Double Pinwheel Tree Blossom

This was taken this morning.  My photo.

Double Pinwheel blossom Apocynaceae Tabernaemontana divaricata, Crepe Jasmine or Pinwheel Flower.

When we first moved into our Florida home, there were six Tavernaemontana divaricata trees growing just east of the front door.  With rich, lush dark green leaves, they were wonderful just by themselves.  In the summer, however, they continually blossomed with small, white, 5-petaled flowers.  Unfortunately they were already overgrown, too big for the space they had been planted in.  Greedy for sun, they pushed their branches up and outward, looking for all the world like trees bent by constant, gail-force winds.  

After a time, I had help digging them up, roots intact, and transferring them to a place in the back yard where they had lots of room to grow.  

Palm Beach Gardens, FL.  My photo.

One little sapling escaped our notice.  Sprouted from a seed, it gradually increased in size and beauty.  Once stunted by the primary cluster of trees, it is now alone, but very happily growing, at the corner of our house and the garage.  I keep it pruned down low--about 5 to 6 feet tall.  Usually it bears the plain flowers, like the one in the photo below.

From a site on-line: ZDNet.com.  The photo is credited to Image by rjackb via Flickr.  This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com 

This morning I found a single flower that surprised and delighted me.  I took a photo of it--the one at the top of this entry:  a double layered flower with two sets of petals set on top of one another.  It is still beautiful--nine hours after I picked it.  It doesn't wilt like the gardenia blossoms I pick and bring inside.  

I've never seen a flower like this on this particular tree before.  

I suppose it's a vote for genetic mistakes as a good thing.

"Drive-By" Gardening; Silk Floss Tree

Garden "wellies."  My art.

Usually when I am gardening I dress in an old, stained pair of overalls.  They are blue and white pinstripe and have splotches of white paint across the front pockets.  Even though I bought a size "small" they are much too big for me and years ago I shortened the legs so that their bottom edges didn't drag the ground.  I also sewed the shoulder straps in place because they kept working their way loose as I worked.  They have great pockets that I empty of soil and crumpled leaves at the end of the day.  The knees are reinforced with no chance that I would ever have to patch holes.  

My overalls.  My photo.

I wear an old shirt--usually a hand-me-down from Nathan that shrunk in the dryer.  I keep a few of them just for gardening and so I can start with a fresh tee shirt for several days in a row without stopping to do laundry.  I also bought myself some black "wellies" from Walmart more than a decade ago that I step into and out of at the door as I come and go from inside to outside--it keeps the dirt that I drag into the house to a livable minimum.  

Before going out I smear my face with sunscreen and spray my arms with mosquito repellant.  I pull on a floppy canvas hat to complete the look.

Thus prepared, I pull on a pair of gardening gloves and load a big bucket with pruners, clippers and a small tree limb saw.  I also usually drag a big, empty garbage container with me so I can collect anything I pull up or cut off as it is pulled or cut.  

In a word--when I work in the yard--I look like I am working in the yard.

Three days ago Lauren came looking for me outside.  Caleb toddled beside her, holding her hand and picking his feet up a little higher than usual (I think the stiff Florida grass tickles his feet).  She found me in the front yard--pruning the inner branches of a hibiscus tree.  I was dressed in jeans and one of my "good" tee shirts.  My feet were bare--though I did have gloves on.  

Lauren approached me and stopped, picking up Caleb so he wouldn't continue to pull on her hand.  

"Hi, mom.  I couldn't find you inside.  You doing some drive-by gardening?"  

I looked back at her with a questioning look--you know one eyebrow up and one eyebrow down.

"Well . . . you're not dressed like usual . . . and you didn't tell anyone you'd be out gardening."

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Drive-by gardening.  Doing something without planning before hand.  Getting caught in the middle of working on something I didn't really mean to be doing.  With yard work, that can be a bad thing for me--shoulder, hands, wrists, knees have all been repaired frequently in the last few years.  

Yesterday we celebrated Lauren's birthday and a (hated) family tradition (that I insist on--another story) is the giving of a "wish" to the person whose present you are about to open.  Lauren wished that Brent would find some really cool fossils the next time he went to the Peace River to search for them.  I was next.  

After rolling her eyes and thinking hard, Lauren said, "I wish that you won't have to have more surgery on anything this year."  

Unfortunately a very appropriate wish; already this year I had to have a severed tendon in my right wrist repaired. 

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NEW SUBJECT

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Silk Floss Trees

Bombacaceae Chorisa speciosa

Ever since we moved here eleven years ago I have alternately felt pity and awe for the Silk Floss tree.  

Through the late fall, winter and spring, the trees look like something from a Tim Burton movie.   

In late fall and winter the crepe murtles are flush with bright purple, red and pink fluttered flowers.  In spring the gardenia trees and tiny jasmine flowers fill the air with a delicious fragrance.  My wild roses produce hundreds of blooms all year long.  Hibiscus bushes and trees boast huge flowers in yellow, flaming orange, bright crimson, and blood red.

In contrast, the Silk Floss tree stands barren almost all year long.  When I first saw the row of trees along Donald Ross Avenue standing naked and crook-branched, I wondered out loud why they didn't just pull them down and put in something that would be able to thrive along a busy street.

January 2016.  Line of Silk Floss trees along Donald Ross Avenue, east of I-95, Jupiter, FL.  My photo.

Usually, sprawling, bare branches are hung with sparse pods--luminous dark olive.  These turn into white, cottony lumps, tight as a clenched fist.  

Seed pods--with green cover and without. I like the image of the smooth green pod against the thorns on the branches.  My photo.

These gradually expand into four fluffing fingers hanging down until a storm wind carries them off--leaving the trees completely naked.

The last stage before the tree's seeds are liberated by a strong wind.  My photo.

As if in response to this dearth of foliage, the trunk and branches have sprouted thousands of thorns.  If they have no leaves, at least they have something with which to protect themselves.  The only way to believe them is to see them.

Spiny thorns on trunk. My photo.

During the summer the tree is carpeted with gobs of fluffy pink clouds of petals--from afar it looks like something from a My Little Pony movie.  During this time of year, it always seem odd to me that there aren't rainbows sprouting from each tree.  

Royal Poinciana, Fern-Like Leaves, Fiery Flowers . . . and Other Florida Flora.

One of the first flowers that fascinated me when I began to photograph plants in Florida.

I've been collecting photographs of plants, trees, bushes and flowers for the last ten years.  Brent gave me, first, a Sony camera with a simple zoom lens--after that, a Nikon D300s with (over the years) three different lenses.  Then, last year, I got a Nikon P600 zoom camera--essentially a zoom lens that can take photographs of the craters of the moon.

My intention (only sporatically carried through) has been to document all of the plants in our yard.  This is a fragment of my dream to compile an identification collection of photos and plant pressings of all the plants I find in our area.

One of the challenges in all of this is the seasonal changes--blooms come and go, even leaves on some plants dry up and fall off for a time each year.  There are flowers that grow from underground root systems or bulbs--they send up sprouts, grow, wither and die.

This is one of the young Royal Poinciana trees along Donald Ross, just east of I-95.

I have one entry for today, though:  Royal Poinciana.  It is a tree that spreads its branches over a huge circumference.  Even though it grows as high as a telephone pole, the branches of an older, mature tree, brush against the ground when the wind blows. The Palm Beach State College, PGA campus, has some gorgeous trees.  During the height of summer, standing under one of the trees' canopy, I am hidden from the sight of those walking on the sidewalks--just a half dozen yards away.  

Here we see the height compared to a light pole: young Royal Poinciana tree, family Fabaceae, Caesalpinioideae, Delonix regia.

From a great distance, the trees are easy to spot--blankets of flowers covering a wide dome.

Seed pods hang down low after the flowers have gone.

The blooms cluster at the ends of branches.  A relative of the pea, the leaves are described as "fern-like."

I took a close-up of a single flower, set at the base of a branch, to show the texture of the trees' bark.

One of the best things about living in Florida is that it is green all year long.  

In Iowa, I loved the fact that I could toss just about any seed on the ground and it would grow--especially "salad" plants: lettuce, tomatoes (those I started from small nursery stock), sweet peppers, carrots, radishes, spinach. 

The same miracle happened in Kansas City, Missouri.  There I was also able to get apple trees to survive--though we didn't live there long enough to see a harvest from them.  We left a terraced flower garden built around a waterfall.   An enclosed garden provided "salad" veggies as will as gooseberries, raspberries, and blackberries.  We were known as the "sunflower house" because of the few giant sunflowers that sprouted in odd places around the house.

Now we live in Florida--Palm Beach.  I've tried peach trees--died.  Fig trees--no figs.  Roses--mildewed.  Tomatoes--burnt by the "partial sun."  Lauren and her family are living with us for awhile and she has been able to get SURPRISE!!! WOW!!! BLACKBERRIES.  I have a starfruit tree that bears delicious fruit twice a year--as does our Barbados cherry tree.  My best success so far (aside from the wild roses I got from the Palm Beach State College nursery) has been a single mulberry bush that gives luscious, though few, berries every year.  I have three pomegranate bushes that have done nothing except not die yet--and a sap apple that also has not died yet--and two coconut palms that I think have not decided if they are going to die yet or not.

I don't have a Royal Poinciana in my yard; I just get to be in a place that is constantly green and growing and filled with plants that I can take photographs of.

It is a place that I like very much.   

Shells Are What's Left When Something Dies

As we were watching an old Netflix movie on TV,  my 26 yearly son Nate walked into the room and said, "I remember when you just popped in a tape or a DVD and then you sat back and WATCHED it!"

If it were "remember when", then I wouldn't be writing this; wouldn't be able to send letters and photos all around the earth in an instant--unless it's a video longer than 10 seconds long, in which case I would have to download it onto YouTube and email the link to everyone.

The photo is from my visit to Maryland during December 2015.  Old, empty phone stations.  Useless unless you count the memories it brings to those of us old enough to remember them when there were phones in them.

Late in the day photo.  

After So Long

Caleb, Robert, Lauren, Charlie. Palm Beach Gardens, FL.  2016.  Caleb is almost 1 and Charlie almost 4.

I have been away from writing for so long that it now feels strange to sit with my laptop and think thoughts that my fingers type out.  I feel as if I have just been reunited with a dear, old friend--but don't quite what to say.

I have been taking photographs--hundreds of them--plants, family, sky, patterns in the fabric that is my life.  Since Lauren, Rob, Caleb and Charlie have moved in with us--I have been obsessed with cleaning--NOT cleaning--purging my house.  Things that have been safely layered in boxes are now being inconsiderately ripped from their dim places and either been repackaged, scanned and abandoned, sent "en mass" to various relatives, or given away.  With two families now using the space that one family occupied for over 10 years--space was needed--stuff had to go.

It is interesting as I sit here now to think of the stuff that I have found and then let set adrift.  I had not thought of myself as a hoarder--but I have display cabinets (3) filled with useless, but very pretty, things.  The majority are Lladro figures.  Much space is occupied by Brent's bottle collection--odd and charming glass shapes--the most precious of which is the first one that he found.  He came across it on a beach years ago.  It's principle virtue is that (besides being old) he found it himself.  I have purchased bottles for him, through the years, as presents for birthdays and Christmases--but he most values the few that he himself came across. He considers them "his" finds.

I guess that is an attitude that I also have regarding the art pieces that decorate our home.  Almost all are done by close family members.  There is one that was done by a cousin of my mother's--a huge green painting of a path through one of her local, forested areas.  I do not know the place, or the artist, but I do feel a fondness for it because it hung in our home for many years.  When mom died 19 years ago, and dad divested himself of all their household belongings, I "got to have" this painting--which, as it turns out, neither mom or dad particularly cared for.  Funny the things that we keep just because we can't bring ourselves to throw them away.  

The wedding dress that mom made for me more than (2016 - 1982 = 34) 34 years ago still hangs at the back of my closet.  It has gone through numerous dry cleanings and survived a flood (that shrank it so that I can no longer wear it).  It is no longer white--but I cannot bring myself to throw it out.  I have vague plans to make a few throw pillows from bits of it, but (since it hangs invisible in my house) plans continue to remain incorporeal.   Someday I will make the pillows and send one to each of my children--along with a photo of me, wearing the dress, and a short story about how she made it for me on my wedding day.

This will be a short essay.  It is Sunday afternoon and Brent is sleeping beside me.  I think I will join him in a nap.

See you soon.

The Cat's in the Cupboard and Can't See Me

Valley hiding from everyone in the hall closet.

I was walking toward my bedroom last week.  Everyone was home.  Caleb was picking up his toys and smacking them against the tile floor.  The percussive "Crack!  Crack!  CRACK!" made it hard to hear the TV, which was turned up to be heard over Caleb's racket, vied for most irritating noise ringing throughout the house.  Charlie was barking at someone he thought was at the door.  Nathan was playing a video game in another room and the "Thud-thud-thud-thud-RATATATATAT" added to the din.  

I would add that the dishwasher was augmented the level of noise in the house--but we have a dishwasher that, when it is going, I can't even hear if I'm standing right next to it.  The clothes washer and dryer are in the garage--so I couldn't hear them either.  It was late afternoon--so no one was mowing the lawn or edging outside.  

Even so, the house pulsed with sound and the energy of five adults and one 10 month old grandson.

As I passed the closet in the hallway leading to my bedroom, I noticed that the door was half open--and a quiet "mee-u" caught my attention.  With everything going on in the house, Valley had sought refuge in a place I had never seen her before.  She looked at me, "mee-u".  I reached in and stroked her head.  In a whole house of bedrooms, a cat tower, hidden window ledges with an outside view--she had retreated to the relative safety of a place where Charlie wouldn't bark at her, Caleb couldn't grab at her, and no one would try to pick her up.

I had to get a picture.

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It is 10:35pm and the entire house is quiet.  Brent, Nathan, La, Roberto, Caleb, Charlie, and both the cats are still and sleeping.  It is now that I like best to sit and write.  

Brent used to ask me why I stayed up so late after everyone had gone to bed.  Classes, kids, errands, appointments, chores all began early in the morning.  When the kids were younger I used to go to visit friends who had been sick or just had a baby--when they opened the door they stared at me and then exclaimed "Come in!  Come sit down!  You look so tired . . . are you OK?"

Being awake in the late night hours, though, gave me the assurance that everyone was safe.  They were all under our roof and sleeping.  Everyone was here--but no one needed me to do anything for them.

When Meg and La were very small--during the years when Brent was in law school--they played happily with each other as I cleaned the kitchen and mopped the bathroom floor.  I could make beds, take dirty clothes down stairs and bring clean clothes back up.  I could put away books, file papers, answer the phone--no problem.  As soon as I sat down, however, I was fair game.  

I would sit at the kitchen table to type a paper for class or start to grade papers my students had written--and "Whoosh!!" they appeared--on my lap.  I would sit on the couch to read a book for class or sit at the piano to play a piece of music and "TaaDaa!" I had two small bodies squirming on my knees.  I couldn't even go the bathroom without the two of them needing me to hold them on my lap and read them a book.  

When they were asleep, however, I could read textbooks, prepare lesson plans, write out checks to pay the bills, write a letter, type a paper--even sit at the table to eat something--and neither Meg nor La would materialize out of thin air between me and what I had started to do.

Of course, now that Meg and La are both married with their own children, my lap is more often invaded by one of our cats--both of whom are easily dislodged with a determined poke of my finger.  I can sit and watch TV all day or scan bills and old photographs into computer files that will float out in space for the rest of eternity--if the eternities have iCloud.  I can even lay down and take a nap in the middle of the day, undisturbed until it is time for dinner and Nathan comes in, wanting to know what's planned for that night.  

The odd thing about my life now is that even with all the time I have, I have more money than time.  It is much easier to pay someone to come and clean the kitchen or mop the bathroom floor.  Nathan will do the laundry if I will sort the dark from the light colours, and put the whites in a separate pile.  And there are no stairs to carry anything up or down.  

At the State Fair on Wednesday, we waundered into a room where the prize winning quilts, crochet wall hangings, knitted baby sweaters, and needlepoint projects were all displayed.  The county quilting club was set up with someone demonstrating how to quilt, information about their organization, and a beautiful quilt that was being raffled to help raise money to support the charity work that they did.  It was a stunning wall display quilt with squares featuring birds and wildlife from the area.  It was intricately stitched and edged.  Since raffles are a kind of gamble (albeit a benign kind), I asked if I could just donate without receiving a ticket.  The response was "I don't know how we handle that sort of thing."  I guess it wasn't a common request.  In the end they graciously accepted my $10.  As they thanked me, I mentioned that I was in a place that made it much easier to give monetary support than to actually spend time working for worthy, charitable projects.  It seems like such a cowardly way to feel that I am "serving my neighbor."  

I look back on the things I did when Meg, La and Nate were in school--and I am amazed.  I had energy and strength and patience and TIME . . . that, somehow, have disappeared.  One friend, also a grandmother, said that for her "the days dragged, but the years flew."  I am still puzzled by that.  I remember times when I had to sit and wait for a doctor appointment or stand in line waiting for my turn to take a driving test--and wishing that I could save up that time and use it later when I was doing something that I loved to do.  Especially during college, during the freezing winters, walking to class--I really wanted to take that time and save it for something else.

Time doesn't save, though, does it?  Ideas, goals--art, garden, school plans--all these can wait for later.  Standing in line at the grocery store, sitting and waiting for a meeting to begin--these things demand that time be taken THEN.

Very often, when things I don't really want to do dictate how I spend my day, I feel like Valley--and would creep off to an obscure place to wait out the commotion if I could.  Later coming out--as Valley does at night--when it is still and my time is my own.

Portrait of a Neighborhood

I'm starting with this image because it is so out of proportion.  It is a long, bigger-than-life panorama. The majority of my photos concentrate on the little details around me. This, in contrast, is a 200 degree view of a beaver dam.  It runs parallel with one of the small bridges located by the lake near Meg's house in MD.  The dam itself isn't what really amazes me--the fact that there are beavers living and maintaining their self-styled habitat in the middle of a huge metropolitan area--THAT is what amazes me. 

It is what Meg and her family love about living in a tiny townhouse with no backyard, front yard or privacy . . . which would drive Brent and me crazy.  She knows just about everyone in the area she can access easily by walking.  When I am there, she introduces me to everyone by name--then tells me interesting things about them after they have passed by: how many children they have, how long they've lived there, if they are outgoing or reserved, and even the food allergies of those on her block.  She regularly makes things or drops off fresh baked bread to her neighbors.  They frequently reciprocate. (In contrast, I do not even know the names of the neighbors on either side of me or across the street--and I would be hard-pressed to pick them out of a line up.)

Last year she decided that they would sell ice cream cones in August to raise money so that their family could buy a cow for someone in a foreign country through Heifer International.  Long after the ice cream cone sale, neighbors would stop and ask how much they made and then make a donation so that Meg's idea could come closer to fruition.

It has just occurred to me that I should have stepped back so that the railing (visible on the left and the right edges of the photo) would have been complete--giving the viewer a continuous frame of reference.  In this photograph, I have to look carefully to realize that it is an image visible from the railing of a bridge . . . next time I'm in MD . . .

On the corner across the street from Meg's, the power company cut down a diseased sapwood tree.  The trunk diameter was easily four feet across.  I would have had trouble putting my arms all the way around it. 

What fascinated me, though, was the uneven growth of the outer rings.  The living vascular cambium layer bulges out, then dips in toward the heartwood of the tree.  In school the tree trunks in the diagrams are always concentric circles--some layers smaller and some bigger than they actually are in relation to the other layers of the trunk so that they can be more easily identified.  On this sapwood tree, the heartwood layers of the tree are even--but as the tree got older, the outer layers became more uneven.  

This ragged outer edge caught my imagination.  I took pictures and then, then I saw how difficult it was to make out the rings in the photograph, I walked back across the street and got a pail full of water and a broom from Meg's house.  I rinsed off the tree stump and then scrubbed at it with the broom bristles.  The photographed image wasn't perfect after I finished, but it was much easier to see each ring.  

As I was dousing the tree trunk with water and scrubbing it down, a car stopped.  There was a stop sign on the corner beside me, so I didn't notice the car at first.  Then, when it didn't move--I looked over and the driver was waiting, watching me.  

"What are you doing?  Why are you washing that?"

I explained that I wanted to get a clearer image of the tree rings.  

"Why?"

I then added that my daughter home schooled her children and that the picture of the tree rings would be a great teaching tool when they were studying plants.

"Is you daughter from around here?"

I told him that she lived across the street, and that she had two children.

"You mean the woman with the little boy and girl?"

"Yes."

"I know them! Have fun! Good bye!"

This conversation was repeated several times, except that some of the people were walking by instead of driving, and others, when I mentioned that my daughter lived across the street added:

"Do you mean Megan Rytting?  Are you her mother?"

. . . .

Small town feeling in a huge metro area.

This photograph is one of my best.  It was across the street from where I spent time swinging (see previous post "I Guess We're Stuck With You . . .").  The dark night and the glow from the street light fit my mood.  I like how the photo is framed.  If I were to sell my work--this would be one that I would use.

I think I may have published this--or one like this--before.  While with Meg, I went to Cosco and found these bigger than softball, perfectly formed and evenly coloured pomegranates.  There were four of them--two of which I immediately pulled apart to eat.  Meg wanted to save two of them to give to friends who had food allergies.  But she never got around to it . . . instead she had a baby. Since she didn't get time to deliver them, I eventually also pulled the seeds out of the other two.  By then the fruit had begun to go bad in spots and so there wasn't quite so many of the seeds to eat.  

What I loved about this section of inner pith was the pure white of the flesh and the startling red of the two remaining seeds--and then I noticed a tiny, albino seed.  Like a tear, it quietly remained behind to mourn the destruction of its home.  

Not really, but it did look like a large tear--one that an anime character would have drawn coming down her face to illustrate her anguished cry of frustration and sorrow.

On of my days in MD, I went on a long walk in a wild wooded area and found this tree.  

There are paved tracks around the nearby lake and other paved pathways between the houses and the backyards of homeowners' yards that lead from one end of the neighborhood to the community center--a youth  center and gymnasium, artists' studio, a large co-op store, an indoor pool (an outdoor pool that was closed for the winter) and a small number of bistros and cafes that served odd (it seemed to me, anyway) kinds of foods.  

This part of the forest had no paved pathways, only a deer trail that lead along a small creek--too wide to get across without getting wet.  I followed the river bank, sure that if I stayed next to the river I could not get lost.  (THAT was stupid of me--she who can get lost going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.)  As I waundered about, trying to return to Meg's house, I eventually got to an area that, at one time, had been sectioned off as government property with a giant chain link fence topped by lines of barbed wire stretching as far as I could see.  

Now, though, there was no attention paid to keeping the area secured from trespassers.  The barbed wire had snapped and hung uselessly along the inside of the fence line.  The chain link was rusted--in some places laying, limp, next to the ground.  

And there was this tree, not too many years from being a sapling, that had grown up and through the fence.  I feel a deep sense of loss when I observe a tree trunk or thick branch from a bush that has been deformed by a section of fence.  What should have been able to flourish and grow freely, has, instead, been deformed, hindered from what should have been a clear path to the sky.   

It is also a warning of who and what I allow to become part of my life.  The tree above, when the fence falls down, or is replaced by new chain link, has no option but to die.  Its life is already shortened and its ability to produce seeds and reproduce has been seriously, if not totally, compromised.  

It all comes across as over-dramatic--but I feel the same emotion  as if I found a wild creature that had been caught in a trap and maimed for the remainder of its life.  

There was, for almost two years, a sandhill crane that frequented our area--and that came daily to eat crushed corn and seeds that I provided.  I carried the feed out of the garage in a white milk carton with the bottom cut off so that it worked as a scoop.  The stark white colour made it stand out against the continual green of our landscape--and when cranes saw it, they would hurry (as much as cranes ever hurry) to come and eat from my hand.  This one crane had gotten a strip of plastic jammed high onto its upper beak--almost completely closing off its nostrils.  To breath it had to open its mouth, which meant that it became dehydrated more easily.  She never was able to find a mate--always coming by herself to feed.  I know that she didn't consciously think "If only I could breath better, I'd be able to keep a mate and have chicks."  But I'm sure that, at some level, she felt lonely.

Here are two trees that grew right next to each other--probably seeds from the same tree that landed together and then sprouted.   One is much bigger than the other and the smaller one shows a bole--the effect of insects infesting or a mold infecting the tree and causing a huge, round outgrowth, covered with rough bark. Because the two trees are so close together, the burl grew to connect them.  Not sure how I interpret this image--rather the smaller tree was supported by the larger or the smaller tree weakened to the point that it became susceptible to insect or mold.

It is striking, though.

I had a hard time finding what kind of fungus this might be.  There are two that are listed as common to the area:  Fairy Fingers (Clavaria fragilis) and Coral Fungi (Ramariopsis kunzel).   As I look at it more carefully here, I think that this is the Clavaria--the white stalactites are straight--rather than interconnected to look like a coral.  Either way, it is an amazing thing to see this bright, white fringe hanging under a dead log fragment.  It was startling enough to catch my attention from half a mile away.  I didn't realize that it was edible--and I know that Meg and her family would have found it a wonderful treat to taste something that grew wild just a few miles from their home.

  

The closing image of this entry is an oblique angle shot of the front of Meg's home.  It reminds me of the perspective I get when looking at railroad tracks converge as they disappear into the distance.  I like it very much.

"I Guess We're Stuck With You, Huh?" "Yes, I Guess We're Both Stuck With Each Other."

At the top of the big slide, my heals lift just a bit so they don't slow my fall to the ground.

When I go down a slide for the first time, it always feels as if I am about to free-fall to the ground.  I am alone at the top--since I am an adult I rarely go to kids' playground areas when the kids are there.  My purpose in being there is not because my mom or dad brought me--or because I am hanging out with friends from school and we don't have anywhere else better to go.  I go because I want to feel apart from the rest of the world.

It is most often early morning or late at night.  It is most often because I am trying to work out feelings that I don't want to feel or am having a hard time dealing with.  I readily cry at sad movies and often cry when I read a book whose story touches me.   

Feeling angry or frustrated or . . . well, REALLY angry . . . is harder for me to come to terms with.  I want to cry because I feel sad--as if I've lost something or someone has taken something from me that I held close to my heart--but I can't let myself do it.  

Last month I got to visit with Meg--both before and after the baby came.  They didn't really need me for anything specific.  I swept and mopped the floors, washed and folded the laundry, helped Meg finish some projects she had started for their home, did the dishes and tidied the kitchen--and augmented the kitchen appliance collection so that making toast was easier for me.  Mostly I just helped the house to run smoother.

I did get to do some cool things--like work with Jon and Kate on their home school projects; build Legos with Jon; make a movie of Kate jumping on their mini trampoline; explore KIDS museum with Jon; go with Kate to an indoor collection of bounce houses where she jumped and climbed and explored places she's never seen before.  I got to hold Gloria when she was just six hours old and talk with Megan for hours.  When Anton's sister Jenny arrived, I got to play the piano while he and Meg and Jen sang Christmas carols.  

I became a fixture in the home--something like the living room couch.  Jon and Kate came to regard me as someone they were "stuck with" (Kate's words, not Jon's) when Meg and Anton were gone.  I was not a guest, not quite a parent, sometimes my rules counted, sometimes they did not.  It did feel as if I were in my own home--I padded about the house in the morning in my pajamas, ate what and when I wanted to, and used Megan's sewing machine to mend clothing.  I sat with the family on the upstairs' hallway floor and heard Anton read scriptures and had my turn saying family prayer.

I was special--but not really.  Sometimes that got to me.  It is hard to live suspended in ambivalence--and one night I left just as I had finished preparing dinner and went for a long walk in the dark.  It was cold, but not too cold.  I had my phone with me, so I wasn't cut off from family--but I turned the ringer off so it just vibrated if someone wanted to talk with me.

I found a small park playground across the street from an old elementary-school-turned-church.  In the windows along one side there were pictures drawn on cream-coloured, thick paper taped to the windows.  I could see the light squares as I sat in one of the swings in the park.  

At first I just sat there.  Not many people walked past.  Those that did pass me, didn't look up as they were hurrying home, their faces hunched up inside scarves wrapped around turned-up collars.  

I sat there for awhile, waiting for the tears that wouldn't come because my frustration was real, but not justifiable--but still REAL.  I finally thought around my feelings enough that they began to settle and as they did so, I began to pump with my legs.  I levered my body back and forth until I was high enough that I could see over the top swingset bar when I was behind it.  I wished that I could take a picture of me, so high that the swing "hiccuped" at the apex of my arc, as I paused for just a fraction of a moment before I pushed my legs out in front of me again and began the long curve down.

I saw myself in the bottom hemisphere of a unit circle--traveling from the 180 degree mark through 270 degrees and up to 360 degrees.

And who said you'd never use anything you learned in Algebra or Trig?
Math is a fourth language for me.  It gives me a specific way to look at the world that is unique--and, to me--beautiful.
My first language was English, then music, then Spanish--then math.*  

I kept swinging, at first not thinking about anything except how my body felt as it covered the range from near-weightlessness to almost too heavy to bear--over and over again.  Like the pendulum of the grandfather clock my own father built, I hung in space--measuring each beat of my heart against the physics of momentum and the laws of inertia and friction.

Then I began to wonder how long I could stay there, moving closer and then farther from the ground.  I thought about how circus acrobats didn't stop their swing at 180 and 360 degrees--but continued completely around the circle--traveling a constant path, unencumbered by the need to slow to a stop at the edge and then descend before wafting upward again.

A strange, cramped circular stairway around a pole--leading up and down from the top of the slide.  With my big, grown-up feet, I have to take cautious steps to get up or down.

Such an eternal continuum is not for mortals on earth.  My thoughts are not lofty, profound ones--but tiny pin pricks of what to do, why to do it, when to do it, how I hate to do it, why I'd like to do something else . . . I do not feel as if I rise in a heavenward gyre, borne on invisible thermals that support eagles in the sky.  

I am, rather, balancing unsteadily at the top of a strange terrestrial ladder--watching each step to see how close I am to falling every time I begin to move.

And that is enough for me right now.  Bit by bit, step by step--waiting for the time when I can move on to unending arcs of flight.

*I hope you liked my drawing.  It was the vision I saw in my head as I was swinging.   Some people see the clouds in the sky, others see the dirt on the ground--I see the degree tics around the unit circle I memorized in Trig.  In radians a 45 degree angle is imaged as the pointin an x, y plane.

Now I've used another thing I learned in Trig.