March Doldrums

:'( Haven't we all met someone like this?

A man of words and not of deeds

Is like a garden full of weeds

And when the weeds begin to grow

It's like a garden full of snow

And when the snow begins to fall

It's like a bird upon the wall

And when the bird away does fly

It's like an eagle in the sky

And when the sky begins to roar

It's like a lion at the door

And when the door begins to crack

It's like a stick across your back

And when your back begins to smart

It's like a penknife in your heart

And when your heart begins to bleed

You're dead, and dead, and dead indeed.

Nursery Rhyme Possibly by John Fletcher 1579-1625

so

Kick that someone clean out of your life

and

garden, garden, garden

A spot of sunshine

in an otherwise common dreary day

"F" is for Fantastic Gardens   :)

This Hole Wasn't Here Last Year ???

Pretty Ladies in a Row

Moss Gardens

Sunshine on a Stem

March---color's shyly appearing on the landscape, except for that tenacious henbit deadnettle hogging every square inch of the gardens with its demure purple flowers that I suppose need to pig out on their space requirements in order to be seriously noticed.  And - we do so seriously notice this little interloper that steals onto the scene quietly, then creates a massive white fungal mess as the flowers fade away and our humidity does its damage.  Disappearing by summer, it's seeds silently wait to irritate the hell out of us again come next March.

Fluffy large rabbit spied in back garden hiding from the dog last week...small scruffy rabbit startled in the front yard today as the bird feeder was stuffed full of treats.  The call of the eastern towhee is heard often, and he's frequently caught scrounging around in the wild weeds on the ground foraging for his supper when he isn't heisting seeds off the back deck railing.  The resident mockingbird is perplexing us once again with some newly learned sounds that have us all guessing.

Seventy degrees one day, 36 degrees the next, buds plump out in the warmed air, then hold their breath as the cold roars back in again, ancient ash tree stands naked in the dreary cold drizzle, it will be the last to clothe itself in greenery and seed layers come real springtime, and the hollies wonder what the hoopla's all about, what's the big deal about all this lovely icy chill?  It's all like a fierce crouched tiger silently waiting for just the right moment to burst forth with all its might.  Spring's waiting just around the corner on the next calendar page.

Irresistible

The gardens are under attack by waves of pelting rains that cannot make up their minds whether to wash everything down the street or take pity and ease up a bit.  Bird watching has come to a screeching halt...erererrrkerPLUNK!

I've been blessed with being sick but on the mends, and pleasantly reminded that birds do indeed find my yard blissfully irresistible. I find myself wistfully wishing I was retired, until I remember that spending money in my pocket is such a warm fuzzy feeling ;)

A flock of cedar waxwings mobbed the back gardens on Sunday gorging themselves on the blue-black berries smothering the two blackhaw viburnum trees.  Later a flock of evil starlings joined in, and I was compelled to open the sliding glass door and beat the living daylights out of an old square cake pan with the back of a serving spoon to chase them away.  Starlings fled, but the cedar waxwings were unfazed.

Late in the day just a small token clump of blue-black berries hung from the end of one lonely branch.  I thought Monday would be dismal, since I reasoned they would move on in their quest for winter foraging.  I was happily disappointed they hung around and began stripping the winterberry hollies of all their bright red fruit. If they hang around much longer, my resident mockingbird will be totally co-dependent on the feeder until spring.

A flock of robins joined the commotion early afternoon, and later a group of cardinals stopped by.  I rarely ever feel the satisfaction that should come from all those laborious hours that seem to never end with the gardens in good weather, but this week has brightened my spirits immensely.

Lacey's impatiently waiting for her broccoli to reach the al dente stage in the oven (yes - I do have a cat that pigs out on that green veggie stuff), so I bid you a fond goodbye for now.  I mustn't be late for my date with Dustin dog and Lacey to get our veggie fix. Just wish I could teach that feisty feline a manner or two, as she loves to bat her pieces of broccoli all over the dining room floor like they are green mice before she decides to devour them :'( 

First peek of spring...

Thoughts like plump fuzzy snowflakes falling from the heavens

Zoe and I are bird watching,

probably for different reasons ;)

but we're enjoying it just the same.

Plump fuzzy snowflakes

are falling from the heavens,

and melting as they touch the ground.

Blue jays bully the pesky grackles,

but the two doves stay put

until the mockingbird appears.

It's always a colorful smorgasbord of feathers

at the feeder each morn

as the sunflower hearts disappear too rapidly.

I hear it's peeps and am delighted

to find my eastern towhee

still hanging out in my neck of the woods.

Purple finch, titmice,

a pair of black-capped chickadees,

and a noisy Carolina wren flit about.

Fresh chilly winter air

refreshes my inner spirit,

even though it all looks a bit gloomy out there.

A downy woodpecker makes its way up the tree,

as a group of slate-colored juncos

mess about on the ground.

The uninvited house sparrows

push out the white-crowned sparrows,

while a pair of cardinals wait in the bushes.

As a goldfinch lands at the feeder rim,

Zoe looks at me with those intense eyes

asking if breakfast is only a myth.

So I must pry myself away

from my window of many delights,

but I do so with a reluctant sigh.

A very nice beginning

to a most wondrous day

that just happens to be my birthday.

Massacre on Hobson Pike

Decisions came hard for her.  She was still parked on the shoulder with her engine idling when the yellow gas light popped on and instantly complicated her indecision.  Rats!  She stared at those twenty-six bloody bodies on the road (she had carefully counted them all), and the acid reflux from her churning stomach was gagging her.  Fumbling with the door lock, she barely pushed it open before her lunch she had spent thirty-five dollars on and devoured two hours ago was lying on the ground.  Great!

She sighed.  She was trapped in her little red car, because to straddle that console with her two chubby legs was not a plan that would ever occupy her head for even one second.  She was going nowhere without her tire rolling through all that crud, but she had to go somewhere, anywhere fast.  She looked at the car clock again - twelve minutes and still no one had driven over the top of the last hill or the hill beyond to join her in her predicament.  The engine was running on fumes, her cell phone was still sitting on her kitchen counter charging, and she had to so desperately pee.

She carefully drove back onto the road with the noise of upchuck flinging off her back tire, and grimaced.  She stopped.  She sucked most of the air right out of the interior of her little red car until she thought her lungs were going to explode; and then raced across those crunching bodies, over the next hill, and into the setting sun.  She put on her sunglasses, dug into her purse with her right hand, and fetched out a stale piece of sugarless gum to calm her nerves.  A semi, she thought.  It must have been a semi-truck barreling through a flock of birds.  It was a bad omen, all that carnage, and she knew the rest of her day was going to be shit - and it was.


The flock of birds was real...
the rest pure imagination.

Magic on Wings

Woke up this morning...

wandered into the kitchen

for a glass of ice cold water.

Lacey was stuttering

at the sliding glass door,

you know -

that there's a bird, there's a bird

kind of stuttering

when she sees feathered food

just beyond her reach.

It was a male Eastern Towhee

checking out the sunflower seeds

I left on the deck railing last night.

This is a first for me.

What a nice way 

to start a cold winter day.

Zoe and Lacey

Sometimes

when birds are involved

compromises must be made.

So, what is the point of it all - of living life?

Whisked off on her first and only airline flight with just the eighty-some years of her life which Deb could cram into one suitcase, mom was uprooted from hers and our late dad's home to live in Deb's household in what must have been the most quietly shattering day of both of their lives.  Deb was the one who had to drop everything when dad and mom had emergencies, and she was the one who looked after them as dad was dying.  She was the one, because she would still have her job to come back to if she left it, and she could scrape up the money to do it.  She's had an altered life because of all this, a life she hadn't counted on living.

Shadow and Sugar, the two felines of mom's life were given to a lady Deb hastily found, and to this day no one knows if this person kept them, found them homes, dumped them out on their own...no one knows.  Mom cried about this for years every conversation we had on the telephone.  Each time I lied to her and told her they were okay, but always figured worst case scenario in their demise.  It would have been great if Deb had kept mom's cats with her, but Deb was forever so coldly over-practical.

Sitting next to my husband on the flight to Reno, I wondered if Deb was right.  Was I just being crazy?  She said it was stuff I could live without.  A year after the house sat abandoned, the new buyers agreed over the telephone to save in one of the rooms of the house everything on my hastily drawn up list. A list of what I could remember in five minutes off the top of my head that I thought was important to me.  As I flew on that plane through the clouds, I worried if it all was worth the cost and trouble, but I also knew that for some reason, I needed to complete this journey.

When someone tells you it is never a good idea to revisit a place that isn't yours anymore, believe them.  Floors were torn out and being replaced; all the furniture was gone, even the old art deco bedroom set that mom and dad had from the beginning of their marriage; the lovely green painted wood cabinets in the kitchen were being sloppily repainted yellow; and things I had forgotten to asked to be saved were already dumped - gone forever.  Pushing away the disappointment and shock, I sat myself down into what had been mom and dad's bedroom with my load of cardboard boxes we had just purchased from the post office, the bubble wrap and shipping tape from the Wal-mart by the airport, the newspaper from the local grocery store, and began to pick, wrap, and pack into those cardboard boxes from the clutter that covered most of the floor - the clutter that represented all that was left of my life there.

Mom's neighbor from across the street bought the place - we talked, they were nice, and they left me alone most of the day even though they were constantly in and out of the house.  My mind was rushing 180 miles an hour with decisions, then wrapping as fast as I could the outcome of those choices, with my husband driving the finished packages to the post office to be mailed to ourselves.  A day to fly in, rent a car, and drive to my home town; a day to wrap and mail; and a day to fly out.  It was insane and exhausting, poignant and exhilarating.  The neighbors left for the day and time was desperately running out.

Choices had to be made - some practical, some from the heart, some better safe than sorry, some no rhyme or reason - there's never logic with emotion.  Choosing what to leave behind, the rest was thrown into boxes to pack in the car to take back to the motel. When I decided to leave that room, we were alone and the sun was still above the horizon.  Walking through every room in the house, closets and drawers were opened and closed, but all was empty except the kitchen.  We grabbed a few things from the cupboards to add to the carload.  Saddened, I welcomed the outdoors.

Scrounging around in the enclosed area that housed the graveyard of my parents rock collecting years plus dad's tool shed proved that everything had already been picked over.  As a last minute thought we dragged the cover off the opening to the basement, and were surprised that all sixty some years of crap was mostly still there.  Overwhelming, with so little time to dig through boxes covered with desert sand from years of sand storms, a box picked out miraculously held a little two drawer cedar chest that I recognized as mom's.  Opening one of the drawers, her wedding band laid alone in it.  The little chest went with me.

Under the wood steps we removed some junk and pulled out a cardboard box stuffed with old photos and sand.  That went with us also. Her old trunk, I think it had originally been her mom's old trunk, was still there with all the needlework, linens, quilt tops, and saved memories of her and her mother's life.  As a child, she had lovingly taken me down those steps one summer and told me the stories of everything that was packed inside that mysteriously wonderful trunk.  She never would let go of any of it, no matter how hard I pleaded, and everything was still there.  I was old.  All those ideas I dreamed up of how to use its contents when I was young no longer existed, but most of its contents was stuffed in paper bags to take with us.

In the final moments the next morning, all unpacked treasures in our motel room were painfully placed into the dumpster before we drove away to fly back home.  In less than a week all boxes arrived almost at the same time - a curious sight most likely for any mail person.  Realizing that whatever would be sent to mom would never leave Debs house again, the excruciating task of deciding what not to send began. Acknowledgements don't exist with my family, so I still don't know if I chose well for mom.  Some things of hers that I kept I sent to her later on.  Some things of my own I kept I sent to the trash bin later on.

My little stash from that house is packed with memories.  The cheap art deco vases mom bought when she was young, two quilt tops either my grandmother or one of my great aunts hand stitched, the hand sewn apron my mom always wore, an embroidered and pink ribbon batiste baby dress that was either mine or my mom's, my tiny white majorette boots, the pig cookie jar dressed as a sheriff with badge and cowboy hat that was always filled with peanut butter raisin oatmeal cookies, the bean pot mom served baked beans in, mom's fancy silver thimble and wood sock darner she used to darn the toes and heels of our socks, the piece of wood mom held onto that her dad gave to her because it reminded him of a face...

...the vintage marbles picked out of her gallon jug marble filled door stopper, her milk glass old jar collection to add onto mine that we both acquired forty years ago sifting through boxes in the back of an antique store we visited together, the crystal rabbit-daisy frosted glass toothpick holder-pink opaline toothpick holder-pair of white porcelain parakeets-gifts to her in my twenties because she never bought for herself anything she liked (these should be with mom, but they stayed with me), lots of photos-letters-writings, my youngest sister's glass insulator collection, the last felt cowboy's hat dad wore, and a quart jar of sand from the yard that was converting back to a desert.

No regrets, but I no longer think I know what life is all about.  We aren't indispensable in the grand scheme of it all.  It's like we're put here as window dressing.  The earth doesn't require us; and bad weather, pestilence and disease seems to level the playing field quite often.  Some religions teach we are the only creatures walking this earth that have souls.  I find that exceedingly difficult to believe. Whether monstrous or angelic, history always has two sides to every action and reaction.  The number of individuals remembered by all probably amounts to no more than .000000000001% of all that have lived, if even that. Material wealth is remarkably fragile.

Chosen to live life, we have been promised nothing.  We seem to have two choices - positive/negative, but within these two choices lies an infinite numbers of levels we get to play with.  Could be why our language has so many adverbs and adjectives.  We're not perfect, after all, we have the capability to lie-cheat-steal on one level or another; but goodness doesn't require perfection.  It just requires the choice to do it.  Is there more to life than this?  If you believe in fiction, there might be; if you believe in nonfiction, there might be; otherwise, I haven't the foggiest clue. 

DARN IT!

Know that phrase 'put the cart before the horse'?

Well...

I feel like an old nag head butting an army tank through a field littered with rocks, and my bruised head is killing me.  

Logic has never been a big deal breaker when it comes to choosing my own little black hole of detention that I sometimes loving call THE JOB.

Perhaps, I should have changed that strategy a few jobs back, but I didn't. Hindsight is so useless ;(

My demons are playing with the curling irons today, and have once again fired my tired noggin to a crisp.

Three hours of lectures flying over the top of my head, and I'm ready to enter camping reservations for our park into the new system.  Ya, right!

Why wait until all is ready for direct online access by the customers - logic is so terrifically over rated.

Takes talent persuading a customer to choose a number out of thin air for their campsite location.

The cheat sheet isn't quite right, problem solving's too scarce, reports translate incorrectly to fiscal services templates; feels like Mickey Mouse is mickey mousing all over the darn place, and I need to so desperately ESCAPE!

But, hey!  It's a 24 hour 7 day a week operating system, and I'm a one person office 8 hour 5 day a week type of gal.

It's beginning to creep into my weekends a bit, cause none of my other duties have evaporated into the stratosphere like I willed them to last night. Rats!

Two weeks down, ten more to go before they THINK it will all go live online.

So...

I'm high tailing it to Frugal MacDoogal Wine & Liquor off Division Street to invest in an intoxicating case of Chateau Ste Michelle Chardonnay.

See ya...!