it’s been nine months

since I last posted here
I have been simmering . . .
and now

I am ready to write again
meanwhile life has gone forward

the winter tasks essential to keeping
toasty warm
achieved
in spring
lawn tilled up
for a garden
gone since then
from bare
to veggie luxuriant;
an herb garden planted and harvested
and now nearing the end of my second September here
mushroom gathering has repeated

all the local berries
black raspberries/blackberries/elderberries
foraged and frozen for pies
to remind me of the season past
 

many more books read
writing more or less hiatus’d
though ideas percolate
as ideas will do
I am living in  my own idiosyncratic paradise
passion about what I was passionate about
when I was four
a reversion to essential form:
outdoors every day
a natural historian in her elemental
elements

rebeginning

no
I did not die
from mushroom poisoning!!!!
my absence more related to
tasks at hand
in particular
the cutting/hauling/splitting/stacking
of firewood

  



it gives me extraordinary pleasure
that trees   long favorite Beloveds of mine
should be keeping me warm
through the winter
by their now barren bones



I have been busy
feeding
and watching the birds
that feed from my avian picnic:
four varieties of woodpeckers
8 regular suspect cardinals
same of blue jays
a bevy of finches



(and I am not alone
in my finch watching:
I call this
the pane of separation



a large clutch
  of (now) fat mourning doves



the surrpounding landscape
so green a few months back



now startling  wondrous
beautiful in monochromes
white/grays/browns/blacks/deep skyblue







and each day beginning and
ending
in a splay of brilliant twilighting

the unpacking of the house
at a seasonal standstill
many boxes yet to go
on pallets in the garage
(where the spring thaw flooding won’t damage them)
tending the stove
and feeding the critters
gets all the attention

the winter solstice
full mooned
and I danced an earth twirly dance
naked as the burr oak are
in the deep snowed lawn
a close to full guarantee
that the new year
will be splendiferous
for me

for you

a harvesty day

it was a mushroom kind of day
a clump of light tan mushrooms
at the foot of one of the burr oaks

a little later
in another part of the yard
a clutch of larger darker mushrooms
again at the base of a burr oak

a bone I have to pick with mushroom
field guides
so sweldom do I find photos
that look anything like the mushrooms
I find. . . 

then later yet
while collecting the days fallen walnuts
I discovered a mushroom I do know
a hen of the woods
of sizable proportions

a choice edible
used for centuries in Chinese Medicine
lowers blood pressure
reduces the size of cancerous tumors
 and retards their growth
and reduces the nasty side effects of chemotherapy
lowers blood sugar
strenthens the immune system
full of excellent essential fatty acids
a protein feast
and beautiful

hen of the woods also known as
maitake mushroom
this one weighs 6.5 pounds



(some as large as 50 pounds
so while mine's a giant to me
it’s small potatoes in the mycological collector’s world

then in a walk  up the steep hill behind the house
another one found
smaller
only 3 pounds



but here is me
now with 9.5 pounds of prime mushroom


lucky it’s freezeable
and I sauted up a panful in butter
with salt and pepper
and they are delicious!

I note they’re selling on the internet
for $33.00 a pound

I am wealthy in ‘shrooms tonight

showing (having told)

having told about the new lair-in-the-woods
it’s time for pix eleations

one of the burr oaks close to the house

here a pooling of sulphur butterflies
on the yellow stone road

and speaking of sulphur
some sulphuir shelf fungii

a standing dead walnut
covered in fungal frills

close up

meanwhile, within
shelves going up in main library room

the library from the loft ladder

and you just know there will be many more images. . .
inside and out

and eventually there will be inside images
with nary a single box!

a plague of unexpected assistants

two days ago
from the southwest
in small numbers  but steadily
a plague of grackles came flying cackling overhead
and almost simultaneously a rainfall of black walnuts
thudding and plopping down

surely there was a connection between the appearance of the eventual hundreds of grackles
 of whom a great number is called a plague
and the fortuitous fall of the nuts I have been collecting. . . 

they swept through flitting from tree to tree
the long length of the yard   some several hundreds of feet
barely stopping to perch
chattering a constant cacophony of cackle cackle cackle
 accompanied by the plunk thunk crunk
as the nuts hit the ground

I swept up the binoculars
and finally found a few still enough
to observe them pecking at the nuts in the trees

after about 30 minutes they left the area
but later in the afternoon returned
for more of the same

AHA
I figured it out:
inside the blackening rotting husks
of the walnuts
are multitudes of squirmy maggots
sometimes clumped in the hundreds

this is what the grackles seek
and prise from the nuts
as they fly by

thank you my gracks
for so speeding up my collection efforts
and for the wonder of the shining black whirl
of your passing through

gathering

I descend from a line of gatherers
little surprise then
to find myself shortly after dawn
with a basket on my arm
 head down   line of sight on the lawn
seeking among the grass   the fallen leaves
of the walnut trees
for the nuts which have begun to fall
 ripe ready  from heaviness
  from the signals of summer’s wane

as I find them  basket them
I am reminded of trips to the chicken coop
when I was four or so  with my mother
and the slipping of eggs from beneath
the warm underbellies of red hens

I am reminded of fall visits from my grandmother
 for whom I am namesake
seeking mushrooms in the Ohio woods
putting them in this very same basket
the seeking posture also   the same

in both cases a race against
 the other gatherers
in the walnut case   squirrels
in the mushroom case   snails and bugs

these black walnuts  the toughest nuts to crack
 lime size and lime green
(this  a year for large ones)
the husks  already   blackened softening  on some
 the precurssor event to shedding the husks
 which in this signaling of readiness
 stains the fingers of the collector

occasional skyward glances
 to detect which trees are nut bearing this year
then to ground again 

the eye develops a talent for perceiving
 a seeing through the camouflage
rendering the fallen nuts near invisible at first

already I am thinking ahead
to how I will protect them from my competing collectors
   squirrels  and raccoons
while they complete   outside
   the shedding of husks that I might then
   begin the arduous task of cracking them open
   for the second harvest   getting to the meat of the matter

above me  sky sailing  the wind pushed clouds
  the heave and roil of tree tops
  dew and last night’s rain  and leaves   loosed and dropping
   about me  on me

there is music here
  the sounds of all these fallings
  the percussive efforts of several woodpeckers
  distant crow conversations
  scream of hawk
  songs of unseen birds whose names-by-song
    I do not yet know
  the occasional road rumble-bys of milk tankers
  pickup trucks caboosed  with corn harvesters  hay balers
    other gatherers out in the early day  intent upon collections
     of their own

countdown

as with most mornings
I was awakened this morning by
bird song
and my first thought was
that this time next week
I’ll be awakening to birdsong
in a new splace

and perhaps to the lowing
 of a cow or two
this is my last Saturday here
where I have awakened on somewhere
  in the vicinity of
    900 other Saturdays

the last week of the ups and downs on the stairs
somewhere in the vicinity of
952,127 steps up
and a like number down

from this
to a ladder with
  close to ten rungs
and a different kind of ups and downs

by this time next week
I will be either at or   close to
the end point of this particular trek
  westward

good-bye to all this
and  hello
to something else entirely

I look around at rooms
some empty but   four
  almost floor to ceiling boxes
and wonder where it will all fit
in the newer smaller quarters:
choices necessitated by the structure
of new space

*     *     *
and now it is Tuesday
and departure inches
no    speeds
forward

I know I am nearing the end of this process
because I am packing away
foodstuffs

the swarm of minutes

 gathered round  3:00 AM
long now  a favorite time of mine:
the rite of flowing down the stairs
to the kitchen    the harvest of the first mug
 of coffee in the day    the letting in of cats
their swirling around my feet
 waiting for their morning feed

attending   the wakening of
    birdsong   the sun
attending   the bedding of the moon

rooted in these rituals
 about to be uprooted
no flight of stairs for the multiple
descendings
   of days and nights
soon now   a ladder for climbing up
and clambering down
loft and balcony   and loft
wherein text and textile wait
  upon my weavings

returning to a landscape
 I have sorely missed
 where I belong
even as I lived in the beauty of
  the Otherness of where I’ve been
  for this long time away
returning to a skyscape
 180 degrees of blue and cloud tapestries
the earth  heaved and breathing
 hill slopes   plowed furrowed
   and planted
the intersperse of field and woods
eye bursting greens   burnished reds and golds
the stark monochromes of winter
this was/is/will be  alchemy
 for me

taking down

room by room
paintings and sketches
pinned to the walls
  spirit catchers  and favorite pendants
  and do-daads
  blown glass baubles and doodles
      sent by Beloveds
left on the walls
the ghost shadows on paint
 protected by what overlay

taking down
fleece abstracts on
  chicken wire
taking down all the empty book shelves

I have sour cherries
from a picking expedition last spring
in the freezer   one pie’s worth
 to be made into pie  before departure

doing my best   to use up   canned goods
 and freezer contents

in fewer than three weeks
 this part  the leave taking
will be concluded

and the last half
the settling in  to the new digs
will occur at a much more leisurely pace
interspersed with touring the new landscape
ogling and ohhhing and ahhhing  at all the beauty

the lost summer

a dramatic thunderstorm passed through
in the early predawn hours
now cool and low humidity
  for the first time in weeks

home no longer home
only a house  many rooms of which
almost completely filled
floor to ceiling with life
  packed in 1.3 cubic foot boxes

two weeks ago
I headed west
970 miles to find
(and another 970 back)
a new home

and I did
in the Driftless Area
  of southwestern Wisconsin
missed by glaciers of all four Ice Ages
the landscape is roller coaster hilly
 woods in wavy alternating strips with tall corn
  hay and soybeans
impeccably clean dairy farms

I have lived here before
high on a hilltop
where I was part of the weather
  as it passed through

this time  valley life  hill bound
11.5 acres  upwards of 2 acres of it in
  emerald green lawn beneath
  black walnut trees









the remainder a forested hillside
with trails blazed through it

a small pond
a bumper crop of blackberries
which should be ripe when I arrive

20 minutes from Madison
which has grown in the intervening years
engulfing small surrounding towns
housing/condo/apartment developments
spreading over the landscape
and as it happens
when this happens
it has become an expensive place to live 

and I prefer the beauty and quiet of the countryside
especially since Madison is so rapidly reachable
via a four lane highway
that wasn’t there when I left

within minutes of
a dear woman friend of 35 years
the new county hospital
 should I ever need it
the county seat with
supermarket and farmers market
little towns with local cheese factories
two state parks with lakes
and one on the Wisconsin river
 (and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin)
miles and miles of bike paths
(all the way to Madison
should my legs ever become up to it)
ski areas both cross country and down(gentle)hill

the house itself
  (mind you all furnishings are the current tenant's)


yes the porch is a-tilt
but only on the outside



I've concocted a tale
  as to why:
a landlooked ship's carpenter
moved by the rolling hills
built the porch while dreaming of
the pitch and yaw of sea waves . . . 

inside
smaller than the generous space here
I doubt I will have space for all my shelving
for all my books
on the other hand
it has both a heatilator fireplace
in the lower living room



and a wood burning stove
in the upper (by one step up and open to each other) living room
 (stove not visible in this photo)



to supplement the furnace heat
and a stack of seasoned firewood
enough to last the first winter
all ready to burn
2 small bedrooms
a dining room
 which will be both library and workout room
2 screened porches
 one for clement weather dining
the other between the garage and house
 for keeping the firewood dry
 and the Weber out of the precipatate weather
 for winter grilling use
a ladder between the large kitchen and upper living room
leads to a balcony that runs across the lower living space
 where I’m sure the cats will be pleased to sit on high overviewing
with a loft area at either end
 (one for text work:  the computer area
   the other for textile work:
    spinning wheel/fleece/yarn/ drawing table designing



a tiny  but sufficient laundry room with applicances
it has a huge attached three car garage
one of which the landlord uses
to store the lawnmower and his motorcycle in the winter
the car will take up
maybe ½ of the remaining two car garage
and the rest can be used for storage

there will be new carpeting and new linoleum
installed before we arrive
and the 500 gallon oil tank for the furnace
 will be full
computer/Net hookup  will be through satellite dish
 also installed before we arrive

altogether much less costly
 in rent and utilities
than here

after we get there
mid-August there will be more photos
EMPTY signs are popping up here
on closets and furniture drawers
as packing up reaches the end:
 it can happen soon enough to please me!