Life In The End Of Times As We Know It- Chopping Wood, Hauling Water, Etc.

Li

Here we have the central, inner parts of a camellia. The folds and whirls are, to me at least, reminiscent of the woman parts of human ladies. Camellias and many other flowers are not in the least shy about displaying their reproductive organs and in fact, the showier and more dramatic they are, the better the chances of fertilization by bees and other insects. 

I am not telling you anything you do not know. 

Today was pottery day but Jessie couldn't make it because she had to take the boys to the dentist for their check-ups. She'd rescheduled twice, I think, already, so she felt like she had to keep the appointment. So there I was, all alone, with no one BUT THE TEACHER to ask questions of. The teacher and Larry, of course. I am so embarrassed at the most basic of things that I do not know. But I had a pretty good time in the class. I worked on what I'm calling my wavy bowl and I also worked on a different bowl, both hand built and not made on the wheel. I got the wavy bowl glazed and now it will go in the kiln, and the other bowl ready for its first firing. We only have one more class this season so that bowl isn't going to be finished but we are going to take another series of the classes and Lily is going to be joining us! We'll be changing to Wednesday mornings as Wednesday is Lily's day off. I think it will be so good for her to have a few hours a week where she is pretty much required, as a result of signing up, to spend doing something crafty which is what she loves to do. Hurray! 

Jessie and I did go to lunch after I got out of class and she got the boys back to school. And that is always nice. Then I went to Publix and came home, watered the porch and inside plants, and planted a few Cherokee Purple tomato seeds in little peat cups to grow into seedlings that will be planted in the garden. Remember last year when I discovered that I can no longer touch peat cups without wanting to cut my fingers off? 
Same-same this year. I accidentally touched one with my thumb and I can still feel it, creeping me out in the weirdest sort of way. I suppose this is what they would call a "sensory issue." I never experienced this before last year. 

I just have to wear gloves and that is that. No big deal. Except...oooooh, ugh, yuck. Just the thought is enough to make me shiver and shudder. 

Here's a picture of what has become, over the years, my favorite of all the camellias.

At least of the ones in my yard. And I still do not know its name. But oh, that shade of pink on the tips of the petals does the opposite to my heart as the feel of the peat cup does to my fingers. 

Immediate and certain soothing, as if a healing balm were being poured over my prickly old soul. 

Sigh...

The kidney stone is still an issue. Not really bad pain, just a crampy ache which tells me that my body is probably trying to shed the dang thing. I'm patiently waiting to see if it gets worse or just floats back to wherever it was when it wasn't making any noise. 

Bodies are just so weird, aren't they? I mean, we are indeed wonderfully made but not always and then time does always take its toll and tax. 

I haven't talked about IT in a few days and I'm not going to now but I will say my opinion about Trump (and Musk) doing everything in their power, mostly illegally, to end democracy as we know it only deepens with each passing day. What a horrible, vindictive, cruel, and nasty person Trump is and in Musk, he has found his counterpart.

My strongest wish is that they become antagonistic to each other, as power-hungry men often do, and in a battle for domination do each other in. 
So to speak. 

I gotta go make supper. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Love Poem To Arugula

It might be hard to tell what that photo is. It's a picture of the little rivulet that one of the bridges crosses over on the trail I took another walk on today. The sun was shining at just the right angle to illuminate the moss on those old pieces of branches. It was rather magical. 

So yes, I walked on the trail again today but I stuck to the part I know and I did not get lost. In a way, it's even more boring to walk through the woods on a trail if you do it more than a few times because nothing really changes unless a tree falls over. Of course, over the seasons, different things do bloom and some lose their leaves and the conifers put on fresh new growth and of course, the different hours of the day provide different shading and illuminating but all-in-all, it is perhaps more entertaining to walk in Lloyd where I can see houses falling down or being built or added on to or painted and new things get planted and something is always going on at Harvey's whether a new way to display his cross or a new (very old) camper or tailer. These things come and they go. 
I think I am just tired of taking walks in general but that's hardly an excuse not to do it. And listening to audio books as I go does help. 

I tell you one excuse not to do it and that's having a kidney stone flare-up which I am having. It's been fucking with me for over a week now. Nothing like agony but just a sly and sometimes pointed reminder that it is indeed there. The damn thing is, I am pretty sure that the insurance company is not going to pay for any sort of scanning or blasting until it gets stuck in the duct (not to be confused with the excellent book "Duck In A Truck Gets Stuck") and causes agony and possible damage. 
I don't know. 
I do know this has happened before and then resolved itself as I guess the stone moved somewhere else. Yeah. I probably eat too many greens and of course I've made a big pot of them from the garden for our supper tonight but hell, that stone is already there and greens aren't going to make it any bigger although for all I know, I have six more in there, all just waiting in line to torment me. 
Probably not. 

Nothing else really going on. I made Mr. Moon pose with a giant mustard green leaf when we went out to decide where to plant the potatoes this year and for me to pick the greens.

Mustard greens can grow to enormous size. I bet that many of you have never seen a mustard green, much less eaten one. They are some of my favorite greens for both cooking and salads. They are spicy, like good, strong mustard, and indeed, their ground seeds are what mustard is made of. A salad made with arugula and mustard greens is not a timid salad and can make you feel like every other salad you ever eat is a mild and meek little thing, suitable for the more delicate among us. Boring, to be more exact. Arugula bites back when you eat it and then it dances a salsa, a rumba, a cha-cha-cha in your mouth while regular lettuce merely does a box-step on the tongue. Combine that with some thinly cut mustard greens and you've got a match made in spicy heaven.

I have to tell you though, that I've never bought arugula in the store that tasted anything like the arugula I pick fresh from the garden. If you like the stuff, it's worth it to grow it in pots. It's weed-like in its propensity to grow and thrive.

And that is enough of all of that. Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, I'll be back tomorrow to give you my opinion of something. I have no idea what. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Catching Up Sunday

Lis got a new iPhone just before they came over. This is her first iPhone and she was especially intrigued by the camera. She and Lon have a recording studio and use Mac computers in that process but the iPhone is new to Lis. I showed her a few things but like I told her, if she watched the video their tech guy recommended on how to use it, she'd probably know more than I do after all my years with one. And I think that's true. I always say that if I knew how to use all the stuff on my phone I could probably launch a rocket into space. Or possibly not but it wouldn't be the phone's fault if I couldn't. 

But anyway, she took that picture of our good men standing in my cluttered kitchen, deep in conversation. The perspective of the shot is misleading in that yes, Glen is very tall but honestly, so is Lon and that picture makes Glen look like a giant. She also took a picture of the same violets I took a picture of yesterday but she put a filter on them and I think it is very cool. 

Lis has an artist's eye which she uses in some of her interests outside of music which are too many and varied for me to describe but let's put it this way- WHY do some people get all the talent? Huh? But what I'm saying here is that she's going to take that little magic camera in the iPhone and learn how how to use it as an artist would instead of using it like I do which is to point, shoot, hope for the best and sometimes to crop and sometimes to darken or lighten a little. I can't wait to see what she does. And here's a picture of the coconut pie that she took on Friday night. 

Meringue and whipped cream both. Overkill, obviously. So what? As Country Joe and the Fish (thank you, Margaret)  said way back when, "Whoopee! We're all going to die!"

This morning we all got up at a reasonable hour, got dressed and did indeed go to the Waffle House. Our server today was the same one that Liz Sparks and I had a few weeks ago- Mama Kim. Mama Kim cracks me the hell up. She has no more fucks to give, obviously. She gives great service and keeps up with everything but she's not taking any shit off anybody. At the Waffle House, when you order a breakfast with sausage or bacon, that comes on a little separate plate and our table was already completely filled up with just the platters (!) holding our eggs and hash browns and toast, and there were also four cups of coffee and four glasses of water taking up space and there was no room for that meat-on-a-plate so she just tumped the meat on top of the egg and hash brown platters and took the plates back to be washed and I loved it. 
By the way, there is a fifty cent surcharge on each egg served at the Waffle House now. I thought that eggs were going to be almost free the day Trump got elected. I mean, didn't he promise something like that?

After breakfast, we said our goodbyes which are always hard. They headed off to Gatorbone and we came back to Lloyd. It had been raining and storming all night and morning and getting chillier by the hour so things looked grim and dark but as the day passed, the sky has cleared. It is still getting chillier and I do not mind that at all. I spent the day doing laundry and cooking beans for tonight's chili and ironing some vintage aprons I came across in my cleaning the other day. I'll be taking them to the hospice resale store. The care and attention and work that went into these aprons amazes me. 

Look at those tucks. And I know that some woman ran this apron up on her Singer many years ago. Such pride and craftswomanship going into such an everyday object. 

I've got a big green laundry basket that used to hold the kids' toys and I'm using that as a place to collect the things I come across and decide to donate. I am not being exactly brutal in my clearing out but I am in the mood to view objects as they truly are and not the receptacles of my deep memories and emotions. Know what I mean? Some things I am not ready to get rid of and those I won't put in the green laundry basket or the trash. That's okay. But many, I am. The Hospice resale shop at Moon Plaza is a boon to me in this regard in that I know the money being made on anything I donate goes to Hospice and not some big organization who takes advantage of their employees while the CEO's are raking it in. Hospice does God's work, if there was indeed a god who gave mercy and ease to people at the end of their lives, but since that is obviously not the case, Hospice steps in and gets it done, taking care of the family at the same time. 

Speaking of people at the end of their lives, I came across an obituary in the local paper today and the name of the woman the obituary was written about stopped me mid-scroll. 

I was tempted to text my kids to demand another granddaughter because that is the most beautiful name I can imagine and I feel I am missing out on not having a grandchild with that name. And reading Ms. Parker's obit just about blew my mind because she was amazing and so was her husband. 

Here's how she got that name:

I am slayed. She was ninety-four when she died, same as Tom Robbins and I hope that her years were filled with more joy than grief. 

Which I think is as good a wish for ourselves and those we love as any other. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Eating, Drinking, Laughing And Crying.

This is the bloom of the Japanese Magnolia (aka Tulip Tree) growing in our back yard. It has a deeper, more purple blossom than the more common pinker ones and it blooms later than they do. I think this is a fantastic color. 

This is what it looks like with the sun shining through the petals. 
The tree in our yard was here when we moved in. It was small then but it has grown over the years, as they do. Not into one of those giant, spreading, sky-touching trees, but bigger for sure. I need to trim it as it has branches all crammed together and being useless but I'm going to need a saw for that. 

Lon and Lis got in last night exactly at martini time and before you knew it, Lis had found the platters she wanted to put the delicious appetizer foods on- the cheeses, the crackers, the salmon, the raspberries...

Lis is always the presenter because she is so good at it. 

Mr. Moon was making martinis and I was stabbing deli blue-cheese olives with the cocktail spears and we were toasting and then sipping and snacking and pretty soon, Lis and I were on the porch where we get the real talking done. 
Mr. Moon made us a very, very good duck-breast appetizer and brought us out a plate. I was honestly quite surprised and impressed. 

There was another round of martinis except for Lon who is on medication for a sinus thing but Lis and Glen and I took up the slack. 
Sigh.
Although it felt like midnight by the time we got around to cooking supper, it was really only about seven-something. The guys started a fire and cooked some amazing steaks and Lis roasted baby potatoes and I made salad and sliced sourdough. 

And then of course came the coconut pie. 
Y'all- it was a pretty heavenly Valentine's Day meal. 

We all went to bed a very reasonable hour and I slept the latest this morning, feeling absolutely no guilt. Lon and Lis had a rehearsal for the gig they're doing at a CD release party and Glen had a basketball game to go to at noon. So they all got nicely dressed and out the door and me? 
I fell into complete uselessness mode. I did nothing. Between the martinis and all the things I did yesterday, including going to town to pick up last minute items, I was just a heap of flowery-overalled human. Oh, and Maurice kept jumping off our bed and then back on, over and over all night as if she was in training for some cat olympic bed-jumping event and that kept me awake which didn't help either.
I even took a nap this afternoon. Which I almost never, ever do. I laid down on the bed with my Alexander McCall Smith book, read for awhile, put the book down, pulled up my cover, and was asleep before I had the time to appreciate the peace and loveliness of it. 

When I woke up, Glen was home, asleep in his chair, and Lon and Lis were napping in the guest room. I guess we just can't party like we used to. Well, we can but we need naps the next day. 

Here's a picture of Levon at the basketball game with his Boppy.

He's eating Dippin' Dots. Glen said he really did watch the game. Levon is playing basketball this year and I hear he's pretty good. I believe that the guy behind Levon is showing how everyone cheering for FSU felt. 
Despair. 

Glen said it was a terrible game. 

And now Lon and Lis are back at the event they're playing for and they're having supper at the venue. Glen and I are going to eat some leftovers. Maybe when Lon and Lis get back we can play some cards. We always have a good time doing that. 

It has been so good to see them, to catch up. Lis and I were able to let loose of some long-held emotions which is generally what we do when we get together. We feel safe with each other. We understand each other. We hold on to each other and we make each other laugh. 

****************

Here's a tiny bouquet of violets. Some of the purple ones are blooming too. It really won't be long before the kicking of bamboo commences. 

There is talk of us going to the Waffle House tomorrow morning before Lon and Lis leave. This is becoming our tradition. In my opinion, it's a fine one. 

I feel so damn lucky. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Troubled Time

That is the only picture I have taken today. Maurice was enjoying being the queen, I suppose. Yesterday, when I was working in my bedroom and bathroom, she napped on our bed as I cleaned and organized around her and today, when I moved to the guest room and dining room area, she moved too. That little doll bed, which Glen's daddy made two of for Hank and May when they were little, is in the guest room. Maggie has one of the beds but the boys don't seem to have much interest in this one and so it lives right next to the cradle that Glen made before Lily was born. I keep blankets and quilts and dolls in them. Never know when a young child may come over who needs to play. 
I assume that Maurice is keeping on eye me, just as she does when I'm outside working and she follows me around. 

Last night she'd been sleeping with us when around five, she woke us up with her "I've got an animal!" cry and there was nothing to do but turn on the light and look because she is determined when it comes to her prey. By the time we got the light on, she was in Mr. Moon's closet and although he checked it out, he could see nothing, either dead or alive. He checked again today and still saw nothing. So who knows? 

A few nights ago, while we were eating supper, my bare toes found something under the table. It felt...soft. 
I peeked underneath and it was- you guessed it- a mouse. I am thinking that Maurice, knowing where we eat, brought it in and delivered it to the dining area. I really don't know if she's bringing in mice from outside or catching them in the house. Either was is disturbing but it's an old house with plenty of ways for a small creature to get in and I know we have had mice here. Never what I'd call an infestation but anyone who lives in the country who doesn't think they have mice is probably fooling themselves. 

It's rained all day and it is getting cooler. I can't and won't complain about that. I'll take all the coolness I can get before summer sets in again. As for rain- we always need that. 

I see that the insane, brain-worm riddled, vaccination denying, former drug dealer and addict, and just general good guy who used to blend up mice in a blender to feed some pet and invite his cousins to watch as he pureed them, is now the Secretary of Health. 
Holy fuck. 
My own doctor foresaw the possibility of this happening back before the election and was already worrying about it. I imagine that lots of medical professionals were. The Republican party has collectively lost their minds and obviously has not one testicle to share among them. Forget spines. There is no rational reason on this earth to have voted RFK, Jr. into that position. Not one. At least old Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, somehow found some moral fiber and voted no. 
It's so bizarre how quickly the previously unimaginable has become reality. I think that most of us are shaking our heads and thinking that perhaps this is all a bad dream, a nightmare, a slip through a portal to a different and crueler universe. 

Again, I am tired. I did a lot today and could not, for the life of me, find an audio book to listen to that could keep my attention as I went about my chores which frustrated me far more than the situation warranted. I believe the problem is more me than the books. I finally downloaded another Alexander McCall Smith book which I know I have read but I do not care. Perhaps McCall Smith is all I can handle these days with his kind and quirky characters, their philosophical musings, their small and sweet adventures.

Meanwhile, if I don't check in tomorrow, you will know why so don't worry. 

Peace to all of us. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Big Emotions

On Monday after I'd spent hours tidying and cleaning and winnowing in the kitchen, I got a call from Lis. They've got a gig in Tallahassee on Saturday night and she was wondering if we'd like to have them here for Friday and Saturday and spend Valentine's together. The four of us have spent many Valentine's Days together. I am not sure why but it often works out that way. In fact, I think the last time I went to see them play was on a Valentine's Day right before Covid shut us all down. 

Now, Lis knows me as well as anybody could and she knows about my anxiety and how it extends, even to something as simple and wonderful as having her and Lon come and stay with us despite the fact that we have spent SO much time together and love each other deeply and dearly, all of us. They know me through and through and still seem to like me okay. So she always gives me an out when these things come up. Lon's sister lives nearby and they can always stay with her and her husband and so when we talked on Monday I was definitely leaning towards saying, "Yes, yes, please come," but I just had a hard time with it. However,  when I was at the store yesterday I bought the half-and-half that you see above which I only ever buy when Lis is coming because she loves that in her coffee. So I texted her that picture and said, "When can I expect you on Friday?"

And that feels good. They will be here for martini time. 

By the way- the whipping cream is for the coconut pie that I'll be making for Mr. Moon's Valentine which he will gladly share with the rest of us. I think.

And so it was fortuitous that I'd cleaned the kitchen at least a little. Lis and I always tell each other not to do ONE BIT of cleaning before the other one visits. And both of us decry our own bad housekeeping skills. In our text exchange last night I told her to please not bring her white gloves and she said, "I won't even bring my glasses!" but you know that I have to at least have things fairly tidy for them. There will be, at the very least, clean sheets and clean towels and clean-ish bathrooms. 

Today I did a lot of laundry and I organized my bathroom and cleaned and oiled the wood in there and went through my overalls basket and my shirt drawer and put things aside to take to the hospice resale shop and threw things away that absolutely needed to be thrown away and even a few things from my closet went into the the old laundry basket where I was putting the things to donate. 

Oh, there is so much more but that's a start. 

I dusted most everything in our bedroom and also in Glen's bathroom.

I swept the front porches. 
Tomorrow I will attend to the guest room and the kitchen bathroom and the dining room. Nothing at all will be white-glove test-worthy but there will be camellias in vases beside beds and on tables and I'll bake a loaf of bread. 

It will be lovely. 

While I was sweeping the porch swing porch, I was looking at the bed around the giant, ancient oak in the front yard and despairing. All the ferns died back in the freeze and also the other plants that have taken over that I do not like but have not tackled yet. 

The only green thing growing is dewberries which are like blackberry vines except that they grow along the ground, not on bushes, and make smaller berries. They do, however, have briars that will rip your skin. 
I mean- ugly. Depressing. Another element of the overwhelm that I feel. 

But. 
Look what I also saw- 

The trillium. It's a shy, native plant that is very picky about where it grows and every year they come up in that spot. I have no idea who planted them but I am so grateful. Every year, they thrill me again, and I always post their pictures. 

Here is what the Florida Association of Native Nurseries says about them:

All trilliums are at least moderately uncommon in Florida; some are very rare. Please do not harvest from the wild.

Every year these plants bring me joy. This year, perhaps, especially because I need it so much. This is not a metaphor for anything, it is not part of a life-affirming story. It is just a simple fact. Today I realized the trillium had bloomed again and it made my heart so happy. 

Oh! I keep forgetting to tell a story about something that happened to me in Costco a few weeks ago. This was another thing that took me away from despair. 
It was one of my very bad days and I did not want to be in Costco and it was so crowded and I was concentrating on just getting to where they sell the avocados and tomatoes and blueberries when I got behind a family who was strolling in the same direction I was. I assume it was a family. They looked like a family with parental and child units as families look. But one of them was wearing a fluffy red tail like a fox tail over her britches and under her shirt so that it was in the proper place for a tail. She was probably about six or seven years old, I'm thinking, that magical age when girls have discovered their power and their pride and have not yet become worried about other's opinions of them or what society says they should be like, and she was just sashaying along with her family and her tail and I fell a little in love with that girl. As I passed them, she looked up at me and we shared big smiles. Her face said, "I  have a tail. And I love it," and I gave her a wink that I hope said, "You have a tail and I love it and I love you for wearing it."

That was one of the best moments of the last three weeks. 
Ain't nobody gonna hold down that sassy little woman. 

Love...Ms. Moon

The Very Definition Of Meaningless Actions

You probably don't remember- and why should you? but last year I had a bird whose daily task was to try and kill the bird in the reflection of my bathroom window. Either that, or else he just really wanted in, perhaps for a nice little bath in the Talavera sink. That guy showed up for weeks, perching in the bamboo and then making a direct attack on the window, recovering, flying back to his perch, and doing it all again. Over and over and over. 
I suppose it's the angle of the light or even the smell of the air at this particular time of year but that bird came to my mind the other day and I wondered if he would be back. 
And sure enough this morning, I was in my bathroom and heard a very familiar sound and looked up to see him in the bamboo, getting ready for another try at the window. Can you see him in that picture? He will be amusing me for the next week or so, I imagine. Luckily, he doesn't hit the window hard enough to injure his tiny little brain. He doesn't get enough of a running start for that. Or flying start, as it were. 

Today was pottery day. I'm struggling there. I truly need more instruction than I am getting and somehow I always feel like an idiot when I ask questions that apply to very basic techniques. It reminds me of my high school trigonometry class when I simply could not grasp the concepts of how it all worked. I had loved algebra, for the most part, especially the way it all fit together and that I could understand with some work and lots of instruction from our teacher, Mr. Fink (I am not making that up) who was a very fine teacher, albeit a rather odd man. 
But oh, I could NOT crack the code on how trig worked. I cried in class almost every day. The teacher who was a really lovely older woman named Miss Smith (although we called her Miss Trig, of course) once told me that if I spent as much time paying attention as I did crying, I might be able to understand it. She was probably as frustrated with me and my stupid questions as I was with trigonometry. 
So then I was frustrated, upset, AND embarrassed and I do believe all of that is part of the reason I find it so hard to ask "stupid" questions, even in a pottery class. 

But whatever. The time always goes quickly and it's nice to have a chat with the others. Sometimes we are more chatty than others. Today was a relatively quiet day. 

Jessie and I went to the Indian buffet after class and it was, as always, good. She had to pick up August early from school to take him to the dentist and I went off to Costco and Publix, as I do. I know I complain about not knowing what to make for dinner a lot but I swear- I'm just about at the end of the road with meal planning. It seems like we've had EVERYTHING in the last few weeks. 

I think I'm just tired of everything. Are we not all exhausted after the last three weeks? I'm sure we've all heard about the Gulf of America and what a dumb bitch move that is. Fuck that. But have you heard about renaming Greenland "Red, White, and Blue Land?" 
Anger is exhausting. And I know that anger is not doing me any good. But how do you avoid it? I know, I know- channel that anger, baby! Resist! 
Okay. I'll work on it. Meanwhile, I'm tired all the time. Or, you know- I could be dying. 

But here's a headline I just read in Huffpost:

American Bar Association Says Trump Is Not Following The Rule Of Law

Okay. True. Good for the American Bar Association to point out this most salient truth. But who is going to make the Fuhrer start following the rule of law? He's got his iron fist on all the branches of government and the military. And how he's managed to do that AND ban paper straws AND rename major geographical areas I do not know. I suppose he's had a little help.
I wonder if he's working on his first Kennedy Center Honors ceremony performance list too? 

1. Kid Rock
2. Ted Nugent 

And that should do it. 

Anger is not only exhausting, it also can feel so good to express. Again- I know it's not doing me any good. 

I'm not doing you any good either so I'll shut up now. I'm just banging my stupid head against a bathroom window. 

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. Here's what the Japanese Magnolia in Jessie's backyard looks like right now. 

I did take the picture through the kitchen window so it's not a great photo but if you look closely up on the right side of the tree, you can see the Hula Hoop stuck in it. Nice decoration. 

MM

 

Searching For Some Kind Of Peace

This is where my peace lies. Sometimes it's the hallway and sometimes it's my bedroom when the bed is made and the yellow quilt  is smoothed out fine and the upper border is turned down a little. Sometimes it's my laundry room when the light is coming in and making the plants I have in there glow with the energy of photosynthesis. Sometimes it's my garden. Sometimes it's my porch. Sometimes it's the room with all the books- the library. 

But to be a place of peace, there has to be at least some sense of order, some surfaces that gleam instead of being covered with a skin of dust. And the ironic thing is- I hate to clean. 
I hate it with all my heart. 
Sometime last year we hired someone to come and clean or at least to come and get some of it done, making it less stressful and less work for me. 
It just didn't work out. She was very good at bathrooms, scrubbing tile and cleaning sinks and toilets and floors, but she didn't have the time to give us to get the things done that I wanted done. And honestly, her ideas of cleaning sort of clashed with mine and so, long story short, I am doing my own cleaning again which is to say- I don't give it the time to get things done either but that's another story. 

Today, I took a walk but I stayed in Lloyd where the chances of getting lost are pretty much nil. I took a picture of great, tall cabbage palm. 

It is the tallest thing in the picture. I have no idea how long it takes for a palm to achieve that sort of height. I imagine many, many years. 

The redbud is blooming. I took this picture of one in the yard of a neighbor down the street whom I have never met to my recollection. 

And yes- I did tinker with the light and color saturation on that one because it wasn't showing up the way it really looked and that is pretty darn close. Redbuds are often the first thing to bloom as spring begins to come in. I don't count camellias because they bloom all winter long. 

The fally down house is...well, falling down. 

It is almost melting into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West when Dorothy threw a pail of water on her. 

They are clearing trees out of a very low area across from where the GDDG was built. 

And hey! It's for sale! Wanna buy some swampland in Florida? Step right up, going for a song. 
Seriously, what in hell are they going to do there? 

I'm having a moment this afternoon. Seems like everywhere I go they are destroying the earth, cutting down trees, scraping it bare down to the red, red clay to build more houses, more houses, more houses. 
I guess. Mr. Moon was talking to me on the phone the other day as he passed "our" Publix which is right by an exit off I-10 which makes it a quick, easy run for us here in Lloyd. Suddenly he said, "Oh my god! They have raped this place!" 
I drove by it a few days later and yes, they have. 

This brings such great sorrow to me and this is a time when I feel as if I cannot bear even another ounce of sorrow for what is going on all around me. And us. All around us. 

So I need a place of peace and that is my home, my yard, my garden. 
Today, after my walk, I decided that I would give the kitchen as good a cleaning as I could manage in the hours I had left in the day and I did. I barely scraped the surface but I managed to winnow a few things and scrub some counters and dust and oil the old kitchen hutch and the center island which is made of wood. And I pulled everything not rooted in there out into the hallway and swept and mopped. If I had any pride at all I would have mopped it a second time, and then, a third. It needed it. But I was tired. 
I am tired. 
Life right now is exhausting and I do not think that's going to change any time soon. 

I am finding it easier to winnow. I look at things that have been cluttering up my life for years which I may love dearly in some deep emotional way because of where they come from or the memories attached to them but everything feels so transient now, including life, that I just reach for whatever it is and either throw it away or put it in a box to give to the hospice resale store. 
Not enough, I assure you. My inner character has not changed overmuch. But I look at things and I think, "When was the last time you really, really looked at this? And what does looking at it make you feel? If I get rid of it, will I ever even remember it was there?"
Mostly not. 

Some things I cannot throw away. Things the grandchildren have made for us over the years. I do look at them. I do find pleasure in them. They will stay up. 

I need to go put the kitchen back together. I'm going to make clam spaghetti tonight which is the easiest thing on earth. I have greens from the garden soaking in the big white plastic bowl that I use for everything around here except for doing any sort of mixing in. I probably got it at the Dollar Tree or maybe someone left it here. Who knows? 

Not me. 
I feel as if I know nothing anymore. As if everything I took for granted like the Constitution, the rule of law, like freedom and justice for all (okay, maybe not that but it was a good goal), have all been blasted into smithereens. Like someone had an almighty big hand grenade and hurled it right into the capitol and stood back and laughed as things crumbled and all of our ideals bled a silent death. 

I'm just Ms. Cheerful, aren't I? 
Sorry. This is just how I feel right now. Perhaps tomorrow I will feel more optimistic. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Name A Topic I Didn't Cover

Here's what the burn pile looked like after I finished trimming the cabbage palms today. Actually, it still looks like that because Mr. Moon has not yet taken a match to it. Well, it's more like a flame thrower. I think that a lot of men (and probably women) love to start fires. I mean, not arson fires, just regular fires that need to be started. The burn pile fires scare me to death but not him. And I do remember the joys of starting fires at camp to cook on. There is something very primally satisfying about that, not unlike growing food. 

Anyway- if you look closely on the right side of the pile you can see the pages of the Evangelical Sunday School manual and on the left side of the pile, near the bottom of it, you can see the crocosmia that has come up from the bulbs that I threw on the burn pile because there is no other other way to deal with them that doesn't just move their stubborn insistence on taking over the world from one place to another. I'm not even sure that fire takes care of the problem. 

I am not an educated trimmer. As in- I have no idea what I'm doing. So I just started lopping away at my poor little cabbage palms but now there is no hindrance to accessing the front porch. 

The garden cart is packed full of fronds and their stems. And look who I found down in the crotch between palm and stem as I was trimming. 

I did a google search and I believe that is a Gray Tree Frog. What an appropriate name! If you want to, you can google "gray tree frog call" and hear what it sounds like in Lloyd at night. Or at least my back yard. It's amazing that such a little critter can make such a big sound. 

I also trimmed back some other cabbage palms I planted in a bed near the kitchen-side of the house. I didn't go as far with these as the other ones because I only wanted to get rid of the fronds that Mr. Moon gets tangled up in, as he says, when he's coming in from the yard. AND I cut back some limbs on the mulberry tree that were almost on the ground. I wonder if I'll get any mulberries this year. I sure didn't get many last year. I think I got one pie's worth. But hope springs eternal, at least when it comes to mulberries. 

*****************

Since I started writing this, about ten things have arisen to take my attention. You know, it is the Super Bowl and although I care absolutely nothing about it at all, Glen did tell me that Jon Batiste was doing the Star Spangled Banner and I would joyfully watch him sing the dreariest hymn in the Methodist hymnal so I went in and watched that and it is my opinion that Jon Batiste has the most beautiful face in the entire world and is a Bodhisattva and an angel and he is quite possibly the most talented musician in the world, I don't know, but I think maybe he is. The only thing marring that beautiful performance was the camera panning in on Mr. Fuckhead and the daughter he'd date if he could get away with it and they should not have done that because Mr. Fuckhead is not fucking worthy of viewing a live Jon Batiste performance in person. 

So Glen had a hankering for some chicken wings which is nothing unusual and the Super Bowl is absolutely an occasion wherein chicken wings must be consumed so he'd gone to Publix to get some and when he got back, I cut up vegetables which are  absolutely an essential accompaniment to chicken wings as well as the blue cheese dressing that goes with them so I made him up a lovely platter with celery and cucumbers and cauliflower and radishes and red and yellow peppers because I am, of course, the best wife in the world. 

I am just incredibly grateful that this year no one is coming over to watch the game because I really can't bear that but I know that my husband would have enjoyed some other person who had interest in it to cheer and commiserate with, as is appropriate. 

Then I found out that Tom Robbins has died at the age of ninety-two which is a good run for anyone. I have been a huge fan of his writing (the earlier stuff, at least) since I first cracked open a copy of "Another Roadside Attraction" and immediately fell in love with Amanda who was the main character and all the other characters and Robbin's take on the Vatican and the body of Christ and, well, just about everything and definitely Robbins himself. 

I've written about him several times but I think this post sort of sums up a lot of my feelings about him. 

Here's a quote of his from his book "Skinny Lets and All" that I just lifted from that post:

Thus, since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy. And once it entered into its unholy alliance with politics, it became the most dangerous and repressive force that the world has ever known. 

And I thought it was prescient then. Whoo boy. Hold my beer. 

Well. I am grateful that I got to be on the planet at the same time as Mr. Robbins and that I was somehow led to read his books. As a wise friend just said to me, "He was a writer of his time," and indeed he was and thank all the gods that be that we have his writing to remind us of the miracles and madness, freedom and folly, silliness and psilocybin of those days. 

This is what my copy looked like. I still have it. 

So is that it? I doubt it. I'm chattering away like an old lady who was unknowingly dosed with speed in her Metamucil.  

Here are two more pictures of cabbage palms. The first one, I did not take, but am posting it here to show how incredibly tall they can grow which explains my thinking about the distance between the ones I've planted. 

And this one I took of the part of the frond that grows from the stem. I think it is beautiful. 

There's a little Spanish moss too. 

Florida. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Deep Appreciation

That's a sweet, tiny little wild violet. The white ones always bloom first. The purple ones will come soon and then the bamboo will start pushing itself up through the ground with alarming speed. And I have even begun to get any of the winter's dead cleared from the yard? 
Well, yes, actually. But not much. Not much at all. 

I went back to the garden this afternoon and pulled more weeds. Simply looking at my garden, especially in the late afternoon when the sun is getting lower in the sky and truly illuminating the plants from a side angle, satisfies something so deep in me. It's like making good food. It's like calming a baby. It's like writing a sentence that makes me happy. I am wired for these things. There are many, many other things that bring me great pleasure, but these are some of the best. 

I got just about all the weeds pulled but Maurice did not offer her help today. I have no idea why. Perhaps she had tired of the garden because of her work there yesterday. Let's face it- collard greens are not a big attraction for a cat, although that rye grass really seemed to interest her for a moment or two. 

She did come out and supervise when I was trimming back the dead firespike and oh, how I hope it's not truly dead, although I see no tender growth hiding under the oak leaves that cover my front yard. We do not even try to grow grass there. I can't think of anyone in this part of Lloyd that has grass. Maybe. I am not very observant. 
I will be heartsore if the firespike doesn't come back. I planted it there by the front fence a few years ago with stems I had rooted over the winter. I have to say that the leaves I cut today reminded me of batwings. That dark. 

That's some I hadn't gotten to by a different fence. I'll get there. 

Or I won't. 

I watered and trimmed my porch plants and hung the ferns back on their hooks but I'm not moving everything back in place yet. That's just begging for another freeze. I watered all the plants camping in the house. My front porch is a mess of oak leaves and plants in pots that are neither arranged properly or tidily, some of them missing parts of themselves that froze. The cabbage palms planted on both sides of the porch entrance need trimming badly, their fronds bending in to meet in such a way that one feels one might need a pith helmet and a machete to get through them to get to the porch steps which you can barely see for all the leaves on them. 

My husband complains about this regularly and bitterly. I have explained to him over and over that eventually, the palms will be so tall that their fronds will not be any sort of problem at all. 
"Not in our lifetime!" he says. 
"Well," I shrug. "In someone's." 

And oh, won't that be beautiful thing? 
But I will admit that I probably planted them too close together. This is a fault of mine whether I'm planting camellias or cabbage or cabbage palms. 

I just baked the sourdough I made yesterday. It has come out all right, but my loaves will never win any contests. 

Still, they taste good. 

It's so quiet here tonight and I am happy about that. 
I wonder what fresh hell the puppet in chief has been responsible for today. I really do not care to read about it at the moment. 

I just want to make our supper, go to bed and read, and fall into dreamless sleep. 

Peace, y'all. 

Moon rise.

Love...Ms. Moon