The Kudzu Files

Try to restart blog
Like tree falling in forest
No one there to hear.

There’s some music playing at the fringe of my conscious today. It never stays long enough for me to identify it; in fact, more than the music itself, I’m remembering the sense of the music. I can identify the time - early 1970s. But nothing more than that. It’s like [...]

While I was working in the yard today, I noticed a small commotion by my workshop. A closer look revealed a family of Carolina wrens getting ready for their first flight; indeed, while I was watching the first two chicks made short hops onto the fence:

And all the while, the mother (or maybe father) [...]

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we [...]

I have a Fairy rose at the front corner of my rose bed. It’s been very successful there for several year, growing and sprawling all across the front. For soem reason, however, this spring part of it starting showing signs of stress, and eventually died. The part that died was the original [...]

President Obama has announced his new auto fuel economy initiatives, which would raise CAFE at the cost of about $1300 per car. I’m sure Rush and Glenn Beck and others will have a field day with this - I’m sure the word “tax” will figure prominently in their diatribes. But I’ve never understood [...]

I had never heard of Bill Holm until I ran across this poem the other day. It’s entitled “August in Waterton, Alberta”::
Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off
the aspen tree a month too soon.
No use wind. All you succeed
in doing is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.
I really like this [...]

I was having lunch today in a fast-food restaurant, with my head, as usual, in a book. I happened to look up in time to see a little man come into the place. I noticed him because he was walking in a sort of half-crouch. Not the bent-over walk of an old man, [...]

I dropped by my mother’s house this evening to take a picture of something for her, and as I was preparing to leave, I looked out her window just in time to see this hummingbird at her feeder. I didn’t have time to do anything more than turn and shoot, basically.

The yarrow (achillea millefolium) is blooming in several places in my cottage garden. It’s pretty dominating right now; daylilies are beginning to bloom, and the stokesia is not far behind. But right now it’s yarrow that’s the star of the flowerbeds.

I’ve added some annuals, mostly in pots, which I’ve been using more [...]