Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Meanwhile, Back on the Farm . . .

As if to remind me I needn't go lusting after the exotic flora in DC's Botanic Garden, one of my tree peonies opened with an exquisite ruffled bloom, the size of a small cabbage.

And this is our latest calf -- a little bull whose mother had neither milk nor maternal instinct. He gets fed milk replacer from a suck bucket and, if hit lives (as the old farmers always cautiously say of any young creature, including human babies), should be a fine healthy fella. We've generally had good luck with bottle-raised calves, though there have, in thirty years, been some sad losses. But that was when the calves were weak and sickly to begin with.

This two day old boy, here seen resisting being moved to another barn, is strong enough to put up a struggle. A good sign for his survival.
Nice to be home!
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Washington, DC


Lynn (my very dear friend from high school days) and her husband Doug picked me up at the hotel on Sunday after my Malice panel was over.
They gave me a quick driving tour of DC -- a really beautiful city and at its best in spring.

Then we went to the Botanic Garden and wandered through the huge conservatory. I suffered extreme plant envy -- especially for the amazing orchids and bromeliads. There were some pretty fabulous cacti there too -- many of which seemed to have been designed by Dr. Seuss.

Here's a link to pictures of just a few of the things I really liked.

DC Botanical Garden



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Monday, April 28, 2008

Back from Malice

It's been a long day -- to fly from DC to Asheville, first one flies to Detroit, oddly enough. But I'll post a few pictures from the Malice Domestic convention beginning with the panel composed of four nominees for best novel -- Rhys Bowen (Her Royal Spyness), Margaret Maron (Hard Row), Louise Penny (A Fatal Grace), and Donna Andrews (The Penguin Who Knew Too Much). Elaine Viets ( Murder With Reservations ) the fifth nominee, was unable to attend.

The very charming Louise was the winner and I have to say her Armand Gamache series, set in a Canadian village, sounds intriguing.
(I was rooting for Margaret who is another North Carolinian -- plus I've read most of her novels while I'm not so familiar with the others. )

I was part of a panel on "Gutsy Gals," moderated by Kate Flora ( Theda Kozak series.) In the picture below, Mary Saums (Thistle and Twigg series) and Kate are shown as we gathered to prepare for our panel. Not pictured are Judy Clemens (Stella Crown series), Julia Pomeroy (Abby Silvernale series), and myself.
Seen from the dais as the audience trickles in for our panel -- lots of folks who admire women who can shoot straight and otherwise hold their own.
And after the panel, signing. A gratifying number of folks bought my books and told me they were looking forward to the latest one.
Apologies for this sketchy post -- but I'm off to bed.
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Friday, April 25, 2008

Malice Domestic


Leaving on a jet plane --- back Monday afternoon. I'm off to Arlington, Virginia for the annual mystery convention called Malice Domestic. Big hotel, lots and lots of fans and authors of the traditional mystery, three days of panels ( I'll be on one) and presentations, and all manner of carrying on.

Then I'll spend Sunday night with my best friend from high school (she and her husband live in nearby Chevy Chase) and fly back Monday morning. I'm not taking my laptop so will not be posting.

Till Monday . . .
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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Washing Windows

Like ironing the linen hand towels, washing windows is another mundane (and infrequent) task that I rather enjoy. Our windows have been screenless all winter and for several weeks now we've been opening them as the days grow warmer.

I love the feeling of screenless windows. I grew up in Florida where window screens were a constant and was amazed when we traveled in Europe to see windows in French apartments open with pillows and bedding spilling out to air. It seemed so exotic -- so European. And for a few brief weeks, we enjoy that same joy of opening our winter-stale house to the fragrant spring air, letting it flow, unimpeded by any barrier.

But now that an increasing number of insects are out and about -- wasps and huge droning carpenter bees by day and far too many light-seeking moths by night -- I haul the screens up from the basement and put them in place. But first, I wash the windows.

The dirt that's accumulated since last fall, the specks of insect droppings, the greasy finger prints, the smudges left by dog noses, even the imprint of a dove's wing, left when the bird ( probably pursued by a hawk) flew into the glass -- all these are wiped away like so many venial sins and our cherished eastern view is refreshed, both in the dining room and our bedroom.



In Madeline L'Engle's lovely adult novel A Severed Wasp, a violinist calls himself a window cleaner and he speaks of human isolation "'in this fragile bag of bones, where all our windows have been so fouled with futility and folly that we can't see out. So there have to be window cleaners.' Artists, he said, would clean the muddied windows with the purity of their art."

I can't pretend to anything so lofty. But I'm always reminded of this passage as I spray and wipe the dusty glass and the squeak of a paper towel on clean glass and a clear view to the eastern horizon bring a modified sort of rapture to this particular bag of bones

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Gurus of Being




The dog on the left is Scout- a pleasant pup who lives down the road from us but visits often. He has one brown eye and one blue eye and, as you can see, poses like nobody's business.

Though Scout is a neutered male, our male dogs find him most attractive. His androgynous charm reminds me of Orlando Bloom as the elf in "Lord of the Rings."

Something about this sequence of pictures made me think of my niece's concept of a photo haiku.

So I'll try for a word haiku to go with them.



At home in this world
Gurus of being here, now --
Dogs in the spring sun.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Earth Day


I invite you to follow the link below to see some of Earth's gifts that caught my fancy today in our little corner of creation.


http://picasaweb.google.com/vickilanemysteries/EarthDayAnAppreciation
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Monday, April 21, 2008

Quel Bummer!

Quel bummer! (as we who are to be published in French say) ---

I just saw the short list for the SIBA awards and OLD WOUNDS is not on it.


I can't help being a tad disappointed, even though I was amazed to find myself a nominee in the first place. And, of course, I still feel honored to be in the company of etc . . .

So, c'est la vie and congratulations to the finalists!


Here's the short list --

FICTION
1.Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead (Algonquin)2. Down River by John Hart (Thomas Dunne)3. Garden Spells by Sara Addison Allen (Bantam)4. Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig (St. Martin’s Press)5. Thistle & Twigg by Mary Saums (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

(Exit, humming "My Day Will Come.")
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Sunday, April 20, 2008

A Sunday Drive


Let's go for a ride! What a long time since I've heard that! Present day gas prices and environmental concerns make driving around just for sight-seeing a slightly guilty pleasure. But back in the late forties and early fifties, the Sunday drive was a tradition in our family. We didn't have to go far to get out of the Tampa suburbs and into the country where there was a tannin-stained quiet river with white sand banks and tiny darting minnows -- the perfect place for wading. Or a field with a gate and a horse (known in our family as 'Vicki's horse')that would politely take a carrot from an outstretched hand. Sometimes we went to Jack Holmes Landscape Nursery and wandered about the jungle-like rows of sub-tropical plants while my parents pondered a small purchase for our yard.

There was no radio, back-seat TV, I-Pod, Gameboy, or the like but somehow we were entertained. I think once I had a pin-wheel I could stick out the window and watch turn. And there was, of course, the timeless game of making sure your sibling didn't impinge on that invisible line down the center of the shared back seat.

In the early seventies my grandparents were still going for a Sunday drive. They would drive out to the house my husband and I had built on a lake in Odessa, not far from Tampa. Their big Oldsmobile would creep up our sandy drive to stop by our garden. A honk of the horn and we'd come out to greet them. Our dog Juno would dance excitedly around the car as they emerged, barking a joyful welcome. My grandfather would reach into his coat pocket, pull out the wax paper-wrapped scraps left from his lunch, and dole them out to the dog who sat expectantly before him. Then my grandmother would come into the house for a visit while my grandfather put the dog in his car and took her for a ride, as he'd done during the three months Juno had lived with them while my husband and I toured Europe on a motor cycle.

Eventually we did what was best for everyone. Juno went to live with my grandparents where she could be spoiled all day long, rather than being left alone while we taught school. And she could go to ride everyday. And my grandfather had 'his' dog back.

(Our dogs love to ride but have few opportunities. This was for a hurried trip down to the mailbox, one mile, round-trip. They loved it.)
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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Rain, Rain, Glorious Rain

It's been dust-dry and the when the rain came this afternoon, we were delighted. The peas and lettuce and spinach I just sowed were nicely soaked and all the new greenery and blossoms looked better for the drenching.


. Water ran in our recently installed gutters -- a charming sight! And a very pale, very low rainbow hinted that the pot of gold might be in our barn.
Only Eddie, who had been caught in the downpour, was not amused.
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Friday, April 18, 2008

Back to the Garden Again with Pictures

It was time and past time to make a start on the box beds where I'm planting lettuce, spinach, and Oregon snow peas. After harvesting their tender young leaves and flower buds for a stir fry, I hoicked out last fall's collards which were finally going to seed. Then I took the weed eater to the masses of chickweed in the beds. Next I used a shovel to loosen the soil before, in my lazy woman style of gardening, I sat by the bed and used a hand hoe to fluff up and then smooth down the soil.
It's a very pleasant job, sitting there in the warm sun under the blue sky, with the hum of bees, all manner of birdsong, and the melodious wind chimes on our porch for accompaniment. Fragrant viburnum and the sharp sweet smell of plum blossoms provide a counterpoint to the lovely aroma of fresh-turned earth. And the first swallowtail butterflies are dancing above the lavender, pink, and white mats of creeping phlox (around here, we call it 'thrift.')

It's exactly where I want to be and what I want to be doing. Admittedly it's slow going; a winter spent in the comfy chair tapping away on a laptop is no preparation for wielding a weed eater and swinging a hoe. But at last, as the sun is beginning to near the western ridge, the seeds are tucked in place. I pick some of the early asparagus and start for the house, ready for some ibuprophen and a hot shower.

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Back to the Garden

Okay, so ignore this post. The pictures didn't upload and I tried again -- same words but with pictures. I'd like to delete this post but I'd lose Pat's comment and if the picture are lurking here in those little boxes, I might delete them from my second try. So stop reading and go on to my next post. No, really, stop reading now.

It was time and past time to make a start on the box beds where I'm planting lettuce, spinach, and Oregon snow peas. After harvesting their tender young leaves and flower buds for a stir fry, I hoicked out last fall's collards which were finally going to seed. Then I took the weed eater to the masses of chickweed in the beds. Next I used a shovel to loosen the soil before, in my lazy woman style of gardening, I sat by the bed and used a hand hoe to fluff up and then smooth down the soil.
It's a very pleasant job, sitting there in the warm sun under the blue sky, with the hum of bees, all manner of birdsong, and the melodious wind chimes on our porch for accompaniment. Fragrant viburnum and the sharp sweet smell of plum blossoms provide a counterpoint to the lovely aroma of fresh-turned earth. And the first swallowtail butterflies are dancing above the lavender, pink, and white mats of creeping phlox (around here, we call it 'thrift.')

It's exactly where I want to be and what I want to be doing. Admittedly it's slow going; a winter spent in the comfy chair tapping away on a laptop is no preparation for wielding a weed eater and swinging a hoe. But at last, as the sun is beginning to near the western ridge, the seeds are tucked in place. I pick some of the early asparagus and start for the house, ready for some ibuprophen and a hot shower.

What, you're still reading?


Thursday, April 17, 2008

A Poem in your Pocket


“I, too, dislike it; there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
It, after all, a place for the genuine.”

(From “Poetry” by Marianne Moore)





April is Poetry Month and today is Poem in Your Pocket Day – you are invited to carry a poem in your pocket to read to others, to leave on a colleagues's desk or in some public place, or just to finger occasionally as a silent talisman.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/poem/html/poems/poems.shtml

Personally, I’ve always loved poetry – and like the character Nola in the forthcoming book, I memorized great wads of it when I was young. My favorites were long dead poets –– poets from my mother’s college poetry anthology and later from my own newer edition of that Untermeyer anthology. – Browning, Tennyson, Vachel Lindsey, Rudyard Kipling, Yeats, Eliot, Hopkins, e.e. cummings, Dorothy Parker, Randall Jarrell, and, that perpetual favorite, Minnie Minnie Moore.

But in the past few years, going to book fairs and writers conferences, I’ve become aware of many contemporary poets.
Glenis Redmond, Jeff Davis, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Cathy Bower-Smith, Naomi Shihab Nye,Irene Honeycutt, Doris Davenport – these are just a few whose work is currently running through my days.

Here’s a nice little starter poem for your pocket from William Carlos Williams.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

My, How You've Grown!


Everywhere on our farm are reminders of the passing of time. The twelve-foot shrub shown below grew from seed -- an Osage Orange I picked off the ground beneath the parent shrub in the gardens of the Biltmore House almost twenty years ago.
The weeping willow in front of the Blue House was a slender sapling planted by my sister-in-law Fay when she lived there, almost thirty years ago.
The river birches were three unpromising, finger-diameter sticks when I stuck them in the ground in 1976.
But our basement door and the wall above it tell my favorite tale.
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