March, Make, Mend,

The March newsletter from the kitchen table in Roundagator, windchimes and wind outside, we woke up and went straight out to the garden,

light, light, a house full of light

(if only I could get the timing right) 

A red rooster in the yard, dogs in the distance, henbit all over the yard, 
Where was it we were walking and the dust of the henbit drifted into the air with every step? I can’t remember.

yellows, blues, purples, white, green,

The redbud tree raining pink petals onto the road, good against the blue green and asphalt, leaving color in the crevices of my car, bees buzzing overhead, first the hawthorn now the redbud, like a cloud of roaring.

Every time we go to the store we walk out to the garden aisles just to see, 

Cardinals, redwing blackbirds, wrens, bluejays, 

Walked into the redmud, 

One blue marble first, a sign, 

A white truck in the distance slow down the wonder light road, 

Thinking I hope he isn’t worried about me anymore. He knew everything and I was too generous with questions. Thinking, I hope he is as rest. The truck met our main road, turned towards the east, headed away, towards the light, 

A sign, 

“There are earthquakes here, too, I experienced one when I was young, right over there on my cot. It formed three foot lake in Tennessee, it made the Mississippi flow upriver three days trying to fill it up.”

“they have stories on the radio on Sundays,” 

Usually he’ll call at any hour, usually, and relay any sort of short quick fact or opinion, or some good music on TV, or a movie he’s just seen, and then he hangs up. Yesterday he called to let us know a child in the gas station had a piece of pizza in his hand. Smiling he said to the child, grinning with his pizza, “whoo-hoo!” And the child possibly grinned bigger and said “woooo-hooo!” 

We don’t usually go out any more but we went out chasing music a couple of Saturdays ago, and in typical Delta fashion, everything had changed, nothing was like it was supposed to be, and no one really told anyone. We went up the road and still found music, and marveled at the boll weevil statue and I said, everyone was so nice. He said, aren’t they usually? He got to dance, she got to sing, 

There’s three or four, probably five ways home, maybe six, but anyhow, this time we went the third way, over the railroad twice and down the bridge, or maybe it was the second way, how we’d gone the other day, muddy and wavering, he accelerates through mudholes and i clench my jaw, and we were almost to the farmer’s road, and rrrrrr, rrrrr - “is that a flat?” 

moonlight, stars, a piece of wood and a jack, luckily we had made it to the blacktop road and weren’t in the river pebbles or the muddirt, learned how to change a tire, lug nuts in my pocket - a little bit like stars, if you wanted to be romantic. Headed home, laughing. 

Today the five o’clock evening horizon looked like the inside of a seashell, glimmering, 

I remember when the time changed (when we changed the time) and the morning light was clear and bright and filled the house up easy and soon, without warmth, smiling. 

quince, vinca, 

Gonna mow a path through the yard and let it all come up a little bit more, gonna mow a path so our feet aren’t wet tomorrow when we plant.

Behold, it is good Friday again already, bought the seeds in December and arguing about raised beds for at least that long.

Seedlings curling up out of the dirt, seems like the “one for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot, one to grow” is working, except we haven’t got mice or crows so they’ve all come up, 

Walking early one morning he said, I can smell the chemicals, 

And it’s true. The first crop duster of the year, it seems, reminding, shocking me all over again, a roaring of a mack truck overhead, 

Headed to work watching three crop dusters swoop and turn, gasping past Mound Bayou as one flew a straight line towards our 61 highway, cutting up quick and missing a truck, and I am not sure how I would’ve felt watching that incoming from the passenger’s seat, 

There used to be a safe here in the woods, someone must have finally picked it up for scrap.

I want to go down to that stand of trees I haven’t been there before,

“oh, it’s a cemetery,”

are you kidding me? 

They pushed the woods up a little bit, but Willie Brown, private, world war one, still lies at rest. You can see all of the sunken places, and one rusted little plaque placed where one day maybe there’d be a headstone. The other cemetery, someone picked up his flowers, now still blue but mudcolored for laying down, and his shirt, and it looks just as good. Her memorial stone in canna and a riot of flowers, you could see it from the house,

A three story house in Sumner, if you look up you can see the sunlight through the roofing. Proper wallpaper, real ivory in the keys, three sheds, we came away with a spade-hoe and other things “you can’t just get anywhere,” he stole some wisteria seeds in his pocket, maybe we got a ghost for that, too.

The figs about to let out their leaves. My first beesting, walking barefoot towards a butterfly,

The redwing blackbirds remind me of ham radio men, buzzing curiously to eachother in the morning, 

walking, riding, you can see all of the green beginning. 

Three rabbits across the road, a sign. 

Flashes, a storm in the night, sleeping so good I couldn’t stay awake to listen. 

It’s amazing what the mind can do, 

You get to believe whatever you want. 

“I was going down a bad thoughtway and said, I don’t have to do that. So I came back out. Turns out you can do that whenever you want.”

A snake through the peep hole while we were watching the swarming bees, 

It seemed like he ran on forever, a big black rat snake. Some people call them like gold. 

All kinds of birds in the distance, a forest of song. 

I couldn’t really hear him for thinking. 

Coming down the hill the wind took his voice, I couldn’t hear him and it never came back to my ears, off west to the river. 

ended up with a bead, two marbles, one big one, he called it a toy marble, maybe - 

And an old horseshoe. He said, that’s special. That’s rare. I can feel it in my heart. 

Walking, thinking, something about the meaningful little things people leave behind. 

An animal jaw small and broken in half, a sign. 

The first snake of the year, and then the second, a cottonmouth rattling his tail in imitation. 

Spiders newly in the bathroom in the dark, where have they been all winter. Signs,

Walking home, thinking, looking up. Almost six and the sun is still high in the sky. We have so much time, so much light. We have so much. Looking out, our friend arrived and it was already 7:17 in daylight, him moving dirt,

Yesterday laying in the grass reading Walden and the sky was very blue, he was joking about the clouds forming into cubes and balls and rolling away whenever we quit watching them. Thoreau goes on and on about economy; how one spends their time, currency. I forget that I am so fortunate, green grass, a dog laying next to me, chickens all over the yard, a new rooster that sets a painting whenever he stops and picks his head up. A little kitten that rattles her tail like a rattlesnake too, and bites my toes as I try to get down the steps to feed her breakfast. 

A grackle, a starling, a towhee, sometimes I think people use names to prove themselves, Thoreau proudly spelling latin. 

And it’s hard to ride out around here and not understand it - the farm equipment pulled from their sheds, cleaned, primed, waiting to plant. The fields burned by the crop dusters yellow brown in to the green of spring. it is strange to think I once didn’t know and probably also did not see. 

Yesterday laying in the grass, carpenter bees fat and clumsy and chasing each other across the yard, looking over it seemed there was always one hovering low (huzzing) near me, 

A little bug crawled over the blanket, black and beetle looking, lined in silver on his edges, big sweet antennae helping him find his way across the book where he stopped, smiling I watched his antennae blow in the breeze - googling this little fellow to find out he is just called black bug. Watch this - corimelaena pulicaria 

He wandered on and eventually left - the stained glass viscosity (i have abandoned definition, you see what I mean) of the hawthorn leaves and wisteria made the tree look like a church above me, with sweet blue shade, everything neon green and bright again in this hour. And in Ireland sometimes they call these rag trees, or wish trees, 

He built two structures, out of juniper branches and cane, planted sweet peas and gourds and morning glories and beans at their feet, 

I watched the bamboo yesterday from the window and it seemed like it was walking up hill.

The collards and turnips and rutabaga are bolting, 
The kale almost is. 

He said his daddy said about the asparagus, pick it until you’re stick of eating it. Then let it go. Yesterday, boiled, before, in a soup, soon - roasted, soon in a frittata, 

But anyway, bouquets of asparagus replace fresh flowers in the kitchen - flowers, which are all over the yard, today an iris and asparagus growing tall side by side. 

I am so unused to alligator clay and buckshot, I am beginning all over again. We have so many seeds I wonder if we can still fail. We have devised a plan to bring bags of squash and put them on people’s cars while they’re in church so they cannot possibly stop us. 

Anyhow, 

amen,

and hallelujah to those who celebrate. 

Hi hello! The show “Tell Your Dreams” goes up April 1st at The Greenhouse Biloxi (Naturally in Biloxi, Mississippi) - we brought down twenty-one pieces (snakes and hawks predictably in the mix) from Roundagator, and it was such a joy to be back on the coast in the middle of one of it’s most beautiful seasons. If you are in the area, please stop by and check out the work and eat a biscuit for me.

https://biscuitsprings.com/

An artist i have long admired chose this artwork for their newest album, Amen! - You can listen to the first single, or pre-order the album here:

Hemlock - Amen! on Bandcamp

Carolina is also on substack and on tour:

caught in the storm

i was blest to get four paintings into “Soulful Feelin’: A Folk Art Celebration” show at LeMoyne Arts Center in my old hometown of Tallahassee, Florida. It opens April 11th and runs through May.

https://www.tallahasseearts.org/event/soulful-feelin-a-folk-art-celebration-opening-reception-at-lemoyne-arts/

ps. i am looking for shows for 2025 and 2026, if your local art place seems like a good fit, please let me know and i will try to apply.

One of the reasons this is at the last minute is because i was hoping to find the right song and it never really came along. this is a joyful song by the Rolling Stone Quartet out of Aiken, South Carolina. With a name like that, you’ll be surprised at their sound. Slow down!