Letting pictures do most of the talking!

If I wait to catch up on the blog until I feel like I have my thoughts gathered enough to articulate things well, I am likely to fall horribly behind on this scrapbook or give up on it entirely. So in "true scrapbook style," I'm leaning heavily on photos this evening. Here's some snippets from Tangly Woods - brace yourself for a very random ride through the last few weeks. I think it will be much more enjoyable than if it was possible to take and share pictures of the emotions that have accompanied that same time frame! Many of the things pictured here are those things that bring me back into some sense of groundedness. For those things, I'm very grateful! (These photos go back before the last blog post, which was dedicated in its entirety to the anniversary of Nora's death)

We are utilizing old bread stick bags, that came to us with bread for our pigs, to try to protect our first go at a "naked barley" crop. The birds have already voted that they like it, but we'd enjoy a chance at trying it and getting a seed increase for future plantings!

The barley pre-harvest in the root patch. It's so beautiful as it turns golden!

Benner family times - trying to savor what is possible at this time!

Myers family times

 

Still really prefer the in person and up close times. So glad I have these precious gals to hug!

And we treasured some really special times with my parents during their recent visit and are counting the days until their return to Tangly Woods.

It was especially fun to help Dad celebrate his birthday - Terah still goes around the house singing lines from the song we made up for him. It's so cute when I hear her belting out, "76 years old Herbert Ezra is..."

After considerable time and effort, we were able to give away over 350 tomato plants (not the sad ones pictured here) and many sweet potato slips..

Garlic scape season has come and gone. We have a new kind of garlic from Uzbekistan that not only has scapes that are fun to pop out at harvest but making a creamier milder pesto. 

And we got a "hot tip" from a friend to try fermenting garlic scapes. So we'll be enjoying scapes for months to come (or at least weeks - we are making a pretty good dent in them already).

Terah was so excited to plant her popcorn and stuck with it to the very end. I'm glad she enjoyed it as we'll be replanting soon - darn squirrels!

She allowed us to help her and chattered more or less the whole time.

And then we moved to Alida's patch. That one will almost have to be completely replanted. We didn't find it all that helpful when we noticed that the squirrels were digging up her corn and planting it elsewhere in the garden. Come on squirrels, we put it where we wanted to start. :) 

We are going to try putting hot sauce in the holes with the corn. Will it deter them on our second go? Time will tell!!

Still eating outside as often as we can. So happy when the evenings cool off enough to make it pleasant to be outside. I'm back to making 4 gallons of mint/lemon balm/raspberry leaf tea every 2-3 days to keep up with this family!

We did a reorganization of our guest room which included giving this bed away. It's one we refinished together the summer we got married. 

The room can still be a guest room but is roomier with the futon moved down from upstairs (Jason is currently researching "mites" as I type this as he had them crawling on him when he sat down on said futon a bit ago. He thinks they found their way in upstairs from the Phoebe nest on the downspot outside the room - he says they don't live longer than 3 weeks so we won't be using the futon for a bit...). It also has the addition of a desk for Jason! While he did not build it, he did spend nearly 4 hours scrubbing it the day after we got it - it is a completely different color, looks like a new desk AND most importantly no longer smells of smoke!

Red hot poker in their prime. My favorite moment from them this year was watching a bird land on one and turn upside down to drink the nectar (just like our kids do).

We have two new tree climbers in our midst: Alida AND Terah are both getting into climbing trees.

We continue to enjoy physically distanced hikes and picnics with friends, most often to Hensley's Pond.

Hensley's Pond may be one of my favorite spots in the world at present - such a nourishing spot for my soul!

I successfully emptied the chest freezer and defrosted it. We have one loaded freezer of mostly meat. Just a little bit of fruit, some seeds, a few veggies, coffee, butter, some breads and a whole lot of chicken, pork and venison. Well balance that out soon enough!

Potato crusted ricotta quiche - made possible when I found 2 shopping bags full of potatoes in the root cellar I didn't know we had. Yay! This is a favorite breakfast, especially when it can be made with freshly steamed spinach, and lavishly sprinkled with homemade cheddar on top!

Loving my more recently acquired friendship with mullein! Drying as much as I can this year for tea this winter - helped Terah so much last winter when she had a cold and was coughing at night!

We made our first batch (probably not the last) of peppermint pesto for a spectacular batch of homemade peppermint patties. I had some leftover melted chocolate and so I also made homemade pecan butter granola clusters that I coated with the remaining chocolate - wow, what a discovery!

Here is one of the many reasons it is hard to relax around here! There are not many moments like this but if Jason chooses to get horizontal in the living room, he won't be alone for long!

The rose bush in Nora's garden is blooming, along with other new flowers even since last week. A place of beauty and color!

We are growing SO MUCH parsley! I'm eating it by the handful. It makes me so happy as we have struggled to grow parsley over the last number of years. I've even frozen some and made lots of pesto. 

But lest I get overly confident, the basil right next door to the parsley doesn't look nearly so happy. We are giving it time and hoping it will still flourish.

Time for lettuce taste testing. The night before we did it, Alida was worried after we went to bed that she had not been clear enough with us that she did NOT want to miss it. So we woke to signs up that Kali had written to make sure we didn't taste test the lettuce without her. Kali is an amazing big sister and knows what it feels like to not want to miss out on one of the most exciting kinds ofTangly Woods' events - seed saving efforts! You really can tell the difference between different lettuces. We only keep ones that we want to eat again!

Barley harvesting time. I learned how and helped for the first time ever. Most meaningful aspect of it was using my Grandpa Myers' sickle. 

Just one of the many baby bird nests around. These three little cardinals are growing in the blackberry bushes that we walk by many times every day. That means we scare their parents (unintentionally) often - sorry cardinals!

I harvested the first major picking of magenta lambsquarters for freezing. I love how it makes the water hot pink when I rinse it. We are eating MANY greens right now, including a new green called senposai that we were gifted seeds for.

Alida continues to enjoy cooking experiments and Terah has caught the bug. They each bought a box of cupcake papers for their enjoyment and made yogurt blueberry cups this week. 

Alida's first cosmos is blooming - much to her delight!

Jason noted that the barley shocks reset the Tangly Woods "bucolicity index" at 100. I agree!!

We are eager to have this threshed and dried so we can make some flour - we are out!!

Our morning routine for the last 5 mornings has been that I do the morning chores and pig weeds and some other general outdoor tasks while Jason scythes until the grass is too dry. The 2nd hay cutting was deemed complete as of today (there is always more than could be done but we moved on to mulching). 

Kali joined us for a bit - the younger two thought the cool house was a better option.

Despite a rather major flare up of my "elbow tendinitis" or whatever it is, I was determined (maybe stupidly) to help get the mulching done before the predicted rains. 

I thought a lot as I worked about the many who have done in our country's history and still today do hard and hot and repetitive labor without adequate compensation, in unsafe conditions and without the satisfaction of getting to enjoy the fruits of their labors. As I was out there today taking another stab at understanding what it takes to sustain me, I felt again that this is good, hard and important work.

While we worked, the Massanutten chickens had found the piglets' paddock and an excellent dust bathing spot! It was so fun to watch, that I even took a video of it if you want to see the dust plumes!

And there ends the random walk through the last little while! It's now time for the daily tick checks and the bedtime routine! 

Remembering

12 years ago today I held Nora as she took her last breaths. And then Jason held me as I wept. Early this morning, Jason and I took mugs of coffee down to her garden and shared together as we welcomed this new day and another anniversary. We reflected on what the missing or the longing feels like at this juncture, and how we hold this individual loss in light of the immense losses being faced by so many right now. We sat, surrounded by seeds sprouting, soils healing, plants growing, flowers blooming, roosters crowing, and the mountain in front of us.

And then we weeded her garden. It felt so good to use my hands, while my heart did its thing. We pulled weeds, talked about who contributed various plants, and sometimes just worked together in silence.

Before:

After:

By then the sun was hot and the morning chores were still mostly undone. When I came in, I found these two having a little love fest in Terah's bed. It was a welcome sight. They seem to enjoy the morning times together, starting the day at a slow leisurely pace especially when their mother is occupied outside! They were up and busy with markers as I started working on our brunch. Alida kicked off the orange theme with her wardrobe choices for the day. She also chose orange for her picture, which we put up in our dining room for the day.

We had slated this day as a "sabbath/family retreat day" and thus my autoresponder was on and I was committed to no "work" emails for the day. But that didn't keep me off facebook and personal emails. While I have mixed feeling about both, it was through those venues that I felt once again surrounded by the love and support of some of those that knew us and Nora the very best. And I felt seen and understood, more than I could have hoped for. It was an email from a dear friend that finally allowed the floodgates of tears to come. And I know they were not just tears for us, but for our world. And it opened me to explore my emotions and thoughts in new expanded ways. 

It was these words that shifted things for me today: "You wrapped that child in love from before her birth until after her last breath. And she showed you just how far you could stretch to love. I know that in the middle of her life you felt like you were going to break sometimes, but you didn't, you just stretched. It hurt. I remember the conflict and sadness you felt about your sudden dependence on a healthcare system that was so full of waste. I remember the hurt you felt  as you gave over your life to her care but still felt helpless to make her life easier. And I know that her loss, even though it brought a release from the overwhelming work of breathing for her, hurt more than all the other stretching you had been called upon to do during her life."

I could not say it better (which is why I didn't even try to). But I will share just a few of my thoughts in their not-very-well-processed state. It has struck me today, with renewed fervor, how much our entire journey with Nora (during my pregnancy, her birth, her life and her death) was marked by the pervasive and unearned privileges afforded to us. That did not make the path easy, but it did alter it dramatically. And right now on this anniversary day, I think most especially about her death.

We all die. But how, when, where, and why matters. It matters for the person dying and the loved ones they leave behind. Nora lived her full genetic potential (quite possibly a bit more than it, aided by Western medicine). She died in the arms of those that knew and loved her most. She had many looking out for her comfort in the final days of her life. She was told that her life mattered and we shared with her what she had taught us. And what about us, those that were left to go on without her? We did not have to wonder how the end was for her - whether she was anxious or scared or in pain. Whether she was treated with dignity and respect. We were not left with questions about what could have been different or if we had done enough. We did not have to wonder if she would have survived if we had had more access to resources or if our skin color was different. We were not haunted by images of her life violently being stripped from her prematurely because of who she was born as. My hope on this anniversary is that I can honor Nora by using my life to move our world in the direction of everyone having the opportunity to live their lives fully and when it is time for their individual life to end that it would be in the context of deep love.

This is the first anniversary for years that we did not host a blood drive due to COVID-19. So the only donation that happened today in our family was Kali's hair!

Now a doting little sister did not want to miss out on the fun of what Kali was experiencing and having a "new look." So Terah donated some of her hair for some future bird nests.

Following haircuts, there was some game playing while I made supper. I loved all the orange in our day.

Even the root patch here at Tangly Woods was right on schedule. The poppies were in their full splendor and behind them the purple vetch made for splashes of orange (for Nora) and purple (for Kali). Those two colors are forever etched in my heart as the colors that symbolize 2007-2008 for our family, and also the beauty and love that has been birthed in our lives since that time! This morning, the card for our meal blessing was the song "There is More Love Somewhere." Seemed so fitting. And a prayer by Ted Loder has come to mind in recent days, that I've taken the liberty of making a few minor edits to for my own ability to connect deeply to it:

Sometimes it just seems to be too much:

too much violence, too much fear;

too much of demands and problems;

too much of broken dreams and broken lives;

too much of war and slums and dying;

too much of greed and squishy fatness

and the sounds of people

devouring each other

and the earth;

too much of stale routines and quarrels,

unpaid bills and dead ends;

too much of words lobbed in to explode

and leaving shredded hearts and lacerated souls;

too much of turned away backs and yellow silence,

red rage and the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth.

 

Sometimes the very air seems scorched

by threats and rejection and decay

until there is nothing

but to inhale pain

and exhale confusion.

 

Too much of darkness, 

too much of cruelty

and selfishness

and indifference…

 

Too much, 

too much,

too bloody,

bruising,

brain-washing much.

 

Or is it too little,

too little of compassion,

too little of courage,

of daring,

of persistence,

of sacrifice;

too little of music

and laughter

and celebration?

 

Make of me some nourishment

for these starved times,

some food for those

who are hungry for gladness and hope,

that, being bread for them,

I may also be fed

and be full.