Six LDS Writers and A Frog

Friday, March 27, 2009

Hanging with my Peeps

by Kerry Blair

I regret to inform you that I am simply too ill to blog today. I have a fever. Other symptoms include:

Dizziness (when looking at the plum tree in full bloom.)

Heart palpitations (when holding one of my eight little chicks and marveling that three days ago they looked like an almost-omlette.)

Shortness of breath (when intercepting the cat in mid-leap toward a nesting oriole.)

Strange cravings (for abundant vegies in the garden—or at least dirt under my fingernails.)

Mark Twain best diagnosed my ailment. “It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

Alas, this fever precludes the desire to sit inside at a computer, even long enough to blog. Nor do I want to thumb through musty tomes—unless I do it outside after hanging the hammock from the apple tree. Therefore, I’m going to share two of my favorite “spring” poems from memory and call it a day. If I whiff a word or three, I’ll hope for forgiveness from you in this life and Shelley and Browning in the next.

Spring arose on the garden fair
Like the spirit of love felt everywhere.
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

The year’s at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven; (Six here in Arizona)
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!
~Robert Browning

Clearly, I am not busy (like Julie) or creative (like Rob) but I am sick. I am practically delirious with longing to welcome the bees, stir up a little nectar for the bummingbirds, and bond with my chicks. As much as I love and appreciate you all, you will just have to excuse me while I go hang with my (other) peeps.

Happy Spring!


12 Comments:

At 3/27/2009 12:40 PM, Blogger Jennie said...

Kerry, spring sounds so lovely. I really, really want it to begin, but everything here is still covered in snow and though I need to take a little excursion to the Credit Union, I'm dreading stepping out in the cold. Nuzzle those chicks for me, sniff the luscious smell of spring, and feed those poor (b)ummingbirds so they'll be strong enough to bum their way up here to me.

 
At 3/27/2009 12:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yours sounds like a veritable heaven. Enjoy your day.

 
At 3/27/2009 12:52 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Reporting from Massachusetts: one robin in the back yard yesterday, one tick after walking through the shade garden two days ago, the cats are throwing fits at each other as though they've suddenly waken from hibernation, and the front flower bed with six inch tall daffodils IN BUD and bright green, and one inch tall iris, light, yellow green, contrast beautifully with the burnt sienna pine needles 'til I hardly need flowers. The delight is truly, "And miles to go before I weed." (Frost lived about thirty miles from here so he knows what I mean.)
Happy Spring!

Marlene Austin

 
At 3/27/2009 1:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Enjoy it now, sister Blair. Your spring may come early, but your winter is our summer.

Didn't you read Places to Avoid: the traveler's guide to hell by J. Golden Kimball. Apparantly not.

Living in Arizona is like listening to J. Golden Kimball give a sermon on a hot Chino Valley Sunday with the chapel windows open and an ice wagon passing beneath. From the pulpit J. Golden says, "In that day of fire and brimestone, when fires of hell consume you, I ask, what will you need?

And the guy passing by in the wagon calls out, "Ice!"

Let us know when you need some ice for your peets.

 
At 3/27/2009 1:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was going to comment, but now I think I'll go for a walk and check my tulips for buds instead.
Have a lovely day!

Pat

 
At 3/27/2009 1:30 PM, Blogger Kerry Blair said...

Anon: FYI, Bro. Kimball would have loved Central Arizona! It's the best of both worlds. Summers are moderate (unlike Phoenix) and March is like the one Charles Dickens described: "Spring in the sun, but winter still in the shade." I'm staying out of the shade, trying not to blow away in the wind, and looking forward to May Day!

Marlene: I want to visit your house!

Jennie: I gave the hummingbirds your address and a teensy little road map. I also advised them to stop off in St. George for a couple of weeks, just in case.

 
At 3/27/2009 2:16 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I want to move to Chino Valley just to experience the spring you described. Yuma doesn't have seasons necessarily. We have warm, hot and too darn hot. For now I'll happily live vicariously through your writings, Kerry. What a wonderful fever to have.

Deb

 
At 3/27/2009 2:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ha. Caught you. It can't be that nice of a day in Chino Valley if you were sitting by the computer waiting to respond to the J. Golden comment.

Get out a hummingbird, would you please. Go peet for a while. Take off your gloves and finger your way through the rocky, red Chino Valley dirt. Have a dizzy, heart palpating, short breathing, strang craving day on us.

Or you could read Ghost of a Chance. Its in the Seagull mailer this month with Kerry Blair's name plastered all over the place. Read it. Love it. Tell Kerry about it.

PS: For your information sister Blair, Mark Twain also said something like this:

Blair's gift in the way of invention was such as it was she liked to work it, she was pleased with the effects, and indeed she did some quite sweet things with it. In her little box of stage-properties she kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for her peets and hummingbirds to deceive and circumvent each other with, and she was never so happy as when she was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined hummingbird tread in the tracks of a moccasined peet, and thus hide her own trail. Blair wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that she pulled out of her box pretty frequently was the Spring Fever broken blog. She prized her broken blog above all the rest of her effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful Friday in any blog of hers when somebody doesn't step on a guest blog and alarm all the authors and publishers for two hundred yards around. Every time a Blair person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, she is sure to step on a broken blog. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Blair. Blair requires us to turn out and find a broken blog; and if she can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Ghost of a Chance Series ought to have been called the Broken Blog Series.

 
At 3/28/2009 1:05 PM, Blogger Stephanie Abney said...

What a delightful post, Kerry. Of course!! Luckily we are experiencing just as nice of weather here in the valley right now. It has been gorgeous with a wonderful wind lately.

Happy Birthday.
Love you!!

 
At 3/28/2009 7:06 PM, Blogger Heather Justesen said...

There's nothing quite like holding a little peeping fuzzy ball in your hands is there? And watching them hatch is so much fun!

My husband probably wishes I had stopped at hatching only eight!

 
At 3/29/2009 8:58 PM, Blogger Cheri J. Crane said...

I love spring, too, Kerry. We'll be enjoying that season in our mountain valley about July. Sigh . . . and yes, we received yet more snow this week. Rapture fills my bosom. ;)

 
At 3/30/2009 9:15 PM, Blogger Lucy Eliza said...

Spring? Where? It's snowing here, but thankfully not sticking. The Robins have come back but I wouldn't be surprised if they left again. I wish I could. Can I come visit you, Kerry?

~Amy

 

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