The First of My Summer Lovers

This was a gift from the poet Stan Thawley last year.

The First of My Summer Lovers
June 2,2009 My first daylily blooms

Just out of the shower
Wearing only lacy dew
She has arrived early
Voluptuous, steamy.
She is no coy one
Her petals spread open
Waiting for mating.
Comfortably naked in the sun
With her soft creamy skin
And dark inner lips
She has come for adulation,
Sex and sun.
Confident, she winks
At me with those dark eyes
Saying, come, adore me.
Embarassed, I have forgotten
Her name... Misty Maude I believe.
Undulating in the wind
She whispers,
Come closer, closer
Love me, love me.
Quick now, skip the foreplay.
We haven't much time you know.
I'm only passing through,
Just here for one day.

Copyright Stan Thawley, 2009
All rights reserved.

First Daylily

This is my first daylily - by the path in the gnome garden.

Bell Flowers

Another kind of Bell Flower (Campanula) has replaced the daisies in the gnome garden.

Bell Fowers

These clustered Bell Flowers (Campanula) have replaced the daisies by the mail box.

Peonies by Jeanne Lohman

Grandma called them pineys, and I didn't know why.
They smelled so good, the full lush petals
crowded thick, the whole flower heavy on its stem,
the leaves dark and rich as shade in Chatauqua
Woods
where each spring I hunted for violets. What could there be
to pine for on this earth? Now I think maybe it was Missouri
she missed, and maybe that was what somebody she knew
called peonies there, before she traveled to Ohio,
a sixteen-year-od bride whose children came on as fast
as field crops and housework. Her flowers saved her,
the way they came up year after year and with only a bit of
care
lived tender and pretty, each kind surprising,
keeping its own sweet secret: lily-of-the-valley, iris,
the feathery leaved cosmos, lilacs in their white and purple
curls,
flamboyant sweet peas and zinnias, the bright four o'clocks
and delphinium, blue as her eyes, and the soft peony flowers
edged deep pink. In her next life I want my grandmother
to walk slowly through the gardens in England and Kyoto.
I want to be there when she recognizes the flowers
and smiles, when she kneels and take the pineys in her hands.

Copyright Jeanne Lohman
From Calls from a Lighted House
Fifthian Press, 2007

Peony

Peony

As a cut flower this peony looks much like a rose.

Peonies

The peonies are being fried by the sun.

Peonies

These peony bushes have been battered by the rains but have continued to blossom bravely.

Late Spring by Jim Harrison

...This year the moisture has made the
peonies outside my studio so heavy with their
beauty that they
droop to the ground and I think of my early
love Emily Bronte. The
cruelty of our different ages kept us apart. I tie
and prop up the peo-
nies to prolong their lives, just as I would
have nursed Emily so she
could see another spring.

Copyright Jim Harrison
In Search of Small Gods
Copper Canyon Press, 2009

Iris redux

I love the many colors of the iris that show up each year and await the re-bloomers in the fall. I am so obsessed that I have already ordered some new iris for next year.