In Love With Bamboo!

I’m wearing the best pair of bamboo socks as I write this, which I bought this week at Target. Last night I slept on bamboo-cotton pillowcases (with a 300 thread count; they are soft as a cloud!) And I’m knitting the prettiest scarf of bamboo yarn coupled with a fun pompom acrylic (both super inexpensive at Joanne’s).

I am all about bamboo these days. We have lots of it growing in the yard where it makes an effective—and very beautiful—screen between our pond and our neighbor’s yard, and provides lots of coverage for wildlife.

The bamboo plant is beautiful, ancient, sustainable and functional. It grows quickly and is very strong, and therefore, is a good renewable choice for wood. It has antimicrobial properties, which means it can be grown easily without pesticides, and presumably produces a fiber that has antibacterial properties. In one study, wearing bamboo socks eliminated the symptoms of athlete’s foot in subjects in just a few days! Unlike wool, bamboo is also hypoallergenic.

I like that bamboo has a solid place in history and culture. The Chinese have used it for at least 7,000 years. Over the past 10 centuries or so, it has been used for paper, shoes, mats, rafts, bowls, furniture, scaffolding, medicine, and, of course, food.

My love affair with bamboo really started, though, when I started to knit. I won’t use wool (it’s itchy, and more importantly, its production is cruel to animals) so I am always on the lookout for good vegan alternatives. Cotton and all the acrylics are fine, but it is so much more fun to knit with unusual plant fibers. I’ve found a few nice soy yarns, but the bamboo choices are more widespread and much softer and very attractive. They are especially nice for baby blankets.

Here are a couple of my favorite examples of bamboo!

My bamboo pompom scarf (on bamboo needles, of course):



Our baby cat--his name is Bamboo!

Euthanizing Paco, Our Tabby Cat

We euthanized Paco last night—our adorable tabby cat whose curly tail always kept him slightly off-kilter and made him look like he was running sideways.

He came to us 8 years ago as a stray, moving into the household gradually. Among our most sociable of cats, Paco had a host of friends. He would run off the porch to greet people as they came down the street—people who were strangers to us but who seemed to know Paco.

Paco wasn’t more than 10 years old when he died, and probably not even that. He was the victim of a fast-growing oral cancer that destroyed the sight in one of his eyes in just a matter of weeks. We asked the vet to come last weekend to euthanize him, but then, after she arrived, we decided to wait. Yesterday, I felt that Paco was ready.

But was he? How can I ever know? I am sure Paco was in pain and discomfort. He was no longer his perky self. Yet he purred when I sat with him. He still enjoyed human contact.

I have been sick to my stomach every time I have euthanized one of my cats. The responsibility of ending an animal’s life is incredibly awesome and overwhelming. I can’t know the right thing to do because I don’t have all the facts. Paco couldn’t tell me how he felt and what he wanted. But I made the choice on his behalf with my heart—out of love and compassion. That’s all I could do.

Making Peace with Deer

I live in a wonderful little town that is sort at the end of a road to nowhere. It's filled with green spaces, walking paths, and lovely gardens. But our town is growing rapidly and its edges are gradually nudging their way into the surrounding open spaces.

There is a field overgrown with holly trees a few blocks from our house and many of the local deer bed down there at night. Our yard has been part of a corridor they travel daily, especially in the spring with their young, as they make their way across this edge of town looking for food. Several years ago the neighbor behind us put up a fence between our properties. They said they were "really suffering" from the deer traipsing through their garden.

Across the street from us is a very old house that had a lot filled with ancient gnarled apple trees. For decades, deer nestled into the grass beneath the trees to give birth to their fawns. When the lot was sold, the apple trees came down and a big tall fence went up to keep the deer out.

We love our gardens here, and it is true that the deer can be destructive. But it is easy to make peace with them. We have a fence around the veggie patch to keep them out but they are otherwise welcome in our yard. We don’t plant tulip bulbs because the deer will eat them. But we have hundreds of happy daffodils that they leave alone. The deer nibbled at our apricot tree for years but it managed to thrive just the same. Now it is tall enough that they can no longer reach it and we are harvesting apricots. (Once in a while I strip some leaves from the tree for them because this seems to be a special treat.)

We love seeing these gentle creatures ambling through our yard or settling in for a nap beneath a tree. It takes a little bit of compromise to live with wildlife, but we wouldn’t trade their visits for the best-protected garden in the world!

Finding Homes for Cats With Special Needs

One of the nicest things that happened to me this week is that I worked with a group of the best people in the world to help Peg and Buzz find their forever home. This story had a happy ending because of the combined efforts of a generous veterinarian, our group of faithful shelter volunteers, and a local newspaper.

Tabby kitty Peg had been left to fend for herself on the streets where she nearly died from starvation and a dangerously infected leg. Poor Peg had been declawed and had probably been unable to fight off a predator. Our veterinarian Dr Johnson saved the cat's life by amputating her leg.

Within weeks, Peg was on the mend and bouncing around the clinic on three legs. One day she cheerfully ran up to another clinic resident, a midnight black former tom cat named Buzz. Buzz had recently lost his home when he developed a urinary tract infection and his family couldn't care for him. The clinic staff ran to separate them because they knew Buzz didn't like other cats—and he was much bigger than Peg.

But Buzz acted like he had known Peg forever and the two instantly became best friends. They became inseparable, grooming each other and curling up together like a big pretzel.

Dr. Johnson started to think that it would be especially nice if they could stay together forever—but it's not easy to find homes for a three-legged cat and a cat who needs a special diet. So she contacted the group of volunteers at our local shelter and we all put our heads together. We decided to get proactive. I was assigned to write a press release about Peg and Buzz, and our local pet photographer, Deja Webster, took their photo.

Even in a small town like this, there is lots of competition for newspaper space. But our timing was perfect; it was Valentine's week and this story had hearts and love all over it! The Jefferson County Leader published our article and within hours, kind-hearted souls were calling about Peg and Buzz. Potential adopters were carefully screened to make sure they were worthy of our special kitties and today, Peg and Buzz are in a wonderful home—together.

(Photo credit: Deja Webster)

Working With Animals

My home office--and why I never get anything done.

Cookies, Christmas & Betty Crocker: Remembering My Mom

Today is the fifth anniversary of the day my mom died. Those years have passed in a flash and there are times when the loss still feels raw and fresh. At Christmas time, especially, I feel my mother's absence. There are certain things that bring her memory especially close and create that poignant feeling of bittersweet. Cooking from her Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook is one of those things.

The cookbook, which doesn't have a copyright date but was published sometime in the 1940s, is just about in shreds. It is a loose leaf notebook, with many additional recipes that my mom pasted in here and there. When I open it to the Russian Teacake recipe on page 206 I see her penciled note that these cookies are "Aunt Sue's favorite." I remember making these at Christmas time for Aunt Sue—a dear family friend—when I was a child. After my mother died, I started to make them again, carefully packing them in a holiday tin and shipping them off to Aunt Sue's condominium in Florida. This renewed tradition has become one of my favorite parts of Christmas.

I made a batch last night, using my mom's little glass nut chopper to chop the walnuts. I mixed the dough in the lovely Hall Royal Rose bowl that she grabbed for me at a church rummage sale many years ago. (My mother told me that when she spied the set of three matching bowls, she reached in front of the crowd to claim them saying "These are for my daughter.")

I never look at these things—the bowls, the nut chopper, the dear frail Betty Crocker cookbook—without thinking of my mom. Using them to make a batch of cookies for one of her dearest friends is a wonderful way to honor her memory—and to reclaim a little piece of Christmas past.

Russian Tea Cakes

1 cup vegan margarine, softened
1/2 cup sifted confectioner's sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups sifted white flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cups finely chopped nuts
More confectioner's sugar for rolling

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cream together the margarine, confectioner's sugar and vanilla. Stir the salt into the flour and blend into the margarine mixture. (I find that it helps to use a pastry blender.) Mix in the walnuts.

Roll into balls about the size of walnuts and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. (I line it with parchment paper since these tend to burn easily.) Bake 10 to 12 minutes until set but not browned (although they will be a little bit brown on the bottom). While still warm, roll in confectioner's sugar. Cool. Roll in the sugar again.

Pack them up carefully, and mail to someone you love.

Confessions of a Vintage Textile Collector (or How I Came to Own 100 Tablecloths).

I'm not especially materialistic or extravagant. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing designer fashions (unless I find them at Goodwill) or driving a fancy car or eating at trendy restaurants. Whatever acquisitive genes I might have, they seem to be programmed to desire old-fashioned, imperfect, history-steeped things.

It all started when I moved into a cute cottage that was built in 1936. It's not a luxurious house and not even especially convenient (the bathrooms are too small, the sinks scratched and rusty, and the staircase is perilously narrow and steep). But there are wonderful coved ceilings, arches, nooks, crannies and cubbyholes. It's a house that wraps itself around you and lets you know you are home.

Such a house needed a few circa-1930s-40s tablecloths I figured. So I ventured onto ebay and plugged in the keywords "vintage tablecloth." Wow! There were many of them, one prettier than the next. I didn't know where to begin.

So I emailed my delightful friend Deb who knows about all things old, and she, it turned out, had been collecting vintage tablecloths for years. She gave me some pointers and I dug in and started bidding.

It didn't take me long to find my dream tablecloth. Printed with red, pink and teal geraniums, it was adorable and absolutely perfect for my kitchen. As a seasoned collector, I now know that this particular cloth was made by Springmaid and it appeared in the 1947 Sears catalog. I also know that, as sweet as this cloth is, on the tablecloth collecting circuit it is common as dirt. But of course, I didn't realize that at the time. I had to have it.

I bid lavishly and won. And then I waited to receive an invoice or email or some piece of information about what I was supposed to do next. As an ebay newbie, I needed some guidance from my seller. I started to panic as days went by without any word from her.

Just as I was giving up hope, I was stunned and delighted to stumble across the exact same tablecloth, listed by a completely different ebay seller. This should have been my first clue that this was a less-than-rare tablecloth. To me, it was simply a miracle. I bid again and won. The nice seller contacted me, and she told me that she happened to have two of these tablecloths and was sending both to me. In the meantime, seller number one resurfaced and, by the end of the week, I owned three vintage tablecloths—and they were all exactly the same.

It was an auspicious beginning. I started out with a respectable little stack of textiles on a kitchen shelf; now they are everywhere.

And why not? Vintage tablecloths are recycled goods, and they are very affordable pieces of art and history. I love the fabulously creative designs, the gorgeous colors, and the friendly charm of these beautiful textiles. I don't hoard and am not a packrat. My tablecloths are all out and about, stacked on shelves, draped over the backs of chairs or—a novel idea—spread atop tables.

Much of what is in my house is just passing through—spending a little time basking in the glow of my admiration before being sold through my antique booth at the mall or on ebay. A little piece of cozy history, enjoyed, admired, and then passed on.