Frankly, I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I learned I was going to have to bleed once a month.
It’s not what I expected, though.
I don’t mind. I’m perfectly comfortable with the sags and wrinkles. That’s what happens when things get used. I don’t hate seeing my grandmother’s mouth on my face or the veins popping up on the backs of my hands.
I’m still sitting with it. And, I think that’s the odd part. I’m used to the activity of Maiden and Mother. This part is internally quieter.
(I wrote this sometime before December 1991)
I am water.
I move over and around obstacles.
Troubles pass through me like a stone in a pond.
Joy rests on my heart like a leaf on a stream.
I embrace the darkness.
I reflect the light.
How humans learn language is fascinating to me. And getting to watch a new brain learn it was wonderful.
When my child was learning to read, they came home from school one day and said, “My teacher doesn’t know how to spell ‘juice’. How weird is that? She ends with an E That makes the vowels long.”
I asked how she spelled it. J-U-I-C-E.
“How did you think it was spelled?” D-J-O-O-S.
“Interesting. And I understand how you thought that. But, she’s correct. It’s one of those ways English is weird.”
“Huh. I’ve been saying it wrong all along.”
I have always spelled that word wrong. A friend told me that she discovered it when she was a kid looking in the dictionary for a “bad word” and it’s been easier to remember.
When I lived in Florence, SC, in the early ’80s I found a hanging basket of the standard fuchsia-with-dark-purple variety and fell in love. Later that season I found one that was all pale pink and I liked having a different variety. I knew they liked shade and kept them inside. When I moved them to Charleston, they both died and I haven’t tried them since.
Seeing them growing into bushes planted in the ground in the UK in 1999 was astonishing to me.
My mother likes to have flowers blooming. But, she has no desire to maintain plants between flushes. So, when the hanging basket she has bad on her porch all summer started to crap out, she gave it to me.
I have looked up fuchsia care and I’m making notes here so I don’t have to reinvent that wheel later.
It will be dormant soon with no leaves or blossoms. (You can see they’re dropping like crazy already.) It needs to go into the guest room where it can stay cool and shady all winter. It should be watered about every 3 weeks until it starts getting new growth. When the leaves are all off, I can trim the branches to half as long.
It should do well outside the east facing kitchen window next summer. it should be watered regularly with the soil kept moist all blooming season.
The Candy Roaster winter squash is boring. Not much flavor and a kind of stringy texture. We won’t grow that again. Back to pattypans next year.
The Rutgers were OK. But, I prefer Cherokee Purples. Same with the yellow cherry tomatoes. They were good. But, I prefer Sweet 100s. They are more prolific and I like the smaller size.
We have Tango lettuce, spinach and kale doing nicely, each in a different trough. (We added a 4th.) I am spoiled by fall greens. If we ever can’t keep up a garden so that I have to buy them all the time, I’m going to get whiny.
The asparagus has done well in the trough. It’s going to be interesting to see how productive it is next year after the spring transplant.
I am the Audience 