Tag: New England

Getting Nest-y

By Anita Garner

Sconce from
Maine artist, Steve Bradford

Temperatures in Northern California are finally slipping into flannel territory in the evening while I continue to ignore relentless sunshine during the day. I concentrate instead on arranging my surroundings to prepare for this favorite time of year.

Though I’m on the opposite side of the country, in the fall my soul communes with New England, with its four seasons and the independent spirit of the people I meet there. Friends who live in New England year-round like to remind me of the fifth season, the one that comes right after the snow melts and lasts for weeks – mud season. I ignore this, pick up my current copy of Yankee Magazine or watch episodes of “Weekends With Yankee” on PBS where autumn is embraced and everything feels comforting, well-loved, well-used and appreciated.

The only decorating style in evidence around here is that I seem to gravitate mostly to objects that look like they have a story to tell.  Some of my favorite things share certain qualities. Many are old and weathered.  If it has faded colors, if the paint is peeling, if some part of it is rusty, if it looks like it could give you splinters, chances are it’s coming home with me.

Steve Bradford, a dear friend and Maine artist, is responsible for some of my favorite art. He answers a question about the wood in this recent birthday gift received from him.

“I meant to tell you about the wood the candle sconce was made of. We’re close enough to the coast so there are fishermen and lobstermen living nearby (there’s a house on the next block with the yard stacked high with lobster traps). When a dory (smaller rowboat kept on a larger fishing boat) wears out, some of them get brought back inland and abandoned in the woods or a field. There was one in Durham where I’ve always taken the dogs to run. It was mostly red, with some blue and white trim. As it disintegrated I used to bring pieces of it home on a regular basis. The boat is gone now but I still see random pieces of red, white or blue wood near where it was. So the sconce was made out of wood from an authentic Maine saltwater fishing dory.”

There’s more of this beautifully aging wood in another piece. “The Writer” is  in a private collection but you can see it at his website under “Chairs.” Link at Steve’s name above.

 

“The Writer”

Now I’m on the lookout for my own big vintage chair with a matching ottoman, black or dark brown or maybe faded red leather, comfortably worn but with more years left in it for reading and looking through windows, watching leaves drift.

Lucky Pennies

By Anita Garner

Southern superstition in my family says when we find a penny on the ground, if it’s  heads up, we put it in our shoe and wear it the rest of the day.  I always do and when I remove the pennies I save them in a little vase.  Mother put a lucky penny in every new purse or wallet and never took it out. I do the same.

A gift from New England artist, Steve Bradford, is a keep-it-forever thing.  Here’s what he sent for my recent birthday.

I love jars.  I love wood.  As soon as this arrived, The Grand and I unpacked it and fell in love.

What to put inside?  Maybe a few bits of sparkle. I’m thinking an old rhinestone clip from the 40s now hiding in my jewelry box would fit up there in that small jar on top and a few tiny pine cones in the jar below.  The biggest jar could hold all the pennies I’ve been saving and all the pennies I’ll find in the future.  Lucky pennies.

Here’s another look at what an artist can do with empty jars and wood.

Steve specializes in assemblage art, but like many artists, he’s a practitioner of multiple disciplines.  Found objects and tiny morsels become feasts for the imagination. Click the picture below to visit his website and see more of his work.

Steve with Willow at Bayview Beach, Saco, Maine  

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Yankee Love

I was visiting friends on a farm outside Maine, a picture perfect place with a pond and a winding lane leading to the main road.  The Missus and I planned to attend Sunday worship at the town’s perfectly-steepled white frame church.  But first, since I’m an early riser, I laced up my walking shoes for a stroll.

By the time I arrived back at the farmhouse, a battered truck was parked in front.  At the kitchen table was a crusty – no other word for it – man in overalls, with a shot glass in front of him.  The Mister of the house also had a shot glass and a bottle of bourbon in the center of the table.  I was introduced and the visitor left.

My friend said his wife died a while back and he’s looking for a new wife. He saw you walk past his farm and hightailed it over to ask if that was our friend walking by and is she single.  His wife always worked his cranberry bogs with him and until he marries again he’ll need to hire labor.

A shot of Sunday morning bourbon, a pickup truck outside and inside, a cranberry farmer in overalls, a wife-hunting widower, decades older than me, using his chair by the front window to spot a new arrival.  Practical. To the point. I carry that story around with me as proof of my first true Yankee experience and please don’t tell me I’m wrong.

This is not my only Yankee love story.  I’m in love with Yankee Magazine.   It’s my favorite publication and the first one I read all the way through before passing it along to a neighbor.

I love it in a specific sequence.  First I love the covers.  Inside, I begin with editor Mel Allen’s letter, then go straight to From Mary’s Farm, then I move to House For Sale and from there, I head back to the front and read every page all the way through. I love the writing, the respect for history, the photos, the covers, the celebrations of all things poetic and prosaic spread out over six New England states.

I imagine life in a cabin in New England. Any state will be fine.  Or maybe instead of the country I’ll take a cottage on the main street of some picturesque town. These are dreams born in a sunny Northern California climate, but while many people run toward the sun for vacations, I always want to be packing for fog and rain and weather requiring big puffy jackets.

California friends say, but the snow.  How would you deal with all that snow?  I don’t have that figured out yet.  I guess I’d find someone to shovel it or snow-blow it or somehow move it around just enough to clear a path for me to the source of the nearest diner with pie and coffee.

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Yankee Magazine’s website is New England Today.

Yankee has a  TV show, Weekends With Yankee.

 

Weather-watching obsession – does this make me an ol’ coot?

Watching the weather is a favorite hobby of mine.  I don’t generally get my weather reports from television, but I might as well be one of those people we see in comedies, who fixate on the Weather Channel and sit there for hours, soaking up data about places they’ve never been, never intend to go, and if they did go there, they wouldn’t know anyone. Those people are portrayed as coots. (One definition of  a coot:   simple-minded.)  A weather fanatic will say to no one in particular,  “I knew it.  I knew that system was gonna come in early.”  

Except for not watching the Weather Channel (tornadoes and hurricanes are exceptions that demand TV coverage) I may be one of those people.

I check the Weather Channel’s website several times a day for places where friends and relatives live.  Every trip for me begins with www.weather.com where I can fill in the name of any city and see what’s predicted for the next ten days. 

It might be an inherited trait, since my country born-and-bred father had a set of weather instruments on the back porch and glanced at them  several times a day, always remarking out loud on what he saw there.  He often disputed what the dials told him, and he was always right.  He could feel changes in his bones. 

Something about working out in the fields as a boy and his own deep respect for nature had permanently tuned him in to the time for sowing and the time for reaping. His instincts often did not agree with the calendar. He’d wake up and announce that he was going out to our vegetable garden. “I better go pull up the radishes and the collards before the sun hits ’em again.”   And this while rain was still falling.   He knew when a big change was coming.

I don’t have the knack he did for predicting imminent change, but I’m always hopeful about it. Our problems may stick around, but at least we can count on the weather to change.  When my diagnosis is boredom,  just watching the weather offers promise. 

One reason I love  my part of Northern California (and envy New Englanders)  is that the weather plays tricks on the forecasters.  Mother and Father Nature send along surprises  for us several times a month.  We’ll get rain when the sky was clear a minute ago.  Big winds arrive high up in the treetops, when the lower limbs don’t even know it yet.   Fog rolls in and out, but not always on the schedule we expect.  I’m disappointed when the fog fails to appear.  Like the redwood trees in the back yard, I rely on absorbing fog through my pores.  

I like being surprised by the weather.  Keeping the family’s weather-watching tradition alive  (my brother does this too) the first thing I do when the day arrives is go see what the weather is like outside, and I do it again before sleeping.  It seems I’ve been making my own notations out loud to no one in particular, without realizing it.   (Another definition of “coot” might be “predictable.”)

I haven’t been a grandmother all that long and sometimes I forget a small person is nearby. They’re always listening, aren’t they?  One recent morning while I was visiting at her house, I opened the drapes and stood there for a minute with my coffee cup.  From the little girl who’d snuck up behind me I heard, 

“Hammy, you forgot to say ‘It’s a beautiful day.'”

Generations of weather-watchers later, we’ve added one more.

Ó Anita Garner