Saturday Farmer's Market - Nature & Poetry

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

It is believed that the "apple" from the Bible was actually a Pomegranate.

I can believe that.

Mine are about the size of softballs.

The Pomegranate
 - Khalil Gibran

Once when I was living in the heart of a pomegranate, I heard a seed
saying, “Someday I shall become a tree, and the wind will sing in
my branches, and the sun will dance on my leaves, and I shall be
strong and beautiful through all the seasons.”

Then another seed spoke and said, “When I was as young as you, I
too held such views; but now that I can weigh and measure things,
I see that my hopes were vain.”

And a third seed spoke also, “I see in us nothing that promises so
great a future.”

And a fourth said, “But what a mockery our life would be, without
a greater future!”

Said a fifth, “Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even
what we are.”

But a sixth replied, “Whatever we are, that we shall continue to
be.”

And a seventh said, “I have such a clear idea how everything will
be, but I cannot put it into words.”

Then an eight spoke–and a ninth–and a tenth–and then many–until
all were speaking, and I could distinguish nothing for the many
voices.

And so I moved that very day into the heart of a quince, where the
seeds are few and almost silent.

The program I use to crop my photos updated recently, and as all too often happens, it has become far less user friendly. At this point I still can't even do a simple crop. 

The upshot of this is that I have some bird pictures to share with you that will not be very good. 

That being said, here goes . . .

We moved the Bird Bath to the house side of the Fortnight Lily, in the mailbox bed. The plant had grown high enough to obscure the it, and my hose was just barely long enough to fill it. 

There. All better.

When we moved it we found a big toad hunkering down beneath it. (Sorry, forgot to take a picture.) 

I fixed one of my broken pots over him and filled in around it with dirt. 

That should keep him safe until he decides what to do. 

There is plenty of loose dirt in the bed, near the fence and beneath the bird bath. And he has several choices of where to make his home. 

I hope he stays.

At first the birds were mystified. 

They kept going from the fence to the sidewalk and back like they were lost, and chattering among themselves as if to say, "Where'd it go? It was here a little while ago."

Birds aren't generally known for their intelligence. After all, the phrase 'you are such a bird brain' is not a compliment.

They finally figured it out, though, and picked up where they had left off in their revelry.

 

I added larger trays to my feeders to hold the bird seed. I just had to fill the smaller ones too often. 

Now they look like strange flowers in my garden. 

But the birds are very happy.

And after all, isn't that what really counts?

 

This little beauty is a Lesser Goldfinch, 

male, I believe.

In this (lucky) shot, a female Anna's Hummingbird is checking out the Tomatoes.

And here is another of the indigenous creatures, the Fuzzy Traveler, returning to his den.

Toad Dreams
- Marge Piercy

That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it. - Henry Thoreau

The dream of toads: we rarely

credit what we consider lesser

life with emotions big as ours,

but we are easily distracted,

abstracted. People sit nibbling

before television's flicker watching

ghosts chase balls and each other

while the skunk is out risking grisly

death to cross the highway to mate;

while the fox scales the wire fence

where it knows the shotgun lurks

to taste the sweet blood of a hen.

Birds are greedy little bombs

bursting to give voice to appetite.

I had a cat who died of love.

Dogs trail their masters across con-

tinents. We are far too busy

to be starkly simple in passion.

We will never dream the intense

wet spring lust of the toads.

from: Stone Paper Knife. Copyright 1983.