FOR ANNE SAYWELL, A BIT OF BIRD’S-EYE SPEEDWELL OR VERONICA PERSICA)

Blue-eyed Veronica

Today is a balmy February day, much like spring (72 degrees), and the sudden birth of flowers assures me that we’re going to enjoy the last weeks of our Louisiana sojourn. One of the small, winsome plants that have appeared near our home is thriving in a pasture for horses across Darby Lane here in New Iberia, Louisiana. 

“It’s probably too small to mention because it isn’t dramatic enough,” my botanist friend Vickie Sullivan declared. But I like this tiny blue flower called Veronica persica (Bird’s-eye Speedwell) because it isn’t a “show-off” plant. Linnaeus named the plant after St. Veronica, who appears in early Christian legends as pitying Christ on the way to Calvary and wipes his face with her handkerchief, which then receives a miraculous true image of his features.

Veronica persica has been naturalized in the US from Eurasian sources, and it seems to like horses because it grows almost under horse’s hooves near the golf club on Darby Lane. The sight of it causes me to lighten up a bit today. Yesterday, my dear British friend, Anne Saywell, passed into the “Also World” (as Sister Elizabeth of Convent of St. Mary calls the hereafter), and I was sad most of the day. 

I recently wrote a blog and published a photo of Anne Saywell that showed her in a beautiful sweater she knitted. Anne was someone I befriended in 1974 while living in Ahwaz, Iran, and we kept in touch for almost fifty years. I can’t say I “kept up with” because Anne and her friend, Maureen Allchin seemed to always be aboard cruise ships. They spent several months doing an “around the world” tour during the last decade of Anne’s life. A trip to Bulkington, Wiltshire in England was on my bucket list when Anne suddenly developed stomach pain, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died 24 days after diagnosis.

I’m publishing Vickie Sullivan’s photograph of the beautiful tiny flower mentioned above as a small tribute to Anne Saywell, an outstanding executive in the administration of Girl Guides in England, a talented craftswoman and gardener who loved fun and games and blessed her friends with enchanting wit. She also possessed a gracious plenty of loyalty to anyone she befriended during her long life. I hope she has a good view of the Veronica persica from her new perch in the “Also World.”

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

FOOTNOTE TO GINGER

Ginger Alive and Dreamy

A large response from readers of the Ginger blog caused me to give it better press than the photo of dead plant specimens in my yard that I published last week. This morning when I viewed a photograph of it alive and well that appears in An Ordinary Day, a book of my poetry, my melancholy mood lightened considerably.

Botanist Vickie Sullivan’s photograph of the plant when it was green and glowing gave me hope for the Ginger patches scattered about our yard. I know that New Iberia, Louisiana has a plethora of dead Ginger vegetation, and our yard tender tells me that we’re on a long list of customers clamoring for the removal of dead plants. So I look at the photograph Vickie took when our plants were at their best and wait for the drooping tan leaves to be cleared.

I know that after the dead leaves are removed, and by the time we return to New Iberia in the Fall, our Ginger patch will have resurrected and will look like the photo of this plant that makes New Iberia landscapes look luxurious and paradisaical. 

 

Photograph & Treatment by Victoria Sullivan  

 

 

EVERYTHING WILL COME UP GINGER COME SPRING

Dead Ginger

There's nothing as forlorn-looking as dead ginger trees — straggly brown stalks that died during the last Louisiana freeze a few weeks ago. This plant usually grows well in our side and backyards and along our overgrown coulee. During warm seasons, the ginger trees give lush beauty to south Louisiana landscapes, but they die ugly deaths from bad chills.

One of our prolific ginger trees grows a few feet away from the "eternal camellia" Godfather Markham planted and is tall enough to view from my perch on the glass porch. When they don't have to endure harsh winters, ginger trees bear lovely purple blooms, and I've extolled their beauty in several previous blogs. However, today I couldn't resist writing a public lament for "Ginger's" death by ice and give it a proper funeral eulogy.

Ginger trees, originally grown in Southeast Asia, emit a spicy herbal scent that lingers even beyond death. I could walk by the ugly stalks right now and revel in their fragrance. Ginger is often used in aromatherapy and medicinally to treat migraines, nausea, arthritis, digestive upsets, and a plethora of other ills. I'm someone who suffers from chronic digestive upsets, so a box of ginger tea is always on the shelf in our kitchen cabinet. In addition to digestive disorders, ginger lowers blood sugar and helps prevent common colds. I'm always asking our resident botanist, Dr. Vickie Sullivan, about plants' usefulness, and she affirms all the treatments I mentioned.

We named the apartment attached to our carport "The Ginger House," despite several Louisiana winters that kill off these plants. However, our ginger trees resurrect between seasons. The rhizome stays alive, Dr. Sullivan says. When spring appears, the rhizomes of ginger trees shoot up sprouts that can become 8-foot tall trees, she adds.

As we usually migrate to Tennessee in mid-March, I have faith that the ginger tree's resurrection will always take place sometime between seasons. By the time we return, this lovely Louisiana plant will be fully restored and willing to enhance my view from the wicker chair on our glass porch. Everything will come up ginger!

 
Photograph by V. Sullivan

BACK TO BIG SUR

No, I'm not riding around on the central coast of California. I'm rooted in place in frozen south Louisiana. Somehow, thoughts about this scenic stretch of California I visited many summers made me feel warmer in the 28 to 34-degree weather we're experiencing this week (and the same slated for next week). My computer screen saver has held a graphic of Big Sur for several years, and Sunday I indulged in a "soap" movie entitled "The Sandpiper" to get a good look at the seaside cliffs and the Pacific Ocean views. Although some viewers would've been drawn to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor romancing in this setting, I just wanted to view the region's pristine scenery again.


I’ve had peak experiences while traveling to and staying in a state park at Big Sur. It's a fantastic stretch of undeveloped countryside unmarred by billboards and commercial activity. A trip along the Pacific Ocean through this rugged region is a spiritual experience, and during some of my visits, I wrote a ream of poems while riding along the narrow two-lane highway. Views from cliffs are remarkable, but I've read that travel on the highway has been hampered by a total of 55 landslides. However, I never felt unsafe, even in a large RV with seven people aboard.


For nineteen years, Henry Miller, who lived at Big Sur, described the area as "the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look." He paid tribute to Big Sur in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, and one summer we visited the Henry Miller Library and bookstore to get our copy of this classic. I've seen several documentaries featuring Jack Kerouac and his gang encamped in the area, and I understand Big Sur is still a major attraction for the literary-minded.

On one of our stays at Big Sur, we turned into the drive leading to the Esalen Institute, where the Human Potential Movement developed during the 1960s, but guardians of this New Age Movement immediately surrounded us. We withdrew and planned a trip to Carmel, where my granddaughter and I visited the poet Robinson Jeffers' home. When the guide asked for a volunteer to read one of Jeffers' poems, I stepped out of the circle of tourists to perform for my granddaughter. The guide remarked, "You read like a poet," and Kimberly snickered.


During that trip, I had an envee to visit the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center that called for a drive up a steep 12-mile dirt road, but fellow travelers in the RV gave the destination a thumbs down, so we backtracked to San Simeon to see the lavish Hearst Castle — the ostentation was visual overload for me, I might add.


The only drive that inspired a bit of fear and awe in me was the Bixby Creek Bridge en route to Carmel, which is now closed again. If you Google photos of this structure, it’ll be evident why I had some trepidation about crossing this bridge.


Most of the beaches in the Big Sur region are surrounded by private property owners, but we often stayed at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park under the umbrella of towering sequoia trees. We made side trips to see seals and otters at Point Lobos, wind whipping around us strong enough to drive me indoors… to begin planning the following year's travel on this "All American Road" touted by the 1996 National Scenic Byways Program.


Just a bit of California warmth on this frosty morning in the sunny South — following a call just received about boiling water because of low psi. Back to daydreaming about Big Sur!




Painting by Paul E. Marquart; photograph by Laurel Marquart.

THE PINE TREE STATE

"Storm Warning" by Paul E. Marquart

Today's rain and cold temps evoke memories of the winter I spent in Limestone, Maine, many, many years ago. Although I endured below 15-degree weather numerous days during that sojourn, the memory of living in the bitter cold of an old farmhouse clinging to a low hill in Aroostook County makes me shiver. I feel compelled to write that the rugged scenery of that State held some appeal in an aesthetic sense and acknowledge that Maine's license plates advertise it as "Vacationland." Still, I've never regarded it as a place of enchantment.

My former husband and I were part of Army personnel attached to Loring Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command Base in the town of Limestone, Maine. At that time, the U.S. military suspected that Russian air attacks would be made on America's far northern shores.

Limestone, situated in Aroostook County, boasted mainly bumper potato crops, which began burgeoning in the 1920s. We lived inland and never enjoyed touring the coast country rife with lofty lighthouses (like my brother Paul's painting above) that mariners built along Maine's shores. In Maine's maritime history, these lighthouses, such as Saddleback Lodge Light Station, have been preserved and are a picturesque part of the sea life surrounding the Pine Tree State.

During the era of sailing ships, the direction of the wind impacted mariners' safety. Lighthouses abounded along the rugged Maine coast, each tower operated by a keeper who made certain the light was always burning. Electric lights caused the lighthouse keeper's job to become obsolete; however, sixty lighthouses still stand on Maine's shores.

When we lived in Maine, we were far from the sound of the Atlantic Ocean and near islands, some of them just mossy rocks rising above the waves. However, I always wanted to visit Acadia National Park, and Bar Harbor on the island's eastern tip was a "wannasee" destination. We were confined inland to wooded areas where deer, raccoons, skunks, possums, and ubiquitous squirrels roamed freely.

A major nesting ground for birds, Maine harbors warblers, thrush, wrens, and other birds familiar to Louisianians, but I'd never heard the weird cry of loons that often carried across lakes and ponds that we approached. We welcomed the sight of ducks and herons, our Louisiana water birds. Still, I never got to see the famous puffin shorebird that gathered beyond the mouth of Penobscot Bay on an island bereft of humans and reputed to be noisy with raucous bird cries.

Army duties prevented weekend tours, even as close as jaunts to Portland because my husband seemed to stay on 24-hour alerts, but I had a list — maybe it's now a bucket list — one that Covid keeps me from completing… but when I get my travel plans certified again, I hope to follow Route 1 from Kittery in the south to Madawaska in northern Maine, to buy a sack of those Aroostook County potatoes and Texas pinto beans, both of which kept us alive and well while living in "vacationland" (?) many winters ago. P.S. I gained ten pounds on that fare.

"Storm Warning," a painting by Paul E. Marquart; photographed by Laurel Marquart

PAUL EMERSON MARQUART, BROTHER, ARTIST

Yesterday, February 10, marked the six-year anniversary of the disposal of brother Paul's ashes at Big Bear, California. Paul, an artist who lived in Crescent City, California for over 20 years, worked in oils, painting renderings of northern California's coast and surrounding scenery. He often shared photos of his art with me that enhanced the covers of my books of poetry.

 

Artist in the Forest

In his 19 x 21 foot studio in Crescent City, Paul placed a wood-burning stove, a garden bath, and built a small kitchenette that overlooked one of the numerous gardens he tended when he wasn't painting. In his studio, he sometimes spent entire brisk winter days painting while his wife Lori sat nearby reading Christian Science publications and offering counsel.

 

The Garden

Paul rendered most of the paintings that now hang in Lori's Costa Mesa, California apartment. However, I also enjoy Paul's work as Lori photographed some of the paintings and put them in two black notebooks with which she gifted me several years ago.

Boats Docked in Fog

Paul's property was a plant paradise on Lake Street in Crescent City. Vickie Sullivan and I made the coast trip from Los Angeles to Crescent City several times during the last fifteen years of Paul's life and enjoyed his lush gardens and beautiful art collection. We also viewed some of his work on display at the Harbor Art Gallery on Marine Bay in Crescent City. Paul often held exhibits of his work in the front garden on Lake Street and served kettles of Louisiana gumbo according to the recipe of our Cajun Grandmother Leila Vincent Marquart of Lake Arthur, Louisiana.

Sailboats on Monterey Bay

The sky darkens, and a Louisiana root soaker pelts down on my patio; I leaf through Paul's notebooks and decide to share a few of my favorites with readers whose day may be brightened by his colorful work.

 

 

GING GANG GOOLIE GOOLIE GOOLIE GOOLIE WATCHA

Anne Saywell in hand knit jumper

The above words are often sung by Girl Scouts and Girl Guides and attributed to the authorship of Lord Baden Powell, father of Boy Scouting, but the song can be traced to a cabaret song once performed by the Swedes. If you google the words, you’re likely to turn up several song renditions, accompanied by dance and performed by Girl Scouts and Girl Guides from around the world.

I tuned in to performances recently, just after receiving sad news about the terminal illness of Anne Saywell, my good friend of nearly fifty years’ standing in England. Anne is a famous retired official of Girl Guides who could be called a human encyclopedia of songs, games, and crafts related to scouting for girls worldwide. She taught me “Ging Gang…” on a blistering day in the desert of Khuzestan Province, Iran where we led a TOFS (Troops on Foreign Soil) together for at least a year. Her leadership was an inspiration to Brits, Americans, Iranians, Turks, and other girls and leaders of a multicultural mix living in Ahwaz, Iran. Including me.

 

Diane with TOFS, Ahwaz, Iran 1974

 After playing the song via the Internet, I wrote the following:

“Tragic news arrives. A beloved friend is terminally ill. Grief closes my throat. Memory closes my eyes: Mah Jong at the Golf Club, Khuzestan Province, 120 degrees, Ahwaz, Iran, 1974. She strides across the desert, and I strain to keep up. That brisk British walk pulls me along. We’ve set out for Ahwaz after the game table, too impatient to wait for taxis. Marbles of sweat wet the long hair we both once tended. She runs out on the highway, arms flailing the air. A godsend, the Paykan taxi spins toward us. We begin to laugh. It’s red dog madness, that desert walk. Her laughter echoes. Ahwaz, Iran, 1974. Grief closes my throat. I try to let go.”

“Ging gang goolie goolie goolie goolie watcha,” old friend. I know you’re singing it right now, despite…

SLEEP EZE

New Mattress at 20 hours

It came in a long cardboard box, a curled up tube that held a modern-day mattress, one that is slated to take 24 hours to blow itself up but is already lopped over the sides of the bed. You think that any moment now, you'll have to exclaim, "Thar she blows!"

You can order anything nowadays, and the mailman will put it on your doorstep, even if it weighs 100 pounds, and how you get it through the door and into a designated room is your problem. After all, you dare not go in a store because of the dread virus and purchase something you can't tuck under your arm and walk out with. However, you don't have to wear a mask in the vicinity of the object left at your door.

You look at the cardboard tube and gauge your pushing/pulling/hoisting strength and decide to put the object on a rug, and with the help of at least one other person, pull it down an interminably long hall, muttering under your breath. Tools needed: scissors to cut through a sheath of hard plastic; butcher knives; wire cutters; good teeth.

When the heavy plastic has been butchered, you unroll a piece of flat cloth that looks like an army bedroll that has been to Afghanistan and back, hoist it onto the bed, and leave it to rise.

Directions inform you that this object's process of becoming a usable mattress requires time, much like making yeast rolls. You give the piece of soon-to-become your place of pleasant dreams a pat and leave it overnight, commenting to a friend that the way it's rising and left to its own devices, it will soon touch the bedroom ceiling. You're already calculating the cost of fitted (?) sheets and wondering if the blow-up mattress company manufactures one-size only bed coverings.

When morning comes, the mattress already resembles a low hanging cloud, but after consulting directions, you see that at least eight more hours are required for the object's maximum blow-up.

"It's going to take over the room," I tell a friend standing beside me.

"Nonsense, it has only risen about eight inches and will probably be the most sought after bed in your house once it reaches full capacity."

"But what if it decides to deflate when someone lies down on it? Think of unsuspecting guests who come for a visit?"

"They won't stay long, and isn't that a blessing in disguise?"

You look at the object on a steel bed frame that is rising toward the ceiling, walk out of the room, and gently close the door behind you.

It will be a long wait, but you know you aren't going to be the first one to lie down on it—no way you're ever going to be that sleepy.