Summer Sunrise

Early summer mornings I  

go out to feel the day

look to see if clouds

will enhance the sunrise

listening to birdsong 

surprised this dawn by  

the call of a quail 

Bob White Bob White

Canning Applesauce

 

The day before my daughter was born in May of '69 we moved to this acreage between Urbandale and Grimes. I was so happy to be living back out in the country - peace, quiet, anonymity and an old barn for my son Douglas to play in. Plus we could get his dog Mimi back from my sister who had been caring for her during the almost two years we had been living in city apartments. We had room for a garden and plenty of apples from the trees growing there. Though I didn't have the equipment, or know how, to spray for worms each spring.

Applesauce

by Ted Kooser

I liked how the starry blue lid
of that saucepan lifted and puffed,
then settled back on a thin
hotpad of steam, and the way
her kitchen filled with the warm,
wet breath of apples, as if all
the apples were talking at once,
as if they'd come cold and sour
from chores in the orchard,
and were trying to shoulder in
close to the fire. She was too busy
to put in her two cents' worth
talking to apples. Squeezing
her dentures with wrinkly lips,
she had to jingle and stack
the bright brass coins of the lids
and thoughtfully count out
the red rubber rings, then hold
each jar, to see if it was clean,
to a window that looked out
through her back yard into Iowa.
And with every third or fourth jar
she wiped steam from her glasses,
using the hem of her apron,
printed with tiny red sailboats
that dipped along with leaf-green
banners snapping, under puffs
of pale applesauce clouds
scented with cinnamon and cloves,
the only boats under sail
for at least two thousand miles.

The time came when I decided to pick some of those apples and make applesauce to can and place on those shelves in the basement. Save a little money, why not? I still remember the hours I spent in a hot kitchen, peeling, cutting out the wormy parts, dicing and cooking down all those apples just to end up with a measly few pint jars of applesauce. It was the first, last and only time I canned applesauce.

Yellow - Light, Sunny and Cheerful

 

The Yellow Lily and miniature Yellow Rose are examples of why yellow is one of my favorite colors but not the main reason. When I was old enough to understand my birth month was November, I learned that my birth stone was the Yellow Topaz or Citrine. But my favorite colors are all the shades of brown from tan to tawny, coffee to carmel - the calm, subdued, muted hues appeal to me.

That doesn't mean I don't like all the pinks, salmon, reds, white, maroon, orange, gold, etc. of my other flowers because I do.

A few days ago, I found this little dragonfly, possibly a Halloween Pennant, lying dead on the patio next to this planter. I put it on the flowers to take this photo. I wonder if the heat killed it.

This is the one Sunflower I allow to grow each year. Several come up volunteer but if I let them all grow it is like a forest out there.

Soon I'll have another yellow flower to admire. The bits of yellow in this photo are Rudbeckia - Black-Eyed Susans. They are also volunteers. I started with one plant. They spread so much I have to pull and discard many of them.

I showed a photo of the Moss Rose in the old mail box in May but my Arizona rocks weren't in front of it.

These are rocks given to me by my friend Kristina who split her time between her AZ home and her Wisconsin house. 

She brought them to me in August, 2017. She told me she found the heart rock on the day my mother died, December 16, 2003. I hope one of my children or grandchildren will keep and treasure both of these rocks.

Last Thursday we had a very nice visit from granddaughter Alyssa and her two children Lily and Maverick. It had been a year since we last saw them and both the kids have grown and changed a lot.

Lily is so talented and smart. She's also quite adept about slipping in funny and sometimes sarcastic remarks.

Maverick will be in third grade this coming school year. He has also become quite the fisherman.

The Orioles and the House Finches are still enjoying the grape jelly. I just opened my third  32 oz. jar.

These two Turtle Doves have been visiting on a regular basis the past couple of weeks. I keep fresh water in the bird bath for all the birds. Robins and Bluejays are the ones who actually bathe in it. The others just drink from it. 

People, birds, and all other creatures are just trying to stay cool. ....and cheerful.

Summer of Drought

The summer of 1955 I was eleven and we were in the middle of three years of drought. All the wells on our farm had gone dry except our house well and thank goodness we still had that!

A water witcher, aka a dowser, had been summoned (hired) to find where to dig a new well. He found a spot south of the barn on the other place. Not far from those trees way in the background between me and Queenie. And the well was a good one once it was finished.

In the meantime the little creek in the cow pasture had also gone dry.  We had to have water for the livestock so Dad paid for a load of water to be brought out from town. Always one to be wanting to know everything that was going on, I had to watch when the tank truck got there so I went out by the stock tank in the barn lot.

Dad opened the gate from the barnyard to the cow lot then the one from the cow lot into the hog lot which was the only way to drive to the well at the windmill. Once the water from the tank truck was emptied into the well it could then be pumped from there back into the stock tank.

There were some old boards with nails in them in the hog lot so Dad was walking ahead of the truck picking those up and heaving them out of the way. He wasn't paying any attention to where he was throwing and neither was I. SMACK!  A chunk of wood sailed right to my head. I let out a cry loud enough for Dad to hear me. "Are you alright?" he yelled. A stunned and only slightly coherent me responded as I turned to go to the house: "I'm okay, I'm just frightened."

June '26 Books Read

Seven books read in this month of June that went by faster than a speeding train. Eight if you count The Sugar Train again as I did read it last month and again this month. 

First the three library books: I thought I had read all the Sandra Brown books until I discovered Exclusive and Outfox in the large print section.

Mona's Eyes by Thomas Schlesser caught my attention because of the title and because it was listed as the most read book in Europe. Ten year old Mona is in danger of losing her eyesight. Her beloved grandfather makes it his mission to introduce Mona to fifty-two works of art in the year they believe she has left before going blind. It was interesting that attached to the back of this book was an envelope containing pictures of the paintings being viewed in the book. 

The Sugar Train by Becky Faber is the book I have included again. Not only did I read it again, I had the pleasure of hearing Becky read some of her poems from the book when she visited us on the 19th. 

Adjoining Rooms is a collection of poems written by Nebraska women writers. Nebraska Presence is an anthology containing two of Becky's poems and four by Ted Kooser, a poet I am quite fond of. The note from Becky accompanying these three books she sent began: "It is my mission today to overwhelm you with poetry!" She did a good job and I have been enjoying reading all the poems.

Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katherine S. White (wife of E. B. White - Charlotte's Web should jump to your mind) is a book about gardening catalogs sent to me by my daughter Kari. It is  interesting to find just how many gardening catalogs there were. As I told her, it brought back a lot of memories of the catalogs arriving in January or February and Mom going through them deciding what to order. Then later when I had my own home and garden patch doing the same thing.

The final book is Local Wonders - Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by Ted Kooser. This one was hand delivered by Becky when she was here. I was so excited because I thought it was another book of his poetry. Instead it is a four season collection of his thoughts and what was going on in his life. I could not have been more wrong about being disappointed that it wasn't poetry. Kooser's prose is just as beautiful as his poetry. It is a book I will read time and time again. (The Bohemian Alps is the name given to the area of Nebraska where Kooser lives.)

This is an example of his prose: "The sky is like old blue denim just before dawn, with one round hole worn through, exposing the cold bony knee of the moon. I have been hearing the trilling of tree frogs.  That a frog - even one with the chirp of a bird - would live in a tree (not even in but on), clinging with little suction cups to keep from falling, is the height of craziness, but forty feet in the air, light as leaves, their tiny hearts are slow and steady under kite paper skin, and their black eyes shine with moonlight. Let us praise all who ascend to such high places on the sheer face of the world."

Whatever I read in July will have to be really good to top what I've read this month.

Tangerine - (The song, not the fruit.)

For some reason the song Tangerine came to mind. It was a song popular before I was born but I wasn't aware of it until the movie version of The Bridges of Madison County, starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep came out in 1995. Do you remember Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson dancing to Tangerine in the kitchen of her house?

When I moved back to WDM in '84, I lived in a two bedroom apartment with my two youngest children. It was okay, but I had almost always lived in the country and started thinking about trying to find a house to rent outside the city.

One day, on the way to Winterset, I happened across a deserted old farmhouse. There was a gate at the end of the driveway with a "No trespassing" sign on it. I hoped to find out who owned the property and if the house could be rented. A nearby neighbor told me others had asked but the owner wouldn't rent it to anyone.

The covered bridges of Madison County had intrigued me from the time I first saw them in the fall of 1960. When Robert James Waller's book came out in 1992, I was just as big a fan of the romantic story as thousands of others. 

Soon the movie rights were sold. It was decided the movie should be filmed in Iowa. The search was on for the right farm house to be used as the Johnson homestead. 

When 'Francesca's House' was found and I saw a picture of it, I recognized it immediately. Like so many other times and instances in my life, I wondered: "What are the odds?"

Before The Bridges of Madison County, before Francesca's House, there was this old uninhabited farmhouse. A No Trespassing sign hung on the gate barring the driveway......

The Sheep Detectives

 

We watched The Sheep Detectives movie today and I loved it - except for the part where George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) is found dead. If you have the opportunity, watch it. 

It reminded me so much of my own experiences raising sheep in 1983. I had purchased a small herd of ewes that had already been bred and were to begin lambing the first part of February. I kept track of the ewes and their lambs in my journal so I have it for reference, but for the two most memorable experiences of that time, I don't need any reminders, I remember them very well even though it was forty-three years ago. 

When the movie was over we both agreed that we had really liked it. In all the years we have been together, I had never told Bud how it had been for me caring for my flock when I had never before had any experience with sheep and lambing. Today was the day.

The first lamb was born on Groundhog Day with no assistance needed. Three days later when I got to the barn, ewe #14 was straining to give birth but couldn't. All I knew about lambing I had learned from reading my Raising Small Livestock book. Which is how I knew I had to reach up inside the ewe, grasp the lamb's legs and pull. Either that, or let them both die. The lamb was already dead, but the ewe survived. Per my journal: "My first time ever for such an experience. Really got to me."

Around the same time the first lamb was born, another ewe, #51 had gone down with what is referred to as "downer sheep syndrome" which can be the result of various issues but leads to the result of the sheep being unable to stand. So the day after the experience with #14 I had #51 giving birth to a healthy little male which surprised me because she was so weak. Then three hours later she birthed another one which did not survive. But I had to do something because she had no milk for her baby and I didn't want to have to bottle feed him.

Solution: Pen #14, who had milk, with #51 and her lamb. But #14 didn't want anything to do with another mother's baby. I told Bud how I had backed the healthy ewe into the corner, held her there, looked her in the eyes and explained: "You've got milk and that little guy needs milk. You have to let him suckle." It took a day or two of forcing her to stand still for the lamb to feed but she finally accepted his nursing. When he was done, he went back to his mother and curled up next to her. This went on for a week or so until #51 died and her lamb and #14 stayed together with no further problems.

After I told Bud this, he said: "You should write a story about it." I told him I had tried, making several starts, changing my mind for the arc and beginning over anew. I still have those pages with at least three different versions of scenarios and characters. The writer I wanted to be isn't going to be, but at least I finally shared those two lambing experiences - and I still like movies with sheep in them. 

Some of my ewes and lambs in the background with my first grandson, Brock, in the foreground.

Those were the days my friend.