Stillmeadow - October

Now I've come to the last month in The Book of Stillmeadow. This has been a wonderful year of reading Gladys Taber, and I plan to do something of the same sort beginning next month. There will be more about my reading scheme in an upcoming post.

In my neck of the woods, October changes dramatically from the beginning to the end.

October 4 (used as blog header)

October 5

October 15

October 24

Gladys begins her October with "nut gathering." She mentions both butternuts and hickory nuts. Do people still do this? I don't know of any nuts that grow up here, and I've never known anyone who picked them (or picked them off the ground). Gladys makes it sound like such fun. She climbs a pasture hill and says,

It is still and peaceful up here, and the air has a dreaming quality. When we have wandered as far as we need, for the gunny sacks do get heavy very soon, we move to the biggest ledge of all, where there is a nice flat place to spread a picnic supper.

If there's one thing I know about Gladys Taber is that she adores picnics.

The menu is an old one, for this nut gathering has all the aura of tradition with us. New-laid eggs, fried crisp at the edges and just firm in the golden centers. Slices of dark bread to lift them on. We have big ripe tomatoes laid on grape leaves, to eat in the hand with salt and pepper.

And this is all, for we can't carry much when the nut sacks are full. Usually we find windfall sweet apples near where we eat, and make dessert of them.

This sounds utterly perfect to me.

Of fall chores she writes that "the real countrywoman wishes she were triplets in autumn. There is no limit to the amount of work".

That is so true around here. We are never finished before the snow comes and the ground freezes.

A great part of the October entry is taken up with the summer kitchen. Do you know what that is? I had never heard the term until we moved to this old farmhouse. Certainly the house in town where I grew up, and then lived as an adult for nine years, never had such a thing. There was a kitchen. Period.

When we came here, this is what we found:

I suppose if we'd had the money we might have transformed this space into something, but it would have taken a lot of work. There was an unsafe attic above, and it wasn't heated. The sink would have been a good place to wash off vegetables from the garden, but it was very shallow and the drainage wasn't good. It was essentially useless space, so in 1992 we had it pulled down. Now that opening in the second picture goes right out to the side yard.

But back to Gladys. She and Jill did wonders with their summer kitchen. 

Many old houses have this large room behind the real kitchen, and many have woodsheds attached to the main kitchen. Almost anyone who has any kind of a back room, I think, would do well to remodel it into a real summer kitchen, for the advantages are countless.

Here, for instance, you may have the old black range, so comfortable, and so good for canning or baking. On cold fall days before the furnace is on, a quick fire in the range warms the downstairs nicely. Here, on boiling days, you may simmer the roast and keep the main kitchen cool for salad-making.

We have always used ours, but only after the main kitchen was made perfect did we decide the summer kitchen must be made equally efficient and labor-saving.

The room is large and runs up to the roof. We put windows all around and windows near the ceiling to let in more sun. The walls are covered with insulation board finished with clear waterproof varnish. They are a warm honey tone and will stand any amount of wear.

It was easy to put in a sink and hook up the washing machine by putting them on the same wall as the inner-kitchen fixtures.

She goes on for several pages until this reader was about as envious as could be!

In each chapter, Gladys spends some of the time writing about her cats and dogs. I don't know why I haven't quoted more of these passages in the past year. They raised cocker spaniels. They had two cats. Gladys was a big animal lover.

Reading of bringing in the harvest and freezing it after years of time-consuming canning, I have the sense that Gladys' household was almost completely self-sufficient when it came to fruits and vegetables. So many of us long for that, but after many, many years of trying, I can say it is very hard work and takes a lot of time. But I hope it still appeals to young people. There is something wonderful about eating what you have grown yourself.

Gladys ends the October chapter in her familiar wise way.

There is a lovely stillness in a fall afternoon. Up in the pasture one can really "busy the heart with quietude." The stillness has the sadness of passing summer, and yet it has a breathless quality of life still to come before winter sets in. All the color that flames in the woods and runs along the horizon is so beautiful that it comforts and warms the sorrowful spirit. While the world continues to be troubled and the atom bomb is apparently the god of all things that are, I stubbornly refuse to despair. There is still love in the world, and kindness, and faith. So let us not abandon hope.

As if that wasn't a wonderful enough ending, she goes on in an exceptional postscript. It is quite long and I won't quote all of it, but I want to give you the feeling that she gave me as I read it. She truly was a philosopher, as I believe I've mentioned before. She is again up on a hill. The passage reminds me a little of Emily in Our Town when she is dead and looks at all her living loved ones.

Sometimes I go away by myself, up the hill, far enough from Stillmeadow so that I only see the slope of the roof almost lambent with sunset. ... From the upper abandoned orchard the yard is partly visible, dotted comfortably with cockers and cats, and if the weather is right, Jill's bent shoulders appear at the end of the tomato vines. If there are guests, and there usually are, the sound of their voices comes dreamily from the open space where the lawn furniture is.

If Cicely is home there is music, too. ... Don is never visible to the naked eye, for he finds the best way to get through all the murder mysteries is to keep out of sight. Too many errands might turn up.

Dorothy and her new husband, Val, will be working on their car; just married, the excitement of being together pitches their voices high and sweet. ... 

There it all is below me, this little world within a world, and I sit down on a warm grey ledge upholstered with feathery lichens and think about it in relation to the rest of the world.

The terrible suffering that man is undergoing all over the earth is like a tidal wave to overwhelm civilization. If we think of this, what can we find in the whole round turning earth to make life good?

The intolerance sickens the soul. Race against race, caste against caste - by what dreadful arrogance could I believe myself better than another woman because my skin is pale? 

But here in the country, we may establish one small territory dedicated to love instead of hate, and possibly that is why we were born. And just possibly when all men have homes, hate will diminish all over the world. 

For we are always pursuing happiness and security. We pursue them, not knowing what they are. Now and then, rarely, we find them, if only briefly. But for me, and for many women like me, and for many men, a small home in a green valley is security and the opportunity to make a happy life.

Looking down on Stillmeadow I see the years that have gone, and the mark of them is a good and kindly mark, for the trees have grown, and the lilacs are spreading graciously. When nature devastates the whole yard full of old and lovely apple trees, she begins new life the next season with young maples, and that year the mallows are as big as full moons. 

The seasons change but new life is always coming, and in the country one never looks backward. As soon as the crops are harvested, we begin to plan next year's garden. When the rose has faded, there is pruning to do for another lovelier rose. Moments of sadness when the delicate amethyst and ivory lace of the lilacs die may shake the heart, but on the morrow we go out to the border and see the rosy red peony, like an English country maid in a lyric, spreading a full skirt.

Gladys remembers the many things that have happened over the years, both the happy and sad. She says, "I remember my mother, who never walked across the lawn her, and is always here." She can talk about the general and the very most personal and we readers feel what she feels. We understand this woman, much like ourselves all these years later. If you haven't read her, I hope you will. And if you have, you know just what I mean. It has been a lovely year with Gladys, and I hope to continue my visits with her each year with a different book. She fills me with joy and hope and real comfort. I couldn't ask for more.

Today's poem by Ted Kooser

                 Father

Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you everyday - the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

Ted Kooser from Delights & Shadows 2004 

Quote du jour/Adam Frost

There's one thing I'm going to do next year. I'm going to celebrate all the things that go right and not worry about the things that go wrong.

Adam Frost on Gardeners' World (I watch on Britbox.)

He was talking about the garden, but honestly they are such good words about life in general.

Stillmeadow - September

I realized that I have gone through most of The Book of Stillmeadow without noting Gladys' poems at the beginning of each month. Here is September's.

Song for September

Not that I ever had her for my own,
Quick in the house I heard her running feet,
Watched the door swing, garnered a sentence blown
Back to my stillness, "Friends I have to meet."
Nor that I knew her, never her secret thought
Came home to me, nor how she dreamed. I knew
Each growing year the size of clothes I bought,
And that her favorite sweater set was blue.

Now sober reason counsels me again,
This was not yours that goes beyond your sight.
Knowing this well, I must perceive with pain,
The bough is empty when the bird takes flight.

Bravely my mind assures me nothing's lost,
But oh my heart admits the killing frost.


Whew! That is deep and so poignant. I think that each monthly poem was generally more wistful, or upset than the prose entry. That's the thing about poetry, isn't it? It can often come right from the heart onto the page. There can be a depth that prose doesn't often touch.

Though my kids are now in their 30s, I still remember those periods of melancholy as they grew up. I had a friend who said of Margaret that she thought she would end up in Los Angeles. What pain that little sentence gave me. You just don't know where they will go. I am thankful every single day that my kids are so close, and that they love the home and the state where they grew up. Lucky, lucky.

This is one of the remarkable things about reading Gladys Taber, all these years after she wrote. She was born in 1899. Her daughter Connie was born in 1927. They are both dead now, but the feeling expressed in this little poem still strikes a chord in a parent's heart, as do all Gladys' essays. This has to be a sign of genius - that your words continue to resonate throughout the years.

So many of us seem to love the month of September.

September wind blows away the fatigue of summer heat, and the listlessness of August weather.

Fatigue and listlessness. Those are great words to describe this past summer. And September was a welcome relief, until we had a reprise of that weather for a few days. The difference was that I knew it wouldn't go on for ages, and the nights were cooler.

Even in my childhood I remember those few hot days that came back in September. I'd be walking home in my wool kilt (anyone remember them? and kilt pins?), simply boiling but I just had to wear my new school clothes no matter the weather!

It is certainly a month of changeable weather. Gladys says,

The September rains are something I just live through. The rain falls straight and dark and heavy and the leaves on every tree and bush are beaten down by the weight. The early-turned leaves are lost now. The rain seems sad, meaning the end of summer days. 

But she goes on,

I don't see how this month can be so exciting and at the same time so sad. It is like the second-act curtain in the play of summer. And every day you feel like begging the play to go on a little longer, before the floodlights go out, and summer is gone.

But there is excitement too. The dramatic first flame of maple, the burning gold of the goldenrod, the coming of the first wild blue asters and the richness of ripening pumpkins. Even the air seems to have color in it; one breathes the color, and the heart beats with it.

I am always frightfully sentimental now. Whether the second-act feeling is responsible, or the color goes to my head, I don't know. But I really go all out with sentiment. 

One of her "sentiments" is so lovely.

I wish we could put up this late summer sunlight in jars. If we could only pack it, clamp the bail down on the glass, set the pressure cooker for, say, ten pounds, and process jars and jars of bright, fresh, mellow sun. I can see how it would look with the jars ranged in the fruit cellar beside the chicken and piccalilli and tomato catsup. And on a dark January day we would bring up a quart or so of sunshine and open it and smell again the warm dreamy air of a late-summer day.

Isn't that just wonderful? It reminds me of my favorite Greg Brown song.



I actually put the lyrics on the blog eleven years ago when I'd been blogging just a couple months.

The Book of Stillmeadow was published in 1948, but the essays have copyrights dating from 1937. Gladys was writing about getting wood together for the winter, when suddenly she says,

We acquired some wood this month at a fearful cost. A small private hurricane descended on us, and in ten minutes took down all the old apple trees in the backyard. Wind and rain made a roaring darkness around the house. A window crashed in and water poured clear across the room, and presently the electric cables to the house were reft away and the place plunged into darkness. ... When day came I looked out on the back yard and felt sure my heart was broken. All the lovely old apple trees, so sweet with bloom in the spring, were sprawled on the grass. Only two were left at the edge of the lawn.

It was an eerie feeling to read this, as I had just seen in the September installment of the Friends of Gladys Taber (which you may read about here) that this past May a tornado went through Southbury, Connecticut. Luckily, the house was spared but a lot of old trees came down, including pines that Gladys had planted in 1938 to replace those 13 apple trees!

After telling Tom about these two things, he began reading Thirty-Eight The Hurricane That Transformed New England by Stephen Long. He thought it was a terrific book. I plan to read it myself sooner than later.

Gladys ends her September essay beautifully with a paraphrase of Keats' words.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too

It has been a little odd for me writing this in the middle of October, but September flew by. Soon, I hope to write about October, the last month in this book.

Aprons

I saw this on Facebook, and I just knew some of my readers would so love it.

The History of 'APRONS'

I don't think our kids know what an apron is. The principle use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons used less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.

And when the weather was cold, Grandma wrapped it around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.

From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.

Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.

They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron.

I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron - but love
---Hawk Seeker of Truth---

Today's Nature Cam Picture/Coyote and wild turkeys

I decided to make a label just for the nature cam photos so they would have their own place here on the blog. The camera is still on the outside corner of the fence by the road.

The time is off on the pictures. We have to check into the setting.

I'm thinking this may be "our" lone coyote that was in the first nature cam picture I put up here. He must have a trail because there he is in the same place in both September and October. There is a whole life going on while I'm asleep!

I am exceedingly fond of turkeys, which I am sure I've written here before. They are a huge success story in my state. The last sighting had been in 1854!! There is a great article here if you are interested.

And here are a couple pictures of not-so-wild creatures!

No-Bake Key Lime Cheesecake Pie

I posted a recipe for Key Lime Pie a while back. It was actually seven years ago, which I can hardly believe! Anyhow, it it here, if you haven't seen it. I have made this pie quite a few times, but there was always something about it that didn't quite make me happy. Well, recently I read

Using the more common Persian limes in this dessert (instead of Key limes) would be no crime. :) However using bottled juice for this recipe absolutely would be. For best results, use freshly squeezed lime juice. Do not use bottled, even bottled "Key lime" juice, which will impart a sourness to your pie. Freshly squeezed juice is what you want. 

This came from Alice Alfonsi who is one half of the writing team (with her husband) that writes the excellent Coffeehouse Mysteries. I thought, yes, that's it! The pie was indeed sour! There was an aftertaste which I didn't like.

Her recipe is here, but I'll write it out, as well.

Key Lime Pie

1 (14-ounce) can of sweetened condensed milk

3/4 cup freshly squeezed (and strained) lime juice - my limes were just ordinary limes

2 (8 ounce packages) of softened cream cheese

1 graham cracker pie crust 

I mixed up the first three ingredients in the electric mixer until very creamy and smooth. I poured the mix into the pie crust, and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

This is out-of-this-world delicious. I'll never make the other kind again! 

This is the pie crust I used.

The suggestion was to place the foiled crust in a regular pie plate "for stability" and I did. 

I didn't top it with whipped cream. It was perfect without!

I'll share this at Weekend Cooking. 

Today's picture/man-dad outfit

Michael sent this to us yesterday morning. This is what Campbell wanted to wear to school - his "man-dad" outfit. The glasses aren't real. The tie is Michael's. I can hardly bear how cute he is.

Jacob's Room is Full of Books - September

Susan Hill's September entry was only 11 pages, the shortest yet, but somehow it didn't seem short. Perhaps because there were fewer "subjects" with more information on each? September finds her in a rental cottage in France. Doesn't that sound nice? I would like to say, "September finds me in a cottage in the French countryside." The weather however was very hot for some of it, and she, like me, wilts in the heat and humidity. 34º C. which is about 93º F. Yuck. Thank goodness my September has been cooler. We've even had a couple frosts, though they haven't been the "killer" frosts when even covering the tomatoes doesn't help. So we continue to eat tomatoes right off the vine.

Of course what Susan Hill does on such a vacation is to read. She's brought books from home, but also is interested in the books that other renters have left-behind. I love that idea of leaving books you are done with, and picking up some that others have left. It's like those little free libraries that have sprouted up in the US (and other places?).

If you were hoping for a list of authors, as I was, she doesn't disappoint.

They fascinate me, those holiday reads, and I have studied a good many in my time. Indeed, I have compiled a list of the authors whose books - always in paperback - are most often found in rented properties, both at home and in France. I start going through them as soon as I have unpacked and I rarely score fewer than five.

The list does change every few years.

This year the bookcases have contained, in no particular order: Joanna Trollope, Dan Brown, Jenny Colgan, Stephen King, Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Hislop, Ian McEwan, Val McDermid, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Jojo Moyes. And Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Captain Corelli's Mandolin has not been found for a while. 

 Several authors dropped off the bottom a couple years ago - Catherine Cookson, Dean Koontz, Gerald Durrell, Peter Mayle. John le Carré comes and goes.

This year there are a few surprises. Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy is here. So are books by Julian Barnes, Martin Amis, Elizabeth Bowen, Patricia Highsmith, Jeanette Winterson - and Jane Austen, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Hemingway and Raymond Carver. An upmarket bookcase then.

Would you be tickled to find such authors in your rental house?

Susan Hill goes on to discuss Olivia Manning in quite some detail, which pleased me because last year I bought both The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy. Of course, I haven't read them yet, but they wait patiently on my shelf.

I am struck in this month's passage, as I am every month, at what a reader Susan Hill is. Writing of the two trilogies, she says

This summer's re-reading must be my fourth, and each time the books yield something new, perhaps because as I grow older I understand more.

FOUR re-readings!!

You know how in late spring the buzz is always about what the upcoming "summer reads" will be? I've never quite understood because my reading doesn't change with the seasons. And I don't go to the beach. If I did, I'd be swimming or walking, not reading.

... beach reads. I was slightly mortified when a friend on holiday in Turkey reported seeing three people reading one of my crime novels on a beach - I have never taken them too seriously, but for a split second I thought, 'I didn't realise they were as bad as that.' 

What a delight this woman is to me. She is scholarly, interesting, informative, witty, and funny. Reading this book is a bit like taking a course from her, and I am loving it.

Another milestone - this one about milk

You might wonder at the title of this blog post, how in the world can milk be a milestone in a life? Well here is the answer, at least in the life I have lived for nearly fifty years.

As you probably know by now if you are a long-time reader of Letters from a Hill Farm, Tom and I are older hippies. We became aware of "real" food in the late 1960s, and have never let it go. We became vegetarians in 1971 due pretty much to a photograph of some words someone said about why he (Donovan or Paul McCartney, methinks) became a vegetarian. He saw a cattle truck, and looked into the eyes of a cow on the way to its death. I can't recall if there was a photo of the cow or not, but I know just where it hung in our first apartment in Boston.

At this point in our lives, we don't know a single person who is a vegetarian or a vegan. Meat is huge now. Somehow it isn't unhealthy to eat the carcinogenic nitrates or nitrites in bacon anymore. People put bacon in everything, and it is rather a food favorite in the world.

Along with giving up meat, we also began to eat whole grains instead of white bread and rice. We learned about foods that are now common in the US but then were as rare as hens' teeth, such as hummus and tabouli. And we learned about raw milk, the milk our parents would have grown up on. When I was a kid, there was still un-homogenized milk and I remember having to shake the milk carton at school. On the occasion when I drink from a carton now, I have to remind my muscle memory that I don't have to do that anymore.

There was a health food store, and a big Erewhon store (the first) just down the street from our second apartment in Boston, and we did all our food shopping there. When my mother died and we moved back home in 1973, it wasn't easy finding the food we were used to. There was a mail order catalogue called Walnut Acres where we bought a lot of items. We made occasional day trips to Boston to pick up other things. And we grew and froze as much as we could. But raw milk we could get right here! There was a farm in town that sold to the big dairy cooperatives, but locals could go right to the farm and get their own raw milk. We brought our own bottles, and filled them usually twice a week. We have done this for all these years, but now the original owners have died, and though their son took over for many years, now it is his time to "give up the cows". He is 63, and said it would be nice to go to a family get-together or an autumn fair without having to get back to milk the cows. He is definitely conflicted though, and the last time Tom talked with him, the last time we got milk, he said he didn't know how he would react when the last ones were taken away. His son is taking over the farm and raising meat (see what I mean - meat is way popular while milk isn't so much) for local markets.

The last of our local farm milk, and yogurt made from that milk, in the fridge.

This change, this milestone hit us harder than we imagined, and not only emotionally. Our milk from the farm cost us $2/gallon! We would keep track of how much we owed and after a while would bring him out some cash, which he preferred because he would put a check in his pocket and forget about it.

When I first went shopping for milk when our last farm milk was gone, I was pretty shocked to see the difference in cost! And I was happily surprised at the variety of milk that is available now. I don't mean the variety of percentages of fat, but in the opportunity to buy raw milk, organic raw milk, organic homogenized and pasteurized milk. As I've written before, we can get just about anything we want right in our Co-op store - a real miracle when we think back on what was available when we first came home.

So now there was a decision to make. Which did we want? I've tried a couple so far.

We haven't made a definite decision but we are leaning toward the Organic Valley. It is organic, but not raw. It says it is from a New England farm, and has the name of the farmer on it. The company must have farms all over the country now. I've been buying their butter and cream cheese for years. This milk is cheaper than the previous picture, but it isn't raw. There is a local farm that offers raw, organic milk in gallon containers, but when I've shopped the date has been too close and I knew we wouldn't drink it all in that short time. I will try that one when I catch it having a later sell-by date. It is more expensive than OV but less expensive than the Kimball Brook.

Before we started making our own yogurt (blog post about it here), I used to buy either Brown Cow or Stonyfield. Now I see that Brown Cow is distributed by Stonyfield. They are both great, and are the same price, but the Brown Cow has more cream at the top.

So there it is. We are lucky, lucky that we are, as they say, spoilt for choice in available products. But there is a sadness in the reason we must make those choices.

Addendum: the money we now spend on milk and yogurt is countered somewhat by  not making a 30 mile round trip twice a week for milk. I also don't have to use the longer wash time in the dishwasher for milk bottles to get them very, very clean. I only use it now when I've got the bread baking bowl in there.

Today's song and video/The Cottager's Reply - Chris Wood

I was just listening to this song on my iTunes, and came to the blog to check if it was here because I thought I remembered posting it. I found it from five years ago, but the video was gone, as sometimes happens. So, here it is again.

Up and down the road - 2018

On May 7, 2013 I wrote a post titled "Up and down the road 2013." I expected this would become a little series of writings with the title changing only with the year. Well, we all know what happened in 2013, 2014, and 2015! Not only have I not done any posts about my walks, I haven't really done any walking. I did walk in 2014 with Hazel in the front pack up in the woods where we logged, but really hardly any since then. I thought today that this would be a good activity to begin now that I have a little more time. I need to build up my endurance and my breath. I don't have to go to a gym or a walking path. I can just go out the door, and I really mean to do so unless the weather is terrible. And I am going to use the blog to keep me honest! Maybe I'll write once a week with photos from each day.

I walked today for 30 minutes. 12:08-12:38 pm. (Just 'cause I thought it would be fun to see when I walk)

This is Maybelline, one of the Shetland sheep we got in 2014. 

And Nebby. Her story is here. 

What I call fall dandelions.

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.

I cannot wait for this movie!

Today's pictures/Weeks ten and eleven CSA flowers - 2018

Last week's flowers were again in my mother's vase, and that Wednesday would have been her 105th birthday.

This week, it was too hot for me to carry the flowers outdoors and take a picture.

I'm wild about the love-lies-bleeding (amaranth). Basil this week!

Today's picture - The granddaughter's first day of preschool

Margaret took this photo. I'm fond of the black and white.

This is really Hazel's second year of preschool. Our town elementary school offers free pre-Kindergarten, which is wonderful. Hazel's teacher went to this same school, as did Margaret and Matthew. They are all great friends, and the teacher, Ms Abbie, sent this photo to Margaret on the first day.

Stillmeadow - August

Gladys Taber begins the month in her wonderful philosophical way. She remembers a covered bridge when they first moved to Stillmeadow. It was in quite bad shape.

It was narrow and rickety and set at right angles to the road on either side, so that getting across safely and into Seymour to shop was a delirious adventure. You just never knew. Maybe this time someone would be coming in as you turned out. The old boards rattled, the bridge shook slightly. But how I grieved when the bridge was torn down! ... Even crossing it in a car, you could imagine driving over behind a pair of horses, clop-clop-clop-clop. You could imagine all the people who had crossed this river in long-gone days. It was like opening an old book for a moment and looking into yesterday.

Are there covered bridges all over the US (the world?)? Around here they are kept up quite well, and are still used. They are so special. The wood, the darkness, the sound. When I was a kid, I made a wish whenever I went through one, and actually still do!

Some writers would leave the subject right there, but not Gladys. She goes on to say

There is always something sad about change, even a change for the better. On the other hand, things must change, for there is no vitality in what is static. When I look at people around me, I sometimes think that when people reach the day in which they can see no good in anything different and new, on that day they begin to die. The will to live and the will to grow are the two foundation stones on which humanity is built. During all difficult days, I am determined to keep new interests going, lest I bog down in worry and anxiety. 

She then goes on to talk about the weather, as most of us do, much of the time. Especially this summer. I didn't have one conversation that didn't mention the awful heat, and then the relief when cooler weather came back. Never have I thought seriously of getting an air-conditioner. But I feel I wasted about ten days of my life being miserably hot and unable to do much at all. We'll see if it comes back next year, and if so, we will look into one. The weeds have grown exponentially. They have crept in amongst every flower plant and vegetable plant. I probably should show you. I will be brave and do so. I'll warn you - not a pretty sight.

The tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and chives have done well, but boy, it looks awful. I feel like if maybe the inside had been cool, I might have been able to spend a few minutes weeding, and then gone in to cool off. Done over and over again, this mess might not have happened. So, as I said, we'll see.

Gladys has a very humorous passage on the perfection of houses and gardens juxtaposed with real life (see pictures above).

Sometimes I am irritated by the decoration experts. The last article I read was about a woman whose house was full of whimsey, said the writer. It was. It was simply bursting with whimsey, if by whimsey she meant a lot of impossible colors slung together and toned down with gilt and red velvet and dark green. When I reached the room where "the dresser had been whimseyed up with white and gold," I uttered a frightful sound and rushed away. Passing rapidly through the living room, which has no whimsey at all, I entered the kitchen and proceeded to whimsey up the stove by cooking plain golden wax beans and a panful of beets with no humor in them. I afterwards scrambled eggs with chicken livers, and whimseyed up the table by putting on the knives, forks, and plates. 

I just loved this passage!

Gladys talks about a summer pastime.

What I like is berrying. Up the hill to the old pasture land on a summer day, with an old lard pail hooked to my belt - that is something. The pasture is full of blackberries and nobody takes care of them but God. There they are, rich and purple-black, and smelling of sun and summer. They fall in the pail with soft plops, each one a perfect little nugget of goodness.

When I was a girl, women used to talk about "going berrying." I wonder if anyone does this now. We are fortunate to have blackberries growing up the hill, ready for the picking anytime anyone goes up. They are a result of the logging we had done four years ago. The trees are cut allowing in the sunshine. The first thing that appears is grass, and then brush and berry bushes. Tom took a picture when they were first coming.

Here is a batch that Matthew, Margaret, and Hazel picked on a wheeler ride.

I haven't been up because I don't like riding on the wheeler, and I haven't walked because at first it was too hot, and now we have loggers again. They are doing a small cut this time, and as Tom said, the next cut will be done by our kids in 25 years!

I'll end this month with Gladys writing about those early morning fears we all have. She is woken up by her dogs barking.

If it is around two o'clock, I can't get back to sleep. All the assorted worries that any woman acquires wait to pounce on me. I worry about the world situation. I go into anguish over the possibility of not being able to pay next year's income tax. I feel perfectly sure Cicely will marry some no-account man who will be an albatross around all our necks. Dorothy will be misled by some charmer who dances well and has the brain of a hubbard squash. My sinus and arthritis and a lot of unknown diseases will do me in within a week or so. ... These and other two-in-the-morning thoughts keep me occupied for some while. All those dandy little articles on not worrying run through my head, to no avail. I know I should think of pleasant things and relax, but I can't think of any pleasant things to think of. I relax so hard that both pillows fall under the bed and I have to get up and fish them out. My mind goes like an electric mixer on high.  

Today's picture/Coyote

My friend Kay and her husband gave us a Nature Cam a while ago. We so appreciate it, and I wanted to show you one of the pictures from this summer.

This is a coyote on the other side of the fence which surrounds the yard off the kitchen. When this was taken, Tom and I and Lucy the Labrador were on the porch. Lucy never smelled it. Not a bark from her. But isn't this a wonderful shot?! Addendum: I should have explained more carefully - the porch where we were sitting is on the other side of the house. That's why we couldn't see it, but I was surprised Lucy couldn't smell it. And another detail - the camera time says 7:37. I texted Matthew and Margaret at 7:42 telling them a coyote was walking down the road toward their house. They never did see it. Must have gone into the woods somewhere along the way. From the porch we saw it come across the lawn onto the road. So this same fellow went right past the porch and again, Lucy did not smell it. Pretty excitin' life up here!

Today's picture/ The grandsons begin preschool

Michael took this photo earlier today as Campbell and Indy began preschool. They will be going three days a week from 8:30-4:30. This sounds like a long day but they have one hour of recess and another hour for lunch! This is an alternative, independent school that sounds wonderful to us.

Jacob's Room is Full of Books - August

The August chapter of Susan Hill's Jacob's Room is Full of Books seemed to zoom by. I actually counted each chapter's pages because it seemed shorter. August was not the shortest but it was second shortest. June was 13 pages, while August was 15. Most were in the teens, with April and May in the twenties, and May a whopping 30. Why this interests me, and why I thought it might interest you, I have no idea. I suppose it is just like writing a letter or a blog post. Sometimes we have lots to say and other times we don't.

Anyhow, though so short, it was one of my personal favorite months. Not the least of the reasons is that Susan Hill led me to a book, Corduroy, which I had bought on the recommendation of a blogging, Instagram, and Facebook friend who is also an author. I wrote about her book here. She and I share a love of the Olde Country, and when she recommends a book I know I will enjoy it.

Hill quotes a passage from a book, and then says, "I wish I had written that." Those words may just be the highest praise a writer can give to another writer. That book is Corduroy, "the first book in a trilogy about Suffolk country life before the last war by Adrian Bell."

I won't quote the whole of it because it was quite long, but this will give you an idea of the beauty of the writing.

'The men move homeward from the field; the last load creaking up the hill behind them, the hoofs of the horses thudding, their breath sounding short. Peace comes, a vision of the fairy armour of moonlight, the peace of 'man goeth forth unto his work until the evening'

Having just finished a book last evening, I was ready for a new one, and went right to the shelf and pulled down my Corduroy. How could I resist after reading such words?! You may read more about the author here. Hill says that Bell's books are a "record of farming life written by an outdoors person who had a poet's eye and pen." As I have noted here before, the time period and place I would most like to live in is England between the Wars. So, this will be a perfect book for me. Who knows when I would have gotten to it if not for Susan Hill mentioning it?

I don't pay attention to book awards so I had no idea of the controversy surrounding the 2011 Man Booker prize, for which Susan Hill was a judge. She says,

It has gone into folklore as the year the judges were of inferior and 'populist' quality who had not a clue about literature. I read that I was 'supremely unqualified' for the task. I do wonder how else I might have improved my chances of being qualified. I have a first class honours degree in English from King's College, London; I have published over fifty books, including several prize-winning novels; I have been a regular reviewer of fiction in a wide variety of newspapers and journals since 1963; I introduced a TV book programme, presented BBC Radio 4's Bookshelf and A Good Read; and I have been not only a previous Booker Prize judge but a judge for every other major fiction prize. In what way was I 'unqualified'?

Before I go on, I just think it is horrible how people - all people, not just politicians - are criticized by the media. One must have to have an awfully tough skin to not feel terrible afterwards. What right does anyone have to say such things about a person? I just hate it.

She said that 2011 "was not a vintage year for literary fiction." Still, the judges had to read over 120 novels. 120!! Can you imagine? It was very difficult for them to come up with a longlist of books they

felt were worthy, and if the criterion was, as it must be, that every book included was a potential winner of the prize, then we failed because, hands on heart, we did not feel that one or two of our longlist choices were worthy of winning.

As for the shortlist they had no doubts, and yet when it was announced they were strongly criticized to put a novel on that list by a certain person because he was gay. It was an absolutely ridiculous accusation. One of the judges wouldn't answer on principle, another said he hadn't even known, and others felt it was completely irrelevant - that the winner is chosen by the book not on the author's sexuality.

I wouldn't be a judge for love nor money! Susan Hill talks, as a reader, not a judge, about her own reading of winners.

I always wait until at least a year after any of the prizes before reading those on the lists which appeal. It is amazing how everything settles down and finds its natural level. Hype never did any reader much good.

She writes of the book that actually won the Man Booker in 2011.

I recently re-read The Sense of an Ending, the Julian Barnes novel which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for which I was a judge. The Barnes was my choice. It was the almost-unanimous choice of the panel. It is a slim book - Barnes is not one to turn out 700 pages. But within its short space it contains truth, beauty, sadness, shrewdness, observation, intelligence, poignancy, self-pity, a man's coming to terms with his past... everything one can think of about the human condition and more.

And now I have only four months to go in this wonderful book. Each month I learn so very much about many subjects, and am so enjoying myself.