Fabric (of my being?)

Hi.  My name is Lea Ann & I am addicted to fabric.

Latest project--my porch!

Hi Lea Ann (you freak!). 

 

I can’t claim hoarder status because at 51 I wasn’t alive during the Depression, nor did I lose all my belongings in a natural disaster.  I just really, REALLY like upholstery fabric…in large quantities. Rarely do I buy it in rolls of less than 15 yards…because you never know when you might need to recover a sectional sofa…or make drapes for a room full of windows…or…OK, I have a problem. 

 

The porch is an outdoor room here

This week I’ve been turning that problem into pure joy—sewing up a radically bright facelift for my bedroom.  My house footprint is small & manageable, only topping 1000 square feet when you include the spacious covered porch.  The reason it doesn’t feel cramped, & one of the biggest selling points for me when I bought it is the beamed cathedral ceilings. I grew up in a house with vaulted ceilings, & as a result can’t stand squinchy, stingy, low-ceilinged dark spaces.  Here in the land of a whole lotta sunshine, open spaces seem even more appealing. 

 

That said, the ‘master’ bedroom (truly a misnomer since the one large-ish bathroom in my house doesn’t attach to anything other than a hallway) has a rather ridiculously small footprint for the giant ‘sledbed’ that was & is lodged in there.  The previous owners of my house were a wonderful young, international family who relocated to the husband’s native Switzerland so their bilingual toddler & his baby sister could become TRI-lingual while their brains were still sponge-like.  They already spoke English & Mom’s native Mexican Spanish, but for these sharp, energetic people, two languages & cultures weren’t enough.  Since they were relocating from the US Virgin Islands to Switzerland, they were traveling light & not taking their furniture.  Some had already been parsed out to island friends before I bought the place, but since I was moving from a furnished rental apartment to this first house of my own, I needed what they didn’t & negotiated a package deal for some of the remaining furnishings. 

 

Enter the ‘sledbed.’  This was how the husband described the sleigh bed to me when we were striking our deal, & the name stuck among my friends.  It is a beautiful bed & I loved it immediately.  Philippe was a reasonable man & I paid a reasonable price.  Which is a good thing because it doesn’t come out of that room without tools & possibly a shoe horn & a tub of Crisco.  So there she sits, dark & large & well…THERE. 

 

In the five years since, I’ve had blasphemous visions of painting the dark rich wood cream or white…or of removing the inset panels in the head & footboards & replacing them with caning (I have 2 rolls of caning—don’t ask) to allow light through…or sawing the footboard off completely & using it as a headboard for the bed in the spare room…or of making a tie-on slipcover in Belgian linen (OK, they’re painters’ tarps I got on sale from Home Depot, but after they’re washed they LOOK like Belgian linen).  And yet there it sits, like a shipwreck on a sandbar, enormous & imposing & unchanged.

 

So I sewed.  (and sewed & sewed).  I keep a white duvet on the beds in both rooms, allowing me to accessorize with any color I choose & change looks on a whim.  Aside from the dark, warm wood tone of the bed, the other furnishings in that room are honeyed shades of split bamboo & the walls are a creamy Danish yellow.  And of course the ceiling beams are espresso colored. 

 

So, I went ‘spectral sunrise,’ (to coin a phrase)--  hot geranium, ‘push up’ orange & warm yellow shams on the 3 sets of bed pillows.  A slightly more elegant orange & khaki print linen that reads old Hawaii to me for the closet drape & tailored cover for the corner shelves.  A warm yellow cushion sham for the oddly proportioned wooden chair in the corner (dubbed a slipper chair because it is low enough to be conducive to put on slippers…or heels) And I had already made a wall arrangement of orchid prints & cigar boxes interspersed with cut recycled metal framed mirrors from up island (Puerto Rico & Hispanola).  And the inspiration for the whole room—the Tjord Boontje laser cut drapey paper lantern that looks like curtains of flowers & leaves in shades of red, rose & orange. 

 

It feels like a successful transformation.  The lantern glows at night & the colors glow during the daylight.  When I wake up & look around I am energized, happy & inspired…to tackle the next bedroom!

Buss Up Shut

Buss Up Shut by Lea Ann Robson



Bread Nut after boiling & draining, or the start of Buss Up Shut?

As I’ve mentioned, St. Croix is a wonderful ‘mash up’ of cultures, flags, traditions, & people.  Today was a great example.  I had dinner with my two favorite ‘Southern Suitors’, my dear friends Miles & Philip.  Among the local restaurants we tend to have our favorites & form our ruts, but tonight we branched out a bit & tried a lovely bistro called Salud.  There we had a wonderful array of tapas that I feel sure would rate well with any food critic, anywhere.  But my culinary adventures weren’t over for tonight.

When I got home I remembered a kindness my friend Joan gave me as a holiday treat this morning.  She vends (colorful wraps, bags, & pretty much everything else!) next to me by the sea when the ships are in & has become a great friend.  She is from Trinidad, has a voice you’ll never forget once you hear it, & a fiendish sense of humor.  She also has a work ethic & positive outlook that is rare.  She packs a substantial amount of wisdom in her not so substantial frame, put her kids through school & is a veritable dynamo.  She loves to garden, & makes all manner of local fruit preserves, jams & chutneys that are a big hit with patrons of our annual Agricultural Festival.  We chat a lot while vending & the topic is frequently gardening or cooking. 

So Monday when the Jewel of the Seas was in port, we were gabbing about what is growing & what we’re doing with it & she mentioned she had a bread nut tree laden with nuts.  Bread nut trees have longer ‘fingers’ on their giant hand-shaped leaves than the more common Breadfruit, & breadnuts have a mild flavor & texture that I loved when I tried them a few years ago, kind of like a cross between a chestnut and a fingerling potato.  I mentioned I liked them, & this morning she had me stop at her veggie stand in front of Ag Fair grounds to pick up the bag of nuts she had cleaned for me.  She told me they still need to be boiled, & I thanked her & rushed off to my other job. 

It wasn’t until after dinner out this evening that I remembered I needed to boil the nuts…& I had no idea about the specifics so I typed the question into my phone & as always, up came multiple answers.  I found one website, simplytrinicooking.com that had several pertinent entries.  The most interesting posts were from ‘Felix,’ who seemed trustworthy if colorful in his advice.  So I boiled the nuts (as he said) for 25 minutes in a deep pot of water, added salt (no idea how much—Felix doesn’t work from specifics) & boiled them 25 minutes more.  They are resting in their water as I write, & we’ll see if I made Felix proud or filled him with shame. 

Some of the breadnut curry recipes on that website were very interesting, but their names are more so than the actual recipe.  One recipe is called Buss Up Shut, & if I have success with the nuts, I may get brave & try that…mostly for the opportunity to say that name to people!

Independence Day(S) by Lea Ann Robson

So today we’re in the midst of our second day celebrating independence.  True to our love of excessive holidays here in the islands, we celebrate TWO versions of independence days, one on July 3^rd and the Continental states’ version on July 4^th. 

Granted we’ve been somewhat justifiably accused of ‘padding’ & fabricating holidays, but on the other hand there are a couple Federal holidays that really make little sense here—Columbus day comes to mind.  Hard to dedicate a day of praise to a guy who in effect invaded your shores (we did kind of hand him his lunch though).  Presidents’ Day is another quandary, given that as a Territory we are unable to vote in Presidential elections.  We fix it by using that weekend to throw our annual AgriFest (see earlier posts) & invite people from all the islands & the mainland to see how the ‘island half’ lives it up. 

And we have a couple of holidays that make sense only from our perspective:  Hurricane Supplication Day & Hurricane Thanksgiving.  The first occurs at the beginning of storm season & is celebrated by the sending up of prayers for peace & tropical weather inactivity.  The second falls in November & is dedicated to giving thanks for surviving yet another storm season (Note:  In 1995 after I lost a business to Hurricane Marilyn, I thought I could forgo the second holiday but stood corrected by a local friend who educated me otherwise.  We’re giving thanks for life, not for possessions, so thanks I gave.) 

So, while you might be tempted to think declaring two independence days is a bit over the top & just some extension of the relaxed island attitude, there is an important reason to celebrate both days here on St. Croix.  You know all about the Fourth, so here is the reasoning behind the Third:  July 3^rd represents Emancipation Day on St. Croix.

In 1847 King Christian of Denmark decreed that all Danish West Indian enslaved people would be free within twelve years.  On July 2^nd 1848, the oppressed people on St. Croix decided the twelve year projection was eleven years too long & that drastic measures were necessary.  Led by General Bordeaux (a.k.a. General Buddhoe), they massed in Frederiksted on the West end of St. Croix & threatened to burn the town (especially the government buildings) to the ground if swift freedom was not granted to them.  Danish Governor-General von Scholten did a much quicker risk/reward calculation than modern politicians seem capable of handling, realized the numbers & potential bloodshed, & on July 3^rd, 1848 from the battery of Fort Frederik issued a proclamation that freed the enslaved Danish West Indians.  His decision was unpopular with the island’s plantation managers, & three days later he was forced to resign his post.  He was exiled to Trinidad while a provisional government was put into place & Spanish soldiers were dispatched from Trinidad to prevent further bloodshed & unrest (though termed ‘the Bloodless Rebellion,’ that wasn’t completely accurate).  Despite this attempted rally by the landowners’ version of an ‘old boys’ club,’ there was no going back & freedom, once granted could not be rescinded.

Each year the anniversary of Emancipation Day is commemorated by large groups of islanders who walk the 15.4 MILES from Fort Christavern to Fort Frederik.  They start before dawn but as July is definitely NOT the coolest month in STX & given the advanced age of some of the participants, this is a real sacrifice & fitting tribute to the bravery & strength of their ancestors. 

Here’s to Independence and however you choose to celebrate it.  This year fireworks will return to the pier in Frederiksted, & we’ll be there, once again looking up.

Refuge, Reuse, Recycle

Frangipani, used in Hawaii to make Leis of Welcome

A couple of days ago there was an article in our local paper, the St. Croix Avis, about a group of 20 Cuban refugees who had barely survived the dangerous passage from their island to our island of St. Croix.  As I read the article, I was surprised that anybody would choose this direction & distance as a path of escape.  The youngest refugee was 15 years old. He came with his mother, who was seeking a place where she could speak and live freely. She wanted better for her son.

It is not a new story.  Some of the details surprised me though.

For instance, one of the group was a 31 year old IT guy.  In his case, his father had urged him to go.  And I started thinking about why people make long, risky treks in search of something different.

This group was seeking escape from external conditions over which they had no control.  Others of us had different motivations.

For many of us who had what would typically be considered a stable, if not enviable life in the continental US, close relatives & safe jobs, the reasons aren't that clear to the observer.  Personally I was running to, not away from something.  Instead of a shot at a better life, I was looking to St. Croix as a place to find my better self.  I wanted my life to mean more than traffic & paperwork & taxes & conspicuous consumption, because those were the pivot points it hinged on at the time.  At least once a week I wondered why quiet desperation seemed so damn loud in my head.

It turned out the silencer was to leave dry land completely, floating in the edge of the Caribbean Sea.  A bonus was the fact our soil grows a huge array of plants, & since that is my other mental balm, I found exactly what I sought. 

But back to the real refugees.  They are being temporarily housed in a local High School, & the Red Cross is attending to their basic needs.  Since they made it to land, they will be allowed to stay on our Island & the agents from Customs & Border Protection spent a few days sorting that out with each arrival.  And then they ran out of bureaucracy to occupy their time. 

So on Friday they went to our Botanical Garden.  There they found someone who spoke Spanish and beautiful grounds with no doubt familiar plants.  They got to relax & wander & start to recover from their journey. 

I hope they found the two things long distance travelers usually seek:  refuge & hope. 


Pictures my symbols of hope:  Plantains in Progress (above) & Pomegranates (below)

I Have the Need...for Seed, by Lea Ann Robson

Blooming Pineapple

Every year at this time peoples’ fancies (whatever that means) turn to Spring cleaning, & despite the lack of a temperature variant here in St. Croix, I’m not exempt.  My urge is also propelled by the fact my Mom finally succumbs to my pleas to visit around Mothers’ Day, thus making my usually benevolent view of my piles of stuff a little more critical.

 



Bumper Pineapple Crop!

I frequently joke that I have ADD, as in Artistic Deficit Disorder.  I have a zillion ideas, most of which I start in some format or fashion…& abandon for some other newer, better idea shortly thereafter.  Fortunately or unfortunately (perspective?), I have materials for nearly everything I think of…SOMEWHERE.  So in addition to the piles of half finished projects, there is always the trail of unrelated stuff I had to unearth to find those materials. At 51, I know myself well enough to realize that if I stopped to put away everything I dragged out, I’d lose momentum & never even start the project before grinding to an unsatisfying, overwhelmed halt. The difference between 51 & 21 is that you recognize that trait in yourself & are more forgiving of the resultant piles of ‘potential’ strewn everywhere. 

 

Potential is alternately my absolute favorite & most despised word.  The other day it caused me to decide the strangler fig vines my friends were pulling out of the Botanical Garden & heaping up to discard MUST BE RESCUED from that fate & stuffed in the hatch of my car so I could take them home & MAKE Baskets & trellises, & furniture & EVERYTHING!  (Sorry, the manic phase frequently comes out in all caps…no control over that).  When I got home, despite the fact it was misting rain, I was so enthused about the project I sat right down on my stoop in the rain & started a basket…at least I think it was a basket…like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I fear I may have switched the plans & been ‘knitting a Brazillian ranch house instead of a sweater.’ 

 

After I spent about 45 minutes & had a respectable start, it was quite dark out & had begun to seriously rain…& I hadn’t eaten in hours.  You can guess the rest.  Five days later I got sick of tripping over the pile of vines & the basket nubbin, & hucked it into a nearby bush so I could continue later…who knows when?

 

The rain continued all day Saturday, a beautiful, tropical, straight down I mean business Spring rain that thrilled my pineapple plants & banana trees, overflowed my rainbarrel & impelled me to run out in the downpour with every container I could grab, catching the gushing cistern overflow & putting it aside to water plants when the dry season comes.  My normally much more sensible dog Mu even decided there must be some reason I stood in streaming water, so she came out & got completely waterlogged watching me.  No doubt she was trying to figure out how to protect me from my feeble-minded self. 

 



Waterlemon Bloom

It was only later that I remembered the seeds I had planted in containers a few nights prior, no doubt getting the hoo-hingus beat out of them & most probably sloshing right out of their pots in the downpours.  I had planted several varieties of dwarf sunflowers, basils & zinnias, 3 heirlooms plus one yellow pear tomato variety, cucumbers, green cantaloupe, & no doubt something else I forgot in several planters & small pots.  It is probably quite telling that all the seed packets denoted the contents were packed for 2012 planting.  Yes, I got distracted last year & didn’t get them in the ground when I should have…no doubt because I started some other project midstream.

 

This morning I noticed several different varieties of seed sprouting in odd clumps, not where I had planted them but instead where they washed to.  I’m still heartened by  the sight of sprouts—the epitome of potential.

 

This weekend I made a pendant light by adding a fringe of gem drops to a boring linen shade cylinder.  I actually finished this project & followed all the way through to getting out my cordless drill & mounting hanging hooks.  The light looks very warm, glowy & inviting as I had hoped. 

 

For those keeping score, that is one project completed for the 278 started this year.   

 

I might up that ratio this week when I (possibly) finish a fun cigar box purse I’m working on.  It is actually the product of some past potential idea, wherein I had embroidered an orchid on an old jeans leg I thought I’d use as a panel in a cloth purse I was going to make.  I found the panel when I was digging for hat patterns (don’t ask!) & decided it was pretty cute.  It also coordinated with the hand-painted plaid I had done on the other side of the box.  So I cut a square of batting from some other abandoned project, used my staple gun & upholstered the 2^nd side of the cigar box.  I have an upcycled denim belt I’ll apply as the strap, & some coordinating vintage fabric to line the interior & after I apply trim around the edges, I may actually have something else finished…maybe.

 

At least no one can say I don’t live up to my potential…more like I hope to live long enough to realize all the potential I’ve started!

 

Happy Spring!    

Zone Envy by Lea Ann Robson

Pineapple w/limb full of mangos

I’ve been outside, gleefully planting in the mud.    My genetic clock refuses to be reset, despite 21 years away from the West Virginia hometown where these seasonal markers make sense.  It has to be some hindbrain function, as completely entrenched & unreachable as the tap-rooted weeds popping up through my stone patio. 

Ground Orchid cluster

At 2am, I was pounding a Phillips head screwdriver into my yard & wiggling it to make spaces for my new solar lights.  After that I planted hot pink, crimson & scarlet Kalanchoes in my yellow planters…because in spring we plant flowers…no matter how many are already blooming year-round in the tropics.  Lately Home Depot (oh, my beloved Home Depot) is chock full of continentals (stateside transplants), mostly women close to my age, filling carts with anachronistic bedding plants & bags of soil, in some knee-jerk reaction to Spring.  If our brainwave activity had a verbal interpretation, it would read “MUST DIG & PLANT…MUST DIG & PLANT,” like some Cro-Magnon tickertape printout. 

External cues are so different here.  Spring’s rays of light are of the longer, golden variety reserved for autumn in the continental states.  Mahogany trees actually drop their shiny leaves in the spring, with each breeze initiating an insane leaf dance that is at once graceful & leathery…& confusing. 

And yet these tropical tricks don’t still the impulse to add more flowers, plant herbs & vegetables, & to start over. 

Waterlemon (passion fruit family) bloom

The do-over is a common thread here.  Many of us came to St. Croix because something wasn’t working, wasn’t quite right where we were & we hoped this big leap of locale would hit our reset switch, knock us out of the groove we were wearing in our lives, & give us the new perspective we sought.  For many of us, it worked spectacularly.  For others, not so much. 

Even for the successful transplants, certain ingrained behaviors were either hard to shake, or reappeared after we had initially overcome them.   Though I’ve long since abandoned stockings & heels, I still tend to overdress in defiance of the casual chic vibe here.  It was part of the identity I wasn’t willing to jettison, regardless of the impracticality in this environment. 

So for 21 years, when March, April, & May roll around & despite the fact I have to concentrate hard every morning to even determine what month it is (our temperature only varies 5-10 degrees, year round), my brain says plant, & so plant I do. 

Some of us long to be able to grow things they left behind, & Home Depot’s packing policy fuels that nostalgia.  When they have room in garden supply containers bound for our islands, Home Depot packs empty spaces with whatever plants they have in abundance, regardless of their zonal incompatibility.  The latest is one of my favorites, Hydrangeas.  I love the shape of their leaves, their flower colors, & the fact they’re a living science experiment with flower hues indicating the acidity of the soil.  HD’s massed displays of the short shrubs are so tempting, even knowing what I know about how miserable they will be here.  Like dieting, frequently that denial of what we instinctually crave causes a pendulum swing & a binge the other direction.

Kalanchoes

So I planted Kalanchoes instead.   Lots of Kalanchoes.  Everywhere.

The subverted need to plant tomatoes popped out the other side & I planted instead the local substitute for cilantro—Recao.  It has a broader, long leaf with serrated edges, & when a shower hits them after a day of sun, the scent released is fresh & clean.  I also grow lots of lemongrass & several varieties of basil.  The lemongrass blob is huge & clippings infuse most everything I cook, most of the year.  I steep it with basmati rice, steam it with asparagus spears (imports, I’m sad to say) & Brussels sprouts (they grow here as do most cruciferous veggies—leggy but functional).   

I pound the base of the lemongrass stalks & steep them with lemon bay rum leaves, peppermint tea bags & a generous amount of Lipton bags to make a fragrant iced tea & a wonderful smelling house. 

A note here about tomatoes:  I have successfully grown heirloom varieties here, if you accept success as smaller & more sparse fruit that tastes pretty wonderful anyway.  A couple of their small, peppery slices on a sandwich with whole wheat bread quell any longing for pretty much anything.  And of course the season is almost here for mangos, Surinam cherries & my favorite pineapples, along with bananas… bananas… bananas (not a complaint, merely a statement of plenty).

Dendrobium Andree Millar
 

So as soon as the rain slacks a bit I’ll be back outside, drilling drain holes in planters, flopping big bags of soil from place to place & planting sunflowers, zinnias…& heirloom tomatoes.  (That sandwich sounded too good to pass up.) 

Happy Spring, regardless of what zone you’re in!

Nothing Happens in a Vacuum, by Lea Ann Robson

 

Or so they told us in science class, but I’m not sure they knew the scope of that statement.   Yesterday I opened an envelope full of clippings from my Mom.  I’m over 50 now & she still clips & sends things she finds useful…or interesting…or hopeful. I still look forward to reading them. Yesterday the envelope was full of photos & lines about the Special Olympics held near her Gulf Coast Florida home.  Her primary reason for sending them was for the pictures of the local police officers who were volunteering with the Special Olympics.  She did it so I could put faces to the names of the coworkers she mentions frequently & with more than a little pride.  She volunteers with the force, & though I’m definitely biased I take the fact that she was just given the Volunteer of the Year Award as proof I’m not the only one who values her sizeable contribution. 

 

I too am more than a little proud.

 

So, after recognizing nearly all the captioned names for the officers pictured, I read the attached article.  I laughed as I read about the 8 year old runner who was so overjoyed with his race that he just kept running…& running…eventually necessitating an impromptu chase by his Mother & a couple of volunteers before his energy could be contained…

And then, like a swift punch came the memory that other headlines yesterday described another 8 year old, another race, & an unimaginably different outcome. 

In my mind now, those two 8 year olds & their stories are permanently linked.  I won’t ever again see the photos of the victim without seeing those of the victor in that other race.

And I’ll see the volunteers & first responders in both races…and rely on those images to move forward.