ODE TO AUTUMN

          The sun has a little different slant these days. The air is crisper, reminiscent of a bite into an off-the-tree Cortland apple. I’ve pulled out my heavy wool socks as a buffer against the morning’s chill on the floors. Turtlenecks and flannel shirts aren’t far behind. And my heavy wool sweaters that I sometimes even wear to bed. From Lower Bear Lake comes the excited honking of Canada geese, gathering for their migration south or maybe just the bird world version of Octoberfest.  The calendar confirms it. Autumn is upon us.

          It’s a beautiful season, really. We love taking trips to Monroe’s Orchard and picking the last of the tomatoes off the wild tangle of plants in our own garden. Sometimes I think we have way too many, but then in a few days, I worry that we won’t have enough. I tried drying some of the smaller varieties to add to pasta dishes and that was fun. I’m hoping for a taste of summer in January.

          I’m cranking up my knitting with visions of toasty cowls and fingerless gloves and maybe a couple of caps to tug over my ears when the freezing breezes blow. I curl up on the couch (Yes, Mom, I still sit on my feet. Sorry. You may have been right. I’ll never be a lady.) and let the stitches fly from one needle to the next, watching the finished product appear under my hands. Sometimes, if the pattern isn’t too complicated, I plug in my MP3 and listen to an audio book while I work. There’s a special rhythm to this craft—knit one, and as my friend Janie says, purl a prayer. Lots of stitches, lots to pray and give thanks for.

          Leaves are starting to change to a riotous display of color and eventually to drop to earth. It’s almost a seasonal rite with me to go out and scuffle my feet through them. I like hearing them crunch underfoot. Or I’ll scoop up a big armload and just toss them up in the air. They rain down on my head and I laugh as they snag on my hair and my sweater and I feel like a kid again.

          There’s plenty of fireplace wood out there at the edge of the wood. Only problem is, it’s in huge chunks, leftover from our 2012 toppled tree summer.  A few we kept for seating around the bonfire pit, but it’s a small dent in the largesse.  Guess we better find someone with a splitter.

          Mr. Tree, the huge beech at the end of our drive, is laden with nuts. The squirrels are going to be sitting pretty come winter. Mr. Tree is getting up there in age and his leaf-covered limbs stretch out many feet, even spanning the driveway. He looks quite handsome in the snow, too, not that I’m too eager at the moment for that scene.

          Thanksgiving is around the corner—one of my absolute favorite holidays. Nobody complains about Thanksgiving. Nobody. Oh, you may get a few worrisome types who insist on counting calories, and I don’t think turkeys themselves are too enamored about it, but there’s no horribly long lead-up to the day and afterwards, the entire holiday just sort of morphs into a plethora of turkey casseroles and bowls of turkey soup. 

          So raise your cup of hot mulled cider on high! Here’s to the glory of an Indian summer day and a harvest moon and the end to lawn cutting and the lighting of the first fire in the fireplace and the bounty of the earth!

         

           

FOR EVERYTHING. . .A SEASON

                This is a requiem. And a welcome.

                It’s not often you find someone you can rely on. Someone who will see you through thick and thin, ups and downs, ins and outs, winter, spring, summer and fall, all you gotta do is call. (A little James Taylor riff here)  For 15 years, this Friend was my little 1998 Honda Civic. 

                It wasn’t much, as cars go. The biggest improvement it had over my previous wheels was an intermittent windshield wiper. The windows needed to be cranked, the key used to get in and start it, the locks engaged when I pushed them down. And it had a tape player that handled the audio versions of all seven books of the Harry Potter series a few years ago.  And it was a stick shift.

                I never got a speeding ticket in that car. I guess it never attracted the law’s attention as, say, a red Corvette. And there were only two minor accidents to the body, not the inner workings. Hey, I even had the same license plate for all 15 years!

                One of the Honda’s first passengers was my mom. I think we went to Ted’s Hot Dogs in Buffalo. It was one of Mom’s favorite spots. She liked the car and must have blessed it with a taste of her own longevity. They both had a lot in common with the Energizer Bunny. Mom passed away that fall at the age of 97; the car just kept going and going.

                A few weeks ago, however, upon my return from the Northwest, I got in my car and turned the key. There was this horrible screeching sound and stinky white smoke erupted from the tailpipe. It settled down and I almost took it on my errand when I noticed the battery light on. That seemed ominous, so I decided not to chance it. When I talked with our car guys, they said it was probably the alternator belt. And it was, along with what I suspected were some brake issues. I’d been pouring some serious cash into repairs during the past year, so despite the fact that it only had 130,000 miles and still got over 30 mpg fuel,  I decided the time had come to get something more reliable and went shopping. Of course, my first choice was a Honda Civic.

                I don’t know what I expected a 2013 Honda Civic to be like, but it wasn’t what I faced when I got in one to take a test drive. The dashboard lit up like Cedar Point on the summer night. Lucky I had my sunglasses on. In those fifteen years, things had changed a bit. Talk about bells and whistles—and they’re all standard. I drove, I liked, I got. Like my old car, it’s a stick shift and a good thing it is, too. It gives me something to do. I hope it has the same staying power.

                Someone else saw the good in my old car, though, and snapped it up. He’s a car mechanic and I’ve no doubt will keep my old friend going another fifteen years. It may be gone, but will never be forgotten.

HOW GREEN--AND SAFE--IS MY GARDEN

 

                Chuck has met his match.

                Chip, too.

                They are both God’s creatures, I know, but they belong in the wild, not my vegetable garden. In the immortal words of Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat bark. Or nuts. Or whatever God put out there for you to nibble on.”

                A few months ago, as I was starting my annual delusion about having a garden the envy of Bird’s Eye, I laid down the gauntlet to these critters who had made my gardening life miserable. Confidently, I planted peas and baby spinach, enclosing the garden in chicken wire and netting.  

                Everything grew. Within a week or so, I had pea sprouts and the spinach had managed to throw a few leaves. Then suddenly, everything was gone, bitten down to the quick. I suspected bugs had gotten the peas, and because the netting had blown away, Chuck had managed to get his Popeye MDR for a few weeks. 

                It was still early enough in the growing season that I could start more seeds, but, really, wasn’t it pointless? Yes, the local wildlife was sleek and happy and I still had my garlic (which no animal has yet to disturb) and some nice blackberries. So why bother with anything else? Because I’m stubborn.

                At this point several green things began popping up from an area of the garden where we had dug in a bunch of compost.  About seven or eight plants had managed to rise, phoenix like, from the barren ground. Tomatoes! Now I’m sure if I’d tried to grow tomatoes from seed, I’d still be waiting. But these “volunteers,” as we call them, had a determination matching my own. They are now at the point where I had to stake them and some are blooming. 

                Tending to my tomato patch one day, I thought there must be some easier way of gardening. Something that was up and out of the way of the animal epicures and that didn’t take its toll on my knees and back. “I wonder,” I said, “if there’s any such thing as a table top garden.”

                Ah, the wonderful Internet. I went in the house, Googled “table top garden” and immediately had a score of hits.  Yes! I was already making plans for a winter woodworking project. (No, not me. I need all my fingers and thumbs.) Then in the garage I spied a huge plastic tub, a leftover from my aborted experiment with raising red worms. It was big. It had holes. It was perfect. I dashed to Home Depot for a couple bags of potting soil and some more seeds. In fifteen minutes, I had me a mini-garden. The best part was that on my way up the drive, I spied an old wooden pool platform left by the previous owners and pretty much ignored by us for years. We end-over-ended it to the garden area, plopped the plastic tub on top and SHAZAM! My very own table top garden. Take that, Chuck and Chip!

                There were now concerns, naturally, about Bambi, so at night, I put the plastic lid on the tub, at least until the plants reached the top. Then all it took was netting. Ka-ching!

                We’re going to have some cukes, some green beans, some peas, and even  flowers, because I need them, too. My knees and back feel great, and thanks to my volunteer army, we’ll be enjoying some steaming bowls of tomato soup come winter.

               

               

                 

SUMMER LOVE

                 Buffalo, NY, where I grew up, wasn’t a huge baseball town. While there were the minor league Bisons, my family never got too excited about the game as we would have had we lived in, say, Brooklyn, with “dem bums.” My brothers were more into other sports, like swimming. Still, I remember a few crisp fall days when the crack of a bat could be heard from a radio set in the window of our house while we raked leaves. 

                During the 1956 World Series, one of my college professors put away his prepared lecture for the day in order to listen to Don Larsen’s history-making perfect game. 

                But it wasn’t until the day my eyes lit on a red-haired ex-airman who was filling in at second base for our church team, though, that I decided there was a bit more to the game. I stayed pretty close to the bench that year and even learned how to keep score. That strategy paid off and in time, we ended up almost forming our own team, missing only a shortstop.

                Like my own family, our kids weren’t really sold on baseball, although the boys all played a bit of Little League (with Dad coaching) and our daughter Anne actually played in a women’s league after college. Anne was a chip off the old block. She never felt a game was complete unless she finished it bloodied and victorious. I got pretty good at taking care of those long brush burns caused by sliding into second. Pat also continued to play in our city’s “beer league.” He and a couple of buddies were known as the “Tinker to Evers to Chance” of North Tonawanda.

                In 1994, we moved to Cleveland for the second time in four years.  Our first time around, I’d been introduced to major league ball and how much fun it was to be in the stands on a summer day. There was now a new ballpark called “The Jake” and we were excited about our adopted team, the Cleveland Indians. But alas, our excitement that year was cut short by a general strike in mid-August, just shy of the end of the season.

                At the beginning of the next year, people were slow to start coming to The Jake. When our entire family visited Cleveland for a little reunion, we were easily able to snag sixteen tickets in the Upper Deck. It was July 18 and in the bottom of the ninth, the Indians were down 5-2. With two out, Albert Belle stepped to the plate and uncorked a Grand Slam home run. The place went crazy and from then on, tickets became as scarce as hens’ teeth.  Occasionally, there were more Indian’s fans in the Detroit Stadium than there were Tiger’s fans.  Those were the good old days, when the batting lineup stayed pretty much stable throughout the season. I probably could still recite it by heart, or come close to it.

                For Christmas 2001, my son Patrick presented me with a book of haiku-like poetry called “Memories of My Mother and Family.” He knows me well.

                A warm summer night

                with an old friend at her side,

                She cheers the boys of summer

                leaving her voice at The Jake.

                We’ve had a few lean years, baseball-wise, here in Cleveland, but things do seem to be picking up slightly.  A bit of the old magic is in the air as I write this. Keep your fingers crossed, your radio/TV/iPad tuned in and Go Tribe!

                 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

These words popped into my head this morning as I was thinking about how I manage to embroil myself in all sorts of undertakings that make the glass of my day not half full or half empty but pretty much overflowing. Actually, the words didn’t do their popping in French, although I did know that it was the language of origin for the phrase “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Or in present day vernacular, “Same old, same old.”

In the past, people kept diaries and journals. Those writings obviously had a lot to do with the very human need to keep a record of everyday life, of the history unfolding around them. Some people were better at it than others—people like Shakespeare and Plato and the good folks who brought us the Bible. We called them writers.  In addition to thinking grand thoughts, they also had the laborious task of putting it all down by hand. If you’ve ever had to scribble “I must not talk in class” fifty times on the blackboard, you’ll have a small idea of what that must have been like. At least, you didn’t have to make your own chalk or fight with a goose in order to get a quill.

With the invention of the printing press, almost anyone could be a writer. No longer did you have to hand write thirty copies of Genesis so more than one person could borrow it from the library. Further down the evolutionary road came the typewriter and eventually the computer and Internet. And that’s how things changed—and how they stayed the same.

Remember Erma Bombeck? She was a grand lady who helped a whole generation of women survive living in the suburbs and raising semi-normal children. There were a lot of other writers whose words appeared on the pages of every newspaper in the country. These days, not so much. The main place we get our news—the newspaper—is fading. These days, we have the Internet and so instead of the columnist, we have the blog.

 “Blog” is a mishmash of “web log.” If you have something to say, here’s the place to say it without having first to convince an editor to put you on the payroll. And people don’t have to wait for the thud on the front door that says the paper carrier went by so they can read it. Readers are able to get opinions on a variety of topics with the click of a computer mouse or the swipe of a finger on an iPhone or iPad, and can sign up to follow a particular blog or leave their own comments. For writers, blogs are the best thing since sliced bread.

Some of my best friends are local writers—and bloggers. Have kids running around—yours or somebody else’s? Check out www.raisinglifelonglearners.com  by educational science writer and homeschooler Colleen Kessler. Or www.happybirthdayauthor.com by Eric van Raepenbusch, who does awesome celebrations of picture book authors’ birthdays by coming up with related creative activities for kids. Eric also creates the hilarious adventures of Three Ghost Friends and talks about books at www.threeghostfriends.com. 

Want to be inspired? Janie Reinart, whose book Love You More Than You Know recently won the 2013 Best Cleveland Book award, blogs with stories of the dedicated men and women in our military and their families at www.loveyoumorethanyouknow.com.

 And for a little lighter fare, try Kate Carroll’s www.kate-carroll.blogspot.com. Like Erma Bombeck, Kate’s delightful, down-to-earth commentary on life will make you feel you have a new friend. 

I, too, am not immune from the blog phenomena, although I’m blaming it all on my daughter, who had this great idea and wanted me to run with it. I fought it as long as I could, but eventually gave in. Since I’m almost never without my iPod or iPad, and since these new gadgets can provide wonderful lifelines for older people, I’ve instituted www.thegrannyapple.com, in which I review some apps that I especially enjoy. They may not be the newest or the most popular, but for the most part, they’re useful and even more important, fun.

Do you have a blog just waiting to be written? Jump in! The water's fine! Or, as the French say, Voyez-vous en ligne !

Spring. Sun. Soil. Digging. Seeds. Watering. Groundhog.

This seems to be the downward spiral in which my garden grows—or doesn’t.  I start out with such great plans. Take last year. Please. I’d heard about this revolutionary way to plant and I was eager to try it. Basically, you cut the front off a bag of potting soil, poke some drainage holes into the bottom and sow your seeds directly into the dirt. This I did and without the backbreaking effort of digging up my entire 8’ x 4’ raised patch, I had—voila!—a garden. And I took pains to protect it, too, putting up a chicken wire fence that was stapled onto posts at the four corners. There was a bit of a break where the wire fencing didn’t quite stretch, but I covered that with netting. Within a few weeks, there were lovely green sprouts emerging and I looked on it and it was good.

Coming home from an errand one morning, I stopped to admire my efforts. Peas and beans and spaghetti  squash and lettuce and some marigolds to help keep the bugs away—all were upright and perky and doing just fine. Two hours later, I emerged from the house and stopped in my tracks. In the middle of my garden sat a fat groundhog and around him was devastation, complete and utter.

I yelled, naturally, even though it was probably just instinct. The groundhog sat up and looked at me, annoyed that I was spoiling his lunch. Then he collapsed into what resembled a fur stole and slithered—no other word for it—slithered down between the chicken wire and wood sides of the garden, and off he toddled.

He’d done well, in terms of groundhog meals, for every green shoot was gone, leveled to the ground. “Wascally gwoundhog,” I muttered.

Almost nothing recovered. I replanted the spaghetti squash and it made a valiant effort, but  produced only two fruits. By that time, it was so late in the season that there wasn’t time to ripen. I wrote the whole thing off.

I confess that I’m not a very good gardener. I don’t take the time or the energy to do the job right. Many times, I even depend on what’s sitting around in the compost, but basically, my mantra is “toss the seeds in the general direction of the ground and see what comes up.” I play the piano in much the same way. But for those few minutes when I’m paused at the beginning of a new endeavor, be it music or plants, it’s that feeling of hope, of this time it’s going to be better that keeps me coming back.

My seeds are purchased for this year—peas, baby spinach, and another attempt at spaghetti squash. The groundhog better up his game.

      Sure and it’s coming up on St. Patrick’s Day and I’ll be proud to be wearin’ the green once more. I’m not just “married Irish,” but Irish in my own right. My father’s family came from the Old Sod, a mix of Cork and Down. They came because of the Famine and worked their way across New York State to settle in Buffalo’s First Ward. Currently, there is a plaque to them at the base of the Irish Memorial on the Buffalo waterfront. In time, there was further migration to South Buffalo, which is where I was born and raised. My husband Pat’s family arrived by another gateway—Canada, but ended up in the same place, which is where we met.

     Some fifteen years ago, we made our first trip to Ireland. There were four couples and not everyone knew each other. Of course, they all had a bit of the Irish in them, and so it didn’t take long for them all to bond. Over a pint at the Shannon airport, as I recall. Ireland was as green as they said it was. I loved the hills and the houses and the winding roads that made you glad you weren’t doing the driving. We had hired a small bus and a driver, whose name was David and who took it upon himself to make sure we had a great time.

      One of David’s first chores was to teach us the fine art of drinking Irish beer. He had a Four Step program. Day 1 was Harp, followed on subsequent days by Kilkenny, Smithwicks, and finally the ultimate--Guinness. He showed us the Lakes of Kilarney, Bunratty Castle, the Burren, and took us around the Ring of Kerry--backwards. We had to start early in the morning in order to make it to the place where the road narrows before the big tour buses arrived. “Start” meant making a visit to a local pub owned by Irish football legend Páidí Ó Sé (Paddy O’Shea). The proprietor himself opened up just for us and made us Irish coffee. (I was saddened, while looking up the correct spelling, to learn that Paidi had recently died. According to Wikipedia, “The body of Páidí Ó Sé lay in repose at his home in Ceann Trá, with "a constant stream of mourners" seen going in and out during the wake.” I can only imagine.)

     We stayed in B & B’s which is definitely the way to go in Ireland as you’ll meet some of the nicest people God ever put on the face of the earth. While on a two-day stay in Dingle, I learned that the young son of our hosts was going to be part of an Irish cultural production in Tralee the next evening. I wanted to go there. My father’s favorite song was The Rose of Tralee. Since David was taking a break and going home for a night, we decided to get a cab and head over there. When David heard that, he promptly cancelled his plans and drove us. The program was lovely—something similar to Riverdance. Our Dingle hosts had asked us to bring their son and his friend home with us on the bus, so afterwards, they hopped on and we set off for Dingle. The road was dark and winding. Suddenly, David began to sing lovely Irish songsand the two kids chimed in—their sweet voices filling the air as we drove through the night. It was one of the most magical moments of my life.

     About the only disappointment I felt during the entire ten day trip was with the sheep. We like to think of those green hills being covered with fluffy white dots. The dots, alas, had big splotches of spray paint on them. I know. It was so the owners can identify them, but still. . . Our second trip to Ireland was about ten years later. We flew into Dublin for just a few days, but made the most of them. We walked around the city, taking in the Book of Kells at Trinity University, having a photo op at the statue of Molly Malone selling her cockles and mussels, doing a literary pub crawl, and visiting the Wicklow Mountains to the south. While driving through the mostly deserted upland, we came upon the Guinness Estate. We were amused to see that the water in the lake was as black as the peat through which it filtered down. A “head” of white French sand spanned one end of the lake, looking for all the world like a huge “pint.” Naturally, we had to visit the Guinness museum, as well, where we ended our tour, as do all tourists, with a free pint in the Gravity Bar at the very top of the building, complete with a shamrock drawn in the foam. The place offers a spectacular 360˚ view of the city.

     I want to go back again, and I’ll be thinking of how to put that plan in motion on March 17 as I raise my glass.

     Slainté!

BACK IN THE SADDLE

Tempus fugit. Or so said the Roman poet Virgil. Time flies. And 2012 “fugited” about as fast as any year I can remember. For those of you who have completely forgotten I exist, or for those who have just moved into the area, I may need a bit of an update here. Scrapbag has been pretty much a regular column about this, that, and the other thing for a long time. I enjoyed writing it and over the years, a few million people told me they enjoyed reading it. But it came to an abrupt end on December 31, 2011, when I decided that life had just gotten too hectic and I needed a break. Not only from Scrapbag, but a lot of other entangling alliances I was in the habit of getting myself into. I was bowing out for a while.

 “Lots of luck,” scoffed a few skeptics, who knew me a better. They’d heard it before. This time, though, I meant it. Until tempus fugited again and without even being aware of any intervening days or weeks or months, I found myself staring at the calendar again: January 2013. Where had the time gone? Had I really had a rest? Had I accomplished anything but ticked off 365 unremarkable days?

 When I set out on this new road, I had a few goals in mind. I wanted to get healthier. I wanted to publish a book. I wanted to get back at the piano. I wanted, in short, to have a little breathing space to do something I wanted to do and to hang around long enough to do them. It’s hard to say “no” to people. People you like, people who came to rely on you doing something, people who kept wanting you to do something else, something more. Surprising even myself, I somehow found the will.

Okay. Report card time. I did get healthier. I lost some weight, started eating more veggies and less chip and dip. I also started exercising more, although that wasn’t part of my initial plan. I was trying to get my husband to exercise and it became clear that the only way he was going to do it was if I went with him. So I did, and found I actually liked it. My body stopped hurting so much. I was able to go up stairs without almost needing one of those little elevators you see in the back of magazines. There were no more sudden and very painful back spasms in the middle of the night. It wasn’t easy. But something was working. I also published not one book, but three. All ebooks, which necessitated a technical learning curve that rivaled scaling Everest, at times. (Note: If you want to learn more about them, check out my web site: www.m-c-ryan.com). And I got to play a rousing rendition of Heart and Soul with 7 year old grandson PJ. That gave me the courage to look up some other sheet music and I’ve been having fun seeing just how far I can get my fingers to stretch, not to mention remembering about sharps and flats.

 I’ve also, as you can see, returned to Scrapbag. I can’t promise it will appear in every issue—more like when the Spirit moves me. (Excuse the pun.) Thanks for your understanding, if in fact you did. It’s good to be back.