A blue jay swooped down, grabbed the peanut off the top of the shepherd’s hook and flew into a tree with her prize.
What were the squirrels doing during this attack?
Cowering in the bushes, where they’d retreated when I came out to install their daily corn cob in the Squirrel Cafe’, which stands across the yard from the shepherd’s hook.
On those rare occasions — once every 10 years — when Iggy acts timidly, I say, "you squirrel" instead of "you chicken."
The auteur known as Big Mama was the only woman in my dream who didn’t know my father. Besides me, there was my mother, my father’s sister and my father’s second wife. I introduced her to them, saying "She’s a great writer and a former Marine."
The four of us were sharing an apartment with an enormous communal kitchen with glassed-in storage units in the middle. I thought I put the food into the microwave to reheat. But when I looked back, I saw that my short arms hadn’t reached far enough into the counter contained inside the central glass unit. The food stood forlornly in front of the microwave.
What could this mean?
Hmm, maybe I’m trying to fix my half-baked prose?
Language is a Virus offers tools for breaking your writer’s block.
I read about it on Lifehacker.com
Teacher’s comments on version 2 of “Don’t Play with Matches”
Here’s what my teacher said about Version 2 of "Don’t Play with Matches." Her comments mean my poor Niblets will have to suffer through an expanded Version 3 at some point.
Now you are cooking. As it is, you could call it good. But I also see that where you took me in the end is an interesting study in how you got to be a prickly person for a time. It also shows how being called on it helped you. You could expand this piece out . In a 1500 word piece you could do a lot with everything you have here—which to me is perfect—and show me more about you, and how you were with people. Were you aware that you were the way you were? Did you feel isolated? Was there anybody who could break through? At what point—age wise—were you when you “got it.” Did you have kids? If so how were you with them? If not, what role did that have in not having kids?
Tell me more about how people reacted to you. A friend and I were talking about Naomi Campbell. She is an extremely abrasive person. Got a mean streak. But we were amused because we knew that she hadn’t run into the right person yet. Because the right people would break it down for her.
So what was the most telling moment when someone ‘broke it down’ for you? Let me see it. Did you think it was okay to be abrasive because your dad was? So were you stunned when someone called you on it?
This is so much stronger than when it was a part of another story. Give yourself several gold stars for carving and teasing out this little gem. Now think about how much more you want to do with it, now that you know what the what is.
Where, oh where is my hubcap?
It’s gone, gone, gone. Lost somewhere before the flatbed tow truck dropped off Iggy and car at the tire place to fix flat. Ended up having to replace four tires because of wear.
Sigh.
My body knows
what my heart denies.
I’ll never fit into a size ten again.
Now I choose
"eased cut" black jeans
of stretchy fabric.
Tight red
Gloria Vanderbilts …
only a memory.
You can find more poetry about what the body knows at Poetry Thursday.
Below is a rewrite of my essay, "Growing Jade Plants." Does it give my readers enough guidance about its meaning?
GROWING JADE PLANTS
I started my jade plant collection twelve years ago at a family dinner. My mother, a devoted gardener, had grown a gaggle of jade plants and installed them in the dining room’s bay window long before her death a year earlier.
Her jade plants’ dark brown limbs and deep green fleshy leaves were outlined by the bright white of the ledge on which they rested. The largest plant stretched wider than the biggest platter my parents had ever displayed on their elegant dinner table. It captured my fancy with its wildly twisted tree-like branches reminiscent of a Japanese bonsai tree. I was also taken with the cluster of smaller plants, huddled closely as though seeking safety in the shadow of their mother plant. I missed my mother, who had always held out her arms to me.
But Mom had effectively lost her mother when Mom was twenty-two years old. In 1948, she made the long trip by ocean liner from Johannesburg, South Africa to the United States to visit relatives. The jade plant also is an emigrant. It, too, came from South Africa, like so many other robust succulents.
I carried my cutting home nestled in a bed of paper towels. Then I placed it in a paper cup filled with water and waited for roots to sprout.
Mom hadn’t planned to stay in the United States, but she didn’t even visit South Africa for more than thirty years after she arrived in this country. She married my father, whom she met at her aunt’s home, she bore two children, and she took pleasure in the garden outside the house I lived in from the end of first grade until I left for college. Perhaps she found solace there for her loss of her mother.
My mother tried to get me to help her in the garden, but I fled in horror the first day. An earthworm oozed into view shortly after I stuck my fingers into the soil. Boys at my elementary school threw dead earthworms at unwary girls when a rainstorm left them stranded atop the nubby blacktop. The first time that happened, I cringed, then ran for shelter in a teacher’s orbit. I wouldn’t willingly place myself near those creepy crawlers. However, as an adult, I was willing to take a chance on house plants in sterile potting soil.
I had rooted spider plants before, but never a jade. I anxiously watched the progress of my cutting. When it took root, I felt happy, as if I’d seen a baby grow into a healthy toddler against all odds. I pulled out my yellow plastic bucket of potting soil and the child-sized shovel with which I’d welcome my plant into its first pot.
The potting succeeded. At first the new buds of fat green leaves protruded delicately like the tip of a tongue. Then they pushed out more decisively. Before long, they reached high into the air like my mother’s roses twirling around a white wooden trellis outside our home’s back door.
My mom had done most of the outdoor work at home. Pruning roses and other shrubs couldn’t daunt a woman who wrestled a testy gas-powered lawnmower. She cut decisively and confidently.
I dithered before I took pruning shears to my child for the first time. I felt as if I was lopping off one of its limbs. But my jade plant came back with two new branches where one had been.
Once I felt confident that my plant’s regeneration wasn’t a freak of nature, I got hooked on growing more plants from cuttings. Now I’ve got about half a dozen plump green children, each throwing out branches. Like Mom, they were transplants, setting down roots far from home. Like me, they could set down roots even after getting cut off from Mom.
My success at rooting jade plants inspired me to start gardening outdoors. Now when I see worms, I smile because they’re aerating compost bins that feed my garden. Mom’s jade plants led me to a happier view of the world.
Saw a squirrel favoring her left front paw, holding it up off the ground as she stood. I threw out some nuts for her.
She must not be in too much pain because she scrambled up the shepherd’s hook and used the front paw-over-paw technique to retrieve a dangling corn cob daubed with peanut butter.
New material for “Don’t Play with Matches”
Hello, loyal readers! What do you think of the material I’m adding to "Don’t Play with Matches"?
Below is what I plan to add.