from California!
Mandarins -- seedless, juicy, and sweet.
Even the labels stuck to their skin are cute. One says, Cuties: Seedless! Another says: Root for the Cute!
I'm rooting, all right, cutie juice running down my chin.I pop a wedge in and wonder, What's the difference between a Mandarin and a Clementine? None as far as size and taste are concerned. At least none according to my palate.
Happily, I can look them up, so I do.
What I discover confirms what I taste: there are two varities -- Clementine mandarins and Murcott mandarins.One of the websites says:
Cuties® are great because… - Seedless
- Excellent quality
- Easy to peel (zipper skin)
- Super Sweet
- Excellent source of Vitamin C
- Naturally fat, cholesterol, sodium and trans fat free. Check out our nutrition label.
- Snack-sized and portable
Another tells me, happily, that there are 143 days remaining in the Cutie season.Hopeless Cutie fan: that's me!
Now if I can just figure out how to word-process and zip the skin at the same time . . . .
I never knew my grandfather, the man for whom I named, and I barely knew my cousin Carl as an adult. The two now meld together in an unexpected gift from Carl's sister, my cousin Donald.
The silver cigarette case says, "First Annual Jefferson County Golf Championship, Birmingham Country Club, Sept 1925, Runner Up 1st Flight, Robley C. Munger."
With all the scratch marks of use for almost 85 years, the case links me to blood-kin and over-the-sheets-family and to Donald, whose thoughtfulness in giving me something Carl enjoyed makes me love her anew.
Several years ago, I read a poem with one memorable image -- fall trees blazing like matchsticks, flaming upwards rather than down.I have no idea where I read the poem or who wrote it or what its title is. I have only this bit of memory.But the image lives: I see flaming trees in fall and winter and feel the poem in my bones. How could I not when, making tea, I glimpse a poem blazing beyond the kitchen window?
A short visit with a childhood friend, like snow on Saturday, offers a bracing change of weather.For years, Betsy baked Christmas cookies, which she secretly delivered to friends' houses in round Christmas tins: stars, trees, bells -- all familiar shapes -- generously sprinkled with nonpareils, baked to a sugary snap better than any other's cookies. Even after we all left homes for other places, she always gifted my father with a tin, squirreled away inside the basement door on his workbench or at the foot of the steps. He loved those cookies.So when I opened her present last night, it was with surprise. "This is like my father's horse-shoe-nail art," I exclaimed. She said, "It is!" The earrings, little splats of brass, daubs of metal with clips no woman would wear, and the decorative cross welded and buffed in that same basement where cookies waited each Christmas -- both make beautiful gifts. 
Like her visit and our conversation, they take me back to family connections, a kind of permanency now of mind rather than matter.What lovely gifts, all the way round.
Beth, a colleague and friend, visited for the annual Studio Tour today.
She arrived with an eco-sack of goodies -- a book on digital art, a crate of canned tomatoes, a bag of coffee, a pack of peppermint sticks, a packet of hot chocolate, an article about bookbinding, and a fabric card.
It sits now to my left, under the tensor light, reminding me of why I blog.Thank you, Beth, for the reminder, and the gifts.
Snow outside. Heat flickers up the gallery blocks, a warm wave lapping edges of shadow.
from California!
