Losing Half of My Heart

My husband, Chuck, passed away very unexpectedly on March 1, 2017.  I wasn't going to write about in here, but it didn't feel right to try to keep on blogging as though my heart were still whole. 

The preceding 12 months had been horrible for both of us; I lost my sister on March 16, 2016, then Chuck was diagnosed with cancer in June.  He battled it with chemo and radiation and he won.  In December, he was pronounced cancer free.  The chemo took a huge toll on him, taking him down to just about skin and bones, but he was getting stronger with each day that passed in January and February.  But on the morning of March 1st, I couldn't get him to wake up.  His heart, his enormous, kind, loving, giving heart had just stopped.  I know it was absolutely painless for him because he looked so peaceful.  That's what I tell myself anyway...

I'm still having a hard time truly believing that he is gone.  Everything looks the same...and yet nothing is the same.  The animals and I are trying as best we can to adjust to a world without our center...if one can ever "adjust" to something like that.  Right now, I'm just trying to take it one day at a time. 

Ornaments

I've been using a lot of shatter-proof ornaments in recent years, along with a few that have a great deal sentimental meaning.

This little crystal angel is also a bell.  She was given to me by my mother for my first tree in my first apartment.

These little mittens were made for me by a dear friend.  We've been friends since I was three years old.  She moved to Alaska in 1971, but we've managed to remain close always, friends for 64 years!

The heart ornament was painted for me my by my sister several years ago.  I miss her so much.

The little wooden "candles" were made by my husband in 1996.  He used dowels for the candles and red pipe cleaners for the "flames," then dripped thick, white gesso down the sides for the "wax."  It just isn't Christmas until these candles are on the tree!

Linking with: Through My Lens

Plenty

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, very windy, but gorgeous.  Overnight, it seems, the apple trees' blossoms burst open. 

My orchard is not tidy, nor do I prune the trees or thin out the growing apples just so I can have bigger apples, although I do rake under the trees every autumn before I put down mulch.  I just can't cut them, much the same as I cannot bring myself to pick flowers. 

I know it sounds silly, but I feel like I'm hurting them.  The trees like to grow this way, so why not let them be happy?  They certainly make me happy. When the apple trees absolutely have to be pruned for their health, I hire someone and hover over them to make sure they prune only what is necessary.  I'm always being told I could get a bigger crop and prettier apples if I used pesticides and pruned every winter.  Pesticides!?  Never.

I think the apples my trees give me are beautiful, small though they are.  Some are bug bitten...so what?  Bugs have to live too.  Some are oddly shaped, but they still taste just as sweet-tart, crisp and juicy as the perfectly formed ones.  I always have plenty to give family and friends, plenty for the deer, bears, skunks and raccoons, and plenty for myself and my husband. 

What more could one ask?

All Hat, No Cowboy

That's what my dad and uncles used to say about a man who dressed like a cowboy and tried to act like a cowboy, but definitely wasn't a cowboy.  I think that saying could apply just as well to the clouds we've seen floating over us for most of the summer because they sure look like rain clouds but they're definitely not delivering rain.  Well, not right where I live, anyway.  Some clouds have dropped rain in areas around my little valley, but no rain right in my little valley.  Ah well....

A Faeries Friday Full Moon in May

I thought She looked especially magical tonight.  I am always intrigued by the lighter, brighter spots on Her and, even though I know the scientific explanation for them, I choose to ignore it.  I like my great-great grandniece's explanation: "They're the lights from the villages of the Moon Faeries, of course!"   Emma is going on 10 and I worry that her wonderful imagination will be submerged under peer pressure soon.  Maybe I shouldn't worry though...just last week she told me that she felt so sorry for kids who were starting to lose their belief in magic, or never believed in it at all.  Like me, Emma finds magic in the most mundane things, she finds the wonder in all that the Great Spirit created, so maybe I'm worrying for no reason.  Unfortunately, worrying is one of the things I do best; I'm so happy that Emma didn't inherit that trait!

Happy Birthday, Mama

This is my mother, me and my little Boston Terrier, Miss Bubbles, at the beach in the 1950's.  My mother would be over 100 years old today if she were still alive, and I believe she would be alive if she hadn't smoked cigarettes.  When she passed away at the age of 87 from Emphysema there was nothing else physically wrong with her; mind sharp as a tack, heart in excellent condition. Everything fine, except her lungs.  No one knew how murderous tobacco was back in those days.  She quit smoking when she was 70 but by then it was too late. 

Oh, the changes she saw in her lifetime!  From horse and buggy to cars, from cars to airplanes, from airplanes to men walking on the moon.  (Mama and I were both very upset about that last; we felt humans had no business mucking up the moon).  She saw the world progress from mail to telegraph to telephone, from radio to television.  She witnessed two world wars and the 'police actions'  in Korea and Vietnam. She went through the Great Depression of the 1930's.  In the 1960's we cried together over the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  She was active in the Civil Rights movement; as half Oglala Sioux and half Italian, Mama experienced the hatred of racists more than once.  She survived the great Flu Pandemic of 1918, was a 'jazz baby' in the 1920's and we marched together in demonstrations for the Women's Liberation movement of the late 60's and 1970's.  No burning of bras for us though: Mama said, "Seeing women without bras will just make men happy and happy men aren't what we're marching for!"  

Happy Birthday, Mama...I wish you were here.

Re-reading Books

"Sometimes I just HAVE to re-read a book.  Even if I have new ones, the old ones call to me."  Anonymous

Are you like this, too?  For me, re-reading a favorite book is like visiting with a beloved friend (or lots of them) that I haven't seen in a long while.  I tend to re-read favorite books when I'm stressed or just because it happens to be a certain time of the year and a particular book just fits that time of year. 

 It's a good thing I'm a fast reader (don't go by the 'what I'm reading now' thing in my sidebar; usually by the time I get around to changing it, I've read eight or nine books beyond that book).  Also, I'm never without a book, or my Kindle.  My sister, who is not a reader (people are always shocked by how different we are and how close we are in spite of those differences) says, "Honestly, Victoria, you're the only person I've ever known who thinks it's perfectly all right to read while sitting at the dining room table!"  My reply to her never varies.  "So, you didn't know our mother?"  I ask, and then we always laugh. 

When my husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, I told him I wanted him to completely cover the dining room walls with beautiful shelves for books.  Here's hoping... 

Sunday Sunlight

Taken today, while Elizabeth and I were out collecting a few acorns and pine cones.

Faeries Friday - The Truth About Chimney Sparks

My youngest great-great niece, Elizabeth, is spending the week-end with me.  Earlier this evening, while a cold little wind wandered around outside, we had watched our favorite movie "Fairy Tale: A True Story" with cats curled on our laps (when they weren't trying to sneak a taste of the whipped cream on top of our hot chocolate) and dogs begging for bits of peanut butter cookies at our feet.

As I was tucking her into bed in her favorite attic bedroom, the one with the sloping ceilings, a tiny fireplace and a window seat that overlooks the stream, she asked me this question: "Auntie V, can faeries really fly down the chimney like they do in the movie?  Why don't they get burned?"  I replied, "Well, of course they can!  And they don't get burned because they're magical.  They fly back up the chimney, too, only they're usually moving so fast and twinkling so brightly, that most people think they are sparks from their fireplace." 

Just as I finished speaking, I saw her eyes widen and her little mouth become a round 'O' of wonder.  I quickly turned to look out the window behind me and saw, in the purple tinted air of almost night, a shining, twinkling flight of bright Faeries swirling past the window. 

"I saw them, Auntie V, I saw them!  Did you?"  I replied, "Yes, my darling girl, I saw them, too." 

Now, I know some of you may think they were only sparks from the fireplace, but Elizabeth and I . . . well, we know the truth.

A Blue Moon

The second full moon of August, according to the moon gadget on my sidebar, is full tonight.  The calendar I have says it won't be full until tomorrow, but She looked pretty full to me so...here She is in all her blue glory.  (She wasn't really blue; I had to give that a little 'help'). 

I call the moon Grandmother because that is what my First Nations ancestors called her.  Mother Earth, Father Sky, Grandmother Moon, Grandfather Sun: humans, and all living beings, are connected as family through these four. 

The Doldrums

                           (The window ledge outside my studio) 

My mind has been stuck in the doldrums of summer lately, or becalmed as my brother would say when we were sailing off the coast of California and the wind died.  Usually at those times a fog would also surround us and that could be pretty scary if we happened to be close to the shipping lanes.  I feel like my mind is fogged in, too.  Any activity that requires more thinking than lifting a glass of sweet tea (iced tea), reading a not too challenging book, or picking the dead blossoms off flowers has just been beyond me.  I haven't even been doing too well at the dead blossom thing, as you can tell from the photo above.  And, the brain fog is getting thicker as I write this...I think I'll go to bed.

The Past Two Weeks

Just One?

Even though it looked like this up here just two days ago, the snow is melting really fast.

In a sunny, protected spot, these violets are already free of the snow and doing just fine. These are special violets, so I'm much more grateful that they made it through the snow storm. Why are they special? Not because they're a unique hybrid or anything like that. They're just regular garden violets, but I transplanted them from my mother's garden...and she's not in this world any more. She passed in January of 1994. Every year, fewer of the violets bloom and the size of the patch shrinks, even though I never pick any so each blossom can make a seed head. I suppose someday soon there won't be any blooms at all and, while that won't be a huge tragedy, the joy in my world will be a little less for their passing.

Maybe I should pick just one blossom and press it?

Faeries Friday - Violetina

This faerie is also a nightlight. She was given to me by my youngest niece right after my studio was finished being built. Violetina lives in the studio's bathroom, and I've always thought she looks like she is saying, "OMG! I've got such a headache!" My niece says she looks like that because of where she lives, ha ha.  My husband says she looks like that because of what she sees. Oh, what a wit. Ha. Ha. 

That Annual Post-Christmas...

Exhaustion! Anthony and George look like I feel. As lovely as the Christmas season is, it is also a very hectic, busy season.  I usually feel like I've run some sort of marathon by the time it's over, even as I'm grumbling about it going by too fast and being over too soon.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas...I'm going to go take a nap!

Faeries Friday - Laverna the Lavender Fairy

This is a little chair I painted for my newest great-great niece. Right now her mother loves it, and I'm hoping when little Elizabeth gets old enough she will love it, too.

Coming Back Into the Light

This past Christmas was a rather dark one for our family. My sister had a stroke on December 22, and one of my nieces, who lives in Georgia, was in a car crash on December 23. Thank goodness both are going to be all right.

I took the picture above on the morning of December 28 as I was driving home. I had learned the night before that my sister could come home as early as January 10th, as long as she has a full-time nurse for several months, so I am trying to arrange that.

I got a phone call around 2 a.m. on the 28 that my niece would be released from the hospital on the 29th, and she is now at home and doing very well.

As I started up the mountain early on the 28 dawn was just barely beginning. The higher up the mountain I drove, the more beautiful the sunrise became. I felt it was an affirmation that my family was coming back from the darkness, coming back into the light.

Thanksgiving Table

This is what the table looked like yesterday (Thanksgiving).

For once, I remembered to take some pictures before we sat down

to eat our feast. Usually I'm rushing around so much I forget, but this

year we were only four; my husband, my sister, my friend Kathleen, and myself.   Different, but nice nonetheless...

In Praise of Eccentricity

While out driving around with a friend, I passed this sign. I thought it was charmingly eccentric, my friend didn't care for it. (Not the sign itself. She just doesn't like any sort of yard decoration).

I've always been drawn to eccentric people. I find them, usually, more interesting than people who are strictly conventional. But that is not to say that I don't know or like any interesting, conventional people, I do.

Most of the women in my family, and extended family, could be called 'eccentric' and they would take it as a compliment. I think it takes a certain amount of courage to be eccentric, especially if you're a woman, even in current times. Of course, in times not too far past, it was risky, even life-threatening, for either gender to be anything other than exactly like their neighbors. I'm so glad I don't live in times like those; I'm not sure I would have survived!