Category Archives: family

A baby and a butterfly.

family, grandchildren, music, my garden, quotes, , , , , ,

It’s been an exciting week. I have to share the most wonderful happening first, which is that my grandson Pat’s wife just gave birth to their first baby. Glory to God! This is my fourth great-grandchild. So far among the Greats there are three boys and one girl. I’ll share a photo as soon as I get a suitable one. Welcome, Little Boy!

(In the meantime, here’s Pat at left, long before he was considering marriage and children.)

My grandma, born this week in 1892.

“The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope.

“I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.”     

– G.K. Chesterton

In the last year I’ve planted three different types/colors of Japanese anemones, and the second of these new groups, the pale pink, opened its first flower yesterday. My old white ones have been blooming for a few weeks, and the new dark pink flowers with a wonky petal pattern also. The dark pink ones are the most enthusiastic, thriving on the amount of sun and water they get; I’m hoping the mildew they have suffered is just from unusual weather this year, and won’t always happen.

Recently my daughter Pearl and I were talking about Elizabeth von Arnim’s books, as we often do, and she suggested I might like The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen. I got it right away and have been reading it on Kindle — many of von Arnim’s books are out of print — to great enjoyment. In her telling of her travels around the German island and among other tourists, Elizabeth often uses words such as happy, blessed, joy, light and radiance to convey how she feels when out of doors, particularly when the sun is shining. She is my kindred spirit for sure. Here is one excerpt that reminded me of my own joy this very week:

“Oh blessed state, when mere quiet weather, trees and grass, sea and clouds, can make you forget that life has anything in it but rapture, can make you drink in heaven with every breath! How long will it last, this joy of living, this splendid ecstasy of the soul? I am more afraid of losing this, of losing even a little of this, of having so much as the edge of its radiance dimmed, than of parting with any other earthly possession.”

In other places her descriptions of the people she meets and the conversations among them are, as is usual with her, both insightful and very funny!

This little purple pot above was given to me by my granddaughter Ivy. It was the first thing she ever made of clay, and it has a convenient hole in the bottom so it can serve as a planter pot. It’s small, and just the right size and color to set off the beauty of a little chick type of succulent. When it becomes a hen I may have to substitute another chick in its place.

The Autumn Joy have turned burgundy.

I had another super exciting day when the Monarch chrysalis we’ve been watching matured and the butterfly emerged. The pupa stage lasted about three weeks, which is on the long side, and I wondered if possibly the insect had died. But the delay was likely just due to the week of cool and drizzly weather we had recently; the case darkened, and I began to see the Monarch colors inside.

Early in the morning I went out to look, and it was a chrysalis. An hour later, still in my nightgown, I checked again, and the butterfly had broken out. (This makes a total of four Monarchs I have monitored closely, yet missed their big event.) He was clinging to the mostly-bare milkweed stem, his wings hanging behind, heavy and damp.

All along I’d been worried that there was not enough food on those plants to grow a caterpillar to sufficient size, especially since the aphids were devouring the leaves at a fast rate. Then when the caterpillar entered the pupa stage, I thought, “Isn’t that chrysalis kind of small? Maybe it’s undernourished….” Now I stared and stared some more, amazed at how such a creature could have been so tightly packed into the thin case. A full-sized Monarch!

The sunlight was weak, so we waited, Mr. Monarch and I, for his wings to dry; intermittently and gently he opened and closed them. Drops of meconium (I looked it up) fell from his body several times. After a couple of hours he began to flap them a lot and flew/fell into the twiggy penstemon patch.

Down there I feared he’d dropped into a spider’s web, so as he struggled to walk out through the tangle, I put my finger near his head so he could climb onto it. Then I carried him, walking up my sleeve, to the zinnias in the planter box, where he was glad to attach himself to a stem.

I sat for a while in this chair nearby, where the buzzing of the bees in the salvia made garden music for me. Skippers were all over the zinnias, too, but they are hard to catch at their business, they are so quick to take a drink on the fly.

The glorious Monarch stayed another full hour on his zinnia stem before he flew up and away, eventually to a perch high up in the neighbor’s redwood tree. There’s no flower nectar to drink there, so I imagine he came down soon, but by then I was very late in Getting On With My Day, and had to go in.

The Anise Swallowtail caterpillars Bea and I had seen a couple of weeks ago disappeared; I hope they are hidden away in their next stage of development somewhere. But two more of these gorgeous creatures can be seen feasting on the parsley now (at right).

And there is another Monarch caterpillar not fourteen inches from where the one just emerged. It seems that there is indeed enough of the narrow milkweed leaves to support not only a large aphid population but at least one butterfly.

As you can see, the week was rich and full beyond the baby and the butterfly. But let me mention two more things that amazed me this week: Sweet peas blooming in September! Not many, but enough for a tiny bouquet. And the music of the piano.

I try not to talk overmuch here about my new housemate, so I will only say that a certain person has been playing my piano more than it’s been played in a very long time. Sometimes she plays morning and evening, and once I woke to the comforting sounds, and once it was as a lullaby when I went to sleep. This is a gift I never thought to ask for, but my Father thought to give it to me.

Do you suppose next week will be calmer?

Resting in their graves at the Presidio.

death, family, history, ,

Last week my housemate Bea and I drove to San Francisco to visit the grave of my uncle,
who in 1944 was buried in the National Cemetery at the Presidio.

Photo by Robert Campbell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

The Presidio, originally named El Presidio Real de San Francisco, “…had been a fortified location since September 17, 1776, when New Spain established the presidio to gain a foothold in Alta California and the San Francisco Bay. It passed to Mexico in 1820, which in turn passed it to the United States in 1848.” (Wikipedia)

Its status as an Army military installation ended several decades ago and it was transferred to the National Park Service in 1994. The military cemetery remains, roughly in the middle of the park, and that is the only part of the Presidio that Bea and I had time to visit.

Maj. James R. Roche, d. 1895.

We wished we’d had more time. As it was, we spent quite a while locating my uncle’s grave, and after saying a prayer there, we wandered up and down the rows of headstones, reading and musing over the names and dates, for an hour and a half.

Pearl Irene Mendonca, d. 1954.

We especially noticed the married couples. Above, John A. Smith and his wife Anne M. — John was a colonel in the Army during both world wars. He was born in 1882 and died in 1948. Anne M. died in 1986.

Richard Domba, and possibly his wife.
Arthur Superior Peterson and his wife Hilda Georgina.

Arthur Superior and his wife Hilda Georgina
died on the same day, October 3,1952.

Brigadier General Louis H. Rucker and his wife Cinderella.
General C.D. Greene and his wife Kate.

It was a gorgeous day, but the wind blowing off the Bay was chilly. The views: breathtaking!

My uncle died before he became an uncle; I never knew him. But I have been remembering him to God, and hope we will meet eventually. I’m glad his precious body has had such a beautiful place in which to rest and wait. Come, Lord Jesus!

Coastal Botanical

family, ocean, wildflowers, , , , , , , , ,

Son “Pathfinder” came from Oregon to see his sister Kate’s family, and we six packed into his truck to drive out to the coast for the day, to hike along a ridge trail and also picnic on the beach. As usual, I lagged behind half the time, making discoveries every few feet of interesting grasses and flowers, and trying to learn or remember their names.

California Aster a.k.a. Pacific Coast Aster

The wind was blowing up on the bluffs, but on the beach the air was still, and Kate was able to slice cheese in her lap and pass it around to the rest of us with nary a grain of sand involved.

Black Mustard

I’m showing several instances of Coastal Buckwheat, one of my favorite plants, with blooms more or less faded from the original pastel pink. It just now occurs to me that one reason I love it may be that those gray and pink colors were also featured in my grandma’s bathroom when I was a child. The bees appreciate it for their own reasons.

Below, a mixture of catsear and lotus combined to create a carpet of yellow:

Another contributor to the sunny tone was the Seaside Woolly Sunflower:

Seaside Woolly Sunflower

The grasses were swaying back and forth in the wind — European Marram Grass, my Seek app told me — and my favorite Rattlesnake Grass was abundant.

European Marram Grass
Rattlesnake Grass

European Searocket

To eat our snacky lunch, we gathered around a minimalist and rickety teepee someone else had built, because there was a nice log beside it that seated five nicely. In the foreground here is Tetragonia tetragonioides, which I’ve always known as New Zealand Spinach, but the actual New Zealanders usually call it  warrigal. There’s a better-watered specimen of this plant that keeps volunteering in my backyard garden:

A pink sport from the usual white native yarrow.

Pathfinder patiently discussed with me ways to tell two members of the Carrot Family apart, plants that grow in a similar habitat and that I’ve repeatedly mixed up over the decades. He noticed the different leaf shape and type: Cow Parsnip has large, deeply toothed leaves:

Cow Parsnip

…while Angelica — in this case Henderson’s Angelica — has pinnately compound leaves.

Henderson’s Angelica

Their flowers aren’t exactly the same, either, and there are other differences. Once I saw the two plants growing right next to each other; that helped, for a time. Unfortunately the Seek app that I use a lot does not have a search feature; but if it did, I would probably be even more distracted from enjoying the plants themselves. So I guess it’s just as well.

Coastal Buckwheat with yarrow and more.

It was a very satisfying outing, even if several of us did get sunburned. That was opportunity to take advantage of a backyard botanical: my Aloe Vera plant, the leaves of which we peeled on one side, revealing the gelatinous interior, which we applied to red arms and neck. Oh, so soothing.

Our whole crew slept well that night!

chickory

Summer ought to be warm.

family, food and cooking, grandchildren, , ,

Daughter Kate and her family are visiting me for a while, so I’ve been occupied with them and not thinking about my blog. But today they are visiting friends in another city, and I walked around the garden where a pollinator party is ongoing….

This time it was a Cabbage White butterfly that got my attention, in the midst of bees who were also enjoying the lavender.

All the nectar-drinking creatures seem to be luxuriating in the heat; when they luxuriate it means they are all limbered up and move more easily, and faster. At least, that’s how it seems to  me. I feel that way, except for the faster part.

Kabocha squash growing bigger…

Many of the calendulas are spent, but this one just opened:

Before my family arrived, I tried a new zucchini bread recipe to have ready for them. I used this one from the New York Times Cooking site, but cut the sugar by half, and doubled the lemon zest: Olive Oil Zucchini Bread. (If you use this link you can access the recipe, that I am “giving” you.) It’s quite delicious. Unfortunately, I had to buy the zucchinis for it! I guess I didn’t sow my seeds in a good place, as the plants are not growing. I will have to wait longer to have a satisfying summer squash harvest. It’s been years since I’ve been satisfied that way.

I had a longing to make real strawberry shortcake, using the shortcake recipe from my oldest edition of the Joy of Cooking. We ate it for Rigo’s belated seventh birthday party. That recipe called for a little butter, plus “milk or cream.” Note to self: Don’t use all cream! Everyone loved it, but it was super rich.

We are all about soccer this week, as my dear people brought me their zeal for the sport and for the World Cup happening right now. I’ve watched two games with them already, and expect to see two more, including the final game this weekend. My children all played on recreational soccer teams as youths and I do love watching. These professionals are incredible athletes, and I am constantly amazed. Kate’s family have just moved from Argentina, and are excited that Argentina is still in the playoffs. When Raj and Rigo built a Lego street scene, it included a soccer field with a game and spectators. Go, Argentines!