Lunch with Ruth

Ruth, my daughter's trophy mother-in-law, and I went to lunch at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens last Friday. I stopped to admire Melvin's jade tree. I thought I would have to look carefully to find it, and it's right in the lobby!

Then I joined Ruth in line for tickets to the orchid exhibit.

Look what was in front of me!

The whole front entry was islands of orchids.

Ruth says, when the exhibit ends in a month, she will have that most purple orchid.

(So would Laura if she saw it.)

A display down a hall way. The theme is "Cuba". 

Ruth said the unnaturally colored orchids have been fed colored water. A long discussion of watering orchids ensued among all the visitors.

This island of orchids also included dresses from a Cuba/orchid themed contest. Ruth reaches for the "keeper" from among the dresses.

Now, the fun.

We went into the glass room, to look at tropical plants, birds, butterflies, ants, bugs...an ecosystem in a glass room.

I lifted my camera to take a picture of glass and mist and a tall plant. The view was foggy.

I tried again. I seemed to have on the lens cap.

I looked. The lens was totally fogged.

Why not. I took many pictures through the steamed lens, and blew a lot of light through them after I downloaded.

Three butterflies.

Bromelid.

Orange butterfly.

An astounding blossom.

Back at floor level, I dried the lens and shot normally.

The glass house is small paths through an overwhelming amount of tropical growth.

Three frogs. 

Phew. The desert, and prickly things.

Two tortoise.

A lizard, with an attendant.

The previous lizard was stolen! Ruth said the thieves were taped, but not caught.

Now a docent is by its side at all time.

It sees us!

In the Linda way

My friend Linda called me last night.

In the Linda way, she wants to put pictures on my blog.

"No, no, Linda; that's Facebook. What would you want to put up, anyway?'

"That one of us in Louisville; we were young and healthy."

"I hate that picture."

"Tell me one you like."

"Maybe that one in Indianapolis, your cousin Bruce took. The first year I helped you at Broadripple, and he set up your tent because I couldn't lift the other side any more."

Linda sent me the three pictures she wants posted on my blog.

She has this titled 'Two almost seventy year olds do a show."

She sent this one, too. It was four in the afternoon of St. James Court Artfest in Lousiville. The show closes at five, but it was my last day; I was retired. I sold the canopy, the display, every last piece of hand weaving except a red dish towel, which we still use. My daughter Beth, and Bill, left champagne in a cooler behind the booth before they had to leave for Cleveland.

Ann, my dear friend and right hand support the last couple of years I exhibited, is in the middle. Yes, that's a hand woven shirt she has on. Me, too.

"Ann won't like that picture going up," I said.

"Ann doesn't read your blog."

A picture of Linda getting juiced.

I think she took a look and decided her hair had to be red, purple and orange, too.

And a little side bar.

At least fifteen years ago my daughter Beth was given a pin to wear at work. It said 'Attitude.' I commandeered one and it hung on my bulletin board.

Before the Arts 'n' Apples show where we froze for three days, I snatched that pin off the wall and took it to Linda. 

"It's all about attitude," said the person who was not facing six months of chemo. What arrogance. 

"Put this on and kick butt."

Linda put it on and wore it everywhere for weeks. In the middle of the show, it was gone. Fell off.

She turned her booth over, retraced her steps.

It was gone.

I told her it wasn't necessary any more. But she thought it was. Nevertheless, you can see she made it to month six, with attitude.

Beth got on EBay and found a new attitude pin. Linda can wear it to meet with the oncologist.

Take a peek, Mel....

Five years ago I wrote about Mel's jade tree.

Mel is our brother who died when he was twenty-eight. Long time ago.

He started this from a cutting--the world must be full of jade trees folks just wanted to grow.

I don't know how old it was when Jan rescued it from Mel's kitchen sink, back in 1976.

When she and Tom, Mom and I set up housekeeping, the jade tree came here, of course, and did what happy jade trees do. It grew.

It was not happy enough to bloom more than once, in 2005.

But it did grow, and was moved to a bigger pot several times.

When it went to this pot it took three of us, and we did it in the foyer, not outdoors.

It was obvious the plant had a small window of opportunity to get through the front door.

I wrote the Cleveland Botanical Gardens and offered them a jade tree, approximately three and a half feet by three and a half feet square. They had only to move it.

They did, in 2011.

I said one day I would take a look at the Melvin Lytle Memorial Jade at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens.

Today Ruth and I went.

There it is, in the foyer.

Look what professional pruning will do.

Jade trees can live five hundred years or more.

This one is just shy of fifty.

Now you know where it is, kiddo.

Keep an eye on it.

I planned posts for all this stuff

I got the key to the locked room on the second floor,

and took a picture of the hummingbird nest, from,

more or less, eye level. Can you find it?

Took this picture of the pileated practice tree I pass.

I've seen a pileated woodpecker on this tree twice.

A couple of years ago, going to work, a big woodpecker was working the tree.

"Please be there when I come back with my camera," I said to him.

Turned around, back up the hill to home. Woodpecker still there.

Returned in ten minutes with camera.

Gone.

Spring still hovers.

A new shirt for the gallery.

Actually, this is embarrassing.

I finished making up the white fabric on Tuesday evening,

took pictures,

Delivered to the gallery on Wednesday.

Looking at the pictures today, I see I missed the last job; 

give everything a quick press.

At the gallery.

I planned posts for the weeks' pictures,

And now it's Thursday.

Week in review.

Once more, with attitude

I spent last Friday with Linda, my friend of three decades and change.  The crazy rug weaver I occasionally accompany to shows. Friday I showed up for lunch, and since I won’t eat chipped beef on toast, we went to a breakfast all day diner, and took a booth for the afternoon. We stayed so long the pie delivery came, and I had coconut cream.

Last July, while I was at Ann’s house, I found a missed call message from Linda. “Be in touch.” She’s cryptic at the best and worst of times, so I dismissed it. When I returned, several attempts to get together, including a trip to buy weaving supplies, fell through. In August she called me. “I really wanted to tell you this in person, but it seems that’s not to be, so...”

That was six months ago. Friday I leaned back in the diner booth and said “Can I tell Blogland about you, now?” This from the blogger who has spilled it about everyone she knows, generally without their previous knowledge. I figure by now everyone knows it could be their turn any day. “Cannot believe you even asked,” Linda replied.

Linda and I were friends long before she became a widow. It often turned out she and Dick were staying in the same motel as I was in, and she would come over to “talk shows.” Actually, we smoked the air blue and talked every subject on the face of the earth. I know she went back and blamed the aroma on me. I doubt her former smoker husband believed it.

You could not imagine two more unlike people than Linda and me. Politically, she is right of conservative, believes in guns, but not in taxes or welfare. In her defense, she came by it honestly. She grew up on a farm, where her parents worked hard for their living and put their faith in themselves and friends, not the government. The only person I know who solved an offensive street light problem by shooting it. So, for thirty odd years, we simply agree to disagree. We even don’t talk about it anymore.

That phone call six months ago…Linda has lymphoma. Stage four this, Stage three that. It was discovered during another routine exam. The good news, lymphoma aside, she is a very healthy woman. Her only symptom was tiredness. Her oncologist said that though her insides were a cloud of encroaching disease, she was healthy enough to be aggressive in treatment; he felt he could put her in remission, probably for another ten years.

Linda, formerly a nurse, married many years to a physician, now an artist who works the colors she always heard and smelled and tasted…would you believe is a skeptic. Side effect of rabid Republicanism, but I’ve never told her that. “It’s ATTITUDE!” I preached. Get your attitude on!

She embarked on six months, six rounds of lymphoma kicking chemo attitude. Three or four days one week pumped full of drugs the rest of us hope we never encounter, or never encounter again, then one week of never waking up, except to be sick, then a week of feeling reasonably social, then a good week, then back again to week one.

At the end of the third month Linda had a CAT scan that showed every little lymphoma bastid half its previous size, or smaller. “Woo-Hoo,” from friend Joanne, who announced it half gone. Think about that—within weeks of its final assault to over half gone.

She’s down to the last treatment, in another two weeks, then a PET scan to survey the bodies all over the field of battle. I see all those little dead grey lymp lumps, expired. They used to be big grey balloons, squeezing the bejammers out of her insides, and now they are little expired, pea sized lumps. Ha. Take that.

Linda doesn’t have that confidence. Maybe because she sees everything in color, and cannot imagine grey lumps. Maybe it’s the chemo. “Poison,” she says. Five months on, it’s taken a toll on her body. Worse, on her brain. The stuff banishes color, she says.  She has not made a wild and crazy rug in months, but she has a full show schedule this year to stock for.  What will she do with a full inventory of boring rugs?

Her daughter has been her main support all these months, there that evil first week and checking in the next three weeks. In truth, Linda has a small army moving her down the road. But a few more cheers will certainly help. Linda reads my blog, and frequently comments. You know, the one with the opinion. It would be nice to see thirty comments: One More Time, Linda, with Attitude.

I could not see how to weave in these pictures coherently, so here they are, the attitude sidebar:

Linda, her daughter, Cara and me, thirteen years ago. Linda was month one of defeating breast cancer.

Now, this is the kind of attitude that kicks breast cancer in the butt, wouldn't you agree. It will work on lymphoma, too.

Remember last fall, when we nearly froze to death in our Dollar Store hoodies at Art 'n' Apples. It was the next to last show before chemo began. The oncologist was not pleased, but that didn't stop Linda. I had a long list of possibilities; if any one occurred, I was to shove her in her van and drive straight back to Cleveland. My personal plan was to hire an airplane.

A couple months ago Linda put the color on her head. Whatever works.

By last Friday it was fading. To everyone who wonders what Linda will do next, you heard it here first: red, purple and orange won't be on top of her head, they will be all over. But, will it be back to front or side to side?