life | Bertram's Blog

Downpour

July 19, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I had a wonderful surprise last night, and you’ll never guess what it was. Aww, shucks. You guessed it. And here I thought I was being subtle and crafty.

Last night’s surprise downpour was anything but subtle, though it was crafty how it slipped in past the weather forecasters’ crystal ball. The meteorologists all said there was almost no chance of rain for the near future, and a few hours later — deluge!

I was thrilled to see the rain for many reasons. One, we needed it. Two, it was a lovely sight — and sound. Three, I was dreading today and having to be outside to water when it was so dang hot.

I also dreaded today because I’d signed up to work at the museum, and although I would have liked to help, I simply did not want to go meandering about in the afternoon heat. I lucked out on that, too. Because of the rain cancelling my morning chores, when a friend called and asked if I wanted to go to the “big city” with her (big only in comparison to this town; anyone anywhere else would consider it a miniscule place) I jumped at the chance to get away for a bit. Shortly afterward, I got a message that the time to help at the museum was changed from the afternoon to the morning, but it was too late; I was already on my way out of town.

So the day I dreaded turned out to be not so dreadful. Even better, I got to see my yard from a different perspective (from the street as we drove away from my place), and it looked pretty good for having to survive such a searingly hot summer.

It’s funny that although we are in the midst of summer (“midsummer” sounds much more romantic than it actually is), I only have three months to come up with and to write a mystery for the museum’s October event.

A friend is doing research for me on a tale she was told as a youngster — something about the military, the Cheyenne, gold, a cave, pictographs, and a totem pole. There was also a hanging, but I don’t remember if that’s part of that story she told me or a different one. (Not only did I talk to her yesterday about what she remembered, I also leafed through a book that gave some of the history of this area, and all that input is jumbled together in memory.) I sure hope she can track down some people who might remember the story because it sounds interesting (more interesting by far than this heat, that’s for sure!). If necessary, I could use those same themes to create my own story, but since it’s for the historical museum, I’d just as soon the mystery have some basis in fact.

But for now, it’s a matter of waiting to see what transpires, both with the story and with our midsummer weather.

We could see a few more showers tonight, but since it’s in the forecast, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rain passed us by — those crystal balls the forecasters are currently using seem rather murky and not at all trustworthy. Because I don’t have my own private rainstorm tucked away somewhere that I could trot out on days like today, I’ll just have to hope that everything again turns out for the best.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in gardening, home, life. Leave a Comment »

Homefull

July 18, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I often write about (or at least refer to) the changes in my life since Jeff died twelve-and-a-half years ago, but I don’t write that much about the changes since my older brother died. Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of his death, and it surprised me that it wasn’t that long ago (or perhaps it surprised me that it was so long ago — with death and grief, it’s sometimes hard to tell). His death set into play a long string of happenstance that ended up with me, in a house, in this sweltering corner of Colorado.

Mostly, his death changed me in some fundamental way so I was ready when my other brother suggested I take my small savings and buy a house. He’d come to help me clear out our deceased brother’s things and deal with any legal issues, and I have a hunch he wanted to make sure I was settled so he wouldn’t have to worry about yet another sibling. Whatever his reasoning, the idea he broached made sense to me, especially when he told me about this area that actually had houses I could afford.

The time was ripe, apparently, for buying houses in and around this area, because every one I liked (and could afford) disappeared from the market even before my real estate agent could look at it.

Luckily, I only needed one house, and that house came looking for me.

It seems as if I’d been looking for a very long time before I became aware of this house, but considering that my brother has been gone only four years and that I’ve been here a couple of months shy of three and a half years, the whole upheaval to my life — ambitions, geographical location, as well as the mental change from life-long renter to homeowner — happened in a matter of months.

It’s ironic that because of the death of my homeless brother, I am homefull. (That’s not a word, though it should be.) At any rate, whatever the proper word, because of him, here I am, with a home of my own.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in grief, home, house, life. Tags: becoming a homeowner, changes grief brings, death of a brother, death of a homeless man. 2 Comments »

Balancing on the Fulcrum

July 17, 2022 — Pat Bertram

This heat sure is zapping any energy I might otherwise have had. I still do my early morning yard chores, but the effort required to slog my way through the heat leaves me without any resources for the rest of the day. Even when I’m finished and am inside with the air conditioner going, I can still feel that lack of interest in doing anything. Except for reading, of course. That I can do anywhere or at any time, though I have to admit, few books can hold my interest enough to keep me awake for very long. Naps anyone?

It’s times like this when I can feel the pendulum swing of life. Here we are, stuck in a slough of over 100-degree temperatures, but it wasn’t that long ago when the temperatures were dipping below 0 on the Fahrenheit scale. On a day-to-day basis, the pendulum of the seasons might not seem as if it is moving, but it is. In another six months, we’ll be back to those frigid temperatures.

Another pendulum I could feel today is the one that regulates how I feel about my yard and the work I’m putting into it. A few months ago, I was enchanted with the way everything looked and how everything was going. Now I am definitely unenchanted (meaning the enchantment is at an end) though the pendulum hasn’t yet swung all the way to disenchanted (meaning disillusionment and disappointment). And perhaps the pendulum might not swing that far. My love affair with my garden was a shallow one, based entirely on its looks. As the old flowers and plants die off and late-bloomers blossom, and as (perhaps) the rather bleak look of midsummer desiccation gives way to a more robust autumn look when cooler temperatures favor cool-temperature plants, such as New England asters, chrysanthemums, and my grass, then I might become enchanted again. If not, there’s always next spring and the inevitable pendulum swing.

I try not to be too influenced by wild pendulum swings because life is so much more comfortable on the fulcrum. I do, as much as possible, try to remain emotionally centered without going to extremes of moods. (Grief was an aberration, an insane one-sided, one-way swing of the pendulum of life, though even then, I tried to find whatever balance I could.) Still, even centered as much as possible on the fulcrum, small daily mood changes can seem immense when influenced by the out-of-my-control swings of nature.

And especially when the heat wipes me out, leaving me without the energy to balance on the fulcrum.

***

Posted in gardening, grief, life. Tags: centering myself, disenchanted with gardening, heat wipes me out, pendulum swing of seasons, unenchanted with gardening. Leave a Comment »

Vexatious Issues

July 16, 2022 — Pat Bertram

When I first started working outside this past spring, it felt as if my yard were an extension of my house — an outdoor room, perhaps. Now the outdoors feels hostile and alien, a place that I cannot control, at least not in the way I can control the “climate” inside my house. We can’t control the inside one hundred percent, of course. So much is still out of our control, such as bugs that find their way inside, appliances that go wonky, as well as any number of things that can go wrong. But at least inside (so far anyway) I don’t have to deal with searingly intense and dangerous heat, slime molds, dead birds (well, one, anyway — I found it on my front lawn when I went out to mow today), clouds of grasshoppers that chomp on non-suspecting plants, grass that turns brown and desiccates overnight.

The past few days, dealing with all those vexatious issues, I haven’t even felt like sitting in my gazebo to enjoy a few minutes of rest after my hard work. I’ve just gone inside, closed the door, and felt glad to be in a more familiar place.

At least for a while, that is, until the phone rings. And oh, does it ring! In the past couple of days, I’ve received maybe forty calls from entities with names like “Spam Risk,” “Haitian Chick 5,” and “Telemarketer.” I don’t answer (well, I do, but I hang up immediately; if not, the calls go to voice mail, and then I have to delete all of them) so I don’t know if there are real people behind the calls or if it’s all robots. But it doesn’t matter who is calling — the ring always startles me, though I have it on low. And I turn the phone off at night to keep from being awakened.

Apparently, after the slowdowns and shutdowns and sheltering-in-place during the past couple of years, the telemarketing machine gave us a bit of a break, but now it’s going full bore, trying to make up the money they think they lost. (Though why, with all warnings about spam and identity theft and fraud, people are still buying into these scams, I don’t know. They blame the “old people,” but my generation and even the one before me are tech savvy and wary. Or so I thought. But maybe we’re losing what few brain cells we have left, and what we once knew we no longer do?)

But luckily, it’s cool inside, so there’s that. And I have books to read and food to eat. And, if necessary, I can mute the ring so I don’t hear it at all to give my poor frazzled nerves a break.

Even luckier, I was able to leave all the rest of my vexations outside where they belong.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in dealing with old age, gardening, house, life. Tags: clouds of grasshoppers, dead birds, increase in spam calls, outside feels hostile, searingly intense and dangerous heat, slime molds, telemarketers. Leave a Comment »

Gardening is Like Life

July 15, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Sometimes gardening it too much like life to suit me. Come to think of it, gardening isn’t “like” life, it is life. All those plants and other living creatures go through the same sort of life cycles we do, with ups and downs, growth and stagnation, illness and death. They might not have to deal with the angst of their traumas, but we — in this case “I” — suffer the angst for them.

This has been a particularly confusing time for me garden-wise. The sun desiccates plants so quickly, that what was thriving yesterday, is all but dead today. I’m glad I took a photo of these petunias yesterday because today, not only are the flowers gone, but the plants themselves look as if they might not make it through another drastic heat wave.

The same thing happened to the zinnias, though I don’t know why. They generally like this climate and this area especially — at one time, 92% of all zinnia seeds were grown in this valley not far from here. Luckily, only the flowers desiccated. The plants themselves seem strong enough to produce more blossoms.

The grass especially confuses me. The large area of the lawn that had turned brown about a month ago was doing well until last night, and now it’s even worse than it was the first “brown” time. As if that weren’t bad enough, I’ve been infested with slime mold in a different area of the lawn. How the heck does such a dry climate even have slime mold spores? And how can a certain area be moist enough for the slime mold to take hold when the area all around it is gasping for a drink? (A while back, a cat with diarrhea left its offering in that very spot, so all I can think of is that it somehow ingested the spores and was generous enough to share.) Even though I clean up the slime mold every morning and sprinkle the grass with baking soda, it grows again overnight in a different spot.

And no, I didn’t take a picture of the white blob. I wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible; I certainly didn’t want to memorialize the creature. (I suppose it’s a creature, though it’s not an animal, a fungus, or a plant but an amoeba. A smart amoeba. Supposedly these plasmodium can solve problems even though they don’t have a brain. Sheesh. As if the life of a garden — and gardener — wasn’t horror enough.)

Another issue I encountered was with a hen and chick plant that flowered. This rooster, as the blooming rosette is called, came right on time. (They flower about every three years.) One gardener told me the flowering stage was the end of the cycle and to pull up the whole rosette so the “chicks” could grow. After I did that, I found out the flowers produce seed, so I could have left it until the rosette died on its own. See? Too much like life. Either way, the chicks will soon become hens. And that, too, is life.

Although I have enjoyed the wildflowers, I’m not sure if I’ll buy more seeds to plant next year. (I still have some left over, so I can change my mind about planting them at the last minute.) The blooms are staggered, so there’s not a lot of color at any one time, and the mass of plants mask weed and weedy grass growth. I’ll need to completely clear out some of the wildflower areas since that will be the only way to get rid of the weeds, but it won’t be a problem since most of the flowers were annuals anyway. The flowers that went to seed won’t be affected — the seeds should still grow.

One thing that does so very well here is the magnus echinacea no matter how the weather or the gardener treats it. I’m considering getting a lot more of those plants for problem areas.

And that, too, is like life — when one thing comes to an end, you do your best to find something else to start.

***

Posted in gardening, life. Tags: dead areas in lawn, hen and chick blossom, hen and chick plant, life cycle of a garden, magnus echinacea, slime mold, wildflowers. 9 Comments »

Liking What I Write

July 14, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Sometimes I read an article I wrote, and I think, “I wish I had written that,” then it hits me that oh, wait. I did write that.

A case in point:

This morning someone left a comment on my post “Let It Ride,” telling me he was doing a podcast about the movie and wanted to know if I would like to join the discussion. Not remembering having ever written about the film, though it is one I like, I went back and read the post. The piece turned out to be not so much a rehashing of the movie (which the critics hated and apparently, so did the screenwriter, because she had her name removed from the credits), but a discussion of the philosophy of luck.

I generally do not like stories about gambling. They set my teeth on edge because of the inevitable slough of despair the character falls into when the addiction gets the better of him. Despite that, Let It Ride is one of my favorite movies, probably because although the story takes place at Hialeah amid the horse racing culture, it is not a movie about gambling. It’s the story of how the forces of the universe align to give Jay Trotter (Richard Dreyfuss) one perfect day, how he had the wisdom to recognize the gift, and how he had the courage to accept it. Not everyone accepted the gift. Even those who saw what was happening to him and were jealous, refused to follow his lead when he so generously offered to share the luck.

I think the part I liked most about that particular post was my summation: What does this philosophical vision of the movie teach me? Perhaps that luck — and life — should be taken as it comes, we should trust ourselves, and beyond that, we should just let it ride.

So, that was an example of something that I wish I’d written and had. On the other hand, there are a lot of things I read that I am very glad I didn’t write. The last book I read (or attempted to read) was a mystery written by a man from the point of view of an alcoholic woman journalist who kept sabotaging her life. It was a popular book, though I don’t know why. A writer struggling with alcoholism is such a trite theme; hundreds, if not thousands of books (though not a single one by me) have been written with that same generic character.

Another book I was glad I didn’t write was the one I read before that — a novel by a youngish white woman whose point-of-view characters were a flamboyant black woman and an old man (who turned out to be younger than I am). I thought such stories were no longer acceptable in a world where people don’t appreciate race appropriation.

I suppose I should be grateful that I like the things I write since there is so much writing out there that I don’t like. I also suppose I will follow through and email the guy about his podcast, though I’m not sure I’ll accept his offer. I really have nothing much more to say about the movie than what is already in this post and the one where he left his comment.

***

Posted in books, culture, life, writing. Tags: becoming lucky, being lucky, gambling, Let It Ride, luck, luck and courage, philosophy of luck. Leave a Comment »

Flowering Despite the Heat

July 13, 2022 — Pat Bertram

This is a hard time for me to be doing any gardening. Although my lawn is a football field blend of grasses with Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, and red fescue — a mixture that is supposed to do well in heat and cold, sun and shade — it’s struggling. Even worse, the Bermuda grass that once covered the yard is poking its way through the thick grass and without some sort of intervention, will eventually take over. For now, I’m just pulling it up when I can. Later in the fall, when the temperature cools down, I’ll dig it up and reseed those areas, as well as any area that didn’t make it through the summer.

I can see why I never particularly wanted a lawn. It’s rather a pernickety plant that can break one’s heart. Still, I enjoy it more than it frustrates me, so I will keep it as nice as possible for as long as possible. I think the second year will be easier (the sod was laid mid-October, so it hasn’t been here a full year yet) because I will be able to see patterns of growth and stagnation, as well as what sort of weeds and weed grass to look out for.

Despite my frustration, struggling plants, and problems with weather, there are still many things to enjoy in the yard. Right now, it’s mostly daylilies and echinacea, but a sunflower or two are also flowering.

I suppose, despite the heat, I’d have to say I’m flowering, too, since I’m being more sociable than I have been the past couple of years. In fact, I haven’t had a completely “alone” day for a while, and don’t expect another one for the foreseeable future.

Luckily, yard and garden care are projects for the very early morning, so I’m available to accept invitations the rest of the time, and I’m less inclined to say “no” than I have been. (I suppose I should be still saying “no,” considering the rise of yet another virulent strain of The Bob, but like almost everyone else, I’ve gradually strayed from taking stringent precautions.)

If I sound a bit down, that’s understandable. It’s a full moon tonight, and I don’t sleep well around this time anymore, so I tend to let my less-than-ebullient nature get the better of me.

But tomorrow is another day, and if nothing else, there will be another flower of some sort.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in gardening, life. Tags: daylilies, echinacea, football field mixture of grass, Kentucky bluegrass, pernickety lawn, red fescue, tall fescue. Leave a Comment »

Weird Dream

July 12, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I had a weird dream last night.

Well, that was a silly thing to say. Isn’t it the nature of dreams to be weird? That’s why I dislike them so much — they leave me feeling queasy and uneasy. When I found out that vitamin B-6 in the evening can help you remember your dreams, I immediately revised my vitamin-taking schedule to make sure I don’t ingest B vitamins in the evening. And it helped.

[In checking to make sure I was right about the specific vitamin that helps with dream recall, I noticed that all the articles were based on “new research” done in 2018, but I’d stopped taking the vitamin at night decades before that, so that “new research” was actually rehashed old research.]

What also helps is that if I do remember a dream when I wake, I immediately put something else in my head.

This morning, however, something banged against the house on the other side of the wall where I have my bed, and it woke me with a start. And somehow the dream stayed with me.

In the dream, I was visiting with my sophomore-year high school English teacher, and I decided to give her my latest book. My dreaming self could clearly see the published book, though when I went to get it, I couldn’t put my hand on it, and I realized the book hadn’t yet been published because I no longer have a publisher. And then . . . bang!

In that first moment of waking, I decided to go ahead and self-publish the book so I could give it to her, then it dawned on me that I hadn’t even written it yet. Didn’t even have a clue as to what the book would be about. Would never give that teacher a book of mine if I ever happened to see her.

The dream seems rather banal, now that I think about it. It was the bang at that precise moment that seemed weird, especially since I couldn’t tell if the bang waking me up was a real-life sound or a dream-induced sound.

Another odd thing is that this particular dream had its roots in a decades-old incident. That particular teacher once told me that she’d saved papers from every one of her students she thought would one day become a writer, then she looked directly into my eyes and said, “But I never saved anything of yours.”

I have no idea what she thought she was accomplishing by that statement, though it seems another example of how fellow students often thought I was “teacher’s pet,” but that teachers generally hated me. (In both cases, now that I think about it, it had to be due to my always knowing the answer. I was one of those silly students who read the schoolbooks the first few days of school, and then had nothing left to learn the rest of the time. I did get smart, though. When I realized some teachers refused to call on me anymore, I stopped listening to them.)

I clearly remember leaving my third-grade classroom at the end of the year. The teacher was sobbing and telling each student in turn how much she would miss him or her. Then it was my turn. She glared at me briefly without saying anything, then turned to the girl behind me and continued her sobbing good-byes.

And then there was my senior-year high school English teacher, who got a horrified look on her face when I walked into her class after everyone was already seated. (The advanced class I’d signed up for had too many people, and instead of being fair and eliminating the last to sign up, the teacher drew a name out of a hat — the only time in my life I ever “won” a drawing.) I’d had that horror-stricken teacher for freshman English, and she hadn’t liked me . . . not at all. And so we were stuck with each other for another year. (Though not really. I asked her if I could take the class independently — teaching myself, in other words — and she jumped at the opportunity.)

But this is getting far from the dream. I have a hunch the dream was more about writing and publishing than anything that happened so many decades ago.

I won’t ever go through the process of trying to find an agent or publisher again, and both my previous publishers have had very little luck with my books, so that leaves only one option — to self-publish, which is something I never wanted to do. Because of the confounding situation, it’s easier to not write at all (except for this blog).

Still, the dream seems to indicate either that I’m not through with writing yet or that writing isn’t through with me. Or conversely, it could indicate I took a B vitamin way too late in the evening.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Posted in life. Tags: bad dream, mean teachers, remembering dreams, teacher's pet, vitamin b-6 and dreams, vitamin b6 and dream recall. 4 Comments »

Treading

July 11, 2022 — Pat Bertram

This is one of those days when I forget I’m not a native of my adopted town. Everywhere I went this morning, as I wandered about doing a few errands, I met up with a good friend. I even managed to collect a couple of hugs, which was especially nice. I was particularly glad to see the woman I have tea with occasionally. We live only a few blocks apart, but we’re both so busy, it’s hard to find a time to get together (and with the weather being so hot, it’s hard to want to make the effort) but we took the opportunity today to make tentative plans for the only day this week we’re both free.

There is another friend I would have liked to encounter but didn’t. I’ve been meaning to call to invite for tea, but there just doesn’t seem to be time. (We’d planned to meet every week, and it’s embarrassing to think how long it’s been since we last got together.) It’s not that I’m so busy, really, it’s that I no longer like making plans to do two different things in one day. Two different things involving people, that is. Obviously, I do more than a single thing every day, even at this time of year when the heat is so enervating. Or maybe I should say especially at this time of year. Despite the heat, I am outside every morning for a couple of hours trying to keep my yard (and me!) hydrated and the weeds from taking over.

Doing yard work now is nowhere near as much fun as it was during the spring. The entire three months of spring I had to contend with strong winds, but still, I managed to find cooler times to be outside. Seeing the growth of the plants and enjoying the splashes of color as flowers blossomed made it all worthwhile. I’m in a holding pattern now, just trying to keep what is there alive. To be sure, there are a few blossoms now and again (lilies and echinacea right now), but mostly, the spring flowers are long gone, the summer flowers are disappearing, and the newly reseeded flower beds and the fall bloomers haven’t yet started to blossom.

Considering how hard it is to maintain what I now have, I can’t imagine what it will be like when the last two uncultivated areas of the yard are de-weeded and planted. I would like the raised garden to be built this fall (and so would the builder so he can check it off his list), but I’m not in any hurry to plant, though truthfully, that planting will be easy. This winter I’ll toss some wildflowers in the trough and then fill in with a few vegetables next spring. It’s the other area, a long stretch back to the alley, that is the real problem. So many weeds, and deep-rooted ones at that.

For now, I’m just treading water. Well, not treading water since mostly the water I see is what comes out of my hose. So treading soil, maybe? Treading paths? Treading errands? Whichever “treading” it is, I’m just holding my own, unable to overcome my heat-induced inertia as well as my garden’s inertia, to propel either of us forward through the summer doldrums.

Despite the rather forced metaphors, you get the picture and can understand why today’s serendipitous meeting with friends was so sweet, even if (as it seemed) I haven’t actually lived here my whole life.

***

Posted in gardening, life. Tags: doing errands, don't like doing two things in a day, heat-induced inertia, in the doldrums, meeting friends while doing errands, treading water. Leave a Comment »

Lilies of the Field

July 10, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I thought I was being clever when I named this post since I am attaching photos of my lilies. I also thought I was being clever when I Googled “lilies of the field flower” to see what exactly those flowers were so I could astound you with my knowledge.

And that’s where the cleverness ended, mine and everyone else’s. Like with so much else I look up for this blog, there is no definitive answer.

Some people think the lilies of the field are lilies of the valley.

Some think they are the now rare — and spectacular — white Madonna Lily, the lily from which our Easter Lily was derived. Because this wildflower exists only in the high valleys of Galilee and a few other places and not near the shores of the sea of Galilee, other people think the Madonna Lily can’t possibly be the original lily of the field.

Some people think the lily of the field is the scarlet martagon. Even though this flower did exist at the proper time, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus supposedly named this flower “lily of the field” after the biblical reference.

Some people think the lily of the field is the poppy anemone.

So, apparently no one knows what the lilies of the field actually are. All the lilies pictured here are lilies of my own field . . . well, yard . . . though “Lilies of the Yard” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Lilies of the Field.”

Making things even more confusing, only the first lily adorning this blog is a true lily, hybrid though it might be. The others are daylilies, which aren’t true lilies but are in fact a completely different genus.

But no matter what you call them, these lilies of my yard are lovely even though, as in the bible, my lilies toil not, mostly because I do the toiling — such as watering and weeding — for them.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.