My blast from the (hardly) past! "Thanksgiving" My favorite Holiday!

Seed Pearls, Swine's Ears: Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving is one holiday that is uniquely American. It is so ingrained in our culture that, even though the story of pilgrims and Indians...

Living the Van Gogh Life

I was sitting out on the front porch yesterday evening with my husband. He was pointing out beautiful birds in our yard which I was pretending to see.  Red birds, blue birds, buntings and starlings and thrush moved from pine to feeder to oak to bath and back to feeder again. I could see the motion when they moved from one place to the other. The titmouse has a way of fluttering its wings when it moves about that I can hear from 50 feet away. It is like a humming bird and I love it. I could see the huge lazy shadow of the buzzards riding the Indian summer heat over our heads. I just couldn’t see the birds, or the feeders for that matter.

I looked out over our yard and I realized my landscapes have become those of Van Gogh. Beautiful colors, swirls and whorls and dots that represent definable shapes but have no strict definition. No red birds or blue birds or thrush darting about, no flowers or chipmunks or squirrels are enjoying the evening as we are. I hear a vehicle roll by at 250 feet but couldn’t tell you anything about it. I can’t see even the motion any more at that distance.

 

I love Van Gogh; this is not a terrible state to be in. I do worry about what comes next though in this interminable process of losing my vision.

I used to know my family by the way they walked, turned their head, held their shoulders or moved their hands. No more. I have to be within ten feet of them now to be sure they are who I think they are. This frightens me on two levels. One, and this is the big one, I do not want to NOT be able to see the faces of those I love. These people are why I am here! If I lose them I will feel adrift and frightened. The second, which is really still the first but seen from a different angle is that I can’t see! I already can no longer ride a bike alone. I move faster than I can decipher obstacles like trees, curbs and psychotic killers. I am now afraid to walk alone because I no longer see well enough to see anything approaching, like dogs with foaming mouths and rabid foxes and psychotic killers. You can interpret this two ways… either I am just a scaredy-cat or I read the news and know that there are indeed rabid foxes, vicious dogs and psychotic killers whether one lives in a metro area or the heart of the country as I now do. With my track record for one in a million happenstances, (tornados, pregnant while taking the pill with my tubes tied, etc.), I choose to avoid them whenever I can.

For now I enjoy the hell out of my impressionist’s yard (people pay hundreds of millions to hang a slice on their wall. I LIVE it baby). The fluid lines and melting edges and glorious colors titillate and soothe by degree. The morning I wake up in a five year olds watercolor, splotches of color running together into browns, lines obliterated and subject up for anyone’s guess will be a sad day for me, I think, maybe not. I will have color and light and God willing my lovely and loved seeing-eye-people to help me navigate it.

Vincent Van Gogh (Duh!)

Night and birds by John Scott's Photography (my hubby, in my front yard.)

The Real Thing!



Happy Day all! I just thought you might like to see what is inspiring Bunky's Playhouse. 

There is a rabbit hutch underneath it. I found this to be horribly cruel to the poor rabbits who must have inhabited it at one time. Here they sit in the cedar bed, looking through wire as their species frolics freely about the ground. Did the wild rabbits taunt  the poor pet, probably named something disgustly cute like 'Bunnie', laugh at his pampered state? Did the poor incarcerated pet get the last laugh as he saw owls, ghostly and silent in the dark swoop down and snatch up his tormentors in their talons while giggling maniacally into the night? One can only wonder...

 

Bunky's Playhouse --CHAPTER 2—

Bunky is staring at me from the corner of the porch. I feel his eyes on me before I spot him eyeing me from behind the glider. He is tiny, a serious little man in a serious little world of his own. He wears a coonskin cap we found at a yard sale and swimmer’s goggles cover his eyes. His blue striped shirt, once fresh and clean looking, is faded, permanently wrinkled and shrunken, having been washed nightly for two months now. I think, as I always do, that I need to find a shirt he likes as well or he will go through life with his buttons popped and his seams split. His shorts ride low, waist band sliding under his rounded belly into a natural resting place on his scrawny hips. Just below his clay stained knees his rubber boots, bright red and shiny look huge and out of place and ridiculously new. He is dressed for adventure.

My heart jumps. I want to run up through the yard and onto the porch and grab him up. I want to swing him around and smother him with kisses and inhale his milk-and-dirt little boy smell. I want to sit in the glider with him on my lap and sing silly songs and tickle his sides until he begs for mercy through his giggles.  I want, I want, I want…

I stroll through the yard slowly, stopping to smell a flower, to pull a weed, to toss an acorn. I approach him coolly. Bunky is the epitome of cool. Four years old and outbursts annoy him. I nod at him as I settle on the porch steps, acknowledging his presence as he sidles up next to me and lays his hand on my shoulder. I pat the tiny fingers, softly, and we stay like that a while, looking out into the yard at the teeming wildlife and the luscious greenery, companionable.

Bunky tells me he wants to go adventuring, please, walk in the woods and find some interesting bugs for his collection. I shudder at the thought of more creepy crawlies at the same time I am bursting with pride at his inquisitive mind. I see that he has his mason jar ready. Holes punched in the lid and grass in the bottom. A magnifying glass, net and bug book sit next to it. They are in a neat row, laid out in a manner that tells me he was expecting an argument and wanted to have everything ready to point at if and when I said no. The book is there simply to make me happy. In an effort to curtail his passion for insects that actually moved and bred I bought him the book. As good as having them I explained, but better!  More variety, more color. You can learn about them without actually having them in your room! He had looked at me somberly and called me out. You only bought it so you wouldn’t have to hunt bugs with me. It is a simple, and true statement but the way he says it sounds so bad I cringe like I have been caught doing something mean and petty.

No worms, Bunky, I mean it, no worms and no grubs and no crickets. Deal? And nothing that bites or stings! And no stink bugs!

I am talking to myself; he has run off the porch and is trotting around in circles with his arms flapping erratically calling out Butterflies? How about butterflies? Are you afraid of butterflies? Are they scary granma? He giggles. My heart soars.

The Joy of Finding Stuff

I haven't been in this house long. I come in from the outdoors where I feel totally at home and find myself in some strange twilight world surrounded by boxes and barrels and bags. A haphazard maze beckons me with its mystery. Should I go left and open a neat clean box, taped carefully, unlabeled as are most of the rest, or should I cut apart the twine holding together the handles of the Disney Store bag and see what delightful possessions are making it bulge? Should I cut through the layers and layers of tape holding together a box which has been used to hold goods many, many times, its various labels, handwritten or printed by machine overlapping each other, black, red, blue, white and green looking delightful and happy together? I see a box that had held a space heater, a piece of masking tape over the bright image and lettering factory printed on the box saying only, teasingly, "STUFF". I WANT STUFF! I NEED STUFF!

Hang on now, what if it just that, just STUFF, nothing worth naming specifically? Perhaps the contents of the junk drawer in the kitchen, the paper clips, rubber bands and expired coupons, picture hangers and batteries (dead or alive? who knows but I can't throw them away), box tops and marbles and shoe strings and nail clippers and stubby pencils and dried up pens and mysterious phone numbers on the backs of envelopes or the cleaning supplies and extra rolls of paper from under the washroom sink. Maybe it is even worse STUFF, like crap I swept into a dustpan from the garage floor? Screws and nails and bits of wire and nuts and bolts and teeny Allen wrenches and dust and wire nuts and fish hooks and, well, you know, STUFF? I thought I had labeled those boxes GARAGE STUFF but I admit it. I am a slack labeler. I may not have gotten the word GARAGE on there at all.

Maybe it is personal STUFF. Knitting needles and yarn from my bedside table. Massage lotion (that's right, I said it, I ain't skeert), the book I was reading before the move which seems to have disappeared, six keys that go to God knows what, but when I find whatever it is I am sure it will be locked. A coin from Panama, where I have never been, a china dog my youngest daughter gave me when she was seven. Some loose Tums and Motrin PMs, 3 unmatched socks and a back scratcher. All of these things should be in a box somewhere, labeled PERSONAL STUFF but I haven't found it yet. Maybe I am just mis-remembering and it just said STUFF, or, knowing me, had no label at all.

I pick up the box and shake it. I can feel something heavy and off balance shifting, I hear rattling of copper and tinging of tin and silent noise of plastic bending.

I am doing it! I am opening this box next. I can't wait! I am getting my STUFF back! I slice open the tape, giving myself an adhesive rimmed paper cut in the process, I rip the flaps open and what do I see? Random freaking stuff, not STUFF like I had hoped but regular old running around while they loaded the truck picking up mismatched and forgotten items and tossing them in a box stuff. Two plastic coat hangers, a windbreaker, a Christmas ornament, a pot lid, a dust pan, a wonderfully silly tall top heavy metal sculpture of a frog, the key card for the community pool and the key to the large ornamental gas fireplace at the rental house. Two back issues of Southern Living and a wash cloth pad a cheap vase and one shoe sits sadly in the bottom.

Next time I am going for the bag...

Bunky's Playhouse

This is the begining (I think) of Bunky's Playhouse.  What do you think? Help me out here folks-- opinions and ideas.

BUNKY'S PLAYHOUSE

--CHAPTER ONE--

I am rooted and settled, I colonized, I dwell, I am established, I’ve hung up my hat, my house is inhabited, I have kept house, I have lived, and I am located, I am lodged, I have moved to, and I am parked, I definitely put down roots, I’ve set up home, squatted, taken up residence. In short, I am here to stay. This is how I felt about my first house and this is how I feel about the house I am in now.  Obviously, in the case of the first house I was sadly mistaken, but hey, no one is perfect! This time it is for real, for sure, no doubt about it. If I leave (for a permanent type of reason) I want to be in a pine box, feet first, heading out the door to the burn pit. Even then I don’t want to go far. Till me up, scatter me about; make me a part of what I call home forever. I want to become part of the soil, lifted up on a warm breeze, carried far on the hooves of deer and the paws of rabbits and fox. Underground, in the air, in the water, sucked up through the trees trunks and expelled through the leaves, forever changed, forever the same, part of this place, this life, this world.

I watch a praying mantis devouring bugs more than half its size on the kitchen window and a wolf spider sits by the front door hunkered down in a sticky, thick and nasty tunnel built of web within a shrub. I can hear a little bunny or similar furry moonlight dwelling creature scurry under the porch, watch the violent, territorial hummingbirds, the butterflies drunk and wobbly on pollen and the chattering squirrels trying to distract the avian mob so that they can steal and run with their bounty.

Buzzards, huge and threatening in appearance, float on the warm air rising from the soft and fertile ground. I watch them, I can almost hear them whispering ‘here bunny, bunny, bunny, here little bunny, let’s do lunch’. In my head they share a voice with Hiss the sssibilant sssnake from the Disney animated version of Robin Hood. I know the only lapin in danger are those too dead to care about it but they frighten me none the less. I watched too many cartoons as a kid with the buzzards stalking the dying, giving them no chance to rest and get their wits about them.

Every now and then an owl’s hoot can be heard, sounding to every creature who hears it like a silken promise of death to come following the gloaming. Doves coo, as if to make it all better, to alleviate the harshness and certain tragedy of the advertised demise by owls and subsequent clean up by buzzards alike.

The ground is springy under my feet and I can see hummocks marking tunnels, little highways under the ground, but barely, moles trudging along chewing and thrusting and chewing some more. Ants of every size and type scurry like… well, like ants, busy and determined but not averse to taking a bite out of you if you happen to be in the line of their travel.

Hornets and bees swirl lazily, their buzzing so overweight, so swollen with the dog days of summer and fermenting nectar that it sounds almost painful for them. They loll about, all the while keeping a secret, a burst of energy tucked away, a smidge of lust barely under control for that sudden speedy dart, land, and sting. It is a given just not knowing when but knowing it will come and that they will surely, obscenely, enjoy it and then die. The bees must be jealous because they know they only have one shot at it while a hornet can sting and sting and sting until you are swollen and full of poison, on fire in the front yard watching the buzzards fly overhead murmuring ‘here little jeannie, little jeannie, jeannie, yum’ and the moles commence happily digging the hole you will reside in forever and ever amen.

Little field mice wait on tenterhooks just around the corner and under the drain pipe taking turns darting in to the garage when the doors open, digging around in who knows what until they open again and a sprint lets them back out into the air and the light. I am sure they have confabs late into the mousy evening regarding the glories they have found on their forays and a cabal of elders is determining just where they will go for the winter (The bag of bubble wrap? The collection of wrapping materials and Christmas decorations? The box of shop rags? Decisions, decisions!), with the lucky mouse that found the perfect hidey hole being celebrated by all the others as their salvation.

As I see them flatten themselves out and then spring out the door, making a run for it I think 'CAT', as I picture myself shaking a fist at them, ‘Cat, you little bastards, a big cat with a large appetite’. I know I won’t but it feels good to make the threat, to see them quiver (in my imagination at least) from fear. I will stare down a spider but furry things with toes give me the willies.

A starling likes to fly in every time the mice run out, sitting on the top of the open garage door and fussing at me for continually locking him out. He flies from side to side chattering and trilling, flapping awkwardly in the enclosed space but he just keeps on doing it so I no longer feel sorry for him. I am not sure if he is the slowest of the starlings, the ‘special’ one,  the one they will definitely leave behind if given half a migratory chance, or if he is just doing it to taunt me. Having seen how frightened I am of the mice and with the moles making me shiver and shudder what a treat it must be  for the normally powerless little bird to make me duck, cover and run from the sheltering garage, sounding all the world like a crow gone mad. I don’t threaten him with 'CAT'. No point, he knows I am a liar. While I can’t stand these creatures invading my space they are glorious in theirs. They belong here and I will not make them dinner on purpose, not even if they wholeheartedly deserve it.

A pile of deer droppings lie at the end of the driveway, next to the mail box. I wonder did said deer void before crossing, wanting to make sure that he was as light and fleet of foot as possible or did he narrowly miss being run into by a car or a truck speeding through the dark countryside at night? Did the lights catch him in mid stride and freeze him for a split second as his life (trees and shadow, guns and grass) flash across his brainpan before he could tear himself away from the glare and leap onto the shoulder, barely making it, breathing hard as the wind from the truck whipped his tail mightily and this mess was literally shit scared out of him? Only the deer and the truck driver (if indeed he exists) know for sure.

I think the other deer must have questioned him if they saw his disheveled state, his wind-blown tail, and ‘ooh’ed and ‘aaah’ed when he told his tale. Even if the first scenario was more accurate, if he just dumped because it was time or the grass was too green that morning, he would tell a similar tale anyway, for what chance do whitetail have to be heroes?  The speed of the hurtling nemesis would go from 20 miles an hour to 100 and from a VW Beetle or short bed pick up to an 18 wheeler barreling down the narrow two lane road. No doubt the driver would have been bent on destruction of one kind or another (why else would he be here, on this country lane at that time of night?) and narrowly missing the valiant deer would have thrown off his timing, or given him a chance to reflect on his misdeeds, real or imagined, and change his direction, both physically and maybe, maybe, spiritually.

As I chuckle to myself at this image of deer as savior of eternal soul of a madman a murder of crows begin cawing over my head, loud and long. They sit in the tallest pines, crying out to each other. Are they shaming me for laughing out loud and ruining their perfect place, their perfect day? I start to wonder what might be lying about dead, what with the buzzards and crows lolling about the canopy, but do not see, or more likely, smell a thing out of the ordinary. They fly about, random circles, black wings flapping crying out to one another but for what? What on earth can they be shouting about if it isn’t food? It is hardly likely that a cat is climbing one of the giant pines, not a child or hunter about with a gun, BB or (God forbid) real, no airplanes or crow eating tyrannosaurus rexes about. Why are they making the racket? Just to be heard. I tilt up my chin and CAW right back at them, it doesn’t even faze them, they chortle, they flap, they remove themselves from my annoying presence and I hear their calls echoing through the woods off into the distance. Holes are left in the blue day where their ragged voices tore at the noisy silence of nature, slow to fill in again, leaving things around them just a bit mussed, not quite as perfect as they were but no visible reason found for it.



Winston

For the last four and a half years my husband and I lived in a newer community. The houses were large and stylish looking on the exterior, the trees miniscule and supported by sticks and twine. They were built  on lots so tiny and the windows and doors so close, it felt like one could reach out their window and tap on their neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar without ever having to step outside. It wasn’t a bad house, it was a really nice house in fact. We had bought it in a time of dire need. I needed to get away from the house where my son shot himself. I needed to get away from my sister and her husband who had been so genial, so kind hearted when he died and took us in because I couldn’t go home. I had to get away from life for a while and this house was perfect for that.

After a year of solitude and wound licking we began to come out of our trance. We planted 3 little trees, two apple trees and an elm, a few shrubs, some tomatoes (what better than a yard with no shade at all for growing tomatoes?) and flowers  and tried to make the barren, poorly sodded yard look like someone actually lived there.  Humming bird feeders rounded out our attempt to make our environment a little less civilized and a little bit more alive. The end result was not spectacular but what could we do? We were trying to hold on until the market straightened itself out (go ahead and laugh, Lord knows we have) and then sell it and move… who knows where, but somewhere that felt like we belonged. The walls were all white inside, pictures leaned against the walls instead of hanging to avoid nail holes and new flooring was priced. Basically we were all dressed up and left with nowhere to go.

Another sister was having a bit of a hard time and had moved in with us. We started spending weekends roaming the county looking for houses that were suitable for her. Not too small, not too large. Not too old, not too new. And most importantly, not too expensive. With the flood of foreclosures there seemed to be an endless stream of new listings every week, hours spent walking through empty homes that looked and felt sad and unloved and quite often abused.

During this process we realized that we had begun  looking for our future home as well. Apparently, even if something were falling down or being  raped and pillaged by hordes of crack heads and roaming wildlife we would  find it charming if it sat on acreage and had a porch. Wiring and plumbing ripped out?  Bums living in the basements and crawl spaces? Bats in the attic and rats in the cellar? Sure! But look at the view! Listen to the birds! Imagine the grandkids running through that grass and climbing those trees! We began dropping off my sister after our weekly forays into the real estate market so that she could run errands or babysit her grandkids and we would take off again, following tiny maps on cell phones and incomprehensible directions  to homes scattered far and wide.

There was lovely property with horrid houses, horrid  property with lovely houses. Houses on lakes, on hills, in valleys and dales. Hundred year old houses that were gorgeous but sat ten feet from a major roadway. Country looking estates that sat two minutes from strip malls and freeways on lots that were 50 feet wide and a thousand feet long. Lots with no trees, acres and acres of grass and scrub and lots with trees so thick you couldn’t tell where the house was. Houses on stagnant lakes and dried up streams that would flood sure enough in a good rain.  Lots with hidden trash dumps, even worse, lots with obvious trash dumps were located in the sticks and in the best of areas… the list of properties that just wouldn’t do seemed endless.

We had driven past a certain house on a certain lot a couple of times but it appeared someone lived there so we didn’t get up close and personal with it. It disappeared off the market and we didn’t think any more about  it. After weeks of disheartening maybe-one-day looking my husband noted that the house had come back on the market at a reduced price. We contacted our agent- slash- shaman and arranged to go see it.

Driving out to the house we were struck once again by the beauty of the woods and farms that lined the route we were on.  The drive was long, the house country. A large and inviting porch lined with white rockers beckoned to us. We sat down, the agent, my husband and I, one, two three in order and for the first time in years I felt a semblance of what I remembered as peace. We walked into the house, older, a bit ramshackle, but so full of promise and love you could almost smell it and feel it as you walked from room to room. Three French doors opened up from different rooms onto a huge covered back porch and (what could be) a beautiful swimming pool.

I saw the hornets threatening, the pool needing repairs, the knee high two acres of grass, but I also saw the basketball sized beehive in a Japanese tulip tree, five different kinds of oaks and humming birds flitting through the copse. I saw deer tracks and raccoon prints and a playhouse/fort colorfully labeled ‘Bunkey’s Playhouse’ back in the woods. I was afraid to say how much I loved this house on sight, I didn’t want to jinx it, didn’t want to find the thing that would make it unlivable like all the rest we had viewed. The simple fact of the matter is that sometimes you just have to jump in the deep end, and while the water is cold, it is clear. Places, houses, have character the same as people. I needed this house and this house needed me.

I looked at my husband who was looking at soffits and roof lines. He listed things that would need to be fixed, things that would cost money and time which are not always as easy to come by as one might wish. I brace myself for the list of reasons why it wouldn’t work. Lo and behold, my husband paused a moment and then told the agent we liked it, we wanted it, and to make an offer.  My pent up breath blew out with gusto, moving my bangs away from my face and drifted up and away to be inhaled by the trees and the vines and the flowers and the other living things on this little green oasis that was already a piece of my heart.