Thank you Winnie for your support, it means a lot to me, having you here. And everyone else, Welcome! I would like to have an adventure, lets walk down a trail and see what magic we can find, want to? There may be portals between the hedgerows and the corn fields so keep a good eye open. Whichever path we take let's keep nature close by our side and our hearts tuned to the divine, shall we? I have a feeling it's going to be grand. I'll meet you here by the blue door.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
No Passport Needed
by Trendle Ellwood
One time before I even knew what DNA was, I had a dream. There was a spaceship hovering in the sky. I wanted to go aboard, I wanted to so bad. A lady and I were looking through black bag after black garbage bag for a certain little piece of paper. I thought that all the files were loaded into these bags and we were trying to find my passport. I was looking for the passport that would let me board the space ship hovering in the sky. Then I heard a voice that filled the whole vacuum of air around me and the voice said, “The code is in your DNA.”
DNA? I didn’t know what it was; I had to look it up. That’s right I wasn’t paying attention in science class, I was daydreaming. I could remember that it was in science class that I had heard the word. I did a computer search; I found out that our DNA is our genetic code. DNA is the genetic "blueprints" of life. DNA is the part of a cell that contains and controls all of our genetic information. These genes are responsible for passing on traits from generation to generation. I read that scientists can decode the genetic markers found in our DNA to trace our ancestral roots back 10,000 years. Wow!
So my DNA is the code of my genetics. And the dream voice said that the code was in my DNA, the code to board the spaceship, how could this be? I had read that DNA was the code for what had already been written but how could it be written of what had yet to come about? But then I guess it does store information, as a babe in the mother’s womb doesn’t know that he will grow to be 6 foot tall but the code is in his DNA is already set. Wouldn’t that little babe be so happy when he is six and feeling short and wishing that he could reach those basketball hoops like the big boys, wouldn’t he be happy if a voice filled the void and told him that he was going to grow to be six feet tall, that the code was in his DNA. This makes me so happy too, to know that I will grow that tall.
The dream voice has not said so but I am suspecting that the spaceships are hovering now. We won’t waste time looking for our passports, the code is inside of us. Lets listen to it, feel how it vibrates, and allow it to sing. Lets get ready to fly , our space ship will recognize us and take us aboard. After all the code is in our DNA.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
(0) comments
One time before I even knew what DNA was, I had a dream. There was a spaceship hovering in the sky. I wanted to go aboard, I wanted to so bad. A lady and I were looking through black bag after black garbage bag for a certain little piece of paper. I thought that all the files were loaded into these bags and we were trying to find my passport. I was looking for the passport that would let me board the space ship hovering in the sky. Then I heard a voice that filled the whole vacuum of air around me and the voice said, “The code is in your DNA.”
DNA? I didn’t know what it was; I had to look it up. That’s right I wasn’t paying attention in science class, I was daydreaming. I could remember that it was in science class that I had heard the word. I did a computer search; I found out that our DNA is our genetic code. DNA is the genetic "blueprints" of life. DNA is the part of a cell that contains and controls all of our genetic information. These genes are responsible for passing on traits from generation to generation. I read that scientists can decode the genetic markers found in our DNA to trace our ancestral roots back 10,000 years. Wow!
So my DNA is the code of my genetics. And the dream voice said that the code was in my DNA, the code to board the spaceship, how could this be? I had read that DNA was the code for what had already been written but how could it be written of what had yet to come about? But then I guess it does store information, as a babe in the mother’s womb doesn’t know that he will grow to be 6 foot tall but the code is in his DNA is already set. Wouldn’t that little babe be so happy when he is six and feeling short and wishing that he could reach those basketball hoops like the big boys, wouldn’t he be happy if a voice filled the void and told him that he was going to grow to be six feet tall, that the code was in his DNA. This makes me so happy too, to know that I will grow that tall.
The dream voice has not said so but I am suspecting that the spaceships are hovering now. We won’t waste time looking for our passports, the code is inside of us. Lets listen to it, feel how it vibrates, and allow it to sing. Lets get ready to fly , our space ship will recognize us and take us aboard. After all the code is in our DNA.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Hair in Brambles
by Trendle Ellwood
Dr Johnson: ”Give me the town, Sir. The Countryman may be king of this holdings, yet, I tell you, Sir, he is the slave of his own acres.”
Squire Windrum: “Yes, Sir. But where will you find such willing servitude, or such happy kingship?”*
As I set out on the porch in the rain this evening I reached a spot of restful mind. It was then that the answer came to me to just let it go. I have been tending my flowers, picking the finest of them and loving them into creations and then taking them to market. The jams and the jellies and the berries I am selling wonderfully but my flowers, well I have maybe two faithful customers who really appreciate them but beyond that most people expect flowers to just be cheap at the farm market.
I find myself feeling resentful about this at times. One day I had the most beautiful Gladiolas for a buck a stem, and Gladiola bulbs are not cheap. I had harvested them in the bud stage, so that they would continue opening on into the next week. One stem had the power to fill a whole room with beauty. One lady came along and asked me if I would take 50cents for them. I felt like telling her that I needed to buy toilet paper on the way home. I mean what is the deal! She can’t fish out a buck to pay for my glads when she is driving a sparky van, get out of here! It is times like these that I just have to leave our booth for a while and go visiting with the other venders. I’m not going to hore my flowers anymore, I tell my friends. Hah! Can’t you see me sulking, the wounded flower artist adrift at the farm market.
Hubby takes people better then I do sometimes, just letting it slide off himself. I have got to get better at that. So spirit got to my heart and said, “ Let the flowers go, their time will come, follow your passion, there are lessons still to be learned from the bramble patches. “ So simple, why can’t I have just seen that instead of getting all stressed out and mad at people?
The other day as I was entering a bramble patch down the road at a friends, passing by on the road was a jogger, we waved, then he stopped and said “Trendle!” as if he knew me. I had not recognized him in bandana, sunglasses and tennis shoes but it was a fellow I know who has bought my flowers in the past. We talked for a bit and he couldn’t wait to tell me that he needed a bouquet. He pays me well, always slips in more then I ask, and he appreciates them so. As he jogged on I asked him if he preferred Sunflowers or Gladiolas and he hollered back, “Your choice, You are the artist.” and so the wounded flower artists heart was tended to. And she knew that she had been given a gift, when this John fellow jogged by when she was entering a berry patch.
I had to laugh out loud the other day when I was out in those brambles. I was thinking of last spring, and the day that I drove into town and took a part time job. I didn’t except the first place I walked into to hire me! I was just trying out applying to see how that felt! But bam, they took me up on it!
I cried for a week, I didn’t want to go. But I felt like I had to help out more, Hubby was going through a transition, I needed to contribute. He does so much. And so I went. It was a great place but I felt so confined. Applying myself to somebody else’s schedule. They even wanted me to control my hair, pull it back tight, to keep it’s fuzziness taunt. It was a perfectly nice place; I just felt in my heart that it was not really where I was suppose to be. So after one day on the job I called in and signed out.
I didn’t call my supervisor back when she phoned and wanted to discuss what ever the problem might have been and saying maybe we could work something out. I just didn’t think she would understand. Oh, I guess I could have gotten my way and since they had seen what a good worker I was, hah, maybe we could have made a deal that I did not have to wear my hair back tight. But it wasn’t just about my hair was it? I felt so foolish thinking it was about my hair, it was about something else but I didn’t know how to talk about it.
So I ran away from the job and ended up out in the bramble patch. It really wasn’t planned that bramble stalking was going to become my focus of the season. We took our goods to market, the tinctures, the produce, the honey, The pollen, the flowers and the berries. It turned out that the berries are the most sought after produce. We cannot bring enough berries and jams.
And so I found myself more and more often in the brambles. And while I am out there I think of what a lucky person I am. Some would not like to travel through nettle and thistles to get to the wild berry patch, but I find the nettle charming compared to the presence of tires on a street. Besides I know how to recognize their stingers and don’t let them get me. And the view of the sky and the clouds, the butterflies and the bees is superb. And some would not like the danger of snakes, the bite of the mosquito and the chance of getting ticks. But to me it seems these creatures are easier to understand then my own human kind, which fill the town. While I am in the blackberry thicket I wonder why picking wild berries is such a challenge. Why do they have so many thorns that grab at me? What are the thorns protecting them from? What are my thorns protecting me from? Do the bramble branches really need these thorns? Do the thorns make the berries sweeter? I do think the wild berry has something that the berries from our domestic thornless canes do not have.
Nettle and Beetles in the Berry Patch
Check out the white hairy stingers on the nettle.
I can handle the thorns pretty well, I just pull back the right way to get loose or they do get me and I just cuss a little, after all there is no one out there to hear me. Mostly I think it is just that the thrill of the ripe berry overwhelms my fear of the elements. When my mind is on the dangling ripe berry my body becomes of secondary importance. Oftentimes there will be the most perfectly tempting berry just hanging a little over my head and I just have to reach it but as I do, a blackberry thorn grabs me by the hair. Then the decision is to drop all and detangle my hair or to just pull forward after the almost in grasp berry, and let the bramble pull. And so I let the bramble pull.
She takes out a tuft here and a tuft there so that soon my hair is a mixed array, some of it still up in my bun and other pieces drawn out and falling, straying all around, a little like new berry cane shoots do. I had one of those live green berry runners reach out and wrap around me one day while I was picking berries. It had the thought to grow up me, as it swirled around my waist!
The brambles take freely; soon strips of my hair hang like shadows floating in the wind upon the berry brambles behind me. I wonder how many bird nests will be cushioned next spring with that hair of mine that I left a- dangling in the berry patch in pursuit of the wild blackberry?
When I come out of the berry patch I am sure that my hair must look like a birds nest itself. And I am certain that the next time I go to my twice a year hairdresser she will ask me if I have had my hair thinned. And so the brambles they want me to be wild and free, they have their way with me and my hairdo is opposite of the way that it would have been if I had kept that job in town. That is what made me laugh out loud that day in the berry patch.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
*from Growing and Using Herbs Successfully (Garden Way Book) by Betty E.M. Jacobs
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Dr Johnson: ”Give me the town, Sir. The Countryman may be king of this holdings, yet, I tell you, Sir, he is the slave of his own acres.”
Squire Windrum: “Yes, Sir. But where will you find such willing servitude, or such happy kingship?”*
As I set out on the porch in the rain this evening I reached a spot of restful mind. It was then that the answer came to me to just let it go. I have been tending my flowers, picking the finest of them and loving them into creations and then taking them to market. The jams and the jellies and the berries I am selling wonderfully but my flowers, well I have maybe two faithful customers who really appreciate them but beyond that most people expect flowers to just be cheap at the farm market.
I find myself feeling resentful about this at times. One day I had the most beautiful Gladiolas for a buck a stem, and Gladiola bulbs are not cheap. I had harvested them in the bud stage, so that they would continue opening on into the next week. One stem had the power to fill a whole room with beauty. One lady came along and asked me if I would take 50cents for them. I felt like telling her that I needed to buy toilet paper on the way home. I mean what is the deal! She can’t fish out a buck to pay for my glads when she is driving a sparky van, get out of here! It is times like these that I just have to leave our booth for a while and go visiting with the other venders. I’m not going to hore my flowers anymore, I tell my friends. Hah! Can’t you see me sulking, the wounded flower artist adrift at the farm market.
Hubby takes people better then I do sometimes, just letting it slide off himself. I have got to get better at that. So spirit got to my heart and said, “ Let the flowers go, their time will come, follow your passion, there are lessons still to be learned from the bramble patches. “ So simple, why can’t I have just seen that instead of getting all stressed out and mad at people?
The other day as I was entering a bramble patch down the road at a friends, passing by on the road was a jogger, we waved, then he stopped and said “Trendle!” as if he knew me. I had not recognized him in bandana, sunglasses and tennis shoes but it was a fellow I know who has bought my flowers in the past. We talked for a bit and he couldn’t wait to tell me that he needed a bouquet. He pays me well, always slips in more then I ask, and he appreciates them so. As he jogged on I asked him if he preferred Sunflowers or Gladiolas and he hollered back, “Your choice, You are the artist.” and so the wounded flower artists heart was tended to. And she knew that she had been given a gift, when this John fellow jogged by when she was entering a berry patch.
I had to laugh out loud the other day when I was out in those brambles. I was thinking of last spring, and the day that I drove into town and took a part time job. I didn’t except the first place I walked into to hire me! I was just trying out applying to see how that felt! But bam, they took me up on it!
I cried for a week, I didn’t want to go. But I felt like I had to help out more, Hubby was going through a transition, I needed to contribute. He does so much. And so I went. It was a great place but I felt so confined. Applying myself to somebody else’s schedule. They even wanted me to control my hair, pull it back tight, to keep it’s fuzziness taunt. It was a perfectly nice place; I just felt in my heart that it was not really where I was suppose to be. So after one day on the job I called in and signed out.
I didn’t call my supervisor back when she phoned and wanted to discuss what ever the problem might have been and saying maybe we could work something out. I just didn’t think she would understand. Oh, I guess I could have gotten my way and since they had seen what a good worker I was, hah, maybe we could have made a deal that I did not have to wear my hair back tight. But it wasn’t just about my hair was it? I felt so foolish thinking it was about my hair, it was about something else but I didn’t know how to talk about it.
So I ran away from the job and ended up out in the bramble patch. It really wasn’t planned that bramble stalking was going to become my focus of the season. We took our goods to market, the tinctures, the produce, the honey, The pollen, the flowers and the berries. It turned out that the berries are the most sought after produce. We cannot bring enough berries and jams.
And so I found myself more and more often in the brambles. And while I am out there I think of what a lucky person I am. Some would not like to travel through nettle and thistles to get to the wild berry patch, but I find the nettle charming compared to the presence of tires on a street. Besides I know how to recognize their stingers and don’t let them get me. And the view of the sky and the clouds, the butterflies and the bees is superb. And some would not like the danger of snakes, the bite of the mosquito and the chance of getting ticks. But to me it seems these creatures are easier to understand then my own human kind, which fill the town. While I am in the blackberry thicket I wonder why picking wild berries is such a challenge. Why do they have so many thorns that grab at me? What are the thorns protecting them from? What are my thorns protecting me from? Do the bramble branches really need these thorns? Do the thorns make the berries sweeter? I do think the wild berry has something that the berries from our domestic thornless canes do not have.
Nettle and Beetles in the Berry Patch
Check out the white hairy stingers on the nettle.
I can handle the thorns pretty well, I just pull back the right way to get loose or they do get me and I just cuss a little, after all there is no one out there to hear me. Mostly I think it is just that the thrill of the ripe berry overwhelms my fear of the elements. When my mind is on the dangling ripe berry my body becomes of secondary importance. Oftentimes there will be the most perfectly tempting berry just hanging a little over my head and I just have to reach it but as I do, a blackberry thorn grabs me by the hair. Then the decision is to drop all and detangle my hair or to just pull forward after the almost in grasp berry, and let the bramble pull. And so I let the bramble pull.
She takes out a tuft here and a tuft there so that soon my hair is a mixed array, some of it still up in my bun and other pieces drawn out and falling, straying all around, a little like new berry cane shoots do. I had one of those live green berry runners reach out and wrap around me one day while I was picking berries. It had the thought to grow up me, as it swirled around my waist!
The brambles take freely; soon strips of my hair hang like shadows floating in the wind upon the berry brambles behind me. I wonder how many bird nests will be cushioned next spring with that hair of mine that I left a- dangling in the berry patch in pursuit of the wild blackberry?
When I come out of the berry patch I am sure that my hair must look like a birds nest itself. And I am certain that the next time I go to my twice a year hairdresser she will ask me if I have had my hair thinned. And so the brambles they want me to be wild and free, they have their way with me and my hairdo is opposite of the way that it would have been if I had kept that job in town. That is what made me laugh out loud that day in the berry patch.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
*from Growing and Using Herbs Successfully (Garden Way Book) by Betty E.M. Jacobs
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Nasturtiums Bring Happiness
by Trendle Ellwood
My sense of duty told me that I should be making up some more berry jam or jelly. It sells real well at market and has been my main avenue of earning my keep the last few weeks. But instead I was drawn to the nasturtiums that are blooming so beautifully in my annual flower garden.
Annuals have their own unique magical quality. Unlike perennials they do not set a limited amount of buds a year. With annuals the more you harvest, the more they bloom. They will give and give and give the more you take. So it is almost a shame not to collect them when they are ready. If they go to seed then they are done, they feel that they have finished their job and they go on vacation.
As I stood with the cheerful faces of the nasturtiums around my ankles I was enveloped by their charming spicy sweet scent. I don’t think anyone could stand among the nasturtiums and not admit that these flowers are very happy. This flower so knows happiness that it spills over in cheerfulness with bright blooming faces of orange, yellow, red and all shades of those colors mixed together in swirling blends. Have you ever eaten this edible beauty in a salad?
Although I knew that it probably wouldn’t sell as well as fruit I decided that I was going to cook these lovely edible flowers up into a jelly. I gathered the fresh blossoms and buds into my apron skirt as I wondered what color a jell of them would come out to be. Back at the kitchen I started a pot of water to boil while I washed through the blossoms.
I placed all of the blossoms into a large kettle and poured the boiling water over them and then covered them with a lid and let them steep for a good ten minutes. When I took the lid off the water it looked dark amber in color. I strained the flowers through cheesecloth, keeping the juice, which I returned to the kettle on the stove. As I added sugar and pectin I watched as the liquid turned into a beautiful bronze red.
Ah! It is such a beautiful color! No artificial dyes needed. How glowing it looks in the jars when light shines through the glass. It will be nice to keep a jar of this to pull out on a snowy day in January, to hold it up to the light and remember July’s rich colors as I spread it’s spicy sweet flavor over a piece of toast.
Like I allready said I didn’t think that it would sell at market but it did pretty well. There were a few ladies that really got into my flower jelly and bought some for gifts to herb loving friends. And the conversations that the nasturtium jellies lead us into!
Two sweet pea lovers met at our stand as they were buying the jelly, they were so happy to find another who loved sweet peas as intensely as they. And I learned a few sweet pea tricks as I was listening in!
Hubby was stripping his cured garlic of its outer leaves, which he had not gotten to do until we were set up. His working with the produce seemed to draw people in. We got to talking together later that it is rare these days for people to even see food in the hands of the farmer. When the food passes through the hands of the farmer and not the hands of the machine does it make the product any different? Or is it only the man that the produce has passed through that is changed? Hubby delights in his garlic, he only grows seven different kinds. All in all it was a real good market day. We even sold one of my Moms paintings.
When we left market at mid noon, Amish man Dan paid us in barter for bringing his load of corn to market in our trailer. We were happy to take the scrapings of the corn harvest left in our wagon back home to our chickens. We picked out maple syrup, cucumbers and onions. At home we sliced the cucumbers and make the onions into rings to fashion into cucumber- onion salad because we were going to Farmer Bob’s pot- luck dinner.
I mixed in the usual vinegar, water, salt, pepper and a dash of sugar but I also added some of our lime basil and chopped up some of the colorful nasturtium flowers to sprinkle in it. Not too much, I wanted people to recognize the cucumber-onion salad that that our own Grandmothers made for our family reunions when we were kids. So I kept to the familiar taste with a slight twist, and an added dash of color. It was so pretty! I find that a grand way to keep such a dish cool on the way to the pot- luck dinners is to not put the full amount of water that is called for into the mix. But at the last minute when you are dashing out your door and tucking the chilled dish into the cooler with your ice packs, then you add tiny little ice cubes to the cucumber and onion mix, this will keep it sparkling cold, just give it a stir when you pull it out to eat, the cubes will have melted into ice cold water by then.
So I am glad that I wandered off from my supposed duties the day that the nasturtium flowers enticed me. You never know where such wonderings might lead you!
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood All Rights Reserved.
(0) comments
My sense of duty told me that I should be making up some more berry jam or jelly. It sells real well at market and has been my main avenue of earning my keep the last few weeks. But instead I was drawn to the nasturtiums that are blooming so beautifully in my annual flower garden.
Annuals have their own unique magical quality. Unlike perennials they do not set a limited amount of buds a year. With annuals the more you harvest, the more they bloom. They will give and give and give the more you take. So it is almost a shame not to collect them when they are ready. If they go to seed then they are done, they feel that they have finished their job and they go on vacation.
As I stood with the cheerful faces of the nasturtiums around my ankles I was enveloped by their charming spicy sweet scent. I don’t think anyone could stand among the nasturtiums and not admit that these flowers are very happy. This flower so knows happiness that it spills over in cheerfulness with bright blooming faces of orange, yellow, red and all shades of those colors mixed together in swirling blends. Have you ever eaten this edible beauty in a salad?
Although I knew that it probably wouldn’t sell as well as fruit I decided that I was going to cook these lovely edible flowers up into a jelly. I gathered the fresh blossoms and buds into my apron skirt as I wondered what color a jell of them would come out to be. Back at the kitchen I started a pot of water to boil while I washed through the blossoms.
I placed all of the blossoms into a large kettle and poured the boiling water over them and then covered them with a lid and let them steep for a good ten minutes. When I took the lid off the water it looked dark amber in color. I strained the flowers through cheesecloth, keeping the juice, which I returned to the kettle on the stove. As I added sugar and pectin I watched as the liquid turned into a beautiful bronze red.
Ah! It is such a beautiful color! No artificial dyes needed. How glowing it looks in the jars when light shines through the glass. It will be nice to keep a jar of this to pull out on a snowy day in January, to hold it up to the light and remember July’s rich colors as I spread it’s spicy sweet flavor over a piece of toast.
Like I allready said I didn’t think that it would sell at market but it did pretty well. There were a few ladies that really got into my flower jelly and bought some for gifts to herb loving friends. And the conversations that the nasturtium jellies lead us into!
Two sweet pea lovers met at our stand as they were buying the jelly, they were so happy to find another who loved sweet peas as intensely as they. And I learned a few sweet pea tricks as I was listening in!
Hubby was stripping his cured garlic of its outer leaves, which he had not gotten to do until we were set up. His working with the produce seemed to draw people in. We got to talking together later that it is rare these days for people to even see food in the hands of the farmer. When the food passes through the hands of the farmer and not the hands of the machine does it make the product any different? Or is it only the man that the produce has passed through that is changed? Hubby delights in his garlic, he only grows seven different kinds. All in all it was a real good market day. We even sold one of my Moms paintings.
When we left market at mid noon, Amish man Dan paid us in barter for bringing his load of corn to market in our trailer. We were happy to take the scrapings of the corn harvest left in our wagon back home to our chickens. We picked out maple syrup, cucumbers and onions. At home we sliced the cucumbers and make the onions into rings to fashion into cucumber- onion salad because we were going to Farmer Bob’s pot- luck dinner.
I mixed in the usual vinegar, water, salt, pepper and a dash of sugar but I also added some of our lime basil and chopped up some of the colorful nasturtium flowers to sprinkle in it. Not too much, I wanted people to recognize the cucumber-onion salad that that our own Grandmothers made for our family reunions when we were kids. So I kept to the familiar taste with a slight twist, and an added dash of color. It was so pretty! I find that a grand way to keep such a dish cool on the way to the pot- luck dinners is to not put the full amount of water that is called for into the mix. But at the last minute when you are dashing out your door and tucking the chilled dish into the cooler with your ice packs, then you add tiny little ice cubes to the cucumber and onion mix, this will keep it sparkling cold, just give it a stir when you pull it out to eat, the cubes will have melted into ice cold water by then.
So I am glad that I wandered off from my supposed duties the day that the nasturtium flowers enticed me. You never know where such wonderings might lead you!
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Valley of Heat
by Trendle Ellwood
Morning comes fast on market day Saturdays. The birds are already singing before the sun has even peeked over Farmer Shaws wood lot. I always wonder about these birds, rising before the sun. Do they think it is their job to sing the sun awake? Usually I wish that they would just let me sleep a few hours longer, my body is not yet ready to rise, what makes them always so eager? Truly I am jealous of them and I wish that I had their zeal, but of course they were not up late past midnight re-cooking the Rhubarb jam that did not set, nor were they fretting over labels and putting the last flower stalks in place.
So wearily I rise from my bed and begin the day. We finish packing the pickup truck and off we go as the sun peeks through the humid mist filled July air. And like every Saturday morning we pass Amish man Dan in his carriage with his horses. Hubby pulls into McDonalds to grab a sausage burger to go and I have the sudden urge to run in to use the rest room. As I came out Amish man Dan is giving us a wave as he chuckles because he is passing us by.
Dan has brought his youngest child to market with him today. He is so cute, a tiny little tike all decked out in Amish style. Black pants and vest, dark blue shirt and an Amish hat upon his head. He cannot be over two or three. He comes to visit us and stands there with large brown eyes watching everything as I jabber to him and ask his name. Later talking with Dan I find out why the little fellow would give me no reply. For Dan informs me that he does not know English but only the German that is spoken at home. I give the little tike one of our dry erase boards to draw on, thinking he might have some fun with it. He goes back to his fathers stand and soon comes back with a word written on it. JOHN it says. So he must have understood that I was asking him his name.
As morning spins towards noon, it gets very hot. We have our awning for shade but still upon the black pavement with hardly any breeze, I feel much hotter then I did all week even out in the patch picking berries. Little John is crying and I give him an ice-cold water. My blood begins to feel as if it is curdling and Dan’s horses which are still trussed together as a team in the sun I can hardly stand to turn my eyes to. They keep trying to twist around to use their tails to flick the flies off of one another, and they stamp their feet in impatience. My heart goes out to them and little John and I am so hot, I feel as if I will faint. But I put on my smile and sale our wares, wishing that the time would come to leave. Farmer Bob helps out by playing his violin and I sing him the song that I wrote to my daughter when she was a child and we were both missing Missouri and he picks up the tune and plays it back for me.
July is hard ,I don’t do well with the heat, I go home with a big headache and a kink in my neck which I try to nap away. I didn’t even go out and pick the berries in the afternoon but let Hubby do it alone. Yesterday I had become boiling mad at the bugs. Bad enough the Japanese beetles with their scratchy little legs, but now a new bug that I don’t even know has come along. This one gets up into the red raspberry and ruins it. If it had been up to me, we would have burned the whole patch down yesterday. I can surely understand why people turn to poison sprays. It would be so satisfying just to watch them squirm and die. But to me it would be like throwing out the baby with the dirty bath water.
Speaking of water it is hard to believe with all the rain that we got this spring that we are in dire need of a rain now. It will rain sometime soon and I will worship it when it comes. I will stand out in it and let it soak into my skin. I will lift up my arms in praise and let the tears fall with the rain.
All night long I dreamed about Amish man Dan and little John. I dreamed that Dan had gotten robbed on his way home and when I came upon them the police had already come. Little John was in bad shape, very hot and thirsty. I talked Dan into letting me take him with me, so that I could get him home faster. But on the way home I got lost, ended up down in the Hocking Hills and it was snowing. I feared that I would drive us off the hilly roads and into a snowy ditch. All I had to give little John was water in a bottle. Finally I arrived at the Amish home, where Dan’s wife had hamburgers ready.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
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Morning comes fast on market day Saturdays. The birds are already singing before the sun has even peeked over Farmer Shaws wood lot. I always wonder about these birds, rising before the sun. Do they think it is their job to sing the sun awake? Usually I wish that they would just let me sleep a few hours longer, my body is not yet ready to rise, what makes them always so eager? Truly I am jealous of them and I wish that I had their zeal, but of course they were not up late past midnight re-cooking the Rhubarb jam that did not set, nor were they fretting over labels and putting the last flower stalks in place.
So wearily I rise from my bed and begin the day. We finish packing the pickup truck and off we go as the sun peeks through the humid mist filled July air. And like every Saturday morning we pass Amish man Dan in his carriage with his horses. Hubby pulls into McDonalds to grab a sausage burger to go and I have the sudden urge to run in to use the rest room. As I came out Amish man Dan is giving us a wave as he chuckles because he is passing us by.
Dan has brought his youngest child to market with him today. He is so cute, a tiny little tike all decked out in Amish style. Black pants and vest, dark blue shirt and an Amish hat upon his head. He cannot be over two or three. He comes to visit us and stands there with large brown eyes watching everything as I jabber to him and ask his name. Later talking with Dan I find out why the little fellow would give me no reply. For Dan informs me that he does not know English but only the German that is spoken at home. I give the little tike one of our dry erase boards to draw on, thinking he might have some fun with it. He goes back to his fathers stand and soon comes back with a word written on it. JOHN it says. So he must have understood that I was asking him his name.
As morning spins towards noon, it gets very hot. We have our awning for shade but still upon the black pavement with hardly any breeze, I feel much hotter then I did all week even out in the patch picking berries. Little John is crying and I give him an ice-cold water. My blood begins to feel as if it is curdling and Dan’s horses which are still trussed together as a team in the sun I can hardly stand to turn my eyes to. They keep trying to twist around to use their tails to flick the flies off of one another, and they stamp their feet in impatience. My heart goes out to them and little John and I am so hot, I feel as if I will faint. But I put on my smile and sale our wares, wishing that the time would come to leave. Farmer Bob helps out by playing his violin and I sing him the song that I wrote to my daughter when she was a child and we were both missing Missouri and he picks up the tune and plays it back for me.
July is hard ,I don’t do well with the heat, I go home with a big headache and a kink in my neck which I try to nap away. I didn’t even go out and pick the berries in the afternoon but let Hubby do it alone. Yesterday I had become boiling mad at the bugs. Bad enough the Japanese beetles with their scratchy little legs, but now a new bug that I don’t even know has come along. This one gets up into the red raspberry and ruins it. If it had been up to me, we would have burned the whole patch down yesterday. I can surely understand why people turn to poison sprays. It would be so satisfying just to watch them squirm and die. But to me it would be like throwing out the baby with the dirty bath water.
Speaking of water it is hard to believe with all the rain that we got this spring that we are in dire need of a rain now. It will rain sometime soon and I will worship it when it comes. I will stand out in it and let it soak into my skin. I will lift up my arms in praise and let the tears fall with the rain.
All night long I dreamed about Amish man Dan and little John. I dreamed that Dan had gotten robbed on his way home and when I came upon them the police had already come. Little John was in bad shape, very hot and thirsty. I talked Dan into letting me take him with me, so that I could get him home faster. But on the way home I got lost, ended up down in the Hocking Hills and it was snowing. I feared that I would drive us off the hilly roads and into a snowy ditch. All I had to give little John was water in a bottle. Finally I arrived at the Amish home, where Dan’s wife had hamburgers ready.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
