Sweet Jasmine

Sweet Jasmine

Noel Laflin

7-27-21

The Doors 'Light My Fire' hit number one on the Top 100 Chart fifty-four years ago this week - way back in 1967.

I was fourteen.

I clearly remember listening to that particular countdown with my best friend on his transistor radio. We were lounging about in traditional old cutoffs, tee shirts, barefoot, of course. It was a hot, sultry summer day, and the air was sweet with the smell of jasmine covering his folks' patio.

He said in advance of the top pick that it would be this song.

And as he was older, and wiser, and followed such mysteries, I believed him.

Libations

 

Libations

Noel Laflin

7-16-21

Twenty of us stepped aboard a gleaming white vessel this warm, July morning; we all found places to stand or sit and talk as the boat quietly made its way through Newport Harbor, past the former home of The Duke, the old Pavilion, the Lido Ferry, whale watchers returning from the hunt, folks on paddleboards, and finally past the thousands of grey colored breakwater stones.

The pace was slow, deliberate, and the water smooth as glass.

We were paying final tribute to a friend, and everyone (crew and passengers alike) was pleased that the weather was being brilliantly cooperative.

At the appropriate point, the captain cut the engines, a prayer was said, and ashes were presented to the sea - all within distance of the man’s former childhood home just off the coast.

A brown pelican passed overhead.

Red roses were lovingly tossed off the bow.

The vessel then gracefully circled where ashes sunk and roses floated.

Filled champagne glasses magically appeared, distributed to young and old alike by the first mate.

A toast was raised to our honored friend and glasses were drained – some libations poured over the railing and into the sea itself.

We then headed back from whence we started.

 

Putting Down Roots

 

Putting Down Roots

Noel Laflin

7-14-21

There’s an old plum tree stump that really needs to be removed one of these days as I could use the space to plant something new in its place.

I was already to do just that earlier this spring when a colony of bumble bees decided to move into the rotting stump and call it home.

As I like bumble bees - and as the planet is in dire need of every bee available for the foreseeable future - the removal project is on hold. Come the fall, the queen will leave this space and set up headquarters elsewhere – or so I have noticed with other hives around here in the past.

But suppose she decides to stay in her new home, tired of the constant moving. It’s pretty nice in there by now, I suppose, as I have been watching the workers enlarge the holes in which they come and go, burrowing down old termite tunnels, enlarging them with each passing.  It almost makes me wish I had a teeny-tiny drone that could fly into one of the holes and investigate, sending back pictures. It would be like a scene from the old classic, “Fantastic Voyage;” only I wouldn’t be on a miniaturized mission to unclog a dying man’s artery.  No, I would just like to see what’s going on inside the old tree that used to provide us with so many plums, and for now, the bumble bees call home.

So, we’ll hold off on tree stump removal for now.

And maybe longer if the queen decides that our garden is a pretty nice place to call home, and put down roots of a different sort from the ones that were here earlier.