Hello there. . . .

I've been away this past three weeks.

Well. . .not exactly away. I've traveled some, but mostly I've been right here -- taking a sort of vacation, burying myself in yard-chores. Gardening, too. . .which is not quite the same as performing yard-chores. Especially if your garden flourishes in a deep woods as mine does, gardening's a labor of love, its phases tied to the unfolding season. In early spring, when the first sharp-pointy fingers of established plants creep into view, it's the loosening and enriching of soil to ease their passage, gently tugging away the moldering remains of last year's stems and leaves, increasing bed-sizes, lifting and splitting starts to fill the new space, nestling them firmly into the soil, reshaping and extending the garden.

I define the whole of gardening a sort of responsibility, a guiding of natural loveliness that might otherwise run wild. As I say this aloud, I catch a whiff of my own arrogance. Who am I to seriously entertain the notion that human interference in Nature's work can somehow improve upon her own whims -- or purposes. Nevertheless, I'm part of a large and ancient fraternity that believes the effort be both useful and uplifting. After all, for those who chose to believe it, human life began in a garden.

I remember the sweet doggerel of my nursery-rhyme days:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary.
How does your garden grow?

Never mind HER answer. MY garden was growing furious-wild. So I took a contrary hand.

Paid off, too. This has been a wonderful season for hasta and day-lilies. They put up fat-round, sturdy three-foot wands, loaded with full flags of blossoms, welcoming all who approached my front door. Astilbe and her larger country cousin, Queen of the Meadow, dominated beds alongside the pond, reaching deep into the woodland. Cone-flower blossoms grew large as the palm of my hand. I had to bunch and ribbon-tie their stems above their bases lest their sheer weight bend them to the ground. In the narrow raised beds following the sidewalk overlooking the pond, these corn-flower stems reached three feet out beneath the eaves to follow the sun. Approaching the entrance to my long driveway, beside my brick mailbox, my Black-Eyed-Susans became a dense golden riot.

All along that walkway, hybrid forms I can no longer name spread to fill the beds completely. Everywhere the colors shown, from deep-rich scarlet to bright yellows, golds, and shades of white. The few Hollyhocks Nancy had permitted me grew six-feet tall, their horn-like blossoms arranged in thick clusters nearly three-foot in length from mid-stem to waving tips. The humming birds came in flocks to elbow their way in for a drink of Hollyhock nectar.

Just yesterday -- perhaps ten days late -- I worked nearly three hours, patiently clipping back the long hasta and day-lily wands. The day-lilies had produced seed pods large as the first joint of my thumb. I worked slowly and methodically, gathering together four or five wands at once, clearing them below the leaves of each plant, snipping them with my hand-clipper. I filled the wheel-barrow twice before the job was complete. I alternated from clipper to hand-trowel, quickly and gently working the soil near the base of each plant, RE-energizing each plant with a general-plant fertilizer. Thus fortified, long practice assures me each plant will virtually leap from the ground come spring.

Lotsa bending and twisting at the waist. Lotsa stepping back periodically, my head lifted skyward, face and eyes squinting into the blue sky, stretching and straightening, my free hand working the small of my back -- all the while softly humming an endless string of old love songs, remembering aloud the old rhyme:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The songs of the birds for mirth,
You are nearer God's heart in a garden,
Than anywhere else on earth.

I had to smile at myself: an aging Methodist choirboy, having long-since drifted into apostasy, I believe only that some strange and indiscriminate natural power is at work in this garden. I've settled my mind: things work as they do in my garden because they can work no other way -- given the intricacy of organic chemistry.

Never mind Intelligent Design? Of course gardening is intelligent. And wondrous too -- as are all things we lack the wisdom and perspicacity to capture and fully understand. But for me, to leap from wonder to superstition is too long a bound. I design and build the garden. The plants do the work. It's enough for me to rewrite the third and fourth lines of that song:

You are nearer to peace in a garden,
Than anywhere else on earth.

ENOUGH! I have no wish to give offense to true believers. I believe in gardening.

Yard-chores are a closely related enterprise -- at least in my mind. But they're more like grunt-work.

Maintaining the lawn.
Sheering and shaping
hedge-sorts and ornamental bushes.
Trimming trees.
Collecting and disposing of dead-fall
and other forms of rubbish.
Applying fertilizer as required.
Searching out and spraying poison ivy. . . .

The list is endless. I suppose I view yard-chores as a responsibility of ownership. It's more than vanity, though I acknowledge there's a quiet pride connected with maintaining and improving property. So I tell myself. Perhaps taking care of property is nothing more than a peace-producing pass-time. Not everybody indulges the opportunity.

For instance, one of my nicest neighbors , whose deteriorating wire fence line forms the southeast margin of our shared woods, has long practiced the notion of benign neglect. He gardens but little. He performs no yard chores in his share of the woods. A huge tree falls, ripping others on its way down. . .he lets it lie. He disturbs no dead-fall. He loves what he refers to as the clutter of Mother Nature.

In the ten years I've known and liked him, only once have we discussed the differences in our approaches to our woods. It was the afternoon we met. He wandered over to his fence line where I was replacing a rotted fence post in what I mistakenly thought was my fence. Nope! It was his fence, and he had a lot description and graphic to prove it. He dug about and showed me the concrete survey marker. Ooooops!

Our discussion was all very amiable and informative. He began by telling me that his niece had been for two years the captain of my wife's competitive pompon squad -- a young woman I knew, respected, and really liked. Having sufficiently softened me up, he then informed me that our woods was a conservancy, a legal classification that forbids by law -- as he so nicely put it -- improving and maintaining its appearance. But he graciously helped me tamp in his new fence post, and held it firmly as I drove the new staples into place. And where one of his ancient trees had fractured and fallen across the fence onto my property, he watched with interest as I chain-sawed the large limbs that had flattened the fence, and graciously helped me stack the logs neatly on my side of the fence. Finally, he permitted me to set a second post and raise the fence back into place. That barely-shared yard-chore cemented our friendship. And we have not discussed my neat-nick fixation since. He keeps a neat black lab. I keep a neat woods. Between us we keep a civil relationship.

Anyway: that's what I've been doing: gardening and yard-chores. In a month or two I'll think about trimming back the gardens and mulching them for the coming winter. By then leaves'll be knee-deep, and brisk autumn breezes will have me working in a hooded sweatshirt and gloves. I'll rake leaves into long piles, run my mulcher through them, extend some flower beds, and work this new-made mulch into the soil. Come spring I'll split and reset my perennials into these bed extensions.

Mary, Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
Coral Bells and Cockle Shells. . .
And little maids all in a row.

A neat row, I hasten to add.

Which leaves me wondering: what are cockle shells? Can't find them in any of my plant directories. Oh well. . . .

Forgive me, please.
I can't break the habit. . .
Of wanting to know.

Visiting Pepe

Actually, I'm not visiting Pepe. I'm visiting Dave and Rachel, who claim without authority to be my handsome, balding son and his gorgeous wife.

But no matter how your kids pretend to love you, you can't expect to visit close family without first passing muster with their daughter's cat. I call it observing all the ritualistic forms of Cat-a-quette.

A brief resume` of our adventures over the past three days:

Arrived Friday afternoon.
Ate immense welcoming dinner.
Felt waistband tighten immediately!
Went grocery shopping.
Got up really early Saturday.
Went to huge Art Show on Capitol Square
in Madison. Talked to interesting
artists as they set up displays.
Didn't buy anything, though.
Came home and took a looooong walk
with Dave and Rachel.
Attended large reception at one of Rachel's
boss's beautiful lakeside home.
(Fell in love immediately with Rachel's other gorgeous boss.)
Met a lotta nice people and had fun.
Ate too much again.
Sunday: granddaughter Jocie and
her guy Chad came to visit for the day.
NICE!
Monday morning: woke up early and
wiggled my feet.
Pepe pounced onto my toes!

Pepe's granddaughter-Ally's gorgeous, smokey-grey kitty. He must've sneaked quietly into the bedroom and spent the night up on the bed with me. . .because my cat-hair allergies had kicked in: slightly swollen eyes, some minor difficulty breathing and clearing my throat. Butcha gotta love a kitty. Especially one who sneaks in at night and sleeps with you, and who then tries to getcher toes first thing in the morning.

Here's my reasonably new speculation about kitty-cats: they like a sweet toe, be it unwashed or washed. There's a nice streak in them that admires Mexican Food. Think soft taco! Warm curled toes wrapped-up tightly in wadded sheets and bed-coverings. Apparently they like their taco-toes live and kicking.

Have some fun with a marauding-morning-kitty. Be hospitable enough to sweep at least one foot back and forth beneath your ridges of cotton-comfort. A good, frisky-kitty will dart back-and-forth bravely for hours on end. If he tires too soon, just slow down a moment and let him capture a toe. He'll regather determination, and you've got him going again for another twenty-minutes.

And IF you're persistent. . .if you carry within you even the smallest fragment of subdued dance talent, you will surely inspire splendiferous kitty-koreography. Kitties love dancing lessons. My artistry knows no limits. Once I got Pepe darting and pouncing back and forth, it was no large task to undercut the end of one of his leaps and send him tumbling head-over-paws off the side of the bed.

Never fear: no CATastrophy. Pepe always landed on his feet on soft carpet and dislodged scatter- pillows. A few darting swats per pillow, and he sailed back up onto the bed, capturing one lazy foot in the process. No fear! I flicked him deftly back down again amid the scatter pillows.

I have the graceful movement of a floppy dachshund. But I have Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire in my heart and head. Never mind: Pepe loves my tapping toes.

So I snatched him up into my lap, gave him a fierce loving rub-a-hug, and tossed him lightly across the room into Ally's huge, soft-and-fluffy, bed-side chair. No Net! A real Hoosier One-Hander. He landed with a happy plop, and began immediately washing his face with one fuzzy paw.

Think what you will. . .your personal preferences notwithstanding, one cat beats a veritable pack of hound-dogs. The best dog in the world'll just lie there fulla farts and slobber.

But a kitty-kat'll
eatcher toes and
Love you Up real good!

The World is Too Much. . . .

Consider William Wordsworth: English poet and early leader of the so-called Romantic Movement of literature (and other arts) in Wordsworth's England, and in Europe and America generally, at the beginning of the Nineteenth century. Scholars suggest the movement was a reaction to the growing impact of the onrushing industrial revolution and the mechanized and scientific civilization associated with it. Some characteristics of Romanticism are

determined individualism,
nature-worship, free thought,
revolt against political authority
and social convention,
enjoyment of emotion
and physical sensation
(for their own sakes),
and sexual promiscuity.

(I always save the best for last!)

You wanna know more: think America during the 1960's and 70's. Remember the Hippies? The return to nature? The youth revolt against the Vietnam War -- the marchers and the slogans on their placards suggesting Americans should MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR! Think hippies shoving daisies down the barrels of National Guard rifles.

You want still more, take as many undergraduate English and American literature survey courses as you can stand. When you've suffered enough, perhaps you'll feel romantic. And that will be the beginning of new ways to understand the Romantic Movement -- and life in general.

Which brings us back (part-way) to wild-Willy Wordsworth. Because I stole the title of this piece from him. The five word title comes from the first line of one of his most famous sonnets: The world is too much with us late and soon. The first four lines of the sonnet go:

The world is too much with us late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
(And on he goes!)

Well: maybe Wordsworth's right. Are you working too hard? Are you plodding along buried in debt? Shoulder to the wheel? Nose to the grindstone? Do you keep up with local and world news? Do you ignore your loved-ones? (Do you HAVE any loved-ones?)

If you answered even one of these questions YES. . .then you may well have "given [y]our heart. . . away. . . ." Not to a good woman, as you should have. But to energetic business pursuits. Shame on you! Clearly, the material world is too much with you. . .and it's likely you're behind in your bills. You may also be (at least somewhat) behind in your love-making.

If you answered YES to three of these questions, then get thee to the woods. (Or at least get a kitty to pet!)

That's what I've done. I'm a widower, living in a beautiful woods. And I've got nearly all the fur rubbed off my Gatsby-kitty. (Of course I'm long-since retired, living frugally off my annuities.)

If you had a bad day, consider mine:

I woke up and bounded lightly out of bed around 9:30am.
I stretched and practiced gentle yoga poses until 10:00am.
I then worked-out with light weights and
a variety of machines for another half hour.
I showered and ate a light breakfast.
I rinsed and shoved the dishes into the dishwasher
and paged thoughtfully through
Norman Rockwell: Artist and Illustrator,
all the while laughing, remembering the richly
romantic years of my youth and middle-age.
Then I took a brisk two-hour walk.

Following the walk I took another shower, jumped into a pair of shorts and sandals, retrieved the day's mail, then carefully read and responded to it in my downstairs office. Then I read and responded to my email messages. (Apologies to Wordsworth: I'd rather answer my email soon than late!)

Next, I grabbed a cup of coffee from my automatic coffee-maker and carried it out to my glassed-in, four-season porch. About forty feet from the windows is a small clearing in the woods. In the center of that clearing is a bird-feeder. On the ledges and roof of this feeder this morning I counted

about two-dozen whirling finches,
four fat mourning doves,
a virtual swirl of barn swallows,
and two gorgeous cardinal couples.

All these birds milled about, taking turns feeding.

Beneath the feeder, in the large scatter-circle I counted six rabbits, four squirrels, and a mother Canadian goose and her four, nearly full-grown offspring. All birds are beautiful. But Canadians are large, long-necked, silvery-gray, light-footed birds. Their bodies are oval-shaped, their tails, necks, and heads are black, and a white blaze marks their blackened tail-feathers and lower jaws. Beneath my feeder this morning, they moved quietly, with dignity and unhurried grace as they tip-toed carefully about the scatter-circle, pecking away at grain-ground-fall.

I didn't count the squirrels that scampered up and down nearby tree trunks, now-and-then darting into the scatter-circle, finding and gobbling fallen seeds. Nor the baby rabbits. But there were many.

And, of course you won't believe this: but no more than seventy-five feet away -- behind the broken-down wire fence that separates my neighbor's portion of the woods from mine -- five deer quietly grazed: a young buck, two does, and two fawns only-lately turned bright-orange-brown. Nearly every day they show up around noon, patiently waiting their turn to pick among the seeds carelessly scattered by the busy birds. Customarily, they feed a few minutes beneath the bird-feeder, then mount the rise that carries a narrow path along the east side of my home, usually chomping a hasta or two as they pass through on their way to a thick-wooded patch beyond my neighbor's home.

Of course, the woods is continuous -- if you ignore the winding road, the seven homes, the small patches of grass, and the concrete driveways. We think we've built here to watch the wild-life. But the wild-things know they're here to watch us. Believe it!

I adored my wife. I miss her terribly. I miss the work I loved. But on lazy days like today, I think maybe Billy Wordsworth knew something important that many of us may have forgotten. Taken at its busiest, at its most industrious, the world REALLY IS too much. Or it gets to be if we aren't careful.

I worked hard today. I stretched, yoga'd, and practiced deep breathing. I exercised vigorously with light weights and machines. I walked over two hours on quiet back roads. Today I paged slowly through scores of Norman Rockwell prints. I remembered the simpler years, the simpler people and events Rockwell recorded. I smiled and laughed out loud. I sat for over an hour quietly watching a wide variety of gentle animals mingle and feed in a wooded space not ten feet in diameter. I've pulled some weeds and completed some household cleaning chores. I've read parts of six books I'm currently working through. I've thought, paid attention carefully to everything I did. That's hard work.

I've always been a Romantic. When I was fifteen, I wrote the number 16 on a small piece of cardboard and stuck it in the heel of my boot. I went to a railroad foreman across town, and swore on a Bible I was "over 16." He hired me. And for 60 of my 75 years I've worked hard for a living, learning things, and mostly teaching, creating what I've hoped has been a worthwhile and thoughtful and useful life.

It's over midnight right now. I still haven't watched the news. Or worried. And right now, Gatsby-kitty sits quietly on my lap as I type. Now and then he darts out a paw and adds a letter or two. But that's easy to fix. And he's good company.

I challenge you: think about your life. Consider the degree to which the world may be

TOO MUCH with you late and soon.

Try to love yourself enough
to find rich ways to slow down.

Maybe. . .

Well. . . maybe Thomas Wolf was right: You can't go home again.

But just maybe you can. I mean for short visits among friends and colleagues with whom you've spent many years working together, caring about each other, watching over each other, helping each other struggle to make sense out of happenings, helping each other survive and grow.

Perhaps the truth is that you can go home for short visits -- which is not like going home to stay. Nor is it likely you'd want to. In the first place, nothing's the same. The situations have changed. And those changes have altered the people. Many have left. Those who've stayed have adjusted to new realities. You no longer fit as you once did. The good part about that is you can express interest in your old work-mates. You can draw them out with questions, learn about the changes. It's always easier to interact with people when you get them talking, when you put them in the middle of the conversation. I'm getting good at that these days.

Early this week I went to a big retirement celebration for the dean of the College of Education. He shared the event with the retiring dean of the College of Nursing and Health Science. So the event was a rich mixture of professors from both colleges, plus a broad selection of central administrative leaders and service personnel. A large number of central administration I've known for years. Many of them have taken my leadership courses over the years, and I think of them as close colleagues, if not close friends. Hard to sort that out. . . enough to say we've worked together a long time, and have liked each other for many years.

There was good wine, too. And a fine buffet loaded with a rich selection of canapes. Even some heavier stuff like barbecued chicken and beef strips on skewers. People stood around in tight groups nibbling and offering toasts. . .to the retiring deans and to each other. Nice white wine. Nice food, nice people. A virtual flood of warmth and ambiance.

The formal ceremony was short and sweet. The deans sat comfortably in rocking chairs while a parade of carefully selected speakers honored them appropriately -- some well-earned praise, some funny stories, some expressions of good wishes and gratitude, tinged lightly with regret. Or perhaps I only projected regret, because I've recently gone through several disconcerting phases of early retirement myself. Finding new purpose for one's days is at least. . .challenging.

It's difficult to let go of collegial relationships. It's even more difficult to let go of daily encounters with friends. It's difficult to relinquish shared endeavors and responsibilities. You spend your life building meaningful work relationships. Then one day the shared work is gone, and you realize how much the work bound you to others, provided the functional reasons you belonged among these others.

I suppose it's true: meaningful work is based as much upon shared purpose as upon anything else. Most of us spend our productive lives working with others to create something good for still other people. The antique hymn notwithstanding, shared work is the "tie that binds."

Kahlil Gibran's lines from "On Work" come to mind:

Life is indeed darkness, save when there is urge;
And all urge is blind, save when there is knowledge;
And all knowledge is vain, save when there is work;
And all work is empty, save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself
to yourself, and to one another. . . .

Few things are more frightening than the end of shared work. Perhaps losing a loved-one is more frightening. But still, loved-ones are related to the business of making family, of making love -- which I argue is the central shared purpose of life. Don't think that with the phrase making love I am talking about sexual intercourse. I'm talking about social intercourse, the means by which we skillfully and artfully develop valued relationships.

Emily Dickinson comes to mind:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third even to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting's all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

At best, a retirement party is a fearful place because it signals a parting of ways. It signals the end of important work we've long-shared with those we've come think of as friends. Here's the fearful challenge:

Shared work produces joy.
And without joy we die!