Flower for the Day Lily I 6-4-24

This year the lilies (Lilium) have been magical. Usually the Asiatic lilies come before the oriental lilies. This year they

have all come at the same time over a one month period. The are a feast for the eyes. And more to come.

          I keep watching

             The lilies

         Keep blooming

Flower for the Day Columbine II 6-3-24

This columbine (Aqualegia canadensis) has been coming up in the gnome garden for more that 30 years.

It is the Canadian columbine.

Glowing in her bonnet-
Glowing in her cheek-
Glowing is her Kirtle-
Yet she cannot speak.

Better as the Daisy
From the summer hill
Vanish unrecorded
Save by tearful rill-

Save by loving sunrise
Looking for her face.
Save by feet unnumbered
Pausing at the place.

Emily Dickinson

Flower for the Day Penstemon digitalis 5-31-24

Penstemon digitalis is also known as fox-glove beard-tongue, talus slope penstemon, and white beard-tongue. It is a  

flowering plant in the plantain family. It grows 3 to 5 feet tall with opposite simple shiny green leaves

Two lipped tubular flowers come off the long stem and have tiny white hairs on the outside of the tube. The lower lip has 3 downward pointing lobes of similar size and shape.   The upper lip is erect and lobed in 2 parts somewhat smaller than the lower lobes. Inside the tube are several pinkish or purplish lines, 4 black-tipped stamens hugging the upper part of the tube, a white style, and a sterile stamen with sparse yellow hairs at the tip end.  

Charles Darwin's grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, employed digitalis to great outcomes with his dropsy patients. He even sought to immortalize the plant in a poem:

Bolster'd with down, amid a thousand wants,
Pale Dropsy rears his bloated form, and pants;
"Quench me ye cool pellucid rills," he cries,
Wets his parched tongue and rolls his hollow eyes.
Divine Hygeia from the bending sky
Descending, listens to his piercing cry;
Assumes bright Digitalis dress and air;
Her ruby cheek, white neck and raven hair;
Four youths protect her from the circling throng,
And like the Nymph the Goddess steps along,
O'er him she waves her serpent wreathed wand,
Cheers with her voice and raises with her hand
Warms with rekindling bloom his visage wan,
And charms the shapeless monster into man.

–  Digitalis, From Botanic Garden, Part 2, Canto 2 (emphasis added)

( From Henry E.Hooper, Witness Post: Foxglove)

Flower for the Day Spiderwort 5-29-24

Spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana) has been a reliable addition to our gardens for many years. 

It comes in a blue 

and a delicate white.

        Spiderwort is a prairie flower, as ethereal is it is enduring.

The name is a consequence of its long slender leaves that break suddenly downward.

                      mimicking the legs of crouching spider.

    It rises at the end of May in the prairies and savanna's, in a universe all its own,

a small galaxy of blue starlike flowers that form the constellation of the universe of the Crouching Spider.

         Unlike celestial bodies that survive in the billions, for billions of years,

the stars of the Crouching Spider number only a few and shimmer for just a few hours.

            Coinciding with earth's star, they emerge, not with a bang,

     but slowly materialize from a golden hot centering three purple points.

                           

                                    As the sun grows high in the sky,

                            they gradually collapse into deep blue planets.

              Yet tomorrow morning, and for thirty or more turns of Earth,

You may gaze into the prairie universe to witness the reemergence of the Crouching Spider

                                                 and the creation of new worlds.

Mike MacDonald

Flower for the Day Coreopsis 5-27-24

I hope you are having a great Memorial Day. This coreopsis (Coreopsis grandiflora) is very plentiful this year.

Its other name refers to small black seeds commonly  called tickseeds. 

The large flower (grandiflora) is impressive.

The old sweet-rocket sheds its fine

perfumes;

With golden stars the coreopsis

flames;

And here are scores of sweet old-

fashioned blooms

Dear for the very fragrance of their

names…

               John Russell Hayes

Flower for the Day Last Iris 5-24-24

This delicate iris (Iris  fernaldii) is the last one of the year.

It is native to western California and how it got to the heartland is a mystery.

Iris, Most Beautiful Flower

Iris, most beautiful flower,
Symbol of life, love, and light;
Found by the brook, and the meadow,
Or lofty, on arable height.
You come in such glorious colors,
In hues, the rainbow surpass;
The chart of color portrays you,
In petal, or veins, of your class.
You bloom with the first in Winter,
With the last, in the Fall, you still show;
You steal the full beauty of Springtime,
With your fragrance and sharp color glow.
Your form and beauty of flower,
An artist's desire of full worth;
So Iris, we love you and crown you,
MOST BEAUTIFUL FLOWER ON EARTH!

- Edith Buckner Edwards (January 1961) 

Flower for the Day Creeping Thyme 5-24-24

As you know I am always into garden infrastructure. This year my creeping thyme (Thymus surpyllum)

is blooming off the chart. 

And the blooms are extraordinary.

A Bed of Creeping Thyme

Don't call your grown son at this late hour.
Put on a coat and go outside, recall a family
you made of snowpeople, your daughter's
mittened hands, the bed of creeping thyme
disappearing in the sudden storm.
The snow is bandaging the world
or is it erasure? What is the answer
to this night's interrogation?
It's falling heavy now.
You know why there are two syllables to hours.
Ours is what is left you cannot name.
Explain can't you, canto what you can bear,
swear
this music is what most matters,
the lawn's staff, notes of tiny boot prints
vanishing—.

Sean Thomas Dougherty
​

Cicada Time 5-22-24

The cicadas (Cicadoideae) have been out for several weeks. The nymphs come out of the ground ( that is what is making all those little holes in the dirt), climb the nearest tree, and shed theirs shells (exuviae). The shell is on the right.

 

The noise they make is from tymbals on their underside. The noise is a mating call. 

They can fly and are essentially harmless. They do not eat any plants or leaves.

After mating they lay eggs in the trees and then the adults die in 4-6 weeks. 

The eggs mature into nymphs which fall to the ground below the trees. The nymphs burrow into the ground and for the next 17 years they have an active life surviving on plant juices from the tree roots. After the 17 years they emerge from the ground and start the cycle again. In order for the cycle to be sustained the trees must be at least 17 years old for them to survive and emerge. 

Maybe the only advantage to having high tone hearing loss is that what I hear is greatly muted and not at all bothersome.

Flower for the Day Philadelphia Fleabane 5-22-24

I have seen this flower for years but never knew it's name. Who would believe it is called 

Philadelphia fleabane (Erigeron philadlphicus) - really? It is also called common fleabane, daisy fleabane, Robin's plantain, frost root, and Skervish - really. The flowers contain a chemical that if burned can drive away fleas. Even if they are not burned you will note that there are no fleas here.

They are interesting in a daisy way.

The Sunset Sky

When I see the clouds shined by sunset,

I have to go home now.

When I see the birds shade,

I have to go home now.

I have to go home.

It is sad.Why does today end here?

See you tomorrow?

Tomorrow and today are

Different.

Today is only today.

Tomorrow is different.Today's me doesn't exist

In tomorrow anymore

And, neither does today's you.

there doesn't exist

todays's touch anymore.

Nobody knows that

Today and tomorrow are completely different.

That's why I cry

In this evening.

In this shiny bright evening,

Today is closed.

In this time,

When a bulbul's voice

Slashes the sky,

It is the same feeling.

All that I've earned,

I don't need.

The annual fleabane's white bouquet

That I gathered

Is withering 

In the hands

Like the letter that was never read.

I'll throw it away onto the meadow

And run away

In order not to be seen by the first star.

To be honest,

I want to be absorbed in the dark sky

And disappear

Because I can see the uninhabited vacancy

From the sky forever

and might even see today's back there.

Tomoko

Flower for the Day Daisy 5-20-24

The oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is ubiquitous for which I love it. 

It can and does show up anywhere. Here it is in back of the house.

And its right purty.

Here is a poem that is challenging.

Let me fall if I must. The one I will become will catch me.

~ Baal Shem Tov

The rain falling from the cloud, caught by--and becoming-- the thirsting tree, the shining drops falling from leaves to the ancient alchemical Earth, the sunlight falling, caught by hungry life; everything is falling into what it will become.

Once, I moved in the world as though I knew my way, as though I had a map and a name for my becoming; I didn't.

I pedaled through the air of my life wildly, panicked and struggling to feel the ground beneath me.

I couldn't land, too fearful of meeting my imagined life, doubting the woman who held my spirit would be there to catch me.

If only I had seen that we're all falling, as long as it takes, till we meet the garden where all our seeds have been planted, the room of our dreams, the home we know to be ours, our own and only holy self.

And then we fall again.

If only I had noticed the tiny fledgling tumble from his bending wind-tossed branch and how he was caught by flight.

If only I'd seen Yeshua fall into his waiting Christ-ness, or Siddhartha cradled by the enlightened Buddha.

We cannot know what mysteries will unroll into time when we let go, only that we're free to bide, to breathe, transform and catch our truer selves when the falling ends, and none of the tipping energy that sends us softly swirling or suddenly down, is wasted.

Everything deepens those who allow it.

I have seen lives fall into the arms of the love they became, and sinners fall into certain saints.

We spend lifetimes, days like centuries, catching and releasing the Sacred One we are, learning to leap into wonder, trusting it will meet us as we merge and fall, like the fledgling, into something as surprising as flight.

And when at last we must drift down into our silent, waiting tombs, we'll know the light we always were and bow to the wonder we are.

It's finished, we'll say, our culminating yes. and we will become our light.

In the garden, blossoms flash into dark, honeyed cherries ready to be eaten by hungry life; everything is falling into what it will become.

 Catherine "Kitty" O'Meara

If you enjoyed this work I suggest you look up Baal Shem Tov, an amazing man.