Night Walk

I keep going out for evening walks to wind down and let go of the day, not be present while A does bedtime and tick off the rest of my Fitbit steps for the day. 10,000 is surprisingly hard to hit if you don't go for a hike on long rambling trails in the woods.

The whole neighborhood is quiet and resting after dinnertime. The sky is a glowing sherbet and highlights the silhouettes of palm trees and Victorian houses. There are sometimes people quietly giving the lawn one last drink or solitary dog walkers but most of the walk is a stroll through abandoned streets. All the homes are luminaries with little scenes or television viewers, armchair readers and lemon light through lace curtains. The cherry plums have dropped their sweet fruits all over the sidewalks in some places and they polka-dot the cement with splat marks and pits. The smell of jasmine swirls past me sometimes, and the heavy sweet of datura putting out their evening burst of smell.

The magnolias leaves shine in the streetlights as I walk second half of the walk, towards home. I walk luxuriantly slow crossing streets because there are no cars in any direction, you can see down and down and down the street, intersections melting into themselves at the vanishing point. It could be a fantastic stage for an impromptu dance performance, all those streetlights and the big open stage with the yellow lines shining down the center. When I come home I always remember that I've forgotten my keys and my very logical husband has locked the front door so I have to call to him quietly through the screen of the office window to be let back into my little luminary. Everything feels softer and warmer back home again, all the little things that make up our cozy life: the turquoise tea kettle, our shelves of books, the confetti of Lego on the floor. The boys aren't asleep but they're in their beds and the light is out, and that's good enough for us. Time to return to my mate and my nest and my lists and remind myself to make the bed up tomorrow as I quietly wash up the supper dishes.

Flower Cache

I think it is safe to say that we have survived. I drove, over a thousand miles by myself with four wild kids in a mini-van and made it back alive. The weather here at home is mild, all the mini-snowfall we had this past weekend has melted away to mud and the yard is filled with migrating juncos and robins. There is a pair of fawn colored wrens investigating the tree hydrangea outside the kitchen window for nesting. Yesterday when the boys and I settled back into our normal groove and went out for a pre-nap neighborhood promenade.

We wandered into a little forgotten section of our nieghborhood where a  scrub woods and a scruffy trail runs behind some of the houses, a favorite secret ramble of ours and we found Spring. How have I lived here two years still never seen this carpet of early spring crocus and snowdrops?????

WOW! I was open-mouthed and the boys were positively giddy. It was pretty tough to tear ourselves away and head back up the hill to our house for naps but I can guarantee that there were sweet dreams.We're gonna make it, y'all. I'm off to unpack the pea seeds in honor of St. Patty's Day approaching.

Neighborhood Dress-Up

Our Halloween was grand. All rustling leaf kicking, mulled cider and laughing murmur of conversation. The big boys (demonstrating our slide into video games this year) were a Mario Luigi duo. They are the most innocuous and classic of video game characters so I couldn't complain too much. How upset can you really be when your four year old is standing there grinning with an enormous faux handlebar mustache happy as the day is long? Not very upset. Mama picks her battles.

There was an astounding and record breaking amount of candy gathering. The big boys are getting to be very stout walkers and Ru in particular is quite enamoured of ringing doorbells which all winds up meaning three gigantic jars full of candy on my top pantry shelf. And this after The Great Binge when we returned to the house. Gah! Yipes.

I think I will continue investigating candy-free stocking stuffers and Easter Basket contents and find pretty little paper-cutting ways to celebrate St. Valentine's Day lest our home be mistaken for Willy Wonka's great factory! Good for me anyhow...gives some starch to the direction I was leaning and the ideas I was hoping to eventually work into. Sugar mustn't be allowed to be the only way to celebrate.

The leaves are coming down fast now. There's a shivery chill on the wind and I find myself noticing it extra now that several of our friends are out of power and shuddering along in the dark wondering when the power company will get to their road. Seemed like just last I was thinking to myself that even though it was technically fall the  weather didn't feel like it had really turned much yet. I'm not sure if I started paying attention or if the thermometer is starting to get serious now that it is officially November.

We're almost to the weekend and its going to be one of those crispy, pink nosed ones where you have a log fire in the morning on Saturday and then go off to pick apples later in the day. My friend, Nutmeg brought me a box of Indian Spice tea and I'm thinking a big pot of chai would hit the spot in the thermos on the way!

Happy Hurricane!

Somehow it is Wednesday already and we are busily clipping towards the weekend which suddenly is inches away! Nothing like having a hurricane over the weekend to make time really fly!

A view down our street.

Hurricane Sandy was mostly, luckily for us, a very exciting story. We heard the most terrific wind I've ever experienced outside our house Monday night but besides a few trees down we have had very little to disrupt our daily function. A was off work and spent some extra time playing at home with us, we did some yard work we meant to catch up on anyhow and we have spent some time yesterday and today calling friends to be sure all our folks are safe and sound. We even miraculously managed to keep our power through the whole storm. I am still shocked that that happened. I carried a candle around with me all evening and went to bed with one on my nightstand, just waiting for the lights to go out but we woke up in the morning with the bedside digital clock blinking merrily at us (there were lots of brown-outs in the night so it went on and off and on and off) but still very much there and alive.

The new ocean-front in our fair city.

We had no major property damage and have been checking to see if anyone we know needs a place to stay or a hot shower but so far people are just toughing it out, waiting to see who will be in it for the long haul.

Halloween festivities have officially been postponed by our mayor to make sure they can get downed wires taken care of before kids take the streets. Still weighing what to do about that personally. Our waterfront was pretty walloped and is quite damaged and flooded I hear but here, one mile in from the shore our own street is pretty sound, we all still have power and the extent of the damage is just trees down in yards. We might check around with neighbors and see if people feel like letting the kids troop around or if we will all wait with the rest of the city. There's some merit to both options. Will see what I find out later today.

Siding off the side of our house that the wind blew down against our front door.

I am off to call and email more friends as I work my way down the list of people I am checking on. Lots of non-answering still...several I am still wondering about and still lots of hot water and food to share if people need the help.

Spring, When the Livin' is Easy!

Today the air is heavy with suppressed humidity, the kind of weather makes the sky feel like it is hanging low and as though all the clouds are some heavy swooping blanket muffling over everything. I make it sound so grey and oppressive. Truth is that the air feels moist and swirly, there's a gentle breeze occasionally that keeps the maple branches outside all tipped with little bouquets of bright green blossoms, bowing and nodding  surprisingly at odd moments.

Image by ~ Martin ~ via Flickr

Maple Blossoms.

There is a kind of dark intensity to the light on this kind of a day too. Colors seem richer and more saturated without the sunlight there to wash them out into pastel versions of themselves. The air is laden with water which (scientific fact!) makes all perfumed scent from the neighborhood flowers more deep and rich, a heavy trail of sweetness sometimes whirls inexplicably in through the open window when a gust of wind hits the poet's narcissus or the pansies just the right way.

Image by vinmar via Flickr

The magnolia at the end of our street is a gigantic cotton candy ball, all pink whirling petals and creamy undersides, a massive undulating mass of curve and shape and soft pastel joy. Last night when I was out running I avoided the tree until the very end of my run when I had finished pushing myself through the very last bits of reserve that I possessed. Only then did I let myself pant to a stop under the great pastel mass of a tree. I knew that if I let myself end up under those spreading baby pink branches before I was finished with my run that I would leave off, part way through, my face lifted not caring two sticks whether I finished the course or not. All else can dissolve in the presence of a tree in full bloom. What is running really when there are five thousand, thousand creamy petals littering the sidewalk and a host more poised in the air above you?

The magnolia is not the only focal point. Our apple tree opened it's first little wads of magenta, the verbena hedge between us and the neighbors is just beginning top open, our potted nectarine is an absurd stick with wads of bright tissue paper blossoms and all across our back lawn there is a rippling spill of violets, deep purple mixed with a purple veined white variety...so many more of them than I dared hope when I noticed their little rosettes of leaves in amongst the grass last fall.

Spring is my favorite. My very favorite. I feel hopeful that I can make it, that I can smell success on the wind. I know that it's supposed to be summer time "when the livin' is easy" because of the cotton being high and all but I have to say that it feels like a misdiagnosis to me, Spring is where it's at.

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Halloween of Yore...

It was a great Halloween. I called it the best one in our memory as a family although A said that he thought we'd had others just as happy and full of cheer. I may be a child of the moment, only really remembering what I just ate or maybe it really was just that fabulous. Who knows.

I was a gardener (I had leaves and sticks in my hair) and Nib was my yard gnome. The big boys were both firemen of course.

There was a wonderful dinnertime open-house costume party at the next door neighbors. The grown-up wore costumes, even if they didn't have little kids, there were lots of homemade get-ups and everyone was very warm and jolly, grinning at each other and swapping stories over the pizza and caramel apple dip. At exactly the right time the party disbanded in a whirl of glitter and feathers and pretend noses....and we all took to the streets to wish each other a happy autumn, make introductions, hand out candy to each other's children and kick our way through the leaves on all the sidewalks.

Here's a neighbor at the costume party who was also a gnome. So funny to see them together!

Dee collected lollipops on his rounds saying when asked what he'd like from a basket or bowl "I like lollipops." and then carried them in bouquets all over town. They didn't go in the bucket...just in the hand.

A said that it was truly surreal trick-or-treating...crowds of people out halloing across the street and parents back slapping each other over their children's costume choices and neighbors passing out glow-in-the-dark bracelets for all the small ones trooping down the street. Such a fabulous sense of community and togetherness and warmth and trust. I am won over, completely.

A is a careful and studious carver and spends a good bit of time on his creation every year. This year he was carving swiss cheese holes in his pumpkin to make a gleeful Sponge Bob.

And here are all of them on the porch: Mommy, Dee, Daddy and Ru...four in a row.

Our pumpkins we carved were wonderful this year too. No botched slips of the knife, very warm and cheery glows and I'm cooking them down today to make them twice useful. Pumpkin pie, here we come!

Autumnal Beach Explore

We took a little picnic lunch down to the shore that is a stone's throw from our house and had what I was calling at first the "Last Beach Outing of the Year." Heh. What was I thinking? It was gorgeous. Not super sunny and not over warm (high fifties) but there was no real wind and it was warm enough to be quite comfortable in our light jackets.

We explored a new beach we'd never been to (fun to learn our new neighborhood a little more), ate peanut butter in jelly in a hurried way and then spent a long time exploring the edge of the tide. So much wonderful stuff had washed up...oyster shells by the pound, pearly, purple mussel shells, claws from crabs, bits of horseshoe crab shell, and all kinds of fabulous sea weed.

Anyhow, all that to say that it was a great way to celebrate the baby turning five months old and it will in no way be our last outing of the fall.

I can't wait to go back! I forget how wonderful it is to just wander around bent backed, looking at all the ocean detritus that has rolled in and watch the boys chase seagulls and drive away with the scent of salt water rubbing off your hands onto the steering wheel.

Yay for living by the sea!