Bernadette Geyer

Summer Reading

2008-07-22T21:48:00.004-04:00

I'm realizing that berniE-zine should be updated soon and thinking about all I have read so far this summer... I've made it about 2/3 of the way through all of the poetry collections I picked up at AWP back in February, but am still working my way through the journals I picked up at AWP in 2007!!

I just finished What Feeds Us, by Diane Lockward. My favorite poem from the collection is the complex poem "Wren House" which, taken on its surface, is quite a lovely poem about the separateness we humans feel as we attempt to reach out to the animal world, even in kindness. But, beneath the surface story of building a house for a bird, there is the layer of meaning about a couple trying to make ready a welcome home for "an other" (I mean this as two words and not just a typo of "another"). The waiting for life to begin within. The poem ends with the very suggestive couplet We had waited like this once before, / wanting some soft creature to fly in.

I also finished Revenge, by Stephen Fry, which is a retelling of the story of The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. I won't reveal any spoilers in my future review of it on berniE-zine, but suffice it to say that Fry definitely shows what I have always thought -- revenge has a way of corrupting us beyond any mere attempt at justice.

Returnings and Late Vocations

2008-07-20T21:50:00.004-04:00

Just got back from my youngest sister's wedding in Ligonier, PA, and saw the good news that Kay Ryan has been selected to be the new Poet Laureate of the United States. Kay's story gives me hope as a poet who came late to the vocation. I look forward to seeing her read at the Library of Congress later this year. In the meantime, here's a nice interview of her on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92721707&ft=1&f=1008

Out in the Open

2008-07-11T12:44:00.003-04:00

Had an interesting discussion with a woman from my writing group. We were discussing use of personal details in my poetry and I mentioned that I don't like to write a lot about the details of my life. She asked if I hid behind my poetry.

I was a little taken aback by that because I feel like I reveal a lot about myself through my poetry.

The details of my life are pretty mundane. I like to write about things that are important to me, things I find interesting, things I would like to read about. In writing, I learn much about myself and I think that readers can "get to know me" through my poems by paying attention to voice and subject matter, the rhetorical stances I take when approaching different topics.

I don't think readers care too much about what I ate for breakfast, or why I never dated anyone for more than 2 months before I met my husband. I don't mine the details of my life for poetry. But, that said, I do incorporate details into poems if the details help me to illuminate some aspect of the universality of human experience. The challenge as a poet lies in figuring out what details of one's life speak to the intent of each poem.

And yet, sometimes I leave things purposely ambiguous so that people can incorporate their own backstory into a poem. If a poem speaks to someone -- even if they have a completely different interpretation of the "details" I've incorporated based on what they themselves are bringing to the reading of the poem -- I still consider the poem a success because the poem has spoken to that person.

And if you want to know anything about me, just read my poems. But you'll have to pay attention to more than just the details.

Creativity and Cycles

2008-07-09T21:35:00.002-04:00

It came as a great relief when I stopped fighting it and finally accepted my natural cycles of creativity. Fall, winter and spring are such creative seasons that I've learned to use summer as a chance to let the well re-fill itself. To tell my muse to go sit by the pool with a margarita.

But, every so often, usually just after I tell someone that I'm taking the summer off, my muse will pinch me on the arm and a poem will appear.

Today was one of those days.

Luckily, my writing group meets this week, so I actually now have something fresh to show them. Hurrah!

And I am willing to accept this "taking a break from taking a break" as part of my creativity cycle.

Do you have a creativity cycle? When did you finally accept it?

The Music of My Summer

2008-07-08T21:59:00.003-04:00

I don't listen to the radio anymore, so thank God my husband introduces me to bands I would never have heard of anyway on commercial radio.

http://www.thepeacocks.ch/

I couldn't find any "good" YouTube examples to post here. So go on their web site and check out the sample they have there.

The Peacocks are a psychobilly band from Switzerland. You would not believe how Simon plays the upright bass in concert! (at least the YouTube videos will show you that, even if you can't hear what they're singing)

That's what is in my car's CD changer right now. Along with 5 other CDs I never get to listen to because MY TODDLER PREFERS LOUD RAUCOUS MUSIC. Shonen Knife: check. The Peacocks: check. Arctic Monkeys: check. The Clash: too slow!

Mommy I need more raucous. Loud.

Sigh. It makes a mommy proud...

Writer, Consider Thy Reader

2008-07-03T20:35:00.004-04:00

I know there's probably a lot of controversy over this topic, but I am nearly finished reading Dave Eggers' book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and am about to burst if I don't say something soon about it.

Eggers is a very talented writer, with a distinctive voice and humorous style. That said, AHWOSG could've done with A LOT more editing than its publishers gave to it. Did they drink the Kool-aid and toss aside their red pens?

I hope Eggers doesn't have sex the way he writes novels, otherwise his partners are going to be checking the nightstand clock and mentally composing the next day's "to-do" list in their head while they wait for him to FINALLY be done satisfying himself. Really. I'm sure many of you have known guys like this.

Hint: Too much of a good thing does not necessarily mean it's "more good." (doubleplusgood?)

Unless you are writing for the sole purpose of amusing yourself, never ever considering that your poem/story/essay will be read voluntarily by another living soul, you MUST always keep in mind that you will have a READER. It takes two to tango, and so it takes two for a successful story/poem/essay.

You want to say something. A reader wants to read something. If you want the reader to actually enjoy your writing, consider your writing from the reader's vantage -- do they "get it"?

If the reader does "get it", do you then belabor the point (as Eggers does) to where the reader not only "gets it" but they "get it" and then lose interest in "it" by the fourth or fifth page of your elaborately convoluted retelling and thesaurus-thumbing descriptions of "it" (might I add your painstaking and gratuitous inclusions of ever-obscurer references to 80s pop culture)?

Eggers should have taken a cue from Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, wherein Calvino does the whole "self-conscious-author/narrator-speaking-directly-to-the-reader-in-the-middle-of-the-story" thing far better, far tighter, and with such a light touch, pulling back just when the reader is lost in the throes of the story, leaving the reader wanting more...

Ooops, there I go using sex as a metaphor for writing again.

That does beg the question: Can you guess what kind of lover an author is simply by their writing style?

What writers might be/have been fabulous lovers, judging strictly by their writing style and not necessarily by the content of their stories?

Call for Poems About Museums

2008-06-30T12:58:00.001-04:00

Beltway Poetry Quarterly announced that Maureen Thorson has agreed to co-edit a new themed issue of the journal, on the subject of museums. They invite poems on the theme from any poets currently living in DC, MD, VA, WV, or DE, and will be reading entries throughout the month of August.

Full guidelines can be found here: http://washingtonart.com/beltway/about1.html

Beltway Poetry Quarterly - http://www.beltwaypoetry.com

When Days Are Hot, When Days Are Cold...

2008-06-27T20:01:00.003-04:00

My respite this summer has been The Water Mine Family Swimmin' Hole in Reston, VA. That's where you'll find me most afternoons, soaking in the kiddie pool while Frida practices floating and fights her way to the kiddie pool's water slide. It's a rough crowd on weekends, but less so during the week.

So, now I'm 40. Doesn't feel any different except that I find myself holding small print a bit further away to be able to read it. I remember when my mother turned 40 -- I was 20 at the time -- my father hoisted an oversized white flag with a big red 4-0 emblazoned on it. I remember thinking "wow...that's old". Now that I'm 40, I'm at a loss trying to imagine what it would be like to have a 20-yr-old daughter at this point.

Turning to poetry, but still related to the above -- motherhood has been a prominent theme in some of the poems I've written for my "new" manuscript. But not autobiographical motherhood poems. To date, I've only written one of those that I think is remotely worth submitting to journals. The motherhood poems I've written have been about "other" mothers.

When Frida was only 6 months old, we received a teeny tiny copy of "Thumbelina" from a next door neighbor's daughter. The book has since disintegrated, but it was just about exactly two years ago that I read the story and it struck me that I wanted to know more about Thumbelina's mother, who is never heard from again once Thumbelina is kidnapped by the Toad's mother, who wants her for her son's wife. At that point, I decided I wanted to write a series of poems about Thumbelina's unnamed mother. And not just a series, once I started writing, I realized I had to write it as a sonnet sequence, in the mother's voice.

When I write in form, I am able to break free of the standard pool of words I usually fish from for my poems. To fit a form, I must look to words I don't normally use, or combinations that don't "sound" like me. To write persona poems, I find form helps me break free of my own voice.

So, with husband on travel earlier this week, I sat down and focused on finishing the last of the four sonnets for the sequence. Yes, two years to write four sonnets. I know many poets can crank out four sonnets in a weekend, but these poems really took me a lot of time because, having no background to go on, I had to figure out what the voice of Thumbelina's mother would sound like and, not only that, what she would feel towards and say to each of the four characters she was addressing: Thumbelina, the witch, the toad's mother, and the author (Hans Christian Andersen).

What I found most rewarding in taking so much time to write these sonnets was that, right as I was close to finishing each poem, something would happen - some event or chaos in my life - that would trigger a phrase, and that phrase would magically be in iambics and be the line that broke through the writer's block to help me finish the poem. I could not satisfactorily complete a sonnet until each of those particular occurrences occurred.

Have you ever had a poem whose completion dogged you until, finally, some specific event or discussion triggered the phrase you needed to complete the poem?

ZOOM and Kismet

2008-06-19T13:00:00.004-04:00

Checking the site stats for my web site today I found out that when someone searches Google with the single term "bernadette" my blog is ranked 5th and my web site is 8th. I know that Bernadette is not a very common name, but I find it very hard to believe how high my sites rank for searches on it.

I take it as a sign of kismet that the #1 listing is the Four Tops song, Bernadette, which my father used to sing to me all the time. That the #2 listing is for Saint Bernadette, whom I was named for. And that the #3 listing is for Bernadette Yao, the famed Bernadette who opened each episode of ZOOM doing the crazy arm thing.

As I mentioned, Bernadette is not a common name. I have lived a life bereft of name keychains or coffee mugs or other such trinkets from tourist gift shops. So for me, as a child, it was a matter of great importance that there was actually a girl named Bernadette on ZOOM, which was my FAVORITE television program.

I even remember how to do the arm thing... just ask me the next time you see me.

Anthology Call for Submissions of "Ecopoetry"

2008-06-13T13:17:00.003-04:00

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

EARTH'S BODY: AN ECOPOETRY ANTHOLOGY

Coeditors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street are soliciting submissions for an international anthology of ecopoetry. Their working definition of "ecopoetry" includes not only what might be called nature poetry, and not only poetry that focuses on environmental issues, but also experimental poetry--poetry that explores language in its relations with the other-than-human.

They welcome work by emerging as well as established poets -- serious poems, playful poems, poems in open or traditional forms. Depending on limitations of space, they will consider not only short poems but also poems of several pages.

The anthology will include only living poets or poets who were alive as of July 2007, and will include only poems either written in English or already translated into English; for poems not written in English, both the original and the translation must be submitted, and if accepted, both will be published. They will consider work that has been previously published, but the poet (and/or translator) MUST control rights to the work.

The deadline for submissions is DECEMBER 15, 2008.

Please send up to six poems to BOTH Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street. You may send them as email text or by snail mail. If they come as email text, make sure the spacing and lineation travel accurately. THEY WILL NOT OPEN ATTACHMENTS AT THIS TIME. Please also include a short bio and a cover letter, and an SASE for their reply.

Ann Fisher-Wirth
English Department
Bondurant C-135
University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677
afwirth@olemiss.edu

Laura-Gray Street
English Department
2500 Rivermont
Randolph College
Lynchburg, VA 24503
lstreet@randolphcollege.edu

My Interview at BOR

2008-06-02T20:51:00.003-04:00

Just a short note to let you know the Barn Owl Review blog has posted an interview with me as the third in their series of interviews with contributors who have not yet published a full-length poetry collection.

Previous interviewees include Gary McDowell and Jeff Newberry.

Disorienting Myself

2008-06-01T14:01:00.006-04:00

And now I can admit that I've been out of the country on vacation. In Berlin. It seems everyone I know has been to Berlin in the past two months. Okay, well, two people I know. Still...

Aside from a breakdown-inducing 10-hr fiasco on the way home during our layover in Newark, NJ, the trip was wonderful. By the way, I would like to caution everyone to NEVER EVER schedule a trip that connects in Newark. You will never get out alive.

After being delayed and delayed and delayed, my husband & I ended up renting a car at 10pm and driving from Newark to Pittsburgh, where our daughter was having some quality time with Grandma and Zedo. We had lost any faith that we would ever get out of the Newark Liberty Airport unless we took matters into our own hands.

But I digress... the trip was fabulous. I was able to enjoy many lengthy uninterrupted conversations and meals with my husband, read one long novel and two poetry books, took tons of photos, saw some sights I hadn't seen on my previous two trips to the city, and ate far more than I should have, despite burning an extraordinary number of calories walking 10 miles per day.

It was good to finally get home. I even had a journal acceptance waiting for me in my tower of mail!

When I finally fired up the computer at home, I realized how little I missed it while I was gone. See, it's taken me four whole days to blog! I am in summer mode now. Looking forward to taking Frida swimming and to my sister's wedding in a few months.

Oh, and my 40th birthday is a mere 15 days away...

Layin' Low

2008-05-18T09:03:00.004-04:00

As with last year, the month following NaPoWriMo consists of me getting out and enjoying life, reading anything BUT poetry, maintaining the yard, hanging with family and friends, firing up the barbecue, etc. So, I'll be maintaining a low profile for the rest of the month. Catch you all as the summer begins...

Though, I will probably give in to the temptation to read more poetry soon...

Hint: Tschüss

Book Arts at the University of Maine at Machias

2008-05-12T21:07:00.010-04:00

When I was selected as a finalist for The Binnacle's Fourth Annual Ultra-Short Competition, I had no idea the journal's edition featuring competition winners and finalists would emerge as one of the first products of the University of Maine at Machias' new Book Arts program.

The package in my mailbox today had no return address marking and when I opened it, I simply found a lovely presentation box with a picture by Vermeer and the label "The Binnacle Fourth Annual Ultra-Short Edition 2007" on the top. Inside the box was what looks like a small deck of cards, but each card features a different author, with the poem/prose on the card's reverse.

Here's what the front of mine looks like:

Each poet's card features a different tiny crop from the Vermeer image on the edition's cover.

If you're not familiar with The Binnacle's Ultra-Short Competition, it's a FREE literary contest for poetry of 16 lines or less and prose works of 150 words or less. The deadline for this year's competition has passed, but according to one of the cards in my deck, entries will be accepted beginning Jan. 1, 2009, for the Sixth Annual Ultra-Short Competition.

Friday, May 9, Poetry and Music at The Writer's Center

2008-05-06T14:08:00.000-04:00

REMINDER: Get your weekend plans set now!

The Sound of Words: A Scheme to Rock the Writer's Center

Featuring: The Caribbean and 32 Poems Magazine

DATE: Friday, May 9, 2008
TIME: 8 PM
LOCATION: The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815

DESCRIPTION:
32 Poems Magazine, The Caribbean, and the Writer's Center join together to bring you outstanding poetry from Sandra Beasley and Bernadette Geyer and songs from The Caribbean.

Writer's Center http://www.writer.org/

32 Poems http://www.32poems.com/
BLOG: http://blog.32poems.com/

The Caribbean
WEBSITE: http://www.thecaribbeanisaband.com/
LISTEN: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=35735011

Pop-what?

2008-05-01T21:20:00.004-04:00

I confess ... I google my name every so often. But this just goes to show you never know what you'll find when you do a search on your own name.

I am a character on Popmundo.

It is a strange coincidence to find someone using my name as a fictional character for an international online roleplaying game in which characters vie to become pop stars.

Apparently, I'm a backup singer for an awful pop band called TARKAN Tevetoglu, despite my "skills" being listed as superior for singing, stagediving, catwalking, and breakdancing. Oh, and I have a lover who wears leather chaps and is a terrible dancer (well, wearing leather chaps, what do you expect?). I've written three songs: "Mastic Bride", "Feel My Heart Bitch" and "Flyin Butterfly."

Damn, now I'm going to have to keep checking in at Popmundo to see how my namesake is doing...

May Day

2008-05-01T20:01:00.003-04:00

I've updated the list at the right to reflect the final poem title added to my list of NaPoWriMo drafts. 36 poems in 30 days, not counting a handful of half-drafts. Whew. Thanks to all of you who stopped by throughout the month to offer encouragement.

Today, as a break from poem-ing, I wrote a book review during Frida's nap. The new issue of berniE-zine is a bit behind and I want to get that up and running within the week.

I feel really positive about a lot of the poems that came out of this month's creative fury. I look back at some of the titles and realize I don't even remember what the poem is about. During the course of the month I finished one notebook and started a brand new one.

I actually managed to be inspired 95 percent of the time with a subject from which to write. In cases where no subject leapt to mind, a couple of lists of "prompts" usually helped me shake some words loose from my pen.

May will involve a lot of typing out of drafts, sorting them into piles of which I want to deal with urgently, which have promise but need more work, and which have stealable lines or ideas that could best be handled by starting fresh.

But for now, it's back to reviewing...

Final Day of NaPoWriMo

2008-04-30T07:58:00.005-04:00

So... today is the last day of NaPoWriMo. I will have 4 hours to myself this afternoon while Frida's grandmother plays with her. Yesterday's poems came out of the two in-class exercises I assigned a class of 5th graders I taught through Arlington County's Pick-a-Poet Program, which places poets in public schools to teach 1-hr workshops. Over the course of this spring, I taught 13 classes. Whew. But it was a lot of fun. The most challenging part of each class was the Q&A at the end when students asked the difficult questions like "What's the hardest part about being a poet?" or "How can you tell something is a poem?"

One of the exercises was to pick an object in the room and write from the viewpoint of the object. I like to do the exercises, too, and here's what I came up with. They gave me a standing ovation for this. Ah, so impressionable. This poem will self-destruct in 24-hours:

Said the Homeroom Globe

*poof*

NaPoWriMo -- The Home Stretch

2008-04-28T13:17:00.003-04:00

I distributed my monthly newsletter for a client this morning, so now I can focus on the home stretch of NaPoWriMo. It's been a crazy month. I started off strong and then had to slack off a little this weekend while working on writing that actually puts food on the table and gas in the car.

Hope all you other NaPoWriMo-ites are still at it... Get ready to come up for air!

LOC Reading with Mark Strand and Charles Wright

2008-04-25T19:49:00.004-04:00

Living in the exiles of suburbia, it's not often that I get a chance to attend poetry readings, but I pledged to go to at least one reading during National Poetry Month, and I sure picked a good one to go to.

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a reading at the Library of Congress. Charles Simic introduced his two long-time friends, the poets Mark Strand and Charles Wright. I enjoyed the fraternal banter, including Simic's remembrances of the publication of early books by both friends.

I had recently seen Strand read poems at the AWP conference in New York City and was glad for the opportunity to see him again. He has a very disarming manner and is quite charming in his introductions to poems as well as just general commentary. But it's hearing him read his own poems that is captivating. Strand uses touches of humor and surrealism to great effect and one can really tell that this is a man who loves words, who loves telling stories, and who truly enjoys the process of writing. I was especially glad to hear him read "The Dirty Hand," which I had included in a reading of my own at the Library of Congress on the theme of "obsessions". Poets who read in the Library of Congress' Poetry at Noon Series read three poems on the theme by other poets and two of their own poems. I distinctly remember how I read it, and I was very pleased to discover that my own reading of it was not far off Strand's own.

Seeing Charles Wright read was also a pleasure. I'd read two of his books but nothing really can compare to hearing that lovely southern inflection in his voice. Another disarming reader, Wright also incorporates humor in his poems to wonderful effect, even though he commented that he's not sure if anyone else finds humor in the poems he wrote to be humorous.

During the reception, I ran into so many friends and colleagues I had not seen in ages and returned home completely rejuvinated. Sigh. As NaPoWriMo winds down I am feeling good about what I've accomplished this month and look forward to the editing in months to come.

After a nice little creative break...

A Poem for Earth Day

2008-04-22T09:40:00.004-04:00

Despite all the newspaper headlines proclaiming that Earth Day is dead and meaningless, I choose this day to celebrate the nature around me. And so, here is a poem by Dana Gioia, from the Bread Loaf Anthology Poems for a Small Planet: Contemporary American Nature Poetry, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini.

BECOMING A REDWOOD

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,

And all the other life too small to name.
First one, then another, until innumerable
they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.

Yes, it's hard to stand still , hour after hour,
fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers
snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.

And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone
can bear to be a stone, the pain
the grass endures breaking through the earth's crust.

Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,
rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall
and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.

The old windmill creaks in perfect time
to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,
and the last farmhouse light goes off.

Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt
these hills and packs of feral dogs.
But standing here at night accepts all that.

You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,
moving more slowly than the crippled stars,
part of themoonlight as the moonlight falls,

Part of the grass that answers the wind,
part of the midnight's watchfulness that knows
there is no silence but when danger comes.

Conversation While Eating Yogurt

2008-04-17T10:41:00.003-04:00

"Mommy, I like your head."

"Well thank you!"

"Mommy, you like my head?"

"Yes, I like your head very much."

"I can't take my head off" (tries to lift head off neck) "It's stuck."

"Honey, you're not supposed to be able to take your head off. It's supposed to be there."

"I can't do it." (sulks, pouting)

"Maybe when you're older you'll be able to." (this is my response to most things she says she can't do...)

"Yeah. When I get older I take my head off. Mommy, when you get older, you take your head off?"

"Yes. When I get older I'll be able to take my head off."

This Week's NaPoWriMo Inspirations

2008-04-17T09:45:00.005-04:00

It's been a rough week, what with Peter in Vegas on business until today. But, I've taken advantage of the time to really get some good NaPoWriMo drafts done. This week's inspirations:

24 hrs - inspired by how long it takes me to clean the house to my liking after Peter leaves for a trip
Corpse Pose - inspired by a Yoga video I watched
Sudden Memory series - inspired by a poem I read by Matthew Guenette called "Sudden Anthem" in a back issue of Passages North ... I was trying to see how tersely I could record a memory while still having the poem convey all the necessary information to the memory

What's inspiring you this month?

Upcoming Poetry Walking Tours in DC

2008-04-13T13:01:00.004-04:00

Thanks to Norma Broadwater of the Goethe-Institute for the following notice. These look like extraordinary events to attend. It is fascinating to have the Goethe-Institute located in the Chinatown section of DC, and really wonderful that the Institute is linking Chinese-German-American poetic experiences through these upcoming events.

---------------------------

“Time Shadows,” a neighborhood collaboration presenting German, Chinese and American poetry in shop windows in Washington, DC’s historic Chinatown and on “Chinatown buses,” brings the poetry and Washington, DC history to life during two free guided tours this spring. The tour information is attached and below. More information on Time Shadows, including all the poems, can be viewed at www.timeshadows.org.

A Walk Into the Past: Illuminating the Invisible
Sunday, April 27, 1 – 2:30 pm
Meet at the Goethe-Institut
Poems from China, Germany and the US reveal the finite nature of existence, and suggest how individuals respond to being confined by time and space. Using the US Census and other fragments of historical knowledge, and the poems which were written over 1200 years, local historian and guide Alice Stewart will explore the 19th and 20th century experiences of Chinese and German immigrants downtown. Poets will read aloud April’s German, Chinese and American poems in their native languages and accompanying translations.
Organized as part of Walkingtown DC, a weekend of free walking tours: www.WalkingTownDC.org

Three Cultures Meet in Downtown's Chinatown
Monday, May 12, 6:30 – 8 pm
Meet at the Goethe-Institut
This tour will begin by viewing the Goethe-Institut’s exhibition “Interior Views: Photographic Explorations of the European Parliament.” From there, local historian and guide Alice Stewart will conduct a tour visiting the poetry displays of Time Shadows. Along the way, she will offer insights into German, Chinese and American history and about some of the individuals who contributed to this very cosmopolitan neighborhood. Poets will read aloud May’s German, Chinese and American poems in their native languages and accompanying translations.

Organized as part of Passport DC, celebrating Washington’s international flair: www.PassportDC.org

These walking tours and the Time Shadows project are organized in cooperation with the Chinatown Community Cultural Center.

Planting the Herbs

2008-04-11T13:25:00.004-04:00

This morning, Frida "helped" me plant cilantro, rosemary, sage, lemon thyme and tarragon. Oh the smells! I could eat herbs by the handfull... can't wait to start harvesting them.

I've been perusing Armitage's Garden Perennials: A Color Encyclopedia, checking out plants I may want to get for our yard. Of course, that inspired today's NaPoWriMo poem: Questions for Flowers. Not one of my best, but fun nonetheless.