Making the Cut

I used to spend hours and days outside with these tools saving the property from invasive cedars and Japanese honeysuckle vines, and after about seven years the clippers and weed whip, dulled and unusable, sat in the garage until I realized a while ago, "I can now pay to sharpen these," and, to be honest with you, also thought, "When the apocalypse comes, any day now, I will wish I had sharpened these tools" to cut a clearing in the underbrush and clip and trim branches to build my lean-to, and so on.

Nobody else, I was sure, ever let their tools get so dull. Embarrassed to bring them to the sharpener, I prepared a fib -- "I bought these at a garage sale" -- in case the sharpener said, "Whee doggie. I've never in my life seen garden tools in such a deplorable condition." I wasn't sure whether the weed whip, my favorite, with its double-edged and serrated blade, could even be honed. I never knew anyone who cleaned or sharpened garden tools; Demetrius left his crusted with clay and soil. Also needing treatment were two lopping shears and a very old pair of hedge shears with wooden handles. The hedge shears were already here, rusted stiff, blades blackened with time and handles sticky with dust, when I moved in long ago. I wondered whether they could be salvaged. In the garage when I moved here was also a scythe, an actual scythe, but I think it's gone.

The sharpener sharpened and spiffed up all four and covered the freshly honed edges with paper, a courtesy unexpected and appreciated. Here they are back home, and out I go because I like cold weather for doing the heavy work of cutting.

Scrapers Gonna Scrape

Winter came early, with snow on November 8, and then an actual 4 inches of snow in this area this past week. When the snow ceases, the snowplow comes. The plow is a benefit for tenants, and I am grateful because, frankly, I have tried to shovel 100 yards of snow but every time, I failed.

Once, before the snowplow, a 50-pound bag of ice-melting salt was delivered here after a blizzard, left in the middle of the lane in front of my house. I could not move the bag, or even drag it, so I slit it open and carried the salt one shovelful at a time downhill to highway's edge where the most treacherous ice forms. After I did that 20 times, the bag of salt diminished and I dragged it away from the middle of the lane so the car could get out.

The plow is so much better, and the plowman courteous enough (now that I have asked) to clear the space in front of the garage so I can back the car out, but his blade scrapes the last gravel from the non-paved lane, leaving thigh-high drifts of gravel and snow, and soupy mud as the snow melts. I call it the "Slop-o-Rama." In front of the garage it looks like this.

What Is It About Old Stuff?

I rearranged my bedroom to look as much as possible like a hotel room for no reason except that I adore hotel rooms, private, clean and comfy, pillows and towels plumped and straightened beautifully and magically every day while I'm out doing something fun, and I'm ecstatic and smitten out of my gourd if it's a firm mattress with--oh, rapture!!--white or cream-colored shadow-striped bedsheets.

So I bought the sheets, and a hotel-looking bedspread and pillow covers, and then rearranged the room, dragging to the garage a battered old metal foot locker given me when I started college, which nice ladies filled with "hope chest" doilies and linens -- boy, did they get a wrong number! -- I was 17 years old and the Vietnam War had ended the previous year so maybe foot lockers were on sale. It had not been moved in 16 years and was locked. Total genius me, I knew exactly where its key was: in the junk drawer, on a key ring that's a souvenir of San Francisco where I've never been: the carefully preserved "key ring holding keys I never use."

Inside the trunk lay Christmas things like stockings and "crafty" tree ornaments that had lost all their crocheted and decoupaged charm, and two green-and-maize rough woolen woven placemats, except they were too small for placemats, as ugly as they sound: a souvenir from Ireland from a certain mother-in-law, God rest her soul; all this I threw out. At the very bottom in a plastic casing was my old Girl Scout sash I thought I'd lost years ago.

You had to "graduate" from Brownie to Junior Girl Scout to get a sash to sew badges on, if we earned them. Nerdy girls earned badges enough to fill the front of the sash and start up the back--Girl Scout cool. The next step up, Cadette Girl Scouts, earned badges with yellow borders instead of green. Earning each badge required genuine mastery: 10 or 12 steps increasing in difficulty, and each step had to be shown to or performed in front of an adult, the Scout leader, who'd sign off on it. I remember most the intensity of earning the Needlework badge. Several wars later, I can still cross-stitch, huck-a-back-stitch, satin-stitch, applique, whipstitch, hem by hand, tie French knots, darn small holes, and what-all. It's the leftmost badge in the third row, above the first-aid box.

(I don't remember any first aid, though. When I'm accidentally cut or stung the first thing I do is swear.)

I left Girl Scouting halfway through Cadettes because the badges had increasingly discouraging requirements: The "Aviation" badge asked us to correctly fold and pack a parachute. I earned the "easy" ones like dressmaking and storytelling and dropped out.

Today with one click I ordered airline tickets like it's nothing and from Amazon.com a programmable coffeepot for my mock hotel room, so I will wake up to coffee or hot water for tea without moving from the bed, and the coffeepot arrives the next day.

Hawthorn Berry

Hawthorn berries, currently ripening to a lovely carnelian red, are called "haws" and are both medicinal and full of cyanide. The seeds, if you ingest them, turn to a terrifically poisonous gas, hydrogen cyanide, in your intestines, and that is a stomachache you do not want to have. The flesh, though, is said to be good for blood pressure and heart issues. I think I'll leave all that to the experts and to the birds who eat these berries, and simply admire them.

The View and the Light

October used to be the month to winterize the single-pane windows with sheeting or insulation, but this November has been so deliciously mild that I dawdled. October ended; still not cold enough to insulate. One by one the flannels came out of storage: pajamas, sheets, robes. Then the wool socks and the fleece vest. But still we haven't had a hard freeze and that's when I block the windows, the view, and the light, so as to keep the indoors a bit warmer. During real winter the cabin's logs are cold as a witch's boot all the way through and the walls radiate cold that gnaws the bones.

So I don't usually get a view in November from the bedroom window: a quilt of trees, foliage and red berries. I love watching the moon sail by at night. I chose blue sheets so I can pretend I'm floating in the sky. The pillows are pink because it was either that or white. I've used satin pillowcases for decades. Unlike cotton, satin pillowcases don't pull on your face and hair and leave it all matted and striped in the morning. This was taken before I made the bed. I must make the bed every day. If I don't I feel as if chaos might engulf me.

No One Has Ever Been Happier

November 1 was a gorgeous 80-degree day, spent working, tooling around in the car on errands all midday and eating two mozzarella sticks and a tangerine for lunch, then getting minor foot surgery I have needed for seven years (no, it does not hurt) and unflinchingly paying cash I had saved for that: so satisfying. Then at 4:00 p.m. at home serving myself my real lunch out on the Divine Porch, watching beautiful birds occupying the golden atmosphere, and after that, dessert. I had bought Golden Delicious apples because a recipe specified them. Compared with the cloying sweetness of Red Delicious apples, these are wonderfully tasty.

Apple slices with my day's cup of coffee, espresso, in the tiny hand-painted cup I brought home from Portugal after touring a ceramics factory in Coimbra and watching eight artists wielding pinpoint-tipped brushes to build amazing, entirely original designs on cups, plates, pitchers, and so on.

Sitting in the rocker, taking in the sunlight and scenery, breathing the delicious scent of coffee in this unique and pretty souvenir of a wonderful country, I thought that no one has ever been as happy as I was at that moment.

The Most Remote Waterfall

November when the trees are naked is a great time to view the property's waterfalls, especially after rain has them rushing, and this one, #7, is the most remote and difficult to access of the eight waterfalls, with banks on each side so steep and choked up with rocks and impassable fallen trees I've never gotten close enough to capture its mostly unseen majesty. But yesterday, because it was there and because if I didn't do it now I might never, I was determined to climb, splash, crawl, and balance-beam to inch as close as possible, and got closer than ever before so I could show you. Still photos are nice but they don't give you a sense of scale or capture the whole experience with sound. I took a video. Now you can see and hear Waterfall #7 at full flood for real (40 seconds). Its brook ultimately flows about a quarter mile through the woods, and then over another waterfall, #5, into a pool, and then beneath bluffs into a swirling LaBarque Creek.

Can This Firebowl Be Saved?

Finished winterizing all my single-pane doors and windows (all but two windows now blocked with 3/4-inch insulation) just under the deadline on a lucky 66-degree dry day with wind howling up high in the sky, where a hawk was riding thermals. Today: cold and rainy, with wintry mix approaching. And as long as I was out there working, I cut down some upstart red cedars and briars, and took a look at my firebowl,  neglected now for years while I overworked myself elsewhere. In December 2010 all this brush got cut down. Currently it looks like:

I can do a couple of things, such as move the firebowl away from the base of the oaks, but before that, the brush must be cleared. It isn't widespread enough to hire a brush hog for, and my friend who owned a chainsaw looked at it askance (to be fair, he hates manual work of any kind). The green sprouts at the photo's bottom right are Demetrius' onions,  perennials, sole survivors of his gardening; these I keep and use and won't have mown down. Decided to try clearing this with hand tools as my project for December. Going outside in chilly temps and working is the only way for me not to hate cold weather. I hope for an improved firebowl I'll use more often, for burning dry leaves and fallen branches, and staring into, as time counts down to the winter solstice (only 25 days!).

Are Flags at Half-Staff All the Time?

Taken Nov. 19, 2015

It seemed to me that flags fly at half-staff more than they used to -- in fact almost continually -- and I wanted to know whether I was imagining that or was it real. Well, dog my cats, U.S. and Missouri flags have been at half-staff a heck of a lot of the time. Information came from this state-run website.

• November 16, 2015: By order of the President of the United States, effective immediately, the United States flag at all State and government offices will be flown at half-staff, until sunset, November 19, 2015, honoring the victims of the attack in Paris, France. 
• October 16, 2015: By order of the Governor, all flags of the United States and the flag of Missouri at all State and government offices will be flown at half-staff on Tuesday, October 20, 2015, from sunrise until sunset in honor of Lance Corporal Dominic E. Shraft who died while serving his country.
• October 13, 2015: By order of the Governor, all flags at every fire station in the state of Missouri and the Fire Fighters Memorial in Kingdom City will be flown at half-staff, effective immediately, in honor of Firefighter Larry Leggio and Firefighter John Mesh who died in the line of duty on October 12th.
• October 5, 2015: By order of the Governor, all flags of the United States and the flag of Missouri at all State and government offices will be flown at half-staff, on Thursday, October 8, 2015 from sunrise until sunset as a mark of respect for former State Senator Harold L. Caskey.
• October 5, 2015: By order of the President of the United States, effective immediately, the United States flag at all State and government offices will be flown at half-staff, until sunset, October 6, 2015 honoring the victims of the tragedy in Roseburg, Oregon.
• September 10, 2015: In accordance with state law, Sec. 9.134 RSMo., the United States flag and the Missouri state flag shall be flown at half-staff on all government buildings statewide on Friday, September 11, 2015, from sunrise until sunset in honor of the individuals who died as a result of the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. 
• September 1, 2015: By order of the Governor, all flags at all State and government offices will be flown at half-staff, statewide, on Friday, September 4, 2015, from sunrise until sunset in honor of Trooper James M. Bava who died in the line of duty.  All flags at all Missouri State Highway Patrol locations will continue to be flown at half-staff through sunset on Friday, September 4, 2015.
• July 21, 2015: By order of the President of the United States, effective immediately, the United States flag at all State and government offices will be flown at half-staff, until sunset, July 25, 2015, honoring the service member victims of the tragedy in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Isn't much else to say, except it was news to me that Veterans' Day (Nov. 11) is NOT a half-staff day, a day of mourning. It's a "day of celebration and honor."

How to Buy and Empty a 50-lb. Bag of Birdseed Without Ever Lifting It

1. Locate a farm and home store or a feedstore selling a 50-lb. bag of birdseed for $16.99 or less.
2. Tell the checkout clerk you want to buy a 50-lb. bag of birdseed but cannot lift it. (Whether that's true is up to you.) Pay for it.
3. The clerk summons a fellow employee able to lift the bag and bring it curbside while you get your car.
4. Have the lifter place the 50-lb. bag not in the car's trunk, but in the back seat. (Previous experience has taught you that if it's placed in the trunk, you cannot for the life of ya lift it out.)
5. At home, lay down some newspaper or cardboard on the ground alongside of the back car door.
6. Open the back car door and tug the bag until it's horizontal and its top lies just a few inches outside the doorframe. Have your containers ready.
7. Pinching the bag just below the top of one corner, cut the corner above your hand with a razor or scissors so the cut is 2 inches wide, forming a spout. A two-inch cut lets the birdfeed flow out at a controllable rate.
8. Place your first and largest container beneath the "spout." Tug, jiggle, and massage the bag until birdseed pours into the container. Continue until the container is full.
9. When the container is full, close the bag, set it upright and get your second empty container.
10. Re-open the bag and repeat with other containers until the bag is empty.
If any birdseed has been spilled, it probably fell on the newspaper or cardboard. Pick that up and pour the spilled birdfeed into the container. Now there's no waste and no treats for mice.
Source: Years of experience at trying everything but this.

Cirrus

To get a photo of this magnificent cloud that looks so much like the spirit that rose from the remains of this cornfield -- knowing that cirrus clouds are in fact formed of ice crystals -- first I stopped the car and stood in the middle of Highway 109, and then in case I didn't quite get the cloud, I drove to this rise, got out of the car and knelt in the field. Then I drove a ways down and took photos of the cloud from a slope overlooking a farm, and was barked at by a lady's dog, all jowly from fat. The lady came outside, of course, and I explained before she said anything, "That cloud is so beautiful I want to take its picture." "It is beautiful," she said, and she and the dog went back into the house. I wondered if they were the sole occupants of that house, and if they had only each other, and if so, how beautiful and how sad that was at once.

Reasons Not to Rake This

While convalescing I sat out in the sun, on a folding seat on the stoop, and took a nice long look at the work I had to do, like, to properly shove the door open and enter and leave the house: oak leaves, twigs, hickory leaves, acorns, hickory nutshells. I enjoy looking at work I can put off until later, when ALL the leaves have finished falling. Why rake twice? Why rush things? Why not enjoy the riches some people don't have -- trees and autumn leaves around their front stoop? Why not imagine each leaf is a dollar bill?

Using Apps for Better Sleep and Waking

Two free Android apps for healthy sleep are "Twilight" and "Light Alarm Clock" and I'm loving both so far. "Twilight" reduces the brighter-than-daylight display from your screen (any screen) in the evenings, in harmony with actual nightfall, so you're more likely to fall asleep naturally when you should. I was staying up with business, games, and Facebook on my phone until 1:00 and 1:30 a.m. "Twilight" allows me to go to sleep at least an hour earlier.

Waking in winter--at any hour--is a chore. The sun rises late, and window insulation further darkens my house, disrupting circadian rhythm so I was a zombie in the mornings and and ready to work starting at about 6:00 p.m. -- unsustainable, even with coffee. "Light Alarm Clock" gradually emits mock daylight for up to 30 minutes before waking me with my selection of gentle music and the sound of twittering birds. I set it for 6:45 a.m., actually got up at that time instead of my usual day-wasting 8:30, and witnessed a red dawn: very pretty, but an old sign for rough weather ahead. Here's that dawn, and late morning, the same view the same day.

My Kind of Turkey

It's no secret that my Seasonal Affective Disorder prods me to "Sleep." "Be apathetic." "Don't do anything." All activities are too far, too expensive, too crowded, too tiring. The world is colorless. Furthermore, it rained all day yesterday. I went out into the woods this morning only to get some daylight for Vitamin D.

Wood ears

I saw a deer, who made that squeeze-toy wheeze, and a wild turkey, who flapped away ("Run, turkeys, run!" I said), and, although it's too late in the year for them, mushrooms, including a cache of edible oyster mushrooms and wood ears such as you get in Chinese food (pictured above). Most abundant, however, were the fungi called Turkey Tail and False Turkey Tail. They look alike, but the real Turkey Tail has pores on the underside, and the other is smooth. What you see here gilding a fallen log is False Turkey Tail. Its sunny colors on greenish lichen served their purpose until the sun itself came out. Only 30 days until the Solstice when the daylight begins to lengthen.

Meet My Fireplace

Picturesque, its native stone dominating the living room, I've never shown you my fireplace because it doesn't cross my mind. Last lighted in 1991 as testified by the tenants before me, it blasted hot soot throughout the cabin,

requiring an actual disaster team for clean-up, and the charring underneath the mantel from that hot mess is still visible today.

Estimate for re-lining and repair: $8000, and the landlord wouldn't pay, or for the cost of running and installing a new propane pipe for a gas fire. Because critters came down the chimney and died behind the glassed-in hearth--here covered by a blue wintertime sheet of custom-cut insulation--I had the chimney sealed. The huge crack up the front was there when I moved in, and I shuddered in its draft for 13 winters, until this very day when I caulked it with caulk that's white when first applied but turns transparent. I also filled holes in the native rock, unworried about resale value. This cabin was not built for year-round occupancy and some say the chimney was faulty from the first.

Fireplaces are wonderful, so romantic--and they suck the heat out of the room, require careful maintenance and tending and the bringing in of wood, and I wish mine were the fireplace it aspired to be, but it isn't.

Frost Flowers for the First Time

Driving into St. Francois State Park for a hike with the gang I saw shredded white plastic bags scattered in the road shoulders and wondered who'd done that, and at the Mooner's Hollow trailhead I was told, "That's not litter. Go look at those. They're ice flowers."

How the stems split

Photog with flower

They were amazing little pearlized natural sculptures made of ice, each unique, some as big as a head--and new to me. When the earth is still warm but the air is freezing, sap rises from the plant into the stem, which then splits and emits moisture, bit by bit, like an oyster growing layers of pearl, and the result is delicate "frost flowers," also called "ice flowers", or "rabbit ice" (an old mountain term, said the oldest hiker, Butch; the appearance of frost flowers indicates "it's the time of year to hunt rabbits").

Ice flowers are unique to autumn and early winter. We were so absorbed in their wild beauty--like fabric netting, like ribbon candy--that a 2.5 mile hike took us two hours to complete.

Two Men This Morning

GPS found for me the nearest building-supply store, boarded up and closed now after a windstorm, and then GPS took me to a Lowe's it didn't know was now a Gander Mountain store, and after that took me on a circuitous and time-consuming trip to the next-nearest Lowe's, far out of my way, and I sighed because I'd had other plans for the morning. But I wanted a single sheet of foam-board insulation to cut up for covering one more window plus the glass front of the non-working fireplace. At last I got the board--9 feet by 5 feet. It wouldn't fit  in my car and I'd known that so I had my box cutter and tape measure and the  measurements, and asked the Lowe's checker if there was a place in the store I could lay it down and cut the pieces. (Outside were high winds and occasional snowflakes.)

To my amazement the checker--his nametag said "Rein"--measured and cut the boards himself, perfectly, in five minutes, and I was so grateful I snapped his photo to show you.

Then I had to get the boards -- 6 feet by 3.5, and a smaller one--into the Corolla. Smaller piece, fine. Larger one wouldn't fit in the  trunk or back seat, nohow; always six inches too long. For 15 minutes I kept pulling it out of the car trying different angles, wrestling it as it acted like a sail in the gusty winds. I was about to razor 12 inches off the long side and try to repair it later when a man came up to me and said, "I see you're struggling with that. I will put it in my truck and follow you home with it." I wanted to accept his offer, but GPS had brought me so far from home that my area was far out of his way.

So we both worked on fitting the board into the car, bending it as much as 3/4" foam board can bend, at one point accidentally breaking off a corner of it, until I said, "It's no use. I will just have to make a a cut." But then he adjusted the board and suddenly it fit and didn't obscure the entire rear window either. I didn't take his picture, but you know he was kind. Maybe an angel.

GPS in its wisdom had known all along it was taking me to the only place where two different people would help me.

Warm Clothing, Part 2: My Second Poncho

Saw this on eBay, pre-owned, a thicker and more wintry alpaca knit than Poncho #1 (below) which I loved on sight and wear all the time, and thought, "That one is too loud and bright for you; you'll look tribal and tribal you are not; find one in a neutral color, beige or black, and longer, to cover down to the knees or so. People will look at that poncho, not at you; isn't there some kind of rule for women's clothing: People should look at the woman, not the clothes?"

Bosh. I'm not dead yet. Stunningly beautiful, soft and windproof, does not snag, $51, and so durable you will be able to cremate me in it. Wore it on a sharply chilly night and learned it is not a substitute for a down-filled or technical parka, but it awes everyone and it's a piece of clothing that inspires me to live up to it.

Warm Clothing, Part 1: My First Poncho

In spring and fall I like sweatshirts because a woman in her 50s needs climate control RIGHT NOW so I wear only those with zippers and hoods, and prefer them to have pockets. Trouble is, billowing and droopy sweatshirts with those baby-clothes cuff bands and unflattering bottom bands look like hell anywhere but at home.

Jackets for spring and fall bind my arms, or are either too heavy or too light, too short or too long, or they're okay for fishing but you need a different one for town; some are too nice or stiff to tramp through messy woods with, or not water-resistant. I haven't had a good spring or fall jacket for years because I can't find one that fulfills my every need.

Seeking alternatives I bought my first poncho, 100 percent alpaca knit, in the wine color I favor. For $16 on eBay how could I go wrong?

It's perfect in every way, like being embraced by a blanket--a warm, nice, secure one--and it goes everywhere, indoors or outdoors, casual or town. It's flattering. It's as warm as you want it to be; flip it up around your neck to catch your torso some cooling breezes. Alpaca, like cashmere, is close to indestructible, nonflammable, soft, natural, and nice. A poncho is not like a shawl or ruana; I don't have to be an artist to wear it or keep it on. People compliment it and ask if they can touch it. People want to buy a poncho for themselves. How great is that? I can foresee myself bundling it up and using it as a pillow on a plane. I've had it just over a week and I might actually look forward to winters now, with a poncho to comfort me. I'm totally at peace when I wear it.

Fossicking a Brachiopod

As a gatherer in a month without mushrooms, vegetables, fruits or nuts, I am drawn to the LaBarque Creek streambed 50 yards away and entertained by fossils from the Ordovician Period -- 400 to 500 million years ago, when Missouri was underwater, specifically warm seawater. I found today the imprint of an ancient living creature, a simple clam-like bivalve called a brachiopod. As the first human being to lay eyes on it I never know what to say. It's an honor to meet this bookmark in time. Did it know it was beautiful?

"Fossicking" is a British-ism for "searching for gemstones among matrix rocks," but I like applying it to the enjoyable pursuit of fossil hunting. Have found fossils of marine plants and coral and creatures such as this brachiopod. Fossicking is made easier by the amazing fact that rocks with fossils and imprints usually lie on the ground fossil-side up.