... Holy BATS!!! A GIFT GIVING Contest...

As a gardener trying to find her way in this thorny garden called life, I have been delighted to see how my own little garden has transformed over the last four years since I’ve moved here and created a gardening space. This year the bats have FINALLY started to return. From research, I understand that they, like most intelligent wild life, leave areas that are undergoing construction. Our townhome community was just completed a few years ago and now that the dust has settled our nocturnal friends are starting to feed in the area once more. I’m more than delighted about this because most bats here in Virginia feed exclusively on insects like those yucky ol’ mosquitoes and pesky gnats. Bats can devour more mosquitoes and other nasty bugs than birds and bug zappers combined! Plus, they’re way cuter! So BRING ON THE BATS!

Sadly my property isn’t so hospitable for a bat house but since I’ve wanted to help out I have started to support organizations who work to protect these little furry friends.  I also like to support Small Business, and I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!

That being said, it’s time for a little GOTH GARDENING GIFT GIVING! This post isn’t only helping Bat Conservation and Small Business, it’s passing on a little Gothy-Goth Christmas spirit to YOU!

I have written about my love for The Occasional Bat before, and you can check out some of my favorite plush bat friends in a previous post. The Occasional Bat donates a portion of every (full-size... they sell ornaments and pet toys too) bat to The Florida Bat Conservancy which educates people about the bats native to Florida, conducts research and helps build new habitats for bats across Florida.  

The Gift:

• I have ordered THREE large, full-sized bats which are around 16x10x2. They come with a certificate that has their name. (Okay, I actually ordered one for myself… but whatever ^o^)

What To Do:

• Write a post about BATS, SUPPORTING SMALL BUSINESS, or even how to have a GOTHY-GOTH CHRISTMAS all in the name of winning this little ol’ GOTH GARDENING GIFT GIVING contest.
• Tag me in your post!
• Make a comment here in this post (including your URL)
•  And prepare to win! (Because hey, if you read this blog you know how many participants were in the Halloween Shovel Contest :p )

Deadline: Friday, December 12^th

... holding on, containing and letting go...

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower;

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

………………………………………

 Joy and woe are woven fine, 

A clothing for the soul divine. 

Under every grief and pine 

Runs a joy with silken twine.

                                               ~William Blake (1757-1827), "Auguries of Innocence"

For various reasons, I’ve been taking a stroll down Nostalgia Lane these last few days. With all my life changes, it seems poetic to softly gaze over one’s shoulder at the past. I also received some unexpected messages that were reminders. Even my last post mentioning my first love has me reflecting on yesteryears. And of course, there was Poe’s returned love story that makes one ponder just a wee bit.

Some of this leads down a path I’m not so proud of but in this age of social media and the interwebs haven’t we all tiptoed into lands not quite protected to gaze at the spiders who can’t tell they’re being watched? I’m sure you too have peeped a time or two. So I crept through a maze channeling my younger self’s memory of names that haven’t been spoken in decades only to find a picture showing that the shell of what was had changed immensely. In fact, I wouldn’t have recognized him if it were not for the place right around his eyes. He wasn’t looking directly at the camera and while nothing looked like what I remember, there was that sense that he, somewhere, was still there…somewhere… perhaps contained deep within. Without going into detail because goodness I wasn’t supposed to be where I was, he had changed in more than outer appearance. His identity, the one that I knew, was altered in a way that from my reading of that one picture shows that he let go. And I don’t mean that he let himself go either. It’s hard to explain while remaining private but he seemed to have stopped being who he wanted to be/ who he once was.

All of this started me thinking about how we become who we are, and how we hold on to who we are in spite of how hard living can be. People say that being goth is a phase. There are plenty of us who prove that this isn’t always the case. But it makes me think about those of us (because I had to for a time) who had to let go of our clothing or look just to function at work or among our peers or family…whatever the reason, it was just easier to let go and try to be someone else, or at least hide who you actually are. I’m so grateful that I returned to Me, that I’m no longer trapped being inauthentic in a fake life. But how many of us have let go and have never returned?  Maybe they’ll never return.  So when I look at the picture, I’m not thinking about the weight he put on (haven’t we all put on some pounds and aged and etc.), but I’m wondering what happened to him after I knew him so well. What was it that changed him? Was life hard for him? Would he put on a happy face? Would he be the same? I don’t think this has to be an awful thing. Sometimes letting go is simply letting go. Sometimes we let go for our loved ones.

 

I typically choose to hold on… to memories, to connections, to inanimate objects… even to my hair that was in awful need of a trim. (Because of this, I had to opt for a chop just to get my hair back to healthy.)  I had a piece of my wedding veil preserved in a heart pendant with glitter (by ModJules on Etsy.)  It arrived this week and I’m wearing it close to my heart.  After drying my bridal bouquet, I placed my much loved bouquet in a jar. Similarly, I put my fella’s boutonniere from the wedding into a snow globe sans water so that we can gaze upon it without disturbing the petals.  

In my interweb prowling, I came across this quote:

“You’re just another story I can’t tell anymore.”― I Wrote This For You

A poignant line about letting go… perhaps to get back to healthy.  

... Poe's love, my first love, and "Grief"...

It’s December! I’m drinking S'mores hot coco with peppermint marshmallows. Seemed strange but turned out to be delicious! Of course, yesterday it was 73ºF (23ish ºC) and tomorrow it’s supposed to be warm again…just a little heat wave and then it will probably snow. That’s what it’s like here in Virginia.

Yesterday when I went out walking, I was gazing at the houses and thinking about how I always want to live here in this small town. Ashland isn’t very big but it is close enough to Richmond and the combined history keeps me connected. I like to imagine walking the same paths as those before me. While meandering, I am always drawn to the house. One of my favorite houses isn’t because of the architecture but because of its history.

Erected in 1858, one of the home’s former owners was Elmira Royster Shelton who just so happens to have been Edgar A. Poe's "Lost Lenore." In one of Poe’s last letters, he writes of Elmira and his longing to marry her. Elmira Shelton, who was Elmira Royster at the time, and Edgar A. Poe were engaged decades before when they were practically children. Ah, young love. (Dreamy sigh). Elmira was 15 years old and young Edgar was 16. They spoke of marriage but Elmira’s father tried to put a stop to it. When Poe headed off to UVa (my old stomping ground) the two were secretly engaged but Royster’s father seized and destroyed all of Poe's letters to his daughter before she even knew they existed. Assuming she had been forgotten, Royster married another man. (Wasn’t there a Nicholas Sparks movie about that? :p ) This was in the late 1820s.

TWENTY YEARS later… Poe returns. Again there is talk about marriage since by this time Poe’s wife has passed as has Shelton’s husband. She has children who disapprove but nothing can stop true love, right? Well, they never married. Poe headed to Baltimore and surrounding his mysterious death he mentions a wife he had in Richmond. Was he referring to Shelton? 

"Grief" by Valentine

Shelton never spoke of Poe again until 1875 when she was interviewed by Edward Valentine who was a Richmond sculptor and a family member of *my employers* aka The Valentine Museum. I’ll add this picture of one of his beautiful sculptures that Valentine created. It is in Hollywood Cemetery and is entitled “Grief”. Although it isn’t actually part of this story, I think it’s quite fitting. At the time she spoke with Valentine, she denied being engaged but then nearly a decade later she admitted that she was. When she died in 1888, her obituary in the Richmond Whig had the headline, “Poe’s First and Last Love.”

 

Yesterday when I walked by the house, there was an elderly woman sitting on a swing on her porch. She probably came out because I had taken a few pictures of her house. Ooops! But I prefer to think of her as someone who was sitting on the swing remembering being 15 and falling in love for the first time with the boy who had eyes like the sea after a storm (or whatever Buttercup said) and the softest Ministry t-shirt that he would give to her to sleep in (yeah, well that was me).

My first love... I was 15.

Last year I woke from a dream that was very much a memory of being a teen with my first love. I recall one of the first lines from one of his letters, "Run away with me and be my love". My first husband burned all of the letters that I had kept. I also remembering screaming that they were being burned into my soul. (An ex is an ex for a reason y'all). Back to the dream... I cried because I always remember how he saved me. My friend had just shot himself, all my friends were a mess, and he, who had just met me a few months before, drove two hours from Washington, D.C. (I had no idea that I would end up working there) for a visit... He hardly knew me but I guess young people don't care. I think we went to the mall. I don't recall much around that time but he was there and somehow it clicked that there was more to the world than all the death in my tiny hometown. We used to write these long handwritten letters but in contemporary times, I sent him an email to say thank you.  “I will always think of your 18-year-old self as the most magical part of my adolescence” and briefly recounted the dream. And I promise you that my heart skipped a beat (it still does) when he responded:

I did not save you sweetie, I just reminded you that you didn't need saving.

Elmira Shelton lived for nearly forty years after Poe died. One day I hope to live in that house and sit on the swing while remembering.