Friday, October 29, 2010

All Hallow's Eve Night


In the darkened night,
earth delivers fright,
of creepy crawlies,
goolies and bullies,
and all the nastys,
evil so delights...

Midnight hour tolls,
hair stands up on end,
I'm poised on my toes,
body tensing in fear,
a touch in the dark,
screams all the way home!

Halloween's just hype,
we all know that...right?
I see what's not there,
it's all in my head,
so why this feeling,
danger follows me?

At home locked up tight,
the whispers, the moans,
the beats of my heart,
I'm smothered in noise,
from this night save me,
anyone, I plead.

Nightmares give me fright,
things cannot be right,
when monsters I sight,
by my bed tonight,
then covers pulled tight,
with all of my might.

I want my mommy!!!


Thoughts, in short lines, under each other.  Any resemblance to poetry is purely in your head.  All rhyming is merely coincidental.  Gather 'round my little pumpkins and have either a delightfully frightful, or a frightfully delightful All Hallow's Eve Night.


Trick
or
Treat
 and a bit of nonsense.

ODE TO A COOKIE

O, thou round, savored morsel
That betwixt my teeth should crumble
Better still if thou were spared
 To ornate my platter in royal state
But alas, my creature of raisins and oats
To bear thy countenance growing stale
Would be too cruel a suffering
While my stomach groans and ails.





OOOweeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....




Spotted 'bove my window ledge

dangling through his raveled web,

trapped within my cubical

of sanitary obstacles,

decayed, he waits upon the thread.











Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Miss Ivy's Garden




Severe thunder storm warning - shear winds - tornado watch - tornado warning - giant hail - front line winds - funnel cloud - rotating wall cloud - tornado spin up - wind at 84 mph - temperature rising from 70 to 85 degrees in 15 minutes - not a good sign - your tornado safe place...my tornado safe place...what the hell is that...my house is built like a shack underneath the okay exterior...do I feel safe in any possible area of this questionable structure...hell no!!!  The Nashville is a great place to live brochures conveniently mention nothing of the possibilities of tornadoes in this town; we were caught completely off guard in our first year with tornado warnings blasting away on our television screen.





Sunday evening was totally occupied by severe thunder storms passing over the house one after another, after another, after another; blasting, rumbling thunder rattling the walls quite effectively.  Surprisingly, Dustin and Zoe, my severe storm freaking out pets, remained mostly calm...perhaps something to do with the new insulated windows...who knows, but it was a pleasant surprise not to have Dustin plastered to my legs when I tried to moved about.  Only one tornado to the north of us, and two to the south of us in what I call Tennessee's Tornado Alley.  Thank goodness, our guardian angel, prevented us from setting up housekeeping there.





Yesterday afternoon, boss told me to stay home today; and boy, am I now glad I heeded his advice.  It was so totally awesome this morning watching those thick black clouds covering the sky so fast, and creating that effect of darkness as if it was that time of day for the sun to set.  News says a tornado passed over an area not far from my park work place.  Another tornado to the south of us, and now at this very moment there is a tornado traveling on the ground far south of us and another one moving to the east of us.  Now it is 60 degrees outside...temperature is fluctuating all over the place with this series of storms.     





Once upon a time, whenever that year was the tornado passed right over the top of Nashville, I was so unlucky to be working downtown at a small state park right in the middle of the city.  Stood at the window watching a huge wall of rotating wind approaching, all of us running down the stairwell as the skylight glass above us shattered and rained pieces of glass down upon us.  Depression was instant when I realized my car was parked in front of the building in the tornado's path.  Imagine my amazement when I discovered my car untouched, but all the cars in the parking garage had shattered and blown out windows.  Thank you, guardian angel. 





The city next to my new work place after I transferred from Nashville, was the victim of a tornado touchdown, which found me driving an extra 40 miles on top of what I usually commuted, trying to find a way home that night that wasn't totally blocked by severe damage.  The year after, a tornado passed over the park and caused damage that took weeks to clear, thankfully that one occurred after hours.  The next tornado passed through the park, but had weakened a little, leaving mostly numerous kinds of debris from peoples houses - checks, letters, photos, insulation, siding, roofing; the park was plastered with all this debris, and hundreds of volunteers combed the park to collect all this stuff.





Raining at present, will most likely rain for rest of day and evening, as a cold front is moving in behind.  Trees and shrubs are mostly naked of leaves after all this wind and pounding rain.  I am always so pleasantly surprised by my autumn crocus goulimyi, when its blossoms peek up through the layers of colorful leaves in late fall.  I always forget that I will be blessed by the sight of its beautiful blooms as the edge of winter peaks over the ridge.  Fortunately, I photographed their beauty before they were a little messed up by all this lovely weather.  I even still have purple coneflowers that are blooming and that is astonishing.





I'm tucked in for the day, snacking on a new find, Greek yogurt with pineapple, love it.  I'm discovering daytime television which is okay as long as I don't have to deal with those awful soap operas, which just aren't my cup of tea.  Have settled for the Ellen DeGeneres show, which is turning out to be simply or complicatedly hilarious.  Headache free today, and I am happy today, any day without a headache is fantabulous.  Love you. 



Sunday, October 24, 2010

Cockroach Sitting was never my Forte




Childhood memories are a weak point...they seem like lifetimes ago.  I'll play with one for weeks until I remember enough facts or fiction...facts clear as glass, or so foggy they are best left as fiction.  Haven't a clue to the time period on this one, I'll pick junior year high school, sounds about right, it was somewhere there in my teenager years.  I was always desperate for spending funds, dad never participated in this judgement call, and mom was always slightly unreasonable with the reality of actual prices.  In all fairness, we weren't exactly the richest family on the block, but then again, neither were we the poorest.  I was at the age of discovering quality clothing, high heeled shoes, and eye  makeup.  Non-necessities were only in my life if I funded them.  

Most likely an ad in the local newspaper, who knows; my town, only about 2000 people strong, offered little variety in the odd jobs department.  I began child sitting a sweet little girl in the first years of her grade school.  Two times a week parents escaped to their out on the town nights, and I sat in this way too little apartment twiddling my thumbs, and sighing those sighs of boredom.  Super old apartments, the same ones my parents as newly weds resided at...I thought that was kind of magical, but only thought that for a short time.  No television, books, games, no nothing, except those cardboard boxes of comic books stacked on the living room floor.  Comic books were wasted money items in our household, so this was a new adventure for me, and I began to educate myself big time.

Not long into the first comic book, a little cockroach appeared on the arm of the stuffed chair I had settled into for my read.  O gawd!!!  How I hated these scum of the earth.  The German type ones, as mom called them, the ones that crunch out loud when crushed with a shoe on foot.  I was queasy about things that crunched under foot in those days, so I always found myself never being able to mash one...calling in reinforcements, and giving mom or dad the pleasure of crushing them to  death.  At home and alone, I once beat one of these hard shelled roaches in our kitchen with a straw broom, and I have to tell you, it takes many, MANY whacks to do anything to a roach like that.  I mostly beat him senseless, and had to finally resort to stepping on him ever so lightly until I heard that CRUNCH.  Uuuuuuuck!!!  

Roach disappeared before I could figure out what to do with him.  You know what happens when this type of stuff occurs.  Felt like those little suckers were crawling all over me, and it took all I had to sit back down into that chair after I hung my coat over the top of door that opened to the kitchen.  Eventually this roach visiting crap happened while my little charge was still up, and she began enlightening me to the horrors of my place of employment.  She had an awful fear of her bedroom as the roaches visited her constantly...she hated it in there.  She hated them in the refrigerator too.  Refrigerator?  Kitchen?  I never even thought past the fear of one on me in that stuffed reading chair I mostly occupied in the evenings after dark.  So I waited until darkness filled the apartment, and sneaked a peak into that kitchen.                        

Flipped on light switch...can you even begin to comprehend what it looks like...five billion roaches scattering everywhere, trying to find something to crawl under, to hide themselves from the lighted area?  I was froze, petrified, took a while to get my mouth closed.  I gingerly walked to the refrigerator and flung open the door, stepping back at the same time, to prevent a roach attack.  Wow!!!  I was trying to reason how husband and wife could live with all this roach activity each time they took something out of the fridge.  How could anyone munch on anything covered with roach tracks occupying space in this fridge with its ill-fitting door?  Maybe they loved roaches the mostest, felt most comfortable in crud, or perhaps they were the epitome of laziness at its extreme.  My choice that night was making this a playground of death. 

I was taught at an early age it was more to my advantage to just keep my mouth shut, and I guess that is why I never presented this roach problem to my employers.  Instead, on my next visit, I just sneaked in several cans of my parents roach spray, and almost asphyxiated myself, applying that foul smelling stuff to every conceivable place those filthy little beetles would call their home.  An enormous graveyard of dead roaches would have greeted my employers eyes that next morning, but neither husband nor wife ever uttered a word on the subject, and no roach carcasses laid anywhere on my next visit.  I did manage to read all those hundreds and hundreds of comic books before my employment ended...my only adventure into that world of myth and legend.  I did get my Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck quality dresses and high heeled shoes.  I was living high on the hog, and it suited me well.  

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Good Gardens Gone Wild

 


Tennessee fall...that time of year you might wake up the next morning to crisp, fragrant autumn air; or heavy, humid summer air; or yikes! ice on your breath kind of air.  Today it is summer again, and pots of wildflowers (bleeding hearts, liatris, summer phlox laura) are lined up along the pathway in front waiting their turn to be tucked into their places in the garden bed.  Leveled the weed vegetation, chopping it to smithereens, giving the wolf spiders just enough time to flee inches ahead of the weed whacker.  One of them was a mini-monster, and a little too curious for comfort.






Cute, pudgy, terra cotta hued concrete pig needs to be repositioned to allow a plant tucking near it, and Miss Black Widow is startled out of her hiding place between poor piggy's front legs.  Pig dropped with a thud, as I'm figuring out how to murder Miss Widow as soon as possible.  I'm wondering where these creatures are lingering, as they seem to pop up out of nowhere to claim anything that has been lying on the ground for more than half an hour.  I see visions of hundreds of them hiding in my gardens waiting for their window of opportunity, giving me the heebie-jeebies.










Big bluestem grass has gotten comfortable with yard, and am moving three of them to this bed behind the wildflowers.  Sun's getting low, and I'm having to speed up this LABOR of love, if I want to not dance with flying roaches, parachuting spiders, and slugs with a death wish that call the dark their domain.  Birds are flying in to roost, and I'm thinking how grateful I am that everything in the universe lined up correctly this year, and two families of bluebirds, families of house wrens, carolina wrens, mockingbirds, and blue jays all called the gardens their home this year, and all fledged safely into the wild blue yonder.






My gardens lie in darkness now, and I'm composing this tale of my day of events while savoring a steaming hot cup of Earl Grey tea and some salty toasted almonds; suppressing this obsession of achy back thoughts, and wincing at the prospect of later this week continuing to empty the back deck of its nursery of wildlings (yellow trillium and aster silk grass) waiting for their place in the gardens.  I have a love affair with concrete statues...one can never have too many of these doodads scattered about.  While others dreams may be of seeds and vegetation for next springs planting, mine are of schemes to purchase that next shaped chunk of expensive garden cement.






Perfecting the lighting has proved a challenge, as I capture in snap shots remembrances of things I love best of these gardens in October.  They're far from calling it a year...insomniacs all when it comes to closing up shop for the season...just one more hurrah, after hurrah, after hurrah.  They're party crazy, and seem far from ready to settle in for a long winter's nap.


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