Great Celebrations...Birthdays and Gardens

Elsa turned two last Sunday on Mother's Day. Now that was a celebration! We went to the park for cake and ice cream after a lovely brunch with Elsa's parents, her grandparents from the Twin Cities and me. I had made a carrot cake in the shape of a 'peep' (chick) and that was a hit,
however, it was the ice cream that truly made her drool.

....mmmmm, I just can't eat this fast enough...

One of my favorite children books is Baby Owls, a sweet, tender story with really beautiful pictures. As Elsa, above all other else, loves things that are tiny I thought that this little book would be something she'd like. As soon as I picked up the book at the bookstore, I knew I would make the three baby owls, and the mama owl and give those to her as well.

...and here they are....

When she opened the box containing them, without hesitation she...

picked up the babiest owl and clutched it to her face. It was really sweet.

It was a happy, happy birthday party and we were lucky, in this spring of unpredictable weather, that the day was quite nice despite what the weather man said.

And it has been a tough spring in which to get the garden started. First of all, I put my very large garden to rye last fall wanting to plow it under for green manure. It has been slow growing and never reached the height I would have liked. On top of that, it has been wet and there has been little access to the garden. Finally Freddie was able to plow the not-long-enough rye under, and just yesterday finally got it tilled.

This is one of the plots, and just beyond the green strip is another, perhaps half this size.

For several years I have been raking the newly tilled soil into 'raised' beds. I do not enclose them with boards but simply pull them up into beds that measure about 8" high all around.

It is quite a task raking the soil into beds of varying sizes, (as my shoulders right now can attest to) but I so much like having a path around each bed, being able to walk on all sides and to reach its middle easily.

Above a bed of Swiss Chard, a bed of lettuce and not quite visible a bed of radishes.

Two very long beds, one of leeks and one of onions.

With a gloved hand, I poked a finger into the loose dirt, set an onion in each hole, and gently packed earth around it. I must have planted over a hundred leeks, and perhaps nearly as many onions.

I haven't yet hauled the straw bales down from the top of the barn, but raked this straw off my asparagus patch and repositioned it around the beds. When the sun shines on this straw, I am afraid that 'the miller's daughter' will come snatch it and spin it into gold, it is so beautiful.

There's is a lot of garden yet to be planted, but it feels oh so good to have gotten started!!

And I even started another rug today.............

and that was a pleasure, as weaving tends to have to 'wait' until the planting is complete.
I've raked...I've planted...I've woven today....I'm happy.

MOTHER'S DAY

My mother and Peggy, me and Corky.

My mother, seemingly long gone now, is never far from me. The days of my youth are surrounded, permeated with her and now in the days of my age, it is not less so. She is deep in me, the best in me, and her gifts are everlasting. Yet this Mother's Day it is not only her I honor, but the life she gave me and the life that was born of me, as well.

Just home from the hospital with Jonel.

She filled my arms and my heart.

For You Who Gave Me Motherhood

There was a time
I thought it crazy...
irresponsible
to bring a child
into a world-
over crowded
war-torn
confused
environmentally slipping...
I thought this with conviction.

But I clearly remember
the moment this changed,
though I cannot recall
what caused that change.

Sitting in a psychology class
I was swept
head to toe
(cliche though it is)
with the desire
to have a child,
a girl child specifically.

I never questioned, nor pondered this,
never weighed it against
my former convictions,
I just became
the truth of it.

I clearly remember
the night you were conceived
the sudden knowledge,
a silent quickening
when that tiny fish
tailed its way
to exactly
the right mate.

That was long ago...
and we've come through years together...
bursting in joys both big and small
-sentences at nine months
-tears for the smashed, bloated ticks
you claimed were your pets
-the kittens, the kittens, the cats, the cats
-your utter love for trees and stones and grass and sky

harrowing through the bumps of life...
ragged and sharp
-a mother sometimes quick to anger
-the teenage years
-the divorce
-and those days of mother/daughter strife
one reads about and wishes it were true
of someone else.

Here we are, down all these years
I honoring you for what you are
-for what you have become
-for how you live your convictions
for a cleaner, safer, sounder world
-for your considered self,
who weighs and sees all sides to issues
-for your utter love of trees and stones and grass and sky

and for your daughters
big-eyed Iris
and her utter love of trees and stones and grass and sky
and brown-eyed Elsa
who seems to have been born
loving,
a born-loving child.

There was a time I thought it crazy
to bring a child into this world

and now I know
the world needed you
and so did I.

How great is a mother's love!

BEYOND WORDS

It was about 6:00 or so, just after supper, last Saturday evening when I happened to look out the window to the most incredible sight I have been treated to, perhaps in the realm of sunsets, ever. Our granddaughter Morgan was staying with us, and I quickly brought it to her attention. She was, honestly, jumping for joy, and proclaimed that the miracles of this weekend, (seeing a wood duck, a large beaver dam with beaver's head poking out, and this) were brought about by her stay with us. Who knows?

Anyway, outside we rushed to 'be in' such beauty. I, with my camera, knowing I could never truly capture the intensity of such a show, am not altogether displeased with the results.

Morgan and grandpa....

The dark was just alongside the light as though nudging it along.

And then to out delight, right before our eyes, a rainbow appeared...

...and seemed to span the very place we stood, it was truly magical...

I doubt any rainbow I've ever seen, even the double ones, surpassed this one's beauty.

A slight downpour of about 3 minutes is all that occurred, and we stayed outdoors until the darkness took over. This weekend's stay at Grandpa' and Nonna's was full of natural wonders.

WORDS...WORDS...WORDS

I don't ordinarily blog about my writing, which most specifically is poetry, and I am not exactly sure why. I think it has something to do with the fact that I am quite aware that poetry is a generally unloved form of writing. People have a tendency to think it is dense, inaccessible, high-flautin', hard to read and uninteresting to listen to. I have had people tell me most directly that they 'don't like poetry'; 'it's o.k. if it's set to music'; 'I never read poetry'; 'poetry is hard for me', etc.

Me, I love poetry, some more than others. My all time favorite poet is Ranier Maria Rilke, and my favorite of his works is in The Book of Hours, translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. I also love poetry by Jim Harrison, Julia Alvarez, Muriel Ruckheiser, Billy Collins, and Mary Oliver, to name just a few. I try to read a few poems every morning, I think this helps me write.

Last evening the La Farge Public Library hosted Essential Writing, a Read Local event. Last year, March of 2010, The Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse, WI, held the first of an annual writing contest. The categories were poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essay with a top prize in each, and an over all Grand Prize. A simple book was published with the winners and those who got Honorable Mentions, as well as work by a group of women who met bi-monthly at the FSC to write. I entered three poems in the contest, and was deeply honored to have one of my poems selected as the all around Grand Prize winner. Two other local women had work in that book as well. This prompted our local librarian to host the above mentioned event. (April also happens to be National Poetry Month)

I must say I had grave trepidations in giving my portion of the readings, as I was the only 'poet' among the readers. Knowing that the general public just does not value poetry, not only did I feel uncomfortable, but I also felt my work would be unappreciated. I anticipated a small 'crowd', and was surprised to find that there were at least 12 people in attendance.

We took turns reading, and honestly, the evening went so very well, and my trepidations were for naught, as I truly felt my work was not only appreciated, but deeply appreciated at least by many in the group.

This is the poem that won All Around Grand Prize:

February Morning

Bitter air
suspended like a fragile curtain
nearly shatters its sharp-edged crystals
in its brittleness.

It hangs together enough
for me to traverse its fragility

and articulates the Divine
like no summer day ever could.

There is majesty in this cold...
magnificent denseness
belies itself in transparency
so acute I slip easily to the
other side

and lose my sharp edges
to fleetingly become the vast unknown,
which burns with an intensity
that could incinerate
were it not God.

Following is a poem I wrote while I was engrossed in reading Rilke:

On Rilke

I can barely imagine his writing room
dark desk, dim light
dark young man...
bent heavy with love
and intensity
penning words
that preceded me by decades
yet seem to be mine.

I read with a devout awe
and a stinging jealousy...
and think that now, having been said,
I cannot drag these words
up from my own anguished soul.
They were taken from me
before I ever was...
both riveted
and torn,
grateful and distraught
honoring yet coveting

I know these were my words,
these were my aching soul in Rilke's tortured web of love

and he pulled them out one deep night
set them down
lifted them up into the holy mist

and I down these many years
anointed by such grace
wander and search and wonder
what words are left for me?

and another, quite different poem:

Midnight Madness

I awaken at midnight
with worries leaden
enough to sink me
as though anchored
in night's darkest pocket.

The air
stifled by motes
of dire thoughts,
is a dense armored wall
halting sanity.

The clock,
with a fearful eye on me,
ticks my heartbeat into eternity...
the night an unending catalog
of worst case scenarios,
which, trembling
I scour with a seriousness
and devotion
that is manic.

...and here is a poem that is a wish of mine...

On Words and Music

Why can't words
like fingers on the fret
pull crescendos
of astounding sound?

Why must words
be mere words
and not an instrument...
for instance, a guitar?

Why can't I construct
a poem
words laid down
like fret-lines
phrases taut like well-tuned strings

and of their own
when read
or said
drive the rhythm
into spheric splendor
eyes closed tight against
the brilliance...

body pulsing past itself
riding off the whammy bar?

Why can't words
play out in sounds
that make you weep?

Mark Knopfler, Roger Waters, Dickie Betts,
Santana, Neil Yound, Derek Trucks

sometimes I'm lost in listening
and emerge directly from their strings
tightly tuned
'til I am what's strummed and picked
stretched so high within their notes
I burst into
a crystal of pure sound.

Oh, that words be strummed like strings
to such high pitch
they, too, would break out
on the other side.

I have been writing every since I can remember, and have box after box of poems and stories tucked away, under cover, on the porch. I also have envelope, after envelope of rejections tucked away somewhere. I belong to two writing groups, which just happen to be made up of only women, but it is both inspiring and motivating for me, and keeps me writing.

So, if you've made it all the way through to the end of this post, I thank you for reading!




...and happy spring!




(There seems to be this huge space at the end of my post and I keep trying to fill it up, and it just won't get filled??????)

GREENS...GARDENS...GRANDMOTHERS...

I always love late April snow! One knows it won't last long, and it so freshens everything if for just a little while. It seems that this year it has served as a brilliant contrast to the growing greens of spring. I do not think I have ever seen green so green. It makes me think of the Emerald Isle, to which I've never been, but imagine that it must be colored like this. The grass is so verdant I can barely keep from munching it. This is a green I think I've never really seen before.

The last snowfall brought distress to some, unpleasant driving conditions, and a seeming delay to spring...but it also brought much beauty! (and relief, if but for a short time, from the Asian Beetles)

Just before that snowfall, I was able to don the garden gloves, and begin digging. Now as much as I love winter, I love gardening! Working with the soil with its smells, its texture, its unearthed worms brings me into a kinship that is primal and vital. I can glimpse the 'grandmothers', those working the Sicilian soil, and my own grandmother, Josephine, in Fredonia, N.Y., wielding shovel and hoe, in faded cotton, flowered sundresses in the early spring mornings.

...finally, dirt on the gloves...

Now I know there are people who are already eating spinach harvested from their own gardens, but I have only just planted mine...

and seeing these tiny sprouts pushing up through the earth, is truly exciting. I already feel a gratefulness that this will one day be on our plates, feeding and nourishing us. There is so much to honor and awe.

The garlic I planted last November is now pushing itself up through the straw mulch and the snow, stretching for the sun.

Yes, I love spring, too, the sights, smells, and potential.

Another aspect of the creative/maker part of me surfaced, recently. I spent some time perusing my fabrics looking for what might lend itself to sweet little spring chicks.

These chicks are egg-shaped, and kind of cute.

I also made some spring skirts for Iris and Elsa, with matching chicks and skirts for the dolls.

I know we will be inundated with mud and muck soon, and I honestly dread that, but I do look forward to full-blown spring. I am anxious for its pending transformations, full and provocative hillsides, and its myriad shades of green...from almost black to pale lime. And then the
summer.

OH, FOR A ZEN LIFE

I am, I believe, a creator by nature. I love to make things, lots of things from bread to rugs to tiny Easter Chicks. Being a Destroyer is really not in my make-up, I am anguished even, at destroying 'weeds' in my garden. Does a growing plant know it is a 'weed', unwanted and destined for removal? I ask myself this over and over again. I know some think this foolish and taking things a bit far, but it is who I am.

And so each spring/fall I am confronted with a mighty dilemma. My role as creator shifts daily, most often multi-times per day, to Destroyer. I am not comfortable with this role, not at all, but I fail to find an alternative.

The culprit..............The Multicolored Asian Beetle

as seen below in its single appearance.
Cute isn't it?

These beetles were first introduced to the United States in 1916 to help control insect pests. They love aphids, and are truly beneficial in ridding a field of this pest, and reducing the need for harmful pesticides. It wasn't until 1988 that they began to show up in huge numbers in New Orleans.

They did not make their appearance in Wisconsin until around 1994...I believe in my house. I recall the very first time I saw them as I was dust mopping the hardwood floors of my upstairs. I first saw one crawling along the baseboard, picked it up very gently and cradled it in my hands. Then I spied another and one more after that. I carefully collected them and ever so softly laid them in a palm tree that sits on the landing of the stairs. Oh, I thought, isn't this wonderful!

Little did I know...oh, how little I knew!

This picture is only a tiny portion of a window on our front, enclosed porch. We have twelve such windows on the porch, and our house, in an otherwise delightful feature, is filled with windows, even in our spacious closets, perhaps as many as 32. And yes, almost all of the windows have a multitude of Asian beetles congregating around. Not all of the windows have this many, which believe me numbers in the hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands. (Vacuuming them never, not ever, clears them away, as soon as I move from one window to the next, the first is filled again. Honestly!) Some windows have only 20 or so, occasionally a window might have only one or two. There might be a window that has none...for the moment. Our floor is frequently littered with Asian Beetle carcasses which defy the continual sweeping/vacuuming.

Looking out from a front porch window AFTER just vacuuming it.

Another delightful feature of this 90+ year-old house are the 'picture frame' moldings in both the dining room and the living room. They are a beautiful oak, which by the way, was logged off this very land. These lovely oak strips have become....

a private, much used walkway for the Asian beetles. Here are two sauntering along, where they are headed I do not know. With any one closely observant glance up to the molding, one can see stretched out along its length, more than one can count.

I have been vacuuming and vacuuming and vacuuming, often five times per day...to no avail. Yes, there are sprays one can use outside to reduce the population, which I have resisted because of the toxicity, but I think I resist no more. We'll see.

There are 4 stages to the life of an Asian Beetle which occur over a 20 day period: egg, larva, pupa and adult with wings. (This is the stage I am confronted with.) Each Asian beetle (I presume female, but it sure wouldn't surprise me if the male reproduced, too) produces up to 5 generations...and the kicker is, each beetle, at least the ones that aren't sucked up into my vacuum or dried out on my floor, lives for 2 to 3 years!! How believable is that?

I am often troubled at my delight in sucking them up. Sometimes I am so distraught at their presence, I gleefully stomp on those little bodies, (careful here, as they emit an awful order) and then am distraught, really distraught, at my glee. I spend a great deal of time wondering what a Zen Buddhist would do in my case??? Honestly, sometimes I feel the 'crazies' pressing down on me, as I am being bombarded with agitated beetles as I vacuum.

They say the best defense is to seal all the spaces and cracks on the outside of the house..."Yea, right" is what I say. This is an old, though sturdy, house, but I do not believe there is a window that does not have some space or crack along its seams. Without an extremely costly, like total replacing of windows, there simply is no sealing of all the cracks.

I am not resigned to life with the Asian Beetle, they truly are my nemesi, and yes, I think we will try the spray this Fall, but not with complete ease.

Who though, can fault an Asian Beetle for its life? Does this tiny mite of a thing wish to cause me such distress, I think not. It doesn't know its a pest, it doesn't aim to congregate in great numbers in my house, overwhelming me. I have yet, however, to find a peaceful way for us to co-exist. I wonder if there is one?

FROM RAGS TO RICHES

A while back I warped my old Union #36 with alternating white/blue threads. I had in mind a design, that only too soon, did I realize, I hadn't actually warped for, and unlike some of my weaver friends who I admire because they can simply cut off warp if it turns out to be a problem in any way (Barb, I speak of you) I just can't bring myself to do that. Perhaps because I dislike warping, and find it such a chore, that I feel I must use up whatever I put on despite problems, major or otherwise.

Anyway, the rug below is the one that emerged from that warp, and I truly disliked it, and it has thus sat, ends unfinished. (Though I do have plans for it that might, just might alter that perception. We'll see.)

As there was still plenty of warp left on the loom, and I, for one as I said before, cannot cut it off, I had to come up with something else that I might like.

I know in the past I've spent time declaring my love and fascination for old rag balls, of which I at one time had a very large supply. Although this supply is dwindling at a rapid pace, I decided that the blue/white warp would receive rag balls well, and that I might like the result.


Here is the VERY LAST of my supply... except for

this huge ball whose circumference measures nearly thirty inches, (it was much larger at one time).

I wish I could find the words for my feelings towards these rag balls. I know I've tried in the past. I get all tangled up with the grandmothers who I think cut, stitched and wound these balls so many years ago. I think of the faded house-dresses they wore, their husbands worn and frayed shirts, little girls torn or stained dresses, young boys trousers, old sheets, etc. I love the way a piece of fabric reveals itself when I am winding a ball onto my boat shuttle, or slipping it through the open shed, and I often wonder about its history.

...small scraps of some of the fabrics from a rag ball...

...a closer look...
and aren't they simply beautiful?

And so I proceeded, although with a great deal of reluctance as I so much fear the approaching end to my supply. I wove a rag rug that I loved in and of itself....



however I always am saddened that the actual rags are so densely packed in the rug, no one can really see or appreciate the beauty and history of each piece. I gave this much thought, wanting to highlight the individual rags, display their vintage beauty to advantage, and not just hide it deep within the rug.

...and so I decided to embellish the rug with rag flowers, the very rags used in the rug...

Oh, I love this rug, and believe that the rest of my rag balls have found their destination.
When they are used up, I guess I will have to start making my own rag balls. They won't have quite the same feel for me, nor the old, old history, but they will one day have a life of their own.