Amsonia tabernaemontana -- Jule: May 2005

I first saw this beauty in someone's backyard on a garden tour. It was spectacularly blue. My friend J. took a photo of it and sent it to me so I could research its identity. It can be grown from seed, per the Thompson Seed Catalog, apparently with a little experience. This year it was introduced into Native Prairie Nursery's catalog of Wisconsin native perennials. When the privacy fence goes up in my back yard I will plant some of these against it, interspersed with dwarf Canadian spruce, serviceberry bushes, and a Russion sage or two.

Jule: May 2005

Memento Mori -- Jule: February 2005

On December 26th I received a phone call from the father of a childhood friend. The man told me his wife died of pneumonia last February. Then he went on to tell of the death of his son, my old friend, last July. Tom died in Thailand of pneumonia, just like his mother, who he loved very much. I hadn't seen him in 20 years, but he was probably the most important childhood friend I had. I was too stunned to say much in that phone conversation, but I have been grieving ever since. I thought I'd be able to check in with him forever.

Tom you were heaven sent to me. The laughter I shared with you during my gradeschool years is one of my most precious memories. Even though we were guilty of cruel mockery of those around us, there was something both healing and teaching in our silly games. What I wouldn't give for one of your little torn paper 'magazines' from sixth grade, with the drawings and the rants. Somewhere I have a 'Certificate of Self' you gave me the last time I saw you alive. You were my chief cheerleader and my gentle mocker. I loved you to the best of my childish ability and I will love you always.

Book Review -- Jule: January 2005

"The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson goes on my favorite reading list. I don't save books, but I don't think I will be able to give this one away.

I have read most of Robinson's books. There is a kind of flatness to them that should be off-putting, but something always pulls me through. The entire Mars trilogy was worth working through just for the last sentence of the last book. It was only two words, repeated three times, but the rightness of that repetition was thrilling. It wouldn't take any thrill to make that trilogy worth reading, but at times I did have a 'so what' feeling. But I kept reading.

"The Years of Rice and Salt" only gave me that so-what feeling in the second-to last section, which seemed to drag a little, and ended so abruptly I had to go back and reread the last paragraph, after I was into the next life, to make sure I hadn't missed something.

But lives are like that, aren't they? Small, inconsequential, sometimes with a so-what quality, and sometimes over without a bang. The last section of the last life acknowledged that smallness, and also how comforting it feels to imagine karmic rebirth and evolution. And that just because a belief is comforting doesn't mean it isn't true. Most satisfying for me was the unexpected discussion of wanting and what it means.