Category Archives: travel

The fountain is dry, but not I.

bees, bread, my garden, travel, , , , , ,

This morning the fountain-cleaner Bill did his good work scrubbing and flushing out my fountain, and then left it empty and turned off. I am traveling a lot in the next month and don’t want it to become a swamp while I’m gone.

Out my bedroom window.

The garden is looking pretty good right now because it’s entering the flowery time of year, and because I’ve had several days to focus on it, to be out there noticing not just little weeds that are easily pulled out of mulch, but this and that glorious scent and sight.

On my neighborhood walks, too, I’m spying perfection of Japanese maples…

…and at church, just look at the wisteria! I could only fit about half of its span in the frame:

Springtime is downright boggling, to the mind and the heart.

During the few days that were cloudy and gloomy, I washed the dirt from my hands and put them into the sourdough. My recent loaf is very tasty, but it would not rise — well, not much. After several hours I gave up and hoped for oven spring, which did not happen. So I got this stunted result, shown after I had sliced it to store in the freezer, so I can take out one slice (2 1/4 inch tall) at a time.

Soon I was back outside again, planting three butternut squash starts and a Juliet tomato plant in the planter boxes. There is no frost in the forecast, and I will soon be gone to Wisconsin for a while, for the first of the grandchild weddings. My original plan was to just wait until mid-May this year to plant summer vegetables, but it seems worth the risk at this point to get them in sooner.

We Orthodox are entering Holy Week on Sunday. I will be away from my parish for most of it, and through Bright Week, and away from my home and garden, so any real-time reports I might have time for will be field reports, or travelogues. For now, I’m soaking up all the familiar and beloved elements of my world to fortify myself against the asphalt and airports that lie between me and daughter Pearl’s garden. Once I arrive there, I will be well nourished by hugs and kisses from a dozen or more family members, and won’t even think of my lemon tree or coral bells back here.

But not quite yet! When I noticed the bee with its head in the lithodora (picture at top), I was mostly looking at the Blue-eyed Grass nearby. It is so sweet it breaks my heart.

The soft and white sand.

nature, travel, writing, , , , , ,

My church friend Ana and I flew to Florida last week for the Symbolic World Summit in Tarpon Springs, and returned on Sunday. I am still processing all the quite stimulating and encouraging lectures and discussions we heard; Ana and I also enjoyed the extended time together over five days to talk about our loves and lives, including many books and ideas. We attended services at St. Nicholas Greek Cathedral in town after the event.

In the paragraph above I notice that I effortlessly included six noun or adjective conjunctions; does that habit flow from my general tendency to the “Yes, And” point of view, I wonder? I hope you don’t mind, because I’m not in the mood for polishing up my writing skills right now. It could be that the Summit increased my leanings toward expansiveness… but it’s an effort I am always making to keep the conjoined words to only two.

Orthodox Lent is almost here! And there is plenty for me to focus on, of the sort of things that help us on our Journey to Pascha. A few of the speakers at the conference gave us their unique short list of “action points,” for going forward in our personal lives on the theme of the event. That theme was Reclaiming the Cosmic Image, which right there seems a very Lenten goal. Maybe I will share about it in future posts.

For now, I just wanted to document the Florida sands. I had never been in that part of the country before, or anywhere on the Gulf of Mexico. When we first walked from our car to the beach, the bright whiteness struck me first. And then, to walk barefoot on that soft, soft sand, everywhere full of broken pieces of shells, was such a different experience from California’s North Coast, which is my normal experience. We rarely see any but mussel shells on our beaches, but there in Florida intact shells were also in great abundance, and in places laid out in wide swaths. Of course, the air was balmy, but not hot.

Shells not yet made into sand, and therefore not soft.

We visited Sunset Beach on Friday (at sunset), and Honeymoon Island on our way to the airport Sunday. Both outings were fairly brief, because most of our weekend was at the conference venue.

We collected a few shells, and my purse collected a lot of the fine, glittery sand. I even carried a big handful back to the car, where Ana found a ziplock bag for me to put it in. I have been neglecting my sand collection in the last couple of years, but now I will get it going again, and will have added one little bottle of white sand to show that I truly was once upon a time in Florida.

Streams in the Valley of Fire.

friends, nature, travel, , , , ,

Contrary to my recent posting about the dead feeling of winter, I was for several days experiencing living “streams in the desert” that were, I realize now, an onflowing of Theophany grace. It was rain, rain, rain, and when it fell on a real live desert in southern Nevada, I felt the rivers as symbolic and real, all mixed together.



At the end of last week I flew to visit church friends who not long ago settled in that state, a large homeschooling family whom I’d been longing to see. We had planned that on Monday we’d make an outing to Valley of Fire State Park in the Mojave Desert. It was raining, but in such a dry climate I assumed the precipitation would be light, or fleeting. We all donned our rain gear; I wore a light shell over my sweater, and wished later that I had put on my longer raincoat.

The rainfall was fairly constant, though not ever heavy, and I managed to take plenty of pictures without wrecking my phone. My Newly Nevadan hosts had visited this park many times, but never before when the landscape was wet, with the colors popping out dramatically, highlighting the lines and textures of giant rocks sloping every which way, and towering above us.



Everywhere we looked, there was a new vista of pink and red and purple, and even yellow. This scene got my attention because the grass seemed to be reflecting the yellow stripes behind — and look! blue sky:



A couple of the children scrambled up higher than the adults (like the bighorn sheep that we saw in the scene at the top of this page — but they are probably too distant to notice in the picture.) and the toddler was pleased with the chance to toddle through pink sand and over flat stones on the trail. I was shown the field of marble-like pebbles and heard the theory of how they were formed, from erosion of aggregate rock nearby:


Our company was dripping and soggy by the time we got back in the car after our excursion, but everyone was cheerful. We had breathed gallons of refreshment, and feasted our eyes on the loveliest colors and forms of Creation. Showers of blessing had fallen on us and made us glorious.

Creosote Bush

I flit and hover before departure.

birds, home, my garden, travel, , , ,
smallage

In the middle of the afternoon, a flock of little birds — maybe kinglets? — flew into the garden and frolicked all over, visiting the pomegranate flowers and the fig tree, but not the fountain. Their zig-zag swooping looked like play, but maybe they were finding various tiny things to eat. In less than five minutes they were gone.

I watched them all that time because I was leaning against the kitchen counter holding one of my favorite Dansko sandals braced against my body, as Shoe Glue cured in the cracks in the sole. I want to pack these shoes in my suitcase this evening to take on a trip tomorrow, and somehow this task got pushed to the last day possible.

So many things got pushed here to today, or were left in a sort of limbo waiting for me to gather my wits — or something. I wish I could be more organized, but today has been fun, for the most part, after I got down to business.

Part of that work was cleaning out the refrigerator, or at least removing produce that won’t keep five more days. I had plans to make soup with whatever was there or in the garden. That would also have been good to do yesterday, but then, there was no pressure…

The initial reason for the soup idea was a head of celery I wanted to use up, but I found lots more in my own garden to add: tomatoes, lemon basil, tarragon, parsley, smallage, zucchini and eggplant. There was only one of the skinny long eggplants, so what else could I do with it but cut it into rounds and plop them in.

tarragon

I watered all the newly planted irises, yarrow, lavender, etc. in the garden, and all the potted plants, and I fed the worms. My worms are doing great! I’ve had lots of vegetable trimmings and even whole leaves and fruits from the garden that were so damaged by birds or insects that I couldn’t use them, so my “vermis” had plenty to eat, and seem to be reproducing a lot. When I dig around a little in the bins I always see at least one big cluster of worms of all sizes, which I consider to be the “nests” of young ones.

The strangest thing about today was that I spent the very middle of it in a literature class online, the first time I’ve ever done such a thing. It’s to study Beowulf, and I couldn’t pass up the chance, and it started today. That was very satisfying. I’m sure I’ll have more to tell about it as the weeks go by.

It really wasn’t until after that class session that my serious flitting began — interspersed with hovering, which can mean to hang fluttering or suspended in the air. Or, to keep lingering about; wait near at hand. Those little birds I’d seen weren’t doing any of that, but then, my garden is not their home. I lingered in the garden as long as I could.

And then, I took time to start writing here, which probably means that I won’t get the floor swept before I go. These days when I live alone, I give myself permission to leave without putting everything shipshape; no one is here to care. I can sweep next week.

[Next morning, this morning]: So, I didn’t finish this soup-and-worm story before bed. Now I’m at the airport waiting for my flight that has been delayed two hours, and I can wrap it up here.

Once I got to the airport, I could calm down. The way from here doesn’t involve a multitude of things to remember or tasks to accomplish. I won’t have much time to think about my garden. But from now until I return, I won’t be fully settling. While my plane flies at great speed, my mind will still be hovering, and I don’t expect it to touch down until I am home again.