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Laughing in the Pond

Jul23

I’ve learned over the past few years how not to tend a pond. For a constellation of reasons, I let the curly rushes get out of control. (Among them, I didn’t know or bother to figure out the best time to not disturb the frogs breeding cycle.) I meant to clear some out last summer but didn’t get to it. With this summer half over, it was time to dive in. I found to my dismay that not only was the top of the pond choked with rushes, but they had grown a mat of roots two feet thick all the way to the floor of the pond. Yesterday I discovered that getting in and pulling wasn’t going to cut it, so today I took a pruning saw and literally cut blocks of roots out, heaving them up onto the lip one at a time.

Good Tim was working elsewhere in the yard, and when I had a big enough pile I hollered, and he came with the garden cart to haul a load to the compost. He laughed at the spectacle, which made me laugh. Then he asked, “Do you still have fish in there, or just frogs?”

“No fish, and I don’t think there are anymore frogs either,” I said. “I think it’s gone anaerobic.”

“There’s a frog right there,” he said, “right behind you. A big one.”

I turned around slowly and two feet behind me, floating on a mat of lily roots I was saving to replant, sat a beautiful northern leopard frog. I laughed. He laughed. I kept laughing. I don’t remember the last time I laughed so lightly with pure joy. It’s been a rough summer. I sat back into the rushes, resting in the cushion of their massive root mat, cool water up to my shoulders, and laughed.

Good Tim hauled a huge load of roots and rushes off to the compost, and headed off to his next job. I sat in the pond and pulled some more roots and laughed some more. Wren always has to check on me when I laugh, so she came to the edge and then accidentally jumped in. All summer she’s just leapt across the pond or into the rushes chasing grasshoppers, and only gotten her toes wet. I grabbed her and hugged her to me, sitting in the root cushion, and whispered how nice and cool it was, how she was safe, what a good girl she is, until she stopped shaking and relaxed a little. Then I released her onto the edge and she raced off to roll herself dry. I sat and laughed a few more minutes and then climbed out of the pond and came in for a hot shower.

Later, both of us dry and happy, we checked out the apricot tree. I’m grateful that neighbor Syd brought me some apricots from her tree, because of the zillion babies that had been on mine, only a couple of dozen managed to hang on long enough to mature and ripen. Most of those were way out of reach on one tall limb, where the birds have been feasting on them for days. Oh well.

Topaz enjoys lap time on her brand new rag rug that Garden Buddy made for her. She and I are both grateful for it! More gratitude for rag rugs coming soon.

Right Tools for the Job: Garden Gate Edition

Apr30

The tiny blueberry bush arrived from Territorial Seeds yesterday. It was bare rootball in a plastic sleeve, and it needs to harden off a few days to acclimate to sun and temperatures before I can plant it in its prepared container, so I put it in a clean clay pot and tamped in its special soil around the edges. I’ll keep it moving in and outside til after the next cold snap later this week, at least. Look at those tiny white bell flowers! I’ve never seen a blueberry plant before, so I was delightfully surprised by the flowers. And tiny germinal blueberries, too! But after its portrait, I snipped off all the flowers and budding berries, as recommended, in order to encourage strong root growth its first year.

I’m grateful for the gorgeous trees blossoming sequentially through this past month, and thrilled to see the crabapple so lush with flowers and buds.

I’m grateful for the right tools for the job, and for these great hinges from Lee Valley. I made a couple of small mistakes, but got the worst-sagging half of the gate hung this afternoon. I’m grateful for a socket set, a wood-bit set, a yardstick, a Makita screwgun, and the little string level I bought almost thirty years ago and used a lot while building my house. It was my ingenious trick to keep the drill bit level as I drilled through the juniper gateposts for the hinge bolts. It set perfectly on top of the bit shank with the rounded legs and I held it steady as I drilled: the bubble shimmied like a belly dancer but stayed between the lines, and when the bit was in deep enough I set the level aside.

I’m grateful for my father teaching me a thing or two about tools when I was a child. I am always grateful for this whenever I open my tool box, but especially so when I undertake a project that uses more than a hammer, wrench, or screwdriver. I’m grateful he taught me his cardinal rule of ‘the right tool for the job,’ and how to measure, and so much more, and I’m grateful that I can remember him with love and gratitude when I think of him in his workshop in the basement, where I would often sit and watch and help and learn.

Finding What I Lost

Apr28
I’m grateful tonight that I found the necklace in the very last place I looked! I’m grateful I could tell Michelle that she was right: it was “tucked tenderly & safely in a soft, dark bag – just waiting to be found.” Wow.

All it took was deeply searching my mind. And then a little help from my friends. After following my delusional thoughts down that dark rabbit hole yesterday, I got the opportunity this morning to share my awareness of mental storytelling in a group of fellow mindfulness students. How throughout the search I was able to observe in real time how we make up stories and then we come to believe them: first, it was that I had put it somewhere safe, but after a long and thorough search of every possible nook and bag and cabinet failed, I gradually ‘remembered’ another story: I’d given it to its maker to clean up the tarnish; but that one didn’t pan out either.

Then I generated a vague recollection that, I gave it to somebody because it looked better on her than it did on me. Really? That precious thing? And then Mind suggested, Maybe I loaned it to someone… yeah, I kind of remember that, and I said ‘Be sure and bring it back!’… Even as these vaporous ‘memories’ arose over time I received them with skepticism and good humor. None of them appeared to be accurate. So I decided to go fishing in the sea of possibility with a little ‘wanted poster’.

I told them how yesterday, working with the photo, my mind made up another story that seemed plausible. And it took me off the hook for not remembering what I did with the necklace. Because in this story, I didn’t do anything with it. Somebody stole it. As Mind told the story, I could see so clearly how all the pieces fell into place, that if he could lie for three solid months then surely he could steal, that this must be what happened to it. I was simultaneously aware, from outside the thinking mind, This is a story that I’m making up and it has no basis in reality. I noticed as I told my friends about observing this new tale emerge and grow, that the telling of it, even though I didn’t want it to, was reinforcing it. Real-time observation of active cognitive distortion.

I also told them how simply sharing the true story of the perfidious Lothario retriggered my feelings of shame and hurt; but how mindfulness practice has diminished those feelings, and fostered compassion both for myself and for the sickness in him that drove his unskillful behavior. They were eager to help me find comfort, and find the necklace. P asked if I might have put it in a suitcase, and told a horror story about finding some long-lost jewelry in a pocket of a suitcase just in the nick of time before it was hauled to the dump.

I no longer own a suitcase. But that did make me think about a woven duffle bag I used to travel with, so this evening I went out to the Mothership just to look inside the duffle bag. Imagining that if it were folded flat I might not have shaken it out. Well, there was no duffle bag in the Mothership! But I decided to toss all the cabinets again, even though I’d thoroughly searched them already. It was dark, so instead of just looking in, I had to reach in and feel through everything: towels, books, and in the third cabinet, just a few t-shirts — but underneath them — the second my fingers touched the soft velvet, Eureka! As I gathered the small bag into my hand and felt the weight and texture inside, I started to laugh. My very first story had been the only true memory, but when it failed to produce the necklace the busy mind manufactured false memories, just trying to help.

Back in the house, in the light, I pulled it out of the bag and gently smoothed it into shape, giddy with joy, relief, and so much gratitude. Gratitude for finding it, of course; followed equally with gratitude for all the fruits of the practice that had guided me during the search: patient perseverance, not believing random thoughts, not attaching to imaginary stories, not taking rash actions, not obsessing over things I can’t control but methodically investigating what I could, keeping a healthy perspective, letting go of attachment to outcome, and the list goes on.

I’m grateful for grateful for caring and supportive friends, grateful for a sense of humor, grateful for Michelle’s confident (and accurate!) vision of a soft dark bag just waiting to be found, and grateful that I can now turn The Necklace over to her to display in her show opening Friday, May 31, at The Cirque in Paonia. To see more fabulous creations from this exceptional artist, check out her website, life of riley designs.

Wanted Poster

Apr27

It’s been interesting to watch my mind’s permutations of the story of what happened to this necklace. The photo is from six years ago, at Felix’s One Hundredth Birthday party. I can’t imagine it’s been missing for that long, but this is the most recent evidence I can find of having it. I’ve actively searched the house, Mothership, safety deposit box, everywhere I can possibly look, for the past couple of months. Before that, I think I started passively looking for it a year or two ago, assuming it would turn up eventually, safely stowed away in one of the places I recently turned over looking for it.

When searches failed, I felt this shadowy memory creep up of having given it to someone on whom it looked better than it did on me; at the same time, I imagined myself loaning it to someone who asked to borrow it. These things would have had to have happened prior to 2020, though, because of the Covid time warp. So somewhere between six and four years ago, I misplaced, mislaid, loaned, or gave away this precious necklace that I truly valued. I bought it at an art opening, a centerpiece of the beadwork of an old, dear friend; it felt expensive at the time, but it was well worth it. Now she’d like to display it in a big show of her new and old work; hence the urgent search.

A baby apricot forms from one node as tender leaves emerge from another.
Dramatic mammatus clouds flow over between rain and hail showers this evening.

As I worked on this ‘Wanted Poster’ last night, a dark suspicion arose. Could it be? The last time I know that I wore this I was with a man I’d been dating a few months. Not long after that he ghosted me, and I discovered later that every single thing he’d said to gain my trust had been a lie. Instead of being single for three years, as he’d said on our very first date, he had been in a steady relationship for eight or nine years with a woman in Grand Junction. I agonized over my naivety for months, grappling with humiliation, rage, and shame. I still haven’t truly recovered in some way from the inconceivable depth of his calculated deception.

And so, I imagined suddenly, looking at pictures of that party, not remembering if I ever saw the necklace after he vanished, and knowing full well this is just the way the mind works, that he stole the necklace and gave it to his girlfriend as a welcome home gift. That last night he kissed me goodbye, after telling me that he had to go to Denver for a few days to be with his cousin who was very sick and probably dying: I never heard from him again. But I did hear from his girlfriend a couple of weeks later, after a chain of events led to our discovering each other, that there was no dying cousin: he’d been with her after she returned from a long work trip.

I’m grateful I have better things to think about now, like these cherry buds just waiting for the next sunny day to pop open.

I’m sad about the missing necklace, and a little concerned that I simply cannot remember the last time I knew where it was. But I’m grateful to have learned recently that our memories are far less accurate than we tend to think they are. “People believe that memory should be effortless, but their expectations for how much they should remember are totally out of whack with how much they’re capable of remembering,” says researcher Charan Ranganath, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Davis. And I’m grateful that I have some photos of the necklace (even though I had to crop out the creep). And I’m grateful that meditation and mindfulness practice have given me the ability to loosen my grip on afflictive emotions like resentment, shame, and clinging. The necklace may turn up somewhere, sometime: Maybe I did give it or loan it and the poster will bring it forth; its creator imagines it is somewhere “tucked tenderly & safely in a soft, dark bag – just waiting to be found.”

Tea Towels

Jan31

As part of the decontamination project, I got the opportunity to wash all my clean tea towels and dish cloths. Wren helped me hang them out on the marvelous Breezecatcher line back by the compost. Tea towel culture is a relatively new thing for me, but I’m grateful that I finally get it.

The first tea towel I remember being given was this linen Y2K tea towel, and I thought of it more as a joke than anything else. But look, it’s 24 years old and as sturdy and useful as it ever was. The next time someone gave me a tea towel, I was disappointed: I had expected something more special, more personal, perhaps even more expensive. I was insufficiently grateful for both those tea towels, and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t really know how to incorporate tea towels into my daily kitchen routine. Only after I saw a stack of tea towels on Amy’s kitchen counter, and watched her reach for one to clean up a spill on the floor, another to dry a pan, another for something else, all in one evening, and then throw them in the wash that same night, did I begin to see the value in having a lot of tea towels.

Long before that, I had bought a set of embroidered days-of-the-week towels at a local antique shop. They were cute and inexpensive, but I was afraid to use them hard because — because I don’t know, I still didn’t get it: use them for everything, wash them, use them again and again until they graduate to being rags, and the more you use tea towels the more tea towels will come to you. Or something. Saturday and Tuesday are the last of these towels remaining in the kitchen, and Tuesday is so tattered it’s about to graduate.

Another towel that’s just beginning to fray is this gift embroidered by a friend no longer living. It will be hard to relegate, I mean graduate, this one to the rag bin. It gets light use these days, in baking rotation, covering bread or rolls as they rise.

This is the latest tea towel to join my collection, one of three tea towel gifts I received this holiday season. Where once I may have looked askance at a tea towel, I now appreciate the thoughtfulness and fun in these gifts from friends. They show that these friends know what I like, what’s meaningful to me; they remind me that I am seen and known. And I’ve learned to give a nice tea towel, too, from time to time.

There’s no need or time to share photos of all the tea towels in my kitchen, but here are a few more of my favorites. I’m grateful for tea towels, for their utility and their beauty, for the connections and memories they represent, and for the sense of belonging in a culture of wise women who love being in their kitchens, cooking and caring.

And in the kitchen last night, among the clutter of the half-cleaned, I made farfalle Alfredo, having no fettuccine but instead this wonderful pasta from Italy. I used mushrooms instead of chicken, and ate two-thirds of it last night because I couldn’t stop. So simple, so delicious!

Meanwhile, the Alluring Fox puzzle continued to delight, and offered up a final sweet surprise as I placed the last piece. As Liberty has an eagle mascot, the Unidragon emblem is a curled baby dragon that I saved til the end, and found that not only did it fit right in the center, the heart of the puzzle; it also completed a perfect miniature of the fox design. Noticing gave me a little jolt of joy. I’m grateful for other people’s clever creativity.

Inspiration

Jan19
The chicken that’s been nourishing me all week getting carved by the chef.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: A homegrown chicken is one of the best gifts. I honor the chicken’s short but happy life, and the women who raised it along with its flockmates with love and care, in a wholesome free-range setting. I’m grateful for the ongoing gift, which has made several sandwiches, a bowl of picked chicken ready for salad tomorrow, and the carcass simmering in the stockpot on the stove right now for future soups. It may be that my experimental commitment to vegetarianism is winding down. I’ve been eating meat when it’s offered but not buying or cooking it for myself, so in almost two years I’ve eaten meat only a few times. I’ve got to come to terms with the fact that I feel more energy when I eat a little meat.

I’m grateful for this sandwich even without cheese. Grateful for avocados!
And grateful for this nifty avocado keeper which has a space for the pit, to preserve the heart of the fruit. I run the cut side under cold water for about twenty seconds (how grateful I am for tap water!) and then close it into the container. It can last a day or two with hardly any oxidation this way.

I’m grateful for flow in the kitchen, using up a chicken day by day, or using up the last several meals by combining the last of the bread with the last of the avocado and the last of the Brie… and grateful for the luxury to live day by day with sufficient food that keeps coming into the house and moving through the fridge, pantry, freezer. When you stop and think about it, it’s a miracle.

I’m grateful for a fulfilling and meaningful week. For all the love and connection with friends and family in various contexts, for old friends and new, near and far; for teaching a motivated and engaged class the transformative skills of mindfulness and meditation; for access to inspiring talks, interviews, and creative efforts of people around the world.

One inspiration I’m especially grateful for this evening is the story of a stuntman gone horribly awry. After working all day I sat down to rest this evening and watched “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived.” This is a documentary of the tragedy and resilience of the young man who was Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the Harry Potter movies for a decade, from the initial Sorcerer’s Stone to the Deathly Hallows part 1. During filming, an accident broke his neck. He’s found the strength, spirit, and courage to reinvent himself as he’s struggled through the years with ongoing complications. Though comparisons can be detrimental, they can also inspire a healthy perspective: In the same way that David recognized that many people he met along the way had it far worse then he, his story inspires me to resilience with my own physical challenges and limitations. I’m grateful for inspiration.

Wren is grateful to her Aunty Melinda for a beautiful new red parka! She feels inspired to romp about in the snow. Isn’t she the cat’s meow?

The Milkmaid

Jan7

The second ancestral puzzle was The Milkmaid, with about 250 pieces, and again no image to guide assembly, just intuition. The most obvious pieces to assemble among the three other main colors were this portion of a cow, and then some smaller cows in a field.

There were three main colors: grey-tan, greens, and reds, plus the milkmaid’s face. Her red skirts were the next easiest, while the faded tones of the sky and field were more challenging.

As I got further along in the puzzle, I could not find the milkmaid’s bodice, and I began to feel confused about how the large cow would fit into the perspective that was emerging. As with the previous Pastime puzzle, the cuts around figures and shapes, like the cows, the wooden buckets, clothing, and the rooster, made fitting the background pieces … puzzling. Especially since the thin film of color on a number of pieces was chipping away even as I gently handled them.

There was a quietly mesmerizing quality to this puzzle. These old wooden pieces have been softened with age and use and have an almost velvety texture. I’ve optimized the images to make the colors a little brighter, just for ease and interest of viewing.

Only once I got the shed put together (and there was no hint until it was together that it would be a shed) did I realize there was no way what I had thought was a cow was a cow… and suddenly realized it was the missing bodice of the milkmaid. It was a great example of how a preconceived notion can determine one’s reality: I simply could not see that it was the shoulder of the milkmaid once I had decided it was the back end of a cow. (But if it was, where was the tail? I didn’t let that detail deter me.)

Once that epiphany hit, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it sooner. It was almost exactly the same shoulder and bodice that was hanging on the blue wall in my mother’s portrait of Aunt Gretchen, from a photograph of her made in the same era as the puzzle. Assembling a puzzle with no image affords a series of one delightful surprise after another. I’m grateful for The Milkmaid.

New Year, Old Puzzles

Jan3

Here’s the long-awaited report on the century old puzzle, Ready for the Dance. As near as we can figure, these puzzles belonged originally to our great-grandmother Samuella White. The date on this one is 12-10-25. I love how the handwritten label indicates it was sawn by ‘2’. I can’t make out the initials of the person who polished and finished it, but I’m gonna guess it was a woman.

Melinda said there were around sixteen of these old puzzles when they cleared out their father’s house. Each piece of this puzzle was marked ’15’ on the back in pencil, in Samuella’s hand. Imagine her taking the time to mark every piece, in order to prevent confusion among possible stray pieces from other puzzles getting mixed up in various boxes. The lids had no pictures in those days, no point of reference, which adds a completely different element to assembly.

Naturally, the whimsy pieces are not nearly as intricate, being cut by hand, as the modern Liberty puzzles are able to do with a laser. But there are still plenty of them, and they provide a helpful anchor for starting to assemble sections.

This particular puzzle was made easier by all the faces and figures it contained, as well as wood grain patterns in the floor, and the ceiling and furniture as they emerged.

A later hand noted on the box that two pieces were missing, possibly Granny but probably Aunt Nelle. I noticed a twinge of envy when Melinda told me that she and her brothers got to play with these puzzles when they were kids, “but only when we were sick.” So what! She still got to play with them! I missed out on an important piece of my rightful childhood by being the child of the son and not the daughter: I didn’t find the one puzzle my dad inherited until after his death.

My resentment is tongue in cheek, of course. I just like to tease my cousin. But every time I couldn’t find a piece for awhile, I wondered, Is THIS the missing piece? This uncertainty also added a novel element to the assembly. Once I had most of the faces in place, I began to have confidence that the missing pieces were the face and bosom of the lovely lady the man below is leering at so enthusiastically. I immediately conjured a story in which one of Mel’s nasty brothers pocketed the fair maiden. This provided endless laughs at myself as I completed the puzzle, and accused them to their sister.

I had imagined that Liberty invented the tiny-connection strategy, but with this puzzle I could see that it’s an age-old jigsaw puzzle trick. The merest tips of two pieces can provide the link.

Another thing I love about this puzzle is the image itself. Though old and faded, it remains full of vitality and action, with genuine connection in the expressions among the dancers. Unfortunately, there’s no attribution to the artist other than a faded signature in the bottom right corner. I suspect the images were created specifically for the puzzle company in those early days.

And here’s the completed puzzle, minus the missing maiden. A few spots where the image has peeled from the wooden pieces, but otherwise in remarkably good shape, despite the manhandling of my young cousins fifty years ago. Another thing about these hands-sawn puzzles is that though the pieces fit together well, they don’t ‘hold together’ well. I could see the sawyer’s strategy in following the shapes of hats, heads, and bodies, and even cutting the puzzle into rough sections before further delineating each piece. The puzzle breaks like a golf putt along certain lines. Time after time I jostled the edge with an elbow, or Topaz jumped up on it, and the whole thing broke apart. Fortunately, it was easy to slide together again.

I’m grateful for a new year and old puzzles, and for catching up with my gratitude blog. This all happened last week, and I’ve since finished the second ancestral puzzle, more about that soon. Meanwhile, last Thursday Wren saw the vet for a followup on her eye, and got a clean bill of health: no scratches, no lesions, just her usual watery eye. We stopped at the new ice cream arcade in Hotchkiss on the way home, to reward ourselves for a good job. I’m also grateful for this new business that brightens the downtown, and serves locally made, delicious ice cream. I chose Cowboy Coffee, and Wren got the tip of the cone.

Christmas Day

Dec25

Darn internets still broken up, so just a quick picture tonight to say I’m grateful for thoughtful gifts of all kinds, from this ancestral jigsaw puzzle to homemade granola to maple syrup to meaningful conversations, with lots in between. I’m grateful for community, friendship, cousins, safety, health, and lights in winter. Wishing you all to find gratitude everywhere you can.

Picasso’s Studio

Dec20
A peaceful morning coffee with potica and Salman Rushdie’s latest novel… Followed by a day with ample free time to finish the puzzle. This was actually yesterday, but nothing wrong with being grateful for yesterday. I’m grateful for today, too.
I worked the floor first, and the rest of the more colorful parts in random segments, which left the hard blue part for the end. I was a little sad to complete it while there was still an hour of jazz on the radio, but resigned myself to moving on to the next thing. Before I did, I decided to slide the puzzle up to the center of the board to get a better picture of it…

My strategy with Picasso’s Studio as I sorted pieces out of the box was to put all the mostly grey pieces in one corner, all the largely white pieces above them, and all the rest above that. I’ve started lining up all the flat edge pieces along the edge of the puzzle table and it’s more efficient than sticking them up in the top right corner as I used to do. I continue to arrange the whimsy pieces along the right side of the table, bottom to top according to genre from geometric to objects to human figures to land animals to flying creatures. And so I began to assemble this one on Sunday morning, and finished it yesterday.

One of the joys of these puzzles is finding the most improbable connections from the most subtle clues, like placing the swirling cloud over the window with just the hint of a brushstroke.
As I attempted to slide the finished puzzle it caught on the felt and buckled… puzzletastrophe!
I was able to salvage most of the assemblage with some gentle shifting. Only two pieces landed on the floor, and it wasn’t too hard to put the puzzle together again. I was grateful to get to spend some more time on it while my friends on KVNF were giving their blues show over to a rare jazz theme, including Vince Guaraldi’s pivotal album ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas.’

And then, about the time the jazz ran out, this gorgeous puzzle from a Damian Elwes painting was finished. Liberty has six artists’ studio puzzles from Elwes, and this is the fifth to join our scattered communal puzzle library after Matisse, Gauguin, Monet, and Frida Kahlo’s. They’re all as scrumptious as this one. I’m grateful to Cindy for breaking the blue barrier and buying it: Sarah and I had qualms about all that blue, but that turned out to be, on my part anyway, an unnecessary bias. This was so lovely to do. The sixth studio puzzle is Basquiat’s, which is brand new and doesn’t appeal to me at the moment. Perhaps my perspective will shift someday about that puzzle also.

Meanwhile, here are some details from Picasso’s Studio, just because they are so delightful, not even considering the whimsy pieces that make them up. You might be able to make out in this image a pair of eyes, one above the easel and one above the white table. This is a hidden layer in the puzzle, a portrait of Picasso himself revealed more clearly on the back side of the puzzle. Another stroke of genius from the Liberty Puzzlemaster.

And finally, as I began to disassemble the puzzle this afternoon, I noticed yet another precious combination of whimsy pieces, which had escaped me as they came together on the board: the guy riding a bike with a cat on the back. I’m grateful for Picasso’s Studio.