April’s ablaze with blossoms and a-flurry with breezes

 

What better way to celebrate April as National Poetry Month?

Soon, in Eureka Springs, a gathering of poets from surrounding states and Arkansas will begin the annual Lucidity Poetry Retreat held at the Inn of the Ozarks. The first session is at night on a Tuesday (non- season rooms are less expensive then) with workshops, lectures, read-arounds, renewal of friendships and beginnings of new ones.

The final meeting is always on a Thursday night with the Awards Banquet, but many of us will prolong our goodbyes at a local cantina.

Poets from Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma will travel here, not only to enjoy the seasonal spring flowerings, but also to renew inspiration, to perhaps gain new techniques for writing, and to savor the ambience and fellowship of like-minded folk.

Laughter and conversations around tables at Myrtie Mae’s restaurant or Sparky’s will enrich the experience further. New friends become old friends and old friends become "family."

On the last afternoon, the group is free to ride the trolley, visit the masseuse, the flea markets, the trinket shops downtown, Thorncrown Chapel, Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, attend an additional read-around session, or to nap.

As usual for the past few years, I’ll soon be a resident of the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow for a week, which will include the poetry retreat. Besides writing, organizing, editing on the non-Lucidity days, I will stop in at the hospital’s Purple House thrift shop, the Echo and what used to be The Red Barn—all favorite places to pick up bargains in books and other things that please my eye.

Since last year, I have made Facebook friends with Dan K., so I’ll visit his workplace and several other places he’s suggested in his newspaper columns. Oh, and the Railway Winery out past Holiday Island—I’ll have to go see friends Vicki and Greg. I will make sure to pick up an issue of the Lovely County Citizen, which is full of writing ideas.

Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the U. S. has written a clever, more-truthful-than-not, poem, called

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

[from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, by Billy Collins]

Spring has sprung . . . spring into action . . . spring into life

by Pat Laster

What’s eating my pansy blooms? I’ve never noticed this happening before. For several days a bumblebee flew between flower beds (separated by a concrete apron and path). It never seemed to land, though later (the first day of spring), it attached itself to the outer, lower blue bloom of the vinca vine. Why wouldn’t it have gone down inside the bloom?
Another question: (but I think I know the answer). An iris bed --with full sun and nearby yucca plants--had exquisite and multiple blooms. However, irises in a bed in the curve of the driveway—for the second year in a row—have not bloomed. I wonder if the pink dogwood is providing too much shade. Also, a small redbud has sprouted and for the second year, is blooming.
After reading in several sites about iris, it seems that this little bit of shade is not the culprit after all. It is recommended that iris be separated every three or four years. How about thirty or forty years since these have been dug up and replanted? Perhaps that’s my next step. I can use more of the 50 pounds of sand I bought!
Another problem is that one year, I bought two burning bush plants and a small holly bush. By planting time, they were still in their nursery containers. One burning bush I put at the west property line, and the other, alas, I dug in next to the concrete porch on the southeast. Ditto with the holly, only at another place in the same bed.
Through the next several years, I failed to move them to a better location and now, they both stand about four feet tall. The holly spread into a lushly-bloomed azalea, forcing me to trim the new growth. To heel in the new cuttings, I dug a bed (or a trench) next to the non-blooming iris bed, amended the dirt with potting soil and sand. On the second day after planting them, the rains came. We shall see.
During spring break, Kid Billy was invited to spend two days at his Aunt Jenn’s home in Conway. She agreed—they texted back and forth—that I could send her rootings of tansy and lamb’s ear. But I added a clump of oxalis and two small gardenias for good measure.
Ferny-foliaged tansy fills bare spots in beds, but becomes invasive. Grey-leaved, velvety lamb’s ear bloom seeds fall out into the yard and take root. Oxalis spreads, too, so I was glad to share some with her. I may have to make new beds here and there; I’ve given plants away, too. They can be transplanted easily. Email me or go to my blog(s) if you want some.
A little history before this next graf: I always wanted a holly tree. So, when I married (the late) Mr. Laster, two of my women friends gave me one as a wedding gift. I planted it at the house we lived in—his late parents’ home. When the marriage didn’t take, he refused my plea that I get the new tree. So, once again, I had no holly tree.
Six years ago, when we moved to Couchwood, KB noticed a holly at a nursery. He “bought” it for me—perhaps it was my birthday. Or Mother’s Day. I planted it at the northeast corner of the house. But I made the common mistake of planting it too close to the foundation. Today, it strong-arms the nearby gardenia and azaleas. Once again to the pruning shears. #

Nature at its best and worst

by Pat Laster

This week, I was struck by these beauties in my yard in central Arkansas: japonica (firebush), forsythia (yellowbell), spirea, pansies, deep-red miniature nandinas, buttercups, heirloom double jonquils, blue-blossomed vinca, berried hollies, hyacinths, dianthus and the understated pink blooms of loropetalum.
Yellow coins of dandelions are blooming underfoot, a portent of future infestation. Hen-bit greens up the yard until the grass begins growing. A yellow sheep shire bloom and stars-of-Bethlehem are also visible in the grass and a lone grape hyacinth peeks from down low in the flower bed.
The oxalis foliage is lush and there are several pink blooms in the hanging basket outside the south window. And thrift. How could I overlook the cascading thrift? Also, the redbud (Judas Tree) is turning fuchsia. And if that weren’t enough, the pear tree is blooming!
Inside, an old begonia (close to the south window) shows one lonely bloom, but four African violets—three blue, one pink—are splendid in their florescence.
As warm as it’s been, it’s awfully tempting to begin putting the plants back outdoors. But I know it’s too soon. The wind would whip them to pieces. Except for the mother-in-law’s tongue. It’s tall, heavy leaves would stand stoically as usual through any weather. We know folks like that, don’t we?
Nature can show both its sublimity in the instances of plants and birds, and its destructive violence as experienced in tornadoes and floods.
This time, central Arkansas received only gusty winds. Places in mid-country weren’t so lucky. At one point, according to newspaper wire reports, storms arrived so fast between last Friday and early Saturday that as many as four million folks were within 25 miles of a tornado.
OTHER SUBJECTS: A recent news picture’s caption mentioned a turpentine farm. A new term for me, so I Googled it, discovering that in earlier years, yellow pine trees were cut into, the resin/sap dripped into boxes, which, when full, were taken to larger containers, then even larger ones and shipped to a distillery, thence to buyers. The online source prompted a poem: “on a dark night/ the turpentine farm becomes/ a cemetery” Cuts in the trees leave whitened resinous coatings that reflect eerily at night.
A term found in an obit ended up in my journal: “Quartermaster Striker (Korean War).” Striker was the enigmatic word. In the list of US Navy Enlisted Rates/Ratings, I found the meaning. I think.
“Sailors who go directly to a base, station or ship without specialized school training following recruit training are encouraged to select a career field. Through correspondence courses provided for self-study and on-the-job training (OJT), they may qualify for entry into a rating. This path is called "striking for rate." A seaman working in the deck department of a ship will by work assignment find herself most often in training for the deck rating of Boatswain Mate. Many "strikers" will venture into other departments to become a Yeoman, Damage Controlman or Gunnersmate as openings occur. Many technical rating fields are restricted to formal school graduates and thereby closed to "strikers." Having experienced the width and depth of Navy life, most "strikers" become excellent petty officers.” #