Gathering for the Blood of RA

From an old post last year....

Home. The weather is warm enough to stay out without a coat. Finally.

Slymer asked me yesterday to show him which areas to mow. He started but the worshipers of the Sun were everywhere, some groups measured in the hundreds, all with big beautiful uplifted faces, all peering at the sun. All ready.

I need 5 pounds for every 5 gallons of the Blood.

So I bowed to the throng, thanked them, and did salutations to Ra. 

As I bowed down to take them one by one,  a red tail screamed from the on top of the old tree, lifting off from him to soar over the fields of clover, looking for blood of his own to drink. The geese overhead found a spot in the far field and slowly descended to eat and bed down for the night.  The train was on it's way, I could just hear it in the back of my mind. An intrusion but one I could dispense. Puppy was there watching over me and Myrrh was at my feet.  The honey bees were helping themselves to the nectar of the faces, while the sun slowly slipped lazily towards the horizon.

I was a weaver once. Not a great one, but decent at best and it was the best way to relax.  Just you and the weave. Your mind did not become embroidered and immersed with details.  It was just the shuttle going through the fibers and the sound of the loom as you moved it back and forth. Meditation from pure creative effort.  Gathering for the Blood is very much the same. All the details are just part of the fabric, the sound of the hum of the universe all around you.

I normally gather them in the first of the morning, just as they open up and turn towards the sun.  But by then I am at work, so to save time and to make sure that I get them in their prime, I have to do this in the evening with not a lot of extra time to give to the gathering.  In the time that I had though, and before they closed up for the night, I gathered 4 pounds. I'll be ready if I can get another 6 to 11 pounds. 

To gather them, you find the largest upturned faces, full with not a brown tip. You make sure they are not a resident for small spiders or have any honey bees hovering over them.  Then you snap the heads off just under their green base. No stems allowed, no leaves.  That would just bitter the blood.

Then you clean them - pull out all the yellow petals and throw away all the green.  You put them in a big pot, pour boiling sugar water over them, some raisins, or grapes (not many), a few oranges, let it set for one or two days and throw in some proofed yeast. Shazam!

Ah, the Blood of RA. Kisses from the sun. 

Wear your sunglasses.

Remember to Remember

Last year I wanted to move the boxwood and a new hosta out from under the leaves of some large hostas. Neither were getting enough light. I kept walking past them and going "Oh! I really need to move them to a better home.", and then I'd apologize, get interested in something else and forget. So much to remember when you are caring for large gardens. I remembered three times this season and I got them both done this past week. The rain last night helped to seat them in. They are all doing fine. 

I have since taken to having a very small notebook  in at least one of my pockets to write these things down and I try to remember a pen or a pencil (blood or plant dye is hard to work with). However, like my brain, the notebooks quicklys become stuffed with things to remember and then become part of a larger library of notebooks (with various other remembrances), sitting on my desk. I have to remember to remember to read them often and cross out those things that I have done or can no longer do (because I have forgotten to remember to do them).

Lists are great tools - provided you remember to look back at them. They can quickly become libraries of thoughts, drawings, clippings and comments that eventually end up in the file marked 13 because they are no longer relevant. My partner Tim, has tables full of lists, workbenches full of lists, walls with lists pinned to them and small little lists that find their way into his wallet or deep inside a corner of his jeans pocket. When he's away from home he may call me and ask me about one of the items on one of his lists. I ask him which one and he may say..."I think it was on the blue sheet under the white sheet next to the bowl of granola...just look for it, you'll find it. I need the info, I'm at Fleet right now...". Right. Right away Dear. Let's see, the pink sheet under the pile of library books, next to the mason jar of dried spinach...Got It! 

He and I are project people. Intensely curious. Mechanically gifted and able to envision things graphically as they could be, not as they are. It's a curse that keeps a person constantly in motion and keeps us coming up with multiple projects that could probably be done by someone else or purchased somewhere with little labor involved. 

The Snowplow Tractor Cab Project

You just add to your list of projects and then make a list for each project and then a list of what you need to complete the project...with more things to remember than you have time in your life to forget....and don't forget to make a list of where you have to be during the week, what you have to get at the grocery store and what you plan to cook...I AM EXHAUSTED! Maybe I need to make a list of what I need to remember to do so that I can get a chance to remember...now what was the second thing that I was going to put on that list? 

I must remember to plant one last hemlock and my two hickory trees this week. I believe that I have a spot for all three and I will have to remember to make deer cages and use wood chips for the mulch (make a list for that). The other hemlocks are doing fine. All are putting out new shoots. I will have to protect them over the winter and oh yea, remember to put a hardware cloth lid on those cages so the deer can't reach in and nip off the tops. I want trees, not low growing hedges.

Remember that for me someone....please?

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Drawing and Illustrating - Dog and Cat and a Bit of History

Somewhere in my blog I stated that I was an illustrator/artist.  I used to draw for Northland College, in Ashland Wisconsin, for their Public Relations department. It was a great job and allowed me to put a pen to paper without getting it graded and I had some extra cash in the pocket for those extra things like groceries. I've had a pencil or a pen in my hand since I could and have always loved to draw. I've had a few published to magazines and have had some in a show or two.

The drawing to the upper left is one of my more recent drawings using a Wacom Bamboo Pen tablet and the Corel software that came with it. It was my first full drawing using something other than an ink filled technical pen or an HB pencil.  This is a drawing of my friend uath mac Tolkien, a full blooded rough collie.  He is surrounded by our family and friends and a plethora of cats. You may see him refered to in some of my blogs as Dog Boy.  He's the eternal boy, he talks a lot, and loves to play and be played with.  I hope that you have a friend like him.  He's been with us for quite a few years, preceeded in years only by our old cat friend Myrrh.  

After drawing the picture of Tolkien, I decided to try a more difficult painting/drawing of Myrrh using the tablet. The result is the drawing the kitten drawing to the right. That drawing is of Myrrh, our ferocious short-haired tabby, shortly after I brought him home over 13 years ago. He is sleeping in a 'cheesehead'. If you are from Wisconsin or have ever been to a Green Bay Packers game, you know what a yellow foam cheesehead is.

He now is much older, has two different colored eyes, is somewhat blind in one of them, has a split ear from an attack from a very large hawk or owl and has finally, after all these years, learned how to purr.

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Rambling in My Blue Plaid Shoes

Slept in this morning because I was still hurting pretty badly in my lower back, but it's better than yesterday and I found a way to lay that did not produce pain until I tried to move or get out of bed. Still, that was better than the day before. Not sure what I did to get this pain, but I sure don't want to do it again. Changing my chair in front of the computer seemed to make a vast improvement and sitting while weeding worked too...hence the raised bed ideas seem better and better.

Yesterday I put on my blue plaid slip-on shoes and because they are a bit bizarre, I wore them out socializing. When you wear them with jeans they don't show as much and don't make as big of an impact on someone else's psyche, but I had them on nonetheless. They are so very comfortable that I'm wearing them again today, with my slightly different colored blue-green plaid shirt. The kind that buttons down the front, has short sleeves and feels like there's not much for fabric in them. Great on a warm breezy day – like today.

So, I found my blue plaid shoes at the local department store. I found them in the boys section and they were $4.99. SOLD! I was looking for some flats to wear to work but could not find any suitable ones that looked comfy and plain. Comfort was and is the big issue. I'm short and flats don't do anything for me except allow me to not have to think about my painful ankles or the blisters from those fancy shmansy stilettos that I wore for the meeting last week. I'm a flats person all the way except when I have the opportunity to wear sandals or go barefoot and barefoot is my shoe of choice. When I walk down the gravel road to our mailbox I sometimes envision myself barefoot, with a piece of grass hanging out of my mouth, a bit of a breeze blowing through my long curls, just as relaxed as a person could ever be without sleeping.

I think I looked that way at one point in my life. I remember a lot of days when my best friend Dawn and I would be walking down the blacktop road that led to town from my house. She was usually on my green and white Schwinn bike and I'd walk beside her. She veered all over the road so that I could keep up with her but we were in no hurry, nowhere that we actually had to be. I'd pull out a shaft of grass from some growing alongside the road, check it over for bugs, then chew on the end. It would be lightly sweet. We'd be off adventuring later, but that was how we usually started out on those long summer days.

Writing about these things, brings those pictures up in my mind. Sometimes so very clearly that I can smell the hot tarmac and feel it move and ooze between my toes, leaving my footprints on the long black path. I wonder sometimes are my footprints are still there? One here, one there? Small impressions of a very small foot. Large impressions left in a very young mind.

It's amazing what can trigger these bits and pieces of a person's past. What you remember and what actually happened – well there's no pictures other than what's in your head that can prove the truth. However, I would not question their validity. What would be the point? When I hear a bumblebee buzz past, I can bring up memories of fields of daisies. When I look up into a blue sky dotted with horsetail clouds, I can bring up memories of laying out in the hay field looking up at those clouds and daydreaming. Pleasant things, things of wonder.

They say that as you get up in the years, your memories become larger, take up more of your life and become more important. I'm not so sure that is true. As we get older, we may become more sedentary and have more time for remembering, but I don't think that the memories grow or change much. You just become more practiced at bringing them up in your head.

As I finish writing this tidbit, I look again at my blue plaid shoes and smile. One day they will be a memory that I can bring back up. What will I remember about them?