Happy Winter Solstice Y'all!

 

Last night across the road on Lake Rousseau.....

About 10 years ago I lost access to be able to walk across the road and stand and breathe or take pictures of The Withlacoochee River aka Lake Rousseau, because the new land owner didn't want anyone walking on his property .

Thankfully about a month or so ago, I was granted permission to walk over there again.  I so love this land and the river that wraps around Citrus County before going out to the gulf   . We all here on this part of Riverbend Road live in what is known as "The Backwaters".  It has been difficult for me to even walk still, but I hope also to get back in my kayak soon too .

 

First seed catalogue arrives!

 This new (to me) seed catalogue arrived today and it is oh-so-beautiful!  I so love getting seed catalogues this time of the year and I tend to treat my seed catalogues like the valuable rare books that they are.

This is a new seed company to me and I found out about it online while trying to find an update about Asheville, North Carolina after the terrible damage done by Hurricane Helene .

Well what a delightful , serendipitous little seed catalogue this is.  Their mission statement includes info about them being  "a small dedicated cooperative committed to making gardening approachable for everyone " as well as "providing high quality open-pollinated seeds in support of sustainable food production and regenerative agriculture.... striving to help our customers cultivate a sense of empowerment and connection in an era of disengagement from nature, food, and community". Hallelujah is all I can say .  

I am determined to try again this year to grow at least a portion of what I eat beyond my (in recent years caretaking my Dad) basil, tomatoes and hot peppers , which all have somehow survived and thrived for me in this part of Florida, even in times when I was too sick to be able to even water them.  I hope to grow more salad greens and varieties of hot peppers as well as The Three Sisters: corn,beans and squash (pumpkins) in the tradition of many eastern Native American peoples including the Timucuan Ocali that lived for thousands of years where I now reside .

I so hope that more and more folks will start to grow some of their own food, and this is an amazing little employee owned company to support .

Check out: www.sowtrueseed.com and grow your own way!

 

Minnie Bruce Pratt

 I have been going through my collection of books that have  been in storage for over 12 years now and a few days ago I found this small paperback collection of poems by Minnie Bruce Pratt that I must have found in Austin when I lived there in the middle 1980s.

I love all of the poems in this collection and was sad to read online yesterday that she passed on in July of 2023.  

All of her poetry speaks to me in a myriad ways.  Here is the title poem and yes, I have come to know now, the sound of my own one fork.

The Sound of One Fork

By Minnie Bruce Pratt

Through the window screen I can see an angle of grey roof

and the silence that spreads in the branches of the pecan tree

as the sun goes down. I am waiting for a lover. I am alone

in a solitude that vibrates like the cicada in hot midmorning,

that waits like the lobed sassafras leaf just before

its dark green turns into red, that waits

like the honeybee in the mouth of the purple lobelia.

While I wait, I can hear the random clink of one fork

against a plate. The woman next door is eating supper

alone. She is sixty, perhaps, and for many years

has eaten by herself the tomatoes, the corn

and okra that she grows in her backyard garden.

Her small metallic sound persists, as quiet almost

as the windless silence, persists like the steady

random click of a redbird cracking a few

more seeds before the sun gets too low.

She does not hurry, she does not linger.

Her younger neighbors think that she is lonely.

But I know what sufficiency she may possess.

I know what can be gathered from year to year,

gathered from what is near to hand, as I do

elderberries that bend in damp thickets by the road,

gathered and preserved, jars and jars shining

in rows of claret red, made at times with help,

a friend or a lover, but consumed long after,

long after they are gone and I sit

alone at the kitchen table.

And when I sit in the last heat of Sunday, afternoons

on the porch steps in the acid breath of the boxwoods,

I also know desolation. The week is over, the coming night

will not lift. I am exhausted from making each day.

My family, my children live in other states,

the women I love in other towns. I would rather be here

than with them in the old ways, but when all that’s left

of the sunset is the red reflection underneath the clouds,

when I get up and come in to fix supper,

in the darkened kitchen I am often lonely for them.

In the morning and the evening we are by ourselves,

the woman next door and I. Still, we persist.

I open the drawer to get out the silverware.

She goes to her garden to pull weeds and pick

the crookneck squash that turn yellow with late summer.

I walk down to the pond in the morning to watch

and wait for the blue heron who comes at first light

to feed on minnows that swim through her shadow in the water.

She stays until the day grows so bright

that she cannot endure it and leaves with her hunger unsatisfied.

She bows her wings and slowly lifts into flight,

grey and slate blue against a paler sky.

I know she will come back. I see the light create

a russet curve of land on the farther bank,

where the wild rice bends heavy and ripe

under the first blackbirds. I know

she will come back. I see the light curve

in the fall and rise of her win

For more about her life's work ...

minniebrucepratt.net

In my view this past week....

 

I AM HERE

A tiny painting I did for my favorite neighbor family

Those same neighbors gave me this art portrait because they said 
It reminded them of my Mollie.  I love it and put it on the back of
the "Dog Couch".