Heirloom Recipe: Pumpkin Cake

It's what's for dessert today at Women Not Dabbling in Normal...and what'll be on our dessert buffet for Thanksgiving!

WWGD...What Would Grandma Do?

My Grandma could stretch a meal! It was seldom fancy, but it was simple, hearty, filling...

These are skills I need to remember and to learn.

For a rambly post as I remember some kitchen lessons learned from my Grandma's Great Depression, WW2, and other years of simple living, you can find that and my attempts to duplicate one of our favorite meals of hers at Women Not Dabbling in Normal today.

Hope you can make it there...have a great day, and let me know how you stretch your favorite meals!

A Total Revamp of Direction in a Mere 24 Hours

This post may sound suspiciously like it has nothing to do with homesteading, but it does...eventually. But first -- a scary little retro trip around the inside of my head. Y'know...the place songs you can't forget lurk...

You know your life is going to take a dramatic turn in a different direction when you can't get this radio refrain out of your head for the past four straight days:

Once upon a time I was falling in love But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do A total eclipse of the heart Once upon a time there was
light in my life But now there's only love in the dark Nothing I can say A total
eclipse of the heart ...

Poor Andy Gibb. (My husband just asked me who Andy Gibb was, no joke. Forgive him, Bee Gees). No, Andy didn't sing this, but for some reason this song catapults me to post-1980s sorrow for him over his breakup with Victoria Principal. Which happened HOW many decades ago??

Oh the silly pop culture concerns we had. My best friend of that era and I had simultaneous crushes on the Hardy Boy TV stars ...my guy was Parker Stevenson and hers was Shaun Cassidy.

Oh the imaginary dates we had with that pair. We would decide who went where with whom and what the most romantic settings would be, and if we'd doubledate, just us and Parker and Shaun. We decided these weighty matters while listening to Karen's Captain and Tenielle records...yeah, please don't do the math there (I think we were what, 12 at the time, and there was no such thing as dating till you were at least 16)



This was made all the more interesting by the fact that my parents raised us with NO radio-listening or record-buying of pop music at ALL. Zero. Zilch. But exposure did happen on a limited scale, which probably heightens its impact at that impressionable age. I can hum the songs from back then, because I heard the radio now and then with my friends in other settings, but I know NO words.

Except for a few refrains. Such as Total Eclipse of the Heart. And when I hear them now on the OLDIES (ahem) station, they're harder to make go away than a crowd of bad relatives.

There are as of yet no total eclipses of the heart going on around here (and no plans for those, either!), and yet BAM, there in the middle of the day, for NO reason, like a bad commercial jingle comes the turn around bright eyyyyyyyyyyyes, turn around BRIGHTTT eye-eye-eyes...

But in a foreshadowing of life imitating (bad) lyrics, there has been a turn around. No word yet on how bright anyone's eyes are, though.



-----------------------------------------------



This isn't a bad thing :) It has to do with what happened last night.


I've mentioned here a few times that we're researching biblical verses related to country living, agriculture, debts, and animal care. We're finding some very interesting things.


One of the things we've been chewing on is how to emulate many of the principles in our lives, as Jews, even though we don't live in Israel. Many of the commands that directly impact homesteader-sorts of ownership, gardening, and husbandry are preceded in the text by the phrase "when you come into the Land the Lord your God has given you." It's written in all the instructions Jews keep while living in Israel, since in the verses, God says it's a land set apart and which must be cared for in specific ways to maintain its being set apart for His uses. That's my quickie explanation to precede describing just what changed for us last night.


Some of the commandments are preceded by the "when you come into the Land" phrase, and others aren't. The 10 commandments aren't. You don't murder, no matter where you live in the world. You keep the 7th day as a day of rest wherever you live. But others are specific to the land of Israel, at least as we understand the simplicity of their construction.


One such commandment has to do with "7 weeks of 7 years," or a rest for the land every seven years, counted the same way as a week is counted...the first 6 days as days of work, and the 7th as a day of complete rest from any labor. Counting this way makes every 7th year of the Jewish calendar a year in which the Bible specifies that all growing of crops and vines ceases, including pruning and harvesting. It's considered by God to be a complete rest for the land, specifically the land of Israel. It doesn't mention anything about anywhere else, and most scholars agree it's an instruction specific to Israel.


The very VERY cool thing is that God promised that the Israelites who will keep that command will receive 3 times the normal harvest in the 6th year...enough for that year, the following year of fields resting fallow, and enough for seed and food for the year beyond that during which things are replanted. How COOL is thatt??? God is so incredible!


We looked it up on the Hebrew calendar, and discovered that year of rest for the fields and vineyards, THAT year, is NOW. It started last fall, the way the biblical months are counted, and ends this coming fall. Of THIS YEAR ....NOW. Eeeeeeps.

In the Land of Israel, that is.

Which sort of means we're officially off the hook, in a literal way. We're free anywhere else to do otherwise in that respect.

So, I had visions of tomato plants. I had counted them, planted them, and harvested them all in my imagination, as the summer approaches here.

There's nothing I can do A total eclipse of the heart

Arrrrggggghhhhhhh!!! Told you! I can't get it out of my head!

ANYway, we talked about a lot of things related to this, and read in Leviticus 25 about the 7th year sabbath and crops and such. As you know, our plans are to expand Bucketville into a fertile orchard-in-waiting till we can move and plant them as more mature specimens. And to fill the many, many wonderful buckets with other lovelies, such as Paul Robeson, Black Krim, and Black Prince tomatoes (the list is miles long in my head).

The conversation turned to something important to both of us: to keep alive in our hearts the desire to live in Israel, and to keep the love of Israel alive in our hearts while we live anyplace else...for ourselves and our children. It's a different expression than a lot of people have, and it's certainly just our own way of walking it out. It's NOT incumbent on Jews to do anyplace but Israel. And we're just fleshing this out as we go...just making it clear that there's no directive anywhere for our doing things quite this way. BUT...we want to "stay in practice" since we are on this as a learning journey. We want to learn to make this way of life our habit, even in exile as such.


So it won't look like anyone else's conviction, and that's fine by us :) But we prayed about it, and decided to sleep on it for the night...the decision of whether to STOP doing any planting this year, anymore buying, and (gulp) any tomato plants. (waving bye to Paul Robeson...)


Well, we did sleep on it, and this morning found us both energized and my wonderful hubby has a firm mind that we ought to carefully try to observe this command, as if we were in the Land, even though we're not required to. With all we want to do, keeping the WAY God set things up as central in importance is truly the foundation upon which we hope to build. No, we're not shooting for "brownie points" here...that's not the way we see this relationship and covenant with our Maker. We do, though, want to LEARN how to be more honoring of His ways, and want PRACTICE. We want to make things habits. For ourselves. To pass along. To be familiar with since many of the practices are very foreign to our surrounding culture.


One thing that sets apart my husband, to me, is a rare heart that CARES about pleasing God, and cares about learning more and attempting to put His ways into practice. I'm ALL ABOUT being a team in that respect, so YAY, what more could I ask for?? He thinks we ought to hold off on any planting (other than what we've already planted), well, so do I!


So look for some upcoming posts on our revamped plan.


We went to lunch today to have a date together (when we can!), and many things were discussed. The most exciting was the prospect of preparing our house to SELL. Whenever it is a better market or the opportunity presents itself. There are OH SO many projects we can be doing in the meantime, while NOT planting this year. Many many skills we need in other areas to develop till they become habits, a learning curve to continue along prior to being on our future land. Getting the house ready to SELL gives me chills of excitement...that's something very tangible TOWARD a nearer time frame to DO THIS :) :) How VERY much we want to be out of here and THERE (wherever there is)


More about what we're going to be redirecting and doing. We'll be making lists, and crossing things off (likely in lists with strikethroughs!) and getting ready to move, yayyy!


We'll also be filling ALL those buckets with soil...just not plants, and in the fall of this year, after the year of rest ends, we'll celebrate by planting a lot more trees in them. That's always good to do in the fall :) (And it should REALLY confound the neighbors NOW, since they'll just be pots of dirt, sitting there...lol

Till then we'll be crossing off other projects and working hard to bring down our debt, towards its eventual payoff.

There, I've typed nearly an entire post without You-Know-What-Song interrupting me.

I just reminisced a few minutes with my husband, to assure him Parker Stevenson is but a memory (lol). And then, oh then...

I remembered...

THEM

I will no longer turn on the oldies station at work. I do not want to know what changes the memory of Sonny and Cher foreshadows.

GLORIOUS IMAGES OF THE BEST FORGOTTEN EIGHTIES SUBCULTURES from these pages:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVQtNK7JmdektCJQrIIyPJiuxt-wepiHw2hkYmRMxUig1zOrxaC6INt0WIAE_2aToemffzE1c4CH_kAMIAbv98Ln-Mkx3NL6AgPLJtsF4Xm-vQEB4SESg3ENssCsnr8-N2Dld5CkzslJU/s320/hardyboys.jpg&imgrefurl=http://fashionsreality.blogspot.com/2007/02/cruise-and-stiller-hardy-boys.html&h=307&w=271&sz=22&hl=en&start=27&tbnid=GIJlks7u4bxTQM:&tbnh=117&tbnw=103&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhardy%2Bboys%26start%3D20%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/9/9a/300px-Toni-Tennille-%26-the-Captain-56sq-555.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.answers.com/topic/toni-tennille&h=300&w=300&sz=22&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=0PK0lVIKpgmRZM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcaptain%2Band%2Btennille%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/S/sonny_lookf.jpg&imgrefurl=http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/S/sonny_look.html&h=400&w=400&sz=54&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=Lms5J5YozNVMsM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsonny%2Band%2Bcher%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Remembering Andrew and Jeremy

They came into my life by storm...in my former marriage, after we'd been unsuccessful in adding to our family in the years after Rachel was born, we eventually decided to be foster parents. We chose to be available to whatever ethnicity and age child most needed to be placed in our home, and we had the expectation that would manifest as a teen boy.

When we got the call that two half brothers needed immediate placement or they'd have to be separated and would later be adopted separately, we said yes...and only a day later we were joined by Andrew, age 1 1/2, and Jeremy, age 8 months.

We had the opportunity to adopt them if we had them at least a year. God's wisdom prevailed, and though that adoption was something I wanted with all my heart, my then husband decided he didn't want to adopt a child that was not his biologically. I was devastated. But the family that became their parents was a beautiful couple that had tried for 16 years to have children of their own...and Andrew and Jeremy were their answer to years and years of prayers. I have no doubt they are having the fullest and most beautiful of family life now through their growing years.

I am grateful they came into my life for that year, and I think of them as my own children even today. They came to life in amazing ways in our family, and they are sorely missed. I know their quirks, their personalities, and their "firsts" as if I bore them myself, and the pang of missing them never leaves entirely. And oh, I am so grateful for having been their mother even though another mother is now their forever Mom.

This video is something I saw my daughter enjoying the other day...you may have already seen it. The two boys remind me so much of Andrew and Jeremy, even right down to the looks of the older boy and the way they interact. And it makes me smile!

And feel SO grateful.

As Shabbat comes and we get to have some rest this week, I leave you with this video clip that's been making its way around YouTube, called "Charlie Bit Me." I saw it and laughed with delight!

I am grateful for many things this week, namely that my job has improved to be something I actually enjoy, and gratefulness for God's continued protection of my family members as we come and go so busily, especially with long commutes. So grateful for my husband, daughter, friends, and for those I know here from a kindred mindset and kindred goals...an inspiration. And I also include among the many things for which to be grateful this week the piece of my heart that Andrew and Jeremy will always occupy :)

Have a great and restful night and day!

Some Family History Unearthed

I'm one of those folks who's disconnected from my family history. My parents have not been in the picture now for nearly two decades now, and with them was most of the preserved memory of our forbears, oral as well as in pictures.


My sister has been appealing to the more distant relatives on the family tree regarding my late maternal grandparents, with whom we were the closest growing up. We adored our grandparents! My Grandpa had the ?distinction? of being named Wilbur Wright, which made for a lifetime of late night prank calls by kids looking through phone books on a Saturday night :) My Grandma was Rebecca, or "Becca" to my Grandpa...Aunt Becky to her nieces and nephews.


My Grandpa's parents were B.R. "Bernie" and May Wright, and they survived a lot of upheaval and economic ups and downs and raised a large family. The siblings, during their lifetimes, always remained very close, even though they lived far away from each other's families. We are now the third generation, and have lost much of their history. But their imprint remains indelibly stamped on us in many ways.


I know Bernie Wright, my Grandpa's father, was an innovator. I may be one of the only surviving people with an insight into his private dreams...which happened by accident a long time ago. When my grandparents retired, they took their little cash (they always dealt in cash) and bought a tumbledown house and some land in north Mississippi, which was quite a change from the Chicago they'd called home for twenty or thirty years (they were originally from the South and Midwest).

My Depression-Era grandparents, though having had to move to the big city for survival at different times in their lives, always gravitated during their lifetimes back to land, and at the homeplace in Mississippi, they put in a garden, repaired the house, and built two large cinderblock buildings...one for storage and one as a carpenter shop where Grandpa set up the heavy woodworking machinery he'd bought over the years from the tool and die company every time they upgraded to something newer. He had enough equipment to fill it with a maze of saws and woodworking tables and gadgets, and drifts of sweet smelling sawdust...mmmm :)


Retirement didn't mean stopping work, but rather it meant working doing what they liked best. I could write and write about them, but suffice it to say, for now, that they were happiest right there...cash tight, gardening, being together, and being great neighbors...and the very best of grandparents.


Back to Grandpa's dad, B.R. Wright...when my grandparents began cleaning out a lot of their storage items in later years, there was this really cool old trunk...the sort that looks like a treasure chest...that I found and which they let me rifle through. Inside it was hundreds of cardboard cutouts...cut into shapes of all sorts and labeled precisely. It was a collection of homemade templates for making not only furniture, but wonderfully creative things, like wooden children's toys...rockers in the shapes of swans and rabbits, toys with flourishes and swirls, odd things and beautiful things and practical things and impractical things.


And somewhere in the midst of it all, were some small note pads and a little black book. I was given those, and I quickly made off for my favorite private spot on their property...a bare, cool place under the arched branches of a hawthorne bush. I opened the books.


Two of them were tallies of expenses, down to the very nails and such. It was essentially a handheld accounting of...something. Every penny was accounted for with precision and deliberation. The black, smallish notebook was full of other things, though...a cutout picture of a WW1 army building surplus being sold as housing...and page after page of layouts of how these could be used for housing for the homeless or for orphans...who fared quite differently in those days...and other pages with original poems and songs, drawings of ideas for toys that could be built for his children or furniture and shelves (with bric a brac) he could make for his wife. It was in a sense a very personal glimpse into his aspirations and his personality...and heart.


I remember sitting on the back porch and telling my Grandpa I'd love to see us make some of the things we'd found in that trunk, and Grandpa became very sentimental. Perhaps some of those things had been built over the years, but I have an idea most weren't. Grandpa told me of his father's ideas, and that he had been an ideas person and had put a lot of elbow grease to the practicals of taking care of his large family. I wish I had had days to listen to Grandpa tell me more...and that in my youth I'd known to soak up every detail or at least write them down. I do know at one time, GGrandpa Bernie raised carrier pigeons. My Grandpa got very, very quiet and a bit choked up every time he talked for very long about his father. His father was a man with his thumb in numerous projects, an inquisitive and intelligent mind, and clearly his children adored him.

Families of that era sometimes keep family secrets. Some secrets are better being kept secret. It was not until years later, years after my grandparents and all but 2 of their many siblings had passed away, that I was told in hushed tones that Grandpa's dad, B.R., had lived with he and my Grandma out on the farm as a very old man. All our family took care of our older relatives in their own homes in those days. It was soberly and quietly related to me, respectfully, as I was asking about any memory from that time that they could remember.

It seems that what I was never told as a child (and rightly so) was that a tragedy that rocked my family happened when Grandpa's dad, who was living with them out in the country..WAY out..at that point, began having chest pains and needed to be driven to the doctor. It was night, there was thick fog, and my Grandpa decided to carry his dad to the nearest place to be treated...which was miles and miles away through farmland. Back then roads weren't what they are today, and neither were cars. But cows were. As my sweet Grandpa was trying to get his father to help in time, and driving fast through those back roads, there in a bend in the road, fog and all, was the unexpected cow. The vehicle hit the cow and the impact killed Grandpa's father on impact...or caused them trauma that GreatGrandpa didn't survive.

It's a very close and special family that never brings this up except years and years after someone's passing. They'd never have done anything to hurt each other's feelings, even with the regular spats that siblings have throughout their lifetimes. It makes me feel even more tenderly toward my Grandpa, and I'm glad I never knew till after he was gone...he'd have hated knowing that we even knew.

I really miss my grandparents...regularly. I defer to the wisdom of their simplicity, intelligence, and wit more and more the older I get. Their common sense was of necessity, and their Great Depression survival taught me much. Plus, I've just always loved people who are older than I am, their histories, and their stories. Give me a couple of years, and I, too, may be doublechecking the cash register printout for accuracy right there in line and counting my pennies out of a little changepurse at the checkout stand at Piggly Wiggly, as a long line of customers waits behind me... ;-)

Anyway, when my sister emailed me today and included an attachment she'd received from a distant relative on that side of the family, I was ecstatic! Among the pictures sent was a picture of GreatGrandpa B.R. Wright, who in his lifetime was many things, among which were farmer, merchant, and carpenter. Here he is shown in front of a store I never knew he owned...and the little boy on the far right was my Grandpa as a young boy, still in knickers. That'll tell you how old the pic is...

Here it is, in honor of Bernie and May, and their dreams...and determination and survival and emphasis on family and God. They were made of durable stuff in a world that is entirely different than today's. I pray we're made of the same stuff, deep down, to leave a similar legacy.


My Grandma, Rebecca, in her younger days, with other family members. She's on the left of the row of women.

My Grandpa (left) and one of his brothers, Donald. My Grandpa was not short, so that'll give you an idea what a tall drink of water Uncle Donald was!

May and B.R., my Grandpa's parents, and his brother Donald in the middle.

Of Guest Rooms and Family Portraits

Remember the scary old sepia print portraits that hang on the bedroom walls of old bedrooms, the sort that stare at you relentlessly in the dark when you're a small child asleep at an older relative's house?

My father's father was a preacher, and though we visited rarely, when we did, their home's decor always fascinated me. Their house had many things ours didn't, a separate library, namely, where Granddaddy would study behind a large desk situated in front of a wall of bookcases, all lined with biblical texts and sets of commentaries, shelves crowded with exotic carved figurines from his many travels. I always wanted a retreat just like his, with a green-shaded desk lamp, the smell of volumes and volumes of books, the leather chair, and motes of dust dancing in the half-light. Perhaps it's from him I inherited my love of books, of solitary reading, of searching out word meanings and other treasures in biblical texts. At least that's what I love to think...

There was also a sitting room situated near the front of the house, a place where Grandmother had a little iron cart filled with her collection of African violets, windows that had drapes and sheers, wallpapered walls with large oil paintings, sofas with crocheted doily antimacassars on the arms and backs, porcelain trinkets, and antique glass lamps with colored spherical double globes.

And always, there was the ticking of clocks...my grandfather loved collecting every sort. Time had a way of always passing, and Granddaddy was informed of its progress at every quarter, half, and full hour. There were wall clocks, grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, mantel clocks, serious desk clocks and fanciful porcelain clocks. Clocks of every style. Handcarved clocks, handheld clocks, metal ones, Art Deco ones, clocks embedded in elaborate or not-so-elaborate statues. There were no battery-powered clocks...they were all the hand-wound sort. Many clocks had an elaborate system of weights and pulls, and Grandaddy knew their secrets, and that they must be balanced on a completely flat surface to keep accurate time. Their tones were all different -- some slow and mellow as an old cello, some marking the hour in a rapid, tinging falsetto. That's one of my favorite memories of their home -- the ticking and chiming clocks, the slightly unfamiliar scent of someone else's house mingled with the fragrance of my Grandmother's kitchen.

It was in her kitchen I first learned the difference between storebought and REAL homemade bread. Grandmother made all her meals from scratch. It wasn't just economy...it was just the way things were done. And she did them well!

It wasn't often we enjoyed an overnight visit there, but when we did, we slept in the guest room. Proudly displayed on the walls were more paintings, but the most prominent hung in direct view of the bed always...two pastel portraits drawn of my eldest first cousins, Alan and Laura, when they were only a little older than toddlers. The portraits were quite large, nicely framed, and were Grandmother's pride and joy...likely a family gift to her in years past.

In the daytime, the portraits were just that...lifelike images in charcoal and pastel. But by night....when huddled under the bedcovers and with only the benefit of a slice of illumination coming in through the door "cracked open," they took on eerie dimensions. I'm no great fan of portraits in guestrooms. THESE portraits were downright chilling in the dark. They. Looked. At. You. No. Matter. Where. You. Were. While the clocks ticked. And ticked. And ticked.

You could hide UNDER the extra pillow UNDER the extra blanket. But you could not escape the cousins' pale gaze, at least until the welcome moment that wonderful dinner you'd just eaten, and the full day of exploring--and intermittent "behaving"-- you'd just had, worked their magic and you found yourself soundly asleep.

Most family portraits I've noticed from the early 20th century are of rather serious-faced folks. Not a lot of smiling took place in those formal shots, for whatever reason. Maybe, as it's been explained to me before, it was seen as saucy or inappropriate to smile for them. Or maybe it was because of the strain of corralling everyone in their clean Sunday best and getting them to sit still long enough for those older cameras to do their thing without flinching and blurring the photos. Or maybe it was because women were a bit grumpier in corsets and men in wool suits? Heh heh...

At any rate, my sis recently found a photo from the other side of our family tree...this photo of my maternal grandpa's sister and her friend. And it's an oldie! I just love it :) Obviously, my family is the entirely serious sort ;-)

I think it was taken somewhere in the vicinity of 1910 or thereabouts. All my forbears were originally country folk, hardworking, and family-oriented. They all came from big families, with loads of brothers and sisters, and family reunions were a noisy confusion of all their descendants.

Whenever they got together, Family was discussed...the marriages, fall-outs, intrigues...and of course the laundry list of physical ailments. But most of all there was laughter...and often singing. Both sides of my family had strong traditions and grass-roots connections to their families and their faith. All were protestant christians of a denomination with very scaled-down beliefs, even to the omission of instrumental music from their hymns. So they sang. And since you pretty much had no other way to play a hymn other than to sing it, 'most everybody had had enough practice to be pretty good at it, or at least to read music. So when gatherings happened, so did the singing...and sitting there as a child in the midst of it, warmed by soft laps and good food while everyone sings, all's right with the world and God. It's another of my favorite memories.

I posted this picture of Aunt Lois taken when she was a young girl. (She's the one on the left, sticking out her tongue, ha! ) I love that it shows her laughing! She ended up being a matriarch of my maternal grandpa's side of the family, only survived by one remaining sister, Aunt Bunny. Aunt Lois had a crackle of a laugh, a deep kindness about her, a no-nonsense demeanor, and a steely resolve. She was a strong woman. I love most that she, like her siblings, could laugh. She aged into what could be called "a handsome woman"... regal and yet down-home. She had impeccable manners, and no false "airs." She had opinions. She was nobody's doormat, and her husband and children adored her. She never forgot a birthday, no matter how remotely-related you were on the family tree, and made handmade items to send for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations. She passed away, after a full and long life, adored.

I've been sent a few pictures here and there in the past few years...some of my childhood, some of my grandparents'. There are no scary portraits among them...they are all unexpected windows into the moments of their lives long before I came along. A picture of my Grandma and Grandpa grinning underneath a huge oak tree, before they were even married...two co-conspirators. A picture of Grandpa dressed up, playing the dandy in his early twenties, leaning on a Model T and foot on its running board. In them I see the younger version of my Grandparents ...having fun, full of mischief, laughing, unposed, loving, joking. It's not so different than the older version I knew, only with younger faces and different surroundings.

If I ever have a guest room set up, these will be the portraits I hang. They may not stare a person down in the darkness of night, but if their eyes do follow, they're filled with a conspiratorial twinkle, perhaps a wink. The ticking of the clock may remind of how quickly time passes, and maybe sleep will come accompanied by the memory of long-forgotten songs.

Some of the Way Back When Pieces of the Big Picture

Like my house cleaning, the blog frequency lately has been rather all-or-nothing. If I make it here, it's a stolen writing respite :)

I was thinking back on what attuned me the direction we desire to continue moving...something that has pulled me like a magnet throughout the years. It seems it was semi-derailed, or maybe just found alternate expressions in my former marriage. I wrongly assumed there was a kindred spirit toward things like gardening, DIY, rural living, returning to natural and traditional foods/skills/medicines/prevention...even physical labor. I assumed, since his parents were SO WONDERFULLY living that way, that was a shared love. Well, NO...hard lesson learned. But I concentrated on other things to make a warm home, and I do not regret a single moment staying home with my daughter, learning to be economical, being creative, homeschooling (in her early years...for the long term, I'm convinced BOTH parents have to be on board)...and so on.

I had married for keeps, and never anticipated at this point in my life the possibility I'd be writing about former things, meaning a past marriage. But I will say that God gives much graciousness and remembers us during the hardest of times, and I feel honored He gave me this second opportunity. He brought me my present husband, and has taught me many things in the process. Hopefully I'm a wiser person for it, but definately grateful. In the few years J and I have been married, we've had the real joy of realizing that we LOVE the same sort of lifestyle and desire the same sorts of things in some real specifics we'd never before been able to have a partner to share in. I'm determined not to pull in an opposite direction as my husband, and all the things he encourages me in uphold me as an individual. But we're definately a team, and I suppose this is what family is...living it together.

I could write so much more about J, but my original intent with this entry was to try to remember bits and pieces of things that contributed to my lifelong love of returning to a different lifestyle. I meaning "returning to" in the sense of something that was taken for granted before "modernization." I remember my grandma heartily laughing at our talking about what we kids had termed the "good old days." She said she appreciates the conveniences that helped her save time, and never had any longings to return to cooking solely on a wood cookstove, that I can remember. But my grandparents were Depression era people, and knew the art of saving...EVERYTHING. They epitomized "frugal" without it meaning sloppiness or neglect. They just buckled down and did things themselves...grew their food, did their own carpentry, side craft-projects, house repairs and renovations, land upkeep, mending, car and machine repairs. They worshipped fairly often in a simple country church, but more often their simple faith was best expressed just by being the people they were...steady, honest to a fault, good neighbors, with quiet spirits and hearty laughs.

I suppose I'm trying to pull together scraps of things that even back then began adding up to the curiosity and desire that has lasted a lifetime.

Here's a very incomplete list:

1. Lying in the grass as a very small child and watching the clouds...for hours.
2. For hours, as a child, watching...just watching and learning...things like ants, all the crawly things that made the soil alive in garden soil, watching the cat hide/carefor/nurse regular litters of kittens
3. Growing my first plant from seeds. I remember they were pansies, watched daily, grown in styrofoam cups in kindergarten. I was so thrilled when it bloomed, and so devastated when I carried it home, but on the way home a boy in the carpool was being rough and kicked it over and it spilled all over the back seat and was crushed. After that, my parents let me have my own little corner of the flower bed to grow some more. I'd water it with the hose, and they were my first growing things.
4. Berries, and warnings that unknown ones were poisonous. Wondering how the birds managed to eat them and know the difference, since I didnt see the birds dying from them.
5. Picking up rocks...my grandpa and I did this when we'd walk down the road together. He'd put them in his pockets and save them up. After a time, he'd put them in a rock polisher. They were our treasures.
6. Raising my kitten Rusty from runthood. He used to sleep in my jacket all those long days playing outside. When he was grown, he answered only to me, and I could call him loudly and hear him crashing through the bushes several streets over. It was like being Tarzan and doing the Lord of the Jungle yell...lol
7. Raising and training our Elkhound, who looked wolflike, and also was bonded to me. Probably because kids (in our house at least) were made to stay outside instead of inside, so Nikki and I went for a lot of walks, exploring. Nobody messed with me...he looked too mean.
8. The facsimile journals of the American explorers, or at least folks along the lines of Kit Carson, Lewis and Clark, and I cant remember the exact others, but I looooooooved these. I'd sit under the hawthorne bush at my grandparents' with a cookie and "explore" through history, in the actual diary copies. Amazing. Eye-opening.
9. Handmade projects my mother would propose we all do before the holidays. She went all out at Christmas. It feels strange to reminisce about something I no longer celebrate now that I'm Jewish, but I cherish the memories of family. Usually, the projects were our way of economizing rather than buying store-bought. Some of the handmade items through the years I can remember were...quilts, appliqued pillows, photo collections arranged into scrapbooks, eggs blown hollow and made into baskets of eggs, decoupaged items, handbaked items, drawings, and so on.
10. Endless books about horses. I seemed to have been born with an obsession with horses from my earliest memory.
11. Flipper, Fury, Lassie, The Waltons, Bonanza...the end. We didtn watch much TV.
12. Numerous projects out on land. My parents bought several acres they readied for us to relocate to some day. We never did. But oh the work we did there. I do remember muscadine vines, an orchard of old pecan trees (and a million branches to be picked up), and burn piles from the brush that was cleared. And the time it got out of control and we nearly burned down the surrounding county.
13. Wearing rubber work boots that go ka-FLOP, ka-FLOP when your legs are too short and they boots are for adults.
14. The aura of the old hardware store and all the seed packets and hanging tools. And the glass globed lanterns.
15. Riding in the back of the pickup truck...before it was a crime ;-)
16. Hanging clothes on the clothes line.
17. Raising baby ducks and finding out how quickly they grow... and how instantly they know how to swim.
18. Sitting on my grandparents' back porch shelling or snapping endless containers of snap beans, peas, etc. Watching the hummingbirds on the trumpet vine and feeder and the woodpeckers and the progression of birds of all sorts. My grandpa was a bird lover.
19. Collecting wheat pennies in an old metal milk can that was used as a doorstop.
20. Cutting out the wormy parts of the peaches grown from the old peach trees that never got sprayed.
21. Watching my grandpa shoot buckshot at the stray dogs that tried to dig up the newly planted garden
22. The grape arbor and tasting an unripe grape...whew!
23. The two wisteria "trees" hanging with blooms and adored by fat bumblebees. The trees literally hummed with them.
24. Making clover flower chains for necklaces and tiaras, and old drapes for long hair.
25. Handmade swing suspended from the biggest tree branch
26. Drinking from the garden hose
27. Looking for four leafed clover
28. Trying to play croquet...and pretty much being bored to death with it, lol
29. Playing chinese checkers in the evenings with my grandma...or american checkers, on a wooded checkerboard nearly as big as the top of a card table. She was stealthy and ruthless...ha!
30. Sunburns and bubble baths of Palmolive dish detergent and really fresh, line-dried sheets at bedtime..white cotton...that grandma always had ironed. They felt so cold on those sunburns
31. hearing the bob-whites, trees creaking and leaves whispering, whip-poor-wills, and mourning doves at the end of the day
32. hearing the morning clatter of skillet and stove in the early morning when grandma started breakfast


There's more...those are mostly young childhood. Just making a note of many of the snapshots stored in my memory. It's interesting...most of my childhood was tumultuous...most of these wonderful times were few and far between, at my grandparents when we visited. They are truly gifts, and I cherish them.

What are some of your moments ?




Going to go now...to tend to the soups. Homemade soups mean love :) and my girl is in need of some chicken soup TLC. Can't say it would hurt J and me much, either ;-)