Piecing it Together

This picture came from About.com's gallery of scrap quilts, and the quilt and picture were made by Momof11 (!). She calls the quilt "Flowers for Laurie". Credit where credit is due!



Just lately, I have been revisiting my recurring passion for quilting. I have dusted off some unfinished projects, and assembled materials for some new ones. I crave the feeling of fabric in my hands, the precision of setting the pieces (not always as precise as I'd like it to be), the interplay of color and shape. I drink in images of the work of quilters who are more accomplished than I. I wander through fabric stores savoring the richness of color and texture on display.

Quilting, like drawing, crochet, cross stitch, playing music, reading, and writing, sits in my closet of dusty passions a lot of the time simply because the projects I have conceived to this point would take longer to complete than I have to live. But from time to time, each of my passions will call to me. There is always a reason.

The art of quilting was born of frugality and necessity. By piecing together scraps of outworn clothing, brightly colored feed sacks, and whatever else came to hand, a blanket could be made that was large enough to be useful. The multiple layers provided warmth. A quilt could be plain, or even homely, and be serviceable, but our foremothers put their creative spirits into arranging the pieces so the quilts were not just warm, but beautiful and meaningful. The traditional patterns -- Birds in the Air, Path Through the Woods, Churn Dash, Log Cabin, Cross and Crown -- represented familiar objects, moments in time, ideas, and elements of faith. The careful choice of color, distinction between figure and ground, the precision of the piecing, and the skill and craftsmanship with which the pattern was pieced and the stitches were taken turned something ordinary into something stunningly beautiful. Each stitch and each scrap of fabric contributed to the meaning and the pattern.

During one of my early morning discussions with my Father, it became clear to me why quilting has spoken to me just lately. My life right now is an assembly of bits and pieces : faith, family, the farm, school, the horses, community organizations, dividing my time and emotional energy between two households, the need to create, the need to be still and listen. Each scrap is rich in color and has a part to play in the bigger picture. But with the start of the new school year, the pieces seem to be smaller and more oddly shaped, and the fragmentation becomes more apparent. The question is, what am I going to make of it all? Something chaotic and unrealized? Something clumsy and plain, but serviceable? Or something carefully crafted to be meaningful and beautiful?

The works of talented quilters, like the lives of the Saints, point the way to the discipline, the love, the craftsmanship, and the artistry to make something warm, colorful, orderly, and unique from my pile of scraps. I pray for the vision to see the pattern, the commitment to cut and piece the elements precisely, and the patience to take each stitch with care.

Sweet Summertime

There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart ~ Celia Thaxter


It seems that every summer goes by more quickly than the one before. This one in particular ran like water through my hands, and next week I go back to school. The delicious margin of summer becomes crowded with schedules that don't depend on weather and whim.

My resolve this year is to keep that summertime feel all year long.

We women, in particular, seem to spend a lot of time dwelling on how "stressed" we are. We define and validate ourselves in terms of "stress", we describe our lives as "hectic, frantic, super-busy" and do a lot of exasperated sighing.

I am at that stage of mid-life when sleep is an unruly guest -- it drops in uninvited, and leaves abruptly in the middle of the night without warning, slamming the door loudly on the way out. Lately I've been trying to spend less of that wee-hours ceiling inspection time grinding my teeth and fretting about things, and more of it talking to my Father, and, more importantly, LISTENING to Him. So He and I have been talking about this phenomenon of stress just lately. I asked myself that if I eliminated the word and the concept of "stress" from my life, what would be left? This morning at 5 AM I got a verse of scripture, and not one, but three answers to that question.

The verse that came to me was from Isaiah: " Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in thee." Is. 26:3. The three answers all revolve around trust in God.

So, what IS left, if one drops out of the stress sweepstakes and does some redefining?


First, there are blessings for which I am not appropriately grateful. This includes the opportunity to serve people I love, and the work involved in keeping up the home and the farm that I have dreamed of since I was a child. It includes my job -- which is a perfect fit for my skill set, experiences, and somewhat sideways outlook on life, and on top of all that, gives me summers to work on the farm. I love all these things, passionately, but sometimes I can feel crowded or overwhelmed, and that leads to resentment.


My abundant life is a big one, and I am not properly grateful. When I flip my resentments on their heads, it's ludicrous that I would complain about having people in my life, after years of crushing loneliness, that I love so much and can do a few little things to help and serve. It's absurd to resent the beyond-my-wildest dream that is this farm. It is unthinkable to kick against a job that I love that pays for all of it. What's left is not overwhelming stress, but overwhelming gratitude. Look at all this! And all these gifts point to the Giver. If He has given me so much of what I want, how can He not be trusted to give me what I need?

No one is saying life is perfect. Money is tight, time is tighter, I make mistakes, I make bad judgments, things fall apart, relationships are sometimes strained, people I love are hurting, and all these things can add up to stress. Feeling helpless, powerless, unhappy with how things are, afraid of what is going to happen next - if that isn't stress, what is it?

Perhaps it's a set of challenges that, if I trust Him, God and I can handle together. No, it's not easy. But God is able and willing to equip me to get through it, if I can trust Him to lead, and rely on His strength to sustain and enable me, and His love to get me through the inevitable losses. No, I can't. But He and I together -- we can!

Finally, some of that "stress" can be redefined as nothing more than excess baggage. Do I really need to let my life in the here and now be influenced or controlled by things that happened in another time, another place, with other people? Do I really need to do so much -- or ANYTHING -- to validate myself or earn approval from God or people I love? Do I need other people's problems, and other people's drama? Do I need more things than I can take care of, and more tasks than I can accomplish? Or do they add up to a hamster wheel that keeps me running in circles, and steals precious time and energy from the things in life that are truly important? Do I trust God to love me whether I juggle more bowling pins than other people or just a few? Do I trust Him enough to let go of what doesn't bless my life?

I want my summertime margin. So to keep it, when I begin to feel stressed, I will ask myself "If there is no such thing as stress, then what IS this?" If it's a blessing -- I need to be grateful. If it's a challenge -- I need to trust God's providence, put on my big girl britches, and get to work. And if it's garbage -- I need to dump it!

Muck Everlasting

in just-

in Just- spring

when the world is mud- luscious

the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come running from marbles and

piracies and it's spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

,,,

ee cummings

If Robert Frost defines winter on the farm, ee cummings has captured spring, although luscious is not the first adjective that comes to mind when one's boot is swallowed by the muck and the next step lands a foot in a sock in ankle deep, 40 degree barn lot muck.

Tis the season of horsehair waffles from the currycomb all over the landscape, of wondering if the horses still HAVE feet, and of those mucky socks. This fine collection of pictures http://www.timflach.com/ was sent by a friend. Elegant and thought-provoking composition, and lovely images aside, the first thing that came to mind was "how on earth did anyone get those beasts so CLEAN!" There is a layer of horsehair on everything, and a strong wind will carry a cloud of swirling hair off into the stratosphere. Tis the season of itchy horses, of leaning through the fence to grab those tantalizing blades of greener-on-the-other-side, of coming home from work to see everyone sprawled flat on the hillside soaking up the sun ... and wondering just what fatal malady has befallen them all.

Once during this season I visited the post office, to have the postmistress say sympathetically "I'm so sorry about your spotted horse" (Ozzie the Appaloosa, the farm character). Since Oz had a gift for mischief I asked her "what did he do?". "He DIED," she replied, and went on to explain that she had seen his alarmingly prostrate form in the pasture when she passed by on a walk. She had whistled, called him, and even thrown a rock, provoking not a twitch. Oz was alive and well, but had just been too busy soaking up the sunshine and sleeping off three months' worth of winter to be bothered to respond.

This is also the season of realizing, as winter loosens its grip at last, what a gift the sunshine and the mud puddles are. The hayfield is emerald green, the alfalfa is shoe-top high, and everything is bursting into flower and song. The frogs are deafening at night, and the oven bird reminds me, calling "teacher, teacher, teacher", that I need to get to school in the morning instead of dawdling in the sunshine with the horses as I'm tempted to do.

This is Holy Saturday, when we wait one more anxious night for the dawning of the Light -- pure gift, pure love, pure glory. The stars millions of them -- are keeping vigil tonight, and tomorrow promises to be a radiant day. May His praises echo through these hills, and may His light so shine that we, like the awakening land, may bring forth flowers, sweet fragrance of prayer, and fruit to His glory.

Chinook

After one of the coldest spells of the year, the wind shifted and it's now 60 degrees outside. The ice and snow are disappearing before my eyes -- presently melted off everything except the laneways and the buildings. Water is running everywhere -- both under and over the compacted sheets of ice, but especially INTO my barn. There's a lake in the aisle in the front part of the barn, and water is pumping up into the stalls from the ground.

Praline went a-wandering this morning -- I was out late in the barn stripping stalls, and wore myself out, so I indulged myself in a late morning. This didn't fly with Praline, who came looking for me and her breakfast. I had to chip the gate out of the ice to put her back in, and grudgingly conceded the point that breakfast was, in fact, late.

Someone had let Leah and Annie out of their stall yesterday while I was at work. It might have been Alice, whose mission in life is to open what is closed and close what is open, and it might have been Allie, who was Leah's co-conspirator and let her out of the barn when she was in labor, so she could foal outside as she wished. Annie was not the least put off by the sheet of ice still on most of the barn lot, but was happily stretching her legs. She and Robin, the Great Dane, had an interesting encounter across the fence. Both were curious, but both were a little apprehensive, so it was a funny dance of advance and retreat. Annie was one of the tiniest foals I"ve ever had, and for a long time made a game out of waltzing in and out through the barn lot fence. She discovered yesterday that she is now too big to do that, and got herself thoroughly stuck. I heard a funny little bleat, and there she was, various body parts woven through three strands of electric tape (chronically not-hot -- a mystery to be solved soon), looking around to be rescued. She stood quietly and let me unwind her, and has been respecting the fence ever since.

That's one of the best things about Morgans --when their curiosity gets them in trouble, they are almost all sensible about waiting for help.

I love watching the foals having their Big Adventures in the barn lot. Annie is fearless about deviling the Big Mares, and is not put off by the Snake Face sisters, Allie and Dancer. It's hard to believe such pretty mares can pull such ugly faces, but they do, and both are definite drama queens, so the dramatic gesture has to include some flouncing as well. Annie is unimpressed by the drama, and enjoys "buzzing" them while they are eating hay, seeing if she can get them stirred up. They are all bluff, however, as I caught Allie standing guard over a sleeping Annie in the barn aisle, nosing her gently.




The break in the weather is most welcome, and I hope to get all the wild things in the barn out to run while I clean their stalls. The hill to the arena has been too slick, but by the end of the day the ice should all be gone, and there will be some rodeos and horse races in the arena for sure. we are all enjoying the taste of springtime, even when it comes with knee deep mud, and are looking forward to the arrival of the real thing.

Waiting for spring

Grapevine Farm is covered with a crust of icy snow, and braced against the unaccustomed cold. This area is decidedly Southern in climate and inclination, so single digit temperatures and prolonged periods of time with freezing temperatures, not to mention ice and snow on the ground, are not phenomena we take in stride.

The horses are all weathering the cold spell in good shape. Only Princess Allie requires a blanket, and everyone has been happily tucking into the extra hay I've thrown them. The two herdlets in the front part of the farm have practically moved IN to their round bales. Nary a shiver this morning, despite wind chills below zero. Water is another matter -- I was late to work this morning because the water trough in the outdoor arena (home to Leroy, Obie, Bit, and Blue, the Don't Fence Me In escape artists who respect not the electric tape) had frozen all the way to the bottom. I thought I was almost done with chores, but ended up spending considerable time and effort pounding the ice into bits with the post driver, throwing the chunks out, and then refilling the trough. It made for an interesting problem for my abandoned class to determine just how much ice I had moved -- 100 gallon trough, 3/4 full, with water at 8 lbs to the gallon. Do the math...

The same calculus has flattened a number of barns in the area, so I am holding my breath waiting for the warmup. My buildings all have large slabs of solid ice on them, and promise to make for interesting times when the thaw does come. The ice is sliding off like captive glaciers, and at the moment there is a two-foot overhang from the barn runway. Hopefully neither the horses nor I will get poleaxed by a sheet of falling ice. One of the neighbors, whose barn disintegrated under the weight, cut a foot-square piece of ice and weighed it. It came in at 15 lbs. Multiply that by the area of the roof of my 60x100 foot indoor arena and you can see why I'm nervous. I have to admire the neighbor's attitude -- I think scientific inquiry would be the farthest thing from my mind if one of my buildings fell in.

As many fair-weather opportunities to ride as I have squandered, now that the weather is a real obstacle, I am dying to get in the saddle. Unfortunately, most of the gates are cemented to the ground, at least the gates with the BROKE horses inside, and the hill down to the arena from the barn lot is tricky to navigate. I have my Yak Trax, and my ice climber's crampons if things get really bad, but the hill is just too steep and the ground too icy to risk getting a horse hurt. Robin, the Great Dane, spins and slides on the ice like a top, and has decided that crate life is not all so bad after all, compared to the treacherous footing outside. My relationship to the horses at the moment is one of waiter and chambermaid (and even the latter function is curtailed, as a ride down the huge dump slope with a wheelbarrow full of frozen manure is not an inviting prospect). They are not particularly patient customers, especially Leah and Shahar, my barn bangers and bucket rattlers, nor do they tip particularly well, but the sound of all that contented munching is a fair reward.

So we wait. I chop ice. I carry hay. I whack buckets with a crowbar. I read Robert Frost's poem "Brown's Descent", which always comes to mind as I head down one or another of my big hills. I watch Philippe Karl on video, and Reiner Klimke's amazing one-tempi victory lap at the '84 Olympics on you-tube, and study barrel racing, cavaletti, team sorting, and the art of harness training. I draw up training plans, put blank paper in each horse's section of my training notebook, and study the clinic and show schedules for the coming year. Makes for happy winter dreams.