One of my favorite Saturday activities is whipping up a smoothie for myself in the early morning hours. It’s so fun and easy. I use almond butter, almond milk, ripe bananas, and organic frozen strawberries. In the lamplight before dawn, I like to sit with …
On Sundays, Rob and I love to cook big vegetarian feasts. They take all afternoon to make and usually include country-fried seitan steaks, mashed potatoes, cornbread, field peas or butter beans, sautéed kale, and my Not-Too-Sweet Sweet Potato Casserole. I wanted to share the casserole …
The other day I went back to Lake Hall, a place that was my home away from home when I was a kid. I brought my camera and walked around and took pictures and thought about old times. Lake Hall is a small freshwater lake at Maclay Gardens State Park in Tallahassee, and, in the seventies, Mom would take my sister Kris and me there to swim nearly every morning in the summer.
Lake Hall lies at the bottom of a gentle hill shaded by venerable old trees—tremendous live oaks, pines, and sweetgums. Sheltered picnic tables dot the hill, and along the edge of the lake’s swimming area gleams a white sandy beach. There’s a parking lot at the top of the hill, and, back in the seventies, as soon as Mom parked, Kris and I would jump out of the car, run down the hill, and plunge into the water.
We’d get to the lake early, before any other people had arrived. At that quiet hour, the lake and its surroundings seemed very peaceful, like an empty church, and sometimes in the sand we’d see tracks left behind by raccoons and other nocturnal animals. Once a park ranger showed us alligator tracks—the marks left by the gator’s broad tail and funny little feet. I don’t remember feeling scared or worried by this revelation, but I do remember feeling a sort of wonder. The morning sky was still gray, and silver mist was rising from the lake’s calm surface. The ranger told us he was monitoring the alligator and knew that it had left the area and so, he said, it was safe to swim.
The water was cool in the mornings and had a sweet, special smell and taste. Yellow waterlilies floated at the edges of the swimming area, near thick beds of reeds where herons and egrets stalked. The lake was ringed by lush woods, and back then, when I was a child, no McMansions marred the view.
Kris and I usually stayed close to the shore, in the shallow water, which was a lovely chartreuse color and where, as the day progressed, the sun lit the ripples and made glowing, honeycomb-like patterns on the lake’s sandy bottom. We shared the water with little gold and silver fish that would sometimes like to nibble your toes in a delicate, tickling fashion.
Mom couldn’t swim, so she rarely got wet. Instead, she’d sit on the shore, under the giant, moss-draped live oaks, and watch us swim, enjoying, as she always said, “that nice cool breeze” that came off the lake. Mom thought the lake was so beautiful. I think it was her favorite place in all the world. Once Joanie, my aunt, my father’s sister, promised to paint a picture of the lake for Mom, and Mom dreamed about the painting for a long time until, I guess, she accepted that it wasn’t ever really going to materialize.
Kris and I would swim and play in the lake for the entire morning, until Mom called us to go home. What did we do exactly? Well, nothing—and everything. Most of my memories of Lake Hall are sensory impressions—the sound of a hawk crying, the sight of a swimming turtle, the feeling of the clean white sand underfoot. . . . Often Kris and I were just hanging out, observing, soaking in the details. We’d go underwater with our masks on and watch the eelgrass sway, or we’d float on our backs and look up at the clouds. It was so nice to have time to simply experience nature, to rejoice in its beauty and ponder its mysteries.
I spent the last two weeks of February reorganizing the back bedroom. Every night after work I’d hurry home, eager to get started. I’d change into my comfy fleece pajamas and socks and sit on the rug in front of the bed to sort through …
I took last Friday off and had another long weekend. Hooray! “I have so much to do!” I said to Rob on Thursday night. “Well, you won’t be able to get to it all,” Rob warned kindly. “But I’m going to try!” I said. Here …
Last Monday at my lunch hour I ran over to Rabbit Creek, a great new antique mall in Tallahassee, and bought a rocking chair and footstool I’d had my eye on for a while. The owner of the booth where I found the chair was sitting in the store doing some paperwork when I came in to make my purchase.
He said, “That chair was sold to me by a 76-year-old lady, and it’s got its original upholstery.”
“I’ll take it!” I said.
And I hauled the chair and footstool to my car and raced back to work. (I’m always rushing now that I’m in the office five days a week once again and have such a long commute. I feel like a hamster stuck in a wheel.)
I couldn’t wait for the weekend to come so I’d have time to arrange my new finds in the back bedroom. On Friday night when I got home from work, I was ecstatic. I love being at home—and I had a precious, rare, wonderful three-day weekend ahead of me! That evening I merrily cleaned the back bedroom, preparing the way for the new rocking chair. I scrubbed the floor and waxed the furniture and removed unbelievable amounts of cat fur from the premises.
The cats were having fun too, because I was moving furniture around and they found all the action very exciting. To make room for the rocking chair, I moved the ugly old chaise lounge out of the bedroom and into the hall temporarily. June, Carl, Tellie, and Frankie thought this was an awesome home improvement and spent the whole evening scratching the chaise and snuggling on it.
I quit cleaning at eight so Rob and I could watch The Pale Blue Eye, a mystery thriller involving a fictional version of the young Edgar Allan Poe when he was a student at West Point in 1830. The movie was beautiful to look at, with most scenes taking place in snowy woods, and shadowy interiors lit only by candles and glowing fireplaces. Becky slept on my lap, and Buntin bathed herself on Rob’s lap as we sat in our chairs in the cozy living room.
“This is so great,” I said to Rob. “Sitting here with you and the cats. Eating popcorn. Wearing my pajamas. I’m really loving everything about it. I just wish it wouldn’t be over so fast.”
The next morning I was up long before dawn, cleaning the back bedroom again. I cleaned it from top to bottom, then got the new rocking chair and footstool into their proper positions.
“They look perfect,” I said to myself, admiring my new additions.
I took some quick pictures. Ha! But then, immediately, I had to completely cover/smother the chair and footstool in quilts to protect them from the cats, whose favorite hobby is, of course, destroying everything in the house.
On Saturday I made a new improvement to the back bedroom. When Rob went out to get his hair cut, I ran up to Bainbridge, Georgia, and bought an old doctor’s cabinet I’d seen at Sharon House Antiques. Bainbridge is a little town 20 miles …
For years I’d been bothered by a certain little spot in the yard, a weedy, unkempt area at the base of the giant spruce pine that grows by the living room windows. Every time I’d walk past it, I’d say to myself, “Boy, that looks …
I wanted to show you a few more pictures of my pond garden. This is a garden I’ve really struggled to get right. Rob and I built the pond in 2010, and I’ve been working on the surrounding garden ever since.
The garden is contained inside a picket fence painted dark green to blend in with the foliage. In the early morning you’ll often see fresh dainty sandy footprints running up the pickets—evidence that raccoons have been to the pond for a moonlight visit.
A stone path encircles the pond. The path is homemade (made by me) and has something of the scrap quilt about it since I used bits of stone left over from other paths to complete it. I cobbled it together from small, mismatched pieces in various colors—silver, gray, brown, white, tan, and orange. Very recently I outlined the path with chunks of field stone, which gave it a fancy look that reminds me of dribble decorations on a sandcastle.
The plants in the pond garden are plentiful and include all my usual favorites: ferns, Indian pinks, golden ragwort, camellias, sasanquas, coonties, beautyberry, and needle palm. The garden is shaded by water oaks, a white oak, some pawpaws, and a big leucothoe.
I have quite a collection of garden ornaments—small statues, birdhouses, birdbaths, seashells, and other doodads. I think it’s fun to hide these neat things in nooks and crannies and corners, like treasures for you to find. Tucked under the fern fronds and among the tree roots are a concrete squirrel, two elves, a couple of gnomes, a lamb, two bunnies (one life-size and the other quite gigantic), a duck, and four owls. Real creatures mingle with the fake ones. I often see a mockingbird perched on the tall ears of the giant bunny statue.
The pond garden is a peaceful, quiet place—a refuge. When you open the gate, you’re entering into a separate, secret little world. Lush plants block the view of everything outside. You can’t see anything ugly—not the nearby road or the passing cars or the power lines. The other day I was sitting in the pond garden, hidden by ferns, drinking a blackberry smoothie. The frogs were croaking, and the goldfish were glistening and glowing in the sun. A squirrel poked her head out of the tin-roofed birdhouse, then hopped out and ran up a nearby water oak tree. I’d been working from home and was on my lunch break, and it really was a break—not just from work but from all the craziness of the human world.
