Helen Mathey-Horn's Blog, page 30

F is for Forsythia

Many plants were named for the people (western Europeans) who ‘discovered’ them. I put ‘discovered’ in quotes as of course the natives knew and often used the plants long before the Europeans saw said plants. This includes poinsettias (named after Poinsett) and tradescantia (spiderwort – named after Tradescants – father and son plant explorers). Forsythias were named after a Scottish botanist, William Forsyth.

To me forsythia are spring sunshine. Such a clear, bright yellow is so welcome early in the season and the branches can be ‘forced’ to bloom even earlier if you live in more northerly climes by cutting them and bringing them indoors in a vase of water. This is how the flower shops get them to bloom, especially if Easter is early in the year. Forsythia make great branches to hang Easter eggs from. That won’t happen this year for two reasons, 1) the blooms will probably be ‘spent’ or gone by then and 2) I have cats that think the hanging eggs are cat toys.

The one in my front yard needs a little ‘trimming’ back. The debate is whether to do it after it flowers or while it flowers. The color is so nice in the yard, but would be equally welcome in the house. What a debate, huh?

E is for Easter Egg

I think this still keeps with the ‘flower’ theme I seem to be running with. This Easter egg is hand-painted, like you could not tell. I purchased it many years ago about 1980, before my son was born. Living in Germany allows you many opportunities to find wonders like this. It is either a swan or goose egg that has been emptied and then painted in a style the German’s call Baurnmalerie, or ‘farm painting’. The style was used on furniture and decorative panels at a time when color was at a premium and furniture was handmade.

I have many hand-painted German Easter eggs, but this is one of my ‘best’. It is not a chicken egg. I don’t remember if it was a swan or goose. I’m thinking swan. I have another large egg, not as large as this, that if I were to rate sizes, I would put swan larger than goose. This egg is decorated with daffodil, tulip and forget-me-not flowers. Interestingly forget-me-not in German is Verzeihen-Sie-mich-nicht which is a pretty direct translation.

I’ve put up Easter Egg Trees in the past, but with cats they seem to think the eggs are there for their pleasure and I have several that are cracked or only partially left (I just could not throw away the handwork and art they represent). I may put this one in the center of the dining room table for the season.

D is for Dogwood

The only kind of dogwood I had had in the past were the red-twig bush variety which are nice in their own way for color in winter but are no where close to being ‘spectacular’. Since I seem to be using ‘Plants’ as my theme for the days of April, I bring you the dogwood.

One of the fantastic things about the house we bought in Tulsa was the dogwood tree in the front yard. It is monstrous! That is in a good way. It sits to the west of our property next to our neighbor’s driveway and they appreciate it as much as we do. To the point that they will not trim the branches that hang over their driveway unless they are REALLY a problem.

When we were still overseas they would send us pictures so we could see how lovely the tree is in its season. Now I can sit in my own living room or on the front porch and love its graceful branches, adorned with fluttery white ‘blooms’. Technically they are bracts not petals, a variation of leaf, and the flower is the tiny cluster of ‘things’ (so technical) in the center of the bract. So we’ll sneak a little botany into today’s letter.

This sequence of pictures should give you a better idea of why the ‘flower’ is not a flower.

Can you believe it? Is it Real Enough?

IWSG Day Question: If you could use a wish to help you write just one scene/chapter of your book, which one would it be?
Co-Hosts:  J.H. Moncrieff, Natalie Aguirre, Patsy Collins, and Chemist Ken!

I’m doubling up today. I’m using the “Can you believe it?” for the Alphabet of April day 3 “C” and the IWSG Day question on writing. My blog/my rules?

Fight Scenes – I mean I’m not a fighter or a wielder of swords, so am I really portraying a realistic scene or am I just getting carried away with it? I think what I visualize is realistic, but I have no experience to draw on except imagination and I don’t like shows where they portray something that when you think about it, isn’t realistic. I am specifically thinking about scenes where someone (Spiderman maybe) is on the ceiling and a person walks down the hall and doesn’t see them. Come on, our peripheral vision is better than that. It’s how we have stayed alive all these years as a species!

So sword fighting scenes. I love watching them, (Three Musketeers anyone) as it is balletic, but I don’t know if what I write translates correctly and maybe it doesn’t matter if it gives the ‘right feel’ on paper.

I also wonder if I go on too long with such scenes. I have characters who are more than proficient with bladed weapons, but perhaps the reader doesn’t care. I know I’ve skip-read over ‘love/seduction’ scenes in some books because after a while it was TOO much and I wanted to get on with the story. Yeah, I get it they are ‘hot and heavy’ for each other, but move along now.

So that’s my answer and I’m sticking to it.

Find more responses to the question at….The Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

C is for Convoluted Cherry Tree

I bought my first convoluted cherry tree when I lived in Germany. I saw one at the nursery and ‘had to have it’! It grew nicely in front of my kitchen window, not growing too large, yet bearing a blizzard of pink, slightly pendant blossoms each spring. The branches seemed to grow an inch or less in one direction and then take a random turn to grow in a new direction. It was so cool.

When we moved back to the States, I wanted one for my yard and went looking on line for a possible source. I lucked out finding one at the local nursery and they even dug it in for me. What would have taken me at least a half hour they had done in five minutes. So now I look out each spring and enjoy my twisted cherry. No fruits, strictly ornamental, but so sweet.

I could also have used convoluted hazel nut as I have one of that in the backyard. I did not plant it, but I love it too. However of late I am battling it’s desire to send up ‘straight’ shoots. I break them off as far back as I can get at and they send up another branch. By the time this is posted the ‘tree guys’ will have been here and hopefully ‘nipped this in the bud’ as it were, or rather back before where the ‘reverted’ growth is.

B is for Books

I’ve written before about how I got started writing books on a ‘dare’ from my mother. I wish she had been around for the era of self-publishing on platforms like Amazon Kindle. I think she would have loved it. She was one of the first people I knew to have a personal computer in a home. She was a secretary and saw the advantages of the personal computer, but could not talk her boss into springing for one at his business. I think he was in the last years of running that business and just did not want to invest in anything further. His loss.

As for books. I’ve read my fair share over the years. My husband and I could outfit a fairly good library, heavy in history, crafts and fiction. Mostly science-fiction.

I got started on the writing one summer at my parents’ trailer and I had run out of sci-fi. I started reading her romance novels at a rate of about three a day. Potato chip reading I think is the term. By the handfuls.

And that of course leads one to thinking they can write as well as the authors they’ve been reading.

If you are interested in what I’ve written there is a link here to Amazon. It breaks down into about half of them are romances and half are science fiction.

Thanks.

April 1st – “A”

As in “April’s Fool”!

I am hoping to keep up with the ‘letter a day’ blog for April (excluding Sundays) so today is the first and of course this is the big day for playing tricks on everyone. This day rates up there with teachers about as high as having school on Halloween. In all fairness, the kids need to let off some steam, but as the teacher the day is fraught with more pranks than necessary.

But the April 1st – “April Fools” prank I wish to document was pulled by my mother on my father.

My father was a ‘tool and die’ guy at a company that produced industrial sewing machines. He was very good. He worked the night shift, something like four pm to midnight five nights a week. He got home around 12:30am or sometimes a little later every night and of course we were all asleep.

He also burned the candle at both ends as my parents had recently (the year this happened) bought a 1919 Illinois farmhouse that had stayed in the same family for all its life, but had been a rental property for the last few years and was showing its age. My parents worked hard to renovate that house on their budget with four kids aged junior high and younger.

The summer after they bought the house in May they spent the summer stripping the wood floors and redoing them. Upstairs the wood floors had to be sanded as they had been painted with gun metal gray paint. Don’t know why, but probably because it was inexpensive? The walls (lathe and plaster of the time) had multiple coats of wall paper. This included the ceilings which when my mother went to paint the ceiling of one bedroom it was enough moisture to loosen the paper and she turned around to find the ‘ceiling’ coming down behind her. Which meant, strip the ceiling, seal, then paint. And as the walls had as many as nine layers, they rented a steamer and took all the paper off.

Nothing halfway here.

The kitchen had white metal cabinets that had definitely seen better days and a lot of mice. Ick. So out they came and my dad built from scratch cabinets that my mother stained and sealed. They were a team.

The kitchen also had two windows, narrow 1919 style windows. One over the sink…expected…and one looking into the backyard. It was a nice backyard with a ‘screen’ of lilacs and a second yard with an old ‘milkhouse’ which we used for a playhouse. But that narrow window was hardly enough to light up the kitchen. Sooooo my dad bought a nice, big picture window, thermal pane-kind and enlarged the opening sometime when the March weather was nice, and set the new window in. That’s the set up. You now have all the pieces.

The night before April 1st, my mother took a black china marker and while my father was at work, drew lines to look like cracks on the window. There was a yard light which was left on to help dad see the steps. And last piece, my mom left dad a note to ‘Look at the window’.

Don’t know if his heart dropped when he first beheld what would have looked like the ruined window, but mom didn’t leave him hanging long as the message had a PS, “Turn over the note.”

April Fool’s.

France – on bread and water

Tonight we were dining out locally and had taken our dog along. As happens we took one slice of the crusty bread to break up and feed the dog, piece by piece, which made me think of my son and France.

It had to be spring of 1990-ish. The school secretary approached me one day to ask if I would like to take a trip with her and her husband to France during spring break. Would I!, but before I committed I said, “My son and I?” as I had a 3rd grader and did not know if the invitation extended to both of us.

Well, it did, so we did. The secretary’s husband and been an military exchange officer in France at one point and she had built up connections and when they moved to Germany (and then Italy) she had kept up her connections to buy French items to sell at the bazaars the bases would have twice a year. This is to say they both were very knowledgeable and comfortable in France and spoke the language and this was certainly an opportunity not to be missed.

We ended up in the Loire River Valley for several days. This was during Easter week so things were a little different than normal for most of the places as the French were on break when we arrived, but headed back to work after the Monday. We toured, and toured and toured. And my son is nothing if not a trooper when it came to endless castles, we did three in one day, something I do not recommend for the foot weary, but we did and he did without complaint.

Since we were going to do multiple things in one spot we stayed at one hotel for several nights. They had a restaurant with the hotel, so breakfast was of course included (Huge bowls of warm milk with a little coffee if you wish.) and supper was available from a menu. So we would come back for supper after a day out and order. And trying to be the good mother, I ordered my son a meal. And being a hungry kid he would start on the bread and water at the table. To the point that when the meal came, he wasn’t hungry any more.

That was the first night. Second night repeat, his meal came and he wasn’t hungry. Third night, my friend’s husband said, “Don’t order him a meal. It’s a waste of food and money. He’s happy with the bread and water. If he is still hungry we can give him something off our plates.”

Well, I didn’t want to be that mom that didn’t feed her kid, you know? But he had a point.

And that is how I took my kid through France on bread and water.

Flowers

I don’t know how to start this except to say, I LOVE FLOWERS and it is getting to be that time of year again when things (plants) are starting to bud and flowers. Proof below.

Spring is definitely my favorite time of year. I probably should take pictures of the lilac buds forming out front. Which always makes me feel guilty…

When I was young (maybe five or maybe younger) my mother had a lilac in the backyard of the house they built on Walnut Drive. It didn’t flower, because Helen made mud pies using those fat little green swelling buds. If I had been ‘the mom’ that child might not have made it to six.

And that reminds me of my backyard in Germany where I had planted daffodils in various places and the neighbor came over to apologize for her daughter having picked the ones next to their garage. I couldn’t get mad.

Now when the daffodils get picked they come in to the table. Those on the bottom are ‘Tete e Tetes’, which are small, the others are ‘standard’ size.

The Stella Magnolia always makes me think of the bows on gift packages. And the hellebore always makes me think of my Aunt Norma.

How about you? What memories do flowers or spring make you think of?

Well look what the cat drug in!

After the post about Pepper being missing and that I was resigned to her being ‘gone’ for good, she showed up this week as we pulled up into our driveway. She looks clean and healthy, just verrrrrryyyyy skinnnnnyyyyy. So I suspect she got herself shut into someone’s garage or shed for the last two weeks! Which ever garage it was I suspect there are no longer any mice, cockroaches, spiders, or bugs to be found as I can’t imagine what she ate. As I said, she’s pretty skinny, but okay otherwise.

Let me sleep!

And to keep with St Patrick’s Day coming up.

I’m the good daughter.

So it was a great week! Yea!

Angel wants to be included. He doesn’t get to go out as he has no front claws. He shouldn’t feel jealous…it will be a while before we let Pepper out either.

Well I tried to include a picture of Angel, but now it is coming out sideways. Another day, Angel.

Shesh, she can’t get me up straight!