Looking Back...

A favorite photo of my mom and Julia in the garden, 1991

I've gotten a lot done in the garden this week. I've been outside for a few hours each day when I'm not working, and I've cut down all the peonies in the front garden and the side garden,  raked leaves out of the garden beds, cut down all the annuals in the garden. I always struggle with what to cut down and what to leave for the winter...basically if it's brown and ugly I cut it down, if it's green I leave it. At least for now, until I can't stand it anymore. I've emptied all of the smaller pots, but my big pots are still big and bloomy, so I'll keep those around until the frosts kills them off.  All my pots are emptied into the garden, and I chop up the dirt and annuals with a shovel.

All this clean up and garden organization makes me do some record keeping in my garden journal, notes about what has done well and what I need to do next spring (spray peonies with fungicide, get more lime green heucheras, pull out some anemones, etc.). And inevitably I look back to see what perennials still survive. I first planted my lavenders ('Munstead') in 1990 and I still have them! Also still thriving from that 1990 planting are phlox 'Miss Lingard,' candytuft,  lychnis alpina, salvia, bleeding heart, baptisia, achillea, and daisies. I was really curious about my anemones ('September Charm')-- I planted two plants of them in 1991 and now they have spread to one quarter of my front garden. It's pretty amazing I've had these perennials for nearly 25 years and they are still strong and healthy. Of course I have lost tons of plants...I can't even tell you how many lupines I have planted, and campanulas and delphiniums and foxgloves. Obviously I should be living in England where these plants will grow.

Walt tilling my garden, March 1990

Early garden, 1990

One year old tree peony, May 1991

And tree peony, 23 years late, May 2014

My Aunt Peggy

Aunt Peggy with my sister Linda and me, August 2013

We have been away for the past three days in Cleveland, attending the services for my dear Aunt Peggy, who passed away last Friday.  She was my mom's younger sister, was part of my life always, and was my favorite aunt for sure. And I made sure to let people know that I was her favorite niece yesterday, although I know we all felt like her favorite niece, favorite nephew, friend, etc. That was just the way she was. Our families grew up together, my cousins and I love to talk about holiday dinners together, remembering the cramped dining room at our grandparents house, the children's table where we would play with our food, all those memories that are so fun to talk about when you are together. I remember spending a lot of time at my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Tom's house when I was little. I would sometimes spend little 'vacations' at their house, and when my cousin Kenny was born, I remember spending a week at their house, helping my Aunt Peggy with her new baby.  Just what she needed, another kid in the house, but I remember having so much fun.

My mom Betts (left), my uncle Reed, and Aunt Peggy

My Aunt Peggy told me she loved me every time she saw me, she kissed me when I was leaving, and then kissed me five more times before I got out the door. She was the most positive person I know, always smiling, always genuinely interested in what you were doing,  always marveling at all the changes she has seen throughout her ninety-two years, instead of complaining about them. I last talked to her about 10 days ago, and as always she didn't complain about her own failing, she just wanted to know about me and Walt, hear about our kids and their busy lives.  She was so happy that my cousin Bob (her son) lives near us, and that our families  are close, and spend our holidays together.

My mom (left) and Aunt Peggy, on Lake Erie, 1920s

As my cousin Bob said at her funeral, her life was about loving people--her incredible family--husband Tom, six amazing children, her beloved grandchildren, her great grandchildren, and all of us. She was a mom through and through and she was never happier than when everyone was together. She was a loving sister to my mom and I appreciate the friendship and  bond they had throughout their whole lives, both living into their nineties. I know she missed my mom after she died, and she knew I missed her too, and we talked about that when we saw each other or talked on the phone.

It was so nice to be with our family these past few days, to be with my Uncle Tom and cousins. My cousins and I know that we are so lucky to have had our moms so long, but it doesn't make it any easier to lose them. I will miss her so much. XOXO

Gingerbread Houses

The other day while at Reston Town Center I stopped to see the gingerbread village that the chefs at the Hyatt make every Christmas and display in the hotel's lobby. I've always loved gingerbread houses. I love every single gingerbread house I've ever seen.  I love the colors, the candy, the imaginative ways people decorate the roofs, the shingles, the windows, just everything about them. The more the better when it comes to gingerbread houses. And if there's a train running around it, all the better.

And of course it got me thinking about all the gingerbread houses I have made over the years. I started making them with my kids when they were little and we made them most every year. It was always a highlight of the Christmas preparations for me, making the gingerbread and cutting out the pieces of the house (no pre-made kits then), buying the bags of candy,  and watching my kids' faces when I pulled it all out and said we were going to make the gingerbread house.

Summer 1974, Paris

Evie recently sent me this fun picture of our summer in Paris in 1974. I was studying at the Sorbonne for the year, and my friend Char (on right) was studying dance, and we lived in Paris. My brother and his family, who were living in Istanbul at the time, were traveling around Europe that summer and wanted to spend a month in Paris. Char and I were lucky to have two friends, Emmanuel and Gerard, who somehow convinced their sister to let Tom and Evie and their three kids stay in her empty house outside of Paris for the month of August (the sister was en vacances--vacation). It was a short train ride into Paris and it was a pretty awesome summer.

McCoy Flower Pots

Back in the day when I was really into antiquing and flea markets, I started collecting McCoy flower pots. McCoy was a manufacturer of pottery in the early 1900s from Zanesville, Ohio, and their pottery has become quite collectible.  I first started buying them because I liked their colors (green) and their floral designs,  but then I started getting into it and looking for different designs and now I have a pretty nice collection of pots. There are a lot of pottery planters out there, and a lot of reproductions,  but the way to find "the real McCoy" is to look for the mark on the bottom of the pot.  I use my planters all the time, and while I am not in the collecting mode anymore, I still keep an eye out for anything unusual when I am at a flea. I know my kids will be happy to have them someday. Haha!

This one is my favorite--it's tiny, only about 2 1/2" tall.

Mom's Quilts

The other day I got out my mom's old quilt to put on the bed in our guest room. I like to use it periodically, and it is so pretty and cheerful. This was my mom's very first quilt, a Cathedral Windows quilt,  which is a very tedious and time -consuming quilt to make--especially for a first quilt!! I was quilting at the time, and I remembering thinking she was crazy to make this for a first quilt. But her friend Ginny had made this quilt, and my mom loved it. And she did it,  all by hand, all those little squares of fabric framed in muslin,  and I can't even begin to think how many of those little square she made and then sewed together. Maybe after all the years of machine sewing, it was relaxing to sew by hand, who knows. And the quilt is truly a work of art.  I love to look at this quilt now, because when I look at all the little windows of fabric,  I see the dresses my mom made for me, slipcovers for the old davenport, dresses she made for her granddaughters, the kitchen curtains--every one of the fabrics  came from something else she made, I am sure. My mom wouldn't buy new fabric if she had scraps she could use, and she had plenty.

Cathedral Windows Quilt

My mom kept a little quilt journal with pictures of all her quilts and I have the journal now. She didn't start quilting until she retired, but she was an expert seamstress all her life and she took to quilting right away. She made quilts for herself, my dad, my brother (and made it a second time after it burned in a house fire), several of her grandchildren, and almost all of her great-grandchildren. I have two of her quilts now, her first one (pictured) and the one she made for my dad. Pretty cool.

Great Granddaughter Hayden's quilt, 2001

Great Grandson Jack's quilt, 1992

Quilt for my uncle's grandson, Jonathan, 1991

Great Granddaughter Emily's quilt, 2000

Dad's quilt, 1990

My Grandmother's Silver

My grandmother's silverware

It's a good thing I talked to my sister the other day, because she had spent the day washing all her good china and crystal, getting ready for the holidays. It reminded me of a job I always forget about until I am actually setting the table for the holidays, and that is polishing the silver. This is a job my kids would never in a million years think about--who polishes silver anymore?  Who has silver anymore? Who has real china anymore?  I am so happy to have my Grandma Camplejohn's silver, engraved with the letter 'C'.  My mom gave it to me after my grandpa died. I don't use it a lot, but I bring it out for the holidays and special occasions. It is missing a few knives, and it tarnishes easily,  but I like getting it out,  polishing it and looking at the tiny shrimp cocktail forks, and I like thinking about my grandma doing the same thing fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. When my cousin Bob and his family come for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday,  I will remind him that we are using the same silverware that we used when we had dinner on Sundays at our grandparents house so many years ago, and we will laugh and tell stories that we remember, like the noisy radiator screen behind our chairs, and the chocolate drops in the crystal bowl by the front door.

My grandmother Jane Kendall  Camplejohn and my mother, Betty Ann

Button Ferns and Paris

Planting button fern in Paris, 1974

As I was watering my indoor plants the other day,  I started thinking about which plants are my favs. I have several kinds of ferns that I like, but if I had to pick one it would be my button ferns (pellae rotundifolia). They are a very graceful small fern, with dark green button-like leaves. The first button fern I ever had was when I lived in Paris in graduate school. I planted it in an old yogurt pot that I had brought back from Turkey after visiting Tom and Evie in Istanbul. So many times I have wished I still had that pot! Anyway, since then I have always had one or two button ferns. They need frequent watering and I can't tell you how many times I have found one all shriveled up. But fortunately, they are great rebounders, so you can cut them all the way back and new growth always comes up and in a month or so it is a happy plant again.

Maidenhair ferns getting a drink

Button fern

Button fern

The Wheel Turns

Dad in his garden, 1980

My parents were always gardeners, mostly in the sense of keeping a nice yard, a lush lawn,  and planting pretty flowers in the flowerbeds. After he retired, my dad got into vegetable gardening in a big way, and dug up a corner of the backyard and turned it into a showpiece garden. He made his own compost and read Organic Gardening. He ordered his seeds in the winter and started plants indoors. His soil was rich and dark, the best I have ever seen. There was not a weed to be found in my dad's garden. And he gardened until he was 91 years old.  Growing up, we had a curved rose bed along the driveway, roses that my grandfather planted when he lived in that house before us. When my mom sold the house in 2006, those roses were still there, and many of them were the original roses, over 60 years old. This poem reminds me of my dad, and makes me think about all the gardeners in my family, past and future.

Seventy-Two is Not Thirty-Five

by David Budbill

I spent seven hours yesterday at my daughter's house

helping her expand their garden by at least ten times.

We dug up sod by the shovelful, shook off the dirt as

best we could; sod into the wheelbarrow and off to the

pile at the edge of the yard. Then all that over and over

again. Five hours total work-time, with time out for lunch

and supper. By the time I got home I knew all too well 

that seventy-two is not thirty-five; I could barely move.

I got to quit earlier than Nadine. She told me I'd done

enough and that I should go get a beer and lie down on

the chaise lounge and cheer her on, which is what I did.

All this made me remember my father forty years ago

helping me with my garden. My father's dead now, and

has been dead for many years, which is how I'll be one

of these days too. And then Nadine will help her child,

who is not yet here, with her garden. Old Nadine, aching

and sore, will be in my empty shoes, cheering her on.

So it goes. The wheel turns, generation after generation,

around and around. We ride for a little while, get off and

somebody else gets on. Over and over, again and again. 

My Grandpa C.

"Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his buttonhole."--Mark Twain

When I saw this quote in a book recently, it immediately made me think of my Grandpa Camplejohn. When I was growing up, he came over several times a week to our house for dinner, and in the spring and summer he would often arrive with a rose pinned to his shirt or jacket. He loved flowers all his life and, in my memory, had a glorious garden full of vegetables and roses, pansies, and hollyhocks. My earliest memory of gardening is at his house, where I would pick little bouquets of pansies and put them in a glass jar on the back porch for my grandparents.  He planted pansies along the borders of his garden and I always plant pansies today because of him. I loved his hollyhocks which bloomed along the side of his house and which you could see from the dining room windows. I have tried and tried for years to grow hollyhocks because of him, but with limited success. I like to think about him when I am gardening, I like that continuity.

I was lucky to get my Grandpa's gardening book and a gardening basket he used, too. I love looking through the gardening book (Better Homes & Gardens New Garden Book, copyright 1951) and seeing the scraps of paper, lists, and newspaper articles he had kept inside. I had totally forgotten he had clipped an article about growing paperwhites in the winter! I love coincidences like that, here I am growing paperwhites 60 years later. I keep my gardening gloves in his garden basket. I'm lucky to come from a family of gardeners. My mom and dad both enjoyed working in a garden and my dad really got interested in it after his retirement, starting his vegetables from seed and making compost that was the envy of any gardener. Both my sister and brother are gardeners. I'm hoping it continues down the line!

We all loved his handwriting!

He was interested in Paperwhites!

His list of tomato varieties to try

Grandpa C's garden basket

December 31, 2011

I have been waiting all year to use this poem that I like so much, by  Ron Padgett, and today seems like the perfect day.


"That was fast. I mean life."


Happy New Year, everyone!

Christmas Memories

Brooks's first Santa visit

I always put out the Santa pictures of our kids when they were little at Christmas time, because they bring back such happy memories.  Contrary to what I see at the malls today, with long lines and music and people overload, we had very good experiences with Santa and I have very sweet memories of our Santa visits. I would take them during the week to the mall and we would make an afternoon of it, visit Santa and then go out to a fancy (for kids) lunch afterwards at the Hot Shoppes cafeteria in the mall.

Julia's first Santa visit

I vaguely remember Santa visits myself, but I do have happy memories of Christmas lunches at the Silver Grille Restaurant in Higbee's Department Store in downtown Cleveland (think A Christmas Story, it's the same store). As kids we would get a little cardboard stove at the table, and it had tiny pots and pans on it with peas and carrots and mashed potatoes. Then you would get this teeny tiny china chicken with maybe creamed chicken in it?  My cousin Bob and I love talking about those lunches and remembering all the little details, like the little pitchers of chocolate milk that came with the stove. I seem to remember Santa made an appearance during lunch. I remember walking by and admiring all the department store windows at Christmas and it was always so fun to see who had the best, Higbees, May Company, or Halles. And then there was the smell of the nut store next to May Co.--wow, that is a strong memory.  I always wanted my mom to stop in there and get some roasted nuts!