Spring! 20 March 2016

Sleeping Until Spring

In Fall a leaf

covers a rock

In Winter the leaf

moves under the rock

On Groundhog Day

the snow slides the 

rock over a flower bulb

With the sun warming 

the rock lets the

Flower surprise us

On the first day of Spring

~Roger Apple 3/20/2016

Today is the First Day of Spring, the Vernal Equinox,  in the Northern Hemisphere. One of two days in the year when the daylight hours and the dark hours are equal. A day of balance. Gradually since the Winter Solstice our daylight hours have increased, and will continue to do so until the Summer Solstice. (Most of) the United States switched to Daylight Savings Time last Sunday morning at 2 AM and already there is more 'outside time' - if only the fickle March weather would cooperate! When I was outside earlier today taking the photographs for this Ostara post, I was wearing a ruana.

Even amongst the dead leaves and rusty metal, life struggles forth. I must be a person of balance, or at least one who craves it, because Spring (Ostara) and Autumn (Mabon) are my favorite times of the year.

When we are children, and when we are the parents of children who are still in school, our lives revolve around school-year calendars. And so it should be. Once we are no longer totally controlled by terms, and vacations, and breaks, and snow days, the manner in which we mark the passage of time alters. For those who farm or garden, and those who live in a climate where there is a noticeable - albeit at times gradual - change of temperature and vegetation, as the sun and moon traverse their not quite in sync year, what is called by some The Wheel of the Year becomes more discernible. 

In most major and minor religions the year is marked liturgically, from holy day (holiday) to holy day, from feast to feast, from gathering to gathering.  Occasionally, there is a serendipity to all of these different calendars and things line up. Then everybody feels an extra boost of energy, an adrenaline burst, while foods and costumes and ceremonies are prepared and rehearsed in anticipation of  a time of community and celebration.

This year, the Vernal Equinox has fallen on the same day as Palm Sunday for most Christians. As I was driving home from work earlier today, there were cars in church parking lots, and at one church (Copper Ridge Baptist) two young ladies (no older than 10 would be my guess) were playing on the railing along the handicapped ramp leading up to the front door. Made me smile. 

There is a quickening to life at this time of the year - buds appear on the end of the fragile branches of the Lilac, the Redbuds are in bloom. There are Daffodils, Crocuses, Dandelions, and Clover blooming as well. Soon, yard and pastures will be awash in color, a sharp contrast to the tilled and turned gardens and fields.  Strawberry plants will bloom white, and then luscious berries will droop in heavy, sweet, juicy fullness. Spring onion and leaf lettuce will inspire many mountain cooks to get out the bacon grease, cider vinegar and sugar to make the first wilted salad of the season. Someone showed me a picture on a cellphone at work this morning of 3 beautiful Dry Land Fish (Morel mushrooms) that were gathered very close to where I live yesterday morning. 

Lambing is for the most part finished. Watching the young frolic in the pasture is always a treat on the drive home of the mornings. I had a surprise this morning - there was a young Angus male calf, standing in the middle of the almost 2-lane road, in a curve. I came to a complete stop, watching as he peered quizzically up the hillside, where several head of full grown Angus cattle were grazing. I do believe he was wondering how he could get back there instead of being where he was at that moment. I slowly moved forward, her turned and looked at me, then started  towards the dirt lane along side the hilly pasture he had liberated himself from. I did not go in search of his keeper, for there was a four wheeler pulling a small wagon further up the same dirt lane, and I am sure the farmer was on his way to return the wayward youth to his proper environ. 

Roger surprised me with the above poem when I got home, complete with an illustration, on the back of an envelope :

May your day, and season be one of balance and growth, May you celebrate the large and small heartily and often. Happy Spring!

Fabulous Friday Findings 18 March 2016

I so enjoy days like today. A casual mental to-do list, nothing actually written down. Everyday tasks, nothing too strenuous or demanding. Flexible, for the most part, on timing. This is what my day thus far has been. Early, before nine, I went outside (brisk is how I would describe the temperature - maybe around 40), with camera in hand. I am participating in a challenge to post a nature photograph for seven days in a row. I am doing this in my writing group, so there is also a meager attempt at writing being done as well. The writing group is focused on mindfulness and encourages us to not just observe, but learn, from everything around us. I see this as an opportunity to see the beauty and unique qualities of all that my five senses encounter. In turn, this is beneficial not just in my writing but my personal path. These are the three pictures I took this morning: 

The remainder of the morning I spent finishing up the weekly laundry, straightening the kitchen a bit, and gathering the trash for a quick run to the dump. By noon all of my tasks were out of the way.

When I was in town yesterday running errands, I bought a container of fresh strawberries. I decided a cake would be fine to have with them, and said cake is on the oven right now. Hence these next three pictures:

I make 1-2-3-4 Cake. This has got to be the easiest basic cake recipe in the world. My grandmother Ethel Slade made this recipe constantly, as did Mom. It was the first cake I ever baked. You can use a tube pan, a bundt pan, make cupcakes, or bake it in a 9x13 dish as I did here. I have made it so many times I do not even use the written recipe anymore. I just set out the butter (1 cup) and eggs (4) and make it from memory. After the butter (I use salted butter - if you use unsalted you will need to add 1 teaspoon of salt with the baking powder to the flour) has softened and the eggs have come to room temperature, I prepare the baking vessel by greasing and flouring it (I use the butter wrappers for the greasing step - waste not want not). Measure out in advance 2 cups of white sugar, 3 cups of flour which has had 1 teaspoon of baking powder stirred into it & 1 cup of milk which I add the flavoring to - since I have fresh strawberries, I wanted a bright flavor so I added a teaspoon each of vanilla and lemon extracts.  Whip the butter until it is fluffy and pale. Add the sugar slowly and beat until it is fully incorporated into the butter. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after you add each one. Stir in the flour mixture and the milk mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour. (I add about a cup of flour, then 1/2 of the milk, another cup of flour, the rest of the milk, then the remaining flour) Pour into the prepared pan and bake until brown and tests done in the center. This is about an hour in a bundt pan and maybe 50 minutes in a 9x13. After the cake has cooled you can frost, glaze or serve with fruit. 

So the cake is baked, the laundry is finished, the trash is at the dump, and I am really enjoying my Friday. I sincerely hope yours was good as well.

~Ellen Apple 03/18/2016

Mid-Morning, Mid-Week, Mid-Month 16 March 2016

This is a picture I took from my driveway, looking across the road to our closest neighbors. We do not have forsythia, and there is a reason for that. I will explain with a tale from my childhood at the conclusion of this middling meander.

The first quarter of 2016 will soon be but a memory, and there is a quickening here in the Appalachians of southwest Virginia. The calendar tells us that the Vernal Equinox is Sunday, March 20. Here we do not need the calendar to tell us, for the harbingers of the season have been with us for the past several days. We have had thunderstorms, and hail. There have been frequent bouts of rain, or spotty showers as the weatherpeople on the television call them. I like the term sprinkles. Sprinkles remind me of my childhood because there was a Methodist pastor at my grandparents church, Ebenezer UMC, at one time and his name always amused me. Then about 25 years later, when I lived in the Charlotte NC area, there was a weatherman on the NBC affiliate (WCNC) that was named Larry Sprinkle. Most apropos. 

The cold weather, while not completely out the door, has for the most part bid us adieu. We will have colder temperatures at least twice more in the weeks ahead. The Easter snap, as PawPaw called it - which is a coldspell right before Easter, is forecast to arrive this coming weekend. Once again the mercury will dip to near the freezing point, and there may even be a few stubborn snowflakes fly. In May Blackberry Winter arrives, just after Mother's Day and prior to Memorial Day. 

Potatoes are traditionally planted on Good Friday (25 March this year) and I have already seen ground turned and fencing repairs on the small and large farms here. Trees are starting to bud, early bulbs have bloomed, and birds are calling up the sun in the wee hours out along the creek. The inside cats run from living room to kitchen and back again, meeping at the birds. Then when the skies darken and the rain starts they run and hide because the storms, even mild ones, frighten them. As I drive across the the mountain to town I am extra cautious. Early morning fogs have returned, and there are critters about early and often. 

My family moved to 400 Virginia Avenue in Richlands, Virginia, in February of 1967. I was not yet 9 years old. My mother still lives in that house, and I suppose that it will always be home in a way that no other place could be. While I have scattered memories of the cabin that saw me into the world, the Myer house that welcomed brother Ed, and the house on E 1st Street that was too close to the Clinch River to suit Momma, the house on Virginia Avenue is where I grew up. The home that I returned to multiple times as I struggled to make my way into life, like a fledgling bird that keeps returning to the nest. I can still climb the steps to my old upstairs bedroom and miss every squeaky spot. 

And that blasted forsythia bush is still in the corner of the front yard, right by the sidewalk and fire hydrant. That bush I hated with a passion, because it was the switch bush. The place we were dispatched to for the instruments of our discipline. The bush that I tried to kill repeatedly and grew to hate more each year. If you cut them to the ground they grow back bushier and healthier. They bloom and green and block the sidewalk. They harbor yellowjackets and blacksnakes. They will not die, even when crashed into by bicycles and fell into by random inebriated men stumbling their way home in the wee hours. They scratch your arms and hands when you prune them back, and they hurt like the dickens when your legs are switched with their branches. 

That, people, that is why I may admire their announcement annually of the quickening of the season but only from afar. That is why you will (hopefully) never see forsythia blooming in my yard. 

On the Cusp 10 March 2016

Always teetering 

on the edge

Ever at the cusp of 

Now and 

Then and 

When

Unsteady  

shifting sands

Unreliable  

horizon

Unable to 

Turn back

Unwilling to

Move forward

Suspended 

Here 

but

Here changes

Daily

By breath

With heartbeat

(there is a cusp of the heart as well)

~Ellen Apple 3/10/2016

photo credit Rachel Westfall Taylor

Elevenses 9 March 2016

In the British Isles, elevenses (pronunciation: /ɨˈlɛvənzɨz/) is a snack that is similar to afternoon tea, but eaten in the morning. It is generally less savoury than brunch, and might consist of some cake or biscuits with a cup of coffee or tea. The name refers to the time of day that it is taken: around 11 am.

I find that I drink caffiene pretty much consistently throughout the day. Coffee, tea, hot, tepid, iced - yep, I am an addict. And I do not want to change.

Scary, isn't it? When I look at this picture, I see my mother Jan Smith, my half-brother Steve Slade & various and sundry other relations from my maternal bloodline. Truth will out, and DNA never lies. I was not switched at birth, planted by an alien race to learn the ways of humans, or left on the stoop by gypsies or the fae -

I can feel change arriving in my life, and it arrives at a swift pace. I can only hope I have the strength to deal with the aftermath in a reasonable manner.

Spring has come Little Beaver Creek - Catching us by surprise - A warmth to the breeze at times - New buds barely catching my eyes - Early birds can be heard to sing - Heralding hope and joy - Lambs are frolicking in meadows so green - There are fishing holes in search of a boy - Clouds overhead float billowy soft - Morphing from fish to fowl - Windows are open to air out the house - Newborn kittens greet us with a meow - All too soon the new will wear off - And pollen will become a pest - But for now we enjoy the halcyon days - Choosing to remember only the best

The following are the first few bits of a story I am working on. Any thoughts?

There was truly no cause for the trepidation that filled Danielle when she knocked on the door to welcome her new neighbors. The house at the end of her lane had been empty for so many months, and it would be nice to occasionally see other people out and about. For the most part, she only saw the creatures that made the woodland surrounding the area their domain. 

And oh, such creatures they were. Deer, opossum, coyote, raccoon, groundhogs, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks ... Most likely there were others she had not seen or heard. There had been rumors of bear, and she was sure there were bats in the night though she had not seen them. Owls often could be heard and seen, seeking out their prey, and the variety of birds made their little bit of paradise a frequent destination for birders doing the annual Audubon Society count. 

In addition to the birdseed, salt blocks, and suet she routinely invested in, Danielle had taken to leaving her food scraps and leftovers at the edge of the woods, feeding the critters she called it. Actually, that particular habit of hers had been the genesis for her recent and somewhat uncharacteristic feelings of unease about her current living conditions. 

She had enjoyed her hermitage at the end of a paved, albeit one lane road. Hers was one of only five houses, each which boasted the type of privacy the burnt out and creative craved as intensely as the pioneers who settled this area had craved community and neighbors in the eighteenth century. 

... more to come at a later date.

~ Ellen Apple 3/8/2016

First Light 8 March 2016

International Women's Day

Celebrate!

Solar eclipse

Meditate!

Political turmoil

Mediate!

Burgeoning Spring

Ruminate!

Early light 
Meditation to pair
Quietude of sight
Crisp clean air

Preparation to bear
What hours will carry
When worldly care
And resources marry

Nourish the body
Embolden the soul

Go forth

~Ellen Apple 3/8/2016

In The Gloaming 7 March 2016

We watched the debate last night...Roger had a flashback to watching Captain Kangaroo because of Hilary's jacket. I mean, did you see those pockets? Then she mentioned carrots and he just about lost it. Bunny!

Really sad about Nancy Reagan. She was a classy lady.

SO happy for warmer temperatures.

When life throws you curveballs, adjust your swing.

*** Bill S-2609 *** Call your US Senator and tell them your state needs to be able to help you know what is in your food.

Stopping the Dark Act in the US Senate

Unfortunately, the preemption bill known infamously as the Dark Act Denying Americans the Right to know Act) passed out of the US Senate Agricultural committee on 3-1-2016.The bill is too new to have a number so I will refer to it as The Dark Act. The bill would violate the tenth amendment rights of the states to label GMO “genetically modified organisms” foods by prohibiting state labelling laws as to GMO foods. People would lose the right to avoid GMO foods by means of labelling laws.

The Dark Act is dangerous. To put it plain and simple, GMOs are slow poisons masquerading as poisons.

The vast majority of GMOs are engineered to resist, and therefore be sprayed with, herbicides such as Glyphosate The health of American consumers has disintegrated badly from the Glyphosate residue in the food supply caused by the GMO crops.

See the research by Dr. Stephanie Seneff ‘Glyphosate Pathway to Modern Diseases’ in Entropy Journal April 2013. Also the research of Dr. Nancy Swanson concerning the strong correlation between the rise of certain diseases and the rise in acreage year by year of GMO crops in the United States, Journal of Organic Systems 2014. Also see article ‘Grow in Doubt’ by Dr. Jonathan Latham.

I am urging you to use all of your parliamentary skills to keep the dark act from reaching the president’s desk. And of course to vote against it. The health of this and future generations depends upon stopping The Dark Act and reversing the insidious effect of GMOs in the food supply.

But how do I contact my Senator? Go to this website and search for your state. Telephone numbers and email addresses in addition to office addresses and websites are available. 

Here are some pictures of page-holders. Roger makes them, and there are some for sale ... 

*gloaming - twilight or dusk