Tree peonies & Irises

A friend of mine came into the house for her art play session and said, "Your flowers-forgive me--they are girlie flowers in the best sense. They scream 'Look at me, I am a flower and I've visible from outer space!"

To which, in all my erudition, I replied, "Well, DUH! Ya think?"

You can tell I am a writer, I know. But, hey, this is why I specifically planted those two plants. When I remember to expose the iris korms nice and early, I am rewarded with spectacular results — the kind really needed by any instant gratification junkie who is trying to learn the rewards of patience. I've dead-headed thirty blossoms and there remain twelve fresh blooms today — the last, but that's okay. The tree peonies, a new addition of just three years, are beginning to hit their stride. BOTH had five blossoms the size of breakfast plates. (I'm old. This is a plate between dessert plates and dinner plates.) At this stage of growth, the effect is sort of silly--all blossom, no foliage. Afterward, now that the petals lie in profusion on the mulch, the sight of the foliage of deeply cut leaves branching from one "trunk" is beautiful.

The point is that I have always overbought annuals in May. Now? I am so fully satiated by the spectacle of delicacy and boldness, that I hold off. These two plants just saved me about $75.

I expected a report from the space shuttles, but no. I cannot believe that those circling toward Bradley field don't tip down to have a look at the intensity of red and blue. Nope. Oh, well. The nightly news' loss is of no consequence. When the iris pass, the regular peonies--a ten foot, low hedge of them--will be off and running.

I can look down from my office, or out from my studio and drink them in. The gratitude for lessons taught by grandmother, my mother, and my oldest friend make me tear up. I did not know I was a gardener, until we moved into this home nineteen years ago, to a place of lawn and one forsythia hedge and not one single other shrub or flower anywhere. Now an island of viburnum, red maple, rhodies, mountain laurel, andromeda, azalea, run the sweep of the fifty foot ranch wing of the house, sheltering the windows from a neighborhood of eyes that DO intrude. There is an alcove of shade, where one can sit unseen from the street, and look back toward the house, to the flowers and other ornamentals. It is a spot of quiet and coolness. I dug every bed, planted every tree and bush and flower myself, largely unassisted.

I have a robin the size of Pittsburgh, who lands not ten feet from me when I mulch or weed. He squawks at me after ten minutes, eager for me to leave the upturned worms for his lunch. He is insistent. I ignore him for a bit because I LIKE my worms. Eventually, I decide he deserves a meal, and I let him at it--for a bit.

I have had two weeks to drive into my driveway and laugh at my ostentatious, unruly, marvelous mass of blossoms. Soon I'll have another.

And now that I have work and it looks as if I may just be able to count on being here for TWO more years, not one? Well, I may plan another bed of future instant gratification. That phrase may seem like an oxymoron, but so is an impatient gardener. I think the NEED for annuals is for the learning process. Oh. Mind you, I'll get some for the little fill in places, but I will be more reasoned in the quantity.

Not in the brightness, however. I will need them for August, before sedum and chrysanthemum have their sway. After the ludicrous lilies have passed and their jester-ruffs have wilted, leaving pathetic stalk behind. I'll need my begonias and alyssum, petunias and coleus, lobelia and snapdragons. The punctuation marks of profusion filling in the blanks, letting me know that my legs still work well enough. My life is rich enough.

It is hard to remember how I hated to help my mother dig holes and plant. How silly I said it all was, all the while I marveled at the ten foot bank of rock garden that sloped up to our home. I remember the iris among the rocks. The daisies and pinks. Pockets of petunias tumbling into masses of something with foliage as dark as New Hampshire pine forest green. I would stand transfixed, yet insist I did not care for gardens... until I had no gardens to see. Until my mother was gone, the cottage was gone, and I grew tired of the sameness of apartment life.

I am a gardener and I never knew it. I am an artist and denied it for years. What a gift to discover such things as I moved through middle age. What will I discover by 65? I don't know, but suddenly, pain notwithstanding, this aging stuff seems a bit less scary than I thought.

Civil Discourse and Politics--Oxymoron?

I find it very disheartening as I see Liberals being as vitriolic as Neo-Cons were and are. Oh, it seems to be a different brand of arrogance sometimes, but arrogance by any other name stinks the same. I am unabashedly liberal, but I feel it is extraordinarily important that I listen to the warnings of fiscal conservatives.

I don't want to see anyone slip through any cracks, anywhere. Clearly that isn't possible. What bothers me is that when conservatives — those who are not simply talking heads trying to sink the Democratic Party — speak their concerns about and disagreements with the current Administration's policies and actions of Congress, too often the response from the left is all sound and fury, signifying next to nothing.

At first, I felt, well, FINALLY we get to speak. I even wallowed a bit in Keith Oberman's and Rachel Maddow's shows. Then I felt bored. Then I felt angry because I didn't think they were a whole lot better than their counterparts on Fox. I went to Twitter to follow some folks from Morning Joe and once again realized that Liberals were blindly attacking a show that really DOES offer discourse on both sides.

I want to know what conservatives fear in the social agenda because I recognize we DO have a tendency to give away the store. I want to hear an honest discussion of the history of this country's use of torture in the last eight years. I am afraid that I assume there is and has been lying on both sides of the aisle, in the CIA, and in the Presidency. I am concerned about issues of law and what constitutes torture and who allowed what when.The conversation devolves, however, into whether or not someone was informed after the fact and who lied or didn't remember what when. We then lose the real conversation about our country and whether or not we were operating under our own rule of law and the international treaties we have signed! We have the Left in the knee-jerk response of defending our own, the Right doing the same. The Liberals cloak things in four-syllable words and sarcasm. Keith and Rachel are prime examples. Are they any less biased than their Fox counterparts?

Feh. We don't "talk" as neighbors, a point I touched on in an earlier post. Better to wait for a nice, juicy confrontation. Pat Buchanan mourns the days of some civility and bipartisan work in Congress. Whether or not I agree with his ideas, I agree with that sentiment. He does not get personal and he argues points, not personalities. He can laugh at himself AND his party.

How can we find a solution to the worsening health care situation if people refuse to listen as well as talk? How can we find a way out of the two wars we are in? Or find longterm economic solutions for our country? I think the Liberals need to rise to our own PR. We were excluded from the conversation for a long time, despite the cries about the "liberal media." Just because we finally have power, it doesn't justify behavior that sinks to the lowest common denominator.

Okay. This was a rant. I'm just ashamed of many professed Liberals, who talk about social justice, but who do not want to listen to proponents of another view. Not of my President, nor Joe--for all his foot in mouth faux pas tendencies--nor our Secretary of State. I think Administration officials are taking their cue From the President for civility. If only the congressional politicians and "regular people" could do likewise.

Politics in our country needs some serious listeners, not just serious talkers.

My Women Friends

Laundry Eagles ©1992
My friendships were forged bouncing babies on hips,
folding towels to each other's tune, accommodating without question.
Speaking over-the-fence music of mothers,
we searched for our songs among static-free
billows of sheets and unmated socks.

Like socks, our mates vanished without warning,
leaving us bound in fang-lined cocoons, too small for eagles.

My friendships were fed by outstretched hands,
binding wounds as we emerged bleeding, free falling, plummeting.
We landed on eagle backs,to soar straight up
on the wings of whichever had healed.
Our touch downs were never fatal.

My friendships flourish in our flights apart
and our headlong rushes home. Crazy quilt eagles dancing round the sky;
free in our love and our strength,
alone together, together alone,
free-flying, floating toward light.

***

I am a lucky woman; whenever I have needed holding, there were women around to oblige. Before my husband came and long after he left, there were the friends who knew beyond words, just where the bleeding was. As I look at the three years since my sister died, I am thrown by the number of women who simply left my life. I am shocked by the number of losses in a short amount of time. Yet though the drama of my life was more than they wanted to witness, others remained. Others appeared. The continuity of that poem remains as true today as it was in 1992, the year my husband left.

Judy, Andrea, Nancy, Paige, and Gail -- they are fixed planets in my system. Martha, Laura, Linda, and both Sues. Newer perhaps, but no less important. My grandmother used to say it was hard to leave this world because there were too many colors to say good bye to. She said each person was a distinct color and I was her lilac girl. I was touched when she said this, but I did not truly understand what she meant. Twenty-five years later, I know.

My friends are the colors of my flower garden. They are just as unruly, defying the planting instructions which so clearly define height and width. They grow according to no one's rule but their own.

And they fly.

I have awakened, terrified because my family has all died, but for my son. This was silly, I realized the other day. My family has not died. They are all around me. My laundry eagle friends are scattered, but we fly home to one another, in joy as much as sorrow. We offer more colors than any rainbow. More strength than any man I ever knew.

I am a lucky woman.
And I sleep deeply.
And I fly.