Isabella Bird Miscellany

says it all - the grotto It sticks to your clothes and shows up splendidly on black, it gets caught on the screen in the dryer and socks elaborately decorate your toes with the stuff.  Yep, lint:  the fuzzy, ravelings of fabric that cling to everything; like Velcro, only different. Lint actually has a purpose.  By scraping it from linen it can be made into a soft, fleecy fabric.  Cotton staple – lint fibers – are spun into yarn.  While all of this is riveting, especially while staring at the lint in your belly-button, there’s more to Lent than its sound doppelganger. lint: fluffy, minute shreds of yarn lent: a season of preparation These two tiny words sound similar in our vernacular, but have massively different implications in our lives.  We clean-up lint and toss it in the trash.  Lent, however is a prepping time for us to realize we’re not great at cleaning up our own stuff. Lent was originally a season between winter and...

i do adore sweetly scented unpredictable yellow roses Ah, crap!  Valentine’s Day is Saturday - gotta make the reservations, grab the expected red roses, obligatory frilly box of cheap chocolates…dress-up, suck-it-up, put on the happy smile.  Sounds more like work or a sentence than a communication of feeling. Why do we think we have to perform to the beat set by media, the norm, the predictable?  I, personally find that a phrase of soppiness that is made exclusively for me, is sweeter.  The tagline, “it’s the thought that counts,” is spot-on. Let me give you a dirty example from a few remembrances back.  I enjoy being outside and wanted to create a new sitting garden.  It would be surrounded by heady lavender with a small gazing pool in the middle – and of course a bench to sit and well, gaze at whatever.  This was all in my mind’s eye, because the area was just straggly grass.  There were no pieces of muted slate marking a path, no s...

coffee cupping at Thump I have a dilemma of almost epic proportions.  Having moved to a new town means finding a new coffee joint to frequent.  My go-to spot in the Portland area was Wind Horse in Milwaukie.  They served up a honey latte that was crazy awesome – you know just the right amount of creamy foam and honey all swirled with robust coffee. Local roasters like Stumptown, Blue Kangaroo and St. Johns each have a different persona, much like establishments that serve their electrifying brew.   Coffee houses have their own vibe and beat, so it’s hugely crucial to find the perfect sweet spot.  I must admit, in my search I might have been slightly over-caffeinated recently, but somehow, that hasn’t translated into more productivity.  Wondering why on that one… So, here’s what I look for in a good coffee hang-out:  Of paramount importance is that they serve really good coffee; none of that freeze-dried, stuffed-in-a-can and drug out ...

green in concrete For the last lot-of-years I’ve lived in urban areas.  I’ve become a city girl with hints of a flower child mixed with hipster nuances…translated I like to wear skinny jeans.  This is the total opposite of how I grew up, which was on a farm.  My paternal grandparents grew, raised, caught and hunted for everything they ate – radical organic, free-range stuff.  On my Mom’s side of the fam tree, there were green grocers and orchard growers.  Heck, I was in 4-H raising feeder calves and a small flock of wooly sheep.  Gardens, canning, freezing and preserving everything was the ordinary. I carried on the gardening-preserving, saving the spoils piece, until I found myself in fresh veggie-at-a-farmer’s-market heaven!  The foreign city I found myself in had a temperate climate where fruit and vegetables could be grown year ‘round, and … it was sold at a giant open air market every week.  Yippee!  I no longer needed to ...

an imbroglio to untangle To say the least, this last year has been a crap shoot.  Massively cool things have happened, but there’s also been the stuff that takes you out at the knees and kicks you while you’re lying in the dirt crying like a baby.  Am I looking for sympathy, trying to make you feel bad?  Nope, think polar opposites.  This past year was a life of “Re.” Re, the little prefix we attach to words has a grand meaning:  do again and then again, or to do something you’ve already done.  Awesome, huh? In order to have a life of re, you first need to have some “de” (removal, out of or opposite.)  Before this starts to sound like a clever Dr. Seuss story, let me explain.  Sometimes we need to take things apart, deconstruct and edit. Keep in mind, deconstruction differs from demolishment.   The first salvages, carefully saves and reuses.  It’s time and labor intensive, but you end up with a sweet stack of bits a...

frozen drip It’s a mystery, the drip, drip, drip, gush from our bathroom shower. Here’s the scoop:  I went to clean the downstairs bathroom about a month and a half ago – not an every week happening.  I’m not a cleaning slacker, far be it, I’m actually a bit of a neat-nik bordering on germ-a-phobia.  Truth is that bathroom is only used by overnight guests; now, back to the leak and bathroom cleaning chronicle. Company had come and gone.  It was time to go down to clean so things would be spic and span for the next visitors.  Turning the light on over the vanity, I was met by a dinner-plate-sized bubble in the ceiling, so not a good thing.  The gotta-figure-this-out in me took over.  Where was the leak coming from?  Duh, upstairs, but was it the tub, the shower or the other shower.  So many choices, not many answers, especially because water travels.  It’s like a no rhyme or reason maze. After inspecting, thinking, chec...

Thanksgiving is a verb.  Mind you, most dictionaries list it as a noun – you know the standard person, place or thing concept, and it is.  But, while Thanksgiving is a noun, it is also an active expression of something that should be happening in our ordinary routines. Heaps of words are busy little multi-taskers, describing a thing and explaining actions.  In reality, just looking around I spot quite a few.  There’s a roll of tape sitting on the kitchen counter.  Tape is a noun – it is sitting there ready to tape a package, which is a verb.  I have a bottle of olive oil from a place called the Olive Pit.  An olive pit is the seed – a thing, but to pit an olive is something to do.  You get the general idea. So, back to the holiday that is trending this week – Thanksgiving, is a time to come together.  We stuff ourselves just like the turkey arranged on the table and we take a few moments to share what we are grateful for. ...