MindSpinner

It is early in the morning. This is writing time. This is the hour when I can feel poems stirring awake. There is one about the rootwork trees do in winter, when they only seem not to be growing. But no, there is the imperious clock instead, and the appointed hour for harnessing mind and body in the familiar yoke of school days and yearbook deadlines. And if I am to arrive by the bell, this instant I must rise, slip off my clothes, bath, dress, pack bags and go. And I must do this over and over again until I am old and hope the poems will wait for me, as seeds do for spring.

I’ve been trying to learn to make bread the old-fashioned way, with some progress to date. Trouble is, a regular loaf is far more than two people can eat before fresh bread becomes stale bread. I have a West Bend Just for Dinner Breadmaker which cooks a dandy little loaf for two or three people in a mere 45 minutes. But because the breadmaker uses an entire package of yeast for a loaf containing 1 1/4 cups of flour to pull off the 45-minute trick, the resulting bread tastes too yeasty to please me. So I’m trying something different, adjusting the small portion breadmaker recipes to make bread that uses 1/4 a package of yeast and takes its time to rise. My first loaf out of the oven tastes much better than the loaf I made in the breadmaker last night. Perhaps I’m onto something.

Snail shell on the trail to the fire tower

Fossils in a stone in the garden path

Lichen on a log