Summer Garden… before it’s burned to a CRISP
18 Jun 2008 1 Comment
in Housekeeping Tags: backyard pond, cottage garden, sunflowers
Since we’ve had days on end of 95° plus temperatures and only 6½ inches of rain since last fall, my green world is browning out by the minute. Here are a few images of my summer garden before it’s dead and gone.
The view in the photo above is from my patio to the east corner of the yard. Most of these flowers were planted from seed. I like for the different varieties to blend into one another without borders.
The view below is the opposite side of the same bed. Purple coneflower has a fabulous scent, and it’s a perennial like the salvia growing next to it. The frosty-looking plant is called Dusty Miller. It’s supposed to be an annual, but this little bush is 3 years old.
We’ve enjoyed the water lilly growing in our bathtub pond. The tub is home to three goldfish named Fred. Bacon named them. Cherry and Coco remind him daily, “It’s time to feed the Freds.”
It’s been a good year for sunflowers. They don’t mind the dry weather and love the heat. The bloom below is smaller than most of these Mammoths, but still as big as a dinner plate. I’m hoping to harvest a few seeds before the squirrel population beats me to it!
Late Relay
17 Jun 2008 2 Comments
in A Zany Life, Joined at the Heart, Mouths of Babes Tags: competitive swimming
The swim meet started at four o’clock. The temperature was an even 100. Humidity hovered at 60 percent, placing the heat index somewhere around HELL. Since only kids could get in the pool, the rest of us were miserable. We suffered through freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly until the sun went down.
It was nine o’clock when the Girls 8 and Under Freestyle Relay began, after the bedtime of all the little girls involved. It might as well have been after my bedtime too, because it was so dark, I couldn’t see anything. Imagine the noise of a gazillion children made hyperactive by concession stand food, a grown man calling out names like a carnie worker at the state fair, and four 12 year old boys picking up, then rotating every few minutes, the canopy we were all standing under….Oh, and I still have vertigo.
Before the race, we were two kids short of having three relay teams. Since everyone wanted to swim, the team director decided to go with it, swimming two and half teams in three lanes. One seven year old didn’t get in line. So there I was, standing with someone else’s kid listening to her wail about not getting to get to swim. Holding her hand, I ran staggered as fast as I could to the far end of the pool just in time to get her into lane 6. Cherry and Coco managed to get into the water like they were supposed to, finishing in second and fourth place.
After the race, Coco didn’t get her award, so I took her back to the starting blocks. She spoke to a man with a nail bag strapped to his waist. “I didn’t get my ribbon!”
“I gave it to your teammate.” He pointed in the dark to the far end of the pool.
Holding a dripping wet, freezing, sleepy, six year old, who swam her heart out, I said, “Even if I could figure out who she swam with, I could never find her teammate in the dark. Can you give my kid a ribbon so we can go home?”
He must have recognized the Mama Bear growl in my voice because he reached into the nail bag and handed one to Coco. It wasn’t the right place, but by this time, we didn’t care.
Gathering our stuff, we slogged to the car. Bacon pulled a red wagon full of folding chairs and sunscreen. I held the hands of two very small, but triumphant baby Dolphins. On the way home, we celebrated finishing the race with strawberry slushes and ice cream.
Cherry, after her first race
Conflict Avoidance
11 Jun 2008 2 Comments
in Writers Write Tags: conflict, road rage
Bacon and I were driving last week when a blue Dodge Dakota swerved into our lane. It was a near miss, and Bacon tapped the horn of our minivan. At the light, Dodge Dakota pulled into the next lane. A man in military fatigues opened the door. Leaving the engine running, he stomped toward our car. My window was rolled down, and I felt his rage rush over me like a wave. Out of his head over a tapped horn, he glared at us. I did the thing experts say never to do to a predator. I made eye contact. It must have humanized me because without a word, he got back in his truck and sped away, squealing tires and burning rubber. With the tap of a horn, Bacon and I were almost road rage statistics. I’m glad Dodge Dakota doesn’t live in China where horns are honked in lieu of turn signals.
The next day at swim team practice, I’m sitting with a mommy friend when her six year old began to struggle in the middle of the pool. The coaches weren’t watching. Without lane lines, my friend’s daughter had nothing to grab hold of in water over her head. Mommy Friend went to the edge of the pool, and with calm words guided her child to safety. It was another near miss.
The young adults in charge were oblivious to the situation. I stalked to the far end of the pool and interrupted the ongoing conversation. I was angry and articulate. One of my friends describes this kind of tirade as “Ripping them a new one.” With words, I delivered the punch that Dodge Dakota wanted to give me the day before.
The child is fine. She was back in the pool within a few minutes, but I shook for hours. I hate conflict. Yet, given the stakes, I put myself squarely in the middle of it.
Randomly Crisp
09 Jun 2008 2 Comments
in Goals Tags: tomatoes, vertigo, writing
I STILL have vertigo. I can’t drive. If I could, I couldn’t afford gas. I went back the ENT. He wants me to have a test called an ENG. The clinician shoots warm and cold water in your ears, and then tries to induce vomiting. I’m not going to go through with it. I already know I’m dizzy. It seems pointless to have a test that is the opposite of therapeutic. I’ve learned that my mother, my grandmother, and my sister all had this problem. They recovered. So will I.
This week my goal is to write three hours a day. Instead of setting a specific number of pages, I’m committing to sit behind the computer for three hours. So far, weekdays have gone well, but weekends, not so much. Thursday, Friday and Monday, I did it. Saturday was Swim Meet Day. Sunday was Recover From the Swim Meet Day. I’ll keep working at it.
It’s hot here. Hot. Windy. Dry. Everything shriveled early. Our usual mid-July weather struck in early June. On the bright side, we have tomatoes. The Early Girls are a success. I took a sack to a friend, and she asked if I was becoming “Ouiser Boudreaux” from Steel Magnolias. Bacon thought that was hysterical. I may keep the rest of the crop to myself.
Listen To Your Broccoli
05 Jun 2008 1 Comment
in Joined at the Heart, Writers Write Tags: Anne Lamott, Mel Brooks, Mothers, swimming, Trusting Your Instincts, writing
I have to confess that I haven’t been trusting myself much. I’ve started a bunch of posts and abandoned them because I haven’t been inspired. While waiting for inspiration to strike, I’ve been . . . you know. It’s funny how time slips away when the conscious self tries to control the message.
I’ve been reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Whenever I’m stuck, I reread it a chapter at a time until something penetrates the miasma. Bird by Bird is one of the best writing books ever written because Lamott doesn’t instruct. She nudges me in the direction I didn’t trust myself to go. In a chapter called “Broccoli” she quotes a bit by Mel Brooks where the psychiatrist tells his patient “Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.” Here’s the short form of the concept. Trust your instincts (the broccoli). Without them, you’ll burn out early and give up. That’s what’s been happening to me, so I’m trying to listen to my broccoli.
My mother gave Bird by Bird to me for Christmas in 1995. I know because she inscribed the first page. She always sent me notes in books. Sometimes, it was a marked verse or a dog-eared page or a random quote at the bottom of a letter followed by “Have you read this yet?” Mom died in 2002. She’s still sending me messages in books.
Cherry and Coco have started competitive swim season. Now that school is out, they’re in the water every morning by 8:00, and they love it. The endless down-and-back laps in the 25 meter pool seem like torture to me, but the girls see them as a celebration, a rite of summer.
When the Olympic Games begin in August, think about this. When they were six (or younger, Coco started at three), each one of those swimmers had a parent that got them to practice early every morning. Close your eyes and imagine those moms and dads standing right there on the podium with their kids. Maybe, it’s kind of like my mom giving me the writing book in 1995. Thirteen years ago, she believed I’d be writing a book one day.
crisp |krisp| adjective
