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.
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.
“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.”
I hope you have people to love, and those who love you. Every conversation with a neighbor or hug from a grandchild feels more precious to me as the days go by; before November winds all the way down I want to share a few scenes and moments that have been to me infusions of grace and joy in the midst of “interesting times” in the world.
It was almost a month ago that my neighbor Kim had a dinner party for several couples and one widow (yours truly) on our block. It was a very restorative and healing time, I think for all of us. Several of these people I had hardly seen for two years, though they live just a few doors down. Half of them had known my late husband.
After we were seated around a long dining table, our host gave a surprising toast to “The first of many more post-covid neighborhood parties!” All cups were raised, and the general tone of the ensuing comments, and the whole evening, was of holding on to our humanity and neighborliness as much as possible, no matter what comes. No one went home early that night; we sat around the gas firepit, or stood in the kitchen, chatting and sipping and savoring the togetherness, acting out the toast for a few blessed hours.
Closer to Thanksgiving, I returned to the beach with a former housemate who accompanied me three years ago just before she moved to New York. Our time there was refreshing and sweet; instead of the scores of seals we’d seen that time, gulls by the hundreds were swooping and gliding back and forth where a river empties into the sea.
We watched them, and the waves, while sitting on a log. When it was time to go, we climbed up a sand dune and tromped back to the parking lot, weaving through clumps of grass in our bare feet.
A few days later, who should arrive but my dear daughter Pippin and her family. They came in stages; when only three of them had got here, we went for a walk in the hills. It was the first time I’d been with Pippin in that particular park since the day Jamie was born, lo these many years ago, the day after my husband’s funeral. So Jamie had been along, too, and maybe the jostling of that walk in springtime had prompted him to start his journey into the outer world.
This day, he was climbing trees with Ivy. First they climbed a Valley Oak, then a Buckeye (horse chestnut), and finally a Bay (Laurel) tree. Pippin joined them up in the bay.
We noticed many little trees and shrubs that were fenced in by wire cylinders, presumably against nibbling by deer. From a sign, here is a list of species that have been planted in the last ten years:
Later we worked on pies for our feast, and the children had the idea of making gluten-free pie-crust cookies for Uncle Steve, for whose sake Pippin was making such a dough for a pumpkin pie. I assembled the fourth version of my famous Grapefruit Gelatin Salad, which after ten years I am still refining to accommodate the changing ingredients available in the stores, and the loss of my favorite, odd-sized dish I always used for it. I’ll pass the recipe along when I fix it so that it fits in one 9×12 pan.
Our long weekend was very full, starting with Divine Liturgy on Thanksgiving morning, and including two (food) feasts, the little hike; and a busy afternoon, when Pippin and the Professor helped me to sort through old camping equipment, put hardware cloth over my planter boxes where the birds have been pecking, and hang fairy lights in the living room.
This little report covers only a small fraction of the loving friends and family who have made me feel the solace of God and the blessedness of the world. I reconnected with old friends and drank tea with many others. It has been a good month in important ways. May God keep our hearts during the next one and bring us with joy to the Feast of the Nativity of Christ.
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” I John 4
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.
A few days later, who should arrive but my dear daughter Pippin and her family. They came in stages; when only three of them had got here, we went for a walk in the hills. It was the first time I’d been with Pippin in that particular park since the day Jamie was born, lo these many years ago, the day after my husband’s funeral. So Jamie had been along, too, and maybe the jostling of that 
Gladsome Lights 