Judgement Call

Is it a better picture with or without the shoes?

Discuss.

The Guest Room

As I made up the bed  in preparation for the arrival on Friday of the first of our guests for the weekend, I was thinking about about guest rooms I've stayed in.

Some have been quite posh -- complete with fruit basket, fluffy terry robe, and lovely toiletries -- others have been less so but still quite welcoming and comfortable.

The one thing I really like in a guest room, beside a reasonably comfortable bed, is a decent bedside reading light.

When we first moved here to the farm, I was asked to spend the night with Louise Freeman, our neighbor down the hill. Her husband was going hunting that night and she didn't like being left alone.

So after supper I walked down to their house. Louise and I sat and visited, talking of gardens and canning, and this and that as the evening dusk turned to night.

 I knew that it was their custom to go to bed when it got dark and to get up well before daylight. I also knew that I couldn't fall asleep that early so I was prepared  with a book in my overnight bag. 

Louise was not a great talker and by 8:30 or 9 we had pretty well run out of things to say to one another.

She ushered me to her guest room -- about three paces from the bathroom --  and whispered that there was a 'chamber' under the bed if I needed it in the night. 

As soon as the door closed behind her, I got into my night gown and  pulled out my book, only to realize that the sole light in the room was the single bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling. About a 60 watt bulb, at a guess.

So I read for a while, or tried to read, sitting on the foot of the bed as near the light as I could get. It was really kind of pathetic. Not to mention frustrating.

 I've seen lists of things a perfect guestroom should have and ours falls far short -- no desk, no comfy chair, no TV, no fluffy robe, no padded coat hangers. But it does have reading lights.

 And I'll try to remember to cut some fresh flowers for the vase on the chest of drawers.

The cat is optional.

 

Order from Chaos

Tuesday dawned clear and dry and blessedly cool.  Thunderstorms are forecast for the rest of the week -- and house guests are forecast for the weekend -- so I took advantage of the fine weather to work in the garden. The corn needed thinning and hoeing; the cabbage and kale and broccoli, which were being ravaged by caterpillars, got sprayed with Bt; and the rest of the garden got hoed. 
 

Miss Susie Hutchins looked on in approval.

I came back in the late afternoon, after the box bed garden was in shadow to do more hoeing and weeding.

 And to pick some lettuce and herbs for our salad at supper.

Oops! I missed that Devil-in-the-Garden lurking in the lettuce. 

 But I was delighted to find some peppers just forming!

 

 And a bit puzzled by this enthusiastic volunteer -- pumpkin? Winter squash?

Time will tell.

There are even a few tomatoes! They kind of don't count since I bought it as a potted plant with small green fruit already on it. But still . . . pretty exciting!

 And by the end of the day I was stiff and sore and feeling rather aged -- but it feels so good to have the garden, momentarily at least, in some sort of order.

There's a theory that says that gardeners are trying to impose order on Nature's chaos -- mowing grass, pulling weeds, making things look just so. 

Could be . . .

There's another theory that says that people who read mysteries -- or crime fiction as they call it in the UK-- do so for the same reason -- to see order (Justice) prevail over chaos (Crime.)

Hmm . . . 

And speaking of mysteries -- no, I've not yet heard from Herself about the manuscript I sent her.  No news is good news . . . at least while I have so many things to get done around here!

 

June is Blue and White

I've been rather wordy recently -- today's post is just pictures -- and captions, of course.

The Gordons - A Magpie Tale

The following is  written as a response to the prompt picture posted by Willow over at Magpie Tales.

Debbe McIntosh rattled her car keys and glanced at her watch. Typical, she thought. 

Heaving  a martyred sigh, she turned toward the empty staircase and called, pitching her voice to carry.

"Samantha! We're  going to be late for your gymnastics class if you don't get down here this instant. Do you hear me-"

"Relax, honey," Biff McIntosh, flushed and sweaty from his morning run, poked his head in the front door and gave her that disarming boyish grin that worked so well.  No, used to work so well, she thought as he went on.

"Sam ran next door to take some cookies to the new neighbors -- something about a good deed she was doing for Girl Scouts. She said to tell you she'd already put her gym bag in the car and she'd be right back." 

Debbe pursed her lips. "Do we know anything about these people? Anything at all? They could be axe murderers or-"

"Give me a break, Deb -- this is Hazelton, for cripes sakes! You know how strict the covenants are -- absolutely no axe murderers.  Besides, I told Sam not to go in. And I'm right here, keeping an eye on her. What could happen?"

Biff paused his post-run stretches and glanced to one side. "She's standing there on the door step -- must be talking to one of the sisters."

"Sisters?" Debbe grabbed up her purse and stepped through the door to peer across the narrow strip of perfect green that lay between the two houses.  Shading her eyes from the sun, she saw her daughter staring up at someone just inside the other house.  

"Who told you there were sisters?" she asked.

Biff  dropped down in the top step and began to remove his running shoes as he talked.  "I ran into Chuck Hendricks yesterday. You know, he's the realtor who sold that house. Kinda interesting -- our new neighbors are two sisters who last lived in Greece. Chuck said they liked the climate here and they chose Hazelton because they liked the privacy fences, of all things.  He hadn't actually met them -- their banker handled the sale completely -- but he spoke to them on the phone and their English was quite good,"

Debbe squinted against the sun's glare. "It must be. Look how Sam's just standing there listening. She seemed utterly spellbound."

"Why did these sisters leave Greece, I wonder?" she mused, really to herself but Biff was eager to share the gossip.

 "It's a sad story, according to Chuck." Now Biff was stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders. It always annoyed her that he went through this little routine on the front steps rather than in the back yard. Rippling his muscles and showing off his tan for all the neighbors.

But she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it pissed her off so she just said, "Sad?"

"Yeah," he had lowered his voice now and they were both watching their daughter. "It seems there was a third sister who was murdered --decapitated.  And the guy got away with it. Greek politics, Chuck said."

The child was still frozen in place, rapt in whatever tale this Greek woman was spinning.   

Debbe looked at her watch and moved to the car. She reached through the open window to tap the horn and recall Samantha.

"Did Chuck say what our neighbors name is? Something unpronounceable ending in -opoulous, I bet."

Biff paused in the doorway. "The first names are pretty weird -- he had to write them down for me.  Get this: Stheno and Euryale -- sounds like a cleaning product and a European ale, he said. Old Chuck's got this system for remembering names -- has to in his line of work."

Stheno . . . Euryale . . .

Back in college Debbe had had a system too. That Humanities course in Mythology -- impossible names you had to know if you wanted to pass. And she was sure she'd learned these. Stheno and Euryale were . . .  who? There were three names. Stheno and Euryale and . . .

Medusa - that was the third sister -- the mortal one of the trio who Perseus had decapitated.  Decapitated . . . All three sisters -- snake-haired gorgons whose glance turned people to stone. Mythical monsters. Mythical . . .

"Biff?" She had to ask. "What's their last name, these sisters?"

"I think it was Gordon -- not Greek at all. I figure their dad must have been English -- that would account for how well they speak the language."

Debbbe took a halting step toward the low hedge between the two properties, trying to fight back a nameless rising surmise.

 

"Sam!" The word was little more than a hoarse croak. 

The child stood open-mouthed, looking up.  Debbe saw the heavy front door slam shut and heard the crack of wood on wood but still her daughter didn't move.

"Sam!" Debbe shouted, "SAM!"

And then she began to run.




If you'd like to know more about the Gordons Gorgons, go to http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Gorgones.html

A Sunday Tanka

Bright colored blossoms --

Summer's fragile, fragrant vow --

So soon forgotten --

While in the greenwood's solemn

         Depths, the grave, grey stones endure.

 Vives floraisons
Evanescent voeu d'été (ou) Serment d'été parfumé
Si vite oublié
Dans les vertes profondeurs
Perdurent les tombes grises

This French version is courtesy of Miss Yves -- she and I have this little game of translating one another's poetry -- 

Sepia Saturday ~ The Stranger

I figured him for a preacher man, ‘long of that dark suit and the Bible under his arm. He come walking down our road, where from, I couldn’t say. Nothing up there but fields and woods and the grave yard. Reckon he could of been visiting kin that’s buried up there – folks do come from away and make the climb, just to brush the gravestones clean or say a prayer for one that’s gone.  But it seemed queer didn’t none of us see him on his way up the road. At the least, we should of heard a dog bark. Of course, we was at church most of the morning but Inez had stayed home, saying as she felt puny. And puny or not, Inez pays mind to what goes by on the road.

I was taking my Sunday ease, setting on the bank aside the house, there where the road runs through our land. That new black and tan hound I’d just traded for, the one the girls had named Drum, was out there too, laying next to me. After last night’s hunt, I reckon the warm sun felt good to both of us. Drum was stretched out on his side, sleeping deep, but twitching his legs like he thought he was still a-hunting. Down in his throat he made little yipping sounds and I wondered what it was he was chasing through his dreams.

I leaned back against the old tree stump we use for busting stove wood and sucked down big breaths of that dry fall air, so crisp and clean it put me in mind of biting into a good apple. Back in the house I could hear the rattle of knives and forks in the dishpan and Inez and Odessa singing close harmony on “Anchored in Love Divine” – them two get on right good when they’re singing. They was a sight of them old carpenter bees buzzing round the house eaves and I could feel my eyelids getting heavier by the minute.

I knew that Mama’d be taking her rest – the only time in the week she’ll let them hands be still and consent to set and rock without picking up her mending. Time was, we took our Sunday rest together; time was . . . and my eyes begun to close and my mind to drift into those far off Sunday afternoons.

“Howdy, there,”

The words was spoke ‘most in my ear and I jerked awake. The stranger had slipped right up on me, catching me gape-mouthed and nodding, his fancy shoes stepping soft in the dust of the road. I blinked up at him, bumfuzzled with sleep and memory and Sunday dinner.

He stood there in his dark old-fashioned suit, kindly rocking back and forth on them fancy shoes that was still shiny beneath the coat of dust the road had put on them. The sun hit on his little round glasses, dazzling my eyes. Hit put me in an ill temper, the way he’d come up on me unawares and the way he was looking down at me. Makes me right uneasy for a fellow to have the advantage of me that way.

I got to my feet, taking my time and not yet giving him back a howdy of my own. It riled me some to see that dog laying there, still a-sleeping and chasing dreams while this stranger had crept up on us like that, making us both look fools. So I reached out and caught him a good one with my Sunday brogan, right on his hindquarter.

Drum yelped and jumped up, whirling around to see what had got after him and his eyes lit upon the stranger. The hair on his back raised up and he lifted his lip in the beginning of a snarl as he squared off to face the man.

Someways, this aggravated me even more. “Think you’re a watchdog, do you, you worthless pup?  What’re you about, all stiff-legged and agitatin’? Lay down, you hear me? Down!”

The stranger didn’t appear overly worried about whether Drum might offer to bite but hunkered down right before him and stuck out his open hand for the dog to smell of.  Ol Drum sniffed at the long white fingers then his fur settled back down smooth. He lay down with his head on his paws, not taking his eyes from the stranger.

“Hunter’s the name,” said the stranger, straightening up and sticking out his hand, “Nim Hunter -- Hunter by nature and hunter by name – my folks put the name of Nimrod on me and don’t the Book tell us that Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord?”

I took the offered hand - soft, like it hadn’t never done no hard work and with fingernails longer than I’d ever seen on a man. “Peavey Henderson,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

I looked up the road, the way he’d come from, waiting for him to make mention of what his business was out our way, but he just rocked back on his heels again and looked down at Drum.

“This the hound I heard baying last night – up one holler and down another?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, but went on, “Got a pretty voice on him. The sound woke me up and I just lay there thinking as how I’d like to get me a dog like that again. Yessir, time was, I was a fool for hunting dogs. Sweetest music there is, a good hound with that deep bay like a church bell. I tell you what, after hearing this dog of yourn, I believe I’d like to buy him off of you. Cash money.”

Well, it puzzled me to know what to say. On the one hand, it didn’t set right somehow, this man just walking down the road and offering to buy my dog. I cleared my throat and spat, using the time to consider. I was about to ask where it was he’d stayed last night that he had heard  the sounds of the dogs but it went right out of my head when he pulled a gold piece from his pocket and held it up to catch the sunlight,

“Twenty dollar gold piece,” says he. “But I’ll trade it for that dog there -- same one you just kicked and called a worthless pup.”

Well, I’ll not deny I was tempted. Sore tempted.  I’d turned in what few gold coins I had back in ’33 when the government put out the call but my fingers fairly longed to hold that double eagle, to feel the soft warm weight of it in my pocket, to rub it betwixt my fingers and thumb. Ever since I was a man, I had carried a gold piece in my pocket for luck but I’d turned it in with the rest, wanting to stay on the right side of the law. But then I kept reaching for it, over and over. Finally I took to carrying a buckeye in the same pocket but it weren’t the same.

Still and all, something in that stranger’s way of speaking didn’t set right with me. It ain’t right, just to try and buy a man’s dog off him without even asking was that dog for sale.

...

The picture belongs to a friend of mine -- Nancy Meadows -- and shows her grandfather Paul V. Henderson and his dog Drum beside his house in Walnut, NC -- probably in the Thirties. 

The photo suggested a story to me -- and the preceding is the way it begins -- I haven't finished it just yet but I can tell you it's a ghost story.

For more Sepia Saturday posts, go to http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/

 

Irrational Orrery Lust

I don't want more stuff.  Our house is full to overflowing with odds and ends -- family memorabilia, trinkets, lovely things we've been given, odd things I've picked up here and there (literally picked up, as in rocks, snake skins, bones, feather, driftwood, shells . . .

So why do I find myself thinking an orrery would be a nice thing to possess? I mean, I already know about the solar system -- I don't need one of these nifty gizmos to convince me that the planets rotate round the sun and the various moons go round their particular planets.

It's just that these early scientific instruments with their elegant brass gears are so beautiful!  They would give a room a hint of steampunk, a suggestion of mad scientist, and a whiff of Merlin. 

Desire isn't rational; it just is.

 (I'd also like an astrolabe.)

Tough (Plant) Love

The area just below our deck -- surrounding the little goldfish pool -- was meant to be a sort of Appalachian version of a Japanese garden. There are azaleas -- all white for a serene feeling, a red lthread-leaved Japanese maple, forsythia, Japanese boxwoods, a yew, a crabapple and any number of dwarf evergreens in a dazzling array of green, yellow, and silver foliage types.

At least, when I bought and planted those evergreens twenty some years ago, they were labeled 'dwarf.' But they've grown and grown and grown till they are shading out the azaleas, blocking our view, and pretty much hiding the fish pool but for a tiny peek. 

The rhododendrons and yew were trying to hide the Japanese maple and a particularly aggressive Virginia Creeper was covering up the Dwarf Alberta Spruce.

What's more, one of the tallest evergreens was bowed and broken by last December's heaavy snow.

Time for Tough Love, also known as Major Pruning!

I crawled about in this jungle, wielding long-handled loppers and pruning shears, while John and his chain saw dealt with the really big stuff.  And John and the Kubota hauled away the trimmings to a brush pile down in one of our fields. 

Now the Dwarf Alberta and the Japanese Maple can breathe! The rhododendrons look awful and we'll have no blooms to speak of next year but I suspect they'll be back by the following year.

 We can see the fishpool again, as well as its little waterfall. We can see the graceful shape of the crabapple's trunk.

 And most of the bent- over gold evergreen has been removed.  The branches that remain will probably go vertical and become leaders and in another ten or twenty years they will probably have to come down.

It's a start -- there is a lot more to remove so that the azaleas can bee seen. And there are many, many more areas of our yard that need Tough Love. And the yard of our rental house is due for refurbishing.

But just for now, I think I'll collapse with a cider.  And some ibuprohen. I'm exhausted but aglow with virtue!

The Cow

Well, technically, Marigold is still a heifer -- she won't be a cow till she gives birth. But she's showing signs that she's been bred : her belly's bigger and her udder's beginning to develop --'making a bag' as they say around here.  As the birth date approaches and the udder gets bigger, she'll be 'baggin' up.'

If all goes well -- or, again, as they say around here 'if nothing don't happen,' we hope to enjoy rich Jersey milk, cream, butter and cheese beginning this fall! 

Here's a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from one of my childhood books. It seems appropriate.

The Cow

The friendly cow all red and white,

I love her with all my heart:

She gives me cream with all her might,

To eat with apple tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,

And yet she cannot stray,

All in the pleasant open air,

The  pleasant light of day;

And blown by winds that pass

And wet with all the showers,

She walks among the meadow grass

And eats the meadow flowers.

No Antiques Road Show for You!

A blessed gentle rain was falling yesterday morning so I had to postpone finishing the plant repotting. (Still not done; the green house has a whole wealth of amaryllis and orchid cactus and Christmas cactus in need  of roomier accomodation.)

This inside job was calling me. The blue paint on the  doors of our corner cupboard has been bubbled for some time now and it was time to repaint.

Yes, I know that collectors prefer the original paint. Anyone who's ever watched Antiques Roadshow knows this. You've seen it happen: the expert takes a look at the piece and shakes his head a little sadly.
 

Ah . . . yes . . . a lovely example of work by Silas Turnipseed -- a well known itinerant cabinet maker who worked in Massachusetts before the Civil War. With the original milk paint on the interior, it would fetch anywhere from five to fifteen thousand dollars at auction -- Turnipseed is enjoying quite a vogue with collectors just now. However -- since some vandal has repainted the interior -- well, you might get fifty to a hundred dollars. Really, though, why not just use it for firewood. . .

 But it's too late. This is a nice country piece,  probably from the 1800's. John's parents bought it back in the 40's -- and they painted the interior green. John's sister inherited it and she painted the interior white. Then she gave it to John -- and we opted for our signature blue.

Once that act of vandalism was done, I got the creamy white paint and started on the walls of the dining room and then on to the living room.  Taking down pictures, hauling furniture around -- generally tearing the place up -- oh, it felt good!

 It was a wonderful day of Getting Stuff Done! Or partially done -- still more painting to go!


Eddie, on the other hand, took it easy most of the day.

   ( The monthly post on my other blog -- The Goodweather Report -- is up now. )