Pristine . . .

I was sim-ply trying to add this im-age as my G-mail signa ture, hon-est! And, as it so often does,
my building frustration morphed itself into creative solution-making attempts and somehow landed here in the shape of yet another blog post . . .

I suppose I should tell the rest of the story--at least the public version--while I'm here . . .

That this photo exists is nothing sort of miraculous, in my opinion.  Years and years and a lifetime ago, when I was without a home (a rented condo, even one with a lake view, is not a home in my opinion), I bought three roses.  These were to be my front-steps-planters garden, faithful greeters of my weary soul after too-long, too-weary days of trying to sort out who I was and how to make my way to someday. . .

The first of these was Peace.  And Peace was the first to succumb to the overabundance of shade and tree roots in her new garden home in the haven I now call home.  I've replaced her . . . maybe three times?  The only Peace rose that has survived me, though, is the lovely cross-stitched blossom my mother gifted me with one Christmas.  A beautifully symbolic gift, given its history and hers and ours . . .So Peace now graces one wall of my dining room, blooming eternally where family comes together in those blessedly peaceful days between Christmas and New Years . . .

The second rose was Brigadoon.  I must admit that the name entranced me, bringing back fond memories of a movie of that name and of the friend I shared it with that long-ago college evening . . .  But I have since come to admire Brigadoon most for her courage to survive, to gift me with a single bloom each spring, each bloom more glorious than the last, as if she knows it will be her last.  For most of her life she has been a single stem, significantly eaten away at its base the last several of those years. Brigadoon bloomed for me this spring . . . as the trees above her were leafing out.

But Pristine, the third of these long-ago roses, did not . . .  And I thought, in the throes of midsummer's challenges, that she had moved on before I could let go of that elusive . . . hope? . . . that her survival represented.  So I let go, drifted, moved on, moved on again, lived as I was meant to live . . . I thought.

One bearably warm late August afternoon, I retreated with mountains of schoolwork to the back porch hammock swing.  Not sure how long I rocked and read before . . . I saw . . . her perennial, her pristinely beautiful gift to me . . .

?

old glass and new blossoms

to be happy about :-)

a "park" of my very own . . .

a home song

I find it interesting that this evening, for the second time in as many springs, I'm relieved to learn that I have not been "selected" for a professional opportunity. Both might have offered additional financial security--a position more immune from budget cuts or a second income to bolster rainy day accounts. But, even in this unsettling economy and with retirement on the not-too-distant horizon, I'm loving where I am. Maybe I reach out for those other possibilities just to ensure that I don't become complacent, lose my edge? Or maybe this is my Everest: I reach out because the opportunity is there?

Whatever the reason, both rejections gifted me back precious summer weeks I would have lost to work. And today, after two glorious afternoon hours puttering in my wilderness but wannabe well-groomed yard, I was especially grateful that I had not traded my summer for financial security before realizing, once again, how much this annual tussle with nature is an inherent part of who I am.

64. Happy 11th anniversary, home of mine! Looks like we'll be spending much of our sweet slow summer days together again after all :-)

I'm smiling. Are you?

October . . .

more quirks ;-)

43. cherishing crystal clear credit in chaotic times
44. owning too many books but ordering even more
45. taking summer clothes to the cleaners before the first leaf falls
46. investing in Ace braces and reaping wellness dividends
47. rediscovering apple butter
48. fueling imaginations with a forest face and a tree door
49. not having to do everything today
50. holding fast to someday . . .

rose of the week/month/year/decade/andbeyond?

I think it's been at least two years, if not three, since Brigadoon bloomed for me. Just last year I noticed that much of the bark and wood at her base had splinterchipped away. Natural aging, I guess. What more to expect of a rose that spent her youth containerbound before being tucked away in a deeply shaded, treerootbound, oft-neglected rose garden?

I took a picture of her single bud this spring, fully expecting that it might not mature. Was I ever wrong, in just this week when I needed a gentle reminder that miracles happen all around us every day of our lives . . .

April in Paris . . .

. . . is a rose. I bought two of them (yes, two bushes full of promise) today. One because today is Kimberly's birthday :-) Two because April (more likely June or July) in Paris is a someday dream we share.

This new for 2008 marvel has been on my musthave list since the first Jackson and Perkins rose catalog arrived in my mailbox last winter. The clincher, though was its parentage--yet another child of Pristine.

I seem to have a thing for "P" roses. Peace (but I have finally admitted I don't have what it takes to keep Peace alive). Promise (no longer available for purchase at any price but it's my personal icon on this computer). Any rose that's pink (which is why I decided to salvage Ultimate Pink today). And Pristine (see last summer's bloom above) . . .

Brigadoon, J&P's rose of the year in 1992, is another of Pristine's offspring.

13 springs ago--one of the more confusing, more difficult springs in my life--I bought two roses: Brigadoon and Pristine. Container-bound their first three, maybe even four, seasons, they became the anchors for my first rose garden here.

Too many other roses to count, to remember, have struggled and lost heart and hope and life in this too shady, too rootbound garden. Yet Brigadoon, a tiny shell of its former self, and frail but determined Pristine live on . . . touching my heart with their hope against hope against hope. . .

so now it's New Year's Eve. . . and I'm bloggin'

not your ordinary holiday, or is it?

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

Is the email copied below another inconvenient truth? Or perhaps simply a timely reminder that maybe I should make the effort to WATCH that DVD, assuming that I can find it . . .


I did have a very environmentally-friendly day--outside, reel mowing and pansy planting. I wonder about the Colorburst fertilizer though . . . but I only used a little bit, I promise!


Oh, and about that email . . .


Yesterday, Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on raising global environmental awareness, spreading the message in books and the Academy Award(R)-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." The popularity of these titles and other films such as "Planet Earth" and "March of the Penguins" proves there's no shortage of interest in the subject of our planet. As someone who's bought environment-related titles, you can find more books and DVDs on Al Gore and the environment below.

September and Parseltongue. . .

Yeah, it's September. . . and a 3-day weekend! I've already turned the calendars--porches and Liberty Enlightening the World--to new leaves.

Yes, the last three Harry Potter books were awesome--infinitely better than the first three (still have to read the 4th, the character development/coming of age one, or so I'm told). I'm still grieving for my lost hero (end of book 6) and, this misty September morning, wishing I knew how to speak in parseltongue.

I met a snake--the third of the summer. The first surprised me. Not much bigger than an earthworm. I watched it wriggle away. The second had an attitude. Tiny too, but it had to go. Snakes don't die easily. . .

This morning's was over a foot in length--big enough to command some respect, if not fear. I have mixed emotions about snakes. I remember the winter-sleeping copperhead that cost my brother half a wedding-ring finger (luckily not his arm or his six-years-young life!).. I remember the baby copperhead that fell out of the fish net (hung to dry in a tree) and onto my mother's head. I remember my own encounters with others of their species--BACK UP SLOWLY. DON'T ACT SCARED. WHEN YOU'RE FAR ENOUGH AWAY, RUN LIKE CRAZY. I'm still here, so apparently that worked.

But then there was Blackie, who wrapped himself around the vacuum cleaner in the dining room/hallway of our rustic mountain home when Jamie was a baby. Blackie, who kept the mice away. Blackie, whose silver shed skin came with us as a dual memo/trophy when we moved to South Carolina. We said he was a black snake. Apparently, or so I learned this year, thanks to Michael, he was a black RAT snake.

I really wanted that snake not to be there this morning, just inches from the yellow jacket nest that appears to have been abandoned without my intervention (or are there larva down there just waiting for the spring?). I wanted to eradicate the baby trees and vines that had sprouted there while I kept my distance (I decided maybe it was wise to respect a horde of yellow jackets) some of July and all of August. I asked this snake, very nicely, to move. He flicked his tongue but I haven't a clue what he said to me. . . He stayed. His turf.

So I looked him up, to give him a name. I think it's Thamnophis sirtalis, a mouthful for sure. Or should we call him garter snake? If he eats bugs I don't like, I might be thankful I spared him. If he eats earthworms--my woods are a fisherman's dream--I might think differently. . .

September, if not parseltongue. . . Glad it's here!

of June and fireflies . . .

I've started a second blog--haven't gone public with it yet though--called why i am NOT a writer. . . This has meant going waaaaaaay back in time, high school and college, Grainger and Duke, to discover what I've buried so deep all these years. Not exactly simple, not exactly pleasurable...just necessary in my quest to understand my own writing history so that maybe I can avoid repeating it with others.

But, in the midst of that shattered dream, I rediscovered, yes, simple pleasures. Looking out the stairwell window at dusk today. . .flickers of light in my oh-so-happy azalea thicket by the drive. Fireflies. My favorite Duke memories--ranking right up there with basketball (I'm having serious trouble getting past the first few pages of Last Shot at the moment!) and PP&M and Rubenstein--are fireflies in the magnolias on spring evenings on East Campus. . . Fireflies in my azaleas tonight. . . Yes!

It's been one of those years when the mind desperately needed physical therapy! My much neglected yard (thank you, Michelle and Rick, for the lawnmower resurrection) finally bubbled up to the top of the must-do-now list. I've been stung (three times, different days), poison ivied (probably not for the last time--found more of the demon to exorcise today), surprised by a snake (garter, not much bigger than some of my earthworms), scratched (monster vines with serious thorns and trash-can-lid tubers for roots), ant-bitten, muddied and sweated through and through. I've filled past capacity and hauled to the curb for pickup about 50 39-gallon trashbags of vines, prunings, roots, branches, and trees (the tall skinny types) that I've felled and chopped into sections trash pickup folks will accept. I've used about a pint of gasoline (need to remember to get some for the mower this week). The rest, except maybe the CO2 I exhaled in the process, has been environmentally-friendly me-power and hand tools.

I'm a real person again!

God has smiled on me. Rain, blessed rain. The grass, tentative at first, not knowing what to think about being force-fed after famine, is hopefully, eagerly even, exploring barren ground.

The "park", sloping away from the drive, and the gazebo behind it sold the house to me nine years ago. I began there, reclaiming established beds and the clearings between them. I've spread 50 bales of pinestraw and could easily spread 100 more. . . Maybe next year, after the leaves fall. . . But the woods out back had never, in all this time, reached the top of the list. Maybe one section here, another a year or two later, but clearing out all the undergrowth??? This will be the year. . .

Even being in class (perennial studentitis) last week and this has not diverted my gardener's sense of mission. . .

Oooh, and the 5 pounds I acquired while exercising only the mind last year? Gone, all gone. But enough sag and bulge remaining to amply fuel the mission . . .

Bees and ants making homes in the ground and Japanese beetles ravishing roses in planters out front and those white sucking things on evergreen leaves and stems everywhere. I've been seriously considering a yard-wide insecticide sweep. Until I saw fireflies in my azaleas tonight. . .

Simple pleasures. . .




"After" photos will be posted soon :)