Austin Tuba Christmas

For more about this event go to http://mab.fotopages.com

Lily poses with my little Christmas tree. 

Kali, Grandma and Meredith on Thanksgiving Day 2004 

Fall colors please me at some primal level.
This year Fall lasted I think three days.
Zoom. . .. One day it was summer and three days of fall, then it
snowed. I was lucky enough to get a great fall picture down the
street at the Talcottville Post office. I was driving by at the end
of the day, and saw the colorful picture, and as if in a script, the
two cars parked right there pulled out as if for me. I jumped out,
took the picture, just the right lighting, a Jenner sky behind it,
just perfect.
And as I left,an old man pulled in and parked his car in front of the
tree again and would have been in the way. Just perfect timing for
a perfect picture. Here is the image I framed for the Postmaster.

Williamson Creek behind the house after 10 straight days of rain.

The waters are rising again. 

This is what we are having for Thanksgiving dinner.....

Frim Fram Sauce

I don't want french fried potatoes, red ripe tomatoes
I'm never satisfied
I want the frim fram sauce
With oss-en-fay with shafafa on the side

I don't want pork chops and bacon
That won't awaken, my appetite inside
I want the frim fram sauce
With oss-en-fay with shafafa on the side

Well you know a girl
She really got to eat
And a girl she should eat right
Five will get you ten
I'm going to feed myself right tonight

I don't want turkey and rye bread
You heard what I said
Waiter please, I want mine fried
I want the frim fram sauce
With oss-en-fay with shafafa on the side


These words are for Bob, who has posted many lyrical lyrics on his blog. I heard this yesterday, recorded by, a favorite of his, Diana Krall. The original Nat King Cole version is slightly different.

Pears, grown locally, bought at the farmers market. 

A turban squash, in fall colors 

A blog isn't a blog unless it is used. This one has been strangely silent for many months. Now it is fall again, almost Thanksgiving 2004, and here in Texas it feels like spring. The oppressive heat is gone, everyone wants to be outside, the air smells fresh, leaves are turning, grass is greening up. Perhaps it is time for me to return again, to the this blog. I can at least post some pictures, and maybe some poems.

Here is a picture from Meredith's photo pages, with Merry and Grandma on her 106th (!) birthday.

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