Missing one very important ingredient . . .
Bella . . .
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Tag: seasons
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The hollowed trunk of a Philippine tree . . . had it shipped from the Philippines 
She was ready. She must have spent the whole summer preparing, her sleeps getting longer and longer and longer. The Man said she still ate all her breakfast that morning. -
When self hears the word “Carefree” she always thinks of summer.
Summer means: FREE WEDNESDAY NIGHT CONCERTS IN STAFFORD PARK!
Oh how self loves these Wednesday evenings in the park! And: ALMOST MAINTENANCE-FREE GERANIUMS IN BLOOM!
Geraniums in Bloom Beneath the Dining Room Windows AND SPENDING MORE TIME — LOTS AND LOTS OF TIME — OUTDOORS!
Sitting on the deck Self loves how colors always seem more vibrant in summer!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Self just realized, looking back over her summer postings, that it’s been a while since she posted pictures of flowers. The summer’s been so hectic.
First, there was the Fourth of July.
Then the CalShakes picnic, self’s birthday and son’s birthday.
Then, learning how to tweet.
Then, the third season of “The Killing.”
Then, Bella’s various farts.
Then visits to various museums.
There was Bindlestiff’s STORIES HIGH THIRTEEN: SoMa Edition (Four Stars!)
And yesterday’s epic trip to place an order at Lech Go in Saint Francis Square.
But today — Hallelujah! — things have calmed down a bit.
So here are some pictures from self’s garden:
Naked Ladies. Self forgets the scientific name. Without fail, every August, the plants she refers to as “Naked Ladies” (She keeps wanting to call them “Bare Naked Ladies,” but that wouldn’t be a flower, that would be a singing group) appear. Self is always a little sad when she sees them, as it means summer will soon be over.
A clematis she bought in early spring (from Regan’s Nursery in Fremont) has one big, white bloom! 
Gamboling Lizards! These metal lizards are made in Haiti. Self bought them from the gift shop of Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum (a brainchild of James Rouse, grandfather of the actor Edward Norton). At one time, they hung next to the clematis henryi — but the clematis and everything on either side collapsed when the neighbor decided to replace the fence.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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It makes self sad to write the above. Indeed, it is the last Saturday of May 2013 she will ever live through. Then May will turn into June, and before you know it, July will be here (though she loves July. And not just because it’s her birthday month!) Before you know it, it will be Christmas again. And those silly Christmas doo-dads she pasted on her dining room windows, and has been too lazy or too distracted to take down? She’ll just leave them on, so that when Christmas comes, there will be no more of this hunting around for them in the garage!
Self has discovered a new Kindred Spirit Blogger! She’s not sure how she stumbled on this site, but she must have added it to her Bookmarks after she got back from Venice.
Tonight, she was browsing through it and thought: Hmm, it’s been a while since self blogged about another blogger. Let’s just say, she was very moved by the series of sunset pictures on this blog. They reminded her of the picture that Philippine Genre Stories used to illustrate her story “The Departure,” which was the very first story of that webzine, and which she’s been reading regularly ever since. It was fun to see it on the site, and a few months ago she discovered that Ellen Datlow (Who is Ellen Datlow, you may ask? Don’t blame you, self had to look her up: She is the editor of Science Fiction Magazine) had given self’s story (and a couple of other ones by Filipino writers, one of whom was Kristine Ong Muslim, whose writing self likes very much) an Honorable Mention for Best Science Fiction 2011!
Just now, self wandered over to Kristine’s website and discovered that Kristine has “garnered multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize” and that “her short fiction and poetry were accepted in over five hundred anthologies, periodicals, and podcasts.” Gadzooks!!! Way to go, Kristine !!!
Later, self browsed for mentions of her own story, and found some other writer mention it in passing, saying it was “rather dark.” To which self could only respond with a hearty
BWAH. HA. HA. HAAAAAA!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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It was a bee-yoo-ti-ful day! The second beautiful day in a row.
Neighbors on all sides were out in their yards, pruning, staking, watering, and so forth.
The tallest cherry tree in the backyard is covered with blooms, and the plants in the side yard are covered with flowers:
Viburnum Tinus, Side Yard Self was so pleased with this specimen that she purchased another Viburnum and put it in the front yard, a few weeks ago.
Cherry Blossoms! One of the cherry trees in self’s backyard began blooming last weekend. And, wouldn’t you know, on p. 162 of Anna Karenina (the Modern Library version), self reads this:
For the last few weeks it had been steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night there were seven degrees of frost. There was such a frozen surface on the snow that they drove the wagons without staying on the roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm, driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though hiding the mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the crackling and floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had come.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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This literary journal (Stone Going Home Again: New Writing from Scotland 28) is so well-traveled. Self purchased it in Edinburgh, from Blackwell’s. She toted it to Bacolod. And now she’s reading it again, here in Redwood City.
This (gloomy) morning, the last day of the long Thanksgiving weekend, self is reading the poetry of a writer named E. M. Buchanan. Here is what it says about her in the Contributors’ Notes:
A retired schoolteacher, in 2009 E. M. Buchanan completed a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. Agin Mischefe comes from the collection of poems and short stories, in English and Scots, backed by a commentary, reflecting aspects of her home ground of Angus on the east coast of Scotland.
Here is her poem yule:
In the crack
o’ the open door atween
the Auld Year an’ the New,
atween the ingang an’ the ootgang,
when derkness is bool-hornit
an’ the nicht is langthey come
I’ll gie ye the cream o’ the well,
a reid herrin, an’ a bairnie
in a byre.Here’s a picture that self took of her backyard this morning. She thinks it fits right in with the poem’s theme!
Backyard, November And here is another of E. M. Buchanan poems, finis:
In the crack
atween the ebb an’ the flow
when the caunle burns low,
warm bluid growes cauld
an’ yir breith gaes oot
by the open door,
when I lowse the knots
o’ yer windin’ sheet
tak oot the nails
frae the coffin lid,
an yer hands are tumethey will come
OMG, just typing those poems makes shivers go up and down self’s spine, dear blog readers! She doesn’t know what it is, but she finds the language, the Scottish expressions, so fascinating.
Stay tuned.
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Today was hot, but this evening is cooler than yesterday.
The warm weather set all of self’s flowers to blooming.
Early this morning, self noticed one gorgeous bloom on her Sunflare. Finally, in the late afternoon, she went for her camera and took this picture:
Sunflare, Backyard 
Self loves orange flowers, but has never successfully grown an orange rose (Her one orange rose, a Fragrant Cloud, died last year). Self has to make do with this abutilon, blooming in her side yard. (She knows the picture is blurred. Apologies!) Changing gears here: self is currently reading Jennifer 8. Lee’s The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. So far, Lee has written about: a) a dynamo who revolutionized the restaurant industry when she introduced Chinese food delivery in New York City; and b) the history of the fortune cookie. Self is finding the subject difficult to get into. Lee is witty and all that, but perhaps self wants to read a really dark, wrenching memoir, and not a light, frothy essay on the misconceptions that surround the origin of the Chinese fortune cookie. The next book on her list is Nicholson Baker’s first foray into nonfiction, Human Smoke: The Origins of World War II, the End of Civilization and it has created quite a rift among Amazon readers, some calling it “muddled” and “a hodgepodge.”
Self has read two short books by Mr. Baker, both novels. She liked them both, especially A Box of Matches. It’s interesting to her that when Mr. Baker tackled nonfiction, he wrote a book that was about five times as long as his novels. (She does commend him for his very intriguing title. Self wishes she had written a book called Human Smoke. Lately, all her story titles have been bad: “Sleuth,” “The Cooking Lesson,” “Emergency” — yucch, yucch, yucch)
Switching gears yet again: today, self went to the Menlo Park Farmers Market, could not pass up the baklava. Then she went to Pampelmousse in downtown Redwood City and purchased four caramel salt macaroons. Finally, because she feels so sorry for the husband because he is an engineer and not something cool like a writer, she went with him to the Dairy Queen on Woodside Road and even though she was not at all desirous of having a sundae, she went ahead and had a caramel sundae. L’Fisher Chalet laundrywoman, the next time self is in your presence, she already knows what you are going to say: You are sooo fat!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Polka: First of Self’s Roses to Bloom Three of the roses in the front yard turn out to have more staying power than self anticipated. These are: Flower Carpet Apple Blossom, Winsome, and Gertrude Jekyll. They had no new shoots, a month ago. Self even gave up on watering them. But now all three have vigorous new growth.
The one disappointment: the clematis montana rubens has only half the number of blooms it had last year.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Soon, the branches of the apple tree will be bare.
Apple Tree in Side Yard 
More of the Apple Tree, Without the Lanterns 
How can one (more…)
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The only poem self remembers from high school days in Manila is this one by Gerard Manley Hopkins. She doesn’t know why, but the voice has stayed with her for ages and ages. She can recite the first four lines from memory.
Today, self decided to get out her camera and photograph the maple leaves in her front yard (They’ve been brilliant red all week — beautiful!). She found herself saying —
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving
Leaves, like the things of man you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?When she was done with taking pictures, she came back inside and found the rest of the poem on Bartleby.com:
Ah, as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Maple leaves and variegated hydrangea by front steps 
Same maple tree, but from a different angle 
This one’s of a tree in self’s backyard. Two rejections this week, but self was up for it: She had five straight acceptances — five new pieces, all to be published 2012, including a novella. The latest acceptance was from Wigleaf. You try for years and years, and sometimes years go by and you don’t get anything. And then, a miracle like the Fall happens. It just happens.
One of the rejections was from a journal in New York, signed by both editors. And saying, in handwritten blue ink: Promise you WILL try us again.
She knew something was up because it had been months and months. Self started thinking: they either mis-placed it, or it made it past at least one round. And she thought: No, they’ve misplaced it. Because the story was “Crackers,” and it was 20 pages of wild. One of those stories she stayed up all night writing, because it came in such a rush.
Eyebags have been tremendous for weeks. She wrote another story last night: “The Not Particularly Likable Woman” — BWAH HA HA HA
That one’s done. It was just hilarious. Self wrote about standing in post office lines and what not. What great fun. To write about Pie in the Sky and the post office, in the same piece. Imagine laughing and writing, simultaneously.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 