Lifescapes

Thanks Giving

I'm giving thanks for

• good work
• good friends and helpers
• a wonderful family: Bill, the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids
• a wonderful place to live
• today's good, simple food (ham, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, broccoli, pecan pie)
• tomorrow's rain (I've got my fingers crossed)
• Toro and Molly Maguire, companionable members of our pack
• the new president and his smart advisers
• the Internet (so I can share this with you)

There's more, of course. I'm also grateful for the working vacation coming up: we're leaving for our place in New Mexico on Saturday, and I hope to stay through mid-January. I'm taking yarn, books, DVDs, more books, more yarn. I'm looking thereforward to quiet evenings, cold weather (it's 70 here in TX today--ugh), and maybe even some snow. My next post, probably, will come from there.

In the meantime, click on over to "Telling HerStories" and read my post, "Glories." 

Reading Note. Whether we are leaving it or coming into it, it's here that matters, it is place. Whether we understand where we are or don't, that is the story: To be here or not to be.... Among the greatest of all gifts is to know our place.--Barbara Kingsolver

Buck rub

 

Cool and drizzly here this morning, to the dogs’ great delight: no breeze to disturb the air, all the fragrances freshened by damp. Noses up, tail nubbins wagging, they’re off to explore.

Zach’s Trail must have seen a great deal of overnight traffic. Deer have built a bedroom--a place where they've trampled the tall grass for sleeping quarters--a couple of yards off the path. Nearby, a small sumac sports a bright new buck rub: a two-foot section where a white-tailed buck has rubbed his antlers against the tree, stripping off the bark. The bucks rub, I've been told, not just to remove velvet, but to advertise their presence. It's like taking out a billboard saying, “Hey, folks, it’s me. I’m here and I’m boss. You other bucks can find your own does.”

I don’t know whether Toro and Molly can read the buck’s message, but they find the rub extremely interesting--until their attention is distracted by fresh coyote scat not far away, full of wads of fur (midnight mouse snack?), and then by raccoon droppings studded with sumac seeds from the clusters of berries the coon has eaten. A little farther along, an armadillo’s been digging for grubs, and then a deer jumps up from under a mesquite and the dogs are off in hot pursuit, returning a little later with tongues lolling, bragging about their adventure. A good morning for dogs and other creatures at Meadow Knoll

Book report. The copyedited manuscript of Wormwood arrived, as scheduled, on Friday afternoon. Bill spent the weekend with family in Houston, so I settled in for a comfortable all-day read in the living room, with a fire, a cup of hot tea, and the manuscript. I finished it late last night. The editor did a good job, the manuscript was fairly clean, and I enjoyed the book. It's more complex than China's usual mysteries, and even more complex than Bloodroot (my favorite of the series). Some may find it (as they did Bloodroot) too much work--and too different. It's not set in Pecan Springs, part of the story is told via journals and newspaper clippings, and there are several different point-of-view characters. Some readers are going to find it too much work.

Sales report. I don't generally get into this on the blog, but you bookaholics might find it interesting. The Association of American Publishers reports that book sales are down “substantially” for September. Adult hardcovers are off by 29.8 percent, paperbacks 8.6 percent, audiobooks by 12 percent. Yikes. The only category to post an increase: ebooks, which increased 78 percent for the month and 55 percent for the year. Considering this, I am glad that all our books are now available as ebooks. But the drop in hardcover sales certainly sounds ominous. Many publishers have already started to cut hours and cut staff positions, and some may start cutting their lists, as well. This recession is hitting everyone.

Reading note. Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued into the next yard.--Dave Barry

Hot stuff

Pretty poblanos. One of our neighbors brought us two bags of fresh, bright red chile peppers from her garden, poblanos for me, habaneros for Bill. I can’t handle habaneros, literally. They’re off the Scoville heat scale, and he’ll have to deal with them. The Scoville scale is a measure of the heat of a chile pepper, which depends upon the amount of capsaicin in the pepper. It's named after its inventor, American chemist Wilbur Scoville. Sweet peppers--such as the green, red, and yellow bell peppers--have no capsaicin; their Scoville rating is zero. The habaneros, among the hottest peppers known, are rated in the 200,000 range on the Scoville scale. Poblanos come in at a paltry 500. Even wimps like me can handle them.

I halved and seeded the poblanos, dried them in the dehydrator, and put them through the blender, then the coffee grinder, to make chile powder. A pound and a half of fresh peppers became three ounces of chile powder in less than 24 hours. I call it hot. Bill calls it sweet and fruity. It's all a matter of taste.

Book report. The copyedited manuscript of Wormwood is supposed to arrive today. Alice, my botanical fact-checker, has already read the manuscript and pronounced it (mostly) free of errors. The project needs to go back on Monday, so you can guess what I'll be doing this weekend. We had to arrange a quick turn-around because of the Thanksgiving holiday--the publisher (in what is no doubt a cost-cutting move) is giving everybody some extra holiday time off. Another project in the works, The Tale of Applebeck Orchard, has moved into its cover-art phase. Peggy Turchette will be doing the cover and the map again. I loved her dragon on the cover of Briar Bank--hope you liked it too. All this scurrying around means less time to work on Holly Blues, but I'm making progress. The book is about half done.

In case you missed it, I'm blogging over at Story Circle's new blog, Telling HerStories, once a week (for now--may move to biweekly in a few weeks). My most recent post: Securities (of which there seem to be fewer these days). We subtitled the blog "A Broad View," and included a quote from Meta Wagner: "A broad is someone who knows who she is, and so no one would think of asking her to be someone she's not." We've had some negative responses to the word "broad." I'm curious. What's your take on that word? Do you find it offensive? Off-putting?

Reading note.  To me, writing is about how we see. The writers I want to read teach me how to see--see the world differently. In my writing there is no separation between how I observe the world and how I write the world. We write through our eyes. We write through our body. We write out of what we know.--Terry Tempest Williams

 

Miss Molly

There’s a new dog at our house. Her name is Miss Molly Maguire.

The back story. Zach died three months ago, Lady four. Bill and I have been talking intermittently about getting another dog to keep Toro company. And as Dave Barry once said, it’s always good to have an emergency backup dog, in case something happens to your main dog (Toro being the Emergency Backup who became Main Dog on the deaths of his compatriots.) But only once have we translated words like these into deeds and deliberately set out to acquire a dog: that was when we phoned Lab Rescue back in 1996 to ask about available Labs and ended up (to our enormous satisfaction) with Zach. All our other dogs have been gifts from a beneficent universe.

Last week, the universe stepped in and took control of our dog situation once again. Dolly Knox (the rancher from whom we got our cows) called to say that her daughter needed to find a new home for their recently-adopted blue heeler, Molly Maguire, who (it turns out) kills chickens. We don’t have any chickens, and we’re down to one Main Dog.

So Miss Molly has moved in. She’s clearly a true blue heeler--an Australian cattle dog--and not quite as pretty (we think) as Toro, who is a so-called Texas heeler with an Australian shepherd somewhere in his bloodline, which accounts for that lovely fur coat. But Molly (red color, on the right above) is agreeable, biddable, playful, affectionate, and rides in the car without throwing up--what more would we want in a dog? We're happy. Our vet will be happy about this, too. We haven’t needed to visit very often since our Labs died, which has no doubt had a negative effect on the clinic’s bottom line. Adopting Molly might be good for the local economy.

Today is my day to post at Telling HerStories. The post isn't up yet, but will be, so watch for it. And I'll be posting here again tomorrow. I'm a little behind--lots going on here and at Story Circle, and yes, I am writing, or trying to. The book keeps growing from the middle, from the back story, which is always interesting. I didn't know all those things about McQuaid's first marriage!

Reading note. Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.--Dave Barry

A Broad View

I'm posting over at Telling HerStories this morning. Click on over and join me and the other fine bloggers there. We all have a lot to say about lifewriting!

Reading note. What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. Muriel Rukeyser

A Big Deep Breath

We could hear it all over the country this week, couldn't we? On Wednesday morning, we were all taking a deep breath, holding it a moment, then letting it out in a long, long sigh. It might have been a celebratory breath, or a breath of disappointment, depending on your political views. But we could all hear our collective sigh. And then another deep breath, as we thought about the seriousness of the situation we're in (yes, all of us, no matter how deep our pockets may be at the moment). And when we let it out, it was with the fervent prayer that our new president would measure up to the challenge; that he would surround himself with men and women who think deeply and speak their minds clearly; and that members of government would forget which party they belonged to and get on with the task of governing our country.

Here at Meadow Knoll, Bill and I were as deeply engaged with the electoral process as the rest of the country. We're lifelong Democrats, both of us, and were thrilled and delighted to join the crowd at Grant Park, via TV, of course. But the next morning was a new day, and a new world, and we woke up to a beautiful burst of color--the cypress trees that grow along Pecan Creek, splendid in their russet-gold autumn finery that seems to exactly express how we feel. If you've been reading this blog for a time, you know that we name our most important trees: from left, Claudia (named for a friend--Claudia, remember when?) and Freya, named for a Norse goddess.

 

Walking. Walking the dog (one dog now, Toro, our heeler--but maybe that will change soon) is my favorite first-thing-in-the-morning practice. Toro and I have been in the habit of circling the east meadow, where he's on the lookout for the deer that bed down for the night among the oaks and junipers along the fence. This week, though, we've been meeting up with neighbors Sharon and Susie, who live on the ridge road to the south of us and walk at about the same time, with Sharon's dog Frazier (an English cocker) and Susie's Fredrika (a Wiemaraner). Sharon and Suzie are energetic walkers, making their mile-and-a-half loop two or three times. I'm a little less ambitious: Toro and I make one loop with them and then head home for breakfast. Our loop takes us across Pecan Creek, west along the fence to the far corner of Sharon's fifty acres, south up the hill (puff puff) to the ridge road, east along the road to Sharon's lane, and north down the lane to the house. Then down the hill and across the dam at Heron Lake (the name I've given, in my imagination, to Sharon's small lake), through Owl Tree Woods (my name, with apologies to Sharon), across Pecan Creek again, around Juniper Meadow, and home. Sharon and Susie, younger than I by a big margin, walk fast, and I have to work hard to keep up. Whew. But wow, too. Toro and I are loving it.

Writing. With the election and all, it's been hard to focus on writing this week. Holly Blues is swinging along: I'm over a third done--and yes, Sheryl, there is a dead body, right about page 100. But it's an offstage body. I don't think we'll ever see it. McQuaid is also featured in this book, so he'll be doing part of the investigation while China is stuck at the herb shop and tearoom, handling the Christmas rush. (Doesn't that sound like something we'd all like to be doing?)

Gardening. Wouldn't you think the grasshoppers would be ready to call it quits? Nope. They've eaten most of the tops of my fall potatoes. Otherwise, going strong, with "messes" (as my mom called it) of snow peas and snap beans this week, and lettuce and radishes for salad. Planted more spinach, spring bunching onions, bulb onions, more lettuce, more beets. Oh, and sweet peas, which I adore. This is all experimental, mind you. My first fall/winter garden, and I've no idea how it will turn out.

Blogging. I'm over at Telling HerStories: A Broad View once every week for a while (Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the week). This is our new Story Circle blog. Join me there, and subscribe to the feed. Lots of interesting blogging there, all about women's stories.

Reading. If you haven't read Al Gore's NY Times Op-Ed piece, "The Climate for Change," do it now. Please. (If the link doesn't work, google it.) We are standing at a crucial crossroad. If we don't make the right choices now, our grandchildren and their children will wake to an entirely different day.

Reading note. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.--Abraham Lincoln, quoted in "The Climate for Change."

Midweek surprise?

That midweek surprise I promised you? (No, nothing to do with the election.)

You'll find it here, on SCN's new blog, HerStories. I'll be posting weekly over there--hope you'll join me!

Reading note. What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.--Barbara Jordan, U.S. Congresswoman from Texas, 1972-1978. In 1976, she became the first African American to deliver a keynote address to the Democratic National Convention.

Golden morning

 

Our corner of Texas isn't known for its spectacular color. (For that, you need to make a visit to Lost Maples State Park, the only place in Texas where maple trees grow natively.) Our cedar elms, pictured here, are about as golden as they get. But on a crisp fall day, it's a delight to stand underneath them and look up at the blue, blue sky, then walk through the crunchy leaves on the ground. The cypress trees along the creek are beginning to turn their autumn russet, and the Virginia creeper is bright red. 

More solar oven experiments. This pecan pie tasted every bit as good as it looks, baking here in the solar oven. Today, I'm baking pecan shortbread cookies, again in the solar oven. We're still trying to use up the enormous crop of pecans that we harvested last year (some 200 pounds, before they were shelled). Thankfully, this was an "off" year for the trees: they naturally cycle through heavy production every second year. We let the squirrels, crows, and jays have the few nuts available this year.

 

We voted this week, in the Burnet County courthouse, on the square. Surprisingly, there was a line, and the woman checking registrations told me that she didn't think there'd be anybody left to vote on Tuesday. But other than that, and a shopping/supper trip to Marble Falls, it was an at-home week. I logged about 6,000 words on Holly Blues, worked with Peggy on a remodel of the Story Circle webpage, did some work on our SCN online classes, and worked in the garden, where we had our first freeze, mid-week. Bill contrived some hoops for my raised beds with flexible black plastic pipes inserted into metal pegs on both sides of the bed. Covered with row cover, the beds looked like this:

 

The temperature got down to about 30, but everything was snug under wraps. This is the first year I've used this system. It went up and came down easily. I'll use a similar system next summer as protection against the sun and insects. We're still eating green beans and peas, but I'll probably pick the tomatoes and let them ripen in the house.

I'll have a surprise for you mid-week, so look for a posting here on Wednesday morning. (No, it has nothing to do with the election.)

And in the meantime, if you don't read anything else before you vote, please read Tom Friedman's column in the New York Times.

Reading note. We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words--not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.--Anne Lamott