a lavender patch

halfway through preparing the pots

 For a few years now, I've been wanting a lavender patch.  A big one.  Not a whole field (maybe someday!) but a good twenty plants.  Imagine all the wonderful things that surround a lavender patch... bees and butterflies, little purple springs to tie on presents or put in a vase on your nightstand, and then, one of the best things I think: drying it and making sachets!  My mom has five or six old plants that grow like a hedge around one of her flowerbeds.  Every summer, we get at least two big aluminum mixing bowls of dried lavender just from those few bushes.  Imagine all that could come from twenty mature plants!  I've been putting off my own lavender patch, thinking the spring would finally arrive when I would be living somewhere I knew I'd be staying for years on end.  But since I'm still not sure when that time is going to come, I've decided to go ahead with the lavender patch now.  I'll plant it on my parents' farm and still be able to enjoy it... and then when I finally have found my home, I can plant another lavender patch... the more lavender patches, the merrier!  I'm starting the seeds in my windowsill and so long as they germinate and take off, will transfer the baby plants into the ground this spring.  Here's hoping!

lavender seeds

one of those days

painted lady with a battered wing tastes the asters

 Tuesday was still and warm.  It was the kind of day when it seems like you can tell the earth has changed its tilt and the sun puts a gilded kind of glow on everything it touches.  After spending so many hours in the car between Georgia and Virginia, I spent a lot of Tuesday outside, happily stunned by the beautiful weather.

Art critics

Not only are my chicks all grown up - rooster crowing, hens laying eggs - but they also have a taste for painting.  This past Sunday my dad and brother were laughing at me from the kitchen window because my chickens kept hopping up on the picnic table to have a look at the watercolor I was working on :)

A beautiful week

I have two wonderful grandmothers, and the one who lives closest to me was able to go with me to the art show at Firnew Farm last Saturday.  It was a gorgeous day, and we enjoyed the car ride through Madison's rolling hills, with the mountains glowing purple blue in the not too far distance.  The art and live music were in the milking parlor you can see in the background (photo below).  The exhibit was full of excellent work and the atmosphere was magical inside the old wooden walls with the music and such a large gathering of caring, talented people full of creativity and appreciation.  In addition, there were three alpacas to visit with.  My grandma, who had never seen an alpaca before, fell head over heels for them.  In the picture below, she is petting the little baby named Prince.  I think she would've tried to get me to load him into the back of my Subaru if his owner (the man in the background wearing the hat) had turned his head for one second.  If there had been any sort of raffle to win one, I think she would've bought at last 25 tickets.  It was so much fun watching her enthusiasm and touching their soft, soft fleece.  Afterward, we went to a little cafe in Madison and ate homemade pie.  I had pecan and my grandma had blackberry.

 The mushrooms from my previous post continued to flourish and this clump opened to be an extra-vivid shade of tangerine.

 And this hand-painted sign charms me every time I pass it on the highway on the way to and from work, especially because I know it won't be long before it will be packed up for winter.  I took a picture of it while traffic was stopped for roadside work.

And lastly, on Tuesday, I spent a really good day with my mom and sister.  We all found treasures at an antique store in Ruckersville... my mom an old, old rocking chair, my sister some vintage earrings, and I found some linens - including a beautiful tablecloth (at an amazingly good price)  in perfect condition.  But before the treasure hunt, we ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  In the little and very dingy bathroom, there was a poster for the pregnancy center, with the familiar slogan 'Late?  Worried?' written in Spanish.  And I realized for the first time that 'worried' in Spanish is 'preocupado'.  And I thought, preoccupied is the perfect adjective for what it means to be worried, because it describes exactly why being worried is such a terrible thing to do.  It overshadows your thoughts in such a way that you  are previously occupied and completely lose the beauty and the gift of the present moment.  When you are worry-free, the present is illuminated.
 

September morning

Today the sky was low and grey.  This morning I went out in the misty damp, prowling around for wild mushrooms.  Not to eat.  Just to admire.  It was a still and quiet morning, except for the rallying of the crickets.  They've been magnificent lately... I think their song has taken the place of the frogs... it's so nice, like a constant ringing glow in your ears.  I'm not ready yet to think about when the population dwindles down to one or two lonely crickets creaking in a corner before the real onset of winter.  But there's no sense in thinking about that now.  For now, we are right in the magical end days of summer, and this morning, I remembered what it was like to spend countless hours exploring outside alone, like I used to do so often when I was 'little.'  There's something so good and simple about hunting for things outside, which also reminded me - other than feeling a little bit guilty and awkward when people ask me what I do, I am very happy being a waitress at this time in my life.  I don't have a job title that carries much weight for people who like to weigh titles, but I have a schedule that allows me to wander around in the woods getting serenaded by crickets while looking for beauty...  while other people might be stuck in traffic wearing pantyhose.  I'm privileged!  After finding and photographing these mushrooms, I painted a couple I picked while I drank licorice tea and listened to a recording of Jane Eyre. I read it for the first time in 6th grade and loved it for some reason.  While this morning I could clearly remember why I loved roving around outside so much when I was in elementary school, I cannot for the life of me figure out why I enjoyed Jane Eyre. Is there any drearier story?  But I will finish it.  Books on tape from the library are an invaluable resource for someone who likes to work on projects and does not have a TV.  I can listen to stories galore (for free!) while I sew and paint.

PS - Does anyone else have the feeling that this year has been an extra-productive one for the mycelium around here?  I've never seen so many kinds of mushrooms in person!  But then again, I probably neglected to look.

Hea(r)t of Summer

While not writing, I've been working.  And when I haven't been working, I've been eating.  Things like wild raspberries from near the Hazel River and sweet drippy peaches and watermelon from an old lady on the side of Route 229.  One evening, when I was home alone, I picked the first tomato of the year, hot with the heat of the whole day and heavy and gritty against my palm.  I cut it up and sauteed it in olive oil with swiss chard, some vidalia onion and some basil leaves from the plants I started in my bedroom windowsill when it was still chilly outside. 

 I mixed the melange from the garden with whole wheat noodles and ate it slowly out of a big bowl while watching  I Love Lucy.  Lucy has some dresses I'd love to wear myself.  After dinner, I started making chocolate chip cookie dough, noticed the sky through the kitchen window and wandered outside.  A mass of bruise-colored clouds milled above, but I could see a thin line of white horizon 360 degrees around it.  The wind picked up and made the trees and bushes sigh and bow.  As dark descended, I finished the cookie dough and the storm seemed to hold its breath.

And then thunder began rumbling, and lightening darted across the sky quick as a snake's tongue.  I turned off all the lights in the house and climbed the stairs to bed, the wood of each step creaking under my bare feet. In the summer in this house I grew up in, I love crossing the invisible line between the air conditioning downstairs and the hotter upstairs.  I like the moment when the air conditioning is around my ankles and the heat of the upstairs is around my head and shoulders and arms.  The floor shook with thunder while I brushed my teeth, the house lit up and went dark with the lightening, rain came down soothing and hard against the slope of the roof, and I couldn't wait to get into bed with my pile of library books.  After I shut off the lamp, the thunder moved off into the distance.  Haphazard bursts of rain splattered the shingles, while a chorus of what must've been at least a few hundred frogs sang in and out in the rhythm of someone breathing until I fell asleep.  

Cinderella Pumpkins

my Cinderella seedlings!

Last autumn, I bought the best pumpkin of my life so far at The Garden Patch in town.  A Cinderella Pumpkin.  It was a beautiful dark orange.  It was shapely.  It remained as vibrant and solid as ever for eight months... first on display for the autumn, then on top of the trunk at the bottom of my bed while it snowed, and Christmas came and went, and spring unfolded.  And then last Monday, the same day my sister and I squished beetles, I cracked it open and planted its seeds.  The Cinderella pumpkin is the French heirloom 'Rouge Vif D'Étampes' which means 'bright red of Étampes', a place I think is about 30 miles from the center of Paris.  Supposedly these pumpkins take about a hundred days to mature.  Unless they are fickle, I should have my very own Cinderellas around September 20th!  Maybe I'm just going through a phase, but I can't imagine liking any other variety of pumpkin nearly as much as this one.


I managed to paint a few zinnias, and hope to do more in the coming days...

I also painted the potato blossoms, and realized they are very sweet smelling flowers.  They smell like honey - not  light and sugary like clover honey, but a musky, rich sweet like chestnut honey.  

We have raspberries galore in the garden.  My sister picked these (and many more) and she and my mom made a big batch of delicious jam.  Today I think I will visit the neighboring farm to pick some blueberries!

Beetle Juice

One day last week, my sister and I spent the whole morning in the garden.  We planted pumpkins and gourds, we weeded, and then we squished hundreds of Colorado Potato Beetles.  Most of them were in the gummy larval stage, and my arms got covered with brown beetle guts.  One squirted on my neck, and thankfully missed my eye.
We have a pretty good potato patch this year.  I like the blossoms and leaves of the plants and think they might make a good fabric pattern.  Hopefully I'll paint them before they vanish.

My Maran rooster is all grown up, and even crowing!  But there are no eggs from the pullets yet.  His name is Hercules Poirot, his hen is Miss Marple and the two other hens are Nancy (Drew) and Thumbelina.  If you remembered that I began with six, the other two were roosters, and hawks swooped down and got them while I was away in France.

And the seeds I planted before I left turned into flowers, so I now have lots of zinnias, my favorite blooms!

Today I made all of my fabrics available for sale on the Spoonflower website:  http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/maria_pace

And tomorrow my wonderful great aunt is coming for lunch and I'm hoping she might be able to teach me how to oil the sewing machine!

Euro Bobbles & Clary Sage

Three nights ago, I went to the Firemen's Fair in town.

It was a hot night - magic with the glowing lights from the rides, the rhythmic cranking and whirring of the mechanisms, the murmur of hundreds of people's voices together, and the ecstatic shouts of kids flying through the air.  There were all sorts of people... one in particular was a body-builder-type wearing a slinky, muscleman t-shirt with spaghetti straps.  The straps delicately cascaded over his tattooed muscles, he had curiously feminine legs, and he was carrying two plastic bags from Food Lion that were bulging with things that seemed to be cube-shaped.  I imagined what steps he took to dress and groom himself before coming to the fair, and what sort of person would like to meet him for a blind date.  And what in the heck was he carrying in those bags?  I saw another man, with no shirt on at all, who exuded aggression, but when he walked, he leaned on a wooden cane, similar to the one my great-grandpa used.  There were lots of girls wearing shorts the size of underwear, and a large woman who stood still in the midst of all the chaos, holding her very tiny baby close to her.  They both looked around blankly with the same dark eyes.

In one area, there were kids in harnesses, suspended by stretchy straps and gracefully bouncing way up high and then down to touch their toes on individual trampolines.  Most of the kids were very delicate in their bounces, and went up and down in slow motion with tentative looks on their faces.  But there was one girl wearing glasses who bounced with real enthusiasm and a big smile on her face.   Next to the quiet, dreamy jumpers was a loud, towering ride that swirled the passengers up and around and upside down in little metal cages.  Then, just across the grass path, was a dingy little pool filled with brownish water and attended by two robust men.  The pool was surrounded by half eager, half anxious kids watching the middle of the pool, where a boy was rolling around wildly inside something that resembled a clear plastic beach ball.  He seemed to be in a state of hypnotic rapture, throwing himself against the inner walls of the ball, and splashing in a puddle of water that had leaked into the bottom of the ball.  When his time was up, the two men pulled the ball in to 'shore', which was a set of wooden steps down from the side of the pool.  They unzipped an opening in the ball, and the air drained out of it almost immediately, and to try to get the boy out of the ball (which had become nothing but a pile of deflated plastic) so he could breathe, the two men grabbed him under the arms and pulled him quickly out of the zipper opening, his legs limp behind him.  Grinning and damp, he descended the stairs with wobbly knees.  Next in line was another little boy, who climbed the wooden steps bravely, but then when the men took his arms and told him to hurry and put his head into the opening, he panicked and went back to his mom.   A little girl dove in and squatted in it, like it was a giant placenta, and one man quickly zipped it up, leaving a little opening into which the other man jammed the end of a machine resembling a leaf blower, which inflated the ball.  Meanwhile, another boy was sobbing inside one of the balls, but you couldn't hear him... You could just see him inside the clear orb with a red face and tears streaming down and his mouth wide open.  So as soon as the girl was all blown up, the men roughly pushed her ball out into the pool to make way for the crying boy.  The girl was in heaven, in high-speed, super-hyper fashion... inside the ball she let loose with kicks and wild thrashing and tumbling.  Meanwhile, the boy was pulled out by the men and walked down the steps with his chin tucked under and wiping tears off his cheeks.  That is what it is was like to see young humans in 'Euro Bobbles'.  It was weird.  But maybe a good illustration of how funny people are.

Last year I bought a little clary sage plant and now, in its second and final year of life, it's blooming right on cue.   I would've liked to try to make some essential oil, but I'd need to build a small still to do it... maybe I will try it when I'm an old woman, but for now, I settled for making a quick tea.  I boiled some clary sage leaves with a few mint leaves for about six minutes, let it sit for a while and then sweetened it with a teaspoon of honey.  The tea smelled like melted butter.  My little sister said it tasted just like milk.  My mom thought it was revolting.  I thought it was pretty good at first... and I'd be happy if it does all the things clary sage is supposed to do...  help with mood swings, menstrual and general muscle cramps, supposedly can help you have vivid dreams...  I've got some left over in the fridge, but I can't bring myself to drink it again today.  I wish I could say that I loved it and I'll be drinking it each day and that it has enhanced my well-being, but I think my mom was right about the taste.  Supposedly it is good in beer, another project for another day...  But if anyone would like to try using it for beer soon, let me know and I will bring you leaves and blossoms!
(More info on Clary Sage http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/s/sages-05.html )

Little Maran

Three weeks ago, my best friend Nora called me early in the morning.  She wanted me to go with her to meet a lady.  The lady was selling action figures that Nora wanted to get for one of her sons as a birthday present.  (It was a Craigslist transaction).  I threw off my covers and put on a dress and drove up to the general store where I left my car and hopped into Nora's.  After an hour and a half drive, we met the lady, who had farm tags on her little sedan, in a 7-11 parking lot.  She seemed really nice, called herself the the 'Farm Mama' and after Nora had paid for the figurines, she gave us her business card and said she had lots of baby chicks if we were interested.  After a bit of whispering and deliberating, Nora and I decided to follow the farm mama to her homestead to have a look at her chicks.  We were a little nervous when we pulled into her driveway.  There was a weedy, dilapidated look about the place... a faded sign dangling in the dusty picture window said 'BEWARE of DOG'.   We followed the farm mama over stepping stones into a kind of breezeway filled (save a narrow, jagged path) with cascading piles of countless feed bags (full and empty) to the back yard where she showed us several pairs of different breeds of chickens.  There were also calves munching on hay and a pot-belly pig rooting under a tree.  Those were the creatures of the small backyard and I privately wondered how much land and what other animals she and her husband might have.  We never did see a dog.  There was at least one cat.  After looking at the parent birds, we followed the farm mama into the house to see the hatchlings.  The air inside was thick with barnyard musk. The kitchen table was piled high with eggs and egg cartons.  There were roosters crowing in cages in the carpeted living room.  Despite these sorts of close quarters not being something I would like to live with, I thought the farm mama was very kind, and I got the impression she was truly knowledgeable and loved and cared for her animals well. She gently plucked  four Rhode Island Reds and two Marans from the bunch of peeping chicks in the living room and kissed them goodbye before placing them in a box for me to take home.  Nora got six chicks, too.

When I got home, I found all kinds of commentary on the internet about Marans.  I wish I could just ask an experienced old woman about them, because you never know what information is accurate on the internet, especially coming from people getting all wild and upset about the genetic purity of chickens.  Marans are a French breed, apparently not yet recognized by the American Poultry Association, and due to under-the-table, indiscriminate breeding, Maran genes have been corrupted here in the U.S.  A proper Maran has feathered legs.  A proper Maran eggshell is a beautiful deep-dark brown, and the yolk  is gourmet in richness and flavor.  Most likely, my Marans aren't up to pedigree.  But I don't care; I really like this little rooster (and his hen, which I don't have a photo of yet).