a bit

 

Happy New Year 2021 

Even when the others do not see

the mathematics in the bend of the grass

feel the soft spray of seeds brushing your cheek

the golden light filtering down

the deepest red in the leaves

still clinging to the branches

the pale blue reflected in the smear of rain on the road

 

Travel the bright road

ahead of you 

see what has been laid out 

for it is given

and even the hard rocks under 

the soft soles of your shoes

speak beauty today

 

Be open

see the mathematics in the light

even when the others do not hear

messages are still being spoken

to the ones who listen to sunlight and see wind

 

Took a mile walk this morning, still in the COVID-19 quarantine.  Our schedules are all off -- I am up at 3 am making soup, Mark is just getting to bed, and Esme won't wake up until 10:30 in the morning.  This is not like us.. but we have about two weeks more until school starts back up.. unless they cancel it for the rest of the year.

I ;am still deemed an 'essential' worker in both of my jobs - postal worker and medical technology service - but the actual hours are few and far between.  I do not see many people.  So, there's that.  I went out to two medical tech jobs the other day and wore gloves for both.  I'm doing what I can for those patients - even though I can't stay entirely at home.

I love the stages of the hickory trees, and the redbuds, and the dogwoods.  The sarvis (serviceberry) trees have finished now with their flowers, falling away to green leaves only.  The dogwoods that are blooming now are a green color and large flowered.  The more delicate white flowered ones will be popping in the woods soon I'm sure.  It seems like it was just a few months ago I was photographing them -- but I know it has been nearly a year.

Time has been so odd this year, even before the coronavirus, with changing jobs and getting through the anxiety of that - then Dad died in October - and I had a lot more anxiety and PTSD type epiphanies.  But  that is a human response, and I am feeling like I've swum to the other side of the shore.

I made soup, following my nose.
I'm a champion at thinking up weird combinations in my sleep... woke up and decided to make onion soup at about 3 am.  Then, as I grabbed for ingredients, things fell together to this.  The actual soup looks awful - kind of like the shiitake mushroom tapenade someone once tried to make with me - and it was so awful the cats and dogs wouldn't touch it..  But, this was amazingly good.

Lentil Seaweed Soup with Onion

About 2 to three cups of water
About 2 tbsp olive oil
celery salt, black pepper, garlic powder, ginger powder
1 medium onion, diced small
about 1/2 cup of brown lentils (washed)
1 sheet of Kombui seaweed
2 cubes of chicken boullion
1 packet of miso tofu (red style) soup
Some leftover packets of tofu cubes and green onion flakes from another bag of miso where they come separate from the paste

It started with waking up thinking about onion soup.  I have eaten a couple of cans of French Onion soup the past week and found them very satisfying.  But - looking at the recipes for how to make it from scratch did nothing for me.  It wasn't right for me.  So, this morning I was thinking I would just start with olive oil and onions and see where it took me.

I put in the spices, and then I knew I wanted the brown lentils.  Then the thought filtered in about the bouillon.  After all of that was together and bubbling nicely, the miso soup that came in the mail the other day entered into the edge of my mind and I added that in.  It was when I put the tofu soup packet in that I smelled the little bits of seaweed that are in it, and it made me think - I bought sheets of kombu last year for soba soup making.. which I've only made a couple of times since.  They were still in the cupboard, waiting.  They add a lot of salt, along with the bouillon, so NO need to add any extra.

After I had let that entire combination boil then simmer for an hour or so, I took the stick blender and gave it a few careful pulses.  You could pour the whole thing in a blender and do the same thing.  I am always careful about hot soup - volcanic bursts onto skin if you do it wrong etc.  But a few pulses was all it took to wake up Esme, too - she had slept through our entire conversation about 'soup at 3 am' but the stick blender woke her up.  She came out and looked at it, made some comments about games she had been playing, and went back to bed.

To serve the soup I put in an extra fresh grind of black pepper and a full teaspoon of hot madras curry powder right into my bowl.  It was one of the best things I've eaten in a while - but yes - it LOOKED gross.  Nova dog highly approved when I woke up at 8 am and had more for breakfast.

This camera has better eyes than I do - it almost gets down to the grain of the wood and the 'feather and fur' of each little leaf.

There was an ant crawling in the redbuds, and bees buzzing everywhere.  I couldn't get any of the insects in focus, but I wanted to remember that they were there.  The sun was coming up over the trees behind me and it made the redbud glow.

My right ankle gave out on me, as well, this morning.  It sent me crumping to the ground just like that time I was pregnant with Esme.  I remember that one often because I was so scared for her.  I fall down in this way quite a bit - just the other week in the garden, as well, but that was the time I had to worry for more than myself.  I was also thankful this morning I wasn't carrying the camera yet.  But, because I was now bleeding from my hand and knee - I was even more determined to capture some images of the things that were unique about this morning, the things that turned a walk to the mailbox into an expedition.

The red brown brush beside the road always piques my attention.  I wonder if there are many other people who find it as beautiful as I do.  This, and the red gold grasses bring me back to a time in the field at Arbo Road - standing in the middle of the sky, one tree to my back and a full circle clearing farther than I could run in one breath to all sides.  I was alone with the sky and the tree there.  I spent a lot of time there, far beyond the garden, but not too far Mom couldn't hear me when she yelled.  I sat at the base of that tree and thought about my ancestors, about my future, about the woods around me.  I was a deep little nine year old.. but there was something about that place - something it imbued me with - that comes back to me when I am out in the grasses.  It is one of the reasons I like to drive up by Martin, TN, too - the wide open sky, like an eyeball looking down on me from above, and the grasses, and the trees like eyelashes at the edges, waiting to blink.

Red brown feathers, delicate structures.  They seem to shine almost pink and looking through them is like looking many strings and webworks repeating over and over to infinity.  When it rains, they collect shining drops of water in their branches and intersections.  When it frosts, they collect tiny crystals of ice.

I think I spend more time looking at the tiny bits of plants around me than most people - it is something I find joy in, the changes, the differences, the transformations.

Mark found this out in the driveway yesterday, he says a woodpecker has been hard at work on it.  It was almost hollow inside - insect work that the woodpecker then went after the insects?

I'm sewing up the ends of dischloths, knitting on yet another lap blanket, bright green this time. Our black tortoiseshell Minion is truly enjoying where the pink one ended up I made over the last few months.

Besides that , more soup, maybe a bit more work in the garden.  It is supposed to rain today so I don't think it is right to put the seedlings out to day.. but it is so warm it is almost there.

We also finally downloaded the game GardenPaws, and it is very sweet.  Esme and I have been exploring that new world and discovering all of the creative things to do in it.

The golden lines and fragile webs

I took joy (this morning) in the golden line that shows behind the silhouettes, the way the first light is touching the trees, lit up and the very colour I feel joy to be as it illuminates my soul.

The golden lines, lit up from only one direction or full face on... the glints and small patches where it is like a fire is present, and all of the dark branching silhouettes where there is darkness but form and structure against the contrast.

 The color of the light pushed me to return to the house, and grab the camera.  And gloves, and a scarf.  My glasses were so fogged up, I had to leave them in my pocket and capture the colors and the shadows to tell as much of the tale for me as I could.

I knew that there were things to be seen at thirty degrees that just do not show up later, at fifty, sometimes even at thirty-three.  

And I grabbed the better camera, the one that sees better than my own eyes, to try to capture the snow crystals forming/settling on the spider webs of the fairy houses.  Even with this camera, you can barely see the threads, very up close.. and that is how you know what you are actually seeing. 

Shadows in the strength of the sun, colors that only show up in the gloss and sheen of frost and wet melting under the heat of sunshine.

And now I am watching red birds and their mates skitter through the cedar trees outside my dirty window, sun glinting off of them and the branches they dance through, gleaming and flashing.  Even after a long winter they are still finding things to eat, to argue over, dashing to the ground beneath for a quick sort through the leaves.. cardinals and redstarts and others, congregating.

January Journals #7

Daffodil Hill, Mixie,  Tennessee
The colors shining through the trees here, and the cascading of the light - I saw it as potential for another drawing or painting.  It also reminded me of the brindle on the back of a dog or a marbled cake.  I loved the way it ended up being the same direction as the moon in the blue sky, too.

We were out doing tile again today, getting closer to being done with that part of the job.

The best PVC cutter I own, will do up to inch and a half drain pipe, strong blade

mallard in the automatic drawing style

At the Lake Edge
The water is down
it rained the other day, so much
and then it was done
still the lake edges are dry
tiny bits of long dead leaves forming a layer
in the mud and drying sandbars
showing throughout the swamp where
beavers work at their industry felling trees and
dragging them down to the shore
to build a house that needs water but now sits
just as dry, near the spires in the lake
trees from some long ago flooding
that have not yet given up their standing
my hound sniffs and bays
what is truly a warbling trill
high-pitched, echoing off the hills
her ghostly face with black mask vibrant
she tells me things that dogs know
she knows they were here
and here, and here, can you see it, too?
Tail swishing, into the water is where her nose runs
and she follows
trying to catch the scent up to the point
It washes away

Frost at the Top of the Hill

the blades of grass and twining plants and wildflowers

have become lacework in the frost of the night

lying down across the earth in lines and flourishes

twisting this way and that around each other

and flattened to the land in white

at their edges and along their lines

waiting to embellish Spring

ive been out to the woods

I’ve been out to the woods
and I’ve come back in
with leaves in my hair and thorns clinging
to my legs and shoes and
small lines of red scratched down my arms
where the thorns tried to find purchase
but instead found skin
so easily torn away and not caught
they could not hold me there
and instead, must let me walk on
but it was worth it
I have seen wonders
and joys within them

and our chickens, who were very very insistent

Out near McKenzie, Tennessee

I love the little flower shape that showed up in the tree leaves to the left.  The light was nice.  This tree was next to a little church that had light shining down on it from above, and a field of frozen volunteer corn stalks that had laid down in bell shaped heaps throughout the field.

 I will post a drawing I've made in a day or so.  This little church's roof shape made me think of what I want to see on the cover of my short story collection book.... it's not a 1:1 comparison, but it got me thinking.

This reminded me of the flower fairy ladies in Fantasia, when they swirl around and bend down so only their skirts show.

 

That was my first attempt at the House of Sunlight cover image... and then I went out and took more house pictures of places that evoked the right 'feel' for me.. and I will need to take another stab at making it again.  However, oddly, the front porch on this one and the front porch on the first actual house I thought of both have the same gingerbread. 

 Sugar Ann sweet peas

 Coreopsis in the garden

emerging Staghorn sumac

 pink tulip

 male sycamore flowers

 a tree

Houstonia pusilla or 'tiny bluet' or 'least bluet' leaves