Yesterday was so beautiful it should have gotten an award. Most lovely winter day where you could still wear a sweatshirt in the morning and it got up in to the sixties but you never sweated even if you were pushing around a load of brick in a wheelbarrow. Maybe not a very poetic award, but one that is secretly super important, like cinematography or editing.
I was hauling some brick because I was fancying up a little flower bed in the front yard—just updating the border to better set off the verbena and little pink knockout roses. This was not the Satruday mornings of times past. I did not expect this phase of life or the happiness and peace it brings.
Backyard Japanese magnolia, yesterday towards sunset, Polaroid SX-70 (2024)
I wish I could have seen what this yard looked like when my house was built in 1950. Or really, I suppose, what it looked like about 15 or 20 years later. There was a little dogwood in the front, long blighted by the time I arrived in 2020, but really in such a perfect spot to bring some shade and color to a corner of the house. A whole bank of blue hydrangeas hugging the Southern fence by the neighbor’s garage. Who decided that the pretty Magnolia x soulangiana was to be tucked right behind the back of the house and not in the front, like a kid’s birthday cake hidden in the kitchen until the singing starts?
Petal from the Japanese magnolia
Before, I used to roam around in the winter looking for the soft pink blooms of the Japanese magnolia. There is one off downtown by WLBT that was always striking. Some years I would miss them completely, the rare splash of pastel at the end of winter.
Now I have just a little tug in my chest, oh, it’s about when it is going to bloom, right when there is a beautiful day where it’s a little cool in the morning, you can wear that Nirvana Unplugged sweatshirt you got at TJ Maxx, even if it’s a little bit of stolen valor because you were more a Pearl Jam fan at the time grunge was king, and you kind of know it’s that time of year but still you walk into the backyard and are surprised, looking up and smiling, grinning like it’s a cake filled with candles.
“WINTER SOUL” is a chapter of GORJUS, a dispatch devoted to art and life in the South, held fast with instant film. If you liked what you saw and read, if you maybe felt a twang in your belly while you looked it over, then this is for you, and I reckon we would be friends. Consider sending this letter to a pal who is like us. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see an archive of Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
Stop looking at me and my Pearl Jam fandom 😂🩷