Cardinals, Geese, and a Too-Early Spring

The maple trees are budding already. The hyacinths are starting to come up. Apparently they have seen goslings at Lake Ontario already, and lately I've been hearing cardinals whooping their mating calls. They're all about two months early, but it has been positively warm the last few days. In fact, other than a few days at -25, it's been unseasonably warm all winter so far. The plants and birds think spring has come. I'm worried that a real cold snap will come in February and kill the young, and it's heartbreaking knowing I can't tell them all, "Hold off! Wait! Winter is coming! It isn't over!" 

Or maybe it is over, in which case we got hardly any snow at all and farmers will be in some trouble this summer. I haven't taken my winter coat out of the closet yet, and I've only shoveled snow one day. Too weird. A bit frightening. Surely cold and snow will come eventually!

Deliverance

It's the 18th of January, and if you've seen the movie Deliverance, you'll know why I feel like playing my banjo today...

I started playing banjo when I was about thirteen, and in fact my first real job was as a banjo teacher at a music store when I was fifteen. I played in the Earl Scruggs style, five-string. I had one student who was so young, he couldn't reach the strings on his instrument. We had to tape a matchbox to the banjo to elevate his hand into position. It was a great job while it lasted, until the shop burned down one night, and they decided not to rebuild. Years later, I developed a Teach Yourself Banjo course so people could learn remotely at their own pace. Not that many people took advantage of it, but it was still a fun venture.

Banjo has cropped up often throughout my life. My niece married a fellow who plays clawhammer banjo, a style I don't know but would love to learn. One evening I got to perform at a jam session with the Utah Old Time Fiddlers and Country Music Association. I ran into two banjo players at a summer girls' camp who taught me a new version of Cripple Creek. My childhood neighbour up the street played too, and even lent me his banjo for a while until I could afford my own. Once I even met a girl walking through an airport carrying a banjo case, and when I told her I played too, it's like we became instant friends. It isn't a common instrument here in Canada, though it can often be found in Irish folk music. Still, it does seem to appear when I'm least expecting it.

Banjo has been the brunt of a few jokes in its history, and people don't always seem to take it seriously. It's actually a pretty complicated and beautiful instrument, and it's not just for Muppet frogs to play while sitting on a log in a swamp. Though it isn't something you'll hear often in a concert hall or accompanying an orchestra, you can play Paganini on it. You can use violin mutes on it to get a soft, chiming sound from it. Or, yeah, you can hammer out some bluegrass on it, set people's feet to stomping. I've always loved bluegrass, and I can't hear it without jumping up and clogging.

Yes, I clog. Or at least, I did until arthritis took over my knees.

What's your superpower?

Yarn Stash Score

I was talking with my weaving instructor, and she said she had some fibres to share with me. A fellow weaver had retired from weaving and gave away her stash, and it wasn't stuff she was going to use. Would I like it? For sure! Buying weaving supplies is pricey. So I went over to pick it up, expecting a small bag of thread.

I came home with five BIG boxes of all kinds of thread and yarn -- stuff for knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and needlepoint as well as weaving. Bulky yarns that will work in peg loom rugs. Two shopping bags of scrubby yarns and craft cotton for making kitchen cloths. Two BIG cones of light yarn the size of basketballs (my instructor says she ended up with 17 of these!). Such generosity! It felt like Christmas. I went through it and selected some fuzzy yarns and baby yarns that I likely won't use, which I can pass on to a fellow knitter who makes stuff for charity. There's a cone of purple yarn my granddaughter will love. I also collected a bag of cotton-silk blend that I'll give to a friend who makes more exotic stuff than I do. I may find more that I can share as I dig through the hoard.

There are some especially beautiful weaving cottons in heathery colours that I look forward to using. Some look good for making tapestries, and I can already see seascapes and Scottish hills in my mind. So many ideas rattling in my head now! I fear other responsibilities are going to languish in neglect for a while...

I feel bad that someone obviously bought all this with the intention of certain projects and never got to them, but hopefully I can honour it and put it to good use. I think the first thing I do is make scarves and hats for the homeless, as winter has finally come to Ontario.

Another manuscript

It was a gray and rainy day and no chance to walk to the lake. Laundry is done. Varnish is still drying on the bannisters so I can't sand them yet. I'm out of weaving cotton. Left my guitar and banjo at home. Nothing good on Netflix. So as a last resort, I finally buckled down and spent the evening polishing off a manuscript and sending it off to my editor. This one is my first attempt at full-length non-fiction, so not sure how it will go, but that's all I'm going to say about it for now! Superstition still runs high at times like this, and I don't want to jinx anything...I'm a jangle of nerves.

I still have two fiction manuscripts (well, more than two, but two main ones) that I'm going to work on next. 

But not tonight. The big question for now is...to make peanut butter cookies and snarf them all in a frenzy of stress-eating, or to drink a sedate herbal tea and go to bed early? What would J.K. Rowling do?

I don't make New Year's resolutions

I am not a big fan of goal-setting. It seems to me if there's something you want to improve, you just start doing it. If you fall short, you start again, right now. If there's a trait you want to develop, you just "be" that. No setting goals about what you want to be in the future -- just be, now. And no one is keeping track of how many times you fail or start again. 

Having said that, I do choose a theme each year and let it influence or guide my thoughts, focus, and activities during the year. For example, one year was focused on "health," one year was "family history," and last year was "emergency preparedness."

We've just come out of a long and rather grueling (and financially draining) church renovation, which isn't quite done yet, but we're at a pausing point. The family has undergone some changes and challenges. We're feeling a bit battered. So this year's theme is Recovery. Or maybe Quiet. Or maybe Ice Cream -- I'm still deciding.

To start this year's theme off, at any rate, I am spending two weeks at the church, the first with my husband and the second week alone, practising "Quiet." When the furnace isn't running, it's a silent place. It's surrounded by empty farm fields. Cars going past are rare, and the thick walls protect me from the sound, muffling anything outside. I can hear my own thoughts here. I can write and read and sleep and not go anywhere or see anyone if I choose not to. Once in a while I take a walk to the local lake, rarely encountering another person. The ideal setting for being quiet.

I'm also participating in a pre-recorded online yoga and meditation class, which helps lead me toward stillness. I've gotten out of the habit of sitting still, and this next period of time will be centering for me. Maybe I'll get some more writing done. Maybe I'll crochet, which is something I find meditative and soothing. Maybe I'll just watch Korean dramas on Netflix. There's no self-judgment this week, that's the agreement I've made with myself.

We foresee someday opening up the church to others who are also seeking retreat and silence. Running meditation sessions and other workshops, to share a little of the peace and stillness and healing that I hope this place will come to embody.

Meanwhile, I'll have to make sure hubby has stocked the freezer with ice cream before he goes, just in case that ends up being the theme... Just to keep all bases covered, you know.