My mother, Emily, in her prime
Today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 99. No one in our family has lived to such an age; it’s apparently not in our genetic code.
If church were meeting, I would be bringing flowers this week. The last job my mother had was as church secretary for her Unitarian church. Among her duties was bringing flowers if no one had signed up to do so. And so I honor her with flowers.
This year, not needing a large bouquet, I picked a few from my garden. Snapdragons don’t last long as cut flowers, but they offer a cheerful mix of colors, appropriate to the Easter season.
I expect this area to have more poppies next year. The seeds have no place to go now that the plants have reached the wall.
This plant, whose name I cannot remember although I bought it, has dutifully bloomed all winter, but not so energetically as it is doing now.
The apache plume has begun to come out. It’s named for its feathery seed heads, but the white flowers are much more visible.
The first made a lovely covering, for the short time it lasted. Here is the view through my study window.
This spring I have one between sidewalk and wall, and two tiny ones between sidewalk and road. My next-door neighbor has a few in what used to be his lawn. The neighbor across the way has several. I’m waiting to see if he pulls them out. As I’ve noted before, I like volunteers and won’t pull these. But they won’t last long.
Well, most people call it a weed, but I consider it a wildflower. It’s current popular name is velcro plant; it was formerly called stickleaf. If you pull it up you will find out why. It’s proper name is said to be Mentzelia. This particularly fine specimen is growing at the edge of our pool deck.
What you see is the top half of the high wall that holds up the ground of the house behind us and a very little of the great mound of leaves which supports these feathery spikes of seed. In the mornings small birds land on the seed heads and weigh them down.
Weaving the Terrain is a large collection edited by David Meischen and Scott Wiggerman. It contains 211 poems, by many poets—a minority of the contributors have supplied more than one poem. The subject matter ranges across the southwestern states and over many themes. There are plenty of roadrunners, vultures and coyotes, historical moments both familiar and lesser known, and a lot of sand. There are personal stories as well, events that “just happen” to take place in a southwestern locale.
The chamisa and the butterfly bush are flaunting their yellow and red, and yes, fighting for space. In the side yard the volunteer autumn sage is blooming again:
Fortunately, it doesn’t mind in the least that I never got around to deadheading the last set of blooms. As the weather cools I hope to give the garden more attention.
Purple mat is a small flower which, this year, is here, there and everywhere in my yard, after some years of scarcity.
The iris came with the house. That is, a few flat leaves showed up in unexpected places. I’ve transplanted and fed them. They seem to like being against the wall. They take much more work than native flowers, and don’t last as long, but they were an accidental gift, so I keep caring for them.
No, these are not the same poppies I’ve shown before. It’s a good year for them, they keep appearing in new spots.
I tried to plant something else for the winter in this pot. It didn’t make it. These violas don’t care whether it is winter or spring.
freethoughtandmetaphor 