redballjets

2007-06-25T12:52:00.000-05:00

Me. 'N everybody else. (Matt, Jon, Case.) We are sitting in front of a gallery on Canyon Road, Santa Fe.

2007-06-24T13:41:00.000-05:00

This is a Sante Fe window. I took the picture while running down Canyon Road on an early morning seven miler. It was hard to carry my camera for seven miles, but worth it in the end.

2007-06-23T10:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, we hiked up to Nambe Falls. Nambe Falls is on the Nambe Pueblo Reservation and is considered holy ground. It is a short but fairly steep climb. Along the way we were lucky to see some cactus in bloom.

2007-06-22T23:24:00.000-05:00

Santa Fe is a door culture. Thresholds are very important here. Each house in Old Santa Fe has it's own distinctive door, sometimes old, beaten, often heavy and substantial. Occasionally, there's a door on the street that opens to a door on the house. They can be bare wood or brightly painted. They do make me wonder about what's on the other side, these doors.

2007-06-21T20:59:00.000-05:00

Today we drove to Sante Fe, New Mexico. Along the way we stopped at Shamrock, Texas to visit the U Drop Inn Cafe, a classic Route 66 structure that was once a gas station and cafe of the best kind. We had high hopes we could still get a burger there, but when we arrived we found only some ladies inside sewing. (I know. Sewing?) Wish they still served hamburgers and fries there. Bet it was good.

2007-06-09T18:26:00.000-05:00

NERDISMS: The Pencil Case.

I love my pencil case. I've had for about ten years. It's is brown leather and just a little bit longer than a newly sharpened pencil. I'm always looking for new pencil cases. But so far, I haven't found anything I like better, which is nice because how often do you purchase something that still makes you happy ten years later?

It's hard to come by a good pencil case in America. If you go to an office supply store and look for pencil cases, mostly what you find are the flat variety that are supposed to fit into a notebook or three ring binder. These are made out of plastic or heavy duty nylon with mesh or some such underinspired thing. Kids' pencil cases (which are found in the school supply section) are a little bit better. They are sometimes in the shape of a favorite cartoon character like Sponge Bob Squarepants or something. But still, where are the secret sliding compartments for erasers and lunch money like they had for pencil cases in days of old? My students from other countries often come to class with very fine pencils cases. I notice, generally speaking, that my Japanese and Korean students have especially good ones. I understand you can get a good pencil case in Paris, and I know you can get a good one in London too.

Mine is rounded like a semi circular tube. The leather is thick, and it's the kind that gets better with age and use. There are no secret compartments, but it is quite roomy and I can fit a lot in it. Here's what I have in my pencil case: an excellent 3 inch folding ruler which unfolds to a full twelve inches, a small pair of scissors, a pen light flashlight (you never know when you might need one), a honey bee eraser, two triangular pentech pencils which are designed to NOT roll off your desk when in resting position, three vintage bakelite pencil sharpeners in red, yellow and orange (more on those in a future NERDISM post), a very compact red and yellow one hole punch, two red pens (one of which telescopes) and a small all-in-one tool which includes tweezers, scissors, a screwdriver, a bottle opener, and a variety of pen knives which means it would not be permitted as a carry-on when boarding an airplane.

I do not however carry any food in my pencil case, not even a roll of Necco wafer candy (which would, nonetheless, fit very nicely.)

2007-06-08T07:28:00.000-05:00

This spring, Habitat for Humanity had a Birdhouse Benefit Auction. The local chapter gives birdhouses out to area artists so they can embellish them in any way they like. The birdhouses are displayed in a gallery and auctioned off. The money from the auction then goes to support the current Habitat House project. It was great fun to be a part of the show, and I was fascinated to see how other artists responded to the project. The final show included a wide variety of styles and colors, but all the birdhouses were happy moments of creative expression. I was glad to contribute my time and creative energy in support of such a good cause. Since I love shadowboxes and have done several in my mixed media art, I decided to make my birdhouse a shadowbox too. The title of the piece is "A Bird's Eye View." Though I don't know who ultimately bought it, I trust it went to a good home, and I hope whoever has it enjoys the little world created within. If you'd like to see more views of "A Bird's Eye View" you can visit my Image/Text Blog. You'll find the link to it on the sidebar.

2006-06-20T18:50:00.000-05:00

Among my collection of favorite books is one entitled, Writer's Houses, by Francesca Premoli-Droulers. It's a large book that features pictures of the homes of several writers, some I've read and or heard of and some who are new to me. She features writers from Europe, South America and North America. In her introduction, Francesca says, "This book is about the varied dwellings in which some of the greatest writers of the last one hundred years, lived, created and suffered, where they acquired perhaps a taste for solitude and certainly an urge to write. These are the private domains they loved, the secret places where they found fullfilment."

It features the innner sanctums of Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Vita Sackville-West, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf. Twain, Yeats, Hemmingway, among others. What I love about this book is how intentional each of the rooms is, but also how imperfect. It looks like someone has had a life there...sometimes complex, messy, uneven, but also orderly, seasonal, rhythmic.

In contrast, the rooms in home magazines and on television shows look impressive, but ultimately, they are too perfect for me. I can't find myself in them. Within the walls of these writers' houses, I feel more at home. There are lumpy old chairs and bookshelves crammed with books. Potted plants, only half alive but tenaciously surviving, cluttered writing tables, windows with views as grand as the ocean or as simple as a cottage garden. Invariably, somewhere in the house, each writer had some special spot, be it a whole room or merely a secret corner, where he or she experienced enough peace and quiet to write.

I am rarely alone in my house. But I can find solitude enough to write in it. Or maybe it is more accurate to say I have composed enough solitude to write in it, because as Margaret Duras wrote, "One does not find solitude, one creates it."

2006-05-12T22:54:00.000-05:00

The owl shakes out her feathers after a morning bath.

2006-05-12T22:38:00.000-05:00

I've done some homework and I found out my neighborhood owl is actually a barred owl. There's a family of them. I saw the fuzzy headed little baby tonight but couldn't get a picture of it. The parents keep it pretty high up in the tree. The mature owls are fond of taking morning baths in a puddle which forms in the middle of my street due to sprinkler systems. They are often surrounded by a variety of angry birds including sparrows, wrens, and blujays, who chatter and dive bomb them. They also like to lurk in a tree in our yard and wait for the neighbor's chihuahua to come out for his evening constitution. They have attacked it more than once. The other night we heard an odd yelping, then some vigorous hooting. We observed from the porch as my neighbor (who originally hails from Mississippi and retains the requisite accent) chased both owls back up the tree, yelling "You can't have mah dawg! He's too big for you anyway!" Who needs T.V. when you have this kind of drama?

2006-05-12T22:04:00.000-05:00

Tonight. there's a full moon. Not a blue moon but full even so. I like when the moon is hanging low in the sky, like it's caught in the branches of the oak tree across the street, like it's staring in at me through the window.

2006-03-12T14:48:00.000-06:00

I live under the watchful eye of an urban owl. To be more accurate and to see it from his point of view, I am a squatter in his territory. He tolerates me reasonably well. He makes himself known at morning and at dusk when he flies from tree to tree hooting. He does this to create invisible but quite distinct boundry lines for any other owls who might be thinking about enroaching on his universe. I know it's a fairly common occurrance in the country, but in the city, especially where I live which is just a short mile from downtown, it is a rare treat.

I have even had some fairly close encounters with him. Once in the evening, as I was walking out to my driveway to secure my car, he swooped low and fast past me on his way to a big old tree at the far corner of the yard. His wings were spread out full length in a five foot span. He pumped them once or twice as if the make certain I noticed him, then glided up on the air to a gnarled limb. I think it was intentional. I don't know if I interrupted him in the middle of a hunting expedition or what. But I had the distinct feeling he was putting me in my place.

Another time, I was sitting out on my small back deck with friends, drinking wine, and talking about him. It was evening and I was telling my friends about his routines, when all of a sudden we looked up and there he was, sitting right above us on very top of an abandoned telephone pole. Right above our heads. "There he is!" my friend said. We all fell into awed silence. I'm not one for magical thinking. In fact, I am generally careful to stay on the rational side of things. But I'd never seen him do this, and now he seemed to be settled there quite deliberately, showing off.

As far as myth and lore goes, the owl has long been the subject of story and superstition. He's been a changling for witches, a harbinger of death or illness, occassionally but less often a sign of good luck, a protector. I like the ancient Greek view of him: the goddess Athena was so taken with the owl and his wide-eyed view of the world, she kept one as a constant companion and consulted him as a source for wisdom.

According to a naturalist friend of mine, most urban owls are of the Horned variety. Besides me, he shares the neighborhood, with dogs, cats, a significant and scrappy population of squirrels, a charming family of foxes, lots of humans with their regular comings and goings by foot and vehicle, and I'm sure, as he is very aware though I don't catch sight of them as easily as he, a population of small birds, mice, snakes, lizards and other edibles. I (along with other neighborhood bird lovers) contribute to his eco-system by faithfully setting out birdseeds of various kinds, which draws said birds and mice and so, attracts predators like outdoor cats, sometimes a hawk, and this majestic owl.

It can be a noisy, busy place. Ambulances wail up and down a nearby thoroughfare with some regularity, trash trucks and street cleaners come and go, once in a while a train lumbers through. But he is unflappable, deliberate, serene. Far from being an omen of bad things to come, he is my good luck charm. I consider myself quite fortunate to be in earshot of his sharp, hollow call.

2006-01-21T22:20:00.000-06:00

I've been telling my sons little things I want them to know. It's sort of like teaching The Meaning of Life, but it's all on the scale of daily minutiae, which is something I understand better anyway. Like with cooking...it's the side dishes that make the meal.

Take for instance peanut butter and celery sticks. I know it doesn't sound like much but it can add just the right touch. It's got a texture element. And sound--it has a nice crunch that reverberates inside and outside your head as you chew.

The celery is refreshing (as long as you serve it cold and you haven't let it get old and rubbery in the fridge...limp celery is not a good thing) and the peanut butter adds just a touch of sweetness. I don't recommend it with Italian meals, but it's good for a traditional bit of pot roast, or a standard chicken pot pie type of thing.

Here's my recipe:

Take a couple of ribs of celery, wash in cold water and trim ends. (I like saying that...ribs of celery.)

Cut ribs into three inch lengths.

With table knife, spread peanut butter in the celery grooves.

Arrange into subtle but appealing pattern on a colorful plate.

Serve immediately!

My son Case believes the best way to eat a peanut butter celery stick is to lick out the peanut butter and leave the celery stick behind. I think this misses the point. I've seen and tasted some variations. Cream cheese and celery sticks. Pimento cheese and celery sticks. None of these possibilties interest me.

I have read a recipe which suggests that once you have the peanut butter spread onto the celery, you can press raisins into the peanut butter. This variation is called Ants on a Log.

If you do this, you are trying too hard.

2006-01-10T18:06:00.000-06:00

I held a six hundred year old book in my hands the other day.

I had gone down to the Rare Book Room at the university library to see my friend and colleague Bill Garvin and make a request of him. Bill spends most of his days in rareified air. (Seriously...the air is climate-controlled with a constant level of low humidity and temperature to protect the artifacts housed there, so that he is comfortable day in and day out wearing a heavy sweater, whereas the rest of us suffer from tropical blasts of forced air in the winter and shiver from overly refrigerated air in the summer.) Bill shares office space with a Picasso drawing, a Thomas Hart Benton painting, important maps and documents, and hand-crafted books inscribed by artisans centuries ago, back when books were treasures and as much cutting edge in technology as computers are today.

I had been preparing for one of my classes--a class on book arts and image text. I wanted to bring my Small Press Book Publishing class down to the Rare Book Room to see and touch some of the wonderful book artifacts we have in our collection. As we discussed the visit, Bill reached over to a shelf behind his desk, then handed me a book. "You might enjoy seeing this," he said. "I just got it."

Since I knew it was rare (remember the name of the room if you will) I gingerly slipped the book out of its protective sleeve. It was a small volume, about the size of a compact writing tablet, and no more than a half inch thick. The text was painstakingly hand lettered in perfect Latin script. It had suffered a little bit from time. The pages had several tiny holes left there by a diligent bookworm. But it was clearly well-made--the pages still held tightly together and turned as well as the first day they were bound in the mid 1400's.

"It is just a manual on writing correspondance," Bill said. "But what I love about it is that the cover is the page of an even older manuscript."

It was true. Once the scribe had finished the text and stitched the pages together, in a pragmatice gesture he took the vellum page from an older book which had for whatever reason fallen into disuse, turned it sideways, and used it to make the cover.

I am always amazed to touch or hear or read things that come to me from the distant past, things that are windows to others who lived long before... which brings me to Pangur the Cat. Pangur is the star of a poem written in 900 A.D. and precedes our bookmaking scribe by 500 years. The poem, entitled "The Scholar and his Cat", was originally written in Gaelic, probably by a monk. Here is an abridged version:

I and Pangur practice each of us his special art: his
mind is set on hunting, my mind on my special craft.

When the two of us--this tale never wearies us--are alone
together in our house, we have something to which we
may apply our skill, an endless sport.

It is usual, at times, for a mouse to stick in his net, as a
result of warlike battlings. For my part, into my net falls
some difficult rule of hard meaning.

He is joyful with swift movement when a mouse sticks in
his sharp paw: I too am joyful when I understand a
dearly difficult problem.

Though we be thus at any time, neither of us hinders the
other, each of us likes his craft, severally rejoicing in them.

(trs. by Seamus Heaney. From The Great Book of Gaelic, Cannongate Books, Edinburgh, 2005)

The monk's name does not survive these 11 centuries, but Pangur's does. (Clever cat!) I am grateful that evidence of his fleeting life was so well captured and preserved. It all serves as proof that there are things which transcend time, the monuments and cathedrals, yes...but also the intimate things--a writing handbook, a house cat's name and nature.

That someone saved such things and passed them on makes it possible for us to meet at this unlikely intersection...you, me, the medieval book maker and Pangur, the scholar's cat.

2005-12-12T20:03:00.001-06:00

I have always loved the "be-" words. Words like become, before.

Begin, behave, belong.

Between, betray.

Some of them are so familiar to us, that we use them whole and don't notice how they begin with a prefix which identifies them as unique in the history of the English language. (The "be-" prefix, which derives from the Anglo Saxon, has various meanings: by or near, or denoting locality, as in below, beside; with a causitive or intensive force as in benumb, besprinkle, bemire; or with a privative force as in behead.)

Other "be-" words we or someone else we know (someone who maybe likes to play with words more than is even advisable... who might, in fact, be one besotted by words but who is otherwise benign) other "be-" words we use on a somewhat less frequent basis: beguile, belittle, bemoan, bewilder, bewitch. Though we use such words less frequently, they still hold some familiarity and we can slip easily inside the skin of them.

But some "be-" words are so rarely invoked that when they are used in our company they strike the ear with the sound of something tinny and ancient: Becalm, bedevil, bedraggle. Bethink, betime, betoken.

I remember the first time I tried to use a major "be-" word in everyday speech. I was eleven and attending a Camp Fire Girls meeting. My Camp Fire Girl leader (who I now realize was only a few years older than I) was eating a Big Mac hamburger in front of all of us six or seven girls. We could not take our eyes off of her as she munched away at her afternoon snack. For one thing, we all knew she was breeching an important rule of etiquette: i.e. don't eat in front of others. But besides that, she was eating something really good in front of others and enjoying every bite. One girl broke the silence, sidled up to her and leaning close, asked her for a bite. Our leader drew the burger away quickly and shook her head. "No," she said, her voice muffled. Another asked, "Oh please," she said. "Pleeeze?" That seemed to break open the dam. We all crowded around and begged, shamelessly.

"One bite?"

"Come on!"

"No!" the leader said again. The other girls began to pull away, but I, emboldened by the moment, tried once more. I could smell the hamburger, practically taste it. I leaned over, gave her my best pleading look and said, "I beseech you!"

She stopped mid-chew. "What did you say?" she stared at me.

I felt myself going red. I'd seen the word in a book, and it seemed to work so well then. "I--beseech you."

She laughed and shook her head. "You're really weird," she said.

It was a few years before I tried such a weighty "be-" word again. But I still love love them. Sometimes no other kind of word will do. For instance: I have beheld the Milky Way on a cloudless night and stood in awe. I have enjoyed the good will and best wishes that friends and family have bestowed upon me. Once or twice, my name has been besmirched by my enemies, but I do not begrudge them. Each time I lose a family member or loved one to death, I am most profoundly bereft. As for myself, these moments would be harder to express without "be-" words.

If you haven't invoked one in everyday conversation, I encourage you to try. Use them as befits you. They will serve you well.

2005-09-29T22:27:00.000-05:00

Have you seen this guy? Do you know him?

He appears as graffiti on downtown buildings and doorways in my city.

In one incarnation he is nearly life-sized, standing four feet tall on the backside of an empty building. In another, on a street one block over, he stands only six inches high, hovering at eye level. He might be a symbol for some secret society. But I don't know, he seems more innocent than that. Something about his guileless stare and the way he so willingly shows me his heart.

I worry about him a little. The climate is not very hospitable to his kind these days. Anything that's spray painted without permission on public or private surfaces is not likely to last. But whenever I'm driving downtown, I go around the block just to check on him, see if he's still there. He's like a revelation, the meaning of which I have yet to discover.

2005-09-05T16:29:00.001-05:00

"Want to see my DNA?" my sister said. She was walking down the hallway, and she grabbed hold of something which hung around her neck on a piece of black yarn. I am used to this from her. My science teacher sister goes off to science conferences and learns various scientific experiments which she can bring back to the science classroom. Once she approached me with a shoebox. "Look! Madagascarian Cockroaches!" There were four of them scratching around amidst some shredded newspaper inside the shoebox. They were large, the size of chicken eggs and almost as thick. "They like warm, moist environments, and if you heat them up them cool them down then heat them up again, they're encouraged to mate, so I'm keeping them on top of the dryer."

When I was a kid, I tried to grow sea horses in the laundry room. I'd found an advertisement for them in a comic book so I sent off for the eggs, and when they arrived in the mail I put them in jars with water. In about a day, I did have something swimming around in the water, transparent little organisms of some sort. Then in another day they were dead. I found out later, they weren't technically seahorses but some kind of common water larva. Not at all what I had imagined or hoped for.

"See?" she said. She held up a small tube which dangled from the yarn. Suspended in water inside the tube was a pale-looking, wormy thing. "We spit into the tube, then added Everclear. Well, I guess maybe it wasn't Everclear, but it was pure alcohol which alters the proteins and...there! DNA." We both stared into the tube. It looked a little spooky. It wasn't like the pictures of DNA in textbooks, or the models I've seen. Those are static and often neatly colored and labeled. This was strikingly organic. It floated around unpredictably whenever she shook the tube. We knew we were looking at The Map of Life. And besides that there was something in it we shared, since we both came from the same genetic landscape. I was awed and uncomfortable at the same time. Like she had just casually introduced me to God.

"Last night, my cats wanted to play with it," she said, "but I wouldn't let them." She took it off and hung it on the door knob of her pantry closet. We went on to other things, but I've thought a lot about it ever since.

2005-08-27T17:29:00.000-05:00

According to my Funk and Wagnells dictionary, an alley is a narrow street. It comes from the Middle English word "aley" which means "walk". It's true that most of the alleys I've been down are narrow. Some are wide enough for for a single car. Some, like the alleys that exist between two buildings are only wide enough for a single person to travel through. But an alleyway implies more than just a narrow steet. Alleys usually take me around to the backside of things. When I travel down the alleys in my neighborhood, I find myself traversing between backyards, seeing not the front porch face people put on things, but their more private selves: where people play and don't always pick up their toys; where stuff piles up if there are stuff-piles; where outdoor dogs live when they haven't jumped the fence and are roaming the neighborhood chasing people who unwisely wander down alleyways.

If I make the word into a metaphor, I come closer to a meaningful definition of it. If I talk about getting lost in the alleyways of life or love, then I'm saying something about being pulled off track, drawn into the hidden side of things, diverted away from the mapped and known experience and into the unknown. It seems important that I have both options. I like both ways of seeing the world, staying on the well-lit, familiar path, and then sometimes slipping down the weedy alleyways.

2005-08-22T21:14:00.000-05:00

My dog Keeper is five years old. I brought him home on April Fool's Day in the year 2000. According to the people at the humane society, he is part Dachsund and part Pomeranian. So that makes him a Dacheranian. Or maybe it makes him a Pomdach. Most people say they can see the Pomeranian part because of his tail and his tendency to smile a lot. Some people don't believe the Dachsund part...they don't see any signs of wiener doggedness. At least one person is convinced he's part Japanese Sheba dog.

One of my friends says simply, "He's a funny looking dog." Keeper and I look at each other and wonder. What is it? Legs too short? Body too long? Tail doesn't go with the head? What? Whatever it is that makes him look funny to other people, we just can't quite see it. I guess it comes from living too close to the mystery on a daily basis.

It's enough to make one want to curl up in a window seat and sleep on it for several hours.

2005-08-21T10:22:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, when I was visiting Dublin, Ireland, I came across a tribute to Oscar Wilde. Wilde is one of Ireland's favorite satirists in a country where a taste for the ironic is developed early in life. In the corner of a large urban public garden, a life sized statue of Wilde rested on a grassy hillside; Wilde was sprawled on the grass, propped up by his elbows, gazing sardonically at those who passed by. At his feet was a circular walkway paved in polished granite, and at its center was a polished granite pillar. The granite on both the pillar and walkway had been engraved with famous sayings by the writer. One for instance: "We are all of us lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." The quotations were handwritten by different people, so each quote looked like graffiti someone had scrawled in passing. My son Matt picked one out as his favorite, so I took a picture of it. I think it describes how we experience Life pretty well: "This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."

2005-08-10T18:19:00.000-05:00

The other night my husband, Jon, and I went for an ice cream drive. We used to do this with my two sons, heading to an old ice cream stand on the north side of town (one in fact that my parents took me to when I was a kid). The most important part of this late summer ritual was that we would all be barefoot and dressed in pajamas, except for Jon who had the job of going to the walk up window to place our order. Because he had to make a public appearance, he had to be fully clothed. There was something about it...driving down the street late at night with all the windows down, a quick dash for ice cream then home to bed...the best. The stand (pictured above) is now closed, but I have high hopes that some day it will reopen. In the meantime, there are plenty of other stands to frequent.

My sons are older now and less likely to travel in the car with us for ice cream and certainly not in their pajamas. So it was just me and Jon the other night. We chose to ride in the convertible. Not just any convertible, but Jon's restored 1968 Datsun Fair Lady 2000. It's a silver two seater car. Low to the ground, small enough to be almost a go cart. It's loud and fast, and when I'm riding in it, I feel like I'm in a small old style speedboat. The roads are ribbons of flat water and we are buzzing through the city leaving everything in our wake. I know it's an optical illusion. Because we are so low to the ground...it feels like we are going much faster than we are. But I like the sensation a lot.

When we got to the ice cream place which was brightly lit, we found the place crowded with people who were standing in clusters around the parking lot. Some were sitting in their cars or on their cars. We pulled in, got out, placed our order. (I got something with vanilla custard, melted chocolate and stawberries.) When we walked back to the Fair Lady, I noticed that in the car next to us was an older white-haired woman. I couldn't see much of her but I could see her hair which had been recently done up in a very firm bee hive. She had backed her largish four door sedan into a space, and sat licking a single vanilla ice cream cone. I watched her watching people and licking her cone. I couldn't tell if she is enjoying herself or not, because she didn't once change her staight-faced expression. Something about her though made me glad she was there, glad she got herself out the door for a summer ice cream cone, even if she was going to be eating it alone. There's something more to say here...something about hoping I'll be able to do same some day if it ever comes down to it, cruise across town for ice cream on a hot summer night, just out of principle, alone or not.

2005-08-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

Hummingbirds have taken over my small garden. They fight with the wrens and the finches. They dive bomb the crows. They fight with each other over flowers and the hummingbird feeder which I've filled with red sugar water. One morning I sat drinking coffee on the back porch and one flew up directly in front of me and hovered there for several seconds. I was wearing a red night shirt, and I'm sure he thought I had potential as a source of sustenance, but after a few moments consideration, he thought better of it and veered off. Another morning the same hummingbird, or one exactly like him, flew up to the window of my sunroom and peered in, then flew to a pot of petunias, the chair, a watering can. I got the feeling he was staking a claim over each of them. "Mine. Mine. Mine, mine, mine." They take over everything. And how can one argue with them? Before a person (or creature) can protest, they're already gone.

2005-07-31T18:34:00.000-05:00

Today, I saw a blue tailed skink in my back garden. My back garden is by some people's estimation hardly worth the effort. It is small, tiny. But there is a nice patch of grass, bird baths (three), daisies, petunias, impatiens, honeysuckle, raspberry yarrow, lamb's ear, lavender, roses, begonias, ajuga, wild strawberries, and wild violets. I also have a regular population of creatures passing through. A possum, squirrels of course, and sparrows. I have a family of mice who have taken to all the bird seed I put out and I must admit I feel some ambivalence about them because I know when cold weather comes they'll try to move inside, and I'll find them dead on the kitchen floor once my indoor cats have had a night of fun with them. I have seen garter snakes ribbon their way through the stones that line my little back garden; finches fly by along with the regulars...cardinals, blue jays, wrens.

But the blue tailed skink was an excellent surprise. He was slipping over the large cut stones which I had piled on either side of the brick steps by the back gate. The back gate is a wrought iron piece hand forged by a black smith who keeps his shop nearby. It leads to an expansive yard behind my house which is not mine but which I still enjoy. The blue tailed skink was most elegant: Long and striped and sleek, winding and curving about. If I were to characterize him and put him in a children's story, he would be wearing a striped day tux, his long and very blue tail trailing out behind him with spectacular dignity. He would be on his way to some place important which he obviously was when I saw him.