Leftover Summer Silliness...

When we went to visit our friends in Eastern Ohio in July, as we have for the past ten years or so, there was a mystery of sorts...I was standing in Peggy's kitchen when her little granddaughter, who we all call 'Bean' looked with some alarm at my feet.

"You only have four toes!" she said.

I looked down to see this:

Four toes

"No, Bean," I explained, "that's just the way it looks because of my sandals, see?" and I stepped out of the shoes to show her this:

Five toes

And I slipped my sandals back on.

Still four toes

She wasn't convinced.  "Do it again!", she said, and I did:

Still five toes

This action was repeated several times until she grew bored and walked away, shaking her little head.

Apparently, it bothers her quite a bit because I was required to do the same exercise LAST year when we were there.

I do, indeed, have five toes on each foot, as evidenced by my dusty footprints made during the installation of the new hardwood floors in July and August:

Really...five toes on each foot!

In addition, I now have beautiful floors in the entire downstairs of the house:

New floor

and they are finished, except for one little corner beneath the stairs, where the Tool Fridge sits.

Our Budding Artist

Robby

Robby spent the weekend at the house, and on Sunday afternoon, a perfect autumn Sunday, I took him out into the marsh, handed him the camera, and turned him loose.  These pictures are the result, and I think he did a pretty good job for a brand-new six-year-old!  I cropped two of the images and converted one to gray scale because he thought it looked 'cool', but all the rest is his work, with the exception of the picture of him on his belly on the bridge, looking for fish and frogs...his favorite position! 
You can click on any of the pictures to make them bigger.

Stream

Yellow Flowers

Dried rose hips

Barn and foliage

Goldenrod

Hummingbird nest?

Waves in the sand

Sunlight

Brush

Bumblebee

Butterfly

Mossy stones

Old shed

ORANGE!!

Autumn path

Preying mantis

Fuzzy flowers

Water Bug

Sassafras leaves

Cattail 

Ripples

Tiny flowers

Wild rose hips

Another Passing

In my life I have been fortunate to have a core group of friends whom I have known since I was twelve or thirteen years old.  Mike, Rick, Bruce, Rich, all of us with the common ground of Eby's Pines in Bristol, Indiana, and the roller skating rink where we met.  We skated together, laughed together, hung out together.  We built a litany of memories, catch-phrases, habits and stories.  Bruce was the eldest of us, and had completed his military service before I met him.  Rick, Mike, and Rich all went off to the Navy and Marine Corps in time, but they all returned to our little area when their enlistments were ended.
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There were marriages and divorces among the group, relationships made and broken, children born, parents lost.  Each time a new person cycled into the group, we all tried to welcome them with best wishes for our friends, and I'd like to think that we've remained friendly with any who have left...with one exception.  One of the guys began dating a young woman who was...ummm...'different'.  We all treated her as best we could, but there came an evening when he told the group that he'd broken up with her.  I remember the laughter that grew as one of us said, "I never really liked her, anyway," and another said, "Well, neither did I...", and another, "I was only polite to her because I thought everyone else liked her," and every one of us agreed.  The look on the guy's face as the admissions were made was priceless...and then he said, "Well, I only dated her for so long because I thought YOU GUYS all liked her!", and we dissolved into hysterical laughter.  That's real friendship!

As we went along, new friends came in and out of our little circle.  Dawn, Diane, Dara, Kenny, a few others, the Redmons, Bardos, Baileys, the Miller 'kids', and more, but the core of my group was always Mike, Rick, Bruce, Rich, Becky and then Tom and Michelle, who became as essential as the original bunch.  For awhile, several of us had MGs: Bruce and Tom each had MGBs, Mike and I had Midgets, Rick had a Morris, and we spent many hours driving, picnicking, and of course, working on the damned things, because there is always something wrong with an MG.

We had periods where we all practically lived in one another's pockets, constantly together or planning the next gathering, and too-long times, sometimes whole years, when we did not see or hear from one another at all.  The time always came, though, when we'd begin to pine for our friends, and we would make some phone calls, get together, and every time it was as if we'd been apart for only a few minutes, and we wondered how we'd managed without one another. 

Rick was the first to move away, just a couple of hours but still too far to make regular contact. Tom and Kenny moved to Florida, and I thought that my heart would break.   Mike was next, again just an hour or so, but still too far.  Bruce had very bad knees that forced him into early retirement, and then began having heart troubles that kept him at home much of the time.  Michelle went to Germany for three years.  Rich had a motorcycle accident, and spent several months healing, finances grew difficult, my sister was diagnosed with brain cancer, our son began having serious problems with his life and marriages, I found myself reeling from the deaths of my sister and two very dear friends in a fairly short time (Tom was one of those), and I pulled away, into myself, and shut out much of the outside world...including my friends.  We all grew apart once again.

One of the things that bothers me is that there are few pictures of these dear friends together.  We were all so very busy just living, being together, running our lives...and I don't think any of us thought to bring along a camera.  Tom was a photographer, as was Bruce, but cameras were rarely present when we were together.  I so wish that I had thought to capture the images of us as we were, as we are, as we have been.  I carry them in my heart, but it would be comforting to have something to hold, to be able to see those dear friends, to rest a hand aside the photo of a face that is now heartbreakingly absent, to remember the glory of our youth and the poignant beauty of our aging selves.

The last time we saw Bruce, he told us that his heart was so badly damaged that he had been put on the waiting list for a transplant.  Last Friday, his time ran out.  His heart just could not wait any longer and he passed on in the company of his sister and with none of his friends nearby.  We had let him slip from our lives these past few years, and it will be a long time before I can forgive myself for that.  He must have thought that we just did not care any more.

I am telling you today: do not waste time.  Life is short.  Love one another.  Stay in touch.  This is the singular most important thing that I have to say.  

We will miss Bruce terribly.  To those of you who remain, know that I love you all and that you are very, very precious to me.  



Good Morning!



 Well, hello there!

It's been awhile, eh?  My very slow dialup Internet has not allowed me access to updating my blog most of the summer. I'm at the library this afternoon, spending a rare weekday off sucking up some of their free WiFi. :)

It's been an interesting summer.  June and July were terribly hot and dry, August was very nice, with finally plenty of rain.  There have been reunions and dinners with friends and family, some health issues, some time spent with kids and grandkids, lots of days spent working at my little shop.

Oh, and there has been work finished on the house!  Nearly all of the hardwood flooring has been installed and finished, with more to come soon. It is turning out beautifully.

I've written many posts in my head, but they've all been forgotten now, I fear.  Here are a few of the things you've missed:



Ripe blackberries in the marsh



 

A perfect summer sky


 

A day with Robby



Toaster demolition

I was making some toast one evening, when the old toaster went POP! and tiny faerie lights began to twinkle in its darkest depths.  I thought maybe that was a bad thing for a toaster to do, so I immediately unplugged it and carried it out to the porch.  On Robby's next visit, he asked if he could take it apart...and so he did.  The grin you see here was what I got when I asked him what he thought his mom would do if he did that to her GOOD toaster?

Look at him...he is all legs and knobby joints, and he is growing so quickly I hardly know what to do. 

Flamingo Socks from the Big Bag O' Sock Yarn.  These are for me!  Many tiny balls of yarn were untangled from the great mass to make these.

Flamingo Socks





"Cinch Socks"

Cinch Socks Knit for the 2012 "Tour de Sock" and going to a friend as a gift.

I don't know when I'll be back here again. It will all depend on my dialup.  Until then, tot ziens!

 Mmmmmmm.....corn.
I love corn. I'm not crazy about summer's heat, but fresh sweet corn in season is like a gift from Heaven, as far as I'm concerned.  When I was a child growing up on the farm, my dad would plant one or two long rows of sweet corn in the middle of one of his commercial cornfields, and when the corn was ripe it was an orgy of culinary delight.  We would eat fresh-from-the-field corn on the cob several evenings a week, and Mom would try to freeze enough to last the family through the coming year.
We would drive the car out into the cornfield and begin walking the row, looking for the ripest ears. I seem to remember that we husked the corn right there in the field, throwing the husks on the ground to be ploughed back into the soil to enrich it for coming years, but I might be wrong about that.  I know that we would fill the car with corn: the trunk would be packed as well as the floor in the front and back seats, and I would ride home with a pile of golden goodness between my feet.
Back at home, Mom would set the big kettle to boil on the stove and dig out the corn cutter, a device that would remove the kernels from the cob in short order, as well as a bit of finger if she wasn't careful!  We kids would carry in the ears and pile them in great heaps that covered the kitchen table, and then we'd sit removing corn silks (did you know that every silken thread is connected to a kernel, and that if the pollen from the corn tassel does not touch the silk, the kernel won't develop?).
Once the ears were clean, they were plopped into the kettle to be blanched.   The pale butter yellow of the kernels bloomed into a rich gold.  Steam and the scent of cooking corn filled the house.  After a brief bath in the boiling water, the ears were pulled out and plunged into a sink full of cold, cold well water to halt the cooking process and then stacked on the counter to await their turn at the cutter.  Mom worked quickly to cut off the kernels and pack them into freezer boxes, then marked the containers with the contents and date and stacked them to await their long, cold rest.
When I was little, the chest freezer in our basement was always filled with meat, vegetables and fruit from our farm or from nearby orchards.  When the freezer was too full, we took the food into a locker plant in town, where we would rent a drawer to store the excess.  I never got to see the storage units, and I'm sorry now.  I'm sure they were nothing like the very cold dresser drawer that I imagined as a child!
It was such a long time ago, but I remember it so clearly and with great love.  The smell of the cornfield, the hot summer sun, the occasional sting of a corn leaf as it cut my skin.  The sound of the husks being pulled from the ears and of the cutter removing the kernels from the cobs.  My mother working so very hard to feed her husband and four children, wiping the sweat from her face, singing, chattering away as she worked. Our fingers stealing a bit of sweet, fresh-cut goodness and popping it into our mouths.  
Supper, during canning season, was often bologna sandwiches and potato chips eaten in the living room in front of the TV.  We rarely had bologna sandwiches for supper and we NEVER ate in the living room, but on those evenings, Mom was too exhausted and the kitchen was too hot for our usual farm supper.
There is a local family who grow the BEST sweet corn every summer.  Thursday evening, I stopped at their farm just as they were bringing fresh-picked ears in from the field. $4.50 for fifteen ears of sweet deliciousness!  A friend once told me that the BEST way to eat sweet corn is to take a small table, a large pot of water, a camp stove, butter and salt out to the vegetable garden.  Light the stove, bring the water to a boil and then walk into the corn rows, pick an ear, husk it, silk it, boil it and eat it, standing beside the garden.  I agree, but as I do not have a vegetable garden this year, I'll buy my corn from the Stears family, and eat as much as I can hold for as long as the season lasts.


Reunion time
 
 Robby and me in the lake at my family reunion. 

 
And now, a brief moment of whining.  I don't usually do this, I don't air my entire life online, don't live my disappointments on Facebook, but I'm just wishing.
I wish that I could have a brief period of only GOOD news, that my son could begin making some SMART decisions, that my grandkids could have safe, stable, loving lives every single day, that things could go smoothly JUST ONCE.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know 'we cannot control the wind, we can only adjust our sails' but couldn't we have just a bit of smooth sailing?  I know there are lots of folks much worse off, that I've had a fairly easy life, but....I'm tired.
sigh...
I'm ok.  I don't need hugs or prayers or good thoughts. There is nothing that anyone can do to help, I just need a bit of peace, a short period of calm, a time of rest.  A good night's sleep would help.
It's been hot and dry here, the grass in the yard is mostly brown and dormant, and we've set record-high temperatures; over 100F for several days in June and July already.  This picture was taken at 9:00 in the evening.  Rain finally came this past week, bringing cooler temps with it.  I fear that it will be too late to save some of the dry-land crops, where the corn stalks stand brown along the edges of the fields, wrapped in tightly-furled leaves.

And I close with a summer song...I do like winter best, but I love this song!

It's been awhile...

Nothing very profound to read here today.  I've written a lot of blog posts in my head while driving to and from work.  Posts about the music I'm playing on the drive, and about the obstacles I encounter along the way, and things like that.  I haven't gotten around to actually writing and posting them. I have, however, been doing a lot of knitting.

I finished these:

Finished socks early June

When we visited Tutto, the Opal sock yarn factory and store in Germany, my friend Michelle and I both bought sock yarn.  The blue-and-yellow socks are from Opal's Vincent Van Gogh collection, in the Cafe Terrasse am Abend color. It is amazing to me how evocative of the original painting they were able to make this yarn!

 I knit matching socks for both of us, using the pattern da' Treehouse by members of one of my Ravelry groups.  Mine have bumblebee buttons, Michelle's have coconut-shell buttons from my sister's sewing stash.  Cherryl loved sewing traditional style Hawaiian shirts, and the real ones always use that type of buttons.

Becky's da' Treehouse socks

Michelle's da' Treehouse socks

Denise's socks

These are for our friend Denise Johnson. Patons Kroy Socks yarn, simple rib.  Part of my promised pay-it-forward knitting from last year.  One more pair of socks and one more hat to go, then I have to begin this year's promised knitting.

Saint-Michel

These are for Michelle's daughter, Amanda.  Yarn is hand-dyed from The Dyepot, and was in my sister's yarn stash.  The pattern is Saint-Michel by Debbie O'Neill, from the Ravelry Tour de Sock group.  This was the Stage One pattern.  Oddly, the purple did not raise blisters on my fingers... (it's an inside joke)

Fields of Flowers

This pair is Fields of Flowers by Sarah Bordelon, and was the Stage 2 pattern.  Yarn was from the Big Bag O' Yarn that was given to me by Felix Zwerger at Tutto.  It was all in short pieces anywhere from two feet to several yards long. 

 

Stardust

This pattern is Stardust by Adrienne Fong, for Stage 3.  Yarn is Trekking XXL.  There are gold-lined crystal and silver-lined translucent blue beads knitted into the lace pattern.

I've begun the Stage 4 socks.  The pattern is Brave by Sarah Bordelon, and I'm using Opal again, this time in a lovely raspberry-sherbet rose color.

Robby completed Kindergarten and is now a big first-grader!  His mom invited me to come to the ceremony at his school.  

The Graduate!

Just me...