Back in the garden

Many times during any given day I find myself composing a great blog post, all in my mind. While doing a puzzle I'm rehearsing a monologue on my inability to keep up with the housework, all in my mind. While baking bread I'm writing an essay on the sad state of grocery shopping today, all in my mind. While helping with piano practice, or researching Egypt, or painting a mummy, I'm waxing poetic about the many joys of homeschooling, and possibly its faults as well, but still all in my mind. Little of this writing ever seems to make it onto the blog these days, and when it does it's usually in a paragraph or two of watered down, hastily jotted recaps of the day. I need a stenographer and a secretary, Mad Men style, like in season one.

For instance, today it warmed up a bit and turned pretty and sunny, so I embarked on my first long run of the year. It didn't go all that well (the first one never does) but while running and listening to Gone With the Wind I was thinking all sorts of things I wanted to say about the resilience of our small town in the wake of the tornado (the outpouring of support has been tremendous), or about the state of the flora around here after the strange weather (the leaves on our tree are a deep fall-brown in early spring). Now for the life of me I can't remember what exactly I wanted to say on either of those topics that was worthy of being more than parenthetical.

After lunch and some relaxed reading time this afternoon we got back into the garden, pulling weeds, trimming bushes, trenching and edging, discovering worms, feeding the birds. The cowbirds are back. The finches are bright yellow again. The robin is settled into her nest under our deck. We haven't seen the hummingbirds yet, but we've got their food out, and I'm sure they'll come. We're also hoping to see the oriole again this year.

This same time last year we had only buds, no leaves yet. I'm kind of digging the bright green against the deep reddish brown, but it's definitely unusual.

Strength of community

We live in the small village of Dexter, and if that rings a bell for some reason, it may be that you've seen us on the news lately.

On Thursday morning Calvin and I went to a play put on by our local theater group. It was the debut of a play written to spark interest in Michigan maritime history, and was about a family shipwrecked in Thunderbay in a dreadful November storm. Having lost their ship and all its cargo, the family, now ruined, is beside themselves with joy for having escaped with their lives. The show was very good, very well acted, and really tugged at the heartstrings.

Thursday in the afternoon Calvin and I practiced the piano, watered the seeds we'd started indoors, designed a "snack delivery system" to bring food from the kitchen to the sitting room (think zip line), and read a little on ancient Mesopotamian religions. Late in the afternoon we were coloring with chalk, and had just decided to take the dogs to the mailbox, when the rain started to come down lightly. We were still considering the mailbox when tornado sirens started going off. We spent the next hour or so in the corner of our basement with flashlights (no power) hearing intermittent strong gusts of wind and hail.

We were unscathed, and thankfully so, but over the first few minutes after we emerged from the basement, as power returned and the news started reporting, it became clear that not all of our little town was so lucky. Watching the news we could see whole streets of downed trees and two businesses were gone, and when they started showing images of a neighborhood with missing roof tops, second stories, even whole houses, we realized that the live footage was coming from the helicopter just outside our own window. The neighborhood right next door had been ravaged.

I've seen images of tornado stricken communities on TV, more so than ever in the past few years, and there are two thoughts that go through my head now. First, that I never believed it would happen here. Second, that there is a lot that those images cannot convey: like the smell that comes after a tornado, a smell of soggy paper, freshly cut wood, pine, electricity, and natural gas; or the extent of the debris, for even today we were finding in our own yard, nearly a half mile away, wood, plastic, insulation, and even people's personal items; or the extent of the damage, because even though only ("only") ten houses were gone or deemed unsafe, actually hundreds have considerable damage, and when standing in the streets the reach of the destruction seems enormous. No photograph can convey that.

Amazingly, thankfully, no lives were lost, and no serious injuries sustained. Many families lost the ship and the cargo, but all the families are still together.

I would never remark to someone who has lived through this on how thankful they must be for their lives, or that all the other stuff can be replaced. That is for them to say, and they will say it and feel it also, but in the days following, when the relief washes away, next there will be time to realize what has been lost, and not all of it can be replaced.

This afternoon Calvin and I put on heavy gloves and ragged clothes and walked across the street , trash bags in hand, to help our less fortunate neighbors. We were assigned to collecting debris from their neighborhood park. While I picked up pieces of glass and drywall, still in the color of someone's dining room or bedroom, Calvin kept to picking up shingles and splintered wood. Far more than building materials, though, it's the irreplaceable items we found that wrenched the heart: the baby book pages, crumpled and torn; the check, obtained and not yet cashed; the child's blanket way up high in a tree. I could not save the baby book, and the blanket was out of reach, but the check I brought home so I could track down its rightful owner. Another woman found a wedding photo in the gutter, posted a picture of it on the community Facebook page, and was ultimately connected with the owners, who had lost nearly everything else. Many of us lost nothing, but there's a feeling of shock and vulnerability that courses through the entire town, and everyone seems to feel the need to reach out and connect with others. There are only little things that we can do, but the whole community has come out to do them.

Children's Concert Series

This afternoon Calvin and I went downtown to the Michigan Theater to see the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra in the first performance of their children's concert series. Over the past few days, in preparation for the event, we'd been listening to the program pieces (via YouTube concerts) and reading a bit about the composers and their compositions. Knowing that Calvin really will sit through a concert and enjoy it, I opted for seats in the front row of the balcony, thinking that the stage would be clearly visible from there, but other squirming children would not be. It was a children's "training concert", after all, and squirming and some disruption were to be expected.

I had not expected the mayhem that actually took place, however. Parents playing tag or hide-and-seek with their children, and another group of families that sat in a circle on the floor attacking each other with tickles, all eliciting excessive screaming and screeching in the lobby. And during the concert the occasional seat kicking, semi-loud exclamations of excitement, or standing to listen and bouncing to the beat are happily expected, but the children playing hopscotch in the aisles or holding loud conversations about toys and/or school were too many in number, and disruptive in a different, not enjoyable, way.

In all fairness, though, I think I was the only one of the two of us who was actually distracted. We made instruments, tried out real instruments, and decorated elephants before the show, then settled into our seats to enjoy the music we'd learned a bit about at home. There is only one more concert in the series (the pair?), but that doesn't come until March, so I will be looking for other symphony opportunities in the meantime.

The Story of Babar, Francis Poulenc

Toy Symphony, Leopold Mozart

Sorcerer's Apprentice, Paul Dukas

Halloween...the real thing

Happy Halloween.

We spent the morning trick-or-treating in Ann Arbor, followed by lunch at the Jolly Pumpkin (where else???). The event in Ann Arbor was sadly disappointing. A disappointing parade of uninterested kids strapped into outrageously expensive strollers being pushed from treat giver to treat giver by parents who were jabbering on cell phones. Where's the fun in that? At least two daycares worth of children were trudging along, kid tied to kid, while care providers walked into stores and declared that they needed 12 (or so) treats while the kids waited outside. I heard no fewer than three parents complain about the store that was handing out stickers instead of candy.

But Calvin and I had a great time, and a great lunch, and a great visit with the owners of our favorite book shop, one of which turned out to be a real Antarctica aficionado who fell in love with my little penguin and invited him back to view his Antractica collection some time.

The afternoon we spent resting and reading before making what we call Halloween soup (vegetable beef barley) and Italian bread. And, of course, trick-or-treating. This was the first Halloween that Calvin was really into the trick-or-treating activity. In the past he was curious, but not completely into it. This year it was hard to slow him down between houses, where I think his favorite part was actually saying "trick-or-treat", always followed by "thank-you" and/or "Happy Halloween". At one house he quite cheerily noted that "there's a dead guy in their front yard" (giggle, giggle).

We traveled about half of the neighborhood, collecting candy all the way, then returned home where he counted his candy, converting it to money, while snacking on grapes. He reveled in handing out candy to the later visitors. We read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow before bed. That's an all around great holiday.

Fall celebration at Parker Mill

Making our tax dollars work for us—we've certainly gotten our allotment of fun out of the county parks service this year. We've always enjoyed hiking the area parks, and we've attended a handful of their events in the past, but this is the first year that we've participated quite so heavily. Or maybe they are offering more events this year, because we've enjoyed guided hikes and naturalist education programs almost once a week since mid summer.

The other amazing thing about is that there are still parks we have never visited. Today was fall celebration day at Parker Mill Park, a new one on us. It started chilly and a little damp, but the sun finally came out while we were making bird houses and fall crafts. We shelled corn, ran the mill stones, and watched a heron fish on our way to the head race. It was a good day.