double digits

This is my baby.
He will always be my baby.
In this picture he is just turning six.
Look at that face.

Today he turned 10.
He's a pleasure and a joy.
He has a beautiful heart.
He's still my baby.
Look at that face.

Who do I talk to around here about slowing down that damn clock?

at the farm

This photo is titled 'Daddy, Della, and the Tantrum'. I love this picture. It speaks to me on several levels.

It says, "Although I am only two and a half, I will race down this hill at top speed on a tricycle that I barely fit on, and I will aim for the lake, all while wearing a party dress!"

It says, "Mom and Dad will let me try that stunt, while lounging on the deck and having a beer."

It says, "Daddy is always there to rescue me when I crash and burn."

It says "Tantrums are not on our list of things to embrace and discuss'.

It says "Daddy will deal with this situation, no problem."

It says "Daddy has nice forearms."

It's true what they say about pictures and a thousand words.

money honey

Our local honey comes from a place called Honeyville. It is a bit of a roadside attraction and the kids are always wanting to go. We eat a lot of honey. Matt puts it in his coffee and I use it in my bread, (holy toledo...do you know how good it feels to write that?!) We can get it at the grocery store, but it was a beautiful day and we were all up for a drive in the country, so we headed out to Honeyville. The biggest attraction of the place is that the kids can watch the bees come and go from the hive via a clear plastic tube that exits out the wall. The hive sits in the middle of the store and has steps for the kids to stand on and stare at at it. It is encased in glass...clearly. The queen bee lives in the hive and is marked with a very small dot of red fingernail polish. The goal is to find the queen bee. This doesn't happen often. She's not easy to see. Almost impossible, in fact.

We walked in and there was an older couple standing before the hive. They had been there for a long time. The husband was hell bent on finding the queen and the wife wanted to get back to the R.V. The man looked at my three kids and made a wager.

"I've got five dollars for the person who finds that queen bee" he said.

I knew exactly where that five dollars was going to end up.

I know my children.

They all scampered up to the hive and started looking. It's 2-sided, so there were two angles to peruse from. There was some pushing and shoving involved. But after a few minutes, two of my children quit. They moved over to the honey stick and candy aisle.

About five more minutes passed and my one very persistent child was still there. Craning and looking, not about to walk away until the queen bee was located. The R.V.er's had purchased their goods and were lingering near the door. They were ready to go.

The wife was a mother, too.

"That child is going to find that bee and you made a promise." she said to her husband.

We made small talk. I was stalling for my sweet baby. I found out that they were from Tucson, but were going up to northern Colorado to visit their grandchildren. They were going to spend the summer being camp hosts at Horse Tooth Reservoir. (Something I want to do one day and a place I was hoping to visit this summer, ironically) They were very nice people and....

"I FOUND IT" the shout rang out!

Everyone in the store rushed over to see. And there she was. A tiny speck of red marking her in the maze of activity.

The man pulled out a beautiful silver and turquoise money clip with a huge wad of money in it and peeled off a five.

"What's your name, son?" he asked

"Lewis" he said, in a barely audible voice and looking at the ground.

You can be soft spoken when you're that damn diligent.

I love my Lewis.

line dry

This is a simple poll. Do you hang your laundry out on a line to dry or do you dry it in the dryer? I'm just curious. Please post your response in the comments section.

mother

This is my mom. Hi Mom. That's Max with the goofy grin and cousin Reid looking darling. Last summer Mom took us all to Williamsburg, VA for a lovely week of soaking up the rich heritage of our country. It's an amazing place and the boys had a great time, but I know my mom, and there was an ulterior motive at work. She was still, 41 odd years later, hard at work, mothering her two daughters. She was reminding us of the things she has spent a lifetime teaching us, of the things that we will spend a lifetime teaching our own children.

OK. That was supposed to be just the caption for the picture and I got carried away. It's no small thing writing about your mother. Let's begin.

I like mothering. I love mothering. Being a mother will be my highest calling.

I believe that this is true for me because of one simple thing.

I have a wonderful mother.

(and father, too, of course. But hey, it's mother's day) I am MOST THANKFUL to be able to say that I had a wonderful childhood. It was full and rich and my memories are pristine. Until you are grown and doing it yourself, it's hard to know what went into it. You reap the benefits, but you don't fully KNOW how hard your mom worked and how jammed pack her days and nights must have been. Thanks mom. Good mothering is optional. You can contract it out, you can check out, you can let your personal demons screw it up pretty good, you can be emotionally bankrupt, you can let your kids fend for themselves.
I wouldn't know about any of these options. My mom TOOK CARE OF BUSINESS!

Here are, but a few of the things that I will be forever grateful for and that will help form the adults that my own children will one day become . (cool how that works, isn't it?!)

• I have a DEEP appreciation for language, literature, poetry, the written word, grammar, and the importance of being able to express oneself clearly and creatively. (will you proofread this for me,mom?) The other day I sent a letter home with the weekly newsletter at Max and Lew's school about a fundraising project. Max sat in the car and read it as we went home. He looked at me and said, "I can tell that you wrote this, it's more flowery and feeling than most stuff people write." Score! Thanks mom!

• I never leave the house without a belt on. What was with the belt obsession, mom?
• I love art and all things creative. Thank you for dragging me to all those T.E.F. concerts, to plays, the ballet, Broadway, art lessons, piano, for teaching me to sew, for being an artist yourself.
• Thank you for your love of the garden. For identifying plants by name. For making special nooks and crannies in the yard. For gathering flowers and greenery from yards and ditches and turning them into beautiful arrangements for others all over town. This is now a part of me and you have a grandson who can identify most any plant by name. Again, funny how that works.
• Thank you for always having 'the family table'. I always assumed that all families did this. Not so. I do, and I think that it makes a difference at a core level.
• Thank you for calling the TV the 'idiot box' all my life. My children will one day thank you, the poor TV-less things.
• Thank you for quoting great men. "Discretion is the better part of valor." God knows, don't we wish more people had learned that one! (Dad, I got the "God Knows" from you, actually, and as I think about it, I've never really heard it anywhere else....) And how about this, Mom. I thought that YOU came up with the saying 'To whom much is given, much is required" up until my highschool graduation. Thank you for your devotion to serving others, and the lesson therein.
• I really like this one and you might not realize that I picked this up from you. "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" Thank you for always being bold and capable and strong and assertive. And that brings me to....
• Your 'can-do' attitude. You have always been positive and joyful and confidant. Because of you, I have always believed that I am capable of most anything.
  
• Thank you for dragging me to church every Sunday of my life. You and Dad set the bar as high as it gets in the moral standards category, and then you lived up to it every single day. This one thing has probably shaped me more than anything as an adult. I stand on solid ground because of you. Thank you.

There is so much more. I've hit the high notes for the world wide web to see, and I could go on and on, but I think you get the gist of things. I am grateful TO you and thankful FOR you.

Happy Mother's Day.

Love,
Ivey

attitude

I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.

E. B. White

photo: Brother Ben leaping into sky water....northern California 2008

drum roll please

(for this post to make sense please read previous post)



I did it. I baked a near perfect loaf of whole wheat spelt bread. When the timer went off signaling it done, I LEAPED from the sofa and nearly turned an ankle skidding into the kitchen. I pulled my grandmother's dutch oven out of the oven with my two favorite hot mats and set it on the counter. I lifted the lid and there it sat. Beautiful. Perfectly round with a golden brown crust. I had, as usual, modified the recipe to suit myself and my one concern was that it was going to stick to the pan because I had failed to line it with parchment paper. It popped right out. It tasted as good as it looked. Oh my goodness.

Things are a changin' at the Patton house.

We need the outfits. Size 4 and 7.

Thankfully, I've had the pottery for years. Get yours here.

And it DOES feel more wholesome and definately tastes better.

Why did it take me 20 something years to bake this loaf of bread?

Plain and Simple, because of that damn book. One hundred and fifty seven pages of detailed mumbo jumbo on baking a damn loaf of bread. It says things like this....

"Preheating the bowl allows the baby bread dough to feel at home and warmly held."

I have little tolerance for that type of language.

The book is up for grabs to the first person who says that they want it in the comment section. FREE. Please!

My bread was so simple. No flowery language, no ambient temperature taking, no 'warm holding'. My friend Tracy gave it to me and she got it from our friend Carla who used to own the Absolut Bakery. It takes about 1o minutes plus rising and is said to be 'no fail'.

In a bowl mix 2T yeast with 2T honey and 1t salt. Add 2 cups water, stir and let yeast activate...about 10 min. Add 5 cups flour of choice and mix together. Knead on floured surface then put back in bowl and let rise for several hours. punch down pretty good and let rise again for an hour or so and bake in a dutch oven that has been preheated. 450 for 30 minutes. And voila! That's it!

Thank you Carla! Thank you Tracy!

therapy?

Long ago, before marriage and children, maybe just out of college, I'm not sure, I bought this book. As you can see, it's the bible for bread baking. The highest authority on the subject. It's not bright yellow as the picture above portrays. It's a ruddy, earthy tone of mustard. It reeks of hippie and I feel very earnest just looking at it. If you know me well, you know that travel and movement has been a big part of my life. I like to purge and travel light. I don't hang onto superfluous things. Somehow or another this book has remained in my cookbook collection despite the fact that I have never, not once, used it. Why do I still have it then? Why didn't I let it go at the yard sale in Athens or Port Townsend or Las Vegas or Jackson Hole or Bainbridge Island or Ann Arbor or Chicago or Mancos or Thomasville or....

Let me tell you.

Somewhere along the way, not sure where (or why) I put 'bread baking' on my list of IMPORTANT LIFE PRACTICES. Do you have that same list? You should. It makes an average, normal life a little more neurotic and exciting. I envisioned a certain completeness, a wholeness, if you will, to accompany my bread baking. If I were baking bread for my children we would be warmer, sturdier, our cheeks ruddier. With a hearty slice of warm bread on a pottery plate, slathered in fresh butter from a local dairy my children would be more apt to recite simple, but endearing poetry about birds in their woven nests or regale each other with tales anchored in ancient celtic lore. As we ate our crusty loaves at our hand hewn table we would be dressed simply but with classic flair. Lewis would wear this.
I would have to trim his mullet.

Della would wear this and we would all die of cuteness.

Max could wear anything because he has always looked like we just picked him up from a day of croquet on an expansive green lawn by a stone house on the craggy and windswept coast of Scotland.

See what I mean.

So has bread change our life, you ask? (and thanks for asking)

I wouldn't know.
I've never baked any.
Not a single rustic loaf.
Nada.
Nil.
Zilch.
28 (long) years of carrying the dream and the subsequent guilt associated with NOT BAKING BREAD....

But hold onto your hats. Because as I type. At this very moment. In southwest Colorado.
Downstairs in MY kitchen. Something is rising. It has a dough-like quality and a yeasty aroma.

Will you stay tuned for the final results?

Please do. I have so much vested in this.

Read the stunning conclusion here!