All posts by GretchenJoanna

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About GretchenJoanna

Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.

Washington – Water and Other Themes

nature, travel, trees, water, , ,

My dear husband conceived the idea of going to the state of Washington for a week, to visit the Olympic Peninsula as he had done with his parents as a boy, and also to see some friends and family who had moved there since our last visit. I’m always a bit overwhelmed by the water, water everywhere aspect of that area, and not because of the water itself.

It’s just that the many canals, sounds and straits around Seattle and northward to the Canadian border make me even more likely than is my usual disorientable self to lose track of where we are. I have studied the maps more than most people are accustomed to doing in this day of GPS and cell phones, but I still feel pretty hopeless about it. We are always looking across some body of water or other, and I never know what it is or what I am seeing on the other side.

It’s beautiful, all that water, and so refreshing, as long as I don’t let myself get discouraged when Mr. Glad wants me to know that those are the San Juan Islands, or that is the Hood Canal. But being overwhelmed by water might be a good thing, if one isn’t drowning.

I kept thinking of my church’s teaching that water is the substance representative of all Creation, so that when Christ was baptized in the Jordan he was actually baptizing the Creation and blessing it. In Bremerton the Harborside Fountain Park highlights the city’s maritime and shipbuilding history with a multitude of fountains, surrounded by constant views of waves, and boats sailing across…um, which canal is that?

Spray from fountains was blessing me, and the waves and moist air were full of the kindness of Him Who alone is holy and blessed in Himself. I can’t intellectually comprehend what my Father has done any more than I can find my way around Puget Sound, but I can receive the blessing anyway.

The forest is imposing wherever the water is not. Lush conifers for Christmas trees, tall, tall Douglas firs and spruces for telephone poles and lumber, lots of lumber for all our houses. This western part of the state is known for high and frequent precipitation to keep all these trees happy, though when the sun doesn’t shine for days, some humans get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) apparently for lack of sunlight, especially in winter when the days are also shorter.

Amazingly, we didn’t have to worry about that, because aside from some morning fog and clouds, and the slightest drizzle, the weather was favoring our touring of the area and taking pictures. I never pulled my rain jacket out of its pouch, even in the rain forest!

Spending days in this part of the country brought to my mind images from a National Geographic children’s book, Three Little Indians, which we read many, many times to our children in the 70’s and 80’s. One of the children featured in the stories of three Native American tribes was Center-of-the-Sky, a Nootka of past eras of the Northwest. The dark skies and high surf of the paintings, along with the idea of fish as a staple of the diet, came back to me on our trip, when two of our hosts served us salmon, which might be the quintessential food of the Northwest.

Years ago when I read a story of Lewis & Clark to the children I was saddened to hear that when the party of mostly Midwesterners got to the Pacific Ocean, hungry and weary, they found a plenitude of fish, but didn’t like it. [I later learned that this is not true.] They had to trade with the Indians for some kind of meat they were more accustomed to. I suppose they were o.k. with berries, those dear little fruits that abound here. Our cousin Anne told us that in her neighborhood in Shelton the women will go berry-picking together to make the time pass more quickly as they tediously fill their buckets with tiny huckleberries or blueberries for pies or the jam pot.

We enjoyed berry cobbler and berry crisp cooked by our hosts, and I took pictures of snow berries, but they are such a bright white they sabotage the photos. We encountered what was probably the Pacific Blackberry: “This is the only native blackberry in the Pacific Northwest, has excellent flavor, and is the ultimate source of several horticultural varieties, including marionberries, loganberries, and boysenberries.”

Mushrooms are prolific in Washington’s woodlands; they get nutrients from the tree roots. October is a good time for harvesting the ones called chanterelles, and one humble café where we ate was featuring wild chanterelles deep-fried. I didn’t want to miss the chance to try these exotic fungi, so we ordered a plate of appetizers. After downing the lot, we doubted that was the best way to present their subtle flavor.

Abundance would be the overarching theme here, where God has blessed so richly in nature and the natural products that we all depend on so much. Our friend C. asked how we liked their state, and I had to think a while before I said, “I’m afraid there are too many trees for me.”

Too many trees!? How could one find fault with that? Western Washington seems to be almost the opposite of the desert, the symbol of want and dryness. But creatures are provided for even in that arid place, and I might still prefer it, with its abundance of sky and sun shining out of it. For the remainder of our vacation, though, I found plenty in this wet and wild land to nourish my soul as well as body.

Laid is a Word You Should Use

the language, ,

In the process of slowly writing blogs about my recent travels, I’m going to just stick a quick post in here on a completely different topic. Most blog writers are interested in being good writers, so I know you won’t be mad at me if I point out a grammatical error that I’ve only started seeing recently. If you make this error, know that you are in good company with Tiina Nunnally, acclaimed translator of Kristin Lavransdatter. I was surprised to see that she was also confused (several times, so I know it wasn’t a typo) on
Lie and Lay.
There are two verbs, to lie and to lay.

Lie is what you do on a bed, or a beach, to rest, or with your lover. Or what anything can do, remaining in a place. (It’s also when you tell an untruth, but that doesn’t get confused, as far as I know, so I’m not dealing with it now.)

The verb has present and past tenses, of course:

Present tense: I lie on the beach, you lie, he lies, they lie. Lie down, Fido! He was lying there asleep for hours.

Past tense: I lay on the bed yesterday, you lay on the bed yesterday, he lay on the bed, etc.

Past perfect: I have lain on the bed every night, etc.

This is called an intransitive verb, which fact might help someone to understand the difference between it and to lay. That means that there is no action transferred to an object. You don’t lie something, you just lie, period.

Lay is a transitive verb, meaning you do it to something. You might lay the napkin on your lap, or the platter on the table.

Present tense: I lay my head on the pillow, The hen lays an egg, Now I lay me down to sleep.

Past tense: I laid my head on the pillow last night, and my mother laid a quilt over me. The hen laid an egg.

Past perfect: I have laid a blanket on the baby every naptime.

The slang about getting laid, etc. is an irregular usage, and I wonder if it may be the reason people avoid the word laid? This is the new error I am noticing, as in Kristin Lavransdatter, when the translator wrote something like, “He lay his trousers on the bed.” Ouch. You can see that there is never a case when that would be correct.

The problem many people have had for ages is saying lay when they should say lie, as in, “Lay down, Fido!” Ouch. That has possibly become more common than the correct usage, I’m afraid. Oddly, it’s the very people who would never make that mistake who are avoiding laid, which can’t be avoided without making me say Ouch.

The only reason I know these things is because as a child I had to memorize verb tenses. Maybe that tradition was fading out soon after, but for any of you who were shortchanged in school, you could revive the tradition to help yourself. Do it like this:

In a sing-song kind of way, if you like, for To Lie, say:
I lie, you lie, he lies, they lie;
I lay, you lay, he lay, they lay;
I have lain, you have lain, he has lain, they have lain.
Or just the short version : “Lie, lay, lain”

And for To Lay, you could just remind yourself: “Lay, laid, laid.”

If you are still confused, you see how others explain it here or here.

Laid is really a fine word. Don’t neglect it!

Up and Down the Mountain

friends, mountains, nature, quotes, wildflowers, , , , ,

Last week was the occasion of a blessed excursion to my family’s mountain cabin, and this time I shared the time with my dear friend Mrs. Bread.

I’ve blogged about the cabin and lake before, here and here. The last two years I went mostly for time alone with God in His Creation. This time I enjoyed plenty of that experience, plus deepening of friendship, and working on improving or maintaining the house and property. Now that my father has passed, I am part owner of this place, and I happily but more intensely feel the responsibility to do my part, though I’m afraid I’ll never match the hardworking devotion of my siblings who live closer; some of them can dash up just for the day if they need to.

Here I am painting the threshold and doorjamb against the elements of winter. One year–or maybe more than one–the whole cabin was buried in snow, just a lump in the white landscape.

The drive took me ten hours, what with a leisurely detour to pick up Mrs. Bread on the way. So we stayed four nights so as to have three whole days for taking pictures, cooking, reading together, cleaning, admiring giant boulders and listening to the silence of the forest.
How can it be so awe-fully quiet? There are birds flitting and chipmunks scampering, breezes blowing and even the occasional chain saw in the village. But the earth feels peacefully serene up there, weighted with quiet, heavy with a silence that speaks of God’s presence. I seem to soak up contentedness and rest.

I needed the rest, as I had come down with a cough and cold in the two days before. The altitude gave me a headache the first night, and we both suffered from the reduced oxygen, our legs uncooperative and slow when we dragged back up the hill after a walk down to the lake.

It’s the High Sierra, and up there the mornings start out below freezing this time of year, making you want to lie abed and watch the sky lighten out the window. By midday it can be sunburning hot out on the deck, so we sat in the shade of the umbrella to peruse the several tree guides that have found their way to the cabin’s bookshelf.

At first we limited ourselves to studying the general shapes and angles of branches, focusing in on the cones with binoculars. Eventually we walked among the trees below the cabin and noticed where cones had fallen underneath their mother trees.

The pines in the neighborhood are mostly Lodgepole, as illustrated by the picture here. But to be truthful, it took Pippin’s later confirmation of that suspicion to make me believe it.

As we walked together marveling at the various beautiful flowers, berries, and stones, Mrs. Bread said, “These little trees grab at my heart!” See why I love her?

  

What a lot can be seen in this photograph, taken from outside the picture window, while I was sitting at the table inside writing a letter to a grandson. You can see the kitchen behind me, and the lake reflected behind Mrs. Bread’s reflection.

I like having these pictures of myself at the lake, something besides the ones of my feet that I took last year when solitary. Thanks, my friend!

P1030772

These three trees stood out from the pines with their trunks shown off by the granite slabs.  Mr. Glad thinks they might be red cedars.

The first morning at the cabin I read in the Psalter, “For Thou hast said: Mercy shall be built up for ever,” (Ps. 88) and was musing about the image that phrase conjured in my mind, of an edifice being constructed. And why not the image of towers of clouds, that often rain down showers of blessing? From now on, when I see cloud skyscrapers rising fast, piling layer upon layer, I will think of the way God’s mercies do the same, every morning.

Someone brought this small remembrance of our father up to put on the bedroom wall. If you click on it a couple of times you can read the labels. I love seeing my father’s handwriting, which didn’t change in all the years since this collection was made when he was in college.

Mrs. Bread helped me firm up my resolve to try really hard to come up to this beloved place more next year. It’s not available for very long, though: This week shutters will be put up, water turned off, chimney covered, to mention only a few of the many tasks to protect the house from blizzards–and if we can get through the snow to open it up before the first of July we’ll be happy.

I’ve never been up more than twice in a summer; I wonder if I really do have the liberty to even dream of spending a week, or visiting twice or three times. I’ll pray for a miracle, and wait to see how the Lord chooses to pile up His mercies next year.

Recipes Page Has Appeared

food and cooking

I’m headed to the mountains this week for a few days, but I managed to put together a page of recipe links, found now on the sidebar. I’ll have to transcribe the Ratatouille recipe later and add it along with others by and by.

At church we just had our yearly international food festival, and I baked a couple of things for the bakery which I’ll tell about, too, illustrated with pictures taken in process and upon completion. It was quite fun to bake goodies that didn’t sit around here tempting me for days; they were consumed within a few hours of the start of the party. This year I didn’t even eat any baklava. The memory of the perfect rendition of baklava that a member of our parish bakes was still lingering and satisfying.