Delta Dreaming: Moveable Feasts

One of my favorite books by Ernest Hemingway is A Moveable Feast. It is not, as a young clerk at a Little Rock bookstore once asserted, a cookbook. The moveable feast is, in this case, is Paris. It is a collection of works about the time he spent there as part of the so-called “Lost Generation” after World War One.

 

To me, love is a moveable feast when one has a fond memory of friends and loved ones associated with a place and time. It is particularly true if one or more of our senses are at play.

 

In 2005, we visited an old friend of mine just over the Mason-Dixon Line and, in the process, made a lot of new friends. While there, we visited the Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati’s Eden Park. On a whim, we purchase some iris bulbs and, when we returned to Arkansas, planted them at our farm out on the edge of the Delta.

 

Each year now, they bloom, as our friendships in the north have bloomed, and we are reminded of dear people whom we don’t get to see as often as we wish. By now, we have lived through weddings, births, and deaths with them. So when the Cincinnati Irises bloom, we always make a point to, as we watch the sun set over the trees, toast all our friends scattered about. For a few seconds, they are there with us.

 

They bloomed this week, the irises. After a tough winter and miserable early spring, they bloomed. It was as if to say that nature, like love, prevails, and is moveable.

 

A VISITOR FROM FAR AWAY NOW HAS A HOME IN THE DELTA
A VISITOR FROM FAR AWAY NOW HAS A HOME IN THE DELTA

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The von Tungeln Family Tree
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