listening after dark

Garden inspiration II

All this is in an alley I walk through every day on my way to work. I love how lush and colorful it is. I'm planning on clematis for the sunny side of our shed.

Things are growing

One of the fun things about buying a house with existing landscaping is waiting to see what will pop up. So far, the fruit trees are looking good. The sweet cherries were mostly eaten by the birds, but the sour cherries are (thus far) untouched. I have plans for pie.

The basil was started from seed months ago, and has taken off in the hot sun. Broccoli starts from a co-worker have flourished in our one garden bed, along with radishes, transplanted chives and a few wimpy peppers.

As far as I can tell, we have two cherry trees, a pear tree, three(?) apple trees and two plum trees. Plus two small trees that won't bear any fruit for a few years. This summer we're growing tomatoes in buckets, with plans to start a larger raised-bed garden next year.

There are some good bulbs on the property, including a huge mass of orange day lilies. Earlier we had yellow, purple and burgundy iris, and when I first looked at the house in April, there were masses of hyacinth and crocus scattered about. Surprises for next spring.

I've planted some cheap annuals in pots, and started nasturtiums from seed for the heck of it. I enjoy watching these things grow.

Garden inspiration

A little bit of everything

For me, every day is a buffet.

When eating a meal with various foods, I tend to eat in a circle, tasting a little of each. Usually without realizing, I leave an equal amount of each food until the end.

At work, I switch tasks often and quickly. I might work on a press release for 20 minutes, then order fiction for half an hour, then answer several emails about varying topics. I might then call a new volunteer to set up an interview, and then work a shift at the information desk for a few hours, doing a number of different things while I'm there — helping people with questions about finding books or movies, using the computers, downloading ebooks, printing and copying.

I've read that multitasking decreases productivity, but it's unavoidable in my life. I still manage to dive into some tasks for longer stretches, and pleasure reading can completely absorb my attention for hours — when I make the time. Lately I am able to spend more time than planned working outside, trimming trees and shrubs, weeding and tidying up our landscaping. Maybe physical tasks are easier to get lost in, when the whole body is involved. When only the mind and hands are busy, distractions are easier to find.

Three life lessons

The most useful advice I've received and continue to use:

3. If you don't have something nice to say, zip your lip.

2. Treat others the way you want to be treated.

And the big one:

1. When walking, driving or bicycling, always — ALWAYS — look others in the eye before proceeding. Never assume they see you unless you see them seeing you.

This piece of advice (thanks, Mom and Dad) has saved my life — and my limbs — a number of times.

Three days of sun

Spring resolution

I feel ashamed. I have been walking Kalispell for nine months, and I have hardly taken any photos around town.

Looking back at my photos from previous residences — Walla Walla, Santa Fe, even Casper — there are a lot of pictures.

Lately I have been neglecting my cameras in favor of time at home. Oh yeah, and that whole grad school thing got in the way for a while.

I will make it my mission to remedy this. Very soon.

We all called him Boppa

I wrote a really lovely post, and then I accidentally quit Firefox. I've been wanting to say, I miss Grandpa/Boppa, and Granny too. I will hold our shared memories in my heart and mind, and I am grateful to have so many wonderful memories. Photographs like these are also a treasure.




I wrote the following poem as part of my senior project in college. It was meant to be snapshots of different family members, including Grandpa.

Grandpa

I want to ask if you remember
the visits when I was small:
the soft, damp kisses you gave me,
and my high-pitched voice calling “Hi Boppa!”
while you aimed the video camera.
You eventually turned it to the sky, filming
white wisps and swirls,
murmuring about the temperature and wind.
Clouds used to fascinate you.
Now they are only proof of government
conspiracy -- influencing the atmosphere,
causing sickness. You used to laugh
more easily, you used to barbecue
hamburgers in a wheelbarrow
and play whiffleball with all us grandchildren,
wearing your white cotton undershirt,
cut-off shorts and brown rubber sandals.
When I see you now and you refuse to hug,
almost refuse to shake hands --
“Hollywood’s perversion of touch,” you say --
I want you to remember.
I want to grasp your hands, shaking
as they handle your knife and fork,
and hold them.

© 2003 April K Szuch

Cities

The other day I had a sort of déjà vu moment, as a car passenger in the rain. It brought me back to driving around Olympia, one of the larger towns I've lived in. I had only a learner's permit, so I wasn't able to drive on my own, and thus never explored the perimeter of the populated area. Because I couldn't picture the limits of the city, I never felt quite right about my own place in it. I didn't realize that until now.

I've never lived anywhere else that felt that way. In every other place, I have driven or walked or biked to the edges, and known where things ended and the rural places began. Even living in Spokane during college, I knew the city well enough to know where I was in it. I had been to the southerly ends of the South Hill, and far beyond the north end many times. I knew where it ended in the west, and how it gradually melted away in the east, toward Idaho.

Part of this is geographical knowledge, and part of it is having control and freedom. As a kid, I was free to bike and wander all over the small town where we lived. I knew all the edges. But as a teenager in Olympia, I didn't have the time or the freedom to wander so widely. Also, it was often rainy, which is not the best for biking. I walked a lot, in our neighborhood and downtown, but that covered only a small portion of the populated areas.

I always enjoy visiting cities, even enormous ones — London, Paris, Mumbai, New York, Toronto, Quebec, Seattle, San Francisco — but I have no desire to live in one. It would take so long to wander the streets and find the perimeter, and meanwhile things would keep changing before I had the chance to memorize them. I enjoy walking the same streets each day, seeing the same houses and sometimes the same people, never being more than a few miles from woods and fields and empty spaces.

In a city, it's easy to blend in and just observe, but a city is also

"this place of endless intersections where people never meet."
— Underground Time, Delphine de Vigan

Bookish milestones

1. Currently reading 1Q84, the first book I purchased for the library last July in my new job as adult fiction collection manager.
2. Now seeing on best-of-2011 lists and available in paperback, The Tiger's Wife, the audiobook I listened to the weekend I drove to Montana for my interview.

These details may be mere reflections of a publishing cycle, but I find them interesting.