Heather Letter Four: In Which a Storm Brews

Dear Heather,

Jesus could have had a whole lot on this earth. He could have gathered his posse around him. . .This from the sermon given by the sweet, earnest youth pastor at the Southern Baptist church we attended this morning. Another memorable bit of wisdom: "Happy wife, Happy Life." Pass that on to Luke for me.

Heather, as I write this, the maple outside the window (the one with the clothesline attached) bent double in a furious wind. Everyone but Grandpa and I had just gone out for a walk but returned almost right away--Martin checked the radar and observed that though nothing threatening shows there, it looks tornadic outside.

Merry's screaming in anticipation on the porch. She's a lot like you--thrilled and terrified witless at the same time by bad weather and natural disasters.

Well, we will just eat our chocolate cream and banana cream (yum, you'd love it) pies and hope the windows don't get blown out.

If you never hear from us again, we've been lifted by the wind to Oz.

Wish you were here,
xoxoxoxoxo
Kimby

Heather Letter Three: In Which I Am a Finn

Dear Heather,

"Young lady, were you born in Finland?" this bearded, wild-eyed fellow asked me today in Fairport Harbor at the Finnish museum. He pointed to my "conservative hair style" (I had it twisted back like a Mennonite girl at our school in Kenya used to wear hers', mainly because I had just showered, brushed it in the car, and it was wet). He squinted his eyes shut in concentration as he talked, and quickly connected me to my Finnish relatives in the room: Aunt Elaine, the lady showing the slides of Finland, and Cousin Jim, who looks like his brother.

The Finnish museum is pretty impressive, Heather--and they serve nisu (heavy on the cardamom--Luke would love it) and coffee to you while you sit at little tables. There are startling blue walls as accents, color of the Finnish cross-thing on the flag, and you can find our Greatgreatgrandmother Lempi's family photos under "Sironen" on the wall next to matted photos of other Fairport Harbor families. In the gift store there are various mugs, T-shirts, and other objects inscribed with "SISU" (I looked for a bumper sticker but was unlucky)--the good Finnish vigor, determination, and vim that have ignited our Tikkanen ancestors (those tough women with thick arms and fixed looks in their eyes) for generations. In fact today over lunch at the Lighthouse Grille Aunt Elaine told me how Greatgrandmother Muma Tikka chased a neighbor out of her house with a broom. That neighbor had just suggested that they use the Tikka's house as a selling place for bootlegged liquor. "Actually, she was a very mild mannered woman," Aunt Elaine said. Mild-mannered or not, she didn't stand for anything--Nana told Mommy how Muma Tikka chased her husband, Bapa, around the barn with a broom when he came home drunk one day--I observed that her broom must have been a great deal more impressive than mine, but Mommy pointed out that it was force of character behind the broom that counted.

Oh, also, I took a photo: it was Greatgreatgrandmother's husband who missed the Titanic and had to take a different ship across to America. . .and so here we all are, alive today.

Just down the street is the old lighthouse you and I climbed up into a long time ago. Martin took the girls up while I fed Beatrix and looked past the industrial yards to the beautiful lake.

This afternoon I found out more about Grandma Irene, how she worked the night shift at a factory for 20 years or more while she brought up six kids at the same time.

Nana bashed out a hole in the wall of their house to make an archway while her father was away and when Bapa came back he congratulated her on her work.

So there's a few more pieces of family history for you. Our heritage.

So, SISU to you, sister--

Wish you were here,

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

Heather Letter Two: In Which We Drive

Dear Heather,

A three hour trip is not a three hour trip with three children, as I am sure you know.

A few of our friends have minivans and DvD players. Elspeth and Merry can easily touch, tickle, and swat Beatrix in the back seat of our snazzy blue Subaru (it's the girl sandwich), and a while ago our CD player broke, so we've been listening either to the radio or a motley collection of tapes. We've got Chopin, the Mamas and the Papas, Cole Porter, Wee Sing, Marvin Gaye, and in honor of you and I and to get Martin's goat, Roger Whittaker.

Since the radio didn't have too much to offer (fundraising time for Pittsburgh's NPR--YAWN--and guilt-inducing, even though we don't even listen to Pittsburgh's station except when driving that way once in a cow's moon), we started on tapes, and then Martin expressed a desire for something less grand than Handel's Water Music, we popped out the tape and popped in Al Greene. And that's when nothing happened. So we had NO sounds except the soundtrack of our own lives for the remaining trip, and since Beatrix had stopped wailing and Elspeth and Merry were finishing off the big bag of pretzels, it was fairly smooth sailing. We arrived a little late for dinner, but arrived here at Grandpa's nonetheless.

It's super hot here (Martin almost passed out after finishing the hill grass this morning prior departure), and I think, though you would probably dispute it, that humid steaminess is worse than dry heat (you say, there in the desert, grass! we say, too much grass; you say humidity! we plug in our dehumidifier). . .but the house is fairly cool because Grandma Irene has the fans going. Remember the little white lamp in the shape of the pitcher and basin with the silvery pull chain that used to stand in between our beds when we were little girls staying at this house? Well, it's still here, in the other bedroom now. The rhubarb in the backyard grows ever bigger and more ruffly.

Wish you were here too,

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

Dear Heather (First in a Series)

Dear Heather,

Rather hot here. I closed off the house this morning and kept it fairly cool all day. It's up in the 90s or so again tomorrow. Whew.

I hear you're terribly busy there. I surely do wish you lived next door; I could shout out my kitchen window at your children, and you could watch my children for two minutes or so while I run out to close the deer fence at the end of the day. Those rascals have been nibbling our fruit trees.

We finally broke down and did the decent thing and mowed today. The grass was actually about Martin's hip height. Have you all read Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest? It's our gardening bible--Martin's always bringing him up (Eliot Coleman says THIS is a good alternative to potting soil, Eliot Coleman says NOT to work the soil too deeply, etc., etc.). Anyway I think you'd get a kick out of his ideal vision of harvesting fresh greens all winter. Well, Eliot Coleman recommends, among other things, a certain kind of European scythe--and we, being fed up with gas prices around here, and with noise, and with our grass--almost ordered one. We watched a video on YouTube with the soundtrack of Bob Dillon singing "How Many Roads"--with a girl with braids and a long skirt scything a field around a tractor (at the beginning the scythe is on fire and she's swooping it through the air). She ends the video by planting her feet firmly on the tractor roof and pivoting the scythe on her palm and then across the screen you see: HUMAN ENERGY. So we were actually pretty excited, by the field going down so cleanly, and her movement (like poetry, swinging back and forth), and her amazing scythe tricks.

But before we ordered it we had to bite the bullet and actually mow with what we had. And after mowing with these loud, gas guzzling machines, we both thought, we're insane to sell our riding mower at this point in our lives. Maybe we'll take up scything when the kids are teenagers. We thought about boarding goats but that went the way of the duck idea (if we can't take care of our laundry and our children and our garden, we're not ready for livestock). I told Mommy I wish we could just put the girls out to pasture. Think of what a money saver that would be.

I think we'll take the scythe money and buy a food dehydrator, which I'm so excited about. I tried drying apples on window screens last fall but it was such a nuisance and not terribly clean, either. The dehydrator has stackable shelves that you can load up with tomato slices and apples and strawberries and what-not. Get ready for your dried tomato Christmas now. It's coming.

So I don't know what's wrong with all my family, that they live so far away. Wish you were "popping over" distance. I actually felt like buying a ticket to Flagstaff and arriving there with Beatrix to keep you company, but then I decided since I can't do that I'd try to write you daily letters. I hope I can keep up with them--we're off to see Grandpa tomorrow.

We've harvested two good sized portions of strawberries from our garden and my beans are actually coming up. I'm always amazed when planting seeds actually results in plants. Your garden is beautiful! I love the bright poppies.

PS. Ask Josiah if he recognizes the binocs below--Elspeth took them with her hiking. Very intrepid.
Wish you were here,
xoxoxo
Kimby

Road Shouts

Some young punk shouted out his car window at Martin: HIPPIE MAN!

It must be said that he did admit to four days without a shower this morning. Is it possible we have stopped smelling ourselves?

Sorry, friends, if we've been stinking. (Martin said he took the yell as a complement).

Martin with my brother, Kenton--he, Martin, our lawn, and I, are in a race to see who can grow the longest hair (or grass). I think the lawn is winning, much to our neighbors' horror. We're roasting hotdogs down the hill at Martin's homemade fire pit.

The Wazoo Girls

Typing with two hands is rare these days--hence the brief, picture-rich entries. Well, it is a season.

Baby Beatrix smiles!

Beloved & beseiged

Toothpaste everywhere but her teeth

Studying Sammy the Snake (our gardening companion, along with Grassy Sam the Groundhog, deer, and the odd neighborhood cats)

Shortish limbs

Zinnias

I planted the first wave of zinnia seeds yesterday, and if they haven't been washed away by the rain, we'll soon have more


I wanted to name our third daughter Zinnia (at R.Robinson's brilliant suggestion), but it was vetoed. I vetoed Martin's suggestion of "Jemima" (too many pancakes and Jemima Puddleduck), so all's fair. Still, Zinnia would have made one heck of a name.

Line the Way

Hoorah! Martin used landscape fabric and about 300 stones (he collected in the graveyard, etc.) to line one path of our garden. Our friend Luis then helped us out and filled the paths with mulch. We're RATHER pleased with our first path!



So here's our side garden last spring:

Here it is this spring (a wreck):

And here it is this morning, after a terribly hard rain and thunder and lightning that blinked the electricity during breakfast. (Click on picture for better viewing.)

The mess in the left corner is the children's garden in progress, which will feature a river/sand bed with trickling water, huge boulders and stumps, and sunflowers and cherry tomatoes rambling over everything (and maybe a pumpkin vine or two).

P.S. We didn't have to toil to the lengths of my sister and husband; they live literally in the middle of the desert in Arizona, surrounded by miles of sand and mesas on the horizon. Please see their remarkable results (Luke at one point actually Shopvacced the garden after a spring dust storm!) at Heather's blog.

First Bouquet of Spring

This bouquet is for you, Aunt Kara;
(sage, roses, chives)

as well as this baby's wave

and this peony child--
All for you, beautiful one

Beatrix and Bouquet 1

Beatrix and Sage, Roses Chives

Stone Crazy

Well, I'm up late. I fell asleep for five minutes around 9:30 after reading to Merry, only to get up again to wash dinner dishes and wait for Kim's brother, Kenton, who drove in from Baltimore.

After cleaning up, I watched the first half of a DVD I've been eagerly anticipating. It's Stone Rising: The Work of Dan Snow, and I bought it after reading Dan's book, In the Company of Stone, which I checked out from the local library.

Dan is a Vermont dry-stacked stone waller. That job title doesn't quite convey what's perfectly clear from the video and the book: Dan is an artist of the first order, a philosopher, and maybe even a mystic (he muses about the "inner life" of stones and their languages, energies, and desires).

And his work is outstanding. The guy builds traditional New England stone walls, sure, but then there are walls that lead me to believe he's been necromancing M.C. Escher. He's done grottos, silos, ampitheaters. Check him out.

I'm a Dan Snow wannabe. And I've been collecting stone for use around the garden. In our Subaru. That might partially account for the broken axles we had fixed last fall.



I built a firepit nearly two years ago made from a bunch of smaller, flatish stones Kim and I gathered from a nearby road-making project. I don't know how Kim felt about standing next to a busy state highway, arms full of rocks, but I felt exposed--as if the rocks were, oh, I don't know, body parts, or maybe dirty magazines.

The firepit turned out well (after I somehow moved load after load down our steep hill via wheelbarrow). Better down than up the hill.

BUT, I mortared the stones. Dan Snow, I'm asking for your forgiveness. Dan thinks mortaring the stones is like chaining them to each other, deadening them so they can't move, change, become whatever they're supposed to become.



I dig up rocks in the yard when we make a new bed or set fence posts. Most are about the size of Yukon potatoes. Some are more like cabbage heads (er, if a cabbage were squarer). I've gotten a couple the size of a Gutenberg Bible. But they're not enough to satisfy me.

For a while I picked up rockfall from a railroad cut, but that got dangerous. I mean, all those boulders strewn between the cliff face and the tracks (15 feet, max)--uh, they didn't grow there. I'm obsessed wtih stone (and bricks, but that's another story), but I'm not wild about blunt force trauma to the head.

So I collect from safer places now. I've got one really great site, at woods edge near a cemetery. No, I'm not hauling headstones.



I seek permission now, too, which has emboldened me. I still look like a wild man, wind blown, sometimes rain drenched or snow covered, heaving rocks half my weight into the back of the car as relatives of the dearly departed meander respectfully between plots, flowers in hand.

But now I'm a wild man in no danger of a lawsuit.

I need more projects like I need a hole in the head (from a plumetting rock?), but I'm anxious to put my stone piles to use: I want to line our garden beds with smaller stones, and eventually I'm going to try my hand at dry-stacking a small retaining wall.

I'm not worthy, Dan Snow, but I'm trying.

Martin

Lush Birds, Lush Nursery

A jaunt down country roads, up and down green hills and past small farms, takes us to our favorite local nursery, Shields Flowers and Herbs. It is exactly to my liking: rambling, lush, and wildly creative. Besides organically grown heirloom tomatoes and vegetables, I save my pocket money for Sheild's incredible selection of herbs, rarish and common. Elspeth teeters after the peacocks, who by all accounts, guard the lavendar and wysteria and bamboo better than the fiercest watch dogs--and apparently there are so many that the owners seem fairly unconcerned at the loss of one of these gaudy creatures. Take, for instance, the resignation with which the Sheild's employee removed the carcass of the peacock that perished with a sickening THUMP in the road. "It happens all the time," she said. The peacocks strut all over the variegated sage and Thai basil and scented geraniums.

Add to this that Shields has just added their own wine cellar and you've got quite a treat of an outing.

Sheep, Rain, Baaaaad Weather

A regular thunderstorm blew up a few minutes ago, complete with mighty winds that ripped through our porch plants and sent me running outside to retrieve the stroller. Merry sang to Beatrix on the bed, safely inside; we'd just finished reading a pre-nap bit of L. I. Wilder's "The First Four Years." The happiest books are over (save the locust plague, tornadoes, fire, etc., etc.) and I know what's coming for Laura and Almanzo: sickness, bankruptcy, you name it.

I bungled the stroller up the stairs but the tools were left out in the chaos, along with the last of the numerous tomatoes in their pots. I kicked off my mud-caked shoes and slammed the door safely on the blustery weather. We've had mud, mud, mud, and cold weather, and I do believe I've forgotten what crumbly, dry soil feels like. Oh, I'm glad I'm not a real farmer, and that the when thunderstorms blow up out of nowhere my heart does not sink irretrievably into the mud at the thought of all the tender seedlings we planted this morning (we did, but we don't derive our livelihood from them).

Our summer potlucks are in full swing, though, every Tuesday, where adults are outnumbered by children and we are surrounded by good people and even better food, so there's a proof that summer is here, even if the weather doesn't indicate holiday.

And we got ourselves down to the annual Sheep and Fiber Festival last weekend, where Elspeth fed the embarrassingly clipped ewes

and we sang in a wind that threatened to tear the awning off the courthouse steps. Merry played drums, Elspeth kicked her feet, and we tried to stay in tune.

Thistle Hill, Birthdays, and So ON

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . .


The sky actually boasts a lovely blue color today. This bodes well; ever since Martin's parents arrived, we've had cloudy, rainy day upon miserable, cool, wet day. I have been able to clean up the garden and work well-rotted compost into the vegetable patch. Our porch is covered in mud and exciting plants in nursery pots ready to plant: heliotrope, heirloom tomatoes, herbs. I even bought myself a blueberry bush, so now we have raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, and blue to look forward to this summer! I even attacked Thistle Hill and weeding uncovered the roses, blackberries, wildflowers, mint and vinca I planted last summer. Notice the look of resigned disgust on my face. Weeding a hill chockablock full of stinging nettles: not the sweetest cup of tea.

Martin and Dad have dipped muddy water out of the post holes twiceto continue their work with a vengeance. Even kind friend Kevin stopped by to assist in the work, and the fence is beginning to take shape.


The kiddos enjoyed slogging through our jungle of a yard to throw rocks into the creek.
Merry escaped a dip into the swollen waters.

Sister Heather, despite a horrible hospital stay where Eclampsia loomed, arrived home safely with sweet Eliora.

Last, but certainly not least, I'd like to say a SUPER BIRTHDAY to my dear Auntie Phyllis--your nieces adored you first
And your grand nieces adore you now!