Apricot Tree...four plus years old...patience in the garden

 

                 A little over four years ago this was an apricot pit.

                 Here it is all leafed  out. There is a younger tree, 

              not pictured, but nearby in hopes of  cross pollination, 

                                               *so maybe*

                           next year we will have apricots?

                       I don't know, but I like this little tree 

                          that I have know since it sprouted. 

   

                      Here is another  tree I am watching grow.  

                   My neighbor gave me a deodora seedling.

            Can you see it surrounded by all the flowering sparaxis?

I had to come and share this tree because Martha was so kind to ask.

Sometimes Even a Title is Too Many Words

1. 

Poppies under my peach tree on an April afternoon....

Today, while it is Yet so Called

Yes.  Pressing on. 

One step at a time. 

“At a time.”

The morning routine is fraught with awareness of time.

How often is time noted by mortals as “fleeting”?

Youth, at play, absorbed in doing-exploring-being, does not take note of time.

Those of us older than a child,  those who’ve passed into the realm of self consciousness, also can dwell in deeply immersed doing, but in retrospect are often aware…“Time got away from me.”  

Or, did I get away from time? 

So much time does get away, and then we splash in pools of memories, murky little puddles though they may be.

I have muddled in my own and others' memories at near expert level, looking for that jigsawed piece that could  finish the puzzle laid out on today’s flat surface.  What could -should -would such completion mean for tomorrow? 

But fragments of time gathered again, like crumbs of bread brought back to the baskets after all have been fed and are satisfied, speaks not only of brokenness but of the whole always fragrant and new. 

The invitation is ever emblazoned on the morning: ”...today, while it is yet called today...” 

The Body of the Earth

The body of earth,
our patch of garden,
makes mottled pears and
raspberry red juice run up thorny vines.
Flat white flowers turn
into strawberries.

Slowing down
time will come
a flutter of falling leaves,
short waves of heat,
strong winds,
migrating birds.
The fruits of summer,
stung by the wasps,
bitten by the squirrels,
will be gone.

Today the figs are still plumping
purple lines of sugar.
Apples sun their cheeks
for just a bit more color.

I like them all best
standing on the skin of dirt,
eating them before they know
they have been plucked.

Notes from the Smokey West

I saw with delight that the forecast for tomorrow is for cooler weather. 

   
                                                                                                             
I hope that is really true....from 95* F down to 79* F.  It would be some help to those fighting the fires and those perched waiting to learn the fate of their homesites. 

Just the smokey air makes me lethargic and combined with the heat I could become truly cat like.  Phoebe the cat moves from one cute position to another on her little pillow.  I try to move around and be a bit more functional, but I did take a nap I hadn’t planned on. 

The strawberries were abundant again today and Mark picked quite a lot of tender little green beans.  We have been trying to keep up with them and not let them get big.  I have some blanched and frozen already and we have eaten quite a few.  

The peaches are such a gift; one night we just had piles of peaches and yogurt for dinner and we were quite happy.  Then there was the night we made a peach pie…oh my.  

Our daughter - S.B.- gave Mark some colored corn seeds last year for a present and he  gathered in his harvest  today.

 We sat in the shade and pulled back the husks; it is so beautiful.  It was like a treasure hunt, not knowing what colors of jewels we would uncover.  The colors are deep burgundies and gray blues, orange and golden yellow and these colors mingle in variations that say that summer does not last for ever…

Fire is certainly a phenomenon that forces much perspective on you even if you only get the smoke from afar.  I smell it and think of those up close and laden in protective clothes and heavy gear fighting to corral the flames. I think of those evacuated from their land and homes, the short term times of wondering if it will be a long term displacement.

And for some,
no matter how the restoration takes place, is feeling at home ever quite the same?
I was truly touched by a man who wrote an on-line  thank you to firefighters with a picture of his gracious curved patio stairs, the stones littered with the ashes of his family home and the current site of his survivor chickens scratching through a feast that had been scattered for them by the firefighters.   Yes.   He has encouraged me and I  haven’t even lost anything. 

Nicolás Gómez Dávila...writing to fix one's thoughts

 Colombian philosopher, Nicolás Gómez Dávila ( 1913-1994) whose works consists almost entirely of aphorisms had this to say about  writing: 

" The pleasure of writing, when we lack all talent and ambition, is the pleasure of  knowing clearly our ideas.
Drafting our thinking is, perhaps, creating it; in any case, it is to acquire a full consciousness. The vague and confusing idea is a mere promise; a promise that is not fulfilled and that is soon forgotten if words do not detain and fix it.
It is true that almost all of our ideas seem to be diminished by being written and that, in the light of that changing, rich and fruitful context of thought, they lose the life that stirs them in the warm shadows of consciousness; but it is only when they are of verbal pulp that we can know them and like, reject, or welcome them according to their excellence."

 (*This  is translated from Spanish, which original version is included below. )

 I  know that experience, where the glow that appears warm and steady within  flickers in me as I attempt to drag my  thoughts word by word into daylight.  Is this all there was?  What was I thinking?   It is a pleasure, those glimpses I sometimes have, thoughts which seem in the moment most excellent while in a hot shower  or on my knees and my  hands muddied in the garden, or in those first waking moments  when the door to dreams is still open. It can be a bittersweet process, but clarity is worth struggling for.

Original  from Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Notas, (p. 106) (Villegas, 2003) (1a ed. 1954) 

"El placer de escribir, cuando carecemos de todo talento y de ambición, es el placer de conocer claramente nuestras ideas.
Redactar nuestro pensamiento es, quizá, crearlo; en todo caso, es adquirir de él una plena conciencia. La idea vaga y confusa es una mera promesa; promesa que no se cumple y que pronto se olvida si las palabras no la detie nen y la fijan.
Es cierto que casi todas nuestras ideas parecen disminuidas al ser escritas y que, al extraerlas de ese contexto cambiante, rico y fecundo del pensamiento, pierden la vida que las agita en las cálidas penumbras de la conciencia; pero es sólo cuando se revisten de pulpa verbal que las podernos conocer y, así, o rechazar, o acoger según su excelencia."

If you would like to read of Nicolás Gómez Dávila  there is a very organized page of English translations of his aphorisms here:<http://don-colacho.blogspot.com>

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Dictation for a second draft!

I'm wondering if the music in the background, it's live guitar music,  will affect the ability of this program to work? I'm using the dictation program and it makes some interesting decisions as to what it is I've actually said. We are learning to get along with each other.  That is to say, I am learning to enunciate more carefully than I might otherwise.

As regards the last question I posted here, I decided to simply keep writing; cull a little and not burn it all.  Of course first drafts do need and get a rough chaffing up that could cause  enough friction to almost set them on fire.

Reading hand written pages into the microphone provides an initial smoothing out. If it doesn't read well out loud, it's likely needing clarification at the least.   I also find words missing that I thought but did not write down.

Pen on ink still seems to be the way feeling and less obvious elements are conceived and I need to be careful, while editing, to not squeeze the life out of any of that protoplasmic ooze.

I felt silly not having found the dictation on my iMac sooner, it was hidden in plain sight. All I needed to do was go to the keyboard preferences.  Once I chose whether I wanted to dictate offline on via the cloud, I chose offline and downloaded what was necessary, it is a simple matter of putting ones cursor in any text box and hitting the function key two times.  Of course  I also need to remember not to say anything I don't want typed into the box in question.  Ahem, clearing her throat, she wondered whether this tool would make new paragraphs on command?

Yes, it does.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Journaling: to cull or to burn?

From My Journal: December 29, 2017

"I'll end this year's journal with a joke...I'd like to sort through and organize my years of scribbles and redact as might be indicated.  In other words, I would like to do something with them. "

 A fire at the beach is one possibility as organization doesn't seem to be my strong suit lately and yet they are collected chronologically at this point; a full step away from simple chaos.  I also think of typing up ( is that even a verb anymore?) excerpts.  So to cull or to burn, that is the question.   It frightened me enough that I went right out and bought three blank books yesterday and wrote 2018 on the cover of one of them.

And now....I have typed up and edited an excerpt, haven't I?  If I am  sensitive about conditions changing, even this small change I have made may be a big enough perturbation in my original trajectory to lead to something other than a bonfire.  I am not, however, predicting anything.

The Shelf Life of Love

A friend recently asked me to remind her where my blog sits.  It isn’t that I haven’t been writing, but I haven’t been posting.  I write and read to Mark and he tells me “ put that on your blog…”  I think about it and then the day passes and the world’s crazy energy swirls me around and I think how weak my words are and I leave them, just ink in my notebooks. But I know  that it isn’t good to capitulate to the thought that small offerings don’t matter. I have received  single sips of water from others that made all the difference in difficult terrain.

 To overcome my “sharing block,”  today I took a photo of my morning’s scribble :