Daddy and his girls . . .

I remember . . .

the travels of Flat Garrett . . .

Flat Garrett has been my almost constant companion since he arrived in my mailbox on Tuesday. I have to send him home to Pennsylvania, probably on Wednesday, so that he can tell his friends at Oakdale Elementary what he's been up to in this faraway state.


Click on the title of this post to read F.G.'s letters home if you want to know what he really thinks of his week with Grandmommy!

Flat Garrett
taking a break
from pansy planting
this afternoon.

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!

Cassie is 1

Don't let the bow fool you. She's a legend in her own time!




Smile for Daddy :)





A feast fit for a [medieval] princess - no fork necessary!

little girls . . .

Cassandra Eve, loved books before she walked. . .




How soon they grow up. . . Kira Rose, a kindergartener at last :)





Can you believe Kelsey's in high school???

Reflections: Honoring United Airlines Flight 93

On a crisp-like-spring July Saturday, I visited the Flight 93 memorial chapel--Thunder on the Mountain--and the temporary memorial at the crash site outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. My daughter--who was on a plane the morning of September 11 and who attended the first anniversary memorial at this site--and her family were with me that morning. The simplicity of that informal memorial site--the faded angels of freedom, wildflowers bowing their lacy heads toward sacred ground, handcrafted tributes from children, grafitti celebrating the lives of heros. . . How could a formal national memorial, such as the one projected to be dedicated on the 10th anniversary of this loss, improve on such simple perfection?

The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything

One of my best reading memories was that weekend when Mason, not yet 4, delightedly joined me in a choral reading of The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. And yes, that now-10-year-old tween hasn't been afraid of much since!

Michelle, do you still have the video :) ?

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 :)

Simple pleasures....

My two boys were at their dad's house on Mother's Day. Sunday, May 13th, at 0745, the phone rings. It is my 10 yo son Mason. He says "Happy Mother's Day!" My heart smiles. Then my 7 yo son Campbell gets on the line...."Happy Mother's Day". My heart smiles wider.

Monday, May 14th, at 2:15pm, I pick Campbell up from school. He has in hand a booklet for me, with each page colored and precious words written on it. Here are some of the phrases he wrote:

"This to let you no I love you Mama so much and happy mothers day and I love my mama so so so so so so so so much"

"My mom's the very best at: Loveing."

"I love my mom most when: She cooks becaus she makes it so good."

"These words describe my mother:

M....Mobile
O....Outstanding
T....Together
H....Happy
E....Entertaining
R....Respected"

Monday, May 14th 2:25pm: I pick up Mason from the elementary school. In hand is a grocery bag containing two bedraggled pots of flowers he's been keeping for me since Friday. A pot of marigolds and a pot containing a Gerbera Daisy. I hug Mason, and he says "Mama!! Not at school!!!" He then says "That's a daisy. I asked to make sure, because I know you love daisies"

Simple pleasures....a child's love for his mother.