HAIKU: Bee-sotted at sunrise...

                   Vine jiggles! I dash -

                   get paper - make coffee. He

                   ...sating......self.........proper.

FIELD NOTES: I hear one bird…

Through the (weekday) window

...its song muffled through the closed up winter window sashes. The heat clicks through the hot water baseboards in my bathroom, the morning news speaks so thinly from its cave in the other room that I can barely hear what’s new in the world today…but this one bird is what alerts me that I have been in a stupor of sorts, buried in snow and government paperwork. But that is the character of February. It is a good month for Lent. It is the month in which I write the least…move the least…eat the most and sleep the most. The attic overhead feels pregnant and overdue. The household file box needs its yearly purging. I take stock in my inventory, both in what I have collected and in what has somehow slid in around me like a storage facility. In February, its closeness turns claustrophobic and fills my nostrils like so much dust. I mull over things, incubate ideas about what’s next, brood and hibernate and absorb and fidget. What relief the one bird is, nature’s town crier, chirping that what is not here now, is preparing to return. Bulbs are energizing underground; they simply cannot be flowers all year round. So, back to the drawing board...

FIELD NOTES: Rescued from the fall...

...a beloved Edith Wolford iris, from the famous White Flower Farm in Litchfield, a gift of one rhizome now repeated a dozen times around my perennial garden, fell to earth because of rain and my previous lack of foresight. The house came with an awkward rectangle of grass between the front of the house and the walkway that leads down to the driveway, so I scooped it out and planted. I should have replaced the old pressure-treated border and raised the bed to level the landscape, but too late now. Stem and stamen tilt forward whenever weighted with water and I find myself propping things up with rocks and ornaments and wiry devices...a dependent relationship. The senior citizens of my garden - the baby's breath and an inherited lavender - have finally lived out their expected lifespan and failed to return this year...and the tiger lilies that stood sentry in the background seem to have been choked out by a relative newcomer, Moonbeam Coreopsis, that I didn't keep my eye on. So I owed it to the one who fell to prop her up in place that was complementary to her complexion and where everyone could continue to view her elaborate tiers of ruffles in pale yellow and violet that I would never keep in my own wardrobe, but in nature's dress shop, anything goes, everything is always in style and grand old ladies deserve to go gracefully.

FIELD NOTES: Birthday haiku...

Teach. Learn. Visit. Explore.
Revel. Relax. Read. React. Write. Walk.
Find chi. Make art. Live more.

FIELD NOTES: My own Flower of the Day...

Last day of May

...a picture-perfect weekend...and I am head over heels for the temperature and sun and breeze and blooms...barely have time to compose the words to express it. Although I always have hopes, I don't quite know what I will get when I plant things, but...if we consider the potential in what we sow and do our best to nurture its growth, we can love whatever comes of it; we can feel joy at its birth and accomplishment at its blooming...or, if it fails, take the opportunity to assess and develop the patience to persevere. Gardens teach us a lot...take care in choosing what you think you will love, know the care you will need to commit to and understand the power of weeds...


Featured flowers: Peony and Edith Wolford iris

FIELD NOTES: Memorial Day tradition...

The Garden: Day 1



Garden Friend:



Ready to Go:

FIELD NOTES: The lilacs are gone but still remain...

...I had a lilac house in the place where I grew up. It was just a row of bushes separating our driveway from the neighbor's backyard, but to me it was another world…the world of my imagination. I wore a path through the shrubs creating an entryway, a kitchen and a rear patio. An old saw horse was the kitchen counter where I made pies and cakes with mud and leaves in my toy aluminum pan. After a good summer rain, I could pretend to take a shower by shaking the branches overhead. Those looking out their windows would see a little girl standing in the bushes, perhaps thinking that I was lonely…or weird…but in my lilac house, I was confident and creative, brave and independent and in control…now isn’t that a wonderful place for a little girl to be?

Find favorite mother-daughter book share: Mud Pies and Other Recipes - A Cookbook for Dolls at Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves

FIELD NOTES: The pineapple sage is closed down like an umbrella...

“Sick” Day, through the window

...due to my unintentional neglect. I called in sick to work because I feel similarly. I rinse the breakfast dishes in the sink and wonder, what now, has blown into the backyard. Sometimes it feels as if I am deliberately placed downwind from the debris of others. But not today, it is not a bright pink candy wrapper, but a lone impatiens blooming in the middle of the lawn! Last summer the deer availed themselves of my hanging baskets as if they were salad bowls and now perhaps they have brought back one of the flowers (albeit with less than delicate means) as a peace offering. I am reminded of my father's wit in the story he liked to curb my wishing moods with, the one about the little girl who wanted a pony and all she got was manure, but her optimism was so great that she declared "Oh goody, goody! I almost got a horse!" How lucky I am today to have gotten a flower. Thanks, Dad.

FIELD NOTES: I meant to take a group picture...

Sometime later in October

...of my late geraniums, the headiest and longest lingering set of potted geraniums I ever remember having, but a storm came. Finally. All desperate for rainwater, we cannot complain, although asking for your thirst to be quenched and getting a bucket dumped on your head are not the same things. You don’t quite know what hit you or why it did or maybe you didn’t phrase your request properly. I don’t remember what it was that I made myself attend to: Getting to work on time? Cleaning the sink? Making the bed? But I do recall wanting to take a picture of my beautiful geraniums. And what elicits a sigh more than putting something off and too lately realizing that THAT was the most important thing you would have done that day? I did save the parsley – sort of. I always grow more than I can use, chop it down and out of guilt try to save it. This time I stuffed a huge bunch in a big pitcher of water, but all I ‘had time for’ was one tabouli salad so when the parsley eventually yellowed I again acted out of guilt and composted it. It was the least I could do. Last season, I snipped it into ice cube trays filled with broth to use in winter soups, but consistently forgot the bag of cubes entombed in the freezer. More waste, more guilt, more domestic neglect. My favorite from the kitchen herb garden is the pineapple sage – nature’s Juicy Fruit – I snipped it, bundled it and hung it upside down to dry. I like to put it in my winter teas. At least I always mean to…

FIELD NOTES: I don’t like it when my gardens start to die...

The end of August

...when the shade seems weaker, the ferns as brittle as old lace, the first dry leaves litter the stepping stones like scraps of old newspaper and the potted annuals have lost their vibrancy along with their high hopes. The deer have finally worked their way to the top of the backyard border having used the lush hosta as a salad bar. I’m at the kitchen sink looking out the window and can’t figure out what I am seeing. For years and years I have adorned each end of the big wooden swing frame that lies perpendicular to the house with two hanging baskets of impatiens. The far one looks odd. Did I forget to water it? I run outside and on closer inspection see that the tender flowers I had embedded and nurtured to bloom have been bitten down to the quick, ravaged like fingernails on a nervous hand. My heart rate goes up and any early morning neighbors hear inappropriate words. The only thing left is the dusty miller rising up from the center like a white flag of surrender on a pole. But days later, near the first of September, all impatiens have fully re-grown their foliage. Like a dry fountain that is turned back on, the basket flows with green again. Another victory in the garden. The waning of another summer is more acute when put up against the shine at the start of a new school year. This is the last year I will send a child off to public school, although I can continue to join the ranks as a teacher. I wonder if the impatiens can manage to re-bloom as well. They do - in red and white and fuchsia - they do indeed.