Words On The Platter

     Sometimes, in order to get going again we have to push the ball down the hill in some small way. I have been long fallow here and now I'm back and grinding away like Sisyphus but in an attempt to help things take on their own momentum and joy, I'm just going light. This is my little kick off the edge.....here I am, with my pen in my hand again.

Lets just marinate in some goods words, shall we? It seems like a good way to begin. Here are some of my own, personal favorites. Which ones did I miss that you love the sound or feel of?

Utterly Enjoyable Autumn Words

Decidious

Scythe

Persimmon

Harvest

Cornucopia

Shadow

Cider

Sheaves

Snuggle

Golden

Quilt

September

Russet

Blaze

Fog

Rusted

Flannel

Crimson

Chanterelle

Meander

Crackling

Maple

Smoke

Squash

Harvest

Spider

Candle

Crisp

Aspen

Marigold

Hazel

Scarlet

 

And then, just because delicious words make me think of poetry, in a When You Give A Moose A Muffin Style....lets have a classic poem by James Whitcomb Riley. I like to imagine my farming great-grandpa, suddenly possessed of a desire to write poems speaking out these lines while he stumps along from orchard to barnyard to his masonry trimmed farmhouse where I was this summer. I miss him and I wish he could know my little boys and that I could marinade in his comforting presence and imagine they will turn out sturdy and reliable and warm, like him.

When the Frost is on the Punkin

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees.... (click here for the rest) 

 

The Seasons, As They Really Are

Here in the Bay Area we have arrived at September like everyone else but here it doesn't mean cooling temps and getting out the scarves and the tall boots. Just when your mind and the American Marketing Machine has you most primed for autumnal bliss, Cali has me all whip lashed. September and October usually hold the warmest, most classically summery weather. We have popsicle afternoons and pool dates and though the apples are ripe and we do indeed need to start prepping for Halloween, its best done in tank tops and shorts. 

We have not had a particularly hot summer this year and there have even been times when it felt a little too chilly so it feels so odd to remember that its expected that we get this heat wave and start using our A/C now.

I am thinking about how in the world I can catch some of that fall flavor in summery ways. I had an iced chai tea the other day because......autumn flavors + summer temps. I want to start making roasts and wearing my hair down but its time for a little bit more warm weather celebration before we get there.

Time to go apple picking and plan one last camping adventure at the same time. Californian Autumn means a different thing and I have to start adapting in my own mind to this reality that is my world and my neighborhood. I love hearing and seeing all the seasonal markers that are different here and owning that fact that we have seasons....just different ones, or even the same ones with different markers and signifiers.

I wanna be the kind of woman who is curious about her world, open to her own microsmic environment and the story that its bringing. It may not be what I am primed for, what the general public talks about or what I have ever seen before but...its mine. Really, in some ways this is the story of what I am learning as a grown-up in general the last few years. My marriage, my kids, my housekeeping, our schooling, my reading schedule, my art career, my own professional life and personal development, my spiritual unfolding...none of them seem to trot down the expected trajectory. I am trying to let go of what I thought I'd have and see and know and instead wipe the slate blank and draw what I really see, like they tell you in art. Instead of drawing the projections of my own mind and expectations, what people tell me I see or should see....instead, in faith, I'll just step into the season I am really living and try to learn to love it in all its difference, and variation and cope with the odd bits and sooth my own nerves about how it isn't what I thought it would be.

Because, truth.....its what it is and its also beautiful, even if unfamiliar.

Seasons In California

End of the plane ride....Mama losing it a little.

We had a wonderful visit back to Michigan with our two families, and were part of my youngest sister Song's wedding to Jack, the newest uncle in the tribe. Its a hard gig, suddenly finding yourself in ownership of "uncle-ing" my four wild boys and I have to say, Jack rises to the challenge. We have been quite lucky in both of the last two uncle acquisitions. My sisters know how to pick playful dudes with love of action figures, roughhousing and silly jokes...all the important things. Its an unspoken thing,  evaluating potential spouses of your siblings for the kind of uncles or aunts they will be to your kids. Never heard anybody talk about that before but it sure is important to me. You don't get to pick your own kids aunts and uncles and you sure don't get to select them when you are the kid but its  a pretty important role. I have looked up to my aunts and uncles a lot as I grew up and sometimes they have been sources of advice or assistance and more and more as I get older, they are part of my network of emotional warmth and love. There's no underrating the role that you can have in a child's life as a peripheral adult in their family who cares and is around and willing to "get" them. Determined to "aunt" more actively this year and make sure my nieces and nephews know that I care. 

The leaves on my crown here are from Michigan when we were there last week, the maples were just before peak, turning red and orange everywhere on the edges of the woods. We have many fewer maples by variety and by volume here in Northern California. I miss the trees I know well, mostly in the way one misses old friends, not because they are the only lovely trees on the planet but just because they are my "known" faces. I miss my childhood trees for familiarity and comfort, but I love all the trees I am getting to know out here. A eucalyptus or pepper tree are graceful beauties that I never knew before. I do have to share that for the amount of griping and disparaging I hear from locals about the "lack of seasons" in California (No autumn at all, so goes the rumor.) I thought the fall color was beautiful! We don't have the same ecosystem so there aren't big sweeps of maple forests which give the "hills are alive" kind of color that Michigan and Connecticut have in the fall. Most of our autumn color is out in the vineyards which all turn gold in the fall, or in the cities. There are beautiful street trees that are all turning color here, apparently unseen, because nobody points them out or talks about them much. I'm puzzled about why! The leaves on the sweet gum trees are just beginning to blush red around town now. They turn the most spectacular scarlet and so do the Japanese maples, the red maples, and the crepe myrtles. One of my favorites in fall is the ginkgo which will puts on one of the most uniform and brightly gold glow, pretty much every single leaf on the tree will turn a glowing yellow.    Here there are lots of new friends however, I love the sweet gum trees, the pepper trees, the crepe myrtles and so many more. The persimmons in our backyard will turn a dark lipsticky red too around Thanksgiving. Fall foliage is later here....coming more in November and even December than September and October and much slower and gradually. We get chilly mornings and evenings, albeit without frost and eventually after color is over the leaves will fall all over town too. We have a lot of persistant foliage too so its doesn't look as bare, but if you which streets to go down, the big leaf maple, sweet gum and sycamores leave big, unseen swathes of leaves for kicking through. Secret Autumn in Norcal.

 I harvested the first hydrangea heads to put up on the mantle today, a few of them had blown down in the first rains (the rainy season is here and starting to turn sunny days into a rarer sighting). I put a few on the front porch with our pumpkins and squashes too. Lovely to have my own decorations growing in the backyard. I have considered spray painting some gold just for subtle shimmer. Might be beautiful or might be tacky, hard to say.

The kale is still appreciating the recent trimming that I gave it and is putting out a new flush of delicious leaves. Strange to realize that there is no real point in putting it away in the freezer for winter as winter here means kale in the garden, fresh at hand. Still wrapping my mind around all that each season means. 

One of my next big projects will be making a NorCal Wheel of Seasons....with painted reminders of what things signify the changing seasons here, I'm so annoyed with everyone saying that there are none. All the world has seasons and change, we just don't all live in a Tasha Tudor book.....the world is more diverse and interesting than that. Who made New England seasons the heartbeat of what change in the natural world world means? It reminds me of the ridiculous obsession homeowners have with keeping up an green English lawn, even when it doesn't make any sense in their ecosystem. There is more than one way to enjoy a front yard or to mark the changing of the year. 

That's our cute little Orange Blossom Cottage, with the kitchen light glowing as the sun goes down. Hello to all of you, from Cali!

Destruction Day

We spent a lot of our time today working on destruction. Its the time of year for heartlessly uprooting the yellowing, flopping and barren members of the vegetable garden. The borage and squash were so prickly that I left them to black into the crisp bits of stiff stalk several weeks ago and they were still incredibly prickly. I never had enough borage in my garden to realize how very covered with tiny, crystalline needles they truly are. They are practically cacti! Astoundingly off-putting. I ended up picking them up between two trowels and forking them over to the compost can. There was a lot of dropping and accidental shredding and a few prickers in my fingers despite all my efforts. Next time, I might do well to wear gloves and consider containing the borage in future gardens. The next frontier will be putting in a few fall crops. Its funny to think about gardening year round here without even trying. The kale just gets chopped down with a larger and larger axe as the seasons wheel round and it grows new stalks from its roots or from the old stalk bases and it basically becomes a grove of kale that lives with you eternally.

The boys and I are so dead after one day a week at the co-op that we are attending. The whole next day is marked off for recovery....dinner the night of our co-op is always a deflated afterthought. I wish I could say I was organized enough to have something snug in the crockpot every week but yeah,.....truth....its like leftovers and take-out and whatever I happen to have in my canned good pantry.  I'm kind of embarassed at the way it takes the wind out of our sails. How do all of you "normal" people do it every single day? Perhaps the contrast of a whole day out and about, teaching and learning, and leaving the house early and packing lunches and filling water bottles against the backdrop of our quiet, homey normal is what is really getting us. Whatever it is...its incriminating. I feel like a total wuss! I am trying to quit beating myself up for it and give us all a little extra grace to deal with what is. Its hard to accept something that is loaded with negative meaning.

This weekend we are headed up to Lake Tahoe to hole up in a little cabin together, skip rocks across the lake and take a chilly dip in that clear, clear water. Nib is hoping desperately for some fishing and I am hoping for a peaceful, foggy morning rising alone, before the whole camp is up....the mist rising off the lake, a loon in the distance. Mommy wishes.

Decoding Winter

Winter here in The Bay Area is a confusing tumble to an outsider like myself who has no cheat sheet about what in the world to expect or how one marks time or knows seasonality or understands what to plan for next. The lovely side of this phenomenon is that I am deliciously naive and unjaded about everything in the outdoor world here. I love the surprise and Dr. Suess like implausible beauty of the visual circus that is a more tropical environment. Earlier this month we were getting rain, rain, rain and lots of chilly weather that felt clammy and demanded sweaters and tea and roasts in the oven at night. Suddenly, we began to be able to tell that the temperature was rising a little and the chill was gone from the air...replaced with a few sunny days here and there.

All the dry, gold-brown hills around us have morphed to Irish green and every lawn and strip of empty earth is full of growing weeds and grasses in lush profusion. Its an amazing and beautiful thing to be in the middle of all of this green and living life in the "dead" of winter but its really incredible after the truly parched dry season. You wouldn't believe it was possible. I laughed one day when I realized that even the cracks in the highways area  bright lime green from growing grass and weeds seeds. There are vivid green seams all the way down every highway, for real.

Then suddenly, BAM! There was a shocking explosion of yellow along the roads and just like that, the bloom season began. Golden acacia trees opened overnight, covered top to toe in the most dayglo shade of highlighter yellow, all over the sides of the main throughways. I was in awe. They were fast....an ephemeral (invasive, as it turns out) pleasure. I think they were there for two or three days in a shining glow and then the yellow dulled to a dirty school bus shade and this week they are a very smudged over brownish carmel and are dropping their blooms in a powder of rusty fuzz all over the shoulder of the highway. When you get up close the blossoms look like little pom poms. Each one a miniature globular bouquet of teeny little canary colored wands. They were amazing.

Now there are plum trees blooming all through our neighborhood, and their petals are just beginning to fall. We had another fantastic rain this afternoon which will drive many of them off the trees and blow them all around the city in a pink confetti storm. The dandelions in the lawn are really revving up in front of our house, there are some species of purple bearded irises blooming all over town already and this morning I noticed that the next door neighbor's apple tree is just opening its blossoms. 

I am so confused and amazed! I have no idea what is next.....the only thing I know is that winter like this, is glorious. I'm drunk on the wonderful fragrance in the night air, the glowing warmth of sunshine and the rich feeling of growth all around me. Cali's got me where it hurts.

Is It Spring Yet?

Am mulling over bridal shower plans for my little sister, wondering when people around here think spring has come, trying to understand exercise psychology and considering designing a tattoo. So many things to think about. I am not sure whether to try to rally the boys for treks to see the elephant seals mating and birthing, the cranes nesting or the newts wriggling around in the winter (spring?) rains in amorous little herds. I'm puzzled by all the folks around here who don't seem to notice seasons or change in The Bay. I think its a downright kaleidoscope.

I am also making headway on the Friend Acquisition Project, finding lots of cool people both kids and mamas that qualify as candidates and also doing the hardest bit: contacting them and scheduling time together. EEP! I am the worst at that. I am really feeling proud though, I am being brave and assertive and friendly and organized and energetic and even though I am NEVER caught up on the dishes (no dishwasher at the new place) I am on the ramp to friendship. I am even finding little friends for the boys.

And on Sunday....Little League tryouts! I can't wait to be back in the bleachers again! Baseball moms are good friend material and that California tan is calling me.

Fat, NYC and Loving My Shadow Self

It is winter and I have gained a little weight again. Not a lot of weight, not even an amount of weight I care about very much...but its noticeable enough that I went up a size and that I feel larger. Something ancient and real about the very nature driven urge to have a little extra padding, or else to move less in efforts to conserve strength, heat and energy. Because I was paying attention last year and the year before I am pretty sure that this is a cyclical thing for me. I am my thickest and most muffled self in the cold months and then I shed the extra and am a more wirey version in the summer heat. Very, very hard this time of year to think about getting up and actually shuffling out in the pre-dawn chill for my once a week, sunrise yoga class. I am totally okay however, with perpetual mugs of tea with cream and honey.  We are just living the other half of the equation now and remembering that we are creatures who till and garden and harvest and adventure and dance and also creatures who burrow in and sleep extra and recover.

 We went down into New York City tonight to see A's work and have dinner together. Pom was so excited about all the hustle and bustle in the city. He kept yelling, "Taxi!!!" and "I sees two peoples!" and other key sights as we drove along. I felt so stressed about trying to drive down into the city with the boys and find parking myself but I really wanted to be brave enough to handle it so I told A that I was game. I was not above texting him when we had arrived and asking if he wanted to come down and help me park. Imagine, if you can, how astonished I was to find out that the curbside parking spot I had pulled into, at the front door was perfectly legal and free! Sometimes life is astonishing.

 The boys and I are going to start work tomorrow on our valentines. So many, many hearts to make and cut and paint and stamp and draw on! I am thinking about the very ambitious plan of making enough to mail to all their cousins AND all the kids in their co-op on Fridays. Am I crazy? At least I am not buying little gifts and making hand crafted astounding little gift bags and rhyming limericks for every child we know! How do some women do it?!? I feel like I am totally hitting it out of the park if I manage to pack snacks for a day's outing. I did, truly, and really astonish a friend with that simple feat today. I'm not a fussy mama. I'm not even a prepared or organized mama although I do at least aspire to those goals.

Then again....I need to remember this yin and yang, this teetering and tottering, this time-for-everything-reality. I stumbled on this poem by Haafizah the other day and it made me smile and remember to appreciate my double sided self. I want to be neat and orderly but I also love passion, flexibility, and visual chatter....the things that make me who I am.  Love your shadow self and the self you aspire to be. They both matter and they are both real. 

Now, The Best Time of Year

Summer is waning. We are still wearing t-shirts and tank tops but we're keeping our sweatshirts handy and most mornings I pull on jeans before I run down to start the coffee maker and level off the chicken feeder. The garden is all seedy and disreputable, the support stakes are leaning tiredly and the borders grown over with grasses chickweed. I am starting to make lists of autumn bulbs and think about where to park the chicken coop for winter. Its a season of stripping down and organizing, busily strapping on our routines and making labels for everything.

This weekend we had A's youngest brother visiting us. He has just moved to our coast and is going to be living in Boston for the next couple of years so we celebrated with an inaugural visit together filled with every good thing.We had late night discussions, morning coffee, road-tripping, beach walking, garden tours, a tea party and many a book discussion. Ru was so enamored of his uncle after a weekend of his excellent company that he got up early this morning and lovingly made him a dozen cookies to take with him on the train. Love feeling so rich in family and seeing how feeding belonging and a sense of connection is for my children. They just bloom under it all, like so many little seedlings.

I was still chewing on all the goodness from the weekend and needed a meditative but energetic project. In a fit of caffeinated enthusiasm I spontaneously attacked the pantry after breakfast. I pulled it all apart and scrubbed the shelves, dusted out all the stray onion skins and found all the glass canisters that are empty and need refilling in the bulk department. I put a little drip of wintergreen oil in it and when Ru came in the room looking for me he said, "It smells like root beer in here, or fall spices or something." I was telegraphing autumn through the house, telling everyone including myself that it was time to switch modes. The squirrels in our garden are whittling the sunflower heads down to sawdust and carting away anything salvageable that shows up on the compost pile within minutes and there I am, playing squirrel in my own pantry, dusting off the spaces for extra onions and squashes and potatoes. I can feel the change coming and the mourning for the blazing, high summer with and orchestra of crickets that threatens. I keep forcefully working on now. Right now it is not Autumn, as good as it sounds, with its chimney sweep appointments and hickory nuts and dusky evenings filled with silent, falling leaves. Now is now. We've passed the peak of summer. The days for sun tan oil and perpetual barefeet, we are in a magical time with 80 degree afternoons and chilly mornings with tea cups on the back step. We hear the cicadas singing and most of the garden needs nothing more than a lot of deadheading. The sprinkler still wants a little use and there are nubbins of sidewalk chalk calling to be turned into dusty rainbows on our front walk but the starlings are visiting in flocks sometimes, just to shake it up and bring all of us to the window to watch their random robot walking and their bright yellow bills stabbing the lawn. Now is always ephemeral and more specific and perfect than any seasonal cliche and always the most important thing is to be paying attention, listening with our whole selves.

 “In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. ” 

― Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day

Making It Together

Am immersed in reading the impossibly good Daring Greatly. Life-changing philosophy, psychology and research on vulnerability, trust, human connection and overcoming shame. Brene Brown is officially on my list of most inspiring humans. Love it when brilliance becomes a best seller and shows up at every library everywhere. It's can't-put-it-down, divinely inspired, putting-in-missing-pieces-I've-been-puzzled-over-forever....type of good.


This morning I noticed that the snowdrops are blooming at the back door and the daffodils at the front door are showing healthy green shoots too. The grocery stores are selling dollar bundles of daffodils for a fix to tide us all over. I am super fixing my faith on the return of warm and leaning it mentally. Not much longer now. We are all going to make it.

We have made two expeditions to the beach this week. Somehow just sifting sand in our fingers and collecting shells together is enough of a recollection of summer and our recent trip to help hold us.

Came home this time with a collection of purple quahog bits, the parts that the local tribes used for money, storytelling, rank and all kinds of other signifiers. Amazing to finger these bits of shell smashed by seagulls and imagine people from another time gathering and trimming them to add beauty and value to their long ago lives too. We are all marching along together in this world, looking for beauty, holding on through the winters of our lives and standing shoulder to shoulder with historical and real-time peoples....a countless line of folks who making meaning together.




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That Glorious First Snow

One week ago we had our first snowfall. Last year was a very light winter, but we did get one big "winter" storm at Halloween...the year before that was of course a real doozy for us New Englanders with record amounts of snowfall. All of us out here are oh, so curious about what in the world this winter holds for us. I enjoy the light snow version for ease of use but I do appreciate a hard killing cold for the sake of bugs and the fluffy downpour for the sake of my house full of snow bunnies.

The boys were out of their skins over the snow last week. I basically gave up any hope of structured lesson time and let them have free-reign outdoors. They played outside until their fingers were numb and then came sobbing indoors just like I used to as a little girl...shaking all their fuchsia appendages while I rubbed them warm again by the radiator.....then back out again with soaking wet mittens before I could stop them. They made a giant snowball together, pulled out the sleds for a test run and threw snowballs at each other until they were all exhausted.

I know the snow will be back again and winter will come for real eventually whether real accumulation comes with it or not but there is something special about that first snowfall, isn't there? I love when it happens in daylight and we can all rush to the windows and shout and holler while we watch the flakes start falling and I also love it when it happens overnight and we wake up to a world newly sparkly and white like there were visits from snow fairies while we slept.

When I was a girl we often made snow ice cream with one of the first snow falls. I totally forgot this time around but I am all ready for next time with this childhood experiment. I think the boys will flip. I've never made anything with snow before and I have a feeling they'll be begging for it every time there's any white stuff on the ground. Ice cream is well-loved at our house. Traditionally snow ice cream is made with sugar and milk but I think this year I'll try a version sweetened with maple syrup and mixed with heavy cream for the real deal experience.

 For those new to this dish, go see Angela's wonderful recipe and directions over at her really great blog Salt of the Earth Urban Farm. I super-dig this blog about urban/farming living and homeschooling in the delightful city of Portland. Inspiration by the bucketful!