Hopping Around

"Some bunny loves you"

That was the saying on a t-shirt that #1 daughter received along time ago from her grandmother.  I can't remember if she got it for Valentine's Day or Easter.  And why, you might ask, is this on my mind?  Well it started on Sunday.  I was merrily knitting away on a scarf.  I saw a design for a bag, but didn't want the bag so tried to do it on a scarf.  I was going to do a keyhole scarf with it but got caught up and went further along.  As I am "always forward, never reverse" I decided to make it a full length scarf. 

So, I was working a way when the Super Bowl came on.  And for some reason K4 P2 and then P4, K2 on the return was too much for my brain to comprehend while yelling at men on the tv that get paid millions to play football, that I know more than they do.  Ignore the irony of that.  But anyhow I pulled out the felted bunny pattern that I found on Ravelry.  I had printed this out to do some for #1 so she would have some Easter things for her house.  It is very easy with knit stitches only so I figured I could handle it.  By the end of the game I had finished one of the bunnies. 

Thinking he was kinda cute, I started a second one.  I have tried to squeeze a couple of rounds in when I  ran upstairs/inside to get a cup of coffe or use the bathroom.  The man finally caught on though and back to work it was for me.  Huh.  You would think he is on vacation and trying to get things done.  The nerve of him!  Well I am now on my forth one. 

They are very rustic, use very little yarn so scraps are good and for some reason that is making me happy.  I have to do their faces and since I didn't felt them I am going to needle felt a tail on them.  Eventually I will end up back on the scarf but I think I am going to make a couple of more and maybe some Easter eggs.

So now I have to ask...We woke this morning to a beautiful sunny day....

but we are due to get somewhere between 4 to 20 inches of snow (you have to love meteorologists)....so is it wrong to want the 20 inches so we couldn't work outside and that we lose electric so we can't work in the basement so that I can knit more?  Yeah, I thought that was wrong to wish for too, and seeing as how #2 daughter is home with the stomach virus, I don't want to tempt fate so I am going to bring in more firewood. 

The Past and Heirlooms

The past is not a package one can lay away. ~Emily Dickinson


But today it was.  In my never ending quest to organize my treasures,  shit, stuff, I dug out some boxes and started going through them.  One box I opened had belonged to my aunt.  She was an avid gardener, crocheter and seamstress and when she died, we cleaned out her house and I "inherited" some of her belongings.  Today's box had Flower and Garden (now defunct) magazines from 1970-74.  As a gardener I love to look at old seed catalogs and magazines which is why I had stashed this box away.
 
Looking through them was quite enlightening.  Back in 1970 Don Adams (aka Secret Agent Maxwell Smart) was touting the magnificence of a garden hose manufactured by Monsanto.  In my gardening lifetime, I have only associated Monsanto with GMO's, Roundup, Agent Orange, PCBs, DDT, Bovine Growth Hormone and Aspartame.  Never in my wildest dreams would I have associated them with anything as innocent as a garden hose!

 

Then there were vegetables that I grow because my mother had grown them.  Some I thought of as heirlooms.  I was shocked to know they had been introduced after I was born.

 

In 1971 Cinderella pumpkin and Better Boy tomato was first introduced. I knew Better Boy to be an F1 hybrid but though it was older than that.  Also new to the gardening world in 1971 was Green Isle Beans and Blue Lakes 141 beans which I have grown a time or two.

 

In 1972 Silver Queen corn was introduced as were Beefeater tomatoes and Ebony acorn squash.  I thought my parents had grown Silver Queen fooooorreeeeeevvvverrrrr.  I know prior to 1974 she sold enough corn (at $1/dozen) in one season to buy herself a freezer which still runs!

 

In 1973 Patty Pan squash, Wonder Boy VF tomatoes, Green Arrow pea, Golden Zucchini, Green Ice lettuce and Giant Beefsteak VF tomatoes.

 

So needless to say by this time I am feeling my age.  If I considered seeds heirlooms when they were only introduced in 1971-74 (when I was 7-10) then I am heirloom also!  But then this advertisement sent me over the edge...

8 track tapes, records and cassettes offered by RCA Music!  And I knew almost all the artists Loretta Lynn, Porter Wagoner w/ Dolly Parton, Engelbert Humperdinck, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Charley Pride, Brenda Lee, Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Conway Twitty, the soundtrack to the Sound of Music, Jimi Hendrix, Three Dog Night, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills Nash AND Young!

 

OMG I do believe that package should have stayed in the past.  I am too old to garden this year.  I think I will just wrap up in a shawl and sit in the shade and take a nap.

2010 Groundhog Day

"Away in a meadow all covered with snow

The little old groundhog looks for his shadow
The clouds in the sky determine our fate
If winter will leave us all early or late."
- Don Halley

And it has been determined that we will have six more weeks of winter.  We are due for some snow tonight and we might get some this weekend so I had pretty much devised that without his assistance. We have not really got hit hard...yet.  It did not stop me from getting some pictures of the first inklings of Spring while I was out and about.

The daffodils, which the chickens will peck at as soon as they find them.

The snow drops

And if you look real close, I tried putting in arrows, it is the start of the bleeding heart.

I am okay with waiting.  I have lots to do before it arrives...like more spinning.

But really starting Sunday the man is taking a weeks vacation so that we can start getting things set up for when real Spring does arrive.  Maybe we will even get the tree down.

Early tradition

~ Tradition is an explanation for acting without thinking ~ Grace McGarvie
In all actuality a lot of thinking goes into this tradition.  Many years ago Cyndy told me my seed order had to be by Groundhogs Day.  I have religiously followed that. 

The catalogs arrive before Christmas and are tucked away until the hustle and bustle stops.  Then with a steaming cup of coffee, curled up in a chair next to the woodstove we crack the covers.  Immediately dreams of the perfect garden go swirling through my head...an illusion...but one I succumb to yearly.  I write down what I want to plant that year...less tomatoes but more beans, no cabbage this year, try celeraic instead of celery etc etc etc.  I don't have a garden big enough for all the things I would like to try so I have to keep it to things that are going to feed the family. A whole list is made and prices compared catalog to catalog.

Then the catalogs and list sit and marinate while I do the daily chores....for days and sometimes weeks.  The stack moves from the kitchen table to the coffee table in the hopes I will be motivated to finally finish.  Ahem, I have been known to procrastinate a little.  Then after #2 son's birthday I finally dig out the old seed packages and saved seeds and find out what I really need.

Yesterday being his birthday and tomorrow being Groundhogs day, I knew what was on my plate today.  I did not save any tomato seed from last year and I will not use my potatoes as seed so I thought that I was going to buy most of what was on my list.  Surprisingly I have more than enough leftover seeds from last year and seeds that I did save to not warrant putting in a seed order.  I will need seed for green beans, peas and cabbage but those I can pick up when I get the seed potates at the feed store.  

And now that I have participated in this annual ritual, daily life can resume.  And daily during this time of the year means fiber.  I tried the combs and spun up some of the shetland but found it to be so much easier to just toss the wool through the carder.  The two don't even compare in softness but I have not been known for my patience either and when I do want to spin I do want to spin...NOW.  So into the carder it went and now I have lots to spin.  I also washed up the rest of the alpaca blanket from Louise.  This was Amigo's from 2007!  How the hell did that much time go by?  I was almost done carding the shetland when the kids came home.  In anticipation of the nephew's coming up, I decided to pack it up until tomorrow.  However, before I finished I carded up some alpaca.  Beautiful. 

Then I took the dog for a walk.  While out there I decided to check the daffodils and they were up!  I never got back to take a picture but they are up about 1/2 inch or more.  I will have to pay more attention while strolling around the yard, looking for the first robin and checking to see what else is coming up, before the snow falls tomorrow.  Until then I have some fiber to spin.

"The Story of the Trees"

The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what "the story of the trees" would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand. ~Author Unknown, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938


Years ago my ex husband and I traveled to Annapolis, MD for him to take his arborists license.  We walked the grounds of St Johns College identifing trees which would be on the test.  We came upon the Liberty Tree.  It was the first time I had thought about what a tree must have seen and heard in it's life time.  Then I had children and read them the stories of  The Little Tree Who Wished for Different Leaves and the The Giving Tree.  Since my whole family did tree work in one form or another, when a tree was cut down I only thought of it as a paycheck, lumber, or firewood.  
 
My younger brother still does tree work.  Along with tree removal, trimming and topping, he digs up trees and plants that are "blemished" or did not grow as fast as the homeowners expected.  He brings them home and transplants them in one of our yards  There have been dogwoods, arborvitae, blue spruce, crab apples, rhododendums and azaleas.  Some needed a little TLC but then ended up beautiful.  It has saved me a pretty penny and I am lucky to have this source available.
 

Along with the trees and shrubs he gave me, I have black walnut, hickory, butternut, apple, forsythia, elderberry, winterberry, nanking cherry, white pine, witch hazel and a chokecherry.  Recently I have been hearing alot of tapping.  Today, as I was perusing the seed catalogs I looked out to see this guy in the chokecherry.

                                     

This tree was already fighting what I think is black knot and for several years we had wrestled with the idea of removing it.  However, Spring comes, the leaves hide the cankers, it starts shading the back yard and we decide to keep it.

But as I sat there, I was very concious of the woodpecker wrecking havoc on the tree.  I went out to look and there are large holes in the limbs and upper trunk of the tree.  I don't need one breaking off in a wind/snow storm and hitting the cars or kids.  I guess Mr. Woodpecker was letting me know that this has to finally be dealt with - the tree's story has to come to an end. 

The Past

What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now. ~Author Unknown

Many moons ago the man had a relationship with a woman which produced a daughter.  They seperated and the woman and daughter went to Florida.

Fifteen years go by, the man is married with another daughter when Social Services contacts him for a paternity test for a child they have in foster care.  The DNA test proves that the child is indeed his daughter from the first relationship.  He wants to move said daughter into his present family but that relationship which was rocky to start with crumbled.  She did not want his past coming around and dirting her life.  So one child stayed in foster care and one went to private school.  The divorce was final and shared custody of #2 was decided.

This is where I enter the picture.  The man had #2 daughter every weekend so as not to disturb her schooling.  One weekend, he took #2 daughter to meet #1 daughter and had a great day.  Then one weekend we go to pick up #2 daughter and she is not there, the phone calls go unanswered and then phone is disconnected...she is gone.  Child support will not give out any information, said to hire an attorney to deal with the custody issues, which financially we were unable to do.

During this time the man was in and out of the hospital with back surgery.  He gets a phone call from Social Services saying #1 daughter has run away, has he heard from her?  We hadn't and kept in contact with the foster family until she was found.  Plans were made to visit but then the child support check was sent back.  When he called to find out why he was told that the foster parents had turned her back over because she didn't want to be there. #1 daughter was lost in the system and they didn't know where she was so had no place to send the money too.  He was so upset as he had only gotten to see her six times...not much to make up for 15 years.

Seven years go by not knowing where either of his children are.  During that time he became step dad to my children.  He was t-ball coach, batting coach, soccer coach, assistant girl scout leader, boy scout leader, taught the older two to drive etc etc etc.  All things he could have done for his own children.

Then we find out the ex had signed over guardianship to a woman in NC.  She was to send the child support to this woman to support the child.  When this didn't happen, the woman with guardianship contacted child support to have the money sent to her.  This is how we found #2 daughter. 

The man took time off work and went to NC to get reacquainted with his daughter. This being the daughter that he had seen everyday for ten years.  She wanted to stay in NC, didn't want to live with him and although he still had joint custody he decided not to fight it.  She was 17 years old and figured she had been thru enough and as long as he knew where she was and could have a relationship with her, he was okay.  Child support was re-routed and it was hoped that a relationship could be forged from the pieces. 

We mailed art supplies she needed,  birthday cards and packages, christmas cards and packages, sent $$ to have her own room built downstairs, sent flowers to the guardian on mothers days and Thanksgiving....and got nothing back.  We would leave phone messages and weeks would go by and we were told nobody answered the home phone so don't bother using it, we left emails and were told she never really checked them, we signed up for skyp so he could IM her because she didn't like AIM and she would sign off when he signed in or say she had to go do homework or eat dinner.  It was so frustrating watching him ache for a relationship and her block it.  She never mailed him or emailed him a fathers day card, birthday, Christmas...nothing.  No Thank You's verbally or notes for anything.

When she initiated contact it was to bitch him out "because the least you could do is pay child support" when her guardian screwed up her checking account so bad that she didn't realize there was over $500 in bounced check fees which were paid for by his child support deposit.  To her credit she did email him back to apologize.  She contacted him once more to get his financial information to go to college and then called to invite him to her high school graduation.  He took time off of work, went to NC, gave her money and got promised pictures. 

The next weekend was Father's Day...nothing.  He was so upset as it was a one sided relationship.  His child support payments ended.  She called in August stating she needed money as she was going to college.  He called back, got no answer so left a message.  She called again asking for money and he called back to find the number disconnected.  Since then we have not heard from her.  He gave up going on Skyp or checking her MySpace.

Saturday while he was at work the telephone rings, caller ID says the mans last name.  I answer and a girl says she is looking for the man and that she is not sure if I had heard about her.  I called her by name...it was his first daughter.  She is 23 now with a six month old son and another on the way.  For the past five months she has been living 12 miles from us.  She said her mother had passed away, and seeing as how she didn't have family around when growing up she wanted her son to have some family.  She didn't have much information but had been trying to find the man for some time.  She did run away from foster care and stayed with friends until she graduated from high school.  She has been on her own since and she is a terrific mother. She had been told the man didn't want her and just wanted to know if that was a lie and if there was a chance he wanted to be part of her son's life.  We spoke for over an hour and then when the man got home we all met at a resteraunt.  Later we came home and talked some more.  Sunday we went to see her and her boyfriends house.

Monday she knew the man had a medical test and called to check up on him.    He has always wanted his children in his life but for more than just the paycheck aspect.  He had hoped and still hopes that when they grew up they would try to find him.  The man is cautiously optimistic now. He would love nothing more than a new relationship with his daughter and grandchildren.  And if the man is happy then I am happy. 

Happy Cooker

“Cast iron is so superior for cooking utensils to our modern aluminum that I not only cannot grieve for the pioneer hardship of cooking in iron over the hearth, but shall retire if necessary to the back yard with my two Dutch ovens, turning over all my aluminum cookers for airplanes with a secret delight.” ~Majorie Kinnan Rawlings, 'Cross Creek' (1942)

My parents received a complete set of stainless steel pots and pans as a wedding present and took care of them. These and her cast iron dutch oven and skillet were the only pans she ever had. When my first husband and I got married we got what we could afford which was the non stick. I thought this was going to be so much better than my mothers. I stuck things to the non stick. When his mother passed away we got her corning glass pots and pans…..well…..

Years passed, my cooking improved. I got two cast iron griddles from my grandmother’s house. One was 10 ¼ and the other was a 14 inch and both needed lots of TLC so the man took them to work and sand blasted them. I loved them but wanted a dutch oven. So my mother bought me a Vollrath cast iron dutch oven for Christmas one year….loved it. Then she went out and bought me the Lodge reversible cast iron griddle/grill. Later I acquired a 10x7 oval griddle a friend was throwing out!

When we were getting rid of the trailer we were living in to build our house, I packed everything away. And then things took A LOT longer than expected in the building area. I couldn’t remember where the dutch oven was so #1 daughter bought me a Lodge cast iron dutch oven. When we moved into the house and started unpacking it was like Christmas all over again as I found it all. And then the children started doing dishes. They would leave water setting in them and brillo them. Then they started cooking. Let me mention right here I love my children.

While we had company camping here, they used my two round griddles on the campfire. As they always cleaned up, I thought they had cleaned them and put them away but I found them while mowing. I love company too.
The only pans I had left in usable condition was a 10x7 oval griddle and the griddle/grill. I loved cooking on the wood stove with them. I loved owning something my grandmother cooked for my father on, I loved the forever-ness of them…I missed them. I begged the man to take them all into work and sand blast them. He put them in his truck and I waited. Months passed. Christmas came and #1 daughter knew I missed them so bought me a larger cast iron dutch oven with an enamel lining so I don’t have to season it or worry about the kids leaving it sit in water or scrubbing the heck out of it thinking they are helping. They did drop the lid on my stove and took a chunk out of the enamel top but we won’t go there. Just remember I love my children.

Last night the man came home with every single griddle/dutch oven completely new again. I was ecstatic! Yeah I am easily pleased. So this morning I put the lard I rendered to good use and started seasoning them. I can’t wait to reacquaint myself with them but that has to wait for another day as I am going out to dinner tonight.