“Garden Shed”, watercolor, janekohut-bartels, 2007
I’m not good with titles, so I don’t know why I titled this post in such a way, but it probably fits.
Since the beginning of the year, I have had some challenges. I badly sprained my right ankle, thought it was broken, probably less pain if it had been, but I’ve only been mobile for about a month. That’s a long time hobbling around. Then about three weeks ago, the bad karma continued, picked right up, and I got vertigo. For those who haven’t experienced this lovely ailment, it’s like being drunk or stoned and having nothing ‘pleasant’ about it. You stumble around, hitting walls and feeling very old. You grab for fences, furniture, etc. to steady yourself, and you get strange looks from neighbors. They think you are drunk in public. You are not. Your head is spinning and there is no balance to find. The doctor in the ER put me on Valium, and it just makes me groggy and sleep the day away. This is no life, especially in the spring.
It is spring, a beautiful, tender season with the push to plant, to cultivate, to be outside. The pollen has been horrendous, but the trees are well budded out now. The grass is growing, and I was able to put in (on my knees, crawling around in the mud) 15 tomato plants. Pretty poor for a gardener, but I did put in a few Cinderalla pumpkins, and some buttercrunch lettuce that needs to be eaten.
I put in a new rose garden…only 9 plants, but these should be spectactular. At least the photos from David Austin Roses looked so. For some reason, some worm has already attacked the greenery and I’m just looking for the right thing to attack it. I use natural products, so pesticides are out, besides the cats sit under the roses and nap.
I’ve decided I need a break from poetry websites. They are generally wonderful, but they also are a responsibility. I just don’t have the energy right now to participate. I know the friends I have made there will understand.
I am settling down with a few books I have had for years, yet never read. One is “Eighteenth Century English Literature” (1969) a college textbook, and a thick one. A long and informative introduction and some of my very favorite writers: Fielding, Swift, Richardson, Anne Finch, the (ultimately) very mad William Collins, Boswell, who, in my estimation, is better to read than Johnson. But they are all in there, and so many more. I have avoided most of them….like Pope, Locke, Gibbon (though I have his 4 volume of “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire…also have never read it).
And because I am SICK of my cooking, I am reading “French Cuisine For All” by Louisette Bertholle. She was a collaborator with Julia Childs on a number of books, and the recipes look good and tasty. Not exactly ‘modern-health-wise’, with butter and some other fats, but more interesting than my vegan fare that is just about tasteless. Of course, there are vegans who are marvelous cooks, but I have yet to meet one. And I have met my share of vegan fakers. They wear the badge of veganism but eat hamburgers behind scenes. I tried it for a couple of months, and it did change my cooking habits, but my husband,…my poor, suffering, tolerant husband….needed something better. So did the dogs who are ‘pre-wash’ in our house.
In an important way, this frees me up to post poems and ‘flashers’ (200 word stories) that I would not be able to post on poetry websites. Sex is sometimes frowned upon, or perhaps it depends on the reader, but sex and sexual activity is very much part of life as my husband keeps telling me. LOL! So, I will, and I will also post things that I have in my files that I haven’t been able to place.
See you on the other side.
Lady Nyo
Spring Orgy
The roses are having an orgy.
They haven’t the decency to wait for the dark,
But ply their lust in the soft, morning light.
Randy Graham Thomas is leering.
Madame Carriere is blushing.
Her pink silk-petal gown flutters
As she twists coyly to avoid his embrace.
By 10am the sun warms their scents and foreplay is over.
The wind at 11am entwines the two.
Pistils and stamens are seriously ‘at it’
Brushing languorously over parts
And hour ago were covered discreetly.
At high noon in the heat of the day
Pollen is floating all over the air
And even the wide-eyed cats
Sitting under tender foliage are blushing.
The garden gnome is licking his lips
While a concrete hand creeps to his crotch.
This fall there will be rose-hips aplenty.
Red nipples packed with tiny seeds,
Evidence of a spring-time lust.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2010, 2012
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