"Where are you Christmas"

Today was warm here, not very Christmassy but kind of nice to go outside and find some December gifts. There is nothing as beautiful as nature, there is nothing in a store to buy that comes near that beauty.

 I am ending the day with a hot cup of organic coffee and a teaspoon of honey from my bees of summer – I can’t express how wonderful this moment is to me. I decided to cap it off with a blog post just to make it memorable. Unfortunately, however, I‘ve not much to say. I am waiting on a cold front to arrive early tomorrow and cause the Christmas spirit to stir – at least I hope so, for it is not here. I draw on childhood memories to help get me there. I have so many and so many different focuses.

 

 

The ones about Miss Sue are so pure and deep. They are connected to nature; they are about cutting cedar trees in the woods, trees with bird’s nests and moss in them, and getting sticky sap on your carcoat and gathering giant pinecones from a place near the bayou and bringing them home to just be. They are about giving her a gift of homemade food and a late December visit by the fire. Those memories stir me, those memories made me. She was untouched by the commercialism of Christmas.

 Another memory is about my dad and the colossal effort he made one year to put together a huge wreath made from cedar boughs from the woods – this thing was engineered and I’m sure, the source of much stress – for him. I don’t know why he did it – but I remember it.

 I remember my mother too, of course I remember her – the manifestation of Christmas for me – the giver, the miracle worker, the one who created the magic; she defined it for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 Of all the things about Christmases past, most are not about things.

Those people are gone now and so are the Christmases of   childhood but, as is evident with this post, their spirits remain a constant in my life.

I don’t have the tree up and I have not been shopping, instead, I wait patiently for the arrival of the Christmas spirit.

I gathered these gifts from the December yard today – citrus from the trees, camellias to put in vases that were a birthday present from a dear friend and narcissus bulbs dug up in my yard at Thanksgiving to be forced bloomed for Christmas.

Christmas is the day that holds all time together. 

Alexander Smith

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bees

 Ahhh Saturday morning. The rain, not the alarm clock, woke me up this morning. This will be one of the early spring rains that nudge the already fat and swollen buds into bloom. Already the garden is so sweet smelling from the plum blossoms and the clover flowers. I hope there are bounties of bees this spring – I am not cutting some of my clover patches, just for them.

collecting honey last july

 The beekeepers will come in April and I hope there will be bees. Speaking of the bees, I shopped for a few vegetable garden supplies yesterday and was excited to see the notable presence of organic fertilizers and pesticides; I stocked up. I just wish people would lay off some of the poison.

” The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place.”

David R. Brower

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bye bye bees

Well, yesterday has been accomplished – I painted and I went to lunch with my twins – both enterprises were very satisfying and enjoyable. Having 5 children is a bit complicated and I try to capture a few moments away from the group theme and yesterday was one of those times.

this is where Matt, Drew, and I had lunch

this is the painting from yesterday

About the bees; they are gone now. The bee keeper came Thursday and extracted more honey (and gave me a sample quart!) and told me they would be here Friday evening (last night) to move the hives to Arnaudville. It seems the sugarcane is not a good thing for them and they will burrow in the dirt if he leaves then here. They will return in the spring. I will miss them so. I spent a part of each day walking through the field to get to them and just watched them and listened to their onomatopoeia and was totally fascinated by their busyness, then I would sneak past them and come home through the woods – it was such a pleasant excursion and kept me so close to  nature. Anyway, til next spring…it is beyond any words I can transfer from this keyboard – eating honey from my yard and peeping into “the secret life of” beekeepers – simple pleasures are the best, hands down.

and these are the bee keepers

"bee" u

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today

painting today and a lunch adventure with my twins - I hope to post this evening because

I have "bee" news!

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p.s. love the d h lawrence quote today!!!!

my pantry

I am putting together my pantry, my medicine cabinet. I have turned a rather big plot of land into an orchard and a vegetable garden. The fruit trees are young, some are just planted and the garden soil needs some amending but over time, it should all be very productive and should keep me healthy. It makes me so happy to see it grow and to plan for each season. A garden benefits you two ways – the exercise you get from working in it and of course, the produce it produces. Anyway, once again, I am motivated to plant a garden. I continue to have high expectations there amongst the honey bees and clover.

"I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.  It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green". 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from and Old Manse

flowers from elizabeth

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