February Flowering, Fragrant, Forward
The monthly newsletter from the dining room table here in Roundagator, birds at the window, Wilbur on the couch, Wompus on the bed. Light in every window.
We were walking down the road and he said when you were little did you ever think you could talk to animals? I forget sometimes that they live across the street in a house as full of stories as our own.
A redwing blackbird singing into the morning windows. The sun golden every morning like a fire. All you can do is smile.
It was an evening like this evening, perfect - right before spring, but just like spring, the wind is blowing and cool and the air feels crisp and the sun is setting and you hope it is always like this forever.
You never knew when he’d be at the barn and he laughed at me whenever I tried to find out or set a time. We were sitting there, probably outside because the bugs hadn’t started yet, I’ve told you this story before, and he was talking about Florida and sail boats and his boys, and he said, if you see everything, you have to react to everything. He said, raising boys sometimes you have to act like you don’t see everything.
Walking down the road thinking about it. Sometimes you get to act like you see everything. Right now, in the early spring, I walk around trying to fill my eyes up.
Daffodils and daylillies and hyacinth, bluebells, things vining and budding and waiting to surprise you again with what they’ve made. The Hawthorne tree, overnight. The Japanese magnolia just now opening here, some seeds now just in the ground, some of the asparagus spearing into the air, tomorrow a new surprise. He said, the garden makes it easier to get out of bed, because something has always happened over night.
He knows the length and location of the asparagus beds, early before they come up. He hasn’t mowed since the fall, there hasn’t been anything to mow, of course, but I can see him doing it now, and smell it, carefully and crazily around everything that is growing.
He won’t plant in rows or raised beds, but instead circles,
We have planted many strange things, I am unsure if they will come up, I am nervous about the buckshot and gintrash, it isn’t scientific like bags of potting soil and fertilizer and it isn’t exact. It melts down when you water it, new glass shards appear after the soil comes down, maybe the spinach berries will come up and maybe they won’t but it’s early still, we can try again.
“There is a reason everyone farms here, millions of acres,”
Frost resistant: YES
Standing leaned up against a doorway watching people laughing and dancing and smiling and being human there on the street,
Trying to get everyone on the ferry to sing into the night air as we crossed the river, hands across the water, hands across the sky,
They both could not and would not, but it isn’t their fault,
It’s hard to be yourself and to be wide-open, especially when you’re not prepared, and
He was just like a butterfly there on the street with his bright wings, walking crooked for fun, smiling.
Just walk up to the crossroads, even when you don’t want to.
I moved to Mississippi because whenever I traveled 61 Highway, it gave me a sign. Whenever I crossed the state line, it gave me a sign. It gave me so many signs, I forgot to look for them anymore. Then it became simply the road.
The crown royal on the road, the car next to us in the parking lot painted up, the song when we rolled into the restaurant, the Houston Astros cap on the sidewalk. It looks like angels is all saying, well, travel on. You’re going the right way.
If you see everything.
We’re back in the starry land, with the river 17 miles instead of 5 blocks,
No reservations, no lines. No folks, no traffic jams. Just us, the dogs, the cats, the chickens, the birds. The hyacinth that came up first, fragrant and pink and pale and short, you can see it from the kitchen. Everyone’s yards filled up with flowers. Even in places where the houses aren’t standing anymore.
The trappers came down from Ohio and he’s been doing it since he was five years old with his father. They had two pelts already in the back of the truck, and carefully pried the jaws of two traps. Musk oil rainbows into the bayou. I shyly asked if they ever ate what they caught; yes, beaver is stringy like a pot roast and about as good. You have to get the glands out of the raccoon. Never will eat an otter or a skunk. But about anything else. I heard bobcat is pretty good.
I fell asleep while he was telling stories, the gardenia bush came from Carrol County, hopefully it will make it, there are new green leaves at the base. He talks with illuminosity, you can see him in the gloaming of a Jefferson summer night, a very young and skinny boy with the same bluesky eyes, stars appearing, tossing sticks into the air to watch the bats fall out of the air in chase. The creek, the hills.
The frogs in chorus again,
Little seeds rising.
A man fishing the bayou.
A donkey along the highway grazing.
Two bald eagles on the ground watching eachother.
Deer in the fog of midnight.
Cornbread and buttermilk for breakfast.
The garden partially recovered; renewed in kale and collards and rutabaga.
We walk into the woods, I forgot some would fill up with water, I forgot they were too-dry to begin with. I am reminded that this world is ours only for a little longer before the poison ivy returns and fences me out. A wide open world, now, clouded with memories that move according to the wind, usually gently. I thought I saw him at the grocery store yesterday, only to be reminded I’ll never see him again.
Our weatherman reminds us that ‘For this day, the record high was 83 in 1918, the record low was 22 in 2014,’ and it’s comforting to know we are perpetually in strange times.
Riding to Greenwood last night with the windows down passing sleeping fields. A night so beautiful and perfect you can’t help but say wow, even just to yourself. In the here-and-now of the forever present moment, everything feels like it could be celebrated, a joyful heart with a newly closed book, look ahead;
“For you the world is weird because if you’re not bored with it you’re at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in the marvelous (delta), this this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”
-Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda
Thank y’all for such a wonderful opening at The Little Green Store. Beyond thankful and grateful, a warm bright night on the mountain among friends. Thank you. So many stories - horses, hollyhocks, starting tractors with a little help from fire.
There is one painting left, the one that begins this newsletter. It was inspired by Jesmyn Ward’s book ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing.’
“two cranes: one for me and one for Given. Given’s is alight, poised in flight, feet skimming the marsh grass, while mine is beak down in the mud. When I was five, Pop pointed at mine and told me: This is the one I got for you: they a sign of luck when you see them, mean everything is in balance, that it’s raining good and there’s fish and there’s things squirming under the marsh mud, that the bayou grass going to be green soon. They a sign of life.”
Up next is a small show at the wonderful Greenhouse Biloxi, if you are in the area please stop by for a biscuit and check it out. It’ll open the first week of April.
Meanwhile, I am here working joyfully in the studio in Roundagator. If you are coming through town, reach out. As part of my job as program director at the Delta Arts Alliance i am excited to share that we have lots of great community things coming up. If you’re in the region, please stop by for drop-in drawing night once a month. See you there.
Been reflecting on how I got here, what made me fall in love with this place and drew me in over the course of a shining decade. This is one of the songs that I used to feel.
Love y’all with an overwhelmingness. Thank you for all of this.
“Walking down the road thinking about it. Sometimes you get to act like you see everything. Right now, in the early spring, I walk around trying to fill my eyes up.”
Thank you for this. I thought I was the only one. My eyes hurt at the end of the day from trying to take it all in. Being eyes over the age of 50, I wonder if I need glasses because they tire so easily, but mostly I think it’s because I feel like it’s my responsibility to take it all in while everyone around me has their face on a screen.
Bbq raccoon was pretty good the one time I had it. But then again anything smothered in bbq sauce is edible. I’ll pass on possum, beaver, and the like. Possum is greasy. Has to be to roasted slow in the oven over a bed of sweet potatoes and even then it’s greasy. Not very many wild things my great grandmother wouldn’t cook, but possum was one of them.