Bamboo-zled

Not enough rain.   Weeds everywhere.  No helpers.  If I weren't so stubborn, if I hadn't invested so much of myself, I'd be tempted to give up gardening.  Maybe go in for rock collecting.  

It is an early year for everything.   The Chinodoxa have spread around the iris.  If you haven't planted it yet, add it to your list for next year: it is a most satisfying bulb, trouble free and cheery.  It blooms in the gap between paperwhites and the proper daffs, and it spreads.  In this case that's a good thing.

Hellebore foam at the feet of the ceramic bamboo - another very satisfying plant, and the only bamboo that will not spread - despite what your bamboo-zled friends will tell you.  Hand made by my friend and fabulous artist Paula Hamilton.

In the fall I planted daffodils in pots, the bulbs almost touching, with pansies on top.  The gold crowned sparrows ate most of the pansies, but the daffs are a huge hit.

Boxwood cones planted last year to give winter structure to the garden - brilliant.  I'm not taking credit for inventing the idea, just for translating it to my garden (stolen, borrowed, whatever).  And for the placement.  Hard learned, hard earned.  So happy to have that skill.

The Patio we built one mothers' day invites  you to sit.  But no gardener ever has sat in her own garden unless she was pulling a rose thorn out of her finger, or deciding on the best place for a prized plant.  Even with guests present the true gardener is leaning over to pull a weed or snick off an errant tendril of clematis.  Guilty as charged. 

The stone stairs, better with boxwood.   And hellebores - they carry the garden thru winter.  

Grape hyacinth tucked into odd corners at the edges of paths are blooming.  They get lost in the garden beds, unless you have them in huge sheets, but walking along contemplating the weeds, just a handful of flowers catch my eye, and are a note of happiness.

 Forget me nots.  Without them winter would be grim.  If you don't pull them when they're gone to seed and mildewed, but give them a haircut instead, they will bloom all summer.  And start blooming earlier next year.  I fling the seeds I've trimmed off everywhere, and in the dead time between winter and spring my garden is a sheet of blue.   

Spring is hovering just over the horizon, that bustle and rush.  Then comes the baking summer and the long evenings, gardening long past the time any sensible person would have gone inside.  But now, just this day, my garden is magic.  Off to look for fairies and photograph the violets.  Quickly, before this moment is gone.

Sillyness

My mom is feeling so much better.  For a long time she laid in her chair, too weak to get up.   Running errands...

...and we were both feeling silly.  Her sister used to wear jeweled cat-eye glasses.  With lots of sparkles.  Two women could not have more different styles, and they're sisters.  And when we saw these glasses, we looked at each other and said "Aunt Nini!" and started to laugh.

Kate Spade, in case you need these.  And yes I know about the selfie side of the iphone, but have you looked at yourself in those shots?  The lens is so horrid it makes you look like a walrus nuzzling a National Geographic camera.   Underwater.  Trust me, this is much better.  And it made Mommy laugh.   And that's priceless.

Cuba In My Real View Mirror

So even tho our trip to Cuba was officially called a people-to-people trip, it only worked one way.  They talked, we listened. Except for that first day when I asked, "Is there anything they want to know about us?"  That soooooooo did not happen again. 

Were they not curious?  or was asking "Hey, how's my cousin Mario doing in Miami?" frowned on?  

I learned some things:

1.  From Tim:  Leave some money on your pillow every morning.  The maid who cleans your room may be off the day you leave, and someone else will get her tip.  Thank you Tim.  If you keep this up you're going to lose your reputation for being cheap! and we can't let that happen.

2.  Some foreign policy is just silly.  Or we don't know the real reasons behind the policy (more likely).  I mean, is this whole country still mad about something that happened 55 years ago?  In another country?  What's really behind our Cuba policy?  The official party line (US and Cuba) makes zero sense.  'S'up?

3.  We are so lucky to live where we do.  We take so much for granted, so much that other people are fighting and dying and going to jail for.  Being able to speak your mind, being able to go where you want and rant at will.  Being able to bitch about the government - we're all doing a lots of that lately, and for good reason.

4. We can buy pretty much anything that's available in the world.   We can choose what we want to be, what we want to do with our lives. We can amass wealth.  Or start some quirky company just because.

5.  Travel.  Moving.  Never take it for granted.  

6.  Great food.  Enough food.  Choices.  Did not occur to me how privileged we are.  Off to make pork roast - without beans and rice.

Blue Jay Bath Day

It must be Blue Jay Bath Day - this guy frolicked in our birdbath so long I was able to get my camera and take these:

He splashed about until the water was almost gone, spilled onto the primroses and ferns.  Then he hopped up the stem of the feeder:

jumped onto the top of the bird feeder and set it swinging, shook himself, settled his feathers, gave one mighty squawk that sounded like "Who's there?" and took off.

I love the birds in my garden - the pygmy nuthatch that creeps upside down around the old oak trees and is shy of his own shadow: 

The bashful bush tits, the hummingbirds that swoop like dragons. The Nuttall's woodpeckers - husband and wife - who take turns spinning on the suet feeder.

The mockingbird whose clock is off, who wakes us at 1.  In the morning.  The bashful owls we never see, only hear.

But I love the jays least of all.  Maybe it's their voices, that raucous rasp.  Maybe it's their reputation for eating other birds' babies. 

But this morning, looking out the kitchen window at the clown in the birdbath, I was glad there are jays in my garden.  

Life Lessons From Paddle Boarding

1.  It's hard to keep your balance if you're not in the center

2.  The farther you are out on the edge, the more unstable you are

3.  If you're not moving forward, it's hard to stand up

4.  The wind and current will take you off course, unless you keep your eye on where you want to go,  and make adjustments

5.  It's always easier with the wind at your back.

6.  You might get hurt.  So what?  You might fall off the sofa.  Get out there, do something.  Do something scary, something you're not good at.  Live! 

That's not me (just in case you couldn't tell...) we were too busy having fun to take photos.  But the water was like that, turquoise and crystal clear.  

Grace Bay Club, Turks and Caicos.  Go.  It's heavenly.  And who knows, you may come home with your perspective changed.

There Are Faces I Remember...

They are what I remember most from Cuba.

The little girls, some happy, 

some wary and grown up too soon.

Some looking like they're auditioning for the Copacabana.  Or Las Vegas.

The boys playing marbles, so serious...

The sad little boy on the fence,

the bored women on crumbling balconies.

The brides - one radiant,

One not.  Both hoping they don't end up on a crumbling balcony. And the groom - put the phone away, dude,  it's your wedding day. 

(And son,  you better not be calling your mother.  Or your mistress). 

The Cuban Marlboro man,

The musicians keeping the old music and the old instruments alive.

The particular form of delivery, the angle of pontification that all the party faithful have when they are lecturing us...

The Chinese African singer/drummer

Delin, radiant in her Yank Tank:

Hector, our wonderful Cuban guide.  

 It's hard to draw on a bouncing bus, but I wanted to capture the sadness I saw in unguarded moments.  

And the people with whom we shared this adventure.  Thank you.

There were so many stories.  What's yours?

Alive and Well

Saturday, February 1

Havana has a spectacular cemetery, along the lines of the Recoleta in Buenos Aires.  There are as many people in the cemetery as in Havana (2.5 million).   But not quite as healthy.

Our bouncy guide leads us down the First Class Section, and says: "This is the only place in Cuba that has a class system.  Here in the First Class Section are buried Presidents and famous people."  

Cuba is all about equality, altho if you've been reading the paper some Cubans are apparently more equal than others...

"Families own the mausoleums, often a miniature of their own mansions."  Before TTOTR, of course.  Still own the tomb, small problem with the mansion.

"After the revolution, the cemetery was the only place you could own property - too late."  He laughs and points at a statue.

"An exact replica of The Pieta.  Have you seen the Pieta?  In Rome?"  When several people answer yes, he says, "Lucky you!  I have never been there!" and he laughs like crazy. 

Capitalism is alive and well here - in the cemetery.

Some of the statues look like they could talk, or get up and walk away:

Bodies are left in the tomb for two years, then the bones are removed and put in a ossuary.  That's how they fit 2.5 million in such a small space.  

Ibrahim Ferrer, famed for being a member of The Buena Vista Social Club is buried here.  Artists and musicians are about the only people who can get rich in Cuba (I don't know about the politicians and party faithful - you're on your own there) and Ibrahim Ferrer made enough money to buy a tomb in the first class section.  We can see where the old family's name was sanded off.  Don't forget to pay your rent!

Someone's family and friends, dressed in their Sunday best are filing into the chapel.  A hearse pulls up:  

I don't think it will catch on in the US.  Well, maybe among the Subaru crowd...

Abelardo's family tomb is here - after some discussion with our guide, he and his wife and daughter go in search.  Hector is on the phone, spelling the name, trying to find someone in the Cemetery office who knows where the tomb is.  


Laredo Bru was President of Cuba, and was Abelardo's great uncle. We are silent, respectful, emotional, waiting.  They come back crying and laughing, their words tumbling over each other.  They found it.  I think: these are the only relatives they were able to visit in Cuba.  

Delin stands in the aisle and thanks us for sharing this very emotional trip with her, and her family, and invites us all to her house.  Tears are rolling down my cheeks, and I look up and everyone is crying.  What an experience, what a privilege to share this journey.