More Green for a Rainy Day

Ruby Red Swiss chard in my garden. These plants were harvested
and frozen to use in soups all winter. They add this earthy taste and smell
that's so welcome this time of year.

I have two bunches of chives in my gardens. These are right in front of the house where
they are among the very first plants to spring out of the ground.
Right now, this garden is under a four-foot snowbank.

A Christmas fern in the woods in fall. It is one of the last green plants
we see along the path.

This is a clematis hybrid. This viney plant takes forever to get acclimated
and bloom and last season was a first for this plant. Now, however, the
lattice where it climbed is gone so I will have to move it.

I spotted this comfrey plant in the woods close to the river, dug up some rootstock and
put it in my garden. The leaves of this plant are huge and fuzzy. I love the blossoms
on it but the leaves tend to smother anything close by so I have
to cut it back to the ground at least once every summer.

I Know Why the Caged Vermonters Sing

Caged Vermonters sing to bring the spring—in spite of
8 (or possibly more) inches of new snow yesterday.

Caged Vermonters sing because our paths through the white stuff are
so well-known and so well-worn.

Caged Vermonters sing in a vain attempt to
make all the icicles disappear!

Caged Vermonters sing to remember the beauty of snow.

The end—of course!

Green B, B, Bs

When my son was little, one of our favorite books to read together was the B Book featuring the Berenstein Bears. The whole book is filled with words that begin with B starting with "Big. Brown. Bear." In that spirit, a handful of Bs for a snowy and Beautiful Saturn's day morning..
Bindweed, bindweed, BBB. The grandparent of the morning glory.

Black-eyed Susan casting yellow rays of color from a vase of flowers.

Blue columbines springing from seed originally given to me by a beloved yoga teacher.

Blueberries ready to pick at Moore's Orchard up in Pomfret on an August morning.
We're now enjoying them in pancakes.

Bright pink asters that wave in clouds down on our swimming rocks in late summer, early fall.

Green A, B, Cs

White Lady Nature sees fit to dump a bunch more white stuff on us,  it's a good time to visit my gardens and the surrounding woodlands to compile my list of 60 plants gathered this year.
We begin with a giant allium (that's the onion family). This closeup photo was taken by my husband.

This is one of the most fragrant plants in my garden. The whole of Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) smells of black licorice. And the bees just love it. In the fall, as the bees get dopey with the cooling air, you have to careful if you pick this to add to a bouquet because you make pick a bee at the same time.

Autumn joy is one of the last plants to bloom. It's a sedum (sort of the camels of the plant world) and its thick leaves remind me of a jade plant.

A bachelor button still in the bud. This is one of my favorite plants with a deep blue that takes on a purplish hue as the flower ages. They look spectacular with the their neighbors, the yellow evening primrose.

Barberry is hardy, doesn't draw harmful insets, doesn't need much attention—and is one of the biggest pests in our woodlands. This barbed shrub escaped from the garden a long time ago to invade our woodlands where it grows in big patches. Getting rid of it is difficult because of the thorns. Too bad it's so good looking.

The Winter Wars

This is not what the great outdoors looks like today.

But it will tomorrow.

For the past three weeks, we've had an extraordinarily welcome break from shoveling and roof raking and snowblowing. The tonnage on folks' roofs has had time to diminish during the day before it refreezes during our very cold nights.

We're all still complaining about the cold—it just saps all your energy—but the evidence of the end of winter is unmistakeable. The dirt-encrusted banks on the sides of the road are shorter. The towns are posting weight limit signs on the smaller roads so that as the ground beneath the asphalt thaws, heavy trucks won't cave in our byways.

The frost heaves are getting bad enough to give you motion sickness as you get jostled from side to side while being jostled up and down. Seriously, trying to drink coffee on these roads is nigh impossible.

But [sigh] the forecast for tomorrow is heavy snow. And lots of it. So this is what we will look like tomorrow.

Twenty five days to spring.

Paddy Lives in a Revised and Expanded Edition!

I just received the proof copy of Paddy: A Ruffed Grouse Chooses Our Farm from the printer used by my company, Full Circle Press.

It's always a time of mixed trepidation and fanfare. Will I find some error that got overlooked in the rush to press that means I need to redo the file for the book? Will the color look good? Are all the pages there? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The fanfare takes center stage as soon as I have released the breath I always seem to hold while I check the proof. It looks good. Oh wow, that came out better than I expected. And that design idea I had, well, it worked.

Such was the case with Paddy in his new and revised edition. I looked and looked to make sure all was well and then, ha!

It's a book!

If you enjoy nature stories, especially the true kind, I would pick up a copy of this book if I were you. It will be available on Amazon.com shortly and I will let you know when it's available.

Counting Down the Days

Today is my husband's birthday.

There are 26 days until the first day of spring.

Some day soon, the white will all disappear and we'll be walking along green paths once again.

The average temperature this winter has been way too cold for too long.

We will be on our first kayaking trip in approximately 90 days, if not sooner.

Winter can be too long.

Comfort Quilt One-Finishing Up

With the center complete, it's time to add the borders. The first border is black so that visually,  the small squares of color in the center of the quilt stand out.

The second border was an experiment for me, putting red in only two corners. The red was sewn to the black with a bias seam such as those used in making a binding.

The final border features the fabric that inspired this quilt in the first place. I bought this flowered green fabric to use as a backing at some point but never have found the right quilt for it. Then I figured it would get used as a backing if it was used in the top of the quilt. Voilá!

Comfort Quilt One-A Step-by-Step in Photos

The center of this quilt begins with squares cut 2 1/2 inches. There are 188 squares in the center, half of which are black and half of a mix of other fabrics.

Each of the color fabrics is teamed with a black square to start putting the center of the quilt together. There are 23 of these pairs in each of the four rows of the center of this Comfort Quilt. Save out four of these fabric pairs to add to the bottom of each row.

Then all but four of the pairs are sewn to another to make 4-Patch blocks. Note that one of the pairs is turned opposite to the other so that the black squares are diagonally across form one another in the 4 Patch.

Then the 4-Patch blocks are put together to make four strips.  Take one of the 4-Patch blocks and sew one of the four pairs that you kept out to it. Each strip in the center is five 4-Patch blocks plus this threesome.

While putting the 4-Patch blocks together, pay attention to the color fabrics that are nearby. I make it a point not to place the color fabrics in a diagonal with one another. Putting two pieces of the same fabric so close to one another draws a little too much attention to that particular fabric at the expense of the others. When you have completed the four rows, the row on the left is sewn to the one immediately to its right. The row on the right is sewn to the row immediately on its left. When this is done, you sew the two pairs of strips together in the center. By attaching the rows in this way, you don't pick up and sew the same strip over and over. This reduces fabric distortion.

When the center is done, I added a black border on all four sides. Notice how this makes the colorful fabrics stand out even more than they did before.

Watch This Space—Comfort Quilts

Oh my, I just realized that I did not blog yesterday. It got to be a busy day and I was focused on my comfort quilt project and…well…experienced a synapse failure.

But here's my newest project—comfort quilts in simple yet (hopefully) eye-popping patterns that will get put together in a book. All the quilts are 30 x 60 inches, the right size to keep you warm where you need it but not so big that they are heavy.

This one begins with two-and-a-half-inch squares of color paired with the same sized-square in black. There are 184 squares in all, divided 50/50.

These squares were all cut on Thursday night. Last night, they were paired with one another, and then the pairs put together in 4 patches.

Game on!

Tradition and the New

I get this daily email called Design Milk. The founder of Design Milk, Jaime Derringer, posts pictures of a wide array of contemporary design in furniture, art, graphic design, architecture, you name it.

Sometimes I'm thrilled by what I find in the post. Sometimes ho hum, but that's the way of design. Nothing is ever going to appeal to everyone.

But yesterday, Jaime posted some contemporary work by a quilter with the remark "this isn't your grandmother's quilt."

Now, I haven't been quilting as long as most of the women in my guild. I'm still very much of a newbie in that regard. But I have been observing and writing about quilting for a while now so I can tell you categorically that we passed the "grandmother's quilt" stage a long time ago.

So I wrote to Jaime and we got into a lively conversation as I turned her onto a strategic handful of contemporary quilt designers. At one point, I mentioned that I'd done and written about art for a long time and come to the conclusion that adhering to tradition is as much of a dead end as ignoring tradition in favor of always being "new, new, new."

She agreed. And then this morning, as I looked for a quote to share with a wonderful art quilter who's working on a book with me, I discovered that Winston Churchill believed the same.

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."
—Winston Churchill

Lord Churchill, by the way, was quite the visual artist and memorized all the major plays of Shakespeare. Amazing man.

This Friendship Star quilt, which I made for my sister Heidi, is more in the traditional mode of quilting.

This wall hanging, made for my brother-in-law Terry, is far from traditional quilting.

Unlearning Deadlines

I learned most of my quilting habits while on deadline for my first how-to, TEACH YOURSELF VISUALLY QUILTING.

The idea behind the Teach Yourself Visually series is that non-English speakers can learn a skill by simply looking at pictures. In my book's case, that's 650 pictures of which I sewed or put together all but five.

Simultaneous with sewing and writing and managing this enormous project, I also started a new business with a partner. Consequently, I worked every weekend and every night for months trying to meet my multiplying deadlines.

Yes, it was pretty awful to live through. I would not recommend it to anyone. Seriously. No matter how young or old.

I digress because that's not the comment for today. Today, I'm aiming at the impact that deadlines have on acquiring and perfecting skills.

When I first started writing professionally—i.e., getting paid for my wordiness—I worked for a newspaper. Deadlines were part of everyday life, and they served several good purposes—learning to be closely observant so that you "got" a story as quickly as possible, how to research a topic efficiently, how to ask questions that led to more information, how to write smart and tight and fast.

After my newspaper stint, however, it took years to unlearn the need for speed so that more flavor lay among my sentences.

I realized the other day that deadline mania was killing my love for quilting.

Now my other best-favorite craft is crochet. I've never crocheted on a deadline so consequently, I cherish my crochet as meditation. In fact, I deliberately seek out patterns that are simple yet eye-catching so that I can feel the yarn move through my hands without the need to pay attention to every individual stitch.

I feel the same way about hand sewing.

But every time I sat down to quilt, this "hurry up" energy emerged. "Don't stop for anything. There's no time. Hurry. Don't worry about the details. Hurry." It was a tape loop that never stopped. As a result, this winter as I took care of myself emotionally, I've mostly avoided quilting. And I couldn't figure out why until this past Sunday when I grabbed that tape loop and told it to shut up.

At the time, I was playing with some scrap squares in a pattern called Disappearing Nine Patch. I had three different sized sets of squares, and wanted to see what size worked best for a quilt I have in mind.

I whipped through the smallest size and was completely unhappy with the result. It bowed, didn't lay flat, yuck, yuck, yuck.

The middle-sized squares came out the same way. Just at that moment, my deadline tape loop started playing and I thought "What's the big hurry?"

There isn't one—except between my own ears.

I stepped away, took a walk with the dog, came back and spent the next couple of hours doing things deliberately, working with my seam allowances until they were right, paying attention to how I used my iron.

And that last block? It came out perfect.

Speed is no substitute for joy.

Growing Corn

I had an interesting conversation with my physical therapist this morning. We started off talking about writing then morphed into blogging. She told me how she wrote a blog through her diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. I told her about this blog and how I talked about losing my Mom here.

Our conversation flowed, as conversations do between like-minded folks, and at one point, we talked about losing friends during the hard times we each experienced, how some people who were once close pulled away while others came closer.

My p.t. lost a friend the day she was diagnosed. She asked the friend to stay with her that evening because she was upset and needed someone to talk to. The friend said she was too busy.

I had a friend who pulled away from me during the last month of my Mom's life. During the active time of our relationship, this friend turned to me again and again for comfort during her difficult times. She's not much of a planner of social events and quite timid in a crowd of mostly strangers. I'm a planner of social stuff. Most of the time, I glide easily through crowds. I planned. She showed up. I glided. She followed in the safety of my wake.

While I was aware of these differences between us, I did not realize how much she relied on the attention in our relationship to flow from me to her.

At the beginning of August last year, my focus in life narrowed to exclude everything and nearly everyone except an eighty-two year old woman with white hair lying on her side in a bed in a nursing home on Cape Cod. I could no longer plan more than five minutes ahead, and had to concentrate just to get through my days.

It was at this time that I made plans to spend a Saturday kayaking with this friend who I now think of as a Onceler (from Dr. Seuss's book The Lorax). Within the hour of making that plan, however, I realized I could not bear to be away from home for a full day. By that time, I lived with a half-packed suitcase and jumped whenever the phone rang. Mom's needs were my first priority.

I explained this to my Onceler Friend, changing my plans. Her immediate response was to pick up her toys and stomp away. Over the next week, the quality of our interactions deteriorated rapidly, and with no energy to spare, I had to hope she would recognize my distress and realize this time I needed the attention.

That did not happen.

During the last days I sat with Mom in her dimmed room, watching her breathe, alert to any sign of suffering that I could alleviate, I had a great deal of time to think. I knew my life was changing in that room and I needed to see it and understand it.

I remembered a phrase from the Medicine Cards I use for meditation about embracing what grows corn and eliminating what does not. Because the pain of my Onceler Friend's actions was so fresh, she became part of my thinking.

And I realized I no longer wanted to include her in my life. And I felt relieved.

It's been seven months now and I don't think of her often. But every once in a while, something like my conversation with my physical therapist triggers thoughts of my Onceler Friend, and I feel the need to have my say, to tell her of the impact her actions had on me at a time when I was so fragile. To tell her how angry I've been, and why she is no longer my friend.

Growing corn is important.

Ode to the Painted Trowel

My husband and I will be married for 32 years in July. Nowadays, that's an amazing feat. What's more amazing is that we still enjoy each other's company.

And we both love to laugh.

At this point in our relationship, we keep our gift giving to a minimum—just stockings at Christmas that focus on special food items, cards on Mother's and Father's Day.

And painted trowels for Valentine's Day.

I'm battling a cold so I slept in this morning but did get up to unwrap my Valentine's Day present and enjoy the card Jay got for me. This was covered in tissue paper and standing up in a container that looked as though it should hold water for flowers. I had no clue what he'd bought for me.

But I'm here to report that the laugh I got out of this just lifted up my morning.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Last Two Wizened Apples = Pumpkin Bread

Have you ever noticed how quickly eating seasons can change?

For example, when the calendar wings its way into November around here, we're all into soup.

Starting right about now, soup is starting to seem a little less desirable and I know I'd better use up the ones I have in the freezer by March or they'll get left behind, accumulating freezer burn until I have to throw them away.

Starting in late August with the first Paula Reds and continuing through the search for good Northern Spys around Thanksgiving, apples flow through this house in many forms—pie, cobbler, sauce, etc.

And then, without planning it, our fruit tastes switch to citrus when there's still a couple of apples left kicking around in the refrigerator's fruit bin. They soften and their skins wizen up, like the ones pictured here, because no one (not even me, the apple queen) wants them.

This morning, we peeled and chopped up two of the final four wizens for pancakes topped with applesauce and cinnamon/sugar. These last remaining apples from the 2010 season were just peeled and chopped for inclusion in pumpkin bread.

Here's my favorite Pumpkin Bread recipe. I substituted the apples for the raisins in the version I made today.

Pumpkin Bread (makes 2 loaves)

1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups (one can) cooked pumpkin
2 eggs
2/3 cup molasses
2/3 cup sugar
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins (or chopped apple)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 teaspoons baking soda

Grease two loaf pans. Measure out the oil in a 2-cup measuring cup. Add the molasses then pour into a mixing bowl. (By doing it this way, the molasses slides right out of the measuring cup.) Beat the two eggs in a separate container then add to the oil and molasses. Add the pumpkin and mix thoroughly.

Add the salt, baking soda, spices, raisins, sugar and nuts. Mix thoroughly.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Measure and mix in the flour. The batter will be thick.

Divide into the two loaf pans and bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.

Let cool then tip out of the loaf pans.

Any Port in a Storm

It's 3:30 on Saturday afternoon. I just finished a deep cleaning of our bathroom. I like to tackle one room at a time, going through every nook and cranny and over every surface in detail at least once a year. It keeps the clutter down, and I get a refresher course on what we have in this house.

I'd just put away the cleaning implements when it started snowing. We've enjoyed a nearly-shoveling-free week—something our tired bodies desperately needed.

But even that respite is not enough to make anyone jump for joy at the prospect of new snow in any appreciable amount.

Not even this mourning dove. It's hunkered down on our bird feeder and looks to remain there for the duration.

It looks like how I feel. I need to go play with colorful fabric.

New Life

Every gardener holds her or his breath when coaxing new life from a cutting or seeds. Will it grow? Will it take to the soil? Will it flourish?

About four weeks ago, I tore through my house plants. I don't have many and I must admit I am not the best of indoor gardeners because I have a tendency to pay attention to other parts of the indoor life. So my pothos and ivy and a Christmas cactus plus the remains of a green gift were pot bound or otherwise neglected.

So I pulled everything out of its pot, cut away stems I figured would respond well to sitting in a pot of water, and put the rest in my compost pile.

Admittedly, this is not the best time of year to do that but my plant shelf gets a lot of light so I thought I'd be OK. But still, I worried.

I noticed the first roots about a week ago, thin filaments extending from the stems, searching for a new home. Then this morning, I noticed that the ivy is growing new leaves.

I'm going to give them another week and then start repotting. And the scent of moist soil will waft through my kitchen. How nice.

Remembering Chard from my Garden

In this world of everlasting white, it is important to be reminded of green and moist earth and dew settled among the leaves of lady's mantle and fresh veggies.

I made a turkey stew the other day with a container of the meaty broth we freeze after we boil down the bird's carcass. The last ingredient was approximately a cup of chopped Swiss chard that I froze last summer.

I just finished the last of the stew for lunch, and was struck anew by the earthy taste of the chard. It's subtle but my tongue is rolling around picking up stray molecules because the memory of this is so pleasant.

Green is such a lovely color, don't you think?

Hmmmm—A Book Review in One Part

About a year ago, I listened to an audio book of The Sugar Queen by this author, Sarah Addison Allen, and really enjoyed it. Light, airy, fun, not too sweet.

So I had no reservations about taking this book out of the library, The Girl Who Chased the Moon.

It's very much of a piece with Sugar Queen, the same sort of quirkiness, walking the same line between this world and another, more faery sort of place. Well written. Reads fast because you want to know what the heck is going on.

So why am I unsure about whether I liked it or not? Hmmm. I think, and don't hold me to this, that it was because it was too much like the other novel, as if the author used a similar cookie cutter, just in a different size.

It's the same issue I have with Janet Evanovich's mystery novels with Stephanie Plum. I quit reading them after the second or third because they were too predictable.

Now, I can't argue with authorial success. Both Allen and Evanovich sell a ton of books and more power to them, I say. I just don't think I'm going to be looking a third novel by her, that's all.

But if I was in an airport and needed something to read, this would be a likely and welcome candidate.

Still Snowing—More Poetry!

This is one of my all-time favorites, by e.e. cummings (1894–1962)

i thank You God for most
this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky:and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

A Poem a Day

Back in the mid-1990s, I was part of a group called the Vermont Book Professionals Association. Steerforth Press, then in South Royalton, Vermont and now in Hanover, New Hampshire, was one of the other members.

In 1994, Steerforth brought out the American version of what has turned out to be one of my favorite books of poetry called A POEM A DAY.

It's filled with all kinds of verse from a wide variety of sources with a poem for each day of the year. The idea, of course, is to imbibe poetry constantly and consistently—in little bites—throughout the year.

Yesterday's adventures with Emily Dickinson reminded me of this book and how, during a tough, very snowy winter, poetry may be just what we (I) need.

Today's poem is called Imagination by a Scottish playwright named John Davidson (1857–1909)

Imagination

There is a dish to hold the sea,
A brazier to contain the sun,
A compass for the galaxy,
A voice to wake the dead and done!

The minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.

In flame can mingle north and south;
Its accent with the thunder arrive;
The ruddy sentence of its mouth
Can make the ancient dead alive.

The mart of power, the fount of will,
The form and mold of every star,
The source and bound of good and ill,
The key of all the things that are,

Imagination, new and strange
In every age can turn the year;
Can shift the poles and lightly change
The mood of men, the world's career.

A Day for Poetry by Emily Dickinson

The Bird her punctual music brings

And lays it in its place –

Its place is in the Human Heart

And in the Heavenly Grace –

What respite from her thrilling toil

Did Beauty ever take –

But Work might be electric Rest

To those that Magic make –

It's Getting Better All the Time

The signs are growing unmistakeable. There's light through the windows of my office earlier in the morning. I don't have to turn on the light in the mud room when I take out the dog the first time.

When I quit working for the day, generally between 5 and 5:30, there's still sunlight coming in the front windows of the house.

Outside when we shovel, we don't have to wear three layers of clothing. Two will do.

The beavers living in the river stir in their sleep then head out to find a midwinter snack. We see the trails they leave behind in the snow on the riverbanks.

If you park just right, the inside of your car will be warm when you get out of the store.

According to the Farmer's Almanac, we add a few minutes of daylight every twenty-four hours from December 23 onward until the summer solstice. But we don't really notice the accumulation of those minutes until this time of the year when suddenly—and it always seems sudden—we realize the deep gloom is lifting.

You can watch the edges of snowbanks retreat when the sun is out. To me, that retreating posture—which is uneven—leaves behind crystalline hands that seem to plead for a return to darkness.

But we're not headed that way and in the midst of our snow shoveling fatigue, our hearts stir.

A Tale of Two Covers

Last week, I wrote about discovering a new (to me) mystery author, Canadian Louise Penny.

When I stopped at the library yesterday to return her first book, Still Life, the librarian asked me how I liked it. When I waxed enthusiastic, she said that the library had all six of this author's novels. So two more came home with me. This cover is of the second, A Fatal Grace.

Now I'd read this book anywhere—waiting for a play to start, at town meeting, in a restaurant if I was eating alone, on the Amtrak to NYC. Why? Because the cover is wonderful and, I think, would intrigue other readers.

Not so with this second cover, the one below. The name of the book is Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn. It's the first (and last) novel I've ever tried by this author. The ONLY reason I brought it home with its Danielle Steele-ish cover (insert the image of a gagging reflex here) is that the reviews I'd read said this author wrote historical novels, which is generally a genre that I like.

I was willing to ignore the cover issue because of something that happened when I worked for The Countryman Press. We published mystery novels and picked up a good one by an author from Minnesota. Part of the story involved a video of a political candidate making love to someone she shouldn't have been. The cover designer seized on this part of the book and came up with a pink cover featuring a video camera and a disheveled bed. The author wasn't too keen on it but Countryman went ahead.

I now imagine myself not wanting to read that book in public either—because of its cover.

Anyway, I'm here to tell ya that Deanna Raybourn's efforts live up—or down, depending on your point of view—to her book's cover. I pushed on to page 141 hoping it would get better before flipping to the back to see if the ending justified reading any further. It didn't. So now it's back to my new favorite, Louise Penny.

This is one time that judging a book by its cover was justified.

A Big Blue Day

I realized today as I shoveled a path to our trash containers that I have developed an intimate relationship with frozen water over the past few days. Yesterday, I spent three and a half hours woman-handling our snow blower as I cleared the driveway, our circular path in the yard and other areas of a foot of snow.

And I found myself wondering, yet again, what dimwitted engineer made the levers on a snow blower so difficult to hold onto. Seriously, the spring action that disengages the accelerator handle is so stiff, holding it in gear makes my hand HURT.

Today we've been in the yard again, cleaning up what didn't get done yesterday as well as raking snow off the roofs of the house and and the garage. But then there's the reward of a big blue sky and temps warm enough to call for just a fleece jacket.

And when you're shoveling, even that gets warm.

There are only 47 days until the first day of spring.