Teapots and a Giveaway

If you like fabric and quilting and give-aways, you might visit Jackie at Canton Village Quilt Works. It is a sweet way to celebrate one's birthday....giving presents to others. Of course she is hoping to get some new visitors to her blog...and it's her birthday, so why not! There is a lot of creativity going on there and many links to other delightful on-line places. I had fun looking at what others are making and sharing. It even inspired me one night to design a little teapot...this project isn't finished...but here's how far I have gotten to date...

The other inspiration I had for this silly little pot, is a kind neighbor who has made me more than several cups of tea...she says she hasn't done anything nice enough to warrant a hand made gift...but one must not ever underestimate the value of simple kindness.

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Along the Way

Visiting up north I pass by our home of seventeen years; we've had it rented it out the last three years and I'm glad to see it looks fine. I'm headed for my brother's. I take an old familiar shortcut. I love the way some places seem to hold off time and yet make the moment I'm in pulse faster with life.Not too many of these old redwood chicken sheds are left.
They remind me of very dear people who lived about these parts.

I didn't stop and take a picture of Walker Creek until it had already met up with Tomales Bay, but every meandering curve of it gave me great pleasure just to know it's still flowing along.

Queen Anne's Lace is blooming...

Preserved...it is a wonderful word. There was painter named George Otis Demont who was one of the many who helped preserve the Point Reyes Peninsula.



Being that I brought bags of groceries from over the hill, right about now I am starting to smell the onions, so I realize I better not stop for any more pictures...after this one.

I've arrived and I step out on the deck now, to look across the waters to the northeast from where I came.
Below the deck it's the garden near and far

One more peek off to the south east and then it's time to get

cooking in the all boy's kitchen.

Memories of old and today's fresh visit of land that my heart knows are both with me, and now those onions are starting to smell pretty good.

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~~2000 words~~

That Some Day We May Ride Bare-Back

In some ways my last two posts were about very small subjects, tiny cakes and vegetables, yet in some ways it's not small subject matter at all. I was reminded of that by several comments I received as direct emails. One especially made me laugh, from a friend who is pushing her self valiantly in preparation for a marathon. She says my repentance vegetable picture is helping her consider forgiving me for the prior post photos.

My brother S. often gets us all to laugh when he holds his hands out to weigh decisions in a justice blinded position, and intones very seriously his symbols to represent a variety of decisions: "broccoli or chocolate, broccoli or chocolate." My brother eats lots of broccoli, and probably only eats chocolate when he runs into it by fortunate happenstance.

Our daughter, S.B. also recently wrote as she was reflecting on various accidents she, family and friends have recently experienced, about striking a balance...

"I am thankful for the health and life of my family and friends. I have a heightened regard for life and health, and hope my friends and family are careful to take the necessary precautions in this world. Not to live in fear, but to truly appreciate the value of what we have and treat it with honor and respect. I make a renewed commitment to live a life full of fun and adventure and excitement, tempered with due reverence to the fragility of life."

And then one of my favorite masters of exploring the full spectrum of life's joys and sorrows left this message on the path. I happened upon it this morning on page 146 of A Year with C. S. Lewis ~Daily Readings from his Classic Works. It is a snippet of his thoughts in Miracles published in 1947.)

"To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room ( more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, 'Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot even be trusted with the wealth that perishes?' Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot even control an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else--since he has retained his own charger--should we accompany Him? "

It's always a great help to me when others put things in perspective. I
haven't been horseback riding lately, in fact I haven't even got to pet a pony lately, but I did fit into a wet suit a few days ago that a month ago I couldn't have squeezed into no matter how much help I got and therefore was able to once again climb down into that stone walled pot of soup I wrote about last week . This time I swam though the arch and out into the Pacific Ocean. It was very invigorating.If I should have and take the opportunity again I would hope increased health and strength would allow me to be more even more, as Lewis says, confident and rejoicing.

I suppose I could title this Bread on the Water post of broccoli, chocolate, inspiring quotes, horses and ocean adventures as "Fool on the Water," but images Lewis conveyed of joyful horsing around have stayed with me and so I leave you with a mountain rather than a coastal image. This is a picture I took years ago on brother L. and sister K.'s ranch. Those are the Marble Mountains of northern California. I hope the pure beauty of what I snapped can make up for the lack of actual pixels.

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Repentence for being a bad influence

I have been reminded, by the "other" very dear person, via a comment in my prior post, that we are a great influence on each other, for better or for worse, and so I humbly post this image in an effort to soothe with the cooling colors of green any longings inflamed by previous photos:

If it is any consolation, we had bell pepper, mushrooms, chard and onions at lunch and we had cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, lettuce and avocado at dinner before the the aforementioned and photographed pretties.
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Off the Chart Desserts

A very dear person is visiting us today. This special someone when younger, often had trouble making up her mind when dining out...decisions , decisions... so when asked which petites fours she wanted to bring home from the charming Patisserie Bechler in Pacific Grove, she had a very novel approach to solving the dilemma, just get one of each. Don't worry, Grandma B., they are just to look at, honest! And speaking of looking, I have not looked at your "chart" except the time you asked me to.... so fill it up or leave it as blank as you like, that's what I do with mine.

I think it must be time for tea...

fancy "bread" on the water....wow
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Climb Down at Low Tide

The low tide on Saturday was around 10:30 in the morning.
We set out for the rocky shore below the garden, down the repaired ladder on the ocean cliff , across a granite precipice as gray as a storm cloud. Other faces of the rock are white marbled with golden butterscotch streaks or peppered with black speckles.

We climbed down to the rocky floor of an outdoor room; it is no lost City of Atlantis, but it is nearly the size of an average American house. There is no ceiling but the sky of soft gray morning fog floating above us. To the north of us the water was still, a pool reflecting the colors of the sea's dark vegetables, captured in tall stone walls like soup in a pot.

pictures (c) & courtesy of Mark

At the stone floor's southern edge we could see the open waters windowed through an arch carved by the waves in the native granite buttress over which we had walked. The rock wall is gray above the water line, but below where life clings, the wet walls are a purple red hue. Cypress trees grow atop the bluff of the steep cliff to our east and the west side is protected from the ocean waters and wind by a wall of rock. At one point small debris tumbled down the cliff and struck near where I was exploring. Do you know what I think caused this? A gopher above me tunneling near the edge and dislodging stones and dirt. As far west as I'd come, I couldn't get away from gophers.

Have you ever encouraged a child to use their words, or admonished a frustrated toddler yourself, to talk instead of wail? I feel like a verbal toddler without pictures to share, it's hard to imagine I can summon words that can bring you the glory of this particular place where land meets sea. I was wearing gloves and as I often needed my hands to complete the stability of my sometime crab-like crawl out to this glorious spot, it was a good thing I didn't have anything else to be responsible for. I'm sure there are folks who could make the same journey (I can think of two to whom I am most closely related), and be graceful in every move, but I was simply glad to arrive and later explore the further domain of these beautiful walls of rock that jut out into the ocean where I live and return safely with a little cache of shells. Constant postural grace was not an option I encountered. .

We found the empty shells Haliotis rufescens Swainson, Red Abalone and Haliotis cracherodii Leach, Black Abalone. One abalone I found is oddly turquoise blue but it is still called black abalone. Here is the photo that I took of the shells once back home. Driftwood and a few striated tumbled smooth stones found their way into Mark's backpack too.

We saw colonies of various kinds of limpets living on the rocks. The most common ones, shield limpets are shaped like rice farmer hats with a little pointy apex near their center. We also saw flat dark plate limpets with their fine little stripes and checkers of color.

Ah...a new development, my partner in fun is offering to share some of the photos he took. We will see if I use them, if they have me in them, I might not want to spoil the view. (Well, as you have seen I did use some of his pictures...with a little cropping.)

There were of course barnacles on the rocks, lots of barnacles. I saw several live Chitons. Their shells are often called Coat-of-Mail. They are odd leathery life with eight butterfly shaped plates of armour. I think the ones I saw, attached to the rocks just below the low tide line, were Red-lined Chiton or Gum Boot Chitons. I only saw one cast off butterfly shell and it had one chipped wing.

Below the tide line are long thick groups of different life forms, brilliant pinkish treelike forms that I think are called nudibranches, black mussels, white and pink tiny volcanoes of barnacles, and tangles of kelps and seaweeds. These colorful bands of colonies ring the side of the cliffs like a woman wearing all her jewels round her neck at once.

The Mussels were plentiful. I recently read that one mussel lays several million eggs per year. I think the species I saw were Mytilus califonianus Conrad, California Mussel.

We saw acorn sized black snails with pearly knobs and crabs no bigger than a fifty cent piece that preferred to stay scuttled under the rocks. Depending on how you cock your head when you look at them, you might decide they are a murky brown or a motley array of iridescent glows. The tidal pools house purple spiny urchin and green pulsating anemones. The starfish were some of the bigger residents and orange and wine red were the colors of the day. There were groups of pointy white shells, I should learn what these are. Maybe one of my readers knows?

Not knowing at first that I would have pictures to share has helped me work harder to describe some of the sights of our low tide climb to you. I hope you got at least a glimmer of the beauty from this missive and had some fine adventures yourself this week.

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In Memory of Lillian...who loved the mountains and the shore.

I don't think she ever saw a rock she didn't admire.

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