Lifescapes

Webs

Going out for our walk this morning, the dogs and I spotted this orb spider just outside the door to the deck, feasting on a June bug caught in her web. Come morning's end, the bug will be an empty shell and the spider will be sleeping off her meal in a far corner of her web, which is anchored on one end to a climbing rose and on the other to the porch light. A strategic location, if what you're after is dinner.

Webs are all the fashion these July days, and a foggy early morning is the time to see them. Here's one draped like a string of diamonds across the path by the creek. This time of year, the webs are arresting, festooned like tattered scrim from tall stalks of grass, swagged along a lichen-embroidered branch, strung shimmering from one tree to another across what must be a vast distance to a tiny spider, like tossing a filament over the Grand Canyon. The celebration of a cool, wet summer, by trillions of tiny web-working creatures.

Returning to the garden (or what's left of it, after July's deluges), I pause to admire other tiny things. The rim of a leaf, silvered, more beautiful than any artist's work. The scarlet twist of a romantic Turk's cap. A fat soot-colored toad napping under the rim of the dog's dish.

And this grasshopper, navigating a rainforest of tall green leaves, king of his stalk, untroubled by my giant self.

Reading note. Here, this, is It. The world as it is, is Heaven.--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

On the Ice: Book Review

I've just posted a review of Gretchen Legler's book On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on Amazon and on the Story Circle book review site. It's a wonderful example of writing about people-in-place. Antarctica is a unique place, because of all the continents, it is the one that humans have not yet succeeded in fully colonizing. It is almost a peopleless place. Almost. That's what this book is about.

Reading note. It had . . . been good to be out alone, walking in Antarctica, feeling that magical, paradoxical diminishment of self and enlargement of spirit that such a landscape brings--that feeling that one is in the presence of something that has been in existence long before you and will continue long after you, into all time; some spirit that is larger and older than the human mind, and that, in its power, comforts rather than terrifies.--Gretchen Legler, On the Ice

Dancing the Blues

I'm still mostly writing (Briar Bank, due at the end of August), but I couldn't resist doing some felting this weekend, since Bill is still in New Mexico and I can leave my stuff out without getting in anybody's way. (We live in a small house, and when two people strew their stuff around, it's crowded, not to say messy.)

So here I am, felting at the kitchen counter. The first photo is a stack of dyed, carded fibers ready to be felted. I'll wet them, mash them, and roll them, then roll them some more. Takes some elbow grease, but that's basically all there is to it.

This is the felted piece. I like to name things, so this is "Dancing the Blues." I love the bright, swirly colors. It's pretty loosely felted, because I also love the textured surface.

In this photo, I'm still playing with surface. The wonderful thing about felt is that it (unlike canvas) is infinitely malleable. You can see that I've gathered and tucked the ends, emphasizing the swirls of color. When it's to my liking, I'll sew and needle felt the surface to an underlying felt piece, to stabilize it. Fun!

Briar Bank is also fun--oooh, I love my dragon! (His name is Thorvaald.) I discovered a new book by Edith Nesbit (author of The Wouldbegoods). New to me, that is: The Book of Dragons was written in 1900 as a charming series of stories in The Strand. (That's the same British magazine in which Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were published. Nesbit was paid 30 pounds for each story--quite a lot, at that time!) If you like dragons, you'll love this whimsical, enchanting book.

Reading note. This are the first two paragraphs of the first story, "The Book of Beasts."

He happened to be building a palace when the news came, and he left all the bricks kicking about the floor for Nurse to clear up--but then the news was rather remarkable news. You see, there was a knock at the front door and voices talking downstairs, and Lionel thought it was the man come to see about the gas, which had not been allowed to be lighted since the day when Lionel made a swing by tying his skipping rope to the gas bracket.

And then, quite suddenly, Nurse came in and said: "Master Lionel, dear, they've come to fetch you to go and be king."

How can you not like a story about dragons that begins in this magically off-hand way?

Wet and wild

Hummingbirds at the feeder at Coyote Lodge, our place in New Mexico. Bill says that there are often as many as 30-40 hovering around, mostly rufous, ruby-throats, and black-chinned (but there are quite a few listed on the New Mexico bird list, and I haven't been able to study them yet). He's busy brewing hummingbird hootch when he isn't working on his log preservation project, or watching it rain. (Yes, it's raining there, too. Lots. And lots. Very wet.) He has time for fun stuff like that, since he isn't writing a book. Or blogging.

Son Michael has posted another of his monthly essays about life as a stay-home dad, written for the Juneau Empire. I'm hoping that seeing his writing in print will encourage him to do more of it--especially when his column is featured in the newspaper banner. That's what every writer needs: a boost now and then. That's one reason I love blogs. They give the writer a public space to fill and maybe even help him/her develop the discipline it takes to fill that space with enough interesting material, often enough to develop an audience. Sometimes this even leads to a book, like the memoir Julie and Julia, which grew out of a blog. Or No Impact Man, which is going to be a book and a documentary movie.

And then there are books, such as What Wildness is This, that become blogs. Which brings me to the two new posts in our What Wildness blog. Check them out. Linda Joy Myers writes that Texas tastes like Oklahoma (I don't doubt it--the wind blows from that direction) and Paula Yost writes an hysterically funny piece that ends with a naked wild wet woman in a cold shower at rain-soaked Beavers Bend State Park in Oklahoma. (What is it about OK, gals?) Oh, and Paula has posted a seriously beautiful photo of a clump of golden mushrooms, also naked and wild and wet.

Reading note: What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left. O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Maple Sugar

                                                                                                                                                                     














Heads up! Here's the finished tam (my first) which I  am calling "Maple Sugar." You can see a detail of the body here. I'm using Palette yarns from KnitPicks.

One of the things I like about the book I'm using (Knitted Tams, by Mary Rowe) is the freedom to mix-match patterns for structural elements (band, body, wheel) and colors. There's enough guidance in the book to keep you headed in the right direction, but you're forced to make your own choices. This can be frustrating (why doesn't she just TELL me what to do!) and freeing (hey, wow, this is really interesting!). In fact, I'd have to say that it's the interest factor that has really kept me going on this, wanting to see what it would look like if I did this, or that, or the other thing. I've already cast on the next one, in blue, using an intricate tubular cast-on that Rowe gives in her book, designed so that you can slip an elastic into it to keep the ribby band from stretching.

Book work. I still have a couple of chapters of Briar Bank to finish--the roundup chapters--and the back matter (recipes, glossary, sources, historical note). But with 80,000 words in the file (this is going to be another biggish book), it's time to go back through from the beginning, revising for style, tucking in a new subplot, and cleaning up a few problems. Bill read the book over the weekend and came up with a nifty idea for a dragon subplot that can easily be worked in and provides an interesting complication. Back in the "old" days, before word processing, adding in a subplot at this point would be a major complication. Now, it's duck soup. (But hey! typewriters really weren't that long ago, and Dickens wrote very complicated books in longhand.)

Authors with pseudonyms. Linda, at the Nashua County Public Library in Nashua NH, has posted some interesting comments on authors with pseudonyms. Take a look. Barbara Mertz and Nora Roberts, both prolific writers, are heroines of mine, so it feels good to be featured with them.

Reading note.
     "I rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before I was satisfied," Ernest Hemingway once told an interviewer.
     "Was there a problem there?" the interviewer wanted to know. "What was it that stumped you?"
     "Getting the words right," said Hemingway.--Judith Applebaum

Echinacea: In bloom this week

File this under "we can't all be perfect." The echinaceas are putting on a brave show, but they are definitely imperfect. Too much rain (before this last month, I would have said there couldn't be such a thing at MeadowKnoll), too many grasshoppers (with the mosquitoes, the corollary of too much rain), too much wind--it's all taking its toll on the petals and leaves. I love the combination of pale lavender and dark orange. And it's nice to see that the latest research reinforces the long-held belief in its effectiveness as a cold-fighter.

The rain has had all kinds of effects here. The grasses are thriving: in the east meadow, the native turkeyfoot bluestem is chest-high, and the yard is lush (especially the Johnson grass in the garden). The pecan crop looks promising, and the salvias are blooming up a storm. But the sumacs are turning autumn orange and yellow, stressed by too much water. The rosemarys are struggling, and the roses (yes, even the antique roses) are showing signs of black spot. And there's the road...but we won't go there. Enough to tell you that (after the garbage truck got stuck) we had to bring in a couple of loads of rock.

Several of you have asked why Bill is taking a vacation in New Mexico while I am here, watching the rain and working on a book. The short answer: he's not on vacation. He's doing restoration/preservation work on our log house, which is in serious need of it. Logs (like other natural things) are inherently imperfect, and they have a tendency to decay, as wood does, in nature. When you build a house out of them, their imperfections get built into the house, along with their natural desire to decay. If you want a "perfect" house, don't do logs. If you do logs, expect to preserve them. His problem: too much rain there, too. He can get outside to work only a few hours a day, between showers. (I hope he stays off the ladder when it's lightning!) 

Funny thing: Bill has discovered that the drifts of what we thought were mouse droppings in the living area turned out to be bat droppings. Yep. We are sharing the NM house with a small colony of NM bats, which has taken up residence in the rafters. As long as they come and go without making a fuss about it (or trespassing on my personal space), I'm okay with them. I can sweep. Living in the country sometimes requires accomodating yourself--a Zen mind where you stay still and centered and let things take their natural course. (However, Bill is considering how best to chink the cracks.)

Reading note, from Gretchen Legler's On the Ice. She's writing about life in Antarctica:

In the end, you learn how not to fight...The master shapes events as they come. There is a time for being ahead, a time for being behind. The master does her job and then stops. Every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things. The soft overcomes the hard. The slow overcomes the fast...When two great forces oppose each other the victory will go to the one who knows how to yield.

A good day for dyeing

I dyed yesterday. Five batches of Coopworth, for more felt play. This is not a lot for somebody who really dyes, but it was a substantial project for me. I'm trying to get the dyeing done before Bill comes back next week--you know why. This roving was dyed in the crockpot, and will be carded with other, less feltable wool, of which I have a lot. (At some point, I seem to have made a major investment in superwash merino, which doesn't felt by itself, but can be coaxed. I believe I had socks in mind at the time.) I'm feeling virtuous, using up some of my stash. Of course, "using up" probably isn't the right word here, since I'm merely converting the wool from one form (roving, top, batts) to another: felted stuff. The real product here--for me, anyway--is the learning and the fun of playing with this fascinating material. Maybe the other products (the felted stuff) will eventually be good enough to give as gifts. Maybe I'll even use them as giveaway in contests--now, there's a thought!

Also yesterday, more work on the book (Briar Bank--the fifth book in the Cottage Tales series). I'm at 75,000 words now, and thinking wrap-up thoughts. I'll probably do another 3,000 words or so, and then go back to the beginning and work through the whole text again. Somehow, it's always easier for me to write the last couple of chapters when I have the whole book in mind. As it is now, I have only the last few chapters in mind. If I don't go back, I'll risk dropping a plot line. Haven't you seen that happen, particularly in mysteries? The author gets so busy resolving the major plot that s/he forgets to tie up a loose string or two. The result: irritated readers.

One sad consequence of all the rain: the rosemarys are struggling. I have a dozen or so, most waist-high and as big around. They love it when it's hot and dry, but they hate wet feet, and there's nothing I can do for them, poor lambs.

Reading note. We humans have a strong desire for groundedness in place. We want to be rooted; we want to be somewhere real. The saying, 'Wherever you go, there you are,' seems also to be an acknowledgment that wherever you go, of course, you take places and people from the past with you. In other words, you can't escape who you are. Wherever you go, there you are, facing yourself again in the mirror.--On Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, by Gretchen Legler

Lady Bird Johnson

Lady Bird Johnson died this afternoon. You'll be hearing and reading about her over the coming days, as her friends celebrate her many contributions. But I'll just add this memory of my own, which has always meant a great deal to me.

In 1981, Bob Hardesty--a long-time Johnson friend and colleague--was serving as president of Southwest Texas State in San Marcos, the college where LBJ graduated, back when it was still Southwest Texas Teachers College.  Bob asked me to be his vice president for academic affairs. When I had said yes (it felt like the equivalent of saying yes to a proposal of marriage), he picked up the phone and called Mrs. Johnson to tell her that he had just appointed the first woman vice president for academic affairs in the history of SWT, in the history of all Texas universities, as a matter of fact.

Then he handed me the phone, and Lady Bird graciously congratulated me. I'll never forget what she said: "Do a good job, not for Bob Hardesty, not for the university, but for yourself. Do the kind of job you'll always be proud of. That's what will matter, in the long run."

That's the kind of job Lady Bird Johnson has done, throughout her long life.

Reading Note. Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.--Lady Bird Johnson

"Saving the Silence"

Susan Tweit has posted a lovely, thoughtful piece, "Saving the Silence..." on our Wildness blog. It's about our need to find places where we can get away from the noise that constantly bombards us. Please read it, and share some of your own experiences of silence.

Blooming now at MeadowKnoll, our mountain pinks (Centaurium beyrichii), along the roads, in rocky patches, on limestone ledges. Each single plant is its own brave bouquet of vibrant, vital pink. The sight of these exuberant flowers scattered across the hillside makes me smile, inside and out.

The dogs and I heard a rattlesnake on our walk this morning. There was no mistaking that dry, "don't-tread-on-me" warning that broke the sunrise silence. Not a surprise, for this is snake country, and they have just as much right to the land as we do. But we took the hint and went in the opposite direction. The dogs are vaccinated against rattler venom, but I'm not. Also seen on the walk: a small slider, heading for the creek as fast as his stubby turtle legs could take him; raccoon tracks, and the remains of a crawdad that was the raccoon's midnight snack; a purple obedience plant in Meadow Marsh (where I haven't seen them before); a patch of prairie petunia along the stone wall; a great blue heron, flying low toward the lake; a red-tailed hawk, flying high, looking for breakfast. Heard but not seen: a painted bunting and a raft of redbirds. Oh, and the sun! It's shining for the second morning in a row, which is by itself a thing to celebrate, after two weeks of rain-every-day.

Reading note. What we do best comes not from our heads but our hearts, from an ineffable impulse thay resists logic and definitions and calculation: love. Love is what connects us to the rest of the living world, the divine urging from within that guides our best steps in the dance of life.--From The San Luis Valley: Sand Dunes and Sandhill Cranes, by Susan J. Tweit

 

Dyeing for fun

Lest you think my life is filled with nothing but words words words, here's what else I'm doing these days.

Bill's in New Mexico, and when he's away, the dye pot is usually busy. Dyeing is a messy project, and it's better to do it while nobody's looking. I've been dying merino roving for some felt projects, and running the dyed fiber through my carding machine. (Click for a larger view.)

There's another step beyond this one, for this is superwash merino. (Don't ask me why I have so much of it--if you can remember the impulse that drove you to acquire a particular fiber for your stash, you're a better woman than I.) Superwash doesn't felt very well, but I can blend it (on the carder) with fibers that do felt well, and come up with a satisfactory blend.

Here are my first efforts at making felt vessels. I love their organic feeling. The mohair of the gray vessel on the right comes from Lisa Shell's angora goats; the handspun yarn that decorates it is couched on.

And here's the tam I'm knitting--an interesting project, from Mary Rowe's Knitted Tams. The book has plenty of helpful general instruction, but the photographs of the finished tams are not keyed to any specific pattern. You have to imagine what a given graph might look like, in colors of your choice. So this is very much an experiment. This is what Rowe calls the "body" of the tam. When the top (the "wheel") is done, I'll post another photo.

And for those of you who are sending DRY thoughts, send more! We got another 3" of rain yesterday. I don't know how much we've gotten in this last two-week rain event, since the 6" rain gauge overflowed the night of the big storm. Judging from radar reports, though, it looks like we got about 12" that night--and another 7" after that. We've had more rain in the past six months than we normally get in a wet year. I'm planning my ark. And there's a rumor that the neighbors are bringing in a truckload of rock for the road. I hope it's more than a rumor. Everybody's getting stuck at Boggy Junction--including the garbage truck!

Oh, and if you went to Amazon looking for my review of Miss Potter, they've dumped it--goodness only knows why. (Maybe they didn't like something I said?) So I've posted it in an update to this post.

Reading notes. "A poet is somebody who stands out in the rain, hoping to get struck by lightning."--James Dickey