Out with the old

    This is a good day to check the closets, time to move the summer clothes down to the guest room closet for the winter and to move the winter clothes up. One year I did that and immediately we had Indian summer so hope that works again. The act of moving clothes takes a while as I look over each piece of clothing to see if it is in good condition and if I did indeed wear it at all this year. It is time to get rid of a lot of clothing that just takes up precious room in my closet. Time to give it to the Salvation Army perhaps. When I was librarian at our church years ago I recall a book that said it is a sin to keep good clothing that you don't wear because there are people that need it. I try to keep that in mind but I am a person that has worn the same size for probably 20 years and I take good care of my clothing so even though it is older it still looks like new. But I must remember what I read and take it to heart. When Don and I decided to sell our home and go rving full time it meant getting rid of things we had for years. That is a hard thing to do because many of our things had memories attached to them, but it was a cleansing move. You never realize how much junk attaches itself to you and fills up your space. All those boxes on shelves what do they contain? If they were truly something we cherish we would have them out where we can see them not tucked away gathering dust. Boxes of kitchen gadgets that we were sure we would need but only used once and boxed because it took up space in our kitchen drawer. Boxes of Christmas ornaments and lights that no longer light up, old books no longer read, etc and etc. Yes it was a freeing moment to get rid of so much unneeded things. Perhaps it is also time to clean our spiritual closet too, tossing out old grievances and grudges. Sweeping out our dusty thinking so that we can see more clearly to make good choices and making room for God to work in our lives. God has His way of cleaning too, for many years ago when I received Him as Lord and Savior he did just as his word said in 2 Corinthians 5: 17  Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. God swept away the old sins and made me new again, a fresh beginning. What a blessing to not have the burden of sin cluttering up my life.

Nature's Bounty

   It's that time of the year when the apples are heavy on the trees and we view them as apple pies warm from the oven when frost is etching the windows. But why do the trees produce so many apples. Of course I have my ready helpers, the deer, to help with the bounty. While sipping my morning coffee I can look out and watch the deer standing on their hind legs reaching high into the upper branches to pick the choicest apples.. it seems they prefer to pick their own rather then eat any from the ground but so do I. We co exist with the deer as long as they do not lunch on my favorite flowers. They are beautiful creatures and oh how we laugh as the fawns kick up their heels and chase each other around the lawn, they know they are safe here and pay no attention to us. I dread the gunshots that come at midnight some times but here on Shaw's Acre's they can safely play.
   Canning brings back so many good memories of my mother. She always had a good sized garden if possible and canned all she could and if she lived where there was no yard for a garden she always seem to have vegetables from someone's over flowing garden. I remember she had a gas stove and a large container called a "double boiler", the boiler was oval shaped and would cover two burners on the stove and many times it was used to heat water for washing clothes but my dad had made wooden racks,one for the bottom of the boiler where mother would sit jars of green beans and another to put on top of the jars to make a second layer.  This was filled with hot water and allowed to cook for hours making sure all jars were covered with water at all times. The kitchen was steamy and you could hear the jars jiggle in the boiling water. Mother would wipe her hands on the ever present apron and sit down at the table for a cup of tea. We enjoyed our tea together. In later years Linda and I also liked to share tea time together, in fact a few years ago I received a package in the mail and it was from Linda and inside was a Boyds Bear figurine of a mother bear and her daughter bear having tea and Linda's note said "look on the bottom" I turned it over and this is what it said "Come and sit with me and we'll have tea and talk of things that were and things that are to be, of places we will go and things that we will see. Just the two of us my dear daughter...and me." A tear still comes even as I write this for my dear daughter is a thousand miles away and I would give anything this moment for us to have tea together.
   What a pleasure it is to stand and view the shelves laden with many jars of green beans, corn, beets, tomatoes, not forgetting the jars of peaches, pears and pickles. Rosy jars of jams and jellies ...what a treat. Apple butter to spread on warm from the oven home made bread. Mother's bread was better then the best cake to me. Mother knew hard times, depression years were my childhood years and we learned not to waste and to do with what we had. A good thing for us to remember in these times. Somehow you felt more secure when you had rows of canned foods in the pantry. Little did we know that we were eating healthy, no insecticides on our veg's and no chemicals added to preserve freshness or artificial coloring. There were no boxes of foods on the shelf, cakes were made from family recipes and for years no canned soups were used in casseroles and gravy came from a good roast not a can. Little wonder food seemed to taste better back then. Like they say "ah the good old days"
   Well there, I am done with the apples and I have seven bags of pie apples to go into the freezer, I think I can smell a pie now but no it is the apples I am frying for supper tonight to go with our fried fish. I better check them ..don't want them to burn and it is time to sprinkle on a little sugar to help them caramelize. I'm thinking of you mother while I am making them. Thanks for the memories!

Grand Marais

    If you look at the word Marais you might ask how to pronounce it and you may also hear the word and never guess the spelling but if you have been there you know it is a "Grand" place like the name suggests.
    This was the week we finally made our way up to spend a few days camping at the camp grounds there. While the weather at home was rain, one inch of rain to be precise, the weather at Grand Marais was beautiful, sunny and almost no wind, the perfect weather to sit on a bench by the lake and just gaze at the water until all of life's tensions are melted away. The benches are tall and we sat on one and swung our feet like little children do when feet do not reach the floor. The sun was warm on our faces and we had the beach all to ourselves which is rare. After 56 years of marriage we can sit and chat about all kinds of subjects or just sit comfortably silent. We are so much in tune with each other we often can finish the others sentence knowing exactly what or who the other is referring to.
    Back at the fifth wheel we realized that seeing we don't have cable tv here at this camp and since we did not bring the TV dish with we should have brought some music cd's or some movies but alas we did not think to do it. We also had no books or magazines but to save the day we had at least brought our cross word puzzle books. So we did some pages of puzzles and then laid back with our feet up and napped. Our radio brought in the local station at Grand Marais so we heard some PBS radio program's. One such program was a lady taking a walk in the woods listening for the different bird calls which was very interesting to me since I have never heard a Brown Capped Chickadee before only Black capped.
    One day we did our tour of all the antique, gift and my favorite art shops and no we didn't buy the very expensive fudge but it did make me think of making some fudge when we got home. What I did buy was a cook book named "Recipes of Minnesota:. This one had a beautiful and mouth watering cover but what caught my eye were all the Swedish recipes, we are not Swedish but we have lived along side them for years and they are very good cooks and have enjoyed so many of their traditional dishes.
    Now that we are home again Don is busy getting the fifth wheel ready for winter and I have hauled back into the house the things that can not take freezing. The house smells so good from the beef roast that is in the oven and I am anxious to serve the Swedish Hasselback Potatoes, a recipe from my new cook book. Yum

Sign's of Fall

   We all recognize the sign's of Fall, the tree's leaves are taking color, the yellow school bus goes by, the arts and crafts stores are full of fall materials to make your home colorful even Halloween crafts are displayed. For us here at Shaw Acre's it means the winter birds are coming to the feeder and the fat has been hung out for the woodpeckers. Our tiny nuthatches and chickadees still come to eat out of our hands when ever we come out to sit on the deck, they prefer we feed them by hand then to go to the hanging feeder. The grass has slowed down so that mowing is less frequent and I heard the furnace come on so it is definitely cooler outside. Don busies himself with getting the wood piles covered with tarps to keep them dry when the fall rains come. His piles of wood are a work of art with each chunk of wood stacked just so and in long neat rows. There are many cozy warm days inside those logs when the snow is blowing against the windows this winter. I love to go down to the furnace room and throw  a log into our Daka wood burning furnace, it means that as long as it is heating our house the fuel oil furnace won't come on and that is quite a savings. Wood is a different heat , more comfortable. Also a pleasure to watch as we snuggle together watching the logs burn in our fireplace in the family room. Don keeps our woods free of dead and dying trees by adding them to the wood pile and a bonus is that Don keeps fit and trim as well.
   Fall is here when the White Pine Harvest Show is on. Sunday before last Don and I stopped by and picked up our friends and neighbors, the Nelson's and we drove to the show. It was a beautiful sunny day and there was a terrific turn out, we found some very good seats and watched over 200 tractors go by just feet from where we sat. Mary Ann and I sat together and talked of many things while the men sat and discussed each tractor as it went by. Marv and Don have so much in common and their knowledge of tractors astounds me. Marv said " that is my dad's old tractor" as one old tractor passed by and he was right but what amazed me was he recognized it by a small bit of welding on the grill. We walked around the park and went into the various buildings to watch them making wooden kegs, sawing logs, making horse shoes and in one house we watched a lady cooking on her cast iron stove while the scent of warm cookies filled the air. We watched them harvest grain and chop corn using vintage machines. We strolled around to see the wares of the vendors and stopped only long enough to eat lunch. At the end of a long day we decided to go to Finlayson for our supper at the town cafe. What a fun day it turned out to be and for me Fall is now officially here.

Mother in Law's

   Our pastor Chris and family were on vacation Sunday and we had a visiting pastor who gave a very good sermon on the book of Ruth. He spoke of her great love for her mother in law Naomi. So many mother in law jokes we hear and most are not nice. I can not relate to them, my mother in law, Don's mother, Louise was so kind and loving to me and I loved her dearly and though she has been gone 41 years I think of her often, perhaps even more often as the years go by. She was a tall women whose black hair had gone to salt and pepper but her brown eyes still had that almost mischievous spark. She loved a good joke or story. Her back ground was French Canadian and as the French are known for their cooking she certainly was. She could make a feast out of anything. As a young bride I stood by her side at the stove hoping that some of that magic would rub off onto me. If she had extras for lunch she would say "we'll put the stretcher's on it" She would cut up the left over roast and potatoes, some onion and a dab of her marvelous gravy and the "stretcher" was some good bread which she tore into small pieces and added it to the skillet. Combined well you never knew the bread was there and it was all so delicious. She told me stories about her mother, Julia, a very proud women who was known for her special cake. Louise said Julia died with the recipe not wanting to share it with anyone not even her daughters. Louise did how ever remember her mother had a large can that sat on the shelf of the cast iron cook stove and she saw her take cookies and cake and grind them fine, dry them and then add them to the can and when she had enough she would make a cake using all the crumbs and her recipe. A cake like no other.
   Louise grew up in the early 1900's when women wore corsets and as a result she had very weak back muscles so she had to wear a more modern version of those corsets. She always wore a dress, nylons and shoes with high heels. She had beautiful legs like a model so why not  show them off. I never saw her in slacks although it was rumored that she wore some on a hunting trip. I did see a photo of her wearing slacks as she rode on the back of Bill's Indian motorcycle when they were young. But I only saw her in a house dresses with crisply ironed aprons. She lived by the old saying "Monday wash, Tuesday iron, etc. and she took great pride in her whiter then white wash that was on the Monday clothes line long before every other housewife in the neighborhood. Each piece was hung just so...no drooping tee shirt or towel on her line. I never could figure how she got them so snow white.
   She and I would play double solitaire a game that she always won because she was so quick and after she  would say "stay for lunch with Bill and I" no way would I refuse.
   Funny how you remember certain things about people, I can still see her hands if I close my eyes. She used to sit in her easy chair watching the show "as the world turns" and embroidering on dish towels or dresser scarves. I had a friend who had access to embroidery thread wholesale and one Christmas I gave her an embroidery case with drawers and every color of threads, she was so happy. After she died at 69 of cancer Bill gave that back to me and things she had embroidered and I was able to share these with her daughters Lorraine and Bernice. Louise was not just a mother in law she was a mother of love.
   A day of remembering, like drops of gold we hide in our hearts that make us truly rich.

Perfect days

   Haven't you had a day that was just about perfect in every way, we had one last Sunday. Don and I decided to visit our son Gary's church at Braham, heard a good sermon, went to lunch at the local cafe and met some of our old neighbors. When we got home we decided to go for a long walk on the bike trail behind our land, later we sat sipping our coffee on our shady deck watching the birds. We put sunflower seeds on our railing and they come, it has gotten so that if we go to sit on the deck they come cheeping as though to say "where is our seeds" and they will even eat out of Don's hand. By the end of the day I felt nourished body, mind and soul.
   As I type this I can stop and look up at my "Great Grandma's brag board" where I have all the great grand children's pictures. I love to look at their shinning faces, bright eyes and big smiles and I think how wonderful it is to be so young when everything is an adventure and you get so excited over the smallest things. It is so important to keep the thrill of life as a child sees it no matter what your age. Try to stop and see things through a child's eyes.
   When we got back from our Alaska cruise we went quickly to the window in our den to see the baby robins and too our shock they had already flown away. How could they have grown so fast in less then a month. Don and I had watched from the window as mother robin formed her tiny nest in the honeysuckle bush. With only her beak she bent each twig to form a perfect round nest and cement it in place with beaks of mud and grass. Only when she considered it good enough did she lay the three blue jelly bean size eggs. Many times in a day we ventured to the window to check while mother robin would cock an eye to watch us also. Then one day tiny bare babies lay in the nest, tiny babies with huge appetites. It is not the first time we have seen robin babies but it is still a thrill. We were sad to see our babies had out grown their home and had ventured out into the world while we were gone but I am sure they will not forget where they were born and will return to sing their morning and evening song for us.

Small Towns

   The days are swiftly moving toward Fall and I am dragging my feet trying to savor the smell of summer, the warmth of the sun and the length of the days. Why do the months go so quickly now that I am older , when I am not in any hurry. I want to crowd so much into the week but never seem to accomplish all that I plan. One thing I want to do is have a coffee party and invite my new friends that I have met since moving to this home. I have not seen such welcoming people as these for many years, it reminds me of years ago when neighbors often visited, and when people knew and cared about those living around them. We have been invited for meals, to go camping and other activities and when we go to the little church in town we are greeted with the same warmth. There is a lot to say for small towns where you can get to know the person that waits on you at the hardware store and the waitress at the local cafe calls you by name or in one cafe where the waitress calls us "honey". They don't just shove your food at you but rather linger to chat a bit.
   We considered building a new home but I am so glad we didn't, this home on 20 acres is established with mature trees, shrubs and flowers. Granted the shrubs and flowers may not be just where you would have placed them but when the lilac's are in bloom you soon forget that and just enjoy. To have trees that are giants always makes me fill with awe, how old are they I wonder. I am some what of a worry wart so of course I get filled with concern should we get strong winds and I see them swaying and hear the pines clanking against each other but I realize too that they have stood the test of time and weather.
   Don has been so kind to erect the arched arbor we bought and to nail the lattice work to the wall of the garage so I could plant the four clematis vines I bought and he hauled black dirt to flower beds and hauls branches and debris away. How could I ever have done it all. Love comes to me in daily doses of thoughtfulness through Don, I am truly blessed.
   Next week Don and I have been invited to join the camping club again and to go camping at a neighboring farm. Last time we did it was so much fun and I think there were about 30 campers. We miss our full time rving life style and we are thankful for our new friends for including us.
   The day is so beautiful I think I will take another stroll around the yard to admire my flowers, watch the birds and maybe there is a ripe tomato to pick.