The National Sunflower Association

I had an email from Darlene a new friend and home caring service provider. She and her crew worked their magic on my yard last summer. I returned to a yard ready to landscape not a weed in sight. I shared the sunflower room idea with her at the end of the summer and enlisted her help in making it a reality. In her email she said she had been researching sunflowers to be ready for the spring. She inspired me to do some research of my own. The best site I found was the one sponsored by the National Sunflower Association. I need to learn how to add a link to another site but here is the address anyway. http://www.sunflowernsa.com

Cherry Pickers

May 22, 2011
Rich and Jayne,
I wanted to remind you that you are welcome to pick cherries off of my tree. It is an old fashioned cherry tree with the very red tart cherries. It is not sprayed so you may have to compete to get the best fruit.

The tree is just like the two cherry trees that were in our next door neighbor's yard on Evanston Avenue. When the cherries were ready word would go out and the Tumey, Stanfill and Warning kids all seven or eight of us would gather and start picking, little ones on the lower branches and older/bigger ones would climb up as high as possible. This was an all day affair. As our baskets and pails filled they would be emptied into larger bowls.

Mildred and her mother, Nana, would "pit" the cherries with a hairpin. Other moms and older kids would help with this but the youngest would just pick. A huge pot of sweet red syrupy cherries would start boiling on the stove. Scoops of white sugar would flow into the pot and finally the rows of one pint Ball Jars would be filled. Then clear hot paraffin wax would be poured on top to seal the "preserved" ruby red, glass-marble-sized fruit suspended in glossy syrup and would be left to cool. Finally the brass colored two part lids with rubber seals would be screwed on top. All of the "pickers" got a share.

Months later on a cold winter morning a jar would appear on the breakfast table. And daddy would use his muscles to open the top with a loud pop. Then the paraffin would be carefully lifted out with a knife and spoonfuls of summer sun trapped in red orbs would land on your warm toast.* I can almost taste it 60 years later.

I wanted to pass the experience onto Freya so much so, that the last summer they lived in the Indy house when she was two and a half we put on our garden boots and went out with our garden basket and picked several handfuls of cherries, brought them into the house and washed them and put them into a pot on the stove. After her nap the cherries were ready to put in graham cracker tart shells and covered with whip cream and enjoyed. She will of course have no real memory of this and until she reads this will not know that the cherries in the tarts came from a can of cherry pie filling switched while she slept. But then I really did all of this for me and I enjoyed it immensely.

*Note - Again, it just dawned on me. When we would have toast and cherries for breakfast, there were no eggs or bacon. Warm toast and cherries with cold milk comprised the whole meal. It must have been one of those ways we were made to feel "plenty" when there was "not enough". What amazing parents we had.

January 17, 2011
Our tea kettle doesn’t whistle here at the apartment. I can hear when it starts to boil. It usually takes almost the same time as it takes me to wash-up what has been left in the sink from the night before. So I have stopped using the microwave to heat the water for my morning coffee. The beep –beep-beep got annoying. But I don’t put the kettle on and leave the kitchen. I am too easily distracted and end up remembering the water and the coffee when it has almost boiled itself dry.

We always had a whistling tea kettle at home. Daddy made his coffee in a two cup drip style pot. The one with three parts stacked on top of each other: the bottom the coffee reservoir the middle the basket to hold the coffee grounds and the top where you poured the hot water. I remember a few mornings waking to the whistle and walking out sleepy headed and coming up behind daddy and tapping him on the shoulder, him turning with a smile and good morning kiss and me signing “water”. A big “O” forming on his mouth and smile as he put down the paper and stood up to go to the kitchen.

Handkerchiefs I

Good Sunday Morning John,

Well, John you have done it again. Brought back to me some wonderful memories – with what I am sure you thought was a mundane comment about a mundane task. But not to me your reference to ironing handkerchiefs sent a memory reel going.

One of my earliest memories is of my mother ironing. Days before steam irons, as you know, meant you “sprinkled” or dampened and rolled up the clothes before you ironed them. If you were delayed in getting to an item you might put it, rolled in a towel, in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t dry out so fast. I remember when I was first allowed to “sprinkle”. The sprinkler was an old RC Cola Bottle with a sprinkle spout stuck on top. You had to sprinkle evenly or of course or you would have wet spots and dry spots.

Eventually I graduated to ironing my father’s handkerchiefs. I was probably about five years old. I would “get” to iron when mom need a break from ironing or had some other task to do. The ironing kept me out from underfoot for awhile so there was probably an ulterior motive.

I would be so careful with spreading the white cloth and going all the way to the edge, folding in half and pressing again, folding in half and pressing again. The stack of nice white, freshly ironed handkerchiefs would grow. And of course, my father would make a big deal over them when he got home from work, beaming his broad smile and pantomiming about how smooth and nice they looked, winking and kissing my cheek.

How can I describe the feel of those handkerchiefs when the were taken out of my father’s pocket and used to dry a tear and wipe a nose after some small tragedy, the faint smell of the hot iron and the feel of the hand that held it.

Of course later I was taught how to iron a dress shirt and all the other tricks and techniques. Ironing was never a punishing chore for me. The smell of hot damp cotton equaled smiles of love and appreciation. It was only later, when as a young wife I made this weekly token of my affection only to find it was expected rather than appreciated for the labor of love that it was, that it started to become an onerous chore.

Now, I am able to enjoy it again, as a gift to myself or to Johanna or Freya. (Kevin insists on doing his own ironing but surely someday he will let me do a bit now and then.) I am afraid I will bore you beyond belief if I detail memories spurred by your comments about Maria’s handkerchiefs. Suffice to say, they are many and dear.

Rain on the Roof

Rain on the roof – Yes, a real pleasure for me going back to about 5 years old when my father added a back porch to the house. It was large and “screened in”. It had a metal roof and when it rained hard it was almost deafening and when it rained softly it mildly amplified the sound so you could hear each drop individually hit the roof. I could hear it in my little bedroom and sometimes I remember lying on the glider on the porch and just listening to the rain and smelling the rain soaked garden smells. Hmmm.

The Sunflower Room

I read about the sunflower room in two paragraphs of a gardening column in the Indianapolis Star many years ago. I clipped the two paragraphs but not the whole column so I cannot give credit to the author. In the few sentences it described a summer activity for children – growing a sunflower room. You mark off a square in your lawn – sacred space to many homeowners – digging the sod up to form 12 to 18 inch “beds” around the square and planting giant sunflowers interspersed with rows of different kinds of sunflowers that would grow to varying heights.

I was fascinated by the idea and wanted so to be able to create one for my daughter. But apartments and rental houses and lawn proud parents prevented my acting on the whim. Now I have my own little house and a granddaughter just getting to the right age but I want a Sunflower Room not for her but for me. It sounds like a little heaven or haven for reflecting and soaking up sun alone or with others of like mind.

Really the longing must be coming from a need to have a personal retreat, mental and physical, from a happy but “full” summer house and an expatriate life style. But since I always wanted to have my cake and eat it too, I would even share it with my grown daughter and her daughter and with my friend who shares my enthusiasm for it…but by appointment only.

I sit here a thousand miles from my little house and imagine myself there. Supervising the measuring and digging (doing it myself is no longer an option) and planting. How many packets of sunflower seeds have I bought for this room but never planted? Too many!

I am sure I will have a willing little helper to keep the seeds watered until they sprout. Then we will eagerly wait for the growing, ankle high, knee high to me, hip high and head high to my helper and at last reaching over my head. I will bring my wicker chair inside and a small table for cool drinks and to rest my book on and a light blanket to cover my knees. Maybe I will add a smaller wicker chair for some small person and carry in a chair for my friend. We will all be very still and listen for bees who will no doubt want to come visit.

I will go there in the early morning to drink coffee and listen to birds. I will write pages of words for no ones eyes but mine. I will paint pictures. Will I be invisible inside the sunflower room? I wonder. Do I want to be invisible? Hum, I wonder.

It is January 18. For now I will dream about it, and plan for it and invite my friend to dream and plan for her own sunflower room. It will be our secret. And maybe, just maybe this June there will be the turning of earth and the planting of seeds.