“Blue flower, red thorns! Blue flower, red thorns!
Blue flower, red thorns!
Oh, this would be so much easier if I wasn’t color-blind!”
Donkey, Shrek
Monthly Archives: April 2008
Small but Great and Noble
Dame’s Rocket
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks
as if they were great and noble.”
Helen Keller, 1880-1968
deafblind American author, activist, and lecturer
Goodness
Bellwort or Merrybell
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
American author, naturalist, philosopher
Best known for “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience”
Self-Acceptance
Spotted Mandarin
“I learned that true forgiveness includes total self-acceptance.
And out of acceptance wounds are healed
and happiness is possible again.”
Catharine Marshall, 1914-1983
Born in Johnson City, Tennessee
Author of Christy (1967)
Places to Play and Pray
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
John Muir, 1838-1914
One of first modern preservationists
Founder, Sierra Club
Earth’s Humor
Faith
Red Dogwood
“Faith is to believe what you do not yet see;
the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.”
St. Augustine, 354-430
Theologian
Plug On
“Don’t bother about genius. Don’t worry about being clever.
Trust to hard work, perseverance and determination.
And the best motto for a long march is, ‘Don’t grumble. Plug on!’”
Sir Frederick Treves, 1853-1923
British surgeon
Endure
Tulip
“It helps, I think, to consider ourselves on a very long journey:
the main thing is to keep to the faith, to endure, to help each other
when we stumble or tire, to weep and press on.”
Mary Caroline Richards
Eloquence
Nature Remains
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics,
conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these
finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains?
Nature remains.”
Walt Whitman, 1819-1892
American poet
Be Interested
Chickweed
“Nothing is interesting if you’re not interested.”
Helen MacInness, 1907-1985
Scottish-American author of espionage novels
Scope
“What would be left of our tragedies
if an insect were to present us his?”
Emile M. Cioran, 1911-1995
Romanian philosopher and essayist
Thrilled to the Edges
Yellow Trout Lilly
“If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges
of your soul by a flower in spring bloom,
maybe your soul has never been in bloom.”
Audra Foveo
A Rainy Lullaby
A shy Trillium in the rain
“Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967
April Rain Song
The Grandmother I Never Knew
Viola, commonly called a Violet
“Every [woman] is a quotation from all [her] ancestors.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
REFLECTIONS
I never knew my maternal grandmother because she died from uterine cancer when my own mother was a teenager. Her name was Viola and I often think of her when I look at the violets blooming each spring. I sometimes wonder — am I like her in any way? Do I have her eyes? Her freckles? Her talents or her personality? I already know that my paternal grandparents, who lived with us as I grew up, get credit (perhaps a little bit of blame occasionally) for so much of who I am. But what about Viola?
I know she was a good seamstress, making all of my mom and aunts’ clothes. O.k., so I didn’t get that from her. Despite my mom’s best attempts, I still don’t know how to sew on a button. I know Viola (what would I have called her? Granny? Grandma? Grandmother?) was a good cook…(well, all except the green jello salad my mom and aunt still insist on making for family holidays). And so I probably didn’t get that from her either.
She must have been an independent and determined woman, and so perhaps I can thank her for that! She lost the use of her left arm to spinal meningitis as a young child but my mom said it never slowed her down one bit and she was always active, involved, and dedicated to her family. She didn’t wait around for others to do things for her — she figured them out and did them on her own.
She grew up and lived all her life in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. And so through her, I am an Appalachian. In the 1930s, she attended Milligan College in Northeast Tennessee. My aunts later followed in her footsteps at Milligan, and so when it was time for me to select a college, Milligan was my natural choice. It felt like home. It still feels like home, as it has become my daily mission and passion for the past 14 years.
I never knew Viola, but I know the three daughters she raised. And so I seem to know her. She raised strong, beautiful, creative, intelligent, caring, and independent daughters. Each has played a very special role in my life — my dear mother, my Aunt Pat, and my Aunt Roberta/”Toby” (who passed away 15 years ago) — and through them I glimpse what she must have been like, for she helped create and mold them. And I think I have some characteristics of each of them, and so therefore I must be like her, too. I like that.
Grandmother Viola, thank you for your part in who I am.
Madness in Spring
Sweetest Spring
Field of Violets deep in the woods
“It is the sweetest spring within the memory of man.
So green, so mild, so beautiful!
Ah, what a contrast between nature without
and my own soul so torn with doubt and terror!”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930
There Will Be More
“That is one good thing about this world. . .
there are always sure to be more springs.”
Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1874-1942
Anne of Avonlea (1909)
(If you’re an Anne of Green Gables fan,
click here for a fun video montage of Anne & Gilbert)
Own Your Days
Red Dogwood at Mountain Home V.A., Johnson City
“You have got to own your days and live them,
each one of them, every one of them,
or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you.”
Herb Gardner, 1934-2003
Cartoonist and screenwriter
As Simple As Possible
Foamflower at Lower Higgins Creek
“Everything should be made as simple as possible…
but not simpler.”
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
Winner of 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics
Not All Bad
Rue Anemone
“If you don’t get everything you want,
think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.”
Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900
Irish playwright, novelist, poet
Day Before
Tulip buds
“We learn something every day, and lots of times
it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.”
Bill Vaughan, 1915-1977
Columnist and author
Count Not the Tears
Underground Dreams
Rock Creek Park, Erwin
“When your dreams tire, they go underground
and out of kindness that’s where they stay.”
Libby Houston
