It's A Garden Party!

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me

- large or small, inside or out -

I would love to see them.

Just leave a link to your post in the comments.

~

This Bud's for you!

Experts tell us that a combination of drought, fires, and changing weather patterns may make this winter a rough one for us this year. We are due for a wet fall/winter/spring, and may end up with serious flood issues. Winter storms have already started hitting in some areas of the East coast and Mid West, and people who know these things say this storm season promises to be a rough one.

So wherever you are, take care of yourselves.

Bleak Weather

- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Dear love, where the red lillies blossomed and grew,

The white snows are falling;

And all through the wood, where I wandered with you,

The loud winds are calling;

And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune,

Neath the elm—you remember,

Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June,

And left us—December.

Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun,

And false in the shadows.

He has found new delights, in the land where he's gone,

Greener woodlands and meadows.

What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea,

Let it drift on the heather!

We can sing through it all; I have you—you have me,

And we’ll laugh at the weather.

The old year may die, and a new one be born

That is bleaker and colder;

But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn,

For love makes us bolder.

Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea,

Thou friend in fair weather;

But here is a song sung, that’s fuller of glee,

By two warm hearts together.

The Soul has Bandaged moments #360

- Emily Dickinson

The Soul has Bandaged moments –
When too appalled to stir –
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her –
Salute her, with long fingers –
Caress her freezing hair –
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover – hovered – o’er –
Unworthy, that a thought so mean
Accost a Theme – so – fair ­–
The soul has moments of escape –
When bursting all the doors –
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings opon the Hours,
As do the Bee – delirious borne –
Long Dungeoned from his Rose –
Touch Liberty – then know no more,
But Noon, and Paradise –
The Soul’s retaken moments –
When, Felon led along,
With shackles on the plumed feet,
And staples, in the song,
The Horror welcomes her, again,
These, are not brayed of Tongue –

from: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Copyright 1998.

For Joe

- Sandra Simonds

Locked in the beauty of the pearl, far from frail,
         these people who claim to love us still
they don’t give up much, do they, sealed? To eradicate class—
      the looking glass of it, the complex glare: “Let me introduce
xxx, impoverished poet.” Winter let up
     like a terrible religion. In its wake, a politics came,
      profane. You were on a train
from Philly to Mass. Winter let up like bands and globes
      and globules and I could feel the trade ships
in my bloodstream, the blood that made me,
        and I wanted to kill it
       really bad like a war path. They said my poems
         were a mess. Well, if that’s the case, then, go ahead.
Strike one match and the mansion will go up in its own ash,
in its obsession with accumulation against the glint of trees.

from: Poem-a-Day. Copyright 2016.

Quote of the Day

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

 - Voltaire

Nothing Is Far

- Robert Francis

 

Though I have never caught the word

Of God from any calling bird,

I hear all that the ancients heard.

 

Though I have seen no deity

Enter or leave a twilit tree,

I see all that the seers see.

 

A common stone can still reveal

Something not stone, not seen, yet real.

What may a common stone conceal?

 

Nothing is far that once was near.

Nothing is hid that once was clear.

Nothing was God that is not here.

 

Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.

Here in the sun I sit alone

Between the known and the unknown.

 

 

from: Collected Poems, 1936-1976  Copyright 1976.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Pertinent, No?

But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under then.

- Fahrenheit 451.

It's A Garden Party! - Winding Down

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me
- large or small, inside or out -
I would love to see them.

Just leave a link to your post in the comments.

~
This is one of our new neighbors that has been spending a lot of time in our garden these days.
Don't get me wrong, I like chickens, but these little ones have been tearing the place apart.
Stay tuned.

The yellow Lantana took off quite well this year.

 And the Roses are still doing well.

Gardening season is ending, but planning for next year is just getting started. Happy planning to you all.

The Definition of Gardening

- James Tate

Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.

He likes nothing better than to put on

his little overalls and his straw hat.

He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."

But then doubt begins to set in.

He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"

And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden

begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.

He stands in the driveway a long time.

"Horticulture is a groping in the dark

into the obscure and unfamiliar,

kneeling before a disinterested secret,

slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle,

birdbrained, babbling gibberish, dig and

destroy, pull out and apply salt,

hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots,

where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous,

the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love,

into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating,

through the nose, the earsplitting necrology

of it, the withering, shriveling,

the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder

and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris,

wireworms are worse than their parents,

there is no way out, flowers as big as heads,

pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently

at me, the me who so loves to garden

because it prevents the heaving of the ground

and the untimely death of porch furniture,

and dark, murky days in a large city

and the dream home under a permanent storm

is also a factor to keep in mind."

from: Shroud of the Gnome,Copyright 1997.