Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.
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The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls Of mastodons, are billiard balls.
The sword of Charlemagne the Just Is ferric oxide, known as rust.
The grizzly bear whose potent hug Was feared by all, is now a rug.
Great Caesar’s bust is on my shelf, And I don’t feel so well myself.
-Arthur Guiterman
This is a fun poem. The poet joined the theme by embarking on his own transformation to dust some time back. I also like these other lines he wrote, on changes he saw happening around him:
New motor roads are dustless, The latest steel is rustless, Our tennis courts are sodless, Our new religions—godless.
Guiterman in 1932
I’m sure that countless swords that have been swung through the ages are pretty rusty by now, but I happened to see this article about the Frankish king’s most famous sword, “Joyeuse” — and that one is not rust yet, because it has been preserved in the Louvre for many generations. Has any of you seen it?
I was thrilled when my newly planted peas came up within a few days. That was one benefit of the Hot Week, when it was over 100 degrees for many days in a row. The seeds were bedded in a temporarily partly shady place behind the zinnias and parsley, so the earth stayed moist.
They are petite and very cute, growing close together next to the tall trellis where I planned to train them upward… until after they were up I read online, and then confirmed it by checking the packet, that Sugar Ann snap peas are a Bush Type of plant, and typically grow only 1-2 feet tall. I have grown peas for more than half my life, so why would I have read the description and instructions?? The packet had been a kind gift a few months ago from Hearth and Field; my thought process on rediscovering them in my box of seeds went quickly from “Oh, goody!” to “Must plant these right away!” and I did that very efficiently.
Chartwell Sweet Peas
Efficiency is not one of the guiding principles of Hearth and Field, however, and I should have embarked on my pea project more in the spirit and manner of the vision expressed on the website of that journal:
Welcome to Hearth & Field!
We are the only journal you’ll find
that makes the internet move
at the pace and rhythm of real life.
Hearth and Field also quotes G.K. Chesterton at the top of that home page, saying,
“The simplification of anything is always sensational.”
I don’t have time to think more about how that second quote relates to my peas. [Update: I originally put something here about WinstonChurchill’s Chartwell peas, which I attributed to Chesterton, which is very embarrassing, and there is no way to fix it, so I removed it. Thank you to my blessed reader Amy who noticed.]
In Real Life, “Haste makes waste,” right? But that motto doesn’t convey quite everything about how I will need to spend an extra hour today that I was not planning on. I will transplant those little starts to the middle of the planter box, so as to free up the trellis for planting Green Beauty snow peas from Baker Creek, because it would be a waste of my beautiful trellis to do otherwise. This is how “the pace and rhythm of real life” works in real life!
Back in May, I wrote about how I had been given a nighttime airplane ride with my son-in-law as pilot. I have had the experience on commercial flights, too, and found it enthralling whenever we were flying low enough to see the patterns of lights down below. I wonder if I will have that chance again…
FLYING AT NIGHT
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
Gladsome Lights 