THE LONELY CAMELLIA

 

I always capture the first camellia to bloom in the back yard; however, three large bees fought me for possession rights today. Here it is December 30, and two blooms have appeared overnight, challenging the massive ginger plant growing beside  the drive of my home in New Iberia, Louisiana. The ginger (almost tree height now) managed to survive several frosts this year and was a daily sight of hope, despite the hovering coronavirus.

My deceased godfather, Markham Peacock, planted the now-towering camellia bush in 1995. It persists, despite lack of fertilizer or new soil, watering, covering to avoid freezes, any TLC. The secret ingredient must be a hovering spirit of love of beauty Markham left behind.

I helped him plant the camellia pictured above, along with two more that gave up during the first year of growth. I’ve written about the plant several times because I admire the flower’s endurance — it represents persistence and resistance, clinging to the banks of an unattractive coulee, resisting winters that lately remind me more of icy temps at our other home in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Unlike women gardeners of the 1940s and 1950s who lived here in the South, I’m not too keen on the cultivation of flowers. Still, I admire gardeners and read books about authentic plant growers of flowers such as the enduring and ubiquitous camellia. I respect their impact on their caretakers, e.g., Eudora Welty, notable author and gardener, and her mother Chestina, who had a lovely garden in Jackson, Mississippi, many decades ago. Chestina valued gardening as “a way to gain insight that could be applied to life in a broader sense. A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness…Above all, it teaches entire trust…”*

Oops! How I’ve ignored that bit of counsel! The Weltys staked their camellias and made little slipcovers to prevent them from freezing. They watered and applied fertilizers, believed that their plants had aesthetic value… And they would’ve cast me out of their paradisaical garden in a heartbeat. I wonder if Lady Clare camellias still grow under Eudora’s bedroom window of her home in Jackson, Mississippi. When I visited her home and garden a few years ago, I felt like a traitor to the caretaking of my lonely camellia.

I console myself by thinking that perhaps because I’ve written so many poems about this courageous flower, it does receive some form of nourishment via literature. Or the spirit of Markham’s love of aesthetic creations persists…

 

* One Writer’s Garden by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown.

Photograph of camellia from my backyard by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

 

 

 

 

MAINLY COLD

 

Over a half-century ago, I lived in a place unsuited to my Louisiana warm blood. Although the temps here are closer to 48 degrees above zero, I was reminded of the 48 below zero temps I endured in Maine one winter. The place: a small town called Limestone; the reason I’d been displaced there: the US Army. No, I wasn’t a GI at the time, but my former spouse had been assigned as an Army radar specialist attached to a SAC base in Limestone. The big joke was that we had endured the heat of El Paso, Texas because of some perverse military reason and were then sent to Limestone, Maine, where winters were harshest in the northeastern US. 

 

Maine was a place where native Abenaki tribes called themselves “People of the Sunrise.” The irony is that the sun was seldom seen, especially that winter in 1954. However, like the Abenaki, we reached out for the rising sun daily.

The average Maine temps in January that year I resided in Limestone dipped to about 15 degrees Farenheit and summer came late. L. L. Bean of present-day fame hadn’t become a popular outdoor outlet, so I didn’t have access to bulky sweaters or sturdy shoes, and my first walk in downtown Limestone in southern loafers resulted in a fall on ice. However, the air seemed clean, and the town boasted of the Robert Frost Memorial library.

 

Due to Scots-Irish immigrants' efforts, the potato had become a leading crop in Maine, and Aroostook County (Limestone) remains the primary producer of this crop. Potatoes were the major daily fare on our table. When we mustered out of the Army after trying to live on non-commissioned officer’s pay, we’d gained weight. The leading causes of our change to "rotundity": potatoes and Texas pinto beans!

This present state of isolation due to Covid reminds me of that winter isolation in Limestone when I spent hours reading and listening to Tchaikovsky (his 5th symphony, for some melancholy reason), and trying to escape a neighbor who wanted to play Canasta from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. while chain-smoking Herbert Tareyton cigarettes.

We were discharged in May, so I never saw the Annual Crown of Maine Balloon Festival that occurs in Caribou, a few miles away from Limestone. Nor did I get to visit the Acadian Historic Village near Van Buren although most people who live in and around Van Buren are of French Canadian descent, and I would’ve been at home among these Acadians.

While visiting the Frost Memorial Library, I discovered the writings of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) who spent most of her life in South Berwick, Maine and whose writing featured the speech and character of ordinary Mainers. I’ve read and re-read The Country of the Pointed Firs, perhaps because a teacher of English Literature once told me my writing style reminded her of Jewett’s writing. I’d have preferred a comparison to Maine born Edna St. Vincent Millay who became famous for “Renascence,” but Jewett’s A Country Doctor is a notable classic, and I still appreciate the comparison.

Snow fell constantly that winter and reached the height of telephone poles, but French fries and pinto beans…and, oh, occasionally a bowl of blueberries…sustained us. And bravo the earmuff, invented by Chester Greenwood, a fifteen year old boy who saved us from frostbite.

 

Image on cover by Paul E. Marquart, my brother.

 

 

POUF OR POOH, EITHER WILL DO

This problem occurred in the early morning when I awakened. Should a blogger write about a “pouf” or a stuffed bear that has survived the tale of Winnie the Pooh?

The pouf is a new addition to our living room in New Iberia, Louisiana. It’s a round ottoman that looks like a blue sea urchin poised to consume tired feet after they have been pacing all day indoors while the corona virus rages out there in the threatening yonder. This pouf could be a puffy hairstyle or a dress gathered into a puff, or a headdress, but in the case of this household, it’s just an ottoman.

Now, the stuffed bear in question bears the name of Jimmy Bear, so named for my deceased Uncle Jimmy, and he looks as though he were wounded in the War of 1940, several limbs still heavily bandaged from a battle between me and my older brother Paul. Years ago, Paul had written a one-page story about this bear, then claimed the stuffed animal as his own. To no avail. I won that battle by right of possession. The bear was mine, and it sits on a blue stool in my bedroom. It’s a reminder of my Uncle Jimmy and of a happy childhood that included a library of children’s books, including Winnie the Pooh my mother purchased during WWII when goods were rationed. 

The bear’s subject was inspired by discovering a photo of me at age four sitting beside Uncle Jimmy on the lawn of my grandmother Marquart’s home in Lake Arthur, Louisiana, the infamous bear lying in front of us. Two days ago, I sent the photo to my first cousin Mina Raymond in Baton Rouge, then ordered a copy of Winnie the Pooh. Further inspiration came from reading aloud verses from Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne, my feet propped on the pouf.

Pouf and Pooh seemed to belong with each other.

“Don’t you ever think about commonplace things?” my friend Vickie asked.

“Well, I learned from reading about the Laurel People of the Cherokee Little People that we shouldn’t take the world too seriously, and we must always have joy and share joy with others,” I answered.

“You could give more simple replies,” she said, feigning impatience.

“Laurel people are humorous. It’s better than being Rock People who practice getting even because one’s space has been invaded.”

“You think too much.”

Perhaps she’s right. However, as I meditate on Pouf and Pooh, or even Laurel People, I conclude that pondering can be a healthy activity. So, I think I’ll put my feet up on the pouf and read about Pooh Bear holding a balloon and ascending into a blue sky instead of succumbing to thoughts about the black cloud of the virus hovering out yonder.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

 

WHEELS

 

“Plasma Yellow Pearl?”

 

Yep, that’s the color — the color of the new 2021 Subaru Crosstrek parked under our carport. And, believe me, the strange hue has incited more comment than I care to hear. I think the color is either olive or avocado, but I’ve never claimed to be a conventional type person who would follow my grandfather’s color preferences.

Grandfather Paul Greenlaw, who sold Ford autos from 1908 (Model T’s) until the early 1940s would have disowned me if he’d seen this audacious car in our drive. A conservative man, Paul Greenlaw, sold mostly black and a few blue autos, but plasma yellow pearl?! He should have lived until the 1950s when Ford offered buyers an olive-colored (not plasma yellow) Mustang during the “pony car” craze when Cobras, Mustangs, and Thunderbirds flooded the market.

For some inexplicable reason, the Plasma Pearl Yellow Subaru purchase inspired me to order back issues of the Ford Times, a now-defunct magazine published from 1908 until 1919 when publication halted, then resumed in 1943 until 1993.

A small magazine 4” x 6” and later 5”x7," I discovered copies of this treasure on Grandfather Paul’s desk on the sleeping porch of his Victorian house in Franklinton, Louisiana. I was fascinated by the paintings (lots of watercolors), travel destinations, articles about restaurants, festival listings and other feature stories, and illustrations of the latest lines of Ford automobiles that I coveted at the time Grandfather owned this automobile franchise. In the attic of his home, I also surreptitiously played thick recordings in which a high pitched voice belted out “Henry’s Made A Lady Out of Lizzie.”

The sight of all the Fords featured in Ford Times created feelings of nostalgia for the old Ford coupes in the showroom of Motor Sales and Service on the main thoroughfare of Franklinton, Louisiana, as well as feelings of being a traitor to Grandfather Paul’s favored line of automobiles…especially since the Subaru is such a “loud” color. However, at the age of approaching 86, I’m sorta’ glad to present evidence that I still have some reputation for being just a little outrageous.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan 

 

 

PANSIES

Pansies 211 Celeste Dr.

After they took down the wrought iron fence that surrounded the yard on 10th Avenue, the yard looked bare. They also removed the cattle guard on the drive because new town laws prohibited cows from grazing on residential lots… except for the milk cow grazing on an empty lot that I avoided when I walked up the street to visit my Aunt Kathryn. The barrenness of the front yard and drive troubled my Grandmother Nell. So she decided to put in pansies in front of the tall steps leading to the front porch. She didn’t turn the ground herself, but Ernest, the yardman, dug a large round bed that covered half the front yard, and she put in pansies using a trowel with a splintered handle and adding a small amount of Vigoro and water.

“Frost won’t kill them,” she said to my aunt. “They can weather as low as 25 degrees. I’ll put in purple ones for sure. They’re symbols of love. My granddaughter will like them.” I was only three years old when she began her landscaping project, but  to her I seemed old enough to appreciate the beauty of flowers. I also knew what love was because she told me often how much she loved me.

Era Leader Clipping

She sent brief messages to the society column of the Era Leader, the town of Franklinton's newspaper of note: “Little Miss Diane Marquart of Baton Rouge is spending the week with her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. P.E Greenlaw.” She felt that the message distinguished our family living in a provincial southeastern Louisiana town of 1,000 or more inhabitants. After all, little Miss was the granddaughter of a Greenlaw, a descendant of the Scots clan among the Humes, although I’m sure no one in that small redneck town knew or cared about the lineage of the Greenlaws. Or about my frequent visits to that community.

However, Grandmother Nell clipped and pasted these society mentions in a scrapbook that is now stored in a sideboard of my living room in New Iberia, Louisiana. I was three when she showed me the circular bed of purple pansies. “Puppy dog noses,” I promptly said, and she clapped her hands as if I’d vocalized the most precocious statement of any three-year old in the world.

Those colorful symbols of her affection became my favorite flower — and remain my favorite flower, planted every fall, sometimes in the spring, by friends who know this story about the language of love that flowers impart.

 

Photography by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

FROM MY WINDOW OVERLOOKING THE BACKYARD

 

Don’t know whether a bird in hand is worth two in the bird bath or not, but we don’t have any problems with our stone bath in the backyard inviting in even one feathered friend because it’s always empty — on purpose. I mean, most Louisiana bird baths should be re-composed as planters, backyard decor, or something other than hold a place where immodest birds flock to bathe naked daily. In reality, if water is left in these stone bowls, they draw in Louisiana mosquitoes the size of horseflies, and mosquitoes draw in rats and snakes. Right?

Half the time, the bowl of our bird bath in the New Iberia back yard lies upended on the ground, but a hurricane isn’t the cause of its upending. Judging from the population of raccoons, an armadillo, marauding dogs and cats around us, I think that the bath is a target for some animal game called “tip the tub.” Most of the time, the bowl lies on the ground looking as if it’s anticipating becoming a planter we should fill with vegetation that will survive backyard shade.

Our smaller bird bath in the yard at Sewanee, Tennessee, isn’t often visited unless it’s filled with purified water, and I think the birds have taken on some of the “entitled” aspects of the clergy/scholars who live in that rarefied Sewanee atmosphere. They turn up their beaks at ordinary rainwater. Most of the time, in both locales, New Iberia and Sewanee, we don’t fill the bowls of the baths because squirrels come calling if they see the water. We’ve caught Squirrel Nutkin swishing his tail in the Sewanee bath several times — and we won’t comment on pesky squirrels that inhabit both Louisiana and Tennessee yards... but I’ve been known to threaten to order a b-b rifle similar to the one I gave my brother Harold on his 7th birthday and …

Well, hummingbirds don’t drink water, and I’m partial to that species of bird life, so I’m thinking of planting coral bells, columbine, or coreopsis in the upturned mouth of the empty bird bath at planting time. The red blooms will look great against the background of the new cedar fence at which the hounds next door bark despite the wall’s impassive, uninviting stance.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

FENCES

In “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost concludes a short poem with the often-quoted line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Today, I thought of Frost’s poem as I looked out at our new cedar fence that divides our yard and the backyard of a new neighbor who lives on one side of our home in New Iberia, Louisiana. On the opposite side of our yard, I look out at a sagging, gray-colored, older fence, one that leans toward our drive, and which I prefer because it reminds me of the neighbor who planted satsuma trees on his side of the fence and from which we have always plucked overhanging fruit.

This good neighbor died of pancreatic cancer several decades ago. He was an amiable man who came over, at no one’s request, and raked our entire front yard following a major Louisiana hurricane. He verged on mute because he performed the task quietly, then returned to his side of the fence as if he had tended to the grooming of his own yard. I never knew anything about this neighbor’s lineage, but when satsumas form and hang over his old fence, in my mind I see a face that looks almost Native American.

He had hair the color of the ravens that nest in a tree beside his former home, a sallow complexion (perhaps caused by his disease) but he was a handsome, lonely looking fellow (although he had a wife and three young children). When I remember this man who spontaneously performed small tasks in my yard, I think of Cherokee people I had seen near Silva, North Carolina, persons whose appearance resembled the quiet neighbor, who lived and continue to live  in harmony with nature, have kind hearts, and are known as wonder workers.


 

 

Our new cedar fence on the opposite side of our home divides us from a dog yard surrounded by a flimsy wire fence that two hounds push down if they’re roaming around outside and from which they could leap over and into our yard at one time but can no longer scale because of our newly-built tall cedar one. The cedar fence is handsome and was expensive to erect, but it isn’t a wall that inspires sentiment like the old sagging fence on the other side of our drive— one that brings up cogent memories within me — those of the kind-hearted neighbor who embodied Frost’s line, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

 

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

LIGHT IN A GLASS ROOM

Glass porch in the morning

The glass porch in our Louisiana home is my favorite room. True, the glass is smudged with bayou country grime from lack of care during the months we are away. Or perhaps the glass is cloudy because the porch is a place friends have visited to tell some dark stories about broken relationships, illnesses, quarrels — the glass porch has often housed usual and unusual tales of human tragedies.

However, this four-season indoor/outdoor room also holds the hopes for new perspective…it is a living room with a better view. Sometimes I go there to write, but the room doesn’t invite labor or action. I frequently fall asleep sitting in a comfortable wicker chair while the sunlight beams through on my winter-pale face.

The room also houses a few of the glass pieces created by Karen Bourque, a talented Church Point, Louisiana artist, and adds to the idea of inspiring joy in this life, albeit smudged with our tragic stories.

All homes should have such a room, perhaps now more than ever in this time of Covid. I went into the glass sanctuary this morning to share in the grief of my dear friend, Kathy, who lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, and who just lost her sister, Mary Kay, to the dread Covid disease.

Wicker chair on glass porch

The glass porch is also a place of prayer. Another smudge has appeared on the glass, and another prayer goes up for Kathy’s release from suffering. The sun fills Karen’s pieces with light in this small blessed space, and I ponder the idea of glassing in our little front porch at Sewanee. However, the porch faces dark woods and only collects shadows…and spiders.

Vickie Sullivan’s photographs capture the essence of this space on a cold winter morning, and I wish that I could say, “Come and sit awhile,” but this open-to-sunlight room doesn’t tolerate masked visitors!

 

 

RIDGES IN GLASS

Cheniere glass art by Karen Bourque

I have the good fortune of owning fourteen glass pieces created by Karen Bourque, the masterful glass artist of Church Point, Louisiana. Many of these pieces have been photographed for the covers of my books of poetry and now hang on the glass porch of our Celeste residence here in New Iberia, Louisiana, and in the windows of our home on Fairbanks Circle in Sewanee, Tennessee.

 

Karen’s latest glass piece is her interpretation of a Louisiana Cheniere, or ridge, and will be featured in the spring edition of Pinyon Review along with several of my poems. The featured poems derive from Ridges, a book of my poetry that Pinyon Publishing will publish this summer.

 

Karen’s latest piece is a beautiful work of stained glass, Apache Tear, and Kyamite that she created this year. It now hangs on the glass porch of my home here in New Iberia, Louisiana. As I look at the purple sky overhanging a cheniere, I’m lifted out of the Covid doldrums and remember a brighter day's visit I made to Cheniere au Tigre many years ago when three female companions and I traveled by boat to this site.

 

Diane on way to Cheniere au Tigre

Karen’s renderings always evoke strong emotional responses in me. A unique non-traditional glass artist, she creates most of her work in a studio beside the Bourque home that she shares with the former poet laureate and humanist, Darrell Bourque. Before the dreaded Covid caused me and my friends to sequester ourselves, I often visited there.

Karen’s work is featured in the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, in a window depicting the Holy Spirit at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church near Opelousas Louisiana, at the Louisiana Book Festival, in an issue of Pinyon Review, and many other venues and homes.

As the maxim reads, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” and this photo of Karen Bourque’s latest rendering affirms that critique. Briefly said, her work is a spiritual experience. 

 

 

PRESENCE

 

Sister Mary Zita's cap

Here it is—a rose-colored cap with red and white stars on it—the last thing Sister Elizabeth slipped into a bag of snacks for us when we left Sewanee a few weeks ago. It was an object that brought forth in me a “gusher” of tears. The cap belonged to Sister Mary Zita, one of the Anglican Sisters at St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee who sat in her wheelchair before me at weekly Services. She died this year while I was in New Iberia, Louisiana.

Sister Mary Zita is memorialized in many of my books of poetry, and while I wrote about her gardening and flower arranging talents, a paramount thought surfaced when I pulled out the rose-colored cap that was of something called “presence.” Although this small Filipino Sister could read the liturgies in the Book of Common Prayer and was often an echo after each line we recited, she never conversed with me or others in chapel (except with Sister Elizabeth}. She just embodied “presence.”

When I was enrolled in Clinical Pastoral Education preceding my ordination as a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, I learned a lot about presence, the act of being at a bedside without speaking or reciting prayers—just standing alongside a suffering person in inviolate silence, perhaps inwardly praying or just being there in the co-inherence of suffering. Fully Present.

My good friend, Janet Fault-Gonzales wrote a powerful essay about Presence in her book entitled Road Home that I feel is one of the best I’ve read on the subject. It involves a eulogy written at the death of her beloved Grandmother Mae:

“In trying to prepare myself to give her up, I realized in the months prior to her death that my grandmother was the still point for me—the center of peace and stability inside of a world that has proven to be much harder than I anticipated. When everything else I had known seemed chaotic and changing, Mae had been the same. She had been there. That’s all she had to be. She didn’t have to be anything else … She’s the greatest loss I have had. Today, my heart aches for someone with whom I talked about pinks, bachelor buttons, glads, zinnias, and roses—grown from seeds supplied by the Standard Coffee salesman. It isn’t what Mae said or what she accomplished that affected and still affects all of us (family)—it’s simply that she was there.

“Once I heard a minister deliver a sermon about ‘being there.’ He said that our attendance at church makes a difference, not only in our lives, but also in the lives of others. I thought the sermon was about role modeling and influencing others by our attendance. But what I learned from Mae isn’t about role modeling, intentionally setting an example. It’s simply about being—having presence—contributing to others because you exist, hold a place for all you love. Mae remained in Eufaula as the same, the comfortable, the familiar that my relatives still hold dear—that place her sisters and brothers couldn’t get back to but they’re glad to have had—the place where it hurts most to lose: her presence. It’s a powerful thing to be who you are …”

I’ve read and re-read Janet’s essays many times, but the memory of that particular essay always comes up when I think about the word “presence.” I chided Sister Elizabeth for causing me to cry when she passed on Mary Zita’s cap to me, a soft cushion of stars hidden among snacks for the journey back to New Iberia. However it is now a “presence” in my bedroom that reminds me of a “center of peace, stability inside a world that has proven to be much harder than I anticipated …”

Thanks for the cap, Sister Elizabeth.