Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.
View all posts by GretchenJoanna →
I recently had two of my grandchildren staying with me for nearly a week. Most of the days and nights I had either Ivy or Jamie, but one day and night in the middle of the span I got both of them together. It was the first time we’ve had so much one-on-one time in a short period, and now that they are 10 and almost 13 years old, our options for how we spend our hours are expansive. We never ran out of books to read together, music to listen to, or things to talk about — including those books, and the music.
For example, Jamie and I listened to The Story of Beowulf, and The Eagle of the Ninth; sometimes he drew pictures while listening. Ivy played her favorite U2 songs for me, and I showed her videos of her late Grandpa Glad singing — she was only two when he passed.
We took many walks near and far, and shopped and cooked together, making lemon curd, boba tea, Greek tzatziki, and plum cobbler.
Stirring tzatziki.Chai boba tea
They both helped me in my big project of removing gravel from the plot where I’m going to plant my new manzanita McMinn. And the day we were all three together, we went to the beach, where it was overcast and 60 degrees all afternoon.
Greater Moon Jelly with sandy great toe for perspective.
Twice Ivy and I walked as far as the library and on to the grocery store, and with Jamie I went on a long lake stroll for which we drove a half hour to the trailhead. They both liked just rambling along the nearby creek almost daily, and remembering all the times they have done that before. Jamie wanted to find the rope swing that has been down there “forever,” but we never found it, and on the way back when we saw my neighbor watering his garden, he told us that the city always takes it down, and someone always puts it back up, but no one has put it up again for a few years.
We visited my friends and their chickens, went to church, painted, did housework together — and played Bananagrams more than once.
Ivy’s winning board
One thing we didn’t do was sleep overmuch. School does not start for them until after Labor Day, so they can catch up over the next couple of weeks. I don’t feel bad about neglecting sleep, as we were taking advantage of our unhurried and summery time together, which will never come again. It was restful to our souls.
A few years ago I posted a poem by Clive James, the title poem “Sentenced to Life,” from the collection written after he became ill, and he began to consider his life from the perspective of a dying man. When I opened that book again recently I immediately was taken by another reflective poem with similar themes.
Reportedly James maintained confidence to the end that there is no afterlife, but I suspect he was cured of that delusion as he was crossing over. He did realize and admit publicly that he had been a “bad husband” (by long infidelity) and he regretted it. In his poems he compares his years of strength, the exciting years of his life, with the last decade when he was facing death, and he judges the recent, shorter season to be the time during which he was restored to sanity by facing the truth about himself.
LANDFALL
Hard to believe, now, that I once was free From pills in heaps, blood tests, X-rays and scans. No pipes or tubes. At perfect liberty, I stained my diary with travel plans.
The ticket paid for at the other end, I packed a hold-all and went anywhere They asked me. One on whom you could depend To show up, I would cross the world by air
And come down neatly in some crowded hall. I stood for a full hour to give my spiel. Here, I might talk back to a nuisance call, And that’s my flight of eloquence. Unreal:
But those years in the clear, how real were they, When all the sirens in the signing queue Who clutched their hearts at what I had to say Were just dreams, even when the dream came true?
I called it health but never stopped to think It might have been a kind of weightlessness, That footloose feeling always on the brink Of breakdown: the false freedom of excess.
Rarely at home in those days, I’m home now, Where few will look at me with shining eyes. Perhaps none ever did, and that was how The fantasy of young strength that now dies
Expressed itself. The face that smiled at mine Out of the looking glass was seeing things. Today I am restored by my decline And by the harsh awakening it brings.
I was born weak and always have been weak. I came home and was taken into care. A cot-case, but at long last I can speak: I am here now, who was hardly even there.
One night as Dick lay half asleep, Into his drowsy eyes A great still light began to creep From out the silent skies. It was the lovely moon’s, for when He raised his dreamy head, Her surge of silver filled the pane And streamed across his bed. So, for a while, each gazed at each — Dick and the solemn moon — Till, climbing slowly on her way, She vanished, and was gone.
-Walter de la Mare
Ivan Marchuk, The Houses Are Illuminated by the Moonlight
I’ve been home from my travels more than two weeks already, and before any more trips loom on the horizon, I have eight more weeks of homebody bliss remaining. It’s still high summer, when the days –or at least, the afternoons — are of the warm sort that energize and call me to the garden. This is the greatest good fortune. Glory to God, that I have a garden. Glory to God!
Stinking Chamomile
Other things besides the garden have helped to fill my days, and are filling my calendar into the near future. When I am home, I can be a host, and have guests! My house is happy when extra people are enjoying its spaces, and feeling the breezes blow through. That’s happened twice already in the last two weeks, and I’m expecting it to happen more.
When guests come in the summertime, they can stroll about the garden and pick a plum, and younger guests can play in the playhouse. The last one who did that made a soup entirely of tarragon and fountain water, and then dumped it into the fountain. Speaking of the fountain, when I am home I can keep it running, and keep it clean. It’s not very cheery to have a fountain turned off.
Lesser Goldfinch – internet photo
The birds are enjoying the summer. I hadn’t noticed the goldfinches much in the last couple of years, but this week they have been frolicking around the fountain; they seem to have plenty of time to play, probably because they’re not burning so many calories to keep warm. Today the house finches came along to drink and bathe as well. And one goldfinch made a side trip to the arbor, to perch on a long wisteria runner that was reaching out horizontally. He made short and quick jumps down toward the tip, which dropped a couple of inches in elevation with each jump, pecking at the buds, or maybe at insects, until he was at some critical point, after which I suppose he’d have found himself upside down if he’d held on — so he flew away.
Spanish Clover
It was a wet spring here, and the early summer was cool, but now everything not in watered gardens is crisping up. I took my friend to one of my favorite parks for an easy hike, but it was so dry that the trail in many places had deep and wide cracks that made walking difficult, even in my boots. I guess I’d never been there at this time of year before? It did smell good out there, I must admit, and amid the crackling grasses we saw lots of wildflowers — first, masses of Yellow Star-Thistle, Centaurea solstitialis, an invasive plant that is in bloom now.
Yellow Star-Thistle
Star-Thistle is one of the many invasives that one can learn about on the website of the California Invasive Plants Council website, which I only just discovered. I think I’ll like to return there. The website of Yosemite National Park also features articles about such plants locally, and one of them tells about the great lengths different agencies go to, to control what is in California considered a weed. A Wikipedia article is unclear about whether the star-thistle is considered noxious in six or in 23 of the U.S. states where it is present. Are you my U.S. readers familiar with it? Evidently the purple star thistle is essentially the same thing, except for the color.
Star Thistle
The pennyroyal that amazed me at Tomales Bay also grew along the path in less spectacular displays; and Spanish Clover, and Stinking Chamomile (Anthemis cotula), photo above. That chamomile was new to me; Gwen sniffed it and said that indeed it did not smell good.
Domesticated and not-stinky chamomile is growing in my planter box, just one specimen that sprouted from the old seeds I threw in there before I went to Greece. I should plant it every year, it is so cheery.
Last week we celebrated the Procession of the Cross, and the festal cross stayed in the middle of the temple until the Forefeast of Transfiguration. Now we will celebrate Transfiguration for about a week until the Leavetaking of Transfiguration which is the day before we celebrate Dormition (Assumption) of the Theotokos in the middle of the month. I love the way the calendar anchors me to the church, and reveals the abundance of saints and events who fill the year with the glory of God.
Before the service, before all the fruit had arrived.
As usual we brought baskets of fruit, and after Liturgy processed through the vineyard singing. It wasn’t as prickly as the trail I walked on last week, but it required careful stepping around grape prunings and blackberry brambles.
I pruned the lavender this week, and set it aside to take to a friend so she can add it to the straw in her chicken coop, to sweeten up the atmosphere:
A different friend came for lunch, and we were able to eat outside on the patio, after a leisurely tour of the garden. It was just warm enough to thoroughly relax, but not to wilt. I added snips of my parsley and tarragon to the salad we made together. I could have put a few calendula petals in as well, but I didn’t think of that.
This has been a pretty unfocused ramble, I’m afraid, so rambling that I don’t know how to sign off. So, let’s just pretend we were talking together next to my planter boxes, and looking at the zinnias, and then I went into the house and didn’t come back.
that they are 10 and almost 13 years old, our options for how we spend our hours are expansive. We never ran out of books to read together, music to listen to, or things to talk about — including those books, and the music.
I added snips of my parsley and tarragon to the salad we made together. I could have put a few calendula petals in as well, but I didn’t think of that.
Gladsome Lights 