City Gardens

Spring and Summer

















The raised bed on the left is now brimming with peas, above.

There are more than 50 community gardens in New Haven, plots here and there where caring neighbors grow food for community kitchens. The generosity of spirit shown by these gardeners should be celebrated. They are a group dedicated to green living, to feeding folks, and to creating on our planet a hope and a determination that we will survive and prosper. There is no better answer to oppression and foolishness in high places than simply to flourish and live good lives such as we dream possible when we are children. This blog is dedicated to the Seventh Generation.

My book Swamp Walking Woman shows a community who must confront bossy "gators" and rally to take back the land on which to garden and prosper. Watch here for launch date.

In Times Like These

The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico makes me feel I need to be stronger, to have more answers, especially about how to stop greed and money from making wrong decisions about our planet. There are people in positions of power who are crazy enough to harm this planet beyond repair.

My book Swamp Walking Woman is about a woman who faces those monsters and inspires a world of troubled people to take a stand.

We used to sing a song in Sunday School that went like this, "In times like these you need an anchor." Of course, the anchor was meant to be faith, and we know faith can do miracles such as bring better health. Self confidence is a kind of faith, faith in oneself and one's own ability to do hard things.

Swamp Walking Woman launch date to be announced soon. Keep an eye on this blog.

Book Launch

Dear Fans,

For those of you who have been waiting for news of Swamp Walking Woman, this fun fairy tale is ready to go!

I want to make a game of it. I want to be Best Selling Author on Amazon for one hour.

In a few days I will set a launch date and hour. I'll let you know so you can get your copies then or as close to the hour as possible. I'll be emailing, making videos, and sending out news releases. Stay tuned! Trish

A Grandmother's Quick Trip

When my daughter-in-law signed up for Skype she urged me to join, too. We looked forward to an on-line visit. Life went on for a time, all of us busy people. But tonight while I was working at the computer she called me on Skype. I answered. Soon we were on exchange video, she and my grandson looking at me while I could see them clearly. He was eating cheese, he told me. Later, I offered him an imaginary cookie and he accepted. Yum!

And there I was right in their home looking at my grandson--and he could see me! I took from the wall a ceramic print of his Papa's hand, made in kindergarten, and held it up to the screen. He placed his hand over it.

My daughter-in-law and I showed each other around our new homes, having both moved lately. What a treat to have her walk me through her house, the good spaces in and out. What fun to show her my apartment. I feel like I just got home from there! Quick trip.

Measures of a Life Well-Lived

I invite you to celebrate an amazing life. My dad (age 96) is in the hospital ICU and on the mend. He had some gallstones melted down and is beginning to drink broth (asking for a hot dog!). A couple of days ago he was cold. The nurses wrapped him in a blanket and took care to tuck his feet in. He said, "You better get a rope and tie 'em so they won't get away!" The nurses compete to take care of him, he's such a pleasure. My brother goes up every day to sit with him and my sister took Mom up yesterday. I am grateful for such a brother and sister. I am grateful for such wonderful parents. I thought after the Red Sox won a couple of World Series Dad would decide to shove off, but he keeps finding reasons to stay around!

Those who know Dad have seen him re-invent himself several times in this life. When he was a young man he raised his first flock of roosters to sell on the market and paid off the farm's back taxes, to my ailing grandfather's huge delight. When the poultry business got tough, Dad installed automatic feeders and a grain mill, bought all the ingredients from the mid-west, and hired a trucker to bring soy, wheat, etc. from the train station in Lisbon Falls to the dumping pit on the farm. At that point he was one of only four independent poultry farmers in Maine, and he stayed in business even in the bad years. He served on and sometimes chaired the state Poultryman's Association.

While he was farming he sometimes worked at the gypsum mill to supplement the family income. He also substituted as a rural mail carrier. He was elected to the Board of Selectmen and later served as Chair. When he tired of calculating carloads of ingredients for chicken mash, he went to school and became a tax assessor/building inspector for the town of Gray where he worked until the age of 70. As we know, taxes can be touchy. People would come in hot about their assessments. Dad would say, "Come into my office. I'll show you how I got those figures." People knew he was fair and they knew he would never get riled. He was beloved at the town offices.

My brother, meanwhile, planted and tended a large garden with Dad’s help and lots of canning and freezing from Mom. When Dad retired he devoted himself to tending his pine trees and raising vegetables and berries. I think a lot of the longevity of my parents can be explained by the homegrown vegetables they ate summer and winter all their lives. I have to work very hard finding "real food" and I pay a lot to eat as well as they eat. Further, it's really true that behind this successful man is a strong and loving wife. Dad has always said that my mother's companionship meant a lot to him. Please celebrate with me this amazing life.

Strength for Girls and Women

I owe much to my writing teachers. Pat Carr is a teacher who encourages girls and women to write, to write honestly, and to find their strength through writing. Susan Baugh guides women writers to use the healing wisdom in the patterns honored by ancient fairy tales. Both teachers help women to face today's problems with strength and perseverance.

Swamp Walking Woman is a serious story and a playful story written to give strength and insight to any who feel "swamped" or overwhelmed with today's environmental and relationship issues. And the sorry state of the environment is about relationships. One of my sons, coming home from a band practice in which the musicians had argued about the songs and about who had the say, commented, "You think it's about a band, but it's always, always about relationships."

Life today is about finding method and strength to handle the bullies who harm our green planet, our only home.

Swamp Walking Woman will be published before the end of February. Watch for a date.

The Darning Needles

What did Swamp Walking Woman feed the Darning Needles?

She whistled sharply and called out, “Darn it!” Instantly there appeared a cloud of the Darning Needles who had befriended her many months before. In a fever of activity they set to work sewing the sides of the water against the shores. While they worked the woman stood with one foot planted on the shore of each island, holding each part in its place. Soon the tapestry was finished. She bowed. With her own needle and thread she sewed in a stretch of swamp flowers and grasses that were home to the insects Darning Needles like best. --from Swamp Walking Woman, publication date January 2010.

Darning is an activity of the past. Not that my socks last very well these days, but I don't darn thread back and forth over the holes in the heels as I used to when I was a child. I remember the wooden "egg" on a stick, how it was placed inside the sock and used to hold the form of the toe or heel. If the hole was very large, you had to catch the darning thread in the good cloth and weave back and forth, up and down across the hole, creating a patch of new cloth. The whole activity of darning socks makes sense when you consider that often the socks themselves were home knit and not to be thrown out lightly.

The dragon flies my mother called Darning Needles were small with thin blue and black needle-shaped bodies. They didn't sting or pester us in any way so we came to enjoy watching them skim over the water or buzz among the cattails.