Category Archives: family

Looking at Shasta and lichens.

family, nature, , , ,

The thermometer hovered at the freezing point all day, everywhere we went. The places we explored, though, were out of the woods and piles of snow, in more arid expanses dotted with rocky hillocks and juniper trees.

The volcanic peak of Mount Shasta rose high above the rest of the land to the south. Closer to the ground, lichens and mosses grew thickly on rocks.

We ate a snacky lunch on the highest pile of boulders, and the children scrambled up and down and climbed rock faces with bare hands that eventually turned red and numb with cold.

I was surprised at how the slightest breeze cut right through my several layers of under and outer winter garments. It was so gorgeous, I wished we could have roamed for more hours. Maybe in another season.

We departed as the sun was going down and taking its tiny bit of warmth from us. The first day of 2022 had been pretty nice!

Snow and pastels.

family, travel, winter, ,

As I was making my last sweep through the house to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, my attention was caught by movement outside the kitchen windows, and I delayed my departure five minutes because of birds: doves, finches, a dozen juncos, a titmouse, a chickadee, a pair of Nutall’s woodpeckers — many hanging off the suet feeders to fortify them against the freezing weather coming through.

And this guy, whom I stared at for as long as he perched there, not recognizing him, as he was the biggest, fattest robin I have ever seen.

Then, I loaded myself in the car and off I drove, north to daughter “Pippin’s.’ The first hours were through winter-greened and gentled landscapes.

But now I am in the mountain forest.

I forgot to pack my laptop, so this post may come out a bit strange. When I arrived Pippin was just putting bread dough to rise next to the woodstove, and cats Fred and Duncan were not feeling the winter at all.

Scout helped me unload my car, and we admired icicles together.

This morning I woke in a cozy room with this view out my window:

Dear Readers who have kept me company here during the past year, or who only recently stopped by, I hope that in 2022 you also find comfort and peace. My advice: Try not to stand under large melting icicles.

Happy New Year!

The chefs create lavish plates.

family, my garden, , , , ,

The children and I had a good time scavenging in my garden for any remaining edibles. My New Zealand Spinach, known down under as warrigal, I think, popped up and was immediately lush after recent rains, so I picked a gallon of leaves to make Creamy Green Soup with.

The boys used a few of the leaves as a foundation for multiple gorgeous culinary creations, several of which were proudly presented as “fully edible.” I did eat one whole plateful, and we all nibbled on pineapple guavas that we found on the ground at the back of the bush, and almost-ripe pomegranate seeds. We found a few sweet tomatillos here and there, but there were only two fruits on the strawberry tree. Olives and salvia flowers and pomegranate flowers all contributed to extravagant visual displays.

Skeleton of a tomatillo husk. It contained seeds and a fly.

Meanwhile, Soldier cleaned my rain gutters
and Joy raked the paths of pine and redwood needles.

Liquidambar gumballs

On our drizzly walks we’ve admired liquidambar trees with deep red leaves yet to drop, and collected cotoneaster berries for the next phase of Christmas decorating. My grandson Pat and his new bride are joining us for Christmas Eve!

Here are the remaining “Baby Jesuses” that we made from salt dough about thirty years ago, re-wrapped in their twill tape swaddling clothes and set under my second little Christmas tree, given by my neighbor and decorated by the children just tonight.

“Away in a walnut shell…”

All the most dramatic things happen.

family, home, quotes, , , , ,

“It is right that men should have houses, right that they should have land, right that they should have laws to protect the land; but all these things are only machinery to make leisure for the labouring soul. The house is only a stage set up by stage carpenters for the acting of what Mr. J. B. Yeats has called ‘the drama of the home.’

“All the most dramatic things happen at home, from being born to being dead. What a man thinks about these things is his life; and to substitute for them a bustle of electioneering and legislation is to wander about among screens and pulleys on the wrong side of pasteboard scenery; and never to act the play. And that play is always a miracle play; and the name of its hero is Everyman.”

-G.K. Chesterton

2016