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| A sunset last week. |
Our weather has been so variable. It snows, then it melts, then it snows again. One day last week we had freezing rain and everything was coated with ice. We had several beautiful sunrises and sunsets, but most of the days were overcast and gray. These winter days seem to be dragging on and on – and we really aren’t too far in to winter at this point. We have a long way yet to go.
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| Sunset one day last week. |
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| A rare bright morning between snows. |
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| A sunrise last week. |
Since the beginning of December, I have received 29 seed catalogs in the mail. I’m not complaining. These first cold days of the new year are my time for dreaming about and planning the gardens I will plant in the months ahead. Seed catalogs fuel my dreams and shape my plans. I don’t order seeds from most of them – only four or five get my business – but I look through every one of them from cover to cover. Sometimes more than once. Some of them I just glance through, pausing on the pages where a photo catches my eye. Some of them I read like a book, devouring every word. The written descriptions that accompany are often so beautifully composed that I read them several times. Take, for example, this description of a tomato from the Baker Creek catalog: “With mottled skin resembling a scene from deep space, each fascinating fruit depicts the depth and beauty of the night sky. Dark Galaxy bears 2-8 ounce fruit that is flattened, with red and orange stripes covered in random speckles, and layered by deep blue. The vines themselves display a purple blush and grow 5-6 feet tall while producing good amounts of the stunning tomatoes that begin to ripen in about 75 days. The taste is a perfect balance of tangy-sweetness--so juicy and refreshing! Each fruit is a unique work of art, sure to be a garden and tabletop centerpiece!” I want some! I will grow some! And I don’t even like and won’t eat tomatoes (but I love to grow them). I’m a sucker for a beautiful catalog photo and a well written plant description.
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| 29 seed catalogs. |
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| Dark Galaxy tomato. |
Aside from reading seed catalogs, I’m in one of those painful pauses right now where I’m not reading a real book. I’ve tried several times to start a book, but nothing seems to hold my interest. I need to plan a trip to the library and spend some time meandering among the shelves.
Speaking of books, when I was in high school I was forced to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I didn’t enjoy it. That’s the way it was with most books I had to read as an assignment in high school. The next year my parents gave me a paperback copy of Walden as a birthday present. I don’t know why. They’d probably forgotten that they’d heard me complain about having to read it for school. Anyway, now I owned a copy but never intended to read it. That changed the next summer when, in a fit of summer break boredom, I picked it at random from the shelf in my bedroom (something I did a lot when I was bored) and read it again. This time I was entranced. Thoreau’s style of writing, his use of metaphor, his gift for observation and description, carried me away. Walden then became one of my cherished books. After multiple readings, that old paperback book eventually fell apart, but I have a nice boxed edition of it on my shelf now. Even more than his style, the content of Walden had a profound effect on me. I resonated then, and still do now, to the things Thoreau wrote. Things like:
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors”
“Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand...Simplify, simplify!”
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
And speaking of books and simplifying . . . Last year some time, I don’t remember when exactly, I saw a book on the New Arrivals shelf at the library that caught my eye. It was titled The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. I checked it out and tried to read it, but it didn’t hold my interest. I skimmed through it and returned it. Then a few weeks ago my daughter Rachel told me I should watch the show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix. I watched an episode and was hooked right away. And then it went beyond just watching. After a few episodes, I went downstairs and reorganized my closet shelves. Then I tackled my dresser drawers. Miriam and Josiah watched the show too. Josiah spent a day tidying his closet and dresser and Miriam went to work on her bedroom. On Thursday last week, Miriam, Josiah, and I were home all day and we attacked the book shelves in the music room. We followed Marie’s method. We piled up all the books on the floor and the dining room table then went through them one at a time deciding which ones “sparked joy” and which ones we could send on to a new home. Then we put back the books we are keeping, organizing the non-fiction by subject and the fiction alphabetical by author. I was amazed at the results. We have an entire empty shelf that no doubt will be filled with books eventually. Next I plan to do more closets. After that we’ll tackle the kitchen. I love spring cleaning, but it is too cold outdoors to turn out the house like I do for real spring cleaning. All this tidying up is a good preliminary though as we wait for spring and a thorough cleaning. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
Speaking of books, when I was in high school I was forced to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I didn’t enjoy it. That’s the way it was with most books I had to read as an assignment in high school. The next year my parents gave me a paperback copy of Walden as a birthday present. I don’t know why. They’d probably forgotten that they’d heard me complain about having to read it for school. Anyway, now I owned a copy but never intended to read it. That changed the next summer when, in a fit of summer break boredom, I picked it at random from the shelf in my bedroom (something I did a lot when I was bored) and read it again. This time I was entranced. Thoreau’s style of writing, his use of metaphor, his gift for observation and description, carried me away. Walden then became one of my cherished books. After multiple readings, that old paperback book eventually fell apart, but I have a nice boxed edition of it on my shelf now. Even more than his style, the content of Walden had a profound effect on me. I resonated then, and still do now, to the things Thoreau wrote. Things like:
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors”
“Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand...Simplify, simplify!”
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
And speaking of books and simplifying . . . Last year some time, I don’t remember when exactly, I saw a book on the New Arrivals shelf at the library that caught my eye. It was titled The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. I checked it out and tried to read it, but it didn’t hold my interest. I skimmed through it and returned it. Then a few weeks ago my daughter Rachel told me I should watch the show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix. I watched an episode and was hooked right away. And then it went beyond just watching. After a few episodes, I went downstairs and reorganized my closet shelves. Then I tackled my dresser drawers. Miriam and Josiah watched the show too. Josiah spent a day tidying his closet and dresser and Miriam went to work on her bedroom. On Thursday last week, Miriam, Josiah, and I were home all day and we attacked the book shelves in the music room. We followed Marie’s method. We piled up all the books on the floor and the dining room table then went through them one at a time deciding which ones “sparked joy” and which ones we could send on to a new home. Then we put back the books we are keeping, organizing the non-fiction by subject and the fiction alphabetical by author. I was amazed at the results. We have an entire empty shelf that no doubt will be filled with books eventually. Next I plan to do more closets. After that we’ll tackle the kitchen. I love spring cleaning, but it is too cold outdoors to turn out the house like I do for real spring cleaning. All this tidying up is a good preliminary though as we wait for spring and a thorough cleaning. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
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| One of my tidied dresser drawers. |
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| Downstairs books piled for sorting. |
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| The tidied bookshelves in the music room. |
Yesterday we went to the temple. It’s the first time we’ve gone since October. It’s harder for us to go in the winter because of the weather, but yesterday the weather was fine (but cold). It was wonderful to be there. I love to go to the temple. It gives me a chance to step back from the world and see things from a more eternal perspective and get my bearings set correctly again.
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| At the temple yesterday. |
We’re home from church. It’s a cold but sunny day. Josiah is starting a fire in the wood stove. Stacey is making lunch. She’s making homemade egg rolls and they smell wonderful. This afternoon, after lunch, chores, and maybe a short nap, I hope to spend some time working on family history. I have a large filing cabinet filled with documents and photographs that needs to be sorted through and organized. There’s that tidying and simplifying obsession kicking in again.
