"When you're walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of loganberries, don't come crying to me!"

Happiness is happening upon an unseen Monty Python episode, when you thought you'd seen them all.

"The great advantage of the tiger in unarmed combat is that he eats not only the raspberry-laden foe but also the raspberries. The tiger however does not relish the peach. The peach assailant should be attacked with a crocodile."

In other news, I'll be mailing out the morning glory seeds to everyone who requested them tomorrow. Notes about germination and cultivation (from some seed catalog): "Seed has a very hard seed coat and better results will be obtained if the seed is soaked in lukewarm water for 24 hours and then planted in warm (60 to 70 degrees) soil. Morning Glories prefer average soil, moderate watering, and no excessive fertilizing. A southern exposure will add to more continuous blooming." All of that has proved to be true for me, except I don't think the soil has to be *quite* that warm for germination. Let me know how they do!


In other other news, for the first time in months I've come up with an entirely new and wonderful (hopefully) kernel of a poem. Tally Ho!

"Music is a pretty thing in fine company"

A weekend that ends with a re-entry stamp on your hand is not a wasted weekend. Just got back from listening to Gerry O'Beirne (guitars) and Rosie Shipley (fiddle) at Conor Byrne's down in Ballard, right across from the Tractor. I don't know enough about music to describe what Gerry plays ... he's not got the most powerful voice in history, but he does have excellent songwriting skills, and I think he must have made some deal with the devil to play guitar the way he does. He's irish, so that tradition is certainly present, but there's a lot of blues in his stuff, as well, and who knows what else. This man can even make a ukelele sound righteous. One of the highlights was "Long Beating Wing", a song about the moment inspiration strikes. He amped up the intensity about twice as much as the recorded version, and it sent chills down my spine.

I've seen him solo before, so it was fun to hear him play with another musician ... in this case, a young Cape Breton fiddler. So it was quite a mixed bag of musical styles we had this evening. She was also *great*. There's nothing like that extra jazz you get from watching someone live who clearly relishes what she's doing. The energy is terrific. It didn't hurt that we were maybe seven feet from them. I'm completely spoiled for seeing anyone in large venues anymore. The Moore or the Paramount is about as spacious as I'm willing to go. Big arena shows ... what's the point?

Listening to Irish traditional music just recharges me in ways I can't explain. It's not some heritage, "getting in touch with my roots" thing ... I just stumbled across it maybe five years ago, and fell in love. Something about the power and the rhythm, something about the energy of the collaboration between the musicians, the repetitions that just keep intensifying ... whatever it is, I'm hooked. I've tried to find my way into writing about it several times ... but I think it's hugely difficult to write about the experience of music anyway (opinions?) ... the relative placidity of a progression of lyrical lines just doesn't seem capable of doing justice to the sensory overload ... dunno. After tonight, I want to try again, though...

I'm not too sure about this Blogger spellchecker. It just tried to convince me to replace "songwriting" with "concreting". Or "consorting". Hmmmmmmm.....

Theodore Roethke Tonight

I'm sure most of you will be doing other things ... but for anyone around these parts, KCTS (channel nine in the Seattle area) will be showing a short film about Theodore Roethke tonight at 9:00 PM. Sounds interesting.

What's the story, morning glory?

You know those little tasks you find to do while waiting for friends to arrive ... too restless to sit down, needing to occupy the time? I spent that space this afternoon harvesting seeds from my very-nearly-defunct morning glory vine along the front walk. I think it's a "Grandpa Ott's" ... a vibrant, iridescent purple one would only expect to encounter on a butterfly's wing or a hummingbird's neck. And a most prolific seeder. I never have to plant a new vine there each year; invariably some of the seedpods will burst before I pinch them off, and bob's your uncle. Toward the end of the season this year I let every blossom just go to seed. I did a rough count on the resultant yield ... counted a hundred and extrapolated by separating the rest into similarly-sized piles. From one or two sprouted seeds ... between four and five hundred. That's not counting the ones still on the vine, not quite crisp yet. Such unprepossessing little packages, like miniscule black mandarin orange segments ... potentially each a source of five hundred more of the same next year. Even allowing for duds, the math gets impressive pretty fast ... where would you find a better miracle?

Ok, so where am I going to find room for several hundred morning glory vines? Seriously, if anyone is interested, I would be glad to share the wealth. They are very well-behaved, requiring nothing but good sun, some water, and something to twine up. No matter how enthusiastic they become, they will perish elegantly with the first frost. Email me if you're interested.

"It's like trying to unstick the duct tape from your wedding dress."

From my husband tonight, apropos of I have no idea what -- the above mental image drove it straight out of my mind.

Because I should be raking leaves ....

.... I decided I'd rather venture back into the blog pond, instead. This seemed *marginally* more productive than looking at shoes on eBay. Although I'm sure some would beg to differ.

Not much in the way of dramatic change around here. Except that Jeannine Hall Gailey has conjured up a new group for the dissection and discussion of poetry, our own and others. And the inevitable accompanying gossip about who slept with who at which conference, who will never get published by which mag. as opposed to who always will (more scandal), etc. I think it will be great to be able to interact with *live* (as opposed to "virtual", not as opposed to "dead" -- although that's true too) poets for a change. Thank for all your work on this, Jeannine! Sometimes I need that whip of a monthly deadline to get anything productive done.

Especially in November. It seems to get tougher every year -- as the light levels drop, there's a giant sucking sound as all my energy disappears down the storm drain with the rest of the seasonal debris. I'm looking for a giant clear plastic umbrella so I can sit outside in the rain, get my lux and still stay reasonably dry. You would think some enterprising Northwesterner would see a market niche for an enormous clear plastic *patio* umbrella on a stand, but apparently such a thing does not exist ...

Interesting social commotion in the field this morning. I didn't see what started it, but I happened to glance out just as two crows begin to seriously mix it up. The one had the other over on his back and started pecking. Within (no exaggeration) five seconds, seven other crows swooped in from all points of the compass to gather close around the combatants. You could almost hear, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" The resemblance to the same scenario in the schoolyard or outside a bar was uncanny. Were the others there out of the same morbid curiosity that drives humans, or did they arrive to break it up? Who knows ... but even trying to avoid anthropomorphism, it was clear that they had some stake in the matter. As soon as the crowd gathered, the fight broke up; within 10 seconds, all the crows begin to drift off in separate directions .... obviously having more important things to do.

Which, sadly, brings me back to the leaves ....