Avoiding Working on My Paper

My paper is about cleaning, right. Ergo, first I must clean (and think about my project as I clean.) De-cluttering is a major step in cleaning. Sort and file those papers!

Plus cooking for the Thanksgiving meal that was yesterday. Trying to get some things done ahead of time. Look what I found as I was sorting! A recipe for Lemon Butter Mousse...sounds great. It will save my baking a pie and be a light and delicious conclusion to the traditional meal.

Halfway into making the mousse, I realized that it involved about four different bowls, whipping heavy cream, whipping egg whites, softening gelatin, squeezing fresh lemons, zesting said lemons (though that was easy, now that I have a posh zester/grater like Alkelda and Bede's). And, I discovered last evening, the mousse is by no means light!

I did not roast the traditional turkey but rather two free-range fresh roasting chickens. And peeling, by hand, the cloves of 5 heads of garlic to make the 40 clove roasting chicken from the Gourmet Cookbook. (We have a whole chicken left, but the clean-up from the one we ate was simple. Bones and grease and scraps were all bundled together. Issa took it all home for her personal coyote .)

Ricardo wondered if all the work was worth it? In one way the evening was a disappointment. Ricardo was tired and Terry's boys were wild and running through the house. They needed to go home. So it was not one of those evening where we just sat around the fire and talked. But I was glad to give the children a place to go for Thanksgiving, and Issa too, though she probably would have been just as happy to stay home because of the snow starting to fall. She is a California girl, after all, and I think most of her round-the-world travels took place in tropical climes.

Maybe today I can start on this project, but of course I will not be able to do my interviews until my little tape recorder arrives -I hope that will work better than taking notes. So far I have not taken notes at all. Sigh.

A Lovely Gardening Blog

I have just discovered this blog: Nature Abhors a Garden. Wonderful inspiration. Today I wandered about the back garden, spreading a bit more straw and wondering about the winter season and next spring. What will survive? Will anything flourish? What an adventure!

I have been thinking about my master's project. And it has sent me to cleaning a bit. Hmmm. An interesting phenomenon. But Holly Koteen told me I would probably become more conscious of cleaning in my home life as I study it for my project.

I have returned to Rudolf Steiner's Knowledge of Higher Worlds which was required reading for my Foundation studies at Sunbridge. At the time I found it hard going. I have just started rereading it, so I don't know how it will progress, but so far I am finding it amazingly refreshing and understandable. Four years can make quite a difference - can it be only four years?????

Now I understand why Ann Stahl had us choose a plant and observe it daily. My plant was the bronze fennel. I planted bronze fennel summer before last, but it died. This year I had better luck. It is frozen in the garden now, but I am hopeful that it will return next spring. That is a primary exercise - to observe burgeoning life and then decline and death - and rebirth - in Nature. An added insight now is the importance of developing an established root system. (I have also learned via Gail not to cut down perennials in the fall - the cut-off stems will act like straws, drawing any moisture down into the root system and rotting it out.) I hope I am developing established root systems - in a metaphoric sense, of course!

Martinmas: a Lament and a Vow

OK. How on earth am I going to write a master's paper if it takes me a month even to acknowledge that I have not completed my previous posting?

It is Martinmas. I want to take my little lantern into the world, with whatever light I can shed. I just read in Knowledge of Higher Worlds that an idea must not be sequestered as a treasure for oneself but become an ideal for the benefit of the earth.

I will TRY to do my part. I hereby request the aid of the angels.

I have just returned from Takoma Park. On November 9 was the memorial service for Jillian Raye, who crossed the threshold on November 2, All Soul's Day.