Their greenness is a kind of grief

Alas and alack, I knew this day would come:

HORROR OF HORRORS

How am I going to blurb this "word"? Ah, but there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Right?

In other news, various birds and dogs, it's Calendar Spring, and tiny crocuses are poking up through dry brown leaves and dirty snow. It seems as though the yellow ones were tastier, since I've only espied purple and white so far.

And now for some things I collected for you on the internets:

I suspect Japan is the best place on Earth.

Hamster content.

More hamster content (not ham).

Everyone needs a wee baking raccoon tattoo.

And a sausage dog named Nigel.

People also ask.

The morns are meeker than they were

Small things:

The older man in Whole Foods wearing a bright red t shirt with F R I D A Y in white (it was Friday).

Oceanside brunch, huge waves, a bright butterfly hiding its wings when it landed.

Clover, early at the empty Deering Oaks playground, loves to play hide and seek on the woodchips, ducking around the climbing structures like a little kid.

Clover, greeting a man on the beach she clearly thought was Mark (who was in Chicago), then returning, utterly defeated. Her tail so low after that it was dragging in the sand. Maybe she forgot about him remembered, and then felt heartbroken? She didn't enjoy the walk after that, kept looking over her shoulder for where we'd entered the beach, turned and trotted back the way we'd come the minute I said, "Oh, okay, want to go back to the car?"

The last days of summer, brilliant with goldenrod and sparkling with surprise asters. Cold enough at night to shut the windows and dig out the comforter. Clover curling up with me on the chilly nights, against my leg (it's like a weighted blanket to feel a dog on my legs, my favorite thing ever).

Not really listening to the BBC narrate the Queen's funeral procession, but catching phrases here and there, the best of which was "at least 40 corgis."

Ladybug-by-the-sea

More like the tipping of an object toward the light

Wednesday is my Busy Day™ so here I am looking out the window and thinking about how much I love a certain shade of yellow these days. I can see black-eyed Susans on one side, deep red lilies beside them, purple hosta spikes. And on the other, the potential of yellow in the massive field of goldenrod I somehow conjured in the front yard. Still to bloom! More summer to come! And the windows are open, and I have coffee, and a fan, and a yellow shirt my favorite person bought for me.

Hello, it's me. I've thought about yellow clothing for a long, long time.

In other news:

Sunblock In My Eye: the Liz Woodbury Story

(Again the mail carrier comes sidling between the hydrangea and the crazy native garden to deliver the mail, circling back to the sidewalk to make his exit. Does he notice all the monarchs dancing around the milkweed?)

THIS is how you write a headline, NYT.

100%

It's hard out there for a 60-pound fighting fish.

Each each other's animal again

Sarah brought me two little baby sweet pea seedlings, which I anxiously nurtured through the end of the winter and into the spring and then planted in a pot outdoors. I keep adding sticks and bamboo poles for them to wrap their tiny tendrils around as they grow taller like Jack's beanstalk. They're sort of humble, and they look like they'd fall over on their fine stems but somehow they don't; they're stronger than they look. Pale cream and pink and violet.

Oh yes, when I see the word "saucepan," it is pronounced in a British accent inside my brain: SUUSpin.

On this day in history: I had to reference NFTs in something for work. Also, "cryptocurrency." 

Make your nails look as smooth as Velveeta feels.

If I'm not worrying about the state of the country/world as I fall asleep, I'm picturing roots, the branching kind and the rhizome ones, the coy rugosa babies popping up here and there, looking so tender and innocent above ground while sneakily connecting to something wide and woody as a tree branch underneath the surface. Also, weevils on the roses and oleander aphids on the milkweed. Daily, I put on one disposable glove and squish the aphids, their tiny yellow bodies staining my gloved fingertips. I wear my reading glasses out in the garden, which means I move drunkenly from plant to plant but can see each little bug vividly and avoid harming the tiny monarch larvae under the leaves. I often startle my neighbors, crouched there in the plants. "Squishing aphids!" I called to one confused neighbor this morning. It's strangely satisfying, like popping caviar between your teeth.

The past few weeks in animals:

• Yellow oleander aphids
• Rose weevils, knocked into soapy water
• A ferret, held like a baby at the Pride festival
• A baby goat, also held in arms at the Pride festival, looking less happy about it than the ferret
• Primary-colored birds in my garden: cardinal, goldfinch, blue jay
• A little dog named Blossom
• Swallows dancing over the pond in Deering Oaks

Ouch.

Pretend it's spring

On the beach, a sweet puppy named Townes, browned butter-colored with patches of white, a white heart on top of his head. "My boyfriend just learned to play Pancho and Lefty on his guitar," said the puppy's person. "That song makes me cry," I said, my eyes welling with tears. 

I raked leaves all weekend, revealing sweet-smelling dirt and the surviving crocuses just barely peeking through the earth (the ones the squirrels didn't eat in the fall). A cluster of tiny green shoots had exploded with purple blossoms by the end of the day, like magic.

Someone in my elderly next door neighbor's house was playing the violin. I couldn't hear it, but I could see through the window.

I took off my jacket! Ate my lunch in the yard! Even made an afternoon iced coffee! Fifty-five fucking degrees!!

Among the wildflowers

Gus died this week.

A woman jogged past my house yesterday, paused at one of our enormous overgrown beach rose bushes, pulled a single pink petal off, popped it in her mouth, and jogged off down the sidewalk.

Sweet little neighbor boys made us sympathy cards. "I'M SORRY CLOVER" said one of them.

It feels like he's still here somewhere. It feels like he's behind the forsythia bush, in front of the fireplace, under the porch. 

My new hobby is buying flowers and planting them in the many spots around the yard where he'd taken to spending most of his time over the last couple of months. That dog loved having a back yard he could defend with his loud barking and relax in all day, moving from one shady spot to another and even into the night if we'd let him. You could see him glowing slightly, settled in the middle of the garden behind the coreopsis or curled around a lily plant. 

Chamomile everywhere.

I'm not sure this spot is sunny enough for daisies, but it was sunny enough for Gus.

This was his usual spot, behind these yellow beauties. I think I need to get two more astilbes to fill in the dirt patch he created here, but this one really reminds me of him.

My color's green. I'm spring.

Is it just me, or do things feel grim and then grimmer? Looking back at low times, dark times, politically bizarre times now — or times we thought were bad or weird — none of it seems quite so bad. Which makes me nervous about the future.

Mark and I embarked on Phase One of our summer fence project. Monday we tore down the old fence (well, most of it was down already, but we pulled up posts and yanked apart fence sections, and stacked everything tidily in the yard). Tuesday we rented a truck (a moving truck), and we filled that truck with fence and drove that fence to the dump. Eight hundred pounds of fence, give or take. We also threw in some large trash that we'd been hoarding in our basement. Then we drove the truck home and filled it twice more with brush that we'd been hoarding in a corner of our yard. Then we drove those loads to the dump.

The sad thing in this photo is the Big Wheel, not the boat.

Oh, how I hate the dump. Well, I like certain aspects of it, like the areas where like items are stacked, nicely categorized and organized like what you'd expect to find at a Montessori Dump. Hot tubs with hot tubs. Concrete blocks all together, tires neatly assembled, air conditioners with their air conditioner families. But the bulk of it is "mixed," like the above photo, and we were surprised that this is where our fence was meant to go. Also, any brush, plastic, or anything else that happened to ride along in the truck with the fence. Brush and other yard waste that was traveling solo was allowed to go in the "yard waste" pile. Horrifyingly, huge pushing trucks (front loaders? bulldozers? I used to know the names of them all, back when Isaac was a truck aficionado) would loom suddenly up right beside you and abruptly shove all the trash back into the trash mountain when you least expected it. 

The worst thing about the dump was a fox we saw there, slinking around, low to the ground, skinny and sad. Its tail was just so ragged and thin. It made me really sad.

We didn't get all the brush out of here, but we got most of it. Phase Two is erecting the new fence on that side. Phase Three, I regret to tell you, is identical to Phase One except on the other side of the yard.

On the upside, I have been making delicious smoothies with my trusty little mild-mannered blender (matcha, frozen banana, spinach, almond milk, vanilla protein powder yesterday. Frozen banana, peanut butter, cacao powder, vanilla protein powder, almond milk today. I think of this as "the Elvis smoothie" of course). We voted yesterday, and it was busy. I don't remember them loudly calling out your registered political party in the past, but they did yesterday, and I was shocked that there were several Republicans in line in front of me. 

Also on the upside, flowers.

Does anyone not like peonies? We once knew a lady in Kansas who pronounced it "pee OH nee."

She's my girl. My secret life's goal is to get her to love me more than she loves Gus or Mark.

One pink, and one white

I'm a lazy gardener. I planted two peonies, probably fifteen years ago, one white and one pink. I made a careless oval of earth, removing sod and turning over soil, which through sheer luck was rich with earthworms. I may have mixed some compost in at some point.

My entire back yard has always been shady, really not allowing enough hours of sunlight for any of the various perennials I've optimistically planted back there.* A couple of years ago, a neighbor cut down a tree (it was our tree, in our yard, and it's funny that he cut it down, but we were grateful to have someone else pay for it and he had a stronger opinion than we did). There's slightly more light on one side of the oval flower bed now! The peony on that side has always been more enthusiastic than the one on the shadier side, and now it's even more so.

I always forget that peonies like to be fed (I think). I research these details and promptly forget. And still, that one peony (along with many flowering companions) seem content. The other peony (and what I started to say is, I always forget which is the white and which is pink until they finally, finally bloom) is less satisfied. It's much smaller, and this year I fear there may be almost no flowers on it.

The thing you always forget about peonies is, ants.



*I've failed at lavender, daisies, coneflower, violets, and more. My successes include lupine, black-eyed Susan, Johnson's blue geranium, various columbines, forget-me-nots, lamb's ears, hosta, lily-of-the-valley, bleeding hearts, sweet woodruff, and others I'm forgetting.

Worst blorger ever

I didn't even manage a Rabbit rabbit blerg post this month. This is going to be a real test of my superstitious/borderline OCD (not Borderline/OCD, I just mean verging on OCD) personality issues, since Rabbit rabbit (the saying, photographing, posting of it on the first day of the month, first thing in the morning) is one of my magic spells for happy living.

Holy crap, would you get a load of those strawberries?!

My neighbor gave me a pint of strawberries! She "picked too many," have you ever heard of such a thing? Zucchini, yes. Chard, sure. But strawberries?

They are so. Good. My immediate thought was "a dollop of whipped cream and you've got a healthy, balanced dinner, all the food groups basically represented!"

Recommendations:

The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu. Tell me if you don't cry out in a tremulous American voice at some point, "Canada."

GLOW if you want something smart and funny. You'll never recognize Trudy from Mad Men.

Vietnamese iced coffee from CÔNG TỬ BỘT (when they open. Sometime next weekish, I think).

Flowers, especially if you can pick em in your own back yard or by the side of the road.

Lady's mantle, cosmos, chamomile, coreopsis, astilbe, bachelor's button.

July, July

In the continuing adventures of our kitchen, Mark and I voyaged to Ikea yesterday and bought three base cabinets, which will make up about half of the kitchen (one wall, including the sink and dishwasher), once we get them installed. I do love Ikea, and it was a whole new experience doing the kitchen thing, which requires a print out from their special, buggy computer planning tool and a brief consultation with an Ikea kitchen "expert." Each cabinet comes flat-packed in brown cardboard, with plastic bags of hinges and knobs, and long rails and miles of kick plate. We split the project in half so we could fit everything in our little car, and so we wouldn't have to store too many boxes at once, and just to make it feel more manageable. It was an all-day project, and we'll have to do it again (but I don't mind; I really do love Ikea).

On the way to Ikea I saw a sad, sad thing. It was so sad I can't even tell you about it--I honestly don't want it to sit in your head the way it still is in mine.

I'll tell you about the sad thing I saw today, which was the inside of the new(ish) Anthropologie store in Portland, built in what used to be two spaces--the main one was the Chamber of Commerce, and the other was Casco Bay Books for seven years, before it was briefly an ice cream place and then a tea house. Our space is now just a "dressing area" at the back of the store, our former doors and windows filled in and covered up so you'd never know they were there. There ought to be a plaque or something. Hmm, maybe a guerilla plaque installation needs to happen.

Did you know it's July? As in, summer?? Tomorrow is the fourth, which keeps surprising me whenever I remember it (again). My garden is at the awkward place after all the blue/purple stuff is done, and before the yellowish stuff starts going. I planted a couple of things in the hopes of livening up the color combo (a daisy and some pink yarrow). I need to move things around and divide them, too, but it's pretty nice back there, green and leafy.

Here are some nice songs for you, courtesy of my brothers:





And this one, Laura Jane Grace covering Michael McDonald, so good.

Tomorrow we'll start assembling kitchen parts, and there's also the sink and faucet to be ordered, hooray!

Rabbit rabbit!

“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.”

-- from Snow Geese by Mary Oliver

Summery

It feels warm these days, so warm that my body is confused, by the sweating and whatnot. So warm that I've switched my usual breakfast from my beloved oatmeal to my summer version of oatmeal, a variation on bircher muesli.

There are many versions of this, but I like to soak some oats in dairy or non-dairy milk (or apple juice)--you can soak them just a little while, but overnight is best. Then add fruit and nuts of your choice, and a couple of dollops of yogurt or kefir. I usually grate half an apple and add some toasted almonds, and as you can see I had some blueberries today. As you can also see, my coffee's on ice.

So that's what I've been eating lately. And that's what I've been drinking lately, although I'm eagerly anticipating a strawberry-rhubarb shrub I'm making (it takes a week), which when mixed with seltzer will be the perfect summer drink (I think). And speaking of rhubarb, I had never made anything with it until last week, when a bunch from the farmers' market turned into my almost-shrub and a glorious strawberry rhubarb pie, too.

I am proud of this pie, and I can hardly wait to make another one.


I've been watching (and savoring) The Americans and Mad Men with my trusty TV Club.
Reading (and loving) The First Bad Man, by Miranda July.
Missing my girl, who's getting settled in Mysore, where she's learning to speak both Kannada and Tamil this summer, before starting grad school in Chicago.
Digging in the dirt almost every day, just as I'd hoped.

This isn't the best photo of them, but you can see my lupines' happy green leaves and a couple of purply spikes (also forget-me-nots, always going crazy all over our yard, and some chamomile that came back, and some iris I need to divide...). Lupines are my favorite.

Rabbit rabbit!

"Shine! shine! shine! 
Pour down your warmth, great sun! 
While we bask, we two together."

from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," by Walt Whitman

Rabbit rabbit!

"May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other,
May is much sun through small leaves,
May is soft earth,
And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South Wind.
May is full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Narragansett Bay."

from "Lilacs" by Amy Lowell

What Freezings Have I Felt, What Dark Days Seen

It's a shivery, blustery day. The kind of day a person might think, "Some people live in the desert. Some people live in Florida. Some people live places where spring starts to show its face in February, where flowering trees are what March is all about." I'll admit, I feel a little complainy today as I watch the flurrying snow blow sideways past the window and huddle in my warmest wooliest sweater wishing we had more pellets for the stove. Drinking so much tea, for the hot cup in my hands.

A few days ago I bought flowers at Trader Joe's,* and after I put my groceries in the car and returned my cart, I came back and didn't recognize my car because there were flowers in it.

If you look carefully--really carefully--at the photo above, you can see there's a cat in it.




*Also, I had my favorite cashier at TJ's, the one who finds any excuse he can to give you a high five.

Nemesis

No, it's not poison ivy (my true nemesis*), it's just the weed-which-shall-not-be-named (because I don't know what it's called). So let's just agree to call it NEMESIS WEED. It's everywhere in my yard, underneath everything, creeping under the fence and up in between the plants. I dream about this weed. I spend all summer battling it, and it is always victorious. The early spring this year is giving me an opportunity to get the upper hand, and I swear I will come out ahead this time.

We are working in the yard before it starts raining for forty four days and nights. Here's a typical yard work conversation:

Me: "Ooh, sorry!"
Mark: "What?"
Me: "I was talking to a worm."


*I have been known to get a poison ivy rash all over my face just from being in proximity to it, no exaggeration.


**Edited to add: Isaac is doing really well! If you are my Book-of-Faces friend, you have seen some gruesome photos of the blisters that rose on his hand over the past several days, enormous enough that I named them (Blisty and Mister Squishy). He has been back to the doctor twice for a change of dressings, and he'll have to go back at least once more, although after that first day the pain really subsided and he did not have to become addicted to oxycodone. Yay!

Les fleurs

Come back, spring! I washed some windows today, hopeful, and bought myself these flowers. Our girl is coming home (mouth healed, finally) for the weekend to see a play, take a bath, maybe try a Holy Donut. I will probably put the flowers in her room, which isn't really her room anymore, but is half way to being Isaac's, with some of his books, art, stuff in it (still, it is currently the most dust-free room, and thus we'll put Zoë in there* I suppose). Her plans to return to India this summer are moving forward thrillingly; she was accepted to a language school in Jaipur where she'll acquire a year's worth of Hindi in a summer. The boy is hatching his own exciting summer plans, details to follow. The long and the short of it is that we're anticipating another mostly empty-nested summer, just Mark, me, and our loyal dog!


*allergies.

back when wildflowers would come right up to your hand as if they were tame

apparently, while in some kind of fugue state, i requested a ridiculous number of books from the library (twelve? fifteen? something like that). now i've got a pile beside my bed as tall as a toddler and a reality show inside my head in which i have to read each and every one before they're due back at the 'brary. most challenging will be 2666, which i'm reading with my tiny book group, and which is 900 pages long, and which i've already renewed twice.

this morning i watched a bunch of little kids watching a worker who was standing in a deep hole wielding a shovel. i love how fascinating that kind of thing is to kids. i miss reading you can name 100 trucks!, even.

i love this dog, even though he barfed very quietly on a pile of my clothes the other night.

(above, his tiny serving of kefir, intended to stop the horrible gurgling sounds emanating from his stomach. it worked!) 

today is picture day at the learning shack. i think i've finally shaken off the parental guilt that comes with not buying the resulting photos. i used to order the very cheapest package every year, even though nine times out of ten the picture is just bad, one way or another (an awkward pose, a defiant refusal to "show some teeth" resulting in a weird grimace. etcetera).

i made my mom laugh recently by referring to the white satin-uniformed women in a feminine hygiene commercial during project runway as "menstrual scientists."

i moved some plants around and drew pictures so next year i (maybe) won't make the mistake of pulling up perennials and allowing weeds to flourish, fooled into thinking they're legitimate.

 























we have such nice dirt in our yard. it was pretty great to dig in it all weekend. also, i finally turned the compost!



October, by Don Thompson

I used to think the land
had something to say to us,
back when wildflowers
would come right up to your hand
as if they were tame.

Sooner or later, I thought,
the wind would begin to make sense
if I listened hard
and took notes religiously.
That was spring.

Now I’m not so sure:
the cloudless sky has a flat affect
and the fields plowed down after harvest
seem so expressionless,
keeping their own counsel.

This afternoon, nut tree leaves
blow across them
as if autumn had written us a long letter,
changed its mind,
and tore it into little scraps.

home

my home. i'm not sure what it is about this image (seen here as sticker art on the maine state pier), but it makes me want to get a maine-shaped tattoo. and it's pretty popular on tumblr today.

oh, friday night lights. i loved you so. and after hearing this fresh air interview with kyle chandler, i love him too. even more than before, that is.

it's hot, and i have NO COMPLAINTS. though i should have made three times more iced coffee than i did last night.

i want my yard to look like this place.

i have been reading gay classics and maine classics and a fabulous japanese mystery. piles of books from the library. if only i had one of these i'd never get anything accomplished.

words, words, words. i seem to have a problem turning nouns into gerunds and not noticing i've done it. gerunding.

zoë and mark and i are planning to wait for godot in deering oaks tonight. care to join us?

happy bloomsday

some blooms from my back yard in honor of bloomsday!

"Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end."

james joyce, ulysses