anniversaries of a farm girl's heart....

this morning dawned bright and beautiful through my farm house windows...

and yet it was filled with a familiar chill,

an ache and longing and thankfully, a comforting promise.

outside, the air is scented with a curious mix of mint, garlic and autumn...

and deep yellow leaves are beginning to show high up in the poplars.

Looking up at them, I'm always struck with how sights and sounds and

scent will bring back a day as clear and bright as if it were

yesterday...

It is the scent and sound of yellow leaves gently falling and hitting the earth.

running barefoot through deep green wet grass,

the scent of juniper wood smoke and apples hanging from an old tree...

crossing over

a ditch with clear water running fast,

singing and dancing underfoot

as if it never heard anything else that was happening

but it's laughter.

I cradle this anniversary of my heart and hold it close...

the unfathomable loss of a loved one on a day just like this...

On days like these I can still see and hear and smell each event of that day as it unfolded.

And somehow I am grateful for them. For he will never be forgotten as long as I can remember with scents and sights and colors of all the happy days before

that chilly sunshine filled autumn morning.

~~~

another anniversary of my heart this day, is that of our country's heart...

For farmers and ranchers here, the flag flying at your gate post or atop the combine, bale wagon,

barn or tractor is an everyday celebration.

not just brought out and hung up for

a special occasions such as 4th of July or Memorial Day or Flag Day...

You'll Always find it proudly hanging here...

~~

Not long after those terrible events took place in New York and Pennsylvania that chilly sunshine filled autumn morning

I happened to look up out my kitchen window while washing dishes to

see my Mt. Jefferson. Somehow just seeing him there each morning gives me solace

and peace to begin my day...

and I saw

this...

~on the left of the picture is a hay barn with the American Flag on it's side~

and my Mt. Jefferson watching over us all.

Our American Flag. Someone had made it of corrugated metal,

painted red, white and blue,

Someone, we still don't know who, and not the rancher who owns the barn,

put it up over night on the side of a huge hay barn

across our valley for all to see...the sight of it then clutched at our hearts and still does.

~~~

I hope you can see it there, on the left. If you were here you could see that it's very large...

and this morning as the sun came up and shone on this rancher's hay barn

it was filled with remembering, an ache

and a longing and somehow,

Thankfully,

a comforting promise...

Tasha Tudor Birthday Celebration & a Very Special Giveaway!

Please do go & Enter your name

for a very Special Celebration Giveaway is going on until Midnight tonight August 30th at Rookery Ramblings !

Stop by and leave your Birthday and Celebration message~

~~~

Go Here to enter the Rookery Ramblings Giveaway in Celebration of Tasha's Birthday!

http://rookeryramblings.blogspot.com/2010/08/tasha-tudor-day-giveaway.html

Happy Birthday, dear Tasha

A tinge of fragrant wood smoke is curling up from our chimney into the chilly air above our old farmhouse this early morning.

The sun has not come up over the hills just yet and I am here writing to you by candle light, with a proper cup of hot tea to drink and a sleepy kitten lying on my lap.

A perfect early morning to quietly reflect on how such an extraordinary woman,Tasha Tudor, touched my life completely.

Today would be her 95th birthday and in celebration of

the amazing life she led

I'll go about my day as I always do...enjoying each quiet moment and task.

Shortbread cookies will be baking for afternoon tea, hand sewing the hem of a small linen petticoat for a doll, reading a few pages of a treasured book of Tasha's extraordinary life...

and in keeping these little rituals we all feel the loss of her a little less and somehow,

we feel even more connected to her and to all those whose lives she touched.

~

Tonight as I cook over the fire and light our evening with hand made candles,

we go on.

Enjoying our family and each season as it comes, without rushing... it is the quiet celebrating of taking joy and the gentle side of life that she loved and bestowed on us all.

~

My gardens speak of her, with herbs and old roses and deep indigo lupine-late blooming this summer~the tangled potato & pumpkin patch and apples hanging from the trees down in the old orchard.

My attempt at knitting a shawl, slow going as I have so many irons in the fire, is snuggled in a basket by my chair. I hoped to have it ready by the time the first frost nipped my cheek on my early morning walks through the gardens.

As chilly as it is this morning, I know

I must knit a little more each evening now....

Each thing we do here as we live our lives close to the land, every dream we dream.

everything has it's roots growing deep in Tasha's garden.

The seeds that she planted in the hearts of those who loved her are

growing and stretching towards a deep blue summer sky today.

~

The garden that was planted in my heart the day I first read a story of her, first saw her gardens, stood by her barn door, amazed at how tiny she was, first hearing her voice and chuckled at her wry New England humor.

I was given a name for what I already loved...

but just didn't know...

a candle was lit...a garden planted...

and there, I found my kindred spirit.

What a gift she was to us.

and is still...

http://thepastoraldollmaker.blogspot.com/2008/07/road-to-tashas.html

~~~~~

Please Come & Enter for a very Special Celebration Giveaway is going on

until Midnight tonight August 30th

at Rookery Ramblings !

Go Here to enter the Rookery Ramblings Giveaway in Celebration of Tasha's Birthday!

http://rookeryramblings.blogspot.com/2010/08/tasha-tudor-day-giveaway.html

wheat harvest

Just about 90 acres of wheat left to harvest now....

then our garlic...then another cutting of mint for tea...and then...

the coriander for seed...

~~~

Our grandchildren, Ethan and Emma, along with their Dad made a little time-lapse video of some of our wheat harvest which they all helped with this last weekend...

yep..we love it here....

(turn up your volume)...Enjoy!

oh, the comfort of sometimes being alone...

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

~*~

~Henry David Thoreau~

summer afternoon

It was a hot afternoon.

The air was still with an occasional bee slowly making his way through the drooping hollyhocks.

It was one of those hot summer afternoons when the grasshoppers stayed hanging from the tall grasses waving in the hot breeze.

Too hot to walk across the grass.

So here we rest, in the cool shade of the porch.

Wouldn't a dip in a nice cool blue pool be the most delicious thing?

...if only we could just get up enough energy to bring the hose over and let it trickle over our hot little furry feet...

ahhh...,now doesn't that sound so nice?

Maybe, when we wake up from our nap, we might get someone to bring the hose over here.

but for now, dreaming about swimming is the closest these three little kittens are going to get.

a beacon of hope

Whenever I see our beautiful flag flying,

I get a catch in my throat.

I can't help but think how very blessed we all are.

That we are blessed to live beneath her colors.

To me, she is a beacon of Hope.

a safe place we call Home.

For wherever her colors are flying overhead,

we know that

some one's daughter and son are, at this moment, watching out for us.

They are far from home...

and looking up at that flag,too.

It's their beacon of hope and a safe place

they call Home.

While we celebrate, wherever our flag is flying,

it is a safe place called

Home.

Happy Independence Day!