This afternoon I balanced two cups of tea and two gingersnaps on a little tray and managed to carry them, without spilling, to the red adirondacks under the birch trees.  The birch trees!  Queenly trees with fluttering skirts and sunlight dancing in each leaf.  Or perhaps they're more like dancers with streamered tambourines.  We are in love with them.  We planted them six years ago and today we sat in their shade and drank our tea and talked about what is most important in our lives.

And it's not the trees, or the house, or the programs and classes Martin developed over the last seven years.  And it's not our work, either, though we love it, and it's not our poems or stories or our small successes.  What is most important for us are the people we love and transform by our love--and the people by whom we have been transformed. We pour ourselves and our work and our energy into people.  The rest is important, but by contrast, the rest is temporal; it can blow away in one mighty gust of wind. And much of it has.  Martin came home from cleaning out his office disconcerted and sad.  I think it surprised him, how depressing it was.  All his beautiful programs, the ones he envisioned and worked so hard for--the literary magazine, the open mics, the reading series, each class sculpted and labored over.  And for what?  he asked.

But the birch trees spoke to us with their music:  It's not the programs themselves that matter; programs are for people.  Programs inevitably disappear.  But the impact they have on people, the ways they change those who experienced and participated--that is the lasting thing.

If we've been taught anything by all of this, one lesson driven home directly and mercilessly would be: very little is ours.  I keep rehearsing it.  I knew it, or thought I knew it.  Now I know it even more.  We are given gifts, we love them, we do our best with them, but they are not ultimately ours.  Not even our writing really belongs to us; we are stewards of a poem, or a story, but we walk alongside them; we do not possess them, and by trying to possess any of it, we ruin all of it.  I guess that rule goes for just about everything I can think of, including people--friends, spouses, children, parents.  We must perpetually let go if we want to find the core of what really matters, if we want to hold tightly to what makes life real and miraculous and lasting. 

We did some haiku with a bunch of fourth graders today, and that was healing: experience a moment; love it; let it go.  Also healing was the fact that every haiku master we came across loved talking about bird droppings.  Bird ---t in sake and on rice cakes.  One haiku basically read:  the happier the sparrow, the more he s---s all over you. (Insert appropriate word--not for young audiences).  So when one fourth grader wrote about a seagull pooping on his potato chips at the beach, we said, Ah, welcome to the fold, young poet.

Haiku is the only writing assignment in college I ever got assigned a B for.  I was crushed.  I have been intimidated by haiku, probably since then.  Apparently I stink at whittling a moment down to three, spare lines.  That's Martin's cup of tea.  Maybe I'll try it as a sort of spiritual discipline.  Maybe you should.  One freeing tip: what you heard in elementary school, that the lines must be 5 / 7 / 5 syllables--you can forget that tyranny.  What you're looking for are three short, simple lines.

Birch leaf--
coin of sunshine on my shoulder
We drink tea all afternoon.

Oh, I'm still terrible.  This will, perhaps,be a private exercise.  (I just had to slip in the bit about drinking tea.)  I think the fourth graders haikued me right under the table today.

Apparently I've become a weeding weakling.  A season of sitting on my bottom and writing and doing little else has rendered my wrists shaky and my legs jello.  After only thirty minutes of weeding.  Ach!

We were sad to see Maurice Sendak had died.  He would have been pleased to hear Merry, at age three, recite Where the Wild Things Are complete with sound effects.  This morning we sat in the sun room and drank our third cup of tea as Martin read his obituary out loud.  I will read Micky in the Night Kitchen with just a twinge of sadness from now on.

The house smells of baking sweet potatoes.  Yesterday, before rain filled the night with a wonderful, healing song, Martin mowed a path through the garden so now at least I can see the blue haze of speedwell and the white azalea petals among all the weeds.

Martin is packing up hundreds of poetry books and bringing home lamps and rugs and pictures and all that has filled his office for seven years.  It is a mercy that the Fine Arts building is slotted for work this summer due to asbestos, because he is only one of a great crowd packing up their offices and filling the elevator with boxes.  It feels better to be part of a crowd surging outwards than one lone fellow, the one who was not tenured, stumbling down the stairs under a tower of books.  Of course he'll use the elevator.  It just seems sadder to stumble down the stairs.

I am filling the basement with boxes and furniture, as well, for the first of a series of clean-outs that will eventually end with a pod, or a moving van, or the back of the pick-up, if need be.

Merry loves to chat about where we might live next, especially the house we might occupy.  Finally, after a long discussion one morning, I said, "Well, maybe we'll just sell everything and live in our car."

Merry made a face.  "That might be a little too small," she said.

"You can have your own seat," I pressed.  "All to yourself.  Some people live in their cars."

"I don't think they live in a Subaru," she said, "Not a family of five.  Besides," she continued, "Can you imagine what would happen to me at school when my teacher asked me to draw a picture of myself and my house?  It would be me, in front of a blue Subaru!"

Ach.  So scratch the car.  And scratch the almost-acre garden.  What were we thinking?  We're not big garden people, I've decided.  Just enough.  It will become my new mantra.  Just enough, and maybe, some days, a little more.

I just finished writing an e-mail to a friend: The plates of the earth shift; another crack appears.  Then you have to wait for everything to shift back again.  That is what being a parent of three children is like.  But you don't have to be a parent to feel an earthquake, of course.

I see people on porches with their children, planting spring gardens, walking around houses and yards that have been theirs for twenty or more years.  I wonder that they have been allowed to be rooted.  What is the magic formula that gives so many in this town a heritage of being, of family and friends, of land and home?

And then I wonder if that's what I really want.  Deep roots in one place.  But at the expense of what?  Adventure?  Opportunities?  Courage?

And of course I'm speaking for nobody but myself; of course being in one place does not have to limit your life.  But I told Martin that I should have known I wouldn't have been allowed to stay here for twenty years.  The curse, or the blessing, or the fact of existence, is on my head like an invisible crown:  this woman is part of the wandering crowd, heritage of fleet feet, of gathering and walking on.

Nobody in my family has ever lived in one place for over seven years.  Seven years is our family's biblical number.  And after seven years it was ordained that they should take up their children and travel. . .I lived for six in Bangladesh and seven in Kenya; those two periods (and now this one), are the rivers that connect the many tributaries: Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Montana, Iowa, Illinois again, Texas. . . .

It all takes a great amount of energy.  But why was I surprised?  I'm actually breaking a record by soon beginning on my eighth year in Pennsylvania next year; part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Eight years?  Two shy of a decade?  Surely that's more than a child of my heritage can ask for.

In the meanwhile I'm realizing afresh that what I said a year ago is true.  I can simply not get my house clean or my possessions streamlined without moving.  And that's the task I'm pursuing.  When it comes down to it, there are only a few things in my house I really want.  The rest could go up in smoke and I would never miss them.  Martin's Grandmother's quilt, my good Wustof knife, a few photographs.  My pillow, a few books.  And now is my chance.

I wish I could gather my favorite things from the garden, though:  the peonies, just opening, the aspen trees, so beautiful and delicate, the purple-headed alliums.

But they are, by nature, rooted things, and belong where they are.

As I wrote years ago in an erstwhile book: Home is something I carry inside myself.  I can encounter home in the face of a friend, my mother's hands, the smell of a favorite book,  in a peony opening its petals, no matter where I am.  Another mantra.  It remains true, even after endless transitions.

CATS

Yesterday Martin and I turned our heads away from our steaming tea cups for a moment and caught this impossible vision: down the hill, a veritable convention of seven black and white cats sat in a perfect circle. In the middle of the circle, another cat lay on his back, one paw extended into the air. He luxuriated on the grass and pointed in the air again in provocative way. Another cat took him up on his challenge and--I can't help it--pussyfooted into the ring and pounced on him. They rolled about and the circle dispersed.

We went back to our tea.

About five minutes later, we looked back down the hill and the cats had reconvened, in exactly the same formation, but this time more centrally in our yard. The same thing happened again; the cat-in-the-middle, the playful tussle, the cats scattering. They played follow-the-leader over to the trunk of the Black Walnut, where they watched one scramble up the bark after a bird. They seemed to be having a wonderful time.

Cats rule Wazoo Farm. As many of you know, I can't get anywhere near cats without swelling like a balloon or scratching my own eyes out. But these cats are different than your average house cat. They're like little gods fallen from heaven; they prowl proudly around the garden; they all have their own paths and patterns, and they seem to be utterly careless of our existence, except when we startle them and they streak off into the sky. We don't know where they live. They are great, heavy, sleek beasts with gleaming coats and certain paws.

I watched one pick his way delicately through a foot of snow last winter, finding the prints of a cat-gone-before and fitting his paws precisely into each indentation.

At night they wail like primordial spirits.

This afternoon Martin and I (yes, we were drinking tea again), craned our necks out the window and saw a cat, black as coal, sitting on the edge of our deck, swishing his tail. He was watching something and I heard him mew. But then I realized his mouth was not opening. I did not think he was a ventriloquist. So I stood up with my tea cup and leaned farther toward the window pane. A huge white cat, its fur standing up and its back arched, was facing down a third cat--I know not what he was in face or manner--I was too consumed by the white cat, who was magnificent.

Martin banged on the window. They did not heed him.

I went to the other window, slid it open and chided them: "No fighting, kitties!" The white cat fixed me with a stare that told me she did not care to be condescended to, but they evaporated into the afternoon.

They will be back. It's a jungle out there. And apparently it's all theirs.

Off to Red Barn Farm

We spent last Sunday at Red Barn Farm, a self-sustaining dream come true. Jeannie Williams, a burnt-out preschool teacher, was inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable. . ." and went to work with an astounding energy. I wanted to glean a couple of articles so I carried around my tape recorder all morning, in the chicken coop and goat pens,
up muddy hills, and in the warmth of a hoop house lined with spinach, bak choy, and other gorgeous winter crops. Look at those nannies, so protective of their kids; they could hear them from across the barn and would charge off looking for one, nosing it back safely among the other babies. Here's Elspeth standing in front of a cunning structure built by a local artisan, all by hand with stone, into a hillside. It looks like a hobbit should live there but it's actually a cellar where Jeannie Williams stores her jams.

To read the sweet, syrupy story of our trip to Red Barn Farm (which is mostly about Llew Williams' maple tapping operation), click here.

Snowing

The girls and I spent a good hour in the library after lunch today; I felt happily surprised and liberated by the fact that my library card was clean and clear (I'd believed I had lost a book) and found a nice stack of picture books to see us through the week.

When we pulled into our driveway, I saw an enchanting site: Martin, covered in snow, clothed in red stocking hat, standing with pruners in our garden, clearing and staking trees. We piled out of the car, tipped our heads back, and stuck out our tongues; the snowflakes are so heavy today, when the temperature wavers just above freezing, that you can gaze at a snowflake some thirty feet above you and watch its slow and meandering descent down to your open mouth. Quite a few hit me in the eyes and finally I was so soggy and cold I came inside and put on the teapot.

But the two older girls still stand outside, their tongues out, busy being "Snowpeople" who are "Snowing," which causes much hilarity between them. . ."Just caught a pike!" one says, and the other: "I got a huge trout just then!"

Advantages: you don't need bait; you can stand in your boat; there are so many fish and no hooks are necessary.

Garden Plans

Martin was very busy over the weekend with a major project. He toiled over it until two in the morning on Saturday evening and spent at least five or six hours bent over it in deep concentration on Sunday.

The final project is now taking up half our dining room table, along with our computers, unfinished puzzles and hot cups of Sleepytime tea.

You'll never guess. It's a to-scale, detailed, topographic rendering of our garden plans, in. . ..LEGOS. Yes. You heard me correctly. The paths, the pots, even the compost bins and our white cat (we don't own it; it just likes our garden)--all carefully built out of legos. My favorite part is the woman sitting at a table under an arbor draped with grapevine. She did not try to design the garden, on paper or with legos. Her one attempt at building a pot was met with veiled derision. So she isn't patient enough to find just the right blocks--so she doesn't have an engineering bone in her body and her pots look like something from out of space--so what? She's happy in the shade.

The woman is me, of course, and she looks so content out there in lone splendor with her book, plastic ponytail, and pot of tri-colored flowers.

In contrast, there are three men, and I think they must all be Martin--one is watering the garden with a huge hose, one is raking over green matter in the compost bin, and one is jauntily starting up the main path with a broom in his hand (due to a cornocopia of legos from different sets, the broom used to be a spear. A barbarian gentleman with a shield and impressive facial hair used to lounge breezily on a garden bench as well until he was plucked and discarded).

There's even a little wheelbarrow and a woman in a zen position in front of a planter. That can't be me.

My little charge, Ethan, poured over the Lego garden today, and his little hands kept fluttering toward it. "No, we don't want to touch it," I'd say. "Uncle Martin made that."

Ethan couldn't wrap his mind around it. "You mean he made it when he was a little boy?"

"No, he made it this weekend." Of course, the impressive crop of legos are from Martin's childhood, and I am glad to report that he is just as delighted by them now as he was when he was ten.

We tromped outside in the garden in our snow boots and made comparisons between the lego garden and the actual garden. We agreed that though the height adjustments of our sloping garden had been tricky to achieve in the Lego replica, the actual toil output in our actual garden come spring thaw will be harder. . .a whole lot harder. But what's more fun than shoveling tons of clay?

I wish I had downloaded the photos, but they're still on the camera. . .maybe tomorrow. I know you'll wait with bated breath.

Sweat and Mulch in Your Eyes

Our living room clock permanently reads a quarter to twelve, but I know that it's ten o'clock here at Wazoo Farm, and the night is still and warm. If I could listen over the steady whir of the window fans, I'd hear the sound of rocks clunking and the soft murmur of the radio. Now, the cough of the pick-up's motor--Martin must be packing up for the night.

It's been a terribly hot day, but the garden called us nonetheless. Martin finished his rock wall, and it is beautiful. I planted six rough-leaved verbena and four large yew bushes, which will grow into a lush, brightly-berried hedge between the main garden and the children's garden. As far as evergreens go, the yew is pretty, with finely textured frondy leaves. They've been sitting in our garden ever since we bought them, and I knew the bell tolled tonight as the heat became less intense. The bell tolled for me, because Martin was so wiped out by then that he stopped transplanting trees, stripped down to his boxers, and sat in the kiddie pool with Bea.

The hapless trees Martin began digging up are three ornamental plums, which flower so promisingly in the spring but which we realized would someday grow behemoth and swallow our garden with their glossy purple leaves. I looked up from fighting the earth with the spade to see Martin, entire plum tree shouldered like a fishing pole, striding down the side yard toward our "prettyish bit of wilderness" down at the foot of the hill, where we plant trees that shake our confidence for one reason or the other. (This last paragraph I give to my sister and her husband. Heather and Luke, there are two things here that will please you immensely. What are they?)

Planting in our garden means swearing at the layers of clay, which your shovel hits almost immediately. You must import significantly better soil from elsewhere and then heavily layer newspaper and mulch so roots don't bake like pots in a kiln.

I have almost decimated the load of undyed mulch in the bed of the pick-up truck; now I have to stand at the edge of the bed, shovel in my hands like I'm holding a canoe paddle, and shove the mulch to the end of the bed so I can fill a gargantuan bucket with the utility shovel. Then I carry the load up paths littered with project bits and pieces to my final destination, where I dump it with unbecoming grunts.

Needless to say, it's good exercise. I too joined the girls in the pool today, where I sat as water spread up my shorts, chatting with Merry about our holiday plans this summer and reminiscing of past summers. Elspeth picked us a basket of strawberries and we were very mellow together. And besides the fact that a critter (maybe Grassy Sam the Groundhog?) topped two more tomatoes last night, we're pretty content with garden. Too bad we won't be around to enjoy it; we leave for our sojourns soon. Come by, then, and cut yourself a bouquet of herbs, roses, and yarrow. And the zinnias are up, too.

Spring Harvest

Spring Harvest
photo arranged and captured by Elspeth (subjects picked and eaten by artist)

Merry, after a long afternoon weeding
(I took this one)

Advanced June Cooling System(photo by Elspeth)

Spring Journals

Martin just finished stacking enormous rocks near posts that will become our short, side garden fence. These rocks are HUGE, each one won with sweat and a great deal of grunting last summer when he and my brother-in-law heaved them out of a state forest (they had a permit, of course, likely the only 'rock-picking' permit issued last year).

After a day of newspapering and mulching beds, I was covered with a fine layer of black dust, which I finally and gratefully washed down the drain. Showers must be one of life's finest pleasures. And now I am listening to a maddening fly and trying to build up enough gumption to fit in a little more work tonight--this time on the computer on a story that was just accepted provided I revise a few things. I would have had it done by now if it weren't for the long beautiful sunny days.

Here are a pictures of a few journals I've received this spring with my work printed inside them. The links to the websites are below right under "My Scribblings."

No. Gumption.

Up the Garden Path

This morning was so cool that we wrapped ourselves in sweaters for tea, but it quickly warmed. In fact it was so lovely that the girls inaugurated a new blow-up pool. I hope the raccoons don't rip this one to shreds. If weeds are the frat boys of the plant world, raccoons are the irresponsible partiers of the animal world. Once I gazed through the dusty window of a handsome historical house downtown; the old pocket doors were punctured, as if a person had been thrown through one, the rooms were in chaos, and all that was once elegant was destroyed. "Football players lived there," Martin muttered in my ear. Not all college football players are destructive, irresponsible maniacs, and maybe not all raccoons are raccoonish, but I have my doubts. Something about their eyes makes me suspicious, as well as the fact that their idea of a really great time is to nose through diapers and rotten meat in our trash. Not ideal weekend guests.

Martin has been incredibly, happily busy on his latest project: creating a brick and stone path leading into our garden. While I have endured the chaos that is our children as he feels each rock with his hands, making lifelong friends before he eases it into place in the puzzle of sand and gravel, I am not bitter. Rather, I am delighted with his progress and his prowess at this art. . .

Above, see the area before the path, in early spring a couple years ago.

First we had to move a garden bed; then the really hard work began. From a heap of clay, which Martin dug out to level, he lined it, lay gravel, then sand, and then finally began painstakingly tapping in each brick, equipped with his handy level. He is a perfectionist. One day I'll show you a "path" I've made, and you can compare.

The proud goof-ball with his path, completed late last night. I'm afraid the lighting this morning was incredibly harsh, but we'll get a better photo soon. I love the steps!

Leveling is no simple job in our part of Pennsylvania. For instance, I meant to take this photo straight, but our garden slopes up, up and away!

Some of my favorite flowers are blooming--roses, so unashamed to be bright and splendid, the intricately patterned heads of yarrow, maybe my all-time favorite.

Yellow yarrow and white yarrow. . .

No, like a jittery Mennonite forced to hold a creed just for a second, I don't want to exclude anything. The hedge of russian sage, reliably flood our front path with tiny blue flowers, is a close second. They're growing strong and will flower soon. And look at our peach tree. We'll have our first peaches this summer!

Alliums. Blue flax. Feverfew. Cosmos. How could I forget zinnias, the swirling skirts of summer? Lavender.


And look how the rose has climbed right over our porch wall. You can climb over the porch wall, too, and take tea. Or be conventional and come through the front gate. Karibou, welcome.

You don't even have to wear a hat.

Hot Days and Poetry

Remember how I waxed eloquent about open windows and breezes and the scent of peonies? Well, folks, that was before the weather turned ballistic on us. August temperatures and as humid as Pennsylvania can be.

I went out last night and when I returned the house felt like an oven, so I finally pulled down the attic stairs and installed all the fans. Usually late May and early June peak in the high 70's. This season, we're peaking in the low 90's. Yes, it's a little warm 'round these hills. I waffle between loving the garden and wishing it were a little bug I could flick off my arm. It would help if it were a bit more in control, less glutted by mid-May rains followed by the scorching temperatures that made the weeds think they were at a frat party. They're having a grand old time.

I kept about a dozen tomatoes alive--brought them back from the brink, no less-by watering, and then this morning I found them all topped by deer. Arg.

Enough of that. Martin's just had some wonderful poetry published at Connotation Press. A few of my all-time favorites appear. . .Photograph, Arizona, 1914 begins:

The well is dry, and the women
who once drew water are stones
silent as those who lived before them

A few months ago, Martin and I were charged by a friend of ours to write poems sparked by the image of a woman at a well. I dove right into the task, writing multiple poems of varying uneveness over a course of weeks. Martin waited until the last minute, sat down and wrote that jewel of a poem, with simple, spare language, rounded images, and startling, haunting lines. . .I almost shiver when I read this poem. Sometimes you get lucky. Martin gets lucky quite a bit; it must have something to do with more than luck.

Then there's "A Day of Mourning." Reading this poem is like hiking through a desert and finding bleached bones laid in the sand in a perfect pattern.

Finally, get your groove on by reading "Proposal." I LOVE this poem--Martin read it some months ago at a local poetry reading and I enjoyed it even more out loud, so read it to yourself, but not silently. Even better, read it to someone you love. The last lines are magnificent:

For these investments we must have a proliferation
of pockets: pockets for money,
for marbles and mice and other small things.
We all must give a little.

Please note the borrowed "mice and other small things," which Martin scooped up from this blog. "Marbles and mice and other small things--" who doesn't want a "proliferation of pockets" for all such lovely things?

Read Martin's poetry by clicking HERE, and visiting CONNOTATION PRESS. If you find some gibberish at the top, just scroll down until you find a hilarious James Bondish photo of Martin, and then enjoy his poems!

I'm in the garden. . . .

Where have I been? In the garden, drinking mojitos, unloading small mountains of topsoil, planting seeds, handing out popsicles to children, in the garden. . . .well, you get the idea. Gardening weather wreaks havoc on writing, as do the company of good people, cold minty mixed drinks, good food(as at our dear friends' house tonight) and hot days when the LAST thing you want to do is sit inside and stare at a computer screen. Winter is far better for writing.

I must fill you in soon about the small flood in our bathroom as well as the inauspicious preparation for our gig/poetry reading the other night. All to do with inexplicable things children do.

Two things. Sal took this photo of our little preschool graduate. Look at that snaggletoothed beauty. Hopefully she will not be missing any front teeth in any of her future graduations.

And happy birthday, Josiah. Many happy returns, dear one.

Racquetball and Peonies

Beside me, Martin studies racquetball techniques. I glance over once and a while and catch phrases like "Crotch Serve," "Blast Rule," and dense labyrinthine passages about three-foot lines.

The day was hot as summer but now the ceiling fan is picking up enough cool night air to make me feel like finding a blanket. We have no air-conditioning, and while one week every summer typically makes us feel like crawling on our hands and knees, we prefer our open windows to the blast of cold air. We can hear a distant train, smell the sweetness of the peonies. Oh, those peonies are so sweet--I prefer their delicate, thin smell to lilacs, which are so heady they almost make you blush. Peonies make me think of old women dressed in aprons, opening their arms to grandchildren. I wonder if such a woman planted these same bare roots one autumn, dreaming of these huge ruffled white blooms. Lilacs and peonies both seem like they should always be heirloom plants, and it's magnificent to think of the first people who lived in this house in the early 1900's sitting in this front room, pausing to close their eyes and breathe in the scent of these peonies under the window.

I wonder what they would think of our huge rambling garden in their side lot. Apparently some of the first owners allowed horses to run about and later, when times were rough and food scarce, sheep were allowed to graze on our grass, sheep that would supply the college nearby with food, or milk. . . I'm unclear what they actually provided. Maybe some really warm sweaters.

Martin's watching racquetball now, young guys in baggy athletic shorts furiously slapping a little rubber ball around. I like racquetball, but I prefer a more leisurely game, serves you can actually return while chatting or hooting to your opponent.

Why is the audience booing so vehemently? Never mind. I'm going to shut my computer, shut my eyes, and enjoy the peonies and a cup of tea. Peace.

Hail, Heather!

Well, Heather my sister,

Remember, in Bangladesh (and then in the half-dozen other places we grew up), when the sky would begin to darken, and you'd say, with your eyes half-full of hope and half-full of a wild light, "I think it's going to hail!"

Well, I wish you would have been here, sister mine, for I just witnessed the most impressive hail storm known to my own memory. Of course, the one in Bangladesh would have been even more dramatic with its tennis size balls, but I can't remember it well, if at all. I'm sitting in the sunroom, looking out on the garden, which seems to be covered in snow--but it's not. Thunder still rumbles across the hills and lightning stitches the white sky, though the storm seems to be retreating.

I was out in the garden for the first time in a while (we've had days upon days of rain and it's all mud and too wet to fool with the soil, though it's a good time to weed), and I was enjoying some quiet time whipping a bed into shape. I didn't even mind being scratched by a rose bramble, nor the fact that my shoes were deep in mud. . .

Ah! Did I say the storm was retreating? I think that was the eye, the calm before the next onslaught. Thunder just crashed so near and loudly I can feel it reverberating in my chest.

Anyway--I sensed the sky was darkening, and I heard low grumbles, but I was so engrossed I just ignored it until rain started to fall, and by the time I was settled on the porch, the drops were so huge I began to wonder if they were actually rain or not.

Inside, Bea and her friend, E, were still fast asleep, and they slept through the racket of grape-sized ice hitting the metal roof of the sunroom and ricocheting off the windowsills. Our table outside was covered in piles of ice balls; it swept down the driveway among all our mud and debris. I so wish you had been here to sit down and have tea with while we watched it all. It was such a good show.

Can you spy the yellow cat? She scrambled like a crazy thing until she finally reached the calm of the old truck's underside, where she slunk until the storm was over.

Can you see her hind legs and tail? She may be there, still. . . .

Flooding downtown; ankle-deep water; the creek is about to foam over its banks. Glad to live on a hill!

Wish you were here,

Kimby

Sunday Night Musing

After a day accomplishing many things, it was wonderful to rest my chin in my hands in the silence that settles over the house when all three girls are in bed. I'd just left Merry and Elspeth in clean sheets, their noses in books and lamplight flooding their freshly showered faces. Bea had shown me her last trick for the evening ("I do it for the Show," she promises me every night, arching her back). Martin was outside mowing in the last of the daylight, and I hunched over my desk at the second floor window and studied the garden. Sky blue spires of lupines rose next to glowing dark plum trees; spiky purple alliums popped by the budding tea roses. How long will it take until our pears and apples bear? How big will the oak and maple trees grow, and what will they hide with their dense leaves? When they are so huge I can barely remember when I planted them, where will Elspeth, Bea and Merry be? Far away, I'll warrant, if their independence is any indication. And good adventures I wish to them, too!

Take courage, heart: the weeds will always be with us. Did I mention the weeds? So many, many weeds, growing in profusion after endless rain.

Still, I'll not be twisted over some crab grass; soon I'll be out there armed with piles of newspaper and shovels full of mulch.

And now I've got to beat Martin to the shower.

Easter Girls: An unusually long display of photos without any poem at all

Easter afternoon, PA Cockroft style. I tried for a photo of the three of them, really and truly, but it was disastrous--so silly I couldn't post any of them.





I know it's just a glut of photos of the girls, but our family lives far, far away. Here's compensating! The lilacs, by the way, are simply intoxicating right now. . .
Currently, Beatrix is yelling from her crib: "Shake your body! Shake your BODAY!" She's apparently having a bit of trouble falling asleep.

for Kara, on her thirty-third birthday

My dear Kara, childhood friend, soulmate and delight of my heart,
I just wrote you a poem for your birthday, and if that's not enough
here are two of your nieces, including your godchild, offering you
a perfect daffodil, plucked in early spring in your honor.

Cleveland Pear on an April Evening

Tonight we stopped the car,
opened the windows, drew in breath
at the world of white lace
cut through by ebony bark.
With the windows down
it was all as real as we'd hoped.

and one more. . .

Just last week. . .

There's a soft, fuzzy head tucked under my chin as I type, so I'm not sure how many words I'll be able to share with you today. The owner of the velvet head is tucking two stuffed dogs, a plastic cupcake, and various other things into a purple Kenyan purse. The forsythia on my table has gone wild, a mass of lemon-colored blooms, and the smell of angel food cake baking fills the house. . .if I weren't supposed to be readying the house for a women's luncheon, I'd be perfectly comfortable to sit here in my robe for a few more hours, typing away.

Outside, it looks like February again--gray, flurrying snow, a few black birds flying low and swift over the tops of bristling tree branches.

And it was only last week that our garden felt like a park, with our friends and neighbors congregating in the garden to dig, trim, run and roll in the grass. The girls and their friends rode down the hill in the wagon numerous times, made soup from wild onions, and frolicked like puppies that have been locked in a pen for four months.

Spring. Come back, sun, and bring the tulips. Whoops, angel food cake is possibly burning. . .gotta dash.

St. Patty's Day Madness at Wazoo

The garden's EN FUEGO!!!

Yesterday was so unbelievably beautiful that we spent almost every minute outside. I finally liberated my spring bulbs from the dry overgrowth that I allow to stay every winter. Laden with snow, the butterfly bushes, which grow to the size of small trees, look magical, and the tangle of Russian Sage appears silvery and delicate on dull, grey mornings. The birds love hiding places and seed heads, and besides, I'm always sick of tending to the garden in the fall.

But it was quintessential spring yesterday, and the poor crocus felt a little sickly and the tulips and daffs were a bit grumpy and felt taken for granted, so I wielded my pruners and liberated them.

The purple crocus, which had been pinched and wizened, found the sun. It threw back its petals and gave a wolf cry from deep within its golden throat. When I stepped back outside after a little break, this is what I found:

I'll give a quick photo tour of the other highlights of our day. . .
. . .My good luck charms--two of them, anyway.

My friend Michelle came for the Irish feast adequately prepared. I give you, the sushi 'o the Irish:

My mother, another lucky charm, peeling the tatties.

My classy tribute to St. Patrick's day (I also tried my feet at a jig):

And a special visit from Kerry O'Malley, who brought us good luck out the wazoo.

Hope your St. Patty's was just as delightful. Happy Friday, all.