Always Take Your Camera to the Grocery Store

. . . because you just never know when you may need to take a picture.

Nature Laughs at Time-Pieces - Magpie Tales

                                Not for her, Man's silly watches, keeping

                                Manufactured time, turning eternal

                                Tracts of forever into infernal

                                Seconds and minutes bounded by beeping.

                                No, not for her, the minute hand creeping,

                                Alarm clocks ticking order external,

                                Making the rules for lives once diurnal 
                                Setting strict hours for waking and sleeping . . .
 
                                Her time is reckoned by the Great Bear's pace
                                Circling the lynch pin of the starry skies . . .
                                Hot summer's fecund growth . . . late swarming bees . . .
                                Slow fall of crisping leaves . . . bright ice's trace.
                                Her clocks are dandelions and brief May-flies
                                And cuckoos calling from the spring-green trees.

For more Magpie Tales, go HERE.

Come for a Walk

The past week has been just spectacular with so many things coming into bloom.  I saw the first humming bird yesterday evening and though the tulips and daffodils are going, going, gone, there are buds showing on the roses and the iris. 

We had a wonderful visit with the cousins from Tampa -- I made one pound cake before they arrived and their daughter Fay liked it so much that she and I made a second one. Barb kindly helped me get my garden ready to do some more planting -- all of this is documented in the slide show below.

And a very happy Sunday to all of you!

Lane Brothers Dairy ~ Sepia Saturday

The young man in the buggy is my paternal grandfather. The date is sometime in the early 1900's; the place, Buffalo Avenue, Tampa, Florida.  These are the Lane Brothers and this is their milk delivery wagon.

By the time I knew my grandfather, he was retired. The family dairy had been sold and absorbed into a larger dairy. There was no talk of cows in the family, my father having happily put behind him his days of drudgery at the dairy. Indeed, when we moved to NC and bought a milk cow, my father simply shook his head in bewilderment and chagrin.

This recipe book dates from 1931 -- when the dairy was thriving.

Prize- winning recipes -- all using LANE BROTHERS MILK!

Our future milk cow ... here we go again!

For others' Sepia Saturday  posts, go to http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/
 

A Brief Visit

Going . . .

Going . . .

Gone.

House Guests Bearing Gifts

Isn't this a wonderful crow? Our cousin Barb bought us this beautiful piece she made -- a woodcut, inspired by the picture below that I posted sometime back in the winter.

Barb carved a wood block then painted it with acrylics and printed and reprinted the image on canvas. Bits salvaged from old furniture provide a unique presentation.

We're enjoying our house guests -- an enjoyable and relaxing time to catch up on news of Tampa as well as other family -- as well as an excuse to eat and drink very well.

And yes, they brought their dog -- the charming Blackbird.

Ali Ali is in love. 

 

One Tanka, Two Haiku

One Tanka, Two Haiku

I removed the second haiku/picture to correct the  spelling and now, drat it, can't make the updated picture post. So I reposted the entire blog -- but am unable to transfer the comments.

But here's the picture . . .  and I'll put the haiku below it.

Aerial assault --

Blur-winged bees descend upon

Fragrant pear blossoms.

Lilith -- Magpie Tales

 Not quite human was what they whispered . . .

Some called her daughter of the djinn.

Old Adam's first wife, others muttered . . .

Immortal,  she returns again.

Wicked stepmother in grim fairy tales,

All of history's evil queens,

She-wolf, Jezebel, Medea . . .

Stalking  through our midnight dreams.

Honing her lipstick to the killing point,

La Belle Dame sans merci paints her smiles.

Blood-dark kisses stain forever

Those lost souls by Lilith beguiled.

Learn more about Lilith HERE.
Follow the link for more  Magpie Tales 

Burnsville for Beginners

Okay, I have nothing to explain these three pictures except that I took them last week when I was in Burnsville to teach my class. 

I guess it was the influence of Merisi who takes such incredible pictures of buildings against the blue sky and posts them on her blog Vienna for Beginners.

Of course, she has Vienna as a subject . . . with the occasional detour to Venice. 

But I loved this series of pictures -- they have a creepy, surreal quality to them -- like an old sci-fi  or horror movie maybe.

And speaking of horror movies, I have a title for one. Bear with me here.


I was emailing the coordinator of an book festival to let him know that I'd have a new book out in September. . .  titled The Day of Small Thongs.

Fortunately I caught the error before hitting SEND but I've been amusing myself (remember, I'm easily amused) by imagining a story to go with that title.

It's set in Hollywood and the premise is that evil forces have a secret weapon -- a Super Duper Shrinking Ray that shrinks all the thong underwear in a fifty mile radius to a third of its original size. It happens all at once, at high noon, and bedlam ensues, not to mention widespread panic, pain, and general bewilderment. 


Angry mobs storm Victoria's Secret bearing torches and pitchforks and walking in a very strange way.  Emergency rooms are slammed with wild-eyed  . . .


Okay, that's enough for now. Got that out of my system. See you tomorrow.

Sunday Gathering

I  find myself once again at the end of the week, looking for something to do with pictures I liked but didn't post earlier. 

Hence, more collages --like a thrifty housewife pulling leftover odds and ends from the fridge to make a soup or an omelette.

Miss Susie Hutchins and Marigold think that you should be sure to biggify in order to see them better.

Benjamin and Harriet

Ol' Benjamin Franklin Freeman? 
Aye, law . . . Oh, I knowed him . . .

Now that there was some kind of a man!

Borned in eighteen and thirty four

Into a hard place and hard times.

And when the times got harder still,

They say he fought on both sides--

Southern gray, Yankee blue -- he done what he had to do.

When the War was over with -- according to some --

 Ben and his brother laid for a man,

What had rode off with the family's last horse,
Leaving naught behind to pull the plow.

 The thief was one of the Home Guard
Claimed the right 'count of Ben's wearing the blue.

Ben kilt that scoundrel dead and called it even,

Though the horse and its gears was long gone.

Reconstructing hisself, Ben went to Mars Hill;

Studied medicine with the doctor there

Till  he could write a prescription good as any man.

From all round, folks come to him for curing

He couldn't heal what lay between him and Harriet though.

And he went for her lover with a pocket knife --

Meaning to kill the no count feller 
But the durn knife couldn't do no good. 

So Ben packed up his young uns and took off

With ox and sled and tools 
Enough to reconstruct hisself again,

Over yon, on the far side of the mountain.

He lived out another thirty years,

Well content to be shed of that huzzzy,

Watching the young uns growing

Into lives of their own.

In later years he saw his wife once more,

Posed for one last picture at Harriet's side.

Still tall and straight he stood, unbowed by time.

Old age had got her, he told me later . . .

Yet still . . . he'd shook his head and spat before allowing

As she still had that teasing way about her

That had made him try to kill a one time friend

With naught but a  Barlow pocket knife.

Once again I'm using someone else's kin. I posted about Benjamin Franklin Freeman back in February, before I was doing Sepia Saturdays and his story is just too good to pass up. You can go HERE for more about Ben and Harriet.

And for even more pictures and stories of other folk's kin. visit Sepia Saturday.

A Spring Rain is a Lovesome Thing

'Red sky at morning -- sailor take warning.'

Though it was more of a pinkish-orange than red, Thursday's sky did, indeed, foretell rain.

I managed to do a bit in the garden -- tidying up the asparagus beds. pruning the black pussy willow, and planting some sugar snap peas and mesclun -- before the clouds rolled in and the rain drops drove me back to the house.

The recent hot days have dried things out amazingly fast and the rain was most welcome -- especially as there've been brush fires in the area.

Such a pleasure to see the drops pocking the surface of the fish pool. . .

...making the periwinkle glisten...

... and setting an evergreen a-twinkle with tiny lights.

The tulips blushed pink with pleasure and the forsythia was a joyous yellow burst against the new-mown grass's emerald green.

A spring rain is a lovesome thing.