oh now it's going to let me post after i just emailed that it wouldn't. ha ha. Just wondered if you or any commenters were into the mary poppins books as a kid. There's one story that's about an old sort of mean woman and her very sorrowful daughters who run a gingerbread-centric bakery. All the cakes they sell have big gold stars on them. All of which the mournful sisters have to retrieve (I forget how. it made sense at the time/age i was really into reading these books)and then they take tall ladders to the highest field in town and start glue-ing the stars up into the sky. It's a peculiar story. They all were, really ...

do you mean you and me or you and the cat. ha. either one works...

forgot you were a girl scout. mostly i just remember you also had ginny doll - know they were extremely popular but you're the only one i've met who had one too.

on this end I sat on our little porch in a wooden chair that was not the slightest bit damp from tons of melted snow. and ate an apricot muffin that was hoarded in the freezer for just such of a moment of quiet celebration. it was more than enough. Enough squared.

yes, Nancy. In that moment of shared experience I was very conscious of my blessings and super grateful for them.

this post made me think of a friend who periodically says "if I want to read a good novel, I'll write one." I have a quasi similar goal this year to re-read something each month that I've enjoyed enough to keep it around over time. My list is an equal mix of novels and non-fiction. Think I'm going to begin with Pieces of White Shell.

oh the past couple of days when planning to visit here I have typed in soul-o instead of spirit cloth. ha ha. Can't get over how quickly this creature has grown!

what a wonderful little treasure you found.

That poncho is awesome! you know what's weirdly funny about that book? Three very different cats all upchucked on the cover of it at three very different points of time when I attempted to read it without getting very far. Never had a cat do that with any other book although there are always plenty strewn here and there. I know why it's consistently difficult for me to truly embrace the work but feel it is more about personal affinity (or lack thereof) than any sort of legitimate literary criticism. But at one point a very cool splinter group formed from a feminist reading club I had joined when I first moved to Boston. About a third of the group just couldn't get into WWRWW while the other two thirds treated it like gospel and the most illuminating "important" thing ever. So we just took a sabbatical from the group and traded ideas of books with similar themes that we really enjoyed. We are all still friends to this day, 37 years later, who trade books, movie dvd's and our own original writing.

Fedco seeds! One of my favorite sources since forever. When I first moved out of Boston my city girlfriends gave me a going-away gift of every type of Poppy and Sunflower seed packet fedco had on offer that year as they were (still are, really) my two favorite flowers. Had a gorgeous garden that summer and fall but unfortunately my camera died and wasn't replaced in time to document more than the first few days of the poppy blooms. I didn't know about the Holistic Orchard but ordered it through inter-library loan immediate. You always have the best book ideas.

I so enjoy your color sensibility. Wanted to refer to the strong inspiration you gave me in one of your former projects which I remember being called The Book of Crazy. Do I have that right? Would cringe to get the name wrong.

I can assure you that, "in the terms"/context associated with James Lovelock and the late Lynn Margulis, Gaia hasn't been rendered irrelevant. More personally I find it my word of choice for quickly conveying a whole realm of ecological and spiritual meaning that holds a more neutral charge than most classical or theocratic language.

ack. read-through.

it's a Joseph Campbell sort of winter on this end, too. I just recently started another re-through of Hero With A Thousand Faces.

I love the way a wild one's purr evolves from a rusty shudder to very deep bone-level contentment. Must have missed something fairly significant that went on only with the private class group. thought this quilt was going to be involved with a unicef related program?

wow soul-o's changing very quickly. the doting is clearly to her liking.

last night was ridiculously cold but today while the sun shone it was a balmy 18 degrees...

love the googly eyed stare. feeling your heart warm ...

I keep thinking of the other little kitten, too. Like Michelle I am hoping.

as you might imagine i am following this particular plot development with intense interest. so sweet, this soul-o. so little and yet complete. i remember an image of WAS in a similar position on the stairs. snow just starting to pick up here, very fine and slanting sideways.

looks like an awesome pruning job. Your year's word is very interesting but right now I'm more concerned with gazing longingly at evidence of somebody else's garden time.