Acorns, Musicians and Ice Cream for Breakfast

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I was eating breakfast at Homestead one Saturday morning a while back and noticed a young girl, probably around 12, getting an ice cream cone from the soft serve machine that is part of the buffet.  I confess that my first thought was not, why is that child eating ice cream for breakfast, but why is she eating ice cream on a cold day like this.  I say that because I myself have been known to eat pie for breakfast – especially strawberry pie during strawberry season.  It is fruit after all.  Ice cream is milk and it’s not unusual to have milk for breakfast.  If it hadn’t been so cold that day, I might have had a cone myself.

I suspect that kids who eat ice cream for breakfast grow up to be people who don’t let anyone tell them they can’t do what they want to do or accomplish what they want to accomplish.  They are the kids that develop a passion and pursue that passion, kids who decide it’s more fun to be interesting than to be pretty, or handsome, or to go along with the crowd.  If no one squashes them, they will grow up to be leaders, artists, inventors, or innovators.  Her parents didn’t seem to be surprised or disapproving of ice cream for breakfast, so I would assume that they are not the kind of parents who will squash those traits in their children.

On a slightly warmer day not long after that, my cousin Alice and I met for our usual lunch at Fish Camp.  When I got out of my truck, I noticed that she was examining the ground beside her van.  “Come here and look at all these acorns,” she called. Alice and I have a long friendship and probably share more experiences that anyone else I know, all the way back to spending golden hours catching minnows in the branch, riding horses all over the neighborhood and exploring every square foot of our adjoining farms.  We still meet for lunch most days through the week, and people around here have come to expect unusual things to happen when we are around. 

 So, it would not have been an odd sight to anyone who saw us behind the restaurant last week, studying acorns and taking pictures of them.  Alice’s son Tommy was passing by with a load of hay and pulled in to ask what we were doing.  He did not seem surprised when we explained that we were examining acorns.  After almost three decades of observing us, probably nothing surprises him.

It has always been amazing to me that a huge oak tree grows from such a tiny source, or indeed that any tree grows from such a small beginning.  The area where Alice noticed these acorns was at the foot of a very steep wooded bluff and the area was absolutely carpeted in acorns.  There was nothing so unusual about them, except a lot of them were split open and when I picked up one of those, I noticed that it had sprouted.  There was about an inch long sprout that could have produced an oak tree.  Unfortunately, it had fallen on the edge of the pavement and the sprout had already turned brown and was beginning to shrivel. 

People can shrivel too.  We all sprout and grow, given enough sunshine and nurturing.  The lucky ones have people around them to encourage, to let them live their passions, like the little girl eating ice cream for breakfast.  I had been pondering these things for a few weeks, feeling the nudge I get sometimes when I need to write about something. Then, this past weekend, I attended a local concert and saw a young friend performing for the first time in several months.  Sidney is a young musician from a small town nearby and I have watched him play his guitar and sing now for a while, tracking the results of his focus and hard work and enjoying his progress as an artist. When I find a young man who plays Tom Petty, Dylan and Bob Seger, I have to sit up and take notice!  He has left his hometown and moved to Nashville, in pursuit of his passion, and I’ve followed his social media as he plays around Nashville and beyond.  Before one of his songs, he had this to say. “When you find your purpose, you have to take a leap of faith to follow your passion.”  Somewhere along the way, someone has given Sidney the confidence and freedom that he can spread his wings and fly.  His talent has sprouted and found a place where it can put down deep roots and grow.    I commend his family and friends who have helped cultivate his talent and his belief in himself.

I bought one of Sidney’s CDs after the show and made sure his signature was on it.  I told him I wanted to be sure to have it so when he became famous, I could show people that I knew him “back when.”  He gave me a big hug and a bigger smile.  I hope I have played a tiny part in his belief in his dreams.

I wish now that I had taken that little sprouted acorn home with me and planted and watered it.  It may have been too far gone, but I will always wonder if it would have revived enough to produce a baby tree.  I also wish I had told that family at Homestead how great it was that their daughter was eating ice cream that morning.  I hope she always eats ice cream for breakfast.

The Paschal Moon

 

Winter is trying to have the last word today.  The last two days brought an icy wind, seeming determined to hold back spring.  Today the wind is whipping the daffodils, sending the wind chimes on the porch into a frenzy and howling through the chimney in my bedroom.  I think I dreamed last night I was in a Bronte novel – listening to the wuthering wind across the moors.  It was the full moon, the Worm moon of March, or the Paschal moon of this year, the moon that determines the date for Easter. I went out late to fasten the dogs in the yard and stood for a few minutes watching the thin clouds scurry across the face of that moon.  I heard wild geese in the distance and an owl hooting in the woods. I suppose this is redbud winter, the first in a list of what we in the country call “cold spells” that appear before summer’s domination.  No matter what winter says, spring is marching forward.

I was in those woods earlier in the day, climbing down the steep hillside to visit my enchanted wildflower spot.  The bluebells were putting on a show, their pink buds and blue blossoms nodding at the sun.  The trout lilies were making their best attempt to outshine them, their graceful yellow faces reaching for the light, and the rue anemone carpeted their space like a sprinkle of snow.  The trout lilies are the prettiest this year that I have seen in several years; something about the weather this winter and into spring must have given them an extra boost. 

A scatter of yellow violets peek out of the leaves, the trillium are open and a few Dutchman’s britches still remain.  The shooting star has four clusters of buds this year.  I am tempted to put a fence around it to protect it from damage, but that would probably offend Mother Nature, who likes to care for her charges in her own way.    Still to come are the columbine’s gold, the purple of the larkspur and the endearing shoots of the Jack in the pulpit.  The mystery foliage of what looks like some kind of lily are up a few inches.  I don’t know what it is and I have never been able to catch it in bloom to find out.  There is one lonely plant, just above the rest of the flowers and I don’t know where it came from.  Maybe this year the puzzle will be solved.

I sat on my rock and watched the branch trickle along just down the hill, listening to birds sing and squirrels chatter.  This is the beginning of Holy Week, when our hearts break again at the memory of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, then pause for a moment on Saturday before the glorious celebration of sunrise on Easter Sunday.  There is no better reminder of Easter than a garden in spring, when buds that appear to the eye to be lifeless and finished get an unseen signal from deep at their roots and begin to swell.   Soon enough, those nondescript buds will unfold into leaves that give summer shade and then autumn’s fierce colors before they fall to replenish the soil and begin the cycle again.  And isn’t that a perfect reminder of Easter’s promise?

 

The Promise of Spring

 

The spring peepers told me it was time for a trip to the holler.  I came home late one night a couple of weeks ago and heard their spring chorus.  Even though the wind was still chilly and the trees were still bare, it was obvious that spring was creeping in.  Spring always reminds me of a timid swimmer, poking a toe in the water to see if the water is too cold, then jerking back over and over until the temptation is too strong.  After I heard the peepers, the following night I was out getting the dogs in and heard wild geese, honking under the half moon and my heart was lifted.  Isn’t it funny how wild geese calling is such a sad sound in the fall, but such an uplifting sound in March?  I am hearing them almost nightly now, especially at dusk.  And the morning bird song has a new urgency, as nest building and courting begin in earnest.  On my way to church last Sunday, I saw a heron in the little pond beside the road, and yesterday the bees were searching my shrubbery for early blooms.

I searched out my walking stick, called to the dogs and began the climb down the path to my wildflower haven.  I wore the wrong shoes, and had to slip and slide and favor my bad ankle, but the sight of the first clump of bloodroot beside the path made the trip worth the trouble. 

I can remember years when the western bluffs near the river bottom held a carpet of white in the early spring, and I’m glad some of the plants we moved nearer to the house took hold and return every year.  I love the dainty white blooms and how the lobed leaves fold up around them in the evening, cradling them from the chilly night until the sun kisses them open again.  The Native Americans used the reddish sap from the root as a dye and also used the roots for medicine, although I have been told it can be poisonous in large amounts.  The blooms are short-lived, so if you don’t visit at just the right time, you might miss them.  The leaves do make a big show on their own, after the blooms drop, getting larger and larger until they go dormant.

The bluebells were showing pink buds, which in another week or so will develop into a sea of blue, and a few trout lilies poked timidly out of the dead leaves.  The spurge showed its feathery blooms and a few toothwort were blooming.  I was surprised to see a couple of purple trillium in full bloom, at the foot of a tree where maybe they are sheltered from the cold winds.  And I was relieved to see the shooting star, just beginning to put out green leaves.

I sat for a few minutes on a moss covered rock, listening to the murmur of the branch at the foot of the hill.  Sophie and Scout did their impressions of Mufasa, surveying their kingdom from another rock.  Thin sunshine filled the silence of the woods, and I was reminded that this spot is a thin place, where the wall between heaven and here is almost invisible.

One of the dead trees from last year is almost gone – it is only half as tall as before and the holes in the truck are larger.  I expect it may be gone by next spring.  But the goblin tree is still there.  I wish my Aunt Mary could see it.  She is the great aunt who taught me to look for fairies in the woods and that magic might be real.  She would have a story about the faces trapped in that tree and how they got there.  I always think of the Tolkien books when I see the tree, or the story of Merlin trapped in a tree by Nimue.

The climb back up the hill was easier than the trek down the trail.  I stopped on the way to check out the columbine, one of the last remnants from plants gathered almost fifty years ago from an old spring near the river bottom.  It is still there, at the foot of a tree among a patch of bluebells, also started from a few bulbs from the same area.  I am thankful each year that, no matter what happens over the winter, I can count on these old friends – the bluebells, the trout lilies, the trillium, the bloodroot and the dutchman’s britches.  They are a precious gift.

An Excess of Recipes

 

Not long after Christmas, I cleaned out a few cabinets.  It was what I optimistically thought was the beginning of a winter project that would lead to a fresh start for the new year and a better organized house.  The project, like most of these projects, stalled about the middle of the second week.  One of the leftover parts were piles of stuff on the dining room table.

So, this morning, I sat down to tackle some of the mess.  The stack I chose was from one of Mama’s kitchen cabinets and consisted of torn out recipes, written out recipes, instructions for long defunct appliances and some very old recipes from several generations of cooks.  Of course, I spent most of the rest of the day perusing the oldest recipes.  I discovered how to make whitewash, using a complicated process with ground rice, a peck of salt, unslacked lime, lots of boiling water and a sieve.  I think that is supposed to be unslaked lime, but I don’t know what that is either.  I read directions for washing clothes that involved boiling the clothes and adding “a little kerosene” to the boiling water.  Did people really do that?  And how much is a little?

To my delight, I found several recipes for making mincemeat.  I think about mincemeat every Thanksgiving and wish for a good mincemeat pie.  A look at the recipe convinced me that I won’t be making any and if I tried, I would have to lie down in a dark room for the rest of the week.  One recipe was made with pears and, oddly enough, another was made with the surplus of green tomatoes that you have in your garden at the end of summer.  I think I found the chow-chow recipe that Gertrude Dansby used to make every summer, when we had a bounty of green tomatoes, peppers and cabbage.  I discovered how to make blackberry cordial, and Mrs. Flowers tea cakes.  Mrs. Flowers lived across the holler from us when I was growing up and I might have to try that recipe because I remember her tea cakes.  The main difference from other tea cake recipes I’ve seen is that it only uses the yellows of the eggs instead of the whole thing.  Many of the recipes called for sweet milk, which is a term you don’t hear anymore.  I think it was a southern term, because a friend of mine once asked for sweet milk at a restaurant up north and the waitress told him they didn’t have any such thing.

I found a recipe for a sandwich made with pineapple and chicken, which breaks one of the commandments in my life – the commandment that says thou shalt not mix fruit with meat.  I think it’s in the Bible somewhere, probably in Leviticus.  If it’s not, it should be.  The only exception is grapes in chicken salad, which are allowed.  Aside from the pineapple on the sandwich, the instructions say to mix pineapple juice and a dash of nutmeg and pour it over the sandwich.  That sounds even worse.  Speaking of dashes, I was a little curious about some of those measurements.  A dash, I had heard of, but one recipe called for a speck of salt.  If it’s just a speck, why even bother?  I found a recipe cut from a newspaper for stuffing that involved white bread.  It did not surprise me to see that the author of the recipe was from Michigan, but it did surprise me that anyone in my family would have saved it.  People in the north don’t know anything about making dressing and they apparently don’t know that it’s a dish made in a big glass pan, not stuffed in a bird.  I also found instructions for trussing a bird, which I had heard of but didn’t realize that it meant to sew a chicken up to roast it.  My only question is “why?”

 I found a handwritten recipe for carrot sandwiches, made with cooked carrots, raisins or prunes and nuts.  I found it in a ragged little notebook that I’m pretty sure was from my great-grandmother Colley’s recipes.

There was a recipe for rusk, whatever that is, and Nesselrode Pudding. It also included something called marguerites, made with orange juice and marshmallows, and several kinds of fancy teas.  One is Bulgarian tea, which has a mixture of cherries, pineapple and lemons, added to tea with sugar.  One of the stories my great aunts told was about drinking Russian tea as children.  They considered it an exotic treat at the time but realized later that it actually was just tea with fruit juice added.

Some of the recipes I found were written in my own handwriting, briefly jotted down with so many abbreviations I had to work to decipher them.  The thing they all had in common is that there was no name for the finished product.  I might try to make them, but I have no idea what I would be making.  Might be a cake, might be a cookie, and it only lists the ingredients so I wouldn’t know how to cook it.  I found one long list of ingredients that called for medons.  It took me a few minutes to figure out that it was supposed to be medium onions. I don’t know why they had to be medium onions, or at what point small onions become medium onions or medium onions become large onions. It also called for a half cup of salt, and I’m pretty sure this was a recipe I tried once for refrigerator pickles which might have been really good if they hadn’t been way too salty.   Another mystery recipe called for bak po, which I assume is baking powder, and it took a while to remember that 2 cu mi translates to 2 cups of milk.  Another one, in handwriting I did not recognize, was something that used 7/8 cups of sugar, butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar.  I’ve never seen anything ask for 7/8 cups of anything and I have no idea what the result of this recipe would be or what you would do with it after you got it mixed up.

In reading over this, I think it explains why I never get anything done at my house.  It certainly explains why my dining room table is still covered with stacks of stuff and I have to eat my meals somewhere else.  What is harder to explain is why I, a mostly reluctant cook, just spent the better part of a day looking at recipes I will probably never try to make.  Except maybe the tea cakes.