Heather Letter: Five and 1/2

Dear Heather,

As the wise woman once said, Tempted to travel? Travel with children. This will cure all temptation.

Nuff said about that.

Honestly not so bad at all--we even went for a hike on the way back: Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park, where glaciers once thrust up huge wedges of rock, forming natural trenches now covered in maples, beeches, deep green ferns, and graffiti.

The house was stifling at arrival, but the fans are running and things are cooling off. We piled out of the car and inspected our garden first. The roses are absolutely stunning. Something is eating my basil and my leaf vegetables to shreds. The grass has sprouted everywhere. Honeysuckle breeze filters in the windows; the broad, handsome wood trim smells full and hot, shut away from the night breeze for too many days.

The climbing roses especially are brilliant, ravishing, embarrassing.

Surely your two-year old is not as wild as ours'.

Wish you were here and we could eat big congratulatory bowls of ice-cream together,

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

Heather Letter Five: In Which it Continues Hot, and We Are Not Amish

Dear Heather,

It is so hot here today that I am having trouble forming thoughts coherent enough to report on paper. Here are a few, though:

1. After watching the laundry flap on long, neat lines, and seeing approximately ten horse and buggies and a Grandma plowing a garden by hand tiller with a little boy in suspenders, Merry wants to be a little Amish girl. Barring that, she wants to become an Amish Mommy when she grows up. We were sorry to tell her that she may be out of luck since she was born to us and our Blue Subaru, but there are many principles we can adopt from the Amish. Neatness of yard and farm eludes us, I'm afraid, but simplicity, laundry on a pulley system, and slow-cooked food may be three we can hope for.

Later in Grandpa's back yard, Merry and Elspeth put their faces close to the hose, sipping in water and spitting it out at each other with many giggles and nose-scrunches. I think we must have been sisters like that, running around soggy and laughing together. They remind me so much of us.

2. One of my favorite memories of being with you (just us) is driving around Lancaster, following long roads past white and green farms and high crops that rippled like water. We'd get to another road and you'd pause, hands on the steering wheel, and ask, "Which way now?" We stopped briefly in the gravel driveway of a church; there wasn't a soul about except us, and farmland rolled in every direction.

2. Today I sat with Beatrix on my lap, reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (I too want to make my own cheese!), and kept an eye on Grandpa. Beatrix fell asleep with her mouth on my breast, and Grandpa twitched and scratched in his sleep. It was quiet. I thought: here I am with two completely dependent beings. Beatrix is not important merely because she is a seed, bursting with potential to become a contributing member of society. Grandpa is not a worthwhile part of the world merely because he once produced, worked, and spoke with a strong voice. Both baby and old man, at opposite ends of their lives and both vulnerable, are vitally important simply because they are people, and the spirit of God lives and moves and breathes in them. It is a good lesson for me to remember, I who often measures my worth (and other's worth) by what I do and how much I accomplish.

I do think the heat will break tomorrow. I love you.

Wish you were here with us even in the sweat,

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

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.