Small satisfactions
July 29, 2012 § 2 Comments
This weekend my sister came and we had a marvelous girls’ time. The weather cooled and we cleared our schedules for whatever we wanted to do, instead of what we ought to do.
So, we started our two days of good food and good fun with a night of arts & crafts. Elena made a yarn-covered letter “B” (the first letter of her last name), and I dug out my paints to replicate the photograph of a butterfly.
We talked as the sunset turned into dark, took a break for pie, and finished our projects with J.J. Heller and King Charles and Fun in the background. Then we admired our works with satisfaction and surprise: Look what we made!
Each of us created something new, something that would add beauty to our spaces, something that had not previously existed. This sort of activity was not uncommon for us as little girls. It occurred almost daily, and lived on our family’s refrigerator, or on our bedroom walls, or on the sidewalk outside, or perched on our dressers. We had little fear of imperfection or inadequacy, little sense of obligation to be accomplishing or completing another, more important task. We created because we liked to.
It is good to bring back these small satisfactions, to insist upon times set aside for the making of things. That thrill of creating beauty is unique unto itself. We remember that we have capable hands and important imaginations. We remember that we are artists.
Summer Sun
July 24, 2012 § 2 Comments
Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.
The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.
Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy’s inmost nook.
Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.
-Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child’s Garden of Verses
Water’s edge
July 24, 2012 § Leave a comment
Summer sunshine and water lilies at Straight Lake State Park.
Castles in the air
July 19, 2012 § Leave a comment
“There is a castle on a cloud,
I like to go there in my sleep,
Aren’t any floors for me to sweep,
Not in my castle on a cloud.
There is a room that’s full of toys,
There are a hundred boys and girls,
Nobody shouts or talks too loud,
Not in my castle on a cloud.”
-Little Cosette, Les Miserables
Do any of you ever imagine yourself in a different space or time, in a castle on a cloud, as the mistreated little Cosette does? Or build “castles in the air,” as Jo March and her sisters do in Little Women? I do – you see them here from time to time, in my perpetual dropping of that handy little word, “someday.”
Someday I will have two dapple gray Percherons with white manes in a red barn with a Christmas wreath on it. Someday I will tie my small sailboat to the end of my sister’s dock, because she will live just down the road on the lake. I will visit her lake house with my kids and she will visit my farmhouse with hers. Someday I will have copper pots hanging from the beams, and a big fireplace, and a claw-foot tub, and a very long table to seat my very best loved ones.
I am curious to know: What do you have in your castle? What are your somedays?
As much as I love to play this game, I think sometimes it makes me forget about the good real earth, the solid ground I’m standing on and how I can build castles right here. Many somedays just require my taking the time to make them come about. So. Dreamers, dream. And then, if you can, draw your castles, and your plans, adjust as you must, and start to build them from wherever you are.
Instead
July 14, 2012 § Leave a comment
Guess who isn’t at Seed Savers and the Greg Brown concert, after all?
We had to wait for Peach the cow to have her calf. She did have it on time – yesterday morning! She came with the gift of rain. But we (that is, our animal husbandry folks) obviously didn’t want to just jet out of here now that the calf has arrived into the world safely.
She is darling, that little heifer. It is good that we have stayed here to watch her get used to the world. And I am not so sad to be at home. I worked on a bunny hutch. I sowed buckwheat. I got in the river, and ran out and back to the house fast enough to shed the deer flies and mosquitos.
There will be another time to go to Seed Savers, and I will take lots of pictures, and tell you all about it.
Here is some other music for the night, instead.
Even in Iowa
July 12, 2012 § Leave a comment
It isn’t all caught in the maw of industrial agriculture, I’ll have you know.
At least not all folks, not so completely.
Read:
Breathing spell
July 7, 2012 § 2 Comments
“I believe that the great Creator has put ores and oil on this earth to give us a breathing spell. As we exhaust them, we must be prepared to fall back on our farms, which is God’s true storehouse and can never be exhausted. We can learn to synthesize material for every human need from things that grow.” – George Washington Carver
This is a fascinating statement. Thoughts?
A little shop preview
July 7, 2012 § 3 Comments
Aren’t these embroidered monogram necklaces simply sweet? I’ll be interviewing Danielle of The Merriweather Council to learn about how she got started with embroidery and an Etsy shop – so check back soon!
Kinds of Honey 