Fleur-de-Lambs

“Don’t move.”

I stopped in my tracks, thinking we were playing the game Statues.

“No, I mean, don’t move from here,” Levi said, clarifying by sweeping his hand around the barn.

The little boy is in love.

Not with me but with our barn and pasture and three lambs.

Early this month Levi, siblings Seth and Rachel, and their father Morgan began clearing an overgrowth of brambles and honeysuckle from our pasture, securing the split-rail fence with a hefty wire fence backup, and prepping the small barn that has been vacant since about 2012 when our last llama went to llama heaven.

The Three Musketeers

This wasn’t my idea.

When our neighbor Morgan first suggested it, I put my foot down. “No animals.”

I’ve spent too many winters tromping through the snow to feed and water livestock, I told him.

Morgan kept working on me.

“No. My mother is in her 80s. The house belongs to her, not me. When she goes, I go.”

“But who knows how long she’ll live? Could you at least pass it by your sisters?”

If Morgan is anything he is persistent.

“OK.”

I asked. No objections.

Still, my answer to Morgan was “No.”

“You see,” I told him, “where I used to live I raised chickens and had a problem in the neighborhood.”

Morgan grew up working on a dairy farm. He wants to instill responsibility in his four children. (The youngest, Hannah, is still a babe in wife Betsy’s arms.) Morgan assured me he would navigate the problems. He would start with lambs that would be butchered in the fall. No winter watering or feeding.

We are a neighborhood in transition. Since I moved back, one neighbor died, two left for nursing homes, and a crop of young families moved in. Morgan said the lambs would be great for his youngsters and also help build community. Morgan started doing so soon after he bought a house near ours, coordinating college students to provide a Day of Caring where they fixed screen doors, cut up fallen limbs, and replaced fence posts for the elderly residents.

“Well, OK.”

On the eve of Easter, three young Katahdin ram lambs arrived. They were born in December. Most of heir barn-mates ended up on Easter dinner tables in Centre County. Morgan said they wouldn’t name the three since they would be butchered in November.

Wynken, Blynkin & Nod

I call them the Three Musketeers or, when they’re sleeping, Wynken, Blynken and Nod. That first night they huddled in the corner of our former pony/llama barn, not exactly sure what to make of everything.

The Katahdin breed originated in Maine and is named after the highest mountain in the state. They were bred as hair (rather than wool) sheep. They don’t have to be sheared and are raised for meat. Muslims prefer “intact” ram lambs without docked tails, and that is what these are. By the way, I looked it up and the meat of sheep is called “lamb” until the animal turns 2 years old, then it is called “mutton.” Mutton is less tender, stronger tasting, and darker in color than lamb.

Within days the kids named each of the lambs. The larger, black lamb is called Gruff. The white one with brown spots on his face is Freckles. The tan lamb is Gary. It makes it easier to talk about them to their friends who walk down to get an up close and personal look at the newest neighbors.

Mayapples in April

I must admit, when I’m weeding my asparagus patch, down on my hands and knees and eye-to-eye with the Three Musketeers, there is something peaceful about the silent companionship on the other side of the fence. It hasn’t been two weeks. Perhaps, like Levi, I’ve fallen in love. Laurie Lynch

 

Written on Slate: “Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.” Joyce Meyer

Fleur-de-RiseUp

As I’ve written before, my mother loves music. I am always scoping out bulletin boards, coffee shop notices, and community calendars for entertaining events that are free, or nearly free. This winter a poster saying “Rise Up Singing” caught my attention.

I guess some people would be afraid to go to an event without making plans with other people, but don’t forget, I grew up in this town and my mother has lived here for 60 years—we always end up knowing someone.

At February’s Rise Up Singing event, held at the Friends Meeting, we saw women I rode with on the bus to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., people that attend Acoustic Brew concerts, and, yep, some Master Gardeners—but we also met a few new folks.

The routine is the same for each group sing. We go around the room introducing ourselves. There is a big tote filled with Rise Up Singing songbooks for everyone but at the February meeting we realized we needed the Larger Print edition, which we bought online. After the introductions, anyone can suggest a song, giving the title, page number, and repeating his/her name again. The only rule is that we don’t sing a song twice.

Besides amateur voices and a few better ones, there are a few guitarists, a one or two fiddlers, a harmonica player, and an older gentleman with what I think is a zither or an Autoharp. (He is the one who told us about the Larger Print edition.)

Rise Up Singing, The Group Singing Songbook was conceived, developed and edited by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson.

Peter was camp counselor in Vermont in the 1970s but the camp songbook didn’t have songs the kids wanted to sing—those by the Beatles, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Joni Mitchell. So, a group of campers decided to collect their own songs and group them into chapters such as Sea Songs, Freedom, Spirituals, etc. They included lyrics and chords, but no music.

Peter worked on the book with friends, and by 1979 the songbook Winds of the People was published informally, “underground,” since not all of the songs were fully licensed. It wasn’t available in stores, but 30,000 copies reached dedicated songsters.

In 1981 Peter and Annie became a couple and began leading group sings based on Winds of the People. They wanted to make the book “legal” so they sought the help of Pete Seeger and his wife Toshi who ran a non-profit organization called Sing Out!

One thing led to another and they formed a song selection team and spent weekends singing songs, selecting those that were easy to sing and play, fun to sing in a group, and filled with hope for a better world.

This all took place in the years before the Internet, so each song had to be transcribed from albums in WXPN’s (The University of Pennsylvania) folk music collection or copied from songbooks in the Library of Congress. It took Peter two years of contacting copyright holders, then the book had to be typeset, Annie illustrated and laid out the pages in their home in Glen Mills, and others helped in various ways. In August of 1988, Rise Up Singing was born as a Bethlehem, PA Sing Out! Publication. People loved being able to carry around so many words to songs in one book. Within the next 25 years, a million copies were sold.

At our March sing-along, we sang 32 songs during the two-hour session. I had a new packet of page marker Post-Its and marked each one. We started with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”, and moved onto several songs I had never heard. “The M.T.A. Song” from 1948 protested the proposed Boston subway fare increase from 10 cents to 15 cents. The lyrics say Charlie was trapped on the subway because he didn’t have an extra nickel to exit. Then there was a traditional wool spinning song called “Sarasponda.”

We sang another Woody Guthrie from 1961 that resonated with life in 2017 called “Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” and then launched into “Oklahoma” by Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers circa 1943.

My mother’s favorite was probably “Moon River” written in1961 thanks to Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini. And mine? Well, I had several: “The Rose” by Amanda McBroom, “Circle Game” by Joni Mitchell, and “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman.

“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round!” “Universal Soldier,” and “Peace in the Valley” were requested and sung with spirit and community. A woman sitting behind me said she wanted to sing “Funiculi Funicula”. She remembered singing it in grade school. (I did too, and was surprised to learn that it is an Italian song written to commemorate the opening of the funicular cable car to the top of Mount Vesuvius in 1880.)

History lessons abound with Rise Up Singing, and joining with friends and strangers to sing our hearts out has plenty of health benefits. Researchers report that group singing improves the immune system, reduces stress and helps with memory training. The social interaction and common experience of singing together is spiritually uplifting and just what the doctor ordered for patients as well as caregivers. Laurie Lynch

Eating for Health in 2017: The Dirty Dozen—Strawberries, spinach, nectarines, apples, peaches, celery, grapes, pears, cherries, tomatoes, bell peppers and potatoes. (Best to only eat organic.)

The Clean 15—Avocados, corn, pineapple, cabbage, peas, onions, asparagus, mangoes, papayas, kiwi, eggplant, honeydew, grapefruit, cantaloupe, cauliflower.

Written on Slate: “The only thing better than singing is more singing.” Ella Fitzgerald

Fleur-de-BFF

Calla Lily Teardrop

Growing up in College Township in what was then the outskirts of State College, I didn’t need female friends. I had four sisters.

As adulthood led to motherhood, and motherhood led to grand-motherhood, the importance of female friends strengthened like a rampant vine, twisting and twining, taking hold, sending out new shoots whenever I went in different geographic (or otherwise) directions. Female friends keep me grounded and grateful.

Thank goodness for email. It certainly makes staying in touch across the miles easier. The other week I dashed off a quick message to Vanessa, sending a link I thought she would enjoy. She replied, and added a juicy tidbit: That weekend she was going bridal gown shopping with her daughter Abby. It just so happens that Vanessa’s Abby and my Marina are best friends from middle school days.

Do you remember the old joke about three forms of communication…telegraph, telephone and tell-a-woman? I guess I’m showing my age and what life was like in the days before we were politically correct. Did I just say that? In the days BEFORE  we were politically correct? Where does that place us now on the scale of verbal abuse, the days of rude politics and lying tweets?

Well, when I was Skyping with Marina I casually mentioned that Abby and family were in Philadelphia shopping for a wedding gown.

Bzzziiiing! Communication between Belgium and the U.S. was never faster.

Mrs. I taught these two well in middle school. Competition is not something to shy from but to thrive on. Abby sent photos modeling her Top 10 gowns and said to Marina, “Tell me what you think.”

Abby told Marina she had videos of the two final contenders but Marina told her to wait. She wanted to go through the entire group so she could figure out the Top Two on her own.

Marina gave each gown a number for easy ID. Immediately she narrowed the field: No. 10 was Marina’s favorite for Abby, followed by No. 6.

“YOU PICKED THEM!!!” Abby replied.

I asked Marina how she did it. I would have been too nervous to pick a gown for a friend. I am no fashionista. But Marina told me it had nothing to do with fashion. Choosing among the gowns was a piece of cake—wedding cake. Marina just looked at Abby’s face in each photo. It was obvious when she was wearing THE DRESS, Marina said. Abby glowed. Laurie Lynch

Calla Lily Teardrop: As you can see, there are no wedding gown photos accompanying this blog. The wedding isn’t until October, and I’m not about to spoil the surprise. However, I did want to share a photo of another stunning beauty—a calla lily teardrop.

I bought this calla lily (aka Zantedeschia aethiopica) in midwinter. I gaze at the elegant flowers each morning over oatmeal, and again at dinner. One morning, there was a droplet of water dangling from the tip of the trumpet-like inflorescence. I touched my finger to it and tasted it. Water, not sweet like sap.

I didn’t know if the plant was exuding water (and why) or if it was absorbing it from the humidity of the room. A female gardening friend, Chris, stopped by with a quart of vegetable soup for the sick one (see below) and I asked her about the water droplet on my calla lily. (She recalls botany class better than I.) “Check out stomata, I think it has something to do with that.”

Sure enough, stomata (or stoma) are pores on the leaf or stem of plants that allow movement of gases in and out of plant cells. Water stoma can discharge excess water—a process called guttation. This word comes from the Latin root “gutta” which means speck, spot, or drop. We were onto something!

Get this, under certain circumstances such as high relative humidity, plants weep. One plant especially known for guttation is, ta-da-ta-da, the calla lily. It allows the plant to grow in wet conditions and prevents it from getting water logged. In humid tropical forests, plants have long slender tips allowing them to drip out their internal moisture to compensate for the lack of transpiration. Long story short, I guess I was overwatering my calla lily.

Say What, Word Nerd? I spent the month of March roaring, coughing, gasping, and barking like a lion. Yes, I had my flu shot, but I picked up some terrible crud that plagued Centre County this winter. Ruth, another one of those wonderful female friends, saw me dart out of a lecture hacking away and followed me, handing me a strip of Olbas Lozenges. Instant relief. (Available at Wegmans in the homeopathic aisle and health food stores.) When I bought my first packet (black currant flavor with lots of menthol and eucalyptus) I noticed they were called Olbas Lozenges. At first, I thought it was because they were from the U.K. Then, after checking the dictionary, I realized that all my life I have been mispronouncing and misspelling “lozenges,” adding an R that shouldn’t be there, as in “lozengers”!

Written on a T-Shirt: Girls just wanna have fun-damental rights.