About That Basket . . .

So this is what I use my grandmother's basket for -- to hold the elements of a little talk I used to do in the lower grades of our local schools, back when I was starting to be known as 'The Quilt Lady."

I'd bring in a bunch of quilts and talk about them and ask the kids about quilts they might have at home.  I'd hand out these pictures of quilt blocks for the kids to identify and color. And I'd tell them a story about Rachel, a little girl who lived in our county about a hundred years ago -- a little girl who wanted to make a quilt for her doll, Grace Greenwood.

I'd show them how Rachel traced around templates and cut out her quilt pieces and sewed them together by hand.

And I'd show them Rachel's doll and the  quilt Rachel made with scraps from her mother and sister's sewing (left unfinished on one edge to show its construction.) By the way, those are my grandmother's sewing scissors in the picture.

But what was the original use of the basket? I hear someone asking.

Well, I believe it was used to hold feathers -- feathers plucked from butchered chicken/ducks/geese and used to fill pillows and bed ticks. 

Here's a LINK to a Shaker feather basket that looks very similar.(Scroll down to number 219.)

Artifact

This basket sat on a cedar chest in my grandparents' bedroom for over fifty years and I never thought of asking where it came from and what it was used for.

It's woven of very thin materials -- ash splits, perhaps, or maybe river cane?

The lid is attached.

The basket is far too fragile to use for heavy things --- what do you think its use was?

To Live Content...

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"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, to all bravely await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony."

This quote from William Henry Channing caught my eye over at Vicki Archer's beautiful blog FRENCH ESSENCE as did the post about her neighbors. 

Not a bad credo to live by, I think. Miss Susie Hutchins certainly agrees.

Pinhook by Janisse Ray

from the publisher's website: "Janisse Ray, award-winning author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilt, writes an evocative paean to wildness and wilderness restoration with an extraordinary journey into southern Georgia's Pinhook Swamp.

Pinhook Swamp acts as a vital watershed and wildlife corridor, a link between the great southern wildernesses of Okefenokee Swamp and Osceola National Forest. Together Okefenokee, Osceola, and Pinhook form one of the largest expanse of protected wild land east of the Mississippi River. This is one of America's last truly wild places, and Pinhook takes us into its heart.

Ray comes to know Pinhook intimately as she joins the fight to protect it, spending the night in the swamp, tasting honey made from its flowers, tracking wildlife, and talking to others about their relationship with the swamp. Ray sees Pinhook through the eyes of the people who live there--naturalists, beekeepers, homesteaders, hunters, and locals at the country store. In lyrical, down-home prose, she draws together the swamp's need for restoration and the human desire for wholeness and wildness in our own lives and landscapes."

This is such a fine book. Ray looks closely at the smallest things and writes of them like a poet. I highly recommend it.

This lovely book seems to me particularly important just now when, in the name of job creation, we have politicians calling for exploring for oil in the  Everglades, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, easing the regulations against smog, rolling back years of progress toward a less polluted world . . .

Talk about a fragmented land.  Some people think it's laughable to worry about species extinction or air quality or global warming. 

Others of us fear that, if the anti-environmentalists have their way. we'll be on the road to a future that looks like this.

 

I'm deeply afraid of the direction things are going.  The mindset that decides to deal with global warming by denying it . . . while turning up the air conditioner, thus adding to the problem, is all  too common.

But I'm preaching to the choir, I expect. 

Meanwhile, I'll be looking for more of Janisse Ray's books. 

Texture

Dirt dauber (mud dauber) wasp nest...
I did a post about these critters HERE

Barn in need of paint
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Old plow point

At Last!

After weeks of bone dry weather, on Saturday night we had a half inch of rain and yesterday another half inch.

The brown pastures have already begun to green a bit; the fall garden is rejoicing; mist was rising yesterday evening . . .

 

A welcome reprieve -- and more on the way!

A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi . . .

Back when I did a post on the perfect tomato sandwich,  a few days later, Vagabonde emailed me to say that she had been inspired to create her own special sandwich with the wonderful heirloom tomatoes that are available just now. 

I've tried it (twice now) and can say that Vagabonde's creation is a winner.

It's nothing more than pimento cheese on toasted bread (Vagabonde used whole wheat; I used a ciabatta,) some mayo,, slices of a really good tomato (these are red and green zebra tomatoes -- the green are ripe, believe it or not,) and some fresh basil leaves for what Vagabonde calls "that certain je ne sais quoi..."

Don't omit the basil! Truly, it lifts a simple sandwich into the realm of cuisine. 

Vagabonde used a gourmet four-cheese pimento cheese from the deli. I make my own  --pimentos, grated sharp cheddar, mayo, minced onion, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, and a bit of Sriracha hot sauce.

Heavenly! A wonderful lunch or supper.

The Dragon in the Sea, on the other hand, wasn't at all my cup of tea. I loved Frank Herbert's Dune but was less fond of those that followed. This is one of Herbert's early efforts, from 1956, which was probably re-published to take advantage of Dune's continuing popularity.  

The book's about four guys in a tiny nuclear submarine at some time in the future. The world is at war and oil as the ultimate prize (sound familiar?)  There are only four guys and it looks like one is a traitor. . .

While it was interesting to see what an early Herbert novel was like, the novelty quickly palled and I did not finish. Way too much technical info for my taste -- what I'd characterize as a 'guy book.' I guess it just lacked that certain je ne sais quoi. . .

I did finish the sandwich, however.

Garden Weirdness

Back to scorching weather and still no rain. I was in the garden early, virtuously watering and doing a little maintenance, and my virtue was rewarded with the sight of some rather unusual vegetables.

I don't know the varietal name of these giant plum tomatoes but Witch's Tits would seem appropriate. The green evil witches of Oz and Halloween  -- not you good witches out there. 

 

I decided to dig in our small bed of sweet potatoes to see what I could uncover for dinner.

I seem to have interrupted these two in the middle of something ...

Silent Sunrise

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School Days and Fashion Notes

For weeks now, the stores have been full of Back to School displays and the big yellow buses are already rolling but when the calendar hits September 1, I am always overwhelmed with memories of the first day of a new school year -- a clean new notebook, a thick pack of blue-lined paper, shiny yellow pencils, an ink pen with those handy cartridges, a ruler, maybe a protractor, and some fat, pink erasers, all zipped snugly into the plastic pouch that fitted inside the three ring notebook.

And maybe a new dress and shoes to start the new school year -- my doting maternal grandparents, with only two grandchildren to spoil, often were the ones to take me shopping for school supplies and by the time I was in high school, those supplies had stretched to include not only a new dress but new lipstick and matching nail polish. ( I can hardly believe it but I can remember kinda lusting after a shade of nail polish called Persian Melon.)

Perfume too -- the names and even the scents come back to me -- Tweed, Wind Song, Jungle Gardenia (a misguided experiment during my senior year of high school that had John rolling down the car window in order to breathe.) And my favorite Maja -- a perfume from Spain, the purchase of which involved a trip to Ybor City -- Tampa's Latin Quarter.

All of these purchases were in pursuit of a new beginning -- new teachers, new classes, new clothes, new me . . . and the giddy expectation that this might be the year Something Wonderful happens.

Of course, soon the notebook was worn and dirty, the pencils chewed on, the erasers hardened and useless. The new outfit would turn out to be not quite what the really popular girls were wearing.

Oh, the conundrum of fashion! It was a password you had to get right. Do you wear your bobby socks rolled or folded down, folded over a foam rubber ring (for that oh so desirable fat sox look,) or do you wear them pulled up . . . or do you not wear socks at all?

It's a wonder I learned anything academic in high school. I was evidently busy studying the changing fashions of the Fifties. Lanz dresses and Capezios defined the so-called nice girls while tight black skirts and shirts with the collars turned up at the back was the uniform of girls who, it was whispered, were not nice, girls who dated the guys known as 'hoods.'

But, oh, the watershed day when one of the cheerleaders came to school, her full skirt hanging limp around her legs, un-poufed by the crinolines that had been de rigueur until that moment.
Heads turned, jaws dropped; it was shocking, it was unbelievable, it was . . . sexy.

By the end of the week, crinolines were a thing of the past -- gone to fashion's scrap bag to join the poodle skirt, the cinch belt, the sack dress . . .

This is a re-post from September '08 -- I think that Pat in TN was my only reader back then. I am the Girl Scout in the first picture and the other pictures are of my brother and 
me on two different Easters

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