Dandelion Wine, Part III

While it seems strange in retrospect to have made only two batches of dandelion wine last year, this year having found ourselves thrust into the thick of spring activities makes it easy to know why: garden-plot digging and widening, garden-plot weeding, lawn-mowing, seed-planting ...

If dandelions would only flower more conveniently at mid-winter, we would make more of the stuff.

A greenhouse for dandelions ... not a completely irrational idea.

Retrospective accomplishments often seem sparse. Take my writing record: last year my record of publications will always look sparse, in large part because of the twenty-ton monolithic slab of C.M. Kornbluth biography that planted itself there. Comparable to the meagerness of our dandelion-wine production is the slimness of my poetry-publication record last year ... or of my short-fiction publication record ... victims of the ever-more-complex pie-cutting of my active hours ...

And how will this year look? -- especially after adding one more reason for enlarging the daily pie, to make room for this public journalizing, AKA bloggerie? ("Blog, blog, blog," Martha said to Lorna this morning while I was sitting in the parlor with pencil and notebook in hand. "It's a Blog eat Blog world.") ... but will this year look even more sparse than last?

The method behind the madness of making huge pies of one's life is Organization -- and constant Reorganization. I keep hoping the reorganizing aspect will diminish with time -- although such aspects of the situation as having no guest rooms except my workspace may guarantee forced reorganizations for years to come.

It seems promising, though, that in the course of the present weeks of house-and-life reorganizations, we have started three batches of dandelion wine, which are fermenting away in two two-gallon and one three-gallon crocks.

Cheers ...

Why "Vines, Wines and Lines"

I have spent a lifetime pursuing matters that seem built upon lines: lines of melodies, lines of drawings, lines of words.

When working in the thickets and tangles of plants in the garden I keep seeing parallels to writing -- especially in the last few years, as I have introduced myself (in the excellent company of lifemate Martha) to the realm of grape vines and other flowering and fruiting bushes and trees and vines.

One of the pleasures of creative activity is the enriching light it sheds on other activities ... or other lines.

So.

Blogwriting on these connections -- on vines, wines, and lines -- occurred to me, a year or two ago.

I am not one to hurry into a latest-thing-to-do. Not even into yesterday's latest.

Today, wading in snow, I was clipping back raspberry canes. Entangled in them is netting against birds -- placed there in late summer, and left there as the canes grew higher to entangle them firmly with prickles and leaves. I hoped to clip the netting free, and clip down the canes, much sooner than this.

Today, belatedly beginning this particular small task, I quit before finishing: cold fingers, and a Scottie named Lorna who wanted back inside.

This, here, now: another small task, in its beginning.

Cheers ...