Progress

Pat and India brought me this lovely bouquet the day I came home from the hospital, and it's still fresh and pretty.

I've had several home health visits, from Steve, Anne Marie and Dan, who have shown me new easy exercises to add to my routine. Mostly they just want me to walk, so I try to do several laps a day around the house, inside and outside.

Some time ago, I saved up enough cash to get my kitchen painted. Now that the smoking issue is resolved--I lit one and it nearly knocked my head off so I'm quits there--I thought I should be able to save for another special project.

Maine Coon!

I found a site online that sells Maine coon kittens, and I emailed them to reserve a male for me. As a tentative color choice, I said black-and-white or gray-and-white. but they're all gorgeous.

So, last night I dreamed that I received notice that the April litter was now eight weeks old, and my boy was available. The picture of him showed a poor scrooched up black object. They said he was the runt of the litter, but I could have him if I still wanted to pay $800. I thought there might be room for negotiation.

In the pines, in the pines, . . .

. . . where the sun never shines,

and you shiver when the cold wind blows.

 

I asked my captain for the time of day,

he said he throwed his watch away. . .

(Bill Monroe version)

On the wests side of my back yard, there are six or eight pine trees that I wish were somewhere else. They are huge, old and scarred. If they were gone, there'd still be plenty of oaks, sweet gums, hickories, persimmons, cedars, and assorted bushes.

I love this place.

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But I guess the hawks would nest somewhere else.

 

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I'm thinking about submitting Big Baby to both Buddhapuss and Negative Capability Press, in hopes that Mary Chris and Sue would read it and just tell me what they think. I'm not as particular about fiction as about my poems, and would not at all resent suggestions on how to make it better. Or even whether I should put it in a drawer and forget about it.

Mother's Day Fun

Had a great visit with Jed on Sunday. He came over from Atlanta, but had to go back Monday a.m. for an important interview Monday afternoon.

On Sunday we went to Ruffner Park in Birmingham. The weather was so hot, and I had on too many clothes to do a lot of walking, but we did see many wonderful sights, and Jed took some photos.

I thought this flower was a pitcher plant, but found it in Alabama Wildflowers, and it's really a Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

 

This pretty plant was blooming all around the parking lot. The best I can determine, it's a wild variety of wisteria.

Their "museum pieces" were old miners' carbide lamps, and charred remains of equipment from the 1970's explosion in the Ruffner mine.

The live wildlife exhibits were snakes, salamanders, turtles, and many others--and of course, possums. An enormous owl stared at us from the corner of a cage. The saddest one to me was a huge old rattlesnake in a pretty habitat behind glass, all by himself.

We plan to go back when the weather's cooler. I want to see (especially) the limestone quarry.

Roses

The roses are having a good year. So far.

 

I cut them and brought them in because of the weather.

For S.D.S.

I think I like the little oxalis flowers best of all. They thrive and survive in the lawn, springing up a few days after they're mowed down with the grass. Every time I look at them, I remember SDS, remember being in the yard at Hammond Camp with all the flowers blooming, the hollyhocks so high I couldn't see the top, and the rump and straw hat of Granny bent over some plant.

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For S.D.S.

I can remember when

you were so beautiful,

red hair tucked under a

floppy straw hat,

working the magic you

did in the garden to

make the sunflowers grow

tall as a tree.

The cream colored rose with a

blush at the center, bloomed

lushly, its great blossoms

nodding, and you

the same color, with russet curls

straying from under the

straw colored bonnet, seemed

kin to the flowers.

Oh, daffodils, roses, sweet

peas and blue violets, your

sisters or children, come

back every year;

but why should this be, with the

rose blushing, cream colored,

russet framed face of you

vanished and gone?

Today

I'm cleaning the cook-top, and if that ever gets done, I've got to mail a book.

I was thinking about words that I hate. "Words" would be more like it. I can only think of two that are not obscene, just made up. "Woot" and "meme." People that use them tend to use them at every opportunity. And in the case of "meme," to misuse it, if a question of appropriate use can even be applied. Gad. As if there were not enough words in the languages.

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I started cleaning the cook-top yesterday, and thought it would be a two-day job. About a dozen pieces have gone through the dishwasher, but it looks like the rest of the matter, studded with nails and screws, will take another day at least.

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"Away by the river so clear,

the ladies were wending their way;

when Pharaoh's little daughter

stepped down in the water

to bathe in the cool of the day. . . "

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"There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passionflower at the gate--

She is coming, my dove, my dear!

She is coming, my life, my fate!"

From "Maud" by Lord Tennyson

The passionflower is commonly called maypop. It grows wild, has edible fruit, as well as some medicinal properties.

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9:00 p.m.: I finished the cooktop. Tomorrow I'll start on the stove hood.

So long, April, and thanks for all the blooms.

Here's the chipmunk. When I got a little closer, he disappeared down the stump.

The white peony isn't as doubled and full as the pink ones.

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The old hydrangeas are full of buds. Can't wait for them to bloom out!

Almost Sorry I Found It

The Listeners, when I read it in the magazine a long time ago, was just a story, which is the first part of this whole novel-length thing. He should have left it alone, but no, he had to go and make a novel out of a good story. Then Carl Sagan came along, took the thesis and wrote a better novel (Contact), but not as good a story as "Robert MacDonald," the first part of this novel. James Gunn was still alive in 2008; maybe he still is. But Carl isn't, at least not here.

Arecibo is in Puerto Rico, not Peru. I get those P countries mixed up.

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I brought in some flowers that the wind was whipping around. The rain was a blessing, although the storms had tragic consequences elsewhere.

Empty Houses

Somebirdy threw away a perfectly good nest. Or maybe the wind, or a vandal bird, dislodged it.

I added it to the row of town-birdhouses on the porch rail.
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Here's my first rose, just opening.

The other day I saw a bird fly up to a tree with what looked like a whole Kleenex in its beak. There ought to be a poem in that.
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I almost forgot. My TV won't work. The cable box won't come on, and all I get without it is static. I checked to see if it's unplugged, and it wasn't. I tried all my many remote controls, and nothing seems to work. I thought if I left it alone for 24 hours, it might heal itself, but it didn't.

Weds., 4/14/10 - The cable box was dead. They brought me a new one.

Tomorrow's another day to worry about...

One bright spot: Jed will be here today and the next day and the next day--to encourage, accompany, and revive me--before, during, and after my Wednesday check-up appointment. I'd hate to be a doctor and have people dread seeing me. Some people don't dread it, I understand, old people who don't get to see many people. I'm glad I'm not old and shut in. Thanks, Lord.

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Sunday afternoon was just wonderful! We ate chicken, salads, barbecue, yams and cake. I drank a little wine to break my long Lenten abstinence. Reed was a very entertaining host, told lots of stories or incidents or something about bugs, showed the purple flowers he and Ma planted. "Quel age as-tu?" I asked him, and he said, "I'm four" (after Ma translated). About the bunny cake, he looked at me like, "You've got to be kidding me."

I'm afraid this is going to be the lost week, writingwise. Maybe Friday I'll be recovered enough to write a little. I hope. -- No, Friday's book club day, so I'll have to think about Gee's Bend.
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The other day Mable sent me a link to a wonderful song, "Going Home," to the music of Anton Dvorak's symphony. I posted it in my Music Links (in this blog's left column). They played the music during President Ford's funeral, and if I can find a cd or dvd of it, I want to arrange to have the song played at mine, if I should ever have one. I'm sure Gerry wouldn't mind my copying. He was a lovely man, though as a president, opinions vary.

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I remember these

flowers from my childhood, when Daddy and Alfred built the house in Irondale for Iris and Alfred. Granny lived with them, and she had banks of these tiny pink flowers in the spring and summer. I don't know the name of them, but they're some kind of clover or sorrel-related plant. I've had them at lots of my houses and apartment, all descended from Granny's plants. Here, they died in the flower bed, but survive in the lawn. I guess getting cut down every 2 weeks just makes them more stubborn and spreading.

Patriotic Mushrooms

The Red









The White

The Blue

All photographed in the back yard, today.

The squirrels eat the white ones. The blue ones are too hard to eat. As for the red, Granny Satterfield (SDS) always said, "Any fool knows a mushroom from a toadstool."

He's got the whole world in His hands...

Bob Frew sent this out.

"I took this picture on Int.20, traveling to Leeds , AL . It has given me strength in the times of trouble. I feel I should share it with the rest of the world. I hope it is an inspiration to you. It just goes to show what we already know...We have a God, and he's watching over us.

"I e-mailed this picture to News Channel Fox6. I was contacted by Meteorologist James Spann. He said that this picture of the sky is showing up in all states and around the world. He wanted to know where I was from and where I took it. He saw a similar picture taken in Texas . He said this is amazing to him.Would you look at this picture? It reminds me of that song 'He's got the whole world in his hands.' He is definitely in control. I needed this today more than ever. Enjoy and pass it along!"

Thanks to Sarah M. who sent me this pic and quote.

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Added about 8:00 p.m.: Late this afternoon, I was toting water to the hydrangeas, and saw a big black feather on the ground. Crow, I'm sure. A bird will occasionally drop a feather, maybe as a rent payment. The crows owe a lot more.

I found this one on the lawn several years ago, when hawks had a nest in one of the pine trees. I washed it, and keep it in this wooden box. It's about 12 inches long.

Poor Squirrel Nutkin

This is a story about a big squirrel, one of the elder ones in my trees. It happened several weeks ago, and I hesitated to say anything about it, lest people think I was lying in my teeth. I've also been looking around for dead squirrels on the ground or in the street around my place, but haven't seen any since the Happening. So hopefully she/he recovered from whatever it was.

I opened the deck door to let Mo out, and saw furious movement out by the chipmunk stump. Ran and got my binoculars instead of running out there, and it was this big squirrel having some kind of a seizure. She (I swear!) did back flips, and then she would run back to a certain spot and then start whirling around and turning flips in midair. After a few minutes, she managed to get to a tree trunk and ran up the tree.

I carefully marked the spot that she kept running back to between aerobatic flips, and after a while I went out there to see if I could see anything. Was sort of afraid it was a snake or something. But all around under the trees out there, were these awful-looking, spiky, dried-up skeletons of some kind of huge mushrooms. They looked like big clumps of doormats that had lost all their threads and left the fiber sticking up all over. I sort of believe that the squirrel had eaten some of this mess and had the psychedelic contortions because of it.

Now that I've written it down, maybe it'll quit bothering me.

Instant Person: Just Add Coffee

Woke up this morning thinking of lots of good resolutions. The first one was to finish my own personal Halloween project and quit admiring it in its near-finished state.

But Maw Maw always said that every stitch you sew on Sunday, you'll have to pull out with your nose on Monday.

Another good resolution I thought of was to quit procrastinating about

1. painting Old Walt
2. fixing up the house before things start falling apart

3. filing for my tax refund

4. throwing a yard sale before cold weather sets in.
5. quitting procrastinating...

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Added at 5:45 p.m. My cosmos that I planted at the foot of the steps is full of blooms and buds, but something broke it down last night. Whatever it was left two pecans on the step, so I guess that's payment enough.

Hawk tales

This morning when I let Mo out and Owen in, a big hawk fluttered off the ground onto a low limb in one of the oak trees, and then flew over to another tree in the back yard. I guess he was after a chipmunk, or had caught one, I don't know which. I ran to get the camera, and of course the hawk was gone when I got back, but I did get a little sweet gum color and a nice shot of my thumb.

Purple Crows

I looked out the back door at a "murder of crows," actually only four, pecking around in the wet grass. Among bows and flows of gray and white clouds, the sun suddenly blazed out and shone on the crows, turning their flat black plumage to a rainbow of peacock colors as if they had been dipped in an oil spill. Then they all rose and flew away, the hues converging to deep purple as long as they were in the sun.

The Book Club meeting was well attended and very noisy. All three Ramey sisters were there: Susan didn't go to Atlanta, Pat decided to stop by there after all, and I didn't sleep quite all morning. The highlight of Nell's table was an apple spice cake with good thick caramel icing, which I understood her husband Bill made. Mary Anne told all about her two weeks in Greece, making me wish I could at least go to Italy and take that Adriatic cruise among the islands. Betty White mentioned that one of the possible side effects of the cholesterol medications could be memory loss. Alopecia and absentmindedness, dang! I'm cutting that flat rose-madder tablet out of my pill diet until I see the doctor next month, at which time I may just blister some of the black porcupine quills off his head, if I feel like talking or if he says "O-KAY?" one too many times.

Mary Undeutsch and Barbara were also at the meeting, and the elegant Jean Mock came late and left early. Neither Jean, Pat nor Barbara had read the book (My Sister's Keeper), so the rest of us talked about everything but the ending, so as not to spoil it for them when they read it.

When I came home, after resting and changing clothes, I had to go to CVS for cat food, and then I finished reading Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith. I was tempted to give it four stars, but it really wasn't as good as Gorky Park. Mighty good book, though. It tied up a couple of loose ends from the other books, i.e., Irina (she and Arkady had been reunited somehow after their sudden traumatic parting, had been together, maybe married for a time, until Irina was accidentally killed by a nurse); and the fate of Sergei Pribluda.

Note above: I think the cruise I was looking at while we were in England was around/among the Aegean islands, instead of the Adriatic. The Aegean sea is the one between Greece and Turkey, I think.