"art in the small ways of living"

"How much art there can be,... in the small ways of living. Sometimes we get lazy, but I think the effort spent in putting an ironstone bowl of pine branches on the table is well spent. And getting out the fragile grandmother china is worth it too. Often we do not bother to use the small gracious touches, and it is a pity. For no matter what heaven may be like, there is no use just waiting for it."

                                                 -   Gladys Taber

the day's work

"Even if the work of each day has been perfectly achieved we don't know what use the Lord is going to make of it...and if it is extremely clumsy and poorly done we know even less how it will be used.

All we know is that anything surrendered to God is never lost."

                                         -  Madeleine Delbrel,  from Magnificat, September 2018

blue heron

A blue heron stopped by yesterday; I saw him out my window, a tall slim creature with legs like a stork. This might be the third time one has happened along; quite a few years ago a heron perched on the garage next door for ages while kids waited for the school bus.

It took him a while to decide on the best course. Meanwhile, he walked along the brook's edge and startled one of Diane's cats who was on the other side. Then, he opened his wings and flew over the house - I heard a soft thud. On the roof!

My brother got the best shot of him.

He stayed a short while.

not quite like September

We haven't had a day yet that I would consider a quintessential September day. Crisp, clear air and deep blue sky, wonderful for doing anything out of doors. Today began in a promising fashion but ended up mostly cloudy, and feeling a little damp. I stayed in and had much to do.

Still, since fall begins today (in about fifteen minutes) I made more effort than I usually do for a Saturday dinner and I baked a pumpkin pie. I happened to have a can of pumpkin and got a whim to make it, except I had no cream, no milk. Only coconut milk and I was determined. Aside from taking a half hour extra to set, it's very good! A little sweet, maybe.

When my brother mowed across the brook, he left this grouping of wildflowers alone -

I'll have to look them up.

cute faces

My brother always says that Sweetie has a sad expression. (she's not sad, just her expression!)

The other day it suddenly occurred to me who she reminds me of. I thought of this image:

and this one:

The first illustration is Alice (in Wonderland) and her cat, by John Tenniel; the second is from Tom Kitten, by Beatrix Potter. She has the same flattish face and round eyes, although they are kittens and have bigger eyes. Still. 

how the other half lives

Mr. Kibble, this morning. He came around, but didn't seem very hungry; it's hard to know the reason. But he sat there and looked at us. The other two were sleeping in different rooms, so my brother closed them in and then he propped open the back screen door.

He watched us, but didn't come in.

lunch

fresh off the vines and warm from the sun.

His plan

Our God, supreme and good,

how richly you have loved!

But nations die for lack of food,

and are we still unmoved?

So keen to eat and drink,

so anxious what we wear!

Our God, reverse the way we think

and teach us how to share.

You made your purpose known

by one rejected man;

the earth his bed, a cross his throne,

new life for all, his plan.

- Christopher Idle, from Magnificat

very snug

Today I used the oven a lot, which warmed up the house - it's amazing how fast things can cool off after excessive heat and humidity. One day of moderate temperatures followed by a rainy one only in the sixties, but I made good use of my time.

I first did some mending and worked on the apron, but then I was eager to try a new bread method I stumbled on yesterday, on youtube. One loaf, using only a quarter teaspoon of yeast! And very hot water. It came out well; I can see myself using this method in high summer perhaps - the oven temperature was high - 450 - but almost no work. The flavor that you get from using cold water and a long rise isn't there, but it does have a nice flavor - just different.

When the bread came out, in went some peppers from the garden, to roast - same temperature. Then, to use up some plain yogurt, I made Winnie-the-Pooh's chocolate tea bread. Everything's in the freezer now. The peppers are sitting in the fridge, in some olive oil. Did a bit of ironing, and the house feels very cozy.

why I love Gladys Taber

"I suppose maturity might be defined as a willingness to shell peas. When I was growing up, I would do almost anything to avoid sitting down with a mess of peas to shell. No matter how fast and hard you work, you get a bushel basket of pods on one side and a scattering of small peas just covering the bottom of a small pan on the other. I found it absolutely maddening.

But now I don't mind. I like the smoothness of the pods and the clear green color. And I appreciate the delicate savor of new peas enough to feel rewarded for the effort.

Besides, I have learned that the mind can wander at will while one does the routine tasks, which is one reason housework never has to be dull. Sometimes when the peas plop softly in the pan, I remember places I have been. Like Williamsburg when the redbud is a singing color against the Virginia blue sky. Or crossing the James River at Jamestown about sunset with the sun going down in a deep sky and the lonely stone church tower of the old settlement slowly sinking into the first dark. Or walking on the beach at Ephraim, in Wisconsin, with the lake water rolling in pure and cold over polished white stones, and the sky there is a darker, cooler blue than the Southern sky.

...Here in Connecticut, I often feel I could pick a bouquet of stars on a June night, but I never have that feeling in New York, for the stars are remote there... But in the country, the earth grows dark at night, dark is the meadow, and dark are the hills. So the glory of the sky is fully visible and country folk look up a good deal...It is obvious that man is small and should be humble.

Thinking of the places I have been, I can find the peas are all shelled and I have not been bored at all. And there is a nice panful to cook with a mint leaf for lunch."


                                                - from Stillmeadow Seasons, pub. 1950

a good year for tomatoes

last week

today

sewing patches

Something else from Magnificat:

Think of some very humble and ordinary form of making, like the sewing of a patch on a coat. You can regard it as drudgery, and do it with careless or perhaps with savage impatience; and then you turn it into a job...

You can regard the patch very differently. You can do it with pride in your workmanship, so that it becomes a thing of beauty; then you are already an artist. You can do it with love, and so turn it into love-making; and then you are twice an artist. You can do it as an act of worship of God - "I patch this coat for this poor child for whom I am forever responsible as a part of our life together that you have given us and that we turn into worship of you" and then you are three times an artist; you are completely alive. And why should not every action that you do be like this? But we are enslaved by a system that despises art and has no room for love and reverence; and so we can be excused if we think sometimes that the end draws near; the soil is stale.

- Fr. Gerald Vann

finding the harmony

This was in Magnificat today, and I thought it interesting -

   "Our whole life is an effort towards this unity, this harmony, that we feel the need to recover. It is in the friendship of God that we can, insofar as it is possible, find it again. Is all of this of practical importance? Yes, it explains both our need for the infinite and our powerlessness to attain it.

 'Doctor Faustus', who sought light, knowledge, wisdom, and happiness, could not find them either in study, love, or sorcery, nor in all that the world offered him, because he should have sought them in the supernatural. Why does man glorify sin? Why is there something religious in the sin of man? What gives sin its mystical savor? Because man has a need for the infinite, and because, not having the courage to ascend high enough, he ends up by deifying his desires.

 Human life is made up of this conflict between man and his weakness, because he has lost his unity. All literature can be studied in his light, and it will be noted, for example, how poets and novelists often permeate all the desires of the flesh with this attraction of the divine."

                                                    -   Fr. Maurice Zundel

a new name

Well, not entirely.

I was just thinking of Mr. Kibble - his chronic upper respiratory congestion, his missing teeth, his stressed-out hissing and swiping at us. And it kept coming to me about a name, a first name for him. And Francis kept coming to my mind.

We'll still call him Mr. Kibble, but now he has the dignity of a first and a middle name.

Francis Joseph Kibble.

copying an apron

I'm going to make an apron for someone, and even though I have a few patterns, I decided to copy the one Margaret sent me. 

I think it'll be pretty straightforward.

what matters

"...sundials mark only the hours that shine"

                                                        -  Gladys Taber,  Stillmeadow Seasons

what faith isn't

"..faith is not some backwoods idea that we attach to our real experiences and bring along with us as our spiritual luggage; and that rebellion, doing it oneself, ("building a better world"), is not the last cry of reason, but that on the contrary the person who rebels and insists on doing it all himself or herself is the person who does not understand and does not perceive who he or she is and what the world is. Faith is not some abstruse philosophy but finding one's way to wisdom, to understanding, to objectivity, to becoming aware of the whole of reality."

                                     -     Pope Benedict XVI,   from Magnificat, August 2018

at last, blossoms

I took this photo of the bean stalks over the weekend. It's really something to come out of the house and have this big, leafy thing on your right. But -

I was all prepared to tell the awful truth: that it may be an impressive looking beanstalk, but there has been nary a bean to be found on it.

And then, it finally happened - the next day, actually. On Monday, we saw blossoms!

Some pretty yellow ones

and some pretty white ones! And they're fragrant. I don't know why the two colors - it's all supposed to be Blue Lake.

But anyway - at last, blossoms!

linen dress with lace hem

I got the lace hem attached yesterday so I could wear it today - what could be better than a sleeveless linen dress in the heat?

Anyway, I hastily took this picture before I left the house. I really love it! But it's not very much like the dress I pinned; this lace has a scalloped edge, so two rows of it wouldn't have worked and I'm not so sure an a-line would have looked well with the double row of lace anyway. But I love the warm, dark blue color, and the lace looks well with it, which isn't so apparent here.

I had bought this fabric at least two years ago for some project or other. I remember that I was disappointed when it came because it was heavier than I expected. It's perfect for this! The ever-present wrinkles in linen clothing aren't as bad with a heavier fabric, it seems.

cool before the heat

I took Dolly out this morning when the grass was full of dewdrops.

I threw a quilt over the wet and we stayed outside for an hour - my sit-upon came in handy.  I spent the time drawing up a tentative menu for Labor Day, and then we listened to a podcast. 

 A sunflower kept us company.

Inside, I quickly did some laundry, did a slap-dash job on the bathroom and spent the rest of the day in a leisurely fashion, staying as cool as it was possible to be. We're in a little heat wave.

the queen of virtues

"Humility is the refusal to exist outside God. It is the queen of virtues."

                                                     - Simone Weil,  from Magnificat, August 2018

the "liberated" man

"The liberated man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes and habits according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to opinion polls."

                                           - Jean Baudrillard, from American Affairs, Summer 2018

I guess I'm getting a little political with the above quote, but this article by Gladden Pappin is riveting.

the overflow

"God does not give his joy to us for ourselves alone, and if we could possess him for ourselves alone we would not possess him at all. Any joy that does not overflow from our souls and help other people to rejoice in God does not come to us from God."

                                              - Thomas Merton,  from Magnificat, August 2018

lace hems and peaceful kitties

Today Mr. Kibble spent several hours in a grassy spot near the driveway at the end of a hedge. He looked extremely content, as I looked out many times to watch him. This is what we want, to try and make it appealing here so he won't be drawn to wander anymore.

Last year I found out he'd been out Cyndi's way, which is a mile from here. A neighbor of hers feeds strays and has a nice place to shelter them, and he recognized Kibble from a photo. I started to try and imagine what would make a cat like him wander around away from people who are willing to feed him, like us and Diane.

I figured he would be motivated by hunger, a need for sleep and a desire to be safe. So, let's say we fed him in the evening. He would go to a corner of our yard to sleep and come out again in the morning for more food. Why ruin a good thing  -  what would make him go elsewhere? Well, I decided it must be that something would force him to move on whether or not he wanted to. Someone mowing the lawn, maybe - another cat or other animal disturbing his sleep - nobody coming to the door to feed him. That is all it would take for him to move on a little further; I'm sure he knew of a few places where he could get a meal, and quite a few more where he could sleep quietly. That is probably how he ended up way out in Cyndi's area, even though he was often in our neighborhood. The wanderer! And we never would have thought much about it if he hadn't shown up last summer in that sorry state, but now we feel more protective about him.


Today it was actually only in the seventies, and with a much lower dew point - it was wonderful! I bound the armholes on my dress, and now have to figure out the lace.

It's really a deeper shade than this picture -  I want to put it at the hem. My inspiration is a dress I pinned, and I have two pictures of it -

Very interesting pockets, but I didn't have enough fabric for anything like that. I pinned it because I love the wide lace at the bottom - two layers of it! But black is easy, dark blue is another matter. I ordered wide dark blue cotton lace from two places, hoping one would match, and decided on the above. 

The other problem is, my dress is a-line, unlike this black one which seems like a very roomy shift. If you've got a wide trim, it's not going to look right attached to an a-line. I pinned it on today, and I think if I attach it kind of high up rather than at the edge, it might work. I hope!

a joyful song

Sing to the Lord a joyful song:

lift up your hearts, your voices raise.

To us his gracious gifts belong:

to him our songs of love and praise.

For life and love, for rest and food,

for daily help and nightly care,

sing to the Lord for he is good,

and praise his name, for it is fair.

For strength to those who on him wait,

his truth to prove, his will to do

praise ye our God, for he is great:

trust in his name, for it is true.

For joys untold that from above

cheer those who love his blest employ,

sing to our God, for he is love;

exalt his name, for it is joy.

For life below, with all its bliss,

and for the life, more pure and high,

that nobler life which after this

shall ever shine and never die.

-   from Magnificat, August 2018

a home of his own

Mr. Kibble is a regular tenant now, it seems.

forgiving

"What happens when we don't forgive? If someone did something wrong to me ten years ago, and I still don't want to forgive them ten years later, it means I am held prisoner by my past. It is as though a chain is holding me ten years in the past. I am not free to receive the graces of today."

                                            -  Fr. Jacques Philippe,  from Magnificat, August 2018

summer dresses

I made another dress with my go-to pattern: a pull over the head a-line with short sleeves in a crisp quilting cotton, sort of a chartreuse with little orange metallic hash marks all over it. It looks much nicer than it sounds. 

Two previous dresses from this pattern are unwearable now for reasons I should be ashamed to admit; I had put them together so hastily that I did nothing to finish off any of the seams. Consequently, after a few washings the seam allowances raveled and then the seams became compromised with no way to repair them without making the dress smaller by taking in everything. Won't do that again!

After the chartreuse dress, I reached up to my stash shelf, pulled down some medium weight linen, and asked myself what I could do with it. I decided that the same dress would be nice, only sleeveless and with some wide lace sewn at the bottom. So, that's what I'm in the middle of now.

It's not as warmly colored as this photo; it's a deep warm blue and the bindings (I don't like facings) are gray. The lace hem will be the tricky part.

the land of Fancy

"Here is a country bearing a well-known name, wherein no chill mists press upon our spirits, and no rain falls but what rolls off our backs like April showers off the backs of sleek drakes; where flowers bloom forever and birds are always singing; where every fellow hath a merry catch as he travels the roads, and ale and beer and wine flow like water in a brook.

This country is not Fairy-land. What is it? 'Tis the land of Fancy, and it is of that pleasant kind that, when you tire of it, - whisk! - you clap the leaves of this book together and 'tis gone, and you are ready for every-day life, with no harm done."

                                                    -  from the preface to Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle

another day, another baseball game

I was folding laundry in the spare bedroom and I heard someone talking. Had my brother left his radio on? But I would have heard it before. It sounded like it was in my room.

Sweetie was in the window, but my radio was turned on to - you guessed it - the ball game. She has done this before. And while I stood there, they got two home runs. I guess she's a real fan.

But she doesn't talk about it.

keeping dry

There's a flash flood watch for our area from about now, until eight on Sunday morning. Where do outdoor cats go to stay dry?

After not seeing Mr. K. at all Wednesday or Thursday, he came this morning, later than his usual morning appearance, which is somewhere between four thirty and five fifteen. I asked him where he'd been, but he didn't say. We assume - and hope - that he's been over at Diane's. 

He has finally "discovered" the cat shelter and been utilizing it, which is huge to us. My brother tried last summer to get him into it and he did go in once, but Yogi was near and went in after him - Mr. Kibble just ran out the exit and took off. This year, he seems to have used it on some cooler nights for sleeping (it's hard to know exactly, as we don't want to peer into it and put him off), and when it's a bit warmer, resting on top as he's doing above. But it's been so hot recently that I think he's gone to  more leafy, shady places to snooze.  

The other day I fed him supper and then some thunder and lightning started up; I hoped he'd go into the shelter and realize that he could stay dry in there, but it didn't seem like he did. It's hard to know why animals do anything they do, there could be so many reasons. I'm sure that heavy rain would be loud on the roof, so that would probably scare him. I just hope he stays away from the brook area tomorrow, because after a heavy rain last week, it became a torrent (like last year).