It'a A Garden Party! - Change is in the Air

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

I lost all the new pictures I just took. I uploaded them but I can't find them anyplace. I've combed through the entire computer and they are gone. 

That includes the pictures for this post, so it will consist mostly of me blathering on.
 
Leaves from the neighbor's massive Maple tree are already making their way into the yard. Flowers are sprinkled sparingly across the garden and the edges of their leaves are traced with brown.

The weeds don't seem to be slowing their determined campaign to take over, and the afternoon sun is still punishing. But change, it rolls on.

We're losing the small Pluot tree. High winds knocked out my supports, and the sudden drop snapped off several heavily fruited branches. I tried to minimize the damage but the remaining branches are withering.

The other Pluot tree is also showing signs of stress. A few small branches are withering even with a lot of new growth new growth. I keep a close eye on the water needs of the trees, for obvious reasons, and that doesn't seem to be the problem.

Ah, the life of a farmer.

We suffered another loss this week. Our Australian Shepherd, Zeke, had been suffering from bladder cancer, but we thought he might still be with us for a while. Unfortunately, he suddenly stopped eating and we couldn't entice him with even the most tempting of previously forbidden contraband.

Epitaph to a Dog

-  Lord Byron

Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.

The Price, which would be unmeaning flattery
If inscribed over Human Ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
“Boatswain,” a Dog
Who was born at Newfoundland,
May, 1803,
And died in Newstead Abbey,
Nov. 18, 1808.

When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown by glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And stories urns record that rests below.
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,
Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth –
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power –
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennoble but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on – it honors none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one – and here he lies.

Many people find Autumn invigorating and inspiring. I'm not one of them; to me, Autumn and loss seem intractably entwined.

On the bright side, My freezer is almost full of delicious Roma tomatoes. My locally grown seedlings delivered well and I will try to save some seeds for next year.

Now is also the time to begin looking forward to next year's garden. I have ideas, but there is still a lot of work to do before I'd be able to implement any plans. 

Have you started thinking about next year yet?

Autumn, the Seasom of Loss has Come Early This Year.

Empty-handed I entered
the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

Like dew drops
on a lotus leaf
I vanish.

- Kozan Ichikyo

Our cat George left us today, and yesterday we got news that our Australian Shepherd Zeke will be leaving us soon. This beautiful piece just seems appropriate

Good Night Patricia Joy. Sleep Well.

From a Window
- Christian Wiman

Incurable and unbelieving

in any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree

rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.

I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get

to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined

or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion

beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.

Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood

exactly as it had and would

(but why should it seem fuller now?)

and though a man's mind might endow

even a tree with some excess

of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men.

of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men.

And that is where the joy came in.

from: Every Riven Thing, Copyright 2010.

Quote of the Day

I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!

- Michael Brown.

{Link, Link. Link}

The Spark is Gone . . .*

Last night my husband came in to my office and asked me if Robin Williams was really dead this time. (He had been the subject of false death stories for the past few years) It didn't take long to confirm that, sadly, it was indeed true this time. And not only was he gone from us, it was by his own hand.

As someone who grew up watching Mr. Williams and saw his talent expand well beyond its original boundaries, I feel a personal loss - but I did not know him.

The pain his family and friends are experiencing right now is beyond my imagining. My heart goes out to them and words fail me, because there are no words that can lessen their grief and loss.




I had no idea that Mr. Williams suffered with depression. But I know others who have, and it's a devastating disease.


There is no amount of cajoling that will make depression go away. It is not possible to just "suck it up" and "get over it."

Statistics on depression and suicide are sobering.

Sometimes it seems that the question is not if a person battling depression will lose the fight, but when.

What can be done?



If you know someone who lives with depression, please recognize that it is not a character flaw or an attempt to hurt you. It is a painful and insidious disease that ends lives. Love and support are what is needed, not judgement. This link will take you to a page listing {Suicide Warning Signs}.

If you, yourself, are the sufferer, please reach out. There are Suicide Prevention Hotlines. There are support groups. There are therapies and medications. Just as there are many reasons for clinical depression, there are also many ways to fight it. The path out is different for each person. This link is to the {International Suicide Prevention Wiki} which will give you resources all over the world. The link also remains permanently on my side bar for whenever it might be needed.

You will be greatly missed Mr. Williams. 

Rest in Peace.

                      {Official Robin Williams Website}

* "You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't loose it."

                                                                                                                                     - Robin Williams.

Mentor, Role Model, Uplifting voice: You Will Be Missed By So Many, Miss Angelou . . . Rest In Peace

 

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Well done, Miss Maya.
Well done.
 

And Still I Rise

- Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

From: And Still I Rise. Copyright 1978. 

Quote of the Day

Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. I think that a lot of what people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.

- Aaron Swartz

History

- Robert Lowell

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter's moon ascends--
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull's no-nose--
O there's a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.

from: Selected Poems. Copyright 1976.

Goodnite Pete, You Have Earned Your Rest . . .

My job is to show folks there’s a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help to save the planet.

- Pete Seeger, Rest in Peace.

Dylan Thomas as Read by Sir Anthony Hopkins

*Sigh*

{Source}

Goodbye Mr. Ebert. We'll See You At the Movies.

On Tuesday Roger Ebert wrote on his blog, Roger Ebert's Journal, that he planned to slow down and take it easy. Today we hear that he has left us. My thoughts are with His wife Chaz, their family, and those who knew and loved him.





I have a soft spot in my heart for those who are capable of deep compassion, critical thinking, and stunning command of language. I did not always agree with Mr. Ebert's movie reviews, but he always made me think. As his illness progressed and he lost the ability to speak his voice seemed to crystallize. Humor, intelligence, and compassion informed his writing and his life, and it is with a heavy heart, therefore, I say goodby to Roger Ebert.

"I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me. I am 69, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. That is in the nature of things. In my plans for life after death, I say, again with Whitman:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

 - Roger Ebert,

His memoir: Life Itself.

Quote of the Day

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

- Gore Vidal, RIP. 

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

The words reached out and touched her, "He's not really gone, you know. He'll never be gone so long as we're here."

(Photo source)


Visit:
RAY BRADBURY . COM

Another Birthday Boy with a Few Good Words

Picture all experts as if they were mammals.

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity.

Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

Suspect your own motives, and all excuses.

Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

 - Christopher Hitchens, from Letters to a Young Contrarian.

(Once again, thank you Andrew Sullivan)

Painting of Christopher Hitchens,
 by Allison Bruns.

from: When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

     by Walt Whitman

1
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,   
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,   
I mourn'd—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.   
   
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;   
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.      

2
O powerful, western, fallen star!   
O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!   
O great star disappear'd! O the black murk that hides the star!   
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!      

3
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash'd
   palings,   
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich
   green,   
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume
   strong I love,   
With every leaf a miracle......and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-color'd blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich
   green,   
A sprig, with its flower, I break. 

Bad News Seems Endless These Days.

As nine government employees with single payer insurance debate depriving the majority of Americans of the protections afforded by the Affordable Care Act, one of my favorite poets left us.

Adrienne Rich, feminist poet and essayist, has died. - NYT.

Thank you for lending us your voice

 for as long as you did.

 
Dreams before Waking

Despair is the question
 - Elie Wiesel  

Hasta tu pais cambio. Lo has cambiado tu mismo.
- Nancy Morejon

Despair falls:
the shadow of a building
they are raising in the direct path
of your slender ray of sunlight
Slowly the steel girders grow
the skeletal framework rises
yet teh western light still filters
through it all
still glances off the plastic sheeting
they wrap around it
for dead of winter.

At the end of winter something changes
a faint subtraction
from consolations you expected
an innocent brilliance that does not come
through the flower shops set out
once again on teh pagement
their pots of tight-budded sprays
the bunches of jonquils stiff with cold
and at such a price
though someone must buy them
you study those hues as if with hunger

Despair falls
like the day you come home
from work, a summer evening
transparent with rose-blue light
and see they are filling in
the framework
the girders are rising
beyond your window
that seriously you live
in a different place
though you have never moved

and will not move, not yet
but will give away
your potted plants ot a friend
on the other side of town
along with the cut crystal
flashing in the window-frame
will forget the evenings
of watching the street, the sky
the planes in the feathered afterglow:
will learn to feel grateful simply for this foothold
where still you can manage
to go on paying rent

where still you can believe
it's the old neighborhood:
even the woman who sleeps at night
in the barred doorway -- wasn't she always there?
and the man glancing, darting
for food in the supermarket trash --
when did his hunger come to this?
what made the diffence?
what will make it for you?

What will make it for you?
you don't want to know the stages
and those who go through them don't want to tell
You have your four locks on the door
your savings, your respectable past
your strangely querulous body, suffering
sicknesses of the city no one can name
You have your pride, your bitterness
your memories of sunset
you think you can make it straight through
you don't speak of despair.

What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other's despair into hope? --
You yourself must change it. --
what would it feel like to know
your country was canging? --
You yourself must change it. --
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page to the end of despair? 

Trayvon Martin . . .

Each time I read that poor young man's name, my heart breaks.

I have sons. I have grandsons. And I have many worries and fears for them as they grow and make their way in the world. But regardless of the decisions and mistakes they may make in their lives, there is one fear I need never have for them.

I need never fear that an entitled bigot will put a bullet in them as they beg for mercy, just because of how they look.

And I need never fear that the law will then decide to ignore and contradict witnesses, refusing to mount a real investigation, and let the assailant go free.

My heart breaks for that young man, and for his mother. And my heart breaks for all the other young men who look like Trayvon, and for their mothers. For this fear is a daily part of their reality. How many mothers and sons must live out this nightmare?

And my heart breaks for the kind of broken society that can possibly justify it, in any way.

Some Days the Past Pulls Hard

Good Night, Miss Etta. Sweet Dreams