Dog Momma Duties

My biological clock is ticking so loudly that I can hardly hear myself think, so of course, I did what any 27 year old baby wanting human would do, and adopted two sweet sister puppies. They are smart and spoiled and trouble and bark and chew and dig and I ADORE them. They eat my cactus, shred my paper (see below), chase butterflies, pull each other's tails, sleep ON TOP of each other, and I wouldn't trade one single second. They may not have stopped the ticking clock, but they've quieted it a little, and they make their mommy smile.

Bunny Flowers

Larkspur = Bunny Flowers

Look closely, see the bunny in the middle? My paternal grandmother, my Didi, had a whole garden full. She was amazing. An accomplished painter, gardener, and sweet sweet soul. When I was three, my Didi & Grandad gave me a huge pink stuffed bunny. I can remember them sitting it on the sofa, and all the adults watching to see my reaction. I was unsure if it was actually for me, and trying to make my three year old brain have the self restraint to not grab her and make a run for it. I spent weeks trying to come up with a name suitable for such a grand possession, only to finally realize there wasn't one. Her name would be "Bunny". That same year, my Daddy brought home a real bunny, she was white with pink eyes, and her name was Foo Foo. Foo Foo didn't last long, but my love for bunnies did, so when Didi took me by the hand one spring day, and showed me the bunny inside her funny purple flower, I was in awe.

Didi got sick, very sick, very fast, but Grandad would push her chair out into her garden so she could sit and instruct him on how to keep it. I would sidle up beside her so she could tell me which ones to pick for her bedside. She passed in the fall, too young and too soon. Grandad did his best to keep the house, and the garden exactly how she'd left it, but time turned the flowers to weeds, and the ivy took over mercilessly like a garden dictator. Twenty years later, every spring, I turn back into that seven year old, crouched over what was once my Didi's garden, waiting for the first sprouts of Larkspur. Spring still comes through all the dead of winter, and so do the bunny flowers.

This year, for the first time, I'll have bunny flowers of my own, planted in little vintage wooden planters that my Didi would have loved.

Why I love this woman...

I began my romance with Edna St. Vincent Millay through an actual romance with a brilliant poet in her own rite..(who shall remain nameless)...the first time I saw her sit on the patio with a glass of wine in her hand and perfectly recite Renascence I was mesmerized. Both by the poet before me, and the poet before her, who had birthed those words. From then on, it went from a love to an obsession....as is the normal transition of these things for me. The more I read, the more my heart ached....the more I connected with her words, the more i felt they were my own. I spent hours reading, memorizing and applying her verse, until it became "useful" in my daily life. I have yet to find a time in my world that is not perfectly and completely conveyed in just one line from Edna St. Vincent Millay's pen.

Here are some of my current favorites~


FIRST FIG

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah my foes, and oh, my friends--,
It gives a lovely light!


PASSER MORTUUS EST

Death devours all lovely things:
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness, --presently
Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain
Dries the sheer libation;
And the little petulant hand
Is an annotation.

After all, my earstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?


THE TRUE ENCOUNTER

"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf!" "Wolf!" ---and up would start
Good neighbors, bringing spade,
and pitchfork to my aid,

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace.


THE PHILOSOPHER
(this was the first one I memorized....it really hit a nerve for me, it is still my favorite)

And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
as many nights as there are days
with weeping for your sake?

And what are you that missing you,
as many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
and looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
and twenty men as kind,
and what are you, that you should be
the one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
as any sage will tell--
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?

This was the in the top of my graduation announcements for college...it fit me perfect

...The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road
A gateless garden, and an open path:
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

This was my Christmas Card last year..

"Not Truth, but Faith it is that keeps the world alive"