Fabulous Flowers

The corn fit for human consumption
Is now in our freezers or cans.
Mountaintop Mary’s horses
Are happily munching the culls.

Our poor dog who was bred for
Romping on snow-covered mountains
Is recently looking as limp as
Our zucchini and yellow squash.

Our garden food looks awful,
But our flowers are fabulous.
Sunflowers’ bright yellow heads nod
As we crawl through the cukes.

The four o’clocks open themselves
Just in time for our foraging.
The bright faces of our flowers
Keep us from complete despair.

We moved to the mountains expecting
That there would always be cool breezes;
But, we are happy for air conditioning,
Even with living in the trees.

While we do debate the merits of trying
To outwit the whims of nature,
For sunflower bouquets alone
We may grow a garden again.

Lady of Leisure

Do computers get constipated?
Or is technology overrated?
Do they suffer from senility?
As they age, they get as slow as me.

While waiting for my computer to boot,
I could learn to play a flute,
Or write a poem about what I see
Sitting in our hemlock tree.

Oh, well, it gives me time to look
At birds, and bees, and trees, and brook
And listen to the breeze and thunder
In our private world of wonder.

A hummingbird stretches his neck,
And spreads his tail for scary effect.
Now he's ruler of this feeder;
I guess he must be a leader.

Butterflies perform a dance;
To my eye, it looks like romance.
But who can tell what the dance does mean?
They may be deciding who's king or queen.

Our dog is taking a long, lazy nap;
Our cat is in the rocking chair's lap.
They are clearly saving their energy
For whatever excitement may come to be.

My man is off doing manly things,
Addressing my vehicle's knocks and pings.
I'm doing my part enjoying the fruits
Of several air-conditioned indoor pursuits.

I need to finish making pickles,
But when I'm alone, I can be fickle.
My reading list calls to me
To use all the time that's free.

The task for today, other than my blog
Is picking corn, and I could brush the dog.
But the heat isn't much of a motivator;
I think I'll wait for a time that's later.

I have to bribe myself to do anything else
Than to write or to read all the books on my shelf.
The garden is shaded after six;
This is a good time for corn to be picked.

Until that time, I'll mimic our pets,
And conserve my energy for breaking a sweat
Harvesting the last of our first corn crop,
Then I'll crash on the sofa with a cold pop.

When my man returns I'll be relaxed.
When he asks about today's acts,
I'll greet him with a hero's welcome
My leisure, a reward for his work well-done.

Fighting For Food

There are now at least two tiny gladiators challenging each other and the insects, so I decided to refill the hummingbird feeder. I had to beat down the bees to get at it. These birds and bees give a whole new meaning to the term "food fight." We also hung another feeder in the dogwood tree outside our kitchen window. I like their movement, but not their meanness. Hummingbirds must have some serious ADHD; maybe that's why I like them -- they remind me of so many people I know and love. I wonder if I added a little Ritalin to the sugar water, they'd be nicer to their fellow feasters.

Judy posted on her Facebook that she was getting buckets of grapes from her vines, so I figured I'd better check our "vineyard" (which means the vines growing wild on several areas of our property) before the birds and bears did. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to have many grapes for our jam, and the ones we do have are a long way from ripe.

The walk around our property was still fruitful. I found a flowering vine that I'd never seen before, and it was growing on the foliage of a hazelnut plant that I didn't know was a hazelnut (aka, filbert). The irony is that Jack gave us a hazelnut plant from his yard two years ago, and I've been waiting for signs of flowering. The stem of it has been broken, apparently by the lawnmower, but not to worry; we'll still be picking filberts this fall.

When we lived in Louisiana, a hobby we enjoyed was catching crabs outside our back door; we now pick fruit and nuts from our land. Richard likes to collect and crack black walnuts, so I'm assuming that he'll equally enjoy harvesting hazelnuts. The black walnuts are divine in zucchini muffins; too bad all our zucchini plants have, literally, bitten the dust.

We went to the garden last night and found quite a mess. Mamie's chickens have decided that the cucumbers were planted for their eating pleasure, as were the cantaloupes. Our sunflowers have toppled over from the weight of their huge heads, and the cabbage bugs have finished making lace out of every cabbage leaf. The weeds are so thick that we can barely find the onions, and our carrots are splitting their sides because of drought followed by rain.

We try to get to the garden every other evening, but sometimes other pastimes take precedence; it's hard to get motivated to work in ninety-degree, damp heat. Thank goodness there are grocery stores because we'd be hard pressed to feed a family with our laissez faire attitudes about getting up and going to the garden.

For today, there are cucumbers to cut for pickles and beans to string for First Friday. We'll go to the garden and weed-whack; maybe we'll find more food under these wild, wanton weeds.

Arts and Crafts of Coker Creek

I'm an artist wanna be, which means that I'd love to be able to produce beautiful measures of music, dances that delight, and paintings that inspire, but these talents weren't given to me. I so admire passion channeled into action, especially into artistic endeavors, that I absolutely love to be around creative people and watch them while they work.

I've dreamed, since we lived in New Orleans, of living in an artists' colony where I could, perhaps, keep myself busy writing or cooking while basking in the creative spirit all around me. Artistic inspiration is in the Coker Creek air; many people who move here are artists in bloom. I think we're now getting close to actualizing an artists' colony.

Stephanie, the gal who recently bought Coker Creek Gallery, is planning to create an incubator-style environment in conjunction with her retail space. Her vision includes having those whose art she represents work out in the open where they can be observed. What a wonderful addition to our other Appalachian attractions this would be!

I was privileged to meet a group of ladies last week-end who are putting their artistry into action making quilts for critically ill children. Once a month, the ladies with Quilts For Kids haul their sewing machines, scissors, and ironing boards over to the Ruritan building and create a sewing bee. The kaleidoscopes of patterns and colors in the quilts were a delight to behold; I'm sure many a child finds a reason to smile when presented with the gifts of love from these ladies.

So much of the creative process seems to require silence and solitude, and I'm a lot loud because I channel my passions into prose, poetry and prattle. On the bayou, there was nothing we wouldn't discuss with lots of laughter and as many tears. I sometimes need a good wet-my-pants belly laugh, a righteous rant, or a soul-splitting cry, and good church ladies don't seem to be comfortable with this brand of unedited emotion.

What's a woman raised with a bunch of boys to do? This is the Bible Belt, and I know that one of the quilters is a pastor. I do have the problem of being a bit too outspoken and baudy for small town tastes. It's so hard to find women of wicked wit;I don't fit in for long with "ladies who lunch," or ladies of any kind. I simply can't act like a lady for more than a few minutes without exploding. My loose lips can sink relationships; and in a small town, like in a family, it's easy to become a pariah.

The quilting queens looked like a lively bunch, and they did have snacks setting near some sewing machines. Somebody's got to feed the troops, and the Ruritan building has a full kitchen; so, maybe I could cook for these crafters. That ought to keep me quiet enough that they'll let me watch them while they work.

A Mess of Emotions

What a messy affair emotions are. Yesterday, I almost wept over the taste of a perfectly ripe peach; the awe its perfection inspired took away my breath. Living in such close, quiet quarters with my man and my memories keeps me ever-extreme in my emotions.

I’ve never considered myself a greedy person, but I really am greedy for my people. I can’t get enough of the essence of them in my mind; even when my emotions are stretched to the breaking point, I want more time, more connection, more making memories. Every child I ever held, in some small way, became a part of me. Every friend or family member I ever hugged has a hold on my heart. Heaven for me would be to have all my people right next to me simultaneously. For now, I have to settle for enjoying them from afar.

I love being able to live vicariously with my grandchildren, family, and friends through Facebook and email. I’ve been able to enjoy my oldest grandchild’s summer activities through the pictures her friends have posted on Facebook. With families these days being so busy, if we didn’t have electronic ways to keep up, we may not be able to recognize our own grandkids by the time we do get to see them in person.

Our grandson’s joy at being able to witness and even participate in rescuing sea turtle babies also came through on Facebook. His dad has promised to post pictures of the monumentally memorable event. I almost feel like I’m there when I’m made privy to the pictures, and Nick’s passionate prose. It does sometimes make my heart hurt with the longing to hear their voices, see their faces, and smell their special smells, but that’s the price we pay for allowing ourselves to love.

Creating Cozy

Isn't it bizarre how we buy these big parcels of land and then spend so much time shrinking the spaces to cozy parcels that we can enjoy from our favorite windows?

Mountaintop Mary and Don own a whole top of a mountain, but they've figured a way to create a cozy place for their grandchildren's reading and dreaming. Just off their front porch, they've closed in a section of yard with ranch-style fencing. In the middle of this enclosure, they've built a tee-pee out of rebar and chicken wire; here they're growing lunar pumpkin vines to create tee-pee walls with brilliant orange blooms. The entrance path to the the tee-pee is a home-hewn stone walkway. All around this miniature mansion are bright red canna lilies in an English-style flower plot inviting the hummingbirds to hover. Their hammock swings gently in the breezes wafting across this child-size Granny Camp garden.

Our close-in trees not only provide shade for our house, they also provide places to observe birds and other beasts feeding and frolicking in the branches. Our niece, Nikki's, favorite reading spot is in the hammock strung between an Eastern hemlock and a black walnut tree only twenty steps from our front door. Would it be as inviting if she had to hike to get to it? I will admit that autumn would be a bit quieter without the avalanche of walnuts bombarding our roof as they fall, but where would we put Nikki's favorite spot? And, every time I speak to my children about moving our bonfire pit farther away from our porch to improve the "curb appeal" of our entry way (not that we have curbs in Coker Creek), I get wails of distress that I would even think about making it less accessible.

Richard and many of the people we know up here worry about the big trees so close to our house. I've had several workmen come up here and admonish me for having pine trees anywhere near our roof line, for fear that they'll fall on said roof. Mamie now says she should have listened to her husband when he wanted to take out all the close-in trees before building her home seventy-six years ago. But, until recently she, like me, celebrated her big trees.

We do have some serious wind storms, and ice can make the branches of pines brittle, but I'd as soon sell this house and live in the desert as worry about a tree falling on our heads. Lightening could strike us as we work in the garden or walk from our carport, but I think that we all have to pick our battles and the things we will worry about. I worry about things that go "bump" in the night, like black bears, not black walnuts.

At least one hummingbird and a wasp have located our front yard feeder. I find it funny that hummingbirds will chase each other from any one area rather than share their food, no matter how many feeders are in the vicinity; but a wasp sucking down the sweet sustenance doesn't worry our winged warrior one whit.

Good Golly, Miss Molly

Good golly, Miss Molly.
How hard can things get?
I’ve been trying to publish
Nancy’s book for months,
And haven’t succeeded yet.
She and I really thought
Her work was finely tuned;
But no, it seems the printer wants
For us to circle the moon.
Finally, in frustration,
We started the process fresh.
A proof copy has been ordered
We hope we can give it a rest.