Marguerite Blogs

Reading and more reading

2012-01-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

Several years ago a kind neighbor who is another avid reader began to bring me books from the public library. Then she found out about SOS, short for special outreach services, a program our public library has that pairs volunteers to a person who cannot go to the library and with the help of one of the library staff, delivers books. My library card stays with the librarian who emails me once a month to ask what my wants are and I respond with requests.

In November I requested books with a holiday theme and discovered Jan Karon. This marvelous writer wrote a Christmas themed story, called, I believe, Shepherds Abiding and I loved it. The next month's bag of books included In the Company of Others, which is truly one of my all time favorite books. Set in modern Ireland with flashbacks through a journal to the nineteenth century I was transported. The characters are also a bit older than I am instead of thirty-five years younger, so this helps a great deal, too.

I have read a great many mysteries over these past few years too. A lovely recent one was The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters. Her Amelia Peabody series is one of my all time favorites, along with Marjorie Allingham's Albert Campion series, and Dorothy Sayers Lord Peter.

Many of these books are "cozies", stories featuring amateur sleuths who have some other occupation in their lives than police work and who just happen to keep finding dead bodies and then figuring out who the murders were. They feature florists and chefs, bakery owners and quilters and they take place in knit shops and other small town venues.

Tonight I will go back to reading one of the chef's as she solves a murder.

I prefer stories that have good puzzles, interesting to quirky characters and one or few murders. I don't like the really, really dark stories especially since I read before going to sleep, but mainly because those are the kind of things that I am trying to avoid too much of on television.

Another favorite of mine is Earlene Fowler whose stories feature a heroine who is a small museum curator in a town on the Coast of Central California. Wonderful characters and very good writing make her books very good reads.

I have read most of Susan Albert Wittig's China Bayles series twice and think highly of them as well as the series of stories set in the Edwardian era that she co-authored with her husband under the pseudonym, Robin Paige.

If you have any books to recommend to me, please leave a comment.

I am so grateful for this service from the library and to the volunteer who brings my books and has become my friend.

Pancakes

2011-11-30T17:14:00.000-08:00

Most of the time when I run out of bread, I make whole wheat oatmeal muffins, an adaptation of mine from an old Betty Crocker recipe of the 1960's. Very moist and yummy. Other times I make buckwheat pancakes and spread them over a couple of days in place of bread. Cold pancakes may seem odd, but they are actually quite good.

Today I didn't want to take time with muffins--thought they would take too long to bake, so I opted for pancakes. But being out of mix--I like Bob's Red Mill's Buckwheat Pancake mix--I googled for a whole wheat buttermilk recipe.

Here is what I found

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/wheat-germ-whole-wheat-buttermilk-pancakes/detail.aspx

Yummy. They smell wonderful as they cook and puff up so that they are unbelievably light and airy. They would be wonderful topped with yogurt and blueberries, but I enjoyed just honey.

Perfect on a cold fall afternoon as lunch.

I am grateful for the Internet, which returns recipes at my fingertips and for food in the house that I can turn into quick and interesting meals that are also fairly nourishing. Happy eating!

A Year Later, Giving Back

2011-11-15T15:06:00.000-08:00

A year ago I was a patient at the Spinal Cord Injury Unit of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. I have written several times about that in this blog. To recap.

Last year, the day before Halloween, I could not stand up to rise from bed. After many years of living with the lifetime effects of polio, which I had as a child during the last big epidemic of 1953, and the somewhat more recent arrival of arthritis, I needed help.

That help came from the wonderful team of professionals at Rehab 1, as the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Unit at Valley Medical Center is known. There I was cared for with much kindness and outfitted with new durable medical equpiment and taught a whole range of new skills. For the very first time in my life, I was given the sense that living with disability for so long and simply caring for myself, was an accomplishment. It is one that I celebrate everyday now as I use my beautiful power wheel-chair, more valuable than a sports car to me, in place of the old manual chair and wooden crutches that had been my daily companions for decades.

Now, for the first time in many years I am doing simple things like exploring the neighborhood, joining a friend for coffee or lunch, going for a haircut (by myself!), or shopping in a physical store instead of only online. Now, I am living my life as a real person, instead of a virtual person. Having the freedom to do this is lovely.

I want to give back to the people who have helped me so much to continue to help their patients. So I have the following fundraiser to offer.

I am a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant. For the Fourth year in a row Mary Kay will donate one dollar from the sale of each of its three special Beauty that Counts™ lipstick shades that sell between Sept 16th and December 16th, 2011. I plan to match this for each of these lipsticks that I sell with $1 to Valley Medical Center Foundation for use in the Spinal Cord Injury Unit.

I will also donate one dollar from each of our hand creams that I sell for the same purpose. We have two hand cream fragrances, Peach and Fragrance free. Either of these would make a very nice hostess gift, stocking stuffer, gift exchange present or other small present. Consider buying a few extra to use as presents during the winter for non-holiday occasions.

Please help me to give back and to build my Mary Kay business by buying one of these lipsticks or hand creams for yourself or as a gift. I will, of course, be happy to show you more from our line of excellent products. Thank you so much.

You may order directly from my Mary Kay website http://wwwmarykay.com/margueritemanor/default.aspx

Travelling by Internet

2011-09-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

I have never been to Tennessee, but the other day a little of Tennessee came to me. Via the gift of the Internet and the United States Post Office, blending new and old technologies, beautiful beeswax candles and delicious, piquant honey arrived at my door. Here is a photo

I bought these items though Local Harvest http://www.localharvest.org/

I could not find candles near by so opted to go to the Heartland. Local Harvest is such a great venue. It can put us in touch with local producers, especially to see who vends at our Farmer's Markets and who provides Community Subscription Agriculture boxes in our local area as well as help us find more regional specialties all produced with care in small batches by small businesses throughout our country. This is an excellent way to help the economy become stable again!

I am grateful for this little bit of Tennessee and for the woman whose fine handwriting on the address label as well as her care in packing in addition to the products themselves showed me a glimpse of someone who cares about what she is doing to earn her living. May she, and all of us, prosper.

Bread, the Staff of Life

2011-09-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

A friend gifted me with the most sumptuous and scrumptious loaf of bread that I have ever had. Here are some pictures.

My bread never rises this high! I need lessons, or maybe I just need more patience.

My friend, who is a busy, busy person, said that she has found the time to work bread making into her schedule because the cost of bread has risen so much! I have seen this in my own grocery shopping. It is a comment on the bad state of our economy, I think when something so basic as bread becomes unaffordable.

On the other hand, it is good to regain control of something so basic as the bread that we put into our mouths by making it ourselves. Somehow, I think we need a revolution in this country to regain our time and do for ourselves the things we have allowed big companies to take over for us. So I will be making bread again.

First, though I want to know how my friend gets her bread to rise so much. Oh, and it tasted every bit as good as it looks!

I am grateful for bread, for the time to make it, for the friend who shared it and for friends to break it with.

Art by my Friend, Fe Langdon

2011-08-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

Today my friend Fe, whom I first met when she came from our local church as a communion minister, brought me lunch from our local Hobee's.

Fe is a gifted photographer and artist. She has been making cards for about as long as I have and in the course of our conversation as we talked about our art and craft, as well as catching up on our lives, she shared her website with me. The website, which she designed herself, is at this url

http://www.mycomfortcards.com/

Fe has expanded her art by taking classes in the book arts and graphic arts programs at Foothill College. Trained originally as an electrical engineer--Fe holds a Master's in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University--her eye for the artistry in nature is, I believe, inspired from that discipline and then transcended by her spiritual quest and gentle personality.

I commend her art and her website to you. She will be away for part of this month and part of next, so if you send her an order, please be patient. She will respond, I am sure.

Fe is one of the people who gifts my life with her friendship and I am so grateful for her and grateful to be able to share her art with you.

Another Wheelchair Throw

2011-07-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

For years I have enjoyed knitting washcloths. Here is a patchwork throw with an elaborate pouch attached that is made from sewn together washcloths.

This is photographed from the viewpoint that the user would have. It is made from Lion Cotton yarn that is made in America and it is washable. I love this yarn because it comes in beautiful colors and knits into a soft fabric.

Pattern coming soon.

I am grateful to see this project coming to fruition.

First Wheelchair Lap Throw

2011-07-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

My knitting lately has consisted of making lap throws that will fit the needs of a wheelchair user. These need to be sized so that they do not drag and catch in the wheels and they need some way to hold them in place so that they don't slide off the lap of the user.

The first problem is solved simply with the use of a measuring tape. The second is solved by attaching a tab with a buttonhole so that the tab will loop over the user's seat belt and then button onto the throw. A pocket is also part of the design, made to sit on the person's lap.

Here is a picture of the one I am currently finishing made from red, white and blue Lion Cotton (yarn made in America).

The ungainly looking hole is actually a knitted in slit for a pocket that will be added to the wrong side. Here is the pocket before it is sewn together and then sewn in.

The tab is made but not yet attached, so that will be a photo in the next post.

The pattern will be posted on my Etsy site as a pdf file for immediate delivery. I plan to donate a portion of my sales for this and similar patterns, to Valley Medical Foundation for the Spinal Cord Injury Unit's use.

The most difficult part of the design, I think, will be writing the instructions for placing the pocket to be sewn into the throw. I got it wrong several times before I got it right, just in the doing yesterday, so writing it will be an interesting challenge. If it is truly never to late to learn, then I guess it is not too late to become a technical writer, even if it is just for my own patterns.

I am so grateful today that the heat wave has ended and I am making progress on projects I have been planning for several months.

Fourth of July, 2011

2011-07-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

Technically, I am a day early. Once the Fourth of July was a holiday. Now it is a long weekend. For a while last week, it looked like it was going to be a winter holiday complete with cold and rain. Now it has warmed up considerably. Better for watching fireworks displays and back yard barbecue. I am engaging in neither--will probably watch the Capitol Fourth special on PBS.

I love red, white and blue not only for the signal of patriotism that they bring to mind but because they are a gorgeous color combination. My knitting project is a red, white and blue lap throw designed to be sized for use by a wheelchair user, like me. (Will post soon.)

It is difficult to get excited about red, white and blue, in the patriotic sense, this year, because the economy is still such a mess and so many other problems abound, here and abroad.

It is also difficult not to be cynical about patriotism because there has been so much co-opting of it by politicians serving their own interests and not the common good.

The spectacle of California's annual budget debacle, which occurs ominously close to the Fourth of July each year, was mitigated by the fact of a signed budget. It would have been a better budget if the sales tax and vehicle registration taxes had been extended.

A total government melt-down at the Federal level looms large and threatening if the debt ceiling is not raised. This must be done. I am disgusted by the posturing of politicians who threaten the well-being of every one of us by their blustering.

Social Security and Medicare, the biggest fuller of budget deficits, could, I believe, be fully funded, with a small increase in payroll tax or getting rid of the cap on the amount of income that is taxed. (In other words, tax all of it--the percent might actually decline.) What a federal budget drain could be eliminated if we would just pay for what we need! Instead, we cut providers payments and threaten deeper cuts and changes in these programs. We have a government that creates dependency and then threatens to pull the programs away--not a great model of a "social contract".

We then feel helpless to do anything about it, although we can do more than we think by participating in government. Voting, writing letters, joining caucuses and action groups, setting up new co-coalitions are all things that we can do.

It's also a good time to think about buying American, and buying small. Patronizing local businesses and helping to set up more. How can we invest in one another, not in giant corporations?

2011 is such a time of discouragement and disgruntlement with our economy and our government that it is difficult to feel celebratory. Maybe we need to look to the Founding Fathers, who got together and did something about it.

What can we do after the bunting comes down and flags are put away and grills are cleaned? Let's make something together--a more civil, decent, healthier and more economically viable America.

I hope so. I think we still can. After we give thanks for the Declaration of Independence and for our freedoms and our democracy, lets get involved in it again.

I am grateful today to have the Fourth of July to celebrate. I am grateful too for beautiful weather, for a friend who is expected this afternoon and for friends who visited on Friday. Grateful, for the opportunities to think about what can be done and hopeful that more will be accomplished.

Today, this eve of the Fourth of July, I am asking myself what more can I do, how can I become more involved?

Juneuary

2011-06-04T11:43:00.000-07:00

Normally, it doesn't rain in Northern California in June. Today I woke to the sound of rain on my gravel roof. Real rain, not the drip-drop, wish we could do it, but we're not quite making it sound of the last week or so. According to the weather forecasts by next week it will be warm. We'll see!

Since it has been so cold this spring, I have put off pricing cooling devices for the outside of my house. Many yards, which used to have trees, have now sprouted umbrellas. According to neighbors whom I've talked to, these actually do work.

I have also looked at shade sails online and at coolaroo screening and bamboo or vinyl shades. I know that the day will come when I will wish that I had swathed the exterior of the house in something. Hopefully, those days will be few and not during the longest days of summer.

Volunteers from a local group, SILVAR, Silicon Valley Association of Realtors, came a few weeks ago and rearranged my living room furniture!. It looks and feels so much nicer now--I wish it could have happened ten years ago!

Then a young friend, who had some brief vacation time between the end of school and the beginning of her summer internship in the nation's capitol, came and moved more furniture from one bedroom to another and inside of the one that is now my sewing room.

All of this makes me so happy and so grateful. The house that I have lived in all of my life is finally becoming my home.

So I may be a little chilly today but I am profoundly grateful, too. It is a day for doing cozy things and puttering at decluttering--putting back the things that were moved so the furniture could be moved.

Thank you to everyone who has been helping me so much!

A Roll Around My Neighborhood

2011-05-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while friends worked on my yard, I took myself off for a roll around my neighborhood to look at the roses and other blooming things. So many pretty yard treatments! When I returned my friends had moved into my backyard. It has been almost fifteen years (maybe longer) since I have been in my backyard. Yesterday I looked at the pavers and thought that the wheelchair and I could do it. (Probably not regularly, though. I don't want to wear out my chair.) Here I am sitting in my own backyard!

Here are some of the roses that captivated me as I rolled and photographed what I saw.

The white roses where fragrant as well as beautiful. What a lovely day. I am so grateful.

More Made in America

2011-05-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

A few posts back I wrote about "Made in America". Here are a few more knitting projects made from American Yarn,

This small pink bag, made with a crocheted button and designed to fit over a wheel chair belt first appeared as a swatch. It is made from Caron, Simply Soft. The button is so cute! These buttons are also great fun to make. At the beginning, the little project doesn't look at all like a button, not even button like. Then at the last pull through, pop, a button! I found this tutorial, www.beatknitting.com/2008/11/crochet-button-tutorial.html

I hope to have a pattern for this little beauty up on Etsy before too long.

The next two projects are made from a pattern that I adapted from a kit. I believe that the seller is Country Wool, http://www.countrywool.com . Country Wool carries yarn from Brown Sheep Company.

Here are the pictures

I am grateful for the fun that I have with knitting; that the things that I make are useful and pretty and that I can still find yarn that is made in America.

Easter already

2011-04-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

When I last posted it was still early in Lent. Time has been telescoping on me, but I am spending time in tinkering and crafty and cooking pursuits. (Anything to avoid writing, which is what I should be doing!)

Friends gave me this lovely lily

I have been making Feta and Green Onion scones following the recipe for Savory Cheese and Green Onion scones on Farm girl foodie (link under blogs to the right.)

I am going to watch the Easter Vigil from the Vatican on EWTN, savor the music and the beauty, while remembering friends near and far and some gone now whom I celebrated with when I was young. Our priest, who always sang the ite missa est twice with the alleluias after it, because he couldn't resist the sheer joyful beauty of it.

A blessed, joyful and beautiful Easter to everyone. I am so grateful to be here and to have these memories and traditions. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to my life so far.

Made in America

2011-03-10T19:20:00.000-08:00

I have been following ABC's World News Tonight's feature, Made in America and decided to look at some of my own things. To my dismay, my bears, who keep me company while I type, and are quiet while I tear the house apart no matter how much they might want to talk back, are all made in China!

Some yarn, however, is made in America. Below is a small knitted pocket that I am making from some left over Dazzelaire, a Caron acrylic. On the back of the label is a small logo that reads, "Made with pride in the USA". I have had the yarn for sometime though and could not find where the yarn is currently made when I went to the company's website.

Here is the yarn in its wrapper along with the pocket or pouch, which I am designing to be worn over a belt. My new wheelchair has a belt and such a pouch would be most useful, I think and might be useful to others as well.

Sometime ago I made a wrap-around or circular shawl using this yarn and it has seen much use and washed well.

Another scarf from another Caron yarn, Simply Soft is here.

The star in the label below to the far left has the made with pride in the USA wording around it.

Finally, I found a swatch in another color of the Simply Soft, that I will probably make into a small purse or another over the belt pouch.

I am grateful to find some things "Made in America" in my house. Can't help wondering if the hand-dyed yarn that I have thoroughly enjoyed using, which is largely natural-fiber and more high end, is also made in America.

Knitting again is also good. It is something that I missed while I was in the hospital and wasn't sure I could take up again, since the set-up of the new wheelchair is so different from the old one. But accommodations and adaptations are being made almost daily here proving that one is never too old to learn. I am grateful for this too.

Spring Not

2011-02-27T11:17:00.000-08:00

And then it got cold. Some elevations near me received snow. Very pretty in the news. Not so much so for gardeners near those higher elevations.

The news casters talked about the last two times it snowed in the Bay Area low enough for it to stick in San Francisco.

In February 1976 it snowed and I have pictures of Papa scraping snow off the windshield of my 1964 Rambler Ambassador. That is the nearest that car came to snow.

In January 1962 I woke up one Sunday morning (at least memory calls it a Sunday) to look out my bedroom window on a backyard that looked like someone had taken a giant sugar duster to the yard and sprinkled powdered sugar all over it. I couldn't believe my eyes and I hurried out to the dining room to open the floor-to-ceiling drapes for a better look! Wow! It wasn't powdered sugar at all ! It was snow. I woke up the rest of the family to come see my amazing discovery.

This time it did not snow at the lower elevations as predicted on Thursday and Friday. In fact, it barely rained. Some weird convergence of pressure systems made for unusual weather.

Is it global warming or some other source of climate change, or just odd weather? Humans have always noticed and talked about the weather. After all, at its extremes weather can wreak havoc with our lives, remind us of how fragile we are and how much we are not in control of nature.

Maybe that is why we like the theory of global warming so much--it puts us in a central position and in control. Not to say we should be wasting fossil fuels the way we do, but I do think there are other reasons not to waste.

I would love to see less waste, and I would love to see the true cost of our wasteful misuse of nature's bounty factored into the cost of the things we buy and discard so haphazardly. I have wanted to see that since I was an undergraduate in college in the 1960's and a fellow student in Econ 1A raised the question of how we could or should factor in the cost of the use of non-renewable natural resources. It is a disappointment to me that almost fifty years later we still don't have any formulas for doing this.

If someone knows of a history of climate or weather that I could request next month from the library as one of my monthly books, I would appreciate it. The historian in me questions some of what I hear as science. (Just a skeptic at heart, I guess.)

I am grateful to live in a free society, where I can be a skeptic, and where I can even show what may be my ignorance without worrying about reprisals. Grateful too, very grateful that I have a warm spot to hunker down in today, more than enough tasks to keep me busy--which ones to choose first--and that the weather is warming up.

A blessed Sunday to everyone.

Signs of Spring

2011-02-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

Daffodils blooming in the ground and in the flower pots show that spring is here. Flowering plum blossoms, with their beautiful pink flowers, are opening to the longer days. Blue hyacinths and grape hyacinths bloom. I would go out and take pictures to illustrate this post except for one major un-Spring like thing--a blast of cold air is coming at us from Canada. Rain, mixed with snow and snowflakes are predicted for tomorrow and Saturday.

It is so cold that I just want to hunker in front of the space heaters.

Girl Scout cookies are another sign of spring. Two boxes of Thin Mints--my absolute all-time cookie favorite have arrived and disappeared. (I definitely cannot eat just one Thin Mint!

Another sign of spring is cleaning! I am rearranging the middle, and smallest, bedroom in my house to be a true sewing and crafts studio. This involves a lot of packing and hauling things from one part of the house to another. Then unpacking and inventory work is completed.

Far more fabric has emerged than I would ever have thought that I had, saved for decades. Books that came home from graduate school and were neatly stowed beneath the bed await disposal in the garage. (Either the local library for their on-going friends sale or the Salvation Army will receive the books, I hope.)

Less yarn than I thought that I had has emerged--guess I've knitted most of it and don't really have a stash-exceeding-life-expectancy after all!

It is a good day to re-do my Etsy shop, which I have been re-arranging, read blogs and research recipes. Spring will come. In the meantime, I am grateful that it isn't any colder than it is! Praying also for no power outages, like the one that hit Toledo earlier in the week as a result of an ice storm.

Stay warm and dry everyone!

Equipment for Independence

2011-01-29T15:24:00.000-08:00

I am using a power chair now. A friend took this picture of the chair.

Slide boards are an integral part of the day's routines now. The first is my wooden one.

The next one, my acrylic triangle board, custom made by TAP Plastics, is a work of art and of community. The whole team of Physical Therapists and one of the Occupational Therapists pitched in to help, taking measurements, snapping a photo and emailing it to me and finally drawing templates. I loved the process and the way the team interacted. It was so great. I think of them whenever I pick this board up, which is several times a day.

I think this is a thing of beauty.

I am grateful for these tools. The power chair allows me to get out of the house. Two weeks ago a friend walked with me, in the mild spring weather we were having, showing me the route to take to our local shopping center, where I got my haircut. This week I will go out for a doctor's appointment and I began the year with a trip in the rented wheelchair van to go see another doctor in San Jose. Three outings in the first five weeks of the year! Wow! If I don't count going to hospitals last year, this is more than I got out in the last two years.

I am grateful for friends who are helping me to develop new skills too.

Home from Rehab with New Equipment and New Skills

2010-11-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

It turned out that all of my "amateur" efforts to resolve my pain were not enough. On Oct 30 I could not stand up to get out of bed. On Oct 31, with the help of very dear and kind friends who are like a second family to me, I went to the ER at Stanford University Hospital. There I was "admitted for observation" and a team of experts determined that I should go to the Spinal Cord Injury, Rehabilitation Unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center--also known as Rehab 1.

While most of the patients who come there do have spinal cord injuries, some do not. Some have broken bones that are mending, and some like me, are "old polios", with post-polio syndrome. (It is a premier center for the treatment of "post--polio syndrome" as well as spinal cord injuries; it is in fact, where my "post polio syndrome" was first diagnosed over twenty years ago.)

It is questionable whether I will walk again, partly because it was deemed that it wasn't (and isn't) safe for me to be doing it especially since I live alone, and partly because the pain was caused by the spinal stenosis creating enough nerve damage that it may not be possible for me to walk again. Of course, I hope that with time the nerves will heal. On the other hand, my parents probably hoped that for a good part of late 1953 and much of 1954......

Needless to say, there are grief issues surrounding this. (And that is probably an understatement.) There is also good news. I came home in a power chair (on loan until my own is delivered) I have a new haircut--from a mandatory recreational therapy outing--in the power chair--to the little hair salon across the street from the rehab center. I went out to lunch--another outing--something that I haven't done for so long that I can't remember how long.

I was cared for with such gentle kindness and marvelous competency that I miss everyone enormously. The nurses are the best. They come from all over the world. I fell in love with them and will remember them for a very long time. (The nurse assistants also.)

The PT's (Physical Therapists) are the best I have ever had except for one young woman who worked with me in Chicago in my halycon graduate school days. They are in the same league. I miss working with them six days a week! I miss the gym equipment and I am doing the exercises that they taught me. I do not want this body to become "deconditioned" again!

The best OT (Occupational Therapist) and one of the finest people I have ever met brought me home within the first three days of my admission to see whether the house was suitable for me to continue to live in. (It was, thank God!) She determined what changes I should make and friends pitched in to accomplish the heroic task of moving things around so that a hospital bed could be delivered. (Power up, power down makes transfers easier.)

Then she taught me how to transfer with a slide board, use various new equipment for (ahem) various daily tasks. Then she brought me home again to make sure everything was in place. It was--almost. The hospital bed people had delivered the wrong bed. She quickly got it sorted out and they--just as quickly corrected their error.

I am now sleeping in the "pretty room", that I blogged about so many, many posts ago when my young friend, now about to graduate from college, painted it that summer after her high school graduation. It is satisfying to fall asleep and wake-up to the color scheme I chose and the rose curtains that my sister made that year.

If there are any typos here, please blame them on the squirrels--they have been distracting me for at least the last hour with their antics in my trees where they are finding a Thanksgiving feast of their own.

I have so much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. I have always thought of the old Beatles song, "We get by with a little help from our friends." I have gotten by and am getting by with a great deal of help from my friends, old friends and new ones. Thank you everyone!

Heat Waves, House Guests and Chronic Pain

2010-10-15T10:39:00.001-07:00

I see that it has been a long time since I posted. The weeks flew by, punctuated by heat waves during which I mostly stay away from my computer. The house heats and heats and finally feels like it is going to explode. Then it cools. Relief that I can almost feel in the rafters.

My family visited briefly. The visit was marred by a heat wave! We are just finishing one now. The days are shorter, so the heat is not so oppressive and the fall light and colors give the experience a different quality from the high heat of summer. Somehow, with the knowledge that winter is coming, the heat is not so difficult to bear or so oppressive.

This morning as I looked out of my bedroom window I saw a trio of great red globes hanging low on my neighbor's pomegranate tree. Beautiful, beautiful fruit of fall.

Chronic pain has been plaguing me for month. A combination of sciatica, spinal stenosis and arthritis. I think that, with the help of the web, I am finally getting the positioning of pillows and bolsters arranged just so and the morning pain is lessening. The web has also yielded information about herbal and homeopathic remedies that are helping somewhat.

I am waiting for a package that contains a bottle of MSM, a supplement that I wish I had known about earlier. It will be interesting to see if it lives up to its reputation.

Gratitude filled my heart this morning when the pain on arising was not so bad. It is a beautiful day and the hummingbirds are feeding on the pineapple sage. My favorite time of the year. So I will hang on the gratitude and let it carry the day.

Remembering Mama

2010-09-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

Today, if she were still alive, my mother would be 100 years old. I am glad that she is no longer struggling in her body, as she surely would be if she had lived this long. But I do miss her. I wonder what she would make of the Internet and Facebook. Had that come along in her lifetime, I am sure she would have used it well to connect with the women whom she had gone to high school and then nursing school with in the 1920's and 1930's.

She lived through the watersheds of the Great War (World War I), World War II, the Great Depression and Vatican II. She knew food shortages and rationing--I remember her stories about adding food coloring to the margarine to make it look like butter and the shortage of sugar during World War II. I am sure that she and her mother must have planted a Victory Garden.

She loved pretty things--I still have a plum-velvet gown that she wore to go dancing and several vintage bags that speak "roaring twenties" when I take them out of my drawers now and hold them in my hands.

Mama made the best lemon-meringue pie that I have ever eaten. So much so that neither of her daughters even try to replicate it. She also made stuffed cabbage and apple dumplings, good German dishes that filled a cold winter's day kitchen with warmth and wonderful smells.

I remember "helping" her to make a meatloaf when I was about four. Her patience was amazing. I also remember wanting to imitate her by ironing--I was allowed to start with the dish towels, pillow cases and Papa's handkerchiefs and work up gradually to more complicated items. Eventually, I was accomplished enough to use the Mangle not only for flat things but even for my father's dress shirts.

Mama was an accomplished musician, singing in the church choir and playing the piano. The piano has not been played for many years, but will move to Phoenix soon, I hope, there to be played by her great-grandchildren.

She would have loved the picture-sharing of digital photography and the Internet that makes it possible to see a new-born baby or the Christmas celebration almost immediately. Her daughters have not learned how to use Skype yet, but I think she would be using it.

I live in the house she lived in. I cook with her pots and pans, bread pan and tools. While I have added some things of my own, there is a continuity here that I love. I love picking up tools that either of my parents used and having a sense of connection of my hands to their hands. I still have the yellow Pyrex bowl that Mama used to mix that meatloaf in that I helped to make when I was four.

The furniture in the living room is the same--some of it belonged to my Grandmother. It has become "antique", simply by lasting for so long. I like thinking about Mama and her Mama when I go into my living room.

When my mother was a child, Gregorian Chant was the norm for the liturgy of the Catholic church. The school, St. Mary's, that Mama attended as a child, had its own prayer book for the children. I have that book. I also have her beautiful First Communion prayer book and a collection of missals that she treasured. She and Papa were both grateful to find a Gregorian Mass in the seventies, and I am grateful that community is still here.

I wonder what she would make of today's culture, all the media blur, the noise and distractions and especially the incivility. I remember both of my parents for their courtesy and kindness.

So I remember you my dear, today. One hundred years is a long time indeed. I am grateful for this lady who was my mother. Grateful to be alive to remember her, too.

A Plenitude of Apples

2010-09-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

A dear friend has a magnificent apple tree in his backyard. He has been bringing me the bounty of this tree in large bags for the last several weeks. I think I have received at least a peck of beautiful, wonderful and very yummy fruit. We think they are Gravensteins, a variety that has a short season and a short shelf life and may be particular to California. They are slightly tart.

Here is a picture of some in a bucket.

I also have two drawers full in the refrigerator, but wouldn't dare to take pictures! The state of my refrigerator is not publishable.

Sunday afternoon a friend made apple sauce and apple chunks that are frozen in my freezer, waiting for cooler weather and company to make a pie.

Last week, we had a truly killer heat wave for several days. I had forgotten how miserable I could be in my un-air-conditioned house! So I have not fulfilled my intentions for this blog, or for much of anything else. Hopefully, this week's heat wave will not be so bad and next week things will be better.

I am grateful for the apples, for the kindness of friends and for the respite that cooler weather brought.

Dream Pillows

2010-08-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

I have begun making dream pillows to add to my herbal products line.Dream pillows have a long history of use for soothing and helping people to sleep. Small sachets or pillows that can be placed inside the pillow case of one's regular pillow. When I first tried this I was skeptical, but I found immediately that it worked. The herbs really did soothe and I dropped off to sleep more quickly and slept more soundly than I had before. That was with a pillow of mixed herbs, that like most of my mixtures is fairly complicated.

Then I added a hops pillow. Hops flowers are a pale green and smelly beery. (Funny about that, since hops dried in a different way to a different stage are an integral part of beer making.) I didn't think that I could sleep with them in my pillow. But they did not distract as I had thought that they would, but simply worked their magic.

Dream pillows have no bad side effects, are non-addicting, have no calories and are inexpensive compared to the drugs that are sold as "sleep aids". (Notice the drug companies no longer call them "sleeping pills".)

Our foremothers knew so much about herbs and grew them and prepared them annually for use by their families. It is a joy to be part of this tradition.

I will be posting my dream pillows for sale on Etsy soon. In the meantime, here are pictures.

I liked the rather "tweedy" effect of the lavender and buckwheat hulls in the bowl. Buckwheat hulls help to keep the herbs from being too overpowering.

I am grateful for the herbs, for the lore that dates back centuries and for the connection that they give me to the "wise-woman" traditions of my ancestors. Grateful too for the technology that allows me to find and buy the supplies and materials, blog about them and offer them for sale. How different my prospects are now than they were twenty years ago.

Createability Team on Etsy

2010-08-05T18:45:00.001-07:00

Shortly after I wrote the post last week on the ADA, I joined the Creatability Team on Etsy. Very supportive and creative group of people that I am glad to belong to, it is comprised of people with disabilities or people who care for others with disabilities.

The products range from those specifically intended for disabled users, such as an ingenious and patented, cane-catcher to items intended for medical professionals such as stethoscope covers, something that would, I think make a much nicer present for a nurse or nurse assistant than the usual candy.

Artists, photographers, knitters, soap makers and jewelry makers abound in the group. So many, many pretty things--makes me wish I could win the lottery so that I could buy them all and bestow them as presents on all of my friends!

I have posted the link to the group's blog in my blog links to the right and hope that anyone who reads my blog will go read and follow the Createability Blog as well.

I have not felt so excited or hopeful or focused in a very long time. Being welcomed by people in the group made me smile and feel comforted and included.

Only modern technology could make this possible. I am so grateful for the group and for the Internet.

Americans with Disabilities Act anniversary

2010-07-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

All this week I have been seeing and hearing that July 26, Monday was the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA by President Bush, senior. I had not realized that it was that long ago.

I have not seen much in the way of results from this act, actually. I know, from reading on the web, that my old dormitory in Graduate School, International House at the University of Chicago has finally been retrofitted for wheelchair access. Decades after I lived there. Still it is good to see.

Ramps still seem to be constructed at too high a pitch for many people with manual wheelchairs to use independently. I have often thought that the people who use them ought to be consulted, rather than merely putting able-bodied architects to work on them.

Physical access isn't really the primary issue, though, in my opinion. Financial access is the primary issue. In a world in which able-bodied people work at home from their computers, this functionality should be available to the disabled as well.

Micro-entrepreneurship should be encouraged as well. The Department of Labor, the Small Business Administration and even the Social Security Administration all comment on their web-sites that disabled people have a higher success rate than non-disabled people in starting our own businesses and making them succeed.

Barriers exist here, however, and I think that it is important to bring them down. The greatest barrier is the paternalism of the culture of disability benefits that has been set by the Social Security Administration itself. For years I have called this the "institutionalized poverty of disability benefits."

The amount that people can earn while still receiving benefits needs to be set higher. The discrimination against the "non-blind" disabled (SSA's designation) in favor of the "blind" disabled needs to be set right. Specifically the earning formula for the "non-blind" needs to be raised to that of the "blind" category. Or, better yet, people need to be allowed to work half-time at whatever is customary and usual for their field in their area (or half the median income in their area, if they are self-employed.) If this were done, there would be a greater incentive for many people to earn. The reason that it is so important to maintain the benefits is that if the cash benefit goes away so does medical care and that is so necessary that many people trade trying to get out of poverty for not living in fear of no medical care.

Greater earning power on the part of the disabled would decrease the need for ancillary services such as In-Home Support services that are constantly endangered by budget cuts. Greater earning power on the part of the disabled would increase the tax revenue bases from the federal down to the local level.

Another barrier for micro-entrepreneurs is the lack of capital and the lack of marketing and networking skills. I think that local communities could do a great deal to help by setting up grant programs and mentoring and networking help. Local Chambers of Commerce could do a great deal here by establishing memberships at no cost for the first year or two for small businesses owned by disabled entrepreneurs who can show that they are at a cash disadvantage. Community service organizations could join in as well, providing, along with the Chambers, mentoring and networking help.

Individuals, neighbors and friends, church members could help too by patronizing such small businesses and thereby giving the best encouragement that there is--increase in cash-flow.

Poverty does not exist only in the Third World; it is here in our local communities. Many of the poorest members of our communities are disabled--disabled by poverty as well as by the physical bodies which do not function as well as others do. Lets change this and make the disabled fully economically empowered as the ADA originally intended.

Look for and support the businesses of your disabled friends and neighbors. Please. Thank you.

I am grateful for being able to make this message available and I hope that it helps others as well as myself.

Garbling Herbs

2010-07-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

Saturday I spent a delightful two hours garbling peppermint. Garbling is the old-fashioned and technical term used by herbalists to denote the process of stripping dried herb leaves from their stems. When I was finished I had a quart bag of the most beautiful, delicious smelling peppermint leaves and a pile of equally aromatic stems.

The peppermint was organically grown and then dried by my friend, G, who has a magnificent garden in the hills above Silicon Valley. She generously shared her harvest with me.

I love the word, "garbling". Like a little kid with a new word, I have been repeating it every chance I get over the last week.

The weather has returned to normal for us. Cool in the mornings and warm but not hot in the afternoons. A blessed and beautiful sea breeze comforts us and makes it possible to enjoy the long days, rather than trying to hide from the light, which also means heat.

Last night as I opened the curtain in one room, to let this delicious air through, I noticed that my neighbor's pomegranate tree still has flowers on it. I have been wondering for several weeks how much longer the flowers would last and when the fruit would show. It is there now. Small, shiny red balls set just above the flowers look like Christmas ornaments. So beautiful and so promising!

Another friend brought me a peck of Gravenstein apples yesterday. I should freeze apple slices for later, but will probably share them instead. Peeling is one of the small hand tasks my hands no longer like to do and I prefer to comfort them with easy tasks rather than push them in frustration.

Gratitude is large in my mind this morning. Gratitude for beautiful things from friends' gardens, for the climate that I live in and for the gift of electricity. The house fan is running in the background, for the house is still stuffy. Without electricity none of the fans would work; the computer could never have even been imagined, let alone become so ubiquitous in our lives. Our lives would not be the same at all.

Still, while we depend on technology, we also do what our ancestors did, harvesting fruit and garbling herbs. I like the connections and am glad to be alive at this time.

Summer Notes

2010-07-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

I seem to have taken an unintentional vacation from blogging! Summer's pace has quickened. More visits from friends, truly one of the best parts of this season. More decluttering of my house--will this never end? More product planning and product making. (A friend told me just this week that with one of my lavender sachets tucked into the pillowcase, she took the most refreshing nap she had ever had. I am pleased!)

I am weathering a heat wave, not my favorite part of summer. New, strong fans help a great deal. As I type, windows are open and fans are pulling cool air into the house. Soon it will be time to put the computer to sleep for the day, shut all the windows, pull all the blinds and curtains and hunker down for the long hours of daylight. It will be hot today and the cooling dark is a long way away. I am telling myself that it will come.

I am reading another Susan Wittig Albert book, one of her Beatrix Potter series. Very different voice, style and characters from her China Bayles series, which I absolutely love.

Need to do some research into the old USDA calorie counting book. Portions commonly used or something like that. Quite a few of the brand names have changed; the culprits remain the same--too many calories from carbs and fats.

Have noticed that consumption of too much soluble fiber increases chronic lower back pain. But what is called a "low-residue" diet, according to my Internet searches, is ghastly both from the standpoint of taste and nutrition. Where is the midway point? That always is the question.

The plumbing in the house was sluggish. Neighbors suggested, after plunging for me two times in three days, that the addition of a biodegradable micro-organism product for drains put into my "clean-out" drain might help. It did! Hurrah!

So today will be a day for fans, and a wet towel around my neck. I found the ice cap last night and was pleased--now do I have ice in the freezer? A friend will bring lunch, Safeway will deliver and maybe I can take a nap this afternoon. Then there will be one more day of this particular heat-wave and it should break. When it does, the feel of the air-flow off the ocean, the Bay Area's "natural air-conditioning" will be a benediction, reminding me that what one friend said recently, "Trust in God. God does always hear our prayers", will be true.

I am grateful for the cool air, the electricity that powers my fans and for survival. Hot weather always makes me think of the pioneers and reminds me that we are not in charge of the universe.

Lavender

2010-06-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Lavender is one of the most beautiful herbs that can be planted in a garden. In a Mediterranean climate the plants will last a very long time. Mine is over twenty years old. Even when it is not blooming, it is a lovely plant and while the flowers are used for culinary, medicinal, decorative and personal care products, the leaves are also fragrant.

Here is my one remaining lavender plant in bloom

I believe that this particular lavender plant is English lavender. My favorite, Hidcote, which was a deeper, bluer color, died out a few years ago. It was planted too close to the edge of the planting bed and did not have enough room. After a decade, lavender will be a big plant, so give it plenty of room.

Culinary uses include Lavender Sugar (see the link to the Spice House at the right), Lavender Chocolate cupcakes, lavender syrup (think addition to lemonade), and all kinds of scones, cupcakes and cookies. Lavender sugar is delicious on toast as a lovely way to start off the day.

Medicinal uses include headache remedies and little dream pillows to aid in sleep. Lavender has such a strong fragrance though, that many people find it overwhelming. It can make a headache worse if you are one of the people who has a sensitivity to it.

Decorative uses include bouquets, both fresh and dried, and wreaths. Lavender sachets can fill a bowl and will make a much nicer air freshener than anything manufactured in a spray can or plug-in. Lavender sachets have long been used in linen chests and closets with stored clothes and shoes. Nice in suitcases too!

Lavender soap is beautiful and lavender is used in fragrances as well.

Here is a big bowl of my lavender sachets. The day that I was working on them, I found them to be so pretty that I had to bring them altogether.

I love the charm squares, small squares of fabric that are pre-cut as part of the quilting industry and the pretty ribbons. Making these brings together my love of plants and my love of fabric and color. The sachets would be pretty on a wreath, too.

I am grateful for the fine old plant that still graces my garden and for the lovely fabrics that I am finding from other Etsy sellers. Grateful, too, for the beautiful, fine weather we are enjoying now that summer is here.

Remembering

2010-06-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

Today, I have been remembering my father, who died eleven years ago today. He was the soul of patience and kindness and one of the most devout (although private about it) Catholics I have ever known. I still miss him, although I think it is fair to say that I no longer grieve except in the general sense perhaps, that grieving, like original sin, is a part of the human condition.

I lit a candle for him on Gratefulness.org http://bit.ly/9e9ZxN Gratefulness is one of my all time favorite web sites. I was intrigued the very first time that I found it that it is possible to light the candle by clicking on the link--and then the flame flickers! It is lovely.

Papa was a handsome man, with the good looks known as "black Irish"--dark, dark brown hair with red and gold highlights, thick, curly hair and green eyes. He also had long, dark eyelashes. Mama commented on both the hair and the eyelashes in a kind of sighing, life-isn't-fair-tone, that men had all the luck. (Of course, I am sure that both attributes had helped attract her to him in the first place!)

He was not tall, but he was strong. Working after school and on weekends while he was young unloading groceries at the store's dock and stocking shelves had done for him what gym workouts do for young men today. Shoveling snow and using a push mower on the lawns of our houses as well as walking the dog kept him in shape until emphysema began to assert itself when he was in his sixties.

Shortly before I had polio, Papa was teaching me to ride a two-wheeled bike, with the "training wheels" gradually being raised on the back of it and I remember that Fall that he was teaching me to roller skate as well. He walked backwards, gently holding my hands, while I skated towards him until I could let go and then he was simply there to lend me confidence that he would catch me if I fell.

"Confidence that he would catch me if I fell", that sums up a lot about the the good fatherly relationship that he had with both his daughters. He was there for us in so many ways that we didn't even realize then, for we took it as normal that both parents would be there, but that now we look back from the vantage point of aging and see it for the tremendous gift that it was.

He took me to the airport with all my trunks and suitcases and just plain stuff when I left home for graduate school in Chicago. A few years earlier he had proudly walked my sister down the aisle of the little church we loved so much in Palo Alto, watching a few days later as her new husband's car and the u-haul it pulled rounded the corner and they drove out of sight, beginning the journey of their new life together in Ohio.

So many years later, eleven years ago this week, we all came together again as the choir he loved, and that I had once sung with, sang him home to his new life after death. I do not believe in eternal "rest", since I think it is too passive. I do hope for eternal rejoicing and I hope that includes a good bit of remembrance and reminiscing. (Papa was also blessed with the Irish gift of gab and a great story-teller.)

I don't believe that our culture values fatherhood enough, and I think that I have written about that before, here in this blog. I can remember that Papa did not like the sit-coms that were popular in the late 50's and early 60's because they made the fathers look like such dummies--or even fall-guys for the patient and always right wife, or the too smart kid. He most certainly did not fit that model!

I am grateful today for the life of this good man and the great gift of family life that I was given as a child. Grateful too for the way in which my parents instilled the old-fashioned virtues by living them every day in their marriage and their relationship to us.

It is good to have had such a father.

Frederick James Manor

February 16, 1920-June 8, 1999

Requiescat in Pace

Rejoice with the angels forever.

Blooming Now, Poppies in My Garden

2010-06-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

Poppies, pink, coral and red have been putting on a show for most of the last month. For a time they were joined by delicate, pale blue love-in-mist. The effect was quite pretty. For the last week the poppies have made me think of Flanders Field--"the poppies blow, between the crosses row on row." It is so appropriate that the bloom around the time of Memorial Day. Here are a friend took yesterday with my camera when he joined me for lunch.

According to various seed sources I have consulted, poppies come in red, pink, lavender, coral, gold, purple and even white. I would like to see the whole array of colors planted and blooming somewhere.

Summer has come. The weather is warm, highs in the seventies. The windows are open letting in the most delicious breezes as well as the sounds of suburban life--doves cooing mixed with leaf blowers. Ah, well! The house is a bit stuffy in the evenings, but fairly comfortable. The transition from winter habits to summer ones goes gently, although I fear the time is coming for ice water, wet cloths around my neck and fans going to a noise level that makes me feel I will lose my mind. I hope not and am determined to enjoy this respite of near perfection for the time it lasts.

I am grateful for the poppies, the friend who planted them, who is now sailing down the coast of Ecuador to Peru with her husband on their boat. (See the link to the blog Sea of Change, if you would like to follow this adventure.) I think of her when I watch the poppies waving in the breeze.

I am thankful too, for trees, which lend their shade and soughing sound as the wind passes through to the ambiance of gentle summer days.

Hawthorn, Hope and Pentecost

2010-05-23T11:03:00.001-07:00

Several years ago my friend who is studying to be an herbal practitioner told me that Hawthorn is an ancient healing tree: the berries, leaves and flowers can be brewed as tea and used as a tonic for heart problems. I have begun drinking a tea of Hawthorn berries and olive leaves and it is quite good. A few weeks ago I decided to search for the meaning of Hawthorn in the language of flowers and was rewarded in my search for it symbolizes hope.

It is so fitting to me that this tree would have this meaning for outside my house in the front patio is a fifty plus year old Hawthorn tree. Shortly after we moved into the house Papa cut the tree back to its stump, because he did not want a tree, which he was sure would become quite large, growing so close to the house. He did not, however, grind out the stump. Next spring a flurry of little saplings sprung up from the mother stump, like baby birds in a nest. He thought the tree would not survive that way, or at the very least, the saplings would not become very tall. Over the years the little forest of treelets has become quite tall and shades the corner of the house in much the same way that the mother tree would have done. It also shades my neighbor's yard, and that is why, I think, her dog likes that spot so well. (The dog "announcement barks" all the guests who come into my patio as well as those who come to her door.)

The tree, cut down once, harbinger of hope has survived to grace my life. She reminds me not to give up.

Here is a picture taken outside

Here is a picture of the flowers.

Hawthorn trees abound in Ireland and bloom with red or white flowers. (The red is really dark pink.) While the pictures here show the red flowers, my tree is neatly divided, with one side blooming in each of the two colors. It has been home to many birds and fed many squirrels through its half century and will have pride of place in my yard for as long as I can remain in this house.

Today is the feast of Pentecost. One of the great feasts of the Christian calendar, Pentecost in its turn is integrally tied to the great theological virtue of hope. For after our Lord's ascension the disciples, forlorn, retired to the upper room and pondered how they were to go on. In a sense, they had lost him, this most beloved teacher, leader and friend twice. The first loss was his death on the Cross and they remembered that he said he would come again but it was not until the stone was rolled away from the empty tomb that they realized he really meant it. It was not until they recognized him on the road to Emmaus that they really knew it. Rejoicing that he had returned, they had only a short while before they would lose him again.

So they waited, forlorn, for the Comforter that Jesus promised to send them. Forlorn, but not without hope. Hope never left them and it was fulfilled on Pentecost.

An eminent British psychiatrist, Frank Lake said in his monumental book something like, Hope delayed too long becomes an illness in itself. (I don't have the exact quote.) Depression, even despair are the other side of hope. Last night as I googled for references to Pentecost and Hope, I found this excellent blog, sacradoctrina http://bit.ly/bofkqy in which the author discusses the Thomistic references to hope and Pentecost.

For St. Thomas, hope is eschatological, looking to the future good of the soul's salvation and eternal life in heaven. Hope is not trivial or silly, a goofy smile in all travails, but rather hope is in it for the long haul, recognizing that the road isn't easy but we have to keep walking it. Hope will come along for the journey. The reward will be at the end.

(I think it not unfair, though to comment that along his own journey, like most of us, St. Thomas hoped there would be a good meal and a warm bed and that he was rewarded much of the time.)

Hope, according to sacradoctrina, takes action and that action is communal. I see that it was so for the disciples first in waiting and then in ministry. Perseverance kept hope alive and kept the disciples going. Hope kept the waiting possible and the ministry doable.

Sacradoctrina states it better than I, for it is a longer post. But it is good, I think, to remember this Pentecost Sunday the virtue of hope. That while we live in a depressing era because the very technology that allows us to be "always on" ever ready and to communicate so seamlessly and non-invasively with one another as I am doing right now with this blog post, at the same time we see the ills of all the world before us, not merely those that afflict our little corner.

It is tempting to give up, to shout in anger and then subside into gloom, because not only can we not turn off the oil spilling into the Gulf, but it seems those in charge, who should be able to, can't do it either. Hope requires us to do otherwise and to remember, months from now when the oil flow is turned off, that legislation may still be required to fix how such a thing is handled in the future.

Hope, because it is communal, also requires that we build community face to face as well as online. Church is particularly foundational here, I believe, for it is the community of faith from which our actions spring forth into the larger community around us. It is not enough to meet online, we must meet face to face and break bread together.

I am grateful for my Hawthorn tree, for it's perseverance, for its healing qualities and for leading me to think of hope and not to give up. Grateful too for the feast of Pentecost. even though I cannot go and join in singing, "Lauda Sion salvatorem", I know that it is being sung, and that, too, gives me reason for hope.

The blessings of Pentecost to you. I wish I could send Hawthorn flowers your way or share a cup of Hawthorn tea with you.

(Sorry about the changes that I just made for anyone who might get this twice. I had muddled sacradoctrina and my own reflection, and so want to clarify. Do read that post.)

Murky May

2010-05-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

Today is as cold, cloudy and murky as a day in March, even though it is nearly the end of May. Today would also be my parents wedding anniversary, if they were still alive. I remember them with love.

Today I was treated to a delicious lunch by a young friend who is now half way through college at UC Berkeley. She has matured into a young woman and looks so professional. She also sounds so professional. It was a joy to share time with her.

I realized that I haven't blogged recently even though I have taken pictures and planned posts. A combination of excessive arthritis pain and reading too much is part of my excuse.

Reading posts on Facebook is a time-consumer. Still, I learn quite a bit from what my friends post and then go dive into Internet research to learn more. Maybe some of those planned posts will materialize here, after all.

Reading novels is also time-consuming. I have just finished the best-selling tome, Roses. Not sure I can honestly say that I liked it, but I was certainly drawn into it and heartened to see that the author is seventy-one and that it is pretty much her first novel. This gives me hope that I might finish something yet.

Lately, with the monthly gift of a bag full of library books arriving like clockwork, I have been finding myself asking writer's questions about the the books I read. Does a series grow from one book or is it planned to begin with? Maybe it will work out better as a series if it is planned that way from the beginning and I have one manuscript that, with a great deal of revision, might become the first book in a series.

Readers seem to like multi-generational sagas. I am one of them. I have a multi-generational saga to finish. Reading Leila Meacham's story of how she started Roses only to put it away and pull it out again then repeat that cycle until she sat down to finish it, I am heartened. Maybe today will be the beginning of the end of writer's block for me and the start of starting over.

Certainly today is a good one to plan for a nice cup of hot chocolate later to take the chill off of me. It will feel good all the way from the tip of my nose to the tip of my oh so cold toes to warm up.

I am grateful for the day and for the roses blooming outside my office window.

Mountain Rose Herbs Recipe Contest

2010-05-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

Mountain Rose Herbs is one of my favorite sources for spices, herbs and oils for my own personal consumption and herbs and essential oils for my business as well. They are having a recipe contest, which requires the contestant to post the recipe entry on the web. (Blogs count.) The recipe will then be linked to their Facebook contest page. Here is mine. It is intended as an entry in the Culinary Recipe Category.

Several months ago I discovered Mountain Rose Herb's Pumpkin Seed Oil. A rich, thick, dark oil it stands up well to the addition of strong spices and garlic. It has ant-inflammatory properties, which was what drew me to it.

For some time I have been cooking with a spice mixture of turmeric, ginger, chipotle powder and celery seed powder. All of these also have anti-inflammatory properties, as does cinnamon, which I have recently included in the mix. Here are the ingredients (not including the cinnamon, but I also have that from Mountain Rose Herbs.)

The recipe for the spice powder mix is equal amounts of the five spices. I could call this Peggy's Five Spice Powder. For a single serving of salad dressing use about 1/8 teaspoon each of the spices or 1/2 teaspoon of the combined spices. (Measure about a tablespoon of each into a small jar that will give you enough room to stir and shake the mixture to combine them well. Then you won't have to open and shut all the bags so frequently, which will save time and help to keep the spices fresh longer.)

For the dressing, measure out the spice mixture as described above, 1 tablespoon pumpkin seed oil, 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon finely grated Parmesan cheese and one or two cloves garlic, slivered or minced as you prefer. The ingredients, in their little prep bowls, are shown below. For the purpose of illustration, I set the ingredients out separately, but it is quicker and more efficient for clean-up to use just one small bowl.

Combine the ingredients in a small bowl, set aside. Assemble your salad using layers of greens, vegetables and fruits of your choice. Arrange the protein for the salad such as tuna, chicken, hard cooked eggs or sliced or shredded cheese on top of the greens and other ingredients. Sprinkle croutons, nuts or pumpkin seeds on top of the protein, if you wish. Drizzle the dressing over the plated salad.

I have used poached eggs for the protein on a chilly day and the warm eggs and rich yolks add to the salad and combine nicely with the dressing.

This dressing is also delicious drizzled over a plate of pasta with protein and veggies mixed in. Yummy.

Anti-inflammatory foods are of particular interest to me since I have post-polio syndrome and arthritis. A salad, as either my lunch or dinner, is a very healthy, low-cal meal. The pasta is an occasional treat because of its higher carbohydrate content.

Simple, nutritious meals that can be prepared easily and are attractive as well as delicious are also of interest, since I navigate my kitchen in a wheel chair. On the days when I do prepare pasta, I forego the large pot of boiling water, for a smaller quantity in a smaller pan. With a bit of stirring as it cooks, the pasta will not stick together. This makes it safe for me to handle by myself and also conserves water.

I am grateful for these lovely ingredients that make cooking for one person less of a chore. My affiliate link to Mountain Rose Herbs is to the right in my links section. Please do explore it for wonderful ingredients for your own healthy cooking.

My contest link to Mountain Rose Herbs Facebook contest page is http://bit.ly/9zCDlg

So My Garden Grows

2010-05-06T20:30:00.001-07:00

Amaryllis, left out this year instead of being brought in to be forced in the winter, are blooming now.

The last of the Iris, a beautiful white was blooming against the fence, here

The white iris always makes me think of Victorian ladies at Garden parties trailing their frills and twirling their parasols. Last evening as I went looking for yet more information on the language of flowers, I discovered that the Iris is one of Mary's flowers and it is also the fleur-de-lis, symbol of France. The blue iris in particular symbolize Mary's fidelity.

I have also recently discovered that Hawthorne, a healing herb that is beneficial in its leaves, flowers and berries and is actually a tree, symbolizes hope in the language of flowers. I hope to use some of the dried leaves and flowers from my own Hawthorne tree along with myrtle leaves and berries from bushes that I grew from seed over twenty years ago in wedding potpourri. Probably I will use them in peace potpourri as well.

Years ago, when my family first moved into this house, my father cut down our Hawthorne tree. He was not familiar with what it was and felt that it was planted too close to the house. It is too close to the house, but it grew back in a forest of little shoots. He did not have the heart to kill it out completely and there it stands, this curious tree that grows as though it were split in two with one side flowering pink and the other white. It was only in the last six years or so that my friend who is a master gardener and herbalist identified it for me. It provides life-giving shade in summer's heat and a tonic for me. I have come to love it so!

Finally, the shamrock continues to bloom. Never mind that many would consider them a weed, I consider them a plant promising good luck, because of their association with Ireland and St. Patrick. I always feel blessed when they are blooming.

Gratitude is with me tonight for these joys of my garden. Spring always makes me feel as though a little taste of heaven has come my way, especially when I look out my back windows and see the pink roses blooming along the fence and the poppies now making their color splashes in the planter box.

My apologies to anyone who got the pre-proofread version without the last photo and the corrections that I could not help myself from making. I am more tired tonight than I realized.

The Day After Earth Day

2010-04-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day and much was said about it in the news. I deliberately watched part of Oprah, something that I don't normally do.

The sight of the Pacific Garbage Gyre was ghastly and disgusting. I have been recycling for years, sometimes grudgingly, I admit, because of the time that it takes to sort everything into separate bags and bins. Sometimes, I am tempted to just pitch it. Lately I have been more careful. The clutter that it makes in the house to have more sorting stations is one my annoyances with recycling. (Not that my house is pristine, in any case.) I think I will learn to live with the annoyance.

I have resisted reusing plastic bags until this year, figuring that it uses water and soap to wash them. I do re-use one bag for dry things over and over until the crumbs get too crumby or there is too much build-up of flour or almond meal or whatever I am putting in its "store" bag into my zippered bag. Switching to cloth bags would not work well, since the contents would not be visible. Switching to hard containers might help but they would be more awkward to handle.

This winter I have saved my plastic bags and now that the weather is warming a bit, I am washing and drying them. Trying to swish the soapy water from one to the next to conserve it is messy, but somehow satisfying. Turning the bag inside out to rinse the interior takes less water--and time--than filling and pouring, especially when I remember to turn the faucet off while I turn. So perhaps it doesn't waste too much water.

I started saving the bags because of the cost. Now I will think of the Garbage Gyres--all five of them, the one I knew about and the other four as I do so. I do think that the problem isn't just re-use and recycle, though. I think it is more fundamental than that.

We need to pick up after ourselves. Dispose of things properly instead of just casting them aside. (I suppose that is recycling, really.) Plastic bottles and bags didn't exist when I was a child. They can be re-used and then recycled to make other things.

That was part of Earth Day coverage too. The things made with plastic bottles. A boat named "Plastiki"; a school in Guatamala. Knitters have used strips of plastic bags for knitting sturdy totes for sometime, although that was not mentioned. I love the fleece fabrics made from recycled plastic bottles. Turning trash into treasure.

We also do need to use less. According to World News last night Americans are consuming less than we did forty years ago. About fifty percent less. But is that because of recycling or merely a result of the recession?

A few years ago, I was pretty cynical about Earth Day, "green solutions" because it seemed as though new companies were simply being started to make the same items that we probably need to use less only out of "green" materials and manufacturing processes.

What if we went back to using thermoses for our coffee and tea? Brought our sandwiches from home in wax paper or re-usable containers, ate in sit down restaurants with re-usable instead of disposable plates and utensils? Turning the clock back to the fifties, I guess, and that is not possible.

While I still refuse to subscribe to the pseudo-religious aspects of recycling, I will grumble less, organize a little more and think of that whale that was beached--dead with plastic items and a golf ball in it's stomach. Not a very good diet for any creature on our small planet.

I am grateful for ways to make my imprint on our planet lighter. Stewardship of the earth is, after all, a way to practice the virtue of humility and any practice of virtue is a good thing.

Blue Iris

2010-04-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Another flower that was truly spectacular in my garden yesterday was a pale blue Iris. These flowers are almost a bouquet in themselves and put on such a show! I have been trying to take the "perfect" Iris photo for about five years now and am nowhere close, but hope to live long enough to persevere some more. I have put a few of my shots on cards and will undoubtedly make some more.

The light yesterday was somewhat flat and dull, as rain clouds gathered. The color of the flowers was more uniform as a result. I would like to try again with bright light to see if the petals are translucent, but that light might just wash out for the camera.

Here are the photos.

The poppies have not "popped" yet and the roses in the backyard are blooming from the top down, but too far away for me to photograph them.

I am grateful for the garden and the camera.

Today's Garden

2010-04-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today as I opened the front door to put something out for the mailman, I spotted the first big red rose of the year. Up high and so beautiful. It is now on my kitchen counter. It does not seem to have the perfume that earlier roses have had--I think it is telling me to feed it.

It drew me back, camera at the ready and garden scissors tucked into my pocket, as surely as if it were calling to me. I took the first photo to document it in place. The second is close-up indoors.

Finally, a close-up on the kitchen counter.

Next I noticed the purple shamrock--oxalis.

Another

and finally

The purple leaves amaze and delight me, since I grew up thinking that leaves should be green.

Last, just because it is so happy there is the "regular" shamrock--green leaves with white flowers.

For a plant that came home from the grocery store several years ago, it's not doing too badly. An amaryllis that was about to flower probably won't, since it has been seriously chewed.

Still, I am grateful for things that are blooming and for the chance to poke my nose out into fresh air and some sunshine before the gathering clouds bring rain tomorrow and keep me indoors. Happy Spring!

Biggest Strawberries Ever

2010-04-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

Friday, my friend who joins me for lunch on Fridays, brought these giant berries. We meant to weight them as well as take their pictures, but got caught up in conversation.

Each of them was equal to four or five ordinary berries. What was truly amazing was that they were delicious and juicy.

Today was a day of true rain, not drizzles but downpours. Perhaps the drought really is truly over.

I am grateful for these remarkable berries and for the rain. Most especially grateful for my friend who shares lunch with me weekly. We have known each other since we were in our twenties--longer now than we have not known each other and he is truly my brother in spirit. Grateful tonight for life.

Easter Roses

2010-04-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

As the first week of Easter progresses, I am celebrating with roses roses brought by a friend. My own rose bushes have buds, so I know there will be flowers soon. (High up on the backyard bush the first roses are blooming.)

There is a sweet, faint odor of roses in the dining room that proclaims Spring is here! I have truly the worst case of cabin fever/spring fever that I have had in years. (I almost typed Spring fervor, and I think that would be a fortuitous typo. It has been cold, dank and dreary for too long--even though we did need the rain.)

I am grateful for Spring and for roses.

Easter Flowers

2010-03-31T14:23:00.000-07:00

It is hard to believe that it is already Holy Week. Perhaps the return of winter weather after sufficient sunshine and warmth over the past weekend add to my disbelief! (I am ready to be warm again!)

My friend C, with whom I share coffee most Monday afternoons, brought me a gift of orchids from her yard this week. They are one of the most stunning plants I have ever seen. She said that they are lymbidiums. Here they are

At the same time, she also cut two of my Iris, which are just beginning to bloom. Not as big as last year's flowers, they are still pretty.

While they are not typical Easter flowers it is good to have something fresh blooming in the house for Holy Week.

Tonight the choir will sing Tenebrae, tomorrow Holy Thursday and then Good Friday. Saturday, the Easter Vigil, and then Sunday. I remember snippets from each service, which I have not been able to attend for many years. EWTN will give me the services from the Vatican, if I can just remember to look up the schedule. Wishing seriously for podcasts here, and I suppose that I should go look for some!

I am grateful for the time that I spent singing this music when I was young, for it shaped so much of who I am and my adult life. Very grateful too, for my friend who brought flowers and for other friends who brought palms on Palm Sunday.

St Patrick's Day, 2010

2010-03-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

The day is being celebrated here with Irish Soda Bread, thanks to a friend, who thought of me when she went shopping. I do wish that bakeries would have it year round; it being one of my favorite things.

In addition, I made Chocolate Stout Cupcakes Sunday and they carry the theme and taste of Guinness. No green beer here, thank you!

Over twenty years ago I bought this lovely set of Irish dolls at our church bazaar. I do not know the name of the person who made them, so cannot credit the artist, but I do dearly love them and think of that time as well as my Irish roots when I look at them. This year I finally made time to take some pictures. Here they are.

A happy and blessed day to you all! I am grateful for my Irish ancestors today.

Connections

2010-03-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today spring shone through. The day was delightful, friends came visiting I got a minimal amount of work done. It is time to fit writing into the schedule again, but before I do that I have been indulging in playing on Facebook. In the process of seeing what friends are doing, I discovered a fantastic blog, The Lighthouse Keeper. The writer, a friend from my graduate school days, who is choosing to be anonymous in her blog, writes of an ancestor who was the last lighthouse keeper in Sandusky, Ohio. Sandusky is not too far from Toledo, where I grew up and where family and friends still live.

It is beautifully written, this blog that gives me dual connections--to the area that I grew up in and to a friend whom I haven't seen in so many years and whom I had lost touch with until the Internet brought us together again.

I love the powerful connections of history, having majored in the subject myself in college so many years ago that I can now properly speak of decades ago. My friend writes powerfully of history, research and genealogy--of connections. I highly recommend this blog. She has a compelling voice, one that I hope will be in print. It is thrilling to read such beautiful and powerful writing and know that I know the person behind it.

I am grateful today for pausing to read. Her blog is noted in my blog links to the right. I highly recommend it.

Sunshine and Pictures

2010-03-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

Today the sun shone long enough to take decent pictures. First I took the baby sachet that I kept when I sent the package off to my sister earlier in the week. Here it is.

My sister called just as I was beginning to write this post and she was so excited that her package arrived today! (I love priority mail.) We have a ritual that when I send a package, she opens it while we talk on the phone. I could hear her excitement and feel it too! She loved the sachets.

The last picture that I took was of these white and purple mitts. I can even type with them on my hands.

Several years ago I was experimenting with making triangle scarves and seeing how much I could make with one skein. For some reason, I made two of these in ribbing, which made them long and narrow and not very useful as scarves. They sat and were about to hit a give away bag a few weeks ago when I thought, "Wait a minute, the yarn is perfectly good and it is one of my favorite discontinued yarns." (Lion Brand, Wool Ease, Sport Weight) I had discovered that I particularly liked to combine two strands for a tweedy effect. So these mitts or wristers quickly materialized.

I am so grateful that the package reached Toledo safely and that the sachets are so pretty and so well-loved. Grateful for today's sunshine, too. More rain is on the way.

Roses in the Midst of Winter

2010-03-03T21:03:00.001-08:00

Not really the midst of winter, but the end--and in my part of the country, from a weather calendar viewpoint it is already spring, but today my house smelled beautifully of roses.

Some months ago, my sister sent me a bag of flowers from her garden. A preponderance of gorgeous, dark red roses along with pansies and a few black-eyed Susans along with other roses. She had carefully dried them, for like me, she can't bear to throw them out. Then the problem was what to do with them. I suggested she send them to me and I would add them to my potpourri ingredients.

In a few weeks she will be giving a baby shower for her second grandchild (first granddaughter) so she commissioned me to make her a sachet for the favor for the guests to take home. Using her flowers was a natural!

In addition, I have accumulated a nice supply of herbs that have meanings appropriate to wishing the young lady well and oils to enhance the fragrances of the flowers and bring them back to their summer glory. Tea rose, old rose and rose garden fragrance oils joined violet and honeysuckle and finally a dash of clove and a liberal amount of patchouli.

The flowers, mixed with the oils nearly fill one bag and the herbs that I mixed on Sunday partially fill another. The dining room smells of roses and so do I, for at one point I wiped oil off my hands unto my clothes. I expect to dream of roses tonight. (Pictures will follow in another post. The light was too gloomy today to take good pictures.)

The library volunteer brought me two Mary Stewart novels, which I am sure that I read in my youth. I am enjoying This Rough Magic and just read all about the fabulous old rose garden in the early part of the book before I fell asleep last night. I dream of such a garden. When I first read the book forty or so years ago, I did not recognize the names of any of the roses. Now, after having a passion for gardening for the last twenty or so years, I do. (My passion is usually as an armchair gardener, but there was a time when I read gardening books as avidly as novels.)

The search for the fragrance oils led me to the website of the Rosemary House, an almost legendary herb business, that I bought many of my supplies from when I had an herbal craft business some twenty years ago. It is good to see they are still there and to be connected again.

I am grateful tonight for the rain that we have been blessed with in abundance this week, for the delightful fragrance of roses filling my house, for my sister's sweet generosity as she draws me in to be included in a family activity that I am too far away from and for the connection to a business that I had so long ago. Grateful too to be reviving my own.

Grateful for Being Where I Am

2010-02-27T19:04:00.001-08:00

It rained a good deal this week in my part of the world and all of us who live here are glad. We need the water. It is still snowing in the mountains and that is good too. Good for the people who live there and need the snow to attract the skiers. Good for the rest of us who depend on that snowpack for our summer water needs. Maybe it will be possible to have a garden this year. I missed my basil and tomato plants last summer. I long to be at least partly food self-sufficient.

As I watched the news reports of snow in the East, I was glad that I don't live there. Prayers, especially for all those who have no power. Spring cannot come soon enough, I am sure.

The news report about the humongous earthquake off the coast of Chile, also made be glad that I don't live there either. More prayers. Earthquakes scare the bejabbers out of me. 2010 seems to have had enough already. I start thinking of moving back to Toledo, Ohio--my real hometown, where my family still live, when I get scared about earthquakes.

Transporting about 25,000 pounds of furniture and household stuff 2500 miles would not be a minor task. Since we had 10,000 pounds when we moved out here, the amount is a guesstimate. I keep weeding out things that I don't need, but somehow the weeding isn't going fast enough! If I could just clap my hands together (since I can't click my heels.)

Better, for now at least, to work on being grateful for where I am. Daffodils are blooming. There may be enough water for basil plants. Oatmeal buckwheat muffins sit in the oven waiting to be consumed over the next few days as my bread. (I nearly said "scarfed" instead of consumed. They are so yummy that they do tend to disappear rather quickly.)

My dining room is full of the lovely smell of herbs since I "booked in" some of the new herbs that came this week. More to do tomorrow. This consists of emptying each bag into a big aluminum bowl and then measuring the contents back into the bag it came in to see how many cups each bag contains. The herbs are sold by weight. I concoct my potpourris by measure. Having the measure is essential, both to know how much I can make before I will need to buy more, as well as the all important cost factor that is at the foundation of every small business and pricing decision.

I am grateful to be where I am tonight and hope that tomorrow will be a good day. Prayers for healing and sustenance go out to all those in danger from the weather. Prayers always go out for my family and friends. Thank you to you all, those who read my blog, those who befriend me.

Reflections on Week Just Past

2010-02-20T11:14:00.000-08:00

The fragrance of daffodils fresh cut from the yard filled my house with a delicate and delicious perfume. I think of the neighbor who shared the King Alfred bulbs with me when she bought a huge bag from Costco one year. She is gone, but her memory lingers in the beauty of the daffodils and in the knowledge that I gained from her sharing. They are fragrant, even being grown especially for the perfume industry and they are an ancient symbol of the Resurrection.

The photo shows some of the daffodils as they appear outside this year. It has either been too wet or too murky to take good pictures this year, so they will not be as well documented as they have in the past.

The next day the heady fragrance of lavender filled my dining room while I worked on lavender sachets and dream pillows for my herbal craft business. More about that after the items are posted on Etsy. The lavender did not quite overpower the daffodils, but they did not exactly blend either. Probably not compatible ingredients for the same perfume or potpourri.

Monday saw a furry visitor to my Pyracantha as well. One squirrel firmly planted herself and ate and ate and ate of the red berries. The next day robins filled the bush. The squirrel slipped in at the back and later a squirrel (perhaps the same one) appeared in the rose bush eating the rose hips. Poor baby, there are almost no berries left now and the robins, after stripping the bushes, have moved on in their migration.

Tuesday, February 16. would have been Papa's 90th birthday, if he were still alive. I wondered what he would be like if he were still alive. Wiser and just as full of intelligence and humor. A little more wizened too.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. This year is going by too quickly already. Time doesn't fly, it flees! Easter is just around the corner.

Thursday my sewing machine and I actually cooperated to get an hour's worth of work done. So often we fight. It was nice to go to it and be able to just do the tasks. Of course, setting it up properly does help! For me, this means reading the book that came with it every time I re-do anything. (Putting the bobbin in and putting the needle in are two of the pitfalls. Threading the needle is another.) Reading the book and checking the diagrams takes so much less time and energy than cussing and screaming, that it is amazing that it took me so long to realize that was the way to go. (Better for the blood pressure too.)

Now it is Saturday already. Time to bake bread and do laundry and clean the kitchen. I am grateful for the show of nature (glad I was inside when all those birds were outside) and grateful for simple weekend chores. If the sun actually shines that will be cause for gratitude too.

Word Should Come with a Warning

2010-02-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I spent hours to layout and print four pages in Microsoft word. Two sheets, both sides on business card stock. Word supposedly has a template for this under envelopes and labels. Trouble is, it doesn't work very well. After screaming, yelling, coughing and using quite a bit of creative but very loud swearing I was ready to abandon not only the project but all hope and any attempt to do anything. I wanted comfort food, a hot bath and a novel. I settled for the novel--after finally getting my pages done and broken up into tags. Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will have some pictures of the products.

The warning, "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here", ought to flash on the screen whenever one attempts to do any kind of layout in Word. To be absolutely fair, of course, I am using Office 2000 with WindowsXP. Maybe that is the problem.

I do fairly well with most layout in Publisher. Publisher is looked down upon by my acquaintances in the Desktop publishing world, but it serves most of my needs nicely. It massacres business cards. It too has a template that isn't a template.

At one point, when my frustration level had mounted and my sense of anguish over waste time had risen, I opened Adobe's InDesign and found, as I had in the past, that it simply seems so complicated that I can't navigate it. I tried in Photoshop and then gave that up and went back and finally conquered Word.

I think my next product is going to have to be something that doesn't fit with a business card size tag. Sigh.

Life is complicated! It seems that the more that I try to simplify it, the more complicated I make it. (That could be the underlying problem with Word too.)
My products are coming along nicely. I am recreating a line that I made twenty years ago and I am excited. The new line has variations, of course, and even the variations please me. I will write about this in another post, soon, I hope.

The complication is that the design process doesn't stop with the product, but must include the packaging and labeling. Sometimes this design process can be fun, too, but not when the software, which is supposed to make our lives easier, makes the completion so difficult that much of the creativity is subsumed in exhaustion.

At one moment yesterday, I was just grateful to get the thing done. Grateful to put the new little products in their neat little bags with their pretty tags on business cards. They look nice and professional, the way I want them to.

I am grateful too, for electricity that makes it possible to sit here at my computer with a light on and my space heater running. So many folks have been without power in the blizzards, that I am simply glad to live here and think of them and send up a prayer that they too will be restored to comfort and heat and light--and even to struggling with their computers.

Remembering my Godmother

2010-02-04T19:25:00.000-08:00

My godmother, Mary Catherine (Mertes) Walker, died Jan 23, 2010. She was born August 31, 1917. World War I had less than three months to run its course in Armistice in November. She was twelve years old, not quite ready for high school when the stock market crashed in 1929. When it came time for High School, Mary Kate, as she was known throughout her lifetime, attended Notre Dame, the same school that her first-cousin, Helen Rose (Mertes) Manor had attended before her. (Decades later, my niece Jennifer also attended that high school and took great pride in looking up her predecessors in the archives of the school newspaper.)

I seem to remember that Mary Kate took a secretarial course after High School and she was able to find work in spite of the depression and the advent of World War II. Shortly after the war she married Charles Walker, "Charlie" and they settled down to the tasks of raising a family--six children, five girls and one boy.

I remember this family well from my own childhood in Toledo and the time that my sister and I spent several days with them while our parents supervised the loading of all our belongings unto a moving van and the cleaning and closing of our little house prior to our own great trek across the continent in the 1955 Chevy Bel Air sedan that I sold a few years ago to someone who was eager to restore it.

I have been thinking of Mary Kate for the last ten days. How many loads of laundry did it take, hauled up and down flights of stairs to keep a family of eight clean and dressed with towels and bedding to boot? Please remember that in those days most of the clothes and all of the linen--even the kitchen dish towels --needed ironing. (And on Saturdays, my godmother took her turn bringing the church linens she had also found the time to launder to the church where she joined several other women in cleaning the sacristy and setting out the linen for Masses the next day.)

How many pounds of potatoes did she peel and cakes did she bake in the years that it took to raise a family of six children? Not to mention the children and grandchildren. In addition, like the church laundry, there would have also been baking for the church bake sales and cooking for the potlucks, spaghetti dinners and fish frys that every church holds to raise funds. That doesn't include the casseroles delivered to people in the parish when illness or death struck a house.

Over the last decade Mary Kate and I talked on the phone occasionally, not frequently enough. I drew on her deep faith and quiet strength to go forward with my own life. She told me, "If you fall asleep while you are saying your prayers, your guardian Angel finishes them for you." (Does it count if you meant to say your prayers, but fall asleep reading yet another mystery novel from the library, because you have to get them all finished before the library volunteer brings some more?)

Like my father, she never had an unkind word to say about anyone or anything. "If you can't say something good about someone, don't say anything," was a watch word that she lived by. Like my parents, too, she lived the everyday virtue of charity in her kindness, courtesy and service to others.

Last week, partly out of necessity, and partly, I think because I was remembering Mary Kate and my mother too and pondering how much work these women quietly did everyday to make our lives glad, I found myself in a frenzy of "multi-tasking" household chores. One afternoon I had bread in the bread machine (no bread machine in the 1950's), laundry in both the washer and the dryer (no dryer until the mid-1950's) and muffins in the oven. At one point I almost muffed the muffins--forgot they were in the oven and they nearly burned. In between, I washed dishes. Nothing compared to the dishes Mary Kate, with eight people in the house, washed everyday.

By the time I ate my supper that night, I had appetite, felt that I had earned it and savored it, simple as it was. (Tomato soup and muffins.) I thought about housework, including cooking, as I have for the past year or so, as the foundation to the practice of the virtue of humility. Just as kindness and courtesy are the foundation of the virtue of charity.

Most of us are not called upon to practice heroic virtue. Still finding the virtue in homely things may keep us well enough in body and in spirit to live a long and happy life. Saying the rosary every day, (or a comparable practice) as I suspect my godmother did isn't a bad idea either.

I am grateful for the life of my godmother and the lives of my parents and others whom I miss who have gone before me. I miss her and I will continue to miss her along with Mama and Papa. It was a simpler life in someways; I have nostalgia for those long gone days, partly because I was a child then. (Perhaps that is another blog post.) Remembering Mary Kate and my parents will give me the foundation for continuing my own life in this all too modern century that I live in.

Rainy Day Fits and Starts

2010-01-21T15:14:00.000-08:00

After three days of storms, complete with thunder and lightening, the rain has tapered off to gentle and dreary. The light in the house is gray and cold, like the weather outside and makes me glad that I live in modern times, with heat and electricity. Put down the blind (battery operated), close the drapes (hand-operated still) and turn on the lights and music. Cozy. So much so that I feel sleepy and sluggish--not at all like writing.

The big grocery store chain that I frequently order groceries from for delivery does not have an ingredient I want to bake with. Almond paste. Neither does the small organic delivery service. (Granted, that was a long shot.) Google tells me that Amazon has almond paste and Amazon itself has marzipan as well. Probably enough for two batches of the cookies that I want to make, one shaped like tiny hearts for Valentine's Day and one like shamrocks for St Patrick's Day.

Trouble is I don't really want to order it shipped. It should be available locally. In the past, I made my marzipan from scratch, first making almond paste from scratch. I know where the book is and I am sure that blanched almonds are available locally, but I don't think I am going to do this from scratch.

Second trouble is that if I buy the marzipan, I am then committing myself to doing this rather elaborate baking. So I will keep thinking about it while I go and do something else.

Friends brought lunch today and that was delightful. (May be part of the reason that I am sleepy, too. It was a biggish lunch.)

The Christmas decorations are almost put away. Another hour of effort and organizing and I would be there with the job all done. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe on Saturday. It's really sounding like a procrastinating sort of a day!

Today is the feast of St. Agnes--one of my patron saints. I was named for my grandmothers, my mother's mother was Agnes Elizabeth. So Agnes is my middle name. Sometimes I have wished that my parents had chosen Elizabeth for my middle name, but that would have been long. Often, I wish I had chosen Rose for my confirmation name because there were so many Roses in my family tree--but I didn't know that then and Mary was a popular choice.

I am grateful for the rain and that it is tapering off! Grateful that perhaps the drought will end and I can grow basil plants again. I will pick a project and go do it.

Happiness is....

2010-01-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

Being blogged! I was blogged this week by someone who cited one of the products from my Etsy store.

The link is here, http://www.baileyandmeister.com/

It was so much fun to receive the Etsy convo (email) and see the write-up. I am so grateful.

Catching Up

2010-01-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that I have let two weeks go by without a word on this blog. I am still here. The first week was simply spent enjoying Christmas. With all the decorations out, light shone forth from all the sparkling things and I took time to delight in all of it. Friends stopped by and the visits were so wonderful. One morning, I met the next generation of a family who have been like extended family to me for over thirty-five years. The children are beautiful.

Each year the holidays seem to have a rhythm of their own. There are the traditions, the things that are always the same and then the things that are slightly different. This year it seemed that the concentration of gifts was on food--a giant See's toffee bar, lovely tea, enough cookies to give a party and a wonderful care basket of a complete meal of ham and other goodies that brought my friend's party to me. I too baked, filling the house with warm, comforting, good smells.

I remarked about this to one friend and posited that it seemed to be everyone's reaction to the recession. Making and sharing food brings comfort and connects us to our roots, those food memories of childhood that in turn, for most of us, signify security.

I am grateful for the lovely holiday just past and grateful too that the earthquake did not occur close to me. (Our two little bumpers on the Calaveras this week were enough of a reminder to me that this is earthquake country.) The earthquake was also a motivator to me to take down the Christmas decorations and put them away. As much as I love them, they are safer put away. That is a curious psychology and one that I may, or may not need to explore further!

It is easier to get on with the work of the New Year with Christmas decorations put away.

May 2010 be one of health, prosperity and grace for all of us.

Last of the Christmas Trees

2009-12-27T16:15:00.000-08:00

This post is especially for my grand-nephew, who at age two has discovered the magic of Christmas trees. I want to share mine with him and love the idea of being able to do so through the inventions of digital photography and the Internet. This is such wonderful fun!

This is the last of the little trees, sometimes known in the past as "little, little tree", but the one in the sewing room may actually be smaller. Called last because it was the last to be decorated, and the only one not actually ready by Christmas Day.

A new picture of the crane tree after a friend found one crane that sat perfectly on the top. In Japan, I believe that the cranes symbolize peace, while in the United States, I have heard that Japanese-Americans see them as symbolizing courage and patience.

Finally, a picture of the tree in my office. The ornaments are ones that I made by hand about twenty years ago, which makes them vintage ornaments now. The angel on the top was a a package topper that may very well be forty to fifty years old.

Come to think of it, the tree itself is about twenty years old now, so that makes it vintage.

I love each and every tree for their special symbolism; for the history that each one has and for the way that they have brought Christmas to me this year, even though I can not go out to find Christmas at church. I am grateful for the way that my Mama loved Christmas, for the many ornaments and decorations that were hers and for the friends who have made Christmas decorating a community effort at my house. For the friends who have brought me food and flowers, too, I am grateful. Finally, for that little boy in Arizona who is learning the customs and wonder of Christmas, I am most especially grateful.

Blessings and a joyous and prosperous New Year to you all--through every day of it until we come full circle and are celebrating our Christmas again.

More Christmas Around My House

2009-12-27T11:11:00.001-08:00

Here is the Christmas cactus on Christmas Day. I was so happy to see that more than a month after it began blooming, and even with frost advisories, it was looking happy and pretty Christmas afternoon.

These roses were blooming on Christmas Day.

The last of the big red roses, which I brought in on Christmas Day.

On Christmas Eve Day a dear friend stopped by with these beautiful flowers.

The flowers added to the colors of Christmas and also reminded me of the legend that says that at the moment of Christ's birth all the flowers bloomed. That same legend says that the animals spoke and the birds sang. I love these legends.

A blessed third day of Christmas. I am so grateful for this beautiful and peaceful time of year and for the memories I have of my family and Christmases past.

Christmas All Over My House

2009-12-26T10:37:00.000-08:00

It was a quiet Christmas at my house this year, with the sound of music for the season coming from my favorite classical radio station. Now I will have to find some tapes and cd's to continue the festal sounds through the season. Too many goodies were made or received as gifts and consumed. (Yes, I do have a freezer and sometimes, it seems, I forget to use it!)

All over the house decorations have come out. First and foremost are the tree and creche in the living room.

The next picture is of the large creche in the living room.

Next is the angel tree in my room.

The small creche, which is over sixty years old now, sits next to the angel tree.

Mr Papa Bear looks on from his usual vantage point with frizzly bear in his lap.

Next is a small tree on Mama's dresser in the room that is still evolving into a sewing space. Amidst the clutter, Christmas has come to this room. Last year this little tree held no decorations. Here it is with its own array.

In addition, hidden away in a bureau drawer in a box that had once held canning jars, I found a collection of vintage (maybe actually antique) candles and ceramic figurines that had been Mama's. What fun to unwrap them after decades of being stored away and arrange them now!

And here along the top of the high bureau are more candles.

The crane tree, a custom I began last year, is set up in the dining room, with a small nativity, a gift from a dear friend several years ago.

There is one more little tree, here in my office, but the sun was shining brilliantly behind it and the picture did not turn out. More to come.

Rejoice Sunday

2009-12-17T19:39:00.000-08:00

I started this post on Sunday, the third Sunday in Advent, time for the rose vestments and the rose candle. (This color is not pink but is more of a rose mauve. I have actually found what looks like the perfect shade on line in a ribbon that I may buy next year.)

Anyway here are my thoughts as of Sunday--it's been a crazy week and I am only four days behind, after all.

Some years Christmas sneaks up on me and seems like it almost takes forever to arrive. Other years, it seems as though Fall has barely started and wham, bam it is Thanksgiving and Christmas is coming so fast that it takes my breath away.

This year has been one of the latter years, perhaps because I have begun to reactivate a business that I loved twenty years ago, but that without the Internet was doomed before it was even begun. So with all the business activities, the Christmas preparations have been swept to the background. A few weeks ago
I thought I might even forgo decorating this year.

Two weeks ago my dear friend, who is also my housekeeper, took the big tree out of the box from the front hall closet where it lives most of the year. Last Monday another dear friend brought out the boxes with all the decorations and the bags with the little trees. On Wednesday another friend "fluffed" the branches on the big tree and put on the garlands. She (the tree, that is) is beginning to look like she is getting dressed for the party.

Another tree sits in my office, waiting. This year there may be ornaments. There were none last year for this little tree. Still another tree, with a plastic bag of paper cranes, sits in the dining room waiting for me to make a space and then begin the meticulous task of placing the little paper birds with their beautiful symbolism of peace. (I am tempted to glue them in place for next year. Would that be cheating?)

The tree that goes in my bedroom never did get put away last year. This season, when Christmas is over, it will be put away. There is nothing quite so forlorn as a barren Christmas tree lying on its side during summer heat waves.)

Two more little trees will find their places, one in the master bedroom sewing room. (AKA, "the big room"). The dolls and bears who occupy that space need their holiday too. The other still has to have a spot designated for it, but I will find one.

The house is also beginning to smell like Christmas. Chocolate and spice fill the kitchen air and I am having fun baking, albeit it is a smaller and simplified menu of choices from what I used to do.

Gingersnaps, cappuccino flats, sweet curry and cardamon icebox cookies and some scrumptious cheese slices that would have been even better with dry sherry (Amontillado, or Harvey's Bristol Cream, come to mind here.)

The only smell missing is that of fresh pine. One or two of my patchouli sachets with their rosemary and cloves can make it smell woodsy too.

Christmas is coming and it will be lovely. I am grateful for the traditions, for the artificial trees, which I would once have scorned and for the goodies. Most of all I am so grateful for all the friends, their patience and kindness in sharing with me and making Christmas possible.

While all of this preparation overshadows Advent, the truth is that I couldn't do it anyway, since I need the help of friends to make it happen. Preparing for Christmas is truly a work in progress all through Advent. The goal is to have everything in place by Christmas Eve and then relax and enjoy it for two weeks before beginning to dismantle it so that it is all put away by Candlemas. (Even that tree that didn't get put away last year.)

Pictures need to be taken too and an inventory of where everything is put away. It will be a busy time!

December and it is Cold

2009-12-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, one of the most beautiful Marian feasts of the year. Lovely chant, lovely music and so appropriate to Advent, which I think of as Mary's time.

We are having unusually cold weather here in California, the kind of weather that reminds us that our houses are shells--granted, shells with furnaces. This makes them difficult and expensive to heat. Still the photos on the various newscasts of snow in various parts of the Bay Area are beautiful.

I will be glad to see it warm a bit and to get ready for Christmas. Some more cooking and baking are scheduled. Some wrapping of presents, if I can remember where they are, and some general tidying of the house. I have a calendar full of visits planned with friends, so I am looking forward to the next few weeks.

The goodies which I posted Saturday were as good as they looked. I am so grateful to everyone who came to my Open House days over the weekend. It is good to see people and to have a positive cash flow!

I am grateful for the good furnace, for the good space heaters and for all the good knitted goodies that I wrap myself up in to keep warm. Will be even more grateful when the low is a little higher and the rain comes. Apparently, we are doing well for the snow pack in the mountains, forty-two inches already at one of the ski resorts. Hurray! With sufficient snow and rain, we will have a summer garden in due season.

Goodies for the Feast of St Nicholas

2009-12-04T19:35:00.001-08:00

Chocolate Stout Cake made up as mini-cupcakes. I finally made the recipe that I found on the King Arthur Flour website last spring. The Guiness stands out in the raw batter. (I always have to taste the dough or batter--before the eggs are added.) After baking the stout disappears and simply acts as a subtle underscore or amplifier for the chocolate. A very moist cupcake. Yummy. three dozen minis and nine full sized cupcakes. I will definitely make this again. This recipe and the beer batter bread make it more than worthwhile to give Guiness "housespace" as my great-grandmother used to say. (Drinking it is good too, but I can't really do that because of the neurological problems that I already have.)

Above, a Christmas tray full of cappachino flats awaits visitors for St. Nicholas Day. This is a fairly standard recipe for these delicious cookies, but I have ramped up the chocolate by adding about 1 T of dark Ghiradelli unsweetened cocoa powder. Very, very good and they don't need the extra dipping in chocolate, although that would make them look prettier.

It was a lot of work, but I had fun. I hope that it will entice folks to come to my little Open House--something that the big box stores definitely won't be offering. But then I can't compete with them in so many, many other ways.

We are having some very cold weather, unseasonably so for so early in the year and I am worrying about how the plants will fair and my heating bill. The gas and electric are the one thing that we don't know the cost of until after we have used them and I have wondered for years what it would take to change this system.

I am grateful tonight that I have a warm house and a warm electric blanket. Grateful for the goodies, which I have enjoyed making and will enjoy sharing.

The Garden for Advent

2009-12-02T11:23:00.000-08:00

On this Wednesday of the first week in Advent I still have the perfume of roses in my house. This is so amazing to me. I don't think that it has ever happened before, although at least two friends have told me at different times in years past that they have had roses blooming at Christmas.

First is the Christmas cactus continuing its joyous bloom.

Next are the roses

A friend brought these flowers from her garden (also in my neighborhood) last week

I found the combination of orange and lavender in this arrangement absolutely stunning. Not colors that I would have combined if I had been consciously thinking of a palette to play or design with, but they work amazingly well.

Much to be grateful for on this wintry day. The light at this time of year has a wanness and poignancy as the year wanes. Soon though, the days will lengthen, the light will return and the flowers of Spring will come back. All part of the waiting and expectation of Advent. Christ, Our Lord, will come into our weary hearts to remind us of His eternal light and joy. The light of day will come, too, following the celebration of His coming. Much, indeed, to be grateful for. I just have to remember it!

Beginnings, Advent 2009

2009-11-30T21:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of one of my most favorite liturgical seasons. I love the music for the season, the sense of growing expectation as Christmas nears and the sign of waiting. I also believe this is one of the few places in the Church's year when she recognizes the contribution of the feminine. Mary's yes, as much as her virginity and her motherhood are so vital Christian life.

Sometimes we say a wild, passionate yes to what we believe that God calls us to do when we are young and have no idea where that will take us. The road less traveled by sometimes, the hidden way some others. (St Therese of Lisieux did not not live long enough to see where her yes to the hidden way--her phrase--of the cloister would take her. She would be astonished, I think, to know how she is revered and I wonder if any of her writings contain any meditations on Mary.)

Sometimes that yes takes us into marriage that endures and is celebrated for decades.through all the trials of family life. Many of us have just given thanks for Thanksgiving and along with the turkey and leftovers have looked around at our families and given thanks for them. Expectation has been in the air on Thanksgiving too.

Yesterday was Stir-up Sunday. Time to get out the big yellow bowl and stir up the pudding or the fruitcake. This year, I will do that in memory only. Time to reminisce about the Christmas baking of yore. (One year I baked eighteen kinds of Christmas cookies, including two kinds of miniature fruitcakes. They were all delicious and I think I am still carrying some of them around on a body that is weary of carrying that weight.) There will be some goodies, but not nearly so many.

Time to get out the Advent wreath and the blue volume of the Liturgy of the Hours and to see what treasures it holds. Time to update my Advent lens on Squidoo and my Keep Advent group on Facebook.

I heard recently of an idea that I really like for an outdoor Advent wreath. Three purple balls and one rose one are hung in sequence on an evergreen wreath on the door. Next year, perhaps, I will do that or else make poufy ribbon bows for I have the wreath stored away in the garage.

I wish you a happy, holy Advent, time of expectation. May joy be at the end for all of us when we come to Christmas Eve.

I am grateful tonight for manifold blessings and for this season of waiting.

Fall Activities

2009-11-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

Today was crisp and clear after a day of rain yesterday. The sky was blue as blue and the leaves, sparser on the trees now after the storm, ran the gamut of yellows, oranges, and reds that make Fall such an outstanding season of light and color.

It is cold enough to think of a cozy fire, of baking and cooking slow steaming things like pot roasts and soups. My activities were more prosaic, setting up shop for my small business. Here are pictures.

The picture above shows my I Keep Advent banner. (Other banner designs are on the rack behind it.) My cards, the peace design that I have written about, designs for Christmas, and all occasion blank notes with many, many flower images comprise the offerings here along with a basket of lovely cards from my friend and colleague, Fe Langdon.

Above one of my hand knitted shoulder shawls, that can also be worn as a head scarf is draped on a wig stand. Two more are in plastic bags next to it. The yarns are soft, hand painted natural fibers.

More banners in the photo above, this time with the peace design on top of the stack and two baskets, one holding peace buttons and gift tag sized cards, the other holding sachets sit on another small table. It is fitting to display the peace design, which I made in honor of Papa with the sachets for herbal crafts were part of the business that he helped me with when he was alive.

Next, in the photo above are a selection of the hand made boxes that I began making last summer. They are fun to make. Some are printed with the same designs that I am using on other items; some are fabric over paper. I love making them almost as much as I love to knit, although arthritis and post-polio syndrome are slowing down my hands. (Some days I feel as though I live on Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen--well and of course, chocolate.)

Finally on the kitchen counter, I have arranged a display of my Mary Kay products. I was disappointed with the picture though, because I had the brilliant idea to use my Pampered Chef cooling rack to display some of the items and it works really well.

I am grateful for how pretty my things look all nicely displayed, for the customers who do find me from time to time and for my dear friend who came and swept all the leaves away and neatened and tidied the front walk way and the patio so that all would be ready for people to come.

Fall for Sure

2009-11-17T10:23:00.000-08:00

It was 59 degrees inside my house when I got up this morning. The electric blanket had quit doing the job--for some reason the newer blankets take their cue from the ambient temperature of the air above them rather than from the control setting. Probably will have to break down and learn to use that other technology that I insisted to my late father that we had to have when we put in the "new" furnace--eleven years ago. That is the programmable thermostat. The one year I used it though, I hated it. It came on way too early, went off too early in the evening and I had to keep remembering to reset it anyway in between, just as I do now. Still it did keep the furnace from coming on at night and blowing 60 degree air at me.

It is time to bake bread and make soup--warm the kitchen with the cooking projects and be comforted by "hot cooked food"--an expression of Papa's that I love. I do wish that I had a winter garden and hope to have one next year.

Rain is on the horizon, but this is the fourth week in a row that we have had that forecast and we haven't had much more than enough drizzle to dampen the ground. We would give thanks for a good soaking rain or three or four.

The sun is definitely at a lower angle these days and I find myself counting the days until the winter solstice and then the light will come again. It is a good time for drawing in and being grateful for home and hearth--which I surely am.

Very hard to believe that next week is already Thanksgiving. (Sorry about the typos that I just corrected.

Veteran's Day, 2009

2009-11-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

Today I think of all of those who served and are serving. Family members going back to the Union Army in the Civil War, coming forward through WWI and WWII who included my Grandpa and Papa. Many friends too, have served and are still serving. Today is the day that we think of you and thank you.

I no longer wear my patriotism on my sleeve as I did when I was a child. Although red, white and blue is still one of my favorite color combinations of all time. Still if I could, I would be flying my flag today--it is one of those things that I can't quite manage from my wheelchair.

I think of this as one of the November Feasts, feasts of remembrance that make the whole month of November special. I look forward to it every year. It precedes Advent and then Christmas. Maybe it is part of the reason that I love the Fall so much.

This Veteran's Day is tinged with special sadness, both because we are still at war, eight long years, longer than any of the others in our history and because of the events last week at Fort Hood.

At the same time there was a very special segment on the news last night about therapy dogs coming to the aid of veterans who are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was a lovely sight indeed to see the dogs with their people and hear the testimonies. This is a good use of our tax dollars indeed. Dogs have a special way of knowing when they are really needed and devotion to their people that is both comforting and healing.

I am grateful for all those who have served and are serving and say a special prayer for the safety of those still in harm's way that they may come home safely to their families and friends.

What is Blooming in Garden Now

2009-11-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

Now is November, 2009. We have had a string of sunny days, although today is cloudy--it is supposed to drizzle. It is colder today, too, but yesterday I had the opportunity to stick my nose out and observe what is blooming.

The first and most stunning thing is the Christmas cactus--two months early! It has apparently liked its spot on the garden shelf and it has been watered, perhaps a bit too much. So here it is in all its glory

I have written about the pineapple sage--nature's hummingbird feeder--in previous posts. I can't get around to the back to photograph the huge plant, which is the mother of all the smaller ones. But here is one of the smaller ones in the front patio

Thanks to my friend, K, who has been keeping my yard in lovely order I also have a collection of oxalis plants to compliment my principle one, the shamrock from St. Patrick's day some years ago. The one that is blooming now is purple with pink flowers. I apologize for the blurriness of the photo. This comes from talking and taking pictures at the same time

Finally, there are roses blooming! I may have roses for Thanksgiving--much as I had tomatoes last year.

The roses do deserve more attention than they have received this year. Perhaps next year will be better. More rain will lead to a better garden. So I wish the drizzle would be rain.

I am grateful for these blooming plants which quietly persevere even when I give them minimal attention. Grateful too for a nice warm place on this winterish Fall day. Hard to believe that the year has gone so fast and is nearly over.

All Saints, 2009

2009-11-01T15:15:00.000-08:00

Today is the Feast of All Saints in the Calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead of commemorating them one by one, today we think of all the saints in the aggregate. Somewhere, I think in my Catholic childhood, I received the idea that this feast was also about those not in the calendar, all the household saints, our ancestors whose lives were lived privately. I remember as the Litany of the Saints was chanted adding silently, "All ye holy Grandmothers and Grandfathers, Great-Aunts and Great-Uncles and ancestors in any way." Now I think of my parents, too, for they have gone on. In fact, we have been without them for too long.

Tomorrow, on All Souls, I will pray for their souls. I think this is called hedging my bets, something that Catholic tradition makes room for in other ways too.

Today, with the sun shining in and the bread baked, the smell of patchouli mixed with cloves and rosemary filling the air and reminding me of incense, I prefer to think of them as saints.

My parents taught me my prayers when I was so young that I don't remember a time that I did not know them. I do remember my Mama lifting me up so that I could dip my fingers in the holy water font as we entered the church to "make a visit". This also always included lighting a candle--real flames and real matches, no electric or battery operated votive lights then. The church was always dark and mysterious and had that smell of left over incense and candles burning--the potpourri I have been working with today is very evocative of that.

Most of the saints made it to heaven by simply doing that daily work of keeping themselves alive for as long as they could. Without all the medical and media rigmarole that we possess some of them had good enough genes--and luck--to make it into their 90's. Other dropped where they stood doing the housework on a Monday after attending Mass on Sunday, a massive stroke or an embolism or something else that they may not have recognized taking them instantly out of the mundane and into the sacred. (I think of heaven as the sacred and afterlife as the culmination of this one.)

The ancestors that I have traced did not, for the most part, die in hospitals, but at home. There were some exceptions. My father remembered that he was four years old when he was taken to the hospital and watched his maternal grandfather being wheeled down the hall on a gurney. He never came back. (Later, my family history research yielded up this man's death certificate and the information that he had died of stomach cancer.) His youngest daughter, my father's aunt told s the story of how her father led the family to church every Saturday afternoon for confession. They where Irish. One Saturday, instead of going to the Irish church they detoured to the German one. There they were told to go to their own church. Which they did. I am sure this same man led this same procession on Sunday to Mass.

They all "kept the Faith". Confession on Saturday, Mass on Sunday, fish on Friday. Rosaries at wake services, Gregorian Chant, the Dies Irae, and all the other lovely music of the annual cycle. And when there lives were completed they were laid to rest with the Requiem Mass.

I remember them with joy and thanksgiving, grateful for their lives on this earth and all that they passed on to me, my cultural heritage as well as my DNA. I am grateful for them, every single one and hope that they are all rejoicing in heaven. Today I rejoice in the beauty of the sunshine streaming in my window on this glorious Sunday.

Household Blessings

2009-10-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

Today it was 62 in the house when I got up around 8:00 am. That is a bit crisp for this old lady, so I set the thermostat to 67 and let the house warm a bit. Both the easy to use thermostat and the furnace itself, which got major parts last year at this time are household blessings.

After several hours of work at the computer--mostly putting up things on Etsy and Zazzle, tasks made possible by the fact that the darling DSL actually deigned to work, I switched to working on making the products themselves. First lavender was stuffed into bags and its lovely fragrance filled my dining room. Then I filled Booklover's sachets and made another small batch of this lovely potpourri that I derived from Gerard's herbal. I actually have one or two small packets of it that I made twenty years ago that still smell good. The fragrance of this is almost overwhelming though, overpowering the lavender and filling the house. Even though it is all put away now, I can still smell it and it is making me think of Christmas.

Then the UPS man brought two boxes for my Mary Kay business and I happily delved into them and set up a box to ship out. The fact that this came during the afternoon allowed me to play in the sunshine that by now was streaming into the house and warming the dining room. I was, and am, grateful.

Finally, I made a quick dinner from sloppy joe mix that my sister made and froze for me when she visited a month ago. I do believe that food in the freezer is one of the greatest blessings of all--quick fixes on busy days. I watched the news, grateful that I do not have to commute so the problems with the Bay Bridge do not afflict me; grateful that I can work at home.

Now I just need to learn better marketing skills, or networking skills to find customers and I will be able to increase the things that I am grateful for!

No pictures tonight, but maybe tomorrow. Good health and blessings to you all.

First Loaf

2009-10-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of computer technology is the availability of lists or groups set up via email. Our neighborhood has such a list and fairly frequently it is a means of exchange or recycling as people clean house or garage or closets. About a month ago someone decided to pass on a bread machine that she no longer had time to use. I was the first one who emailed her so it came to me. I call this winning the neighborhood list lottery and I think it is great fun. The bread machine is pictured below.

A few weeks later another friend, whom I knew had a bread machine, looked at it and said that it was exactly like the one that she had and would I like her recipe? I was so grateful, for I wasn't looking forward to experimenting until I got it right. (I knew I would eat the experiments, anyway so as not waste them, but I really hoped for bread.) My friend then asked a few days later if I would like a packet of the dry ingredients that she uses for her recipe. She makes up ten packets at a time and freezes them. I will be doing this I think. So I now had a bread machine and packet of ingredients to make bread. (This story is beginning to remind me of Stone Soup, one of my favorite childhood books.)

Today, with help from another friend, because I could not possibly lift that machine, the machine was set up and the bread ingredients placed into it and the settings buttons pushed. Thump, thump, thump it began mixing (kneading). Through several hours as we worked on projects the machine clunked on and off, beeped, kneaded and then began to bake. A lovely odor wafted into the dining room. At last, bread! After the cooling phase completed itself I took out a lovely rounded loaf of bread and cut and ate the first slice. Delicious! Here is the picture of the bread.

While the machine thumps through its kneading phase, it rocks back and forth a little on the old typing table that it is sitting on. At one point I looked at it, lights on, rocking and thumping and exclaimed to my friend, "It looks like R2D2!" She agreed and we laughed.

I am so grateful tonight to neighbors and friends; to a community who helped me bake bread--for another friend with the same machine was also involved in this and gave me a slice of bread she baked. I know that I will not need to be hungry for good bread again. I can make it now in the bread machine or, using the beer batter recipe, in the oven and have good, wholesome food that I have prepared myself.

Gratitude and happiness fill my heart. Thank you to all who helped with this.
(And one of these days, I will remember to proofread before I hit publish.)

Beautiful, Beautiful Produce

2009-10-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

In the last two weeks, I have lost track of time. Somewhere an entire week of October has simply disappeared. I don't know how I did this. First my friend whom I invited to add her cards to my holiday boutique emailed to ask if I was still doing this. Oh, oh, I thought, isn't that next week? Quick look at the calendar---this week. Scurry, scurry to get it done.

Then I was sure that I was due for my monthly Planet Organics delivery next Friday. While I was having lunch with a friend and enjoying the sunshine streaming in the front door (enjoy it now, its going away soon), the young man who delivers for Planet Organics came up my ramp. Turns out if you don't place a specific order they deliver a minimum container of assorted seasonal produce--very much like the Community Supported Agriculture boxes. The contents are mostly displayed in this picture.

It is so beautiful. There is chard on the bottom that doesn't show and carrots that I set aside and forgot to add. I will prep most of it tomorrow by cooking it and freezing it to eat over the next two weeks. It is a major blessing to have such fine food. Maybe it will keep my brain working better so that I won't be quite so forgetful. (A kind of new memory chip implant--vitamins and minerals from nature.)

Here are the fruits--the box is always a mix of fruit and vegetables, local and organically grown.

I love the size of the fruits, smaller than much of what comes from the supermarket and therefore better scaled to one serving for one person--especially one who is aging and not very active. My late father used to say that the most expensive food we buy is the food we throw out. Maybe the really most expensive is the food that we eat so that we won't feel guilty about throwing it out and it lands on us and we haul it around. I am still fighting with the weight problem. Perhaps more organic fruits and veggies will give me a step toward wining.

It was a serendipitous day. I am so grateful.

Morning Has Broken

2009-10-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning at first light as the dawn edged around the curtains and daylight crept into my house from the high windows in the living room that run down the whole side of the house. The light reaches all the way across to the hallway outside my bedroom. At this time of the year I also still have a few of the shades up a little from the summer pattern of letting air in although the windows are now locked down for the coming winter.

The words, "Morning has broken like the first morning" sang in my head as I watched the light grow stronger and I thought "what a nice way to wake up." For years I have had the luxury of waking with the light rather than to the sound of an alarm, but this is the first time in many months that my mind has turned to the words of this song/hymn.

First a hymn, it became a popular song in the seventies sung by Cat Stevens. I looked for the words on the net and found that I had long been conflating the first and last verses, so that what I was singing in my head was, "Morning has broken like the first morning.....God's recreation of the new day."

I loved the song and was surprised, some years after its time on the charts, to see the verses included in the Liturgy of the Hours. That is when I discovered that it is a hymn. God's recreation (re-creation) of the new day is an image I have been fond of ever since. This morning as I waited for the light to fill my house so that I could rise without needing to turn on a light, I pondered its meaning. I should have written this post immediately, because much of what I was thinking has been dissipated by the cares of the day--fighting with a bad Internet connection that is making life miserable, washing dishes and paperwork.

Still the gist of what I was thinking was on the relationship of recreation to re-creation. Prayer, worship, sharing meals with others, gardening, laughter and making things with our hands and minds seems to me to be in the nature of re-creation. We use ourselves in the ways that the Creator intended and are connected to Creation, completing a cycle each day so that we may rest and begin anew the next day.

Recreation, on the other hand, the passive entertainment that passes for recreation in our overly technological world, disconnects us from ourselves, from our true purpose in life, from meaning and of course, ultimately from our Creator. It may contribute to keeping us from resting and from being productive in truly human ways.

As I looked for a link on the Internet to the text for Morning Has Broken--which I found here http://www.events-in-music.com/morning-has-broken.html --I discovered that there is a Christmas carol set to the same tune. It can be found here http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/c/h/childman.htm
.

It is a carol that I hope to come back to as Christmas arrives. The tune it seems is Celtic.

I wish you true recreation--re-creating--tomorrow and the next day and the days hereafter and good rest this night.

I am grateful for that light this morning and for the thoughts it gave me as well as the beautiful day that it gave me as well. I will be even more grateful if and when my DSL finally works as it is supposed to!

Sunday in October

2009-10-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

The weather has taken a winterish turn. Overcast and damp, it could be any time of day and much more deeply into winter than it is on this second October Sunday. We are waiting the arrival of a storm. While we are desperately in need of rain, we aren't in need of the wind that is supposed to accompany it. This is always a little scary. The first goodly storm of the season tends to run off since the earth is hard packed and dry from all the baking summer sun. In addition, the power lines are dusty and the rain seems to have the effect of causing this dust to turn to muck and the power lines to short. I hope that we will get the good effects and the bad will be minimized. May the trees stand tall and the power stay on.

Time to remember where I put my long underwear shirts after no longer needing them for the year back in June. Time to hand wash all the hand knitted things that I should have washed by now when the weather was warmer! (I am a champion procrastinator.)

Good weather for baking though and for soup. I will use up all those cans and boxes of soup. (It feels almost as strange to say boxes as it does to pour the soup out of them, but that is a definite advance in technology! No more can openers. No more depending on power to open the cans, either, come to think of it. My hands will no longer work a hand opener.)

Yesterday I made a small batch of booklover's sachets. I love the smell of the patchouli, rosemary and cloves mixed together. So yummy. And no calories. (I should invent a chocolate and vanilla potpourri, but that would make me want to bake.)

Pictures to take, that should have been taken yesterday--when the light was better. Natural light is always better.

Still, it is Sunday. Time to relax and pray, give thanks and count my blessings. I am grateful today that the hot weather is behind us and that when I look at my Etsy shop I see that some of my items have been viewed many times. I wonder, what to do to convert the views to clicks?

Prayers for all my family and friends--and viewers and readers. May your day be truly blessed. (That underlined for was originally a typo--I thought for and typed to. Guess I shouldn't blog on only one cup of coffee. Yes, proofreading would help too.

Coming Back from Vacation

2009-10-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

I have had company for the last week. A delightful visit from my sister and her husband from Toledo, Ohio via Phoenix, Arizona where they visited their son, daughter-in-law and grandson in time for their grandson's second birthday. My sixty-second birthday was celebrated Wednesday.

It has been lovely to have this time away from routine, to eat with family and friends and to play Scrabble and watch movies. (I laugh that I may have the greatest shrink wrapped collection of video tapes on the planet. One of those tapes, Tea with Mussolini came out of its wrap yesterday and my sister and I enjoyed watching it together.

We watched several other movies and that gave me practice in finally using the DVD/VCR unit that I bought a year and half ago, but hadn't mastered using! Now I must watch more movies so that I don't forget how to do it.

My sister and I cleared a chest of drawers and she moved it to its new spot in the sewing room, aka Master Bedroom, which I hope I will finally have rearranged between now and Christmas. That will be the completion of a two-year project.

I need to get back to work and hope that the last heat wave of 2009 hit us last weekend. The computer and I both seem to like cooler weather better than hot.

The Fall is really here with crisp mornings, sunny afternoons and the pineapple sage in full bloom outside the kitchen window. My sister and I both love looking at the hummingbird as she feeds on that blooming plant.

More to come, I hope now that summer and vacation are behind me.

I am so grateful for my family and for their visit and praying for safety for travelers as they return home.

Civility and Incivility

2009-09-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

The news has been filled with incidents of incivility this week. To a certain extent, I think this is media hype. Someone is rude and gets more notice than he/she would get for ordinary, courteous behavior. Media hype, in other words.

Still there is a general lack of courtesy alive in the land and an over-sized measure of entitlement that seems to go with it. I think we all need to calm down and back up a bit.

Aristotle posited the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," hundreds of years ago. How different would our social discourse be if we were to follow it, even at this late date?

Instead of name calling, which has become our political way, if we were to take time and listen, then make our points of disagreement politely, would we make more progress on finding middle ground in our law-making? The problems that face us are huge and won't be solved by inflamed emotions and inflamed rhetoric.

I think this applies just as much to liberals not name-calling conservatives as it does the other way around. We should not hate our elected officials; it is unbecoming a democracy for its citizens to behave this way. On a practical level it leads to gridlock and the work that needs to be done, cannot be done.

I am grateful to live in a democracy.

Tasks That Didn't Exist When I Was Young

2009-09-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe I am just getting old and grumpy, or maybe it is just beginning to show a bit more. Yesterday, as I shredded paper and washed plastic bags I thought of tasks that didn't exist when I was growing up.

Recycling.

There wasn't so much packaging for starters. If you needed to buy a pencil, you went to the store and bought a pencil. (I still remember buying my artist's blue pencils for calligraphy layout as singles. Several sizes of leads, but one of each. Not packs. I still have the pencils.) If you needed screws or nuts or nails, you went to the hardware store and bought what you needed out of bins. There were no blister packs and the sacks that they came home in were made of paper, easily burnable in the coal furnace in the basement.

True, crayons came in sets in boxes, but the boxes had no other packaging, not even a sticker to keep them closed. Nobody would have swiped one crayon.

Plastic bags hadn't been invented yet. Our mothers made our sandwiches for us to take for lunch and slipped them into wax paper sandwich bags. Milk was delivered in glass bottles and the bottles, washed, were put back in the milk box on the back porch so the milk man could take them when he brought the new full ones.

We rarely drank soda, but when we did, it came home in glass bottles that had a deposit on them, so we took them back to the store. Sometimes, in the summer, kids collected bottles in the their red wagons to take back to the store to earn money for the ice cream man or some other small kid expense. The newspapers were tied up in bundles because sooner or later there would be a paper drive by the Boy Scouts to earn money for the troop. This was a vestige of paper drives during the war years when nothing was wasted.

Washing everything before it is recycled.

Obvious. There wasn't so much stuff; we threw out the trash and we didn't wash it first.

Sorting the recycling.

How many hours have I spent doing this in the last twenty years? I am so grateful to be able to read newspapers and magazines online now so that everything that I read doesn't have to be handled so many times before it clears the house.

Shredding paper

This one didn't exist a few decades ago either. The noise made from the shredder is about as pleasant as a leaf blower. One small good note of the recession is that at least there isn't as much junk mail this year as in the preceding years. I can at last catch up with all the paper shredding. Didn't even own a shredder until two years ago. After spending time sorting the recyclable parts (envelopes and such) from the shreddable parts of the junk mail, I find that I then spend about as much time cleaning the stuck paper bits out of the shredder so that I can feed it some more, as I do actually feeding paper through it. Definitely not time well spent.

Washing plastic bags to use them again.

This was one that I used to refuse to do. Yesterday, after cleaning three kitchen drawers, I found that I had the equivalent of a box full of zipper type plastic bags. All gently used since the really gunky ones had made it to the trash. So along with the dishes, I am washing the bags. (That will mean fewer boxes cluttering the pantry and fewer boxes to break up to recycle. Maybe there is more method to this than I thought.)

I have found that the easiest way to do this and to ensure that they will dry is to put soapy water in the bag, close the bag, shake and squish. Transfer the soapy water to the next bag or the dishpan to be used to wash the next thing and turn the bag inside out. Rinse it. When it has dried, turn it right side out again and dry the outside. Store open so that it will be easier to use the next time.

How much water, energy (to heat the water as well as our own energy) and dish soap does it take to reclaim the plastic bags and rinse out the recyclables? How much time do we spend doing these seemingly useless, less than productive tasks?

Still, I am grateful that I am getting things cleaned up. Even more grateful for the visit of my sister and brother-in-law that I am anticipating in two weeks. (The motivator for the clean-up.) Grateful too for the beautiful fall weather that we are having and the energy it gives me to do the clean-up.

Vegetable Delight

2009-09-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

My dear friend L brought this scrumptious vegetable gallette over for a taste testing this morning--late enough to be lunch.

Tomatoes, roasted red pepper and provolone blended together to provide the filling. The flaky pastry melted on my tongue. Altogether marvelous.

When she called, I was just about to test a buckwheat oatmeal muffin for doneness. They were perfect so I took them out of the oven.

I have always been fearless about fiddling with recipes--sort of a master fiddler--in this respect. The original recipe called for butter, but I have been eating too much butter recently, so substituted canola oil. Where the original recipe called for white flour ("all purpose"), I long ago substituted whole wheat. Half the whole wheat gave way to buckwheat and it all came together nicely. Forgot to take a picture though. They're not really all that photogenic.

I must ask my friend if the pastry could be made with whole wheat flour. Probably wouldn't be as pretty though.

I am grateful for this yummy food brought by a friend. Grateful too, for the weather. Fall is definitely in the air today. I do love Fall and am glad to have survived summer. It is hard to believe that the last few months went by so quickly.

Knitting Project Completed and Books Read

2009-08-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

For the last two weeks I have been preoccupied with turning some beautiful purple yarn that I found in my stash into a garment, ad libitum, that is without a pattern. Here it is

I found that it was great fun to figure out how to count out and tie off the stitches that would become the hood and then bind off the two sides, pick up the hood stitches and knit them. After this picture was taken I sewed the top of the hood together and added "I-cord" to the corners where the hood and body of the shawl intersect so that it will be easy to keep it anchored when I wear it next winter.

Last week, one evening was almost cold enough to wear it; two nights later I kept myself awake reading Murder with Puffins, while the fans ran and blew enough cool air into the house to bring the temperature down enough to sleep. ("Changeable as the weather", that is the kind of summer we have had.)

I indulged in reading the next China Bayles mystery that the library lady brought me, Spanish Dagger and am now reading the next one, Nightshade. I have one more to go, Wormwood and then I think I will have to go back and read the first one over again and the rest in sequence. Like the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters, I think I can read these over and over.

Except that I am being prodded and pep-talked by a very persuasive and persistent young woman from twenty-five hundred miles away to "finish your book, Aunt Maggie". Niece Jenny, who lives in Toledo. I said, "Which one." I have almost as many unfinished projects as I have clutter in my house--and yes, they are almost certainly related.

Well, tomorrow is another day and it is late now. I am grateful that I found that pretty yarn and I think I will be even more grateful when the cold weather comes in December. Grateful, too for this mild summer. Maybe, just maybe, I will be able to write that I am grateful for finishing one of those manuscripts. One of these days.

My apologies for the coding errors in the first post of this; I have edited it, which may be against blogging etiquette, but it seems better to fix it than leave it in an incomprehensible state. (Shouldn't blog when I am falling asleep!)

Journeys Taken

2009-08-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Fifty years ago today, on August 17, 1959 my family arrived in the Bay Area in our 1955 Chevy Bel Air, a green and white two-door sedan with a fully loaded car top carrier and an equally loaded trunk. (Ah, the capacity of that trunk! ) We had spent the night in Virginia City, Nevada, an historic silver mining town. I remember a Polar Bear mounted in a glass case--something that was rather shocking then and would be utterly appalling, if not actually illegal, now. The beauty of the creature still haunts me.

Papa knew that we would make it to our destination that day, so he allowed time for
lingering and being on vacation as it were. We had spent the last nine days driving across the country from Toledo, Ohio. Across the Midwest plains states, bypassing Chicago--Papa did not like city traffic, (Much later I realized that he had actually lived in Chicago for a short time when he was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Station to fill out his contracted term with the Navy after the war in the Pacific ended.)

Through Iowa with its, "Iowa has more pigs than people" highway signs, we stayed overnight in Nebraska at a Motor Inn, a wonderful place that had been built in the 1920's. With its two bedrooms, spacious bathroom, front entry hall that would easily have doubled as a sitting room if it had had furniture, and tiny kitchen ("kitchenette") we could have spent a week there--if there had been something to do!

Our journey took us to Wyoming and I remember eating lunch in a town called Laramie and marveling at the splendor of the mountains. "Purple mountains majesties" became real to me that day. Onwards to Utah, with even grander scenery we stayed over on the fourteenth of August. The next day, the fifteenth, was the Feast of the Assumption, a Holy Day of Obligation, so Papa inquired of the cashier at the restaurant where we ate supper and then we found the church we would go to in the morning and checked the schedule for morning Mass.

Very bright and early the next morning we arrived at an empty parking lot and watched sunrise in the Rocky mountains, wondering where the people were who should be attending Mass. Only after we had been sitting there for a bit, did our parents realize that the time zones had changed and we were an hour ahead of everybody! We went back to our motel and gathered our things together so that we would be ready to leave after Mass. We could not eat breakfast, of course, because we wanted to receive Communion and the laws of fasting still held in 1959.

I remember seeing sisters in the congregation with the great white headdresses that would later show up on tv in Sally Field's "the Flying Nun". Daughters of Charity, perhaps? Mass was quick and breakfast eaten and we were on our way again, marveling still at the deep drop and glorious mountains that we drove through. That night was spent in Elko, Nevada, I believe and then two days later we were home, although we did not call it that yet.

It was the essence of the great American Road Trip. I may still have the AAA "Triptik" somewhere in the house. It changed our families lives, of course, for we became Californians and our parents lived out there lives here, as I very well may, in this house that I still live in.

I am grateful for these memories and for my family today. Grateful too for the Bay Areas's natural air conditioning, that I love!

Blue Vegetables

2009-08-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

In the last year of my late mother's life she frequently said, "Oh, I wish someone would invent a new vegetable." Shortly after her death, the explosion in exotic and rare vegetables took place. I even have a large book, written in the 1980's devoted to these specialty vegetables that now days, thanks to Farmer's Markets, gourmet cooking shows and "foodie" blogs are no longer exotic or rare.

I thought of Mama when I saw that the purple cauliflower that I wrote about a week ago turns blue when it is cooked. My friend, who showed it to me right after she bought it, shared a generous bag of it with me.

Here is a picture

And another

Smells and tastes just like cauliflower. I am tempted to make a bleu cheese sauce and something with blue corn meal to complete the blue motif, or is it a blue food conceit?

All of this adds up to a new definition of playing with my food. I confess to a fascination with it. Find a wine with a blue label, make something with blue icing for dessert and have a blue food party. (Lemon cupcakes with blueberry frosting, a recipe that I found a few months ago and haven't tried yet.) Would anybody come or would they think it too weird? (I promise not to dye the chicken blue--but what could the entree be to keep with the theme?)

I could make the invitations blue (a digitally enhanced blue rose maybe) and ask the guests to wear something blue.

Now all I need is a clean house and a sous chef and I would be all set.

Seriously, I am grateful for this blue vegetable, even more grateful for my friend who shares her food finds with me. The weather is beautiful today--I feared that it would be hot and it is not, so I am grateful for that too. Always grateful for things that remind me of my Mama as well.

A blessed Sunday and day after the Feast of the Assumption. May all your vegetables taste yummy and delight you, whether they are blue or not. (And one of these days, I may learn to proofread before I hit post!)

Random Thoughts

2009-08-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

The days have been flying by. Too many books, too little time! I have thirteen books from the library and I think that I am about half way through them. Novels are the majority. I have read A Dilly of a Death, another China Bayles mystery by Susan Wittig Albert, who has become one of my most favorite authors. Then I was engrossed in Interred With Their Bones, a complex story that spanned several centuries and was primarily a modern day action thriller/mystery. Following these books were several that are the reading equivalent of eating popcorn.

This week the weather has been gorgeous with even a little rain on Thursday. Just enough to smell good and give us a dramatic sky, it was not enough to water the plants. Now we are due for a heat wave. I will be glad when that is over. July and August are two of my least favorite months. Followed by January. If I could hibernate during those three months, I think that I would!

This week I made the rye/onion variation of the beer batter bread. This is so good! I am thinking about trying for a whole wheat and cinnamon, raisin variation. I'm not sure how this will go with the beer, though. Report to follow if I do it.

I was struck by the news this week of the two young women journalists returning home from Korea. It was touching to see them reunited with their families.

At the same time, I was struck by the fact that I did not see a single allusion to Hiroshima on Thursday, August 6, the anniversary of that awful event. Are we starting to forget? We never should. The danger is still so great.

Finally, I have been meaning all week to share this marvelous vegetable that a friend showed me from the Farmer's Market, a purple cauliflower.

I need to ask her if it cooked purple and if it tasted any different for being such a fabulous color.

I am grateful for this length of cooler days, even as I go into heat wave mode again and I am grateful that Fall is coming.

Feast of St. Ann

2009-07-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite days in the calendar, one that I anticipate is this day the Feast of St. Ann. In the traditional calendar, St. Ann was honored alone. In the modernized calendar, St. Joachim has been added. This is appropriate, I think, especially in a culture when fathers are all too often relegated to roles as sit-com dads or comedy movie bumblers. Fathers, and thus grandfathers are as important as mothers and grandmothers.

I have an especial love for the images of St. Ann with the little girl, her daughter, Mary at her knee, a book open. This is an image of a woman who is clearly literate, passing on her knowledge to her daughter. She would also have taught spinning and weaving and the other domestic arts to this daughter who was destined to play such a powerful role in "salvation history", a term I put in quotes because it was part of the catechism instruction that I received as a child (also at my mother's knee--and my father's) and that I have not heard used recently.

There was, I believe, a seamless integration of the activities, what I believe today we might call "roles"--of St Ann and St Joachim as they went about their daily lives. Today the closest that many of us come to physical labor is picking up and adjusting the keyboard and the mouse and then typing as we sit down to our computers. To exercise our bodies we go for a run or to the gym.

In an earlier, pre-industrial, pre-modern society, the muscles were used everyday for everyday tasks. Spinning, weaving, sweeping, carpentry. (This raises the question, that I don't believe I have ever heard an answer to--St Joseph was a carpenter, what did St Joachim do?)

I miss hearing the lovely chants for this feast and should go poking around on the internet to see if I can find them. I am grateful for the childhood spent learning these devotions and the traditions of Catholicism, and for the time, too brief in retrospect, that I spent singing in a chant choir when I was a young woman. Grateful, too that that chant choir is still well and singing in Palo Alto.

Today is a lovely day with cloud cover still at almost 9:30. I can remember so many times that we sang in a heat wave, an evening Mass. As the sun set the cooling ocean breeze would blow in the chapel windows and doors and by the time that the last note had been sung, the last candle blown out and the last program collected, we would shiver slightly as we walked across the lawn to the house were we would have refreshments to continue the celebration of the feast.

I am grateful for these memories too and wish you a happy and blessed St Ann's Day.

Catching Up

2009-07-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've been using the hot days of the last week to do some catching up. Sorting and actually shredding paper is one of the most boring task sets in the universe. Be sure not to mix the-goes-in-the-shredder-pile up with the goes-in-the-recycle pile. There is a sense of accomplishment when it is done that almost makes up for the time.

I have chores in every room of the house--grateful that it isn't a bigger house! Oh yes, I am. Too much paper, too many books, too little time. Never thought I would reach the point of too many books, but I have. I am glad for the public library and the Special Outreach Services Program that brings books to me. Fewer books would have come into the house if I had known about this earlier.

The sewing room, newly painted in the summer of 2007, may emerge this summer. That would be wonderful. The living room might be visible again before my family comes to visit. it has been a default sorting space and knitting accumulation space, with its own accumulation of books. I should take before and after pictures. Then this could become a decluttering blog!

Some of this blends with Using What We Have. A storage bin was cleared to put my new store of herbal products and supplies away where they would not make me sneeze. I was very pleased to consolidate and use a bin I had rather than buy yet another bin to stack into the clutter. More of that to come.

Reading books that are old friends that I haven't read in a decade is another example of using what I have when the library books run out. Last week I unraveled a shoulder shawl that I had knit two years ago that had not worked out quite right. In the meantime I found two more skeins of the yarn, a deep, luxurious purple color of a somewhat bulky wool yarn. I got it from someone on the Internet and had it put away. It is now two skeins away from becoming a new, warm triangle shawl for me to use come cold weather. (As hot as it was last week, it is hard to believe that it will ever be cold again. Of course, it will!) There is already a hat made from this yarn, just have to sew up the side.

This is the summer for finishing lots of small projects and then finding space to store them properly so that they can be used. It is fun to put the things from one season away and take out those for the next season. Much for fun than just letting it all clutter in bags stuck around the place.

So even though it is sometimes only one object at a time and it seems mortally slow, I am catching up. I am grateful for the return of the cool weather--it is in the 50's outside as I write this and 67 in my office. The pictures of the fog surging through the Golden Gate that are shown on the weather forecasts are some of the most beautiful that I ever see in summer. Sometimes, as I remember to take a deep breath, I am simply grateful to be alive.

Using What We Have

2009-07-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

A friend emailed me recently that she was cleaning out her fridge and freezer prior to going on a long trip. She plans to disconnect the unit and leave it open while she is gone. She indicated that she was diligently working her way through the groceries that she had on hand rather than buying more and that this was a discipline, since what she had to eat wasn't necessarily what she wanted to eat.

This is a uniquely American dilemna, I think. (And is dilemna spelled with an n as I think that it is, or two m's as the Google spellchecker is telling me? I don't think I have ever seen the two m version and I can't find my old spelling dictionary anywhere around the computer.) I digress.

Americans are blessed with such an abundance of food as well as the refrigerators, cupboards and pantries to store it in, that we can easily overbuy from any reasonable or responsible supply.

My current refrigerator is smaller than my old one, but it still has far more food within it than I can expect to consume in a week. Perhaps more than I can consume in two weeks. The freezer is also full. I have not used all of the pesto that I made with so much love last Fall, and I must do so. It would be a shame to see that go to waste. There is no ice cream in the freezer--partly because I no longer eat anything with soy in it and partly because there simply isn't room for ice cream.

A round plate with fruit, very pretty, resides on the kitchen counter. What possessed me to order so much? Of course, when I order online, I don't see how many that will be. Still, one organic apricot went moldy and so did one lemon. It hasn't even been hot. Better to have bought less or shared more with a friend who visited for lunch on Friday.

I am considering using what I have as a challenge to clean out the kitchen. What can I have that is delicious and nutritious? What will be merely delicious? How unbalanced will my diet be if I try this experiment? I will run out of milk and definitely need to buy that.

Another challenge would then be to buy only what I need and will truly use within a defined period. The period should be defined by how long things will keep and the need should be based on a standard of nutrition that begins with protein grams, adds carbohydrates, adds calcium, adds fat and then includes fiber. (Vitamins and minerals will come primarily from supplements as they do now.)

If I were to devise this challenge and stick to it, how much money would I save? But that is probably not the whole point. The principal point is to cut down on waste and recognize that while so many people in the world go hungry, I am an American who can watch cooking shows, and be tempted to make food that is really beyond the necessary (I saw a segment this afternoon where someone put corn stuffing into meatloaf); an American who can eat anything at anytime from anywhere in the world and who can decide that I am bored with what I have on hand and order out from an array of restaurants that deliver the cuisine of the world to my door. (Limited by my budget, of course.)

All of that is good and I like it. Still, I am wondering how I will fare if I give myself this challenge. No ordering anything except milk until I have used up what I have. (I'll let you know.)

I am grateful for my kitchen and its pantry and a goodly array of supplies. For the pesto and one dozen lemon cupcakes in the freezer, I am also grateful. For the kale from a friend's garden, for the community of sharing that is my neighborhood with all of its gardens and fruit trees. For the community of sharing that is the Internet, too. (I wouldn't have the overstocked dilemna without the Internet.)

Oops, zucchini and onion correction

2009-07-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

Sigh! I have done it again. The picture of the red onions in my last post seems to have lost the zucchinis.

Here is the correct picture.

The zucchinis were indeed the best that I have ever had.

Here is the link to the Pinconning Cheese company
http://pinconningcheese.com/
The website is a marvelous thing. So many kinds of cheese. So many kinds of sausage. I think this is probably the same shop Grandpa went to since it has been in business since 1948 and it is close to Bay City and Saginaw. I hope that when cooler weather comes in Fall I can check this one out.

In the meantime a friend emailed me that she is going to the Milk Pail, a local (Mountain View) wonderful place for all things dairy, plus produce, tomorrow. So I will have cheese to go with my beer bread. Several years ago my sister discovered Iveta Gourmet Scone mixes at the Milk Pail when she visited and they have an interesting story. Another family owned business, Iveta began in Chicago and moved to Santa Cruz. All of their mixes are formulated so that only one ingredient is needed--heavy cream. Delicious and simple. (But it did lead to my keeping cream on hand for awhile and that isn't really in the diet now.) Here is their link

http://www.iveta.com/ They ship.

I don't see the pumpkin mix listed now. It would be too bad if they have discontinued it.

The lemon cupcakes turned out well and are even better made with sour cream than they are with yogurt. Half are now in the freezer so that I won't simply eat them all at once. (Nice for breakfast, though!)

I am grateful for all of these goodies and the kindness of friends which makes it all possible.

Summer's Bounty

2009-07-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

Last night I was grateful to PBS for producing and airing A Capitol Fourth. The fireworks each year with the Capitol Mall are so splendid. I would have been happier with a bit more patriotic music and less of the pop culture glitz, but I suppose that is me. It is good to remember what the Fourth of July is really all about and I can't help wishing that they would give us a little more history and maybe even read the Declaration of Independence aloud.

The celebration of the Fourth is part of the bounty of summer. More is in the photos below.

The first picture is of red spring onions from a neighbor's garden with zucchini from Planet Organics. The second is apricots, peaches and plucots, again from Planet Organics. Planet Organics is a family owned grocery delivery business in the Bay Area. I have gotten some amazing things from them recently.

Last Thursday evening it was finally cool enough in the house and I found the time to make Whole Wheat Beer Batter Bread, one of the recipes that I posted about two or so Sundays ago. It is fabulous. So good, that delicious does not do it justice. Simply fabulous. It wants a slice of Havarti with Dill or of a good cheddar--extra sharp, preferably.

That reminds me of the cheese my Grandpa would send us each Christmas when we still lived in Toledo. The cheese came from Pinconning, Michigan. I must look for it again here on the Internet.

More lemon cupcakes are in my Sunday schedule. Gratitude for the Fourth of July and for the opportunities to cook and bake is also a part of my day, this beautiful day.

Trains

2009-06-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

As I was washing dishes the other day and generally puttering around my kitchen, I heard the train go by. I live three blocks over from a major expressway bordered by train tracks on the far side. The sound of trains has been with me all of my life.

Commute trains, Amtrak trains and freight trains punctuate the day and night. Now with the windows open for the summer I hear the early and late trains more than I do during the colder months. The length of the trains suggest whether they are passenger or freight, with the longer trains that I assume are hauling freight going through at night.

In Toledo, when I was growing up, we lived a similar distance from trains and I remember all too well the pictures from Life magazine of Anne Frank and the concentration camps. For a brief time in my childhood, probably when I was nine or ten, the sounds of trains scared me. I lay in my bed at night fearful, imagining what it had been like to be pushed into a boxcar traveling in the dark without water or food or a place to go to the bathroom. I had a vivid imagination and for a time the trains were not comforting.

When we moved to California my parents again bought a house that was near trains. In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school my family took the Vista Dome train to Chicago from Oakland. This was an elegant train with its dining car, private compartment and second story for viewing the country as it rolled by. I remember sitting in the dining car with a linen table cloth and heavy silver flatware waiting for our dinner with the train stopped blocking a crossing. People were backed up, probably wishing that darned train would get moving.

We pulled into Chicago on the Fourth of July, passing through miles of stock yards and slums such as I had never seen before. (I would see them again from the Dan Ryan expressway years later when I lived in that city.) It was sobering to see a city so different from the areas where I had lived. Then we made a mad dash across town to another train station where we had a long, long wait for the "milk train" that would take us to Toledo where we were visiting family and friends.

We sat it out in the station until eleven pm and finally boarded the next train. I remember taking an escalator in the second station, one of the few times in my life that I ever did that. Escalators are scary things to people on crutches, as I was then, and require some very precise co-ordination of person, crutches and moving stairs to get on and off. Getting off is definitely trickier than getting on if my memory serves me correctly. With Papa behind me, I felt confident to try it, but was not really happy with it.

We had studied geography freshman year and I remember being very excited and waking up my long-suffering younger sister with my excitement that we were passing through the Gary, Indiana, noted primarily for its smokestacks. She still remembers this and has full rights to give me a hard time about it even after all these years. (Nearly half a century.)

When we arrived in Toledo in the wee hours of the morning we were met by the very dear friend, a tall, handsome Irish American with a fine voice and wonderful sense of humor who had been Papa's work colleague before we moved. Some years later, Uncle Ed, as we called him, would become my sister's father-in-law and "boppa" to her son and daughter. I remember his intelligence, humor, kindness and friendship to our family as though he truly had been my uncle. Along with my parents and his own wife, he is sorely missed by our family.

Finally, as a graduate student in Chicago, I lived three blocks west of the El. The stairs up to it were so daunting to me that I never did ride that train. The city traffic noise in Chicago was so great that I don't remember a distinct sound of trains such I experience now or knew as a child in Toledo.

Sometimes I think that I would like to move away from trains, but it isn't likely to happen. Sometimes I think that taking the Vista Dome across the country again would be a fun adventure. Adventures are mostly in my mind though, now that I am definitely aging and I think that I will keep them vicarious through memory and film. (Great train scenes from film would be another post! One that I saw last night was in an old Sherlock Holmes with Holmes and Watson and Holmes older brother catching up with the bad guys on the "boat train.")

I am grateful for my memories of trains and grateful for the relatively cool part of this day that will become quite hot later.

It is hard to believe that the Fourth of July is right around the corner and that Christmas is now less than six months away! (Arggh!)

Summer is Here

2009-06-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

After an almost heat wave that didn't quite materialize I am back to sitting with a blanket wrapped around me. It is officially the first day of summer (or will be in three hours).

I celebrated by baking a Garvey's Irish Brown Bread. This is a mix that requires the addition of just one ingredient--buttermilk. It is delicious and quick. I will make it a pantry staple from now on. The mix came to me from Planet Organics. They are delivering once a month on a Friday, because that is my delivery day. The produce is beautiful. I also cooked zucchini this afternoon. They were so beautiful that I should have grabbed my camera and taken their portrait, but the space in the kitchen is a little confined and too cluttered. They were actually delicious raw too.

A neighbor, who has a prolific garden, has been supplying me with kale and salad greens. It is one of those amazing facts of life to watch a pile of kale that has filled a large skillet to overflowing shrink to a small bunch in the cooking. I keep wanting to cook it with bacon and onions, but bacon isn't one of the things that I normally have on hand.

The kale would also be good with sausages, which reminds me of summer meals of potato salad and sausages brought from Wisconsin or Milwaukee by friends as each went home for a summer visit to his respective family and came back with a carry-on filled with sausages--enough to feed fifteen to twenty people gathered to feast after singing Vespers on a Sunday evening in Palo Alto thirty or so years ago. Beer, of course, was the beverage of choice to go with the sausages.

A six pack of Guinness resides in my kitchen at the moment. One bottle, along with 2 oz of water will combine with other ingredients to make a loaf of whole wheat beer bread, the recipe I cited two weeks ago. Some more of it will be used to make the chocolate beer cake that I also cited. Since that will require opening more than one bottle, and since I no longer drink alcohol, I want to time it so that the leftover can go into the pot of whatever I am cooking at the time. (I have no aversion to alcohol, but prefer not to drink alone. Anyway, sausages, kale and onions with beer would be good. (Maybe should go back to Planet Organics and peruse the sausage offerings.)

I am intrigued by the growth of a company such as Planet Organics, the farmers markets and the CSA movement. Community Supported Agriculture brings the farm to the urban dweller though subscription boxes of produce while providing capital to the cash strapped farm. I love this and I also love the Farmer's Markets.

I am grateful for the lovely cool weather this weekend and the chance to catch up cooking, which I do not do on hot days! I am also grateful for this lovely food in my pantry and fridge and for the Internet, which gives me a constant supply of new recipes and sources for a plethora of fine ingredients.

Happy Father's Day tomorrow to you all. (And again if I could just learn to proofread before I post, what I write might make more sense! Sorry to anyone who read the uncorrected version.)

Remembering

2009-06-12T20:21:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking of my father a great deal this week. It has been a busy week, so I have not posted as I had planned. Monday was the tenth anniversary of Papa's death. (That is the official date, although he actually died on June 6; he was kept breathing on life support.) Yesterday, the eleventh of June was the corresponding tenth anniversary of his funeral, a Gregorian Requiem, as he had always wished it would be, sung by the St. Ann Choir at St. Athanasius Church, the Church where he and Mama were among the forty or fifty founding couples who built the parish from its beginnng in 1959.

Ironically, yesterday the Senate of the United States passed a much belated law giving the FDA authority to regulate tobacco. It is ironic to me because my father died from emphysema, a smoker's disease. Up to 1985, when he quit smoking, every picture of Papa that we have showed him with a cigarette in his hand. He smoked his last cigarette on June 6, (D-Day), 1985 and made a mark on his bathroom wall (now painted over.) Fourteen years later he collapsed and was revived by the paramedics only to have a massive heart attack in the emergency room from which he was again resuscitated, but never regained consciousness. I found it ironic then that he died on the anniversary of D-Day and of the day when he had quit smoking.

He called emphysema, "an old man's disease, an old veteran's disease", and told me about how his becoming hooked on cigarettes was linked to his service in the war. After one incident of combat, he said, someone offered him a cigarette and the combined adrenaline rush from combat and the nicotine caused him to become addicted as he had not been before.

I remember in my childhood in Toledo once when I was ten or eleven years old coming upon his cigarette in the ashtray on a table in the living room where he had left it while we ate lunch in the kitchen. It was nearly burned down and I could not resist taking a puff. The hot smoke and disgusting taste of the thing made me cough and I had to go into the bathroom and close the door so that I could cough and recover and not admit to stealing a drag on the cigarette. I couldn't comprehend why he smoked. It was just so yucky. (Years later I would become a smoker myself and I quite some months before Papa did.)

So I am very glad that the FDA will finally regulate tobacco. I have often wondered if he had quit sooner, would we have enjoyed his company, his intellect, his wit, his grace and charm and his joy and pride in us longer? He would, I am sure, take great pride in his grandchildren who in the past decade have become accomplished adults. He would be charmed and chuckle over the antics of his first great-grandchild, my grand-nephew whose first haircut pictures arrived in my inbox this week and made me laugh.

Often when I load new pictures from my digital camera unto the computer, I think of my father, wistfully for he was a skilled photographer himself and also a computer programmer. He did not live long enough to see the advent of the scanner, printers or digital camera into this house, but I am sure that he would so enjoy them. The prints I have made from old family photos adorn my shelves. I made them within the first year after he died as my own grief gave way to mourning and the mourning was turned into remembrance through the work of documenting our family history and printing out these pictures. He would have been amazed by the quality of the prints and enjoyed having his family around him again, as I do.

I wish the technology could have come sooner, that the Internet could have come sooner. I know he would be so pleased to see me re-inventing the little business that he helped me with and watched over in the eighties as I learned to garden and make potpourri. (Although he would be glad to know that I am no longer growing what seemed to be bizillions of seedlings all over the dining room.)

Tonight I watched an episode of NCSI, a program that he never saw, but that I think he would enjoy. I miss sharing these things with him. The books that I read, the television programs that I watch have less savor without someone, Papa in particular, to share them with.

Cooking is harder too, now than when he was alive ten years ago. Part of that, of course, is that I am ten years older now and physical tasks are not so easy as they were then. (That is relative, too, of course.) Lacking someone to share my "creations" with makes the task harder too and scaling back from cooking for two to cooking for one is a challenge as well.

Papa rarely talked about his time in the Navy or the war as my sister and I were growing up, but it was a seminal part of his life, if for no other reasons than that it took him away for three years and it solidified his occasional social practice of smoking an occasional cigarette into an addiction that ultimately took his life. Before it did that, it also robbed him of robust vigor that would have been his.

Two months ago when friends cleaned out my garage they found the following artifacts that were part of Papa's Navy Service tucked away in a drawer.

The first I call an insignia, but I am truly not sure what it is. The second is a pocket Morse code "cheater". I assume that this is from the time that he spent in Navy Officer Training at Princeton in the Fall of 1943. The last is the emblem from his cap.

Finally, here is his official portrait in his uniform, which I have also posted on the Squidoo lens that I have done about him--Fred is Peace, that is in the links to the right.

I am grateful for the life of my father, for my memories of him and I hope that the time will come when fewer people smoke and no one any longer dies from smoking related illnesses.

Blogs I Have Found Recently

2009-06-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

While searching cyberspace for the perfect lemon cupcake recipe, I found a number of interesting blogs and recipes. The most interesting--I was looking for a blueberry frosting recipe that I had found when I first began the cupcake search--is this one
http://shazaminthekitchen.blogspot.com/2008/05/lavender-cocoa-cupcakes-with-blueberry.html .

This is definitely on my list of must try recipes. (I will probably use either Dagoba or Ghirardelli cocoa because that is what I have on hand.) I will order my food grade lavender flowers (along with tomato powder, chocolate extract and at least two kinds of pepper, white and black, from the Spice House in Chicago. The Spice House has wonderful, wonderful spices and recipes on their site).

After my friend shared her lemon recipe find, I went looking for a beer bread recipe. This was inspired by a mystery novel that had a recipe at the end for a beer bread with three ingredients--beer, self-rising flour and sugar. I didn't want to add self-rising flour to my flour collection. (Whole wheat, white whole wheat, all-purpose, corn, spelt, buckwheat and probably some other flour take up space in my refrigerator. There is a box of cake flour on the pantry shelf too, but it's been there for so long that I can only guess at what it was used for. (I think it was either the lemon Madelaines or the Julia Child chocolate ginger cake that my sister made when she visited. Two different visits.)

King Arthur Flour gives the formula for converting self-rising flour to regular ingredients and they also have an absolutely spectacular looking recipe for a Chocolate Stout Cake--which I have had on my list for some time, actually. (I think since St. Patrick's Day.)
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/chocolate-stout-cake-recipe I think they blog about this too.

Finally, searching for the beer bread led me to this wonderful blog and wonderful sounding very simple recipe that I will definitely make soon. (Unless we get a Truly Horrible Heatwave, and then it will be postponed to later.)

http://foodiefarmgirl.blogspot.com/2005/11/beer-bread-update-whole-wheat-version.html

Then a friend who is on Facebook with me pointed to a tea group that she had joined and followed to a link to this blog post on making homemade tea bags. (Kind of fits with the cupcakes, I think.)
http://lillyella.blogspot.com/2009/05/crafting-tea-bag-gifts-and-favors.html

I hope that all of the links work. Wish you could come join me as I experiment with these goodies. I am grateful for the friends who share what they are finding and for the blogs. I can hardly wait to try more of these goodies.

Happy Sunday. (And to those who get this twice, I heartily apologize. If I could just learn to proofread in preview instead of hitting post and then looking at it. Well, I always did cook and bake better than I type!)

Baking again

2009-06-03T19:35:00.000-07:00

Sunday I baked these delicious lemon cupcakes with lemon glaze. A friend, who is an expert baker, recommended the recipe from About.com. I am thinking about substituting a small orange for the lemon and making a variation.

The recipe can be found here. http://southernfood.about.com/od/lemoncakes/r/bl1102f.htm

I substituted plain yogurt for the sour cream, added lemon juice and 1tsp of vanilla extract. Added 1/2 tsp vanilla to the glaze as well and made about half. Obviously I baked the recipe as cupcakes instead of a cake. Twenty-five minutes were a perfect time and I had 18 cupcakes, although I think that if I had filled the tins more evenly I could have made 24. (And would have needed more glaze.) I am a life long choc-a-holic ; these were so good, I am not sure I did not prefer them to chocolate.

Two of my favorite new tools are depicted below.

The bowl is a soft plastic one with a "grabber" ring on the bottom. No skid. The black tool is from Pampered Chef. I think they call it an avocado masher. It does a great job of creaming sugar and butter and of beating and mixing. I love it. I could not handle an electric mixer, so do not miss having one. This tool makes baking possible again. Serious plug.

I am looking at two recipes for blueberry frosting and also looking at a cocoa lavender cupcake recipe. Too many ideas, too little time. (Too many calories, not enough people to share them with!)

I am grateful for the interlude of cool weather--it actually rained for about six minutes last night--and the time I spent baking.

Back to Blogging

2009-05-31T11:09:00.000-07:00

Allergies have been keeping me feeling unwell and it seems that when my head is stuffy I don't write much. The time has gotten away from me.

Today is Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit filled the Apostles and they went out and began their preaching ministry. It is a good day to reflect on the Spirit and on new beginnings. A new season is underway, too with summer almost upon us.

Pentecost can be a hot, hot day. I remember melting in the heat and singing the Mass in Polyphony, grateful for the cool chapel and the even cooler Adobe house with its tile roof that was then the Newman Center for Stanford University where the choir sang. In particular, I remember slaving through a heat wave to make a duck pate and a cake and other goodies for the baptism of one of my god-children, now a young man in his twenties. Time has flown far too quickly.

As I wrote about the Apostles beginning their preaching ministries, I wondered what they would make of our new technologies? Babelfish and Google translator, would be the modern day tools to get the word out in multi-languages and Facebook and Twitter would carry the message to the whole world. They would use them all, I am sure.

A Blessed Pentecost. I am grateful for the Spirit even though at this point in my life I am weary, too and even my faith is weary. Renewal is a necessity!

Back to Bay Area "Air Conditioning"

2009-05-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the better part of my life. One of the things that spoils us who live in the area is the "natural air-conditioning" of sea breezes and fog coming off the ocean and down the bay. Every so often the winds, shift, we swelter and some succumb to installing air-conditioning, which puts a greater load on the power grid that we all depend upon. So far, budet constraints have kept me from meeting the temptation head on and giving in to modernity in this technological form.

Last weekend was such a heat wave and I did not come to the computer very much. Without the computer, I have a harder time keeping myself occupied. Fortunately, friends came to my aid by bringing meals and fellowship so that the time went by quickly.

Sears also delivered a fan that I ordered on Wednesday on Friday. This is the fastest service that I think I have ever had for anything purchased on-line. The fan is an 18" pedestal fan and it means business. Industrial strength, it moves air. I have dubbed it the "wind turbine'. Wonderful!

While I was cowering inside, escaping the heat, one of my Amaryllis bulbs bloomed. Here it is.

It is so delicate, almost ethereal, that it was hard to believe it bloomed in the heat. It took my mind off the heat with its cool beauty.

The big Cecil Brunner rose bush in the far corner of my backyard is also blooming beautifully. It has a cool look to it as well, even in the heat.

I am grateful for these flowers. Looking at the Amaryllis this morning in its beauty reminded me of the beauty of God and that I ought to take time to think about that beauty more frequently.

Mother's Day

2009-05-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

Wishing all the moms I know a happy Mother's Day and remembering my own mother.

Her middle name was Rose and she loved roses so. I look out as I write this on a half-century old rose bush in the far corner of the back yard. Identified a few years ago by my friend G. (a mother herself) as Cecil Brunner, it is coverd in pale pink blossoms and buds.

In the far corner of the front yard is the "cornflake" rose, the one that Mama planted. We ate whatever cereal it was that had the offer. Three boxtops were sent in and the bare-roots plant arrived. Papa planted it in the far corner. At one time, it filled that corner with a huge bush. The bush is struggling to survive against the poisonous oleander planted on the other side of the fence. Sigh.

I would love to identify this rose so that I could find another. At one time it was so fragrant that all I had to do was open the front door and the fragrance filled the house. Over the years, it has lost its fragrance.

When we lived in Toledo, Mama also grew beefsteak tomatoes in the summer. Very best tomatoes I ever ate. My memories of her are of a woman always busy with her hands. Laundry, cooking, washing dishes, ironing and finally at the end of the day a few minutes to herself to play her beloved piano.

Sometimes, looking back, I wish my parents could have home schooled us. Music and literature, French and cooking, history and domestic science could have come from Mama. Math and science from Papa. It would have been much more fun than school. Of course, it wasn't done then and I am sure she never thought of herself as a teacher. When we came to California, she became one, teaching in the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine program at St. Athanasius, our local parish church. She would have been a wonderful piano teacher too.

Sunday mornings bring back memories of Mass, followed by brunch. Ah the smells of bacon and eggs and cinnamon toast! The Sunday comics were followed by homework in the afternoon and more cooking for Sunday dinner. Bike rides around the neighborhood on Sunday afternoons, especially in the Fall, finished with coming home to those good food smells. Finally, in the evening we would all watch Maverick.

Mama loved life and her laughter, love and music filled our lives. We were so blessed and are so grateful.

Where Did Spring Go?

2009-05-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

The roses are blooming along with the calendula. The lavender is in bud and will soon be blooming. The rosemary is flowering and doing it's usual thing of trying to grow enough to take over the county or at least the yard. The cold weather has returned.

The sky is grey and darkly overcast. Drizzle is trying to turn into rain and I wish it would pour. On the other hand, I can be grateful that it isn't thundering and lightning. This house was not built for those kinds of storms, the real flash bang boom storms of the mid-West. I would not be sitting at the computer in that kind of storm. (I would probably be cowering over my knitting or trying to read a book.)

The roses like cooler weather. I have noticed over the years that the colors are always deeper and the flowers last longer on the bush when it is cold to cool. So loving the roses as I do, I will try not to complain. Just hunker under polar fleece in front of the electric heater and give thanks for my technological and electronic blessings. (Even the polarfleece is hi-tech, made, as it is from recycled plastic bottles! I have always thought this is a real hoot.)

It is a good day for domesticity, since the laundry needs doing and for "zazzling"--learning my way around Zazzle and figuring out how to do things there. I've been there for two years, just never developed it and I know that the items are lovely and they do a good job of printing. I just am overwhelmed by the amount of time it will take to develop this and not very good at self-promotion. Oh to have wings and to fly. (Or even just be as mobile as I was a while ago and get out of my house more.)

Cabin fever is showing in this post, so I will be grateful that at least I have not needed to contend with snow and have been outside in the fresh air from time to time. I wish everyone a lovely Sunday in the Easter season that is all too quickly going away. Soon it will be back to "ordinary time". Is there such a thing, really?

Garage Again

2009-04-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday four friends gathered for a massive re-organization of my garage. I think the garage is bigger than any room in the house. All that space! All that stuff! What is it? My dear friend, K, has filled her van twice with recyclable oddments. More to go.

Some of it has just been sitting there for a long, long time. I am finally ready to let go of much of it.

A few treasures emerged. The insignia from my father's Navy uniform cap. The course notes for an Algebra course he taught as a graduate student at Ohio State. (Along with some Ohio State notebooks from the 1940's that are near pristine condition with the unused paper in better shape than some modern tablets inside the house.

My friends worked their way to the far-back upper corner and a voice called out, "Peggy, what on earth is this? It's a table with a hole to put the kid into it". I thought for a second and hollered, "oh my Gosh! You've found it! It's the baby Tenda." Features in pictures of my sister when she was little. Papa said that he had looked for it and never found it. My sister, the same one in the pictures, ditto. It just had been so carefully tucked, so long ago that it had been in hiding. Now I will have to figure out what to do with it! Is it an antique, a treasure or something that no one will want?

Wow! The garage will not yield a whole lot more. There is a stove that needs to go. A cedar chest. A cedar armoire full of what are now very probably antique clothes. And all of Papa's tools.

Now if I could just diminish my library.

I am very tired, since I sat outside in the wind and supervised all day yesterday. I am also deeply grateful to everybody who helped. Thank you.

It's Been a While

2009-04-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that so many days have gone by without posting! We did have the first heat wave of the year--it reminds us that we are not in charge of the weather. It is also miserable as my house isn't that removed from the outdoors--hard to heat in the winter, hard to cool in the summer. Still I am grateful that it provides a roof over my head, electricity and running water. Definitely better than the farmsteads my ancestors lived in, with outhouses no less. So I will give thanks.

Opened up my Facebook the other day to find big and not necessarily welcome changes at Cafepress. Wouldn't have known without my Facebook and if I hadn't logged in just then. ("What! Did I miss the announcement?", a quote from Special Agent Gibbs of NCIS comes to mind here.) I have spent more time than I have to spend this way reading the forums and figuring out how I will be impacted by this and what I should do.

I have really loved Cafepress. It was exciting and pleasing and fulfilling all at the same time to receive the first package with a made object, the mug with my Fred is Peace design, come out of the wrappings. Soon I graduated from being a customer with some private designs to being a shopkeeper. My name on an Internet page! More goodies with my designs--and slowly over several years, a minor amount of sales. For the most part the prices of custom-made work are too high for most people, and I have never found a niche market of customers who could afford these high-end, equally high-quality items.

Then this St Patrick's Day and Easter I had a nice uptick in sales. I was inspired to spend time on my designs again, adding new products that I had not included, which meant templates and descriptions and all of that. I have made a whole nice new section for Mother's Day and I think these things are pretty. They are not terribly commercial though, or of the present moment. ( I have little or no interest in pop culture.)

Now the company is changing its business model so that it looks as though most of the designers--who have been setting our own mark-ups--will lose income as the company standardizes its prices. I won't give up yet, but I will try to expand to another POD company, one that I have had a small presence on for two years. It will be one more very time-consuming and energy-consuming thing to do. I am very tired. This was not how I was planning or hoping to spend the Spring days.

So mixed with the gratitude for my essential blessings is a fairly stiff measure of discouragement right now. The challenge is to take what looks like a set-back and turn it around so that it becomes a success and something to be grateful for.

My Zazzle url is in the column to the right in the links. Please click on it. Thank you.

Easter Week

2009-04-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

Easter was truly a blessing. I watched part of the Holy Saturday, Easter Vigil from the Vatican and then spent a sunny Sunday enjoying flowers that friends had brought for me. Several months ago I found a scrumptious sounding Chocolate Pound Cake on the King Arthur Flour website and it seemed the perfect celebratory goodie for Easter. (I haven't quite finished it yet.) During the hour and a half that it took to bake, I finished reading The Moral Measure of the Economy. A perfect and beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Monday a dear friend delighted me with a surprise visit and she put up with my singing of "And very early on the First day of the week, they went unto the Sepulcher and found it lying empty, Alleluia." Matins for Easter morning, which is the conclusion of our community's traditional Easter Vigil. I love it so much and miss singing it. It has always touched me that it was the women who bore first witness to the Resurrection.

While the weather has turned chilly the sun is still shining and Easter week is progressing as a time of joy and blessing. Here are some of the flowers.

The purple sweet peas are the most stunning of all because of their color. I am so grateful for this bounty of friendship and flowers during Easter week.

Holy Thursday

2009-04-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

Holy Thursday already and Easter is actually late this year. It does seem as though the year is flying by. I loved singing for Holy Week when I was young, although I quickly realized that it was a half time job!

Admiration and prayers go out to all of you who sing in choirs this week. Unless you are able take time off the experience will be one of sleep deprivation--and of liminality. The liminality, temporary transcendence from the mundane as it is, may be a good thing. The fact that ordinary routines must go on is too bad though. It would be good to have an economy more attuned to liminality, perhaps?

I notice that Passover is being celebrated this year at the same time as Christians are celebrating Holy Week and Easter. This is good. It reminds us of our relationship to one another. Christianity is after all, rooted in Judaism. The Passover Seder is the root of Holy Thursday. After the institution of the Eucharist, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the disciples were no longer Jewish in the way they had been before. Today, Christians certainly are no longer Jewish.

I have mixed feelings about the custom, in some Christian communities, about holding a Seder. The intentions were good I think. Mine certainly were when as a young woman I convinced my parents we should move the furniture around so that people could come for the Seder at our house. I learned something more about Judaism and also about community from this experience. I never did it again though. Today, I think I would feel that it would be stealing from someone else's tradtions. Respecting the others is important though, and I hope that more respect will grow in this country.

Last year I wrote about the foot washing command of the Maundy and how I have never been comfortable with it and why. That post is still available, I think, so I will not repeat it, except to say that I have found a kind neighbor who is helping me with washing my hair! What a blessing this is!

Community is fractured and fragmented in our modern world. We need to keep working to build it and to make it less fragmented, more cohesive.

I am reading, not exactly as Lenten reading, although I think it is appropriate, The Moral Measure of the Economy, a book about Catholic social teachings that is also a critique of big capitalism run amok. I would like to see a national discussion. Maybe I will start a group on Facebook to read this book and others that are related to it.

I am grateful for the rain this week, for the reading and for the liturgy even though I can be there only in spirit. (I wish they would do Podcasts!)

Vacation Reading

2009-04-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

I've spent the week on something of a reading vacation, polishing off two China Bayles mysteries back to back. Not good for blogging--or other work. Fortunately, I had no pressing deadlines this week so I could do this. Wednesday I spent the entire day away from the computer and found myself completely engrossed in the second book. I haven't done this in years and it was difficult to get back on track the next day, as difficult as though I had been away on a trip for reading a good work of fiction is a kind of trip to another place.

This book includes a recipe for a cookie that I am going to try soon--a sugar cookie with the addition of Habanero powder. So that was the next part of the vacation reading--searching online for Habanero powder. Ah, ha, found it! The Spice House in Chicago has it along with a number of interesting things.

Then I topped off the week by adding Chipotle powder, which I already have from Mountain Rose Herbs, to my chocolate. One tablespoon of Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa, about one tablespoon of sugar, and a smidgin of Chipotle powder, probably 1/8 teaspoon with enough water to make a frosting like consistency. Very good, very soothing, got the endorphins going and I felt much better than I have in some time. Next I will try the cookies. (Maybe lavender and Chipotle powder, or would the flavors simply fight it out? Lavender is not a hot spice--er, herb--but it is a very pronounced flavor.)

I am also wondering what the addition of chile powder would do to my favorite cappuccino flats. Chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg and espresso powder are there already. Last year I made a batch with Chinese Five Spice and a hint of orange zest. Very good, but I have misplaced the recipe.

I remember reading one of Robert Farrar Capon's books in which he says that cooking is an intellectual endeavor. That rang a bell. Cookbooks are another kind of favorite read, but that is another post. (Maybe I should add a few to my books list!)

I am grateful for the time off, for the fun of reading a good mystery and for the friend who brought the books to me from the library.

Herbs

2009-03-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

For the first time in twenty years the house is filled with the smell of herbs. Lavender and patchouli predominate. I spent a pleasant time on Friday filling small muslin bags with Lavender and attaching pretty tags. Yesterday, I mixed the potpourri that contains the patchouli.

Here are two of the lavender sachets--

And here are the flowers--

In the language of flowers lavender signifies purity of heart and devotion. It has been used for centuries to freshen linens and keep moths away from linen and clothes chests, as well as being used as a wedding herb.

I am resurrecting a tiny (micro) business that I loved in the eighties and am hopeful that now, with the Internet, I will be able to do a little differently and a little better with it.

The language of flowers and of herbs as well as their histories and uses fascinated me when, in the eighties, after setting aside an unfinished dissertation, I looked for something to do.

Some of my Squidoo lenses, many of my designs on cafepress, blog posts about my garden and now the herb crafting hark back to that time and tie periods of my life together.

The source is Mountain Rose Herbs, recommended by a friend who is a nurse and an herbalist. The quality is everything she said that it would be and I am delighted!

It has been a long full week and one of great blessings. I am as filled with gratitude tonight and the feeling of being part of a caring community, as I am tired. So shortly to bed and then to read an herbal mystery by Susan Wittig Albert.

More Spring Flowers

2009-03-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

This post is for my sister and everyone who is still locked into cold weather. (It has been cold here too, but not so much so that it has impeded Spring.) Yesterday I went outside and took more flower pictures. Here are the two calla lilies blooming on my porch steps.

Followed by one white daffodil.

Then a yellow daffodil.

The callas are especially beautiful and the white daffodils continue to amaze me. I am grateful for the joy they bring as well as their beauty.

Where oh Where Does the Time Fly To?

2009-03-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

How can it be Saturday already? I fully intended to post on Thursday, the Feast of St. Joseph. St Joseph is the patron saint of fathers, of families and of workers. We all need his intercession now more than ever. For those of us who are still employed, whose businesses are holding up or who are starting new ventures, that our employment may continue. For those of us in need of work, that we may find work. My godmother, who is 91, sent me a card for St Joseph's day. I was deeply touched. I have spent the week updating Easter designs to my cafepress shop and need to do the same to my Etsy. It was so appropriate to send me a card that blessed my endeavors and I smiled in hope and joy that she had sent it to me.

Of course, it also reminded me of my father and that makes me smile too. Papa is always worthy of remembering. Fathers don't get the recognition they deserve in our culture. Butt of sitcoms, instead of being portrayed as the domestic heroes they truly are, fathers have an uphill climb now days. It is good, I think, to pause, remember St Joseph and think of our fathers.

This week I also admired my garden. The first calla lily bloomed several days ago and was quickly photographed and incorporated into one of my new cafepress Easter designs.

One perfect yellow daffodil caught my eye.

Here is an array of daffodils on the picnic table that shows yellow and white daffodils, the whites are in two stages. When they first open they look like jonquils with their white petals and yellow centers. Over a few days the yellow centers fade to white. These are Mount Hood daffodils and I bought the bulbs last year from American Meadows.

I love these Spring flowers so much and am extremely grateful today for all the manifold blessings of the week, especially my godmother and my flowers.

St Patrick's Day

2009-03-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

A Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone who wanders by. There is no green beer here, but there is Irish Soda bread from Safeway. I also have two (at least) mixes of a brand called Garvey's Irish Soda Bread--and one of the same vendor for Irish Brown Bread. Sounds Irish enough so that the product should be authentic. We shall see.

Shopping on the Internet told me that Bob's Red Mill and King Arthur Flour both had Irish Soda Bread mixes. Sticky Fingers has wonderful mixes in delightful new packaging and a quick check says yes they have Irish Soda Bread. Iveta Gourmet, another one of my favorite sources for yummy things that have way more calories than I need or can burn, doesn't. They have so many other scrumptious goodies....(Hey, I wonder how many calories does it take to roll up and down my ramp and how many times a day would I need to do it to justify/use just one scone.) Plug of the day over.

Last week I received my first ever order of herbs from Rose Mountain Herbs and I will be reactivating an old part of an old small business that I had in the 80's and that I absolutely loved. Sachets will soon appear on my Etsy shop and I am happy and excited.

While I have been posting this KDFC has been playing Irish music. Alas they do not play the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. I should get more organized and dig out the tapes and see if the tape recorder still works and, and ....

A tiny bit more work on my Easter designs on my cafepress site, a poke my nose out the front door to admire the daffodils and calla lilies that are blooming (and the oxalis, shamrocks as well) and an episode of NCIS will complete my day.

Happy St Patrick's Day. May all your days be blessed. I am grateful for my Irish heritage.

Lazy Saturday

2009-03-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

Today has been a lazy Saturday. The sky has been overcast, threatening rain, but not delivering the goods, the water that we still need in this drought parched land. I am revising my garden plans--no point in starting seedlings if they can't thrive.

There are some interesting water collection devices, out of my price range, and it is too late this season anyway, but in addition to the rain barrels that I was looking at several weeks ago there is also a water "pillow" that stores rainwater--1000 gallons and more depending on the size of the device. It would be interesting to include these features in a "universal design" house. Water conservation and energy conservation features should be as much a part of this, I think, as lower counter tops and remote control blinds.

This would expand the concept of universal design somewhat, I believe, for it would be an aspect of self-sufficiency or sustainability. Ultimately, I would like to have such a house, green-tech, high-tech and amazing and comfortable. I don't think that it will happen in this life-time unless I win the lottery. (Since I never buy tickets to the lottery, it won't happen in this lifetime.) Still it is fun to dream.

Another part of this lazy Saturday was sitting at the computer and re-doing what feels like a million cafepress templates. (It isn't, of course, merely a few dozen. It just feels that way.)

It has been a busy week, full of people in and out and packages arriving and it was good, actually to have a quiet day. Good music came through my radio and at the end as the sun was setting my window was filled with lavender sky. Absolutely gorgeous.

I am grateful for this lazy Saturday and glad to have some visible results for my efforts.