Mother Culture in Snips and Snatches

Mother Culture in Snips and Snatches

     Over the summer the Lady-of-the-House enjoyed adding new bunches of dried flowers to the beams of the keeping room – the room open to the kitchen.

     It would be quaint to say that she picked bunches of flowers and herbs from the plants in her garden or along the wayside. She had her eye on the tansy (Tanacetum vulgae) growing in the vacant lot, next-door.

  

     The brambles, however, were filled with plump yellow spiders. They were just as plump as the orange spiders out her back door, except the yellow spider webs were wispy. They draped across steams and twigs everywhere she turned. It was scenic from a nature lover’s point of view - a good subject for a naturalist’s paintbrush. The field guide the Lady-of-the-House opened told her tansy is poisonous. Perhaps it is just a well they stayed in the brambles.  

     Therefore, she has to admit to something less quaint. At her local flower shop she spied some bunches for sale for a few dollars each. They hung on the shop’s barn beams – available for those who have a flair for arranging dried flowers. Having no flair, and feeling wary about it, the Lady-of-the-House hung them as-is. She likes to pretend she grew them or picked them herself to adorn her house with an autumn harvest of earlier times.

     The rose hips were a gift from a friend last year. As per her friend’s instruction, when the rose hips got dusty she simply took them over to the sink, along with her dusty baskets, and sprayed them clean. Then she let them dry in the sunshine.

     Little projects of adornment are one of the niceties that get left out of her days, mostly. A conscientious cleaning of the house and getting meals on the table is the priority. But once in awhile some project idea that has made its appeal in odd moments, comes to fruition.

      She has more ideas than she ever gets to. She has learned to live this way. It’s fine, really. It’s fine to entertain relaxing notions about what you might do with any spare time to do it. A little daydreaming is how the domestic artist uses her tired-time wisely. And when an idea grows larger and stays with her awhile, revisiting her while she washes dishes, folds towels, sweeps the steps; she will somehow make a little time for it.

     Some of her friends welcome cooler days. The Lady-of-the-House does, too. Wrapped in a cardigan and cozy feelings of the season, she took a last visit to the grower’s market before they closed for the year. She liked seeing the tiny leafed plants there.

     “They could be used to make a fairy garden,” the grower said. Oh, the strength of an idea. A picture of her girls (when young) popped into her mind, when make-believe was a bigger part of their lives than it is today as married women (creative elements still rise to the surface). They would have had fun with a fairy garden-in-the-making.

     The Man-of-the-House noticed the sunflower heads filled with seeds. His wife’s first thought was: “if I place a couple of these on the big rock beside the house our cardinal couple would have a feast.” But on further thought, she passed. Realistically, the squirrels would walk off with them. The obnoxious blue jays would bully the cardinals out of their wits for them. And the mice, she was reminded, would make a hearty breakfast of the crumbs left by the messy eaters. Speaking first-hand, country mice are cute and round with stubby little noses. House mice – well, they are too nosey. They have the pointy facial features to prove it, nosing their way in where they’re not wanted.

     The cats Lady-of-the-House kept, were mousers. They earned their keep over their lifetime. But she no longer has cats on guard. And having had experienced years (without mousers) with mice and a nest of squirrels in the walls, she can affirm that: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – when it comes to misplaced critters. And so, with this convoluted train of thought, she put off a purchase of fairy garden plants and sunflowers, choosing instead, the pip-squeak pumpkins.

     During the hour that a setting sun lit up a western window, the Lady-of-the-House worked on another project of adornment. Out of her little collection of calico fat-forths she cut out circles in snips and snatches. On summer evenings she made her yo-yos.

     The piles got higher as the sun got lower. She hopes to have the yo-yos sewn together for an autumn centerpiece on the keeping room table. A special supper is planned.

Post Script

News

     I wrote this piece during preparations for our son’s medical treatment in Philadelphia. Nigel has been handicapped with pain in both hands for more than a year. Dean and I are grateful to God that our workplace is our home. Here we can take turns being Nigel’s hands throughout the day. Nigel longs to do website designing work again.

   


     While reading Luke 5 in my quiet time something dawned on me. With all the rig-a-ma-roll his dad has gone through this long year to find a doctor who could make an accurate diagnoses – (medical hoops come in all shapes and sizes) – Dean is like the faithful men who would not give up on their handicapped friend. They would not be put off or discouraged by the crowd. They carried their friend ‘round back of the house (I assume), climbed up onto the roof in the hot sun, removed the heavy tiles and slowly lowered their friend, through the ceiling, right to the feet of Jesus.

     For those who know Nigel and would like to offer a prayer for the success and safety for these two-weeks of initial infusions for RSD, I thank you . . . from the bottom of my heart.  

Until next time,

Karen Andreola