CHRISTMAS EVE MEDITATION WHILE WAITING TO PAY--A poem for Christmas

Happy Winter Holidays and Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it) to everyone who reads this!

This is a photo taken by Sue Wyatt Shinkle of Kansas City's famous Plaza lights at Christmas time right before a winter storm hit. When my kids lived in other states but came home for Christmas, they always said the sight of the Plaza lights let them know they were really home.

CHRISTMAS EVE MEDITATION WHILE WAITING TO PAY

Standing in shopping-center lines,

I remember last Christmas in your arms.

I dream your voice on the phone at midnight,

asking to come home,

how I will unlock the door

to admit you from the black cold

and hold you,

chilled and shaking from something

deeper than cold.

I dream you

on your knees, how I will

drop to my own and join you.

A tightmouthed woman behind me

jabs my back with a box corner,

and I step forward,

one person closer

to paying for what I want to give.

Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

Look Back to the Future

We’re starting off 2012 on a lovely note here in Kansas City. Beautiful dry, sunny days that haven’t gone below 25 degrees for weeks. For the last several years, the Christmas-Chanukah-Solstice season and the year’s changeover have been buried in terrible blizzards, but this year, we’ve been spared the below-zero temps, ice, and 1 ½-2 foot snowfalls with blinding winds. And I am so, so grateful.

Like so many of you, I’m looking ahead, planning, setting goals, and hoping for certain successes. Most of us do this every year. But when I look back to see what I planned and hoped for in 2011 (easy to do since I’m an inveterate journal-keeper), I find that almost all of the wonderful things that happened to me in 2011 were unforeseen at the beginning of that year. And I wonder if that isn’t pretty much always the case.

In January of 2011, I wanted to lose weight, de-clutter and organize my house, and find a way to get my finances under control. I had been making most of my money through poetry—a miracle to make any at all, in that case—and that probably explains why I wanted to improve and regularize my finances.

By January of 2012, I had won a national novel competition, signed a book contract with a major New York trade publisher, received an advance, found a great agent, acquired terrific blurbs and a beautiful book cover, and finished the second novel in the series while the first book started going out for reviews. None of these exciting things were listed in my hopes and plans for the year—and I still need to lose weight, de-clutter my house, and find a way to bring my finances under control. (More money came in with the book, but the year was still very feast or famine in the money department—just a little more than feast than usual.)

I’m sitting down now with my journal to look ahead, plan, set goals and dream about the successes I want this year to bring—and I do believe 2012 will bring me some wonderful successes and good fortune. I'm looking forward to the launch of Every Last Secret at the Central Library in Kansas City, Missouri, on Tuesday, April 24, and a whole slew of other appearances and book signings after that. (Just check the News/Events tab of this website to see the current calendar. New events are being added each week.) I'm looking forward to attending several big mystery conferences this year, beginning with Malice Domestic in late April. These things I know are going to take place. But I suspect that the best things to happen in 2012 will all, or mostly, be things that aren’t really on my chart yet, but will sideswipe me once again.

What about you? Do you plan and achieve your yearly plans in detail like clockwork? Do you send your boats out over and over, only to have a jet come in sometimes instead of a ship?

The Garden Wars

It's spring in Kansas City. As many of you may recall, last year I was summoned to court by the city over my garden. I said then that I would take photos of it in bloom in the spring to show the next time that happened, and I promised to post them on this blog.

So here we go. And here's the list of what my gardens contain, front and back, though not all of it is blooming now, of course.

Plants In My Garden

Southernwood

White peony

Bowl of Beauty peony

Yellow iris

Purple iris

Various bicolored iris

Peace rose

Large old species rose

Chocolate mint

Native daylily

Native goldenrod

Butterfly bush

Lamb’s ears

Costmary

Mugwort

Fennel

Rue

Lemon balm

Peppermint

Oregano

Tansy

Sweet Annie

Sage

Wild strawberry

June-bearing strawberry

Red clover

Various hybrid daylilies

Various hybrid Oriental lilies

Missouri primrose

Black-Eyed Susan

Purple coneflower

Bouncing bet

Wood sage

Sweet autumn clematis

Naked ladies/ American amaryllis

Liatris/gayfeather/blazing star

Columbine

Mayapple

Lily of the Valley

Yellowbells

Periwinkle

English ivy

Honeysuckle

Gladiolus

Petunia

Marigold

Wax begonia

Wormwood

Daffodil

Various colored tulips

Violet

White clover

Rose of Sharon/American hibiscus

Hen and chicks

Sedum

Marigold

Portulaca/Moss rose

Red and purple salvia

Hardy chrysanthemums

Sunflower

Much of that will not be blooming for another month or more, and the woodland plants bloomed much earlier. I should have taken these photos a few days earlier before the rains knocked blooms off the peony and the iris. And, of course, many of the native plants I have don't bloom until much later. As you might expect, I have a wide variety of birds, including bluebirds, goldfinches, and hummingbirds, plus butterflies, four kinds of bees, etc. visiting and living in my yard.
I also mentioned when I was battling the city last summer that a different department of the city was trying to persuade everyone in my part of the city to put in gardens much like mine in place of the environmentally destructive grass lawns they all love so much. The folks at the court had not heard anything about this, but I was able to bring in brochures and correspondence to prove it, and that helped. Still I had to pay a fine and plead guilty to having a nuisance yard. The city prosecuting attorney made it as low as possible, but given the city's ordinances, he had no other choice than to go for it. (In Kansas City, any plant over 12 inches tall can be declared a nuisance by your neighbors or the city yard police, even roses, peonies, iris, etc.!, and they can do all kinds of terrible things, including throw you in jail for it.)
Now, to the punch-line.

That other arm of the city governmental bureaucracy sent me a letter saying they wanted to put a raingarden in my yard. $450 worth of native plants--they gave me a list to choose from and I already had two-thirds of them that I had been cited for growing--plus the cost of the topsoil and sand and additives and all the labor of digging and planting. I said sure and chose all the native plants I didn't have. Here you see the raingarden they just planted in my backyard.

Already, my next-door neighbor, who hates nature, has been leaning over the fence pointing to the newly planted raingarden, so I expect something from the other arm of the city soon. I have all the correspondence on the raingarden, and this time, I have an ally--the guy who planted it using EPA money given to the city just for this purpose. He will come to the court with me and explain.

So, the garden wars continue. How will I fare this year? Being the fool that I am, I am hopeful. Being as old as I am, I am wary. But so far, I consider myself undefeated. Honey, the South ain't got nothin' on me!