I slept till 3pm Sunday. What a surprise. It didn’t start out a restful night, but when I finally opened my eyes I thought I might be Lynn again. I’m still weak, but the emotional me is beyond pleased.

Ice Queen Weather

The view from our living room Sunday was surreal. There was so much light coming in from everywhere! The sun shone, and it bounced around to the point where it seemed light came beaming in from every window at the same time, all three sides of the room. The sky was so clear and the air so cold that even when snow got into the air, the snowflakes turned into pulverized particles of ice, like fairy dust.

Saturday night at 6pm it was just barely under the freezing mark, and then it plummeted south quickly. Right now (writing this draft after 9pm Sunday) it is -5F, with a predicted -6F low tonight (-21C for my international readers). It was another good day for staying in. I am very, very happy for our Mail Carriers on foot, that it was a non-mail-delivery day.

My Incredible Support Team

Sunday the phone kept ringing. Friends who knew I had been ill spent time leaving me to heal but figured they should make sure I was on the mend by now.

Altu, April, a music friend, all made brief calls to hear my voice. That is where I really count my blessings. All week I had offers from local blogging friends, dance friends, other friends… did I need anything they could bring over? What could they do? Since Brian is so good to me I needed nothing, but it was lovely to have offers.

I have created the nicest possible community of friends I could have possibly asked for. No, it’s not just me creating it, but the space must be clear and warm for people to feel comfy joining in. Of course, nobody can join my circle if they have never met me, if I have never reached out or gone socializing in any way. That bit was on my own shoulders long before this week.

Knowing the Difference

I remember when my father died, my mom really did not have confidantes or buddies. She had co-workers. She knew people at church. We knew a group of neighborhood families. Mom had not totally isolated herself, but she also had so much to juggle in her life that she did not really have strong friendships that supported her well. With a career and an unwell husband, it left no time for nurturing personal friendships. She had our family, and when Daddy died the three of us did our best. We still feel like a powerful and loving team.

For the record, Mom is a social butterfly now, with so many friends and activities that she will never be alone. She will never want for someone who cares. Mom has done a bang-up job of becoming herself and I wish to emulate her strengths myself. At this point, Mom is one of my support folks from afar.

I, too, had a time in my life where I was quite isolated and had little time for building personal support friendships. When I lived half an hour from work and depended on my then partner to drive me to and from work, lunch hours were the only time for socializing. I could go to lunch with others who also worked downtown, mostly co-workers.

At least I had the phone, and I did use it… and I found respite in the independently-owned Fabric Gallery store, a tiny but super-high-quality sewing heaven which thankfully was walking distance from my house. I spent time there every Saturday, and it was rejuvenating. You do what you can with what you have. I discovered wool jersey fabric during those years… even when I sewed as my creative outlet, it was knit wool that made me happiest.

Counting Every Blessing

In my current life, I have the music community, dance, knitting, the East Side (Foster Center was important to me before I taught kids to knit there). All the yarn shops where I teach are full of friends, particularly the shop owners. Then there is Altu and the community centered around her restaurant and the music I coordinate for her there. Many of my students I now count also as friends. I have the blogging community which is local as well as international in scope. And now I have Ravelry on top of that.

After a week where it was just difficult to breathe, I am so happy to see what blessings (if I may call them that without sounding church-y) I have in my life. I am so happy to take a moment to make this gratitude list, not only of the things and people I am happy to have in my life, but where I stand in my life’s journey, as well. It seems appropriate to take in “the landscape” this early in the calendar year, as we proceed forward.

For the record, Brian is first on the list. I was happy single, but my life is magnified in all good ways since we joined forces. He was so helpful to me when I was so very sick the first 4 days. Unfortunately, he came down with an awful cold Friday and so now we are sort of parallel-sick trying not to pass our germs across the room. This, too, shall pass.

Permission to Knit for No Good Reason

In more frivolous pursuits, I have been afraid to try to knit anything Sunday, though it has been the first time my hands had the inclination to pick up needles in nearly a week. I do not want to make any mistakes and it seems I feel guilty doing a sock with no reason attached to it when I have pattern deadlines looming heavily at my schedule’s door.

I think I’ll shed that guilt and let myself knit a sock for the pure joy of one knit stitch after another. The value of that is in the repetitive joy of the knitting and its relaxation. Joy and relaxation might equal healing, right?

Tomorrow I will see if the knitting-editor brain has returned along with the more normal temp. It would be good if I could do some work, at least get started in a gentle way. I won’t be teaching tomorrow but perhaps I can do something useful on the computer.

Now where did I put that sock?

I feel luxurious today. I’m one who adores open windows, open doors. I even roll down the windows in my car, at least a little, most of the year.

So winter is really hard for me. I can’t hear the sounds of the outdoors, can’t feel the fresh air. Instead we have the hiss of a furnace, which for some reason is very distracting to me. (Am I the only one who counts one of the disadvantages of winter, as having a furnace blowing much of the time? The sound, not the warmth…)

Well, today it’s just around freezing, and there is no wind at all. In the areas of the house where heat rises through the roof, the snow is melting and there is a steady drip of water I can see through the window. There is the tiniest bit of snow coming down, and it is peaceful and beautiful.

The house just felt full of germs and stale air. So I turned down the thermostat, wrapped up in my Ethiopian blanket and opened the front door. Aaaahhh.

If it has to be winter, this is pretty good. OK, I can’t do it very long but I feel some relief.

Whenever I have an instinct to control something not in my power to control, my favorite saying is “I’m not in charge.” It has perhaps never been so true as this week.

I was a bit sick last week for a few days (small potatoes, as Gramma would say), but I recovered, danced at Aladdins, felt just great. Then Monday I got hit hard. It’s a mean flu, different symptoms every day. I spent a day and a half unable to keep anything down other than a little water. Even tea did not agree with me.

I do not get that sort of sick very often and I had forgotten. I am grateful for a few friends/family who were able to give me real advice on how to get through the nausea. Today I’m through that challenge, anyway.

So I’m not in charge. This was to be such a busy, exciting week. It has turned into a “sit on the couch and don’t move” week. Fortunately I was able to cancel or reschedule my events… but a few break my heart. The knitting guild retreat on Sunday, where I was to teach color combining for real garments, and Rae’s birthday yesterday… well, I’m sad.

Today I have my brain back and I’m able to eat again. I’m not yet well, but a corner has been turned. For two days I could only get on the internet to see if I’d sold anything that had to be shipped out, and my emails had no more than a sentence or two. I couldn’t read or knit, so I sat still like a good girl and stared at the ceiling. Yes, me.

It was not small potatoes this time, though even this will not hang on that long. However, I think it’s important to notice good stuff, and the view out of the front window is clean and snow-covered and white. If you do not have to go out, this is lovely weather. I hope I can knit some wool today and make it a winter lay-on-the-couch-and-heal day.

And as another favorite saying goes, “This, too, shall pass.” I should feel better next week and I’ll lay low this weekend. It’s sort of required.

I am repeating a snow photo from January today, please forgive. It looks like this today, only more. Much more snow.

When you have to slow down, the natural world becomes apparent. Even sitting on an artificial chrome couch with Naugahyde cover, in a wood box built to protect me from the elements, I can see a lot of the outdoors. One of the advantages of a small house is that this living room has windows on three sides, it is a lot like the proverbial goldfish bowl.

The Natural World on My Block

Yesterday it rained. This is January in Michigan, and rain is not unheard of (my friend Mike Ross wrote a song called January Rain, about a particularly bad day he had).

However, this is usually the season of snow and cold. Lansing tends toward piling up snow for several weeks, than a short melt, then more snow. This last few weeks has had more melt and less snow than feels normal.

I worked on the computer (thank goodness for wireless internet and laptops) sitting on the couch. I kept being distracted by movement outside the window. It was that dratted squirrel again. He’s so cute to watch and I do like him much better when he is outside of my house.

Clearly that one nook in the front tree is his favorite spot, because I’ve showed you two photos of him there and again yesterday he’d go there, then run up and down the diagonal tree branch, then sit for a moment longer. He didn’t stay up the branch long enough to do anything. I assume he was out looking for food while it was warm enough to do so.

Of course, I also saw him in the rain gutter, his avenue to the hole he chewed under the shingles to get into our attic. Ick. That’s where he ceases to be cute.

A Short Breath of Fresh Air and a Dose of Reality

At 7:30pm I realized it was 45F degrees outside and rainy. Since I’m fighting a bug, I’m even more aware of air quality issues and the lack of open windows in the winter. So I turned down the thermostat, wrapped up in some blankets, and opened the door for a few hours. I am a huge fan of open windows and doors, and it felt so good to not be locked up so tight.

It rained peacefullly and there was no wind at all, so it took a long time for the house to feel colder inside. The humidity was a nice change, too.

But something threw a switch and it got mean out there. It sounded like Dorothy from Kansas was going to land her house in the street at any moment. The National Weather Service says it was 45 degrees F (7.2C) at 10pm, and 19 degrees F (-7.2C) at midnight. Whew!

More Small Potatoes

I remind myself that I’m human on earth and that means I’m not in charge, and that many things don’t fit in easy boxes. Getting this nasty cold is reminding me of this idea more intensely these few days. Sitting still and watching the weather (and the squirrel) go by, reminds me how little I am in charge of my life.

But I’m doing better at remembering my Gramma Illa’s theory that many things are small potatoes. Really, everyone gets a cold sometimes and they do go away. They slow us down, they make us uncomfortable, we don’t enjoy it. In the big scheme of things, though… it’s small potatoes and it will be over soon enough.

I observe little Isabel, the 3-1/2 yr old toddler in my life, and I see how she really still believes that the world revolves around her, which is normal for her age. When things go wrong we have to explain to her that it isn’t her fault, because as the center of the universe she would believe it was. Really, we all are the center of our own universe… which explains a lot of confusing behaviors in others at times. Yet, as adults we know our power is not all-encompassing.

I Don’t Think We are in Kansas Anymore, Toto

The wind is so strong outside that it is blowing through the cracks between windows in this old house. It is not extreme most of the time, and I’m not asking for advice since a little fresh air is excellent.

A little airflow does not upset me at all, and the house is small enough (and the furnace efficient enough) that it is just fine the way it is. Our windows are varnished hardwood, very beautiful, and I value them as an artform… just the way they are.

We have 8 small windows and a door in the small L-shaped area that is our living room and my office. I did take some of that thick not-too-sticky plastic weather tape a year or two ago, and taped the larger crack that is between the upper and lower moving window parts.

Yesterday, when we would get a huge gust of wind, we would both jump from a very loud noise. A whoopie cushion, but louder!

It was one of the windows in my office. I’d opened it for Brian when we were dealing with telephone-line issues near that window. The tape is still sealed on one side but it broke its bond on the other.

Then the wind blew so hard that it pushed quickly through the crack, and the loose side vibrated. Instant whoopie cushion! Quite amusing when you are fully awake.

So, How is Your World?

Nothing new in this corner of the world, really. The world turns, the sun sets, we sleep, we wake up, we have a cup of tea, we work for a while. How about you?

(The photo? Beats me. I downloaded a bunch of photos and this one was in the middle for no apparent reason. I thought it was beautiful so I didn’t delete it. I call it “Wild Abandon.” It is so sunny I hought it appropriate to a winter day.)

Well, Monday was one of my favorite holidays, right up there with Thanksgiving. We celebrated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I did work, but I work teaching others and I think teaching/learning are reasonable pursuits on that sort of holiday. I have written long essays on this day in previous years. I am not writing about it today, but that is not to say that the holiday escaped me. It definitely did not.

However, I was reading the comments on Stephanie’s Yarn Harlot blog the other day, and someone mentioned a Squirrel Appreciation Day. And it’s on the same day as Dr. King’s day? Amazing. I admit that the date of Dr. King’s celebration changes because of Monday holidays, but I found it impossible to understand the idea of a Squirrel Appreciation Day at all, and to have it compete with MLK Day was surreal.

I remember a friend from New Zeeland who moved here for several years. She says the first few weeks they were here, they used up much photographic film trying to get good shots of those adorable squirrel creatures. They seemed so exotic!

But for me? If Dr. King is about peace, then squirrels are not. We have one spectacular tree, and from it a squirrel can get on our roof. From there, he/she can get into enough mischief to cause my house damage and me a bit of jangled nerves.

We had a squirrel when I moved here, who was fat and fearless. I think someone was feeding him and I was not amused. He would come up on the step and when you yelled at him to go away, he just looked at you. As in, are you bringing me food now? Quite spooky. They live near humans but they do not usually get along with us quite that well. They should rightfully be a bit afraid.

One day we found squished squirrel in the road and that one stopped coming around so we think it was him. As Kenny says, Curiosity Killed the Cat, and Indecision Killed the Squirrel. They are always trying to figure out which tree is closest to run up if they are startled, and sometimes they head to the closest but not safest tree (or phone pole). Maybe I’m a squirrel, I suffer from indecision myself, though it has never threatened my life at this point.

When I moved here there was a protected spot on the roof where a lot of angles came together, where the squirrels had gnawed a hole and were trying to get through to the attic on the other side. Our neighbor at the time, Marvin, put a metal plate there with a plywood board over it, and that ceased to be an issue.

Then this year I kept hearing “someone” up in the attic, at all hours of day or night. We have had birds before but this one seemed to be scurrying in a way a bird would not. I figured it was a squirrel. We found that one was going in and out the vents on the roof. We got new animal-proof vents. And the sounds did not stop.

So about a week ago I talked to friend/musician/woodsman Paul Bennett and mentioned the squirrels. He didn’t miss a beat. He said, they are traveling in the gutters of your roof, look for a low spot on the very edge, and they get in the attic by chewing a hole through the roof boards, underneath the very last bottom shingle.

So a few days ago, I heard it again. And I went outside. It was the perfect weather for the discovery… and sure enough, it was a piece of cake to find it once Paul had described the situation. On the front of the house where we added on the new porch several years ago, there is a side gutter. And there was clearly a little entry hole, and even squirrel tracks going from the gutter a foot or so from that hole up to the top of the roof. Wow.

Well, then I read about squirrel appreciation day. I personally am afraid for my house, that the rodent will gnaw through electrical wires or something. I’m a little less worried about the things stored in the attic, though no doubt it could become bedding for the furry little pest.

But I read the whole page written by the Founder of Squirrel Appreciation Day. And I read that the animals do not like the scent of mint, and if you put peppermint oil on a cottonball in the attic space, they will vacate. This sounded too good/simple to be true.

I had a cottonball, and I had some very strong Eucalyptus oil, which is to me even more obnoxious than peppermint. So I put some oil on the ball and put it in the one attic door I could reach easily. I can get Brian to help me go into the one other door near the squirrel area when he gets home.

I’m crossing my fingers. I am not one to put out bait, and closing up the hole could trap the dude inside which could be very bad. I really want this furry tenant to go his merry way without a formal eviction of any sort.

As I type this I can hear someone up there walking around. It’s really spooky. Let’s face it, we are humans on earth and we make little climate-controlled boxes to keep ourselves warm and protected. But we are not in charge of nature, and animals are much more resourceful than humans are in cases like this.

While researching this column, I found a web page that says in Council Bluffs, Iowa it may be illegal to do what I am doing.

City Attorney Richard Wade said roughly in the 1930s, the City Council adopted an ordinance barring people from bothering black squirrels.

According to the ordinance, it is illegal to annoy, worry, maim, injure or kill the squirrel.

My squirrel is red. Go, cottonball!

What a strange weather day we have. We will not see a hint of sunshine today, even at noon it felt like dusk. The temperature is 60F/ 15.5C, unheard of in January in this area. The sky looks like a typical full-cloudcover December day. It’s almost surreal.

It rained two nights ago and started to melt in earnest around then. Our January 1 snowman has lost any resemblance to a snowman, it is now just an unusual pile of snow in the middle of the front lawn. He gave us (and some of you) much joy in his short existance, at any rate. We got about 3 good solid days out of his glory before things started getting warm.

I am sharing two photos with you today… Yesterday’s sad snowman-remains, and the glory of a perfect Michigan snow, from my mother’s front yard on the 2nd, just four days before. Sometimes the sun does come out, and if it is right after a lovely snow, you can get photos like this.

I think I’ll go for a walk today, anyway. It will be another day without appointments so I can play with my schedule a bit. There is SO much to do from my home office/studio, but if it is 60F, I just think it is imperative that I take a walk.

I hope your day is great. So many folks are going back to work and school today. I hope this brings the joy of reunion rather than a sadness at the routine. Remember, if you are one going back to work… income is definitely a wonderful thing, not everyone has work right now.

And truthfully? One must have a place to belong. I figured that out when I had too much alone time and not enough work, back when I lived alone. Peers are essential to a person’s life, particularly if you are like me and relatively social by nature.

(I’ve been knitting… photos tomorrow.)

We had a great New Year’s Eve and I want to tell the full story of that with photos maybe tomorrow. However, the big fun for January 1 was the snow.

It is 36F degrees (just above freezing a bit) and last night we got several inches of gorgeous, wet, perfect snow. For some reason I decided I wanted to make a snowman with Brian today, as we drove home from the event last night. He was all for it.

So today we got out there and I participated in the first snowman-building experience since my father was alive. (Daddy died in 1973, I was 14.) I don’t remember doing it in college or in any of my former adult homes. Honestly, I’m not much for being outdoors any big length of time and I’m also not fond of being cold. But today there was not a whisper of wind, the snow had stopped falling, the sun shone, and the snow was about perfect for snowman building.

I have the perfect partner for me. He got us started and I followed suit, not remembering much about this process. He did the biggest physical labor parts, and we both had fun adding to the artful bits as we got going. Brian found sticks for arms and then he kept going with spiked hair, a great touch. I found gloves and an old scarf, the stem of a red Swiss chard leaf for a mouth and the end of a white yam (they are white inside and purple outside but not very sweet at all, I get them at the asian market) for a nose. He made eyes with bits of the sticks (they are actually spent flower stems from the daylily).

I think it’s a mighty fine joint artistic product! What fun.

And because there was no snow coming down and no wind? We did not get cold at all. It’s great to have good warm wool/alpaca clothing to bundle up in while spending time outdoors. I’m not sure I’ll be building snowmen every year or anything, but there was literally no cold to complain about. It was a great thing to do, to start the year.

May all of you find 2008 to be happy, healthy and full of abundance in the larger sense of the word. I count you all as friends, and you are part of my own abundant life. Thank you.

It snowed today, and snowed and snowed. At 11am there was just a dusting, but by 4:00 we had over 2 inches (5cm) on this car. It was not cold, in fact most of the time it was just above freezing. It was that perfect sort of snow that they try to re-create in movies and on TV. I was glad I only had to drive about 2.5 miles.

The tomatoes I pictured here on the Solstice (mostly green at the time), were joined by 2 more fruits I found on the bush almost a week after I took that photo. The new ones are the two at far left. One just was not ready for even a gentle nudge, apparently, but the other is doing great. When I put the first batch out, only two had any sense of color besides green. I am eager to make some sort of sauce for pasta perhaps. Either that or I’ll make some greens with tomatoes, another favorite of ours.

In other news, Altu asked me to walk her through a sweater pattern. She learned to knit in Ethiopia as a young person, and made a lot of sweaters. However, they had only one thickness of yarn and you could change the gauge by doubling it. So she learned how many stitches to cast on for herself, and she learned to make up the sweater as she went, shaping by instinct and experience. She has never followed a pattern.

So Rae helped me find a sweater that would work for both Altu and me. It’s the split-neck T Shirt from Knitting Pure and Simple. I will interpret the pattern for Altu and we will knit together on our regular Thursday afternoon lunch date each week until we have finished sweaters. This could be fun!

My size needs less than 850 yards and I happen to have four skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece that add up to just a bit more than that. Funny, this yarn is supposed to be a worsted weight (5st/inch) but on size 8 needles after blocking I’m getting 4.5 stitches an inch which is the gauge the pattern wants.

I did not imagine this yarn could get that gauge, so I swatched like crazy. I held it together with sockyarn, and thicker alpaca lace yarn, and added yet another laceweight to the first. In the end, when I wet blocked, I got gauge with a single yarn strand of Cotton Fleece. This is very good, that makes the project more portable.

I looked on Ravelry for other folks’ versions of this sweater. One woman used a contrasting yarn for 2 garter ridges (four rows) on both the arm edges (instead of ribbing) and the neck. It looks wonderful, so I may do that. I have lots of yarns that might be just right with this cherry red, for an edge or two.

I’m going crazy with ideas for projects. I finished another pair of really-tiny-socklets for earrings. I keep looking at tiny toy projects like the heart I made recently. I still want to embroider. I did darn some socks and need to do some more. I love that I finished those 2 pairs of socks last week.

And my singing voice is so strong right now! We don’t have a concert scheduled until a few weeks into January and I wish I were singing tomorrow. In the wintertime I often have struggles with allergies and the inevitable bugs that go around. Right now we rehearse and I sing my heart out to the two of us. It’s really fun, but I love the stage. Soon enough, I guess.

I just love Kristin Nicholas (though we have not yet met in person). I’ve loved her knitting design work and her color sense for years, before I read her blog. Now that I know the blog, I have learned of her other artful endeavors (paintings and illustrations, as an example). And she is a good writer. Her books are on this page if you are interested… order direct from her and get an autograph on your book.

She lives on a farm with her husband, young daughter Julia, a herd of sheep and a menagerie of other animals including artful chickens and a guard llama. Often on the blog she talks about the animals and the nitty-gritty of farm experience.

The sheep are a big part of this… she shows baby lambs when they are born, she talks about the challenges of keeping the animals safe from coyotes, and talks about how they rotate the sheep between several pastures during the course of the year.

I’m really clear I am not cut out for farming, it’s such a complete lifestyle (requiring going outdoors to work for the animals every day, no matter what the weather… not my thing). I really respect those who make the life committment to care for animals, any animals. Hundreds of sheep on a farm is beyond my comprehension.

In October they moved about 150 sheep down the road about 3 miles, and this week they moved them back. She took excellent photos of the experience, and told of the process getting the sheep home again.

The story is so interesting, I did not want it to end. Perhaps you’d like a short digression from the holiday crazies, and you can go read the December 20 post of Getting Stitched on the Farm. Or just look at the pictures…

Brother Eric and Sis in Love Diana got “sun comeback tour” shirts to celebrate that Friday is the Solstice, the day our sun starts getting closer every day for six months. Yesterday I was positively blue after holding it off all season… I am ready for the sun to come back and kiss me again.

I am not a sun worshipper but I am definitely a warmth lover. These days I dress in so many layers I do not move easily. I always have a lot of wool and many under-layers. Today I saw that if I’d chosen the purple hat I knit, I would have been wearing at least 8 items I’d knit at least partially, myself. It would have been, from top down, hat, mini-sock earrings (photos tomorrow), “Turkish sock sweater” which I altered heavily, wristwarmers, legwarmers, socks, purse/bag and stole. I chose a commercial beret instead so I was merely wearing 7 things I knit upon.

I look like a commercial for handknitted items (many of which are cool in mainstream culture at least this week). I think I’m hopelessly uncool for wearing so many at once. I’ve been uncool all my life, it’s no problem to me now… but I’m really happy to have that warmth.

Warm is so much better than hip and edgy, in my 49-year-old opinion. I’m so happy to not be young anymore, it was so hard to try and fit what I could not fit. Now is better, I’m just myself and most times it’s exactly what I’d choose if I had a choice. Very nice when life works that way!

So to celebrate the sunshine which we did have today at any rate… I present you a photo I took less than a week ago. We have tomatoes we grew ourselves, ripening on the south windowsill. You see, I had one bush in a pot on our steps. When it got chilly around Halloween, I brought the pot in to the mud room to avoid frost. However, it got so cold in there that a few weeks later Brian took it into the basement.

I watered the plant dutifully but it was so cold even in the basement that it did not drink. I let the fruits stay on the plant until the leaves started drying up. Then not a whole week ago I plucked these fruits and put them on the sill.

Yesterday I realized that there were two more tomatoes still on the plant. I brought them up and put them with their buddies but they have not caught up yet.

When they get red enough, I’ll cook them with greens, or pasta and a little protein of some sort. It will be a celebration. And that will happen on a day when the sun stays up longer than it did today. I’m delighted about that part. I’m ready to give up the wool sweaters and start wearing my African and Indian clothing, and embrace 80F and above. Not today, but I’m already heading there in my mind.

Meanwhile, I still am in love with my hot water bottle. That old fashioned idea keeps my feet warm every night when I’m home after work. I take it around the house with me and rest my feet on it all night long. The best.

Happy sunshine comeback, my friends. We have passed the shortest nights of this year. I wish to toast the coming sun and warmth… and the optimism which accompanies them.

Does anyone else have a way of celebrating the passing of the darkness and moving into light? I wish I had a fireplace. Alda in Iceland writes of huge municipal bonfires on New Year’s Eve there. Norwegians(?) banged on pots and pans to wake up the sun and bring it back.

Me? A cup of tea and the hope of a nice long walk with my beloved if the sun comes out and says hello, would be the best choice. And a few kind words to the tomatoes on the ledge.

I will be quite occupied Monday so I am blogging photos today. Brian and I took a walk on Thanksgiving day, last Thursday. It snowed the night before, for the first time (at least the first where it stuck).

The neighborhood was almost like a ghost town, no cars driving around at all. With the snow on the ground, sounds were muffled. We could hear the swishing of cars on the main roads on the west and east of our neighborhood, but things were very silent in our corner of the world.

This tree is in our side yard. I think it is interesting how we can see the actual colors of a tree trunk when the snow makes the green grass unimportant, and the wet bark intensifies what colors are there. Lichen and moss are really beautiful colors of green.

The larger-view neighborhood photo is one block from our house. When all the maple trees turn color, they are blazing orange and the yellow trees seem less than interesting. However, at this time of year, the few remaining red and yellow leaves (and those on the ground, which finally fell when it finally froze hard overnight) become very interesting on their own merits. They are particularly nice if both in the same view.

Thanksgiving need not be a single day. Tell someone you love them today, OK?

A week or two ago, I taught in Charlotte, Michigan, which is a small town with heart and soul. So many small towns are suffering these days, but Charlotte is quite alive, thank you very much!

I love taking photos of this town in the fall, I’ve done it before. This time I headed toward the library and the park where Brian and I performed last June.

Charlotte has two important streets which intersect near the old courthouse. This is the one which seems a bit shorter, and which heads out of town toward the fairgrounds (where the bluegrass festival happens each June). I caught it just as the sun was setting and the light really was nice.

Also, I enjoy taking photos of older homes in this town. They tend to be well-kept or well-restored. I drove past this house, pulled over to the parking lane and was taking photos backward out of my window. I’ve taken photos of the house right behind it in previous posts.

Well, I noticed a guy walking down the street who looked like a musician I know, who lives in Charlotte. I called out his name and sure enough, I had the right guy. So guess what? This is his house, since right around when Brian and I sang at the park.

Isn’t life interesting? The longer I stay in Michigan the more people I know are connected to other people I know. And to be in a town 30 minutes from where I live, and to know the one person walking down the street? Whose house was exactly the one I was trying to quietly photograph?

Actually, I got photos of two houses next door to one another. Both are beautiful and I think I’ve got the one, but I may be one lot off. Forgive my 2-week memory which has lost a tiny bit of information.

I sort of like it when things happen this way! The leaves don’t look particularly colorful in these two photos, but the relationship part of life was fully functional. Cool!

I had a plan for today. It all changed very quickly and that meant I did not work at home today. I dropped my plans to help a friend, totally worthwhile. I did teach two computer classes, too, later in the day.

Since I did not spend lots of time on my computer, I don’t have recent photos for you. However, here are a few random photos I developed in the last few months but never posted.

The squirrel who had been so hot this summer… found a nut and made enough noise eating it that I went out to investigate. Same exact spot. This was maybe a month ago, actually, when the leaves were still green:

The parking ramp at Lansing Community College, where I had my class this weekend. I think this view of the exit ramp is quite striking, if unreal in a city-sort-of-way:

A view of the lakeshore (the west shore of Lake Michigan) in Chicago, from the viewing deck of the Sears Tower. I usually get dizzy up there (not on the Hancock building, oddly) but this day it was not windy (we could not feel the building sway as usually happens). It was misty and cloudy which may also have helped, perhaps being able to see too far is also dizzying. We got up there in the 15 minute timeframe that whole day when people could actually see something through the clouds.

This was in late August, I went with Altu and a young Ethiopian friend who had never been to a city of this sort…. and who was enthralled to be there.

You know, I adore Chicago from many angles. At this height, the horizon looks a little bit curved. So cool!

I took an Adobe InDesign workshop today (it continues tomorrow). All I can tell is that yes, it’s a great program, and yes, I’ll be learning it forever.

With word processing I know there are things I don’t understand, but that does not bother me since everything I need/want to know, I have figured out down pat.

But page layout has always been hard for me. After all, I spent how long as a secretary? And how much longer as a word processing instructor? I still teach word processing one day a week part of the year. It seems word processing and page layout have significantly different ways of thinking about text.

I have no problem that typing more stuff makes things pop to an extra page. That is just fine with me. But Word flips out when you place too many photos… all of a sudden your 6 page document is 15 pages and corrupted. Or the third photo you place on page one somehow lands on page 7. Ugh.

I must get with the program. Except I know so many hints and tips and tricks and work-arounds in Word… and I know almost nothing about Adobe InDesign.

I have done PageMaker (never made sense even after classes), and Publisher (the interface was Microsoft but it’s far too simple a program), even CorelDraw 4, for one single project (the CD art for our In The Garden CD, which Brian planned/designed and I put into the program acceptable to the CD manufacturing company).

InDesign is clearly better than all of the above for laying out knitting patterns. I can only hope that I will learn enough to start using it immediately when class is complete.

The leaves are still beautiful, and they have not all fallen yet. Even with all this rain, they are hanging on. One hard frost and we will be bleak and colorless, but for now it is a fiery sky on every street. Really, really beautiful!

Enjoy your fall weekend, whatever it brings you. Mine is bringing me learning and color. That’s a pretty good weekend, I’d say.

Photos: more of the trees in the few blocks behind our house. The city is full of beauty but these trees often are some of the best. This year, it is doubly true. So beautiful! So ColorJoy!

It occurs to me looking at these photos just now, that they are every bit as majestic as some of my favorite photos that I took in Africa.

Brian and I were outdoors today and I found my eye drawn to a particularly colorful maple leaf that had fallen on the ground. I really enjoyed looking at it.

That took my mind back to my childhood. I loved the leaves, I would collect all the prettiest ones I saw on the way home from school. It took me an eternity to make it home from school those days. I would have an entire handful of beautifully colored leaves, sort of a bouquet, by the time I got home.

And then my mother consistently told me I had to choose only a few to bring into the house. I was crushed. They were all so pretty, it was painful to choose. I am sure it took almost as long to do that as it did to wind my way home!

Mom would try to console me by promising to iron the chosen ones between two pieces of waxed paper. Theoretically that would seal the leaves and make the colors stay nice longer. However, I knew that I would have to view those colors through the wax and paper. This effectively made them barely-colored as far as I was concerned. I was not consoled.

Today, I found two lovely leaves, looked at how beautiful they were, and enjoyed their colors fully. Then I left them in the yard (noticing that we have a few blooming wild violets again in the side yard). And I came inside.

I hope I still love the colors every bit as much as I did as a child. I just do not love cleaning house. I think I understand now, where mom was coming from.

Photos? I took these in the several years I have been blogging… since 2003.

I am taking a computer class (Adobe InDesign) this weekend and so I saved time by going back and finding lovely leaves from previous years. They illustrate my point perfectly, though they are long gone at this point.

Sunday, Brian and I walked to the diner in the neighborhood for breakfast. We used to do this often, now only a few times a year. It was a nice little morning date.

The day started chilly, though by late afternoon it was 79F degrees, warm for this time of year. I was glad I took my camera, because the five blocks between our house and the diner are always beautiful in the fall. This year seems even more beautiful than usual.

The photo of me, Brian took. I was barely awake… this is how I look when I throw on something quickly to go on a walk first thing. I’m wearing a hat I made years ago, and my Kristi Comfort Wrap that Diana knit for me, plus the legwarmers I made from a thrift-store find, a Ralph Lauren crewneck made of Manos del Uruguay yarn.

But the leaves? So brilliant that no ColorJoy wardrobe can compete. The sky made them even more obvious. And now Monday looks the same. Woohoo! Now if only I could spend some time on the porch today… something happened and the utility company is digging up the front yard of my next-door neighbor, so the porch is not peaceful today.

Enjoy the leaves…

We stayed at a very nice, relatively new resort/hotel/conference center on Drummond Island for Rae’s knitting retreat last weekend. I took photos of the grounds and the buildings. Here is a shot of the grounds between the building where we had our classes (this was an older building than where we slept) and a fine restaurant. It didn’t look that fine from the outside but those who had dinner there were really pleased.

Then I have a shot of the shoreline (I’m not sure which body of water this is, I had heard we were in the center of the island so this bay confused things for me). I think it’s some sort of bay, just because the restaurant had the word Bay in its name.

The last photo today is the staircase railing in the quarters where we stayed. Rae and I each had our own double bed downstairs, and Gwen had her own single bed up in the loft at the top of this stairway. I loved the paint job and the energy of the zigzag cuts in the railing. There was mostly red paint, some warm yellow, and a small amount of sage green… all on tone set of railings. It pleased my sense of ColorJoy in all ways!

You guys were right… the error message (yesterday) was written by someone in the Czech Republic. Clearly it’s a case of several words/phrases being mis-translated. Good catch.

No surprise, but the first day back was spent catching up. Some laundry got done, a little cooking got done (chard and taro root, it was pretty good for a first try), I printed out handouts for my computer students, taught two computer classes, stopped by my mom’s house, went to the post office (I am anxiously awaiting my copy of Kristin Nicholas’ Colorful Stitchery any day now), and cooked dinner. More laundry, catching up on email and Etsy and Ravelry correspondence.

So now it’s 1am and I need to post something. I edited three relatively easy photos (trees and sky on the trip, and pot of plants at retreat center) that are quite ColorJoy the way nature handed them to me. The sky/tree photos were taken in the car on the way back from the retreat, somewhere between Claire, Michigan and the bridge to the Upper Peninsula. The trees were breathtakingly orange from one corner of the sky to the other, or so it seemed at times. The sunset was even more pink than it seems in this photo.

I was in the back of a moving car, windows up. I think that these photos turned out a bit like an impressionist might have painted them.

More photos of the actual retreat later, again, of course. Meanwhile, I’m very tired and staying on an earlier schedule than usual will be good for me. When I teach, I can not afford to go to bed at 3am or I am too tired to do a good job. See you tomorrow, and thanks as always for your great support!

Sunday’s weather is perfect. Perfect. No rain, just 82F/27C (just below my favorite temperature, I like it hot), sunny, slightly windy, with trees just starting to turn colors.

VanAtta’s Greenhouse is wonderful, I can not believe I’ve never gone there before. I’m not a big gardener and that kept me from driving across town, though I knew about their great reputation.

I do love having fresh herbs in the back yard, and I have had good luck with growing Swiss Chard (no luck with spinach for some reason, maybe because I don’t plant early enough). I prefer buying plants over seeds, they are more certain to make it and a lot less trouble. I just have not had much luck finding herbs at the Lansing spots I’ve tried. You should have SEEN the basil and parsley they had today. I know where I am going for my herbs next spring.

Next year we plan to expand our “food garden” (which this year had one Swiss Chard plant, some dill, cilantro and parsley). I have grown carrots before and may do that again. I want to grow more herbs next year.

Our soil is not good at all, and that discourages me when I try new things. We have a compost pile just because it’s the good way to get rid of vegetable scraps, but we don’t use it up much because we don’t really garden. I figure right before the snow comes, I’ll put a bit of compost on next year’s garden area and hope it gets used to its new home. We can put more on there in the spring when we plant.

The RicStar Music Camp benefit was a lot of fun. We got there just as Jen Sygit was starting her set, so I sat and took a bunch of photos of her, Drew and Matt. Next we were on and Jen took photos of us. Here are a few of those photos from today.

I tell you, I just love being part of the music community here in Lansing. At one point we played Epley Breakdown (an instrumental Brian wrote, that is oft-requested by musicians, particularly Drew) and Drew did an impromptu dance for a second. It made me smile. This is the authentic-friend thing going on. I am so honored and happy to be part of it all. You can hear the Epley Breakdown in MP3 format by clicking here.
Some music communities are not so warm and welcoming as the one in Lansing. We’re a relatively new act on the block, we have maybe been doing this seriously as a duo for about 5 years. It is great to really feel included in something that preceded us.

Well, the sun is still up and warm. I have work to do (writing the text to explain the ZigBagZ pattern so that Karen can start to test it). But while it’s this beautiful I will take myself on a walk around the neighborhood. May you have as nice a day as I am having.

Saturday I taught at Camp Miniwanca near New Era Michigan (not far from Silver Lake, where we spent the 4th of July), on Lake Michigan. It was the Sierra Club’s annual retreat. I’d never been before, and honestly I did not get to stay very long this time. I went there long enough to have a very nice salad, teach, and go home.

I car pooled with a very interesting guy from Lansing… we had four hours of chatting on the way there and back. He’s interested in color, and told me about some resources I had not known before on the subject. I am excited to check into that. I don’t take time to read enough, but will need to work that into my schedule now.

The grounds were beautiful. The food was also beautiful… real, healthy food including great salad fixings and baked potatoes with a number of possible toppings, and sandwich fixings and pasta salad for those wanting typical lunch fare. I sat down with my plate of good salad greens, carrots, water chestnuts and olives (I brought canned fish to top it with) and talked with a few folks at the table. It turned out that the two who obviously were cooking, were from Ireland and Turkey… and the two others at the table were from Russia. The first two were quite willing to chat.

The Irish woman had only been here a few months and was still getting accustomed to the different cultural situation, and the differences in her version of English versus ours, particularly considering she has spent a life working in food service and yet there are many things we call by different names here in that realm. Surely she’s in some of the hardest adjusting time for a move to a new continent/culture, and I wished her well in her experience here.

The woman who talked the most with me was the lady from Turkey. She has been here in the USA a long time, she lived in New York City (and loved it) for I think she said 11 years. She goes back whenever she can. We talked knitting and socks and Kilims. She would not use the word “rug” for a Kilim, it’s distinctive enough to have its own name somehow. One of the distinct things about Kilims was that the fibers are all colored with what we call “natural” or “vegetable” dyes. I want to look up more information about this, perhaps one of you reading this will be able to direct me to a good resource.

I asked her about socks. In her area, men knit socks in the winter after dinner as they socialize together. She said women didn’t knit socks where she was from. This is in contrast to the one pair I own from Turkey where I know a story behind them. The pair I have were knit by the grandmother for the mother’s wedding, and the daughter sold them to my friends who bought them for me.

I asked about the symbolism of the colorwork patterns in the socks. She said they were individual, meaning different things to different folks who knit them. I interpreted her information almost as if the people were knitting a visual poetry, with lots of subtle symbolism inside. She stressed several times how knitting is done without patterns, how every single thing is made differently, made up on the needles. (This is how my friend Altu from Ethiopia/Africa learned to knit, as well.) I thanked her for the information and company, and then proceeded to set up for my class.

My students wandered in, curious (they can come to whatever classes they want without pre-registering). I ended up with seven folks, six pictured in this photo which was taken by an aunt (I think of the youngest one in the photo) who came in as we were preparing to leave. We had a marvelous, creative time.

I only wish we had more time to spend together, there was such enthusiasm in the room. I’d asked for 2 hours or more, and they said they’d schedule 1.5 hours and put me in the room when nobody would follow me so we could bleed over and stay there longer if we wanted to do so. Then when I got there, they had scheduled someone to start teaching 1.5 hours after me. We did what we could with our time.

One woman (see photo) did a great job making the finest, almost paper-thin, lacy felt in her first attempt (red). It was like glass, you could see through it. The second one she got thicker by adding more layers of fiber, and I loved both.

The last two photos are of Rose from Ann Arbor. She really loved the needlefelting process which was an option to try after they made a small piece using the “wet felting” technique. Here in the first photo she’s still in the classroom (which was hot as an oven, but had a spectacular view of Lake Michigan from the back windows you see in the first photo).

The last photo is a close-up of Rose’s piece as I left the grounds. She took her supplies outside the classroom building and settled in on a bench to keep working on her needlefelted masterpiece. I sent them all home with a baggie full of wool, yarn, ribbon, beads and other goodies to make more pieces at home or later in the retreat. She did not waste any time getting into it again, and I think this piece looks rather spectacular. You’d never know she had not done it before.

I thank the Sierra Club retreat people, especially Lisa and Wendy, for inviting me to teach at this excellent event I really enjoyed the students and I hope they contact me and say hello. At least a few said they would email me. For the record, all of you reading here, I do have an email list which I don’t use very often… but if you want to be on the contact list for classes I teach all over the state and country, and significant updates to my website/shopping cart, please send me an email at Lynn AT ColorJoy DOT com and I’ll get you on the list. I promise I won’t overwhelm you with emails and I won’t sell your name.

(The photo of the peaches? We bought them on the road to camp. It was a table full, with a box to deposit your money in and instructions to take a bag and leave the basket. We each got one of the smallest size, still a lot of peaches to consume in time, when they are this ripe.)

I’m reminded of the old joke on the Johnny Carson Tonight show. He would say something like… “It was so hot…” and Ed McMahon would say “How hot was it, Johnny?” Yesterday it felt like I was in the middle of that joke.

I understand that it was merely 98.6F yesterday (37C). I understand that my friends in Texas and Florida often deal with temperatures higher than that. However, I’m in a state where I don’t need air conditioning most of the time (I do not like it much, especially when it’s cranked to 65F which is colder than we set the heater in the winter).

We use the air conditioner which is in the 2nd floor bedroom, when it’s hot enough to interfere with sleep. This is anywhere from one night  to a few dozen nights most years. (We are more likely to use the fan in the A/C unit than the cooling unit.) I’ve had the air conditioner since my “previous life” in Williamston, I’m sure it dates from at least as far back as 1990, and it’s still not used up. I prefer to cool off on the porch in the hammock, which is particularly ideal for weather up to about 90 degrees F.

But yesterday it was too hot, even on the shaded east-side porch. My goddaughter Sara came over and we did our best to stay cool out there. Here is what the thermometer said:

So there we were on the porch, drinking iced tea out of glasses that had water condensing on their sides. It was a lovely view although the sun was really baking down:

And then Sara said: Look, Lynn! See that squirrel?

That’s how hot it was.

I’ve slept in a tent three different sessions this month. I’m so happy to be back to my own wonderful house and my own bed and the best super-deep claw-footed tub in the world. The porch is extra wonderful and the hammock absolutely perfect, after time sleeping in a tent and dirty feet and cold nights.

The good part is that we go camping to be with great people. During the day when I’m usually relatively comfortable and the sun shines, I don’t mind it much. I prefer camping with flush toilets rather than porta-potties (would absolutely refuse to go if it were more primitive than that). Two of the three sessions had running water, and I was pleased with that part.

I took photos but after two days gone then two home then four days gone, I am hopelessly behind again on photos. I just wanted to check in with you folks and let you know that things are coming to you slowly because I’ve been beyond internet accessibility.

Until the camping photos are processed… for my garden-photo fans, here is a photo of my very own tomatoes… “grown on my own farm.” They are here on my one potted tomato bush on the back step landing. As of today I have picked four tomatoes. One went to Mom, one to Eric and Diana, one Brian ate, and the other is yet to become dinner, probably Tuesday night. I don’t enjoy fresh tomatoes but I like them cooked. I bought summer squash and zucchini so probably will do a saute with those and the tomato (and fresh organic basil from a friend’s farm).

I’ll be back as I have time to catch up. I tell you, travel is very enjoyable but it sure makes my regular life slow down to a halt!!! Thank you for hanging in there.

Recently, Brian and I (as The Fabulous Heftones) performed as the entertainment for a wedding reception in Grand Ledge, Michigan. This is a lovely older town west of Lansing which has stayed beautiful and vital. They have a real appreciation for the historical there, including a wonderful old opera house where this reception was held.

Behind the opera house is a river and a park area. I got a few photos just after we got our gear unloaded, before the bride and groom arrived. This photo of Brian pleases me a lot. He’s in the tuxedo he usually wears for our performances, on the back walk of the opera house.

After taking the shot of Brian I turned to my right and photographed the downtown park on the banks of the Grand River (which also flows through downtown Lansing). Very pretty!

Grand Ledge is named that because of some rock formations there (not unlike the dells in Wisconsin Dells). These are popular for local rock climbers. They are in a different park (Fitzgerald Park) which is really beautiful. Grand Ledge is particularly lovely in the autumn, though I think I have never taken any photos there at that time of year.

Eunice likes it when I post photos of my garden. I was quite honored when she told me that. This post is for you, Eunice!

My Plant-Tending Story

I can not say I’m much of a gardener. I’m more of a person who loves color and flowers. I love what grows but I am not thrilled about tending to the needs of the plants.

I also tend to enjoy home gardens which look somewhat natural. Even in someone else’s yard I think I am not so fond of straight rows of tulips or round gardens with edgings in regimented rows. I admire people who are able to make that sort of thing work, and I adore this sort of formality in a public garden (such as Frances Park in Lansing or Applewood Gardens in Flint). I just prefer a softer, more natural look in my own yard.

The Shade Garden

Because of these tendencies in myself, I have learned for the most part to plant things which come up every year. In the front of our yard, we replaced a porch maybe four years ago and lost all of our overgrown bridal-wreath bushes at that time. I planted three varieties of hosta (the front yard is 100% shade most of the summer).

I chose purple-leaf coral bells in the same front garden (with the hosta plants). My horticulturist friend warned me that the purple ones are sometimes not as hardy as the green ones, but I lucked out. The two plants did very well for several years, but this year the largest hosta are taking over and shading them a lot.

I will need to make a choice… move the hosta or move the coral bells. I am leaning toward the hosta, because they are more likely to take a move well.

I also tried lilies of the valley in that garden which seemed to not work… yet this year two lonely shoots came up. Maybe they will turn into something someday, I will honor them by leaving them alone.

The North Side

Fortunately, the lilies of the valley on the north side yard (a thin strip of land, maybe 10ft/3m wide) are thriving and taking over. This was exactly what I had hoped for. There is no tree shade there so it gets reflected light.

There is also a small white wild climbing rose there, with tiny single flat blooms. It has mean thorns but doesn’t grow as fast as the fuschia ones elsewhere on the lot.

On the north we also have a small pink spirea (I’m not at all sure that is how to spell them… the white ones are called bridal wreath). I am not sure how old that one is, but I’m certain it was there when Brian moved in (about 1992).

Gratitude

For the record, when we put in these plants it is me doing the choosing and Brian doing the digging. He is a very good sport about physical labor, and I am grateful.

Brian usually cuts the yard with an “acoustic” motorless mower. It is very lightweight and quiet (I can even push it for a while, where power mowers bother my wrists instantly). Sometimes the woody weeds need a good power cut but that doesn’t need to happen every time. I like this balance just fine, though honestly since I do not do the mowing it’s up to Brian.

The Sunny Side: Wildish Roses

On the back and north sides of the house, we have a good deal of sun. This means that things grow on their own, without help… sometimes they grow so well they take over. Since much of our house was built in the 1920s (The front 3 rooms were turn of the century), many of our plants were no doubt established at that time. The roses, at least, will surely live longer than I will.

You can see the fuschia climbing roses in these photos. We have them on the garage behind the house, on the back wall (two major plants, and they creep sideways along the house on either side), and on the north side which is the far side of the house from this vantage point. The north side has two major plants and many little scrubby ones trying to come up.

These are the roses I ignored last year. They had so many dead branches that they were a big mess and ugly tan in so many spots! Roses get powdery mildew easily when there is not a lot of airflow, so it was important to prune all those dead branches out.

I worked several days getting the roses down to a civilized state (they still look wild, I think, but they are not taking over and dying as much). I threw out seventeen paper grocery bags full of clippings, in two sessions, and a few more in subsequent small sessions. Whew!

Yes… these photos were taken *after* the pruning sessions. You can see that I do not dare skip a year with these plants again.

I am grateful for my thick suede (hot pink) gloves. They protect me from most of the puncture wounds I am guaranteed to receive if I garden without them. Sometimes I think I won’t need them, and one time I literally had a thorn pierce a fingernail all the way through. Those beauties are downright mean!!!

The Garage Garden: A bit o’nourishment

On the garage you can see we have a thriving “snowball bush” which is also no doubt from the 1920s. We moved it once and it’s very happy in this new spot.

Actually, at the very far corner of the garage , we have two rhubarb plants for pies/desserts (behind the snowballs, you can see the furthest one in the shade if you look at the first photo in this post). Rhubarb is a regional treat… very tart, even more so than cranberries.

The furthest rhubarb plant is from Mom, it is descended from plants on the farm in Minnesota where she grew up. It’s very strong and happy even though this is only its second year. The one on the left side of the small door, is tiny and scrawny, has always been a little weak, and now that the snowball is shading it we may lose it entirely.

You may not be able to see it, but on the garage, underneath the climbing rose, to the right of the lilies and the left of the snowballs, is a two foot by two foot area I call my food garden. I know, that’s a bit postage-stamp to be a real garden but it’s in a good spot and that’s all I have time to tend.

In the food garden I have chives (from mom) that are being choked out by the lily. I used to have sage plants for many years but they are gone now and I can not tell why. I have a parsley plant or two… they are supposed to be two-year plants but this is their third year. They are tall and spindly and woody, but they still taste like parsley and I use them when I cook.

I also planted two types of dill from seed, cilantro and spinach also from seed, in this area. The tall (non-bushy, standard) dill is growing OK although I started it a bit too late to really thrive. The bushy dill did not even attempt to come up.

The cilantro is looking happy but still small. And the spinach? Well, it came up but it likes cold weather and my delay means I did not get any for dinner. They are tiny little weedlike bits, but I don’t have the heart to take them out.

You may be able to see in the little area at the foot of the garage rose, an odd plant in the colors of rhubarb (red stem, big green leaves) but much more upright. This is a Swiss Chard plant I got in a pot at the local health food store.

When I bought it, the thing was very sad and droopy. It has recovered well and I have been harvesting bits of it for different meals. I grew it once before but I thought I could only harvest once so I saved it “for special.” Now I know that if I harvest, it will grow more. I’m enjoying this small bit of food “grown on my own farm.*”

* My maternal grandfather used to say this sometimes when dinner came around on the farm in Hanska, Minnesota. My father then started saying it when we would harvest fruit from the trees on our suburban lot near Lansing, Michigan, when I was growing up. I thought it was a common American saying, but it turns out it was about my Mom’s father. Go figure.

Another food plant takes up the same space as the entire herb/chard garden. It is a potted bush tomato, and it lives on the top landing of the back steps (in the above picture it is in the shade behind the mailbox). Living there it is protected from some bad weather, some animals, and it reminds me to water it every time I come home (because that is the door I use every day).

I have neglected to mention a few other plants that come back each year. We have three peonies, and those in the most sun of course do best. One we moved from shade four years ago and I thought we had killed it, but now it is under the mailbox and almost taking over that area entirely. You can not even see the side of the cement steps any more, which pleases me.

Have a peek at this photo from 2004, the geranium/petunia containers I planted that year (they sit at either side of the steps on the grass, the only flowering plants I fuss with which do not come back each year). See how bare it was, and how tiny the peony behind the pot?

Believe me, at that point I was just thrilled that the peony made it through the winter. It had gone down to one sprig of leaves the fall before.

We also have some wonderful orange day-lilies, the kind which grow wild by the roadside. These just keep growing, again especially the ones in full sun. They keep growing little baby plants on the perimiter and I seem to often be giving those away to friends. I never diminish the number I have, it seems. Perfect.

Also we have a lot of Myrtle/Periwinkle groundcover. At first it did not do that well but I have learned how to encourage it. Now it is doing pretty well. It takes about 3 years for any plant to thrive and I think I’m on my 3rd year of actively encouraging the myrtle… it is trying to take over my tiny food garden so I move it from there to a shady place on the south side, and that place doesn’t look so barren anymore.

We have a relatively small yard for Lansing, but I find it perfect for people who don’t want to spend too much time fussing. I can water all the plants which need assistance, in less than 20 minutes when I get home from work.

Not too big, not too small. As Goldilocks would say: “Just Right!”

I’ve got so many wonderful photos of the dunes between Lake Michigan and Silver Lake, that I can not resist showing a few more to you. The first one is our little crew of dune walkers that day, minus me… Jennifer, Jennifer’s beau, Brian, Pedro and Kathleen. Only Brian in this photo lives in the Midwest right now… Jennifer and beau are in Washington DC and Kath and Pedro are in northern Florida. It was wonderful to spend the day with them all.

Next is a lighthouse on the shore of Lake Michigan. This photo was taken facing south. I took it only a few minutes before I took the photo of the sunset (posted in previous blog entry).

Next is a view on the top of the dunes. I like how peaceful this one looks. If it looks like the sand goes on forever, it surely feels that way when you are up on the top.

Last is some dunegrass that we found at the top of the dunes. This type of grass is very important to the dune, if I remember my science class right. The roots hold the sand in place and resist erosion. Once grasses take hold, other things are more likely to be able to grow. I believe there is a whole set of animal life (birds are the most obvious) that thrive on the edges of the dunes where this grass has taken hold.

Maybe I’m catching up. In any case, here are a few photos from near Silver Lake State Park, 45 minutes north of Muskegon, Michigan… there are sand dunes between Silver Lake and Lake Michigan. Beautiful territory.

We tried to camp (July 3-5) and the first day it rained TWO INCHES in one night… we ended up sleeping in the car and it was a good thing, because everyone who slept in a tent (and these were experienced tent campers) woke up in puddles and ended up sleeping in cars or even driving home over an hour, at 1:30am. Ugh.

Luckily, Brian’s car is very big and the seats are quite comfy… not for overnight sleep but better than my New Beetle by a long shot. Two people in a car means not much oxygen, so we would wake up every so often and open windows in the pouring rain just to get more air, then we’d sleep a bit longer. I really prefer physical comfort to the great outdoors but at least we did not get very wet or very cold. It could have been significantly worse.

The next day was slow to dry out, but around 3pm it got nice and a bunch of us (Brian’s family) went walking on the dunes. Usually walking very far in that sand is a lot of work, but because of all the rain the dunes were solid underfoot and we walked a long time. It was really beautiful, and a nice payback for a crummy/wet night.

Here is a sunset over Lake Michigan, footprints in the firm sand, and a panoramic view from the top of the dunes. I hope you enjoy the photos.

My mother is very good at keeping in touch with those she loves… and she loves a lot of folks. She sends regular emails telling of her life, and she mails out copies to those who do not have email access. They tell about trips, meals, events, relationships and her own back yard.

Since Mom is a good observer (she does not talk as much as me so she has more time to notice things around her), she has much to say about ordinary but precious events. I particularly liked her stories this week…

Mom gave me permission to quote her today. I hope you enjoy it as I did.

The animals in the yard really entertain Fred. He calls it my zoo. It was fun watching the cardinals teaching their new hatchling to hunt for food. At first he just enjoyed hopping around and did not seem to notice what his folks were doing. Once he caught on, he would hop over and eat it out of their bill. A few days later, he was hunting up a storm.

There have been woodpeckers, flickers, sparrows, robins and blue jays lately. The red squirrel is here off and on. The chipmunks are always around and they do love to chase. Today a saw a “wooly” caterpillar. It was only a fourth of an inch long. The daddy long leg spiders were all over in the ivy and all over me too. I brushed them off most of the time, but had to take my glasses off when one got on the inside of the lens…

…I still have some purple wood sorrel. The seeds came from Pete’s Grandma Peterson. Pete’s mom had the plants and asked if I wanted some. They self seed and are hard to see as they blend in with the mulch. I am always excited to see them. I have no idea where she got them. Some of them have cross bred with the wild green wood sorrel. I still have some of the dark purple. When I was little we loved to eat the raw leaves and say it was sauerkraut. I have no idea where that came from.

I have some white clover in my yard, too. I even made some clover chains as a reminder of my childhood. I wonder how many children get to make clover chains now. It seems most yards are like a carpet and have no room for making clover chains or whistles from grass blades or eating “sauerkraut”.