yet again claim
a Restart here
as that would be boring
and given my false starts
really now
can I be believed?
I can only hope
I have something
worth saying
in a public space
yet again claim
a Restart here
as that would be boring
and given my false starts
really now
can I be believed?
I can only hope
I have something
worth saying
in a public space
my last restart blew away
as soon as I posted it
or rather my writing tenacity
was blown away
so much happening here
in real space/time
it makes cyperspace look empty
and inactive . . .
all of my writing has been languishing
while I have been feeding all the woodland critters
(1/2 ton of food per year)
and helping move the firewood
from the slopes to here below
where we dwell
and watching the amble of the sun
through the tree line
from one fall equinox
to the next one
and planting and harvesting
spinning and knitting
and lazing
once again trying to be disciplined
in the matter of writing
I have opened up a new blog
a blog of place
this place
where I dwell so joyously
you can find it here
http://osuzannahhh.wordpress.com/
I’ve just completed cataract surgery on both my eyes
and have gone miraculously
from crappy rapidly diminishing eyesight
to the clarity and brilliant color of
restored vision
I feel it’s a perfect time to get back
to writing on a daily basis
either here or at adrift in the driftless zone
at the above link
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
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
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
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!
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
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
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