Happy Holidays
From our Home to Yours
Tom & Glenda Conlan
Blackcreek Farm
Happy Holidays
From our Home to Yours
Tom & Glenda Conlan
Blackcreek Farm
Leaves yet to drop…
Sweet Betty does not mind…
Venus wears a pink scarf…
Time to start the woodstove…
The garden sleeps – will an orange bucket protect the red, red roses?
Grapes are growing sweet,
and soon will be wine.
Apparently the birds think so…
One yellow bloom erupts
beneath a bird feeder.
Seeds planted by a fence never see the sky,
while wild shoots grow tall.
Sunflowers find their own place.
When old friends come to town…
For Doug Manning
No More Unexpected Calls (For Doug)
As he drives through Charlevoix
on the way to the UP,
where we searched for a cabin in the woods.
Years later he found one.
He first showed me this country some
forty years ago.
I need a buxom lass, he called out,
who is up for a swim, though nearly midnight
in Northern Lake Michigan.
We first met in Saint Louis,
two Michigan boys working on
the Mississippi River. Never missed lunch
at Hodge’s Chili Parlor down on Market Street.
Fast friends, and somehow we knew the bond would last
through friends and partners and moves and ups and downs,
through rag top bugs and pickup trucks.
Never argue nor refuse a good bowl of chili.
He grew up a man child of this north country,
a hunter, a sailor, a gregarious soul
who made me feel special each time we spoke.
Cards on the holidays in some exotic pose,
usually a hat of some proportion,
a smile to match his wit.
And on each November eleventh,
For nearly forty years,
an expected call no matter
where he was off to,
hunting elk or moose or whitetail,
Thank you for your service.
But it was those calls out of the blue
that I will miss,
expecting me to drop everything for a road trip.
And sometimes I did,
and I will never regret answering the call.
So, I am trying something new. Give a listen to the recording below – From my lyrical memoir –
My Journey Begins Where the Road Ends…
‘Fawn’ ‘I Hear the Sea in the Wind’ and ‘Half Cord’
Well, the new vines are pruned and March has not yet ended.
Cool air, snow still on the ground, and I have a wonderfully fulfilled feeling.
Muscles ache, more than they used to. But hell, at least they ache…