Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I feel like I used to find more photos like this one for the Pictorama archive. I discovered this on eBay. Unfortunately it is quite faded, I have even assisted it a bit here. Still, this family with their mostly matching haircuts and each girl sporting a member of a kitten family was too good resist.
This photo postcard was never mailed and the clothes on the kids are sort of timeless, but I would guess maybe the 1920’s or 30’s. They are posed by the “side of the house” from what I can figure. I would say spring considering the shortness of the grass, the clothes and of course the kittens they hold.
My sister Loren in an undated photo I keep next to my desk at home. Judging from the car I would say from the early 1980’s.If I was in NJ I might find a photo of all of us. Will have to wait!
You can’t really see it easily but there is a great variety in kittens here. From left to right we have a tortie, a tabby, a sort of gray soft stripe and a gray tuxie. Not at all impossible that they are all from the same litter however.
These kids are clearly also of the same litter! Far from identical, however there is a strong family resemblance brought out further by their matching bowl style hair cuts. Each one wears it a bit differently though – bangs aside or straight, one where they are cropped short. The girl in the plaid dress is clearly the eldest but the exact order of the others is left to our musing.
A close look at their faces and the girls look more alike to each other than they do with the man who I have been assuming is dad. Family resemblance is a strange thing I always think. Sometimes I am sitting on the subway or walking down the street and a family passes and all I can think is that they could never deny all being related. This always comes to mind in my reading of early novels (someone denying a child is theirs) and this was satisfied as a plot point in a Rose Mulholland novel recently – the striking resemblance to her father could not be denied! More on that possibly as a tomorrow post.
A still young Cookie and Blackie bearing some resemblance here.
My family sort of mixed and matched with familial likeness – not looking alike, stronger resemblance to one parent when young and then another. My sister and I, she of the curly hair and I of the straight, never looked much alike however once someone who knew me from work walked up to my brother and announced we must be siblings. (We were at a rare moment, like these girls, when we were sporting approximately the same haircut.)
My brother may be surprised to hear me say it but, although he and I have always looked more strongly like my mother’s side of the family, I saw a recent photo where he looks very much like our father. (I think it is the beard Edward.) Kim has a rather extraordinary family likeness with his brothers and I gather his fraternal grandmother from whom he inherited his distinctive eyes. There is an additional family resemblance though also to both his mother and his father.
This is of course also true for cats and cat families. My mom used to quote from an old genetics text that this kind of cat and that kind of cat likely to produce this or this cat. I could never keep it straight.
There are days when you can tell that Cookie and Blackie hatched from the same mom and dad combo. Other times, Cookie being smaller, mightier and a tuxie to Blackie’s bigger all black handsomeness makes it appear as if there is no resemblance.
Beau (left) and Blackie meet for the first time.
The one litter of kittens I grew up with bore a remarkable resemblance to each other (variations on gray and tabby striped), but not to their mother (Winkie, a tortie) at all. And for that reason perhaps, she utterly disowned any knowledge of them after a point. I have commented on how Blackie and Beauregard (the all black male kitty of the Jersey Five) stared at each other, clearly in recognition of the fact that they looked alike. (A post about the New York cats meeting the New Jersey cats can be found here.)
It is too bad no one thought to include the mom cat in this photo – assuming she was a denizen of the same household. It would have rounded things out nicely. It is fun to speculate that the cats and the kids grew up over time side by side.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: As I wake up on this pretty fall morning, the folks over here at WordPress told me that some of you are hard at work reading away. It is fun to see and thank you all as always for your dedicated reading and attention. It’s nice to know that you are out there and I hope you are enjoying your wander around the Pictorama world. Welcome today to all readers both new and longstanding. It pleases me to think that there are folks who want to read about cats, toys and my minor exploits.
I have an interesting little addition for this post, a postcard from the big buy a few weeks back, of a cat having chewed through a hat. Seems like an odd image to make a postcard of – have to wonder if the artist had a real incident on his mind. The cat is rather pleasantly benign for a chapeau eating demon. He is of the, aren’t I cute so you can’t possibly kill me school I guess. Why would he chew through a hat though? Must have been so pleasantly stinky.
This card appears to have been produced in Eastern Europe – ambitious felines there I guess. It is an embossed image, a very old, worn man’s hat with this sweet faced, long haired kit having munched through it. This card was mailed from Fort Scott, Kansas at 11 AM, on March 21, 1908.
Back of the card. Is actually a bit easier to read in this photo than in person.
The pencil writing on the back is very faded and a bit illiterate. The best I can make out is, 3-20-1908avrr – all ok and a card from Pec. he did not say when he was coming back expect we wont come til Monday if you children are all well. love to all Mother. And it was addressed simply to: Carles J. Pierce, Appleton City Mo. Must have been a small town.
Ongoing readers know that my current gig at an animal hospital has set me contemplating things that pets ingest that they should not. (Foreign Object Friday anyone?) The favorite by far seems to be dogs eating ear buds (owner might even find out because they are gently pinging in the pooch), one of the worse is marijuana they pick up from discarded roaches on the street (very bad for animals, please dispose of thoughtfully), and while it is hard to choose most exotic might go to a corn cob which sort of startled me. Shoes, underwear and socks are not safe from your large pup, I’m telling you that right now.
Just for kicks and giggles – this photo from one of my very first posts. Someone named Dally Petit shown in true cat hat splendor.
However on the cat side, this image reminded me very much of a cat we had as a child, Zipper. I have told of his exploits as the swaggering sort of tabby cock-of-the-walk, feline ringleader in our old neighborhood.
I was quite small when for whatever reason one day Mom had to take Zips to the vet. Evidently she was short of a cat carrier and she enlisted me as well. (Later in life she always made sure she had more than enough to move all the cats if necessary, which it was during hurricane Sandy when she moved at least five.) On this occasion she placed Zipper in a rather picturesque antique straw picnic basket and somehow secured the top so he couldn’t bound out.
Zipper was not a cat easily cowed and he sent what we called war whoops and howls from the seat next to her in front (this was an old car and I believe the front seat was all one, not broken into separate seats like they are now), and I was plopped in the back, but of course watching this unfold. Well, Zipper was not to be contained and began systematically eating his way through the side of the basket. (In retrospect, whatever ailed him wasn’t that serious I guess.) It wasn’t long before he was thoroughly stuck, head out but unable to go back in. I can assure you he was a good deal more demonic looking than this puss. Mom, for her part, just kept driving.
I have no idea how we got him home, nor was I there when the vet must have cut him out and most likely asked mom what the heck she was thinking. I wish mom was still around to ask her about that part of the story. This card will always remind me of it however.
Sadly I cannot think of a single family photo that incorporates Zipper – he was a will o’ the wisp of a fellow, always on the move. Somehow he never quite got documented to my knowledge. I suspect it had to do with his aversion to being picked up. A true ally cat, he was very selective about who could touch him and how much. He lives now only in my memory and imagination.
A couple of rather wonderful items wandered in the door this week – a good week at the online auctions. This and that needs to be done before I can share them but some rather wonderful things coming up soon so stay tuned.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: We are (mostly) packed and at the ready to head to New Jersey this morning. It is still pitch black out as I write this, but here in New York we got our first snow flakes in a long time yesterday. I think the ground was too warm full there to be a frosting of it out there, but we’ll see what Monmouth County has, if any.
Although there is a certain feeling of routine to it, this is only the second year we are spending in New Jersey for the holidays. We are still finding our stride with it. While there are packages of gifts and essentials, I usually take the opportunity to move a few bulky items to the house there while we are packing up a car.
Christmas breakfast with Eileen Travell yesterday before leaving town. I gave her this pretty little blue and white bowl.
Rides With Cash is a car service I have used since I commuted frequently during my mom’s last illness. (I posted about it previously here.) Jeff, the proprietor, brings his unfailingly wonderful Aussie, Cash, with him and I get a dog cuddle in as well. Now that Cookie and Blackie share some of these rides they are less thrilled with Cash but the car is large enough for a generous separation of cats in carriers and dog!
Cash sitting in the front seat during our summer sojourn.
Although more frequent commutes from New Jersey in recent years has mentally shrunk the distance between the two locations, bringing the cats and going to stay is still definitely a maneuver which requires forethought and planning. Somehow the holidays got away from us this year and I feel a bit like we are going to land in a heap. Blackie’s Thanksgiving holiday illness set us back a bit schedule-wise and there will be a holiday card reveal tomorrow while we are still sending out the bulk of our mailed cards! (Apologies in advance to those of you who don’t like your surprise ruined.)
We had our annual Top Dog Gala at work last week. We honored the NYP’s K9 unit and the dogs we care for on the force.Centerpieces complete with usable leash were for sale at the end of the event.
Blackie is better, although he required yet another trip to the vet this week – puffy eye. We aren’t sure but maybe his sister socked him, or he got something in it which made him rub it a bit raw. He is somewhat demoralized by gooping three times a day and I’m sure this trip out of state will get on his last little cat nerve. (It is finally getting light and it has indeed snowed and there appears to be a half inch or so on the ground.)
For those of you who are new to the fold – five additional cats await our arrival in New Jersey. My mom left me her cats who continue to reside in the house there where they are cared for. Our visits mean a house full of seven cats. What was my mother thinking?
All staff holiday party. My colleagues had spent the day in the lobby playing Santa and Elf to visiting animals who could have their picture taken.
For all of this, going there for the holidays is very soothing for me . Like many folks, I feel the loss of family and friends most keenly at this time of year. Being in the area I grew up in and being around the people there mitigates it somewhat and blunts the blow of the sharp edges. I know it is asking a lot of Kim and the cats who would much rather stay in New York. However, going as a family and having everyone I love together in one place for a few weeks is special to me.
So, a brief entry today an unsuspecting Cookie and Blackie to be placed in their carriers shortly. More from the other side. Let the holidays commence!
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It’s a crisp fall weekend here in New York City. Tomorrow will, in part, be devoted to a Halloween Howl dog parade over at Carl Schurz park. I will stop by the animal hospital’s table and visit my colleagues handing out animal care info. Costumed cuties will likely abound so keep a weather eye out for pics on Instagram.
Meanwhile, today’s photo is one of those odd one off purchases for me. Saw it, liked it and followed my nose to purchasing it. I can imagine this being a much loved family photo of this proud family business owner of yore.
It came to me via the Midwest (dealer of all things vintage @missmollystlantiques), but there are no identifiers as to location. Emanelo Fine Cigars are boasted and Camels proudly in large letters below it. The sign that reads Pharmacy is decidedly less prominent, at least for the purposes of this photo.
Clearly the pharmacy was also where you went for your cigars and cigarettes and there is a sign for something called Penetro, which a quick bit of research tells me was a medicated rub. Sort of like Vicks I assume. (That from my childhood – does it still exist? I haven’t heard of anyone using it for years.) There is a tiny advertisement for Kodak also on the far left.
Our fellow, I assume proprietor, stands proudly in front of the establishment and with this splendid popcorn machine which is labeled Hot Popcorn. This is not a photo postcard, but a photo and it shows evidence of having been glued into an album at one point. The Deco border dates it back to the early years of the 20th century, but for decade it is a bit timeless and hard to nail down.
Pictorama readers know that I have restaurants on one side of my family tree and a dry goods store on the other. I would love to have a photo like this of either establishment, but in some ways especially Butler Dry Goods which I retain a very dim memory of having been in. It is more a memory of light and smell and space than of the specifics of the interior.
I inherited a large number of photos which I am going through in New Jersey. I don’t know where they all were because there are many I never saw before. Of course now with mom gone I have largely lost my ability to have the family members identified.
Many of these photos are from my dad’s family and I’m not sure how many she would have known as these were long before her time too. Dad never knew. He seemed to remain somewhat willfully ignorant about his family history and passed almost no stories on. Mom held what tales we had, as told to her by Dad’s mother. I have a few cousins who might find them of interest and I should scan some for them. I imagine I will share the best of the pictures with you all too as future posts.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: In some sneaky way our electronic devices missed us while we were on our now annual New Jersey summer sojourn. The electric toothbrush, although charged, stubbornly refused to start upon our return, followed by the new outlet in the bathroom which oddly now seems incapable of operating so much as a nightlight let alone a hair dryer. (In all fairness, after 30 years of owning this coop, the outlet had technically died the first time several weeks before we left last summer.) The dishwasher threatened to go south on us, but has agreed to continue working as long as I commit to smaller loads, although that will make them more frequent. (And I admit to a strange compulsion to always fill it to the utmost before running. I will need to get over that it seems.)
However, last Saturday night while I was wrapping up my reading before turning out the light, Kim asleep next to me and Blackie at my feet, a loud, long crackling noise came from the living room. Blackie and I looked at each other and he raced off into the dark of the apartment, but nothing looked amiss and I continued on, turning out the light and went to sleep. The next morning the television in the living room was dead.
In retrospect, this is not the first time I have heard that noise during the demise of an electronic appliance. Years ago I had a clock radio that made that noise and started to smoke which landed it in the tub of my apartment after unplugging. (If you live in an apartment anything potentially combusting usually ends up in the tub. Probably not really a great idea, but often the best you can figure out in the moment.)
To my reckoning the toothbrush and the television were both reaching their four year anniversary – honestly I am looking funny at my Fitbit watch (sometimes it just dies before being coaxed back to life) and my phone (not holding a charge), which share similar acquisition dates. (All of this more precisely etched in my memory because it was as we were coming out of Covid and things like acquiring a new television or phone were just a bit trickier.) In my way of thinking, the masterminds of planned obsolescence have arrived at the four year mark as the shortest time possible which is unlikely to invoke costly (for them) warrantee coverage or truly shrill outcry. It is just over the line of long enough.
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Televisions have turned the corner into a whole new world. There are a myriad of different kinds which required learning at least a little about. They are despised by many who now use their phone, computer or tablet for whatever streaming consumable they prefer. Or they have extraordinary needs for maniacal fidelity and massive size.
To care only nominally about the definition, let alone to want one to fit comfortably on a table in our studio apartment, is suddenly to want something exotic. Out of the usual also means, probably not in stock and needs to be ordered. In my desire to be efficient I have ended up with one slightly larger than I am comfortable with and which swamps the former tv table I inherited from an early apartment rental and have dragged through a few moves.
Meanwhile, putting aside the group who want massive home theaters, I encountered a fair amount of skepticism about purchasing a television. Aside those who, as mentioned above, just watch things on various hand held devices, there is another whole group who eschew it entirely. In all fairness, I think Kim would happily remain without one as he mostly reads in his spare time in the evening and on weekends. When he wants to watch a film he’s happy to sit at his desk and watch it on the computer. I have other friends who haven’t owned one for years and frankly are surprised I would bother.
I love this show, which seems to be intermittent at best. They tour very old homes that need rescuing.
Television and I go way back to my childhood. As I have written about previously, my dad was a cameraman for ABC news and although the family media addiction started with non-stop news radio (my uncle worked for that CBS radio affiliate) it morphed over time to owning many televisions. So I watched it a lot as a kid – sometimes the whole family but also alone. It was the background of my life until I went to college and I entered a period of several years that went into my twenties without one.
However I was living in New York and cooking professionally when I fell down a flight of stairs at work and was sent home to rest, flat on my back, for several weeks. My mom sent me a tv and I got the cable hook up and was reintroduced to owning one. I got an extended chance to see what had developed over the previous four or five years (admittedly not much) before returning to the insane hours of restaurant cooking and never being home. (While I was recovering I got a call offering me a much better job cooking for a young chef named Jean-George Vongerichten for a restaurant he just opened in New York City at the Drake Hotel which I accepted with the caveat that I needed to finish my bed rest.)
I was rarely home and awake during that period – in fact I had a boyfriend for awhile who was also a chef and we had opposite shifts. It was like a silent comedy I later saw from Russia about rotating schedules like this sharing a small apartment in Moscow.
Ultimately the career in cooking ended with arthritis having started to snake up my back and hips and the boyfriend was disposed of for other reasons. I went to work at the Metropolitan Museum in the bookstore. Clearly all that would be another post!
I was there from the very start!
Eventually the TCM movie channel was established and frankly for decades my television rarely changed channels. Aside from the occasional disaster (natural or political) which might send me over to CNN, or a period where I needed to see breakfast tv (local news and weather before heading out the door) my set could have been a single channel. This is largely true still today.
However, when March of 2020 hit and suddenly the world shuddered on its axis with the first of the pandemic we watched a lot of news in the beginning. Given world affairs we continued to watch it a fair amount but the sheer number of hours home meant my old friend TCM, but also a new interest that had slowly been developing in what I call Home shows.
A sort of low budget show with very historic homes in the Massachusetts area.
I have always liked to look inside houses. to me they beg to tell their stories. I especially like old ones, the older the better. But in general I like to see what all houses look like inside versus outside. Sometimes I am amazed that ones I find ugly on the outside are quite beautiful on the inside. I like to consider what it would be like to live in them. I am interested to see the light and the views from the windows and what the yard looks like. And yes, I like to think about what it would be like to live in a house rather than a one room apartment. I liked big budget shows, but find interest in the more homespun ones too. I enjoy pondering the very concept of home and what it means to different people.
Like my television watching, I come to my interest in houses honestly. My parents bought houses and renovated them and rented them for a period of years – really mom since dad’s job was more than fulltime. She had a great mind for this and liked both the acquisition and the renovation of them. Her approach to it remains with me after many years. She wasn’t a moving walls around kind of person, but she went into every home assuming renovating the kitchen, floors would be redone and it would be painted. Smart small things.
When mom ultimately looked for a house for their retirement she was a bit broader in her thinking and knew she would be adding a handicapped accessible bath for herself and a things like that. She had limited mobility already so another friend and I did the leg work and as her surrogate I got to look at a lot of houses before we found the one she and dad purchased and I inherited last year.
So during the pandemic year I found great comfort in watching a never-ending, forever unspooling reel of home finding and renovation. In short, the only drama was which lovely house would they pick and what would it look like when it was renovated. Would the young couple choose the house in the country where they could raise chickens? That really suited me fine – life had enough drama and I wasn’t needing more
Home Town was a favorite during the pandemic year. Who knew how many lovely old homes could be bought for a fraction of the value of my NYC studio in Laurel, Texas?
In this way I got to tour lots of old houses (which frankly I would probably have left more intact than most of these folks – I don’t have a passionate need for spaces to be huge and open as seems to be the fashion) and given the high stress of my job (fundraising for a performing arts organization’s survival during a world wide pandemic shutdown) I found great comfort in it.
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Fast forward about a year and during mom’s final months of illness, about the last six months of her life, I pretty much lived in New Jersey. (Posts from that strange time out of time can be found here and here.) There are many televisions (large, wall mounted) in that house and my mother wanted CNN on 24 hours a day. All her nurses knew better than to change the channel and incur her wrath. Oddly my father also watched news constantly at the end of his life. My mother explained that it was her only connection to the outside world which makes sense. I do wonder about this and if it is something about getting old or particular to them. Will I ultimately cast all aside for 24 hour news?
Anyway, during that period the noise from mom’s care and the constantly changing shifts of nurses contributed to the insomnia I had developed during Covid when I would frequently get up at 3 AM and start working out of anxiety. (I would often discover the Wynton Marsalis was also awake and we’d work via text for awhile. I’d go to sleep for a bit and wake up around 6:00 and start all over again.)
I still find this show especially soothing. I think it started in Canada and slowly found locations in the United States. A lot of episodes seem to cover the south but NJ featured occasionally. Manhattan never!
I began sleeping with the low hum of HGTV, usually a benign show called House Hunters where folks were shown looking at three houses and choosing one. This would cover the sound of CNN booming from my mom’s room and do a lot to help me sleep through shift changes and folks coming and going. I slept with my phone next to me and if they didn’t want to come and physically wake me up the nurses would call if they needed me.
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It’s been more than a year since mom passed and I have changed jobs. A new job, settling her estate, inheriting a house and five cats (not to mention some oral surgery which has tormented me on and off since January and doesn’t promise to wrap soon), has made this year tough in a different way.
A pending Presidential election means a certain amount of checking in on the news which we all know is not good. I work on an open floor office currently so I no longer listen to music at work and I miss that. All this to say I unabashedly like having a television and catching a few truly mindless hours of Home shows in the evening before bed.
I confess and openly acknowledge that I would read and sleep a bit more if I eradicated the habit. However, as a life long habitue of television I say the heck with everyone else, I intend to own one (as soon as I can successfully have the one I purchased installed – that is another long, but boring tale) and watch it for the foreseeable future.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: This photo postcard makes me think about my mother who loved ducks, geese and swans. Frankly she was less romantic about chickens which she grew up around although she bore them no ill will and being a vegan did not eat them nor their eggs. Mom did tell stories about her childhood and how they roosted in the neighbors trees and would occasionally torment her on her way to or from school.
It’s a pity this photo was poorly made, overexposed and with an odd sloppy line of poor printing at the bottom. (I have improved it some before sharing with you.) However my mom would have liked this card.
Those things notwithstanding, it is a compelling image and caught my eye online a week or so back and I purchased it for the house here in New Jersey. It is a photo postcard and was never used.
Photo of a photo of the house I grew up in.
As some readers know, I grew up in a house on an inlet of a river here, the Shrewsbury River. It was within walking distance of the ocean and as a result my childhood was full of time on the water – swimming in the ocean and walking the beach or crabbing off our dock or taking a rowboat out in the backyard. Mom’s nascent passion for animals first took the form of cats and dogs, strays and kittens that needed home.
However, later in life mom started feeding a flock of swans inhabiting the secluded inlet near our house. Then, slowly, she started helping out with an injured swan, goose or duck. Before long she was traveling to fetch a stranded pinioned one here or one that swallowed fishing line there. Betty became the go to for injured waterfowl for not just the surrounding counties but even in the surrounding states. Swans and geese that could not be released back into the wild were placed in areas in New York and New Jersey with appropriately large water bodies where food would be available and people would care for them.
A dahlia also on the hummingbird path of nectar.
Betty fought for these birds as well as other animals – helping to shut down puppy mills, purveyors of sick dogs. So many rescued bunnies found a home in our backyard that they were all so tame they would come right up to you if you sat out in the yard. I would come to New Jersey for a visit and the guest bathroom would be commandeered by a swan. Even at the same time, a rescued cat might be healing in an upstairs room. Somehow it all seemed quite natural at the time. Or at least it was our normal.
Strawberry plant currently on the deck which seems to be a happy stop for hummingbirds.
In her last years mom had a commanding view of the deck and the yard from the chair she spent virtually all her time in. It was planted for the explicit pleasure of birds, bees and butterflies. However, it wasn’t until after her death that I started spending time outside here and on the deck and began to realize how successful she was. Furry bees buzz busily everywhere, but especially early in the morning and evening. Hawks fly overhead, but sparrows, robins and a host of other birds amass. Bunnies of the more shy variety nibble greens in the yard – I think they and the chipmunks eat more heartily when unobserved, or so it seems from the consumption of my berries and veg.
Front of the NJ house earlier this week.
Most notably I never knew about the hummingbirds. I have loved the idea of them from the first I learned about them in sixth grade, but it was years before I saw one in person. I used to try to temp them to feeders with syrup water concoctions. It turns out that they love this yard! They appear to have a path from my dahlias, to a strawberry plant with bright red flowers and then to two Rose of Sharon trees (one white and one purple) that technically belong to my neighbor but hang heavily over my side of the fence. and amazingly enough, if I sit quietly on the porch long enough, one will pause en route, pausing, suspended in front of me in greeting.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: A few different things conspired to prompt a rather wonderful childhood memory recently. The first was our friend Bruce bringing over a bag of Ranier cherries – the ones that are sort of orange fading to a bright red, rather than the dark maroon of the more common ones. Despite the story I am going to tell, I somehow came to gobbling cherries late in life, but have eaten them with an abandon to make up for lost time. I generally buy the dark red ones, but cast no shade on the Ranier variety.
The next things was this little device shown at top – a cherry pitter. I also use it for pitting olives. I was in New Jersey a few weeks back and realized that I only had my decades old one, acquired in cooking school tucked happily away in our New York apartment.
Not much to look at yet it is perfectly adequate for these two tasks and if you are trying to cook with either cherries or olives it is a much needed and appreciated tool. To be without it means any chance of a perfectly sliced cherries or olives for decorative effect will likely not happen. I promptly ordered the contemporary equivalent from Amazon. I searched cherry olive pitter and there is was. The beauty of the internet age. I sent it to NJ and it was waiting for me when I got here on Wednesday; it is a decidedly zippier, upgraded version. A happy summer of cherry and olive pitting awaits.
Meanwhile, the memory in question was one of an annual cherry picking at my grandmother’s house. She had an enormous Ranier cherry tree in the backyard. In retrospect as an adult I don’t think I realized that cherry trees got that big. It required a proper ladder to get to the top.
Was actually a bit hard to find a photo online of a large-ish one. My grandmother’s was much larger than this!It makes me remember it being in bloom though.
Anyway, the kids, spouses of kids and grandkids were all assembled and we picked cherries all day. There were sea green plastic buckets I can still see in my mind and we filled them with those orangey red cherries. My grandmother would then take them and cook them down and can them. They would supply pie filling and get spread on toast for the rest of the year and long winter ahead. (Mom’s mom who I have written about before here with a historic photo of that yard – sadly the tree was in the other direction and would have been tiny!)
These are exactly as I remember them.
Oddly, I don’t remember eating them off the tree. Now, I was at the time probably the youngest family member of the team, probably about five or six at the time I am describing before my brother was born. Perhaps my mother, always a worrier, didn’t want me eating pit filled cherries. I can see her fretting about that. Anyway, I didn’t and somehow didn’t really get into the swing of eating cherries until I was more or less an adult. If I were able to visit that tree today I’d be popping half in my mouth as I went, eating my body weight in cherries off the tree.
On one of those days I remember it ending in, if not a barbeque at least a picnic. (My Italian grandmother wasn’t really much into barbeque – she liked to cook her food on her stove and in her oven and make the table grown with delicacies which were not of the grilled burger variety.) I wandered around and found my way to a small tree. Much to my horror, as I touched the tree I was immediately covered with ants! I screamed the way only a small child shocked by ants can scream. It took a minute for mom to figure out what was wrong with me, get them off and set me right. (Tree must not have been well to be full of ants, but I don’t remember much about it.)
Dusk on the deck with the fairy lights on. Deck (and lights) had to be completely redone last fall – boards were all rotted! This is my first evening of return on investment! Well worth it.
Perhaps that memory came back to me because as I write this I am sitting on my deck in New Jersey, in the evening of July 4. Next to me on the fence I share with my neighbor, I discovered a huge and evidently industrious ant colony. I can see those hard working fellows even by the dim light of my fairy lights out here. Do ants ever stop and rest? These don’t appear to as I spotted them early this morning and they are still at it.
On of the solar lights I have around which I love!
A gentle boom, boom of distant fireworks is going off, but not enough to bother either me or the five New Jersey cats who have had their dinner and are largely sleeping. Fireflies have come out and look like miniature versions of the fairy lights. (People ask me if we still have fireflies and I am glad to assure them we do – have they really disappeared from places?) The mosquitoes, whose enthusiasm for my flesh has been somewhat tempered by some spray will chase me in soon. But my first evening on the deck this year and I guess summer has begun.
The back gate! Newly installed light here also last fall – so we have a bit of light coming and going at night. It is motion activated.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: The last of the Mom posts today, for now anyway.
It is Thursday night and I am back in New Jersey. I worked remotely today and will spend tomorrow preparing for a repast for mom on Saturday – 40-50 people over several hours stopping by to chat and have a nosh. The resident cats are surrounding and circling me endlessly since my arrival last night.
The cat family greeting.
Since my mom died almost three weeks ago I seem to live in a state that is strangely and endlessly anxious. I think it is a constant unconscious feeling that I am forgetting to check on her nagging at the back of my mind. Also a terrible sense of always feeling like I am in the wrong place, a perpetual fish out of water. Being back at the house has eased this slightly, perhaps because I am here with the specific mission of getting ready to receive people on Saturday. Or maybe it is being here and forcing my brain and subconscious to accept that mom is no longer here to be cared for.
Stormy, dubbed Cat of Mystery by me, is starting to get a bit more social. She also likes to sit in the window.
Friday and a day of cleaning, shopping and cooking. I thought the house had been deep cleaned right after mom died, but friends showed up today and cleaned some more in preparation for tomorrow. Many hands did make for lighter work and the care of all these women surrounds me in a way that makes me feel like a kid again. In the process of the many cleanings and work that has been done the house is slowly becoming more of a home again, the bed no longer in the kitchen, the roar of the oxygen tank with the cord I was always afraid of tripping over gone.
Peaches.
A certain Pam-ness is starting to exert itself undeniably. Paintings brought up from the basement where they were in exile for some reason. A litany of small repairs are being made. I am having the black front door painted red, just for fun. Circus lights now festoon the back deck. Making it my own was what mom wanted and I believe she approves.
The garden is blooming early this year. Although mom never was able to set foot in it she enjoyed greatly it from the windows and via a series of recordings made for her to celebrate each phase of each season. She’d watch these again and again and share them with friends and family. (Here is a video from last spring that is still up.) Everyone remarks on the beauty of the backyard.
The peonies
The peonies I gave her several years ago are already bursting as are her roses. Mom was good with roses in an effortless way. Did she just know good spots for them? I never remember her fussing over them especially. My nascent herb garden and tomato plants are slowly gaining traction. A dahlia is shooting up in a planter. Unclear though if I have inherited the green thumb or just having some beginners luck as well as guidance from gifted gardening friends.
The roses in the backyard.
Tomorrow some family and a number of her friends will raise a glass to her and nibble on vast piles of fruit salad, cheese sandwiches and cupcakes we purchased and assembled today.
Sunday. Well, it rained hard all day. I said it was because mom was looking on and was worried about the cats getting out with people coming and going. Kim showed up early and was introduced to Hobo who received his third meal of the day from him. That cat must have a hollow leg.
Hobo on meal number one of three yesterday, at about 6:30 AM.
The plant people were all pleased about the rain as we haven’t had much and being plant people we walked out in the garden despite the rain. The animal folks were in a group talking about the rescue of a fawn that was unfolding and some left to go help with that. (Mom’s obit with information about her work in animal rescue and welfare can be found here.)
Family, caregivers and one of our neighbors all discovered people in common and mingled and marveled over the few degrees of separation that were unfolding as I guess they do in smallish towns. Like a wedding I don’t spend enough time with any one person while trying to get to all.
I woke up, exhausted this morning, back here in Manhattan, with Kim and cats. (It is Kim’s birthday – shout out to him! We sang a sloppy Happy Birthday over cupcakes to him at the end of the party yesterday.)
The eggshell this layer of protection I felt during mom’s last months has been broken and my time in that liminal space has ended. It’s a hard finding myself back out in the world again with new responsibilities as well as the old ones rushing back in. It is lonely without her, but she left me with new friends and renewed connections. I am so grateful for their ongoing ministrations. The page turns and the next chapter starts now.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: When this posts on Saturday I will be making my way to the cemetery to see my mom’s mortal remains off. So I apologize that this will be another brief and Pam-centric post.
As I write it is a dark and damp Thursday morning. Coffee is perking, cats have been fed. I woke at 3:00 and two of the cats strolled into my room and onto my bed to keep me company and fight for my attention. It did distract me from my fretting. Gus had the temerity to chase Beau’s tail!
I cut up a watermelon which has been sitting since before mom passed. A friend had brought it by for her. It’s more watermelon than I can eat so I will share it with friends to take home to their kids. After cooking for large numbers of people it is mostly just me now and the food production and consumption is amping way down except when folks stop by to check on me.
Long Branch Poultry Farm, since 1939.
The various machinations of the week have taken me to some locales that I haven’t visited in decades and occasionally requiring amazing feats of memory as I take on the role of navigator for the folks kind enough to drive me on my various rounds.
For example near the funeral home was an ancient poultry farm where my parents used to stop for eggs on our way to or from my grandmother’s house. The friend who was driving me stopped to look at the plants that are now sold outside and the childhood memories flooded back. I probably have not stood in that driveway since I was 12 years old.
Another night someone took me out to dinner at Bahr’s Landing, a waterside seafood restaurant of my childhood. My last trip there was with my sister for my birthday, the year before she died, but it was a family favorite for special occasions as a kid and my late teens and early twenties saw many a late night at the outdoor clam shack for a late night snack and a beer. A week of This is Your Life style fascination.
Extraordinary clouds over the water at Bahr’s Landing restaurant.
Some days have seemed long and others zipped by. Uniformly the nights and early mornings (mom’s best time in recent years) have been difficult. The house itself seems to be in a gentle form of revolt starting with a series of roof leaks (which left me facing a very young man who attempted to sell me a new roof, but instead agreed to just overcharge me for what desperately needed to be done to stop the immediate water incursion) and followed by water in the basement as the result of a broken drainpipe.
A farm stop in Holmdel where geraniums were procured.
My bouts of manic energy have gone into cleaning and the redistribution of things no longer needed. It has also resulted in some gardening which seems to calm me down. Some of those efforts shown on the deck above, a new favorite spot.
After I get through tomorrow on Sunday I will head back to Manhattan and to the office on Monday. The shell will be thoroughly broken and back into the world I go.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: These are strange days for me as spring arrives in New Jersey this year. I am here for a stay of indeterminate length during what appears to be my mother’s lingering last illness. I have written before about the sense of being in a liminal space – between two periods in my life that in many ways will define the before and the after. That sense has only increased recently as I perch on the threshold of this personal sized seismic shift.
Helleborus is an early bloomer which deer are not fond of so it is all the talk of gardeners here right now.
I miss my daily life in Manhattan: my husband, my cats, my bed (we have an unbelievably hard mattress), and I miss actually sitting down with my co-workers daily. Still, it is human nature to make things as pleasant as possible where we are and I have done this by largely by dint of cooking and running. (I have written about that previously in posts that can be found here and here.) Earlier this week a friend dropped flats of pansies off for me saying it was nice to do do something for the future and today I added planting to the list.
My simple potting assignment, complete on the deck for all to admire.
While I have been around a lot of gardening as an observer, I have in fact never gardened. I suppose this is not surprising given that I have lived my entire adult life in Manhattan without so much as a fire escape. Kim has a green thumb and under his casual attention plants do seem to thrive in our bright living room window. Still, if my ability to keep houseplants alive was anyway indicative of my ability say, to care for pets or people it would be a not-green thumbs down I am afraid.
However, in her day my mother was a superb gardener. One of my earliest memories is of a huge rock garden in the back of our house in North Jersey and watching her work in it, our cat and dog sniffing around. I must have been just three or four.
When I was a tad older we had moved to the shore and I can remember my mother coaxing vegetables and flowers out of the sandy and salty soil, and fighting a freakishly high water table. I had a child’s joy over the immensity of sunflowers which towered over us and tomato plants which delighted me . Laawn never interested mom and hers was nominal. (Dad traveled for work and never really had anything to do with the yard. Mom did it all.) She was and is all about plants and trees.
Didn’t buy these sporty petunias with the stripes but was very tempted – I was very entertained by them.
In the house subsequent to that one, but still on the waterfront the garden was somewhat more elaborate with herbs, strawberry and grapevines. Bunnies and squirrels helped themselves liberally to those edibles as well as dandelions and other delectables .
So earlier this week the same friend took me to Lowe’s where I assembled a cache of potting soil, a spade, some clippers and a lone adolescent tomato plant – Jersey tomatoes being a summer delicacy for this Jersey girl. Shop Rite (as big as several city blocks) produced a length of lightweight hose. The Dollar Tree provided some lightweight garden gloves. It seems I was ready to plant some pansies.
Someone brought these by for mom and I am greatly enamored of the daffodils with the apricot centers!
Luckily this project was pretty low stakes as said pansies were already in bloom and just pleading for soil and water, a straightforward assignment for the rookie me. However, the pots I thought I would use proved too small and too deep. Luckily rooting around in the basement coughed up some appropriate vessels. The nozzle on the new hose proved unexpectedly challenging I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, but we came to an agreement without my getting entirely soaked.
Somehow, all the plants found their way to pots, fit appropriately and were watered – which was good because the promised rain never showed. Mom was pleased with my efforts on behalf of the yard and a rakish stake with a whirligig red bird stuck in the tomato plant container for a finishing touch.
Pam's Pictorama 