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“The eyes of spring, so azure, Are peeping from the ground; They are the darling violets, That I in nosegays bound.”

May 18, 2017

My wish came true. Yesterday was sunny and hot, 75˚ hot. I’d complain, but Boston hit 90˚ so I’m content at 75˚. It will be the same today.

The morning has a languid feel to it. I do hear a single bird, but the rest are gone, probably perching in the shade. This room where I spend most of my time is a refuge from the heat as it is in the back of the house and stays dark and cool until the afternoon when the sun moves to the west and streams through these back windows.

I went to the dump yesterday, one of my three errands. Poor Gracie stayed home as the other errands would have meant her sitting in a hot car. I tricked her by bringing the trash bags out early then sitting down for coffee and the papers. She forgot all about the trash and hopped on the couch for a morning nap. She is now back to getting into her crate. Her back legs were iffy, but they seem fine now. She gets in the crate and sticks out her head for a treat. I never refuse.

When I was a kid, I gave my mother dandelion bouquets. She always gushed at the beauty of the flowers then she’d put them in a vase, usually a jelly jar, which exalted them from their weedy status. I remember making a wish then blowing the dandelion seeds and watching the wind take them.

In my mother’s backyard, she had lilies of the valley and violets growing on the top dirt shelf of a rock wall. Some of the lilies were blue from their contact with the violets. I dug up and took some lilies and some violets home with me so I could plant then in my yard. They have spread all over. The lilies are in a front side garden with only a few violets here and there among them. The violets in the backyard took a while to grow while the lilies dug in right away and are now in clumps around the fence and some trees. Every time I see them, I think of my mother and her garden.

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“Silence is also speech.”

February 25, 2017

Today is far warmer than I expected. It’s a sit in the sun day because tomorrow will be colder, back down to the daytime 40’s, to our usual February weather. This morning there was some fog. I couldn’t see more than an outline of my neighbor’s house. After I got the paper and yesterday’s mail from across the street, I stayed outside a while just to take in the warmth, the fog and the songs of birds.

The aroma of wood smoke is one of my favorite smells. The guy in the house on the next corner has been burning wood in a rusty metal barrel. At first I though a house fire then I saw him putting more wood in the barrel. He’s the same neighbor who thought Gracie was a wolf when she jumped the six-foot fence into his yard to go after his dog. I’m thinking he doesn’t have a permit to burn wood. but I don’t care one way or the other.  I like the wood smoke. It is one of my strongest memories of Ghana where wood charcoal is used for cooking every meal.

I had a portable cassette recorder in Ghana. The tapes stuck all the time because of the humidity so mostly they had to be rewound by hand using a Bic pen. I didn’t have a huge number of tapes, but I had my favorites including PP&M, CSN, Simon and Garfunkel, and Joni Mitchell. I think I played music every night. The adaptor had a red Christmas light size bulb attached so I could play without a converter. I could plug the cord directly into the wall. My friends Bill and Peg and I got together every night. We had dinner outside in their small courtyard. After their one-year-old went to bed, we played games. Password was our only actual comes in a box game, and we played it over and over and never got bored. We had the cards memorized through repetition so we sometimes changed the game. There were contests like the winner is the one who finishes the whole card first. That kept life into the game and kept us occupied.

I lived alone for the first time in Ghana. It was quite an adjustment getting used to being alone in a place so different, so far from home. My PC friends weren’t close to me geographically. (They were a letter away, no phones back then). I was teaching for the first time and not teaching well. My students didn’t understand my English. I was frustrated and lonely but determined. It took time. I did my best and so did they. Finally, we understood each other, and I was teaching, really teaching. I loved going to town and the market. I filled my days with teaching and my nights with music and books.

After my first year, Bill and Peg moved to my school, and we lived in a duplex. I loved having them near, being with them, and I also loved my quiet times, my alone times. We gave them to each other.

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“You may have heard that back in the States there are some people who are smoking grass. I don’t know how you feel, but it’s sure easier than cutting the stuff. “

April 7, 2015

The sounds of spring fill the air: the songs of birds, the chattering of squirrels, aka the spawns of Satan, and the annoying hum of leaf blowers and saws. Yesterday the landscaper’s crew was at my house for several hours clearing between my house and the rental. The tree which had fallen this winter was sawed into manageable pieces, all the branches on the ground were cleared and the underbrush was cut. The wild space looks as clean as it ever has. My front yard too is cleared of debris as is the driveway area and the dividing space beside my house and Sebastian’s, my neighbor. Today the men were working at a house down the road. I could hear them long before I saw them.

My dad never bought a power mower. He used his old cutting mower. Every spring he’d bring it to the hardware store to have the blades sharpened. His only lawn was in front and between his house and the neighbor’s. He mowed that lawn every week. I used to sit on the front step and watch. He had a technique which never varied the whole of his life. He used a wide pattern to cut the grass and moved from one side of the lawn to the other slightly overlapping the cutting lines as he went. He always raked when he was finished. He always raked everything to the middle then picked it all up and put it in a leaf bag. I still love hearing the scratching sound of the rake.

My visual memory of my dad raking is a fall memory. He’s wearing a maroon jacket, one with a zipper that used to be his father’s. He constantly moves the rake. He starts on one side of the lawn and begins raking the grass which becomes a small pile. He keeps raking and moving that same pile, adding to it as he rakes. Finally the small pile becomes part of the big pile in the middle of the lawn. Every now and then my dad stopped to neaten the big pile before moving to another side of the lawn.

When my dad was done with his raking and the leaves were bagged, he’d put his rake and mower back into the cellar until the next week. His grass, raked and cleared of fall debris, always looked a bit beaten low to the ground and headed in one direction from the raking.

My dad was proud of his summer lawn. When I visited my parents during grass season, my dad would always ask if I had noticed how good his lawn looked. I always did and told him so. He’d just nod. That was always the answer he expected.

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“First a howling blizzard woke us, Then the rain came down to soak us, And now before the eye can focus — Crocus.”

March 31, 2015

Today is bright and lovely, a bit chilly but that’s okay. It feels like spring; it doesn’t smell like a spring morning yet, but I think we’re close. Two bright, beautiful yellow crocus (croci) have flowered in my front garden. My eyes, hungry for color after the winter, saw them as soon as I walked outside to get the papers. It seemed as if they sprang from the earth overnight, maybe as a gift from much maligned Mother Nature.

I keep watching the birds flying in and out of the feeders, and I keep checking to see if I will again be plagued by the red spawn. I thought I caught a glimpse of the beastie on a tree limb, but he didn’t go to the feeders. I wonder if they have red spawn tasers.

I have decided winter is over even though it will be 28˚ tonight. You will read no more complaining about this extended season from me. Every day I see or hear a new sign of spring. The mornings are now filled with the songs of birds. No longer does that single bird sing. The sun is so bright coming through the storm door that all three animals vie for a sunny spot. Maddie’s fur was hot this morning when she came for a pat. The plowed snow is still on the corners of the street but the piles are tinier every day. I no longer pay them any mind. When I look out my window here in the den, I see the deep blue sky and I see trees no longer seeming shadowy, no longer silhouettes in the darkness of a cloudy day.

The last few days have been busy ones for me. I think the winter sloth has moved on. All the chores I kept putting off are done. I don’t even have any laundry in the drier. Today I have PT and some errands. I’m excited about going outside in the sun. Today is a sweatshirt day. I think I’ve seen the last of a winter coat day.

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“What shall you do all your vacation?’, asked Amy. “I shall lie abed and do nothing”, replied Meg.”

July 10, 2014

Yesterday was a sweat producing day, a day for the air-conditioner which was on all afternoon and night, but I turned it off this morning though it is still a bit warm. It’s just that the mornings are so lovely I hate to miss them sitting behind closed doors and windows. Right now there is a little breeze from the window behind me, the birds are singing and the neighborhood is gloriously quiet as if I’m alone in the world. I like that feeling sometimes. Last night it rained, but I didn’t hear it. Today might reach 80˚ but it will drop to the 60’s tonight. Tomorrow’s forecast has the nighttime temperature at 59˚. That sounds delightful.

My energy comes in spurts sometimes dictated by my back. Yesterday my sole accomplishments were to re-set the flag holder and screw in the hook off the deck which holds a bird feeder. Both were victims of the wind. The bird feeder had been filled but it fell to the ground and was emptied. I’m thinking the spawns had a picnic. Now that the hook is fixed I’ll go and retrieve the items which fell off the deck and refill the feeder. I am already on my second load of laundry, and I have to go buy Gracie food and drop a few things off at the dump. That, for me, is quite the busy day.

My sisters used to give my mother dandelion bouquets. She’d act thrilled as if she had been given the rarest flowers. She’d put the bouquet in a jelly glass and then in the middle of the table. The dandelions were brilliant yellow and didn’t seem at all like a weed should be.

My father always got two weeks’ vacation, and he took them in the summer. Most of the time we didn’t go away as it was too expensive though I do remember the trip to the island in Maine and the Niagara falls trip, but that’s it; instead, we’d go places close to home. I remember going to the beach on weekdays when the traffic was light, and there were parking spaces near the water. We’d stay most of the day. A couple of nights we’d go to the drive-in. Sometimes we’d go to Maine for a weekend and stay at my father’s friend’s cottage. I always found that boring. The water was too cold, and there was little to do. The museum trips were my favorite. I remember standing in the Egyptian section at the MFA and marveling at how tall the sarcophagi were. I still get that feeling when I visit the MFA even now. Once during the two weeks we’d go out to dinner, a rare occasion for us. We’d go to Kitty’s where the food was cheap and plentiful. It never occurred to me that we didn’t have enough money to go away. I never felt deprived, and I loved being surprised by every day.

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“In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. “

March 22, 2014

Winter is a solitary season. I sit in my warm house with the doors shut against the cold. My neighbors and I wave as we drive pass each other going one place and another. The world goes quiet when it’s winter, and I seldom hear outside sounds except for the rain and the wind. I have more sloth days in winter than in any other season. Winter days are for flannel, sweatshirts and warm socks. Winter nights are for down comforters. I read, sometimes the whole day into the night. I like soups and stews and macaroni and cheese. An afternoon nap is a bit of bliss. I abide winter in its turn.

This time of year is the yin-yang season, the time of winter and spring. It is the most frustrating of all the seasons because it isn’t really one or the other. The calendar says spring but the weather is sometimes wintry, cold and even snowy. Two warm days lull us into thinking it is spring then a day of 23˚ throws winter right back at us. The only consolation is in the garden where the spring bulbs have become flowers bursting with color. Today will be warm. Tomorrow will be in the 20’s during the day and the teens at night.

Summer is the social season. I am out and about a couple of evenings each week and spend my days on the deck sitting under the trees, sometimes reading, sometimes just sitting. My friends and I have our movie nights and game nights. My neighbors are out in their yards mowing and raking and playing with their kids. I can hear their voices from my house. The birds are loudest in the morning when they greet the new day. I love the songs they sing. The front garden is filled with flowers of every color, and I always stop to admire it  when I go to get my papers. The rain in summer seems gentler even with thunder and lightning. Sometimes I sit under my outside umbrella during a rainstorm just to hear the drops. I love summer nights with all the sounds of night birds, the flickering of fireflies in the backyard and the candlelight glowing from the glass tree hangings. Summer is just so glorious.

Fall is the magnificent season, my favorite of them all. The garden shops are filled with pumpkins and mums whose colors are a bit muted, perfect for fall, the end of the growing season. It is still warm here during the day but cools a bit during the night. In late fall, when even the days get cool, I always think they are a slow easing into winter, a warning about what’s coming. I know winter must have its turn, but I wish it wasn’t at the expense of fall.

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