Tom Loves Becky

Tom Sawyer & Becky Thatcher impersonators at a street fair in Hannibal, MO

The next moment he was “showing off” with all his might—cuffing boys, pulling hair, making faces—in a word, using every art that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. 

"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain

To Be Once More a Little Child...

I'd give all wealth 

that years have piled,
The slow result of Life's decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer day.

~Lewis Carroll, "Solitude"~



The other day I ran across this favorite photo of my son when he was little, posing with his beloved pet, Kitten Nugget. He carried that little kitten around so much that it must have thought he was its mother.  Nugget grew up to be the most affectionate, lovable cat I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

To Keep Your Health

Mark Twain impersonator at a street fair in Hannibal, MO.

The only way to keep your health is 

to eat what you don't want, 

drink what you don't like, 

and do what you'd rather not.

~Mark Twain~ 

Ain't What They Used to Be

Things ain't what they used to be 

and probably never was.

 ~Will Rogers

Used now as nostalgic, rustic decoration, I can remember when washtubs such as these were a part of every Monday morning of my childhood. My Grandma ran a boarding house for the elderly and Monday was Wash Day.  I loved to help her with the chore in her shadowy basement where she had an old fashioned wringer washer with two tubs like these for rinse water.  The wringer arm of the chugging, churning machine swung about so that we could wring the clothes and bed linens from the soapy water into the first and then the final rinse water tubs. It was probably a dreaded weekly chore for Grandma, but I hope having a little "helper" made the task less wearisome. One of my most vivid memories of Grandma was her strong but wrinkled hands that always smelled of Clorox.

REPLY TO THE COMMENT FROM ANNE (below): My "reply to comments" feature isn't working. Thanks for stopping by, Anne.  Yes, we often got articles of clothing or towels caught in the wringer --- but I don't remember ruining anything.  Grandma would always warn us kids to be careful not to get our fingers caught in the wringer though!

Purple Rays of Beauty

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty 

outvalues all the utilities of the world.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Forget Your Years

Poster in my room at Mason House Inn Bed & Breakfast, Bentonsport, Iowa

O men, grown sick with toil and care,
Leave for awhile the crowded mart;
O women, sinking with despair,
Weary of limb and faint of heart,
Forget your years to-day and come
As children back to childhood's house.
~Phoebe Cary

Rewards of the Simple Life

To find the universal elements enough; 

to find the air and the water exhilarating; 

to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; 

to be thrilled by the stars at night; 

to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring 

- these are some of the rewards of the simple life.  

~John Burroughs~

Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make...

Stone Wall, Galena, IL

“Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars--a cage, 

so peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, 

are not oppressive evils, 

so long as the frame is healthy 

and the faculties are employed; 

so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, 

and Hope guides us by her star.” 

 ~Charlotte Bronte~ Villette

Touch a Hundred Flowers

I will be the gladdest thing
under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
and not pick one.
 
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Afternoon on a Hill"

A Short History of Medicine

2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."

1000 B.C. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."

1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."

1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."

1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."

2000 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root."
~Author Unknown

Hollyhocks

Hollyhocks are a favorite childhood memory of mine. My grandmother grew them in her backyard, and we would pull off blossoms to play with, because they resembled little dolls with hoop-skirts when you turned them upside down. This year I plan to start some growing in my garden, because they come back year after year.

Stone Lily

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality
~Emily Dickinson

Thorns & Roses

The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it.  

~Chinese Proverb~

Loving Wild Creatures

Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals "love" them.  

But those who respect their natures and wish to let them 

live normal lives, love them more.  

~Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons, 1953

Real Food

Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. 

~Michael Pollan~

Waterlilies

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.  

~Claude Monet~

So Andy Says To Opie...

Opie, you haven't finished your milk.  

We can't put it back in the cow, you know.  

~from The Andy Griffith Show~

It's a Dirty Job...

 ... but somebody's gotta do it! 

Sometimes we get dirty on the farm.

"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D.  

Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B." 

~"Fats" Domino~

Lunch at the Split Rock Artist Retreat

When I attended the Split Rock Artist Retreat at the University of Minnesota's Cloquet Forestry Center in July of 2006, one of the best parts of the week-long program was the three wonderful meals a day that were provided.  The food was absolutely unbelievable! Even the simple lunches were artistically created for our dining pleasure.

3 Nature Books for Families (reviews)

THE SENSE OF WONDER - Rachel Carson (93 pages)

c. 1956  The text was originally published as an essay in Woman’s Home Companion entitled “Help Your Child to Wonder.” It was posthumously made into a book in 1965, illustrated with black & white and color nature photography by Charles Pratt and others. Many photos featured children enjoying the wonders of the natural world around them.  In this book, Miss Carson often refers to the explorations of woods and beach that she made with her little great-nephew Roger, who she adopted after the death of his mother in 1957.

         With prose as eloquent as poetry, Rachel Carson urges parents to take the time just to be with their young children in the great outdoors. It’s not important to drill into their little brains the names and details of the flora and fauna they see, but rather to just be with them in the wonder of the moment.

BUTTERNUT HOLLOW POND - Brian J. Heinz (31 pages)

c. 2000  What a great book with which to follow Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder!  The lovely, detailed watercolor illustrations by Bob Marstall bring to life the story of a day in the life of the denizens of a pond ecosystem somewhere, anywhere, in the eastern half of the United States.

           The various food chains and ecological niches of the creatures that call Butternut Hollow Pond “home” are sensitively explained to children in a series of vignettes describing five different times of day from the break of dawn to the shadows of the night. I recommend this thoughtful book to parents who wish to introduce their children to the natural world.

BLUE POTATOES, ORANGE TOMATOES - (39 pages)

c. 1994  This is also a wonderful nature book for children, one that is meant to encourage them to explore the world of growing plants in the garden.  Riotously colorful, it gives helpful advice for the young first-time gardener and introduces him or her to varieties of common vegetables and fruit that also come in unusual colors. There are even easy-to-make recipes, so children can experience (with the assistance of their grown-ups) cooking and eating the fruits of their labors.

Kitty Rumpus

These kitten sisters did a lot of rough-housing when they were little.  Then after they grew up, the gray striped one ran the calico off for good. It's sad when families can't get along...

What IS It???

I know at first glance this looks like a big snowball, but it's actually a giant puffball, Calvatia gigantea, an edible woodland/meadow fungus that can grow to one foot or more in diameter. A mature giant puffball can produce around 7 times 10-to-the-12th-power spores. This one we found that we found in the fall is a bit on the small size. They can get as large as beachballs!

Blue Jay Feeding

"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, 

where I had heard a tittering for some time, 

"winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, 

if you know where to look for it."  

~Henry David Thoreau~

A Portrait from the Past

One of my favorite pastimes is exploring old cemeteries.  Once in a while I come upon a very unique gravestone, like this one that contains a beautiful cameo portrait of the departed. It's located in an old hillside cemetery north of Kampsville, Illinois, in Calhoun County.

2 Shocking, Sad, but Inspiring Books

A STOLEN LIFE - Jaycee Dugard (273 pages)

c. 2011  Wow! What a story! This is the memoir of a young lady who was kidnapped when she was eleven and was kept as a sex-slave by a pervert and his enabler wife for eighteen years. During that time she gave birth to two daughters, the first when she was only 14.  The babies were delivered by her rapist and raised to call him and his wife Dad and Mom, and their real mother “sister.” (I don’t think I’m giving anything away here, because this case was widely reported in the news when the young woman and her children were later discovered and rescued.)

           I can’t write this review without warning more sensitive readers of the explicit nature of Jaycee’s recollections of her abuse. It is very hard to read or even imagine! It’s a tale of survival, but also an example of how one sick-o person can manipulate and control the lives of those around him. And lastly, it’s a plea from Jaycee herself: that if something going on in a family (even if it’s your own) doesn’t look right to you, don’t hesitate for even a minute to report it to authorities. 

RANCH OF DREAMS - Cleveland Amory (280 large-print pages)

c. 1997   It says on the front cover that this is a “Heartwarming Story of America’s Most Unusual Animal Sanctuary.”  I found it to be a heartwrenching story.  It blows my mind how cruel people can be to animals. I’m glad there are people like Cleveland Amory who rescue abused and unwanted animals and give them a loving home.

           The author’s favorite book as a child was Black Beauty. He was even related to the man who brought the beloved horse story, by British author Anna Sewell, to America and made it popular in this country. It was his childhood dream to have a ranch someday where mistreated and unwanted animals could live out their lives in peace.

           Amory, a television critic for TV Guide in the  60s and 70s, established the animal rights group Fund for Animals in 1967. In 1979 he started Black Beauty Ranch in east Texas, and his first animal residents were feral burros rescued from the Grand Canyon.  It’s the largest and most unusual animal refuge in America, but it’s not a zoo or tourist attraction. It’s open to the public on special occasions, but most of the time it is just a home for animals to be cared for, not looked at.

           The book details the horrific offenses and the legal struggles he often had with the federal government and the many different missions he went on to rescue both domestic and exotic animals. Mr. Amory died in 1998 at the age of 81. The animal world lost a devoted friend and advocate with his passing.

Regifting

It's Not Regifting, It's Recycling

Christmas is long past but the remains remain. Here is an interesting re-gifted gift we received. At least the giver was honest and said, "Somebody gave this to us and we can't use it.  Thought you might like it."  If you look closely, one of the bottles is missing. We tried it, and now it's taking up space on the refrigerator door shelf. I suppose hot sauce is like honey, it never goes bad. I just don't know what to use it for...  Maybe we can dilute it and spray it on our garden plants to deter deer and raccoons???  (P.S. I supplied the "Clear Eyes.")

The Love Tree

This is an early self-portrait of me in 1995, hugging my favorite tree.  The Love Tree was actually two trees that wrapped around each other in an amazing arboreal embrace. Sadly, a few years later, they died and had to be cut down.


This spring we had to cut down another of my favorite trees --- an ancient redbud that probably would have lived forever, sprawling along the ground. But it had to be removed so the tree-man could get into the yard with his boom truck to cut down a couple of big, dying trees that were threatening to fall on the house. I love my trees and get really sad when I lose one.

Lake Jacob

When our son was a preschooler, his favorite activity was spending hours in the garden, digging deep holes. (At the time, Louis Sachar's young adult novel, Holes, had yet to be written.) He used the holes for places to play with his toy tractors and earth-movers. Some of them were so deep he would disappear in them, and I'd be surprised when I called for him, to see his little head pop out of a hole like a prairie dog.


When he was twelve, he began racing motocross. He and his dad rented a small earth-mover called a Bobcat and started tranforming our beautiful pasture into a practice track, complete with twelve-foot-high jumps, berms and whoops. Jacob operated the machine as much as his dad did, and dug this small pond at the far corner of the pasture, so he could use the dirt to build his jumps.


After he grew up and moved away, we paid a neighbor with a bulldozer to restore our pasture, but Lake Jacob remains as a small watering hole for the wildlife.  This winter it's been so mild, it has yet to freeze over.

The Crappie Cruiser

Monday my husband and his fishing buddy drove up to Chicago to look at a boat for sale. They spent the night, because they got a late start and it's a 4-hour drive one way. They came home yesterday afternoon towing this great little pontoon boat. It's a 2008 Bass Buggy --- but we're renaming it the "Crappie Cruiser", since the guys are big on fishing crappie and belong to a crappie club.  For those who may not know, crappie (pronounced "CrawPee") are delicious, little, freshwater panfish that are lots of fun to catch.


I just can't wait to get out on a lake with this really awesome boat.  It's big enough for our dog, Beary, to go fishing with us. He'll love that! Also, we could camp out on it if we wanted to. Oh, this is going to be a fun spring, summer and fall!