around here

I'm savoring autumn, taking in details,

storing them away, 

for bleaker days.

I collected leaves, and remembered doing so as a child

and with my own children--

the colors, that spark of wonder.

I've been volunteering at a cat shelter.

In case you want a pet, 

but not the long-term commitment that comes with owning one,

shelters are always desperate for foster families.

My palette has changed with the season.

I take a walk every day,

try to stay in the moment more

and worry less.

I hope you are enjoying autumn, or spring, depending where you are.

                        xo,

                       Jennifer

the blustery day

 All day the words Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day have been going through my head. Phase two of autumn is kicking in. The first phase is when you start to feel the edge--crisp air, russet leaves, the anticipation of heavy sweaters and crackling fires.

Then, bam! it's raw and windy, like today. Blustery. Flannel pajamas seem like a good idea. Lucky me, I got these gorgeous flowers from Bow Street, and they are at my side, warming me up.

I'll be making baked ziti and garlic bread tonight,
maybe baked apples,

a blustery day dinner.

Even the cats don't want the window open.

Autumn in (upstate) New York

A misty morning drive to Bovina for an egg sandwich takes me through this gentle upstate landscape. Rolling hills dotted with farmhouses, barns and the occasional Airstream, milk truck rolling down a country road…My crush on pink peonies and orange roses has given way to a deep love of russet, apple, pumpkin, the smell of woodsmoke, the sound of acorns dropping.

It's becoming an annual ritual for me to post this poem by Rilke. (2013, 2012)
The poem that gave me orchards in space.

                             Autumn

     The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

     as if orchards were dying high in space.

     Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no".

     And tonight the heavy earth is falling,

     away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

     We're all falling. This hand here is falling.

     And look at the other one ... It's in them all.

     And yet there is Someone, whose hands

     infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.

                               -Rainier Marie Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)

The best thing about blogging is the friends I've made, and I'm not going to call you virtual friends either. I love that New Zealand Amanda's posts about spring coincide with mine about fall, and that when I am shoveling snow she will be sharing her peonies. It truly is a world wide web, both infinitely large and comfortably small.

xo, Jen

weeding, reading, and wildflowers

  Summer feels compressed this year. Spring was late, and

all my flowers seem to bloom two weeks past their usual time.
 Already people are talking about autumn.                                  

 Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that I was photographing peony buds?

Summer evenings are  a joy, reading on the porch, watching robins and rabbits 

through twilight, the sounds of neighborhood children playing outside after dinner.

 My flower bed has gone from being calm and distinct 

to a weedy tangle, and somehow I missed the transition. 

It's been many years since I've done much gardening.

 When my children were young and my life overfull,
 tending a garden went from pleasure to chore. 

But now it's becoming pleasure again, in small bits. 

For one thing, I've been weeding in the evening. 

Many people do their gardening in the early morning, 

but I am not a morning person, and if I try to force it, well, it becomes a chore again. 

But my evenings are mostly my own, and these days I spend them reading.

 So I take a break from my books and weed for a while.

 It's quiet and shady and sometimes even meditative. 

  

Best of all though, are the wildflowers in the country.

                                       

They don't need weeding,

and their petite charms are beyond anything I could cultivate.

I hope that you are enjoying summer (or winter if you are on the other side of the globe).

xo, Jen

first of spring

The first flowers of spring have finally popped up in my yard, next to the birdbath.

 In honor of the flowers of my last two posts, here's an almost haiku:

ditch flower, motel daffodil
drugstore hyacinth
in a water glass, by the bed

Today is Patriot's Day, a Massachusetts holiday, and the Boston Marathon was run safely. There was much joy, classic spring weather, and I cleaned the birdbath.

Enjoy your week!

Jen

flowers and books in the winter house

White freesias from the supermarket mix with garden greens and reds,
for a nice winter bouquet.

(The scent of freesia is too strong for some, but I love it--it's
the top note of Antonia's Flowers, one of my favorite perfumes.)

How to survive the polar vortex.

And, I have some book recommendations for you.

 I'm always looking for literary detective/crime novels (no that's not an oxymoron). Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller is smart and suspenseful, with appealing characters and an interesting setting. An American widower (Korean war veteran, early stages of dementia) living with his granddaughter in Norway, protects his traumatized young neighbor (who witnessed his mother's murder). The two of them flee the killer, and their ensuing adventures are a poignant mix of humor and terror.

Submergence is breathtaking, and will stay with me for a long time. An English spy and an Australian oceanographer meet and fall in love at a British seaside hotel. The book goes back and forth between their points of views: he, captured by Somalian terrorists and she, on a ship off the coast of Greenland, preparing to dive to the ocean floor in a submersible. Love and science, deserts and oceans, wonder and terror. Read more about it here.

I'm late to the 66 Square Feet blog, but I'm catching up, and was moved to buy the book 66 Square Feet: A Delicious Life, One Woman, One Terrace, 92 Recipes. It's a lovely combination of beautifully written essays, recipes and photographs; each chapter encompassing one month. I've been savoring it--reading one month at a time.

Now jump on over to Jane's to see more Flowers in the House. You'll be glad you did.

Jen

little birds

In this bitter cold, I am putting out much more bird seed.

I bought another feeder and scatter seeds on the deck.

It's such a pleasure to watch the birds, and when the food is scattered widely they share nicely with the squirrels. A rabbit makes a regular appearance and we had a possum come by for a couple of nights, but the biggest surprise was the day I saw a red fox in my suburban Boston yard.

view from my kitchen window

Sparrow, finch, wren, dove, woodpecker, blue jay, chickadee, cardinal...
There is so much I cannot do, but I can try to take care of this tiny corner of the world.

Here I am at 2-1/2, with a pan of food to put in the feeder.

Did I take the cat for a ride on the saucer?

(Thanks to Jane for the idea of digging up old photos.)

Hope you who are sharing the polar vortex with me are warm and cozy.

Jen

merry and bright

There is joy this holiday season, but also there is loneliness. And if that's you, I just want to say hello.

Here are some wonderful ice pictures.

Dylan Thomas reads A Child's Christmas in Wales, here.

I hope your days are filled with warmth and love, good books, delicious food,

and the beauty of nature.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, dear friends.

xo, Jen

late November

I've been thinking about seasons and landscapes. 

Saguaros are everywhere in the Tucson area, common as hemlock here in the northeast. Those arms make them seem lifelike, friendly, welcoming.

This one, (which seems to be dying) reminded me of the Straw Man from Wizard of Oz.

Birds nest in holes in their bodies. Their night-blooming flowers, white and yellow, appear in the spring, and their ruby red fruit is edible.

In New Zealand it is spring. Here it is leafless and bitter cold. I read Polar Star, which was fascinating. A fish processing factory on a ship in the Bering Sea. Truly bitter. I will never look at cat food the same way.

We're going to the Catskills for Thanksgiving, and I'm hoping for snow to soften the starkness of November. A roaring fire, icicles. I spend too much time inside in the winter, looking out (or down at my book).

It's deer hunting season, which I used to hate, until I thought about the slow starvation of deer through the long winters (which happens when there are too many). Actually, I still hate it, just a little less.

A year ago we adopted Aji and Masa. They had been sheltering under a porch. Now it seems like they've always been here.

unharvested

It's been a beautiful autumn, brisk and crisp, leaves from green to gold, scarlet, orange, bronze, glowing yellow. The windows are open and I'm taking long walks and trying to savor, store it up for bleaker days.  I've discovered pink lady apples, (they've edged out honeycrisps as my favorite) and beautiful sunsets from my studio windows: fat pink clouds and streaks of gold over the old mill town of Lowell.

I've been culling my books, pruning, paring, streamlining, saving only the ones who touch my heart.

The rest go to More Than Words  a used books store that trains teens in foster care: "Empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business."

You know when you go into someone's house and look at their books, you get to know them? Here are most of my surviving A, B, and start of the C (by author) novels, those that aren't scattered elsewhere or in the country. It's scary how few there are, but it feels good too, that I've passed along the ones I'm pretty sure I won't read again, stripped down to the necessities.

"May something always go unharvested!
 May much stay out of our stated plan,
 Apples or something forgotten and left,
 So smelling their sweetness would be no theft."

from Unharvested, by Robert Frost

orchards in space

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

as if orchards were dying high in space.

Those lines, from Rilke's poem, Autumn,

 kept running through my head this weekend in the Catskills.

I posted it last year too, when I was cleaning out the store
and we still had world's ugliest kitchen.

Four seasons ago. 

It feels like another life.

Autumn

     

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

     

as if orchards were dying high in space.

    

 Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no".

And tonight the heavy earth is falling,

     

away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.

     

And look at the other one ... It's in them all.

     

And yet there is Someone, whose hands

    

 infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.

                               

                        -Rainier Marie Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)