Flower for the Day Good Friday 3-29-24

One of the advantages of looking carefully where you walk these days is that you get to enjoy 

the miniatures that are rising up today on Good Friday. My favorite is Tiny Bluet (Houstonis pusilla).

No frills beauty in simplicity.

         The Bluet

Of all the flowers, the bluet has
the sweetest name, two syllables
that form on the lips, then fall
with a tiny, raindrop splash
into a suddenly bluer morning.

I offer you mornings like that,
fragrant with tiny blue blossoms -
each with four petals, each with a star
at its heart. I would give you whole fields
of wild perfume if only

you could be mine, if you were not -
like the foolish bluet (also called
Innocence) - always holding your face
to the fickle, careless, fly-by-kiss
of the Clouded Sulphur Butterfly. 

Ted Kooser

Flower for the Day Redbud 3-27-24

I'm back 'from assignment, as they say in the business. March actually has done it backward coming in like a lamb and  going out like a lion. This is a great time rebirth. I love it when small red-purple buds arise from the limbs of the redbud tree. It reminds me of all those spring breaks in Florida where these buds produced enchanting color on the way home to St. Louis.

             Ode to a Redbud
        by Margaret Dornaus

   it is a serious thing // just to be alive / 

  on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

            —Mary Oliver, "Invitation"

Redbud, such a simple name for such
a complicated tree. You, with blooms so red
they're purple, fostering a crooked understory
at the edge of my forest garden. You,
doing your best all your brief life to disguise
the gnarled knot of your trunk, your brittle,
hard-knock scars with leaves that pass for teardrops
or hearts—depending on perspective, depending
on the season. You, growing without fanfare before
bursting in on early spring, an awkward adolescent, once
reviled; now kowtowed to by the sudden delicate
droop of a dogwood's subservient white petals.
O, tree of my youth, have you come to tempt me
into yesterday's fairytale of possibilities?
To sweep me off unsteady feet, take me for a ramble
in your branching arms, hold me close, heartwood
to heartwood, showering me with a hundred fascicles
of passion until I cry out, turn toward your light and beg
for mercy and the fire to believe in happily-ever-after
beginnings, if not endings today? This day, your day,
my day. This day of sweet imperfect beauty
in this broken world.

Flower for the Day Hyacinth 3-8-24

The hyacinth bulbs popped the other day. They are amazing but enjoy them while you can. They are 

short lived and disappear in a blink.

Hyacinths come in many colors.

I love the purple the best.

In Greek Mythology Hyacinthus was a Spartan prince of remarkable beauty and a lover of the sun god Apollo. Hyacinthus visited all of Apollo's sacred lands with the god in a chariot drawn by swans. So fiercely was Apollo in love with Hyacinthus that he abandoned his sanctuary in Delphi to enjoy Hyacinthus' company by the river Eurotas. He taught Hyacinthus the use of the bow and the lyre, and the art of prophecy. 

One day, Apollo was teaching him the game of quoits. They decided to have a friendly competition by taking turns to throw the discus. Apollo threw first, with a strength so great that the discus split the clouds in the sky. Eager to retrieve the discus, Hyacinthus ran behind it to catch it. But as it hit the ground, the discus bounced back, hitting Hyacinthus' head and wounding him fatally. Apollo's face turned pale as he held his dying lover in his arms.^[15] He used all sorts of herbs and even tried giving ambrosia to heal Hyacinthus' wound, but it was futile, for he could not cure the wound inflicted by the Fates.  Apollo wept for Hyacinthus  and promised that he would always remind himself of Hyacinthus through his songs and the music of his lyre. He created a flower from Hyacinth's spilled blood, the hyacinth, and inscribed on its petals the words of lamentation, "AI AI" – "alas".

Don's Blog Continued Art Presentation 3-4-24

The Art of Jan Sessions

Untitled. Collage with acrylic in canvas.

The artist continues to go beyond the edge of the canvass.