When they run

Cape Cod clouds, in a line

 

I caught a glimpse of he horses running yesterday.  I watched as the white and brown raced one another, first one in the lead, then the other.  They are so beautiful, so breathtaking.  It is like a good poem;  it stuns you out of your daily life for a moment.  I don’t know wat I did to deserve this within my sight.

I planted lettuce.  As I prepared the soil in a container, before I even tore the packet of seeds open, on the balcony, a rabbit appeared below.  It had a hint of reddish fur on its nape.  There was a New Yorker cartoon in which a man turns his back on his lush rooftop garden white giant rabbits with wings swoop down to carry off the carrots.

Sighted a snake, oozing into the rocks.  Apparently, there are seven kinds of snakes in these parts, non venomous.  This was either a racer or a watersnake.   For much of the day, I was leery of going barefoot inside the house, even though the snake was outside.

This morning, I saw a yellow bird –harbinger of summer colors?

The skein of Rain

Photo: Seedling © Archana Bhartia | Dreamstime.com

I wish I could describe the fine quality of the rain that is descending now where I live.  It is like mist, except with a gravitational pull.  It is rain but seemingly not made of raindrops.  On the puddles, by the time the water lands, it is in fact droplets, but in the air, the rain is like the softest texture imaginable.  No, that’s not right, because there are softer textures, finer textures, like silken rice flour, or a baby’s cheek.  But this rain, this mist pouring down, in May, is unlike any of the other rains I’ve witnessed on the Cape.

My life here ebbs and flows.  It puddles, as I ready to enter the homestretch with the final copyedits of my book.  I wonder why I made the choices I did, I wonder how it is I got here, but then, there is the rain.  The horses must be inside.  A friend is gathering dirt for her garden beds.  Soon, it will be Memorial Day and time to plant.  All week, if the rain mist lets up, it is time to plant, after the new moon Sunday.  There, the sky is already brightening.  My cosmos in their egg crate cups are spindling towards the hidden sun, ready to anchor.

Possibilities

Does thinking you can do a handstand count?

My first Iceland Poppy blooms in garden

Green, in Rain

Galium odoratum – lievevrouwebedstro (Photo credit: AnneTanne)

Green is never so bright as it is in spring, during rain.  It rained like England today, the way it’s barely visible but pouring, lets you can wander happy among the new plants.

I got everything in last week: lavender, lemon thyme, strawberries, hostas, columbines, sweet woodruff, dicentra, poppy, ranunculus, creeping phlox.  Only the cilantro and basil await, and all the annuals from seed.  Here I advise anyone who loves to garden to immediately go to Dan Pearson or Nigel Slater.  They will captivate with lush pictures and solid tales of growth.

I just planted, having amended the soil with compost, but not topsoil.  Hopefully, the rental association will give us mulch and gravel (for paths.)  Though I am only here for another twenty-eight months, I’d like to plant a trio of roses (this morning I thought six) even as I hear my mother shake her head and advise, annuals, from the supermarket, because if they can survive there, then anywhere.  The daughter of thrifty parents with longings for the world of plant luxe, the heady catalogs of White Flower Farm, Logee’s, Landreth’s.

Something is chirping.  Is it a frog–one of those tree peepers? Or a sparrow baby,lost?  Such a disconsolate sound.  The supermoon has past.  He’s quieted now, peeper or bird.  Roses, blooms, buds of spring.

Reader,

In the interest of improving my blog, I am taking an on-line class called “Blog Triage” with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield.  In the first lesson, I am asked to describe my ideal blog reader, as a way of defining perhaps what is central to this blog.

My ideal reader I think would be interested in reading my fiction.  This reader does not have to read the fiction, but I hope to stir some interest about what else I might write.  Unlike, say,  101 Cookbooks  or The Gardener’s Eden, two of my favorite blogs, this blog is not necessarily practical, but I hope for a reader in search of a touch of inspiration and curiosity about the daily life of a person who writes.

In a way, it is like fiction, hopefully entertaining reading that might contain recognizable truths for a reader, which might of course be quite different from the writer’s truth.  What I seek in a reader is someone who is interested in words, literature, in the hedonistic pleasures of botany, food, caffeine, music, yoga–the arts. A blog is an open letter not only to my friends and family, but to a wider audience; this blog is a series of essays and observations, pensees, a place to practice, to attempt.

Writers like to be read, they care about their words, hope their work is of value.  Thank you for following me on this journey, and I hope you will stay tuned for more.

~What do you like to read about? What would you like to write about? And are you ready for The Transit of Venus in June?~

On Yoga

http://www.dreamstime.com/apple-splash-imagefree186427

 

An article I wrote for Elephant Journal:

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/04/my-first-yoga-journal-conference-indira-ganesan/

Oh, April, you came back with Showers!

Sweet Peas, after the rain. A bright showery morning in Bromsash. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today it rained.  After a week or two of sunny balmy San Diego weather, April gathered its grey overcast coat and sent down fog, mist, drizzle, and a scattering of showers that seemed to proclaim, yes, it is still spring, not summer.  The oddities of the seasonal changes rested, at least for a day, and here on my end of the Cape, the sky is grey, the wind is a quiet roar, and the railings are dripping with cold droplets.  In the month of summer, I listened to various advice and did not plant, even though I knew sweet peas ought to in before St. Patrick’s Day.  Wait until Memorial Day.  It reached sixty-five.  It reached seventy.  Finally I put Explorer and Watermelon sweet pea seeds in the ground on Friday. I got plants over the weekend and put them out: cilantro; lavender, both provence and hidcote; lemon thyme; plus a ranunculus named Bloomingdale’s.  I kept the basil inside,as I was advised.  Good thing, as  you know, it rained, April returned.

The Waste Land Part I – The Burial of the Dead by T. S. Eliot – Poetry Archive.

Duende by Tracy K. Smith : The Poetry Foundation.

P.S.  Today is Earth Day.  Tomorrow is Shakespeare’s.

Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? by William Shakespeare : The Poetry Foundation.

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Whales? Whales!

Friday I drove to Race Point where Right Whales have been feeding for more than a month.  I just went for the drive, the beach.   As I made my way down the sand, I heard a couple begin to exclaim.  Whales, I asked?  Yes, indeed.  Kindly lending me their binoculars, they pointed, I peered but saw nothing but white caps.  The blue was extraordinary, a deep aquamarine tinted by three o’clock sun, and the white was vivid.  Handing back the borrowed lens, I watched from the beach, encouraged by the courteous pair.  And there it was, a dark smokey plume of spray, signalling Whale!  I saw many such plumes, my first sightings since I moved here, and I was ecstatic. I watched, until it got too cold for me, and I turned to head back.  I thought of Stanley Kunitz and his Wellfleet Whale, and Adrienne Rich, whom we lost a few days ago.  Many more people had gathered, and every so often, I turned back, to see another soft spray of air blown exuberantly into the air, as if to say, we are here, here we are.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich, read by Anne Waldman, NYC,5.23.2009.

needing chocolate

chocolate by jules from chocolate-2 23 august 2009,14:45

Can one’s body need chocolate?  Like the way one can thirst for water, or instinctively know it’s time for some greens.  The body, being smart, can figure out what it needs, and while one may hanker for cookies, it’s not the body that wants the muffin.  It’s the eyes, the mind, maybe the tongue.  But there I was, breaking off pieces of 72% cocoa dark chocolate, and my body demanded more.  Was it detecting some antioxidant lack, some iron deficiency that only this baking chocolate could satisfy.

It wasn’t eating chocolate, but baking chocolate, but it wasn’t the baker’s squares, the unsweetened serious variety used to make brownies back in the day.  They were the ignots that fooled, that made us believe in its sweetness until we tasted it.  But today I –that is, my body–craved Green & Black’s and it was not satisfied with one piece.

It was bought and used for brownies, but there were two bars.  The extra bar was for future brownies, only they were partly broken into banana bread.  Had the entire bar been used, maybe the bread would have turned out better, because as it turned out, two medium bananas are not a substitute for three.

This week, there is heavy cream in the fridge, meant to make scones that never got made.  It was delicious in the coffee.  I wondered though, since I’m so used to shaking the soy creamer, if it would eventually turn to butter, because I absent-mindedly shake it too.  There is creme fraiche, too, but I’m not sure why it’s in the fridge, but it has slowly disappeared, a spoon in this, a spoon in that.

Calcium.

Related articles

• Photo Friday #13 – Chocolate (acraftytraveler.com)

spring, nearly, with a dog on the roof