On a non-writing topic, check out the Mar Vista Garden Showcase tour!

Just fyi, my son and daughter-in-law are included in the classy and ecologically savvy Mar Vista Garden Showcase. Fiona designed the yard, and Ted did a lot of the digging and planting. Their gardeners cleared out the horrible crabgrass and installed irrigation. Fiona cleverly chose plants that chime beautifully with the lavender-gray house paint. The house should have been designated a fixer-upper when they bought it, and they have been applying sweat-equity and thought to fix it up ever since.

This seems to be the only photo I have that shows their yard (albeit backyard). You can see where my interests are fixed, namely, on my grandson, sez his Nana.

http://marvistagreengardenshowcase.blogspot.com/2015/02/12683-dewey-street.html

Intimate under the oaks: poetry in the botanical garden

Alice Pero caught in uncharacteristic repose

 

Bruce Williams rocking the hat

 

Turns out Cati Porter reads with her eyes cast down down down

 

Cindy Bosquet Harris looking uncharacteristically serious--maybe she was putting it on?

 



Lavina Blossom consulting the oaks as she reads

 

shali Nicholson prefers her given name lower-case and her hair fuchsia-pink. So pretty.

 

 Karen Greenbaum-Maya, Cindy Bosquet Harris, Cati Porter, Alice Pero, Lavina Blossom

 

I just hosted a magical event in the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden, a wonderful place where you see what California could be like if it had just a little more rain. Oaks, irises, milkweed; butterflies, towhees and finches; squirrels, rabbits, hawks. We read poems about Nature or Spring or the environment at five different places in this setting. My station was under old oaks, warm and cool, shady and dappled, quiet and alive with birdsong and wind in the many leaves. Above:  Alice Pero, Bruce Williams (rocking the hat), Cati Porter, Cindy Harris, Lavina Blossom, shali Nicholson (digging the hair), and a friendly group shot including me. Other readers as well. Also the sheltering oaks, an intimate setting where we immersed ourselves in poetry.

Yeah yeah, I know, I know

A few months ago I was diagnosed with a serious chronic disorder that is requiring blunt changes in what I eat, how much I exercise, and how many times daily I am fearful about my health. It's like a bad part-time job:  you don't get much back for all your work, it doesn't leave much for you to do what you enjoy, and you don't dare quit because you need the pay. What's more, I haven't written anything new since I got the diagnosis. I was grousing to my husband about this, and he responded compassionately. "Don't be so hard on yourself! Give yourself a break! It was a big shock to you. Besides, it's not as though editors were hounding you to send them work." Oh, don't I know it.