Revelations

Yes, my work. 

There is the garden project to write about (what changes!). There is the 2nd quarter/1st half grocery expenditures to report on (let's just say there are some surprises there). My father had a medical matter arise that has landed him in skilled nursing rehab for the indefinite future (the same one I spent several weeks in last fall, so it is like Old Home Week for me when I go visit).  There is Warren's impending retirement as Executive Director of our local symphony after 3+ decades (he will continue to play, and he has other significant commitments, so don't worry about him not having anything to do). And it is 4th of July week, which means this household is on buzz level (on the 4th itself, Warren and I will put in 18+ hours from waking up to finally going to bed, most likely on the 5th). In short, our hands are full, our calendars are packed, and our time is on short supply.

Despite all of that, I no longer feel as I am running on overload, a word I have used constantly for weeks now. A word I have used so much for the last month that I have often thought of the old Groucho Marx show, "You Bet Your Life," with the classic "Say the secret word," which would cause the duck to drop down with a prize for the contestant. 

That duck was dropping down daily, even hourly. No prize, mind you, but the damn duck kept dropping. 

So what happened? 

Two things.

One happened early in June, when we had our June Justice Bus, a collaboration between our county Law Library, Andrews House (which has hosted legal clinics since October 2003), and the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation. We come together once a month in town for a clinic focused solely on family law. I am the attorney wrangler, but in June I filled in for one of our attorneys who had a last-minute court matter. I met with the clients, we fully explored the issue that brought them there, and they left with gratitude for the directions we had discussed.

I walked home that day deep in thought, resolving to step back into serving our Justice Bus, not just as attorney wrangler but also as a volunteer attorney. I have to finish my Continuing Legal Education for this biennial (yeah, yeah), but I am back in.

Warren smiled and nodded when I told him my decision later that day. He made it clear that he supported me fully. Then he said he was not surprised; he knew where my heart was.

The second revelation caught me totally off guard, albeit in a great way. And it involves my long love, albeit dormant, of photography. 

I have been taking photos with my old  iPhone (a model X, to give you an idea just how old—new to me, but old). It does okay. It captures moments. 

But the bees are back. I sat on the porch and watched them. I knew I wanted something better than my iPhone. So I went back inside and picked up my Canon.

When I shattered my wrist in January, I could not use my Canon. And, to be truthful, I had not been using it much even before the medical mess of the autumn, let alone the wrist. But with my arm in a cast, I could not easily handle the Canon. When the cast came off in early March, I had significant neuropathy in my right thumb and index finger. That improved with exercise, but then another medical problem on the same arm (and the same nerve) set me back and made clear that I will always have neuropathy. Better, mind you, but likely permanent. So I skirted the Canon, not sure what my right hand could do. 

And the iPhone was so convenient. But it could not begin to give me what I wanted. And my Canon could. 

And did.

I texted my lifelong friend Cindy what I had just done, adding "So excited!" Then added "And it feels so great!"

What I realized and shared with Cindy was that this was the reconnection to photography that I had been hoping for, but was not sure I would ever get back, not just in my hands but in my heart and emotions. I knew Cindy would understand as she and I, besides being lifelong friends, also grew up in 4-H photography together.

Of course, Cindy got it immediately. We are that close, that connected. 

And she totally understood when I texted: "I don't want to lose that feeling ever again."

Truly, I felt like a missing part of me—not just since winter, but long before then—was back. 

Every night I sit out on our back deck as dusk comes on and watch the fireflies come out. It is my retreat; it is my time of quiet contemplation. I am writing this in longhand as I sit here. It is chill tonight, so much so that I am in sweats and a hoodie. The fireflies are blinking off and on, sometimes rising in seemingly choreographed waves.  

As I watch them, I reflect on my finding my way back to advising. I think of my finding my way back to photography. I think of Warren and his support and love, and of Cindy and her support and love.

And I savor the little lights flashing in the deepening dusk.

This Year's Gardens: End of the Season

The last of the garden

The garden year is over. 

As I wrote in my last post, I picked all of the remaining not-yet-ripe peppers and tomatoes a week ago and have been sunning them since Saturday on our deck in the hopes that some of them will ripen. While we are having a warm weekend ("warm" being in the 70s), the change in light and the cooler days in general spelled the end of them ripening on the vines. I am writing this Monday and there have been good results. We are still having a few more days of warm, sunny weather, so I am looking forward to a few more days for the tomatoes. The peppers, judging by their textures, are ready to call it a year. 

This was not a good gardening year on many fronts. We did manage to get three more cabbages, small red ones, from the Hej garden, much to my  surprise. Small? One was about the size of my fist. Maybe. They made the white cabbages from earlier in the summer look large. I chopped the three up and we had enough coleslaw to accompany our meals for several days. 

Tiny cabbages.

The cabbage crop!

Next year, I told myself as I chopped. Next year.

Next year's gardens have been on my mind a lot. A. Lot. How to approach them, what to plant, how to make sure the gardens thrive. We now have rabbit-fencing for the Hej garden and will roll it out at the beginning of the season. (Ha! Take that, rabbits! I hope the falcons come back and thin you out again.) So that is one small step.

What to plant is more nagsome. I planted a lot (again, A. LOT.) of tomatoes on the promises of friends to take the extras. Well, one friend took extras only if I picked them for her. Another had such a crowded summer that tomatoes were not high on her list of priorities as tomato season waxed and waned. A longtime neighbor across the street, who not only took tomatoes but picked them herself, moved away in September (but not before coming over and picking more tomatoes). So next year? WAY less tomato plants (and unlike this year, that is a vow I will keep). 

By growing fewer tomatoes, I should have more room for the peppers, which were definitely crowded. Those also suffered attacks from the rabbits in the early weeks until we put fencing around the individual plants. I don't know that I will plant more peppers, but I will definitely give the ones I plant more room and respect.

Other probable changes? The four planters are lackluster when it comes to growing lettuce and carrots (finger carrots, which are smaller). Some of that is due to my lack of attention. Some of it I blame on how the soil compacts quickly in the planters. I doubt I will try carrots again in any format and I am not even enthusiastic about a lettuce patch, although I love the fresh lettuce. The planters will likely go to the curb with a "FREE" sign next spring. 

I am planning on growing zucchini again, despite a mediocre season. Again, some of that was rabbit depredation. Some of it may have been (again) lack of care. I pretty much neglected the Hej garden, even after the fencing, so the weeds grew strong and plentiful. They did not overshadow the few zucchini plants that grew large, because it takes a lot to best a full-sized zucchini plant. But the weeds did shove aside the smaller plants. And all the plants seemed to develop a white coating, no doubt a disease of some sort, which hampered the growth. Still, there are quarts bags of sliced zucchini in the basement freezer to eat for the next several months, and I would like to see how next year's crop plays out. 

And of course there will be basil, although to my disappointment the bees did not flock to it this year after the final cutting. They apparently found the cosmos, which grew abundantly from a pack of scattered seeds, of far more interest. Bees loved the potted marigolds on the deck as well. They also loved a flowering plant (coleus, perhaps?) in a large planter that Warren's daughter brought over as a gift and that we kept on the deck for the summer. The planter has come inside for the winter and will make a reappearance next summer.

In the comos

And the marigolds

And on the coleus (I think)

I am planting more cosmos in the kitchen garden next year. They were too bright and too engaging to ignore. I will plant sunflowers again, although they take up a lot of space, just for the joy of watching the goldfinches and other small birds feast on the heads as they go to seed.

In the waning days of the fall, I am bringing down the gardens. For the kitchen garden, that means pulling up the plants, taking in the tomato cages for the year, and first weeding, then tilling the bed. For the Hej garden, I think the only way I can get it under control is to go out there daily, for 30 to 40 minutes at a time (setting an alarm), and take the weeds out bit by bit. It is too overgrown to be an easy afternoon, trust me. (I started this project over the weekend, and soon realized the enormity and the tenacity of the deeply rooted weeds.) Only then we can till. We may spread compost on both gardens for the winter, then till and put down compost in the spring.

As I settle into the late fall, I hope to return to writing on a more regular basis. My health continues to be very stable, but with 18 years of myeloma under my belt, I have no illusions as to how fast the sand in the hourglass is running. Even without the myeloma, we recently had a harsh reminder of how brief life can be when one of Warren's high school classmates, who we'd just seen in September at the 50th reunion, died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Time is precious. I want to spend more time writing; Kaki Okumura, a writer I first found on Medium, recently wrote about being away and then coming back to writing and her thoughts resonated with me deeply. I admire bloggers like Sam (Sam, Coffee, Money, and Thyme) and Kim (Out My Window), who write daily or almost daily. 

And I want to spend more time with my camera. I look at Laurie's beautiful work on The Clean Green Homestead and her photos make me want to also look at the seemingly everyday but infinitely precious world around me.

Like this little one who decided to visit yesterday:

I'll be watching myself to see how I do.

Jumpstarted by Two Youths

This is not a post about Millennials or Generation Z. When I wrote "Youths" in the title,  I was referring to individuals under the age of 15, and I'm only hedging on that because I can't remember how old Liam is, although he is still in middle school, so I know I am more than safe with that age range. The other young person is Ramona, who is not yet eight and a half years old.

So, jumpstarted by youths. I could say "inspired," but "jumpstarted" is more accurate. I just had my car battery replaced, and Warren had to jumpstart me on two different occasions just before that, so that sound of turning the ignition key and hearing the power surge on is spot on. 

Ramona first. Ramona my oldest grandchild, Ramona the amazing. After months of irregular video chats,  complicated by busy schedules, online schooling, activities, family matters, and time zone differences, to name a few factors, she and I now chat online on Wednesday afternoons (my time) as Wednesday is the weekday her online school classes are the shortest. As has always been the case with Ramona, she hits the conversational ground running and we never know where that talk will lead. It is a blast.

During our most recent talk, we started off talking books. Ramona reads a lot of fantasy, especially if it features dragons. She is enthralled with the Wings of Fire series and sometimes we explore tangential threads to that series, including dragonflies of the genus Pantala, also known as rainpool gliders, which Ramona immediately connected to the Rainwings in the series and drew comparisons between the characteristics of the dragonfly (I read them aloud) and the dragons.

She then segued to a "chapter book" she is writing. She wanted to read some of it to me, but it is packed away in preparation for her family moving (today, in fact). However, she recited (or pulled up on her iPad) a list of the characters and ran through them quickly. I then shared with her that I was writing a novel, but I had not worked on it in months (well, years).

Ramona bounced straight up. "What? You're writing one? What is it about?" I  told her it was a novel about her completing a quest with the help of Aunties Jenna and her little brother. She beamed when I said it was about her. "Read some of it to me," she demanded. 

Well, what could I do with a command request like that? I got my manuscript (which is always, always setting out) and told her I would read her the prologue, after asking her if she knew what a prologue was. Polite eye roll. Yes, she was very familiar with prologues (and correctly explained it to me) as well as epilogues (the same), adding, patiently, "I know all the logues."

So I read it to her. 

There was a split second of silence, then an outburst. "That's good! Read more."

I read a little more, with Ramona asking questions, then told her I haven't finished it and haven't been working on it. 

Ramona cut me no slack.

"You need to finish it."

After we finished talking, I told Warren about reading some of the novel (which he has not read) to Ramona and her response. Then I added, "I want to go back to it and see it through. I thought it was just a discarded idea, but now I feel ready to tackle it again." 

Ramona jumpstarted me. 

The second jumpstart was with Liam, the middle-school aged son of my friend Cecelia. I have known Liam since before he went to kindergarten. Recently, Liam got both a Facebook page and a new camera, and has been posting photos on his page. 

Liam has a good eye. Several of the adults in his Facebook world have said that to him, including me. It's one of those intangible "I know it when I see it" qualities; Liam has it.

I have written before about my love of photography. When I was Liam's age, I started thinking about whether I could be a photographer; National Geographic was my goal. I set that career path aside long ago, but I still love photography and cameras and seeing what others are doing in the field. I have a great camera; I mean to use it more, but, like the writing (all writing, not just the novel), it gets set aside too easily.

Yesterday Liam posted some of his latest work. It was really, really good. I had my same reaction: Liam has a good eye. (And you bet I told him that on Facebook.) I had a second reaction, which I did not post but came naturally: I miss photography.

Which is why when I saw the morning sun lighting up the kitchen, particularly the pot of beans on the stove, I took this photo, then posted it on Facebook with the comment, "Liam, you are totally responsible for this shot."

Just because

Because he was. Like Ramona, his enthusiasm for photography jumpstarted my too often dormant love of it. Because of that surge of energy, I saw the plain pot and the sun and the day entirely different.

Jumpstarted by the young ones. What a gift.

What Another Morning Brought

 It was quiet and moist and foggy this morning. I walked out to dump the kitchen scraps on our neighbor's compost and a shimmer in the pine trees caught my eye.

Another morning of small moments: the most fragile of constructions, the sturdiest of homes.

What One Morning Brought

 Earlier this week, I cut off a soft portion of a late tomato. It has broken open—the tiniest of breaks—and was weeping gently, so I sliced it off and tossed it into the small compost bowl I keep on the counter. The bowl has a lid, and I snapped it into place.

In the morning, a surprise greeted me:

Within the warmth of the lidded compost bowl, the weeping tomato turned into something else.

I was entranced. I was fascinated with its beauty and delicacy. I grabbed my camera and started snapping. 

I know. It's just mold. I get that. But in the early morning light, it was a wisp of a unicorn's forelock, a bit of fairy hair, a thing of beauty.

And that makes it a joy forever.

The Stub Ends of August

 How can it be August 28 already? How can it be that I have not posted anything since the beginning of the month? 

The time has slid through my hands.

There is much more to say, but not today. August has held some hard moments, many wonderful moments, and at least one stunning surprise. 

I'll write about all that soon. For now, I'll let a few photos speak instead. Even in the late summer, blooms abound. 

Purslane in bloom

Sunflowers in bloom

Bolted Bibb lettuce in bloom

The More Things Change

"The more things change, the more they keep changing."

I admit it: I stole that line from the our Juvenile Court judge, who is my employer, a neighbor (our backyards connect), and a longtime close friend. Because that pretty much sums up life around here.

As I type on this 29th day of March, the wind outside is picking up as our part of Ohio moves from balmy springlike weather (it was 72 yesterday!) to what will be a drop into the 40s and 30s. I believe we are also under a High Winds Advisory from the National Weather Service for good measure.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been walking daily, taking my camera along, and posting what I photograph on Facebook. Friends both near and far have been watching to see what I come up with each day. chiming in with stories or memories or their own shots. It has been a lot of fun.

I did not walk today, despite the sunshine and warm temperatures earlier.  The unwell feeling from the myeloma has been building over the last several days, so I skipped the walk. Instead, I posted some of the shots I had taken over the last week or so but not used before. I shared my health situation; my status brought a comment from a concerned friend (ranting against the myeloma) that led me and my friend and boon companion Anne, lawyers both of us, to riff on the application of the law of adverse possession as it relates to my myeloma. I don't know if the author of the initial comment appreciated our levity, but Anne and I certainly did. (I also realize that last sentence is probably incomprehensible to anyone who has not sat through first year Property Law.) You know you are in quarantine for a long time when you make law jokes with good friends.

I have been watching friends and family build community through these times. We cannot visit, but we reach out through other ways. At the Facebook site for the Central Ohio Symphony, we are posting a video every day: our musicians, our conductor (a world class trombonist), pieces by some of our composers. (You do not need a Facebook account to reach the Central Ohio Symphony's postings; they are open to the public.) Other friends are also sharing and posting music, visual art, and more. Today I joined the church service at All Saints Episcopal Church in Vancouver, Washington. So what's a Jew like me doing in a place like that, be it the venue (a church) or the distance (2400 miles)? Because the churchman conducting the service, Father Joe, is my child-in-law's father and my grandchildren's grandfather. In short, family. Family that I love and miss. Like so many other places, his church is closed because of COVID-19 and today was the first livestreamed service. Of course I watched it. And afterwards I said the Shehechiyanu, a Hebrew prayer I recite often, giving thanks to the Creator for the fact that I am still alive and sharing the moment. (And while I was watching the service, Warren surprised me with making and bringing me lunch. You bet that prayer of gratitude includes the fact that I have this dear man in my life.)

This post is all over the board, but so is life today. So I'm going to close with the best example of resilience I have seen in a long time. When it was so warm yesterday, I spent over an hour in the morning starting to clean out the vegetable garden, which I had brought down but not cleaned out last fall. Last October or November, I had tossed out a potbound planting of thyme, burnt out from a hot summer and fall. The clump of roots and soil had been in the garden upside down all winter. I turned it over and found new growth on the old thyme. Despite being burnt out, despite being thrown out, despite being left to the winter blasts, the thyme came back. Now that's resilience!

See that little bit of green to the left? That's new thyme! 

And yes, I replanted it, this time in the garden.

Another 100 Words

COVID-19.

Pandemic.

My oncologist imposed lockdown: no office, no store, no visitors, no visiting.

At all.

Legal Clinic: canceled.

Poetry Night: canceled.

The Symphony's season finale: postponed.

Our library: closed.

I may take walks. Solitary or with Warren. I take my camera along.

In these strange times, being forced to slow down makes me realize how much I push myself. Even working part-time, I drive myself too hard, too long, too much.

In the evening, I do yoga. Sometimes I stop and take deep breaths just to center myself.

Breathe.

I am still here.

Breathe.

We are still here.

Breathe.

What Christmas Held

One of our special ornaments: a bird from the National Museum of the Native American

Warren and I tend not to give one another large or extravagant presents ever. Birthdays, anniversary, Christmas: they tend to be celebrated in mood rather than in presents. There are many reasons for that. Neither of us are much moved by tangible gifts and we tend to be frugal when it comes to one another. I do not lust after jewelry, clothing, shoes, expensive kitchenware, and the like. In fact, early on in our courtship Warren sent me a note in which, looking at our respective financial positions and lack of luxury, he wrote: "You probably aren't going to get Europe, diamonds, many expensive meals or lots of shoes."

And that was and is fine.

So leading up to Christmas, the one thing I pointed him to was the just out first volume (paperback) of Mary Oliver's collected poems. It was in a shop in Rochester when we were there two weeks ago, modestly priced, and I thought that would be perfect gift for me. So when I unwrapped it (knowing which present it was) Christmas morning, I felt very much like Beth March, on the second Christmas in Little Women, who said "I'm so full of happiness, that, if Father was only here, I couldn't hold one drop more."

Another special ornament: the Santa we bought early on 

It turns out there were drops yet to come. Warren had two large boxes under the tree with my name on them. Again, in and of themselves, they did not arouse suspicions. We each have been known to wrap very small modest presents in big boxes; Warren especially is notorious for that trick. I unwrapped the first: it contained solar-powered outdoor lights in the shape of fireflies. I laughed, delighted. Warren grinned and said he thought they would look good out on the deck. I said they would look good out on the deck when my nephew gets married in our backyard next June.

Then Warren said, "That's not the present I thought it was. Unwrap the other."

The other had more heft to it. I only had a little of the paper off before I realized what it was.

A brand new DLSR camera, with lenses. (To be accurate: a Canon EOS Rebel T6.)

To say I was stunned would not begin to capture what I was feeling. Shocked. Floored. Caught entirely off guard. And emotional to the point that tears came into my eyes.

Back in October, I wrote about my introduction to and love of photography. What I did not write about, although my friend Cindy and I talked about it, as did Warren and I, were the limitations of a simple point and shoot (a Nikon Coolpix S3600) and whether we should invest in something better. Eventually I concluded with Warren that it was probably not worth the cost, given our schedules and busy lives. Warren, though, tucked away that discussion. He heard my tone of voice when I talked about how much I loved and used to shoot photos, and he acted on it.

The biggest gift in my life? My husband's love for me.

I didn't shoot the camera for the first few days. Cindy pressed me: just do it. I told her I was intimidated by the new machine. I told her it felt like writer's block; I just couldn't couldn't bring myself to do it. "My finger is frozen just hovering over the shutter release: I emailed. Cindy then gave me the best photography advice I have ever received: "NO!!!! PUNCH IT!!!"

She was right.

I am still learning my new camera, getting used to its many bells and whistles. I pulled out my old Nikon (film camera) that served me so well for so long, and spent time comparing the views through the respective viewfinders. It was Warren that figured out the focus issues tripping me up; I am the one who figured out some of the manual settings.

Even with what little I have taken, two of the photos shown here, I am ecstatic. I foresee photography in my life in 2018 in ways it has not been in a long, long time. 

Many decades ago, I wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic. (Before National Geographic, it was Life magazine I wanted to work for, but it folded in 1972, while I was still in high school.) That dream is long, long over, but the girl who had that dream and who loved seeing the world through a viewfinder is still deep inside me.  

And she can't wait. 

Small Moment

Still in black and white mode.

Even the ironing looks dreamy.

Black and White

My first camera was a simple box camera, plastic, with a silvery cavity for a flash bulb.  I think my mom sent away for it: 50 cents and a box top back in the very late 1960s. My best friend Cindy got the very same camera, if memory serves me. That summer, our moms were 4-H leaders in a pilot photography project, and Cindy and I started down the path of learning the basics of photography.

Everything was black and white back in those days. I don't know if Kodak (because it was all Kodak back then) even made color film for that camera. If Kodak did, black and white film would have been infinitely cheaper both to buy and to process. Besides, as a 4-Her, we were not allowed to use color film in Photography 1. Oh no: only black and white. (Color film was not allowed under Photography 3 or 4 back then.)

So everything was shot in black and white. Paul Simon to the contrary, everything looked good in black and white. Eventually, I started using my dad's 35mm camera (he had brought it home from Japan in 1954) and I remember the thrill of using Tri-X film: still black and white, but faster, for action shots. Tri-X was grainier when you shot landscapes; I loved that aspect of it too. In those long past days, by my last years in 4-H and high school, I learned to develop my own film (black and white). I bought an old used enlarger and took over my grandmother's bathroom every few Saturdays to develop and print my own work.

That was real magic. There was the tang of chemicals in the air, there was the magic of sliding a piece of exposed photographic paper into the developer tray and watching the images form out of nothing under the water. It was like watching dreams develop.

Eventually, of course, color came. Fuji film came, 4-H let us shoot and exhibit in color, and black and white faded away in my albums. It was all color all the time.

Fast forward to the digital era, in which I have been participating for not quite a decade now. Everything is color. Bigger, brighter, my god, look at the detail (and I just have a simple point and shoot).

Until this week. This week is when my brother Mark tagged me on Facebook: seven days of black and white photos, ordinary items, no titles, no explanations. Go.

It took me a half hour of fooling with the camera to find how to do black and white. But I figured it out and I have been posting black and white photos.

My friend Cindy—the very same Cindy—and I have been emailing back and forth about the experience for the last few days:

          April: LOTS of memories. LOTS AND LOTS of memories--remember early 4-H when we only did black and white? I forgot (until I was changing the colors on my camera) how beautiful it can be. How dreamy.  I MISS FILM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

         Cindy: I have been seeing the black & whites!  Love them!!!  I remember you developing black & white pictures in the bathroom on Flax street!!!  Remember that?!!!!

         April: Oh yeah! I couldn't sleep last night and so started thinking about film and I thought all about Flax Street. It was magic to watch those photos form out of the air.  Am really, really intrigued with dropping back into black and white world. 

         Cindy: YES, Black & White World!!! 

So here I am, back in black and white world for a few days. Maybe for longer. It has been so long since I have shot just for the heck of it. Most of my shots these days are "occasions:" the kids home, a Symphony rehearsal. Maybe a few garden shots here and there, but a lot of time the camera stays in its pouch, up in my study.

But black and white? Just ordinary everyday things? I can do that. I may keep doing that.

And it is still dreamy.