This was the final entry on my AOL blog. I moved these files here from prior entries.
perhaps it will be fresh in a new neighborhood.
Here is my address
traveloguefortheuniverse.blogspot.com
If any alien reads this, I hope that entity understands my need to move the journal and follows the instructions.
there are some great Hubble pictures on my new blog site!
Best wishes in your part of the galaxy.
Mary
Fall colors are slowly building.
Red is a strong color
this year.
And so we shed September and face October when the heat goes on and off until it's all on and the leaves turn colors then fall until they are all gone and the days grow short as the sun falls lower in the sky each day until by the end of October we will see the beginnings of the cold darkness of the north country.
This time of year my mind always drifts to a day when we lost Katie and Suzie so many years ago. I wonder each year if, the following year, will I remember the day (I long ago forgot the exact day) or at least the time, the end of September, the time just before the fall comes on full strength. A hint of fall and a transition time to that brooding time of gray skies and soaking dark rains. I would like to remember them for a moment and smile for them as they never aged. We go hurtling through space but return to the same vicinity every year relative to the Sun. Perhaps I feel the same things that remind me every year of especially Katie. She gave me a longing for Vermont when I had no idea before meeting her. Here I stayed and when I first came, in November, I suffered through stick season (no leaves) and winter and enjoyed summer before waiting an eternity for my first fall foliage. Then it turned on like a magical light and I was hooked on the fall explosion of colors we have for weeks before the cycle repeats.
Hope you enjoy your fall reflections.
Mary
P.S. AOL is shutting down this Travelogue soon. Stay tuned for where ever I end up drifting to next. mg
Fall Harvest is progressing as it should while we take breaks to enjoy the fall weather which is the finest of the year just behind the first day of warm weather in spring.
We attended the Shelburne Farms harvest festival and green technology fair. It was a nice day as well and we got to pet the goats and sheep and witness the revolution that will cause oil to plummet in value and worth. Geothermal, grass pellets, solar and more ways to avoid the gas hogs. It is just the right thing to do and those 4 dollar a gallon price tags make it all worth exploring anything.
Today we made 2 things: Beet and Red Cabbage Relish and Jalapeno Salsa.
We also froze some Eggplant which were small but beautiful.
And sold a little at the farm stand. Nice to see people eating our excess.
Nice to see our food in the cupboard. We can rest later.
Hope you have enough to eat and you stay warm when you need to.
September and the Start of Fall
in the North Country.
There now, Tommy aka Napoleon has downloaded his picture which was
complicated by having to rotate 45 degrees and saving to a file God knows where. He likes to sit on Fred's lap while Fred is online. Like most pets he likes the smell of fresh worn sneakers.MMMM!
We got 12 bags of corn 2 cups each from our corn patch. Was better than we anticipated and all the raccoons are gone. No electric fence needed.
Business is slow on the farmstand. Traffic has been extraordinarily light and we hope if we cut back the gas prices will drop. Still waiting...
The Leaves are Turning
The weather a delight. One of such a few rare days that we recall with smells and feelings of cool mist and big fluffy clouds and long rays of sunshine making orange streaks across red leaves and green remains of spring. Great flocks of blackbirds whirring through the sky flying with one mind, one purpose, one life and together they talk without singing and see with their noses and forget the summer's work behind. Summer's work a tale of rearing and feeding and flying in that order and in rapid succession (to our mortal human concept of time)
The Start of Fall begins the travel beyond the flying to the flying with others, Like our lives beginning as children to when we fly along, the birds grow and then make their own nests here or there and start all over again. Each stage of the journey looks to be planned and I believe it is.
Hope you enjoy your fall flocks and the transition to cooler weather.
Mary
Our Farmstand is now open in NW Monkton. Now you can self serve a variety of vegetables and some zinnias.
And we renovated it a little, put some red roofing on it and fixed the sides and back. I think it does look nice.
We sell surplus vegetables and we can or freeze or dry or recycle the rest.
This year's varieties: Goliath tomatoes which have some blight but we picked them yellow, and
Zuchini->Raven is delightful and disciplined. We had
some slug damage but were mostly perfect.
Potatoes: Kennebec, Red Pontiac and Bintje.
Our plastic rows really help but the weeds, diseases and bugs work 24/7.
When we are done in the garden and exhausted from the sun and weeding and picking we come in and see our mischevious cat Napoleon aka Tommy aka many other names.
I tried to insert a photo of him but it was too hard today. I can try again when my patience for Vista and kodak and etc programs resumes.
Have a great night in your corner of the world.
The Red Planet
is now more desirable because they just found
Water
and now the real estate futures marketeers are studying how to lay out the subdivisions and lakes and infrastructures of the yet to be exploited
red planet
What is an expected mystery?
What is the meaning of water on Mars? It becomes clearer when you know for sure. But then, I've always known for sure that Mars must have water, a sister planet to Earth our present house.
Isn't it great the Nasa equipment on Mars didn't break down? Not like the stuff we buy on Earth. I wish it would start when we want it to and there's always something breaking down.
This is the last day of July and that puts me into a blissful August panic. The beans would come soon and then everything will start ripening and the animals, bugs and diseases will try to eat some of our bounty. I was fortunate to weed the beans last weekend although it forced me to hit the pillow early that night.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the real estate guide to mars.
But think about how in your lifetime perhaps there will be such a website and people will travel to the red planet and vacation by some of the pooled water under a solar canopy and fish for exotic species and good old fashioned ice cream made from synthetic proteins and maple syrup from Vermont.
A few things just can't be replicated.
May you discover an expected mystery of your dreams.
mary (the martian by zodiac sign)
TRACTORS and Subsidies
We actually felt OK when the old tractor Ed drove the most went rolling down the hill pushed by the new owners, the 3 generations. Grandpa, Dad and son.
How else could we feel? It was just right to do. We agonized and pondered and finally decided neither one of us has that as either one of ours or even our dream. I got my picture snapped on the old tractor which was a challenge to climb up on. I had to use an old bucket and some twisting and wondered how Ed did it all those years. Fred drove it too and he told me stories more valuable than what is left of that poor worn tractor.
Someday the young boy will recall to a young boy his going out to the farm one sunny day and pushing the tractor down the hill with his Dad and Grandad. How do they not deserve it? I think Ed would have approved. If he could have he would have sold it too.
Now the next area will point you to a site for identifying farm subsidies
mulchblog.com
Check it out and put your favorite megafarm in and wonder how they got 100's of Thousands of our hard earned money and still hire (illegals) foreign manual labor?
Why are farms allowed to be subsidized when they are huge and eat up all the small farms?
If I saw some poor schmuck on the list I might have felt differently.
The garden is growing and the weeds and bugs competing. Now 2 young deer stopped by the garden tonight. Fresh worries.
Went to the mailbox and my farm subsidy wasn't there. We couldn't even get a farmer loan. They didn't think we were serious about growing switchgrass for fuel.
Have a great day where ever you are. Hope you get the tractor you dreamed about.
The Sun is the topic of today's brief entry.
Carol even gave the sun credit for improving Mom's mood after surgery. I agree. A powerful healer.
How Warm it is and how Powerful.
How we miss it when the clouds keep it away like this week.
off and on with brilliant Sunshine which led to tall fluffy clouds and black bands of showers.
We we glad to hear from Mary Sue and a flash update. 27 trips around the Sun, our solar friend, and another pops up out of the blogosphere. Welcome, Mary Sue, back to know us, although we are not as young and no, things cannot be defined as the same as we remember them. Even photos have a different meaning over the years. An Enlightenment so to speak. Kind of bold but I believe true. Seeing the valley where we live in fresh LIGHT. Not better or worse or warmer or colder (although with menopause feeling a little warmer these days). Not greener but seeming so. So, Mary Sue, since I cannot write to you directly, take this as an invitation to see the valley in your new Light. And when you close your eyes you will see the cows in the valley and smell the warm Sun and hear the quiet and peace we still harbor here.
And in the theme of the SUN. here is a link to Frank's Bakery website, the solar powered one.
fathersunmotherearth.org
He also has a link to his bakery web site near 9N in Crown Point, NY. We spent Sunday am marveling at his solar bakery, his container grown food plants, and learning native americancustoms.
This all leads to the end where I go to sleep on this side of the planet and wake up in a different spin/direction so to speak. Hope your place in the universe is peaceful and lit by our father sun. mary
A Tear and a Smile (or two)
This past few weeks brought Hunter to daylight and he is a healthy beautiful boy. Such a smile he has already.
It also took our dear friend Firmin and with it an eerie emptiness already as we planted the garden and hauled away the old International Truck without our familiar Sunday visitor. We shed tears with friends on Friday the 13th.
Then from the past a voice from MarySue my first roommate in VT commented on my blog. What a strange connection from years of spinning around and I now live accross the road from our old apartment which is now a horsebarn.
So I had wanted to say more but will leave it for now as a tear and a smile now two. I wish you peace and that you might make a connection every time you lose one.
Au Revoir Firmin
May Recap
I know recapping a little early but also has been 5 weeks since I entered any thoughts and I fell my complacency directly proportional to our recent travel and catching up since combined with spring garden yard panic and wonderful cool weather that has teased us and caused us to all dread the summer. Vermont has a finite number of gorgeous beautiful days. Which makes them so precious to us.
Likewise the superstitious among us feel too many good days will lead to monsoon or other weather extremes.
When people first move to Vermont like I did so long ago, after a spring warm spell they often ask, "It must get warm now?...It is time to plant the tomatoes?" These questions worded as a statement with a question mark as an afterthought, knowing deep down the bad weather real never goes far.
one thing that happened this month was
us going to Illinois to see the parental units and siblings and their aufspringen.
The town I grew up in just doen't look much like it used to. I missed going to the old neighborhood this time. Memories stronger than the sights I saw there. Deep memories and people long dead.
If I had to give you one message I learned in our journey to the flatland,
I would tell you what Dad said about working longer. He would have worked longer. I would say going blind and deaf really is one of the worst robbers. Somehow losing touch by phone was made up with one touch of the hand.
I hoped his tactile sensation made up for not being able to see me as more than a vague circle of blur or hear my voice like he used to clear and loud.
My Mom would give me a lesson that says don't try this at home. The pain is too great and the pills don't work or they knock me into a haze and make my head spin. Makes me pray for a cure for arthritis.
Dad with senses diminishing and Mom with pain intensifying.
Sensual imbalances deficits and excesses.
Me trying to make some senseof it all and make it all better.
Frustrated by my inability.
And now back home to the familiar scenes.
The highlight of the trip for us was my Brother Dan's Edwardsville introduction to the Tim-Tam Slam, an Australian original pasttime.
It seems his boss is Aussie and passed on the well guarded secret in a Dallas undisclosed location.
We then did the Tim Tam as a Fam..ily and laughed and smiled like none of us had any of the problems we do and did.
The Tim Tam Slam gave us a great break and brought the Tim Tam close to the 90th meridian.
Then this week, The Tim Tam Slam was performed I believe for the very first time in a public building when I introduced the subterranean obsession to my office co workers as it was my turn to celebrate the next birthday in the office.
Everyone either watched or participated or both.
Once again the Tim Tam traveled a bit farther, to Vermont now.
And we all found a few minutes to laugh and forget our troubles.
May you find the Tim Tam to take your troubles away even for a minute.
Say a prayer for Hunter and Mom and Dad for safe arrival hoefully before May's end.
mary
At Long Last Quilt pictures
and
wall hanging.
Spring time flies and with it time to sit and contemplate stays behind in winter memories.
I thought I had written in the last week but someone reminded me as I have been caught up in spring sprucing up and airing out.
As I promised,
Hunter's quilt ******** Trip around the Universe pattern
There are little Harry Potter's in outer space and black cats, tractors, trains, bears,
tools and school supplies.
It is actually on top of a great quilt a friend recently made and gave us.
Also the wall hanging made with Mom's blue & red bias tape and yellow ric-rac. It added the perfect border and was handy and right there. The color matched perfectly.
My favorite is Number 9. (No not like the loser NY Gov).
Count first five then the next 4 on second row.
See the little rabbit in the space ship?
My theme wasn't intentionally outer space related, only subliminally and coincidentally.
There, Vista conquered and little plastic pieces with a million pictures stored on them.
Some day soon will seem crude and old fashioned.
Here is a wish for everyone (anonymous) everywhere and forever.
May all your joys be quilted
and
All your sorrows be patched.
I don't want you to think the winter is still raging here.
Because it is not. The sap is finally running, the tulips and daffodils poking up and possums are breeding. The sun is warmer and kinder. The air is fresh and the birds are coming through and to this area. The frost has come out of the ground. We are thankful winter has receded for the most part.
Still a little snow teaser this weekend planned by Mother Nature. We will ignore it as irrelevant to our weekend plans of painting and resting and will probably watch the Last Waltz DVD again. Wow. It was so good way back when but now we can look back and see all of the artists in their absolute prime. Every one. I have yet to finish reading
Levon Helm's book
This Wheel's on Fire.
But what I have read is amazing and I want to savor every page. He has awesome talent and grit.
Hope your corner of the universe is as you wish and that peace envelopes the planet.
Do rent The Last Waltz and buy Levon's book.
Happy After Easter
and Transition to
Spring.
And now I find myself 50 years old.
Our accountant said it plainly. You already have been 50 for a year. You know, when you are born you are zero.
My bubble of stress burst. I had been 50 for a year and felt no different. What a rapid transition. Why couldn't spring come any faster. As if the last cold was the stubbornest and clung to the ground in great cakes of ice and dense snow.
But I wanted to recall Easter day. A holiday and symbol of the spring and apparently governed by the lunar calendar. Also nature based rituals of egg gathering and rabbits. chocolate? and pork? At least for traditional midwesterners like myself. Pork represented a great corn harvest from the previous year. Bounty. Abundance. Now a source of fuel (food deprivation) and certainly some misguided farm subsidies.
Really, seeing Mars Attacks as an offering on the satellite TV signal catcher on Easter was not merely a minor shock but also a pleasant diversion from the conflicting religious and food stimuli and normal daily obligations. Mars Attacks reflects the arrogance of man and government and rebirth of man's vision of the universe. Not as an innocent explorer wandering off to the nearest spinning object, but as a participant and survivor. One willing to utilize even a demented old woman and shy caring young man to stumble onto the only way to save the world. The movie gets better every time we see it. We bought a copy but still feel celestial intervention decided to put the easter bunny to sleep and crack the traditional eggs and play it on the satellite dish, sure to be enjoyed by man and martian alike.
Best wishes. Spring is around the corner and in the case of VT, down the road apiece as well.
where did al gore go? the picture I sent him of our record breaking snow pile in March came back no forwarding address. lesson: don't try to predict the weather. In VT spring may be optional.
Happy St. Patrick's Day
And hope you have had a nice one plus or minus corned beef and cabbage which was our preference.
We choose to be Irish for a meal. We used our potatoes and carrots.
The weather is raw and icy cold in spite of the deceptively warm 30 degrees. That is usually a heat wave in March. This 30 however feels different. It is so cold I couldn't stay outside in the new found sunlight appearing after work now. Short term torture at adjusting to the new time change. It is doubtful we should ever change time so often.
The spring bird sounds are coming in spite of the cold snap. Red wing blackbirds, in fact all the blackbirds, ravens, crows were squaking and singing these liquid impossible tunes calling out to all that their stake has been claimed. We saw some turkeys today. They were sipping water by the edge of snow. They they went trotting away on the hard crust of snow.
So raise a glass to an Irishperson or a person choosing to be for a moment.
Spring must be coming soon.
Election results Vermont.
I had intended on writing something on Leap Day but it came and went without any words written. Now we must wait 4 years for another. As I wrote earlier with a typo I just discovered some cruel rule maker gave us and extra DAY (not year, apologies to you perfectionist types) of inconvenient winter weather. Now I sit here, the day after election day/town meeting to locals, and I am wondering why the bad weather has struck again. I suppose so I can sit and contemplate the icy wilderness and play the new video game Fred found on the free pile in the web.
I also want to finish Janet's new son to be "Hunter"'s quilt and wall hanging. The theme is Trip around the universe--much like my blog. If I can locate the picture which Vista ate, I will post it. I like the colors and the little Harry Potter pictures. The wall hanging was completed with bias tape mom bought a million years ago. Was fun to put together.
Oh yes, back to election day/town meeting.
We went to the Monkton Town meeting and were satisfied there are enough young and restless voters/townspeople in town. Although I was silent except for some very small talk to a neighbor, there were people who spoke up "for me"...in other words, when they asked a question that made someone twitch, they were showing me the democratic process that makes the USA the best country on this planet. They were not hostile but just wanting to know. The answering parties tried and sometimes just gave up explaining the inherent mysteries of budgets, line items and the finer points like why a tandem truck instead of a single axel. My thoughts drifted to... with the bigger truck, they will dump more snow on our side (the "right" side) of the road. But I voted with the social conscious that it was better for the greater good. I will shovel twice as hard to please the road commissioner. But at least I had a chance to say no....
The best thing about town meeting was showing up, upright, breathing tax payer. Perhaps some in town think they know me or what I am about. Or that I may be defeated, put down, give up. They may talk about us since we have become some sort of gossip fodder when avoiding the social scene. When one person wagged her finger in front of my face as if it would make me disappear like a Harry Potter spell, I wondered why we live here at all.
Then
When I heard the townspeople questioniong and voting and shaping the future of the town of Monkton,
I thought, Maybe we'll stay for awhile and see how it turns out. Why go somewhere new to start all over again. Is that a sign of aging? I am almost 50. I am so close to 50 now. Soon I will say I am 50 years old. Many others in the school where the town meeting happened yesterday were about our age. The boomers acheiving critical mass. There were a few elders and some young people. A great acheivement was two local teachers who brought kids to town meeting and succeeded in keeping them quiet and observant. I don't know what they got out of it but I saw the kids watching us adults and seeing how we cared enough to show up and ask questions.
We left at noon,
just before the PM voting.
I was exhausted and had too much social exposure. I felt comfortable that the town was getting more skeptical. That the new comers were just what the Dr. ordered....Change Agents. The old ones and ways would die and a new town will emerge.
And we listened to Dirt Farmer again with our cat Captain chiming in-he loves the music and sing along time.
Captain is on the left. Sean is on the right.
They are oblivious to town meeting and primary results.
They really see life as it affects them.
This has been the latest stop on trip around the universe....Monkton, Vermont.
Have a great day wherever you are in the universe.
mary
Sparkling Snow**all rights reserved
by mary gerdt
It happened today,
when I thought some great thoughts,
that peace would come
and
all hunger would stop
and the sick would rejoice when their pain went away
and the lonely will find a friend and the sad will smile.
It happened.
The snow sparkled like never before.
Is that a start?
Just a quick note to say I have lifted some restrictions you may have found if you tried to post. I want others to post and you may have to register somehow but not as complicated as it was before. If you find it too hard to post at least think them outloud. I think the more controversial they are the quicker I will hear them.
Best wishes tonight and have a great weekend.
Summer Memories
Summer memories are warm and sweet. I wanted to share a poem even while fearing once I let it out I will be unable to ever outdo it in feeling and depth of myself immersed therein.
Coyote Night by Mary Gerdt * 2008 all rights reserved
When we walk down a road in the dark,
And the Coyotes are crying their mournful cry,
The smells of summer drift and hang in the valley
And little night birds chirp goodnight.
The stars peek out from the clouds of August mist
The moon hangs over the hills by home.
My memories fade to days gone by
When we looked at the nights from inside.
Now we walk on the path outside
Not afraid anymore.
While the coyotes cry.
Best wishes to you and yours.mary g
St. Valentine's Day in the US
Just another reason for chocolate for myself who seldom needs another reason for chocolate. In Vermont it has been a cold crisp day. Clear and sparkly after yesterday's sleet and snow. Many celebrated the day out to dinner but we prefer our own taco pie with salsa from 2006.
This holiday reminds me to do the seed order or at least begin making serious plans. Potato order has to be in soon-about a month. This holiday signifies the half way mark in February. That means we are halfway through the coldest month left this winter. This year some cruel rule made leap year add a year of cold snow ice to our life.
Lastly our friends to the south sent us a very interesting book titled The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto. I read it over and over. Fascinating. His website is a good intro and has a children's course. Just search for his name.
I wondered...if I thought great thoughts at the falling snow would the snow sparkle more? You might too after you read his stuff.
Thanks to Nancy for the reading suggestions. Always welcome.
AGRICULTURE
There is more to come under this heading. We like to have our garden and had our small self serve vegetable stand last summer. It really gave me pause to think about why the vagetables tasted so good here. And I gazed at the rocks and ledges above our garden. And I thought how the rain washes over all those rocks and tiny pieces are washed that feed the plants that make our food. And I realized that in a long long time that the entire farm would be eaten. I mean a looooong time. So in the short run even a little tiny bit, when you eat the vegetables we grow, you actually
EAT THE FARM.
Which is just a concept that came out of sitting on a nice summer day wondering about why our vegetables taste so good.
This is our new name so to speak when we refer to our farmstand.
When you taste fruit or vegetables now or meat if you are so inclined, consider the farm that fed it. Is it a place you would put in your mouth? Because you are.
Thanks and have a great day!
