Flowers

Daffodils

Daffodils

These daffodils were not painted by an unknown painter, but by a painter whose paintings are unknown. There is a subtle difference. There is also something sweet abut covering a blank space with color and shape, even if the hand is unsteady and the eye unsure. This painting is also unframed and belongs in a photograph album or a long-forgotten painting book.

“Fair daffodils, we weep to see thee.” Indeed we do, for they are so transient lasting but a week, or less, cut and placed on the table in a vase of water. So sad to watch them as they stiffen, turn slowly brown, dry up, and then hang their heads in the shame of old age. We are not so dissimilar, those daffodils and me. This photo will capture me forever, or until it is erased, because a photo isn’t a photo anymore. That painting will capture those daffodils too, for little while, until my subscription to the blog runs out and I forget to renew it.

“Poor daffodils, we weep to see you.” But weep not for us, they tell me. Our day is done. Our life is fulfilled. We have brought beauty and scent, however brief, and we have given light to enlighten your days and joy to light up your heart. And that, I guess, is the message. “Gather you daffodils while you may, for Father Time is flying. And those sweet blooms you pluck today, tomorrow will be dying.”

Thus it is during the Corona Virus 19 pandemic, and thus it was during the Spanish Flu, the Black Death, and all the other plagues that have come to bring understanding and make us see reason. Our lives are as short as the lives of flowers. Seize your life, hold it in both hands, admire it, enjoy it, make the most of the mall things, for they are often, like the smiles of small children and the daffodil’s golden glow, the most important things of all.

Merry Sunshine

“The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, bring promise of merry sunshine …” Gilbert and Sullivan, from The Mikado, if I remember correctly, and not at all anonymous like the Anonymous Bosch artist who painted this painting. Still, I like it, and it certainly lends a little bit of color to the pale cheeks of these walls.

“And we merrily dance and we sing, tr-la, as we welcome the promise they bring, tra-la, of a summer with roses and wine …” I can remember my grandfather singing that in the kitchen in Swansea. He would conduct with one hand, and encourage me to join in with the other. And I did. Merry days, they were, before the fire in winter and out in the greenhouse in early spring.

So, where have all the flowers gone? Gone with the grosbeaks, everyone. Which reminds me, I saw an Evening Grosbeak at the feeder this morning. The first one in years. There used to be several nesting nearby and they were regular visitors, as were the Gray Jays, aka Whisky Jacks, aka Gorbies, aka Ghosts of the Woods and all of them long, long gone.

Will they naw come back again? Who knows? The world is changing even as I sit at my window and watch it go by. February, March, April, May, June, and now July. The lock down has been lifted, but the fear of going unmasked in the great outdoors is still with us, as are the anonymous givers of the virus, a donation I do not want, and nor does anyone else, in their right minds, compus mentis, and not yet willing to on the anonymous ranks of the Gorbies, the Grosbeaks, the Swallows, and the other birds that have fled elsewhere, leaving our yard to the crows, the blue jays, the squirrels, the chipmunks, and the occasional more colorful visitors.

Spring Flowers
by
Anonymous Bosch

Hibiscus

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Hibiscus
Day 26 CV-19

The hibiscus lives downstairs. We bought it years and years ago. A tiny plant in the florist’s shop, we brought it home. When we placed it here, by the window, we were horrified to see it was covered with tiny spider mites. Gradually, in spite of all our efforts, it lost its flowers and then, one by one, its leaves. After Clare had magicked the spider mites away, she nourished that one last leaf. “If that goes, the plant goes,” she told me. “It cannot survive without leaves.” It took time and daily care and attention, true TLC, but a second leaf appeared, and then a third. Now, each winter, it puts out flowers and fills the room with joy and light.

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More important, in these dark times it fills us with hope and the knowledge that however bad things may appear to be, we can hang on, we can survive. We can be present in every second that we are given and that we can, and must, enjoy every moment to the full. Condemned to a certain death, our hibiscus survived to remind us of the miracle of life, for life is stronger than death, and hope is stronger than despair, and spring and summer are stronger than winter, even if it seems to be ‘our winter of discontent’.

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Creativity

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Creativity

When creative artists get together they talk and walk and hug and hold and discuss so many things, like how the creative spirit can inflate the body and send it soaring like a trial balloon, how listeners can be swept away by a magic vortex of voice, and how time and space can be suspended in the glories of creation that spin a web of forgetfulness around us and makes us disregard who and what we are as we forge new worlds.
Dark earth-spirits of love, want, and creation, hold us captive and drive us onward and inward until we give birth to that which was waiting patiently to be born, even though we never knew that the seed had been planted. “What is this?” we ask as we survey the new-born entity fresh on the page, held in the hands, suddenly full of life and breathing on its own, a thing of beauty, an essential being. It makes complete sense as we struggle to hold it as it grows and transforms from internally ours to eternally theirs, a product of our mind and body now belonging no longer to us but to the world beyond us.
We long to know its fate, to watch it as it walks along its path, its destiny now in its own hands. “What is it?” people ask as we stand still and know not what to tell them. Some sigh, some mutter ‘nice’, others just turn and walk away, lost in a self-created labyrinth of cul-de-sacs, dead end streets, and black, blind walls. Many go back to their two-thumbed clicking and surf the networks, bereft of the imagination to see and explore that which has been thrust fresh before them, this new-born babe beautiful in its swaddling clothes, a new creation.

Comment: The photograph … a geranium against the snow. Truth and beauty can survive even the hardest winters. As true creative artists we must be prepared to fight for our creative ideals. When the skies seem to be at their darkest (see my recent posts Poem from the Cree, Co-[vidi]-s and Outrageous Fortune) that is when we must strive to re-create the light, not just for ourselves, but for others as well.  

Going, going …

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Going, going …

… and soon they’ll all be gone, save for the lucky ones that Clare gathers and sticks in pots to winter over in the house-warmth. Over the coming months, if you visit us, you’ll find these flowers in corners, on tables, in places that are touched by the low winter sun. Clare keeps lots of geraniums and they do winter over very well. She makes a selection of colors and then places them in sunlit spots. They bring color and light to the darkest days and help keep winter at bay. They are also great to photograph against snows and crows, and I often use their window reflections in my indoor photography.

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Here are some red and white geraniums getting their last touch of fall sunshine as they cling to the back porch.

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This little group await their fall prune. Clare will trim them down and then bring them in. They will be slightly dormant for a while and then start to flourish once again. By the time next spring comes round, they will be ready for their outdoor adventures, a day at a time, back in overnight, and nursed and nurtured until they are ready for their full summer blossom.

It’s Thanksgiving this weekend, so a Happy Thanksgiving to all, and may you all have flowers to brighten your life and bring you some beauty and peace.

 

 

So sad

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So Sad

It’s so sad to see the flowers passing. They lose their color, dry up, fade. Seed pods rattle. Squirrels carry away the sunflower heads. Birds migrate. Speaking of birds, we have not seen many this year. Crows, oh yes. We have been invaded by crows. And by Blue Jays. They nest in a neighbor’s yard and have been irregular visitors. While the crows are here every day, the blue jays come sweeping in, four and five at a time, shrieking loudly.

The woodpeckers have been regular visitors, downy and hairy. Not the Greater Pileated though. I have only seen one, very small, later this summer. The chickadees have been regulars, but we have seen very few sparrows and only a couple of mourning doves. No Eastern Phoebes, a few juncos, no Grosbeaks of any kind, Evening, Rose-breasted, or Pine. And scarcely a sign of swallows, martins, night jars, cat birds, cow birds … so many friends missing and passed on. Even the yellow-bellied sapsuckers seem to have neglected us. We had robins in earlier, but just passing through, an occasional American Goldfinch … very few hawks, no starlings … an occasional nuthatch …

I can remember the washing line with sixty to seventy mourning doves hoo-hoo-hooing away. This year: two. So, something is happening. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. Where have all the birds gone? 

A couple of years back. we hardly saw a bee. This year we had bees, and hummingbirds. We also had some wonderful butterflies, the like of which I haven’t seen before. Here’s one that Clare caught, sunbathing. Rear-view, it looks quite frightening. Great orange eyes. Colored fangs. Wonderful. I want our world to heal. I want to see these wonderful creatures returning to visit us. I live in hopes to see them … but, who knows? Have we passed the turning point already? Who knows?

Autumnal

 

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Autumnal

Skeletal rattle of autumn trees their crisp,
leaves fallen beneath barren branches.
Rat-a-tat rap of dead bone music dries out
flowers, shakes seed pods. Summer’s end
yammers its ruby-sweet, rose-tinted world
where petalled hope and October carnival,
with its ghoulish goulash, mish-mash mix
far-fetched mismatched face. Gruesome
uniforms, fairy-faced, gauze-winged, facile.

Cadaverous danse macabre of death mask
clowns posing distorted in a hall of mirrors
for selfies. The drowned moon needs a kiss
of life. Last night, she peeped through my
window and nuzzled me. This morning my
head is full of mystery, poetry, and dreams.
I analyse them. None of them make sense.

Last Day of Summer

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Last Day of Summer

Farewell, sweet hollyhock, you served us well. Your beauty lingered long after the warmth was done. At your best, forty, fifty magnificent blossoms.

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But now your dried seeds rattle in the wind. You will follow the sunflowers into winter’s dark. Poor sunflowers, all have departed, even the one that greeted us from his pot at the garage door …

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devoured by a chipmunk whose bulging cheeks and sleight of eye tell  of a late summer harvest gathered and stored.

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Red Face of Fall

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Fall

red leaves are multiplying on the maple trees
bright berries draw rings round the mountain ash

just one flower survives on the hollyhock
its blaze of glorious blooms lost with the bees
faded away to silence and dried seeds

hummingbirds have departed too and geese
gather in great gaggles on the grass feasting
before they take flight and soar to the south

I want to walk out and talk about their journey
but they waddle away and won’t let me get close

 

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Butterflies

 

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Butterflies

“Why did the butterfly flutter by?”
“Because she saw the dragonfly drink the flagon dry.”
That’s all you need to know about our raison d’être, our reason for being here, the meaning of life. Unless, like Bertrand Russell, The Meaning of Meaning, you think a cat is a dog or you know why “the beach wet” or how many turtles there are, on the way down.

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So many butterflies have visited us recently. We think the hollyhocks may have attracted them. But they seem to prefer the cone flowers.  And the bees’ balm remains virtually without visitors.

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What exactly are these blessings that descend upon us? I don’t know. I have never seen this one before. A black swallowtail, according to my searches. But this is the first time we have seen one, let alone catch one on camera.

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According to my research, shallow at best, these Admirals mimic the Monarch Butterflies which taste so bitter that predators will not touch them. True or False (T / F): a multiple choice question that I cannot answer, for I have no personal or scientific knowledge, just opinions found on the web.

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What I do know, from personal experience, is that our little patch of garden is blessed by the presence of butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. We live in a treasure-house, pleasure-house of Nature. Long may it continue.

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