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flowers of the forest. [d.r. thursday]

as we were walking into costco the other day, there was a man briskly walking out. he was balancing a a box of items in his right hand. but in his left was a bundle of flowers. i don’t think he was aware of my brief stare, for outside costco it is windier than most places and we were scurrying to get inside.

but i did stare.

it wasn’t because of the man – i wouldn’t be able to identify him in any way. it was because of the bundle of cellophane-wrapped flowers in his hand. he made me think of my sweet poppo who would purchase grocery store flowers for my momma to put in the center of their coffeesitting table or maybe on the side table in their foyer. my momma loved those flowers. inexpensive, and often on sale – she was ever budget-mindful – but she really loved them.

in these days of a bit more challenge we have taken to a new practice. it’s: pretend-i’m-giving-this-to-you. next to a display of valentine cards sweet-topped in love language with $5.99 printed on the back, we held one out to the other – “pretend i’m giving this to you.” we stopped by the floral cooler and he pointed to a bundle of red roses (with buds and petals actually attached, i might mention) and said, “pretend i’m giving these to you.” the “pretend-i-got-you-this” is far-reaching and much more satisfying than you might imagine.

for it is an intention of love and, in our lighter-weighted and budget-minded world, not stuff.

as we drove home from hiking we contemplated what we might do for the rest of the saturday. it was wide open and we had vowed to hold it as our own. we needed this day on the trail, this time outside, this time together sans angsts. we ran ideas in littlebabyscion.

revisiting frugality is not unfamiliar for us. it is, in fact, much more familiar than extravagance. and so, it is much easier for us to be prudent and thrifty when considering the ‘what’s next’ category. off-trail, our legs were tired from hiking in snow and, though refreshed, we were a little weary from being out in the windy cold.

we considered our options. what to do with the rest of saturday. it was getting later.

back home, we made a little charcuterie board, poured a little wine. we decided to stay home – with our happy dogga. we talked about our trail covered in snow, we read a book together, we played one of favorite cds. kind of a gentle end to our day.

i scrolled through my photo stream then reached out to d with my phone, pulling up one the photographs i’ve taken on the trail we love – this photo of stunning blooms of wildflowers in the winter forest – and said, “pretend i’m giving these to you.”

i’ve noticed lately that my eyes look a lot like my poppo’s.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY


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just three. [k.s. friday]

we stood in the grocery store in brevard, right by the display. the food lion price for the charming smushy-flat white pumpkin was $8.99. it called to me, “you need me! bring me home!” but i got hung up on the price tag and we didn’t buy it.

we’ve had a pumpkin or two most years, often a pie pumpkin that we place on this funny wrought iron stand with arms, making it look like a pumpkinperson. we’ve gotten gourds – interesting shapes that tickle us. but not yet a white pumpkin, even though i really love how they look.

budgets are sometimes fun-oppressors. but any artist can tell you they are necessary. and any artist can tell you that there’s been at least one time that an $8.99 pumpkin – even one that might do the dishes and sorts socks – has not made the cut.

there is a sweet apple orchard out in the county. there is wine-tasting and a distillery at aeppeltreow, so there are spirits and spirited fun. there are a zillion apples and there are pumpkins and gourds and apple cider donuts. two years ago we picked out our tiny patch o’ pumpkins from their flatbeds and gardens of choices. coming home with a pear-shaped gourd and a couple smaller that were wart-laden we felt rich.

we bought pumpkins in aspen that same year and carved jack-o-lanterns at our airbnb with our daughter, leaving our artwork and extra candles behind for the next guests.

last year we featured our aging pear-shaped gourd in our sunroom, put out some orange happy lights and indulged in apple cider donuts at the orchard. despite the gluten they were worth it.

i think this year we will get a white pumpkin. and maybe two orange ones. three in all. just three.

but it will truly be magical.

*****

MILLNECK FALL ©️ 1996 kerri sherwood

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quaking aspen dreams. [two artists tuesday]

we have our own personally-funded go-fund-me for this dream. it buys time for the bigger dream.

the tiny stand of quaking aspen trees beckoned to us. it was instant love. at first sight, no less. tall, willowy, silvery-white bark, the stand transported us to high mountain forests, to trails in breckenridge, to the first ahhh moments coming over the pass.

we took a breath and asked the price.

the nursery is an oasis. in the middle of our town, we sank into it for a few hours, just strolling about and imagining. these trees brought us to center.

our real landscaping need, right now, is for tall grasses along our new fence. we studied each variety and its characteristics – upright and erect or billowing and rounded, low to the ground or reaching to the sky with plumes, feathery in the light. i visited again during the week, asking questions and spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the aspen trees, photographing from different angles and surprised, soaking, by a full-on sprinkler. we’ll go back and purchase a few grasses.

we’ve run the numbers and the stand of aspen must wait. our tiny aspen tree, delicately brought home from the high mountains, aptly named “breck”, is in our backyard and would love the mentoring of a taller, more established stand. with us five years now, we don’t want breck to feel lonely. but, numbers don’t lie and a stand of aspen, along with planting it, is a little bit expensive. the immediate-gratification toddlers in us want it now, but the adults know it needs to wait. there are other priorities. sigh.

we’ll visit the aspen again. and i’ll visit it while david is working, again. and we’ll save up and keep on designing what we want the next phase of our backyard, our sanctuary, to look like.

in future days, our – still-imagined – tiniest “pando” (latin: i spread) of aspen in our yard will grow and remind us of the interconnectivity of all. the canopy-to-come will bring us to places we cherish, dreams beyond the dreams. we will keep saving, a deliberate stand-fund.

we are aspen-dreaming.

*****

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kitchenaid, oh, kitchenaid. [k.s. friday]

a good self-actualizing refrigerator and freezer will keep things cold and frozen, respectively, and have no further issues. the job is simple.

now, there are fancy fridges and run-of-the-mill fridges…side-by-sides, french-door-bottom-freezer models, freezer-on-top standards, retro fridges, beverage center fridges, deep built-in fridges…but the one thing they have in common is keeping things cold, keeping things frozen. so, leaking water onto the floor is not in the list-of-things-to-do for a fridge/freezer combo that has any self-respect.

which brings me to the last two years of our kitchenaid.

back in 2013 i spent a literal fortune on a stainless steel french-door-bottom freezer refrigerator because suddenly, after merely 24 years, my fridge had failed. there is limited space in our old kitchen where the fridge goes so i had to choose carefully, measuring tape and measurements in hand.

they installed the new shiny fridge and, i have to tell you, i felt fancy. gleaming stainless steel, sunlight reflecting off its french doors, bottom freezer the coolest-invention-ever, i was pretty darn excited, despite the monthly payment to the temporary credit card issued by the local appliance store. classy fridge and all, i moved on in life.

seven years later, this fridge, that i have babied with stainless steel cleaner and soft cloths, began to weep onto the wood floor.

there was no reason for it to weep. on the contrary, i should have been weeping as i watched rust spots accumulate on its no-longer-gleaming doors. stainless steel that is not stainless. when i asked kitchenaid about the rust spots and streaks, they said, “we’re sorry you’re experiencing rust on your stainless steel fridge. we recommend using stainless steel cleaner.” well, hello. that’s the only thing i have used, frequently enough to have to purchase and re-purchase. somehow i am not feeling their remorse or sympathy.

but, back to the water-on-the-floor. the opening credits of the pandemic on the screen of life, we were not anxious to bring in a service rep, so i googled. there was a gigantic sheet of ice under the drawer of the freezer – and this was leaking onto the floor. apparently, this is a common problem. (which begs the question why this is not addressed.) i defrosted the freezer and fridge, cookie sheet catching the icebergs as i rubber-spatula-ed them off of the freezer floor. cleaned everything, dried it all off, stainless-steel cleaned the doors and body for good measure and turned it back on.

and now? i am doing this every four to six weeks. but i have it down to a science. i use this tiny fan that my sweet poppo made, a rube-goldberg special the rpms i could not guess but the pitch of the whir tells me it’s mighty fast. i only thaw the freezer floor – so i only need one larger cooler for the freezer food and i don’t open the fridge. i wipe it all down (there’s no chance for it to get icky these days) and turn it all back on.

yesterday morning…merely nine days since the last great-thaw…we woke to puddles under the fridge, clearly having a meltdown (no pun intended). we are increasing the defrost-the-freezer-frequency and looking up appliance repairmen.

my conversation with kitchenaid was…interesting and very, very long. they promised to send me a part on the 22nd. a couple days ago i checked on this. they told me the information i provided does not match their records. so i am at ground zero again. no irony there. zero. the degrees the freezer is set at.

i just don’t know. it goes without saying they just don’t make things the way they used to.

kitchenaid is leaving my heart cold.

*****

I DIDN’T KNOW from THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY ©️ 1997, 2000 kerri sherwood

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pink squishies. [merely-a-thought monday]

yep. they are mine. sponge curlers from my growing-up.

and, i have to tell you, i am tempted to try them. i mean, remember banana curls? well, they are baaaack.

everything comes back, it seems…so my sweet poppo was right in saying that you need to have a giant barn “out back” where you can put every single thing until it comes back into style again. and again.

the cleaning-out-of-the-basement (and the closets and the attic and the cupboards and the garage) is just a tad bit overwhelming, not that you haven’t guessed that from all the other times i’ve mentioned it.

these sponge curlers are riding the can’t-decide-train. they alternatively go from donate to trash to keep. i’m leaning to keep. i mean, how much room do they actually take? and….wouldn’t it be fun to try them again one day? i think i have a curling iron or two tucked away somewhere, but we all know old-school is, well, old-school.

we came across the word “modtro”. ohmygosh, ya gotta love it! it is us, i told david. a cross between modern and retro. yup, yup. and no, we aren’t going to go all math-like and try to figure out the proportions of each…what percentage modern and what percentage retro…i’m sure that the girl and the boy could fill you in on that. but i do love having a descriptor. because, truth is, we sit kinda close to the tail end of the baby boomer category and we are not really gen-x-ers either. it’s tough without a proper descriptor. modtro. i like it.

so, as a modtro, surrounded by both – the modern and the retro and don’t forget the retro-ish-modern – my life-work is now – for this moment – discerning between treasure and what’s-a-nice-word-for junk. discerning between we-should-keep-this and someone-else-could-really-use-this-especially-if-they-didn’t-have-to-buy-it-let’s-give-it-away. discerning between someone-else-needs-this and someone-else-would-buy-this. discerning between i-can’t-part-with-it and i-can-take-a-picture-of-it-and-thank-it-and-let-it-go. discerning between the necessary and the not-necessary. discerning between the i-can’t-store-it-anymore and the deep-regret of getting-rid-of-it.

i come by all this honestly. my parents were not wasteful. they had a tight budget – i now see – and they re-purposed and re-used and did-without and passed on the genetics of this in full force to me. the i-might-need-its rear their ugly heads and i push back, conjuring up the strongest ruthless inclinations i can muster.

and i’m doin’ it. the stuff is clearing out. it’s a long process with many decades to review as i go. there are moments of utter joy – remembrances and visceral memories. there are moments of wistfulness. there are moments that make me laugh aloud.

i clearly remember my sister not-so-gently brushing my hair and winding it around these old sponge curlers. then i’d sleep on them all night, which is a gigantic sleep-sacrificing effort. and then, voila! curls! “it hurts to be beautiful,” she’d admonish me when i complained, bonking me on the head with the hairbrush.

so it’s hard to know in what pile to put these pink squishies.

for now, they don’t take up too much space.

*****

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and then, the feral. [d.r. thursday]

in my recollection, my sweet momma didn’t buy flats of flowers with the arrival of spring. my mom and dad didn’t run nursery to nursery purchasing new shrubbery or plants to add to the gardens around our home. they didn’t pore over landscaping catalogs nor research shade and sun preferred plantings. though it didn’t occur to me then, i realize now – and empathize – that they couldn’t afford it.

the half-acre piece of long island on which i grew up was beautiful and natural and serene. along one side of the house – a little bit shady – were four-o-clocks and bleeding hearts. along the other side were hosta. in the front corner and along the side where the neighbors-who-had-the-nice-weimaraner lived there were forsythia. on the other side where the neighbors-who-had-the-weimaraner-who-bit-me lived there were rose of sharon. we had rhododendron and i can’t remember what else in the front garden. but they all came back; they were perennials. because anything annual, well, i don’t think that was in the budget.

and so i guess i have come by it honestly. it wasn’t a “thing” when i grew up to run out and purchase – before anyone else picked them all over – flats of this year’s preferred annual flowers. it wasn’t a “thing” to plant hanging baskets and wooden barrels or giant clay pots with flowers for the season. it was expensive then and it’s expensive now. i learned early to appreciate the simplest garden, the natural setting of a woods, the reassuring return of perennials you have nurtured and which, likely, came from cuttings someone else gifted to you.

when i first moved to wisconsin, it was a full-impact moment when may arrived and everyone was talking about the flowers they would plant. friends and neighbors would dance gracefully into planting season and the ballet seemed a bit foreign, a bit out-of-reach. the quietly-popular greenhouses were divulged to me; i purchased a small trowel and got to it. impatiens and waxed begonia and petunia flats later, to no avail i had tried to avoid the pressure. each year posed the angsty question of color – for there are trends, i found, obvious by the missing palettes at the nurseries.

my momma and my dad loved their garden. they loved their indoor plants as well. and, when they planted vegetables out back next to – but far enough away from – the dog run, they loved those too. mostly, they loved the trees canopying our house and yard, the woods out back, the tiny lily-of-the-valley next to the old shed. i never heard them utter a peep wishing for more. i never felt – growing up – that i had missed out, not having new flowers or plants each year.

yet, here i was – i am – living in a place and time where that seems to be of vital importance. and i have wondered why this urge, this spring-flower-purchasing-extravaganza doesn’t come naturally to me. i know it’s not because i don’t love flowers.

we walk and hike through the woods. no matter whether the forest trail takes us into the mountains or along the low elevation of a river in the midwest, we notice the floor of greenery, the flowers growing wild, color and shape, exquisite all.

once again this year – like last – we won’t purchase annual flowers. the plants we will add for our summer will be cherry tomato plants, basil, lemongrass, perhaps lavender. we will appreciate the tenacity of our hosta and our ferns, the spreading wild geranium, the stubborn return of our daylilies, the tender peonies, our aspen sapling, the ever-present grasses. we cheer on the groundcover sally gave us and the groundcover sneaking under the fence in its every-year attempt to take over the garden. we celebrate the simplicity and wish that our front yard – in its water-main-replacement-utter-mess – wouldn’t require neat and tidy grass replacement, a huge and costly job to remove old sod and stray cement poured from the temporary sidewalks and various strewn deposits of rubber and metal and rocks.

my sweet momma and dad adored the yard of my growing-up home. they didn’t pass on to me the necessity of more. instead, they passed on to me an embracing of simplicity, gratitude for what-we-have and the appreciation of other gardens – friends’, neighbors’, public botanic celebrations of gorgeousness. they passed on the love of feral forests of jack-in-the-pulpit and the crowning glory of trillium.

*****

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black ‘dack stack. [two artists tuesday]

i was a doubter. i doubted the plastic lumbar support. but i had done my research and, with the budget we were allowing for new chairs – which didn’t include traditional wood, composite or cool new resin – and the fact that we wanted black chairs – these were what i had come up with.

so we went to the ace hardware store not holding out a lot of hope, thinking that we would have to nix this plan and move on to target or menards and get some other color.

the adirondack stacks were outside on the sidewalk. every color you could think of, stacked high against the front windows. a rainbow of adirondacks. we pulled one of the black ones down and drew in our breath to try it out.

in a surprise moment of don’t-expect-too-much-this-is-plastic-after-all it was actually quite comfortable. we bought two, loaded them into littlebabyscion, drove them home and placed them on the back patio to see if we would like them or if they would need to be returned. not shockingly, we quickly decided that we wanted a few more and, as luck would have it in our plastic-chair-budget-world, the ace was having their grand opening the next day and had given us coupons for $20 off purchases.

we went there in the rain. early. we didn’t want the black stack to be gone. you know…a lack of black in the ‘dack stack.

the dj was pumping out music, there were hamburgers and facepainters; it was quite the festival of celebration for a hardware store.

we grabbed four black adirondacks, whipped out our coupons and moseyed off into the wild grey yonder, happy as clams to have six new adirondack chairs in which to sip wine, gather ’round the bonfire, soak up the sun, ponder life and all its mysteries and support our lumbars.

*****

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rose petal lemonade. [merely-a-thought monday]

it was a first. the very first time that david had a dozen roses sent to me.

i heard the knock on the door and went to see what it was. the tall package was sitting there. fromyouflowers.com the label read. i, excitedly, called d down from his office upstairs, saying, “look! i got flowers!!” he ran downstairs, looked at the box with a slight furrow and replied that they were ordered to arrive monday, on valentine’s day. i suppose that might have given us a glimpse into what-would-be.

i brought the box into the kitchen and grabbed the scissors to slice the tape, tears coming to my eyes as i gently pried the flap open and saw the red-red of roses inside. we’ve been daisy-people with a single rose-here-or-there, but never a dozen roses. i extracted the inner cardboard holding everything upright and looked down into the top of the bouquet.

there were loose rose petals everywhere. rose buds floated on top of the bundle and i could see the stems where they belonged. sensing that this was not going to be pretty, with d watching, i unwrapped the paper around the stems.

rose petals and leaves fell around us, on the counter, on the floor, on my clothes. though d had not ordered an invisible flower girl, it appeared that one had magically appeared to shower us with rose-love. clearly when he ordered this gift he hadn’t checked the option where the buds and leaves were attached to the stems.

his face said it all.

the one time he went all-out. the one time he surprised me with delivered-to-the-door-flowers. the one time he sent a whole dozen roses.

i gathered together all the rose petals and rose buds that still-tightly-held-their-shape-but-not-their-stems. i went into the dining room and took out a beautiful crystal bowl that used to be my sweet momma’s and poppo’s. i placed all the petals and buds into the bowl, arranging the buds so their graceful curls faced up.

i looked at david and said, “still beautiful. just different.”

a little later, work-day over, we lit a candle, clinked glasses and sent naked-stem-photographs to our friends and family, sharing the moment and lemonading rose petals.

*****

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intrepid. [two artists tuesday]

and just like that – on a beautiful sunday driving a back road in wisconsin – little baby scion turned 250,000 miles.

we drove with the camera ready…ready to take a video of the 249,999-250,000 turnover, ready to stop and take a picture on the side of the road of this momentous moment. this tough, scrappy little vehicle is intrepid. with a few bumps and scratches (like the rest of us) and a few rattling noises (also like the rest of us) littlebabyscion diligently trods on, dutifully and reliably chalking up miles and experiences with us. and we are devoted to it.

we knew it was coming. we were less than thirty miles away, a mere backroads drive to lake geneva to pick up a piece of flourless chocolate cake in anticipation of our celebration of this no-frills little square vehicle. we planned our sunday afternoon around it, loaded dogdog in and, in sunday-drive fashion, took our time both on roads we knew and roads we turned onto, just to see where they went. we pulled over when it turned. it was astounding to actually think about: that this little car had safely driven me/us 250,000 miles. that’s 83 times across the united states! we sat there and thought aloud about all the places we’d gone in it, all the roadtrips, and all the really significant events that had happened.

when littlebabyscion turned 235,235 miles i recounted some of those; it is no less inspiring to me now. littlebabyscion delivered my girl and my boy – and all their stuff – back and forth and back and forth and back and forth etc etc etc to college dorms and apartments. littlebabyscion brought babycat home from florida. littlebabyscion drove across the country loaded with cds for concerts and wholesale and retail shows. littlebabyscion picked up david at the airport for the first time we met and drove us away on our honeymoon. littlebabyscion drove dogdog home from a farm in a little town on the river on the other side of the state. littlebabyscion took us back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to florida to see my sweet momma in the last of her life. littlebabyscion was our haven the day, on the highway to see her, my momma died. it held us safe, a buttress for our grief. littlebabyscion moved us all – with dogdog and babycat ferry-quivering each time – to the island littlehouse and then home again. littlebabyscion has determinedly climbed mountain passes to get to see our girl and driven in traffic jams out east and on chicago’s highways to see our boy. littlebabyscion has slept in rest areas, restaurant lots, parks. littlebabyscion has eluded storms and hail and snow and straight-line winds. like 20 said, when he heard of its milestone, “to the moon and back!”.

i asked steve, our miracle mechanic, what i would do when littlebabyscion reached 300,000 miles. “keep driving it,” he said.

he’s right. keep driving it.

so one of these days, a while from now, expect to see this same shot with 300,000 miles on the odometer.

you go, littlebabyscion, you x-ceptional xb.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY