Simple Pleasures of High Summer

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Kids, kidlings, children, chillin’,
whatever you want to call them.
(Only one of these cutie-pies is related to me!)

: :

Flowers, blossoms, buds, flora….color!

The very pink of perfection!

 

: :
Sisters

: :
The sweetest thing in my garden…

 Vegetables are the food of the earth;  fruit seems more the fruit of the heavens.
~  Sepal Felicivant

: :
….and lastly,

the color Aegean Green.
Funny, I don’t love the color but I am gaga over the name of the color.
Aegean Green just makes me smile.

What simple pleasures are you enjoying before summer wanes and mistappears?

Do you have a favorite descriptive color?

Don’t you love to read paint chips for the color names?

On Online Friendships

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 The first blog I ever read  back in 2004 was Quiet Life.
Donna’s writing was a joy and encouragement.
She’s been called a “spirit-gardener.”

It turns out, Donna was born September 27th.
I was born in the same year on September 28th.
We grew up two towns away from each other.
We are both part of a family of seven kids.
We both lost parents at a young age.

I read Quiet Life daily for several months.
One day, I was compelled to respond to something she wrote.
It was SO scary.
Me? Comment on someone’s blog?
And she didn’t know me?
What would she think????

Donna has the gift of the right word for the right time.
Time and time again.

Donna has another gift, she does.
She is a friendship broker.
Her comment section (QLCS for short) has
introduced me to several friends who are dear to my heart.
I’ve met two in real life. 
There are more on my list to meet.

Donna gives her readers something else:
she shares her family.
We all, in some way, believe Katie is our daughter too.
We love Donna’s kids.
Donna has five sisters; we know them by name,
and consider ourselves honorary Glyman girls.

I’m always learning from Donna’s example:
Keep it short.
Ask questions.
Find appropriate quotes.
Be interested in others.
Take photos.

So on this trip to Chicago, a pocket of time opened up,
time enough for a short visit at a halfway point.
We met at Chipotle’s and talked.
And talked.  And talked.
It was sweet.

Ah, Donna.
Love you.  Mean it!

~  happy sigh ~

Day of Rest

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Every year our close-knit community of faith meets at a cabin near Imnaha, Oregon.
It’s a day of rest.

 We worship, talk, eat, sing, play, and…rest! 
These are my people. 
This is what my eyes saw today. 
A fawn, a flower, a salmon, a discontinued outhouse.
Not pictured: a golden eagle hitchhiking on the side of the road.
We stopped to offer a lift, but he took off on his own.

Cliff-jumping into the river or catching some winks: good times!

Home Below Hell’s Canyon

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After Five Five-Star Books in a row, I didn’t expect to read a sixth stellar book.  A friend loaned me this book, and I decided I’d better read and return it.  We had swapped books of local pioneer stories and the one I sent her wasn’t really that good.  I approached Home Below Hell’s Canyon with a neutral attitude. 

Well.

This book whirled me around.  During the Depression Grace and Len Jordan bought a sheep ranch in Hell’s Canyon.  With their three young children, they worked to make a go of it.  Danger, isolation, toil, trials were daily companions.  Jordan does not resort to high drama, nor does she syrup the narrative. 

Our determined frugality did not ease much, even at Christmas.  In the youngsters’ stockings there would be something practical and something they had longed for, with a treat of candy and apples.

The life of the Jordan family was so foreign to a typical family’s life in 2010.  Risks had to be taken, decisions had to be made, chores had to get done…all without a husband a cell phone call away.  The pace of life was measured, time was carefully apportioned for the family and ranch hands to be fed and provisioned.  It was typical to can 1,000 quarts of fruits, vegetables and meat for the year to come.

A  canyon is a bad place for real wrongs, far worse for fancied ones.

What fascinated me was the education of the children using the Calvert School’s correspondence course.  The Jordans homeschooled before homeschool was a word!  The way Grace Jordan met the challenges of educating the kids while running a ranch is worth the cost of the book. 

From the first day of school it was clear that only by setting a rigid program would we ever protect ourselves from the double threat of alien interruptions and our own natural inertia.

This book is worthy. I hope to re-read it down the road.  Satisfying stuff.

Creation is making something from nothing; and creation is as bad for tying up a man’s day- and night-time thoughts as the drug habit.  Yet it is soul-satisfying, and for the weeks that we were involved in the carpentering and plumbing arts, we had never been happier.

Len Jordan went on to become governor of Idaho and a US Senator. 

We got word that we might have trouble disposing of our wool unless it was certified as shorn by a union crew.  A sheep-shearer’s union in the depths of the Snake Canyon was patently absurd, but the 1938 path of the American livestock man, a normally independent and rugged creature, was certainly not strewn with government roses.

Grace Jordan wrote four more books, taught journalism and English at various Idaho universities and has an elementary school named after her. 

Wedding Journal for July

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I love weddings, I do. 

Where else do you get to fling flowers up in the air?   There is something glorious about a celebration, dressing up, taking vows, sharing food, taking pictures.  In the casualization (made that word up!) of our culture we find ourselves with very little ceremony in our lives. Besides it’s jolly good fun!  It takes a lot of work, but the rewards are wonderful.

Last week’s wedding was unique for us: my husband was the officiant!  The groom has been our friend since 1981 and he wanted the person tying the knot to be personally connected.

  

Have you seen a Unity Sand ceremony?  The bride and groom pour their sand into a common vessel, a visual representation of oneness of the couple.

 

Blessings, our friends, on your marriage.

Quinoa Salad

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Quinoa Salad

Cooked quinoa

Add chopped:
 cucumbers (I used English)
onion (green or white or red)
bell pepper (red, yellow, green)
tomato (fresh or sun-dried)
olives (black or Kalamata)
artichokes

Salt and pepper
Vinegar and Oil dressing

I had Quinoa Salad (KEEN-wah) at a rehearsal dinner and loved it.  It looked different than mine pictured above, because the cook very finely chopped the veggies in her salad.  I’m a coarse-chop girl. I understand that  Quinoa is a complete protein and is gluten free.  I’m delighted to add to my meager repertoire of  GF recipes.  Quinoa only takes 15 minutes to cook, it’s a whole grain and very versatile. 

As I made this salad it dawned on me that, aside from the quinoa, it features all the ingredients for a lovely stir-fry.  So this is my summer stir-fry dish!  When I eat it, I pretend I’m Lebanese.  (I know that’s neurotic, but there it is.) I could make a large bowl of this salad and have lunches for a week.  Yum!


 

It Is a Privilege

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I called my cousin Rebecca when her husband died of cancer.  Her quiet words, spoken ten years ago, are barnacled to my soul: It was a privilege to be his wife.

That’s exactly how I feel after 32 years of marriage.  It is, it was, it continues to be a privilege to be his wife.  Happy Anniversary, my love!




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What Fascinates You?

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What I decided to do was to sit down and, very quickly, make a list of things that I most liked in other people’s fiction — these could be thematic, character driven, very general or very specific. I found that when I started this list, it began to incorporate ideas and items which I was inventing as I went along.

This post by Sherry at Semicolon made absolute sense to me.  I find too many things fascinating, but it was fun to write down my list of fascinating elements in fiction and memoirs. 

1.  Community.  This is what I like about Wendell Berry’s fiction.  What draws and holds people together?

2.  Island/Insular/Isolated life.  The rules seem different in closed communities and I find this fascinating.

3.  Loss of mother.  Since I lost mine at age ten, I’m always curious how other families fare when mom is gone.

4.  Homesteading and pioneer stories.  Moving to a piece of land previously uninhabited, and actually living on it.

5.  Clerical life.  Trollope, Pym, Chesterton, Karon.  Put a Father in the title and I’m engaged.

6.  Travel to different cultures.  Colin Thubron is my current guide; the observations of an outsider looking in.

7.  Scotland.  If it’s not Sca-ish… (Stevenson, O. Douglas, Buchan, Scott, Gunn); I can sniff phony Scotticisms.

8.  England: Victorian, Edwardian, Regency, Elizabethan.  Austen, Trollope, Gaskell, Dickens, P.D. James, Miss Read.

9.  Conversions.  When one changes his/her fundamental paradigms, I’m intrigued.  Why? When? How? My interest is in all directions: Protestant » Catholic or Orthodoxy, Islam » atheist, agnostic » Mormon, Armenian » Calvinist…

10.  Specific references to literature, art, music.  I look them up.  Google and I are good friends.

11.  Kitchen life: the preparation and consumption of food.  Specifics are special.

12.  Names: allegorical, patronyms, eponyms, clues in names.  (e.g. Malfoy means Bad Faith)  Dickens, Trollope, and Bunyan are particularly fun.

I’m interested in what you find fascinating in fiction.  Care to play? 😉

Rich Treasures

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Many days I’m tired and cranky.
Depleted.
I’ve had it.

But.

I need only to keep my eyes open
to see blessings, beauty surround me.

Here’s a short accounting of good stuff in June 2010.

  ~  the gloaming

~ leftover firewood when it’s needed


~ an iris soaking up rays

~ an expanding garden



~  more rain
“Those wandering cisterns in the sky
Borne by the winds around,
With watery treasures well supply
 The furrows of the ground.”


~ Morning tea


~ Icelandic poppies
~ nutty granola

Develop interest in life as you see it;
in people, things, literature, music –
the world is so rich,
simply throbbing with rich treasures,
beautiful souls and interesting people.  
~ Henry Miller
  
More Simple Pleasures