Treasuring and Pondering

December has been a month filled with sorrow, joys, beauty, tears, quiet and bustle. As I grieve the recent death of my father, I sometimes find myself looking at the day's activities as if it were happening to someone I'm observing attentively. I move through the day and reflect on it's occurrence's with quiet reflection, and treasure up the many blessings that come softly and sometimes boisterously my way, my tears often punctuating their beauty.

November 28'th my father was greeted into heaven, and on the day he left this earth my dear friends with whom I was staying, received word that they were new grandparents. I have long held a soft spot for children and seeing the pictures of new life on the very day my father went to greet his, was such a reminder of God's wonderful plan of joy and hope, life and love.

Last week I was privileged to be with my daughter and her husband during the sonogram when they learned they are having a son. A son. My baby is carrying a son. I find myself, like Mary did so many years ago, pondering what God has in store for this new and precious life.

I have kept Christmas decorations to a select few this year, no big gorgeous tree is filling our home. Rather, tree-scented candles, sprigs of holly, a wreath at the door, two small but treasured china angels from my husband's family and a 100 year-old copy of "The Night Before Christmas", that was my grandma Edna's is on display. I'm finding the lack of glitz is calming, and I'm so very thankful for our lovely little home. I even shelled out the big bucks (for us anyway) and had two people come in and paint the main living area and kitchen of our home and I love its new look. I've never had anyone paint for me before and although I had to close my eyes when sending the check, the lack of fuss on my part was well worth it. The two days the painters were here, I sat in my room and wrapped presents, thoroughly cleaned my room, got some correspondence done, did laundry and actually enjoyed being in my little nest while the painters quietly worked.

A few days before my father passed away, I called my husband and asked if he could plan something in Seattle for us to do around Christmas. I needed something to look forward to during that very difficult time.  He rose to the challenge and so far we have gone on a Christmas cruise around Seattle with members of our church, attended the Nutcracker, and the symphony. An embarrassment of riches. The above picture is from our fun walk around Seattle the evening after watching the Nutcracker. The picture below is while at the Nutcracker, where all the many little girls in their beautiful princess dresses were as entertaining as this gorgeous ballet.

My husband and I want to wish each of you the merriest of Christmas celebrations. May you also have time to treasure and ponder the many blessings that God offers us; from the simple beauty of gnarled bare branches, to the splendor that is often a part of this season, to the warmth and love of friends and family. Celebrate the gift of life that was given to us and may peace overflow in your lives.



Saying Goodbye



Me, enjoying my Dad's music just as I did as a child.

My Dad has finally let go of his strong grip on this life and has embraced his new heavenly one where he can walk again, play his spirited music once more, and be filled with such joy that his light heart will perhaps even spill down towards me on days like today, when my tears are flowing and my heart aches for just one more hug.

For the last several years my Dad's health has been in a slow decline.  Two and a half years ago he actually died and was brought back to life, but only to be so weak he couldn't walk anymore and could only eat pureed food that was spooned into his open mouth like a frail little bird being fed by his mother.  He was on hospice for six months before he was booted out because he just kept on keeping on. I often wondered why he kept on fighting, his quality of life was so poor.  Even this last week the nurse said that he only had a few more minutes to live, so I called my brothers who drove to the hospital to say their goodbyes. Dad lived another day. Why?  For what was this thin, frail man still fighting?

My single father and his brood of six. I'm holding onto his leg.

I think it is pretty safe to say, that Dad was hanging on for his kids.  He loved us and we all knew it.  He had adopted three children and had three children of his own, when he found himself a very single parent of six.  He owned and operated a logging company, working hard during the day, then coming home to six children who clamored for his attention. He played guitar and sang to us, held our hands and made us laugh with his silly jokes and funny faces. When he married again, we added a step-sister to our fold, then he and my step-mother broke the long run of girls by having two very loved boys together.  He wrote and sang silly songs about their childhood and attended every game they were in, no matter how tired he was or how much his back hurt.

My dad worked hard, played hard, and loved with everything in him.  When any of us kids would say, "I love you Dad", he would answer back with great emotion, "I love you more than anything". He taught me to love without bounds, to laugh for no reason, to express joy, sadness and tears without reservation.

We shared a love of nature and working hard outdoors.  I helped him set fence posts and tend the garden, and he walked through the forest with me teaching me the names of trees and birds. We enjoyed digging clams together and shucking oysters on the beach. He patiently taught each of us girls how to tie a hook, bait it and catch a fish. Well, he tried. Often he spent the entire day just untangling our lines, never complaining that he didn't get to fish even once. He always had a small boat and I loved to go out fishing with him.  One time he laughingly accused me of "chumming," because the waves of the lake had gotten a bit much for me.

My dad was real,sometimes glibly making bad choices and sometimes he just trusted the wrong kind of people. He wore the two-word title, "A Character" from anyone who had spent any length of time with him.  At one point Dad felt the current sum of his sins just might be getting a bit larger than he was comfortable with. This brought him to the decision to be baptized a second time,because so much had happened since the first one, and he wanted to make absolutely sure of where he was going when his time came!

I'm happy my dad has been released from his tired and broken body, but I find myself trying to adjust to not being tethered to him and feel a bit adrift, and as irrational as it is,maybe just a tiny bit afraid to handle the world again without one of my parents.

Goodbye Dad, I love you more than anything. Thank you for loving me my whole life.

A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot

At the end of each school year all the beautiful art created by students; all the bright seasonal decorations, learning incentives and affirmations, are wistfully removed and the teacher and her students are left with a bare classroom; an austere contrast to the beauty and life it held earlier. 

I'm reminded of this ritual of my past as I nostalgically cut back the flowering perennials in my garden each fall. However, the act of saying farewell to the flowers is admittedly made more easy by their unattractive fall look. I've been busily removing sodden brown flowers, limp blackening leaves, and tall stalks bending heavily towards the soggy earth The clouds and breezes have now fully gathered, and the leaves on the trees are emptying at a steady rate, their final bright colors waving a cheery send-off for the darker winter months ahead.

 Having grown up in Oregon and living the last couple of decades in Washington, I've been privileged to enjoy "many" autumns in the northwest. In late August, on a particularly lovely day, I received a call from my mother who said she was making pork chops. I knew what she meant without saying another word. My mother had experienced perhaps a slight shiver, a cool breeze, observed a subtle difference of color in her maple tree's leaves, or perhaps just an intangible feeling that our brief summer season had come to a close. I said, "Are you sure Mom...already?" "Yes", she said with certainty, "I can feel it in my bones". Cooking pork chops and applesauce is my mother's way of acceptance of the close of summer and an open invitation for fall to come magically in with its paintbrush loaded full of intense passionate colors.  

The salmon streams near her home are now thick with spawning salmon, and the maple trees are making up for their lack of leaves by housing great numbers of crows resting with their wings tucked in tight, between their raucous raids. I'm planting alliums for the first time this fall, their big bulbs promising large purple-swaying globes of color in late spring.

Fall is already coming to an end, and the warmth of my family, friends, and the upcoming births of our first great-grandchild (and yes I married a man who has a few more"autumns" on me, and a previous family), plus a new grandchild, fill me with thankfulness and anticipation. The picture below is of my son and I this last weekend as he surprised me with a week-end visit from his home in San Diego.  We both share a love of nature and a walk through the forest to the beach brought our hearts closer as we foraged for the perfect shell, pebble or leaf and praised God for the blessings he has poured out so richly on us.

Psalm 108:4-5: For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.

"A" is for Apple Cider Mill!

We recently visited an apple cider mill about 40 minutes from our home for the first time, and what a sweet adventure it turned out to be! Lattin's apple cider mill is a favorite field trip for our area's school children and a fun family outing.  I spent much of the time wishing one or more of my grandchildren were with us and hope that someday they will. The mill is also a petting farm and pumpkin patch, and has vegetable and flower gardens that are offering the last of their bounty.  I've long had a curiously strong bond with goats, and goats were sprinkled throughout the farm for people to pet and feed.  The picture below shows a couple of high-rise goats in their element as children send up small amounts of food in buckets on pulleys, a mutually enjoyable activity.

A very debonair fellow whom I'm sure cannot resist...

The winsome smile of this cute little face.

The Cider Mill has games for children and their adults to play, including a large apple sling-shot that flung apples across a field in hopes of hitting a bulls-eye target.

Perhaps another apple remedy to keep the doctor away?

Now, we need to get to the exciting part,the part that will keep me going back to Lattin's cider mill year after year after year, because I currently have within me a deep longing,a memory that is so powerful that I can almost recreate it with my eyes closed, nuance by nuance...Lattin's fresh, warm, incredibly soft, delicately seasoned apple fritters. I don't think I have ever in my life tasted anything quite so perfect.  These apple fritters had a flawless blend of  texture, flavor, temperature and apple-essence. My husband and I ate our perspective fritters slowly,their soft cinnamon little apple pieces and tender dough filling our mouths with warmed apple Nirvana. We kept closing our eyes and muttering, "Mmm..." soulfully. Afterwards, we walked around the little barn jonesing for another but feeling too foolish to admit it...for about five minutes.

So...we went back for seconds, skipping lunch all together and not feeling the least bit guilty! We even bought some of Lattin's famous national award winning apple cider. A wonderful spicy treat that when warmed is perfect for a chilly fall day, proving even though our gardens are losing their beautiful flowers and vegetables for the season, the Washington apple is just getting warmed up!

*I personally don't think that Eve presented an apple to Adam, although it is a beautiful and cultivated fruit to be sure. I think, rather, she was handing him a pomegranate, using her womanly wiles in hopes he would get the seeds out. Enlightenment has its price. :)

Savoring September

"The breezes taste

Of apple peel,

The air is full

Of smells to feel-

Ripe fruit, old footballs,

Burning brush,

New books, erasers,

Chalk,and such.

The bee, his hive,

Well-honeyed hum,

And Mother cuts

Chrysanthemums. 

Like plates washed clean

With suds, the days

Are polished with

A morning haze."

-John Updike, September

September is bringing activity, color and change to my garden! The dahlias are at their peak (often with earwigs lurking in their folds),the roses are brilliant and fragrant (between attacks of powdery mildew), both scarlet and lavender colored asters are just starting to bloom, the Japanese anemones are swaying in the gently cooling breezes, and the chrysanthemums are offering up their wine colored blossoms...

And a large population of crane flies are laying eggs in my lawn during the day then dying on my front doorstep each night, apparently a gesture of macabre honor having given me everything they've had to offer, including their next generation.

My blue mop-head and lacecap hydrangeas (Hydrangea Macrophylla) are blooming big and beautifully and some are starting to turn their gorgeous ocean colored aqua just for fall.

I'm also thrilled to announce that I purchased a new limelight hydrangea that is pruned into a tree shape. I had looked throughout the summer for limelight and didn't even know they could be pruned this way. I learned the paniculata hydrangeas are the only ones that can.  Here is limelight, snuggling with the roses and dahlias while he waits for his new digs to be dug. It has the potential of being 9 feet wide, so I'll probably have to break new ground,remove some sod,and build up some soil, ugh!

I attended Olympia's Home and Garden show a few days ago and learned a few new things about hydrangeas while in a workshop. For instance, apparently mophead and lacecap varieties bloom on old wood and therefore shouldn't be pruned or picked unless directly under their flowers at this time of the year. Paniculata varieties, such as limelight, bloom on new wood and are a bit more forgiving. I'm still remembering the gorgeous colors of a new paniculata hydrangea I saw there called, "Vanilla Strawberry". It may be added to my family if I don't stop thinking about it. While at the seminar, I was privileged to win a "Rainbow Sensation-Weigela" from Gordon's Nursery. I love its variegated and colorful leaves.

The other day my neighbor visited my garden and was commenting on how some blue lobelia looked so striking against the bright orange of some calibrachoa. It made me think of how I too loved that color combination and have decorated with it inside my home. My wheels began turning.

First I snuggled down three orange dahlias inside a blue hydrangia, wondering if the hydrangea could be used for a base to further compliment their contrast. Liking the effect (although I resisted the urge to add googly eyes to the hydrangea thinking the dahlias looked like curly red hair),I snipped a few more items and took them inside to make a quick arrangement.

 Standing back I found how the colors of the flowers joined in sweet harmony with a nearby painting.

I'm transported when I'm creating, gardening or decorating and it reminds me of just how much God cares for His creation.  In Isaiah 42:6-7 it says, "I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand.  I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness".

God loves me so much he will take me by the hand, train me up and let me assist Him in his work. I'm honored and am holding out my trembling hand in awe of God's unwavering faith in me.

Light reveals Light

Sunlight in Kauai , July 2011

I am a light seeker.  I was born and raised in the Northwest and have lived with a slow simmering wish for for a bit more sun almost daily.  I did live eight years in the Mojave Desert in California when my children were small, and although the intensity of the heat was usually too hot to be out in, the light it cast was like adding sugar to yeast, and my spirits bloomed and bubbled with its addition.

We built our home almost five years ago, hoping the windows on the south side would fill our home with light. However, we didn't take into consideration how deeply our lot was going to be excavated and have found the rock retaining wall and fence above it on the south side have hidden some of the sun we were planning to enjoy. 

I painted the house in saturated colors of green, camel, and blue with a warm red kitchen added for spice, before we moved in. Unfortunately, I've found that I often need to keep the lights on in the house during the day to keep my spirits up. I have been researching new paint colors for months, and have learned that adding light colored walls to a dark room only makes them look dingy.  Apparently mid-tone colors are the key, as they have to provide the entire color interest by themselves with little help from the sun-light. 

We recently added track lighting to our laundry room and now its bright CFL lights  make the room look like God has taken up residence there. The hallway around it glows and we're half expecting a divine voice to instruct us to go on a mission of some kind.

I was watching the weather report a few summer's ago and saw a pitiful yet sweet example of our exhausting Northwest search for sunshine.  The weatherman was showing a fast-forward chronology of the day's cloud cover and pointed excitedly to two brief  sun-sightings that occurred around noon.  The sightings undoubtedly provoked a hope inspired run on sunscreen at our neighborhood Walgreen's. 

 I found the following poem the other day and loved it!

I wish I was a glow worm,
A glow worm's never glum.
'Cos how can you be grumpy
When the sun shines out your bum!
~Author Unknown

Indeed, a luminescent bum shouts nothing but good times! David writes in Psalm 36:9, "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light". I've been pondering that verse.  It would seem that when we accept the love God offers us, how much easier it is to see the world as a reflection of God's love and in turn we share His love and light as an abundance in us that cannot be kept to ourselves or hidden. Light reveals light.

As I continue to search for tangible light around my home, I'm reminded of how looking for the blessings around me will teach me a few things about their source. Flowers are an easy God sighting for me, so I will share with you a few of some recent blooms around my home.

Bumblebees just love my Mallow flowers.

A daisy = smiles

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My Betty Boop rose has shown me that she just LOVES fish fertilizer.

Voodoo Rose is a new addition to my garden this year.

My dahlia's are in bloom, yeah!

A bouquet of blessings on their way to a friend.

Petals of sunshine!

Don Juan rose is showing his moves this year.

These flowers add such smiles when I look out my side kitchen window.

RX: Pick Three Flowers and Call Me in the Morning.

"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful: they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul."...Luther Burbank

I don't think I would want to meet the person whose spirits weren't lifted by the sight or scent of a flower. Flowers are a rich celebration of color, form and fragrance and are continually used to commemorate special occasions, or even the reason for the occasion, such as Washington's tulip,daffodil and lavender festivals.  Flowers inspired artists like Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh to paint art that continues to stir our souls and at the same time relax our bodies.  For centuries people have used flowers as part of their worship, and in ancient times flower bulbs, as well as spices, were used as currency. They are of infinite value.

A dear friend of mine recently fell down and broke her hip. Gorgeous bouquets of  flowers continue to be brought to her home and their presence has shown her how special she is to us, as well as uplifting her spirits and soothing the emotional trauma of her surgery. When my children were young I would send them to school with big bouquets of flowers from my yard to their hard-working teachers, and my flowers today seem to be just the thing when one of my neighbor's blesses me with a ride to the doctor, or is sick or in mourning...or just because.

These little beauties are some of my first spring blooms.

I love how the lavender stems of the sedums echo the color of the rhododendron.

My delphiniums have been known to cure tension headaches!


 So, if you are: thankful, sad, joyful, blessed, stressed, honored, cranky, in pain, in love, rejected, mad, moody, reflective, worried, exuberant, nervous, blissful, or bashful, pick at least three flowers and give them to someone else or put them in a vase by your bed and dream sweetly. In the morning you will either see those beautiful reminders of God's love for you, or you will remember how blessed you've made someone feel by honoring them with flowers, either way, you will feel better. To your health!