Ok you guys the other thread is getting too long, so here is May.
May flowers, oh dear God despite the sadness and hurt and fear, oh how I love Your flowers. I have a huge vase of long stemmed gardenias on the table, freely given by a vendor who had an excess, and ran around the market handing out bouquets.
the Plumerias in my yard are popping out leaves and waxy creamy smelly deliciousness. And how I could go on and on about the myriad of orchids.
God bless us each and every one. For the ones here that are really having an extra hard time, tons of love and support to you.
Way too hot for May in Tenn. What will it be when summer really comes to the muggy south? Coco no such exotic flowers here but we have lots of wildflowers we allow to bloom just outside the yard fence in the pasture. Always interesting to see what has bloomed. We had beautiful dogwood and redbud just gone. Tenn is a beautiful state.
Feeling very disoriented! I picked up my son from college in an overnight run to North Carolina. Jeff is still in the geri-psych unit, so his brother and my mom had to fill my visiting shoes yesterday and today. I'll be there tomorrow, and the reports from my surrogates are ok!
Changed it. Dianne is in the center. The other two are the x-friends who turned their back on her. Happier days then. Photo about 1990, painted in 2004. I can be seen in one of the sunglasses but not at this resolution.
Wolf what an amazing artist you are so so beautiful your painting. I love to see Dianne's red hair. And the foliage is so lush and full. Thank you I just love it.
I also in my not being able to sleep tonight, thought of those so called friends in the painting. HOW, just HOW can friends walk away like that? Now I am not perfect friend, and have been know to talk stink behind backs etc. , however, I KNOW, that I would NOT abandon a close friend, or any loved one, that I would AT LEAST call and give love once in awhile.
Thanks guys. I put that up because I talked about painting again in the slap thread and I thought while it was a slower weekend on the board I would put some of them onto flickr and out into the sea of other stuff on the web.
I said everybody should tinker on a piano and try things because we don't know what gifts we've been given. I never had a lesson but when we open we start and we learn. Everyone here has abilities because everybody here is doing or has done the most important thing in life I learned how to do. Yes, it's the same.
Dianne and I hitch-hiked across Canada in 1973 and down the west coast and stayed at her sister's in Marin county for six months north of SF. One day my BIL asked me to help him and we went up to a farm owned by the sherrif of Mendocino county as I remember. The hippies in the chicken coop (brass bed, sack of whole grain rice, stained glass windows) wanted plumbing so my BIL and I ran plastic piping out and I helped him hook up the sink. They paid us with a garbage bag full of 'marinol'.
They were up on the hills by Mt Tam and one day (blitzed out of my skull) I decided to walk down into the valley to Corte Madera and bought brushes, canvases, and oils. I looked through National Geographic and found some pictures and did my first painting the first day, the second painting the second day, and a third before the week was out. I still have the one I did that second day and I'll switch it in so anyone reading this can see it.
Understand? I was given this. Some of you will say by God and some by nature; but, it was there waiting to be discovered and then nurtured. You don't know what talents you have. No one ever listens because we are reluctant to explore ourselves without all our baggage and defences. I however know different because I stumbled on it.
I have never cared whether people like a picture or drawing. I give them away when people show me they really like something. I rarely sign them. That would be about the self aggrandizement of me and it's much more serious than that. It's me disappearing into the work itself.
Carol and I had this discussion a while back. The writer does not paint the pictures. The reader does. Oh but a good writer takes you places. No. A good writer gives you the materials you use to create. When readers talk about books they both read even though they both understood the bad guy was the bad guy or the person struggled or it was this city - they do not see the same books. But they do see. They see what they and only they created in their own mind which is distinct from every other reader in many ways.
You don't know what you can do. And by human reluctance you are unlikely to find out. The way it is. I found one we can see and my only thoughts about it beyond that it draws others in is that I don't work hard enough at it but I do understand that it is a journey where you never arrive and you do it by making your needs and desires disappear and then you work. Afterwards "you" look. Just like writing. Just like caregiving. Sewing. Gardening. Quilt making. Cooking. Exercise. Family. Friends. Everything but you. You disappear when you do them and then you 'look' at what was.
Coco, resistance to reality is futile and causes problems because it is reality and we have to learn to survive and manage with that. I hate them and I forgive them and I struggle with it but there is only one reality and in this one reality I have to learn to let them go. Putting up that picture was one tiny step in that where I'm learning to allow them to be what they were then in the days that were. See the sisters as they are and realize it is you that defines the relationships by your own needs (need family wish it wasn't you) and that you get to be yourself in all that just like everybody else is. Learn to free yourself to be more by deciding what that is.
I am getting there Wolf, I know, I cannot just freak out every time people are selfish jerks. Yet I refuse to believe that every time it is NOT that they are jerks, they are they truly are. Up theirs. So how to handle selfish self centered jerks, that will come in time. Ride that tide of resistance.
And art!!! We are all artists, I simply love to see ANYTHING people make, it is always so original and shows their uniqueness. Loved your California story too, I have a few good 70's one. California is cool.
We don't have many May flowers here, but the entire time we have lived in this house, we have had rabbits living under our storage shed. Some people are dog people or cat people. I'm definitely a rabbit person, so I've really enjoyed this, especially when the little ones come. The other day I was looking out the kitchen window, watching one of the bunnies, when I saw something else out of the corner of my eye. In the very back of the yard (where there was a little water still standing from the storms the day before), there was a mommy duck and a whole bunch of very tiny baby ducks. These little duck babies were so small I think they would have still fit back in the egg. I stood there for the longest time, just watching them. They must have hatched very close to where I saw them, because something with legs only 3/4 of an inch long couldn't have walked very far! Anyway, I guess now I'm a duck person, too.
Wolf thanks for your posts you are a very insightful person. Our oldest son has written a book about a pit bull that was dumped near his rural home he like most tried to run the dog off. A day later he found the dog had been shot but not killed so he couldn't allow the dog to suffer and took him to the vet. Well long story short the dog now lives with them. The book tells about this some from the dog's point of view. When I read the book I thought of your postings that what was written and then what I understood was what I got out of the book. His point of the book was that the pit bull would respond to his treatment and understanding from his master. - By the way I have not made friends with the dog although other family members have and say he is as the book says. Our son writes much like you do. He is probably about your age as he is/was a hippie. Do hippies ever change ---- they just grow older. ;o) Not saying you were or ever were a hippie. Do not be offended, please
Uhh..no, man...I'm like..totally cool with that (wait, that's the nineties)...no do your thing, man...it's like..out there and we're all stardust, man.
Hippies definitely change. In fact they disappeared. I think the self indulgence became too apparent. Good times though. I must have heard "get a haircut" a hundred times.
They had one thing right I think. Life is glorious when we find ourselves fully occupied within it. I think the wear down of living most of our lives and all the things that happen deaden us inside as a means of coping through all the very long tasks like a career, raising children, long term social situations, buying and paying for a house, and all those things take years which doesn't encourage spontaneity in us. It's too bad.
Wolf - my grandchildren are young adults now and when someone asks if their dad was a hippie they laugh and say "was?" Yes, he has a college degree (finally) and was successful in his chosen career but he does still hold to many of his thinkings of his younger days. he is a generous fellow to a fault, will take in anyone or anything as witness to the dog adventure of late. He went from long hair to almost no hair - heredity ;o)
Flo, I do think some of it survived. Not in many though. I'm glad about the dog. And as pitbulls demonstrate, beauty is in the eye of the beholder (because my god they're ugly).
I got my chuckle today. I bought a healthy catnip plant for Gracie. She has never shown an interest in it-guess she's not a hippie. I gave the plant to the cats next door. Their owner brought back to pot today. They had eaten down to the roots and were banking off the walls.
Well 'somebody' sent me a cat toy that makes a chirping sound when you throw it against something and one of my cats has learned how it works and she gets that beady eyed look and pounces and throws it. There is such racket of this little thing chirping away flying all over the house while the other cat looks on bored.
I'm staying up all night. It's 5:40am, the dawn is breaking, the cool air is full of song birds, and I'm anxious to watch another day of the markets melting. I'm waiting for MacDonald's® to open and I'm thinking about how you define usefully to someone how to be in the 'now'. Like a recipe for fairly predictable results. Is there such a thing?
We'll see what the day brings beside me crashing probably by noon.
Nora--there's a fairly high percentage of cats--maybe 20%--who are immune to the joys of catnip. Gracie must've been raised on a catnip farm in a previous life.
Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you've had a baby. Somebody doesn't know that once you're a mother, 'normal' is history.
Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct. Somebody never took a three year-old shopping.
Somebody said that being a mother is boring. Somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver's permit.
Somebody said if you're a 'good' mother, your child will 'turn out good.' Somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.
Somebody said you don't need an education to be a mother. Somebody never helped a fourth grader with his math.
Somebody said you can't love the second child as much as you love the first. Somebody doesn't have two children.
Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery. Somebody never watched her 'baby' get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten or on a plane headed for military 'boot camp.'
Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married. Somebody doesn't know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother's heartstrings.
Somebody said a mother's job is done when her last child leaves home. Somebody never had grandchildren.
Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don't need to tell her. Somebody isn't a mother.
Lori, How true! About mother's day my dh apparently called our youngest son plotting something about the day and my son called me and asked if I knew that Dad had called him. I said no and he said he was just wondering because he thought maybe I had called for him because his Dad hasn't called him for years in fact he usually cannot remember how to use his phone. Even more perplexing about 30 mins before dh called son I had been called into dh's room to look at phone because it had missed calls on it that have been bothering him...so I told him they were all old calls and there were not messages and he said he wanted them off the phone but couldn't do it.. so I deleted the missed calls and gave him back his phone.
dh hasn't remembered holidays or stuff for a few years now so I am baffled. Then when I told my daughter about the call she laughed and said last time she called dad he told her he wanted to mow the lawn but I wouldn't let him.... I like to do it he said. He hasn't mowed for at least 10 years...cannot remember how to start the mower.... I don't know what is going on but it makes me uneasy.
That's a great piece Lori. Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers (tee-hee-hee). Seriously, thanks to all of you who mothered someone.
Here's a lovely commerical. From P&G about moms. It's quite beautiful:
http://www.wimp.com/beautifulad/
It took me a while to find the music and then someone I thought played it well. It's Divenire by Ludovico Einaudi. I'm playing it over and over now that I've found it.
It's a stunningly beautiful morning. It's a long weekend up here which I realized yesterday. The roads are packed with people going up to open up their cottages on the laurentian shield. The nurseries are filled with gardeners. The huge market is packed with shoppers and buses. This is a mennonite district (cousins of the amish) and anywhere north of the city you will pass the horses and buggies and them dressed in black.
Last year when I had my wife with me, I was so busy I looked out the window twice all summer aside from the grocery shopping when my helper was here. This year I've been out for drives and for some walks and even though I'm so lonely my lonliness feels lonely, I have to keep focused that it's just May and though I go days without talking to a soul I will be at the garden center next week and I will plant the flowers she would normally have loved planting.
My honey locust tree out the back is the last to emerge and it is filling out fast in it's glorious bright yellows before the leaves become green. The mallards which are everywhere in April have moved further north. The squirrel mothers with their backs shredded of fur by their young come charging up when my window opens and peanuts fling out.
Life is out there as beautiful and vital as it was in my youth where I am as passionless and reluctant now as I was full of enthusiasm then. What a difference an attitude makes!
And on this fine day I have gotten up still in my pajamas, sipping yesterday's cold coffee, to say what a fine place this forum is because when I was laying in bed wondering who I am and thinking about recent events; I realized just how much this forum has helped me and been one of the most important parts of my life among all the soldiers in the same battle as I am.
Even though I have been blessed with a very full life and have met many people, I feel quite comfortable that if I am asked at the end what stands out - it will be easy. In my darkest hours in my hardest days, I was part of the finest example of humanity I have borne witness to. The people here have reaffirmed my faith in what humans are and can be.
I have other things to say about when your spouse is in residence. But that's a different topic and belongs on that thread so that people looking for answers or discussion will find it.
Wolf...I thought I would take a peek in here before we leave for our 5:30 am trek to town for the Farm Market. to hawk our wares.
That was a lovely uplifting post, especially with the bit of stress going on lately. Thanks for making my day.
I sometimes wonder, that we the people here in this caregiver land, have grown in to nicer more caring people due to what we are experiencing. I agree, what a wonderful bunch of people, how I love you all too.
And your weather and flowers and critters, I can never hear enough of it! My friends and family in B.C. have also been extolling the virtues of spring in the Northwest. Yes, Hawaii is amazing, but no more amazing than the rest of the world.
Off to fluff my hair, hope I always remember that, and to pluck eyebrows lol
Wolf, thank you for your lovely post. It reminds me that there are people out there who still reflect and enjoy beauty. It sounds like you are still suffering your loss by placing your wife. I am sorry for that but this post also reminded me that I wanted to thank you for posting your painting and sharing with us. Your talent and humor are appreciated from afar. I awoke this a.m. at 4 with dread... I am stressing myself out I know but I am trying to plan my son's college graduation party for next Friday and my dh asks me a hundred times a day when his party is. I don't know why he remembers there is a party but not when....sheesh. Then I quietly try to make coffee because I know once dh wakes up the day starts with me having to go into his incredibly smelly room and strip bed, spray down all wet surfaces with lysol, or bleach or febreeze to get smell out. Of course it is spring so have to mow (large yard, takes 3 hours to just mow) then trim and haven't even planted beds.... Then have to go to his office and take care of some matters that have come up with the closing of his practice last year. Go to work at my part-time job. Whine whine....I am tired of myself... Meanwhile he sits in one chair or other all day long just staring... at a book which he doesn't really read, tv, or me ... It really might drive me crazy. This post is probably not doing much to reaffirm your faith in human-ness.
You're getting it done. Hang in there. Try and remember what you're giving. You'll be needing those memories later when the only thing you can remember is you're mistakes (my mistakes).
Try shaving them. I never understood why women pluck them. They grow back or at least new ones are made plus it's painful. Men just get in the habit of shaving and a women's electric razor would make short work of them. Plus years later you could grow a unibrow.
Since the title of this thread is "May Flowers", I'll post here. Today is a beautiful, sunny day, temp 75. After I picked my wife up at day care we drove out to our house (where we used to live before moving into the retirement Inn). The daffodils and shad were past but one dogwood was covered with flowers. DW and I walked around the house as much as she was able, and sat on a bench to enjoy the view of the bay and mountains of Acadia National Park. She seemed to enjoy it. I took a scenic route back to the inn and drove only 25-30 mph. She enjoyed watching the scenery and several times commented on something she saw (although I could not make out what she was saying).
The roses here in Michigan have started their yearly show,clematis all opening an to cap it all off a pair of beatiful bluebirds have nested in one of the many houses we have and are busy feeding four little bluebirds,it IS a beautiful world out there if we just stop an enjoy the little things an don't dwell on our own problems
Oh Amber, I would love to have had one real good snow this last winter. It's so beautiful on the ground and I love to watch it coming down but didn't happen! Where are you?
Hi, I'm in Central BC Canada, up on a mountain at about 3800 feet.
We get 6 months of winter here -40C at it's coldest and the rest of the year is a quick spring...8 weeks mud season, summer about another 8 weeks, fall the last 8 weeks. But I do love living in my cabin by the lake in the wildernest now listening to the loons at night and waking up and looking at a deer peeking at me through the window. So I'll give up on the flowers...deer eat them anyways....and enjoy the wild life here.. Plus the fishing is really good this year.
I remember hearing the loons when we camped by a lake in BC on our way to Alaska. Never heard such a mournful sound. Also remember we had to keep OFF near at hand to ward off the mosquitoes! BC is beautiful - we really enjoyed our trip through there. I live in the south - we probably have only 62 frost days here.
Attention KMart shoppers! Attention. There will be no frost days here because I am planting flowers and if there are I will be very, very cross. And no sneaking around being moquitoes either. I don't care how beautiful you are BC, bite me and I will bite you back. Also anyone living above 2,000ft sea level come down from there right now because you'll fall and hurt yourself. Come on.
First songbirds are at 3:30am, the first light is 4:45, the traffic starts at 5:30. If you're going to scare the morning paper person with the sudden flashlight under your chin in the window trick - well it just doesn't work in the summer. I was really nice to the person on the phone calling me from the local rag asking me to please not scare the delivery people. I practised my thick Stan accent on him. It doesn't matter what Stan. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kurdistan, Uzbeckistan. That guy got around.
And speaking of India (pronounced indy - yahhh). Say that. English accent. You can do it. Here, I'll help. Try reading the following sentence without thinking English accent. "I see. And that's supposed to make me feel better is it?"
Now keep that sentence in mind. In fact repeat it over and over with the most dreadfully overdone english accent you can muster. "I see. And that's supposed to make me feel better is it?"
That's it. I'm off. The neighbour will be walking the dog in 8 minutes and I have a dog to chase. Payback is a beech. But that's a different accent.
"I see. And that's supposed to make me feel better is it?"