GONE FISHIN’

 

GONE FISHIN’

 

From Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist

 

My brother David carved a slow pathway in life. It was slow, but deep, and as close to Zen-like as any I have known. In his solitude, often he fished; and he fished well. For many years, he fished at bass tournaments in and around his Florida home—and he won some of them. “Bass fishing is an art,” he would say to anyone he could corner to engage in conversation. “You can have all the best gear, but if you don’t know your fish, then you won’t catch him. Bass, he doesn’t have any brain to speak of, but his instincts are sharp as a tack. And his body is made to work with his instincts. He’s got eyes on the sides of his head, and they can see all around. So just any flutter in his vicinity, and he’s gonna see it. It’s hard to fool him. And he’s got a built-in antenna that runs down the sides of his body, and that thing is sensitive to the slightest changes in the temperature. He knows the weather forecast better than Jim Cantore and way before Cantore knows it. So, a good fisherman’s got to study the weather, too. Bass, he likes overcast mornings to come out of his hiding places, but he doesn’t swim too far from them. So you gotta look for a bunch of rocks or a fallen log in the water or tall weeds, and that’s where you’ll find him hangin’ around.”

In the eulogy I wrote for my brother, I likened him to an old African proverb that says, “When a man dies, a library dies with him.” That describes my brother to a tee. He studied every subject that interested him until he mastered it. Today marks the seventh year since David passed away. I hope he’s gone fishin’ up there, or wherever he fishes these days. ©

 

***

My brother is among the cast of characters in my novel, GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS. It is also dedicated to him. If you would like to read it, just click the URL below and it will take you to its purchase page on Amazon.

 

Purchase URL: http://goo.gl/imUwKO  

#fishing, #bass, #bass fishing, #BassTournaments, #largemouth bass, #striped bass, #Zen, #ZenBuddhism, #GuardiansandOtherAngels, #LindaLeeGreene

YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY TOMAHTO, BUT NO MATTER, WE LOVE ‘EM!

 From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 

I didn’t plant tomatoes this season, but at summer’s end, little bundles of them in paper or plastic bags will show up at my back gate, the largesse of my sweet neighbors and friends. I am prepared for the bounty better than in previous years, because I came across an intriguing and simple recipe to preserve them found in the Spring/Summer 1995 issue of “The Cook’s Garden” catalog that has been tucked away and forgotten among my cookbooks all this time. Sadly, at least from my perspective, the “Cook’s Garden,” the mail-order and seed supply house of Londonderry, Vermont has since been assimilated into the W. Atlee Burpee Company. I am therefore, so happy to still have in my possession this edition of the catalog as a memento of the innovative and famous organic growers enterprise.  

           

Founder of the “Cook’s Garden” and author of the catalog Shepherd Ogden writes that this recipe for oven-dried tomatoes promises to be as good as anything found in a store. A further benefit is that it is so easy to prepare. Once properly dried, the tomatoes will keep in the refrigerator for several months, to be used as the base for tomato sauce, tomato-based soups, and as a topping on pizza, among other uses limited only by the imagination.

 

OVEN-DRIED TOMATOES

 

4 pints of Principe Borghese or San Marzano tomatoes (or other Roma heirloom varieties)

1 tbsp sea salt

2 cups fresh basil leaves

1 cup olive oil

2 sterilized jars (pint-sized canning jars with lids and seals, or canning jars with self-sealing lids)

 

Slice tomatoes in half lengthwise. Scoop out seeds. Place on cookie sheets, flat side up. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt. Set in a warm oven (150°). When tomatoes are completely dry (12 to 24 hours), pack in pint jars, alternating with a layer of basil leaves. Continue to build layers of tomatoes and basil leaves, and at the top of the jars, drizzle in olive oil until all contents are coated. Place in the refrigerator where the tomatoes will stay fresh for several months.     

 

***

Rich and spoiled-rotten Olivia Montoyo Simms wouldn’t know how to prepare a tomato dish even if she was so hungry that “her belly was gnawing on her backbone,” to borrow an old-timey expression. But Olivia has no match in the ways of wooing a man to her risky schemes. A mysterious stranger at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas just might be the one fellow who has what it takes to wangle her comeuppance, though. Read all about it in A CHANCE AT THE MOON, my novel of love, betrayal, and murder.©

 

Purchase Link for A CHANCE AT THE MOON: https://tinyurl.com/3dc75u6p

 

Image: “The Cook’s Garden” catalog cover: woodcut by American woodcut artist and children’s books illustrator Mary Azarian   

 

#ShepherdOgden, #MaryAzarian, #RomaTomatoes, #HeirloomTomatoes, #CannedTomatoes, #TomatoSauce, #TomatoPlants, #OvenDriedTomatoes, #Gardening, #AChanceAtTheMoon, #LindaLeeGreene  

IN DAD’S SHOES

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 

Dad was in the garage,

Working on a car.

One of his,

Or one of his brothers’,

Or one of my mother’s brothers’.

It didn’t matter

‘Cause Dad liked working on cars.

Dad removed his greasy shoes and grimy socks before coming in the kitchen,

And as always before and again that time,

I noticed his feet –

So much like mine,

And I took the photo of his shoes to remind me,

And hoped I would be more like him in other ways with time.

©Linda Lee Greene, 2007

 

My father’s given name was Leland Edward Greene, but he preferred the shorter Lee Edward Greene. The briefer version won out and was his name for the entirety of his 89 years of life. I am named for Dad. The distinction is mine among the four offspring of my parents due to the order of my birth: I am the firstborn and because of that accident of chronology, by tradition the name was given to me. As time passed, however, it seemed meant to be, because among my three siblings and me, I resemble my father in appearance most closely. The jury is still out on whether or not I take after him in other, more crucial ways. But I try! I try!

          For the past several years, I have been asked to write the eulogies of members of my family whom have died during that time. The assignments began with the passing of my father on March 29, 2014. In tribute to him on this Father’s Day, I am including the opening paragraph of the eulogy I wrote for him, as well as an excerpt about him in GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS http://goo.gl/imUwKO, my book in which the momentous historical events of the twentieth century, from World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and beyond form the backdrop and my family holds center stage. My father’s grit is the quality that comes across most prominently in these passages, I think.

 

(Excerpt of Eulogy)

 

“Lee Edward Greene, 89, beloved son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and cherished friend was one of the last of the Greatest Generation, a loving and dedicated family man who was a joyful and steadfast breadwinner. He was a man good with his hands whether the task was to fix a leaky faucet, to make a car purr, or to build a house. But essentially he was a simple man – he held no public office, never attained fame nor amassed a fortune, but within the small circle that comprised his life, he was the center that always held, the rock upon whom everyone depended, the flint against which everyone struck on his/her passage to adulthood. We aren’t likely to see his kind again any time soon…”

***

(Revised excerpt of GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS http://goo.gl/imUwKO)

“The one-room, Cedar Fork schoolhouse across the holler from the little log cabin on the near side of Peach Mountain, which nestled among the northern foothills of the Appalachians, was a tolerable two-mile walk in mild weather. It was an enjoyable walk actually, if one had time to swing from a grapevine on top of a high cliff and drop into Cedar Fork Creek for a lazy dip, or to stop by the Workman’s place for a quick smoke of corn-silk tobacco. But in snowdrifts as tall as thirteen-year-old Lee Greene, in threadbare clothes, thin hand-me-down coat, and barely covered feet in holey socks flopping in an old pair of secondhand shoes that were too big for him, the walk that frigid, Great Depression morning was worse than pure misery.

Lee’s chronically aching stomach was hollow and rumbling. His meager breakfast of cornmeal mush and sugar water was quickly wearing thin, but he had more important things than his stomach to worry about that morning. He was stewing about the small amount of milk he had drawn from their cow tethered in the yard just beyond the lean-to kitchen at the back of his family’s tiny log cabin. The two-story structure, built by Lee. his older brother, and their father only five months before, comprised a common, or front room on the main level, a primitive lean-to kitchen at the back, and a bedroom where his parents slept, housing the only closet in the place. A rough-hewn timber ladder gained access to the upper deck, where, in an open-to-the-front loft, all of the many children slept on crude cots, or thin pads on the floor. A large ceiling-to-floor fireplace of indigenous stones in the common room on the first floor was the only source of heat in the place. Felled tree trunks supporting its roof, a porch spanned the width of the front of the log cabin.  

The soil where they lived on Cedar Fork—thin, hard, and dry, a crusty layer of sediment topping a bedrock of limestone, dolomite and shale—made for poor farming and gardening, posing a formidable challenge for growing adequate food. Squirrels, rabbits, opossums and birds, hunted and brought in by Lee, the insufficient supply of milk from the cow, and scant eggs supplied by their paltry flock of scrawny chickens in the yard, were the only sources of protein for the family. In season, a large vegetable garden and a stand of corn were coddled into fruition in the poor soil, but only if they were favored with enough rain.    

His nose and eyes crusty from yet another head cold, gloveless hands thrust into the pockets of his thin coat, and his feet turning to blocks of ice, Lee trudged on to school, his white-blond head under his hat hunkered into his shoulders. Despite the fact that he might not make it through the perpetual hardships of his life, much less that cold, windy, and snowbound morning, his soul was full of dreams, his mind of intention, his body of vigor and endurance, and on the strength of pure power of will alone, and maybe some help from the man upstairs, Lee was determined that if he ever got out of his childhood alive, nothing would ever encumber him again.

The one-room schoolhouse was dark and frigid, and Lee, by design, was the first to arrive. The door was unlocked, as always, and Lee, halting for a few minutes to give his blood a chance to circulate again in his frozen limbs and digits, sat down on one of the benches. He would have wept if he had allowed himself to seriously consider his unfortunate circumstances—but not Lee! No, not Lee! Not the boy/man who would one day be my father. He had a chance to earn fifty cents that week and every week for weeks to come, fifty cents for building a fire in the “Warm Morning” wood-burning, heating-stove each morning before school. And By Gum!!! That was exactly what he was going to do…”©

 

#Father’sDay, #CedarForkCreek, #AppalachianLife, #AppalachianMountains, #Southern Ohio, #PeachMountain, #WarmMorningStove, #GuardiansandOtherAngels, #LindaLeeGreene

THE ZEN OF WASHING DISHES

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 

“If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not ‘washing the dishes to wash the dishes.’ What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

***

 

Roma, whom her near and dear called “Ro” was my mother, and in all her 69 years of life, she never owned a dishwasher. Day in and day out, Ro cooked for her family and then washed the dirty dishes by hand as she always had done. The eldest female of her seven siblings, she was born at a time when small family farms were still ubiquitous in America. The responsibilities of an “eldest female” in such farm societies began very young and were numerous. Among the chores she assumed when little more than a toddler was washing the dirty dishes at the completion of every multi-course breakfast, dinner, and supper consumed by her large family, seven days a week, every week of every year and nary a day off in between. After each meal, her mother scooted a chair across the worn linoleum-clad floor of the Southern Ohio farmhouse kitchen and set it before the counter on which the chipped and dented metal dishpan of warm water sat next to the cistern pump, and then she lifted Ro onto the chair. The little girl then got busy washing the dishes and stacking them to air-dry on the counter.

          When Mom and Dad built the house on Alkire Road in Grove City, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, in the late 1950’s, Mom could have made room for a newfangled dishwasher in the kitchen—but she saw no need for it. However, she did opt for a double stainless-steel sink mounted in a countertop of yellow-gold Formica and surrounded by tiles of turquoise plastic on the backsplash. And boy, did that compact workspace see hard duty over the years.

Reva “Re,” one of my mother’s two younger sisters and my favorite aunt, came to visit one September Sunday of 1979, arriving early enough to allow her and my mother ample time to “visit” before getting down to the serious business of preparing the evening meal. Their “visits” were jovial affairs comprised of jawing the latest gossip, hee-hawing, sometimes irreverently, and chewing anything in sight. The photograph of them (Re is on the left; Ro is on the right) illustrates the point better than any words I can bring to mind.

 Among a family of wild cats, Re was the wildest of them all. Stories of her escapades abound in the annals of our family. One of my favorites took place in a ‘beer joint” in Columbus, a rowdy evening that Re, my father, and two of my uncles were hanging out and getting soused together. A fellow drunken patron, slurring epithets and challenges to my father to duke it out then and there didn’t know the peril he was inviting. Re jumped up from her bar stool, thrust her face right up to the big fella’s nose, and hands on hips and blue eyes flashing, she spat, “That’s Lee! He’s my brother-in-law, and anyone who makes trouble for him has to go through me first!” The guy just laughed and turned his back to her. Furious at the affront, Re jumped up on his back and riding him like a cowgirl on a bucking bronco, she pounded him on his skull with her balled fists. It took my father and both my uncles to pull her off the startled man.

With help now and then from their brothers and brothers-in-law, my father and mother built the house on Alkire Road with their own hands, essentially. It was an endeavor rife with successes and challenges, the challenges in large part emanating from my mother’s screwball exploits, all of which were constant bones of contention between my parents. One of them involved her hammering a roofing nail into her bare foot. In all its zany and glorious details, I wrote the story of the construction project in GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, my book in which the momentous historical events of the twentieth century, from World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and beyond form the backdrop and my family holds center stage.

My two sisters, my two children, and I also attended that gathering at the Alkire Road house that September Sunday of 1979. It was a giggle a minute, which was always the case when Re was around. The evening meal under our belts and the dining room table cleared, everyone but Ro and Re piled in the living room to watch TV. My mother and her sister wanted to extend their visit while washing the dishes. The yellow-gold Formica countertop heaped with all manner of greasy dinnerware, Ro plunged them one by one in the soapy water of the right-hand stainless-steel sink and scrubbed and scrubbed, and then Re swished and swished them in the clear water of the left-hand stainless-steel rinsing sink. Pretty soon Ro took to braying like a mule and Re to howling like a hyena. The TV show in the living room was no competition for the one underway in the kitchen, and the rest of us raced to investigate. And there, dripping in the dish drainer was a Leaning Tower of Pisa of dishes, topped off with an orange plastic bowl and a metal pan wedged in and teetering upright on its handle. “Get the camera!” my mother yelled.

Thich Nhat Hahn also said that washing dishes was like bathing the baby Buddha. I doubt that my mother and my aunt found that kind of reverence in the act, but they applied their considerable sister wisdom to it and made a delightful game of it to share together. So simple! So real! So full of moments of actual life! I am happy to report that I also love to wash dishes by hand and have no desire to invest in a dishwasher. I have a friend who in all the twenty plus years he has lived in his condo, has never turned on his built-in dishwasher. He stores his deceased mother’s fine china in it instead. To my mind, that is a brilliant use for a dishwasher!©  

             

***

 

Re passed on in 1989 and Ro in 1992. Their lives, from birth to death, are featured prominently in Linda Lee Greene’s, GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, a book of historical fiction based on a true story. To purchase the book, please click the following URL: http://goo.gl/imUwKO.

 

#ThichNhatHahn, #Zen, #Buddha, #Buddhism, #WashingDishes, #Dishwasher, #FarmhouseKitchen, #Formica, #Linoleum, #GroveCityOhio, #ColumbusOhio, #SouthernOhio, #AppalachianLife, #OhioWriters

A LESSON FROM HISTORY

 

British author Carol Browne explains the Battle of Dunkirk and why Britons still hold that spirit.

The Dunkirk Spirit – a Lesson from History

By Carol Browne

Let me begin by setting the scene …

It’s the summer of 1940 and on the beaches around Dunkirk in France hundreds of thousands of British troops are trapped with no hope of escape. Behind them was the vastly superior German army with its engines of war; before them was the cruel sea; above them was the relentless strafing of enemy aircraft.

Despite overwhelming odds, the men of the British Expeditionary Force and their Belgian and French allies had fought to defend their positions but, with all escape routes blocked, a desperate retreat to the beaches and harbour at Dunkirk was the only option left.

Now all these men want is to get to England—to home and safety. They have put their faith in the navy. Operation Dynamo has been set in motion to evacuate them, even though the transport ships and destroyers can only expect to have enough time to rescue about 30,000 troops. But soon, repeated attacks from the enemy’s aircraft have blocked the harbour with sinking ships. The soldiers must be evacuated from the beaches. How is this possible in such shallow water?

What happens next will leave a permanent impression upon the British psyche, for when the call goes out that small boats are needed to rescue the troops, a motley fleet of plucky ‘little ships’ will chug its way across the Channel to bring the warriors home. They are motor boats, trawlers, paddle steamers, fishing smacks, lifeboats, barges, and other shallow-draught vessels. The majority of them are privately owned. Many will be taken across by naval personnel, but an equal number will be crewed by their owners and other civilians eager to stand by their country during its darkest hour.

Braving the combined onslaughts of the German army and air force, these civilians will risk their lives again and again to take troops from the beaches and ferry them to the destroyers waiting out in deeper water. Some of these boats will take thousands of men all the way back to England. Thanks to their efforts, a total catastrophe will be averted. It will be described by Winston Churchill as a “miracle of deliverance” and what takes place at Dunkirk from May 27^th to June 4^th, 1940, will live in the hearts and minds of the British people for many generations to come. At a time when Great Britain faces certain invasion, recovering over a third of a million troops has turned defeat into victory. The phrase, “The Dunkirk Spirit” is born.

***

“The Dunkirk Spirit.” This is a phrase I have heard many times during my life. If you are British, it needs no explanation and yet as the event that created it moves further back in time, I feared that new generations would have no knowledge of it and an important part of my country’s heritage would be lost. I was delighted, therefore, when a new movie about Dunkirk was released in 2017. Not only will people much younger than me now know about “The Dunkirk Spirit,” but so will people of other countries, and a valuable historical lesson will continue to inspire us all.

What is the lesson? During current uncertain and divisive times, it resonates as much as ever. It shows us what we can achieve when we cooperate.  It demonstrates how brave and selfless ordinary folk can be. We are all capable of far more than we know and when individuals work together for the common good, the tide will turn, and even in the most hopeless and desperate of situations, defeat can be transformed into victory. Because “The Dunkirk Spirit” is the human spirit at its best and nothing can stand in its way.

***

The book “Being Krystyna” by Carol Browne recounts another true story of survival in World War II.

 

In 2012 when young Polish immigrant Agnieszka visits fellow countrywoman Krystyna in a Peterborough care home for the first time, she thinks it a simple act of kindness. However, the meeting proves to be the beginning of a life-changing experience.

Krystyna’s stories about the past are not memories of the good old days but recollections of war-ravaged Europe: The Warsaw Ghetto, Pawiak Prison, Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, and a death march to freedom.

The losses and ordeals Krystyna suffered and what she had to do to survive are horrors Agnieszka must confront when she volunteers to be Krystyna’s biographer.

Will Agnieszka be able to keep her promise to tell her story? And, in this harrowing memoir of survival, what is the message for us today?

Buy Links
Dilliebooks - Amazon UK - Amazon US

#WorldWarII, #Dunkirk, #OperationDynamo, #WinstonChurchill, #AMiracleofDeliverance, #CarolBrowne, #BeingKrystyna

 

A MEMORIAL DAY STORY

 

 From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 

Long, long ago—when I was just a little kid, my family visited the graves of our dead relatives not only on Decoration Day, as Memorial Day was known then, but also on every holiday and at the change of seasons. Among Civil War and other war veterans, upper-crust titans, and lower-caste farmers of our region of Southern Ohio, most of my deceased maternal kin lay in our designated plot of the old cemetery. When spring changed to summer, we thinned the old-fashioned lilies of the valley and irises on their graves and then supplemented them with geraniums and petunias. We embellished each grave with perky little American flags, stars and stripes that waved patriotically from their wooden pegs. As the weather turned brisk again, we planted pumpkin-colored chrysanthemums at each headstone, the ebullient faces of the flowers reflecting the last rays of the sun. Next came festive Christmas wreaths, and finally, grave blankets of fresh hay before the January freezes blew in on the frigid north winds. There was never any second thought about those tasks of caring for the graves of our departed loved-ones. It was as natural and as necessary to us as breathing.

Back when my mother and her siblings were young, and to accommodate the whole large brood, Roger and Smoky, the team of workhorses, straining against their leather harnesses, pulled my grandparent’s heavy flatbed wagon on visits to the graveyard. Taking a rare break from the demanding chores of their farm, Mommaw and Poppaw were at the helm of the wagon. Dean, the baby of the family, sat between his parents on the high seat of the buckboard, a vantage point that looked out over the ample rumps of the horses. Piled in the bed of the buckboard, the seven other children sat on bound bundles of hay perched vicariously on the gaping floorboards of the conveyance. In perfect harmony and at the top of their lungs, and accompanied by Uncle Bob and Uncle Bussy on their mandolins, the group sang the old song, “On Top of Old Smoky,” while the groaning wagon appeared in danger of imploding from the weight of its human cargo and the rough terrain that suffered its challenged wheels and chassis. As the first grandchildren born to the family, my brother and I also rode in that wagon on some of those excursions, singing that old song in unison with our aunts and uncles at the top of our voices. As the newest youngsters in the family, it was we who then got to ride between Mommaw and Poppaw on the high seat that gave view of the broad backs of Roger and Smoky. I was a grown woman with a husband as well as children of my own when suddenly one day it dawned on me that the song was about the Smoky Mountains rather than a horse named Smoky. My Uncle Dean and I, during every gloriously long and adventure-filled summer of my young life on the farm, rode bare back together on top of our own Smoky many times, often singing the song. It was natural that the song took on the meaning of riding Smoky, the horse. 

  

I still can see in my mind’s eye the wobbly wheels of the buckboard and the iron-shod hooves of the horses kicking up clouds of dust on the deeply-rutted mud-caked lane that opened onto that hillside cemetery, the accumulated clamor of buckboard, horses, and human beings setting in motion the flight of collected birds in an old oak tree at the edge of the plot, the overlapped and snapping black wings of the birds, for those brief moments, nearly blotting out the sun. One of my prized possessions is the ancient earthenware jug that housed the grease Poppaw used to lubricate the screeching wheels of the buckboard, the interior of the jug’s fissured walls coated to this day with black and slick remnants of the grease. During those journeys, every once in a while, Poppaw yelled, “Whoa, Roger…Whoa Smoky,” and the buckboard came to a grating halt. While the horses snorted from their huge nostrils and pawed the ground with their heavy hooves, their hot bodies steaming and making auras of their perspiration all around them, down from the high seat on his long legs Poppaw jumped, pulling that jug from beneath the seat, a stick jutting from its open top. The working end of the stick wrapped in a grease-blackened cloth, he smeared the axles of the wheels with it.          

 

Many years ago, a psychic, supposedly consulting messages pertaining to me that emanated from an otherworldly realm, where, I am told, such things are known, and scripted within her crystal ball, told me that as a spiritual practice, I should visit cemeteries on a regular basis again. I am yet to wrap my head around the fact that she was privy to the habits of my family of old, and it wasn’t until I wrote GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, a book about my family, that I set out to take her counsel seriously.

 

This Memorial Day I come to call in my car rather than the old buckboard. At the entrance to the road that loops the deeply forested community of Cedar Fork in which the cemetery is located, although over the years several new homesteads have cropped up among the trees, the road improved, and the bridge that spans the creek refurbished to modern standards, still it feels as if I am entering an evolutionary backwater, a safe haven cut off from the rest of the world. Nevertheless, I am shocked at the greater accumulation of headstones in the cemetery as beneath the tires of my car the gravel on the lane pops and crunches. And as was the case during my childhood visits, huddled within the gnarled branches of a wizened oak tree on the boundary of our family plot, gathered birds are perched. Their noisy flight as I exit my car and approach the graves briefly blankets the sun. These days, the graves are almost exclusively under the custodianship of some obscure caretaker, and I imagine, with the assistance of the watchful birds.

 

Late, but better than never, I see fully the meaning behind the psychic’s counsel to visit cemeteries every chance I get. How easy it is for me to lose my way in imagining that life is one way when it really is something else. Few things are more accommodating than a cemetery in which to gain a foothold in reality.©

 

***

 

The above essay is a revised excerpt of Linda Lee Greene’s GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, a book of historical fiction based on a true story. To purchase a copy of the book, please click the following URL:  http://goo.gl/imUwKO

 

Image: Dean and Linda on top of Old Smoky.

 

#Decoration Day, #Memorial Day, #Southern Ohio, #Cemeteries, #Farmlife, #GuardiansandOtherAngels, #HistoricalFiction, LindaLeeGreene

THE OAK TREE

 

I am so happy that author Julia Robb stopped by my blog today. She recounts an amusing story of her West Texas gardening trials and tribulations. However it is a journey of much reward in the end, for while her garden refused to grow, her impressive body of literary work took hold and bloomed. She tells us about her latest book, as well. -Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 

The Oak Tree

                                 From Julia Robb, Author

 

My garden saga began when I moved to my parent’s home in Marshall, Texas in 2004, after events had beaten the heck out of me. I had left a Maryland reporting job for a Louisiana reporting job, because Louisiana was nearer to Marshall. But the second morning on the road I took my chocolate lab for a walk, and he jerked me. I fell, shattering my leg. That led to a Near Death Experience, which I tell in its full detail in my latest book, SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA. Readers can find the book at https://www.amazon.com/SUPERNATURAL-PHENOMENA-Julia-Robb-ebook/dp/B09256BZ82

  I didn’t get along with the Louisiana folks and got fired. Then, I got home to Texas just in time to see my father’s Parkinson’s disease go from bad to worse. I needed cheering up, so I looked for a house (one I could afford). A miracle—I found it. But the house had problems.

  There was nothing behind the tattered wallpaper but board and the home’s former owners had covered the ceilings with commercial acoustic tile. Linoleum covered the sunroom floor. The 1940 yellow-brick, two-story house was on a nice street, but nothing grew in the front yard but scrubby, yellowy grass. According to neighbors, the renters who lived there before I showed up never watered the grass, or planted anything (which I could see), but they did haul a plastic kiddie pool to the front yard and splashed around while guzzling endless Coronas. I renovated all 1,600-square feet, and then faced doing Something to the vast wasteland beyond the front porch.

  Question: What did I always want in the way of a garden? Forget gardens. I had always wanted a tree that towered over everything—hundreds of feet of green shade. I wanted a 500-year-old Downton Abbey-type tree.

I thought, “Maybe I can have that tree? Maybe at least a 30-foot tree?” I didn’t know anything about trees. I had never planted a tree or even had trees because I grew up in West Texas, which gets a maximum of 20-inches of rain each year. (Marshall gets 50-plus).

  As soon as I got this tree idea, I was inspired and zoomed off to the nursery, only to discover none of the trees were more than five-feet-tall. A grizzled laborer said, “Lady, nurseries don’t sell no 30-foot trees. You can try somewheres else, but you ain’t gonna find nothing that tall.” On the good side, he said the tree I liked was a Red Oak, long-lived, hardy and tall (eventually).

  I gave up and shoved the tree inside my Toyota (although half of it hung out the window) and raced home to the waiting (male) neighbor. Bless Mike’s heart. Digging the hole was convict labor because dirt in my front yard is hard-packed clay. When we sat the tree in the hole, that five feet was pitiful looking; better than nothing, but pitiful.

  Then my real challenges began. It wasn’t long before I discovered that grass refused to grow beside the oak. Clay topsoil will not hold moisture. So I had this little, bitty tree which reached my nose, but was surrounded by dirt. I solved that problem by hauling wheelbarrows of rocks to my yard and dumping them beside the tree. That created a sort-of Japanese look: A tiny tree surrounded by rocks. The yard wasn’t looking like an English manor.

After fuming about the vast wasteland, it dawned on me I could plant other green things—back to the nursery to buy irises. I lined the sidewalk with purple irises, but they took turns blooming for two weeks each spring, and that was it—not near good enough.

  I searched garden books and found an English manor house with roses surrounding the main entrance. That’s it! Climbing roses! That was the answer. So I bought an iron trellis that circled halfway around my front door, and I closed the half circle with wire. The Don Juan climbing red roses looked like my vision of heaven. After they grew around the trellis, I rejoiced in the beauty and the smell. Then black spot hit.

My heart was broken, but I was not going to be beaten down by rose disease. I cut the roses down and planted a clematis vine. That worked splendidly. After several years the vine grew all around the trellis and the tiny white blooms smelled just as good as roses.

  Inspired again, I planted a 12-foot-long garden of perennials (zinnias) between the front door and sidewalk, on the opposite side of the oak. I thought I wouldn’t have to do anything; just plant, and the tall pink flowers would grow, faithfully, each year. Yes, when they bloomed, the zinnias were beautiful. They got taller each year, but so did the weeds, which flourished.

Eventually, my flower bed looked like an empty lot and I didn’t want to spend my free time on my knees. I forced myself to pull up the zinnias by the root (that hurt me, because I believed the flowers cried when I did it), and planted another tree. But the tree had to be a dwarf to avoid electric lines running over that part of the yard, so I planted a Crape Myrtle. Crape Myrtles produce pink blooms from summer until frost and usually quit growing at 12-feet. Guess what! My tree is three years old and has never bloomed.

Then last month a freak, five-day storm may have killed the clematis vine. Right now, on April 5, every single leaf is brown. I have no idea if the vine will come back. My neighbor swears it’s dead. If it’s really dead, I’m going to plant disease resistant climbing roses.

Now let me tell you about the lantana, which is a perennial verbena plant with a red or yellow bloom. I planted two lantana plants with yellow blooms, one on either side of my yard, beside the front sidewalk. They’re beautiful when they bloom, but the plant dies off each winter. In spring, you have to cut off the skinny limbs to make way for new growth, leaving huge circles of nothing but dirt until the plant decides to wake up.

Oh brother! Right now, I have in the front yard two large circles of dirt, a mutant Crape Myrtle and a possibly/probably dead brown vine.

No sign of iris blooms. Well, maybe one.

I don’t seem to be a natural gardener, although I am stubborn.

I do have one redeeming piece of beauty in the yard. Every year, for 16 years, while I failed at gardening, the oak tree grew, and I wrote novels (https://juliarobb.com/).  I didn’t believe the tree would continue to grow, but it did. Before I knew it, the oak was as high as my house, and I never dreamed it would go on growing, but now it’s as tall as the house plus half as much again. And there is an extra benefit—each fall the tree flames with color.

My oak tree almost makes up for the vine, the roses and the zinnias.

***

SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA

Julia Robb began collecting psychic experiences from her Facebook friends and found them so intriguing she decided to put them together in a book.

One friend told her about a shadow spirit who flowed across the bedroom floor and physically attacked him, and another about a malevolent spirit who lived in his boyhood bathroom.

One mother lost her beloved only son to an accidental overdose, but was not spiritually alone before or afterward. Spirits kept appearing to her, and she kept repeating (about who we consider dead), “They’re Alive, They Really Are!”

Julia herself has had psychic experiences, and she has stories to tell us.

#SupernaturalPhenomena, #Paranormal, #WestTexas, #OakTrees, #Gardening, #ClimbingRoses, #Zinnias, #JuliaRobb, #LindaLeeGreene