Flower for the Day Tiny Bluet 3-31-25

As you know I love miniature wildflowers. They are so small that you must

bend over to see them. This years first is a meadow flower - tiny bluet (Houstonia pusilla). It is a re-seeding annual that does so well that it can color an entire field. 

It is also called star violet and Quaker Lady. Its four petals arise from a single branch with a tiny blue toned flower with

a yellow center.

When thorough a rent in the rain-clouded 

sky a ray of the sun suddenly glides

over the gloom of the meadows . . . .

              We never come to thoughts. They come

                 to us.

              That is the proper hour of discourse.

              Discourse cheers us to companionable 

                 reflection. Such reflection neither 

                 parades polemical opinions nor does it

                 tolerate complaisant agreement. The sail

                 of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the

                 wind of the matter.

   Martin Heidegger

Flower for the Day Periwinkle 3-28-25

It's not exciting but all garden's must have some infrastructure. My favorite without a doubt is 

periwinkle (Vinca minor). Vinca from the Latin vincere - to bind, is a spreading flowering plant in th Apocynaceae family.

Periwinkle plants have trailing stems which take root where they touch the ground so they spread easily.

I like it because it stays green all winter and does not climb trees.

The multiple flowers are simple with five purple/violet petals joined at the base to form a tube. They bloom in the spring and the fall.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday I walk myself into a state of well-being

and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it . . . but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. If one just keeps on walking everything will be all right.

Soren Kierkegaard

Don's Blog "Being in Country" 3-26-25

Here is my Missouri Medicine  editorial from June of 1991.

Flower for the Day Hyacinth 3-24-25

Well it has warmed up considerably and we have all that a garden requires - sun and water.

The crocuses are gone but the hyacinths((Hyacinthus orientalis) are exploding. Each year I 

put more in but when they bloom I always yearn for multiples more.

 

As you can see my mulch is down. The hyacinths come in many colors.

I love these new ones with pink stripes.

The hyacinth appears in the first section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land during a conversation between the narrator and the "hyacinth girl" that takes place in the spring.

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence. 

Don's Blog On Time 3-19-25

Here is my editorial from May of 1991.

Don's Blog The Art of Jan Sessions 3-17-25

Here is one from the artist's archives:

"Cityscape"  Acryllic on Canvassboard. 18" x 24"

Don's Blog What's this all about? 3-11-25

Here is my Missouri Medicine editorial from April 1991. 

I'm still addicted to action but am much more alert to whether the interaction

will produce a favorable productive result.

Flower for the Day Warm weather produces flowers 3-11-25

Just two days of arm weather and my flowers are showing up.

Its going to be a great growing year.

The crocuses are still blooming.

And some miniature irises are in abundance.

And the first of many, many daffodils today.

When the early morning light quietly

grows above the mountains . . .

            The world's darkening never reaches

                to the light of Being. 

            We are too late for the gods and too

               early for Being.  Being's poem,

               just begun, is man.

           To head toward a star — this only.

           Martin Heidegger

Don's Bog The Art of Jan Sessions 3-10-25

The artist is whimsical.  This work lightens the day.

Untiltled. Acrylic on canvass with gnomes. 

For many years we loved our A-frame in the woods.

Don's Blog The Art of Jan Sessions 3-7-25

Here is the first of a new series. Untitled. Acrylic on canvass.

It is evocative. What do you see?

Don's Blog What Are We to Do? 3-5-25

Here is my Missouri Medicine Editorial from February, 1991.

Flower for the Day Crocus 3-3-25

Well a week ago I was clearing my driveway at the Lake House. Yet weather warmed and the 

snow melted. 

Yesterday my crocus bloomed here in town. Its going to be a great growing season.

The yellow crocus (Crocus flavus) is always my first of the year. Flavus is Latin for yellow.

It is also called the snow crocus

Crocus is in the iris family.

In classical Greek mythology Crocus was a mortal youth changed by the gods into a saffron flower.

Crocus was said to be a companion of Hermes and was accidentally killed by the god in a game of 

discus when he unexpectedly stood up. As the unfortunate youth's blood dripped on the soil, the saffron flower came to be. This is similar to the hyacinth myth.

Look to the Crocus

Eyelids are the final petals closing on this life.

When I die, place crocuses on my eyes—they will guide me.

I kneel down next to the crocuses, touch them gingerly as if they were puppies

with pin teeth jumping excitedly in the firth breeze.

At last the snow has left us, cleaned the earth for crocuses

luxurious as silky hair or oiled skin.

Don't be fooled—crocuses are as wild as a fairground wheel

spinning out of control. The crocuses were coughed up out of the ground;

they are scattered around tree trunks like residue from a terrible accident.

They are purple tears hand-sewn to the earth.

We are all survivors in this life, but none more so than the crocus

embedded in the grass like a microchip gathering the history of the world.

Crocuses are submarines moving silently though green waves.

The crocuses seem to be melting among snowdrops like ice cream

with the wet look of a frog; their orange tongue-pistils barely visible.

Crocuses are satellites in the grass watching us, they know us

better than we know ourselves. Look to the crocus.

Do not stand on the purple crocus, it will remember your footprint;

like elephants—they never forget. The crocus beckons like homemade liqueur—

each one a glassful of sunlight. The crocus is a soft word in my ear;

the crocus is my best self. I carry them around in my head like a song.

I want to crawl inside of their purple armor—dwell in the honeyed saffron

filaments at their center. Thank God when the final curtain falls

it is made of crocuses.

Marion McCready