156. Flowers

I like flowers. Not floral prints, but real flowers. I spend a great deal of time gardening and I love it. Much of the joy of gardening comes from the flowers. I spend hours pruning rose bushes, fertilizing them and cutting them to bring inside. I plant old wheelbarrows and whiskey barrels full of alyssum, lobelia, pansies and petunias. My vegetable garden is interspersed with sunflowers that attract honey bees and then go to seed and attract birds. Those same flower seeds fall to the ground and become sunflowers themselves the next year. I don’t ever have to replant sunflowers. The same is often true of pansies and alyssum. In fact, some years, in this land of winter, the pansies don’t die at all but continue to slowly bloom if they are in a sheltered place.

Other flowers that I enjoy growing are tulips, daffodils and crocus. The spring is resplendent when those flowers announce the end of winter. Other flowers that require a little less tinkering that I enjoy are lilies and lavender. If you want to lose every care in the world, sit amongst the lavender plants—but be careful because they will be full of bees. The scent of lavender transports you to another world where there are no worries (but, like I said, don’t be deceived or you will get stung) and any of the troubles that you harbor will vanish like the ripples of raindrops on the surface of a still lake.

And then there are peonies and iris. Peonies—I like the blood red ones—grace the garden for only a few days at the end of May around here. Their leafy green shrubbery lasts all summer long but their flowers herald the beginning of that glorious season and disappear with the end of spring. And the iris fall quickly behind the peonies lasting but a little longer and leaving their flat leaved verdancy well into winter. Vincent Van Gogh was also a lover of his and painted many still lifes with iris as the central figure.

Another flower that fades in mid to late spring is the lilac. Those flowers are so popular around here that Spokane has taken the moniker of Lilac City. Of course, I love to hike and observe the many wild flowers. A shrub that grows almost everywhere in Idaho and has given itself to our state as the state flower is the syringa. This is another flowering shrub that transports you to another world with its beautiful fragrance. When syringa fades, ocean spray graces the mountain sides around here. It doesn’t have the heady scent of syringa but it still has the ability to carry you downstream from the Idaho mountains to the Pacific coast in a heartbeat.

While the fireweed is fading its purple pink into the coming onslaught of snow and the golden rod has heralded the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of the fall, the flowers are beginning to fade away and their fruits are ready for harvesting. Huckleberry, elderberry, strawberry and serviceberry are all ripe or finished. Apples are ripening and ready for harvest. Soon we’ll be mulling cider and baking apple pies. But there will still be flowers. I might have to get some dried straw flowers or some of my roses but the variety, while slightly diminished, doesn’t go away. And the seasonal heralds of nature’s bounty and beauty are always just a melted snowflake away. I think what makes me happiest about flowers is their effervescence that sparkles throughout the year. They have sustained me through this year of disease and they will continue to do so. I am, indeed, grateful for flowers.

 

155. Morning Coffee

 I have never been an early riser, though as I age I tend to do fine with a little less sleep so I am always up by seven, or at least awake. If I go to bed earlier than midnight I’ll wake up between five and six. I like to be slow and contemplative in the morning, designing my day but not rushing the plans. I gauge that planning by cups of coffee. I always buy my own beans and grind them. My favorite roast is a medium dark and I’m very fond of Starbucks House Blend, but I buy the Costco variety because it’s cheaper and basically the same product.

I don’t just have a single cup of coffee, I drink three every morning. I like it black and fairly strongly brewed—none of this weak western pioneer crap that is brewed so frugally you would think it was dishwater. I savor each cup and on the rare occasion I will add a little half and half. While the coffee is brewing I shave and get dressed. While I am savoring the first cup I read some verses from the Bible, usually in German, and write in my journal. Generally, the worst writing I ever do is with my morning coffee because I find little inspiration at that time of day when my mind is still pondering the day as a whole. It is my least creative point in the day. Coffee does little for me in the creative realm—in fact, I don’t typically feel any effect from coffee beyond the pleasant taste and the comfort of a morning routine.

When I’ve made it to the second cup I begin taking my vitamins. Typically, I no longer eat breakfast because I’ve learned that intermittent fasting reduces my cholesterol. Black coffee helps keep me from being too hungry—and I’m used to the morning fast. I usually finish that second cup somewhere in the pages of my journal writing and make it onto my third cup just as I begin to be more physically active.

I’m well aware that coffee is the national drink of Americans, though not every American may be so enamored of it as I am. You find it everywhere in this land. There are coffee stands of every variety in every little burg here in the Northwest, even if they are too small to have a franchise like Starbucks. While we have definitely been influenced by the Italian espresso, we staked our claim to coffee during the Revolutionary War when colonists threw the tea into Boston Harbor as a protest to the high British taxes. Apparently, we could get coffee at a much lower taxation rate from our South American brethren. So coffee represents much more than the drink we have with our donuts or our bacon and eggs. It is our national drink of independence.

So this morning as I sit here writing and drinking my favorite cup of joe, I am reminded not just of my day ahead, or how I just can’t seem to get a decent image in my head to make a poem, but of who I am as a person, as an American. With a few cups of coffee in the morning my joints get loosened up, the day gets planned, and maybe a little creativity creeps its way into my brain with the routine of those morning rituals that have become a part of who I am. I am an independent American with a strong connection to my ancestry that I taste and feel with every drop of coffee I drink. I am thankful for that and I am thankful for my morning coffee.

154. Friendships

A few days ago, a former student asked me what it is that motivates me. I told him that I think people motivate me. More often that not, I feel like a salmon swimming upstream against the flow of public opinion, yet I still feel motivated by people (even when I’m going against them). And I am one to cultivate friendships. Of course, my closest friends are people who I share commonalities with, so that would be teachers, coaches, and family. But because I am now a teacher recently retired, I have always been interested in people and getting to know them where they are. Friendship is very important to me as a person and as an American. I have made friends all over the world and I work to stay in touch with those people to maintain our friendship.

What I love about my friendships is that I know people from so many different backgrounds and I have learned that we are all more similar than different. We all sleep and eat and breathe and work to maintain those functions. We all love our families and work to protect them from harm. I believe that when we look to those similarities and foster friendships based upon those things we will create fewer barriers between one another and we will help each other to stay safe. We can work to create good food, peaceful rest, and clean air for one another. Friends share things and throw aside their greed realizing that sharing makes things more pleasant and easier to get along with one another.

My best friends are my fellow teachers and my family because we share so many common interests that when we have our own eccentricities we can share those with others without feeling shame. Most friends share so many common interests that the few deviations they have from those interests lead to tolerance. So it is so important to establish friendships so that we can, in fact, develop tolerance.

Of course friends aren’t just people who tolerate one another, they love each other. My friends are people to whom I can go for help, for a laugh or for a beer. I have climbed mountains with my best friends, ran marathons with them, sat to dinner with them, prepared lesson plans with them. My best friends are those people who I call to go on trips with, to help me make a wheel chair ramp to make my doorway handicap accessible. My best friends motivate me to be a better person, someone who understands them and someone who understands me. This is true of all friends and their friendship. Friends are people who strive to help one another, who enjoy each other’s company, who share each other’s joys and sorrows and make even life’s unbearable moments bearable because they don’t leave you alone.

I believe the best people are the people who have lots of friends. I am motivated by people and making life better for all of us, but I am motivated primarily by my friends. I have several years left in me and I plan on spending those years cultivating the friendships I have and developing new friendships so that I don’t end up leaving this world lonely or alone but that I leave it a better place than when I found it. There is no doubt that is an impossible task if I am intolerant and lonely, but with friends it is more than just a possibility, it is a reality. I am so thankful for all of my friendships. My American dream is to be a friend.

 

153. Backyard Sanctuary

The world has always been a crazy, frightening place with famine, disease, and greed, but our country has had a slightly more charmed existence between the second world war and now. Still, individual families and every American at one point or another suffers from something whether it be physical or social-emotional. The current pandemic has added unbelievable stress to us as Americans and as the human race. If we are wise we learn how to create our own spaces, our own sanctuaries, where we can go to enjoy reprieve from some of those problems. I have piddled around for years making my own little backyard sanctuary.

I am by no means a landscape architect, but I have dabbled in gardening all of my life. I have also experimented with a little mechanicing and carpentry, two other fields far away from my own areas of expertise, when it comes to my own yard. Currently I am even hiring a construction company to build us a garage and patio. When it’s not raining (as it is this morning) I love to sit on the porch in the morning sunshine and drink my coffee. Hummingbirds will come to the flowers I have planted, as will hummingbird moths, dragon flies, butterflies, and honeybees (and the unmentionable mosquitos and wasps!). I have even had bear and moose in my lawn right here in town (though I try not to invite them). It is a space where I can contemplate nature and almost instantly forget the problems I am dealing with. It is a place that can help me forget or it can bolster my creativity or the courage I need to face the problems I am encountering (and I do believe creativity and courage are often synonymous). It is my sanctuary.

All of my favorite artists from Van Gogh, Gustav Caillebotte, Georgia O’Keefe, and Monet seemed to have similar sanctuaries on one scale or another and you can still reflect on their sanctuaries when you view their paintings of flowers, water lilies, and gardens. Mine will appear on Instagram and Twitter in photographs, or in my poetry. I often think my back yard is not anywhere as grandiose as those works of art, then when I visit their spaces I realize that the scope comes across as grand in their work because it was grand in their minds and grand in their renown, not so much in size, but in sanctuary. Sanctuary is what my back yard is.

From a distance the sunflowers look to overwhelm the corn, tomatoes, and squash, yet up close I still have all my vegetables but there are finches eating the sunflower seeds and honeybees in the flower centers yellow with pollen. I too get lost in iris and peonies and out of my roses come photographs and poetry and fresh air. Even now, as my backyard is a construction zone for a garage and patio, the flowers are blooming and there is zucchini and winter squash ripening. I will pick tomatoes and basil this afternoon and bask in the sunshine with a drink, all the while forgetting about my impending retirement and the mixed emotions that brings. I’ll just be able to sit and breathe. The only reason I’m not out there now is because of the morning autumnal chill that reminds me it is now September.

There are many places in America that I love to go to and enjoy the splendors of nature and I’m thankful for them all, but some days I just have to be at home. At home there are thousands of little things that need to be done always, but if I just step outside and sit in a lawn chair, and look at the flowers and breathe, they all melt away for just long enough to bolster me so that the thousands of things I need to do become a little less important and much less burdensome. No matter who you are or where you are such a backyard sanctuary is possible, so find it, breathe and give thanks in your own space.

 

152. Snoqualmie Falls

 

As things ramp up again with the beginning of school there’s a part of me that feels a little regret that this summer went by without any of the big trips I usually take, without any camping trips, without any big hikes. But I did replace a great deal of that with reading, reminiscing, experimenting with recipes, and enjoying just what I have here. Still, the end of summer always leaves me, as a teacher with a few pangs of regret. This summer is no different, except, perhaps, the additional stress of starting a new school year with entirely new forms of teaching and new safety protocols, some of which leave me doubting how much actual safety there is and how much artifice is in the mix. So, after taking a moment to get myself centered and calm, I realized I needed to cash in on my retirement. All that brings a mix of emotions, so to stay centered and calm I usually look to water.

 So, while I continue to express my gratitude for things about America that I love, I want to reminisce about a beautiful waterfall. More often that not, my family travels to Seattle a few times a year for some medical reason. Lately it has simply been appointments, nothing traumatic. But we started taking time to appreciate things about the Seattle area to dissociate some of the trauma that we have also associated with the area. One place we knew about, but never went to, was a place called Snoqualmie Falls. I guess I thought it was probably some tourist trap just off the freeway that I wasn’t so certain I wanted to get stuck in (and I’m sure there are times when it is). But, like all the Northwest, there is intense beauty formed of the mountains and the rain that can’t be overlooked even near the intensely populated area of Seattle.

 If you go there on a weekday you won’t see a big crowd of people. You can eat at the restaurant that sits at the top of the falls and look over it. You’re going to see houses lining the banks of the river below, it seems isolated from the view almost as if you were in a hotel in a national park. And, yes, the restaurant is part of the hotel called Snoqualmie Falls Lodge. It’s easy to get to, just a short drive from interstate 90 less than an hour east of Seattle before you climb Snoqualmie Pass. It’s beautiful to walk along the terraced viewpoints at the top of the falls. While you’ll see the mist of the crashing waters with its accompanying rainbows—assuming you’ve come on a sunny day—you are far enough removed so you won’t need to worry about getting wet from the mist. It is still western Washington, so quite possibly you will be there on a day when mist is falling from the sky and in that case, you will need to wear some form of rain gear.

 I’ve said this before in other entries but there is great calm to see such turbulence of water and land that is perfectly outside of your individual realm of control. It could seem quite violent but the natural aspect of it creates intense beauty that I find mesmerizing and soothing. I find that sense of comfort in a crashing waterfall of an immense river or just a small stream. As I sit here contemplating the intensity of retirement, I find myself bolstered against uncertainties. Snoqualmie Falls is an American landmark that brings me solace during times of trouble and I’m thankful for it.