the parable of the ducks

the duck mistress of the farm had three ducks. every day she fed them and filled up three water vessels for them: two small vessels for drinking and one large one for bathing and swimming. every day as she was filling the vessels with clear, clean water, she would call the ducks to come and drink. instead, the ducks were dabbling in the mud and drinking from every stagnant puddle they could find. even though she called them again and again and called them any number of unattractive and perfectly true names, they wouldn't come.

finally one day they tripped over the vessels and said, "oh, look, clean water." one refused to drink. one took a tiny sip to wet his tongue. one plunged in, swam, dipped and drank his fill. and the duck mistress was happy.

preview of coming attractions

i am testing my own version of julia child's wonderful french bread which adds a little bit of whole wheat flour and sourdough. the first couple of versions had various problems, but i think i've got it (by george!). i am also experimenting with making yogurt in a slow cooker (well, in a jar in a slow cooker).

my new science project

this is my new science project: i took four eggs out of the ducks' nest (they lay eggs in there, but neither of them has shown any inclination to actually set the eggs), and stuck them under a broody hen who has taken her stand in one of the nesting boxes and hasn't seen the light of day for a week. for those of you who are city people*, a "broody" hen is one who suddenly takes it into her head (where, believe me, there is p-l-e-n-t-y of room) that she HAS to have babies or die. so she lays eggs in the nesting box (or under a bush) and insists on sitting there day after day after day, waiting for them to hatch. my broody hen will wait a long time, since she's never even SEEN a rooster in her life. there's a chance that the duck eggs are fertilized, so i guess we'll see what happens.

*we have lived in the country for exactly two years.

the philosophy of perfume

do you have a philosophy of perfume? what is your philosophy? should perfume be banned? should it be provided by the government? who do you wear it for?

do you wear it with the idea that it should reach out and grab people by the front of the shirt and shout, "Patrice is here!!!!!" or do you wear it for the few who come close to you, kiss your cheek, hug you, whisper in your ear? what do you do if you want it a little stronger than a whisper but your name is not Patrice?

my daughter and her daughter(s)

just thought you might like to see my daughter and her daughters.

mother and daughter update

i trimmed the daughters off of my most prolific mother, leaving her looking a little bereft (top picture) (i can't figure out how to disperse my pictures throughout the blog. mary, help!). i saw a single lady bug in there walking around and around in a circle, wringing her tiny little hands.

then i put them in the little rooting jar. you can see the tiny sweet roots in the bottom picture. by the way, if you look in the background and see the fuzzy looking white thing, i put it up to have a light colored background so you could see that the shorn mother still has some little daughters coming along. i laid it over the top of the my plant light, took the pictures, wandered off, and a half hour later started wondering what smelled like burning. now i can't clean my floor. darn.

and by the way, my daughter is having a daughter some time in the next ten days.

women who may or may not love vacuums too much

mary accused me of not having any kind of a "real" relationship with my vacuum (see "let's get this straight"). this photo disproves her statement. booyah.

p.s. sara joy took this picture when i wasn't looking. she showed it to my husband and said, "mommy's fighting with the couch," which is more or less the truth.

alone at last

because my children were spaced out pretty severely when they were born......wait, let me try that again.  my five children were born over almost 20 years; and therefore, the intervals, or spaces between them, were mostly pretty long.  during all of their growth and development i would hear other women talk about the fact that when all of their children were in school they would be alone for five or so hours a day.  that sounded pretty good to me. 

well, the older four have gone and left me alone (just as they got nice to be around, i might add).  BUT ("everybody has a big BUT" - pee wee herman) my youngest, who is 18, has down syndrome, which makes her 18 going on 11 some days, 18 going on 30 some days, and 18 going on 4 other days.  i decided when she was supposed to go to middle school that the middle school atmosphere was not one which would provide her with the safety and emotional security that a mother might hope for (snark!).  so she has been home with me since then (about four years).  this basically makes her my life buddy. 

she is a wonderful companion, helpful and happy and loving.   but i am never n.e.v.e.r. alone.  so i invented the daddy-daughter date tradition.  okay, okay, so i didn't invent it.  but i have encouraged it and am now a master at making my husband feel like a mean father if he objects.  they have gone to see "avatar" in 3D tonight.  (two birds with one stone: now i don't have to see avatar.)

i will play spider solitaire, listen to my music as loud as i want and even sing out loud and dance with no one standing around being not amused, watch sense and sensibility (with emma thompson and hugh grant, the amazing life-sized marionette) without receiving any flack, eat whatever i want, even popcorn.  what would or what do YOU do with three hours of alone time?

wise thought

gordon b. hinckley said, "you can never get enough of what you don't need."

i have been thinking and thinking about that this week. when i have a hole in my heart that only love from another person can fill, no amount of anything else (like chocolate chip cookie dough) can fill that hole. i can shovel it in all day, and it makes no dent.

often what i really need is God. one tiny whisp of His spirit is enough, but no amount of TV will fill me; and will, in fact, take me farther and father away from having my need filled.

if i need the self-respect that comes from accomplishing my goals, i will awaken from my two hour nap frustrated, unfulfilled and empty.

review: julia child's flourless chocolate cake, "le glorieux"

it was really good.

ladybugs: not just for breakfast

one of my many science projects is my sweet potato slip farm. a dear friend gave me a sweet potato "mother," and i have been pulling off, rooting, and potting the "daughters" to produce all of the sweet potato slips i want for my garden this year. please don't ask me what happens to the male segment of sweet potato society, i have no idea, and if my friend knows, she's not letting on.

the only problem with my sweet potato mothers was that they were covered with aphids. i had a sticky (literally) little chore every day of squishing the aphids so they wouldn't distract or hurt my mothers.

one day i found a ladybug charging about in another part of the house, and (now you can foresee the punch line of this story) i carried her in and put her on a sweet potato leaf. there are now five ladybugs living with the mothers, and it's been weeks since i saw an aphid.

go figure.

not necessarily in this order

sherlock holmes once said that a rose is the perfect evidence of God's goodness: it isn't necessary for roses to exist on earth; the world would keep spinning, the seasons would pass, humans would survive. maybe it would throw off the eternal balance for aphids, i don't know (and mr. holmes didn't address it); but the rose is the running over, the excess, of His goodness.

here's my list (starting with roses): dirt, delicious vegetables and animals, my heart that beats, my eyes that see, people i love, cats, daffodils, truth that warms up my heart, color, ice cubes, ducks, pregnancy, snakes, hot showers, babies and children no matter who they belong to, dangling participles, my own babies and children and grandchildren, getting dirty, bees, work to do, jokes, rain, laundry, puns, the smell of bread, friends, (and the smell of friends).

actually, many of those things ARE necessary, and my list is obviously a partial list. Nevertheless, His goodness surrounds me everywhere. i just thought you might like to know that. leave me a comment with #1-5 on YOUR list.

you like it

now is the time to think about planting milkweed if you want to attract or raise monarch butterflies. if you don't want to plant milkweed in your yard, maybe you can find some growing wild, although wild milkweed is now almost a thing of the past. the combination herbicides that are currently popular with farmers kill milkweed right along with the other weeds. the borders of planting fields used to be the best place to find wild milkweed. i have yet to find any here (clayton, nc). (alice, i saw some between your house and the shopping center in knightdale.) if you live here in central nc, the further west you go, the easier it is to find wild milkweed.

there are dozens of kinds of milkweed, some of which are easy to grow, and some of which are tricky. i recommend monarchwatch.com and butterflyencounters.com for lots of good information about milkweed, and also as a source for milkweed seeds and plants. i also discovered last year that what is called "butterfly weed," "glory flower," "butterfly plant"(asclepias tuberosa) is also a form of milkweed that monarchs love. it is also very easy to grow from seed, and pretty, not at all like a weed (common milkweed grows about four feet tall and spreads, so it's probably not for the small suburban lot, though though there's nothing wrong with strewing a few milkweed seeds on a vacant lot or the verge of a road that is not mowed very often). last year i would go out and pick monarch caterpillars off of the butterfly weed, like fruit.

what's the point of raising monarchs? the mortality rate for monarchs in the wild is 98%. if you bring them indoors and raise them, you can lower that rate quite a bit. some years mine has been 0%. last year it was about 15%. that's mortality rate, not survival rate.

monarchs love lots of other flowers, but that's another post.

goatfruit

i love this. i makes me laugh out loud. all those goats just standing there in that tree like great big stinky fruit. you ask why they get up there, but isn't it obvious? there's nothing else to do. you can tell that if you came up there and stared at them, they would just say, what?

sourdough briefly revisited: correction

i doubt anyone has tried my sourdough starter yet (o ye of little kitchen imagination), but i made a mistake. when you are ready to make your sourdough bread, take the starter out of the frig, let it come to room temperature, and then measure out what you need for the bread. THEN feed it.

let's get this straight

i am NOT tiny. not by anyone's standards. in fact, if you were here and saw me walking through walmart, you would think, "now there is a woman who is definitely moderately chubby." and although i dance daily sitting in the car or with my partner the vacuum cleaner, it makes my knees and ankles cry.

BUT my heart balances and twists with the winter chickadee on a blade of ochre grass; it turns up daintily with the butterfly as she sips her lunch; and it leaps with the kitten after the bare branch of hanging jasmine on my porch. i'm not tiny, but don't say i don't dance.