Birthday photoblog

Texas Gardening Sept 7th,2003

I have posted a photoblog of my trip to Montana. Although it doesn't have a poetic name like Bendermeer, the Flathead River in Columbia Falls has clear water and sitting by it is very soothing.

There's a bower of roses by Bendermeer's stream
and the nightingale sings round it all the day long.
In the time of my childhood t'was like a sweet dream
to sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.
That bow'r and it's music I never forget
but oft when alone in the bloom of the year
I think, Is the nightingale singing there yet
are the roses still bright by the calm Bendermeer?

~ Irish Folksong ~

Haiku--- to continue the eastern theme


Across sandy beach
Bird shadow moves, detach-ed.
Then meets bird: itself.


Lightning strikes! Booming
thunder rolling east to west.
Who is this in bed?


__

Title "HANA" "Flower"

Haruno urarano Sumidagawa Nobori kudarino funabitoga Kaino shizukumo hanato chiru Nagamewo nanini tatoubeki	The Sumida River in the warm spring weather; Boats go up and down the stream; Water drops are splashed from the oars; What can one compare the beautiful scene to?
Mizuya akebono tsuyu abite Wareni monoiu sakuragiwo Mizuya yuugure tewonobete Ware sashimaneku aoyagiwo	Can't you see the cherry trees That speak to you, with dews at dawn? Can't you see the willow trees That invite you with their hands stretched, in the dusk?

---

Wayback machine dialed to 1962(?) Kunihiko Makita (Foreign Exchange Student) and
I sang a Japanese song he taught me, as a duet for some assembly or something
- (I need some help remembering this). Only a tune and a few words were left in
my brain, and asked Kuni, now in Singapore, who emailed me these lyrics. He said
he had to look them up too, so I didn't feel as bad. I remember it as "Haru-no".
It's the kind of nature poem where you can see and feel the river and the setting.
It reminds of Merry's trip to Tanaguchi Gardens, in some city in Texas .

Update: Kuni sent me the score, and I converted it to MIDI, so you can play it Here.
Also, The orange icon above says "MAKITA" and was from a glass stamp that I got
from Kuni way back when.

I am trying out a new way of hosting my blog.
What do you think?

Last week a friend was visiting from NY and we went to Hamilton Pool to swim. It is way out in the country, a long drive. After we got there we found out we could not swim, bacteria count too high. But we got to sit by this beautiful spring fed pool.This was my first visit and I want to go back when I can swim.On the way home I stooped to buy a bottle of water at Bert and Ernie's, the little country beer store closest to the park. As I left, two Texas ranchers parked their two big white dusty pickup trucks and were approaching the door. Conversation went something like this:
"Today's a hot one?"
"Yep, looks like a long hot summer."
"Yep."

This is a wonderful photo essay on the Japanese garden in Zilker Park, Austin. Tanaguchi Gardens

Well, I guess I'm back. With some coaxing from my siblings. However, in my recent move, I have lost the tiny piece of paper which told me how to post pictures and do other cool things on my blog. I just spent a couple of hours sorting through my desk and trying to create some order. But still no luck finding my crib sheet. I need a good source of info on how to blog. Can any one out there help?

Ha ha! that certainly is hair-raising. We are looking forward to Meredith's return to her blog.

Just thought you needed a stimulating, beautiful picture to get you going again.

New Place, New Blog ------------- Images from Kali's home in Austin

My new used blue Metro

Grandma going out the gate for a ride around town

Kali's wonderful screened porch in the back

Kali in the kitchen

Grandma and Rufus, her new best friend

Oh, I loved the basement. Going down the stairs, seeing the shelves of preserved fruit and jelly in those big Mason jars. Such a lot of work, making those preserves, dipping the jars in boiling water, melting the wax to seal them, all that steam in the kitchen on a hot summer's day... but what joy in the winter to be the one who got to open that jam jar, prying the wax open with the tip of a knife, getting to lick it clean and then chew the sticky sweet wax in lieu of bubble gum.



Then at the bottom of the stairs, the coal furnace glowing. What a scary, pre-industrial era image, the iron door, the piles of coal, the dust everywhere, the crunchy floor underfoot.



There was a nook with remnant of a broken down wall in the back room where slaves had hidden in the underground railroad. There were bare lightbulbs hanging from wires. The foundation walls were old stones, all exposed, with bugs and dust. The storm door that came up by the driveway looked just like the one Dorothy goes down in the Wizard of Oz.



Today, I doubt most modern, protective parents would let a child go into such a danger trap as that basement. But it was where my imagination took flight, in the dirty dark recesses where time stood still.

I have to catch up to you guys a little on the blogging. Merry, I either didn't know, or had forgotten that you worked downtown. It's strange to think of LeRoy in those days. Leah, I remember the quarter eating milk vending machine too. It must have been a real pioneer thing, as you said, for the vending machine and weren't they in paper cartons, too? I remember the hardware store most clearly because I went there so often for cartridge fuses for 25 cents each that we kept blowing in the 39 East Main house. Remember the electrical system was so overloaded that we were always smelling a blown fuse, and going down in the dark to replace it. Along the way Dad paid Mr. Sharp (Dad of Phyllis and ? on Summit St, old neighbors) to put in a new service box, but it was never hooked up while I lived there. Also links to memories of the coal shoveling. The basement was full of memories for me. I must have been down there more than I thought. The darkroom, of course, (can't you smell the dektol?) the back room where miraculously two soapbox derby racers were built, or appeared by spontaneous generation out of the ethers, The garbage barrel, clever in it's convenience from the kitchen, but always propped up from beneath in some rube goldberg fashion, waiting to be dumped.

I remember sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs, and looking up at the beams in the ceiling, recalling a fable-like story that we had in "Lands and Peoples". I have remembered it in my own fashion all of my life. It told of several brothers in a family (in a land far away) who one at a time went down in the cellar and saw a hatchet stuck in a beam above their heads. The second son found first son crying about it, worried that it some day would accidentally fall and kill someone. They cried together. yadda yadda yadda The last brother came down and saw the others fretting over this and reached up, laughed, and took down the axe and solved the problem. I wonder if I ever found the real story again, if it would resemble my version at all.