Dear friends,
Today we gardened once again up at Laurey's cabin in Weaverville - - Lito and Rolando and Fred. (With me feeding and watering, both people and plants.) Moving more rocks. Moving azaleas ("ah-zah-LEE-ahs") into the sunshine. Giving the lilacs and butterfly bushes severe haircuts, releasing potbound summer annuals into the newly denuded garden, plunking new mums into bright containers for the autumn porch. We have company coming: our Alicia, Laurey's personal designer and dear heart, is here for a few days to view the renovations, and we're still primping.
I was supposed to be completing my taxes this week. Stymied by the search for One. Small. File. The records snuggled away, somewhere in the bottom of yet another box. Hopefully not labelled "Winter boots".
Yesterday I abandoned the effort, and did what any good Masterton would do: I baked. (Want a Chocolate Drop cookie?) Anyway, Lito and Rolando appreciated it.
So today we chased barrowfuls of burgeoning Siberian irises down the hill, edging the path in the woods. Joining their banished neighbors, a lusty crew of riotously successful hostas. They look really great at the bottom of the hill. Large and great. Honest.
Frankly, at the moment the upper garden looks a bit like a kid whose ears are stickin' out, but we are hopeful that all the annuals will forgive us, and spread out and delight in their new airier surroundings. Till frost comes, which the way it's been going might be by Christmas. So they might have a good run still.
Okay, so I have received a couple of requests to come over to YOUR house and work on your rock walls. Lito and Rolando have the hang of it, I can tell you - let me know if you're serious and I will give them your phone number.
Now. A few days ago, Fred popped into the kitchen with an envelope, startled. "Dear Neighbor" handwritten on the back.
"We've been invited to a wedding! They just drove up and handed me this!"
Well, in fact, we'd been invited to hear the neighbor's wedding MUSIC. Right behind our house. Tonight, in fact. (The morning we got the note, they were apparently testing the loudspeaker: "Is THIS loud enough?" the guy hollered... Yep, yep it is.)
They apologized very sweetly in writing and in advance for the noise and the traffic. Hoped we would understand as they celebrated this milestone. Beatriz and, I think, Zac? With live music from 8 to 11. Probably, they said. Actually, it started about 3 pm, and yes, I am writing this about 10 pm and they are hard at it.
Well, Fred motored off to the Brevard Philharmonic early this afternoon, after entertaining us through the open windows as he tested his reed. [THAT, I can tell you, is a mind-blowing experience - he runs each of "the hard licks" at speed, about ten times. Even he admits: lots and lots of notes. The whole thing takes maybe 15 minutes. After 45 years and thousands of performances, playing that clarinet, that's a rehearsal. Gor-geous.]
So, the wedding. Around 3 pm, floating through the woods, chaste and atmospheric, shimmers a lovely bell. Once, twice, and again. Nice!
Now comes unbelievably great mariachi music - strong, straight harmonies, multiple trumpets, sambas, merengues, ballads... baby, I want to go to Beatriz' wedding!
Indoors at supper, we didn't catch much beyond the high notes, but it was terrific. And now I really AM working on the taxes. Yeah, I found the file. Don't ask.
A few minutes ago things quieted down in the cabin once again, and it was my turn to be startled. "Isn't that Hava Nagila?" (I just looked it up - it means, "Let us rejoice!")
Now either that is a universal wedding song, or Zac's family isn't from these parts.
They sure are rejoicing - whoops of delight after every number. One pictures the bride and groom hoisted on their little chairs, the trumpets carrying on, apparently gifted with chops of steel. (They have now been playing their horns for 7 hours, basically non-stop. Maybe there are TWO bands. Oh, and they also have a tuba.)
My samba skills are a little rusty, but when Fred comes back from his second gig of the night, (one more clarinet solo and swinging saxophone with Russ Wilson's Big Band over at The Isis in West Asheville), I may just drag him and his tux right over there.
Hava Nagila, y'all. And Buenas Noches, too.
- from Heather Masterton
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