I was just getting various seeds prepped to do sprout sketches/studies (when they're ready, of course), placing them on a table under the window in the dining room, when I noticed something: this little room is sort of like a living "self-portrait" of me.
On the bay window sill are potted plants, mostly spider plants, all of which came from a single, 4-leafed plant that stayed that way for the 3 years it was in a dimly-lit lodge of ours, but later went ballistic with babies (many of whom have found homes throughout the county). A couple of the plants are in mosaic pots made by a friend who's loved me (and whom I miss keenly); the mosaics were applied using antique pottery shards she found while mining an old farm "dump".
Two other pots hold the dormant (I hope!) forms of vincas from seeds my stepmom had on her counter the spring day she died. Even after 10 years, the seeds were viable enough. Being hybrids, even outdoors and open-pollinated they formed no seeds, so this may be their "only chance" of propogating, if they can do so by sending out shoots.
I'm an incurable naturalist, so I have not only a regular dried cob of corn, but a very immature one beside it, showing some of the mysteries of how cobs look while they form. A small horse hoof-shaped tree lichen I found shares the antique plate on which the corn cobs sit. I've prepped some zip bags of various seeds in damp paper towels to draw closeups from when they emerge.
Canning jars await nearby, because soon it'll be time to freshen the sap buckets and tap the maple trees we've found to see if this will be a better sugaring year than 2009. In our most bountiful year, 10 buckets were put out, 400 gallons of sap collected, making for 10 gallons of syrup cooked down. Last couple years, though, 20+ buckets were out, and only 120 gallons of sap (3 gal syrup yield). Even Maple Grove, the brand in the store, regretfully had to do without selling online, as there wasn't enough supply. Even store brand real maple syrup is holding steady at what amounts to $80/gallon.
$ aside, though, it's a tasty dance, scrunching atop the snow on snowshoes to tap the trees, the evergreen smell from the dry pine to feed the portable barrel stove Clueless designed, the mingling smells a couple hours after the stove is lit: pine fire, sweet sap boiling, the hot-metal smell chimney turning orange with the heat and the regular creaking of its expansion as it heats (or shrinking as it cools when the day's boiling is done). All mixed with the sweet smell of the air that's like the taste of the fresh mountain water springs.
Every sugar season is a mystery; no one seems to know what a tree needs to make sap happen in a big way. Last couple of years, with record snows, the tree bases were shaded from the sun, but the run was different tree to tree, no matter how much snow on their base, sun on their backs, whether in or out of a swamp. The only 'rule' that's universal with them is they want cold nights and 'warm' days (Clueless could tell you if trees also prefer wind or not).
Back to the dining room part of the "portrait", though. It's on that table I push my pencil to make lines to color in with paint, pen and ink, and/or other pencils.
In all, if the props in the dining room tell anything at all about me, at my core I have every reason to hope, and tinker, and know that this world is more full of mysteries and discoveries to be unveiled than I'll ever live on earth long enough to personally behold.
I only know for sure that if I pause long enough, now and then, to look closely at the surroundings outside, I may perchance see either a short-eared owl (or a broad-shouldered hawk, can't tell which yet) swoop into that big hemlock, or the flock of a dozen turkeys make their rounds getting driveway sand for their crops, or a swooping flock of juncos huddling against the house out of the wind, sunlight blazing off the white birch tree bark or sweeping ultramarine blue shadows across the field.
I am truly blessed not only with all that "company", but to be married well with my soulmate, Clueless, who in no small part makes joy in my life possible. Nay, inevitable.
