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scatter

Another entry for Mundane Monday #118, which isn’t up yet. I will add the link when it is. This is a stealthie taken with my cell phone. I liked the scatter and caught it….

Addendum: ok, #118 is NEXT week. THIS week is Mundane Monday #117. But anyhow, look at trablogger’s travel photos by clicking the first link….

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transplant

A friend bought a house in Portland, Oregon. Last spring he was redoing the yard: all edibles.

“Wait,” I say, “what about the roses? Didn’t you say there are roses?”

“Yes,” he says, “Digging them up. Do you want them?”

“Yes!” I say.

I visit in Portland and drive back with three roses, roots but not much dirt, in a plastic bag. I think two are red. I plant all three in my front yard, with the deer fence. As high is is legal.

And here is the first bloom: an immigrant to Washington, a transplant, another color, a surprise! Lovely!

 

 

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The introverted thinker breaks the rules

My earliest memory is taste and proprioception.

I am outside in the yard. I am under three, because it is when we still lived in Knoxville, Tennessee. I am standing. I am not terribly steady and I am holding on to the pipe. I remember how the pipe feels, metal and a bit rusty and rough. The day is hot, but the metal is cool on my hands. I am drinking the water out of the top of a pipe that sticks up from the ground. Water pools in the top and I like it. It tastes of iron. I am not supposed to drink that water.

I lose my balance a little and bump hard against the pipe. My tooth breaks. Now my mouth tastes of blood and iron.

I don’t remember it hurting much and I am not scared. I am mostly annoyed and resigned. I think, I am going to get caught now, I can’t hide this.

This is me in the canoe and my parents, in the early 1960s. I don’t know who took the photograph.

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The introverted thinker in the garden

My second earliest memory is between age three and four. We have moved to upstate New York, Trumansburg, and are living with my grandmother. I am old enough to know that I can’t pick random things outside and eat them. However, my grandmother has a currant bush: red currants.

I am amazed to see her picking and eating something outside. Does she not have to follow the rules? And then she lets me eat some. And I do not instantly die.

“You may pick them and eat them off this bush whenever you want.” says my grandmother.

I remember the color of the currants and the taste and the miracle of having permission to go eat something on my own recognizance, outside in the great wide wild world. I was so thrilled and entranced with the currant bush and my grandmother.

Here are red, black and white currants from the farmer’s market yesterday. I put them in a fruit salad with a honey melon that was so ripe that is dripped, and added apples and blueberries and lemon juice. Mmmmm, bounty. The tartness of the currants is delicious with the sweet melon.

 

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sky door

I am submitting this to Thursday doors today. It’s not a door really, except sometimes the views traveling or hiking or outdoors are doors into another consciousness… I think that hiking helps me through the door into feeling peaceful and that my problems or worries or hurt feelings are not really significant after all. They are small in this beautiful world. They shrink and seem insignificant.

I took this near the summit of Mount Townsend, looking back. There is Mount Ranier and then we had a discussion about the other peak to the right. Mount Adams, I think, because Mount St. Helen’s is not as tall….

 

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growth

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #116. Ok, yeah, it’s Thursday. I am thrown off by four days off, my son visiting all the way from Maryland and the news of the death of an old friend, Monday.

The lower branches of the trees are dead, but are covered with growth anyhow: the hanging beautiful moss. I don’t know how the moss holds on through the dry season. Meanwhile the tree continues upwards, new branches reaching up to the light.

I took this on Mount Zion, two weeks ago.

Lake Street Dive: What I’m doing here.