Dreaming of a "Half"

It's Monday, and to start the week off right, I went on a 10-mile run with a friend. It was unexpected, I was really planning a shorter trot when I woke up this morning. But we bumped into each other in the locker room and she cheerily invited me along, so off we went.

I was initially reluctant. Last time we went running I couldn't keep up. I had to walk up hills and she would go on ahead, and then turn around until I caught up. But she promised we'd run slow, as she's training for the Middlebury half-marathon in late April.

Thankfully, a winter on the treadmill and getting outside to run early last month has put me in good enough shape to run with her again. And we ambled along, up hillsides with lovely views of the mountains, along a picturesque reservoir, through quiet neighborhoods with magnolias in bloom, until we were back in our sleepy college town.

Half-marathons are not easy. You can't just roll out of bed and go run one. A 5K, or even a 10K I could probably do without any sort of training "schedule" but a half-marathon is thirteen point one miles, not just a zip around the block.

Can I really run a half-marathon in two weeks? I hope so! I've signed up.

To Blog or Not to Blog

That is the question. I have started another, more focused blog over on Wordpress, called "The Power of One." That is where I will post my musings about raising an only child, and other child-rearing issues. Alas, I have found Wordpress to be a bit unwieldy, full of all sorts of buttons and things that I can't quite figure out. It's also not very pretty, rather utilitarian. The Wordpress blog is more 'public,' as it is picked up by a local family internet magazine called Hilltown Families. In fact, Katie has morphed into "Daisy" and other names are changed to protect the innocent.

Here, now, I am going to revive Earthly Sweetness with more focus, and more regularity (sounds like a digestive aid....) In order to motivate myself and organize my thoughts, I will have a schedule of 'what to expect':

Sunday: photo and/or quote

Monday: Back to school day! Celebrate with thoughts on exercise and health

Tuesday: My volunteer day, so no time for writing

Wednesday: Knitting, crafts, organizing the home

Thursday: Creative writing: poems, stories, ditties, etc.

Friday: Gardening, because after all, it's spring!! And/or food, glorious food.

Saturday: No time to write, day of rest.

In my revival of this blog I also do hereby pledge to hunt for readers, seek out comments and criticism, and thereby hone my writing skills. Are you in? I am!

Mid-August Musings

Mid-August Musings


It's mid-August and the mosquito's whine
Makes me long for winter time.
Those short dark days that end too soon
The bright bright glow of the brilliant moon.

It's mid-August and the leaves are yellow,
Summer's heat begins to mellow
These endless days are shortening fast
These hot hot days aren't built to last.

Harvesting berries, snapping beans
The tomato plants are starting to lean.
Giant sunflowers wave in the breeze
I seek some shade beneath the trees.

All too soon it will be fall,
And what I'll miss, most of all
Are the summer storms that come at night
The shots of lightning that give a fright.

Just three more weeks 'til back to school,
And no more trips to the local pool.
New pencils, new shoes, new teacher and then
I'll start longing for summer all over again.

Great art

Is there anything more wonderful than your own child's art? I love that Katie has recently really taken off with her 'figural' drawing. On the left is a portrait of her 14-year-old cousin. On the right, a picture of Katie and her two cousins. Like most kids, she also loves to draw flowers, suns, and rainbows, but people really are her 'forte.'

We have tried faithfully to subscribe to Susan Striker's philosophy, outlined on this link:

http://artfulparent.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/susan-strikers-10-cardinal-rules-for-teaching-creative-art/

Also see Susan Striker's book, "Young at Art: Teaching Toddlers Self-Expression, Problem Solving Skills, and an Appreciation for Art."

While many may disagree with her cardinal rules, I have found that they have helped foster Katie's creativity immensely. She is a master at thinking outside the box. At the Clark Museum's family day this past Sunday, we were making a sand project: filling a bottle with different colors of sand. Each kid's bottle was turning out great, really -- they were all beautiful, but Katie decided to take all the extra sand that was on the table, mix it together, and put that mixture into her bottle. Inspired, she then began making different combinations out of all the available sand colors. Her bottle, when finished, was truly unique.

I must admit it took her longer to paint and draw recognizable objects, landscapes, etc., and I'm not sure if it's because I never drew anything for her to copy, or have denied her coloring books. But I love that all her art comes out of her own head, she's not trying to copy anyone else's ideas. Granted, I do give her things to be inspired by, and we visit museums regularly. But I never pressure her to copy anything. She still enjoys scribbling -- when I ask her about her drawing, she will say, "it's nothing, really, just abstract." I love that she knows what abstract means, at age four.



Here are some of her family portraits:





And here she is in our NYC apartment, proudly showing off her drawing of "An apartment building and a person."
I can't wait to see what she'll make next.

Fog and Trees, Dove and O'Keeffe, in short

So much to love in Arthur Dove.
Can you hear the fog horn, dear?
Blaring red, over the sea,
Blooming like a peony.


Arthur Dove (1880-1946), Fog Horns, 1929
Oil on canvas, 18 x 26 in. (45.7 x 66 cm)
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Anonymous Gift, FA 1954.1

"Fog Horns" is my favorite work by Arthur Dove, America's first abstract painter. I was thrilled to see it this past Sunday while visiting the wonderful exhibition at The Clark here in Williamstown, MA, "Dove O'Keeffe, Circles of Influence." Many people know and love Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings: her images of seductive flowers and the dry bones of the American Southwest, for example. But fewer are familiar with Arthur Dove. Some may even look at his paintings and say, "oh, he was copying O'Keeffe!" But actually, O'Keeffe herself credited Dove's works as her primary introduction to modern art.

There is so much I love about this painting: to me, it is the consummate feeling of fog horns. I hear the fog horns, and I see the fog horns. If I try hard, I can smell and taste the beach, the ocean. The fog horns emerge from the air, how do you paint the essence of sound? Why are they red? Can sound be red? My daughter was intrigued by this painting. "What are fog horns?" she wondered. I reminded her of our trip to Maine last summer, seeing the lighthouse during the day and hearing the fog horn at night. I made a low plaintive moaning sound. "Oh," she simply said, trying to remember, "okay."

The painting makes me want to head right back to the foggy coast of Maine and sit on a beach, dig my toes into the cool wet sand, inhale the salt spray, listen to the waves, listen for the fog horn.

****




Look up, my sweet, into that tree,
And think of all the things that be:
The earth, the sky, the stars and moon,
A mid-summer's eve ends too soon.



Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), The Lawrence Tree, 1929
Oil on canvas, 31 1/8 x 39 1/4 in. (79.1 x 99.7 cm)
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund

And my favorite O'Keeffe painting, "The Lawrence Tree." It is to me the essence of a summer evening, of lying beneath an enormous tree and gazing at the stars. The painting seems off-kilter, one's head might cock to the right, trying to get the perspective right, to enter the painting and take part in the activity of lying on a blanket, listening to the bullfrogs and the crickets and the rush of the river, watching for a shooting star.

"Fog Horns" and "The Lawrence Tree" are so much more than merely visual images. They make you feel, taste, and smell. They might make you remember, or long for a certain memory. They impart sensational, full body experiences. They invite you to return, again and again.

The upside of gardening

Okay, so we don't live in a lovely big Victorian in Adams, but our Vermont house really isn't all that bad. I've grown to love it, with its bizarre quirks, strange plumbing, the crazy post-and-beam construction, the sloping floors and all the mismatched windows. It has personality, it has spunk, it even has a bit of charm. It's cozy warm in the winter and breezy in the summer, the half-finished basement a refuge for kid toys and exercise equipment. We are even planning to renovate the roomy, vaulted space above the garage.

Gardening here has been a challenge. I'm not really a "gardener." I'm a kid of the suburbs, I don't really know how to do stuff. Growing up, I mostly remember a rock garden with crocuses in springtime, and a rose garden, though I'm not sure if the roses belonged to us or our next-door neighbors. We had a small grove of apple trees, though the fruit was mostly used for family games of "apple ball," not for consumption. My parents have since moved from that suburban house, and now have a garden that is the envy of Berkshire county -- planters overflowing with annuals, a delicious herb garden, a perennial garden that should be in "Berkshire Living," luscious tomotoes growing on the vine, an idyllic wildflower garden, and blueberry bushes to beat the band. Plus acres of woods and meadows surrounding it all. Whenever we visit, we are truly inspired. We grow lusty with ideas -- we could do blueberries, too!



We certainly try. In the spring, a myriad of daffodils bloom along the fence row, giving way to irises, Rosa Rugosa, peonies, and Stella D'oro day lilies. A picturesque boulder is the backdrop for crocuses in spring, alongside an uncontrollable nest of Artemesia, Easter lilies, and incredibly tall and wild bee balm that is currently in its glorious bloom. Our "sun garden" is filled with chives, lemon balm (good for tea, I hear), and sage, which is turning into a true sage-bush. Our delphinium flopped in the June hail-storm, but coneflowers I planted by seed two (or three) years ago have finally come to fruition. A thicket of black-eyed Susans is blooming, and gladiolas are even coming back (I never dug up the bulbs last year, just crossed my fingers that they'd make it through the Vermont winter).

Here's part of our garden, shortly after we returned home to Vermont in mid-June, after a year in New York City. (Thankfully, the ratty birdhouse is now gone.)

We expected the rhododendron and irises, but a big surprise was encountering the gargantuan lupine. These were planted by seed last summer, after we had read Barbara Cooney's "Miss Rumphius" (also known as "The Lupine Lady") for the millionth time.










So now it's summer. Our bee balm has completely taken off this year (I love the crazy frizzly petals), along with the chives, lemon balm, sage, and hydrangea (white, purple, and endless summer). Some of our rhododendron look a bit sickly, so we've started treating them with a steady diet of coffee grounds, thanks to our local coffee shop. There are some mysteries, things I don't remember planting: tall spiky plants in a bed along the fence row--they look like they'll be butterfly magnets, so they're keepers for now; black-eyed Susans have migrated to the back yard; daisies have moved to the front yard (including the front walkway); and little Johnny-jump-ups wintered in the whiskey barrel and are now happily co-existing with geraniums and Vinca vine.

I love gardening, I love the anticipation in early spring, the trial-and-error, the oops, oh well, that didn't work, so much for benevolent neglect. I rejoice when something thrives (hardy Lavender, Lamb's ear, Ladies' mantle, Astilbe) and mourn when something just doesn't make it (tulips bitten off at the head, sunflower seeds eaten by critters before they even have a chance to emerge from the ground, slugs who devour every delicate wildflower seedling).

Our biggest surprise by far was our accidental pumpkin patch last summer. We planted lilies in a bed, and covered them with some delightful compost from our heap. A few weeks later, we had pumpkin plants emerging, which by the end of the summer produced the most wonderful array of jack-o-lanterns for us. From that same compost mix came cherry tomotoes and even a pepper plant. This year, the pumpkins that I planted from store-bought seedlings are not as hardy, though a cherry tomato plant has returned. And we have one lily.

What I really love about our garden is seeing the bees buzzing around, digging for pollen in the blooms. The butterflies, hummingbirds, even the rabbits and chipmunks all have their niche. We're part of the system, so we try to do our part. We try to weed out any invasives that come our way (goutweed, for example). No chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides unless absolutely necessary, and then we use organic compounds, whatever that means. We even mow the yard with a 'reel' mower, so as not to create noise and air pollution for us and our neighbors. I feel more in touch with our yard after a good mow: just this morning I encountered numerous little frogs, leaping out of my way, many kinds of mushrooms and fungi, plenty of sticks that I piled up for Katie to use in her fairy-house construction projects. We compost all our yard waste and kitchen scraps, and try not to disturb the delicate ecosystem surrounding the stream that wends through our backyard.

It's lovely here, quiet and peaceful. The constant sound of the stream comforts us by day and lulls us to sleep at night. Now if we could only convince the mosquitoes to move on, we'd be golden.

The one that got away

There's a demon I can’t shake: red, orange, green and white Victorian house in Adams, Massachusetts.

Yes, it’s just a house, but this is no ordinary house: it was my first love. And I'm sorry, one really never forgets that first love. Six years ago, about to relocate to the Berkshires from New York City, my husband- to-be and I started house-hunting. He had just accepted an offer to teach at Williams College, so we started looking at houses in Williamstown, naturally. Everything in our price range was either seedy, needed great amounts of renovation and repair, or was in a location that just wouldn’t work for us (like on a main road).

We branched out into other, neighboring communities, and saw a rambling old blue Victorian on Church Street in North Adams, a town known for its rambling old Victorians. I loved the tin ceilings, the historical marker by the front door, the back staircase. But this one had been a two family home and it needed more vision than we could provide.

We ventured further south, to North Adams’ little sister, also curiously known as The Mother Town, Adams. Up Orchard Street, left on East Street, and there it was: the stately Victorian manse of my dreams. It wasn't red and white then, just a dusty, peeling grayish gray. Spindles and porches and a wreath on the double wood door, crenulations and detailed decorations abounded. It was tall, dark and so handsome. Something about it made me want to snap my fingers and sing, "The Addams Family" theme song. Sure, it needed a paint job on the outside, and it appeared that the garage/barn was on its last legs, but my heart raced. This is my house, I thought. We were made for each other.

With my heart in my throat, we entered the back door with the realtor. The kitchen made me gasp: it was as if we had entered the set of a 1950s movie. What was this kitchen doing in a nineteenth-century Victorian? Didn’t matter. The appliances were old, but they were top quality. In its day, it was a very fancy kitchen, for sure. I could be Mrs. Cleaver and bake cookies here. I loved it. I loved the back staircase, even though loose boards creaked, I loved the breakfast nook that had a view of Mount Greylock. I loved the small den, even if a floor-to-ceiling crack threatened to open and swallow everything inside, I loved the living/dining room, with the curved window looking out onto another Victorian home, this one many different shades of pink and cream. I especially loved the front entryway. We rang the doorbell, and I was deeper in love. Giddy. Not only did it sound like the ringing from some black and white horror movie, but there were actual bells in the foyer that binged and bonged when the doorbell was pushed. This was not a rinky-dink doorbell. This doorbell meant business. A small hearth in the entry way was lined with blue tiles. A hearth. I played with the word in my mouth.

The dark wood staircase wound its way upstairs, a stained-glass window at the landing. Upstairs there was much to love, four bedrooms, one with a balcony: my study, I’ll write my dissertation in this room, and go out onto the balcony for fresh air, I thought. Two bathrooms in the back, one curiously cloaked in Bakelite fixtures. I pictured bathing our as-yet-unborn children in the large tub in the ‘kid’s bathroom.’ The sun-room that had views to the top of Greylock, our as-yet-unborn childrens’ playroom. There was more: a third floor aerie that would be perfect as an exercise room, and a small bedroom – another guest room or children’s hideaway.

The basement held more treasures: a soapstone sink, a root cellar, and many creepy nooks and crannies hidden away, the musty dirt floor keeping me from getting too curious. I didn't care. This was my house. Make an offer, the realtor suggested, the owners (a young couple with two or three kids) want to sell. I was too excited to sleep. I dreamt of the house, what if someone else fell in love with it? It was like that feeling after a first date – will he call back, does he really like me? What if he likes someone else? What if he likes my friend better than me? We returned a few days later with my parents in tow. I was excited for them to see it, to see the big house their little girl loved. They hated it. They saw one thing: money pit. It needs to be painted. Look at all that detail. It needs a new roof. There’s a crack in that wall, the window frames all need to be replaced. A tile is missing here. You’ll need to redo the kitchen. The back staircase is a hazard. No. No.

I was crestfallen. The realtor sunnily suggested, “Let’s take them to the other house we looked at, the one in Pownal.” Okay. I didn’t love that one as much. Actually, there was no love at all. It was a little white cape, still unfinished, covered from head to toe inside in chintzy wallpaper, mismatching wallpaper borders. It felt dark and small and cramped. There was no back staircase. I really wanted a back staircase. An older couple owned it, the husband had built it, the wife decorated it in what we now call “cheap Vermont country yuck.” It was in rural Vermont, on a dirt road, not a short walk from neat downtown Adams, like my beloved Victorian. We’d have to drive everywhere, even to get a gallon of milk.

My parents loved the cape. It has potential! It's new! It’s great! Sold!

They were giving us a good deal of money towards our new home. A wedding present. We felt beholden to their opinion. I didn’t want to have to spend all their money (our money?) on a new roof. They wanted us to take the cape. My husband wanted the cape. He just couldn't see himself in the Victorian. So we made an offer on the cape. We spent my parents' money, and more: the house needed to be painted outside (we chose yellow) inside (took down all the wallpaper), it needed a new deck, siding and windows on one side, the floors needed to be finished, closets built, the list went on and on. Outside, landscaping needed to be done, a retaining wall fixed, shrubs moved. And to think the biggest expense for the Victorian was to be a new roof, I grumbled, continuously. The Victorian was still a money pit, he argued, and the Victorian didn't have a stream running through the backyard. Okay, you win there. The stream was a bonus.

We have now been in our cape house for five years, and not a day goes by that I don’t think about the Victorian. I continue to picture our furniture there. I picture us living there, now with our four year old daughter. I picture us walking to the playground, the bike trail, into the town itself, which has become a more vibrant and energetic town since we first saw it. I can’t seem to let it go. The house is now a Bed and Breakfast. I have driven by, parking on the other side of the street, just to look at it. Aching to ring the doorbell and have a look around inside. Like wanting to see that old boyfriend from college, but not sure if the years have been kind to him, or if he'd think the same about me. The front doors of the house are included in “Doorways of the Berkshires,” a poster with photos of about thirty doors from all over the county. The poster is in the bathroom of one of Williamstown's local eateries. Whenever I go in there with my daughter, I point it out: this is the door of the house I fell in love with, my first love. We almost bought that house. We could have been so happy there. It beckoned me then, it continues to speak to me now.