Lifescapes

springing

Saturday's one-inch rain brought this Monday-morning daffodil springing out of the ground, and Sunday's near-eighty temps gave it an extra nudge. This was the warmest January on record in our part of Texas--not a good sign for the summer to come. But summer's heat is a future discomfort, and the sight of this golden bringer of spring sets my heart swinging.

The dogs, however, cruising nearby, were just puzzled: "Why is Mom on her knees in the damp grass, in front of that flower?"

Worshipping, guys.

Worshipping.

Reading Note, from "Poem: The Morning Walk," by Mary Oliver, in Long Life:

There are a lot of words meaning thanks.
Some you can only whisper.
Others you can only sing...

A person, sometimes, will hum a little Mahler.
Or put arms around an old oak tree.
Or take out lovely pencil and notebook to find a few
touching, kissing words.

on perfection (and the lack thereof)

Those of you who stayed with me through the research and writing that went into LIZARD will know exactly how good this makes me feel. Finally, real books: the hardcover of LIZARD, the paperback of BLENHEIM. Decent covers, too, now that they've taken off the gingerbread trim and cleaned up the author panel at the bottom. But I still wish they'd go with something more realistic. The books aren't fluffy historical fictions--they're reality-based novels, sometimes fairly dark, and the covers ought to reflect what's inside. That's my idea, anyway.

To celebrate the arrival of books, we drove over to Marble Falls to have dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant--but it was CLOSED. As in forever. (There was fairly unmistakable clue in the parking lot: a dumpster filled with restaurant trash.) And when Bill came home and began reading at random through LIZARD, he found a typo on the first page he opened to.

But I learned a long time ago that no book is perfect. Bill says we never really finish a book, we just run out of time to make it better. Which is true. It's also true that no matter how many times the author(s), the editor, the copy editor, and the proofreader read the damn darn thing, there will be mistakes, and that sharp-eyed readers will find them and point them out. I'm bracing myself. (In case you were thinking of writing to us, we already know that there is an error on p. 76. Yes, we welcome your corrections--we send them on to the editor so the paperback edition can be corrected. No, we will not hire you to proofread the manuscript before it flies off to New York.)

To sooth my spirit, I'm knitting a blue hat. This will also use up some of the incredible amount of blue superwash that someone seems to left in my stash. The hat is easy enough to be perfect (almost).

Reading Note, from At Knit's End, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Thank you for these wise words, Steph (there are more on her blog: Yarn Harlot). As in the knitting of sweaters, so in the making of books:

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.--Eugene Ionesco

I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but knitting is a bit of a gamble. It is possible that you can knit a swatch, wash and measure it, carefully calculate your guage, absolutely study a pattern, execute it with patience and perfection . . . and still end up with something unexpected. This element of risk is what keeps the more adventurous of us knitting.

I will try to stay connected to my cheerful sense of adventure the next time an absolutely perfect sweater grows by 3 feet the first time I wear it.

hearts' ease

Short post today, because I'm tired of writing (2200 words today, in the current Beatrix Potter mystery). But here's a photo: a few purple pansies, hearts' ease, love-in-idleness, one of the loveliest of herbs. Nicholas Culpeper (18th century English herbalist) recommended it for treating venereal disease, but it was used widely to treat a great many ailments. Maud Grieve's Modern Herbal tells us much more--how delightful to have this remarkable text online and searchable!

Reading Note, from Grieve:

Its common name of Pansy (older form 'Pawnce,' as in Spenser) is derived from the French pensées, the name which is still used in France. 'Love in Idleness' is still in use in Warwickshire. In ancient days the plant was much used for its potency in love charms, hence perhaps its name of Heartsease. It is this flower that plays such an important part as a love-charm in the Midsummer Night's Dream.

just a brown hat

Yep, just a brown hat. But this is a special brown hat, because it's knitted from the brown yarn I spun on my hand spindle a some days ago (spinning this particular fiber was itself a minor miracle), plus some red yarn I spun last year. This is a significant triumph for me, you understand, and it has very little to do with the the intrinsic beauty or artful complexity of the hat itself (really, it's just an ordinary brown hat).

My problem: I spin all this lovely yarn and I don't know what to do with it, so I have a wonderful, colorful stash of skeins and small balls of handspun yarn from my dyeing experiments. There's never enough to do anything big (like a sweater) even if I wanted to, which I don't, because this is Texas and because the family members I might want to knit sweaters for either 1) knit for themselves, 2) grow too fast, or 3) don't like to hand-wash wool sweaters (and who can blame them?).

But I am resolved to do more spinning and find ways to use my handspun this year. I regard this brown hat as a down payment on this resolution. From that point of view, this is not just any brown hat. It is a hat rich in significance. It is a hat heavy with symbolism. I am not giving it away. I will wear it indoors and out, even when the air conditioner is running, to remind me of what I aim to do. Well, maybe.

Reading Note, from At Knit's End (my favorite book on knitting) by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee:

When I took up spinning, my husband worried that it was just going to devolve into another addition. To make him feel a little better I pointed out how much money I was going to save spinsning my own yarn. Then I bought a spinning wheel, carders, fleece, and dye.

I will remember that timing is everything, and I might have wanted to make my point sometime after I had spent all that money getting set up and spinning a $500 skein of lumpy yarn.

invisible travelers

When we first moved out to the Hill Country nearly twenty years ago, I noticed that a great many of the smaller trees wore strange markings, usually a couple of feet off the ground, usually made in September or early October. Whoever was doing this seemed to be doing it at night, but I didn't have a clue. Beavers stripping the bark? Rabbits? Hungry armadillos?

Finally, a rancher friend tipped me off. "It's the deer, dummy," she said, in that tone of voice that experienced ranchers reserve for city folk who are still learning country ways.

It's the bucks, to be more precise. This small sumac has been rubbed by a good-sized buck who came this way in the night. He was rubbing the velvet off his antlers and giving vent to that testy testosterone rush that makes bucks go for does in the rut. (If you want to get the insider dope on deer rubs, go here.) It turns out that deer seem to like aromatic trees, like cedar and sumac, and trees with a thin bark. It also turns out that deer have a "forehead gland" that leaves a scent on the rubbed tree, a "genetic calling card" that announces the rubber's social status and hierarchy within the deer herd.

When the dogs and I walk in the early morning, we often see fresh signs that travelers have taken our path during the night or in the gray moments of dawn. Armadillo diggings, raccoon dumps, coyote scat, deer rubs--there's been a lot of traffic out this way, along this meandering path that takes the long way around the meadow, through the woods, down to the creek. I like to think of these invisible travelers as I walk, and imagine them ambling, swinging, scurrying, strolling along the path with me. And I whisper thanks, and put out my hand to the grasses these travelers have brushed, and the stones they have scraped, and the trees they have rubbed--to the signs of their invisible passing. This is when I feel closest to the land and the creatures who share it with me. This is when I feel strongest and cleanest and truest and best--and most, most human.

Reading Note, from "Sand Dabs, Nine," by Mary Oliver:

In nature what looks like ornamentation is always of the greatest utility. You too can be carved anew by the details of your devotion.

sic transit gloria

I've never grown an amaryllis before, so I was delighted when I got one for Christmas. I've been babying it since then--well, since about December 20, because I couldn't wait to open this particular package. It bloomed this week: eight gorgeous blossoms on two stalks, and not a leaf in sight. Spectacular.

Until, that is, I put the plant outside for a bit of sunshine and the wind blew it off the table. That's right. Pot and all--it was top-heavy, with all that bloom--right smack onto the deck. Snapped off both stems about 4 inches below the blooms. And since I didn't discover this disaster for a couple of hours, the blossoms were all wilted. The poor thing was a goner. A real botanical tragedy.

But you can't keep a good amaryllis down. I repotted the bulb, trimmed off the broken stems, and today this amazing creature has put up a THIRD stalk! And just because I couldn't bear to part with the bruised and broken blossoms, I stuck them into a vase on the kitchen window sill. Today is the third day since the catastrophe, and while there are a few minor scratches and scrapes, the blossoms are almost as pretty as they were five minutes before this misfortune.

There's a moral here somewhere, I'm sure of it.

Reading Note: "Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe."--Germaine Greer

herdwicks, wool, and beatrix potter

Beatrix Potter was nuts about sheep, especially about a particular Lake District breed of sheep, the Herdwick.These are especially hardy sheep, suited to the challenging climate of northern England. Their wool is coarse and scratchy. It was used in earlier times for wool carpets. But these went out of fashion in the 1880s, replaced by linoleum, of all things!

Since Herdwick wool was no longer in demand and there are other sheep that are meatier, the breed declined. In fact, if it hadn't been for Beatrix Potter, they might have disappeared altogether. When she bought Hill Top Farm in 1905, she was introduced to Herdwicks, and loved them for the sturdy, resiliant, resourceful animals they are. When she died in 1943, she left over 4,000 acres of land to the National Trust (much of it purchased with book royalties)--with the proviso that the sheep stay on the land. Sheep, land, and people belong together, she said. My kind of woman.

When Bill and I were in England, I bought some Herdwick yarn (I wanted a fleece but wasn't sure I could deal with it!) and knitted this hat. It is very sturdy and practically waterproof. A bit scratchy, maybe. Personally, I wouldn't want to wear this next to my skin, but people do. Beatrix did. In fact, she had a set of Herdwick tweeds that she wore for years--they never wore out.

For a lovely photo of Herdwicks in their native habitat, go here. When I read Peter Rabbit or Jemima Puddleduck, I love to reflect that Beatrix used the royalties from her little books to save these wonderful sheep. So my hand-knit Herdwick hat (which I wear when I do book talks about the Cottage Tales), has an extra meaning for me.

Isn't it amazing how wool can sometimes be so much more than just wool?

Reading Note, from The Fairy Caravan, by Beatrix Potter, written in the voice of the little ewe, Belle Lingcropper (the names in the last paragraph may be names of some of Beatrix's own sheep):

Cool is the air above the craggy summit. Clear is the water of the mountain keld. Green grows the grass in droughty days beneath the brackens! What though the hailstorms sweep the fell in winter--through tempest, frost, or heat--we live our patient day's allotted span.

Wild and free as when the stone-men told our puzzled early numbers; untamed as when the Norsemen named our grassings in their stride. Our little feet had ridged the slopes before the passing Romans. On through the fleeting centuries, when fresh blood came from Iceland, Spain, or Scotland--stubborn, unchanged, UNBEATEN--we have held the stony waste.

Dunmail; Faulds; Blue Joe; Wastwater Will and Thistle; Rawlins; Sworla; Wonder--old Pride of Helvellyn--pass the tough lineage forward; keep the tarrie woo' unsoftened! Hold the proud ancient heritage of our Herdwick sheep.

titles, connections, conversations

I've been going back and forth on the title for this book. Does it want to be Hawthorn House, or Hawthorn Cottage, or maybe Foxglove Cottage? Or something else that has not yet occurred to me?

Usually, I have to have a title before I can begin, which is not the way that all writers work. In a series, though, when the titles of all the books need some connection to the series concept and to the preceding books, it's a good idea to start with the title in mind, as a way of focusing the material. All the China Bayles book titles, for instance, have some sort of herbal reference, with a "threatening" inference: Chile Death, Blood Root, Indigo Dying, and so on. The Robin Paige titles are built on "Death at..." plus a place name. (I've always thought the "death at" part was dumb, and tagged the books as being of less literary significance than they are, or rather, as I like to think of them. It was the choice of an editor whose acquaintance with the series was mercifully brief.)

The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter (the name of the series) is my own invention, and I love it. Each of the eight books will have the tag phrase "The Tale of . . . " and the name of a house or a place in the Lake District where they are set. The first book was a natural: The Tale of Hill Top Farm. The second and third (The Tale of Holly How . . . The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood) work fairly well, although people seem to have a hard time with "Holly How." When they write to me, they call it variously: Holly Hill, Holy House, and (my favorite) Holly Hollow. I'm still enchanted with Cuckoo Brow, which is the name of a real wood not far from Hill Top Farm. "Brow" means something like "the top of a steep place," and the woodland there is full of cuckoo song in the spring.

The book I'm writing now is more of a puzzle. The initial action takes place at a fictional house I am calling Hawthorn Cottage--that's where the mystery is situated--so I'm now thinking it will be called The Tale of Hawthorn Cottage, although it has had several incarnations. Some of the action takes place at Foxglove Cottage, which is the summer home of the fox who nearly caught the unsuspecting Jemima. (You do remember The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck, don't you?) So I've also thought of calling it Foxglove Cottage. At the moment, I'm suspending judgment until I see how the action moves.

The writing is chugging along, with a couple of days out to do errands, get my annual mammo and bone scan, that sort of necessary health stuff. I'm into Chapter Four, with nearly 12,000 words (of a planned 85,000). It always sounds mechanistic to report writing progress in terms of the number of words, but there it is. (Knitters report progress in terms of inches knitted, don't they?) As usual, I have too many stories to tell (one young reader wrote to me that the books are very "busy"--she's right!). So the material currently seems to lack focus--or rather, the focus is shifting fairly rapidly, and it doesn't feel to me that the book knows what it wants to be when it grows up.

One of the reasons I love writing these books is the sense of being part of a community of books and book lovers. There are, of course, Beatrix's little books, and the many books that have been writing about her. But there's also a strong connection to fantasy (I always reread The Hobbit when I start one of the Cottage Tales), and to the Lake District. Last night, I read some pages about foxes from a very lovely book called Wild Life on Moor and Fell, by W. R. Calvert, which was written in the mid-thirties, and dipped into one of Miss Read's Fairacre novels about English village life. And Linda Lear (the author of a new biography of Beatrix, out in 2007, with whom I have almost daily email conversations) told me yesterday that Jemima's name is very likely a reference to an artist named Jemima Blackburn, whom Beatrix greatly admired. So of course I had to go straight to one of the online bookstores and order a book about her and her work. Writing these Cottage Tales, I feel my connection to a fascinating community.

Reading Note: Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.--John Barth

multi-tasking

I've been spinning--and reading galleys at the same time. So if the fiber is a little uneven, that's my excuse. Actually, I like this thick/thin yarn, and I am really glad that I can spin it, because last year at this time I couldn't. It's merino, and slick, and I didn't have enough skill to make it work. Now (even though I haven't done a lot of spinning this year), I seem to be able to do it, at least passably.

The fiber itself is really lovely, rich browns of all shades, with gold and green and orange threading through it. Here, I've plied it with itself. I've also plied it with orange and with green. The blue in the photo are bits of blue yarn I used to tie the skein--should have taken it out before I took the picture, I think. The spindle is one Bill made for me. I have a wheel, one of those inexpensive Babe plastic models, which I bought used because I wasn't sure whether I'd stay with it enough to warrant investing in a really good wheel. Turns out that I actually prefer spindling, because it's portable. I can even do it while I'm writing at the computer. And when I do wheel spinning, my yarn is waaay too even, and what's the fun of knitting with something that's as predictable as what I can buy?

And yes, I was spindling while I was reading galleys of BLEEDING HEARTS (the next China Bayles mystery) which I've been doing for the last three nights, 100 pages a night. Ack. Reading galleys (the printed pages of the book before they're bound) is easier than reading copy-edited copy, because the pages are much cleaner. There wasn't much to pick at in this book, but sure as shooting, somethng will have gotten past me and the copy-editor, and some sharp-eyed reader will find it when she opens the book. Like the time I described a good-looking steer as a "stud muffin," or when my fingers put the Golden Gate Bridge into a scene set in 1902. (My fingers must not have been connected to my brain at the moment.) Oh, blush. And I wasn't spindling on either of those occasions, so I can't blame my lapse on multi-tasking. Unless maybe I was chewing gum.

Reading notes:

Your best teacher is your last mistake.--Ralph Nader

You know you knit too much when there is a knitting project or yarn in every room of your house, including the bathroom.--Sephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

morning fog

With the continuing fire danger, this morning's predawn fog was especially welcome, silvering the shadowy shapes of the distant hills, veiling the still-green live oaks and the leafless sumacs, transforming the landscape into a gauzy, gossamer mystery, imperceptibly touched by the faintest pink glow of the rising sun. The damp air feels colder than it is--just freezing this morning--and the dogs are delighted, for the dampness holds the scent of every passing creature: a coon or two, a coyote, a few deer, a possum, perhaps even a foraging mountain lion. They stop to investigate each new smell and leave their own scented calling cards, so our walk takes twice as long as usual--but who is watching the clock? I'm taking in the sunrise, the grasses, the sky, the array of bluebirds on the wire, the flock of cedar waxwings alighting in the hackberry tree at the edge of the meadow. A glorious morning in a beautiful place on an incomparable planet in a generous universe.

There's a story in the news today about morning fog--the groggy, groping, disorientation that researchers call "sleep enertia." You know the feeling, I'm sure. I do. But I'm here to tell you that a loop around the meadow in the chilly predawn air, in the company of a pair of happy, frisky dogs, goes a long way toward dispelling morning fog. When the dogs and I get back, I feed the cat, feed the birds, fill the birdbath with warm water, and then come inside, into the cheerful kitchen, for that first cup of morning coffee. Oh my my my, what could be better, sweeter, more enlivening than hot coffee warning my hands and all my insides on a cold morning, after a walk through the fog? And after that, music and good work to do, writing and reading, work that is more like play. A day, a perfect day, already begun perfectly with a walk in the morning fog.

Reading Note, from "Wordsworth's Mountain," in Long Life, by Mary Oliver:

There is a rumor of total welcome among the frosts of the winter morning. Beauty has its purposes, which, all our lives and at every season, it is our opportunity, and our joy, to divine...How wonderful that the universe is beautiful in so many places and in so many ways. But also the universe is brisk and businesslike, and no doubt does not give its delicate landscapes or its thunderous displays of power, and perhaps perception, too, for our sakes or our improvement. Nevertheless, its intonations are our best tonics, if we would take them. For the universe is full of radiant suggestion...