Help Wanted: Special Delivery; No Heavy Lifting; Beautiful Feet Required

Jack Frost's Christmas Day handiwork on SAM's Dodge truck

It was quite chilly outside when I woke up this Christmas morning. The windshield on SAM's truck parked in the driveway became Jack Frost's canvas. Old Jack painted some interesting shapes for our enjoyment. Do you see the yin-yang heart figure at the bottom left corner of the glass? Then again, maybe it's not a heart shape. It could be that Old Jack was giving his backside a break from all the havoc he's been causing with my plants. Thanks a lot, Jack!

After a breakfast of sweet roll (recipe here), Havarti cheese, and strong coffee, I was ready for Christmas morn to begin. Wait, though. No stockings were hung by the chimney with care. No children or grandchildren were wiping the sleep from their eyes to find presents under the tree. It was just SAM and me present and accounted for this Christmas morn. It felt weird, I have to admit. Son and his family have moved back to Illinois. Daughter and her husband are spending Christmas with his parents. SAM and I are still recovering from a flu-like respiratory illness (stubbornly resisting going to the doctor). We've stayed home for the past nine days or so, trying not to infect anyone else if at all possible. Friends and neighbors know that we're sick so we've not had any visitors except for the package delivery people, God bless 'em. The Fed Ex man even brought a package this morning. Poor fellow, having to work on Christmas Day.

Peanut wonders if there will be any Christmas present for her?

Thinking about people who deliver things, I read a Christmas story that Charles Dickens wrote called The Chimes, in which a delivery man (known as a "porter" in Dickens' time) is charged with delivering more than a letter or a package. He falls into a reverie of sorts, is haunted by the spirits of the local church bells (sound somewhat familiar?), and encouraged (or rather scared witless) to change his sour attitude about life and his circumstances. Those footsteps have been followed before, I think, in other Dickens' stories and the like. They're amusing, I admit, but not life-changing.

 After finishing up Dickens' story this morning, I turned to another book that I've been neglecting, which could account for my own recent sour attitude about life and circumstances. I wish I'd looked into it sooner rather than later.

Now here is a present that doesn't need any special packaging. No cardboard, packing tape, or postage stamping is necessary. A few instructions for use, though, might come in handy for those not familiar with it or needing a refresher: "Handle with care"? Nope. No kid gloves necessary. "Do not immerse"? Well, that's not a bad idea after some use and much contemplation. How about "Take to heart on a daily basis and get those lovely feet in motion"? Yes! That's the ticket!

How beautiful on the mountains

are the feet of those who bring good news,

who proclaim peace,

who bring good tidings,

who proclaim salvation,

who say to Zion,

"Your God reigns!"

(Isaiah 52:7)  

Christmas Waits for No One in a Garden

...Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life...
--from Charles Dickens' essay "A Christmas Tree," 1850--

Who better to question the various meanings and memories of Christmas than Charles Dickens? I think he surely laid the foundation for the way many of us celebrate the holiday today or at least expressed it better than anyone else. Elaborately decorated trees laden with glass baubles and homespun merriment, gifts covered with paper and ribbons tempting youngsters to sneak a peek, and calorie-studded feasts shared with loved ones and friends manage to hold their own even in these days of economic effeteness. Real life takes a back seat, if only for a day or two, when Christmas comes around. With a new job in Tallahassee driving us on to new and different experiences, SAM and I slowed the real-life pace last weekend on our visit to Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park. It's one of those places I'm sure that we will revisit now and again.

...Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top...

--from Dickens' essay, as above--

SAM gathers strength from weekend visits and so do I, seeing him in better spirits against such a massive backdrop. I wonder how many storms this live oak has weathered over the years to achieve this stature?

Yes, on every object that I recognize among those upper branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light! When I wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings, the white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I hear Dinarzade. "Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the Young King of the Black Islands." Scheherazade replies, "If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful story yet." Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the execution, and we all three breathe again.

--from Dickens' essay as above--

I wondered as we walked the brick pathways through the gardens: where did these variously crafted bricks come from, and why did they all end up in this garden? One search led me to a Tallahassee blog and a helpful lady who apparently likes to walk here too. There is a story behind every block laid down on these paths, and I'm glad someone thought it worthwhile to preserve them for visitors in need of a respite from real life.

One path leads to a secret garden enclosed by leafy walls. It's beautiful even at this time of year, planted with succulents and frost-tolerant flowers. At this time of year, before the peak of camellia and azalea season, you don't pay extra to visit the Maclay estate. Six dollars admits a car-ful of people to the park and includes admission to the gardens as well as access to picnic areas and miles-long trails through the woods. What a wonderful gift!

Like silvery Christmas tinsel in the sunlight, Spanish moss covers just about every tree in sight. You see much more of it here in Tallahassee than in the Pensacola area. The air plants apparently take a long time to recover from hurricane damage, which is obviously not as much of a limiting factor in this landlocked state capital. Of course, the ambient air quality could be a determining factor in its growth habit, as some researchers have suggested. Paper mills and chemical factories in the Pensacola area could be contributing to the epiphyte's relative scarcity there. If Tallahassee's air quality suffers at all, it's probably from an overabundance of hot air, as its main industry is politics. The resounding echoes of real life--The Waits, if you will--warning us to note the change in time--or changing times--seem to fade away into Camellia Christmas beauty in this garden.

But hark! The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas tree? Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do...'

--from Dickens' essay as above--

Go Ahead, Bug Me--Thoughts Concerning Governors and Pitcher Plants

I guess I am not the only one from Illinois, in Little Egypt or upstate, feeling a bit unsettled these days. The media pounced on news of Governor Blagojevich's (sounds like Boy-I'm-rich) downfall like these pitcher plants clamp down on trapped insects. People outside the Land of Lincoln may be understandably shocked by the news of such audacious corruption in the Windy City, but Illinoisans have become all too familiar with this sort of gubernatorial gaff (trick, fraud, ordeal, abuse).


My walk with Hubby last Sunday on the Blackwater Heritage State Trail provided some wonderful shots of Sarracenia leucophylla thriving alongside the trail. Phillip Merritt, a new blogger and friend of Cosmo, posted recently about these fascinating plants as some of his favorite things. You can tell by their beauty, if nothing else, why they could be favorites. This time of year and early spring are the best times to be traveling by foot here. I am thankful for these plants, and I hope they continue to thrive, because stinging and biting insects abound in marshy areas like this one. Summer is the worst time to be walking the trail, though bicycling and roller-blading do not seem to be unreasonable alternatives. If you are fast enough, you can easily escape the blood-sucking critters.

Here you can see one of several bridges along the trail, which is well-maintained and offers benches along its length for taking breaks. There are even porta-potties available for other kinds of breaks.

Water keeps flowing here in the creeks, inviting reflection and admiration for a state that strives to take care of its natural resources. It may not be the best of times financially for Florida, but at least its governor does not resort to underhanded methods of improving his own financial situation. At least, I hope he doesn't.

...For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept that "Whatever is, is right"; an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

--from Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities--