#sempervirensbough

[cathy-tea]

New World Symphony: Takes a Troupe

New World Symphony: Takes a Troupe

“I don’t know how you do it,” Jaclyn said to Cypress.

“Do what?”

“Stay married. To the same person. And not only that, live with him, day after day after bloody day.”

Cypress laughed. “We’re happy!” she said. “I love McRae. He makes every day fun.”

“I love Davion, too,” replied Jaclyn, “but that doesn’t mean I want to be around him every single day. I’m getting tired of feeling like my wings are…

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[cathy-tea]

New World Symphony: Room

New World Symphony: Room

Cathy Tea wanted more room. Not for Brennan: they were happy living in separate houses. Not for a double-bed: the thickets suited their wild times just fine.

But she’d run out of room for hanging paintings. She’d always wanted a rooftop garden. And she thought it might be nice to have a launchpad for the rocket ship on the roof, too.

But mostly, she needed room for this.

She had thought she…

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[cathy-tea]

New World Symphony: The Neighbor

New World Symphony: The Neighbor

After school, Sempervirens loved to run through the meadows. Squirrels chattered, woodpeckers drummed old branches, the waterfall rumbled, and sparrows sang from the tall grasses. Sempervirens let the sounds wash over her. What she loved most was the feel of the air. She was a free-range kid.

Her parents never worried. They knew many of their neighbors, and they trusted their daughter to find…

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[cathy-tea]

New World Symphony: The Old Ones

New World Symphony: The Old Ones

The old ones aren’t really old: they’ve just lived for a very long time. Sugar Maple taught them all the secret of everlasting youth decades ago.

When Cypress and Knox brought Squid to visit the old family home for the first time, she found herself in the midst of dozens of conversations happening simultaneously, and each of them seemed to be about something exciting and new.

“This is where you…

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[cathy-tea]

New World Symphony: The Aunts

New World Symphony: The Aunts

“Hey, was that Squid?” Ren asked Sugar when a pint-sized dynamo went running past them one afternoon.

“It sure was,” said Shug. “Hey, Vi!”

“Hi, Aunt Ren and Aunt Sugar!” Sempervirens said when she turned around and caught up with her aunts. “I’m on a mission! I need to write a report for school, and Mom said I’d get the best ideas over here!”

“We are loaded with good ideas, Little Green!” said…

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[cathy-tea]

Squid’s uncle is all kinds of cool. She thinks he’s about the greatest person around.

“Thanks for letting me come visit you, Uncle J. P.,” she told him. “Think I could come over every day?”

“Tell you what, Little Green,” he replied, “You can come over anytime you want, as long as you don’t have school or other places you’ve got to be.”

“Lemme take a picture so I can look at it on the days I can’t come. That way, you’ll always be with me, anyway!”

“Ok!” J. P. agreed. “But only if you let me take a photo of us on my phone, too!”

Sempervirens loved J. P.’s house. The amazing thing about it is that it’s an art gallery downstairs. Sempervirens thinks it’s special that the art gallery is private: the only people that can see it are the ones that her uncle invites inside.

She thinks maybe that’s because the paintings are too powerful to share with just anybody.

You’ve got to have a taste for magic to be able to withstand some of her aunt onezero’s masterpieces.

They do a funny thing to her when she looks at them. Sometimes, she feels really confident: her great aunt painted this! And sometimes, she feels really inspired: imagine being able to paint something that shows the world the way you see it!

Another thing that Sempervirens loves about visiting her uncle is that he lives in a neighborhood with lots of people, and he knows everybody!

Whenever she goes there, she meets somebody new and somebody amazing, like Rose, who seems like she’s from a family just as magical as her own.

Last time Squid was there, a whole bunch of neighbors were having a picnic, and she met Jaclyn, and Joel, and Aya, and a gardener who said she knew Squid’s mom, and another lady with two pigtails on top of her head like panda ears who said she was a good friend of Squid’s great aunt Sugar. It was so easy to make friends when everybody there already knew her whole family.

She even met her great grandpa there.

“Hey, Squid!” he said. “How are you doing, Little Green? What brings you so far from home? Are you here to see your uncle?”

“Yup,” she answered. “I come visit every chance I get.”

Great aunt Sugar is often over there, too. Uncle J. P. says she’s a patron of the store.

“Didn’t she also paint all the paintings in there?” Squid asked.

“Well, not quite all of them,” J. P. answered, “but a lot of them! I guess she’s sort of her own patron of herself, when you think about it!”

Sempervirens’ mom’s garden club members love to walk through J. P.’s neighborhood. Last time Squid was there, she and J. P. ran into John.

“My sister was telling me that the energy of meditation enhances the growth of plants, and that the growing energy of plants facilitates meditation. You’re a scientist, John. What do you make of that?”

“It’s likely,” replied John. “There’s a great deal going on beyond what we see with our eyes.”

Sempervirens loved it she could hang out with her uncle and his friends in the Commons. Their conversations were seasoned with jokes and stories and references to books they’d read.

Sometimes, you run into funny things in her uncle’s neighborhood, like Cathy Tea in a hot dog suit!

But of all the family, friends, and neighbors that Sempervirens might meet in her uncle’s neighborhood, none of them were quite as wonderful as her uncle.

Uncle J. P. is like a sunflower. He stands tallest and brightest, higher than all the other flowers in the garden.

“Were you waiting for me?” Squid called one evening as they made their way back to her uncle’s house after their walk.

“Sure was, Little Green,” he replied. “Let’s head on in and see what we can whip up for supper.”

Sempervirens followed J. P. up to the computer room, where he checked out a new recipe for stir-fried chicken.

“Are you checking to see if there’s an email from your girlfriend?” chuckled Sempervirens. She was just joking–she knew she was the apple of her uncle’s eye.

J. P. provided a show whenever he cooked. He juggled the knives, chopped in rhythm, and danced his way through the preparations of the meal.

And his creations were true works of art, carefully prepared to satisfy every sense.

“Do you think every girl has an uncle that’s as cool as you are?” Squid asked J. P. after supper.

“You think I’m cool, Squid? Thanks!”

She giggled.

“Do you know who your mom’s best friend was when she was about your age?”

“Was it you?” Sempervirens asked.

“Nope,” replied J. P. “It was her uncle Alder.”

“Was he cool like you?”

“He was kind of mean, actually. But Cypress thought he was the most amazing person ever. And he was never mean to her.”

“Well, you’re not ever mean to anybody, J. P.,” Sempervirens said, “and you really are the most amazing!”

There were so many things about J. P. that Sempervirens would stick on a list if she were to make a list of every feature that made him amazing.

But the coolest thing of all is the way he makes her feel when he looks at her.

“It’s like I got two homes,” she said to herself after supper. “If home is where you know that you can be all completely yourself, and that you’re loved head to toe for who you are, then I got two homes. Because that’s how I feel when I’m home with Mom and Dad, and that’s how I feel here with Uncle J. P.”

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  New World Symphony: The Uncle Squid's uncle is all kinds of cool. She thinks he's about the greatest person around. "Thanks for letting me come visit you, Uncle J.

[cathy-tea]

Fairy songs drifted across the meadow every night.

Remember, starlight, remember us!

Search today search each night.

Bring us home through meadow or hedgerow

Hold it open The curtain, the door

We are coming, we are more.

The first infant that Jaclyn blessed hardly needed an elf-blessing to walk in magic, for Sempervirens Bough was born into a family of enchantment.

The baby’s ears were always open to songs too high for most to hear.

Her infancy, passed in the cool breezes of the meadow, bound her to the fairy realm, and in a family with parents and aunts who treasured a young one’s tales, she was not likely to forget their songs.

Jaclyn’s blessing served as an affirmation, a confirmation of Squid’s path and direction; rather than setting a new course for this young life, the elven words set firm the fairy way that she had been born into.

The years passed, and Sempervirens grew to be a strong and lively child, full of songs and stories that delighted both her parents.

Her mother’s jokes brought belly laughs.

And her father always had a ready ear for Vi’s own stories.

“We should plant bluebells, Dad,” she said.

“Why’s that, Little Green?”

“They make good fairy homes.”

“Bluebells it is, then!”

The three were bound together by their shared love of the outdoors. Each member of the family felt at home in the meadow or rambling through the woods.

For Sempervirens, having a mother who’d never lost the magic of childhood meant that she had a ready playmate, someone who understood that Tricer Triceratops was not merely blue plastic and metal horns.

In the evenings, the family liked to gather in the kitchen.

“So, what discoveries did you make today?” Knox would ask Sempervirens.

“I learned about blue!” Vi might answer. One day, she described how she’d hunted all through the meadow for everything blue.

“Blue things have the same buzz as the note C,” she said. “When Mom plays C on the violin, I hear blue!”

These evenings together were some of the happiest moments for the family.

“Can we make flower tea, Mom?” Sempervirens asked Cypress. “I want to taste purple and pink!”

“We could make flower tea!” said Cypress. “I think we’ve got some chrysanthemums ready to harvest, and maybe some roses, too! Would you like to taste white and red?”

Cypress found it inspiring that her daughter loved the garden as much as she did.

“Maybe we can grow elderberries!” she said.

“And bluebells,” said Vi.

Sempervirens’ favorite person was her uncle J. P.

“Did you get any new gnomes?” she asked him. J. P.’s store was known as the Gnome Emporium.

“You know,” said Knox, “if you and your mom buy all the gnomes, there won’t be any left for anyone else’s garden.”

“No,” replied Vi. “It doesn’t work that way. They’re what-do-you-call-it. Indefatigable.”

“We do have a good supply,” said J. P. “I think we’ve got plenty for everybody.”

It was Sugar Maple, though, who seemed to be perhaps the most mysterious of all her relatives. Often, Sempervirens would spy Sugar running along the periphery of the meadow, off towards the waterfall, perhaps, or through the long grass and flowers near the swimming pond. Sometimes, Sugar stood at the edge of the world and played her violin.

Sempervirens wasn’t sure yet what she wanted to talk to Sugar about, but she knew that one day, Sugar would have so much to teach her. She came across the word “apprentice” in her reading. And she thought that maybe, one day, if she were lucky, she could become Sugar Maple’s apprentice. It might be exciting to learn magic from the magician herself!

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New World Symphony: Squid Fairy songs drifted across the meadow every night. Remember, starlight, remember us! Search today search each night.