Happy New Year 2012

NEW YEAR

At the sound of the tolling midnight bell

a brand new year will begin.

Let’s raise our hopes in a confident toast,

to the promise it ushers in.

May your battles be few, your pleasure many,

your wishes and dreams fulfilled.

May your confidence stand in the face of loss

and give you the strength to rebuild.

May peace of heart fill all your days

may serenity grace your soul.

May tranquil moments bless your life

and keep your spirit whole.

~ Author Unknown ~



Happy New Year 2010!

Rosa 'Don Juan'

And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast,
And been bow'd to the earth by its fury;

To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury--

Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,

And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.

~ Thomas Hood

Unlearned Lesson ~ Memorial Day

Rosa 'Peace'

Of every year

The little valiant

Flags appear

On every fallen

Soldier's grave--

Symbol of what

Each died to save.

And we who see

And still have breath--

Are we no wiser

For their death?

~Dorothy Brown Thompson~

Happy Easter

Rosa 'Tiffany'

The fasts are done; the Aves said;

The moon has filled her horn

And in the solemn night I watch

Before the Easter morn.

So pure, so still the starry heaven,

So hushed the brooding air,

I could hear the sweep of an angel's wings

If one should earthward fare.

~ Edna Dean Proctor

Hello Dolly--Hello New Year 2009!

Rosa 'Hello Dolly'

What can be said in New Year rhymes,

That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,

We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,

We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,

We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,

We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,

And that's the burden of a year.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

And Make Our Garden Grow...

We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow

~ Leonard Bernstein

Scarecrows

"Though I appear a handsome man, I’m only stuffed with straw.
‘Tis difficult a man to plan without a single flaw.
Though you might think my lovely head - a store of lore contains,
The farmer lack of skill displayed and quite forgot my brains...."

~ Lyman Frank Baum

While shopping for craft supplies, I noticed this display of decorative scarecrows in front of the store. They were so colorful that I snapped a photo. In other parts of the country, scarecrows serve to scare away crows or blackbirds, but one never sees working scarecrows here in the desert, probably because we don't have many crows.
Nowadays, rather than scarecrows, farmers use shiny strips of aluminum or automatic noise generators to keep the birds away. The scarecrows have been relegated to an easier life, serving as a decorative symbol of fall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some Yellow Flowers

Baileya multiradiata

Although this poem is not well known, it is one of my favorites. I've posted it before but thought that now is a good time for it to be seen by new eyes.

Ode To Some Yellow Flowers

Rolling its blues against another blue,
the sea, and against the sky
some yellow flowers.

October is on its way.

And although
the sea may well be important, with its unfolding
myths, its purpose and its risings,
when the gold of a single
yellow plant explodes in the sand
are bound
to the soil.
They flee the wide sea and its heavings.

We are dust and to dust return.

In the end we're
neither air, nor fire, nor water,
just
dirt,
neither more nor less,
just dirt,
and maybe
some yellow flowers.

~Pablo Neruda

The Demise of Bees

Arizona Republic published a story this week stating that 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives have been lost in the past year. After reading about this, I remembered a poem that seemed fitting.

The

When the last bee died,
nobody noticed. Nobody put on black
or made a dirge for the death
of honey. Nobody wrote an elegy
to apricots, no one mourned for cherries.

When the last bee died,
everyone was busy. They had things to do,
drove straight to work each morning,
straight back home each night. The roads
all seriously hummed. Besides,

the pantries were still packed
with cans of fruit cocktail in heavy syrup,
deep deep freezers full
of concentrated grape and orange juice,
stores stocked with artificial flavoring.

When the last bee died, nobody saw
the poppies winking out, nobody cried
for burdock, yarrow, wild delphinium.
Now and again a child would ask for
dandelions, quickly shushed: That pest!

And everyone is fine. The children healthy,
radish-cheeked. They play she loves me/not
with Savoy cabbage leaves, enjoy the telling
of the great myths, peach and peony.
No one believes in apples any more.

End Notes for a Small History
Betty Lies
"Southern Poetry Review"
Summer 1998 Vol. XXXVlll, No. 1 page 33

Road Trip

Opuntia sp. Flower Buds

Road Trip

I want to take a road trip,
stop along the way and explore an old adobe house
with crumbling, eroding walls.
And after maybe 50 years of vacancy,
Hollyhocks still bloom near what was
once the front door.

Or maybe stop at a sunlit meadow,
much like one I saw 40 years ago
on the way back from Colorado.
I wanted to stop then, it was so beautiful,
But Arizona beckoned me home
And, being in a hurry, I didn’t stop.

Or, upon seeing a boulder outcropping,
climb up onto the smoothest one,
lie down and let the warmth of the rock
ease my aching back, eyes shielded from the sun.

Then stop at a roadside stand for some black cherry juice,
or maybe stop along the way at a country store
equipped with an old-fashioned fountain counter,
and splurge on a milkshake poured from a stainless cup
into a tall, tapered crystal fountain glass.

Or stop at a motel with vines growing on its walls;
the proprietors a friendly old couple
who treat the place like a Bed and Breakfast
by offering a lending library and homemade snacks.

Then, stop at a front yard cottage garden
beckoning beyond a white picket fence,
all layered and rocky and terraced
and full of color and scent,
beautiful and compelling in its wildness.

Visit a friend from my twenties, back
when we were young and gorgeous
and didn’t know it then, but know it now.
Oh, what we would have done
differently had we known. We joke about it,
but we both know we were what we were
and would not have done it differently.

And then, move on to a beach at Carmel-By-The-Sea,
soaking up the sun without worrying
about cancer and wrinkles and such.
Stay until sunset, then move on down the road
toward the full moon in the eastern sky.

Take For Joy

Take for joy from my open palms

A little sun and a little honey,

As we were ordered by the bees of Proserpine.

No one can free an unmoored boat,

Nor hear the shadow shod in fur,

Nor conquest fear in the dense forest of life.

We are left only with kisses

Prickling like tiny bees,

Which die when they leave the hive....

Take for joy my wild present,

This plain, dry necklace

Of bees, which died turning honey to sun.

~ Nadezhda Mandelstam

Opuntia Basilaris ~ Beavertail Cactus Flower

Opuntia Basilaris ~ Beavertail Cactus

Just living is not enough.
One must have sunshine, freedoom
and a little flower.

~ Hans Christian Andersen

Happy Easter

Easter is not a time for groping through dusty, musty tomes or tombs to disprove spontaneous generation or even to prove life eternal. It is a day to fan the ashes of dead hope, a day to banish doubts and seek the slopes where the sun is rising, to revel in the faith which transports us out of ourselves and the dead past into the vast and inviting unknown.

~ Author Unknown

One Little Thing

Ferocactus wislizenii

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back
and realize they were the big things.
~ Robert Brault

Just Around The Corner

"The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size."

~ Gertrude S. Wister

Anticipation

Mammillaria decipiens ssp. camptotricha

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.

~ Barbara Winkler

Happy New Year ~ 2008

May the longtime sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure, pure light that's within you
Guide your way on

~ Traditional Blessing

A True Sportsman

The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,
The brooks for the fishers of song.
To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game
The woods and the streams belong.

There are thoughts that moan from the soul of the pine,
And thoughts in the flower-bell curled,
And the thoughts that are blown from the scent of the fern
Are as new and as old as the world.

~ Sam Walter Foss

The Glory Of Gardening

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. Share the botanical bliss of gardeners through the ages, who have cultivated philosophies to apply to their own--and our own--lives: Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.

- Alfred Austin, 1835-1913

Autumn

Credits: roswitha-schacht.de & morguefile.com

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colors richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content.

~ Lin Yutang