Waiting for Spring

Still good! Last year's pansies, but blooming just the same today.

Fridays are always a day when I want to just put on some good music and write whatever I want to write - gardening articles, pet care articles, model horse articles, anything as long as it isn't in AP style and isn't written to a keyword. It's been a long week that has only underscored my general loathing for AP style and yearning for Chicago style, Oxford commas, and the elegance of a semi-colon.  If that's all gibberish to you, then congratulations: you're not a freelance writer.

By eight o'clock this morning, the cats had already made messes in several areas of the house. Pierre managed to barf all over the closet floor and Genghis attacked a closed container of cat food I'd left in the dining room. He managed to knock it on the floor along with a metal bowl, which hit the floor with a mighty clang that reverberated like a gong through the house. He also managed to knock the lid off of the container of crunchies and gorge himself before I could reach him. Shy Boy, one of the outdoor cats, clawed me during playtime this week and now my hand hurts.  Sometimes being a cat momma is hard work!

I'm just waiting for spring. I've got spring fever for sure. The only things blooming in the garden right now are yellow crocus, white snowdrops, heather, and one lonely pansy that keeps reseeding in a really odd spot near the front walkway.  It's a beautiful pansy; this picture is actually from last year, but it's what the pansy looks like today, so I'm fudging a bit and using an old picture. Same for the heather photo, by the way; I took that one last year, but hey, it's the same  plant, so use your imagination.

I am really looking forward to spending time at  B & M Greenhouse tomorrow for the terrarium workshop. Just being in a greenhouse in the wintertime lifts my spirits, and I've got a bit of money squirreled away to buy a house plant or two. I'm hoping they have some African violets I do not have already, like a mini or a trailing violet, or perhaps a jasmine. I was hoping to buy a cyclamen and then I remember that they are poisonous to cats. According to the ASPCA website, the tuber is the poisonous part, but the leaves may have "some" toxicity.

I do have some chores to tend to with the house plants. My father-in-law's cactus and succulent terrarium, which I inherited when he died, desperately needs some attention. I don't know a lot about cacti and succulents; he liked them a lot, but I have never really liked them. I know I have one aloe in the planter, one succulent, and two cacti. One cactus looks like it is dead, but I'm not sure. It's sort of brittle near the bottom but still green near the top. I think I will investigate some cacti potting soil tomorrow, too, and replant the whole thing.  He grew it as a terrarium but I don't think that is the  best environment for those types of plants.

The rescued orchid that I found at Lowe's is rebounding - hurray!  It is pushing out a single bud, and if I can get it to bloom, I can finally determine what color it is.  The old rescued orchid is once again creating blossoms, this time not just on one stem, but on two.  I have found orchids surprisingly easy to grow and just learned that my little plant room where I tend my collection of house plants has ideal low to medium light for them. Who would have guessed it?

Oddly enough, the poinsettia my friend Karen gave me for Christmas is still going strong. It barely drops any leaves and still has the red bracts it sported at Christmastime. My dad's always looked lousy by March, so maybe it likes that plant room, too. Well, who wouldn't?

Razzleberry cat has now discovered the reading chair back there and I have to argue with him each evening for possession of the chair. He curls up against the needlepoint cat pillow, cat against cat, orange against brown, and makes the entire room look cozy as can be. 

And then Genghis Khan cat crashes in with a big chirrup, a leap, and a swat, and they're off and running.

Sigh. I can't wait for spring. But oh wait...now I have three outdoor cats.  Gardening will never be the same with my new cadre of "helpers!"

Mother's Predictions Come True

My mom used to have a saying. "If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person."  Sounds crazy, right? Because after all...the busy person won't have time to tackle your request.

Or...will she?

My mother's prediction is coming true this week. I'm sick and tired of a lot of the junky gardening and lifestyle websites I see out there. The gardening sites all seem to be either stupidly simplistic or absolutely impossible - you know what I mean:  "Here's what dirt looks like" or "Build your dream house from empty popsicle sticks!"  Yeah, right.

In between are the average folks. You, me, and probably everyone you know. We don't have a million dollars lying around to hire a landscape architect. We live in a modest home in a suburb somewhere with a lawn, kids, pets, a job, elderly parents or some other responsibility. In other words, we've got a life.

But we want to live that life to its fullest. We want beauty, joy, and happiness in our lives.  We want to be surrounded by beautiful things, and growing things count very much as beautiful things. The ugliest garden weed, the ones we call biting weeds here and the ones my mentor in the Master Gardening program calls "the devil's potato" are even beautiful. They're deadly nightshade, they have thorns an inch long, but they do produce these pretty star-shaped purple flowers....

My mom's prediction is coming true, because this busy person  - me - is launching a new website. A gardening and lifestyle site named Get Your Hands Dirty Gardening.  Over the past several weeks, you may have seen the name of this blog change on and off.  I was experimenting with the layout of the blog to see if I could get it to do what I wanted it to do. I couldn't.  It just wasn't working on this platform, but I didn't want to abandon the blog at all. I love blogging. I love sharing my garden, the crazy antics of my pets, and all sorts of stuff with you.  And as my readership has grown over time, I think you've come to like this blog a bit, too.

So...I needed to keep this blog. I had a strong desire to launch a new site. I have a distinct lack of money to launch said site. What to do?

Build a site myself, add my own content, and share it with you guys.

Because I know that, like me, you love to garden. You're growing herbs in little red wagons your kids have long since outgrown. You're enjoying hobbies like sewing, quilting, jewelry making, model horses. You're browsing through lifestyle magazines and wishing you could have a little bit of that.

Well, let's see if we can't have that ourselves. If we can't make a little joy, beauty and prosperity right in our own backyards, in our own corner of the world.

Welcome to Get Your Hands Dirty Gardening. It's still a work in progress, but please do visit, bookmark it, share it, pray a blessing over it or whatever floats your boat.

Merry Christmas Wishes

Wishing all of my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Happy Holidays to you and your family. May your garden and your lives blossom and grow in 2013.

All the best,
- Jeanne Grunert

The Writer Is at a Loss for Words

2012 Christmas Tree

I've wanted to write some gardening posts this week. I've got my research done, my pictures selected. But it's been too hard to write cheerful, think-spring kind of posts. The darkness spilling out of Connecticut pulls at my mind. It's like a mosquito in a darkened, sweltering hot room; it keeps swooping near my ear with a whine, only to dash away when I swipe at it, returning again to keep me from resting.  Just the other day, I looked up from my desk and mused about my favorite Christmases. I immediately thought of first grade; that Christmas found Breyer horse models under the Christmas tree, toys and games to amuse me. I remember rising early before my family was awake a few days after Christmas and pulling the box of colored pencils and color-by-number pictures out, snuggling into the club chair next to the Christmas tree and coloring until my family rose at a more reasonable hour. It was the kind of Christmas where the twinkling lights swaying from the lamp posts in our town were magical, when a car ride at night to see the neighbor's Christmas lights and the evening "Rudolph" was on the television were the best nights of all. And of course, there was school; I remember making yarn-wreaths in Mrs. R's third grade classroom, clothes-pin Santa Claus ornaments another year, sharing holiday traditions in second grade.

I wanted to write up some of these memories, but I can't speak of them right now. Because when I remember first grade, my mind shifts into that innocent mindset. I have some kind of weird ability to move through time in my mind, to make today yesterday or 30 years ago if I so choose, all inside my mind. I feel what I felt then and I remember the smooth feel of that Breyer model horse, the sharp smell of the plastic and paint, the crisp evergreen scent of the Christmas tree and the way tinsel feels when it clings from static electricity to your hands.

And then I can't help but feel a sharp pain in my heart as I think of those 20 innocent children whose lives were cut short in Connecticut. I think of presents bought and wrapped and waiting for children who will never open them. Did their moms hide the presents under the bed the way our mom did?  Did they have hand-made Christmas ornaments waiting at school to take home to their parents?  Did they get to see "Rudolph" one last time?

I'll write about gardening another time.  For now, I keep thinking that this writer is at a loss for words...just a lot of images in my mind, of Christmases past and Christmases that will never be.

Gratitude and Abundance

This morning as I walked Shadow, with the morning star twinkling over the dawn-kissed sky, I gave thanks for the abundance in my life. Today is the American holiday of Thanksgiving, and one I am especially fond of no matter how old I get. I have so much in my life to be thankful for - my life is filled with abundance. And I feel gratitude. Deep, profound gratitude that I am walking, have my health, have a warm home to return to each day and food on the table. Grateful for a spouse who loves me and with whom I have shared my life now for over 20 years. Grateful for parents who raised me in a traditional home, grateful for my four siblings who are wonderful people, grateful for the big, extended family and the village I grew up in that was like a big extended family.  So much joy and happiness today despite sorrow this fall.  Today, join me in giving thanks for the simple gifts...

Happy Thanksgiving!

National Hug a Cat Day and Venus Amazing

Pierre the Great (and the Gray)

Today is National Hug a Cat Day, which of course means that Pierre and Razzleberry are hiding.  Can you tell they "love" hugs? (sarcasm intended.)  Actually, Pierre is out on the front porch snoozing to get away from his pesky little 'brother' Razzleberry.  The cats have been getting along well, but Razzleberry is three years younger than Pierre, and on some days it shows.  Pierre remains an active cat but Razzleberry wants to play, and he doesn't seem to like playing with cat toys. Pierre can entertain himself for hours batting around stuffed mice or his favorite, the stuffed chicken toys with real tufts of feathers, but Razzleberry doesn't have much use for stuffed toys.  He'd prefer to play with Pierre's tail.  Then the fight is on, with plenty of growls, snarls, and jockeying for position to see which cat has the upper paw.  Fortunately they are both lovers rather than fighters and aside from some nasty sounding growling and hissing, nobody gets hurt. 

I love to hug my cats but they don't really appreciate hugs, do they?  Now Shadow the dog would love a hug, but she smells like a pair of old gym socks left at the bottom of a locker, which makes her rather unpleasant to hug sometimes. There are the occasional ticks marching along her coat . I give her a hug anyway and try to avoid the ticks. 

Life has been good, but busy. The garden is settling into its summertime beauty. We've had enough rains so that the flower garden is blooming abundantly. The Japanese beetles arrived two weeks ahead of schedule and are already drowning themselves en masse in the bird bath.  I told John that we should just put out more bird baths - gives the birds a place to play and acts like a natural Japanese beetle lure.

We lost one dogwood tree very suddenly, and it makes me sad that the something attacked and killed this beautiful red dogwood.  We had no warning signs that the tree was going to die. John noticed a sort of horizontal slash across the trunk, which we believe was made by an insect of some kind. A few days later all the leaves turned brown and now the four year old tree is dead.  I will need to research what could cause death to a healthy dogwood tree that fast.   I am almost certain it was an insect as we do not use any chemical sprays (so no chem damage) and there was no sign of fungus, virus or other infection.  It was just like sudden death to the entire tree after that weird slash appeared on the trunk.

Today, by the way, marks the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. It's an amazingly rare occurrence.  It happened in 2004 and now today and tomorrow in 2012, and then it won't happen again for centuries! Of course you cannot look directly at the sun without damaging your eyes, but NASA has information on how to see it. I'll wait for the photos.  The transit of Venus has all sorts of astrological symbolism. I am not into astrology (it's kind of superstitious in my book and against both logic and Christian values) but I do find it fascinating that this occurrence won't happen again for another 100 or more years. The last time this happened was in 1882!  Here is NASA's information on the 2004 and 2012 transit of Venus.  Along with how much I love the natural world, the animals and plants, I love learning about the stars, planets and galaxies. Just as I've sat in awe in a lawn chair and watched meteor showers here so too I hope to see on the news more pictures of Venus moving across the face of the sun....it will not happen again in my lifetime.  Another awe-some moment!

Good Bye Old Times

As I sat down to write this post, the Lynchburg classical music station began playing one of my favorite symphonic pieces - Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, by Claude Debussy. I can vividly recall the first time I heard this wonderful work.  It was in 2000, in Alice Tully Hall in New York City.  I used to keep a radio tuned to the local classical music station in my office in New York City so I always had soft, ambient music to keep me company and soothe my spirits throughout the day. Lee, one of my coworkers, someone I did not know very well, came by with a yellow mimeographed flyer in her hand.  "I noticed that you like classical music," she said.  "Did you know that the Julliard School students perform concerts every Wednesday at 1pm? It's free of charge and you can bring a brown bag lunch!"  We made a date.  We brought our sandwiches and sodas into Alice Tully Hall. It was only half full, mostly with what looked like retirees and a sprinkling of business people like ourselves. It was one of my best memories from the years I worked at that particular company and Lee and I caught a few more concerts together before she left the company.

It was a wonderful few years I worked at that company.  I spoke with an old friend today who told me that another of our coworkers, J, had recently passed away. No one can find out any details on J's passing.  It was sudden and unexpected.  I find it hard to imagine the world without him.  I did not keep in touch with him except through Facebook, but he would always pop into my email every once in a while with a baseball score or two.  It made me sad to think of him leaving this world. He was smart as a tack and so funny he would make your sides hurt. He had a wry, sarcastic sense of humor and impeccable timing.  He could make faces at people behind their back and in a split second, be all polite and listening to you.  He had a wonderful gift for working with our customers and the customers loved him.  Best of all, he was kind; when he was sarcastic, it was to pinprick us when we felt our heads swell with importance, or when we lost site of the people we were supposed to be serving.

Talking to my former colleague, another person with whom I'd shared those marvelous days, made me feel a bit nostalgic.  The other day I was thinking of a former boss from that company who had died many years ago.  He was a gifted copywriter, one of the best I have ever worked with, who taught me so much about writing in the 8 months I worked with him that I silently thank him in my heart when I write, and I silently ask his forgiveness for my being a know-it-all upstart.  I wasn't always kind to him and I wish I could go back in time and tell him "thank you."

So many good memories.  I feel nostalgic but not sad.  It helped me to talk to my friend, to realize that the happy memories will always stay with me.  Times have changed and the company has changed.  New leadership is coming aboard.  I will not be there to experience its next incarnation, and that's okay.  I have wonderful memories of what life can be life when people in a company genuinely like and respect one another.  During the years I worked there, I had the pleasure of working with so many bright, talented, dedicated people, many of whom I have kept in touch with over the years.

I think that says a lot.  When people you work with become like family, and it's a decade later and you still pick up the phone to catch up, you know your good memories are true.  True, good and bright.

Be well, J.  I hope you rest in peace and thank you for the wonderful memories.

A Lumpy First Quilting Project and the Joy of Discovery

Yesterday it was raining buckets outside, a welcome sight for this gardener.  We hadn't had this much rain in many weeks and the clay soil was already so baked it was beginning to crack. I was getting tired of carrying buckets of water around the garden to keep my new transplants alive.  Nearly 36 hours of rain later, the garden looks fresh, green and...moist.

It's unusual to have a rainy Sunday.  I sat down to an afternoon of play.  I finished my quilted pillow. I have no idea what I am doing.  I have never sewed, but I love quilts.  Somehow I managed to collect a bunch of fabric scraps over the years in a variety of blue and yellow hues. I seem to have a fondness for pairing those colors together, the way I like to pair peach and aqua together.  My bedroom is blue, and so I decided to sew together some patches and make a pillow.  I used my Christmas present, the new Janome sewing machine I bought from Sew Simple in Lynchburg.  I can't say enough great things about the sewing machine or the shop...they were wonderful and this model Janome is like the idiot's guide to sewing.  Literally.  It has little numbers and arrows showing you how to thread the machine. It's like connect the dots sewing.  That is my kind of machine. 

So here is my lump, bumpy pillow.  It's uneven. One side is poking up more than another.  It won't win any prizes.  Many children sew better than I do. I don't care. I had fun making it.

The reason I share my lumpy bumpy pillow with you is this.  I was raised in a super strict household where play was frowned upon past the age of six.  After that age, work was the watchword.  We were expected to work so hard at our schoolwork that we brought home straight A's regardless of the subject. We were to  work hard at home and were assigned tasks far beyond what our age normally dictated. This was to "build character." I was not allowed to play sports and only academic clubs were allowed. These would further my school work; sports were nothing but a waste of time and money.  And so on.

By the time I turned 16 and was able to get a part time job, my parents didn't just encourage me to work...they practically pushed me out the door. While it's true that I was highly motivated to take a part time job to pay for my horse back riding lessons (a frivolity my siblings gifted me with for my 16th birthday and a long cherished dream),  my parents saw hard work as the ultimate virtue.

If you sewed, it was to make clothing...not because it was creative expression, but because the clothing was better made or less expensive than store-bought clothing.

If you gardened, it wasn't for fun.  It was to win prizes (competition) or grow food (money saving.)

If you rode your bicycle, it wasn't for pleasure...it was to get from one place to the other.

Everything was for a purpose.

I devoured Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project in three days flat, and it was she who inspired me to finish my lumpy bumpy pillow.  In her book, she explores a year of testing the various hypothesis around how to become happier.  But what struck me was her exploration and identification of unspoken "rules" she'd had about herself.  Some "rules" were good, and some kept her back.  Another thing that struck me was that play is good.  Getting away from that hard, grinding approach to work is GOOD for the soul, the spirit, and happiness.

She made me sit back and question this unspoken rule that play was frowned upon and that every activity had to be for a purpose, that every activity undertaken by an adult in our family had to be bigger, better and best.  She made me question the unspoken and odd rule we had growing up that if you wanted to do something your older siblings wanted to do - even if it was some activity that spoke to you, that inspired you, that made you happy - well, you were just 'copying' someone else.  For years my sister teased me that my interest in gardening was just me trying to copy another sister.  Well, she is wrong.  I love to garden.  Gardening makes me happy.  I never learned how to sew because that was another sister's "thing."  I have one sister who sews beautiful tailored clothes. She made me my first good business suit when I entered the work force and it was lovely. (I still have it even though I have gained too much weight to wear it; I won't part with it.)  The other sister took up sewing, but her "thing" was quilting.  She made me a gorgeous double wedding ring quilt for my wedding that I have hanging up in my bedroom.  I don't want to use it on the bed because my cats sleep on the bed and shed all the time.  I keep a store-bought quilt on the bed that I can just throw into the laundry in case of kitty accidents or hair.

But I have always longed to sew. I remember the whirr of my mother's sewing machine and it is like the background song of my childhood.  She was an excellent seamstress and there are many pictures of myself and my sisters wearing Easter dresses she created.  My favorite was white with flocked purple tulips on it and a lot of purple rickrack. Remember rickrack, the 70s answer to trimming anything? I'm just grateful she never bought the Ronco Be-dazzler.

I tried taking a sewing class when I lived in Floral Park. I dutifully trekked up to Sewanhaka High School for the evening course.  I never took home ec in high school because I was music nerd (still am); my electives were piano, chorus and music theory, which left no time for cooking or sewing classes.

I tried sewing a dress in that class and it was a big, shapeless black tent.  It was so ugly I couldn't bear to even save the material.  Patterns made me cry.  I got so frustrated. The teacher kept saying to me to have patience with myself, but that old habit ingrained in me from childhood of expecting to BE the best because I HAD to be the best because that is what my parents expected and demanded of us kicked in.   I quit the class.

Now I know better. I know that it is okay to let hobbies be hobbies. It is okay to not only not be the best but to putter around with something that gives you joy and pleasure.  It is okay for me to quilt, garden, sew, and do other things that I enjoy.  So what if my sisters like doing them too? Just gives us one more thing to share when we are together.

Every childhood has its rules and every family has its quirks.  As I read The Happiness Project, I realized that the important thing is not getting stuck in the quirks.  The important thing is that when you get to adulthood, you can be dispassionate and detached enough to recognize, analyze, and scrutinize those childhood rules.  You can keep what works and leave behind what doesn't.

For my parents, hard work and striving was the key to getting out of poverty.  My grandfather died when my mother was only 3 and during the height of the Great Depression, leaving my disabled grandmother with little income and three daughters to feed.  My dad's family were immigrants striving to succeed in America during a time when prejudice against German immigrants ran high.  To my parents, the iron-clad rule "Be the best" and "Anything you do must be productive, earn money, and be the best" was necessary to lift them out of poverty.

Their rules aren't my rules.  I am not living in the Great Depression no matter what the newscasters may say about the economy.  I have good work that I love to do, and I have a roof over my head and a full pantry.  I respect that my parents may have had to strive every hour of every day to get ahead, but I am not in that same atmosphere.  My life is my own.

And so out came the scraps of material.  Out came endless cups of tea and the radio tuned to the Lynchburg classical music station. I set up my sewing machine at the kitchen table, set up the ironing board on the island, and went to work.

While I puttered and sewed, I watched a huge wild tom turkey out in the yard.  In the pouring rain he went from space to space behind the vegetable garden, pecking for insects.   I paused, sipped my tea, and watched this fascinating (and bedraggled) tom turkey in the rain.  And suddenly I thought, "Life is good.  Life is fine."

So here is my lumpy bumpy pillow and all that it represents. I added it to the mount of pillows on the bed, those decorative pillows men never understand and women crave.  And every time I look at it, I smile and feel alive again.

That's what creative play does for you.

Happy Boxing Day

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Christmas was lovely this year because the emphasis was on faith, family and friends, in that order - NOT food, gifts and consumerism.  I'm not talking about becoming a Scrooge and doing away with giving presents, but I am talking about putting the emphasis where it belongs - with relationships, first with God and then with your family and friends.

My friend Cecilia called me from Los Angeles around 9:30 p.m to wish me a Merry Christmas and send her love and best wishes to the choir.  We miss her beautiful soprano voice and cheerfulness for sure every week but she's moved on to a new job in the midwest.  She didn't forget her friends back east though, and it was so nice to let everyone know we had a friend on the West Coast rooting for us as we sang the new translation of the Gloria for the first time.

Midnight Mass was wonderful but for me a struggle with my body clock.  I am a morning person and my body does not adjust to staying up late.  I couldn't even stay up late as a teenager. I am still feeling "hung over" from sleep deprivation today and battling a migraine, which is what happens to me when I go off my sleep schedule, but it was worth it to start Christmas was carols, songs and hugs from my church family. 

Then it was home to my family nest - with Christmas morning under the tree snuggling with both cats and Shadow as we unwrapped a few presents from friends who brought hostess gifts to last weekend's Christmas dinner.  My little godson sent Christmas presents for the pets, and Pierre and Raz enjoyed their new catnip toy, a weird green plastic ball with fringe on it, and a new brush for Raz.  Shadow got jerky treats and she loved them so much she sat next to the shelf where we placed them out of her reach and worshipped the bag from afar.  We spent the day watching endless reruns of "A Christmas Story" to the point where we started reciting lines - "You'll shoot your eye out!" - and I worked on my counted cross stitch and ran out of thread.  I worked out too, and walked on the treadmill for half an hour grooving to the oldies on the CD player

So now today is Boxing Day, which doesn't mean we all punch each other in the nose.  Back in the olden days when people had servants it was the day to give servants their boxes or presents.  Since I am the servant here as well as the mistress of the house, I think I will treat myself to some time to myself later.  I am planning the vegetable garden, perusing the seed catalogs, and I'll probably go out and pull up more of the spent marigolds later to get some fresh air. I can't believe how the spring flowering perennials are all blooming - I've got daffodils emerging, Dutch iris already up, and even yarrow - yes, yarrow - blooming away.  Thank God no snow but honestly,  my poor plants are confused and think it is Easter instead of Christmas.

Happy Boxing Day and hope your Christmas was merry!

Because Stories Aren't Stories Until They're Told

I made a bold decision this month regarding my writing, one which I hope I won't regret. I've gotten so frustrated at not finding markets for some of my fiction and essays that I've decided to self publish them.  I've published them on Hub Pages - first my short story, An Ancient Gift, and today, an essay entitled The Fox.

I wrote both stories in the early 1990s. The incident in The Fox actually took place sometime around 1989.  I've lost track of how many anthologies, literary magazines, and whatever I've submitted both works to.  Sometimes I get back notes saying "Nice but not quite us - try again" or "Keep submitting" - and although I know, based on countless books on writing I've read over the years, that these are meant to be encouraging, at this point I'm just discouraged.  Yes, I've had plenty of essays, stories and articles accepted for paid publication, but these two works I felt deep in my heart were good enough to be read by others, but I just couldn't find them a home. 

Elizabeth J. Andrew is a writer whose work I admire, and last night I finished reading her book Swinging on a Garden Gate.  One thing in the book that really struck me was that she wrote that stories aren't stories until they're told - and that sharing our stories is a gift we give others. She was talking about a pile of manuscripts that she'd lost to a fire, and she mourned their loss because now she could never share them with others.  I thought a lot about that last night. It's not as if my works are lost, but aren't they, if they're just sitting on the computer? It's unlikely a new print publication is going to launch and clamor for my type of stories. And I think I've tried every single one in the Writer's Market by now.

I'm tired of having wonderful stories stuck in limbo because there just aren't publications out there these days buying them. Traditional tales, or uplifting essays.  It seems as if every short fiction market these days wants people to write like Hemingway or have some sort of vague, quasi literary ending.  I hate stories like that. I want to be entertained when I read a story. I don't want to have to reach for my dictionary or pretend I am uber-hip because I get the nihilistic meaning of the deep thinking writer who doesn't punctuate properly.  I'm tired of bad art, bad music, and bad writing masquerading as brilliance.

So I have decided to go the way of many...self publishing. I am grateful for the internet.  It's really given control of content back to writers.  Sure, readers have to find your writing, whether you're penning a blog or a book.  But once readers find you, it's up to the READERS whether or not they like you - not one editor making decisions based on profitability.

If you like these works, please leave a comment on their pages on Hub Pages (or here if you prefer). And if you like them, I will share more.

Because a story just isn't a story until it's told...and someone like you is there to read it.

Second Place Feels Like a Winner to Me!

So....does anyone remember how I was terrified to can my first jars of garden produce?

How I was afraid I'd poison my whole family....picturing them writhing on the floor in the throes of botulism poisoning....

Bravely channeling the spirit of my Grandma Rudmann, born and raised on a farm in the valleys of southern Germany, armed only with The Ball Complete Book of Home Food Preservation and Preserving the Harvest, my husband's grandmother's speckled canning pot and a shiny new utensil box set from Walmart, I proceeded to can two jars of peppers, several jars of pears, and two jars of pear butter.

And my family liked it. They ate it. They actually asked for more.

My first canning project, 2009

This is year three. I am proud to share with you that two of my canned produce items, my pickled beets and pickled peppers, took second place ribbons each at the Five County Fair. (The rainbow-colored ribbons go to all participants - it's like saying, "thanks for being brave enough to show off your stuff.")

I couldn't wait to show my husband my ribbons when I got home from picking up my items on Sunday.

It was the end to a perfect fall weekend. I couldn't help but think of my dad.  I spent many brisk October weekends as a child at the Long Island Chrysanthemum Society Shows at Farmingdale Community College.  I remember helping him pack up all his ribbon cards and the occasional bright silver trophy or two.

Placing my little jars on the counter with their ribbons put a big, goofy smile on my face. I did it.

I came, I saw...I canned!

Five years ago I was working in a cubicle farm at 2 Penn Plaza, a gigantic office building right over Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, in New York City.  I was bored, stressed and overworked.  I was tired of the rat race. I yearned to write again but every day was a drag. By the time I came home at night, I was so tired that I couldn't imagine doing anything creative. My garden consisted of several shady beds in my in-laws garden since we didn't even own our own home; we rented rooms from my in laws. To say that I was unhappy with my life was an understatement.



But there was light at the end of the tunnel. We'd found the perfect land in south central Virginia in 2005.  It was so covered with pine trees and brush that my husband kept asking doubtfully, "Are you sure about this?" And as I looked around, a little voice inside of me said, "This is the place."  I was sure as sure could be.

We bought the 17 acres and had three cleared.  We built our dream house. My elderly father in law moved with us.  My husband helped me build a fenced in vegetable garden; 10 raised beds, a nice stout fence around it, a shed we painted to look like a country cottage. The steep area next to the driveway that he felt he couldn't mow safely with the riding mower I transformed into a blowsy, "wild" flower garden as my friend Ilsa called it when she came by last week for the book group meeting, with winding stone and gravel paths and arched rose arbors and a bench to sit and watch the butterflies.

I grew not only enough produce to feed us throughout the summer, but enough to can almost 40 jars of peppers, beets, carrots and pickles.  I have bins of potatoes in the basement and sweet potatoes from the harvest of 2010, all 79 pounds of them.  I have grown and stored onions and garlics too.  We planted 30 fruit trees.

All this in four years.

Those shiny red ribbons are more than second prizes in a county fair. They're confirmation of the right choices I made and the hard work we - not just me, but the "we" of our family - put into our lives.

I try as often as I can to share these stories with you because I want to encourage everyone reading this to do what Yoda told Luke Skywalker to do - "Don't just think. DO."   Don't waste your life in a cubicle farm when you have a dream in your heart.  Don't rest content with life as your parents scripted it for you if your mind and heart tell you otherwise.  God has a plan for your life, but you've got to listen and act.  You can make your dreams come true. I am doing that one day at a time.

It's not that there won't be fear at making great changes like we made. There was fear, and many moments of fear thereafter.  Fear that we'd made a terrible mistakes and that we wouldn't fit in. Fear that I'd never make friends like I had in New York. Fear that working from home would keep me isolated and that I would never make new friends. Fear that my business wouldn't succeed, fear that we'd use up all of our hard-earned savings.  There's been times of plenty and lean times too, but I have learned to just trust the flow of life and enjoy the moment while prudently planning for the future.

If you think you can, you can, and if you think you can't, you can't, or something like it Henry Ford once said.  What is holding you back?

Five years is not a long time but I look back at my life and it is like I am a new person, with a new life, yet I maintain a connection to all that was good in my old life. I still miss New York City and the smell of hot chestnuts roasting in the carts of street vendors near Christmas. The constant clang of Salvation Army bells and the sway of subway trains while the muffled voice of the conductor barks the next station. I miss the beautiful area I worked in on the upper west side of Manhattan, the free Lincoln Center concerts on Wednesday and bringing our brown bag lunches over to Alice Tulley Hall to listen to performers run through their programs while we happily ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with the rest of the workers who loved classical music.  I miss running out for Indian food at lunch, or "street food" from a pushcart, the delicious $1 rice and beans made by an immigrant, legal or not, from his push cart. I miss the weird synchronicity that only living and working in Manhattan makes you appreciate; running into a friend on the subway I haven't seen in over a decade only to find out we will now be working for the same company in Manhattan, running into an old grammar school buddy on the A train during rush hour, waving madly to a sibling I see crossing the street who I didn't even expect to see in the city  at all that day, only to find us in the same block hurrying to separate destinations.


Two red ribbons marking the new place and new chapter in my life.  Am I sorry they aren't blue? No, not at all.

Red is also my favorite color.

And there's always next year....because I'm not going anywhere at all.

Four years ago, bare clay.  Today, blooming. Bloom where you are planted.

Seeds of Change

This is the time of year that always makes me think of new beginnings, of change. It's the change of seasons, I guess, although that phrase means less to me now than it did years ago. I love Virginia's long, slow change of seasons, the transition from spring to summer and fall to winter more drawn-out than what I used to experience on Long Island. There, it always seemed as if winter's icy breath changed to summer's gentle kiss in an instant, and we'd move from hot, sunny autumn days to cold snaps and pumpkins without pause. You'd be wearing t-shirts and jeans to school one day and the next day be bundled up inside your parka and searching for a missing glove.

This is the season when the garden slowly begins its descent into death. I walked among the paths in the flower garden this morning, marveling at how the marigolds have formed such dense orange tufts that they spill over the walkway. I have marigolds growing among the blocks my husband placed on a solid bed of sand in the back; no soil, no moisture, no nutrients, but the seeds grew into mature, thriving plants. I have morning glories turning brown, leaves drifting onto the paths, seeds falling among the flower beds. I'm forever picking heart-shaped vines out of the paths. This year I left some to grow among the flowers.

I marvel at the seeds each plant produces in abundance. Some we save - in a week or two we'll begin taking pails out in the garden and collect the marigold seeds. Some I'll just let nature sow where she wants them. I'll find drifts of coreopsis in the driveway, marigolds in the sand.

My garden has taught me many things, but the lesson that I learned lately is the lesson from the marigold seeds. Not just bloom where you are planted, but let nature tug you to where you should be planted. I tend to be a planner, logical, methodical, write the to-do list and check it off. The problem with being so methodical is that often, I end up closing myself off to inspiration, to creativity, to the joy of the moment. A friend will call me in the morning with the unexpected gift of tickets to a professional horse show she knows I'd love to see, but I cannot embrace the moment - I've got that to-do list, you see.

My garden is like my to-do list. It's planned. I mapped out the pathways, I tried charting the plants on graph paper. Nature has other ideas. Some plants grow in certain spots, other seeds drift to new ground and form beautiful clusters and clumps of plants I would never have dared plant there. As I look at the marigolds this year, at the morning glories twining among the boxwoods, I understand the lesson the garden has for me this year. Change is good. Be open to the drift of possibility, the tug of creativity, the spark of inspiration.  Plan, yes, for only the fool does not plan. But be open, be creative, be free.

Seasons change, and so do I...

Butterfly wing

Weeding After Weeks Away

I meant to write that essay on Sunday, but decided against it.  It's not that I didn't want to sit down and write - I did. But the weekend passed in a hazy blur of chores, and I was studiously avoiding anything that might trigger reflections, musing or blathering about September 11.  So I decided to follow the Shaker maxim of "Hands to work, hearts to God" and work I did, giving my heart some room to pray.

Saturday morning, I tackled the weeds in the flower garden. Now that might not sound like such a big deal, but the flower garden is large and the weeds are strong. Plus, they've had nearly six weeks to grow unchecked.  In early August, my sister came for a visit, then we had a weekend 'off', then two weekends in a row, John's sister and her family were here visiting. The next two weeks? Hurricane Irene, followed by yet another weekend of rain! So this really was the first sunny weekend for weeding.

I spent two hours pulling weeds, and finally got the edges of the garden at least into law and order. I uncovered one poor azalea that had been smothered by crabgrass and managed to give myself a great unidentified rash on the arm. It was itching so badly I feared something dreadful, like poison ivy, but I knew I hadn't seen that particular evil one in the garden.  I must be allergic to another weed. I wear gloves, but the rash was in the crook of the elbow.  A bit of soap and water, some first aid spray, and I soldiered on.

You can really see in just these few weeks how fall has crept into the garden. The marigolds are at their peak. Some grew up in the cracks between the sidewalk in the little pathway leading from the garage to our back deck. I don't know what they live on - they are growing in pure sand, and underneath, a bed of hard packed clay. Yet they thrive. I don't have the heart to pull them up in the spring. If they are tough enough to grow under those conditions, they are plants to be admired.

Leaves are starting to turn golden on the tulip poplars along the driveway.  I spent time taking pictures of mushrooms, in all their glory. We found several perfect rings of mushrooms growing in the lawn which my husband dubbed "Shroom Henge."  It is amazing to watch each mushroom (fungi? what is the proper name anyhow?) unfold daily. Some start as small baseballs, then suddenly grow up on stems as thick as a man's wrist. The baseball unfurls into an umbrella with what looks like a car filter underneath. Then the umbrella collapses, the mushroom shrinks back into the earth, and the cycle continues. I am slightly in awe of them.  I don't quite understand them.

After grubbing about in the garden for hours, I was ready for some indoor house-wifey tasks. Saturday afternoon, I canned eight pints of pickled peppers, which is good because the family keeps eating them faster than I am able to can them. That's a sign they like my recipes!  The pickled beets are also disappearing from the shelves.  I keep eying the pressure canner in the Lehman's catalog. Maybe next year....

Sunday church, then off to do the shopping, then the afternoon filled with house cleaning. I finally curled up on the back patio to read the latest issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal, only to get dive-bombed by a bee jealously guarding "his" part of the patio. It got so bad he actually chased me inside. It was either that or he was going to be a dead bee...

So honestly, although my heart wanted to write, all I managed to do was curl up in my big fat armchair last night and watch the weekend reruns of my favorite TV show, Monk.  My garden is neat and tidy, my peppers - all 13 pounds of them - canned, and my house sparkles.

That, I think, made up for the lack of essay.

Woods here at Seven Oaks

Dancing in the Rain

I used to love thunderstorms. When we were kids, my sister Ann and I loved nothing more than a good roaring thunderstorm. We had a screened in porch at the back of the house, and we would sit in chairs facing the backyard and watch nature's pyrotechnics. Once I remember the two of us running outside in our shorts and t-shirts on a hot summer afternoon while black skies poured rain onto the slick pavement. We danced through the puddles and the rushing water in the gutter in our bare feet.  I shudder to think what was in that water, but what a fun memory!

Since my friend Patty's firsthand experience with lightning, however, and since becoming a homeowner myself, I'm now afraid of lightning. I used to be cautious but this weekend, when we went to Patty's and saw the damage first hand - a giant red oak tree pretty much split in half by the explosion of lighting, the burned wires her husband pulled out of the basement - and saw how far, how strong, the lightning bolt traveled, I have grown apprehensive whenever "severe thunderstorms are predicted."

I started getting more cautious in 2005.  We had a power surge during a thunderstorm at our home on Long Island, and even though it was barely noticeable, it fried my poor computer. I lost the modem and it damaged the mother board.  Money spent to repair it, and then a virus killed the computer a short time later.  Now, whenever thunder is predicted, I unplug computer, modem, you name it.  My piano is an electronic keyboard and I keep it unplugged at all times unless I am playing it. I even keep my CD player unplugged!

Last night, the local TV station kept beeping in with severe thunderstorm warnings.  We had a few rumbles. I sat on the back deck before dinner, listening to my fountain and enjoying the flowers with Shadow while I read my book and checked on dinner cooking in the oven.  I started to get apprehensive.  I saw the big black clouds in the north.  I remembered that my sister Mary, who worked as a nurse for many years, told me that she once took care of a man who had been seated in an aluminum lawn chair, the kind I was sitting in, and he had been affected by a lightning strike...it had struck a tree many feet behind him while he was at a picnic, but the electricity traveled through the ground and into the lawn chair, hurting him.

It's these things I think about now instead of the joys of dancing in the rain.  Is this what is meant by growing up and losing your innocence? As a child, we danced with joy under the canopy of clouds. We marveled at the bolts of lightning streaking across the sky. Now I glance fearfully at the heavens and seriously consider hiding in my basement for an hour or two until tornado and thunderstorm warnings pass.  I check my cell phones, check the water supply in case the power runs out, make sure the pets have their ID tags on.

I think I am grown up.

Sometimes, I wish I was with Ann, dancing in the rain again.

Garden Centers

This morning I stepped into the garage to put aside some stuff for recycling, and the odor of potting soil, bird seed and fertilizer zapped me like a time machine, transporting me in a whirl of sensory memories back to childhood treks to the garden center. 


Sundays during my childhood were dedicated to two things: God and family. At 10 a.m. my mom, grandma, and the five of us would go to Mass (my dad went to an earlier Mass to usher).  After Mass, we'd drive to the bakery and buy fresh, hot cinnamon bread and a cake for Sunday dinner. Mom would make a big roast of some sort for 1 p.m. Sunday "dinner" and the eight of us would have a leisurely midday Sunday feast.

After midday dinner, if relatives were expected for a visit, they would arrive sometime around 2:30 and stay until about 4:30.  If not, the family went on an outing - to the duck pond to feed the ducks and play, to see Christmas lights or fall foliage, to buy pumpkins and apple cider in October, or during the winter, to visit one of the local garden centers.

The greenhouses at Gardeners Village or Garden World were like tropical paradises on a cold snowy winter day. The moist, green smell delights me now as it delighted me then.  I'd run from table to table, touching cactus spines, sniffing orchids that smelled like chocolate, staring at pots and garden gloves.

Gardeners Village had a pet department and my parents knew that I'd be safely entertained there. Pepper the Parot lived in a big cage in the middle. He was rumored to be old - very old - close to 40.  Pepper could say "Hello" and lots of other funny things.  I'd often leave on these Sunday trips with a new goldfish for the family's fish tank.

My dad loved garden centers and spent happy hours browsing the shelves. He loved to try the most modern chemicals, too.  That's where he and I differ - he never met a chemical fertilizer or pesticide he didn't love, and I've never met one that didn't give me the creeps!

From the seed packets arriving in late January to the rows of big plastic Nativity scene characters and toy Soldiers in December, these trips instilled a love for garden centers in me that eventually led me in my twenties to work at one of the major ones on Long Island and today still transports me back in time.

I have a big plastic turkey window decorations that my mom bought for me when I was six years old on one of those garden center jaunts. Tom Turkey, as my husband calls him, is ugly; he smells funny, like burning plastic wires, when the sun strikes his bumpy plastic chips too long. He's missing his feet because sometimes in my childhood I decided to operate on him and remove them. But I don't care. Just seeing him hanging in my window at Thanksgiving is enough to make me smile and remember those long-ago trips to the garden center.

My friends also know me so well that guess what we have planned for my springtime birthday?

You guessed it; a day trip to Lynchburg's garden centers.

Garden center memories....do you love browsing through them too?

Another Remember When Thanks to James Bond

It's funny how totally unconnected things can spiral a 'remember when' moment out of control.  We were watching the old chestnut, the 1962 James Bond adventure "Dr. No" on television last night.  It's still one of my favorites despite some of the campy-silly moments and as one reviewer on the Rotten Tomatoes website said "that damned mango tree song."

There's one scene in the movie that had us going into a lengthy "remember when" moment.  I don't know if you have seen the film or not.  James Bond, played by the ever-sexy Sean Connery, is lying in his hotel bed in Jamaica trying to sleep.  The bad guys, in a classic Batman-style move (ie, why kill the enemy outright when you can use some sort of outrageous gimmick?) place a tarantula in his room and it is crawling up his arm.  He managed to squash the tarantula and live to fight the evil Dr. No.

Here's where the remember when moment kicked in. As we were watching the scene, I realized Bond was sweating. He was tossing and turning in a perspiration-soaked bed.  The room was HOT.

There was no air conditioning.

Now, can you imagine a hotel room, especially in a tropical climate like Jamaica, without air conditioning? Can you imagine your own home without air conditioning in the summer heat? Yet as children, no one we knew had air conditioning!

Late in May, usually around Memorial Day weekend, my mother would go up into the attic and remove three fans. There was a giant box fan that went on my sister Ann's dresser and blew air between the bunk beds where I slept with my one sister and my oldest sister's single bed. Mind you, the air never actually made it to any of us - it just sort of blew the hot air out through the window and kept us awake with its noisy clatter.

There were two ancient swivel fans for my brothers. Each of my brothers had these circa 1940 fans.  Only one of my brothers had a night table. The other brother put his fan on a chair next to his bed.

Our rooms were stiffing hot.  Our bedroom, the girls' room, was next to the walk-in attic, and the heat would build up in the attic during the day and ooze into the bedroom by night. My poor brothers had a bedroom with a huge south-facing window and a slanted roof. The sun beat down all day on the roof and in through their windows until their room was like an oven.

My parents bought an air conditioner for their bedroom in the 1970's. It was a big deal!  If we wanted to get cool, we had to drag our blankets and pillows downstairs and sleep on the floor of their room. Nope, not even a sleeping bag or an air mattress - we slept on the wooden floor!

Another option was the basement.  That was our playroom and where me and my sisters played during the hot summer days. It was always around 65 degrees down there, although clammy.  We could sleep on the couch or on blankets piled on the floor.

We had no air conditioning at school, either.   It would get so hot in June that you'd sit on the heavily varnished old fashioned desk seats and when you got up, your thighs would stick and peel away like band aids.  Sometimes a kind teacher would bring in a fan.  Most of the time, you just sweated.

The only places that had air conditioning were the public library and church.  My mother thought the AC in church was fantastic - my grandmother used to bring a sweater!


My husband and I compared notes and our childhoods were very similar.  As we watched that scene, we realized we were looking through a window back in time. That movie was made in 1962 and we bought grew up in the years soon after that.  Now can you even imagine a hotel room without AC?  A school?  Your house?

One film moment made us remember our childhoods.  So thank you, 007, for the absolutely weird connection we made between that movie scene and a 'remember when' moment!

Snow Day

Snow day, sick day.  Although the radio announcer pronounced that our church is open (I'm wondering just how many people called the office!) there is four inches of snow on my long, curving, sloping, unpaved driveway, and several inches of snow and ice on our back country road.  My little engine that could, i.e. my 10 year old economy model car, slip slides on this for sure. And for two days I've wrestled with the "I'm coming down with something but it can't quite make up its mind to stay or go" feeling.  So I'm home right now, watching fat lazy snowflakes whirl by the windows and cranking the heater up as high as I can to ward off the chills.

Christmas was lovely, about as lovely as it can be.  I made a big family breakfast of pancakes and managed a few chocolate ones for my father in law, who in his eighties has the sweet tooth of a young child.  That was my Christmas present to him; getting up early, cranking up the griddle, and making him hot stacks.  I went to 10 a.m. church services and was shocked at several things. First, the church was only 2/3 full...did everyone got to Midnight Mass? Or do people no longer care about Christmas?  And second - why weren't any other churches in town open? What happened? Do they have services later to let families sleep in or what? Does everyone celebrate Christmas on the Eve now and I missed the memo? It was bizarre, to say the least.  But I sat with Andrea, and got hugs from Linda and Eni, and was able to say with heartfelt thanks to our pastor, "Merry Christmas!"

By the time I got home, it was snowing.  I ate grapefruit for lunch ( hoping the vitamin C would kick out the "I'm coming down with something" feeling) and green salad and felt better for a few hours, then felt tired and cranky again later, like children do when they struggle with a bug.  We lit a fire and opened small presents. Pierre got the most, as befitting a cat of his greatness.  He didn't even wait for me to take his new rattle mouse, aka "Mini P" because it's colored like him, gray with a white tummy, off the store card. He grabbed it when we took it out of his Christmas stocking and went running off with it. I had to fight him for it so I could remove it from the card. 

We sat in front of the fire, read books, listened to Christmas music, drank copious amounts of tea, and watched the snow.  My brother called and I was so glad to hear from him - the family just got a new puppy, and amidst the clank and clatter of pots as my sister in law cooked Christmas dinner, I could hear the squeals and excited barks of the puppy in the background as his children played with her.  They're all grownups, my nieces and nephews, but a puppy at Christmastime brings out the child in everyone.

John made his usual gourmet fare for Christmas dinner, and afterwards we watched Ben Hur and King of Kings...which was a nice counterpoint to the movie A Christmas Story.  Am I the only one who starts crying during the prologue to Ben Hur, when the baby Jesus starts wailing in the stable in Bethlehem, and you just see the shepherds peeking around the stable door, and a frisky calf leaps over Mary and Joseph to nuzzles its mama? You don't even see the Christ child, just hear this newborn infant wailing, and suddenly it just hits me - I don't know how else to feel the incarnation as readily as I do when I hear that infant wailing.  It suddenly brings it home that the son of God became a man and was born into abject poverty, was hungry and thirsty and cranky and probably cold, and was born into a filthy stable to poor peasants.  It is a thought  that has been around with me since childhood, so common as to be taken for granted. I need these reminders like the little scene in Ben Hur or standing for a few minutes in front of the nativity at church and just feeling it - not thinking it - the entire moment of Christmas.

So now it is the day after Christmas. I am not going to any sales today. I can't even get my stupid cranky car out of my farm driveway until the snow stops and we can clear a bit.  Thankfully, the forecast calls for temperatures this week to go back into the 40's, which will melt enough on the hilly sections of the drive so that the cranky mobile will trundle and burble its way up the lane, with yours truly hunched in multiple layers of clothing.  In the meantime, I wish you all a lovely snow day if you are on the east coast of the United States.  My former stomping grounds, New York City, is under a blizzard warning and my brother, who lives on the North Shore of Long Island, said hopefully they were expecting 6-9" of snow there.  Knowing him, he'll grab the sleds and wake up the adult kids for sleigh riding and snowball fights before making everyone shovel the walks!

Enjoy your snow day or Sunday, whatever you are doing, and may God bless you this Christmas season. 

Ballet Shoes and the Nutcracker

I sat down to work this morning and put a compilation on the Mp3 player of Christmas music that I'd created last year.  One of the first section on the play list is The Nutcracker suite by Tchaikovsky. I started feeling nostalgic as I remembered taking my little niece, who is now a beautiful 23 year old woman, to the ballet when she was around 5 or so.  My sister, her then-husband, my husband and I took her to the ballet.  We were in some auditorium somewhere and it was an amateur production. We got a fit of the giggles when the scene shifted into the dream sequence and the dancers moved Clara's bed around the stage, carrying what was supposed to be Christmas tree but what looked like big stalks of broccoli. My niece was bored and squirmed a lot, although she liked the beginning with the party sequence. I think she fell asleep halfway through.  It was my husband's first and only experience of the ballet, and it was not the best first experience.  I have a very close friend who was a dance teacher, and she and I used to go once a year into Lincoln Center in New York City and watch the New York State ballet.  Swan Lake is my favorite, but I also loved the Alvin Ailey troop, which I have seen many times.  Now that would have been a good first live dance performance experience!

I think back to my first time at the ballet. My sister and her husband were friends with a couple whose daughter was a professional ballerina.  Her name was Shari, and I was in awe of her.  We drove to New Jersey to see the production of the Nutcracker; Shari danced either the roles of the Dew Drop Fairy or the Sugar Plum Fairy, depending upon the evening.  I was about 8 years old, maybe 9.  I was so excited.  We went to Shari's house to visit with her parents, who I liked a lot.  Shari was already at the theater. I asked to use their bathroom and Mrs. N showed me the bathroom on the second floor of the house.  She left me alone upstairs, and on my way to rejoin everyone in the living room, I peeked into Shari's bedroom.  Ballet clothes were strewn all about the room, and laundry tumbled off the practice barre in the corner of her bedroom.

But it was her shoes I remember best.  There were pink pointe shoes with holes worn in them next to the bed.  It was at that moment, as I stood in the semi darkness staring into Shari's room, that I felt as if I had a secret. A magical secret. I looked at the holes in the shoes and I realized, with a sudden recognition, that she had actually danced right through them. 

All through the magnificent performance, as I waited for Shari to dance her part, I felt like I had a delicious secret.When she finally danced, all I could do was stare at her pointe shoes. The ones she wore during the production were brand new.  I thought of the ones with holes in them by the bed.  When I finally met Shari after the performance, I blurted out, "How did your shoes get holes in them?" which must have seemed like a really weird question to her!

We are all grown ups now; yet somehow, the magic of having a secret has stayed with me, the peeking behind the curtain to notice something no one else knows or notices.  It is part and parcel of being a writer, and part of why I tend to notice all sorts of peculiar details that escape others. To this day, whenever I hear the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, I don't think of the ballet itself, but a pair of pink pointe shoes with holes danced right through them strewn on a messy bedroom floor.

Tis the Season for Cookies

Last night, I made my friend and fellow writer Marye Audet's recipe for Rollo (Rolo) Cookies.  I didn't have silpat mats (baking mats) and the cookies needed another 5-6 minutes of baking time to come out just right.  They are extremely sweet, but the layers of peanut butter cookie, chocolate and caramel can't be beat.  The full recipe is on Marye's blog, Restless Chipotle, and in her published cookbook too. 

Whenever I bake, Shadow sits next to the kitchen island and just begs and begs.  Because of her allergies, I make homemade peanut butter dog biscuits for her, so whenever she hears the baking sheets come out of the cabinet she thinks she's getting cookies!

I don't bake as often as I would like.  Because of our ongoing slow and steady move towards eating healthfully, I have really cut back on the home baking.  I love to bake, and thankfully the Christmas season gives me the opportunity to make all those homemade goodies I love to create but try not to eat anymore.  So my nieces and nephews were blessed with care packages this year.  I get to create in the kitchen, and they get to eat the results!

It felt so wonderful to just relax last night. It has been many weeks since I had an afternoon and evening off.  I shut down the office around 4pm instead of working until dinner, and working again after dinner. I am blessed beyond measure to have work that I love and many freelance projects on my desk right now, but I've definitely been burning the candle at both ends as well as in the center, and setting fire to the candle holder too in the process (to really s-t-r-e-t-c-h that metaphor).  I can do that only for so long.  I found myself getting short tempered and cranky.  So I took a wee bit of time to myself last night. I baked the Rolo cookies. I made garlic infused tomato sauce and pasta for dinner.  We lit a fire in the fireplace and sat on the couch and read in the warm pools of light.  I started a new P.D. James mystery I hadn't read yet.

Later, I escaped upstairs to fold laundry and practice piano. After warming up with some good old Hanon exercises and a few my piano teacher had taught to me that I still recall, I sat down to play the Speer piece again from The Joy of the Baroque, a favorite piano book.  Time flew by. I didn't realize it but I practiced for well over an hour.  John came upstairs at one point and he was lurking down the hallway, listening.  I fiddled around with the settings on the electronic keyboard AJ left to me, and found a harpsichord setting, and then I really had fun (Okay, so my idea of fun is to read books from the 17th century like those by Francis de Sales and play music from the 17th century.....party animal that I am).  My high school had a small, modern harpsichord, and I used to love playing the pieces in that book on it.  Shadow didn't like the harpsichord. She likes Grand Piano setting on the keyboard.  But when I switched to harpsichord, her ears pinned flat back and she left the room.  Seems like everybody's a critic these days....

Today it is snowing, with six inches expected. As long as it stays about that we will be fine.  I am cozy and warm in my office, listening to some Bach, and working today on writing projects. Life is good!

For those who haven't given feedback on the blog, please see yesterday's open thread. Thank you to Liz for the personal email; for Jessica and the Gardener on Sherlock Street for leaving comments. Won't you let me know what YOU would like to read on this blog in future?

Happy Snow Day!

An Open Thread for Readers

Today will be Wordless Wednesday...wordless on my part, that is. I'd like to open this thread for your comments.

When I began this blog, I intended it as a chronicle of my transition from Long Island/New York City executive to country dweller, to detail our lives here in rural Virginia after a lifetime of city-dwelling.  Then I found Blotanical, the community for gardening bloggers. I began blogging about my hobby, gardening, and found a readership. Then I went all over the place, posting recipes, memories of childhood, stories, some rants about stuff going on in my life, and just....well, stuff.

I've received some emails lately from people who miss my personal essays. They want stories. They want perspective and personality.

So my question to you today on this open thread is simple: what would YOU like to read here?

More gardening stories? More personal stories? What?

The nuns at my aunt's convent requested more Pierre stories.  Just so you know, that's a given.

But really...what would YOU like to read?

Leave a comment today, please.