Visit to England, Part 2: Kitty Cats

Felines, nothing more than felines...the Internet was invented by cats, wasn't it? Certainly they must be heavily invested in MewTube...oops, I mean YouTube. Anyway, it's Friday and it's summmer and therefore highly appropriate to share photos of the cats we encountered on our recent trip to England.

Kitten 1 of a trio adopted by my  niece: this little girl is Austen.

Wilde, the boy of the bunch, rambling in the walled garden of
my niece's new home. These are the luckiest kittens in the world!

Clever, spunky Bronte, the runt of the litter but clearly
destined to be the leader of the pack and head of the class.
She is rarely called by her literary name
as she is more frequently addressed as "Naughty."

Cat sunbathing, Burcott Mills, Wookey

Cat (possibly) on column in Wells Cathedral, Wells

A cat may look at a king, and sometimes it
may even nap on the Bishop's chair.
Wells Cathedral is the seat of the Bishop
of Bath and Wells, and this moggy
has laid claim to it, quite literally.



Weathervane cat enjoying a fish atop a rooftop in Maldon, Essex


 

Visit to England, Part 1: Doors to Past and Present

My husband's roots are embedded in his English homeland; mine trail back to Ireland and Germany via my grandparents, who emigrated from those countries. Visiting these lands, and especially the ancient villages tucked among the hills and valleys of lush green farm fields, always feels like returning home.

Surely this feeling is mostly generated by the warm welcome we receive from family members who really do make their home there and isn't entirely the product of some deep-seated Celtic-Anglo-Saxon spirit lurking in our bones.  Their doors are always open to us. And that metaphor gives me an easy-peasy way to start sorting through 1,093 photographs of varying quality from this trip.

Old door, side street, Wallingford

Door in stone wall, public footpath, Wookey

House Door, Vicar's Close, Wells

Doors on high street, Burnham-on-Crouch

Garage Door, Burnham-on-Crouch

Door, storeroom-now-museum, Wells Cathedral

Things My Father Taught Me

My dad, like all good fathers, taught me a great many useful things. Some of the lessons were the large-scale kind, of course--the ones passed along mainly by example, such as being honest and considerate, respecting others, not taking more than your share, always doing your best work, responsibility, and the like. I certainly don't really remember Dad telling me those things, though, or informing  me outright how to live an honorable life.

It's the small bits of information that I remember him passing along--recalling not only the advice but also the setting and the timbre of his voice, the sorts of things that you'd think would stick in your mind if someone were imparting words of eternal wisdom rather than a snippet of a suggestion.

Most of them are things that sound silly when described, but like photographs they stir up memories and let them unspool, revealing their contents again and again like the fragments of movies that they are.

Silly things like teaching me how to make scrambled eggs, how to keep tumbling them in the pan with a spatula and take them out when they still had a sheen to them. Teaching me how to make a superior paper airplane by notching the wings and weighing down the nose. Showing me how to hammer a nail, start a car with a flooded engine, and peer along the edge of a board to judge how straight and flat is is. Instructing me in how to make a fist if I needed to defend myself, making sure I knew to keep my thumb outside my fingers and not tucked inside them lest I sock someone and in the process break my thumb. (I remember being impressed that I had such potential power, though now I know it's highly unlikely I'd ever exert enough force to sprain my thumb, let alone break it.)

Most vivid is my memory of Dad teaching me how to find Polaris, the North Star.

We stepped into the front yard on a balmy summer night, the kind of night when the air feels silken. Fireflies flashed silently in the grass, the shrubs, the sky. Dad pointed out the shape of the Big Dipper, wheeling slowly through space scooping up stars. He traced the line between the two stars forming one side of the dipper and then extended that line so that it pointed to Polaris and explained how the distance between the two dipper stars, when multiplied about five times, was equivalent to the distance to Polaris.

That's about where he lost me. As soon as he pointed out the pole star, my head was wobbling like a bobblehead toy's as I tried to relocate the Big Dipper. Then, we'd sort out the Big Dipper again, track the stars to Polaris, and immediately I'd lose the dipper again.

He must have felt a bit desperate after a while, and I was getting exasperated and saying things like "how am I supposed to find the stupid North Star if I can't find the stupid Big Dipper?" Because suddenly he squatted down to my level and said, "Look. See the corner of the roof?"

I looked up. Yes, there was the corner of the roof. I nodded.

"OK. So now look just a little bit to the right of that corner, and up a bit. You see that star? That's the North Star."

"I see it! I see it!" I squealed triumphantly.

Pleased, Dad said, "OK. So now you know that you can always find the North Star. It'll always just be off that corner of the house."

I was extremely pleased to know this, that this star was fixed in space, at least for a while, adjacent to our roof.

Dad paused for a few seconds. Then he added, "So. In the future, if you're ever lost in the front yard, you'll be able to find your way home using the North Star."

I think one reason I remember this little scene so vividly is that, even though I was only little, I fully appreciated the the absurdity of my ever getting lost in the front yard of our suburban home or looking at my house to orient myself to the North Star so I could find my house.

I can still see Dad, his head thrown back, eyes squinting, a broad grin on his face as he shared a deep, rumbling laugh. I laughed with him, somehow knowing that this was a different kind of laughter than the sort tickled out of you by somebody doing something funny. It was shared laughter, the kind of laughter we'd enjoy many more times over the decades to come.

In writing this blog entry, I didn't set out to equate my Dad with the North Star, but as I savor this memory of him I realize that he was (is) indeed pole star in my life. Missing him this year and a half since his passing is very much like looking up at that corner of the house again and again even though I know he won't be in that fixed place just to the right and up a little bit.

Sometimes I feel terrible that I can't remember more. What happened to all the conversations we had? Why can't I recall all the words? I felt a bit relieved when I read Joan Didion's account of losing her husband, The Year of Magical Thinking, and came across a passage in which she despaired at not remembering the content of all their many talks. If Didion couldn't remember, either, then perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself.

One tidbit of Dad's advice, however, came with an artifact attached. He was working in the basement one day, building something (he was always building something), and chatting with me as I hung around. Then he chuckled at something in the palm of his hand before tossing it to me. It was a yellow square of wood, about an inch square, from the end of a yardstick.

"Know what that is?" he said. "That's a one-inch fixer-upper." If one failed to observe the rule "measure twice, cut once" and found that a project wasn't fitting together properly, it might need something like a shim stuck into it to make it right. The technical term for this item, he observed, was a one-inch fixer-upper.

I never seem to have a one-inch fixer-upper when I need one, but I still do have that one-inch fixer-upper. It appears randomly (unlike the North Star, it does not appear to be fixed in space) when I am tidying a closet or sorting a drawer or moving things in the basement. "So that's where it went," I'll think before losing it once again. But every time it appears, it's as if Dad is winking and sharing a laugh with me again.

The Garden, Ready for Its Closeup (and Only a Closeup...)

Sometimes when I look at my garden...er, no, make that every time I look at my garden--I'm overwhelmed by a feeling of utter futility. For all the hours spent weeding and planting and lugging soil, and all the achy muscles afterward, after 15 years it still often looks like I'm only getting started.

To keep from being completely disheartened, I put on blinkers and look for the patches that are achieving that close-packed, cottage-garden atmosphere that I'm laboriously trying to achieve. This was a particularly useful exercise this weekend since everybody has been flattened by a particularly vicious cold and no work could be done at all.

This sedum has filled in a rocky niche in the front garden.

The sunrose is twining among assorted variegated perennials.

For a limited time only, the flowers are cooperating  in putting on a pastel fireworks display.

Calendula and visitor

Two-spotted ladybug (no, really, that's its name!) on caterpillar-nibbled leaf

These birds, sent to me by my friend W. after my father's death, appear both smug and snug about their little house with its sedum-planted front yard.

Of course, they have their own bookshop. Otherwise how else would they be able to get "Peeple" magazine? They don't have a Twitter account, so they can only tweet, not Tweet.

Hello, Rhubarb Tuesday

Yesterday I finally got around to baking with the rhubarb harvested over the weekend, plus some rhubarb serendipitously stumbled upon while out for a walk; we strolled past a tiny house on Phinney Hill, and sitting there in a pot were half a dozen ruby-red rhubarb stalks with a sign that said "Free Rhubarb."

This being Seattle, one might think that a sign reading "Free Rhubarb" referred to a wrongly incarcerated pit bull or the like, but no. It really did mean, "Here. I have a lot of rhubarb. Take some."

In our household, there is never such a thing as too much rhubarb, which is why we grow it both in the backyard and in our P-Patch. As a plant, it's pretty when you look at it up close, with its crimson stalks and tightly curled new stems. The leaves, those famously toxic leaves, are huge green platters, often growing to nearly two feet across. Best of all, it's low maintenance.

Unfolding leaves among stalks

Perhaps because its leaves are poisonous, a rhubarb plant also seems like something of a curmudgeon. Chard, which also has colorful stalks and green spinach-like leaves, just seems cheerful. But rhubarb's a bit sullen. Maybe this impression stems from the time I dug up a big rhubarb plant to move it to a better spot in the garden.

The stalks grow from a thick underground stem called a rhizome. The big plant I dug up had an equally hefty rhizome, which was as orange as a sweet potato, with gnarled roots grasping in all directions.

I really felt as if I were digging up a very angry mandrake root and so heaved it into its new spot as fast as I could; it looked like something from a fairy tale that shouldn't be dug up, ever. Like this thing:

You'd think I'd have a grudge against rhubarb, since one of the pet rabbits I had as a kid died from eating it; he'd gone for a romp in the yard and did a Mr. MacGregor's Garden, slipping in among the vegetables and sampling the rhubarb leaves. (Then again, maybe he'd just realized that he was called Tiffany, a name I gave him when we thought he was a girl. Until he fathered a litter of baby rabbits, that is.)

But rhubarb is so scrumptiously tart and smacks up so deliciously against sweet ingredients in a recipe that all is forgiven. (Sorry, Tiff.) A 1949 cookbook I have declares, "Rhubarb, though it cannot rightly be called a fruit, is one of the most refreshing of plants."

(Maybe it was fate that led me to live in Washington State, which is the nation's leading rhubarb producer with about 60 percent of the crop. Nearby Sumner, Washington, proclaims itself as the Rhubarb Pie Capital of the World. Beat that!)

 

Favorite recipes include strawberry-rhubarb pie with a crumb topping--not for nothing is rhubarb known as "pie plant." Rhubarb crisp and rhubarb applesauce also can't be beat. Another favorite is rhubarb coffee cake. This recipe is adapted from one in the cookbook The Joy of Rhubarb by Theresa Millang.

(Rhubarb, incidentally, is also the name of the first pony my horse-mad daughter ever rode. Though she didn't hop on him the first time he stood patiently waiting for her at Remlinger Farms. Oh, no. I urged her on by saying "Rhubarb really wants to carry you!"--ignoring Rhubarb's equine version of "yeah, right"--but my 3-year-old would have none of it. She glowered at me and said in a low voice, "YOU ride the pony.")

Rhubarb Coffee Cake
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar

Doesn't look like much but tastes amazing.

2 eggs
1 cup sour cream or 1 cup plain or vanilla  yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 cups chopped rhubarb

Topping:
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 Tb flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 Tb butter, softened

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 13 x 9 baking pan. (Ha, I just noticed the book says to grease a 13 x 9 "square" baking pan. I challenge you to find such a thing.)
2. Beat butter and sugar til smooth.
3. Beat in eggs, sour cream or yogurt, and vanilla.
4. In separate bowl, mix dry ingredients, then fold them into the wet ingredients.
5. Add rhubarb and stir, then plop it all into the baking dish.
6. Cut the topping ingredients together either in a food processor or with a pastry blender until they resemble coarse crumbs, then sprinkle over the batter.
7. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until a fork comes out clean.

Stop and Smell the Roses, Already, Will Ya? Sheesh.

The last week has felt as if I am being drawn and quartered--no, make that drawn and thirty-seventhed--by frantic little shrews. Between the gmail meltdown, the torn-apart bathroom with the tub spout that rockets across the room every time the shower is turned on, and the general maelstrom of work deadlines, clutter, dogs, cats, checklists, shopping lists, to-do lists, and the like, there has scarcely been a moment to cook a meal from scratch, savor a sunrise, read a novel, or go for a walk.

So I can't say that stopping to smell the roses and all the other flowers now blooming that collectively turn the neighborhood into the startling Technicolor Munchkinland scene in The Wizard of Oz manages to brush away all cares and reminds me to appreciate The Really Important Things in Life. But it's definitely a pause that refreshes.

Tangerine Geum in front garden.

Flower in front garden whose name completely escapes me at the moment.

Blossom of Japanese kerria, back garden.

Wild bleeding-heart, which volunteers in shady spots of the yard.

Lewis's clarkia, a flower native to California that really isn't a fan of Seattle's maritime climate, but which grows nicely if you give it a sunny spot and surround it with gravel. I grow it in a "pot" made of paving stones set on end in the garden, filled in with white pebbles, and it's survived not only the rain but also the dog periodically digging it up and burying bones in its microhabitat.

A  yellow clarkia, companion to the pink one.

Closeup of tangerine geum

Golden-flame spirea

And, of course, rhododendrons--mountains of them, everywhere.

Little Kids and a Very Big Horse

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending a beautiful sunny Saturday in rural Snohomish at a stable with sweeping views of the Cascade mountains and a lush green valley.

The occasion was a demonstration of equestrian vaulting, the art and sport of gymnastics on horseback with roots that go back to ancient Rome and Greece.

A friend's little girl, a child as petite and lively as a cricket but flexible as a rubber band, was participating in this event aboard a giant of a horse: a Belgian named Curious George.

The vaulters, all associated with a school called Above and Beyond Equestrian Sports, ranged in age from a wee five-year-old wearing butterfly wings to an adult woman.



The vaulters leaped onto the horse and landed lightly, as if the action were no more difficult than playing in  waves.

Fearlessly, they executed twists, turns, stands, and other acrobatics while patient George walked, trotted, and cantered at the behest of his trainer.


At the event's conclusion, George returned, stripped of his surcingle and other gear.

The big horse never moved his massive hooves as children clustered around him, stroking his broad flanks and chest and reaching up to pat his velvety nose. He delighted in nibbling the blond, wispy haylike hair of one small boy, sending him into rivers of giggles.

Clearly this is a horse who revels in attention.


It was a relief to look back on this weekend because unfortunately I'd started the day by reading an article about the horrific abuse endured by Tennessee Walking Horses at the hands of so-called trainers who employ barbaric tactics to make their horses walk like goosestepping Wehrmacht soldiers.

My photos from that beautiful Saturday reminded me that many people honor and cherish the horses who serve them so faithfully and remain mindful of what the Greek writer Xenophon stressed more than 2,300 years ago in his work On Horsemanship:

"What a horse does under compulsion he does blindly, and his performance is no more beautiful than would be that of a ballet-dancer taught by whip and goad...The performances of horse or man so treated would seem to be displays of clumsy gestures rather than of grace and beauty. What we need is that the horse should of his own accord exhibit his finest airs and paces at set signals...The majesty of men themselves is best discovered in the graceful handling of such animals."