Apricot Tree...four plus years old...patience in the garden

 

                 A little over four years ago this was an apricot pit.

                 Here it is all leafed  out. There is a younger tree, 

              not pictured, but nearby in hopes of  cross pollination, 

                                               *so maybe*

                           next year we will have apricots?

                       I don't know, but I like this little tree 

                          that I have know since it sprouted. 

   

                      Here is another  tree I am watching grow.  

                   My neighbor gave me a deodora seedling.

            Can you see it surrounded by all the flowering sparaxis?

I had to come and share this tree because Martha was so kind to ask.

A Follow Up on those Apricot Trees now almost ONE Year Old

In my last post,  many months ago, I chronicled my adventure with some apricot pits. 

If you would like to read about my adventure of starting stone fruit from pits, you can read about that here.

The bag of soil and pits hung out in my refrig longer than they needed to, but it was last October 2020, that I planted the sprouts in soil, making these young trees not quite one year old.  I am really pleased with their growth and have enjoyed repotting them several times as their growth spurts suggested.

I am still trying to figure out  the ideal spot in my garden so all the trees are still in pots. This one is on my deck and keeps me good company.  Many of the little trees have been gifted to grow in  friends' gardens and I hope they, my friends and the trees, are all happy.  

Wishing any readers that wander in here very best wishes as well... leave a hello if you like!  I'll likely respond. 

My Apricot Hopes: from Jam to Stones to Little Trees

 I had hoped to make a trip to a few apricot orchards last summer. 

Spurred on by blog and cookbook author, Lisa Prince Newman, I had noted the location of some orchards in what people now think of as Silicon Valley, but it was not always so.  I grew up just north of the Golden Gate and remember a family jaunt to orchards south of the city.  Little farms that welcome visitors and have ripe cherries and apricots on the trees make a pretty indelible memory.  

Pre-covid, back in the last months of 2019 and maybe even a week or two in January 2020, I was imagining an early summer trip to Monterey County to visit friends on the coast south of Carmel. On our return home I had hoped  to wind our way to a few orchards I had read about.  Timing is everything with apricots; it is a short season and a fragile fruit, but the possibility of tree ripened apricots seemed within my grasp. 

Sadly, the 2020 apricot events had to be cancelled and family farms and orchards were not open to the public. Visiting our friends was not an option either. Our trip to the central coast is still a hope for another season. 

As the summer of 2020 unfolded, my gratitude for our garden and fruit trees grew, but I was wishing I had an apricot tree.  We twice had planted an apricot in our home garden. The first was one of the many fruit trees crushed by a neighbor's giant Cedar tree while we were renting out our house and working in Carmel. The tenants in our house telephoned to tell us of the fearful sounds as the huge tree fell on a stormy night. Thankfully the heavy trunk and long limbs had just missed the house. Everyone was safe; there was much to clean up but more for which to be grateful. 

We bought new young trees and made a Saturday trip north to plant them; but alas the apricot replacement was not one of those we found alive when we returned home a few years later.  While apricots are available in the markets, they are often either green or over ripe and generally pretty expensive.  So why didn't I promptly plant another apricot?  Let's just say it was a very busy and complicated time.

Imagine then, my delight, when in the shut-down summer of 2020 the oldest local fruit stand, which has grown over the years into a trendy expensive market, used a notorious social media platform to advertise organic apricots clearly at a "loss leader" price.  We donned our masks and headed down the road and were possessed of twenty-two pounds of blushing apricots within the hour. 

Oh, and they were good, those apricots, and we ate as many fresh as we could and made jam together in several sessions and felt pleased with the results and ourselves. 

Now I had a heap of pits. I just couldn't bring myself to toss them.  Many fruit trees grow best from cuttings, but having grown my favorite peach tree  from a pit that sprouted in my compost pile, I was pretty sure an apricot stone could yield a tree that would  carry on the most desirable traits of its parents. 

My favorite peach tree in spring 2020 bloom

 I knew that different seeds require certain conditions in order to germinate because as a child I had watched my father.  He would admire a tree in Golden Gate Park and gather some seeds and start experimenting.  He explained to me what botanists call stratification as a process of tricking the seed into waking up by mimicking the conditions of the seasonal changes of nature. I knew I had to wake my sleeping pits, stir them from their complacent dormant state. 

A quick search led me to the school of "youtube" where I found several generous instructional videos about  germinating stone fruits. One method was to put the whole pit in some soil in a bag and stick it in the refrigerator, while another proponent  said to remove the kernel from the outer shell and store them in soil in the fridge.  A third tree sprouter said to put bare kernels alone in a bag and store them in the freezer.  

So on July 27th, 2020 I did all three of those things. 

I could've checked them in August. I surely could have inquired on their well being in September.  Several weeks at low temp would have been enough to wake them, but it was October 13th before I rescued my bags of moist dirt and pits and brought them to the light of day.  The package of soil-less naked kernels is still tucked in the freezer, so that part of my experiment is on hold for now. 

I was excited to find that both whole and naked kernels were sprouting. I planted two of each and labeled the pots on 10/13/2020

On 11/03 I repotted the two viable trees, they were both from whole pits.  I think that au natural is the best way to go.  I have continued to have success with additional pits from the whole pit bag.

,

The other pots surrounding the trees have additional sprouters that I have since popped into soil.  If you try it, put the root poking out of the now cracked open pit facing down and keep them moist.  I have plastic egg crates over my pots to keep them a bit warmer but more importantly to stop the visiting squirrels from digging them up.  I have had fun gifting sprouting apricot seeds to nearby friends ... we all need something to watch grow in these strange days. And hopefully we can all look forward to apricots on our little trees, maybe three to five years down the road.  

Today, in between trying to find the hidden typos in this story of pits, cold dirt and hidden hope, I realized all these hopeful trees already need taller pots because they want to put down a nice long tap root, so I transferred them to bigger pots. 

I don't mean this post as instructions for growing stone fruit trees, there are many sources available with more and better information.  I'm just saying hello and sharing a little project that buoyed my heart of late.  I hope you're finding ways to keep as much of your life on track as possible during these prolonged and challenging days of covid related restrictions. It is so easy to get derailed.  

February 15, 2021***UPDATE***13 little trees and growing.

Sometimes Even a Title is Too Many Words

1. 

Poppies under my peach tree on an April afternoon....

In the Western Hills ...a poem

For my friend who has painted many wonderful images...a word picture

for Daria…

In the Western Hills

The road rises

through gullies

edged with wild seed flowers

Queen Anne’s Lace

bobs high on slender stems 

Atop the rise, on both sides

Black cows graze in golden grass.

Yellow headed daisies 

poke through the white lace umbels

Sunshine in a sea of clouds. 

August 2019

Jeannette

painting by Daria Shachmat

Today, while it is Yet so Called

Yes.  Pressing on. 

One step at a time. 

“At a time.”

The morning routine is fraught with awareness of time.

How often is time noted by mortals as “fleeting”?

Youth, at play, absorbed in doing-exploring-being, does not take note of time.

Those of us older than a child,  those who’ve passed into the realm of self consciousness, also can dwell in deeply immersed doing, but in retrospect are often aware…“Time got away from me.”  

Or, did I get away from time? 

So much time does get away, and then we splash in pools of memories, murky little puddles though they may be.

I have muddled in my own and others' memories at near expert level, looking for that jigsawed piece that could  finish the puzzle laid out on today’s flat surface.  What could -should -would such completion mean for tomorrow? 

But fragments of time gathered again, like crumbs of bread brought back to the baskets after all have been fed and are satisfied, speaks not only of brokenness but of the whole always fragrant and new. 

The invitation is ever emblazoned on the morning: ”...today, while it is yet called today...” 

The Madonna and Child

by Sebastiano Conca ( 1676-1764)

Such a lovely depiction this is...in the years I was privileged to see it daily, it never failed to touch me. 

Joyous Christmas Tidings 

Book Review: Americans and the California Dream by Kevin Starr

I read Kevin Starr’s Americans and the California Dream very slowly, in small passages and with no sense of pressure over a period of 8 months. 

It’s not a chronology of large happenings, but rather a record and Starr’s literary cultural analysis of what others thought and wrote in and about the California of 1850-1915. Starr had, as his vantage point, substantial historical knowledge and a native son’s heart for ferreting out the antecedents of subsequent events and dynamic on-going consequences intended and otherwise. 

In Starr’s words from the last page, he selected "acts of definition, moments when vision and event betrayed their interchange, and the aesthetic pattern and moral meaning of social experience became clear. History grants few such occasions.” (P. 444) 

I construct a timeline for myself as I read any history. As much information as I am able to retain, dates often escape me. Starr presents his narrative as an ”act of memory” rather than a classic or linear analysis. It might help some readers to read the final page reflections in conjunction with the introduction to avoid what some reviews express as frustration with and disappointment in this approach to history. 

Any study of people, time and place is best done through the politics, history and literature of the period. Starr’s book is best read as an adjunct to both linear historical documentations and first hand accounts, journals and essays of the time.  I have read many of the accounts to which Starr refers with some notable exceptions. I have never been able to read Gertrude Atherton and Starr’s assessment of her outlook helped me understand more clearly why I have resisted both her “history” and her novels. “For the sake of the establishment myth, and for the sake of her own role as a writer in that establishment, Gertrude Atherton did her best to sustain an illusion…” 

And then there is a book to which Starr has alerted me that I plan to seek out. California Coastal Trails, a Horseback Ride from Mexico to Oregon, by J. Smeaton Chase, was published in 1913. Mr. Starr says that past, present and future converge in this elegant narrative and he likens it to an elegy and yet Chase shares his hope. In Starr’s words, “In 1913 California-as-nature yet seemed capable of coping with California-as-history.”( P. 438)

Kevin Starr researched and wrote with hope himself and his work is testament to his belief that commitment to California does not preclude scrutiny, nor does admiration always blind one to her faults. Americans and the California Dream is work to read, but it is a worthwhile work.

The Body of the Earth

The body of earth,
our patch of garden,
makes mottled pears and
raspberry red juice run up thorny vines.
Flat white flowers turn
into strawberries.

Slowing down
time will come
a flutter of falling leaves,
short waves of heat,
strong winds,
migrating birds.
The fruits of summer,
stung by the wasps,
bitten by the squirrels,
will be gone.

Today the figs are still plumping
purple lines of sugar.
Apples sun their cheeks
for just a bit more color.

I like them all best
standing on the skin of dirt,
eating them before they know
they have been plucked.

Notes from the Smokey West

I saw with delight that the forecast for tomorrow is for cooler weather. 

   
                                                                                                             
I hope that is really true....from 95* F down to 79* F.  It would be some help to those fighting the fires and those perched waiting to learn the fate of their homesites. 

Just the smokey air makes me lethargic and combined with the heat I could become truly cat like.  Phoebe the cat moves from one cute position to another on her little pillow.  I try to move around and be a bit more functional, but I did take a nap I hadn’t planned on. 

The strawberries were abundant again today and Mark picked quite a lot of tender little green beans.  We have been trying to keep up with them and not let them get big.  I have some blanched and frozen already and we have eaten quite a few.  

The peaches are such a gift; one night we just had piles of peaches and yogurt for dinner and we were quite happy.  Then there was the night we made a peach pie…oh my.  

Our daughter - S.B.- gave Mark some colored corn seeds last year for a present and he  gathered in his harvest  today.

 We sat in the shade and pulled back the husks; it is so beautiful.  It was like a treasure hunt, not knowing what colors of jewels we would uncover.  The colors are deep burgundies and gray blues, orange and golden yellow and these colors mingle in variations that say that summer does not last for ever…

Fire is certainly a phenomenon that forces much perspective on you even if you only get the smoke from afar.  I smell it and think of those up close and laden in protective clothes and heavy gear fighting to corral the flames. I think of those evacuated from their land and homes, the short term times of wondering if it will be a long term displacement.

And for some,
no matter how the restoration takes place, is feeling at home ever quite the same?
I was truly touched by a man who wrote an on-line  thank you to firefighters with a picture of his gracious curved patio stairs, the stones littered with the ashes of his family home and the current site of his survivor chickens scratching through a feast that had been scattered for them by the firefighters.   Yes.   He has encouraged me and I  haven’t even lost anything. 

The Governor and the Chicken Lady

A True Story Retold...

Christian Archibald Herter, who lived from 1898 to 1967, was Governor of the state of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1957.  This is a story he told on himself.

 I heard a version of it in a sermon in the 1980’s from a dear Anglican priest, Fr. David Schofield, who used it to illustrate how important it is for us to know who we are.   Although I remembered the story vividly, I wanted to be sure I had the Governor's name right.  When I checked it out on the internet I found the tale has been repeatedly used  to make many points, but I think it hardly needs any amplification to be of great value.  Here it is as I remember it.

~~~~~

Christian Herter, a graduate of Harvard and the governor of Massachusetts mid 1950’s was seeking re-election.  He was having one of those really hard days on the campaign trail.  He had spoken at a morning breakfast meeting where he had no more than a cup of coffee while his listeners ate.   He had then skipped lunch altogether to meet other duties,  consoling himself that his last scheduled event on the trail was at a church barbecue.  He arrived a bit late and was relieved to see food was still being served.  The Governor  was really hungry. The queue was quite long but he resisted the temptation to be recognized for special treatment and stood at the end of the line.  The day was coming to a close, he was tired, he was hungry and everything smelled so good.  As he moved down the serving line he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken.  She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.

“Excuse me,” Governor Herter said. “Do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?”

“Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person.”

“But I’m so hungry, I haven’t had a bite all day.” 

“I’m sorry,” the woman said again. “Only one piece to a customer.”

Governor Herter thought of himself as a modest and unassuming man but he suddenly decided to throw his weight around just a little bit. He pulled himself up to his full height and asked the woman behind the platter of barbecued chicken, “Excuse me, but do you know who I am?” 

“Why, yes, Governor, sir, I do.  Do you know who I am?”  she replied. 

Governor Herter had to confess that he didn’t have any idea who the lady was.

“Well, I’m the chicken lady, and it's one piece per person. Now please, sir, kindly move along.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A thought or two on "Charles Dickens A Critical Study" by G. K. Chesterton

I did , in January, read this

1929 Dodd Mead & Co printing
of the 1906 copyright of
Charles Dickens 
 A Critical Study
 by G. K. Chesterton.

Thumbing through my notebook I see that while I fell short of writing a proper review of it I did jot down a few thoughts.

I was given this book a number of years ago and it has languished on my shelf primarily because I have not read much of  Charles Dickens.

Mr. Chesterton's writing often references
the luminaries of his day and the political social and literary climate of the time. In addition to not knowing much about Dickens, there is all that  I have never learned about England's history, as well as that which I may have once encountered and have now forgotten and yet, I was amazed at how much there was to glean, how much was still available to me in Chesterton's narrative, even when ensconced in specifics for which I had little reference. Though I often couldn't place or affirm many of  Chesterton's allusions and references,  I was, like a bird at picnic, well fed on crumbs.

Take for example this little gem found on page 161:

He could not help falling into that besetting sin or weakness of the modern progressive, the habit of regarding the contemporary questions as the eternal questions and the latest word  as the last....He could not help seeing the remotest peaks lit up by the raging bonfire of his own passionate political crisis." 

~the contemporary questions as the eternal questions and the latest word as the last~  

There is just a big lovely breath in that little phrase, isn't there?  

Here is a link on google's free Ebook site to some pages where Mr. GKC discusses "this thing we call fiction." Peek in around page 83.  The whole book is available there. 

Well I must away...and make some serious preparations for some very special visitors! 

Until next time....

You are alive...be happy! To Paraphrase G.K. Chesterton

 I came across a quote this morning that has piqued my interest in reading The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton  (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006.)

 In his Autobiography, Chesterton writes that

“At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence.  The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy” (99).

"...submerged sunrise of wonder..."  yes...

May Thoughtful Honest Public Dialogue Prevail

     It's generally considered a good thing to be an assertive person; I don't mean aggressive, that's different.   If being assertive looks like standing up straight, aggressive would be a forward lunge and passive might be leaning backward.

   And me, I must admit that I find myself leaning back in the public conversations of the day.  I find myself wondering about the scope of my vantage point, the validity of circumstances as presented and the possibility of hidden implications and unforeseen consequences of the proposals and platforms of the day.  It is a lot to sort through.

    I find myself listening carefully to others' assertions and though I believe that well-honed common sense is often enough, I recently ran across some notes from a class my husband took years ago with a more formal review of how assertions can be sorted out. I decided to flesh the notes out with some examples and found it helpful to put names on what I tend to do intuitively.  Perhaps you might find it helpful too.

To begin I started thinking about the word "assertion" and made a list of synonyms:  
 a declaration
 a contention
 a claim
 an opinion
 a pronouncement
 an avowal
 a protestation
 or simply a statement.  

Judging the acceptability of specific assertions begins with recognizing what type of statement it is.

*What's the assertion based on?

* Is it a description, an interpretation or an evaluation? 


 Three general types of Assertion  with an example in italics

1. Description  (based on the senses, or       experience)
    a. 1st hand     This is what happened to me...
    b. 2nd hand   This is what he told me...

2. Interpretation (based on various derivations of meaning)
    a. Internal states  I know what he was thinking.
    b. Causal relationships.  Causality is, by definition, interpretive, the answers we can give to "why" questions involving such causes as material, form, agent and end. In other words,  physical realities, circumstances, human actions and choices, overarching purposes or agendas. I had no choice, I had to build the fence strong enough to keep my cows home and it was the only material I could afford. 

    c. Comparisons and contrasts  Scales of 1-10, less or more... This is more important than that... 
    d. Categories or alternatives:  qualities or chain of events according to type. What might be appropriate for adults may not be for children.

3. Evaluation  (based on approval or disapproval - emotive language) I don't care if it is legal, it still isn't right.
     
Of course one assertion could and often does involve all three types of assertions; a first or second hand description, interpreted and emotionally evaluated. 

And then there is the matter of whether a statement is:

1. Presumably true ( in favor) 
2. Questionable (creating a burden of proof) 
3. False

Vouching sources for determining validity include:

A. Our own sense experience/ reason
B. Personal Testimony  
     (While sources A & B can receive
     presumption, that is, be assumed true unless further information  proves otherwise, neither A nor B sources can speak for assertions of interpretation or evaluation.) 
C. Common Knowledge
D. Expert Opinion ( sources C & D can ameliorate the burden of proof)

The likelihood is, even without formally thinking about such distinctions, they are operating in your daily listening and responding; but if you'll allow me an assertion of opinion, it's worth the effort to renew and increase our communication skills consciously, for no matter the issue, our public dialogue needs thoughtful and honest tending. 


         
      
      

Nicolás Gómez Dávila...writing to fix one's thoughts

 Colombian philosopher, Nicolás Gómez Dávila ( 1913-1994) whose works consists almost entirely of aphorisms had this to say about  writing: 

" The pleasure of writing, when we lack all talent and ambition, is the pleasure of  knowing clearly our ideas.
Drafting our thinking is, perhaps, creating it; in any case, it is to acquire a full consciousness. The vague and confusing idea is a mere promise; a promise that is not fulfilled and that is soon forgotten if words do not detain and fix it.
It is true that almost all of our ideas seem to be diminished by being written and that, in the light of that changing, rich and fruitful context of thought, they lose the life that stirs them in the warm shadows of consciousness; but it is only when they are of verbal pulp that we can know them and like, reject, or welcome them according to their excellence."

 (*This  is translated from Spanish, which original version is included below. )

 I  know that experience, where the glow that appears warm and steady within  flickers in me as I attempt to drag my  thoughts word by word into daylight.  Is this all there was?  What was I thinking?   It is a pleasure, those glimpses I sometimes have, thoughts which seem in the moment most excellent while in a hot shower  or on my knees and my  hands muddied in the garden, or in those first waking moments  when the door to dreams is still open. It can be a bittersweet process, but clarity is worth struggling for.

Original  from Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Notas, (p. 106) (Villegas, 2003) (1a ed. 1954) 

"El placer de escribir, cuando carecemos de todo talento y de ambición, es el placer de conocer claramente nuestras ideas.
Redactar nuestro pensamiento es, quizá, crearlo; en todo caso, es adquirir de él una plena conciencia. La idea vaga y confusa es una mera promesa; promesa que no se cumple y que pronto se olvida si las palabras no la detie nen y la fijan.
Es cierto que casi todas nuestras ideas parecen disminuidas al ser escritas y que, al extraerlas de ese contexto cambiante, rico y fecundo del pensamiento, pierden la vida que las agita en las cálidas penumbras de la conciencia; pero es sólo cuando se revisten de pulpa verbal que las podernos conocer y, así, o rechazar, o acoger según su excelencia."

If you would like to read of Nicolás Gómez Dávila  there is a very organized page of English translations of his aphorisms here:<http://don-colacho.blogspot.com>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dictation for a second draft!

I'm wondering if the music in the background, it's live guitar music,  will affect the ability of this program to work? I'm using the dictation program and it makes some interesting decisions as to what it is I've actually said. We are learning to get along with each other.  That is to say, I am learning to enunciate more carefully than I might otherwise.

As regards the last question I posted here, I decided to simply keep writing; cull a little and not burn it all.  Of course first drafts do need and get a rough chaffing up that could cause  enough friction to almost set them on fire.

Reading hand written pages into the microphone provides an initial smoothing out. If it doesn't read well out loud, it's likely needing clarification at the least.   I also find words missing that I thought but did not write down.

Pen on ink still seems to be the way feeling and less obvious elements are conceived and I need to be careful, while editing, to not squeeze the life out of any of that protoplasmic ooze.

I felt silly not having found the dictation on my iMac sooner, it was hidden in plain sight. All I needed to do was go to the keyboard preferences.  Once I chose whether I wanted to dictate offline on via the cloud, I chose offline and downloaded what was necessary, it is a simple matter of putting ones cursor in any text box and hitting the function key two times.  Of course  I also need to remember not to say anything I don't want typed into the box in question.  Ahem, clearing her throat, she wondered whether this tool would make new paragraphs on command?

Yes, it does.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Journaling: to cull or to burn?

From My Journal: December 29, 2017

"I'll end this year's journal with a joke...I'd like to sort through and organize my years of scribbles and redact as might be indicated.  In other words, I would like to do something with them. "

 A fire at the beach is one possibility as organization doesn't seem to be my strong suit lately and yet they are collected chronologically at this point; a full step away from simple chaos.  I also think of typing up ( is that even a verb anymore?) excerpts.  So to cull or to burn, that is the question.   It frightened me enough that I went right out and bought three blank books yesterday and wrote 2018 on the cover of one of them.

And now....I have typed up and edited an excerpt, haven't I?  If I am  sensitive about conditions changing, even this small change I have made may be a big enough perturbation in my original trajectory to lead to something other than a bonfire.  I am not, however, predicting anything.

Fictive character spills on author: try it, it's a helpful exercise.

When you write stories you get to create characters, but what would one of  your characters have to say about you?  Here's Ruthie, circa a few years back, on Jeannette:

Hi, my name is Ruthie and I got picked to be the character that tells you about Jeannette. Amazing, she picked me. 

I wonder what she thinks I’ll tell? Not that I don’t like to talk, ask any of my friends, they’ll tell you, but I’m a good listener too. I like people. People are always welcome at my door. They come, I feed them, we talk. I could have been a psychiatrist or a hairdresser maybe that would have been just as good, but me, I stayed home on the ranch. But I’m getting off the subject; this is supposed to be about Jeannette. 

It’s a shame she doesn’t have a better memory, and she could be just a bit more industrious. All right, so she already has the stress from her job. I know what that’s like because my son, he’s a very important person, he has the professional stress. Anyway, so it takes it’s toll, but a persons just got to decide, what are you going do? So if she wants some advice from me I’ll give it to her with strudel and tea, “If you want to tell a story you got to get to it.” But maybe she’ll listen to you people better. Who knows what difference you make in a person’s life? In one ear and out the other they say, but with her I think some of it sticks. 

But as I was saying about her memory, just the folks she met at my table, oh the history it all spans, she should remember it all. Okay, I’m not really someone she knew…and yet I didn’t spring from thin air either. I suspect some of the stories she could tell just the way she heard them, but she’s got these notions about fiction being able to tell a truth in a special way and fiction needs characters and I don’t know about you but personally I’d rather have character than be one. But a character I am and what she’s going to ask of me next I don’t know. 

I know that I’m putting some pressure on her. Sometimes I'd feel like the ladies that inspired me were my Siamese twins, like we were joined back-to-back and trying to walk opposite directions. But I’m learning to just speak up and let her know, “That’s not what I’d say, I’m not as nice as those old friends of yours that you hold so fondly in your heart. I’d stand up to that challenge.” And sure enough, she lets me go. 

So while I got the chance, what was it you wanted to know about her? I never could understand her love affair with writing. Talking it out is what I love to do, but she sees something and down it goes into words on a page. One day she found a notebook that was the perfect size for the inner pocket of her purse and she bought five of them. No bells on her toes, she just has paper and pen wherever she goes. I think she actually does her best work in dark black pen on paper, but as you know, she’s using a computer. You got to watch her if she’s doing rewrites, a couple times she’s squeezed the juice right out of me. Oh, here she comes now, I gotta go. 

                             ********** 

 Ruthie, what have you cooked up now?  She’s stirring so many stories she gets them mixed up sometimes so you needn't quite believe everything she tells you, besides,  she almost always exaggerates about me.    Jeannette 

Always Expose for the Shadows of the Subject even When you Aren't Taking Pictures

A reposting from a few years back...

"Always expose for the shadows of the subject..."   so says my 1948 focal guide retrieved from storage a few weeks ago.  Somehow the advice suggests other connotations....the realms of metaphor... " always expose for the shadow of the subject."

The other day it was the Walter T. Foster painting book  Seapower that got me thinking this way.
I had looked at the  10" x 14" teaching book  with absolutely no intentions of trying to paint the ocean or the cliffs I live above and yet

 I enjoyed perusing the step by step paintings and the tips and clues to doing the same.

"If you continually think in large masses of light and shadow ..."    "Always think and paint the large masses first..."   "...pick out the lighting...then you will know exactly where you are going."

  So if you know from where the light emanates, you will know where you are going.

That makes more than sense to me. 

Later in the day, out and about on the land,  I found  the painting advice impacting how I saw the ocean waves, the light on the rocks, the blue of the sky.  Lessons for painters are first and foremost, lessons for the eye.

Writers must see carefully too and one's eye must be attuned to many realms.  It's good to be able to see one's own framework of understanding, to filter the light from the dark.  Every heart frames reality in its own terms, its own limits.  To have an impact it needn't be large, but there must be an intersection with other frames of reality other than one's own.

I look at the sea.  Clouds are stretched like peach tinged taffy along the horizon. Light is scattered across the waters so white and shimmering  in areas that the eye can barely absorb the beauty without reflexively looking away.   I can change my visual perspective and for a moment the waters in front of me appear like a bowl, but I know the horizon is distance beyond my scope.

There's a boat out there carrying its own reality across the waters, but to me it is little more than a dark speck.  We are often in each other's view, but seeing eye to eye, well the eyes and the heart can take a lot training.

Such are the topics that have been on my mind lately.  You might enjoy the essay I  wrote this week and posted on Write Purpose  "Why We do the Things We Do "

Now that I have read  my old focal guide, I want to see if I can translate it to my digital camera.   My  notes to my self need to say.."Always be aware of your tendency to just point and shoot on automatic..."   and of course that too has metaphorical implications; I'm not just talking about taking pictures.

 ~~~~~~~~~

Black Butterfly Hatches while it Rains and Blows...female pipevine swallowtail

 On January 23rd, picking out spent leaves on a potted pelargonium I snapped off a brown stem. As I went to toss the leaves in a bucket, I looked down in my hand and saw what I thought at first was a leaf rolled up. I had inadvertently plucked some little critter.  I realized it must have been attached to the stem I had broken; it was a chrysalis. I wish I had been more careful because now I couldn't string it back to the plant the way it must have neatly spun itself on a twig to swing and sway in waiting.  I brought it inside and marveled how its colors were so similar to the leaves of my plant.   I later read that they are often the color of the leaves they have eaten.

I set my displaced friend with a leaf or two in a glass jar with  a vented lid and put it on my desk.  I was pretty sure it was a future butterfly, but I hadn't had any close encounters with a chrysalis for many decades.

                     

I took a peek at it most every day. It never answered any of my questions as to whether its accommodations were satisfactory or let me know if my assurances of good intentions were penetrating.  I took this picture on January 27th.  It was hard to tell if anything was going on.  The leaf was drying up, but the chrysalis looked about the same. 

 I decided it deserved more of the plant in the jar and I nestled it on a new leaf on February 5th.  They really do have a matching color thing going on together, don't they?  I was prepared to wait. One friend suggested to me it could take months to manifest.

Then this morning, February 9th, as I approached my desk, I saw my cat standing over the jar and sniffing at the lid.  I knew at once that movement must have drawn the cat, something was changed.  I had missed the moments of emerging, eclosing, hatching.  While I had slept, the last transformations had been going on inside this quiet package.

Lifting by the stem of leaves, I helped her out of the jar right away.  I was excited and wanted to return her liberty to her at once. I took her out to the front porch and set her on the wooden arm of a chair.  The wind was blowing and the rain poured down.  What a morning for the birth of this beautiful black swallowtail butterfly.

She continued to cling to the leaf.  I picked a new wet stem of the same plant and she gravitated to that and seemed to drink.

Still in my robe, I left her on the window sill and  I went back inside.  The husk and original leaf on which she had rested, brown now, lay in the bottom of the jar.  I got dressed and went back out to check on the winged beauty.

She hadn't flown away. One could hardly blame her.  We are in the middle of what the weatherman has called an atmospheric river.  I decided she might need to shelter for a time,  so I moved the very potted plant on which we had first met up under the cover of the porch roof and set her cut branch in the living plant.

And there on a potted pelargonium on my front porch she has spent her first day.  I should go see if she is still there...It is  now 9 pm and she is still on the potted plant.  I do hope she is viable.  Perhaps tomorrow there will be a spot of sunshine, something this butterfly has to yet experience, and with wings warmed she will venture out into the garden.



FRIDAY MORN UP DATE:  Sunshine was the secret ingredient for this butterfly to take wing.   As soon as a few weak rays broke through this morn, I moved the potted plant and inhabitant into the light and several hours later my friend had flown into her life!   Maybe sometime she will make me a visit.

February 9th in a ray of morning light.

February 14th UPDATE: PROPER IDENTIFICATION AND LEARNING MORE ...

from friend Katie who has studied butterflies: 

 "We don't have black swallowtails in our part of CA.  It looks to me, you have a female pipevine swallowtail (http://butterfliesofamerica.com/battus_p_philenor.htm), which feeds only on pipevines (http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/species_query.cgi?where-calrecnum=674). Do you have some pipevine, native or cultivated, nearby? Caterpillars of all sorts of Lepidoptera tend to roam around before they pupate, hence why you found yours in your geranium. And, they also tend to eclose early in the morning, maybe as protection from hungry birds, considering leps are so vulnerable when their wings pump out and harden.....and really you should let them rest outdoors to get the winter chill and emerge at the same time as their cohorts for mating purposes."

~Thank you Katie~  I  haven't seen the pipevine plant in our environs, but one can always stand to become more observant and it isn't as if I can trek around in all the places this beautiful butterfly can go. I wonder how far the caterpillars can crawl?  I hope she wasn't too coddled and thereby premature in my warm house...learning...learning.  It is always good to learn!