Another Early May Garden Tour!

When spring is in full bloom I almost have to choose it as my favorite season. Toss up between spring and fall. I don't know if it is the cooler weather, but the tulips are more vivid, all blooms seem to last longer, and the weeds are just growing like crazy. Sigh.

Join me in another early May garden tour.

The rhubarb is getting with it!

The wedding garden looks inviting! JEJ caught this shot.

I love this garden path.

The pond is noisy now with toads. It is all good!

The Scenic Tour

Last Friday JEJ and I headed south and I had my camera ready knowing some of the most picturesque parts of eastern Washington would be part of our drive.

I love this view of  Lake Roosevelt as it joins with the Spokane River at Two Rivers.

From this vantage point you can see how much water this lake holds behind Grand Coulee Dam.

The sky darkened as we headed further south through farmland.

 The setting sun peeked through the clouds as the threat of rain was left behind.

Lilac Time

We arrived home too late last night to do a garden tour. This morning I was so excited to see the lilacs opening up and beginning to fill the air with their fragrance.  Lilacs were always a part of springtime growing up in the Inland Empire.

Spokane, known as the Lilac City, always celebrates the blooming of lilacs with the festival in May. In a town that usually smelled like smelter smoke, lilacs managed to endure and make a beautiful border in our backyard on Cameron Ave.

Evening Sky Shots: Northeastern Washington Highway

National Poetry Month Coming to an End: Canning Time

It is hard to believe April will soon be leaving us. I carved time out all month to read new, old, favorite, and classic poems. I have had the poster you see on the sidebar on my whiteboard of the classroom all month. A student just yesterday said, "How long has that poster been there?"  I do love to celebrate National Poetry Month even if a few students don't notice!  I will continue to celebrate my love for poetry many more times on this blog. I am returning to one of my favorite anthologies with my poem today. The book is Strings: A Gathering of Family Poems, selected by Paul Janeczko. This poem reminds me of Grandma West, Grandma Woolum, Auntie Lila, Auntie Ronnie, Aunt May, cousin Helen, my mom, myself, JEJ, and my sister Silver Valley Girl... all the great canners in the family!

Canning Time

The floor was muddy with the juice of peaches
and my mother's thumb, bandaged for the slicing,
watersobbed. She and Aunt Wessie skinned
bushels that day, fat Georgia Belles
slit streaming into the pot. Their knives
paid out limp bands onto the heap
of parings. It took care to pack the jars,
reaching in to stack the halves
firm without bruising, and lowering
the heavy racks into the boiler already
trembling with steam, the stove malignant
in heat. As Wessie wiped her face
the kitchen sweated its sweet filth.
In that hell they sealed the quickly browning
flesh in capsules of honey, making crystals
of separate air across the vacuums.
The heat and pressure were enough to grow
diamonds as they measured hot
syrup into quarts. By supper the last jar
was set on the counter to cool
into isolation. Later in the night
each little urn would pop as it
achieved its private atmosphere and
we cooled into sleep, the stove now
neutral. The stones already
pecked clean in the yard were free to try
again for the sun. The orchard meat fixed in
cells would be taken down cellar in the
morning to stay gold like specimens
set out and labeled, a vegetal
battery we'd hook up later. The women
too tired to rest easily think of
the treasure they've laid up today
for preservation at coffin level, down there
where moth and rust and worms corrupt,
a first foundation of shells to be
fired at the winter's muddy back.
-Robert Morgan

What the Living Do

I remember attending a workshop about five years ago and the presenter had us do an activity with this poem. I had never heard the poem and really loved reading it that day and still have the coffee stained copy that I have kept since that day. I still really like it.  ( Everything I love seems to have coffee stains on it!)  I think each of us could create our own poem with this title.

 What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably
    fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes
    have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we
    spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight
    pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and
    I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street,
    the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying
    along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my
    wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called     that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to
    pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss – we want more and more and
    then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the
    window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing
    so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m
    speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

Marie Howe, from her 1998 collection What the Living Do