A Bit of Snow

Tuesday--Not much of a snow but it's cold-- temp in the low twenties and dropping. John headed out to take stuff for the dumpsters and recycling and found our road quite icy. He slid to the lower place and decided not to go farther. So he left the truck down there and walked up.

But the critters are fed; the water is dripping (to keep the pipes from freezing;) we have wood and fuel oil; and are reasonably warm inside.

County schools are closed.

It's always an uneasy time with cold weather--waiting for the water to freeze and/or the power to go off. But we've dealt with these things many times (oh, that blizzard of '93, aka The Storm of the Century.) This is just a little snow. And the sun actually came out around four!

 

Flowers Inside, Snowy Mix Outside

 

1922 Trip Down Florida's East Coast

Saturday's clean out and reorganization of the mathom closet revealed a stash of old photos from my maternal grandparents. I already have several of their old photo albums but some of these were new to me. 

The photo above says on the back: Taken on trip down the east coast of Florida Dec, 1922.

My grandfather was thirty; my grandmother a few years older, and they'd been married for seven years. Along for the ride were their five-year-old daughter (my mother,) "Father' (my grandmother's widowed father who lived with them,) and a Mr. Quinn, about whom I know nothing. Possibly a friend of Father's?

Notice all the luggage (grips, as my grandparents called them) strapped on the running board. 

My grandparents had fairly recently moved from Troy, Alabama to Lakeland, Florida and this may have been their first exploration of the state that was to be their home. The pineapple field they visited must have been a source of amazement. (In later years, after their move to Tampa, my grandfather tended a succession of pineapple plants, grown from the tops of the fruit.  And some persevered to bear fruit themselves.)

At Miami Beach. That's my mother in the foreground, watched over by Father. I'm guessing that's my grandmother and grandfather in the background. Presumably Mr. Quinn took the picture.

The last shot is of West Palm Beach. The Florida land boom/bubble (1924-1926) with unchecked development is just a few years away.

 A hundred and two years and these lovely scenes are long gone. 

 

Playing with Salt

If you sprinkle salt on a half-dry watercolor wash as I've done here in the blue, you get these lovely effects. Lots of fun to see what happens as it dries. 

 

A Reward

At the grocery store, the cheerful display of bulbs and primroses absolutely called to me. It's such a pleasure to see blooms in this somewhat grim time of year.

You deserve a reward, I told myself. Cleaning out the pantry was MAJOR. Go on, get the little planter with the yellow primroses and the purple hyacinth.

And while you're at it, how about a little pot of those tiny daffodils?

Why not, indeed! They have taken their places in my dining table garden, where the orchids are blooming and about to bloom, and the amarylli are reaching up.

Now I've begun a challenge similar to the pantry--our mathom closet where are stored, along with vacuum cleaners, all the seasonal tchotchkes that I've accumulated over the years. I have hopes of weeding out a lot of stuff--and already have three boxes of things to go to a local thrift store. 

When I picked up Josie, I asked if she would help me go through the boxes in the closet. She was thrilled. "It's like a treasure hunt!

And it was. She took home two plushies--a cow and a duck that had been part of my Easter decor, as well as numerous shells (summer) and another Easter cow (plastic) and a painted gourd rattle (fall)) plus various odds and ends. I know her folks will be overjoyed.

 

Sunshine and Shadow and Blue, Blue Sky

 

Josephine the Pirate Queen

 

There was no school on Tuesday and I stayed with Grandma and Apa. On Wednesday I stayed with Meema and Grumpy. First I had pancakes and then I had some cocoa because it was a Very Cold Day. 

Meema and I took turns reading Pirate Stew which is a funny book with lots of good pictures. Then I decided to be a Pirate Queen and I made a song about Josephine the Pirate Queen, who sails the seven seas. 

Dino and I got in a boat. My aunt Fay gave me Dino for Christmas. Dino is a triceratops and she is very pretty.

I had cannon balls to shoot at sea monsters. (The dogs were the sea monsters, and the cannon balls were soft and didn't hurt them so don't worry.)

Me and Grumpy played catch with the cannon balls while Jenny watched.

I sang my pirate queen song for Grumpy.

I pretended my lunch was pirate stew.

I built a fort with a secret place for my treasure. The treasure is a locket that Sandy gave me a long time ago. It opens and I have a piece of sea glass in it.

Then we had a pirate dance party!

I took a break from playing pirate because the babies wanted a puppet show in The Room.

The princess and the unicorn did some singing and then the babies sang with them. The unicorn sounds like a donkey, hee haw, hee haw. The babies thought that was funny.

The princess does opera singing. She is very loud.

Later on, Grumpy and I talked about pirates and he told me about Blackbeard who lived in North Carolina a long time ago. Grumpy showed me a picture of him and his big black beard that he put burning stuff in. And Grumpy even has a flag like Blackbeard's. AND, Grumpy told me that Meema had written a book with Blackbeard in it. (Editor's note: Never published, but it got me an agent.)

So I drew a picture of Blackbeard on a post-it note for Grumpy. He has a pirate hat with a skull and crossbones on it and a big black beard with fire burning in it.

                                                        

PS: Meema was a little cranky when it was time to take me home and I was drawing on my tablet. Close that NOW she said. Your mama is expecting us!

Just one second I said. 

It's been one second she said. Close it NOW.

Just be patient I said.

PATIENT? she said Close it!

Do you know what a virtue is I said and she said yes she knew that patience is a virtue. (She was really getting cranky now.)

Well, you don't have that virtue I told her. And she said something about my daddy getting the child he deserved because when he was little, he always argued too. 

And then she took me home. She said I had done an extra good job with reading (I read most of four books) and with clean up.)

We could see snow on the far mountains when we went out to the car. It was a good day to be a pirate queen.

                                                                       

A Tale for the Time Being

I read the first page and was hooked. A Japanese teenager is sitting in a French maid cafe, writing to an unknown 'you.' Already there was so much I wanted to know.

Nao is the teenager and she wants to die. But first she wants to tell the story of Jiko, her 104-year old great-grandmother, an early feminist and rebel and now a Buddhist nun (and who I would like to be when I grow up.) Nao's voice seems absolutely authentic--she's vulnerable, tough, witty, kind, ruthless, and, above all, a survivor.

And there's Ruth, on the other side of the Pacific, who is reading Nao's diary which she found washed up on the beach. Ruth is a novelist who is having trouble writing and we glide into meta-fiction when we realize that Ruth is also the author of the book in our hand. Ruth's story and her relationship with Oliver (the name of Ozeki's partner) is almost as compelling as Nao's story and the novel bounces from one to the other as the stories become more and more intertwined. 

This is such an amazing book. I wanted to read it quickly, to resolve the many questions it raised. And I wanted to read it slowly, to savor each moment and to immerse myself in the meaning/non-meaning.

It's a treasure-trove of ideas and speculations, hints and allegations. Teen age angst, Japanese culture, Zen philosophy, Western philosophy, magical realism, family secrets, ecology, the nature of time and reality . . . It's like a marvelous kaleidoscope that just keeps spinning.

Every once in a while, I encounter a book that shifts my perceptions. This is one.

Most highly recommended.

 

Red Sky at Morning

 

It's Kinda Addictive

                                                                            

It's been gloomy and cold all day--it was actually snowing lightly when I took this picture--but it mattered not because I was in the pantry, continuing to wrestle order out of chaos.

                                                             

These two shelves have been annoying me for some time. Put one thing back and two fall off. Plus, there is some serious redundancy going on.  How many cans of lemon spray furniture wax does one need anyway?                                                    

With all these cleaning, polishing, waxing, deodorizing supplies, I don't know why we're not cleaner. Could be the dogs; could be my disinclination to clean every day. As the meme says: I dusted the house. The dust came back. Not falling for that again.

Still, it's a fine feeling to have room on the shelves--a lot of the extras went to the basement. And, having gotten the most challenging bit over with, I continued on to the No Man's Land between the refrigerator and the shelves--a narrow strip that was the repository for items that fell off the shelves and didn't get picked up, due to being out of easy reach. Also, odds and ends that missed the paper recycling bag. Done, thanks to my grabber!

Moving on, I tidied and edited two of the food shelves--discovering some ancient, pitted dates that are still edible, if a tad hard. The internet suggests covering them with boiling water for ten minutes.  Worth a try.

But this kind of cleaning (once every thirty or so years) really is addictive--and lots more fun than dusting.                                                     

Terra Ingognita

                                                                            

Terra incognita aka Under the Kitchen sink.

At last, after some happy piddling around with books and watercolors, I've returned to The Project: Cleaning and cleaning out everything. Two cupboards in the kitchen remained, and by the grace of Someone or Other and with the help of a grabber, I have removed the contents, cleaned the shelves, taken inventory, and garbaged/recycled twenty-leven rather nasty old sponges, seven toothbrushes (great for cleaning small spaces but I don't need but one,) African violet fertilizer (it's been probably thirty years since I had any of these,) a brush for cleaning baby bottles, cheap florists' vases, ceramic orchid pots, pretty bottles, soap dishes, and some unidentifiable grunge. 

                                                  

Also a glass RC Cola bottle. This puzzled me but, after talking with John, we decided it had probably come from one of our barns, and it had probably been used by previous owner of the farm for dosing a calf--shoving medicine down its throat. (We have always used the heavy sparkling wine bottles.)

                                                       

So here's the finished product-- much nicer and cleaner and at least I know what's there--for a while.

The second cupboard was a breeze--cookware, bowls, slow cookers (getting rid of the small one,) casseroles, and baking tins. Out they came, back in they went, washed (when needed) and reorganized. Oh, it feels good!

On to the pantry--a shelf at a time . . .maybe tomorrow . . .

                                                         

Silent Saturday