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~front garden~
When I got back into town on Tuesday evening, I stopped at the front gate - and couldn't believe how much everything had grown over the long warm and sunny weekend. It's dry here - we're in need of a good rain, and I watered some of the beds this evening. This weekend needs to be one spent in the garden - the place is in desperate need of some attention.
~Flathead Lake, Montana, across from the Flathead Lake Brewing Company~
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I really liked Montana, but boy - you can't garden very much there, at least in the northwestern part of the state. First you're limited by region (and it's almost semi-arid by late summer), but then - if you don't have a tall fence up - deer mow down everything. Tonight as I was watering the garden (we're really dry right now), I couldn't help but think about how attached I am to gardening in the south, and our almost 12-month long growing season. There are irises blooming all over the place (all kinds) I'm still thinking and seeing Montana in my head - all day long - as I sat through a series of meetings, as I stood in my garden this evening (water hose in hand), as I prepared dinner tonight. I'm drinking water out of my Glacier Brewing Company glass (Polson, MT) and I'm still smiling about the woman who walked into the Flathead Lake Brewing Company and asked for a Miller Lite (the whole place stopped and turned to look at her - I mean, this is a place that has won international awards for it's beer).
~~~~~
At work today - being a Wednesday - at 12:30 pm we had lab meeting. My group was off the hook, since a student whose thesis committee I'm on wanted some input from a room full of opinionated microbiologists. Nonetheless, Katherine presented a poem - a rather nice one from a poet, Jim Harrison, that has spent many days in Montana. I hadn't heard of Harrison before, but I have decided this evening that I really like him, especially after reading the paragraph below that I found on his MySpace page:
I don’t want to teach anybody anything. Everybody’s got to figure it out for themselves. That’s my attitude anyway. Just read all that is good and then write. I’m shocked when I go around giving lectures, how little some people have read in these M.F.A. programs. It’s pretty startling. How can you know how to write unless you’ve read the best? That’s my attitude anyway. But it’s partly that our educational system sucks, so there you are. For every good university, there are 100 colleges that aren’t much good at all. Eat well; of course, avoiding the ninny diets and mincing cuisines that demonize appetite and make unthinkable a tasty snack of hog jowls. We're all going to die, might as well enjoy a little fat along the way. Pursue love and sex, no matter discrepancies of desire and age. Romance is worth the humbling. Doing it outdoors on stumps, in clearings and even swarmed by mosquitoes is particularly recommended. Welcome animals, especially bears, ravens and wolves, into your waking and dream life. An acceptance of our common creaturedom is essential not just to the health of the planet but to our ordinary happiness. We are mere participants in natural cycles, not the kings of them. And finally, love the detour. Take the longest route between two points, since the journey is the thing, a notion to which, contaminated by the Zen-fascist slogans of advertising ("just do it!"), we all pay lip service but few of us indulge. Rather than lighting out for territory, we ought to try living in it.
Here's the poem that Katherine read to us today...
Age Sixty-nine by Jim Harrison
I keep waiting without knowing
what I'm waiting for.
I saw the setting moon at dawn
roll over the mountain
and perhaps into the dragon's mouth
until tomorrow evening.
There is this circle I walk
that I have learned to love.
I hope one day to be a spiral
but to the birds I'm a circle.
A thousand Spaniards died looking
for gold in a swamp when it was
in the mountains in clear sight beyond.
Here, though, on local earth my heart
is at rest as a groundling, letting
my mind take flight as it will,
no longer waiting for good or bad news.
Often, lately, the night is a cold maw
and stars the scattered white teeth of the gods,
which spare none of us. At dawn I have birds,
clearly divine messengers that I don't understand
yet day by day feel the grace of their intentions.
~taken on the road heading towards Flathead Lake~
I've returned from Montana - after a nice long weekend there. It's a beautiful place. Woke up to snow several mornings (which I didn't mind at all) - stepped off the plane in Charleston early this evening and was hit by a wall of warm spring air.
I'm flying out to Montana tomorrow morning.
They're calling for rain and snow flurries tomorrow in Missoula. Low in the upper 20s.
It was about 80 here today.
Snow. The 20s.
It's the whole shoe thing, you know?
Enjoying a weekend with friends, then an invited seminar on Monday at the University of Montana.
Then back to South Carolina.
If you happen by, weed some - okay?
A garden filled with roses, an image taken tonight when it was getting close to being too dark to capture light. Roses that are beginning to encircle a few raised beds used to grow strawberries and brocolli and eggplant and whatever else I decide to grow. I use a pitchfork to turn over the soil in one of the raised beds tonight (they haven't been fully turned over since last fall) - and all I can smell is the fragrance of roses. The Pointer Sisters are captivated by a heron sitting on the branch of a tall pine. Stanley is with me. A beautiful late April evening.
Now there is a manuscript to edit, a talk to prepare.
~snowball Viburnum~
When I was young, the first house my parents bought (when I was just a few months old) had a large snowball viburnum in the front. We lived in the house for about 12 or 13 years, and I still remember that viburnum. I've wanted one ever since, and last fall finally put one in the ground. This spring it is covered in those wonderful, abundant flowers.
Chinese, japanese - I get all of the snowballs mixed up. This should help.
I am late, terribly late in fact, for May Dreams Gardens Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. I did take all of these images last weekend - so that is close to the 15th of April. It's the best I could do - late is better than never and all that stuff, right?
(I was number 144 to post their blooms. Wow!)
It's a busy - no - it's a chaotic time.
I have been spending more time in the garden - much needed time. I'm still weeding, mulching, transplanting - and I'm on a painful plant restriction diet.
"No plants until you've planted everything you still have in pots."
So far, so good. I have about four more things to plant.
Oh, but I included in that restriction -- seeds. I need to plant seeds and grow and nurture plants.
I have alot of seeds to plant.
I like planting.
~~~~~
~crimson clover, Trifolium incarnatum L.~
Last week I was at a student's doctoral dissertation defense, as a committee member. This student did a really nice job with her seminar - and her research will most likely result in 4-5 peer-reviewed publications. It was a solid defense. But the dissertation - well, the dissertation was fine except this student had absolutely NO IDEA how to use a semi-colon. It drove me nuts. There were semi-colons all over this document - in fact, there were more semi-colons than I have seen in my ENTIRE LIFE.
I kid you not.
So I told this student that she has to spend 15 minutes with the lab's Poet Laureate on the use of semi-colons. Which, ironically, was the same week that the lab's Poet Laureate, Katherine, read us a piece that was...oddly...quite timely.
QUIETUS by Orlando White
The zero is not a circle; it’s an empty clock. And the clock is an o which rolls to the other side of the page. But the c stuck between the b and d eats itself and the page will taste how desperate language is. If you peel a sheet of paper, you will find letters who have eaten themselves: the a who chewed itself until it became a dot on paper and the z who ingested itself until it was a tiny line on a page. Within the white spaces they have become inklings, miniature dark skulls, and black specks on paper. But they still move like the tiniest gears in a clock. And their bones are scattered like dry grains of ink on a white sheet. I think of their deaths: the stiff face of a choked letter, the broken jaw of an e, the throat of an f slit open, an i swallowed up to its torso, the dot bitten from a j, the letters of a sentence removed with teeth; and a sentence dipped in bleach until it becomes a skeleton, the bones thinning into calcium, the sockets of the skull discoloring into pale ink. And you will hurt it more if you try to slip its bones back through the flesh of ink or dress it back into its dry black clothes. So let the lower case i be a body under the dot: a naked letter on the page.
[Originally published in Oregon Literary Review, Summer/Fall 07]
~~~~~
~live oak catkins~
How can I write about blooms in April without mentioning THE most abundant inflorescence in my coastal South Carolina garden? It's been literally snowing catkins today - as if a rare southern snowstorm has been blowing through - there is measurable accumulation and sidewalks that need to be swept. There are six large live oaks in my garden - and unless you've experienced a live oak first drop it's leaves... and then it's catkins in the spring...well, I've lived in Michigan and it's alot like a blizzard.
But I'm looking at this all differently this year. I've decided that if you time it just right - and get all of the leaves blown/raked before the catkins start falling - that you can let the catkins fall, stay on the ground - disintegrate (especially if there is a good rain, which hasn't happened yet) - and provide a natural fertilizer to the lawn! Now, being a scientist, I quickly did a literature search on the nutrient composition of live oak catkins and I found...NOTHING.
I consider this a wide open area of research. It could revolutionize lawn care in the south.
~~~~~
~'Blossomtime'~
~~~~~
The roses have awoken...in a big way. Individual fragrances are floating around the garden on light breezes, mingling with that of the texas mountain laurel and banana shrub. When I arrived home this evening and let the dogs out - I found myself just standing there, near all of the roses in the side garden - trying to memorize their fragrance. Eyes closed, sense of smell all that was really necessary. Such a nice way to distance oneself from the frustrations of the work day.
~~~~~
~~~~~
It's been a busy day, and tomorrow will be busier. Today there was a student's dissertation defense and discussions regarding a manuscript and decisions needing to be made on whether to submit another grant (next week - and yes, we decided to give it a try). There were calls to centers for aging in Charlottesville, so that my brother and I can take my father there to get a better evaluation of his health than he is currently getting by his primary care (family) physician. His short term memory was exceptionally bad over the Easter weekend - so much so that my brother and I are very concerned. It's a difficult week for him, for all of us, since tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my mother's passing. One year ago tonight I left at 2 am in the morning to race up I-95 to say goodbye to my mother. A whole year has gone by - at the same time it feels like years and only yesterday.
~~~~~
But for tonight, I'll be grateful for roses. I wish I had the energy to dig up their names here, but I don't - so you will just have to enjoy them on their own terms. As for me, I still have some work to do. There is always more work to do.
~~~~~
~My Aunt's strawberry patch, Adam's Acres, Dinwiddie County, Virginia~
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On my drive up to Virginia last Friday, I stopped off at the home of one of my Mother's sisters - the sister who has for years, along with her husband and youngest son, farmed 'Adam's Acres'. I remember when I was young we would go and visit them, and they would take us out on a pick-up truck, with the tailgate down, and we'd yell when we would see a watermelon or canteloupe that we liked. They've diversified alot since then, and now have a large selection of pick-your-own vegetables and fruits that include strawberries and blueberries. And sometimes, if you stop by late in the summer (and you are a relative), they'll give you a bag of baby butterbeans, already shelled - and boy what a treat that is! It was too early for them to be picking strawberries this spring, but they had picked enough to make a delicious strawberry shortcake - which of course I was offered the minute I walked inside the door.
I've always fantasized about being a farmer. Often, in my own very special delusional way, I refer to my own garden as producing 'crops', and joke about a roadside stand that would consist of one pomegranate, two cups of blueberries, a dozen spears of asparagus, and six asian pears. When I stop and visit my Aunt, I get to talk 'real' farming, and I love to hear them talk about tilling the soil (or, alternatively, not tilling the soil), whether the spring was early or late, and how much water was in the irrigation ponds. I'm envious of their tractors. I'm envious that they are not glued to a computer or stuck in an office. They work really hard - and it's a 24/7 job - and some years are bombs - but I also know that they still look out over their fields with pride and wouldn't be caught doing anything else.
If your near southern/central Virginia, why don't you stop by? And if you do - ask them about growing garbanzo beans. I keep telling them to grow garbanzo beans, and they just look at me and smile. But as long as those butterbeans keep coming, I don't mind.
~a yellow camellia leaf, diseased~
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I was thinking tonight about how we associate disease, and agents of disease, as something distasteful, ugly perhaps - when in actuality, many causative agents are quite beautiful, groups of cells simply living their lives - taking advantage of opportunities when they arise.
I was struck tonight by the beauty of fungal growth on a few yellowing lower leaves on one of camellias.
~~~~~
Tomorrow I head to Virginia to spend Easter weekend with my father. My brother is flying down from Vermont, so my father is thrilled that we will both be home. So yes, I'm back on the road again, after another busy week. But this is good, and important - and I will most likely spend much of Saturday working in my mother's flower beds. I promised her that I would care for them, so it's time that I spent some good hours in my other garden.
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