Country Mouse Monday: the why, the weird & the wonderful

Monday mornings around here are sweet and dreamy, filled with the bounty of the two days prior, two days in the garden with the poppies and the bees, planting and tending and harvesting, eating and laughing with friends.

Monday mornings are that reflective pause before the work-week kicks off, and the Country Mouse takes a back seat to the demands of the 9-to-5.

Every weekend around here is like a vacation.

Which is, I suppose, how Country Mouse Monday started, from a desire to celebrate all that those 48 or so hours deliver, all that simple, delicious farm-y pleasure. 

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This Monday is no exception, naturally, even though our time on the farmlet was shorter this weekend, one entire day spent 'cross county, on a different kind of vacation.

As has become tradition, we spent Saturday at the Fairfax Festival. I can't remember for how many years we've done this -- arrived at our friends around 9 for waffles and coffee, then strolled down with them to the center of town, watched the charming, goofy small-town parade and then headed into the redwoods to eat, shop, listen to music.

And mostly people-watch.

There's something so sweetly earnest about Fairfax. It's always a treat to go spend the day immersed in that particular still-weird place, wander the Eco-Pavilion, stop by the tables of so many well-meaning groups trying to save this or that, selling tie-dyed hemp pants, organic local beer, garlic fries. Where the dancers at the live music are always more interesting than the bands themselves, from aging hippie FringeMan to lightly-clad women with big black crows wings on their backs.  

There are no explanations. Everyone just does what they like. Everyone belongs.

I don't know why this gentleman was walking around the Festival carrying his handmade Poetry banner aloft. But he was. 

Why aren't we all walking around raising banners to the things we love?

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And so this Country Mouse Monday-thing, this is my banner raising, I suppose. This is me walking around the Festival that is the whole week, buoyed by the wonder and sweetness of free time immersed in what I love, raising high a hand-sewn flag that reads, Beauty.

I imagine my banner embroidered with vines, and tiny bees and flowers, much like the pocket on a Mexican smock my mother used to wear in the 70s.  I'd be carrying it around while wearing the peacock-apron purchased in Oaxaca years ago, my pockets filled with fruit, my gloves and clippers.

Meanwhile, though, as the weekend recedes and the clock reminds me that it's getting to be time to move on, I stare at the jars of apricot jam we put up yesterday and marvel: really? we made that?

Whatever it is that you love, announce it.

Bear your banner high, with love-lit eyes.

We need you.

XX