Roger Barbee

By Roger Barbee

            For a Christmas present, Mary Ann gave me a book titled The Upward Path, which was published in 1920.  It is a small, blue book with just 250 pages of text, but each page is packed with information still useful today.  In the Foreword, the editors write: “It is the hope that this little book will find a large welcome in all sections of the country and will bring good cheer and encouragement to the young readers who have so largely the fortunes of their race in their own hands.” The “good cheer and encouragement” the editors wish for comes from the essays, stories, poems, myths, life-stories, and histories that follow in the book’s pages.

            As I read the collection compiled by the editors, I recognized such names as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, Charles W. Chesnutt, and James Weldon Johnson. However, there were many I had never heard of, and I was glad for the Notes section which holds a short biography of each writer. While it was a pleasure to read their short biographies, it was a joy to read what they had written for this small volume. Topics of every nature had been written about. I sense that because The Great War had just ended, the editors included many stories of bravery exhibited by American soldiers in the horrible trenches of France or Belgium. Tales of animals abound as do stories of schools and the acquiring of an education. The lives of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln are held up as examples of how to live. One myth written by Fenton Johnson, The Black Fairy, is an explanation of how Africans came to the United States and like many selections, it is beautifully illustrated by Laura Wheeler. The selection, Behind a Georgia Mule, is a delightful tale of how a mule wins out over James Weldon Johnson showing how a seemingly lower animal can outsmart a man. Each selection has wisdom of living as its base, and one of my favorites is a four-line poem written by Cordelia Ray titled Charity:

                                                I saw a maiden, fairest of the fair,

                                                With every grace bedight beyond compare.

                                                Said I, “What doest thou, pray, tell to me!”

                                                “I see the good in others,” said she.

            Since reading the little book, I have thought of it and talked of it with Mary Ann. As a teacher of English, I have pondered its selections and intent. As a reader, I have learned from it. The editors had a definite audience in mind and a purpose that is elegantly expressed in the words “bring good cheer and encouragement to the young readers….” Yes, the audience is the young blacks of the 1920s in America, but as I read and thought, I saw how the idea and intent behind the little blue book could be used for young readers today? I wondered, “Can we not find literature today that will teach valuable life lessons while bringing “good cheer and encouragement”?

            When I choose a story, poem, novel, play, or other genre of literature to teach, I examine its potential for inspiring readers. That does not mean that a reading need be “happy”, but that it gives an honest look at the human spirit. That is what the little, blue book does—it shows how the human spirit can overcome obstacles—world war, slavery, lack of education, or any number of trials that are faced and then defeated by the characters in the book.

            So much of accepted reading today, it seems to me, is trite, overly violent, sappy, poorly written, or just not that good. Too many characters in novels and stories read today are one dimensional. Seldom do we ask students to face a demanding task such as learning how to give a text a close reading or to learn to explicate a poem. We seem content to accept that any reading is good reading, and I think that attitude does our youngsters a dis-service. When we accept graphic novels as equal to Beowulf or use a serial of modern vampire novels as equal to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein we lie to our students and ourselves. Just as some foods are better for us than others, so it is with literature.

            We should, in my mind, do as well today for our young readers as did the little, blue book for its readers.

By Roger Barbee

            In April of 1963 as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. languished in the Birmingham jail, eight local clergymen published a letter in local newspapers in which they denounced Dr. King as “an outside agitator”, and they ended their appeal with these words: “We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.” Their advertisement prompted Dr. King to pen his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” in which he explained why waiting for racial justice any longer was not an option.

In 2006 and ’07, Joe Bageant, a resident of Winchester, wrote Deer Hunting with Jesus. Several  years ago when a good friend loaned me his copy, he said, “If you want to understand many people of the Shenandoah Valley, read this book.” I did, and I have just finished my second reading of this fine examination of class in America.

Bageant, who is deceased, returned to his native Winchester, Virginia in 1999 after a thirty-year absence. He moved to the North End where he had grown up, and he found it as it was in his youth–”the most hard-core of the town’s working-class neighborhoods, where you are more likely to find the $20,000-a-year laborer and the $14,000-a-year fast-food worker.”  He continues, “It didn’t take too many visits to the old neighborhood tavern or to the shabby church I attended as a child to discover that here in this neighborhood in the richest nation on earth folks are having a hard go of it. And it is getting harder.” With that, he began listening to what he referred to as “my people”, and they trusted him to tell their stories with empathy, not pity, and brutally honesty as when he writes, “…my people are a little seedier than most;…” He quickly sees that the preferred avenues of escape for his people are alcohol, Jesus, or overeating.

Writing before “the crash” of 2008, Bageant sends a warning as he writes about American Serfs, Republicans by Default, The Deep-Fried, Double-Wide -Lifestyle, and more. He goes to the guts of the working class of the North End where two in five of residents have no high school diploma. He writes of his childhood friend who carries seven credit cards in order to “build up my credit” so that he can buy a double-wide trailer that will decrease in value before he parks it on a rented lot. He writes of “Dottie”, his favorite karaoke singer who lives in Romney, West Virginia. Disabled, Dot lives on her Social Security Disability Insurance, uses an oxygen tank and wheelchair, and is forceful in the way she deals with her doctors. She tells Bageant, “I learned that damned towel-head doctor of mine has only four years of college someplace in South America.” Bageant goes on to explain, “No doubt you [the reader] are wincing at the racist term towelhead.  But people do talk that way, and if we use it as an excuse not to listen, we rule out listening to half of America.”

For me, those words about Dot’s vocabulary are the message of Deer Hunting with Jesus, which is sub-titled, Dispatches from America’s Class Wars. He is telling us, long before Trump and his evil appeared, that there is an entire class of people who are poorly educated, poorly prepared with soft skills, have poor health, possess no or little health insurance, and have children which will continue the cycle of their lives.  Bageant pulls no punches in faulting political leaders locally and nationally,  mortgage companies, our health care system, and others for the condition of “my people.” But, most of all he blames their poor education for their plight. Having escaped the North End, he attended college, fought in Vietnam, traveled, and wrote before returning home. He knows the value of education and knows that a good one will give “his people” a door to walk through.

But Bageant could have been writing of the eight clergymen of Birmingham that I quoted above. We still have people like them who want to proceed slowly in any cause, especially in the area of racial equality. We still have subtle and overt racist.  We still have Dots. Right here among us we have extremes, and it seems to me that we must find a way to hear what is being said from those extremes.  

Bageant sees the lack of education as the biggest obstacle for “his people.” But, the clergymen from 1963, by their plea, show a lack of education concerning what Dr. King was trying to achieve. If they had had a better education concerning the plight of blacks in the Jim Crow South, they would not have written their pathetic letter. If they had had an education on this topic, they would have developed understanding and empathy. Yet they, like Dot, are voices that need to be heard because they tell us what we need to change. We cannot use their language as an excuse to not listen to them.

On the surface we are an educated society. We have degrees. Yet, too often we refuse to educate ourselves regarding topics or issues we find uncomfortable. I often think of Robert Kennedy who in May, 1963 asked James Baldwin to organize a meeting at his New York City apartment with black and white activists.  The meeting lasted about two hours as the invited guests attempted to explain to Kennedy the plight of blacks and other disenfranchised people. The meeting did not go well, but Kennedy must have heard some things because he soon became a champion for all disenfranchised Americans. He got himself an education concerning racial inequalities in America, and he began working  for change. But he first had to sit in that meeting, hearing words that undoubtedly made him uncomfortable.

Like Kennedy, we must listen to each other—the plodders, activists, the uneducated, the educated-all must be heard. In doing so we will work to create a country of purple by blending our red and blue. If we refuse to, we will have a divided house and lose it all.

By Roger Barbee

Going out our front door, my wife encountered the rat snake on our stoop, at the hinge side of our entrance. She, being an admirer of snakes, quietly closed the door and came to share his presence with me. Every muscle under its black skin was tense from her presence, and there seemed to be a bulge in his middle that suggested a recent meal. We watch it move across our threshold and climb a corner of our house.

Next to the front door in a corner is a plant stand holding a bright red geranium. It is such a well-tended and full plant that a pair of Carolina wrens have taken residency of it. But the presence of the rat snake brought them out immediately and a Savannah sparrow helped as it held a position near the plant like a Kestrel hunting over a field. One of the wrens held a morsel in its beak and darted near the nest then out of reach. The other flew in circles above the scene, and the snake held its ground in the corner of our house. My wife and I, believers in the rules of nature, left the scene, knowing that “Nature’s beautiful way” would prevail. But as I  went inside our house, I was hopeful for the wrens and that the rat snake was just passing through.

As much as my wife and I  enjoy our garden, many pine trees, and the birds and other animals that share them with us, we accept death as part of this life. We realize that we will sometimes find a fledgling that has fallen from its nest high in one of our pine trees—especially after a storm. Some plants that we hope to see bloom do not do well and die or just limp along like the clematis planted two years ago. The bright and cheerful winter pansies will wilt under the June sun. But no matter of all the lessons I have learned in the garden, I wanted the wrens’ nest to remain intact.

For the remainder of the day after the snake appeared, I would wander out to the front door area. I stayed far away but best positioned myself to see if the snake was in the plant. I did not see or hear the birds, nor did I see the snake in the plant or anywhere in our yard. Because of the lack of animals, I assumed that the nest had been violated, the snake and wrens leaving it to compost and feed the geranium; another death/life cycle in a garden. Our front entrance held the silence of a grave.

Gardens can be plotted on paper or in the brain, with the location of various plants thought out for a variety of reasons. Plants can be planted, nourished, and even pampered. Most will thrive, some will not. However, the outcome of the planned garden’s flowering will offer a home to a variety of animals. Most, like the birds, will be seen and heard. Some, like the snakes, will not be seen often. But all will be present and contributors to their local ecology.

This morning when I went to the front yard to ride my stationary handcycle, I was thinking of other things as I turned the corner from our back garden. But regardless of my other thoughts, the notes of the Carolina wren sitting on the back of a garden chair near our front door cheered my spirits. The pair were here. The loud notes announced their territorial presence.

I did not venture toward our front door area, but paused and listened to the morning concert of one small bird telling the world that this morning it was here like its ancestors and for the moment, what else mattered?

By Roger Barbee

The word Father is used most often as a noun, as in Ralph is my father. It is also used in religious references. However, the word is most interesting to me when used as a verb, as in I will father my children. It also can be used in a participle,  as in “To father a child is a joy, but it requires commitment.

On this Friday before the celebrated day of Father’s Day, I think of my experience as a father of five children, and, while I was active in the noun usage of the word, I missed much in the verb usage. As I examine my role all those years ago as a father, I see my presence, but not my participation. Yes, I performed all the standard tasks of fatherhood—I worked and provided the necessary material things for them. But I was like a shadow, I think, in their lives. I could be seen, but I had no or little substance.

I will not delve into the reasons for how I fathered you, but I ask each of you to learn from my wrongs. Here are a few thoughts:  Share time with your children because it and love are what you can give them;  Keep external pressures away from your fathering;  Be a guide on the path of your children by showing them a good way but not the only way; Find a safe escape away from your children for your anger and frustration; Understand that they may not remember your words, but will remember how they made them feel;  When they talk, listen as if everything depends on it; To guide is better than to push; Make their home a safe place.

Father as a verb, not a stale noun.

By Roger Barbee

Pastor Clarence Jordan showed us how.

In November 1942 he and Martin England, a Baptist missionary to Burma, placed a $2,500 down payment on a run-down farm eight miles southwest of Americus, Georgia. They named the scarred and eroded acres Koinonia Farm and began living the Sermon on the Mount as they worked to turn their purchase into a place guided by Jesus’ message in Matthew 5-7.

As a doctoral student in Greek at Louisville Seminary, Jordan did not just read the words of Jesus, but he began to use them as his guide for living each day. It was his firm  belief in those words that guided him to begin Koinonia Farm as a place for justice and equality during the days of a world war, the Ku Klux Klan, Senator Joe McCarthy, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, civil rights struggles, and more. His world, like ours, was divided. However, he remained loyal to the best sermon ever spoken and withstood attacks by the KKK and harassment by the FBI and local churches. In fact, because he brought a black man to a Christmas Eve service at his own Baptist church, the church told him not to return.

Pastor Jordan lived the words of Matthew 5:44 that tell us to love our enemies and at Koinonia Farm he showed us that it is not only possible, but better for us, to follow the Sermon on the Mount.

Koinonia Farm still operates today, and many scrumptious food items may be ordered from its website. I recommend Clarence Jordan, Essential Writings, edited by Joyce Hollyday, (Orbis publication) as a good primer on this man who showed us how to live during difficult times.

By Roger Barbee

The long present COVID-19 pandemic and the racial turmoil we must heal have caused me to recall my days of racing marathons, those grueling 26.2-mile races. Like the marathon, the pandemic has been long, and the racial injustices we face have been with us for four hundred years. Both a marathon for sure, and we need to remind ourselves that the way to finish strong and correct is to maintain our form gained from our training. Let me explain.

My view of the marathon is that it is a 10 km race with a twenty-mile warm-up. I raced each marathon by pacing myself and when my energy began sweeping away,  I concentrated even more on my form:  Maintaining a relaxed arm rhythm with my head erect as I aligned my shoulders  above my hips which I kept in line above my knees which I kept in line above my feet. I also maintained a good foot strike by gently landing on the outside of each heel and then rolling to the big toe before pushing off. I worked at maintaining as much of a relaxed, upright posture as I could and not allowing fatigue to dominate. Concentrating on form, not food or some other such subject, worked best for me, and I recommend it still for any road racer or athlete. Too many times I would pass runners whose form had melted into the roadway as they lost position in both the  race and their form. They had fallen apart. In any race, even the 100-meter dash, form is important, and a racer’s form is a result of his or her training.

We are given the opportunity to perfect a form to follow in times of such horrific racial injustices that we, sadly once again, face, and the long-weary COCID-19 pandemic.  The form that I write of is our individual and collective knowledge of our history, literature, religion, and more. For instance: Knowing the name Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and some of his accomplishments is a good beginning. However, we should go a step more and read and study his essay Letter from the Birmingham Jail, but do not stop there. Read the April 12, 1963 appeal to “local blacks of Birmingham” that was signed by eight religious leaders and printed in many area newspapers. Read their condemnation of Dr. King as “an outside agitator” and then read his essay in answer to their words. Learn more about the long struggle for racial justice and have a deeper appreciation for some people’s impatience over 50 years after he penned those magnificent words.

The COVID-19 plague continues to wear on us. Some of us ignore safety protocol in a belief that “rights” are being infringed upon by any governmental restriction aiming for public safety. We are tense. We are tired. We are troubled. Yet, if we had read John Barry’s fine study of a horrific flu epidemic, The Great Influenza, we might be better equipped to place our struggle in an important historical context and act from that perspective; not one of selfish disregard for others.

Any modern sufferer will gain solace from knowledge. Out of that solace will come patience which is necessary for productive action. And we need action today, but action based on facts, not emotions. The patience that grows out of knowledge will help us see the complexities we face and to understand how we came to where we are and to find solutions. But both above examples are historical and literary. While they and more are valuable for training or preparation for having a productive and quality filled life, I also recommend another base to help when weariness sets in; and just as in a marathon, every-day life will cause fatigue for every person. 

We all will benefit from a higher power. As a Christ follower, I read and study my Bible, but the Sermon on the Mount is what I draw from most—especially when I am weary as I am now. During the 1960’s I marched and protested against the war in Vietnam and for equality in America. I know the sting of gas agents and the destruction from angry mobs, which Mark Twain described as armies without a leader. I see that same anger now, but offer that if we, Christ followers or not, follow the words in Matthew 5-7, we would be better for it. Speaking to a large crowd on a mountain, Jesus gives instruction for living. For self-respect and respect for others. For decency. For living a productive life and a life of quality.

 Dr. Clarence Jordan demonstrated at Koinonia Farm in Southwest Georgia during the 1950’s and 60’s, that if we follow the teaching of The Sermon on the Mount, we will have the training that is necessary when the fatigue of running our marathon sets in. And that training will enable us to maintain form, to finish not only the race, but to finish it well.

By Roger Barbee

The camellia bloomed first; the azaleas came next and are now empty of their bright, white flowers; as are the dogwood trees; and the rich purple flowers of the rhododendron and irises at the gate are limp imposters of their former selves. But the hydrangeas form small bubble-like features that will soon burst into balls of blue-yellow and lime; both gardenias are poised to burst forth to slather the garden air with fragrance; and the lyda roses grace one garden wall with their pansy-like opened faces. As if all of this is not enough, while riding my stationary bike yesterday morning a whisper of scent from the large Ligustrum across the road floated by me.

Nature is composed of cycles and sometimes, as described above, cycles within cycles. That is one way to describe birth and its conclusion—death. So yesterday, on May 11 at 4:46 pm, Nolan the noble hound “went the way of all living things.”

Fourteen years ago when we were living in the Shenandoah Valley, my wife Mary Ann took some items to the local animal shelter. It was there that he found her and won her heart with his “Whoo, whoo” each time she passed his crate. The next weekend we visited him and the adoption of us was completed.

He was a stray that had wandered up to a local man’s kennel. Fortunately for us, the man had many dogs, so he brought him to the animal shelter. While he appeared to be an ordinary black and tan hound that had gotten lost or had been abandoned; a young hound that carried buckshot in his hindquarters delivered by a cruel person,  he proved over time to be much more than the sum of his first two years.

At that time, we were dividing our time between Washington and the Valley, but Nolan slipped effortlessly into our schedule. During that first car ride to our home in the Valley he did vomit from car sickness, and he did mark the smoker on the screen porch when he marched into his forever home. Oh, and later that weekend he pulled too hard and turned my wheelchair over, tossing me to the ground. But after that, he began life with us and our beagle Callie and our cat Katie Kitty. During the week while in town he enjoyed walks on the leash with us and Katie Kitty, and each morning if we were not vigilant he would take Callie’s stuffed dog  out of her crate and attempt to escape to the backyard. He never harmed Buddy the stuffed animal, but he gained pleasure from slipping him out of her crate, for whatever reason.

During the weekends in the Valley, Nolan was freer because we had an acre that was fenced in by an underground wire. While Callie respected the fence, he would sometimes be overcome with the hound urge to roam. He had chosen a back corner of the acre and would crawl on his belly to “slip” below the fence. His yelps alerted us to his escape. But he never wandered too far, just enough to satisfy his roaming instinct.

Nolan never met a person or animal that he did not like. After we moved to the Valley full time, we adopted another beagle and a stray mother cat with her kittens. He shared the house, yard, and family room sofa with them all, restful and at peace in his life. However, he would grab in his mouth any squirrel or groundhog that Callie chased his way. Oh, and he would chase thunder across his acre lot, howling and jumping as he repelled the invading noise.,

In his youth Nolan enjoyed slices of an apple or tomato as a treat. However, as he grew older, he came to dislike the tomato while retaining his love of  bits of an apple, but he  remained Mary Ann’s “My sweet boy” who would obediently eat his medications wrapped in a pill pocket or a slice of salty ham.

When the moving van was loaded and headed to our new home on Lake Norman, Mary Ann and I packed our vans for the five-hour ride to the lake. The cats rode in her van, and the three dogs rode with me. Callie slept on the passenger seat, Mickey in the back between plants, but Nolan sat erect between the front seats for the entire ride: My noble co-pilot on our new adventure.

Just as he did all those years before, Nolan accepted and adapted to his new life. He slept on the library sofa with cats and dogs; and he learned to drink his water from the bird bath so as not to stress his aging knees. He loved his mistress as always and shared life with her. But after almost four years on the lake, and sixteen years of life, he aged out and yesterday made his last car ride.

Nolan’s cycle has ended. But like the plants in our garden,  he lived and bloomed and graced Mary Ann and me and all around him. His early years of lonely roaming the Valley do not define him. His long life—lovingly  lived—does.

By Roger Barbee

The above Latin phrase, made famous by the American movie Dead Poet’s Society, was first used by the poet Horace. Its use by Horace is most accurately translated as “Pluck the day,” and after the movie it became popular in American culture and before long it was printed on tee shirts, caps, and mugs. However, the word “pluck”, for whatever reason, proved too much for American sensibilities and the phrase became translated as “Seize the day.” (Such a refinement) Given a coffee mug with that inscription by the head of school where I worked, like the other administrators, I understood the phrase, as a rising professional, to mean that I was to grab each day and shake it out making the most of it as opportunities arose. If opportunities did not arise to pluck, then I was to create them, then pluck.  Seizing the day meant that I, in my mid-40’s, was in charge. Anything that was accomplished in my realm of the school was directly related to either my ideas or actions or both. It was all up to  me, and I lived several years following that belief in my personal and  professional  life.

Thinking of the two interpretations of Horace’s phrase, I recall the saying attributed to  Mark Twain, that the difference  between the right word and almost the right word, is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug. Pluck and seize when viewed as verbs are much alike, but are they the same?  When we seize do we pluck?

One of my mother’s favorite “chores” was to  sweep the front porch, steps, and sidewalk of her mill house. She did  not rush to arrive to this or rush in its doing. She would sweep the  wooden porch some, stop and look around her front yard, sweep some more and adjust the chairs and plants. Satisfied with the porch’s condition, she moved on to the three concrete steps and stepping down carefully, she cleaned each below her as she went. Stopping at the juncture of the steps and sidewalk, she would survey the goings-on of Juniper Street and then begin sweeping the private sidewalk that led to public one. Arriving at that junction, she turned, chatted with any neighbor near or a passer-bye, then carrying her broom like a proud knight, she went back inside of her house  to  finish any cleaning left undone. My mother, a girl of the South Carolina Sandhills, grew up in a time when front yards of sand were swept of their loose sand to make a  clean place to entertain company under a large shade tree. Sometimes, as Maggie did in  Alice Walker’s short story, Everyday Use, people would make a design using the loose sand on the edge of the cleared area. Thus, a “living room” space was created for the company. There was no sand on my mother’s sidewalk, steps, or porch, but her daily sweeping of it made certain that no visitor would trip on a acorn or  small limb, and its cleanliness invited folks to come on in.

Today we  have  leaf blowers, those noisy machines that will clean the area that took my mother thirty minutes or so to  sweep in just a few minutes. Time saved, and all that dirt blown away into the yard or gutter. Time  saved to be used inside cleaning or to be used on another household chore. Time saved is money saved, If my mother had had a leaf blower to use out front, she would have been more efficient and more productive. If my mother had had a leaf blower, she would have been “seizing the day” and producing more.

Yet, even had my mother been given a leaf blower, one she  could have used, I  know that she  would have just left it gathering dust in her garage. She, like so many of her peers, was not interested in being more productive or efficient or  cost effective. She swept her front porch, steps, and sidewalk with her straw broom because she enjoyed the doing of that act. She enjoyed observing the activity on her street and its people. She enjoyed the result of her labor. In my mind, she was plucking. Not the day but a small  piece of it. She understood that one cannot grab and hold an entire day, but one could pluck a moment. She plucked it, enjoyed it, and continued on. Like so many, she had faith in the words, “Give us this day….”

A lesson I finally learned at half-past fifty.

By Roger Barbee

        This is our first spring in the Valley since 2016. As expected newness arrived.

Last week our bird feeders and sunflower seed stored in a metal can were trashed by, yes, a bear. Fortunately, the bear climbed the four-foot fence without damaging it and only scattered things a bit. However, the feeders and metal container are now kept inside, and the feeder out only during daylight hours.

There are three bird boxes in the back yard, and one of them is on a tree next to the workshop. As I have been puttering about in the shop, I have enjoyed watching the nuthatch pair coming and going with small morsels in their beaks for the clamoring young. But two days ago there was no activity in or around the box for a long time, but then one of the parent birds landed on top of the box but did not enter. Then the other parent appeared, but only fluttered around. They would fly away, then return to only peek into the box while sitting on its top or tree.

I  knew what was going on, but kept waiting and watching the parent nuthatches, wishfully hoping that what I knew to be was not true. Finally I went to the box and opened the side wall to see the coiled snake resting on what had been a beautiful nest but now was only a soiled reminder of “nature’s beautiful way.” I left the side wall open and later, after the black racer had left, cleaned out the violated nest, hoping against what I knew that the pair would return to the box.

Yesterday afternoon I got a full view of the snake as it sunned itself on the shop deck, It is thick and over three feet long. It is quite a specimen, especially for a town snake. Because we don’t know its gender, Mary Ann and I named it Sydney.

Our small back yard holds much life. The fish pond shelters 15 goldfish and one large frog, named of course, Jeremiah. Birds galore come for the day ration of sunflower seeds and the water of the pond. Now the garden’s resident snake has introduced itself and become public. Nick the beagle has yet to encounter Sydney, but we are hopeful that all he will do is bark. After all, they both have their purpose in our garden.

Poets say that a poem is never finished; so for gardens.

As I look out the window near my computer I see the purple irises next to the gate. At Lake Norman I complimented a neighbor, Mrs. Bumgardner, on hers. She gave me a bag of bulbs, and my friend Mike helped me plant them next to our gate there. I brought some with me and planted them last summer–   a  reminder of Mrs. Bumgardner and my buddy Mike.

They, like other garden work to come, are a journey that will never be finished, just enjoyed for its beauty and memory.

By Roger Barbee

            Had Robert Frost lived where I do on Lake Norman, would he have written a poem about pine trees and not one about birches?  Pine trees are not as limber as the birches that Frost writes about, so no young boy could be a swinger of pines because a pine would snap, sending the swinger to the ground in a rush, not a slow arch as with the birch.  However, since moving to Isle of Pines Road on the Lake, I have been thinking of Frost and his birches and their meaning for him. And pines.

            Now, if you move to a road named Isle of Pines, then you know for sure one thing about your new neighborhood.  However, as in all situations, knowing about it and living it are two different things. All summer I knew about this isle we were moving to, but in the past few weeks I have been living in the isle and learning about its pines and their ways. The abundance of pine cones and needles taught me the first lesson: There are more of them than of me, so I needed to develop a plan for co-existence, not battle.

            Our house was built in the late 1990s, but it appears that no previous owner worked with the pine needles, allowing them to take over areas next to the house and on the driveway. After planting the small butterfly garden in the back yard, I grabbed by trusty pitchfork and removed them to create a border next to our neighbor’s fence. I used a shovel to scrape away the layer of hard mulch and small roots that had spread across the edge of the driveway. This reclamation of space made room for grass and flowers and gave me a sense of ownership but not control. Each time I looked up to the green canopy of over thirty pine trees in our front yard, I realized my place in this isle of pines. 

            One cleared area between the house and the walkway to the back yard has been designated for a bloom of azaleas, and the small area next to the front entrance will be many pots full of shade loving flowers.  The long area following the driveway has been planted with fescue grass, but one large area next to our neighbor’s fence has yet to be planned. (A wild area perhaps). The remainder of the front is either struggling green or piled pine needles nestled at the base of their trees. There are no pine trees in the back yard until you get near the Lake, and we will work with those after we come to full terms around the house.

            However, I have learned quite a bit from the over thirty tall pine trees in our front yard. One day while raking, I heard the soft wind travelling through the canopy. It was one of the loveliest of nature’s many melodies. Even the shower of needles that followed was delightful. I have even come to appreciate the symmetrical style of the female pine cones while respecting their piercing points. I no longer startle at the sound of scampering squirrels as they race across the pine’s rough bark, but I did marvel on the day I found my first cone that had been gnawed by a squirrel leaving only its core with a tuft of immature seeds remaining on the top, causing it to look like some cartoon character. And who could not enjoy the bird sounds that erupt from the green canopy high above me. But, perhaps the most enjoyment I have learned from the pines is the way the sun’s light first comes to the topmost green and slowly makes its way down to the thick bases as if caressing the rough, brown bark.

            Unlike Frost, I never swung on birches, but as a boy I did climb pine trees. Despite their roughness, sap, and the lasting odor they left on me, I enjoyed their convenient limbs that invited a boy to climb to their lofty tips. The trees in our yard are so tall they have no lower limbs, but even if they did, I am too old to climb. Frost writes that there are worse things to be than a swinger of birches. I agree. And there are worse things than living with pines.