Melanie

The apple tree was a gift. We’d just moved to a new home and I had a new baby on my hip. Friends brought lunch…and an apple tree. 

We did not have a per­fect spot for the tree, so we plant­ed it in the best spot we could. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this was part­ly under the shade of a large estab­lished ash tree, but the apple tree was so lit­tle we fig­ured it would­n’t be a problem.…

The baby grew and the tree grew. To begin with our apple tree had about as many leaves as she had hair, but some­how it thrived in its less than ade­quate loca­tion. And she, too, thrived—and grew hair!

By the time she could eat apples, we were get­ting a few on our lit­tle stick of a tree. It had entered its ado­les­cent stage—tall and bit gan­g­ly, not very filled out. But it pro­duced won­der­ful apples, none-the-less. By then we’d lost its tag and so did­n’t know what kind of apples they were. Lat­er I would do some research and com­par­isons and we’re pret­ty con­fi­dent they’re Har­al­sons: Firm tex­ture with a com­plex tart fla­vor. Good for fresh eat­ing and cook­ing. Espe­cial­ly good pie apple. 

Some years there were enough apples for a pie or some apple­sauce. Some years there were just enough to be plucked com­ing home from the school bus on an autumn after­noon. The apple tree grew taller (and filled out some) as the chil­dren grew taller, and it gave both nour­ish­ment and delight as our kids grew up.

Even­tu­al­ly, we noticed that the loom­ing ash tree was like­ly com­pro­mis­ing our lit­tle apple tree. But what was to be done? They were both mature trees—it was­n’t like they could be moved. The apple tree adapt­ed, stretch­ing toward the street, away from the shade, chas­ing the sun. It became notice­ably crooked, but only when looked at from the neigh­bor’s yard. From the house it looked fine, and so our neglect con­tin­ued. But then the ash tree began to look dan­ger­ous and seemed doomed with the Emer­ald Ash Bor­er on the loose. So we had the tree tak­en down. This was unex­pect­ed­ly dif­fi­cult, even though it was a scrap­py tree that felt dan­ger­ous to walk or park under, and even though it was keep­ing its thumb on the apple tree. Los­ing a tree is always hard. What I think of as The Scar is still vis­i­ble in the yard. It was a big tree.

We thought the apple tree would straight­en itself with more sun­shine, but it has rather held its crooked course. Like most plants we grow, it kin­da has had to fend for itself…we’ve been hap­pi­ly con­sumed with grow­ing chil­dren until quite recently. 

Spring 2019, the apple tree put out a bevy of beau­ti­ful blos­soms. Alas, a late spring frost killed every sin­gle one and we had zero apples last fall as “the baby” start­ed her senior year in high school.

Spring 2020, that baby on my hip when our apple tree came to us grad­u­at­ed from high school. The tree out­did itself in celebration—made 2019’s excep­tion­al blos­som out­put look mangy! It was a major sign of life for us while we were quar­an­tined in the ear­ly days of COVID-19.

There was no late frost last spring.

Come fall, our girl went to college—far away and dur­ing a pan­dem­ic (she’s doing just fine.) And the blos­soms that turned to hard green apples over the sum­mer turned to red apples in the fall…and we began to real­ize how many apples we had on our hands. So did the neigh­bor­hood. Peo­ple walk­ing and dri­ving by slowed down or stopped to gawk.

My hus­band guessti­mates over a thou­sand apples have been picked—not count­ing the hun­dreds that fell off the tree when the top pruned itself. Not count­ing all the ones that have gone to the squir­rels. We have spent our first weeks of emp­ty-nest­ing pro­cess­ing apples. Work­ing togeth­er, we can fill four pie pans and the crock­pot or food dehy­dra­tor in about 45 minutes. 

We should’ve kept track, of course, but we’ve hard­ly been able to keep up, so we’re stuck with what we’re con­fi­dent are con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates. We’ve made close to twen­ty pies—eight of them in the freez­er now. (I make a real­ly good apple pie, if I do say so myself.) Twelve quarts of apple sauce at least (they’re buried in the freez­er and hard to count now.) As many batch­es of dried apples—each batch using about 50 apples. And we’ve pressed large bags of apples upon friends, neigh­bors, and rela­tions, of course. We’ve encour­aged chil­dren in the street to steal from the tree. We sent out invi­ta­tions to the squir­rels to make merry.

Abun­dance does­n’t even begin to describe our apple sit­u­a­tion this year. What a gift that tree is! And what a joy to think of the par­al­lels with our daugh­ter’s growth—it is, real­ly, her tree. When she comes home for Thanks­giv­ing, she will be greet­ed with apple pies, apple sauce, apple scones and apple cake.….

(And yes, we have some­one who knows about apple trees com­ing to assess the sit­u­a­tion. It deserves a lit­tle TLC, that sweet apple tree.)

We start­ed fall cleanup in the gar­den this past week­end. I can hard­ly bear it, but needs must. Took down all the climb­ing and tan­gled beans, which was a work­out in and of itself, and which opened things up con­sid­er­ably. My hus­band built a new peony/dahlia gar­den fea­ture that we’re awful­ly excit­ed about even though it just looks like dirt now…but it holds such hope and promise for next spring! The E.B. White line about his bulb-plant­i­ng wife “calm­ly plot­ting the res­ur­rec­tion” comes to mind. (Fun Fact: The sign above the door to our gar­den is the name of the gar­den­ing col­umn Kather­ine White wrote for The New York­er.)

Soon we’ll have to clear out the toma­to plant skele­tons, the friz­zled zin­nia remains (which I hate to do until I’m sure the goldfinch­es have moved through), as well as the still bois­ter­ous marigolds. It has to be done—there’s the fall com­post appli­ca­tion and two new beds to install replac­ing “com­post­ing” wood ones. It’ll be quite a job—hopefully we have a long fall. Nei­ther of us wants to be out there in the snow.

I should be clear: my hus­band does all the hard gar­den work. This leaves me to wan­der about tuck­ing in new seeds and plants, los­ing myself in day­dreams and pos­si­ble book plots while water­ing and har­vest­ing veg­eta­bles, and cre­at­ing small bou­quets of joy from the flow­ers. I try to pull my weight, but I get dis­tract­ed. I do try not to make more work for him, though I’m not always suc­cess­ful at that either.

For me the gar­den is a beau­ti­ful teacher and work­ing metaphor of writ­ing. This fall the writ­ing par­al­lels and insights have been many. In 2013, when we cre­at­ed the gar­den space that takes up much of our back­yard, we put a size­able pump­kin patch at the back of it. For a few years we tried our hand at grow­ing giant pump­kins because I was writ­ing a book about grow­ing a giant pump­kin. We nev­er put near­ly as much work into it as true grow­ers do and the results were still star­tling. It was a fun project when the kids were still home.

But, alas, the kids have grown up, and the last cou­ple of years I’ve been all about flow­ers, so the pump­kin patch has been recon­script­ed to be a flower patch, though so far we con­tin­ue to call it the pump­kin patch so as to dis­tin­guish it from the oth­er flower patch­es in the gar­den. We moved some black-eyed susans and cone flow­ers of var­i­ous col­ors from the site of the new peony and dahlia gar­den. I filled in with col­or­ful zin­nias, salvia, and marigolds this sum­mer. And then a won­der­ful gift cer­tifi­cate got us some phlox, gold­en rod, and car­di­nal flower and the peren­ni­al like, which have been put to bed along the back fence, care­ful­ly leav­ing emp­ty pock­ets for sun­flow­ers, which I’m deter­mined to grow despite our squir­rel issues, which are many and mad­den­ing. I spent the sum­mer bat­tling what I think is purslane, which crept along under every­thing. (Yes, I know purslane is not only edi­ble but super nutri­tious, but it also looks a lot like spurge, which is poi­so­nous, so….)

As these gar­den changes were being plot­ted and car­ried out, I start­ed a full-revi­sion of the nov­el I’ve been work­ing on for four long years up in my office over­look­ing the gar­den. It’s a bit of a sprawl, lack­ing the fenc­ing and orga­ni­za­tion of the gar­den. There are many tan­gled parts and tak­ing them apart has been messy and time con­sum­ing. I’m wait­ing for things to feel like they’ve “opened up.” I’ve moved whole chap­ters, small scenes, bit and pieces…weeded words and sen­tences along the way…imagining what this sto­ry could be if I can just get all the right things in the right places in the right way.

I’ve ripped out ellipses (which is like purslane/spurge in my writing—it’s every­where!) Points of view and the time­line have changed sev­er­al times. All along the way, I’ve plant­ed love­ly bits of color—like the annu­als in a garden—so as to have pock­ets beau­ty and not despair at the mess of the whole.

When I get frus­trat­ed, I go out to the gar­den. There’s noth­ing like walk­ing through that screen door—it’s a def­i­nite thresh­old to a dif­fer­ent place. As I water and weed, pick and pro­tect, the nov­el­ist-brain often loosens, show­ing me what to do next with the chaot­ic knot­ted up chapters.

I’ve had to grow into gardening—it doesn’t come as nat­u­ral­ly to me as it does to my husband—but I’m begin­ning to think of it as an inte­gral part of my writ­ing process. The skills are so sim­i­lar: imag­i­na­tion to see what could be, dai­ly work, con­stant weed­ing and dead­head­ing, let­ting things com­post, mov­ing things around, pock­ets of love­li­ness amidst the tran­si­tion­ing pieces…. No won­der so many writ­ers are gardeners!

I hate to see it go—this year espe­cial­ly, as it sig­nals our return to a more soli­tary indoor life. But I hope to hold onto the inspi­ra­tion it pro­vides this win­ter as I keep weed­ing and plant­i­ng and mov­ing things around in the nov­el, if not the dirt. Onward & Upward In The Nov­el, I say!

I was a born a week after the moon land­ing in 1969. Some­how, in fam­i­ly sto­ry­telling and conversation—and lat­er, in my education—I came to under­stand that my birth­day was spe­cial. That I myself was…well, special…simply for hav­ing been born dur­ing such a his­toric week.

In school, we watched a reel of the icon­ic footage of Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. I sat in my chair aglow, pon­der­ing if I should let my teacher and my peers know the won­der of my birth dur­ing this time. When I saw pic­tures of that stiff Amer­i­can flag plant­ed on the moon’s sur­face, I felt a kind of kin­ship with it. Even today, when I look up at the moon I smile, mar­veling at our connection.

Now that we’re at the fifti­eth anniver­sary of this aus­pi­cious time, I’m real­iz­ing I have spent my life with a naïve and high­ly roman­ti­cized ver­sion of the sto­ry that got us to the moon. It’s had the grand scope and spir­it of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s call to action in his Moon Speech at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty in Sep­tem­ber 1962. With­out any of the actu­al details of how it came to pass, as it turns out.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the oth­er things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to orga­nize and mea­sure the best of our ener­gies and skills, because that chal­lenge is one that we are will­ing to accept, one we are unwill­ing to post­pone, and one which we intend to win, and the oth­ers, too.”

Our 1969 trip to the moon, for me, has always been about that orga­niz­ing and mea­sur­ing of the best of our ener­gies and skills to do the Hard Thing. This great explo­ration of a new fron­tier, this com­ing togeth­er to do the momen­tous and amaz­ing thing of send­ing peo­ple to the moon and hav­ing them walk on it—what a hard and thrilling thing! I feel like I grew up under JFK’s call, even though he posit­ed the nation­al goal years before I exist­ed. In my fam­i­ly we talked about space explo­ration with won­der and reverence—it was this great adven­ture, an amaz­ing feat of sci­ence and human inge­nu­ity, an astound­ing achieve­ment. The moon land­ing was a big part of my child­hood. I felt “touched by it,” as sil­ly and hubris­tic as that sounds.

So I’ve been quite excit­ed about all the media cov­er­age as we’ve approached the anniver­sary. In print, tele­vi­sion, and radio, I’ve revis­it­ed the details of those days when I was wait­ing to be born. And it’s been…surprisingly dif­fi­cult. The PBS series, Chas­ing The Moon, in par­tic­u­lar, was challenging.

Of course I knew about the “space race” with Rus­sia, but I’d always thought of this race as some­thing like a play­ground race to the swings—not as a proxy for war. I had no idea that some of the tech­nol­o­gy so quick­ly devel­oped in this “race” was devel­oped by Nazi sci­en­tists. And although I under­stood from a young age that 1969 was a trou­bled year that fol­lowed the extreme­ly trou­bled year of 1968, I did not know the ugly pol­i­tics around civ­il rights that became tan­gled in our space explo­ration. What’s more, I’d total­ly for­got­ten (or ignored) the trag­ic deaths that occurred on our way to launch­ing Apol­lo 11. I sat and watched this ter­rif­ic doc­u­men­tary on PBS and squirmed. It was so much messier than I knew…. Where was the won­der, the call to adven­ture? Was it too much to hope for a new call to action—a call to come togeth­er and do some­thing amazing—here in the 21^stcen­tu­ry?

And then the New York Times pulled through with this won­der­ful arti­cle about writ­ing the lede for the front-page cov­er­age of the moon land­ing on July 21st, 1969. I went and looked up the whole arti­cle on the Times­Ma­chine. My sense of won­der and adven­ture was restored. I’m just less naïve and a bit smarter about it all now.

As I rapid­ly approach the ripe old age of fifty, I won­der if I’ve thought of this his­toric event pri­mar­i­ly as a writer. (More heav­i­ly lean­ing on poet­ry than jour­nal­ism, per­haps.) Good­ness knows the his­toric con­text and facts need to be put before us again and again—I’m grate­ful for the pro­duc­tions teth­er­ing me back to all of the his­to­ry of this momen­tous event. But I’m also grate­ful for the poet­ics spo­ken and writ­ten dur­ing that time. And for the phrase “Sea of Tran­quil­i­ty,” (or Mare Tran­quil­li­tatisas as it is known in Latin—swoon!) the name of the loca­tion where Apol­lo 11 land­ed. I’m grate­ful for the com­bined sto­ry of my birth and the moon land­ing told to me by my parents—making it seem as if it was all one marvel—and for the sense of won­der and adven­ture and pur­pose I absorbed from the story.

I’m a writer—words like Pres­i­dent Nixon’s con­grat­u­la­tions to the astro­nauts speak to me.

“Because of what you have done, the heav­ens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tran­quil­i­ty it requires us to redou­ble our efforts to bring peace and tran­quil­i­ty to the earth.”

Fifty years on, we live in a time where we could use some redou­bling of our efforts to bring peace and tran­quil­i­ty to the earth….

Maybe I’ll make a moon birth­day cake this year.

Our gar­den is behind sched­ule this year. An unco­op­er­a­tive Min­neso­ta spring com­bined with health issues con­spired against us. We just man­aged to get the seedlings we’ve been grow­ing in the laun­dry room plant­ed this past weekend—they were start­ing to look a titch ane­mic under their arti­fi­cial lights.

It was an all-hands-to-work sort of week­end to get the weeds man­aged in prepa­ra­tion for plant­i­ng the more inten­tion­al­ly cul­ti­vat­ed plants. I poked in a few hun­dred seeds, as well—sunflowers, nas­tur­tiums, marigolds, car­di­nal run­ner beans. Pre­sum­ably they are doing their invis­i­ble work under the dirt before they pop out to beau­ti­fy it all. Should’ve done it weeks ago, of course. The arched trel­lis would nor­mal­ly be fill­ing in at this time, but as it is…it remains bare.

But it is start­ing to look like something…or like it will be some­thing. Our back­yard sanc­tu­ary is just not to the point I’d hoped it would be in the mid­dle of June. 

My WIP—a mid­dle grade novel—is in about the same state as the gar­den. Start­ing to look like something…or like it could be something…still bare in spots…so many weeds…seeds of great poten­tial sown (at least I think so on my upbeat days.) It’s just behind where I hoped it would be at this point.…

I’m struck by the num­ber of writ­ers who are also gar­den­ers. I won­der if muck­ing about in the dirt, turn­ing com­post, pulling weeds, plant­i­ng seeds, mov­ing things around, con­stant­ly water­ing etc. tutors us in the skills need­ed to write. The daili­ness alone is instruc­tive. It’s so much eas­i­er to do some gardening/writing each day than to try and catch up on the week­end. Patience is impor­tant in both endeav­ors. Grand vision bal­anced with real­is­tic expec­ta­tion is sim­i­lar in each case.

The hope that comes with the plant­i­ng of seeds and seedlings, whether in a nov­el or a gar­den, is an exhil­a­rat­ing thing. The gen­tle tend­ing required to coax those seeds and seedlings to life—well, that’s good, hon­est, some­times mys­te­ri­ous work. There’s no get­ting around the fact that gar­den­ing and writ­ing require time and hard work. Nei­ther activ­i­ty takes kind­ly to rush­ing; both ben­e­fit from constancy. 

I’ve been com­post­ing for this book for three years now—researching, scrib­bling, meet­ing just the right folks, bang­ing out a first draft etc. I’m not sure I could’ve sped that up, actu­al­ly. Now that the raised beds of the nov­el­’s struc­ture are in and plant­ed, my job is to tend the growth, work on sup­ports for the flop­pi­er bits, plant a few more seeds, weed out the unhelp­ful parts.… I’ve got a design firm­ly in mind, yet I keep remind­ing myself to stay open and flex­i­ble. Some­times (often?) things grow dif­fer­ent­ly than orig­i­nal­ly planned.

As Kather­ine White’s The New York­er col­umn (and lat­er her book) was titled: Onward & Upward In The Garden!

A cel­list-friend invit­ed me to a cel­lo mas­ter class last week­end. The invi­ta­tion made me laugh. “Won’t I be a bit con­spic­u­ous as a non-cel­list at a cel­lo mas­ter class?” I asked. She assured me I would not be. And I was­n’t. There was an entire audi­ence there and I’d like to think you could not tell me from the actu­al cel­lists. Ver­i­ly, I sat among them in a row. My friend intro­duced me down the line as we took our seats. I said, “Hel­lo, I’m Melanie, a Cel­lo Enthu­si­ast!” as my intro­duc­tion. (My friend kind­ly added that I’d writ­ten a book about a young cellist.)

The Mas­ter at the Mas­ter Class was Amit Peled. He plays Pablo Casals’ cel­lo! (Swoon!) His stu­dents for the after­noon were four brave teens. I am priv­i­leged to know one of them—she has played the pre­lude to Bach’s first suite for me at Giant Pump­kin Suite book events. (And she’s pic­tured above dur­ing her time with Mr. Peled.) It was a love­ly sur­prise to get there and find she would be one of the stu­dents playing. 

I say these stu­dents were brave because I don’t think I could’ve done what they did when I was their age. They played for Mr. Peled and then they sat for a half hour on stage in front of an audi­ence while he worked with them on their piece, on their body mechan­ics, on their musi­cal­i­ty, on their sense of self as a musi­cian and cel­list. He asked dif­fi­cult sweaty ques­tions. (But he did not shame them in the least when they did not know the answer.) He asked them to sing, to shout, to move in new ways that sure­ly must’ve been embar­rass­ing. And they did all of this in front of an audi­ence. 

Amit Peled is an extra­or­di­nary teacher—kind, encour­ag­ing, full of enthu­si­asm. He has the most cre­ative ways of explain­ing things and such mar­velous sto­ries. This Cel­lo Enthu­si­ast learned much.

I was struck by how he talked about each piece. The stu­dents played such dif­fer­ent music, but some­where in his com­ments, one way or anoth­er, Mr. Peled asked each of them what sto­ry they were telling in the music. This writer’s heart skipped a beat each time. He talked with them about their posture—their low­er back, elbows, and breath—and how it served the music. “Music is the lan­guage of the ear…” he said sev­er­al times. And he talked with them about sur­pris­ing the audi­ence, about mak­ing us do that sharp intake of breath that hap­pens invol­un­tar­i­ly when a musi­cal phrase or sto­ry is told in some new way. “I know you have the heart to play this,” he said to one. “You have already con­vinced me. Let me hear you play this sto­ry again.….”

Let me hear you play this story.…

Music and story.…story and music. They’ve always been linked for me. What a plea­sure it was, though, to hear these two arts talked about in tan­dem—and with cel­lo!

It is pos­si­ble this is only my first cel­lo mas­ter class. What a thrill it was!

“…spaghet­ti pie meant Gram’s gar­lic bread, which was the best thing this side–and prob­a­bly the oth­er side–of the Mis­sis­sip­pi. Crispy crust, soft and squishy in the mid­dle, lots of but­ter, and gar­lic you could still smell in the house the next day.” (Giant Pump­kin Suite, pg. 60)

It was high school home­com­ing this past week­end and Dar­ling Daugh­ter invit­ed friends for din­ner before the dance. We decid­ed on a pas­ta bar, sal­ad, and Gram’s Gar­lic Bread for the menu.

And so, the roast­ing of the gar­lic com­menced. Do you do this? So easy. So ver­sa­tile. So very fra­grant…for days. Cut off the tip­py top of a head gar­lic, splash lib­er­al­ly with olive oil, seal it in a foil pack­et and put it in the oven for about an hour at 350 degrees or so. If you’re going to do some, you might as well do a lot—the roast­ed end result freezes nice­ly to be used later. 

After it cools suf­fi­cient­ly, squeeze the gar­l­i­cy good­ness out. Very Messy. Wear gloves if you don’t enjoy eau d’gar­lic scent. Take that gar­lic yumminess—anywhere from four to twen­ty cloves—and whir/mash it up with a stick of soft­ened but­ter. Add some gar­lic salt—a tea­spoon or so. Gram does­n’t real­ly measure.

Then, take a loaf of bread—Gram makes hers, of course, but I bought cia­bat­ta at the gro­cery store. I will say, the more airy on the inside and crispy on the out­side the bet­ter. Cia­bat­ta is per­fect. Slice it long ways unless you want to be but­ter­ing the whole day long.*

Then, take that salty, gar­l­i­cy, but­ter mix­ture and spread both halves lib­er­al­ly. This par­tic­u­lar ren­di­tion could’ve used more of the salty, gar­l­i­cy, goodness—it would be hard to over do this Very Good Thing. An amend­ment to the above: use a stick and half of but­ter (and more gar­lic) if your cia­bat­ta is large.

Put the loaf back togeth­er and slice into pieces—easier done now than when it’s hot.

Need­less to say, all of this can be done well ahead of time—you can even freeze it at this stage. Wrap it up tight. Put it in the oven with your spaghet­ti pie or what­ev­er you’re serving—it can heat any­where from 30–60+ min­utes. Very flexible.

I have no more pictures–it was hard­ly out of the oven before it was devoured. Gram would’ve been pleased.

* Also, it must be not­ed, this recipe is not up to Gram’s usu­al health­ful stan­dards, but when you put squash and spinach in your spaghet­ti pie like she does, it’s okay to eat white bread with lots of but­ter and salt Thomas says.

On one of my reg­u­lar walk­ing paths, the grassy boule­vard has been replaced by plant­ed prairie. I am all for these prairie restora­tion efforts. I know that prairie patch­es will do more than sim­ply make for a more inter­est­ing walk for me—they bring in pol­li­na­tors and crit­ters, fil­ter water and pre­vent ero­sion etc. Prairie places will do things I don’t even know about or under­stand. All good.

But the in progress phase is less than per­fect­ly lovely.….

I swear, I’m pulling “plants” (I’m avoid­ing the more pejo­ra­tive term) that look just like those out of my garden.

I love the sign: Prairie In Progress. It reminds me of what writ­ers some­times call the book they’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on: Work In Progress (WIP). My cur­rent WIP looks a lot like this PIP right now. Hard to imag­ine it’s going to turn into some­thing beau­ti­ful and impor­tant. Right now it feels like it’s filled with weeds. It’s  uneven and bumpy. There are bare spots and rocky places. Can­dy wrap­pers and cig­a­rette butts lit­ter the edges in places.

But it’s in progress. It will fill in. Scrap­py look­ing places will bloom some day. I’ll clean up the lit­ter, even out the bumps, and replant as need­ed. I will water it and shine some love on it. It will be tend­ed as it finds its way, becom­ing what it’s meant to be. I have to believe this, or I can’t work on it.

I’m grate­ful for this Prairie Project near my house. When I walk by it I remind myself: It’s not always beau­ti­ful in the begin­ning. It takes a lit­tle faith to let it grow and a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion to see the spots in which things begin to look more hope­ful. It always, in fact, takes longer than you think it will (or should.) 

So be it. Most every­thing and every­one is a Work In Progress. I’m grate­ful for this live and grow­ing reminder twen­ty min­utes from my house.

I attend­ed a won­der­ful tea par­ty this past weekend—complete with hats and gloves, fun games, inter­est­ing women, a lit­tle poet­ry, and an astound­ing array of deli­cious food—decadent quiche, lit­tle sand­wich­es, sal­ads, scones and treats. The works, I tell ya! (I can’t believe I did­n’t take a pic­ture of the food!) There was also iced tea and hot tea. I had both—it was warm out (we were out­doors in a love­ly gar­den) but I want­ed a chi­na tea cup, so I had hot tea first (gloves on) and then switched to iced tea (gloves off.) I’ve no idea if this was prop­er glove-tea eti­quette or not.

I was invit­ed because of Giant Pump­kin Suite. There’s a Japan­ese tea cer­e­mo­ny in the book and the host won­dered if I would come and talk about it. Now, the Japan­ese tea cer­e­mo­ny is not a tea party—it is, in fact, some­thing else entire­ly. I was­n’t sure I could do it jus­tice speak­ing about it on my own.

So I asked if I could bring my friend Sato­mi who helped me learn about the tea cer­e­mo­ny and end­less­ly advised and proofed for all of the many details.

The night before, I texted Sato­mi and said, “Do you have gloves and hat to wear to the tea party?”

In the morn­ing I woke up to her text: I’m now think­ing about try­ing on my mom’s old kimono that I brought last time I vis­it­ed Japan. Would that be for­mal enough?

It took her an hour to dress. Wear­ing a kimono is not like wear­ing a bathrobe—it is a very intri­cate process to get dressed! Lay­ers and lay­ers, many ties and folds, and more layers—it is not unlike the tea cer­e­mo­ny in terms of process. Beau­ti­ful, slow, full of mean­ing, his­to­ry, and tradition.

I drove with the air-con­di­tion­ing on full-blast so she would­n’t melt before we got there. And I was so glad she came—she spoke so elo­quent­ly about the his­to­ry of the tea cer­e­mo­ny and how it is used today in Japan­ese society.

I am filled with grat­i­tude for Satomi’s help with “Chap­ter 14: The Way Of Tea”—I knew noth­ing about the tea cer­e­mo­ny when we began and she patient­ly walked me through the many details sev­er­al times. It was such an inter­est­ing process to write about. Dif­fi­cult to describe and not make it a six­ty page chap­ter! If you’d like to watch a tea cer­e­mo­ny you can watch here. It is very relaxing!

We had a ball on Sat­ur­day. Thank you to the Minneapolis/St. Paul chap­ter of TTN for a love­ly day!

Also, this is Satomi’s moth­er. My fic­tion­al Mrs. Kiyo is named after her. She lives in Tokyo and Sato­mi says she’s delight­ed with Giant Pump­kin Suite even though she does not read Eng­lish (and it is not yet trans­lat­ed into Japanese!)

When the writ­ing is going badly…and some­times when it is going well…I pack up note­books and pens and print­ed drafts and head to the Min­neso­ta Land­scape Arbore­tum. It’s a bit of a dri­ve from my house and so I always feel like I should spend hours and hours there once I arrive. This is not hard to do.

I usu­al­ly begin with a walk around 3‑mile dri­ve. Then I go to the car and get my things and find a qui­et place. I work awhile. Then I wan­der the gardens…maybe stop in the library…then work again. At some point I have lunch and anoth­er prop­er walk, and maybe a vis­it to the gift store before I set­tle down and try to accom­plish one more lit­tle bit. Cer­tain­ly there’s anoth­er walk before I head home.

It nev­er fails me, the arbore­tum. It is always worth the trip. Year round I get “unstuck” there—by get­ting out of my own way, usu­al­ly. Today I fig­ured out a lit­tle plot hic­cup and dis­cov­ered a won­der­ful bit of research that focus­es things nice­ly. I think it’s the com­bi­na­tion of walk­ing and work­ing. This morn­ing, a fam­i­ly of geese slowed me down—the lit­tle ones climb­ing out of the pond, the par­ents hiss­ing at me until they’d all been gath­ered. I had to stand and wait. Then walk at a dis­tance behind them for awhile. In the process, the plot hic­cup worked its way out.

I spent a lot of time (A LOT of time) at the Arbore­tum when my kids were lit­tle. We have many mem­o­ries scat­tered through the gar­dens there. Pic­nic places under favorite trees, in trea­sured places, on cer­tain bench­es. Books we read entire­ly in the gar­dens, pick­ing up and walk­ing to anoth­er spot of beau­ty when­ev­er we need­ed to get wig­gles out between chap­ters. We packed sand­wich­es and snacks and lemon­ade and hot choco­late (depend­ing on the sea­son), and always, always books in our back­packs. (I do the same now.) We have loved the sum­mer art exhibits mixed in and around the flow­ers and herbs, research plots, and gath­er­ing spots. This year, there’s an origa­mi theme. I can’t wait to take my big kids, when their sched­ules release us to sum­mer. It looks like they’ve fresh­ened the maze garden—the shrub­beries look right prop­er. (I’ve got a maze gar­den in the WIP. This was my excuse for going to the arb this morning—RESEARCH.)

I am grate­ful for the beau­ty cul­ti­vat­ed and tend­ed in this place—staff and vol­un­teers work con­stant­ly to keep things so love­ly. I’m grate­ful for the paths invit­ing me to walk and walk and the bench­es invit­ing me to sit and rest and read. I’m grate­ful for the sea­sons and all of their glo­ry. The peonies are just begin­ning to open—the ros­es, too. It’s going to be a gor­geous summer.

[Read­more­from­Me­lanieHeuis­er­Hill]

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When our son went off to col­lege a few years ago, I pan­icked in the park­ing lot. We said our good­byes, I tried not to cry but failed, he put his giant man-child arms around me to com­fort me…and then he walked one direc­tion and we went the oth­er. It remind­ed me of putting him on the bus the first time for kinder­garten. We stood there at the bus stop and I thought, “This is CRAZY! You don’t put your baby on a behe­moth of a yel­low vehi­cle that does­n’t even have seat­belts with a dri­ver you don’t even know…!”  It took every ounce of strength in me not to march him right back home and then into the woods to begin a new her­mit lifestyle. 

But I digress. He sur­vived not only the bus and ele­men­tary school, but mid­dle school (which is no small thing), and high school, too. I was forced to admit I had every con­fi­dence he would do well in college.

But I—the mother—was still a tiny bit of a mess. I need­ed some­thing to do for my sweet boy who was so far from home. On the ride home I remem­bered how my Mom wrote me a let­ter pret­ty much every sin­gle day of my fresh­man year of col­lege. I was­n’t ter­ri­bly home­sick, and maybe this was why. Every day I went to the P.O. there was a breezy newsy mis­sive from home.

I knew I would make a mess of such a prac­tice. I’d be writ­ing unbear­able tomes of things I thought I should be set­ting down in ink for the boy. Unso­licit­ed and unwant­ed advice, lengthy inser­vices on health and hap­pi­ness, too nosy ques­tions, not very brief lec­tures etc. So I decid­ed to send (drum roll!) post­cards. What fun! Post­cards are super fun!

By the time we were home, I’d done a fair amount of retail ther­a­py and ordered an an impres­sive col­lec­tion of post­cards cov­er­ing many topics—art and jokes, books and the human­i­ties (I did­n’t want engi­neer­ing school to ruin his Renais­sance Man ten­den­cies), super­heroes and fun facts, sci­ence and Jane Austen.… 

I real­ized I could still abuse my mail­ing priv­i­leges with post­cards though. If I wrote small enough, I could still…say too much. So I start­ed writ­ing haikus. I do not con­sid­er myself a poet, and these haikus would nev­er be mis­tak­en for stel­lar poet­ry. But they’re fun for me to scrib­ble out—5 then 7 then 5 syl­la­bles in three lines. I wax poet­ic on the sea­son, lim­it my unso­licit­ed advice, lecture—I mean remind—him of things as need­ed, and gen­er­al­ly just let him know that he is loved and missed…all in sev­en­teen syl­la­bles a day.

Fresh­man year I man­aged most every day. I’m less reg­u­lar now, but he still says he likes receiv­ing them, so I still send them a few times a week. His kid sis­ter not­ed recent­ly that I’m going to have to refur­bish my post­card sup­ply for her. But I’m con­fi­dent I’ll still be able to come up with 17 syl­la­bles a day when she goes off to school.

[Read­more­from­Me­lanieHeuis­er­Hill]

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