The World of Dragonfly

I’m not a big collector.  Sure, when I was a child, I was a huge unicorn collector.  And Star Wars figures collector.  These days, as a recovering pack rat, I generally try to avoid collecting stuff.  But I do enjoy music.  The shelves at the house are filled with lots of music.  Mainly country and Christian but also with some folk and rock’n roll mixed in as well.  Oh, and let’s not forget about the Eighties music I have as well.

I really enjoy finding music that’s not played on mainstream radio.  Just in the past year or so, I’ve come across a group and a singer who are definitely worth a listen.

The group, Red Mountain Music, played at our church a couple of years ago.  Essentially, they’re a group of musicians at the Red Mountain Church in Birmingham, AL who have taken an interest in taking all-but-forgotten hymns and setting them to new music.  As a result, they’ve produced five CDs so far that are incredible.  I have all of their CDs (does this make me a groupie?), and at least one of them is in my car stereo at all times.

The singer is a guy named Kareem Salama.  Egyptian by heritage and an Oklahoma native, Kareem composes and performs his own music on the two CDs he’s put out to date (I have both.  Again, does that make me a groupie?).  The music itself is folk, although I can certainly here country and other influences in it.  And his lyrics are very deep and thought-provoking.  Once again, at least one of the CDs is in the car stereo.

I hope that you’ll get a chance to visit their Web sites.  I promise you’ll be more the richer for it.  Maybe in the future, I’ll do a post on other singers I truly enjoy.  Happy listening!

We passed a milestone at our house last week. Aspen, one of our basenji dogs, became an ace. Let me introduce you to Aspen. Like I just said, she’s a basenji, which is an African dog native to the Congo. The breed has roots going all the way back to ancient Egypt. Basenjis are sight and scent hounds, meaning that they hunt both with their eyes and noses. And since they’re hounds, they tend to pursue small game out in front of their human masters, thus requiring planning and thinking by them to catch their prey.

So back to Aspen. She loves to hunt like her cousins in the Congo. She already had four kills on her list, two squirrels and two bunnies. Believe me when I say that the wildlife in our backyard usually grazes or plays with one eye on the dog door leading to the house.

Last Wednesday morning, I’d gotten up early to water the flowers since it was so hot outside. I noticed that she was delicately nibbling on something in the back corner of the yard. I frowned and turned back to the watering. Something didn’t seem right. I’d better go check on her, I thought. So I headed to the back corner. That’s when I saw it. She’d caught something and with the appetizer finished, she was getting ready to settle down for the main course. “Aspen!” I screeched, most likely loud enough to awaken any neighbors who were still sleeping.

I snatched her up and carried her inside. “Steve!” I shouted. “You wouldn’t believe what she did!” I slammed down the plastic door over the dog door.

He only groaned. “What?”

“She got a squirrel!”

Being the mortician of the family, he went to the garage, got a glove, and headed outside. It turned out to be another baby bunny. He dutifully disposed of it. Later, as Steve was crating them for the day, she yodeled twice.

Some of you may wonder if we scolded her. I have to admit, we didn’t. Hunting is deep, deep in her nature. I was actually proud of her for having the smarts to bide her time and wait patiently for prey. So now Aspen is an Ace in the basenji world.

Okay.  So I know that the Midwest is making all of the headlines this spring with the crazy weather that they’ve been having.  But I’m here to tell you that it is HOT here in North Carolina!  They’re calling for 100 today, 102 tomorrow, and 100 on Monday.  And it’s not even officially summer!  Yikes!

But that’s okay.  Really.  As a native southerner, I’m used to scorching weather, albeit at least later in the summer.  And it’s not a dry heat.  So sorry about that.  No, humidity’s thrown in there.  So the temperature that it would really feel like is 106 to 107, according to Accuweather.com.  It’s nice to know that by Thursday, a “cold front” will bring “cooler” temperatures that will push the highs to about 90.  So until then, those of you who are in the South right now, be thankful for AC, cool showers, and that delicious drink called sweet tea.  Cheers!

I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gardener. This is very unlike my grandfather. When I was growing up, I remember visiting my granddaddy and grandmother at their house in Florence, SC. It was the same house they’d lived in ever since they’d gotten married in 1932. Out back was a huge garden. I’m terrible with guessing the size of something, but I think it was at least a half acre. He grew everything imaginable, and since he was retired, he was meticulous about keeping it weed free. Another thing I remember about him was the fact that he always smoked a pipe. Up to his last weeks, that pipe was always with him.

So what about gardens and me? Maybe instead of the Constant Gardener I’m the Careless Gardener. I plant the seeds. Wait a few weeks for them to sprout. Then occasionally toss on some fertilizer and water if it doesn’t rain every third day. And wait. The seeds sprout, but so do the weeds. So then I wind up spending all day weeding. But now, maybe, I’m being a little more careful. I’m checking the garden and at least getting out there every other week. And I’ve began putting down grass clippings.

One day, as I was checking the garden, I was leaning over the fence and looking at the tomato plants. It was moist since it’d just rained the day before. I thought I caught a whiff of something I hadn’t smelled in a long, long time, since 1995. It was the faint scent of my granddaddy’s pipe. I sniffed again. It was gone. But I had to smile. It was almost like Granddaddy was standing near me as if to say, “It’s doing okay. You’re doing a great job.” So maybe I’m doing something right. Maybe, one day soon, my garden will produce even a fraction of what his produced. But it doesn’t matter. What did matter was the good memories that one whiff brought.