Saturday Farmer's Market - And the Garden Hangs On . . .

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

The name of this lovely Rose is Strike it Rich.
(Wouldn't that be lovely?)

These are probably the most numerous Birds in my garden. 

This Lesser Goldfinch says, "Can I help you with something?"

This is the bed I always refer to as the Grass Bed. 

The original Grass didn't make it through last winter, but it didn't look bad so I left it in all Summer.
Big plant sales netted me a Bougainvillaea and some Iceland Poppies, so I finally pulled it out and replaced it.

The Lady Bugs are still working hard.
This little one is sitting on a Rose called Pillow Fight.

I have to say, "What is wrong with this picture?"

Irises and California Poppies - in the fall?

As I was watching out my front door, this Squirrel ran down the sidewalk and into the Crepe Myrtle,
where he sat watching the cat eat his breakfast.
(The cat was not the least bit interested.)

 Hens

 &

 Chicks

 

A Mourning Ringneck Dove eating homegrown Sunflower Seeds out of the newly revamped feeders.

 

Where there is one Mourning Ringneck Dove there is usually another. 

They always visit me as a pair.

 

The Cape Honeysuckle

has more flowers every day.

 And finally, we have a Rose known as Camelot.

Darwin’s Finches
- Deborah Digges

1
My mother always called it a nest,
the multi-colored mass harvested

from her six daughters’ brushes,
and handed it to one of us

after she had shaped it, as we sat in front
of the fire drying our hair.

She said some birds steal anything, a strand
of spider’s web, or horse’s mane,

the residue of sheep’s wool in the grasses
near a fold

where every summer of her girlhood
hundreds nested.

Since then I’ve seen it for myself, their genius—
how they transform the useless.

I’ve seen plastics stripped and whittled
into a brilliant straw,

and newspapers—the dates, the years—
supporting the underweavings.


2
As tonight in our bed by the window
you brush my hair to help me sleep, and clean

the brush as my mother did, offering
the nest to the updraft.

I’d like to think it will be lifted as far
as the river, and catch in some white sycamore,

or drift, too light to sink, into the shaded inlets,
the bank-moss, where small fish, frogs, and insects

lay their eggs.
Would this constitute an afterlife?

The story goes that sailors, moored for weeks
off islands they called paradise,

stood in the early sunlight
cutting their hair. And the rare

birds there, nameless, almost extinct,
came down around them

and cleaned the decks
and disappeared into the trees above the sea.