Don's Blog Dear Deer 12-3-25

Begin forwarded message:

From: Don Sessions <bigdonsessions@gmail.com>

Subject: Don's Blog Dear Deer 12-3-25

Date: December 3, 2025 at 10:11:21 AM CST

As you know the deer and I have had a complex relationship this year. The herd of 11 that used to stay in the woods behind the meadow of the back yard is now regularly eating my front garden flowers. They even bed down in the day lilies. But that is balanced by their sheer magnificence. This invasion of the dear but hungry  deer is also occurring at the lake house. Here is a new friend who has been hanging out there lately.

He struts around knowing I am there. 

And later looking closer at the picture I see a surprise that I didn't even see when I took the image. Beautiful,yes?

But don't forget that this young child can sometimes grow up to be frightening.

        The Deer

You never know.

The body of night opens

like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,

like so many wrappings of mist.
And on the hillside two deer are walking along
just as though this wasn't

the owned, tilled earth of today
but the past.
I did not see them the next day, or the next,

but in my mind's eye –
there they are, in the long grass,
like two sisters.

This is the earnest work. Each of us is given
only so many mornings to do it –
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
Days I don't do this

I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn't just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open
like a river;
the old body goes on, climbing the hill.

Mary Olliver

Flower for the Day Rosemary 12-1-25

From May to several weeks ago we have enjoyed a large container of rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus). It is a shrub with  evergreen needle-like leaves. It is a member of the sage family, Lamiaceae. We love its pleasing fragrance.

Several weeks ago Jan noticed a flower. 

We had never seen it flower before.

Rosemary leaves are used as a flavoring in foods, such as  stuffing, roasted meats, and marinades. Fresh or dried leaves are used in traditional Mediterranean cuisine, having an aroma of pine which complements many cooked foods. Herbal tea can be made from the dried leaves.

Rosemary was considered sacred to ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks. It was written about by Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE). Several Shakespeare plays refer to the use of rosemary in burial or memorial rites. In Hamlet, Ophelia says, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember." It likewise appears in winter's Tale in Act 4 Scene 4, where Perdita talks about "Rosemary and Rue". In Act 4 Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence admonishes the Capulet household to "stick your rosemary on this fair corse, and as the custom is, and in her best array, bear her to church." It is also said that "In the language of flowers it means 'fidelity in love'.''

LoveSpell: Against Endings 

All the endings in my life  rise up against me  like that sea of troubles  Shakespeare mixed  with metaphors;  like Vikings in their boats  singing Wagner,  like witches  burning at  the stake--  I submit  to my fate.    I know beginnings,  their sweetnesses,  and endings,  their bitternesses--  but I do not know  continuance--  I do not know  the sweet demi-boredom  of life as it lingers,  of man and wife  regarding each other  across a table of shared witnesses,  of the hand-in-hand dreams  of those who have slept  a half-century together  in a bed so used and familiar  it is rutted  with love.    I would know that  before this life closes,  a soulmate to share my roses--  I would make a spell  with long grey beard hairs  and powdered rosemary and rue,  with the jacket of a tux  for a tall man  with broad shoulders,  who loves to dance;  with one blue contact lens  for his bluest eyes;  with honey in a jar  for his love of me;  with salt in a dish  for his love of sex and skin;  with crushed rose petals  for our bed;  with tubes of cerulean blue  and vermilion and rose madder  for his artist's eye;  with a dented Land-Rover fender  for his love of travel;  with a poem by Blake  for his love of innocence  revealed by experience;  with soft rain  and a bare head;  with hand-in-hand dreams on Mondays  and the land of fuck  on Sundays;  with mangoes, papayas  and limes,  and a house towering  above the sea.    Muse, I surrender  to thee.  Thy will be done,  not mine.    If this love spell  pleases you,  send me this lover,  this husband,  this dancing partner  for my empty bed  and let him fill me  from now  until I die.  I offer my bones,  my poems,  my luck with roses,  and the secret garden  I have found  walled in my center,  and the sunflower  who raises her head  despite her heavy seeds.    I am ready now, Muse,  to serve you faithfully  even with  a graceful dancing partner--  for I have learned  to stand alone.    Give me your blessing.  Let the next  epithalamion* I write  be my own.  And let it last  more than the years  of my life--  and without the least  strain--  two lovers bareheaded  in a summer rain.

Erica Jong

*'epithalamion' -  a song celebrating a marriage

Don's Blog Happy Day 11-21-25

Well today is my day. Ninety years ago today (1935) I arrived at Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. 

I spent my childhood in La Grange, Illinois.

 

My most fortuitous event was in 1961 (64 years ago) when I married Jan Elizabeth Feldwisch. 

We raised three boys (Lee,Gordon,& Chris) who have families of their own.

I have accomplished much both near

and far.

I have been on many trails

and still seek the 'peace the passeth all understanding'.

Who Knew?

YOU my Friend,
have truthfully lived a Grand and Glorious Life,
and Blessed by three Sons,
and a Gorgeous Wife.
You chose Medicine, Jan chose Art,
Your conversations are often apart,
But the Obvious Measurement,
Stands on its Own, You are always Together,
Never Alone.

Bill Halliburton

Don's Blog Arborvitae 11-17-25

The leaves of the hardwood trees are almost all on the ground providing mulch for the azaleas and other bushes. 

Our white pine has been dropping needless for a month. Between us and the Kraus House, the Frank Lloyd Wright House, to the south west of us in Ebsworth  Park is a row of trees planted by St Louis County. They are arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis)also known as northern white cedar. Arbor vitae is Latin for 'tree of life'. They are native northern conifers in the cypress family Cupressaceae.

They grow rapidly and are the best natural barrier available both for sound and privacy. The tree can grow to 50 feet or more with a 3 feet diameter. The bark is red-brown and its fan-like branches have scaly leaves. This time of year the leaves turn color and begin to fall.

Thuja occidentalis has important uses in traditional Ojibwe culture. Honoured with the name Nookomis Giizhik (Grandmother Cedar), the tree is the subject of sacred legends and is considered a gift to humanity for its myriad of uses, among them crafts, construction, and medicine. It is one of the four plants of the Ojibwe medicine wheel. The foliage is rich in vitamin C and is believed to be the anneda, which cured the scurvy of Jacques Cartier and his party in the winter of 1535–1536.

Is it heedless?

Is it heartless, or unjudging, or forgetful, or immune?

Do we apprehend its nature, can we comprehend it power,

We, as mortal as the sparrow, and as fading as the flower,

And as changing as the moon?

John Masefield

Flower for the Day Last Dahlia 11-12-25

The 22 degree freeze has leveled the gardens in one night. Here is the last dahlia. As you have noticed the depth of color is fully equal to that of the peony or the rose. Its power comes from its structural complexity. The flowers are unsurpassed. This one stars out almost like a peony bud.

Then it explodes into glory.

And in its Steuben container it dominates for over a week. 

time scratches at the walls during small talk,

it inches forward in every parking lot.

I exist amongst it,

invisible to the world like im made of glass.

Adam Sessions

Note: With the garden resting for the winter the posts will become more irregular. The fruits of this years gardens despite the ferocious intrusion of the deer have been extraordinary. Eh?

Flower for the Day Dahlia V 11-10-25

Well we are in the big freeze and everything is drooping. Her is one of several remaining dahlias which were 

saved for inside before the silent demise of the many remaing buds.

Dahlia

a sea of swanning sirens
proudly poised, petals upon petals 
that furl and curl 
a lover of the sun, a foe of frost
a vibrant color palette
from esther to labyrinth to tangerine
like a beauty queen
stealing gazes, spilling sighs
she reigns supreme
in the garden of Eve

Kahlani

Flower for the Day Dahlia IV 11-7-25

This dahlia has beaten the impending freeze and there are more to come. Not much else is still newly blooming.

This bud has been slow to bloom,

but it turns wondrous. The edges are amazing.

And then it continues to entrance us for days.

Dreamy Petals

dreamy petals

in full blossom

proud dahlia

Writinstuffs

Flower for the Day Dahlia III 11-5-25

The big freeze is coming this weekend but the dahlias are still blooming - many buds but painfully slow. They better hurry. When they do bloom they are spectacular.

The Perfect Garden

These blossoms do not grow to be a botanic
Artist's view.
But grow free in the perfect garden nourished by
golden sun and watered by dawn's misty dew.

To exist in the perfect fantasy somewhere..
where fantasy and reality boldly gleams...
somewhere in this perfect garden...
a dahlia tenderly dreams.

LG Mace

Flower for the Day White Snakeroot 11-3-25

Our last offering, Fall Boneset (Eupetorium perfoliatum) looks similar to todays flower, white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima). They are both white flowered Native herbal perennials. Their differences lie in their leaf and stem structures and toxicity. The most significant difference is that boneset is used medicinally for fevers while white snakeroot is poisonous and can cause 'milk sickness'. If ingested by cows  the poison can be passed to humans via milk. Bonesets leaves are joined across the stem (perfoliate) and has hairy stems.The leaves of snakeroot  are separate with distinct leaf stalks. Its stems are hairless.

Here is a side by side image with boneset on the left and snakeroot with clean white flowers on the right.

White snakeroot  grows upright tp 5 feet producing multistep clumps. The leaves have serrated edges and grow to 6 inches long. At the end of the upper branches, flat-topped panicles or compound corymbs of white flower heads.  The flowers are a clean white color and after blooming, small seeds with fluffy white tails are released to blow in the wind. 

In the early 1800s, a devastating disease of unknown origin was sweeping across much of North America. It was almost always lethal, particularly in isolated mountain communities. The disease is characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain, and if untreated, the symptoms can progress to weakness, difficulty standing or walking, complete loss of muscle coordination, stupor, and even coma; death usually occurs within a few days of the onset of these symptoms. Adult cows were not affected, but the disease killed their calves, and goats, horses, and sheep all fell victim to the plant's poison. The disease was prevalent in the south and the midwest.

In 1818 Abraham Lincoln's family was living in a small settlement in southern Indiana  known as Little Pigeon Creek. Like southern Illinois, this area of Indiana was untouched by the glaciers of the last Ice Age and as such is hilly and forested-the perfect habitat for many sorts of woodland animals, but not particularly good as pastureland for livestock.As much of the land had yet to be cleared, the cattle would forage in the woods, feeding on sedges and other assorted foliage including white snakeroot.

In 1818 Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln,  died after a week's sickness.Nancy got sick in late September and died on October 5. She was buried next to other victims of the disease. Her aunt, uncle, and several people in Little Pigeon Creek, Indiana died then as well. Abe and his father were unaffected. She was 34 years of age. Young Abraham then age 9 helped his father build a coffin by carving wooden pegs by hand. Some historians see Nancy's death as triggering the depression that seemed to haunt the president. 

It was not until 1828 that a frontier physician, Dr Anna Bixby (later Hobbs),  learned from a Shawnee woman that the disease was the result of drinking milk from cows that had eaten a native plant: white snakeroot. Unfortunately, few learned of Dr Bixby's revelation and white snakeroot was not officially recognized as the cause for many years.

A Bell, Still Unrung

She daily effuses
the close-mouthed
tantrum of her fevers.

Hog-tied and lunatic.                         
Born toothsome, 
unholy. Born uppity.        
    
Blue-jawed and out-order.   
Watched her sculptor                   
split her bitter seam        
              
with his scalding knife;
mauled through the errant                
flesh of her nature

and hemorrhaged mercury, 
molted snakeroot, a smoke           
of weeping silver. 
 
She, accused.
Sprung from the head 
of a thousand-fisted

wretch or a blood-dark                                   
cosmos undoubling
her bound body.  
                   
Vexed shrew. Blight of moon.         
She, armory. Pitched-milk pours
from her gold oracular.

Bred in her nest a lone                          
grenade, prized, unpried
its force-ripe wound.

She, disease. Often bruised
to brush the joy of anything.
Zombic. Un-groomed.      

Her night slinks open 
its sliding pin. One by one
these loose hopes

harpoon themselves
in, small-ghosts alighting
at her unwhoring.    

She, infirmary.
God's swallowed
lantern, tar-hair and thick.

Her black torchstruck.
A kindling stick.
No sinkle-bible fix

to cure this burning.
Shrill hell. Jezebel.

Isn't it lonely.

Safiya Sinclair

[Safiya Sinclair's "A Bell, Still Unrung" is a strange poem that uses the imagery of "molted snakeroot" to explore themes of illness, nature, and female identity. The reference ties into the plant's historical association with "milk sickness".]

 

Halloween 10-31-25

Mabel, who's real name is Veda, dresses as an owl for Halloween this year. 

We had only one trick or treat family this year but hat means more candy for me.