Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Cool Green Tent
Last
night a tree fell on our home.
We were literally climbing into bed when it happened. We watched and couldn’t believe it.
The big hackberry tree in our backyard snapped in two. We didn't notice any precipitating factor that could have alerted us to its imminent demise.
The portion of the trunk that sheared off as we watched looked like a green iceberg sliding into the sea.
The sea in this case was our yard and rooftop. We looked on in awe with no time even to be fearful.
The tree fell in slow motion yet quickly. Amazement dulled what should have been instinctive reaction to move away pronto. Frozen in place we waited for the inevitable thud.
The tinkling noises of glass disturbed in the window panes got the adrenaline flowing. I was sure the sounds of breaking glass would be next. I was in the hallway by that time and that was all that mattered.
In the quiet afterward we checked things out. We counted ourselves extremely fortunate. Boughs on the roof and over the deck had made an unbelievably graceful landing.
It was a perfect drop (not that a tree falling on one’s house can ever be described quite in those terms). One lucky thing registered immediately. No glass anywhere was broken.
Rain (for it had begun to rain) wasn’t pouring in or seeping through the roof. That was good enough for me. I went to sleep.
In the light of day we reassessed the damage. Branches rested up against the upper windows in bushy disarray. They required nothing but to be cleared away. Some roof shingles are messed up. This is minor damage Al thinks.
The deck took the brunt of the fall. It was filled with branches and leaves. Incredibly it sustained no damage.
The tree couldn't have lined up its fall better if programmed by a computer. Considering the welter of boughs and branches poking and projecting every which way the end result was a sense of tidiness.
The tree managed to miss eaves and gutters, rainspouts and deck lighting. It didn't puncture window screens.
All those branches didn't scratch the deck rails or overturn one piece of deck furniture.
The deck (newly stained just last week) has a fifteen-inch gouge mark in the center of the floor boards. This can be sanded and restained. A trifle in touch-up when you consider costs with major deck damage.
The large limb spanning the deck created a pergola effect. The greenery was draped as if for an outdoor social event. It made the deck on this sticky August morning seem like a cool green tent.
Someone came over to cut up the tree (goodbye $700.00!) and haul away the debris. The backyard was left with an airier canopy and glimpses of open sky not seen before.
The tree with its encompassing umbrella of shade might be missed next summer. Regret is mixed with great thankfulness.
We're glad the part of the tree rotten at the core could come down relatively gracefully. It shed its thicket of green leaves upon us without doing a nasty number on the house which could easily have happened.
Surveying the mess this morning gave me my first smile. It was at sight of the blanket of leaves on the deck.
Last evening I was about to sweep the deck. Recalling that the forecast was for possible late-evening storms I figured rain or wind would bring down more leaves, rendering futile any sweeping done.
A clean deck can wait until tomorrow was the decision. I went off to find my big fat fall fashion magazine.
I sat with it out on the deck, mentally previewing my autumn/ winter wardrobe under the pleasant shade of the stand of trees which includes the hackberry.
I saved myself some work was the thought that produced this morning's smile. I’d have swept the deck yesterday only to have to do it all over again.
Then a new thought came. I may have saved myself a bit of work but the tree may actually have saved me.
The hackberry tree held off on its fall until the deck was empty and we were safely inside for the night.
Ro Giencke – August 24, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Cherry Nut Cake
Beautiful cherries are in the stores. The trip through the produce section is never better, nor a more visual feast, than now.
With nutrition and health a guiding factor in our shopping list it makes eminent sense to add the deep red fruit, heaped so prettily in proud display, to the food items that will make up our munching and meals in the week ahead.
Cherries comprise what I think of as the Big Four of the summer crops. Along with corn on the cob, blueberries and tomatoes my esteemed cherries, as they seasonally appear, define the best of summer.
With the Olympics just over in London, and its glorious show of competitor spirit and awesome athletic skill endowing August 2012 with special flair, I may even score cherries as the gold medalist among the summer delights. Cherries are simply the taste of summer to many of us.
I like cherries so well that as a girl I settled on Cherry Nut Cake as my birthday cake. I wanted my cake iced with no ordinary frosting. It had to be penuche frosting. If it was going to be my day I knew this was my best time for asking for the things dearest to my heart.
Cherries, nuts and penuche as a birthday dessert was triple-tier indulgence. It was like finding a quarter by only looking down and seeing it, so lucky did my party cake make me feel.
The cake maintains its hold on me. It’s wonderful to have a few constants in life. A cake filled with cherries and nuts and frosted liberally with penuche icing puts a smile on me and I’m not counting on that changing.
A copy of Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls, and surely some Nancy Drew detective stories, are the only birthday gifts recalled from childhood. While Christmas gifts did a better job of staying in mind the ones given at birthdays had a more fleeting touch.
What’s remembered instead is the fun of the birthday party with your friends invited, the excitement all around and the supreme moment the cake and ice cream is served and you’re the one who bends in to blow out the lighted candles.
My mom’s love stirred into pink cake batter studded with maraschino cherries and chopped walnuts, and further demonstrated in the floral decorations on my Cherry Nut Cake, is the one birthday gift I’ll never forget or outgrow.
Cherry Nut Cake
Beat 4 egg whites until frothy. Gradually add ½ cup granulated sugar. Beat until peaks form; set aside.
Cream ½ cup shortening and ½ cup granulated sugar. Add 2½ cups cake flour* and ½ teaspoon salt alternately with 2/3 cup milk. Add 1/3 cup finely chopped maraschino cherries and ½ cup chopped nuts.
Fold in meringue. Pour into two 9” lined cake pans. Bake in 375 degree oven 25-30 minutes. Cool and frost.
Penuche frosting: Melt ½ cup butter in saucepan. Add 1 cup brown sugar. Boil over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in ¼ cup milk. Bring to a boil stirring constantly. Cool to lukewarm. Gradually add 2- 2½ cups powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until right consistency to spread.
* to substitute all-purpose flour: 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons flour for each 1 cup of cake flour the recipe calls for
____________
Ro Giencke – August 14, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Three Violins
August is like glancing at your watch and realizing it’s later than you think.
It makes it important to get in the remaining summer highlights before the calendar runs out.
Fishing is Al’s intent as he pictures lazy August mornings ahead. My interest is for the other end of the day.
My pleasure is getting maximum usage out of the summer evening light. It shrinks with each new sunset and fills our rooms with an earlier dusk.
It makes me wonder how the approach of fall was awaited on long ago farms and homesteads.
Perhaps the rural community didn’t look past harvest, the make or break time of the year with its long hours of bringing in the crops.
But certainly, with the wheat threshed, the corn siloed and the hay bales hoisted to the barn loft, the next phase of winter preparation took hold.
At night there may have been lights to see across the fields. These steady beacons connected through the quiet starlight.
The farm lights, standing out above plowed acreage and neat belts of planted windbreaks, told the scattered farms they weren't alone.
Through the winter the farms mostly depended on their own households for company. This often was a mixed group.
It could comprise of family, parents who came to live out their years with them, hired help when it was necessary or could be afforded, or relations on a visit, or waiting out a tough spell when cities could offer no jobs.
Those on hand amounted to your human contact, your support. Everyone else was more or less on the periphery as days shortened and life drew in.
After chores were done, and the cool night air began to descend, there were socks to mend by such light as there was, or a bit of harness to repair, or time for storytelling or accounts to balance at the kitchen table.
The children played their own games in a warm corner. The cats – actual house kitties and not the half-wild barn cats who kept the mice population down – curled in balls of comfort completing the scene.
I’m reminded specifically of an old country neighbor. What thoughts were his as August days sloped toward fall?
He was our neighbor in a geographical sense. His farm wasn’t far away. He was a bachelor.
I don't think he was a recluse but he was very retiring, almost surely shy. I don't recall every meeting him. Knowledge of him came from what was said of him.
My mother knew him and his family, all of whom were older than she. They were a Norwegian family who came in the early 20th century. It was long after the main thrust of immigration to our parts.
That first big group settled our area as pioneers of a land just opening up. This family arrived to find their fellow Norwegians well assimilated into American society.
The Norwegian language had been shed, at least in public, and by the children altogether. Born in Minnesota they tended toward American ways. I wonder what the brave little group braced for as they realized the wide gulf in their experience from that of the others.
The family bought land and this was something they shared with the others. They knew how to work hard and tend well their farm animals and their acreage.
They likely attended the little country Norwegian Lutheran church near their farm. They’d have been faithful Sunday congregants.
The strength of the old Norwegian hymns, still sung at church in their native language, would have supplied courage from one week to the next.
There were trips to the country store, hardly a mile away, and perhaps to the cheese factory. They had a small herd of cows which gave them milk they could sell. Cows meant you were pretty much tied to the farm. The black and white Holsteins had their price.
The family consisted of the parents and a son and daughter. The children were possibly ten or twelve when the family moved from Norway to the United States.
In time the parents died. The son and daughter didn't marry. They stayed on at the home. They farmed and were presumably each other’s friend and companionship.
Then the sister passed away. Carl, as he’ll be called here, continued alone. Big-hearted neighbors of his (the two farms joined) tucked him under their wings like family.
Carl wasn’t social. The couple respected this. But he was foremost a neighbor and this meant checking on him and including him.
They brought him soup and meals. Sometimes meals were fish which the farmwife caught. She was an avid ice fisherman. She had holes on the lake ice out of which many a winter meal took shape.
Perhaps she took over molasses cookies (cookie jars were always full) or buttermilk pie. Norwegians love their dairy in a hundred different renditions.
There were times they’d sit to coffee together. Coffee was an important part of the ritual of rural neighboring. I’m sure Carl visited their farm somewhat easily. They helped each other at harvest and with chores.
We knew very little, just snippets of what we heard. We did hear that Carl drank his coffee differently. We thought it sounded very Norwegian. We put it like that because we didn’t know how else to categorize it.
He poured his coffee, a little at a time, from cup into saucer. The saucer was a small circular plate that held the cup.
The coffee was allowed to cool before he sipped it from the saucer. We kids didn’t think it so much odd as unique. It was a whiff of old patterns our generation found more amusing than anything else.
Coffee served in a farm kitchen came with something ample. Whatever was newly baked would come out now. Or it might possibly be donuts, punched out of yeasty dough and deep-fried at the counter hours ago with the smell of the cooking fat still in the house.
The table might have homemade bread and preserves or fruit sauce, opened from a Mason jar sealed the summer before from high bush cranberries or apples or plums. It was a sufficient feast to tide Carl over if he decided not to fix anything for dinner later at home.
Carl’s farm was in a pretty bend of the river. The house was enfolded in hills. It wasn’t seen from the road as I recall. There was a red barn you could glimpse except we seldom went that way.
As kids Carl scarcely entered our thoughts. He was rarely mentioned and never seen.
We did think his was a set-apart existence. We could imagine the strangeness of coming as youngsters to a place you never quite latched onto.
We were glad for the kindness shown to him by his nearest neighbors, and no doubt there were many others too who looked out after him.
Our children were babies when I learned there’d been an auction at his farm. Carl went as quietly as his years had been spent. It was left to the family items to tell his story.
Friends attended the auction. There were scores of items they said, stopping to visit afterwards.
Among the calls for bids were linens (probably beautifully embroidered), furniture, which included iron beds, three old violins, egg crates and cheese boxes. Typical of a farm sale there were also many tools.
It was the three old violins that got me. I could hear the music. It came to me this is how the long nights of fall and winter were spent. Music chases away loneliness. It instills hope. It unites, soothes and soars.
I wondered who in the family had been the violin players. Three violins among four people could indicate one violin was shared.
Maybe the fourth person was the listener – the audience, the appreciator. Or perhaps the fourth person provided vocal accompaniment.
I can believe this family group sang of their homeland. They came to terms with the new in the healing music of the old.
Summer, which is outward in its energy, changes to fall’s more concentrated air. This family played from their hearts and hopes as the door closed out the cold and darkness of night.
Any sadness, too, I like to think, was kept on that other side as the strains of the violins had their piece.
Ro Giencke – August 6, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Two Women
Recently I stepped into a rural cemetery to see if I could find the gravestone of an old neighbor.
She hasn’t been thought of in such a long time. Suddenly she seemed important to find out about.
It’s as when my sister brought up a forgotten neighbor. It generated much discussion for awhile as we reminisced. We wondered where the family moved and what their further story might be.
The woman whose grave marker I was seeking was largely unknown to us, like the other neighbor thought about out of the blue.
This woman was a widow. She had an adult daughter who wasn’t quite right. I'm sure I was some years along before I realized this.
A little slow is what she'd have been called. There was kindness if not an actual concept of the nature of her condition. Things like that weren’t talked about.
She was always with her mother. She was neatly dressed, perfectly polite.
They had a farm off a gravel road we seldom used. I suppose the two coming alone to church Sunday after Sunday made an impression on me.
The mother was well past middle age. She was weathered but not worn down. You felt she could master any situation.
It was a strength held in common with the farm women of her generation. They could meet anything, deal with it and survive. They were very elemental.
She was self-sufficient and sporting as I took her in. She competently drove what surely was a 1946 Hudson sedan.
It was a beauty. It was big old classic. It was recognizable as her car as it turned into the church parking lot.
I recall going by their place one time. The Hudson was poised at the entrance of their long farm driveway as we came along.
Township roads didn't see a lot of traffic. There wasn't a whole lot of passing cars or getting behind a moving tractor. Meeting a car pulled up in a driveway was therefore pretty exciting.
This was as close to a traffic moment as this road had. On top of that we knew the driver. Score another point we thought from out of our admittedly small fund of worldly experience.
The two were on their way somewhere. This seemed neat to me. It was a glimpse of their life which can be like pushing back shutters. A little can reveal a lot.
Mom knew that this woman lived here. For me it was different. The idea of people living separately from the places you associate them with, which was church in this woman's case, was just beginning to sink in.
We were on this particular road so seldom it really was a chance meeting of cars. The flash of her face through the windshield, and the daughter alongside in the front seat, sank in deep.
Their last name, and this one sure memory, is about all I had on her. My family was approached to see what they remembered.They drew blanks.
Brothers latch on to other things or recall not at all. My sister in this case couldn’t be of help. It was up to me to connect with this person as best the trail led.
The cemetery visited is small as laid out. There are neat rows, not too many, which made the search somewhat simple to carry out.
It’s peopled, if the term is correct, by families known to me. Almost all the names mean something.
We’re connected by geography, faith and time. We’re largely a flock that hasn’t gone far from home.
The years of birth and dates of passing make the former neighbors a true and ongoing part of the countryside.
Their span of time registered in the churchyard signifies their living years. Remembrance is palpable in the stillness of the green plots aligned within sight of their church.
Emma’s gravestone was come upon as I was entertaining the possibility that her resting spot was elsewhere.
By the dates on her gravestone she lived into her 90s. Helen, whose name I learned along with Emma's, preceded her mother by ten years.
Helen’s birthdate indicates she was born much earlier than I guessed.
As a girl I assigned no age to this constant companion of her mother. She wasn't a girl even though she had that as part of her. She was a woman who didn't grow old.
She had the same day of birth as one of my brothers. It was noted because common ground suits me.
I think back to those long ago summers. I like to think of a decorated cake set out for Helen in a hot late August kitchen.
There, and at our place across the lake, it's similarly a day for cake made festive with icing and candles. Mutual birthdays and we had no clue.
You think of folks from your early years, maybe especially those who fill a country church with you. It’s a happy addition to include Emma and Helen among those we once knew.
Ro Giencke – July 24, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Succession
Our pot of tomatoes on the deck is showing off early thanks to the heat.
One tomato was perfectly ripe when we came back from a few days in the country.
Dragging in laundry to wash, and the additional bags of paraphernalia you gather on even short stays out of town, we were predisposed to an easy supper as the vacation clothing went directly to the washer.
Maybe it was the tomato, noticed when we first got home, that made us think of ordering in pizza.
The tomato looked too pretty on the vine to pick when first exclaimed over. Then we forgot about it in the throes of unpacking.
We ate the pizza unadorned except for the cheese and bacon toppings with which it arrived.
The tomato, fixed with some basil, could have been an excellent pizza garnish. Instead the juicy red globe gained some extra minutes in the sun.
It was eaten later with a shake of salt. Tomatoes taste best fresh and on the spot.
We sweltered the whole time we were away. One assumes it’ll be cooler leaving behind the asphalt and diesel fumes of the city. That's not always so.
The hot air dome is a tight cap over the Midwest. Whether it's skyscrapers or silos out your back door broiling temperatures this month are pretty much the case.
Most of us can deal with the heat. It’s harder with sticky hot. If you’re outside any length of time you’re dripping wet. Dew points are the points of reference picking away at our summer enthusiasm.
We aren’t letting the inconvenience of major perspiration outbreaks get in the way of our planned activities. Summer is over too soon to get reliant on central air and stale TV reruns.
It feels good to be on the move outside even in dew point country. We go slower, find shade and drink plenty of water.
This was our strategy at a recent outdoor art festival, which has the good fortune to be set along one of our cool flowing Minnesota rivers.
The white tents arranged under the trees gave the aspect of a medieval fair. It looked jaunty as viewed on approach.
I expected to hear the clank of armor or see the flowing gowns of fair ladies of the castle with wide baskets strolling through the archaic lanes.
It was only a dream, however. The brisk business of buying and selling materialized with the opening of the admission gate.
My method with any outdoor emporium is to cover the grounds swiftly, get a feel for what’s there and zero in on what attracts me. Familiarity with the general layout helps me scope out my interests and saves time with the rest.
Many depend on the map handouts for orientation. For me nothing takes the place of scouting with your own set of eyes. Eventually the handout is referred to but it's held in reserve as used by me.
An abundance of merchandise with an up North theme was immediately noted. Possibly the pieces stand out because they fit so well with the distinctly bucolic setting.
If you don’t own a cabin or lake home these items make you want to acquire lakeshore property pronto.
It’s hard to resist the breezy banners, cute plaques, carvings, Man Cave objects, stained glass suncatchers, wind chimes and assortment of wooden furniture from tiny benches on up.
They’re so suited for lake décor you can almost hear the waves as you walk by. You can justify the cabin purchase on this basis alone. The artsy choices call for a relaxed second home they can spiff up.
You’re struck by the industry behind all these wares. You picture the studios or workshops or simple kitchen tables where these examples of skill and labors of love are conceived, prepared, completed and packed to bring.
Displays of handcrafted jewelry, meanwhile, take you in a different direction. They play on your dress-up whims which begin with your mother’s multi-strand pearls fastened around your neck when you're small.
You admire the delicate designs or the bold workings of metal and stone or intricate beaded fabrications.
You want to put on a raft of necklaces, or maybe just one perfect pendant, and slip into a caftan and sashay to a place that serves wine and outdoor poetry readings if you only knew where such a place might be.
With this same unique jewelry, but with towel and swimsuit tossed into one of the commodious carryalls also for sale (and which I virtuously resisted, my tote bag shelf being full), you might opt instead to a game of volleyball on the beach.
A large component of art fairs is the creativity that it causes to circulate. It begins in the mind, eye, heart and hands of the artist. It travels to those inspired by their work, each with the various influences derived from it.
A few tents offered books with the authors not exactly hiding behind the piles of their copies but likely trying to read interest on your face as the title makes contact with you.
Authors must come to book-signings with tight throats. They recognize their work is being sized up. The value of their product is established by the willingness of the public to buy.
The food tents and music and entertainment venues draw their crowds. Many of us were in the queues for drinks and refreshments as the steamy afternoon pressed on.
Certain members of my group were intent on one specific thing. They were here for the pork chops.
The cooked pork chops are possibly the festival’s biggest attraction. They’re cooked on location with a great deal of smoke and the smell of the meat to mark their territory.
Champing at the bit for pork chops my group managed to rein in their appetites until we could all be together. They made it longer than one determined gal.
Perhaps she’d waited all year for pork chops in the park. She was oblivious to all things as she sat over her pork chop, enjoying every bite of her forenoon chew.
We sat at the picnic table by the river with our pork chops. The smoke from the cooking area hung in the heavy air. It was in our hair and on our clothes and in our eyes.
At the moment it didn’t matter. To avoid the smoke was to be absent from the festival. Having allergies or sensitivities can rule out many things. Smoke very much bothers me but here I was nevertheless.
Nearby was the music and we ate and enjoyed. And then someone thought of ice cream cones for dessert. Maybe an art festival is really the art of enjoyment practiced on a large scale.
Now for some summer fun nearer to home. We’re in the midst of the Minneapolis Aquatennial and it puts July in the city in lights.
Called the best days of summer the annual event has something for everyone. For us it’s the milk carton races on Lake Calhoun and also the fireworks that stream and blaze and arc high above the Mississippi River on the final night.
Summer rightfully is a succession of community celebrations and events planned to take us out and about in the embrace of nature at her best.
There’s no need to refer to the calendar for weeks on end. We cross off each event as it comes along and mark the next one we aim to attend.
It’s a lovely way to do summer. Dratted dew points and all.
Ro Giencke – July 17, 2012
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