Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 156

a flat face with many folds

There were all these heirloom roses blooming outside the Durfee Conservatory, huge piles of them, in a pale, pale golden color with just a hint of pink. The faces of these roses were flat, with the petals all folded and whorled around, like this:


Heirloom roses by C. J. Aycock on Flickr

As a kid, when I'd see roses drawn this way, I'd assume the artist couldn't draw roses well, had never seen real roses--because all I'd ever seen were hybrid tea roses.


Oregold hybrid tea rose, from Growquest.com...

native blues

That was on a sign at a local roadside fruit and vegetable stand: "native blues," meaning native blueberries, and yet, blues-local-to-the-area, for sale by the side of the road? That has some resonance going on, too.

My father has some blueberries growing--I picked some for breakfast this morning:



The cicadas are sheening now, a sound like Japanese court music of the Heian period, which leads me to wonder whether court musicians were maybe in part inspired by the cicadas.

Unable to secure a tut...

The broken magic book

Some while ago I was thinking of the part of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (book not movie; I've never seen the movie) where Lucy, paging through a magic book, ends up saying a spell that will let her know what her friends think of her. A picture in the book--of one friend, Marjorie, and another girl, Anne, in a carriage in a train--comes to life, and she hears Anne asking Marjorie if she's going to be "all taken up" with Lucy next term.

“Don’t know what you mean by taken up,” said Marjorie....

hope to dip in to LJ this week...

I've been much more absent from LJ these past few days than I ever have been before (or so it feels like), in large part because I'm trying to cram the work I won't be able to do in August in now, and in part because there've been various (pleasant) family obligations.

But oh, LJ, I've had so much I've wanted to tell you. As it is, I hope at least to visit some of your journals in the slips of time I have, and then, eventually, to update my own. Meanwhile, look, I MADE BEAN SPROUTS! Almost too...

Birds, clouds, and flowers

It's the season of cloud towers



When I was walking down the road, I could hear song sparrows, so beautiful, and when I was picking berries, a cardinal was calling out "spiritual! spiritual! spiritual!"

The homing pigeons were wheeling around above their dovecote. When I see this, I feel like I myself am flying for a moment.



The roadside is bursting with flowers--here, daylilies, daisy fleabane, and mullein



But I must help myself to more iced tea and get back to work....

black berries, red berries

Oh summer, I love you so much.

The Canada lily is getting ready to bloom, a cascade of bell-like blossoms:

buds



and a few already blossoming



So is the deadly water hemlock, looking so like queen anne's lace, but it is no wild carrot, no!



And the berries, the berries. I made red currant jelly this morning, and picked black and red raspberries for eating out of hand.

black raspberries



red raspberries



black and red together



more photos to come, but now I am hepped up on iced tea and working, working, wo...

Billboard

Sometime in his delinquent youth
my big brother noticed the rusty rungs
that led to the billboard catwalk
and he told me
when things got hot at home
he’d climb up and sit there
by the highway
all night long
silhouetted against “defeat proposition 466”
or “buckle up for safety’s sake”

One day, he brought me along
up and up I climbed
trembling arms and shaking legs
and sat with him
half choked and deafened
by my own drumming heart

With duct tape and string
my brother fastened pint jars
to mom’s unused tomato s...

Mythic Delirium--the e-zine

Using phoenix power from Clockwork Phoenix 4, Mike Allen has relaunched Mythic Delirium, this time as a quarterly e-zine featuring not only poetry but also short stories--including by such luminaries as Marie Brennan and Ken Liu. (And the poetry includes some of my favorite very favorite poets--so don't neglect the poetry!)

He's also got a Kickstarter going (link here) to help pre-fund future issues of the zine, and among the prizes currently available is art by Paula Friedlander, who does ama...

The king unwilling

I went to buy Little Springtime a new inner tube for her bike. The guy at the bike shop had a tattoo on his arm, a chickadee with fancy scrollwork around it, something like this, though at the time I couldn't quite make out the last word.



"What is your chickadee saying?" I asked.

"Oh, 'The king unwilling,'" said the guy. "It's the motto of my hometown."

"'The king unwilling' is the motto of your hometown? How cool! What's your hometown?"

"Danvers, Massachusetts."

At home, I looked up the motto. Wi...

Heavy feet, powerful hands

They made a new sidewalk near here; they made it of cement instead of tarmac, and a squirrel left its footprints in the corner of one square. It did this after the cement had set.

You're thinking I misremembered. Of course it had to have happened when the cement was still wet. Maybe, but I don't think so. I think maybe the squirrel had such deep concerns, such ponderous thoughts, that his feet left impressions, even in the fast-hardening cement. A weighty, metaphysical squirrel. Any hawk that...