2021: the song "in the end" by ida maria.

 what a world we've been living in since 2020 now into 2020. it almost thieves my ability to formulate what the hell to say or write anymore, with so many complex factors of hardships across so many people's lives, on top of how difficult the world already was before the drastic changes we've been enduring. but in the midst of this, there is always the gift of contrast, something there to teach us to weigh the pros against the cons, to lift the veil around us a bit to see the good messily mixed in with the bad. this is a part of that, in the lessons we're here to learn.

x-posted from the blog for remembering artist, comedian, & poet frank kelso wolfe and also poetry with jennifer hetrick—

i am pretty sure i burned frank a CD copy of the album ''fortress round my heart'' from 2008 by ida maria years ago and that he ended up telling me later how much he liked it, that it really stood out to him. i wish i remembered specifics, but it's more the feeling of it, what i remember best, and that's probably what really counts.

norgwegian musician ida maria børli sivertsen has a lot of upbeat, vibe-you-on-up songs, the kinds built to make you want to dance the hell around. and i love those from her plenty.

but ''in the end'' is a song by her which i love in its slower degrees of movement, one always reminding to slow down in myself, stilling enough to see what's beautiful around me and in what i've known, like the moments i had with frank in our friendship.

this photo below of red-petaled tulips off in the distance is from a springtime walk i took during my workday. it reminds me of catching up fast, to glimpse and capture the scene, and to slow down in appreciating what it can bring to a single heart or perhaps a few or more hearts than just this one in our world. and i feel like noticing art around me to photograph is frank nudging and tapping at me sometimes from the inside, a welcome reminder for me to document would-be missed art for myself and also so others can learn about its existence to experience.

and below here is the song ''in the end'' by ida maria. at least a few times a year, i remember that it's out there, and i play it on repeat. please enjoy it for your heart and for frank's.

allium blossoms blowing in the wind & sunshine after a rainstorm during a pandemic in this 2020 of ours.

welcome to 2020. we are in the midst of a pandemic since months ago, COVID-19, one of the single biggest lessons for our world across countries and continents in a long time, leading to me stumbling across the concept of carrying capacity at a  biological level.

i've been working on taking more photographs of flowers this spring in balance with this health-centric situation, as i feel strongly and understand that people need to see pretty things, like freshly sky-reaching blooms, out in their world(s) on hard days with so many limitations in order to protect the most basic of safety for each of us and others. seeing what's beautiful around us helps to inspire us with hope, calm us down, and even out some of our worst-reaching emotions.

and i focus on flowers from our earth in balance of loss, too, as today, 284,883 people have died from the virus since the end of 2019 (and 80,000+ in the u.s.) when it was first detected by a doctor who was reprimanded for sharing the truth in advocating awareness, education, and caution to share with all people across our planet and within his own country, which worked diligently to take accountability after realizing how dangerous the situation truly was, and i wish i could say the same for not some but all officials in my own homeland, but many people who are intelligent, self-responsibly properly informed, cognizant, and incredibly careful are doing their best to balance out the energy, willed scope of understanding, and actions of those who are very unfortunately not.

this doctor later died from being infected by the virus from trying to save lives, in meaning well for others. here is a poem i wrote for him months ago. i cry for him every time i see a photograph of his face before he knew he was infected with the virus he identified on behalf of humanity's knowledge—and especially when i see the picture of him struggling to breathe, getting ready to lose his life in a hospital bed in the hospital where he worked tirelessly in trying to do good for others in a new, hard world, sacrificing his right to exist in doing so. please honor him by remembering him and learning from his heart.

in medical & human thought

i cry for dr. li wenliang,
my eyelids wet, becoming
cold from the sitting saline.
i drift into remembering
how he tried to do a good
thing, how being ethical put
him in danger, led him
to be targeted under law.
then, a second kind of it—
in short sets of weeks, he
had no energy to take
a razor to his cheeks,
stubble growing in while
bedridden, a mask and tubes
staying in place on his face.
and now, his lungs do not
move, like more than 500
others since december,
referred to by their bodies
instead of who they were,
a number growing with our
global, far-reaching sorrow. 

jrh. 6 february 2020.

renegade ornamental peppers & the rain on their undersides.

most of my garden-oriented photographing and blips of writing are now on my instagram page. for someone who is 83 inside despite appearing to be in her 30s in the american sense on the outside, i'm also surprised at myself in making one more online account to manage.

but it turns out that instagram is a very progress-driven place as well as the comforting world of memes to make us hate the worst of our lives a little bit less and actually laugh a little more. and if you avoid the junk-posts and scammers, there is some great and more innovative information out there, too.

in the meantime, here are some renegade ornamental peppers from my backyard, dipped at the bottoms with drops of rain giving into gravity. i loved catching the sight of them.

a hair poem to almost-end national poetry month.

some identity

grass & hair.

hair & grass.

sun & copper.

strands, blades.

peace, spine.

jrh. 29 april 2018.

sprawling in the grass in warm weather is one of the most calming practices i've ever stumbled across in my entire life. it is also very free, which is one of my favorite aspects of this routine. simple earthing, grounding is something which makes me feel truly alive. i recommend it to infinity and then some.

it is easy to love an antique mower.

long time no post. that is what happens when you're literally too busy to live. and speaking of that, i wrote an article on this exact theme in 2016 through interviewing two therapists based in berks county in southeastern pennsylvania. many can relate to being literally too busy to live.

but now onto mower-talks. this is my antique mower which i love dearly. i abandoned the idea of using a modern one after i bought this one from a friend who found it an auction.

while i've had it for years, and it's one of my favorite parts of warm seasons, i only last week attempted to find out its manufacturer and production year. i did see a twin of it at the leesport historical society a few years ago, and a member estimated that it's from somewhere between 1900 and 1920. googling has so far failed, at least in terms of validating serious background information about my dear antique mower. i'll keep searching. i also appreciate the ab workout which it incidentally offers. oh swoon for antiques to help with yard work routines.

a smoothie from only ingredients which i already had on-hand.

after my old blender broke, i went without smoothies for months, but i never drank them that frequently in the first place, to be fair. yet i wanted to get into making them more often because they're often such a healthy choice, and since i am someone who doesn't have much appetite for food in the morning but can drink and sip beverages down when it's still pre-afternoon time, i thought this might be a smart approach to be better to my health. 

fortunately, in deciding to ask around if anyone had any spare blenders since appliances are sometimes in doubles in households, with one sitting around waiting for a purpose again, it worked out that the first person i asked, my sister, had a backup blender to offer since she mostly works with her go-to nutribullet and only used her blender once. so it sat in a box after that initial use. and apparently, it was waiting for me to own it, ha. love at first smoothie.

since becoming the new owner of this blender yesterday, by this morning, while i knew i wanted to test out all sorts of new smoothie recipes, i decided just making up my own not-so-tracked recipe would be the best approach. plus, i felt really thirsty-hungry and wanted it ASAP ! here is a list of ingredients which i threw together in random little amounts for the above-glimpsed smoothie.

• blueberries
• cherries
• mango
• avocado
• asparagus
• baby carrots
• lemon juice
• apple juice
• water 
• ice cubes
• nutmeg
• cinnamon
• maple syrup
• hemp seeds
• chia seeds

a few months ago, a too-sweet smoothie quickly taught me the value of lemon juice, which i adore in the first place since i love all things sour. so i am sure that helped in balancing out the flavor adequately in today's quick practice at the blender. it's so nice when you don't have to be so calculated and yet can still make something healthy, delicious, and filling. yum x 4982945832045.

moon garden haiku.

in 2013, i began one of my most absolutely fun writing jobs for vanduzer design & marketing. it involves farm blogging for weaver's orchard in morgantown, berks county, and wolff's apple house in media, delaware county.

this week, i wrote about moon gardens for wolff's apple house and interviewed holly cusumano of phoenixville, chester county, about this topic. i've mentioned before that cusumano visited my pull of poems class as a guest writer when we focused on moon poems.

below are some scenes from cusumano's moon garden plant children, including elderberry, dianthus, and valerian root from camera moments in her backyard. then...more haiku. always more haiku lately !

cusumano is the chairman of the herb society of america's philadelphia unit. you can eye-peruse her recent moon garden reflections and design suggestions on the blog for wolff's apple house, here.

yet again, a haiku popped out of my brain-box. it is apparently the week of haiku in my life, given the stuffed grape leaves and heirloom tomato children haiku of recent days.

*

blooms mingle night talks

under beams of moon-glitter:
salt-pearl garden light

tomato children haiku.

this is cross-posted from poetry with jennifer hetrick. very, very long time no blog, yes-hmm !

*

i glimpsed first signs of heirloom tomato plant children in my garden, a sight of farm and earth gifts possible in a small backyard in a borough. every year, i order tomatoes from erica bowers-lavdanski of b&h organic produce in caernarvon township at the edge of berks and chester counties.

this particular plant is called matt's wild cherry. i plan to save some of the eventual tomatoes for my one brother since this is his name, too. i'm also in people's gardens sometimes, as well, and point this out when i notice myself sprawling in a landscape. creeping jenny. =) i may save brain-space for a creeping jenny haiku in the future.

here is a tomato children haiku sparked from this eye-scene.

visit your own garden for some poetry-whisking ideas.

*

green globes hold tightly 

to matching leafy-topped

crowns stretching skyward

a cherry lime smoothie recipe born in lancaster county.

busy-bee syndromes are strong (the reason i find my way to this blog-ish space so infrequently). many nowadays know this but don't necessarily think about in depth—i'm working on a way to explore that in the form of an article to pitch, when i have some free life-minutes to discuss the evolution of our too-busy-to-exist lives with some local therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc.

but—

at least there is this cherry lime smoothie, with the recipe prepared by phoebe canakis of phoebe's pure food. once you have the ingredients lined up, you can freeze or refrigerate most of them to last for a while so that you can keep blendering up the recipe until you run out of what it takes to make it. i create it in my kitchen every week or two, and as i finally run out of the foods it involves, i buy more.

this brightly beet-rich smoothie reminds me of comforting breakfast in non-rushed moments, mingling with how miraculously delicious fruit+fruit+more can be. 

it incorporates cherries, orange parts, raspberries, shredded red beet pieces, red grapes, cherry juice, freshly squeezed lime juice, and optional maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, (black) cherry greek yogurt (that's what i use), granola, hemp seeds, and chia seeds.

phoebe also has a podcast called two weird hungry girls. i often mistakenly call it inaccurate titles like two girls who are really hungry. so i always have to google it to make sure i'm saying or writing it correctly. but either way, it bursts with its obvious fun-persuasion just by its name, even if my memory skills with its title are sometimes a bit off.

she is also the host of pure food for thought with the people chronicles, where she explores local people's life stories and how they're laced along the way with food-stirring memories.

she's also just completely fun as a human being, which is a major plus nowadays.

freebie tomatoes are the thing sometimes.

i would really love to come back here more, to this blog. this weekend, i scheduled no interviews, hiking, or other plans. the hours of this weekend will be dedicated exclusively to gardening and yard cleanup and hopefully not burning to a pennsylvania dutch and irish crisp, with the help of some sunscreen and the floppiest straw hat i ever owned. and some sunglasses. 

i love when tomato parts mate and make new children. these are two happenin' offspring from near my compost area last year. the freebie plants that popped up via kind nature-efforts this year are still in the process of growing and are apparently leaning toward being more sizable. 

now that i think of it, maybe these tomato kids weren't in fact hybridized but instead ones that had blurred seed parents making their way to my yard from my neighbor's garden. either way, they were free. and i love when food ties in such freedom.  i am a grateful eater. nommm.

an ode to those little orbs of rainbow parts.

x-posted from news, not blues:

bubbles are everything that is fun in the world. 

go make some happen. seriously, though.

s'now way-- yet again.

i missed posting for a year. too many things to do, ah.

this winter is compensating for all the easy ones that came before it. a whopping snowfall today will soon have another one following it, just a few hours later.

i never expected to love a machine so much, a snowblower from a friend who was kind enough to give me very affordable pricing, and it was almost new when i brought it home.

today's revving and augering took more than two hours. thank lordisa for the snowblower. the thing deserves a name. i'll work on that.

while i now have social media dwindling due to liking privacy better, this blog may not be something even a few people stumble across if i begin posting again more, which is my hope. but that works for me. i really have missed this place and spending some energy on nature-swept eye-scenes and word throwings. it all benefits the heart and peace the world needs.

goldflame honeysuckle moves along in song-speak sometimes.

life-minutes for words about the two-toned sweet-smelling petal love here may be few, but at least some of the garden kindly takes care of itself while i'm working many a job and trying to squeeze hiking and other good times in on weekends.

take the good of the world and your garden with you in every new day !

Heirloom fruits & veggies are relics.

Before the food-growing industry's most practiced approaches were rewritten, fruits and vegetables took on a diversity of impeccable flavors, curious colors and skin patterns, and unexpected yet eye-piquing shapes. Heirlooms are the name given to those that survived.

The last century's strong commercial push involved seeds for crops being developed into hybrids intended to yield high amounts with sturdier outer skins.

This large-scale shift in agriculture, starting with the seed, led to a lot of sacrifice in taste while sometimes diminishing the nutritional value per plant.

Heirlooms are food relics all their own. They behave differently than mass-produced garden and field crops by having less-standard mature growth sizes and food-bearing periods.

To read the rest of this article, visit this lil' link. 

sassier salad selections.

when they sang on the simpsons years ago that ''you don't make friends with salad,'' i think it was just that whoever ''you'' was, was making a boring-as-a-curse word salad. 

this delish dish included hydroponic salad blend lettuce from butter valley harvest, tomatoes, avocados, craisins, hard-boiled eggs, olive oil, lemon juice, and pink salt. i forgot the snapea crisps. oops. still, nom and a half.

solar toys-- stirring my proverbial sun-soaked fancy.

meet my new crew. these fellows are a bit sun-inspired with their more positive provocations. the frog performs some darn happy hopping, the racecar zooms along with quick-spinning little tires, and the grasshopper jitters about-- all through the solar persuasion of their backsides.

over the past few months, i featured stokes solar green toys & goods on phillyecocity.com and also in lancaster farming, the reading eagle, and with some outside penning-assistance, in news, not blues as well.

john stokes, who is the man behind the oley operation of green-speak in toy-sly approaches to shifting how energy is viewed on the local level, also recently introduced a first-ever wind-powered toy to his lineup.

and another enticing update is that he's working on bringing educational workshops into schools, using the toys. children will learn how the fun-time perks are put together, building the critters and cars themselves, sometimes, to really absorb function-smart ways while seeing how solar energy has such environmental potential.

and of course, on top of all that, the crew is just darn cute. i am a lucky garden harlot to have such lil' props of versatility and excitement-stirring, sun-powered jollies. mhm !

ode to the mouth-perking persuasion of pear and ginger butter.

something like fruit butter is bound to have its own song, especially when it's as seasonally-pulling as pear and ginger butter, prepared with love built right into it during the whims of winter weather. and this palate-hugging medley certainly sings, on key, too, with a flavor-set and texture so exacting that it easily wins an eat-this-by-the-spoonful distinction.

phoebe canakis, the naked food home cook behind phoebe's pure foods, kindly dropped off a little jar of this for me to pick up at a coffee shop while i was in fleetwood this weekend. 

after i'd told her about bauman's apple butter and the pennsylvania dutch family's cherish-worthy line of fruit butters, and once she'd finally discovered a few jars in her own food-travels, this creative kitchen mistress whipped up her own sampling. 

the delightful lure of an autumn-plucked crop, along with hints of the warm south asian-known spice, quickly reminds the palate of sudden comfort taken straight from the leggy limbs of nature.

homemade catnip-- a cinch and stitch of an effort.

i wanted to do something nice for my little fur kid quasi-niece named iris, a cat of a close friend of mine. she isn't too savvy on kitty treats, so her papa suggested i use the catmint in my garden to make her another play toy.

once the catmint dries out after i separate all of the leaves from the thin stems, i'll stuff it into this wildly pink-striped monkey sock with some cotton balls, tie it up sewing-wise with some string and a needle, and gift it to the adored iris.

catmint, the perennial known for catnip-makings, is hardy for our region in pennsylvania. it can sometime take over in gardens, so if you don't want that effect, keep an eye on it and prune it back or thin it out, when need be. it's probably easily transplantable as something to gift to others or relocate in your garden space, too. look for it at garden centers and nurseries from spring to late fall for possibilities in grabbing up this easy-to-grow plant well-capable of tantalizing the inner-temptresses in kitties.

november half-slumber: a quick-witted greeting.

quick words. willow wood ones.

and smokebush speckles, a glimmer into autumn's appetite.


brevity can say a lot.

with much long overdue affection, the garden harlot.

august greetings from the garden harlot.

long time no flower ? it has been an incredibly busy set of life-weeks for the garden harlot across the expanse of many jobs, but luckily, they are wonderfully fulfilling ones. 

in the meantime, here is a sampling from my tumblr page of positives, which i have also semi-abandoned for instead working on so many other projects. here, a night embers daylily from my garden graces oxygen and its other friendly elements.

i currently have a fun lil' 10 week series about farms premiering each wednesday on the limerick-royersford-spring city patch site. so far, beyond the introduction, i've featured discussions of the farm to school program, renninger's farm in royersford, and dream come true farm in spring city.

and i started writing for copper in the arts with the copper development association, recently featuring an artist named david burns from california with his rough and ready moniker, copper gardens.

this afternoon, i'm traveling down to spring city to photograph some sweet cows at kolb's farm store.

lots of fun and work is spilling me away from the blog, but news, not blues is still a monthly must.

thanks for stopping by, and remember to soak up the sky a good bit in your days.