Anna,s sugjeststons

This week's guest blogger is our granddaughter Anna, five.

1/you shod NOT talk To strangrs! NO NO NO NO NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2/stop and look booth ways 2 time,s befor you cross the rood.

3./keep yor hands on the stearign weel all the time

4./ do not eat ice creem on A/a new rug.

/5.do not drik juse on A/a new carpet./

6./you need to folow ruls

7/wene you cook you need to now the resepee.

Happy Birthday, Canada!

Happy birthday Canada!

We have heard your friendly seagulls
and your ferry whistles
and the french accents of young girls,
the midnight cries of mating cats
and the quiet sound of knots of ribbon snakes
slithering away into the woods.

We have glimpsed your seals
and puffins
and sea urchins
and lynx
and dall sheep
and wood bison,
and found grizzly scat in the middle of the road.

We have waited at your borders to be scrutinized
and questioned
and be taken apart. 
Advice: Never say
"What's the matter lady,
you got PMS or something?"
like Uncle Dick did.

We have felt your whale splashes,
your cold nights on Lake Huron,
your tidal bore,
and your mosquitoes.
Our feet have waded in your tidepools bare
because we left our flip flops on PEI.
We did not wade in the Yukon
after we saw a huge tree appear
and disappear
from its muddy flow.

We have canoed to your pictographs.
We have looked for tiny moonworts
and found old bottles instead.

We have tasted your snails
and seaweed
and mussels
and lobsters
and fresh strawberries
and a bucket of perch.

We have sung,
rather well,
on your public radio station
near the Plains of Abraham.

We have tried,
unsuccessfully,
to count your fireweed
and to make a fish harness,
and have helped sink a boat called "Dundee."

We have seen the underwater lights of night divers
and the twinkling lights of fireflies.
We have seen the rocky cliffs
that used to touch African shores.
We have seen the maple leaves
on the haunches of the horses
of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
We have seen your canola fields
and are glad you changed the name
from "rapeseed."

We found the snake you hid in our stove.
We have worn our honeymoon jeans
to one of your proper churches.

We were reminded of Aslan
singing Narnia into existance
at the foot of the mighty McKenzie mountains.
Primal.

We have climbed your trees
and a few cliffs
to find perfectly cubed rocks.
We will climb your Rockies next year,
God willing!
We have loved it all,
mostly.

We are comfortable to be your neighbor
and happy to be your friend.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: June

A partial list:

10. Cooking hot dogs over a campfire.
Relish.
Mustard.
Good conversations.

9. Teaching Vacation Bible School.
Alice based the week
on GT and the Halo Express scripture memory.
Love GT!

8. Visiting Goodwill.
It borders on addiction.

7. Looking at the roadsides.
Elderberries are currently blooming.
There was a dead porcupine
along 322 east of Rockton
and I had a "Get Well" balloon in the car,
so I tied it to his front leg
and took a picture for Luke,
bless his heart,
who tolerates my humor.
A car pulled over,
perhaps thinking I had car trouble,
then, thankfully, left.
More cars were coming
(busy road for the middle of the afternoon)
so I left,
only to see a car slam on its brakes
in my rear-view mirror.
I did a u-turn
and retrieved the balloon.
Warped humor should not cause accidents.

6. Went to a mountain picnic and took a dessert.
A dessert that people liked.
A dessert that people requested the recipe for.
Den was shocked.
We circled the day on the calendar.

5. Eating Calliari's bread
spread with real butter
and Palumbo's hot chicken spread.
What Primanti Bros is to Pittsburgh,
that combo could be for DuBois.
Hometown food.

4. Visiting local state parks with the grandgirls.
If you're interested,
Bald Eagle State Park's water is warm and a bit dirty,
Parker Dam's water is clean and COLD,
and Black Moshannon's water is cool
and full of tannic acid from vegetation--
thus the name BLACK Moshannon.

3. Reading children's books
and then writing reviews for a company in D.C.
The good news is: free books!
The bad news is: I've thrown some of them away.
If I can't recommend them,
why pass them on?

2. Watching 24 every Monday night
and Doc Martin on Thursdays on PBS.

1. Looking for things
that are creature-like
in public places.
For the past two years,
I've carried stick-on googly eyes in my purse
(a Luke suggestion).
The most recent find is below.
Ten points if you can identify its DuBois location.

How did you spend your June?

Hello

Juneberry Thoughts

One of the advantages of living on the mountain
is the panoramas that spread out when we drive to the valleys.
Last month
Bennetts Valley was spectacular
with hundreds of juneberry trees in blossom.  
Amelanchior is known by a number of names:
saskatoon
is the native name
and was a major ingredient in pemmican,
shadbush
because it flowers when shad spawns,
serviceberry
because two centuries ago
the berries were ripe
when the many wedding services were performed
by the circuit-riding preacher.
  
About ten years ago
Den planted our three bushes,
and this year the conditions were perfect for fruiting.
Last week
the berries were pink,
Wednesday
they were darkening to a perfect ripeness...
and Thursday night the bear came.
Branch tips were stripped
by his bite-and-pull method of eating
and a big branch was broken on the ground.
Friday morning
the grandgirls and I discovered the damage.
Anna was a bit sad
that the bear damaged the bush,
but Lucy was thrilled
that so many berries
were now within her reach.
She ate them indiscriminately
until she discovered
that green ones were not good.
The next hour
was spent devouring
Hundreds of Delicious Berries.
Crevasses in the stones in the wall
became temporary bowls.
While Anna braved
the wiggly stones in the wall
to reach higher branches,
Lucy took Bop a fistful of berries,
which somehow became
half a fistful of berries.
Bop graciously accepted the gift
and then immediately gave it back to her,
Lucy 's cheeks almost burst with enthusiasm.

This morning the girls are back home
and more branches are broken.
Luckily the weather is perfect:
nice breeze,
relatively low humidity,
great for beating the bear to the remainder of the fruit.
I gently bend the branches
to reach the higher berries--
not too hard
or I will break the remaining branches.
I pick the ripest maroon berries
and the darker reds
and listen to them ping into the bowl.
When I release the branch,
the remaining reds look riper than the pinks
and I wonder if perhaps I should pick them as well.
As I work, I think of spectrums--
the spectrum of juneberry ripeness
with greens not ready and some purples overripe,
and the spectrum of branch brittleness
as I want branches to bend but not break.
In the spectrum of house cleanliness,
our house has dust bunnies
and the occasional dust possum
but the Center for Disease Control hasn't visited yet.
In the political spectrum,
I am easily swayed
by both Rebublicans
and Democrats.
Then there is the spectrum of attention given to children....
I think that the middle is usually a good place to be.
Colson Blakeslee,
our first family physician,
advised "Everything in moderation."
I like that.
I eat low-fat cottage cheese and butter,
carrots and bacon.
I use store-bought pie crust
and homemade filling.

I think I'll go make a juneberry pie.

Seedy deliciousness

Anna and Lucy juneberrying

The "bowl" isn't empty yet

Saturday's task

Official Summer Greetings

Ahhh! A hammock, a book, and a glass of lemonade....

This weekend marks the summer solstice.
It's interesting how
the first day of summer on the calendar
can be the same day
as Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream."
We spent Thursday and Friday
(our summer babysitting routine)
with granddaughters
Anna, five,
and Lucy, two,
and Paul joined us Friday night and Saturday
while Kate was at a conference at NPR headquarters.

School has been out for almost two weeks,
but learning is a daily occurrence. 

Anna learned
the joys of hammock, lemonade, and book
(Boxcar Children's Blue Bay Mystery recommended),
brick sidewalks have patterns,
lifting too many bricks
can make your stomach muscles sore,
life jackets really do make you float,
and some flowers are called "blue-eyed grass."
Really.
To bees, nectar is like lemonade
and pollen is like Chee-tos dust.
Mortar is fun to mix.
You eat Juneberries in June.
Mountain laurel has flower parts
that act like sling shots.
When you get a belly-ache
from eating too much applesauce
with cinnamon and sugar,
you can always play hospital.

Lucy learned
deer eat the corn you throw in the field,
you can sing yourself to sleep
by bellowing "Are you sleeping?
ARE YOU SLEEPING BRUDDA JOHN?!?"
Grammy can do underduckies.
Chee-tos are good
...except for the ones
that have been on the cabin floor for hours.
You can go fishing in puddles.
Squirt guns can water plants.
Bop keeps pretzels in the jeep.
Outhouses are fun if someone holds onto you.
"I wuv dat guy!" melts Bop's heart.
Hickory Dickory Dock cannot be read too many times.

Paul learned
five-year-olds can make your favorite rhubarb pie,
World Cup soccer is available on the mountain
if you aren't picky about which game you watch,
tree stands sometimes blow over...
and winches are wonderful.
Tarps over sandpiles
are good places to find snakes.
Winter-killed ivy
is difficult to remove from chimneys.
Masonry skills improve over time,
and Anna
has inherited
some of his musical ability.

Sue learned
sometimes bears wake you up
by crunching birdboxes,
small children are impressed
by mediocre scooter skills,
and watching for injured chipmunks
to emerge from daylilies
can be calming.
Creek clay can swallow shoes.
When jumping into swimming holes,
it's a good idea
to have your sunglasses
attached to your body.
Fast water can knock you down.
Bruises happen.
Two-year-olds like bug spray, not for its repellent abilities,
but because the lemongrass oil mix
is in a spray bottle.

Bop/Den learned
pancakes can be consumed
as fast as you can make them.
It's more fun to lay stone with a friend.
When Bop needs a band-aid,
everyone wants a band-aid.
Sometimes turkey gobblers
prefer the neighbor's field,
and sometimes
you don't realize
how much you've missed your son.

This first official week of summer,
may your books be many
and your band-aids be few.
It'll be midsummer before you blink.

Blessings,

Sue's scooter-riding abilities are recorded for posterity on the driveway.

Sue and Denny

Lucy caught a fish-leaf!

Bop calls it scaffolding. The girls call it a jungle gym.

Anna reassembles the sidewalk. Re-laying seemed easier than weeding.

 

Did you know that mortar can be called "mud'?

Squirrel's Ear Day

Like Second Breakfast gives a hobbit's morning a boost,
Squirrel's Ear Day is a boost to the Shaffner spring.
Squirrel's Ear Day is a moveable holiday,
falling on a slightly different day each spring,
somewhat similar to Easter
which is the first Sunday
after the first full moon
after the equinox.
Usually Squirrel's Ear Day,
the day when the oak leaves are as big as a squirrel's ear,
falls in single digit May,
but not this year.
Botanical spring is late on the mountain.

Spring comes sooner in the valleys.
DuBois was built around a beaver meadow wetland
and the streams that feed the wetland have lowland wildflowers.
I made my traditional spring drive to Van Tassel Road on Thursday
to see bloodroot,
dogtooth violets,
spring beauties,
and red and white trilliums.
In our college years,
white trilliums bloomed the week that Houghton's semester was over.
As we drove 219 south through the Allegany Forest,
the hemlocks would have a blanket of white at their feet.
"Trillions of trilliums," Den used to say.

My grandpa Bernie
used to make a yearly spring tonic from sassafras root scrapings
and serve it in chilled aluminum glasses.
One major boost to Den's standing in the Rensel family
was using his dad's tractor to pull sassafras roots out of the ground.
Bernie did not have to use a shovel.
We had his vote from that day on.
A friend gave Den a jar of sassafras tea this week
and the scent alone made me feel like an eight year old again.
I had mine without aluminum this time.

Dandelions and violets began blooming this week in the valley.
I sat my first graders down
on the edge of the playground
for an informal science lesson.
"Dente means tooth in French.
So dente de lion,
dandelion,
means tooth of the lion,"
and we picked dandelion leaves
and held them up to our jaws
and growled ferociously.
I then showed them a violet
and pointed out the pouch-like nectary
where the sweet nectar is stored.
We nibbled the nectaries,
then ate the violets.
They taste a bit like cucumbers.
Two girls spent much of the remainder of recess
prowling around
snacking on violets.
(The next day,
A informed me that he wasn't allowed to eat purple flowers.
Do his parents know what is in school lunches?)

Spring here on the mountain is a bit sparser--
no forsythia blooms this year due to frigid temperatures.
I've walked to the arbutus patch twice so far,
but no blooms.
What we lack in flowers this year, though,
has been made up in birds.
Besides the traditional chickadees,
doves,
finches,
blue jays,
cardinals,
and the misguided redwing
that lurks recent years in the silky dogwood,
this year we have a catbird that yells everything he knows,
a pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks,
and three northern orioles.
Orioles!
Yay!
The boys were babies the last time we had orioles.

And Squirrel's Ear Day?
Today was the first day I noticed a swelling in the oak buds.
Squirrel's Ear Day is coming,
probably some day this week.
We suggest celebrating Squirrel's Ear Day with a second breakfast.

Broken

New birdfeeder

Slowly, spring is coming to the mountain.
When I returned home from school a few days ago,
Den was quite animated.
"You just missed it!
A three hundred pound black bear
just climbed the huge oak tree by the back porch!
He didn't stay there long--
must be hard to keep that much weight up a tree."
When we walked around the house,
the just-purchased-last-week birdfeeder was broken
and the flowering crab that had held the birdfeeder
had another broken branch.
Bears can be a mixed blessing.

Flowering crabapple with newest broken branch

I've been thinking about the word "broken."
When we visited Tanzania,
we heard the story
of how in the 1960s,
the Australian government
wanted to help the people of Tanzania
by giving them horses.
When the horses arrived,
they were hard to control
and many escaped
and disappeared into the bush
where they soon died from tsetse fly bites.
Both governments were disappointed.
The Australians had sent the horses,
unbroken as requested.
The Tanzanians replied,
"Why would we have wanted broken horses?"

Broken.
Our government is broken.
Last week, I was reminded
that I have no right to complain
unless I have been praying for the people who govern me.
Guilty.
Now I find myself praying
"Father God, give the people in government wisdom
and help them to do what is right...
but I am cynical.
Lord, I believe.
Help my unbelief."

I am also broken.
Probably you are, too.
We agree with Paul's letter to the Romans,
"I want to do what is right, but I don't do it.
Instead, I do what I hate."


Who would want a broken horse?
Ah! Who would want a tamed horse?
I think of Saint-Exupery's masterpiece
The Little Prince,
the story of a small boy
who visits Earth to understand it better. 
The Fox wants to be tamed by the Little Prince
because "one only understands the things that one tames,"
and so the fox allows himself to be tamed,
to be broken. 

In this delayed spring, post-Easter world,
my brokenness can be understood
by the Visitor who created me
and gives me grace.
I am broken,
forgiven,
loved.