Country Diary of a Lady: 02/17/2014

It has been snowing again, today.  At times, it feels like it has been snowing forever.  And at times, it seems as though the snow will never end.  That winter will just go on forever.

It has come to that point in the season, where I have begun to long for the changing of the seasons, the warmth and the wet of spring.  The days when you can smell the changes in the air, the sun warmed dirt, the smell of green things beginning to push their way up through the soil.

That is what we love about spring.  The sense of everything coming alive again.  Though up here, in the Northwoods, they tend to call it “mud season.”

But, that is a ways off.  Tonight I rejoiced in the 17 degrees we were above zero!  And the beauty, the pure and pristine glory that is a fresh fall of snow.  For it blankets the world, it bedecks the tree branches turning them into magical creatures.  Reminds me of Cinderella as her Fairy Godmother turns her ragged dress into a gorgeous ball gown.  There is nothing quite like a pine all gowned in white.

Tonight, as I sit quiet and comfortable in my little blue house, my mind is spinning in circles.  For I have been delving into promising material for my next book.  Russian Folk Tales!  Oh how interesting they are.  Good think I already have a country based off of Russian Culture within my world.  I must decide which tales to focus on though, for they are all so interesting and many of them have a darkness to them that would be very easy to turn into a novel, it provides enough details and good enough villains to set up truly convincing stories.  And that is what I seek, when I look.  And with that little teaser, I shall leave you.  Good night snowy world.  May you wake to the brilliance of sunshine on pristine snow!

Country Diary of a Lady: 02/10/2014

I seem to go through moments when I totally doubt myself.  Don't know what brings this on, maybe the time of year or day or anything.

I made my first ever Lemon Meringue Pie today.  We'll see how it tastes tonight.  But as I was waiting for my egg whites to stiffen for the meringue, I felt so entirely conflicted, and I wasn't sure why.  I guess it's just that I feel like I don't have any plans, that I don't know what is going to happen next, that I feel like I don't know what path I'm on, or even if I'm on a path.

And yet I know God has been taking me down the exact path that he wants me to be on.  Even if I make stupid choices and go down a particular fork that he'd rather I didn't take, he is still there with me ready to help me deal with the darkness that I am bound to encounter.

The point being, while I was making the pie, I was in the moment.  I was mixing the shortening and butter into the flour and salt, working the dough with my bare hands, whisking the lemon mixture in the pan as it thickened, adding the egg yolks to give it the color and richness.  And I loved every moment of it.

Then, almost like the beater in the mixing bowl, as it spun around in it's circles, my mind began to circle.  The whole "What are you doing with your life" type question popping up.

I love to cook, I love to bake, I love growing flowers and embroidering and making costumes and writing and reading and all of these things that makes me who I am.  And yet, I sometimes feel that I am missing something.  That I'm not doing something that I should be.  And then my brain whirls me into the doubts and fears.  And perhaps that is the root of everything.  Fear.

I have been working towards a positive change in my life.  For the first time I am training to run in a 5K race.  I would never have even thought this was something that I wanted to do before.  But now, I almost look forward to my time on the treadmill (It's been too cold to run outside just yet), it's a time to decompress and expel what seems to be a negative energy.  I have found though, in the last two weeks, that someone or something is attempting to keep me from these times.  Mostly they have not succeeded. For which I am thankful.

But I wonder, this thing that I want, to be healthy, to bring down my blood pressure, to be happy, to enjoy life to the fullest, to live each day as if it were a miracle, to see the little every day miracles.  Are these things too far beyond my grasp to reach for?  I doubt it.  And so I keep on trying.  Even if I don't have the slightest clue what I am going to do when my contract expires at the end of the Summer of 2015, even if I have no idea where I am going to be going or who I will be going with.

Either way it will be an adventure, right?  And I know who will be walking alongside of me.  All I have to do is still my mind and listen to the whisper, the one that reminds me of the joy that I felt as I created that pie.  He know what to tell me and where I should go.

Country Diary of a Lady: 02/04/2014

I had lunch today in a greenhouse.  It was beautiful.  While the weather outside has indeed been warming up, the greenhouse presented to me just what I have been aching for at this time of the winter season.  I sat at a small metal table with my lunch and closed my eyes.  I smelled the smell of green, growing things.  Camellias, Orchids, Hyacinths, Daffodils, Crocuses, Amaryllis.  Beautiful small pots bursting with primroses in colors of orange, yellow blue and pink.

I sat for almost two hours.  I had begun reading Shauna Niequist’s book “Cold Tangerines: Celebratng the extraordinary nature of everyday life” and was very reluctant to leave the respite that I had found from winter within the glassed in enclosure.  Thank you Forth Floral, for the brief respite, for the small gift you gave me and for the enormous Amaryllis bulb that I simply am dying to plant right at this very moment!

Have you ever had days where your soul seems to be aching for something, but you don’t quite know how to assuage the ache?  Today the greenhouse provided a little bit of relief from the ache.  But what else helped was that while I was reading Shauna’s poignant words I was listening to the wonder of “The New World Symphony.”

For you see, I have days where nothing soothes my soul as much as classical music.  I simply feel that nothing will soothe the ache in my soul like the strains of Dvorak, the swelling violin of Tchaikovsky or the sweet strains of Stravinky.  I have found it a bit ironic that almost all of my favorite composers are Russians.  

But then I also love Beethoven, and he breaks me out of that mold a little.  My favorite, at the moment, being The Pastorale Symphony, Symphony No. 6.  I can almost close my eyes and see the centaurs, Pegasus and fauns from Disney’s first Fantasia as they danced about to the beautiful music of that symphony.

I also bought my first seed packets today.  But what they are going to be used for I won’t tell you just yet. 

Country Diary of a Lady: February

“This month derives it’s name from the word Februare, to purify, or from Februa, the Roman festival of expiation, which was celebrated through the latter part of this month.

In ordinary years there are 28 days in February but in leap-year 29.

Feast Days Etc.

Feb. 2 Candlemas Day

Feb. 14 Saint Valentine

Feb. 24 Saint Matthias

“February fill dyke be it black or be it white.”

“All the months of the year curse a fair Februeer.”

“If Candlemas Day be fair & bright Winter will have another flight.  But if Candlemas Day be clouds & rain Winter is gone & will not come again.”

“If February bring no rain ‘tis neither good for grass nor grain.”

“In February, if thou hearest thunder, thou shalt see a summer wonder.”

“One month is past, another is begun,

Since merry bells rang out the dying year,

And buds of rarest green began to peer,

As if impatient for a warmer sun;

And though the distant hills are bleak and dun,

The virgin snowdrop, like a lambent fire,

Pierces the cold earth with it’s green-streaked spire

And in dark woods the wandering little one

May find a primrose.” ~Feb. 1^st 1842 Hartley Coleridge

February 3^rd: It says in today’s Chronicle that at Dover a Blackbird’s nest with two eggs has been found, at Edenbridge a Hedge-sparrow’s with four eggs and at Elmstead, A robin’s with five eggs.

February 12^th: I visited the violet wood again today, the Lords and Ladies are quite up above ground now; and the violet roots are sending up little green trumpets of new leaves.  The ground in the woods is covered with tiny seedlings of the Moschatel.

I gathered some Gorse blossom on my way home.

The Elm trees are just braking into blossom and the willows are showing their downy white catkins, - very small as yet.

Excerpted from "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" by Edith B. Holden