Because Nature.

Southern Magnolia

Lemon-scented goodness!!

Native Magnolia

Hello My Loves,

Sweet Bay Magnolia

It's getting more like Springtime every day, here in beautiful, downtown Midland, and there are so many plants blooming in the backyard. We have a Southern Magnolia, with the dark glossy leaves that are fuzzy underneath and the big saucers of lemon-scented goodness. We have some sort of native little booger that has glossy, light green leaves and isn't blooming yet, and then we have the Sweet Bay--aka, swamp magnolias--diminutive teacup flowers with the most glorious perfume of lemon and jasmine. And then there's the actual Jasmine, which releases her scent at dusk. It is a scent of sweetness and melancholy and allure, that you wouldn't expect from a blossom so white and demure. There is a reason that Southern writers are so often reflective and dreamy. They are lost in a reverie of flowers. Because along with all of these fragrant beauties, this Spring, we've seen lemon lilies blooming and the purple and gold iris and both white and coral azaleas and even orange squash blossoms out of the compost heap. The morning glories are starting to wind their way around our moss-covered, warped wood fence, next to the tiny pink-yellow blossoms of the lantana, that self-seeded from our neighbors' yard. It's all rounded out by the pink abelia and lorapetalum flowers on the shrubs that line the yard.

Abelia

I don't know if you can tell, but I love flowers. I mean, LOVE, flowers. I haven't even gotten to the sunshine-colored daylilies by the mailbox or the coconutty, perfumed perfection of the creeping gardenia by the front door. When I was four, I named my first dog--a shaggy gray Old English Sheepdog/Black Lab--Tulip. Since then, we've had Daffodil, a golden mix, and Pepper Daisy, a shepherd/corgi mix, and an orange kitty cat named Marigold. In fact, we nicknamed our daughter after a flower.

But why? Why am I so enamored with flowers? As a child, I loved the beautiful Victorian flower fairies and I imagined meeting them under toadstools and in the kind of scary, spider -filled playhouse in our backyard in Silver Spring. Even the patio, with it's ant-filled stump and hollyhocks and glads shooting up along the fence, and the brick patio, shaded by a giant, old fir tree,where I remember discussing the merits of ketchup or mustard or mayo on a freshly grilled hamburger, was the perfect place to find a stray fairy.

Jasmine

Then we moved to the farm, and I could walk along the creek and find the stinky-when-crushed skunk cabbage and a wayward lilypad and moss-covered rocks under a giant-leafed sycamore, like the one where we scattered some of my Dad's ashes. There were ferns with their ancient, spotty spores on the underside of their chartreuse leaves and pitcher plants waiting for junebugs and mosquitoes. I could walk in the woods in Winter and see the beautiful silver-barked birches and the craggy oaks and the leaves of the trees and wonder, truly, if a tree fell in the forest, did anybody hear? I did. Once. It was a small tree and it was LOUD. I can't imagine if a giant, old oak fell in the woods. It would have been deafening.

In the Winter,  when it snowed, the forest where I lived was silent, aside from my own footsteps. The birds had fled South, where I now live, and the animals were tucked up in trees and underground, waiting to hear the first,  grating croaks of the bullfrogs that lived at the edge of the very murky pond by the amphitheater where so many calico print- and flower-bedecked couples were married. Flowers are in my blood. I love to be in Nature. I am not a fan of mosquitoes, of course, and I might have a bee phobia, but I love to be surrounded by leaves and green and quiet and heavenly-scented flowers. I love the lushness of Spring and the scarcity of Winter. God's glory is represented in every Season.

I worry that the future will bring destruction to the luxury of Nature. I wonder what would happen if we all took a day to revel in the wonder of nature, be it animal, vegetable or mineral? How can we encourage each other to feel more connected to the world we've been given? How can we feel compelled to protect her?

Look. Smell. Listen. Feel.

Love,
Corks

Internet Malaise **decidedly political(I yam what I yam)**

Oh friends,

I had the day off today and I spent too much time with the internet. It made me sad. Because what I read and saw was all about unkindness. I read about the AFA (American Family Association)sending men into Target's women's bathrooms to prove a point(what point, I'm not sure) and how 1.5 million people had signed onto a boycott all because Target said people can use the bathroom where they feel most comfortable. Target didn't say people are welcome to commit crimes in bathrooms. They said "be who you are" to people who haven't always had that luxury. And I can't understand why someone would want to make life harder for someone who has suffered to become who they feel they need to become(please don't start telling me about people who marry goats or plastic dolls, those are sensationalist stories told to distract), but clearly many do.

Next, I watched a video that shows a woman berating a man who is buying food for his family at a Wal-mart with food stamps. She tells him that she is paying for his food with her tax money and she doesn't want to--while his toddler sits in the shopping cart in front of him. On the video, it doesn't show any bystanders telling her to knock it off or interrupting her, just this obnoxious woman and the man doing what it takes to feed his kid, trying to defend himself. I wondered why someone didn't ask her if she knew that often soldiers' families have to use food stamps to make ends meet?  Or ask what happened to her empathy? Or at least ask her "WWJD?"*

Stupidly, I read the comments on articles talking about Malia Obama's admission to Harvard. So many of them implied that she would never have gotten into Harvard were it not for her race, and that somehow it was easier for her to get in. Some merely talked about her race in the most base and vulgar terms.  And many questioned whether she would have gotten in if Barack Obama hadn't won the Presidency in 2008. Who knows? Why would her ability be questioned? Her parents are Harvard grads, she's gone to the best schools, and she has had a unique experience as a participant in big history headlines. What school wouldn't want her? These hateful comments prove once again what so many of us have thought since 2008--that we had been pretending that we were a postracial society--when racism is still alive and well and seething with rage. And as many times as I remind myself that

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”--MLK

I wonder if we are going to last until the arc arcs? Our society's unkindness seems to know no bounds. We offer no empathy to those who suffer misfortune, whether it's at the hands of others or their own. We hide the sick and the slow, we cut off the needy and the infirm, we scorn those who are mentally ill or drug-addicted. And we celebrate Donald Trump, who promises to give power to people who feel powerless, but it's the falsest promise of all time. Donald Trump didn't become Donald Trump by sharing the power, but Barack Obama did.  That's what really scares people. And scared people have a hard time with empathy. They are thinking about fight or flight or they are paralyzed and they can't think at all. So what do we do, to start recognizing our shared humanity? How do you feel compassion for a father using food stamps or a girl going to college or people who just want to use the bathroom without a fight? How do I learn compassion for those that pick fights with the downtrodden or denigrate good people? I think it takes kindness--just a smile and a gentle reminder to walk in each others' shoes for a ways. It's going to take a long time, like MLK said, but maybe, someday, we'll meet each other at the bend.

Be sweet, y'all. 

Love,  

Corks

*Hey 90's, I missed you.