in dramatically exciting news, this has been the week of tabouli. with heat indexes off the charts, it’s a refreshing change of pace.
it’s only mid-july and already our little potting stand garden is rocking. we have sooo much mint, a wild burst of chives and some curly parsley (our flat parsley has been the incredible-shrinking parsley – which must be because it’s on the preferred diet choices of our local squirrels.) the first batch of jalapeños are ready to harvest, many of the cherry tomatoes are orange-ing up, the basil is happily basil-ing along.
in an effort to use the herbs of which we have plenty, it brought to mind our quinoa tabouli – which uses the harvest we already have at our fingertips.
in these days of sickly sticky parasites invading the fruits and vegetables of these united states it feels extra good to have just gone a few steps outside to clip off what i needed for this fresh salad. it is a weird world with way too many things to worry about.
pasta with basil, homemade pizza margherita, jalapeño poppers, pesto, mint and lemon suntea that basked on the deck…and soon…more of our own cherry tomatoes for everything under the sun…the recipes line up in wait.
our adirondack chairs adjacent to our little burgeoning herbandveggie garden, we sat outside – after dinner – after sunset – while the fireflies danced through the backyard – and talked. our tiki-type torches lit, dogga conked out on the deck, we reviewed yet another strange set of days – strange in an insane number of ways. we wondered – yet again – what we can do.
we are beyond saddened by the schisms that deepen with every single corrupt thing that is reported (leaving us to truly ponder what is too opaque – too silenced – too hidden – to be reported, even by hardworking alternative media sources.)
and yet we know – even with our intense sadness – that there is no going back. anyone who thinks that all this is acceptable in any way – including what seems too easy to avoid – the new veggiefruit parasites running rampant because of this administration’s gluttonous greed and incompetence – is lost to us. that loss is mindboggling. it is heartwrenching.
and so, i guess we’ll just party on with our tabouli.
*****
WEEPING MAN mixed media 48″ x 36″ (available for purchase)
in 1992 david sold a painting to a man he has not spoken to since. a couple days ago he received a message on his website from this person – reaching out to tell him how much he has enjoyed this painting for the last almost-35 years. they mutually agreed that the reaching-out-reaching-back was like a homecoming.
this is why painters paint, why recording artists record, why writers write.
because sometime – in the vast sometime that is time – and somewhere – in the vast somewhere that is out there – someone is touched by a work and actually reaches out to let you know.
from conception to completed work – is anything really complete without an audience? – we work to bring to life an idea, a question, a texture, a gesture, an emotion.
just like these cherry tomatoes we pay attention…check on the necessities – like sun, water and sources of inspiration, muslin-tie up the branches that grow long and lanky, heavy with early buds and new fruit – protecting the muse, watch for pests – like aphids or a lack of confidence, hope for the best – tomatoes in the end or something worthy to release into the world. and then we set it free – this piece of us – so that we can start what’s next.
i learned early in the studio that to hold on too tightly to a track of music is to never be able to move on, to never grow, to never period the sentence. despite any lack of total perfection – for is anything ever really, truly perfect? – i learned that good is – actually -good and, by accepting that, i could produce a finished product.
the recording label our son owns posted a meme one day which read, “just make it EXIST first. you can make it good later.”
I laughed reading this. it goes hand and hand with the john cage quote i have in my studio: “begin anywhere“.
it is both in the trepidation of the beginning – and the anxiety of the finishing – where artists can get lost. it takes practice – and courage – to start. it takes practice – and courage – to finish.
it never hurts to hear from someone that a work has made their world a little bit better, even that a work has accompanied them – for years and years – on their walk in the world.
the cherry tomato ripens. if all the conditions are right, it’s inevitable. and, in the way of indeterminate tomato plants – which “continue to grow and blossom and produce fruit throughout the entire season” – more tomatoes will ripen – even if you pick some and consume them, even if some fall off the vining branch. the plant keeps on, regardless. “there are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” (janet kilburn phillips)
so, too, it is with artistry. we are indeterminate – it is the imperative – we will continue to grow and blossom and experiment and produce more fruit our entire seasons – especially if all the conditions are right, especially when we know the fruit resonated with someone in vast sometime-somewhere.
no matter, though. the tomato plants keep growing wildly in these weirdly wisconsin sub-tropical summer days. despite it all.
and the artists do as well.
“…stick with it no matter what. tell your story.” (barkersounds)
cosmos. this incredible flower is a cosmos. it is flawlessly beautiful.
each time we have passed these in the ‘hood i have stopped and just stared – their whimsical look is enchanting. i have said – more than once – that we should consider potting this and enjoying it ourselves. i’ve been thinking maybe one of these hot days we will go to the garden center and see about it.
and then i read that cosmos flowers “symbolize order, harmony, balance, peace and tranquility” which moved the needle from ‘maybe’ to ‘definitely’ because we sure could use some order, harmony, balance, peace and tranquility.
matter of fact, it wouldn’t hurt to have the cosmos as the new national flower (now that the rose garden – and its roses – are destroyed in vulgar favor of cement and patio umbrellas).
gifting cosmos to others – is, apparently, a gesture of deep appreciation, conveying the message, “your presence brings peace to my life“. i can’t imagine how much it might mean to our allies around the world if we gave them all cosmos and stood behind that message.
clearly an idealist.
marc-in-high-school used to accuse me of being the rainbows/bubbles/sunrise girl and i suppose he was – is? – right.
but what if?
what if order and harmony and balance and peace and tranquility were valued more than money? more than power? more than control? more than carrying an elite attitude of ethnocentrism? of supremacy? of nationalism? of xenophobia? of privilege?
what if we could all live under this great big sun, this great big universe, with love for one another in our hearts, with care and concern and compassion and an unwillingness to caste – or cast away, for that matter – anyone?
what if?
reading further i see that cosmos are also widely seen as symbols of resilience and healing.
wow. damned if i can think of a better flower for right now.
a full box of crayolas at my side, i, too, in my itty-bitty chair at the itty-bitty table, would outline the image on the coloring book pageand then color it all in. like there was some artistic reason for outlining – making a definitive and clear break between the image and the background. for a non-artistic-in-the-sense-of-drawing type, it seemed to make my coloring page look better, cleaner, more striking. i’m not really sure. but it was a popular thing to do – this outlining thing – and, though i don’t know who initially suggested it, nearly everyone colored their pages that way. you could see it on the ever-important bulletin board wall.
if i were to pick up a coloring book and crayons now i might even just fall back into old patterns, grasping the crayola stub in my hand tightly, pursing my lips and concentrating on not drawing off the line. then i would color it all in – in the lines – and my page would be neat and tidy and whatever other adjective might apply, synonymous with success.
when i color in “adult-colored-pencil-coloring-books” i have found that i don’t do this – i just color with my pointy pencils – no outlines, no outlining. is it the difference between the paraffin wax/powdered color pigmentcombo of crayons and the pigments/binding agents/fillers/casing used in pencils? is it some leftover art lesson from elementary school – where the emphasis was on some sort of impossible sought-after perfection for our coloring sheets? and why – knowing me – did i not color out of the lines? well, i can answer that one. back then i was an in-the-lines colorer, going with the crowd, hoping to get my picture on the bulletin board wall.
i move up close to the peonies in our garden out back. they stand their ground as i move around, right in their little peony faces, alternately snapping photos and taking big whiffs of their intoxicating scent.
there are no outlines here. everything up this close blurs as my depth of field changes, my point of focus changes, my intent changes.
were i to make this photograph a coloring sheet – an accurate coloring sheet – it would require fuzzy lines – no clear outline – instead, a fade of one color into the next, maybe difficult to capture with a stub of crayon looking to make something definitive.
but life is more like that. less definitive, more fuzzy. it is less distinct and more out-of-focus. it is less green and white, and more grey. there are no outlines and, if you really get it, there’s no ever-important bulletin-board-wall upon which to hang up your life.
it just is.
and the moments we get to sniff peonies or color out of the lines, to allow the unfocused to swirl around us, to not get all caught up in the bulletin-board-wall – those are the moments to grasp, to hold onto, to store away as balm for those other moments – the ones that test us, that hand us crayons with impossible confidence-taxing expectations, that, somehow, in all the chaos, make us forget that peonies exist. craziness.
and so, no outlines. just color.
“…you write about my flower as if i think and see what YOU think and see of the flower – and i don’t.” (georgia o’keeffe)
less than a week. the peony shared its dance with the world for less than a week. but oh, what a week it was.
i don’t imagine that it wondered – ahead of time – how long would be its time in the sun. i don’t imagine that it pondered the kind of notoriety it would have. i don’t imagine it was fretting, “bloom/don’t bloom/bloom/don’t bloom“. i don’t imagine it planned its choreography – the minuet or ballet, the jazz steps or interpretive improv – based on what it understood its stage and its time under the fresnel of light.
from a tight bud to wrinkly vestiges of peony petals, it danced for the sun, shied from the moon. it held on during the winds and collected bits of rain, courageously standing under the pressure to bow its fragile stem, its velvet-soft blossom.
the peony didn’t measure its relevance by its time here. it didn’t concern itself with striving or success, abundance of blooms or lushness of plant. it just bloomed as it bloomed.
and in the giving-over of trying to control any thing else, in the giving-over to follow its natural path, in the embrace of its exclaiming-life dance, it exploded in beauty.
i could get lost in just gazing at this spot where greens converge. i find myself breathing deeply, taking it in, appreciating how utterly extraordinary the nuance, how textural, how life-affirming.
it has been a week. with multi-layered challenges, personal and nationwide.
in the middle of the week, neck spasms – which i had in february for the first time in my life – and which sent me to the emergency room – returned with a vengeance. to say that i was laying awake all night, fearful of the way these manifested in my shoulders, my jaw, my chest, my neck, would be an understatement. it was downright scary. and so painful – even for someone with a relatively high pain threshold.
when it finally slightly eased up for a bit in the morning – after a long, sleepless night – i was exhausted and overcome with how it must be for people who are in chronic pain. the chronic pain of disease, of life-altering treatment plans, of hunger and thirst and of not-enough, of homelessness, of psychological and emotional scars, of addiction, of deep, all-consuming worry. thinking of others always puts one’s own pain in perspective.
for a bit of time – the bit when the spasms did not refer to all these other parts of my upper body – i could breathe more deeply. and so i went outside to our deck and little potting stand – to look at new growth, to soak in the colors green.
in wednesday’s news there was much headlining about a quiet interview that the speaker of the house had on a tiny radio station in his home state. and, in that interview, he revealed the intention of this administration – to fix (read: gut) medicaid, medicare and social security in an effort to free up money so that this government might be able to make a dent in the country’s trillions of dollars of debt which is – clearly – attributed to mountains of tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.
so. their goal? take away from the most vulnerable and the eldest in order to further bankroll the gluttony.
it is hard to wrap your head around this kind of whoring of humanity. the word “disgusted” barely touches it.
again, i say, there is no reverence. they have reverence for nothing.
i wonder what our communities, our states, our nation, our world will look like once they have eliminated all that is good, all that is natural, all that is lawful, all that is compassionate, all that is life-giving or life-affirming. what will be left after the land and the natural resources and the regular folk and the goodness are decimated?
as i stood and looked at our tiny vegetable and herb garden, i was filled by the beauty, wrapped in the essence of green, and a sense of balance was restored in me.
though the spasms started up again, this is not about my neck spasms. when they re-started, i felt slightly more equipped to deal with them, carrying into the pain the knowledge that they would – in time – ease up.
but for some, there is no easing up. there is only long-term pain, without ceasing.
there are people intentionally hunted down for their ethnicity, people intentionally taken off rolls for food assistance, medical assistance, housing assistance. people removed from jobs of science and education and journalism so that the country ceases progressive forward-movement and so that the only narrative going forth is vile, self-serving propaganda. there are people targeted by the brandishing of bigotry. there are people whose chronic pain – no matter what it is – no matter the umbrella under which it falls – seem a nuisance to this administration, an administration without a heart or a conscience or any sense of reverence for anything other than self and money and retribution.
were i to be given a choice – live acknowledging simplicities – like the nuance of green OR live inside the insanity of always-wanting-needing-hoarding of moremoremore – i would go with cherishing the tomato plants and herbs and lavender and licorice plant every time.
i would go with the convergence of green, the convergence of goodness, the convergence of growth, the nuance of breath, the affirmation of life, living and reverence for it all.
we took off our sunhats. it was a hot day and we had been gardening for hours. the purchased plants had been potted, all the transplanting in the yard was done. it was that golden hour after all the work and before making dinner. we poured a bit of cool pinot grigio, took a tour around the yard and then settled into our adirondack chairs in the shady corner of our deck to gaze out at the yard – one of our favorite pastimes now.
the daisy path – as d has aptly named it – is slower. it doesn’t require the striding or racing around of earlier years. it is a – rather, The – sweet phase and we are trying our best to hone it. we never expect to perfect it, so we are doing everything we can to appreciate it, be grateful for it, honor it.
every night last week we sat on our patio or on our deck, just sitting. at the end of the day – after having dinner al fresco – we – truly – just sat.
and we talked. about anything, everything, nothing.
earlier in the day – on one of the days – i got ready to plant one last sweet potato vine. d had spray-painted a plastic pot and it was ready for the transplant and to be hung on the old ladder in the corner of the deck.
d asked me if he could get me a chair – as i have found that placing a chair on the patio next to the raised deck makes planting easier on my back. i thanked him and said that i was only planting this one pot.
but then i was struck by how generous this offer was. for in the middle of everything he was doing, he was concerned that it might be easier for me if i had a chair – as i had used while potting other days – and he was going to drop everything to go get me one if i wanted or needed it.
and so, it was then – one of those rare moments you remember – not because you don’t appreciate each other all the time, but because sometimes a very intentional wave of gratitude is easy for your brain to snapshot into your memory.
i walked over to where he was weeding the cracks in the patio and bent down. wrapping my arms around him, i told him how much his kindness meant to me. it wasn’t even a few seconds and dogga was there, right in the middle of our embrace, pushing his head up into the armwrap hug, his face even with ours, in the middle of so much love.
i whispered to d, “memorize it.”
of course.
we three stayed that way for at least a full minute, which is a long time for a busy aussie. it was a magical minute. definitely daisy-path stuff.
our old dogga stuck close for a bit more, to get kisses and pets and butt-butts. he didn’t see the tears welling up in our eyes as we committed it all to visual and visceral memory.
d went back to weeding and i potted the sweet potato vine and hung it on the ladder.
it seemed right that this sweet potato would keep vigil over our little corner on our deck. my sweet momma’s words, “live life, my sweet potato,” ring in my ears.
sweet potatoes and the daisy path. sunhats and glasses of wine, a checkered tablecloth and adirondack chairs. our dogga and a sanctuary of peace. love and gratitude.
we’ve gotten a few plants now. a couple sweet potato vines, a couple licorice plants. we also have our basil, chives, parsley, cilantro, jalapeños, cherry tomatoes and lavender. in the last few days we transplanted them into clay pots for our potting stand or their new home on our deck or patio.
our first day at the nursery was completely about reconnaissance. the second – at a different nursery – was to be wowed and make a few purchases…four to be exact. we were directly behind someone who had ridiculously-loaded carts of plants and flowers, along with a ridiculously-loaded price tag. we were just as excited as she was, only our joy was about our four plants, not a multitude. there is a reality to budgeting and we try to plan our purchases wisely, particularly in these times.
our third day out was crowded with people, the nursery was messy and the plants were picked over, but we still managed to find some herbs and tomatoes, lavender, salvia and sweet purple flowers whose name escapes me. our fourth day we filled in the gaps. the nursery had resupplied and we picked up the mint, jalapeños, and little white with purple flowers to contrast with the purples we had already gotten.
d lined up all the pots and planters on the patio and i took out my gloves from the old cabinet we had placed on the deck. and then it started.
from individual elements – these small (though not inexpensive) plastic pots of baby plants – turning into our own backyard sanctuary, filled with potential of beautiful flowers and edible produce. exquisite. each morning we look out the window – in the earliest morning light – to see these new residents of our home. each morning they are enchanting.
one day – over a century ago – all the pieces of barney were put together into an upright piano. where he went from there is unknown, but we found him in the church’s basement boiler room, not exactly a prime location for this musicmaking instrument.
after we managed to have him delivered to our backyard instead of to the junkman, we were thrilled with his presence. his aging might have been preserved by some marine wax, but we chose to go organic with barney. he’s way more of a granola piano than a botox piano.
through the years we have now had him, he has become more and more gorgeous, more and more a part of our backyard, offering shelter to the wee critters, a landing pad for those who fly or scamper. barney’s higher-purpose presence is grounding and part of the peace we feel when we step out our back door.
it’s hard to believe that it is almost june again. already. summer is at the edges.
the last two nights we have had dinner outside on the deck. as the sun just begins to slightly wane – to fall off into acute angles with the horizon – we sit and chat while the garden lights reflect in the pond. we wait for hummingbirds to zoom to our feeder. we watch breck quake in the breeze, marvel at the play of birds and squirrels, adore our dogga laying on the deck in the shade. it is all enchanting.
as the dark begins to settle into the alcoves of our yard – the ferns breathe deeply, the peonies stretch – we yawn and make our way inside. as we settle in under our quilt we talk about our day. we talk about the delights of new plants, marvel at the perennials we are astounded to see again. we are grateful for plastic adirondack chairs, a tiny bistro set, two old gravity chairs and a couple round rugs – the trappings of our deck – a place we truly find enchanting.
as it turns out, we don’t require much to be enchanted.
“we might think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it’s our garden that is really nurturing us.” (jenny uglow)
we have had a journey with breck. as a baby aspen, we brought it home in 2017 – a tiny sapling in a black plastic pot, bouncing along with us across the country in littlebabyscion.
there were more than a few times – in the first years – we thought we would lose breck – to the weather, the conditions, the displacement. we wrapped breck’s roots in its then-clay pot in blankets and black plastic. we planted breck and discovered it was the wrong place. we transplanted breck. and we always talked to breck, affirming its importance to us, its place in our lives, the meaning it had for us, cheering it on.
and now – breck is as tall as the garage roof and full of gorgeous quaking leaves. sparrows and cardinals regularly land on its branches and we can see it smile and sigh from our place on the deck, watching like proud parents, quietly grateful for its happiness – just like with our grown children.
to have breck in our backyard is to have a little piece of breckenridge in our backyard – a little piece of the high rocky mountainsfrom where it came. it feeds us to look out back and see our aspen, standing taller and taller. it makes us dream and ponder, reminisce and just gaze at it in wonder – that what was a tiny aspen in a plastic pot has turned into a real tree.
it is not unlike artistry and artists – also real trees in a real world. even during the periods of fallow, when creativity is merely a pilot light, there is what comes next. there is the tiny spark that makes ideas come alive – the first stitch on a new quilt, the first note in a melodic gesture, the first paint in the underpainting, triggers of nurture.
and the ideas begin to quake – with or without wind – as they take hold of us.
“to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” (audrey hepburn)
time goes on. and on.
and breck grows taller and fuller.
it is a constant source of both contentment and awe to watch.
soon now, we will plant our basil, parsley, mint, chives, jalapeños, tomatoes.
in what feels like a moment of gardener glory, i suddenly noticed that the peonies are rising. because they are sooo utterly gorgeous, it always feels like great success when they return, when nothing i have done or not done has dissuaded them from coming back. these reddish-maroonish sprouts – full of promise – are growing and, one day down the road, on a warm late spring or early summer day full of sunshine, we will have stunning peonies again. beauty is on its way.
i stumbled onto a social media post with photographs of a variety of women who are now part of the current administration or somehow peripheral to it in a meaningful way. there were before and after pictures. photo shoots of women who had looked, well, like normal women living life, with faces that had faced whatever challenges or successes had come their way to date.
you know, like ours….faces that have grown up with macaroni and cheese, with petticoat junction and gilligan, with phones connected to the wall, with studying into the wee hours of the night and term papers on typewriters, with apartments or houses to decorate and upkeep, with childbirth or the hurdles of adoption, with middle of the night feedings and fevers and teenagers breaking curfews, with illness and recuperation, with job discrimination and grievances, with the loss of our parent or parents, with our bodies ever-changing. faces that have reflected back the tens of thousands of suns we have seen, the tens of thousands of moons we have stared at – wide-awake, the hundreds of thousands of stars we have wished on. faces that have aged through time, every laugh line, every wrinkle, every worry line earned.
the photo essay i saw depicted women who then changed their faces. they erased the laugh lines, the wrinkles, the worry lines, the jowls. they puffed up and exaggerated some version of youth that, in the end, escapes them. they no longer look real. they look plastic, even like the scary dolls you see in antique shoppes. and maybe that’s their point. that feels sad, but seems accurately reflective of the ideology they are choosing to embrace. which makes it even more sad.
because every day we live – we women AND we men – we are gardener glory of the universe. every day we live – we women AND we men – are great successes of endurance, of keeping on, of facing what comes.
and because every day we live – we women AND we men – are beauty on its way.
reverse threading 