The Rains of Ranchipur Recalled

For the last month central Oklahoma has received 12.5 " of rain, the most rain recorded in April since 1942 and May is by all accounts our rainiest month!  (Update: May 6 between midnight and noon we've received another 1 1/2" of rain.) All records have been broken and ten of those inches fell during my flower planting season. Our home sits on a slight decline, not a mountain which slides into the river, which translates to our famous clay soil sucking up the rain and keeping the ground squishy.  It also causes plants to wilt and drown from too much water, but it does not cause earthquakes.

Wilted perennials sitting in rain soaked clay, mud. 

 

Only droughts in Oklahoma cause the ground to split wide open, revealing baked red clay. 

Two weeks ago, with my never call it quits attitude I dug my first hole for the Purple Salvia. Water, not black oil, bubbled up and laughed at me.  Then it began to rain for days on end.

1900 spring rains in Norman, Ok before University Blvd was paved. 

My sister and I share a memory that we often recall during stormy seasons and heavy rains. Only a phone call away we recount the color of the skies before the storms, how high did the water rise, how many minutes or hours have we been hovered under a storm, what yard furniture was destroyed, windows broken, trees fallen or roofs peeled back. We talk in descriptions like yellowish green skies before the storm, howling winds, thunderous booms from lightning and pelting rains, but we didn't laugh when we were little children. 

One dreary winter day back in the last century when the Ford Thunderbird owned the road, when families watched black and white TV shows like "Gunsmoke", Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "I Love Lucy", and "The $64,000 Question" two little girls walked to the Coleman Theatre in Miami, Oklahoma to watch a movie called "The Rains of Ranchipur." 

With money enough to buy a large dill pickle each, we found cushioned seats toward the front of the grand theatre. Sitting under the large chandelier imagining royalty sitting in the two balcony wings we felt rich.

It didn't take long for the movie to go from a boring romance to torrents of rain upon rain until the earth began to move and shake causing massive craters in the earth's surface right in front of us. We screamed when we saw people running and falling into the abyss. The cracks became crevices and then ravines of raging water and death traps. We tried to stop the people in the movie with our directions, "No, don't go across the bridge. No, don't run blindly down the streets, they might open and swallow you!"  

Then suddenly the  mountains gave way, the dam broke, trees and buildings all washed in violent waves down the river busting the bridge wide open and sending people to their deaths. Someone in the movie we liked must have fallen into the river at that point, because I remember us crying. 

When we stepped out into the Saturday afternoon daylight cold rains just shy of icy pellets were pouring down,.  We stood under the Marquee in hopes that our mother may have paid attention to the weather and rescue her little girls from the long walk home.  With the blaring moo cow horn we saw our mother parked up the street waiting to take her girls home and any neighbors we saw along the way. Our bodies crawled into the station wagon and held each others hand. 

To this day I don't recall any of the plot even though great names like Lana Turner, Michael Rennie, and Fred McMurray starred in the show. If anything, the movie has sealed the relationship between two sisters. It has been our benchmark on a deluge of rain, and it does rain in Oklahoma most often in dramatic fashion. 

The security for us was that we didn't live in India, so of course, what happened in the movie wouldn't happen in Oklahoma.  For years the term earthquake brought brought back visuals in black and white of people screaming as they fell into the earth's innards.

When our family bought a set of 1959 World Book Encyclopedia's I earmarked page 2168 on earthquakes. It reads: Earthquakes are among the most terrible things that can happen on earth. They have toppled huge cities and started great first, killing thousands of persons. They have started tidal waves that have swept up cities on seacoasts. Sometimes the earth itself splits open. (I think perhaps that statement created more fear than the movie.) 

Seventy years later an internet description reads: An earthquake is a sudden shaking of the Earth's surface caused by the release of energy in the Earth's crust. Not nearly as terrifying as the WBE in the 1950's.  

This weekend the sun is shining. I will gather my tools and my flat of flowers to plant before more rain returns on Tuesday. For two older and wiser women we will not drive into water on the roads, nor do we worry about earthquakes, but we do take cover from tornadoes. 

FLUMMOXED

 

Our elevated garden under the Birch tree is a delight for me and 
the upkeep is simple because the soil is not clay.

Our four front yard gardens vary in degrees of stress and beauty. Consequently, my brain is completely flummoxed and my body is weary. My platter and palette are full: rounds of golf with friends, books to read and discuss, walks to take with Jack and Murphy, time to read, furniture to be painted, stories to write, research to continue, naps to take, time with family and friends, and meals to fix. Then there is the house to clean and clothes to wash. 

Nothing new in my life, except that as I grow older my desire to create and play is still strong, my back and joints are not.

The wilted stalks will produce the "naked ladies" 
sometime in July. Thanks to fertilizer we grow
daises and lilies three feet tall. 

This spring I planted the last few perennials in our front garden to showcase our elevated addition to the flower bed. The End.

I imagined that slowly year by year the garden would grow and be less demanding, giving me more time to relax. I imagined less gardening and less pain in my hamstrings from bending and pulling.

If only the Sweet Woodruff had not drown in wet clay, if only
we had dug up all of the clay in the garden eight years ago,
if only we had elevated the garden. I am quite sure on a warm
 sunny day I will come up with a plan. 

The rains came and gave our trees, bushes, and grasses a new life. They also drowned my new perennials. Yearly, I am reminded that I no longer live on rich black Kansas soil. Our Oklahoma clay retains water, thus saturating my plants and leaving me perplexed as to what to do next. Now I have another project on my list.

While the grasses and weeds were growing this spring, my bookcase, hand made by a music teacher in 1979, looked at me one day and said, “I need to be cleaned up and given a new life.”

One more coat or maybe
the darker yellow?

“Sunshine,” I told the bookcase, “we need more sunshine in our playroom/computer room/atelier.”

“Atelier?” the bookcase replied, “You have never called me that.”

“No,” I explained, “You cover the wall in the room where I write, color, draw, and dream. I think that makes this room a studio or atelier.”

“By all means paint me yellow and watch me enjoy how I brighten our studio. Please don’t call our room an atelier. It sounds old and dusty.”

Selecting the color that works in a soft green room is not easy, and timing is everything. After much thought and way too many yellow paint chips to view, I made a decision to purchase two quarts of various tones of yellow paint. Within a day of moving the bookcase to the garage, our three week rains began and progress slowed dramatically.  Having the bookcase back in the studio by the end of May is the plan. Meanwhile, the books are scattered over the bed and down the floor line, leaving me confounded when I walk into the disarray.

The last time I painted furniture it didn’t bother my wrists and shoulders, it didn’t leave my shoulder throbbing, nor did it affect my golf game. Thank heavens for Aleve.

Meanwhile, one of our other gardens grows Nutsedge and a wild spreading violet, which is beautiful when in the correct space, but a nuisance as it spreads its dainty heart shaped leaves where I don’t want them. Bending and searching for roots I can rid the garden of nutsedge with the herbicide specifically to kill nutsedge. As for the violets, the directions say wait till fall to kill the plant or dig, dig, dig…..What to do? 

How to get rid of Wild Violets

I would rather write. Sitting here I can watch the birds at the feeder, people walking by, children on bicycles and skateboards, the irises that have bloomed, yellow day lilies in bloom, purple salvia, and rabbit’s ears covered with purple stalks of color and surrounded by bees. I like sitting here. It doesn't cause me any pain. 

Our ceramic bunny lost his ears over the years. The lizard is covered with salvia, and the ground cover wound its way through the Never Die, sedum. 

A break in our day as we met Leah Jackson for lunch at Baguette. 

Time has passed and I have yellow on my hands from giving the bookcase another coat of paint. I opened Facebook and read that it has been 58 years since the Class of 65 graduated from Miami High School. Hum, that may be why it’s not so easy to work on all of my projects.

Later,  I will return to the studio and continue the research on the Miami Golf and Country club 1963 (Miami Golf and Country club, History )

Tomorrow is filled with a round of golf with friends. I love life. 

For more gardening stories click on these links:

Life as a Perennial

Twenty Minute Gardening

Reflections on a Rainy Summer Sunday

Dahlia or a Covid model ?

Something happened to my brain last year during the COVID Restrictions, but I cannot pinpoint the problem. It seems that I have no distinguishing markers as to what happened, when it happened, or did it happen last year. It honestly take a village to recall if we participated in an event, when, where or why. We draw blanks. *

White iris at night, inspire by Linda Hoye's photography.

I follow blogger, Linda Hoye from Western Canada who writes daily. Once a week she reflects with her  Friday's Fave Five . Each week I read that thinking, I need to do that, "but then" I don't.

This week friends, Manon Bradbury and Victor Kubbeh, from La Quinta, California visited us. On Monday we were rained out of our golfing tee time, and much to my delight we chose to visit the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. My desire to walk through museums and feel the artwork far outweighs my desire to play golf on rainy or cold days. Today, I realized that I didn't want to forget that day with my friends. I didn't want a year to pass and look back on my memories from 2021 and draw a blank. 

That was one classy stagecoach. 

The Cowboys drew my attention as Victor, Manon, Jack and I roamed our separate directions seeing perspectives, colors, fifty shades of white, shapes, textures, and forms coming to life differently for each of us. 

  As I roamed and wandered I noticed a man standing in the hallway, dressed like a cowboy but not joining the people. I turned to look down the hallway toward the man and his dog when I realized it was a painting. The painting had come to life and the man looked real enough to take the step out of the door. The dog more hesitant,smart dog.

TWO'S COMPANY, oil on canvas by Duane Bryers

I like colorful moments, and mesmerizing memories, the sounds of laughter and birds, the feel of cool spring rains and hot summer days.

My garden is coming back to life, and I am rearranging as it grows. The purple and blue irises planted seven years ago have outgrown their space.  This week I dug them up, weeds and all, and gave them away.  The tree lost to the ice storm took out my shade plants, but new ideas grow there now. My weekly hours in the garden are paying off. 

The older I feel, the more I plant Never-dies and other perennials in my garden. 

The M T place behind the stone is for my Surprise Lilies to return. 

Last year's canvas (from March 17, 2020--May 15, 2021)  is nearly blank, but for the vivid memory of leaving Manon's home and driving to the Palm Springs airport. In downtown Palm Springs we finally found an open restaurant on March 17, 2020. There I also discovered a statue of a friendly mayor, Sonny Bono, sitting by himself. No tourists except three of us. Where had all the people gone? What hijacked our lives? 

Good-bye Sonny Bono, good-bye Covid's blank. 
March 17, 2020, Palm Springs, Ca. 

I am looking forward to weekly reflections and the stories in between. 

* Footnote: To Libby, my friend who does not cuss on the golf course, but instead says "blank" with frustration when she hits a bad shot. "Please use rats or frats instead of blank" because each time I say that my mind is a blank, I think I hear you cuss "blank." Take pity on the brain that does not travel like a driver on the Interstate, but instead loops around the long way....

.

I LOVE LIVING

Fall trees at Dillon Nature Center, Hutchinson, Ks. 

We met that fall morning in the parking lot outside the hospital. She reached in her trunk to pull out a basket of scrape booking materials. "Would you like some help with the basket?" I asked.  

"No, I'm fine today. Thank you." With a heavy breathe she continued, "I may not feel this good after the treatment today. The days get really long for me."  

My heart took a double beat with her heavy sigh. Here she was smiling and looking at the sunlight. With a joyous expression on her face and a glisten in her eyes, she looked around at the hospital complex, of concrete, bricks, and asphalt, and then the sky. "I love living, Letty. I don't want to die." 

I LOVE LIVING

"So do I, Sue. I love living." But the words stayed on my tongue. I wasn't strong enough to repeat her words. I knew her cancer was more serious than we wanted to acknowledge, and I cried inside for her. For her zest for life. For her abundance of joy that she spread to all around her. For her family and selfishly, for me.

Prairie Dunes Country Club, Hutchinson, Kansas

It was a cold January and we were celebrating our sixtieth birthdays at Prairie Dunes. Sue was a friend who laughed like I did when it came to telling stories about plucking hair from our cheeks our round table of women took turns topping each others stories about aging, and asking over and over 'what next.' We laughed especially hard over the long black hairs that hung from our chins. Gads! you could see the look of agony as personal stories flashed through our minds of chin hairs. The next time it was the pitiful stories of shaving our mustaches for the first time.

Here we were at sixty trying to laugh out loud at our new 'old' bodies. Month by month we poked fun at our fragilities from puffy eye bags to sparse eyebrows; from wrinkles to 'wisdom spots' on our faces and arms.  

The friends all joined in the laughter with stories. "Ladies," one woman who confessed to being older than sixty placed her arm on the table, rolled up her blousy sleeve and continued, "This is why we wear long sleeve blouses all year long." Then she curiously rolled her skin back and forth using her index finger. She even went on to show us how she could pinch and pull up loose skin. We snorted we laughed so hard. I think it was after that story that the club gave us space to gather away from the lunch crowd. 

Perhaps we had shared a bottle of wine or beer at the luncheon that day. We seemed louder and funnier than ever, when Sue dropped her voice, gathered our attention and then pointed at her chin. "Look. Look at me." In silence we looked. "See."  She pointed to a camel colored mole, then she began to wisp two white hairs back and forth. Her cackle erupted, "I have become a HAG and I'll pull your little hairs out one by one."  Our table roared with laughter. We loved to be in her audience.

WE LOVE LIFE.

Months passed. Things happened.

I often arrived to sit with Sue on Wednesday afternoons for a couple of hours.  Sometimes I helped her paste things into her scrape book for her children. Other times we shared our joys, sorrows, funny moments we experienced from golfing with other women, all told with a desire to share our lives and love for living. We still played golf on warm summer days. We saw hope on the horizon.   

Prairie Dunes Country Club, Hutchinson, Ks. 

On a late spring day, I walked her to the car to say our evening good-byes. Tears I'd never seen before began to flow. Catching her breathe between sobs she said, "Here. I have to show you something." I watched closely as she put her basket in the car and pulled out a plastic sack. Shaking and crying she reached inside and pulled out an object that looked like a prop from a HALLOWEEN movie. It was a brownish toned mask with tiny holes along the forehead and down one side to the ear. 

It was my turn to gasp and catch my breathe. Holding the mask away from her like a dead animal she sobbed, "The cancer has metastasized in my brain. They told me that I now have to come back for radiation."  I reached for a hug. As she rested her head on my shoulder, she sobbed, "I don't want to wear that mask. It's dark. It's ugly. I don't want sting rays shooting through my head." We cried. 

At last she sobbed, "I just want to live. Doesn't God know that I LOVE LIVING?"

I don't remember being able to come up with words of encouragement. I do remember we continued to share what we loved best about living, to the point that we compared our crooked toes right there in the room full of patients all receiving chemo. 

Sue Wagler

January 23, 1948 - September 03, 2010

Surprise Lilies by night 

Dear Sue, 

I hear your words "I love to Live. I love living," ringing in my head these days. I noticed out my window that a few bulbs are reaching up through the cold mantle of earth. Our perennials. Sue, you are my shining example of a Perennial. I pray that I may never forget how much joy living brings us. Did I ever tell you that I LOVE LIVING, too?

A View of Life as a Perennial

Click on this link to read another story about living and loving life as a Perennial. 

A View of Life as a Perennial

Thank you readers for your responses to my last blog, 

Look out Millennials—
We’re still here – the Perennials.  

I replied to their emails with a simple question, which perennial might you be?

Marilyn's response to being a perennial reads, "I am probably a daisy--I like yellow and white--perky, uplifting, energetic. (The flower, not me--lol.)  Like you, I have a funny story about aging and teaching. I was filling in for a teacher at Hutch High. One class was all freshman, mostly girls. I spent extra time with a girl who just needed to talk. Just before they left, she told me, 'When I get old I hope I'm skinny, just like you!' Hilarious!"  

Indeed as perennials we have much to laugh about.  

Judy replied, "When I saw the pictures of the Iris  

I went down the memory freeway to mom. She raised Irises for the fair each year, and knew all the names and colors of the flowers.  I guess I would be an Aster that blooms in the fall, lives in the desert and  other climates and is purple."

Vicki said, "I am an Iris and enjoying this stage of life most of all."  While Nancy responded with, "I love the Iris, but the Naked Ladies always amaze me and I love their name, too!"

Mexican Petunia

While wandering off on a color tangent of favorite flowers, I chuckled. thinking that my sister, Jonya, could be "Mexican Petunia." They are hardy, bloom everyday throughout the warm months, and propagate year to year to fill the garden with color. 




In a whimsy I pictured myself as a yellow-eyed white daisy lightly blowing in the wind, but a peak out the window shifted my focus to a perennial in my garden that has been a part of my life since childhood. My grandmother would cut stems of "never die' from her rock  garden every summer and give them to me to plant at home.  From our childhood home on "H" st. to the farm where my parents moved, the 'never die' plant moved with us.  

On the farm it thrived on the west side of the house even when the Bermuda took over the garden, but on the southeast corner it enjoyed a spectacular life in a rock garden with many rocks and sea shells we collected from our trips.  

As I moved around over the decades I often cut off stems and planted them wherever I lived, never realizing that "never die" was best known as Sedum. The Sedum I planted from Kansas to Texas is best known as "Autumn Joy." 

The Autumn Joy sedum is also an entertainer. Throughout the summer months a green leaf can be squeezed and turned into the appearance of a "frog's tongue" much to the delight of children.  (Directions to follow this summer.)



My  grandmother's naming of the 'never die' plant was close to correct-- it can survive through periods of drought because it stores water in its leaves. Even in the winter it can stand up against the snow and winter winds  while showing another side to its beauty.

As perennials we are learning to accept another side of the beauty of living a long fulling life. 

Look out Millennials

Look out Millennials—

We’re still here – the Perennials.

You may know us as grandparents or Baby Boomers,

But as you can see we’re no longer booming onto the scene.

I only hope and pray that many of you will live this long.

 

Daisies 

Perennials are not the new 40 or 50 as some might wish.

To be honest we are older if not old.

We aspire to age gracefully and contribute to society,

But as perennials we can bloom again and again until the winter is too bitter.

I only hope and pray that many of you will live this long.

After reading this article in the Washington Post,  In Search of a Word,  I smiled and felt invigorated about my age. My eyes were opened to a new metaphor about growing older, and older. I can proudly say that I am a “perennial.” Each day and each season I can begin again, if I care for my body physically and mentally.

Naked ladies or Surprise Lilies 

In my late forties when one of my seventh grade students said that I must be the same age as the math teacher on our team, Mrs. L., I danced a happy step and laughingly replied, “Absolutely.” On our planning period that day, I laughed all the way down the hallway to Mrs. L’s room.  The thirty year old teacher didn’t think the comparison was funny.

In my fifties my back and feet conspired to keep me on the injured and recovering list summer after summer.  Aleve became my ally, our hot tub eased the pain, and I pushed like a thirty year old to play through the pain. Even in my fifties I didn’t have the wisdom to slow down.

Iris

In my sixties, one of my students carefully touched my hands and said, “Your hands look like the old ladies hands in the care home where my mother works.” I stopped breathing for a moment then replied with an empathetic smile, “You’re right. They look like my mother’s hands, and I rather like that.” Inside I felt the tears and smiled in recognition that I was aging. And that's a good thing.