Better than a red dress

The beans are blooming!



I didn't realize they would be so flashy--in a good way.

My kind of Italy

Yesterday, after a hiatus of several years, we finally found a new outdoor table.

I've been steadfastly obssessed and in love with Italy. The food. The language. But most of all the romance of sitting at a table under the trees with some wine and bread and cheese and olives. Time to talk and sit and listen to the birds, watch the light move across the evening.

And now I can have that romantic bit right in my own backyard.

After we snapped this picture, we sat down and told each other about our day.

Little dreams coming true.

How do you bring your dreams into your life?

I love how late the light stays now!

Spring's first crocus

Harvesting sage for the dinner

It's under here somewhere...

Aha!

What next?

This morning I set aside a large block of time to put some new poems up on my website. But after I started working on that project, I realized that most or all of those poems were out in the world, under consideration. So that won't work.


I can wait until they all come back in the mail, or until it's been a year and I figure I'm not going to hear back, but these are poems for now. I'm hoping that after the November election, they will be irrelevant, or maybe just a reminder of what can go wrong.


Then I thought that I could send out some more poems. I even have it partially organized. But these poems are in my new manuscript. Can you send out poems even while you are submitting the manuscript that contains them to various contests or open readings?


And do I really need to worry about this? The statistical likelihood of getting a manuscript accepted and a poem in that manuscript accepted elsewhere sounds like the lottery or lightning.


Okay, I've managed to convince myself. Now I just need to wait for the grass to dry so I can mow the lawn (dandelions, clover) and maybe figure out what to do with this monster clematis.

Hang on, little tomatoes

They aren't even a little bit red yet, but they make me think of The Pink Martinis.

A starry sky

Blooms bursting in air

Another flowering fourth.

Start laughing now

I have gone off the deep end.

I have planted corn.

From seeds. Hard golden nuggets.

I have little hope that any of them will grow.

I have no room for them in my garden, anyway.

All the prime real estate (good soil, good sunlight) was filled in by starts that I bought while that packet of seeds sat on my kitchen corner. So now the corn is tucked in the corners, and a few meager that seemed to poor for any plant I wanted badly.

As I hunkered down in the dirt and troweled out short trenches, a handful of seeds in my hand, I felt like Jack, or like Jack's mother—as though I were planting magic. And after I found as many places for the corn as I could, I planted some beans.

If any of it grows—and that's a mighty big if—I'll take a picture. It really will last longer!

Time to punch down (gently!) the bread, if it has risen. I may not be writing so much today, but I'm feeding something.

A rose is a rose is…

a menace?

or a way of life?

My grandmother had a rose garden tucked away on the side of the house—prim tea roses edged by a small hedge of columbine. I always knew that I, too, would have a rose garden—in her memory and also because it's what women do (as when my daughter informed me that all girls should know how to play the piano).

Size is not the defining factor. The rose garden can contain one shrub to (name your number). At my previous house, I dug the yard up and planted, many, many roses: Linda Campbell, Thomas Lipton, Gruss an Aachen, Reine des Violettes, Peace—at one time I could have told you all of their names, but there were many others.

We moved here to a yard that was half deck and half grass, with large laurel hedges on either side. Nothing else. Again, I dug the yard up and planted roses: Butterfly, Paul's Himalayan Musk, Rosa Rubrifola, Cecile de Brunner, and the Gruss an Aachen that I brought with me.

My grandmother's garden was the picture of pretty—and orderly. Mine has become a bramble, a ramble of roses each competing for more space more room, more bloom. Roses crowd out the wisteria, the honeysuckle, the hibiscus (rose of Sharon). The Californica Plena sucker that started as a stick would take the entire yard. The Agnes rose (Agnes was my grandmother's name) is surrounded by the Butterfly that spreads its canes with abandon.

Abandon. Perhaps that is the key. Only constant attention can keep this garden from growing its own way, and I tend to let it grow until it's entirely out of control. Princes would sooner ride away than hack through its thorns and canes.

This morning, I started the chore of cutting back. I thought about what Nance Van Winkle said at the poetry class I took last week: "Ruthlessness." And it's easier to for me to be ruthless in the garden than in my poems.

Then again, the roses are starting to bloom. And I don't want to cut too much until after the show.

What does this have to do, really, with poetry and writing?

Perhaps I need as much abandon in my writing as in my back yard. (If I start with more, it might be easier to figure out what to cut away.)

How do you let go—and go?

More time management

I need to learn how to write at night

so I can work on all this in the daylight.

One crocus!

Back in December, I planted many bulbs. I envisioned a meadow. I saw parking-strip grass. My mother pointed out that December was not so long ago and I should be patient. I pointed out that evidence indicated the neighborhood squirrels had feasted on my dreams.

Lo, this week, I saw a bloom. Just one, but it made me so happy.

(Next year, I shall follow Laurie's example and put red pepper and black pepper right in the holes. They shall be well-seasoned flowers.)

Is there a poetry connection? Yes!

Sending out the many, many poems is like planting all those bulbs. Maybe only one work is accepted, but how exciting it is! And, as with planting, I always hope that the yield may increase next year, just as I hope that my work will grow.

Late in the season

Planting crocus bulbs
Visions of gold and violet
Waiting for the spring

Thinking ahead

Today, I planted some 360 crocus bulbs and any of the grape hyacinths that hadn't gone moldy.

My vision is to have a little meadow of crocus blooms in my parking strip. More likely, the squirrels will come tonight and dig them all up, or they will be planted too shallow and won't survive.

At one point, I saw the chopped end of a daffodil shoot. What? I stopped jabbing my trowel into the damp ground and noticed that yes, the daffodils are already arriving even though it's December, even though winter doesn't start until tomorrow.

Whenever I work in the yard, or the garden—and it isn't nearly often enough—I think about Stanley Kunitz, who made time for both passions, planting and poetry. Sometimes when I garden, poems begin to grow in my thoughts. Today, I just got muddy, cold, wet hands. But, bulbs are in the ground.

Spring will tell its own stories.