My Friend is a Ghost

Lonely late November porch chair

 

My friend in F-FL, when she moved into her assisted living room – which is on the first floor, only about 20 feet from the dining hall, activities room, elevator to the library and mail boxes, door to the cute little garden, and close to the receptionist and the doors to the great outside, the puzzle room, the sun porch, and the rocking-chair bedecked front porch – all the things that all the residents in the facility need to access several times a day – my friend, instead of hanging from her room door hook a sign with her name, or a pretty wreath, or a happy picture like all the other residents have done – she, instead, hung a huge set of wooden rosary beads.

“To keep the vampires out, or to keep you in?” I asked her.

I got a glare in return. Not funny.

My friend has long white hair that she keeps off her face with sparkly hair bands. She wears long, flowing, light-colored, semi-see-through dresses – et ne pas porter des culottes - and is often barefoot or wearing light sandals. She rarely leaves her room except to pick up her frequent shipments from Amazon, and to haunt the place at night when no one else is around except the nursing staff. God forbid that she have to have an actual conversation with other residents, and she refuses to eat in the dining room – she eats alone in her room, so none of the other residents have gotten to know her, or even have a conversation with her.

The following story was told to Cousin Paula by the nursing director at my friend’s residence, who gleefully passed it on to me:

One or two rooms down the hall from my F-FL friend’s room lives a very old woman – over 100 years old. When my F-FL friend (FFF) moved into her room and the Aged Lady saw what FFF had hung on her door hook, Aged Lady decided that FFF belonged to a cult. My commentary, here, is that that isn’t far off the truth, it’s just a cult of one.

But then Aged Lady caught sight of FFF flitting around the place in her long white hair and long white dresses (sans culottes) and realized that – actually –FFF is a GHOST!!!

And ever since then, Aged Lady refuses to walk past FFF’s room without a CNA (certified nursing assistant) next to her to protect her from the ghost!

I hope I always remember this story, because it’s the best one from F-FL yet.

Plant thriving near the woodstove

Today is one day past half-past November. The sun was out; there was a light breeze; it was in the low 50’s.  We’ve kept a couple of fold-up porch chairs – the canvas type – near to hand in the dining room, just for a warm, sunny afternoon when sitting outside could reasonably happen. Mostly it’s been only warm enough for the cats, but today was my day.

I put on a polar fleece hat with ear flaps and a visor (to keep the sun out of my eyes), a polar fleece high-neck shirt, a polar fleece scarf wrapped several times around my neck; I zipped up my polar fleece late fall jacket, put on my polar fleece fall gloves, and brought out two polar fleece blankets for my legs, which were covered with flannel pants; and I also had a Body Warmer tucked into my waistband. My feet were in my felt clogs, but I forgot to put on socks – I’ve got to start wearing socks again! The two blankets over my lap and wrapped around my legs were almost enough to keep my ankles warm in the breeze. I plopped the chair down in full sun, put my books on the porch rail, my coffee-milk (with a little local-farm eggnog in it) in the chair’s drink holder, the newspaper and a pen (to do the Sudoku and Little Words puzzles) in the chair’s zip-up pocket, and read and puzzled from noon until 3 pm, when the sun got so low there was nowhere I could move to and still be in the sun, and the temperature started to drop.

For part of the afternoon, one or another of the cats joined me in the second chair, or sashayed by on their busy projects. Birds were calling – mostly chickadees and crows and jays; the breeze blew my wind chimes from time to time. An occasional little bug flew by. There were the purring sounds of trucks in the distance. Something did a lot of rustling in the fallen leaves across the driveway – probably a cat hoping to scare up a squirrel. I read; and then I fell asleep, until my book hit the deck and woke me up.

Rasta, lime and bay thriving near the woodstove

I gave up on the garden when we had snow last week, and it was, as always, an autumn relief to finally say Enough for Now. All the garden work I’m doing now is bringing bits and pieces to the garden shed, as I locate them: the slug catchers a friend borrowed this summer and recently returned, a pile of cardboard I’ll use in the spring to do one of the chores I’ve given up on for the time being, binder twine I’ll use to hitch up vines next summer; and I finally remembered to empty the birdbath and turn its bowl upside down for the winter; stuff like that. I’ve updated my perennials map and my garlic map, and put away my garden notebooks. This weekend I’ll organize and store away my garden belt and bag for the winter, shake out the dirt and straw bits, and put away in their winter storage tin any leftover seeds. 

I noticed that the very last of last week’s snowstorm finally melted today. Except for the light – the low, grey and brown, sleepy November light which starts to disappear around 3 pm – it could have been a very early spring day.

But it couldn’t, not really – our minds and bodies are readying for winter. While I dozed, I had a slumber dream about dozing near the woodstove; the cats were ready to go inside for the night at 3 pm; it feels like midnight at 6 pm. The body wants more rest, and more warm foods. Turmeric milk suddenly sounds appealing to me.

On my porch all summer hangs a spiral wind chime made of copper leaves. It has a light, almost fairy-like sound. I’ve brought it in for the winter, because winter winds are sometimes too much for it, and I don’t want it scaring the winter birds that I feed on the porch railing. I’ve hung it from a lamp at the door to our office/library room; we brush it accidentally whenever we walk by.

This will be my winter song of hope, and comfort, and possibilities!

 

For the blog, 16 November 2023: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

Photos by Deb Marshall

The leaf chime

 

A Witch Stole My Leeks

 

California Poppies, end of October

A Witch stole 3 of my leeks.

It must have been a Welsh witch; or maybe my garden gnomes/gremlins are Welsh.

At least, that’s what I assume happened. There were 6 waiting for me to harvest the night before Hallowe’en, and only three the next morning when I’d decided it was finally time to pull them and went out to the garden to do so.

One of the things leeks are said to do is keep away evil, so maybe it was the gnomes. Or a good witch.

Or maybe the gnomes are Scots and they needed them for cock-a-leekie soup; I don’t raise chickens, so I don’t know if any local hens went astray on Hallowe’en night. Or maybe it was a Scots witch, who wanted to add leeks, for their protection against wounds, to her cock-a-leekie eye of newt stew – rich and warming nourishment after a night spent flying around in below-freezing temperatures under a nearly-full moon.

I do know the cats were very interested in something they could see out the south-facing windows that night. They aren’t allowed out after dark, I have a dark enough imagination to fear cock-a-kitty soup makers. The garden and compost bins/gnome winter housing is visible out the south-facing windows.

I’d put the gnome’s bottle of whisky in the garden shed a couple of days earlier; I should check to see if it’s still there. Whisky would be a fine addition to cock-a-leekie soup.

It’s looking very like November out my windows: lots of bare tree branches, but there are also bright flashes of earlier seasons. A lovely maple just across the street is still in process of turning orange and rose, with many green leaves yet; the grass is still very green; the puckerbrush on the edge of the kitchen pond is bright yellow. Rasta is busy pursuing and eating late-season crickets, and the calendula is still in full bloom, but the CA poppies have finally succumbed. Monday – day before Hallowe’en – I sat out on the porch in the sun for an hour, wearing a winter vest, hat and polar fleece gloves,  reading and drinking coffee milk, and it was lovely until a breeze picked up. There were crows calling, I heard ravens in the distance, the wind chimes gave an occasional melody. In the background, as in all backgrounds in the country, was the omnipresent growling song of chain-sawing.

I am, however, going to have to break down and start wearing socks again. 

Crow; Clare McCarthy photo

Monday at dusk I picked a pint of fall golden raspberries. I had to brush off a number of sleepy, slow-moving wasps as I was picking. I must go out and see if the canes and their emerging fruit got frozen during the past two nights. If not, I’ll be picking again this weekend. I still see the rare cricket when the sun is warmest, and the pollinators, though slow, are still about. I haven’t seen a toad or heard a frog, or seen a snake – except the slumbering one I disturbed when I shifted a rock a week ago – for several weeks.

My garlic is planted and bedded down with straw; my asparagus beds are covered with compost and straw, with fresh shavings in their pathways. I’ve started to put manure on the perennials, and come across many worms in the manure. This weekend is supposed to be a little warmer – I’ll finish that job then, so the worms can dig in and find winter homes before it all freezes solid. Raspberry canes need to be cut down; straw needs to be mounded around some of the perennials. If there’s time, there’s a lot of weeding to do. If there isn’t time, I’ll curse the lack come next spring.

I have 57 books on my list of books waiting to be read; all but one that I stole from my F-FL friend have been read and passed on; and I admit I’ve added a bunch more used books, and a few new books, since I made my list in the spring. But I’ve also passed 40 from that original list on to other readers, as well as a dozen I’ve fished off my bookshelves that I know I’ll never be interested in reading again.

One used book that I got from…it was probably Thriftbooks, but may have been a different used-book source, came with a return address of a previous owner pasted inside. On a whim, I sent her a postcard telling her that her book wound up in NH and that I was enjoying it greatly. The book was one of the series that the British tv series “Call the Midwife” was based on; and I mentioned to the past owner that my grandmother had been a nurse who for a number of years ran the maternity department in our small local hospital, and her stories of that time made the book series that much more interesting to me.

A couple of weeks later I got a nice letter back from the original reader. She, too, was a retired nurse; and had recently down-sized and moved closer to grandchildren, out in the great Midwest somewhere, thus getting rid of many of her books.  She also enjoyed the Midwife series because of her profession, and we had a short correspondence about that.

I wish I’d know these books when my Nana was still alive. She was a constant reader, and besides enjoying a good story, she was an excellent storyteller.  I think she would have loved this series.

But what a good thing to remember on el Dia de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead, when our dead relatives can cross the barrier and visit us, just after Hallowe’en, which the Celts also believed was the one time of the year that the dead could  pass between the worlds.  

I wonder if we could all share a bowl of cock-a-leekie soup together, and a dram of whisky…

So long as I could be the cook!

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com,  1 November 2023

Photos by Debra Marshall

Late October roses and Bells of Ireland