Reflections on the Second Week of Winter – Curse the Candle and Light an LED

George and the LED Luminaria

    After years of freezing my tush in the dark to light candles in paper bag luminarias, I dug through three Christmas storage containers to unearth our LED luminaria kit. A week before Christmas, I set the plastic bags and LED candles on the kitchen table where I couldn’t forget them Christmas Eve. No frozen tush for me this year.

    Only I forgot.

    A fortunate mistake? Piercing the country dark, the luminarias could welcome my daughter Ellen and her husband Chris. They’d arrive between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. Tuesday.

    Tuesday afternoon, in preparation for their visit, I baked a batch of pumpkin oatmeal cookies and two batches of peanut butter cookies. Then, after a late dinner, I washed baking sheets and mixing bowls. George, one of my cats, hovered around my feet, the wood stove clicked with changing heat, and aroma of peanut butter drifted through the kitchen. The clock chimed 7:45. When it chimed 8:00, I’d set out the luminaria.

    But at 7:50, the gate scraped against the cement. Feet stomped across the porch. The front door burst open, frigid air swirled in, and Ellen flung her arms wide to engulf me in a hug.

    “I wanted to put the luminarias out to welcome you.” I said, let Ellen go, and hugged Chris. “But you arrived before I got to them.”

    Chris slipped out of his snowy shoes. He picked up a plastic luminaria bag and flipped over a plastic candle exposing two metal contacts. “You fill the bag with water and float the candle?”

    I nodded and put cookies on a plate. “I thought the lights would guide you down the driveway.”

    “That would’ve helped.” Ellen shrugged out of her coat. “I missed the driveway and parked off to the side.”

    Chris put the candle down and reached for a peanut butter cookie. “But the water would have frozen and messed with the LED lights. They’ll work better inside.”

    So Thursday, before my brother-in-law’s family arrived, Chris set out the luminarias–two on the coffee table, one on the table by the wood stove, and one on the kitchen table next to the yule log.

    George jumped onto the sofa, swished his tail, and leapt between the bags on the coffee table. His tail whacked one bag. The floating candle jiggled. He stuck his head in the other bag. Its candle floated to the side, and George’s pink tongue lapped water. When the water lowered, George stuck his head in further. The bag slid to the edge of the table.

    I grabbed the bag before it fell.

    Due to his kidney failure, George needs lots of water.

    I put more water in the bag, set it in front of George, and ran for my camera. He lapped, and I focused the camera lens between giggles.

    An hour later, my great-niece Addy, two and three-quarters years old, pushed her tummy against the coffee table and reached into the nearly empty corn chips bowl. She dipped a small piece of a blue chip into the salsa and munched. Addy stuffed one salsa loaded piece after another into her mouth.

    Halfway through the pieces, she paused. Her gaze traveled from the flickering LED luminaria beside her to the burning yule log candles on the kitchen table.

    She wiped her fingers on a napkin and walked to the kitchen table. On tiptoes, she pointed to the yule log. “Is it my birthday?”

    “No, Addy. The candles are for Jesus’s birthday,” her mom said.

    Addy blew at the middle candle. The flame disappeared into rising smoke. Laughing, she walked back to the chips bowl.

    Addy munched then blew on the luminaria. The white light glowed. She blew again, but the LED candle stayed lit. With a scrunched forehead and pouting lips, she dipped another piece of chip into the salsa.

    Two days later, with Ellen, Chris, and my brother-in-law’s family back snug in their own homes, I prepared a left over pizza dinner. Since I didn’t have cut flowers from the garden to decorate my tray and the potted poinsettia wouldn’t leave room for food, I filled a luminaria bag with an inch of water. The LED light didn’t need much water, and I didn’t want to bump the bag and flood my pizza. I sat in the Adirondack chair by the wood stove fire. The candle flickered, and I ate.

    After dinner, I set the tray on the floor to check my email.

    George hustled to the tray and pushed his head into the luminaria bag. Before his tongue reached the water, his head stuck to the sides. He lifted his head. The bag plopped back to the tray. He pushed his head in again.

    Push, lift, plop.

    Push, lift, plop.

    Push, lift plop.

    On George’s fifth try, he shook like a dog stepping out of a lake. The bag flew, hit the tiles in front of the wood stove, and emptied itself. With a soaking wet head, George licked the puddle on the tiles. Inside the wet bag, the candle glowed.

    I grabbed a handful of rags, knelt beside George, and mopped the water he didn’t drink.

    Curse the candle and use an LED. Despite mop-ups, LED luminaria work well inside–water for George, a conundrum for Addy, and decorations for me.

   Best of all, I didn’t freeze my tush in the dark.

Addy at the Chips Bowl with Ellen in the Background

 (Photo by Bruce)

Reflections on the First Week of Winter –                Beavers Move In

Beaver Cut Sapling

    For years, my husband Spence and I tripped over an occasional beaver cut sapling stump on the flood plain and searched in vain for beaver lodges. Had the beavers snacked while passing through?
    On December first, Flickie, our neighbor Charles Flickenger, didn’t snack or pass through. He sat on the grassy knoll’s moss covered stump. In hunter orange and with a rifle across his lap, he gazed over Deer Creek and into the woods to watch for deer moving away from his hunting buddies walking through the woods.
    Spence spotted Flickie’s truck parked near our garage so walked down the hill to greet him.
    Flickie pointed upstream. “I see beavers have been up by Hutch’s.”
    Spence gazed at the beaver cut saplings on Hutch’s bank. “Yeah, but I can’t find the lodge.”
    Flickie shrugged. “They’re bank beavers.”
    Back at our log house, Spence pulled off his hiking boots, reported his conversation with Flickie, and said, “I’ve got a research project for you. What are bank beavers?”    
    I tapped computer keys.

• All beavers can build lodges or bank dens.

• If the water’s slow, beavers build lodges in the middle of a stream or pond.

• If the water’s swift and deep enough, beavers dig dens in banks.

• Bank dens may or may not have lodges on top.

    Throughout December, Spence pulled off his boots and shook his head. “Beavers cut more saplings, but I can’t find any bank dens upstream.”
    Wednesday, because my curiosity about where the beavers slept peaked, I dressed for a beaver investigation walk. All I needed was the pair of knee high wading boots I hadn’t used since I fell into the creek ten years ago. “Where are my yellow waders?”
    Spence moved papers into a stack beside him on the sofa. “Your boots are in the cold cellar by the basement door.”
     A lemon yellow boot and a corn yellow boot sprawled on the floor between the grill and a basket of sawdust. Color didn’t matter if my feet stayed dry. While I shook each boot to dislodge sawdust and visiting spiders, the curves of the toes discouraged me. I dropped the boots and climbed the stairs. “They’re both left feet.”
    He laughed. “You won’t need them—”
    I frowned.
    “—but you can wear mine. They’re on the porch.” He slipped into his hiking boots.
    I fetched the yellow waders from under his summer porch desk and pulled an old gray sneaker out from the top of the boot. A mouse nest filled the foot of the boot. Leaning over the porch rail, I shook out the nest. A dark blob that could have been a dead mouse–I didn’t investigate–fell with leaves, shredded paper, fluffs of insulation, and wood shavings. I emptied a few pieces of paper and leaves from the second boot then dusted the shoes and boots inside and out.
    Boots on, camera hung around my neck and clutched in my left hand, I galumphed across the porch, down the steps and through the woods with Spence.

Old Dam and Thin Ice

    Thin ice covered the still water behind the old dam where we’d watched a beaver in June. (See “Our Forty-ninth with a Dam Beaver” June 4, 2017 blog.) The dam rose a foot and a half above the surface of the downstream water. “The beavers rebuilt the section that the flood washed away this summer.”
    Spence put his hands on his hips and stared at the dam. “Or a subsequent flood deposited gravel and debris.” He ran his fingers across beaver tooth marks on the top of a fresh sapling stump. “If there’s a bank den here, it has to be on Hutch’s property.”
    I glanced through the woods at our grouchy neighbor’s house. “I don’t want to walk along his bank.”
    “We can cross here and walk up the island.” He splashed through the trickle flowing below the dam.
    I followed.
    Ducking under briars, we walked along the low, muddy edge of the Deer Creek island.
    Spence pointed across the creek to a messy pile of fresh cut sticks on Hutch’s high bank. “The bank den.” Two yards from the pile, a half dozen beaver cut saplings rose from the ground like a sprouting crop of corn. “We won’t know if they’re inside until the weather’s colder and their warm breaths condense above the ventilation hole.”
    I focused the camera on the sticks.
    Spence explored. “You won’t believe this!” he shouted. “This is new.”
    I turned off the camera, attached the lens cap, and ducked under briars.
    Though moss, withered grass, and brown leaves covered the uneven ground of the island, Spence walked along a dirt path. Beaver tummies and tails had cleared and smoothed this straight, twenty foot walkway to the other side of the island.
    I followed. “Wow!”
    A new beaver dam, three feet higher than the downstream water, arced across the wider branch of Deer Creek. Behind the dam water formed a smooth, reflective pond. Below the dam, the creek swooshed and burbled over rocks.
    Spence grinned at me. “You want to explore the other bank?”
    “Definitely.” I studied the submerged tree trunk near our grassy bank, calculated the depth of water above and below the tree, and added the thickness of the trunk. Two and a half or three feet deep. “But we can’t cross here.”
    “We can cross at my old logging site.” Spence led the way over the beaver path, across the narrow Deer Creek branch, and down our high bank. Below the island, the two branches combined and spread into a slower, wider, shallower creek.
    We splashed across a rocky section. Water topped the foot of my boots. Then the creek deepened.
    Spence stopped. “Be careful. It’s slippery and uneven.”
     With slow, steady steps, I waded through water coming halfway up the knee high boots. My feet stayed warm and dry.
    “That water’s going to come over the top of my boots,” Spence said.
    “Go back.” I stepped out of the creek. “We can walk on opposite banks.”
    “I don’t like that idea.” Spence hustled through water which topped his boots and wet his jeans.
 

New Dam 3

   Though his feet were cold and wet, we followed the wooded bank to a clearing of sapling stumps by the new dam. Further upstream a mess of blackened leaves, sticks, and mud topped a bank den. Beyond the bank den lay two felled maples. Beavers had gnawed through trunks twelve inches and eighteen inches in diameter. I focused the camera on the beaver’s work.
    “If Hutch sees this, he’ll trap the beavers.” Spence stomped his wet feet. “Good thing his eye sight is poor, and he doesn’t ride his tractor anymore.”
    After taking my eighty-seventh photo, I said, “We’ve got to get you home and into dry clothes.”
    Spence agreed.
    On Friday, when I pulled on hiking boots to take a break from the laundry, Spence said, “Do you want to see the third bank den?”
    “A third?”
    He chuckled reached for his jacket and led me to the spot where two huge maples had fallen across Deer Creek downstream. A pile of sticks made a mess two yards from the undercut bank.
    “Those sticks?” I squinted at the pile. “Didn’t the flood deposit them?”
    Spence walked on logs nestled against the bank, stepped across the stream, and held his hand out for me.
    I grabbed his hand and joined him on a pebble strewn beach. We trudged around the horizontal maples. A mud slide, narrower and muddier than the beaver’s dirt path upstream, connected the lodge topped bank den to the creek.
    The flood hadn’t left the sticks, and beavers hadn’t snacked while passing through. They’d moved in.    
    Only the cold water and my too wide derrière stopped me from trying their tempting slide. 

Deer Creek Island

 

Reflections on the Thirteenth Week of Fall – Jane and Charlie

Trees and North Side of Log House

    My romance with Jane Austen began thirty-seven years ago. I’d watched the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice mini series and fell deeply, madly in love with Jane. After reading, listening, and watching everything Jane Austen, my passion demanded more. I celebrated Jane’s birthdays by throwing a tea party for Ruffing Montessori School colleagues after work on numerous December sixteenths.

    The night before the first tea in December 1991, my son Charlie, seventeen years old at the time, walked into the dining room of our Cleveland Heights house and watched me select delicate tea cups from the china cabinet. I wrapped the cups in paper towels and tucked them into a sturdy box between tea pots wrapped in tablecloths.

    “You know, Mom,” Charlie reached for an oatmeal raisin cookie from the canister waiting to be packed. “Not everyone likes Jane Austen as much as you.”

    I tossed packages of Earl Gray and peppermint tea into a second box. “I know.”

    “So it’s possible no one will come to your tea party.” He bit into the cookie.

    I placed a loaf of zucchini bread next to the tea packages and put the lid on the cookie canister. “I don’t expect a crowd, but a few teachers will come.”

    “Well, don’t be surprised if no one does.” He left me to my packing.

    After school, four teachers sat in third-grade-size chairs around the two by three foot table in my cramped tutoring room. We sipped tea and listened to Denise, the art teacher with frizzy hair and purposely unmatched socks. She told an antidote about youngsters’ painting shenanigans.

    Halfway through her story, Charlie peaked around the door frame. He glanced about the room, nodded to me, and left without saying a word. He’d walked a mile and a half from the high school just to be sure I had company for the Jane Austen tea. My mothering heart swelled, and I missed the punchline of Denise’s story.

    Years passed. I moved the birthday teas to the staff room then to a classroom because attendance increased. After joining the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), I also celebrated Jane’s birthday with Janeites.

      *Toasting Jane with carbonated grape juice,

      *Dancing country dances until my heels ached,

      *Listening to music Jane would have played on her pianoforte,

      *Writing letters using a quill pen, and

      *Contributing Wells Wood holly and rosemary decorations for an afternoon of table games.

    After Spence and I retired to northwest Pennsylvania, driving back to Cleveland for celebrations turned into a physical ordeal. I flirted with the idea of asking Spence to drink tea in honor of Jane. Visualizing Spence off his tractor, out of his garden, and away from his computer to sip tea didn’t work. Instead, I noted December 16 in my journal and thought Jane Austen thoughts without throwing or attending a party.

    But this year, Janeites around the world celebrated Jane Austen two hundred years after her death. I wanted to celebrate Jane’s birthday with more than a journal notation. And since Charlie, at age forty-three, had invited me to a tea party for two this summer (See “Tea Party for Two” September 3, 2017 blog), I could invite him.

    When Charlie called to chat a week and a half ago, I asked, “Will you have to work Saturday, the sixteenth?”

    “Yes,” his exhausted voice answered. “We’ve been loading twenty-six cars a day and working six days a week.”

    “That’s too bad.” Twenty-six cars is UPS-speak for twenty-six delivery trucks. Charlie usually supervised the loading of sixteen or seventeen cars a day. He’d be exhausted that Saturday. “You’ll need to go home and sleep after work.”

    Charlie said, “Why did you ask?”

    “It’s Jane’s two hundred forty-second birthday. I was going to invite you to a tea party, but not now. You’ll be too exhausted.”

    I hung up the phone and planned a celebration for one.

    On Saturday, December 16, I dressed in a Jane Austen t-shirt and studied Karen Gloeggler’s Jane Austen Quilts Inspired by her Novels for the next step in making the cross in a cross blocks of the Mansfield Park quilt pattern. Then I sat in my Adirondack chair and swiped my finger across the tablet screen so I could listen to LibriVox’s audio version of The Letters of Jane Austen while I sewed.

    The front door opened.

    Charlie trudged into the great room. His upper back humped forward, and a laundry bag half his size draped over his shoulder. He set a bag of loose lemon soufflé tea on the arm of my chair.

    “Ooooo. Thanks!” I opened the bag and took a whiff. “The tea smells like vanilla.”

    “It should smell like lemon,” he mumbled and dragged himself to the washing machine.

    I dashed to the kitchen to bake a batch of sugar molasses cookies. While I brewed a pot of the lemon soufflé tea, I set the table with two Jane Austen mugs and cookies cooling on a rack.

    Charlie shuffled back to the kitchen and collapsed into a chair.

    I poured tea and handed him a mug.

    He clutched the mug and bent his head as if to inhale the rising steam.

    I took a sip. Though the ingredients didn’t list vanilla, the taste of vanilla tinged with lemon filled my mouth. I bit into a sweet molasses cookie. “We could share our favorite Jane Austen quotes.”

    He grunted a consent.

    “Mine goes something like ‘We live to laugh at our neighbors and have them laugh at us in return.’” I took another bite. “Maybe it’s ‘make sport of our neighbors.’”

    He looked up and pointed to the mug he’d given me for my birthday. “There are quotes on your mug.”

    Indeed.

    I turned my mug and called out the novel for each quote I read to Charlie until I came Mr. Bennet’s from Pride and Prejudice. “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and to laugh at them in our turn?” I laughed and took a second cookie.

    Head still bent, Charlie sipped tea.

    While I summarized past Jane Austen birthday celebrations, Charlie didn’t utter a word. Had he fallen asleep? I stood, rubbed his arm, and said, “Thanks for coming to celebrate with me. You’re special.”

    Leaving his empty mug on the table, Charlie picked up a cookie, shuffled to his room, and closed the door. Within a minute, snores floated down the hall.

    I climbed the spiral stairs with my tablet, listened to Jane Austen’s letters, and sewed center sections for the cross in a cross blocks.

    My passion for Jane Austen pales in comparison to the natural love Charlie gives me.

 

Center of "Cross in a Cross" Block

Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Fall – Chewy, Sticky, and Sweet

Apple Pie Jam Filled Cookies

   With a mischievous grin accentuating his dimples, my son Charlie arrived for breakfast one October morning and set a jar of golden-red jam on the kitchen table.

    A twinge of guilt for all the questions I’d asked about the store owned by the mother of his UPS coworker Tanner—

*Does she sell gifts?

*Are there tables in the deli?

*Is there anything I could eat?

—lasted as long as it took me to read the label on the jar.

Farmers Daughters

Country Market

Deli & Bakery

Old Fashioned

Apple Pie Jam

    The jam jar served as a centerpiece for a month while I debated consumption options. The obvious, toast and jam, I associated with recovering from an illness. My second choice, almond butter and jam sandwiches, didn’t stick to my ribs long enough for swimming five sixths of a mile or an afternoon sewing the Mansfield Park quilt. I delayed opening the jar until I could think of a special use for the jam.

    Morning after morning, the color of the centerpiece jam sparked a memory of biting into my mother-in-law’s apricot filled cookies while logs burned in her fireplace and fragrance of pine drifted off her home grown Christmas tree. One November morning I wondered aloud, “Could I substitute the apple pie jam for the apricot filling in Mom’s cookies?”

    Spence, who empowered me in many crazy projects and who had consumed nearly as many of his mom’s cookies as me, answered, “Why not?” He lifted his computer onto his lap, clicked some keys, and sent me an email.

cookie of interest

https://www.tasteofhome.com/

    Two weeks later, Todd, a supportive and kind Pennwriters coordinator I pester with questions about running a writing group, sent an announcement about the next Erie Pennwriters meeting.

“Our Area 1 Christmas Party will be Saturday, December 9^th . . . .Bring some of your holiday goodies so we can “taste test” for you . . .”

    Perfect.

    I’d try Charlie’s special jam in Spence’s found recipe for Todd’s “taste test.”

    So this Friday, after stuffing the first load of laundry into the washing machine, I mixed ingredients, substituting olive oil for shortening, and shoved the bowl of dough into the refrigerator to chill.

    While Spence and the cats snoozed after supper, I fetched the dough, formed some into an ovoid, and rolled the clump on the flour-sprinkled table top. The dough wrapped around the rolling pin. Right. With olive oil for shortening, I needed to substitute wax paper for flour. Dough rolled, I cut circles with a plastic juice glass. Rather then buy a doughnut cutter, I used a pill bottle to cut a hole half of the circle centers. But I didn’t substitute for the oven temperature or cooking time.

    After the cookies cooled, I spread the apple pie jam on the solid circles with a table knife. Jam dripped making my hands sticky. Oops. Not great for writing, but the Pennwriters would be munching and talking most of the meeting. No worries. I set circles with the holes on top of the jam spread cookies.

    When I finished the last cookie, Spence called from the sofa. “I must have fallen asleep.”

    “My cookies look great. Do you want to look?”

    He yawned. “Now?”

    “You can see them later.” I bit into a cookie. “Yikes. They’re hard.”

    Spence picked up a book and patted the side of the sofa to signal he welcomed cat company. “They’re just crunchy.”

    “Crunchy?! They’re hard enough to break a dental filling.” I took another bite. The apple pie jam tasted super sweet.

    Emma jumped onto the sofa and curled beside Spence.

    “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” he said opening his book. “Just relax.”

    Maybe, like an olive oil pie crust, the cookie texture would be better the second day.

    Just in case, I pulled a loaf of zucchini bread out of the freezer and set it on the table near the wood stove.

    Saturday, I jumped out of bed, rushed to the kitchen, and bit into a cookie. Chewy–no danger to anyone’s teeth. Perfect.

    Mid day, I left the defrosted zucchini bread and walked to the garage with a note for my boxed treat.

Apple Pie Jam Filled Cookies

Warning: Chewy, Sticky, and Sweet

    “People will eat them, or they won’t,” Spence said carrying a bag with copies of my story-in-progress and a present for the gift exchange. “You don’t need to explain.”

    I stuck the note in the box at the meeting anyway.

    When people piled treats onto plates at the counter of the meeting room’s corner kitchen, plate after plate included my apple pie jam cookies. Writers took more than one bite so I walked to the counter for a cookie. A woman stood in front of my box and read, “Chewy, sticky, sweet.” She picked up a cookie. “That works for me.”

Perfect.

    At Wells Wood this morning, I woke to the clank of the porch gate latch followed by the thud of the front door closing. Charlie had arrived for breakfast. I jumped out of bed, threw on my robe, and rushed to greet him.

    With his hoodie pulled over his head, he slumped into a chair and flashed me a sad smile. Pain and exhaustion etched his face.

I didn’t need to ask about his week at UPS with the holidays approaching, but I did.

    “I worked fifty-three hours.” He sipped tea. “That’s six days with over eight hours on Monday.”

    Hoping my cookies would gave him as much comfort as my mother-in-law’s apricot cookie had given me on many Christmases, I handed him two apple pie jam cookies.

    He nodded and silently munched one after the other while Spence banged pans cooking breakfast in the kitchen.