Dirt Under My Fingernails: January 2019

Overnight, the winter birds found my feeder. Before the snow, though the ground was bare and brown, they had flitted through the shrubs and pecked at the seed heads in the garden. But the storms that drove us humans into the warm hearts of our homes kept the birds grounded too...and hungry.

So, rather than purchase the big bags of “mostly millet”, the stuff that leaves the ground under the feeder rank and weedy come summer, in pity, I sprung for the good stuff…..sunflower hearts and cracked corn. The rosy purple finches and the wintry green goldfinches clung to the perches in defiance of freeloading squirrels while the sooty little juncoes took their chances with what the other birds dropped. Watching them from the kitchen window, I felt slightly less downtrodden by the speed bumps of the season.

“Skylark, have you seen a valley green with spring
Where my heart can go a-journeying
Over the shadows and the rain to a blossom-covered lane?”

….Hoagy Carmichael

Alas, the meadowlarks that stick out the season in northern Missouri, contrary to all common sense, have no such help when the ground is white. Like forlorn hitch hikers, they huddle on the shoulders of our country roads, taking their chances with the passing semis in hopes some grain will blow off a flapping tarp or leaking trap.

I’ve been reading John Eldredge’s new devotional Restoration Year, a year long selection of short devotions that builds on the foundation of his All Things New, a book of wild hope and encouragement. Like opening a door to warmth and companionship, his book and these short essays are like looking down into the valley green with spring and rain beaded blooms of tulips and quince and redbud.

I took a screenshot of that page….the January 30 page...which sparkles defiantly with cheerful birdsong when spring is not just one calendar page, but three or four months in the future. Be hopeful, be confident, and throw those songsters in your yard some seed for their long winter days…..

Sometime this week, while celebrating, we lost someone.We didn't notice. But today, as I began to dismantle the Christmas decorations, I discovered one of the little Snow Village shoppers had disappeared. Not a trace, even of a dropped peppermint striped shopping bag. I thought the little figure might have slipped beneath a poly quilt filling snow drift. We checked the empty gift boxes as we hauled them to the trailer to take to the farm. Lee even asked Ryan if he had any inkling...since he has been known to rearrange the inhabitants of Snow Village when no one is looking...but alas, after all the ornaments were boxed and the decorations bagged and carried to the basement, the china tot was nowhere to be seen.

Christmas 2018 is in the books, but the Christmas mystery remains.

Tonight while the north wind is howling at the windows and hissing around the doors, I think I hear the old year digging its nails into the trees and its heels into the driveway while the new year chugs in like a freight train. Farewell to ye, old year, and a good riddance to your foul weather and rotten politics. Whatever may befall us in 2019, there will be a minimum of political ads, if not opprobrium. The elements? Meh...it will be too hot and too cold, droughty and rainy at unfortunate times. The elements will be what they will be and we can but pray for the best and expect the normal extremes to average out to "normal".

The 2019 family calendar is hot off the presses at Shutterfly and in the mail, nearly every date filled with the best moments of 2018 in pictures and/or birthdays and anniversaries of loved ones. It's my constant reminder that each day brings its own blessing, the small ones as vital to our well-being as the big ones. However crummy the corporate memory of a year, it cannot be considered an unmitigated disaster if a person has 718 happy pictures to fit into 365 days....

I have been enjoying a recent addition to the YouVersion app: using some of my own photos as backdrops to favorite Bible verses. The verse comes first and then the search for an image. The right photo doesn't always appear, but these ordinary snapshots of my oh so ordinary life make God's Word a more integral part of my daily routine than the spectacular photographs and calligraphy often provided with the very best of intentions.

This frigid New Year's Eve Blake and I stayed home. While I loved last year's extravaganza of music and a night out, our evening of grocery store sushi and Netflix, snug under the flannel sheets when the midnight fireworks popped and crackled, was comfortable and fulfilling. The Christmas tree is downstairs with just a few staticky pieces of tinsel left behind....those, and the gifts that need to be framed or hung on the walls. Matt and Aaron, Lizzie and Josh sawed and drilled and fitted the stained glass door from my folks' house into one of the doorways here at Spruce...a labor of love performed in the busy week before Christmas. Ryan worked his metal magic and produced lantern covers with wonderful cutouts for the summer patios of all us gardeners...mine's a bison, a reminder of our Wyoming adventure. A graceful pottery bowl in Western hues waits for its turn to hold strawberries or cherry tomatoes this summer....Lee's choice along with two little watercolors from Missouri artists. Ann took time to add pictures to the blogposts from 2018 and now they are a hardcover book created by Storyworth. Forgive me if I am kinda excited about "being in print" even if it is a single volume! Kenzie and Ben have given us music....tickets to Lyle Lovett in a couple of weeks...and art for the garden when sunnier days are upon us

I take time to enumerate these generous and thoughtful gifts for a reason: because these parents give of their time and talents, their kids are learning the joy of making and giving. Levi chose presents for all his grandparents at the "Elves" shop where they label and wrap too! Kenzie laughs when she describes his care in choosing just the right item, "He has a reason for every one!" Aaron picked out vintage style National Park postcards for each family, choosing parks we had visited, and then mounted them on finished boards...strikingly reminiscent of the boards and stain of the Schlouse! Gabe vanished into the his dad's garage to build his grandparents a sweet smelling cedar shelf. Lizzie drew and hand-colored a beautifully detailed Christmas doorway, arched and lighted and hung with greens (something else to frame!) and Abbie sprinkled the house all Christmas long with fanciful origami birds and flowers, Santas and stars, snowflakes and reindeer. As they did last year, the kids prepared and practiced, (Lizzie made programs and Josh drew a sign) then sang and played Christmas songs for the second Redbarn concert...before they opened even one package. When the new garden tools are muddied; the Legos deconstructed; the boots outgrown and the letter jacket left hung in the closet, the music will be remembered still.

Wish I noted where I read these lines this Christmas Eve: I think they perfectly express the heart of giving and what the grandkids are learning at home.

" .......we cannot purchase pleasure. Joys are given by God; man can only accept them.
But joys cannot be bought, only received. The one thing we can do to develop a capacity for enjoyment is to practice generosity--a kind of reckless sharing that imitates the divine largesse."