Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

First Frost (on the Bok Choy)

 
I returned last night from Thanksgiving spent with my Dad in Virginia - and woke up this morning with the first frost of the season in my garden.  It's a light frost, and only evident in the open area, where my vegetable beds and large (and grower larger) perennial border is - much of the garden is protected by the outstretched arms of the live oaks and bald cypresses and sweet gums. 

I've always loved the first frost - and I think it's because when I was in Michigan, in graduate school, the first frost was usually a heavy one, and made the fields around the farmhouse I was renting look magical.  It would be as if, overnight, the entire field was decorated - each blade of grass glistened, each seed pod was etched in crystal.  That first frost ushered in a new season, but with such beauty that you scarely noticed the cold.

Louise Odier

 
~Louise Odier (1851 Bourbon)~

Blossomtime

 
~Blossomtime (1951, Mannerly climber, obtained from Ruth Knopf)~

Rosa moschata

 
~Rosa moschata (Pre 1700 Musk)~

Mutabilis

 
~Mutabilis (Prior to 1894 China)~

Marie Pavie

 
~Marie Pavie (1888 Polyanthana)~

Old Blush

 
~Old Blush (1752 China)~

Souvenir de la Malmaison

 
~Souvenir de la Malmaison (1843 Bourbon)~

Reine des Violettes (and a poem)

 
~Reine des Violettes (1860 Hybrid Perpetual)~

~~~~~

Last night I went to Michael McFee's poetry reading, sponsored by The Poetry Society of South Carolina.  It was held in the lovely Charleston Library Society building (164 King Street).  He read numerous poems - but not the one below, that I found online and enjoyed.  Hopefully you will too.  

Holding Hands by Michael McFee

After weeks of yearning
half-taps and near-grasps,
my sweaty palm found hers
and we made a leaky basket
of our interlaced fingers
and that was it, hallelujah,
finally we were holding hands
in public, we were shaking
sideways on a visual contract
everybody could understand,
I was hers and she was mine,
the two of us had begun
becoming one clasped flesh,
now we were happily coupled
from the supple wrists down,
we were carrying the pet
with two backs between us
as if we'd never before
squeezed another human
in such a meaningful way,
as if she had never seized
her tall anxious mother
when first learning to walk
or cross a lethal street,
that firm grip saving her,
as if I would never clutch
a dying father's calluses
in cardiac intensive care
and feel our shared pulse,
the mutual prayer of blood,
as if she and I would never
tire of each other's touch
and try to figure out how
to escape this embarrassing
collision of crinkled skin,
this padded cage of bones,
these too-long opened fists
before somebody passing by
mistook for love our resigned
inability to quite let go.