Month: April 2021

Springtime! Plants!

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Bedding plants at a local hardware store. The “pillows” are bags of potting soil.

Do you have bedding plants yet? I didn’t buy any plants from this store, but I bought some at a nearby superstore.

All I have is a small balcony, but I want to fill it with leafy plants and flowers. Online I see photos of Italian house window boxes and apartment building balconies, overflowing with plants and I get envious. The exuberance of these window boxes is bright and cheerful. I suspect my balcony is the only one in the entire complex that’s loaded with flower pots. All the balconies here face the back and there is no car access. I haven’t walked around back to see if other people have balcony gardens. But I’ve driven past other complexes and have seen only one plant decorated balcony. Why don’t more of us do this?

Here are a few of my bedding plants.

I love that geraniums bloom all summer.
I’ve never seen this color petunia before. Petunias are humble little plants, but they’re cheerful and lovely and bloom all summer. I hope this beauty will attract hummingbirds.
These are bacopa. They’re pretty little trailing plants, they grow enthusiastically and also bloom all summer. They share a planter with my petunias.
The color of this petunia matches the edges of the magenta flower. I love the coral pink.
Occupants of another container.

This is a new variety of trailing pansy, called Cold Wave. When I bought them I didn’t know they were trailing pansies. I’d never heard of such a thing. Me see pansies. Me want. Me have money. Me buy. I didn’t even look at the label. As the name implies, Cold Wave pansies grow in cold weather. I’m not sure I’d have bought them if I’d known. I want my flowers to bloom all summer. I hope these dear little things survive in warmer weather. Fortunately, around here summers tend to be pretty cool, so I hope these babies will be happy come July and August. The long-range weather forecast is for a cooler and rainier summer this year.

Flowers From Other Years:

I’m hoping for a plethora of petunias this year, too. This photo was taken in mid-summer.
Don’t these coleus leaves look like velvet?

If you haven’t bought plants yet, it’s not too late. It was late spring when I bought this coleus. It was a leggy plant with only a few leaves on a long stem. No one at the superstore’s garden center had bothered much with the plants that had been left behind–end of season, new stuff to sell. After a few weeks on my balcony, with plenty of sun, water, and a bit of fertilizer, this is what the skinny coleus turned into.

There are four empty pots on my balcony (and eight occupied ones) I’m going to have to go to a garden center and buy a few more flowers. Pots should not be allowed to sit around empty. I need flowers. It makes me happy to see little blossom faces peering over the rim of their container. The blinds in front of the slider are always open, so I can see my “pets” anytime of day or night. I like to sit on my balcony among my plants, have a cup of coffee or tea, and enjoy their beauty. There’s a bit of Italian somewhere in me.

Photo of a Photo

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How Photography Has Evolved in Recent Years

I was wary to trespassing so didn’t try to get closer of a different angle

The original picture above is one I took many years ago in Okanogan County, Washington, using a twin-lens reflex camera. It was big and bulky, required roll film, and hung from my neck on a broad strap. At the time, it wasn’t a pain in the neck, but no doubt would be now.  For a while, I was in love with that camera. Took it everywhere. I was also in love with black and white film.

This photo is from the Pixabay stock agency. I don’t remember the brand of my twin-lens reflex.

For a while, I toyed with the idea of a career in photography. I could spend hours in the darkroom, developing and processing the film and making prints. Watching prints in a developer bath as an image appeared on what had once been white paper was like magic. 

The warm brown color is a result, not of the aging of the photograph, but from a sepia toner bath. Sepia ink comes from cuttlefish. Centuries ago the ink was used for writing and for drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and other Old Masters.

Sadly, the twin-lens reflex camera was stolen during a break-and-enter at my old house.

My little Canon digital camera took the photo of my original print. I love this camera, too. It’s great not to have to buy roll film or try to figure out “F” stops and exposure time. The camera does it all. But that can also create problems, such as over or underexposure. No pain in the neck if I wear the camera around my neck on a slender strap, instead of carrying it in my pocket or purse. I love that I can upload photos in mere seconds. That’s like magic, too.

It’s easy to spend hours messing with the uploaded photos, too–improving sharpness and color, cropping, and rotating. Adding sepia, and other tones can be done with my photo program filters instead of in a messy bath. If I don’t like the results, I can remove the color tones. Instead of bending over a print and using a tiny brush making eensy dots to fill unwanted spots, I can do it in a second with the click of a mouse.

Although I love taking and sharing pictures, making a living as a photographer was never practical for me. My original intent in enrolling in a photography classes was to illustrate articles I wrote, maybe even published a book of photographs and essays or poetry. That, too, fell by the wayside. I’m primarily a fiction writer. Now I provide pictures for my blog, my social media platforms, and for the enjoyment of the hobby, recording magnificent beauty and also the loveliness of small, ordinary things that people tend to pay little attention to. With my camera I can say, look at this–see how remarkable it is?

Just a dandelion? I couldn’t resist taking its picture, one of the little, overlooked marvels I like to highlight with my camera. What a sunny little face! It’s an intricate little flower with many parts: ray florets, with bilobed stigma, anthers, and individuals bracts. They’re an edible plant, rich in vitamin C. They originated in Europe and brought to the New World by early settlers so they’d have a winter source of greens to prevent scurvy.

John Donne: National Poetry Month

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English poet (1572-1631)

“The Sun Rising”

Busy old fool, unruly sun,
               Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
               Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
               Late school boys and sour prentices,
         Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
         Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

               Thy beams, so reverend and strong
               Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
               If her eyes have not blinded thine,
               Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
         Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
         Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

               She's all states, and all princes, I,
               Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
               Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
               In that the world's contracted thus.
         Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
         To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

“Outlander:” Not an Endearment

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Outlander. Foreigner. Sassenach

Definition of sassenach (Merriam-Webster)

: a typical Englishman or something considered typical of England —often used disparagingly by Scots and Irish

My second reading of The Outlander, the first book in Diana Gabaldon’s the Outlander series, is far more critical than the first. The first time around I was too caught up in the story to pay attention to errors that I now find irritating. I’m not going to dwell on minor glitches, instead, I’ll focus on the one that bugs me most because it’s the one that shows up most often and strikes too close to home.

It’s clear that Gabaldon has never been a foreigner, not in the real sense. Not as someone who has lived in another country. No doubt she’s been a tourist and she probably traveled to Scotland to do research. On her website, she says that her husband is a foreigner, but gives no details. Is he a “foreigner” from another state than Arizona, their home, or is he a foreigner to the USA? I wonder if she calls him Sassenach? Or perhaps Outlander? But in the Outlander books, Scotsman Jamie Fraser refers to his beloved, English wife, Claire, as Sassenach. Affectionately, of course, almost as if the word meant darling and were not considered a disparaging term.

Having been an actual foreigner and being too often reminded that I am “other” (You have an accent, where is your accent from? Are you English?) I can assure you that “outlander,” “foreigner,” “Sassenach” don’t come across as endearments. Not even in Latvian, my native language, which has many diminutive suffixes, the word Ārzemniecīte would not come across as loving, no matter how gently said or softly whispered in the most intimate of circumstances.

Who needs to be constantly reminded that they’re an outsider, that they do not belong? Imagine yourself in that situation, in this country, or any other you may have emigrated to.

Gabaldon was obviously reaching for something original. Something Scottish and did not give the matter enough thought.

How does this sound to you?

Husband comes home from work and kisses wife. “How are you, Foreigner?”

Wife to husband, “I adore you. Let’s make love, Foreigner.”

Does that seem endearing? Loving? Or does that sound like grounds for divorce, especially after having heard it for the five thousandth time?

National Poetry Month

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William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

(1890)

April Dawn

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Early morning is a wonderful time of day. The air is fresh and brisk. Dew is on the grass. The colors in the sky can be dazzling. I seldom experience any of this beauty. I sleep through that magical time of day. Most of the time. If I happen to be up at that hour, it’s usually involuntary, having to get up for some reason, no noisy neighbors this time. Maybe it was a dream which I’ve forgotten that woke me. Usually, I sleep through dawn. If I happen to be up, and circumstances permit, I go back to bed.

This morning I happened to be up just as the sun was rising. I may have been half asleep, but I was awake enough to grab my camera when I saw the sun peeking over the top of the Cascade Mountains. I always keep the blinds to my slider open for that very reason. Sometimes the moon peeks in; sometimes the sun peeks in. I keep my camera handy for just such moments.

The last time I photographed a magnificent sunrise, the day turned drab. Today lived up to the promise of dawn.

This is the scene that caught my eye as I shuffled into the living area.
A few seconds later.
These photos were taken within the space of a minute or so.

I hadn’t put a robe on when I crawled out of bed. I hardly noticed the chill morning air as I concentrated on taking photos, but I had to open the slider to get some decent exposures. It was around 40F (4.4 C) so I didn’t linger very long.

Sometimes you get so busy taking pictures that you don’t even notice what your camera is seeing. I didn’t see the halo effect around the tree until I uploaded my photos.

After I photographed the rising sun, I turned southeast and made a couple of exposures of Rainier.

Our magnificent, eternally snow-covered monarch.

Some people feel closed in by mountains. I feel protected, even though I know this is a volcano that could erupt. Life if full of perils wherever you happen to live. There’s no point in worrying about what may happen in the hundred years. Just enjoy the splendor.

John Donne:

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National Poetry Month

John Donne is one of my favorite poets. I didn’t like his poetry very much in high school English, but I learned to love his work in my college lit. class. I’ve loved his poetry ever since.
Break of Day

‘Tis true, ‘tis day, what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ‘tis light?
Did we lie down because ‘twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

Fading Tulip: Portraits

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Today I felt as faded as the tulip in my vase.

Creativity can be a real pain. Editing my manuscript was going pretty well, until I discovered that Google Drive saves documents not just to the docs file, but also to the Drive file. Something I’d never known before. I only found out when I was editing my story and came across a sentence that I’d already deleted. What’s going on? Two copies of the same document, one with edits, one without. That wouldn’t have been so bad, if I hadn’t been editing the wrong document. Searching Drive by the title of the document apparently resulted in the wrong document popping up at random. Since I didn’t know about the two copies, I wasn’t paying attention to what it said at the top of the toolbar, which would have told me which copy I was editing. Curses on Google!

That’s why it’s good to have more than one creative outlet. When one fails you, you can turn to the other. When I got fed up with editing, I picked up my camera. Justifiably, or not, I’m sometimes in love with my own photography.

When we take a picture, what we’re photographing is light. Not just the light reflected by the subject, but also the ambient light.
This is the same tulip photographed in a different room with different light. The wall is actually white, but the ambient light comes from electric bulbs, so the camera captures that golden light and turns the wall yellow. If I’d waiting until daytime, my camera would have captured bluish daylight. think this tulip is beautiful even as it fades away. The petals look like silk, a woman’s skirt blowing in the wind.
The artificial light makes the tulip look more golden than it actually is, but I like the way it looks against the wall.
Since I haven’t learned to paint yet, I have to pretend I’m Georgia O’Keeffe with a camera.
By the light of fluorescent lamps seeping in from the kitchen. I tired a flash, but all I got was a white blob.

Windows 10 is also a pain. It stores my stuff in three different places. All too often, I can’t find what I’m looking for and have to go through a bunch of files to find the one I want. I have to admit, I’m not a terribly organized person, so that doesn’t help.

Did I mention Word Press? Yet another pain. Lately it hasn’t been able to fine the preview page, so I have to publish my posts without previewing them.

Despite all the hassles. taking these photos, editing, and posting them, writing the essay have been enjoyable. Mostly.

Latvian Easter Eggs

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Resist dyed eggs.

For centuries Latvians have been using natural ingredients to dye Easter eggs. I know it’s late to be posting this, but I only just found this photo and it’s too pretty not to share.

These eggs were dyed using onions, which go in the pot of water the eggs are boiled in. You need a lot of onion skins. Tiny leaves and flowers are dampened and applied to a dampened egg. Then the eggs are wrapped in gauze to hold the leaves in place, boiled till they’re hard and allowed to stay in the dye bath all night to get color depth. Less time in the dye bath means a lighter color.

To get a marbled effect, wet onion skins are crunched and applied directly to a dampened egg and wrapped in gauze. Adding a dash of white vinegar to the dye bath helps the dye adhere to the egg.

Red cabbage results in blue eggs. Beet juice for red eggs.

Latvians aren’t the only ones who dye eggs using natural ingredients. Instructions for achieving different colors, lavender, green, yellow are available online.

National Poetry Month

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No kidding, April has been National Poetry Month since 1996, organized by the Academy of American Poets to raise awareness of poetry.

In honor of National Poetry Month and spring, which is almost two months old, I’m sharing one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, e. e. cummings. I’ve loved his work since I was introduced to it in high school.

I think this poem captures the spirit of spring in a unique and delightful way.


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
puddle-wonderful