Rise Now and Sing
Rise Now and Sing
The dewy phlox flowers greet the morning.
. . . . . . .
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Poem for Sunday: Feverfew
Patience
Do flowers make us happy? Especially those little smiling faces of daisies and daisy-like flowers? Used to represent a universal flower type, little white flowers with yellow centers and a circlet of white petals have always been recognized as symbols of innocence and childhood.
I’m a sucker for a little white flower, be it chamomile or a daisy or an aster or…feverfew, even the mounds of it that take over sections of my garden every summer. It’s a native wild plant in my area and once it gets a root in the soil nothing can stop it. Yet it looks as delicate and happy and innocent as a flutter of butterflies.
Through the years caring for my mother and brother, money woes and running my business, the coming in and sadly, leaving, of members of my feline family have tended to pull me deeper into myself until I can’t get past myself to my creative self that is totally unaware of all these daily things. Sometimes when I’m weighed down by everything around me, a trip to the garden and seeing little smiling flower faces dotted with dew can awaken my creative senses and lift the weight off my shoulders—and a good thing because I need all my strength and balance to run around with my camera and sketchbook. A trip to the garden in the morning pulls me out of that space for just enough time that I can reach that creative self in time for another day’s work in my studio, and my kitchen, and around my house as I smile back at all those little happy faces covered with dew and suddenly see photos and paintings and fabric designs and, for the moment, forget anything else.
Feverfew
Oh, I can’t stop looking at all the feverfew
in my garden,
I just keep running from one cluster to another
those tiny perfect daisies
in umbels as if floating without stems
on waves of bright green leaves
the dots of dew flashing, sparkling
in the day’s new sun
just arrived over the horizon
its color still warm and yellow
as if it’s a cookie just taken out of the oven
and I have to look at all the feverfew
from every angle
until I’m done looking
and I discover I’ve forgotten all the problems of yesterday
and all the ills of the world that I feel the need to carry
and I’m laughing
and dripping with dew myself
and visualizing stunning works of art
and amazing poetry and prose
most of which will ever be realized
nor do they need to be
the inspiration only needs to settle into my soul in this early morning in June
and its glow will warm heart
and keep me laughing with joy
through the day
and the next
and the next.
Poem “Feverfew” by Bernadette E. Kazmarski © 2008, may not be reproduced in any way without express written permission of the author. Links to this blog are fine.
Feverfew
I read this poem at my 2008 poetry reading at Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall which you can read in Paths I Have Walked, outlined below. Also visit the writing section of my website to read more poetry and see more art and photos.
Read more poetry here on Today or visit my poetry page to see more about my poetry and other writing, and to purchase Paths I Have Walked.
And also see a series of traditional black and white photos I’ve taken of my feverfew inspirations, for sale matted in my Etsy shop.
I’m proud to offer a folio of my poetry
Paths I Have Walked: the poetry and art of Bernadette E. Kazmarski
FROM FOUR ANNUAL POETRY READINGS AT ANDREW CARNEGIE FREE LIBRARY & MUSIC HALL IN CARNEGIE, PA
People who attended one or more of my poetry readings encouraged me to publish some of my poetry in a book from the beginning.
Once I completed my 2010 poetry reading, my fourth featuring the final piece of artwork in the “Art of the Watershed” series, I decided it was time to publish something and it should be those four poetry readings.
Poetry books are not best-sellers; it’s difficult to convince a publisher to risk effort on a beginning poet, and while self-publishing is the best option it’s not inexpensive and once you’ve got the book, someone’s got to market it. Plus, I’m a graphic designer and I designed books for years, and I want things my way.
All of this is a recipe for a little bit of trouble, but I decided the book was well worth the effort so I designed the book myself and had a set printed—no ISBN or anything formal, but it’s a start! I’m really excited to offer it.
Books are 4.25″ x 11″, 40 pages of information and poetry, with glossy covers featuring “Dusk in the Woods” and little thumbnails of all four pieces in “Art of the Watershed”.
$8.00 each plus $2.50 shipping (they are oversized for mailing first class).
You can order one on my poetry page, or in my Marketplace.
About the books and the poetry readings
My biggest inspiration for poetry, prose and artwork is the world right around me, and I enjoy the opportunity to share it from the perspective of one who walks and hikes and bikes and carries a camera, art materials and journal everywhere—even around the house—so the inspirations are fresh.
In December, 2006, two of my poems were chosen to be published on a section of the Prairie Home Companion website entitled “Stories From Home/First Person” for submissions of writing about the place we feel most familiar. I’m a long-time listener to PHC and reader of Garrison Keillor’s books as well as a daily listener to The Writer’s Almanac featuring news about writers and writing and of interest to writers as well as a poem, all compiled and read by Keillor himself. I was astonished to find my poems were among the first chosen from apparently thousands, and so happy to be able to share them with a potential audience of so many similarly inclined writers and readers.
My poetry readings and art exhibits were the vision of Maggie Forbes, executive director of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, after learning of my publishing of those two poems. I owe her many thanks for encouraging me to present this combination of my visual and literary art, a first for me. I love that building, every inch of it, and the opportunity to bring people in to visit is an honor.
Daylily Time
Three Daylilies
The daylilies are blooming, and their color seems fired up by the heat wave we had in the last few weeks—before a week of rain. But they were wonderful on a sunny morning.
A bunch of daylilies.
This year’s entrance, at least from one angle.
Entrance.
. . . . . . .
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Old-fashioned
Old-fashioned
Peonies always seem so frilly and fussy when they are actually quite resilient plants. I like this old favorite, not one of the double varieties that is a mass of petals but a singled variety called “Sea Shell”, delicate pink with flowers like crepe-paper, or like the crepe de chine fabric that had been so popular in the 1940s when this was named, or like the fluted edges of a clamshell. A friend’s grandmother gave up her home to a highway, and my friend gave me this peony from her grandmother’s yard.
Sea Shell Peony
. . . . . .
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Got That Pollen, Heading Home
Got that pollen and taking it home.
Someone’s headed off to the hive with stash of pollen! How many bees do you see here? And in all the other photos? One of them has five bees on these crocuses! These crocuses were humming with bees as was another clump of them, and as long as the sun was shining the bees were very, very busy.
I photographed this back on April 1 when I photographed the “one white crocus” and forgot to share it then. It’s nice to have spring-blooming flowers you can enjoy, but it’s far better for the bees to be able to find an good meal in early spring. Crocuses, which sometimes bloom even earlier, even during a late spring thaw when bees often awaken in the warmth, are rich in pollen and are easily found by bees. Never underestimate the value of any blooming flower to help keep bees alive—you can help with very little effort in your own back yard.
See other of my posts on helping bees in your own back yard and in encouraging wildflowers in your area.
. . . . . . .
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Playing Hide and Seek
Natural Background With Two Deer.
The two does were piecing their way through the debris of winter in our back yards on a sunny morning. Many trees stand at the end of my yard and all the adjoining yards, and tiny twigs and early leaves act as foils and decorations to the photos of these two. I like to get nice clear everyday photos of wildlife, but I also like to treat them as other subjects too, as if floating in a different reality, for instance, among unknown natural forms. Below the two are making a decision on something.
Making decisions.
Here is the older one, standing tall in her cut-through spot next to my neighbor’s shed. She likes to sun herself there in the afternoon.
The doe in her favorite afternoon spot.
. . . . . .
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
On Planting Peas
Pease Vine
It’s my annual paean to gardening and the cycles of life.
Every year in the month of March I awaken one morning with the knowledge it’s time to plant the peas, another step in the flow of the seasons. Though I have plants growing indoors, this is truly the beginning of the gardening season for me. Whether it’s the sun, moon, weather, schedule or simple urge to get out there and get my hands dirty I don’t know, but I enjoy the simple manual labor without assistance from any electronic device, ears open to the birds, face feeling the breeze, hands and feet feeling the earth. Many a photo, poem, essay and painting has been inspired by the simple acts of growing things.
Today might be the day though I have much cleanup out there and the soil is either too frozen or too soggy, yet very son I feel, it will be, and then I will be far too busy, and nowhere near my computer, to post this essay, so I want to share it now, and share my excitement for the coming season of growing. I first read this essay for the first New Year Poetry and Prose Reading of the erstwhile Carnegie Writer’s Group which I’d led from 2003 to 2006. In the meantime, my “Early Sweetness” peas are at the ready for when the day comes.
On Planting Peas
It is early March and I am planting peas. The wan spring sun is finding its heat and lays like a warm hand upon my back as I work. Signs of approaching spring fill my senses in the mild air on my skin, the scent of damp soil and the shrieks of children as they run in frenzied circles of freedom, much like the birds swooping and circling above whistling their mix of songs.
We have passed the first intoxicating days of air that does not bite, endless sun warm enough to melt the last snowfall into a composition of dripping and trickling, soften the soil and make one’s blood run with the abandon of a stream overflowing with spring thaw. The dawns have come noticeably earlier and the muted indigo dusks have lost the sharp quickness of winter and softened to a moist lingering evening.
Perhaps it is the phase of the sun or the moon, the proximity to the vernal equinox or some eternal voice that speaks to those who will listen about the time and season of things, or my own impatience to join in with the cycle that has been going on without me for a few months. Whether it is any of these reasons or all of them or none of them, I awaken one day in March every year with the knowledge that this is the day to plant the peas. It is as clear a yearly anniversary for me as any holiday, and can…
Click here to visit my professional and creative writing page to read the rest of On Planting Peas
Poem for Saturday: Feverfew
Feverfew
Do flowers make us happy? Especially those little smiling faces of daisies and daisy-like flowers? Used to represent a universal flower type, little white flowers with yellow centers and a circlet of white petals have always been recognized as symbols of innocence and childhood.
I’m a sucker for a little white flower, be it chamomile or a daisy or an aster or…feverfew, even the mounds of it that take over sections of my garden every summer. It’s a native wild plant in my area and once it gets a root in the soil nothing can stop it. Yet it looks as delicate and happy and innocent as a flutter of butterflies.
Through the years caring for my mother and brother, money woes and running my business, the coming in and sadly, leaving, of members of my feline family have tended to pull me deeper into myself until I can’t get past myself to my creative self that is totally unaware of all these daily things. Sometimes when I’m weighed down by everything around me, a trip to the garden and seeing little smiling flower faces dotted with dew can awaken my creative senses and lift the weight off my shoulders—and a good thing because I need all my strength and balance to run around with my camera and sketchbook. A trip to the garden in the morning pulls me out of that space for just enough time that I can reach that creative self in time for another day’s work in my studio, and my kitchen, and around my house as I smile back at all those little happy faces covered with dew and suddenly see photos and paintings and fabric designs and, for the moment, forget anything else.
Feverfew
Oh, I can’t stop looking at all the feverfew
in my garden,
I just keep running from one cluster to another
those tiny perfect daisies
in umbels as if floating without stems
on waves of bright green leaves
the dots of dew flashing, sparkling
in the day’s new sun
just arrived over the horizon
its color still warm and yellow
as if it’s a cookie just taken out of the oven
and I have to look at all the feverfew
from every angle
until I’m done looking
and I discover I’ve forgotten all the problems of yesterday
and all the ills of the world that I feel the need to carry
and I’m laughing
and dripping with dew myself
and visualizing stunning works of art
and amazing poetry and prose
most of which will ever be realized
nor do they need to be
the inspiration only needs to settle into my soul in this early morning in June
and its glow will warm heart
and keep me laughing with joy
through the day
and the next
and the next.
Poem “Feverfew” by Bernadette E. Kazmarski © 2008, may not be reproduced in any way without express written permission of the author. Links to this blog are fine.
I read this poem at my 2008 poetry reading at Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall which you can read in Paths I Have Walked, outlined below. Also visit the writing section of my website to read more poetry and see more art and photos.
Read more poetry here on Today or visit my poetry page to see more about my poetry and other writing, and to purchase Paths I Have Walked.
I’m proud to offer a folio of my poetry
Paths I Have Walked: the poetry and art of Bernadette E. Kazmarski
FROM FOUR ANNUAL POETRY READINGS AT ANDREW CARNEGIE FREE LIBRARY & MUSIC HALL IN CARNEGIE, PA
People who attended one or more of my poetry readings encouraged me to publish some of my poetry in a book from the beginning.
Once I completed my 2010 poetry reading, my fourth featuring the final piece of artwork in the “Art of the Watershed” series, I decided it was time to publish something and it should be those four poetry readings.
Poetry books are not best-sellers; it’s difficult to convince a publisher to risk effort on a beginning poet, and while self-publishing is the best option it’s not inexpensive and once you’ve got the book, someone’s got to market it. Plus, I’m a graphic designer and I designed books for years, and I want things my way.
All of this is a recipe for a little bit of trouble, but I decided the book was well worth the effort so I designed the book myself and had a set printed—no ISBN or anything formal, but it’s a start! I’m really excited to offer it.
Books are 4.25″ x 11″, 40 pages of information and poetry, with glossy covers featuring “Dusk in the Woods” and little thumbnails of all four pieces in “Art of the Watershed”.
$8.00 each plus $2.50 shipping (they are oversized for mailing first class).
You can order one on my poetry page, or in my Marketplace.
About the books and the poetry readings
My biggest inspiration for poetry, prose and artwork is the world right around me, and I enjoy the opportunity to share it from the perspective of one who walks and hikes and bikes and carries a camera, art materials and journal everywhere—even around the house—so the inspirations are fresh.
In December, 2006, two of my poems were chosen to be published on a section of the Prairie Home Companion website entitled “Stories From Home/First Person” for submissions of writing about the place we feel most familiar. I’m a long-time listener to PHC and reader of Garrison Keillor’s books as well as a daily listener to The Writer’s Almanac featuring news about writers and writing and of interest to writers as well as a poem, all compiled and read by Keillor himself. I was astonished to find my poems were among the first chosen from apparently thousands, and so happy to be able to share them with a potential audience of so many similarly inclined writers and readers.
My poetry readings and art exhibits were the vision of Maggie Forbes, executive director of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, after learning of my publishing of those two poems. I owe her many thanks for encouraging me to present this combination of my visual and literary art, a first for me. I love that building, every inch of it, and the opportunity to bring people in to visit is an honor.
The Changing of the Year
Red Runner Bean Flowers
The scarlet runner beans grew so fervently over the summer, and here in August reached their peak of dense leaves filled with blossoms. I called it the Tower of Love because every insect and bird and chipmunks and probably a lot of other critters visited the flowers or the leaves or the basin I had them all planted in for a little bit of a summer dalliance. Growing on fallen branches I’d tied in a teepee shape it radiated the vitality of the season. Looking at this lovely spectacle and what came to visit it became a highlight summer mornings. These are but two of many photos I took over the summer, a little soft-focused because they are shot through the screen on the basement door.
But as summer turned to autumn the leaves began to thin and all her vitality is turned to a rather tired and shabby look, but the results of all the visits to those flowers became evident. It’s been like watching a friend grow and change, but not to die; I have more bean seeds this year than I ever have in all the years I’ve grown these, and we’ll see her again next year.
What’s left.
. . . . . . .
For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
Sampler
Garden Sampler
A little of this and a little of that from the garden, broccoli, a sweet pepper, some tomatoes, ultimately they were marinated and grilled and tossed with pasta.
I was very closely supervised by a sleepy black cat while I harvested this basket.
. . . . . . .
For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
It’s What’s for Dinner
Broccoli
I almost feel bad about eating this broccoli tonight. We’ve been spending the past few weeks getting to know each other. But I treat my vegetables kindly, give them treats of composted manure and fishtank water, and talk to them and sing to them. Really, I do, I always have. I let each plant go to seed at the end of its season, and often I save and plant those seeds next year; they are open-pollinated, often heritage, varieties. Getting to know your food is an important thing to do.
. . . . . . .
For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats, visit The Creative Cat.
Yellow Beans
Yellow beans beauty shot.
Four pounds of yellow beans today—the very first thing from my garden after a late start, extended cool weather, excessive heat, heavy rains, and a 70-foot maple tree falling on a portion of it. Yellow beans are like green beans, but better, sweeter, more tender, less of that stringy starchy nature beans get when they’ve been hanging on the plant for too long. I’ve grown them for so many years that I’m surprised when I find other gardeners don’t know about them, or think they are somehow exotic. They are just yellow beans, and lightly steamed and buttered they are a meal in themselves.
Yellow beans in the garden.
Starfire
Leeks.
What leeks normally look like.
Nothing fancy, just a little work in PhotoShop on a very common vegetable. These are the flowers for leeks, a member of the onion family. They are biennial as onions are, growing greens and growing their bulbs the first year, which is when we usually pull and use them. If left to overwinter in the ground the second year the bloom in June with big spheres of flowers at the ends of long rays; these spheres can vary between 2″ and 5″ in diameter. The flowers are pale yellow with a pinkish tinge, but the rays vary from pale pink to bright magenta.
Seeing them in the garden they made me think of balloons on long strings, and abstract patterns. I photographed them from all angles trying for total darkness in the background, and then found I had to adjust some levels because of the contrasts of dark and light I had included in the photos, discovering how cool it looked with just the pink. So I desaturated the green and yellow and left the red, magenta and blue channels alone. Below is a closeup of them.
Leeks are also highly attractive to bees, which is one of the reasons I let them bloom in my garden. All kinds of bees large and small and all colors and shapes come to visit the leeks, bees I’ve never seen before. Here’s a photo of a leek flower with a few bees hanging onto it in Daytime Fireworks.
Leeks again.
A Sweet Treat
A wild strawberry waits for me at the end of the row.
What a reward for a hot afternoon of thinning out my garden! A sweet wild strawberry.
I let many things grow in my garden along with my chosen plants, and wild strawberries are one plant that grows all over, wherever it pleases. It’s fairly short, just a crown of leaves, sprouts and grows early and reliably at the beginning of June I find tiny sweet-tart berries. The leaves shade the ground and act as a natural mulch around taller plants, and their shallow root system doesn’t compete with plants like tomatoes, peppers and corn. Where beans, salad greens and root crops like beets and carrots are concerned I remove them so they don’t shade the shorter plants, but I usually transplant them elsewhere. One great benefit is that the bunnies and groundhog like the leaves—a lot—and will often choose the strawberry leaves over my garden plants.
So it was that I was pulling other plants from around the tomatoes and encountered the first wild strawberry of the year. And more to come, as you see below.
There will be lots more where those came from!
Three Columbine Flowers
Three Columbines
They look like little ladies in hoop skirts, delicate and beautiful, three columbine flowers in the morning.
Gleanings
Gleanings
I turned the soil in my garden during a sunny afternoon yesterday. The first turn in the spring always assures a few root crops left behind the previous autumn, like the tiny carrots, above. I usually also find tiny potatoes, a turnip or parsnip or two, and a few things sprouting early with edible greens and even a few edible natives are sprouting and greening up. Often it’s enough to make a soup or stew or a side dish, but this year these carrots and a basket of turnip greens were all that were to be had.
It wasn’t so long ago when people gleaned the fields for such things, food stores were gone, and what they found was the only thing available to them to eat. I sometimes wonder how society advanced when simply not starving to death was a daily battle, and I wonder how many lives were lost because only a handful of baby carrots was available for food. I will not complain about how had life is—modern days have their travails, but I have a refrigerator with food, and a store just down the street. Many thanks to our ancestors who had the will to survive.
Cagey
Cagey
A stack of tomato cages sits in an unused portion of my garden after the weather finally permitted me to turn the soil. The sun was so bright and the sky so blue, and so much to do.
I added a diffuse glow filter, filling the lightest areas with glare, because the sun was so loud and bright that a regular old photo just didn’t get the point across. Happy spring.
Essay for Saturday: On Planting Peas
Pease Vine
It’s my annual paean to gardening and the cycles of life.
Every year in the month of March I awaken one morning with the knowledge it’s time to plant the peas, another step in the flow of the seasons. Though I have plants growing indoors, this is truly the beginning of the gardening season for me. Whether it’s the sun, moon, weather, schedule or simple urge to get out there and get my hands dirty I don’t know, but I enjoy the simple manual labor without assistance from any electronic device, ears open to the birds, face feeling the breeze, hands and feet feeling the earth. Many a photo, poem, essay and painting has been inspired by the simple acts of growing things.
Today is not the day, yet later this week, I feel, it will be, and then I will be far too busy, and nowhere near my computer, to post this essay, so I want to share it now, and share my excitement for the coming season of growing. I first read this essay for the first New Year Poetry and Prose Reading of the erstwhile Carnegie Writer’s Group which I’d led from 2003 to 2006. In the meantime, I’m soaking my “Early Sweetness” peas so I’m ready when the day comes.
On Planting Peas
It is early March and I am planting peas. The wan spring sun is finding its heat and lays like a warm hand upon my back as I work. Signs of approaching spring fill my senses in the mild air on my skin, the scent of damp soil and the shrieks of children as they run in frenzied circles of freedom, much like the birds swooping and circling above whistling their mix of songs.
We have passed the first intoxicating days of air that does not bite, endless sun warm enough to melt the last snowfall into a composition of dripping and trickling, soften the soil and make one’s blood run with the abandon of a stream overflowing with spring thaw. The dawns have come noticeably earlier and the muted indigo dusks have lost the sharp quickness of winter and softened to a moist lingering evening.
Perhaps it is the phase of the sun or the moon, the proximity to the vernal equinox or some eternal voice that speaks to those who will listen about the time and season of things, or my own impatience to join in with the cycle that has been going on without me for a few months. Whether it is any of these reasons or all of them or none of them, I awaken one day in March every year with the knowledge that this is the day to plant the peas. It is as clear a yearly anniversary for me as any holiday, and can…
Click here to visit my professional and creative writing page to read the rest of On Planting Peas
Homegrown Tomatoes
Homegrown Tomatoes
Only two things money can’t buy, and that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes (thanks Guy Clark).
From my garden. September tomatoes are the best, even if it’s only September 1.
Trumpets Greet the Dawn
Little Trumpets
They may be only 3/64 of an inch across but they are making a joyful noise for me.
They are the flowers on my lemon verbena, whose leaves smell heavenly all day and night at this time of the year, inviting me to afternoon tea.
Today’s Harvest
Beans
I love to photograph my vegetables, even just to document them.
And I had set the basket on the top step then turned around and saw it was a sweet photo with the green and yellow beans, basil, lemon verbena, a yellow gerbera daisy and just a splash of pink phlox in the background.
Today’s Harvest
Somebody Else’s Garden: 2010
Someone Else’s Garden
I passed a tiny side entrance to Homewood Cemetery, an huge old city cemetery where so many famous and infamous are resting, and instead of crypts and tombstones in this back corner, I saw gardens and remembered the public plots for gardening instead of burying this garden had always offered.
Well kept by ever-changing groups of volunteers, the garden site has hosted several dozen gardens since some time in the 1960s. I love to look at gardens, and can only imagine sharing garden space with total strangers.
But gardening makes friends of us all.
The Busy Bees
The busy bees on the sunflower.
Three busy honeybees carry out their duties on these bright sunflowers.
These sunflowers were planted along someone’s driveway in an area where I was driving today. I quickly checked behind me, pulled over and rolled my window down, reluctant to get out into the heat. I got several good shots, but didn’t see the bees until I opened this one at home.
Happy bees, and happy sunflowers!
You just never know where or when you’ll find beauty.
Sunrise Lily
Sunrise Lily
This daylily faces directly east and welcomes the sunrise, opening quickly after the sun is over the horizon.
It’s a very old daylily, older than me. I moved it from my mother’s yard when I sold her house almost ten years ago, and I remember watching the clusters of buds form on the plant, reminiscent of small bananas until one by one the popped open on a summer morning. My mother dug it up from the yard of a friend’s mother before I was born, so who knows how old this daylily really is, or how many other yards it graced on summer mornings before my mother’s. That’s another reason I call it the Sunrise Lily. It blooms each year right around her birthday.
Today 