Calm and still mantis,
passerbys oblivious.
Heads are devoured.
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photos
My gift to you
Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful;
they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.
~Luther Burbank
You’re welcome.
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Sermons in stones
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt,
finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones, and good in everything.
~ William Shakespeare
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Woman watches cat watch rabbit
Slow news day on the homestead.
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If you move it, they will come
For years our main bird feeder hung off a branch near the trunk of our red maple. We had a great view from our dining room window and spent many happy hours watching the birds. The good news is our maple tree has thrived in our yard (our one and only true success with planting trees at this house), but the bad news is that we could no longer see the feeder due to all the growth.
Out of sight equaled out of mind, and filling the feeder became hit and miss. For the most part, the birds gave up on us.
Today we purchased a feeding pole and moved the feeder to its new location outside the other dining room window.
The feeder is now located next to the stump from the ash tree that resided there before succumbing to our bad tree juju.
The feeder is now also located close to where our bird bath was situated. We foolishly left our heated bird bath out there all season and it fell victim to the same hail storm that destroyed our roof. We were (and still are) sure there’s another unheated bird bath somewhere in this house, but we’ve been unable to find it. So today we finally caved in and bought another one (which Zippy insists means we will find the missing bath), and set it up on the patio.
The insurance company is replacing our heated bath, but we won’t put that one out until the temperatures drop.
Now all that’s left to do is sit back and wait for the birds to find us again.
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Friday Haiku
Rain makes green grasses,
lush suburban lawn.
Fungi invasion.
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Garden gone mad
I’ve neglected my flower gardens this year and it’s very crowded out there, both front and back yards. The thistles and bindweed are giving the perennials a run for their money. I spent two hours out there today working on one small area in back, and it still looks like a garden gone mad.
Asters, day lilies, sedum, yarrow, and three shrubs that have run amok.
It’s a vicious cycle:
I’m overwhelmed by the mess
and avoid going out there
which means more stuff grows out of control
which I then avoid.
Some women fantasize having a cabana boy,
but I dream of Chance the gardener.
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Friday Haiku
A rabbit at rest
eyes looking to the future
escape route all mapped.
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Channeling Muhammad Ali
I must dig deep to find the essence I’ve overlooked, hoping that as I revise I don’t trample the delicate structure already in place.
Gotta float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
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All our exploring
Just finished a Skype session with Zebu who is in Sweden. He’s been there about ten days now and feeling more settled, especially after getting this issue resolved. I carried the laptop around the house so he could see the dogs and cats in their various poses of slumber and he told us of his many adventures.
The son who demanded I hold him for the first year of his life now eats breakfast paste from a tube and purposely gets lost in an unfamiliar city.
Who knew?
Marcel curled up next to my weight bench that’s covered with the T-shirt Zebu designed for his 6th birthday.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
~ T. S. Eliot
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O pioneer woman
Zippy and I just returned from a hike in the open space. We walked up the street a little ways and were out on the trails.
Invasive mulleins in the foreground.
Unfortunately, I started having discomfort in one of my toes and guessed that the neighboring nail was cutting into the skin. We stopped so I could take off my boot and sock and, sure enough, my toe was bloody. So I found a small rock and used it as a file to grind down the nail’s sharp edge. It worked! For the first time ever I had faith that I could’ve survived more than an afternoon in Lonesome Dove (contrary to a friend’s long ago teasing).
Zippy and I continued on our hike. There was so much cool stuff to see (flowering thistles and seeded-out knapwood plants and bright red rose hips and wildflowers and hawks and songbirds), and I kicked myself for not bringing camera and binoculars. But Zippy used his phone camera for these shots, and I’m glad to have documentation of our lovely hike on this August afternoon.
Another mullein invading the space on the right side of photo.
This photo doesn’t do justice to the thicket of white stalks which reminded me of birch trunks but is probably wild parsley or wild parsnip or something like that?
I’m so very grateful for open space that allows me to clear my mind and ease my soul.
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A little bit of blue
Last night I found out I wasn’t selected as a Pitch Wars mentee and I admit to feeling down. I went to bed thinking I was a loserhead. Then I woke up this morning and reread feedback I’d received from one mentoring team last night, and the wheels began turning. When another mentor sent feedback, one of her comments dovetailing nicely with a bit from the earlier critique, the wheels in my head started cranking in earnest.
Did I agree with everything written? Nope.
Did I have AHA moments as I read their comments? Yep.
Can I quit this manuscript when it’s within my power to strengthen it? Nope.
So does this mean I’m embarking on yet another round of revisions? Yep.
The season’s last clematis bloom.
I exchanged emails with a writer friend about all this and he was a bit horrified that I’m revisiting this manuscript for the umpteenth time. His exact words: I think you’re the type of person who puts a band-aid on just to rip it off!
But that’s the writing life: patches of blue poking through the clouds, an occasional burst of sunshine, and a steady stream of self-inflicted pain.
So it goes.
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Rainy days and Wednesdays
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
~ Toni Morrison
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I can hear her breathing
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
~ Arundhati Roy
Our blue flax has bloomed again. Rebirth is possible.
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The ultimate sophistication
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
~ Leonardo da Vinci
The last blooming coreopsis in my garden.
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Thankful Thursday: These Guys
Wildebeest and Zebu a couple days ago, working the camera in their unique ways.
(In keeping with the spirit of Rio Olympics, Batman stuck it on the dismount!)
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Wildebeest migration
On Saturday, Wildebeest drove for six hours to come home and see his brother before Zebu leaves for ten months in Sweden. (In the time-honored tradition of all young adults, Wildebeest brought his dirty laundry with him.)
Zoey keeping watch on Wildebeest’s hamper and work shirts.
A few minutes ago Wildebeest hugged us all goodbye, loaded up his clean and folded laundry, and headed back home. He’s leaving one home for another.
I’m hyper-aware that whenever I refer to this, the childhood home we made for our sons, as HOME, I run the risk of minimizing the lives our children are creating for themselves. But I also want them to know they are always welcome here and will always have a home with Zippy and me. This is their home. We are their home. So I use “home” to refer to here and there, wherever there may be.
Wildebeest is currently on the road, migrating back to the life he’s chosen for himself. I miss him already, but will see him the next time he comes home.
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
~ Matsuo Basho
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It was 24 years ago today
Zippy and I got married on Hatcher Pass in Alaska on August 15, 1992. My childhood friend, my best friend, Scott, served as our marriage commissioner and performed our ceremony.
Anne, whom we’d we met in a black and white photography class at UAA, was our close friend who acted as the hardworking wedding photographer. Bob and Liz were adventurous friends Zippy called a week in advance to ask to be our witnesses.
Scott, Tracy, Zippy, Bob, and Liz. If you look closely in the background, you will also see tourists watching the ceremony.
It was a bit chilly up there on the pass, but the day’s emotions kept me warm. Here we are with Scott and Anne when she got a brief respite from photography duties.
Scott, Anne, Tracy, and Zippy.
And here we are with Scott who’d traveled from Colorado to Alaska to officiate at our wedding despite serious health issues. He died in late December of that year.
All smiles.
I miss him so. But twenty-four years ago today, he helped bring a whole lotta love and laughter. All our friends made it a truly wonderful day.
Happy Anniversary, Zippy.
I love you.
*smooch*
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Tenacious R Us
I’m a perennial gardener which means that the flowers I’ve planted are supposed to come back every year. Some, like the coreopsis that once bloomed long and bright throughout my beds, suddenly stopped blooming. All of them, at the same time, disappeared from my garden. The same thing happened with the exuberant clumps of blanket flower that used to bloom next to my driveway and were the the envy of my neighborhood. Here today, gone tomorrow.
But those are exceptions. The vast majority of my flowers come back each year which is great because I’m lazy. And cheap. I don’t like having to plant year after year and I don’t want to pay a bunch of money for flowers that will only be around a few months.
For a number of years I did plant annuals in clay pots and place them around my patio and down the steps. It was a lot of work and cost a bunch of money, and I had to remember to water them all the time because it gets extremely hot out there in the late afternoon. So I just kinda allowed that aspect of my gardening to fade away and left the empty clay pots stacked in my basement.
However, one huge pot remains outside year-round.
This is a photo from yesterday and the petunias blooming there are the result of the last planting which was 2-3 years ago. Those petunias haven’t gotten the memo that they’re annuals. They keep coming back. They refuse to give up.
They’re tenacious,
they prevail,
and I feel an undeniable kinship with them.
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This may or may not be evidence
Zebu has completed two years of college and is getting ready to study abroad for the next year. He just finished sorting through an accumulation of notebooks, folders, and binders filled with paper from high school and the last two years.
He came across personal notes that made him cringe, Calculus test scores he’d rather forget, and class notes from his all-time favorite class so far, a Latin American history course.
Here’s something I rescued from the recycle pile:
He believes it’s from a high school English class and as he held it out for me to see he said:
“This may or may not be evidence of me cheating on a vocab test.
I honestly don’t remember.”
Know what?
I honestly don’t care.
Gaining perspective is a beautiful thing.
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Sometimes revision looks like this
As I posted yesterday, I’m focusing on getting through this draft of my revisions and am trying hard not to get bogged down in potential issues. I want to trust that I can fix anything in need of fixing next time around. Right now the priority is maintaining forward momentum. The problem with pushing hard rather than employing my usual tweak-and-polish-rinse-repeat approach is that I can still see those potential issues and I start to doubt.
For instance in the above photo, I see all sorts of stuff:
vinca leaves
vinca blossoms
holly leaves
holly berries
pine needles
maple leaf
landscape timber
In this photo, it’s not clear where the eye should go. The focus isn’t great and there’s all sorts of stuff going on. And that’s a bit how it feels with the draft I’m revising. What potential issues deserve my full attention right now and what’s okay to let go? Where should I zoom in and where can I pan the camera? Inquiring voices (in my head) want to know.
I’m not in any kind of panic about this. I’ve made solid progress today and still believe (24 whole hours later!) that I’m taking the best approach to this draft. It is, however, interesting to note that the voices insert themselves into my writing process regardless of what that process might be.
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Do unto others
Yesterday I posted some photos of myself along with a few words about my uneasy relationship with cameras aimed my way. Less than 24 hours later, I took out my camera and pointed it at Zoey.
Zoey doesn’t like her picture taken, either. I know this and yet I sometimes try to coax her into looking my way. She’s a big-hearted dog who wants to please me so she usually complies.
But only up to a certain point. Then she lets me know I’ll have to settle for blurred images.
Oh, my Sweet Zotato. Thank you for not sinking your teeth into the pushy photographer.
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Free to be me
I dislike having my picture taken.
I dislike seeing photographs of myself.
I would much rather I didn’t care one way or the other.
I just used my old phone to take a few pics of myself
and I’m posting them here.
Call it photographic immersion therapy.
A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks.
~ Richard Avedon
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PSA: How to peel an orange
I’ve been writing today so, of course, I’ve also done a fair amount of wandering into the kitchen to see what was happening in the food department. A few minutes ago I spotted a lone orange in the fruit bowl and picked it up with the intention of eating it slowly so as to procrastinate as long as possible promote healthy digestion. But then I realized it was one of those oranges. You know, an orange with that thin kind of rind that’s so difficult to remove you end up with a high percentage of orange still attached to the peel and/or because of aggressive peeling you end up gouging out chunks of orange with your thumbs? I know you know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, I put the orange back in the bowl and remarked to Zebu that I didn’t have the enthusiasm to mess with the peel. To which Zebu replied, “Roll it.”
Roll it?
Yes, people. Roll those oranges!
Note there are no thumb gouges in this specimen.
I rolled that orange on the table for about thirty seconds and then proceeded to remove the rind in one piece! It’s a freaking fruit miracle! This experience has expanded my world view to the extent that I will no longer avoid thin-peeled oranges. Because of what I learned today, I will face ALL citrus fruits with confidence.
When I told Zebu I was going to share this information as a Public Service Announcement he replied, “I think everyone already knows this, Mom.”
It’s probably true. I didn’t learn about apple slicers until Wildebeest was in kindergarten and one of the other moms used that awesome tool during a class party. (Confession: I also got really excited about that fruit technique.)
So maybe you already know how to roll. If that’s so, congratulations! But if not, then please go forth and roll those oranges!
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Peachy keen, yo
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring,
and because it has fresh peaches in it.
~ Alice Walker
Zippy went to two farmers’ markets in search of these organically-grown beauties.
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Tracy Abell 