Schemes and Dreams

Wrapping up Nancy’s book,
Adding recipes to mine;
Sending Jack’s work to the editor.
Where will I find the time
To do anything but write,
And polish, and publish books?
I have classes to plan and teach,
Like the one for couples who cook.
I also have a club to start,
In my native New Orleans.
My days just aren’t quite long enough
For all my schemes and dreams.

Sunrise in the Smokies

A veil over the morning,
Being lifted by the sun.
Puffs of vapor rising from
The Smokies at break of day.

Each mile a bit brighter,
Every turn a bit clearer.
A bright spring day awaits me,
At our Tennessee Mountain Home.

Passionate Pursuits

I’ve decided that the only way to enjoy my life is to combine business with pleasure, since the only reason I’m in business is for the pleasure of the company of those I represent. I set out this week to make the connections that will make help me succeed in my passionate pursuits.

It was a whirlwind trip, but very worth the drive. Not only did I see Susan and renew our friendship, she also agreed to sign on again on as my editor. We met many years ago at a PBS art auction, and then again in a writers’ class – both in New Orleans, before Katrina. Our friendship flourished, as did our sharing of the love of the arts and our artistic and other skills. Katrina killed both our neighborhoods, so we have had to seek new homes. We finally have a plan that will, hopefully, keep our friendship fresh no matter where we live.

In the Cincinnati area, I have a niece whose company I enjoy in the extreme. She somehow juggles her marriage and four children with a very successful career as a financial analyst at a large publishing house, all with a ready laugh and a delightful outlook on life. She managed to put clean sheets on a son’s bed for my slumber, make a pot of gumbo for me to feast on, take me along with two of her sons on a post-supper fishing expedition at a local park, and still sit down with me to discuss business.

I came away with a commitment from her to handle my business accounts. Now, we have reasons other than familial relationship to get together on a regular basis. She and her children can also come to Granny Camp this summer as an extra perk of her being my accountant.

We lost our dear neighbors, Sheila and Tom, to Katrina’s blows; they’re now in a suburb of Cincinnati. Sheila is an incredibly talented multi-discipline artist, and Tom is a retired fighter pilot and rocket scientist. Sheila was right up my alley and Tom was right up Richard’s. Losing them as neighbors was a primary reason I had no hesitation about giving up my fantasy of rebuilding on the lake.

Our first experience with Sheila was with her voice wafting over the water as she practiced her operatic arias. We’d see Tom coming and going to the glider hanger that he shared with several glider enthusiasts. As we got to know their interests, Sheila and I would share bits of our culinary creations and discuss all manner of arts and philosophy while Richard and Tom would have grand boating adventures and building projects, and bonded over shared volunteer work on the Higgins boats at the World War II Museum. I can’t even express what a great loss they were as our neighbors.

Sheila has agreed to have me help represent her visual arts. I’m so hoping that she’ll also teach some classes on her passionate pursuits. At least, we’ll now have a reason to see each other again soon.

Palest Pastel Plateau

The Cumberland Plateau
As rainy night descends.
Mists settling over all.
New leaves-- lime sherbet green.
Lavenders, blues, and mauves.
Like Monet impressions
In the palest pastels.

Cremation Cooking

Lilting laughter is the best way to spend a day, in the company of friends who work as hard as they play. Susan, Mark and I had a creative and luscious brunch at a Louisville restaurant called Wild Eggs. Many of the dishes were rather wild, but also delicious – like my Creole omelet with andouille sausage and Creole hollandaise sauce. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that Louisvillians can cook, like New Orleanians, they are proud to display the mark of French influence on their city in the form of the fleur de lis.

We discussed our belief systems, and shared our grief over our New Orleans losses. We also celebrated our great memories of that wonderfully crazy place, expressing hope that we’ll one day see it fully functional again. Susan and Mark have a son still there, so we spent a good deal of our time cooking up a scheme for regular Lucy/Ethel adventures to see our sons and the city we so love. Susan is the original Lucy/Ethel, so it’s only fitting that I share these adventures with her.

Susan took me on a grand tour of her hometown; this is a return to her roots. Louisville is a lovely city with a great variety of neighborhoods, and still much pastureland on the outskirts. There’s a great expanse of the Ohio River running through parts of it. And, as I find is typical of river towns, every kind of ethnic neighborhood and restaurant you can imagine.

Susan’s mother Eve lives just around a couple of corners from Susan. We picked up this magically effervescent lady and began laughing immediately. This light approach to even the deepest conversational subjects continued on through the trip to pick up Susan’s equally magical and talented daughter Katy. After a short tour of Katy’s new home, we headed to the primary destination of this trip, a presentation by the most magical of us all, Maya Angelou.

We laughed, we cried, and we cheered as Ms. Angelou wove a web of her troubles and triumphs around the audience. It is so inspirational to hear and see those who have succeeded against all odds and exceeded their own wildest dreams, especially when they can present their journeys with great humor, as well as great pain.
Susan is also quite a storyteller, and can usually find something funny in everything. At supper, her mother asked how dinner went the night before. This question was in reference to the delicious dinner Susan had served me. Susan admitted to her mother that the chicken had not cooperated in being the perfect broasted bird. Because Susan wasn’t used to her new convection oven, the skin was nicely browned while the breast had stayed relatively raw in places. This prompted Susan to regal us with her “cremation cooking” tale that is one of our favorites Lucy/ Ethel moments.

The four of us, Susan, Mark, Richard and I had gone on a supper cruise on Richard’s boat. The wind started to kick up on the lake, so we decided to head back to the marina and eat supper dockside. Susan and I were both good Girl Scouts, so we concocted a plan to cook beef stew in foil pouches placed on the cockpit deck barbeque grill. I got the coal lit; we placed the pouches on the grill rack, secured the lid, and away we went. We were thrilled with the prospect of dinner dockside as soon as we arrived in port.

When we opened the foil pouches, little remained but chunks of char. We should have factored in the convection factor, but we didn’t. It was like we had tried cooking dinner in a blacksmith’s fire with the bellows going full blast. That convection cooking can be a tricky thing.

Appalachia Awakening

The appeal of Appalachia is everywhere in the spring. All along the highway, the stages of earth awakening are absolutely breathtaking. It almost makes up for the difficult winter when we remember that the worse the winter the more spectacular the spring.

Although our early spring is almost over in Coker Creek, going north to Louisville, I was able to do spring all over in a backward progression. By the time I got to Berea, spring was barely breathing its first breath. The leaves weren’t yet in evidence on many varieties of trees, and the redbuds were still in their baby stages of blooming.

All this splendor growing out of the rocks and into the gorges put it in my mind that God must have created the Appalachias to have a permanent place for all these species of trees. We can’t cut down what we can’t climb to.

Berea is beautiful, no matter the season; it’s where I first saw, many years ago, the winter wonderland of ice-encrusted trees. There are signs everywhere proclaiming the presence of the arts in this area. I do wonder if the creative energy in places like Berea and Coker Creek is a result of all that waiting as winter tamps down activity, bursting forth into music, song, painting, pottery, textile, and all the other arts at which these artists excel.

Going toward Lexington, the mountains give way to the rolling hills of horse country. While the fenced and groomed pastureland is beautiful, especially when the horses are out on the greens, I still prefer the cradle of trees surrounding our holler home.

How fortunate I’ve been this spring to have the freedom to travel, experiencing the earth’s awakening from the flat Gulf Coast to the higher altitudes of the Appalachias!

Girl reporter Susan’s new home is in a suburb of Louisville, and backs up onto pristine forest land. I was greeted as I exited my van with the sights of the woods and the smells of home cooking. I already felt at home.

We had her house all to ourselves, as her husband was out with their daughter. We reminisced about our days together in pre-Katrina New Orleans, and made plans for future creative pursuits as partners in writing projects. We met at a writers’ group in New Orleans and both still have strong ties in the area, including each having a son there.

Scheming and dreaming, we had a wonderful herb-roasted chicken, sautéed crimini mushroom caps, and spicy stir-fried greens with sweet red peppers and onions. Susan is a great cook, and was my partner in a cookbook that never made it to the publisher. How nice it was for her to, not only cook for me, but to remember that I’m doing Atkins.

No matter how many years or how many moves have conspired to separate us geographically, friends don’t get any closer than this. I am one lucky lady.

Mistress of the Manor Mamie

Richard got instruction from Travis on how to use the tractor, and completed the tilling before lunch. We’re already a bit late getting in the “early crops,” and I’m leaving for Kentucky and Ohio for five days, starting Saturday. I really wanted to help get the planting done because I know a little more about gardening than Richard does, which isn’t saying a lot. But, more importantly -- unlike Richard -- I can communicate with Mamie.

Richard likes to converse in sequence, Mamie and I sort of bounce all over in and around issues until we’ve gathered whatever we’re trying to share. Mountaintop Mary calls this “going down bunny trails.” It may be more akin to chickens scratching in the dirt for some good grit. Combine Mamie’s conversation patterns with her hearing problems and Richard’s voice that he says, “doesn’t carry farther than my nose,” and communication can be decidedly difficult.

I had been telling Mamie that her contribution to the garden was going to be as a boss lady sitting in an easy chair, under an umbrella, with a cool drink in her hand. When we showed up at her house, ready to work, she admitted to me that she was “wore out” from doing so much already that day.

I told her that I had a chair with an umbrella all set up for her and that all she needed was the cool drink. I suggested that she drive down to the field with her beverage, but she’d have none of that. She grabbed her hoe and some seed and sashayed herself down to the newly tilled plot where she stood in the dirt, leaning on her hoe, waiting for an assignment.

Last year, the process began with eyeballing the rows, which created confusion when it came time for tilling between the rows. Tillers operate best in straight lines, not on random bunny trails. I took her aside and reminded her that Richard is a scientist, and likes to do everything in a measured manner. I admitted that it takes longer, and she added, “But it looks so much prettier.” This was a good enough reason for Richard’s rational approach in her mind, so we went with it.

As Richard measured and marked, Mamie sat with me discussing what should go where in the garden based on companion planting methods and the need to keep her chickens away from some crops. She was so cute sitting in the shade that I told her next time I’d bring a recliner for her to nap in. She insisted that she wasn’t sleepy, just “wore out” from working, and got up to go to the house for a glass of water. Next thing we knew, Mamie was back in her big white car with a pitcher of ice water and drinking cups for her farm hands.

She watched and advised, but I did catch her napping; so I took a picture of Richard in the foreground with her dozing in the background. I told her I need that photo to defend my honor when she tells everybody that whenever there’s work to be done, I leave town and leave the work to Richard. We got a good laugh over that.

We put in potatoes, carrots, beets, radishes, onions, spinach, and lettuce – in all twelve rows with ten varieties of vegetables. After Mamie went inside, I planted a few gladiola bulbs as summer surprises. We’ve completed our first crop creation foray this spring.