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Things Mama Left for Me

| Flower Roberts

I found another treasure from my mama this Mother’s Day….My first Mother’s Day without a mother.


KiKi would find important things at the house at Enwood and bring them up to the mountains. She put my treasures in the chest of drawers in my room there. This was her way of making sure we kept the things that were important.


My find this past weekend was a single slide. It is of my sister and her deceased husband (Bill), me, my mama and three friends from Lebanon.


Semaan Saikali, his brother Salah and cousin Fouad came to our house for dinner. They brought a bottle of wine to my tea-totaling parents. In the photo they are showing my mama their photos from home.

Lebanese friends with my family


Later they played music and slithered around the livingroom writhing like cobras. They were charming entertainment. My sister and I enjoyed remembering our times with them this weekend. I would have never found this slide if Mama had not slipped it into my dresser drawer.

I have letters from the Lebanese in my writing box, but no photos. This is an important artifact to help me remember things. I am grateful to my thoughtful mother for saving this and stashing it in a safe place.

Our parents just keep on helping us. My dad left the box for the lost garage door opener and a spare battery inside it, so I would know what to order and which battery. This is how my parents were. Their legacy lives on every day. More gratitude from me!

These Lebanese are in a book I have been writing. I have gotten bogged down in the details. I like to think this was Mama’s way of reminding me to remember the important moments. That is what a story is for.

Thank you Kiki, for this Mother’s Day gift.

FLOWER

The Crazy Orchid Cactus

| Flower Roberts

I think I finally figured out how to get this Epiphyllum to bloom. It spent all winter in front of a sunny window. It had buds before it was set outside.

EPIPHYLLUM Orchid Cactus

I gave it a good dose of Bloom Food and some succulent fertilizer. Last,  I trimmed off about two dozen cuttings to share.

Red Orchid Cactus

Bingo. This plant has never bloomed this prolifically. It has stolen the show.

FLOW

Double Peonies

| Flower Roberts

These three hybrids are the best bloomers. Strong stems are a must. I missed staking the stems before a storm, so some ended up soaked on the ground. I will put circles in place earlier next spring to prevent this.


Karl Rosenfield has dozens of blooms on each plant. There are also multiple blooms per stem.

Karl Rosenfield peony



Sarah Bernhardt is slow to open. But the buds are gorgeous.

Sarah Bernhardt peony


Duchess de Nemour has slightly asymmetrical blooms.

Duchess de Nemours

This last hot pink p double is from my great grandma Pearson’s farm in Ohio. It now belongs to four generations of my family.

Pearson peony

I put some beside my mama’s pink urn at her memorial service this weekend. It felt right to have those flowers with Mama for her service.

Pearson family peony with Mama’s urn.

FLOWER

Forced to Stop Doing and Start Being

| Flower Roberts

I have always been ‘Doer’, even as a child. I made plans and then I carried them out. My sister and friends were involved in all sorts of complex projects…a lean-to hideout built with spare plywood between the house and shrubbery, a rock polishing factory, a jewelry making production using poor Daddy’s colored wire, a cemetary in the woods for smashed toads from our street, and of course a school full of doll students under the apple tree. I was always busy.

My son still calls me ‘Busy Bee.’ It is hard for me NOT to be busy. Sometimes, this habit leads to what I call ‘Bad Busy.’ I wrote a post about this phenomenon on my other blog back in my busy days. (Link below)

Now, I have ended up on the other end of the busy spectrum. I cannot be active in many ways. There is a real risk that my injured hip will pop out again. I know pain, that was the worst yet. No drug could stop it until I was totally knocked out and intubated to pull the ball back into the socket. My right leg was visibly shorter.

So much for hiking trails alone for a while. That was my plan for April. I hope to eventually get there after physical therapy and two months of healing.

But for now, I have been forced to stop doing and start being. It sounds so cliche, but this has been hard for me. Being busy allows you to lose yourself in activities. Sometimes doing is an escape from being.

All that action is a distraction from reflection. It can be a way to avoid and ignore what is going on inside your head and heart. Once I stopped and rested, I looked around and was puzzled by my life.

Nothing was like I thought it should be. I know, ‘should’ is an expectation word with baggage. I know all about baggage. I rarely put anything down. I am a ‘History Hoarder.’ My past gets pulled along behind me like a wagon full of treasure and trash.

So me and my wagon have had to pause on our journey. The ‘Being Me’ is looking into the ‘Doing Me’s’ wagon. Whoa! What a load!

Do I really want to pull all this to the next phase of my life? Absolutely not.

So ‘Being Me’ is physically resting while mentally  purging the wagonload of her past. This is a necessary step. I will not go so far as to call it a silver lining to this cloud. It has been painful. It is mentally exhausting. There has been a lot of reading and writing and thinking along with the healing.

My sincere hope is that when ” Busy Bee” flies back into action, her load will be lighter, her path will be brighter, and her hip will stay where it belongs so that she/me can finally find where we belong.

FLOW with wagon in tow.

Bad Busy

Daddy’s Stories

| Flower Roberts

While my daddy was in hospice dying of cancer, I sat by his bed every morning and took notes about what he said. He made me read the notes back to him. It was important that I get everything right.
I gave him a small notebook to jot down things he needed for me to do or bring to him. The lists he made for me ended up being the titles of stories he wanted to tell me to be written down.
We used the list as an agenda for our daily meetings. I would read off a title and he would tell me the story. When it was properly recorded, the title would be checked off the list.

Notebook to the left is the list of titles in Daddy’s handwriting.


This was my job during the weeks before he died. It was important to him that his stories be preserved. Who he was made me who I am and who I am made my children who they are. These stories matter.
That is the reason I am reading The Healing Power of Stories by Daniel Taylor Ph. D.. I want to have a clear goal of how I want to preserve Daddy’s stories before I begin. This will be my third family memoir project.

My daddy, the storyteller.

I am grateful to have these treasures to share with future generations. My two children are the only great, grand children on my daddy’s side of the family. His line may end after them, but I would like these stories to go to families who might enjoy the adventures of a little boy growing up in a small, southern town.

Daddy would like that.

FLOW

We The People – March 2025

| Flower Roberts

Contact info to reach out to Congress: Senator Thom Tillis (R) Elected to seat 2014; next election 2026https://www.tillis.senate.gov/202.244.6342 (press “3” to leave general message, this mailbox fills less frequently) Senator Ted Budd (R) Elected to seat 2022; next election 2028 https://www.budd.senate.gov/contact/202.224.3154 (frequently fills & will not take messages; Advance ofc: 336.941.4470) Congressman Pat Harrigan (R) […]

We The People – March 2025

My Lack of Mindfulness

| Flower Roberts

I am rarely in the present moment. My mind is either in the past or in the future. I hate to admit this, but it is noticeable in my case. I am either in a reflective fog or moving too fast.

This is not a new problem. When my children were small, I drove them through the drop-off line at their elementary school. If you have ever done this, you know it is an irritating parade of dozens of stops and dozens of goes. When I finally made it into the drop-off zone, I stopped one last time and pulled away. The guidance counselor, Mingo, had to chase down my car and knock on the window. I had forgotten one small detail…to let my children out of the van.

Lately, it has been pointed out to me by two separate friends at two different meals that I stab my food like I am angry at it. Mad at food? No. Just thinking of other things as I mindlessly stuff food into my mouth.

This is the reason for today’s read. Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This is a frustrating title for someone who needs to escape herself. I have been sitting in silence trying to absorb its wisdom today without angrily turning its pages.

I have found it interesting. I am proud of the sustained attention I have mustered to read such a book. I am easily distracted, so this would not have been possible at home.

Being in the moment is something I obviously struggle with. The other flaw I am tackling in the coming weeks is fear. People think I am brave, but they do not see how I  constantly fight fear.

My latest fear is that my new hip will go out of joint again.  I fear that I will be alone so no one can call an ambulance this time. I must say that I met an inspiring young EMT named Rambo. She got away before I could propose to her for my son. We need an EMT in this family boy!

It is awful not to trust your own body. I will be doing physical therapy to strengthen the muscles. I have too much to do to lie around thinking. Any level of uncertainity will hold you back, if you let it.

So now, I hope to be mindfully walking, eating and reading.

We shall see!

FLOW

The Crow’s Wings

| Flower Roberts

I heard the crow’s wings beating the air as it flew silently over my head and landed in the tree next to me.

Blue Ridge Mountains


There are always crows here in the mountains.


They are usually squawking and cawing. They are too noisy.



But I did like the sound of the crow’s wings.

FLOW among the crows.

Time to Go

| Flower Roberts

Sometimes the signs are too obvious to ignore. I have been monitoring the conchs at the base of this oak for many years.
Next, a species of bracket fungi colonized in a crevasse at its base several years ago and have continually replaced several generations of fruiting bodies.

Old brackets are dark. Newer ones are rust.


The final sign is a huge hole under the base. Long sticks can be pushed deep down in the earth.

When I removed these today, they were actually cold on a warm day.


I will miss this tree, but it seems to lean toward the neighbors pier. That liability was its death blow.


I hope I am here to record the Watt Tree Service team’s removal of this huge oak. Sad but absolutely necessary.

FLOWER