It's Almost Halloween: Reach For 'The Long Hand of Twilight'

Remember when fantasy and science fiction books were fun to read? Silly instead of sinister, they didn't leave you with an uncomfortable chill in your spine or a brow-knitting blight on your spirit. Instead, they brightened your outlook on life as well as your face by turning the tables on things that go bump in the night. Laugh them away, those monsters that keep you awake when you should be sleeping. Send them to their eternal rest so you can enjoy a temporary version of it. Hmm. Maybe that's why so many people these days have trouble sleeping. Watching and reading too much horror, fictional or real, their minds can't relax. They are stuck in perpetual "fight or flight" mode. The autonomic nervous system's sympathetic response to the horror stimulus is unsympathetic to the body's need to rest.

If laughter is the best medicine, then The Long Hand of Twilight, a novel by Justin Bayne, will be an easy pill to swallow. It's a delightful book written by a native Floridian, someone who doesn't care for social media or self-promotion. He prefers to hide in the shadows so he can work on dispelling them. A prolific writer, he will, I know, forever dispel those shadows, those awful fears and doubts that haunt our thoughts and dampen our spirits. His book (someday soon to be plural!) will lead them by the hand and send them flying back to wherever it is they belong.

Fearlessly and shamelessly, I proudly promote Mr. Bayne's work for good reason. A recent addition to our family, he works hard at his day job and writes when he can find the time, something we all know doesn't grow on trees. If only it did.

The Unvarnished Truth About Gardening

Argiope aurantia, way past her prime, off the Web, with chamberbitter weed in the foreground

In the midst of some volunteer work today, I had a lively, you might even say tit-for-tat, discussion with someone I'm not likely to associate with in the non-volunteer realm. Why should we be so far apart? Well, for starters, we come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. And what brought us two disparate souls together? Gardening, of course. We both have a passion for it, you see, though we sometimes find that passion difficult to reconcile with our diametrically opposed points of view. Or, maybe not. Death, you see, is the great equalizer. We dance around the subject, as delicately as we can. But there it is. You can't escape it, and neither can I. And so we joke and dance as long as we can-can. And then, we go our separate ways.

Punica granatum 'Nana'

But we both embrace life. We hang onto it for all we're worth.

Hic Sunt Dracones: Pulling Dragons from the Ground and the Air

Rhionaeschna multicolor (Blue-eyed Darner)

If you're feeling blue now that summer is almost over--if you're in Florida, you should be kicking up your heels to a lively tune--stare into the blue eyes of a darner dragonfly. They are sure to make you smile. And if that doesn't work, then take SAM's advice and listen to the song by Corb Lund in the video below. Here be dragons--in the ground, in the air. Here be dragons everywhere. Okay, so maybe my paltry attempt at poetry falls flat on its face like a map of the world. Here Be Dragons, a poem that I came across while looking up the term, stands on its own as a model of great poetry.

Hic Sunt Dracones. Before they knew exactly what was just over the horizon, before explorers could bring home the good news of gold and other rich stuff in them thar hills, cartographers would warn of possible dangers in uncharted regions of the world. (Pointing) Here, here, and here be dragons. There, there, and there you can expect to travel safely--or at least without fear of encountering dragons. These days I think I'd rather take my chances with dragons than visit certain spots on the globe. Alberta (where the video was filmed) might be a good place to visit. At least the natives look and sound friendly. "Power to the People." Yeah.

Another Whirled Piece: Gardening in Days of Awe

Malvaviscus arboreus 'Dwarf Pink' Turk's Cap

In days of awe

When night temps can get raw

And politics can get steamy,

You stop by the less-traveled road

And drop your travel-less load,

Returning to life, garden-dreamy

Argiope aurantia near the end of her days

In days of awe

Argiope draws short straw

Of life and so shall we

If taking the Road to Damascus

Causes the world to task us

With rebuilding the whole Middle E

Love Bugs Make It On the Big Screen

In days of awe

A red-line faux pas--

Does a line in the sand really make it all right?

If truly we care for the future--we do have choices--

Let’s unravel each stitch of the suture

That’s bound up our voices

And so end this fight

In days of awe

Imagine the law

That captures the world’s attention

It frees us to act

With love, mercy—not blindly react—

Finally, at-one-ment(ion).

Whirled Piece: Ginger or Mary Ann? Julia or Lucetta?

Costus pictus, spiral ginger

The ginger that does grow
In tropical garden isle
Makes its way onto the blog
And so the garden file

It traveled here all potted up
Last year from lakeside yard
It grew but didn't bloom 'til now
A spiraling upwards guard

With gaze that grows from inward out
To focus on a whirled
Piece on Earth, on entwined fates allowed
To mingle here, so gradually unfurled.

Hedychium coronarium, butterfly ginger

JULIA: What is't that you took up so gingerly?

LUCETTA: Nothing.

JULIA: Why didst thou stoop, then?

LUCETTA: To take a paper [blog] up that I let fall.

JULIA: And is that paper [blog] nothing?

LUCETTA: Nothing concerning me.

JULIA: Then let it lie for those that it concerns...

(from William Shakespeare's The Two Gentleman of Verona, Act I, scene ii)

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I never dreamed I would become such a ginger gardener. But who can resist the tropical allure of these beauties? They grow so effortlessly, with so little care and attention, quite unlike a blog, I'm afraid. I never dreamed I would become such a "gingerly" blogger. If a blog is let go, allowed to drop out of sight and mind, it might just die on the vine, so to speak. And the entwined fates (faithful readers/followers/thinkers) will stop mingling here and remain unfurled. Impressions either never arrive or quickly leave, unseen and unspoken.

If you're wondering what Ginger or Mary Ann have to do with this whirled piece, blame SAM. When he saw the ginger unfurling its flower bracts, he suggested that I ask the question. Are you a Ginger or Mary Ann? Gilligan's Island fans will know what I'm talking about. You might even remember dramatic Ginger as Ophelia in this episode. There, now. Shakespeare>Ginger>Tropical Landscaping>Gilligan's Island. Everything comes together in this whirled piece. Oh. What about Julia or Lucetta? Read the play and let me know what you think.

Thunder Smitten: The Idea of This Garden-Life

Black-and-yellow Argiope aurantia

"Tell me," said the spider, "why do you garden? Why do you toil in the heat and bake yourself brown under the summer sun while countless others of your kind are cooling themselves in pools of water or at the beach or sit all day inside their offices and houses made artificially cold by large, noisy boxes? I have to be outside to catch small things that fly so that I can feed myself and my babies. They're coming soon, you know. And then I will die. As I sit here day after day, I notice that you don't have many mouths to feed. How will your species survive with so few young ones to work and gather food to feed you and take care of you when you're very old? I've heard (on the Web) that your kind lives for many moons, more than I care to imagine. So, why do you garden?"

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The author needs great faith in his[her] reader's sympathy; else he[she] must hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the idea of this garden-life. It was the Eden of a thunder smitten Adam[Eve], who had fled for refuge thither out of the same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original Adam was expelled. 

(from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables).

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Life cycle of Argiope aurantia: The female fills a spherical egg sac, up to 1" (25 mm) wide, with a tough, brown, papery cover. She attaches it to one side of the web close to her resting position and then dies. The eggs hatch in autumn; the young overwinter in the sac and then disperse in spring. The male builds a web in the outlying part of the female's web, making a white, zigzag band vertically across the middle.

This spider seems to prefer sunny sites with little or no wind. It drops to the ground and hides if disturbed.

(from The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders)