Tipp City Finds 4

Crossroads Consignments in Tipp City, Ohio, has no peer. Owner Becky Peura’s passion is to offer items of lasting value and to display them artistically. I have made so many purchases from Becky’s shop that I must exercise discipline to limit myself to one “find” for this blog. I have chosen an unusual object: an oversized wreath made of oversized wooden acorns. For Christmas, I hung the wreath above the living room fireplace. My cousin, artist Sally Arnold, made the lovely bow and attached it to the wreath.

Oversized Acorn Wreath from Crossroads Consignments

Having grown up on a farm, I enjoyed early exposure to meadows, creeks, and woods. I quickly developed a deep and lasting love for nature. Acorns fascinate me perhaps as much as they fascinate squirrels.

In 1830, Scottish author Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) wrote, “When the oak tree is felled the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.” (Surprisingly few websites name the source of the quotation: Carlyle’s essay “On History.”) Carlyle suggests that the course of history arises from an infinite number of tiny, often random, actions. I like to think that whoever made my wreath knew the famous quotation from Carlyle and showed that countless capricious actions can form perfection in the same way that the acorns are twined in a perfect circle. Even if the builder of the wreath did not have Carlyle in mind, a circle formed of acorns affords a pleasing aesthetic.

I wonder how Becky can bear to part with such lovely items as the acorn wreath, yet her shop with its rapidly changing inventory is always packed with attractive objects from furniture to decorations (and everything in between). While I do not know Becky well, I suspect that she sees her mission as bringing joy to her customers.

On the farm where I grew up were two ancient oaks. Tall and elegant, they stood beside each other, supporting one another. To this day, my memory of the oaks reminds me of my parents, whose unshakable love for one another had grown with the years. My father and mother, who led upstanding lives, remain my principal inspiration. Faced with dilemmas, I ask myself what they would have done under similar circumstances, and I never regret choosing what I am confident would have been their answers.

A wreath of acorns, then, serves as a lovely ornament for Christmas. Thanks, Becky, for selling it to me!

Tipp City Finds 3

In 1818, Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) wrote, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness; but still will keep / A bower quiet for us, and a sleep / Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.” The Hotel Gallery in Tipp City specializes in things of beauty, and I bought one that increases in loveliness each day.

Vase by Sally Watson of Tipp City, Ohio

And I do admire it daily! It is a vase by artist Sally Watson. Sally’s pottery is so exquisite that I should put “artist” in capitals: ARTIST!

Sally Watson and husband Steve oversee the artistic shops and the musical concerts of the hotel, which was built in 1852.

Drawing comparisons, Keats implies that things of beauty resemble daffodils beside streams, sheep, shade trees, the sun, and the moon. When I read Sally’s statement (linked above), I understand that she is so well grounded that the beauty of the universe flows through her hands into her pots. Another potter once told me that it is nearly impossible to throw a calming pot if the potter feels stress. As an author and an illustrator, I took to heart the lesson that stress produces stressful art, and, not wishing to produce stressful art, I must relieve stress before attempting to write or draw.* Such excellent advice! (I think we do well to listen carefully to others every day because we never know when a gem of advice will be forthcoming!) I try to find an inner calm before I compose anything, including this blog.

I know that the vase I purchased from Sally Watson came from a stress-free potter’s wheel and kiln; in fact, the vase helps ground me, relieving my stress while I view it.

As I am not a potter, I lack the proper terms to discuss the technique Sally employed in creating my vase. I can only say that I appreciate the colors of the glazes; they remind me of mosses, earth, and sky. The shape of the vase suggests reaching upward to clasp hands around a part of heaven. My feeling for the vase extends so deeply, broadly, and highly that, ultimately, it surpasses description. Every day, when I glance at the vase, I relax.

I want to thank Sally for bringing such tranquility!

____________________

*I recognize that stressful art has its place. Many of the greatest works of literature convey dismay, anxiety, and horror. I happen to feel that life already presents plenty of distress; for that reason, I seek to eliminate and avoid such tension. An inner calm is my goal. For me, celebrations of peace can be just as great as outcries of pain.     

Summer Gardening 1

I have always planted my garden early, harvested the vegetables early, and stepped aside in late July to let crabgrass and pigweed take over.

This year, I did not follow my usual practice.

For the first time, I experimented with a second crop. On the 7th of July, I planted a row of snow peas and a row of beets. By the 17th, the peas were well above the surface of the earth, but the beets had not yet made their appearance. I wondered what was keeping them.

Diver’s in Middletown, Ohio

Which Has Everything for Gardeners

And Where I Bought My Seeds

I felt under obligation to prevent pigweed and crabgrass from growing. The pigweed presented no problem. The little pigweed starts were easily pulled. The crabgrass posed a challenge. When the ground was dry, the blades of the grass tore off between my thumb and forefinger, but the roots remained in the soil—ready to send up more blades within a short time. I had to hunker down and dig the roots with a trowel. A steady rain on the 18th meant that I spent a few hours digging crabgrass on the 19th; the soil was nicely workable after the showers.

Bean Harvest 2016

When I first picked beans in mid-July, I picked a bushel of them. I think I noticed a phenomenon. My beekeeper friends can correct me if I misunderstood the situation. I began combing the bush bean plants for beans not long after the sun had come up. When I was perhaps a third of the way through my two rows of beans, buzzing interrupted the quiet. Bees were busily collecting pollen from the sunflowers and squash blossoms. I have the impression that the bees arrived all at once, as if they had awakened at the same minute. Perhaps the angle of the sun served to signal the bees that it was time to fly to the flowers.

Having harvested the lettuce long ago, the beets next, the carrots after the beets, and the onions most recently, I cleared half of the garden space. In that open area were my voluntary salad tomatoes and my new rows of snow peas and beets. My original beets were canned, my carrots were frozen, and my onions were dried on a tall steel rack that I wheel onto my screened porch for the purpose every July. Later, when the onion stalks had dried completely, I tied bunches of onions with twine and hung them from nails in my solarium. Throughout the fall and well into the winter each year, the walls are decorated with golden and bronze onions.

When I first planted my snow peas and beets in mid-season, I was full of anticipation. I hoped they would thrive, but I had never tried to grow a second crop of vegetables so late in the year. I worried, asking myself questions I could not answer. Will they struggle with the heat? Can I keep the plants watered? Will the crabgrass take over, despite my best efforts? As so often happens, my excitement was mingled with trepidation.

Lucky Breaks: My Experience in Salamander Cave

When a friend from high school knocked on my dormitory door at Indiana University, I was surprised twice. My first surprise was his visit, which came with no warning. My second was his suggestion that we go spelunking. I asked him where we would find guides, and he replied that we needed none as he was an experienced caver.

Aaron Valandra in Salamander Cave

Posted by Richard Vernier for Indiana Cave Capers on Facebook

Before long, we had parked our car and had hiked to the entrance of Salamander Cave. The crevice lay beneath layers of limestone. Almost immediately, the squeeze was tight. We twisted this way and that. We crawled. We hunched over. We went on our knees. Eventually, we broke into a large room.

Our world now consisted of cold, pasty, yellow clay, but our flashlights revealed an indefinable beauty in the surface undulations. I felt we had broken into a vault that God had hidden. The cool air made me shiver. We dashed ahead to see what the next passageways and rooms might conceal.

There were bats in groups. They seemed only shadowy smudges on the ceilings. Whenever we encountered a choice of two paths, we tried to memorize whether we had turned left or right.

A growing fear gnawed my insides. I was not yet in a panic, but the onset of claustrophobia had definitely begun. Finally, I summoned my courage and said, calmly, “I suppose we should be retracing our steps soon.” My friend agreed. We started back.

… but we could not find where “back” was! Nothing—and everything—looked familiar. Confronting alternative passages, we asked each other, “Did we come that way or the other way?” Our memory failed us.

I eventually had to admit to myself that we were lost. We trudged onward for a long time. We found ourselves in a narrow channel with a foot of water in the bottom. Our shoes slid on the slippery bottom of the groove. The water deepened and deepened until it came up to our chins.

The batteries in one of our flashlights died, and we had brought no food. Angry thoughts flashed through my mind. Why had he claimed to be experienced, when clearly he was not? Why had I been so stupid as to agree to this nightmare?

When we came to a wall, we felt despair. We could hardly go back again, as the volume of water was increasing slowly but surely, and neither of us could swim. We gave no utterance to what we were thinking: that we were going to drown. I suggested that my friend switch off the flashlight to save what was left of the batteries.

We stood there in the silent water for many minutes. I began to imagine I could see a faint light high above my head. I assumed I was hallucinating, but I fished around for the claw hammer hanging from my belt all the same. I asked my friend to shine the flashlight on the wall, and I used the claws of my hammer to dig toeholds in the clay. With all the effort I could muster, I scaled the wall by digging toeholds as needed. I was seeing light! That day gave me a deep understanding of the biblical quotation “And the light shineth in darkness.” At the top, I found a horizontal gap just tall enough for me to slither through.

My friend followed my lead. The light grew stronger, and, sure enough, we escaped from the cave.

It was late afternoon. A steady rain was falling. We were no longer in the woods where we had entered the cave; instead, we were standing in a pasture with a few clumps of trees and brush. The drops falling from the branches looked like diamonds—the more exquisite because I was still alive to see them!

We had no idea where we were or how far away our car might be. We strode through the meadow and came to a road. We made a fortunate choice and walked in the right direction. After a few miles, we came to a crossroad that we recognized. Ultimately, we regained our vehicle.

As my “experienced” friend had broken every rule in the spelunking book, I was not too sorry to bid goodbye as he returned to the college that he was attending. I was unable to wash out the yellow clay stains in the white jeans I had worn, and I had to throw them away. Tossing the jeans in the trash was just a bad outcome of a bad business, though with a happy ending! I never went caving again. As of today, Salamander is a closed cave—off limits to amateur cavers.