Taking it in

Smoke from our wood burning stove

Moving to a farm in the country two years ago coincided with a new way of looking at the world. Part of the change was looking to nature for meaning, beauty, truth. Finding joy in simple, touchable, life-giving, cyclical routines.

I read a poem this morning by A.R. Ammons that says something about how I feel:


WHEN I WAS YOUNG THE SILK

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head
unfurled
and wind bloomed the parachute:

The air-head tugged me
up,
tore my roots loose and drove
high, so high

I want to touch down now
and taste the ground
I want to take in
my silk
and ask where I am
before it is too late to know

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Corn crib in February

We've got a cold snap: 9 degrees at 1:47pm. With wind chill it feels like -4. Only a few minutes to take pics before fingers start aching.

These images are the "corn crib," but not used for corn these days. Don stores his tractor and odds and ends in the middle, shown here, between the two enclosed sides. Then in one side, yard tools. The other is for firewood.

For a while, Don's tractor was for kicks, a joint "toy" he owned with his dad. But this winter he began using it to drag downed trees he later sawed for firewood.

All the outbuildings on our little 5 acres are occasionally propped with creative foundation materials, like this molded cement piece.

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A Talented Woman

Photo by Lesley

She weaves. She knits. She pounds fibers into felt. She felts wool. She dyes linen with poke berry juice from our farm. She dyes her hair maroon. She silk screens. She creates batik. She designs wall hangings and interior spaces with color, form and texture. By hand (which she prefers to AutoCad) she renders elevations and buildings, rooms and displays. She stays up very, very late working. She watches Japanime while she works. She lives in the moment. She photographs decaying things for inspiration in her spare time. She listens to the Cranes on her iPod. She plays the piano. She designs sets for plays and movies on the side. She leads student organizations. She calls her mother or father almost every day. She writes the only perfect senior thesis in her graduating class. She inserts emotion and spirit into everything she does. She gets chosen as one of three students to go to the Milan furniture trade show in April. She deserves it.

This is my daughter, Lesley.

Her felt wall hanging before she pieced it together; each square she pounded into felt

from strands of wool.

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At the office

Hubbub and hullabaloo.

New office furniture was delivered for me and four other staff members in the English department yesterday. It felt odd, because our department is "poor" when it comes to material goods. We all had hand-me-down furniture (like my 1970s Steelcase desk), nothing matched, of course, and we kind of liked it that way here in this 100-year-old university building.

So getting new furniture takes some getting used to, but I love it! I'm surrounded by more flat surfaces than I ever have been! And this allows me to spread out papers when I meet with students; what a luxury.

But my favorite piece in the office is still very old, maybe as old as the building. This photo shows just the right upper side of my huge book cabinet, with the teapots for the English Tea lined up on top. The way my new computer desk sits, I face this view.

I have a Turkish kilim on another wall, one Don bought in our Istanbul days.

This is my little painting , a copy (different colors) of Paul Klee's Senecio.

I love my workplace.

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Heart Wood

Saturday Don spent an hour or so cutting wood for our wood burning stove. Most weekends he finds a downed tree or two, or -- more preferably -- a dead tree that’s still standing, because it is already perfectly seasoned.

He strikes up his chain saw, cuts the tree into lengths that just fit into our tiny wood stove, loads up a blue plastic sled, pulls it up to the shed (former corn crib in our farm's true farming days), unloads and stacks it, then pulls the last sled load to the garage for easy armloads during the week. Needless to say, the free energy source right on our property has been very welcome this winter with sky-high heating bills, helping to supplement the gas furnace. We probably have enough dead wood to last a few years.

I was in the house piddling around, and Don came in from cutting wood with this Valentine, a half-inch slice of an elm tree (it really is ONE piece). I love how it resembles a human heart, even with left and right ventricles. Many other images come to mind: owl eyes, ears. What do you see?

Do you see my love for this man?

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Meditation on a white amaryllis

I wanted to plant an amaryllis bulb in time to bloom for the holidays. But I bought and planted it late, after Christmas in fact. I watered it faithfully, and after several weeks, last Wednesday my amaryllis bloomed.

It takes patience to wait for blossoms. For weeks you water the bulb in the pot, with no apparent result. The bulb's dry, homely neck and shoulders sit above the soil, and you're convinced nothing will ever come of it. Then, maybe four weeks in, a chartreuse tongue appears at the top of the bulb. Quickly, it seems, the stem grows. In just a few days it reaches eighteen inches. Then for another week or two, four chrysalis-like buds emerge from the very top of the stem and prepare to open. At last, one at a time, each bud flowers, facing east, south, west and north, like blades of a helicopter. The orbit of blooms is worth the long wait.

I would like to propagate a bulb. This requires even more patience. You must pollinate the pistil with the pollen on the stamens, then wait for seeds to form in the ovary. After removing, drying and planting seeds, it takes three years for bulbs that will flower to grow.

This is one of those areas of life where I ask, if someone else didn't do this for me (take care of propagating plants and bulbs so I can just plant them), would I know how to do it? I have one lifetime (maybe?). In this era of technology, what fundamental survival skills do I know? If all the computers crashed, what then? If I couldn't buy groceries, could I grow enough to sustain myself? If no one else repaired our mechanical gadgets, could I?

Though I may never have to depend on myself for some of this know-how, it is gratifying to learn at least a few such life lessons, to be more connected. My Donald, who knows how to do so many things, is patient with me as I grow.

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Spring Alliance

Our first spring project (a la Feb. 1 post: Imbolc: First Day of Spring) is revamping our study into a workout room, moving the computer and books upstairs. Our house has limited space, so we have to be creative.

Since we began running last week, we decided to move the treadmill from the barn into the house. (Sorry, bats.) Don's weights and bench, up from the basement, will share the new fitness room with Ms. Alliance Treadmill.

Even though it's work to reorganize and lug books upstairs, it's nice to reconnect with favorite books, find ones that were "missing" and recapture space for our goal of regular exercise.


Thank you, Jane Kenyon, for your sad but brilliant poem rediscovered: "Having it Out With Melancholy."

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