Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

~sunflower seeds, in need of planting~

In a somewhat feeble attempt to improve my mood, I decided this evening to gather together all of my packages of sunflower seeds - some open, some not, some collected last year from my own garden, and some seeds from my Mother's garden with little notes written on them.  A few years worth of seeds.

~~~~~

(Might I digress?  There are definite 'triggers' in the grieving process I have discovered, and for me personally, one of them is my Mother's handwriting.  She had beautiful handwriting - and when I run across something that simply says 'about 20 seeds' in her handwriting - written on an already opened package of Burpee's 'Sunset' - tears immediately fall).

~~~~~

Burpee:  Lemon Eclair Hybrid, Autumn Beauty, Vanilla Ice, Sunset, Bouquet Mix, Chianti Hybrid, Del Sol Hybrid, Dorado Hybrid, Tall Border Mix, Lemon Chiffon, Moonwalker.

Ferry Morse:  Lemon Queen, Mammoth, Red Sun, Double Sun Gold, Autumn Beauty, Summer Sun.

Seeds of Change:  Tarahumara.

~~~~~

So this weekend I will clean out the large raised vegetable bed (yes, the one that still has a few carrots and onions and cloves of garlic in the soil) and I will add some compost and leaves and I will them plant as many of these sunflowers as I can.  I was thinking...perhaps I should staggering the plantings, so that I will have blooms throughout the warm southern fall?  But no.  I want an explosion of blooms, as close together as they possibly can (genetics withstanding) - I want an October filled with sunflowers.

~~~~~

The Sunflowers by Mary Oliver

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines

creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy

but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young -
the important weather,

the wandering crows.
Don't be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,

which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds -
each one a new life!

hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.

 

~okay, I think everything is gonna be alright~

~~~~~

Holy Cheesus!

~the continued audacity of not hoping~

~~~~~

Two herons, near Station 28, fighting over a small pool of water filled with small fish.

~~~~~

Yesterday, in the early evening - there were rain showers all around me, but my own piece of land remained dry.

Yes, I quit hoping for rain.  (And it didn't rain...perhaps I'm onto something here?). 

~~~~~

And then I started thinking about something that someone wrote to me yesterday, about Dante's Divine Comedy and..."All hope abandon ye who enter here." Should it be placed over the gates of hell...or heaven?  Or simply be used as a new subtitle for this blog?

I wonder what Emily Dickinson would say.  I'll perhaps think of this, throughout my day (in lieu of thinking about other more important things).

~~~~~

Heaven is What I Cannot Reach! by Emily Dickinson

Heaven is what I cannot reach!
The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopless hang,
That "heaven" is, to me.

The color on the cruising cloud,
The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
There Paradise is found!

~~~~~

Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~~~~~

Hell by Sri Chinmoy (excerpt from 'Dance of Life Part 4')

Hell is a thing like doubt.
Hell is a thing like jealousy.

Hell is an animal like a panther.
Hell is an animal like a tiger.

Hell is a man like the poorest beggar.
Hell is a man like the fiercest brute.

Hell is a road paved with good intentions.
Hell is a road that compels us to think of perfection.

~~~~~

Two Kinds of Hell by Charles Bukowski 



I sat in the same bar for 7 years, from 5 a.m.
(the day bartender let me 
in 2 hours early)
to 2 a.m. 


sometimes I didn't even remember going back
to my room 


it were as if I were sitting on the barstool
forever 


I had no money but the drinks kept
arriving
to them I wasn't the bar 
clown
but the bar fool
but at times a fool will find a greater
fool 
to
admire him,
and,
it was a crowded
place 


actually, I had a viewpoint: I was waiting for
something 
extraordinary to
happen 


but as the years wasted on
nothing ever did unless I
caused it: 


broken bar mirrors, a fight with a 7 foot
giant, a dalliance with a 
lesbian, many things
like the ability to call a spade a spade and 
to
settle arguments that I did not
begin and etc. and etc. and etc. 


one day I just upped and left the
place 


like that 


and I began to drink alone and I found the company
quite all right 


then, as if the gods were bored with my peace at
heart, knocks began upon 
my door: ladies
the gods had sent the ladies to the
fool 


and the ladies arrived one at a time and when it ended with
one
the 
gods immediately--without allowing me any respite--sent
another 


and each began as a flash of miracle--even the bed--and the
good ended 
up
bad 


my fault, of course, yes, that's what they told
me 


but I remembered the 7 years in the bar, I hardly ever bedded
down with 
anybody 


the gods just won't let a man drink alone, they are jealous of
his simple 
strength and salvation, they will send the lady
knocking upon that door
I 
remember all those cheap hotels, it were as if the women
were one: the 
delicate little rap on the wood and then:
"oh, I heard you playing that 
music on your radio...we're
neighbors, I'm down at 603 but I've never 
even seen you in
the hall..." 


"come on in..." 


and there go your balls and your sanctity, Men's Liberation,
they say, is 
not needed
and then you remember the bar
when you walked up behind the 7 
foot giant and knocked his
cowboy hat off his head, yelling:
"I'll bet you 
sucked your mother's nipples until you were
12 years old!" 


somebody in the bar saying: "hey, sir, forget it, he's a mental
case, he's 
an asshole, he doesn't know what he is
saying!" 


"I know EXACTLY what I am saying and I'll say it again:
I'll bet you 
sucked..." 


he won but you didn't die, not at all the way you died when the
gods 
arranged to get all those ladies knocking and you went for
the first flash of 
miracle 


the other fight was more fair: he was slow, stupid and even a
little bit 
frightened and it went well for quite a good while,
just like with the ladies 
those gods
sent 


the difference being, I thought I had a chance with the
ladies 


from "Third Lung Review" - 1992 

~the audacity of not hoping~

~~~~

A sunflower...

(a slice of one that reseeded in the neglected vegetable bed in the side garden)

...showing off it's many colors.

~~~~

Hope.

...to cherish a desire with anticipation, to desire with expectation of obtainment, to expect with confidence...trust.  A dictionary's definition.

I was thinking today about how much of what we observe in our lives is a narrow slice - a slice of a friend, a slice of bread, a slice of insight, a slice of life.  Slices of pies, slices of cakes.  A slice of pizza.  Maybe we long for more, wish for it, hope for it - but often it's the slice that we get.

So it goes.  Fleeting experiences, plates that are filled to overflowing, confusing slices, no room for more than a slice, mysterious slices of the world.

~~~~~ 

Oddly (but perhaps not so?) -- Barack Obama's campaign based on 'Hope' bugs me.  Maybe his book based on hope bugs me too.  Perhaps Wikipedia's thoughts on Hope reminded me of why:

Hopefulness is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive attitude.   

Again, from Wikipedia:

In his speech addressing the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama said:

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?  John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope![4]

I have grown cynical.  I don't think hope alone brings us much of anything, although perhaps it can soften the edges of our emotional worlds.  Does that make me a terrible person?  I would hope not (irony!).  I am paying close attention to Barack Obama and his campaign, and I am trying, genuinely trying, to see past the hope.  Optimism I can take - so bring on the optimism (his trip abroad was optimistic I think).

So, is it odd not to hope?  Should I write a book on The Audacity of Not Hoping?  Would anyone buy it, much less read it?  Perhaps this is just what is left in me after a year of loss and a summer of difficulties and disappointments.  Perhaps this is okay.  Others might think so, perhaps the newly appointed Library of Congress' 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry might think so.   

~~~~~

Hope by Kay Ryan

What's the use
of something
as unstable
and diffuse as hope—
the almost-twin
of making-do,
the isotope
of going on:
what isn't in
the envelope
just before
it isn't:
the always tabled
righting of the present.

~~~~~

~of little consequence~

It's Monday morning.

(Please tell me it isn't so.  After a weekend spent with three sets of different out-of-town guests, I'm not ready for a Monday morning).

Here's an option:  I could take the day off.  Now there's a thought!

(I wonder if the Station 28 heron out on Sullivans Island ponders such things.  I do believe he ponders...but I do hope he ponders about things that are much more important than my ponderings...).

It's obviously a Monday morning. 

~the common thing~

A heron on Sullivans Island, near Station 28.

~~~~~

Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond by Mary Oliver

So heavy
is the long-necked,
long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks

of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself--
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn't a miracle

but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.

~somewhere near Station 28~

Sometimes, often times, a late afternoon/early evening spent at the beach goes a long, long way towards making one feel that life is just a bit better.

Sullivans Island, somewhere close to Station 28.

I love watching these barrier islands change.

Now the sand bar - the one that I used to swim out to (that was usually covered during high tide), is starting to get colonized with plants.  There were house finches flitting from plant to plant -  obviously something was attracting them.  Some kind of insect.  Those plants weren't around the last time I was there (and I don't think it was that terribly long ago) - and now there are plants and finches.  Imagine that. 

Jungles, Lawns, and Last Lectures

It's a jungle out there.

Boy, after the past 36 hours that I've had - that's an understatement.

I'm in a pretty shitty mood.  Need to step back, gain some perspective, make a plan.

They say the corporate world is a jungle, but...academia? 

There are no words.

Truly.

So what can I do...tonight?  While waiting for a friend from graduate school (and her daughter) to arrive from out-of-town?  I'll try to think about other things.

The garden, life, living.

~~~~~

I haven't been so good at reading other blogs lately, I've maybe snatched glimpses of text here and there, but honestly, I just haven't had time.  I don't like that feeling - of having no time - but I'm just in no mood to go into that now.  We all know what that feeling is, and we all know that it sucks.  But - a week (or so?) ago I came across a post at Garden Rant that sent me to a great New Yorker piece titled 'Turf War' (by Elizabeth Kolbert).

(Now, I found all of this a bit embarrassing - because I'm reading the online New Yorker piece - when, in fact, the actual magazine was sitting in a pile of mail on my kitchen counter.  Also, this was the infamous New Yorker issue - 21 July 2008 - with the 'The Politics of Fear' cover - by Barry Blitt.  And might I just say, that I didn't get all of the craziness?  I loved the cover.  Yeah, old news, I know.  But isn't what the New Yorker does best, what we WANT it to do best - is satire?  I'm with 3D on this.)

So, there I go - distracting myself - from what I wanted to ramble on foolishly about:  turf. 

I like lawns.  But I like them further north - in places where you are compelled to take your shoes off, to go barefoot, places where you look down and you want to just sit, better yet - places where you want to lie down on your back, with your arms spread out and your fingers moving across the tops of the grass, enjoying the coolness, the fragrance.  I spent alot of my childhood doing just that, and I don't think I could deny such a pleasure to future generations.

But that was another life - my Michigan days, or when I visit my parents home in Michigan, where my Dad's back lawn is soft and cool.  I now life in the south, where grass is coarser, more prickly - where fire ants stake their claim to new lands with flags that sting.  I haven't really had a fire ant problem in awhile -- (knock on wood) - but lawns aren't quite as exciting down here along my piece of the coastline.  That being said - I can't imagine not having some of my one acre in lawn.  I like the expanse of it - I like the option of playing croquet...or of just sitting...I like the cleanliness of a lawn, the simplicity of it - while so much of my garden is a jungle by this time of the summer, the lawn is still under control, quiet, content. 

But...

Down here in coastal South Carolina I have never once fertilized my lawn, or applied pesticides to it.  It isn't a perfect lawn, nor do I wish it to be.

~~~~~ 

In my new 'landscape plan', which has been made official (since my architherapist has now transcribed it onto paper in that architectural way) -- I am reducing the amount of lawn on my .82 acres by about 60%, that is, only 40% of my 'acreage' (God, I wish) will be in lawn.  I'd like to get it down to 20%, and I might try - but that just depends on my mulch budget, which at this moment, looks limited.  Such is life.

However, one area of my lawn is sacred.  For all sorts of reasons - the live oaks are in a circle (which, according to some pagan friends, suggests that it is a holy place) and in the beds surrounding the live oaks - well, this is where I've buried my cats and dogs.  This area is also protected from the sun by light ('dappled') shade provided by the live oaks - so the lawn is pretty decent here. 

Except for (depending on how you look at it):  The Trench of Dan.

The Dan, The Now-No-Longer-New-Yet-Still-Wild Wild Dog, has 'created' (oh, come on, it's art) a lovely trench that was, most likely, a mole trail at one point.  Each day she goes to the trench, digging a bit here, a bit there - and while I know that I could, perhaps even should, tell her no, I simply can't.  For whatever reason, a dog digging a trench in a sacred lawn surrounded by live oaks is just somehow - appropriate.  There is also the observation that dogs and digging is somehow primal, and that there is a joy in 'the dig' that one should simply not crush.  I just can't do it.  So in the middle of my very best area of lawn, there is - and there will likely remain, The Trench of Dan.  Think of it as one of the Great Wonders, or akin to the Grand Canyon.  It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

(But again I distract myself.  I wanted to talk about the Kolbert article on turf in the New Yorker.  It's a really good article.  Even if you don't care one bit about turf, you'll probably enjoy it).

~~~~~

I purchased a new lawn mower last week.  Actually, I purchased one, it worked for a few days, then the self-propelled function stopped working (which is why I wanted a new lawn mower in the first place) and I had to go and turn it in for another one exactly like it.  Yes, it's a shiny green John Deere.

For years I've had folks telling me to get a riding lawn mower.  I have no desire to have one - and so for years I've mowed my lawn with a gasoline-powered push mower.  I don't mind it (as long as it is a decent lawn mower), there's a zen thing going on when you mow - and with my new mower, I can walk faster, much faster, than with the old one - so mowing actually isn't something that takes days to do.  I laughed when I came across the Lorrie Otto quote in the article:   

“If they’re so large that you cannot use just a little hand-push lawn mower, then I truly think they are evil,” Otto once said of lawns. “Really evil.”

I think that Lorrie Otto has a point.  Now, my shiny John Deere is most likely not a 'little hand-push lawn mower' like Otto was thinking about - but at least I'm not sitting on my ass (pardon me, like I said earlier, it's been a bad day) when I'm using it.  I'm also not holding a beer in one hand (although, that doesn't sound like a completely terrible idea) and yes, I'm using fossil fuels and yes, there is exhaust and yes - to whatever else.  So yes, there you have it - I'm a mower of lawns.

But there are pleasures in life.  One should not tell their dog to not dig a lovely trench, nor should one tell their child 'no' when they ask to paint their own room.

(Here I go:  Once again, I'm distracted from writing about turf).

~~~~~

Randolph Frederick Pausch passed away today (you can read more about him here).  I was terribly sad to hear about this, knowing that it was inevitable, knowing full well that he was a stranger to me - but also fully aware that I am no longer a stranger to cancer, and how it impacts lives.  (Personally, I'm pretty tired of it all).  It made me think about my Mother - who, although much less publicly, fought her cancer bravely, and lived the last year of her life as fully as she could.  Weeks before my Mother died, she was still saying that 'if she could only feel a bit better, that she would bake a cake for her friend' - a friend battling a terminal lung disease.  During my last visit to Virginia, I baked that cake on behalf of my Mom, and my Father took it to my Mother's friend. 

Although I had heard of Pausch and his 'last lecture', I had not listened to it until today.  Perhaps it was a good day to listen to it - perhaps it wasn't - all I know is that it's important to decide at some point in your life what kind of person you are going to be, and hopefully that will be good - and hopefully that will keep you going when things are difficult.  One hopes such things.  This quote in Pausch's last lecture (you can find the transcript here, or see the video below) really struck a chord with me today:

'Don't bail.  The best of the gold's at the bottom of barrels of crap.'

I needed to hear that today. 

Pausch has left quite a legacy - and as a fellow academician, all I can say is that he is what we should all be - kudos to a life well-lived.

~~~~~

~simplifying~

No, I'm not living in the Airstream yet.

But might I just say...that it's looking better and better every day?

Front Door Light Moth Series, Part XIV

I'm sure that you've been on the edge of your seats, wondering...what's the next front door light moth gonna look like?

Well, now you know.  It was discovered this morning, clinging to the edge of the storm door. 

We're all clinging to something, I suppose. 

~~~~~

I don't know the name of this little fuzzy thing, but I can say that it has a very dainty little black front...paw?  (I know, I've got a computer, I could look this sort of thing up, but I've got a list of things to-do so long that I just can't imagine adding another thing to it.)

But...tonight I did come across this South Carolina Moths Searchable Checklist.  Perfect!  Well, sort of.  And maybe one day, one of my Front Door Light moths will make their list of South Carolina moths.  Now how cool would that be?  That could be a new life goal.  Heck, it could become my ONE and ONLY life goal - now, there's a thought.  (And there is also the possibility that it is my only thought - which is scary indeed).