The year's at the spring

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hillside's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in His heaven -

All's right with the world!

     ~Robert Browning

 

It has been a while since I posted, and I have missed it dearly.  We have been busy with yard sales and baby preparations and reclaiming our house after the remodel.  We have also been busy in our yard and garden.  Time certainly flies when one has one thousand things to do!

 

This year, instead of planting herbs and vegetables in a separate space, I have mixed them in among my flowers.  They are alongside the house in the flowerbeds and in the large ornamental spaces in front of the house.  That area receives the best sunlight, and all other places have failed to produce...so I decided to give this a try. Of course, I only grow peppers and tomatoes, along with the basic herbs: onion chives, basil, oregano, fern leaf dill, sage, rosemary, thyme, and parsley.  I am seeing this more and more in landscapes.  I would love to hear from others who mix their herbs and veggies in with their ornamental flowers.  We are thoroughly enjoying the warmer weather and our time out of doors.  Soon, the weather will turn so hot that we will avoid the midday in the garden, so we are enjoying it now while we may.  We currently have irises blooming, as well as our beautiful clematis vines...so full of blooms that you couldn't count them all!  One of the prettiest irises I have this year is a gorgeous peach color.  We are anxiously awaiting our new blooms courtesy of the landscaping project we completed back in the fall:  cone flowers, dianthus, black-eyed susans, and more showy blooms.

 

 

April is a promise that May is bound to keep. ~Hal Borland

Happy gardening and flowering!

Conquering the Stuff

I hate that I have not had the opportunity to post for a week or so, but it has been for a very good reason. With the remodel finished on our master closet and art studio, we have been putting our house back together! This has meant a lot of deep cleaning and sorting and laundering and organizing. We had a great weekend and felt that we were making some progress until we opened the door to our guest bedroom and realized that we had another room full of MORE stuff. Neither of us has any idea how we accumulated so much stuff or how we had it ALL stored in our house. Looking at it now, that does not seem logically possible!

We are giving ourselves two more weekends to conquer "the stuff." What we have not found permanent homes for by then is going in the yard sale or to Good Will. We can DO this. We CAN do this. We can do THIS!

Wish us luck! ;-)

Meeting the Easter Bunny

On Easter morn at early dawn

before the cocks were crowing

I met a bob-tail bunnykin

and asked where he was going.

"'Tis in the house and out the house

a-tipsy, tipsy-toeing,

Tis round the house

and 'bout the house a-lightly I am going."

"But what is that of every hue

you carry in your basket?"

"Tis eggs of gold and eggs of blue;

I wonder why you ask it.

"Tis chocolate eggs and bonbon eggs

and eggs of red and gray,

for every child in every house

on bonny Easter day.

He perked his ears

and winked his eye and twitched his little nose;

He shook his tail -- what tail he had --

and stood up on his toes.

I must be gone before the sun;

the east is growing gray;

Tis almost time for bells to chime."

--So he hippety-hopped away.

Meeting the Easter Bunny

by Rowena Bennett

Nothing but blue skies...

Blue skies

Smiling at me

Nothing but blue skies

Do I see

Bluebirds

Singing a song

Nothing but bluebirds

All day long

Have a blue sky, daffodil kind of day!

All of a sudden...

Open the windows and open the door

And let the fresh breezes blow in, blow in.

Jack Frost has gone to his home in the north

And all of a sudden it's Spring!

~Author Unknown~

Antique Card Catalog

For as long as I can remember, I have had a love affair with books. Not just books, but libraries filled with books. As a child, I enjoyed going to our small town's library and getting lost in the stacks of books, reading the back covers, having a difficult time deciding which I would check out because I wanted to check out all of them. In elementary school, our class would go to the library one day a week. I would check out the maximum books allowed and carry them home with me. My favorites I checked out over and over again. Many years later, the woman who had been my elementary school librarian decided that Harold and the Purple Crayon should be retired. Since she remembered that this was one that I checked out over and over again, she signed the inside of the well worn cover and brought it to me. Of course, I was thrilled. Now that little tattered book is among my collection of first editions and author-signed books, as it is as important to me as any of those...perhaps even more.

Another thing I loved about libraries was the old card catalogs. I loved reading them! So, imagine my delight when poking through an old junk store, I spied in the back corner under piles of "stuff" a dusty antique card catalog that called out to me louder than if it could speak. I got so excited over this scratched old cabinet with it's twelve drawers that I could barely ask the price of the old man who ran the store. Fifty dollars. He actually said fifty dollars. I couldn't believe it. Of course I yelled, "Sold." and went up to immediately pay him, and I couldn't get it loaded in my car fast enough. It barely fit across the back seat, but it did...as if it was meant to be. When I got home and asked my husband to help me unload the car of a true treasure, he looked at me as if I had lost my mind when he saw it. "Where in the world are you going to put it," I remember him asking. "I don't know, but I have to find a place!"

The photo above is not my cabinet, although this one has twelve drawers. Mine is two drawers high and six drawers wide! I love it!

I believe I know the perfect place. In my new studio. It will look wonderful in there and serve as a great cabinet to hold paint brushes, tubes of paint, pencils, etc. I cannot wait to take the orange oil to it and see how that old wood shines. I bet the patina is amazing. For now, it sits among the other furniture all piled in our guest bedroom awaiting the finish of the remodel. I can't even get in there to take a photo of it right now, but soon....

This will be a project that will touch my heart and lift my soul. I can't wait to see it in its new home.

First Signs of Spring

The first signs of spring always bring a smile to my face. After a long winter's sleep, it is always so promising to see those first signs of life - the crocus and the daffodils beginning their journey toward the sun, rising up through the soil to greet the warmer weather and the new spring light.

I love taking drives in the country during the early spring and seeing the newly born calves beginning to walk under the close supervision of their mothers. With an early spring chill still in the air, I love to take my camera to the edge of the fields, stand by the fence posts and watch the activities of these youngsters as they become more self assured and frolic in the warming of the season.

I can say goodbye to the winter with little remorse as the new season offers so many delights of colors and scents and sounds. As I draw up the blinds that have for the last few months helped to keep the artificial warmth inside my home, I welcome the sun through the window panes and feel a sense of renewal as it dances around the rooms.

It is time to begin again.

Sorrow

The Childless Mother's Lullaby

By Ella Rhoads Higginson, 1925

Oh, many's the time in the evening

When the light has fled o'er the sea,

That I dream alone in the gloaming

Of the joys that are not for me;

And oft in my sorrowful bosom

Swells up the mother-love flame,

And I clasp with my arms that are trembling

My child that never came....

The hours swim on the midnight

The moon looks over the hill,

And the u-lu-lu of the night owl

Sinks mournfully and shrill;

The solitude aches with rapture,

And my heart with the mother-love flame

As I sing alone in the gloaming

To the child that never came.

From A Book of Lullabies (Elva S. Smith ed., 1925)

Today I am sinking into the depths of sorrow...I feel it happening, as if a giant wave is enveloping me; it has been another difficult day.

Hopelessness.

Once again, it all feels so hopeless. We have explored adoption, surrogacy, donor egg programs, foster care, and still we do not have a child. I called Department of Children Services earlier. The lady on the telephone was cold and harsh. "If you are looking to adopt a baby, this is not for you." She said, matter-of-fact. "People just don't hand over their babies to DCS, and when they do under the age of 18 months, they usually end up being placed back in the home." She also said that we would have to foster a child for a period of six months or more before we could be considered as potential adoptive parents. It doesn't matter that we have gone through home studies and background checks before with agencies and attorneys. I also found out today that surrogacy is not an option for me... because my ovarian reserve is low and I am over 42. The nurse said, it is "unlikely." "The doctor won't even consider harvesting eggs from a woman your age," I was told by the nurse. "The odds are against it," she said. She added that she was not trying to be mean...that she was just explaining the facts to me. It seems that every path we look down, there is someone slamming doors in our faces.

Sorrow. Today it is all that I know.

Painting: Joy & Sorrow

by Zhong-Yang Huang

Anger, "Justified?"

Here we go again. As a native of Harlan, Kentucky, I am used to stereotypes. I run up against them all the time. As soon as someone knows where I was born and raised, they feel compelled to make remarks like: (looking down at my feet) "Well...you're wearing shoes!" Or...(squinting as they pretend to take a closer look at my mouth) "You have all your teeth!" Or they ask me if I grew up with indoor plumbing. If my family tree actually forks. Do we have electricity? Phone service? Are my daddy and grandaddy and brother coalminers? I have even been asked if we have television in Harlan. Usually, I would make smart comments like, "Well, we only have ONE television in town....it's down at the courthouse, and all of us go down there on Saturday nights to watch 'HeeHaw'." You would be surprised at how many people believed me.

If you have followed this blog for long, you will remember my anger over the Diane Sawyer piece, "Hidden America: Children of the Mountains." Oh, I was upset...and justifiably so! But now I have a new one to focus on...the latest in the long list of (inaccurate?) portrayals of my hometown.

FX will present a new series, Justified, beginning March 16th. My husband keeps saying, "Paula, watch the first episode before you get so upset." I do not need to watch the first episode to tell you how it is going to represent us. It has been done before. We know. It will make us all look like gun toting, barefoot (or boot wearing), uneducated, unethical, primitive-living, moonshine making hillbillies. I will be shocked if it is anything BUT that.

I did managed to calm down enough to watch the trailer and their video on the History of Harlan. What did I see within the first couple of seconds? A flannel-wearing man carrying a shotgun, running through the woods, looking behind him like he was running from someone. The only thing missing was his hound dog. Oh wait...they had that, too.

I AM FURIOUS!

I was born in Harlan County to a middle class family. My father worked for the state, my mother owned her own business. My grandfather was president of a local wholesale company. My grandmother was a kindergarten teacher. All of us wore shoes. I was not allowed to use the word "ain't." If I spoke with a double negative in my sentences, I was corrected. I was educated. I grew up with a telephone AND a television in my house. I did not know any moonshiners.....well...that I knew of. My mother's father and grandfather were coal miners. Nothing to be ashamed of there! They were honest men who earned an honest living. That I know of, neither of them carried shotguns with them on a regular basis. Please.

I hope that this newest series set in Harlan does not portray the entire population with the same mentality that we are used to seeing when it comes to the media. I hope that someone did their homework and has enough intelligence to look at the place as a whole and tell your made up stories that do not portray the area as a wasteland when it comes to IQ's and morals. I am skeptical...again.

I believe the media thinks that telling the positive aspects of Harlan County won't bring them ratings. Perhaps the world would discover that our problems in Harlan are not very different from those in any other place in America. The myth would be exposed, and then who would the media have to exploit?! We cannot fight stereotypes in Eastern Kentucky with this kind of thing out there! This series is just one more nail in the coffin of my hometown...and one more slap in the face of the place and the people I love.

Come on, FX and Mr. Leonard....prove me wrong. I dare you.

Seething,

God's Language

"Silence is the first language of God; all else is a poor translation." Thomas Merton

In this world full of noise and chaos, are you taking the time to listen to that sweet, small, subtle voice of God?

Photograph by Christopher Talbot Frank

Blessings,

In Praise of Winter Trees*

A closed heart can't greet

a winter sky. Even a rain puddle

is filled by it, and a horse trough,

and the slow current of creeks.

Winter trees, sycamore and oak,

reach for the sky to offer praise –

stark, hard praise, born from all

those rooted years of bearing

the sky's weight. Some nights

an open heart is filled with vast

spaces between stars the mind

can't grasp. The thought of heaven

is not so much mammothed by

the sky's grandeur, but mystified

beyond our silly notions. Winter

trees aren't arrogant; they praise

no flags, no denominations,

they owe allegiance to the soil.

My sister, when she was younger,

awoke in winter to hold her arms

up to the sky, shiver in the wholeness

of it, let shadows of winter trees

dance sunlight across her face.

Oak, beech, sycamore, maple, and gum,

reenact creation, drop their seeds

from the sky, make their homes

in star dust, and reach back

toward heaven. Trees suffer

drought and freezing rain, accept

the annual tilt toward shorter days.

Some ancient hope, like winter light,

is allied with the gravity of stars.

*Excerpted from Late Winter by Bill Brown, published by Iris Press. Bill Brown is a part-time lecturer at Vanderbilt University. He has written four poetry collections, three chapbooks and a textbook. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, Brown lives in Robertson County, Tennessee.

I have always found beauty in the starkness of winter. Something about the winter light and proud trees with their entangled branches against a gray winter sky speaks to my heart. The pure white of a fallen snow with its shadows of violet and muted silver, flashes of diamonds in the rays of a winter sun. Asleep. At rest. Peaceful and waiting.

Hoping you're enjoying the beauty of Winter, wherever you may be...

Happy Birthday, Mom

As a child, I used to love to pick flowers for my mom. I thought she was beautiful and smart and funny. I liked to make her smile. I liked when she talked to me and made me feel that what I said was important.

It was not until years later that I found out she was highly allergic to those little raggedy flowers that I thought were so beautiful. Even though I brought her weeds, she always smiled as if I had brought her roses.

My mother is still beautiful and funny....and smarter than I ever imagined. And I still like to make her smile, because she has always made me feel that what I had to say and what I thought mattered.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.