Don and his cats

What else can I say?

Quilts

This baby quilt is extra long so it can be used on a toddler bed as well. I made this one for my friend Emily who adopted a baby boy named Cooper in March. They already have a son named Parker. I made him a lap quilt with pockets a few years ago when they went on a long road trip. It fits over his lap in the car seat with slanted levi's pockets so he could keep crayons and matchbox cars at easy reach. It also had a bit of a patriotic theme.




I made this quilt and sent it to Kirsten for Baby Gretchen.

Pictures I like to look at

This is my basement window. All of the east facing windows were iced up like this for days. Not only were we isolated and couldn't get off the hill, we couldn't see out either. That made for a really interesting Christmas 2008.




Three days into the snowstorm, and I'm doing fine!!



Six days below 25 degrees looks like this.



Last summer in my front yard!



A dahlia from the Swan Island Dahlia Farm. Unfortunately, no flowers will be in bloom during the Family Reunion.



Granny and Briana - Christmas 2007. I love this picture because both ladies are so pretty in red.



Lilly and Briana - Christmas 2007.



Updated MOOSE picture!


This is a picture of Don with Cameron and Connor in front of a big tank at Camp Withcombe. We let the little boys climb all over tanks, humvees, trucks, and an old WWII ambulance.

One of my favorite poems

Name of Horses

All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine
clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;

and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.

For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground - old toilers, soil makers:

O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.

Donald Hall

I love this poem.

Day Lilies

Gentle fingertips pluck the lily from a tall stalk.
With lines and spots, a map of joy and stress
On cheeks turned up toward the sun
Dottie follows the thin web down into foliage
Specks of brilliant green spiders try to dodge detection.
A pink plastic Easter egg missed by grandchildren
Reveals its hiding place among the leaves.
Within are two shiny quarters. Cool.

Dottie examines the six perfectly shaped petals
Green throat, now maroon, now cantaloupe, now butter yellow
With all stamens sporting dress shoes dusted in pollen
And one pistol, bulbous and sticky, protrudes.
This flower lasts just one day but deserves a moment of respect
Its perfection never duplicated.
This one gets the nod - - the admiration.

Soon Dottie moves on
To those more mundane details of the day
Bills, papers to grade, correspondence
Plans for the weekend, the month, the lifetime ahead

Tomorrow another lily will bloom.
It may rain
Droplets that scar fragile petals
Or sun too hot
Could scorch and wither them
One day to bloom and flaunt
Attract, pollinate, and germinate
Twenty-four hours – a lifetime – no time
For the mundane details of
A tedious life.

Quilts

I love this quilt! It is huge!! Kristi got married in 2007, and the table cloths were white with this blue starry fabric and little silver bells. With the fabric from the wedding, I made this mondo quilt of 16 log cabin blocks with multible borders. You can't see it but the back is pieced with all the scraps no bigger than 18 inches square. I gave it to Kristi for Christmas this year. I think she likes it : )

Quilts

Here is another quilt I made for the family reunion raffle. It is about the size of a larger throw. the image is a Japanese screen. The fabrics in the screen are alternating, although it is hard to tell in this photo.