Red Hawk Rustic

Our power didn't go out.

Walking through snow is a great workout for my legs.

We've got plenty of water from the previous melt and more to come when this goes ~ deep, hot baths for anyone who wants one!

If it is going to be this cold, there might as well be snow.

My neighbor came by with his tractor again and plowed everyone's driveway--bless him!

The horses can get around better on the packed snow than simply frozen mudholes, and they like rolling in it.

It makes the world beautiful beyond words...

 And spring will be that much sweeter when it arrives.

The other week I went for a walk in the woods and met Winter in one of her lovelier moods.  There was still snow on the ground and it was cold, but not piercing.  The air felt fresh and moist and was a pleasure to inhale.  It was morning, before 9 o'clock and the sky was pastel blue, pink, and yellow--it glowed from the inside like mother-of-pearl, or an opal.  It had that special luminescence that I love and  see only in winter. 

I walked all the way through the back pasture and up through the woods trail to sit on the porch swing that John put up between two trees.  The swing looks out over one of my favorite section of woods, what I call the Beech Tree Forest, even though there aren't really a whole lot of beech trees.  I like it there because the forest floor is relatively free of multi-flora rose and some of the trees are large.  They create a true canopy and the sunlight filters through, church-like in the summer.  There are some young beech trees in the understory and in winter, their silver bark and their creamy yellow leaves still clinging to the branches stand out in graceful relief against the black trunks of the other trees, and, on my particular morning, snow.

Like dogwoods in spring, beech trees in winter always remind me of lace.  I guess that's a bit cliched and I should come up with a better metaphor, but it jumps to mind, I can't help it.  It has to do with the way their branches grow horizontally, snaking out to capture what light they can under the bigger trees once summer gets underway.  The white dogwood blossoms and the pretty yellow beech leaves look like they've been threaded through a tapestry in an almost even line.  It's lovely, dainty. 

Beeches grow all big and muscular of course, while dogwoods remain demure.  I like the mature beeches, too.  They remind me of people more than any other tree in the forest.  Their bark is smooth, like skin, and it wrinkles like skin around the joints of their branches.  Whenever I come across a grove of full grown beeches, I become a little self-conscious, like they're watching me, and perhaps judging.  I'm worried I'll get smacked like Dorothy did by the apple trees in the Wizard of Oz.

Research into why beech trees (and oaks) hold onto their dead leaves ( a phenomena called marcescence) until the new growth in spring pushes them off led me to this answer:  No one knows.  There are guesses, of course.  Perhaps it helps them retain water throughout winter (but this doesn't make any sense to me, since trees lose water through the stomata, little pores, on their leaves).  Or maybe they are still getting some nutrients from the leaves (which also seems suspect since all the chlorophyll is gone and what's left are the chemical wastes from metabolism).  Or maybe it keeps deer from eating the bark since there are dead, crunchy leaves in the way (hmmm...seems to me that would not deter the eating machines I know as deer).  The best answer I found was that maybe it doesn't do them any good at all anymore.  Maybe it is a remnant from earlier in their evolution, something like an appendix.

I found that answer in a delightful article about the beech tree here by George Ellison.  He found a quote by naturalist Donald Culross Peattie that I would have thought came straight out of the 19th century, given the romantic tone of the prose.  This is the kind of stuff I eat right up...

“A beech is, in almost any landscape where it appears, the finest tree to be seen ... Far down the aisles of the forest the beech is identifiable by the gleam of its wondrously smooth bark, not furrowed even by extreme old age ... The elegant clear gray of the bark extends from the trunk to the main mighty boughs so that when the tree stands naked in winter it seems to shine through the forest ... As the foliage matures in autumn [its] delicate leaves . . . turn a soft clear yellow. Then is the beech translated. As the sun of Indian summer bathes the great tree, it stands in a profound autumnal calm, enveloped in a golden light that hallows all about it.”
— Donald Culross Peattie, “A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America” (1950)

Well.  So much for lace!  Have a great weekend.

One piece of fashion advice I’ve never forgotten came from my grandmother, Baumie.  She told me that if you wear only high heels you won’t be able to walk in flats, and, conversely, if you wear only flats you won’t be able to walk in high heels.  So, mix it up and wear both styles frequently.  I was in my early twenties when she told me that, and it made perfect sense to me then.  Even the first part—that if you wore only heels, you would have trouble in flats.

Baumie had great style.  It was classic, but full of fun details and luxurious accents.  When I was young, she lived on a farm and I saw her both in flannel shirts and jeans and all dressed up for church or a trip to town.  The transformation she made for church always took my breath away.  I see her in my mind’s eye in cream colored cashmere sweaters and brown wool skirts, a sparkly amber brooch and red lipstick.  And she would have amazing shoes.  Suede and patent leather pumps maybe, with a pointy toe and narrow heel.  She would look beautiful—sophisticated and put-together.

She moved from the farmhouse to her townhouse in Montpelier when I was about twelve.  With eleven rooms filled to the hilt, it was the perfect place to explore my middle-school fashion fantasies.  I loved going through her drawers and trying on her jewelry and looking through all her closets at the random finds—a fur coat, a tailored suit, a mohair sweater.  The attic was another story altogether.  That’s where the ball gowns were kept.  My grandfather had been a teacher at Culver Military Academy and there were balls to attend at the formal school.  (Imagine!)  My mom and my aunt attended the dances, too, so there were gowns for each of them along with the ones Baumie wore.  I never tired of rustling through the stored silks and taffetas and crinolines, imagining which one I would wear if I had a formal dance to attend, which of course, I did not. 

On a visit to Baumie when I was in college and in the full throes of vintage style, I stumbled across a cache of shoes in the recesses of a closet I hadn’t noticed before.  It was the closet in what we called the twin bedroom.  There were two twin beds in moss green coverlets and the walls were painted lavender.  I nosed through the closet which reached pretty far back in the narrow wall and found boxes upon boxes of shoes, all labeled and neatly stored.  I opened one after the next and gasped at how perfect they were.  I tried them on.  Most of them fit, though a little snugly.  I never asked if I could have them, because I assumed she still wore them, even though she was in her seventies or eighties at the time.

I’ve got a pile of dress shoes stored, not so neatly, in my closet right now.  I haven’t worn them but once or twice since we moved here.  My day to day life has changed in so many ways since our move, which I expected, but is still strange to realize.  Clothing and footwear are the most visible markers of the switch.  Instead of pretty tops suitable for work, I’ve got drawers of t-shirts, preferably with crew necks to keep the sun off my chest.  And instead of a million different styles of black shoes, I’ve got boots.  Many different kinds of boots.  In the same way that you need a little more heel for that one pair of grey pants, or a little more of a pointy toe for that one dress, you need just the right boot for the country task at foot.   And it’s not just for each different task—gardening, barn chores, riding, hiking—but for each different task in different seasons.  Wet and cold add a whole new set of requirements.

What I will tell you is this: the search for the perfect boot is as elusive as the search for the perfect black shoe.  You need more than one pair.  Period.  Always. 

I miss wearing a dress and heels.  I do.  At my old job, I didn’t have to dress up necessarily, but I could if I wanted to and it wouldn’t be out of place.  Right now, I have very few reasons to dress up.  There is the occasional wedding or party, but most of the time I can wear jeans and a t-shirt and fit right in.  I don’t miss spending money on clothes or, even more annoying, time on shopping.  But, I’m probably losing my ability to float through a room in a pair of heels.  Maybe I’ll start dressing for the grocery.  Who’s to know that I’m not coming from the office or church, that I’m not on my way to something fabulous?

I think my sisters lost out in this fashion shoot--matching dresses? Boring. That's me in between my mom and Baumie. The three of us look dashing, don't you think? : )

We spent the weekend watching M&M while their parents were in Cancun.  (What's wrong with that picture?) So, you know what I'm doing today...swabbing the decks.

In the meantime, check out the third Menkedick Girl Blog ~ "Mom!" written by none other than M&M's very own mommy. 

Have we got an empire going here, or what?