That in course the flower may flourish
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[Subject line from People, Look East, my favorite Advent carol.]
Even in winter
you will find light
everywhere you look:
inhabiting both
the coils of the stove
and petals in flight.
My mother would have been sixty-eight today. Of her many plants, the two Christmas cacti in my bathroom are the ones that have survived.
I've been conscious all week that her birthday was approaching, but I didn't remember it today until I was uploading these photos. That's okay. The remembering isn't as important to me as what I make or give from it.
(For instance, there's teacher in Tulsa seeking donations of any amount to fund a cacti-growing project for her students. [Which, if I may be shameless for a moment, would make a lovely present to me, if you happen to be one of those readers whose lists I am on...])
I started reading Nigel Slater's Tender: A cook and his vegetable patch during breakfast this morning. This sentence made me giggle:
And this one reminded me of a couple of shoeboxes downstairs:
My mother-in-law helped me prepare my mother's house for sale three years ago. One of the tasks I asked her to handle was organizing my mother's stashes of seeds. She's a master gardener, so I figured she'd know (better than I) what was worth keeping and maybe find some things of interest to her.
This past August, my mother-in-law showed me one of the newer plants in her garden:
She'd grown it from one of the seeds in mom's stash. Knowing that something beautiful has sprung from that mess -- and after who knows how many years in that basement -- it does make me happy. Furrows, be glad. Though earth be bare / One more seed is planted there . . .
Even in winter
you will find light
everywhere you look:
inhabiting both
the coils of the stove
and petals in flight.
My mother would have been sixty-eight today. Of her many plants, the two Christmas cacti in my bathroom are the ones that have survived.
I've been conscious all week that her birthday was approaching, but I didn't remember it today until I was uploading these photos. That's okay. The remembering isn't as important to me as what I make or give from it.
(For instance, there's teacher in Tulsa seeking donations of any amount to fund a cacti-growing project for her students. [Which, if I may be shameless for a moment, would make a lovely present to me, if you happen to be one of those readers whose lists I am on...])
 |
| From cooking 2011 |
I started reading Nigel Slater's Tender: A cook and his vegetable patch during breakfast this morning. This sentence made me giggle:
The house had previously been home to a celebrated collection of Italian art, a Victorian slum so grim it had a closing order slapped on it, and a hospice run by Catholic nuns (one of whom appears not to have quite departed).
And this one reminded me of a couple of shoeboxes downstairs:
Wherever your seeds come from, they need some form of organization. An old shoebox, constantly in a state of suppressed chaos, sufficed for several years. When it finally fell to pieces, I found opened packets five years past their pull date. Then someone gave me an old church collection box, much polished, with spookily creaking hinges and two compartments just the right size for seed packets. What used to hold the harvest festival coins now holds a harvest festival of its own.
My mother-in-law helped me prepare my mother's house for sale three years ago. One of the tasks I asked her to handle was organizing my mother's stashes of seeds. She's a master gardener, so I figured she'd know (better than I) what was worth keeping and maybe find some things of interest to her.
This past August, my mother-in-law showed me one of the newer plants in her garden:
She'd grown it from one of the seeds in mom's stash. Knowing that something beautiful has sprung from that mess -- and after who knows how many years in that basement -- it does make me happy. Furrows, be glad. Though earth be bare / One more seed is planted there . . .
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