Standing Still

Yesterday I received the sweetest note in the mail from one of my aunts.  She heard that I had been having a difficult time with my cats -- first Tiger, our shop cat was attacked by a dog earlier in the summer (she is now almost fully recovered but it has been a stressful and expensive journey) and then Kroompli, one of our house cats suddenly developed cancer and had to be put to sleep last week.   My aunt sent me a kind note to encourage me and included this beautiful poem.  I thought I would share it today with all of you.  I hope it speaks to your hearts the way it speaks to mine.  There are so many of you who are going through trials of all different sorts.  I received an email yesterday from a dear follower whose mother has alzheimer's disease.  It broke my heart to read how she is now parenting her mother, because her mother has become a child.  And I know there are many of you who are facing other difficulties.  I hope you too will have someone come alongside of you to encourage you with a little note, a sweet poem, or perhaps an unexpected hug.

Blessings,

Ro

If You Stand Very Still

If you stand very still in the heart of a wood

You will hear many wonderful things

The snap of a twig, the wind in the trees

and the whirr of invisible wings.

If you stand very still in the turmoil of life

and you wait for the voice from within,

You'll be led down the quiet ways of wisdom and peace

in a mad world of chaos and din.

If you stand very still and you hold to your faith

you will get all the help that you ask.

You will draw from the silence the things that you need:

hope and courage and strength for your task.

Patience Strong

Theology in a Tea Cup

It's Tuesday again and time to link up with all those lovely tea parties that whisk us away to a gentler, kinder place, where the pot of tea is always fresh, everyone is on their best behaviour, and all the world's problems can be easily solved over a steaming cup of Darjeeling or Earl Grey.  The only dilemma is whether or not to have a slice of lemon or a drop of milk!

Tea is being served at:

Martha's Favorites
Rose Chintz Cottage & Inspirations
The Plumed Pen
Lady Katherine Tea Parlor
Artful Affirmations

And of course, tea is being served right here.  Today, my inspiration came from a poem that I recently read.  I read it once, and then again, and then had to read it one more time.  Actually, over the last few weeks, I've returned to it again and again, and I am still pondering the meaning.

All day long

She has been arranging our welcome:

Scouring down the house,

Sweeping under beds,

Pulling out the old crocheted counterpanes,

Shining glasses and tableware,

Dusting sideboards and picture frames.

Now she sits in a deep chair

Till we come crunching down the beeches

To the door.

Nice, isn't it?  Sort of creates an instant feeling of coziness and love.  You just know that when you arrive at that door, you are a welcome guest!  But why has it caught my attention so deeply?  Well, it's because of the title.  Here ... I'll give you the whole poem one more time, but this time, I'll include the title.

God


All day long
She has been arranging our welcome:

Scouring down the house,

Sweeping under beds,

Pulling out the old crocheted counterpanes,

Shining glasses and tableware,

Dusting sideboards and picture frames.

Now she sits in a deep chair

Till we come crunching down the beeches

To the door.

Ah ... doesn't that title change the whole poem?  I'm enthralled by the idea.  I actually have no problem with the idea of God being a woman ... because I think God is a spirit being - neither male, nor female.  I also think that since God created both men and women, both genders are reflections of who He/She is.  Anyway, the poem really got me thinking, and this morning I began to wonder about something - if God invited me over for tea, which tea cup would She choose for me to use?

I decided on this one:

The pattern "Memory Lane" is by Royal Albert and consists of delicate blue forget-me-nots circling pristine white china.   I purchased this tea cup and saucer as a gift for my Grandmother for her 80th birthday.   Born in England, my Grandma was a great tea drinker and loved to drink her tea out of a fine bone china tea cup.  I wanted her to have something special to drink her tea from, that would be particularly beautiful.  When she passed away several years ago, the cup and saucer came back to me, and of course they really have become part of "Memory Lane" now because they always remind me of my Grandma.

But why did I chose this particular cup and saucer when I was thinking about that poem?   

Well, contrary to mythological beliefs, all grandmothers are not sweet darling little old ladies who never do anything wrong!  My grandmother had a temper.  She wasn't perfect.  She was human.  And although I'm sure there are many elderly couples who have nothing but goodness and light to say about each other, my grandparents could raise bloody hell, if you'll excuse the expression.  

One day when I was visiting, I happened to notice that my Grandma was using the Memory Lane tea cup with a different saucer.  She explained, with a rather odd look on her face, that the saucer had broken.  Looking at her hands, all gnarled and stiff with arthritis, I assumed she must have accidentally dropped the saucer and I decided immediately that I would get her a replacement.  I mentioned my intent to my Grandad later that day.  He told me Grandma didn't deserve a new saucer.  Apparently they had a big fight and she had thrown the saucer at him and that is how it broke.

I got quiet for a moment when my Grandad told me the story.  Then I looked him in the eye and told him that I was going to go ahead with my plan to replace the saucer.  I said to him, "Grandad, love isn't something we give because it's deserved, it's something we give because it is the very nature of love."  The thing is, I didn't love my grandmother less because she had temper.  I didn't feel she deserved the tea cup and saucer because she turned 80 but didn't deserve a replacement because she deliberately broke it.  I gave the cup as a gift because I loved her.  And love isn't supposed to be conditional.

That's a lesson I learned, not from my grandparents, but from my God.  See, I'd like to claim the idea of unconditional love as one of my own, but truthfully, I only understand a glimpse of it through the grace of God.   When I read that poem, I think of how God so patiently waits for each one of us to come and spend some time with Her, eagerly preparing in advance for our visit, longing for the moment when we arrive.  And She loves us unconditionally, each and every one of us, not because we have done something to earn it, but simply because God is love.

I am glad to say my Grandma eventually came to an understanding of that Divine Love.  After spending the first 86 1/2 years of her life as an atheist, she became a believer in the last 6 months of her life.  And the amazing thing is God didn't love her less when she was an atheist than He did after she became a believer.  He loved her from the moment time began and will love her through all eternity.  Because God is love.

(The poem "God" is one I discovered in a book called Irish Mist written by Father Andrew Greeley.  I'm not sure if he is the author, or if it was written by someone else.)

Marvelous Monday!

My father-in-law was a hard-working man.  As an immigrant to Canada, he spent most of his life working low-paying, long hour jobs in less than idyllic conditions.  He was a lumber jack in British Columbia for a few years in the late 1920's, spent a few years in the "dirty thirties" working in Saskatchewan and Alberta for the railroad where he was part of a crew who manually repaired railroad tracks along miles of track that were scorching hot without shade in the summer and blistering cold in the winter.  He also spent quite a few years in Sudbury, Ontario working in a mine where he managed to develop the "miner's lung" that would plague him for the rest of his life.  In the 1940's he worked at the Massey Harris plant in Brantford,Ontario where farm equipment was manufactured and in the 1950's, he was part of the tunnel-digging crew that dug the tunnels for the "new" hydro-electric generating plant in Niagara Falls.  He spent the last twenty or so years of his working life at a brick factory in an incredibly hot environment.  His job was to shovel coal into the kilns which had to reach 1800 degrees fahrenhiet in order for the clay tile and bricks to cure.  My husband estimates that during this time, his father would have shoveled 100,000 tons of coal!

When my father-in-law finally retired at the age of 70, he was at last able to spend time doing what he really, really loved to do ... and that was planting!   I think perhaps that he looked back with nostalgia to the the first 15  years of his life that were spent on a little farm in what was then Hungary but is now Slovakia, tilling the soil with a donkey, immersed in small-town rural Europe before the first world war changed everything so dramatically.  Or perhaps he just simply enjoyed the feel of soil on his hands but regardless of his reason, my father-in-law really did love to plant. 

My husband says that every time he came home from work, it seemed like his father had planted something new!  He planted fruit trees and currant bushes and hedges galore!  All of which had to be patiently watered by hand from an old-fashioned hand pump, bucket by bucket carried out to keep those little seedlings alive.  And for some reason, my father-in-law took a special liking to Rose of Sharon.  As a result, we are surrounded by beautiful Rose of Sharon bushes.

So today, on Marvelous Monday, I am extremely thankful for my late father-in-law, who spent hours planting those beautiful Rose of Sharon bushes that now grace our home with such beauty.  This past weekend, they all began to flower, their lovely big blooms opening up for the enjoyment of humming birds, bees, and butterflies and even the occasional human!

My father-in-law planted quite a few different colours of Rose of Sharons, including a number of bushes where several colours have been grafted on to the same plant.  It's lovely to see all the different shades.

Some are deep pink, and others have a blue tinge.  There are two different types of white blooms, the one above with the red centre, and one other that isn't open yet.  It is a soft white colour with a buttery yellow centre.  I think it's actually my favourite, but I do love them all.

When I sit on our front porch in the evening, resting on our swing, this is the beautiful view I get to enjoy.

And what makes it particularly beautiful is that although the Rose of Sharon are just opening up now, they will last for the rest of the summer and well into the fall, a wonderful reminder of my father-in-law and his love of planting.  

If my Nonna could hear me now ...

My Italian grandmother had a saying - well, truthfully, she had MANY sayings! - but the one I'm thinking about right now is:

"Primo non pensa, ultemo suspiro."

Not sure if I've spelled that right because I don't speak Italian, but basically translated it means "If you don't think now, you'll be sighing later." Or, in other words, if you don't think things through now, you will suffer later.

I want so badly to be able to communicate this idea to the next generation - only I don't know how. How do you take a body of knowledge, "wisdom" if you will, and package it up in some palatable form that a young adult or teenager will accept? Suddenly, I find myself feeling very old and at a loss to connect with my younger relatives. Was I ever that naive? That stubborn? That stupid? Okay, I freely admit to the stubbornness. I know I have always had a stubborn streak. But the stupid part? Not really - I did some stupid things, but I did them in a smart way. Does that make sense? I mean, I never went farther than I should have, never crossed a certain line into behaviour that would have put me at risk. I drank foolishly, but watched my back the whole time. There were times that I partied like there was no tomorrow, except, I always knew that there was a tomorrow! And that I had to go to work the next day, so I made sure I got just enough sleep to show up to work on time and even managed to be a hard-working productive employee.

I didn't know what I wanted to be when I "grew up," but I was ambitious enough to push my way to the top in the job I had at the time. It may not have been my life goal, but I was going to prove to myself and the world that I could do it, and do it well. And I took a fierce pride in my own ability to maintain my independence, to save as much as possible, even though it was a small amount, loving that satisfaction of a job well done, a paycheck well-earned, and a small but growing savings account.

Nothing was ever given to me, I had to work for it, and even though I envied some of my friends their sense of entitlement, I liked knowing that I could rely on myself to survive. I know that we all dream of some day winning the lottery, but truthfully, I can honestly say I don't know if I would ever have the sense of joy over a big lottery win as I could possibly have over my very first pay check. I remember looking at with such a sense of pride, knowing I had sweat buckets in a hot kitchen, scrubbed out pots and pans and deep fryers, peeled an immense amount of potatoes, and put up with the worst kind of sexual harassment that could only have happened to a 16 year old girl in the 80's, since no one in the work place would ever get away with that now. That was life in a hotel kitchen back then, male-oriented, fiercely competitive, and full of all the foul language that Gordon Ramsay now makes millions spewing on TV. No, nothing was given to me, but I earned every penny and along with the pennies, came an iron core of determination and strength of character that have stood with me all these years.

I wish I could translate that for my young relatives to understand. I wish I could instill in them a sense of determination and an appreciation for achieving a goal that you have worked hard to attain. But those are things you can not gift to another person, they have to experience for themselves by working at it. And in the mean time, I have to sit back and watch ... and pray ... and hope they don't make irrevocable mistakes, by acting without thinking now, so they will end up sighing with grief down the road.

If I had a scanner, I'd scan in a picture of my Nonna so you could see her, but instead I'll have to make do with this old photo I scanned a couple of years ago, taken when I was 17 and apprenticing to be a chef.  I'm in the first row, third from the right.  Don't we look silly in our tall white hats?  :)

Sunday Crop Report

Calling this post the "Crop Report" brings back all sorts of fun memories.   Growing up, I remember that our supper table at home was always one of great boisterous chattering and laughing.  There are 5 siblings in my family and every single one of us seems to have become great story-tellers.  Those skills were honed from infancy around our kitchen table, where my parents always encouraged us to talk about what we had done at school, who we had met, and whatever trivia was important enough to us that we wanted to share it when we got home.

It's not to say we weren't taught manners.  My Mum (who actually loves to eat with her fingers!) made us eat properly with knife in right-hand and fork in left.  We even had to formally ask for permission if we wish to be excused from the table when we were finished our meal.  And we certainly were NOT allowed to talk with our mouths full.  But still, supper was not a quiet time, it was a loud, noisy interlude in our day when we all felt free to talk as much as we wanted and for the most part, had our parents' full attention.

With one exception.  In the summertime, when the CBC Crop Report came on the radio, we immediately had to quieten.  My father only had to put up one finger and say "Quiet!" in a stern voice, and instant hush fell into the room.  We would listen quietly as the crop report was given and then invariably my Dad would give some commentary on that day's crop report.  Then all would return to normal and we'd be busy yakking away as usual.

Anyway, consider this a hushed moment in the middle of your noisy weekend, because I'm about to give our very own Crop Report.


First the BAD news:

Some evil monster has snipped off THREE of our pepper plants and left them to die a miserable death, shriveled in the sun, separated at the base of the plant from the roots that would give it life!  I suspect it is one of those @#!% blackbirds that have been pooping with wild abandon in our swimming pool.  @#!% blackbirds!!!

Next, somebunny has been nibbling off all the tops of our beet greens!

Wretched cute furry little things!  I'm feeling surprisingly in tune with my inner Mr. McGregor and Elmer Fudd! @#?% rabbits!

And finally on the Bad News front:

Our five peach trees have been hit very hard with curly leaf this year.  Here's a close-up picture that will show you how they are affected:

You can see the dead leaves in amongst the healthy second set.  The good news is that they seem to be making a good come-back with a healthy second set of leaves and fruit.  We will baby the trees along this summer as this type of disease makes them particularly vulnerable to winter kill.  My husband and I are debating whether or not we should get rid of all the fruit right now so that the trees don't have to spend their energy on producing fruit.  We can always get peaches from my brother who grows acres and acres of them.  But, of course, it is a difficult decision to make because we really do love having our own peaches.

Now on to the Good News section of today's crop report.

Our white cherries are ripe and absolutely delicious!  This tree in particular is absolutely loaded with fruit.

I am particularly fond of white cherries as they are so tangy!  Here's a close-up.

And some of our black cherry varieties look they will be ready to pick by the end of this week or early next.  I just hope we don't get a big rain storm late this week that will split all those lovely cherries like popcorn!

The rain we've had up until now has been very welcome.  Look at how the pears have sized up already!  The rain has been very good for them.  These Bartletts are already about 3 inches in length.

Looks like we'll have a good plum crop this year too. Our shiro plums are doing well, although we did lose a number of trees this winter. Not sure why really, since the shiros at my parents' farm would grow forever into huge gnarly old trees, but for some reason on our farm they don't have the same long life. Maybe it's the difference between our sandy loam and my parents' heavy clay soil. But the trees that remain are healthy and strong and have produced a lovely crop so far.  Hope we don't get hail or anything between now and the time they ripen.  They are another crop, like cherries, that can split if there is a huge rainfall when they are close to being picked.

Our early golden plums are looking wonderful:

As are our stanley prunes, especially since these trees are only 3 years old.  They are producing magnificently for such young trees.

I had a discussion with my brother and sister-in-law (who are full-time farmers) and we decided not to thin our apricots even though there is a heavy crop.  There are just so many things that can go wrong with apricots, causing some of them to be unmarketable.  Also, if we thin them, they will get quite huge and not too many people want really huge apricots.  So we've left them alone for now, but as you can see, there are clusters of them growing this year.  Apricots are funny trees in that they usually have two or three years of a light crop to every year of a heavy crop.  Looks like this year is the heavy crop year!

And on the garden front, everything (including the weeds) are growing like weeds!  Well, with the exception of the aforementioned pepper plants and beet greens.  The red currants are almost ready to pick.

And our little mystery plant (see this past blog post for more details), is really taking off.  I still don't know what it is.  Any guesses?

Well, that's it for the Crop Report today.  You can all go back to chattering up a storm around the Sunday Dinner table.  Hope you are having a good conversation with your loved ones, listening to the things that are on their hearts, and having time to share those that are on yours!

Attic Treasures

We live in a big old farmhouse – a home that my dear husband’s family moved into many years ago.  Before we met, my husband renovated the house, enlarging rooms and switching things up quite a bit.  The area that had formerly been a summer kitchen and cistern was converted into a garage and the second story above that was left unfinished.  That has become a very useful storage area and houses everything from our shop’s bookkeeping archives to odd chairs and stray pieces of furniture.  Occasionally, I pop into that area looking for something specific and get lost in the paraphernalia of bygone years. 

I never got to meet my parents-in-law as they both passed on long before I met my husband.  Because the living part of our house has been totally renovated since they have been gone, there are really no clues to their personalities in that part of our home.  But the storage area is filled with all kinds of memorabilia!  There are old fashioned copper kettles that my mother-in-law used for canning, an old scrub board that she used to do the wash.  There are funny old toiletry items that belonged to my father-in-law, like the straight razor that he used to shave everyday since apparently he never trusted the “new-fangled” razors to give him a close shave. 

Since we got married, I’ve been on a hunt to find something more personal – like maybe a letter my mother-in-law might have written and hidden somewhere with a big bold heading on the envelope: “TO MY FUTURE DAUGHTER-IN-LAW” – a letter in which she will tell me how sad she is that she never met me, but assure me that she is delighted that her only son has finally found such a wonderful partner.  Thus far I have found nothing quite so romantic, but a girl can dream!

There is an old trunk of my mother-in-law's that I like to open once and while.  Today I went up and rummaged around in that trunk hoping to find a remnant of material that might work for a chair I’m making over.  I’ve found some different pieces, one of which I think might work:

And some funny old sewing notions, like this strange “cover your own buckle” kit:

And this great pattern for smocked curtains, a pattern that apparently only cost 35 cents!

There is this lovely jumble of old embroidery floss, yarn and crochet work housed in what looks to be a shaving kit:

And then I found this great gem – an old newspaper from 1962 lining the bottom of the trunk!  What a wealth of humourous information this has proven to be.  Almost, but not quite, as great as finding a letter directed to my dear self from my deceased but none-the-less appreciative mother-in-law.  

Some of the highlights were in the advertisements, like this one advertising a dry cleaner.  Only 88 cents to dry clean a dress or 39 cents for a pair of trousers!

Apparently apples were only $1 a bushel ....

And you could buy a "bouffant crinoline" at Simpson Sears for a mere $2.44.

And who knew that Ann Landers was so good-looking when she was young?!

Some of the articles were absolutely hilarious.  The section of the  newspaper is called "Women's Pages" and includes this article:

Sorry it's so fuzzy but basically it explains that the school board had almost made the "mistake" of ordering teachers' desks without ashtrays!  Fortunately, one of the trustees caught the mistake before the order was placed.  Can't imagine teachers ever being allowed to smoke in a classroom, can you?   They can't even smoke anywhere near school property now!

This article really made me chuckle:

"The age of chivalry is not dead in Hamilton courts.  During a divorce action in the Supreme Court of Ontario, a woman broke down on the stand.  While answering questions, she desperately searched for a handkerchief in her handbag.  Not finding one, she wiped away tears with her hand.  Her counsel, Donald Cooper, strode to the witness box proffering an immaculately folded white handkerchief.  Proceedings continued, with the woman dabbing at her eyes with her gratefully-accepted gift.  Her divorce was granted."

Isn't that too funny?  I just can't believe that made it into the newspaper!

But back to the subject of my mother-in-law, I haven't found any secret letters from her yet.  In fact, there are  very little of what you could call "personal items" anywhere to be found ... a few post cards from friends (but mostly written in Hungarian), an old well-worn Bible, and her wire-rimmed eyeglasses are pretty much all there is.  But going through her belongings does give me some clues about her personality.  She was obviously a woman who loved her family and did everything she could to make ends meet.  She saved little scraps of material to patch clothing or to make rag rugs (some of which we still have).  She tried very hard to make "special" dresses for my husband's sisters, saving little bits of fancy trim to be reused and recycled.  And she didn't spend a lot of money on things for herself, so perhaps that's why her personal items are so limited.

Here's a picture of my in-laws on their wedding day.  Don't they look lovely?

So I guess I'll keep hunting just in case there is a special letter that my mother-in-law has left for me somewhere mixed in with all those "attic treasures," but part of me realizes that the real message is an unwritten and unspoken one from a woman who lived simply and loved her family.

Reunions

When an estrangement in a family finally comes to an end, I’ve found the reunion takes place in stages.  First, there’s that rush of intense feeling that floods your soul but must be kept tamped down, for fear of scaring off the very one you are so excited to see.  Then, over time, you are able to share meaningful conversations, comparing notes on what went wrong and who said what and aren’t you glad it’s all over now?  This is followed by a strange period of awkwardness.  Suddenly it becomes gallingly apparent that your lives have not stopped since you last were in contact.  Each person has grown, changed, developed into a different version of the one you once knew.  There’s an acknowledgement that relationships will have to be rebuilt and mended over time, not instantly repaired no matter how much love is in the equation.  But finally, at long last, there comes a time when you know the reunion is complete – when you’re sharing a simple moment of no consequence, your hands immersed in a sink full of soapy dishwater, your sister standing at your side with a tea towel ready to dry, sharing a task you’ve shared hundreds of times before, and the years roll back as if there never was a gap of 17years between this sink load of dishes and the last.

Painting by Iranian artist Iman Maleki.
http://imanmaleki.com/en/Galery/