Reflections on being weak....

Pictures of trees reflected in water and sky reflected in water, and bridges reflected in water, anything reflected in water, any time of year are as impossible to resist as snow scenes for me.


























So I did Walk Two at the pond today, and just fell for all these lovely scenes, including the bridge I've pictured in here before. This proves that though you can't step into the same river twice, nor take pix of the same bridge twice, you can have a strenuous effort at it! just be glad these aren't vacation movies...

Julian and Me

I like walking meditation, and just got hold of CDs of Julian of Norwich, from the local libe. so it seemed like a good walk on a Fall afternoon, beside the pond, watching fishermen and clouds and reflections, very appropriate for reflecting.









Not an early Christian mosaic, just the result of drought followed by floods followed by drying winds.

This sort of listening, to an early Christian mystic's writings (a woman, though the name would not tell you that) goes well with knitting, too.

And I will get back to knitting my Royals! I have all Kate's body parts, but need to assemble her, and maybe organize some jewelry..and corgis for her grandmother in law, too.

Latest, highly recommended reading: Sarah Vowell's account of Hawaii, "Unfamiliar Fishes" which covers its history, culture, very readable indeed. She spares nobody, and is not only very funny, but very well researched and accurate as a historian.

Don't just do something --sit there!

This year has wrought a lot of changes, and some of them have been major subtractions from our family's life. I already wrote about how I was going to give Halloween a miss, and HS and I talked about Thanksgiving, well ahead of time, better that way, and what we might like to do this year.

The idea of setting a table here for two, with all the cooking and the sadly missing person was just too hard to manage, so we decided we'd be a lot happier going out for Thanksgiving. HS and I used to celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving, back when HP and I were not together, by going out, and it will be nice to revive that this year, for several reasons. And when I had the petcare business, Christmas was one of my busiest days of the entire year, not unusual to work 18 hours straight, so HS agreed very flexibly that we would declare Christmas on a day we could take the time to enjoy it.

Likewise my birthday this year will be a restaurant event, and I don't know what we will do for Christmas this year. Maybe we'll have it on a different day or something. I just feel as if it's better to have a day with no sad echoes in it, at least for this year. And I feel very good about it, interestingly. It's about creating something new, rather than just compensating for what we've lost.

Daily no-stuff is working out too. The utter peace of no television unless I put on a DVD of something I really want to see, no commercials even the polite public tv ones. Radio tuned to the classical music station, no endless, tedious highbrow political discussions. Laundry once a week instead of twice daily. No phone ringing except the rare times my cell goes. These are new subtractions that I savor. Utility bill half the size of what it was when HP's equipment and other needs required a lot of power.

A couple of long-married women friends have asked me if I am nervous alone in the house, and they're surprised that I'm not at all, never have been, even in client houses where I used to stay overnights with pets, in huge mansiony places with grounds and general remoteness. This is a new concept for them, I think, since it's one of the things people ask about right away, as I'm getting used to being single here again.

On the other hand, I've always done things alone, pretty fearlessly, from going to France at age 18, alone, to find a job in order to get my French fluent enough for the very tough degree program I was going to enter several months later. Or when I went away to work at age sixteen, for my summer vacation from school, just to get away somewhere, anywhere! I found that you always make new friends, and being alone isn't at all the same thing as being lonely. I'm looking to make new friends now, as well as nurture old ones, since at this age, friends start to disappear in the course of nature.

Anyway, these are late October thoughts!

Caution: Lions now in residence

The Bookshelf Jungle



and the pride of lions in close up.



I don't know if two constitutes a pride but when a lion tells me she and her feller are too a pride, who am I to dispute the point.

All Gardens Great and Small

October day yesterday, full of color and light and chrysanthemums everywhere.



I love the neighbors who make massive use of tiny spaces.




And indoors, the dish garden in preparation.



The mosses came from right outside the gate, this being a very wet year, no need for much of a search, and they come complete with small wildflowers. The carrot top will make an interesting tree, and there will be other features as it comes together. Today is drenching rain, so it's a good day to do gardening indoors.

The glass cover is a salad server, pressed into service for this purpose. It acts as a terrarium cover, and as a kitty shield, since cat owners know that this sort of miniature setup is a kitty magnet, nearly as good as a dollhouse.

Rugged Individual

I was out walking today in the park, and came up behind an older lady, tiny, about 75 lbs if that, pushing a stroller with one hand and with a Lhasa Apso on a leash on the other. I looked into the stroller, as you do, in passing, and there was nobody in it. Odd, she wasn't looking around for a baby, just attending to the dog. And it was a very small stroller, the kind a little kid pushes her doll in.

Walked on, lovely afternoon, thoughts on the art show I'd been at earlier with a good friend, some good watercolors, and the keyboard practice I did this morning, trying to retrieve my piano skills so as to take a better part in our harpsichord and recorder duets, idly noticing soccer players all over the place.

Then on the path outside the park, on the way home, I heard a tiny voice behind me, saying, don't want to make you nervous, but I'm coming through on your left...looked back and there was the tiny lady, with the dog asleep in the stroller, being pushed.




I laughed, and said, ah, the puppy needed a ride? to which she solemnly responded, not a puppy, he's fourteen years old! I explained that to me they're all puppies, and she said, you see, this way he walks until he's tired, then he rides, he gets his exercise I get mine. It all works.



Totally unselfconscious about the figure she and Puppy cut, just a lovely character.

Shocks of recognition

Lately I've been noticing faces which remind me of artworks. Not at first, just that vague "where have I seen that face before" type of perception, followed by a sharp thump to the side of the head, when I realize where I've seen it.

A few days ago, at the Recorder Society meeting, I thought the conductor reminded me strongly of medieval art, that long serious face, deep eyes, tall, flowing clothes, fitted in perfectly with her field which is early music. She would have fitted right in with stained glass, too in a cathedral, or an early icon, same features.

Then in the Asian market, today,I was surrounded by classic Chinese and Japanese faces, exactly like those in my Japanese woodblock prints and in early Chinese artforms in ceramics, but these people were checking out food at the counter of a local store.

It reminded me of my surprise at realizing that what I had taken, as a little kid, for great imaginative powers were more an illustration of faces and natural forms familiar to the artist or writer. I used to assume that the toadstools that elves sat on in fairy books, the red ones with white dots, were simply a work of the imagination.

Then, a few years ago, we had a wildly wet summer followed by wonderful fungi in the autumn. There all around the house were fungi in purple, cream, red with white dots, yellow underneath, bronze on top, all the illustrations from fairy books come to life! the only thing missing was the little elf in the green hat.

I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell lately, "What the Dog Saw" to be exact, a collection of essays written for the New Yorker, over a couple of decades, some of them a bit dated now, but all interesting and interestingly analyzed. He has a knack of suggesting, not the answers and the deconstruction of a phenomenon, but the best questions to put to it. This makes not only an interesting writer, but one who triggers other perceptions in his reader, like my studying the faces at the shop today.

The dog in the title is one of the clients of the Dog Whisperer, whose approach is not to enforce his ideas on the dog, but to figure out what the dog is seeing in order to get them working in harmony. I do tend to consider the underdog first in human interactions, too, and see what I can understand of that viewpoint, before arriving at a conclusion.

The Dog Whisperer, however, grew up with a better understanding of dogs than of people and had a shock of recognition when he was advised to treat his wife like an actual human being, not just a useful appliance in his own life, before he lost her. He was so shocked that he realized he had to see What the Wife Saw, as well as what the dog saw! I gather he did manage this, just in time.

But, since I was out shopping for food, I decided life can't be lived on this high plane at all times, since lunch is important, too, and I made this nice crustless spinach quiche, which seasoned blogistas will know is Diane's Passover recipe, but she tells me gentiles can eat it too, and it's not seasonal!



what it is,though, is very good.

A sense of wholeness

I was sitting with an afternoon cup of tea today, idly more or less reading a book of essays by Anna Quindlen, and watching the mourning dove sitting peacefully on the cherry tree branch a few feet away from me outside, and suddenly realized that a sense of wholeness is coming back to me.

It's partly about a lovely October sky, varying shades of soft grey, a true watercolor, and the start of changes in the leaves





though ours are usually quite muted, no brilliant Wisconsin foliage here





partly about the softness of the air and the boldness of the chickadees shouting and eating, and the smell of newly baked food in the kitchen.



and about the late flowers in neighboring gardens




and noticing how on one rosebush there's a new bud, a flower in full bloom and a dying flower. Life in fast forward.

and the red peppers in the garden of the little boy down the street.



But it was also about remembering my life from years ago, before I had to give up being single with my own household, because HPs needs overrode everything for both of us. He no more wanted to share a roof than I did, both being very happy as a couple with large areas of privacy, to the extent of traveling back and forth to each other's homes for years. But we both recognized, nine years ago, that he could no longer manage without constant help. And that started the trajectory for both of us until it ended in August this year.

I'm rediscovering the pleasure of pleasing only me when I cook or go for a walk, or decide to go to a recorder society meeting, or entertain a friend. It's not that he was an obstacle, but rather that the simple presence of another person makes a difference to every move. He wanted very much for me to have a life, even when his nursing needs became more and more pressing, and was joyful when I got an evening out and told him about it when I got home. And yet there's a freedom in singleness that the single understand.

But the other side of it is that there are a lot of firsts: last night was the first time I went to the recorder society without him to come home to. This will be the first Halloween without him. Actually that's a good thing, since I truly hate what people do with Halloween, and will firmly leave the lights out and the door shut this year, honoring my own wishes after years of catering to HPs pleasure in giving candy to kids and seeing their outfits. It's not a carnival, it's a solemn quiet, thoughtful religious time, when we honor the souls of the dead the day before we praise the saved. This year particularly I would like to honor the dead quietly.

And there will be more occasions, like the first birthday unobserved by him in nearly fifty years. There's a reason people say you need a full calendar year to know what you're doing -- we do use the calendar for so many symbolic reasons, that it takes that rebuilding time.

But for the moment, it's just fine. The balance is coming down heavily on the side of joy.

Hope over Experience

These little avocado hopes are what Oscar Wilde might have called the triumph of hope over experience, oh no, that was remarriage...oh well, anyway since I just added avocadoes into my menu, I had a couple of pits to do something about.

Now, longtime friends and blogistas know I'm a pretty good gardener, the person with all the cuttings and advice to give away, and with surplus plants I stealthily plant around the place as a stealth gardener, all that. However, the one thing I have never succeeded with is the humble avocado plant. I don't ask for it to grow into a tree or anything, just to put out ANY sign of life.

I do all the instructions, as you see in the picture, never get a sossidge out of it. One of my friends a few years ago said, right, I will give you a well established plant, and you can enjoy that instead of struggling with the pit. So she gave me a lovely flourishing little plant to take home. By the next morning, it was already half dead, and it definitely went home by the next day. We puzzled over this, since there hadn't been time for me to do anything wrong in that short period.

Then she admitted that every other plant without exception that she'd tried to grow had failed in short order. Not a single houseplant had ever worked for her but the avocado, including the plants I'd given her in great health. So we concluded this is about body chemistry. I must be giving off molecules that scare the avos. All I can say is that they're pretty picky, but I'm still giving them another chance.

The other teeny thing in the kitchen nursery is a carrot top. I always put carrot tops in water just to enjoy the greenery that sprouts from them. It used to amuse HP enormously that I couldn't bear to just chuck anything away, even into the garden, but had to give it another shot. I expect I'll revive my dish gardens before the winter, too, with the mosses and all that. I had to abandon them under the pressure of HPs last illness, but they are in my future indoor garden plans.

The Spindler Family

aka sinister spinsters....I now have the other two of my hand spindle family, from Schacht, courtesy of lovely Debby at Twist in New Hope, Bucks Co, Pa, sorry, a bit of a commute for some of our overseas blogistas, but they are so cool. As is Debby, who was patience itself with our telephonic problems -- some gremlin hates to allow calls between her zip code and mine and kept dropping the call after about ten words, not enough to establish what I was trying to buy! I gave up and wrote out a paper check and mailed it! and the spindles, exactly what I was looking for, arrived almost before I'd got the check in the mail. I love Twist! that's the name of the shop.

A couple of years ago I was given (by Carol Q, who is to blame for a lot of my spinning adventures), the biggest, four inch, spindle to learn on, along with a nice hank of what I think was beautiful merino top, which I reduced to clumsy knots in no time, but who's counting. Very good size to learn on, though, big enough to make fat yarn, which I did, and eventually smoother yarn, but still pretty sturdy.

So after working with that on and off for nemmind how long, now I need to learn to spin finer yarn without having the heavy spindle tear it apart...ask me how I noticed this...so I invested in its smaller counterparts, the three inch and the two and a half inch. You see them here, with a beautiful length of alpaca top, courtesy of Felicity at the Minnesota State Fair this year, what a great gift, along with a bag of white, also alpaca, smells like heaven, too.

Spinning has brought some of the nicest people into my life, great treat. The only thing I now have to resist is dressing up the spindles to make the Spindler Family...no, no, mustn't go there. But I could just paint little faces, no, no, stop me before I doll again.

Anyway, I calmed down by spending the afternoon on the Preserve, met a lovely lady who'd never been there before, was mad with joy running about taking pictures. Beautiful October day, perfect for wandering about, spotting butterflies, a flock of yellow rumped warblers, various other birds leaping around, thrushes, I think, and being startled by me out of the shrubs. Not many walkers at the moment, so they're quite bold and easy to see, the birds, I mean.

Harold Urey would like this,four easy pieces

I was out and about, strolling and clicking today, perfect golden light, clear, just glad to be alive weather, and after I got home with these art pix, literally art underfoot, what I saw on the ground, I cracked up laughing when I rotated the bumpy one and realized I'd achieved a great optical illusion by moving the shadow, so the viewer now thinks it's a series of depressions. Art being the big lie that tells the truth, you know.

The reference to Harold Urey, at least I think it was he, some Big Name in Studying the Moon long before anyone walked on it, gave a special big deal lecture in England years and years ago, to which scientists were invited and as the spouse of same, I got to go along.

He was showing big slides of the craters of the moon, but kept on getting the giggles when the craters would suddenly seem to be mountains and bumps. He was quite frivolous, and the audience didn't know what to make of this, expecting a solemn disquisition on Lunar Excrescences or Cavities or something or other. But I loved him for breaking up over the slides and saying, oh, look, it did it again! which goes to show that childlike behavior may very well be a part of genius. I bet Feynman would have cracked up, too.

The Dollivers' Tea Party

All this talk of the tea party has got the Dollivers interested in politics, or at least in tea parties. So today we got out the best hand hemmed napkins and afternoon tea tablecloth, little vase of flowers for the table, and Call Me Michele put on her lace gloves and everyone put on a hat, and we set up the party.



The photo shoot was over before they remembered the cream and the little dish of lemon slices, but they were added in before our guest arrived, bearing yet more food.

A great time was had by all, and the Ds decided to vote for doing this a lot, as did Boud.

One thing I'm still in the process of discovering is small pleasures like entertaining at home, impossible for years, baking the hot biscuits with butter and tomato jam inserted, making the chocolate oatmeal lace cookies, just luxury.



So I'm putting local blogistas on notice: if you're not careful you may be joining the tea party...

On the way to the art museum, Sunday

I always have to park blocks from the Princeton Art Museum, even on Sunday, which is fine because I park up a side street with all kinds of back views of campus buildings, and old houses with great tiny flower-stuffed yards.

Like this one, mostly wildflowers. Here's a peek into their back yard





and here's what their sidewalk looks like





and here




and, oh, guess who's living in the garage




Then formality intervenes as I pass Prospect, once house of Woodrow Wilson when he was President of Princeton U,before he went off to be President of that other place.



The gardens are formally laid out, changed with the seasons, and usually a tourist magnet. Yesterday no exception, I bumped into French, Russian, Polish, and various other languages I couldn't identify, being spoken by visitors.








The art museum was lovely as always, great medieval section which I'd never been in before. You know when an exhibit is excellent, when it engrosses you even if you had little interest in the subject matter before you saw the installation. And this one was. As was a show of historic photographs, again I found over and over items that I really wanted to see. So it was good. Then, by contrast, there was a big Rothko, just the one, on temporary loan.

I like this museum because it's small enough that you aren't overwhelmed by the numbers of artworks. Just one Rothko is plenty to study for one day, no pressure to "see the others".

And there was a great spoken piece, a continuous loop projected onto the wall, with English subtitles to a Spanish spoken narrative, about a document the narrator's grandfather had written about the Holocaust. Not a journal, but a philosophical thought process about memory and how it turns and how you substitute what you can bear to remember for what you can't, and altogether gripping. A young woman came and sat with me and we talked about oral history for a while. Great interlude.

This work was there in relation to an exhibit about the life and death of cities, a terrible wallpiece about Dresden after the firebombing,shameful episode, and other cities which had suffered destruction and had a rebirth. It was done in connection with September 11, to put it into context, I suppose. This is one I need to go back and see again, since I was at saturation point before I got to it! fortunately the museum's not far to go.

And then I passed all the gardens again on my way back to my car.

Home on the Range, the Dollivers Make Jam

It's the season for tomato and lemon jam around here, and the Ds, figuring that they were already dressed for the part after the soapmaking adventure, got busy making a supply of tomato and lemon jam, which has gone down very well in the past and finally we have time to make it again. It's sweet but not like dessert, more interesting than a jammy taste.

Then the movie-going Ds decided that they should also be food critics, and they requested that their committee should sit in judgment of the finished product. As you see.



Simple recipe: one thin sliced lemon, 5.5 cups sugar, three pounds of tomatoes, preferably Roma plum for my taste, peeled, cored, deseeded, quartered, simmered for 10 minutes before you add the other stuff, one pouch of pectin or one package depending on how you get it. Usual remembering to put it in a much larger pan than you can believe, to allow for the unstirdownable boil it has to come to. This is a safety issue.

I love making pickles (as in recent piccalilli) and jams and that kind of thing which involve stirring and fooling with boiling liquids and so on. So this was fun.

It was also a response to yet another bereavement package that arrived in the mail,very well meaning, reminder that hospice continues to be available for the family, but in my case timing not good. Just as I start to get up again, something arrives and knocks me flat once more. So when the going gets tough, the tough make jam!

I really think the kitchen has been a wonderful saver for me, what with making bread and soup and jam and pickles, all great stuff good to enjoy, but very therapeutic to make, too. Maybe that should be in the bereavement advice? feel sad? make pickles. feel bad? make jam. feel all angry and upset? punch out some bread...