Sunday surprise

 Yesterday we met Campbell and Indy halfway between our towns, and brought them up here for the day. Margaret did not tell Hazel they were coming. After we let her know they were here, she told Hazel there was a surprise up at Pop and Nana's. The boys hid, she came in and closed her eyes, and then this happened!

Bees in the honeysuckle

The school song

This is Campbell Walker singing his school song on March 17. He sang it to me, and then I asked if he would sing it again so I could video it, and he said yes. It makes me just melt with love. Those expressive eyebrows and the way he moves his hands. Oh, just so adorable.

Quote du jour/The Old Farmer's Almanac Engagement Calendar

Violent north winds in February herald a fertile year.
from my Old Farmer's Almanac Engagement Calendar

I don't know if they were north winds, but we had really strong winds this past weekend. If the saying is true, it bodes well for the new vegetable and flower gardens!

Tom took a video of the prayer flags up in the woods on Saturday.

A big day!

I got a text from Margaret this afternoon.

Hazel just asked can I go up there all by myself? She's been looking out the window up at your house to see if your car is there.

And this happened!

Virtual Advent Tour - December 5

This is such a special day in our family. On this date five years ago, our first grandchild was born on her grandfather's birthday. The story of her birth is here. Hazel Nina is a miracle that I am thankful for every minute of my life. Her birthday party was on Sunday and I took this little video.

This evening we celebrated with supper at her house. One of the presents we gave her was a matching pajama set for Hazel and her American Girl doll, Emerson.

We were having so much fun that I never got a picture of grandfather and granddaughter.

My heart is full.

How I Spent My 12th Blog Anniversary/Thanksgiving

November 22, 2006 was the first day of Letters from a Hill Farm. I had been getting advice from my friend Les and her husband Rod about how to start a blog, she having started hers some months earlier. My internet connection was slow and I got frustrated thinking it would never work. I remember saying I could just read my Gladys Taber without writing about her! But finally, it was all sorted out, and here I still am, a dozen years later. A dozen years back from that first day was 1994. That puts some perspective on ol' father time, doesn't it!!

We expected to be home just having a regular day, as we often do on Thanksgiving, but a day or two before, Estée, our daughter-in-law told us a story. She said they had been talking to the boys about being thankful, and explained they were going to her parents' house for Thanksgiving and that they were all thankful for them. Campbell Walker said, "are Pop and Nana going to be there, because I am thankful for them." Well, that's all it took, of course! Actually, we had been invited, a sort of open invitation every year, but we hadn't been before.

It was a lovely, lovely day.They are renovating an old house.They have two dogs, Hamish the Bernese Mountain dog, and Angus the Golden Retriever. And there is little Indy Thomas!

There was great food, and tons to eat for the vegetarians! My pictures from the day are mostly in-motion shots, and quite blurry, like the above. There was lots of good conversation and after dinner lots of music and dancing. Here is a little bit of Campbell Walker. I love his expressions!

When we went around and said what we were thankful for, I said, "family."

November 9

I began a new reading project today inspired by this post on the Sew and Sow Life blog.

I ordered a used copy that is in excellent shape. The idea of the book is, in Ted Kooser's words:
"In the autumn of 1998, during my recovery from surgery and radiation for cancer, I began taking a two-mile walk each morning. ... During the previous summer, depressed by my illness, preoccupied by the routines of my treatment, and feeling miserably sorry for myself, I'd all but given up on reading and writing. Then, as autumn began to fade and winter came on, my health began to improve. One morning in November, following my walk, I surprised myself by trying my hand at a poem. Soon I was writing every day.

Several years before, my friend Jim Harrison and I had carried on a correspondence in haiku. As a variation on this, I began pasting my morning poems on postcards and sending them to Jim, whose generosity, patience and good humor are here acknowledged. What follows is a selection of one hundred of those postcards."

Isn't that just lovely?

Every day I am going to read the poem that corresponds to the present date. I don't expect to post a poem each day, and maybe not even each week, but occasionally I will post one with notes and perhaps pictures of my own walk on that same date, twenty years later, and in New Hampshire, not Nebraska.

november 9

    Rainy and cold.


The sky hangs thin and wet on its clothesline.

A deer of gray vapor steps through the foreground,
under the dripping, lichen-rusted trees.

Halfway across the next field,
the distance (or can that be the future?)
is sealed up in tin like an old barn.

I so love that first line. Such a unique concept. And I think the distance/future is just brilliant. A lovely poem, I feel.

I haven't been very faithful to my idea of walking often up and down my road. I did a few times, and even took photos, but then didn't have the chance to post about them. I do hope to get back in the groove of writing much more often. It is good for me to stop and examine my life. Even if no one ever reads the postings, I feel better when I really take the time to pay attention. So, today with this new reading scheme, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to take a walk as Mr. Kooser did, though mine is not two miles. It is half an hour. I dare not walk up the hill into the woods this time of year, but come winter I hope to do so.

Today I was so thankful to see geese. I took this little video. Click to make it larger and turn your volume up, and there they are!! A little magic in the skies, methinks. And you may hear the cheery little chickadee.

The beech and oak are the only trees that still have their leaves.

When we moved here in 1981, we brought an oak tree we had recently planted at our other home. It is quite a mighty oak now.

We've noticed many little oaks have sprung up between this oak and Margaret, Matthew, and Hazel's house. Just for fun today, I decided to count the saplings. There are 19!! Our original oak was the only one on our 200+ acres, and in a few decades, they will line the road. Amazing, amazing.

Nebby and the sheep were curious as I walked back and forth.

I walked from 1:30-2, and it was just so pleasant. Cool, not cold. No precipitation, and all those lovely brownish colors everywhere.

A milestone

According to the dictionary, a milestone is an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development. Well, that's what yesterday was for Nana.

We've been taking care of Hazel Nina while Margaret worked for over four years. For a year she was here for four days a week, and the other three years she has been here every Tuesday and Friday. We see her at other times but those days it has been just Pop, Hazel, and me.

This is a picture from the spring of 2014 when we began taking care of her. So tiny, so precious.

This year of Pre-K, Margaret had her go three full days, and one half day, and has now decided to make the half day a full day. Hazel's doing well and loving school. Yesterday was our first Tuesday without her and it was so strange. You might expect that Nana had quite a good cry. It just doesn't seem possible that the time has passed so quickly. She has grown into the dearest little girl.

I put this picture of my desk

 on Instagram last Friday with these words:

What my desk was like when Hazel went home today. Her imagination is remarkable. She takes totally unrelated items and builds a whole world. hashtag lucky grandparents.

Here is a little movie of her playing.

I am thankful beyond words that I have had the honor, the privilege, the gift of taking care of this little girl. There isn't a day goes by when I don't think about how very different it could have been. If you don't know Margaret and Hazel's story, you may find it here - I just re-read the post and all the wonderful comments. I never replied but they meant the world to me.

Crickets

This is a video, well, really just an audio taken in the butt'ry off the kitchen, from a couple weeks ago. The cricket isn't in the house anymore, but the air outside is full of their sound.

The other day I heard a wonderful little show on the radio about crickets here. Nathaniel Hawthorne was quoted:

If ever there was a sound that signifies August, it’s the quiet song of the crickets. Nathaniel Hawthorne described it as “audible stillness,” writing, “if moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that.”

Aren't his words simply perfect.

Today's home video - Bob Ross mug

This is the coolest thing ever! One day a Bob Ross video suggestion turned up on Tom's YouTube app. He thought Hazel might like it. Well, she did! And has been painting ever since. She talks as she paints, just like Bob Ross. Today Margaret and Hazel gave this mug to Pop.

Stillmeadow - March

I began writing this two weeks ago when it was indeed March, but life has been busy and I'm just getting around to working on the post again. I love Blogger's draft facet. I've had to delete a couple things I wrote because the time has passed, but it is nice to find my words intact and waiting for me to finish.

March isn't my favorite month, and I can't quite put my finger on why. I love February, probably mostly because it is my birthday month, but also because the sunshine in that month is so dramatic, so bright on the white, white snow. It feels like the best of winter. In my memory most February days are sunny, while I'm certain that isn't the real truth. Even though spring began on the 20th at 12.15 pm my time, March doesn't feel like spring. Maybe if I lived where my heart lies in England, the daffodils and snowdrops would make me feel differently about the month, but there is no such flower here. The daylilies may be an inch out of the ground if it has been warmish, but that's the only green you will see.

But we do have the browns! You may remember Gladys writing about the autumn browns in the November entry. It is here, if you'd like to compare with how she describes the browns of March.

The wind, the wild brave wind, has carried off the last of the ice and snow. How wonderful the ground looks! The sharp sunlight falls like a blade on the meadow grasses, on the brown lawn, on the huckleberry bushes in the swamp. All the browns are distinct and beautiful, and why are they different from the browns of autumn? Perhaps the new life under the bark, under the root, makes them more glowing. Perhaps it is the quality of March light, keen as an etching tool.

If you burn wood, you may be tempted to put the ashes/coals down on winter sidewalks. We tried it one year, and what a mess! It took ages for those ashes to go away and we tracked them in for months. Gladys also gave this idea a try.

The floors look grimy and the rugs give back a cindery crunch when you walk on them. All those ashes spread on the icy walk come right back in and lay a heavy, gritty film on everything. 

Gladys writes about the craziness of featuring summer clothes in the store windows while winter is still going on. This is something we shoppers still face today, even while shopping online rather than in stores. I've often found that if I don't buy that shirt at LL Bean's the minute I see it, they will be sold out before the proper season to wear it even arrives!

In the midst of snow and sleet and rain, the shops are showing summer clothes! It's getting so you can hardly buy anything to wear at the time you need it. In summer the nice warm woolens come out for next winter, and in mid-winter pastel sheers blossoms all over town! ... When I was a child, the shops faced the facts. In February the windows were still full of fleece-lined underwear and arctics. Then when the Wisconsin spring finally loosened the river ice and the logs boomed down again, out came the flowered prints.

She naturally writes of spring cleaning. Do you do this? I don't believe I ever did. My mother was a demon cleaner. Her diaries are full of what she cleaned during the day. That would make a very minuscule entry in any diary of mine! Gladys seems to have been like my mother, but even more so.

House cleaning involves washing all the furniture with mild soap and water, and re-waxing with two thin coats of paste wax, well rubbed down. We like all our furniture finished with linseed oil and waxed.

Roz Chast has the best cartoon about this subject. I cut it out and put it on the fridge.

I'm not a collector (unless you count buying books!), but Gladys helped me understand the minds of those who do collect things.

We have a dear friend who was suffering a great grief. She found herself in a desperate state, as we all do at times. So she sat down one day, after a sleepless night, and said, "Now look here, you have got to stop thinking only about this, and about yourself. It's time you did something." She had a short vacation from her job at the time, but family duties kept her confined to the city. "All right," she said, "I'll just collect something." So she spent her vacation wandering in little shops, and riding busses and street cars to remote second-hand stores, and going to the library to read about milk glass. Now she has a beautiful collection of glass; but more, she learned the value of a lively interest in some external things. "Whenever I got too low," she said, "I tried to match the blackberry creamer." 

We didn't need to have our minds taken from anything personal at that moment, but we saw the milk glass she had, and it conquered. And now our own modest collection keeps us in a constant fever of excitement. There is really something amazing to collecting. Going into a dusty, grimy junk shop and seeing two one-o-one plates, for instance, just waiting to come home and be loved. Finding a blackberry egg cup in Roxbury and another just like it in Brooklyn.

She might be writing the thoughts of everyone who has a garden when she says,

Jill and I order just a few more berry bushes, fruit trees, and roses; it isn't too late. Jill reads dreamily, "The fruit is sweet and juicy enough to eat when it is only half ripe. The catalogue says so. In the golden stage. Continue to eat and enjoy it until September, when the skin is rich maroon red and the flesh is tempting gold. ... remove one third to one half the fruit every year to keep trees from breaking down under the load of fruit." ... Just once I should like to see one tree on our land that had enough fruit to break down a branch. Or even to shatter a small twig. But I am always as hopeful as Jill. You never know when the seed catalogue's dream may come true. After all, we had three plums this year.

My particular fruit dream is a raspberry bed like Tom's grandmother used to have. You could walk down the long rows and pick and pick and pick. I can still remember the taste and the size of those berries. I think I could live on them, if I only had a plot full.

I shall end this month's entry with a little video Tom took on St. Patrick's Day. In addition to the "wild, brave wind", you can hear the big wind chimes in the oak tree down the road and Nebby, the donkey.

Trying something new - a home video

I have seen a little video icon next to the photograph one, and I thought I'd give it a try. I put this on my Facebook page today. This is the side yard, off the kitchen door. I fed the birds and they were just beginning to come to the feeders.