Healing Nicely

For those who have asked, my eye is doing wonderfully.  Thank you so much for asking!  I don't get on the internet for long periods, because that eye will get red and irritated, but otherwise all is well.  I also had an MRI for a lumbar problem and bilateral neuropathy and have since been going to physical therapy.  I THOUGHT that was helping but since Friday I have been none too comfortable.  Will keep you posted.

Since I have been a terrible blogger, and have not been posting much I thought I would at least make an appearance tonight.  Part of my problem is not getting many photos with the manual camera.  Part of the problem is being over-tired from all the Dr./therapy visits I've been having and other things that have kept me busy the last three weeks or so.  I hope all that will dwindle down.

This is for Tuesday Muse.  I hope you will join in for Nancy's lovely meme by clicking on the link!

Obviously not my photo...but I have a lovely story to tell.  At the eye Dr. the other day I met a Lakota Sioux man who is a descendant of Black Elk and also of Crazy Horse.  His name is Red Bird and he is in his sixties.  He told me that when he was a child Black Elk was blind, with cataracts, and very old.  I read Black Elk Speaks many years ago, and I was so impressed to be able to speak with someone related to him, and who knew him. The photo above is of Black Elk with his second wife, and one of his children.

When I was one year old I sat on the lap of my great-great-grandmother, "Lou Ma" Banks.  She was 103 years old at that time.  When she was a child, she had given water from her family's well to passing Union soldiers during the War.  I thought about how Red Bird and I are bridges to the past, each in our own small way, just by being alive to tell of these contacts in our childhood.  How long ago all of that seems!  And yet how little time has really passed.

Me sitting on Lou Ma's lap in 1953.

Thoughts

A nation is not conquered until

the hearts of its women

are on the ground.

Then, it is done, no matter

how brave its warriors

nor how strong their weapons.

                ----Cheyenne Proverb

Joining Tuesday's Muse, created and hosted by Nancy at A Rural Journal.  Click HERE to join us!

Muse In Early June

Perhaps I shouldn't do a post tonight.  I am still WAY behind on all my blog friends' posts!  I am working my way to the present very slowly.  But I hadn't done a Tuesday Muse in a few weeks, and couldn't resist.  Hope you will check out Nancy's meme by clicking on the link.

The Santa Catalina mountains in spring.

Cedars of Lebanon trees.

"If you're going to go into history, you can't do it with a hate attitude.  You have to remember that times were different then." 

 This was spoken by Deborah Lacks whose mother Henrietta had cancer cells removed without her consent....cells that have touched every aspect of medical research since she died in 1951.  But, Henrietta is buried in an unmarked grave, and no one in the African-American Lacks family has medical insurance, or has ever received a dime from any of the research that has benefited millions.  This was said with a goodness of spirit and generosity of heart that most people do not have.


PLEASE NOTE:  I AM SOMETIMES COMING ACROSS A BLOG THAT IS NOT BLOGGER AND I VERY MUCH WANT TO MAKE A COMMENT BUT CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO ADD ONE.  MANY TIMES I HAVE HAD TO PASS A POST BY WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGING IT AND THAT HAS MADE ME SAD.  I WANT TO APOLOGIZE TO THOSE WHO I HAVE DONE THIS TO AND ASK FOR SOME ASSISTANCE IN FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE COMMENTS WHEN THERE DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE A PLACE TO LINK IN TO A COMMENT FORM.

Tuesday Muse Today

Last time I participated I wrote a little snippet of my own poem. Today I am borrowing some wisdom from an artist I admire....

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." -Georgia O’Keeffe

saguaro cactus bloom

To see more inspirational photos and poems or sayings, click on the LINK and join Nancy's Tuesday Muse!

The New of Spring

I have been away too long!  My how I have missed blogging! :-)  It's like leaving a favorite book alone for a week, right at the good part! But, now I am back.  This post is sharing in Tuesday Muse (thanks so much Nancy!) and ABC Wednesday (thanks so much Denise!...and Roger who started the meme!)

New.....freshness all around us, as life rekindles tiny flames of brightest green, and bursts forth stars of color to explode with joy!

The palo verde trees are amass with yellow blossoms, but I will wait till later to share them....right now I want to explore the newness of my garden:

Near and dear to my heart, a gift from my kids for my birthday....I don't do the textures with my photos, but I have to say that I can combine the TT theme of "Celebrate" too by saying I celebrated this wonderful gift, and am now celebrating spring!

Here's the grow house where I started some of my seeds back in January and February.

Strawberry plant I kept covered all winter during the several freezes we had.

Lettuce (I did pick some of it) left from last Fall's planting, also.

Sideways????  Onion sets I took from a red onion that had sprouted in my kitchen back in January.

The cilantro is sprouting!

 Neat round beds to grow my veggies in!

Here is the oldest bed with the two monarda didyma that came back from last year...I look forward to the flowers!  And I also make Earl Grey tea from the leaves.  There are also potato plants in this bed, and cantaloupe!

 Nubbins on a nearly rotted potato (better known as eyes) provided these potato plants!  I cut it up and planted them and look how healthy they are!

Close-up of the monarda didyma.

 Narrow bed along the wall is home to other plants...carrots, turnips and purple hull peas...all coming up nicely!  I plan to extend it at the end where you see I have some weed-fighting still to do!  Many other things still to be planted!

 Native American corn has been planted in another round bed...only three plants are barely breaking the soil's surface right now.  I planted a variety that is Native to this area--Rainbow Inca Sweet.

Here I have dug another round bed.  It still needs to be amended before I plant more corn here.

 Amending the soil makes it Nitrogen-rich.

And for my final photo, a view of the little honey mesquite tree I planted last year, with my neighbor's full-grown mesquite, glorious with New green in the background.

Lamplight

Join us for Tuesday Muse, sponsored by Nancy at A Rural Journal....and for ABC Wednesday, the letter L this week.... L is for Lamplight.

"The Poets light but Lamps--

Themselves--go out--

The Wicks they stimulate--

If vital Light

Inhere as do the Sun--

Each Age a Lens

Disseminating their

Circumference--"

Emily Dickinson

A lamp lighting a street in Suffolk, Virginia

A rare old gas lamp found on a very short cobblestone street in historic Ghent, Norfolk, Virginia.

A lamp at Thunder Mountain in Disneyland

The lamps next to Union Public House at St. Phillip's Plaza, Tucson, Arizona.

The last photo was posted a week ago as part of Fridays Fences, but the lamps were as interesting as the gate....plus it was an overcast day which made the lamps shine more brightly than is normally seen.

My First Tuesday Muse

"There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;--

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more."

William Wordsworth

My photograph:  Dusk on the Currituck Sound, NC.

I am joining in with Tuesday Muse at Nancy's A Rural Journal.  Click on the link to see more.