored to restore order.

My husband laughed when I told him that I woke up in the middle of the night knowing just where my sorting adventures had to begin but when you're mad about method, you have to know where to start. I have been stashing my yarn in two totes in a downstairs closet for years but have always wanted it more accessible. So that's where I started.

Moving the yarn freed up storage space in the closet where I carefully chose, over the course of the day, to tuck away stuff I don't need very often but sure want to know where it is. And then I was off.

By the time I went to bed, I was pretty close to as done as I can get until Jay can make me some shelves in the former clothes closet where I'm going to house my fabric stash, which was quite an accomplishment.

And those flowers, those delicious dark pink asters up at the top of this post? Picked fresh this morning because I had just the spot to put them.

Now if I could only find that flash drive that I put in a safe place so I would know where it was, all would be well.

After Chaos Comes Bliss—Right?

Yesterday was moving day. My office and art studio are now in the downstairs of our house and our son has taken over the office space in our renovated, detached garage. This is really a beautiful space and there are lots of advantages in the move.

Of course, I have no idea where much of anything is, as you can witness in these photographs.

But this type of chaos and rearranging is also an opportunity to downsize, to put things that should be together together so the "stuff tribes" are all in one place, and to figure out what sort of projects I'm willing to spend my time on. 

So tomorrow, this pile and all of the others like it will be gone. Right?

Comfort Food, Jane Austen Style

When my son Jesse was a little guy, small enough to sit on my lap to read bedtime stories (and believe me, he's a lot bigger than that now), he had favorite books that we read over and over and over again. In fact, I can still recite the opening pages of Dr. Seuss's ABC's from memory.

Big A, little a, what begins with A?
Aunt Annie's alligator, a, a, a.
Big B, little b, what begins with B?
Barber, baby, bubbles and a bumblebee.

See what I mean?

It took me a while to understand this phenomenon but now I know that it was practice, it was learning. But it was also comfort, the comfort of the familiar. After all, when you open a beloved book to page 37 because you know that's where you'll find a passage you particularly like, you'll find it there on page 37 just where it was last time. And for little ones whose lives are continually buffeted by new experiences because everything is a first for them, the comfort of a book that's the same as yesterday is significant.

I think all readers develop a short list of go-to books that they'll read and re-read for the same reason. The writing in them is good or at least compelling. You know what's going to happen so you don't have to spend a lot of thought following a plot but can sit back, relax, and savor the details of the journey from page first to page last.

I have such a list of beloveds—Winnie the Pooh, Tolkien's trilogy, Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, George Eliot's Middlemarch—but Jane Austen has long topped my list of books I will re-read.

In other words, Austen is the macaroni and cheese of my reading life.

My husband can always tell when I am significantly stressed because Jane shows up on my reading shelf. Years ago for my birthday, he bought me this wonderful seven-volume set of Jane in hardcover from the University of Oxford Press. I adore these books because they are replicas of the original editions of her work so you can really time travel to the early 1800s, reading them the way they were first seen.

When we were getting close to losing Mom, Jane appeared on my reading table. Of what I consider the four big Austen novels—Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Emma—it is Emma who is my least favorite. And yet I wanted to read her particularly this time.

I'm not sure why exactly except that Emma—who can and is foolish and meddling and sometimes petty and irritating—shows this remarkable love and patience for her father, a man who dwells on his ailments and mourns change in all its forms. Mr. Woodhouse is a sweet guy but peevish and would try the patience of a saint. But young Emma cares and nurtures him in a way that shows a true love for the man and a maturity on her part that bodes well for the adult she becomes during the course of the novel.

In any case, Emma proved a good companion for the past month as I dipped in and out of the book. Ah Jane, thanks for your company.

Bling Bags Two and Three—Furthering Creative Expression

Just a quick followup on designing these little bags for jewelry. These are the second and third attempts to get them right and I'm pretty happy with them.

Notice that the upper flap is slightly tapered so it slides comfortably into its ribbon holder. The top opening and the side closures are now done in straight stitch and look much cleaner.

I converted the once-exterior fabric into the interior fabric because it's not as bright as I wanted for the outside.

The one remaining issue, which you can see in the photo on the right, is that the ribbon is just a bit too tight when the flap is closed. When I make bag four, I'll pin the ribbon in place with a bit of slack to take care of this issue and then I think it's production time.

On a weather note: we've had weeks of very dry weather. We didn't gain a drop of water from Hurricane Earl. But over the past two days, we've received a summer's worth of rain. The river is rising rapidly. And the water is clearing the banks of debris. Whole trees are occasionally floating downstream and our island has been much reduced in size.

The White River, which is our backyard, is the longest undammed river in Vermont and its watershed is huge. Since we're only seven miles up from where it churns into the Connecticut River, we get to watch her in all her power and glory.

It's always interesting here on the river.