Scarecrows and such

Our town started a new activity last year.  The Historical Society thought it would be a great idea to do a scarecrow fund raiser.  They sell the head for a fee and then the person buying it comes up with a clever scarecrow to house the noggin.  Last year, they sold out of the 50 they had made. This year, they sold out of the 100 they made and there's already a list for next year.  Pretty cool idea, I thought, and money raised for a great cause.  Enjoy some of the fun antics we have going on around town, won't you?

Josh, the pizza chef and butcher extrodinaire at your local general store.

The EMT outside of the fire station and ambulance service.

That's one GIANT spider at the Brown's house!

you can't see in this picture, but boy to the right is playing Super Mario on a fake tv, the little girl in front is walking their dog, Mom's harvested the garden in the back, not sure what Dad's up to...

At a local beekeepers house...

At the oldest resident's home, she's got got the Boston Post Cane this year and is 94!

Headless Horseman indeed!  We'll miss the person who used to ride up and down the street on Halloween night dressed at the headless horsemen with her bay horse, they moved to Tennessee this year.

an ode to the snow lovers...

A local artists home, pretty neat and it's rained a bunch since this was taken and the painting looks the same!...

At a retired shepherd's home...

Where we get our hunting licenses and deer cutting station...

Their daughter is an adult ballet dancer...

And Maestro's favorite, a Patriots fan watching tv with his big bowl of snacks, soda and magic 8 ball...

If I get a chance to get out and take more pictures, I'll add to this, there are 100 of them around town, after all! 

Scarecrow adventures to you, ~Peacemom







Can You Smell IT?

I woke up this morning, and autumn struck me.  There's a special smell to the air when it's becoming autumn...clearer, crisper, chillier...I dug out wool socks yesterday and smiled as I pulled them on to sit in our wonderful sun porch and have hot tea, with toasty toes.  It was not iced tea that I reached for as I have all summer, but wanted to hold the mug in my hand to feel it's warmth, to inhale the vanilla goodness, see the steam rising.  Flannel, wool socks and hot tea, perfect comfort are these.

Now, anyone that knows me, or if you've been following my blog for a time know I am totally obsessed with the Fall Equinox season.  There is something very interesting that happens to me during this time of the year.  I don't know how or why, because certainly in this day and age we've got all modern conveniences that basically totally negate this visceral reaction that I have to the cooler temps, the color of leaves changing, the need for another blanket on the bed.  The ingrained sense is this...it's time to get the hunkering down started.  I have a drive to make sure there's wood split, the shelves in the pantry are full of canned goods, the sweaters and wool socks should be in good working order or mended if need be, the fall comforter needs to be hung on the line and freshened up.  All these things harken back to a more basic time, don't they?  But, they honestly do exist in my nature, the drive is there and starting up with full force. 

As I woke this morning to work in total darkness, I noticed that first light didn't arrive in the sky until about 5:50.  At the height of summer, it began getting light about 4:10 in the morning, so oh yes,  the days are definitely shorter.  That's sometimes a bit tough for me being the morning person that I am, I'm ready to go with first light usually.  But when first light doesn't come until almost 6:00am, and I've got to be up at 4:45 to start work...that's a tough one some mornings.  My internal clock pushes out too, and suddenly I should have been up earlier and now it's 5:30, messes up the whole flow of my day.  I don't use an alarm clock, I've got one in my brain.  It takes a little time to adjust to the fact that  I need to get up in the dark rather then the light.  And I've been doing this for over 40 years, you think I would have the hang of it by now!

 I do so love waking to a chilly house in the morning.  It's not yet the cold of winter, it's the feeling of cozy-the feeling of wanting to pull the blanket up close to my ears and rest for just a few more minutes.  That chill when it's not yet time to turn on the furnace, but time to just put on a layer or two.  Cozy is just the right word for that feeling.  And I know I'm in full autumn swing when I reach for the hot tea mug and make that the first beverage break of the morning.  In summer, I have iced tea going all the time, in fact I drink about 2 quarts a day (unsweetened, I don't muss it up with sugar or anything else), but fall/winter/spring it's hot tea all the way.  I'm not a hot weather worshipper, in fact, as you probably know, I really, really dislike being hot.  I much prefer the need to add layers of cozy clothes and blankets then get to the summer heat where there's just so much I can take off an not freak out my neighbors.

This week's autumn preparation will include harvesting the copious apples on the trees in our current yard.  They are spotty, funky in shape and multicolored, but taste great.  So, I'll be saucing and for the first time trying my hand at canning my own apple juice.  My boys prefer it and I figure if I can stop buying the organic kind in the plastic bottles for a while and have a few gallons preserved for them for winter, that's a win-win all the way. 

Wood smoke on the air this morning...can you smell it too?

Wishing you apples and wool socks of your own, ~Peacemom

Another Cemetery Visit

Yesterday I went to the Village Cemetery here in town again to get some more pictures.  I was trying to come up with some photos of the artwork on the tombstones for a lecture I attended last evening on Gravestones of New England.  The clouds provided for some great shadows in the photos, it was fun to wander around "The Yard", which is what the cemetery was called in days of 'or.    I enjoyed myself, spending some time checking out all the different symbols. 

This shows some of the Acanthus leaves that were common in the 1700's.  They were common and stood for peace in the Garden of Eden.  I found out from the lecturer, Ken Knoblock, that this carver's name is Wight and he did many of the oldest stones in the Chester Cemetery. 

Lots of skulls, which were a sign of mortality...

Likenesses of the person buried beneath....and "Memento Mori" which means "remember death"...just in case you were inclined to forget that death is inevitable...

Wings were added to the likenesses and skulls to signify rising to heaven...and urns became common.  Though they did not cremate people back then, this was what the carvers has seen on Egyptian relics, so urns became popular in the 1700 New England and were a symbol of mourning...

And willow trees became popular then as well.  I learned they can symbolize sorrow, and they were added by the carvers due to their popularity....



And a sheaf of wheat, which signifies long life and passing, harvest of life if you will.  Another meaning I found in research is resurrection and fertility...

I also saw the tombstones of two civil war soldiers, one was a bugler in Company G, First NH cavalry, Mr. Edward J Robie, who was a bugler in his young 17th year....

I found it interesting that he lived 60 years beyond the end of the civil war to the age of 81, and they put on his stone that he was a bugler at 17.  I thought he must have been proud of his service....

And the other one I found was a General in the Civil War, General Louis Bell.  The Bells are part of the founding families of Chester and a member of that family built a beautiful home owned by friends of mine...General Bell had quite an impressive stone which he shared with his wife, who died a mere 5 months after he did. His stone states, "Gen Louis Bell...Fell at Fort Tish (?) on Jan 15, 1865, Killed in battle fighting for the Union of his Country"  and below that is his wife's short and to the point, " Mary Ann P Bouton"  when she was born (Dec 15, 1834) and that she died here in Chester on May 4, 1865.  They were both so young, only 28.  I understand he died in battle, but I wonder why she died so young?  Was it of a broken heart?  Or tuberculosis (which they called consumption back then)?  I wonder about that sort of thing when I see these types of death dates so close together.  Interesting...

The broken sword is a symbol of life ended too short...and in both of their cases, that's quite true...and the harp is a symbol of St. Cecilia, patron saint of musicians...

I truly enjoyed the lecture last evening and learning many new things I never knew about New England tombstones and graveyards history and artwork.  Some of the carvers of old were truly master artists, and when you consider that they used hammers and chisels to create such exact carvings and writing, it's even more impressive...no machinery then, just good old fashioned skill.  Pretty neat.

And my little pumpkin accompanied me and set up a nice autumn, Halloween-y type feel.

Wishing you a new passion to learn about, ~Peacemom

Letterboxing, Cemetery and Autumn in the Air

Today Music Man and I took the boys to our local cemetery.  It has wonderful stone walls all around and a bunch of very old hand forged gates, one of which appears above.  It sits smack dab in the center of our town at the busiest intersection.  There's no creepy sense of isolation in this cemetery, it's actually quite inviting and friendly.  In this cemetery there are 2 monuments that look like granite but are in fact made of metal.  It was quite a fun adventure for me to try to locate them, which I never could do as I thought they were headstones, not monuments. Music Man showed them to me today.  Apparently as the story goes they are members of a family that had a brother that owned a foundry, and he had them made.  A neat little tid bit of history from our little villa.

Our purpose today was not only to show the boys a bit of the history of the town, some of the founding fathers names and such.  They were particularly affected by the number of children that are in there.  That lead to an interesting discussion of why these children all died so young.  And a good lesson on how vaccinations have made childhood deaths fewer and further between nowdays.  Maestro is at the age and understanding of the fact that these children were just like him and his brother.  We talked about how one family lost 3 children in less then a month, and we hypothesized about what could have happened to them, why they all died so close together.  The thing I didn't say to him, but passed the prayer along to their mother how sorry I was that she suffered so much loss of all three of them so close together.  I can't imagine how I could go on in the face of that pain.  As she was still alive and died almost 50 years after her children, that's a long time to suffer such sadness.  But, I suppose they accepted that it happened to a lot of people then, but I still don't know how you could ever recover from that pain.



I also particularly like to look at the artwork on the headstones.  I attended a really fascinating talk about 4 years ago on what all the particular symbols mean that were carved into the stone.  We noticed today some peculiar ones that I've not seen before but want to look up to see what they mean.  In addition to lots of urns, willow trees and faces with wings, we saw some hearts with diamonds in them (some right side up, some upside down) along with some coffin shapes that were also either upside down or right side up and some celtic type designs.  I don't know why I'm so fascinated with old cemeteries, but I am. 

The other reason we wanted to take the boys into the old plot is that there is a letterbox hidden there.  For those of you that may not be familiar with letterboxing, it's a fun activity whereby you get a clue from the website, follow the directions on the clue until you find the box containing a stamp and journal someone has hidden.  Each person or family have their own stamp which you bring with you along with your own journal.  When you open the letterbox, you stamp your journal with their stamp and their journal with your stamp and write a little something in it such as the date, weather or anything else you might find fun to jot down.  Then in our journal we write where we found it, the date and any fun memories that happen to accompany the day and hunt for the box.  Then, you place everything back in the box and re-hide it in the same spot for the next "hunter" to find.  It's so much fun, and a completely family friendly activity.  Though it's by no means relegated to families.  I know a number of grown ups and retirees a like that enjoy it.  It gets you to places you'd perhaps never see otherwise.  We've been to many neat places, some of them miles in on a trail, or at a harbor or lighthouse.  My favorite, by far, however is the cemetery boxes.  And when I find the clue on line for one, I always save it for autumn.  Something about wandering around a cemetary in the crunching leaves looking for a mysterious box it's super fun for me.  And the kids really enjoy it, too.

Autumn is proving to be on it's way for sure. Letter boxing, fall and cemeteries go together like pumpkin spice tea, smores and fall campfires.  If you've not heard of letterboxing before or are interested in a simpler style entertainment every member of your family can enjoy, check out http://www.letterboxing.org/ .  It teaches the kids lots about how to follow direction with the adventure of the stamp as a reward.  Fun time, free time and especially great as an autumn activity.

Wishing you stamps and cemetery adventures of your own, ~Peacemom

Gaa Gaa Gaa, it's Peaceable Wild Kingdom!

Good Morning, Friends and Family,

We have turkeys. They are wild and really cool. The neighborhood mascots have become quite fun to watch as they've grown. We first discovered them in the spring when we heard the tell tale "gaagaagaa" in the woods. These turkeys don't actually gobble, they more make a "gaa" sound in rapid succession when they are talking to each other. It's pretty funny to hear. They have become the main attraction when they are outside doing what turkeys do and that is eat. They spend most of their day pecking in the neighbor's lawns. The neighbor across the street is like us, he does not use any chemical fertilizers on his lawn and has an abundance of weeds. Now, on the surface this may not seem like what you'd want for a lawn, but it's really a very healthy environment for lots of critters, including whatever bug or grub it is that these turkeys find delectable. They have scratched some patches in his lawn bare to dirt.

Originally when we spotted them, there were two adults and 6 babies. The babies were so cute and we would always stop what we were doing to watch them. Now, as the summer and autumn have progressed, it's tough to tell the babies from the adults as they are just about the same size. And all six of the babies made it. I cheer for the mama whenever I see them because I know how hard that feat was to accomplish. We actually do have some wild dogs living in the woods adjoinging our properties, so that is even more amazing in light of that fact. Good mama and daddy!!

They are smart little birds with bb sized brains. They know where the good grub is and where the best places to avoid are. Unfortunately, they seem to avoid our yard as one big party they don't want to be invited to. This is understandable with two boys running around outside most of the day, making noise (and oh, do they make noise), laughing, fighting, playing with toys (which are strewn everywhere no matter how many times we clean it all up during the day). Like I said, these are not dumb birds. They also won't let me get close enough to them on foot to get a reasonably good picture of them, so above is what I was able to manage. I was trying for the cool Thanksgiving card shot with my neighbor's lovely door decoration and the turkey in the foreground. Unfortunately, I could not get close enough, even with my big lens, to capture the shot I really wanted. But this one is cool, anyways.

I really wish these little harbingers of fall would come over to our yard and scratch away. We could definitely use a decrease in the grub population in our yard and goodness knows the soil is packed hard from kiddos running around on it all the time, so they could come over and do a little tilling for us while they forage for grublets. I've not been able to convince them just yet, but don't be surprised if you spot some cracked corn on the lawn...I won't know how it got there, but I just hope the little fairy that spreads it actually attracts them.

Wishing you the blessings of turkeys in your lawn, ~Peacemom

Our own cooking show

Good Morn to you,
Just wanted to post a recipe for some yummy pumpkin bread that Little Red and I made the other day. He's really becoming quite adept with the mixer and is loving not fighting over who gets to mix the wet or dry ingredients. Since both boys love to help cook, and both love to do the wet ingredients, we have to switch off who does what each time we cook together. Now, Little Red gets to do wet AND dry and life is good in his little world. This having big bro gone to school for 4 hours each day is not all bad after all.

He's been having some fun with me during this time. I've purchased a few workbooks and we do our "school work" for 1/2 hour each day and we have set up a bit of a routine already. Once we wave our final goodbye to Maestro each day, we usually hop in the car if we need to go somewhere and head out first. This gives Little Red something to look forward to as he's always ready for an adventure. And let me tell you now, anyone who doesn't have at least two children wouldn't know this...it's absolute heaven shopping with just one of the boys at a time. Instead of dancing around, singing, knocking things off shelves, chattering incessantly, the list goes on, Little Red interacts with me, is well behaved, asks me questions, isn't hopping around like an ant with his butt on fire, it's all good.

After errands are completed, we usually come home, have that 1/2 hour of school work, then it's snack time. After snack time, we usually will make something together, some days it's cooking, some days arts and crafts, whatever the mood strikes me that day. Then, here's mommy's one big guilty pleasure that I've not been able to indulge since they stopped napping years ago...I turn on...shhhhh....don't tell anyone else, okay?....the Food Network....and watch a cooking show! A whole half hour of cooking, and no one jabbers through the whole thing, I can actually hear it AND get to increase my brain power instead of just listening to (let's face it, can't watch it) Curious George for the 453rd time. Oh, I love it! And, Little Red even likes it too. He says things like "YUMMY, that looks good" and "Can we make that, Mommy", oh it's music to my ears. I so rarely get to watch any TV that is adult TV and to be honest, most of the time, I don't care. I prefer to read at night once I crawl wearily into bed, so it works out just fine most of the time. But, I do miss the days when Music Man and I would snuggle up on the couch with some buffalo wings and the drink of choice and camp out for whole afternoons in the fall and winter and watch the Sox or Pats and enjoy a peaceful afternoon together. Though I'm not a football fan at all, I am a Music Man fan, and snuggling up on the couch with him didn't need an excuse! Time alone? We NEVER get that now, and I do mean NEVER. You parents know what I'm talking about, I know you do. I guess as they get older perhaps this will change, but I'm not holding my breath. I think life as we knew it is gone for good. But, when I look at my wonderful little men, I don't mind so much, they are more inviting then a Sox game most days!!

Now that the cooler temps are rolling in, I hope you'll try this delicious bread recipe. The boys like it a lot and have been eating muffins for breakfast for 2 days now.

Little Red's Pumpkin Bread

1 cup canola oil

2 1/2 cups sugar (I didn't say this was high nutrition this time around, did I?)

4 eggs

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/3 cup all purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 cup water

1 15 oz can pumpkin

1 cup dried cranberries, raisins, or both

Grease bottom and 1/2 in up sides of three 8x4" loaf pans (or one 9x5" and 12 muffin cups), set aside. In an extra large mixing bowl beat sugar and oil with electric mixer on medium speed. Add eggs and beat well; set aside.
In a large mixing bowl combine flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add dry mixture and water alternately to sugar mixture, beating on low speed after each addition just until combined.
Beat in pumpkin. Stir in cranberries and/or raisins.
Spoon batter into prepared pans. Bake in a 350 degree oven 55-60 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove from pans, cool completely on racks. Yum mo!!

It could be instinct...just not sure

This morning, I was preparing some green beans that I bought at a local farm stand. I was snapping the ends off and stringing them (for those of you who don't cook or prepare such things, I was taking the tough strings off the "seams" of the beans). As I sat there, listening to the satisfying snap! of the beans, in the beautiful sunshine, listening to the boys playing on their scooters, Music Man mumble, mumble as he spoke on the phone in the house...I had the thought that I am blessed. In that very moment, for that speck of time, I felt truly blessed. Now, those who know me know that I am diligently trying to live more in the moment. I tend to project things that will happen in the future and have really been trying to just stay where I am right now and not think about what's coming all the time. Of course, to some extent, you have to do that, don't you. But, there are moments that can be just perfect and for me that was one of them.

For some reason as I've gotten older, there's a part of me that is totally connected to autumn. My sister can attest, as she's a fellow autumn worshiper, that I will start thinking about autumn long before the first shade of red, orange or yellow will dapple the leaves with color. I am passing this obsession down to the boys as they delight in telling me the first hint of color to appear on our otherwise lush green surroundings. We were waiting in a parking lot the other day, and Maestro tells me, very excitedly "LOOK MOMMY!!! Autumn's coming!!" as he points to one single leaf that was red on a maple full of green. I smiled and my heart warmed, I hope they can appreciate the seaons as I do.

I was fortunate enough to have been transplanted from hot, sticky, unseason-changing (okay, so I made that term up) humid Florida as a 10 year old to the wonderful, breath-taking mountains of New Hampshire. Since I grew up from that age being able to follow my intense (you horsegirls know what I'm talking about) passion of horses at a local boarding stable, I soon connected to the seasons. For anyone having grown up in rural New England, you can remember the times when you would get off the school bus, air crisp, firey leaves fluttering on the branches, the already fallen ones crunching under your feet, sky the deepest blue and you felt the promise of something to come. It was completely intangible, that emotion, but it swept you up in a moment of joy and perfectness. I remember many days like this as a child. I would get off the bus, trek the long walk from the bus stop to the horse barn sometimes with other children with me, sometimes not. I actually preferred the solitary walk so I could listen for geese flying overhead, the scrunch scrunch of the leaves underfoot and feeling the excitement of riding my horse on such a wonderful afternoon. I even liked the blustery ones of the late fall season, when it would be downright cold and I'd have to bundle up and the frigid rain would fall and the leaves would swirl around me as the wind whipped my hair this way and that. It was a feeling of just being ALIVE.

These were the memories of my childhood that I cling to and for me, I still get a sense of that girl walking in the wonder of autumn and believing that there was magic in it somehow. Having never had that exposure until I was 10, I think it was not commonplace to me, I never took it for granted and I hope to pass that wonderment onto our boys. Hiking in the fall is still one of my favorite things to do, it connects me in a way to the natural world like nothing else possibly can. When I was a teenager and was able to make a horse of my own happen for myself, I would ride Dixie on the many miles of trails in the woods surrounding the horse farm. Those were perfect moments themselves. It honed the senses that I still carry today in the woods of listening for animals. The adrenaline rush I would get when Dixie flushed a partridge, or seeing deer grazing in an otherwise unoccupied field, or a bear in the distance as it ate berries at the edge of a stream. I remember actually seeing a bobcat once cross the road and feeling like it was there so I could see it. I think it's possibly akin to the way Native Americans feel in their heritage. I felt an intimate connection to the landscape and animals that were all around me. When I say we lived in the sticks, seriously, folks, I'm not kidding here. There were so many acres of total wildness around the places I played as a child. And it has instilled in me the love of that wildness, even now. I actually feel sad for the boys that they may never get to experience what that was like. To sit at a stream and take off your sneakers and dangle your feet in the water and listen to the crickets and watch the tiny fish nibble your toes. These are perfect moments as well, and ones that I feel are so important to teach them about.

But, how do you do that now? When everything is so "DO NOT TRESPASS"?? How can we find those places when we can't afford to own them ourselves? It's a scary proposition to me that children now just don't even get to be wild and free themselves, connecting in this way to woods and animals and water. How will they know this is worth preserving if they don't get connected to it now, when they are children? I don't know, but for me, I think loving it is part instinct and part nurture.

Blessings and perfect moments to you ~Peacemom