My hero

Pensive, originally uploaded by scrollwork.

Salmon-flavored cream cheese, licked from a spoon. Oceanfish paté-style canned food. The overgrown corner of the garden that serves as both a lookout spot and Fort Kitty. These are a few of his favorite things.

"You've been home alone too long," Steve said when he heard me talking to Charlie. "You talk to the cat and the laptop." I think Steve minds only because he keeps mistaking my out-loud remarks for attempts at conversation with him.

The cat and the laptop have become my must-haves during this reinvention phase. Although I think the cat has a few more merit badges. He has singlehandedly averted empty-nest syndrome, underemployment stir-craziness, and perimenopausal mood extremes. No prescription necessary.

Blue toward blue

My morning glory seeds took their sweet time germinating, and finally, close to summer's end, one Heavenly Blue bloom. The vine was happy to twine around a rickety branch pruned from the nearby tree. 

I feel protective of it. It seems to do just fine when the wind kicks up. It just clings tighter. The soil isn't fertile or watered often, but that's how morning glories thrive.

It's keeping an eye on the sky. It doesn't know the word "impossible." It might be thinking it's a tree. By fall I hope it will at least have clambered over the fence and gotten a glimpse of what's on the other side.


It's hard to resist the urge to make it a metaphor. Late bloomers, ugly ducklings and fledgling small business owners. Check, check, check. Here's to all of us!  Let's keep our eye on the sky, and cling fast to what keeps us grounded. 


Morning glories turn their trumpets to the sky, and nothing in nature mocks them for it. They do not aspire to be blue, they embody blue.

A glimpse of what's possible

When the puppy next door isn't pushing her nose through the hole, begging for a petting, I can pretend that the pixies who flit through my flower garden perch in this space mid-flight and are silhouetted against the light.

Clearly imagined

A dose (nose) of reality