A Mouth Full Of Stones (Friday Flash 55)

Don’t blast a call to prayer outside my window.
I pray when I want
and drink when I want and sometimes I want.
Our best times involved copious amounts—
me and my Bobby McGee,
hair flowing free
not swaddled in silence
with a mouth full of stones.
Don’t blast a call to prayer outside my window.


If you write a Friday Flash 55 or just want to know what it's all about, visit the G-Man here.

Ampersands and Colloquialisms

The Falling Leaf Moon is on the wan and still we haven't had our first frost. This is unusual for the Thumb of Michigan and for me yet one more symptom of unsettling climate change. Should I be happy with these extended frost-free days or concerned? I know one thing: weeds are growing faster than they did in the heart of summer, at a time when they should be dead and buried.

I hate weeds. I hate cliches and redundancies. I try to make sure I never use these nasties in my writing but once in a while one shows up, like a weed in the greenhouse. Speaking of, I'm planning to make full use of my greenhouse this winter and to date I've planted spinach, komatsuna, and mizuna. I cleaned out the weeds from around the edges for a weed-free environment. Now I need to clean the weeds out of my manuscripts, past and present.

Edittorrent has posted a list of writing pitfalls to avoid. Of course Edittorrent is quick to point out that one can break a rule if done to good effect. But can we be the judge of our own good effects? I know a weed when I see one but would I know an ampersand and recognize a colloquialism? Will my one-word sentence be of good effect or make you groan? Oh what an obsessive pastime this writing business is.

Now, how many writing rules have I broken in this post? Don't we all like to break rules? Like smoking in the bathroom and walking on rooftops and eluding the police? Like throwing in an occasional one-word sentence?

OF SONG AND WATER . . . Shallots and Garlic!

Is it really October? October 11th?? Holy cow! The weather this past week has been so beautiful I've lost track of time. What have I been doing? Checking in occasionally on all of you and planting shallots and garlic-Purple Stripe, German Hardy and Porcelain, rows and rows.

One thing I did want to share with you this morning is the book I'm currently reading....OF SONG AND WATER.


This novel by Joseph Coulson is the story of Coleman, a jazz musician who can no longer play, his mentor and teacher, a black man trying to live quietly on the edge of a white town, his father, an expert sailor, and his grandfather who was a rum runner on the Detroit River during Prohibition. Coulson expertly weaves his tale between generations, from the shores of Lake Huron (our beloved inland sea)and the narrows of the river, to jazz clubs in Detroit and Chicago and a marina in winter where Coleman retreats to his father's sailboat.

I don't know how I happened upon this gem but it's a captivating story that had me from the opening paragraph.

He climbs without faith, the ladder unsteady, the wooden rungs brittle, each step filling the air with the sound of old bones. Don't look down, he thinks, watching the slow drift of his shadow, seeing its darkness on the long white surface of the hull.

I think it unusual to find novels that take place in and around the Great Lakes (UP reviewed here is another) and I'm always excited to find one.

Would you rather read a novel that takes place somewhere you've never been or one that takes place close to home in places you've seen? I think the latter adds an element of understanding because you can bring your own experience into the narrative rather than having to depend solely on an author's skill at guiding your imagination.

To Tamper With The Truth (Banned Books Week)

It's that time of year again....Banned Books Week. Time to check out the ALA List of banned and challenged books and read a banned book. Jemi Fraser has an excellent post on this subject here, and then there's this passage for Three Word Wednesday from Rebecca,

To tamper with the truth
And court false tales . . .

Can you guess what banned book inspired these words? Check out Rebecca's blog to read her entry and find out.

I'm proud to say my local library has posted signs for Banned Books Week, challenging patrons to read one. I'm reading A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY. So what are you reading? Let's hear it for the mighty book!

When the Geese Fly

The geese have been flying overhead with their mournful honking. I can’t think of anything that more poignantly portends autumn than the migration of Canadian geese. And if a sound could describe the silent angst of the querying writer, it would be geese flying overhead. It was eighty degrees yesterday, but the geese tell it all. Then last night a powerful storm blew through the area and this morning my ferns lie broken on the impatiens (which aren’t long for this world), and I hang them back up wondering where I’ll put them come October.

I told myself that fall was a good time to start querying agents again. But now I have to think about my ten pages for the Literary Lab's Notes From Underground anthology and ponder where my little story is going. A short story is a semi-circle and doesn’t really end, but it has to go somewhere. I want my readers to sit back at the end of it all and say, “wow,” or at least, “hmmm.” I don’t want to let down those who expressed confidence in my ability to see it through. That, plus my second novel is gnawing at my inner consiousness. It currently has no ending whatsoever and has sat on the back burner since the geese last flew the other way. So how do you organize your writing life? What is more important, querying the old or losing yourself in the new? And if you juggle both, I'd like to hear about that too.

Notes From Underground

The Literary Lab recently held a Notes from Underground contest, and I am honored to have been selected for the anthology. It was an eclectic and somewhat intimidating contest, so I was jumping up and down this morning. So excited!! Please pop over to the Lab to see the others who won. I'm proud to be in their company.

The Man In Black

I just realized that a true protest singer of the sixties, one who often collaborated with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, was none other than the Man In Black, one I never thought of as a protest singer. After listening to an NPR special on American Roots, I know why Johnny Cash dressed in black. And sadly the reasons are still true today. This, from one of his songs,

I dress in black for all the downtrodden, for those who are serving time past the time their time is up because of the times.

I just wanted to throw that out there because I thought maybe some of you didn't know that either.

And for the downtrodden writer on the query quest, how about a different way of looking at rejection. With so much talk out there about rejection, how to handle it like a big girl and plod ahead without drowning yourself in drink or giving up the game to pursue something you don’t like as much, like waiting tables or nine-to-fiveing it, I like what Holly Root had to say recently on her blog.

"With so much talk about “rejection” on the internet, I sometimes wish that we could talk in terms of “decline” rather than “reject.” There’s no moral judgment here, just an opportunity I won’t be part of."

I like that. How about you?

A Ginsberg in our Midst?

The sky is gray and rumpled
low-hanging clouds skuttle
across the land without a shadow
taking their rain with them.

A day like this calls for a strong cup of coffee. Coffee and books and hours of writing. Autumn come!

I've been sitting on a few awards that I need to pass on and I will. I will, I promise, but right now all I can do is share with you an amazing poet and writer who is new to the blogosphere but obviously not to the power of the written word. You can check Alisa Dodge out here. You won't be sorry. I promise.

Paper Lanterns

For the last post of August, let’s talk about the upside of drought and unrelenting heat. Let’s assume this record heat (August was the sixth driest and the hottest on record for the Great Lake State) is not a harbinger of what's to come, climate upturned on its axis, chill in the desert of Palmdale where my sister lives and asphyxiation in the upper midwest. So what can be an upside to drought? First, there are no mosquitoes. I mean, not one single solitary bloodsucker is left in the Thumb of Michigan. Second, in the still of the exhausted summer night outdoor candles stay lit. They burn all night, inspire and enthuse, the only draft the flutter of a moth's wing before it's coerced into the fire. Paper lanterns sway next to the Boston ferns, and I think of swaying to the dance in a gauzy skirt the color of summer.


Let's talk veggies and the bounty of summertime. Melons that won't usually fatten in Michigan have thrived in the record heat. Cantaloupe and Sugar Baby watermelons, fully seeded for the future, have graced our tables—homestead and market. Tomatoes dropping ripe from the vine take all our time-salsa, canning, and bread salad. Peppers ripening to red and orange in the heat take no backseat to tomatoes. Volunteer cilantro from last year's planting sprouts underneath the soaker hoses in the pepper row as if they know their rightful place, and we pick and we pick and we pick. The butternut and delicata winter squash are a golden tan with skins that cannot be pierced with a fingernail, hence ready for harvest.

So what does this have to do with writing? What, I say, doesn't it have to do with it? We eat to live and writers live to write. I drink and eat and write. I bemoan my ability to keep up but the harvest is plentiful and I persevere and tend my soaker hoses and baby my laptop and long for the time to bring a new novel to fruition. I listen to music that gives me goose bumps like John Lennon’s Working Class Hero and then I go back outside to watch Orion march across the southern sky, because I have to. The new moon is dark and hidden like a story aching to surface. I’m writing about the secret everyone in my family knows but no one talks about. What are you afraid to write about? What are you waiting for?

The Poetry Bus

The Poetry Bus this week is being driven by Chris at the The Enchanted Oak. We had to chose one of two photographs to use as inspiration, and I chose this one -Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O'Keeffe--Hands, 1919

The poem links are up here.

My ticket to ride the bus....

THE HARDEST THINGS TO HOLD

The blues man wraps band aids around his fingers
and holds the quivering note beyond its value.

Grandmother had hands of steel
that whipped egg whites into peaks
and eroded the corner of the cake spoon
we all covet.

My sister's hands are bare.
She drinks cherry juice for arthritis
and sharpens her knives to an edge.
The piano is out of tune and the garden lies fallow.

The hospital had to cut
my mother’s ring off her finger.
They put it in an envelope with her name on it,
and gave it to me to hold.

The artist holds her left hand perfectly still
and draws it with her right.
The teeth that fall out of her
great grandmother's mouth in her dreams
are in the center of the palm.
The hardest things to draw are hands.

THE BOY FROM YUGOSLAVIA (Flash 55)

While the teacher was at the beer garden they beat up the new boy with the funny name and she hid behind the country school and covered her ears until they were finished. He ran past her bloodied and in his place, face etched with the horror, and she thought, maybe now they’ll believe us.



If you can write a story in 55 words, post it on your site and then visit the G-Man to let him know. You'll get marvelous feedback from his many participants and even a visit from the man himself.

Have a marvelous weekend, writers and compatriots.

Control

The family of woman and children,
baby bottles, car seats and strollers,
head scarves and . . . tennis shoes?
make their way through the checkpoint.
A line of impregnability,
from the wrinkled forehead of the matriarch

(it’s always been this way)

to the teenager in black scarf

(I’m reminded of Minstrel Shows and the subterfuge of black face but can’t say why….is imitation the highest form of flattery?)

that drapes her face like a mantilla and frames her dark glasses,
modern as the painted toes

(slattern)

she bares to remove her shoes.
It’s our choice, she would insist if asked.
But I wonder where the men are.

The men behind the choice come through later,
unburdened in blue jeans, serious as kings.
Unencumbered but for their wallets and cell phones,
they sport flamboyant heads of hair
I’d like to run my fingers through . . .
and pull.

The women sit in chairs with their legs together
and await direction.
They cosset the children and await the men.

Meeting Mojo

Lightning flashed on the horizon but stars blinked overhead the night I met Mojo. He came in the middle of the night. He woke me up. He knocked on the door and I unlocked it.

He stood in shadow but I knew who he was. I invited him in.

“No,” he said. “You must come out.”

So out I went. We sat on the porch and lightning bugs landed in his hair and formed a constellation called Perseverance. Night birds chirped from the half-dead ash trees along the road and Mojo tapped his elongated fingers on the arm of the metal chair. He said no two sound alike if I would but pay attention, and I listened to the sing-song from across the yard, much like the murmuring amongst a flock of hens, low and throaty and full of mystery, as they run here and there with their full-hipped waddle.

I asked him why he came and went like a flimsy idea and he said it was I who could call him up at will if I but put aside that which wasn’t necessary to the writing life. He rose to his feet, and the lightning bugs flew out of his hair and flickered away into the hayfield.

“I have something for you,” he said. “We can go inside now.”

We sat at the kitchen table and he lit up a cigarette, holding it like a joint between his thumb and forefinger.

“What is it you have,” I said, impatient with his silence.

He stubbed it out. It didn't smell like a cigarette. It smelled like clover. “Show me your room,” he said.

I took him into my room, and he drew artwork from inside his shirt like a sorcerer and displayed it on my bed, and I waited for him to explain himself. Then he handed me a letter from an agent.

“Take it,” he said, forcing it upon me. “It’s a good letter and nothing to be sad about.”

I looked at the envelope. The return address was New York and my pulse skipped. A letter from New York, but one to be sad about.

“You should display it like a painting,” he motioned to the one on the bed. “And learn from it. You will not have success until you have had rejection you don’t turn your back on and refuse to learn from.”

And he was gone like the constellation of fireflies, leaving only the memory of his presence, but his words are etched along the knobs of my backbone.

All this in a dream.

The Lifeblood of Fiction

Sitting at my laptop in the night with a glass of water at my elbow, there is movement in my peripheral vision. I glance at the source, alarmed, but the shimmering movement is only the play of moonlight on the water's surface. With each keystroke the water jiggles and though I know what it is, the ghostly shimmer fools me again and again, like the slap of the flag on my dad's flagpole in a brisk wind when I'm working in the garden. It has me looking over my shoulder, again and again. And I'm reminded of a passage from THE SOUND AND THE FURY.

If character is the life of fiction (as John Gardner says), description of time and place is the lifeblood that supports your characters along the way. Consider how William Faulkner describes water in a basin in the moonlight....

I could hear Shreve working the pump, then he came back with the basin and a round blob of twilight wobbling in it, with a yellow edge like a fading balloon, then my reflection. I dipped the rag, breaking the balloon.

Or this passage that blends the best description of twilight I've ever read with the memory of the brother who never grew up...

As I descended the light dwindled slowly, yet at the same time without altering its quality, as if I and not light were changing, decreasing, though even when the road ran into trees you could have read a newspaper. I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling like butterflies hovering a long way off. Benjamin the child of. How he used to sit before that mirror.

I just finished Ian McEwan's SOLAR, which set me to thinking about the importance of character development and how essential it is to make your readers care about your characters. Maybe this is an unfair comparison I'm about to make, but McEwan has been compared to literary giants, from Dickens to Faulkner, so my guess is that it isn't. The characters in SOLAR were as flat as failed bread and I had to force myself to keep going. Halfway through, I stopped waiting for it to get better and resigned myself to disappointment from an author who has never disappointed me before. So, even the experienced writer slips on occasion and falls into the trap of their own verbosity. Not only was the main character unlikable on a personal level, but as a scientist he seemed unmotivated, selfish, and greedy. And the only time McEwan comes close to a Faulkner description of time and place is when his Pulitzer Prize winning scientist steps out of his air conditioned car in the heat of the New Mexico desert and falls to his knees under the weight of it.

I think the main problem for me is that climate change is such a serious subject it doesn't lend itself well to the slapstick satiracal style McEwan uses to drive the novel forward. I found it hard to sympathize with this unlikable character who zips his penis in his snowsuit during a trip to the Arctic, this overweight academic who overeats before an important speech at a climate change conference and has to swallow his acid reflux as he tries to convince investors to take their money out of coal and oil and put it into solar. Who could take him seriously? This buffoon who has multiple failed marriages and countless affairs and who behaves badly at the turning point of the novel. And the multiple cast of supporting characters are equally unlikable and unmemorable. I didn't care about any of them. Characters are the life of fiction and these ones were dead in the water before the halfway point.

I think it unfortunate that one of the premier writers of our time missed an opportunity to bring solar power and all the possiblities encompassed within the miracle of photosynthesis into the mainstream conversation. Most readers won't put up with unlikable, boring characters, regardless of the subject. I would love to hear other opinions on this subject. And if any of you have read SOLAR, what'd you think?

If you can't give your readers a character to love, you'd better at least give them one to hate. Make your reader feeling something. Take Faulkner's Jason-one of the most despicable characters in the history of American literature-Jason Compson will stay with me long after I've forgotten McEwan's Michael Beard. Indifference to character is the death knell for a novel.

The Wrong Side of Town (Flash 55)

Beside a three-story house in Romanesque style
that’s falling down,
a station wagon is parked
in the tall grass on two flat tires.
An old man sits behind the steering wheel
and reads the newspaper,
oblivious to the crumbling ruins.
He does this every day,
past All Saints,
warm in his sunroom
but going nowhere.


If you can write a story in 55 words, let Mr. Knowitall know. TGIF party animals!

Miner Dorm

I remember the radio I won
selling magazines
and the song playing
the last time I lay with you.
The dorm was emptied for summer—
wisteria in bloom.
We lay on the bed
and listened to the closing of the doors.
We didn’t make promises to keep in touch
because we knew that we wouldn’t.

This is a Flash 55. And least I forget, Mr. Knowitall is the motivating factor.

If It Were My Home

If It Was My Home is a new site that will allow you to quickly compare the breadth of the BP oil spill to your home town or city. Just type in your location and it will take the spill out of the Gulf and put it in your backyard. I did it. It filled Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay and spilled into Lake Erie.

The photograph of the struggling brown pelican is from Charlie Riedel at AP.

Pelican, brown pelican, preen once more for me.

49th Festival Of The Trees

Welcome to the 49th Festival of the Trees. When Jade Blackwater first contacted me and asked if I would be interested in hosting July's celebration, I didn't know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect the outpouring of artistic expression that I received. I would like to thank Jade for seeking me out and Dave Bonta , co-founder of the Festival of the Trees, for all his help with coordinating submissions that came in through the blog.

July 1st is the first day of the heat moon, and we're on the cusp of the dog days of summer... thunderstorms and fireflies, straw hats and cold drinks, days of lazy summer heat when finding shade under a tree is sometimes all one can think about. So, without further ado, let's check out some trees.

I'd like to kick this off with my favorite childhood hiding spot. This old pickling pear tree.
Yes! it really is a pear tree and, yes, there has been a rope swing (recently updated) hanging off the same limb for seventy years. Three generations of inquisitive adventurers with scabbed knees, bare feet, and dirty faces have wrapped their legs around it. If you climbed up the trunk to the fork and then higher.... out on this limb,
your mother couldn't find you, nor your older bossy siblings. You could read uninterrupted about adventure on the high seas or about a little girl in the Maritimes, or just watch squirrels navigate the narrow branches above while you, blameless, dropped hard, inedible pears on your brother's head as he tried to swing.

From Tricia O'Brien at Talespinning, we have a few of her amazing photos complemented by her signature haiku, as well as a flash fiction piece about a young cypress tree (relatively speaking as a cypress can live for thousands of years) that wishes it were a boy.

His roots had long ago stretched so far around his base they looked like a nest of pythons.

When reading Tricia's short story, I couldn't help but think of the Ents, the endearing talking trees in Lord of the Rings. Tricia weaves a story the Ents would give a magestic nod of the head to. She even has a Part II later in the fest.

Speaking of The Ents, I think it appropriate to elaborate a bit on what these, my favorite fantasy trees, are. They're a fictional race of people who closely resemble trees from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth. They appear to have been inspired by the talking trees of many of the world's folklores. At the time The Lord of the Rings takes place, there are no young ents (known as entings) because the entwives (female ents) were lost.

This is Treebeard, the oldest of the Ents. His motto was: "Do not be hasty." I think I shall make it mine as I try to live with a lunar calender and stay out of the rat race of modern society. The fate of the Ents is something I couldn't get out of my mind as I collated everyone's favorite trees.

Next, I would like to present Suzanne Casamento, who writes young adult fiction and, as she has now proven, poetry, writing about her favorite tree in poetic form. I think you'll all be spellbound by Suzanne's poem, drawn up the ladder to climb inside her secret hiding place and then...

Turn to yesterday’s last page
Its telltale folded corner begging me to finish
Someone else’s story

This next entry from Ed Pilolla juxtaposes nicely with Suzanne's poem. Ed is living the writing life in Hermosa Beach, California (am I a little bit jealous?), writing like a fool, in his words, but still taking the time to compose and submit Tree Rings. Hauntingly beautiful...

We journeyed our entire lives to arrive here, both of us with knots lodged within the rings of our lives,

this poem lodged in the roots of my soul. Thanks Ed.

Liza Carens Salerno at Middle Passages posts a lovely ode to New England stoicism and how she happened upon the perfect tree.

Fall seeps in via the patch of burnt-umber on the tree by the market in mid-August, through the crimson poison ivy vine twisting around a pine deep in the woods.

Thanks Liza for a native's perspective of color-seeking tourists. I want to crack a lobster and, somehow, you've made me yearn for fall colors before the Fourth of July!

V.R. Barkowski who lists amoung her accomplishments, recovering sociologist, mystery writer, and museum whore (my participants have some of the most interesting professions!), pays homage to her favorite trees through photography. You will absolutely swoon (in Tricia's words) at the photo from Savannah. And I wonder at those who could be in the shadow of such as these and not really see them at all, a thought brought to mind by her use of a William Blake quote...

Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all.

Kenneth Pobo also wrote a poem for the festival. I was thrilled to get so many poems, the highest form of human expression. Ken doesn't yet have a website or blog but I loved his poem so much I was compelled to include it anyway. He can be reached at kgpobo [at] verizon [dot] net if you want to offer your accolades.

BACK YARD BIRCH

Tall Wisconsin birches
line the highway. Light sifts
down, leaves almost translucent.
If I were the moon, I’d talk
all night with a birch, or
a forest of them, but I’m just
a guy with too much

weeding to do. Our one birch
provides good conversation.
Small, but airy, a tree
with nothing to prove. I put
violas at its base, an offering.
Catbirds, tasteful but busy,
like this tree too, a fine

launching spot on their way
to a blueberry bush. Wrens
turn leaf into recording studio.
In winter, a gray sky wraps
empty branches. Spring
will come. And when it does,
the birch will be ready.

You know I could relate to this one....to a guy with too much weeding to do but who will still take time to talk to a birch. And the last four lines are alive with imagery. Let us know, Ken, as soon as you get your site up and running!


Next, from Biologist, D.N.Lee, at Urban Science we have this entry from her travels in Europe, introducing us to the Mimosa Tree, which is also her favorite tree from childhood-

"My,fancy seeing you here. Are you here on holiday in France, too?"
"No, the trees replied, "we live here. You must be mistaking us for our cousins who live everywhere".

Indeed, I didn't know the Mimosa tree was so widespread. Nor did I realize it is sensitive to the touch, as shy as a praying mantis, and its leaves fold inward if you should touch them. Don't touch this! Thank you Ms. Lee for sharing with us your favorite tree along with memories from your grandmother's backyard.


From Marian Veverka we have this ode to the trees, a whiplash of a poem that sets us amoungst the branches of trees standing naked before the storm, limbs tossed and tangled like a schooner in a typoon. And, yet, again,

"your limbs provide the home the sparrow needs."

Thanks, Marian, for a beautiful poem that left me breathless. And honest folks, I'm not usually given to such gushing but you have all left me awed by your talent.

Next, to Lye Tuck-Po at Fieldsketches

where we have something really different, a tree/temple in the Cambodian woods. Tuck-Po, who is an anthropoligist living in Malaysia, photographed these ancient trees in Prasat Sambor, Cambodia. I think this is one of my all-time favorite trees. Who wouldn't want to enter this door and curl up inside with a dog-eared book? (One of Suzanne's!)
Just click the link to view more of these ancient trees of Cambodia. The second one is eerie and reminds me of the Alien curled up in the spaceship. I digress. Thank you Tuck-Po for sharing these stunning photos from the Cambodian woods.

From Australia, Jacqueline Yetzotis at Saving Our Trees takes us for a stroll down her street into the fork of a red flowering gum, the tree that most symbolizes Australia for her. Bird and bees love them and you will too when you see their amazing blooms. They reminded me of birds of paradise, or like something out of The Wizard of Oz with their little rosy faces. Check it out and see what I mean.

Next, from an Australian transplant, we have the unbudding of a Tulip Poplar. Joan Knapp, a microbiologist who now lives in Georgia, gives us a frame-by-frame video of the development of the beautiful flower on a Tulip Poplar tree. The progression is amazing and I was almost sad to see the dying of the flower but then realized that, too, is beautiful and essential, the closing of the circle of life.

Casey Harn shows us the inside of a different sort of a cathedral, the sort that man can't replicate with hammer and nails and architectual genius, a cathedral in the woods on the 15th Day of the Rose Moon. Now if that title doesn't pique your interest, I don't have one that will. Rose Moon is a Native American name for the moon that appears in June.

Casey posts by the Lunar calendar and uses the Native names for each moon cycle. July is the Heat Moon. Thank you, Casey, for sharing some of your Native American culture and your cathedral in the woods.

Next up are the fragile branches and purple berries of the Elderberry tree. Brought to us by Elizabeth Enslin, an anthropoligist and recovering academic based in Oregon, the elderberry has a long, rich history of delicious sustenence. (Especially in the dead of Prohibition.) Check out her pictures of elderberry clusters and tips on how best to enjoy them. I can't resist relating a personal story about how my grandpa got himself in a heap of trouble over a neighbor's jug of elderberry wine. But I'll save it until later.

The most poignant submission I received was this video story from wildlife biologist Jackee Alston who just suffered the loss of her mountain's old-growth ponderosa forest due to the human-caused forest fire in Arizona. Thank you Jackee for sharing this amazing video. We can only hope that the ponderosas will return en masse for future generations to enjoy.

From Poetry Daily, we have a killer of a poem, Twin Tree, by featured poet, Carol Muske-Dukes, Poet Laureate of California.

I stood beside you weeping,
trying to hold your heart together with my hands
at the fork where you'd leaned apart,

There is nothing else for me to say. My words pale next to hers. Hers are enough.

Suzanne Murray, an artist based in North Yorkshire, UK who specializes in calligraphy and lettering art submitted these samples of her work. I can see why these are some of her favorites.

I know a pine tree that leans over near a sea.

Suzi also blogs at Spirit Whispers and there shows us the birth of a baby Scots Pine cone and why her work is inspired by pine trees and also by the words of George Seferis- Greek poet, essayist & diplomat, and winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Literature-

One night I stayed awake all night under this tree...

On a lighter note, we have an amusing anecdote from Michelle Markey Butler who is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh and blogs atHeir Raising. Boys will be boys, but really....you wouldn't want to do this to your favorite tree!

From Becky Miller at The Rainy Day Wanderer you can browse a photo gallery of amazing tree photos she arranged just for us, from her backyard to the Asheboro Zoo and in an array of seasons. Thanks Becky.

Have you ever been to a hazelnut tree farm? Erika Rathje has. Enter here and scroll down until you come to the geometric marvel of the hazelnut tree farm with her description underneath the photo. I may never get an opportunity to visit a hazelnut tree farm. I didn't even know there was such a thing. So thank you, Erika.

And finally, I have Tricia's Part II, as promised. Waylaid at last with her, trussed and captivated, she sets us down gently.

Oh, would you like to hear that story about grandpa and the elderberry wine? I cornered my dad on the porch yesterday and made him repeat it to me so I would get it right. This is what happened.

It was 1928 and the country was tiring of Prohibition. But people became resourceful and ingenious. My grandpa, along with many others in these parts, made elderberry wine out of the elderberry blossom, which makes the best wine according to the experts, and he and neighboring farmers often got together to spin yarns and compare homemade concoctions.

Grandpa always planted the navy beans on June 6th. That morning after breakfast a neighbor came over with a jug of elderberry wine and Grandpa opened up a bottle of his. They got to talking and exchanging stories, and several glasses later he looked at the clock and said, “Hey! I have beans to plant.”
The neighbor said, “I have errands to run.”
And off they went.

Grandpa hooked up the team of horses to the drill he used for planting beans and drove them out to the field.

My dad was only eight but he remembers my grandmother looking out the window later and saying,

“I wonder why your dad is riding on the drill…”

He usually walked behind it, but there he was, sitting atop it, swaying with the motion of the horses and singing at the top of his lungs.

The next morning after chores were done, Grandpa hitched the horses up to the drill and started out towards the field.

Grandma said, “Where’re you going, Raymond?”
“Out to plant beans,” he replied.
“I thought you did that yesterday.”
“I did,” he said. “But I forgot the seed.”


It is fitting that I should close with Roberta at the Growing with Science blog . She gives us the walnut tree. I'd forgotten how beautiful this tree is. Once again, an example, I think, of a tree we take for granted. Thanks, Roberta, for reminding us of the walnut tree!

The August 1 edition of The Festival of the Trees will be at Growing With Science Blog
Theme: Trees Through a Child's Eyes
Send to: growingwithscience [at] gmail.com
Deadline: July 29

That’s all folks. I have enjoyed reading and compiling all the entries. I learned so much myself, I hope you have all gained something too. If I've made any mistakes or left anyone out, please contact me and I will right any wrongs immediately! Whew. I want to thank everyone who participated and helped make this a success.

Thank you all for reading. Happy Heat Moon!

For The Small People

Firefly,
firefly,
fire
fly for me.
Pelican,
brown pelican
of the Gulf Coast pelicans,
(you were a postcard pelican)
preen once more for me.
BP CEO sail your yacht
on a pristine sea.
For me.

Summer Solstice and a Writer's Stew

We farmers are always stewing over something. Right now it's lack of rain. We await the rain with the patience of fishermen. While we wait, we water the fledgling asparagus ferns with a hose in hopes that one day we'll have a beautiful asparagus bed. We water the tomatoes and the rest of the nightshades, we douse the broccoli, melons and lettuce.

We do our best, but well water is not rain water and irrigated vegetables do not have the flavor and nutrients of those watered from heaven. Something about the rain and the nitrogen and ozone it picks up on its way through the atmosphere makes all the difference. Ever do a taste test between a Michigan strawberry and a California one grown and irrigated in the Central Valley? Such a poor imposter that. But we've run the soaker hoses because the promised rain has alluded us for two weeks running. It goes around Deanville Mountain to the north. It goes off into Lake Huron to the east. It rains to the south of us and to the west of us. Enough, you say! Enough. OK.

I'm keeping this short, though my June contributions have been paltry. I'm saving my energy for a slam dunk Festival of the Trees at the end of the month. You have until June 28th to post your entry and send me the link. I'd like to thank Tricia O'Brien for this captivating teaser and mention of the Festival. Also, thanks, Tricia, for the Pertinent Posts Award!


I have not been very prolific of late so it's very consoling to be told I'm pertinent! Not to be confused with impertinent. Isn't it interesting how two words can be so similar in spelling and pronunciation yet so dissimilar in meaning?

(Warning.... I feel a tangent coming on.)

I think it is impertinent of agents to say they are too busy to reply to everyone who queries, that they can only be bothered to reply to those queries that interest them. Of course we writers are supposed to be patient and understanding. Am I being contrary to call that impolite? How do we know our email was ever received if we never hear back? So I have something else to stew about too. Enough, you say. Go to bed, Yvonne, and you’ll feel better in the morning.

OK. But first I'm stepping out on the porch to watch the fireflys as they try to attract a mate. Good night, happy hunting and a soulful Summer Solstice to all.