The goldenrod is yellow,
The corn is turning brown,
The trees in apple orchards,
With fruit are bending down.
– Helen Hunt Jackson
Monthly Archives: September 2012
a fall tradition
What a difference a couple weeks makes. It is the difference between short sleeves and stadium blankets. Between sunscreen and umbrellas. This is the way of it every autumn. Early in the season the sun beats down and by the end we are shivering on the sidelines. Rain or shine they are on the field however, a fall tradition in this family for nearly two decades now.
I hope you are playing hard this weekend. What says fall fun in your family?
song-filled sunset
Another from the phone archives. Rather what I picture when I close my eyes and remember strolling along the streets of Cambridge that evening. No little people to corral. Just music at sunset. A very nice night out.
Cambridge in Color
I had forgotten about these images still on the phone from our shopping trip to Cambridge earlier this month. Maybe you'd like to walk along?
We start this leg of the trip strolling through the marketplace late in the day as things were wrapping up.
A shop all red and polka dotted with vintage goodness. I could live here. Might be overstating since my home seems to be making ever greater inroads into Old World golds and wines vs vintage red and turquoise. That doesn't deter me from lingering a good while however!
Market flowers. Can't get enough. America needs far more vendors with big buckets of blooms.
Ely Cathedral
A cloudy day in Ely. First stop, the cathedral.
Right this way…
God bless 'em they wanted some ten pounds per person to cross that rope. I do miss the free access to cathedrals on the continent.
Graves in the small side yard.
Staffer chatting along the alley way outside some admin offices. Wardrobe selections for both are very typical of this area. Men are in ties and I would guess at least a third of the women are in skirts. In fact I saw a groundsperson brandishing a leaf blower in heavy tights and a skirt.
Case in point. A woman out front putting her collie through the paces.
Love that blue door. Love.
house party
We hosted our first dinner party at the farm today and it felt really, really good to have friends around the table(s) again. It was also good incentive to get the last things done around here that we had put off.
The menu was pretty simple as usual – steak and hamburgers for the grill, baked potatoes, BLT salad (we skipped the turkey this time).
The girls made two kinds of cupcakes which were less simple – chocolate fudge cherry vanilla and raspberry-filled lemon. Both went fast! New favorite game around here – Cupcake Wars, the home edition. ; )
Ed and his family have newly arrived in England. He and Allen have worked together different times over many years and were deployed together when I was expecting Brendan.
He is like the Pied Piper and the children were drawn to him magnetically. Abbie didn't let him out of her sight and insisted he sit next to her during dinner.
She does actually have coordinating clothing, fwiw, but has ideas of her own and usually reworks her wardrobe throughout the day.
Tomorrow is Cambridge again the girls tell me. So we better go finish night two of our Jack Black movie weekend and get those dishes done. I hope your weekend is full of good friends, good weather, and good food. : )
the sheep’s in the meadow
signal fires
"If there is more important work than teaching, I hope to learn about it before I die." – Pat Conroy, My Reading Life
We had about a half hour early morning session of (not) back to school pictures, so these are rife with imperfections. No re-do's at this school though. <g> I am happy enough to capture us as we are this year – grades K, 2, 5, 7, and 10 plus one mom who is also learning as she goes.
The quote is one of many I have transcribed from My Reading Life which I grabbed blindly off the shelves. I have not read Prince of Tides nor any of his other work, nor even watched the movies. The memoir thus far is gripping even without that background and I found myself unable to see the type for several minutes this morning as he shared the story of his beloved English teacher's death.
His mother instilled in him a tremendous love of literature, introducing him to classics by the armful. The first few chapters are tributes to these two great influences on his life. Definitely lots of food for thought to mothers who are also teachers.
"She read so many books that she was famous among the librarians in every town she entered. She outread a whole generation of officer's wives but still wilted in embarassment when asked about her college degree. She talked of Pasternak and Dostoyeysky."
"My mother hungered for art, for illumination…She lit signal fires in the hills for her son to feel and follow. I tremble with gratitude as I honor her name."
" A library could show you everything if you knew where to look."
"She checked out large art
books from the library and and spread them out for Carol and me and read
out names seething with musicality and strangeness."
"Pat, don't you think the passage of time is what all literature is really about? Poems, plays, novels, everything?"
"I think so Gene."
"Mr. Powell seems to think it is a dance. Do you agree?" (referring to Powell's 12 volume A Dance to the Music of Time)
"I wish I'd thought of it before he did."
"You walked into my class in 1961."
"Our dance began."
It is good to think about our own dance through time with these children. What will they remember? What treasures will they store up in their hearts and minds?
This is what I am thinking about this week.
piebald
Such a pretty face. Our game was rescheduled so instead I ran outside when we got back home for a quick visit before dark.
There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.
– Herman Melville
They are harvesting onions in a nearby field this weekend. When the wind kicked up yesterday the whole area smelled like it was marinating. It became so irresistable we had to make a salad last night. : )
Starry Sky Journal 