Full moon last night. Even though it's still summer, that harvest moon gives it away: change is around the corner. This had to be the fastest summer of my life; I ran the entire way.

I really, really like living in The 'Kan. I love adventure and I love travel and it's the best day of the week when I can find out something new and learn a whole lot more. And therein lies the conundrum of each and every day as I pull the soft, smooth sheets away and slip out of bed to survey the morning sky, panoramic in my bedroom window. That horizon bids me ever onward and succumbing to the call of the Sirens, much as Odysseus, I find to my dismay that when I come home to The 'Kan, the roses have bloomed and gone.

I planted the roses and made a garden in memory of my mother, in honor of my friends, in hopes for my children. I lined the paths of the garden with the most used of bricks and filled them with the tiny rainbow pebbles of the Mission Valley. Along the way, I culled and collected birdhouses and benches and feeders and fountains and my most favorite of rocks from everywhere and poked and placed them along the path, for respite and reflection. It's a wonderful garden, built by me.

It's been alone much of the summer and as a result, my eye is clouded and corroded and weary. I sit in my office and watch the planes fly east to Chicago and south to Denver. The little ones head straight for Seattle. The American flag waves languidly off a crane of the big project down the street and the sky sits a pale gray, still in the September summer. I can't see and understand how the gray of the morning air makes me feel and so I know again, that the benches in my garden have sat too long in the summer sun without me.

I need a mast made of the finest hardwood and the strongest of rope; to lash me, to hold me, to protect me from the seductive call of the Sirens, ever singing a beautiful, mysterious melody of odyssey. I will plant this mast deep in my garden in the cool shade among the tall ferns and in the thickest of the mosses, and hold dear to its ropes that bind me--and keep me near the roses, who bloom fragrant and spicy each and every day of the year, just for me.

JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA