Flower for the Day Hyacinth 3-31-17

March has come in like a lion and is going out like a lion not a lamb. Our water tables are overflowing

but the flowers are responding. 

I don't know if you have ever cut your hyacinths and brought them inside but if you do you are in for a treat. 

The amazing pungent scent is surprising and extremely pleasant. 

Can you smell it?

Flower for the Day Gnome Garden 3-29-17

This is the Gnome Garden after 2 days of light rain and a little added warmth - a

beautiful explosion. (Best on your computer.)

Flower for the Day Tulips 3-27-17

I am not a tulip guy but have put a few in for the last several years. 

This is a nice subtle red crop.

Tulips

By Sylvia Plath

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.

Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.   

I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly

As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.   

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.   

I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses   

And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff   

Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.

Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.

The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,

They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,

Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,   

So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water

Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.

They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.   

Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage——

My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,   

My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;   

Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat   

stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.

They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.   

Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley   

I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books   

Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.   

I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.

How free it is, you have no idea how free——

The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,

And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.

It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them   

Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.   

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.

Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe   

Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.   

Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.

They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down,   

Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,   

A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.   

The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me

Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,   

And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow   

Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,   

And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.   

The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,

Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.   

Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.

Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river   

Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.   

They concentrate my attention, that was happy   

Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.

The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;   

They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,   

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes

Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,

And comes from a country far away as health.

Sylvia Plath, "Tulips" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1992)

         

Flower for the Day Phlox 3-23-17

There are several beds of phlox within the gnome gardens which have begun to bloom in the last few days.

The colors are vibrant. Phlox is from the Greek - flame.

The details are amazing.

I had not seen the purple spots on the white petals before this close up.

Denel Kessler

Mar 15, 2016

Wild

The Mountain keeps all secrets. Crusted lichen on timeworn boulders. High altitude longing for alpine daisies. Carefree blossoms, long ago plucked, gone to seed, restless in the fertile ground.  Wildflowers bloom shortly sweet, fleeting paintbrush to layered canvas. Fairy slippers lost on crumbling doorsteps. Glacier lilies pressed between avalanched pages.  Forget-me-nots in forgotten blue hollows. The common harebell feels anything but common when seen through a lover's eyes. Forest tiger, your bulbs taste bitter. Purple lupines sage with fuzzy-leafed logic.  Fireweed, erect, unadorned, eternally reaching. Lousewort, spreading phlox, leave this scarlet alone.  Listen to Indian Henry, it's bad luck to trample what is sacred. The devil dreams behind steep and sheltered walls. Keep to the Wonderland, bypass this Trail of Shadows.  Seek ancient hunting grounds, steadfast shelter in the wooded clearing.  There is no pearly everlasting along these old trails.  Paradise lost may never be regained.

Flower for the Day Periwinkle 3-22-17

The periwinkle (Vinca minor) has been blooming foe more than a month. The purple beds surround the east and west sides of the house. I love vinca as a ground cover because it stays green all winter and blooms twice a year. It stays low and does not climb the trees. This vinca bed is more than 70 yards long.

It is impressive close up - beauty growing old.

Lyrics of your smile

Your beauty sings harmony  with a cantata sunrise,  euphoric melodies in viola  and piccolo lingering  'pon a lavender haze  of periwinkle whispers,  symphonic poetry  afloat of dawn's breezes,  ecstasy in tangerine desires,  wafting concertos of passion  as I listen quietly  to my day once again  beginning with the perfect  lyrics of your smile  

Copyright © Chris Green | Year Posted 2016 

Flower for the Day The Gnomes want Out 3-13-17

The gnomes winter over in the garage. They have watched with interest as the gardens are getting ready with cutting the grasses, blowing the leaves,  and mulching with some organic concoction called Black-Gold.

They told me last Friday that they were ready to come out to their garden. It was a beautiful March day.

I told them to be careful what they wished for:

They are still smiling.

Prabhu Iyer

Oct 28, 2014

Olmec

Carved in stone, lost in time,
freezing my parted smile,

Peering down into the unknown,
I sit next to you, toting my arms:

Where is the world
that breathed you to life?

On this lonely peak, tires
upon tires of hopes and dreams
retreat into the the terraced
spirals of mists; Every mystical
dawn dissolves into the lakes.

Gnomes bear the burden of
mysterious gates to the beyond,
as whispers tiptoe to strains
of the Quijongo.

Here epochs and worlds end.
And counts begin all over again.

Flower for the Day Daffodils II 3-9-17

The daffodils, like the weather have been coming in by dribs and drabs. Now there is a second wave.

We expect snow this week-end. 

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Flower for the Day Hyacinth 3-8-17

These hyacinths came up almost overnight. They are old friends and constant.

It is exciting to watch as the petals unfurl almost in real time.

"If, of thy mortal goods, thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves
alone to thee are left,
Sell one & from the dole,
Buy Hyacinths to feed the soul"
- Muslihuddin Sadi,
13th Century Persian Poet

Don's Blog St Louis Symphony Special Open Rehearsal

My friend Dave lives in E, coloradostes Park and was able to visit this week. On Thursday we went to a friends 

of the Symphony Event at Powell Hall. I was an Open Rehearsal and filled the lower level. Dave and I sat in the second open row on the right. The musicians put their instrument cases in the first few rows.

Here you can see the pre-start tune-up with the St Louis symphony Chorus in the background. To the left of the podium in the brick red shirt is Concertmaster and First Violin David Halen. David runs the Innsbrook Music festival in the summer.

The practise was run by guest conductor Sir Andrew Davis. They started by playing Belshazzar's Feast which William Walton wrote in 1929 at the age of 27. The words sung by the chorus were shown on the white screen 

behind the orchestra.

They played this mesmerizing piece straight through without stopping. Belshazzar of Babylon commanded his followers to drink from the sacred vessels taken from the temple of the Jews. In the midst of the revelry "as they  feasted came forth fingers of a man's hand and the King saw the part of the hand that wrote: "MENE.MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN" "THOU ART WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE AND FOUND WANTING". And then Belshazzar is slain -SLAIN! - the chorus almost shouts as Babylon falls and the Jews are delivered. The piece gets inside your body. After this the conductor turned and asked the chorus director Amy Kaiser for her reactions and they worked on three minor parts.

There was a 20 minute intermission and the chorus left. Most of us went to the lobby for cookies and drinks. It reminded me of an intermission at a Blues hockey game - only th audience here was on average 40 years older.

 

After the intermission the conductor and the orchestra worked on one piece: Edward Elgar's Falstaff-

Symphonic study in c minor, op.68. They worked long and hard with many re-plays. At one time the conductor turned to the audience and said," I know this is very boring, but we have to do it."

For me it was an evening of great entertainment.