Dog Days Of Summer

sony ♥ grass (four), Sony frolicking in the pasture on apple-picking day two weekends ago, October 2009, photos © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

Summer ended with a splash Tuesday afternoon in this part of the Rio Grande Valley. A clap of thunder, and then boom, pouring down rain. For 24 hours the clouds socked us in. We went from thin sock (or no sock) season to thick socks, and for a day we yearned for the amber glow of a fire in the fireplace.

Of course, summer officially ended a month ago, but just this weekend we sat in bleachers with the bright sun on our faces. I have a tan from three hours watching a tennis tournament, and for the past week I’ve worn short sleeves and sweated through 80-degree afternoons.

Yesterday I felt moody, an emotional achiness. I wanted to drink hot tea all day and curl up on a couch with a good book or a movie, a stew bubbling on the stove. It’s hard to believe that just a few days ago we were frolicking in what we thought was fall, not knowing all along they were the dogs days of summer.

By evening the rain had thinned to the point where I only need the intermittent wipers on the windshield. The sun tried burning through the clouds. Last night the temperature dipped to the high 30s. This morning is cold.

Time to bring in the geraniums.

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runway haiku (take flight)

Yellow, somewhere over Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota, October 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

gassing up the plane
yellow sun on horizon
I’m running on fumes

restless night owl
wings clipped over the Midwest
sleeping in mid-air

voicemail remains full
apologies to callers
delayed housekeeping

wings bobbing in sun
to avoid motion sickness
touch wrist pressure points

Northwest bites the dust
D-E-L-T-A imprint on cookie
“Skymiles with Biscoff”

ankles and joints swell
somewhere over Ohio
depressurizing

smoldering remnants
of the way it used to be
cause a lot of pain

nothing can contain
my rattling restless spirit
banging in the night

Liz rises at 5
and defrags my Toshiba
gift from the heavens

BWI
destination Baltimore
home of Ace of Cakes

high altitude yawns
saturate before using
low oxygen lungs

overweight luggage
travels with Baggage Angels
checks and balances

strange things worry me
laundry, shoes, and broken glass
where is my Space pen?

clouds dance on wing tips
full of milk and sky cookies —
I’m hungry to write

opening the door
family collectibles
hide in my closet

in for a landing
sun shines over Baltimore
gloomy clouds below

______________________

Note: All is well on my travels. Wrote these haiku on the plane yesterday morning. So much has happened since I arrived in Pennsylvania. Feels like I’ve been gone a week. My sister made sliced pork with peach glaze, mashed potatoes, green beans, and Southern banana pudding. My mother made chili, grits, and took me shopping for Fall outfits. My brother and Liz helped me out with a small glitch in the BlackBerry modem. All fixed now.

Tomorrow morning we start the 10-12 hour drive down to Georgia. Will try to check in as we roll over the Mason-Dixon line. We will travel through quite a few states before hitting the Savannah River. Will try to keep in touch. Writing and photography seem like the right things to be doing. Grateful for the opportunity. More as I know it. Time, time, time, time, time.

And the New Moon. New beginnings. Some call October’s Full Moon the Blood Moon. Prepare for the cold dark months ahead. Honor your ancestors. Let go of what is unnecessary. The veil between the worlds is thin.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, October 18th, 2009

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Reflections On My Love Of Fall

Look me in the eye, an iridescent-bellied lizard that Jim caught October 17, in the Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

The days are beautiful in the Rio Grande Valley. The other morning we woke to a thick fog hovering just above the field. Sun rose, and the warmth slowly burned off the mist.

I wonder if we’d get sick of our favorites seasons if we could magically make them last twice as long as they do normally. If we collapsed summer and fall into a new season, Extra-long Fall, I’d be perfectly happy. Although, we’d miss out on swimming and eating popsicles in the scorching sun. And weekend getaways spent at 9,000 feet.

Eh, scratch that idea.

This is Jim’s favorite time of year. He’s been outdoors every day, raking and cleaning up the yard. He’s working on a project to take out overgrown juniper bushes, rotted railroad ties, and an old leaning fence from the back courtyard. He disappears for hours out there, calling me now and then to come look at the critters he finds.

There are Black Widows galore, although Jim usually leaves those alone. He caught one, a huge girl with a big red hourglass on her belly. The shots I snapped are obscured by the plastic tub we put her in. We’ll release her soon—it’s just a matter of finding a spot far enough away that she won’t be a menace. I know, she’s more afraid of us than we are of her, but she’s the biggest black widow I’ve seen and I don’t want our paths to cross ever again.

Speaking of big spiders, Jim also found a most extraordinary Orb Weaver. Its web filled the entire corner, floor to ceiling, of a shed that came with the place when we moved here. Motivated to put the rarely used space to use, Jim was clearing out a set of old screen doors when he stumbled upon what appeared to be a large walking mushroom.

He coaxed the spongy yellow-white mottled spider onto a walking stick and brought the whole contraption to the back porch for me to see. After I took a few shots, Jim carried the dear back to her home in the clean shed.


It’s a gentle time. Except for last Saturday, when a wicked wind whipped through the valley, turning the sky a gray-white and lashing sheets of rain and hail onto the world. We were drawn to the windows but at the same time fearful that a branch might break from a tree and in through the glass. The storm lasted about 20 minutes, then settled into a steady rain.

Today it’s about 72, on the way to a high of near 80 degrees. Trees are in different stages of becoming yellow, and the Virginia Creeper has suddenly bloomed a ruddy red.

At Sunflower Market, where I just went to restock the pantry, folks sat at tables and chairs set up in the parking lot and ate hot dogs and hamburgers bought off the grill for a dollar. I bought three hamburgers and brought them home with the groceries.

Something’s in the air. This is a fabulous time. We are inside the eye of change.

                      

fall morning (four), a misty morning looking out at the pond in our field in the Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico, photos © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

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The Pet Parade (Because We Can Use Some Levity Today)

Ready for Take-Off, this angel baby pooch stops to pose before marching on in the Harvest Festival Pet Parade, photos © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

Every year in early fall, our little village holds a Harvest Festival. This used to be a farming community, and although many fields have turned into big houses with lawns, you can still find acres of apple orchards and corn and chile crops. Not to mention the good-sized gardens and non-commercial farms that produce a bounty of fruits and vegetables. It’s definitely a time to celebrate.


My favorite part of the Harvest Festival, hands down, is the Pet Parade. The first year Jim and I moved here, we heard that the festival always kicked off with a parade for pets down the main road in the village. I’d never been in a parade before, and something inside me was hankering to walk with our dog, Roger, as observers lining the street cheered and clapped wildly.

I tied a red paisley handkerchief around Roger’s neck and headed to the staging area where parade participants were gathering with dogs, cats, goats, chickens, turkeys, and horses.

Roger, of course, was chomping at the bit. This was the most exciting thing to happen in his life, too. He pulled me from one animal to another, sniffing the spray paint on their coats and their silly wigs, hats, tu-tus, flower arrangements, polka dots, shoes, and tuxedos. Clearly, Roger was underdressed, and I towered two feet above the tallest human participant.

Still, we marched. We smiled and waved. We posed when Jim snapped our photo and then watched him stagger off holding his stomach from laughing so hard.


Nowadays, entire families march in the Pet Parade. This year there was a “wench wagon” with showgirls dressed in velvet corsets sitting in a horse-drawn carriage. (Forget the kids and pets, I’m taking my bosom to the parade!)

There’s still the odd assortment of animals. One year I saw an iguana in its glass terrarium atop a chariot, looking like Cleopatra. This year my favorite was the Chicken-Mobile (a chicken perched on a Playskool car) and the weiner taco (weiner dog in a taco shell). The goat in a straw hat was a stand-out, too.

After the parade everyone scattered for other parts of the festival. Some headed to the food court—all that clapping worked up an appetite for turkey legs and Indian tacos—while others jumped on hay wagons heading in the direction of the three-mile-long corn maze.

We made our way to the Old Church and Casa San Ysidro, where we bought tamales and burritos from a woman who scooped extra ladles of red chile meat onto your plate if you asked.

We took our food to a bench under an old quince tree and talked about how cool it would have been to take Azul and the Toms, or Sony, Otis, Rafael, or even Baby to the Pet Parade.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Maybe next year.

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Halloween Tea Rose

Halloween Tea Rose, out in the front garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

We worked on last minute details in the yard today. It was cool, cloudy, sunny. Bending over the 7 transplanted tea roses with the green water bucket, I noticed a distinct peripheral rush of red. A confused October tea rose was sporting a new summer bud.

We hauled wet, decaying bags of leaves to the city’s yard waste site, nabbed a geocache near an empty ball diamond, and drove home on winding country roads. An ordinary Fall Saturday. I didn’t notice the strings of cobweb until I took a closer look. It’s always good to take a closer look.

Traditionally, October is the month I feel the happiest. Something shifted this year. But tonight I count my blessings. It’s the little things. Maybe the budding Halloween tea rose with the silver thin cobwebs is not confused at all. Maybe it’s me.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, October 27th, 2007

-related to post, PRACTICE – Fish Out Of Water – 15min

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The Gleaning

The Gleaning, Rainpainting Series, outside the Parkway Theater in the rain, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The Gleaning

skirting the edges
of a blustery fall day
diving for spent dreams

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, October 6th, 2007

-related to post, Somewhere Buried Deep

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This Time Of Year

This time of year in the Rio Grande Valley makes me think of:

 

The bluest skies,
misty mornings,
apples,
hot air balloons,
and days that make you sweat.


 
 

Unexpected rain.
Ditches running with muddy-brown water.
The most intense colors.
Light that makes everything look crisp.





Did I say apples?
And still mornings, the most brilliant skies.
Smells. I should mention smells.
(Green chile roasting, and hay warmed by the sun.)
The best yard sales.
Sweaters in the morning.
The color yellow, and green turning to yellow.
Not quite pumpkins. But definitely apples.

What does autumn make you think about?



This Morning, photos taken in the early days of October by ybonesy
and her Farmer Jonesimbonesy, © 2007 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

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PRACTICE – Fish Out Of Water – 15min

The 7 tea roses sitting on the deck, roots untangled and exposed, tilted in their makeshift pots, looked like fish out of water. I stared at them through the picture window. The wind whipped the mustard ash leaves across the peeling gray paint. We called a handyman to help shore the deck for winter. He is coming Thursday. And we are looking into gutters for the small white cottage named Indria. Another way I knew I loved Liz – when she referred to her home by proper name.

I have felt like a fish out of water most of my life. A grand sweeping statement, not made of detail or feeling. Living an alternative lifestyle is a long swim upriver. Strong. Strong and long. Luckily, I am a good swimmer. But lately, weak in the knees. And fish don’t have knees, do they? Only fins and gills. They breathe with gills. Oxygen out. Or in? Now I’m confusing lungless fish with the leaves on the oaks that bend and gnarl across skies to the west of me.

I’m longing for more confidence. Everything is going fine. Swimmingly, in fact. Yet that nagging doubt. It rises this time of year, when the skies grow darker and the hours of light, leaner. I am sad to see the light go. Happy for a snowy winter. Can you have it both ways? Maybe in pulp fiction.

The tea roses – Liz drove home from work, unpadlocked the shed, and out came the square-toed shovel. I was commenting on red Ravine and peeked up to see her bent body over a grassy hole. I had to go out and help. 7 tea roses. We inherited them from our friends who moved last summer, only 10 minutes away. They bought a new house and are not fond of the idiosyncrasies of hybrid roses.

But Liz never shrinks from a challenge. It is I who run. She has the greenest of thumbs and now I’m thinking about the time we visited the Jolly Green Giant sign down in rolling, hilly southern Minnesota, Le Sueur. She snapped a photo of me standing next to the pea-clothed big guy. Did he have a leaf for a hat? Oxygen. If I find the photo, maybe I’ll post it. But then I’d have to blur out my face and body leaving nothing but – this writing practice.

Last night before the rain, I pulled on steel-toed motorcycle boots and helped Liz plant the 7 tea roses we dug up from our friends’ home on Sunday. They have round white tags with silver edges and names like Queen Elizabeth and Glowing Peace and Elle and Mirandy and Betty White, but we gave Betty away to our neighbor, Bev. And when we were done, they looked happier and no longer like fish out of water, but roots in wet land.

And my fingernails bled dirt underneath and my hands smelled like a ribbon of earthworm. My hair blew back behind my eardrums and the wind was so loud she swept the changing season that seems to pound through my head. We walked into Indria and made chicken and dumpling soup. And all seemed right with the world until I remembered the fish that I’m allergic to now, and the lump came back into my throat. The same watery lump that dumps me on dry land, wondering which decision it is that will tip the gray scales.

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

-from Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – FISH OUT OF WATER

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