Monday Farm Photos

The Muscovy ducklings have hatched! We are so excited. There are six of them. It was hard to get a good look at them due to the very protective parents - Green Tea and Mae Belle. They kept moving them into the protective cover of a Leyland Cypress tree. Aren't they the sweetest, fluffiest creatures ever?
If Jesse hadn't (justifiably) insisted on getting on with our day, I would probably still be there, sneaking under the branches for a peek.

Gillen was very Huck Finn/farmboy this morning. Jesse wasn't. I like this picture that shows their different moods that moment. I confess - part of what I like is that they both saw it and decided that they want a hair trim. That never happens!

All this writing and research about bees had me noticing the pollinators:

Local crash

I was going to prepare a local-only lunch yesterday (right at the deadline), of omelette and vegetables. Instead we had a local car crash which took my attention.

A furious thunderstorm suddenly blew in yesterday afternoon, right after Gillen had gone bike riding in the neighborhood with a neighbor. Immediately, Nicolas drove out into the deluge to go rescue them. About five minutes later, a drenched Gillen had returned. After fifteen more minutes, Nicolas still hadn't come back. Finally, I got a phone call. He had been in a wreck. He had left the house without his license and needed me to bring it to him.

Jesse and I drove in Nicolas' van to the wrong wreck (there were three that happened during that fifteen-minute storm). In the wake of that wreck, the two cars seemed to have been deposited into a giant trash compactor. Jesse got hysterical. I rolled down the window and confirmed with the cop, for Jesse, that neither of those cars were our dark green Toyota. Jesse and I are still talking about what we saw and are sending good thoughts to the victims and families of that crash.

This was good preparation for finally finding Nicolas. He was fine. The other guy was upset (it was his dying dad's car), but physically fine. Our sweet car was carried off by a tow truck. We had just paid off that car and just put a lot of money into maintenance. But Gillen was safe. Nicolas was safe. The farm was not damaged by the storm. What's a hunk of steel compared with that.

Camps

Last year, the kids did a few day camps and loved them so this year they enthusiastically signed up for many more. I'm glad that they get this chance in the summer to try lots of new things.

Jesse just finished three weeks of camp in a row. Gillen was with him at this last one - circus camp. On Friday, I got to go to their circus. Gillen took to the air:


This fantastic ring master MC'd the event. There was a Beatlemania theme and there were lots of tiny people dressed as fairies and clowns dancing and leaping about. Those were two highlights for me.
Jesse rode a unicycle! He got by with a little help from his friends ; )This was the end of Jesse's first week of day camp, a nature camp that Gillen has loved for years. This was Jesse's favorite this year, as well. The orange-shirted boy in the middle is Logan, Jesse's best friend.
Yes, we are in Georgia and that looked like some serious worshiping but they are actually doing "the funky dance" for the parents. Their mascot that week was the screech owl.
Here is Jesse at the end of his week of theater camp. He turned eight on the last day of camp so was with the young group of actors who were five through seven. In this riveting production of Robin Hood, they played the skunks. The skunks main role was to sit silently back stage, awaiting their two entrances. Jesse was really annoyed with the boy to his right in the picture, who passed the time by jabbing Jesse. This boy was the main topic of conversation in every birthday call he had with relatives who called. Jesse can't wait to do theater camp next year as an eight year old, with lines.
I'm glad to have him home next week to just chill out before more camps.

The O'Riley Bees - a few paragraphs

Yesterday I hit the maaaad (as in crazy) part of this month long writing challenge. As I had earlier in the week, I got sucked into the research. This time I was looking up a few bee breeding and island facts and google filled my head and a pad of paper with way more than I needed to know. The book that Chris Baty wrote about this challenge recommended not allowing yourself to go to more than a few pages for research at a time. I see why.

In trying to find a few paragraphs to post here, I also ignored another cardinal rule, which is - don't reread what you have written. It started to make me a bit crazy last night to see how many inconsistencies have developed as my plot twists and turns. So I stopped looking for good paragraphs and am just going to post a few of the first paragraphs.

On an unseasonably pleasant day in July, on their Western Massachusetts farm, dusk was falling. Finn was picking the Brandywines and whistling a Flogging Molly tune to himself. He started singing, “If I ever leave this world alive,” carefully piling the giant heirloom tomatoes into an old bushel basket. He paused to take a bite of an overly ripe Brandywine, using the back of his hand to sop up the juice on his chin.

“Oh you don’t leave it alive, boy, but you do leave it with a sense of humor, if you’re lucky.” This was followed by a deep and bouncing laugh. "What is he doing harvesting in that shirt? What a mighty strange looking fellow.” The accent was Irish.

Finn dropped the Brandywine and looked around. No one was there.
“What? Who? Hello?” he stammered.

“You hear me?” came the cracking, surprised voice. This time, Finn was sure that it had come from the tomatoes. He squatted down and tentatively started searching for the hidden body, suddenly remembering the time when he was very small and talked to the fairies, right here at what was then his grandmother’s farm. At least, that is how his grandmother had described it when she’d come upon him in conversation. He had never seen anyone back then and had assumed, in retrospect, that he’d had a really vivid imagination. But now, he found himself searching for a little person, wondering if the Irish brogue could be coming from.. no, could he even let himself think it - a leprechaun? He moved aside a few of the branches, peering between the tomato cages, his feet grounded and ready to spring back if anything should appear.

“I didn’t meant to scare ya. I’ve never had a living talk back to me.” came the voice again, this time from a tomato bed a few feet in front of the one where Finn was crawling.

Finn froze, starting to feel wary of actually finding someone. What did he mean, “a living”. A living what? He was living, so that meant the voice was not? Then it occurred to him. It was the tomatoes! The Brandywines were talking to him. He picked one up and held it for a bit before quietly saying, “hello?”

And alright, because I happen to love one of my characters, Beatrice, this is from much later:

Once Finn and Beatrice had exited the bus, Finn had no idea where they should go. When he had only had a bee in a box to take care of he had assumed that he and Paddy would simply sleep on the beach. It was Newport. There must be a beach, right? But now that Beatrice was his traveling companion he didn’t know what to think. Did she have a plan? Was he supposed to follow her? He couldn’t imagine being away from her, even for the night. He adjusted the straps on his red backpack and stood looking up at the stars, hoping that she would say something. For an agonizing minute she just stood next to him, quietly watching the sky as well. All of the other passengers had collected their luggage and walked off to the station or towards the line of taxis, before Beatrice softly broke the silence.

“I hope the weather stays this mild. Bees can’t travel through rain and they are also handicapped by extreme heat. I think the weather will stay with them.” Beatrice turned to Finn, smiling. “Shall we get something to eat? I could eat a whole bushel of my auntie’s corn, slathered in butter. But I’ll settle for whatever they’ve got here.”

The buzzing of bees, the chirping of chicks, the silence of kids away

Gillen and Jesse are in a circus camp this week. I had said that they couldn't be in it because it is an hour commute each way to get them there, but friends whose boys were also taking the camp offered to keep them with them for several days. They are loving it. They call every night with stories about aerial moves and learning to unicycle and they are getting along great with the other boys with whom they are staying. This means that there are four boys there. Under one small roof. It was a very generous offer and I will return the favor.

The quiet here is vast. I do like it, for this brief amount of time. I am getting so much written. And I am not alone. There are the Gillen poults that are in a cage on our side porch (well, only one is left, but he is very loud). There are bees drinking from Gillen's garden pond:and Irish bees, specifically Maude and Paddy, buzzing in my head.

There is sweet, loving Fracas. And camera shy Tuki-dog, who is my constant companion, sometimes lying on my feet while I type.

I won't be sorry when the boy noise returns. I don't always love their noise, but with the noise comes the boys.

"One Local Summer" Challenge

Jesse was responsible for the most innovative contribution to this week's all local meal. He has been wanting to cook lately, but rarely from a cookbook, usually only from his head. This time his idea turned out to be delicious. He talked all week about stuffing burgers with vegetables. On Friday, I helped him do it. He searched through the fridge for every vegetable he could find, all of which came from the farm, so it worked out well for the challenge. He found parsley, chives, English peas (which he shelled), and carrots. There were big, beautiful sweet onions but he wanted nothing to do with those. So I chopped those up and mixed them with leftover farm potatoes and broccoli into something like hash browns. These onions, cooked, make even the oldest leftovers taste good.

We used ground pork for the burgers. It was from Riverview Farms.

We also had a strawberry smoothie this week made with local frozen strawberries and local milk and we had our first blackberries of the year.The most exciting new farm vegetable (ok, fruit) that ripened in time to appear at our local-only dinner was the Heirloom Black Krim Tomato!

Jesse

I should be plugging away at the book, since I spent the past many hours hanging out with my kids instead of writing, but I am feeling sentimental and have to write a tribute to Jesse before I can go back to my story of the bees.

Eight years ago today, I was talking to my second babe, who was still in the womb. I was telling him that this might be a really good time to get this show started, to begin the moving and shaking that would commence his natural descent from my body into the world. As with his brother, I had reached that doctor deadline of two weeks past my due date the day before. I had a nurse-midwife and had thought that she would be more flexible. But instead, she scared me with her fear. She talked about the possibilities of there not being enough amniotic fluid and of all of the things that could go wrong should I choose to wait for contractions to begin. I agreed to allowing something to be placed near my cervix over night, to soften it. Nothing happened, other than some reactions of the staff to the funny heart rates Jesse showed on their monitors. I was bullied into another c-section. At least this one wasn't preceded by four days of labor. I set a precedent at the hospital by taking a stand about the nursing. I made them agree to holding Jesse next to me, allowing him to nurse while they sewed me up. My arms were pinned down so I couldn't touch him but it made such a big difference having those moments with him, feeling him successfully drink my milk, before being wheeled off to recovery, away from my baby for the next two hours.

This boy is uniquely wise. He is a story teller and game creator and a seeker of magic. He is passionate about what interests him and sensitive to others' needs. He is honest and thoughtful and curious.

I love you more and more Jesse. Happy Birthday.

Words

Shanna, an artist, created this silhouette of me and I created the background. This was a few weeks ago when I was first thinking about the novel writing challenge. I realized today that it is an accurate visual of who I am right now (including the horn at the top, which is also the curl on the top of my forehead). My head is filled with broad strokes, small moments, Irish music, the bees of my story and the somewhat neglected bees in my yard, exciting storms and passionate chemistry, too much chatter and not enough silence.

I've written ten chapters and over 18,000 words in the past 12 days but am still 2,000 words behind where I'd like to be by now. But that's O.K. While getting behind, I was discovering a wonderfully useful but horrifically true article about GMOs, about the Irish potato famine and about bees, all of which are in some way in my book. Doesn't it sound like light reading? The article is not, but I am hoping the book will be.

I met a really interesting columnist the other night at the GA Organics event. She is wonderful with words. She writes a column called woman to woman that compares a conservative woman's point of view on a topic to that of a liberal woman- the woman I met - Andrea Sarvady. We talked the other night about how unusual it is for women to get into it with other women about politics or religion. Men are much more likely, in person, to duke it out and try to convince the other guy that they are right. Women do it more anonymously I think, via blogs or email.

Lastly, I saw a film last night that was very quiet and moving called The Secret life of Words. Tim Robbins is in it and he is so different than in anything else I've ever seen him in. I liked it a lot.

"One Local Summer" Challenge

Purple potatoes:



Last night we had grilled local pork chops, with broccoli and potatoes from the farm. We missed butter. Gillen missed barbecue sauce. But not so much. It was all so fresh and flavorful.

On Tues., there is a local GA Organics event happening at Restaurant Eugene. It is a five course local meal with wine pairings and a meet and greet with farmers - so Nicolas and I will get to be there. Five courses at Restaurant Eugene. yum!

Jesse's Birthday Party

Jesse turns eight next week but will be in a play that day after doing a theater camp all week. His schedule is packed this month! So we celebrated him, with three other families, yesterday.

He wanted no theme this year, just milk shakes and cup cakes. Half the cup cakes had chocolate frosting and half had vanilla. We bought lots of candy with which to decorate them. For a bit, while the candy was still intact in bowls on the table, the cupcakes were laid out and I had the vanilla, strawberry and chocolate milk shakes shaking, I felt deliciously special, like an oompa loopa in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. There is nothing like a strawberry milk shake made with local, fresh strawberries, or an unexpected mojita made by Mindy with mint collected from the neighbor's back yard. Our time together was so sweet that we all were still hanging out at 11pm. We toasted Jesse for bringing us all together. It was a good day.

Here's the birthday guy after showing up to his party with Claudia and her family. She took my boys fishing all morning so I could bake and clean. He and Gillen jumped right in the pool with their clothes on. So far, it's been the hottest June I've ever known.

Notice Gillen making plans for the candy.

There was a spontaneous Pokemon card hunt at one point. Jared found a horse shoe which inspired a game of horse shoes for the dads.

Gillen and Sophie exchanging jokes at 11:00. Sophie is wearing a hat identical to the one I wear when I write. I sent her home with this one. I had two and was glad to give it to a fellow writer. She too is writing a book. The day after, I've just gotten my coffee and Nicolas is already vacuuming. I am so lucky. I do know this.

Madnowrimo

That is the way in which my friend Helen referred to this crazy lone-wolf pursuit of mine to write a novel in thirty days. It isn't really nanowrimo, as I am not doing it in November with all of the good support of the usual national novel writing participants.

It is Madnowrimo - meaning one of several things, depending on the hour:

1. Madeline's novel writing month
2. Mad (as in utterly insane) for choosing to write a novel this month
3. Madly (as in obsessively, but with a joyful skipping-through-the -flower-fields-and-glens feeling) novel-writing this month
4. Mad for not writing in the same month as inspiring people like Alecto and Jessica.
   
5. Mad no wri' mo'!
   

So far, in the brief four and a half days I have been doing this, it has mostly felt like #3. But there have also been moments of #2.

I read that the first week is always a breeze compared to the rest of the month. Once I am in week three I can imagine being reduced to a blubbering, barely audible #5, all of the words I have heard of in my entire life having been used up in the previous days' word counts, my brain a warped, gray, plastic tub of sour grape jelly.

As for the story, I usually don't know what is going to happen next and that is exciting. So far, the book is about a fourteen year old, Flogging Molly-loving farmer-boy named Finn, a somewhat bewildered Irish ghost who starved to death in the potato famine of 1849, and a quest to find Finn's missing father who may have the answer to the bees' Colony Collapse Disorder, but could also be the reason that the African bees were released in Brazil, thus having caused the beginning of Aricanized killer bee colonies that have reached the United States.

I am writing while Jesse is in day camp, for several hours every day. Yesterday, with Gillen gone those hours as well, I stayed at the computer and forgot to eat anything but chocolate and was a depleted mess by dinner time.

The writing is so much fun that I could imagine doing it on a regular basis, even if just to then read it to my children. But with them around, the words don't make themselves heard so loudly. The words don't like interruptions. So I am enjoying this now for all it's worth.

A Picture of Obama, From My Sister in Montana

My sister Bhu took this photograph a few weeks ago when Barack Obama came to speak in Bozeman, MT. I just heard that his win in Montana clinched it. He is now the official nominee for the democratic party. It's a pretty exciting moment, historically. As he said, "this teaches the American children that the oval office is within anyone's reach." I do hope that it is in within his reach. I'm glad that my sister's lens was in reach to get this great picture.

A Flickr Meme

1. madeline in london, 2. Lobster time.., 3. Booklet, 4. reaching out ........., 5. ewan-mcgregor-04, 6. The Intoxicating Allure of Indigo Booze, 7. Stretching... ♫♫, 8. Crème Brûlée, 9. What does the future hold?, 10. laughing children, 11. Prenent un Bany. Taking a Bath., 12. Mosaic Plant

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name? Madeline
2. What is your favorite food? lobster
3. What high school did you go to? BB&N
4. What is your favorite color? Periwinkle Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Ewan McGregor
6. Favorite drink? Dirty Martini, up (I only drink it about once a year, but mmmm)
7. Dream vacation? Bali and Japan
8. Favorite dessert? Creme Brulee
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Fearless
10. What do you love most in life? children's laughter
11. One Word to describe you. Interested.
12. Your flickr name.


My friend Helen passed this one along. Since I had fulfilled my 1660 word count for the day this was a fun change of pace the first day of the writing challenge. It was excruciating finishing my word count last night. I was using chocolate not as a reward at the end of sections but rather as a way to keep me awake. I get to start earlier today so it shouldn't be so challenging. My pink crown, green plastic bracelet and blaring writing soundtrack will keep it fun.

If you do this meme (anyone know what meme means?), please post about it so that I can see your results.

One Local Summer

Every Sunday, all summer long, I will be posting about a meal that we eat that consists of all locally produced food. Everything in the meal, but for oil and seasonings, has to be produced within a 100 mile radius of home. This link will bring you to all of the One Local Summer participants' blog posts, which will be posted there by Tuesday.

Our first meal consisted of hamburgers, salad and roasted vegetables. The grass-fed beef came from our friends at Riverview Farms in Ranger, GA. The salad lettuces and the boiled beets that were cooled and then mixed into the salad came from our farm. The roasted beets, garlic, carrots and onions were from our farm. The turnips (so sweet when roasted), and the radishes in the salad came from Gillen and Jesse's backyard farm. The potatoes were from a friend down the street.
Everyone contributed to the preparation. Gillen and Jesse collected their vegetables. Nicolas drove to the farm, five minutes away, to collect the rest of the vegetables. Once we realized that we couldn't use any of our condiments on the burgers, I thought of a cheese-free pesto that we could make with our basil and garlic. I thought of it, but didn't make it. (I was busy starting a novel. : ) Gillen and Nicolas generously made it, with a cheese version put aside for later in the week.

For dessert we had plums from our farm and strawberries from another local farmer. Gillen ate his strawberries dipped in organic, raw milk that was produced by a local dairy.

We included Tuki in our local feast. She got her own burger.But not enough.


While I did the dishes, I listened to last year's annual "poultry slam" episode of "This American Life", about the tiny bird that is described as representing the soul of France. It is illegal to eat it anymore. Mitterand ate it as part of a huge last meal feast, thinking he was going to die, and when he didn't die he refused to eat again for the next eight days, until he finally did die. The narrator of the NPR story described eating it himself and how conscious and silent he had to be in order to eat it. It is Act Two of the episode. It made me think about how unconscious we all are so much of the time when we eat. We talk a lot about this as a family and as members of Slow Food. Tonight, we were made more conscious of what local really means. We missed our condiments and thought about how much work will go into making them all ourselves. And we talked about what a luxury it is to have this farm and our honey bees and to know local farmers who raise meat.

Later, the farmers hoed, staked the tomatoes and spread fertilizer in the backyard farm, and we talked about what they'll have grown by the end of the summer.
Anyone in the Atlanta area who is interested in getting more local produce, we are part of a large group of organic farmers who sell our produce every Sat. morning at the Morningside Farmers Market. Here is a national web site that can help you to find the local resources near you.

Procrastination

Tomorrow is:

-the first day of counting the words I write, towards 50,000 words by the end of June.
-the first of my One Local Summer blog posts about eating a meal made up of all locally produced food.
-the annual, local Hummingbird Festival.

I had imagined knowing many more details (at least the middle and the end of the story) about my novel, by today, the day before I start this gargantuan undertaking. I have an image. It is a picture of Gillen at the farm looking, from a distance, like he is talking to the vegetables. My idea is that he is actually answering some humorous ancestral ghosts who are going to get him to help out a relationship that is in trouble...or have him find the treasure that will save his family... or set him straight about life and the pursuit of happiness, or all three. I read the book that Chris Baty, the originator of nanowrimo, wrote, which is filled with hints about how to succeed. Once I had read that too much preparation was a big mistake, and that giving myself the right music, lots of snacks and much caffeine could be helpful, I knew that this was the right kind of writing project for me. I need pressure, and crazy small goals, and delicious incentive. I will be telling myself that I can have that Green and Black's chocolate at the end of one more page, or that I can run screaming into the night and onto the trampoline, or, more likely, pass out on the nearby bed only once I reach the day's word count goal.

I wrote my high school senior paper, a loooong one that we were given half of the school year to work on, in three days. I was doing a lot of theater and had a job and "Dynasty" was on tv. This was, of course, way before computers. No rough draft. Lots of white-out. I fell asleep on my typewriter before I'd hit the finish. My glorious mother, I kid you not, lied to the school and told them that her mother had died (her mother was not part of our lives, they were estranged, but still...) thereby buying me a few more hours. It provided just the extra hour or so I needed to reach deep and come up smelling like roses, even though I had red ridges and wrinkles on my face from the typewriter keys and seemed strangely O.K. for having just lost my grandmother. I got a B+. I don't think that my ultra-serious high-school prep. school, whose graduates mostly ended up in Harvard, Radcliffe or Yale, graded based on sympathy votes. But, I really could be wrong.

A dangerous precedent was set.

Audition preparation in NY, college papers, birthday cards, handmade gifts, even going into labor - nothing gets my creativity and productivity moving like being on the deadline.

I shouldn't make light of this major character flaw. It quietly concerns me when one of my children shows signs of being the same way. But it's too late to change it before this latest endeavor. Plus, the same trait has produced amazing results for my successful siblings ...

Hopefully, I'll just post a few hummingbirds and local food pictures tomorrow and will save my words for the novel. If I am writing here, it means only one thing - procrastination. Tell me to go clean my refrigerator.


I have wanted to write a book ever since I was seven and wrote stories on yellow legal pads at our kitchen table. I need to remember that. This is supposed to be fun. It will be fun. Maybe I can make it to the thrift store today and find a hat that makes me feel like I did at seven.

Ms. Whit.

Ms. Whit. is actually Mrs. Cornelia Whitten but when we first met her, about twenty-five years ago, my then six-year-old brother christened her "Ms. Whit", and it stuck. She was the chaperon who came with my father and brother (two of the several times, I went as well) on overseas trips when we were young. My mother, no longer his wife, had insisted that my father bring someone responsible with him. Ms. Whit's husband had just died and she had never traveled outside of Georgia. My father had money, liked to drink, was young and was adventurous. That first summer, Kenneth was six, precocious and already had a life goal of being chairman of the world. It could have been disastrous. Instead, it was so magical that the trips continued for years and would probably still be happening if there were funds to pay for them.

Yesterday, my father, my boys and I visited Ms. Whit at her home to watch the Braves game together. I didn't bring my camera but have this recent picture that my sister took of her: She is 103. She lives in a wing of her daughter's home and has her own entrance. I have visited her a few times every year but have never asked her as many questions as I did today. I found out, for the first time, that she was one of six children who lost their mother when the mother was only thirty-nine. The day that her mother died, of cancer, her father remarried and proceeded to have ten more children. Cornelia and her siblings lived with her grandmother. I asked if she liked being with her grandmother and she said, "Ohhhh, yes! She dressed in old lady...(here she couldn't find the word) something or others, and she could tell a good joke." I asked if she remembered any of the jokes. She did! Here is her grandmother's joke:

There was a man who had a wife and six children. Often, in the evening, he would go out. When his wife asked him, "Where are you going?" he would answer, "That's a bone for you to chew on." This kept happening. Years later, the wife got sick and called the man to her death bed. "One of our six children has a different father", she told him. "Which one?" he asked in shock. She answered, "That's a bone for you to chew on."

Ms. Whit raised an eyebrow and gave a great little ironic smile before bursting into her familiar high, woodpecker laugh. I was overjoyed that she had remembered the whole thing.

I asked her about her health. She said that aside from a swollen ankle, that had just started bothering her that week, she had nothing to complain about. She is supposed to keep that leg lifted but for the most part can't be bothered with that instruction. She has a hearing aid but can still read books, watch every Braves game and she likes to look at her old journals and photograph albums from her trips to the Far East and to Europe. She has "no inner pains, whatsoever." Going to the hair dresser and leaning her head back to have her hair washed started to make her dizzy, so she washes her own hair, alone, in her sink at home. She said that after hitting one hundred, she stopped caring so much about her hair. Now she "combs it and lets it do its thing".

We have a massage therapist who greatly helps Nicolas and I with our many aches and pains. I asked her if she wanted a massage. Her response was that she massages her son-in-law, all the time. He lays down on her floor and puts his foot in her lap and she massages it or she massages his neck - has done it for years. She mentioned that she'd been worried that he was too rough when she first met him but now she just loves him to death. Then she said, "What would I need with a massage?" and laughed that bubbly laugh.

Yesterday, I was wearing my "No Worries" shirt that I bought in Australia. I think I should add a picture of her onto the back, her laughter highlighting the beautiful life lines of her face.