Owning cats means arranging for their care while I'm away

 Annamarie Parker, my volunteer cat/plant/yard "girl" while I'm away

 

Spring is not a good time to be away from home for two weeks at a time.

 

Grasses grow, flowers bloom, indoor and porch plants dry out, litter boxes fill up, cat food and water disappear.

 

Lights need changing every night or two. Doors to the bedroom area need "locking" against paws that want to investigate and knead--as they did before new carpet was laid.

This acre of yard needs mowing fairly often, especially when it rains often.

 

Grandson Billy's mother--my daughter--lives five miles away and insists that she will tend to these matters for me. For that I am grateful.

 

And so are Greye and Bibbs. They should be: while I'm gone, they get the best seat in the house.

 

 



Blogging: Serendipity and spring

 

 

                Without a leading for this week, I searched through several catch-all books. Not finding “April” in the lists, nor “Spring,” I put them back in place. Abutting the last book I shelved, a thinnish hardback standing there--without a title on the spine, or author—piqued my interest. Pulled it down, and just guess what? A book entitled . . . serendipitously. . . WHO TELLS THE CROCUSES IT’S SPRING?

                I looked no further; this was it! The subtitle was “Favorite Poems of the Four Seasons as published in Farm Journal. Compiled by Pearl Patterson Johnson, published by Countryside Press, a division of Farm Journal, Inc. Philadelphia, 1971."

                “From the hundreds of poems printed in FARM JOURNAL magazine over the past three decades, [here are] 135 of the most representative seasonal verses. . . .” she said.

                I'd purchased this book four years ago from The Purple House in Eureka Springs—the hospital thrift store—for fifty cents.

                Since April is National Poetry Month, I’ll print a few. If you wonder about the typography, the slashes denote new lines. Somehow, in posting, the lines are double-spaced. Which I don't like. So, until I learn how to make them single spaced, I'll use this format.

                IT’S SPRING! IT’S SPRING! – by Mae Winkler Goodman

                “Who tells the crocuses it’s spring?/ What calendar informs the daffodils/ To bloom, or notifies the birds to sing,/ Or bids the grass to blow across the hills?/ What messenger instructs the buds to break,/ Or violets to lift their purple heads?/ And yet they know. They know. This is the hour/ When spring takes over. Let the winter pass--/ You cannot keep it from the wistful flower, / You cannot hide it from the eager grass. / It’s spring. It’s spring! The news has got around, / Spreading like fire across the quickened ground.”

                A RED-LETTER DAY – by Yetza Gillespie

                “When every budding maple wears/ On every twig a gilded locket, / When ponds are loud with clicking frogs/ Like marbles in a small boy’s pocket, //

                “When well-bred goldfinches ignore/ The ribaldries that bluejays utter/ At picnics where the grass is spread/ With dandelion pats of butter, //

                “Then you may ring the calendar/ With scarlet, though it shine or rain, / And run outside without your gloves, / For April has come true again.”

                DAWDLING WINTER – by Meryle Moore Simpson

                “This backward spring reminds me of the way/ The children used to think of everything/ At bedtime—any quick excuse to play/ Another hour: the drinks—remembering/ Small joys they had not told—prolonged good-nights--/ Good-night, good-night, again, again, again./ Closing the door and turning out the lights/ Was never final as it should have been./ A coyote, wind, a cricket’s harmless noise/ Was cause to fret, and I had not the / heart/ To chasten them. Now winter time enjoys/ Playing a similar, slow counterpart: / Reluctantly still dawdling in the snow/ Long past the hour for frosty days to go.”

                SPRING HOUSE CLEANING – by Blanche A. Hjerpe

                “I’m short of breath, my heart beats fast/ When nature is a-greening; / I’ll bet you think that I’m in love--/ It’s just from spring house cleaning.”

                May spring put a spring in your step, the aroma of flowers to your nose and a smile on your face.

c 2015 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press

 

Spring springs, then swarms

Tax time again - during the best part of spring--PL

 Easter, taxes, yard work, more yard work, tax deadline, impending trips, chapter revisions—you who longed for spring for so long (ahem), I hope you are not in the same predicament. Of course, all gardeners are deep into dirt.
 

I’m deep into a ‘do-it-yourself’ project: a sidewalk from the front porch to street-side’s mail and paper boxes. I saw a beautiful example last year on social media (FB) and shared it. It would take too many precious minutes to locate it again, so I’ve used what materials I have, plus river pebbles and several stepping stones from Home Depot. [photo on my FB page]
 

It will replace the mere stepping-stone path I put down several years ago, which stones have either sunk into the grass, or broken in the weather extremes. The hardest part of the new project is digging out the lawn grass so it won’t overtake THIS venture. About a sixth of the way done, I’m hoping to have it finished by July 4. This year.
 

Another area I want to make into a faux patio has undergone much cleaning of broad leafs --not counting the mullein pinks  which I call lamb’s ears-- and the addition of 3 small red azaleas (4 for $10 at Home Depot). The only thing potentially untoward is if the neighbors moving into the house south of me are noisy. Bird noise I covet, but please, no human racket.
 

Speaking of noise, wait till the subdivision to be built on the north is inhabited in its projected 120 lots. Maybe I’ll have to build a privacy fence on all four sides!
 

Then there’s taxes—mine and Kid Billy’s. I decided to join the crowd and do them online. Bad idea! It asks questions I don’t know the answers to—like specific sales of investments during the year. When the IRS quit printing out the instruction booklet, they failed us who can read and who can at least attempt to do our own taxes.
 

The federal tax online workup is free, but the state one costs from $12-$20. No fair! If it says "free," then it should be free.
 

Easter Day is history, but in liturgical churches, the season of Eastertide lasts until Pentecost. We don’t just exult for one spring day that Christ is risen—but celebrate throughout several more weeks, until the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit.
 

This Easter day is only the second time in my life that I didn’t attend church on this high day. Oh, I was GOING to—to Zion Lutheran in Avilla with my widowed aunt, whose granddaughter’s wedding I played several weeks ago. But with two evenings of hefty yard work plus the cold wind hitting my ears all that time, I just KNEW I’d be ‘stove up’ on Sunday morning, so I called the night before and begged off.
 

That morning, I felt no painful results of my labor (thank you Lord), so I sat on the porch swing and meditated in a one-person sunrise service. As I told a friend, the crows were my brass, the robins, flutes, woodpeckers provided percussion and the doves cooed arias of hope. The ubiquitous wind was worshipfully quiet.
 

 

May your wintertime dreams of spring projects become realities—at least by summertime.

##



Another week of spring in the Ozarks

 

               APRIL 21- Easter Monday, – Prepping to leave for a week at Eureka Springs – Lucidity Poetry retreat (for two days and three evenings) but living at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow. On the road at 9:30 and drove four hours straight only to find the doors all locked at 1:30. Luckily, the other resident was on “his” porch and while he went down for some lunch, I found the keys to my room and came back up for a nap. I unpacked the car then and parked.
             After that, I went outside and wrote.

FROM THE COLONY DECK

Dogwood
as far as I
can see in these mountains.
Settling in to write this Easter
Monday.

The sun
merely a bright
spot behind a cloud bank.
On Easter Monday, the weather’s
still cool.
        
           At dusk, I hear an owl from somewhere down Dairy Hollow Road.

again this year
heartburn follows
Jana’s great dinner.

APRIL 22 – Tuesday. The annual (for 21 years) Lucidity Poets Retreat doesn’t begin till tonight. So I tackle the myriad submissions to CALLIOPE’s poetry file. This is a gratis job (a non-profit writers’ publication), but –despite the general editor’s wishes (“You went there to write!”)—I spread all of them out on the kitchen table and sort them by dates received—some as far back as December. Though a newbie at editing poetry for a lit mag, I try to respond (via email) as soon and as personally as possible.
The opening session of the Retreat brought old friends together (of all the hugging you ever saw: in someone’s coat collar or lapel might be one of my earrings) and a few new folks who quickly became friends.

          APRIL 23 – Wednesday. The honor of leading one of four workshops starting at 8:30 meant my leaving here at 8.  Three Texans, an Illini, and four Mizzou poets had been assigned to the group.  In two long sessions, we critiqued each others’ poems sent in earlier. Lunch at Sparky’s Bistro with Missouri and Mountain Home friends lasted until 1:30, and the next session began at 2. I eschewed that one for a nap. The evening lectures added more information and inspiration. Afterward, we participated in a read-around. I lasted one round, but some of them stayed for two. When the leader called for a 3^rd round, I heard that several called out, “Enough!” By then it was ‘way after 10 pm.

 

            APRIL 24 – Thursday. Another workshop session, another lecture, a group picture, then the afternoon was free. It threatened rain, and I came down with a fresh cold. Sure enough, we had to wear raincoats over our dressy clothes for the final activity.

            The Awards banquet began at 5:30. Dr. John Crawford provided the pre-and-post banquet piano music. Though I was sure my poem would win at least an honorable mention, alas, it didn’t. With a runny nose and sneezing spells, I didn’t feel like attending the usual ritual of goodbyes at the local pub. My sleep was noisy and fitful. Rest was out in the woods somewhere, or in the fields. It certainly was NOT in MY bed.

 

            APRIL 25 – Friday.  After two days of arising by alarm for early workshops, I slept in till rested, arising at 8:05. This day was all mine. Coffee and journal on the back deck, and time to write. And write I did—for two hours. After breakfast, I continued toward my goal of organizing all the Calliope poetry submitted thus far, and trying to get them all a schedule for publication. Turned out to be a complicated procedure that meant emails to most of the poets before I could call myself done. 

          After a sumptuous dinner (provided at the Colony each week night) of salmon “cakes” (I call them” patties”), mashed potatoes, steamed, uncut asparagus, salad and lemon meringue pie, I drove across town to the only local store, Dollar General. I needed more antihistamine, some throat lozenges, batteries for my camera, toothpaste and the most important thing, ice cream. I continued working on the poems submitted until bedtime. The Haagen-Dazs strawberry provided a cooling, sweet midnight delight.

 

            APRIL 26 – Saturday. Another whole day alone—except for the loud folks motorcycling, walking, yelling, playing their car radios loudly—I finally finished the CALLIOPE task with each poem tucked away in folders labeled “Summer ‘14”, “Fall ’14,” “Winter ‘14/’15,” “Spring ‘15” and a couple as far out as “Summer ’15.”

 

           APRIL 27 – Sunday. Sunday. Here it is 9 p.m. and I’ve just now wasted four hours of typing into my website 62 "found" poems. SIXTY-TWO. I could tell the machine or the text editor was getting tired. First, it skipped two spaces instead of one, then three spaces. Once, the screen went completely away, but came back presently. When the 62^nd poem—the end of the ones beginning with F—was typed in and a note as to the date, I looked around for a SAVE CHANGES. Couldn’t find it, so started searching. And, for want of a SAVE, the lot was lost.

         But—after fuming, whining, crabbing, grousing—I decided that this was nothing compared to the destruction and deaths caused by today’s tornadoes.

         Forgive me, Lord, for magnifying the insignificant things instead of the important ones that really matter.

 

March lagged behind in its tempo to spring's marching

~~Spring of 2006, PL~~

 

 

                Most years by now all the spring-blooming plants were in full blossom, and I sometimes listed all I could see around Couchwood. Not this year. But with the few warm days we’ve had, more and more color is showing on this first day of spring.

 

                The inside plants blooming are blue African violets, and red epesia trumpets. The bracts of the red Christmas poinsettia, and two red carnations with baby’s breath and greenery (from the Valentine bouquet sent by my Florida son) still decorate my buffet.

 

                Oh, yes, and a bouquet of cut flowers lends springtime to my sight and a heady aroma to my nose from the dining table. For the first time ever, I also arranged a bouquet for the bathroom. (Why hadn't I thought of that before now?)

 

Outside on the porch are the newly released house plants. The baby jew from my Hot Springs son has tiny white dots for blooms. (I’ve never had such a plant before. ) Two other plants have their own odd-shaped blossoms. A cutting of begonia in water shows a pink bloom.

 

Five kinds of daffodil or buttercups brighten either the edges of the yard or the flower beds. The vintage double ones are more profuse than usual. And appear in more places. Others are common daffodils, a vintage, single fragrant buttercup, two hybridized ones—one completely yellow with a cup, and one yellow with an orange cup. Oh, and here’s another: ivory with a larger yellow cup.

 

Farther out are forsythia, japonica—both pink and white--and spirea, but none as full of color as they usually are by this time. Perhaps another week of warm weather…

 

Grandson Billy’s 24^th birthday was Wednesday. The first time in his life, he said, that it didn’t fall during spring break. He'll come "home" tonight and Friday (no classes; no work shift) for a rare visit.

 

Other family events happened in March. Dad was born March 25, 1909. One of my sisters—Barbara--was born on March 28, 1947. Mom died on March 28, 2006.

 

On March 20 in other years, Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published--in 1852. John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar, 1969.

 

On March 21^st in 1790, Thomas Jefferson became Secretary of State under President Washington. Alcatraz prison was emptied of prisoners by the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963.

 

March 22^nd saw The Beatles’ US album The Early Beatles released in 1965.

 

March 23^rd Patrick Henry's Give me Liberty speech occurred in 1775.The United States Mint produced its first coins made by a press in 1836.

 

March 24^th 1989 saw the largest oil spill in United States history. It happened in Alaska.

 

On March 25^th in 1954, RCA first produced color televisions. (I was a high school senior.)

 

March 26^th 1892, poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey.

 

Belated, but still appropriate to the season is this Irish Blessing: “May good luck be with you wherever you go, and your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.”

c 2014, lovepat press, PL

If I can’t have a steel bridge, an old telephone pole will do

by Pat Laster

I have always been interested in the steel bridge on Boone Road in southwest Bryant. The reason: my Grandmother Couch, so family lore goes, was walking a footbridge across that part of the Hurricane River when she fell, an accident that crippled her for life. My research doesn’t tell me when the steel bridge across that body of water was built—nor the one we traveled over as a family of eight farther up in the county that we knew as Steel Bridge or North Fork (Saline River.) That was our “swimming hole.”
Several years ago, both bridges were cut away, hoisted to nearby roadsides and replaced with nondescript spans. How nice, I thought, one of those bridges would look on my south property line. The bridge official I called knew nothing. Now, I realize it would be too large and besides, the scrap metal thieves would have it gone in no time.
So when First Electric changed out the poles in our neighborhood last week and came to the one my electric lines were attached to, I asked if I could have the old one. The man seemed delighted and laid it where I directed. What to do with it now? Oh, I’ll think about that tomorrow.
This week’s poem, in honor of National Poetry Month, is “When April Does Her Laundry” by the late Arkansas poet, Geneva I. Crook. I found it in the 1955-1956 Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas’s Annual Brochure of Poetry, which later became the Anthology. An interesting note: “Printed for the Seventeenth Year/ By The/ Morrilton Headlight/ Morrilton, Arkansas.”
I found this issue in a flea market in southern Missouri several years ago. The price was $5.00, a whopping sum for used books, but there were two copies. I’d never seen such in all my years as a PRA member. So they had to be mine. On the flyleaf of one, Mrs. Crook had written, “To my friend, Mrs. Harris.”
Here is the poem, which won PRA’s annual Light Verse contest in 1955.

WHEN APRIL DOES HER LAUNDRY - by Geneva I. Crook
When April does her laundry and hangs it out to dry,
It’s white clouds moving in the breeze against a blue-rinsed sky.
Then while her laundry’s drying she tidies up her floor
Of old oak leaves and whisks them right out her March back door.
She spreads out fresh new carpets of grass as green as jade,
Hand-launders all the flowers so colors will not fade.
She brightens wings of redbirds and freshens up their song,
Then sets them on the branches to sing the whole month long.
No time for Mother April to sit and rest awhile,
She’s busy every hour, but still has time to smile
A smile which warms seed babies and makes them feel so good
They spring from bed to grow up just like plant children should!
Then dressing up her children she hums a happy tune
And leads them through the garden to sisters May and June.
I don’t know which is happiest––the flowers, birds or I––
When April does her laundry and hangs it out to dry!

What great personification.

More about all things April

by Pat Laster

Are you still exulting in the exuberance of Easter? If that feeling was not caused by the extra-ordinary pomp of a worship service, perhaps it came later over a family gathering—like ours—or an afternoon with friends. Hallelujah! Christ is risen!
As I promised last week, I discovered from my uncle John Pelton that the plant with the maroon capsule buds and the trumpet-shaped blooms is Cross-Vine. He only had a small picture on my cell phone to go by, but he gave me three possibilities: cross vine, trumpet creeper and trumpet honeysuckle. Pictures on the Internet proved that my first-time-to-bloom vine is a Cross Vine.
Last week’s anagram for April is Pilar, a main character in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
One morning this week, I watched out the south window as a male robin commandeered the freshly-filled birdbath. He stood his ground, er rim. A female cardinal flew up faced him off by staying on the other side. Soon, a brown thrasher joined the two. As if waiting for the robin to leave, the thrasher swooped down and ate from the grass. When it flew back to the rim, the cardinal left and so did the thrasher. Meanwhile and afterwards, the robin availed himself of a good bath. In the background, an adult squirrel nosed around in the grass for who-knows-what?
The narcissus are blooming. Since they are later than the daffodils, tulips and jonquils, I always wonder if they are even going to bloom. Just when I decide they are too crowded, up pops the first white blossom and then another. Soon, there are enough of the heavily-scented, long-stemmed whites to snap off, take inside and slide down into a water-filled, lead-crystal vase. Along with Easter lilies and hyacinths, these flowers can be enjoyed by sight and smells.
A couple of tiger swallowtail butterflies have appeared this week, stopping at the azaleas and the dianthus.
April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month. It is also National Soy Foods Month. According to Rosemary Boggs, ADG, three companies that make soy products are Soyjoy, Morningstar Farms and WestSoy.
April is also the peak of tornado season that runs from March to June. (ADG wire)
The April poem for this week (in celebration of National Poetry Month) was written by Langston Hughes, who can also be heard reading it on the Internet. I found it in a severely-yellowed, Scholastic paperback book --bought for thirty-five cents by my first-grade-teacher (now deceased) mother, Anna Pearl Couch-- the Arrow Book of Poetry – poems selected by Ann McGovern and published in 1965.

“April Rain Song"

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night

And I love the rain. – Langston Hughes.

So do I.
written 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press

Gifts for the senses and the mind

by Pat Laster

Not 24 hours after I’d zipped off last week’s post, I discovered—on the path to the mail/paper box—what I’d missed seeing this winter: both blue and white Johnny-Jump-Ups, or bluets (whitets?). Also, the last-year’s Wave petunia that never froze showed two orange-y blossoms.
Returning with the papers, I looked around and noticed something white and low to the ground at the lower edge of the yard near the fence that houses the new neighbor’s two Dobermans. It was early morning. Perhaps they were still abed.
I walked through the dew and dry leaves to the spot. A dozen jonquils bloomed from bulbs that somehow had landed there. I plucked the flowers, every one. The fragrance was so strong, so wonderful that I walked toward the house with my nose buried in their perfume. I literally ran into a sprig of redbud blooming on a fractured and hanging limb. Nothing to do but stop and twist it off. And then another. Into a water-filled Fostoria vase they all went. Now, when I sit at the dining table to read or eat, they assail my senses of sight and smell, and I sigh. Contented, thankful.
As if that weren’t blessing enough, Monday morning, out to mail bills and retrieve the morning paper, I glanced to my left: the purple irises were in bud!
When it quit raining, I planted a flat of pink thrift along the border of the old driveway in openings of long-in-place concrete blocks.

Five Lady CAWs (Central Arkansas Writers)––as one has taken to calling us––meet monthly, each an hour away from a centrally-located county where none of us lives—in their library. The riders arrive sometimes bleary-eyed from the early-Saturday trip, but the drivers are alert--stoked on coffee—at the 9:00 opening hour.
Last Saturday, the parking lot was full for some reason. Entering the place, we discovered why: a book sale was in progress. We dodged our ways through the avid customers, who in this town with three college/universities, seemed eager, like diggers who go to Murfreesboro hoping to find diamonds, to , well, find diamonds in books. We had to wait until after our meeting to peruse the many titles.

Four of us are writing novels and the other has her first book at the printers. A stringent critique session—kind but stringent—ensued, where we aired our opinions about words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs that we considered emotionless, puzzling, or unnecessary.
After two hours of tedious but meticulous work, it was time for lunch. On our way out, we stopped by the book sale. One needed some beach reading for an upcoming trip to St. Thomas, New Orleans and Navarre. Two others of us, who claimed to be merely looking, went up and down the rows–– just in case we saw something we had seen reviewed or had read about and didn’t own.
I looked for authors and found a new Gina Wilkin’s title. Gina, a Jacksonville writer, has relatives in my community, and I have four other titles of hers. It somehow glued itself to my hand. Other authors I picked up were O. Henry, D. H. Lawrence, Hermann Hesse, Walker Percy and C. S. Forester. Two others I chose by the titles: Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up by Eleanor Porter.

Why don't I find a reading space where I can place the vase of flowers close by and open one of the diamonds I bought?

c 2012 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press
Check out my first novel, A Journey of Choice, available at major booksellers or by emailing me at plpalaster21@gmail.com. I will snail mail a copy if you wish. Hardback=$25 + $2 postage; Softback=$15+#2 postage.