You should go over to Martha's site and see the virtual gallery show she has up! It's for VirtualTart, an artist's collective mothered by New Zealand artist, Dale Copeland. Martha sent me to Dale's site when I lamented my lack of housekeeping skills and clutter fest here at Dogpatch Ashram and Hot Flash Hotel. My loving name for my home.

I saw photos of Dale's studio and yard and have been mostly okay with my own fierce abandon since. My yard looks like a jungle too. I have planted all kinds of exotics that will live in this semi-tropical place. There's frangipani, several kinds of datura, lots of different jasmine, lime, lemon, orange, pear, tangerine, grapefruit, a huge bearss lemon, pineapple, mulberry, palms, river birch, cherry laurel, some bananas, plantains, passion flower, thumbergias, orchids of several stripes, night blooming cereus that regales me regularly with it's phenomenal blooms, Don Juan and David Austin roses, lots of begonias including one that belonged to my mother, Jewels of Opar, succulents and aloes, and every kind of local weed you can imagine. I used to garden.

There's a vine called 'Blue Skys' that presumptuously grows up over an heirloom La France weeping hibiscus. It tumbles down to the ground, up over the roof gables and into the old oak above my house. I know I should trim it back. But I love the huge lavender blue blooms with their yellow throats that grow in long clusters like garlands. It helps to hide some of the trauma from the storms.

Since the hurricanes that wreaked havoc on my 100 year old house and yard two years ago felling several large oaks and collapsing ceilings and putting holes in the roof, I've been in a frozen state. Almost a panic about getting it back in order. There are boxes piled with fabrics and trims. Furs used on the historically accurate gowns I make peek out between rolls of brocades. The world's largest button, brass findings and bead collection rests in caskets, boxes, drawers and trays. Laces spill out of boxes and around the several machines that I use as the hardware of my costume craft.

I guess there should be a new number in the psychology texts for post-hurricane stress syndrome. Surely the Katrina survivors have it. To go out and start uprighting the plants in the path of the tornado that sat down here during Jeanne would be to remember sitting in the house and feeling it lift off of the foundations and come slamming back down with an ear shattering bang. Moving the debris would bring back the sounds of the winds howling through and around me as I sat here huddled with the dog and cat, all of us shaking.

Or maybe I'm just flat ass lazy and tired. Maybe I want to create, build, write, visit, enjoy my friends and screw the house keeping duties since there is better use of my time at my age. Whatever. The mortgage should be paid off shortly and I can begin to dab here and there at it with small funds. I like owning it stick and splinter. I'll get to the repairs the same way. Stick and splinter.