Let me be taken in.

quotes,

Oh, but I do love this thought from G.K. Chesterton, which I shared five years ago today, so maybe that is long enough ago that it will be fresh for some of you, as it is for me. WordPress has started doing this thing to keep us on the site longer, where they show us a list of titles of our past blog posts, what we have posted on this day in years past, with links to click through and read. It is sometimes surprising, and/or pleasingly nostalgic, to fall into these little traps, though I think G.K. would say, “Those are not the sort of traps I was thinking of!” 

“His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise enough to be made a fool of. He will make himself happy in the traps that have been laid for him; he will roll in their nets and sleep. All doors will fly open to him who has a mildness more defiant than mere courage… [He] will always be ‘taken in.’ To be taken in everywhere is to see the inside of everything. It is the hospitality of circumstance. With torches and trumpets, like a guest, the greenhorn is taken in by Life. And the sceptic is cast out by it.”

G.K. Chesterton, in Charles Dickens

July 2025

Peaceful breath and perfect pie.

books, food and cooking, pie, poetry

LEMON PIE

I struggled ten or fifteen years
To make good lemon pie.
The crust was thin, the paste was thick,
And the meringue was dry.

The crust was thick, the filling thin,
The top was limp and flat!
I thought, I’ve met my Waterloo–
I’ll never master that!

But I toiled on while bitter tears
Fell often on my board.
And now I’ll draw a peaceful breath–
I’ve reaped a rich reward.

I heard the village gossip say,
Today as I passed by:
“I never liked her, but she makes
A perfect lemon pie.”

-Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I made a lemon meringue pie only once, and wrote about it here: Pie Amusement

You might think from the way I talked about pies ten years ago that I would have made dozens more by now, at least one a month, right? I have not. But, maybe I will this week — haha! I truly have been wanting to bake some kind of dessert so that I can call — or more likely, text — the neighbors and ask them for dessert on one of these long evenings. For me, baking a pie is a monumental event, and I don’t know if I can change my perspective at this stage of life.

This poem is from the poetry collection Songs of a Housewife, but you might be more familiar with the poet as the author of The Yearling. If you’d like to read more about the housewife-poet Rawlings, Sandy’s Chatter featured a post about her some time back, and shared another poem, “Prize Jelly.”

Showing the good side of my lemon meringue pie.

 

Gleanings from an evening walk.

nature, , , , ,

When Ivy and Jamie were here they got me back into the habit of an evening walk. Depending on how much time we had before dark, or how much energy remained for Grandma after the day’s events, we might just go to the bridge over the creek and back, ten minutes. Or we might do a half hour’s walk, farther on from there.

Wedged between twigs and the trunk of the live oak above, Ivy found a smooth and flattish oval rock. She brought it home and painted a frog on it, and placed it back where she’d found it. A day later it had been taken, so she next wrote a friendly note to the taker and managed to place it between the twigs. The note had been moved when I looked tonight, and now it’s likely to get blown down. She had leaned out precariously over the bridge to place her items in the first place, where I can’t reach, so I’m of no use in pursuing further written communications with other bridge-walkers.

Since the children went home, I’ve walked every evening by myself. Today dusk was early, because of it being a mostly cloudy day. No frogs were croaking in the creek, and few birds were to be heard. A towhee, the distant cawing of a crow, and few finches by the side of the path.

We’re coming into the season when the wild Himalayan blackberries get ripe, and they grow all along the creek and the path. Actually most of them never ripen, but this evening I found a few sweet and juicy ones  hiding in the back of a patch. One of them is in the photo, just before I plucked it. Dessert!

Along my street the neighbor’s bank of star jasmine is in full bloom, and it is exuding its heavy sweetness — too much for some people, and not a plant you want to have by your front door, because of the bees that will scare your guests. But it’s nice to catch a whiff when walking by.

Star Jasmine

And I passed the home of Deanna, whose door I bravely knocked on a couple of years ago to introduce myself and ask if I might have some of her dozens of summer squashes growing and becoming overgrown right by the sidewalk. She gladly gave me a few (already overgrown ones), but I never asked again. Last week I saw her outside when we were walking by, and she told me to come and pick from the current crop anytime. So tonight I did. I just twisted this little crookneck until it broke off.

These bike paths in my town that follow the course of the creeks typically back up to fenced back yards of neighborhoods on the other side. Growing through those fences are a great variety of not-so-wild plants: roses, trumpet vines, honeysuckle; for years branches of a fig tree hung over the path, from which I picked several figs, before it evidently got pruned back. Tonight I broke off a stem of honeysuckle to stick in my buttonhole, and breathed in its sweetness all the way home.