“The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”
I mistakenly thought was fiction
and I planted this year’s pear tomato
with blithely naïve predilection.
Egad, it grew like Jack’s beanstalk
like some overpowering addiction
forcing the zinnias and chives
to bent and yellowed eviction.
Even the pots on the deck
are muttering gruff malediction —
who knew one little tomato
could become such rabid affliction?
Emmy wanted you to see
what a little girl she used to be,
how she would get all ice-cream-coned
before her skills were practice-honed.
Now that she’s a big girl of three,
she cones a lot more tidily,
avows, it should be here appended,
the ice cream facial is recommended.
My thanks to the unknown photographer
and to the photogenic Emmy.
When it’s too hot to hum,
there’s nothing to do
but sit on a zinnia
and wish for a brew.
Every so often, dear reader, I have the urge to add “Burma Shave!”
A kid with a cone
in raspberry shoes
teaches a lesson
we can all use:
know your priorities
focus, be serious
(a chinload of ice cream
is not deleterious);
practice makes perfect
as life goes along —
if you’re not getting sticky,
you’re doing something wrong.
I don’t know who took this picture, but I know that’s Emmy braving the hard work
of learning how to eat an ice cream cone. Sometimes work is indeed its own reward.
Happy Labor Day, dear reader!
When morning sparkles
nothing is finer
than breakfast al fresco
at the pondside diner.
The chase and the catch, continued from yesterday.
You see “In search of story” at the top of my blog. For me, trying to write a story is like trying to enjoy a root canal. But I listen to others in an effort to learn about story. And this is what bothers me about the machines: they yield the tidy catch, thereby rendering the messy chase obsolete and attendant stories extinct.
My Grandma Mauck and her siblings would fight to the verbal death about who was born when. With them, it was all about the chase. If they’d had Smartphones to consult, our Thanksgivings might have been quieter, but I wouldn’t have learned about their internecine wars and I’d have been deluded into thinking all my relatives were rational.
My Grandma O’Hern would celebrate summer, no matter how icky hot, with a mountain of pierogi; family and chairs would appear magically and morph into a small city around the table. If they’d had iPads, would I have heard the accounts of how Baby Edna had to walk because Grandpa’s hootch rode in the baby carriage?
How can I hope to develop any story-telling abilities at this point in my life when people are nose-dived into their gadgets, and mind only the catch?
It is arguable that if I don’t know how to tell a story by now I never will. I guess I am stuck in my own messy chase, trying to catch the skill of story-telling, dodging the thumbs of the world.
Zinnias in tatters
petals all strewn
who done the deed?
what marauding poltroon?
When I glimpsed the bright sneak
I recanted my whine
my old friends have found me!
the garden’s more mine.
Please pardon the slight haze, dear reader. I had to nab this shot through the window.
