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| Geraniums. |
How good it was to see Mike Kasun again, lugging pots around at Tiger Lily on the corner of Water & Brady. He’s fit as a fiddle from carrying stuff hither and yon and yon and hither. Mike’s an artist of considerable note, noted for his paintings of feathered friends, several of which I’ve purchased: a robin, a blue jay to be exact. His work has been featured at Portrait Society Gallery in the Third Ward, too. A member of the infamous “Flesh Experts,” he knows his fowl and fleurs.
During our endless no-spring of 2011, anyone and everyone goes seeking stuff for their Memorial Day plantings. I hauled home various geraniums in shades of pink and set them outside in the sun for a few precious moments culled from the incessant rain that has bedeviled the area. As my balcony is small, I’m keeping things simple by extending my pink & turquoise color scheme of the condo’s interior, outside. It works for me. The winds blow mightily off the lake shore, so low growing is the way to go. I’d love a huge potted palm, but no way Jose.
I learned while catching a few sentences from Mike, that his longtime partner, Joe Mancuso, is putting the final touches on a book about body, mind and spirit, distilled from his years of working as a psychotherapist. I’ll have more about that in a future posting.
My sister wrote me today that I had used the word “hear” incorrectly my posting titled “Moss On My Head.” A quickie send to Denise at insidemilwaukee.com and it was fixed in a flash. This saves me from losing face as a writer. I’ve been around long enough to witness the demise of copy editors. Ye Olde Computer checks the stuff once checked by them. It’s not perfect in the way that dedicated copy editors were.
Outside this vertical box, Dennis our maintenance guy is down on his knees, digging and fixing winter’s damage. The flowering crabs on the property have done their thing, but around town, out in my T-Bird today, there’s still plenty to admire. Although as I write, spring seems ever elusive. I feel cheated. Selfish of me, for the folks in Joplin, Missouri really got the short end of the stick this year. No house, no yard, no nothing, and in the worst possible cases, family and friends missing in the mayhem.
My book, Saddle Shoes, is progressing nicely under the wing of Kevin Gardner, who is a whiz at getting what I want. For the cover, I hauled in my old pair of saddle shoes for him to photograph. I put them in a plastic bag so as not to offend him (he wasn’t quite sure what saddle shoes were!), and before I exited his office at the Shepherd Express, warned him not to wear them.
As if he would, but you never know, shoe fetishes being what they are….
