taming a wild dragon

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'Flying Dragon' Hardy Orange (Poncirus trifoliata) at Beal Gardens

I should have taken her picture. (I want to get bolder snapping people.) The college student kneeling at the foot of the Flying Dragon Hardy Orange tree is one of the "slave laborers" in the Horticulture program, and weeding campus gardens is part of her curriculum. When the weather entices, Inge and I head out Fridays at lunch to sit on a bench by a fountain or walk one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. I watched the kneeling student's gloved hands picking at leaves and tiny weeds in black soil and recognized my garden clippers sticking out her back jeans pocket. She flashed us a smile, obviously enjoying her work.

I learn best from watching and imitating, and the student tidying those beds inspired me to put our own beds in order at the farm before winter. In July before the wedding my niece Jennifer worked long, hard - and she said "enjoyable" - hours on the veggie and flower beds to shape and beautify them: ha, wedding weeding. It would be a shame to let them run too far amuck.

Fighting the grass whose roots are bound with my poor iris rhizomes will never end (photo below). I was too lethargic to tend to these ruffley pale iris in their previous bed, and the grass did what grass does, shooting roots far and wide under the iris, herbs and daylilies. Now I pay the price, like I did Saturday in another weekend of warm sun, tediously pulling thin blades and roots, making my carpal tunnel weakened wrists ache.

But yikes, I won't get carried away and manicure the farm with its rustic barns to look like Versailles. I don't just love tended iris, tulips, peonies, columbine, sedum, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and the like. The wild natural beauty of goldenrod, Timothy grass, Queen Anne's lace and sumak in the meadow - maybe not quite as wild as a flying dragon! - is where I go sit to soak in Nature. One day if the whole farm becomes naturalized, will it be by choice, or because of my laziness?

Nature never stops working - it's the ultimate example. But my hat's off to two women of a younger generation for motivating me to get off my butt and take care of all those sweet plants that I depend on in the spring to pull me out of the dormancy of winter.




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Ok, no award, just share your blog name's story December 1st

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That was a fun little rip and rant, phew! Thank you to those who agreed to participate in my How I Named My Blog invitation.

After a couple days of sobriety, and some chillier November air, I've decided to keep on despising and shunning awards of any kind! If you'd like to tell the story of how you chose your blog name on December 1st, please do! But there will be NO MAJOR AWARD! You can leave a comment in this or the previous post if you'd like to participate, and I'll add you blog to the list. If you already told me you would, I've got you on my list for that day's post. If you want to withdraw now that the pulchritudinous award is just a pretty face on my last post, let me know, teehee.

(It is very hard to resist an exclamation point now, let me tell you. There, I left a big period. That feels a little better.)

I don't like "winners" and "losers" (I was rarely chosen to be on anyone's team) - but I am curious about some of those blog names out there. You can use me as an excuse: "Ruth asked, so I'm telling . . ."

I mean even a name like "Peter's Paris" - how did Swedish Peter come to live in Paris?
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A Major Blog Award!

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Dear Bloggy Friend!

How did you name your blog? Was it a no brainer, easy as pie? Or was it obscure, esoteric and deep - only you could understand it? Did you choose from five stellar names - or struggle to think of one?? Do you ever regret your blog name? Wish you'd called it something like "The Daily Life of Cindy Jones" because you get tired of explaining what "Les écritures d'une nymphe des bois*" means incessantly? Or vice versa?? Inquiring minds want to know!!!! Namely, mine!!!!

Why not take a break from travel, food, music, book or movie reviews, photos of your grandchildren, your cat, your dog, the chickens, your garden, city, nature, politics, art and poetry and tell the fascinating story of how you came to choose your blog name?!!! Maybe your blog naming story IS about your cat or dog - all the better!!!! What hidden truths about yourself lie within that moniker? And is your profile name a pseudonym??? Completely different from your blog name?? How intriguing, how delightfully freeing to choose a name when you couldn't name yourself at birth!!! A blog is a wondrous playground!!!!

On December 1, publish your own "How I Named My Blog" (echo echo echo) post!!!! Participate with THOUSANDS - perhaps TENS of THOUSANDS - of Bloggers around the world in this first time ever highly anticipated truly GLOBAL event!!!!

But wait, there's MORE!!!! Like my dear friend Al Pacino, I despise and shun awards of any kind!!! But I am going to bestow a Major Blog Award to ONE blogger for "How I Named My Blog" (echo echo echo, and henceforth)!!!! What could be more thrilling?!!!

Did you choose a straightforward name of small proportions and your story will impress me with simplicity, subtlety, nuance and grace? Or will you take your ordinary name of "Nathan's New York" and unfold a titillating and seductive tale - fiction or non-fiction??? Ah - will you transform your blog naming narrative into poetic form - a haiku, a limerick or maybe an epic??? (God be pleased, NO EPICS.) Will you try to make me laugh? How well do you know me? That is the allure for this Major Blog Award - YOU CAN'T KNOW for sure!!!! Maybe I'll lay them all before the chickens and let them "peck" one!!!! I might just give the Major Blog Award to my BBF**!!!!! Or maybe I'll give it to myself - even though I despise and shun awards of any kind - since I myself will explain how I named synch-ro-ni-zing on December 1st!!!! There are no rules or criteria (except NO EPICS)!!!! All bloggers are welcome!!!! You don't even have to have a Blogger blog!!!! WordPress or any other weird site will do!!!! Will I choose the story with the most exclamation points???? The most words in BOLD???? The most embedded LINKS???? Who knows!!!!!!!!!

Just tell me in a comment at this post that you are going to participate in posting your very own story of "How I Named My Blog" on December 1st, give me the URL for the blog where you will post it, and I will list and link to your blog that day!!!!! Then I will read every last one of the posts posted by posting participants and choose a WINNER!!!! Mark your calendar!! (Did you notice that only two "!!" was such a letdown?!!!!) Don't miss out on this FIRST-EVER CHANCE to participate in this unique and major Major Blog Event!!!! Are you going to be away December 1st?? No worries!!!! You can schedule a post ahead of time!!!! Just click on "Post Options" at the bottom of your Compose box!!!! I will announce the WINNER in my first post after December 1st!!!! (If I get the THOUSANDS - PERHAPS TENS OF THOUSANDS - I expect, I'll see you sometime next year!!!!!)

If you get weak at the knees thinking of increased traffic at your site, participate!!!!!! If you get sweaty palms thinking about winning such a Major Blog Award and a traffic jam in front of your blog, or the drama of paparazzi camped out on one side of your lawn and protesters with placards on the other, consider long and hard, my friends!!!!! I am IRRESPONSIBLE!!!!! Any damages are not my problem!!!!

The lucky winner of this prestigious Major Blog Award will get to post on their own site the pulchritudinous award above of an elegant woman christening her blogship!!!!! Imagine how it will look on your site!!!! But don't worry, if you have always been like me and my good friend Al Pacino and despise and shun awards of any kind, and you WIN - post your story anyway, and just don't show up for the award, it's simple!!!!!! Even if you don't WIN the coveted Major Blog Award, you will have gotten that marvelous story down in the annals of blogdom and participated in this highly anticipated Major Blog Event!!!!

I know you are unused to this kind of hysterical buzz at such a serious and sober blog as mine!!! But I couldn't be more serious or sober - even if a little delirious and dervishy!!!! Don't delay, sign up TODAY!!!!!

Now sing along with my close friends Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews as Bert and Mary Poppins as they sing, "It's a bloggy holiday with you, Ruth!!!!!"

Sincerely, soberly and ecstatically yours -
Ruth





*Les écritures d'une nymphe des bois = Writings of a Woodland Nymph

**BBF=Best Blog Friend - (You thought you'd find out who this is down here???)

Note: Emily Dickinson said a poet has license to use one exclamation point in their entire oeuvre. I'm sorry, but I have used all of yours and mine up for this global cause.

Note2: Again I apologize, this was written between 1 and 3 in the morning one night when I couldn't sleep. We can only pray it won't happen again, and this blog will return to its state of peace and tranquility.

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a rare November weekend

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Autumn sun and a light wind from the south carried the weekend up to seventy degrees (21ºC) and blue skies after a few weeks of cold weather (30ºF, around 0ºC). Towels whipped in the wind. The last of the garden peppers went into white chili (with turkey Don raised, white beans, onion, garlic, cumin, homemade chili powder from our neighbor's friend (we'd run out - thank goodness! wow was this good stuff), cilantro, lime juice and chicken broth, no tomatoes - save those for red chili).

Rosemary and parsley puffed out like it was August.



Beverly and Berta wondered where the cold went.



Don even let the turkeys wander outside their fence a while, but it didn't last long. He remembered how dumb they are, worried they'd head toward the road and penned them back up.

Floozie found a rock and wanted to brood. Wow, she looks big all of a sudden, as fluffy as the parsley. She used to be such a skinny squirt. A nosy one. (See sidebar toward the bottom.)



Spearmint, peppermint, ever-ready strawberries and frost-flattened rhubarb kept two other garden beds alive and green with red trim. Don had transplanted the foundering rhubarb here where it looks to be thriving now. I tasted a chunk of pink rhubarb stalk, thinking I'd make pie, but it was tasteless. I used to eat rhubarb raw when I was a kid from a patch in my parents' backyard - crisp, gritty, juicy and SOUR. We will have to wait until spring for this plant to grow fresh tasty stalks. Save room for warm strawberry-rhubarb pie a la mode in June. Something in the pairing with strawberries eliminates rhubarb's gritty feel on your teeth.



The lumberjack chain-sawed dead wood by the pond, which I later stacked in the corncrib. So far the forced air furnace has hardly kicked on in spite of cold weather the last few weeks because the wood stove is efficient and keeps us cozy. It will be cold again soon enough.



What can be said - except Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and pass the sour cream (for the chili), and butter and honey (for the cornbread)!



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statue

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photo "Statue" used with permission of photographer Carl C

Move Within

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
but don't move the way fear makes you move.

.............................................................- Rumi
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friendship in a mobius strip

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The best most amazingly wonderful boss I ever had was a mathematics professor named Ed. Once he tore off a strip of paper, twisted it and then joined the ends to show me what a mobius (or moebius, or moëbius) strip is. In case you don't know, as I didn't, it's a surface with only one side. That's right, if you run your finger along any surface, you'll see that there is only one. It is one of those deliciously annoying impossibilities that tells me I can't be a scientist. I just can't get my head around it, and that bothers me. If I couldn't get my head around it and it didn't bother me, I might be scientist material. (You scientists are going to correct me now.) A mobius strip is also a non-orientable surface. If you want to understand that physical concept, try this. "Orientability is a mathematical property of surfaces in Euclidian space measuring whether or not it is possible to make a consistent choice of surface normal vector at every point dot dot dot"



Whatever. So this is a mobius strip bangle.

I have this friend, a person in authority and power. This is her bracelet, which I admired on her wrist. One day many months later, she publicly scolded me very vehemently over something I thought trivial, and I didn't deserve it. After that I had to seriously consider whether I wanted her to remain in my life as a friend. It took several days and a mini vision quest of sorts to really search out my heart about her and what had happened. I decided I did want her in my life, in spite of her sometimes abrasive ways. There are many things I love about her and our relationship, so I talked with her about it, we patched things up better than before, and a few months later she came for a gathering at my house on my birthday. She handed me a gift box, and when I opened it there was the bracelet. The significance of its twisting and single surface touched me as a symbol of our friendship, one that was pliable enough to go on after a rift that almost tore us apart.

I love it so much that if a fire broke out I would grab it with the photo albums, camera and the external hard drive with all my photographs - after making sure Don is out ok.



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The Year of Yes

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Vessel made by Beatrice Wood

My disappointment in the outcome felt like a hollow dirty blue plastic molded bed pan. I felt sick, like throwing up into it. After all, I had invested my time, energy and love into someone who was desperately hurting, and what happened thereafter? Within just a couple of weeks, we were right back where we started. I wanted to scoop her up in my arms and just let the bad things spin away from us.

Feeling thus the other morning, hugging my hand thrown pottery mug full of fresh hot coffee (not the chalice made by Beatrice Wood in the photo above), I opened Google Reader, scrolling down through the words and images miraculously appearing on my laptop screen from my friends' worlds. What a wonder.

And then there was a poem. Called The Year of Yes. I read, and the words released the sickness in me. Instead of throwing up, I cried - a cleansing sob. The ugly blue plastic morphed into a glazed earthen cup ready to be filled again.

Shaista wrote the poem and posted it at her blog Lupus in Flight. This is what she has written about herself in her About Me.

I live a meditative life in a green village in England. I was diagnosed with Lupus when I was 18 and much of my poetry writes itself in response to living with such a peculiar, demanding and life-altering illness. I write about love and longing and hope. I have lived half my life in India and the other half in England. I was born into two religions in a country of a myriad faiths. I have been writing since I can remember holding a pen, a crayon, paper, anything that comes to hand...

The illness Shaista lives with is "a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various parts of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys," as the Lupus Foundation site says. I didn't know much about it until reading her blog posts, which sometimes talk about her regular hospitalizations for treatment.

Just from Shaista's blog title Lupus in Flight you understand how she lives with illness. Her story is about letting something from within her experience of incessant pain, ache and disruptive hospital treatments surface and be expressed in poetry. Well, her About Me above says it far better. Here is Shaista's poem.

The Year of Yes

- for Victoria and Perveen,
dearest, patient girlfriends
who nonetheless went off to Bury Farm
without me
and inspired this poem

I wish I had said Yes!

beloved

When you asked me out to walk

among the leaves

the turning leaves

You were offering me

the sound of dreams,

And I turned you down

politely.

Not today, I smiled

Perhaps,

Maybe, tomorrow?

But I wish I had said Yes!

beloved

I wish we had shared this light.

Next time don't ask

Just take me!

Order me to dress!

I am going to need your help

beloved

To begin the Year of Yes.
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