A few evenings ago, as the sun dipped behind the trees on the wooded hills above our farm, I set off with my trusty wheelbarrow heaped with pussy willows we’d rooted last year and wintered over in the garden–where they could not possibly remain–and a shovel. My aim, the farm pond in the meadow. Highly curious heifers with no regard for personal space followed at my heels like pet dogs. If I turned around, they were breathing down my neck. A little disconcerting, so I waved them back. Repeatedly. I was also slightly concerned about chancing upon a coyote, but decided with this lot keeping me company that wasn’t likely. Might not have been anyway, but coyotes do visit the meadow when making their rounds late in the evening or at night. Rarely in the day.

My two farm dogs chose not to go with me on this particular venture. Wise. I had to toss the pussy willows, contained in feed sacks after I dug them out of the garden, and my shovel over not one, but two, electric fences and then roll beneath the wire to reach the grassy edge of the water. For those of you who think it’s easy to dig in wet muck sucking at your shovel and your boots, I can assure you that it’s not. Already worn out after a day of overdoing it in the garden, this final endeavor took the last of my reserves. And I sank in the squelchy mud up to my boot tops.  Then my knees. Digging and clawing my way along, I shifted clumps of saturated grass and oook to get my plants into place. Then heaved myself back up the bank to the meadow and pushed my barrow home. A task I desired to accomplish before dark so I could still see the electric fences, installed, btw, to keep the cows out of the pond.

If the pussy willows are happy there, we will have lovely catkins next spring. Supposedly, they prefer swampy places and the edges of streams, so this spot ought to suit them. But I reserved one to plant someplace else, just in case. As ever, I am in pursuit of Eden on earth. My own bit of heaven. And I have the aching back to prove it.

(***Images of Lance in the muddy creek near the pond, and daughter Elise on a different outing. And our oh so friendly cows. To be expected, really, as they were hand raised and bottle fed, etc).

I did a search on pussy willow quotes and found this rather unusual one: ““Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it.”
― Margaret Wise Brown

I have no idea how that relates to pussy willows, but liked the quote. I hope to find my willows where I planted them, growing happily. I shall report back.

“The spring has sprung, the grass is rizz. I wonder where them birdies is?” ~A.A. Milne

“The spring has sprung, the grass is rizz. I wonder where them birdies is?” ~A.A. Milne

Actually, the birds are singing away outside my door, but I like the quote and that's how it goes.To declare the Shenandoah Valley in the full bloom of spring is a tad premature, but we are poised to burst forth. The early plants already are. And, like the happy kitty above, I say bring it on! This has seemed an exceedingly long and tiresome winter.

The report on the seeds I've started in my little greenhouse is that many of them are coming up, though not all. It's said that parsley has to go to the devil and back again seven times (and he keeps some for himself) before those seedlings emerge. And I have more seeds I need to start. But I will. I'm using the large yogurt containers to begin the seeds and will transplant them into the small yogurt containers and whatever else I can find. I'm recycling, and we're eating a lot of yogurt these days, also begging the containers from friends and family. If the cost of shipping were cheaper I'd ask you to mail me yours. 

As to my gardens, before the snow that hit on Sunday and into Monday, I was able to work outdoors and pull a whole wheelbarrow full of overwintering weeds. Yes, they always manage to survive the harshest weather. I'm taking stock of what else made it through and considering which plants didn't and should be replaced or grow something different in that spot. I am expanding my herbs, so look for more fragrance this year.

For those of you who love gardening and country life, I recommend my nonfiction book, Shenandoah Watercolors, was 2.99, now only .99 at Amazon. The book is also available in print with beautiful pics of the valley and mountains taken by my talent

A late summer excerpt from my nonfiction book,  Shenandoah Watercolors, a 2012 Epic eBook finalist. Free in Amazon Kindle from August 19th through the 21st.

We’ve had many misty starts to the day this August. Haze hugs the pond, parting just enough to reveal the long-legged blue heron fishing for his breakfast. There’s a country saying about the number of foggy mornings in August being an indicator for the amount of snows we’ll have this winter––a heap, at this rate.

Dozens of swallows skim over the pond as the sun sinks below the Alleghenies. If I were standing on a distant ridge, would it sink behind me, or the ridge beyond that one?

The water is calm now but was awash with waves during the storm that hit a short time ago. The grassy hill and maple tree are reflected on the surface, silvery and streaked with rose from the western sky. All is peaceful as a soft twilight settles over the valley. Utterly idyllic, until I pause to consider what all of those swallows are after. There must be clouds of mosquitoes.

Here’s another thought, where do all the birds spend the night? Are the woods up on the hill lined with birds perched wing to wing jostling for space on the branches? I’ll bet they make room for the big red-tailed hawk. He gets the whole tree––as many as he wants. It’s good to be king.

**Image of our pond taken by my mom, Pat Churchman

**Image of Hawk by daughter Elise taken up in the meadow behind our house

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Shenandoah Watercolors

My new nonfiction release is out!

Written in a month by month journal style, Shenandoah Watercolors follows a year in my life on our farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. This collection of word paintings begins in May 2003 and concludes at the end of May 2004––a highly significant year for our family as it turned out.

Uncertain what route to pursue regarding its publication, I set it aside and continued to work on my fictional historicals for The Wild Rose Press. However, my mother showed Shenandoah Watercolors to a local historian who insisted it beautifully captured a vanishing way of life and must be published, an insistence that nagged at the back of my mind. With the evolution of the eBook world I decided to self-publish and share Shenandoah Watercolors with my fans.

My mother, Pat Churchman, did the spectacular cover and was of immeasurable help in editing this book, reading it over and over.  We originally intended to include some of her wonderful photographs of the valley and mountains, but the enormous undertaking involved was too daunting.  As it was, I had to hire an editor to format the manuscript for epub, not as easy as you might think.  So I invite you to explore my home blog where many of mom’s photographs are featured in various posts on gardening and rural life at http://bethtrissel.wordpress.com

Description of Shenandoah Watercolors:

Author/farm wife Beth Trissel shares the joys and challenges of rural life on her family’s small farm located in the scenic Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Journey with her through the seasons on the farm, owned by her family since the 1930′s, and savor the richness of her cherished gardens and beloved valley. This journal is a poignant, often humorous, sometimes sad glimpse into a vanishing way of life for anyone who loves or yearns for the country and even those who don’t.~

Shenandoah Watercolors is available as an ebook at Amazon Kindle and at Barnes & Noble as a Nookbook. (However Barnes&Noble hasn’t gotten my cover up yet and I have no idea why.  Amazon was prompt.)

*Also, for those of you who didn’t realize, you can download Free software at Amazon for reading Kindle books on your computer called Kindle for PC.

Photographs of the primary inspiration behind my work.  The colonial garden pic is from Williamsburg which also inspires me, as does my own garden included in several pics taken by my gardening assistant, artistic daughter Elise. The majority of these shots were taken by my mom.  The lovely old home (circa 1816) is the family homeplace in Augusta County, Virginia.  I don’t live there but visited much over the years particularly as a child.  The rustic mountain home photographed in fall and summer was shot by my hubby and speaks for itself.

From my nonfiction collection, Shenandoah Watercolors.

The Alleghenies are shrouded in mist this morning and the colors muted. Columbine blooms outside my kitchen window, a mass of pink bells. I’ve planted all kinds of columbine because it’s one of my absolute favorites. I have the red-yellow woods variety too and the blue one from Colorado. The roses beside the old, red barn are so big and thorny, like guardians of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and badly need pruning.

I’ve a sea of herbs and flowers ever changing with the season. Some perennials are lost each winter and new ones are planted by me and my nature child, Elise; still others by the birds. One wild aster, carried to us on the wind, blooms in late spring. The robust plants are covered with small white flowers and very pretty really, although difficult to contain. I'm partial to white flowers, glowing at dusk while all else fades.

Several plants reign supreme because of Elise. ‘Magic flowers,’ yellow evening primrose, have taken over a generous quadrant at the edge of the vegetable garden. She rushes me out at twilight to view the wonder as they pop open, charging the air with fragrance. Hummingbird moths swoop in like little fairies to feed on the blossoms.

Dill is also rampant because black swallowtail butterflies lay their eggs on its leaves and hatch into little caterpillars which she watches closely, puts some into jars and feeds until they make a chrysalis. Then one day they emerge with wet crumpled wings and she releases them to the sky. I feel a bit like those uncertain butterflies, taking those first tentative flights.

Elise showed me where the robin is tucked down in her nest in one of the crabapple trees. She knows where the soft, brown dove nests in the pear, where the six goslings are at any given moment, and is on the prowl for the new kittens, but that wily mother cat has hidden them well.

Author's note: Elise, now in college, still loves the garden(s) and is my right hand. This pic is one taken of our farm.

Once again, new life is swelling all around us. Baby calves appear overnight in the meadow, and as we drive along the back roads we see fleecy lambs trotting behind their mothers and baby goats playing King of the Mountain. The kids leap gleefully off an old stump and scamper back up again. Babies come wired for play, as instinctive as eating.

Why do we seem to lose the knack for fun as we grow older? More play and reinstating nap time would turn this rum old world around. And chocolate, I think, to sweeten the deal. Those people intolerant to chocolate will have to make other arrangements.

I have sometimes considered writing the President with my ideas for world peace which involve airlifting in chocolate chip cookies, the really good double chunk kind, to quarrelsome countries as a reward for playing nicely. Bubble stuff would be a good, too. Folks can eat cookies and blow bubbles after their naps. And smell the flowers. We should plant flowers and herbs everywhere. Americans could do with far more beauty in their lives. Is beauty vain and frivolous, or as essential as breathing?

“Yes, in a poor man’s garden grow
Far more than herbs and flowers –
Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,
And joy for weary hours.” Mary Howitt

Posted by Beth Trissel
Photograph by Pat Churchman, shot along a back road a few miles from our farm

"The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes..."
Shakespeare

The heavy rain has given way to a misting drizzle, but streams of water are pouring down from the hills, making new ponds and creeks. This spring is awash in moisture and amazing after last summer’s searing drought. I am struck by the intense beauty around me, and I thought I was already seeing it, but it is so much more somehow. The grass seems to shimmer, yet there is no sun out today, and the meadow is so richly green it’s like seeing heaven. The barnyard geese are enraptured, as much as geese can be, with all the grass. If there is a lovelier place to revel in spring than the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains, I don’t know it. Narnia, maybe.

I’ve been thinking about my favorite places. The pool I like best lies in the woods near a place called Rip Rap Hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A most splendid falls cascades up above, but I like the pool far more. We always meant to go back, but never have. The cold water ripped through me like liquid ice and is as clear as melted crystal. I could see the rocks on the bottom, some slick with moss, others brown-gold in the light where the sun broke through the leafy canopy overhead. Trout hid beneath big rounded stones or ones that formed a cleft, but the men tickled them out to flash over the flat rocks strewn across the bottom like a path. Drifts of hay-scented fern rose around the edges of the pool, warming the air with the fragrance of new mown hay, and made the shady places a rich green.

Now, that’s a good place to go in my mind when I’m troubled. The problem with cities is that people don’t learn what really matters, don't really feel or know the rhythms of the earth. When we are separated from that vital center place, we grow lost. Sadly, most people will never know what they are lost from, or where they can be found.

Posted by Beth Trissel

By Beth Trissel (photograph of our farm)

Spring can be very wintry here, with snow lying on the ground sometimes until Easter and a brisk wind blowing from the North. But the sun shines brighter, when it shines, and the geese begin to fuss, a sure harbinger of spring. Squawky geese are always the first sign, even before the pussy willow blooms, or whatever it is that pussy willows do.

This annual sign of spring makes me think of other spring observances. March is usually the first month when gardeners can really get their hands into the earth and plant something, like those first rows of peas, often put in with cold fingers right before a rain. The rains are so close that there may only be a day or two when the soil is workable before it’s too wet again. Veteran gardeners watch the sky and feel the earth, wrinkled pea seed in readiness, and when it’s all systems go, there’s a mad scramble for the garden as the gray clouds roll in.

A bit of lettuce, spinach and radish seeds are scattered in short rows, then back to the house for a hot cup of tea and the toasting of numbed extremities by the wood stove, the contentment of a spring rite observed. There’s something of a one-upmanship among country folk about who gets their peas in the earliest. “Got your peas in yet?” is apt to be a seemingly casual conversation opener, but only for the one who has, of course.

Spring is also the time of year when I regard the cows with a deep wariness. Inevitably, the cows will get out. I never know exactly when they’ll time their visit, but their attraction for newly planted gardens and flower beds is their annual spring rite. Around here, in the spring, cows are the enemy. They particularly like a newly planted garden just after a spring shower, because they can really sink their hooves in and churn up the earth. A freshly re-seeded lawn will do in a pinch, even shrubbery if all else fails. We have a side of the house called 'Cow corner' where the bushes appear to have been strangely pruned by a mad gardener.

I once threw myself in front of a stampeding young heifer as she made her way for my very newly planted raspberries. I was in the midst of planting them when she and several others escaped from the calf pen my husband was cleaning. He had left the gate unbolted for a second--that second cows live for. Yelling “No!” I hurled myself in her path. He came running just in time to see me prepared to be martyred for my cause.

The heifer, a coward at heart, veered at the last moment and leapt off the small wall at one end of the garden. I heard some discussion later about the price tag value of the raspberries compared to the cow had she broken her leg. I’m relieved to add that she didn’t, and there was some concern for my safety had I disappeared under her charge.

I’ve watched in horror as bovines of all ages have frisked their way through tender young snapdragons, newly emerging peas and dozens of other cherished plantings. Later in the season when the weeds get thick and the weather grows hot and dry, I begin to lose my earlier enthusiasm for my garden and so do the cows. They prefer to make their pilgrimages while the earth is fresh and new and the plants are carefully chosen and special. Don't we all?

Have any gardening stories of your own? Please post them under the comments section!

When the world was new and I was young, I ordered a dozen Rouen ducklings from a game farm and began my love affair with ducks, blessed by its moments of joy and cursed with inevitable tragedy. The box of downy babies was delivered directly to my door much earlier in the day than our mail normally comes as the mailman had wearied of their incessant peeping. I took the new arrivals from the grateful carrier and transferred them to a corner of the family room under a warm light bulb.

My two oldest children, now young adults, in elementary school then, were delighted with their new playmates, but soon joined me in the discovery that these tiny creatures were incredibly messy. The ducklings reveled in their food, spewing a mixture of feed and water on themselves, the box, and the walls. This led to their speedy removal to an unoccupied rabbit hutch in an outbuilding. Here they grew in sheltered bliss until we deemed them ready for life on the pond, unaware that our charges needed parental guidance. The unchaperoned youngsters soon slipped under the fence and lost themselves in the neighbor’s grassy meadow. We tracked their frantic quacks and carried them home, only to have them forget and stray again.

Sadly, unwary ducklings do not know to be on guard against snapping turtles, something their mama would have taught them. By summer’s end, just two grown ducks remained and were fondly named Daphne and Darlene. They were inseparable and divided their day between the cows and geese in the barnyard and forays to the pond. The next spring Daphne and Darlene built a mutual nest inside a clump of gold-button tansy at the edge of the garden and patiently sat on the eggs that would never hatch. It was time to find them a suitable spouse.

One fall evening 'Don' arrived in my husband's pickup truck. The girls took an instant liking to the handsome drake, and he to them, though he showed a slight preference for Darlene. As spring neared again, we noticed a wild mallard drake observing our little band. He dashed forward for a bite of grain at feeding time, only to be driven away by Don. We pitied Dwayne, as he soon became known, and tossed a handful far to the side for him. Besides the free lunch, it seemed that Dwayne was attracted to our Daphne, much to Don’s strong disapproval.

Undeterred, the small male eventually won acceptance, amusing us by his attempts to mate with Daphne, twice his size. Persistence won out, though. That year the girls had separate nests, Darlene at the base of a bittersweet vine, while Daphne went back to the tansy. Don and Dwayne bonded, swapping stories as they awaited imminent fatherhood. The ducklings hatched in late spring and grew quickly. All survived with excellent care from their mothers. By fall, we could see Dwayne’s influence on the flock. His offspring were much smaller.

This was a happy, golden time. Late afternoons we quacked loudly, calling our ducks for feeding. Heads popped up from the seeding grass and they answered back, then waddled single file behind Don, their noble leader. If we were late with dinner, they gathered to complain about the lack of service and were not averse to heading up to the house to fetch us if necessary.

Autumn in all its’ splendor passed into a winter that was our most severe in years. We tromped faithfully through the deep snow every day to scatter feed on the frozen pond. Then one morning after fresh snowfall we could not find a single duck. Our anxious calls came back to us empty on the wind, searching revealed only spatters of blood and dog tracks in the snow; the silent witness to their grim fate. Still, we hoped that some birds had escaped the attack and combed the neighborhood, finally locating a pair of Dwayne’s offspring. Only the smaller ducks could fly well. We had unwittingly fed the others up to be sitting ducks, an expression I now understand all too well.

A week later Dwayne returned, but it was a bleak time. How empty the pond seemed without the gang. That May, Betty, our lone remaining female, hatched a fuzzy brood. Familiar quacks again filled the air and gladdened our spirits. It just isn’t spring without ducklings.

By Beth Trissel