QUOTES: Done with Great Things

"I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride."

~ William James

BOOKS: Library Sale

I love books.  Especially good used books that can be had for next to nothing.

This was the week of the annual book sale at our local library.  For far less than one might spend on a single, new, hard-cover book, I brought home 17 barely-used, new-to-me books:

COOKBOOKS

• No Salt, No Sugar, No Fat Cookbook, by Jacqueline Williams and Goldie Silverman
  
• Plain & Happy Living: Amish Recipes & Remedies, by Emma Byler
• Better Homes and Gardens Complete Book of Baking
• Herbs are Good Companions: To Vegetable - In the Garden, To Cooks in the Kitchen.  by Adelma Grenier Simmons (founder of Caprilands Herb Farm, Coventry, CT)
• The Pasta Machine Cookbook, by Donna Rathmell German
• The New Book of Favorite Breads from Rose Lane Farm, by Ada Lou Roberts
• Perfect Pasta: 100 Suppers in a Flash.  Rodale Press
• The Complete Guide to Claypot Cooking, by Bridget Jones [seriously!]

GARDEN AND HERB LORE

• The Complete Book of the Greenhouse, by Ian G. Walls
• Crockett's Victory Garden, by James Underwood Crockett
• Dandelion, Pokeweed, and Goosefoot: How the early settlers used plants for food, medicine, and in the home. by Elizabeth Schaeffer
• The Healing Herbs: The Ultimate Guide to the Curative Power of Nature's Medicines, by Michael Castleman

OTHER

• Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook, by Paula Gunn Allen
• Field Guide to Gestures: How to Identify and Interpret Virtually Every Gesture Known to Man, by Nancy Armstong and Melissa Wagner
• Blow a Bubble Not a Gasket: 101 Ways to Reduce Stress and Add FUN to Your Life, by Janie Walters [The book actually smells like bubble gum!]
• Cat Massage: A Whiskers-to-Tail Guide to Your Cat's Ultimate Petting Experience, by Maryjean Ballner
• The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit, by Don Campbell

ADDITIONAL READING

Also, last Saturday at our great big yard sale, I rescued a copy of "The Wind in the Willows,"by Kenneth Graham, from one of the boxes of kids books we had for sale.  I'd never read it as a child, so I started on it while sitting in the shade during lulls in business that day.  Just finished it yesterday afternoon.

I was surprised by the  poetry of the prose and the sophistication of the vocabulary used in a book intended for children.  It was first published in 1908.  It's heartening to think of the respect given to the intellect of children in a book such as this, discouraging when compare with the mindless entertainment provided for children by today's media.

Today I just returned borrowed library copies of "Northanger Abbey"* and "Persuasion"* by Jane Austin.  I'm in the process of reading through her works, for the first time, this spring and summer.  Read "Emma"* a few weeks ago.  Have checked out "Mansfield Park"* to begin this week.

[*Skip over plot summaries in these links if you don't want to spoil reading the novels for yourself.]

Though Jane Austin's books were written nearly 200 years ago, the characters described within their pages demonstrate that human nature has changed little over the last two centuries, if at all.

In this light, I'm able to view my own encounters with difficult characters less as a matter of personal bad luck and more as the inevitable result of living and interacting with others.

(c)2008 Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

GAIA LUNA: Demure Dogwood

When rain drops grow heavy, the kousa dogwood tree outside our front door bows low in greeting, just as its Japanese ancestors might.

  

Delicate geishas with powdered faces nod politely while I balance on our top step, screen door behind me held open with right elbow and hip.

I am the awkward tourist, camera in hand.

They giggle demurely behind leafy fans.

(c)2008 Kay Pere - Effusive Muse Publishing

GAIA LUNA: Strawberries-First Harvest

Today the strawberry harvest began.  I picked them as the sun was coming up, just enough fresh berries for this morning's breakfast cereal.  A precious taste of spring sunshine.

There have been home-grown berries for breakfast almost every day since last June.

First, at the beginning of June '07, there were the fresh strawberries from the 8-foot circular patch at the center of Gaia Luna that I'd planted the year before.

Then the blueberry harvest followed--enough gathered fresh each day to last through September of last year, enough frozen to last until just this week, all from just three bushes.

Another season of little miracles begins today with this handful of beautiful strawberries.

GAIA LUNA: May Planting

Welcome to the new improved Gaia Luna Garden. 

We put in a new purple picket fence around the garden in April, which you can see it in the distance, just beyond the white barn.  The pink flowers, near at hand, are azaleas

In the photo below, we stand at the entrance to Gaia Luna looking East toward the newly expanded growing area. The old enclosure held an area approximately, 32 x 32 ft.  The new fence surrounds an area more than double this, at 40 x 56 ft.

Above the purple pickets are two layers of 3 ft galvanized fencing to keep the deer out while allowing butterflies and other pollinators through.  The entrance is blocked by plastic mesh until we build the gate.
Gem, the cat, helps to patrol the garden.  She's nonchalantly busy keeping rabbits and birds away from the tomatoes, Italian parsley and zucchini squash I planted last week.
Yesterday, I added trellises to the garden.  They are of my own design, using readily available materials from a discount store and the local hardware store.  Each trellis costs about $20 US, but will last for many years, and provides a flexible set-up.

This trellis will support cucumber vines, started from seed indoors several weeks ago and set out yesterday.
It's constructed of 4 plant hangers (2 top and 2 bottom, the bottom two hung upside-down) with cross pieces of steel electrical conduit.  I decided not to use petroleum-based heavy PVC pipe for philosophical/environmental reasons.
Jute twine spans the distance between the top and bottom pipes.

The top brackets are movable from season to season. I used galvanized metal screws, spaced along the posts so the upper bar can be raised or lowered depending on the needs of plant to be supported, anywhere from 4 ft to 8 ft in height.
I'm using companion planting (inspired by this book) though out Gaia Luna.

Here young eggplant and jalapeno pepper plants are nestled with foxgloves behind, sedum ground cover in front, and ladies mantel in the foreground.  Marigolds and nasturtiums will be added as the season progresses.  

This isn't necessarily a recommended combination, but the diversity of inter-planting is guaranteed to produce healthier plants vs. monoculture.
Looking West, late in the day, the sun shines down on the central bed of strawberries, all in bloom, encircled by lambs ears.  Within the next two weeks there will be fresh strawberries for breakfast.

The lettuce and cabbage bed is bordered on yellow onions.  To the left of these grow four short rows of peas in an intensive planting. Red and white sedum edging occupies the foreground.
The sun sinks lower as we step back outside Gaia Luna's purple picket fence.

The last light of the day touches the tangle of blueberry bushes, raspberry vines and the broad leaves of rhubarb.

A few days ago, I froze some rhubarb for adding to preserves later in the season.  I'm still enjoying blueberries picked and frozen last August, and last summer's homemade blueberry jam from the pantry.
April and May are just the beginning, the beginning of planting, the beginning of growing and harvesting.

Much awaits us this summer inside the purple picket fence of Gaia Luna.

(c) 2007 Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

BOOKS: Slow and Messy

Recent reading has included topics often pointed to as character flaws in our hurry-up and get organized culture--slowness and messiness. 

While I'm sometimes criticized for moving too slowly and being habitually untidy, I find these characteristics to be essential for my creativity and enjoyment of life.

I need time to think and an abundance of materials around me in order to do any original work. Without the freedom to savor life at an unhurried pace the joy goes out of it.  I'm willing to live frugally with both time and money, foregoing things like TV and many consumer goods, to maintain the balance that suits me.

Apparently there are many others who feel the same way.  "In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed" by Carl Honore explores the Slow Movement as expressed through the food we eat, the ways we choose work and live, and the ways we relate to one another.  

I highly recommend it.

I've just begun to read "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder," by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman.

Already I'm feeling better about the messy though functional piles that surround me here in my studio.

This book asserts that the hidden costs of organization can, in many circumstances, out weigh the benefits.  It challenges the culturally held assumption that messiness is always detrimental to productivity, offering examples and research in support of the opposite view.

Three chapters into this book, I'm excited to see where it is going. I've begun to breath easier after releasing a huge load of guilt over my perpetually untidy surroundings.

Even my reading habits don't flow in an orderly manner.  I'm not a one-book-at-a-time kind of reader.  I wouldn't want it any other way

At any given moment I'm in the midst of reading dozens of books, fiction and nonfiction, on a wide range of topics, spanning various historical periods.  Ideas bump up against each other in the slow turning of pages.  They linger together and form new relationships.

Given the choice, I'll let the value of original thought and enjoyment of simple pleasures trump swift and orderly completion, every time.

BTW - On the frugal front, I unsuccessfully attempted to find these books through the public library before resorting to used copies through Amazon.com.  Ownership does allow the luxury of making marks and taking my time.

Cape May Singer Songwriters Conference

We landed in beautiful Cape May NJ this weekend, for the Cape May Singer Songwriter Conference where B and I taught workshops, performed, and met a lot of wonderful people dedicated to writing and performing their songs.

Though this photo looks like a UFO beamed us down on the NJ beach, we actually arrived by car.

The conference was held at Congress Hall, a beautiful old resort right on the shore, built in 1816.

More to come about this wonderful weekend and the people we met there.